WAPO says the recent energy bill is bipartisan and they seem pretty happy about this legislation generally. The drawback that is getting attention:
“Energy efficiency advocates applauded its measures for buildings and weatherization programs even as some greens have expressed concerns about the legislation’s provisions that would define the burning of biomass as carbon neutral.”
So, there you have it. It is the law of our land that burning biomass is carbon neutral. If/when CO2 levels continue to rise and one source can be determined to be the net positive CO2 emissions of burning biomass, I guess we will need to revisit this definition, but for now, corporations and individuals who want to monetize forest biomass have the green light to proceed.
BPL: You have no idea what I have or haven’t experienced, you bloody fool.
Richard, being even more of a jerk than usual: Sure I do. I can say that there’s better than 99% chance that you’ve never survived on maggots. Never lived like Leningrad. Either confirm or deny; don’t spout nonsensical insults. So, BPL, tell us, what is the closest you’ve come to the survival mode of which I speak? Have you or your kids ever had kwashiorkor?
BPL: If I had a way to filter you on RealClimate, I’d take it at this point. Being called a liar by a filthy, repulsive dog like you is a signal that I never should have paid you any attention. The next time you want to call me a liar, do it to my face. Better be wearing armor.
Steve Fishsays
Re: Comment by Phil L — 26 Apr 2016 @ 12:44 AM, ~#377
Phil, I am also in favor of sustainable forest management, but don’t fool yourself that this can capture anywhere near the carbon that a forest left alone can. The real problem is that wood construction requires a holistic approach and this is just not done. Why is this so? It is expensive. Until the public understands that we all cannot continue to think that we don’t have to pay for externalities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality ) this will not change. For wood construction, this approach involves building energy efficient structures that are designed to last, and then insist that they can’t be torn down unless this would reduce externalized costs. If this were done, the amount of forest harvested would be reduced and leave more forest land for capturing carbon. Managing commercial forests to minimize carbon loss is also quite expensive. All of this can be done, but … .
Steve
Scottsays
@Richard,
I also have a research and development project for agriculture. It’s purpose is also to regenerate soil health, not the least of which includes significant increases of soil carbon via the liquid carbon pathway. My project is scalable from the small family garden all the way up to the large commercial grower.
I am a few years out from being able to claim success, but early results are encouraging enough for me to have applied for a small case study grant from the USDA. I have a few people looking at it from the local land grant university and the State Carbon Project (which is voluntary in my state).
So I agree with you that with the changes we can make, it is unlikely that the US will ever go hungry. I believe there are agricultural solutions to both AGW and soil health/desertification. However, I believe you are being too hard on some of the other posters here. Without changes they are correct. Their influence is needed to help provide the impetus for change. Otherwise people will continue to live in denial there is a problem at all. It’s the old “frog in a pot on slow boil” problem.
Steve Fishsays
Re: Comment by Richard Caldwell — 27 Apr 2016 @ 12:27 AM, ~#395
Richard, you are not a serious commenter. You asked me a question, I provided a simple way to find the answer for yourself, and you are griping. You express ignorance but continue to provide unsupported opinions. Log houses? I know several families that have lived in them. Try living in a house with R8 value walls and dealing with air and water infiltration, dry rot, and insect invasion. The remedies for these problems plus the overuse of wood make for very inefficient construction. Pellet stoves? Well maybe, but pellets are not made everywhere and, in addition to the fossil energy required to prepare the wood and compress them, shipping them 600 miles uses as much energy from fossil fuel as is contained in the pellets. We are talking about reducing fossil carbon pollution here. Do your homework.
Bock Cay, too, though the effect was much more muted there.
Of course, that’s a very different environment, but I expect the logic will hold.
Richard Caldwellsays
Robin: If I have 2 children who consume more per child than someone with 10 children, but
Richard: It’s a difficult subject, so I’ll head out to Left Field: since I have no children, I should get your share PLUS your children’s share, as amortized over all four of our lifetimes? Perhaps we should be taxing reproduction instead of subsidizing it via tax breaks, free school, and all that other stuff that robs me of my hard-earned money and welfares it to your family? (And those planet-killers with ten kids, well, just shoot them.)
Heading infield: China’s one-child policy gives us a grand experiment on population reduction. As tech advances and their citizens age, will everything be just dandy, or will robots not be able to keep up with labor requirements? Their abandonment of the policy shows that their opinion of the merits has changed, though female infanticide might have been the dominant factor in their decision. Dunno. Japan’s aging population is another example.
———
Chuck: apartment dwellers
Richard: Yeah, LEDs and HPS have opened up the door for apartment agriculture, especially in winter. Instead of using resistance heat, run a mini-garden. Food, light, oxygen, air cleaning, beauty, fragrance, and heat all for the same electricity where only heat was formerly generated.
And rocky soil is only a huge headache if you plough/till. Ploughing harms soil, releases carbon, and encourages erosion. There are other ways to provide the benefits of this primitive technique without all the related harm.
Remember, empty the cache and sign out of Google before searching, or Google’s “search bubble” may protect you from seeing anything you might not like.
Chuck Hughessays
I see time and again the same sort of assumptions being made right here, on this blog, so the point I was making was not about Gore per se, but the general tendency for all those of like persuasion to deceive themselves in a similar fashion.
Comment by Victor — 27 Apr 2016
Weaktor! Your “concern” has been noted and forwarded to management.
In the future scientists will refrain from making any predictions until AFTER disaster strikes, no matter the probability. We will instead employ the “Point and Laugh Method” which, even though totally useless and unscientific, does provide some satisfaction for those who were told to keep their alarmist predictions to themselves.
Scott at 406 says “it is unlikely that the US will ever go hungry.”
Mike says, hey, let’s be clear. The US will never be hungry or go hungry. The US is like the scientific community, these are concepts, neither of these is a physical reality that can speak with one voice or shove calories in a piehole. Some US citizens are normally hungry and go hungry.
“Food insecure—At times during the year, these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food. Food-insecure households include those with low food security and very low food security.
14.0 percent (17.4 million) of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2014.
Essentially unchanged from 14.3 percent in 2013”
My guess is that none of the regular commenters or contributors have much experience with food insecurity either directly or indirectly.
Food stamp program recently took another cut in benefits, if I am not mistaken. There are millions of US citizens living in households that cannot put a decent meal on the table tonight. If climate change causes food prices to rise, then this situation is likely to get worse. This is not a situation where the US is unable to grow sufficient food, but the hard reality is that not all folks in the US are getting a place at the table.
Victor (@399) says: “The snowball was clearly not intended to “refute” AGW, as has so often been assumed. It was presented in response to the many predictions by Al Gore and other climate alarmists that snow would be a thing of the past by now.”
I’m so glad we have you to interpret Inhofe’s actions. Especially since his WORDS (the never-ending supply of them, replete with no end of deceit and ignorance) certainly seek to refute AGW. No need for quotes. He calls it a hoax. He calls climate scientists liars. As for the snow ball, THIS is what he actually said (as per CBS News):”Do you know what this is? It’s a snowball,” Inhofe said, holding the snowball aloft. “It’s just from outside here, so it’s very, very cold out … very unseasonable.” This in an attempt to distract folks from the fact that globally 2014 was close to a record warm. Record lows. Please. Sure they still happen. It’s called noise. But they’re becoming more and more infrequent, while record highs are becoming more and more frequent.
So, on the one hand, we have a measurable and dramatic increase in extreme warms and an accompanying decrease in extreme colds. We have good evidence for increasing extremes of wet and dry (but not as robust, which is not surprising). On the other hand, we have a handful of predictions (which do not, to the best of my not authoritative knowledge, include the end of snow by this time) that have not worked out. Hmmm… Why is it you carp on the trivial latter than the significant former? I wonder. No I don’t.
Richard Caldwellsays
Scott: However, I believe you are being too hard on some of the other posters here. Without changes they are correct.
Richard: I agree, including that I’m abrasive, especially since my primary utility for humanity is the destruction of axioms. Would you like to exchange ideas? I’m guessing we’re taking wildly divergent paths that utilize many of the same components. My current “disposable email” is InitialContact@yandex.com
———–
Steve Fish: All of this can be done, but
Richard: Yep. Continuing BAU is not a viable option. That’s why I specified doing that which is not currently done.
Steve Fish: Try living in a house with R8 value walls and dealing with air and water infiltration, dry rot, and insect invasion.
Richard: Huh? Why would anybody build a log house without ~R30 insulation values? (other than in a very mild climate) Without proper barriers? Logs provide thermal mass, carbon storage, nice visuals, and structure. Insulation provides insulation. One method is to split logs into outer slivers and inner square cores, and orient the slivers horizontally on the exterior of the house (like siding) and the cores vertically (flat surfaces that won’t shrink vertically), filling the gap with foam, sort of like a Structural Insulating Panel. Insects? Water? Air? Thermal losses?
Then, assuming you’re too far away from the source for stoves with attached Stirling engines to be viable, you can take much of the slash and waste and make SIPs to build more houses. Or you can burn the waste and transmit electrons. Or you can make alcohol for fuel. Why didn’t you ponder the “folks who live 600 miles from a forest” issue and come up with a solution? (Logs close, SIPs far away) Why did you assume it’s impossible to insulate a log house?
Steve Fish: I provided a simple way to find the answer for yourself, and
Richard: I said I’d research it WHEN I had time to give it justice. That ain’t good enough for you? Why?
And I even went beyond by doing a quick search, which said you are wrong, and invited you to explain, yet instead of continuing the discussion, you said/implied that asking ONE question of somebody whose opinion I respect so as to prime my mind for not-yet-but-imminent research is “griping”? How so? Well, I’ll “gripe” it again:
WHY is my source, which said coal IS being formed, wrong?
And you gave no alternative. IF we leave all trees alone, THEN how do we provide the material which will replace wood? Hemp might work… How do we suppress fire in the resulting tinder-choked not-yet-mature forests? Importing elephants might work….
It’s easy to say “let it be” and wander off cluelessly. I know you’re not like that, so I suspect you’ll enlighten me with some grand techniques. Frankly, I don’t see how selective logging prevents old growth. it might be the ONLY way for us to reasonably get there from here. (the other possibility I’ve pondered is clear-cut harvesting of “fire breaks”, so fires can be easily contained.)
————-
BPL: repulsive dog like you
Richard: As I figured. NO substance. NO confirmation or denial. NO data or thought. NO answer to Secular or admission of error of immense magnitude. (Factor of 43!!) YES, you would block out all original ideas if you could.
Where’s that Eemian USA map? Or tell them [everyone except me] why such research is irrelevant. I questioned your “research” and gave specific issues. If you were serious, you’d answer with the requested map. Since you went ad caninem AND Hitler (I’m repulsive and not-even-human, so my ideas should be censored), I’d say you should ask Santa Claus for a longer ruler and a blindfold for Winter Solstice so you can extend that extrapolation in ignorance. I hear our arable land will go negative…
Steve Fishsays
Re: Comment by mike — 27 Apr 2016 @ 10:56 AM, ~#402
Mike, please explain how burning biomass releases more CO2 than the plants had to remove from the atmosphere in order to grow in the first place. Steve
What’s wrong with “melting”, as in “melting Arctic”? Anyway, let’s put this aside, shall we?
Brian Dodgesays
MA Rodger – How are “Our data document significant losses of soil carbon with permafrost thaw that, over decadal timescales, overwhelms increased plant carbon uptake” and “Thermokarst erosion occurs along lake margins when massive, subsurface ground ice wedges melt, causing the ground surface to subside. Labile organic matter from permafrost erodes into anaerobic lake bottoms when yedoma thaws, enhancing methane production and emission” not “…emissions debouching from a melty Arctic”
Richard Caldwellsays
Mike: My guess is that none of the regular commenters or contributors have much experience with food insecurity either directly or indirectly.
Richard: I’ve lived with/amongst the poor for part of my life, so I am intimately familiar with the lives of all classes of Americans. For me, lifestyle is a choice, and as an atheistic follower of Jesus, the parable of the camel and the eye of the needle rings true. I’ve lived in a rough trailer park, two ghettos, and a shelter. (BPL’s terroristic threat just made me chuckle. I can navigate my way through a bar fight without throwing a punch. Life is helicopters and sirens and watching folks absorb blows that surely “must” be fatal and then they wake up and don’t seek medical treatment for the apparent concussion and probable skull fracture. Hospitals charge the uninsured extra.)
Food insecurity is dependent on functionality, education (not school) and attitude, with some access thrown in. SNAP is theoretically plenty for providing folks with basic healthy food such as rice and beans with fresh veggies, but getting to a grocery store is an issue. Buses, childcare, snow, nutrition deserts.
The poor literally work themselves to death. They pay extra for almost everything, and perhaps 400% above retail for many things. Go to a rent-to-own furniture store or a buy-here-pay-here car lot. You can rent a $100K house for only a little more than the poor pay to live in a $15K dump. The poor often “spend” a huge chunk of their income on fees for the payday loan that they renew every week. Rent often includes a hefty late fee. The rich get free credit cards with cash back. The poor pay maybe 21% interest plus annual and late fees. Vultures don”t wait for the poor to die. Since the Vultures write the Rules, well, the Rules say the poor deserve to be eaten.
Navigating the System is another issue. Miss a form or a piece of documentation and your SNAP benefits terminate. Now Mom has to drag her kids on two buses to a food bank and then try to get everything back home, where she’s faced with the fact that They turned off the electricity because the check bounced. Spoiled food and another couple Fees. Life is a series of catastrophes.
We’ve trained folks to eat expensive and toxic garbage. That single mom with three kids who demand the sugar and salt and animal fat that television says they deserve, well, she probably grew up eating garbage and the idea of cooking from scratch is completely foreign to her. And the time. Soak beans overnight before you can even start dinner?? She’s got two jobs! Soda, mac and cheese, hotdogs, hamburger “helper”, a TV dinner is what food is. Splurging is McDonalds.
BPL: You don’t deserve substance. You wouldn’t understand it if I gave it to you. In fact, I have given it to you, and you’ve repeatedly shown you don’t get it. You still talk about my “extrapolating from a trend,” as if I were using a linear regression. You have no idea what climate modeling is about. Worst of all, you continue to think you know what I have or haven’t gone through.
You do not. You can cite probabilities all day long, and you still don’t know me or what I’ve been through. You never will, and since you’re not my friend or my intimate, and never will be, I owe you no personal information. Go play with the other dogs.
Chuck Hughessays
fat that television says they deserve, well, she probably grew up eating garbage and the idea of cooking from scratch is completely foreign to her. And the time. Soak beans overnight before you can even start dinner?? She’s got two jobs! Soda, mac and cheese, hotdogs, hamburger “helper”, a TV dinner is what food is. Splurging is McDonalds.
I agree with you. Your side has no idea.
Comment by Richard Caldwell — 28 Apr 2016
RC, you’re off in the weeds. “Your side”? Not even sure what that means. “Atheistic Follower of Jesus”…?
HadCRUT4 has posted for March at +1.063ºC, a tiny bit warmer (+0.002ºC) than February but being a rise, March stands as HadCRUT4’s ”scorchyissimo!!!”
An update on the El Nino which will be responsible for a part of that record temperature, the average of GISTEMP, NOAA & HadCRUT is +1.188ºC, down slightly on February’s +1.206ºC. The 1998 equivalent was +0.61ºC & the full comparison 1997/8 v 2015/16 so far is graphed here (usually 2 clickjs to ‘download your attachment’).
ENSO3.4 continues to fall but not as quickly as in 1998 and SOI which never really matched the strength of the 1997/98 values, is still negative while we are a few days away from when it began to fall back into its positive mode in 1998. So we will soon be seeing for real that ENSO 2015/16 is longer lasting than 1997/98 (or not), although in some respects a weaker affair than the 1997/98 version.
Brian Dodge @418.
The potential for massive emissions of CO2 and CH4 from various bits of a melting Arctic are indeed large. How large will depend on how much melt occurs and how quick those emissions can occur will depend on how melty the Arctic gets.
The initial comment I made about these Arctic CO2 emissions (@210) was to say:-
“How much of the 2014-to-2015 atmospheric CO2 increase is due to higher LUC emissions or due to the mounting El Nino or due to wonky non-flat FF emissions figures, we shall have to wait and see. (Note I do not mention emissions debouching from a melty Arctic as I see no evidence for it.)”
I do not suggest in this that the Arctic is not a net emitter of CO2. Rather I dismiss any significant increase in CO2 from such a source which could in any way stand as a potential source for the 2014-to-2015 atmospheric CO2 increase alongside the others I listed.
RC at 419: I should have said “few” of the regular commenters or contributors. Your complex take on the US caste system seems right to me and much more realistic than a simplistic proposition along the lines of “the US is not going to go hungry” and that kind of sloppy argument.
SF at 415: the devil is in the details on biomass. Congress has declared biomass to be carbon neutral as a means to game the global emissions problem. Producing biomass fuel creates a carbon debt (carbon emissions) where a non-monetized treatment of forest “waste” could very well create carbon sequestration in soil. Remember that all of the legal arguments the world might muster are subject to review by the final arbiter: the level of CO2 and other ghg in the atmosphere. We are past the point where we should argue about carbon neutrality on biomass burning without considering the natural carbon sequestration and soil health that can accrue if we choose another end for the biomass.
I think there may be situations where biomass burning make sense, but I live in the Pacific NW where environmentalists have been fighting the treatment of forest waste as biomass fuel for a variety of reasons. The local struggle colors my thoughts on biomass.
Not climatology, though.
Think of the children and do your best not to respond here
Go there if you must.
Puhleeze.
Steve Fishsays
Re: Comment by Richard Caldwell — 27 Apr 2016 @ 8:43 PM, ~#414
Why do you say anything about a topic when you accurately claim ignorance of the topic? For example, you say: “Huh? Why would anybody build a log house without ~R30 insulation values?” What you apparently don’t know, is that to bring an R8 log house up to code requires putting internal studs on exterior walls to provide space for insulation and to hang the interior wall finish. You might as well just build the wall and skip the logs. So log houses use as much as three times as much wood as a conventional one, only store carbon for a short period, and are very difficult to protect from moisture and insects, but they look nice and woodsy. Hey, just what we need. Richard is not interested in learning anything, but for others interested in log homes you can start here: http://energy.gov/energysaver/energy-efficiency-log-homes, but there is a lot more involved.
Regarding “coal happens,” perhaps you should read some science and stop pretending to be the captain of the junior high debate team.
Steve
Steve Fishsays
Re: Comment by mike — 28 Apr 2016 @ 10:38 AM, ~#424
Hi, Mike. I see where you are coming from. I live in the Northern California coastal forest, and we have our own issues. One is called “hack and squirt,” which involves logging an area and then using nasty poisons on forest recovery plants, like tanoak, in order to promote faster growth of commercial trees.
I think that the most important issue regarding uses of biomass is that it is the fossil carbon component that is the real problem. For example, agriculture produces a lot of CO2, but the portion of this that was previously extracted from the atmosphere in the previous year is not very important.
Steve
Victorsays
#413 Martin Bernstein: “On the other hand, we have a handful of predictions (which do not, to the best of my not authoritative knowledge, include the end of snow by this time) that have not worked out. Hmmm… Why is it you carp on the trivial latter than the significant former? I wonder. No I don’t.”
As for the “end of snow,” this dates from 2000, in an article titled “Snowfalls Are Now Just a Thing of the Past”: “According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.”
So yes, some were predicting the end of snow, or something very close to that.
“So, on the one hand, we have a measurable and dramatic increase in extreme warms and an accompanying decrease in extreme colds.”
Interesting. Would you care to provide documentation for the above? I’m especially curious about the “dramatic” part.
In any case, as I’ve said before, my point is not that GW isn’t happening, and that the world isn’t warming (obviously it is), but that it is all too easy to make predictions based on incomplete and misleading evidence, cherry picked to support a favored position.
Victor’s illustrating his usual claim that he can’t find what any child interested in the subject can find out in 15 seconds with a search.
As an example, for any youngster still looking for information — remember, ask your local reference librarian for help. They’re there for you.
If you can’t get out of your chair, there’s Google
(remember, first empty your cache, sign out of Google, restart your browser, to minimize the “filter bubble”showing you only what you’ve previously seen)
376 Robin Johnson. I think more research wouldn’t hurt. I think you’re basing your judgments and opinions on a hole range of unsupportable assumptions Robin.
re “In fairness, nations in colder climates have long relied on meat.”
That’s not fairness that’s cherry picking fallacies Robin. It’s not fair when you change the subject which was the US consumes 20% of all meat with only 4.3% of the population. That’s not fair in a warming world, it’s overindulgence self-interest wasteful and greed imo. It’s also unsustainable, and anything that is unsustainable is dangerous and the wrong direction to head, imo.
re “The “efficient” food mix includes a lot of animal protein. Using animals to convert inedible vegetation and waste food into something edible by humans is actually efficient food resource management.”
– Only in the arctic or when living in a hut at 20,000 ft up the Himalayas. It’s well proven that on balance today meat production inefficient and wasteful except in “organic self-sufficient” type production. That’s the exception not the rule. It’s late to start that when the grocery shelves are empty and the internet has failed.
re “However, raising meat on intensively farmed corn and soybeans is not efficient and generally totally nuts.”
Sure is. And how is the US currently raising their 20% of the world’s meat Robin?
re “I find arguments based on “share” are somewhat fallacious.”
I do not. It depends.
re 10 children & “I’m very egalitarian – but if irresponsible people have way too many babies – don’t complain to me that my children are using up their resources.”
I do not call that kind of thinking egalitarian. I call it judgmental, misguided and wrong. Some “facts” here: Fertility rate, total (births per woman) http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN and
re “Apportioning resources “fairly” does not have an easy answer.”
I don’t care about that because it is the #1 hard question confronting the entire world. Apportioning fair use of Fossil Fuels is but the first cab off the rank. Then there’s water, fish stocks, and ……….
re “The only GOOD news is that the US and Europe have a lot of room to make ourselves more efficient without sacrificing comfort.”
That isn’t good news – 6.6 Billion do not care about your USA “comforts”!!! If you had a look of the GW contributions you might have noticed it was this attitude that has powered AGW since 1850 by the US and Europe in particular – especially their past desire for “empire building” and ripping off resources from others at the point of a gun. Those who live in those nations have not forgotten what made the US and Europe and other OECD nations super rich and huge GHG emitters.
re “I have no idea what India and China are going to do.”
Yes I know. I suspect you do not care either and may even still believe that what they do and what the US does are occurring on two different planets?. But we only have one and everyone of the 7 billion people own an equal share of the Atmosphere, the Oceans, and the Water – land is problematic as is the size of one’s military forces.
Only 4.3% of the global population lives in the USA. The USA does not “rule the world” anymore. The days of the USA doing whatever it wants when it wants or believing it has this “god given right” are over. :-)
Russell Seitzsays
A week from now , Climate Hustle will open and close in a one night stand at several hundred theaters pair to screen it nationwide.
Sight unseen, I’m prepared to bet Marc Morano that the average number of paying viewers will be smaller than the numbe of people appearing on screen.
Thomassays
Growing food, working outdoors and living in a city in a warming world – what does the science say about this to date? Some examples are:
Any exceedence of 35 °C for extended periods should induce hyperthermia in humans and other mammals, as dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible. http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552.short
Modeling of future climate change in Australia shows a substantial increase in the number of very hot days (>35°C) across the country. In this article, the authors characterize the health risks associated with heat exposure on working people and discuss future exposure risks as temperatures rise. http://aph.sagepub.com/content/23/2_suppl/14S.short
Heat-related mortality is already thought to be the leading cause of death among meteorological phenomena in the US (Davis et al., 2003; Borden and Cutter, 2008). This includes classical heat stress in addition to heat-induced episodes of pre-existing illnesses (i.e. respiratory, cardio-vascular, nervous system disorders, etc. (Mastrangelo et al., 2006; Ishigami et al., 2008; O’neill and Ebi, 2009)) typically in the very old, very young, and those with a history of ill health (Falk, 1998; Davis et al., 2003; Donaldson et al., 2003). The very old and very young cannot thermo-regulate their bodies in extremes of heat very well and may be dependent on others to provide food, water, and cool surroundings. Extended periods (a few days) of high heat causes stress on the body to accumulate. This is exacerbated by sleep deprivation during warm nights. Urban environments can exacerbate this, especially at night when the urban heat island is most prevalent (Grimmond, 2007). With a growing global population, an increasing proportion of urban dwellers (now 50% (UNFPA, 2007)) and climate change, the heat-stress burden on society is set to increase considerably. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.2257/full
Richard Caldwellsays
Hank, great link. It’s interesting that the first point they had was that though trucks and trains are inefficient and not sufficient, pipelines CAN’T(?) be built going east-west. We need east-west right of way to move electrons from the center of the US to the coasts anyway. Why not move alcohol too? Is there some magic which allows an electrical backbone but no alcohol backbone? We have neither today. What’s the difference, other than that the alcohol backbone would have less opposition since it would be out of sight?
The other points are very salient, and the systems I’m designing strive to solve each and every one. I’m not in a position to move the biotech research community yet, but the axiom that creating plants with crappy easily-digested structures is impossible seems wrong. Pick some points to introduce design flaws and go for it. What “brown goo problem”?
———–
Steve Fish, I gave you a model. if you’re going to critique me, then critique the model I gave. The model has insulation, barriers, vertical shrinkage elimination, and plenty of room for utilities. There’s a carbon-storing version (logs) and a wood-saving version (SIPs) which are synergistic. Go for it, or not, but don’t attribute 1600s technology to me and then complain about my ignorance of 1600s tech problems. Obviously, my model was designed to fix 1600s issues, so I DO know about those issues. Man up, and actually address my model. Maybe, together we can improve the model. Why not try?
On soil-building and forests: I didn’t claim diddly. I know a fair amount, but knowledge ages fast nowadays. I felt the topic deserved serious attention, so I promised to do research, yet you say I refuse, even after I said the same damn thing several times. You are not a liar, but that’s a lie. Stop it. One last time: I PROMISE TO RESEARCH THE DAMN ISSUE AND COMMENT ON IT LATER. (My primary motivations are time and that this is the end of the month. New topics are best introduced in the first half of a month.)
On coal: A simple binary question, asked several times and you REFUSE to address it, even though you are the one who crowed about it. Man up and answer the question: Is coal being formed today?
————
FactorOf43, I said I don’t deserve an explanation, but others do. Is the fact that I brought up the Eemian a good reason to ignore it? Don’t others deserve to be Enlightened by You? Are you forgetting that this is an open forum? If I had a hypothesis and some A**H*** poked it with a very salient point, I’d address it. Heck, I’d do it for MYSELF. Are you that uninterested in finding truth?
Nope, I don’t “know” what you have gone through, except your location and schooling, both of which strongly point to my guess being correct:
“Kwashiorkor is very rare in children in the United States. There are only isolated cases. ”
“When kwashiorkor does occur in the United States, it is usually a sign of child abuse and severe neglect.” https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001604.htm
So, since you are in the USA, the odds of your experiencing what I guessed you haven’t are vanishingly small. Or did your parents withhold food? I can see why you might not want to share that, and if they did, my condolences.
And Man Up. Explain why Secular is wrong, or admit you were off by a factor of 43.
Thomassays
I do not think ‘fortress america’ or ‘we’re ok no matter what’ is a very rational nor ethical way to look at the multiple slow-moving effects of a progressively warming world. I think the US needs the rest of the world more than the rest of the world needs it.
A snippet of the data – Volume of U.S. food imports x 1000 metric tons
—————————Columns 1999 ——— 2014
Live meat animals (x1000) – 6,067.1 ——7,295.6
Meats —————————–1,439.0 ——1,717.2
Fish and shellfish ————– 1,677.8 —–2,451.0
Dairy ——————————— 242.6 ——-225.6
Vegetables ———————– 4,784.9 —–9,601.8
Fruits —————————— 8,221.9 —12,686.7
Nuts ——————————– –329.4 ——–596.0
Coffee and tea ——————1,650.7 ——2,110.6
Cereals and bakery ———– 6,878.5 —-11,132.4
Vegetable oils —————— 2,382.5——7,767.6
Sugar and candy —————2,475.5 —–4,293.1
Cocoa and chocolate ————923.7 —–1,297.7
Other edible products ———–670.5 ——1,534.4
Beverages (1000 KL) ——– 2,854.9 ——6,062.0 http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/us-food-imports.aspx
So in whole figures that is 12.7 Million Tons of Fruit – That’s a lot of container ships
428 Victor says: “So yes, some were predicting the end of snow, or something very close to that.”
So what? Nothing. The IPCC Reports were not predicting that. The body of “Climate Science” literature was not predicting that. The exceptions prove ‘the rule’ which was not predicting that.
Meanwhile who keeps promoting this fallacy? Well all the science denier websites of course: https://goo.gl/IJw1f4 (google search results)
It’s all they got. One off BS reports that get repeated on realclimate and that’s it. Gullible is as gullible does. One twit the other day said while claiming the entire agw/cc is a ruse by the NWO ‘communists’ to take over the world and start a program of Eugenics: “It snowed in Spain in April, so much for global warming.”
FactorOf43: You have no idea what climate modeling is about.
Richard: I’m pretty sure that when a fantasy writer says that ALL professional climate models are off by a FactorOf43, and then invokes Climate Models as a defense, then I’ve got to suspect that Climate Scientists are Climate Scientists and the Fantasy Writer is a Fantasy Writer.
Or did I miss one professional climate model prediction? I bet it’s in the drawer right next to that Eemian map…
Chuck Hughessays
Guys, if you want to encourage online sermons, they’re a click away. Clear your search bubble, set for “verbatim” and you’ll find plenty.
Comment by Hank Roberts. 28 Apr 2016 at 11:46 AM
This explains why RC can’t turn off the sanctimonious drivel. “Reality trumps belief” Richard. Work that into your next sermon.
Incidentally, I live in a log home and they do look good but are a complete pain in the ass when it comes to bugs, squirrels and water. I think they do better in higher elevations in a dry climate. I’ll never build another one. Mine was cut from dead standing timber so no live trees were used. I have one in Colorado as well but it’s at 9000 ft. and it’s been around since 1931 and the wood underneath looks new.
On most houses the heat goes through the roof, not the walls. As long as you insulate the ceiling well you’re good. If you put covered porches all the way around it protects the logs from the weather but you still have bugs. The key there, if you live in the South is to raise the foundation with cinder blocks and rock high enough off the ground that termites can’t reach it. Either way log homes are a lot of trouble unless you don’t mind the maintenance which has to be repeated every so often. It also helps if you cut any trees near the house.
Richard Caldwellsays
Chuck: “Your side”? Not even sure what that means. “Atheistic Follower of Jesus”…?
Richard: Your side = those who have never intimately known folks who live in poverty i.e. “From the right side of the tracks”
Atheistic follower of Jesus = one who attempts to follow the teachings of Jesus but disagrees with the Council of Nicea’s purported claim that Jesus was God, or even that there is a deity that exactly matches what the Bronze Age scholars described.
Richard Caldwellsays
Mike: the devil is in the details on biomass. Congress has declared <–no comment
Richard: Yeah. Current techniques aren't good enough. Some say biofuels are an impossible nut to crack. They'd sure be convenient, though. Imagine if we were as advanced as India, where they use biogas for heating water and cooking and more! We already have the distribution network, too….
Richard Caldwellsays
BPL,
How would you feel if a denialist repeatedly waved a highly controversial rejected paper on this site? One that in no way is supported by the work of the moderators? Their models don’t show what yours does. They have supercomputers and do this as a team of teams.
Vendicar Decariansays
Victor (@399) says: “The snowball was clearly not intended to “refute” AGW, as has so often been assumed. It was presented in response to the many predictions by Al Gore and other climate alarmists that snow would be a thing of the past by now.”
Al Gore has made no predictions.
Moseleysays
I am an experimental physicist, and am old enough to remember the history of the past 40 years pretty well. In post 428, there is an interpretation of Senator Inhofe’s snowball episode in the senate. I tried to follow the link, but as he says, it has been taken down. Having had my work covered in the press, I am reticent to use newspapers as primary references. Quotes are often incorrect, and misunderstandings abound. Having heard Al Gore during his more public years, I don’t ever recall any short time scale predictions that sounded crazy to me. I do remember in “Earth in the Balance” that he showed the sea level rise expected in the future. I was disappointed that the timescale was omitted; the rise he was showing was expected on the time scale of 100-200 years, and many incorrectly stated that he said it was going to happen really soon. He never said that, but he did not make it clear what the time scale was. Imagine that you are being interviewed and you say that with the current temperature rise of .18 C per decade, or whatever it is, that snow may become less common in the future (though in some places, the temp rise may generate more snow due to the availability of more water). I can easily see a writer calling it “the end of snow” or something. And very often, if you are interviewed, the first time you see it is in print.
I have a hard time understanding a lot of the back and forth on this site. There are a couple of basic items that if all agree with, the path to improved knowledge is pretty clear. First, science based on quality measurement and modeling is the only path to knowledge of the state of the global climate. Second, the scientific community will sort out the crap on a very short time scale. It does not eliminate crap, but they identify it quickly. Third, if there were a breakthrough that showed that there were no human-caused warming, the scientist who discovered it would immediately become the most prominent climate scientist in the world. In science, there is no benefit to “going with the crowd”; no one wants to pay for the same research twice. No funding agency funds a proposal that says “me too”. I have always felt that scientists almost universally want to be right more than they want any particular result. As they say, follow the data. Finally, the fact that we have made a large fractional change in CO2 in a very short time has to be profoundly disturbing to anyone who thinks about it carefully. The climate is a complex nonlinear system, and they typically don’t respond well to huge fractional changes in driving parameters. In such system in general, if you kick it hard, you don’t know where it is going to settle, and you also don’t know that if you remove the perturbation that you will return to the same equilibrium that you started at. I know lots of climate scientists. They are not stupid, and in all the cases I know, their prime directive is to get the observations right and understand what is happening.
Vendicar Decariansays
Victor quotes – “within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
That is correct.
Victor quotes – “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.”
Correct again.
Victor – “In any case, as I’ve said before, my point is not that GW isn’t happening,”
Direct measurement of global temperature proves you to be a liar and a fool.
Richard Caldwellsays
Steve Fish: What you apparently don’t know, is that to bring an R8 log house up to code requires putting internal studs on exterior walls to provide space for insulation and to hang the interior wall finish.
Richard: You are fixating on your own vision of a log house and totally ignoring the model. I’ll try to be clear:
Imagine a stockade built of short sections of logs. The bark has been peeled for use, perhaps as a mulch or a substitute for fossil peat. The logs are squared, though the edges have tremendous tolerance for diameter, as the squares can have rounded corners and the squares can be of varying size as well. They’re all scrunched to the inner surface, so varying sizes add interest to the inner surface and the resulting uneven backs provide wicked bonding for the next layer.
The logs are on the INNER side, not the outside. Putting logs outside of insulation is an error. The thermal mass is on the wrong side, the wood is on the rotting side, etc etc.
The vertical orientation is also MANDATORY. Logs swell and shrink. Imagine your doors, windows, second story existing in the middle of a tide of rising and falling walls. Imagine the humidity difference between the wood stove/Stirling engine and the bathroom…
Good design minimizes exterior wall utilities, but electrical wires are run on the outer surface of this stockade. Plumbing doesn’t last forever, so stud walls might replace the stockade at kitchen sinks so as to provide easy access. Then comes insulation. Poured foam sounds grand. Watertight, structural, etc, etc.
Next is a layer of OSB. It just completes the wood-foam-wood sandwich.
Finally, the moons you cut off to create the squared logs are used as siding, with whatever milling is needed to make things tight. Alternatively, “permanent” artificial siding of any pattern can be used. This criss-cross of posts and siding will be wicked strong. Add in the foam and the OSB, and it’s probably nuke-proof.. How many THOUSAND years will it last?
The outside looks like a traditional log cabin. The inside looks like vertical wood paneling with as much character as the architect wants to incorporate.
Back to the forest…
Slash, standing deadwood and fallen wood are cleared to the optimum for the habitat, considering fire et al. This stuff goes to best use, as does mill waste.
Much of the good wood goes to make OSB and other stuff, even beams. It’s amazing what wood chips, glue, and pressure can build. SIPs have many of the same characteristics as a vertical log home, but lack the thermal mass. That can be a good thing. You might want your breakfast room to be quick-warming, so a log house with some SIPs…
Please run this comment by your log home resident friends. See what they think and report back.
Vendicar Decariansays
Parts of India ban daytime cooking as hundreds die of heat
Rivers, lakes and dams have dried up in parts of the western states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, and overall officials say that groundwater reservoirs are at just 22 percent capacity.
In some areas, the situation is so bad the government has sent tankers of water for emergency relief. Monsoon rains are still weeks away, expected to start only in June.
At least 300 people have died of heat-related illness this month, including 110 in the state of Orissa, 137 in Telangana and another 45 in Andhra Pradesh where temperatures since the start of April have been hovering around 44 degrees Celsius (111 Fahrenheit).
That’s about 4-5 degrees Celsius (8-10 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than normal for April, according to state meteorological official Y.K. Reddy. He predicted the situation would only get worse in May, traditionally the hottest month in India.
The southern state of Andhra Pradesh is running ads on TV and in newspapers urging people to stay indoors during the hottest hours. Construction and farm laborers are advised to seek shade when the sun is directly overhead.
Vendicar Decariansays
@442 “Finally, the fact that we have made a large fractional change in CO2”
One significant problem is that many of the Denialists I have seen are incapable of doing simple math or interpreting simple line graphs.
Repeatedly I have been told by screaming Denialists that graphs which have a strong positive slope actually show a decline. They make dramatic errors with simple addition and subtraction, and often in subtraction, subtracting in the wrong order.
This week I was entertained as one Denialist did a simple division and claimed the ratio was a percentage – failing to shift the decimal point.
When this was pointed out to him, he shifted the decimal point two places in the wrong direction.
I see these same mistakes being made by Denialists over and over and over again.
But it’s not just Denialists who are showing this kind of numerical illiteracy it is Republicans in general. Specifically tea Bagging Republicans.
Richard Caldwellsays
BPL,
During a quick scan of your wiki for the literal starvation “debate”, what stuck with me was that They changed the rules to “Anybody but BPL” after you dominated a writing award for two years.
Perhaps your great talent bleeds over to your passion. Dunno.
This is the blockquote code: blockquote /blockquote
put after the code
put the first one before the block you want to quote and the second one after the block you want to quote
Please, please, please — either use quotation marks, or block your quotes.
You just dump a chunk of text in and someone’s name and it’s very hard for someone trying to make sense of your posts.
These quoting conventions are widely used by all people who read and write.
Join the crowd.
sf at 427: “I think that the most important issue regarding uses of biomass is that it is the fossil carbon component that is the real problem.”
I have a different view: Anything that drives CO2 and other ghg accumulation in the atmosphere is a real problem and anything that sequesters or removes CO2 and other ghg from the atmosphere is a real solution.
The long and short term consequences of too much ghg and CO2 in the atmosphere are disastrous. Our species has driven the buildup of CO2 and other ghg in the atmosphere. We are approaching the time when our species will be doing everything and anything possible to survive on a fundamentally changed planet. Most of what we will likely do will be in the realm of resource conflict and poorly thought-out geo-engineering projects. That is too bad, because a global approach that followed the “more ghg is bad, less ghg is good” formula might actually create less suffering on the planet. There is a lot of stuff that humans on the planet could be doing to reduce the CO2 and ghg accumulation in the atmosphere. I don’t think we nearly enough of that stuff. I think we will watch a lot of folks attempt to game the emissions problem by tweaking the emissions tests of our vehicles or defining biomass as carbon neutral. When we cook the books now we also heat the planet and fuel the sixth great extinction.
Maybe I am wrong about all that?
but:
Decade
Atmospheric CO2
Growth Rate
2005 – 2014 2.11 ppm per year
1995 – 2004 1.87 ppm per year
1985 – 1994 1.42 ppm per year
1975 – 1984 1.44 ppm per year
1965 – 1974 1.06 ppm per year
1959 – 1964 (6 years only) 0.73 ppm per year
I think the 2015 increase was around 3.1 ppm, my gut calculus says we are on pace for around 3.3 ppm increase for 2016. This shows that we are going in the wrong direction and picking up speed. I think this may be the only number that matters now, but I could be wrong about all that.
Victor wrote: “Since my posts are currently winding up in the Bore Hole, what’s the point?”
There is absolutely no point in you posting any comments here any more. Glad you finally realize that.
on agriculture, deforestation, etc. comes this:
Exploring the biophysical option space for feeding the world without deforestation
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160419/ncomms11382/full/ncomms11382.html
WAPO says the recent energy bill is bipartisan and they seem pretty happy about this legislation generally. The drawback that is getting attention:
“Energy efficiency advocates applauded its measures for buildings and weatherization programs even as some greens have expressed concerns about the legislation’s provisions that would define the burning of biomass as carbon neutral.”
So, there you have it. It is the law of our land that burning biomass is carbon neutral. If/when CO2 levels continue to rise and one source can be determined to be the net positive CO2 emissions of burning biomass, I guess we will need to revisit this definition, but for now, corporations and individuals who want to monetize forest biomass have the green light to proceed.
Our score card at this moment:
Daily CO2
April 26, 2016: 407.41 ppm
April 26, 2015: 403.64 ppm
Mother nature bats last.
Warm regards,
Mike
Looks like Theo bought the “Greening Earth” variety of CO2 logger, from the picture: http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0019/5952/products/TIM10–for-web_large.jpg?v=1453643332
“639 ppm CO2 GOOD”
BPL: You have no idea what I have or haven’t experienced, you bloody fool.
Richard, being even more of a jerk than usual: Sure I do. I can say that there’s better than 99% chance that you’ve never survived on maggots. Never lived like Leningrad. Either confirm or deny; don’t spout nonsensical insults. So, BPL, tell us, what is the closest you’ve come to the survival mode of which I speak? Have you or your kids ever had kwashiorkor?
BPL: If I had a way to filter you on RealClimate, I’d take it at this point. Being called a liar by a filthy, repulsive dog like you is a signal that I never should have paid you any attention. The next time you want to call me a liar, do it to my face. Better be wearing armor.
Re: Comment by Phil L — 26 Apr 2016 @ 12:44 AM, ~#377
Phil, I am also in favor of sustainable forest management, but don’t fool yourself that this can capture anywhere near the carbon that a forest left alone can. The real problem is that wood construction requires a holistic approach and this is just not done. Why is this so? It is expensive. Until the public understands that we all cannot continue to think that we don’t have to pay for externalities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality ) this will not change. For wood construction, this approach involves building energy efficient structures that are designed to last, and then insist that they can’t be torn down unless this would reduce externalized costs. If this were done, the amount of forest harvested would be reduced and leave more forest land for capturing carbon. Managing commercial forests to minimize carbon loss is also quite expensive. All of this can be done, but … .
Steve
@Richard,
I also have a research and development project for agriculture. It’s purpose is also to regenerate soil health, not the least of which includes significant increases of soil carbon via the liquid carbon pathway. My project is scalable from the small family garden all the way up to the large commercial grower.
I am a few years out from being able to claim success, but early results are encouraging enough for me to have applied for a small case study grant from the USDA. I have a few people looking at it from the local land grant university and the State Carbon Project (which is voluntary in my state).
So I agree with you that with the changes we can make, it is unlikely that the US will ever go hungry. I believe there are agricultural solutions to both AGW and soil health/desertification. However, I believe you are being too hard on some of the other posters here. Without changes they are correct. Their influence is needed to help provide the impetus for change. Otherwise people will continue to live in denial there is a problem at all. It’s the old “frog in a pot on slow boil” problem.
Re: Comment by Richard Caldwell — 27 Apr 2016 @ 12:27 AM, ~#395
Richard, you are not a serious commenter. You asked me a question, I provided a simple way to find the answer for yourself, and you are griping. You express ignorance but continue to provide unsupported opinions. Log houses? I know several families that have lived in them. Try living in a house with R8 value walls and dealing with air and water infiltration, dry rot, and insect invasion. The remedies for these problems plus the overuse of wood make for very inefficient construction. Pellet stoves? Well maybe, but pellets are not made everywhere and, in addition to the fossil energy required to prepare the wood and compress them, shipping them 600 miles uses as much energy from fossil fuel as is contained in the pellets. We are talking about reducing fossil carbon pollution here. Do your homework.
Steve
#396–Theo, I expect you’ll see the opposite pattern: it’s during the day, when photosynthesis is taking place, that the forest consumes CO2.
And that is what they saw a few years ago at Norman’s Pond, Bahamas, when they tried out a new CO2 measurement device (Fig. 3.):
http://www.co2.ulg.ac.be/pub/Frankignoulle_et_al_2003.pdf
Bock Cay, too, though the effect was much more muted there.
Of course, that’s a very different environment, but I expect the logic will hold.
Robin: If I have 2 children who consume more per child than someone with 10 children, but
Richard: It’s a difficult subject, so I’ll head out to Left Field: since I have no children, I should get your share PLUS your children’s share, as amortized over all four of our lifetimes? Perhaps we should be taxing reproduction instead of subsidizing it via tax breaks, free school, and all that other stuff that robs me of my hard-earned money and welfares it to your family? (And those planet-killers with ten kids, well, just shoot them.)
Heading infield: China’s one-child policy gives us a grand experiment on population reduction. As tech advances and their citizens age, will everything be just dandy, or will robots not be able to keep up with labor requirements? Their abandonment of the policy shows that their opinion of the merits has changed, though female infanticide might have been the dominant factor in their decision. Dunno. Japan’s aging population is another example.
———
Chuck: apartment dwellers
Richard: Yeah, LEDs and HPS have opened up the door for apartment agriculture, especially in winter. Instead of using resistance heat, run a mini-garden. Food, light, oxygen, air cleaning, beauty, fragrance, and heat all for the same electricity where only heat was formerly generated.
And rocky soil is only a huge headache if you plough/till. Ploughing harms soil, releases carbon, and encourages erosion. There are other ways to provide the benefits of this primitive technique without all the related harm.
A plea for reading more science, and contributing less anecdotage.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2016&q=agriculture+climate+change+productivity&hl=en&num=20&as_sdt=0,5
Remember, empty the cache and sign out of Google before searching, or Google’s “search bubble” may protect you from seeing anything you might not like.
I see time and again the same sort of assumptions being made right here, on this blog, so the point I was making was not about Gore per se, but the general tendency for all those of like persuasion to deceive themselves in a similar fashion.
Comment by Victor — 27 Apr 2016
Weaktor! Your “concern” has been noted and forwarded to management.
In the future scientists will refrain from making any predictions until AFTER disaster strikes, no matter the probability. We will instead employ the “Point and Laugh Method” which, even though totally useless and unscientific, does provide some satisfaction for those who were told to keep their alarmist predictions to themselves.
Scott at 406 says “it is unlikely that the US will ever go hungry.”
Mike says, hey, let’s be clear. The US will never be hungry or go hungry. The US is like the scientific community, these are concepts, neither of these is a physical reality that can speak with one voice or shove calories in a piehole. Some US citizens are normally hungry and go hungry.
from USDA: http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx
“Food insecure—At times during the year, these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food. Food-insecure households include those with low food security and very low food security.
14.0 percent (17.4 million) of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2014.
Essentially unchanged from 14.3 percent in 2013”
My guess is that none of the regular commenters or contributors have much experience with food insecurity either directly or indirectly.
Food stamp program recently took another cut in benefits, if I am not mistaken. There are millions of US citizens living in households that cannot put a decent meal on the table tonight. If climate change causes food prices to rise, then this situation is likely to get worse. This is not a situation where the US is unable to grow sufficient food, but the hard reality is that not all folks in the US are getting a place at the table.
warm regards
Mike
Victor (@399) says: “The snowball was clearly not intended to “refute” AGW, as has so often been assumed. It was presented in response to the many predictions by Al Gore and other climate alarmists that snow would be a thing of the past by now.”
I’m so glad we have you to interpret Inhofe’s actions. Especially since his WORDS (the never-ending supply of them, replete with no end of deceit and ignorance) certainly seek to refute AGW. No need for quotes. He calls it a hoax. He calls climate scientists liars. As for the snow ball, THIS is what he actually said (as per CBS News):”Do you know what this is? It’s a snowball,” Inhofe said, holding the snowball aloft. “It’s just from outside here, so it’s very, very cold out … very unseasonable.” This in an attempt to distract folks from the fact that globally 2014 was close to a record warm. Record lows. Please. Sure they still happen. It’s called noise. But they’re becoming more and more infrequent, while record highs are becoming more and more frequent.
So, on the one hand, we have a measurable and dramatic increase in extreme warms and an accompanying decrease in extreme colds. We have good evidence for increasing extremes of wet and dry (but not as robust, which is not surprising). On the other hand, we have a handful of predictions (which do not, to the best of my not authoritative knowledge, include the end of snow by this time) that have not worked out. Hmmm… Why is it you carp on the trivial latter than the significant former? I wonder. No I don’t.
Scott: However, I believe you are being too hard on some of the other posters here. Without changes they are correct.
Richard: I agree, including that I’m abrasive, especially since my primary utility for humanity is the destruction of axioms. Would you like to exchange ideas? I’m guessing we’re taking wildly divergent paths that utilize many of the same components. My current “disposable email” is InitialContact@yandex.com
———–
Steve Fish: All of this can be done, but
Richard: Yep. Continuing BAU is not a viable option. That’s why I specified doing that which is not currently done.
Steve Fish: Try living in a house with R8 value walls and dealing with air and water infiltration, dry rot, and insect invasion.
Richard: Huh? Why would anybody build a log house without ~R30 insulation values? (other than in a very mild climate) Without proper barriers? Logs provide thermal mass, carbon storage, nice visuals, and structure. Insulation provides insulation. One method is to split logs into outer slivers and inner square cores, and orient the slivers horizontally on the exterior of the house (like siding) and the cores vertically (flat surfaces that won’t shrink vertically), filling the gap with foam, sort of like a Structural Insulating Panel. Insects? Water? Air? Thermal losses?
Then, assuming you’re too far away from the source for stoves with attached Stirling engines to be viable, you can take much of the slash and waste and make SIPs to build more houses. Or you can burn the waste and transmit electrons. Or you can make alcohol for fuel. Why didn’t you ponder the “folks who live 600 miles from a forest” issue and come up with a solution? (Logs close, SIPs far away) Why did you assume it’s impossible to insulate a log house?
Steve Fish: I provided a simple way to find the answer for yourself, and
Richard: I said I’d research it WHEN I had time to give it justice. That ain’t good enough for you? Why?
And I even went beyond by doing a quick search, which said you are wrong, and invited you to explain, yet instead of continuing the discussion, you said/implied that asking ONE question of somebody whose opinion I respect so as to prime my mind for not-yet-but-imminent research is “griping”? How so? Well, I’ll “gripe” it again:
WHY is my source, which said coal IS being formed, wrong?
And you gave no alternative. IF we leave all trees alone, THEN how do we provide the material which will replace wood? Hemp might work… How do we suppress fire in the resulting tinder-choked not-yet-mature forests? Importing elephants might work….
It’s easy to say “let it be” and wander off cluelessly. I know you’re not like that, so I suspect you’ll enlighten me with some grand techniques. Frankly, I don’t see how selective logging prevents old growth. it might be the ONLY way for us to reasonably get there from here. (the other possibility I’ve pondered is clear-cut harvesting of “fire breaks”, so fires can be easily contained.)
————-
BPL: repulsive dog like you
Richard: As I figured. NO substance. NO confirmation or denial. NO data or thought. NO answer to Secular or admission of error of immense magnitude. (Factor of 43!!) YES, you would block out all original ideas if you could.
Where’s that Eemian USA map? Or tell them [everyone except me] why such research is irrelevant. I questioned your “research” and gave specific issues. If you were serious, you’d answer with the requested map. Since you went ad caninem AND Hitler (I’m repulsive and not-even-human, so my ideas should be censored), I’d say you should ask Santa Claus for a longer ruler and a blindfold for Winter Solstice so you can extend that extrapolation in ignorance. I hear our arable land will go negative…
Re: Comment by mike — 27 Apr 2016 @ 10:56 AM, ~#402
Mike, please explain how burning biomass releases more CO2 than the plants had to remove from the atmosphere in order to grow in the first place. Steve
> burning biomass
Transportation and storage and drying and, ironically, fire prevention all add up. This is cautionary:
http://littlebloginthebigwoods.blogspot.com/2007/10/fuelish-fantasies.html
#388 MA Rodger
What’s wrong with “melting”, as in “melting Arctic”? Anyway, let’s put this aside, shall we?
MA Rodger – How are “Our data document significant losses of soil carbon with permafrost thaw that, over decadal timescales, overwhelms increased plant carbon uptake” and “Thermokarst erosion occurs along lake margins when massive, subsurface ground ice wedges melt, causing the ground surface to subside. Labile organic matter from permafrost erodes into anaerobic lake bottoms when yedoma thaws, enhancing methane production and emission” not “…emissions debouching from a melty Arctic”
Mike: My guess is that none of the regular commenters or contributors have much experience with food insecurity either directly or indirectly.
Richard: I’ve lived with/amongst the poor for part of my life, so I am intimately familiar with the lives of all classes of Americans. For me, lifestyle is a choice, and as an atheistic follower of Jesus, the parable of the camel and the eye of the needle rings true. I’ve lived in a rough trailer park, two ghettos, and a shelter. (BPL’s terroristic threat just made me chuckle. I can navigate my way through a bar fight without throwing a punch. Life is helicopters and sirens and watching folks absorb blows that surely “must” be fatal and then they wake up and don’t seek medical treatment for the apparent concussion and probable skull fracture. Hospitals charge the uninsured extra.)
Food insecurity is dependent on functionality, education (not school) and attitude, with some access thrown in. SNAP is theoretically plenty for providing folks with basic healthy food such as rice and beans with fresh veggies, but getting to a grocery store is an issue. Buses, childcare, snow, nutrition deserts.
The poor literally work themselves to death. They pay extra for almost everything, and perhaps 400% above retail for many things. Go to a rent-to-own furniture store or a buy-here-pay-here car lot. You can rent a $100K house for only a little more than the poor pay to live in a $15K dump. The poor often “spend” a huge chunk of their income on fees for the payday loan that they renew every week. Rent often includes a hefty late fee. The rich get free credit cards with cash back. The poor pay maybe 21% interest plus annual and late fees. Vultures don”t wait for the poor to die. Since the Vultures write the Rules, well, the Rules say the poor deserve to be eaten.
Navigating the System is another issue. Miss a form or a piece of documentation and your SNAP benefits terminate. Now Mom has to drag her kids on two buses to a food bank and then try to get everything back home, where she’s faced with the fact that They turned off the electricity because the check bounced. Spoiled food and another couple Fees. Life is a series of catastrophes.
We’ve trained folks to eat expensive and toxic garbage. That single mom with three kids who demand the sugar and salt and animal fat that television says they deserve, well, she probably grew up eating garbage and the idea of cooking from scratch is completely foreign to her. And the time. Soak beans overnight before you can even start dinner?? She’s got two jobs! Soda, mac and cheese, hotdogs, hamburger “helper”, a TV dinner is what food is. Splurging is McDonalds.
I agree with you. Your side has no idea.
dog: As I figured. NO substance.
BPL: You don’t deserve substance. You wouldn’t understand it if I gave it to you. In fact, I have given it to you, and you’ve repeatedly shown you don’t get it. You still talk about my “extrapolating from a trend,” as if I were using a linear regression. You have no idea what climate modeling is about. Worst of all, you continue to think you know what I have or haven’t gone through.
You do not. You can cite probabilities all day long, and you still don’t know me or what I’ve been through. You never will, and since you’re not my friend or my intimate, and never will be, I owe you no personal information. Go play with the other dogs.
fat that television says they deserve, well, she probably grew up eating garbage and the idea of cooking from scratch is completely foreign to her. And the time. Soak beans overnight before you can even start dinner?? She’s got two jobs! Soda, mac and cheese, hotdogs, hamburger “helper”, a TV dinner is what food is. Splurging is McDonalds.
I agree with you. Your side has no idea.
Comment by Richard Caldwell — 28 Apr 2016
RC, you’re off in the weeds. “Your side”? Not even sure what that means. “Atheistic Follower of Jesus”…?
And I thought Victor was bad.
HadCRUT4 has posted for March at +1.063ºC, a tiny bit warmer (+0.002ºC) than February but being a rise, March stands as HadCRUT4’s ”scorchyissimo!!!”
An update on the El Nino which will be responsible for a part of that record temperature, the average of GISTEMP, NOAA & HadCRUT is +1.188ºC, down slightly on February’s +1.206ºC. The 1998 equivalent was +0.61ºC & the full comparison 1997/8 v 2015/16 so far is graphed here (usually 2 clickjs to ‘download your attachment’).
ENSO3.4 continues to fall but not as quickly as in 1998 and SOI which never really matched the strength of the 1997/98 values, is still negative while we are a few days away from when it began to fall back into its positive mode in 1998. So we will soon be seeing for real that ENSO 2015/16 is longer lasting than 1997/98 (or not), although in some respects a weaker affair than the 1997/98 version.
Brian Dodge @418.
The potential for massive emissions of CO2 and CH4 from various bits of a melting Arctic are indeed large. How large will depend on how much melt occurs and how quick those emissions can occur will depend on how melty the Arctic gets.
The initial comment I made about these Arctic CO2 emissions (@210) was to say:-
I do not suggest in this that the Arctic is not a net emitter of CO2. Rather I dismiss any significant increase in CO2 from such a source which could in any way stand as a potential source for the 2014-to-2015 atmospheric CO2 increase alongside the others I listed.
RC at 419: I should have said “few” of the regular commenters or contributors. Your complex take on the US caste system seems right to me and much more realistic than a simplistic proposition along the lines of “the US is not going to go hungry” and that kind of sloppy argument.
SF at 415: the devil is in the details on biomass. Congress has declared biomass to be carbon neutral as a means to game the global emissions problem. Producing biomass fuel creates a carbon debt (carbon emissions) where a non-monetized treatment of forest “waste” could very well create carbon sequestration in soil. Remember that all of the legal arguments the world might muster are subject to review by the final arbiter: the level of CO2 and other ghg in the atmosphere. We are past the point where we should argue about carbon neutrality on biomass burning without considering the natural carbon sequestration and soil health that can accrue if we choose another end for the biomass.
I think there may be situations where biomass burning make sense, but I live in the Pacific NW where environmentalists have been fighting the treatment of forest waste as biomass fuel for a variety of reasons. The local struggle colors my thoughts on biomass.
Cheers
Mike
Guys, if you want to encourage online sermons, they’re a click away.
Clear your search bubble, set for “verbatim” and you’ll find plenty:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22richard+caldwell%22+climate+Jesus&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=%22richard+caldwell%22+climate+Jesus&tbs=li:1
Not climatology, though.
Think of the children and do your best not to respond here
Go there if you must.
Puhleeze.
Re: Comment by Richard Caldwell — 27 Apr 2016 @ 8:43 PM, ~#414
Why do you say anything about a topic when you accurately claim ignorance of the topic? For example, you say: “Huh? Why would anybody build a log house without ~R30 insulation values?” What you apparently don’t know, is that to bring an R8 log house up to code requires putting internal studs on exterior walls to provide space for insulation and to hang the interior wall finish. You might as well just build the wall and skip the logs. So log houses use as much as three times as much wood as a conventional one, only store carbon for a short period, and are very difficult to protect from moisture and insects, but they look nice and woodsy. Hey, just what we need. Richard is not interested in learning anything, but for others interested in log homes you can start here: http://energy.gov/energysaver/energy-efficiency-log-homes, but there is a lot more involved.
Regarding “coal happens,” perhaps you should read some science and stop pretending to be the captain of the junior high debate team.
Steve
Re: Comment by mike — 28 Apr 2016 @ 10:38 AM, ~#424
Hi, Mike. I see where you are coming from. I live in the Northern California coastal forest, and we have our own issues. One is called “hack and squirt,” which involves logging an area and then using nasty poisons on forest recovery plants, like tanoak, in order to promote faster growth of commercial trees.
I think that the most important issue regarding uses of biomass is that it is the fossil carbon component that is the real problem. For example, agriculture produces a lot of CO2, but the portion of this that was previously extracted from the atmosphere in the previous year is not very important.
Steve
#413 Martin Bernstein: “On the other hand, we have a handful of predictions (which do not, to the best of my not authoritative knowledge, include the end of snow by this time) that have not worked out. Hmmm… Why is it you carp on the trivial latter than the significant former? I wonder. No I don’t.”
As for the “end of snow,” this dates from 2000, in an article titled “Snowfalls Are Now Just a Thing of the Past”: “According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html (That site has been taken down, but the source is well-documented.)
So yes, some were predicting the end of snow, or something very close to that.
“So, on the one hand, we have a measurable and dramatic increase in extreme warms and an accompanying decrease in extreme colds.”
Interesting. Would you care to provide documentation for the above? I’m especially curious about the “dramatic” part.
In any case, as I’ve said before, my point is not that GW isn’t happening, and that the world isn’t warming (obviously it is), but that it is all too easy to make predictions based on incomplete and misleading evidence, cherry picked to support a favored position.
Victor’s illustrating his usual claim that he can’t find what any child interested in the subject can find out in 15 seconds with a search.
As an example, for any youngster still looking for information — remember, ask your local reference librarian for help. They’re there for you.
If you can’t get out of your chair, there’s Google
(remember, first empty your cache, sign out of Google, restart your browser, to minimize the “filter bubble”showing you only what you’ve previously seen)
search: https://www.google.com/search?q=climate+change+warming+increase+extreme+events
find, for example: https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/images/science/extreme-weather/bell-graph.gif
from
https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/science/extreme-weather.html
376 Robin Johnson. I think more research wouldn’t hurt. I think you’re basing your judgments and opinions on a hole range of unsupportable assumptions Robin.
re “In fairness, nations in colder climates have long relied on meat.”
That’s not fairness that’s cherry picking fallacies Robin. It’s not fair when you change the subject which was the US consumes 20% of all meat with only 4.3% of the population. That’s not fair in a warming world, it’s overindulgence self-interest wasteful and greed imo. It’s also unsustainable, and anything that is unsustainable is dangerous and the wrong direction to head, imo.
re “The “efficient” food mix includes a lot of animal protein. Using animals to convert inedible vegetation and waste food into something edible by humans is actually efficient food resource management.”
– Only in the arctic or when living in a hut at 20,000 ft up the Himalayas. It’s well proven that on balance today meat production inefficient and wasteful except in “organic self-sufficient” type production. That’s the exception not the rule. It’s late to start that when the grocery shelves are empty and the internet has failed.
re “However, raising meat on intensively farmed corn and soybeans is not efficient and generally totally nuts.”
Sure is. And how is the US currently raising their 20% of the world’s meat Robin?
re “I find arguments based on “share” are somewhat fallacious.”
I do not. It depends.
re 10 children & “I’m very egalitarian – but if irresponsible people have way too many babies – don’t complain to me that my children are using up their resources.”
I do not call that kind of thinking egalitarian. I call it judgmental, misguided and wrong. Some “facts” here: Fertility rate, total (births per woman)
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN and
India 2.48
World 2.42
China 1.60 has a lower birth rate than the United States 1.87 – Ooops :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_fertility_rate
re “Apportioning resources “fairly” does not have an easy answer.”
I don’t care about that because it is the #1 hard question confronting the entire world. Apportioning fair use of Fossil Fuels is but the first cab off the rank. Then there’s water, fish stocks, and ……….
re “The only GOOD news is that the US and Europe have a lot of room to make ourselves more efficient without sacrificing comfort.”
That isn’t good news – 6.6 Billion do not care about your USA “comforts”!!! If you had a look of the GW contributions you might have noticed it was this attitude that has powered AGW since 1850 by the US and Europe in particular – especially their past desire for “empire building” and ripping off resources from others at the point of a gun. Those who live in those nations have not forgotten what made the US and Europe and other OECD nations super rich and huge GHG emitters.
re “I have no idea what India and China are going to do.”
Yes I know. I suspect you do not care either and may even still believe that what they do and what the US does are occurring on two different planets?. But we only have one and everyone of the 7 billion people own an equal share of the Atmosphere, the Oceans, and the Water – land is problematic as is the size of one’s military forces.
Only 4.3% of the global population lives in the USA. The USA does not “rule the world” anymore. The days of the USA doing whatever it wants when it wants or believing it has this “god given right” are over. :-)
A week from now , Climate Hustle will open and close in a one night stand at several hundred theaters pair to screen it nationwide.
Sight unseen, I’m prepared to bet Marc Morano that the average number of paying viewers will be smaller than the numbe of people appearing on screen.
Growing food, working outdoors and living in a city in a warming world – what does the science say about this to date? Some examples are:
Any exceedence of 35 °C for extended periods should induce hyperthermia in humans and other mammals, as dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible.
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552.short
Modeling of future climate change in Australia shows a substantial increase in the number of very hot days (>35°C) across the country. In this article, the authors characterize the health risks associated with heat exposure on working people and discuss future exposure risks as temperatures rise.
http://aph.sagepub.com/content/23/2_suppl/14S.short
The Effects of Extreme Heat on Human Mortality and Morbidity in Australia: Implications for Public Health
http://aph.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/01/19/1010539510391644.abstract
Heat-related mortality is already thought to be the leading cause of death among meteorological phenomena in the US (Davis et al., 2003; Borden and Cutter, 2008). This includes classical heat stress in addition to heat-induced episodes of pre-existing illnesses (i.e. respiratory, cardio-vascular, nervous system disorders, etc. (Mastrangelo et al., 2006; Ishigami et al., 2008; O’neill and Ebi, 2009)) typically in the very old, very young, and those with a history of ill health (Falk, 1998; Davis et al., 2003; Donaldson et al., 2003). The very old and very young cannot thermo-regulate their bodies in extremes of heat very well and may be dependent on others to provide food, water, and cool surroundings. Extended periods (a few days) of high heat causes stress on the body to accumulate. This is exacerbated by sleep deprivation during warm nights. Urban environments can exacerbate this, especially at night when the urban heat island is most prevalent (Grimmond, 2007). With a growing global population, an increasing proportion of urban dwellers (now 50% (UNFPA, 2007)) and climate change, the heat-stress burden on society is set to increase considerably.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.2257/full
Hank, great link. It’s interesting that the first point they had was that though trucks and trains are inefficient and not sufficient, pipelines CAN’T(?) be built going east-west. We need east-west right of way to move electrons from the center of the US to the coasts anyway. Why not move alcohol too? Is there some magic which allows an electrical backbone but no alcohol backbone? We have neither today. What’s the difference, other than that the alcohol backbone would have less opposition since it would be out of sight?
The other points are very salient, and the systems I’m designing strive to solve each and every one. I’m not in a position to move the biotech research community yet, but the axiom that creating plants with crappy easily-digested structures is impossible seems wrong. Pick some points to introduce design flaws and go for it. What “brown goo problem”?
———–
Steve Fish, I gave you a model. if you’re going to critique me, then critique the model I gave. The model has insulation, barriers, vertical shrinkage elimination, and plenty of room for utilities. There’s a carbon-storing version (logs) and a wood-saving version (SIPs) which are synergistic. Go for it, or not, but don’t attribute 1600s technology to me and then complain about my ignorance of 1600s tech problems. Obviously, my model was designed to fix 1600s issues, so I DO know about those issues. Man up, and actually address my model. Maybe, together we can improve the model. Why not try?
On soil-building and forests: I didn’t claim diddly. I know a fair amount, but knowledge ages fast nowadays. I felt the topic deserved serious attention, so I promised to do research, yet you say I refuse, even after I said the same damn thing several times. You are not a liar, but that’s a lie. Stop it. One last time: I PROMISE TO RESEARCH THE DAMN ISSUE AND COMMENT ON IT LATER. (My primary motivations are time and that this is the end of the month. New topics are best introduced in the first half of a month.)
On coal: A simple binary question, asked several times and you REFUSE to address it, even though you are the one who crowed about it. Man up and answer the question: Is coal being formed today?
————
FactorOf43, I said I don’t deserve an explanation, but others do. Is the fact that I brought up the Eemian a good reason to ignore it? Don’t others deserve to be Enlightened by You? Are you forgetting that this is an open forum? If I had a hypothesis and some A**H*** poked it with a very salient point, I’d address it. Heck, I’d do it for MYSELF. Are you that uninterested in finding truth?
Nope, I don’t “know” what you have gone through, except your location and schooling, both of which strongly point to my guess being correct:
“Kwashiorkor is very rare in children in the United States. There are only isolated cases. ”
“When kwashiorkor does occur in the United States, it is usually a sign of child abuse and severe neglect.”
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001604.htm
So, since you are in the USA, the odds of your experiencing what I guessed you haven’t are vanishingly small. Or did your parents withhold food? I can see why you might not want to share that, and if they did, my condolences.
And Man Up. Explain why Secular is wrong, or admit you were off by a factor of 43.
I do not think ‘fortress america’ or ‘we’re ok no matter what’ is a very rational nor ethical way to look at the multiple slow-moving effects of a progressively warming world. I think the US needs the rest of the world more than the rest of the world needs it.
A snippet of the data – Volume of U.S. food imports x 1000 metric tons
—————————Columns 1999 ——— 2014
Live meat animals (x1000) – 6,067.1 ——7,295.6
Meats —————————–1,439.0 ——1,717.2
Fish and shellfish ————– 1,677.8 —–2,451.0
Dairy ——————————— 242.6 ——-225.6
Vegetables ———————– 4,784.9 —–9,601.8
Fruits —————————— 8,221.9 —12,686.7
Nuts ——————————– –329.4 ——–596.0
Coffee and tea ——————1,650.7 ——2,110.6
Cereals and bakery ———– 6,878.5 —-11,132.4
Vegetable oils —————— 2,382.5——7,767.6
Sugar and candy —————2,475.5 —–4,293.1
Cocoa and chocolate ————923.7 —–1,297.7
Other edible products ———–670.5 ——1,534.4
Beverages (1000 KL) ——– 2,854.9 ——6,062.0
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/us-food-imports.aspx
So in whole figures that is 12.7 Million Tons of Fruit – That’s a lot of container ships
A few graphs also tell part of the ‘story’
http://www.fdaimports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Food_Imports_USA_Statistics.png
http://foodsafety.news21.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/SeafoodImportersGraphic-950.jpg
http://www.apsnet.org/publications/apsnetfeatures/Article%20Images/FoodSecurityFig15.JPG
http://www.apsnet.org/publications/apsnetfeatures/Article%20Images/FoodSecurityFig11.JPG
428 Victor says: “So yes, some were predicting the end of snow, or something very close to that.”
So what? Nothing. The IPCC Reports were not predicting that. The body of “Climate Science” literature was not predicting that. The exceptions prove ‘the rule’ which was not predicting that.
Meanwhile who keeps promoting this fallacy? Well all the science denier websites of course: https://goo.gl/IJw1f4 (google search results)
It’s all they got. One off BS reports that get repeated on realclimate and that’s it. Gullible is as gullible does. One twit the other day said while claiming the entire agw/cc is a ruse by the NWO ‘communists’ to take over the world and start a program of Eugenics: “It snowed in Spain in April, so much for global warming.”
A little common sense never killed anyone. Unlike those whackos who regularly predict the end of the world such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_(religious_group)
FactorOf43: You have no idea what climate modeling is about.
Richard: I’m pretty sure that when a fantasy writer says that ALL professional climate models are off by a FactorOf43, and then invokes Climate Models as a defense, then I’ve got to suspect that Climate Scientists are Climate Scientists and the Fantasy Writer is a Fantasy Writer.
Or did I miss one professional climate model prediction? I bet it’s in the drawer right next to that Eemian map…
Guys, if you want to encourage online sermons, they’re a click away. Clear your search bubble, set for “verbatim” and you’ll find plenty.
Comment by Hank Roberts. 28 Apr 2016 at 11:46 AM
This explains why RC can’t turn off the sanctimonious drivel. “Reality trumps belief” Richard. Work that into your next sermon.
Incidentally, I live in a log home and they do look good but are a complete pain in the ass when it comes to bugs, squirrels and water. I think they do better in higher elevations in a dry climate. I’ll never build another one. Mine was cut from dead standing timber so no live trees were used. I have one in Colorado as well but it’s at 9000 ft. and it’s been around since 1931 and the wood underneath looks new.
On most houses the heat goes through the roof, not the walls. As long as you insulate the ceiling well you’re good. If you put covered porches all the way around it protects the logs from the weather but you still have bugs. The key there, if you live in the South is to raise the foundation with cinder blocks and rock high enough off the ground that termites can’t reach it. Either way log homes are a lot of trouble unless you don’t mind the maintenance which has to be repeated every so often. It also helps if you cut any trees near the house.
Chuck: “Your side”? Not even sure what that means. “Atheistic Follower of Jesus”…?
Richard: Your side = those who have never intimately known folks who live in poverty i.e. “From the right side of the tracks”
Atheistic follower of Jesus = one who attempts to follow the teachings of Jesus but disagrees with the Council of Nicea’s purported claim that Jesus was God, or even that there is a deity that exactly matches what the Bronze Age scholars described.
Mike: the devil is in the details on biomass. Congress has declared <–no comment
Richard: Yeah. Current techniques aren't good enough. Some say biofuels are an impossible nut to crack. They'd sure be convenient, though. Imagine if we were as advanced as India, where they use biogas for heating water and cooking and more! We already have the distribution network, too….
BPL,
How would you feel if a denialist repeatedly waved a highly controversial rejected paper on this site? One that in no way is supported by the work of the moderators? Their models don’t show what yours does. They have supercomputers and do this as a team of teams.
Victor (@399) says: “The snowball was clearly not intended to “refute” AGW, as has so often been assumed. It was presented in response to the many predictions by Al Gore and other climate alarmists that snow would be a thing of the past by now.”
Al Gore has made no predictions.
I am an experimental physicist, and am old enough to remember the history of the past 40 years pretty well. In post 428, there is an interpretation of Senator Inhofe’s snowball episode in the senate. I tried to follow the link, but as he says, it has been taken down. Having had my work covered in the press, I am reticent to use newspapers as primary references. Quotes are often incorrect, and misunderstandings abound. Having heard Al Gore during his more public years, I don’t ever recall any short time scale predictions that sounded crazy to me. I do remember in “Earth in the Balance” that he showed the sea level rise expected in the future. I was disappointed that the timescale was omitted; the rise he was showing was expected on the time scale of 100-200 years, and many incorrectly stated that he said it was going to happen really soon. He never said that, but he did not make it clear what the time scale was. Imagine that you are being interviewed and you say that with the current temperature rise of .18 C per decade, or whatever it is, that snow may become less common in the future (though in some places, the temp rise may generate more snow due to the availability of more water). I can easily see a writer calling it “the end of snow” or something. And very often, if you are interviewed, the first time you see it is in print.
I have a hard time understanding a lot of the back and forth on this site. There are a couple of basic items that if all agree with, the path to improved knowledge is pretty clear. First, science based on quality measurement and modeling is the only path to knowledge of the state of the global climate. Second, the scientific community will sort out the crap on a very short time scale. It does not eliminate crap, but they identify it quickly. Third, if there were a breakthrough that showed that there were no human-caused warming, the scientist who discovered it would immediately become the most prominent climate scientist in the world. In science, there is no benefit to “going with the crowd”; no one wants to pay for the same research twice. No funding agency funds a proposal that says “me too”. I have always felt that scientists almost universally want to be right more than they want any particular result. As they say, follow the data. Finally, the fact that we have made a large fractional change in CO2 in a very short time has to be profoundly disturbing to anyone who thinks about it carefully. The climate is a complex nonlinear system, and they typically don’t respond well to huge fractional changes in driving parameters. In such system in general, if you kick it hard, you don’t know where it is going to settle, and you also don’t know that if you remove the perturbation that you will return to the same equilibrium that you started at. I know lots of climate scientists. They are not stupid, and in all the cases I know, their prime directive is to get the observations right and understand what is happening.
Victor quotes – “within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
That is correct.
Victor quotes – “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.”
Correct again.
Victor – “In any case, as I’ve said before, my point is not that GW isn’t happening,”
Direct measurement of global temperature proves you to be a liar and a fool.
Steve Fish: What you apparently don’t know, is that to bring an R8 log house up to code requires putting internal studs on exterior walls to provide space for insulation and to hang the interior wall finish.
Richard: You are fixating on your own vision of a log house and totally ignoring the model. I’ll try to be clear:
Imagine a stockade built of short sections of logs. The bark has been peeled for use, perhaps as a mulch or a substitute for fossil peat. The logs are squared, though the edges have tremendous tolerance for diameter, as the squares can have rounded corners and the squares can be of varying size as well. They’re all scrunched to the inner surface, so varying sizes add interest to the inner surface and the resulting uneven backs provide wicked bonding for the next layer.
The logs are on the INNER side, not the outside. Putting logs outside of insulation is an error. The thermal mass is on the wrong side, the wood is on the rotting side, etc etc.
The vertical orientation is also MANDATORY. Logs swell and shrink. Imagine your doors, windows, second story existing in the middle of a tide of rising and falling walls. Imagine the humidity difference between the wood stove/Stirling engine and the bathroom…
Good design minimizes exterior wall utilities, but electrical wires are run on the outer surface of this stockade. Plumbing doesn’t last forever, so stud walls might replace the stockade at kitchen sinks so as to provide easy access. Then comes insulation. Poured foam sounds grand. Watertight, structural, etc, etc.
Next is a layer of OSB. It just completes the wood-foam-wood sandwich.
Finally, the moons you cut off to create the squared logs are used as siding, with whatever milling is needed to make things tight. Alternatively, “permanent” artificial siding of any pattern can be used. This criss-cross of posts and siding will be wicked strong. Add in the foam and the OSB, and it’s probably nuke-proof.. How many THOUSAND years will it last?
The outside looks like a traditional log cabin. The inside looks like vertical wood paneling with as much character as the architect wants to incorporate.
Back to the forest…
Slash, standing deadwood and fallen wood are cleared to the optimum for the habitat, considering fire et al. This stuff goes to best use, as does mill waste.
Much of the good wood goes to make OSB and other stuff, even beams. It’s amazing what wood chips, glue, and pressure can build. SIPs have many of the same characteristics as a vertical log home, but lack the thermal mass. That can be a good thing. You might want your breakfast room to be quick-warming, so a log house with some SIPs…
Please run this comment by your log home resident friends. See what they think and report back.
Parts of India ban daytime cooking as hundreds die of heat
Rivers, lakes and dams have dried up in parts of the western states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, and overall officials say that groundwater reservoirs are at just 22 percent capacity.
In some areas, the situation is so bad the government has sent tankers of water for emergency relief. Monsoon rains are still weeks away, expected to start only in June.
At least 300 people have died of heat-related illness this month, including 110 in the state of Orissa, 137 in Telangana and another 45 in Andhra Pradesh where temperatures since the start of April have been hovering around 44 degrees Celsius (111 Fahrenheit).
That’s about 4-5 degrees Celsius (8-10 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than normal for April, according to state meteorological official Y.K. Reddy. He predicted the situation would only get worse in May, traditionally the hottest month in India.
The southern state of Andhra Pradesh is running ads on TV and in newspapers urging people to stay indoors during the hottest hours. Construction and farm laborers are advised to seek shade when the sun is directly overhead.
@442 “Finally, the fact that we have made a large fractional change in CO2”
One significant problem is that many of the Denialists I have seen are incapable of doing simple math or interpreting simple line graphs.
Repeatedly I have been told by screaming Denialists that graphs which have a strong positive slope actually show a decline. They make dramatic errors with simple addition and subtraction, and often in subtraction, subtracting in the wrong order.
This week I was entertained as one Denialist did a simple division and claimed the ratio was a percentage – failing to shift the decimal point.
When this was pointed out to him, he shifted the decimal point two places in the wrong direction.
I see these same mistakes being made by Denialists over and over and over again.
But it’s not just Denialists who are showing this kind of numerical illiteracy it is Republicans in general. Specifically tea Bagging Republicans.
BPL,
During a quick scan of your wiki for the literal starvation “debate”, what stuck with me was that They changed the rules to “Anybody but BPL” after you dominated a writing award for two years.
Perhaps your great talent bleeds over to your passion. Dunno.
For Chuck Hughes:
These are quotation marks: ” ” ” ” ” ”
This is the blockquote code: blockquote /blockquote
put after the code
put the first one before the block you want to quote and the second one after the block you want to quote
Please, please, please — either use quotation marks, or block your quotes.
You just dump a chunk of text in and someone’s name and it’s very hard for someone trying to make sense of your posts.
These quoting conventions are widely used by all people who read and write.
Join the crowd.
RC,
You have 78 chromosomes.
sf at 427: “I think that the most important issue regarding uses of biomass is that it is the fossil carbon component that is the real problem.”
I have a different view: Anything that drives CO2 and other ghg accumulation in the atmosphere is a real problem and anything that sequesters or removes CO2 and other ghg from the atmosphere is a real solution.
The long and short term consequences of too much ghg and CO2 in the atmosphere are disastrous. Our species has driven the buildup of CO2 and other ghg in the atmosphere. We are approaching the time when our species will be doing everything and anything possible to survive on a fundamentally changed planet. Most of what we will likely do will be in the realm of resource conflict and poorly thought-out geo-engineering projects. That is too bad, because a global approach that followed the “more ghg is bad, less ghg is good” formula might actually create less suffering on the planet. There is a lot of stuff that humans on the planet could be doing to reduce the CO2 and ghg accumulation in the atmosphere. I don’t think we nearly enough of that stuff. I think we will watch a lot of folks attempt to game the emissions problem by tweaking the emissions tests of our vehicles or defining biomass as carbon neutral. When we cook the books now we also heat the planet and fuel the sixth great extinction.
Maybe I am wrong about all that?
but:
Decade
Atmospheric CO2
Growth Rate
2005 – 2014 2.11 ppm per year
1995 – 2004 1.87 ppm per year
1985 – 1994 1.42 ppm per year
1975 – 1984 1.44 ppm per year
1965 – 1974 1.06 ppm per year
1959 – 1964 (6 years only) 0.73 ppm per year
I think the 2015 increase was around 3.1 ppm, my gut calculus says we are on pace for around 3.3 ppm increase for 2016. This shows that we are going in the wrong direction and picking up speed. I think this may be the only number that matters now, but I could be wrong about all that.
Warm regards
Mike