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nigelj at 07:26 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Sunburst @12
"You must, however, consider the Big Picture in that "global warming" really isn't global unless the upward temperature trends are happening everywhere, and I have pointed out several regions where exactly the opposite is happening."
No. The world doesn't have to be warming at every place for the world to be warming as a whole. All that has to happen is the planets average temperature goes up. This is self evidently possible even if some small areas are cooling. By analogy a simple traditional wood fire could be getting hotter and hotter measured with temperatures in the chimney even if you spilt your iced drink on a small part of the fire causing one corner of the fire to cool for a little bit. I've already explained all this @7 and you havent disproven it with any data. You have pointed out a couple of regions where you allege without hard evidence theres cooling but you neglect the many more regions that show warming. You provide no proof that areas of your alleged cooling are greater than areas of warming. And as people point out you confuse a warming trend with weather so you havent demonstrated any actual cooling trend anywhere at all on the planet.
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Sunburst @13
"Well, you are free to believe whatever you want. But I'm sure that most Americans who have seen skyrocketing heating bills and frozen water mains for the past 5-10 winters would tend to say it's a cooling trend and not just cold weather. "
Or is it because electric companies are simply charging more money for other reasons? Maybe they are building new infrastructure. Maybe they are getting greedy. Maybe there is maineinance work. Again you provide no reliable evidence of why prices are skyrocketing or even "if" they are sky rocketing.
And 10 years does not constitute a climate change trend. Its generally accepted we need 30 years of data to be certain the climate has changed in a fundamental way and its not just short term natural cyclical variability. This is why it was only decided in about the 2000s that burning fossil fuels was definitely causing climate change. So even if the global climate WAS cooling for 5 -10 years (it isn't) this doesnt prove very much.
" At any rate, it would simply be wrong to deprive those people (including myself) of the fuels they need in order to get them through the winter seasons despite all of the "global warming" we are experiencing."
Strawman. Nobody is depriving anyone of fuel.
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Rob Honeycutt at 07:11 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
SunBurst @12...
The term "global warming" refers to the rise in global mean temperature. There is nothing dictating that every single point on the planet must be warming for it to be global warming.
You also failed to address the point that your original statement said the cooling was "equally as strong" as the warming, when it clearly in fact is not.
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SunBurst at 07:01 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
nigeli @ 7
I sympathise with the challenges people face, but these comments about what they can afford are just empty assertions. On what basis with what facts? What expert study says this? Even if they had difficulties affording this you can have carbon tax and dividend schemes which are financially gentle on people (google it).
Don't trouble me with "expert studies". These studies say only what the paymasters want them to say. First try living in one of those cooling regions I describe and see what it's like to try to make ends meet on reduced crops and whatever government assistance they can get. And the more government handout we have, the more inflation we get. Either way we are stuck with less, and things are bad enough even under the present circumstances.
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SunBurst at 06:51 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Philippe Chantreau @ 13
Well, you are free to believe whatever you want. But I'm sure that most Americans who have seen skyrocketing heating bills and frozen water mains for the past 5-10 winters would tend to say it's a cooling trend and not just cold weather. At any rate, it would simply be wrong to deprive those people (including myself) of the fuels they need in order to get them through the winter seasons despite all of the "global warming" we are experiencing.
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Philippe Chantreau at 05:49 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Sunburst, you seem to be the one stuck with not understanding the very words you yourself use to argue.
You have pointed to several regions where cold events have happened recently (weather) but failed to produce data that would show that there is a long term cooling trend in these locations. In post 8 above, MA Rodger did not mention gobal averages at all but instead linked data that clearly show an upward trend for the 2 locations you mentioned with enough precision that they could be checked.
So, not only these locations fail to show "a downward trend equally strong as the upward trend in other regions," they actually show an upward trend, consistent with the global trend. How did you get the impression that these locations were experiencing a long term cooling trend?
Repeating stuff does not make it become real. If you want to be taken seriously, you must now produce local data that shows a long term cooling trend of approximately 0.18 deg C per decade. Considering how your original argument went, you should produce a great quantity of them too.
You must also show data showing a decreasing growing season. That will likely not be in the 48 contiguous US, where the length of the growing season has gone up steadily. I'll add that, if you want to go into the growing season argument, in order to keep it honest you must steer away from research showing that the overall warming could cause a decrease in the number of days suitable for plant growth due to soil moisture and other factors adversely affected by rising temperatures.
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SunBurst at 04:55 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
MA Rodger, nigelj, John Seers, David Kirtley, Rob Honeycutt
You all seem to be stuck on using global averages as your only way of characterizing global temperature trends. You must, however, consider the Big Picture in that "global warming" really isn't global unless the upward temperature trends are happening everywhere, and I have pointed out several regions where exactly the opposite is happening. This is especially true in the case where the warming is caused by the CO2 greenhouse effect since CO2 is non-condensing and therefore stays in the atmosphere long enough to become more or less evenly spread. In this case, would it not be much more logical that the greenhouse warming would also be evenly spread instead of some regions showing great warming and other regions showing great cooling? You miss this sort of thing by relying only on global average temperatures.
Moderator Response:[DB] Does "global warming" mean it’s warming everywhere?
"No, “global warming” means Earth's average annual air temperature is rising, but not necessarily in every single location during all seasons across the globe. It’s like your grades. If one semester you get all Bs and Cs, and the next you get all As and Cs, your grade point average rises, even though you didn’t improve in every class.
That’s the way it is with Earth’s near-surface temperature as atmospheric greenhouse gas levels climb. Temperature trends across the entire globe aren’t uniform because of the diverse geography on our planet—oceans versus continents, lowlands versus mountains, forests versus deserts versus ice sheets—as well as natural climate variability. When you’re zoomed in on a particular place, you may not be able to see the overall trend.
It is only when scientists calculate the average of temperature changes from every place on Earth over the course of a year to produce a single number, and then look at how that number has changed over time that a very clear, global warming trend emerges. In other words, it’s only when we “zoom out” to the planet-wide scale that the trend is obvious: despite a few, rare areas experiencing an overall cooling trend, the vast majority of places across the globe are warming."
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Rob Honeycutt at 03:52 AM on 14 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
I'm very curious where SunBurst finds cooling "that is equally as strong as the upward trend" because I'm just not seeing it.
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Stephen Mettler at 02:42 AM on 14 March 2021'Freedom from Fossil Fuels' - a climate science framework for non-scientists
Thank you Joel, I really appreciate the kind feedback and I'm so glad this can be an easy on-ramp to welcome more people in!
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David Kirtley at 23:29 PM on 13 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
SunBurst, you are confusing weather for climate. Take a look here: Does cold weather disprove global warming?
As MA Rodger pointed out @8, one year's cold temperatures (weather) need to be looked at in the larger context (climate) to see if there is any trend. Deke Arndt, in this tweet, summed this up well for the continental US, for Feb:
Now compare this year's Feb to Febs from earlier in the 20th century:
Do you see the trend? That is global warming.
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JohnSeers at 20:20 PM on 13 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
nigelj @ 7
SunBurst
As you rightly point out Al Gore's expertise is not the issue as suggested by SunBurst. However I would like SunBurst to list one prediction by Al Gore that "failed" because I do not think SunBurst will be able to list one.
Al Gore may have had a tendency to frame his narrative in rather doom laden terms and his desire to dramatise for effect gave ammunition for criticism. But he was fairly accurate.
The only prediction SunBurst is likely to come up with is Arctic ice. An accurate understanding of exactly what Gore said on this does not add up to a prediction. (Though you could criticise the words for dramatising a worst case scenario.)
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MA Rodger at 18:50 PM on 13 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
StarBurst @6,
You tell me:-
"I agree in that we would not expect perfectly uniform warming, but when temperatures show a downward trend in some regions that is equally as strong as the upward trend in other regions, it definitely raises doubts about global warming."
Then you describe cold weather in Niagra Falls & Chicago, But do does that indicate locations showing a downward trend?
February 2015 was a cold month in both these locations, in Chicago the 4th coldest on record and in Buffalo the 2nd. But cold months way below the average are seen in the records at both locations. Such events are surely to be expected. They are not part of a downward trend. The trend at both locations is upward!!
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nigelj at 13:21 PM on 13 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Starburst @6
"I agree in that we would not expect perfectly uniform warming, but when temperatures show a downward trend in some regions that is equally as strong as the upward trend in other regions, it definitely raises doubts about global warming. As I stated in my first posting, global warming means warming over the entire global, which certainly isn't happening."
My understanding is most regions of the world show warming. The few regions showing cooling or no change do not have enough cooling to offset the warming in the regions with warming. This means the world as a whole is warming. This is commonsense. Scientists measure all these things and take it all into account because they are basic things. The heat energy content of the entire planetary system has also increased in the last several decades. Again scientists look into these things because its what they are trained to do.
If you still dont understand or agree, please provide a list of all countries in the world and its oceans as well, and their warming rates and cooling rates (if there are any) over the last 50 years and we shall see which dominates, - warming or cooling. Until you do this in detail, with links to all your data, and making sure you are comparing like with like, you have got nothing worth me considering.
"For people in these regions, global warming is not the problem and fossil fuels are necessary for making a living, or even just surviving. These people simply cannot afford governments imposing additional taxes (or "cap and trade") for their use of fossil fuels. "
I sympathise with the challenges people face, but these comments about what they can afford are just empty assertions. On what basis with what facts? What expert study says this? Even if they had difficulties affording this you can have carbon tax and dividend schemes which are financially gentle on people (google it).
Many expert reports like the Stern Report find we can mitigate the worst of climate change at a cost of approximately 2% of global gdp per year. This is very roughly equivalent to 2% of peoples incomes. I suggest all but very poor people can afford that, and poor people can be given finanical assistance by governmnet so they can cope or could be excluded from carbon tax schemes. At least some countries do this sort of thing. I dont have time to list them all but this sort of thing is eassily googled.
"Finally, with the failed prediction track records of Al Gore and other pro-AGW politicians,..."
You provide no evidence of these alleged failed predictions. But its not relevant anyway , because the IPCC reports about climate change are not based on anything Al Gore said. The IPCC and climate scientists make their predictions based on science, and so far warming trends are very close to predictions made decades ago. Refer:
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/01/update-day-2020/
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SunBurst at 10:32 AM on 13 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
MA Rodger @5
We would thus expect regional variations in the rate of AGW.
I agree in that we would not expect perfectly uniform warming, but when temperatures show a downward trend in some regions that is equally as strong as the upward trend in other regions, it definitely raises doubts about global warming. As I stated in my first posting, global warming means warming over the entire global, which certainly isn't happening. Also, many pro-AGW articles focus on the thawing permafrost in Alaska and the summer-like temperatures in London or Paris during the December-January months, but neglect the frozen-over Niagra Falls and ports on the Great Lakes, massive numbers of burst water mains in Chicago, shorter growing seasons in agricultural areas, and dozens of hypothermic deaths in cities throughout the midwestern and northeastern states. For people in these regions, global warming is not the problem and fossil fuels are necessary for making a living, or even just surviving. These people simply cannot afford governments imposing additional taxes (or "cap and trade") for their use of fossil fuels. Also, they can't afford governments shutting down pipelines or making "national monuments" of regions rich in methane.
Finally, with the failed prediction track records of Al Gore and other pro-AGW politicians, it cannot reasonably be expected that Americans would be more concerned about global warming than fixing the economy and getting back to work.
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Joel_Huberman at 01:22 AM on 13 March 2021'Freedom from Fossil Fuels' - a climate science framework for non-scientists
Thanks, Stephen! I'm a retired biochemist/molecular biologist, who was rigorously trained in physics, chemistry, and biology--but never in climate science. Like you, I am a climate science auto-didact. The fact that I had previous scientific training certainly gave me a leg up. Nevertheless, gaining a full understanding of the greenhouse effect, of the current climate crisis, and of possible solutions was not easy for me. So I congratulate you on your intelligent persistence, your willingness to share what you learned with others, and your creativity in generating a clear, scientifically based presentation!
I intend to share your presentation with many friends who have asked me to help them understand climate science. I would like to be able to respond quickly and fully to each such friend, but I would have to develop a presentation like yours before I could get started, and I haven't found the time to do so. Your presentation comes as a great time-saving gift to me and as a wish-come-true for my friends!
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MA Rodger at 21:20 PM on 12 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
SunBurst @4,
Your detailed account of US temperature sits within a wider annual trend. The GISS mapping tool mapping warming 1980-to-date shows individual years averaged over a month can be cold in certain regions and even a decade of a single month can show cold. Thus October in the northern mid-west US shows a bit of cooling when averaged over a decade (and a similar area shows no warming through April/May), but these are some of the few exceptions in a global-wide warming evident over the full year mapped out below.
I would suggest, contrary to your assertion, that this does indicate that "AGW is global."
You also argue that, if CO2 is spread evenly in the atmosphere (which it is, global rises are measured up to 50km with perhaps a two-year lag between the hemespheres), the warming should be also seen uniformly across the globe.
Yet the climate is a far more complex thing. While the sun provides a uniform warming by latitude, the map below (from here) shows some significant variations within latitude, this seen even on a temperature scale perhaps 10x wider than the anomaly map above.
It is these variations that define the detailed average temperature of a latitude and these variations do not simply get warmer uniformly in a warming world.
We would thus expect regional variations in the rate of AGW.
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SunBurst at 13:55 PM on 12 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
You climate change people talk about anthropogenic global warming (AGW), but is this AGW really "global"? Well, warming has certainly happened in some parts of the world, but in other regions such as the midwestern and northeastern continental US, temperatures have dropped by about 25 degrees F during the winter months from years before 2015. In Colorado, we have seen relatively mild winters during the past 5-6 years due to drought conditions, but the summers have also been "milder" (ie. cooler). This results in much shorter growing seasons even though annual average temperatures may or may not have changed much. The ground in many places remains frozen and therefore not suitable for tilling until mid-June. Then killer frosts occur in the late August to early September time frame — not much time for growing. One might argue that our problems are related to cooling, and not warming.
Therefore, it seems that your AGW isn't as "global" as we were led to believe. Furthermore, we would expect that warming caused by the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect would be more or less uniform since CO2 tends to spread evenly in the atmosphere over long time intervals.
In view of these simple facts, we must ask if the CO2 greenhouse effect is the best explanation of any warming we are experiencing. Also, AGW believers ultimately base their claims on an increasing global mean surface temperature (GMST). But is this actually a meaningful figure of merit for assessing planetary warming?
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David-acct at 11:57 AM on 11 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Sorry - gotta correct a few typo's should read -
for reference purposes, the total electric generation for the ERCOT grid was hitting a high of appprox 65-66 GW per hour in the ERCOT system (sorry if i lost the link to this site ). The peak summer hits in the area of 75gw-78GW per hour (based on my recollection).
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David-acct at 11:54 AM on 11 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
In response to Eric's comment
There is no question that the natural gas source electric generation dropped during the critical period from late in the day February 14th until early morning on the February 15th.
I have attached the link to Eia.gov grid monitor which details the electric generation by source (its the 4th chart on the site and you will need to select a custom date range)
From February 12th natural gas electric generation went from approx 35-37GW per hour to a max of 44gw per hour at 9pm Feb 14. Then at approx 1.30 am was the percipatice drop down to 33GW, then a further drop to approx 28GW per hour by 3pm on the 15th. A total drop of approx 16GW of natural gas generated electricity or approx 36% drop.
At the same time wind source electric generation typically runs between 12GW to 20GW per hour. During the period Feb 10th though Feb 14th, Wind source generation ranged in the 2GW to 8GW per hour. Wind reached a max during that period of 9gw per hour midday Feb 14th and dropped to approx 0.9GW per hour by mid day Feb 15th . Electric generation from solar generally ranges in the 4GW -5GW per hour during the day. During the period from Feb 10through Feb 14th, solar reached a high of 1.9GW per hour and did not produce more than 1GW per hour until the mid day on the 15th producing a high of 2.7GW and quickly dropping back down. Electric generation from Both solar and wind were expected to drop to approx 20-25% of normal generation.
for reference purposes, the total electric generation was hitting a high of appprox 65-66 GW per hour in the ERCOT system (sorry if i lost the link to this state ). The peak summer hits in the area of 750-78GW per hour.
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nigelj at 06:59 AM on 11 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
swampfoxh @24, Savorys claims about how much carbon grasslands soil can be made to sequester by certain types of rotational grazing are probably exaggerated. This website did an article on his work a year or two ago, that demonstrated this exaggeration with reference to published studies.
That said, there is published evidence grasslands can be made to sequester at least some additional carbon with the right rotational grazing eg Nordberg. The worlds grasslands grazed by cattle are often metres deep in carbon rich soil, which suggests something is going on. I suspect the truth of how much carbon can be sequestered by rotational grazing is probably somewhere in the middle between the various claims. However open grasslands grazing like this has low cattle density to work properly, so it likely means fewer total cattle numbers globally than presently.
Moderator Response:[PS] Please take this discussion to the appropriate thread. https://skepticalscience.com/holistic-management-rebuttal.html
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:34 AM on 11 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
There is more to be addressed regarding agriculture than the impacts it has on climate change or the potential for agricultural practices to be changed in ways that help reduce the climate change harm that has already been caused.
A more holistic view regarding the issues is presented in the University of Stockholm led development of the "Planetary Boundaries" evaluation. Key points from that evaluation related to agriculture are the ways that developed agricultural activity can be seen to be significant reasons that global human activity has already exceeded Planetary Capacity regarding Biochemical Flows (specifically the Nitrogen Cycle) and Biodiversity.
That understanding of planetary boundaries is understandably a major aspect of the basis for the Sustainable Development Goals. The latest annual report regarding the Sustainable Development Goals effort, Human Development Report 2020, discusses the details of the Planetary Boundaries (Note: Although climate change Planetary Boundary impacts are not as significant as other boundary impacts at this time, it is understood that the developed systems need significant change to keep climate change impacts from doing more harm to the future. The HDR 2020 focuses a lot of attention on Climate Change impacts because more climate change makes it more difficult to achieve the other SDGs).
The most important understanding is that the challenges to the development of a sustainable improving future for humanity are mainly getting the "highest negative impacting people" to be less harmful, and to get the "Supposedly Superior People" to be more Helpful, especially helping the less fortunate.
That understanding leads to the awareness that the behaviours of richer people as leaders are key considerations. The people who are wealthier have the ability to be the least harmful and most helpful. Those among the richer in the global population, which is the majority of people in the "supposedly more advanced nations", who are not acting that way, including the leadership they vote for politically and what they encourage economically (how they spend their money), is a detriment to the future of humanity. And anyone using their wealth to influence popular support contrary to achieving the corrections required to develop sustainable improvements for the benefit of the future is behaving most harmfully, even if it isn't "illegal" (which exposes the reality that Law and Order and Regulation can be harmfully inadequate or incorrect when powerful interests influence and get to compromise that type of stuff).
10 to 12 billion people can be decently sustainably fed with current technology. The ways that the systems that have developed fail to do that is "The Problem". And over-consumption and food waste by the "Supposed more Advanced, the Supposed Leaders, are serious aspects of the systemic problem).
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michael sweet at 21:31 PM on 10 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Swampfox:
I read a lot about Arctic Ice, sea level rise and renewable energy. I do not have time to also keep up to date on agriculture. Therefor I do not read the literature you read on agriculture. It seems you do not read much since you have cited no references in your rants.
If you want to make a scientific argument you must cite your references for everyone else. You are simply claiming you alone know what should be done. Your claim of authority seems pretty slim to me. Try finding some references so we can check your claims.
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swampfoxh at 21:16 PM on 10 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
We have all read the same literature, it doesn't need constant citing. The F&AO numbers don't include many items needed in determining animal ag's footprint, like the footprint of refrigeration. I'm not a ranter, I'm a climate science writer and a faculty member of ccl.org. the F&AO has a vested interest in keeping the numbers low, they are a "cow" interest group. I'm an omnivore, so I don't have a bias about cows, but bovines pose two major problems: 1.445 billion of them, nose to tail, would circle the earth at the equator about 100 times, along with the human race, shoulder to shoulder, another hundred times. That is an impact that needs to be reckoned with, but is an attention that is being ignored.
Regen Ag has its own intractability, along with the Savory "bovines forever" solution. We all know the last ten ice ages created the twenty (now less) feet of the "Great American Desert", not the Buffalo. The buffalo theory is invalidated by that animal's need to stay near water while avoiding wolf packs in the tall grass prairie. Also, antique inventories of the buffalo hide industry of the 19th century show less than 3 million carcasses, so Savory's estimates of herd strength are highly inflated. The very idea of a bovine eating grass, taking materials from that grass for its own development, invalidates the returning value theory of soil Regen, unless, of course, the animal died and rotted on the prairie, returning its store of leached nutrients to the ground. This is a much longer story, so I won't take up anymore of your time, its apparent that some of you don't want to be reminded that most every solution posed to fix the climate problem has caveats, although the science of the "what" and "why" we have about the climate problem is pretty solid.
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nigelj at 08:44 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Typical systems available to stop icing on wind turbine blades:
Moderator Response:[RH] Shortened link.
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nigelj at 07:02 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Yes the basic reason for the Texas blackout was failure with gas and nuclear power. Basically Texas had failed to insulate supply pipe etc despite having similar problems in the past. They just didn't want to spend the money although other states have. Texas grid is also independent so they couldnt import power and this is because of further cost saving and ideological reasons. I found this commentary about a week ago:
yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/02/the-climate-lesson-from-texas-frozen-power-outages/
As the commentary proved, the actual problem with wind power in the Texas power outage was not its electrical performance per se. In fact I recall seeing some information elsewhere that it was producing higher than expected output. The real problem is some of the blades iced up. However technolgy exists to stop this happening. Its possible to fit this to both new and existing turbines. The underlying problem was again ERCOT not spending the money.
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michael sweet at 04:16 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Eric,
The amount of power from wind and solar is predicted 24 hours in advance. The remainder of power is supposed to be produced by thermal sources (fossil fuel and nuclear). Wind performed as expected. Solar outproduced forecasts. Thermal power collapsed. You want to keep all your bets on thermal?? In the future there will be storage that provides energy on windless nights like happened in Texas. Some proposed energy systems use electromethane as storage to power existng gas plants (Connelly el al 2016, Williams et al 2021). Keep in mind that an identical problem occured in Texas in 2011 (before wind and solar were installed) and the Texans decided not to do anything to prevent reoccurance. Are you blaming the 2011 failure on wind?
Poorly designed thermal power plants caused the failures in Texas. Blaming wind and solar for improperly designed thermal plants does not make sense.
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jhnwlk at 02:32 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Watch the video Eric and listen carefully.
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Nick Palmer at 01:48 AM on 10 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
swampfox wrote that animal agriculture is "the major contributor to GGEs". No, it's not. I suspect they have watched the highly deceptive (and wrong/dishonest) film 'Cowpocalypse'. swampfox asserts that they have have followed skepticalscience.com for 8 years so they should have seen the article about the subject which states that the actual figure is around 11%.
skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm
The F.A.O. estimate that the actual figure is about 14.5%
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/ -
swampfoxh at 00:29 AM on 10 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Moderator. I'm not trying to disrupt the orderliness of this conversation. I have been following SkepSci for eight years. I use it for my lectures on Climate Change: Impact of an Outlaw Species" which I have delivered to thousands of people over the last 7 years. It's not outrageous, as some assert, that industrial animal agriculture or current plant agriculture is the major contributor to GGEs, nor it is outrageous to tag the emissions footprint of 8 billion humans as the principle cause of the climate problem. Really, the climate scientists are their own problem. We find the evidence, present it to the politicians, they distort it to fit their own narratives and the human race ends up fiddling while Rome burns. The climate scientists need to put their foot down and start demanding policy changes instead of meekly slipping away into their labs and relocking the door. Scientists need to run the climate mitigation show...if they don't start running it, it will never get done...it's not getting done now.
The main reaction to my lecture is, "Gosh, I didn't know all this was going on."
That should tell contributors to SkepSci how ineffective their research has been, how little influence they have. What good is their science if it never reaches the public, if it never frightens anyone into action?
Moderator Response:[DB] Moderation complaints and off-topic snipped. Others have pointed you to a post better-suited for your conjectures about animal agriculture.
Time to move on.
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Eric (skeptic) at 00:16 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
The video downplays the failure of wind. Click on Wind Integration Report: http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/generation/windandsolar Table below has date, avg wind (weather), peak wind (weather), wind power at max load and max wind power on 4 days in Feb..
15 18.4 30 5,350 5,461
16 6.8 16 4,415 4,732
17 9 15 3,556 3,882
18 14.5 21 6,634 7,080The peak power numbers are all below the average (2019) Feb wind power of 9,000 MW. The wind dropped, but the wind power produced dropped even more. Peak wind production dropped too so storage would not help. The bottom line is in the report: 30 GW of wind capacity and about 4GW of wind production when power was most needed. The low production to capacity ratio shows wind cannot be relied upon.
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John Mason at 20:46 PM on 9 March 2021Peter Brannen's Paleo Proxy Twitter Thread
I'm sure Greenland was affected during the Eemian given the sea level data.
The East Antarctic ice-sheet is less than 40ma old, dating from approximately the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. -
DK_ID at 09:49 AM on 9 March 2021Peter Brannen's Paleo Proxy Twitter Thread
@2, you are correct but I didn't think the changes over the last 2 my had much impact on the East Antarctic ice sheet and ocean sediments should be around for over 100 my.
However, there are problems with the impact theory. There are deposits that seem to indicate a bolide impact but studies of paleo-indian population density don't really support the theory. Also, you may know more than me, but I think the 1st evidence found for the YD was from Greenland ice cores. Greenland has, likely, been affected by past interglacials.
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John Mason at 07:44 AM on 9 March 2021Peter Brannen's Paleo Proxy Twitter Thread
A big problem with the Icehouse climate is that each glaciation typically does away with the physical evidence for both past glacials and interglacials. The effect's not total but it's widespread nevertheless.
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:22 AM on 9 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
I'm alway skeptical of any claim that includes something like "feeding all the people." Over 80 million acres are devoted to growing corn in the US. I'll leave to Red Baron the calculations to determine how much carbon that could store if used differently than in the extreme industrial fashion required by corn growing. Of all that corn, 60% goes directly to ethanol production and feed stock, another 10% to dry distiller grains with solubles (which requires further energy input), then another 11% to other processings. Other processings include high fructose corn syrups, an addition to human diet that has no value whatsoever from the nutrition and health point of view, and is arguably detrimental to health.
This means that over 80% of the use for corn has been artificially created to find avenues to an overproduction so severe that the stuff is not worth enough for farmers to make a living. Corn farmers have been subsidy dependent for literally generations. This entire system is total nonsense, from any angle: economic, social, environmental, thermodynamic, agricultural. It is complete madness.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/
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michael sweet at 22:32 PM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Since this is a scientific site it would be helpful if people supported their arguments with citations and not just empty assertions. Long, unsupported diatribes, especially doomer messages, are not very helpful in advancing the discussion. Scientists have not yet given up on reducing carbon pollution and feeding the current population of the world.
See Jacobson et al 2018 and Connelly et al 2016 for possible solutions to the carbon problem in providing enough energy for adanced societies. Red Baron has previously posted extensive links suggesting a large amount of meat can be produced without a carbon disaster. Perhaps carbon could even be sequestered. I disagree with some of his conclusions but he has demonstrated that his position can be defended with citations.
Swampfox: what peer reviewed studies can you produce to support your wild claims? I note that you have not even cited a newspaper article in support of your rants. Why should I believe you instead of Red Baron?
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RedBaron at 19:13 PM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
@Nigelj 17,
One of the issues we have with studies like the Nature study you posted and Richards' citation is context.
You can claim it is exaggeration, but actually more important to be understood is that there are fundamental problems using the industrial ag infrastructure for regenerative ag that limits the rate of sequestration substantially.
Richard is using numbers from regenerative ag practised in a way not limited by the current industrial ag (green revolution) and associated secondary industries. Your Nature study details improvements on industrial ag, but without changing the basic models. It is not suprising that the current paradigm is not ideally suited for sequestering carbon and falls significantly short of what many farmers brave and lucky enough to work outside the support of that model have been able to do.
Adding cover crops between monoculture commodity crop harvests is certainly beneficial, and using no till with covercrops between commodity crops even better yet. But as much better as this may be, it is nothing even close to the potential of a native tallgrass prairie. And THAT can bypass all the whole commodity crop infrastructure and easily sequester orders of magnitude more carbon per year.....And also at the same time produce more food per acre than now.
But you really need to make pretty big changes to the whole food system to make that sort of future a reality.
Don't think that you and Richard are as far away as the numbers you parry about seem. Truth is you are simply looking at two different things, yet describing them as accurately as you can.
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nigelj at 18:51 PM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Swampfox @15
"why wouldn't we just go with outlawing conventional plant and animal agriculture and fossil fuels? We know nobody will change their habits unless forced to do so by government fiat, so why not go for the jugular right now?"
It would be nice and clean and simple, but is probably just not politically viable. No political party to my knowledge has proposed this because they are probably scared they would loose too much support in the polls, because not everyone wants to go that far. And you cannot simply outlaw fossil fules because we dont have an alternative fully in place. It would have to be done in a phased way, but you know that. And of course there is pressure on the government from the huge industrial farming lobby and fossil fuel industry, and these are big campaign donors.
However certain other things do promote change. Its proven that carbon taxes help (look it up on wikipedia and read the studies) and renewable subsidies provably help.
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nigelj at 18:38 PM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Richard at 14
"If 10% of all agricultural land across the planet were to be farmed using proven, relatively simple, cheap and healthy Reg Agriculture principles, that would sequester approximately 46.g Gt of CO2/yr. That is more than the approx. 25.6 Gt that is currently emitted and so we could begin to bring down the Keeling curve.
These comments contain errors. They make uncited claims. Read my comment @1 based on a published, peer reviewed meta study. Not sure how you could have even missed it. Paraphrasing the study, soils can be made to sequester about 1.9 gigatonnes of carbon a year (which is approx 9 gigatonnes of CO2). And total emissions is approx 37 gigatonnes per year, easily googled. As per the study, this sequestration process requires virtually all the worlds croplands to be used.
I get so tired of exaggerations. That is not to diminish the obvious value of regenerative agriculture, and the criticisms of industrial agriculture look roughly correct. Regenerative agriculture is a good thing for several reasons. Over selling the concept just seems like it could backfire and will give ammunition to the critics.
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swampfoxh at 18:08 PM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Nigelj already points out that population can't shrink fast enough to clear the 2 or 3 degree increase, yet some commenters maintain that Regen, CCT and other remedies are useful endeavors...even though they will be resisted by that very large (billions) population. So if we do these things and population still thwarts the 2 or 3 degree goal, what's to follow?
Moderator Response:[DB] Again, time to move on from this line of discussion.
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swampfoxh at 17:49 PM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
The rules of Regen Ag require a massive and coercive change in human behavior. Still, very few scientists are addressing Animal Agriculture's negative impact on any chance to implement Regen Ag. Meanwhile, CCS offers another mirage undertaken by the fossil fuel industry to avoid stranded assets and have sold a bill of goods to the public that CCS will solve the larger emissions problem. If we are going to discuss solutions that require an "ought" followed by a statutory requirement, why wouldn't we just go with outlawing conventional plant and animal agriculture and fossil fuels? We know nobody will change their habits unless forced to do so by government fiat, so why not go for the jugular right now?
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Richard13699 at 11:42 AM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
For all his technological brilliance and extraordinary engineering prowess, Elon is better to concentrate on further refining his Tesla empire and leaving the question of 'carbon capture' to the farmers who are operating their farms along Regen Agriculture principles.
The capacity of the soils to capture and hold carbon (and sufficient depth) is effectively infinite. As long as there is atmospheric CO2, N2, water, sun and chlorophyll, then plants and their mycorrhizal symbiotes will continue to build soil carbon.
The problems is that current agricultural practices that stem from the well intended but ultimately flawed thinking of the Green (agribizz) revolution, are actually inhibiting photosynthesis and slowly degrading soils worldwide.
Some of the problems.
1.Heavy machines compact the soil and prevent atmospheric N2 from getting to the roots.
2. Deep ploughing destroys the mycorrhizal fungal networks that are vital to the process.
3. Inorganic N2 compounds are added that actually inhibit the chemistry of carbon storage.
4. Inorganic N2 run of is bad and N2 creates N2), a potent GHG.
The less agrichemicals that are used, the healthier the plants, the animals (including humans) that eat the produce, the farmers who farm the land.The more regen agriculture, the more healthy soils that hold carbon and water.
If 10% of all agricultural land across the planet were to be farmed using proven, relatively simple, cheap and healthy Reg Agriculture principles, that would sequester approximately 46.g Gt of CO2/yr. That is more than the approx. 25.6 Gt that is currently emitted and so we could begin to bring down the Keeling curve. All that stands in the way of this are the vested interests of 1) agribizz which makes approx. $250 – 300B/year from feeding the current problem 2) technobizz that claims giant vacuums can process the planet’s atmosphere, as in some Sci Fi novel. -
swampfoxh at 07:17 AM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Not suggesting we kill anybody. Merely showing that whatever we do can't really solve the problem unless the population falls to a half billion and industrial animal ag is outlawed along with go.ssil fuels being left in the ground. We can see that population size can't change fast enough, so while we are "mitigating" damage to a hospitable climate, we are "exterminating" ourselves...and we all recognize that the carbon footprint of 8 billion consuming "stuff" and emitting wastes will overwhelm and bury all of our remedies. Carbon Capture is all bunk science since we already don't know what to do with the CO2 we have, let alone what to do with the CO2 we still want to kick out into the atmosphere, just so we can continue burning fossil fuels.
Surely no one believes that sequestering CO2 in the ground is expecting it to stay there. Surely, plate tectonics is still operable on Earth. When you think about that, we should remind ourselves that nature already sequestered fossil fuel materials in the ground...then we dug it up.
And when we think about mitigation efforts, we should consider that most of the planet's humans are not going to cooperate. We might be able to engineer a reduction in some emissions, but we already know that large numbers of people aren't going to let us do it...like they are not letting us do it now.
Moderator Response:[DB] Please move on from this line of discussion.
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nigelj at 06:31 AM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
A global population of 500 million is not going to happen fast enough to solve the climate problem. Killing billions of people is too evil and stupid to contemplate, and even if the global fertility rate fell to zero tomorrow (which it obviously wont) population size still wouldnt change fast enough to keep warming under 2 - 3 degrees. Consider the demographics.
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Bob Loblaw at 04:33 AM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Of course, any CCS technology runs into the question of how much it costs, in comparison to not emitting the CO2 to begin with.
An early effort at full scale is the SaskPower coal-fired plant in SE Saskatchewan (Canada). Adding the technology to an existing power plant, it reduces efficiency, only part of the CO2 is permanently stored - and it is being used to increase the extraction efficiency of nearby fossil fuel deposits - and the economics haven't been quite was aws originally claimed.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:39 AM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
swampfoxh,
A better solution is to have leadership (all of it, in business and politics) held to account for achieving and improving on all of the Sustainable Development Goals and everything like them that is being worked on related to fixing-undoing the harmful unsustainable things that have developed and developing sustainable improvements for the future of humanity (like nuclear non-proliferation, and COP-IPCC actions to end climate change impacts). Anyone in a leadership role impeding that effort should be removed from their position and everyone their harmful leadership actions "helped" should be penalized to remove the gains obtained from the harmful pursuits of benefit.
As for global population. If the highest impacting portion of the population was trimmed off the total sustainable global population could be 10 to 12 billion people based on current technology, with higher numbers possible with the development of better sustainable ways of living.
If you really are interested in understanding what is required for a better future for humanity, including population considerations, I recommend:
- Read Jeffrey D. Sach's "The Age of Sustainable Development" or take the MOOC of the same name. That book (and MOOC) present the evidence-based understanding of the Sustsainabel Development Goals.
- Read the following report recently published in The Lancet "Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study". That study concludes that the global population is likely to peak at less than 10 billion. And it concludes that if the Sustainable Development Goals are met the peak population will be lower.
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Nick Palmer at 01:26 AM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Hey swampfoxh, most climate scientists (the guys who are smart enough to figure out the climate and its potential trajectory) reckon we can solve this problem without going to the extreme lengths you suggest needs implementing...
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swampfoxh at 22:56 PM on 7 March 2021Guest post: Why avoiding climate change ‘maladaptation’ is vital
There is no chance that mitigation efforts to reverse the climate problem can take into account any affected group, all groups are adversely affected because all groups live here on Earth. Earth is where the climate problem is, and all human Earthlings have contributed to this problem. We tag the problem as Anthropogenic, leaving out the rocks, trees and other plants and animals as culpable parties...we even leave out the bovines because their numbers and impact are because of humans. There will not be a solution to the climate problem, anyway, because humans are incapable of controlling their numbers. The complete elimination of fossil fuels and animal agriculture will not cure the climate problem because we humans will not meddle with procreation. In the end, their will still be a few hundred million left on the Planet at the very end of history...they will have to just "go on" "without".
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swampfoxh at 19:26 PM on 7 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Looking back on global history, no organism before humans had utilized fire to control his living environment. The human requirement for heat became a human requirement for propulsion and power which became a human requirement for digging up fossil fuels and eating animals. So as long as there are humans, and lots of them, the climate problem can never be solved.
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swampfoxh at 19:12 PM on 7 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Why don't we just face the reality that only three things need to be done to fix the climate problem: stop burning fossil fuels, outlaw industrial animal agriculture and reduce population to somewhere around 500 million. Certainly. As long as we have the carbon footprint of 8 billion humans and 1.445 billion bovines, nothing we do will change the trajectory.
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nigelj at 16:18 PM on 7 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Enhanced rock weathering has potential at two billion tons of CO2 per year. The required source rock is abundant. Sounds relatively benign and environmentally friendly, compared to crazy ideas like BECCS.
energypost.eu/enhanced-weathering-crushed-rocks-spread-on-farmland-can-capture-billions-of-co2-year/
However direct air capture technology does still sound useful, and appears to already be proven. Although storing the CO2 undergound intuitively sounds challenging.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:42 PM on 7 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
I share Bob Loblaw's concern about partial Carbon Capture related to fossil fuel burning. It is likely to just be the newest unsustainable harmful way of doing things. Even a system that theoretically captures all created CO2 is likely to suffer from the "reality gremlin" (a term made-up just as I wrote this). There will likely be a nasty reality difference from the theoretical performance of such a system. It include things like fugitive emissions (unintended escape) that are almost impossible to eliminate from any built system.
I would add the concern that any Carbon Captured needs to be as certain as possible to be locked away (very likely locked away is not good enough). This concern would also apply to CCS that is being claimed as a credit against GHGs from fossil fuel activity. An aspect of this concern is that pumping captured CO2 into underground features that are "Hoped to be permanent storage" is potentially limited to things like salt caverns in geologically "quiet (very little quake activity) regions".
The understanding needs to be that fossil fuel use actually has to be rapidly reduced and, in addition, there needs to be systems that take CO2 out of the atmosphere even if there is no profit to be made from such systems. And those systems taking CO2 out of the atmosphere need to be sustainable - no harm done by their operation or they just become a new harmful unsustainable way of doing things. And sustainable Carbon Capture systems need to start operating as soon as possible, no waiting for the "lowest cost system" to be developed. And they should be paid for by the least deserving among the wealthy who obtained wealth or other benefits from fossil fuel use through the past 30 years (when the wealthy should have been leading the way to Carbon-Zero living).
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