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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 104851 to 104900:

  1. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    RSVP@90 You make a good point! I wasn't shrugging anything off. My comparison was with a really massive increase in nuclear energy (mainly), probably bigger than is practically or physically possible. In which case renewables are probably better because they don't add to the system, they take an existing input from a 'nuclear' source external to the Earth.
  2. Berényi Péter at 21:00 PM on 11 November 2010
    Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    #88 Marcus at 11:03 AM on 11 November, 2010 your desperate attempts to defend a dirty & inefficient source of power-straight out of the 19th century (i.e. coal)-are really quite quaint. I am not defending coal. I am just trying to tell you land use efficiency of coal based power generation is up to a hundred times better than that of solar (mining, transportation & waste disposal included). It is a fact. Even in a worst case scenario when the plant is located far away from the mine its efficiency in this respect is more than ten times better. Of course nuclear outperforms coal by another factor of ten-to-a-hundred, so we should clearly go for it. Yet your increasingly specious reasoning betrays the weakness of your original argument-that being the use of a 30 year old solar farm to "prove" that solar power is a bad investment. Sarnia Solar Farm in Ontario, Canada is not a 30 year old thing, it is being built right now by Enbridge using state of the art thin film PV collectors purchased from First Solar in the 3rd quarter of 2010. I do not think it is a bad investment either. At least as long as the public lets the Government collect the money for an expensive PR campaign of an oil company (that's what Sarnia is about), it's just a piece of cake. I mean, if you want to quibble over numbers, then I can always talk about [...] Well, there is a several thousand years old European tradition which involves extensive quibbling over numbers before making decisions called "rational" by the natives. This tradition may be fading away in Europe quickly, but during an aggressive past period of European history known as "colonization" it was exported mindlessly all over the world using transient military might and may still be practiced in backwater corners. I am glad the New World is proudly joining the fight for getting rid of this old burden. Plain talk is so much nicer and as you say, we can always do that almost effortlessly. This means that, even for this poorly lit region of the world-using the most inefficient solar panels of the time-should get around 16 Watts/square meter. The 14.2 W/m2 efficiency for net panel surface claimed by Enbridge is not much less than that. However, land use efficiency also includes the necessary tilting of panels (to optimize insolation angle), gaps to avoid shading, service roads & buildings, etc. BTW Sarnia is not so poorly lit as you claim. In June it gets 24% more power flux at TOA than the equator and even the annual average is only 24% less here than there. The atmosphere may be a bit more transparent in arid or semi arid regions (except for airborne dust), but destroying sensitive desert ecosystems by building extensive road systems there, sending in heavy machinery over large areas and turning them into tramped down construction sites (remember the meager land use efficiency) is not always a good idea. Also, large population and industrial centers tend to be outside deserts, so power transmission losses also come into play. Yet, as I've said before-ad nauseum-the *real* beauty of photovoltaics is that you don't need to build them as "Solar Farms", you just build them on available roof spaces-& other vacant areas-& you can get the equivalent of a power station. I would agree with that. Except if the technology is far too expensive for large scale installations, it is even more expensive for a distributed system. We should clearly wait until price of solar panels gets closer to that of ordinary roof tile. Anyway, if you do not have local energy storage capacity, electricity generated on rooftops is not terribly useful. Of course it can be used for air conditioning, because it is sunny most of the time when it is hot, but PV panels make a low albedo (dark) surface per definitionem, collecting heat effectively and making electricity as a byproduct just to get rid of this heat using complicated machinery. Does it make sense? Painting rooftops white may be a low tech solution compared to this, but it is much cheaper. Pre-heating water with old style solar heat collectors to be used by washing machines, dishwashers, in shower and family pools may also make more sense on rooftops, than PV. On the other hand, if you could store the electricity generated in sunny hours locally for later use, when it is really needed, that would be a game changer. Unfortunately current battery packs are both prohibitively expensive and are turned into highly toxic waste at the end of their lifetime. Proper handling of toxic waste distributed all over the country is a real nightmare. We are clearly a technological breakthrough or two away from efficient, cheap and benign storage.
  3. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Bern: "I think the 2.25% figure comes from considering the entire area of the facility, which is four times the area of the actual solar panels.| Yes that is what I was thinking overnight (UK). That was the only explanation. That is a distinct distortion of any engineering or scientific methodology that is credible. He is mixing up economic calculations with engineering calculations, in a way misleading way. The only currently reasonable way of using watts per metre squared calculations regarding solar panels is for comparisons with other solar power stations. Once you go beyond that, and start using pseudo economic/engineering calculations to make comparisons with other options, the simple calculations break down dramatically. Even my assumption that you can reduce it to the solar panel area and compare it to a coal fired power station, is clearly incorrect, but is is less of a bodge than Berényi Péters attempt.
  4. Real experts don't know everything
    Norman, you arent going to find proof. This is science after all. There is always the possibility that human imagination will create a better model that explains all of existing observation and more. What you do have though is a theory of climate (of which AGW is an outcome), based on fundamental physics that has proved exceedingly good at predicting climate and accounting for paleoclimate. What have got for a competing theory? That somehow physics is all wrong and some deep unexplained phenomena is responsible instead? Any other aspects of your life where you would take kind of bet? As for cycles, of course there are cycles, with real physical causes, not some mystery. Now are you comfortable with 1st law thermodynamics? If some "cycle" (outside any that we know and account for) is moving energy enough to account for surface temperature trend, then where is that energy coming from?
  5. Tai Chi Temperature Reconstructions
    "any educated person " - how about cutting the rhetoric and getting educated? Start with IPCC WG1, then come back here. "Finally, various data must be discounted due to spoliation-- particularly ice-core samples, which are completely worthless due to polar-ice temperatures ALWAYS rising above the -70C maximum required for validity." Care to give us a cite for this amazing opinion?
  6. CO2 effect is saturated
    Norman - so? So do various fossil fuel shills. Does he have any expertise in climate science, radiative physics etc? Has he published his critique in peer-reviewed journal? If you don't have enough expertise in an area to be able to evaluate competing claims, (I'm assuming you havent been able to follow the critiques above) then unfortunately you have either got to acquire the expertise yourself, preferably from textbooks and papers, or you have to rely on expert opinion from people actively working in the field with appropriate domain knowledge. Now where in physical geography do they teach thermodynamics and radiative physics? Not my idea of expert opinion. In my opinion, if you are interested in climate science, then you start with IPCC WG1. This reflects the published science and gives you an almighty index into it. You can see what is actually claimed rather than the zillions of strawmen that denialists like to doubt. You dont have to agree with the assessment but at least you get it one place. If you are looking a "skeptic" claims, then only bother with what's been published for reasons I stated earlier.
  7. CO2 effect is saturated
    #58 Daniel Bailey, "Let me ask you this, Norman: Post-1976, what forcings other than CO2 have had any significance on global temperatures? Simple question, right?" Yes and Climate4you does have an alternative forcing. If I am successful I will Post the graph. Alternate forcing that can affect Global temps. Quote from the page on Climate4you that had this graph (from the Homepage click the Climate & Clouds tab): "Within the still short period of satellite cloud cover observations, the total global cloud cover reached a maximum of about 69 percent in 1987 and a minimum of about 64 percent in 2000 (see diagram above), a decrease of about 5 percent. This decrease roughly corresponds to a radiative net change of about 0.9 W/m2 within a period of only 13 years, which may be compared with the total net change from 1750 to 2006 of 1.6 W/m2 of all climatic drivers as estimated in the IPCC 2007 report, including release of greenhouse gasses from the burning of fossil fuels. These observations leave little doubt that cloud cover variations may have a profound effect on global climate and meteorology on almost any time scale considered"
  8. Tai Chi Temperature Reconstructions
    Overall: a tentative 1-degree shift over a 150-year period is hardly what any educated person might call "conclusive." Likewise, simply averaging various claimed indicators is no "magic carpet" to the truth, without weighting each according to its respective accuracy. Finally, various data must be discounted due to spoliation-- particularly ice-core samples, which are completely worthless due to polar-ice temperatures ALWAYS rising above the -70C maximum required for validity. Overall, this article simply assumes far too much-- and discounts far too *little*-- to be considered reliable in even its conservative conclusion.
    Moderator Response: You have posted the same claim about ice cores in at least five different threads on this site. Please do not spread discussions of a single, narrow topic across many different threads. Another commenter (KR) has already responded to your claims in the thread where you first posted this material ((What does past climate change tell us about global warming?), so it would be a good idea to respond there. Thank you.
  9. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    The Ville #78 "The solar panel would cause a delay in warming via conduction or emission. eg. if it was hundred percent efficient, eventually the energy would be converted to heat or work by the device(s) it was connected to. But this energy would escape, as it does in the natural world." It's funny you shrug off that "small" detail when in fact supposed warming due to delays in cooling brought on by anthropogenic CO2 enshrines the cornerstone of AGW theory.
  10. CO2 effect is saturated
    #57 scaddenp The person who runs Climate4you, has a lot of peer-reviewed publications.
  11. Real experts don't know everything
    #38 Daniel Bailey "So, your eyes show you that, considering all the data, the world is warming. Polar amplification is taking out the multiyear ice in the Arctic. Put aside your cognitive bias and first prove the globe is not warming." I can't prove the globe is not warming. In fact my opinion is that it warms and cools in cycles not fully understood at this time. I am sure of one thing, climate seems to cycle. More cycles. On your link it shows Siberia as one of the locations warming the fastest. This is the claimed proof of AGW as CO2 warms polar areas devoid of water vapor (the dominant greenhouse gas) and also is at a temp where the IR spectrum peak is closer to the 15 micron wavelength maximizing CO2 GH effect. Here is a link that questions the warming of the Siberian region. Questions the Global anomaly of Siberian Temps.
  12. Real experts don't know everything
    #40 Daniel Bailey I have read Goddard's report (I visit WUWT as often as these sites). I was not sure how his idea worked. If a gas is compressed it will heat up, but then it will give up its heat to it surroundings. It will not stay hot.
  13. Real experts don't know everything
    #39 Tom Dayton I have already been there and posted some questions. I posted at Venusian mysteries part-two.
  14. Real experts don't know everything
    PaulPS: Other than the implied assumption I might do that, thanks for the advice. I'm very sorry I gave you that impression. That wasn't my intention at all. The point of my comment was simply that the "Ken treatment" resulted from an approach that was insulting and — as JC notes above — totally unnecessary. I certainly didn't intend to cast any aspersions on you.
    Moderator Response: This is not targeted at either Phila or PaulPS, just a general request: No more discussion in this thread of who may or may not have insulted whom, please. The comment that started this all should never have been posted, and nothing more needs to be said about it. Thanks!
  15. Real experts don't know everything
    Re: Norman (37) Um, you haven't been reading anything by Steve Goddard have you? Full discussion of the Venus Syndrome here. The Yooper
  16. Real experts don't know everything
    Norman, there is an excellent series of posts about Venus on the Science of Doom site Venusian Mysteries.
  17. Ice-Free Arctic
    Thanks, Dodger! Busy day on tap tomorrow, but I'll check that out tomorrow night. Looks cool (sorry)! BTW, my wife and son went to the MSU:UM game this year (I had to work on getting ready to move into our new house out of the old one). Lucky buggers. The Yooper
  18. Real experts don't know everything
    Re: Norman (35) The point is...that climate change is measured in terms of anomalies, not temps. That is a very, very basic underlying principle in climate science. Temps are weather. The trend in temperature anomalies over a long enough period of time to be statistically significant is called climate. Here is the change in the global temperature anomalies over 1980-2010 vs the 1951-1980 baseline in degrees C (multiply by 1.8 to convert to F). Please note the graph of zonal mean by latitude at the bottom of the linked page. Mean anything to you? No cherry-picking of stations, no focus on individual years or temperature not contextually similar to other temps due to seasons, locations, etc. No detrending of temps to hide the inclines. Just the good stuff: all of the data for a 30-year chunk of time relative to another 30-year chunk of time. So, your eyes show you that, considering all the data, the world is warming. Polar amplification is taking out the multiyear ice in the Arctic. Put aside your cognitive bias and first prove the globe is not warming. The Yooper
  19. Ice-Free Arctic
    Daniel: Here's a sobering read "A World without Ice", Henry Pollack (2009). This could be like quaffing Jaggie and Red bull after a Spartans game! But what a head-ache the day after...
  20. Real experts don't know everything
    Asking the Experts. I still am not convinced the high surface temp of Venus is caused by "runaway" Greenhouse. I am looking for a IR spectrum of CO2 at Venus pressure and concentration (it seems certain some lab has run it). Does CO2 begin to absorb more of the IR spectrum at elevated pressure? Under normal conditions of 100% CO2 it absorbs at two bands that do not cover much of the total spectrum. I am not sure it is not the highly reflective clouds that retain the radiation. It would seem that if not for the highly reflective clouds, IR would be pouring out of Venus at all bands not absorbed by CO2.
  21. Real experts don't know everything
    Re: Bob Guercio (15) Big Tobacco had a hand in many pies. For example, Winston was a sponsor of the Flintstones at one time (ah, the days of the old B & W TV's...). The Yooper
  22. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Karamanski: Here is Wang and McPhaden (2000) "The Surface-Layer Heat Balance in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean. Part II: Interannual Variability." This paper discusses the surface-layer heat balance on interannual timescales in the equatorial Pacific to determine the processes responsible for sea surface temperature (SST) variability. This seminal paper has been cited in 79 Articles published in peer-reviewed Scientific Journals, including 10 in the last year.
  23. Real experts don't know everything
    Even though an expert in a given field will possess a greater amount of knowledge than a non-expert, it will still not prevent human emotion from bias. Climate science is very complex. Any system with numerous variables and a chaotic connection between them can easily allow human bias (the desire to be right, ego) to paint a picture favorable to ones preference (be it Warmist or Denier). It is not a simple hard science like measuring gravitational attraction. Much more wiggle room. Here is an example. Antartic temps. What is the temperature of Antartica? I sent a link with current Antartica temps. The range is around 100 F. If my current belief was that the World was warming and Antartica was warmer, I could prove this by rejecting a few of the lower temps from the group and coming up with a slightly warmer temp. Likewise if I felt the Earth was cooling, I would be inclined to think Antartica was cooler and I could throw out few of the warmer temps. Both calculations will give and average temp of Antartica and neither are false. They will be different. The point is that with the Earth's large daily temp range (about 200 F) you can find a 1 or 2 F trend going up if you want. Is it real? Maybe. No matter how many web sites I visit. RealClimate, Skeptical Science, Science of Doom I still have not seen definate proof for AGW.
  24. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Well to be honest, I have actually had some input into science education. My beef is that it is too easily (and usually) taught as natural history. Its scientists that learn the observe-model-predict-observe cycle and disciplines to try and avoid fooling yourself. I'd like that to be taught early, to everyone. Learn to use scientific method as BS detector (Sagan's "candle in a demon-haunted world") - but this is something of a digression from this thread...
  25. CO2 effect is saturated
    Re: Norman (55) This page. By taking the underlying signal (Figure C) out of the data, you homogenize (Figure D) the data. When you take the pits out of the cherries, is what is left really a cherry? Let me ask you this, Norman: Post-1976, what forcings other than CO2 have had any significance on global temperatures? Simple question, right? The Yooper
  26. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Hey now, muon--why single out the humanities? High school "poets" may not be the most critical of critters, but of the vocal "skeptics," I'd wager most are engineers and business types--Ayn Rand-reading folk who understand enough science to make them confidently dangerous.
  27. CO2 effect is saturated
    Norman, thank for that. Now to why I wanted it. Firstly, the claim that 1981-2005 represents a unique new trend is Climate4you, not IPCC. The text never uses the word unique. There is no argument easier to demolish than a strawman. Note how John does it here? He quotes the skeptic claim verbatum with pointer to source of origin. What DOES the IPCC paragraph claim. 1/ The earth is warming, stratosphere cooling in accordance with models. 2/ It details the nature of the warming. 3/ It outlines the basis of the measurement 4/ It notes the consilience of measurements with sea-level rise, glacial melt etc. It also claims that the temperature rise is consistant with modelling of known forcings (GHG, aerosol). As to climate4you's claim that he/she has shown CO2 is not the dominant factor since 1975, as noted above in posts, he/she has only shown a misunderstanding of the actual climate predictions - trying to demolish what the physics doesnt claim.
  28. CO2 effect is saturated
    #44 Tom Dayton Thanks for the link to the posts concerning Outgoing Longwave Radiation. I am reading through the posts working to understand the content. I do love learning.
  29. CO2 effect is saturated
    #37 Daniel Bailey at 07:28 AM on 10 November, 2010 Re: Climate4you stuff Went to Norman's website source for his graph & poked around a bit. On this page I noted that: 1. All data is in absolute temps, not anomalies 2. They establish the post-industrial runup in the temperature trend and use that trend to de-trend the signal in the data. I.e., they "hide the incline" in the 20th Century temperature data. 3. They attribute 100% of CO2's effects on temperatures when comparing the CO2 rise to temps, showing that since temps don't rise in lockstep with CO2 levels it can't be the CO2 affecting temps 4. They use a paper by Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu as a basis to say that any warming since the LIA is just a reflection of the Earth returning to "normal" and that it's a natural cycle. Trenberth demolished Akasofu here. The whole site is a bait-trap for the unwary. The Yooper Not sure what page you looked at. They have several graphs using anomalies. He did not claim CO2 did not effect temp...Direct quote from the page. "Consequently, the complex nature of the relation between global temperature and atmospheric CO2 since at least 1958 therefore represents an example of empirical falsification of the hypothesis ascribing dominance on the global temperature by the amount of atmospheric CO2. Clearly, the potential influence of CO2 must be subordinate to one or several other phenomena influencing global temperature. Presumably, it is more correct to characterize CO2 as a contributing factor for global temperature changes, rather than a dominant factor."
  30. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    #3: "indicates more total energy in the system." More energy? Perhaps stated another way: the measure of the total energy of this type of system is ... temperature?
  31. CO2 effect is saturated
    #50 scaddenp The actual wording in the IPCC report is "Note that for shorter recent periods, the slope is greater,indicating accelerated warming." Link to source: IPCC page used in the Climate4you section. Quote from the Climate4you web page: "From the text above the period 1981-2005 is identified by IPCC as being unique, representing a new trend characterised by an accelerated temperature rise. The accelerated temperature increase is suggested to be caused by atmospheric increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, assumed to dominate the observed warming after the mid-1970s.
  32. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Wang and McPhaden (1998) discuss these effects in this paper, "The Surface-Layer Heat Balance in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean. Part I: Mean Seasonal Cycle" There is a complex interplay between vertical mixing, seasonal surface winds, and meridonal transport (N-S ocean currents). Overall, the ENSO cycle seems to be accelerating, which indicates more total energy in the system.
  33. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    I'm not a scientist but that's the way I read it. La Nina is the absorbing phase, el Nino is the releasing phase for heat exchange between the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean.
  34. Ice-Free Arctic
    Re: Artful Dodger (56) Sounds like time for a beer then. Because the world is going to find out what the loss of the Northern Hemisphere's refrigeration system is going to mean. Didn't think it would happen on our watch. The next melt season will be fun, though. The Yooper
  35. Ice-Free Arctic
    Too right, Daniel. In 2007 persistent winds herded Sea Ice into an anomalously small Extent, but the resulting compaction actually preserved ice that would otherwise have melted earlier. In 2008, -09 and -10, spreading sea ice resulted in dramatic melt, as measured by Volume. We have perhaps only 2 or 3 years until all the multiyear sea ice in the Arctic is gone.
  36. Skeptical Science moving into solutions
    There are pros and cons which need to be carefully considered. My own web site, www.climatechangeanswers.org, presents both the science and solutions in a way that is generally well received. However, my site is not a forum, and I agree that www.skepticalscience.com needs to keep focused on a job it currently does very well. Of course, with the follow-up to Copenhagen in Mexico in just two weeks time, and most nations accepting the science, we all need to start thinking about solutions. Contrary to the perceptions expressed by some above, the amount of solid academic material on solutions to climate change is huge. It also occurred to me that venturing into solutions might best be done through a sister site, but that may not be practical given the current site is already stretching John. Provided the structure of the site around skeptics’ arguments and rebuttals remains unchanged, articles on solutions might be accommodated as periodic guest posts without adversely affecting the site’s reputation. On my own site I divide solutions into technological, economic and political pages. That is probably the logical order of progression, so if this site moves into solutions, the technological area is probably the best place to start. Proposals would need to be first shown to be scientifically feasible, and subsequently shown to be economically feasible.
  37. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    #56: "What the hell are they teaching in science in schools?" Now, now, scadden, every school must have its top-of-the-class and those who major in 'Rocks for Jocks' or 'Science for Poets' or even 'Computers for Poets'. The good news is that these bottom-dwellers can find full employment -- as yes-men to the Watt$ of the world.
  38. Real experts don't know everything
    Re: PaulPS It's been my experience here, first as a longtime lurker, then an occasional questioner to someone now able to answer most questions without shooting myself in the foot (well, mostly), that all posing questions framed honestly are treated with respect and dignity. Which reflects the majority of questioners. I have been known to spend several hours researching the answers to questions put to me. As have others here. But at the same time, we're human. And it does get exasperating to answer the same questions from the same questioners for the umpteenth time. And to rebunk the same debunked zombie memes over and over again. Sometime from the same poster. And sometimes people get personal here. Hence the need for the Comments Policy. It IS possible to disagree without being disagreeable. Most of the time, the sub-thread involving KL would not have gone far, as the Mods do a pretty good job catching the egregious comments. But sometimes, as evidenced by John's in-line comment, some bad ones slips through the cracks. Which is why, in this case, I advocated for it to be left as a teaching moment (rather than deleting a bunch of comments). For most people, being polite and courteous comes naturally. And enhances the learning potential for everyone reading. So we (I) look forward to trying to help answer any questions you may have here. Honestly, and politely. Like the Boy Scout I was raised to be (OK, never made it to Eagle Scout...but I was a Boy Scout). The Yooper
    Moderator Response: Thank you for encouraging politeness and reminding us all about the Comments Policy. Now let's see if we can get this discussion back on topic.
  39. Real experts don't know everything
    Phila at 11:39 AM on 11 November, 2010 Other than the implied assumption I might do that, thanks for the advice.
  40. Real experts don't know everything
    PaulPS @31: However, if I ask a question or bring up a controversial point, I'd prefer not to get the Ken treatment! Fair enough? As long as you don't go out of your way to be offensive and insulting, and can refrain from accusing thousands of scientists you've never met of being dupes or frauds without offering any evidence whatsoever, I think you're very unlikely to get the "Ken treatment."
  41. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Since La Nina cools global surface temperatures by cooler water upwelling from the depths to the surface and absorbing heat from the atmosphere, wouldn't La Nina accelerate the warming of the oceans by increasing the transfer of heat from the atmosphere into the oceans?
  42. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Bern @ 87. The best *commercially available* solar panels have a conversion efficiency of 24%-& it would be hard to find one with anything less than a 16% conversion efficiency. There are models in the Lab which currently get greater than a 40% conversion efficiency. All of this progress is being made on, virtually, the "smell of an oily rag"-in terms of R&D funding.
  43. Real experts don't know everything
    I have been observing this site for at least a year or so to get informed, and learn a little about Climate Science from both sides. However, if I ask a question or bring up a controversial point, I'd prefer not to get the Ken treatment! Fair enough?
    Response: The main issue with Ken's comment was the "religious belief in alarmist AGW" comment. It was perfectly possible for him to make his scientific arguments without resorting to that ad hominem. If I'd been awake at the time, I would've deleted the comment as it violates our comments policy. By the time I woke up this morning, a whole discussion had sprung from it and in those cases, I just have to cut my losses. Note to moderators - any ad hominem comments that equate the other side to having religious beliefs should be deleted.
  44. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Wow Beranyi, your desperate attempts to defend a dirty & inefficient source of power-straight out of the 19th century (i.e. coal)-are really quite quaint. Yet your increasingly specious reasoning betrays the weakness of your original argument-that being the use of a 30 year old solar farm to "prove" that solar power is a bad investment. I mean, if you want to quibble over numbers, then I can always talk about the Transmission & Distribution losses from Coal Power stations (about 10% to 12% of total capacity in most areas), or the vast amounts of electricity generated-between 8pm & 8am-that never get used. Your claims regarding solar panel efficiency are entirely off-beam, btw. Solar panels being sold on the market at the time had an average conversion efficiency of about 10%-12% (some were even as high as around 20% around 2006-2008). This means that, even for this poorly lit region of the world-using the most inefficient solar panels of the time-should get around 16 Watts/square meter. The only thing I will agree on is Bern's point about the folly of building a solar farm so close to the Pole. In more appropriate regions (pretty much anything south of Canada), the *real* energy density of solar panels is much closer to the numbers I've previously cited-& its improving pretty much every year, whilst prices continue to drop (current US price is about $3.50/Watt). Yet, as I've said before-ad nauseum-the *real* beauty of photovoltaics is that you don't need to build them as "Solar Farms", you just build them on available roof spaces-& other vacant areas-& you can get the equivalent of a power station. For instance, the average residential rooftop in Australia can easily fit about 4kw worth of solar panels. Now even if we assume only 1 million such homes being available for fitting, that comes to 4 million KW of peak power-or about 4,000MW-the equivalent of about 4 regular sized coal-fired power stations, without displacing a single acre of farm land, national park or urban development area. Try doing that with a coal power station & see how far you get.
  45. Ice-Free Arctic
    Re: Artful Dodger (52) Digested the links. Sobering. From 2004 to 2009 (using ICESAT data), 336 cubic miles of multiyear ice, or about 3 times the volume of Lake Erie (if represented as ice), has been lost to melt, not advection out the Fram or other exits. Gone. See ya, ne'er-pass-this-way-again. Finito. And under the column 'Peak year of loss' for $200? Any takers? Bueller? Nope, not 2007. 2008 lost about 50% more ice due to melt than 2007. Think on that for a minute. So much for the "recovery". The next summer with a strong Arctic Dipole sees an ice-free pole. Especially if it coincided with a strong El-Nino and/or a wakening sun. If not 2011, then 2012 becomes likely... We live in interesting times. The Yooper
  46. Berényi Péter at 10:24 AM on 11 November 2010
    CO2 effect is saturated
    #48 Albatross at 05:50 AM on 11 November, 2010 Berényi Péter, Please clarify. Do you believe that the CO2 effect is saturated? Of course it is, in most of the 14 μm - 16 μm (wavenumber 625 cm-1 - 710 cm-1) absorption band. In this frequency range effective height of the photosphere (the region from where photons have a reasonable chance to escape to space) is above 20 km, well in the stratosphere. As there is a thermal inversion there (the higher one goes the hotter it gets), with increasing CO2 levels outgoing thermal radiation increases (this is why it is not shown in Harris 2001). There are two narrow bands on both sides of this range which belong to the wings of multiple absorption lines there. In these bands CO2 IR optical depth is close to unity and this is where effective height of photosphere is still below the tropopause. In the troposphere temperature usually decreases with increasing height, so at a specific wavelength more CO2 means less outgoing radiation. On the low wavenumber (long wave) side there are strong H2O absorption lines as well, so the effect only works in an extremely dry troposphere (mostly in the polar regions where low level dry-freezing occurs). Therefore stuff usually happens only at the upper edge of the 8-14 μm main atmospheric thermal IR window (lower edge of wavenumber 710 - 1250 cm-1). In this frequency region there are no major absorption lines (except O3 lines around 1040 cm-1), just the somewhat mysterious water vapor continuum. Partial pressure of water vapor decreases more rapidly with increasing height than that of carbon dioxide, so at frequency bands dominated by H2O absorption effective thickness of photosphere is much smaller. Therefore outgoing thermal IR radiation in these regions is extremely sensitive to minor variations of water vapor distribution. As atmospheric H2O distribution is fractal-like on a scale spanning many orders of magnitude, this effect is neither modeled nor measured sufficiently.
  47. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    As much as I think Berenyi Peter's arguments about facility area are specious & misleading, there does seem to be a point regarding the potential income from that plant. 120,000MWh/yr at 3.85c/kWh is only $4.6m per year in revenue, if you sell the power at prevailing wholesale rates. Not a very good return from a $300m investment (just a smidgeon above 1.5%). On the other hand, you could say that solar panels at the north pole are a poor investment, and you'd probably be right. Somewhat closer to the equator, on the other hand, the numbers might change a bit... and then there's the whole other question of "how much money is it worth spending to avoid catastrophic global warming?" Of course, we want to spend that money in the most efficient way possible. Putting solar panels in far northern or southern latitudes is probably not the way to go. The Ville @ #83: I think the 2.25% figure comes from considering the entire area of the facility, which is four times the area of the actual solar panels. Not sure where the 8.94% efficiency for the panels comes from - I thought that most panels were getting closer to 15-20% these days, but must admit I haven't checked the numbers lately.
  48. CO2 effect is saturated
    Thank you scaddenp :)
  49. Philippe Chantreau at 10:21 AM on 11 November 2010
    Real experts don't know everything
    KL throws out a funny again. With UAH, the models were right and the "data" wrong. Willis ran into the same thing. Instances of model right/obs. wrong are numerous across many fields. Models based on physics should always be trusted over measurements made with sensititve equipment subject to many potential errors. It's funny how skeptics are also eager to cast suspicion on obseved data if it does not show what they want.
  50. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Yet still, at the end of the day, we're left with the fact that you *can't* build a coal power station *without* significant disruption to the landscape-whereas you can build the *equivalent* of a solar power station *without* disruption to the landscape-by using roof-top space, road-sides & other spaces in the city & suburbs that currently go unused. Heck, they're even talking about putting solar into window tinting material & just under the surface of roads! The reality is that, when you account for the power station, the coal mine & the land used to dump toxic fly-ash waste, the environmental footprint of a coal power station is *huge* compared to solar farms-even ones that use technology that was nearly 10 years old when construction began. Given recent leaps forward in conversion efficiency, we can expect the footprint of the latter technology to keep dropping-regardless of where its built-whereas the footprint of coal power will always remain very large!

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