E-P 285: The point you’re missing is that your solar and wind and batteries CANNOT be manufactured with solar and wind and batteries; they require coal, oil or NG forever because they cannot supply the energy to make more of themselves.
BPL: Stuff and nonsense. The upper limit on Solar power alone is orders of magnitude more than all human energy use.
Ken Fabiansays
E-P, I really do think the Nuclear industry had it’s golden opportunity to save us all from global warming pulled from under them when Right politics settled on climate science denial and obstruction as their principle response. Only mainstream Right politics taking up the climate issue with conviction and vigor, making it their own, could do that kind of climate policy. But Commerce and Industry wanted no climate responsibility and Right parties especially want to do what Business wants. No climate accountability. No liability. No requirement for stopping global warming unless that somehow turns out cheaper up front for businesses than just letting it happen. Mainstream political parties have for the most part accommodated them but none with such commitment and willingness to set aside facts and reason as the parties of The Right.
Oh, I’ve got serious criticisms of the mainstream Left too, but the Right’s economic alarmist fearmongering, the conspiracy theories and the scapegoating of Environmentalists, when the issue is so incredibly serious is way worse than the Left failing to support nuclear. But yes, it was a serious abrogation on the Left IMO to make appeasing gestures rather than get serious about it much earlier, at a time when nuclear stood out as the most credible alternative to coal and solar and wind were hugely expensive niche options. No special credit to those that gave early policy and funding support that solar and wind advanced so far so rapidly; it was more the product of taxpayer funded science and R&D being taken up and pushed into commercial viability by capitalist entrepreneurs.
I think the RE experiment should as far as it can go. Solar is unstoppable as it currently is, with better still in the pipeline. Batteries and other storage are lagging but the successes of solar and wind have seriously increased the already growing interest in batteries. Tech devices, cordless tools. And then came Tesla. There has never been more commitment to battery R&D and I quite optimistic we will get significant advances as a consequence. That a prosperous zero emissions economy requires technology at scales far greater than anything that has gone before should be taken as given or what do you plan to do with all that nuclear power? If RE does run up against hard resource or other constraints it will get reflected in their price and if it seriously stalls then maybe nuclear can make another shot, perhaps having worked up their own improvements but I am optimistic RE will take us a long way.
zebrasays
#288 Al Bundy,
“You got any data that indicates that I have Trumpian tendencies?”
How about incomprehensible babbling about stuff that only exists in your own mind?
Heck, I even deliberately gave you a chance to promote your concept by beefing it up yourself. Yep, instead of speaking about obvious solutions, such as your Wind Farm having contracts with Jim’s Solar Resort, Hank’s Hydro, Gerta’s Gas Turbines, and EP’s Nuclear Palace so that your customers don’t have to bother with multiple contracts in order to get 24/7 service, I set your shot up, expecting you to spike the ball. Imagine my surprise when you fully embraced my set-up, the dumbest possible interpretation of the z-grid’s operation imaginable.
But, but, but the article said the temp went up over a vast region by 14 C in just “a few decades” and the CO2 was only 240 ppm at the time. Seriously, isn’t this a little weird – it’s like what’s happening now, only with greater temp increases and lower CO2. How did it happen?
Seriously, no, it’s not “weird”. Most if not all of this has been discussed here during your time as a participant. But you have to be willing to read for comprehension instead of skimming in search of talking points that may afford you some FUD relief.
“Studies of ice cores drilled from the Greenland ice sheet have “suggested that the atmosphere above Greenland warmed by up to 14C in a few decades at this time,” he told AFP.
So, what this says is that the proximate cause of the melting was a regional, not global change. (Though it was evidently part of a true global change, i.e., the last deglaciation, so indirectly it would indirectly be attributable to that global change.)
“Atmospheric concentrations of planet-warming CO2 were around 240 parts per million at the time, compared with over 415 ppm currently.”
Indeed they were, more or less. See, for example, Figure 3 in this discussion paper:
But it also reveals that “at the time” that number had been increasing for about 6,000 years, from a value of ~180 ppm during the glacial maximum. That’s about a 33% increase–compare that to the more than 45% increase during the Industrial Revolution for which humanity is unequivocally responsible.
And as we’ve explained here in the past, and discussed here (in case anyone needs a refresher), the initiating forcing for the cycles of glaciation and deglaciation observed during the Quarternary is pretty reliably believed to be changes in solar forcings due to cyclic shifts in orbital parameters, AKA “Milankovitch cycles.”
Note that the Gest et al paper referred to above compares *Antarctic* data, not data from the Northern hemisphere. But the CO2 data shouldn’t differ much; it’s primarily the details of the temperature trajectories in the hemispheres that are really distinct. As the Gest et al Introduction points out:
T1 offers an interesting deglacial scenario, since warming and CO2 rise were not continuous. Indeed, near the end of the glacial-interglacial transition, the Antarctic warming made a break during about 2000 years and even became reversed, preceding the Younger Dryas (YD) cooling in the Northern Hemisphere. This period of cooling in Antarctica is called the Antarctic Cold Reversal (ACR) and is almost synchronous with a warm period in the North, called the Bølling–Allerød(B/A) period. Such changes in trend are useful tie points to observe the leads and lags between atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature.
There are a few good takeaways from that.
1) Regional and even hemispheric trends can buck global trends for a time, but that doesn’t mean that the global trend isn’t affecting them. (If it did, it wouldn’t be a global trend.)
2) There can be up-and-down fluctuations within longer trends, even over timescales that seem long to us.
3) CO2 is not the only thing that affects temperature, and no climate scientist ever has claimed that it is. (It’s important to remember that because a day seems not to go by without someone, somewhere, ‘discovering’ that other things can affect temperature too, and then jumping to the erroneous conclusion that they’ve just ‘refuted AGW’.) Solar forcings and albedo are two such that are particularly important in the current context.
4) Short-term chaotic instability can happen during the course of, and presumably driven by, longer-term temperature change. The dissolution of the Eurasian ice sheet doesn’t in any way challenge the mainstream understanding of climate change during the last deglaciation. But it does show that there are precedents for extremely rapid changes which would be very damaging and difficult to cope with for today’s society–“the temp went up over a vast region by 14 C in just “a few decades”.”
Which was the point. If that happened to Greenland, it would make the economic devastation of Covid-19, which GOP leaders have been catastrophizing about, look like peanuts, because we’d lose not just Miami, but large chunks of Lagos and Mumbai and Shanghai–in fact, large chunks of many of the world’s largest cities. With it would go enormous amounts of infrastructure, including the infrastructure of bulk international trade, and the residences of hundreds of millions. They’d become refugees, or at least displaced persons.
Recovering from that would be a decadal project–if nothing else went wrong. And we can be pretty sure that that latter condition could not be realistically assumed.
The proximate need is to reduce emissions to net zero, and then reduce them some more to induce gradual drawdown.
After that–and by “after that” I don’t mean it would be smart to ignore the issue completely till then–we need to work toward true sustainability, which means figuring out how an economy can nurture human needs without trashing the rest of the planet–especially including the fact of its finitude. That clearly does mean population limitation, probably to a number well below the current one. It clearly means zero energy growth at some point–though just what that point should be remains, as far as I can tell, to be determined.
The jury is also AFAIK still very much out on whether that also means zero economic growth–in fact, I don’t think there is a ruling even on what zero economic growth means. There is a whole host of definitional issues, I think.
In the immediate term, the one thing that is making the biggest positive difference appears to be modern renewable energy.
Against ‘relentless’ competition from solar and wind power, the financial case for coal is becoming incrementally worse, according to Carbon Tracker. In 2017, the report stated, ‘only’ 46% of EU coal generators ran at a loss.
Austria, too, just went coal-free. They don’t use nuclear power, but they are so abundantly gifted with hydropower that they’ve never really needed it. Now wind, solar and biomass have completely displaced the relatively small amount of coal generation they did employ.
E-P displays his unmatched ability to provide correct answers to incorrect questions. I had said that “in the great majority of cases, EVs do, in fact, reduce emissions, even with less than perfectly decarbonized grids charging them.”
In response to that, he “did the math” for generic Teslas charged by 1) a completely coal-fired grid, 2) a completely natgas-fired grid, and 3) a completely nuclear grid. By ignoring all “upstream emissions in production, refining and delivery”–all of which matter in real life–he manages to ‘prove’ that a hypothetical generic Tesla in the first two cases has emissions comparable to typical ICEs, and worse than economy ICEs.
Of course, the emissions of the nuclear grid powered Tesla are stellar.
Well, duh.
The point at issue is that in the real world, even relatively dirty grids generally see EVs provide improvements in emissions, and therefore the claims in Planet of the Humans are without merit. Remember, it was BPL who raised this, citing the obvious cherry pick of a 95% coal-fired grid apparently used in the film. Everybody already knew that the composition of the grid matters.
A pretty good analysis of the EV lifecycle emissions issue is here, including consideration of the ‘ifo study.’ That is the one outlying study which found lifecycle emissions for EVs comparable to ICEs–or rather, speaking more exactly, comparable to an ICE model that nominally achieves 52 mpg:
Perhaps it’s worth remembering the point, made in that article, that since many nations are cleaning up their power grids, EVs there are investments in cleaning up transportation, too, since improvements in the grid antomatically and immediately result in a commensurate improvement in transportation sector emissions. Rather a nice ‘twofer.’
I’ll only add that the contention, made several times recently, that somehow renewable energy “inherently” needs fossil fuel input is transparently silly. Pretty much anything you can do with thermal power you can do with electric power. (Though it may be more practical in cases requiring high process heat to use non-fossil fuels, such as syngas, biogas, or non-fossil-sourced hydrogen.)
zebrasays
zebra Hacks Wikipedia,
Yes folks, he has installed a completely fake article, pretending that something we have been told over and over by the RC Brain Trust is impossible…exists all over the world!:
Since the 1950s, New Zealand has had a system of load management based on ripple control, allowing the electricity supply for domestic and commercial water storage heaters to be switched off and on, as well as allowing remote control of nightstore heaters and street lights. Ripple injection equipment located within each local distribution network signals to ripple control receivers at the customer’s premises. Control may either done manually by the local distribution network company in response to local outages or requests to reduce demand from the transmission system operator (i.e. Transpower), or automatically when injection equipment detects mains frequency falling below 49.2 Hz. Ripple control receivers are assigned to one of several ripple channels to allow the network company to only turn off supply on part of the network, and to allow staged restoration of supply to reduce the impact of a surge in demand when power is restored to water heaters after a period of time off.
Depending on the area, the consumer may have two electricity meters, one for normal supply (“Anytime”) and one for the load-managed supply (“Controlled”), with Controlled supply billed at a lower rate per kilowatt-hour than Anytime supply. For those with load-managed supply but only a single meter, electricity is billed at the “Composite” rate, priced between Anytime and Controlled.
(zebra is particularly proud of slipping in that Fake Picture of a control setup.)
But we all know that consumers would never tolerate such nonsense! The Genius Brain Trust has told us so!
Please, folks, write to Wiki-p and tell them they must take down that page!
Stuff and nonsense. The upper limit on Solar power alone is orders of magnitude more than all human energy use.
If solar power is so great and so easy, why did ANYONE ever bother to dig coal or drill for oil or gas? Same goes for wind.
It would occur to anyone with a brain† that you have to do a lot more than just stand out in the sun to make it industrially useful. First, you have to collect it in a useful form. In clear-skied deserts you can often do this with mirrors and store heat in e.g. “solar salt”, but in the majority of the world which has significant clouds and haze your only real option for catching it is with PV panels. Since the product of PV panels is electricity, you need batteries to store it.
That storage is a sine qua non. Many things require power 24/7; you can’t do without sewage lift pumps. Industrial processes are often supply-critical. Interrupt the juice, and “the potline problem” requires an extended shutdown and costly restart, often throwing out the material-in-process as ruined. You can’t run an aluminum smelter on PV by day and leave it un-powered overnight. The same goes for lots of crucial industry, including making silicon wafers for the all-important computers and comm systems which a “smart grid” cannot do without.
You can’t power these things directly with sunlight. You would need vast areas of PV panels to catch the light, and literally cubic miles of batteries to store the immediate surpluses to run things when the sun was down or behind clouds. In most of the industrialized world, the sun is practically unavailable during the winter. This means your batteries need to store MONTHS of energy.
The US consumes primary energy at a rate of about 10 kW per capita. Over even 3 months, that is 21600 kWh per person. Li-ion batteries cost roughly $100/kWh, so you’re talking an investment on the order of $21.6 million per person to tide them over the seasonal deficit in solar energy generation. Do YOU have a spare $21.6 million to go solar? I sure don’t. And even if you can cut that by a factor of 10 using e.g. hydrogen instead of batteries for long-term storage, I’m still sure neither of us have it. A nation with a per-capita GDP around $55,000 can’t afford anything like that. It’s impossible. It’s even more impossible when you factor in a replacement of both the PV panels and batteries even every 25 years, let alone possibly 10 years.
So yeah. You can go solar and freeze in the dark in the winter. I’ll go nuclear and sit toasty, TYVM.
† Of which group you are not a member, because such obvious things don’t even occur to you. But they occur to others, and they are understood by many more once they see the logic laid out. Which is why I welcome your dumbest posts; they let me convert the lurkers. IOW, thanks for the softballs, sucker.
I really do think the Nuclear industry had it’s golden opportunity to save us all from global warming pulled from under them when Right politics settled on climate science denial and obstruction as their principle response.
Why wasn’t it when David Brower broke with the “Atoms Not Dams” Sierra Club to form the anti-nuclear “Friends of the Earth”, forcing Sierra Club to reverse course? Brower took hundreds of thousands of dollars from ARCO executive Robert O. Anderson to start his anti-nuke organization. Doesn’t that say it all right there? The fossil industry has been behind anti-nuclearism from the outset, and the left has been its willing patsy.
Only mainstream Right politics taking up the climate issue with conviction and vigor, making it their own, could do that kind of climate policy. But Commerce and Industry wanted no climate responsibility and Right parties especially want to do what Business wants.
I have to admit, the forces of propaganda played this one very well. Back when talk radio was the arbiter of orthodoxy on the right, they pushed climate science on the left and let reflexive animosity drive the reaction on the right while they provided the guidance. But the “No Nukes!” forces are ultimately to blame, and they’re all on the left. Nuclear power is the ultimate energy source for clean air and clean water. (((Bernie Sanders))) led the drive to close Vermont Yankee, depriving the region of hundreds of megawatts of emissions-free energy and driving up both NG consumption and regional electric rates. Yet the left SUPPORTED HIM! If the left was truly devoted to fighting climate change, Sanders would be a pariah. He would not have been a Senator running for the Democratic nomination for president, he would be unable to show his face in public.
Solar is unstoppable as it currently is, with better still in the pipeline.
That quite literally does not matter. PV could be free, and you still couldn’t power our industry with it due to night, clouds and winter. And it’s not.
Batteries and other storage are lagging but the successes of solar and wind have seriously increased the already growing interest in batteries.
I was quick to note the possibilities of sodium-ion battery producer Faradion making a sale in Australia, and the fact that my own butt overlies at least kilotons and likely megatons of Na+ ions has nothing to do with that. Sadly, the advances Faradion has made allow progress into hours of power, but to fully decarbonize using batteries we need MONTHS of power. That requires storage costs of dollars or even cents per kWh. That is not in the offing.
Solar and batteries are orders of magnitude away from being able to decarbonize us. Nuclear is the only game in town, and we are 31 years and counting past the decision point to choose what we’ll use to get the job done. We should have acted in 1989.
what do you plan to do with all that nuclear power?
Honestly? Provide all electric power demand, up to and beyond peak direct demand, from operating plants. Devote the power in excess of immediate demand to loads like industrial process heat at temperatures above what direct nuclear heat can provide. Supply most transportation energy (mostly from LDVs running on gasoline) from batteries in PHEVs. Devote surplus energy to make electrofuels for the remaining needs of things like PHEVs. Put a few hundred GW to work mineralizing atmospheric CO2. This is multi-faceted but ultimately not too complicated.
If RE does run up against hard resource or other constraints it will get reflected in their price
It has ALREADY run up against constraints and been reflected in their price. That price has FALLEN BELOW ZERO. Yes, we have already seen times when “renewable energy” was LESS THAN WORTHLESS. Yet people kept making it, because they were paid regardless of the worthlessness of what they were making.
I’d like to see those surpluses put to use. Let the fossil-fueled generators get paid to take that negatively-priced “renewable” power, turn it to heat in resistor banks, and use it as a fuel-substitute to keep their own backup capacity hot and spinning. That is an immediate (but hardly ultimate) use for “renewable energy” in excess of instant demand, and fixes a looming problem. It does not fix the ultimate problem, but ultimate solutions require incremental progress.
The proximate need is to reduce emissions to net zero, and then reduce them some more to induce gradual drawdown.
I would argue “as fast as possible” vs. “gradual”, but no dispute on the trend. (I’m trying to get info on the dimensions of a PRISM power plant, to see just how much capacity could fit in the footprint of e.g. a supertanker. I think we need to site such floating plants offshore of dunite deposits to power dunite mining for CO2 removal efforts. When the CO2 is dealt with we can sail those floating plants elsewhere.)
After that–and by “after that” I don’t mean it would be smart to ignore the issue completely till then–we need to work toward true sustainability, which means figuring out how an economy can nurture human needs without trashing the rest of the planet–especially including the fact of its finitude.
No argument with this either, but the job is EVER SO MUCH EASIER if we are not making demands on the limited primary productivity of the biosphere for most of our needs, and instead use things that the biosphere has no use for. The biosphere has no use for actinides; to most of it, they are poisons. If we convert actinides to elements between transition elements and rare earths, we are doing the biosphere a favor vs. letting them decay to toxic lead.
I had said that “in the great majority of cases, EVs do, in fact, reduce emissions
Save in the case of the nuclear grid, they do NOT reduce emissions vs. a grid-independent Prius achieving 50 MPG.
therefore the claims in Planet of the Humans are without merit.
The claims mostly relate to non-carbon effects, and are unrebutted. Destruction of landscape and biodiversity has no direct carbon impact or equivalent.
I’ll only add that the contention, made several times recently, that somehow renewable energy “inherently” needs fossil fuel input is transparently silly.
It’s not silly, it’s basic. Your “renewable energy” is unreliable, and our systems require reliable energy. Our reliable options are fossil fuels or nuclear: Pick One.
Pretty much anything you can do with thermal power you can do with electric power.
A point I have made repeatedly, but what do you do to make that (decarbonized) electric power available when you need it? Nuclear and hydro are the only games in town, and the supply of hydro is strictly limited and seasonally constrained. It’s mostly available during snowmelt and only the impounded water can be used most of the rest of the year when there’s little rainfall.
it may be more practical in cases requiring high process heat to use non-fossil fuels, such as syngas, biogas, or non-fossil-sourced hydrogen.
I’ve been assuming that a substantial amount of this requires direct electric power, but I don’t know how much to allocate to that vs. direct nuclear heat or lower-grade heat. Insufficient data.
nigeljsays
Zebra @307 posts:
“Since the 1950s, New Zealand has had a system of load management based on ripple control, allowing the electricity supply for domestic and commercial water storage heaters to be switched off and on, as well as allowing remote control of nightstore heaters and street lights.”
Now I live in NZ and this is true, if people want it. What really annoys me is Zebra parrots this sort of thing as if its his own invention (as a key part of his Z Grid) and offers it as some sort of justification for his bizarre suggestions that his grid switch things like fridges and heaters off regularly, as a way of dealing with load management issues etc.
The ripple control is simply a commonsense way of taking advantage of cheap night time rates for electricity and doesn’t really hugely compromise water heating during the day. However from what I recall not many people choose to use it. This is way different from the rather harsh sounding control of appliances that Zebra has advocated, and as AB points out its a bit unclear how this is better or more reliable than the traditional grid. Its a bit unclear to me as well. But its apparently clear inside the wiring of Zebras mind. Somehow I dont think there will be many takers for his system :)
nigeljsays
Ken Fabian @302, good observations.
nigeljsays
KM @304 quotes KIA saying “But, but, but the article said the temp went up over a vast region by 14 C in just “a few decades” and the CO2 was only 240 ppm at the time. Seriously, isn’t this a little weird – it’s like what’s happening now, only with greater temp increases and lower CO2. How did it happen?”
Ah I see now. They didn’t mention that CO2 had also increased 30%. Typical climate denialist lies by omission.
Mr. Know It Allsays
304 – Kevin M
“…. the initiating forcing for the cycles of glaciation and deglaciation observed during the Quarternary is pretty reliably believed to be changes in solar forcings due to cyclic shifts in orbital parameters, AKA “Milankovitch cycles.”
Those cycles are one theory, but there is no concensus:
From britannica link:
“Such dramatic climatic reversals occurring in such a short time cannot be explained by Milankovitch cycles (that is, cyclical changes to the shape of Earth’s orbit, the tilt of Earth’s axis, and the wobblelike movement of Earth on its axis with respect to the Sun), which play out over tens of thousands of years. A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain the Younger Dryas, but so far there is no consensus on its cause.”
From wattsup link (I know, don’t say it):
“What can we learn from all this? The ice core isotope data were hugely significant because they showed that the Younger Dryas, as well as the other late Pleistocene warming and cooling events could not possibly have been caused by slow, Croll-Milankovitch orbital forcing, which occurs over many tens of thousands of years. The ice core isotope data thus essentially killed the Croll-Milankovitch theory as the cause of the Ice Ages.”
Sounds to me like the same thing that occurred previously – rapid warming over a few decades – is exactly the same thing we are experiencing today, casting credible doubt on current CO2 theory.
nigeljsays
KM @305
“After that–and by “after that” I don’t mean it would be smart to ignore the issue completely till then–we need to work toward true sustainability, which means figuring out how an economy can nurture human needs without trashing the rest of the planet–especially including the fact of its finitude. That clearly does mean population limitation, probably to a number well below the current one. It clearly means zero energy growth at some point–though just what that point should be remains, as far as I can tell, to be determined.”
“The jury is also AFAIK still very much out on whether that also means zero economic growth–in fact, I don’t think there is a ruling even on what zero economic growth means. There is a whole host of definitional issues, I think.”
Yes, but we just have to get specific, rather than too much philosophical hand waving (not that you are doing that):
1) Conserve the forests. If we run out of timber we really will have a problem very long term. Its the one resource that is totally regenerative and can be used for so many things. That said, iron is so abundant we won’t run out but it is not as flexible as timber.
2) Conserve the fisheries. Its just a crying shame to destroy those and all it takes is quota management, like we have in NZ. The real challenge is getting most of society on board and overcoming peoples greed.
3) Find a solution to the insect decline problem.
4) Stop dumping dangerous wastes. Its largely a societal / political issue not a technical issue.
5) Recycle and waste less.
6) Get the size of population down, but this will be challenging because it can create demographic imbalances. Its happening but might take some time. Its a powerful tool to reduce virtually all environmental problems and help sustainability.
7) Clean zero carbon energy obviously.
8)Try to not be extravagant in our use of resources, however to try to make huge reductions in our use of resources and kind of go bush and abandon huge chunks of technology doesnt make sense because it causes pain and only delays the inevitable point where we run low of some things and have to adopt a more basic lifestyle, something some people cant seem to grasp.
GDP growth and energy use may ultimately be forced to slow down by circumstances anyway. At some point we should stop fighting this, and work with it.
E-P 298: What it said to me is that “renewables” are UNABLE to live up to the promises made for them. They cannot be clean and they cannot sit lightly upon the earth. It does not matter who brought this message forth or what motivated them, it only matters if it is true. I believe it is.
BPL: And the myriad factual inaccuracies in the film don’t bother you, because it tells you what you want to hear.
KM: “in the great majority of cases, EVs do, in fact, reduce emissions
E-P: Save in the case of the nuclear grid, they do NOT reduce emissions vs. a grid-independent Prius achieving 50 MPG.
Again a mostly-true (I presume) factoid responsive to the wrong question. The global ICE fleet does not consist entirely of Priuses. And the “mostly” is a big one: there are a number of non-nuclear grids which are also non-fossil, several of which I’ve cited quite recently. (Two are Norway and Uruguay.) Clearly the generic Tesla, or Leaf, or Zoe, or BYD, would be just as stellar there as in the hypothetical all-nuclear grid, which AFAICT exists exactly nowhere in the world.
KM: …therefore the claims in Planet of the Humans are without merit.
The claims mostly relate to non-carbon effects, and are unrebutted. Destruction of landscape and biodiversity has no direct carbon impact or equivalent.
I apologize for the careless use of the plural. I was speaking specifically to the EV issue we were discussing.
However, there are numerous rebuttals of the documentary. Here are three, addressing various different claims and coming from different perspectives:
KM: I’ll only add that the contention, made several times recently, that somehow renewable energy “inherently” needs fossil fuel input is transparently silly.
E-P: It’s not silly, it’s basic. Your “renewable energy” is unreliable, and our systems require reliable energy. Our reliable options are fossil fuels or nuclear: Pick One.
Dogma, more than adequately refuted already by real world examples previously cited at length and on numerous occasions. And ditto for the next E-P paragraph, which I won’t quote here.
All very well and good, except that no-one ever claimed nor imagined that the Younger Dryas was a product of Milankovitch cycles. (Or as your source calls it, “Croll-Milankovitch.” Nice to see James Croll get a little belated love for his pioneering work.)
So, no, the fact that those cycles certainly, definitely, absolutely DID NOT cause the Younger Dryas has no bearing on whether they DID cause, as I put it, “the cycles of glaciation and deglaciation observed during the Quarternary.” The consensus on that latter point is pretty strong as far as I can tell. Here’s what NASA has to say about it:
Milankovitch’s work was supported by other researchers of his time, and he authored numerous publications on his hypothesis. But it wasn’t until about 10 years after his death in 1958 that the global science community began to take serious notice of his theory. In 1976, a study in the journal Science by Hays et al. using deep-sea sediment cores found that Milankovitch cycles correspond with periods of major climate change over the past 450,000 years, with Ice Ages occurring when Earth was undergoing different stages of orbital variation.
Several other projects and studies have also upheld the validity of Milankovitch’s work, including research using data from ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica that has provided strong evidence of Milankovitch cycles going back many hundreds of thousands of years. In addition, his work has been embraced by the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Scientific research to better understand the mechanisms that cause changes in Earth’s rotation and how specifically Milankovitch cycles combine to affect climate is ongoing. But the theory that they drive the timing of glacial-interglacial cycles is well accepted.
That population growth occurs almost exclusively in the turd world. Just stop sending food there and sink the boats coming out; the problem will fix itself. So-called humans who are objectively no smarter than yeast deserve nothing from us.
I’ve refrained from responding to E-P’s boastful self-enhancement because my warrant on RC is to challenge AGW-deniers, and he isn’t one. Narcissism is a common enough personality trait among us regulars, after all, or maybe it just takes one to know one. Besides, the rest of you do pretty well at calling out his motivated cognition, while acknowledging his grasp of certain technical topics.
Nevertheless, I can’t ignore the virulent racism at #284. It might have come from a church-bombing Ku Klux Klansman. WT actual F, people! Is everyone OK with it but me? Have I missed seeing other overt manifestations of E-P’s pathological hatred, far beyond mere narcissism? Is he just messing with us, or will he commit mass murder any day now?
The coronavirus pandemic will pass, but the disease of racism still infests our society. Shouldn’t it be quarantined on this blog? For once I call on its moderators. Failing that, why isn’t E-P’s loathsome utterance being condemned in the strongest possible terms?
#314, KIA–
Oh, I suppose I should respond to this, too:
Sounds to me like the same thing that occurred previously – rapid warming over a few decades – is exactly the same thing we are experiencing today, casting credible doubt on current CO2 theory.
It sounds that way to you because that’s what you want to believe. The WUWT quote is ridiculous, not because it came from WUWT, but because it conflates or confuses causes and effects operating on different timescales, because it misunderstands what the scentific literature is saying, and because it promulgates (once again!) the bogus notion of singular causation.
What are you ignoring in order to achieve the “sounds like” you desire? A partial list:
1) Time scale.
2) Correlation of CO2 and temperature.
3) Regional nature of some of the changes we’re discussing: “The Younger Dryas was a period of climatic change, but the effects were complex and variable. In the Southern Hemisphere and some areas of the Northern Hemisphere, such as southeastern North America, a slight warming occurred.”
4) Known multiple causes (ie., what I’d call the “Singular Cause Fallacy,” discussed above.
5) As always, the known physics of the greenhouse effect–amply understood for decades now.
In short, you are not really trying to understand.
Seems like a useful list for a start. My only comment would be that “the insect problem” may unintentionally undersell the seriousness of that issue, just by its otherwise commendable brevity.
As insects go, so goes everything else on the food chain. Only green plants are more of a keystone. (If I may be forgiven for once again making an absolute term relative.)
Al Bundysays
Kevin M: EVs there are investments in cleaning up transportation, too, since improvements in the grid antomatically and immediately result in a commensurate improvement in transportation sector emissions. Rather a nice ‘twofer.’
AB: Cars last for perhaps 20 years so the odds of improvements in the grid substantially reducing an EV’s lifetime emissions are slim. Of course those same odds apply via bio/synfuels to internal combustion vehicles (the primary sane format of ICE is a non-plug-in hybrid, with plug-in hybrids being a blended format), so the whole concept of glorious improvement for EVs and no improvement at all for non-plug-in hybrids boils down to bias.
Kevin M: How did Sweden accomplish this? By maintaining their hydroelectric and nuclear capacity while displacing the coal with wind and solar:
AB: Yeah, but that would require sanity and here in the good ol’ USA sanity buys no votes. Greed works. The grasping at rainbows works. But making sense isn’t exciting.
Kevin M to MrKIA: In short, you are not really trying to understand.
AB: He’s really, really, really trying to misunderstand. Folks can post here or publish elsewhere and MrKIA will scan and parse for snippets he can take out of context, misunderstand, and magnify.
______
ze bra: How about incomprehensible babbling about stuff that only exists in your own mind?
…snip…
WTF are you talking about?
AB: Those with triple-digit IQs had no problem understanding. But for you:
Your z-grid is definitely double-digit. Even so, I tried to get you to see at least one of the gargantuan flaws in the z-grid as described, thus giving you a chance to fire up your third neuron and improve your concept. Your response shows that my attempt was in vain.
Shallow is as shallow thinks.
______
Mal Adapted,
EP provides folks with the glorious feeling one derives from believing oneself to be morally superior. Who wants to kill off Righteous Indignation?
EP also provides useful data, which brings up the whole Dr Mengele issue. Mengele reduced humans to lab animals which begs the question: Should Mengele’s data and results be used or burned?
My ‘favorite’ Mengele experiment was when he tied women’s legs together as they went into labor. Gives the whole “genius” label a bad name…
Al Bundysays
Nigel J,
I said that the President and Congress would better serve the People if said elected officials believed that elected officials should live like their constituents instead of like the rich. The revolving door corporate to elected to corporate thing makes things even worse.
You went off on a tangent, about how folks in the private sector wouldn’t seek top private sector positions if they weren’t showered with cash. First, I said nothing about the private sector. Second, the private sector performed much better than it does today back in the 1950s when CEOs made 20 times what a worker made as compared to today’s 361 times (and rising, so 361 is surely out of date).
But to take your outrageous example at face value, you’d be hard pressed to find many very smart and quite talented workers who wouldn’t choose to be CEO even if it paid exactly the same as they’re getting paid now. Heck, corporations often fool folks by giving them a fake promotion via a made-up label. “Assistant manager” of a fast food joint comes to mind.
Mr. Know It Allsays
313 – nigelj
“Ah I see now. They didn’t mention that CO2 had also increased 30%. Typical climate denialist lies by omission.”
Thanks for that observation. It proves my point that the rapid warming of 14C over “a few decades” casts doubt on CO2 theory. According to CO2 theory, and BPL can do the math for us, a DOUBLING of CO2 would raise the temperature by 2C. That did not happen – it went up 14C over just a few decades with a minor, if any, increase in CO2. That cannot be explained by any orbital/tilt cycles which occur over far longer times.
I think what happened at that time, may be similar to what is happening now. Just based on an occasional look at temps in Alaska, I’ve noticed that they are waaaaay warmer than they were 50 years ago, far more than 2C, probably closer to 14C. Something is happening that we do not understand. Time for scientists to find out what it is.
nigeljsays
KM @322, thanks. Yes the insect problem is pretty serious. Some bird species are already declining linked to this problem. Bear in mind it was a five minute post, not a dissertation.
The point I’m trying to make is we talk a lot about “sustainablity” and grand singular sorts of environmental solutions like “smaller population” and “simplification” because we yearn for simple solutions to complex problems, but there may not be a simple solution to our considerable environmental problems, not one that makes sense anyway. Instead I was trying to show we can list all the main challenges, there are a couple I left out like soils degradation, but the overall list is quite short and digestible, and it can immediately be seen solutions are possible, without completely restructuring society first, if at all.
Of course we need an over arching plan, but the UN sustainable development goals achieve that and are reasonable objectives in the main.
Back to your comment: “The jury is also AFAIK still very much out on whether that also means zero economic growth–in fact, I don’t think there is a ruling even on what zero economic growth means. There is a whole host of definitional issues, I think.”
Gotta agree with that. The standard definition of economic growth is “an increase in the amount of goods and services produced per head of the population over a period of time. It’s a fairly agreed basic definition. Taken literally zero economic growth would mean no increase in the amount of goods and services produced per head of population over a period of time”. But is that a sensible solution to environmental problems? Its an awfully blunt instrument. Obviously economic growth that derives from the extractive mining industries cant continue forever at current rates unless we just dig holes and fill them in again, because resources are finite, but its a question of whether we should deliberately slow that growth down and by how much.
Bearing in mind stopping economic growth immediately would consign the third world to remaining in poverty. Even if rich countries shared more of their existing wealth there probably isn’t enough to lift every country out of material poverty, and you cant really share fixed infrastructure where most of the wealth actually resides. So we have to be very careful to assess exactly what problem in the future we are trying to solve by putting the brakes on growth right now. The future problem could be shortages of materials, but putting the brakes on growth can only delay the inevitable, so has to be carefully weighed against what quality of life we might loose with zero growth. You also need to consider whether zero growth can be a stable position because it could slide into degrowth and economic depression.
However if wealthy countries try to prolong high rates of economic growth forever we are asking for trouble and some sort of abrupt resource crunch. But there is evidence economic growth is slowing anyway, and the solution might be just not to fight this too much, at least in the wealthy countries. So let it slow down to zero or close to that, and don’t panic. We will still be able to advance things that really count like healthcare.
The other thing is types of economic growth. Growth based on the extractive industries has environmental impacts. Growth in services delivery has fewer environmental impacts and could continue for some time.
Of course recycling could prolong some level of economic growth that has minimal environmental impacts.The circular economy also relies on high levels of recycling.
nigeljsays
Mal Adapted @320, I’ve made my displeasure with EP’s racial utterances clear, and tend not to repeat it, however I suspect EP is enjoying a mischievous troll. I doubt he wears white robes to bed. It might just be a frustration with the corruption you get with Africa’s leaders, or I hope its just that.
We have a similar character in NZ, a Mr Bob Jones, an annoying libertarian guy always having a go at darker skinned people and poor people, but hes actually married to an Asian lady, and he donates to poor people in Africa. However there are plenty of full on racists around, sadly to say.
siddsays
Re: “I call on its moderators.”
They are busy, got better things to do than scanning commentary for offense. As usually happens, exemplified on Usenet, when moderators are slack it comes down to the participants.
Much easier on moderation load if readers would use a killfile,scroll down/page down controls, refrain from replies to extreme posts. Not every idiocy on the net needs corrected at volume and in depth.
Amazing how those extremes go away faced with wall of silence; in most cases extreme posts are demands for attention. If attention does not result, extremals try elsewhere.
I recommend killfile, number of putatively readable comments drops considerably with a few judicious selections. Recursively hiding comments quoting killfiled commentary is a big plus here.
“The fossil fuel industry has been spending a lot of money to subtly introduce the idea that if only you, just you, would change your wasteful habits, then maybe climate change wouldn’t be so bad. They started doing it with those benign “Check your Carbon footprint” ads years ago, and it continues today.
But the current crisis has shut down flying, most driving, and kept millions inside their homes, and while we’ve seen lower particulates in the air, leading to those beautiful photos of clear views from Los Angeles to Mumbai, carbon emissions have dropped in only a minor way.
Mute proof of what I’ve been telling people for years. If you and I and our 100,000 closest friends move to the woods to subsist on nuts and berries, the impact on carbon and climate would be minimal to none.
We live in a system that has to end its reliance on burning fossil fuels – that’s it….So where are all those emissions coming from? For one thing, utilities are still generating roughly the same amount of electricity — even if more of it’s going to houses instead of workplaces. Electricity and heating combined account for over 40 percent of global emissions. Many people around the world rely on wood, coal, and natural gas to keep their homes warm and cook their food — and in most places, electricity isn’t so green either…..”
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @324, I didn’t go off on a tangent. I was pointing out the elite extends beyond congress surely?
“Second, the private sector performed much better than it does today back in the 1950s when CEOs made 20 times what a worker made as compared to today’s 361 times (and rising, so 361 is surely out of date).”
Yep, and a small group of people like the Koch brothers just couldn’t live with only earning 20 times more and launched a cunning if odious campaign to promote greed is not just good, its the single most important thing in life. And they won, but only because others let them win.
Communist systems paid most people the same or close to the same, and it just lead to laziness and stagnation. However studies show that when executive salaries get truly huge they don’t motivate better performance, so theres probably a sweet spot somewhere to aim for.
David B. Bensonsays
Mr Know It All @325, just for the latest — Could you kindly take your rantings to the Unforced Variations thread? That is, if you cannot bring yourself to desist.
David B. Bensonsays
nigelj @326 — I recommend that you read “The Midas Plague” by Frederick Pohl.
nigeljsays
KIA @325
No there’s a simple explanation based on conventional greenhouse gas theory. The 14 degrees warming spike in the Arctic after the ice retreated was local in the Arctic region. C02 increased 30% over a long period of thousands of years, and so the positive feedback from melting arctic ice might have eventually lead to 14 degrees. We already see the arctic warming 5 degrees in places so perhaps it could reach 14 degrees in a few centuries, even if we stopped emissions. So that would explain why it appeared warmer back then, its only because we haven’t had time to catch up. That’s my hopefully educated guess.
nigeljsays
KIA @325 sorry correction, we might catch up to that 14 degrees in the Arctic in a few decades, not necessarily centuries. There might also be other factors helping cause 14 degrees after the last ice age.
John Pollacksays
Mal Adapted @320 I am no longer reading E-Ps remarks in full, and missed the one you quoted. I certainly agree that it’s loathsome, and deserved to be moderated out. Since E-P wants his writings to be taken seriously, I’ll take that one seriously, too. It shows a complete contempt for the lives of anyone he doesn’t like. That’s one reason I consider nuclear power to be a safety hazard that can’t be explained away by him, or anyone else who thinks that my life doesn’t count if I don’t agree with them. Since he asserts that there are “so-called humans that are demonstrably no smarter than yeast” he has negated the rest of the demonstrations that he wants us to pay attention to.
6) Get the size of population down, but this will be challenging because it can create demographic imbalances. Its happening but might take some time.
You can stop exploding populations by demanding they accept contraception in return for food. Niger’s fertility rate of 6.35 per woman should be brought down to 1 for at least a couple of generations, and none of them should be allowed to emigrate. NONE. The price of food should be NPG.
Ideally the ones allowed children should be slanted towards the most intelligent and peaceful, but “das rayciss”.
List them. Let’s debate this with facts, not empty assertions (of which you are quite fond).
because it tells you what you want to hear.
Wrong. It says what I’ve been saying since 2004 when I started my blog (actually before that in other blog’s comment sections, but who’s counting?) Gibbs and Moore are waking up and catching up to me (and Rod Adams), not the reverse. Took them long enough.
This is not a documentary about the environmental damage that had to occur for Gibbs to go on his drive – it is not mentioned. Nor is it about the harm from fossil fuels.
It is about why renewable energy is bad.
Wrong. It’s about why “renewable energy” is a LIE. Driving ancient yucca plants and desert tortoises extinct is the opposite of “renewable”. Once gone, those species cannot be restored. Power plants which require shredded tires to get their “renewable” green wood chips to burn are not “renewable” either. All LIES.
It is clear that Gibbs has been trying to make this documentary for a long, long time.
Wrong. It’s obvious that Gibbs has been collecting evidence for a long time. It’s also obvious that he only put the pieces together recently. Peter Sinclair is either STILL in denial (years after being informed) or is on the side of the fossil-fuel interests, for which he undeniably covers. Peter Sinclair is a climate criminal and an enemy of the planet.
Killiansays
Re #305 Kevin McKinney said After that–and by “after that” I don’t mean it would be smart to ignore the issue completely till then–we need to work toward true sustainability
How do you get to net zero by doing nothing? And, yes, that is what you are saying. You are saying this economy, this level of consumption, can be made first net zero then negative.
That’s denial. You cannot begin to make the math work on that.
Go ahead, explain how that gets done because right now all the idiots are talking about is electricity, which gets nowhere near net zero, let alone drawdown.
Go ahead, make my day with this delusional thinking. And be specific.
which means figuring out how an economy can nurture human needs without trashing the rest of the planet–especially including the fact of its finitude.
So, wait 30 years or more to stop trashing the planet. Tipping points don’t exist? 70, 80, 90% reductions in myriad species is already over the threshhold to be collapses, but you think we can wait that long. And I don’t give the slightest damn about your sill caveat, because you don’t get to save the ecosystem and maintain the current system – no way, no how.
That clearly does mean population limitation, probably to a number well below the current one. It clearly means zero energy growth at some point–though just what that point should be remains, as far as I can tell, to be determined.
Well, that population stop is likely coming no matter what, so BFG. Oh, I have a policy! It’ll happen, anyway, but aren’t I smart? Give us all a damned break.
Zero energy growth. Garbage words. Barking words. ANY level of consumption is a problem if it isn’t sustainable; it doesn’t matter what you WANT or BELIEVE.
The jury is also AFAIK still very much out on whether that also means zero economic growth–in fact
No, it isn’t.
I don’t think there is a ruling even on what zero economic growth means.
Jesus christ… Ruling? And where would that ever be made? Ruling!!!
And, yeah, we do. You don’t because you believe in neoclassical horse droppings.
There is a whole host of definitional issues, I think.
There are exactly zero. There is a shitoad of ignorance and refusal to put Nature and natural principles first.
In the immediate term, the one thing that is making the biggest positive difference appears to be modern renewable energy.
It’s making no difference. At all. We just went through all that crap about, oh, emissions are falling! even as Mauna Loa laughs in everyone’s face.
Against ‘relentless’ competition from solar and wind power, the financial case for coal is becoming incrementally worse, according to Carbon Tracker. In 2017, the report stated, ‘only’ 46% of EU coal generators ran at a loss.
How much gas has come online, Kevin, hmmm?
How did Sweden accomplish this? By maintaining their hydroelectric and nuclear capacity while displacing the coal with wind and solar:
So Sweden, rather than live within limits, added greater complexity and did nothing at all that will give them a sustainable future while putting/keeping bombs on their soil. Brilliant.
Now wind, solar and biomass have completely displaced the relatively small amount of coal generation they did employ.
So, if you don’t use something hardly at all, you can change it! Great! With three techs that are completely unsustainable! Biomass? Tell, me, Kevin, what is the immediate problem with biomass????
Ray Ladburysays
Mr. KIA@325
Just curious. Were you an idiot before you tuned into Faux News and Breitbart, or did they cause a significant decline in your cognitive abilities and reading skills?
Dude, once again. You cannot draw a conclusion about a global increase in temperature from a local event in the dark and distant past. Global events depend on energy in and energy out. Period. Local events also depend on where the energy goes–local variations in transport.
Killiansays
Re #315 nigelj say stupid crap that Kevin repeats: Yes, but we just have to get specific
Oh? Is that all? Just get specific? Tell us all, genius, how you do that when the world doesn’t evern agree on what Economics is, or what economy is. or what growth is, or what should be counted as growth.
That’s why the fools need shut the hell up and let those that do know speak.
Economics and economy are nonsense that only have meaning if you go back to the ancient Greek definition, and even then it’s of little use in a regenerative society because you can’t run ANY community on that basis.
Those days are past.
And you have no idea what you just read.
rather than too much philosophical hand waving
Really? Because what follows is meaningless drivel.
1) Conserve the forests.
HOW, if you aren’t willing to change society from consumptive to regenerative?
If we run out of timber we really will have a problem very long term.
Lord have mercy…. if you “run out of timber” the planet is going to be dead soon after. No trees? Are freaking kidding me you even entertained that thought?
“Well, if we run out of air, that might be a problem!”said Captain Balloonhead.
That said, iron is so abundant we won’t run out but it is not as flexible as timber.
ANYTHING can be run out of. Get that through your skull.
Conserve the fisheries.
HOW, goddamnit? Making a list of things to conserve when EVERYTHING needs to be conserved is dipshittery.
Its just a crying shame to destroy those
It’s a SHAME? It’s death of the oceans, for chrissakes, and the forests, and many humans and… likely almost everything.
WTH is wrong with your head?
and all it takes is quota management
Ah. I see. We don’t need less pollution, lower ocean temps, to limit SLR… nah… just…. quotas.
like we have in NZ. The real challenge is getting most of society on board and overcoming peoples greed.
Really? Has nothing to do with demand, lifestyles, sushi restaraunts…?
3) Find a solution to the insect decline problem.
I swear to god… I hope you were neutered. “Find a solution to…” Sure, just toss out a few gizmos! A better class of chemicals!
HOW ABOUT LIVING SIMPLY AS THE CORONA VIRUS HAS AMPLY DEMOSTRATED?????? Nah… can’t have THAT.
4) Stop dumping dangerous wastes. Its largely a societal / political issue not a technical issue.
WTF??????? Wastes only exist because of politics??????? We have exactly zero solutions for human waste. There are a few small-scale activities, nothing is a solution. There CANNOT BE. Why? Most of what we make is NOT recyclable, AND we would need to increase recycling 100-fold globally, to even begin to tackle this… and it still wouldn’t because so much of it is literal trash.
And, GET THIS THROUGH YOUR HEAD: All waste is dangerous. It all can disrupt and imbalance a system. That’s why “zero waste.”
5) Recycle and waste less.
Because on a finite planet we can just keep making trash.
6) Get the size of population down
Yet, you have zero serious, effective, doable solutions. You don’t even understand msot of what you just wrote about.
7) Clean zero carbon energy obviously.
It does not exist. Cannot exist. Not one of the technologies for energy is carbon-free. Not one. Ah, you meant carbon neutral? No carbon-neutral energy exists and none of what does is in any way sustainable.
8)Try to not be extravagant in our use of resources
This is barking words.
Gods help us. The inmates are running the assylum and think it’s a spaceship.
KIA 314: Sounds to me like the same thing that occurred previously – rapid warming over a few decades – is exactly the same thing we are experiencing today, casting credible doubt on current CO2 theory.
BPL: How do you know the previous episodes of rapid warming weren’t caused by CO2? And when did CO2 not become a greenhouse gas? Do you know what you’re talking about? Why am I even asking?
MA 320: why isn’t E-P’s loathsome utterance being condemned in the strongest possible terms?
BPL: I condemned it, but my response was so brief you may have missed it. Yes, E-P is an extreme, genocidally-inclined racist. I would love to see him tossed off the board for spouting this crap, but the moderators don’t seem to be so inclined. E-P accepts every racist meme ever invented, right back to Samuel Morton’s valueless work with skulls and grain seeds back in the 19th century, and he’ll babble endlessly about race and IQ if you let him. God forbid he should ever be in a position of power. He is a toxic, evil man, and his racism is only part of his essentially fascist worldview.
Killiansays
re #322 Kevin McKinney said Seems like a useful list for a start.
It’s irrelevant. It’s addressing syptoms.
My only comment would be that “the insect problem” may unintentionally undersell the seriousness of that issue, just by its otherwise commendable brevity.
As insects go, so goes everything else on the food chain. Only green plants are more of a keystone. (If I may be forgiven for once again making an absolute term relative.)
But, but, but, Kev!!!!! You said we have time to get to net zero, then mostly worry about becomeing regenerative! Yeah, don’t worry about it. 7-something decline in 30 years or so, hey, that’s nothing! Nah, I’m sure it won’t keep going at that rate! We’re safe! And that it’s probably over 95+% since, say, 200 years ago, receding horizons don’t matter in assessing ecological helth! Pshaw!
And who cares about tipping points, amirite?
Killiansays
Re #326 nigelj said The point I’m trying to make is we talk a lot about “sustainablity” and grand singular sorts of environmental solutions like “smaller population” and “simplification” because we yearn for simple solutions to complex problems
No, it’s that some of us understand how the ecosystem works. You do not. Some of us understand which forms of complexity (natural systems) are viable and which aren’t (human modernity) and listened when Tainter said diminishing returns on complexity leads to collapse.
Don’t know if you’ve seen my previous comments on this. However, you said:
Thanks for that observation. It proves my point that the rapid warming of 14C over “a few decades” casts doubt on CO2 theory. According to CO2 theory, and BPL can do the math for us, a DOUBLING of CO2 would raise the temperature by 2C. That did not happen – it went up 14C over just a few decades with a minor, if any, increase in CO2. That cannot be explained by any orbital/tilt cycles which occur over far longer times.
Again, no, it doesn’t. It would only “cast doubt on CO2 theory” if said theory held that only CO2 ever affected temperature. That is not, and has never been, the case. As BPL (and many others, including me) has said, “The existence of natural fire does not make arson impossible.” Yes, CO2 affects temperature. So do Earth’s orbital parameters, so does Earth’s albedo, and so can oceanic circulation changes, such as massive infusions of cold fresh water due to glacial melt.
So, it is true that the 14C temperature rise was not (proximately) caused by an increase in CO2. (Though it may also be true that the multi-millennial warming trend in which this sudden fluctuation was embedded served as an indirect cause–and that was in significant part due to the 30% increase in CO2 I referred to.) That in no way implies that CO2 doesn’t affect temperature.
I think what happened at that time, may be similar to what is happening now. Just based on an occasional look at temps in Alaska, I’ve noticed that they are waaaaay warmer than they were 50 years ago, far more than 2C, probably closer to 14C. Something is happening that we do not understand. Time for scientists to find out what it is.
And on what basis do you find that similarity? Look, I don’t think that the last word has been spoken on exactly what happened 14.5 thousand years ago. However, to equate the uncertainty associated with that time with the uncertainty around what is happening today in the Arctic is, if you take a second to think about it objectively, pretty darn silly.
Particularly when the phenomenon of ‘Arctic amplification’ showed up in the very first mathematical model of CO2-induced warming, hand-calculated by Svante Arrhenius in 1896:
But congratulations, I guess, on discovering it for yourself. A pro tip, though–when you say “Something is happening that we do not understand,” you really should consider who “we” is.
(And if we really need to continue this discussion, it should move over to the science thread.)
No, that is not the first time that such abhorrent utterances from E-P have disfigured these threads, and I’m very much afraid it won’t be the last. I agree with you, and have expressed similar sentiments to yours in the past. I missed the paragraph you highlighted because I now try to skim over such garbage in E-P’s output in order efficiently to address his disinformation WRT renewable energy.
But in my “ideal world RC”, crap like that would be moderated out. Such objectification of humans is quite simply evil, in my opinion. Nigel speculates that maybe E-P isn’t really all that bad in real life, and E-P himself has admitted that he likes to play up that sort of thing in order to provoke–in other words, he’s admitted to trolling. Personally, I don’t think it matters. Saying this shit normalizes it, whether you ‘really mean it’ or not.
So, thanks for calling it out. You have my ‘plus one’, for whatever that may be worth.
E-P 285: The point you’re missing is that your solar and wind and batteries CANNOT be manufactured with solar and wind and batteries; they require coal, oil or NG forever because they cannot supply the energy to make more of themselves.
BPL: Stuff and nonsense. The upper limit on Solar power alone is orders of magnitude more than all human energy use.
E-P, I really do think the Nuclear industry had it’s golden opportunity to save us all from global warming pulled from under them when Right politics settled on climate science denial and obstruction as their principle response. Only mainstream Right politics taking up the climate issue with conviction and vigor, making it their own, could do that kind of climate policy. But Commerce and Industry wanted no climate responsibility and Right parties especially want to do what Business wants. No climate accountability. No liability. No requirement for stopping global warming unless that somehow turns out cheaper up front for businesses than just letting it happen. Mainstream political parties have for the most part accommodated them but none with such commitment and willingness to set aside facts and reason as the parties of The Right.
Oh, I’ve got serious criticisms of the mainstream Left too, but the Right’s economic alarmist fearmongering, the conspiracy theories and the scapegoating of Environmentalists, when the issue is so incredibly serious is way worse than the Left failing to support nuclear. But yes, it was a serious abrogation on the Left IMO to make appeasing gestures rather than get serious about it much earlier, at a time when nuclear stood out as the most credible alternative to coal and solar and wind were hugely expensive niche options. No special credit to those that gave early policy and funding support that solar and wind advanced so far so rapidly; it was more the product of taxpayer funded science and R&D being taken up and pushed into commercial viability by capitalist entrepreneurs.
I think the RE experiment should as far as it can go. Solar is unstoppable as it currently is, with better still in the pipeline. Batteries and other storage are lagging but the successes of solar and wind have seriously increased the already growing interest in batteries. Tech devices, cordless tools. And then came Tesla. There has never been more commitment to battery R&D and I quite optimistic we will get significant advances as a consequence. That a prosperous zero emissions economy requires technology at scales far greater than anything that has gone before should be taken as given or what do you plan to do with all that nuclear power? If RE does run up against hard resource or other constraints it will get reflected in their price and if it seriously stalls then maybe nuclear can make another shot, perhaps having worked up their own improvements but I am optimistic RE will take us a long way.
#288 Al Bundy,
“You got any data that indicates that I have Trumpian tendencies?”
How about incomprehensible babbling about stuff that only exists in your own mind?
WTF are you talking about?
KIA, #278–
Seriously, no, it’s not “weird”. Most if not all of this has been discussed here during your time as a participant. But you have to be willing to read for comprehension instead of skimming in search of talking points that may afford you some FUD relief.
But I’ll break some of it down for you.
So, what this says is that the proximate cause of the melting was a regional, not global change. (Though it was evidently part of a true global change, i.e., the last deglaciation, so indirectly it would indirectly be attributable to that global change.)
Indeed they were, more or less. See, for example, Figure 3 in this discussion paper:
https://www.clim-past-discuss.net/cp-2017-71/cp-2017-71.pdf
But it also reveals that “at the time” that number had been increasing for about 6,000 years, from a value of ~180 ppm during the glacial maximum. That’s about a 33% increase–compare that to the more than 45% increase during the Industrial Revolution for which humanity is unequivocally responsible.
And as we’ve explained here in the past, and discussed here (in case anyone needs a refresher), the initiating forcing for the cycles of glaciation and deglaciation observed during the Quarternary is pretty reliably believed to be changes in solar forcings due to cyclic shifts in orbital parameters, AKA “Milankovitch cycles.”
Note that the Gest et al paper referred to above compares *Antarctic* data, not data from the Northern hemisphere. But the CO2 data shouldn’t differ much; it’s primarily the details of the temperature trajectories in the hemispheres that are really distinct. As the Gest et al Introduction points out:
There are a few good takeaways from that.
1) Regional and even hemispheric trends can buck global trends for a time, but that doesn’t mean that the global trend isn’t affecting them. (If it did, it wouldn’t be a global trend.)
2) There can be up-and-down fluctuations within longer trends, even over timescales that seem long to us.
3) CO2 is not the only thing that affects temperature, and no climate scientist ever has claimed that it is. (It’s important to remember that because a day seems not to go by without someone, somewhere, ‘discovering’ that other things can affect temperature too, and then jumping to the erroneous conclusion that they’ve just ‘refuted AGW’.) Solar forcings and albedo are two such that are particularly important in the current context.
4) Short-term chaotic instability can happen during the course of, and presumably driven by, longer-term temperature change. The dissolution of the Eurasian ice sheet doesn’t in any way challenge the mainstream understanding of climate change during the last deglaciation. But it does show that there are precedents for extremely rapid changes which would be very damaging and difficult to cope with for today’s society–“the temp went up over a vast region by 14 C in just “a few decades”.”
Which was the point. If that happened to Greenland, it would make the economic devastation of Covid-19, which GOP leaders have been catastrophizing about, look like peanuts, because we’d lose not just Miami, but large chunks of Lagos and Mumbai and Shanghai–in fact, large chunks of many of the world’s largest cities. With it would go enormous amounts of infrastructure, including the infrastructure of bulk international trade, and the residences of hundreds of millions. They’d become refugees, or at least displaced persons.
Recovering from that would be a decadal project–if nothing else went wrong. And we can be pretty sure that that latter condition could not be realistically assumed.
#280, nigel–
Yes, that quote from Kate Marvell is very good.
The proximate need is to reduce emissions to net zero, and then reduce them some more to induce gradual drawdown.
After that–and by “after that” I don’t mean it would be smart to ignore the issue completely till then–we need to work toward true sustainability, which means figuring out how an economy can nurture human needs without trashing the rest of the planet–especially including the fact of its finitude. That clearly does mean population limitation, probably to a number well below the current one. It clearly means zero energy growth at some point–though just what that point should be remains, as far as I can tell, to be determined.
The jury is also AFAIK still very much out on whether that also means zero economic growth–in fact, I don’t think there is a ruling even on what zero economic growth means. There is a whole host of definitional issues, I think.
In the immediate term, the one thing that is making the biggest positive difference appears to be modern renewable energy.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/04/22/sweden-exits-coal-two-years-early/
How did Sweden accomplish this? By maintaining their hydroelectric and nuclear capacity while displacing the coal with wind and solar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Sweden#/media/File:Sweden_electricity_generation_chart_(EIA).png
Austria, too, just went coal-free. They don’t use nuclear power, but they are so abundantly gifted with hydropower that they’ve never really needed it. Now wind, solar and biomass have completely displaced the relatively small amount of coal generation they did employ.
#293, E-P–
E-P displays his unmatched ability to provide correct answers to incorrect questions. I had said that “in the great majority of cases, EVs do, in fact, reduce emissions, even with less than perfectly decarbonized grids charging them.”
In response to that, he “did the math” for generic Teslas charged by 1) a completely coal-fired grid, 2) a completely natgas-fired grid, and 3) a completely nuclear grid. By ignoring all “upstream emissions in production, refining and delivery”–all of which matter in real life–he manages to ‘prove’ that a hypothetical generic Tesla in the first two cases has emissions comparable to typical ICEs, and worse than economy ICEs.
Of course, the emissions of the nuclear grid powered Tesla are stellar.
Well, duh.
The point at issue is that in the real world, even relatively dirty grids generally see EVs provide improvements in emissions, and therefore the claims in Planet of the Humans are without merit. Remember, it was BPL who raised this, citing the obvious cherry pick of a 95% coal-fired grid apparently used in the film. Everybody already knew that the composition of the grid matters.
A pretty good analysis of the EV lifecycle emissions issue is here, including consideration of the ‘ifo study.’ That is the one outlying study which found lifecycle emissions for EVs comparable to ICEs–or rather, speaking more exactly, comparable to an ICE model that nominally achieves 52 mpg:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change
Perhaps it’s worth remembering the point, made in that article, that since many nations are cleaning up their power grids, EVs there are investments in cleaning up transportation, too, since improvements in the grid antomatically and immediately result in a commensurate improvement in transportation sector emissions. Rather a nice ‘twofer.’
I’ll only add that the contention, made several times recently, that somehow renewable energy “inherently” needs fossil fuel input is transparently silly. Pretty much anything you can do with thermal power you can do with electric power. (Though it may be more practical in cases requiring high process heat to use non-fossil fuels, such as syngas, biogas, or non-fossil-sourced hydrogen.)
zebra Hacks Wikipedia,
Yes folks, he has installed a completely fake article, pretending that something we have been told over and over by the RC Brain Trust is impossible…exists all over the world!:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_management
A sample:
(zebra is particularly proud of slipping in that Fake Picture of a control setup.)
But we all know that consumers would never tolerate such nonsense! The Genius Brain Trust has told us so!
Please, folks, write to Wiki-p and tell them they must take down that page!
BPL puts himself right where I want him @301:
If solar power is so great and so easy, why did ANYONE ever bother to dig coal or drill for oil or gas? Same goes for wind.
It would occur to anyone with a brain† that you have to do a lot more than just stand out in the sun to make it industrially useful. First, you have to collect it in a useful form. In clear-skied deserts you can often do this with mirrors and store heat in e.g. “solar salt”, but in the majority of the world which has significant clouds and haze your only real option for catching it is with PV panels. Since the product of PV panels is electricity, you need batteries to store it.
That storage is a sine qua non. Many things require power 24/7; you can’t do without sewage lift pumps. Industrial processes are often supply-critical. Interrupt the juice, and “the potline problem” requires an extended shutdown and costly restart, often throwing out the material-in-process as ruined. You can’t run an aluminum smelter on PV by day and leave it un-powered overnight. The same goes for lots of crucial industry, including making silicon wafers for the all-important computers and comm systems which a “smart grid” cannot do without.
You can’t power these things directly with sunlight. You would need vast areas of PV panels to catch the light, and literally cubic miles of batteries to store the immediate surpluses to run things when the sun was down or behind clouds. In most of the industrialized world, the sun is practically unavailable during the winter. This means your batteries need to store MONTHS of energy.
The US consumes primary energy at a rate of about 10 kW per capita. Over even 3 months, that is 21600 kWh per person. Li-ion batteries cost roughly $100/kWh, so you’re talking an investment on the order of $21.6 million per person to tide them over the seasonal deficit in solar energy generation. Do YOU have a spare $21.6 million to go solar? I sure don’t. And even if you can cut that by a factor of 10 using e.g. hydrogen instead of batteries for long-term storage, I’m still sure neither of us have it. A nation with a per-capita GDP around $55,000 can’t afford anything like that. It’s impossible. It’s even more impossible when you factor in a replacement of both the PV panels and batteries even every 25 years, let alone possibly 10 years.
So yeah. You can go solar and freeze in the dark in the winter. I’ll go nuclear and sit toasty, TYVM.
† Of which group you are not a member, because such obvious things don’t even occur to you. But they occur to others, and they are understood by many more once they see the logic laid out. Which is why I welcome your dumbest posts; they let me convert the lurkers. IOW, thanks for the softballs, sucker.
Ken Fabian writes @302:
Why wasn’t it when David Brower broke with the “Atoms Not Dams” Sierra Club to form the anti-nuclear “Friends of the Earth”, forcing Sierra Club to reverse course? Brower took hundreds of thousands of dollars from ARCO executive Robert O. Anderson to start his anti-nuke organization. Doesn’t that say it all right there? The fossil industry has been behind anti-nuclearism from the outset, and the left has been its willing patsy.
I have to admit, the forces of propaganda played this one very well. Back when talk radio was the arbiter of orthodoxy on the right, they pushed climate science on the left and let reflexive animosity drive the reaction on the right while they provided the guidance. But the “No Nukes!” forces are ultimately to blame, and they’re all on the left. Nuclear power is the ultimate energy source for clean air and clean water. (((Bernie Sanders))) led the drive to close Vermont Yankee, depriving the region of hundreds of megawatts of emissions-free energy and driving up both NG consumption and regional electric rates. Yet the left SUPPORTED HIM! If the left was truly devoted to fighting climate change, Sanders would be a pariah. He would not have been a Senator running for the Democratic nomination for president, he would be unable to show his face in public.
That quite literally does not matter. PV could be free, and you still couldn’t power our industry with it due to night, clouds and winter. And it’s not.
I was quick to note the possibilities of sodium-ion battery producer Faradion making a sale in Australia, and the fact that my own butt overlies at least kilotons and likely megatons of Na+ ions has nothing to do with that. Sadly, the advances Faradion has made allow progress into hours of power, but to fully decarbonize using batteries we need MONTHS of power. That requires storage costs of dollars or even cents per kWh. That is not in the offing.
Solar and batteries are orders of magnitude away from being able to decarbonize us. Nuclear is the only game in town, and we are 31 years and counting past the decision point to choose what we’ll use to get the job done. We should have acted in 1989.
Honestly? Provide all electric power demand, up to and beyond peak direct demand, from operating plants. Devote the power in excess of immediate demand to loads like industrial process heat at temperatures above what direct nuclear heat can provide. Supply most transportation energy (mostly from LDVs running on gasoline) from batteries in PHEVs. Devote surplus energy to make electrofuels for the remaining needs of things like PHEVs. Put a few hundred GW to work mineralizing atmospheric CO2. This is multi-faceted but ultimately not too complicated.
It has ALREADY run up against constraints and been reflected in their price. That price has FALLEN BELOW ZERO. Yes, we have already seen times when “renewable energy” was LESS THAN WORTHLESS. Yet people kept making it, because they were paid regardless of the worthlessness of what they were making.
I’d like to see those surpluses put to use. Let the fossil-fueled generators get paid to take that negatively-priced “renewable” power, turn it to heat in resistor banks, and use it as a fuel-substitute to keep their own backup capacity hot and spinning. That is an immediate (but hardly ultimate) use for “renewable energy” in excess of instant demand, and fixes a looming problem. It does not fix the ultimate problem, but ultimate solutions require incremental progress.
Kevin McKinney @304… said absolutely nothing I have issue with. It’s all 100% solid AFAICT. Note this.
@305, he has this to say:
I would argue “as fast as possible” vs. “gradual”, but no dispute on the trend. (I’m trying to get info on the dimensions of a PRISM power plant, to see just how much capacity could fit in the footprint of e.g. a supertanker. I think we need to site such floating plants offshore of dunite deposits to power dunite mining for CO2 removal efforts. When the CO2 is dealt with we can sail those floating plants elsewhere.)
No argument with this either, but the job is EVER SO MUCH EASIER if we are not making demands on the limited primary productivity of the biosphere for most of our needs, and instead use things that the biosphere has no use for. The biosphere has no use for actinides; to most of it, they are poisons. If we convert actinides to elements between transition elements and rare earths, we are doing the biosphere a favor vs. letting them decay to toxic lead.
And then KM gets it completely wrong again @306:
Save in the case of the nuclear grid, they do NOT reduce emissions vs. a grid-independent Prius achieving 50 MPG.
The claims mostly relate to non-carbon effects, and are unrebutted. Destruction of landscape and biodiversity has no direct carbon impact or equivalent.
It’s not silly, it’s basic. Your “renewable energy” is unreliable, and our systems require reliable energy. Our reliable options are fossil fuels or nuclear: Pick One.
A point I have made repeatedly, but what do you do to make that (decarbonized) electric power available when you need it? Nuclear and hydro are the only games in town, and the supply of hydro is strictly limited and seasonally constrained. It’s mostly available during snowmelt and only the impounded water can be used most of the rest of the year when there’s little rainfall.
I’ve been assuming that a substantial amount of this requires direct electric power, but I don’t know how much to allocate to that vs. direct nuclear heat or lower-grade heat. Insufficient data.
Zebra @307 posts:
“Since the 1950s, New Zealand has had a system of load management based on ripple control, allowing the electricity supply for domestic and commercial water storage heaters to be switched off and on, as well as allowing remote control of nightstore heaters and street lights.”
Now I live in NZ and this is true, if people want it. What really annoys me is Zebra parrots this sort of thing as if its his own invention (as a key part of his Z Grid) and offers it as some sort of justification for his bizarre suggestions that his grid switch things like fridges and heaters off regularly, as a way of dealing with load management issues etc.
The ripple control is simply a commonsense way of taking advantage of cheap night time rates for electricity and doesn’t really hugely compromise water heating during the day. However from what I recall not many people choose to use it. This is way different from the rather harsh sounding control of appliances that Zebra has advocated, and as AB points out its a bit unclear how this is better or more reliable than the traditional grid. Its a bit unclear to me as well. But its apparently clear inside the wiring of Zebras mind. Somehow I dont think there will be many takers for his system :)
Ken Fabian @302, good observations.
KM @304 quotes KIA saying “But, but, but the article said the temp went up over a vast region by 14 C in just “a few decades” and the CO2 was only 240 ppm at the time. Seriously, isn’t this a little weird – it’s like what’s happening now, only with greater temp increases and lower CO2. How did it happen?”
Ah I see now. They didn’t mention that CO2 had also increased 30%. Typical climate denialist lies by omission.
304 – Kevin M
“…. the initiating forcing for the cycles of glaciation and deglaciation observed during the Quarternary is pretty reliably believed to be changes in solar forcings due to cyclic shifts in orbital parameters, AKA “Milankovitch cycles.”
Those cycles are one theory, but there is no concensus:
https://www.britannica.com/science/Younger-Dryas-climate-interval
From britannica link:
“Such dramatic climatic reversals occurring in such a short time cannot be explained by Milankovitch cycles (that is, cyclical changes to the shape of Earth’s orbit, the tilt of Earth’s axis, and the wobblelike movement of Earth on its axis with respect to the Sun), which play out over tens of thousands of years. A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain the Younger Dryas, but so far there is no consensus on its cause.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/19/the-intriguing-problem-of-the-younger-dryaswhat-does-it-mean-and-what-caused-it/
From wattsup link (I know, don’t say it):
“What can we learn from all this? The ice core isotope data were hugely significant because they showed that the Younger Dryas, as well as the other late Pleistocene warming and cooling events could not possibly have been caused by slow, Croll-Milankovitch orbital forcing, which occurs over many tens of thousands of years. The ice core isotope data thus essentially killed the Croll-Milankovitch theory as the cause of the Ice Ages.”
Sounds to me like the same thing that occurred previously – rapid warming over a few decades – is exactly the same thing we are experiencing today, casting credible doubt on current CO2 theory.
KM @305
“After that–and by “after that” I don’t mean it would be smart to ignore the issue completely till then–we need to work toward true sustainability, which means figuring out how an economy can nurture human needs without trashing the rest of the planet–especially including the fact of its finitude. That clearly does mean population limitation, probably to a number well below the current one. It clearly means zero energy growth at some point–though just what that point should be remains, as far as I can tell, to be determined.”
“The jury is also AFAIK still very much out on whether that also means zero economic growth–in fact, I don’t think there is a ruling even on what zero economic growth means. There is a whole host of definitional issues, I think.”
Yes, but we just have to get specific, rather than too much philosophical hand waving (not that you are doing that):
1) Conserve the forests. If we run out of timber we really will have a problem very long term. Its the one resource that is totally regenerative and can be used for so many things. That said, iron is so abundant we won’t run out but it is not as flexible as timber.
2) Conserve the fisheries. Its just a crying shame to destroy those and all it takes is quota management, like we have in NZ. The real challenge is getting most of society on board and overcoming peoples greed.
3) Find a solution to the insect decline problem.
4) Stop dumping dangerous wastes. Its largely a societal / political issue not a technical issue.
5) Recycle and waste less.
6) Get the size of population down, but this will be challenging because it can create demographic imbalances. Its happening but might take some time. Its a powerful tool to reduce virtually all environmental problems and help sustainability.
7) Clean zero carbon energy obviously.
8)Try to not be extravagant in our use of resources, however to try to make huge reductions in our use of resources and kind of go bush and abandon huge chunks of technology doesnt make sense because it causes pain and only delays the inevitable point where we run low of some things and have to adopt a more basic lifestyle, something some people cant seem to grasp.
GDP growth and energy use may ultimately be forced to slow down by circumstances anyway. At some point we should stop fighting this, and work with it.
E-P 298: What it said to me is that “renewables” are UNABLE to live up to the promises made for them. They cannot be clean and they cannot sit lightly upon the earth. It does not matter who brought this message forth or what motivated them, it only matters if it is true. I believe it is.
BPL: And the myriad factual inaccuracies in the film don’t bother you, because it tells you what you want to hear.
https://climatecrocks.com/2020/04/25/planet-of-the-stupid/?fbclid=IwAR1Gl6aV40ZK2wG8_E1uf21PEW48uB-5J0BRnWFiNMkevK8R0QIXJYDoSs0
E-P, 310–
Again a mostly-true (I presume) factoid responsive to the wrong question. The global ICE fleet does not consist entirely of Priuses. And the “mostly” is a big one: there are a number of non-nuclear grids which are also non-fossil, several of which I’ve cited quite recently. (Two are Norway and Uruguay.) Clearly the generic Tesla, or Leaf, or Zoe, or BYD, would be just as stellar there as in the hypothetical all-nuclear grid, which AFAICT exists exactly nowhere in the world.
I apologize for the careless use of the plural. I was speaking specifically to the EV issue we were discussing.
However, there are numerous rebuttals of the documentary. Here are three, addressing various different claims and coming from different perspectives:
https://350.org/response-planet-of-the-humans-documentary/
https://www.ecoequity.org/2020/04/why-the-planet-of-the-humans-is-crap/
https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/skepticism-is-healthy-but-planet-of-the-humans-is-toxic/
Dogma, more than adequately refuted already by real world examples previously cited at length and on numerous occasions. And ditto for the next E-P paragraph, which I won’t quote here.
#314, KIA–
All very well and good, except that no-one ever claimed nor imagined that the Younger Dryas was a product of Milankovitch cycles. (Or as your source calls it, “Croll-Milankovitch.” Nice to see James Croll get a little belated love for his pioneering work.)
So, no, the fact that those cycles certainly, definitely, absolutely DID NOT cause the Younger Dryas has no bearing on whether they DID cause, as I put it, “the cycles of glaciation and deglaciation observed during the Quarternary.” The consensus on that latter point is pretty strong as far as I can tell. Here’s what NASA has to say about it:
Engineer-Poet:
I’ve refrained from responding to E-P’s boastful self-enhancement because my warrant on RC is to challenge AGW-deniers, and he isn’t one. Narcissism is a common enough personality trait among us regulars, after all, or maybe it just takes one to know one. Besides, the rest of you do pretty well at calling out his motivated cognition, while acknowledging his grasp of certain technical topics.
Nevertheless, I can’t ignore the virulent racism at #284. It might have come from a church-bombing Ku Klux Klansman. WT actual F, people! Is everyone OK with it but me? Have I missed seeing other overt manifestations of E-P’s pathological hatred, far beyond mere narcissism? Is he just messing with us, or will he commit mass murder any day now?
The coronavirus pandemic will pass, but the disease of racism still infests our society. Shouldn’t it be quarantined on this blog? For once I call on its moderators. Failing that, why isn’t E-P’s loathsome utterance being condemned in the strongest possible terms?
#314, KIA–
Oh, I suppose I should respond to this, too:
It sounds that way to you because that’s what you want to believe. The WUWT quote is ridiculous, not because it came from WUWT, but because it conflates or confuses causes and effects operating on different timescales, because it misunderstands what the scentific literature is saying, and because it promulgates (once again!) the bogus notion of singular causation.
What are you ignoring in order to achieve the “sounds like” you desire? A partial list:
1) Time scale.
2) Correlation of CO2 and temperature.
3) Regional nature of some of the changes we’re discussing: “The Younger Dryas was a period of climatic change, but the effects were complex and variable. In the Southern Hemisphere and some areas of the Northern Hemisphere, such as southeastern North America, a slight warming occurred.”
4) Known multiple causes (ie., what I’d call the “Singular Cause Fallacy,” discussed above.
5) As always, the known physics of the greenhouse effect–amply understood for decades now.
In short, you are not really trying to understand.
nigel, #315–
Seems like a useful list for a start. My only comment would be that “the insect problem” may unintentionally undersell the seriousness of that issue, just by its otherwise commendable brevity.
As insects go, so goes everything else on the food chain. Only green plants are more of a keystone. (If I may be forgiven for once again making an absolute term relative.)
Kevin M: EVs there are investments in cleaning up transportation, too, since improvements in the grid antomatically and immediately result in a commensurate improvement in transportation sector emissions. Rather a nice ‘twofer.’
AB: Cars last for perhaps 20 years so the odds of improvements in the grid substantially reducing an EV’s lifetime emissions are slim. Of course those same odds apply via bio/synfuels to internal combustion vehicles (the primary sane format of ICE is a non-plug-in hybrid, with plug-in hybrids being a blended format), so the whole concept of glorious improvement for EVs and no improvement at all for non-plug-in hybrids boils down to bias.
Kevin M: How did Sweden accomplish this? By maintaining their hydroelectric and nuclear capacity while displacing the coal with wind and solar:
AB: Yeah, but that would require sanity and here in the good ol’ USA sanity buys no votes. Greed works. The grasping at rainbows works. But making sense isn’t exciting.
Kevin M to MrKIA: In short, you are not really trying to understand.
AB: He’s really, really, really trying to misunderstand. Folks can post here or publish elsewhere and MrKIA will scan and parse for snippets he can take out of context, misunderstand, and magnify.
______
ze bra: How about incomprehensible babbling about stuff that only exists in your own mind?
…snip…
WTF are you talking about?
AB: Those with triple-digit IQs had no problem understanding. But for you:
Your z-grid is definitely double-digit. Even so, I tried to get you to see at least one of the gargantuan flaws in the z-grid as described, thus giving you a chance to fire up your third neuron and improve your concept. Your response shows that my attempt was in vain.
Shallow is as shallow thinks.
______
Mal Adapted,
EP provides folks with the glorious feeling one derives from believing oneself to be morally superior. Who wants to kill off Righteous Indignation?
EP also provides useful data, which brings up the whole Dr Mengele issue. Mengele reduced humans to lab animals which begs the question: Should Mengele’s data and results be used or burned?
My ‘favorite’ Mengele experiment was when he tied women’s legs together as they went into labor. Gives the whole “genius” label a bad name…
Nigel J,
I said that the President and Congress would better serve the People if said elected officials believed that elected officials should live like their constituents instead of like the rich. The revolving door corporate to elected to corporate thing makes things even worse.
You went off on a tangent, about how folks in the private sector wouldn’t seek top private sector positions if they weren’t showered with cash. First, I said nothing about the private sector. Second, the private sector performed much better than it does today back in the 1950s when CEOs made 20 times what a worker made as compared to today’s 361 times (and rising, so 361 is surely out of date).
But to take your outrageous example at face value, you’d be hard pressed to find many very smart and quite talented workers who wouldn’t choose to be CEO even if it paid exactly the same as they’re getting paid now. Heck, corporations often fool folks by giving them a fake promotion via a made-up label. “Assistant manager” of a fast food joint comes to mind.
313 – nigelj
“Ah I see now. They didn’t mention that CO2 had also increased 30%. Typical climate denialist lies by omission.”
Thanks for that observation. It proves my point that the rapid warming of 14C over “a few decades” casts doubt on CO2 theory. According to CO2 theory, and BPL can do the math for us, a DOUBLING of CO2 would raise the temperature by 2C. That did not happen – it went up 14C over just a few decades with a minor, if any, increase in CO2. That cannot be explained by any orbital/tilt cycles which occur over far longer times.
I think what happened at that time, may be similar to what is happening now. Just based on an occasional look at temps in Alaska, I’ve noticed that they are waaaaay warmer than they were 50 years ago, far more than 2C, probably closer to 14C. Something is happening that we do not understand. Time for scientists to find out what it is.
KM @322, thanks. Yes the insect problem is pretty serious. Some bird species are already declining linked to this problem. Bear in mind it was a five minute post, not a dissertation.
The point I’m trying to make is we talk a lot about “sustainablity” and grand singular sorts of environmental solutions like “smaller population” and “simplification” because we yearn for simple solutions to complex problems, but there may not be a simple solution to our considerable environmental problems, not one that makes sense anyway. Instead I was trying to show we can list all the main challenges, there are a couple I left out like soils degradation, but the overall list is quite short and digestible, and it can immediately be seen solutions are possible, without completely restructuring society first, if at all.
Of course we need an over arching plan, but the UN sustainable development goals achieve that and are reasonable objectives in the main.
Back to your comment: “The jury is also AFAIK still very much out on whether that also means zero economic growth–in fact, I don’t think there is a ruling even on what zero economic growth means. There is a whole host of definitional issues, I think.”
Gotta agree with that. The standard definition of economic growth is “an increase in the amount of goods and services produced per head of the population over a period of time. It’s a fairly agreed basic definition. Taken literally zero economic growth would mean no increase in the amount of goods and services produced per head of population over a period of time”. But is that a sensible solution to environmental problems? Its an awfully blunt instrument. Obviously economic growth that derives from the extractive mining industries cant continue forever at current rates unless we just dig holes and fill them in again, because resources are finite, but its a question of whether we should deliberately slow that growth down and by how much.
Bearing in mind stopping economic growth immediately would consign the third world to remaining in poverty. Even if rich countries shared more of their existing wealth there probably isn’t enough to lift every country out of material poverty, and you cant really share fixed infrastructure where most of the wealth actually resides. So we have to be very careful to assess exactly what problem in the future we are trying to solve by putting the brakes on growth right now. The future problem could be shortages of materials, but putting the brakes on growth can only delay the inevitable, so has to be carefully weighed against what quality of life we might loose with zero growth. You also need to consider whether zero growth can be a stable position because it could slide into degrowth and economic depression.
However if wealthy countries try to prolong high rates of economic growth forever we are asking for trouble and some sort of abrupt resource crunch. But there is evidence economic growth is slowing anyway, and the solution might be just not to fight this too much, at least in the wealthy countries. So let it slow down to zero or close to that, and don’t panic. We will still be able to advance things that really count like healthcare.
The other thing is types of economic growth. Growth based on the extractive industries has environmental impacts. Growth in services delivery has fewer environmental impacts and could continue for some time.
Of course recycling could prolong some level of economic growth that has minimal environmental impacts.The circular economy also relies on high levels of recycling.
Mal Adapted @320, I’ve made my displeasure with EP’s racial utterances clear, and tend not to repeat it, however I suspect EP is enjoying a mischievous troll. I doubt he wears white robes to bed. It might just be a frustration with the corruption you get with Africa’s leaders, or I hope its just that.
We have a similar character in NZ, a Mr Bob Jones, an annoying libertarian guy always having a go at darker skinned people and poor people, but hes actually married to an Asian lady, and he donates to poor people in Africa. However there are plenty of full on racists around, sadly to say.
Re: “I call on its moderators.”
They are busy, got better things to do than scanning commentary for offense. As usually happens, exemplified on Usenet, when moderators are slack it comes down to the participants.
Much easier on moderation load if readers would use a killfile,scroll down/page down controls, refrain from replies to extreme posts. Not every idiocy on the net needs corrected at volume and in depth.
Amazing how those extremes go away faced with wall of silence; in most cases extreme posts are demands for attention. If attention does not result, extremals try elsewhere.
I recommend killfile, number of putatively readable comments drops considerably with a few judicious selections. Recursively hiding comments quoting killfiled commentary is a big plus here.
sidd
This is interesting:
https://climatecrocks.com/2020/04/28/corona-crisis-reveals-we-need-systemic-not-just-individual-change/
“The fossil fuel industry has been spending a lot of money to subtly introduce the idea that if only you, just you, would change your wasteful habits, then maybe climate change wouldn’t be so bad. They started doing it with those benign “Check your Carbon footprint” ads years ago, and it continues today.
But the current crisis has shut down flying, most driving, and kept millions inside their homes, and while we’ve seen lower particulates in the air, leading to those beautiful photos of clear views from Los Angeles to Mumbai, carbon emissions have dropped in only a minor way.
Mute proof of what I’ve been telling people for years. If you and I and our 100,000 closest friends move to the woods to subsist on nuts and berries, the impact on carbon and climate would be minimal to none.
We live in a system that has to end its reliance on burning fossil fuels – that’s it….So where are all those emissions coming from? For one thing, utilities are still generating roughly the same amount of electricity — even if more of it’s going to houses instead of workplaces. Electricity and heating combined account for over 40 percent of global emissions. Many people around the world rely on wood, coal, and natural gas to keep their homes warm and cook their food — and in most places, electricity isn’t so green either…..”
Al Bundy @324, I didn’t go off on a tangent. I was pointing out the elite extends beyond congress surely?
“Second, the private sector performed much better than it does today back in the 1950s when CEOs made 20 times what a worker made as compared to today’s 361 times (and rising, so 361 is surely out of date).”
Yep, and a small group of people like the Koch brothers just couldn’t live with only earning 20 times more and launched a cunning if odious campaign to promote greed is not just good, its the single most important thing in life. And they won, but only because others let them win.
Communist systems paid most people the same or close to the same, and it just lead to laziness and stagnation. However studies show that when executive salaries get truly huge they don’t motivate better performance, so theres probably a sweet spot somewhere to aim for.
Mr Know It All @325, just for the latest — Could you kindly take your rantings to the Unforced Variations thread? That is, if you cannot bring yourself to desist.
nigelj @326 — I recommend that you read “The Midas Plague” by Frederick Pohl.
KIA @325
No there’s a simple explanation based on conventional greenhouse gas theory. The 14 degrees warming spike in the Arctic after the ice retreated was local in the Arctic region. C02 increased 30% over a long period of thousands of years, and so the positive feedback from melting arctic ice might have eventually lead to 14 degrees. We already see the arctic warming 5 degrees in places so perhaps it could reach 14 degrees in a few centuries, even if we stopped emissions. So that would explain why it appeared warmer back then, its only because we haven’t had time to catch up. That’s my hopefully educated guess.
KIA @325 sorry correction, we might catch up to that 14 degrees in the Arctic in a few decades, not necessarily centuries. There might also be other factors helping cause 14 degrees after the last ice age.
Mal Adapted @320 I am no longer reading E-Ps remarks in full, and missed the one you quoted. I certainly agree that it’s loathsome, and deserved to be moderated out. Since E-P wants his writings to be taken seriously, I’ll take that one seriously, too. It shows a complete contempt for the lives of anyone he doesn’t like. That’s one reason I consider nuclear power to be a safety hazard that can’t be explained away by him, or anyone else who thinks that my life doesn’t count if I don’t agree with them. Since he asserts that there are “so-called humans that are demonstrably no smarter than yeast” he has negated the rest of the demonstrations that he wants us to pay attention to.
nigelj writes @315:
You can stop exploding populations by demanding they accept contraception in return for food. Niger’s fertility rate of 6.35 per woman should be brought down to 1 for at least a couple of generations, and none of them should be allowed to emigrate. NONE. The price of food should be NPG.
Ideally the ones allowed children should be slanted towards the most intelligent and peaceful, but “das rayciss”.
BPL claims without evidence @316:
List them. Let’s debate this with facts, not empty assertions (of which you are quite fond).
Wrong. It says what I’ve been saying since 2004 when I started my blog (actually before that in other blog’s comment sections, but who’s counting?) Gibbs and Moore are waking up and catching up to me (and Rod Adams), not the reverse. Took them long enough.
BPL writes @317:
From the link:
Wrong. It’s about why “renewable energy” is a LIE. Driving ancient yucca plants and desert tortoises extinct is the opposite of “renewable”. Once gone, those species cannot be restored. Power plants which require shredded tires to get their “renewable” green wood chips to burn are not “renewable” either. All LIES.
Wrong. It’s obvious that Gibbs has been collecting evidence for a long time. It’s also obvious that he only put the pieces together recently. Peter Sinclair is either STILL in denial (years after being informed) or is on the side of the fossil-fuel interests, for which he undeniably covers. Peter Sinclair is a climate criminal and an enemy of the planet.
Re #305 Kevin McKinney said After that–and by “after that” I don’t mean it would be smart to ignore the issue completely till then–we need to work toward true sustainability
How do you get to net zero by doing nothing? And, yes, that is what you are saying. You are saying this economy, this level of consumption, can be made first net zero then negative.
That’s denial. You cannot begin to make the math work on that.
Go ahead, explain how that gets done because right now all the idiots are talking about is electricity, which gets nowhere near net zero, let alone drawdown.
Go ahead, make my day with this delusional thinking. And be specific.
which means figuring out how an economy can nurture human needs without trashing the rest of the planet–especially including the fact of its finitude.
So, wait 30 years or more to stop trashing the planet. Tipping points don’t exist? 70, 80, 90% reductions in myriad species is already over the threshhold to be collapses, but you think we can wait that long. And I don’t give the slightest damn about your sill caveat, because you don’t get to save the ecosystem and maintain the current system – no way, no how.
That clearly does mean population limitation, probably to a number well below the current one. It clearly means zero energy growth at some point–though just what that point should be remains, as far as I can tell, to be determined.
Well, that population stop is likely coming no matter what, so BFG. Oh, I have a policy! It’ll happen, anyway, but aren’t I smart? Give us all a damned break.
Zero energy growth. Garbage words. Barking words. ANY level of consumption is a problem if it isn’t sustainable; it doesn’t matter what you WANT or BELIEVE.
The jury is also AFAIK still very much out on whether that also means zero economic growth–in fact
No, it isn’t.
I don’t think there is a ruling even on what zero economic growth means.
Jesus christ… Ruling? And where would that ever be made? Ruling!!!
And, yeah, we do. You don’t because you believe in neoclassical horse droppings.
There is a whole host of definitional issues, I think.
There are exactly zero. There is a shitoad of ignorance and refusal to put Nature and natural principles first.
In the immediate term, the one thing that is making the biggest positive difference appears to be modern renewable energy.
It’s making no difference. At all. We just went through all that crap about, oh, emissions are falling! even as Mauna Loa laughs in everyone’s face.
Against ‘relentless’ competition from solar and wind power, the financial case for coal is becoming incrementally worse, according to Carbon Tracker. In 2017, the report stated, ‘only’ 46% of EU coal generators ran at a loss.
How much gas has come online, Kevin, hmmm?
How did Sweden accomplish this? By maintaining their hydroelectric and nuclear capacity while displacing the coal with wind and solar:
So Sweden, rather than live within limits, added greater complexity and did nothing at all that will give them a sustainable future while putting/keeping bombs on their soil. Brilliant.
Now wind, solar and biomass have completely displaced the relatively small amount of coal generation they did employ.
So, if you don’t use something hardly at all, you can change it! Great! With three techs that are completely unsustainable! Biomass? Tell, me, Kevin, what is the immediate problem with biomass????
Mr. KIA@325
Just curious. Were you an idiot before you tuned into Faux News and Breitbart, or did they cause a significant decline in your cognitive abilities and reading skills?
Dude, once again. You cannot draw a conclusion about a global increase in temperature from a local event in the dark and distant past. Global events depend on energy in and energy out. Period. Local events also depend on where the energy goes–local variations in transport.
Re #315 nigelj say stupid crap that Kevin repeats: Yes, but we just have to get specific
Oh? Is that all? Just get specific? Tell us all, genius, how you do that when the world doesn’t evern agree on what Economics is, or what economy is. or what growth is, or what should be counted as growth.
That’s why the fools need shut the hell up and let those that do know speak.
Economics and economy are nonsense that only have meaning if you go back to the ancient Greek definition, and even then it’s of little use in a regenerative society because you can’t run ANY community on that basis.
Those days are past.
And you have no idea what you just read.
rather than too much philosophical hand waving
Really? Because what follows is meaningless drivel.
1) Conserve the forests.
HOW, if you aren’t willing to change society from consumptive to regenerative?
If we run out of timber we really will have a problem very long term.
Lord have mercy…. if you “run out of timber” the planet is going to be dead soon after. No trees? Are freaking kidding me you even entertained that thought?
“Well, if we run out of air, that might be a problem!”said Captain Balloonhead.
That said, iron is so abundant we won’t run out but it is not as flexible as timber.
ANYTHING can be run out of. Get that through your skull.
Conserve the fisheries.
HOW, goddamnit? Making a list of things to conserve when EVERYTHING needs to be conserved is dipshittery.
Its just a crying shame to destroy those
It’s a SHAME? It’s death of the oceans, for chrissakes, and the forests, and many humans and… likely almost everything.
WTH is wrong with your head?
and all it takes is quota management
Ah. I see. We don’t need less pollution, lower ocean temps, to limit SLR… nah… just…. quotas.
like we have in NZ. The real challenge is getting most of society on board and overcoming peoples greed.
Really? Has nothing to do with demand, lifestyles, sushi restaraunts…?
3) Find a solution to the insect decline problem.
I swear to god… I hope you were neutered. “Find a solution to…” Sure, just toss out a few gizmos! A better class of chemicals!
HOW ABOUT LIVING SIMPLY AS THE CORONA VIRUS HAS AMPLY DEMOSTRATED?????? Nah… can’t have THAT.
4) Stop dumping dangerous wastes. Its largely a societal / political issue not a technical issue.
WTF??????? Wastes only exist because of politics??????? We have exactly zero solutions for human waste. There are a few small-scale activities, nothing is a solution. There CANNOT BE. Why? Most of what we make is NOT recyclable, AND we would need to increase recycling 100-fold globally, to even begin to tackle this… and it still wouldn’t because so much of it is literal trash.
And, GET THIS THROUGH YOUR HEAD: All waste is dangerous. It all can disrupt and imbalance a system. That’s why “zero waste.”
5) Recycle and waste less.
Because on a finite planet we can just keep making trash.
6) Get the size of population down
Yet, you have zero serious, effective, doable solutions. You don’t even understand msot of what you just wrote about.
7) Clean zero carbon energy obviously.
It does not exist. Cannot exist. Not one of the technologies for energy is carbon-free. Not one. Ah, you meant carbon neutral? No carbon-neutral energy exists and none of what does is in any way sustainable.
8)Try to not be extravagant in our use of resources
This is barking words.
Gods help us. The inmates are running the assylum and think it’s a spaceship.
E-P 308: If solar power is so great and so easy, why did ANYONE ever bother to dig coal or drill for oil or gas?
BPL: Because they didn’t understand the photoelectric effect until 1905?
E-P 309: PV could be free, and you still couldn’t power our industry with it due to night, clouds and winter.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269058761_Energy_sustainability_through_integrated_solar_thermal_systems
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148115003079
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119555650.ch4
https://www.geek.com/tech/thermal-battery-could-power-solar-systems-overnight-1795421/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalieparletta/2019/04/03/new-thermal-battery-could-be-a-game-changer-for-storing-renewable-energy/#c1ec7b04f956
E-P 310: Our reliable options are fossil fuels or nuclear: Pick One.
BPL: C. None of the above.
KIA 314: Sounds to me like the same thing that occurred previously – rapid warming over a few decades – is exactly the same thing we are experiencing today, casting credible doubt on current CO2 theory.
BPL: How do you know the previous episodes of rapid warming weren’t caused by CO2? And when did CO2 not become a greenhouse gas? Do you know what you’re talking about? Why am I even asking?
MA 320: why isn’t E-P’s loathsome utterance being condemned in the strongest possible terms?
BPL: I condemned it, but my response was so brief you may have missed it. Yes, E-P is an extreme, genocidally-inclined racist. I would love to see him tossed off the board for spouting this crap, but the moderators don’t seem to be so inclined. E-P accepts every racist meme ever invented, right back to Samuel Morton’s valueless work with skulls and grain seeds back in the 19th century, and he’ll babble endlessly about race and IQ if you let him. God forbid he should ever be in a position of power. He is a toxic, evil man, and his racism is only part of his essentially fascist worldview.
re #322 Kevin McKinney said Seems like a useful list for a start.
It’s irrelevant. It’s addressing syptoms.
My only comment would be that “the insect problem” may unintentionally undersell the seriousness of that issue, just by its otherwise commendable brevity.
As insects go, so goes everything else on the food chain. Only green plants are more of a keystone. (If I may be forgiven for once again making an absolute term relative.)
But, but, but, Kev!!!!! You said we have time to get to net zero, then mostly worry about becomeing regenerative! Yeah, don’t worry about it. 7-something decline in 30 years or so, hey, that’s nothing! Nah, I’m sure it won’t keep going at that rate! We’re safe! And that it’s probably over 95+% since, say, 200 years ago, receding horizons don’t matter in assessing ecological helth! Pshaw!
And who cares about tipping points, amirite?
Re #326 nigelj said The point I’m trying to make is we talk a lot about “sustainablity” and grand singular sorts of environmental solutions like “smaller population” and “simplification” because we yearn for simple solutions to complex problems
No, it’s that some of us understand how the ecosystem works. You do not. Some of us understand which forms of complexity (natural systems) are viable and which aren’t (human modernity) and listened when Tainter said diminishing returns on complexity leads to collapse.
You, as ever, speak out of your ass.
#325, KIA–
Don’t know if you’ve seen my previous comments on this. However, you said:
Again, no, it doesn’t. It would only “cast doubt on CO2 theory” if said theory held that only CO2 ever affected temperature. That is not, and has never been, the case. As BPL (and many others, including me) has said, “The existence of natural fire does not make arson impossible.” Yes, CO2 affects temperature. So do Earth’s orbital parameters, so does Earth’s albedo, and so can oceanic circulation changes, such as massive infusions of cold fresh water due to glacial melt.
So, it is true that the 14C temperature rise was not (proximately) caused by an increase in CO2. (Though it may also be true that the multi-millennial warming trend in which this sudden fluctuation was embedded served as an indirect cause–and that was in significant part due to the 30% increase in CO2 I referred to.) That in no way implies that CO2 doesn’t affect temperature.
And on what basis do you find that similarity? Look, I don’t think that the last word has been spoken on exactly what happened 14.5 thousand years ago. However, to equate the uncertainty associated with that time with the uncertainty around what is happening today in the Arctic is, if you take a second to think about it objectively, pretty darn silly.
Particularly when the phenomenon of ‘Arctic amplification’ showed up in the very first mathematical model of CO2-induced warming, hand-calculated by Svante Arrhenius in 1896:
https://hubpages.com/education/Global-Warming-Science-And-The-Dawn-Of-Flight
But congratulations, I guess, on discovering it for yourself. A pro tip, though–when you say “Something is happening that we do not understand,” you really should consider who “we” is.
(And if we really need to continue this discussion, it should move over to the science thread.)
#320, Mal–
No, that is not the first time that such abhorrent utterances from E-P have disfigured these threads, and I’m very much afraid it won’t be the last. I agree with you, and have expressed similar sentiments to yours in the past. I missed the paragraph you highlighted because I now try to skim over such garbage in E-P’s output in order efficiently to address his disinformation WRT renewable energy.
But in my “ideal world RC”, crap like that would be moderated out. Such objectification of humans is quite simply evil, in my opinion. Nigel speculates that maybe E-P isn’t really all that bad in real life, and E-P himself has admitted that he likes to play up that sort of thing in order to provoke–in other words, he’s admitted to trolling. Personally, I don’t think it matters. Saying this shit normalizes it, whether you ‘really mean it’ or not.
So, thanks for calling it out. You have my ‘plus one’, for whatever that may be worth.