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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 81751 to 81800:

  1. IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    Chemware, further details of costs are given in the Report : Wind power plant investment costs rose from 2004 to 2009 (Figure 7.20), an increase primarily caused by the rising price of wind turbines (Wiser and Bolinger, 2010). Those price increases have been attributed to a number of factors. Increased rotor diameters and hub heights have enhanced the energy capture of modern wind turbines, for example, but those performance improvements have come with increased turbine costs, measured on a dollar per kW basis. The costs of raw materials, including steel, copper, cement, aluminium and carbon fibre, also rose sharply from 2004 through mid-2008 as a result of strong global economic growth. The strong demand for wind turbines over this period also put upward pressure on labour costs, and enabled turbine manufacturers and their component suppliers to boost profit margins. Strong demand, in excess of available supply, also placed particular pressure on critical components such as gearboxes and bearings (Blanco, 2009). 7.8.3
  2. IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    #32 Tom Curtis The UK Climate Change Committee doesn't even mention solar or geothermal as significant players in renewable heating in the Renewable Energy Review. They see heat pumps and on a more limited scale resistive heating as the primary technologies for renewable heat. They set aside district heating using waste heat from nuclear or CCS power generators as a potential source but requiring further study. On heat pumps they estimate:
    Although there are limits on the suitability of these technologies, our analysis suggests that these could meet 55% to 75% of residential heat demand and around 70% to 90% of non-residential space heat demand in the UK.
    Assumptions that heating will not require independent energy generation to drive it seem extremely dubious to me (and also it would seem to the CCC).
  3. Bob Lacatena at 00:00 AM on 23 June 2011
    McManufactured Controversy
    DSL,
    ...is to wait for the evidence to build up. And it is building up.
    Here we are and it is only the first day of summer, 2011. The mercury is rising... temperatures are quickly approaching those of last year -- but there's no El Niño firing it this time around. The ice is melting -- it appears to be a week to three ahead of last year, and 2007, when looking at it in detail instead of a mere 15%-sea-ice-extent graph. The actual images are scary. The fires are burning. From that page: "Wildfires in 2011 have so far consumed more than 6 times the ten-year average, and rising." And summer hasn't even started. Weather is fickle, but climate is not. Time is going to tell, and evidence is that at least for the moment, time may tell sooner than we think.
  4. IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    Pauls @29, from Teske et al 2010, the difference between their Energy Revolution scenario and their "advanced Energy Revolution" scenario consists in the assumption that energy use in transport will be reduced by the wide spread adoption of public transport and/or electrical vehicles; and the assumption that heating will be done using solar, geothermal or waste heat sources, thus not requiring independent energy generation to drive it. Total energy demand for normal power purposes increases by the same amount as in their less ambitious Energy Revolution scenario, and in fact a little bit above that to power the electrical vehicles. However, for base industrial and domestic power supply, the scenario assumes reduced energy intensity but increased overall demand due to a population growth of 2.48 billion and a per capita GDP growth rate of approximately 2% per annum.
  5. McManufactured Controversy
    I agree with Andy to an extent, David. I would add, though, that we're not fighting with McIntyre, Watts, et al. Rather, we're fighting with public perception and governmental policy-makers (owned by various interests, but primarily by big business). Michaels and Lindzen might be laughingstocks to working scientists, but the public is generally unaware of this, and various powerful members of the U.S. Congress know it (actually, every member and attendant consultants know it). They know all the public sees is "scientist," and the public has no basis to judge one from another. The public will typically respond to the message that makes them feel most comfortable (George W Bush as a regular, grew-up-down-the-block Joe actually worked), until the evidence begins to shift probability toward reality. Then the public will get angry, but the damage will be done. This is the same pattern politicians have worked through since the beginning of mass media. The answer to this is to overwhelm the public with evidence. Demand that mass media news step up to reality. Use the internet to force mass media news to compete with one another for the truth. Right now, I'd say that the message of the necessity of sustainability is winning in the U.S., but the empowerment of that message is losing. In other words, yes, the world is getting worse and we're the cause, but we can't really do anything about it. It's too hard. We'll have to give up our individual liberty. We'll become socialist or maybe even communist. We'll have to give up all the good things in life. We'll have to sacrifice and suffer. People want a miracle cure, as the strong response to renewables indicates (some wait for the miracle, and some see miracles--and thus renewables--as fantasy). Renewables are not a miracle cure. They will ultimately require significant economic and subsequent cultural change. That's the barrier we face. So McIntyre, Watts, et al. would indeed be worth ignoring if the issue was beetle wings. It is not. Instead, these normally powerless doubters become life preservers--a defense mechanism to save people from drowning in a sea of change. Their science needs to be revealed for what it is, and they need to then be publicly ridiculed (thank you, Tamino)--until, of course, they actually start acknowledging the probabilities and attacking the anti-scientific rhetoric that they currently actively and passively support. Then they stop functioning as life preservers. The only other way to disempower them is to wait for the evidence to build up. And it is building up.
  6. IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    Recommended reading: Five Predictions for the Future of Energy
  7. McManufactured Controversy
    The only thing that is creating an "impression of partiality" here is a deliberate and unwarranted beat up by McIntyre that has been uncritically repeated by others with a desire to stick a knife into Greenpeace
    Into the IPCC ... Greenpeace is the excuse, bringing down the IPCC the goal.
  8. McManufactured Controversy
    AndyS:
    However, the report would have been more convincing, especially to skeptics, if the senior authors had all been people--probably tenured academics--whose integrity and independence from any pressure from their employers could be clearly demonstrated.
    You're living in a fantasy land. Look at all the scorn heaped on tenured academics by McIntyre, the press, etc after "Climategate". Eric the Red:
    As suggested, using Teske as a contributing author is fine. However, making him lead author can give the impression of partiality.
    More fantasy land. McIntyre would've been screaming as loudly if Teske had "only" been a contributing author. We'd still be seeing all the crap about its being unacceptable to include a paper written by a Greenpeace employee.
  9. McManufactured Controversy
    Eric the Red @44, why should making Teske a lead author create an impression of partiality? As a lead author, Teske has less influence on the report than the two Coordinating Lead Authors of Chapter ten, Prof. Dr. Manfred Fischedick and Roberto Schaeffer. He also had no more influence than any of the eight other lead authors, Akintayo  Adedoyin (Botswana), Makoto Akai (Japan), Thomas Bruckner (Germany), Leon Clarke (USA), Volker Krey (Austria/Germany), Ilkka Savolainen (Finland), Diana Ürge‐Vorsatz (Hungary), Raymond Wright (Jamaica) And why does it give an "impression of partiality" to have a member of Greenpeace as a lead author, but not give an impression of partiality to have a lead author on the same chapter with a direct financial interest in fossil fuels? Is there some subtle principle that says that members of Greenpeace automatically have a conflict of interest if they work for the IPCC but Special Project Managers for fossil fuel related companies do not? What I think we have here is a very clear double standard. Greenpeace personnel are persona non grata simply because McIntyre and Lynas, and apparently, you do not like Greenpeace's political views and wish to censor them. Whereas Raymond Wright, who has been "... a Consultant to companies and governments in all continents except Australia" and is currently "Special Projects Manager at the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica", and that is not even worth mentioning. Nor has any issue been raise about Leon Clark being a co-author of the paper on which the third scenario was based, nor apparently any concern that Teske was an author of the paper (the same one as it happens) from which scenario one was drawn from. The only thing that is creating an "impression of partiality" here is a deliberate and unwarranted beat up by McIntyre that has been uncritically repeated by others with a desire to stick a knife into Greenpeace. The correct response is completely reject his absurd claims and show why it is a beat up. And to demand of McIntyre and of anybody who uncritically repeats him a full list of those organisations whose politics is so unacceptable that no member of that organisation is permitted to work as a scientist.
  10. Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
    Given that ice 'extent' can vary by as much as 667% (1 / 0.15 minimum concentration) for a given ice 'area' I'd agree that "today's date is irrelevant"... but so is any given September minimum. Ice extent is simply too disconnected from ice amount (i.e. volume) for any single year value to be significant. Right now ice melt pond formation, extent, area, and total volume are all at new record values... which certainly makes a new record minimum extent this year seem more likely. However, given the huge potential disconnect between ice amount and ice extent anything could happen.
  11. Eric the Red at 22:37 PM on 22 June 2011
    Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
    michael, last year was the third lowest recorded (2007 was the lowest, followed by 2008). We are approaching the halfway point in the melt season, and a time when the rate of melting reaches its maximum. 2007 was near the high side of the past 10 years during mid June, but went into a steep decline thereafter. Clearly this date is nothing special in the measurement season. In fact, going back one month, to the middle of May, and 2006 and 2004 had the lowest sea ice extent, yet neither of those years made the bottom five. Today's date is irrelevant. Wait until Septemeber, then we will see.
  12. Australia’s contribution matters: why we can’t ignore our climate responsibilities
    Pretty Good Questions Agnostic: Here are your answers: • How are Ministerial assurances that coal use will grow as an energy source consistent with reduction of Australian CO2 emissions? Answer: Its not - just an example of the hyprocrisy of our political leaders. Open a new coal mine one day - and tout an ETRS the next. • How is provision of financial assistance for coal production and use is consistent with placing a price on carbon or reduction of CO2 emissions? Answer: Ditto. • How will development of CCS technology reduce CO2 emissions, knowing its application is so expensive it makes production of electricity from renewable sources cheaper than using coal? Answer: CCS is BS and always was. Do the numbers. • How does excluding agriculture from a carbon tax help reduce CO2 emissions when that sector contributes over 20% of Australian emissions? Answer: Electric Trucks and Tractors and non-farting cows. • How is assisting the motor industry to produce more fossil fuelled vehicles consistent with the government aim of reducing CO2 emissions? Answer: What about the hybrid Camry? • How is CO2 reduction achieved by increasing Federal and State government dependence on revenue derived from expanding coal production and use, rather than aiming to reduce that its use and dependence on its production? Answer: Our federal and state budgets depend on the revenue from coal exports. • Why have we adopted a target of reducing our emissions by 5% by 2020 when climate science advises reducing by 95% by 2050 and when other have adopted targets of 20-25% by 2020? Answer: A bit of pathetic tokenism by our politicians who think there might be votes in it from the kiddies who feel impelled to do something about global warming without sacrificing hot showers and warm lattes.
  13. Eric the Red at 22:17 PM on 22 June 2011
    How would a Solar Grand Minimum affect global warming?
    RC has a much heavier emphasis on modeling - no real surprise with Gavin there. The discussion tends to get much deeper into the details of some of the aspects of global warming. Discussions tend to get more heated, with less tolerance to opposing opinions and more personal attacks. The moderators are a little more sensitive than here, and are quick to send those undesireable posts into the "bore hole." Here, OT posts (like this one) will usually receive a warning, followed by future movement to the appropriate thread.
    Moderator Response:

    (DB) It is duly noted that differences exist between RC and SkS; as you also note, we are now well off-topic so let us return the discussion to the OP.

  14. IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    @28 JMurphy. Figure 2 above. 5 years is a guesstimate based on yearly (?) data points, given that the ordinate is installed capacity.
  15. Eric the Red at 21:13 PM on 22 June 2011
    McManufactured Controversy
    I do not believe that science needs PR. The issue is not about the science of the work, but rather the politics. As suggested, using Teske as a contributing author is fine. However, making him lead author can give the impression of partiality. Politics needs positive PR, and always has, especially when the most recent PR has been negative.
  16. McManufactured Controversy
    30, dana1981 - 'if McIntyre had limited his criticisms to the press release, I wouldn't have had a problem with that. But he went a tad bit further. "Everyone in IPCC WG3 should be terminated and, if the institution is to continue, it should be re-structured from scratch." I'd say that's a tad bit extreme if you're only complaint is about a flawed press release.' It's very extreme invective but nonetheless his complaints as written are banal on one point and unfounded on the other. You should probably know by now this is NFM - Normal for McIntyre.
  17. McManufactured Controversy
    JMurphy, the reason most scientists wont go around claiming McIntyre was demanding WG3 be put to death, is that they have moral integrity that they wont compromise to make a political point. Yet another point of differentiation with the hardcore deniers, some of whom seem to have sold their souls, and their scientific integrity, to the devil that is the fossil fuel industry. While I admit it would be very tempting to start slinging mud, if you do, you'll end up with a discourse akin to that seen in Question Time in the parliament (for those outside Australia - picture two bunchs of petulant children from different clubs screaming at each other across a fence, and you wouldn't be far wrong. If you're still curious, you can see video here.)
  18. McManufactured Controversy
    The world has come to a strange place when the suggestion is now made that science needs PR to be able to get its message across properly, and all those involved in it need to have no external associations with any group that can be used as propaganda against them - whether valid or not, doesn't matter. And it is certainly true that people like McIntyre would hate to be ignored. What would be even better, would be to use their own tactics against them, i.e. 'McIntyre said "Everyone in IPCC WG3 should be terminated" - that is a shocking demand, tantamount to asking for death sentences on everyone involved in IPC WG3.' Not what he was suggesting ? How does anyone know that for sure ? Maybe he should release all his emails, so we can see what he really thinks. Until then, anyone can believe what they want about him and can make things up as they see fit - a tactic known as so-called skepticism.
  19. IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    14, dana1981 - I certainly don't dispute that energy demand can be reduced over time with improved efficiencies. What I can't see is how this can be coincident with unfettered growth in per capita GDP. Essentially Teske 2010 claims that economic growth can be decoupled from energy usage altogether (normally 'decoupling' refers simply to breaking the link bewteen economic growth and fossil fuel use). Is there anything which can back this up? 20, Tom Curtis - Table 10.3 in the report shows figures for both Energy Demand and Energy Intensity. While all four of the featured scenarios show reductions in Energy Intensity by 2050, ER-2010 (Teske) is a huge outlier in producing a reduction in Energy Demand by 2050.
  20. McManufactured Controversy
    David Horton "(a) we are constantly on the back foot as each new bit of idiocy comes up, constantly responding, being defensive, instead of offensive, and (b) treating this sort of crap as if it was a serious comment dignifies it and magnifies it into exactly that. McIntyre would hate to be ignored! " Good points. This is why the IPCC should have had something in place to deal with this before. They didn't, so they, and anyone defending them, look like they are playing catch-up. Had this not been picked up and run with by Lynas, there'd be less reason to worry about the PR aspect. But Lynas' response has been spun to be anti-IPCC when the situation is much more nuanced. He's like a their trophy.
  21. David Horton at 18:50 PM on 22 June 2011
    McManufactured Controversy
    "Urging those in the real world to ignore this crap, as David Horton@33 writes,sounds more like capitulation than a winning strategy to me." - if you knew me you would know that precisely the opposite was true. I just think that (a) we are constantly on the back foot as each new bit of idiocy comes up, constantly responding, being defensive, instead of offensive, and (b) treating this sort of crap as if it was a serious comment dignifies it and magnifies it into exactly that. McIntyre would hate to be ignored!
  22. IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    Chemware, could you provide further details of the increase in cost that you mention ?
  23. Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
    Norman wrote : "Disasters are increasing but not enough data is available to determine if hazards are increasing." It seems, Norman, as Tom Curtis has shown, that you do not read what evidence you are presented with and cannot find out simple information for yourself. However, even when you are presented with it all (and even if you might have read some of it), it seems that you do not want to accept that which goes against your world-view. If you had read the post of mine which you were apparently replying to, you would have spotted the very same quote that you repeated. You would also have found out that it was produced by Oxfam, although it does reference the Munich Re report, and that it gives good definitions of all the relevant terms. It would help if you could compare what you believe to be the case, and what is actually the case, especially with regard to 'disasters', 'hazards', etc.
  24. Glenn Tamblyn at 18:02 PM on 22 June 2011
    IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    An interesting comparison and 'other factor' here is comparisons to military spending. Dana's figures give a cost of $500-$700 Billion per year. World military spending is around 1.3 to 1.5 Trillion per year. How much of that military spending is really about protecting energy security? And consider how much military spending is actually 'wasted'. Not spent for its intended purpose. Australia is replacing its Leopard tanks with wizz-bang Abrahms, replacing its F111 & FA18 fleet, its entire destroyer & frigate fleet, planning for the replacement of its submarine fleet etc. And they have hardly ever fired a shot in anger. A small number of sorties in the Iraq war, a few small bombardments around Basra. The pasrts of our military that have carried the heavy lifting for many years are the special forces units, military transport aircraft and transport ships. Most oif the rest has been ever ready but not used. A world with fewer Big Power confrontations and Energy Security missions, oops I mean Carrier Battle Group deployments, is surely a world where we can still have our military security at a fraction of the cost. Isn't that a hidden cost advantage of moving away from energy sources that need to be transported around the world?
  25. IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    Why has the cost of on-shore Wind power risen so much (50%+) in the last 5 years or so ?
  26. Australia’s contribution matters: why we can’t ignore our climate responsibilities
    Of course Australia can influence regional emitters like Indonesia to do better but it seems to me that when our neighbors look at our policies and action we are taking they might be expected to first ask for an explanation of: • How are Ministerial assurances that coal use will grow as an energy source consistent with reduction of Australian CO2 emissions? • How is provision of financial assistance for coal production and use is consistent with placing a price on carbon or reduction of CO2 emissions? • How will development of CCS technology reduce CO2 emissions, knowing its application is so expensive it makes production of electricity from renewable sources cheaper than using coal? • How does excluding agriculture from a carbon tax help reduce CO2 emissions when that sector contributes over 20% of Australian emissions? • How is assisting the motor industry to produce more fossil fuelled vehicles consistent with the government aim of reducing CO2 emissions? • How is CO2 reduction achieved by increasing Federal and State government dependence on revenue derived from expanding coal production and use, rather than aiming to reduce that its use and dependence on its production? • Why have we adopted a target of reducing our emissions by 5% by 2020 when climate science advises reducing by 95% by 2050 and when other have adopted targets of 20-25% by 2020?
  27. McManufactured Controversy
    Phillipe@37 You may well be correct, probably the hard-core skeptics never will be convinced by anything; a lot of them are pretty dug in, I agree. However, the group we are trying to reach are the many people in the middle who don't have a strong opinion either way. Without them on side, we're going nowhere. Recent polls show that US public opinion is growing more skeptical, even as the evidence mounts. The evidence says that the contrarians are winning the only debate that matters. Urging those in the real world to ignore this crap, as David Horton@33 writes,sounds more like capitulation than a winning strategy to me.
  28. IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    quakka: "If you want to pursue this energy intensity argument in the EU and Japan, then the purported improvements in energy intensity must take into the account the rising embedded energy in imported goods. Do they?" The reason is that emissions need to be accounted for based on consumption and government responsibility. If production is exported but the nation that exported the production continues to consume at the same rate, then effectively the consumer nation is held responsible for the emissions of the producer country. The consumer nation does have a choice as to how much it consumes and hence is responsible.
  29. Renewables can't provide baseload power
    I can see how burning crop residue and plantation forests can be renewable - but how can they be clean? How much CO2 does this energy generation method use?
  30. Michael Hauber at 15:29 PM on 22 June 2011
    Australia’s contribution matters: why we can’t ignore our climate responsibilities
    Personally I think Australia is too small to take a dramatic leadership position in climate change. We should be matching what other's are doing, and going a step or two further to encourage others to lift their game as well. And many other countries are doing plenty to combat climate change, with some high rates of renewable energy uptake already achieved in some European countries, and high rates planned in the near future in China for instance. I am personally amazed at how much is actually getting done on climate change globally despite the lack of a strong agreement to force such action. I can think of two possible explanations for this: a) despite the fact that politicians know that causing real pain for their electorate by raising energy taxes will cause voter backlash and reduce their chances of re-election they are committed to doing the right thing despite the significant personal cost. Contrary to what nearly all of us believe about politicians they are really in it for what they believe is the good of the country, and not for the pay perks or the glory and power of it all. b) The actions taken to date are cheap and will not have any noticeable impact on electricity costs or jobs or anything else that could cause a voter backlash. If we were willing to pay any real cost on climate change we would be able to do significantly more. c) Politicians have a secret plan to siphon of the extra carbon taxes to fund the creation of a one-world government.
  31. IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    quokka - I'm actually of the opinion that synthetic fuels (carbon neutral) will be part of the ongoing solution. There are several in development now, including (as I've referred to before) one for aviation gas that is in the US FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) approval cycle (Swift Fuels).
  32. Philippe Chantreau at 14:51 PM on 22 June 2011
    McManufactured Controversy
    Andy, nothing that goes toward controlling CO2 emissions will ever be credible to so-called skeptics, no matter what.
  33. IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    #22 Bern Partially true, but in some of the high renewables scenarios, there is a lot of biomass. The issue of the efficiency of heat engines is not going to go away any time soon. We don't even know yet how widespread the deployment of EVs is likely to be. It may turn out that carbon neutral synfuels of some type have a big role to play. Again the issue of heat engine efficiency looms large. I completely agree that there is an urgent need to dramatically improve public transport, but sometimes it is far more difficult than is commonly supposed. I spent a decade or so working in London as a contractor - some short term and some long term contracts so I got around a bit. I always had a car but I would rather slam my finger in a car door than drive to work every day as opposed to use train or underground. A lot of people in London share that sentiment. London has an extensive and heavily used rail and underground system and quite good local bus services. But the rail and tube is essentially a spoke network. If you need to travel any substantial distance across those spokes, then the buses take way too long and there is no alternative but to drive. This is why the M25 ring motorway (six lanes in each direction in parts) is the busiest motorway in Europe. There is no easy, and certainly no cheap solution to this problem. The existing rail and tube system has taken over a century to build. London is certainly not the whole world, but each public transport network will have it's own set of issues to address, and some of those issues are damned difficult to resolve and are going to take many decades, if indeed they are ever addressed. What I see repeatedly is an attempt to shoehorn purported solutions into the best of all possible worlds. It is done, not because those worlds are the ones that we are most likely to inhabit, but because of emotional attachment to alleged solutions.
  34. Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
    Tom @149, Indeed. Up.
  35. McManufactured Controversy
    "They just want to stir up the dirt." and what's so dirty in Greenpeace? I'm not a member though. But still, the message here was that 77% of the energy could be from renewables by 2050.
  36. Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
    Camburn @143, the study you reference suffers from several major disadvantages. This first that using annual discharge is a poor proxy for extreme weather events. Extreme weather events come in the form of both droughts and floods (among other things) which have opposite effects on river discharge. So, rather than use annual river discharge the study should have looked at change in the variability of monthly discharge; and changes in the maxima and minima of monthly discharges. Without doing so, the study is not even capable of being an adequate proxy for increased extreme events. Further, the study takes no account of potentially confounding factors. Fairly obviously increased evaporation due to rising temperatures will be a confounding factor, but no notice is taken of it. More crucially, increased water use by humans for personal, industrial or agricultural use is a major confounding factor. For one example of the studies ignoring this, one of the rivers analysed is the Thames. It is hardly plausible, however, that the growth in London's population (between 25 and 40% depending on the district in the last decade) has not increased the water usage from the Thames, and hence reduced discharge rates.
  37. Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
    Albatross @148, it is worthwhile using the controls to look at the extremes in one day precipitation as well.
  38. Bibliovermis at 13:57 PM on 22 June 2011
    McManufactured Controversy
    Andy, Controversy manufacturers will spin anything to suit their purpose. Preventing energy experts from authoring energy chapters will not quiet the muckrakers. This is another one of those contrarian contradictions. The IPCC is a purely political ploy that is politically tone-deaf... right.
  39. The Planetary Greenhouse Engine Revisited
    Re [DB] - thanks.
  40. IPCC Report on Renewable Energy
    quokka: you're forgetting that the actual efficiency of use of primary energy is, in many cases, very very low, e.g. coal fired power stations rarely convert more than a third of the primary (thermal) energy into useable electricity. Burning liquid fuels in car & truck engines is even less thermally efficient - <20% for petrol(gasoline) engines, maybe as high as 40% for a well-tuned diesel. Replacing a petrol-powered car with an electric one will result in more efficient energy use, especially if you charge it with electricity that doesn't come from burning fossil fuels. And that's completely ignoring the issue of energy wastage, which is a far bigger problem (e.g. driving a 12mpg truck to your desk job, when you could be catching public transport). Many (most?) industrial users can significantly reduce energy usage with no changes to their output at all. Those that make the effort usually reap the benefits, saving tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on their energy bills (or millions, for large industries). You can hardly claim that most industries in China that produce goods for Europe & Japan have been optimised in terms of their energy use. That's not to say that rolling out energy efficiency across the entire global economy would be easy, nor cheap. But it would pay for itself quite quickly. Whether it would be enough to entirely offset growth in world economic activity, I don't know.
  41. Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
    People should also look the annual U.S. Climate Extremes Index (CEI) (with Tropical Cyclone Indicator) for 1910-2010. Note the the downward decline in CEI from 1910 to 1970, and since then an upward trend. With greatest frequency of extreme events in the first decade of the 21st Century. And it is still early days in our stupid experiment.
  42. The Planetary Greenhouse Engine Revisited
    ... I didn't even mention the mesosphere or thermosphere in that last part because - while their meager optical thicknesses are important to their own energy balances and in determining radiative equilibrium, they are so tiny compared to the stratosphere (as a whole, anyway) and troposphere that they barely make any difference.
  43. Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
    Norman @140, "Do either of you know of any study done to determine if the number is increasing (please Albatross no models or guesses...just actual countable numbers) " Well, I'm affronted :) Stanley Chagnon is your man and Google is your friend. FWIW, I have an idea as to how we can objectively look at this, but it will use a model.
  44. How would a Solar Grand Minimum affect global warming?
    Ken @87, The link @80 works. Re "I went there in the early days and found that the site was far inferior to SKS, with no where near the quality of science contributions. " Empty rhetoric mate. The post at RC is written by Feulner.
  45. McManufactured Controversy
    David Horton: we can't just ignore it, because debate in the public sphere isn't about who is right, it's about who shouts the loudest and the longest. Disinformation like this needs to be fought by providing actual, verifiable, factually correct information. Eventually, some of the journalists covering climate change stories might start to include it themselves in their coverage (assuming their editors let them present a slightly less imbalanced viewpoint, that is!). The more the general public see that these deniers are just blowing off steam, the more they'll pay attention to what the actual scientists have to say. It'll be a long, hard road, but it's one that must be travelled. As for Monckton: yes, I hope he pulls out that swastika slide at his presentation in Perth. If he does, I think that one slide will do more for climate change science that an entire presentation by a real climate scientist...
  46. Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
    camburn - all rather useless because they are not linked to what is actually predicted for those indicators and regions. The WG2 link to rivers reports on 195 rivers. It still didnt distinquish between places expected to dry versus those expected to get wetter.
  47. Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
    This is a good peace talking about tornados in the USA. Note from the graphs that precipable water is well within historical ranges as well as other items required to produce tornadoes. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/csi/events/2011/tornadoes/climatechange.html Just some papers for thought and I hope these help you in your search of knowledge.
  48. How would a Solar Grand Minimum affect global warming?
    Realclimate is not trying to do same thing as Sks. However, the contributors are publishing climate scientists so the discussion there is rather more informed on the specialized areas.
  49. Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
    And here is one on global storm days: "However, the global total number of storm days shows no trend and only an unexpected large amplitude fluctuation driven by El Niño-Southern Oscillation and PDO. The rising temperature of about 0.5°C in the tropics so far has not yet affected the global tropical storm days. " http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2010/2010GL042487.shtml
  50. Linking Extreme Weather and Global Warming
    Norman: Here is a study on hydrology that only uses stations that have at least a 50 year history so that a trend can be detected. The results of the study show that there has been no increase in hydrological events verses the long term mean. http://itia.ntua.gr/getfile/1128/2/documents/2011EGU_DailyDischargeMaxima_Pres.pdf

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