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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 -
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.
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