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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 50401 to 50450:

  1. Lean 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.
  2. Lean 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.
  3. Lean 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.
  4. Lean 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.
  5. Lean 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.
  6. 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.
  7. The 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?
  8. The 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.
  9. Frequently 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.
  10. Putting 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.
  11. The 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?
  12. Frequently 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!
  13. Putting 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.
  14. Putting 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.
  15. CO2 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.
  16. Frequently 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.
  17. Putting 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.
  18. Putting 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.
  19. Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
    RE: KR @20,Dana @21,KR @22 "it has been shown that distributed renewable systems provide a steady baseline power supply - Archer and Jacobson 2007" I still see renewables appearing to be costly (short-term) on account of our desparate need for more electricity infrastructure - particularly east/west connectivity. North America is pretty North/South and we require a grid that is actually more "grid like" in that hydro in the rockies, can be connected to wind in the mid-plains and then connect to the needs in the east. Wind should be paired with hydro (wherever possible) since turbines spun by falling water are relatively easy to turn off/on. Nuclear has a place (I suspect deep in the base of the baseload) since it is difficult to turn off and on. Renewables would be so much more effective in a better grid. And once they are up and running they are the energy gift that keeps on giving. Besides maintainence, their benefit continues on into the future.
  20. George Montgomery at 11:18 AM on 4 January 2013
    Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
    The silliest comment I've seen on the denial of ocean acidification finished with "I'll let you work out just what percentage of the ocean waters mankind's tonnage of CO2 emissions amount to." No dissociation equation, no equilibrium reaction, no pH calculation, no idea.
  21. littlerobbergirl at 09:56 AM on 4 January 2013
    Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
    Phil, Andy, dana, thanks. Hawaii seems to be going balls out for renewables - geothermal, wind, wave, and the sea pipe things for air conditioning. Makes sense if they have to import oil, but a special case as any alt. tech. is going to be cheaper! Worth watching how they get on. As for Maine burning their wood waste, good! But i cant help thinking we'll have rather more dead stuff to pyrolise (sp?) in next few years than we would like - pine bark beetles, sudden oak death, chestnut canker and ash dieback are just the start :(
  22. Frequently Asked Questions About Ocean Acidification
    Hey Rob... Can you give us an idea of the size of that tattered little critter?
  23. The Dirt on Climate
    littlerobbergirl @3, the diagram is the glacial and sea ice extent at the time of maximum extent of both, and is only to illustrate the lack of glaciation in longitudes close to the Chinese Loess plateau. At the onset of the last glacial, Antarctic sea ice would have been comparable to current levels, and probably not capable of driving the onset of glaciation in either hemisphere.
  24. Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
    Thanks, Dana, for this update on the ever-increasing market competitiveness of renewable energy, when all costs and subsidies are considered. Thanks also for pointing out that ALEC - the unholy alliance between corporations and elected leaders - has added the decimation of state renewable energy standards to its agenda. It is extremely irritating when a cabal of plutocrats uses money and influence to overrule the people of my state (Colorado) who voted to have a renewable energy standard. We're second only to CA, with a requirement for 30% of electricity from renewables by 2020. Thankfully the Wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) of 2.2 cents/kWh was renewed along with the "fiscal cliff" bill, although the extension is only for one year. Too late for many Colorado jobs already lost to Congress' dysfunctionality, but something is better than nothing I suppose. Why are direct fossil fuel subsidies permanent and automatic, rather than subject to renewal every year or two like renewables? One difficulty to overcome in reaching a clean energy future is the seeming enormity of the task of getting from here to there without great disruption and cost. There are some very well thought out and modeled solutions out there, and I'll mention two. One is a recent study by NREL, and the other is a project called Reinventing Fire by energy and energy economics expert Amory Lovins and his crew at the Rocky Mountain Institute (buy the book here...it's a good read, and hopeful). One thing I like about Lovins' approach is that consideration of climate change is unnecessary, as the transition is led by the private sector because it's the more profitable approach (opposite of the Heartland mythology).
  25. Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
    CBDunkerson: Thanks for clearing up your point; I think you have addressed my concern save one minor misunderstanding:
    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...
    I do not think I was making an argument from equilibrium. My understanding may be (and probably is) off, but the impression I have is that normally, ocean warming leads to CO2 outgassing by the oceans into the atmosphere, and vice-versa. However, because of the source of the current build-up of atmospheric CO2 (human emisssions), due to the difference in partial pressures of CO2, the oceans are taking it up instead, despite their warming. 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.
    Moderator Response: [DB] Dr. H. Franzen discusses that very thing in the comments thread of his Seawater Equilibria guest post, starting about here.
  26. Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
    'Been thinking about my plans for this coming year, influenced by this thread. On a gently-sloping hillside below the level of a pond I'll raise the soil level of a rectangle of land, incorporating the 20 tonnes of horse manure that I've just taken delivery of from a friend who keeps horses. On this rectangle I intend to erect polytunnels, and round the outside of it I'll dig a metre-wide ditch leading off to a nearby drainage channel to take away any excess water. That should allow me to control the water level in the soil within the poly tunnel; and the pond will provide a gravity-fed source of water in case of drought. Deer are a major problem round here (SW UK) so surrounding all this will be 6-foot deer fence with rabbit netting round the bottom three fee, pegged out to stop burrowing-under. Around the West, East and North will be planted a belt of alders to act as a wind break. I'll report back at some point how I get on.
  27. Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
    I propose an "all of the above" approach , and allow the market to decide .
  28. Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
    The problems associated with the on-off nature of renewables are highly overhyped. http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2011/02/wind-energys-no-good.html
  29. Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
    Whoops yeah, I should have linked to the advanced version.
  30. Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
    dana1981 - Ah, yes, the Advanced version of the blog post addresses intermittent supply via geographic distribution and linked systems. I had been looking at the Intermediate version, which does not - just energy storage techniques.
  31. Putting an End to the Myth that Renewable Energy is too Expensive
    KR @21 - my link to the renewable baseload rebuttal @20 addresses the distributed renewable baseload point :-) That's one of the ways renewables can meet baseload demand, in addition to geothermal, and sources with storage like solar thermal.
  32. 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.
  33. Putting 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.
  34. Putting 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.
  35. Putting 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.
  36. Putting 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.
  37. Putting 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....
  38. Putting 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.
  39. Putting 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.
  40. The 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?
  41. Putting 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.
  42. Putting 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.
  43. Putting 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.
  44. Putting 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.
  45. littlerobbergirl at 19:29 PM on 3 January 2013
    Putting 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.
  46. littlerobbergirl at 19:10 PM on 3 January 2013
    The 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.
  47. Doug Hutcheson at 18:54 PM on 3 January 2013
    Putting 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.
  48. Food 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.
  49. Putting 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. :-)
  50. Putting 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. :-)

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