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Comments 19301 to 19350:
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nigelj at 12:22 PM on 21 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
Regarding the comment by WatrWise "Do individual people living in developed countries bear any responsibility for climate change? Remember individual people in developed countries will ultimately have to bear the cost of any mitigation of climate change."
I do not understand this question. Does it mean are individuals responsible for causing climate change as against other parties? Or does it mean are individuals responsible for reducing emissions, as perhaps against governments or corporations? Or does it mean are individuals in the west responsible for problems caused by people in the third world?
But here are some attempted answers. Individuals are causing climate change varying dependent on their lifestyle. That much is obvious.
But governments and corporations are responsible for causation as well by continuing to drill for oil, and by not offering alternatives that we know have viability: renewable power, recharging stations for electric cars,etc.
Individuals are responsible for fixing the problem as an issue of personal responsibility as noted above. But it goes further, I would contend its always ideal that individuals take the initiative, but history shows this doesn't always work sufficiently to resolve community scale problems, so communities and governments have historically imposed rules, taxes and limits.
Certain corporations also have a responsibility for both causing climate change, and reducing emissions. Again it would be nice if they didn't have to be asked, but history shows corporations have a poor record of using their own initiative in fixing environmental problems, so governments have set rules, penalties, and sometimes taxes (that dreaded word, do forgive me).
I dont think individuals in the western world have responsibility for choices made by people in other countries, but given western countries have been the biggest emitters, and some small countries could end up in dire straits over climate change, the humane thing is to assist, just as countries often do with other natural disasters.
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Eclectic at 11:26 AM on 21 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
Watrwise @11 ,
on your first point ("call for action"), the required realistic actions are very obvious — reduce CO2 emissions to "net zero" as quickly as practicable. Perhaps it is better to turn the question around :- What realistic actions do you consider should be taken?
Second point :- for 30 years or more, the scientists have been pointing out that the AGW problem is severe — yet ultimately it is the politicians that bear the responsiblity for action & inaction. But the Past is unchangeable : so it is better if you turn your attention to dealing with the present & the future.
Your third point really leads back to the fundamental question :- Are you your Brother's Keeper? Society is made up of individuals. And so each individual has personal responsibility to contribute to the health of present & future society (and the health of the planet itself, of course). Can you argue otherwise?
Watrwise, you raise a large number of other points — but those are relatively trivial in comparison with your first three. Best if you address & discuss the first 3, before proceeding.
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nigelj at 11:15 AM on 21 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
WatrWise @11, your post is a very long list of rhetorical questions. I find such long lists of questions to be by definition content free, and extremely irritating, reminding me of aggressive lawyers, so it just gets my back up, and is not conducive to open and useful discussion.
One or two perceptive rhetorical questions can clarify, but your list of over 10 is just ridiculous. We are not your students, Mr / Mss Waterwse.
It's especially frustrating because I know a simple google search would answer many of your questions, so why didn't you just do that first?
And most of your questions are off topic.
One point is worth comment because it demonstrates what I'm getting at. You say "Over 120 years and science cannot accurately predict climate change, even with evolving technology; why?"
If you had done a simple google search, or taken a more relaxed approach to your writing, instead of trying to intimidate people with long lists, you would know that some climate influences are known to be chaotic or variable (like el nino cycles) and so models will probably never be 100% accurate, no matter what technology is available, same issue as predicting outcomes of illness. But climate models have shown useful and reasonable levels of accuracy.
Sceptics like have been told this a million times, and still dont get it. I mean it gets to a point that you are just exasperating, and I dont want to know you people any more.
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pjcarson2015 at 11:13 AM on 21 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #24
The Greenhouse effect is a temperature - that resulting from the heat held by all the gases in the atmosphere.
Therefore, ALL gases in the atmosphere are greenhouse gases.[It is immaterial how the gases absorb this heat, eg by convection, conduction, diffusion or infrared. That is an (infra) red herring!]
The amount of heat each gas component holds is roughly in proportion to its percentage.
Therefore, as carbon dioxide’s level is only about 0.04%, its contribution to global warming is puny – perhaps 0.01C!Moderator Response:[PS] Sloganeering. You cant start with a incorrect understanding of the greenhouse effect and then expect to prove it wrong. Firstly, try to understand how the greenhouse effect works - virtually everything you said was wrong. I recommend Science of Doom, for good textbook treatment. If you still want to object, find an appropriate topic (use search or argument buttons at top) and support your argument with references/data. Your objection needs to fit with all of the observation/measurements made, including direct measurements.
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WatrWise at 08:21 AM on 21 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
I have signed up today after perusing your excellent website extensively over the last few weeks. Using the following webpage for conversation “How reliable are climate models?” https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm
I have three questions based on the thought process below.
• Your website infers a “call for action”. In your opinion what realistic actions should be taken?
• Does science (scientists) bear any responsibility for inaction on climate change? https://www.skepticalscience.com/loss-damage-climate-change.html
• Do individual people living in developed countries bear any responsibility for climate change? Remember individual people in developed countries will ultimately have to bear the cost of any mitigation of climate change.How reliable are climate models?
Basic description
“Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally, by land, in the air and the ocean.”
Intermediate description
“While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations.”
1. Why the subtle difference in your basic/intermediate descriptions, successful vs uncertainties?
2. Climate change identified by science in 1896; why so long for science to accept vs relatively short time span for general public? Why insist acceptance now? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science
3. Is science more certain about climate change today, compared to history? If so why the need for this website?
4. Over 120 years and science cannot accurately predict climate change, even with evolving technology; why?
5. Were comprehensive, reliable, numerous, geographically comprehensive temperature reading done worldwide, “since 1900”? What is the difference between land and air temperature?
6. How far into the future are predictive models confirmed “successful”?
7. Do ALL models use ALL pertinent data to “reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally”, as well as into future?
a) Are there multiple sets of data that can be ‘plugged’ into models to arrive at different conclusions? Which data sets are used below? What was the criteria to select those data sets?
b) Why is it hard to successfully “reproduce” existing historical data for climate change models? Just values measured historically, yes/no?
c) Since it is hard to successfully reproduce existing historical temperatures since 1900 globally in models; how hard is it to extend those models into the future?
d) When using forcing… how much data/which data ‘plugged in’ is related to human interaction relative to natural climate change? Is this a small or large ratio?
e) Are ALL models predicting future climate change confirmed by future observations?
f) What criteria was used to select the “correct” predictive models, shown below.
g) How do predictive models account for global variations in climate change?
h) How does someone decide who to believe when trying to make an informed decision about climate change?Moderator Response:[PS] We strongly prefer that discussion be kept strictly to topic. Please copy you comments on models, and place as a separate comment on the models thread. Put other questions on relevant threads. Bashing a whole lot of objections in one comment is called a "Gish gallop" and any repeat will be deleted. Please see the comments policy.
In general it is best to address questions one at a time.
Responders: Please put any responses on the appropriate thread. Thank you for your cooperation.
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nigelj at 08:07 AM on 21 June 2017New Video: John Cook and the 97 Percent
"There’s no such thing as settled science” and “science does not work by consensus”, are things we commonly hear from people who really should know better. "
I agree for all practical purposes many science theories are settled, like the earth orbiting the sun, and basic equations of gravity and the greenhouse effect. The sceptics take uncertainty in some areas of science, and try to falsely claim this means everything is uncertain. There do remain mysteries at the deepest levels of particle physics, but this doesn't obviate basic theories and laws and evidence of physics and chemistry etc, because the laws work in the real world, and you have observable cause and effect.
The climate sceptics claim theres no consensus, when there plainly is, proven by at least 5 polls and studies now, including the important Cook study. We have to use the evidence we have, and we have several consensus studies all pointing in the same direction, and all using different methods. This is a strong confluence of evidence, and we have no study showing anything significantly different, despite the fact nothing is stopping anyone trying to find a different result for over 20 years now.
Science does work by consensus. You have the majority of scientists agreeing that a theory has been sufficiently debated, and things point strongly in one direction. This is the only way we the public can have faith in a theory.
Of course nobody seriously claims a consensus is proof, and proof belongs only in mathematics, and self evidently a consensus could be ultimately proven wrong, but a consensus is based on the views of trained people, so is very significant. The duty is on people to find compelling evidence it is wrong. The climate sceptics have failed to provide a compelling critique or alternative theory for over 20 years, so its just not going to happen.
Governments often have to make policy choices based on new science, and they obviously look at majority scientific opinion, ie the consensus. There is no other sensible alternative. If governments choose to believe some eccentric, this would be irresponsible, and they would certainly need some utterly compelling reason, and they have singularly failed to provide one over climate science. Trump is a good example of somebody who has not come up with a remotely sensible reason to ignore the consensus, simply because there isn't one.
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ubrew12 at 01:20 AM on 21 June 2017Factcheck: Grenfell Tower fire and the Daily Mail’s ‘green targets’ claim
Daily Mail editorial: "The more we learn... the more it appears that the blame lies not with money but... misguided climate change targets… Was it... an attempt to slash greenhouse gas emissions?"
Uhh, how that not about money? Low-income residents in London so flush with cash they just throw it in the furnace?
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uncletimrob at 23:19 PM on 20 June 2017Factcheck: Grenfell Tower fire and the Daily Mail’s ‘green targets’ claim
This is a shocking tradgey - but worse is that Clark and others are using it to pursue their (I'll have to say) ill-informed agenda's. His stuff is some of the worst journalism I've seen, and in my opinion this one is one of his worst.
Having said that, there is more to be done to ensure a tradgey like this one does not occur again, as the main article points that quite clearly, and presents achieveable goals in residence refurbishment that I hope governments and contractors are reading.
SkS and others should continue to call out these "shonky" stories, as unfortunately they are the ones that make the popular press.
(Mod happy for you to delete anything I've written, but this has got me quite fired up)
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JWRebel at 20:39 PM on 20 June 2017Factcheck: Grenfell Tower fire and the Daily Mail’s ‘green targets’ claim
£5k extra for a £1.8million job does not seem very much to get fire-retardant material. The gas pipes in the escape stairways is real genius, regardless of doors or over-pressure in the stairwell. The whole project was about making the building somewhat more comfortable and lowering the heating costs for low-income tenants — any green targets were simply an unavoidable side-effect to stoking less fuel.
The people who planned this, both the construction people and the people in the municipal government were negligent to criminally negligent/selfish. The people in charge of oversight fell down on the job. The people trying to channel the outrage and emotion against "green goals" are cynical and perverse beyond redemption.
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Lionel A at 20:39 PM on 20 June 2017Factcheck: Grenfell Tower fire and the Daily Mail’s ‘green targets’ claim
If the final paragraphs of a BBC article are true then it becomes clear that the cladding had everything to do with the rapid spread of the fire, video bears this out too.
In a separate development, Panorama has discovered that firefighters put out the first fire at Grenfell Tower.
They were called to a fridge fire, and within minutes told residents the fire was out in the flat.
The crew was leaving the building when firefighters outside spotted flames rising up the side of the building.
Four ministers were warned about tower block fire risks
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:54 PM on 20 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
Nigelj,
I will check out "Behave".
Based on human behaviour studies that I have read about in detailed magazine articles and brief news reports and seen documentaries about, people are born with varying degrees of altruistic and selfish character qualities (along with ranges of other qualities) and their upbringing and personal experience can alter or reinforce those characteristics to different degrees (it is both Nature and Nurture with character specific Nurturing being able to make almost any character grow up to be a helpful member of society).
My issue is with the people who have grown up being encouraged to continue to be more competitively selfish, caring more about believing what they want and trying to get away with doing whatever they please than they are willing to understand how to be cooperatively helpful (be sure they do not harm others - outgrow the desire for freedom without responsibility).
What is particularly vexxing is seeing those type of people become significant Winners, with a significant percentage of their wealthy and powerful peers willing to excuse and defend their understandably unacceptable behaviour because they also have Won by getting away with behaving less acceptably (when one type of undeserving Winner gets taken down the other types of unacceptable Winners are at higher risk of also becoming losers).
That is why my point is about the need to have the Winners of the games played in society prove they ethically deserve to be Winners, prove that their actions help develop a sustainable better future for humanity (measuring their actions against the Sustainable Development Goals established in 2015 and considering penalizing bad behaviour that occurred after 1972 based on the good understanding that was established by the Stockholm Conference).
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nigelj at 14:08 PM on 20 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
OPOF @8 yes there's a certain degree of difference between the ozone issue and climate change. An ozone hole immediately affects everyone in significant parts of the world, climate change is slower and also some people may feel they can escape the effects of climate change. Clearly if you are financially really well off, it's easier to move houses, etc and insulate your children and their clildren from the consequences, or so the uber wealthy think ( in fact it may not be all that easy).
It's also a life cycle issue, as the older and more self sufficient people get the more they resent paying taxes to help others etc etc. I'm pretty relaxed and accepting about things like public health care etc, but even I have felt this a little at times, but at least make the effort to pull back and think it through a bit.
But it's almost like there are two species of humans, one accepting of some collective responsibility, taxation and public services, and one deeply resentful. You call it grown up children, and this is an apt description, but I suspect it goes beyond this and is quite deep. I have just bought a book called "Behave, by Robert Sapolsky" that looks into the biological origins of all this.
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Doug Bostrom at 10:26 AM on 20 June 2017Factcheck: Grenfell Tower fire and the Daily Mail’s ‘green targets’ claim
Nigelj's remark about pressurization of stairs is particularly correct and significant and is exactly the sort of requirement that will fall through the cracks when oversight is impoverished. It appears something was wrong with the ventilation of fire stairs at Grenfell, almost doubtless down to a matter of broken or insufficient equipment the rectification of which pales in comparison to the ultimate cost of failure. This is what's known to us plebes as "false economy."
Closer to the gist of the original post, the Daily Mail leads us to the very sadly predictable matter of false choices. As it happens, the boxes of "reasonably efficient" and "reasonably fire resistant" could both have been ticked by the addition of ~£5k for appropriately fire resistant retrofit panels, a figure obviously far less than the down payment of £5 miillion now made by the false economics of "austerity."
Similarly, we're presented with bogus choices regarding doing the responsible thing with regard to climate change relatively cheaply now, compared to the costs of letting the problem evolve in size and cost by negligence of the style we've seen practiced in the UK with regard to fire safety.
None of this is rocket science. Let alone being deeply tragic, it's embarrassingly stupid to behave this way, when we clearly know better.
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swampfoxh at 08:08 AM on 20 June 2017SkS Analogy 8 - I'll take the specialist
Dr. Giaever, President Trump and the rest of them are simply standing in the way, so we'll just have to walk around them.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:06 AM on 20 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
nigelj@7,
Regarding "Free-loaders":
I see it as the irresponsible immaturity of someone pursuing their personal interest any way they can get away with, something that is understandably unacceptable in a grown up, who is able to Win up to high levels in human societies which is the fault of the society that allows it. As John Stuart Mill advised, a society should collectively teach those type of people not to try to get away with understandably unacceptable behaviour. Responsible people do not require rules or laws regarding understandably unacceptable behaviour. The obvious example is sports which need “new” rules and revision of rules (with the challenge of effective monitoring and penalizing) because someone is discovered to be getting an advantage by doing something understandably unacceptable that is not yet Specifically Proven to be Breaking any Already Written Rule. That Sport example also applies to the economic and political games played in societies.
The required correction of the over-development of societies in the wrong direction, allowing people to grow up mere children (John Stuart Mill's description) and also allowing them to Win up to high levels of wealth and influence is the Rule of Ethics focused on the best understanding of what can be sensed and learned from to help improve the near term and distant future for a robust diversity of humanity governing over the Rules of Law and Enforcement.
Regarding a Carbon Tax:
A very effective measure would be a High Fee per unit of CO2 equivalent impact (burning fossil fuels, chopping down trees) with all of the collected money distributed equally to all members of the society including the homeless (the least fortunate).
One temporary benefit of a higher fee-rebate program would be the significant increase in wealth transfer to the less fortunate because they the impacts of their lives are well below the average level impact. But that must be recognized as a temporary benefit. It would be disastrous if a government tried to maintain that fee-rebate transfer of wealth to appear to reduce poverty. The objective is "Ending the generation of GHG impacts" not "Deciding who should pay and what can be done with the collected money".
Regarding the Ozone Hole:
The global agreement to curtail the impacts on the ozone layer was not as effective as it could have been. Though the unacceptability of certain activities was clearly understood, compromises were made that allowed continued impacts on the ozone layer by those who had the most to lose if they were required to more rapidly transition to behaving more responsibly. Basically, the worst offenders were granted permission to behave less acceptably because they were wealthy and powerful people (if the behaviour of poor people had been causing the problem it is almost certain that rapid correction would have occurred including mobilization of enhanced policing).
The agreed long term plan regarding the ozone challenge was made almost as soon as there was a reasonable understanding of the cause and the required changes to activities that had been developed.
The unacceptability of burning fossil fuels was internationally understood at the same time as the ozone problem (both are mentioned in the 1972 Stockholm Conference). Yet many of the most developed nations deliberately pursued over-development in the wrong direction long after 1972 (with many examples of irresponsibility at the highest levels of government including: The Government of Canada and Alberta trying to promote the expansion of Oil Sands extraction, and President G.W. Bush declaring that Americans do not need to change the way they live when he announced that the USA would not ratify Kyoto).
And the fight against curtailing the understandably unacceptable activity escalated as climate science became more certain about what was going on and the required changes. And the people fighting against the understanding of the required changes became wealthier and more powerful. That behaviour could be claimed to be excused because the threat to humanity was not imminent. In fact, a major tactic of the denier/delayers was to claim that other things are more urgent threats (even fabricating excuses to destabilize regions of the planet to create longer lasting cases of those distracting Alternative Threats).
The climate change challenge has exposed the unacceptability of a larger number of wealthy powerful people than the ozone challenge. And in spite of leaders in government and business knowing better since 1972 the highest impacting nations have over-developed in the wrong direction. They now claim that the required larger climate mitigation action created by their deliberate development in the wrong direction is “too expensive or unfair to them”. And it is easy to gather support in many regions for resistance to measures that would effectively rapidly curtail the understandably unacceptable behaviour.
In 1972 there clearly was less sense of significant negative consequence for the people who desired to benefit from the understandably unacceptable creation of excess GHG. The already created South Pole ozone hole and the thinning of North Pole ozone layer was a threatening real-time impact on wealthy powerful people and the populations that support/defend them. However, even today the many voters in high-impact nations are easily influenced to perceive the need to curtail their “way of living” as a Threat rather than caring to understand the Threat of their way of living. That makes it easier for wealthy and powerful people who should (and mostly do) know better to drum up support for what is understandably unacceptable behaviour, including getting support to make-up laws that do not penalize the bad behaviour they want to get away with or change laws that restrict their Freedom to Win by getting away with understandably unacceptable behaviour.
That type of Winning clearly has no future. It is actually a threat to the future of humanity. And the sooner the international community of rational considerers of distant motives develop effective ways to thwart those who attempt to Win in understandably acceptable ways, the sooner and more rapidly humanity can develop toward a truly lasting better future, climbing out of the down-ward spiral hole of damage created by those who compete to get away with being less acceptable (the real Threats).
It is very likely that the future of humanity, and effectively addressing the climate change challenge, requires a return to Successful People/Deserving Winners proving they are worthy of their wealth and influence by embodying Culture of Character traits rather than getting away with Winning because of the easier pursuit of popularity in the currently popular Cultures of Personality (Terms developed by historian Warren Sussman as presented in Susan Cain's book “Quiet - The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking” Culture of Character: Citizenship, Duty, Work, Golden deeds, Honour, Reputation, Morals, Manners, Integrity vs. Culture of Personality: “Magnetic, Fascinating, Stunning, Attractive, Glowing, Dominant, Forceful, Energetic”).
The Culture of Personality traits can easily be achieved by Mill's grown up mere children - unable to be moved by rational consideration of distant motives. But such people need significant help to understand the importance of becoming people of Character (and some of them can be expected to become angry rather than change their minds).
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SirCharles at 08:03 AM on 20 June 2017Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Northern Hemisphere vs 2016:
Moderator Response:[PS] While your image is pretty self-explanatory, please note that image only/link only posts can be confusing. An extra sentence to explain the point you are making is good.
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Mukesh Prasad at 07:30 AM on 20 June 2017Factcheck: Grenfell Tower fire and the Daily Mail’s ‘green targets’ claim
Conclusion? You lie - you are unable to reach any conclusion that doubts Climate Change. You lie in the very name of your website. Your website have never done any single thing involving "skepticism".
Skepticism means challenging the consensus. Try reading that and comprehending that - skepticism means challenging the consensus. When there was consensus in some parts of the world that earth was flat, skepticism meant arguing against that consensus. Today, arguing that earth is round may be anything else, but it's not "skepticism".
You are consensus lovers, therefore you are not skeptics. You have neverd one any single piece of honest skepticism.
You don't understand science either. Climate science? No, you don't. Real climate science involves physics and mathematics, not scientific-sounding talk.
Here is real climate science, if you can find a real scientist to challenge it and put their name on what's wrong with it - please do. Get somebody to find an error in the thermodynamics, or an error in the math.
Or act shamefully and just delete this open challenge.
http://www.mukeshprasad.com/climatechange.htmlModerator Response:[PS] We have no interest in engaging with people who will not respect our comments policy.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
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nigelj at 06:56 AM on 20 June 2017Factcheck: Grenfell Tower fire and the Daily Mail’s ‘green targets’ claim
Yes this tragedy is hardly due to green targets. This is another typical Daily Fail anti environmental article. All buildings need insulation for a variety of obvious reasons, so its absurd to blame insulation or climate mitigation policies.
I concur with comments 1 and 2. This tragedy looks at least in part like short sighted cost cutting, combined with anti regulation and ideologically driven neoliberalism. In fact legislation was put in front of the British governmet in the last couple of years requiring upgrading of old buildings, especially adding sprinklers, but this was voted down apparently out of worries about costs etc. It's highly irresponsible to have done this because so many lives are at stake.
I used to be involved in some building and infrastructure consultancy work so know a little of the background. This is how the situation appears to me:
The fire safety provisions of the British apartment tower appear appalling, to almost non existent, although this was typical back in the 1970s in western countries. Modern codes are much better, but don't always require upgrading of older buildings out of "cost concerns".
The basic goal is to get people out safely, even if the building is burning badly, so its critical to have proper fire alarms and smoke detectors for early warning, and these are not even a large expense. You need fire safe stairs with pressurisation to keep smoke out, and tall buildings normally have two stairs. You need fire resistant structure for the stairs of at least a couple of hours normally, and also to the basic building structure to keep the building stable, and sprinklers, because fire trucks cant reach above about 4 floors.
The apartment building in England appeared to have none of this apart from some form of concrete frame, which would be inherently reasonably stable. The building was a disaster waiting to happen. The instruction to stay in rooms was bizarre to say the least, as modern practice is normally to get out fast.
The exterior panels were very flammable, being thin metal with little fire resistance, and a flammable polystyrene core. They have been banned in several countries, however provided you have proper smoke proof exit stairs, fire alarms, and sprinklers, and so on people would have at least had a much better chance of escaping, even with these burning panels.
The building could most certainly have been insulated from the inside, and with low flammability materials, or at least they would be buried behind fire resistant platerboard linings. The choice to use these panels looks like cost cutting and so on, and they are of a thin metal skin and flammable core so very susceptible to fire.
I'm an unashamed apologist for regulations around health and safety. Without these people die.
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JWRebel at 02:16 AM on 20 June 2017Factcheck: Grenfell Tower fire and the Daily Mail’s ‘green targets’ claim
This isn't about the Grenfell Towers at all. And it is certainly not about green targets. It's about propaganda, political power, and disaster capitalism. And it's about scum in a variety of ways.
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Doug Bostrom at 01:27 AM on 20 June 2017Factcheck: Grenfell Tower fire and the Daily Mail’s ‘green targets’ claim
Obsession with green targets leads to inferno? Hardly. But the current not-quite-a--government of the UK has enthusiastically promised a bonfire of regulations post-Brexit, in so many words. Grenfell is only what a smouldering burn of regulations thanks to starvation of civil services produces. A full conflagration is not at all desirable.
The myopic arrogance of people who believe they can second-guess hard earned wisdom encapsulated in regulations produced by decades or centuries of nasty object lessons is barely to be believed.
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Tom Curtis at 15:38 PM on 19 June 2017Al Gore got it wrong
iocc @16, do you have a link. The most recent Al Jazeera article on coral I can find is from May 7th.
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Eclectic at 14:55 PM on 19 June 2017Al Gore got it wrong
Iocc @16 , on the contrary , a large conference of coral reef experts (gathering in Hawaii) in mid-2016 expressed grave concern about the fate of coral reefs worldwide. And individual reef experts have been pointing to the impending destruction of coral reefs, for many years now.
All this was well before Mr Trump was anybody worth paying attention to.
The by-now unavoidable death of coral reefs is merely a part (but a spectacularly obvious part) of the corner that we have painted ourselves into, regarding the slow-building crisis of global warming.
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iocc at 11:14 AM on 19 June 2017Al Gore got it wrong
Further to 'foram' it's interesting in the wake of President Trumps withdrawal from the Kyoto Agreement that a news bulleting about coral reefs dying worldwide has appeared on the Al Jazeera network in Australia this morning - complete with heart tugging segments of local fishermen.
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iocc at 11:11 AM on 19 June 2017Al Gore got it wrong
Seems to me that the issues such as Antarctica, Greenland and the Himalaya's are indicative only of warming, which I believe is well supported by empiral evidence. But that alone does not necessarily mean that mankind has caused it.
Moderator Response:[PS] Noone is claiming that it does. Please use the "arguments" menu item, "taxonomy" and look under the "its not us" section. Alternatively, read the "attribution" chapters of the IPCC WG1 reports to see where the evidence comes from.
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nigelj at 07:29 AM on 19 June 2017New research may resolve a climate ‘conundrum’ across the history of human civilization
Chriskoz, yes fair criticism of the composite graph. However its very, very difficult to understand the article without some sort of graph, and it was something I had come across, and at least it showed broadly what was going on.
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nigelj at 06:54 AM on 19 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
It angers me that Trump has left the Paris accord, and yet America will benefit from the efforts of those countries in the accord (if it ever actually gets going and achieves anything). There always seems to be one free loader in agreements.
Climate change is indeed a tragedy of the commons problem, and ideally the polluter should pay. This is why I favour some sort of carbon tax aimed at the polluter, and with money then targeted at renewable energy or given back to the public in some way.
Tragedy of the commons problems are usually resolved with preventative rules, and also in some cases taxes on polluters to pay for damages caused. Of course its notable that some of such costs will tend to be passed onto everyone, but at least polluters and shareholders pay a decent proportion.
It's interesting that the ozone hole problem seemed to be quite well resolved with international agreement and rules and phasing out of cfc's. So why are we having such troubles with CO2 emissions?
Is it because the power of fossil fuel lobbies so much greater than the cfc lobby?
Is it the simple scale of the problem, or fear of voter backlash against any rules or taxes? Is it public fear that they will end up paying for the problem?
Has the tragedy of the commons concept and remedies not been discussed enough publicly?
Of course certain powerful politicians and business interests have attained their positions through vested interests in fossil fuels and allied industries, and are reluctant to let go. This behind the scenes pressure and its associated denial campaign is larger than the public realise.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:10 AM on 19 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
bvangerven,
I encourage you to revise your "Most Important Question" to be something like: "Why are people in supposedly advanced or advancing nations, particularly the most fortunate in those nations, still allowed to get away with activities that are well understood to not be Sustainable into the distant future and are actually understood to be imposing negative consequences (challenges, costs, and reduced opportunity - less buried ancient hydrocabons available for future sustainable good uses), on Others, especially future generations."
The thought that "making a payment" can justify allowing an unsustainable damaging activity to continue is wrong.
The requirement is effectively curtailing unsustainable and damaging pursuits of personal interest regardless of the perceptions of prosperity and opportunity that develop due to being able to get away with them. That means ending the ability of someone to do something they should have understood was unacceptable and penalizing them based on how much they should have known better (not requiring proof that something contrary to a specific interpretation of some written rule has occurred since new rules and revisions of rules always happen to try to correct unacceptable developments). The wealthier or more powerful a person is the higher the expectation that they know better and the more severe the penalty for behaving less acceptably.
That understanding undeniaby leads to the awareness that many of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet unjustifiably got their wealth and power. And that explains the magnitude of the "Resistance to better understanding". Not every wealthy powerful person is equally undeserving, but the games of popularity and profitability definitely give an advantage to those who want to and can get away with behaving less acceptably.
International legal consequences based on investigation of the evidence of a person's behaviour is where things need to get to. Crimes against Other Members of Humanity, particularly against the entire Future of Humanity need to be internationally applied disregarding claims of national or personal sovereignty.
John Stuart Mill warned that "If society lets a considerable number of its members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame for the consequences.". To ensure that the advancement of humanity to a sustainable better future is not being compromised by personal Preferences to believe and do whatever is desired - unjustifiably doing harm to Others, the international collective of humanity has an obligation to ensure that no sub-set society is failing to responsibly educate its members in matters that can be sensibly rationally evaluated based on observations and experience. The wealthier or more influential a person is the higher their obligation is to help in that effort.
The international collective of rational considerers of distant motives has developed the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Those goals are understandings that are open to improvement if good reasons are provided. They are the improvement through 43 years of international collaborative effort of the 1972 Stockolm Conference.
Reviewing the declared intentions and actions to date of the Trump/Republican Lead Government-of-the-Moment in the USA many, potentially all, of that groups interests are contrary to achieving the Sustainable Develpopment Goals. It is almost as if they are a last-ditch battle front against rational sensible justified internationally imposed limits on national and personal freedoms to believe and do whatever is desired.
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bvangerven at 00:43 AM on 19 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
@4 chriskoz: I hear you.
The Paris agreement is as weak as any agreement can be. That’s the reason even the fossil fuel industry supports it. Trump asked to renegotiate this agreement but it is hard to imagine an agreement that asks even less of its participants.
The Paris agreement is entirely voluntary. Every country announces how much emission reduction they want to achieve, but this cannot be legally enforced, and if a country breaks his promise, it has no consequences.
If a government official proposed to collect taxes in a similar manner he would be declared mad. Imagine that every citizen in the country can freely choose the amount of taxes he will pay. Nobody with half a healthy brain cell left thinks that this could work.
But this is the scheme they have thought out to tackle the biggest problem of our time with ZERO margin to get it wrong.
I do see one way out: appealing to the universal declaration of human rights. Global warming will threaten several human rights – among which the right to a livable environment for current and future generations. And therefore a government taking no or insufficient action can be legally sued and enforced to take action. On this subject I can recommend the book by the Dutch lawyer Roger Cox: “Revolution Justified”. -
chriskoz at 22:33 PM on 18 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
bvangerven@3,
I like your passion and honesty. so, Is there a positive answer to your quest?
In current political situation, nope. At the international level, the AGW problem can be viewed as a typical tragedy of the commons (I know some poeple here don't like this term but I cannot use a better term to describe what I mean here) without any global regulation or incentive that historically was always needed in resolving similar problems. If the best we have so far (Paris accord) is so weak that the biggest polluter to date (US) can quit it at whim without any conseqences, it means we have practically nothing.
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bvangerven at 21:58 PM on 18 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
For me, the most important question in the climate change debate is: who is going to pay for this ?
Perhaps your reaction is: Shouldn’t we focus on choosing the best solution and implementing that solution, and let’s find out later who will pay the expenses ?
But the point is: we are not reaching a solution BECAUSE this question isn’t answered.
The viewpoint of scientists has shifted. First, they thought only about mitigation: what can be done to stop climate change ?
Then it became acceptable to think about adaptation – which is already an acknowledgment of defeat – we can’t stop it anymore, how can we adapt ?
Now, apparently, we are starting to contemplate the possibility (well, it is not just a possibility, it is already the daily reality) that we won’t be able to adapt, so there will be loss and damage to pay.
And even geo-engineering, which scientists would deem unthinkable a decade ago has become a serious possibility . Geo-engineering is btw not the best term, because it wrongfully implies that it is a precise science with known outcomes. Climate interference is a better term: taking desperate measures, injecting sunlight reflecting aerosols into the atmosphere, hoping it will have no adverse effects we don’t know about. In reality, it is another way of playing russian roulette with the planet at stake.
WHY are we contemplating one possibility after the other, one even more grotesque than the other ? Because the fundamental question: who is going to pay for this ? is not getting answered.
Climate mitigation is by far the cheapest and least risky solution. Why does the world not choose to go for the best solution ? Because the bill is not always paid by the same stakeholders.
Climate mitigation would largely be paid by the polluters.
Climate adaptation would most likely have to be paid by the tax payers
Loss and damage would be paid by the countries that suffer the most from climate change, either in the shape of money or in the shape of lost human lives and property.
Geo-engineering ? That would be a giant perpetual bill that our generation leaves to future generations.
And in such cases the bill tends to end up at the people with the least influence and the least power. That means: the developing countries and the future generations.
The only way to get out of this deadlock is to say: no matter what, no matter which solution is chosen, the bill has to be paid by the polluters. It is the only logical decision, and the only fair decision.
Once fossil fuel companies realize that the bill will end up on their desk anyway, they will quickly choose and support the cheapest option, which is climate mitigation.
If we fail to let the polluters pay, I don’t believe we will succeed in avoiding catastrophic climate change. -
chriskoz at 21:57 PM on 18 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Tom Curtis@68,
The limitting factor of Ohm law in DC transmission is not the percentage of resistance Ohm losses in proportion to the transmitted power but the temperature rise of the conductors that results from the Ohm losses. It thought it was obvious in my previous post, that my examplary Ohm loss of 16,000 W/m was enormous and unrealistic. If not, I restate it here with an assertion that this Ohm loss does not magically "disapppear" into oblivion (as, incidentally FF interest groups would like them to "disappear" after burning into "trace gas only"), but must be dissipated as heat. So, imagine each metre of your transmission line becomes 16kW heater which is a very accurate model, what happens? The wire simply melts away. My lowest estimate (160 W/meter) that I deemed realistic will still rise the conductor T but likely not to the point of damage because such amount of heat can dissipate without signifficant rise in conductor temperature. The standards for maximum conductor temperature in emergency operation (up to 2h surge) is something like 90degC, while it must be even lower in continuous operation.
Ohm losses are not the only losses in transmission. And those that I described in my examples are absolute physical limits. Practical losses will be higher due to menioned increase in T, ergo increase in conductor resistance. Ohm limits the amperage of your cable, to the practical limit of couple kA. Other losses like corona discharge limits the voltage of your line, current highest is 1.2MV. You can try to build higher towers/bigger insulators but only up to a point. The cable cannot be too thick (in my examples I used 5cm but 2cm is more realistic standard for aerial cables) because your tower would fall down under the weight and force of the stung up heavy cable.
To see the practical limits of HVDC transmission in play look at its records here. Remember, each record is achieved by itself at the cost of lower than optimal (not shown in this Wiki summary) other parameters of the line. Now Desertec (or Dii as it's now known) wants to beat all of those records, including voltage and distance in one mega-project. The fact they failed confirms my opinion they wanted to build something too big that exceeds the limits of available technology.
In your responses to me and Nigel, you're quoting their plans from 2012 at the latest, while I provided the link from 2013 explaining what happened:
Siemens pulled out of the venture in November last year. In the same month, Dii failed to get the support of the financially-strapped Spanish government for a 500MW CSP demonstration project in Ouarzazate, Morocco, though the project is still going ahead.
So it's worth quoting the the explanation form the head of Energy Policy in Spain. She said:
At a very basic level, we are still missing lines and capacities for export, Spain is already struggling with its own excess renewables production – additional imports from third countries would certainly compound the problem,” she added. “It is difficult to argue that the EU needs the additional RES capacity,”
In other words, the load balancing of local network with intermittent renewables is already a big problem, without dealing with concentrated energy transmission, which confirms my opinion. You are better off by producing and consuming your RES locally. Maybe "locally" means within EU itself with distances within the limits of current transmission technology. Maybe she would like Spain (where there is still plenty of sun) to become the "Sahara" of that project so that she be happy with production and export only (like I'm happy with my rooftop PV that need zero maintanance) and do not deal with complex logistics of transmission and load balancing of intermittent source.
Dii is currently thinking its network can power African and Middle-Eastern nations, which is more realistic as transmission distances are shorter. Perhaps it did not abandon its dream of powering Europe from Sahara, but s of now, it is only a dream.
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Digby Scorgie at 17:48 PM on 18 June 2017SkS Analogy 8 - I'll take the specialist
Tom Curtis @8
Thanks!
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jgnfld at 16:03 PM on 18 June 2017SkS Analogy 8 - I'll take the specialist
While it's obvious to most, "sceptics" like Giaever, and many others, totally miss the point when they talk about problems with measuring the global average temperature. What anomalies measure is trend at a location. The global set of anomalies is the global sample of trends not the global sample of temperatures. Nowhere in there is any attempt to measure global mean temperature, nor should there be. Sampling issues remain, but the issue is whether there is sufficient coverage to infer trends averaged globally not whether there is sufficient coverage to measure global average temperature. While more coverage is good, what reasons do we have to assume that unsampled areas are systematically different from already sampled areas in ways not already identified and corrected for (e.g., urbanization at sampling sites)?
Giaever's critique focuses on showing the difficulties involved in measuring a completely irrelevant variable.
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nigelj at 11:30 AM on 18 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Tom Curtis @71, thanks I will read that later this week as its quite long.
It's a much more plausible looking proposal. It will come down to costs and benefits.
Everyone is looking for magic bullets, but there aren't any, just various options that might work for some countries and not others. The EU has a common policy on many things, so should be able to coordinate over electricity, and as spain and northern africa suit solar so well, its the obvious thing. It really just depends on how all costs stack up, and that is a huge calculation. But sunlight intensity, consistency and hours are so good in the Sahara its a big plus that could outweigh the cable costs.
We are the opposite in my country, and have cloudy weather and are too far from any desert, but have great wind resources and geothermal.
I think humanity is so used to traditional forms of energy, it's a big mindset change and confidence thing and this is probably more of an impediment than the actual technical issues. Unfortunately we are also becoming more reliant on electricity than ever, so this has come at a difficult time.
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Tom Curtis at 09:49 AM on 18 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
nigelj @69, Desertec's proposal isn't for a single large facility in the middle of the Sahara, but for a large number of smaller facilities within the Sahara and parts of the Middle East. That would be desirable if for no other reason than to extend the longitudinal extent of power production to minimize the need for storage. The image I showed @28 above merely illustrates the proportion of the Sahara that would be needed to generate the relevant amounts of power, not a proposed site.
Desertec provided this schematic of likely locations of sites:
The idea would be a band of solar power sites across the Sahara just south of the Mediterainian, supplmented by a another band of fewer sites just north of the Sahel. That would give mimimum typical transmission distances to Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, and also give some latitudinal extent to avoid the impact of localized weather systems.
Dii shows this map of current Dii projects:
Their full 2012 proposal is here.
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nigelj at 09:11 AM on 18 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Ah sorry Tom Curtis, I see you addressed some of that earlier above. Thank's by the way.
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nigelj at 09:02 AM on 18 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Regarding 'desertec', I just wonder if the issue is really about the technology as such. I respect the various comments, for and against this and power losses and its rather intereresting.
I think its really about relying on such a single huge centralised facility and single cable network. This would go for any type of very centalised facility.
1) Yes the Sahara has incredibe sunlight hours and clouds rarely form because they can't, but it does get about 1 inch of rain a year, usually torrential. One giant facility would still be offline for a few hours, and so would be particularly reliant on rather expensive and huge backup, unless people have to live with a few power cuts.
2) Desertec is such huge reliance on one single facility, or group of facilities and, one gigantic cable network. This cable would become a huge target for terrorism, unless it was buried underground at enormous cost, and this creates other problems.
Yes all systems can fail but having such a large system fail even if only a few hours would be a special kind of problem
You probably need several desertecs spread, with their own cable networks.
The ideal is solar on peoples roof tops, but this is reliant on breakthrough battery technology. You smart fellows want to be wealthy and earn a nobel prize, get into that.
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Tom Curtis at 08:37 AM on 18 June 2017Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming
Theresab @8, this SKS page discusses the issue directly. Essentially, deforrestation contributes more to global warming than does agriculture (18.2% vs 13.5%), but most deforrestation is driven by the lumber industry, not land clearing for agriculture. From agriculture, the major contributors are agricultural soils (6%) and livestock and manure (5.1%). All percentages are of global totals in CO2eq, from 2000 data.
Crops require far less land area than does pasturing cattle. Indeed, in general, you will require 10 times as much land area for animals as you will for plants for the same total food production. That said, some area on which livestock is grazed is not suitable for cropping due to inadequate rainfall or other factors.
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SteveAplin at 04:25 AM on 18 June 2017Tom Harris' Carleton University Climate Misinformation Class
way late to the discussion, but since I live forty-five minutes by foot, fifteen by bike, and five by car from the institution in question (Carleton University) and am one of Tom Harris's fellow alumni, I feel compelled to jump in and say...
His responses to the critiques offered hereare so weak and irrelevant he should be embarrassed.
You know a denier has got nothing when he trots out the old "colorless, odorless gas" remark about CO2, as if it's only a pollutant if you can see and smell it. The same exact description applies to CO, the most reliable and prolific toxic killer of humans in human history, which is most definetly a pollutant.
I have come to learn that when I hear the hooves of that old nag clattering on the pavement, I must expect little from the denier in the way of research and evidence and much in the way of irrelevant platitudes such as "plant food."
It is a shame, because Harris's critique of the means by which we humans have begun our quest to reduce our dumping of carbonaceous garbage into our atmosphere is not so bad.
He correctly identifies natural gas as the big beneficiary of efforts to reduce power-generation-related CO2.
Natural gas, or methane (CH4), is, in all applications, a CO2 emitter almost as bad as coal. Quitting coal in favour of natural gas is like quitting whiskey in favour of wine — you're still a drunk.
There's one and only one powergen option that keeps the lights on without CO2, and that's fission of uranium.
Unfortunately, those who profess to care about reducing CO2 couldn't be less interested in promoting nuclear. They're too busy pushing proven non solutions like wind and solar.
And who's the big beneficiary of that?
The natural gas industry.
SKS editors — with all due respect, and I do most sincerely respect and admire you — it is high time you climbed off this renewable energy bandwagon. RE has failed in Germany, its biggest and most enthusiastic uptaker. Other than Brazil and my neighboring province of Quebec, just about every jurisdiction on earth that has a low grid electricity CO2 intensity per kilowatt-hou has at least some amount of nuclear. That's not a coincidence.
Moderator Response:[DB] Nuclear power is wedge number 9 in the solutions to replacing fossil fuels.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/solving-global-warming-not-easy-but-not-too-hard.html -
Theresab at 03:27 AM on 18 June 2017Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming
OK, I have a question... So, supposedly not eating meat will reduce carbon emissions and help reduce global warming correct ? But so far it seems the main way animal agriculture contributes to global warming is through deforestation for feedcrops and pasture land. If more humans start eating plants instead of animals however, while the need for pastures and feed crop land will reduce, won't the need for farmland to grow all these in demand plants just increase ? For example the U.S is already unable to produce enough fruits and veggies to feed its citizens and relies on other countries as a supplement..if the decrease in land needed for animals doesn't match up to the increase in land needed for plant farming , won't this result in even more land cleared in other places to keep up with supply and demand (aka money to be made ? )
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chriskoz at 23:37 PM on 17 June 2017New research may resolve a climate ‘conundrum’ across the history of human civilization
Nigelj@1,
It's always better to look at the actual published source rather than dodgy 'skeptical' blog.
The 'conundrum' Dana is talking about likely comes from (Liu et al 2014) where they state:
A recent temperature reconstruction of global annual temperature shows Early Holocene warmth followed by a cooling trend through the Middle to Late Holocene [M13]. This global cooling is puzzling because it is opposite from the expected and simulated global warming trend due to the retreating ice sheets and rising atmospheric greenhouse gases. Our critical reexamination of this contradiction between the reconstructed cooling and the simulated warming points to potentially significant biases in both the seasonality of the proxy reconstruction and the climate sensitivity of current climate models.
So L14 has already pointed out the possible M13 sesonal and hemispheric bias. They, hower, looked at SST reconstructon biases only. Look at Figure3 in L14: it has been known that N hemisphere models (3B) do match Marcott (3A) at least in sign.
However, note that the total cooling shown by M13 from the peak of Holocene (ca 7ka BP) to the LIA dip, is some 0.5-0.6 degC only. Not 1.4C as the 'skeptical' blog clearly exaggerated. BTW, that latter graph is hardly readable with 4 plots superposed. The obliquity plot has nothing to do with the rest of the plots because Milankovic forcings do not have direct effect on global temperature, they only produce variations in Arctic temperatures. However 'skeptics' have superimposed and scaled the obliquity plot only to suggest to uninformed that obliquity is in direct correlation with temperature shown by M13, maybe to justify the bogus 'neo-glacial' label there. My 'uninformed' question would be then: why the obliquity is so different than T in the very first section of it labeled 'pre-boreal' (whatever that mysterious term means)? Logical answer: because the obliquity has nothing to do with this picture and does not belong there.
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Tom Curtis at 17:29 PM on 17 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
chriskoz @66, in reverse order:
1) Your estimated 160 W/meter with 100 lines represents a total loss of 160 MW over 1000 Km, or 0.04% of the total 400 GW at the point of origin. Even the 16,000 W/m estimated with 10 lines, ie, 16 GW over the 1000 Km represents just 4% of the 400 GW at origin. Both estimates are well below the 10% loss per 1000 Km from Desertec. Therefore I do not see how your calculations show the project to be implausible.
2) Desertec and Dii still exist (the later's most recent function being on the first and second of this month). What has changed is their strategy. Because Europe already has an abundance of electricity supply, they changed from a strategy which prioritized delivering energy to Europe first, to one that prioritizes delivering energy in North Africa and the Middle East, with the idea that overtime interconnections with Europe will be established allowing desert solar to provide an increasing share of Europe's power.
3) The solar resource varies substantially by location. Indeed, the difference between the solar resource in the North Sahara to that in France is approximately a factor of 2. In Germany or Britain, the solar resource is approximately a third of that in North Africa:
This is an annual average, so the problem will typically be even worse in winter. Put another way, solar energy is generated 45% less efficiently in France than it would be if generated in the North Sahara and delivered over high voltage DC lines, allowing for both the difference in solar resource and transmission losses.
Further, purely regional grids must relly heavilly on storage, probably battery storage to allow regular power delivery. Storage increases costs by 50-80% for eight hour capability (Lazard 2016). As the best strategy will come down to costs, the costs of transmission lines will have to be greater than the costs of 400 GW of solar generation for local solar plus storage to be competitive with desert solar in Europe. Based on Lazard's LCOE for thin film photovoltaic (the cheapest form of solar), and this estimate of costs of transmission by distance, the cost of generation is much greater.
(Cost is in millions of USD for 2000 MW line.)
4) Costs for transmission would increase linearly with distance, not exponentially. Increasing interconnectivity within an area will increase costs at less than the rate of increase of area covered.
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Eclectic at 13:04 PM on 17 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Chriskoz @66 , I am sure you are quite right about super-colossal solar energy collectors transmitting over very large distances. My impression was that Tom Curtis was primarily demonstrating the solar collection area needed for national-level electric power generation, as being a small area really (when set against continental size). "Relatively" small projects, delivering to a city 100 or 200 Km away, might be practicable with today's technology. But colossal projects might be the go, if future-tech superconduction at hot temperatures ever becomes possible — but by that time, it's more likely that local collection of solar power from rooves/walls/roads/etc will be the preferred option (not to mention small-scale fusion generation! ).
Still, we cannot live in the maybe-future. Present-day technology is at the stage where (politics permitting) coal-fired plants can be phased out quickly, and gas-fired plants following soon after.
As you say, Chriskoz, a distributed/dispersed power generation system is not only possible, but very desirable also from the perspective of high resilience against terrorist attacks & natural disasters.
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chriskoz at 11:49 AM on 17 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Tom Curtis@30, Eclectic@31,
(sorry for late reply, my workweek was busy)
My skepticism about large scale projects concentrating the renewable power into high energy, together with long distance transmition infrastructure is high, utopian cost. The process of concentrating many small, intermittent, low energy sources into a reliable and sizeable commercial supply (of an order 100s MW) is by itself very difficult without buffering storage of adequate capacity and time. In case of solar source, that time is at least a daily cycle. Then, on top of that, the lengths of the interstate transmition increase as the sources in entire regions/states stop producing completely due to meteorological conditions (such as a recent freak overnight storm in SA) and the entire load must be transfered from other state. The transmition costs owithin such model grows exponentially with its size. You don't need to be an expert in technology to understand, in a philosofical sense, that concentrating a number of small energy sources (higher enthropy) into a single high energy (lower entropy) "super-grid" is a process going against a natural entropy flow, whereas existing electricity distribution models go with a natural entropy flow. So the cost of a new model implementation must be much higher.
IMO, much more realistic is a distributed model where electricity is consummed as close to the source as possible, with high capacity storage and some transmition that balances intermittence within a given region only, e.g. when broken clouds or local storm overshadows PV panels in a given suburb. Anything on a scale of Desertec project rfered to by Tom is unfeasible.
With regards to Desertec, in was conceived in 2007-8, and the Tom's link is dated June 22nd, 2009: a time when its plans were very operational. Fast forward just 5 years till 2013, and Desertec abandons Sahara dream due to its utopian costs. Now, were in 2017, and no comparable alternative project is beeing considered (it should be given AGW solution becomes most urgent) so the idea is pretty much dead. Some say, as noticed by Nigel elsewhere, there were huge political obstacles with host nations. But I even disregard those obstacles (biggesr obstacle in general is outright science denial by white nations' politicians) and think technical obstacles may heve been decisive.
High-voltage direct current transmission technology has its disadvantages, and above all its limits. Disadvantages include difficulty in AC/DC conversion and higher cost of safety and maintenance. In particular High-voltage DC circuit breaker is expensive and difficult to build. Those problems limit the practical length and power capacity of existing HVDC lines to 1000km/couple GW. To have the entire Europe's electric power (400GW) delivered from 2000-3000km Sahara increases the scale of the enterprise by 1000times. And don't forget that energy losses in trnsmission increase with a square of power. Even the Ohm law becomes the hard limit on such scale.
For example, 400GW delivered by say 1MV line means 400kA current. Standard 2cm aluminum wire has resistance of 50 microOhm/m. But say a thicker (harder to deploy and support) 5cm cable, resistance 10microOhm/m be used. The power loss by Ohm alone is I2*R = 400kA*400kA*10microOhm = 160,000M*10microW = absurd 1,600,000W per each metre of cable. Of course no one is going to use just one cable, but even if you repeat the above calculation for 10 cables, each carrying its share of 40kA, you end up with enormous power loss of 40*40*10 = 16,000W per metre each. To be realistic you need to have say 100 lines, 4GW each, which is 4kA per line, with Ohm losses just 4*4*10 = 160W per metre. That's just the hard physical limit. There are other limits like corona discharge, arcing on insulators or dialectric leakage in case of underwater cable, that also add to the heat production and stress on the cable material itself.
From my calculations above, it'll clear that concentrating and long distance transmitting the renewable energy is an expensive business that quickly becomes too expensive and scaling it even higher to the point of Desertec level becomes utopia.
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One Planet Only Forever at 11:24 AM on 17 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
The assistance to developing countries should include "Giving Away" Carbon-Free technology (no patent profit-taking), and providing "Free to the developing nation" research assistance to develop location specific carbon-free systems suited to the divesrtity of regional population requirements.
We really need to all be in this together working to improve the future for all of humanity, as a robust diversity of humanity (not all Drinking Coca-Cola or Pepsi - I like Dr. Pepper). Anyone not interested in helping with that needs to have their life truly be "Of No Consequence - Living on their own for their own amusement in ways that have no impact on anyone else."
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Tom Curtis at 10:00 AM on 17 June 2017CO2 is plant food
Hans @27, there are a large number of studies of carbon exchange in a variety of ecosystems and seas, many of which will also analyse the day/night (diurnal) cycle. As examples, Leinweiber et al (2009) analyze the diurnal cycle in Santa Monica Harbour. Friend et al (2007) compare model and observaltional values net ecosystem exchange of CO2 (NEE) across a variety of land based ecosystems, including the diurnal variation in NEE (Figure 5, bottom panel). However, it is easier to just look at the gross fluxes from the IPCC AR5 Figure 6.1:
The gross fluxes are are indicated by the large arrows. Where the gross flux is two way, the net flux is indicated above the brackets. Values inside the boxes are the total amount in the reservoir. Black figures indicate preindustrial values, while red values indicate the change to the preindustrial value due to anthropogenic influence.
Although the gross flux is what you appear to be interested in, it is the net flux that is the relevant comparison for anthropogenic emissions, given that the gross flux largely represents churning which does not alter atmospheric concentrations, except locally on a diurnal basis, and regionally on a seasonal basis.
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nigelj at 09:26 AM on 17 June 2017Explainer: Dealing with the ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change
Developed countries are the larger emitters per capita, and are a bigger contributor to more severe weather, so some compensation should be given by developed countries to developing countries. We have caused them some harm, and this is normally the basis for compensation and various laws. It's a just approach to the whole thing, but its unreasonable to expect it to be sort of huge money give away either.
But determing such things in international court cases would be a nightmare. The only winners would be lawyers and bureaucrats. No country is going to want to admit liability over this huge climate issue.
Proving and quantifying liability over specific weather disasters will be very, very difficult for several reasons. It will be hard to get countries to agree on how much certainty you need to determine if a weather event is caused by climate change. It would be hard to determine levels of compensation, as there are no innocents, everyone is an emitter.
It would seem that countries donating money as aid, or some sort of international aid fund might be the best solution, that recognises developed countries have some sort of duty to provide some extra help to developing countries. In fact if countries are severely hurt by extreme weather we often already help with international aid, and regardless of causation.
Of course this would all require a determination of how much aid. But we could at least approximately quantify costs of climate change as a whole going forwards, and determine how much of this is caused by higher emitting countries. Levels of compensation will be a decision ultimately made by governments and populations, and some already give aid, but history indicates people are usually mostly willing to give some help through taxes or private donation or both.
One thing about money given in aid or some form of international fund or insurance fund, as opposed to legal cases, is the use of that money can be monitored and controlled to some extent by the donors. Levels of aid money might also depend on whether developing countries are making efforts to curb their own emissions.
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Hans15731 at 08:48 AM on 17 June 2017CO2 is plant food
I would like to know if there are measurements done showing the output of CO2 at night above seas, forests and grassy lands. If someone knows how many tons of CO2 is released at night and how much is absorbed by day.
Also when plants die they release a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, almost as much as they took in while they were growing and alive. One of the reasons I bring this up is to see what is the natural cycle and volume of CO2 going out and back into the atmosphere as we need some standard as to how nature processes CO2 .
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Curiousbev at 08:30 AM on 17 June 2017The Larsen C ice shelf collapse hammers home the reality of climate change
As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow our comments policy. Thank You! All this argument over nearly 50 years, and what have we done to adapt to the wilder weather? A simple blizzard can grind us to a halt just because we don't seem to have the sense to bury our power lines. Neanderthals managed to adapt to both warming and glaciation several times over a couple hundred thousand years. Today, power failures paralyze whole swaths of the country. Long term warming could indeed end us. But ice is survivable. Our half -naked ancestors managed it. How can we deal with weather in the future if we cannot manage it today?
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nigelj at 07:08 AM on 17 June 2017SkS Analogy 8 - I'll take the specialist
Ubrew12 @11, yes Giaver is like that.
I recall Giaver complaining that the Antarctic or Arctic (I can't remember which) "only" had 10 weather stations, but he seems singularly unable to define exactly how many weather stations he want's, and why. It's like there would never be enough for him, and he is possibly saying "you cannot prove you have enough therefore, I'm going to say climate change is a fallacy".
In fact it's really hard to say exactly how many weather stations you ideally need globally. It's hard to quantify this.
But the planet has thousands of weather stations through most countries, with gaps mainly in central africa. Even 10 in the Antaractic is obviously a lot better than just one or two, and they are reasonably dispersed.
I suggest we intuitively know the thousands of weather stations across the planet that are at least reasonably widely dispersed, gives a good idea of global average temperatures that is pretty accurate, and accurate enough for our purposes. And its possible to look at areas with poor cover, and ask the question of whether it's likely temperatures in those areas whould be higher or lower, based on adjacent areas, and knowledge of their geography etc. We cant be 100% certain, but we can be pretty certain.
Basically I feel people like Giaver are demanding 100% coverage and 100% certainty, yet as a scientist he should know things dont work like that and generally aren't possible. Maybe he has some hidden ideological agenda but I dont want to speculate. I just think he is being unreasonable.
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