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Charlie A at 03:52 AM on 19 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
@ #53 Anderson -- that's a very interesting paper with a method of analysis I've not seen before. The concept of doing record-breaking analysis while moving back in time is one of those "why didn't I think of that!" ideas. The rather startling conclusion about decreasing variability of monthly average temperatures does not fit with the consensus thinking about the effects of global warming. More concretely, the paper finds about a 0.2C decrease over 106 years in the standard deviation GHCN monthly temperatures,which have a starting deviation of about 1.8C. A non-trivial observation that doesn't seem to have gotten the appropriate amount of attention. Although the method does require detrending of the data, the detection of variability trends seems very robust to the detrending method chosen. I forsee this method being used to analyze other parameters where variability is of great interest, such as precipitation. 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. -
L.J. Ryan at 03:39 AM on 19 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Tom Curtis@647 "accumulated energy would be 360 kilojoules" So the accumulated "boxed" light would radiate 1W for a 100 hrs, once the second aperture is opened? "the light would decay to zero very quickly" Sounds like a violation of the 1st law...remember perfectly reflective walls. Sounds as if you don't believe your own answer. "The answer has to be in terms of photon numbers, not energy because the wavelength of the photons has not been specified. If we specify that all photons have the same wavelength, then the multipliers for photons in the answers above can be used for energy." ok lets assign three wavelengths and redo @646 1. 11364 nm 2. 10062 nm 3. 2898 nm @637 questions 1) Consider the box as described, but without any lid. In this case all the light will reflect of the wall of the box and exit through the aperture where the lid was. Is that correct? 1a)I not sure I understand your question...if the lid included the aperture wouldn't it also be removed with the lid...? 2) Now consider the case in which we place the lid on the box, but at an angle so that all light reflected of the lid will leave the box through some other aperture. In this case, the amount of light leaving the box through the lid will be half of that which enters, while the amount that is reflected by the lid and leaves through the other aperture will also be half of that which enters the box. Is that correct? 2a)Again, I'm not sure I understand your question. Is the box partially open? How open? -
RickG at 03:21 AM on 19 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel @ 643, I'm well aware of the title of the thread. However, my original comment was about Trenberth's diagram and what you said about it. For what Trenberth is demonstrating temperature is neither necessary or relevant in that diagram. I have no problem understanding the diagram myself. Trenberth has a presentation in which that diagram is described here on pages 13 & 14. Other diagrams with "temperature" are described in the presentation as well, in their appropriate place. If you still have a problem with the diagram, then perhaps you should contact him personally and take the matter up with him at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).. I'm sure he is open to new ideas and wants to be sure his diagrams convey the proper information and documentation.Moderator Response: [Muoncounter] damorbel has been given this suggestion a number of times to little if any effect. Instead, we have more pointless repetition of the same tedious argument, which we may surmise is damorbel's actual intent. -
les at 03:15 AM on 19 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
damorbel 648 - fine. We agree on so much including, it would seem, that the diagram is not "completely deficient in temperature information". Why don't people say what is apparent without exaggeration? The diagram doesn't explicitly mention temperatures and piles of other information. Indeed it's a cartoon. It clearly does "present ... useful information for any discussion on climate change (anthropogenic global warming - AGW) ". Why the hysteria, then? Same with LJRyan, giles et al. If you guys where half the scientist scientists you'd have be to participate in tgis discussing, you'd be far more easy with the shorthand notations, use of approximations, anstract models,partial perspectives and all the other tool we use on a daily basis to understand things. Take a chill pill. -
damorbel at 02:35 AM on 19 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #644 les you write:- "... all of which are temperature dependent." Too true, I couldn't agree with you more. So do you not think, to make a useful contribution to a discussion on temperature change, the temperatures should be mentioned? Also, the emitting materials do not all have the same emissivity; Trenberth should have inserted the emissivity that applies. -
Anderson at 02:30 AM on 19 March 2011Maximum and minimum monthly records in global temperature databases
Record-breaking events can also inform trends in variability. Those interested in this topic may find the following paper interesting. Anderson, Amalia, Alexander Kostinski, 2010: Reversible Record Breaking and Variability: Temperature Distributions across the Globe. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 49, 1681–1691. doi: 10.1175/2010JAMC2407.1 -
Tom Curtis at 02:27 AM on 19 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
LJRyan @645, in an ideal fully mirrored box, the accumulated energy would be 360 kilojoules. Of course, in practise you would not have perfectly reflecting walls, and given the high speed of light, and consequent very large number of reflections in a short period, the light would decay to zero very quickly. Likewise, again because of the high speed, the light would escape the aperture before you could close it. But practical difficulties do not prevent us from exploring theoretical possibilities in ideal cases. @646, let the time interval be the time it takes a photon to travel from the lid to the back wall. Then 1) the accumulated photons at equilibrium is 4 times the number of photons that enter the light box at each time interval (see 640); and 2) at equilibrium the number of photons reflected in each time interval is 3 times the number that enter the light box in each time interval. Of those, 2 times that number are reflected of the back wall, and a number of photons equal to the number that enter are reflected of the lid. This ignores reflections of the side walls which are irrelevant to the overall issue. The answer has to be in terms of photon numbers, not energy because the wavelength of the photons has not been specified. If we specify that all photons have the same wavelength, then the multipliers for photons in the answers above can be used for energy. Now, can you answer my questions @637 -
From Peru at 02:19 AM on 19 March 2011Sea level rise: coming to a place near you
I wold like to see Lima, the capital of Peru, in the list. Where I live is safe (100 meters above sea level) but other areas of the city are not so lucky. I would like to see where and how extensive those areas are.Moderator Response: [DB] Unless you live in the vicinity of Callao, at no other point does the tool show even a 6-meter rise penetrating more than 2 pixels (2 kilometers) inland (to perhaps La Merina Ave/St/Rd). Wikimapia (the linked viewer) uses a much denser dataset than the mapping visualization tool. -
Kooiti Masuda at 02:10 AM on 19 March 2011Sea level rise: coming to a place near you
(Re: K T #11) It seems to me that the potential inundation map of Singapore is factually wrong. The terrain is really low, but it is unlikely that more than half of area is less than 1 m above sea level. I have not examined appropriate reference books yet, but by a quick Google search, I find an academic geographic paper by R.D. Hill (1980) Singapore - An Asian City State. Though subscription is needed to read the whole text, I can read its first page which contains "Tab 1. Singapore Island: Areas of various elevations (%)" with "Source: Wong 1969", and the percentage of "0 - 15 m" is 63.7. So, 36.3 % of the area has elevation higher than 15 m. It seems that the national data of Singapore were mis-interpreted, probably during the editing of the global elevation data set, before the global data set was incorporated in the analysis by the Univ. Arizona team. -
L.J. Ryan at 02:03 AM on 19 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
e@642 You asked: "The amount reflected tells us how many times photons have bounced off the walls, while the accumulated energy tells us how many photons are in the box. Do you see the distinction? " Using Tom Curtis 615, what is the value of each at equilibrium i.e. 1. accumulated energy 2. reflected energy..if you can quantify it -
L.J. Ryan at 01:48 AM on 19 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Tom Curtis@637 You are avoiding questions posed @636. If your box was fully enclosed such that all surfaces are reflective save two small aperture. One aperture to receive light the second to radiate light. Close the output while receiving 1W at the input. The light source occludes the reflected light from "leaking" out the input. The energy "accumulated" within the box after 100 hrs is what, 360kj? If the first aperture is then closed, does the box now contain 360kj of light? Asked otherwise, can the "accumulated" energy in the box be captured? -
Bern at 01:37 AM on 19 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
Erk. Mods, feel free to move my off-topic reply to the relevant thread, or delete it... [blush] Back on topic, pricing the externalities of coal is the big issue of the day. Brown coal produces ~0.8t of CO2 per MWh, so at $25/t CO2, that's only raising the price to $120/MWh. Still, that's enough to make it more expensive per MWh than everything except offshore wind, Solar PV, and Solar Thermal, going by your costs. I've seen costs for existing Solar thermal around the $170-$290 per MWh range, so that's almost competitive now, too. A bit more engineering to reduce the cost per MWh, and bob's your uncle! The big problem, as CBDunkerson points out, is that with fossil fuel plants you only pay part of the cost now, with most of it coming in fuel costs over 30 years, whereas most of the renewables have more like 80% of the costs up-front. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 01:25 AM on 19 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
Certainly the climate is warming since 1960. In countries with low CO2 emissions (on the maps above) have come primarily to a decline in food production. On this page, is briefly described the global food market.: “Food production more than doubled (an increase of over 160%) from 1961 to 2003. Over this period, production of cereals—the major energy component of human diets—has increased almost two and a half times, beef and sheep production increased by 40%, pork production by nearly 60%, and poultry production doubled.” For example, in Africa - which is most affected by global warming (tropical and subtropical zone of the World) - the production of food is strongly associated with the climate - but not from global warming - rather, the phases of the AMO - the warm phase -growing (as currently) - in the cold phase - drops ... -
Bern at 01:25 AM on 19 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
andthorne @ 4: No, it's not methane. Yet. Yes, methane is part of the problem, and needs to be dealt with. If the methane in the hydrates & permafrost comes out, we're all in big trouble. But right now, methane isn't increasing much, while CO2 is. Regarding your comments on water - not every part of the world is blessed with the combination of rainfall and geography that Qebec has. Some areas are even running short of the stuff to drink. Also, storage for hydro is not cheap, takes up a lot of room, and the most suitable sites may already have towns or cities or other important infrastructure in them. It may be part of the solution, but it's not the only solution. -
les at 01:08 AM on 19 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
643 damorbel - "Trenberth's ... is completely deficient in temperature information" Someone might correct me; but, seems to me, the diagram includes "surface radiation", "back radiation" from GHGs, "Emitted by Atmosphere" ... all of which are temperature dependent. -
The Skeptical Chymist at 01:05 AM on 19 March 2011Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
Harry, if you check Rob's graph (comment 5) you will see that the rate since the 90's (when satellite measurements of sea level become available) is around 3mm/year. So the indications are that the rate of sea level rise has increased from the 20th century average of 1.6mm/year. Some of the world experts on sea level rise are Australian scientists at CSIRO, they have good webpage with some good information on SLR here. -
JMurphy at 01:00 AM on 19 March 2011Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
The difference between the two graphs is actually due to the 'Inverse Barometer' being applied or not. -
JMurphy at 00:56 AM on 19 March 2011Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
Harry Seaward, have a look at the graph immediately above, in Rob Painting's post, and you will see the current rate shown. However, looking at the graph today, the rate has gone up to 3.1mm/yr. (If, like me, you get a mainly blank page at that link, just scroll down) -
The Skeptical Chymist at 00:54 AM on 19 March 2011Sea level rise: coming to a place near you
Thanks for the reply Dan. No doubt a number of countries have produced high resolution maps of land that could be lost to sea level rise. Perhaps links to some of these would be a good addition to the excellent resources on this site, as well as being useful for those of us outside the USA. -
Harry Seaward at 00:41 AM on 19 March 2011Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
Sea level rise has historically been at 2mm/year. Has that changed? -
The Skeptical Chymist at 00:34 AM on 19 March 2011Sea level rise: coming to a place near you
Thanks for the interesting post Dan, these sorts of interactive tools are really useful. That said, it looks like care is needed when applying it outside the USA where it has a "horizontal resolution of 1 km" compared to a much more accurate "30m" with the US. 1km is probably fine for large low lying areas but not much good for coastal cities based around low hills (Brisbane, Australia is a good example). Comparison the Brisbane prediction to data from much higher resolution maps from the Oz govt linked to by Bern (comment 10), shows good agreement for some areas; i.e.: with 1.1m SLR and a high tide Brisbane airport will either need a sea wall or sea planes. But low agreement in other areas; i.e.: some coastal suburbs suggested to be mostly underwater, will be still above water, though not unscathed by 1.1m SLR. So yes a useful tool but requires care outside the US.Moderator Response: [DB] Agreed. Brisbane was included as it was both topical (Queensland flooding) and where our SkS founder (John) lives. Mapped impacts also do not reflect ongoing adaptation efforts, such as in the Netherlands. -
damorbel at 00:29 AM on 19 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #580 RickG You wrote "The diagram is not about temperature. Its about incoming solar radiation expressed in W/m^2 and how it is distributed throughout the Earth's climate system, which is the proper unit of measure for that particular type of energy (Incoming Solar Radiation)." The thread is about 2nd Law of Thermodynamics which states the direction energy is transferred WRT temperature. Trenberth's diagram is all about energy transfer (W/m^2) without any reference to temperature anywhere, thus it says absolutely nothing about atmospheric thermodynamics or the possibility of CO2 having any influence on climate in any way. You write further:- "Why would Ternberth or anyone for that matter want to use 12 year old data when more up to date data is available? And again, the diagram is about the distribution of energy, not temperature." The age of the data has no relevance, Trenberth's diagram does not present any useful information for any discussion on climate change (anthropogenic global warming - AGW) because it is completely deficient in temperature information, the driving parameter in the 2nd law of thermodynamics. -
TimTheToolMan at 00:28 AM on 19 March 2011What would a CO2-free atmosphere look like?
And then there's the issue of where the CO2 is coming from. The best case (lowest ice albedo @ 55%) requires 66,000 ppm CO2 to escape snowball earth. We're at 390ppm right now and we've burned about half our oil and quite a lot of coal too. Sure, there's plenty of coal left, but enough to get to 66,000ppm CO2? How about the worst case (highest ice albedo @ 65%) which is closer to 660,000ppm CO2?! Maybe the numbers add up and I'd be interested to see his paper to see what he says about that. -
2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
LJ >After all, the claim is reflected light (B from Tom Curtis's diagram) is twice the input. Why the discrepancy? Amount reflected off a surface is not the same as accumulated energy in the box. If a single photon "bounces" back and forth from one wall to another, then you are going to count multiple reflections even though the energy content is still a single photon. The amount reflected tells us how many times photons have bounced off the walls, while the accumulated energy tells us how many photons are in the box. Do you see the distinction? -
les at 00:19 AM on 19 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
28 Gilles: "the great majorities of people were poor peasants surviving with fluctuating crops and regularly decimated by famines, droughts, epidemics, and wars." Gilles, get a grip. The advances or otherwise of todays situation are clear to everyone. Many of which, we all know are due to plentiful energy supplies as well as a wide range of technical advances (as I point out above, many of which use power from oil etc.). None of which contradicts the fact that economic growth has happened at other times, in other places. But your 'defense' is poor... poorer than the peasants to which you allude. The point was that there have been many incidents of great wealth, technical advance, etc. before oil became ubiquitous. That is 100% clear. Those societies has some problems, ours has others. adding a 'yes but' doesn't change that. Instead of spouting the above rubbish, you could have pointed to some hard facts like the massive improvement in life expectancy across the world and given a link like this. But no, you just make it up as you go along... -
TimTheToolMan at 00:05 AM on 19 March 2011What would a CO2-free atmosphere look like?
Is figure 2 really taken from Pierrehumbert's accepted paper? That graph makes no sense to me. Our global mean temperature is around 288K and according to the graph that puts us correctly in the partially ice-covered state (only just) at about 130 ppm CO2 and thats not right. Looking the other way, 390ppm CO2 puts us on the curve at 292K (too hot) and into the ice-free state (the polar bears and penguins might have something to say about that) -
andthorne at 00:05 AM on 19 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
Yes we do need to sit down and evaluate this intelligently instead of allowing ourselves to be marketed by the producers of any given fuel source. That said: ( - Paragraph in All-Caps deleted - ) The source of the increase is methane gas. There is methane pouring into our seas from leaky oil wells and exploding methane hydrates, and there are tremendous amounts of land emissions. Before this site publishes another word on greenhouses gases you need to do the math. Given methane has risen in the atmosphere 140-155 percent depending who you read, and CO 2 has increased only 26% and methane's ultimate oxidant is CO 2, how much of the extra CO 2 in our atmosphere is methane oxidant. One scientist way back in 1972 said that methane produced 25 times the amount of carbon dioxide as cars, and methane has risen astronomically since then. Do you want to market a fuel or do you want to save earth. Make up your mind! And by the way the answer is and always has been WATER! Canadian energy companies are moving in that direction, so is Russia by inking a deal with Hydro Quebec to develope Russian water sources. The new development that Emera in Canada is putting together is utilizing two waterfall in labrador to produce a ton of mega watts daily. How about checking out the American Niagara Falls. Remember Tesla. The answer is water, macro and micro water power, in our streams, rivers waterfalls real and maufactuired, in our tides and waves. It is the lady, all the rest are tigers. Until I hear the word water out of this site, you are marketing, not trying to save Earth. Andrea SilverthorneModerator Response: [DB] Please limit the use of all-caps to perhaps a word or two (Comments Policy). Please also furnish links to sources (preferably peer-reviewed studies) that support your above contentions. Remember also the topic of this thread, as much of your comment, as it currently stands, is off-topic here. Thanks! -
Gilles at 23:51 PM on 18 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
Marcus : the energy intensity in the 50's was not very different from the current one. It means that the "extreme wealth" of France or Great Britain is just the current one scaled by the energy consumption. Are you living here ? do you have parents or grand parents able to tell you how exactly they lived then? I have. In the 50's, they just escaped from the WWII, before the green revolution. France was still essentially an agricultural country, many people lived in farms with no electricity, no telephone, no car, no fridge, no TV of course. The great changes occured between the 50's and the 70's, with a considerable mutation in the society. Probably the energy consumption per capita peaked around 70's, before conservation measures following the oil shocks improved it. So i am not saying that all improvement is impossible. I say that the current way of life is not possible with a minimal amount of FF, well above the world current average. Concerning your figures : energy is measured in TWh or Gtoe, not GW - you must mix up with peak power capacity. M. Sweet : I know France - i'm French actually. The low CO2 production is obtained through the use of 80 % nuclear power (and a general better use in Europe than in US, due to their history and more concentrated cities and smaller distances between them). But note that if the whole electricity should be produced by nuke worldwide , it would exhaust the known uranium reserves in 10 years or so - not to speak of minor inconvenience of nuclear plants we can see currently. And despite this high level of decarbonated electricity, the FF consumption in France is by no means negligible - we still drive, heat our houses, and cook with oil and natural gas. Heating is interesting for instance : due to the high nuclear electric production , people were encouraged to adopt electrical heating (which is a heresy if electricity is produced by FF). The problem is that heating in winters produce spikes in the consumption in the evening, where everything is cold and dark outside. Often few wind , too. And nuclear plants cannot respond fast enough to adapt the production to these spikes - so we use .. thermal plants. Sigh , the total yield of producing electricity from FF for heating is much worse that the direct use of these fuels... Les : " Not to mention, for example, China - which was far more wealthy than Europe upto the 1800s, the Abbasid dynasty in the middle ages... ahhh Rome, the British Empire etc. etc. It is really, really important that people see the FF based age as just one age amongst many - not the first nor is there any good reason to believe it's the last." I agree with that - it's only that all these "wealths" were all of the order of that of the poorest countries in the current world, and in all these civilizations, without any exception, the great majorities of people were poor peasants surviving with fluctuating crops and regularly decimated by famines, droughts, epidemics, and wars. Check YOUR history. -
les at 23:48 PM on 18 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
27 adelady: Well, to twist an old phrase, We are born with some choices already made, some choices we can make, and some choices are thrust upon us. Oil is a fabulous product. It's one of those products (like e.g. MS Windows) which feeds into a vast number of markets from a point of supply which is relatively narrow and not very competitive (some are born with oil, some find oil, most don't have any). The result is a self catalysing market, the more it's used, the more ubiquitous it becomes, the more uses there are for it etc. You are right about the "fuels" point, of course, but that's one place there may new problems. The rest of the petrochemical industry depends (as an economic externality) on oil being extracted and refined to subsidize their raw materials. Once the use of oil in fuels collapses (I had the word tipping point, but that) these other industries will become much expensive. If we're really unlucky, that'll happen after all the easy to reach stuff is extracted, exacerbating the situation. Given the inevitability of F-Fuel use going down sharply over the next years - the rest of the petrochemical industry should be campaigning like crazy to preserve the hight quality, easy to extract sources! bit off topic. sorry. -
CBDunkerson at 23:47 PM on 18 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
Another thing which always seems odd to me when considering cost comparisons between fossil fuels and alternatives is that they ignore the fact that fossil fuel prices will inevitably keep rising over time. For instance, to determine the 'cost' of electricity from a solar power plant you essentially calculate the construction cost, add in a small cost for ongoing maintenance, assume a lifespan of about 30 years and then divided the power to be generated over that timespan by the calculated cost. Cost estimates for coal plants are calculated very similarly, but there is one very large additional cost... you have to factor in the coal itself. Yet when doing so comparisons invariably seem to use the current cost of coal extended over the lifespan of the plant. Which is simply unrealistic. If one instead assumes that coal prices continue rising at the rate they have been and then uses an average price over the plant's lifetime then wind and solar power are already cheaper than coal power... even without considering the externalities described in the article above. They'd start out being more expensive, but by the end of the plant's lifespan rising fuel costs would more than offset the difference. That said, there are now a few places in the world (e.g. Hawaii, parts of Italy, Southern California) where solar power has dropped below even current fossil fuel costs (again without considering externalities). As solar prices continue to drop that'll be true of larger and larger areas. Most estimates put global average solar cost dropping below fossil fuel costs during this decade... again even assuming that fossil fuel costs were to magically stop rising. Factor in the inevitability of fossil fuel prices rising as supplies decline and the externialities and it seems inconceivable that people are still pushing fossil fuels. -
Harry Seaward at 23:38 PM on 18 March 2011And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually
Sea level has been rising steadily at 2mm/year historically. Has there been a verifiable increase in that rate recently?Moderator Response: [DB] This thread is about the impacts of SLR. For an answer to your question, please see the sea-level-rise-predictions thread where that is discussed. Pertinent for thought is comment number 6. Thanks! -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 23:38 PM on 18 March 2011Examining the impacts of ocean acidification
What scientific "foundation" has the claim: ” The implications of all of this are disturbing ...” ? Ocean acidification, Gattuso, 2010.: “Surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14 between 1751 and 2004 and may reach 7.85 in 2100.” “Although changes in the carbonate chemistry are well known, the biological and biogeochemical consequences are much less well constrained for several reasons. First, very few processes and organisms have been investigated so far (research in this area only began in the late 1990s). Second, most experiments were carried out in the short-term (hours to weeks), effectively neglecting potential acclimation and adaptation by organisms. Third, the interaction between pCO 2 and other parameters poised to change, such as temperature , concentration of nutrients and light, are essentially UNKNOWN." “It is not anticipated that oceanic primary production will be directly affected by these changes in carbonate chemistry because most primary producers use carbon concentrating mechanisms that rely on CO 2. Note, however, that primary production of some species is likely to be stimulated.” “Note, however, that some calcifiers either do not show any response to increasing pCO 2 or exhibit a bell-shaped response curve with an optimum rate of calcification at pCO 2 values close to current ones and rates that decrease at pCO 2 values below and above the current values.” (...) -
adelady at 23:29 PM on 18 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
les "... people see the FF based age as just one age amongst many - not the first nor is there any good reason to believe it's the last." Even more importantly, the FF era was a choice. When I was a toddler in the late 40s in a rural area, our neighbours used 'windlights'. Ordinary windmills ran lighting and recharged car batteries to allow lighting when the wind died down. Large wind power generators were around in the much earlier part of the 20thC in the USA. We "chose" to develop power generation by combustion of fossil materials rather than develop existing engineering capacities in other ways. The other thing we should do is stop calling them fossil "fuels". They're valuable carbon resources and the very worst thing we could possibly do with them is incinerate them. Now that we've seen the marvels of carbon fibre technology, we can only dream of what further marvels can be performed with these materials. We always have choices. We should choose more wisely. -
Gilles at 23:25 PM on 18 March 2011Sea level rise: coming to a place near you
( -Snip- )Moderator Response: [DB] Adherence to the Comments Policy is not optional. You were previously told of the specific nature of this thread, that your comment focus was off-topic here and that other threads exist more suited to your comment focus & to place those questions there. Participation in comment threads at Skeptical Science is a privilege, not a right to do as one pleases. Thanks for helping keep our community streets tidy! -
Daniel Bailey at 23:22 PM on 18 March 2011And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually
Creation of people = growing almost exponentially. Creation of new real estate (at all, let alone that above future SLR) = slim to none (outside of new volcanic islands). Instead of the mantra "Go West, young man" the new mantra shall be "Buy High (ground), young man". Savvy investors, take note. The Yooper -
Phil at 23:17 PM on 18 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Tom @640 Cool - thats shows it nicely - but hey I don't need convincing :-( Kudos has to go to KR, who first alerted me to the idea of using spreadsheets to do these sort of simple iterative demonstrations. On a more general note I wonder if the SkpSci team have considered trying to let contributers share "live" spreadsheets via "cloud" providers like GoogleDocs. It would need to protect the documents from abuse and hide users email addresses, but it might be a useful additional resource if it could be made to work. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 23:17 PM on 18 March 2011Maize harvest to shrink under Global Warming
Paper Lobell et al., 2011, this work is a fundamental flaw. It has a very poor literature. For example, I do not understand why there is not such a fundamental work as: Temperature dependence of growth, development, and photosynthesis in maize under elevated CO2, Kim et al., 2007.: “All measured parameters responded to growth temperatures. Leaf appearance rate and leaf photosynthesis showed curvilinear response with optimal temperatures near 32 and 34◦C, respectively. Total above ground biomass and leaf area were negatively correlated with growth temperature. The dependence of leaf appearance rate, biomass, leaf area, leaf and canopy photosynthesis, and C4 enzyme activities on growth temperatures was comparable between current and elevated Ca [carbon dioxide concentrations]. The results of this study suggest that the temperature effects on growth, development, and photosynthesis may remain unchanged in elevated Ca compared with current Ca in maize.” Conclusion in this paper: “Temperature optima for leaf Am and leaf appearance rate were near 34 and 31 ◦C, respectively.” “These results indicate that while many of the growth and photosynthesis parameters examined here were minimally responsive to elevated Ca, an acclimation process might occur in the C4 cycle by way of reducing the activities of C4 enzymes.” -
CBDunkerson at 23:12 PM on 18 March 2011And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually
Any new coastline also likely won't have sandy beaches for a long time... unless we haul in the sand or the inland area was sandy to begin with. Beach decay has been a growing issue for many years now, but it is nothing compared to what will happen in the upcoming decades. Here's a thought for GW investing... look for high elevation points near the coast and buy those up. Eventually ugly rocky hill by the beach becomes your own private island. :] Just make sure the elevation is high enough that it'll remain above water for a long time. -
michael sweet at 23:06 PM on 18 March 2011Maize harvest to shrink under Global Warming
Johnd, I note that in this entire thread you have yet to cite a single paper, peer reviewed or otherwise, that supports your position. The paper cited in the original post reports data from about 20,000 trials. These are the best performing varieties during the period in questions and not "average varieties". Please suporting papers or data for your positions and stop hand waving. -
CBDunkerson at 23:04 PM on 18 March 2011Examining the impacts of ocean acidification
Chris G, I wouldn't take 'the great dying' to imply that everything died either... just that alot of things died. However, 'our planet is dying'.... there is only one planet involved. Either it is going to die or it isn't. Anyway, purely a semantic argument. We all agree on what is happening, but apparently there are differing views of what that particular turn of phrase implies. It was apparently intended to mean, 'much of the life on our planet is dying' rather than 'our planet is becoming devoid of life'. -
Marcus at 22:45 PM on 18 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
The point, Gilles, is that you're constantly trying to sell fossil fuels as the miracle ingredient in the creation of wealth & staying power-yet have provided not a *shred* of evidence to back your claims. There are many elements to creating a wealthy society, all of which are much, much more important than that society's energy intensity or reliance on fossil fuels-things like good education, a strong labor movement to ensure decent wages, proper emancipation, full control of one's reproductive rights....and so the list goes on. All you keep doing is trying to show that a very weak correlation "proves" causation, when it clearly doesn't. As a proof of your weak correlation, though, China & Iran both have more energy intensive economies (in MJ/$ of GDP) than the UK, yet their per capita GDP's are *lower* than the UK. You really do need to check your facts before repeating fossil fuel industry propaganda Gilles. -
les at 22:41 PM on 18 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
22 Marcus: " The nations of Great Britain, United States, Germany & France were already extremely wealthy prior to the 1950's" Not to mention, for example, China - which was far more wealthy than Europe upto the 1800s, the Abbasid dynasty in the middle ages... ahhh Rome, the British Empire etc. etc. It is really, really important that people see the FF based age as just one age amongst many - not the first nor is there any good reason to believe it's the last. Anyone who looks at our current struggles with FFs and cannot see a way forward clearly has little perspecitve on history in general nor technology development - for them I have (again) just one word horse-manure -
michael sweet at 22:40 PM on 18 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
Gilles: According to 2007 data, France generated 1/3 the CO2 per person as the USA, but has a comparable living standard. This shows your unsupported claim that FF consumption is required for generation of wealth is a false choice. Note that the average person in France takes twice the yearly vacation as the average person in the USA and has a longer life expectancy, yet still uses similar amounts of consumer goods. -
Marcus at 22:37 PM on 18 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
Well, lets see-Wind already provides 160GW of energy world-wide (as of 2009)-the equivalent of 100 coal-fired power stations, up from only 6GW back in 1996. More than 100GW of energy is supplied by solar energy (photovoltaics & thermal). 270GW of energy is provided by biomass. 900GW of energy is supplied by hydro-power. In total, renewable energy currently provides about 10% of the world's energy needs, with the capacity to provide much, much more-especially with proper energy storage, where needed. Of course, clean renewable energy hasn't enjoyed the decades of *massive* government support that the coal & nuclear power industry has enjoyed in order to make them so "cheap"-so it will take time, effort & money to ensure that renewable energy is more attractive to developing nations who're seeking to improve their standards of living. -
TimTheToolMan at 22:36 PM on 18 March 2011What would a CO2-free atmosphere look like?
" In figure 2, the slope of the (solid) lines represent climate sensitivity." And we've come full circle. I would put no faith in those figures because they're little more than guesses dressed up as science. We simply dont have any knowledge of how the climate will respond when its a long way from what we know about and have measured. Parameterisations are definitely going to be wrong in the models. What is this fascination with attacking Lindzen? -
Marcus at 22:27 PM on 18 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
Gilles, when are you going to cease with your constant, repetitive cheer-leading on behalf of the coal/oil industry? The nations of Great Britain, United States, Germany & France were already extremely wealthy prior to the 1950's-when the output of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels really started to take off. Not surprising given that, until the 1950's, coal-fired electricity was much more expensive, in today's dollars, than most renewable energy sources are today-or that cars were then only owned by the wealthiest people. It seems to me that, in spite of your claims, you know *nothing* about our world's history-or choose to ignore it in your desperate attempts to push fossil fuel industry propaganda down our throats. -
Tom Curtis at 22:25 PM on 18 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Phil, interesting point @639. I have included two new columns in my spreadsheet. One, titled Gain, is Bx-Dx for each row, x. The second, titled "Stored" is the sum of the values in the Gain column from row 2 to row x, for each row, x. The exact formula is "=SUM(G$2:G2)" where G is the column for Gain. As expected, with each progressive iteration, Gain falls to 0 while Stored increases to 400 when the number of photons exiting the box matches the number entering the box. When the incoming photons are reduced to zero, the Gain immediately becomes -100 before slowly increasing to zero, which it reaches approximately as Stored reaches zero and photons leaving the box reaches zero. -
Marcus at 22:16 PM on 18 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
Seriously, Gilles, you're such a one track record &-as always-your claims rely on complete *false-hoods*. Neither Wind nor Solar are intermittent, as there is now this thing called *storage* (hardly new, as plenty of storage options have existed for at least a decade). Geothermal & Hydroelectric are also not as limited in their placement as you make out, when you include things like Micro-hydro, tidal streams power, Run-of-the-river hydro, Osmotic plants & hot-rocks. Also, you think that coal power stations can be built willy nilly? No, coal power stations have very strict limits on where they can be built, & usually have to be sited close to the source of fuel (coal mines). As to gas, well maybe natural gas is finite, but its also more efficient than coal power (2-3 times more efficient depending on the type of turbines used to produce the electricity), can be built at any size; to better match demand; is modular, so can be scaled to meet changes in demand curves, & added to slowly as demand increases-unlike inflexible coal power stations &-most important-natural gas can be substituted with methane from natural, non-finite sources, such as landfills, sewerage treatment plants & from algae grown from the CO2 waste generated from a gas-fired power station. Methane/natural gas is also a fantastic storage medium for various levels of solar thermal energy-from simply boosting the energy content of the methane (at temps of 60 degrees C to 100 degrees C) all the way to breaking down the methane into CO2 & H2 which, when re-reacted, generate heat & recreate the methane. So, as you can see, there are already substantial options for replacing coal as our major source of base-load energy, something which won't just reduce the amount of CO2 entering our atmosphere, but also reduce the amount of Radon, particulate emissions, mercury & cadmium which also gets into our air courtesy of coal-fired power stations. Now, have you got anything *new* to say? Or are you just going to keep boring us with Coal/Oil industry advertising? -
Tom Curtis at 22:07 PM on 18 March 2011What would a CO2-free atmosphere look like?
TTTM @92 (First, do you object to TTTM as you do to TTT?)Right back on topic and using my favorite method of looking at an extreme, what would the sensitivity be on a hypothetical hard snowball earth? For the first many doublings, it would be very low. Maybe even approximately zero. Only once CO2 levels have got very high would they have an effect and then it will jump hugely. What does this mean to me? Well it means that sensitivity depends on the climate's "state" and the CO2 level itself. Some states will be more sensitive than others."
There is probably something in this. As it happens, in figure 2 above we have a means of testing this intuition. In figure 2, the slope of the (solid) lines represent climate sensitivity. By zooming in on the graph a bit, and laying a ruler along side, it can be determined that the climate sensitivity in the snowball earth case is 1.5 degrees C per doubling of CO2 (and higher on the right of the graph). In the non-snowball earth case, the climate sensitivity is about 2.5 degrees C per doubling of CO2 (and again, higher as it gets warmer). So, let's consider what this means for Lindzen's testimony. First, it means that climate sensitivity in the non-snowball earth case is high enough to initiate a snowball earth in the event of removal of all CO2 from the atmosphere. So, in the no CO2 scenario, the global meant temperature would be closer to 240 degrees K then the approximately 284 degrees K he testified to. Second, it means even the lowest climate sensitivity is about three times the value he uses. And you have to have a snowball Earth to have a climate sensitivity that low. Third, the climate sensitivity is very stable over a large range of temperatures and CO2 concentrations. The major instability is an albedo forced bifurcation which therefore cannot be included as a climate sensitivity per se. So, Lindzen's testimony continues to look very shabby. -
Phil at 21:53 PM on 18 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
CTruth @627 said I agree with RW1 and a few others that observational data seem to indicate the availability of a significant kinetic energy content in the lower troposphere than cannot be accounted for by the solar input alone. CTruth, my position (and if I may be so bold to suggest, I think the position of Tom Curtis, KR, scaddenp et al) is this; ... that observational data indicates the availability of a significant energy content in the lower troposphere than cannot be accounted for by the solar input alone but is accounted for by an exchange of heat between the surface and the atmosphere. This heat has accumulated in the planetary system in the distant past in the process of reaching (approximate) thermal equilibrium If you tried the spreadsheet model I suggested earlier (and Tom Curtis improved @626), one thing you can discover from it is that at the time P(in) = P(out) then ΣTP(in) - ΣTP(out) is at its maximum and is equal to the capacity of the system to hold P (so as to conserve energy or matter) These statements hold true for Tom's half-mirrored box (where P is photons), KR's rivers running in and out of a reservoir (where P is water) and the earths energy budget (where P is heat). T is time, of course, and - heads up to les @623 - yes of course the summations should really be integrals !
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