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Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
In addition to dana1981's points, it has been shown that distributed renewable systems provide a steady baseline power supply - Archer and Jacobson 2007 show that just 19 wind sites in the southwest US (no solar in that investigation, which would increase availability due to different time patterns) gives at least 1/3 of the average power at current baseline dependability/consistency rates, while minimizing distribution costs. This percentage would only go up with larger distribution areas - individual sites have high variability, but weather is local, and when one site is calm others are windy. Back on topic - wind power is growing at 20% a year globally, solar power (photovoltaic) installations are doubling every two years. That wouldn't be happening if these weren't economically attractive, no matter what subsidies were given. ALEC and similar groups are arguing against reality. -
dana1981 at 02:19 AM on 4 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
I think chriskoz @5 and Andy @12 are making a somewhat similar argument - that just because average electricity prices haven't increased at current relatively low levels of renewable penetration, that doesn't mean they won't rise when renewables reach a higher share and have to replace some baseload power, for example. That's a valid point. This post is specifically in response to Heartland/ALEC arguing that renewables are already too expensive, which is clearly false. Most states are still just aiming for ~25% renewables in the next decade or two, and I think the evidence shows that won't have much if any impact on electricity prices. That being said, the hidden costs of fossil fuels are so large that replacing them with renewables will still almost certainly save money in the grand scheme of things, even if prices rise as renewables meet a higher percentage of demand. It's also worth noting that there are several ways renewables can produce baseload electricity. LRG @9 - Phil and Andy are correct that Hawaii is the expensive outlier, and Maine is the high renewable production outlier due mainly to burning wood waste. -
CBDunkerson at 02:17 AM on 4 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Composer99, there are actually a lot of factors involved... but my simple estimate should be in the ballpark. I think you are saying that less CO2 emissions would lower the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and thus result in more net outgassing from the oceans to maintain equilibrium... That would be true if the oceans were uniformly saturated with carbon, but they aren't. If the oceans were well mixed then the amount of carbon we have released to date would have had no discernible impact on global climate. Indeed, the vast amount of carbon the oceans can absorb was one of the initial and strongest arguments against AGW. It turned out to be incorrect only because of the rate at which we are putting carbon into the atmosphere... we are churning it out so quickly that the surface of the oceans is becoming saturated and allowing a backlog to accumulate in the atmosphere. If we were emitting at a lower rate (say 50% of current) the ocean surface would not be as saturated with carbon and thus actually able to absorb more for a given atmospheric ppm level. That said... I'm not arguing that our goal should be to hold steady at ~400 ppm by reducing CO2 emissions 50%. We should be looking to reduce the atmospheric CO2 level back to 350 ppm or less. However, that should be possible while continuing to use fossil fuels for a few niche applications... provided we deal with the two biggest culprits; baseload electrical generation and transportation. -
JasonB at 01:40 AM on 4 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
OPatrick, I can't speak for the other commenters but in my case at least my ambivalence probably derives from knowing too much about nuclear. :-) It is something I have spent a lot of time researching and looking at from lots of different angles, from mining and resource availability through to costs, safety, risks, and flexibility. The reason I'm not strongly against it in spite of all that is because I think we need to actively pursue all options if we're going to achieve major reductions and it can play a role. I just don't think it's ever going to be the magic bullet or even a major player for many reasons, so I don't like it sucking oxygen away from investment in renewables. -
Composer99 at 01:14 AM on 4 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
CBDunkerson:Logically, there is some point between our current level of fossil fuel use and zero fossil fuel use at which our emissions would not cause atmospheric CO2 levels to increase. Given that roughly half the carbon we emit currently accumulates in the atmosphere each year that level would seem to be at about 50% of current emissions.
Unless I am mistaken, it is my understanding that, all other things being equal, warming oceans tend to outgas CO2 (oceans being, as far as I am aware, the source of the CO2 feedback to warming orbital forcings). This is currently not the case due to anthropogenic emissions which are causing oceanic absorption of CO2 due to the pressure differentials (again, as far as I understand it). As such, as human emissions draw down I would expect we would see increased CO2 outgassing from the oceans, which would keep heightened atmospheric CO2 stable (or at least slow down its decrease). So I am not certain it is correct to say we can just cut our emissions by half and atmospheric CO2 will simply stop rising. -
OPatrick at 23:43 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
It's refreshing to see such a thoughtful set of informative comments (and, of course, a thoughtful and informative article). There seems to be a consensus building on Skeptical Science, at least towards nuclear, to the effect that we don't really know where we stand because we can't find enough information we trust on it. Is there a case therefore for expanding this and related articles into a cohesive analysis of renewable and other alternative energy? Perhaps a sister site, Sceptical Energy? I'd like to see someone, or a group of someones, with a proven level of expertise but no vested interests other than wanting a sustainable environment to live in looking in to these issues on my behalf.... -
michael sweet at 23:28 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Concerning baseload power: currently power companies subsidize use of power at night with low rates because coal and nuclear power are inflexible and cannot be ramped down. Solar produces power at peak usage times so these subsidies are not needed. Perhaps industry will adapt to renewables by using energy storage as they do today with inefficient coal generators. Nuclear seems uneconomic to me. Here in Florida customers have paid $1.5 billion for planning on a plant that will never be built. Currently there are at least two nuclear power plants permanently off line (Crystal River in Florida and San Onofre in California) due to long term maintenance issues. Any solution must be good for the entire world. Do we really want North Korea to get its power from Nuclear plants? Would you feel safe about the maintenance of nuclear power plants in Nigeria? I feel good about solar in Nigeria and wind in Korea. -
CBDunkerson at 23:05 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Doug H, you cite a few examples where carbon fuels might always be required (e.g. broadacre farming & load balancing) and then say that in a "low-carbon economy" these things would have to cease to exist. That isn't accurate. What you are describing is a no carbon economy. Logically, there is some point between our current level of fossil fuel use and zero fossil fuel use at which our emissions would not cause atmospheric CO2 levels to increase. Given that roughly half the carbon we emit currently accumulates in the atmosphere each year that level would seem to be at about 50% of current emissions. Even if we continued burning carbon for broadacre farming, commercial air travel, some military applications, grid load balancing, et cetera... the level of CO2 emissions from such would be far below 50% of current. The majority of our CO2 emissions (~75%) come from baseload power generation and general transportation. Convert those two things over to non-carbon electrical sources and we'd be fine. At that, there are existing or potential solutions to all of the 'no carbon exceptions'. Load balancing with fossil fuels would not be needed if we built a global electrical grid (there is always Sun and Wind somewhere on the planet), included sufficient electrical storage to smooth over fluctuations, or some combination of the two. A heavy tractor could potentially be beamed power from a nearby transmitter... allowing it to drop the weight of the huge engine and fuel tank (helping to offset power lost in transmission). There was a recent successful test of similar power beaming to a UAV in flight. Whether that could be scaled up to a full sized passenger jet is uncertain, but ultra-thin solar may also eventually be sufficient to keep planes in the air if they don't need to haul tons of fuel along. Et cetera. The point is that there already are or some day will be solutions to many of the 'continuing carbon' issues... but even if there weren't, we only need to tackle baseload power and transportation to end AGW. We could continue using carbon fuels for everything else and the planet would still be on the road to recovery. No new technologies are needed to solve the problem. We could do so today... and doing so would be less expensive than continuing with fossil fuels in the long run. -
CBDunkerson at 22:31 PM on 3 January 2013The Dirt on Climate
littlerobbergirl, the big difference between land ice and sea ice is that the land ice can build up to such a thickness that it remains present all year. The large SH sea ice extent shown on the image above is presumably an estimate of the winter maximum... but little to no sunlight hits the south pole during winter and thus the shift in albedo from snow on the ice would have little impact. That ice and snow would need to remain through the summer to match the effect of land ice/snow in the NH. To paraphrase the old saw about trees falling with no one to hear, if snow falls in the dark does it cause an albedo shift? -
Paul D at 20:37 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
In the UK there is an ex-nuclear energy scientist that actively helps anti-wind farm groups. I think he also joined or has been associated with a climate skeptic group. I think climate change skeptics/deniers will align themselves with anything that has a potential to undermine any policy to deploy technology that is strongly linked to climate change policies. Nuclear energy is associated with existing energy provision and historical economic activity, so in many respects it is aligned with established norms. Renewable energy is associated with variability and a potential change in the way we use energy, that equates to uncertainty and change. A point I would make is that these struggles are similar to those throughout history. There were tremendous battles to adopt different standards and technology in electricity distribution. What we have today is established, only because of tremendous and very public fights over the use of DC or AC electrical systems and other issues. So the idea that established systems are going to continue into the future is basically a political lie and ignores the massive creative and extensive work that was required to establish what we have. This implies change will continue and the establishment of energy storage and renewables will continue into the future. Those changes will become established and will become the norm. -
Andy Skuce at 20:35 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
littlerobbergirl @9: I believe that the high renewables state is Maine, which generates some of its electricity from woodwaste. It is probably not realistic for other states to adopt this kind of renewable energy at that level. My main problem with this analysis is that electricity price variations are dominated by the fluctuating costs of the large share of non-renewable sources and the changing mix, in different states, between coal, gas and nuclear energy. There are also many regulatory price controls. I don't think that we can assume that because we have not been able to measure an increase in costs when the proportion of renewables is generally less than 15% that this means that there won't be an increase when the proportion rises to greater than 50%--and we need to get to 100% within decades. Certainly, pricing externalities properly for coal and gas is going to raise consumer prices. Higher electricity costs seem inevitable to me, we have been free-riding and passing on costs to future generations for too long. -
Phil at 20:27 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
littlerobbergirl @9 I would suspect that the high cost outlier is Hawaii, reflecting the high transportation costs of fossil fuels. -
JasonB at 20:24 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Doug H, I'm not so pessimistic about our chances of being able to maintain close to our current standards while also raising the rest of the world to something similar for a few reasons, which I'll have to expound on somewhat briefly due to time constraints: 1. We are currently very wasteful with energy, precisely because it is so cheap. There is plenty of scope for improvement that actually has negative cost. 2. People make a big deal about the cost of renewable electricity and the cost of deploying infrastructure but fail to keep things in perspective. The current generating cost of electricity from coal in my state is only about 1/4 of the retail price; the rest is transmission costs, retailing costs, profit margins, etc. Even if renewables were four times as expensive as coal (which they aren't) it would still only double the retail price, and the cost of electricity makes up a pretty small percentage of my overall expenditures as it is. I've been buying free-range eggs for years despite being much more expensive than cage eggs in the beginning; I'm willing to make the same sacrifice with my power.For example, broadacre farming currently relies upon powerful tractors and no replacement for internal combustion engines in such tractors has, as yet, made its presence felt.
Note that many of the largest trucks used in mining and diesel-powered trains have been "hybrids" for decades before the Prius came along — the diesel motor drives a generator that, in turn, drives electric motors that drive the wheels. Electric motors rule! There's no problem making an electric tractor (and, in fact, if it were large enough I wouldn't be surprised if it was electric, just like the trucks and the trains); the problem is energy storage. Hydrocarbons are a great way of storing energy — so great, in fact, that even when electric motors are being used, people are willing to put up with the low efficiency of the internal combustion engine driving a generator just so they can use them with an electric motor. BTW, the problem with hydrocarbons is not the fact that burning them releases CO2; the problem is that the CO2 that is released was sequestered for millions of years, so it is being added to the system. Synthetic hydrocarbons, made from CO2 freshly drawn from the atmosphere, are carbon-neutral. Synthetic hydrocarbons and alcohols are an interesting possibility that would allow us to keep much of our existing infrastructure. Batteries aren't great but they're workable; for years I've been using LiPo-powered helicopters rather than alcohol or petrol powered ones due to the benefits of electric motors in operation. I think there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about our ability to change without great reductions in living standards if we make the change early enough for the world we are faced with to not be too different to what it is now. What I'm pessimistic about is whether we will choose to do so. -
littlerobbergirl at 19:29 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Im interested in those two outliers on fig 2 - the high cost one and the high renewables one do you know which states they are? Could be useful as worst and best case examples. -
littlerobbergirl at 19:10 PM on 3 January 2013The Dirt on Climate
Interesting post, nice diagrams, thanks. Interesting point Tom, but could there have been snow falling on permanent sea ice around antarctica at 65 s? Your pic shows loads of ice. -
Doug Hutcheson at 18:54 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
JasonB @ 6, the underlying problem exercising many minds, as I see it, is how to maintain our present life-styles in a low-carbon economy. To my mind, maintaining our life-styles is incompatible with zero emissions, given the state of current technologies. In many cases, adaptation to a low-carbon economy will require us to forgo some of the things we take for granted today. For example, broadacre farming currently relies upon powerful tractors and no replacement for internal combustion engines in such tractors has, as yet, made its presence felt. Thus, broadacre farming will continue to rely on the combustion of liquid fuels: if appropriate liquid fuels cannot be sourced, broadacre farmers will adapt by going out of business. In the same vein, if low-carbon electricity generation becomes intermittent, we will be forced to adapt by not expecting 24/7 delivery of electricity to our homes and workplaces. People who depend upon 24/7 electricity to power their life support systems will adapt by dying. It may sound harsh, but it is the reality of the future we are facing. The question is: can we maintain our current life-styles in a low-carbon economy? The answer is: almost certainly, we can't. Once we accept the reality of a future less convenient than today, we can move past the stumbling block of how to feed, clothe and house 10 billion people by 2050, by realising that a low-carbon future will not be able to sustain a population that large, using presently available technology. Instead of worrying about how to take today's good life into tomorrow, we should be looking at how best to use the more limited energy sources of the future. Deploying nuclear power plants may solve the 24/7 electricity conundrum, but it will not solve the problem of the farm tractor and its ilk. -
andrewfez at 16:52 PM on 3 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Thankee vroomie, villabolo, Mal, Doug, Daniel and anybody i missed for the replies. Based on your replies, it seems that places around 45 degrees latitude are going to be popular. The BBC video mentioned above that showed the forest farming sounds like a good idea; especially if you can substitute chestnuts for rice, regarding carbohydrates. I try to use nuts for breakfast/lunch a few times per week as a substitute for animal protein; I have no idea if that's sensible or not, concerning nutrient substitution. -
JasonB at 16:11 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Something that has occurred to me in the past is that there are countries like Australia, China, and the US, where the population centres are concentrated largely in the east and the ideal locations for solar thermal (i.e. deserts) lie to the west. The key feature of this, of course, is that peak power demand is often in the late afternoon/early evening, when the solar thermal plants a few timezones to the west will still be generating substantial output (especially with a few hours of storage). The trick is to get that power to the customer. According to Wikipedia there are > 2,000 km HVDC power lines already (two 3 GW lines 2,500 km long are under construction in Brazil); that's more than enough to connect Sydney and Melbourne to some very sunny areas in Australia. :-) -
JasonB at 16:00 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Doug H, like you, I am fairly ambivalent on nuclear power, neither strongly in favour nor against. What annoys me, however, is the way the nuclear energy proponents misrepresent both nuclear and renewables. For an example of the former, note that they base costs on projected costs [*] of new conventional plants, but base benefits on hypothetical future fast breeders and thorium reactors, which are still a long way off commercial use and have highly uncertain costs. ([*] Never actual costs, of course, because every instance of massive over-runs so far is either a one-off that will never happen again, or the fault of overly burdensome regulations caused by irrational hysteria...) For an example of the latter, there is the land area required (as if that in and of itself is an issue — ignoring the fact that wind turbines can co-exist with other land uses, rooftop solar doesn't require any extra land, and large scale solar thermal is best placed in very low-value land areas), the material required (one popular Australian pro-nuclear site worked out how much steel and concrete was required and then essentially said "Look how much that is, QED" without mentioning that both represented just a few percent of global production capacity), and the intermittency. There is no doubt that large-scale penetration of unreliable power sources creates new challenges to be overcome; however the perfect is often the enemy of the good, and we can scale up penetration quite a long way before it becomes a big issue, all the while gaining the benefits of averted CO2 emissions. If we are expected to believe that all the historical problems with nuclear will be solved if only we start working on them now, then surely the same applies to engineering our grids to work effectively with high penetrations of renewables? The other thing they often overlook is the discrepancy between nuclear supply curves (or, more accurately, flat lines) and demand curves that dramatically reduces the attractiveness at high penetrations; that discrepancy needs to be resolved somehow — historically, using pumped hydro, or through large scale grid interconnects in the case of France — and many of the energy storage solutions that solve the problem for nuclear would also work for intermittent renewables. In the meantime, we have studies from Germany that showed how wind power actually lowered electricity costs (and, interestingly, that anti-wind article at The Conversation even said "Large volumes of wind generation entry have also contributed to a substantial lowering of the South Australian wholesale spot price" but thought it was a bad thing) and a study from California I posted about here before that showed how rooftop solar combined with solar thermal can dramatically increase wind penetration due to the complementary supply curves combined with the flexible output characteristics of solar thermal plants vs coal and nuclear. My view is that we should build wind and solar as fast as we can and let nuclear see if half a century of massive subsidies has managed to make it economically viable on its own yet. By all means subsidise wind and solar to the same degree that nuclear power has enjoyed over the years if you wish to level the playing field. :-) -
chriskoz at 15:59 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Your cost analysis, Dana, is simplified by the fact that you provide the average costs only. As a side note, I don't knoiw if your actual $ are wholesale or consumer prices. If consumer, then they seem quite cheap, at least comparing to the prices in most AUS states, where I live. The actual cost of electricity producton may vary wildly. The baseload is reliable and cheap. Peak time may be several times more expensive. We know that the technical problem with renewables is ake the as reliable to compete with baseload coal, which is reliable because the techology is well established (100y old) and very cheap because the various externalities including climate change are excluded. I'd like to see some more detailed analysis how renewables compete with baseload coal in both price and reliability. Perhaps solar (either theral or PV) could ultimately become our baseload power if we argree the grids become international (the "daylight" states selling power to "nighttime" states) but I guess that last condition is just in my dreams: I don't even know the feasibility of the power transport over such big distances in the first place. -
Doug Hutcheson at 15:13 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
dana1981 @ 3, to my mind, we should use whatever safe technology we have available, as the cost of not replacing fossil fuels is far more important to our collective futures than the cost efficiency of any one technology. If someone could come up with a demonstrably safe design for nuclear generation, I would be happy to include it in our future energy mix. That is my 'all the above, excluding fossil carbon' approach to future electricity generation. Delay is our worst enemy. -
dana1981 at 14:59 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
GillianB @2 - I added the suggested text. Doug H @1 - at the risk of turning the comment thread into a nuclear power discussion (which I hope doesn't happen, but tends to occur), it's a bit ironic for nuclear power backers to criticize the cost of renewable power, because new nuclear projects always run way over budget and schedule, and often default on their loans at taxpayer expense. I'd support nuclear power if it could be cost-effective, but right now that's not the case. And an individual nuclear plant is so expensive that you have to put a lot of eggs in that high-risk basket. Renewables are a much safer bet. -
GillianB at 12:47 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Thanks for this excellent summary of key facts. As ALEC is very active at the state level as well as the national level, I suggest a minor edit to the sentence "..and then pass it along to legislators who will introduce and attempt to implement their bills in US Congress" to include State Legislatures as well as US Congress. Cheers... -
Doug Hutcheson at 12:23 PM on 3 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
I have been following an at times vitriolic comment thread at The Conversation, on the topic Wind is no answer if it leads to higher emissions. The premise of the article is that wind generation is intermittent and requires fossil-fuelled backup generation capacity. To my surprise, almost none of the comments attacks the fundamental idea that CO2 emissions are a bad thing. The interesting argument on the comment thread is between pro- and anti-nuclear proponents, with the pro-nuke crowd claiming that renewables are too expensive and their intermittencies create costly engineering problems for the distribution network, so the logical thing is to start a crash programme of building nuclear generators, instead of spending resources on wind, solar, tide etc. capacity. Sadly, by strenuously opposing renewables, the pro-nuke crowd are playing into the hands of the do-nothing, BAU, burn-baby-burn crowd. I'm not sure where I stand regarding nuclear generators. On the one hand, I see the dangers of catastrophic failures, such as happened at Chernobyl and Fukashima. On the other hand, I know that great strides have been made in engineering and safety aspects, as well as the ability of newer designs being able to use spent fuel from earlier designs currently in operation, thus eliminating the dangerous waste products of existing nuclear plants. On balance, I am sceptical of the ability of humanity to rush the building of new nuclear plants, while maintaining the highest standards of safety, so I am uncomfortable with the prospect of rapid deployment. This caution, however, does nothing to solve the problem of renewables having intermittent generation capability. -
dana1981 at 11:47 AM on 3 January 2013Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
peggy @30 - all projections are based on a certain GHG emissions scenario. In Figure 12 they used the IPCC FAR 'business as usual' scenario discussed towards the top of the post. -
Doug Hutcheson at 11:28 AM on 3 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
Simon @ 243, Bob Carter's Gish Gallop is still worth reading, as an example of faulty reasoning by someone who should know better. His opposition to AGW seems rooted in his politics, rather than in his superior understanding of the evidence. No doubt, this polarised view is being passed on to his students. Sad to see. -
curiousd at 10:50 AM on 3 January 2013Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
In regards to my comment 29 above, despite John Cook's valient efforts to help me out in cyberspace, my graph still did not plot! This is a polite website but perhaps an "Oh Piffle!" is o.k. However, I was able to post my plot onto http://tinypic.com/r/29faz45/6 -
peggy at 10:46 AM on 3 January 2013Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
A simple question on the IPCC predictions, in fig.12 for example- do they hold GHG constant or do they also include a social policy prediction? If so, what CO2 level are they designed around? No doubt the answer is in the references, but such critical information should be presented with the predictions. I speak as a casual reader with a PhD in biology. -
curiousd at 10:37 AM on 3 January 2013Contrary to Contrarian Claims, IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate
In regard to above comments about multiple data sets, perhaps a clearer case can be made to help prove the point by indeed combining many data sets extending over a long time period but then linearizing the expected relationship between CO2 and temperature by plotting aveage temp anomaly versus log base 2 ( Concentration CO2 by year / Concentration CO2 in 1850). I have used the averaged temp anomaly since 1850 in the SKS temperature trend calculator to do this, including CO2 from Law Dome data plus Keeling. Then I performed this linearization. Here is the result:
The statistical analysis of my data processing program shows that an uncorrelated relationship between these variables has a probability of less than 1 in 10,000. The R value is strong at 0.91
Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed image. -
Tom Curtis at 07:45 AM on 3 January 2013The Dirt on Climate
To raise the obvious point, glacials (by current understanding) commence when weak Northern Hemisphere summer insolation fails to melt the winter snows, thus leaving high albedo snow cover throughout the summer. That snow cover then accumulates to form ice sheets; but it is the high albedo during the period of maximum NH insolation that reduced global temperatures. The mechanism does not work in the SH for the simple reason that, in the relevant latitude, snow in the SH falls into the ocean where it simply melts. As a result, NH, not SH insolation drives the transitions between glacial and interglacial - a point acknowledged by Hao et al by their use of June insolation at 65 degrees North to indicate the likely onset and termination of glacials (figure 3). Prima facie, this mechanism is inconsistent with an increase of Antarctic glaciation preceding an increase in NH glaciation. Given that ice sheet extent in Asia was very limited due to arid conditions (see diagram below), it seems far more probable that delay in onset of winter monsoon dominance is a regional effect rather than a hemispheric effect, ie, that it is not indicative of the timing of NH glaciation.
Of course, there may be some odd effect here picked up by the climate models and loess, but we need significantly more detail to assess it.
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Andy Skuce at 03:16 AM on 3 January 2013The Dirt on Climate
Thanks for this informative post, jg. And great diagrams, too! -
Simon8049 at 22:33 PM on 2 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
The link to Bob Carter's Telegraph article no longer works. It has moved to: There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998 -
JasonB at 15:49 PM on 2 January 2013Arctic Sea Ice Extent: We're gonna need a bigger graph
This has always struck me as a bizarre complaint. Spend any time on WUWT and you'll see numerous posts positively dripping with hatred towards those who dare try to present data in a graph with a scale they disapprove of. Isn't that why the values are shown on the axes? Even Excel, the fake sceptics' statistical analysis tool of choice, defaults to automatically adjusting the axes values to best fit the data when you use it to create a graph. And why stop with the Y axis? Surely the X axis should start at "0", too? Let's see, instrumental record ~150 years, X axis scale ~14 billion years, you'd need a sheet of paper 4 km long to have the entire instrumental record represented by a single pixel at 600 dpi on that graph. :-) -
Bernard J. at 15:15 PM on 2 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
DB at #238. Thanks for the tweak. I'm not sure what the issue is with my addie - I tried mailing it from my institutional address, and there was no problem. I shall have to remain intrigued, and wondering... ;-) -
Bernard J. at 15:12 PM on 2 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
That's torn it Daniel - there'll be a rush on now. You might want to ask the moderators to deleted the pot! ;-) -
villabolo at 13:23 PM on 2 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
@35, Thanks for the link Daniel. -
Daniel Bailey at 11:04 AM on 2 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Like all things with real estate: it depends on the location. Acreage with frontage (inland lake or Lake Superior) costs more. As do more "urban" parcels (by most standards, even cities in the UP are not "urban"). A quick search brought up this site where one can find a specific parcel more to their liking. Cheaper parcels seem to run between $4,000 and $6,000 per acre. Frontage...varies. But the views are spectacular... -
villabolo at 10:23 AM on 2 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Daniel Bailey @#32: "And by urban standards, land is quite cheap right now. And there's over 600 square miles of it." Daniel, how much per acre? -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:15 AM on 2 January 2013Arctic Sea Ice Extent: We're gonna need a bigger graph
As an example of Tom's point, go look at pretty much any graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the NASDAQ for the prior, say, 24 month. You will never see such a graph starting with zero. Go to Google Finance and experiment with different time periods. The Y axis will automatically scale with the range being displayed. If you don't do this then, as Tom says, you run into troubles trying to discern any changes. -
villabolo at 10:07 AM on 2 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Doug H. #31: "Wherever you go, be sure to arrange strong defenses against those gun-toting desperadoes who would try to take your safe place away from you by force. Remember, if the climate changes as projected by models, the bad guys are going to be migrating to more comfortable climes, along with everybody else. This time around, the meek are unlikely to inherit the Earth." Well put, but individuals and family groups will be insufficient to arrange a strong defense against roving gangs. If we are to survive we need to organize in eco-villages/Arco-Santi like communities. 500 or more people, in a cohesive community, will allow for maximum efficiency of horti-permaculture as well as self defense. I suggest networking with such survivalist like minded people for a possible future relocation. A sense of community is of utmost importance. -
Tom Dayton at 05:00 AM on 2 January 2013Arctic Sea Ice Extent: We're gonna need a bigger graph
No, william, it is neither necessary nor desirable to always start the graphs at 0. Scaling should be appropriate to the purpose of the graph's readers. If you want to maximize the readers' ability to discern changes in the graph, you should make the graph fill the space as much as possible. {...snip...}Moderator Response: [KC] Inflammatory snipped -
william5331 at 04:41 AM on 2 January 2013Arctic Sea Ice Extent: We're gonna need a bigger graph
The Y axis on ice extent and ice volume graphs should always have started at 0. {...snip...}Moderator Response: [KC] Inflammatory snipped. -
Tom Dayton at 02:00 AM on 2 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
Punksta, even based purely (and therefore inappropriately) on statistics, the +0.14 C trend of the last 16 years is the most likely "true" value--the expected value. 0 is not the most likely value. Nor is +0.13, nor is +0.15. But trend values close to +0.14 are more likely to be the "true" value than trends far from it are. Statistical significance merely provides one estimate of the probabilities of those different trend values. Nor is there anything magical about the 95% confidence level; it is merely a traditional value. The 94% confidence level encompasses only values closer to the 0.14 most likely value. Statistics does not dictate what the confidence level should be. The situation outside of statistics dictates that. If you must make a decision based on your best estimate of the true value, you must weigh the costs and benefits of acting based on the several incorrect and correct decisions you might make based on that best estimate. You leaven those costs and benefits with the probabilities of the various errors and correct decisions. But even if you do make such a sophisticatedly thorough judgment, you are a fool if the statistics are the only knowledge you use to make your decision. Knowledge of physical processes such as causality, and a plethora of other factors, should be even more important in your decision. Statistics is merely one tool in a very large scientific toolbox. This failure of pure statistics to provide clear answers is not at all unique to climatology. I used to do massively complex ANOVAs in a completely different field, and usually had difficulty dissecting the complex relationships because the component, less complex statistical tests rarely were significant at the same probability level for them to logically support the overall, complex test. In other words, a naive perspective on the entire set of tests would be that they were internally inconsistent and therefore nonsensical and impossible. That's a similar phenomenon to what folks here have pointed out to you: Often all the short time intervals fail to reach significance at the same probability level as the longer time interval. That's why real scientists do not base their judgments solely on statistics, and even to the extent that they do rely on statistics, they do not rely on a naive, high school level of statistics. -
Tristan at 00:18 AM on 2 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
Neat image Bernard! -
Bernard J. at 23:19 PM on 1 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
I should probably explain the approach that I used to determine the intervals I derived for the post above. All I did was enter various start years until I obtained for each of the end years a minimum-sized interval where there was no way to describe a negatively-sloped line through the whole range. It's not the best way to derive the info, but it was quick and it's a good approximation and I didn't want to waste time with something that has been debunked countless times in the past. -
Bernard J. at 23:13 PM on 1 January 2013It hasn't warmed since 1998
Punksta seems to come from a long, long, long line of denialists who are ignorant (often deliberately so...) of the fact that a minimum amount of time is always required to be able to identify a signal emerging from inherently noisy data. I have two points, in addition to the many others made above, to put to this person. The first is an exercise in thinking (yes, I am being optimistic...): 1) If there had been no "statistically significant" warming for twelve years, does this disprove a relationship between CO2 and warming? If there had been no "statistically significant" warming for ten years, would this disprove a relationship between CO2 and warming? Five years? Two? What is the basis for claiming that there is no relationship between CO2 and planetary warming? 2) using the trend calculator to which many people have directed Punksta, I constructed a graph showing how many years prior to a particular year are required to identify a statistically significant warming trend at the 2 %sigma; (~95%) level. It's quick and dirty - I didn't muck around with the autocorrelation period and I only used GISTemp - but it's enough to demonstrate for any year in the last three decades how many years of prior data was required to observe a "statistically significant" warming trend.
The graph itself shows two further things:
1) there is nothing unusual about the current period required to identify statistically significant warming - indeed, over all there is a trend to the period becomng shorter.
2) prior to 1981, the post-World War II hiatus (significantly attributable to aerosols) triples the period required to identify warming. However, there was warming occurring then too, but it was being compensated for by other factors. This did not alter the physics of greenhouse gases though, and the same is the case today - CO2 is still warming the planet.
[I apologise for thumb-nailing the image. Try as I might, my efforts to use the width tag would not produce a visible graph.]
Moderator Response: [DB] Improved image width. Bernard, I tried to email you the proper image width code but the message proved undeliverable. -
Daniel Bailey at 12:48 PM on 1 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Well, I'm reluctant to mention it (because I don't want to make it a target destination), but the Keweenaw Peninsula portion of the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan would make an excellent long-term destination. Connected to the mainland portion of the UP via the lift bridge at Houghton/Hancock, the Keweenaw (also called Copper Country) is separated from the "mainland" UP by a natural "moat" and (counting Lake Superior) is completely surrounded by fresh water. The climate is harsh still in winter, but continued warming will greatly lengthen the growth season, fresh water is virtually inexhaustible, it's defensible (just drop the bridge and it's an island), it has abundant forest and farmlands and there's still copper and other ores (albeit deep) in the ground. Basically, one of the few areas in North America that figures to have its climate improve over the next couple of centuries: winters will grow milder, with snow becoming less of an issue [the record is 390" in 1979] and even less common [about 24" thus far this winter]; summer heat will still be ameliorated by the enormous thermal inertia of the big lake. And by urban standards, land is quite cheap right now. And there's over 600 square miles of it.
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Doug Hutcheson at 12:42 PM on 1 January 20132012 in Review - a Major Year for Climate Change
Regarding Whitehouse, how refreshing it is to see a politician telling the plain, unvarnished truth! Tony Abbott and the Australian Tea Party wannabes, are you listening? (Cue sound of crickets ...) -
Doug Hutcheson at 11:51 AM on 1 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
andrewfez @ 25, you asked "Where do you guys think the 'best' place in America is going to be to survive/thrive at around 2050?" Wherever you go, be sure to arrange strong defences against those gun-toting desperadoes who would try to take your safe place away from you by force. Remember, if the climate changes as projected by models, the bad guys are going to be migrating to more comfortable climes, along with everybody else. This time around, the meek are unlikely to inherit the Earth. -
Mal Adapted at 11:33 AM on 1 January 2013Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
Vrooomie:I'll say an area centered roughly around Bend, OR: decent glacial soils, reasonably temperate, year-round, and good precip.
Hmmm, Bend's climate makes agriculture challenging, on account of a pretty short growing season (90 days is optimistic), and not enough moisture without irrigation. It will get warmer, but it may or may not get wetter. Precipitation models currently show wetter winters, drier summers in that area. Having lived in the inland PNW, I'd pick Moscow, ID or Cle Elum, WA myself.
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