A question about climate change/global warming.

well that wasn't too difficult

that was lovely to watch but i wanted more

ugh no more delingpole pls

if you've got the time, this series of videos is pretty great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAjo

that's part 1, they're about 10 mins apiece, and there's 13 of them i think

The Delingpole segment referenced above:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Xu3SQcIE0

"I am an interpreter of interpretations"

THAT is the guy who broke the climategate e-mails?

how do people like this gain any authority or trust whatsoever?

I am forced to actually transcribe his closing statement just to stare at it:

'it is not my job to SIT DOWN and READ peer-reviewed papers because I simply haven't got the time, I haven't got the scientific expertise. What I rely upon is people who HAVE got the time and the expertise to DO IT and write about it and interpret it. I am an interpreter of interpretations.'

That is jaw dropping. What a prat.

That's a lot like the explanation some medical cranks give when someone asks them why they haven't done any scientific testing to see if their particular brand of snakeoil actually works: "I don't have the time to find out if I'm full of shit or not! I'm too busy saving lives!"

that quote needs to make the rounds. it needs to be his representative quote, that and perhaps the one about 'truly there just aren't enough bullets'. any paper of note that ever gave time to both sides of the debate in an attempt at objectivity needs to do a story on this and just publish that quote near the top of the page, to make it clear that one of the sides represents world scientific consensus and the other side is basically led by a twit in an angry clown mask who becomes incomprehensible under the slightest questioning.

Heads are going to roll for this, they’ll have to. But however many heads do roll it won’t be enough. Always remember this: the Warmist faith so fervently held and promulgated by the Met Office is exactly the same faith so passionately, unswervingly followed by David Cameron, Chris Huhne, Greg Barker, the Coalition’s energy spokesman in the Lords Lord Marland, and all but five members of the last parliament. And also by the BBC, the Prince of Wales, almost every national newspaper, the European Union, the Royal Society, the New York Times, CNBC, the Obama administration, the Australian and New Zealand governments, your children’s schools, our major universities, our minor universities, the University of East Anglia, your local council….

Truly there just aren’t enough bullets!

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100069327/climate-change-there-just-arent-enough-bullets/

Almost all the responsible and/or intelligent people in the world disagree with my conclusions. Therefore, they should be shot.

Truly an example of conservative 'humor' at its 'finest'.

from tonight's SOTU:

"Now, clean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they’re selling. So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all – and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen….."

Wait a second...did "clean energy" just get redefined as including nuclear, clean coal and natural gas?

Obama's been pro-coal since his Illinois state house days. I can see a plausible case for creating incentives (carbon tax) for converting existing coal plants to natural gas over, say, 5 years as an inexpensive interim solution that would reduce electricity generation GHG emissions by 40-45% (while utility scale nuclear, wind, solar thermal, etc are built over a generation). We're not going to get that from an Illinois (or Wyoming, or Montana) politician.

We're not going to get that from an Illinois (or Wyoming, or Montana) politician.

― Pauper Management Improved (Sanpaku), Wednesday, January 26, 2011 5:47 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

Or Pennsylvania, or West Virginia or Kentucky etc. We're fucked.

If the only way to get a massive boost for solar, wind and small-head hydro projects is to feed the corporate pigs some subsidies for (*ahem*) "clean coal", then I am willing to hold my nose and go ahead with it. Something needs to happen that to change the present fossil fuel-centric equation in favor of cleaner energy. This is a case where half a loaf is still likely to be a long term disaster, but at least smaller, slower disaster than preserving the status quo.

The argument I often hear in favor of clean coal goes along these lines: It's in our own best interests to perfect & distribute Clean Coal technology to China & Russia since they're doing it anyway.

I can see a plausible case for creating incentives (carbon tax) for converting existing coal plants to natural gas over, say, 5 years as an inexpensive interim solution that would reduce electricity generation GHG emissions by 40-45% (while utility scale nuclear, wind, solar thermal, etc are built over a generation). We're not going to get that from an Illinois (or Wyoming, or Montana) politician.

― Pauper Management Improved (Sanpaku), Wednesday, 26 January 2011 00:47 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Converting coal to NG is not negligible thing to do. Since you are replacing baseload you want to be operating combined cycle which means new turbines and new or heavily modified boilers. There's not much saving or benefit over build new especially as you have to get that base load power from somewhere else. So essentially you are building new at ~ $750/kw. Cartbon tax would have to be huge to negate the effect of fully depreciated assets.

They need to change the rules on how thermal plants are costed. Fuel costs don't have to be factored in right now which means they look cheaper than they should compared to renewables.

The sad fact is that there is no way of passing an energy bill without votes from those bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry. It means that way more than lipservice has to be paid to 'clean' coal and shale gas.

A gently effective demolition of Christopher Monckton just now on Storyville on BBC4.

rockin' the faulty thyroid look

it's ok tho 'cause he can cure aids and cancer and meningitis

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00y5j3v/Storyville_20102011_Meet_the_Climate_Sceptics/

Can somebody (hello, Z S) summarise why the latest kerfuffle about peer review is the crock of shite it inevitably must be?

xp Ed:

Coal-fired generation sites already have the water supply, facilities site and transmission lines, so replacing them with combined cycle gas would be relatively cheap (ca $1/W installed). Far, far cheaper than achieving similar emissions reductions via coal gassification and C02 sequestration. The 309 GW of coal fired generation in the US could be replaced for about $309 billion, about 20% of this year's fiscal deficit. Not all at once, mind you (it would take time, a decade or so, for shale gas production to ramp to required needs), and it would make no sense whatsoever if the coal was exported to be burned elsewhere.

But the point is to create a wedge issue to divide the political bloc of fossil extraction states. Before shale NG became economic this decade, it was believed there was only two decades of supply left. Once the general plausibility of an interim NG, long-term renewables & nuclear policy becomes accepted, then the consuming states & NG states would have the mass to halt further coal leases by the BLM in the Powder River Basin etc. The goal is to make coal off-limits globally, and quickly. When we're back below 350ppm in 1000 years any survivivors will have the records of the famines of the bottleneck century, and can decide whether exploiting the remaining coal is worth the risk.

xpost james

I have to confess that I'm not sure what the latest kerfuffle about peer review is!

This kerfuffle: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/wrong-is-wrong-a-reply-to-the-real-noise-at-real-climate/

Where does that $1/W figure come from. I generally carry $750/kW as a figure for capital cost of new gas generation so that seems higher. That said, that's an industry number held almost as a talisman and I should probably look at the EIA numbers again. I'd be very happy with a $1/W figure, it makes selling batteries $250/kw more profitable.

OK, confusion in my mind between Conventional Turbine and Combined Cycle.

xpost, that's funny, I read the original RealClimate post on the day it was published, but had no idea that there was a "controversy" that emerged out of it!

To be honest, I read O'Donnell's response at ClimateAudit.org, and then Steig's rebuttal to the rebuttal back at RealClimate - and both sides of course claim to be completely correct and basically claim victory - but I'm having trouble getting over the fact that O'Donnell is choosing Steve McIntyre's ClimateAudit.org as his platform! And that the link to the kerfuffle has a big ad for a book about "climategate" side, which of course has been repeatedly exonerated by a number of commissions (though, predictably, the exonerations got about 1/10000000000th the media coverage as the accusations). McIntyre is pretty renowned for being full of shit constantly, from the petty to the libelous (and renowned among skeptics as a hero), and like many other prominent skeptics, isn't even a climate scientist (he's an expert in the business aspects of mineral exploration . Anthony Watts, of WattsUpWithThat, another prominent skeptic blogger, is a weathercaster. Mark Morano, of ClimateDepot, is a professional trashbag).

So, I don't know...based off of what I've seen published in ClimateAudit in the past, it's really, really, REALLY hard to support O'Donnell's side. Then again, even the National Enquirer breaks a legitimate story every once in a while, so...? No, I can't do it. ClimateAudit is irredeemable!

uuuuuuuuugh

NOAA and NSIDC estimate that thawing permafrost will turn the Arctic from a carbon sink to a carbon source by the mid-2020s, a feedback loop "strong enough to cancel 42–88% of the total global land sink". AND, I'm assuming to simplify the study, they made the assumption that all of the carbon in the thawing permafrost would be released as CO2, and none as methane (many times more heat-trapping than CO2), even though it's known that much of the carbon in permafrost is contained as methane.

http://i54.tinypic.com/2nu6h5k.gif
Carbon emission (in billions of tons of carbon a year) from thawing permafrost

Wish more people would listen to this dude:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6TXXDSQwCE

From one of my local Twitter contacts this morning, after a major snowstorm hit Cleveland last night/today:

I just had to drive through nearly a foot of global warming in my driveway. #AnInconvenientBlizzard

To which I followed up with:

Confusing weather and climate = Not A Good Look

"My house's thermostat says it's 67 degrees, so how can there be ice in my freezer?!"

Global warming=hotter air=holds more moisture=makes more snow when a cold front hits. #nothardtounderstand

lol @ thermostat line

"say, why do we drive in the parkway and park on the driveway?!?
#icanalsiveannoyingandstupid

this made me laugh. a climate skeptic's graph, via tim lambert's deltoid:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2011/02/12we22.gif

i guess this quick lil' post is aimed toward people who get the feeling that all this climate change stuff is a little blown out of proportion, but i wanted to highlight the first comment on Friedman's op-ed today, which was written by Australia's former Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull:

Recently I was visiting with an Asian Environment Minister I knew well from my own days as Australia's Environment Minister. We discussed these issues and he said to me "My conclusion is that the short sightedness and greed of mankind - especially in the rich developed world - is so great that in a hundred years this planet will be uninhabitable for billions of people."

Turnbull goes on to counter that with a more guarded view ("I don't share that gloom and remain optimistic that before it is too late we will cut global greenhouse gas emissions and contain, if not stop, global warming. But there are some environmental challenges which are profoundly existential"), but I think it's worth mentioning that at least some political environmental leaders of the world recognize the gravity of the situation, and apparently they discuss this openly with each other.

PS sorry for linking to Friedman!

And really, this soon-to-be unanswered post belongs just as much, if not more, in the Energy thread. Or really, in a food/energy/water/climate change thread. I think there's already one like that, but the subject matter is so relentlessly gloomy that it attracts rolling eyes.

I dont get why people say things like "DO you belive in global warming" - is it really a question of belief when ~90% (yay tilda!!) of the world's scientists say it is valid? I guess the question is whether you believe in science at all

I wonder where all the, "look, there's snow on the ground in late April, global warming is such bullshit" people go when we hit record-breaking triple-digit temps in early June.

Yeah, one of the worst common perceptions is that global warming means no more cold temperatures. When in fact, there will continue to be record-setting low temperatures. It's the trends that matter, of course. I always thought this chart was instructive:

http://i54.tinypic.com/2j424nm.jpg

Romney draws early fire from conservatives over views on climate change

His views about climate change in particular put him at odds with many in his party’s base.

“Bye-bye, nomination,” Rush Limbaugh said Tuesday on his radio talk show after playing a clip of Romney’s climate remark. “Another one down. We’re in the midst here of discovering that this is all a hoax. The last year has established that the whole premise of man-made global warming is a hoax, and we still have presidential candidates that want to buy into it.”

Then came the Club for Growth, which issued a white paper criticizing Romney. “Governor Romney’s regulatory record as governor contains some flaws,” the report said, “including a significant one — his support of ‘global warming’ policies.”

And Conservatives4Palin.com, a blog run by some of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s more active supporters, posted an item charging that Romney is “simpatico” with President Obama after he “totally bought into the man-made global warming hoax.”

All this criticism, even though Romney's position on mitigating climate change is predictably weak and muddy:

“I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s getting warmer,” he said. “I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that. I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know that there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past, but I believe we contribute to that.”

Romney added that “it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.” He also said he does not support a cap-and-trade policy, saying it would put American companies at a competitive disadvantage in the world. “We don’t call it ‘America warming,’ ” he said. “We call it ‘global warming.’ ”

But it was his line that “humans contribute” that sparked the conservative backlash.

It does seem that the right has backed off on denying that the globe is warming, with them now just saying it's not man-made.

either way better weather proof your house or rent

can someone tell me when the first "cooling center" opened in the u.s.? were they common out west and i just never knew about them? cuz whenever they mention on the news that cooling centers are open in various cities it makes me think of dystopian sci-fi books.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_center

We had them after Hurricane Charley hit--hurricanes tend to soak up every bit of atmospheric moisture when they hit, so there was nothing to protect us from the horrid effects of South Florida's summer sun. Also, we didn't get power back everywhere for a few weeks.

Sorry, about the long quote here, but this is so mind boggling I had to share it. This is the full transcript of the caller on Rush Limbaugh's show that generated the quote in the WashPo article about Mitt Romney that I posted yesterday. It's like arguing with a doorknob.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Mike in Hanover, New Hampshire. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Thank you, Mr. Limbaugh.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: I was actually quoted by you yesterday. I was the person who asked Mr. Romney at the town hall meeting about his position on global warming. And you, unlike almost everybody else, actually did me the courtesy of quoting some of my questions before you gave the answer. Anyway, I read the transcript that you provided, I read the transcript of your show yesterday --

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: -- and just had a few comments on it.

RUSH: Go ahead. Fire away.

CALLER: Well, sir, first of all --

RUSH: Let me first, by the way, here's his question. This is the guy who asked Mitt Romney at his announcement meeting, the question was, "Nearly all other candidates suggest that there's no scientific consensus on climate change. Some insist it's not even occurring. We can't have a meaningful discussion about solutions until there's agreement about the problem. Will you, sir, state now that under a Romney administration, global warming will be accepted as reality, and this reality will form the foundation for all climate energy policies?" That's the question and you're the guy that asked it.

CALLER: Right. Right.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: Prior to that question, however, I provided a bit of context. If you don't mind I'd like to read that piece, too. First of all, I wanted to specify the difference between policy and science. I said that how to deal with climate change is a policy issue; science of climate change is not. Anyway, my question was not about policy, that is, how do we mitigate global warming, do we do cap and trade or carbon credits or whatever, but it was about the recognitions of science. And I specifically quoted from a 2010 National Academy of Sciences report, and two quotes here. The first is, they concluded -- and, by the way, the National Academy of Sciences, as you know, is considered the Supreme Court of science in this country. It was founded in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, and it's charged with giving the Congress unbiased scientific information. Now, their conclusion was, quote, "A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems."

RUSH: Then they've lost all credibility. It's a bogus claim.

CALLER: Let me go on. They then went on to say, "Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found wrong is vanishingly small. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities. And then I asked my question, so that's the context of the question. Your response was that there was evidence even in the last year that established this whole premise of manmade global warming is a hoax.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: I don't know where you're getting the hoax from, sir. I mean I'm looking at --

RUSH: It's called the University of East Anglia in England and the Hadley Centre for Climate Change Research where they basically made it all up, pure and simple. It's a hoax. There's nothing true about it.

END TRANSCRIPT

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_060811/content/01125112.guest.html

!

he is funny

4 tornadoes in Maine this year - I'm just sayin' - don't be hatin' on the global warmin! aint suualy no 'nadoes in lobsterland!

well, if anybody would know, it'd be rush

here's a hilarious chart:

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/07/238287/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/MediaMatters1.png

no surprises with fox, but to me the bigger story is WTF CBS? WTF NBC? WTF ABC? WTF CNN? and to a lesser extent, WTF MSNBC. it's not so much that fox has way more anti-environment people on their shows in comparison to supporters, it's more that the other channels don't even cover the issue.

There's a new report out that's being proclaimed by deniers as evidence that we're about to enter an ice age, and that all of climate change is really just solar cycles that we can't control (instead of something that has to do with CO2 that we pump into the atmosphere).

It's already being headlined at Fox as "Global Warming Be Damned, We Might Be Headed for a mini-Ice Age"

For those that care, here's the inevitable debunking that won't get covered:
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/15/246202/sun-hibernation-deniers/