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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 91051 to 91100:

  1. A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
    Gilles, there are so many reasons I don't understand what you're saying, it's unimaginable; but not sharing in your confusion on economic growth (and many many other issues) isn't (aren't) amongst them. Anyway, nice to see that your knowledge of economics is right up their with your physics and stats.
  2. A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
    DM : "No, that would only be true if it burned cleanly and completely, which generally is not the case (e.g. carbon monoxide in car exaust fumes). " i'd like to strongly discourage you from thinking that you can reduce the CO2 by increasing CO - fortunately CO is slowly oxidized by radical reactions in the atmosphere (much like CH4) and ends up also as CO2. " Tar sands produce less energy per unit carbon than natural gas because you need to expend (vastly) more energy extracting it." If you think a little bit more of what you're saying, you will see that it's exactly what I am saying : all the carbon extracted gives eventually CO2, the only drawback is that less usable energy is produced with it. Tar sand do not emit "more CO2" per unit C - they only produce less usable energy per CO2 molecule.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] I have rarely seen such an obvious example of trolling than suggesting anyone would think that increasing CO emissions would be a way of reducing CO2. Sorry, I am issuing a nolle prosequi on that one! ;o)
  3. Preventing Misinformation
    dana1981 at 02:19 AM, I am disappointed that you are unable to readily provide such references. That is not upholding the general spirit of SkS in that it is expected anyone making assertions,or even expressing opinions, should at least provide links to support their claims. Whilst the matter of extreme events has been raised in a number of threads, generally relating to specific weather events such as the recent floods in Australia for example, or as you mentioned, the Tennessee floods, there has been no thread that I know of that has addressed it statistically rather than emotionally. One of the points that needs to be resolved is the apparent conflict in some peoples minds of, one hand, attributing some such extreme events to conditions such as the current La-Nina for example, yet on the other hand, maintaining a general assertion that such systems are oscillations that are not indications of any trends. An event such as the Brisbane floods is a weather event, not a climate event. From an Australian climate perspective the actual event is this current La-Nina coinciding with a -ve IOD. Perhaps you would like to present such a review on extreme climate events on a new thread?
    Moderator Response: [muoncounter] See the thread on Extreme weather. The key take-away is, as dana pointed out, simply one of increasing probabilities of extreme events due to warming.
  4. A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
    "Efficiency means exactly producing more usable product per unit of input. In the case of oil, using less of it for the same output will reduce CO2 production" les, the important point is that there is no reason to keep the same output if efficiency is increased. That's the very principle of economic growth. increasing the efficiency doesn't reduce in general the energy use and keep the output constant, but quite the opposite : keep the energy use constant and increase the output. If you don't get this point, you can't really understand what I'm saying. Actually it is worse like that, because increasing efficiency does event not keep energy reserves constant : it tends also to increase it. The amount of available FF is increasing with time.And there are not one, but two excellent reasons for that - increasing the efficiency of technology tends to decrease the extraction costs : we're becoming more and more performant to drill oil wells very deep in the ocean, extract hydrocarbons from shale, and so on... so actually for a given quality, they become cheaper and cheaper - increasing the efficiency raises the wealth produced by unit energy, so increases the cost of not using them . A cost-benefit analysis will be displaced towards a larger consumption equilibrium value. For the "cost" of burning 1 t C is always the same (it can be even lowered by improving adaption and mitigation), but the "benefit" increases. So not burning this t of C is increasingly expensive. If you want an explanation of why all discussions about "reducing CO2" universally fail, these are two very good reasons - you can have a reduction of the annual rate - this won't insure at all that you will reduce the total amount, quite the opposite actually.
  5. The Washington Times Talks Greenhouse Law
    Carbon monoxide, doh! Of course I learned as a little boy, that "when the blue flames have run out, you can close the damper". Never realized the lethal amount really is so tiny. In crowded room you could easily say: "If there were as much carbon monoxide in this room, as there's CO2, we would all be dead in less than an hour". Or on sidewalk in big city.
  6. michael sweet at 02:38 AM on 26 March 2011
    A climate 'Gish Gallop' of epic proportions
    John, This was the first time I have seen your one liners to counter a long Gish Gallop. I thought that they were very effective.
  7. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #842 Bibliovermis you wrote :- "Individual photons with equal 'temperature' (energy / wavelength / frequency) are identical regardless of source temperature." This is precisely what Einstein's 1916 paper is about, he shows how the electromagnetic 'Planck black body spectrum' is equivalent to the Maxwell-Boltzmann energy distribution in an ideal gas.
  8. Rob Honeycutt at 02:31 AM on 26 March 2011
    The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    Poptech said... "any "solution" involving government fiat has nothing to do with markets and thus is impossible for it to be a "market-solution"." You're a little slim on your macroeconomics there, Poptech. You might go back are read a little Keynes. Government is very much involved in economics. The governments uses a wide variety of tools to modify desirable market behaviors. Interest rates, tax incentives, money supply, etc. If you take the government completely out of economics then the market literally becomes the government. And I think that is exactly what Libertarians want. Especially very large and powerful corporations. The term is: Plutocracy. The problem is that Libertarians rely on the mistaken idea from the Chicago School that markets are inherently rational. The last decade should tell anyone that they are decidedly not so. Even in their best Milton Freedman-esk attempt to prove it (the Greenspan years) the Fed still had to modify the market through interest rate adjustments. Don't forget Greenspan's word after the collapse. "We underestimated banks ability to police themselves."
  9. Philippe Chantreau at 02:29 AM on 26 March 2011
    2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    This has gone on long enough. I would like to encourage all to abide by this principle we keep on talking about yet keep on ignoring: DNFTT. Of course, every time we try, they spew another humongous piece of absurdity and we can't help but point it out. We have to stop doing that. They have all done has done an excellent job of demonstrating the extent of their confusion and no amount of redirecting can reconcile them with reality. At some, point, one's mind must be acknowledged as having declared itself. We're long past that.
  10. Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
    Gilles #72 - if you had read my link, you would have seen
    "it is very unlikely that [transient climate response] is less than 1°C"
    This is a minimum transient climate sensitivity parameter of 0.27 Wm-2K-1. For an increase in CO2 from 280 to 310 ppm (pre-industrial to 1940), the minimum anthropogenic warming by 1940 is 0.15°C. Or if you just look at the increase from 1900 to 1940, the minimum warming is 0.07°C. So it depends whether you're considering the anthropogenic contribution to 1940 from pre-industrial, or from 1900. But there is a minimum transient response.
  11. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #840 in Response: [Dikran Marsupial] you wrote :- "No, it means they have the same "equivalent temperature", it does not imply they were emitted by bodies of the same temperature." Photons are generated in different ways, but when they are generated by molecular motions they have energy directly related to the temperature of the particles. Einstein wrote a paper about this in 1916 "Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung" and I've never seen it contradicted. Photonic energy is regarded as electromagnetic, although when they are created they take mechanical momentum from the emitting particle and give it (the momentum ) up when absorbed. But photons are not mechanical 'objects'; they have no mass, so they can't collide. Collision is how mechanical particles exchange momentum (thus energy), according to kinetic theory. Temperature is essentially a mechanical concept, that is why the energy of a photon gives it an 'equivalent' temperature.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] You are still not making the distinction between the "effective temperature" of a photon/emitting particle and the temperature of the emitting body. Oh well, you can lead a horse to water...
  12. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Discussing an individual photon's 'temperature' is a bit of semantic play, which is why quotes are used. Individual photons with equal 'temperature' (energy / wavelength / frequency) are identical regardless of source temperature.
  13. 10 key climate indicators all point to the same finding: global warming is unmistakable
    Here is a possible 11th indicator: wave height.
  14. Preventing Misinformation
    johd #67 - not off the top of my head, no. You could find them as easily as I could. Google Scholar is your friend.
  15. 10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change
    Oops - posted on wrong thread. The above link should be on ten indicators of a warming world. Sorry.
  16. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #838 in Response: [Dikran Marsupial] you wrote :- "I suspect there is a good reason the article talks of an "equivalent temperature" rather than simply a "temperature"." There is. Photonic energy is regarded as electromagnetic, although when they are created they take mechanical momentum from the emitting particle and give it (the momentum ) up when absorbed. But photons are not mechanical 'objects'; they have no mass so can't collide. Collision is how mechanical particles exchange momentum (thus energy), according to kinetic theory. Temperature is essentially a mechanical concept, that is why the energy of a photon gives it an 'equivalent' temperature.
  17. 10 Indicators of a Human Fingerprint on Climate Change
    Here is a possible 11th indicator: wave height.
  18. A climate 'Gish Gallop' of epic proportions
    Ken L #4 - the Knox and Douglass paper you reference was a horrid example of cherrypicking. See Monckton Myth #1, Cooling Oceans for a better analysis of all available data.
  19. A climate 'Gish Gallop' of epic proportions
    "CO2 was higher in the past" In addition to the Sun being cooler, the Earth was hotter -- at times a *lot* hotter -- than it is now. According to Dr. Richard Alley (in his memorable 2009 AGU talk), sea surface temperatures approached 100F in the tropics during the Cretaceous Hothouse period. But along with 100F sea surface temperatures, you will get dangerous levels of atmospheric heat and humidity, as in dew points well over 90F. Once the dew-point hits 95 F or so, *everyone* caught outside in conditions like that for more than a few hours will die of heat-stroke. Everyone. To keep your body's core from overheating, your skin temperature needs to be kept at 95F or below. Get dew points near or above 95F, and this becomes impossible. If we woke up to a Cretaceous Hothouse climate tomorrow, billions of people would die of heat stroke long before they had a chance to starve to death. A CO2 hothouse climate is incompatible with human existence. This was covered nicely in this most excellent skepticalscience piece last year: Heat-stress-setting-an-upper-limit-on-what-we-can-adapt-to Now, how to summarize all this in a nice sound bite... Maybe something like this? "CO2 was higher in the past" --> "It was also hot enough to kill most humans in a few hours."
    Moderator Response: [DB] Hot-linked URL.
  20. A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
    scaddenp: > Well David MacKay's "Sustainable Energy without the hot air" most certainly considers it. MacKay's book has been accepted with a puzzling level of passivity. Most people seem to have simply assumed it's an unbiased, factually infallible work. A few people think otherwise: * David MacKay's "...inflated demand figure of 490 GW is nowhere near our real energy demand, and has mislead people into believing the myth that Britain’s energy demand exceeds its renewable resource, whereas the reverse is true: our renewable resource is much greater than our energy demand." http://www.energynumbers.info/british-energy-demand-and-professor-mackays-estimate-of-it-an-explanation-of-the-differences * 'No Hot Air' About Renewable Energy While Blowing Smoke: David Mackay plays 'Brutus' to the Sun's 'Caesar'. http://www.justmeans.com/-No-Hot-Air-About-Renewable-Energy-While-Blowing-Smoke-David-Mackay-plays-Brutus-Sun-s-Caesar/27338.html
  21. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #839 Bibliovermis you wrote :- "Individual photons of equal wavelength are identical regardless of source temperature." If photons of 'equal wavelength' are 'identical' then they have the same energy also, which according to the link means they have the same 'temperature'. The only difference betwen a photon and a particle moving at less than c is that a photon must be absorbed to give up its energy. When you talk about 'curve matching' and 'spectrum' you are no longer talking about individual particles (including 'photons' as particles). These terms form part of statistical mechanics, the science of large collections of particles. But the concept of temperature is not confined to 'large collections of particles', temperature is an intensive property, meaning individual particles have a temperature also.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] No, it means they have the same "equivalent temperature", it does not imply they were emitted by bodies of the same temperature.
  22. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    damorbel, That article is talking about curve matching an observed wavelength spectrum to a known emission profile at a given, not the temperature of an individual photon. Individual photons of equal wavelength are identical regardless of source temperature.
  23. Why we have a scientific consensus on climate change
    @ Arkadiusz 98 I don't really understand the point you are getting at in your first paragraph. Which is the "imperfect" model are you referring to? As DB said, when you are interpreting the result of the model, you should keep in mind what feedback the model captures. Is 1.94 degrees that far from the range? As someone pointed out elsewhere (don't remember where I read it), you should also keep in mind the model assumes that foliage increases, which is not necessarily true. Regarding the coal-fire plant paper: The paper says that while the emission of pollutants may induce a cooling effect in the short term, the control of pollutants down the road will remove this effect. And as far as I can tell the authors didn't suggest that the models don't capture the effect, it's just that the current way of quantifying the effect doesn't not reflect the regional variation. Regarding black death: So despite the long list of criticism of Scott and Duncan's hypothesis, despite the lack of concrete evidence, and despite the strong evidence of Y. pestis being the cause, you think Scott and Duncan overturned the consensus because you LIKED their writing?
  24. A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
    I think there is a lot of unecessary speculation here. First, there is, technically, no need of using FF at all in the long run, even with current combustion technology. Bio-substitutes are already important in the fuel mix in several countries, and they can be produced entirely from inedible raw materials, so there is no inherent competition with food use. Rather the contrary whenever the use of waste like straw from grain production makes agriculture more profitable. Second, the price increase due to increasing FF energy use is a problem for using gas/oil as industry raw materials - it is no longer the case that raw material use of hydrocarbons is not able to pay for itself. So if we want to promote that use, we avoid using gas for power plants and oil for gasoline. But the increasing gas prices also makes bio-mass more competitive for raw materials, which is probably not a bad thing. Third, if we use energy efficiently, the current world population could probably have the western living standard. Space, not energy, restrictions is what will make adaptation of the western life style impossible. For example, in Norway, less than 1700 kWh/person is used for air transport, and the demand is almost surely higher than will be the world average. It's not that hard to produce that amount of biofuels if people are willing to pay, and most other transportation could be electrified. Fourth, FFs can surely help in the transition, and it is not their use in itself, but the enormous levels of CO2 emissions that constitutes the problem. And it is not true that development of renewable energy has to take an enormous amount of energy and raw materials, compared to other enterprises. For a large part, renewable energy is already used to produce equipment for renewable energy, and if this is done consciously, it can speed up development greatly. Gas and coal fired backup for renewable electricity production will be important for quite a while, but not indefinitely. Fifth, those who advocate the use of nuclear as necessary baseload with renewable energy have surely not studied the field very well. For example, in Europe, pumped hydro can easily do all the necessary regulation itself, if a Europe-wide network of offshore wind turbines is used as a basis, and simple, economically motivated, measures are taken. Like intelligent grids and photovoltaic generation balancing air condition use, domestic heat pumps run in daytime against accumulation tanks, etc. I reallly can't get it: People are thinking and talking about renewable energy as the distant and unknown future, whan actually today, ca 20% of EUs electricity is already renewable, and the fraction is rapidly increasing. At today's pace, EU renewable electricity (610 TWh) will bypass nuclear (1000 TWh) in less than twenty years. With no policy changes. And we know that time is working for the renewable alternatives. The potentials are huge, which is why we don't really have to care too much about the future total consumption - the most important thing is faciliating change. And in this respect we have already proven tools, like predictable feed-in tariffs. The important question for me is: Why don't we use them more? Even China has a generous feed-in tariff for wind power...
  25. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #835 & #386 If you find what I wrote in #833 unclear check this link and find - when a cosmologist talks - . when a cosmologist talks about the 'temperature' of a photon Then tell me what the problem is with 'the temperature of a photon'.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] I suspect there is a good reason the article talks of an "equivalent temperature" rather than simply a "temperature".
  26. A climate 'Gish Gallop' of epic proportions
    Ken, you could try clicking on the link to the full writeup on this issue. Your suggestion that it puts the warming imbalance in question is incorrect. We know there is an imbalance because we have measured that directly. What we can't measure is where the extra energy is accumulating within the climate system.
  27. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Damorbel @831 Each photon is created by an individual electron that gets its energy from the particle that where the electron is found. A photons energy is directly related to the temperature of the particle emitting it. This is incorrect. Molecules emit photons when they transition from one quantum state to a less energetic one. The frequency of the photon is determined by the difference in energy between the two states, as related by E = hv. The energies of the quantum states are fixed, determined by the atomic makeup of the molecule and the strength of the bonds between those atoms. Thus the frequency (and hence energy) of the photon is not determined by its temperature. Temperature will control the intensity of the radiation at a given frequency, since that will determine the proportion of molecular in excited quantum states that can decay. IR radiation is emitted by vibration of atomic nuclei within a molecule, Microwave by rotation of the molecule as a whole, and visible/UV radiation is emitted by electrons. Two photons of identical frequency are not "tagged" by their emitting source. However the spectrum (plot of frequency versus intensity) of a given molecule (especially a gas) is a sufficient finger-print to identify the substance uniquely, and the relative intensities of the various frequency bands can often be used to infer temperature of the emitting substance.
  28. Dikran Marsupial at 01:02 AM on 26 March 2011
    A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
    Giles wrote: "as far as I know, burning one atom of C does always produce one molecule of CO2 , whatever you're doing with it." No, that would only be true if it burned cleanly and completely, which generally is not the case (e.g. carbon monoxide in car exaust fumes). Tar sands produce less energy per unit carbon than natural gas because you need to expend (vastly) more energy extracting it. I would have thought that was blindingly obvious. IIRC the reason for interest in tar sands and shale deposits has more to do with security of supply than economics, although that will change as more economic supplies are used up.
  29. A climate 'Gish Gallop' of epic proportions
    One of your items on the list of dud sceptic arguments is: "Trenberth can't account for lack of warming" and your answer is: "Trenberth was talking about the details of energy flow - not whether global warming was happening". Not quite true. Trenberth was highlighting the fact that in Aug09 when his now famous paper was published - he could not account for more than about 60% of the warming imbalance which was postulated by Hansen in 2005 (0.9W/sq.m) Since then; Knox and Douglas published a paper in Aug10 which showed that 2003-08 data for OHC contect was flat or slightly negative (cooling)for the top 700m and deep ocean of approx +0.09W/sq.m (Purkey & Johnson). Five Argo studies for 0-700m OHC by Willis, Loehle, Pielke, Douglas & Knox show **negative** OHC change, while von Schukmann (0-2000m) is the outlier showing +0.77W/sq.m. I would like know if the Knox & Douglas paper has been contradicted or its findings overturned by more recent studies. If not, then Trenberth's lack of warming is still with us, and in fact has gone from finding 60% of Hansen's 0.9W/sq.m to finding almost **none** of it. I would have thought this was a serious problem for the whole theory of a positive warming imbalance.
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Trenberth discusses this issue directly here on this very recent and still active Skeptical Science thread: Teaching Climate Science; a post wholly devoted to Dr. Trenberth and his work.

  30. The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
    Not true, Poptech. You're referring to the market system as described by economic modes that rely on private property relations. Markets (and market solutions) can easily work within other modes, including those where the government has a hand in regulating the markets such that they perform optimally. A completely free market under private property relations would perform so inefficiently that people (having had the experience of government regulation in theory if not in practice) would demand some form of social regulation. The libertarian support of capitalism is one of the more bizarre philosophical moves of the last few centuries. Why encourage the concentration of real (economic) power in the hands of a small group of people who don't have your interests in mind? In other words, what's the difference between a government and a business run under the capitalist model? At least a democratic government has the ostensible job of serving the people (i.e. worrying about all that externalizing). The driving value of the business under capitalism is the generation of capital (i.e. finding ways to externalize and drive up profits). I remember a free market theorist, speaking in the documentary The Corporation, making the claim that if he could, he would turn air into a commodity (subject to the private property system).
  31. A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
    Giles 58 Wrote "reducing" CO2 production means actually producing more usable energy and/or GDP per unit carbon. " les 56 wrote "terms of efficiency and reduced CO2 production" Efficiency means exactly producing more usable product per unit of input. In the case of oil, using less of it for the same output will reduce CO2 production. So I'm not at all sure what what your wrote adds. On the other hand, your remarks about coal, tar sand, natural gas etc. only goes to show that you did not understand what you wrote above... if it produces more energy per emitted unit of CO2, it's exactly what I wrote. Clearly you're so into objecting to what you think you see written (not, actually what is written) that you end up disagreeing with what you wrote your self!
  32. A climate 'Gish Gallop' of epic proportions
    This was truly a giant and thorough Gish Gallop (108 MB!). It even caused John to give up listing the arguments before finishing. That's a record breaker. This guy should have its name on a Gish Gallop scale - all other gallops would be measured as to what extent they compare to this one.
  33. Philippe Chantreau at 00:35 AM on 26 March 2011
    2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Damorbel, you are digging yourself into a bottomless pit of nonsense. This sentence makes no sense, and wouldn't even if the syntax was correct: "Each photon is created by an individual electron that gets its energy from the particle that where the electron is found." You say this: "photon energy is given by the formula E = hv" That is, in fact, correct. Where in that formula is the temperature of the source hidden? In other words, what distinguishes the energy of a photon at a given frequency emitted by a source at a certain temperature from the energy of a photon at the same frequency coming from a source at a different temperature? There are only 2 terms to the energy of a photon, one is a constant. You are saying that, if the other is also kept constant, the product of the 2 can nonetheless be different according to a factor that is not part of the equation. Do you realize how idiotic that is?
  34. A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
    les : "Technology is improving for oil use in terms of efficiency and reduced CO2 production; and will continue to do so." as far as I know, burning one atom of C does always produce one molecule of CO2 , whatever you're doing with it. That's precisely why I insist on this point : "reducing" CO2 production means actually producing more usable energy and/or GDP per unit carbon. People use to say that "coal (or tar sands) produce more CO2 than natural gas", but this is deceiving : actually natural gas produces more heat than coal per atom of C - but exactly the same CO2 : one CO2 per C. So barring carbon sequestration which is very unlikely to suppress a large amount of CO2, the total amount of CO2 produced during the industrial civilization will exactly be the total amount of C extracted. Period. And improving the use of energy does not change the ultimate amount of extractible reserves. The only reason why we should stop extracting fossil fuels are 1) they have become much too expensive (or difficult to reach actually that's the same) OR 2) there are much cheaper and more convenient alternatives and they've become totally useless - which can only be true if the alternatives are not limited by their amount compared to needs Even from what I'm saying in this scenario, we would be very far from case 2). It can work only through "a major effort" and " and increasing use of mass public transportation." - well, swimming in wealth is usually not a "major effort" - this means simply that all needs would NOT be satisfied . And so until 1) is reached, there is absolutely no reason why producers wouldn't extract FF for which they would find without problem customers.
  35. A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
    Regarding the use of fossil fuels for aircraft - the US military is pouring a huge amount of funds into the development of alternative fuels for aircraft (seems they don't like spending $billions every year on oil from the middle east!). There was a story a couple of days ago about an F-22 fighter (their latest & greatest stealth jobbie) flying on a 50/50 blend of fossil/biofuel. I believe they've already flown some other aircraft on 100% biofuel. Regarding getting fossil fuel usage to zero - yes, it would be desirable, but no, it's not gonna happen. Given that natural sinks are currently soaking up about half of human emissions, though, an 80% reduction would be a good starting point! There are also some promising new technologies that may make it cheap & economical to strip CO2 out of the air on a truly industrial scale. So combine dramatic reduction of FF usage, with industrial-scale CO2 capture, and we're halfway there...
  36. A climate 'Gish Gallop' of epic proportions
    Just last night I had a discussion with my wife about the intractable nature of this ongoing (non-)debate with the deniers. It's bad enough that they collectively repeat the same long-ago debunked arguments ad infinitum (ooh, had a Monckton moment there and lapsed into Latin), but proving any one of them wrong on any one point does no good. The person or "think tank" or "news network" pays no price for being blatantly wrong and simply trundles along, spewing the same falsehood. How did we wind up in a position where even science is so politicized that accuracy no longer matters to a large portion of the public???
  37. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    #831: "As a commenter said a bit ago, photons do not carry ID cards." #834: "If they wrote that, then it is not correct. Photons do carry ID cards? Will the madness never cease? 'Get the new EZ-photon identification card! Never get held up by those pesky laws of physics again! With EZ-photon you too can make your own decisions about what forms of matter you choose to interact with. EZ-photon! Because reality is just so passe!'
  38. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #831 (in the grey area) someone wrote:- "That photon could have come from a source of any temperature. As a commenter said a bit ago, photons do not carry ID cards." If they wrote that, then it is not correct. Photons are emitted (and absorbed) by individual (accelerating) charged particles. The source of a photon characterises it by the energy the photon has. The photon keeps this energy (unless it changes energy in a gravitational field) until it is absorbed by another charged particle, even if it has to cross the universe before this happens.
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] I am simply gobstoppered. Please think about what you just wrote some more. As written, does-not-parse.

  39. Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
    Marcus #100 So black coal is only the cheapest because Governments heavily subsidize it. And that is why it is still the main power source for central generation thoughout the world. So please explain the economics of selling subsidized cheap coal to China and India and Taiwan and Japan? If we were subsidizing it, there would be a net cost to the Australian economy - not a main source of foreign exchange! Is your assertion 'Voodoo' economics Marcus?? Wind farms need to be covered by base load reserve for the situations where light or no winds occur over a wide area. Without base load coverage - storage systems would need to cover at least a couple of day's supply to meet these weather events. As far as human health effects of Wind turbine noise, there are individuals who are more sensitive than others to low frequency noise. I would agree that those not being paid might be more inclined to imagine symtoms, in the same way that RSI infected the Public Service while it was lucrative - and is hardly heard of now with jobs less secure.
  40. Meet The Denominator
    Poptech You said, "All papers are listed because they support a skeptic's argument against AGW or AGW Alarm." So, yes you did unless you've reinvented english and logic. The paper, "An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere" does not fall into the Sqeptic category (despite some apparent flaws) as these issues are known the climate scientists and are a matter of public record. Ergo, the paper falls into the realm of the usual skepticism which naturally prevails all of science and this paper is another attempt to resolve said issues.
  41. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #831 You wrote:- "What's this talk of photons having temperatures in Kelvins? A photon's energy depends on its frequency or wavelength, not on the temperature of its source" The temperature of a particle (in an ideal gas) is measured by the amount of energy (Joules) in the particle. The Boltzmann constant relates the energy to the temperature in Kelvins, the formula is E = 3/2 kT where k is the Boltzmann constant 1.3806504×10^−23J/K Photons are considered to be energetic particles, the term photon gas is used frequently. As energetic particles photon energy can be given as temperature or e/v (electron volts) Photon energy is also a function of the oscillation frequency of the electron that originates the photon, so photon energy is given by the formula E = hv where h is the Planck constant = 6.62606896×10^−34 J/s and v the frequency You wrote:- "...the temperature of an EM radiation source affects the spectrum of the radiation and that's about it." Not just the spectrum but the energy also. You wrote:- "An individual photon at a given frequency couldn't care less whether it came from a 5 gazillion degrees source or a light bulb, does it? If it does, how exactly does that manifest? A different spin angular momentum? Or what? " Each photon is created by an individual electron that gets its energy from the particle that where the electron is found. A photons energy is directly related to the temperature of the particle emitting it. When a photon is emitted it carries momentum, there is a recoil reaction on the particle emitting the photon which means the emitting particle loses the amount of momentum taken away by the photon. This is just the same but on a smaller scale, as a bullet leaving a gun. Thus photon energy is directly related to the source temperature and the photon 'knows' this because the frequency v is a direct function of the temperature.
  42. A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
    Regarding FFs being used somewhere: One the one hand, it's not really a problem - any more than the fact that some people still ride horses doesn't give rise to huge problems clearing the streets of New York or London of manure. Technology is improving for oil use in terms of efficiency and reduced CO2 production; and will continue to do so. On the other hand it's always been a question of the shear quantity of the CO2 emissions. I do think there will, however, be a down side. The rest of the petrochemical industry (plastics, drugs, paint etc.) depends on the cost of extracting their raw material being subsidized by the fuel industry. If oil consumption drops to low (no, I don't know how low that is) it could be that the cost of other products rises to as they shoulder more of their own cost of production.
  43. Why we have a scientific consensus on climate change
    #96, Harry: Smug? Hardly. Factual? Yes. Directed at Gilles, who avoids fact-based argument whenever permitted? Also yes. "let's come up with a short, but better set of survey questions that are quantitative ... and post links to the survey here, and at WUWT" Yes, let's make scientific decisions by popular vote. How many think it would bemore effective if E = mc3? The ayes have it, so it must be true. Now, that was probably 'smug.'
  44. Of Satellites and Air – A Primer on Tropospheric temperature measurement by Satellite
    Glenn "Interesting that The Pielke's et al consider the possibility of a warm bias in the surface record but don't consider the possibility of a cool bias in the satellite record...'have more confidence in the UAH satellite data set compared with the RSS data set.'" Which is a couple of reasons I found your article useful while reading the the Pielke's study.. "And how well can you compare...?" The points that you raised were very good and I admit to not having thought of them all at the time. There's a lot I'm trying to absorb at the moment. :-) Excellent article BTW, Glenn. I find I'm learning a lot.
  45. A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
    On Gilles insistence that 'fossil fuel will still be used'... there is some validity. For instance, if most of the rest of the world converted to renewable energy it would be quite likely that Saudi Arabia would continue using oil... because they'd then have such a surplus of it that the cost for local use (no transport cost added in) would be negligible. There are also some applications which alternative energy sources can't handle yet. For instance, what other energy source has the energy/mass density needed to keep a 747 in the air? Or launch a satellite into orbit? So no, true 0% fossil fuel use in the next few decades does not seem likely with current technology. It is possible that the few remaining technical and economic hurdles will be overcome in that time frame, but by no means certain. However, even without revolutionary technological improvements we can certainly get down to some tiny fraction (less than 1%) of current fossil fuel use.
  46. Why we have a scientific consensus on climate change
    @ Arkadiusz Semczyszak "The existence of two (or more) contradictory (even if only partially) the theory of makes it impossible a consensus. That this is my "caution" ..." Shows that you simply don't know what the term 'Consensus" means. Consensus simply means "General agreement among the members of a given group or community, each of which exercises some discretion in decision-making and follow-up action." Note the 'General Agreement'-it does *not* mean that *every* scientist in the field has to be in agreement-only the majority, a fact that your claims have not been able to alter. Also, when these skeptics provide something called *proof* to back their contradictory ideas, then maybe the consensus might be in danger but-if A.A. Marsz is anything to go by-then its not in danger yet. We *know* what caused the 'great warming' (it wasn't that great) of the Arctic in the 1930's & 1940's-it was this thing called a massive increase in solar irradiance. Yet we *know* the Sun isn't responsible for recent warming, because its been in a state of *decline* for the last 30 years-reaching levels unseen since the 19th century in just this last decade. I think its time for Marsz to go back to school.
  47. A climate 'Gish Gallop' of epic proportions
    Oh dear. I've spent a while to convert the file into something a bit more web friendly and so far it's failed. This leads me to the conclusion that they're not really interested in passing their message to a wider audience. I would advise that you edit the post to advise that the pps file for download is over 100MB mind you, which is a ludicrous size for a presentation slide deck.
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] Done, thanks! It took over 3 hours just to pull the links out of the file.

  48. A Plan for 100% Renewable Energy by 2050
    "could give a simple argument explaining why the world would renounce entirely , for eternity, to extract some tens of Gt of carbon still available at cheap prices , increasing the total wealth" You really are a broken record, Gilles, & you still haven't provided proof to back this assertion. You're part right, in that extracting this carbon will *probably* increase the total wealth-but that wealth ultimately accrues to those who mine & sell it, not to those who burn it & ultimately will have to clean up the mess this stuff leaves behind. There are better ways to increase wealth-starting with paying the people of the developing nations a wage commensurate to the work they do, rather than being exploited for slave wages-something *no* amount of fossil fuel consumption will rectify. Similarly, helping nations to improve education & health care standards will do far more to increase overall wealth than just burning tonnes of coal & polluting the atmosphere. The fact is that burning coal is less tied to wealth now than at any point in the last 150 years-yet still people like yourself continue to cling to these outdated mythologies about the miracle panacea of fossil fuels.
  49. The Washington Times Talks Greenhouse Law
    Not visible, but carbon monoxide is also a 'naturally occurring odorless colorless gas'... which is lethal to humans at about 670 ppm. Yet is also a nutrient (i.e. "life giving") for some types of bacteria.
  50. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Ryan, your assertion that the earth, if receiving energy faster than it looses it, will not warm beyond 255K here violates the first law of thermodynamics - what you propose does not conserve energy. Either you are wrong or the Laws of Thermodynamics are wrong - take your pick.

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