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Alexandre at 03:09 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
Rob Honeycutt #3 I don't think the market is so limited in planning the long term. There are examples of projects and investments done with decades ahead in mind. The problem is the externality, specially the diffuse ones. It's hard to convince a CEO or shareholder to cut some of its own result to mitigate a cost they would not pay for anyway. Having said that, I agree with all the rest you've said. Market's creativity is hard to beat. No one central planner would come up with so many ideas as thousands of individuals seeking solutions for themselves, driven by the right price signals. That's where the government role comes in: to set a price for the externality. -
JMurphy at 03:06 AM on 22 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
Gilles wrote : "Again, I'm just looking at facts." Sorry, but I must have missed those "facts" you refer to - did you include some in any of your recent posts ? If so, please be so good as to point me to them. Thanks. -
between the lines at 03:05 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
Rob Honeycutt wrote: " ... governments, by definition, have multi-generational horizons. This is why climate change is an issue that is best managed through governments." If only governments did have long horizons, Rob. The unfortunate fact is, however, that governments have very short horizons, ie only as far as the next election. This is the failure of democracy. -
Lou Grinzo at 02:38 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
Rob: Nicely put. Speaking as an economist (no one hate me; I'm one of the good ones), I would add that a useful way to view this question of roles of the government and the market is: The government should set the overall strategy, as in "get off coal as quickly as possible" or (here in the US) "reduce oil dependence as quickly as possible". The market can be astonishingly good at resource allocation, including R&D funding, and to the greatest extent possible that's still consistent with achieving those strategies and more general goals of social justice, etc., it should be allowed to do its thing. This is why either a cap and trade or carbon tax and rebate program would be so effective; it creates a disincentive to emit more carbon, which is another way of saying it creates an incentive to find lower carbon ways of doing things as well as using old and new techniques and technologies. But the very idea of government "forcing" individuals and businesses to do anything, even when it is demonstrably in their own best interest in the long run, is so repellent to some libertarians that they find any excuse possible not to support it. -
Gilles at 02:35 AM on 22 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
Michael sweet : just a reminding. In the sixties, some people wrote that nuclear energy could produce so much electricity that it would be too cheap to meter . I'm not young enough to believe in fairy tales, sorry. Again, I'm just looking at facts. -
Gilles at 02:29 AM on 22 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
if you have children, of course. -
Anderson at 02:29 AM on 22 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
Charlie A: Your last observation gets to the heart of interpreting that paper: "I note that the paper took the GHCN monthly record as it stands, and there is no discussion of whether the observed 10% decrease in variability in the GHCN monthly temperature record is due to a true reduction in variability of temperatures or whether the observed decrease is merely an artifact of changes in measurement and record keeping." Further research is currently being done with the goal of answering that question. Shoyemore: Indeed, Wergen(2010) also contains "reversible time" analysis. It has been used occasionally throughout the history of record-breaking analysis, e.g. Benestad, RE. 2004. Record-values, nonstationarity tests and extreme value distributions. Global and Planetary Change 44:11–26. I think Benestad may have been the first to use "reversible time" analysis in studying temperature, though it was proposed as a statistical technique prior to this. -
Gilles at 02:29 AM on 22 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
Marcus :"Also, I don't see anything in those graphs to suggest they're exponential extrapolations either-" Well, if you don't understand that saying "And indeed, it follows a nearly straight line on a log scale... What do these trends mean for the future? If the 7 percent decline in costs continues (and 2010 and 2011 both look likely to beat that number), then in 20 years the cost per watt of PV cells will be just over 50 cents." IS an exponential extrapolation (i.e. linear extrapolation in log scale), you could benefit from some refreshment of your mathematics courses. As an exercise, you could plot the growth curve of your children in log scale during their first 15 years, and then extrapolate linearly in log scale ... -
actually thoughtful at 02:28 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
Thank you for introducing peer reviewed literature into the political debate. Give the overwhelming evidence, we clearly need to focus on solutions, and providing libertarians a face saving path to agreeing with progressives (the two groups find agreement in many, many areas) is a great start. Alexandre - the cap and dividend system www.capanddividend.org IS the free market solution! Adding the missing price information is a valid and useful role for government, and that notion is accepted by conservatives and libertarians - you need only look to the building code. It would be cheaper to build poorly constructed buildings (first costs) - the building codes ensure roof trusses can support the weight of the roof, the snow load, the guy shoveling the snow off the roof (as well as a the odd solar panel). Without this code buildings would be cheaper (and unsafe), thus it is a "tax" (to use Tea Party nomenclature). But there is no outcry or concern. The same logic gets a libertarian or conservative into a cap and dividend system. The question I wrestle with is how do you ensure logic and facts are the basis for the actions and policy? -
dana1981 at 02:16 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
Gilles #15 - the equilibrium warming from the CO2 increase from pre-industrial levels to 1970 is 0.64°C. So I'm really not seeing your logic as to how pre-1970 warming was only natural. Clearly there was a major anthropogenic component over that period. -
Rob Honeycutt at 02:13 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
I always find one fundamental flaw with the whole Libertarian mindset. Markets just plainly have different time horizons that does broader society. Markets, and specifically publicly traded companies have very short time horizons, often limited to the next quarterly report. Private companies have slightly longer horizons, as long as the next CEO lasts. Family run companies can have a generational horizon. But governments, by definition, have multi-generational horizons. This is why climate change is an issue that is best managed through governments. Because it mostly affects the sovereignty of each nation in the future; the world our grandchildren must inhabit. Markets are fantastic and dealing with solutions, today. But it's the government that must set up the proper incentives that drive the solutions today to solve the problems of tomorrow. To have a Libertarian government is to remove exactly what governments are established for and puts it into the hands of those who should least have those powers. A Libertarian government is a contradiction in terms. -
dana1981 at 02:13 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
HR and Kooti - it's entirely possible that less than 0.15°C of the early 20th century warming is due to solar effects. I don't see that as problematic. -
Alexandre at 02:12 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
Kooiti Masuda #14 If the solar forcing was less important in the early 20th century, does it mean that that warming was more due to GHG? -
Gilles at 02:07 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
DB#9, Marcus#11 : my question wasn't about the post-70 instrumental rise, but about the "hockey-stick" shape of all proxy curves, that start rising much before the 70's. Does it mean, yes, or not, that the pre-70 rise of proxies temperature reconstructions can only be natural and NOT anthropogenic, and if not, what can it be ?
Response:[DB] Now I must ask you if you have actually read the source post for this thread. Pre-1940 warming is multi-factorial, per the referenced forcings. Do not conflate that somehow into "all proxies"; simply waving your arms in strawman fashion will not overturn the hockey stick shape of multiple temperature reconstructions. Keep in mind what Tamino had to say about hockeystick reconstructions in his guest post over at Real Climate:
"The truth is that whichever version of PCA you use, the hockey-stick shaped PC is one of the statistically significant patterns. There’s a reason for that: the hockey-stick shaped pattern is in the data, and it’s not just noise it’s signal."
"The hockey stick is so thoroughly imprinted on the actual data that what’s truly impressive is how many things you have to get rid of to eliminate it. There’s a scientific term for results which are so strong and so resistant to changes in data and methods: robust."
Peer-reviewed reconstructions and studies have consistently shown a multifactorial warming of the globe, with the graphed data taking the shape of a hockey stick. That natural factors post-1970 or so do not explain the rise in temperatures measured since then does not also mean the converse: that only natural factors explain the rise before it. That is a strawman and wrong.
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Kooiti Masuda at 01:41 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
I think the conclusion is correct, but there is a weak point in the demonstration. Meehl et al. (2004) used the reconstruction of solar irradiance by Hoyt and Schatten (1993, J. Geophys. Res. 98, 18895-18906) as their solar forcing. As shown in the Figure 7 of the review article by Gray et al. (2010, Reviews of Geophysics 40, RG4001), the amplitude of centennial variability of Hoyt and Schatten (1993) is similar to that of Lean (2000), though not exactly the same. On the other hand, Wang, Lean and Sleeley (2005) estimate much smaller variability, and it seems that the more recent estimate is more plausible. Then, logically, the simulations by Meehl et al. (2004) likely over-estimate the role of solar forcing in the real world (assuming that the solar forcing is due to the total solar irradiance). -
Ken Lambert at 01:05 AM on 22 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
Marcus #58 I did not hear of any power blackouts during the flood crisis in Queensland due to unavailability of coal fired plant. Last time I checked, wind energy generated through an axial turbine was proportional to the wind speed cubed. If a turbine is optimized for a wind speed of say 20 knots, when the wind blows at 10 knots you get 1/8th of the power from the unit. If it blows at 30 knots you have to feather the blades and shut the unit down. The average availability of coal fired plant is over 90% - ie; the output/installed capacity. For Wind it is below 30% and I have seen numbers in Victoria which suggest at low as 12%. That means you have to install 3MW+ of Wind capacity to get an average of 1MW output. I trust is taken into account in all Wind power comparisons with coal, nuclear & geothermal. Again in Australia, particularly in winter - a large slow moving high pressure system can reduce wind speeds to below 5 knots for a day or two over large areas of the continent, and strong cold fronts between can cause shutdown due to excessive wind speed. Wind therefore needs significant back-up capacity or storage capacity when it does not blow over a wide area. BERN #67 Where can I invest in your ZCA systems?....readers must be knocking down your door to do so..on your numbers. One question - do 3.5 of your ZCA's have the same availability as 1 x Kogan Creek? -
Alexandre at 01:01 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
For some time I have persued a truly free-market solution for Climate Change. I mean a truly libertarian one, without any interviniance from government. Apart from the self-regulated common resource management studied by Ostrom, I did not find any. And none of these apply to air pollution, which usually involves many users and the impossibility to limit new appropriators. For air-related environmental issues, I don't know one single example of solution that goes without any kind of proper legislation. When you turn to these think tanks, the usual tactic is to deny or downplay the problem, again suggesting that this would be their only way out. The sad part is that by doing so, they simply keep themselves out of the debate. Cap-and-trade relies on market properties of efficient resource allocation, and neither libertarians nor conservatives are there to defend it. A carbon tax is also more a "free-market"(ish) solution than simply a Project Manhattan, government dictated industry. The presence of libertarians and conservatives in the debate could (in principle) help make it less "vulnerable to special interest pleading". But they're absent, unfortunately. -
bibasir at 00:30 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
The same argument can be made to Libertarians on the need to ban smoking in public places. But you don't hear them acknowledging it. Cato is more anti government than true Libertarian. -
Bern at 00:01 AM on 22 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
John Chapman - using currently disused car factories for heliostat manufacture is, in fact, suggested in the ZCA report, if I recall correctly. As for the rest of it - a quick search reveals the 750MW Kogan Creek power station (750MW coal) took about 3.5 years from a "go" decision to full commercial operation. A "first of a kind" solar thermal unit would obviously take a bit longer, but probably not too much, as all the required technologies are off-the-shelf. The problem is where to get the funding? It'd probably have to be a government-backed project, at least for the first one (to "prove" the product to the market, given how risk-averse investors can be in Oz). I did some more quick sums. ZCA estimates ~$739m or so for a 217MW plant. The Kogan Crk coal plant cost $1,200m for 750MW, but burns 2.8million tons of coal per year (for which it's probably paying minimal royalties plus the cost of digging it out of the ground at the adjacent mine). Assuming it cost about $40/t (about a third of the market rate for good quality thermal coal), that's another $112m per year for coal. Doing the sums, it takes ~3.5 of ZCA's solar towers to equal Kogan Creek. So that's $1.2billion vs $2.59billion in up-front cost. If you assume operation & maintenance costs are a wash, and when you add in the cost of the coal (ignoring inflation), it takes 12 years for the total cost of the coal plant to equal the solar tower. But over a nominal 30-year life, the solar towers end up ~$2billion cheaper - almost enough to pay for the solar towers in the first place! Factor in a $20/t price on CO2, and the price difference increases to ~$6.2billion (assuming 2.5t CO2 / 1.0t coal) i.e. enough to pay you back for the initial 3.5 solar towers, and build another five to cope for future demand! Now, discounting of future coal prices makes a big difference (how much is $112m/year for 30 years worth today?), but the cost equation will probably still favour the ZCA proposal, based on their numbers, especially when a carbon tax is thrown into the mix. If you count the benefit of avoiding ~200 million tons of extra CO2 in the atmosphere, then things really start to look positive... -
les at 23:29 PM on 21 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
712 RickG I guess there are several issues. The one I have with this form of argumentation (not particularly this one, but ones like it) is that it's very often to appear to knock down an argument using broad bush-strokes, appeal to "common experience", focusing on missing details etc. What is harder, and rarely done, is to build up an argument - and specifically to build an argument up to the level to be usable for policy... that is the role, e.g. of the IPCC. Now, "do nothing" is a policy. It just isn't good enough to base this policy - which is potentially very very expensive and life threatening - on a level of analysis which is no more than waffle-words. Something much stronger must be built to attack the science as shown on a site like this... ... you just cannot cut steal with chewing-gum. The tools need to be sharper and harder than the thing you're attacking;you need maths, detail, consistency etc. And these things are, by and large, the unknown-unknowns of a lot of "denilists" - all the stuff along the road that ends in a diagram, a graph or a couple of numbers. -
CBDunkerson at 23:07 PM on 21 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
ranyl #55, there is no contradiction between the passages you cite and what I had stated. The 2 ppm drop per year which I calculated would not continue on the century scale examined by the Lowe paper. That is, if we stopped emitting CO2 today we would not drop 200 ppm and find ourselves at the coldest point of a glaciation (190 ppm atmospheric CO2) by 2111. Currently we are releasing about 30 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year and carbon sinks are extracting a net of about 17 gigatons. Each additional 7.81 gigatons in the atmosphere corresponds to another 1 ppm. Thus, atmospheric concentration is currently growing at about (30 - 17) / 7.81 = 1.66 ppm per year. If our CO2 emissions dropped to zero the carbon sinks would continue sequestering about 17 gigatons per year (17/7.81 = 2.18 ppm decrease per year)... there is no logical reason that this would change radically right away. However, this amount would decline on a decadal scale as atmospheric and oceanic concentrations approached equilibrium. The prior equilibrium was at ~280 ppm so we would certainly hit zero decrease some time before that point... exactly when depending largely on the rate at which carbonic acid will mix throughout the world's oceans. Note that some of the values you cite from Lowe involve unfettered CO2 emissions through 2050 or 2100... resulting in vastly higher atmospheric levels and potential oceanic saturation. The -0.2 ppm figure based on 404 ppm in 2012 was again looking at the mean over a century... so by 2112 we'd have dropped to 384 ppm. I think (and other papers such as Meehl 2007, Plattner 2008, and Solomon 2009 cited in the Lowe paper seem to agree) that the equilibrium point would likely be much lower. In any case, Lowe agrees that there would be a quick drop after cessation of emissions and then a very long slow decline. Only how far the initial drop would be is in question. However, as I'd stated... hitting 450 ppm does not mean we are stuck there. It is only if we go significantly over that mark or continue significant emissions even after converting to alternative energy sources that we need to worry about the long term impacts of 450 ppm (or any other level) atmospheric CO2. Stopping emissions will yield positive results / we are not yet 'locked in' to devastating climate change. -
IanC at 22:47 PM on 21 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
HR, That will only work if magnetic variation is the primary driver of total solar irradiation, and from the language used in the paper this seems to be largely speculative. Now I am curious to see where you are going with this. Are you arguing that neither CO2 nor the sun drives our climate? -
Marcus at 22:36 PM on 21 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
So I guess my point is this-if the cost of solar cells can fall by more than 1/7th in the space of less than 30 years, then I'd hardly call the extrapolations in that article "undue". Also, I don't see anything in those graphs to suggest they're exponential extrapolations either-though you've proven already your total inability to read a graph, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised at such an error on your part. -
Marcus at 22:32 PM on 21 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
Gilles, between 1982 & 2006, the average cost of PV's fell from US$25 per Watt to less than US$ per Watt-yet in that same time period, average conversion efficiency has risen from less than 8% to more than 20%. Whether you choose to accept those facts or not, Gilles, it *shows* clearly that the potential of PV Cells-in both cost & efficiency terms-has barely been tapped, in spite of the much smaller amount of public funds enjoyed by the PV sector when compared to your beloved fossil fuels. -
Marcus at 22:26 PM on 21 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
Ah yes, HR, "Watts Up With That"-the bastion of truth & decency in the Climate Change debate.....*not*. The fact is that directly measured sunspot numbers rose significantly over most of the first half of the 20th century, but sunspot numbers have been *falling* over the last 30 years-yet the fastest warming has been over the latter 30 year period. So how do your mates over at WUWT explain this obvious discrepancy? -
Marcus at 22:23 PM on 21 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
Gilles, are you just being deliberately blind or *what*? Take a look at the graph-you've got a slight warming trend in the first 40 years of the 20th century, then a leveling off between 1950 & roughly 1980, then a much faster rise in temperatures between 1980 & 2010. This is odd given the fact that TSI/Sunspots have been trending downwards from 1980-2010. So no, I'd suggest it *doesn't* imply that the growth is natural. If it is natural, then please tell us what the cause of it is. -
michael sweet at 21:15 PM on 21 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
Gilles: If you were citing known facts you would not be controversial. You are citing your unsupported and uninformed opinion as fact. This article describes how to replace all FF consumption world wide with renewables. Electricity, transportation, heating and all other uses of energy. Perhaps if you read it you would not have to say "I don't know" so much. Papers start out with ideas which develop into accepted explainations over time. The facts they contain are screened to weed out the problems. Your postings, unfortunately, are not screened and the "facts" are only your uninformed opinion. -
scaddenp at 19:48 PM on 21 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
L.J. Ryan. We have measures (ie real world) of 341W/m2 incoming at TOA and 396W/m2 being irradiated from surface. Wow, 1st law violation? Are you trying to say nature is breaking the 1st law? The measurement must wrong? Well no. Tom and others have very patiently been explaining to what is really happening. Ditto, this whole thread on 2nd law where you are jumping on the premise that atmosphere is heating the planet. Nope. Thermodynamics is not flawed. Understanding is. -
HumanityRules at 18:51 PM on 21 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
Dana, Over at WUWT they recently highlighted a paper that suggest TSI may be even smaller than you are assuming here. Maunder Minimum to present would be something like 0.33-0.66 W/M2. I think that would mean solar forcing for the period you're interested in here is ~1/3 what you are suggesting. Which seems problematic for your calculations. -
Marcus at 18:27 PM on 21 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
OK Bern. According to a deal signed by the builders of the Sorne Hill Wind Farm in Ireland, a 12MWh VRB's was going to cost just under $6.3 million-back in 2007. Of course that's with the older technology. In 2009, German Scientists claimed that they managed to boost the energy density of the VRB's from around 30Wh/L of electrolyte to 150Wh/L of electrolyte-which would substantially reduce the cost of new VRB's. The advances linked to by The Ville will almost certainly bring the price down further still. Of course the important thing is that it would effectively double the capacity factor of the 30MW Wind farm to which its attached. -
Gilles at 18:08 PM on 21 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
Great : we had undue exponential extrapolations of economic growth and FF consumptions, now we have undue exponential extrapolations of the decrease of solar PV cost. Thank you, exponential function ! -
damorbel at 17:55 PM on 21 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #717 Tom Curtis you wrote:- "The[y]also note that low emissivity means not only reduced surface radiation, but reduced absorption of back radiation, factors which again tend to cancel each other out." Yes indeed. And so did Gustav Kirchhoff writing in 1862. From that he concluded that the temperature of a body black or or otherwise, is not affected by its emissivity as long as it has no internal heat source (or heat sink) i.e. it is in thermal equilibrium. This is the basis of his argument that emissivity and absorptivity are the same for any given body. The only internal heat source* the Earth has is the radioactivity in is rocks and (possibly) some residual heat from the formation of the planet. Measurements have shown these internal heat sources contribute not more than 0.1W/m^2 to the outgoing radiation, a negligible amount. The meaning of this is clear, the size of the albedo has no affect on the temperature of the Earth, the position of climatologists, that the Earth's equilibrium temperature is lowered by 33K from 288K to 255K has no scientific basis. What the albedo does is reduce the rate of change of temperature, this follows because a high albedo reduces both the absorptivity and the emissivity by exactly the same amount. Common experience shows the reality of this; an every day vacuum flask has a highly reflective coating that produces this effect exactly. I apologise to muoncounter if I have mentioned this before but he should take note that, as yet, the argument about the vacuum flask has not been countered by anyone and the comparisin with a planet heated entirely by energy from the Sun is 100% valid. And, incase you are wondering, Kircchoff's proof of this is based entirely on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. * The Earth has a heat sink, chemical change. Some of the Sun's energy is converted into chemical energy, but not very much. -
Gilles at 17:46 PM on 21 March 2011Republicans to Repeal Laws of Physics
"That's not true. If for example there were an all-powerful deity which created the Earth 6,000 years ago and put all the pieces in place to make us think the planet is 4.5 billion years old, that wouldn't contradict modern science. " Dana, this wouldn't contradict known facts, but this would plainly contradict the very spirit of science. You could argue as well that the world was created just yesterday and that nothing existed before. Science has begun when mankind has ceased to believe that events could happen randomly or through the will of deities, but should obey definite laws. This is precisely why creationism isn't acceptable as a science. It is as a belief, of course. Weren't this feature, it would be perfectly admissible and debatable. But there is nothing like that in the discussion about CC. It's just a discussion around a very complex system that nobody really knows. -
Gilles at 17:38 PM on 21 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
Michael , I said "except for a limited amount of electric power" - I already know countries with a much lower carbon content of their electricity than Australia (Iceland, Norway, France), the issue is that their "solutions" are not applicable to the whole planet. That the same for heat concentration solar plants - basically you need deserts close to cities, and this doesn't happen everywhere. Mostly Australia, California, some parts of Spain. It doesn't make a lot of people worldwide. For papers : papers deal with research, that is, disputable issues. A (even reviewed) paper has never been a proof of anything. I'm citing known facts that are never discussed in papers - because what has been proved to be true doesn't need any research anymore. -
Tom Curtis at 17:22 PM on 21 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
LJRyan @716:"Low temperature, (lower energy) atmosphere adding radiative heat to the warmer surface is a violation of the 2nd law."
The energy increase comes from the sun, not the atmosphere. All the GHG in the atmosphere do is decrease the efficiency with which the energy is radiated away. There is a very simple model of this. Suppose you have an electrical stove with a pot of water on it. The pot has no lid. You heat the pot until it is gently simmering, and stably so. In this situation, the heating element will be glowing slightly red, showing a temperature of about 500 degrees C. The water will be just of the boil, indicating a temperature of about 100 degrees C. We now place a lid on the pot, leaving only a small gap. Even though the we do not adjust the heating element, the water will commence to boil vigorously and may even boil over. It you look at the inside of the lid, however, you will see water condensing on it, showing clearly that it is below 100 degrees C in temperature. So, addition of a cooler part, the lid, has caused a hotter part (the water) to gain heat. In thermodynamic terms, the analogy between this and the greenhouse effect is exact. So, anytime anyone on Earth boils some rice, they prove you wrong about thermodynamics."To proclaim star sourced energy can be increase itself by it's own reflection and/or re-radiation is a violation of the 1st law."
See 718""Like conduction, thermal energy is in harmony with the second law of thermodynamics such that, in the absence of work, thermal energy is radiated spontaneously from higher temperature to lower temperature matter." M. Quinn Brewster Thermal Radiative Transfer and Properties"
This quote is quiet accurate, but refers to the net energy transfer. It is plainly not true that a cooler body cannot radiate energy towards a warmer body. What it cannot do is radiate more energy that is absorbed than does the warmer body toward it. Ie, radiated energy from the warmer body - radiated energy from the cooler body is always positive. That it is not simply prohibiting any radiation from the cooler body is shown simply, and aptly by the actual measurement of back radiation. The atmosphere is, in nearly all cases, cooler than the surface. Despite this radiation from the atmosphere to the surface has been measured many times. Here is one example:
From Science of Doom. See also this and this.
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Gilles at 17:21 PM on 21 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
It seems that most proxies start climbing at the beginning of the XXth century and even before, and have achieved most of their growth by the 70's. When I compare with Fig 5., doesn't it seem to imply that this growth is essentially natural and not anthropic ?
Moderator Response:[DB] You have interpreted the meaning of Fig 5 backwards. Look at it again.
Natural forcings simply do not explain the rise in temperatures we physically have measured to occur. Period.
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John Chapman at 17:11 PM on 21 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
How long would it take to construct and install the required quantity of wind generators and solar energy power stations, PV panels. etc? Presumably it would be quicker than the 10 - 15 years for nuclear, but are there any calculations to hand? I guess if the government was serious it would crank up an industry (convert one of the car plants) to churn them out like Spitfires were during the war. -
Bern at 17:08 PM on 21 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
Hmm, those VRBs do look good. I imagine the storage capacity is determined by the storage tank volume? What's the cost look like? Affordable enough to store many MegaWatthours of electricity? -
Marcus at 16:37 PM on 21 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
Wow The Ville, that's some fantastic news. I mean, I knew VRB's were already pretty good under *most* conditions, but these recent improvements should really open the gateway to more widespread use of VRB's for wind power storage. -
dana1981 at 16:36 PM on 21 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
For the record, I specifically mentioned the contribution of oceanic cycles in the article, so I don't know what more Protestant could want. I guess if you don't attribute 100% of every climate change to natural cycles, he's not happy! -
Bern at 16:34 PM on 21 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
LJRyan @ 716 - you assert that "Low temperature, (lower energy) atmosphere adding radiative heat to the warmer surface is a violation of the 2nd law" That's actually not correct. The 2nd law only talks about NET heat transfer. You can have heat radiating from an object at 500º to an object at 1000º. Obviously, the warmer object will be radiating *more* heat back the other way, but it's still receiving heat from the cooler object. Anyway, don't take our word for it. Ask Dr Roy Spencer, one of the most prominent opponents of human-caused global warming. He discusses it here, and again in more detail here. Dr Spencer may hold views on the causes of global warming that are at odds with the vast majority of climate scientists, but he certainly understands radiative heat transfer (and that, to be honest, makes it really puzzling why he so strongly disagrees with the consensus view on this matter). -
lukeness at 15:38 PM on 21 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
One of the favorite things to say is "the wind doesn't always blow" so we need to burn coal. Refer those who say that to this item: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/04/east-coast-winds-would-support-a.html etoc. It shows that if distributed over a reasonably wide area and tied together in a grid, the wind power never goes to zero. In fact, offshore wind farms in the Atlantic could supply all the electrical needs of the coastal states, or more.
Moderator Response:[DB] Fixed & hotlinked URL.
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Tom Curtis at 15:29 PM on 21 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
LJRyan @715, the photon does not increase its energy. Rather, if you feed in one photon per time interval, at equilibrium there will be four photons in the box, each with the same energy, and hence the total radiant energy in the box will be four times that which is fed in in each time interval. You cannot, apparently, manage even simple reading comprehension, yet you purport to lecture the world's atmospheric physicists about the relation between thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect. -
Tom Curtis at 15:11 PM on 21 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Damorbel @703, the sentence you quote is clearly intended to describe the procedure in Kiehl and Trenberth 1997. Following that quote, Trenberth, Fasullo and Kiehl then go on to discuss the changes in method for T, F & K 2009. The most important of these is that they factor in the difference in temperatures due to latitude, which results in a significant increase in the calculated surface radiation. To achieve greater precision, they take the mean of surface radiation in a model which correlates well with surface radiation measurements around the globe. They then discuss differences in emissivity. They note that low emissivities are found in regions with high surface temperatures, ie deserts, the two factors tending to cancel each other out. The also note that low emissivity means not only reduced surface radiation, but reduced absorption of back radiation, factors which again tend to cancel each other out. T, F, & K note (from Wilber et al 1999) that differences in emissivity can result in up to a 6 w/m^2 reduction in surface radiation. That represents just 1.5% of the average surface radiation. A 1.5% reduction in back radiation absorbed would be 5 w/m^2, making a difference of just 1 w/m^2 over deserts. The total area of deserts on Earth (excluding the Artic and Antarctic) is about 20 million square kilometers, or about 4% of the Earth's surface. Therefore, correcting for the low emissivity of deserts would have altered the final figure by just 0.04 w/m^2, which given the margin of error in the calculations is to small an effect to by worried about. In addition, your claim that the atmosphere is treated as having an emissivity (and hence absorptivity) of 1 is plainly refuted by the fact that some energy escapes from the surface to space in the diagram. McEnroe's histrionics where not even amusing in his time; in the era of Hawkeye, they would have just make him look foolish. He would have been forced to win matches on skill rather than on gamesmanship. On this forum we have something better than Hawkeye. We can read the original papers, and we can think. -
L.J. Ryan at 14:54 PM on 21 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
scaddenp647 KR671 KR "If, however, you carefully add up the Trenberth numbers without rounding you get an imbalance of about 0.9 W/m^2 less leaving than arriving. That's the forcing. " scaddenp "Umm, this is about whether the GHE is consistent with thermodynamics. If it is, the adding CO2 will create forcing as KR has pointed out. (and is measured at TOA)." Low temperature, (lower energy) atmosphere adding radiative heat to the warmer surface is a violation of the 2nd law. To proclaim star sourced energy can be increase itself by it's own reflection and/or re-radiation is a violation of the 1st law. "Like conduction, thermal energy is in harmony with the second law of thermodynamics such that, in the absence of work, thermal energy is radiated spontaneously from higher temperature to lower temperature matter." M. Quinn Brewster Thermal Radiative Transfer and Properties -
L.J. Ryan at 14:51 PM on 21 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Tom Curtis 699 You said: "I get 3.4249 * 10^-19 Joules per photon myself, and hence four times that energy contained in the box." How does a photon of 3.4249 * 10^-19 Joules outside the box increase it's energy to 1.36996E-018 Joule inside the box? And now having a wavelength 145 nm inside the magic box, the photon (as a stipulation of the filter lid) can escape to the vacuum..where it instantaneously lengthens to 580 nm. This most improbable supposition is the basis of your models and GHG theory...shown here to clearly violate the 1st law. -
Bern at 14:29 PM on 21 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
@scaddenp: "I dont think we need major new technology to change that equation" That's exactly right! If you've read the ZCA report (as I have), you'll note that they state up-front that that was one of their 'design constraints' - that no major new technology is required. What this also means (and something that a lot of people overlook) is that the ZCA report specifically *excludes* any technology that will be viable in even 15-20 years. The objective of their plan is, after all, to be zero-carbon in just 10 years. -
robert way at 14:18 PM on 21 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
DB, You are courteous as always. Either way though, for me its not a big issue. I think that the 1940s are mostly irrelevant to the climate change we are dealing with now anyways. Explaining the 1940s warming using models just needs a little bit more fine tuning, i.e. ramp up one parameter versus another for example. I've often wondered how it is that modelers and some of my colleagues think that factors do not change how much they can contribute through time... i.e. maybe the reason the 1940s are not as well explained using models is because they rely on the response of the planet to be constant through time to a given factor (solar for example) when it very well may not be. Either way, I agree that your response to protestant was probably the best approach because it deals with more than just the one factor. Better than just one like the one I *cherry-picked* as my pet project haha... -
scaddenp at 14:03 PM on 21 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
Has Gilles ever cited a paper to support any of his claims on any thread?
Response:[DB] In his most recent 40 posts, Gilles references the IPCC once, but no original research papers. Before that here at SkS: not that I recollect. He may have in his tenure over at RC; I did not catch all of his comments there (but saw most).
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scaddenp at 14:00 PM on 21 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
Agnostic - first I'm inclined to agree that SCT is coming tech not here. I would note though that PV is a lot more expensive than SCT so it's hardly the most expensive of renewables. The various marine options are even more expensive now. Will it change quickly? SCT costs are almost all in the construction. When every station is a custom build, then parts will be very expensive. On the other hand, I dont think we need major new technology to change that equation.
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