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Comments 54051 to 54100:

  1. Sceptical Wombat at 00:24 AM on 12 September 2012
    Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    I don't have any problems with Australia buying carbon offsets from other countries instead of reducing our own carbon emissions - provided that the offsets are genuine. What matters is that we reduce and ultimately eliminate global carbon emissions. If it is more cost effective to pay someone else to reduce theirs faster so that we can reduce ours more slowly then that is what we should do. The danger with cap and trade systems is that carbon allocations are in effect a form of money and (as with water allocations or money itself) there will be a strong temptation for governments to simply create more, which of course results in a lowering of the price. It is crucial that the integrity of the system be maintained. Unfortunately Jason is wrong in thinking that a lower carbon price will result in lower compensation. The household compensation is fixed so a lower carbon price will result is a budget problem.
  2. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    I spent some time looking at the Arctic currents yesterday, such as here: I'd love to know more about the models that point to the Arctic being a two state system (all ice, or no ice, year round). I'm wondering if one of the problems is that without the icepack, the warm water flowing in from the Barents Sea won't easily dive beneath the fresher water flowing in from the Siberian rivers? Or is salinity the key factor, and that won't change?. But scientists have already detected a change in those (freshwater) currents, so maybe this will happen... freshwater will flow counterclockwise around the coast, while warm, Barents sea water will flow through the pole to Greenland. We may be seeing some of this effect right now... look at what is still melting in the Cyrosphere Today maps. If so, with the ice gone, it could mean more warm water flowing through the pole to the coast of Greenland, and that alone could potentially keep ice form forming, even in the cold dark of winter. But if the two-state theory is correct, this whole "when is it zero" argument may well be a very, very short discussion.
  3. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    To put Glenn's statement more concisely... Pretty soon the amount of ice by any measure really is going to be zero, so the question will be moot. "No ice" will mean no ice. Of course, then "skeptics" will say that "well, water is just warm ice, so really there's still lots and lots of ice in the Arctic. In fact, all of the world's ocean's are ice, which means we're going through a period of catastrophic global cooling! Global warming is a hoax!"
  4. Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
    That Humlum et al. 2012 paper is discussed in a new post at RealClimate.
  5. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    This reminds me again of that old saying by, IIRC, Churchill: "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."
  6. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    More about world's renewable capacity (including PV) because Figure 4 gives not enough details. This report, esp. Table 2 at page 6, shows the world's capacity as 1342GW in 2010, and projected to become 2167GW in 2017. The continuous consumption in 2009 was 15 terawatts, according to quick search on wikipedia. Of course, caparity does not equal production, and we
  7. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    More about world's renewable capacity (not just PV) because Figure 4 gives not enough details. So, I'd like to provide better perspective below. This report, esp. Table 2 at page 6, shows the world's capacity as 1342GW in 2010, and projected to become 2167GW in 2017. The continuous consumption in 2009 was 15 terawatts, according to quick search on wikipedia. Of course, caparity does not equal production, and we all know problems with their integration, insufficient reliability to provide baseload, itd. So total renewable capacity is still only 10% of demand, while realistic production would be at best I guess 50% of capacity, thus 5% of demand. PVs are even smaller percentage of theat. The numbers above are probably the only guidance to Romney, who does not seem to look beyond just his potential 4 year term. However, the growth rate and price drop is more important consideration, IMO. And those, are about to reach or reached grid parity within this decade according to this analysis. If that forecast is believable, then we should see a big boom of PVs later in this decade. Pending the resolution of the PV energy storage issues, the fossil-powered plant imminent collapse will follow. That last vision suggests how short sighted is Romney's policy, if he puts renewables at the near-last place in his list.
  8. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    I strongly agree with U.S. assessment and it should be far stronger as a global technology leader. I'm still concerned that Obama has accepted a 100 year natural gas national supply in State of Union and this campaign. His recent action to double MPG requirements by 2025, CAFE, was welcome. It is regularly ignored in U.S. that global prices set fuel prices and increased production will likely result in increased export making self-sufficiency little more than a talking point. Approving deeper wells and Arctic drilling approval should be balanced against increased clean energy production. State level clean energy action is progressing in some states much faster than a national program. I'd much rather see high-speed-rail cross national lands, if anything, versus mining. Your point regarding Obama and the Keystone concerns me, current action is delay. Coal production versus coal power production are two points often ignored here. Coal mining will result in increased export as energy is reduced. Obama's DOE has accepted the vast supply of methyl hydrate gases as viable. That isn't carbon reduction. We waste power on a 50 year old infrastructure that neither party is likely to make serious efforts to catch up with the EU. Increasing and stronger weather events are still often accepted as flukes, ignoring similar global activity. I didn't know whether to smile or cry when middle U.S. temperatures were comparable to Australian Outback this year. Insufficient information was made available about reduced nuclear power production due to temp rise in cooling supplies. Grumpy old electrical engineer. U.S. should be leading the world in all climate beneficial and carbon reduction activities.
  9. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    Kevin C - Owen Paterson (the new environment minister) took part in a Shropshire wind farm planning consultation in 2008. The letter he wrote was recently used by George Monbiot in a blog post. Since then Shropshire Council have posted their planning officers report which has a summary of the letter. http://planningpa.shropshire.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=K0YDKRLO02U00 http://www.monbiot.com/2012/09/06/declaring-war-on-the-environment/ Paterson definitely opposed the wind farm and expressed a lot of dubious reasons for the opposition. In the officers report Bill Cash MP also opposed the wind farm. Interestingly whilst Northern Ireland minister Paterson did appear to support offshore wind, at least in official statements.
  10. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    There often seems to be a basic disconnect occuring in discussions of future ice conditions in the Arctic. One perspective focuses on the area metrics - Sea Ice Extent/Sea Ice Area - and whether looking at the trends in the data or model projections seas a Summer Ice Free Arctic in a couple of decades. Because that is what the trends are saying. The other perspective focuses on the volume of ice in the Arctic,and what the trends say about that. And this data is throwing up figures for a Summer Ice Free Arctic in a handful of years. So how to reconcile these two perspectives? Arctic Sea Ice is relatively thin and very flat. So melt & accumulation occurs mainly on the top and bottom surfaces. Yet the areal metrics are basically measuring the sideways dimensions of the ice. And Models/Projections into the future may be looking at how these 'sideways' dimensions change. Imagine a hypothetical 'ice floe'. It is 1 meter thick and 10 metres by 10 metres. Over the course of the melt season, lets assume that it loses 0.5 meters in each dimension. It is now 9.5 * 9.5 metres in area and 0.5 metres thick. So its area has dropped by around 10% while its volume has dropped by 55% Now imagine a more severe melt season. Loss over each dimension is now 1.1 meters. So Area has now dropped by 21%. But it's thickness is now -0.1 metres. It has melted away. So in reality, its area is now zero. This is the problem with using area metrics as a basis of future projections. They only hold valid while the volume projections remain above zero. Once volume starts to approach zero, area will start to crash to zero as well, and all projections of area/extent suddenly become invalid. Without some process to reverse the decline in volume, and quickly, within a handfull of years, area/extent will crash.
  11. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    Kevin @ 8. Don't forget we also have an equalities minister who opposes equal rights for gay people, and a health minister who want to wind up the NHS. Who would have thought Kafka would take over the government!
    Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed text.
  12. Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
    I've made a new animated graph of Arctic Sea Ice Volume with PIOMAS data to 2012-09-02. The previous version was used last week by the BBC's Newsnight programme: Arctic ice melt 'like adding 20 years of CO2 emissions' - a nice surprise!
    Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed text.
  13. Dikran Marsupial at 21:13 PM on 11 September 2012
    Murry Salby's Correlation Conundrum
    The pre-bunking of Prof. Salby's yet to appear article applies equally well to the new paper by Humlum et al., who make exactly the same mistake of using a correlation between rates to justify conclusions about long term changes.
  14. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Oneiota at #26:
    But it was much darker during the MWP!
    That's why it was referred to as the Dark Ages...
  15. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    "Back then in MWP there was no need to ever change a bulb!"
  16. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    On a related note, the UK now has a climate skeptic (or possibly just a wind farm skeptic - h/t Stoat) as environment minister - however he has no responsibilities with respect to climate change, except for possibly being able to affect wind farm permitting (The Register), and a health minister who believes in homeopathy (Telegraph).
  17. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Yes Bill, if you go over to John's original link that started all this, http://theconversation.edu.au/how-do-people-reject-climate-science-9065 The denierati (mainly consisting of 4 or 5 hard core denialists blessed with truly epic stupidity), are too busy making what they imagine to be clever rhetorical debating points, whilst avoiding discussing the actual science intelligently (or at all); totally oblivious to the fact that with every asinine comment, they confirm the original thesis of John's article. Their DNA obviously doesn't carry the irony gene! On another note, we seem to have lost all the fake skeptics, including Eric (pity, I sort of enjoyed his convoluted attempts to reconcile his mutually contradictory positions), hence we appear to be talking amongst ourselves.... Ah, for the good old days...
  18. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    When I heard Romney's acceptance speech I think he did mention renewables but that part of the sentence was drowned out by appluause for the fossil fool bit.
  19. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    I agree that the reaction is more interesting than the original survey. Questions of methodology and the questionable nature of online surveys aside, most of us who've been in the debate for a while were simply unsurprised, because the results aligned with our own experience. 'Who knew?', as Monbiot tweeted sarcastically. And there the matter may have rested... But the fake skeptic response has really been the gift that keeps on giving. And an ever more convincing confirmation of the original results. The (over)reaction also reminds me of those Fundamentalist groups that apparently cannot stop themselves stridently decrying the perceived 'blasphemy' of some relatively obscure Arthouse cultural production, turning it into an international cause célèbre - and hit! Spreading its message across the globe in the process. Not only do some people apparently not get irony, they also cannot seem to grasp the basic wisdom that sometimes the less said really is the better...
  20. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    Dale @ 2, It has occurred to me that the government changes are actually very smart politics, nullifying attacks from both directions simultaneously. Firstly, look at it from the "green" side: provided the number of carbon certificates issued by the Australian government gradually decreases over time as proposed, emissions will decrease. They may not decrease in Australia if Australian firms decide to buy them from Europe instead, but buying them from Europe prevents another European firm from buying them which means the reduction is still real. It doesn't matter if the CO2 is not emitted here or if it's not emitted in Europe, as long as it's not emitted. Australia will be doing "our fair share" and nobody can argue otherwise because the bottom line is the total emissions. Now look at it from the economic side: a large part of the scare campaign has been based around the idea that it will wreck our economy because our businesses will be uncompetitive and we're sticking our neck out too far beyond what the rest of the world is doing. This change neutralises that attack — we won't be paying too much and won't be sticking our neck out too far because we'll be in the same boat as hundreds of millions of other people, participating in the largest carbon market in the world. If other countries in that market limit emissions even more, we automatically have tighter constraints on emissions because we're competing in the same market for those emissions. If they loosen them, we automatically have looser constraints. Once the ETS is in place, Australia automatically plays its part and avoids becoming uncompetitive without having to change anything. (This becomes more true the more our competitors join the same market. I suspect that these benefits will convince more and more countries to do so, although it may take some time.) As for the coal power stations: their owners felt they were worth more than the government was willing to pay. If the government can reduce the same amount of emissions for less money elsewhere then they should do that. Those owners may turn out to be wrong: the European price may go much higher over the next few decades than they've assumed, which will greatly devalue their asset, but that's their problem now. I never really liked the "direct action" part of the plan anyway — it's like giving tobacco companies money in exchange for not selling cigarettes. I haven't looked at how the legislation works, but I would have thought none of this should have too much of a detrimental effect on the budget. If carbon costs much less than forecast, then the compensation required is less as well, so that should roughly balance out.
  21. Philippe Chantreau at 16:02 PM on 11 September 2012
    A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Thank you Bill for that update. We are all anxiously awaiting Foxgoose comments. These stories always end the same way, it's as predictable as a Hollywood movie. Incidentally, the reactions speak volume on the validity of the studies' results. Perhaps the methodology wasn't perfect but the conspiracist ideation is definitely there. This is quite comical.
  22. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    "President Obama's energy policies are good, although his lack of leadership on the climate change has been insufficient to take us off the potentially catastrophic climate path." This sentence seems to mean the opposite from what is intended. What is an insufficient lack of leadership? This could be replaced with "...his leadership hasn't been sufficient to..." or some such phrasing.
  23. New research from last week 36/2012
    Link to the full text of Polvani and Solomon fixed, thanks. :)
  24. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    "Al Gore and IPCC have blinded us!"
  25. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    Dale @ 2, Yes, it looks like the Australian government is backpeddling, but some observers point out that the link to the EU scheme will make dismantling of the Australian scheme more difficult. Of course political considerations seem to slow and weaken climate action at every turn.
  26. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    I wrote:
    I've seen a really good graph somewhere...
    I've found it: Credit goes to Michael Tobis and Stephen Ban.
  27. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    The second is also used in many posts here (example) and originally comes from Foster and Rahmstorf 2009.
    Oops — that should be Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, not 2009. Tamino's analysis is excellent, as you would expect. ;-)
  28. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Bob Loblaw, Thanks for the link. I actually downloaded that book some time ago but haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Sounds like I'd better! bill,
    It will be noted that all 4 have publically stated during the last few days/weeks that they were not contacted.
    It seems that for some people, accusing others of malfeasance requires such a low burden of proof that simply searching for someone's name in their Inbox is enough effort to put in before doing so. Then, when it turns out that their efforts wouldn't have worked anyway, they blame the victim for not making it easier for them to check their own mail before they made the accusations. Personally, I'd be searching for words like "survey" and, if need be, checking every single email during the month or so in question before I'd accuse someone of lying. I guess I'm old-fashioned like that.
  29. Antarctica is gaining ice
    I would expect Zwally to have the numbers right. The interesting science question is reconciling the ICESAT data with the GRACE data. This abstract was done in July. The point for Watts is provide some reassurance to readers wondering about the arctic meltdown. All his readership cares about is having an excuse to do nothing. I suspect for the average US citizen, the effects of climate change are so far small, in the future, and happening elsewhere, whereas any sort of mitigation is perceived as less spending power by one means or another.
  30. Antarctica is gaining ice
    I would be cautious about reading too much into these results. This is also just a conference abstract. Then again, Zwally does good work. It also keep in mind that they conclude that: "A slow increase in snowfall with climate wanning, consistent with model predictions, may be offsetting increased dynamic losses." If true, one has to wonder for how much longer that might hold?
  31. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    KR @1 - thanks, fixed. Dale @2 - fair points, but it's still very early in the Australian system. Better to have a system in place that can be weakened or strengthened than no system at all.
  32. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    Please note the Australian Govt appears to be back-peddling on the carbon tax. They've already removed the floor price, linked us to the EU carbon market (so companies can substitute cheap international credits with the expensive AU ones) and also cancelled the coal power station buy-out process. State Govts have also been cancelling/down-scaling the residential alternative energy schemes and subsidies.
  33. Obama, Romney, and Various National Climate Policies Around the Globe
    Moderators - Fig. 1 has badly formatted HTML code, missing the initial "h".
  34. Antarctica is gaining ice
    Yah, barry - sounds like accelerated loss in addition to accelerated gain - perfectly consistent with global warming, as the authors note: "A slow increase in snowfall with climate warming, consistent with model predictions, may be offsetting increased dynamic losses." Watt's the big deal? Ha ha ha, but more seriously, how long would you expect the mass gain to last, if indeed it is happening?
  35. Antarctica is gaining ice
    Apparently an internal document, not a peer-reviewed study. Maybe they have submitted/plan to submit.
  36. Antarctica is gaining ice
    The WUWT report is about recent ICESat data that apparently show mass gain in the Antarctic ice sheet from 2003 - 2008, citing a paper (and linking a video) by lead author Jay Zwally. The NASA page on it is here.
  37. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    philipm,
    The problem is not just laziness about making sense of science. Superficially, fake balance accepting the logic that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge implies that journalists need to learn more science.
    This is a really good example -- on the one hand we have multiple, relevant experts telling us about Arctic sea ice, nicely balanced by another guy at the end telling us what he doesn't know: "Climate change is a murky science," [Christy] said. "To some [i.e. those who are experts on Arctic ice] it's an easy answer to say it's due to extra greenhouse gases. To the rest of us [i.e. those who aren't], separating natural variability from human impacts remains a wicked problem." (Editorialising mine. :) Perhaps the reporter should have asked himself why he was balancing his report with "expert" opinion from someone who finds the whole problem too difficult to solve? Since when is that news? There are literally billions of unqualified people they could have asked who could have said they find it all a bit complicated as well. Why didn't he "balance" it by finding some nutjob willing to say that the oceans were going to boil next week? Why is the "balance" always between the mainstream view and only one of the two potential fringe views? Why do they get to paint the mainstream as "alarmists" rather than looking for real alarmists (preferably those who actually are hoping for One World Government (TM)) so that the mainstream can look sensible and conservative in contrast? It's not just the problem of false balance, it's that the false balance is biased and always goes only one way. (I've seen a really good graph somewhere (here at SkS?) that visually represents the gamut of views on climate sensitivity and shows the mainstream clustered around 3C with a big bump at low sensitivities representing "skeptics" and a long tail to the right with "extreme warmists" and showing how including just the "skeptics" and not the "extreme warmists" creates the illusion that the "true answer", which "must lie somewhere in the middle", actually lies in the trough between the mainstream and the "skeptics"; whereas if the "extreme warmists" were included, then the "middle" value would actually be the mainstream view (and the "middle ground" fallacy that many people intuitively believe would actually give the right answer).)
    But really, it's simpler than that. The mode of argument and the chief sponsors are exactly the same as for a range of other faux debates from tobacco to ozone hole. Failing to spot this is a major fail.
    Absolutely. Why are their BS detectors so utterly useless that even when it's the same people from the same organisations saying the same things about climate science as they used to say about medical science (re: tobacco) they still don't detect it?
  38. Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
    @ dana1981 #27: I do believe that you are being a tad too harsh on Watts. After all, he and the Wattsonians come from a parallel universe where the laws of physics and chemistry are entirely diffeerent than those that apply here on Earth.
  39. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    philipm, The first graph is used in many posts here (example) and originally comes from Murphy et al 2009. The second is also used in many posts here (example) and originally comes from Foster and Rahmstorf 2009. The third originally comes from Santer et al 2011, discussed here at SkS and mentioned in many other posts. If you right-click on each image you can obtain the URL for the image hosted by SkS.
  40. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    "Rapid rebound in bulb luminosity confirms theory that low amount was because of storm causing abnormal min"
  41. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    I trust that the following will not offend... "Man may have made the bulb, but only God has the power to turn on the electricity."
  42. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    It's hard to stop a moving object... "Wipe off those fingerprints on the bulb before you screw it it. We don't want people to learn who made it and where it came from."
  43. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Blogger's Hall of Amnesia As well as McIntyre – the man who chucked around allegations first and then got round to checking his Inbox – it’s:
    Dr Roger Pielke Jr (he replied to the initial contact) Mr Marc Morano (of Climatedepot; he replied to the initial contact) Dr Roy Spencer (no reply) Mr Robert Ferguson (of the Science and Public Policy Institute, no reply) It will be noted that all 4 have publically stated during the last few days/weeks that they were not contacted.
  44. New research from last week 36/2012
    Yes, our salvation undoubtedly lies in Tupperware, lots of it. We'll need the UN world government to enforce purchases but that can easily be woven into Agenda 21. Anybody found cracking PE and attempting to make moonshine go-juice can be sent for a "moon landing," heh-heh-heh.
  45. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    "Unless you are a scholar and a well known scientist, no one may seriously listen to what you say, write or research. I am not a scientist but an electronic engineer with long years of interest in geology and history." Umm...did anyone *else* get hit by the low-flying Irony Horse? Astrofos, I would indeed ask you, AGAIN, to justify your earlier comments, pointed out by Daniel Bailey, plus now please explain why anything you say should be taken as authoritative from this point on. FYI: I have a bit more than an "interest" in geology: i have a degree and 14 years of experience in the field.
  46. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    But it was much darker during the MWP!
  47. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    'Living rooms have been brighter in the past!' I'm rather disappointed LA21 hasn't been mentioned yet. And, of course, the Illuminati (boom boom!)
  48. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    "How many Wattsians does it take to install a CFL? NONE! They all deny they work!" John Hartz, you are on a roll...I canna resist!
  49. New research from last week 36/2012
    Doug, we were warned.... Just one word >;-/
  50. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Eric wrote: "Most skeptics agree in principle on the need for a new light bulb, but believe that the modeled light output of most light bulbs is exaggerated by a factor of two." Sounds about right... given that the modeled output of the light bulbs would (like climate models) have been refined until it matched actual observed output. So, restated; 'Most 'skeptics' believe that observed reality is exaggerated by a factor of two.'

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