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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 -
Doug Hutcheson at 12:37 PM on 5 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
CBDunkerson @ 14, you said "What you are describing is a no carbon economy". Not quite right: what I was describing was an economy in which our non-fossil-fuel carbon emissions continue, thus using up the small wriggle room we have available in our emissions budget. As I understand it (and I may be wildly wrong), human agricultural practices cause the emission of significant volumes of CO2e that would not have been emitted in a human-free world. In addition, our existing CO2 emissions are sufficient to raise the average surface temperature by circa 2°C and this is already enough to cause significant releases of CO2e from NH tundra. Thus, my reading of the tea-leaves says a low-carbon economy probably needs to be a zero fossil fuel economy and this was what I meant in my comment. It is why I agree with the premise of the original post, that not only is renewable energy not as expensive as some claim, but it is the only way we can transition to a relatively safe future. I predict that a future world with renewable electricity and synthetic hydrocarbons (algal fuels etc.) for liquid fuels will be a very different one from what we enjoy today. -
JasonB at 10:42 AM on 5 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
wstarck, I'm glad you agree that the whining from the fake sceptics is irrationally driven by their objections to proposed solutions rather than any real problem with the science itself. But I can't help wondering why they aren't similarly whining about the subsidies received by fossil fuel interests? I read once that the entire profit margin of Exxon Mobil, one of the most profitable companies in the world, was approximately equal to the subsidies it received. Why does it still need subsidies after all this time? And that's not even accounting for the external costs as KR mentioned; I presume those fake sceptics will be right behind some form of carbon pricing mechanism to allow the market price of fossil fuels to accurately reflect the true cost of using them if they are so concerned about subsidies, correct? -
Rob Painting at 10:41 AM on 5 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Wstarck - As KR points out, once you account for the fossil fuel subsidies (over half a trillion dollars a year globally), and include the external costs (which are not currently accounted for), then fossil fuels are distant runners-up to renewable energy. How much do you think it would cost for fossil fuel companies to pay for the (roughly) 25 metres of future sea level rise they have already committed us to? I reckon it would bankrupt even them. -
Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
wstarck - You are of course including the fossil fuel subsidies as well? Both direct financial subsidies and the rather huge subsidies of not accounting for the external costs (health, pollution, climate change) of fossil fuel use? -
wstarck at 09:19 AM on 5 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
It is really good to know that renewable power costs no more than conventional power. It means that the expense of subsidies is unnecessary and they should be eliminated immediately to shut up all the whining from skeptics. -
Rob Honeycutt at 08:52 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
I think all the car companies have had to adopt much of what Toyota does (and actually Honda is now very much a leader in manufacturing). But again, there is so much about leadership that is lacking. Do the CEO's of any of the US car companies have the leadership to really drive cutting edge efficient manufacturing? I sincerely doubt it. Not one of them is going to get down on the production floor and put his hands on a wrench and discover what they actually make and what his people know. It's really quite sad. -
LarryM at 08:47 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
Interesting and somehow fitting that the Nummi facility now houses Tesla. May they fare better than GM has. I can't help wondering whether things at GM might have gone very differently (better) had they taken the proven successful methods of Toyota to Detroit, rather than letting that promise die on the vine. -
Rob Painting at 08:43 AM on 5 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
Glenn Tamblyn @ 4 is referring to this pic of a nannofossil from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 55-56 million years ago, a time of natural global warming from increased atmospheric CO2. On the left is a typical fossil before the PETM and on the right a fossil during the PETM. Dissolution of the shell is obvious.
Although the rate of PETM ocean acidification was much smaller than present-day it still resulted in the extinction of some species.
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Rob Painting at 08:10 AM on 5 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
mdenison - Making the SkS site easier to navigate and improving its functionality is a work in progress. I've had similar problems using the search function - it's not very good. Operating on a volunteer basis does tend to prolong these projects though - our IT experts tend to be very busy in their day jobs. -
Rob Painting at 08:03 AM on 5 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
funglestrumpet - I use Google Chrome and the OA FAQ opened fine for me just now. Perhaps it is your computer? -
Rob Honeycutt at 07:43 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
LarryM... I actually toured NUMMI some years back. It was actually a very successful project. That Fremont CA plant was, at one point, GM's most inefficient factory before they shut it down. Then Toyota proposed a joint venture to reopen the plant and structure it using Toyota production systems. They fired all the management and retained all the same workers. The plant went from being GM's worst to becoming their very best, and rivaled Toyota's very best plant in Japan for most efficient. GM ended up pulling out of the joint venture and Toyota could not justify the facility on their own, so the plant closed. That same plant is now reopened as the TESLA factory, again in partnership with Toyota. -
LarryM at 07:28 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
Rob - Good luck with your Kickstarter project! I'd like to point you and others to a super-interesting episode of This American Life on National Public Radio (NPR) called "Nummi". It's the story of a collaboration between Toyota and GM where Toyota tried to teach GM not only their lessons about efficiency and quality-first, but also how Toyota fosters excellent rather than adversarial worker relations. Here's a blurp about the episode from the website: "A car plant in Fremont California that might have saved the U.S. car industry. In 1984, General Motors and Toyota opened NUMMI as a joint venture. Toyota showed GM the secrets of its production system: How it made cars of much higher quality and much lower cost than GM achieved. Frank Langfitt explains why GM didn't learn the lessons—until it was too late." -
funglestrumpet at 07:08 AM on 5 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
I cannot open the FAQ document. Probably my computer, but if it isn't, I won't be alone. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:42 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
Thanks Andy! Whooboy, I'll tell you, I've only barely touched on the inefficiencies embedded in Chinese production. I have a friend who is a manufacturing manager at Apple and he says that Apple has a veritable army of auditors on the ground at all times in China. They're all just making sure that none of their product is back-doored and that each supplier in the supply chain is paying the agree upon price for the goods. They're constantly just trying to make sure that no one is getting under-the-table payoffs. I mean, talk about non-value added activity! -
william5331 at 06:31 AM on 5 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
I've often wondered if we are approaching a pH cliff. If Sea water is a buffered system it should react stepwise rather than in a continuous curve to the introduction of Carbon dioxide. In a buffered system, pH changes very little until the buffer is "used up" and then a little more acid sends the pH plunging. Alkalinity is a measure of this as it measures the amount of buffer available to counter pH changes. Has anyone checked this out. As a first preliminary trial it would be as simple as taking a litre of sea water and titrating it dropwise with very dilute HCl with a pH probe inserted in the sea water. The solution would be allowed to come to equilibrium after each drop and pH plotted against drops on a graph. -
Andy Skuce at 06:27 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
Nice article Rob, thanks. There are other reasons that manufacturing is returning to the US: rising labour costs in China, along with concerns over problems like corruption and intellectual property theft there are part of the story, but the big reason seems to be the rising importance of robots and devices like 3D printers. I suppose that all of this new technology can be harnessed to improve leanness and reduce waste even more. Combined with renewable energy sources, these kinds of advances give me hope that we can transition to a cleaner and smarter economy. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:43 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
angliss... It's interesting. One of the other land mines inherent in the implementation of Lean, I believe, is that people think a new initiative or program is going to somehow fix their problems. There was a lot of TQM and JIT that was sold as a panacea to all that ails your business. And that's not what it is. Very often Lean systems were attempted with a CEO that was dubious. It just can't work without total buy-in from the top. Toyota is famous in how they change over a supplier to their systems. Basically, if you are selected at a Toyota supplier you have to give total control of your business over to Toyota. You'll have business owners saying, "WTF! I've been in business 30 years, I know how to make my products." But with Toyota it's their way or the highway. Then after Toyota gets in and restructures the supplier, a couple years later, they're generally saying, "Wow. I had no idea how much I didn't understand." You either have to have absolute buy in and commitment from the top, or you have to completely isolate the top from the transition until they finally come in line. -
angliss at 05:31 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
I'm sure that you're correct, Rob, that what I describe is part of why some companies abandon Lean. And I'll admit that I don't know a ton about it besides what I learned from my dad (he used to run businesses for a living before he retired, where as I'm an engineer) via osmosis. But I think my point is a little different. Reliability and efficiency are fundamental tradeoffs - increase one and the other necessarily goes down. There are smart ways to trade them off and there are stupid ways, and I suspect that Lean is an attempt to do it intelligently instead of stupidly, but it's still a tradeoff. It's like the fundamental tradeoff among the triad of cost, schedule, and performance - you can choose any two of those priorities, but the third will always suffer. NASA learned that the hard way when "faster better cheaper" resulted in very expensive failures because the "better" part of the equation was deprioritized relative to faster and cheaper. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:15 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
Taiichi Ohno used to chastise engineers for doing what he called "catalog engineering." It's such a natural inclination to try to spec the largest "most efficient" machine for a task without looking at product flow. Whereas this actually is a less efficient method when it comes to the overall process. When a machine produces too much, too fast, then it creates excess inventory. This is actually another form of waste that Ohno termed "Mura" - Unevenness or inconsistent. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:11 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
perseus... One of the most important aspects of Lean is to "right size" processes. If you're shipping massive quantities of goods in a single load then your upstream process is out of balance with the downstream process and needs to be "right sized" to bring the processes into flow. As well, if you're using rail transport that would suggest that your supplier is too far from your facility. Again, you'd need to right size the process and move the process into a closer proximity to the following processes. -
perseus at 04:56 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
Since part of lean manufacturing involves reducing stock levels, this often means increasing the number of smaller loads. Of course road transport is far better suited to this than rail freight. Isn't this a severe environmental disadvantage of so called low stock or 'Just-in time' logistical methods? The move away from large industries to much flexible smaller businesses, and lower stock levels, have led to the demise of rail freight in some countries. -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:53 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
angliss... I hear what you're saying but I believe what you're addressing is why companies abandon Lean. I can tell you from first hand experience what an excruciating experience it is to lean out a company. But if you visualize it in terms of the fact that you're exposing problems then you begin to realize how much inefficiency there is in your processes. Think about Toyota, though. They are consistently rated as some of the most reliable vehicles on the market, and their manufacturing methods are the most efficient in the world. Clearly it's impossible to foresee every possible problem that can shut down your factory. But the big difference is... or should I say, the mindset change that has to occur is... you have to view those shut downs as golden opportunities. At Toyota when they ran into such problems, no one would freak out. In fact, their response was to make tea. Let the factory shut down, that's okay. But from there you must understand the problem and hopefully create a deep solution that will keep the problem from ever occurring again. It's a process that never stops. -
angliss at 03:41 AM on 5 January 2013Lean Manufacturing: Addressing Climate Change Through Reductions In Waste
Good luck to you, Rob. I hope it turns out well for you. As a comment to the general points you raise, in every case I've come across, improved efficiency results in reduced reliability. As an example, if you eliminate redundancy in a system, the system becomes more efficient, but subject to the failure of a single component shutting down the entire system. Just in time manufacturing has the same problem - it's very efficient and reduces cost a great deal, right up until the point when a tsunami, a tropical storm, or a longshoreman strike prevents delivery of critical manufacturing components. Every method I know about that improves the reliability of a system also reduces its efficiency, and vice versa. Ideally, following continuous improvement processes should enable you to develop the optimal level of efficiency and reliability - keep inventory of critical raw materials to absorb reasonable supply disruptions, but don't spend the money for a completely redundant manufacturing line, for example. In every business I've worked for, that process is a lot harder to do than it sounds. You have to have very smart people tracking weather, political upheaval, possible disruptions to your supplier's suppliers, daily inventory level tracking, good market information. Too few small companies have the management foresight or monetary resources for the startup costs, and too many large companies are unwilling to attempt implementing such dramatic changes to their corporate culture. If you can pull it off with a startup, more power to you. That you're going into the project planning on it means you have a better chance than most. Again, good luck to you. -
The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
Chris O'Neill - That older Tamino post used an AR(1) noise model, whereas the current work uses a more accurate ARMA(1,1) model, as described in the Methods section of Foster and Rahmstorf 2011. -
Chris O'Neill at 02:24 AM on 5 January 2013The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
Could someone tell me why I get a discrepancy between what the tool says and what Tamino determined in this post. Tamino determined the trend error range for GISTemp 1975-2008 as being ± 0.0032 deg C/year. The tool says it's ± 0.0049 deg C/year. Why is there such a large discrepancy? -
Kevin C at 01:30 AM on 5 January 2013The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
KenM: Very good question. The answer is no, that is not what is happening. We don't have error bars on the data points - ordinary least squares doesn't use them. What ordinary least squares does is calculate the best fit straight line, and infer the errors in the data points from the deviations from that line. If the underlying data is truly linear with normally distributed errors in the dependent variable, then this gives the same result as using the true errors. Of course if the underlying process is not linear, then this gets rolled into the errors, which would not be the case when the error bars are known. -
mdenison at 22:43 PM on 4 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
This article does not show up in search results on clicking "OA not OK". I assume the word 'mackieOAposts' needs to added to the text to make the search work. -
CBDunkerson at 22:40 PM on 4 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Composer99 wrote: "Hence my inference that reducing human emissions would allow ocean outgassing of excess CO2 when the partial pressure difference is altered. I gather that I have made a mistake in there somewhere, but I do not think it has anything to do with equilibrium CO2 concentrations." Part of this may be a terminology issue. The equilibrium I was referring to was the balance between the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere and the concentration dissolved in the oceans. To quote Henry's law; "At a constant temperature, the amount of a given gas that dissolves in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid." That said, there are three factors in play here; 1: Temperature 2: Partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 3: Carbon content of the ocean surface in contact with the atmosphere Essentially, my argument is that, given the fact that roughly 50% of human fossil fuel emissions currently remain in the atmosphere each year, cutting emissions by 50% should cause the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to stop increasing. Note that the partial pressure is determined by total atmospheric ppm of CO2 rather than annual emissions... thus, if we were at 400 ppm and emitting enough to increase by 4 ppm each year with 2 ppm of that instead being sequestered in natural sinks and we changed to emitting 2 ppm (50% reduction) we should remain at 400 ppm (no change in partial pressure) as natural sinks continue to absorb the 2 ppm we emit each year. Given that the oceans are the largest of those natural sinks it might be argued that the 2 ppm less emissions would result in a lower partial pressure throughout the year and thus slightly lower absorption... but we're talking about 2 / 400 = 0.5% of the total atmospheric concentration... so maybe the oceans would absorb 1.99 ppm of CO2 instead of 2 ppm and we'd see a 0.01 ppm per year increase continuing. Likewise, given that temperature increases are lagging the CO2 level we'd see temps continue to rise slowly and thus tip the balance towards slightly more outgassing. However, there would be an opposing push from the third factor in the list above... the carbon concentration of the ocean surface. If the oceans were absorbing carbon at a lower rate they'd have more time to mix and the concentration at the surface would drop... allowing more to be absorbed from the atmosphere. So, everything you describe is accurate, but there are other factors in play which would offset them and at a 50% reduction in emissions the delta values we are talking about become very small. Maybe at exactly a 50% emissions reduction atmospheric levels would continue to creep up very slowly... or maybe ocean mixing would allow them to start dropping very slowly... but somewhere right around 50% (52%?, 47%?) would 'stabilize' the atmospheric CO2 level. Basically, if we can get below 50% of current emissions (before passing some 'tipping point' that causes natural sinks to start releasing excess carbon) we'll be ok 'eventually'... though the outgassing issues you describe could make that a very long time in the future, depending on exactly how high the atmospheric concentration gets before we stop increasing it. -
KenM at 21:29 PM on 4 January 2013The Skeptical Science temperature trend calculator
Can I ask what may be a silly question (and one that may have already been answered). I was wanting to understand more about how the errors are calculated. If I'm teaching in a first-year physics lab (as I have) the way I would illustrate errors is to get the students to plot a graph with the measurements and with an error bar for each measurement (say nuclear decay for example). They would then determine the best fit line. The error could then be estimated by drawing two other lines, one steeper and one shallower. If they wanted 1-sigma errors then the two other lines should each pass through about two-thirds of the error bars. If they wanted 2-sigma errors, then the two other lines should pass through 95% of all the error bars. They can determine the gradient for the best-fit line and the gradients of the two other lines and they can then state the trend plus the error. Is this similar to what is done to determine the errors here and if so, what are the errors on the data points? -
Glenn Tamblyn at 21:19 PM on 4 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
Another awesome pic. Bottomof page 10 in the FAQ doc. OA damage in a fossil of a tiny critter from 55MYr ago. Real then, real now. And awesome science that we can see that far back in that detail! -
Glenn Tamblyn at 21:09 PM on 4 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
ridethetalk, Manwichstick. I thinkyou are close to the mark with a lot of this. With the dropping costs of wind & solar I am becoming virtually unconcerned about any cost question, even factoring in the cost of adapting to their intermittent nature. There are still serious concerns around how fast we can rampup production capacity forthese technologies. The two key missing technologies are storage & the grid. It is certainly true that studies indicate that nearly 100% renewable energy supply is pretty technically viable. There still might be the occassional issue with protracted weather periods over large areas - lots of still cloudy weather for days perhaps. But they will be uncommon. Energy storage is important for smoothing out the remaining irregularities. It also will play a very big part in a transition to 100% renewables. At current levels of penetration the intermittancy issue is small. At near 100% penetration it is small. However,in a world of say 50% renewables intermittancy may be a bigissue. The system isn't yet big enough to be self levelling. But it is big enough that significant lulls have a big impact. Storage may be critical in facilitating the transition from one viable state - now - to another viable state - 100% - through a difficult intermediate state - 50%. The other missing piece in all this is the grid. I would be willing to bet that if we tried to reverse the direction of flow in or grids today - all the electrons flowed fromour houses back to the powerstations - the grid would fail in 101 different little ways. All the transformers, switching yards and substations will have lots of small engineering decisions embodied in them that assume the electrons mainly flow one way. reverse themand equipment will fail,safety's will trip out etc. All absolutely solveable little engineering problems to make them truely bi-directional,but the investment needs tobe madetobring that about. The current grids have been designed to facilitate transferring energy from big generators, largely in one direction to small consumers. The grid we need to enable 100% renewables requires that we be able to move energy in hugely varying package sizes, in every possible direction. No preconcieved ideas of what the preferred pathways willbe. A bit like the Internet but for electricity. And there is no way out of the fact that that requires a much larger investment in the grid than we have made in the past. The future grid need a larger percentage of our total energy infrastructure spend. The old gridwassimple, very simple, because thats all it needed to be. Andsimple was cheaper. In the future,we will reap ever greater rewards the more powerful, flexible and adaptable the grid is. Thegrid needs to start to look like an organism, self adapting, self correcting, and when needed,self healing - lets never forget that part of the design brief for what we now call the Internet was that it be able to survive a Nuclear War. We need similar thinking about the grid. And we need to ramp up investment in it now, before the need seems to be there because the grid is the enabler of that demand. Another key feature that will give us flexibility so we can get the maximum benefit even if supply is somewhat variable is really intelligent demand management. Not just users turning oflights or whatever. Every energy using device connected to the grid being able toadapt it's energy consumptionbased on current supply & demand. Imagine the grid, in addition to delivering electrons, is also transmitting a singlenumber every few minutes. 0 to 100. The percentage of the current demand that the gridcan supply! If it transmits 100, it can meet all current demand. However, if it is transmitting 97 it issaying that iy can only meet 97% of demand. 'Eevrybody start reducing demand a bit!'. So a light bulb dims slightly. An Air Conditioner adjusts it's set point by 1/2 adegree. A freezer lets the temperature rise by 1 degree for a bit. Maybe the pump on a fountain slows down by 20%. Every device on the grid adjusts it'susage if it can to compensate where possible. So instead of a power blackout, everything justs dialsit back a bit. And the more a device or consumer is able to wind back their demand, the less they are charged for the power they do use during this period. Smart grids shuffling power around including in andoutof storage and smart demand management adapting to circumstances would achieve a huge amount. Then Renewables are absolutely viable under all circumstances. -
Ali TT at 20:43 PM on 4 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
This is an interesting analysis and useful in the argument against those who are less keen on renewables. A couple of comments/questions (I'm sorry if they've been raised/discussed elsewhere): 1) At present the conclusion from this analysis must be that mixed energy generation does not affect the average price of electricity (not that renewables specifically are no more expensive than fossils). I realise this post is a rebuttal to comments on cost of renewables made by ALEC/Heartland but I think the differences between a mixed and wholly renewable system is (or will be)important. As mentioned by others, there is the problem that when renewables reach a certain level it becomes impossible to run fossil fuel plants all the time, which may raise cost. As you state in another post, renewables can overcome problems with intermittency but with the Grid structure in the US (and elsewhere) at present, is this feasible without very disruptive and costly infrastructural changes? I guess we may only know this as various States increase their renewables to above 25%. 2) How do installation costs get factored into the analysis? Presumably a new power "plant", fossil or renewable, can be funded through either commercial investment, subsidies or a bit of both. If an installation is more commercially funded, I'd assume this would be seen in a change in metered electricity prices whereas it may not be when subsidised (unless one includes the taxation needed into the price). I'm unfamiliar with how these things are funded in the US, but are there big differences between fossil and renewables? 3) It would seem that in many cases existing renewables can be cheaper than fossils, or at least price match, once installed. However, it is the cost barrier in moving from a fossil fuel-based economy to a renewable one that gets in the way. This takes many forms- changes to the Grid, R&D and roll-out of new renewables and energy storage methods, installing smart meter/energy efficiency technologies in homes. Also, there is the "social" cost in having to educate and change people's behaviour. Thank you for a helpful analytical insight on this topic. -
curiousd at 18:41 PM on 4 January 2013CO2 effect is saturated
Never mind. I think I have figured out that NACAR thing pretty much now on my own now, just by persistent putzing around, day after day. -
Rob Painting at 17:03 PM on 4 January 2013Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
Rob H - The pic is of a juvenile form around half a millimeter in diameter. IIRC they grow to between 5 & 10 mm at the adult stage. The peer-reviewed paper this pic comes from has been published, so expect a post on it in the near-future. -
sol6966 at 14:23 PM on 4 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Pumped Storage & Hydro will be needed as intermittent renewable energy generation increases it's penetration of the grid. However, there is a subtle difference between Hydro & Pumped Storage. Regular Hydroelectric needs a sufficiently large catchment area to replace any water used to generate electricity, to put it another way, generation is limited to the amount of precipitation in the catchment. With Pumped Storage however, the same water used over and over again. The catchment only needs to supply enough water to replace water through evaporation. This reduced need for a large catchment means many sites that are not viable for hydroelectric generation may be viable for Pumped Storage. In Australia the Great Dividing Range which runs the entire length of the east coast of the county would likely have a number of locations suitable for Pumped Storage. The northern most end of the Great Dividing Range is the wettest area of Australia so would be viable hydroelectric generation. -
ridethetalk at 12:57 PM on 4 January 2013Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
Manwichstick, I think you hit the mark with the requirement for a well connected grid being the missing piece in the renewables puzzle. In a geographically diverse renewable generation scenario, fluctuations in sun/wind tend to even out. Pumped hydro storage also helps but, unless this can be done easily using seawater, this is unlikely to be useful in Australia. (On this note, Carnegie Wave Energy are using seawater to generate electricity/produce de-salinated water so this may not be too far-fetched.) As far as liquid fuels are concerned, I am keeping a finger on the pulse of algal fuels. I believe these present great possibilities for future fuel uses and, indeed for carbon sequestration. (Could we produce excess fuel and pump it back down into old oil wells?) Sequestering a liquid is a whole lot easier than a gas.
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