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Camus at 22:26 PM on 14 August 2012Christy Once Again Misinforms Congress
@ Albatross on #17: "It is really troubling that "skeptics" and contrarians like Christy are permitted to grossly and repeatedly mislead Congress without any consequence whatsoever. Policy makers need the best science to make informed decisions..." Don't make the mistake of assuming that the purpose of congressional hearings is to air the best science. It's just a dog and pony show. With a few exceptions, these people already understand the science, but they are serving a completely different agenda. The scientific community, however much scientists may generally disdain politics, needs to become far more politically savvy. Because this is what you are up against: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Statement&Statement_ID=4f92dad8-2308-4c1e-aba3-b39d33486519 -
Camus at 22:09 PM on 14 August 2012Christy Once Again Misinforms Congress
@Moderator response to #11: I think there is considerable evidence that funding matters. This blog rightly focuses on the substance of the science, and discouraging ad hom attacks is entirely appropriate. However, for what it's worth, I don't believe that making funding sources transparent constitutes an ad hom. While not currently popular among researchers, many professional societies have attempted to implement ethical guidelines for funding transparency, given the strong correlation between funding and findings. IMHO, I think revealing the funding of research should be standard practice. -
michael sweet at 21:24 PM on 14 August 2012The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
Lloyd, It would be a good idea to read the paper before criticizing it. They have checked for normality and find that the distribution has shifted. Tamino does not agree with that conclusion on his blog. Hansen's work is peer reviewed. Please provide data to support your analysis. You assume that Hansen did not review the paper with a statistician. I doubt your assumption is correct. After all it was on the web for months for comments like yours. -
les at 19:09 PM on 14 August 2012Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
Nicely review. I particularly liked the use of repetition on paragraph 4. I wonder if we'll see, in future blog posts, more use of the techniques you illustrate in the fourth paragraph, i.e. repetition... -
Kevin C at 19:04 PM on 14 August 2012Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
I haven't read the book (of course). Nonetheless, in true internet form, I'll comment authoritatively on the review. Firstly, all this is well known to anyone with any background in public speaking outside science. The value in Joe's work is therefore in bringing it to a specific audience and presumably in introducing some field specific examples. Beyond that, it gets messy. The problem with communicating in metaphor is that metaphors can only be pushed so far. If you give your audience a partial understanding of a system based on a metaphor, you also give them the tools to reach wrong conclusions on the basis of that incomplete understanding. That's a tough problem. I'm not saying don't use metaphor (indeed arguably all of science is an exercise in metaphor), but that doing requires care - it can backfire. This is a symptom of a deeper problem (which can probably be expressed more precisely using a sociological terminology of which I am unaware). Our natural mode of reasoning is something I call 'social reasoning'. In this mode, arguments which are simple and link in to things we already know are the most persuasive. However, this mode of reasoning is not well adapted to scientific exploration - this is presumably a contributing factor to the scientific hiatus between ancient Greece and the Enlightenment. Effective scientific reasoning is logically consistent and deeply evidence based, both of which compromise simple expression. Thus scientific arguments are frequently less 'fit' in social discourse than social reasoning. Again, that's a tough problem. I've got ideas here; Romm may have more, so I'll certainly try and make time to read the book. -
Dale at 15:36 PM on 14 August 2012A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
Chris: Here's a crazy thought. Have you contacted the people/orgs directly in the climate/energy business? This includes research facilities such as GISS, Suzuki Foundation, WWF, energy companies, Govt Climate Commissions, and dare I say it, the Koch's? There's also "people movements" such as GetUp here in Australia (which can move a LOT of small people in a very short time). Specifically people/orgs with a direct interest in climate communication and getting knowledge out to the public. -
Andy Skuce at 14:54 PM on 14 August 2012Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
chriskoz@3: I think it's because of the way Lady Gaga uses repetition and extended metaphor. Also, her videos get a staggering number of hits, so she must be doing something right. There are limits though, I'm sure that Joe is not advising John Cook or any of the rest of us to don a raw-meat bikini, effective attention-getter though that would be. Chris Mooney has an extended interview with Joe Romm. -
Uncle Pete at 14:53 PM on 14 August 2012Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
Rhetoric aside, the laws of physics even apply in the parallel universe inhabited by Sen. Inhofe, the Heartland institute , Plimer et al. :) -
chriskoz at 14:18 PM on 14 August 2012Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
John, or whoever has read the book, Lady Gaga's listing among the esteemed persona as mentioned above is intriguing yet left unexplained. Does anyone have the explanation (best if supported by relevant citation) of such listing?Response: [JC] He cites examples of Lady Gaga using rhetorical techniques like repetition and metaphors in her songs. You'll have to read the book for more details :-) -
Andy Skuce at 13:41 PM on 14 August 2012Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
I'man assiduousa keen reader of Joe's blog and I go there often to find out what's happening in both science and policy. He's an excellent writer, too, and I'm so sure that I can learn lots from him that I immediately bought a Kindle copy of his new book. But (there's always a "but") I wonder how effective his style is in getting inside the heads of the doubtful and disengaged and actually changing their minds? There was a good comment on Planet3.0 , one I didn't entirely agree with, but which did express very well why some people often recoil from forceful rhetoric. Dan Thompson wrote:Now, I will say, for me, the recent Hansen paper makes sense. I like its sober approach. But when that paper is rolled up and I’m beaten with it, figuratively of course, what choice to I have other than to take the opposite stance and fight back? I saw an informal summary of Hansens’ paper published by Columbia.edu leads with a photo of a huge forest fire. It’s like they need that bit of drama to bring readers in. But drama quickly puts us on edge, feeling that we’re being knowingly manipulated, with the result being that you don’t quite trust what you’re reading.
I'm relying here on my familiarity with Joe's blogging style, not with his book, which I haven't yet read. I will be interested to read how he deals with the psychology of persuasion. Maybe his straight-ahead style is the only one that works in today's polarized world of American politics, but I can't help thinking that he could use a little more honey with his vinegar. -
Chris Crawford at 13:14 PM on 14 August 2012A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
Wow, you've got a good memory! Yes, the original game had a factor for people falling off their roofs while cleaning their solar units. This really is a significant consideration -- a LOT of people die each year falling off their roofs. I've forgotten the numbers, but the overall number per gigawatt-year was in the same league with most other energy sources. I didn't include it in this edition because nowadays we're talking about more centralized solar installations, or installations on large buildings that would be serviced by pros, so the death rate goes way down. But yes, I had to dig through numbers to come to that decision. -
Bernard J. at 13:01 PM on 14 August 2012The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
Have they actually checked for normality or is the distribution a heavier or lighter tailed one? Have they checked for change in variance with time? Have autocorrelations in time and space been allowed for?
I think that the statistical understanding of the researchers is rather more sophisticated than the low level that would be required to ignore such basic processing. And even though such tests are useful, there's the simple fact that many analyses are robust to departures from standard assumptions, especially where such departures are slight. Further, there's the simple fact of the consilience of different datasets with each other, and with the underlying physics. If there is a Type I error occurring, then there is a huge problem not just with some statistical analyses, but with the fundamental scientific understanding of basic physical processes. Ockham's parsimony razor is unkind to such discrepant protruberances. -
calyptorhynchus at 12:13 PM on 14 August 2012Book review: Language Intelligence by Joe Romm
Good luck! The reason that communicating global warming and other upcoming environmental catastrophes is that a huge change in mindset is required. Up to now our society has operated under the assumption that we can do anything, we are in control, our desire for economic development cannot be modified in any way. All this has to change. -
Bert from Eltham at 11:52 AM on 14 August 2012The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
Yes we need at least five sigma signal to incontrovertibly prove our premise. This will be very robust and far too late! The statistics of extreme events do not prove the case but taken with all the other indicators that are all skewed toward a warming Earth are a very compelling argument. Bert -
SEAN O at 11:29 AM on 14 August 2012The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
Tamino has a look at the paper. -
SomeDude89 at 10:55 AM on 14 August 2012A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
I like Ollie's suggestion of randomized (and maybe hidden) biases. Combining that with multiple turns (3 still sounds a bit low) should make for good replay value. Let the player review and respond to the results each turn. That's what made the DOS game engaging, before getting familiar with all the effects. No mass fall deaths in this version? That was kind of funny... -
adelady at 10:50 AM on 14 August 2012The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
Perhaps we should wait for the analysis tomorrow on the paper itself before going too far down this road. -
Lloyd Flack at 09:51 AM on 14 August 2012The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change
It's good that people are now looking at theglobal pattern of extreme events rather than at individual ones. Any signal will be detectable in the ensemble rather than in individual observations. But they really do need a statistician in on this rather than relying on their own knowledge of statistics. There are things that they have not done in this study that need to be done to make the conclusions more robust. Have they actually checked for normality or is the distribution a heavier or lighter tailed one? Have they checked for change in variance with time? Have autocorrelations in time and space been allowed for? I don't see any sign of these having been considered and as a statistician I would want them to have been looked at. This looks like a case of non statisticians doing their own statistics when they should not. I think the conclusions are probably correct but are not robust enough. -
Chris Crawford at 07:35 AM on 14 August 2012A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
I'll chime in with Dale by noting that Civ is fundamentally a war game. That's its point and purpose. It wasn't designed to teach history, economics, military science, or environmentalism. It was designed to be fun -- and it does that very, very well. I love that game. Balance of the Planet can't hold a candle to Civ in terms of fun. That's because it was NOT designed to be fun -- it was designed to be educational, and in that, it greatly outpaces Civ. -
scaddenp at 07:11 AM on 14 August 20122nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
The point of redirection to SoD is to help you understand the physics - that AGW does not in fact involve a mechanism that violates 2nd Law nor that it proposes a novel definition of 2nd law. Keep reading - try to understand what is actually happening. -
Dale at 06:54 AM on 14 August 2012A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
Paul @15 The problem is, Civ is a war-game, not a planet simulator like Chris is creating. That's why environmentalism doesn't really get a lookin in Civ. ;) Try Alpha Centauri if you're looking for a more environmental focus. -
Paul D at 05:46 AM on 14 August 2012A game designer's contribution to the climate solution
I have played Civ II to V and haven't been impressed by any of them when it comes to environmental issues. In Civ IV they lost the plot and linked it to nuclear war. The problem they have is that they do not show how to develop alternative political strategies to achieve a result. You are stuck with war, trade and no differentiation between low carbon strategies etc. There isn't a built in analysis of carbon footprints based on certain trade stategies. eg. I doubt if there is a difference between importing a product rather than producing it locally. Hence you can't experiment to see what happens if all nations make do with what they have locally etc. What if your nation went vegetarian? And what about developing low carbon tech? There is tremendous potential in Civ to create a genuine low carb product that challenges players to try something different. -
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 -
Chris Crawford at 05:22 AM on 14 August 2012A 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. -
suibhne at 05:05 AM on 14 August 20122nd 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. -
Bob Lacatena at 02:46 AM on 14 August 2012Sequestering 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. -
dana1981 at 02:04 AM on 14 August 2012David 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. -
kar at 01:00 AM on 14 August 2012New 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. -
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. -
vrooomie at 23:09 PM on 13 August 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #31
Tristan, you may find your answer here. here -
Daniel Bailey at 22:46 PM on 13 August 2012David 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."
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Mike_H at 22:40 PM on 13 August 2012A 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 -
Alexandre at 22:18 PM on 13 August 2012David 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... -
chriskoz at 18:18 PM on 13 August 20122012 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. -
Dale at 16:55 PM on 13 August 2012A 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". -
Lanfear at 16:17 PM on 13 August 2012A 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. -
Uncle Pete at 15:31 PM on 13 August 2012Sequestering carbon nature's way: in coal beds
@ onceasceptic http://bravenewclimate.com/ Count me in also re nuclear power. France is the great example. -
Chris Crawford at 13:40 PM on 13 August 2012A 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... -
Stevo at 12:16 PM on 13 August 2012A 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. -
JasonB at 11:40 AM on 13 August 2012Sequestering 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. -
skywatcher at 10:30 AM on 13 August 2012A 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. -
scaddenp at 07:29 AM on 13 August 2012Sequestering 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). -
Kevin C at 06:29 AM on 13 August 2012Watts' 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. -
Ollie at 00:50 AM on 13 August 2012A 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. -
JasonB at 00:41 AM on 13 August 2012Sequestering 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.
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Tristan at 00:08 AM on 13 August 2012A 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. -
John Russell at 00:05 AM on 13 August 2012A 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. -
kampmannpeine at 00:05 AM on 13 August 2012Sequestering 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 ... -
Sapient Fridge at 23:48 PM on 12 August 2012Sequestering 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. -
Onceaskeptic at 23:04 PM on 12 August 2012Sequestering 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?
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