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CBDunkerson at 22:37 PM on 7 January 2013Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going
The truly sick thing with the IPCC 50 year estimate for the 'distinct possibility of seasonally ice-free' is that, if the observed trends continue, then there is a 'distinct possibility' that in 50 years the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free year round. If the PIOMAS data is charted by total volume rather than anomaly you get;
Note that the Winter maximum values have decreased from ~33 to ~22... almost as much as the ~17 to ~3 decrease in Summer minimum values. If we take that Winter maximum decline as a flat rate then it'd be about 65 more years before it hit zero... but the decline is visibly accelerating and thus 50 years is in the ballpark.
Of course, there have been arguments for a long time that the declines in the Summer minimum will level off (any time now)... and the whole 'months with no sunlight' thing would certainly argue for there being some kind of floor on how low the Winter maximum can go without a profound change in climate.
The large 'ice islands' which break off land ice areas will prevent a true zero sea-ice volume until Greenland has largely melted out, but we will almost certainly see a 'near zero' ice volume before 2020 if the PIOMAS results are accurate. After that we should start seeing just how warm Arctic waters get with no ice cover and be able to start making better projections for what is going to happen to the Winter maximums.
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Tom Curtis at 22:28 PM on 7 January 2013Greenhouse effect has been falsified
JasonB @99, he also fails to explain why temperatures fall with increasing pressure as you go deeper into the ocean. He tries to conceal this by asserting that:"PV=nRT ,Avagadro number and all that.Pressure is proportional to temperature. This also explains why temperatures fall(1 degree per 200 metres) with altitude and rise in the deep sub sea level areas of the earth."
But, of course, temperatures do not rise in the ocean abyss except at the sites of volcanic vents. Even there, while the water emitted from the vent may be as warm as 400 C, within meters of the vent the ambient temperature is a frigid 2 degrees C. Worse for high treason, the ideal gas law alone is not sufficient to explain the temperature profile of the troposphere. You also need to employ the laws of thermodynamics, the universal theory of gravitation, and the assumption that convection is the main form of heat transfer within the troposphere. And worst of all for high treason, he forgets is earliest lessons in algebra. Taken together, basic physical law explain the approximate -6.5 C per kilometer altitude temperature profile of the troposphere; but that only gives you a line with a slope. Knowing only the slope, you cannot deduce the intersection with the x-axis, ie, the surface temperature. Not only has he got his high school science wrong - he can't even get his primary school maths right. -
JasonB at 21:09 PM on 7 January 2013Greenhouse effect has been falsified
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." High treason, your hypothesis fails to explain why the stratosphere warms with altitude. Perhaps more reading is in order? -
high treason at 21:01 PM on 7 January 2013Settled Science - Humans are Raising CO2 Levels
Humans are responsible for some of the rise in CO2 levels, but not all. Basic high school science- if water rises in temperature, gases are less soluble and thus released. (---snipped---)Moderator Response: (Rob P) Please familiarise yourself with the comments policy. This site does not exist for the purpose of hosting contrarian graffiti a.k.a sloganeering. Stick to one aspect of the science at a time so that others may respond, and also find an appropriate thread in which to paste that comment. If you use the search function, you'll find thousands of posts which cover most aspect of climate science. As for your un-snipped comment see the OA not OK series - ocean warming is too small to affect the seawater CO2 uptake in any significant way. -
mercpl at 20:51 PM on 7 January 2013Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going
The PIOMAS volume graphs are quite scary. I actually took the last PIOMAS graph and gave it to a few friends and changed the x-y axes to represent some stupid made-up values like vampire movie gross ticket sales, they all predicted a zero of about 2015-2020. Then I showed them that they were really predicting Arctic sea-ice volume. http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/ -
high treason at 20:40 PM on 7 January 2013Greenhouse effect has been falsified
There is a very simple explanation for the 33 degrees extra temperature on planet earth and it is basic high school science from around 10th grade. PV=nRT ,Avagadro number and all that.Pressure is proportional to temperature. This also explains why temperatures fall(1 degree per 200 metres) with altitude and rise in the deep sub sea level areas of the earth. As for planet Venus, apart from being closer to the sun, pressures are 92 times that of Earth at the surface. As on Earth,temperatures fall with altitude. You would think that temperatures would be more even in the atmosphere of Venus if the "runaway greenhouse" were for real. The same effect I think occurs on Jupiter- the outer gas is cold, but deeper in the atmosphere as the pressure builds, it is considerably warmer. Think how refrigerators work- they compress the refrigerant gas, which get warm. The heat is radiated out, then when the pressure is released, the gas cools to allow us to have that icy cold beer on a stinking hot day. I lay down the gauntlet for some physicist out there with more brains than myself to check this simple hypothesis and gain immortality and cudos. -
JasonB at 19:22 PM on 7 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Another point worth making about those EIA levelised costs is the regional variation. Solar PV is $152.7/MWh on average, but as little as $119.0/MWh in what are presumably the sunniest places in the US, and wind drops to $77.0/MWh in the windiest places. Wind and solar tend to have larger cost ranges due to location so including nonsensical locations when determining the average is probably a little unfair. Yet another point is the cost of CCS, especially for coal. Given the intrinsic problems with storage (in particular the sheer scale required and the long-term risks of containment failure) I don't think this is going to be a viable option and research into it seems to be more of a PR exercise to justify further expansion of fossil fuel usage. KJD: It appears subsidies are not included in those costs because it specifically mentions "Note: These results do not include targeted tax credits such as the production or investment tax credit available for some technologies, which could significantly affect the levelized cost estimate." -
Sapient Fridge at 18:57 PM on 7 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
The interesting thing about the EIA levelised costs of power generation is the speed that solar PV seems to be dropping at. In the 2012 estimates for 2017 installations solar has a cost of $152.7/megawatthour, but the previous year's 2011 estimate for 2016 quotes $210.7! -
Doug Hutcheson at 17:55 PM on 7 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
villabolo @ 45, I concur that a 4°C warmer world may not see the extinction of our species, but I wonder about the goods and services that would be available in an isolated population of even 50,000. Ancient civilisations had relatively low populations by today's standards, but they also had numerous robust civilisations in the same neigbourhood, with which they could trade. A group that specialised in metallurgy could trade its goods with another group that specialised in shipbuilding, who in turn traded with groups based on intensive farming, and so on. In the future I fear we are headed for, survivor pockets of humanity may be separated by long and inhospitable distances, making trade less possible. A remnant population of 50,000 is not going to be manufacturing flat screen TVs, or transmitting podcasts, or making mobile phones, or delivering any of the other gadgets and services we now consider benchmarks of our civilisation. Remember, all the easily accessible resources have already been extracted from our environment. Without the machines we rely upon today, nobody is going to be able to smelt aluminium, steel, zinc, or titanium, even if the group had sufficient surplus food to enable them to dedicate some of their people to extracting the ores. On the contrary, I expect 'incompatible with organised human society' to mean smaller, mobile extended-family groups will develop into hunter-gatherer or simple agrarian communities, whose concentration will be on acquiring adequate food, shelter and clothing to sustain life, whilst defending their territory against hostile invaders. That's why I made the comment about an Old Testament future being wishful thinking. On the other hand, a cure for our dirty habits with carbon may magically appear and make predictions like mine ludicrous. Nothing would make me happier than to find I am making a fool of myself over a mere 4, 5, or 6°C. While hoping for the best, I am preparing for the worst. I have moved my family from a coastal city to a country town 433m (1421ft) above sea level; I am growing veges, fruit and nuts; we have a chook run; we do not fly anywhere and drive only when public transport or Shanks' pony can't get us to where we need to be; we have the ability to live off-grid. Not that any of our preparations will help our personal security when the brown stuff hits the revolving cooling device. Alarmist? I am certainly alarmed at where the smart people are saying we are headed. I would be extremely happy if trustworthy people could show me why my gloomy, worst-case prognostications are wildly inaccurate. (Note: denialist attempts to cheer me up by overturning the laws of physics are bound to fail, so please don't try.) -
JasonB at 17:29 PM on 7 January 2013The Y-Axis of Evil
The strangest thing about Boehm/Smokey's contorted graphs is that they still show acceleration despite his protestations otherwise. The earliest HadCRUT data lies above the magenta line, the middle section dips down to the blue line, and the end part breaks through the magenta line again. It's easier to see (Ha! What a concept...) if we look at the residuals after removing the trend, and even clearer if we use the non-obsolete HadCRUT4. (The figures of 0.741546672 and 0.7562876736 come from finding the linear trend for the period and multiplying it by the number of years in that period; the green line is both to help visualise the residuals as well as prove the detrend figure is correct by showing the result is horizontal.) If you try fitting a polynomial to those residuals then a quadratic does a nice job of showing what's left after the linear trend has been removed. Who to believe? Boehm/Smokey or the data? The good thing about his claims is that they have to be one of the easiest to debunk. :-) -
desertphile at 15:46 PM on 7 January 2013Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going
I am not a math wizard, but just fitting a simple curve function on the observed data it looks closer to seasonally free of sea ice closer to year 2022, conservatively. William M. Connolley might yet lose his wager. -
KJD at 14:48 PM on 7 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
The central claim that the Heartland Institute is making is that "renewable" energy is more expensive than "conventional" energy. There are inevitable ambiguities in such a statement, but the normal method to compare generic costs of different types of generation plant is levelised cost of electricity (LCOE), which converts capital and running costs into a single metric. See EIA data for US here. This suggests that gas combined cycle is typically the cheapest plant, with wind , hydro and geothermal comparable to coal, but solar power somewhat dearer. The data is 2017 forecast; historically coal would have been cheaper than wind. I haven't checked the methodology in detail, but subsidies and externalities such as CO2 emissions are usually excluded unless specifically stated. Actual costs will vary from this due to site-specific factors as well as fuel contracts and the cost of capital. Hydro and geothermal are only available in very specific locations, and new large-scale hydro is often strongly resisted due to its local environmental impact. So under renewable mandates, wind is often predominant. But wind, along with solar has the drawback that it is not dispatchable, i.e. you can't bring it on when you want to. High penetration of such technologies will inevitably require large-scale (or widespread smaller-scale) storage, and maybe investment in grid management to deal with more intermittent supply. Another factor is whether the renewable mandate in practice is meeting some or all of a demand increase or whether it is cannibalising existing production (if demand is flat/falling due to energy efficiency and/or economic downturn). If the latter, which is certainly the case in some electricity systems outside the US, then the mandate forces new investment that would otherwise not be required at all. On balance, on currently available costings, mandated renewable energy will be incrementally more costly than no mandate under most circumstances. Frankly, as has already been pointed out, if it wasn't, then there would be no need for the mandate; utilities would choose renewable power as a matter of course. How this additional resource cost manifests itself in retail prices - which is the focus of the analysis in the original post - depends on a number of other factors. Generation costs are only a part of the total cost of supplying electricity to end users. Renewable energy policies may include subsidies that do not get funded through retail prices. Electricity markets are highly regulated, in some cases with a price cap that may have limited sensitivity to changes in underlying costs. Even where market pricing prevails, the supply and demand dynamics may mean that a small increase in the underlying cost mix of generation does not immediately result in higher prices. If the market is working efficiently, though, you will see the price effect over the longer term. There is obviously one large gap in the above analysis. It does not include the cost of the externalities. you can make a case for various externalities for all sorts of generation, but greenhouse gas emissions are the most significant. any valuation of these is inevitably highly contestable and so for purposes of analysis it is better to consider it separately. It does mean however that you cannot say with certainty that renewable energy mandates are economically inefficient. Conventional economic wisdom would however suggest that pricing the externality is the most economically efficient way to deal with it. -
JasonB at 14:12 PM on 7 January 2013Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going
Agnostic: One of the sad things about this "debate" is how "conservative" is taken to mean "assume things won't be bad unless proven otherwise", or "err on the side of optimism despite evidence to the contrary" — the opposite approach to that normally taken in risk management. A doctor notices something suspicious. Which is the more conservative stance? 1. "Let's get some tests done to make sure it's nothing serious." 2. "Let's assume it's OK until you start showing signs of serious illness." Given the almost ludicrous extent to which the IPCC underestimated the rate of Arctic sea ice loss in the last report,
it's appalling that they have apparently been bullied into updating it to the meek claim that "A seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean within the next 50 years is a very distinct possibility".
Here we have a doctor looking at someone already showing signs of serious illness and still thinking "conservative" means "Let's not break the bad news because they might still get better"...
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villabolo at 13:38 PM on 7 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Doug H. @ 44, I personally believe that we'll have pockets of civilization here and there. You can have a civilization with as little as 50,000 persons. -
Doug Hutcheson at 10:55 AM on 7 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
CBDunkerson @ 45Further, since the carbon being emitted here comes from plants... which took the carbon out of the air in order to grow... there is no ongoing accumulation of atmospheric carbon as a result.
Doh! Thanks for pulling me up on this. Stupid mistake for me to make, considering I have pointed this out to others in the past. The only methane I need to worry about is that currently sequestered in frozen form, as tundra or clathrates, because it is not currently taking part in the carbon cycle. You also saidmethane in the atmosphere quickly breaks down into CO2 and water
I knew it broke down eventually, but did not characterise that conversion as happening quickly. I have read that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for many years (a century?), but thought methane stayed in the atmosphere as methane for a smaller, but still significant, number of years. So, I did a bit of googling and found the IPCC list of greenhouse gasses, which includes both an indication of their persistence and their global warming potential. The link is here, for any who are interested. Thanks for making me do my own homework - it is the best way for me to learn. -
bibasir at 10:36 AM on 7 January 2013Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going
How about "where it is and where it's going." -
Riduna at 10:15 AM on 7 January 2013Climate Show New Year podcast special: where it’s at and where it’s going
Interesting comment about IPCC authors of the soon to be published 5AR – that they would prefer to be conservative in their reporting, findings and conclusions rather than accurate. Probably explains why they conclude that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by the end of the century. The problem of course is that such seemingly wrong assertions on Arctic sea ice cast doubt on other conclusions reported by the IPCC. -
StElias at 09:16 AM on 7 January 20132012 in Review - a Major Year for Climate Change
Does anybody have any insights on this latest bit of Alaska weather research? "The overwhelming majority of Alaska is getting colder and has been since 2000, according to a study by researchers with the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks." Having lived in Alaska all my life (73 years) this doesn't come as a great surprise, since, other than north of the Brooks, the last three years have been somewhat more overcast and cooler, particularly in South Central. However, it seems to me that the winters, although still long and cold, have not been as harsh. Fairbanks shows a significant cooling trend over the last 10 years according to this study, yet you never see interior weather get down to those -80F shots anymore or experience long 8-12 week stretches of -35 to -45. Per the study, it is another story though on the slope, Barrow does show significant warming which we all are aware of up here. When Umiat has the warmest day temperature in the state, like 74 last summer, then something is strange. http://www.adn.com/2013/01/05/2743379/study-shows-alaska-got-colder.html -
Philip Shehan at 08:52 AM on 7 January 2013The Y-Axis of Evil
Thanks to the moderator for the links. I assumed that they would just come up when I copied them with the text. Thanks KR for providing the "provenance" for the graph. -
Don9000 at 03:31 AM on 7 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
An interesting report (based on data through last April) on the ongoing shift away from coal in the US can be found at the US Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA): Monthly coal- and natural gas-fired generation equal for first time in April 2012 Of course, the shift--quite visible in the accompanying graph--is predominately from one carbon-based fossil fuel to another, but at least it is from coal to natural gas. The EIA has another interesting graph which illustrates, even as the report focuses on our ongoing reliance on fossil fuels, just how sharply the US managed to break away from its upwardly trending dependence on oil in the mid-1970s following the OPEC oil crisis: Energy Perspectives: Fossil fuels dominate U.S. energy consumption I think the sharp break in the upward curve, while it reflects a serious economic disaster, nevertheless illustrates that things can change dramatically in a short period of time. With these two reports in mind, I suspect a well-implemented carbon tax could give green energy a dramatic and rapidly realized boost. It is probably necessary too, in order to counter the new attractions posed by natural gas. Unfortunately, one big obstacle to progress is that the same blank states we see in the map Dana has included are in a general sense dominated by Tea Party politicians who have shown what I'll charitably call a deep-seated reluctance to acknowledge the reality of global climate change. -
The Y-Axis of Evil
Philip Shehan - Oh, and Boehm/Smokey has been called on that particular graph before... As discussed in the opening post, he appears to have quite a hobby of generating what turn out to be misleading figures with compressed axes, cherry-picked and statistically insignificant short time frames, of representing something like the Central England Temperature (CET) record as representing the globe, on and on and on. I don't expect him to suddenly change his mind when these issues are pointed out... -
The Y-Axis of Evil
Philip Shehan - That graph is from Monckton Myth #2: Temperature records, trends and El Nino, and is an average of 10 temperature records brought to a common baseline. That averaging should minimize biases from any particular dataset involved. The fit appears to be a simple quadratic trend line. -
CBDunkerson at 01:23 AM on 7 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Doug H, methane causes more warming than CO2 on a 'per molecule' basis, but is not a major factor in the current AGW for the simple reason that methane in the atmosphere quickly breaks down into CO2 and water. Further, since the carbon being emitted here comes from plants... which took the carbon out of the air in order to grow... there is no ongoing accumulation of atmospheric carbon as a result. Effectively, it is a transitory boost in warming potential due to atmospheric CO2 being temporarily converted into atmospheric methane. There is no ongoing accumulation. The only way for the greenhouse effect from this issue to increase would be to significantly increase the amount of land devoted to paddy fields and/or livestock. As to ocean acidification... I'm not sure whether the continued absorption of 2 ppm emissions would cause sufficient upper ocean acidification to offset the effects of greater dilution. However, that's also at 50% of current emissions, which we can get well below. If we reduce the atmospheric CO2 level then we will also reduce ocean acidification. Replacing electricity generation and automotive transportation with renewable energy would accomplish both. -
mdenison at 23:03 PM on 6 January 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
Planet offers independent record of global warming A graphic comparing the proxy and measured GST can be seen on the lead authors pages here -
Philip Shehan at 18:30 PM on 6 January 2013The Y-Axis of Evil
In a current discussion on WUWT (http://tinyurl.com/by6lp2h) concerning a paper where a figure incorrectly (in my opinion) states that there is no acceleration in the temperature trend from 1880 to the present, D Boehm is caught out in a flagrant manipulation of the Y axis to flatten the data set. My initial comment is at Philip Shehan says: January 4, 2013 at 8:43 am The discussion with Boehm and others continues thereafter but his manipulation is evident here where my losing patience unfortunately leads me to being a little rude Philip Shehan says: January 4, 2013 at 4:42 pm D Boehm, Look, don’t try to blow smoke. You have been caught out manipulating the data sets to produce a chart which attempts to hide the trend. Here is your chart going back to 1850: http://tinyurl.com/bkoy8or and here is your chart with the irrelevant camouflage removed. http://tinyurl.com/af5xwmv Your linear fit, stripped of the camouflage is inferior to the nonlinear fit: http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png Later Boehm describes the non linear fit of the data as being “without provenace” and “John Cook’s cartoon”. I rebut that but I often get this from “skeptics” when I present this figure. Is anyone there able to give details of the actual temperature data set used and the function used for the nonlinear fit?Moderator Response: [RH] Added hot links. -
Doug Hutcheson at 12:24 PM on 6 January 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
John Hartz, the second bullet point has a typo:2022: the year we did our best to abandon the natural world
2022 should be 2012Moderator Response: [JH]Typo corrected. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. -
Doug Hutcheson at 12:19 PM on 6 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
villabolo @ 43, I have read that an increase of 4°C to 6°C in global average surface temperature would be inconsistent with organised human society. If true, and if we are stupid enough to let it happen, an Old Testament future might be only wishful thinking. Let's hope that I am a Jonah, not a Cassandra. -
Doug Hutcheson at 12:04 PM on 6 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
CBDunkerson @ 42, I'm glad my concerns are unjustified. I must have misunderstood the information I read about land use being a significant contributor to AGW. What I (mis)thought was that methane emissions from paddy fields and livestock made up a large CO2e contribution to our greenhouse gas emissions. It is refreshing to find something about AGW that is not as bad as I feared! John Cook might have some ideas about how I absorbed this incorrect meme, considering I don't read the Pielkes, or WTFUWT. If natural sinks are consuming ~2ppm/year and one of those sinks (the biggest?) is the oceans, will our continued emission of 2ppm/year not continue to acidify the oceans? -
adavid at 09:25 AM on 6 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
William @6 A cliff it certainly is, but the ocean carbonate system has always been near the bottom. I always say you can't talk about OA without reference to a Bjerrum Plot as it distinctly shows the relationships between pH and carbonate species. The FAQ would be improved by one and an associated discussion.
As for titration, it is a standard test of seawater samples to determine Total Alkalinity.
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shoyemore at 09:18 AM on 6 January 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
The UK's Channel 4 showed a documentary tonight asking the question Is Our Weather Getting Worse?" The answer was an uncompromising Yes, with AGW as the culprit, and not a Lord Lawson, Viscount Monckton, or a James Delingpole in sight to argue about it. Since the year 2000, the UK has had the warmest, wettest, coldest and driest periods in its history. The documentary emphasised weird weather in previous centuries, like an actual Medieval tornado, but showed that frequencies of extreme weather, even of tornados, were rising. And it pointed out this was true not only in the UK. Channel 4 "Is Our Weather Getting Worse" What is refreshing is that Channel 4 has taken many fringe positions in the past, like screening the downright dishonest The Great Global Warming Swindle -
hig314 at 07:51 AM on 6 January 20132013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #1
The last article about volcanic activity is poorly written with some mistakes and misrepresentations. Probably better to go to the more detailed LiveScience article that it was based off of: http://www.livescience.com/7366-global-warming-spur-earthquakes-volcanoes.html -
villabolo at 07:33 AM on 6 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Mark-US @ #41 Nomadic goat-herding? Are we back to Old Testament days? ;-) -
KenM at 06:50 AM on 6 January 2013The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
Scaddemp, thanks. That would explain it. I am just using the LS error. -
Mark-US at 06:20 AM on 6 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
@John (39), How big a rectangle? Is the drainage moat as cheap and as effective as just burying drain tile? -
Mark-US at 06:15 AM on 6 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
@Andrew (25) and those who replied; Best place: Desert wastes, to poor for farming, but can sustain goats. Rationale: The "best place" is anywhere the human population remains within local carrying capacity. Since everyone is just as smart as we are, when the migrations come in earnest the entire population is going to seek their own idyllic Keweenaw (or Michigan's Beaver Island for that matter). No matter how stable these places might be for gardening and homesteading, they will be loved to death by EVERYONE. In the end, carrying capacity in these oases will be overshot by a long margin more than the nomadic goat-herding carrying capacity of desert wastes they walk away from. And their will be a lot fewer guns per hectacre in the scrub as well. So I'd say, figure out where everyone else is running, then figure out how to live wherever they left. See http://www.amazon.com/Goatwalking-A-Guide-Wildland-Living/dp/0670828467 -
scaddenp at 05:24 AM on 6 January 2013The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
KenM, temperature series are strongly autocorrelated. You must account for this to get proper error bounds (ie not a simple LS error). -
John Russell at 04:14 AM on 6 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
I just came across this graph, which tells quite a story. Note the apparent correlation with the 'Arab Spring'. -
Rob Honeycutt at 02:51 AM on 6 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
I definitely hear you, Jonas. On one hand I'm trying to tap into rampant consumerism to launch the project. On the other hand I'm trying to solve problems that are a direct result of rampant consumerism. There are so many problems to solve that I think it just can't be done in conjunction with launching a product. As it is I have an extremely broad vision related to a simple product launch. But I believe the vision I'm laying out eventually will begin to encompass more and more of the aspects that you're bringing up. A key element is just the act of bringing products in-house. So many industries have "externalized" all their problems by doing outsourcing to Asia. Send it to Asia and you don't have to worry about labor problems, ecological problems, regulatory problems, etc., etc. Those problems clearly don't disappear; they're just externalized. Out of sight, out of mind. When companies start to become "makers" again, they have to address all those issues again. They have to start solving real problems. That's a big part of what I'm trying to advocate with Elroy. Don't sweep problems under the rug of Asian production. Face problems and solve them. -
funglestrumpet at 01:07 AM on 6 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
That should read 'taking all the trouble!' -
funglestrumpet at 01:05 AM on 6 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
@ Moderator Thanks for all your trouble. In the end I had to rely on the email. For information: Right clicking gets me to the save as intruction, which eventually comes up with the options of where to save it (in the normal way), but then nothing happens when I try to do so (no matter how long I wait). I have been commenting elsewhere under my real name and seem to have upset someone. Oh hum, modern democracy: 'if you cannot win with facts, then win without them' seems to be the maxim. Pity Old Mother Nature is not so easily hindered in her endeavours. And yes, I have a firewall and antivirus (premium version), plus some software that is supposed to ensure that I have all the correct settings for protecting my computer, but somehow I have Chrome going in round in circles and another site that will not let me read the web page because of a 'long running script' which their admin do not recogise and cannot understand. So beware one and all. -
sol6966 at 23:26 PM on 5 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
littlerobbergirl @ 41 Another promising energy storage technology that has potential is Liquid Metal Batteries. An excellent description of the technology can be seen in the following TED Talk by Donald Sadoway http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Sddb0Khx0yA This technology appears to be scalable. It may even be possible to convert Aluminium Smelters, as the basic hardware is the same. -
funglestrumpet at 21:29 PM on 5 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
Rob @ 8 I get this message: Oops! Internet Explorer could not connect to darchive.mblwhoilibrary.org:8080. While it would not surprise me that my computer is the miscreant, I would not expect to get that message if the address is correct. Could you confirm that it is, please? (Though I don't know what I am going to do if it is.)Moderator Response: [DB] Have you tried right-clicking on the link and selecting the "Save link as" option? Failing that, check the email account you used to log into SkS. -
CBDunkerson at 21:12 PM on 5 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Doug H, the degree of impact from 'land use' issues is contested, but the IPCC ranks it fairly low. Claims that it is a major factor in current CO2 levels come only from the Pielke's (it was Roger Pielke senior's main area of research), Ross McKitrick, and other climate contrarians. That said, the primary 'land use' arguments are that deforestation has decreased CO2 sequestration in natural sinks and shifted planetary albedo. Neither of these actually 'emits' any carbon. Effectively, their impacts (however large or small they may actually be) are already 'factored in' to the calculations / logic I was using. That is, if natural sinks (already diminished due to land use) are currently absorbing ~2 ppm worth of emissions per year... then decreasing our total emissions to the 2 ppm level would stop the atmospheric accumulation. That would require a 50% reduction in emissions... and thus we could keep ~25% of our current emissions for large tractors, aircraft, and other energy intensive applications and still see the atmospheric greenhouse effect decreasing back towards natural levels over time. We do not need a zero fossil fuels solution to fix the problem. We just need to deal with electricity generation and general transportation (i.e. cars). We probably can adapt most other fossil fuel applications to renewable power, but we shouldn't allow any exceptions to be used as arguments that 'we cannot fix AGW without giving things up'. -
Bernard J. at 20:27 PM on 5 January 2013The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
KR. Thanks for that. It's been a while since I read the top of the original post so I missed the second button. Now I can have some fun. -
KenM at 18:57 PM on 5 January 2013The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
Kevin C, thanks. That makes sense. So the trend is from minimising the sum of the squares and the error is based on the standard deviation of the sum of the squares. I actually downloaded some data (GISTEMP) and wrote a little code of my own. I can reproduce the trend but, for some reason, the 2 sigma error seems to be about a factor of 2 smaller than the trend calculator here gives. This is probably getting more technical for this comments page, but is there something else needed to get the error, a weighting for example? -
Doug Hutcheson at 15:11 PM on 5 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
From p15 of the FAQ document:Reaction of anthropogenic CO2 with carbonate minerals will ultimately cause the average ocean alkalinity to get back into balance; however, full recovery of the oceans will require tens to hundreds of thousands of years.
Hundreds of thousands of years, to eliminate the effects of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. What a dangerous species we are! -
The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
Bernard J. - There is a variation removed version that can be found from the Trend Calculator link entitled:"See here for more information."
Moderators - perhaps this link could be directly accessible (and labeled) from the Trend Calculator page? -
Bernard J. at 13:57 PM on 5 January 2013The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
Is there any chance that Foster's and Rahmstorf's 2011 treatment of the global temperature record could be added as an option for the calculator? And if it's not too cheeky to ask, would it be possible to include an option that permits the return of the type of graph I posted a few days ago? -
Jonas at 12:55 PM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
Since I think, that we (rich or relatively rich people in the west and elsewhere) will not only have to make the industry greener, but also reduce consumption to achieve acceptable and fair share levels of ecological footprint, it cost me a little frowning and thinking before I supported the project (after all it's a gadget and my personal goal is to reduce gadgets). According to a talk by a business professor (Niko Paech) given in Munich, efficiency from specialization is increasing up to a certain scale of savings and then negative feedback problems of too long supply chains kick in, at least ecologically. This also means, that we not only have to manage these problems via waste reduction in a lean/intelligent way, but we need to look at the general ecological optimization equation (when will more complex and specialized products values be overcompensated by ecological loss) and constraints (ecological footprint): if we manage to stop the "social arms race" for ever more hyped ("me too" and not "me need") complex soon outdated and to be wasted products and if we manage to develop more robust and less failure prone products (e.g. an exchangeable battery for the Elroy), we avoid waste on the demand side and also can produce more products locally or at least repair them locally (replace the battery for the Elroy, headset plug and usb plug easily accessible for repair: that's where all these gadgets break, ...). Here is one document (german+english) from Niko Paech ( http://www.postwachstumsoekonomie.de/Paech_Oekonomie-jenseits-Wachstum.pdf ). -
littlerobbergirl at 12:37 PM on 5 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
I've just been reading about liquid air energy storage, these people; http://www.highview-power.com/wordpress/?page_id=1405 All made from off the shelf kit, factory size
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