Mom told me a friend is having a wedding at a swank location in El Salvador. She sent an youtube and wrote
This is where the daughter of Clara Maria Salazar Lemus despite Marshall will have her reception in El Salvador. It is glorious. I recall visiting a Turkish American civil engineer and his family in a spot similar to this. His name was Orhan Ilgaz and he had a very fat daughter. He had wanted to purchase on the coast but such negotiations were available only to Salvadoran nationals. Mary Beth and Lucia may remember this. Natalie
Of course I remember. The place was amazing then, though not yet swanky. I suspect people only recognized how great the area was because of what Mr. Ilgaz built for his kids.
The video mom sent highlighted the swanky new hotels. But I wanted to find one that focused on what Mr. Ilgaz created in the 60s. Before minute 1:07 in the video you’ll see all swankyness. But around minute 1:07 you’ll see two people standing at the top of a stairway, then you’ll see a walkway down to a pool Mr. Ilgaz blasted out of the rock to create a “beach area” for his kids. Evidently, the laws wouldn’t permit him to buy on sandy beach. But I guess he could buy this supposedly “unattractive” area. Well… not unattractive to a civil engineer who knew how to blast rock!
He and Posie-Wopsie were friends and we’d visit and swim in the pool. Once when we visited, we couldn’t swim for an hour or so because something dangerous had gotten into the pool and people had to get whatever it was out. Mr. Ilgaz also had an ice cream making machine. My sister has the family photos otherwise I could show you photos of all the kids eating the ice cream under the pavilion, which, I think was the only building at the time.
The area seems to have become quite a resort area. That was not the case in the early 60s.
This also shows the pool the way I remember it.
Open thread.
Redstone arsenal active shooter situation, or so I hear.
Alright, gates back open and apparently nobody injured. Maybe somebody just saw somebody carrying a firearm or something. Maybe there will be more complete reports later.
We’re all becoming hyper alert to terrorist risks and crazed lone gunman risks!
Lucia,
Yep. I’ll admit I was worried it was something like that. Still don’t know for sure, but what little info there is doesn’t seem to support anything horrific.
There’s another ransomware attack today, Petya/NotPetya. I suspect that corporations are more vulnerable because, if they’re anything like where I worked, OS patches have to go through IT before they’re applied. That can be a slow process. Microsoft issued a patch for the exploit in March.
Me, I am ok in a 10 dollar dump, but what is the most luxury hotel there? Could you post the video your mom sent?
I’m taking my girlfriend somewhere this January. I was thinking of Brazil but maybe to Salvador. Shorter flight and my Spanish is way better.
I’ve completely changed my mind. My hard-core surfer friends won’t even go there anymore because of crime. I’d be fine but they said I’d be crazy to take my GF there.
This is from a long time visitor to neighboring Nicaragua.
For her birthday we are instead going to Negril, Jamaica. Lame, but safe.
Causes of differences in model and satellite tropospheric warming rates
https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/research/DandA/Synthetic%20Microwave%20Sounding%20Unit%20(MSU)%20temperatures/2017/Nature_Geoscience/NG_Fact_sheet_v3.pdf
Joel,
Safe is a good choice.
Bugs,
So they admit the models are above the data. They didn’t used to do so.
.
For much of the tropics, the GCMs create an erroneous double ITCZ. Since convection provides much upper tropospheric heat, a double ITCZ implies too much upper tropospheric warming, aka, the Hot Spot.
.
This goes without mention in the Santer paper. Why? It probably does imply a reduced sensitivity of surface temperature to radiative forcing because observed rates of forcing are occurring without the negative lapse rate feedback.
.
But there is uncertainty and bias.
.
Neglecting Santer’s biases for the moment, Christy, and all of us, may be subject to Observation Bias. Christy focuses on the MSU observations, but the world did not begin in 1979. What happened before satellites? The RAOB data from early on has uncertainty, but there is a Warm Spot for the RAOB data in the RAOB era. But, the world did not begin in 1958, either – what happened before then? We’ll never know.
The Santer paper is just the most recent in the long series of papers which fall in the general classification “you can’t ever show the models are too sensitive to radiative forcing”. In this instance, the rather embarrassing divergence between models and satellite measurements is “explained” as due to “small changes” in net solar energy, Chinese aerosols, and “internal variability” (ENSO, AMO, etc). Nowhere is the most obvious source of the divergence (the stupid models are wrong) ever seriously entertained… because that is NEVER seriously entertained by the climate ‘science’ community. The motivation for rubbish like the Santer paper is transparent: only models project sufficiently scary warming to motivate draconian changes in energy use, governance, and ever more public funding for climate ‘science’ ‘research’. After-the-fact arm waves like Santer, claiming to explain and discount discrepancies, are not part of any physical science.
.
To me this effectively makes climate ‘science’ a major branch of political ‘science’. Both have oxymoronic names. Both exist to promote specific political goals, and are dominated by those on the political left. Both fields advocate ever growing global governance and criticize both individual liberty and local political control. Both reject the basic requirement of any actual science that theories make testable predictions, and when those predictions fail, that the theory be revised. (Scary projections of warming by models are never revised downward in light of data.) The Santer paper only confirms that the public is funding a primarily political enterprise as if it were a scientific one; drasticlly reduced funding for this non-science is the only sensible public policy.
SteveF: “The motivation for rubbish like the Santer paper is transparent: only models project sufficiently scary warming …”
Although that motivation exists, I don’t think is the main one. One should never attribute to mendacity that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
Climate modelling (which has become nearly synonymous with climate science) is based on the idea that climate can be understood by using the reductionist-constructionist approach that has been so successful in physics. That can only work if low frequency internal variations in radiative forcing are small. Then to get any significant natural climate change, the climate sensitivity must be large. That paradigm (stable internal forcing, high sensitivity) was, I think, well established back when the main interests were pure scientific understanding of climate and ice ages. People raised on that paradigm are not going to be inclined to question it.
I think that the evidence points to a different paradigm: modest climate sensitivity combined with large, chaotic, low frequency variations in radiative forcing, driven by the oceans and mediated by clouds. If you want to model that … well, you probably can’t. So to get climate scientists to accept that paradigm, you need to convince them that the thing they have dedicated their careers to is a waste of time. Good luck with that.
Mike M,
With regard to the realization, and apparent acceptance, that Freudian Analysis has no clothes:
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/571816
There is a history of ‘scientific’ endeavors being recognized as fallacious and their practitioners agreeing. I have a relative who was such an analyst and who subscribed to the theories but now recognizes their unfounded bases. He continues in practice but more in a counseling mode than an analytic one.
One might ask how the believers in phrenology or eugenics handled their identification as non-scientific pursuits. It seems to me that Judith has made that leap, at some cost to her career, although she by now may have had enough of academic life.
j ferguson: “There is a history of ‘scientific’ endeavors being recognized as fallacious and their practitioners agreeing.”
Yes, but arguably such people are in the minority. Max Plank thought so: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
.
j ferguson: “One might ask how the believers in phrenology or eugenics handled their identification as non-scientific pursuits.”
Mostly, I think, by doubling down and then bitterly fading into obscurity.
j ferguson,
“One might ask how the believers in phrenology or eugenics handled their identification as non-scientific pursuits.”
.
I doubt most of them ever accepted the fact they were studying rubbish. Mostly they just died unrepentant. I figure if Albert Einstein could go to his grave rejecting quantum mechanics (‘god does not play dice with the universe’) despite 30 years of its dominance, the likes of Santer et al will be no less stubborn in their beliefs… both scientific and sciency-political (AKA climate science).
Mike M,
“…you need to convince them that the thing they have dedicated their careers to is a waste of time.”
.
Reality will not be denied, but will continue to be rejected by the likes of Santer et al. They won’t ever be convinced they have wasted their time, but evolving reality will ultimately make them and their ‘scientific’ work mostly irrelevant.
Let’s all go to El Salvador and talk about sensitivity. Jeeze.
@Mike M
The global warming science has been developed over 150 years by now. It’s not going anywhere. It is the doubters who are being left behind.
OTOH.
Zeke comes up with some updates on the RSS temperature record. It has been reading cool.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/major-correction-to-satellite-data-shows-140-faster-warming-since-1998
bugs (Comment #163730): “The global warming science has been developed over 150 years by now.”
Wrong. Climate models and attempts to estimate climate sensitivity have been around for 40 years or so. In that time, there has been exactly zero progress from the main stream climate science community on the question of climate sensitivity. But there has been significant progress from the skeptics.
Understanding of the greenhouse effect has been around for a long time. That is sound science that serious people don’t doubt.
.
bugs: “It’s not going anywhere.”
Yep. It is a total dead end.
.
bugs: “It is the doubters who are being left behind.”
No, it is the doubters who are leading the way to advancing the science. I am, of course, talking about scientists (Spencer, Curry, Lewis, etc.), not idiots on the internet.
Thats a very short list. From what I have read the main thrust of what Curry and Spencer claim is ” I don’t know”. Not really advancing anything. Zeke seems to do a better job of advancing science.
bugs (Comment #163734): “Thats a very short list.”
A few dozen people is indeed a short list compared to the hundred or thousands in the heard feeding at the mainstream through. But scientific revolutions have been started by fewer.
.
bugs: “From what I have read the main thrust of what Curry and Spencer claim is †I don’t knowâ€. Not really advancing anything.”
You need to read more. For a start, the skeptics have produced: a variety of observational estimates of climate sensitivity, the Iris Effect, the global stadium wave, important steps towards understanding natural variability driven by ocean-cloud interactions. They have pointed out a host of errors and problems in the mainstream approach; in case you didn’t know, that is how progress is made in science.
Even if what you say were true, “I don’t know” is the starting point for understanding.
bugs: “Zeke seems to do a better job of advancing science.”
Zeke? Sounds like someone on the internet.
Apologies for changing the subject, but Stephen Hawking has just suggested that the Earth may end up like Venus due to Trump leaving the Paris Agreement.
“We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible. Trump’s action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid,” he told BBC News.
I’m gobsmacked. I don’t recall any such possibility being broached by a scientist before. [Although there have been other over-the-top exaggerations.] And certainly not due to the relatively minor change due to the US.
Mike M.
Zeke, an internet name? google Zeke Hausfather.
bugs: “Zeke seems to do a better job of advancing science.â€
j ferguson: “Zeke Hausfather”
Thanks. An environmental “scientist” and manager with a couple papers on energy policy who is part of the Berkeley Earth team. So maybe 1% the scientific contribution of Spencer or Curry and maybe 0.1% (if that) of Richard Lindzen. And less than Nic Lewis, who is a journalist, or Steve McIntyre, who is a mining consultant.
And while I am at it: Hawking’s statement is shocking drivel. Hansen has said some crazy stuff, but even he was never so silly as to suggest raining sulfuric acid.
Mike M,
I strongly suspect you are under-rating Zeke. He used to blog a lot here. But no, you don’t need to believe everything Zeke says.
lucia: “I strongly suspect you are under-rating Zeke.”
For all I know, Zeke Hausfather might be a very smart guy and great science communicator. But my comment was in response to the claim by bugs that Zeke has made large contributions to advancing science (not just to communicating about science) in comparison with very good actual scientists.
Fair enough. Zeke seems balanced, is used to blogs and I suspect he wouldn’t lose sleep over it anyway!
Zeke, does do useful things advancing the observational record.
.
But that’s the thing – verification of mean global warming corresponding to radiative forcing is not the same thing as climate change and especially not the same as harm.
.
It’s not that the consensus of global warming is wrong, it’s that the lay public and media and unscrupulous climate porn media stars wrongly believe/intimate that climate catastrophe is part of the consensus.
With regard to the Mike M paradigm: “I think that the evidence points to a different paradigm: modest climate sensitivity combined with large, chaotic, low frequency variations in radiative forcing, driven by the oceans and mediated by clouds.”
What evidence points to large, chaotic, low frequency variations in radiative forcing? Seems to me that radiative forcing has been increasing in a very regular fashion during the past 12 years at least (since the Argo float system was initiated), and even in the past 25 years as measured by ocean heat content increases.
Owen,
I think the claim of modest sensitivity comes from empirical estimates of sensitivity (Otto et al, Lewis and Curry, several others), which appeared to be what the AR5 authors were refering to when they noted “conflicting” lines of evidence about sensitivity. I think you will find most ‘lukewarmers’ believe the empirical estimates over the GCMs.
.
I’m less certain about ‘modulation’, but I suspect he refers to significant changes in rates of warming over the instrumental record (warming from a little before 1920 to ~1945, slight cooling from 1946 to the mid 1970s).
Owen: “What evidence points to large, chaotic, low frequency variations in radiative forcing?”
Proxy temperature records show near red noise on time scales of a few centuries to 100,000 yr. They are not precise enough to say what happens at higher frequency. Red noise means that the power decreases quite strongly as frequency increases (1/f^2); it is associated with random walk (AR1) type behavior which is often the result of chaos.
Temperature variations are presumably a result of radiative forcing variations. There don’t seem to be any external forcing changes that are large enough, so it would seem to be internal. Clouds would be the best candidate since their radiative properties are so large.
So what could change cloud patterns on such time scales? It is too low frequency to be internal to the atmosphere. But we know that ocean circulation undergoes chaotic variation on decadal to multidecadal times scales (AMO, PDO) and there is evidence from models that sea surface temperature variations affect cloud patterns and the resulting radiative forcing. There should be satellite data on that in the pipeline, but I have not heard of it being published yet.
I admit that there is no direct evidence that the same process is responsible on century or millennial scales, but what else could it be? Ice caps might get involved on millennial scales or longer. Edit: Ocean circulation variations on century and millennial times scales would seem to be entirely plausible.
.
Owen: “Seems to me that radiative forcing has been increasing in a very regular fashion during the past 12 years at least”
I would call that medium to high frequency. I don’t think the satellite data are out yet. But the “pause” suggests that forcing has not been increasing, in spite of more CO2.
.
Owen: ” (since the Argo float system was initiated), and even in the past 25 years as measured by ocean heat content increases.”
That is not forcing, it is a result of imbalance in TOA radiation as a result of increased forcing from increased CO2.
SteveF (Comment #163755): “I think the claim of modest sensitivity comes from empirical estimates of sensitivity (Otto et al, Lewis and Curry, several others)”
Yes, that is what I meant. There is also Roy Spencer’s estimate from satellite data, which is quite a bit smaller (ECS < 1 K, if memory serves). It is not clear to me that his method gives the right number for real earth, but it does seem to work for GCM earth. IT seems to small, and Spencer does not seem to really trust it himself.
.
SteveF: "I’m less certain about ‘modulation’, but I suspect he refers to significant changes in rates of warming over the instrumental record (warming from a little before 1920 to ~1945, slight cooling from 1946 to the mid 1970s)."
Yes, although I would not be so definite as to the exact dates. But there are also longer time scale changes (Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period, Bond events, glacial cycles).
Mike M,
It is certainly true that there have been changes, some of which are periodic, in the long term to medium term (everything from ice ages to the ’60 year oscillation’ which we see in the instrumental record). However, it is extremely unlikely that these changes are related to red noise (or random walk noise). A random walk system has an unlimited range of states, and the Earth shows no evidence of that (the average temperature is unlikely to have been outside a 20 C range over billions of years). Just as winter is colder than summer, and the response to major volcanoes is cooling, we can be confident that Earth’s average temperature responds to changes in forcing, and those are not a random walk. While weather is certainly chaotic to some degree, we do not expect July 20 in Chicago to ever be cooler than January 20; the system has an overall causal response to forcing, not a random one. The only interesting issue (for me) is the expected response to increased GHG forcing.
Lindzen. He has produced many good papers about the climate but nothing about global warming of any substance. One of the generation that will die off along with all the other doubters.
Spencer & Curry. Look at their evidence to the APS hearing into the APS position on global warming for example. Nothing of substance. Spencers’ source code? You can’t have it.
Zeke. Young(ish) guy who seems to do the hard yards. Helped set up BEST which confirmed the other land temperature series were correct. The satellite record has been too low. Big news.
Curry is just playing climate ball these days and is regarded as a joke.
https://judithcurry.com/2015/04/20/aps-members-comment-on-climate-change-statement/
No, the 2007 APS statement is not controversial and it was reratified. The only controversy was in the heads of a few older people.
https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/15_3.cfm
bugs shows the apologist’s style of long winded scripture quoting to defend their faith.
This: https://moyhu.blogspot.com/2017/07/new-rss-tlt-v4-comparisons.html including the comments seems quite thoughtful.
Hi Mike,
I have a couple papers on climate science too! https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Chq-VAIAAAAJ&hl=en
I’ve spent most of the last decade as a data scientist for various tech companies, and used to blog pretty extensively here. You can find all my old articles: http://rankexploits.com/musings/author/zeke_h/
Two years ago I finally decided to make my hobby my career and went back to do a PhD. Hoping to have it done in another two years or so…
Mike M,
You had said “radiative forcing” which is quantified by the TOA radiative imbalance. The TOA imbalance is determined most directly from the ocean heat content, and the secular trend for OHC increase has been very regular for 25-30 years, as predicted by our increasing greenhouse gas levels.
hunter (Comment #163760): “bugs shows the apologist’s style of long winded scripture quoting to defend their faith.”
And dismissing anything and anybody that disagrees with received wisdom.
Eddie,
“It’s not that the consensus of global warming is wrong, it’s that the lay public and media and unscrupulous climate porn media stars wrongly believe/intimate that climate catastrophe is part of the consensus.”
One of the things that bothers me most about these discussions is the suggestion that a scientist pointing out potential outcomes of increasing warming is characterized as being alarmist. I for one would like to know what biologists, oceanologists, foresters, etc. see as potential or likely outcomes.
Eddie, what is your take on the coral reef situation, as this outcome seems to be already well underway?
Owen (Comment #163765): “You had said “radiative forcing†which is quantified by the TOA radiative imbalance.”
That is simply wrong. At present, radiative forcing is about 2.3 W/m^2 and TOA imbalance is about 0.6 W/m^2.
.
Owen: “The TOA imbalance is determined most directly from the ocean heat content”
Correct.
.
Owen: “the secular trend for OHC increase has been very regular for 25-30 years”
We don’t know that. The heat content data is so noisy that we can only say that it is trending upward. We can not tell if it regular or not.
.
Owen: “as predicted by our increasing greenhouse gas levels.”
You are confusing a derivative with an integral. It is the rate of change of heat content that should be proportional to forcing on short time scales (like a century or less).
Mike M,
The OHC data is NOT particularly noisy. Plot out the pentadal data, for example, or the yearly data ( https://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/pentad/pent_h22-w0-2000m.dat ). The pentadal data includes associated standard errors.
The accumulation of heat by the oceans has been very regular
Mike M,
“Owen (Comment #163765): “You had said “radiative forcing†which is quantified by the TOA radiative imbalance.â€
That is simply wrong. At present, radiative forcing is about 2.3 W/m^2 and TOA imbalance is about 0.6 W/m^2.”
See: http://news.mit.edu/2010/explained-radforce-0309 or http://nit.colorado.edu/atoc5560/week14.pdf
SteveF (Comment #163758): “it is extremely unlikely that these changes are related to red noise (or random walk noise).”
It is a FACT that they show near red noise. For instance:
C. Wunsch, “The spectral description of climate change including the 100 ky energy”, Climate Dynamics (2003) 20: 353–363 DOI 10.1007/s00382-002-0279-z.
S. Lovejoy, “Scaling fluctuation analysis and statistical hypothesis testing of anthropogenic warming”, Clim Dyn (2014) 42:2339–2351 DOI 10.1007/s00382-014-2128-2.
.
SteveF: “A random walk system has an unlimited range of states, and the Earth shows no evidence of that (the average temperature is unlikely to have been outside a 20 C range over billions of years).”
That is true for a pure random walk. But there can be random walk behavior on short times scales and white noise about a mean on long times scales. An example is Brownian motion, as described by the Langevin (Ornstein-Uhlenbeck ) equation. See D.T. Gillespie, “The mathematics of Brownian motion and Johnson Noise”, American Journal of Physics 64, 225 (1996); doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.18210, http://aapt.scitation.org/doi/10.1119/1.18210
As long as the red noise behavior does not extend to infinitely low frequencies, the range is limited. The lower the frequencies for which red noise is found, the wider the range.
.
SteveF: “we can be confident that Earth’s average temperature responds to changes in forcing …”
I agree. I said as much.
SteveF: “… and those are not a random walk.”
Commonly assumed by climate modelers, but the data imply otherwise.
.
SteveF: “While weather is certainly chaotic to some degree, we do not expect July 20 in Chicago to ever be cooler than January 20 …”
Yes. The instrumental record shows something resembling the Langevin equation behavior with near red noise on the weather times scale (days to weeks or months) and near white noise on the climate time scale (decades). But on even longer time scales (centuries up to about 100 ky) it goes back to red noise.
SteveF: “the system has an overall causal response to forcing, not a random one.”
I never said otherwise. I said that there are internal chaotic variations in forcing.
.
SteveF: “The only interesting issue (for me) is the expected response to increased GHG forcing.”
That is the interesting thing for policy. But that requires an understanding of natural variation, both for separating the internal and anthropogenic contributions and for testing models.
Owen (Comment #163769): “The OHC data is NOT particularly noisy.”
Looks pretty noisy to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ocean_Heat_Content_(2012).png
Of course, the five year averages are less noisy that the 3 month averages. And this integrates the pertinent quantity; that greatly reduces the noise.
Owen (Comment #163770),
It is easy to find stuff on the web that is wrong. The TOA imbalance from ocean heat content is 0.6 W/m^2. The radiative forcing is 2.3 W/m^2. Your claim that they are the same thing is wrong.
bugs (Comment #163734
” From what I have read the main thrust of what Curry and Spencer claim is †I don’t knowâ€. Not really advancing anything. Zeke seems to do a better job of advancing science.”
Principle one better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it.
Advancing anything by making a positive or negative statement on complex matters when one really does not know falls into the proving it category.
Evidence. Me, bugs.
Zeke on the other hand advances it because his masters demand it or he is a believer, not a fool.
Owen (Comment #163754)
Seems to me that radiative forcing has been increasing in a very regular fashion during the past 12 years at least (since the Argo float system was initiated), and even in the past 25 years as measured by ocean heat content increases.
No one has a handle on the true OHC Owen.
Not even close.
Certainly not 25 years ago with intermittent surface measurement at sporadic intervals from a few ships by drunken or very interested sailors.
Argo gave some depth perception from a limited nunber of buoys over a very sparse sampling area missing for example most of the Arctic basin for starters. Worse nearly half of thes buoys are now non functioning, disabled or give inaccurate information
Satellites probably give the best estimate of earth radiative uptake and loss, best of luck finding that information
Mike M,
Wikipedia definition (referencing IPCC): “Radiative forcing or climate forcing is the difference between insolation (sunlight) absorbed by the Earth and energy radiated back to space.[1]”
The only thing that matters in the end is the imbalance at TOA.
Is your forcing value of 2.3 W/m^2 derived from summing all of the estimated forcings of individual gases and things like clouds, aerosols, etc?
Owen (Comment #163778): “Wikipedia definition …”
No matter how often something wrong gets repeated, it does not become right.
Here is what IPCC says in the AR5 glossary:
“Radiative forcing is the change in the net, downward minus upward, radiative flux (expressed in W m–2) at the tropopause or top of atmosphere due to a change in an external driver of climate change, such as, for example, a change in the concentration of carbon dioxide or the output of the Sun. Sometimes internal drivers are still treated as forcings even though they result from the alteration in climate, for example aerosol or greenhouse gas changes in paleoclimates. The traditional radiative forcing is computed with all tropospheric properties held fixed at their unperturbed values, and after allowing for stratospheric temperatures, if perturbed, to readjust to radiative-dynamical equilibrium. Radiative forcing is called instantaneous if no change in stratospheric temperature is accounted for. The radiative forcing once rapid adjustments are accounted for is termed the effective radiative forcing. For the purposes of this report, radiative forcing is further defined as the change relative to the year 1750 and, unless otherwise noted, refers to a global and annual average value. Radiative forcing is not to be confused with cloud radiative forcing, which describes an unrelated measure of the impact of clouds on the radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere.”
What a mess. It is easy to misread this as the sources you cite have done. But to do that, you have to overlook the words “with all tropospheric properties held fixed at their unperturbed values”.
.
Owen: “The only thing that matters in the end is the imbalance at TOA.”
Why?
.
Owen: “Is your forcing value of 2.3 W/m^2 derived from summing all of the estimated forcings of individual gases and things like clouds, aerosols, etc?”
It is not “my” value, it is the IPCC value. Yes, it from summing up the individual contributions. That is the only way to do it. If you could get forcing from heat content data, they would do it that way. But they don’t.
angech (Comment #163777): “Satellites probably give the best estimate of earth radiative uptake and loss, best of luck finding that information”
G. L. Stephens et al. “An update on Earth’s energy balance in light of the latest global observations” NATURE GEOSCIENCE, VOL 5, 2012, http://www.nature.com/naturegeoscience.
But the satellite data are not nearly precise enough to determine the tiny imbalance.
Mike M,
I would interpret the value of 2.3 W/m^2 as meaning that every second 2.3 Joules of additional energy are being added to every square meter of the earth’s surface. That value would cause the oceans to heat at ca. 3 times the current rate. So I am not sure what is going on here.
TOA value incorporates all the factors, including those we might not know accurately or at all, into one net forcing value that quantitates the net amount of energy entering the earth system.
Re: the incorrect definition of “radiative forcing” at Wikipedia, cited above. The “talk” page has this:
Owen (Comment #163783): “I would interpret the value of 2.3 W/m^2 as meaning that every second 2.3 Joules of additional energy are being added to every square meter of the earth’s surface.”
That would be true “with all tropospheric properties held fixed at their unperturbed valuesâ€. But the initial imbalance causes warming and the warming causes an increase in outgoing radiation. The warming also causes increased heat flow into the ocean. It is the sum of those two increases that equals the forcing. Eventually, we will reach “equilibrium” (actually a steady state) at a higher temperature and there will no TOA imbalance.
.
Owen: “That value would cause the oceans to heat at ca. 3 times the current rate. So I am not sure what is going on here.”
I hope what I just wrote helps. Good for you for being able to realize that the facts indicate that there is room to expand your understanding.
Mike M,
The American Chemical Society says: “Radiative forcing by a climate variable is a change in Earth’s energy balance between incoming solar radiation energy and outgoing thermal IR emission energy when the variable is changed while all other factors are held constant.” They, like IPCC, are talking about forcing by a single variable. Nonetheless, radiative forcing is strictly defined as a TOA radiative imbalance. It cannot be measured however for a single variable – only estimated.
The value of 2.3 W/m^2 from IPCC sums all of the estimated forcings over the time period from 1750 to 2007 (the start time of 1750 may well explain the discrepancy in the two numbers.
I get 0.70 W/m^2 from the slope of OHC from 2005-present (ARGO era), assuming 93% of extra energy going into oceans.
It is absolutely certain that radiative forcing is defined as a net radiative imbalance for the planet – it must be so.
HaroldW.
I don’t think the Danish Scientist is correct – all definitions of forcing are based on a planetary radiative imbalance. I note that his changes were rejected by Wikipedia.
Getting back to forcing by a single variable, which cannot be measured directly. This single forcing attempts to estimate the effect of a change in that one variable on the planatery imbalance, assuming all other variables are held constant. I assume this process of estimation is carried out by climate models. So the value of 2.3 must come from values for all known variables estimated by climate modeling. That’s my best guess.
The total forcing, measured directly from OHC, does not depend on estimated forcings of individual variables.
Owen (Comment #163787): “The American Chemical Society says …”
I don’t care how many times an error gets repeated. It is still an error. I am basing what I say on what is in the primary literature, not on something said by someone who is copying something said by someone who is copying something said by someone who misunderstood what was written by a person who was sloppy.
Radiative forcing is defined as what the net radiative imbalance for the planet would be if nothing else (temperature, humidity, etc.) changed.
Mike M.
I would change your final statement ever so slightly: “Radiative forcing for a single component is defined as what the net radiative imbalance for the planet would be if nothing else (temperature, humidity, etc.) changed.”
Agreed.
Owen,
You really do not understand what the IPCC is saying. The man made forcings (actually estimates thereof) are summed to a single value (eg about 2.3 Watts/M^2 according to AR5).
.
That total forcing is “accommodated” by the system in two ways simultaneously: 1) an increase in surface temperature which increases the loss of heat to space, and 2) accumulated as heat, mostly (>90%) in the oceans, but also warming the land surface, net melting of ice, warming the atmosphere (thermal mass is equal to about 3 meters of water), and raising the moisture content of the atmosphere (increasing latent heat content). The forcing is always higher than heat accumulation except for the first second after applying an instantaneous step change in forcing. In the case of an instantaneous step change, 100% of the additional forcing goes into heat accumulation, but only for the first second. As soon as heat begins accumulating, the surface temperature rises, and loss of heat to space increases… reducing the rate of heat accumulation.
.
As Mike M says, current heat accumulation is in the range of 0.6 – 0.7 watts/M^2 averaged over the Earth’s surface, so that means the current rise in temperature above the pre-industrial period (about 0.9C) is accounting for about (2.3 – 0.65) = 1.65 watts/M^2 of the estimated forcing. At equilibrium, a doubling of CO2 is expected to increase forcing by ~3.7 watts/M^2, so that puts the “best estimate climate sensitivity” based on AR5 at about 0.9 * (3.7/1.65) = ~2.02C per doubling. Of course reaching the equilibrium warming would take many hundreds of years at constant forcing, so an equilibrium response is not ever going to actually be seen.
.
The greatest uncertainty in forcing is the negative forcing contribution of man made aerosols. If that uncertainty could be significantly reduced, the empirical estimate would be much less uncertain. (see, for example: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/human-caused-forcing-and-climate-sensitivity/)
.
BTW, I loath the entire abstraction of “radiative forcing”, because that is not at all what is happening, and it only causes confusion (as your comments show). Rising GHGs restrict loss of absorbed solar energy to space in the infrared wavelength region, so the surface must warm to allow the same amount of energy from solar radiation to escape to space. The atmosphere is just becoming more resistant to the passage of heat when GHGs rise.
Mike M,
“I am basing what I say on what is in the primary literature, not on something said by someone who is copying something said by someone who is copying something said by someone who misunderstood what was written by a person who was sloppy.”
.
LOL. You have just perfectly described the quality of the editorial content of the weekly ACS rag “C & E News”. Their articles on global warming are so full of misunderstandings and errors that they are not even worth reading, save for the humor content.
.
Michael Creighton’s discussion of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect is the best description of the quality of coverage of global warming:
.
It has happened to me dozens of times.
SteveF,
Gell-Mann amnesia is it? I occasionally wonder when I’m reading a piece in the paper on a subject I know well, and it’s screwed up, whether everything I read in that paper might be messed up to the same degree. I usually decide not.
.
An area in which I used to be conversant, not necessarily through my own skill but because of the guys I hung around with, was aviation accidents. I found that my friends and I usually had a sound grasp of what had happened and how it might have been averted or its effects diminished in a day or two, sometimes via inside information.
.
The newspapers were usually wrong in a variety of ways some defying the known laws of physics. If the crash continued to hold interest something like the probable truth would evolve in about ten days. It was uncanny, we used to start a pool on the number of days between when we figured it out and the Tribune ‘got it’
.
But that’s for stuff I thought I understood. For other things, I can see that ten days is way to short, and in fact may be never.
SteveF,
I think I understand the point you are making – that only a fraction of the total forcing as calculated by IPCC by summing individually estimated values (2.3 W/m^2) goes into heat accumulation (~0.65/2.3 = 28%). That would explain the difference between 2.3 and 0.65. I must admit I am surprised that far more energy (72%) goes into processes other than the large ocean heat sink.
I have always thought of OHC, and the TOA radiative imbalance which is calculated from OHC, as the best integrative indicators of the heating of the planet. OHC sums all of the complex “steady state†effects: increasing levels of GHG, increasing heating of all elements of the climate system, increasing release of radiation to space through the open windows of the IR spectrum, increased water vapor in the atmosphere, melting ice, etc.
As such OHC gives a running picture of the warming of the planet and it gives us in the calculated TOA imbalance a value for the “effective†forcing of the climate to produce added heat.
SteveF,
C&E News has been a worthless rag for as long as I can remember. I dropped my membership in the ACS many years ago so I wouldn’t have to see it again. It’s printed on slick paper so you can’t even wipe with it or wrap fish guts.
Mike M.
Fractional integration of white noise with an order less than, but close to, one is similar a system with long term memory or persistence. It looks much like red noise over a wide range of frequencies, but is ultimately bounded, unlike pure red noise. Unless you have a really long series, a unit root test will give a positive result.
Eddie, what is your take on the coral reef situation, as this outcome seems to be already well underway?
.
This is a great example of confirmation bias leading the suggestible to a presupposed, and sought after conclusion.
.
There’s no evidence that AGW is a threat to coral.
.
* Coral have been around for half a billion years. During this time, globally as a species, they have encountered numerous climate states. Fretting now is because someone wants to find something bad to get excited about.
.
* Coral are photosynthetic symbiotes. Photosynthesis increases with increasing CO2. CO2 increase likely increases Coral count.
.
* There are numerous causes of coral death ( Wiki gives a start ). Even among those, high temperature is correlated with two other causes: low tides and low cloudiness.
.
* Recent investigation indicates the latest GBR episode took place with extreme low tides months before the high temperature anomalies.
.
Nothing-burger. With nothing fries.
“Zeke comes up with some updates on the RSS temperature record. It has been reading cool.”
I want to accept the RSS updates for now. I had been under the impression that the surface would warm, and higher up it would cool and this generally supported the theory.
“Satellite datasets show that over the past four decades the troposphere has warmed and the stratosphere has cooled.”
The updates to RSS and the above quote. Does Wikipedia need to update its above?
If higher up is warmer than we thought, I’d imagine it emits more to the TOA.
Owen,
“I must admit I am surprised that far more energy (72%) goes into processes other than the large ocean heat sink.”
.
The ‘other processes’ are just loss of heat to space, which is going on all the time at a rate near 240 watts/M^2 (average) all the time. The change in rate of heat loss due to higher GHGs is actually pretty small. All else being equal, the rate of loss goes as the 4th power of the absolute temperature, so it doesn’t take much of a surface temperature increase to increase rate of loss. It is only a series of assumed/modeled/estimated feedbacks, mainly related to atmospheric moisture and clouds, which make the GCMs predict relatively high sensitivity to GHG forcing. The empirical sensitivity estimates suggest to me that the models have the feedbacks wrong. Only time can confirm or deny that with any certainty.
.
But with Trump in office, and with India, China, Latin America, the Arab countries, and Africa in no mood to sacrifice economic development on the alter of global warming, global emissions of CO2 will grow for at least 25 years, and likely much more. So ultimately the level of GHG forcing will be high enough that inaccurate estimates of sensitivity will be discredited by reality.
.
The thing is, I am all for reducing fossil fuel use, so long as that reduction is based on substituting the most economic alternative: nuclear power. When global warming activists embrace nuclear power in a big way, there will be progress on reducing emissions globally. The until then…. not so much. They are not serious about reducing GHG emissions.
@TE
Not what a climate scientist told me. Research has shown that the big die off is due to global warming.
The piece of the puzzle you are missing is the rate of warming. On a geological time scale it is the blink of an eye. Far quicker than any previous climate changes.
bugs,
“Far quicker than any previous climate changes.”
.
Really? I thought the meteor that killed off the dinosaurs was quicker. On a less extreme scale, the end of the last glacial period (transition to the holocene) was pretty quick as well… with 100 meters sea level rise in 100 centuries. Our sea level change is mild by comparison. Life usually survives, well, except for the dinosaurs. (and yes, I know birds are closely relaated to dinosaurs)
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/half-the-great-barrier-reef-may-have-died-in-last-two-years/news-story/d1a7e2974597f40d04700d7313c9f713
1.5c as a limit for a coral is a number as meaningful ad the Drake equation.
Who to believe? An anonymous person posting on a blog or a scientist with long experience studying coral reefs?
https://www.barrierreef.org/the-foundation/our-governance/russell-reichelt
I doubt they mean 1.5C exactly. It’s a guidance based on the history of the reef and the recent extreme bleaching events.
Yes, I said extreme.
Based on the documented data deceit practiced by big climate hypesters and the annoying reality of the fossil record showing corals doing just fine over huge swings in climate regime, just think if the anonymous poster as the unnamed kid pointing out that the Emperor is really not wearing much at all.
bugs,
Rhetorical questions are frowned on at this blog. If you ask, you are supposed to offer your own answer and explanation.
.
Who to believe? Well, that depends on your evaluation of the quality of the person’s logic, as well as their potential for bias. If you ask researchers who work on drug resistant pathogens what humankind’s greatest threat is, they will say ‘drug resistant pathogens’. Climate researchers will, of course, claim that global warming is the greatest threat to humankind. Neither response is at all suprising. So you have to take the comments from ‘experts’ with large grains of salt. I will note only two facts: 1) corals suffer from lots of human activities, including overfishing of reef species, fertilizer runoff, and silt runoff; these are in many cases much more important than warmer water. 2) Corals in very warm waters (like the red sea) are extremely resistant to high water temperatures… but can still be damaged by other human activities. Perhaps some of those corals could be transported to regions where the same coral types are less resistent to high temperatures.
.
Finally, appeals to authority almost never convince anyone, especially when the appeals are offered to scientists and engineers.
Owen (Comment #163783) July 4th, 2017 at 9:07
“TOA value incorporates all the factors, including those we might not know accurately or at all, into one net forcing value that quantitates the net amount of energy entering the earth system.”
If you parse that comment for a second you will see that you have said TOA value incorporates factors that we do not know (accurately or at all).
The TOA value is where incoming radiation balances outgoing radiation.
1. We already know the amount of energy entering into the system, hint the sun plus minuscule other. No uncertainty there.
2. We already know where the TOA is
Hint where the outgoing radiation equals the incoming radiation see 1. No uncertainty there.
The TOA is quite variable depending on day or noight and latitude so you do have to average it all out to get a TOA. Putting more GHG in extends it out but does not change the overall energy going in and out. Cloud cover, albedo, can affect the TOA per any amount of GHG far more than the GHG change itself on a daily basis.
OHC is such a useless metric, impossible to measure accurately in the first place and so small a change to such large forces.
Why as a warmist once said a billion Hiroshima bombs a day extra going into the sea would not raise the temperature 0.001 C
Yet your measurement error is 100 times greater than this.
Give it away, Owen.
I wonder how many people know what the bleaching events actually are? They are reported often but seldom described. ….which is a typical clue that a climate doom report is bs.
Steve F
SteveF Thanks.
Bugs, the reason rhetorical questions are frowned on is the people asking them often harbor the incorrect notion that they have made an unanswerable point. Yet, often, there are a range of possible answers, none of which match what the questioner thought. So if you think asking the question makes some point tell us what you think that is.
Lots of people have many reasons for not believing what some scientists working on a project have to say about something.
bugs,
It’s almost impossible to take coral bleaching = global warming seriously. I think one could levy a charge of “climate opportunism” at activists and win a jury trial 99 times out of 100. Did you hear that hurricanes are already much worse circa 2006? Flood X and drought Y from year Z have been linked to global warming? Food supplies! 10 feet of sea level rise by 2050! Syria civil war! Malaria! Bird extinctions! Bees! Frogs! How is one expected to separate the serious from the BS here when any negative short term anomaly is trotted out as proof of climate change?
.
The media and activists have gone into overdrive with post-hoc analysis of climate change effects. It’s very unconvincing when one looks at long term trends and the track record of previous predictions. People ignore these things for a reason, that reason is lack of credibility.
.
If you want to hang your hat on coral bleaching, fine, perhaps this is real. Just do us all a favor and promise to come back and post on any “surprising coral recovery” stories we may hear within ten years.
.
If people want me to take the predictions seriously, then the same people need to take their past failures seriously. It’s been warming for a hundred years and if something just started changing very recently then one better have a very compelling story to tell about boundary conditions.
Who to believe? An anonymous person posting on a blog or a scientist with long experience studying coral reefs?
.
I’m not as troubled by rhetorical questions, because they are still subject to analysis.
.
I would advise that you not believe anyone, but rather use your own capacity for reason. That’s not how our brains evolved, though. Most questions in life during evolution were relatively short term, occurred in a clan, led by an authority. That explains why we’re subject to appeal to authority ( believing some one ), and appeal to consensus ( best to stay with the clan, no matter what the clan believed ).
.
As for coral, while you do have to believe the fossil evidence unless you’re going to go around the world and collect it yourself, the fact that coral have been around for 500,000,000 years should tell you something.
.
No doubt coral die today. But all coral alive today will die, just as you and I will. That doesn’t mean the species is going extinct. Coral die, and then remarkably flourish again, probably as they have done for hundreds of millions of years. Further, coral depend on their guests photosynthesis for energy, a process that is enhanced with increased CO2, just as it is on land. CO2 probably benefits coral.
.
Further still, the most recent GBR coral death took place around the Cape York Peninsula. Strangely enough, El Ninos tend to give very low sea level anomalies in this area in addition to high temperatures. It looks like this. But, coral killing low sea levels seem to precede high temperatures.
Turbulent Eddie, you got it. The so called bleaching events were due to extreme low tides. Which have nothing to do with CO2. The infantile alarmism that climate hypesters rely on is humorous vwhen pushed by UFOolgists. But is annoying when used by people posing as scientists.
hunter and TE,
Some coral bleaching events are caused by high temperatures; the coral polyps discharge their (colored) symbiotic photosynthesizing microorganism, and so turn white. This can be done experimentally to verify that high temperature can cause bleaching.
SteveF: “Some coral bleaching events are caused by high temperatures”
I recall reading that bleaching is often a reaction to change. The polyps discharge their algae so that they can be replaced by algae better adopted to the new conditions. But the change could be any number of things, not just higher temperatures. Do I remember correctly?
I also recall that bleaching is not bad in itself. But sometimes, after a bleaching event, the reef gets colonized by algae that are not symbiotic with the coral; then the polyps die. Can someone confirm this? Do we know what causes the algae regime change?
Selected Twitter responses to Hawking’s claim that Trump pulling out of Paris Accord may lead to Venus-like conditions (#163741):
Zeke Hausfather wrote, “A good example that even brilliant scientists sometimes say silly things when it’s outside their field of expertise (see Nobel disease)”. (Richard Betts replied.)
Bjorn Lomborg wrote, “Stephen Hawking being silly:
No risk of climate runaway to Venus US Paris cuts were just 0.2% of needed to 2°C”
Ryan Maue wrote, “Stephen Hawking’s wacky & bizarre opinions on climate change (e.g. Earth becoming Venus) pollute policy debate.”
As someone who has read as much of Hawking’s accessible writing as possible over many years I find his morphing into yet another pc chorus member to be rather sad. As someone who has seen too closely what terrible Neuro disease can do, I seriously wonder who is controlling his voice synthesizer these days.
As to the coral, the big events that the climate consensus went off on recently were apparently tidal.
I don’t think you people get it. This isn’t just bleaching. This is coral dying.
bugs,
You don’t get it.
There are many reasons why coral reefs die and a number of them are anthropogenic in origin. However, global warming and high CO2 are not high on that list. If high CO2 and high temperature killed corals, then they wouldn’t have survived the PETM around 55Mya.
Harold W,
“A good example that even brilliant scientists sometimes say silly things when it’s outside their field of expertise”
.
Zeke almost got it right… just strike the ‘when it’s outside their field of expertise’, and his statement is perfectly accurate.
Maybe Hawking is just joking; for his sake I hope so.
Bugs: “Who to believe? An anonymous person posting on a blog or a scientist with long experience studying coral reefs?”
….
If someone is an expert, that expert or those defending him, should be able to explicitly support their views or expertise.
….
Here is a different, but very similar question. Should you believe a Nobel prize winning economist, (Paul Krugman), or a nobody workers’ comp lawyer (me) about the efficacy of the VA?
……
I criticized a Krugman column about the VA on June 19, 2014 and then about a month later even more negative information came out about the VA. Part of my comment was: “When PK states that “until the scandal broke, all indications were that it [VA] worked very well, providing high-quality care at low cost.” it shows appalling ignorance and the failure to investigate what was actually happening at the VA.” See https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/opinion/the-hype-behind-the-health-care-scandal.html?_r=0 (My comment can be found among the recommended comments)
…..
Even after VA officials were caught falsifying data, Krugman [very erroneously] stated in the same column: “So here’s what you need to know: It’s still true that Veterans Affairs provides excellent care, at low cost. ” There are many examples of experts being wrong and “amateurs” being correct. So, just trotting out someone as an expert with experience in a certain subject, doesn’t make your case. (I could give other similar examples if someone wishes). With respect to “climate science”, it is particularly dangerous because academia in the US is so biased and intolerant.
JD
TE
“Coral have been around for half a billion years. During this time, globally as a species, they have encountered numerous climate states. ”
Wow this is dumb… They’re a collection of Sub-Classes for a start. And there are thousands of species today, none of which existed half a billion years ago. They have evolved a lot.
Even today they live in hot and cold climates and at great depth.
If changes happen faster than a species evolves to cope, it will eventually go extinct. Many corals have gone extinct, in fact almost all have.
Hawking should have read the IPCC reports.
bugs (Comment #163843)
“I don’t think you people get it. This isn’t just bleaching. This is coral dying.”
Bugs, coral skeletons are found all over the world, some at great depths in the ground,some on mountain tops.
Corals grow in multiple areas at different depths and different temperatures.
They diasphore, OK ,I made that word up, but they send their spores many hundreds of miles to make new corals every year.
They are resilient.
If the temperature changes in one that gets hotter or colder they just move to the new right temperature areas.
They do not live in an Aquarium but the real world.
The have to adapt to bleaching events, to local sea level change events, to starfish viruses and varying coastal runoffs.
They have done so successfully for over 500 million years. The great Barrier Reef is a new event, make up a figure, 10,000 years before that time the land they are growing on was above sea level. The real old coral reefs are another 60 kilometers off the coastline drowned under 60 meters of sea level rise.
They moved . they adapted.
They will move or adapt again.
Get over it.
@Angech
Once again, the time to adapt is too fast for evolution. The Great Barrier reef is a whole ecosystem. They take geological time to build and adapt.
Owen (Comment #163783)
“TOA value incorporates all the factors, including those we might not know accurately or at all, into one net forcing value that quantitates the net amount of energy entering the earth system.”
Not happy.
If there are unknown or not accurately known figures they cannot be incorporated into a net forcing value of known forcing values because they have no value to incorporate. If you do not know your forcing values you cannot have a known TOA in the first place.
A TOA value made up of known factors can only represent known factors.
Also a TOA is defined as the place where the amount of energy leaving earth [not entering] equates to the amount of energy entering the earth.
By definition this is a variable figure.
It does not quantitate the net amount of energy entering the earth system.
It quantitates the amount of energy absorbed by the earth system.
Big difference.
And then the amount radiated to space.
Another big difference??
Hence albedo or reflectiveness decreases the amount of energy from the sun [the main source of energy entering the earth system but not the only source, just 99.999%] and can be seasonally and cloud related extremely variable .
TOA is the height at which the absorbed energy [for the most part] balances the outgoing radiated energy.
It is an entirely fictitious device which is averaged out to a unit distance. In actual fact the true TOA can vary from hundreds of kilometers out directly under the sun where the highest amount of heat in and out occurs to 10’s of kilometers out late at night or at the farthest pole from the sun.
There is Ocean heat content, land heat content [never mentioned but important] and atmospheric heat content.
All 3 layers accumulate and release heat at different rates.
Hence no surprise
“I must admit I am surprised that far more energy (72%) goes into processes other than the large ocean heat sink.â€
I will ask Steve F about forcing rates later. I am uncomfortable about the long times to adjustment mainly due to my inability to understand how long extra heat is retained by different materials before it is radiated, obviously not instantly but 100s of years of adjustment is a hard concept to get.
“The forcing is always higher than heat accumulation except for the first second”
Mike M. (Comment #163780) thanks
DeWitt Payne (Comment #163844) sorry did not see your reply until after I made mine above.
bugs (Comment #163851)
“Once again, the time to adapt is too fast for evolution.”
Perhaps. The coral spores I saw had 3 eyes. Smile.
Here’s a page from NOAA on anthropogenic threats to corals. There is no mention of CO2 and global warming at all.
I’m not particularly worried about climate change and corals either. Still, it seems to me that this is a good opportunity for guys who believe we aren’t taking AGW seriously enough to make their case.
.
So – if Owen or Bugs or anybody wants to offer any predictions of short term impact that I can verify over the next few years – tourism and fishing collapse along the Gold Coast in Australia for example, impact on Australia’s GDP over three (3) years. Impact on unemployment in Queensland over the next year or two. I would be most interested in following the predictions. Of course, I would also be interested figuring out attribution – it’d have to be clear to me that pollution and overfishing and so on weren’t really to blame.
.
I’m open to new evidence, but as Tom eloquently put it here:
I can change my mind in the face of new evidence. How about you two, Owen and Bugs.
Bugs wrote: “Once again, the time to adapt is too fast for evolution.â€
.
On what evidence? Proxy records with poor temporal resolution compared to the temperature record? Poor understanding of genetics?
.
Adaptation doesn’t always require a complete rework, just small tweaks to existing DNA. There’s genetics and then there’s epigenetics. https://www.whatisepigenetics.com/epigenetics-rescue-climate-change/
DaveJR,
“Adaptation doesn’t always require a complete rework, just small tweaks to existing DNA. There’s genetics and then there’s epigenetics.”
.
Sure, but in this case, it is probably even simpler. My understanding is the temperature sensitivity of corals to bleaching is set by the characteristics of the symbiotic algae, not the coral (that is, the algae is temperature limited). The polyps discharge the algae because it could poison the polyps if it dies. Different algae have different temperature sensitivities.
.
But the most important steps for protecting coral reefs are controlling the discharge of polluted/silt-latent water and stopping over fishing of reef species. These are MUCH easier, faster, cheaper, and more effective than reducing global CO2 emissions. Harping on global warming to “save” corals is either misinformed or disingenuous.
Steve hits nail on head.
The climate tinfoil approach is to re-engineer the world. The real world approach is to use commonsense practices that are proven: reduce pollution, improve land use, limit fishing and eco-tour disturbances of reefs.
A lot of species catastrophe theories are built upon the inability to adapt to a climate “impulse function”. We are artificially spiking CO2 / temperatures / associated effects faster than natural systems would normally ever see in the absence of man (this is probably debatable but accept it for the sake of argument). So the reaction to this spike may not be easy to predict based on historical observations. If I spike my speaker with a 1000A the results are not good for the speaker.
.
All things equal, it would be better to not test this function output due to the uncertainty of possible unstable outcomes. All things are not equal, we humans like our cars and heating our homes.
.
Activists tend to make some rather poor assumptions when working out the possible consequences, namely that a species will not adapt to changing conditions. This is absolute total BS as any species alive today has stood the test of time.
.
The boundaries of survivable conditions may shift for some species. An assumption that a species will not simply move with the more favorable conditions, is incapable of surviving slightly warmer temperatures, and will be totally wiped out, is science with an agenda.
.
The best example of this is the Audubon society claiming “Nearly half of our birds are at risk of extinction this century”. Try to find an article in the media that doesn’t take that claim at face value and challenge that assertion. Birds are apparently totally incapable of adapting to change. Birds. Yes, I see no reason to challenge that assumption.
.
We have daily temperature swings of 10C, yearly swings of 50C, routine local annual records one way or the other. Droughts, floods. Everything has adapted and survived. But if the median shifts 1C over the next century, (arm wave) catastrophe. I am spiking my 1.00A speaker with 1.01A and it survives without consequence.
.
One can assume species are barely surviving and on the knife’s edge of extinction all the time (assumption for all the cute furry things), or one can assume nature is very robust and adaptable and will thrive (assumption for mosquitoes that carry malaria).
.
There will be change, it will have effects. I don’t trust team climate science to evaluate it impartially or the media to report it impartially. What will make me trust it again? Correct predictions, acknowledgement of failed ones, and a way to reliably discriminate between the two.
Yes, science is alive and well. NPR says getting your DNA tested by 23andMe is racist. I’m feeling a huge dose of white guilt now, what was I thinking? I’m enabling white supremacists with their scientific racism.
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/07/06/535767665/why-you-should-think-twice-about-those-dna-by-mail-results
.
“Scientific racism,” Marks told me, “often begins by highlighting (and misrepresenting) patterns of difference in the human species; but regardless of how different they may be from one another, people are entitled to equality.”
.
Yes folks, your tax dollars at work. NPR and academia. Making a better future for all of us. Where is that donate button?
The only racism being pushed by academia is racist drivel like “critical race theory” by a pathetic number of academics. But let’s do recall that eugenics, which was sciencey racism of the late 19th & early 20th centuries was all the rage with academics and progressives of that time as well. Our self declared elites seem to hanker for racist ideology as long as they can dress it up with progressive and sciencey lipstick.
Tom Scharf,
So, what does 23 and me tell you (aside from the obvious… yuo’re a racist! 😠)?
.
With regard to species extinction: humans have indeed driven some species to extinction or close to it (carrier pidgeons, bison, etc). But it is prudent to remember people were trying to kill those species, in vast numbers, over extended periods. I do not think there exists even one recent example of a species extinction where people were not actively killing that species. 0.9C is too small a change in mean temperature to kill off any species. As Willis has said, “show me the bodies”. Starting with the infamous exhortation to ‘scare the public’ made by the late Stephen Schneider, scare tactics have been routinely used to advance the green agenda, and there is no reason to think that will change.
@DE Witt
Looking at the reference on your link I think it is just out of date. NOAA doesn’t have infinite resources to maintain all its’ content.
It took only a google search to find this.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coralreef-climate.html
@SteveF
It’s not just bleaching, as I have said already.
This article shows bleached coral and dead coral covered in slime.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-07/dramatic-images-show-attack-of-the-slime-on-great-barrier-reef/7484454
Tom Scharf
I certainly recognize how some peoples motive in genetic testing might be racist. They might have some compulsion to prove they are “pure”. SNot sure I see how you can say the testing is generally racist. Lots of people find out they have mixed race ancestry they weren’t aware of.
My sister and her husband had it done. They ordered it for my Mom. We were rooting for Neanderthal, but none showed up.
Most of the reported studies I have seen indicate that the stress of higher local water temperatures results in the expulsion or death of zooxanthellae. That seems to be well-documented and is possible to directly study. The 1998 El Nino was accompanied by a massive world-wide bleaching, some of which has recovered, some not. If the symbiotes do not return, the coral can die.
Exactly why the zooxanthellae are expelled is another question.
I don’t understand why some think it important to try to discredit these studies carried out by ocean biologists, often with the goal of saving the reefs. Our glib judgments seem shallow in comparison to their long-term, on-site work.
Some here see plots and conspiracy at every turn and on a world-wide scale.
Lucia,
“We were rooting for Neanderthal, but none showed up.”
.
People of European descent all appear to have some Neanderthal heritage, ranging up to a few percent. So your mom probably does have some Neanderthal… but they just report it as ‘European’. So maybe your rooting worked after all.
.
I also read a couple of (probably speculative) articles that the Basque language is completely unrelated to all other European languages, and also unrelated to non-European languages. This leads to the suggestion that the Basque language may be derived from Neanderthal. The Basque region also happens to be close to the places where the Neanderthal’s appear to have last lived.
SteveF,
Yes. That’s why we were hoping for the test to specifically identify some Neanderthal. Supposedly it can, but zip! So we were bummed.
Dad’s great-great grandfather who moved to Cuba was supposedly Basque– from France. That wouldn’t have made Mom Neanderthal, but we could have hoped to see some in Mary Beth. Nope!
But Mary Beths cousin supposedly came up Denisovian which we thought pretty funny. We created outrageous theories of the Hun’s kidnapping some kids and getting him to Poland. I asked a genetics guy I follow on twitter and he said the Denisovian identification is probably bogus. Too bad!
Ok… I googled.. I now have no idea where Dad’s ancestors came from. I found this note by Dad’s aunt Stella here:
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=43456868
SteveF: “the Basque language is completely unrelated to all other European languages, and also unrelated to non-European languages. This leads to the suggestion that the Basque language may be derived from Neanderthal.”
Fanciful. There are actually quite a number of such language isolates.
Owen, no one is dismissing marine biologists who are making in depth years long studies. People are dismissing alarmist claptrap that claims coral bleaching is caused by CO2. El Ninos are as ancient as the Pacific ocean. Strong ocean oscillations have happened throughout the existance of the Pacific ocean. Coral has bleached from time to time for millions of years as well. The corruption of science into an apocalyptic death cult is always worth criticising. Look at how the same scientists marching in the streets demanding science not be silenced niwvrefuse to debate climate science. They won’t debate because they know they would lose.
MikeM
Not in Europe. My understanding is there are 4 major non-indoeuropean languages in Europe: Basque, Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are in the Finno-Urgic group.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages
(From the map at wikipedia, I guess you could say 5 non-indoeuropean languages since Turkish sneaks over from Asia a little. Also: the tally of 4 non-IndoE languages seems to exclude Sami languages which are uralic and related to Finnish.)
I do think it’s fanciful to think Basque came from Neanderthal. I think the time scale is very large. We also pretty much know that the “Aryans” (whoever they were) came in and their languages displaced others. There’s no reason to believe all the non-Indo languages are particularly ancient just because most are gone.
@hunter.
There have been El Ninos for years. This is the highest peak yet, hence the dead coral. The extent of this devastation is the worst that has been observed.
Global Warming. Those peaks take life that has adapted to a range beyond that range.
bugs: ” Those peaks take life that has adapted to a range beyond that range.”
Nonsense. Anthropogenic warming in the tropical oceans is something like 0.5 C. Normal temperature ranges in the tropics are perhaps 5-10 times as large. Corals live in waters ranging from 18 C to 35 C. Tiny changes are not large changes.
lucia: “Not in Europe … There’s no reason to believe all the non-Indo languages are particularly ancient just because most are gone.”
True. It seems that there is much less linguistic diversity in Europe than on other continents, even considering that Europe is rather small. Basque did not used to be an isolate, it is just the only member of its family left. Other language families in Europe (like Etruscan) have been reduced to zero. All that can really be said about their ages is that they would have been around before the Aryans moved in some 5000 years ago.
I read the current thinking is that El Ninos have been around for thousands of years. Here is a fun, fascinating story about how a mega El Nino induced drought may have brought down a civilization around 600 AD, excerpts include:
Of course, these days our ritual sacrifices to appease Gaea are more along economic lines. I wonder if our leadership – which at least in part claims authority on the basis of being able to determine climate trends – is going to retail control over the people.
We live in interesting times. 🙂
retain control, not retail control.
ugh.
bugs,
Your tinfoil is slipping over your eyes. Coral bleaching events as a result of tidal extremes have been going on as long as there have been tidal extremes. The apocalypse is not happening. Commonsense things like runoff control, fishing regulations to protect parrot fish, banning coral harvesting work directly. CO2 is not killing coral nor will it.
My report says I have “fewer neanderthal variants than 54% of customers (275/397)”, whatever that means. I’m worried that neanderthal supremacists are now going to discriminate against me because I’m impure. I’m 94.6% Northwestern European which the report says makes me better than almost everybody else. BETTER. Oops. sorry that one was from KKK23andMe.com.
The ancestry reports are quite interesting because they not only tell you what your current makeup is, but can also tell you the timeline of when changes occurred.
“This module uses your Ancestry Composition results to estimate the generation range where you are likely to have had a single relative who descended from a single population.”
AKA when your bloodline was polluted from outsiders, ha ha.
1720: Eastern European, 8 generations ago
1810: British/Irish/Scandinavian, 5 generations ago
1870: German/French, 3 generations ago.
This can be used to check your genealogy, this matches what my Dad has found previously.
Bugs,
“the worst that has been observed”. This type of loose language is another characteristic of activists. Are we talking a 150 years or so here? If somebody wasn’t studying worldwide coral characteristics the conclusions one can draw from one die off is pretty tenuous in the grand scheme. In the absence of solid connect the dots causation (which may or may not apply in this case) for sensitivity to temperature or CO2 then it is just another theory.
.
Lots of coral has died over the ages for specific reasons. If one can eliminate all those natural causes then maybe you have a solid case. My guess is all the reasons for coral die offs are not well understood since people have only been studying them for a very short period in a geological sense. There has been a series of blame global warming exercises (bees, frogs, etc) that turned out to be false alarms. How confident are you that this is not one of them?
There’s a video about coral:
From despair to repair – YouTube
Words to the effect of, don’t blame climate change, rather reduce runoff pollution and overfishing. “Climate change is an excuse for doing nothing.â€
I’ll favor a focused small area solution over a general global one such as mitigation. I think we should attempt both. We could consider that both approaches draw from the same pool of money.
bugs,
Serious CO2 mitigation simply isn’t in the cards for decades, absent the zombie apocalypse. The Paris Accords are a huge joke, much like the Kyoto Protocol, and will have about the same effect, i.e. none.
If you want to complain, try China. They were specifically exempted from the Kyoto Protocol, one of the prime reasons why the US did not participate. Experience has proved that was the correct decision. Chinese carbon emissions tripled from 0.95GtC in 1997 to 2.81GtC in 2014. China has now by far the largest annual carbon emissions, about twice the US total.
By the way, renewables won’t help. They are far from carbon neutral in the short term, i.e. a century or two. See section 4 of the recent JPMorgan report:
https://www.jpmorgan.com/jpmpdf/1320736492579.pdf
Ragnaar,
In nearly 100% of cases critical review shows that local conditions like over building in known surge zones, subsidence, pollution runoff, destruction of habitat…not CO2…is responsible for damages that the climate opportunists loudly claim as “proof” of “climate change” (& etc is “climate change” anyway?)
DeWitt,
“The Paris Accords are a huge joke.”
.
Sure, from an emissions reduction POV.
.
But you are ignoring their enormous value as a means of virtue signaling and political discrimination. Endorse the accords and you are very virtuous, reject them and you are profoundly evil. The accords are the product of the ‘global governance’ left’s ongoing efforts to eliminate the nation-state as a legitimate political entity.
DeWitt and SteveF,
“The Paris Accords are a huge joke”
So I assume you are saying business as usual, full ahead.
Owen: “So I assume you are saying business as usual, full ahead.”
Fine with me. But even better would be more nuclear.
Owen,
I’m saying that yes it will be business as usual because no one in the world is, in fact, doing anything serious about mitigation. It’s all a pose. That’s because decarbonization is far more difficult and expensive than is commonly thought. Nobody is going to seriously compromise their standard of living, which is what would be required for significant decarbonization. That’s not to mention condemning the less developed world to permanent grinding poverty.
Owen,
Japan and Germany think that nuclear power is a bigger problem than CO2. Otherwise they wouldn’t be decommissioning their nuclear plants and, in Japan’s case, replacing them with coal burning plants.
Regarding corals, the 1998 El Nino caused a rapid, simultaneous, world wide bleaching event. It was not due to over- building, polluted run- off, etc occuring simultaneously in all those disparate parts of the world. It was thermal stress that luckily was short- lived. Parts of many reefs died, but more recovered.
As AGW continues, intense warming events may not cool again as quickly, preventing recovery. Those reefs provide essential habitat for fish and other members of the oceanic food chain. In our already over- fished oceans, loss of a large percentage of shallow-water coral reefs could become a very big problem.
I should add that, OF COURSE, coral reefs have been affected by prior El Ninos and warmer temperatures. And a remnant always survived the great extinction events of the past. I don’t think we need to email the ocean biologists concerned about reef health with this startling news.
Life itself survived the great extinctions, even the several that killed off over 75% of the species. Our planet lost a lot of unique DNA, but life always re-evolved in new and interesting ways (e.g. human)
I don’t consider the argument based on eventual survival to be particularly reassuring.
Owen,
Our emissions reductions are largely due to BAU, the fracking revolution. The bitterest of bitter pills for the left to swallow. If you think promises to the world community are what actually reduces emissions, you might want to check the science. If we could use green proselytizing to power the grid, we would be well on our way to meeting PA requirements.
DeWitt,
Does decarbonization have to be complete and total? Could we start with the electric grid and shoot for 25 years? As that becomes decarbonized could we go to all electric family vehicles? James Hansen is pleading with anyone who will listen for new nuclear plants. We are in need of a substantive national project that would energize and unite.
That’s what makes me call Hansen a “true believer”. If you really think there is potential for catastrophe and you are against nuclear, it’s a pretty incoherent position. It’d be nice to have it all, but the menu is limited for base load power.
Owen,
.
Indeed, coral has survived extinction events. But realize that you have introduced the topic of extinction events. AFAICT nobody else had mentioned them. As a result, it’s not entirely clear what you are responding to – or if you are in fact responding to anything at all.
.
I don’t think anyone has made this argument on this thread.
With mitigation I am a critic of wind and solar because of their economic short comings and their integration with the grid issues. In the United States they have staked out an area, and I can hope for a somewhat slower growth rate. It’s similar to what ethanol has staked out. Following Ellison’s idea at Curry’s blog, I hope that soil carbon restoration is going to be an answer. Given the right terms, the farmers will participate. My grandfather used to refer to his program land as a soil bank. We get something tangible which is more productive land in the intermediate future. There are spin off benefits. Habitat, and improved watersheds for instance. Cattle could be raised on the program land. Minnesota has one such program that allows that. When looking for answers from Republicans, we mostly hear No. We could siphon some wind and solar money away, getting to say both No and Yes at the same time. This would also allow more time for grid stability and battery issues to be solved.
Owen,
“Does decarbonization have to be complete and total? Could we start with the electric grid and shoot for 25 years? As that becomes decarbonized could we go to all electric family vehicles? James Hansen is pleading with anyone who will listen for new nuclear plants.”
.
Hummm… lots of rhetorical questions in there…. frowned upon here.
.
On a per capita GDP basis we have been rapidly decarbonizing for a long time. Of course, the concurrent increase in per capita income has reduced the impact. Still, we in the States have been on a downward trend in absolute CO2 emissions for almost a decade. I am sure this trend will continue; it could be accelerated by substituting nuclear generation for fossil fuel generation, combined with a gradual shift toward electric vehicles (as battery technology permits). The real issue for those who are concerned about CO2 emissions is how to move the needle with the (strong) green organizations that are implacably opposed to nuclear power.
.
If Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and their many ilk changed course and became outspoken advocates for nuclear power (like Hansen is), I am certain global CO2 emissions could be falling within two or three decades. But I am confident greens are NEVER going to broadly embrace nuclear power. Which dooms the Earth to much higher atmospheric CO2 over the next century.
.
We can argue about why green organizations oppose nuclear power, and I am sure my judgement of those organizations is much more negative than yours, but this much is certain: poor people around the world will not accept remaining poor, and only low cost energy will help them escape poverty. Any policy designed to reduce CO2 emissions while insisting on solar and wind as the only solution will have the worst possible consequences for Earth, because poor people will simply not accept costly ‘renewable’ energy.
Mark Bofill,
Read my comments this way, Mark: I agree with earlier statements that corals have survived many previous climate events, and I will concede even more, that they survived even traumatic extinction events. Tough little critters they are.
Re the argument based on survival, see 819 & 833 above.
Owen (Comment #163894): “Does decarbonization have to be complete and total?”
Even if you think CO2 is a big problem, complete decarbonization is not needed. Pushing that makes the perfect the enemy of the good. It is advocated because it is about religion, not science, and complete decarbonization is required for religious purity.
.
Owen: “Could we start with the electric grid and shoot for 25 years? As that becomes decarbonized could we go to all electric family vehicles?”
That commits the same fallacy. Complete decarbonization of the electric grid is hopelessly impractical, as are pure electric cars (for anything more than commuter use). A sensible carbon dioxide reduction plan (if one were needed) would push nuclear for most electricity generation, ground source heat pumps for space heating and cooling, and plug-in hybrids for transportation. That would shift of lot of energy demand to the electricity grid and probably even out demand on the grid. Then baseload electricity generation by nuclear would be able to provide a large fraction of total energy use.
SteveF,
I am not aware of much in the way of fossil fuel based power installations in rural Africa. For isolated villages, solar may prove to be the fastest route to electrification. The following link is to an article about micro solar startup in rural Africa, written by one of your favorite people, Bill McKibben: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/the-race-to-solar-power-africa
It’s not all pie-in-the-sky and does take a realistic tone.
Mike M,
I’m glad you are now talking potential solutions, and some good ones at that, instead of business as usual.
Ty Owen.
Owen: “I’m glad you are now talking potential solutions”.
You seem to have overlooked the fact that I said IF a carbon dioxide reduction plan were needed. My suggestions are from back when I was inclined to think that at least some action was needed.
For the most part, the greens have no interest in potential solutions. They are only interested in using global warming to push an agenda. When the greens get serious about potential solutions, I will listen. Until then, business as usual will have to do.
Owen,
Here are power plants in South Africa (greatest economic development in sub-Sahara Africa): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_South_Africa
It is dominated by coal, as will be virtually all new installations in Africa for the near future. You can continue to imagine Bill McKibbon is a serious source of information about electric power, but he is not. Small solar installations can help the poorest of the poor, far from cities, but only grid power will give Africa an exit from poverty via industrialization. The rest is fantasy. Where are all the green organizations pushing for nuclear power in Africa? Answer: They do not exist. Green organizations are not serious about reducing CO2 emissions. Their advocated policies appear designed only to diminish human material wealth… and I suspect if you ever could get a straight answer from them, they would confirm that. Greens consider humanity a great harm to the planet. Theirs is a dead end culture of well off people who feel guilty about thier material wealth, but would never give up that wealth; their culture will not prevail.
Solar may be good for the first power in a place off the grid, same as wireless phones are better than wired for unconnected areas. However if rural Africa wants to participate in the global economy (industrialization) or wants to go from charging phones to air conditioning their houses then real power is needed. Perhaps by the time they get around to doing that electrical storage will be cheap enough to allow them to use intermittent power for everything. Today it would be prohibitively expensive to do that on a Somali budget. I don’t think taxpayers in Ohio are very interested in subsidizing that effort.
Marc Bofill,
“Ty Owen”
.
I have not a clue what that means.
Steve,
Mostly means I was in the car on my cell. TY == thank you.
Tom Scharf,
“to go from charging phones to air conditioning their houses then real power is needed.”
.
Indeed. And air conditioned houses mean an end to endemic diseases like malaria. Wealth = human wellbeing. The rest is crap.
@hunter
More reading for you.
http://theconversation.com/how-much-coral-has-died-in-the-great-barrier-reefs-worst-bleaching-event-69494
Written by scientists familiar with the reef.
According to them it’s record temperatures, they provide evidence.
All you every provide are opinions.
http://www.bom.gov.au/environment/activities/reeftemp/reeftemp.shtml
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has a Web page that shows the probability of a bleaching event based on sea temperatures.
bugs: “According to them it’s record temperatures, they provide evidence.”
They only provide evidence that bleaching is associated with El Nino. I don’t think that is controversial. The issue is whether global warming kills corals; they provide no evidence for that. Instead, they start with that assumption and rely on confirmation bias to do the rest. They do obfuscate by equating bleaching with dying.
For your education: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/44/17995.full
Abstract: “we show a major decline in coral cover … Tropical cyclones, coral predation by crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS), and coral bleaching accounted for 48%, 42%, and 10% of the respective estimated losses, … the relatively pristine northern region showed no overall decline … In the absence of COTS, coral cover would increase”
In the body of the paper, they attribute (with evdence) the starfish increase to agricultural runoff. They also pay obeisance to global warming and climate change, but without evidence.
SteveF,
India had an installed electric power capacity of 300 GW in 2016, of which 42 GW were renewable. Two new projects that I am aware of (5 GW of distributed solar in the state of Telangana by 2018) and 10.7 GW of solar parks in the state of Uttar Pradesh by 2022) will boost installed renewable capacity to 58 GW (almost 20% of total). Dropping prices for solar are causing India to rethink planned coal plants (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-01/cheaper-solar-in-india-prompts-rethink-for-more-coal-projects).
Owen,
When calculated on the basis of actual electric energy generated, the renewable percentage is not as large. E.g., from Wiki (yes, I know. But I’m traveling and it’s harder to look things up), 2016-17 fossil fuel electricity was about 1000 MWh, nuclear and hydro 160, renewables 82.
(The renewables category includes “small hydro”, which accounts for around 10% its production. I don’t know why they categorize in this manner.)
HaroldW,
Are those USA numbers?
Owen: “Dropping prices for solar are causing India to rethink planned coal plants”
If they are smart, India will rethink solar and wind instead. Solar and wind are 13.5% of capacity, so potentially a very large part of generation at times (average production in India appears to be about 40% of capacity) even though they are on average a very small fraction of production (as HaroldW points out). Once built, wind and solar are basically free to operate, so they can always underbid other sources. That undermines the fossil fuel generators that are needed most of the time. The resulting dysfunctional market has caused big trouble in Germany. But Germany is part of a larger grid; that is not an option for India. Renewables (other than large scale hydro) can not be more than a small part of actual generation without destabilizing the grid.
HaroldW, Sorry, I see your link now, the values from which are in GW hours I believe. Those numbers do not include the ca. 16 GW of new capacity projects I described. But I take your point that the efficiency of electricity delivery is lower for the renewable sector, as it should be due to its more intermittant nature.
Mike M,
When storage solutions, for both utility grade and distributed solar, are functional and mass produced, that will spell the end of coal power for electric generation. I hope sooner rather than later.
It took hundreds of millions of years to sequester all of that reduced carbon underground. Reduced carbon is valuable for many other purposes. I’m not keen on burning it all up in 300 years or so.
Owen: “When storage solutions, for both utility grade and distributed solar, are functional and mass produced …”
That may or may not happen before we have cheap fusion.
.
Owen: “… that will spell the end of coal power for electric generation.”
Storage increases the grid’s ability to cope with intermittent sources. But each increment is more expensive than the last. 100% renewable will never be practical unless it includes a large fraction of large scale hydro. So some fossil fuel generation will probably be needed for a very long time. The thing that could really do coal in is nuclear.
.
Owen: “I hope sooner rather than later.”
I agree. But I see no need to hasten the process, other than by supporting R&D and by making it easier for advanced nuclear concepts to enter the market.
.
Owen: It took hundreds of millions of years to sequester all of that reduced carbon underground. Reduced carbon is valuable for many other purposes. I’m not keen on burning it all up in 300 years or so.
I agree. But we are still a long way from that being an immediate concern.
Owen (#163917)-
Yes, thanks for the correction, my figures are in TWh not MWh. I really shouldn’t post from a tablet. At least that’s my weak excuse for a silly error. 🙂
The table shows that India has been adding about 50 TWh of fossil fuel electricity generation each year for the last 5 years. The 16 GW new renewable capacity you mention is a large chunk, to be sure, but not enough to meet growth.
Cost effective storage of solar energy is called “fossil fuels”. The quest to replace that proven storage system will be like looking for a gold coin in the corner of a round room.
HaroldW,
The units of TWh are now good (I was wrong on mine as well), but the comparison with 16 GW new installed capacity needs to be with the ca.300 GW of currently installed capacity. That makes it around a 5% increase.
And I mentioned only the two new projects that I had read about. There are surely many more, perhaps only a few as large.
Hunter,
But when that gold coin is found, it will have been well worth the search! And our great grandchildren will thank us.
Owen (Comment #163913)
“India had an installed electric power capacity of 300 GW in 2016, of which 42 GW were renewable. Two new projects that I am aware of (5 GW of distributed solar in the state of Telangana by 2018) and 10.7 GW of solar parks in the state of Uttar Pradesh by 2022) will boost installed renewable capacity to 58 GW (almost 20% of total).”
Owen you are committing a cardinal sin if only increasing the renewable amount over the old total and not increasing the fossil fuel component. I presume you must be aware of the planned increase in fossil fuel electric power capacity. By 2022 this will increase the total to 450 GW dropping your renewables to 15%.
You should make that clear.
Not to mention that the majority of renewable is hydro power.
Your 15 GW extra equates to a mere 3% addition which cannot work at night and adds stress to the system.
Think South Australia with a 300 million tesla battery storage which can only last 1 day.
“Dropping prices for solar are causing India to rethink planned coal plants”
In your dreams. Adani is opening a 1.6 billion dollar coal mine in Australia for Indian coal powered plants,
Some 1600 hundred new coal power stations around the world in the next 5 years ? Is this right?
Sorry for being a negative sod.
Angech,
You are right that I did not include new fossil fuel plants, nor did I include other renewable projects other than the two I was aware of. 16 GW capacity being added in two of India’s states is nothing to sneeze at. The point is that renewables, especially wind and solar are undercutting coal economically in India and most everywhere. New installations world wide are expected to increasingly be renewables.
The Tesla plant in South Australia – does it need more than one day storage? In areas of high insolation that could be sufficient.
Angech,
A short video featuring the state minister of energy of India talking about new focus on clean energy. Last year India added more installed capacity in renewables than in fossil fuels. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Be75_VIuug&list=PLopq6yGfmFAuPHVynymKc3JyzpLHDqgB6&index=1
Owen,
Except for hydroelectric power, nameplate capacity for renewables is much greater than their average capacity. A typical a erage value is about 25 to 40% of nameplate. So you need to add 2.5 to 4 times as much nameplate for solar and wind to equal hydro or fossil power production on average. You also need a fossil fuel backup watt for almost every wind or solar watt to cover nights with little wind. In certain (hot) places, there is some correlation between solar output and power demand, but in general that is not the case. Nuclear resolves these problems nd emits no CO2
Owen,
There is no corner and no gold coin. The stories of wind and solar out competing coal are mythological. If we continue wasting our collective resources chasing things that are not to to be caught to fail to solve a problem that does not exist, our grandchildren will be cursing, not praising.
@hunter.
The price of renewables keeps getting cheaper while the price of coal doesn’t. Gas as a backup to renewables is all that is required for now.
@MikeM
Did you read the abstract.
” the relatively pristine northern region showed no overall decline”, dated “approved September 5, 2012 (received for review May 25, 2012)”. The other issues are all real but none of them have been as rapid and deadly as ocean warming. You could fix them all tomorrow and it would be for nothing if temperatures keep rising.
How quickly that can change. The Northern region was the hardest hit by the recent El Nino and its’ record temperatures. It’s no longer pristine. Much it is not just bleached but dead now.
Still waiting for evidence from Hunter that low tides are all that did it.
@Hunter
The peer review system and conferences are where all the debates have already been held.
If you want a Curry and a couple of others vs the world debate, that has already been held at the APS review of its’ global warming statement. The Curry team lost badly.
Lucia said “So they admit the models are above the data. They didn’t used to do so.”
Trenberth et. al. 2009 did have this admission about empirical vs. model data:
“There is a TOA imbalance of 6.4 W m−2 from
CERES data and this is outside of the realm of current
estimates of global imbalances (Willis et al. 2004;
Hansen et al. 2005; Huang 2006) that are expected
from observed increases in carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The TOA energy
imbalance can probably be most accurately determined
from climate models and is estimated to be 0.85 ±
0.15 W m−2 by Hansen et al. (2005) and is supported by
estimated recent changes in ocean heat content (Willis
et al. 2004; Hansen et al. 2005).”
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.papers/BAMSmarTrenberth.pdf
Kan,
It’s models, all the way down. So the models need no confirmation with actual data. That is not science, but rather a mix of green religion and lefty politics, with ‘sciency’ window dressing to make it more credible.
Angech,
A nice world bank report on India: http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/immersive-story/2017/06/29/solar-powers-india-s-clean-energy-revolution
They are going strongly toward solar, but in the near term the energy needs are so great that coal will need to serve as the bridge. But, the plan calls for over 50% renewable (including hydro) by 2027, and most of this new capacity will be solar.
@stevef
Nothing easier to knock down than a strawman. I would have thought strawman arguments would be every bit as on the nose here as rhetorical questions.
SteveF,
Modelling is essential to climate science. It’s not a propaganda tool.
@Owen
“Modelling is essential to climate science. It’s not a propaganda tool.”
Modelling is essential to pretty well all advanced science these days. The claim that it debases science is based on a romantic view of science. We don’t have multiple earths in a laboratory so that men in white coats can run repeatable experiments on them.
bugs (Comment #163930): “Did you read the abstract.”
Yes I did, you jerk.
.
bugs: “none of them have been as rapid and deadly as ocean warming”
A claim for which you have NO EVIDENCE. Sorry to shout, but repetition is not evidence.
.
bugs: “The Northern region was the hardest hit by the recent El Nino … It’s no longer pristine”
You need to look up the meaning of “pristine”. El Nino is a natural process; it is not caused by global warming. Stubbornly repeating a claim won’t change that.
.
bugs: “Still waiting for evidence from Hunter that low tides are all that did it.”
Except for the little detail that you don’t care about evidence.
bugs: “Modelling is essential to pretty well all advanced science these days. The claim that it debases science …”
What debases climate science is reliance on unvalidated models, the refusal to take model validation seriously, and the ignoring of evidence of severe problems with the models. Almost all science relies on models of some sort, but climate science relies on evidence-free models.
So in science, models are validated against data. In non-science, data is adjusted to fit the models. In science, small trivial changes are recognized as such. In non-science, trivial changes are conflated into great apocalyptic perils. In science, those proposing radical results defend their position against skeptics. In nonsense…set non-science promoters if apocalypse silence critics and refuse to debate with skeptics.
News item to bugs, shallow water gets warmer than deep water. Speaking if deep water, bugs us floundering here….seems out if his depth when his repeating of talking points does not win the day….sort of like a sidewalk preacher endlessly repeating his gospel verses.
Regarding the claim that climate models aren’t propaganda tools, Merriam Webster gives us this:
I think it is obvious that media has spread ideas and information based largely on scientist claims regarding climate model runs intended to further a specific cause or damage an opposing cause. I post this only because the audacity of the claim, while not causing me to snort coffee out of my nose, did sort of take my breath away for a moment.
.
I’m not sure I have a case for this; the idea just occurred to me and I haven’t really thought it through, but I think it’s possible that the primary use of climate models has been propaganda, actually. Have climate models altered the direction of scientific inquiry, or really had any other effect or impact on anything? Real question. How would the world be different without climate models? I’m not sure they make any difference really, but I’m not positioned to personally know.
Talk about straw men.
Nobody here has made a general claim that models ‘debase science’. Steve’s exact words:
You two (bugs and owen) are turning into a bad comedy routine.
Modeling is like any other tool.
It can be used for whatever purpose the user wants, including propaganda or pure science.
A lot of climate modeling is being used as propaganda, namely to try to influence opinion to advocate for policy which climate science advocates think are desirable.
Lately modeling has been used to shore up the mismatch between projections and what actually happened, to try to explain and salvage the modelling efforts of the past.
I think that if climate models continue to be predicting more warming than actually occurs, that at some point, there will be a wholesale redo of most models, and they will end up using a lower climate sensitivity to conform the models to actual data. But that could take another 10 or 20 years.
Nic Lewis has been doing an amazing job pointing out errors in the modeling efforts of the climate advocates, and it has been a real pleasure to read and watch.
mark bofill (Comment #163942): “I think it’s possible that the primary use of climate models has been propaganda, actually. Have climate models altered the direction of scientific inquiry, or really had any other effect or impact on anything? Real question. How would the world be different without climate models?”
.
Very good questions. Climate models have impacted the public debates (i.e., they have been used for propaganda) and have a major influence on the flow of research funds. I am sure that early on they provided some valuable insights into the workings of the climate system. But for the last 20 years or so, they seem to have been mostly barren.
.
In properly functioning science, you build a model and compare it to reality. You find various ways in which the model differs from reality and you ask yourself: What are we doing wrong? The effort to answer that question leads to improved understanding. But climate modellers never seem to ask that question, so the science goes nowhere.
.
In fairness, I must admit that some main stream climate scientists seem to starting to address some of the outstanding questions. But they are a small minority. Hopefully, it is the start of the usual scientific process of self-correction. But I am not holding my breath.
.
Normal science advances largely by falsification. I put forward a model, and you poke holes in it. Either I patch the holes or my model falls by the wayside. But in climate science, all models are created equal and are deemed equally valid. No model is ever discarded because no one tries to show that other people’s models can’t be trusted. That is no way to make progress.
.
p.s. – The primary use of climate models is obtaining research funds to advance one’s career.
Mark Bofill,
“….I think it’s possible that the primary use of climate models has been propaganda, actually…..”
That is an outrageous statement. If widely believed it does debase science.
Mark Bofill: “….I think it’s possible that the primary use of climate models has been propaganda, actually…..â€
Owen (Comment #163946): “That is an outrageous statement. If widely believed it does debase science.”
Both Owen and Mark are correct. The debasement of science is possibly the worst consequence of climate science.
“The debasement of science is possibly the worst consequence of climate science.”
That certainly seems to be the view around here.
Owen,
In your opinion, have climate models been used to inform or direct policy? Do you believe that this use debases science? Real questions.
Read the definition of propaganda and explain to me how climate model use affecting policy does not satisfy that definition, please.
Mark Bofill,
Climate models are used to inform and direct climate science. They are powerful scientific tools that allow scientists to test their understanding of the complex climate system.
Charges that the underlying purposes of the climate models have been political are way off base.
I don’t think that recent estimates of global CO2 emissions are correct. If estimates are to be believed, global CO2 emissions have peaked. If that were the case, then it should show up in the atmospheric CO2 concentration. It hasn’t.
The 2016 CO2 annual average at Muana Loa for 2016 was 404.2 ppmv compared to 400.8ppmv in 2015. If CO2 emissions in 2016 were the same as 2015, the concentration should have gone up by about 2ppmv or less. Instead, it went up by 3.4ppmv. That difference is equivalent to about 3GtC extra carbon emissions. Since 2016 was an El Nino year, the higher temperature might have had an effect. But the average concentration for the first six months of 2017 are 2.3ppmv higher than 2016.
The evidence in the data is that global carbon emissions are still increasing at the same rate they have been increasing in the past, perhaps faster.
Hunter. Saying same opinion again is not evidence of anything
DeWitt,
I had wondered about the same thing. Could ocean uptake be slowing?
Owen,
You have avoided answering my questions. I’ve got a busy day ahead. I therefore shrug at you before I go on my way.
shrug
Mark Bofill,
Consider a case where a new Ebola strain emerges in Africa. Based on its epidemiology models, the CDC strongly recommends a certain course of action to the federal government. By your definition, that recommendation would be propaganda.
Yes, of course it would be. There is nothing necessarily sinister about propaganda.
DeWitt: “The evidence in the data is that global carbon emissions are still increasing at the same rate they have been increasing in the past, perhaps faster.”
That needs the qualifier “within the error bars”. I think that using year-to-year increases in mixing ratio has an uncertainty of about 10%. It would take something like 5 years for flat emissions to deviate by 10% from the trend line. The annual cycle in CO2 has an amplitude of about 3 ppm. And there are other sources of natural variation in CO2, such as El Nino. The emissions data may be off, but it will takes years before we can infer that from concentration data.
One more thing in this vein: I sometimes hear people argue that it’s great for scientists to be political activists. Why not, they ask. Well, perhaps this illuminates one of those reasons. Policy advocacy is by definition propaganda. I suspect many associate negative connotations with the word propaganda. Still – don’t get mad when somebody points out your favorite climate scientist (cough, Hansen cough-cough) is a propagandist. Climbing into the political pig pen means one will get those nice white lab coats dirty; if advocacy seems like a good idea, don’t whine about it afterwards.
Sorry for the rant I guess. Somehow it never seems like the right moment to explain this, and the discussion we just finished made it appear to be a good time to. uhm. rant about it. :p
DeWitt,
Yes I noted that that. It is odd to me that they use estimates of emissions as the benchmark and not actual CO2 measurements. It’s quite unclear how the emissions total gets determined. I would guess China is cooking the books (as they have in the past). Naturally Owen immediately takes the apocalyptic “it’s worse than we thought” viewpoint.
.
China Burns Much More Coal Than Reported, Complicating Climate Talks
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/world/asia/china-burns-much-more-coal-than-reported-complicating-climate-talks.html
.
The never ending effusive praise for China by the US greens has been very strange.
bugs projects that repeating an opinion is not evidence. 😃
When the true believer is losing they typically drop back on the argument from authority before arriving at ad him. bugs is demonstrating that rather well. The uselessness of GCM’s for regional predictions is well demonstrated. The failure of the peer review system across many disciplines has been well documented. The failure of “climate science” predictions with hotspots is well documented. The uselessness of most “climate science” predictions regarding storms, droughts, floods, slr, “ocean acidification”, etc. speak for themselves. The reactionary true believer tenacity in explaining away the failures of their hypothesis: that Earth is experiencing dangerous climate change and that human CO2 is the cause is as interesting as the contortions of a creationist explaining how their creation story is literally true.
Wind may be getting cheaper. It gets a lot of support from MSM claiming wonderful things. It’s technology that is over 300 years old, and turbine design is something we’ve been working on during the 100 years of aviation. It’s like trying to build a better bicycle. Sure you can gain some percentages points here and there. How much money do you have? Some may feel obligated to not overstate the attributes of this solution.
Mike M.,
I’m pretty sure that one could use statistical techniques a bit more sophisticated than the eyeball to pick up a trend change in less than ten years.
Owen,
“Charges that the underlying purposes of the climate models have been political are way off base.”
.
I must respectfully disagree. Climate science in general (and modelers in particular), seems wedded to providing scary projections of warming and its consequences for political purposes. .
The scary projections are usually couched in weasel words like could, possibly, might, and may, rather than firm testable projections… so the projections can never be proven wrong by reality. We KNOW most models are wrong about future warming, if only because they cover a wide range of diagnosed sensitivity, and there can be only one correct value. Worse, the models are all nore sensitive than empirical estimates indicate, further casting doubt on their veracity. ‘Models all the way down’ is not science…. it is only sciency.
Science of Doom has extensively reviewed the literature on the practicality of replacing fossil with wind and solar.
Start here: https://scienceofdoom.com/2015/07/30/renewable-energy-i/
I think the last one is this: https://scienceofdoom.com/2017/01/31/renewables-xviii-demand-management-levelized-cost/
I think the following quote from Renewables XVI is important:
When you see reports that wind and solar are getting cheaper than coal, it’s highly probable that’s levelized cost.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #163964): “I’m pretty sure that one could use statistical techniques a bit more sophisticated than the eyeball to pick up a trend change in less than ten years.”
Sure. But I did not see any sophisticated statistical techniques in your post. And I didn’t say ten years. But three years are not enough, especially when they include an El Nino.
Emissions are about 36 GT CO2 per year. If half stays in the atmosphere, that is 2.3 ppm. The cumulative deviation from the trend line from the 3 years pause in emission growth is maybe 15% of one year’s emissions, about 0.3 ppm. With an El Nino messing up the data, even sophisticated analysis probably won’t pick that up. But if the pause continues for a couple more years, we should start to see it in the atmospheric data.
DeWitt: “When you see reports that wind and solar are getting cheaper than coal, it’s highly probable that’s levelized cost.”
Right. Comparing levelized cost implicitly assumes that all generated electricity is of equal value. But “as available” power is not nearly as valuable as “on demand” power.
There is a strong correlation between average SST and year-on-year increase in atmospheric CO2. El Nino conditions generally lead to greater year-on-year increases; la nina generally leads to smaller increases.
.
It is unwise to draw conclusions about the longer term trend in ocean absorption of CO2 without considering the influence of average SST.
Mike M.,
I fit a straight line to the year over year change in monthly CO2 concentration. The residuals show autocorrelation at lag 1 and 2. After correcting for that, a residual control chart shows no evidence that there is a process change. Neither does a cusum chart of the corrected residuals. In the cusum chart, there was a drift away from zero during the period from 1980-1994, but it has come back to near zero and shows no trend change. However, the distribution of the residuals isn’t quite normal. It has fat tails. I haven’t tried to correct for that.
At ATTP discussing red teams and climate sensitivity a commentator repeated a version of Lucia’s assertation,
“In any mathematical physically possible model (never mind plausible) sensitivity must be positive.â€
In rebutting it
“Only in the set of such models where you define sensitivity as “must beâ€, which is not the set of all mathematical physically possible models as B Russell found out. Plausible has to be minded.”
I found an example of a negative climate sensitivity example
“On a lighter note I will give one example of a plausible negative climate sensitivity model.
Climate Sensitivity in nature should never be negative.
A trivial exception would be an array of solar panels, which are flipped by a motor activated by solar energy. The flip sides are all white and lock on flipping.
The small amount of solar energy needed to flip them now results in a continuous loss of energy to space over 50 years far greater than the original solar input.
Like perpetual motion this idea should be easy to shoot down?”
–
What am I missing?
On a secondary note this statement,
“Negative climate sensitivity means turning off the sun increases the temperature of the earth.”
was made. I thought this confused internal with external forcing and was incorrect?
Is he right?
As DeWitt points out, storage is a major obstacle for large scale use of renewables. Especially true of solar. Wind however has already made pretty deep inroads in windy states like Kansas (37%), Iowa (31%), South Dakota (29%), Oklahoma (28%), and North Dakota (23%). Texas, a highly populated state, was at 13% 2016. Those values are actual power produced, and not installed capacity.
Thermal solar, which maintains its own constant energy storage through its molten salt heat transfer fluids, in just beginning to make inroads in the American west and in Spain.
Photovoltaic power will soon be aided by rapidly decreasing prices in home batteries and utility grade batteries.
angech,
Positive sensitivity just means that an increase in external forcing, like the sun getting brighter, would cause an increase in temperature. I can’t imagine why anyone would argue about that.
Your example says nothing about sensitivity.
Are you sure they weren’t talking about feedbacks? There are two ways to describe feedbacks. The sum of all feedbacks, including the Planck feedback, must be negative. But if you exclude the Planck feedback (as is usually done), the sum of the remaining feedbacks could be either positive or negative. It is generally (but not universally) assumed that they are net positive.
SteveF,
I can buy the notion that the press might exxagerates and overstates findings or model predictions for the purpose of a good story or to make a predetermined point, and that certain individual climate scientists probably do the same.
But I see the role of the climate scientist much as I see the role of an epidemiologist – to provide informed advice to the government and to the public.
I think we will just have to disagree on the extent to which abuse by climate scientists occurs.
Owen,
There is a great difficulty in reconciling what you see as the role of climate scientists with the actions of many climate scientists. And the antics of climate scientists since climategate has if anything become even less authoritative and more authoritarian. Frankly you seem naive.
Owen,
I recommend reading The Honest Broker by R.Pielke, Jr. That is pretty much his definition of an honest broker. The problem is that too many climate scientists are actually stealth advocates. An open advocate is not a major problem. It’s the scientist who claims to be an honest broker but is really an advocate that’s the problem.
Just as with the model over empirical data issue, climate scientists always deem to choose the hotter of every choice they have.
.
Reports of their choices get lost in the re-telling of the tale.
.
Perfect example is the Karl 2015 paper.
DeWitt,
“It’s the scientist who claims to be an honest broker but is really an advocate that’s the problem.”
.
Yes, and that’s the 97% of climate scientists everyone keeps talking about. People go into the field because of their interest in saving the environment. It’s the most politically charged ‘science’ outside of perhaps political ‘science’. We can each judge exactly how much is politics and how much is science…. but there is a LOT of politics.
hunter,
“And the antics of climate scientists since climategate has if anything become even less authoritative and more authoritarian. ”
.
Yes, sort of like the “rico 20” climate scientists asking the Obama administration to pursue their political opponents using rico laws, all the while engorging themselves at the public trough. Beneath contempt.
.
But I don’t think they will be sending any letters to the Trump administration.
As the pathetic social mania of climate apocalypse continues to become itself O hope that those who pursued criminalization of climate skepticism will receive some mail from the Trump DoJ.
Owen,
In the US where the wind is and where the people are tend to be quite non-optimal.
Wind Speed:
http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/80m_wind/USwind300dpe4-11.jpg
Population Density
http://udel.edu/~timdag/apec480/proj1/pop_density_thematic.png
Looks like a lot of grid investment to make it work.
Dr David Schröder from the University of Reading
2017 September ice extent of 5.1 (4.6 to 5.6) mill km2
Rob Dekker SIPN was 5.4 M km^2 for the NSIDC average September :
Ron Clutz 2017 . It may yet beat out 2014 as the highest in the last 11 years.
3 similar results from 3 different methods, melt ponds, snow cover and high amounts of ice in the central arctic.
Fingers crossed for a no melt year!
@Kan
“Just as with the model over empirical data issue, climate scientists always deem to choose the hotter of every choice they have.”
Evidence?
@SteveF
“I must respectfully disagree. Climate science in general (and modelers in particular), seems wedded to providing scary projections of warming and its consequences for political purposes. .”
Are you sure you have cause and effect in the correct order there? The “political” purposes is ridiculous. Are you claiming there a global conspiracy to inject commie loving individuals with a high IQ into climate science for the sole purpose of bring down the West?
bugs,
Who said anything about conspiracy? Not me. The people attracted to climate science are most often people who already have strong political/moral beliefs about humans’ and their impact on the environment…. those beliefs are mostly green, and green is strongly correlated with ‘left’. It’s a bit like saying the people who enroll at divinity schools are religiously inclined before enrolling. Those on the political left believe expansive (and essentially unrestricted) public control of private activities is perfectly OK. The ‘solutions’ usually proposed for global warming are, shockingly enough, consistent with things those on the left would want in any case (global governance, wealth transfer from rich to poor, ‘economic justice’, etc.). Climate scientists are very political: very green and very left. That’s fine, but when you are attracted to work in a field because of your beliefs, you have to expect political pushback from those who do not share those beliefs, especially if you choose to act as a policy advocate. Dishonest ‘stealth advocacy’ will just piss off those who disagree.
bugs relies at the end of the day on the deceptive choices that all fanatics and extremists rely on.
Alright Bugs, I’ll bite.
.
.
Well, except for the ‘high IQ’ part. Commie loving individuals with a high IQ; I’m not sure it’d be realistic to speculate that there are enough such folk to sustain such a conspiracy. But I jest. Let’s examine the matter seriously.
.
So, starting at the beginning is usually best; let’s define our terms. (Sorry, had to trim my links to post this. People will have to google defs themselves if they want links):
Merriam Webser on conspiracy:
and then on conspire:
So – secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act? No, not so much. It’s no secret, and it’s not illegal in the U.S. to be a communist AFAIK.
.
Are you familliar with Naomi Klein? She’s not exactly a nobody:
.
I have not yet been able to bring myself to purchase her book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, but I’ve read about what she’s saying, and I’ve read her (Naomi) speak about her ideas. This summary from the book link I provided is decent:
.
So – not a secret, not illegal. Commies who want to bring down capitalism, bring radical change to the West? Well, here’s darling Naomi from the board of directors of 350.org.
Say Lucia, I’ve got a couple of versions of a comment that won’t post; keep falling into the bit bucket (trash) that for some reason. I wonder if you could fish one or the other of them out, if you can see them.
Thanks.
SteveF: “The people attracted to climate science are most often people who already have strong political/moral beliefs about humans’ and their impact on the environment…. those beliefs are mostly green, and green is strongly correlated with ‘left’.”
.
I think you overemphasize the ‘left’ aspect. People attracted to environmental sciences (like me) do tend to have a world view that biases them toward concern about human impact on the environment and the idea that the environment needs protection from humans. That falls well short of the secular green religion. It tends to be associated with left-of-center, but not necessarily the hard left that has taken over most of academia and now the Democratic Party.
.
If your concern about the environment guides your choice of research topics, it is a short step to thinking that your research is helping to “save the planet”. Then you become especially susceptible to confirmation bias and noble cause corruption.
.
If you are in climate science, then high climate sensitivity and bad consequences fit your bias; so such results get less critical examination than they should, while opposite results get treated with skepticism. That is synergistic with a more widespread problem in science: positive results are much better for career advancement than negative results. The minority of scientists who are more politically inclined tend to self-select for positions of influence, creating yet another bias in the same direction. The biggest bias comes from funding availability, which ultimately comes from politicians and bureaucrats. Now we are well on the way to turning reasonably respectable research into junk science.
.
The political left were relative late comers to the global warming badwagon. They jumped on when they realized they could use it to push the agenda they already had. I think that happened around the time of Gore’s movie and the IPCC Nobel Prize. Before that, the debate was not nearly so polarized.
.
Even now, I don’t think that most climate scientists are all that political or all that hard left (as opposed to left-of-center). But the ones who are political are the ones who get themselves noticed. Even if not hard left themselves, they seem to willingly allow themselves to be used by the left. The entire situation is unhealthy.
bugs (Comment #163986): “Are you claiming there a global conspiracy to inject commie loving individuals with a high IQ into climate science for the sole purpose of bring down the West?”
You mark your position as intellectually bankrupt when you need to support it by inventing crazy ideas to attribute to those who disagree.
Climate models were not created for political purposes. But they are now used for political purposes. A case can be made that politics has become their primary use.
Tom Scharf (Comment #163983): “Looks like a lot of grid investment to make it work.”
Texas put billions into their grid so that it could accommodate wind. That does not get included in the cost of wind. And it looks like they might have to spend even more on their grid. That to accommodate just 13% of power production from wind, in the state that probably the closest association of wind resources with high population.
MikeM,
The problem is that the “solutions” to global warming all pretty much demand the kinds of things the ‘hard left’ wants, and climate scientists/advocates don’t object. The issue is ultimately the “perceived cost”: if you do not value personal liberty (and the left doesn’t) then solutions which diminish personal liberty have little perceived cost. If solutions force upon humanity the things that you think humanity should be forced to do, then that is a negative perceived cost… AKA a benefit. For the left, the cost of ‘solving’ global warming is tiny or non-existent, and the political benefit huge. People on the right see an entirely different cost/benefit ratio, with enormous cost and tiny or non-existent benefit. Therein lies the fundamental disagreement.
Tom Scharf,
Right, one shoe does not fit all. California, AZ, NV, NM, UT, CO are exceptionally favorable for thermal solar or photovoltaic. For the east and west coasts, off-shore wind is a possibility that is booming worldwide. The Norwegians have developed less expensive floating wind turbines that can be placed way off shore in deep water. TX investing in upgrading their grid positions them for increased wind and/or solar.
SteveF,
It was news to me that I don’t value personal liberty.
SteveF,
News to me that I don’t value personal liberty.
I don’t think this is just SteveF’s opinion. Read Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything Capitalism vs the Climate.
Steve’s not making this up as he goes along. It’s not a conspiracy either – not secret, and not illegal. Nor is Naomi a nobody – she’s on the board of directors of 350 dot org.
Owen,
One can claim to value personal liberty, but when push comes to shove, favor the state over the individual. Kelo v. New London is a classic example of this. The Supreme Court justices on the left voted unanimously in favor of New London. Where Kelo’s home was is now an empty lot.
mark bofill,
350 dot org is the lunatic fringe of CAGW. Their goal of a return to an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 350ppmv is almost literally impossible to achieve absent the zombie apocalypse.
Why she thinks Capitalism is the problem when communist China is now by far the leading carbon emitter is beyond me.
DeWitt,
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. I hope Bugs and Owen agree as well.
.
Still – you can’t say SteveF is nuts to point out that there are people who think that way, because there are. Nutty as they may be, they still exist. How large a group is it? That’s harder to determine. Hopefully it’s a small fringe, don’t know.
…and right on cue New York magazine published a “serious” piece that represents the thinking of “climate scientists” who claim that so-called climate change will literally kill us all and make Earth uninhabitable. This is all President Trump’s fault for not staying in the Paris Agreement. And here we gave Owen cheerleading for offshore power, a costly failure , and echoing the false news that solar works. No admission of enviro destruction by big wind. No admission that “renewables” are not reliable or renewable. No addressing of the insane claims by climate hypesters. Just cheer leading.
SteveF (Comment #163997): “The problem is that the “solutions†to global warming all pretty much demand the kinds of things the ‘hard left’ wants, and climate scientists/advocates don’t object.”
Yes. I think your analysis of the left’s position is spot on. But I suspect that a poll of the silent majority of climate scientists would show concern more than alarm, modest support for radical top-down solutions, strong support for win-win policies, and considerable support for nuclear. Quite different from the hard left.
Owen,
Sadly you support people that want xenocidal reductions in human population. Who openly state democracy is not good enough to deal with “climate change”.
Owen (Comment #164000): “News to me that I don’t value personal liberty.”
That would come as news to most leftists. Such people are mistaken.
There is an old and important distinction between liberty and license. Liberty is the freedom to what is right, license is the freedom to do whatever you want. Conservatives support liberty and oppose license. Libertarians support both liberty and license. Progressives oppose liberty and support license.
The fact that some definitions of liberty encompass license does not change the above distinction. At most, it indicates that we need a different word for liberty as defined above.
Progressives like to say they are in favor of freedom, but when you ask for examples you find they are only in support of license. Note that the “freedom” to do what someone else thinks is right is not liberty, it is tyranny.
Edit: I should have said that conservatives oppose excessive license. We must have some freedom to do what we want.
Owen,
” For the east and west coasts, off-shore wind is a possibility that is booming worldwide.”
Very difficult to see this happening on a large scale. See for example the Cape Wind Project (near off-shore turbines in Nantucket Sound), which had a capital budget of $2.6 billion for a projected average production of 170 MW (peak production 454 MW). Aside from the grotesque capital cost per KW produced, the project faced endless lawsuits from local interests (eye-sore, disrupt navigation, disrupt bird migration, disrupt fishing, disrupt tourism), and political opposition from NIMBYs like the Kennedy’s, John Kerry, and many more. Politically mandated wholesale “must take” power contracts at $0.187 per KWH meant the project would deliver retail power at costs (eg ~$0.25-$0.30 per KWH) close to those in European countries who have gone insane (lots of wind power). Fortunately for me, the project is now pretty much officially dead. The local utilities canceled must-take contracts for power buys based on non-performance, a series of state permits for construction have expired, and the banks have consequently withdrawn financing. All that remains to permanently kill it is the expiration of federal environmental permits… and the Trump administration is unlikely to renew them. A small victory for sanity.
.
Absent mandated power buys and Federal/State subsidies, off-shore wind power is dead in the water. A tiny combined cycle gas turbine plant with 200 MW (dispatchable) power, much more valuable in terms of power than the above wind project, would cost about $250 million, reduce existing local emissions of CO2 by ~35% or more, and REDUCE local electricity costs. Land based wind is not quite as bad as off-shore, but still non-viable without subsidies and mandated power buys.
Owen,
Doubling electricity rates reduces personal liberty. I very much doubt you can see that. Mandating that you drive a small car with low fuel consumption reduces personal liberty (and maybe kills you in an accident).
.
As DeWitt notes, Kelo V New London also diminished personal liberty, and I doubt you can see that either. Fortunately, a lot of State governments (mostly run by conservatives, who could see the loss of personal liberty) responded to Kelo by passing laws forbidding that kind of private property seizure. The Trump administration is trying to undo many Obama era regulations which reduce personal liberty.
.
You may actually be able to see a pattern here.
Mike M,
“I suspect that a poll of the silent majority of climate scientists…”
.
If such a majority actually exists, then they should have the courage to stand up to the wingnuts that dominate the public face of climate ‘science’. I have seen zero evidence for the existence of such a silent majority.
SteveF,
It takes a lot of courage to destroy your career, or start a new one, which would likely be the result of going public. See, for example, Roger Pielke, Jr.
SteveF: “I have seen zero evidence for the existence of such a silent majority.”
Perhaps a consequence of their being silent. The silence is partly due to believing that scientists should not be political. Partly due to, as DeWitt points out, fear of career suicide. Partly due to thinking that we ought to do something and so not wanting to undermine the people who are pushing for action. Partly due to being overworked and over stressed and not wanting the hassle. Partly due to being so focused on their little niche that they don’t feel competent to speak out on the big picture.
DeWitt,
“Where Kelo’s home was is now an empty lot.”
.
Not nearly as empty as the heads of the five constitutionally illiterate numskulls who voted to support the seizure. (Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer)
.
Souter and Stevens are gone, but have been replaced by other constitutionally illiterate numskulls (Sotomayor, Kagan). We can hope that Ginsburg and Kennedy will soon be replaced by more sensible judges.
There’s an article in today’s WSJ on offshore wind power. The Martha’s Vineyard project guy says he hasn’t given up. The only functioning US project is the Block Island wind farm that produces up to a whole 30MW for $0.241/kWh. Of course they claim that large scale projects could get the cost down to $0.10/kWh, supposedly like it is in Europe. I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one. I also think that some creative accounting is being used to get that number.
Another article reports that Tesla sales went to zero in Hong Kong when a government subsidy was cancelled.
Owen, Bugs, explain how this happens.
.
NYMAG: The Uninhabitable Earth
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html
.
“This article is the result of dozens of interviews and exchanges with climatologists and researchers in related fields and reflects hundreds of scientific papers on the subject of climate change. ”
.
“Most people talk as if Miami and Bangladesh still have a chance of surviving; most of the scientists I spoke with assume we’ll lose them within the century, even if we stop burning fossil fuel in the next decade.”
.
It starts:
“It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today.”
.
“parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable”
.
“last month’s satellite data showing the globe warming, since 1998, more than twice as fast as scientists had thought”
.
“But no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough.”
.
“the altogether incomprehensible scale of that problem, which amounts to the prospect of our own annihilation;”
.
“the (IPCC) authors still haven’t figured out how to deal with that permafrost melt.”
.
“In fact, all (extinction events) but the one that killed the dinosaurs were caused by climate change produced by greenhouse gas”
.
“the species needs to colonize other planets in the next century to survive”
.
“the most credentialed and tenured in the field, few of them inclined to alarmism and many advisers to the IPCC who nevertheless criticize its conservatism — have quietly reached an apocalyptic conclusion, too: No plausible program of emissions reductions alone can prevent climate disaster.”
.
“Since 1980, the planet has experienced a 50-fold increase in the number of places experiencing dangerous or extreme heat;”
.
“As soon as several decades from now, the hajj will become physically impossible for the 2 million Muslims who make the pilgrimage each year.”
.
“In the sugarcane region of El Salvador, as much as one-fifth of the population has chronic kidney disease”
.
“The End of Food”
.
“every degree of warming, yields decline by 10 percent. Some estimates run as high as 15 or even 17 percent.”
.
“the world’s most arable land turning quickly to desert”
.
“By 2080, without dramatic reductions in emissions, southern Europe will be in permanent extreme drought”
.
“Climate Plagues”
“There are now, trapped in Arctic ice, diseases that have not circulated in the air for millions of years ”
.
“by 2050, 5.2 billion people will be reckoning with it (malaria)”
.
“current trends suggest it (CO2) will hit 1,000 ppm by 2100. At that concentration, compared to the air we breathe now, human cognitive ability declines by 21 percent.”
.
“The Chinese “airpocalypse†of 2013 peaked at what would have been an Air Quality Index of over 800.” (caused by climate change).
.
“Every degree Celsius of warming costs, on average, 1.2 percent of GDP”
.
“There is a 12 percent chance that climate change will reduce global output by more than 50 percent by 2100”
.
“we will see at least four feet of sea-level rise and possibly ten by the end of the century.”
.
“tornadoes will grow longer and wider and strike much more frequently,”
.
“The strongest hurricanes will come more often, and we’ll have to invent new categories with which to describe them”
.
This is probably one of the worst articles I have ever seen, especially inferring this is consensus science. That climate science allows this type of propaganda to go unchecked does them no favors.
Well, time to eat some Michael Mann crow, ha ha. That’s a first. Here is his response to the above article:
.
https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist/posts/1470539096335621
.
“I have to say that I am not a fan of this sort of doomist framing.”
.
“The article argues that climate change will render the Earth uninhabitable by the end of this century. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The article fails to produce it.”
.
“Also, I was struck by erroneous statements like this one referencing “satellite data showing the globe warming, since 1998, more than twice as fast as scientists had thought.”
.
I hereby withdraw my unqualified “climate science allows this type of propaganda to go unchecked” statement. That crow tastes terrible by the way.
So MM is starting to go the way of Hansen. Amazing.
More amazing, the fact that he and I agree on that New York magazine bit apocalyptic fluff is something to ponder…..
I’ll eat my crow well done with a nice habanero pepper sauce and quinoa on the side….
DeWitt,
“The Martha’s Vineyard project guy says he hasn’t given up.”
.
He is in denial. He can’t legally proceed, even if he had funding, and he doesn’t. His Federal permits will expire. He has burned through $100 million doing studies and paying lawyers, and he is no closer than he was years ago. He didn’t even have the money to fight for an extension of permits for a transmission line before they expired last year…. he pulled the plug on all legal actions at the last minute. Look at the Cape Wind website… not updated in years. To top it off, the current governor is a moderate Republican, not a crazy green Democrat.
.
It’s over, no matter what the guy says.
.
“The only functioning US project is the Block Island wind farm that produces up to a whole 30MW for $0.241/kWh.”
.
It is far enough off shore (and behind Block Island!) to be difficult to see from shore. Also small enough to not raise electricity rates too much. The original Block island plan was for 100+ turbines, not the five they got; that was probably because some saner heads prevailed. I believe there are ongoing state lawsuits over the extremely high “must take” contract price, which some claim is a failure of fiduciary obligation to the public.
If you qualify ‘uninhabitable’ to mean under water, then there might be a small grain of truth to the statement. But that assumes that no sea walls will be built. In the TV series, The Expanse, that’s set several hundred years in the future, they show Manhattan island still occupied, but surrounded by a sea wall. The novels are better, by the way, but the TV series is pretty good.
PEW: Respect for academia by Republicans has declined 20% over the past two years.
http://www.people-press.org/2017/07/10/sharp-partisan-divisions-in-views-of-national-institutions/
.
This is an own goal by academia that they really need to correct. I think by “correct” I mean they need to reduce the moralizing on culture issues. This shouldn’t be hard to fix if the will to change is there.
Republicans control funding for many academic institutions. End explanation for why this is important.
Tom Scharf,
That piece was just lurid climate-porn to entertain know-nothing NY liberals and greens (of which there are, sadly, millions), none of whom even care if it is accurate.
.
“This shouldn’t be hard to fix if the will to change is there.”
.
It’s not. They are unrepentant leftists, and they never change.
The Expanse books were pretty good. I liked the early stuff better. The TV show was a good adaption, but the books had so many moving parts that it was hard to do no matter what.
What will be interesting will be to see how many opinion leaders join withIN in condemning the New York magazine nonsense. The more interesting question is will MM ponder the fact that this article grew directly out of his alarmist work?
British wind: Read all about it http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/04/01/uks-bet-offshore-wind-pays-costs-plunge/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/17/mersey-wind-turbines-liverpool-uk-wind-technology
The Brits are betting the house on offshore wind
Off shore wind employing the new very tall turbines produces more energy due to better wind strength and wind consistency. For countries where it is appropriate, like the UK, it will soon wipe out coal for good. Good riddance!
UK Parliament: The Price of Power: Reforming the Electricity Market
Chapter 3: Failures in the market
https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201617/ldselect/ldeconaf/113/11306.htm
.
Average domestic electricity bills in Britain, adjusted for inflation, were 58 per cent higher in 2016 than they were in 2003. 10% of the bill was climate change policies in 2013, 24% in 2020. How one calculates this is apparently a bit political. The UK has the highest industrial energy costs in the EU. They were the second lowest in 2003.
.
The UK pays about 50% more for domestic power than the US. It appears they subsidize the domestic sector with the industrial sector so the numbers bounce around.
Tom,
The point still stands, I think, that with continually falling prices and more efficient turbines that wind will undercut coal and that new installations of capacity will be almost entirely wind and at lower user prices.
Denmark in 2016 was at 42% wind and 56% total renewables. https://cleantechnica.com/2016/12/13/renewables-produce-56-denmarks-domestic-electricity/
These countries may pay more in the short term, but will in the end be less easily blackmailed by Russian gas.
Owen: “The Brits are betting the house on offshore wind”.
And on a cold, dark winter evening, when peak demand tends to occur, and the wind does not blow (as often happens in the British Isles at that time of year), they can shiver in the dark.
Denmark can get away with lots of wind since they are part of larger grids in central Europe and Scandinavia. Over investment in wind is starting to be a big problem in South Australia. Unless you have lots of hydro, wind still leaves you dependent on fossil fuel, unless you are OK with the grid working intermittently.
Betting the house on huge storm vulnerable, non-scalable intermittemtly producing machines sitting literally over the horizon in some of the stories roughest water on Earth. Sounds like a genius plan.
Mike,
Well, on the upside, if CS turns out to be high and we keep burning, we might nudge temps up a little more. Perhaps the Brits won’t shiver as much as they would have otherwise.
Gotta look for the silver linings…
Owen,
Denmark can rely on Norwegian dams to supply power when the wind doesn’t blow. Of course they pay a premium for that power. When they have excess wind power, they can sell it to Norway for much less than the generating cost. Great for Norway, not so much for Denmark.
Germany is similar. They can get nuclear power from France (and build coal burning plants) when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. We don’t have that option.
You really should read the series at Science of Doom I linked above. 100% renewables is simply not an option for the foreseeable future. Anyone who says it is usually ignores something or uses a ridiculously low cost for, say, storage. In the real world, a substantial amount of quick spin-up fossil fuel plants will be required.
Inexpensive natural gas from hydraulic fracturing/horizontal drilling is what is hurting coal in the US, not solar and wind.
Oh, and I hope you don’t like birds, raptors especially, and bats much. Wind farms are very hard on them.
There is a hope for more efficient wind turbines.
We’ve been refining airfoils for the 100 years of aviation we’ve had. With this we may find another 10% improvement. There could be masts twice as high as current ones with more cost.
What we are trying find is wind turbines that turn on more of the time. If they work in lower wind speeds, we are harvesting in a lower energy situation. So there isn’t that many Megawatts to be found.
Owen,
Denmark pays about 3x the US costs for electricity, about the same as Germany. You keep saying it is possible, I agree. I keep saying it is expensive, and I imagine you know that too. If the citizens of those countries wish to pay more for their energy in order to fulfill climate goals then that is fine by me. If the citizens of the US vote for that sacrifice that is fine by me as well (not that I would vote for it myself). I would just want there to be a clear eyed view of what you are paying for (more expensive, less reliable, cleaner) and what you are getting in return (marginal returns in climate results). The citizens should have their say.
.
If clean energy hits cost and reliability parity then count me in. The trend is such that it may happen in the next decade or two and I’m not so bull headed as to not see that as good news. It is “good” that other countries are paying for the large scale development costs instead of the US. I did investigate rooftop solar here in Florida this year and it still wasn’t cost effective, but much better than it was only five years ago.
.
As DeWitt says SoD has some good numbers on how progressively harder it gets when more intermittent capacity is added.
Over at Ken Rice’s blog (ATTP) Michael Tobis has a quest post about what the red climate team exercize the Trump administration proposed. A few things stand out: 1) Tobis, to his credit, at least acknowledges a red team willing to construct a limate model with low sensitivity would be a reasonable exercise, 2) there are lots of hysterical commenters furious that Tobis would ever give legitimacy to other POVs 3) shockingly, one of the few sane voices on the thread is William Connoley (of fuding edits fame at Wikipedia)… first time he ever sounded remotely reasonable 4) Mosher beats up on some of the worst rubbish with reasonable comments and 5) I found the thread quite entertaining, in the same way that monkeys throwing poop at each other is entertaining… definitely not something you would ever want to get involved in, but still funny to see the poop flying about. If you need a laugh it is worth a read…. except for Willard, who never writes anything worth reading, not even for its humor content.
DeWitt,
I have started reading through the SOD series and will continue. It will take me a while. I have great respect for SOD and will not lightly discount what he /she has to say.
My assumption has been that Denmark, with 42% wind penetration, must have developed some workable strategy to incorporate that much intermittency to the grid. I assume part of the strategy is using gas as a flexible baseload.
Tom,
Costs between countries have caused me some confusion. Denmark charges private homeowners 3X what they charge industries, so they are doing some subsidizing. Also, a big part of my bill is transmission costs that get added to the per KWh cost. I don’t know if European costs include transmission or not. I looked up European rates and in general they are higher than US rates. Even Norway with 100% hydro is substantially higher than US.
Owen,
SOD has a PhD in a climate related field (oceanography?), but quit when he became frustrated with the politics. I believe he has some association with Princeton University (adjunct?), but teaches earth science to high schoolers most of the time (I think). SOD is smart and writes very good, well documented blog articles.
I wonder whether this thread was triggered by the article linked above https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/6mfumt/as_a_parent_how_do_you_cope_with_global_warming/.compact
Owen: “Denmark, with 42% wind penetration, must have developed some workable strategy to incorporate that much intermittency to the grid.”
The strategy is called “Norway”. Denmark exports power when they have too much and imports when they have too little, effectively using the hydro capacity in Norway for storage. It is not a strategy that scales.
DaveJR,
Apparently it was if you look at the references. The comments on threads that talk about this are kind of nutty. If one has a big dose of climate anxiety the cure is learning more about the science, not less. One will quickly learn sea level rise isn’t exactly Japan tsunami 2011. 50 feet in 15 minutes is a disaster. One inch per decade not so much.
Owen,
The fees charged to customers seems pretty decoupled from the costs of generating power so it’s pretty hard to separate things out in an apples vs apples comparison. It will be interesting to know what final lifetime costs for wind generation are once long term data comes in. Put it up, tear it down, maintenance, actual usable power, etc.
@SteveF
More opinions. Evidence?
Mike M,
Denmark evidently uses multiple approaches, back and forth transfers to Norway, Germany, and Sweden and flexible baseload coal plants. Excellent report by Agora Energiewende in 2015: https://www.agora-energiewende.de/fileadmin/Projekte/2015/integration-variabler-erneuerbarer-energien-daenemark/Agora_082_Deutsch-Daen_Dialog_final_WEB.pdf (in English). The report says: “Danish coal power plants that were originally designed as base load units have been transformed into some of the most flexible power plants in Europe. For example, the load gradients of existing Danish coal power plants (3-4% PN/min) already achieve what is termed the “possible state of the art†for German technology.” The Danes have North Sea oil and gas, but nothing is said about gas plants which have very quick start up/shut down.
Danish coal power plants are also capable of generating either electricity or heat, giving them additional flexibility to handle intermittency in wind power. (taken from Agora Energiewende report)
Owen: “Excellent report by Agora Energiewende in 2015”
So let’s see what the lessons are:
It is impossible to get most of your power from wind.
You can get high wind penetration if you look at only a small piece of a market, lower if you look at an entire market.
Building wind turbines requires building fossil fuel plants.
Denmark has been spending large amounts of money to upgrade coal plants, so as to enable them to produce less power.
Denmark appears to be locked in to using coal for space heating.
Wind power is great! If you are insane.
Mike M,
“Wind power is great! If you are insane.”
.
…. or a Dane.
.
Denmark takes ~60% of GDP as tax… astronomical electric power rates are small potatoes in comparison.
DeWitt, no one ever provides an answer of how much electricity would cost if it is 100% renewable energy, including electric cars.
No one renewable technology is “the” answer. It is going to be a matter of evaluating the local conditions to come up with the appropriate balance and estimating how much gas baseload is needed for backup.
Off grid is also becoming a real option for people who have no hope of being able to afford the real cost of grid power. It’s not a complete solution for many but it gives people some power as compared to none.
Nuclear would be a good option but.
1. No one wants a nuclear plant near them.
2. No one wants a nuclear waste disposal site near them.
3. The cost to build is very high.
bugs,
Renewables would be a good option, but:
1. They double or triple the cost of electricity.
2. No one wants windmills near them.
3. Solar uses huge amounts of land… unless rooftop, then even more expensive.
4. They are inherently intermittent, and tend to destabilize power grids.
5. Adding storage is either astronomically costly, technically difficult, or both.
Nuclear power has a long record of use… consider that virtually all power in France is nuclear, and has been for decades. It is the obvious best solution, and it is costly mainly because geen airheads, the idiotic anti-GMOs, and the loony anti-vax crowd always delay construction with endless lawsuits. By the way, I lived and worked within a few miles of a nuclear plant for many years, and never had a problem with that.
SteveF,
Yes. Also, I’ve linked this before; some argue that regulatory ratcheting also drove the costs of nuclear plants too high artificially.
I’m about 50 miles out from Bellefonte but I’ve got no problem with it; I hope they get it up and running one of these days. I think nuclear plants are cool. 🙂
bugs,
I’m not going to pretend I spend my life worrying about the poor, cause I certainly don’t. Still, tell me this seriously if you would, because I’m asking honestly. I’d really like to know. How does this square in your mind? You demonstrate here that you know that there are people who will ‘have no hope of being able to afford’ power if you have your way. Obviously, not being able to afford electricity will impact the quality (and arguably the quantity as well) of these peoples lives. China and India and the rest of the world are going to do what they are going to do; I think history shows some will do ‘the right thing’ and other won’t. How is this OK, to drive up the cost of electricity? How do you justify doing this to our low income people?
It seems to me that you are advocating the certainty of screwing the poor to protect against the chance of high climate change costs.
[edit: I mention China and India doing what they will do because I’ve never understood how it helps for say half the world to quit burning and the other half to go full speed ahead. So it slows down climate change a bit if you’re right. We’re going to degrade quality of life and drive up energy costs – what, so Chinese and/or Indian poor people can enjoy a higher quality of life until climate change devastates everybody? This has never made any sense to me.]
Thanks in advance.
Nuclear also has a load matching problem if you want to use it for more than the roughly 60% of generation that constitutes base load. But that is three or four times what you can get from wind or solar before you have a problem.
Matching production to load is a lot easier with nuclear than wind or solar. One kilowatt hour of storage for each kilowatt of nuclear capacity would allow something like 90% of demand to be met by nuclear. With wind you can have a week of low production; the storage needed to cope with that is entirely unfeasible.
bugs: “Off grid is also becoming a real option for people who have no hope of being able to afford the real cost of grid power.”
mark bofill: “It seems to me that you are advocating the certainty of screwing the poor to protect against the chance of high climate change costs.”
.
In Hawaii, upper middle class people taking advantage of solar subsidies have driven up the price of electricity so much that poor people are apparently going “off grid”. But not, of course, in the way that bugs implies since since such people obviously can not afford to do that. They just decide that they will have to make do without electricity, other than what can be powered by flashlight batteries.
.
Of course, bugs is not actually advocating screwing the poor, either in developed or undeveloped countries. He is just ignoring the inevitable consequences of the policies he and Owen advocate. Economics d3n!al.
Mike, Bugs,
Thanks for this. Bugs, it’s not my intention to attack you here. I think I disagree with you, that’s all. If my tone was overly aggressive, I regret that – not my intent. Thanks.
Many eugenics believers in the day would have been appalled to have been confronted with the logical outcomes of eugenics.
I’ve lived within 60 miles of a nuclear plant for over 20 years. I don’t care and I’ve literally never heard anyone bring it up in a conversation.
.
Nuclear safety is a real issue and shouldn’t be minimized. Part of this is clearly radiation-phobia, but if I saw this happen to my local plant I would be in full panic mode:
https://youtu.be/kjx-JlwYtyE
.
Anti-nuclear activists don’t present the case accurately or fairly, but what else is new? The main drawback of nuclear is cost and that could be handled with better design and standardized plants. Obviously nuclear waste needs to be stored safely, the way we do it now is crazy, an invitation for terrorists.
.
Nuclear R&D should be part of the movement to clean energy. This is an area where compromise can be made.