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Comments 76851 to 76900:

  1. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    Thanks dana1981, that certainly explains it. The possibility of getting back down to 350ppm is already remote, and anything which makes gasoline powered cars viable for another 50 years would remove any chance of it. I agree that 'finding ways to use new sources of fossil fuels' is a major problem. I'd said as much a few weeks back when there was a report about the Japanese looking at 'mining' methane hydrates from the ocean floor. That, the tar sands, the work Russia is doing to extract methane from permafrost, and so forth are taking away the possibility that dwindling supplies will push fossil fuel costs up so much that they are no longer economically viable. If so, then the only real hope is to find ways to make other energy sources even less expensive.
  2. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    If the solution is nukes/renewables/whatever, the question isnt really about what is the technical solution - its about the political solution. If the solution is there, then why isnt it happening and what needs to change to make it happen.
  3. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    That google aerial photograph is just about what I saw on my last polar flight, which featured obscenely clear skies for a vast portion of the flight over the arctic (PDX to Heathrow via Seattle IIRC). Watching nothingness go by I was suddenly startled when I noticed a huge scar along a river, and it slowly dawned on me that I was seeing the alberta tar sands operation. The immensity of it was boggling as we were flying at close to 40K feet up ...
  4. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    CBD - Hansen's comments about the tar sands being 'game over' were based on the full amount of carbon they contain, whereas the EPA estimates are based on how much oil will realistically be extracted in the next 50 years. Plus Hansen is big on 350 ppm, whereas the 1 trillion ton target is 450 ppm. So those two factors account for Hansen's "game over" comment. To me it's an attitude issue. As I said in the post, we need to be looking for alternatives to fossil fuels, not looking for new fossil fuel sources to burn. It's totally backwards, looking for more fossil fuels to burn instead of trying to leave as much fossil fuels in the ground as possible. The signal it sends may be the worst aspect, if the pipeline is approved by the USA's supposedly environmentally conscious president.
  5. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    Badgersouth #7 - True. Though the steam injection method is much less destructive than the strip mining they were originally using to get at the stuff. Again, not using the tar sands would be a good thing... but so far as I can tell that ship has already sailed. Even if Obama blocks the pipeline AND all the other distribution options somehow fail to materialize I can guarantee you that the next Republican president in the U.S. will see to it that a pipeline gets built. A couple of people have suggested that delay is worthwhile to give alternatives a chance to reduce demand. There is some validity to that, but I don't see a few years delay making much difference. Certainly not a 'make or break' issue for keeping carbon emissions within manageable bounds. If Obama blocks the pipeline or bargains his approval for some kind of concession (e.g. investment in electric vehicle research, offsetting carbon capture, or whatever) I'd say that is pretty good for us. If he approves it without getting any offsetting benefit in return then that's a loss (and rather disappointing)... but doesn't seem catastrophic.
  6. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    Dikran Marsupial: SkS opened a Pandora's box by posting this article. Whether or not Tom Curtis looses his patience over what's being posted on this comment thread is somewhat irrelevant.
  7. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    One obvious solution that might be palatable to both sides is to ramp up both renewables and nuclear. But both have "not in my backyard" aspects that make such new energy construction problematic. Specifically most solar and wind resources, in the US at least, are located pretty much in the middle of nowhere as opposed to where most people live due to noise and aesthetic considerations. Likewise, most nuclear power plants are currently built near to where the energy consumers are, but because we see these plants occasionally have a Murphy's Law melt-down event, people are psychologically (though understandably) reluctant to have a nuke built upwind from them. Here is one solution that I'm sure has been thought of already: build the Smart Grid, including high voltage (up to 1 MV) DC transmission lines for sub continental transmission with minimal losses, to connect the "middle of nowhere" to population centers with both renewable and nuclear energy. Then we could dedicate huge swaths of more or less under utilized desert for renewables (where those solar and wind resources are generally located) and also for new nuclear plants. These remotely located nuclear plants would then not only provide baseload power for the renewable plants next door, but would also not be located near population centers in the event of a technological, natural or terrorist disaster. There is the issue of water for cooling the nukes but that doesn't seem an impossible hurdle to overcome.
  8. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    @CBDunkerson#6: No matter how one slices it, the extraction of petroleum from the Alberta tar sands has been, is now, and will continue to be an ecological disaster for North America.
  9. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    Stopping this pipeline is about more than just preventing the calculated incremental production that will directly result from it. The producers have two main goals here: a) to supply diluted bitumen directly to the Gulf Coast refineries that pay a higher price than the refineries in the mid West; b) to provide diversity and excess capacity in their transportation options. If Obama OKs this pipeline (and I fear he will), this will provide a shot in the arm to the tar sands operators and will encourage further development. If he nixes it, on the other hand, expect the producers to dial up the pressure on British Columbia to provide additional outlets to the Pacific. Currently there are two main options for Pacific outlets. The most prominent option is the Northern Gateway pipeline that will run to Kitimat on BC's north coast. This pipeline is encountering much public opposition, notably from First Nations. BC public opinion is generally very negative towards the idea of having oil tankers on the north coast; a spill there would have unthinkable consequences. The other option is expanding existing pipelines to the Port of Vancouver and dredging the harbor to allow Suezmax tankers. This proposal is currently mostly under the radar of the mainstream media. As Dan@1 said, the best way to prevent pollution from the tar sands in the long run is to stop consumption. But until then, the only option is to try and choke off production.
  10. SkS Weekly Digest #12
    pirate#2 "the cartoon highly inaccurate." You should look at the Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute and American Enterprise Inst websites; they are against quite a few of the things in the cartoon. Hence it is accurate. Example -- Heartland: Probably two-thirds of the warming in the 1990s was due to natural causes; the warming trend already has stopped and forecasts of future warming are unreliable; and the benefits of a moderate warming are likely to outweigh the costs. Global warming, in other words, is not a crisis. These are inaccurate. And what kind of 'science' makes an assessment that starts with 'probably'?
  11. Newcomers, Start Here
    Glad to be here John. And, good to see you on the Climate Show. Keep the faith... "Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them." - Mark Twain's Notebook
  12. Scott Denning: Reaching Across the Abyss
    DSL- Man, you had to go and show everyone my pic! Now I’ll have to go back underground. (Sorry mods, I don’t usually respond to being outed but this one was the best yet.) Besides respecting Denning and Gates for the extra effort to cross the abyss I also have extra respect for everyone who uses their real name on the web; think Cook, the one aka as “the Yooper”, and so many others here, all the folks at RC, heck even Tamino (‘cause his ID is no secret.) It’s also the only respect I have for Anthony.
  13. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    I have posed this question before on 'skeptic' blogs: If you were to believe (just as a what-if) that our CO2 emissions were going to cause these problems, what, in your political framework, would be the right way to approach the issue? The person I initially asked this of ranted for a while about 'enslavement by the left' and left. Another one or two indicated that they just could not trust any statements claiming that AGW was an issue. But I did get a reasonable response, one that I feel provides an interesting point of view: (JoNova thread) Twodogs: August 9th, 2011 at 11:34 pm KR asks the correct question finally, as to what we would do if human CO2 production was the cause of significant global warming with significant adverse effects. We would act to limit production to the extent that it would negate the adverse effects subject to a proper risk assessment and subsequent cost/benefit analysis. Firstly, the risk analysis would require certainty not only of warming, but to what extent. As such, the positive feedbacks claimed would require the same level of scrutiny as the principle of global warming via human CO2 production, in order to ascertain the impact. This leads into the benefit of mitigating action, to be compared against the cost of doing so. All costs and benefits can be quantified to some extent, so no matter how bad global warming may be at a given extent, any cost is comparable. A trillion $ of benefit still ain’t worth it if it costs 2 trillion $ to achieve it, no matter how warm and fuzzy it makes you feel inside. That said, it’s easy to feel warm and fuzzy inside with other people’s money. --- In other words, balance (spreadsheets and all) costs and benefits of AGW mitigation, and use that to decide on policies. I realize that most of the readers on this site are already quite convinced of the costs of global warming - but I would suggest that focusing a bit more clearly on those costs (as Scott Denning did in his presentation) may be a reasoned approach to discussing matters with the political Right. Not just why, but by how much.
  14. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    "Over 1 billion tons of equivalent CO2 emissions is a substantial chunk of emissions. We recently discussed The Critical Decade report produced by the Climate Commission established by the Australian government. Their report concluded that humanity can emit not more than 1 trillion tonnes of CO2 between 2000 and 2050 to have a probability of about 75% of limiting temperature rise to 2°C or less." 1 billion / 1 trillion = 0.1% Thus, I'm not sure where Hansen is getting 'game over' unless he is using very different numbers. Yes, not using the carbon from these tar sands would be a good thing... but in numeric terms it is ONLY 0.1% of the target limit. That's the equivalent of a couple of coal factories operating over the same timeframe. Also, given that shutting down the pipeline won't stop the tar sands from being used... and using the tar sands would (by these numbers) release only 0.1% of the target carbon limit... I'm inclined to think we may need to pick our battles better. Heck, if Obama could leverage SUPPORTING this pipeline into anything which reduces carbon emissions at all (which opposing this pipeline... wouldn't) then that would seem like a win to me.
  15. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    Dan - I do agree that we have to address the problem from the demand side. But at least in the short-term, there's Canadian opposition to building the infrastructure to transport the tar sands oil to the Canadian west coast (hence the McKibben quote in the intro paragraph). If we can at least temporarily delay things from the supply side here, maybe it will give the demand side the opportunity to catch up.
  16. Polar bear numbers are increasing
    Oh look! Willie Soon... so this goes right back to the 'climate skeptics and their myths' thread. :] Setting that aside, the statement that polar bear numbers are impacted by seal populations is amusing... considering that seal populations are also declining due to global warming; Global warming -> sea ice melts earlier in the year -> seal dens on the ice melt away -> seal pups drown -> fewer seals -> fewer polar bears. So again, 'polar bear numbers are not declining due to global warming'... they're declining due to things CAUSED by global warming. :]
  17. apiratelooksat50 at 03:52 AM on 23 August 2011
    SkS Weekly Digest #12
    I find the cartoon highly inaccurate. I am a skeptic and politically conservative (though I don't vote the party line). It is the old standby ploy of implying that because a skeptic and/or conservative does not believe in taking drastic actions to combat AGW, then they don't care about these other bullet points. I care about all of them. However, it is not that simple. Maybe creating green jobs will balance out the jobs lost in current energy sectors. Hopefully, we can continue improving our air and water quality (I do a lot of work in those areas.) Of course I care about my children and the children of others. And, it would be an unimaginable tragedy should we lose any of Earth's precious ecosystems. The term energy independence is misused. If you are posting to this site, or just reading it, chances are you are dependent on energy. And, you expect that energy to be reliable. Every form of energy known to man has environmental impacts whether direct or indirect.
    Response:

    [DB] Actually, I am scientifically skeptical and politically conservative (though I don't vote the party line), too.  And I find the cartoon hilarious.

    Don't read so much into it; it's a cartoon.

  18. Polar bear numbers are increasing
    21, Eric the Red, You post comments and links, but you didn't bother to actually follow the link I already gave you which rebuts that particular "study" (which is actually an audit on the quality of the studies used in "....nine government reports were written to help U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service managers decide whether or not to list polar bears as a threatened species." Rebuttal of “Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public-Policy Forecasting Audit” In particular, this study by actual scientists in the field of study found that the study you linked to was "mistaken or misleading on every claim." The "qualified scientists" who authored your paper are: J. Scott Armstrong, Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Kesten C. Green Business and Economic Forecasting Willie Soon, Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
  19. Polar bear numbers are increasing
    Arghh, Dikran Marsupial added to the mod response and stole my thunder! lol
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Ooops, sorry!
  20. Polar bear numbers are increasing
    "Do you think a social sciences journal is likely to be able to give a competent peer review to a paper on polar bear populations?" There's that and the fact there isn't a polar bear specialist among the three authors. 2 are in marketing/economic forecasting. The other is Willie Soon.
  21. Polar bear numbers are increasing
    CB, Other studies have found that polar bear populations are largely affected by hunting and seal populations. http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1145&context=marketing_papers&sei-redir=1#search=%22polar%20bear%20seal%20population%20increase%22
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Link activated. Is this article peer-reviewed? It appears to be published in a social sciences journal of some kind. Do you think a social sciences journal is likely to be able to give a competent peer review to a paper on polar bear populations? Do any of the authors have expertise in polar bears (one is an astrophysicist and the other two are in marketing). Are they in a good position to judge whether they have correctly intepreted the previous studies on polar bears?
  22. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    Can I note that all this talk about who vilified who first is of topic and unproductive. Can I ask the moderators to clean out the nonsense before I loose my patience.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Reasonable request. From this point on, discussion of how the challenge may be met only. If it will help, imagine only the right actually exists and discuss how the challenge could be met if they had free reign to conduct any policy consistent with their principles. No more recrimination about events in the past; this is a thread about the future.
  23. A new SkS resource: climate skeptics and their myths
    Really Sphaerica, [incendiary comments deleted] I will however take this argument to the appopriate thread.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Please both of you moderate the tone of the discussion back to less personal terms.
  24. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    "The Karl Rove era (continued brutally today by Fox News) learned how politically valuable it was to sabotage the need to compromise by vilifying one's opponents and painting them as evil instead of simply misguided or wrong on the issues or solutions." I think you make Lloyd's point if you don't realize how much the Left also demonized and vilified the other side during the last ten or so years. I know, I was there, on the Right, and what was being said about the Right often bore little resemblance to most of the people I knew who were Right leaning. You talk about how Rove and Fox distorted things, and no doubt there was enough of it, but my Gods the other side gave as good as it got and them some. The Right is doing it now with Obama, and they are just as blind to their own distortions as the Left was to theirs. As Lloyd said, it is *very* difficult to see your opponents as real people who think they are doing what is best, out of decent intentions. It's a lot easier to see them all as the new incarnation of Karl Marx or some villain from Captain Planet bent on World destruction/domination. Sure, some really are bad, but assuming this to be the case is not a good starting point for a discussion. "Again, you present this as if the left gets together for their weekly strategy meetings and decides to take advantage of the situation." They don't have to, that's the point. It's done reflexively by some, in the same way many on the Right reflexively dismisses climate science. The Left needs to rethink how it presents itself (as does the Right). I don't know, maybe it isn't possible because there isn't a centralized "Left", as you say, anymore than there is a centralized "Right" that speaks for everybody on one side. There are all sorts of divisions on all sides, even if the main one is a fault-line dividing Right and Left. I can't control the deniers on the Right anymore than a climate scientist can really control those on the Left who use the science as a way to get whatever other goals they might have. I know people who couldn't tell you the first thing about the scientific issues involved in AGW, but who nonetheless are adamant that it's happening and it's all the fault of Capitalism, free markets, and so on, because they *already* distrusted those things. They may have come to accept AGW, but not for the right reasons. The right reasons are because of the scientific evidence that points to AGW, not because it happens to be inconvenient to your opponents' ideology. Obviously there are plenty on the Right who never seriously looked at the science either and who reject it out of ignorance. If they have looked, they have not looked to what most scientists are saying but screen things through a denialist mesh provided by *accepted* sources. They might *think* they have a good understanding of the science, and perhaps that is worse than not paying attention at all. After all that typing I don't have any solutions. People have become more entrenched in their positions than they have in a long time. I don't honestly see it getting better any time soon. Maybe I've gotten too damn cynical and pessimistic, and I'm only 40. I hope it's better when I'm 50 or 60. Now I know why I never mention politics on the climate blogs. I'm long-winded. :)
  25. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    @Dan Moutal #1: You make an excellent point. I would also add that the Obama Administration is likely to approve the proposed Keystone pipeline because the majority of Americans will see it as a positive move. BTW, the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives has already passed a bill approving the proposed project. Sad to say but the overwhelming majority of Americans are more concerned about the price of motor fuel than they are about the negative consequences of climate change. Obama will loose in 2012 if the price of motor fuels were to steadily increase in the months leading up to the election.
  26. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    Congressman Ron Paul is sort of thinking man's libertarian politician. His thinking on teh environment, which you can find by doing a search on Grist is very shallow and not very well considered. He sees pollution in terms of property rights, adn says that if courts enforced propoerty rights, the problem of pollution would be solved. He considers you "own" the air you breathe so if someone pollutes it, you can sue them. He argues that court judgments against pollution would solve the problem. How he can draw a distinction between a set of case law, interpreted by lawyers and scientists, and regulation beats me. It also leaves hanging a whole pile of issues around equity and timing. The inhabitants of Kivalina, Alaska are suing Exxon Mobil for destroying their community. What are the chances of a poor community up against a $billion corpration that can hire the best lawyers around, not to mention making significant contributions to the election expenses of judges and politicians? As for timeliness - do you wait for the children to start dying before you sue? Watching a coal-fired power plant being built, do you have to wait for the asthma to kick in first, before you hope you draw a sympathetic judge. He does not consider global warming at all, and trans-national effects of pollution seem to have escaped him. More recently, he seems to have joined the Bachmann-Perry school of political climate deniers. Just as disappointing are libertarian "institutes" like Cato, backed by rich foundations, which spend their time "proving" climate change in not a problem, rather than considering what might be feasible should it come to pass. Libertarian ideas on the environment are ill-considered and not thought through. Right-libertarians seem to have just monetized everything and lost their humanity in a scramble for power. Most of them believe that a change in society will change people's characters - an odd belief they share with socialists. Interview with Ron Paul (2008)
  27. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    On the issue of the pipeline unfortunately the issue is more complex than people like Bill Mckibben make it out to be. The problem is described nicely by Bryan Walsh:
    "While blocking the Keystone XL pipeline would slow the development of oil sands, it wouldn't stop it. Oil is a fungible commodity, and if the price goes high enough—and there's little reason to expect it wouldn't—eventually Canada would sell that crude elsewhere, perhaps piping it to the west coast and shipping it to a thirsty China, even if that is more expensive and difficult than simple selling it to the U.S." http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/08/22/standing-against-oil-sands%E2%80%94and-standing-for-the-climate/
    The real solution (which admittedly is more complex and more difficult to achieve), lies on the demand side.
  28. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    Everyone reading this article will also want to read the NY Times editorial, “Tar Sands and the Carbon Numbers” published on Sunday, August 21. To access this powerful editorial, click here. Dana: Perhaps you should post this editorial as a “note” to your article?
  29. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    @Lloyd Flack #39, Others have responded to your scatter-gun shooting at "the left" as if that was actually going to help us progress. But you claim that support for nuclear power should be an acid test of seriousness is way off. A few years ago, I would have said "why not nuclear power?". Now I think it has fallen so far behind other power sources, that it is a waste of time and money doing the research necessary to help it catch up. It would just consume resources that should be used researcing and developing renewable sources. Australian experts believe solar energy can replace coal AND nuclear in their country. Why not elsewhere? The Conversation
  30. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    Chris Mooney hit the nail squarely on the head when he recently wrote: “You can follow the logic to its conclusion: Conservatives are more likely to embrace climate science if it comes to them via a business or religious leader, who can set the issue in the context of different values than those from which environmentalists or scientists often argue. Doing so is, effectively, to signal a détente in what Kahan has called a ‘culture war of fact.’ In other words, paradoxically, you don't lead with the facts in order to convince. You lead with the values—so as to give the facts a fighting chance.” Source: “The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science: How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link,” by Chris Mooney, Mother Jones May/June 2011 To access Mooney’s insightful article, click here
  31. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    Lloyd Flack at 00:57 AM on 23 August, 2011 Have you ever watched the video featuring Richard Alley on AGW? He's a republican American, apparently conservative, explaining the science and the reasons why we should act now. The readiative properties of greenhouse gases do not depend on political views to be true. OTOH, picturing this as a leftist conspiracy, as some do (not you), is a politically-based distortion that is widely used.
  32. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    39, Lloyd Flack,
    The left does its share of demonizing opponents. Thirty years ago I think it was the worse offender.
    I disagree. It was mutual and equal, but a limited if necessary aspect of politics, and it did not ever get in the way of government by compromise. The right from the start of the Reagan years absolutely crossed this line a lot, demonizing the left for the state of the economy and at the time was an unstable and uncertain position for the west in world politics. The Karl Rove era (continued brutally today by Fox News) learned how politically valuable it was to sabotage the need to compromise by vilifying one's opponents and painting them as evil instead of simply misguided or wrong on the issues or solutions. We now see the same thing done by deniers... climate science isn't just wrong, but it's purposely wrong for nefarious purposes (making money, world domination, exporting socialism, whatever). This is Monckton's favorite mantra, in fact.
    The biggest one of these is the opposition of most of it to nuclear power. I've heard those on the right who said if the left was genuine it would be advocating the building nuclear power plants.
    That's a bit unfair, because opposition to nuclear power (due to ecological issues) has long been a left of center position. The fact they the left is now faced with the lesser of two evils is not going to quickly change the group or individual position on nuclear power over night. Expecting the left to quickly abandon a long held position is unfair. The left should do so, but it won't because the left isn't a hive mind, it's a collection of individuals and individual groups, and the fact that such change encounters friction is not to me evidence of culpability by the left. [As an aside, the right is now faced with a similar "lesser of two evils" issue concerning U.S. debt and raising taxes, and left with U.S. debt and cutting entitlements... a challenge that recent history shows was much more readily accepted by the left than the right.]
    Another thing is that any attempt to use environmental concerns to bring about actions wanted for other reasons damages credibility.
    Again, you present this as if the left gets together for their weekly strategy meetings and decides to take advantage of the situation. There are individuals and groups who have other primary interests that will unwisely use climate change to their advantage, but to interpret this as collective action by the left is naive and unfair. Vilify the groups that do it, not the entire left or the whole idea that climate science is valid and important. That's cutting off your nose to spite your face.
    ...any solution that looks like you are seeking the satisfaction of asceticism is not an acceptable solution.
    Agreed, but a giant straw man. I rarely see anything remotely like this presented by anyone except deniers who want to scare people away from reasonable but prompt mitigation. And, oddly enough, it is exactly by ignoring that problem that this outcome will become likely... that your descendants will be living in a backwards, purely agrarian society because infrastructure and access to energy and technology have broken down, because people waited too long to act and the existing infrastructure imploded under the stress.
  33. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    Lloyd, polls in the United States showed for many years that majorities on both the 'left' and 'right' supported more nuclear power... unless it was going to be located near them. So, most people (more than 50%) on 'the left' WERE "advocating the building nuclear power plants (sic)". Of course, that changed with Fukushima. Support for nuclear power has dropped sharply this year... just as it previously did after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. A recent CBS poll had 50% of Republicans against a nuclear power plant being built near them. Nuclear power won't take off until a significant majority support building plants in their own area... which typically lags around 25% behind support for nuclear power 'somewhere else'. If past history is any guide, for that to happen in the U.S. we'd have to go 20 to 30 years without a major nuclear accident anywhere in the world. For the record, Republicans DO generally support nuclear power about 15% more than Democrats and Independents... but this doesn't change the facts above: Most Democrats DID support nuclear power in general before Fukushima, and most Republicans now DO NOT support nuclear power near them. Ergo, 'left' vs 'right' isn't really the issue.
  34. SkS Weekly Digest #12
    Great cartoon.
  35. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    scaddenp: I apologize for being super-critical of your post on this thread. I was not able to review it in draft form because I was out of town on family business. I was also over-tired when I commented late last night.
  36. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    We need to look at what the left has done to contribute to the polarization and what everyone can do to reduce it. The left does its share of demonizing opponents. Thirty years ago I think it was the worse offender. And of course when the right hears itself misrepresented it tends to not listen to messages from those doing the misrepresenting. And the left does plenty of things which damage its credibility on climate change. The biggest one of these is the opposition of most of it to nuclear power. I've heard those on the right who said if the left was genuine it would be advocating the building nuclear power plants. Since it isn't therefore it is said it must not be genuine in its concern over AGW. And it gets pointed out that coal is more dangerous than nuclear power. So yes there are downsides to nuclear power. This is an emergency and it is better than coal. Bite the bullet! Another thing is that any attempt to use environmental concerns to bring about actions wanted for other reasons damages credibility. Don't even think of using this crisis to bring about other changes no matter how much you want them. The situation is too grave for support to be squandered. And there are the allegations that environmentalism has become a quasi-religion. In some though not most cases this is true. Libertarians especially often see this as a put down of humanity and human accomplishment. So be very wary of calling the right's behaviour greed. It gives them reason not to listen just as you don't listen when a right wing shock-jock blathers on about power lust. And any solution that looks like you are seeking the satisfaction of asceticism is not an acceptable solution.
  37. There is no consensus
    Rickoxo#430: "... makes me think this site is expressing more personal opinion than summary and distillation of what the scientific community would say about this topic." No one here pretends to speak for the 'scientific community.' I doubt that many here would take issue with Dana's stronger statement ('... require that our fundamental understanding of physics be wrong'). It takes some understanding of both the physics and the intricacies of climate science to be able to say that with confidence. A statement such as the one in IPCC AR4 ('... very likely due to observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse ...') is clearly a watered down, committee-written compromise version of what they could have (and probably should have) said. You can only see that and begin to grasp the fullness of the problem by learning something about the science. Relying on what can only be described as 3rd hand information is a very dangerous practice because there are lots of bad sources out there (and they very often come here to promote their uninformed opinions).
  38. A new SkS resource: climate skeptics and their myths
    93, Eric the Red,
    Crystal-ball projections are poor subsitutes for scientific research.
    You love to trot out "science" as a debate tool, but it's just empty words (just as for the "heroes" of the post above). I realize now where you are coming from since you said:
    No one knows what the future will bring...
    The reality is that you don't believe in science. You do believe in engineering and technology. You believe in what you can see and use. You believe in what you can buy at Walmart for $59.99 to use in your kitchen or bathroom or house or yard. That's real to you, and that's as far as science goes. Real science... understanding the universe and how it all fits together (so that engineers can make those wonderful labor-saving toys for you) is beyond your grasp. Real science is superstition, magic and voodoo to you. You can't actually understand real science, which is why you don't get it, and why you fall back on using the words "scientific research" as a ploy in an argument, and yet thread after bleeding thread you are unable to accept even one single aspect of current climate science. You refute all -- all -- of climate science, while trying to stand behind science as your shield -- selected parts of science that you use to keep your eyes tightly shut. You don't believe in science, only technology (which is science that you can see and feel without entirely understanding, and so is real to you). That's the bottom line with you, and anyone that discusses anything with you needs to recognize that. As far as your unsubstantiated claims about polar bears (while demanding proof of the opposite from everyone else), visit this post: Polar Bears or any of these papers: Climate change threatens polar bear populations: a stochastic demographic analysis (Hunter et al, 2010) Rebuttal of “Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public-Policy Forecasting Audit (Amstrup et al, 2009) Polar bear population status in the northern Beaufort Sea, Canada, 1971–2006 (Stirling et al, 2010) Polar bear population status in southern Hudson Bay, Canada (Obard et al, 2007) Predicting 21st-century polar bear habitat distribution from global climate models (Durner et al, 2010) Effects of Earlier Sea Ice Breakup on Survival and Population Size of Polar Bears in Western Hudson Bay (Regher et al, 2010) I suggest you take further arguments about this to the thread I already posted above, where it belongs. It does not belong here, although this is the perfect place for someone such as yourself to emulate the stars of this post in misrepresenting, denying, or dismissing the actual science.
  39. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    First, I should thank the owners of this blog and the community for this site was the final nail in the coffin of my former world view and AGW denial. All it took was reading the well-digested blog posts here, and the truth became evident. I actually first found this site while searching for an arguement against AGW. So it works! I say that to say this, I think the key to creating some kind of future that isn't based on fossil fuel can only be driven by science and bottom up support for action. Politics and Policital parties are a moving target. They are in the world of short term gain. I do not know how to involve the "political right" in the US other than by convincing them one at a time that we have to take action, both in abandoning fossil fuels and mitigating AGW impact.
  40. A new SkS resource: climate skeptics and their myths
    Absolutely les, all the polar bears need to do is migrate to their new territory by heading North from the North Pole.
  41. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    I think climate change denialism is an aspect of political polarization. Over the past, oh, twenty years or so most sides of politics have become more eager to demonize the other. Many have been constructing echo chambers over that period, seeking information from those who will not challenge their preconceptions, who will tell them things that they find comfortable to hear. Many of the politically active have come to see their political opponents as not just wrong but as stupid and/or evil. And to come to these conclusions they are attributing motives to opponents that I think have only a tenuous connection to reality. Rather than accept political opponents declared motives they attribute motives that allow them to see themselves as fighting evil. They look at what they might loose if their opponents win and think that that loss has to be because their opponents desire it father than because their opponents have different moral priorities to them and their possible losses are side effects of those different priorities. They refuse to accept that an intelligent person of integrity could come to different conclusions to them on moral issues. What is happening in climate denialism is that since most of the left accepts the reality of anthropogenic climate change and at least says it is trying to do something about it and is proposing measures that at least seem to have the effect of furthering the left's other goals then they see it as a power play by the left. Much of the right has become obsessed with fighting the left and often forgets their own aims in the service of this obsession. What is behind this? Some of it is so that they don't have to question whether they are in the right or accept that even if on balance their position is the best one it still had disadvantages and costs and undesirable consequences. Some is satisfaction of fighting evil, which of course requires someone that you can see as evil. Some is the bonding that comes from joining together against an external foe. The attitude is that if something is pushed by the left it has to be evil. For conservatives at least this obsession is actually a betrayal of their principles. In contrast to libertarians and progressives conservatives place a high importance on social cohesion. They are exactly the party that should be most in favour of prudent actions to safeguard our future. But for some reason, probably in part the religious motivation of many of them, they have have become especially likely to see the left as evil. Libertarians are not accepting that the market has limitations and that there are things that require centralized rather than distributed decision making. The market cannot deal with common goods because they are not traded. And it does not handle emergencies well because they require centralized decision making by a hierarchy, anything else is too slow. They don't want to accept that the market has to be modified and their principles are in some cases inadequate. And so many of them engage in wishful thinking. Ironically they are usually the group that is most likely to rightly point out the undesired consequences and costs of others pieces of wishful thinking. Sorry this has been a long post but sound bites got us into this mess. This is not a subject that can be dealt with in a couple of sentences. I'll post the rest of my comment tomorrow.
  42. There is no consensus
    And if you don't get into the science, Rickoxo, then you're going to be left relying on opinion. If I point out that some of the minority do their publication in dodgy journals, you'd have to take my word for it. Adelady's advice is good, but wear your math hat at SoD. The Miskolczi series is interesting if you like to see the in-depth interrogation of one of those 10%. If you're into the statistical side, Tamino gives statistical silliness the baseball bat treatment. It's a no-brainer over there right now, though (Joe Bastardi).
  43. A new SkS resource: climate skeptics and their myths
    I'll bet the polar bears are looking at a bright future... ... given all the new food that's heading their way: Rapid Range Shifts of Species Associated with High Levels of Climate Warming
  44. A new SkS resource: climate skeptics and their myths
    EtR wrote: "The scientific research shows a stable polar bear population today." WHAT scientific research shows that? I don't believe I've seen a single paper making the claim that the total world polar bear population is currently stable.
  45. How does global warming affect polar bears?
    garethman, see my response to your comments in the other thread. You seem to have a rather inaccurate picture of the amount of hunting going on, what hunting levels polar bear scientists have estimated as sustainable, and the relative importance (i.e. very little) hunting has compared to sea ice loss. "Mullers claim about not a single bear having died from the effects of climate change is odd. How can he know that?" Which was precisely my point. He can't. But beyond his lack of any basis for making the statement, logic also says it must be wrong. Polar bears that drowned in areas which were previously always covered by ice died due to climate change. The condition which led to their deaths (i.e. large areas of open water) did not exist before. Ergo, the thing which caused that condition caused their deaths. Otherwise, his argument comes down to the equivalent of, 'not a single polar bear has been killed by hunting' - you just have to ignore that the reason their heart, brain, or other vital organ stopped working (the DIRECT cause of death) was the bullet they were shot with (the INdirect cause of death) the same way you ignore the sea ice retreat. EtR wrote: "Unfortunately for CB, his claim that just because there is no evidence that climate change has had a negative impact means that climate change has not impacted polar bears." I can't make out what you are trying to say here... or even what you think I said. However, you go on to claim that polar bears dying due to global warming cannot be verified. THAT is not true. Just above I presented the very simple logic that polar bears cannot drown if they are not in the water... which also proves (global warming -> less sea ice -> more polar bear hours spent swimming -> more polar bears swimming when storms come up or beyond the limits of exhaustion -> more drowned polar bears) that global warming is killing bears. You have also been pointed at studies which extend this inescapable logic into the realm of observed reality.
  46. A new SkS resource: climate skeptics and their myths
    Sky and Sph, What evidence do you have that the polar bear populations will be devastated in the future? Certainly not the recent many-fold increase in numbers that has occurred since the international hunting ban. Crystal-ball projections are poor subsitutes for scientific research. The scientific research shows a stable polar bear population today. This is especially significant given the many species which have declined in the past few decades due largely to human interactions. I suggest you both open your eyes to what is happening to the polar bears today. That may yield better insight into what tomorrow will bring.
  47. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    Tom C#31: "Any purported Libertarian solution ... must be able to eliminate global emissions by 2050 ... any purported solution ... must reduce US emissions to zero by 2020." Those are verrry tough deadlines; given the disordered political picture in the US at the moment and the likelihood that it will continue moving in the wrong direction. Accepting my analogy to the Dutch Delta Project for the scale of this type of problem, I do not see how the 'free market' accomplishes such a task. It would be interesting to find an analog for a project of such complexity and scope carried out primarily by private interests. Even if you put together a coalition of Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and the Sultan of Brunei (representing all the money you might need), you would still have to counter the inertia of opposition from deeply entrenched corporate lobbies. Like the dinosaurs, the ExxonMobils of the world do not adapt quickly. And like the dinosaurs, the world may be very different before they know what hit them.
  48. Polar bear numbers are increasing
    garethman wrote: "But I also cannot stand idly by while thousands of bears are shot by “sportsmen”" According to the IUCN polar bear specialist group, fewer than a thousand bears on average have been killed by hunting over each of the past five years. That includes somewhere between 100 and 200 killed in the Chukchi sea area (where Russia does not enforce quotas). This works out to about 4% of the population per year. Under those kind of controls the population grew steadily for decades before leveling off and then starting to decline over the past twenty years, primarily due to sea ice loss. It is noteworthy that during the peak of unregulated hunting the number of bears killed each year was 'only' about 1500. As the population declined (and it became harder to find bears to kill) that dropped down to about 1000 per year. Given that there were only about 5000 left when hunting limits were put in place it is clear how dire the situation was. Yet just a slight reduction in the number killed each year allowed the population to rapidly increase. Yes, as habitat loss puts increasing stress on the ability of polar bears to survive, maintaining the hunting levels of the recent past would further compound the problem... but it seems unlikely that is going to happen. Both the United States and Canada have already established new protections for the bears and are evaluating further changes. In any case, on its own regulated hunting is clearly not a problem. As the population decreases so do the quotas. Sea ice loss, on the other hand, is increasing in severity. Yet, those 'skeptics' who have moved on from the 'polar bear numbers are increasing' lie all seem to focus on hunting as the new way to avoid even thinking about the real problem. All polar bear hunting could be banned (it very well may be within the next twenty years) and the total polar bear population would still decrease if nothing is done about sea ice loss.
  49. A new SkS resource: climate skeptics and their myths
    55 Tom Curtis "Les @10 was frankly, talking nonsense. This is a witch hunt, what we see above is an index." Frankly, I'm not. I never said this is a witch hunt. What I said is that there is a risk that it could degenerate into one if not managed properly or over-done.
  50. Scott Denning: Reaching Across the Abyss
    Inspiring. I think most of the criticisms of the speech are just nitpicking (nothing is perfect). I doubt he got through to most of his audience (the right is not noted for it's use of evidence to form policy) but who knows - he may just have reached a few - especially given that essentially he was also appealing to their hip pocket (get in the drivers seat or be forced to accept solutions you don't like). Very clever overall :)

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