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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 103151 to 103200:

  1. Renewable Baseload Energy
    A couple of years ago I came across the idea ofKiteGen, which seemed to have a lot of potential - I've heard little about it since. Does anyone know if there is anything in it? It seems to me that harnessing the more reliable high altitude winds would eliminate much of the need for baseload power. Offshore kitegen is the future, just no-one has realised this yet.
  2. It's Pacific Decadal Oscillation
    kdkd #26. I haven't looked at your analyses yet; I simply haven't had the time yet. I will look at it when I can asap, and I really thank you for providing this and also the bottom line that CO2 overtook solar variability some time in the mid-20th century is interesting. The nature reference is very appropriate. I've been thinking of applying economical/stock market data analysis to the global temp, PDO and ENSO data. Such as momentum, RSI, or stochastic indicators like MACD; as all those are used to determine which way stocks are moving to make trading decisions. For example, Momentum (M) measures the acceleration rate of a stock's price. This positive or negative value is then plotted around a zero line; where positive indicates (future) increasing prices and negative values (future) decreasing prices. In this case it can simply be applied to the rise and fall of global temp. M = V - Vx ; V is the latest price, and Vx is the closing price x number of days ago. When applied to global temp V is current monthly temp, Vx is say last month's temp. This could maybe give a could idea about the last This then should be read together with the relative strength indicator (RSI determines the true value of an oscillator: RSI = 100 - (100/(1 + RS)), where RS = Average of x days’ up closes Average of x days’ down closes; which in global temp terms means average of x month's of increasing temps and average of x month's increasing temps) Applying such indicators to the last decade, for example, should give valuable insight on which direction global temperatures are and will be moving in the near future. This in turn is given the current debate that global surface temps since 1998 or 2007 haven't risen while CO2 levels have a great tool. ps: there is nothing wrong with crude analyses. Those are excellent for pattern-recognition and then further in-depth analyses. muoncounter #26: many authors refer to them self in their own papers. The nr of self-references is not an indication on the validity of the data-analyses presented. One of the reasons often is that the author is one of very few within that particular area of research. Just judge the paper on content, quality, argument and validity; not on references.
  3. Pete Dunkelberg at 05:15 AM on 28 November 2010
    Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    At least no one who thinks it through would conclude that McIntyre et al. are acting in good faith. 1. McIntyre set up the whole FOI affair. 2. He knows what requests were sent in to the CRU. 3. He knows the responses. 4. He knows the law. 5. I think he would know of any failure to comply with the law. 6. I don't think he is the type to hold back this information. 7. He has not announced "Cool it folks. There is no violation here." 8. By innuendo (or whatever his exact words) he lets people think his FOI requests were not answered properly and legally. QED
  4. actually thoughtful at 04:38 AM on 28 November 2010
    Renewable Baseload Energy
    Camburn - does the rest of the world include Germany? They are, I believe, the leaders in solar PV (and equal to the Northern US in terms of sun and clouds). Nuclear may have a transitional role. But it has so many questions and such high costs (and the amount of CO2 released for the concrete is staggering) it has to be a tier 2 solution. Also, a comment was made about no government subsidies. This is simply untrue. At a minimum the US government is supplying loan guarantees. More frightening - the US is providing liability limits to nuclear plants. As per usual - privatize profits and socialize risks. For the foreseeable future - just install the renewable technology we KNOW works - with no notable downsides, (and this is the part people keep ignoring) AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. When we get to the point of needing storage and/or baseload power - it will be a whole new world (in energy terms). Some of the pie-in-the-sky stuff will already be done, some will be ready, and some will remain "in the sky." How about we keep nuclear at 20% of US load for the next 20 years, then look around (all the while INSTALLING the known-good renewable technology). Once carbon is priced into the economy - the world will change (for the better).
  5. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Phil, first you say as Bibliovermis did, that incoming solar radiation is not effected by green house gases. Now you state otherwise, but now you claim that the effect on outgoing radiation is greater though you don't say how much as well as to provide any evidence. OK, again that leaves all the work for me. Then I will try evaluate the effects. If I am not mistaken then usually differences between TOA and the earth surface are taken as a measurement of the green house effect. Seems quite reasonable, let me try. I suppose all can agree that I use the numbers provided by the Trenberth et al. diagram I have included in my post #50. It says incoming at TOA 341, reflected 102 and absorbed at surface 161. As the reflected part is not affected by the green house effect it has to be taken out (subtracted from the TOA value) which leaves us with an effective TOA value of 239. So the relation is 239 / 161 = 1.48 Now we have surface radiation 396 Radiation leaving the atmosphere is at 239. Here the relation is 396 / 239 = 1.65. So, yes you are right, the green house house effect is stronger on outgoing radiation though I hardly assume the magnitude of the difference satisfied your strong wording. As to your comment about this being rather off topic I have to disagree for the reason that the whole argument of the lead article rests on the green house effect. So any discussion on this is quite on topic.
  6. Renewable Baseload Energy
    Rob@33: My point exactly. At this time, and in the foreseeable, there is no way to "store" that electricity economically. While we burn more coal/methane for energy and increase the co2 load, we have proven tech that will/could cut that co2 load. It is outright scandelous that we are not using that tech. That tech is nuclear. The rest of the world is embracing it. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf17.html. We are being pound foolish to continue the path we are on.
  7. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Re #158 archiesteel you wrote@ "the graph simplifies how the heat exchange mechanisms work. You can't look at such a graph and claim it is supposed to accurately represent the path of each photon." I take it you mean the diagram in #153? I am not arguing that there aren't better explanations for the GH effect but this diagram is what is used by the IPCC in its Assessment Reports and its Summaries for Policymakers. This is what is used by government agencies like the Met Office when they are advising on energy source policies. The diagram is a principle feature of the IPCC AGW science, it appears in volumes of the various IPCC Assessment Reports called "The Scientific Basis". In thess volumes it is stated that the GHE warms the surface (on average) from 255K to 288K i.e. 33K. If the diagram were improved it would show just how this 33K comes about. As it stands there are no temperatures at all reported on it, this should be possible using themal models of the atmosphere such as the US Standard Atmosphere (which does not recognise the GHE), then perhaps the arguments of the IPCC will become more clear.
  8. actually thoughtful at 04:20 AM on 28 November 2010
    Renewable Baseload Energy
    It is taken as axiomatic that PV panels last 30 years. Why? They might suffer some degradation of output, but not that much. What is a more realistic lifetime of a PV array?
  9. Renewable Baseload Energy
    Camburn @24... Your entire comment here about not being able to run a business on intermittent power is totally ignoring the thrust of the entire article that Dana wrote. You are arguing as if, when the wind dies so does all the electricity. Go back and read the article again. It's all about how to smooth out the intermittency in order to deliver base load. For every weather cycle that might deliver a day or two of no wind conditions there are many more other days that deliver high winds that would outpace the demand. The point is to capture and store that over capacity for later use. The other thing everyone seems to miss in this discussion is that current energy production suffers exactly the same kinds of issues of matching demand to production. We have base load units that end up on spin reserve at night. And then we have other plants that get turned on only during peak hours and lay idle the rest of the day. People get all twisted up in their shorts over the intermittency of renewables when the intermittency of demand is as big a problem to energy efficiency as anything. Most of the solutions that Dana is presenting here work just as effectively for all forms of electricity production to smooth the production/demand cycle. Peter Sinclair has a really good Youtube video on house electric vehicles play into the mix.
  10. Renewable Baseload Energy
    tt23: "As I said above, people knew about the potential of renewable resources since they were people around. Most civilization perished as these renewable resources proved again and again as insufficient to sustain them." That is totally incorrect. They were not abandoned because they couldn't sustain the population. They were abandoned because fossil fuels came along, that helped the population grow beyond what previous technologies could support. Civilization wouldn't have perished just because it continued using wind and water to power it's needs. The population would have been restricted, that isn't the same thing. And BTW repeating something that has been rebutted in a previous comment doesn't make it correct again. (re The Ville comment 20).
  11. Renewable Baseload Energy
    tt23@27 we will switch to breeders, which is tested and proved technology since the early 1050s. Then we would have to deal with the consequences of a very widespread plutonium economy. Just imagine what might happen if Iran, North Korea, Chechnya etc had easy access to tonnes of the stuff.
  12. actually thoughtful at 03:50 AM on 28 November 2010
    Renewable Baseload Energy
    The mention of APS is interesting, but not surprising. After fighting renewables for decades, the company appears to be pursuing distributed energy with a vengeance. Both with solar thermal, and robust support for rooftop PV. We have so far to go with direct-to-grid renewables (ie no storage) that the lack of storage should in no way be seen as a counter to renewables. Indeed, by the time we get to this issue, we may find renewables are doing just fine. While this is a good overview - all these items in the future and utility level solutions leave me cold. Every poster here should put solar (heating first) on their roof, wind in their yard, solar PV, ground source heat pump (all of course, where practicable - but that is almost everywhere for at least one). The point is: we already know how to solve it - NOW. Yes, we can improve the solution going forward, but there is a temptation to say "well - efficiencies are going up, price coming down, let's see what the utility does...." But that ignores the key tool we have - swaying public opinion by actions. Humans response VERY STRONGLY to what the other guy does. You are the other guy - lead the way.
  13. Renewable Baseload Energy
    tt23: "PV...results in large quantities of electronics waste which none has any idea how to treat on the scale when PV would make a visible dent in electricity production." Urm, if you are worried about electronics waste, why promote an energy source that supports an electronics market. You are shooting your own foot again.
  14. Renewable Baseload Energy
    Sorry I typed too fast, and one cannot edit the posts! The last few paragraphs get screwed beyond comprehension, so here is a better version: > As I said above, the potential of renewable energy has only just been tapped, which has the mainstream energy suppliers scared out of their minds! As I said above, people knew about the potential of renewable resources since there were people around. Most civilizations perished as these renewable resources proved again and again as insufficient to sustain them, primarily by exhaustion of wood. Modern civilization developed after it tapped controllable and scalable energy sources with orders of magnitude higher energy density than these renewable ones. To get out of our current dire predicament we need to step up several more orders of magnitude in energy density with a clean and sustainable energy source alternative, which has the crucial qualities of scalability and controllability. Fortunately we already have one - nuclear fission.
  15. Renewable Baseload Energy
    @Marcus at 18:05 PM on 27 November, 2010 > tt23-ah, the old "nuclear energy will save the day" speech-though you took a while to get around to it. Face facts, nuclear power is a pipe dream. Do you realize that nuclear power is the youngest source of energy? While the civilization spent thousands years developing wind energy, the fundamental physics beyond fission was only realized 60 years ago! Do you realize that nuclear in the US produces more electricity than the entire grid produces > 60 years of R&D & government subsidies, Nuclear power reactors receive NO subsidies. They actually have to pay large fees, such as the $4 000 000 / year / reactor regulatory fee. They are also the only single one energy source which has to pay for its own decommissioning, and for the treatment of spent fuel (in two separate accounts). No other energy source does that, and if any other source was held to such standards, it would perish over night. > & its still one of the most expensive forms of electricity around. Actually it is the one cheapest electricity source, you were badly misinformed: http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedImages/org/info/US_ElectProduction_Costs.jpg > Even PV's are threatening to provide cheaper electricity over the next 5-10 years. However, unlike nuclear power, PV's don't generate large quantities of long-lived nuclear waste, Instead of easily & safely stored small amounts of solid waste, it generates persistent pollution such as silicon tetrachloride, and results in large quantities of electronics waste which none has any idea how to treat on the scale when PV would make a visible dent in electricity production. > don't use up precious water The PV panels or mirrors need cleaning. The largest nuclear power in the US is actually in the desert, happily using only waste water from a nearest city. > & don't generate large quantities of surplus electricity during off-peak periods. Which we need for charging up electric cars. PV on the other hand is only useful for hot sunny days AC, and even then is mismatched with electricity demand curve by some 4 hours, mandating another source to back it up, not speaking about how to power civilization in the night, or in places where cloudless sunny days are exception not a norm. > Also, what happens when those 80 years worth of uranium reserves run dry? We will switch to breeders, which is tested and proved technology since the early 1050s. There is enough uranium to power civilization for several billion (10^9) years, and then there is thorium. See the calculation here: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html > The reality is that, with proper storage technologies, most of the currently available renewable energy technologies are already capable of producing close to base-load power. The reality is we do not have the "proper storage technology". Not even close. Again, the largest storage we actually have (i.e. not a pipe dream), is pumped hydro, and it was not even mentioned in the list of author's fantasies . > Developments over the next decade will probably bring them up to base-load capacity-assuming they get the public funding they deserve, but have for so long been denied. We see the disastrous results in Europe already. Despite all the R&D funding and subsidies. > Of course, then you have tidal streams-which are already capable of producing reliable power. Then you have bio-gas from landfill, sewerage plants, forest plantations & farms. They're already in the process of generating electricity using osmotic potential-so it probably won't be long before Osmosis plants will be generating base-load electricity. Sorry these are recycled hypes from 30 years ago. 25 kWe of biogas per landfill are not going to cut it. ? As I said above, the potential of renewable energy has only just been tapped, which has the mainstream energy suppliers scared out of their minds! As I said above, people knew about the potential of renewable resources since they were people around. Most civilization perished as these renewable resources proved again and again as insufficient to sustain them. Modern civilization developed after it tapped controllable and scalable energy sources with orders of magnitude higher energy density. To get out of our current dire predicament we need to step up several more orders of magnitude in energy density with a clean and sustainable energy source. Fortunately we already have one - nuclear fission.
  16. Renewable Baseload Energy
    Thank you tt23@25. Thorium is a very viable alternative which the US has bountiful supplies of. While the rest of the world races ahead with nuclear tech, the US lags behind further and further.
  17. Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    Here's how *honest* skeptics would have dealt with the CRU. *Honest* skeptics would have read up on the CRU's temperature-computation methods (which are openly published). After being told by the CRU that data from certain met offices could not be supplied due to nondisclosure agreements, *honest* skeptics would have contacted the respective met offices directly and obtained the temperature from from the met offices themselves. As for the freely-available public-domain temperature data, *honest* skeptics would have downloaded that data themselves. *Honest* skeptics would then have performed their own independent temperature analysis using the treasure-trove of free/open-source software development and data-analysis tools available to anyone with Internet access. *Honest* skeptics would have published their results, either in an "open-access" on-line journal or on their own web-site. That's what *honest* skeptics would do (and have done).
  18. Renewable Baseload Energy
    @Marcus at 17:57 PM on 27 November, 2010 Thorium was not developed for several reasons: it was not chosen in the early days due to the problem of making thorium derived fissile into a warhead due to U232 contamination which decay chains produce strong gamma radiation which will kill your workers, screw your weapon's electronics and chemical explosives, and tell everyone where it is, in short. Later after a brief investigation and two operational test reactors it fell out of favor compared to uranium/plutonium route due to several turns of history, mainly the large investment into the U/Pu route, which was found good enough; and personal politics within the AEC. It is similar to why we use PWRs now: they were developed by the Navy and found to be good enough. Anyway, the political/societal priorities had changed dramatically since the 1970s, so it makes a good sense to give thorium a second look. I would recommend brief primer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUeBSoEnRk Also your statement is not entirely accurate, India has developed their own way of using thorium commercially. They already have small test reactor successfully up and running in Kalpakkam, and several large scale (500MWe) reactors are already under construction. The first one should turn on next year. It is really a shame that US decided to get left behind in this crucial technology, and wishful thinking about renewables certainly did the job of cementing in our coal and gas based infrastructure.
  19. Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    Instead what happened was a CA-coordinated campaign to make requests for different countries not under proprietary agreements. Each request contained just 4 or so countries so that it could not be rejected because of one country being proprietary. There were also requests to obtain the proprietary agreements for those countries that were deemed proprietary. The above statement is flat-out dishonest. Nobody with any integrity would even think about implying that CA was acting in good faith. If the CA crew wanted to see the nondisclosure agreements, then why didn't they bother to contact the national met offices directly instead of pestering a small organization with fewer than 5 FTE's? The CA folks certainly were fully aware that the CRU had minimal administrative support staff and that the administrative burden would fall on already-overworked scientists. So if the CA folks really wanted to see the nondisclosure agreements in question, why couldn't they either track down the respective met offices' web-sites or pick up the phone and call them? And the reason, of course, is that the CA folks more interested in harassing the CRU scientists than they were in doing any science. Anyone who claims otherwise is just plain dishonest.
  20. 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
    Bibliovermis wrote: "That spectral chart is a visual example of what I said - incoming solar energy is primarily in the form of visible & UV light." So far so true if you define primarily to be more than 50%. But I would not dare to call 45% negligible. Further you stated that incoming solar radiation is not effected by green house gases but the chart clearly shows the opposite.
  21. Renewable Baseload Energy
    michael sweet: The wind corridor is vast, but when it slows down it does slow down over a wide area. http://minnkota.com/ Look at Astabula and Langdon as these are two large wind farms. They are approx 140 miles apart as the crow flies. I have talked with Minnkota as to wind variability. I had no idea that when the wind dies at one station, it dies over SD, Iowa, Minn, ND etc. I do not know if the wind dies in Texas at the same time as it does in the upper midwest. When examining baseload, one has to look at all users. Commercial/residential etc. You can not run a business with intermitent power. And in ND, Minn, SD etc, you can't decide not to heat your home for several hours without consequences. Solar is not an option at the northern latitudes. Not only do we have less sun, we have more clouds. Fact of life. On any grid that goes great distances, there is loss of power. One of the main stumbling blocks to ND selling wind energy to Chicago has been that loss. People are demanding efficiency, which should be done. I wish it was simple in scope. That wind/solar etc could supply the energy needs of the US on a cost basis similiar to what we currently have.
  22. Pete Dunkelberg at 02:27 AM on 28 November 2010
    Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    Some sane person, I for get who, summed this up months ago by saying almost exactly this: "I read the emails and what I learned is that there was someone named McIntyre who no one wanted to do any favors."
  23. Twice as much Canada, same warming climate
    Re: gallopingcamel (68) The portion of your statement
    "I hope we can agree that 1976-2005 was a period of warming so they are saying that the increase in mortality due to rising temperatures is orders of magnitude smaller the decrease in cold related mortality (at least in England)."
     that I agree with I have underlined. At no point in the study do the authors characterize the difference in CRM and HRM at terms similar to what you describe. Because human's ability to adapt is remarkable, it would be difficult to compare and contrast properly actual CRM and HRM even within one country (let alone expanding the scope to other areas). The focus of the study was narrow: to examine changes in CRM, changes in HRM, delineate any of the attribution of the change to adaption (if any) and to the warming of winters and summers due to AGW (if any). They did find that, even with milder winters, human adaption to cold was significant. But they also found that human adaptation to heat was less so (perhaps for the reasons you delineate). The authors also posit that
    "With regard to heat-related mortality, future changes in the frequency and intensity of heatwaves also pose a concern and raise the question whether adaptation will manage to keep pace with such changes. In the UK there has been little adaptation to warmer temperatures."
     Future warming (if any, even unattributed warming) will be a bad thing for HRM in the UK. It is often difficult, even for experts in statistical analysis, to make proper comparisons (i.e., apples-to-apples comparisons). Hence my point about apples and oranges, breadfruit, and Na'vi. The further one gets from what the actual study was powered to detect, the further one gets from making apples-to-apples comparisons. It would have been nice if the study had been powered to directly compare HRM to CRM, changes therein, and potential impacts of climate change (human-caused) upon HRM and CRM. Since it wasn't, one has to appropriately use what one has. The expected increase in temperatures still in the pipeline will adversely affect much more than the UK or Canada. But I think we actually have less differences between us now with regards to the Christidis et al. study than when we began this exchange. Thank you for the pleasant dialogue and quality of discussion. It has been a breath of fresh air, unlike many others I have participated in on SkS or elsewhere. The Yooper
  24. Pete Dunkelberg at 01:33 AM on 28 November 2010
    Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    Camburn, at first you seem to be saying something was done "improperly" in your opinion, making it "wrong" in your opinion. But you want to make your opinion into a fact, insisting later that "It is a legal issue, nothing else." "CRU did not follow the law. It is that plain and simple...and yes it is." Camburn, after a careful investigation of the matter, no charges were filed. Well known reasons for this are: 1. You can't give out information you don't have 2. It is illegal to give out information that you have under a non-disclosure agreement. 3. The law gives protection from vexatious requests. Camburn, if you just don't like the CRU that is your privilege. But if as you have said it is a legal issue only, there is no wrong.
  25. Renewable Baseload Energy
    Dana, Excellent post. I'm wondering in a country like the USA, which is large and has large wind resources, how much does having big wind farms in North Dakota and Texas (and in between) counter the issue of low winds. How often is it windless over the entire center of the US? I understand that Australia is smaller and might have more windless days over the entire country, how often does that happen? What about Europe?
  26. Renewable Baseload Energy
    As many have mentioned, there is lots of waste in our (U.S.) cheap energy market. To help define and eliminate waste the power prices can be set in ways that provide the greatest incentive to match the availability of renewable power. It is easy to envision a few dollars of computer and network hardware in each appliance and around the grid to save a lot on both generation and transmission costs. Such a system could easily handle variations in wind or partly cloudy solar days, for example. (BU Engineering magazine has the Fall issue devoted to smart solutions where I found a reference to this article) http://www.bu.edu/pcms/caramanis/TaborsParkerCaramanisIEEEPaperSmart%20Grid%20HICSS%2005-01-03.pdf
  27. Climategate: Hiding the Decline?
    KL #98 Oh for goodness sake. I pointed out a method by which you could evaluate the importance of anthropogenic warming with using all the questionable high uncertainty measurements to one side, or as secondary data. But as your ideologically motivated argument relies on magnifying this uncertainty out of all proportion to its importance, you refuse to look at anything except a very small part of the temperature record. Very poor methods there, you've really got to try a lot harder. Very poor indeed.
  28. Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    #33 Marcus, neither you nor dhogaza provided any details of specific requests made and that "McI and the CA crew knew that CRU could not release the small amount of data deemed to be proprietary by a few countries which owned it. McI and the CA crew peppered CRU with FOIs demanding this data anyway" Instead what happened was a CA-coordinated campaign to make requests for different countries not under proprietary agreements. Each request contained just 4 or so countries so that it could not be rejected because of one country being proprietary. There were also requests to obtain the proprietary agreements for those countries that were deemed proprietary. To deem that campaign "vexatious" as dhogaza says is fair enough. But it is not fair to characterize it as asking for a "small amount" of data over and over.
  29. Climategate: Hiding the Decline?
    archiesteel #96 "Oh, and AGW theory isn't based on lost data, but on sound, verified science. The fact that the original, non-normalized data (still available from national weather services) is or isn't in CRU's possession is completely irrelevant. It's a red herring, just like pretty much your entire contribution to this site." The topic of this thread is Climategate - hiding the decline. Hiding the delcine relates to the treatment by CRU's Jones of tree ring temperature proxies which were spliced with thermometer data after 1960 - when the proxy no longer matched the warming trend. All the raw global thermometer data was collected and many (if not all) 'corrected' by CRU to produce the surface temp series HADCRUT etc. As even kdkd says ""Even if we take the idea that the "Nature trick" was dodgy...", indeed we surely can ask for an independent verification of the CRU 'corrections' to the raw surface temperature data - by simply asking CRU for a copy of the raw data. Unfortunately CRU 'lost' this raw input data Of course it has has the output with a description of how it was processed in the literature somewhere going back in time. In plain language - do dodgy once and don't be surprised if others want to look at your other 'tricks' to verify there is no other 'dodginess'. Archiesteel - I can't remember which thread I last conversed with you but your ungenerous remark does not fit with my recollection of the weakness of your contribution.
  30. Renewable Baseload Energy
    tt23: "Renewable energy advocates have been posting wishful thinking along these lines for well over two decades...however thinking we can build a backbone of industrial society using these sources is delusional wishful thinking, which I object to." Status Quo advocates have been posting fantasies about maintaining the current way of life for decades. Such delusional thinking misses the point, which is we need sustainable systems that complement our environment. Building a backbone for a sustainable society is the goal, not a crash and burn 'industrial society'.
  31. Renewable Baseload Energy
    tt23: "The fundamental reason for this is the same as why these energy sources were abandoned by our ancestors some 200 years ago: low energy density and finicky energy flows related to these sources." There are so many assumptions and things wrong with that statement, it's hard to know where to start! 1. Today isn't the same as 200, 300 or 1000 years ago. I don't think Tudor Britain had access to microprocessors or the ability to store significant amounts of energy and use it where ever they wanted it. They also didn't know about global warming. 2. Although coal has a high energy density, if you work out the figures and include losses, more energy is used to operate a coal power station than it produces. It's only when you ignore the fact that a large chunk of a lump of coals energy is lost, that it becomes rational to use it. Energy density works in 'theory' but is usually lost in practical engineering. 3. In the past they couldn't distribute the information to manage the 'finicky' energy sources. It would have been impractical to send a man on a horse from the windmill to homes 100 miles away to tell them to use less wind energy for their wooden washing machine, because the wind died by a few metres per second. Today that information can be transmitted through the grid or down existing communications networks in seconds. Basically, you seem to have little imagination and not only misunderstand the past, but also the future!
  32. Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    Over the past twelve months, there have been many references to these emails being leaked by a person or persons unknown, rather than the CRU server being hacked by a person or persons unknown. The clear inference is that leaking of these emails would not be in breach of any UK or EU law. Since emails contain personal data and the release of these emails was not authorized by the data controller, it is entirely possible that an offence may have been committed under Section 55 of the UK's Data Protection Act. It is also possible that a breach of the Seventh Principle of the Data Protection Act, which covers security, may have occurred. It is therefore unwise to assume that leaking of these emails would not be in breach of any law.
  33. Renewable Baseload Energy
    I actually question whether a 'big' baseload capacity is required for a future where we need to cut the number of gadgets used, consume less per capita etc. Another issue is the massive inefficient use of energy in the US, partly because energy prices are low. Although probably no one wants really expensive energy, when prices are to low, there is a significant amount of waste, it's natural for people not to worry so much about what they use, if it is cheap. Some of the ideas Dana has posted about aren't really 'baseload' providers, the point being is that the nature of electricity generation will change since the 'load' is intelligent and adjusts it's consumption based on monitoring the grid. eg. we are talking about smart grid concepts. Finally it should be pointed out that current large scale generation is a quirk of consumerist history. Electricity generation companies, engineers etc, had developed the method for generating electricity from coal and oil, which needed a big consumer market to soak up the capacity (because that generation technology had to be running all the time to be efficient, stop start operation wasn't practical). This resulted in electricity companies desperately selling vacuum cleaners, washing machines etc in the 1950s, 60s so that they had a market to sell their electricity to. Now we have generations of people that don't know how to live without it. But the current grid technology had to be invented years ago to get what we have now. So it isn't unreasonable to expect changes in the way we use electricity in the future, with microprocessor controllers in fridges, freezers, cars etc, deciding how much energy can be drawn from the grid. Indesit are testing a fridge in the UK that does this and a smart grid test project is being set up to test different technologies.
  34. Renewable Baseload Energy
    Dana, i'll add two UK projects to your energy storage list: Isentropic energy storage: http://www.isentropic.co.uk/ Another CAES idea, Seamus Garvey's compressed air underwater energy bags: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/8500075.stm
  35. Renewable Baseload Energy
    The problem we have at the moment is that whilst renewable power (particularly onshore wind) is getting close to the levelised costs of other sources of power (gas/coal), we haven't properly communicated the extra costs associated with it in terms of distribution, storage and smart grid tech. This gives renewables an reliably rosy impression. But the amount and cost of the storage depends on how much you rely on renewables. I think dana did a pretty good job, although the 'renewables are still decades away from providing most power in most countries' maybe should have been hammered a bit harder. We need nuclear and CCS for steep CO2 cuts.
  36. Renewable Baseload Energy
    I can't say nuclear is a perfect technology, and I would hope that several decades down the track both coal and nuclear end up as obsolete alternatives to renewables. But between coal and nuclear - the two traditionally dominant baseload sources, the answer is crystal clear. On the other hand, there's also room for adaptation to intermittent supply on the demand side with smarter grids, metering, and appliances.
  37. Renewable Baseload Energy
    @ marcus Thanks for that. And I agree with you re - nuclear, there seems little point replacing one finite source with another. Quite apart from that issue there is a huge political hot potatoe to handle with the siting of such facilities, the nimby crowd is likely to start weighing in pretty rapidly with any new reactor developments, regardless (in some respects unfortunately) of whether or not it's actually a good idea.
  38. Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    Camburn, the fact that the long-term trend is "down" over the last 8,000 years doesn't mean a thing-its exactly what we'd expect from our position in the current Milankovitch cycle. The fact is, though, that this downward trend is infinitesimally small-properly measurable only on a multi-century time scale. Similarly, the upward trend since 1850 actually petered out around the 1930's-1940's, & was driven by a massive increase in solar activity. Yet this upward trend was still less than *half* the speed of the trend we've seen in the last 30 years (in spite of falling sun-spot numbers). So, yes, the climate has changed before-but did so according to well known *Natural* forcings-& occurred at a much slower pace than what we're seeing now. Also, if the current rate of climate change persists, we could end up with global temperatures *higher* than during the Holocene Climatic Optimum.
  39. Renewable Baseload Energy
    tt23-ah, the old "nuclear energy will save the day" speech-though you took a while to get around to it. Face facts, nuclear power is a pipe dream. 60 years of R&D & government subsidies, & its still one of the most expensive forms of electricity around. Even PV's are threatening to provide cheaper electricity over the next 5-10 years. However, unlike nuclear power, PV's don't generate large quantities of long-lived nuclear waste, don't use up precious water & don't generate large quantities of surplus electricity during off-peak periods. Also, what happens when those 80 years worth of uranium reserves run dry? The reality is that, with proper storage technologies, most of the currently available renewable energy technologies are already capable of producing close to base-load power. Developments over the next decade will probably bring them up to base-load capacity-assuming they get the public funding they deserve, but have for so long been denied. Of course, then you have tidal streams-which are already capable of producing reliable power. Then you have bio-gas from landfill, sewerage plants, forest plantations & farms. They're already in the process of generating electricity using osmotic potential-so it probably won't be long before Osmosis plants will be generating base-load electricity. As I said above, the potential of renewable energy has only just been tapped, which has the mainstream energy suppliers scared out of their minds!
  40. Renewable Baseload Energy
    @ Camburn-you'll have to do better than some pathetic MSM propaganda piece. They're trying to blame renewable energy for rising electricity prices here in Australia too-even though there is no causal link between renewable energy investment & change in tariffs between the various states. Fact is, the retail cost of your electricity is 10.22c/kw-h. If Minnkota is buying Wind-Power for 4.5c/kw-h, then I don't see how his company can be losing money. For the record, the cheapest price wholesale price I've seen for base-load electricity (coal or nuclear) is around 4c/kw-h. Here in Australia, the wholesale price for coal-fired electricity is actually closer to 5c-6c/kw-h. Of course that doesn't stop the retailers charging us more than 20c/kw-h for electricity during peak times. So please tell us *why* you believe this obviously self-serving Utility CEO? Can't you tell when someone is trying to invent excuses to rip off their customers?
  41. Renewable Baseload Energy
    70rn, I got my information from a book called "The Big Switch", by Gavin Gilchrist, & he sourced his information from a man called C. Weinberg. The information is from 1993, which is why I used 1990 Inflation adjusted dollars.
  42. Renewable Baseload Energy
    @ Camburn. If Thorium were so amazing, then why is it still not in commercial development? Perhaps because of the fact that its incredibly expensive, largely untested & has a number of key engineering issues which are nowhere near being solved. Fact is, all I'm reading in the above posts is the usual Denialist Clap-trap about how "useless" renewable energy technologies are. In truth, they've had a far, far more rapid rate of development-in terms of efficiency, cost & reliability-than coal or nuclear power-& with only a fraction of the Research & Development Budget. Contrary to the above claims, the strongest winds are at night-when the sun doesn't shine-& the majority of solar energy systems currently in existence don't require direct sunlight to work. Rapid developments in storage technologies over the last decade are making cheap high density storage a reality. Of course, the great advantage of renewable energy systems (& I'm including gas in there too-given that methane can be easily sourced from nature) is that they can be more easily "tuned" to meet demand, whereas coal & nuclear power produce almost as much electricity at night as they do during the day-resulting in a massive *glut* in off-peak electricity. Not only that, but renewable energy systems can be built small & close to the source of demand-thus reducing the roughly 10% loss of electricity that occurs during wide-spread transmission & distribution of electricity. Overall, coupled with the lack of an ongoing fuel requirement, most renewable energy systems will leave coal & nuclear power for dead-which is exactly what has the owners of these technologies so scared-& why they & their MSM allies run such a concerted fear campaign against them!
  43. Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    Follow up on DO events -- they were greater than regional, but were most likely hemispherical "see-saw" events (NH cooling coupled with SH warming and vice-versa). For these DO events, the evidence indicates that the NH and SH were "out-of-phase" with respect to temperature. They were also smaller in magnitude (on a global scale) than were the really large climate events that are now linked to changes in atmospheric CO2/methane concentrations (Permian-Triassic, Triassic-Jurassic, PETM, etc). DO events have little in common with the current warming trend where the NH and SH are rapidly warming together. (During DO events, NH cooling was accompanied by SH warming.)
  44. Renewable Baseload Energy
    I am resentful this article was posted, as it is a bunch of half-truths at best, which damage the stellar reputability of this blog. Here is my list of objections: 1. All the "baseload renewable energy" schemes mentioned in the article are extremely expensive and therefore unrealistic as a solution. The fundamental reason for this is the same as why these energy sources were abandoned by our ancestors some 200 years ago: low energy density and finicky energy flows related to these sources. And please keep in mind that there were 1/6th of population o the planet then with 1/10 - 1/100th of per capita energy use. Even then it was not enough. Renewable energy advocates have been posting wishful thinking along these lines for well over two decades, and the complacency generated in thinking public did a lot of harm as an impediment to the necessity of actually facing the dire reality. I should say these energy sources are great in specific niches, however thinking we can build a backbone of industrial society using these sources is delusional wishful thinking, which I object to. What follows are specific objections to the mentioned energy generation schemes. 2. Concentrated Solar Thermal - great some places, untenable in others. Not every place has sunshine as regular as southern California or Spain. Few hours of energy storage do not qualify as "baseload", even in these places. Using CST as baseload in northern Europe or Canada does not add up, when there are cloudy and rainy days and weeks with little sunshine. Even in the most sunny places CST is still prohibitively expensive despite centuries of development. 3. Geothermal - great but limited to places with appropriate geology - a heat source close to the surface. Even then, some such suitable places developed earthquakes and the projects had to be abandoned (such as close to Basel in Switzerland), or the heavy metal pollution brought up from the GT wells is prohibitive (such as mercury pollution which closed GT plants in Italy). Most of the places with suitable geology are already used, or are not available for exploration. Who of the environmentalists want to convert Yellowstone National Park to a GT plant, which would supply few percent of US electricity at best? Therefore GT does not scale up to be much more useful then it already is. 4. Compressed Air Energy Storage - CAES does not compress and reuse compressed air, as the article suggests. The expanded air drops in temperature (pV = nRT), and would freeze & destroy the turbine. CAES indeed use the compressed air to aid compression stage in a gas fired turbine. In another words, CAES plant is a gas plant with efficiency improvements. We should keep in ming that there is less energy available in natgas reserves than in oil (according to BP2010 statistics), so unless we want to go with all-out fracking, which has its own dire environmental consequences, any scheme which relies on natural gas is doomed to fail, as is clearly neither renewable nor sustainable. 5. Pumped heat storage - there is no heat storage which was demonstrated to scale. 6. EV battery storage - the largest component the variable cost of running an EV is not the cost of electricity, but the battery amortization with use. In another words, cycling the battery is more expensive than the electricity it stores. Unless there is some great break-through in battery storage which would reduce battery amortization by at least an order fo magnitude, this scheme is a wishful thinking. 7. This article does not mention hydro electricity, by far the largest non-nuclear clean and sustainable source of dispatchable energy. Pumped hydro is by far the largest storage we actually have on the grid. It has issues similar to most of the above, namely it does not scale anymore, as most of the suitable locations are utilized. 8. To summarize, none of these sources can realistically replace coal as a baseload source. On the other hand, we do have a baseload energy source which readily replaces baseload coal at lower costs (in most places), and which is steady, controllable, scalable, and clean (or as clean as wind/solar in life cycle emissions) - nuclear energy. This is not to say that nuclear energy is a kind of fairy dust which does not have its issues, it is just to say that nuclear is the best of all realistic alternatives. Time we spent wishing that there was fairy dust solution to our problems is a time wasted in daydreaming.
  45. Renewable Baseload Energy
    @ Marcus I'm intersted in the rise of coal power as a dominant player. Where did you source those figures from?
  46. Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    Camburn @38, "With the above being said, CRU still did not follow the law." Please follow the link in my post @38, and then desist from perpetuating this rumour of yours. You can no longer claim to be ignorant of the facts and the truth. For now, I will ignore the other misinformation in your post regarding your interpretation of the science, as doing so would require going off-topic. But thanks for showing us all what your true motivations are.
  47. Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    Camburn is laboring under some serious misconceptions about climate-science. The models do not project the certainty that some would have you believe. This statement about climate-models indicates that he is not aware that the strongest evidence linking CO2 with global-warming isn't climate models; it's physical evidence obtained from the Earth's crust by paleoclimatologists. Even if every single climate-model result were thrown out, there would still be a mountain of evidence linking CO2 to global-warming. The trend in temp since 1850 has been up. The long term trend since 8000 BP is still down. These are known facts. Had Camburn done his homework before posting here, he would have realized that the causes of the downward 8000-year trend and upward 160-year trend are well-understood by climatologists. The 8000-year downward trend is a result of the Earth's decreasing tilt that is causing a reduction in the amount of solar energy being received at the high latitudes. This is one of the Milankovitch-cycle orbital components. The recent warming is a result of human-caused CO2 emissions interrupting the very gradual multi-thousand-year Milankovitch-cycle-forced cooling trend. This is no mystery to those who have done their homework. There have been climate shifts that dwarf what is occuring now with no good explanation. They are called DO events. The DO events were regional, not global. And the most of the major global climate shifts that have dwarfed what we have seen in recent decades are tied to concentrations in atmospheric CO2. Continued uncontrolled CO2 emissions will certainly result in climate-shifts comparable with the largest ones in the past -- and on a much more-compressed time-scale. Before Camburn posts here again, he would be well-advised to spend an hour of time watching this video: http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
  48. Renewable Baseload Energy
    What Dana has not talked about is the smart grid to control loads, HVDC lines for more efficient transmission of power. North Dakota has plans to sell wind power to Chicago over HVDC lines. Today we have the equivalent of the dumb grid. There is very little control over peak loads. Being able to shut down loads intermittently would be able to reduce power by about 20%. Also tieing the grids together in a national grid would bring the cost of power due to the ability to have more competition. With a cap and trade program or some funding source, we would be able to modernize our power lines to handle our energy needs more intelligently.
  49. Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    Camburn, The emails were not leaked. Police have revealed that at around the same time as the CRU emails were hacked, several other climate centres (e.g., CCCMA) survived attempted hacks into their systems. The thieves also hacked into the RealClimate server and uploaded the stolen emails together with a message.
  50. Climategate: Impeding Information Requests?
    kdkd@37, Like most "skeptics", Camburn, is clearly partisan beyond the pale. While several posters here, including me, and the Sir Russell Inquiry have acknowledged that UEA/CRU may have not dealt with the vexatious FoIA issue appropriately-- Camburn, like most "skeptics", will never concede any wrong doing by the likes of McIntyre (Wegman maybe?) and company. More importantly, last time I looked CRU/UEA did not break any FoIA laws, despite what some on the internet are claiming. Camburn et al. need to please read this, in which they state: "A subsequent letter to UEA from the ICO (29 January 2010) indicated that no breach of the law has been established; that the evidence the ICO had in mind about whether there was a breach was no more than prima facie; and that the FOI request at issue did not concern raw data but private email exchanges". The double standard of the skeptics only acts to make the credibility that they so dearly crave even further out of reach. They are fooling no-one except themselves. In fact this whole series of James has been a delightful illustration that "skeptics" have no interest in objectivity, facts or truth. They seem much happier to entertain conspiracy theories, malign scientists and perpetuate myths and misinformation to distract themselves and others from the fact that the planet is continuing to accumulate energy, mostly because of anthropogenic GHGs. To be honest, I find such behavior by the "skeptics" rather sickening.

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