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Comments 55451 to 55500:

  1. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    suibhne - I would refer you to the reference Chris Ho-Stuart pointed you to (his peer-reviewed reply) the last time you argued in support of G&T. I would note that suibhne has been repeatedly pointed to the errors in his physics (here, here), and stand by my recommendation
  2. Chris Crawford at 05:22 AM on 14 August 2012
    A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    Mike, I looked over your simulation. Very interesting. Organizing it so that each country has its own team is an interesting approach, but I'll caution you that some people will resent being given a podunk country, so you should probably lump countries together into groups large enough to have an effect comparable to those of the biggest countries, such as America, EU, and China. Certainly all of Africa would have to be lumped into one unit because Africa comprises such a small portion of the overall problem. Indeed, it might be interesting to lump countries together by characteristics. Thus, the USA and EU constitute one group, the East Asian nations another, Africa a third, and so forth. A question: are the three team members from each team awarded points individually or do they win/lose as a team? That will have an important effect on their interactions. The greatest value of your simulation, I think, will be in demonstrating how political considerations cripple our ability to address these issues.
  3. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    KR says ...... Science of Doom site (search there for "Gerlich"), including such gems as On the Miseducation of the Uninformed by Gerlich and Tscheuschner (2009) and Radiation Basics and the Imaginary Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Science of Doom site is an evolving platform. Leonard Weinstein has a recent guest post there. How the “Greenhouse” Effect Works – A Guest Post and Discussion. SoD agrees with the broad outlines of the post. Leonard Weinstein would agree with Silas that it is technically incorrect to say heat moves spontaneously from a lower temperature object to a higher temperature one. Why do some in climate science take issue with the technical language of thermodynamics? There is no debate in physics about whether or not heat can flow spontaneously from a lower to a higher temperature object. Thousands of physics textbooks and thousands of physics departments unanimously agree with Clausius that it cannot. To argue otherwise is to peddle pseudo science. To redirect folk to SoDs site may not have the result that KR intends.
    Moderator Response: [DB] Being argumentative, repetitive and pedantic constitutes sloganeering and is in violation of the Comments Policy. FYI.
  4. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    Onceaskeptic, There are lots of answers to the plastics problem. First, we use it too much because it's so cheap, because it's a byproduct of the distillation process. It's there, why not use it? But if it's not there... do we really need to coat magazine pages in plastic, or use plastic straws (straws were once made of rolled paper, you know). Do children need to live a childhood dominated by heaps and heaps of plastic toys? Would it really be that unacceptable to actually have well-crafted, real wood trim some things (instead of plastic, which is sometimes colored to look like real wood)? Similarly, yes, with today's infrastructure we burn more FF collecting recyclables than we do just creating new things. But what if vehicles were electric, and drew their power from a grid whose source is not fossil fuel based? We're light years from there now, yes, but we have to get there. I think you are trapped too much in the moment, without recognizing the myriad possibilities. Think of the major lifestyle and technological differences just fifty or a hundred years ago. The USA did not have an interstate highway system. Think about rail and air transport, communications and electricity, manufacturing and more. It's not like things have been this way for centuries. Our current "lifestyle" is a blip in history. Things don't have to be this way, and they don't have to stay this way. "Thinking outside the box" means eliminating false assumptions -- and I think a lot of your pessimism is based on a number of false assumptions.
  5. David Archibald Exaggerates the Solar Influence on Future Climate Change
    At least Archibald is admitting that the data aren't following his prediction. That's a small step in the right direction, unlike say Don Easterbrook, who just distorts the data to make his prediction look less bad.
  6. New research from last week 32/2012
    Is there an error in the Citation about the Tree-ring study from the Alps? We're not quite at December 2012 yet? "Atmospheric Environment, Volume 61, December 2012, Pages 169–179" Anyway, these updates/Abstracts on new research is great, even though I don't spend time and money on reading the actual articles. Thanks Ari!
    Moderator Response: [DB] The paper is to appear in Volume 61, December 2012 edition of Atmospheric Environment, which is currently being compiled. No error.
  7. New research from last week 31/2012
    Moderator - The Dessler full text link goes instead to the Küttel et al 2012 full text.
    Moderator Response: [DB] A pre-print is here. Updated post accordingly.
  8. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #31
    Tristan, you may find your answer here. here
  9. David Archibald Exaggerates the Solar Influence on Future Climate Change
    "...he says cycle 24 is likely to be a long one, ending in 2026. Until then we should see a global cooling of 0.9º over the entire cycle"
    Record CO2 forcing + a more active, awake-for-longer sun = global cooling? Reminds me of the immortal words of John Wayne:
    "Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid."
  10. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    Chris I too have a global warming simulation you may want to look at. It is at www.globalwarminginteractive.com Michael Hillinger
  11. David Archibald Exaggerates the Solar Influence on Future Climate Change
    Archibald is still clinging to his story, albeit in a slightly modified way: now he says cycle 24 is likely to be a long one, ending in 2026. Until then we should see a global cooling of 0.9º over the entire cycle. Article here: When will it start cooling? Suggestive title. I also ask that question...
  12. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #32
    Deepak's post is insightful with simple & delicate yet "deeply meaningful" words. You can apply them not only to AGW but virtually any env problem/tragedy of the commons.
  13. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    skywatcher @8 I used to play modded Civ3, and from memory I believe it did beef up the global warming concept. Chris @10 Only reason I mentioned FotW is because it's already being used in some education circles. It literally is your competition (since it's the ONLY game/app in that arena right now). Lanfear @11 Yeah Civ2 was pretty basic environmental models. Civ3 has the strongest environmental models out of the 5 Civ iterations. I know for fact it was basically removed from Civ4 (and never re-implemented in Civ5) for the simple fact the concept was totally negative for the player and deemed a "bad concept".
  14. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    Dale@4 That reminds me of this with the reoccuring icecap melting. Only mildly related to the topic, since obviously Civ2 only has a crude climate model.
  15. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    @ onceasceptic http://bravenewclimate.com/ Count me in also re nuclear power. France is the great example.
  16. Chris Crawford at 13:40 PM on 13 August 2012
    A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    Wow, so many comments so quickly! I have good answers for all of them. First, I've gotten massive amounts of great feedback on the Kickstarter site, and those comments have boiled down to four major changes: Three turns instead of one. In fact, the game was designed from day one to have whatever number of turns I felt best. I reduced it to a single turn to permit easier testing and tuning, and never got around to re-activating multiple turns. The standalone version of the game (which resides on my Mac for faster testing) has already got this change; it will take a little while before the web version catches up with the standalone version. Second, I decided to ditch support for the iPad, which was seriously constraining the screen real estate and making the program unnecessarily cramped and difficult to use. This allows me to open up more screen real estate so that I can add the additional UI stuff for easier play. Not implemented yet. Third, I'll be arranging the causal factors in order of the magnitude of the impact they have on each variable. In other words, if you're wondering why the Global GDP went down, you can look at the various causes to it and immediately see which one had the biggest impact on the change. I'm still working on an additional indication of the magnitude of the impact of each causal factor. Not yet implemented. Fourth, and biggest, I'll be changing the levels of the game to have just four levels. Level One has only 39 factors (pages) in play, dealing only with climate change and the economy, so it will be simpler and easier to get started on. Level Two adds more environmental considerations such as air pollution, coral bleaching, acid rain, and species loss, for a total of 64 factors. Level Three will have the current set of 85 factors, plus a few more. Level Four will be the one where the player tinkers with the coefficients. By proceeding through the levels, the player will be brought up to speed to the full complexity of the game. I looked at Fate of the World and my characterization is that it's a game first and an educational simulation second. It's educational value is pretty slim, but it's a hell of a lot more fun than Balance of the Planet. Ollie, your idea of random values is interesting and would indeed make the game more challenging, but so far I haven't heard anybody say that it wasn't challenging enough. Besides, I spent three months tuning the system to get it to balance properly under the entire range of inputs, and even then the balance is rather delicate. Throwing some randomness into it would make final tuning impossible. Not that it's a bad idea; it just increases the testing load by an order of magnitude. Thanks for the feedback. Balance of the Planet is still quite incomplete and will be considerably improved by all the comments. Now if I can just get some funding...
  17. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    Hi Paul, I'll ditto what Dale said @4. Also, you asked about strengths of feedbacks. Why not set them up as parameters by which game difficulty is determined? Minor feedbacks for an easy standard of play and feedbacks at the upper end of possibility for the nightmare scenario.
  18. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    scaddenp, I wasn't assuming a-priori that the problem was insoluble (in fact I had originally assumed quite the opposite), but rather relating the impression I got from listening to the geophysicists and geotechs who's job is to solve it, and the impression I got was that it's unrealistic to expect to be able to find suitable sites and build the necessary infrastructure on a scale large enough for it to make a meaningful difference and the risk of containment failure was high. Speaking of modelling, this is somewhat related to the topic at hand so you may find it interesting. (Disclaimer: We've worked on projects with these guys.) The PDF fact sheet you can download at the bottom has more details. As I'm sure you're aware from your own experience, this kind of physics-based computer modelling is both extremely powerful and well accepted by industry -- something that "skeptics" would no doubt be surprised to learn.
  19. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    Potentially a great idea, and I hope you can succeed in developing something workable. Something that people find very hard to comprehend is the scale of change and the kind of momentum in the whole system, then grasping the kind of change (positive and negative) required to alter the system for the better. Having experimented with scientific simulations, I can certainly sympathise with the challenge of tuning a large number of factors to produce something stable, yet vaguely realistic! Dale, you make some good points, I'll just comment on Civ3, having enjoyed playing that a bit myself - it had global warming, but never at the point that it would seriously slow down a march to domination through massive industrialisation. You'd lose the odd tile here and there (a little lost production as you have to compensate for lost food), but cities are usually big by that point and it doesn't affect the outcome. A Civ version where global warming led to real economic damage would certainly be interesting.
  20. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    Tom, edging closer to my field here. Most of the generated oil/gas in a basin is going to be lost because there is not a suitable trap at the time of expulsion or because subsequent tectonics destroys the cap. My modelling software would tell you how much was generated and when, but it wouldn't interest an oil explorer unless the quantities are at least 10 times greater than an economic target, because they would assume 90% was lost. However, once a trap is formed and oil/gas accumulated, there is every reason to believe that trap can be stable for very long periods. (Evidence would include secondary cracking products consistent with trap conditions). Jason's point is a valid one - extracting gas alters a reservoir and depending on the nature of the seal, it could lose integrity. However, this to me is a reservoir engineering problem and I cant see how you assume a priori that it was insoluble, or that the problem would affect every reservoir. (eg a thick plastic, mudstone seal could still retain gas despite deformation and cracking in the underlying reservoir rock).
  21. Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique
    Zeke: The way I deal with this is to always start from the gridded data and calculate my own temperatures, applying a high resolution mask if I want land or ocean only temperatures. That way comparisons are always like-with-like. Well, as long as you have separate land and ocean grids; NCDC is a problem (and obviously UAH). Doing this you can pick out some interesting features. For example there's a step change between the Hadley and GISTEMP co-located land data around 1933 (BEST mention something like this in their paper). I never got to the bottom of that.
  22. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    Great idea, I look forward to playing with it. Suggestion for a different clever stunt for the values that are not perfectly known: Why not have the game pick a value at random (from a distribution that best matches our current knowledge) and /not/ let the player know what it is until the end? This could be a way of factoring in that we have to deal with these uncertainties when planning our future course.
  23. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    Onceaskeptic, the following is a good thread to read for solutions to the problem: http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-too-hard.htm You'll note that nuclear power certainly is one of the options available, although as Sphaerica notes it's but one avenue -- any plausible expansion of nuclear by itself won't be anywhere near enough. One of the dangers of insisting that any particular technology must be the magic bullet is that it's an unrealistic expectation -- after all, we have always used a mix of technologies with different characteristics. Some, like coal and nuclear, have large capital costs but relatively low marginal generation costs, so we run them constantly at high capacities to provide so-called "baseload power". Wind, OTOH, has medium capital costs and zero marginal generation costs but is intermittent, so we use whatever we can get when we can get it. Gas turbines, however, have low capital costs, high marginal generation costs, but very quick response times, so we run them only when needed to fill the gap. A grid that was 100% reliant on any one technology would be expensive and inefficient. Integrating renewables (and nuclear) would mean changing the mix of technologies to optimise costs but the need has always been there -- what makes it more challenging is the intermittency issue, which I believe is not beyond our capabilities to overcome. I will add that China, South Korea, and India are still actively pursuing ambitious nuclear programs so even if we don't build any in Australia, the world as a whole derives the benefit in CO2 reductions. I also think you dismiss solar power and wind power too quickly. If you read the report I linked to in #29 above I think you'll be surprised by the actual costs relative to other technologies, and the growth in wind power worldwide in the past decade has been phenomenal: (Source) Divide by three to get an "equivalent" capacity for comparing to fossil fuel and nuclear; that means that in the five years to 2011 the world added wind generating capacity equivalent to about 55 GW of nuclear power generating capacity. That's about half as fast as the peak rate of growth in installed nuclear capacity, which occurred during the 80s, so it's nothing to sneeze at: (Source) The decline in solar PV prices has been phenomenal, too. Solar thermal is still very expensive, which is a shame, because it has the advantage of relatively cheap energy storage and night-time operation, but hopefully that will come down.
  24. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    I enjoyed fate of the world although I wasn't very good at it. The only time I won was by pumping sulfates into the air in order to dodge 3C by 2120. Pyrrhic victory methinks.
  25. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    Potentially, Chris, if it's true to climate science and doesn't over-hype the subject, this is a brilliant idea and could target exactly the sort of people who need to be reached. As a sixty-two-year-old who finds gaming anathema I'll give it a miss, but I will pass a link on to my sons who are professional coders working for major players in the industry. I'll be interested in what they think. Best of luck with it.
  26. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    I think there is one point - possibly - overlooked: it is true - CCS is now heavily discussed. however there are other ways of elimination of CO2 from the atmosphere: the transmutation of CO2 into CH4 or CH3OH with the help of H2 generated by electrolysis (the current stemming from PV, wind or other sources of electrical energy). there are some interesting projects here in Germany carried out recently at the Fraunhofer Institute (IWES in Kassel) by Michael Sterner, now professer at HS-Regensburg. Very promising. However: The big technical problem is the effective filtration of CO2 from the rest of atmospheric gases. From a very reliable source here in GErmany I became the following information (filtering is performed by selective membranes): 1. normal atmospheric filtration (390 ppmv of CO2) just yields a filter result of 3000 ppm for one stage of filter. It is simply not effective enough. 2. filtering of fluegases from carbonic power plants results in an effectiveness of about 15 % and if you do it in a two stage version you will get about 90 %. This procedures result in enriched CO2-concentration. Then the next step could be the process of physico-chemically forming the methane or methanol products ... Methane could be put into the gas-pipelines. Methanol could be treated as normal fuel ... on the long run .. To sum up: CCS might be an interesting issue for the coal industry - but with all the negative issues - cited above - this is only a political point and does not solve the problem ... There must be emphasis on developping other procedures like the one above described ...
  27. Sapient Fridge at 23:48 PM on 12 August 2012
    Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    Onceaskeptic, I think nuclear certainly has to be part of the solution mix but I don't think it can be the whole solution. Even if you ignore the political and practical problems of dealing with the waste there is the simple problem of fuel availability. Currently there are about 85 years proven supplies of uranium at current usage rates, but only a 13% of the world's electricity comes from nuclear. If the whole planet converted their electricity generation to nuclear then the uranium would only last about 11 years, and that calculation doesn't take into account other uses of fossil fuels e.g. fuel for cars. Breeder reactors (e.g. thorium) sound like a solution but as far as I understand it the breeding is too slow to be of much use. Simply not economic. Humanity desperately needs an easily exploitable, plentiful, non-polluting and free energy source. That's the only way I can see we can meet our energy needs *and* start pulling CO2 out of the air so it can be buried again.
  28. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    @36 Thanks, and I know there are a lot of little steps to take. Two steps forward and 1.9 steps back is still progress definitely! I didn't mean to be so doom and gloom, I guess. I recently looked into hyper-miling as a driving method, bumping up from 32 to 50 MPG in my civic for instance, but it's hard to know which widely endorsed solutions ARE actually solutions... like the big recycling myth-hap. I used to think recycling plastic was the way to go, even though I didn't really believe in global warming as a human phenomenon, but it turns out it's actually worse for the environment than making new plastic, given that the energy requirements are higher and the energy comes from burning the very oil that would make new plastic anyway. (the evidence is there, don't take my word for it) speaking of plastics, let's consider CO2 and plastics manufacture alone; Does the manufacture of brand new plastics from oil contribute to C02 emission assuming a world where the electricity for that manufacture doesn't come from a CO2 emitting source?. Or, is there something we have to burn off or heat up that would produce CO2 to make the plastic out of the oil even if we had a truly clean source of energy? If so, Given that i. the likelihood that the amount of plastic we need to manufacture all the materials for most, if not all, of the forms of alternative energy that we know about (alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear power I mean, I suppose) is gargantuan, and ii. that plastic just is spun fossil fuel or sometimes bio oil in the first place, and iii. we still would need a VAST amount of plastics for everyday life, even if we did away with bags and bottles (think even just healthcare, let alone household items, etc.) are there even enough resources to convert to all those various forms of alternative energy even if we do get the popular will? I'm still pushing for nuclear energy discussion I guess, and REALLY considering EVERY way humans emit CO2 above the threshold the natural carbon cycle can handle, from cars to plastics to agriculture to 'homeland security'/war to SO MANY other things. I mean, the only real answer still seems to be stopping all fossil fuel use as soon as possible, except for what is necessary to convert to a system where we use NO fossil fuels at all (even like, the plastics for fiber-optic lines). There's only one crop I know of that even has a hope of creating enough bio-oil to make enough plastic, and still be renewable and not destroy the land and it's currently illegal to grow on most of the planet (hemp, of course... corn and soy and sugar cane and linseed, cotton seed just don't make enough per acre). With conversion to nuclear power though.... no CO2 for plastic and other oil based synthetics potentially. What, if any, are the direct CO2 worries with regards to nuclear power that outweigh the incredible efficiency it provides? even taking into account nuclear disaster potential (which becomes less and less likely as new reactors are designed). I mean, we've been using fossil fuels for a pretty large chunk of time compared to nuclear power, and think of how much less polluting in terms of CO2 natural gas is per amount is used now compared to when we first started burning coal in an industrial capacity. With all that effort put towards nuclear power couldn't we completely solve the CO2 problem alone with that alone?
  29. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    Paul @3 Try Civ3. It modeled global warming and sea level rise. As the world's industry grew, the chance of warming increased. If the event triggered then tiles across the map would become desert, the polar ice tiles would recede, as well as some coastal tiles would become sea tiles.
  30. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    Onceaskeptic, You're overwhelmed because you're trying to find one solution. There is no magic bullet. That said, reducing carbon emissions to a notable degree would be trivial, and would have a serious impact if we do it soon enough. The longer we delay, the more difficult the problem becomes. The waste of the last ten years is going to be looked on by history as a huge, huge black mark against our generation. First, there is a lot of total waste. Cars could be far more efficient, yet moms drive pickup trucks to go to the store for a loaf of bread. There are a million other examples where simple behavior changes will make a difference. Our vehicles are unnecessarily inefficient, and our personal habits are foolishly wasteful. Secondly, our power infrastructure is inefficient and needs revision. Third, there are many, many alternate power sources, and they are all getting cheaper by the day. If man tried to go to the moon the way we're addressing renewable energy, waiting for it to be so economical that it is not only painless but foolish to do otherwise, then we wouldn't get to the moon in a thousand years. Each of these things by themselves won't do a lot, but in concert they can make an impact, one that will not solve the problem, but will at least slow the speeding train and give us more time get further (cheaper, better vehicles and renewables, more social progress, etc.). Delay is the only real problem. [That, and as you pointed out, that so much of the public is fooled by climate disinformation, so there is no broad-based popular will to solve the problem -- yet. Things are only going to keep getting worse, and it's just a question of how long people are willing to remain stupid, and how evil the deniers who think they will benefit from delay are going to be.]
  31. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    @8 I think part of the point is, don't even waste money furthering the project as it can't possibly even come close to making enough of a dent in the problem to matter and spend that money on something else. Like nuclear power conversion efforts =-D.
  32. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    Sarah @ Article Now that it seems pretty clear from the article and the above comments that storing C02 in such a manner as to negate human emission problems is practically, if not physically impossible, are there any other threads that discuss a solution to the problem of human-activity-driven-global-warming-via-CO2-production anywhere(questionmark) I am a very recent skeptic-cum-convert, who was of the massive population that believed global warming may be true, but humans probably had very little to do or say with or about it. It is, embarrassingly enough, clear from even the first few argument refutations that I was in error. My bad. Now I want to know how to FIX it. I don't care amymore about the bad arguments from the deniers (who I was until 3 hours ago one of). Now I care about a solution to the argument that, socioeconomically, politically, and practically speaking, there's not a damn thing we can do about it, as long as the 'powers that be' don't want us to do anything about it (which they don't, and I don't mean any of the three branches of government people normally refer to when they speak of powers that be, but pick whichever powers that be you recognize), cause you should all be smart enough to recognize that they operate FAR too slowly to fix a problem like this in time, despite their ability to severely exacerbate a problem like this in time for it to matter for anyone but the mutants living in caves to escape the heat. This disturbs me, and coincides with my hopelessness regarding the availability of social security funds when i reach the appropriate age, the value of my dollar, and the erosion of my civil liberties. Educating the populace would be nice, but what do they do about it once they know. Stop using cars (questionmark) Right, my minimum wage job allows me to stop using fossil fuels as I struggle to provide for my family, let alone the rest of the wage slaves that comprise the majority of the world's population, as 30% of my paycheck is gone before i get it, and 15% of that (made up number) goes to pay for bullets, billionaires, and blow. Solar power won't cut it, it's just not efficient enough, and given the amount of money being put into researching making it more efficient (or how about even, potential money available TO put into researching it and still pay for things like food) it wouldn't be ready before we all fry like bugs under a microscope anyway. Same with tidal power, wind power, etc. etc. As the son of a nuclear engineer who actively oversees nuclear reactor operations, including refueling, decommissioning, testing, and maintenance, am I alone in thinking that massive and immediate conversion to Nuclear Power across the board is quite possibly the only solution that we have time to implement (questionmark) It is CLEARLY the best combination of safe, clean, VIABLE, efficient, and available energy, especially with the emergence of breeder reactors as an option, so can someone point me in the direction of a thread that talks about the effects of an energy-industry wide conversion to nuclear energy that includes informed discussion from actual nuclear engineers and nuclear reactor operators on the overall C02 emissions problem. What effect does fuel production have on CO2 emissions. What about manufacture, transportation, storage, etc. If global warming is in the top 3, or even top 30, list of problems most needing solved, then this seems like a reasonable solution, and a reasonable topic of discussion, doesn't it (question mark) That would be a really cool discussion, I think. Pardon the newbie mistakes in violation of perhaps the 'no politically charged' comments. And I know it's BARELY on topic, but I couldn't really find another topic that even discussed the skeptical argument that "it's too damn late anyway, so it is irrelevant that we are, in fact, the cause of global warming" Admittedly I only looked for the better part of a couple hours, which isn't very long, and I'm really NOT trying to trivialize the whole discussion or be sarcastic. Thanks for converting me. I'm still a skeptic, but only in the same sense that I'm skeptical that this website exists at all, or that I'm in fact typing anything.
  33. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    Hmmm. Games. I actually got given a copy of 'Fate of the World' as a gift. Never really got into it. I still think a genuine global warming/eco version of Civilisation is the only way of getting genuine game play and ethical reality truely working together. You need to be able to see failure happening on a big map and the migration that would result as drought hits etc.
  34. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    "This is a close judgment call" Anyone remembering the advisory board within "Balance of Power" will rightly admit that there are only few who could possibly bring a realistic "mini GCM" to the playing masses ;-) There is no close judgment call here - go for it, Mr Crawford!
  35. A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
    Hi Chris, I really enjoyed Balance of Power, SimEarth and Patton vs Rommel. But what I want to talk about, designer to designer (I'm credited on a number of Firaxis and Firefly titles) is this game. I'm concerned by the gameplay you talk about on the kickstarter page. TBH, it doesn't sound very appealing as a game. You make a couple of decisions at the start and then let the game play out by itself. The fact these taxes/subsidies are static for the 60 years of the game is very unrealistic, and from a player perspective, very boring. You have to remember, this isn't the 80's/90's where strategy/simulation gaming was still basically the realm of the hard-core grognard (like you and me) who didn't mind sitting there for 30 minutes waiting for a turn. ;) Firstly, in the real world taxes and subsidies change over time for a massive number of reasons, even down to simply who's in power at the time. But there's economic reasons, diplomatic reasons, foreign reasons, even totally random reasons for taxes and subsidies to change. From a player perspective you are removing the player from 95% of the game. As a design issue, this is the biggest one. Players need to be engaged throughout the game, not restricted from it. I understand you're selling this as an "educational simulation" but you need to look at the audience. You're going to be competing with the "angry birds/fruit ninja" generation. With so many shiny, flashy offerings on the market (and most of that for free too) the modern day game designer has quite simply 15 minutes to "win" over the gamer. If you don't win over them in 15 minutes, your game is shut off and never opened again. As a suggestion, considering taxes and subsidies change over time, and engagement rather than restriction wins audiences, why can't some alternative concepts be tried? For instance, why not allow the player to alter a couple of the taxes/subsidies up or down a couple of points each 5 years? The simulation is still basically the same, but you allow the player to address variance within the game. There's plenty of alternatives, and the one I suggested is no way the only one (or even the right one for your game). All I can strongly suggest is that I feel you need to engage the player during the simulation and let them alter the outcome. Lastly, I just want to mention that if you haven't already seen/played it, look up "Fate of the World". It's an economic/social/environment simulator. http://fateoftheworld.net/ That's what you'll be competing against. Thanks for reading Chris, and please take my post as positive criticism, and not a negative jibe. Dale
  36. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    scaddenp: like Tom, storage is my key issue, too. It hasn't always been -- I previously had a fairly simplistic view that if those reservoirs had managed to contain fossil fuels under high pressure for millions of years then it made sense that we could use the same reservoirs we are tapping for fossil fuels as secure repositories of carbon dioxide. However, following that talk by Zoback and subsequent discussions with others in the geomechanics field I have come to realise it's not quite as simple as that. As Tom mentions, the first point is that the reservoir that may have been sealed for millions of years is, of course, no longer sealed -- and that could be a weak point. Even more importantly, the stresses in the rock mass have changed enormously -- firstly by unloading, in the case where the reservoir previously contained fossil fuels that were tapped, and then by re-pressurising. Changing stress fields induces fracturing, and fractures have a nasty habit of propagating in unpredictable ways, potentially intersecting with larger-scale geologic structures that are relatively porous and allow the gas or liquid to traverse large distances. There have been some interesting studies where the chemical tracers from fracking operations have ended up in various wells in surprising configurations (e.g. contaminating a nearby well and a relatively distant well but leaving an intermediate well clean) that highlight how difficult these things are to predict. The scale of injection required to make a meaningful difference is also truly mind-boggling. It's difficult to see it being economic to construct infrastructure on that scale even if suitable sites can be found rather than simply not emitting the CO2 in the first place. Tom's point about the bias inherent in only looking at the "winners" is well made, too. If you only ever interviewed lottery winners you would think everyone wins the lottery -- it won't give you any information about the likelihood of winning a lottery with your next ticket. We simply don't know how many "potential reservoirs" there have been over that period that failed the test of time. I do agree with your point that it's still too early to be making judgements -- and I include the estimate of a doubling of cost in that. There has to be an enormous range of uncertainty associated with cost estimates, but even at double the cost it's not terribly attractive for new coal (but, of course, would be better for existing coal than simply leaving them running as-is). It should certainly still be pursued (although I would argue at a lower priority than it currently is in Australia) as it may lead to options for geoengineering in the future if it comes to that.
  37. Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
    DSL - it's unfortunate that Des Moines Register published that load of garbage. However, reading the comments was very entertaining. They absolutely tore Tom Harris apart. Great to see that he's not fooling anybody.
  38. Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
    If anyone's bored, Tom Harris is at it again. This time in Des Moines. Tom: "There really is no consistent correlation between climate and CO2 over geologic time." Tom: "We did answer the [I guess the CASS report, though I was pointing to this SkS article], in general (the authors were so inexpert in the field, and evaluated the course based only on the video, not the notes provided the students, that it was not worth spending a lot of time on)"
  39. Pielke Jr and McIntyre Assist Christy's Extreme Weather Obfuscation
    John Brookes @68, Tamino showed a different method. However, he only applied to to the contiguous United States, and only applied it to annual data. Consequently the results of his application of his method is not strictly comparable to the results of Hansen, 2012, which used global and seasonal data. In particular, winter months have greater variability of temperature than summer months; and have increased in temperature faster than summer months. The later fact means that by Tamino's own analysis, his technique applied to Annual data would show a larger SD than would be found using summer data alone as done by Hansen. The greater variability in winter months is also likely to swamp any signal of increased variability in summer months. So while Hansen has shown that his argument does not support the conclusion of increased variability within regions, he has not shown that that increased variability does not exist.
  40. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    scaddenp @31, storage is my key issue on CCS. There is little gained, IMO, if we bury the CO2 now, but it returns to the atmosphere within a couple of hundred years. In that context, the analogy to natural storage of methane is misleading IMO. First, it is misleading because geological processes can result in the release of methane, and does so all the time. Of the methane formed within the Earth 60 million years ago, a significant fraction has been released. How large a fraction? I suspect we don't know because the areas in which methane has escaped are of no economic interest, and do not get recorded. Of course, I am not a geologist. For all I know some geologist may have done a study of the proportion of the surface in which methane is likely to have been formed and trapped 60 million years ago which has since been eroded (thus releasing the methane), and the proportion in which methane is likely to have been formed and trapped, but which have been fractured by seismic activity, or had the cap eroded through, etc. From such a study we can truly estimate the stability of long term storage. Are you aware of any such study? More importantly, from my point of view, every proposed area of CO2 storage differs from areas of natural storage of methane in one crucial area - we have already breached the seal. We have breached the seal to provide a means to pump in the CO2. So the question of stability resolves not on that of the geological formation, but of the concrete seal we place afterwards to prevent leakage. This makes me think the stability of storage has been way oversold.
  41. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    Well my 2c (disclosure - my department is involved with CCS research) is that it is still too early to making judgments on CCS. CO2 doesnt have to collected at point of emission though you would need incredibly energy-efficient process to extract from raw atmosphere. Even if it doubles the cost (or more), there can still be situations where this may be economic. While I would agree that it is high-risk research, I am amazed that at such sweeping judgments on whether storage can work given the state of knowledge so far. If a seal can hold methane for 60 million years or so, then I dont think you can dismiss out of hand, the possibility of it holding CO2 for tens of thousands of year.
  42. New research from last week 31/2012
    Thanks Ari. Good to see that Dessler got his paper published on feedbacks! I'm surprised that there has not been more hoopla for the "skeptics" on his findings, which of course refute their claims of a strong negative cloud feedback.
  43. Pielke Jr and McIntyre Assist Christy's Extreme Weather Obfuscation
    John @68 - agreed that it's important to apply skepticism equally to both 'sides' and all research. We've got a post coming up on Hansen's paper which looks at critiques from tamino and others.
  44. Pielke Jr and McIntyre Assist Christy's Extreme Weather Obfuscation
    Tom Curtis @50, my reading of Tamino's post was that he disagreed with the way that Hansen et al did some of their analysis. Tamino showed a different method that got different results to Hansen et al. I'm sure the substance of most of Hansen et al will be unaffected by this. However, I think it is great that Tamino has found and publicised a possible error. Fake skeptics never criticise their own. Real skeptics do. Real scientists do. Let the fake skeptics blindly defend their side. It shows how uninterested in the truth they are.
  45. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    Oops, posted too fast -- should have read ahead a little rather than just doing a keyword search. The costs associated with sequestration were not included in the direct and indirect costs, but an estimate of the cost of sequestration was included in the levelised costs. The table of assumed costs is on page 23. The lowest is $14/tonne of CO2 in WA, the highest is $72/tonne in NSW. Without a very high carbon price I guess it'd be cheaper for NSW generators to just emit the CO2 and pay the tax.
  46. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #31
    Caveat: Without a general section I can't find a better spot to make general comments. From the comments policy: Comments using labels like 'alarmist' and 'denier' as derogatory terms are usually skating on thin ice. 'Denier' gets thrown around a fair bit. At what point is it derogatory as opposed to thin-ice skating?
  47. Pielke Jr and McIntyre Assist Christy's Extreme Weather Obfuscation
    Dana How you talk on twitter is your business of course but, "Like father like son" sounds like the sort of stuff that we should try to avoid if we actually want discourse.
  48. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    The new report Australian Energy Technology Assessment by the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics has some interesting figures for the cost of electricity from coal power stations with and without CCS. In most cases adding CCS roughly doubles the cost of the electricity, making it a relatively expensive option. Importantly, "the cost associated with CO2 injection wells, pipelines to deliver the CO2 from the power plant to the storage facility and all administration supervision and control costs for the facility" were excluded from those figures. Given the points I relayed earlier suggest the storage itself is a far from trivial problem to solve, I can't see how CCS will be competitive on purely economic grounds alone. I also think that transportation of the CO2 will be a big cost because I don't like the chances of there being a suitable storage location "near" each of the existing coal-fired power plants. For this reason, chriskoz, your original thought might be more accurate. The "marketing" for CCS is around retrofitting existing power plants, which makes it seem like a good idea because they're already there and they're already polluting, so why not clean them up? But I suspect the reality is that very few existing power plants will be economic to retrofit because of the costs of dealing with the CO2 once it's captured at the plant, whereas new plants could potentially be located with that being taken into account -- in which case CCS gives us an excuse to build more coal-fired power plants.
  49. The Mid-Wales floods of June 2012: a taste of things to come?
    I am not convinced at all that this flood in Wales can be or should be attributed to Anthropogenic effects. The Wye and the Severn valleys are both fed by the orographically enhanced rainfall that flows down into the valleys. The highest river level on the river Severn was recorded in 1947 when it reached a level of 5.8 metres. No flood since has ever reached this level. All this with added developments on flood plains and more run off. I believe the Wales floods along with Boscastle and Cockermouth were isolated events. Yes, in the future that MAY change. It is not even empirical evidence that you show here. Thailand had terrible flooding in 2011, but the British CCC determined that this flooding was not abnormal and the severity was caused by other factors. I think caution needs to be observed here. I am also not convinced that the thermal conveyor is being disrupted by 'Arctic amplification' as has been suggested. Our climate is very diverse and ever changing and I think it would be wrong, in the absence of a long term pattern, to draw this conclusion. I know hindsight is a wonderful thing, but without it we could be going down the wrong avenues.
  50. Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
    After reading the comments above I realise, the context of this article is not clearly specified. My original thought of it as the excuse for FF induustry to dig and burn more stuff promoted as "clean coal" because it's CCSed, is reinforced by the cartoon. But when you change the context to apply it to existing coal plants because you cannot dump them as it's economically unreasonable, totally changes the meening. And even people like Jim Hansen suggest that CCS would be helpful here. However, does anyone know any plans to apply this context, i.e. retrofitting existing plants with CCS? I hear about "new modern plants coming with CCS" only... Needless to say the change of context does not change my skepticism: i.e. I see PV technology already successfully competing with old C plants in Australia (without CCS but with carbon tax) in terms of $/kWh within next 2-3y (certainly this decade), so why even looking at still doubtful and largely uncertain CCS? PV has already reached the state when the energy put into production is returned within 1-2y (check Martin Green video here) while CCS remains very doubtful, almost pointless.

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