Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 Next
Comments 90801 to 90850:
-
johnd at 09:34 AM on 28 March 2011Weather vs Climate
Alexandre at 23:23 PM, perhaps you should read the paper "Impact of Global Ocean Surface Warming on Seasonal-to-Interannual Climate Prediction" that I linked in an earlier post in this thread "johnd at 06:49 AM on 27 March, 2011". It might assist your own understanding of climate modeling. Incidentally, I think the behavior of buyers, and sellers, is extremely predictable, as reflected by the ability of some of the more astute investors of the world to always be ahead of the market. Whilst the study focuses on the time scales the title indicates, what those who conducted the study allow us to appreciate is that as our awareness of all the factors involved increases, the uncertainty widens. Here is an excerpt:- "Based on atmospheric model simulations with historical sea surface temperature (SST) forcing only, Compo and Sardeshmukh (2009) have found that most of the land warming in recent decades is caused by SST rise rather than by its local response to increasing GHG forcing. We note that the SST warming itself may be driven by both the increasing GHGs forcing and slowly-varying natural processes (Solomon et al. 2007). The SST change was found to play a dominant role in determining the land/ocean warming contrast probably via complex hydrodynamic-radiative teleconnections (Joshi et al. 2008; Compo and Sardeshmukh 2009; Dong et al. 2009)." -
Alexandre at 09:29 AM on 28 March 2011Weather vs Climate
johnd #67 said: if you feel that CO2 dominates the climate, to what lesser degree do you relegate the oceans. Oceans don't have the ability to affect the energy balance of the planet. Surface temperature will be affected by ocean cirulations, but the amount of energy of the climate system will remain approximately the same. The greenhouse effect, OTOH, affects how much energy goes out. And if you attribute the current warming to the oceans, how do answer these questions: - What ocean oscillation became suddenly warmer now then on the last millennium or two? - Why did the outgoing longwave radiation diminish on the last decades? - Why did backradiation become more intense? - Why did IR radiation trapped by GHG have no effect on temperature this time? -
Gilles at 09:27 AM on 28 March 2011Weather vs Climate
Trueofvoice : so you agree that energy conservation does *not* imply a constant average surface temperature ? -
scaddenp at 09:25 AM on 28 March 2011Weather vs Climate
Tim, no matter. While you provide a forcing (eg heat from underneath/more CO2 in the atmosphere) then the pot will heat till its temperature enables energy in = energy out. Yes, climate is more complicated because its sensitivity is harder to tie down with the internal feedbacks, but heat it will. Now by what physical process, can you get a sensitivity so low that you manage only 2 degrees per 500 years for realistic emissions? This violates the physics as captured by models, the observed sensitivity for post-1970 temperature rise and constraints from the paleo record? You need some so far unknown negative feedback. Too risky for me. -
Trueofvoice at 09:23 AM on 28 March 2011Weather vs Climate
Tim, During a La Nina heat from the atmosphere is essentially transferred to the oceans. During an El Nino heat is transferred from the oceans to the atmosphere. The heat doesn't go away, it just moves to another part of the planet. Energy only leaves the planet via radiation into space, and this is exactly the process that GHGs interfere with. -
Gilles at 09:11 AM on 28 March 2011A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
So basically, you're arguing that mankind would have much less difficulties to replace 80 % of its energy sources, than to face a few degrees more on the Earth? the weird thing is that when I look at individual persons, I would be inclined to think exactly the opposite. Strangely enough, your own ancestors must have left spontaneously at some time a temperate and rainy country to go living in a much hotter and desert one... certainly a much brutal change for them than any local climate change .. and apparently they must have been rather successful yet ! -
TimTheToolMan at 08:51 AM on 28 March 2011Weather vs Climate
"That's a very strangely qualified statement. Any timescale that we care about?" Would you feel the same if it turned out the majority of observed warming so far was in fact natural and that CO2 was actually expected to increase global temperatures by around 2C after 500 years or more with cuts in emissions that reflected a controlled steady move away from fossil fuels rather than a frantic ill considered one? -
TimTheToolMan at 08:45 AM on 28 March 2011Weather vs Climate
@Trueofvoice "No matter how many ENSOs, or how powerful, in the end they do nothing more than shift the heat around." Thats clearly not the case though is it. During La Nina, global temperatures drop and during El Nino they rise. We measure this and its generally accepted. @scaddenp "Could you predict when the kettle will boil? (climate) yes. " No. Didn't you notice that the pot was much taller than you thought and that heat loss from the sides means that the flame isn't powerful enough to boil the water? There are many very large assumptions about whether climate can be predicted. Dont lose sight of that.Moderator Response: You have managed to start your comment on topic and end it off topic. See "Models are Unreliable." -
Ken in Oz at 08:40 AM on 28 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
Unfortunately this is not a proposal that will be taken up by Australia, which is currently engaged in maximising extraction and export of fossil fuels - a boom that goes unopposed. Australia is struggling to get even it's ageed to minimal 5% reduction of domestic emissions by 2020 through the political process. The politicking is ugly with opponents building on a strong basis of mis- and dis- information with plenty of big media support. I believe that it's both possible and essential that the kind of remake of energy infrastructure and energy usage patterns this proposal represents occur, however I am in a minority. And it's a minority that simply cannot compete with the influence of an Australian fossil fuel lobby that has successfully prevented any political will to limit the continuing growth of their industry. Any serious attempts to do so are politically impossible within our fossil fuel dependent nation. -
scaddenp at 08:30 AM on 28 March 2011Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were ignored
Welcome to real world. If you (taxpayer from country x) have paid for data in taxes, then certainly demand for it be public. What about data from country y? Did you pay for that? How do you get a global record without access to country x,y,z etc? Now in many countries, met services are semi-commercial. Part tax payer, part from selling data and forecasts to media, farmers, airlines. If you want their data, then you need a contract with them for it. For research purposes, you might get it free - provided you dont make it public. Anything in UK is public, so FOI requests were for data from other sources. In my country, science is done by government-owned private companies. Income from research contracts with government but also heavily from commercial work. Public gets the data that the research contract specifies for free. No more. -
johnd at 08:27 AM on 28 March 2011Weather vs Climate
Trueofvoice at 01:55 AM, if you feel that CO2 dominates the climate, to what lesser degree do you relegate the oceans. The oceans store and move an immense amount of heat energy, apparently more than can even be accounted for. If we are to accept that the "missing" heat needed to balance the equations is somewhere in the oceans, then we must also accept that as long as the ocean currents circulate, that "missing" heat will reveal and perhaps manifest itself causing the currently balanced equations to be rebalanced. -
scaddenp at 08:22 AM on 28 March 2011Temp record is unreliable
Try the links at: here and here Way to go, by the way. Nothing better than getting your hands dirty with the real data. Just be sure to read up the metadata and also data processing, especially homogenising. Any long term record will have changed thermometers, screens, maybe location, reading time, many many times. Its not a trivial job doing those corrections. Homogenised records can be got from GHCN sources. -
stevee3906 at 08:19 AM on 28 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
Did the study estimate the effect on birds deaths due to WindFarms ? Will they same standard be applied to Windfarms as oil ? The current state of WindFarms shows some cause for concern. -
johnd at 07:34 AM on 28 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
Ken Lambert at 00:13 AM, the point you make about where what competitive advantage we still have comes from is all too true, but something many seem oblivious of. We have seen our manufacturing industries virtually all move offshore because labour, and the skills they might have had, are not finite resources that we could continue to monopolise like we once could, instead the world supply is rapidly heading to oversupply. Thus, as apparently only dinosaurs are able to appreciate, we are left with little option but to exploit what finite resources we very fortunately do have. Sooner or later a major readjustment is going to be required to allow our standard of living to reflect our true rung on the world ladders of productivity and prosperity. One way or another we are going to have to learn to live with the equivalent of about half the income we currently enjoy. Even if renewable power eventually can be cheaper than FF,it is already too late for us here. -
cjshaker at 07:23 AM on 28 March 2011Temp record is unreliable
I'd like to be able to graph historical met station data for a given site over its entire history. So far, I have not yet found access to such a data collection Chris Shaker -
cjshaker at 07:17 AM on 28 March 2011We're heading into an ice age
Regarding whether or not we are heading into another ice age, my buddy's son, Jed Kaplan, is a climate scientist who believes that mankind has been changing the environment for at least 8,000 years, reversing the declining temperatures we experienced during this interglacial. He and palaeoclimatologist William Ruddiman believe that the agriculture of early mankind changed the CO2 level and helped stabilize our climate against the start of the ice age http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110325/full/news.2011.184.html "Proposed by palaeoclimatologist William Ruddiman in 2003, the theory says that human influences offset the imminent plunge into another ice age and helped create the relatively stable climate that we are familiar with today" If that is true, we need to learn to better control our environment by better controlling our CO2 emissions, ie - not just by cutting it. We would need to manage it, figuring out what level of emissions is needed to stabilize temperatures, and be able to mange our CO2 emissions to match. Climate control... Chris Shaker -
cjshaker at 07:14 AM on 28 March 2011Freedom of Information (FOI) requests were ignored
Why should we have to file Freedom of Information Requests to get data that taxpayers already paid for? As far as I'm concerned, no one should get their research grant until all data has been made public. Maybe pay half the grant up front, and not release the remainder until all of the data has been published? Chris Shaker -
cjshaker at 07:10 AM on 28 March 2011Temp record is unreliable
I've been looking for long term historical data from climate records for specific met sites that I can download and graph on my own. So far, Google has not provided. I did find and read some nice Wikipedia entries on Climate records, controversies about same, and more about the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth_Surface_Temperature Also found access to "Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: a new dataset from 1850" http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut3/HadCRUT3_accepted.pdf I would appreciate pointers to raw data that we can download ourselves. Chris ShakerModerator Response: Go to RealClimate.org. Click the Data Sources link in the horizontal bar at the top of that page. -
scaddenp at 07:07 AM on 28 March 2011Models are unreliable
"a set of models superimposed to data is enough to believe them- I don't. " No, but if they didn't match it would be good reason to disbelieve them. There is no way to "prove" a model is reality, but continuing success of model does increase confidence. Model validation is done in rather more complex ways than just global temperature trends including testing the physics of all the components. However, could any paper or data cause you to change your mind and decide we did need to act to limit CO2 - or you would always just find debating tricks to excuse such an action? -
scaddenp at 06:59 AM on 28 March 2011Weather vs Climate
Tim, repeating earlier comment: "Tell, if you put a large kettle on to hot flame, could you will all the computer modelling in the world accurate predict the convective flow within that pot? Not likely, though you might predict the pattern. (the weather) Could you predict when the kettle will boil? (climate) yes. " -
johnd at 06:54 AM on 28 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
The Ville at 00:33 AM, you have gone off on a tangent. My observation of accommodating two variables as being harder and costlier in no way construes it as being impossible, merely how it compares relative to not having to accommodate two variables. Unless we can recognise and evaluate the options available, sorting out those that are less hard and less costlier from those that are more hard and more costlier, then we are likely to be continually blindly led down the wrong paths, which unfortunately seems to be an increasingly frequent occurrence with many governments of the developed world. -
Rob Honeycutt at 05:20 AM on 28 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
ClimateWatcher... If you click the link in Dana's article related to Steven Chu you'll see that they are projecting that solar with be cost competitive without subsidies by the end of the decade. That should be a major game changer. -
ClimateWatcher at 04:42 AM on 28 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
Solar makes sense: 1. for situations where the power is used when it is generated (schools, businesses that operate during daylight ) 2. for situations where the power is used where it is generated so that it does not require additional footprint for distribution. That means rooftops - and -not- the large generating farms. 3. for situations where the generation does not require huge amounts of water - which means localized PV and not thermal plants. 4. to a limited amount where the daytime capacity does not exceed the nighttime demand so that plants can operate at max efficiency. Otherwise, one is decreasing efficiency which increases cost and carbon intensity. 5. to the extent that we don't have to tear up all the ocean floor digging out the trace minerals necessary for the chinese to build us PV cells. 6. Passive solar makes sense everywhere. As I have posted, I don't believe CO2 is a problem, but if active solar can be cost competitive ( it still isn't after many decades ), we should use it. -
Phil at 04:07 AM on 28 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Phillippe @863 - Didn't you know - Global Warming is caused by glow-worms. :-) -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:46 AM on 28 March 2011Weather vs Climate
TTTM said... "The view that CO2's effect as a GHG will necessarily dominate over any timescales that we care about is a naive one." That's a very strangely qualified statement. Any timescale that we care about? I believe the point is that we are adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a rate that it is overwhelming the natural radiative balance and causing the planet to warm. I don't believe that is a naive statement in any way. -
Philippe Chantreau at 03:24 AM on 28 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
LJR: "Q1)What is the SW radiation emissivity of the earths surface?" What? Why would one even ask such a question is baffling. -
muoncounter at 02:30 AM on 28 March 2011Weather vs Climate
Gilles #58: "has the rise been unlikely close to Hansen's predictions, or not?" Skip the ambiguity; take these questions to the relevant thread, where there is graphical evidence that your doubts are ill-founded. "you cannot always find clear validations of theories." In this case, theory predicts trend (climate) rather than specific events (weather). Short-sighted individuals who focus on individual events do not look carefully enough to see those trends. Perhaps it is a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees? -
adelady at 02:29 AM on 28 March 2011A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
Gilles, you're certainly right about Oz and USA consumption. Our houses are dreadfully designed and built for this (or any) environment. We have far and away the biggest carbon footprint of the OECD countries, Canada's between us and the USA. I don't think we can continue to have the biggest houses in the world. Most Australian capital cities are on the list of 10-15 least affordable places to live in the world - that can't continue. OTOH, insulation, ventilated roofs to remove the heat reservoir in our ceiling spaces, passive environmentally sensible design should remove most of the 'need' for our excessive use of air conditioners. I don't have one but have an old house with very, very high ceilings. Livable in all but the very worst heatwaves. And I'm a lot more optimistic than you about the declining cost of wind and solar. I'm also very impressed by technologies like metal roof panels precoated with solar collecting material and similar window films. Not economic yet, but soon, very soon. My preference for places with ludicrously high consumption like ours is major investment in negawatts, rather than alternative sources to maintain our totally unnecessary consumption (esp of that diabolical brown coal used in Victoria.) Though here we get 15% of our power from wind already and the only reason it's not more is grid inadequacy near a couple of prime wind generating sites. Basically I'm more optimistic than you. Equally, I'm irritated by people insisting on staying with what I see as primitive technology. No matter how you cut it, burning stuff to initiate other processes that eventually finish up producing power is Victorian. The fact that we build bigger and better with more concrete can't change the fact that this is crude technology. I prefer sophisticated. -
Trueofvoice at 01:55 AM on 28 March 2011Weather vs Climate
Tim, No matter how many ENSOs, or how powerful, in the end they do nothing more than shift the heat around. They do not produce or eliminate it. CO2 dominates climate because it controls the planet's radiative energy balance. The more CO2 we add to the atmosphere, the greater the energy imbalance and the more heat we get. The energy imbalance can be measured and projected into the future as we continue to add GHGs to the atmosphere. This is basic physics. -
muoncounter at 01:44 AM on 28 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
rhj #23: "Wind farms in the UK have been turned off because they caused havoc with the main grid supply as the supply fluctuated with wind changes." I'll see that non-specific example with a specific one. Texas had a freeze in early February; mechanical issues with freezing water pipes caused a number of coal-fired plants to go off-line. Natural gas shortages (in Texas, no less!) prevented backup generators from starting. A series of 'rolling blackouts' began statewide on what was one of the coldest days of the year. Unlike these unreliable fossil fuel plants, the wind kept sweepin' down the plain: Wind energy played a critical role in limiting the severity of the blackouts, providing enough electricity to keep the power on for about three million typical households. ERCOT, the Texas grid operator, has confirmed that wind energy was providing between 3,500 and 4,000 MW of electricity (about seven percent of ERCOT demand at that time), roughly what it was forecast and scheduled to provide, during the critical 5–7 a.m. window on [Feb. 2] when the grid needed power the most. --- Texas climate news, 2 Feb 11 Despite progress, Texas remains the state with the highest CO2 emissions in the US. ERCOT reported last month that wind-generated power had increased to 7.8 percent of the electricity used in Texas during 2010, compared to its 6.2 percent share in 2009. Coal produced the most electricity last year with 39.5 percent, followed by natural gas, the 2009 leader, which was down to 38.2 percent. -- same source We're all used to cheap, amply available fossil fuels; perhaps our judgment is clouded by that history. The situation will no doubt be different as we slide along the downwards side of an energy supply curve. Perhaps resistance to change is highest in places that have neither experienced the damage done by lost supply nor the benefits of available alternatives. -
Paul D at 00:33 AM on 28 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
johnD: "It's a lot harder, and costlier, to accommodate two variables." It's not hard. If you take that attitude then everything is hard and we would have never have developed any system we have today. If you go back to the 1940s then playing music from files on a silicon chip would have seemed like science fiction (it was science fiction, because that was exactly what science fiction authors wrote about). What really annoys me is the idea that: 1. People are stuck in some sort of time warp in which nothing can possibly change and we must have what we have today. 2. People are dumb and all the technology we have today magically appeared from no where. Just in the UK alone we have two completely new energy storage technologies being developed/researched. And it was only a few days ago that new developments in better battery cathodes promises extremely quick charging times for existing battery technologies. What I find extremely puzzling, is that skeptics are optimistic about future climate and pessimistic about any new technology developments that would replace existing technology. Or rather maybe it should not be puzzling, given vested interests and a complete cynicism about science. Yet these same people lap technology up once it is universal. IMO you have to make your mind up, get on with the job of changing, or just go and sit in a cave somewhere. You have those two choices. Isentropic energy storage: http://www.isentropic.co.uk/ -
Ken Lambert at 00:13 AM on 28 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
Marcus & Adelady As johnd again correctly points out - there is a world price for coal because it is a traded commodity produced in many nations. Demand has been increasing rapidly - so the price is at high levels and our dastardly miners are making big profits. Remember Rudd's 'Mining Super Profis Tax' - it was designed to cash-in on the boom. So our miners are just 'giving' our heavily subsidized coal to the Chinese like a fire sale of the family silver?? Well in that case all the other world producers must be 'heavily subsidized' by their governments too - so they can compete with us! Hello?? Sounds like Pauline Hansen Economics 1.01 to me. Have you ever heard of State Royalties which act as a straight turnover tax and Company Tax which taxes profit just like any other company? Marcus: Time for you to put some numbers on your assertions. How about the cost of Wind generation including the storage technologies (molten salt, compressed air or pumped hydro - or whatever). Cents per kWhr will do. And all those landfills across the country just happen to be able to back-up Wind generators when they don't generate. Let us know the cost of this too in cents per kWhr. One free service dinosaurs like me perform, is to point out that our main competitive advantage in this real cruel world is our relatively cheap and abundant fossil fuel (black coal and gas). Input energy from Wind, Solar or other renewables to our industries and domestic economy at 2-10 times the current cost and see what happens to our standard of living. I am all for energy saving and efficiency measures such as building insulation, smart storage of heat, light bulbs, 6 star ratings etc - but these must all make economic sense with the current cost (and projected future cost) of energy. -
Alexandre at 23:23 PM on 27 March 2011Weather vs Climate
johnd #62 The behaviour of a buyer is far more unpredictable than that of a gas. I suggest you get more familiar with what climate models are all about (btw, this could be a suggestion for a future post here at SkS). It's just a calculation with very well established laws of physics. Now, you cannot predict daily weather very accurately, but you can predict its long term average quite well, given the boundary conditions. If you add a greenhouse gas to the atmosphere, you can calculate (and measure) more IR radiation being trapped. You can calculate the temperature difference. You can estimate within uncertainty ranges how water vapor will respond. It's not like trying to guess how the market will behave. You can't say for sure if it will rain on the Amazon on Dec 12th, but you can state quite confidently that December will have far more rain in the Amazon than in the Sahara. Why? -
Eric (skeptic) at 23:21 PM on 27 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
On J&D's suggestion #4 "Use energy storage technologies", hopefully that includes thermal storage. I think techniques like vehicle battery storage might help with a little marginal power, but thermal masses can store lots more heat energy if properly designed. Here in Virginia (where it still seems to be winter), the majority of energy is used to keep warm and for transportation. Rather than use up vehicle batteries on any aspect of keeping warm, we need to improve passive solar (plus the active solar and heat pumps mentioned above). It is probably the case that 99.9% of houses are suboptimal or very suboptimal in terms of passive solar (which includes summer cooling). -
Marcus at 23:14 PM on 27 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
Its worth noting that, after California, the biggest US investor in Wind Power is Texas-hardly a State I'd associate with being keen on protecting the environment. I can only guess that they see the value of investing for future energy needs *now*-rather than when its too late. Texas, as I understand it, are also looking at Compressed Air as a storage mechanism. The Germans, meanwhile, have pumped storage. Either one of the 3 options I've mentioned can all but eliminate the variability of supply-especially if coupled with a decent distribution of individual turbines. -
Marcus at 23:10 PM on 27 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
John D, it is a very easy thing to change Wind Farms from being variable to being a fixed supply-I suggest you look into Vanadium Redox Batteries, which are making great strides with every passing year. Not that Wind Power is nearly as variable as the knockers claim it is-with or without storage. Lastly, with storage it will be much easier to adjust the energy output of wind farms than is currently the case with coal or nuclear power. -
johnd at 23:00 PM on 27 March 2011Weather vs Climate
Alexandre at 22:16 PM, checking the trends is fine, but the problem for all models, be they climate or economic, is that ultimately,and always, the trend is your friend until the bend at the end. -
johnd at 22:55 PM on 27 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
The Ville at 22:01 PM, but also do not overlook the fact that windfarms change the system from one with a fixed supply and a variable demand to a system with a variable demand and supply, perhaps even an erratic supply. It's a lot harder, and costlier, to accommodate two variables. -
Alexandre at 22:16 PM on 27 March 2011Weather vs Climate
batsvensson #57 Of course I do not agree with that. Theories are based on cause and effect, but that effect is not what is predicted by that theory (allowing for the broader sense of "theory" here). It's like saying "if you can't predict the next 6 you cannot say the dice is loaded". Check the trends, not events. Gilles #58 Who's saying no doubt is allowed? Models are limited approximations of the real world. Any law of physics is a limited approximation of the real world. That is not to say they are useless pieces of fiction. Would you go so far as to say that? Or would you recognize its share of accurate predictions? -
Paul D at 22:01 PM on 27 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
rhjames: "They also pay the windfarms to shut down when they supply power when it's not needed. All false economy." Cherry picking. All power stations are paid money for being idle when to much is being generated or there is not enough demand. Please do not distort the facts for political and prejudiced reasons. -
michael sweet at 21:56 PM on 27 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
Rhjames: Spain got 16% of its electricity in 2010 from wind see this Wikipedia article. As FF get more expensive their wind will be free. The fuel is one of the biggest costs of a FF power plant. I find it hard to believe that wind farms in the UK cannot be accomodated when Spain has done it. Perhaps the Spainish are smarter. Please provide references. On the other hand, I expect that when new technology is introduced there will be a learning curve. As we learn more these issues will go away. I note that you have not pointed out a single item in the posted article that you find incorrect, you just wave your hand and say "I don't believe". Not very convincing. People who have carefully thought about this problem believe it can be solved. The article discussed cost. Where is the problem that you have found with their calculations? -
Paul D at 21:55 PM on 27 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
rhjames: The fact that wind turbines can be easily disengaged and the fact they are well distribruted is a positive attribute not a negative one. Power stations are taken off line and put on line and they make a much bigger impact to the grid than a few smaller wind turbines going on and offline. When you take a power station off line you have to be much more careful (take a look at Fukushima and the impact large powers stations have on grid stability). How do you solve these issues? You do it by managing the resources you have so that the grid frequency doesn't fluctuate to much. Whatever mix you have, you are going to have problems to manage. The fact that for years we have had one type of source (large powers stations) just means that we have developed grid management systems for that specific scenario. That isn't practical for future scenarios so new ways of managing renewables connect6ed to the grid are being developed. That's what engineers do, solve problems. -
TimTheToolMan at 21:50 PM on 27 March 2011Weather vs Climate
"Weather" in the skeptic's sense doesn't have to be day to day though. "Weather" can mean a few years of ENSO events for example. Since we cant predict whether El Nino or La Nina (or neither for status quo) will become predominant in the future, we cant predict "global" climate either. ENSO is just one of many potential long term changable effects that will determine global average temperatures. Cloud cover is another major one. The view that CO2's effect as a GHG will necessarily dominate over any timescales that we care about is a naive one. -
rhjames at 21:15 PM on 27 March 2011A Plan for 100% Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar by 2050
Michael - how do you expect Spain to have cheaper electricity (assuming no government subsidy?) Wind is bad news. Wind farms in the UK have been turned off because they caused havoc with the main grid supply as the supply fluctuated with wind changes. They also pay the windfarms to shut down when they supply power when it's not needed. All false economy. I think this is all fantasy, supplying all power from such variable sources. Of course, it can work, but the cost will be mind blowing. Imagine a fortnight of rain and no wind - where does the power come from? How would it be realistically stored? I can remember over a month of wind free rainy days. -
batsvensson at 20:57 PM on 27 March 2011Weather vs Climate
"to qualify a good theory as one which predicts unlikely events is tricky when we look at climate change." Nobody said it will or is easy, but what I think irritates or annoy a lot of people is when pro AGW people goes public and make dead sure "predictions". No such thing can be said to be sure. What we have is likely and unlikely scenarios and these are covered by the error ranges in the models - then of course some stupid journalist must hock onto this and blow things out of proportion with the worst case, which is also the most unlikely scenario, with a "what will happen if we continue as we do" story. -
Gilles at 20:49 PM on 27 March 2011Weather vs Climate
"Back to an “unlikely” event that has been predicted by climate models, if we look at Hansens model from 1988, I repeat what I’ve said on the models are unreliable thread, the global average surface temperature has risen. " the question is : has the rise been unlikely close to Hansen's predictions, or not ? a simple visual inspection of figures concluding that "it matches approximately" is obviously not enough to say that. Alexandre#56 : you cannot always find clear validations of theories. That's unfortunate, but you know, life is not a fairy tale; for instance we don't have yet clear predictions of supersymmetry or worse, brane theories. That's life. The only thing is that before claiming that things are settled and that no doubt is allowed, you need such facts. If you don't have them, you're not allowed - in principle- to make such claims. And the burden of proof is for this who claims he believes in a model - not for this who doubts. -
batsvensson at 20:49 PM on 27 March 2011Weather vs Climate
@Alexandra - that's part of the assumption that a theory is based on cause and effect. Do you agree to this? -
Alexandre at 20:43 PM on 27 March 2011Weather vs Climate
Gilles and batsvensson How can an event be a test of a climate prediction? -
johnd at 20:38 PM on 27 March 2011Weather vs Climate
Gilles at 18:33 PM, "unlikely" unfortunately is something subjective, and we see this in action quite frequently in weather forecasting where different forecasters can use very different models. All too often here in Australia with seasonal to long range outlooks, what one body predicts as most likely will be predicted by another forecaster as most unlikely. It has happened that two totally opposing outlooks have been released by two separate organisations on the same day. Given such differing predictions are not isolated events, "unlikely" therefore cannot be an appropriate means of judging quality. -
michael sweet at 20:35 PM on 27 March 2011A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
Interested readers willl find Gilles' questions about air conditioning, heating and other areas of the world addressed here. The reference linked there proposes to use renewable energy for all current uses of Fossil Fuels. They calculate the material needs and costs. It is possible to live similarly to current lifestyles using renewable energy.
Prev 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 Next
