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nigelj at 19:00 PM on 13 June 2017The Larsen C ice shelf collapse hammers home the reality of climate change
The photo of the crack in the Larson C ice shelf in the article does lack scale. It needs something digitally added near the edge of the ice shelf to give it scale. Trump Tower perhaps?
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Eclectic at 18:09 PM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Too @40 , if I may, I can add something on top of the comment by Nigelj and the Moderator.
( I speak only for myself, since I am a newcomer to SkS and am definitely not a Moderator or long-time inhabitant or anyone entitled to represent SkS. )
Too @40 , if you are genuinely wishing to engage constructively with this website (and are not merely a troll amusing himself) then you will have little trouble learning the standards set by SkS. As a website addressing the "controversial" topic of AGW, this SkS website is in that very small minority of websites which demand intelligent and civil discussion.
SkS is all about science & scientific thinking, regarding the problems associated with AGW. So there is no room for the gutter level of Partisan Politics [especially of the American sort].
You will notice in the Comments Guidelines, that Ad Hominems [in the sense of a logical fallacy] and accusations of dishonesty are verboten (both in relation to other posters and in relation to public figures such as research-scientists / media-commentators / and yes even those deplorable politicians!!! ]. The best we can offer, is some gentle snide irony/sarcasm of a rather indirect sort ;-)
Too @40 , simply comport yourself in a civilized way, and your innate gentlemanliness will keep you out of danger!!
A couple of points :- when Moderators "strike out / cross out" parts of a post, it provides a useful educational feedback to newcomers [rather than simply "snipping" the lot]. Secondly, if anyone wishes to avoid being "snipped" or banned as a troll [and then being put to the nuisance of constructing more sock-puppet accounts! ] then it is wise to restrict one's questioning to one or two topics/threads rather than use a shotgun/machine-gun assault on multiple threads. And this also requires one to engage genuinely & attentively to points made in the OP or in other posters' comments/replies. "Sloganeering" is the SkS term for mindless assertions which are unsupported / unscientific / and have (long ago) been debunked.
Anyone is entitled to bring up (in a non-trollish way) an idea or concept which is "contrarian" — provided that the poster can make a good case for it (and usually this requires some reference to and support from valid scientific research papers. I need hardly add, that well-supported contrarian ideas are rare as hens' teeth!! ).
Too @40 , when I say that AGW is "controversial", I mean that the topic itself receives much controversy, even though the science of AGW is not at all controversial (since it is well-demonstrated and accepted by virtually all climate scientists . . . with the inevitable exception of a few characters possessing a perverse personality and/or a purse of gold from the Oil Industry). And please note that such description by me is not an Ad Hom but merely a factual description!
Too @40 , you seem to be hinting that there are "two sides" to AGW. Perhaps it would be best if you explained yourself there — and you could do this by briefly listing 3 or 4 points which support the consensus science position, and then specifying a few points [ if you can find any valid points ] which would support the "opposite" position. But just before you list the "contrarian" points, please check that they haven't already been debunked (check through the Climate Myths, found in the top left corner of the Home Page).
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Tom Curtis at 16:50 PM on 13 June 2017The Larsen C ice shelf collapse hammers home the reality of climate change
Project Midas gives a far more informative image of the crack, showing the position as of May 31st:
It is not entirely clear here, but apparently the shorter section of the split end (white in the inset) occured on February 12th, with the larger section occuring over the months of April and May.
Robert Scribbler discussed the crack in February of 2015, and showed to possible scenarios:
Apparently scenario II is being followed, resulting in more ice calving from the ice shelf. The calving fronts of prior events shown by Scribbler are interesting, both in showing the progressive retreat of the ice shelf, and that at least part of the ice calving of this time was added since the 1988 event.
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Tom Curtis at 16:00 PM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Trump dumped Paris because, first and foremost, he is a complete scientific ignoramus. I saw that yesterday in video of him claiming that aerosols cannot effect the ozone layer because his apartment, where he sprays the hair spray, "is all sealed", and goes on to suggest safety regulations in coal mines are also without basis.
It is clear that, first, Trump has no basic scientific understanding, given that he equates a shut door with an air tight seal; and second, that based on his complete ignorance he rejects any science that results in regulations that he or his business friends might find convenient. If Trump has his way, if nothing else, he will cut down on unemployment one mining disaster at a time.
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Tom Curtis at 15:38 PM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
nigelj @39, I agree about the political stability of North Africa. I consider the plan likely to be technically feasible, but not likely to be politically feasible in the near to mid-term. Having said that, the area required to power the EU alone is not so large that it could not be located in Spain alone, or perhaps Spain, Mauretania, Morroco and Algiers (which are more stable than nations further east).
With regard to winter nights, the proposal is for concentrated solar thermal power plants. Solar thermal power plants have a large thermal inertia which allows the delay of use of the power by up to six hours with current technology, and with unlimited duration with supplemental gas heating. The later, in turn, can be provided by hydrogen gas seperated from H2O by electrolysis using excess power production in the day time.
On top of that, heat itself can be readilly stored in domestic situations by heating large containers of water, and or large stones while power is cheap in the daytime, and using that heat to warm the house over the following night. I do not see night time usage being a problem with this scheme.
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chriskoz at 15:37 PM on 13 June 2017The Larsen C ice shelf collapse hammers home the reality of climate change
The picture does not give a proper sense of scale and neither does the text explain anything.
First you need to know that Larsen C is on average 350m thick. So, assuming the ice in the vicinity of such large crack is fully floating, the lips visible above water level are about 35m (i.e. 10% of floating ice volume is above water). It's a big chunk of ice, way beyond the horizon, of DE state size as mentioned, more precisely it's ca 5000km2 roughly 50kmx100km. Due to Earth curvature, it's not completely flat. The actual curvature at its most distant points can be calculated as ca 35m, so it's only 10% of its thickness.
The water channel in the crask is surprisingly wide - I eyeball it as ca 200m.
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nigelj at 14:03 PM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Too @40, I dont have a huge problem with your tone. You are pretty polite, - and its always a tough one balancing being polite, and not being so polite its painfull, if you know what I mean.
And yeah I get you are just trying to figure things out. I will go with that for now. We are all trying to do that really.
However I would just say that "calm down" is condescending. One thing I like about this website is it is more a facts based website, with some sophisticated views. I read some websites and its nothing more than insults, sarcasm, accusations and slogans and arguments about who is the most intelligent poster! This can all be cleverly put and amusing, but for me it gets boring after about five posts, and a bit deadening.
Remember websites can set whatever rules they like and nobody is forcing anyone to participate. I value freedom of speech, but you need some moderation or it becomes a shouting match.
Remember sociopathy is a mental condition and not simply an insult. It exists on a sort of spectrum.
Thank's for clarifying your basic concerns about Paris etc. Personally I think most of the reason Trump dumped Paris was to do something more to humiliate Obama. Even if you argue it economically, he could have stayed in Paris and then done nothing, so why leave?
And you think the Paris accord doesn't stack up economically. I disagree. The thing is you have to prove your scepticism. A lot of research going back to the Stern report finds the benefits of reducing emissions, outweigh the costs.
Although the sceptic Bjorn Lomberg claims Paris will have a neglegible effect on global temperatures, numerous other reputable studies find otherwise. Lombergs assumptions are also clearly excessively pessimistic, and in conflict with the success of other historical environmental improvements that have worked, like reducing the Ozone problem.
It's a difficult issue to resolove in a few blog posts, and you would have to prove in detail why the people supporting Paris are wrong.
Your own information on renewable energy tends to show its economic, so goes against your own scepticism! There are numerous studies showing costs of wind power etc are looking good (at least on land), its beyond doubt now. The thing is will you accept such evidence, or desperately search for something otherwise?
Regarding feedback, and moderation, and tolerance of different points of view. The moderator has only really asked you to address certain issues clearly before moving on, and provide sources to back claims. This seems fair to me. The website does set quite high standards compared to many but they want a constructive debate not a shouting match. Whats wrong with that?
In all farness you have provided sources quite well. I have been guilty of not backing things up. Its all a learning experience.
But personally I dont like comments crossed out. This is rather like being humiliated at school.
I think you commented on the no politics thing somewhere? Basically I have found what works for me is if articles are science focussed, stick to science, if articles clearly have a political component then I make political comments sometimes, but I try and keep them "measured". What else can we do?
However this website certainly allows alternative points of view, provided its more than simple empty assertions.
And you cannot expect other people to just agree with you. You have to persuade, people and this goes for me and everyone.
Moderator Response:[PS] Let's make this clearer. The comments policy exists to foster calm and fact-based discussion of the science around climate change. Plenty of sites tolerate/welcome wide-ranging flame wars - this site isnt one of them. Prohibitions on politics etc are there to prevent discussions veering down value-based, volatile paths with little connection to climate science.
As moderators, we deal daily with rabid deniers more used to WUWT et al style, who are not interested in data, logic and have no intention of conforming to comments policy here. The concept of letting data define your opinions is also foreign. We try education, but someone only intent on trouble not learning usually attracts minute attention from moderators and is kicked off asap.
That said, "too" did not make a great start and so is certainly getting moderator attention. Unlike many we deal with however, he/she has clearly made an effort to understand the policy. We welcome discussion where participants are prepared to cite sources, argue logically and let the data speak rather just motivate reasoning. Please carry on.
We would rather have conformance than exclusion so cross-outs are a form of education. You may find them intrusive, but the alternative (before moderators had this tool) was simply deleting the whole comment with not even an indication of why.
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too at 13:18 PM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
@nigelj - I'm new to the community and still learning that phrases like "calm down" are inflammatory. Which...wow. So please have a little patience while I get the gist of things here, every community is extremely different.
I stand by my original point that there is an economic reason for Trump to pull out of the Paris accords and that it is not simply the stereotypical partisan view that he is a complete and utter sociopath. And my other point but that is topic verboten apparently.
The problem is that the average American does not view the economics the same way that you guys view the economics. Frankly, it isn't even close. The two sides aren't even speaking the same language when they refer to things like economics. So, I'm trying to understand where, fundamentally, the disconnect is by better understanding things from this point of view. I get the other point of view already and I equally do not agree with it. I honestly don't have a horse in this race but I like to observe and understand and learn. But, what I realized was that I can't make a point about "the economics" in this discussion unless I understand what you guys refer to as "the economics" from your perspective. So, I'm not making the case until I feel that I grasp this community's view of this topic because otherwise I have a feeling it will be tossed away as nonsensical (even though many others would see it as absolutely sensible) because it is not speaking in your language. I'm sure that this will be censored in some way and I honestly mean no offense it is an honest observation, but this community is highly, as in astronomically, intolerant of alternative points of view and points made that do not speak in the correct voice and language.
Moderator Response:[PS] if you reference and use the language of professional economists, you should be fine. Arguments an economist would laugh at won't work.
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nigelj at 13:01 PM on 13 June 2017The Larsen C ice shelf collapse hammers home the reality of climate change
The cracks in the ice shelf and rapid warming on the peninsular are obviously a concern, but I dont have enough specialist knowledge to comment much more than the article already says. I can say something about the implications of sea level rise, as I have done infrastructure design consultancy work in the past.
We know the experts calculate if all the land based ice on the planet melted sea levels would rise by 216 feet (about 70 metres). The maps below show this impact on global coastlines, continent by continent, and its pretty dramatic, with a lot of rich coastal agricultural land gone and obviously many cities gone as well.
www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/09/rising-seas-ice-melt-new-shoreline-maps/
This is obviously the worst case scenario, but I find it useful to consider this, and work back from there.
And we are at some risk of causing at least 30 metres of sea level rise, if we continue to burn fossil fuels unabated. This alone is a disturbing scenario, because of the extent of land loss alone.
The other concern is rates of change. How fast will this process occur, because ability to adapt is the prime factor to consider. In fact it will be hard to adapt to even half to 1 metre per century, repeating for many centuries.
It "should" take thousands of years for 30 - 70 metres of sea level rise, but nobody is 100% sure. We know there have been past periods where sea level rise has been several metres per century, for a couple of centuries, and nobody can totally rule this out from happening in our futures. The impacts of several metres per century of sea level rise would be horrendous, so even if probabilities are small, it is still such a dangerous scenario that it should be absolutely avoided.
Sea level rise has been virtually non existent until recently, and generally buildings were built with this in mind, and reach the end of their lives before it becomes an issue, in the main. Things have been gradual and predictable.
But this is changing already in recent years, and already impacting places like Florida where flooding has become a real problem.
Faster rates of sea level rise this century will put existing communities at risk, and buildings and drainage networks will be replaced, rebuilt or relocated well before the end of their useful lives.
Planning for the future will then become very difficult. You will have to assume some level of sea level rise, and have some land off limits and / or special building code requirements.
Its not just a case of lifting up buildings on higher foundations. Drains and roads all stop functioning properly with sea level rise, or more frequent floods, or both.
This is all going to have several consequences:
Some land is going to either be put off limits for future development by law, or it will be identified as at risk by law, or it will become known as being at risk. Either way at risk land is going to start plumetting in value.
It will be hard to plan infrastructure when we are dealing with a process that could continually accelerate, and is not able to be predicted with high accuracy, and rates are going to only be intelligent estimates somewhere in the middle, and could be worse than expected.
Nobody is going to want to insure coastal property against these sorts of problems, and calls will be put on governments to either build barriers, or bail home owners out financially. This will cause government spending and debt problems, and consequent political problems.
This could all go on for centuries, as communities gradually relocate further inland in a stepwise fashion.
These are just some of the consequences of failing to reduce emissions.
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nigelj at 12:34 PM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Tom Curtis @30 that plan to power Europe with solar power from deserts in northern africa is absolutely amazing, and quite jaw dropping.
But just looking at it a bit critically, a few things jump out at me. Northern africa is not the most politically stable place, to be so fully reliant on.
And Europe has high winter nightime heating requirements, so how does this square with a gigantic solar panel array or solar thermal array? They are going to need substantial storage, and / or backup from alternative generation sources.
A solar system would need significant water for cleaning, and this is going to put serious pressure on local resources.
But the very fact the scheme is being seriously considered tells me these things are likely to have answers, and the world is about to change radically in our lifetimes. I mean its pretty amazing.
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nigelj at 12:24 PM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Too @32, 33, 35, where are you going with this? What are your trying to argue?
Are you trying to claim wind is not an economic source and promote nuclear? Please just say what you are going on about, because I can respect someone who wants to argue in favour of nuclear power (even if Im a bit cautious about this power source), or has some specific doubts about the costs of something specific, but I have no respect or patience for people who just quote tables of numbers without making it plain what their real point is. Its like they are hiding something.
The wikipedia article on costs by source is consistent with other sources I have seen. The obvious fact is that onshore wind and photovoltaic has become very cost competitive as a full lifetimes cost measure. Its fair to assume costs of offshore wind will drop a bit and costs of solar thermal are likely to drop considerably. In other words renewable energy (and I include nuclear in that) is economic even without factoring in costs of agw as such.
I would have thought the more important question is making the grid reliable (I dont mean transmission lines as such, but resolving intermittency problems, and substation problems to deal with more fluctuating loads than normal). But the law of large numbers applies, and the more the grid is renewable as in dispersed solar and wind power etc, the smaller these sorts of problems become.
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too at 12:14 PM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
It is very helful Tom Curtis, I am beginning to get a sense of why the two sides in this debate cannot seem to have productive discussions.
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Tom Curtis at 11:36 AM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
too @35, yes the Social Cost of Carbon is considered. The alternative is that the adverse direct health effects from the combustion of coal be neglected, not to mention the costs of AGW. If, however, you want to ignore these factors you need only look at Figure 4, which shows the cheapest source of electricity with out consideration of availability or externalities:
You will notice that coal is cheapest in just 29 counties.
Factoring in availability but not externalities, you need to look at figure 5 of the Supplemental Information, which shows coal is cheapest in just 89 counties, a long way behind solar (482 counties) and wind (1,125 counties). Natural Gas (1344 counties) and Nuclear (70 counties) rounds out the list.
The SI also shows the LCOE for each power source by county, along with the national mean.
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DPiepgrass at 11:19 AM on 13 June 2017It's Pacific Decadal Oscillation
"the 130-year near-linear trend is 0.6C / century"
The trend is certainly not near-linear since 1887.
As for why global warming is predicted to accelerate, see here.
Moderator Response:[RH] Fixed image width. Please limit images to 500px.
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too at 10:24 AM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
So, if I understand the cost differences in this paper versus pure LCoE one of the cost factors this report considers is the EPA's SCC?
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too at 09:30 AM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #23
Calm down. Just trying to understand the mores here. I appreciate the eduction on personal versus political mockery. That's a very fine line that is being threaded.
Moderator Response:[DB] Inflammatory snipped.
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Tom Curtis at 08:32 AM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
too @33, the cost of electricity by particular sources varies by location. This 2017 paper takes that into account, and provides a map of the cheapest source of electricity by county in the US:
As you can see, wind is the cheapest power source across the majority of the US. In the south west, utility scale solar PV becomes very important, and residential solar PV is cheapest in a scattering of counties across the country. Other than that, the dominant player is combined cycle Natural Gas, followed by nuclear. Coal is not cheapest in any county.
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too at 08:12 AM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Right you are [RH]. Thanks. The Wikipedia article on this looks like it repeats much of the same information although has some nice graphs and a breakdown by country. Appreciate turning me on to that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
I found this for land use but you have to pay for it ($38 US). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032108001354
I guess the Arkansas article does cite some decent sources that you could cobble together:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epa_sum.html *3 American Wind Energy Association. http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_basics.html *4 U.S. Energy Information Association. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/archive/aeo06/assumption/renewable.html *5 American Wind Energy Association: http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_environment.html. *6 Sun power® Tracker Solar Systems: http://www.progress-energy.com/aboutus/news/article.asp?id=18882 http://www.sunpowercorp.com/
Moderator Response:[PS] Fixed links. Please learn how to do this yourself with the link tool in the comments editor.
And thank you too for a refreshing conformance to our comments policy.
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too at 07:03 AM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
@Eclectic, yes I made an error, which I was clear about making in @25 and @26. It was an honest mistake that I performed on each of those calculations. I was actually jumping through hoops using a different source where I had to convert the cost per MW (not MWh) of a facility and then found the nei source and I totally screwed up. The correct numbers are billions, not trillions. I am not yet magical enough to have never made a mistake.
I would like to know if the nei stats on cost per MWh in @21 are good or if there are better sources out there. Similar with the entergy-arkansas stats for land use in @26. Surely there are better sources than entergy-arkansas??
Moderator Response:[RH] You might want to read up on Levelized Cost of Electricity. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf
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Eclectic at 00:51 AM on 13 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #23
Too @3 , to the best of my knowledge, "Political" comments are strongly discouraged — where "politics" is taken to be in the sense of Partisan Politics (a situation where, as you will doubtless have noticed on the internet, many Americans fall into a brainless and intense left/right tribal battle). There are abundant websites where such emotional venting is permitted, for those who wish to indulge in that exercise.
Here at SkS, the website exists for discussion of the science of Global Warming. AGW is affecting the present physical world, and so affects (in a major way) present and future human society — and so must necessarily involve a political aspect of how to best manage & counteract the AGW problem. But that means politics in its purest form e.g. the political actions/decisions that should be taken by "Statesmen" who wish to best allocate society's resources to tackle the problem. This is essentially partisan-free politics.
While at first glance, the Toon of the Week may resemble something typically found on a partisan newspaper : nevertheless if you look more closely at the situation, you will see that the cartoon disparages three individuals and their anti-science stance (which they take to the detriment of all humanity). Whether these 3 are partisan-red or partisan-blue, is a matter which is quite immaterial here.
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too at 23:46 PM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #23
Is the policy against Political comments always the case or is there an exception when politcal discussion is invited like in the Toon of the Week? I assume there are no exceptions?
Moderator Response:[JH] The comment threads for both the Weekly Digest and the Weekly News Roundup are akin to "open threads." Political comments are permitted as long they comport with all of the other parts of the SkS Comments Policy.
[RH] You have enough to discuss already. Please don't start another topic.
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Eclectic at 22:24 PM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Chriskoz @29 , help me to understand the point you are wishing to make in your post #29.
Electric power requirements per head of population are likely to keep increasing through this century, even despite some degree of increased efficiencies in lighting and home insulation. Ever cheaper "renewables" electricity costs will encourage less frugality; plus there will be greater use of electric vehicles; and perhaps more heat waves will increase demand for refrigerative air-conditioning especially in the tropical zone. As Tom Curtis has said, there would be a marginal increase in the present grid distribution system.
Present-day impoverished areas, with isolated villages and houses, have largely been excluded from grid power distribution because of grid set-up costs. However, these areas will likely benefit in future from micro-networking of solar-panel power generation even where that generation is "daytime only" [in the absence of battery or other storage].
Aluminium-smelting and other high demand industrial concentrations are mostly already served by an existing grid. At need, new solar-farms at a distance can be efficiently plugged into the grid via high-voltage DC lines. Solar-farms tend to be placed in areas of low-value soil — but it should be possible also to use higher value pasture land, provided that the arrays are elevated and spaced sufficiently to permit better-than-50% insolation of pasture land over the course of each day. All this can be done with present-day technology, let alone with the hi-tech stuff Tom Curtis is mentioning.
Disregarding how our poster "Too" has magically transposed (in his post #21) the Billions dollar costs into eye-watering Trillions dollar costs [ for our shock and amusement!!! ] . . . nevertheless there will have to be a continued ramping-up of investment in electric power generation in coming decades. Yet this investment will be cheaper via "renewables" than via fossil fuels.
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Tom Curtis at 17:26 PM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
chriskoz @29, that was not the point that too made, and nor should you assume that it is the point he wanted to make. His comments in general do not warrant that sort of confidence.
Adressing your point, obviously nobody thinks the worlds energy should be generated in the Sahara. The inclusion of the area required for that is merely for illustrative purposes. However, there already exists a commercial plan to generate the majority of the EU's, Middle East's, and Africa's energy using concentrated solar in the Sahara, with the required network connections. Moreover it is a plan that is already attracting serious funding from major corporations including Siemens, Deutche Bank and Munich Re.
With regard to the cost of the required interconnectivity, the Eastern States of Australia (including South Australia) have already set up a broad distribution network because it was expected that the cost savings through increased competition among power suppliers would reduce overall costs, not to mention increasing reliability in the event of specific power stations having an outage. Europe already has even more connectivity between member states. From what I understand, the US would benefit from a similar arrangement. Building the extended network required for renewables does not add a lot to the interconnectivity required for such programs, and ergo not a lot of additional costs. That is particularly the case given that a 100% renewable network would not require the extensive logistic network required to supply fuel to FF power stations.
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chriskoz at 16:38 PM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Tom@28,
You cannot concentrate your power production for the entire world in a single spot as you've shown on your map. If taken literally, the map is moot, even say for powering nearby EU, because network and transmition costs would be enormous.
Too's point is an issue for renewables not in a sense that there is not enough land to build the renewable power plants. The point is that the energy has to be produced over larger areas (i.e. in smaller, sparsely located units) and then longer, smarter transmition lines able to equalise intermittency of various sources, then concentrate the energy and send it to the regions of high demand. I'm not saying this is unsolvable problem but it hasn't been solved yet. The exiting energy distribution models hve small concentrated sources (FF power plants) that simply allow expansion of said energy in a given direction. Because, FF have miracuously high energy density, and releaqsing that energy is very cheap with the process of burning them, and expansion of that energy into the neighbourhood follows the natural process of rising entropy, is can be done/controlled with ease. The industrial civilisation have been following that model of energy flow forever.
Now, with renewables, the energy density at the source is must lower and intermittent, so it must be gathered over larger area and concentrated before being redistributed and then redistribution mst be able to balance different sources over long transmission linesin real time. This is a difficult task. I'm not saying it's impossible to solve but it hasn't been solved by energy distributors yet. In a very basic physical sense, concentrating renewable energy, a process that lowers the environmental entropy, that must be done on a larger scale to feed customers like e.g. aluminum smelters, is a unique challenge that hasn't been even considered by distributors in the past.
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Tom Curtis at 14:21 PM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
too @26, nigelj has already covered this in part but, both wind and solar can make multiple use of their footprint. Specifically, and most obviously, neither interfere with land used for grazing, and wind does not interfere with land used for cropping. Wind can also be built as an offshore facility. Solar can be built in the roof of buildings, over railway tracks and roads, or (apparently) along border walls. In addition, solar pavements and roof tiles have both been developed.
More importantly, the total amount of area, even if dedicated single use area, needed to power the world is miniscule relative to the total land area. Below are the areas of solar facilities required to power, respectively, the World, the EU, and the Middle East and Africa set against a map showing Algeria and Tunisia:
If one, medium sized country in North Africa has enough effectively unused space to power the world, I don't think the "but think about the surface area required" has any but emotional appeal.
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nigelj at 13:53 PM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Too @26, onshore wind is clearly the cheapest renewable option, not nuclear, (using your link) although as I said in 23 above, we do need some sort of mix of options because of wind intermittency etc.
First its not clear if your wind area measure is for the farms as a whole, or just the footprint of the towers. But assuming its just the footprint of the tower this would not add up to all that much. Wind farms could be on farms with cattle wandering around the towers couldn't they.
Only a tiny proportion of America is urbanised with hard surfaces and I doubt wind farms would add significantly to this. It's just not an issue.
Nuclear power is moderately cheap power, but this is only realised quite long term. You also have a range of other challenges, eg safety requirements mean its a lengthy and difficult process getting approval which is one reason not much nuclear power has been built in America in recent decades. And I suggest you don't want to cut corners on safety approvals.
I dont know how the public perceive nuclear power in America, but it's not popular in parts of Europe. Wind and solar may simply be easier to get underway, and more practical to get regulatory approval and public approval. You have to consider this.
But let's not let this become a debate about nuclear versus other sources, which is clearly your unspoken intent.
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nigelj at 13:28 PM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #23
Chriskoz, the poster is satire, and sarcasm, so not to be taken literally.
But satire is risky. Satire works better in an article, when its possible to insert a couple of little things that are so obviousy insane, it becomes obvious it's satire.
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too at 13:12 PM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
One side note, we should take into account the acreage required:
http://www.entergy-arkansas.com/content/news/docs/AR_Nuclear_One_Land_Use.pdf
To generate 1,800 MWNuclear - 1.7 Sq Miles
Wind 720 units
169 Sq MilesSolar
21 Sq MilesSince I apparently suck out loud at math, I'll leave it to whoever to calculate the acreage.
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too at 13:02 PM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
@MatinJB - I definitely might be. It's a lot of numbers and I could be a factor off. Admittedly, those numbers seemed high. But, if it is any solace, I did all the calculations the same way? :) At least the ratios should be correct...
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too at 12:59 PM on 12 June 2017There is no consensus
I agree that scientific consensus is that climate change has anthropogenic causes. I think I was pretty clear about that.
Moderator Response:[PS] Great but didnt say you didnt. I am saying that you are making claim about that means that neither the article nor any scientific source actually makes. (ie a strawman).
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Evan at 12:44 PM on 12 June 2017SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause
nigelj@22 Thanks for your post about the town relocating. I have been pondering an analogy along these lines, and your link is perfect. If a city wants to build a road through a neighborhood where they need to remove a bunch of houses, if they set there sites 30 years into the future, they can buy the houses as they naturally go up for sale and cause little disruption of the residents. Move that time period up to 10 years, and they force people to move sooner than they want. Move that time period up to 1 year and they will probably have law suites from every homeowner. And if they give the residents just 2 weeks notice, well there is civil war and chaos. This is obviously related to the problem that animals have adjusting to rapid climate change. There is simply a natural time frame within which things can happen at a normal pace. The further we move from that natural time frame, the more pain, as in the article you posted.
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nigelj at 12:36 PM on 12 June 2017SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause
I like Evans comments at 21. Many people can relate to that sort of science, while staring at the equations behind climate models would be incomprehensible to most people. Its certainly important to understand that smallish changes can lead to bigger impacts than we might anticipate, from a simple gut reaction only.
It's also about getting the message across about floods and sea level rise. We are all used to big floods occasionally maybe 1:100 years where the house is a total write off or seriously damaged. It wont take much for that to become 1 in 20 years, and this is worse than it sounds. These sorts of costs will therefore become onerous, and insurance will become a nightmare, due to both increasing severe weather and also the difficulty predicting just how this severity will worsen more over time. Insurance companies hate unpredictability hence they hate insuring against earthquakes.
Speaking of floods and sea level: "Climate change causes relocation of entire town in USA" as below
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nigelj at 12:15 PM on 12 June 2017SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause
Ubrew @18, I didn't want to say anything really harsh, like "total idiot" and get told off for being personal by the moderator.
Yes he cherrypicks etc. I think RC did some article on this guy, and the consensus is he is getting old and past it. Or possibly he has some undisclosed agenda, or is an attention seeker. You will go nuts figuring it out, because humans often have mixed and complicated motives. It's definitely not good though.
Plenty of people tell me climate change is all " just natural". They are just grasping at anything to deny there is a problem. It's like an avalance of things.
I think you are right to point out the rate of change since 1900 is far higher than natural rates of change in the past, and of course the big problem is adaptation to fast rates of change. There have been previous extinctions due to climate change as species have struggled to dapat fast enough.
I suppose people assume technology will rescue us, but this is a very high risk solution.
I also point out that we know recent climate change is not natural because solar energy patterns should have cause a cooling trend over the last 50 years, and there have been atmospheric changes that can only really be caused by an increasing greenhouse effect. Trouble is it gets complicated, and peoples eyes glaze over a bit.
Maybe some people are fatalistic, and say "things changed before and so they will change again, regardless of causation".
But this is only because the climate problem seems distant, and if it was to hurt them badly tomorrow, they would probably have a different view. There's a lot of psychology going on with the climate issue.
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too at 12:07 PM on 12 June 2017There is no consensus
Look, your argument is that anthropogenic causes are proved by scientific consensus. I have presented examples where scientific consensus was not just incorrect by exactly the opposite of what we know today. Although you deleted them. That's the only point. I happen to believe in the anthropotenic causes for cliimate change, but basing that upon scientific consensus is problematic. If you want to talk about logical fallacies, there you go.
Moderator Response:[PS] "Look, your argument is that anthropogenic causes are proved by scientific consensus. "
No, as repeatedly said, that is not the argument and you repeating it does not make it so. Nothing is "proved" in science. What is asserted is that the vast weight of scientific evidence supports the notion of anthropogenic cause, so much so that a scientific consensus has formed on that. It might be wrong, but until someone shows evidence that it does, policy should be guided by that consensus. Show us anywhere in the IPCC report (or peer-reviewed paper) where it is claimed that anthropogenic warming is proved by consensus. That is a nonsense statement. The papers discussed above simply a methods to determine whether a consensus exists.
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MartinJB at 12:03 PM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
too (@21)
It's late, so I might be glitching, but I think you're off by a factor of 1,000. For solar, $144/MWh * 4 billion MWh = $576 billion. Of course, that seems too cheap, but then I don't know how they're treating capacity factors. Also, you used the price of off-shore wind instead of on-shore - which is substantially cheaper.
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Evan at 11:55 AM on 12 June 2017SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause
Here is another way to answer the likes of Giaever with facts.
Water freezes at 0C. So if the average global temperature is 15C, it matters not about the range from 0 down to -273 (absolute 0), if we are concerned about the strength of storms. After all, from absolute 0 up to 273K there is not enough vaporization to drive anything.
Nobody will dispute that water freezes at 0C, and it should not be too hard to educate people that the energy of storms is derived from water condensing (latent heat of vaporization/condensation). So forgetting that the Clausius-Clapeyron is an exponential function, an increase of 1C from an average temperature of 15C to 16C means a whopping 6.5% increase relative to 0C. And an increase of 2C means an enormous increase of 13%. These are not small numbers, especially when this refers to the jet fuel of storms. That is, I think most people understand that the warmer the water, the more water vapor it releases into the air. Think of a tea kettle. And by some coincidence, increasing global temperatures by 2C does increase the water vapor in the air by 14%. This is by pure chance, but you can point anyone to the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, and if a physicist cannot follow this line of reasoning, he should donate his Nobel prize to someone else.
Not everyone will follow this, but my guess is that most will, because it is the kind of science that is so basic and fundamental as to be transparent. I'm sure this can be cleaned up, but the point is that referencing all the way to absolute 0 is unreasonable, and referencing to the freezing point of water makes a nice reference to discuss what drives storms.
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nigelj at 11:49 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Too @21,
Your first link didnt work, but the image in the second link measured simple population increase against increases in CO2. Clearly they are positively related. More peope does tend to generate more emissions thats obvious but the solution does not have to be less population increase, equally obviously although it is certainly a help.
I think Tom Curtis graph shows something different: that the "rate" of increase of population growth has slowed since the 1960s, thats what his graph shows, and over the same period CO2 "density" has increased. The source as noted at the bottom of the graph.
The message for me is that even despite the "rate" of population growth slowing carbon output is increasing as a density function!
Therefore in order to make a difference we would have to make population slow at a faster rate, maybe double the rate. This would reduce global warming but only a certain amount, and my guesstimate is by about 20% maximum. To achieve this limited effect would require big measures. It means massive contraception programmes and lifting the third world out of poverty at a more rapid rate than currently tracking, so that they are comfortable having smaller families. But the demographic transition is a slow thing no matter what you do so it will not be easy. Theres tons of research on all this.
Lifting people out of poverty requires economic policies and / or wealth redistribution. Take your pick. But note that Trumps anti free trade agenda will definitely not help lift developing countries out of poverty, so he is doubly toxic for resolving climate change!
But its fair to say that reducing rates of population growth does help reduce climate change to at least some extent, so this is serendipity.
But I digress.
Regarding your claimed costs of nuclear energy, solar and wind power you say.
"Cost per MWh
Nuclear - $108 per MWh
Solar - $144 per MWh
Wind - $221 per MWh"But the article says: The total system cost for a natural gas combined cycle plant is $65.60 per MWh; onshore wind is $86.60 per MWh; offshore wind, $221.50; and solar, $144.30. Unlike renewable sources, however, nuclear energy facilities produce electricity around the clock.
So you were rather selective in your list. Wind is actually quite cost competitive, and so probbaly has a big place in the mix of things.
However I agree energy diversity is important. I see nothing wrong with a mix of nuclear, solar wind and gas (gas as the smallest possible component) in America at least. All countries would be different.
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chriskoz at 11:38 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #23
Is today's Poster of the Week a joke, or another "fake news" or what?
Acording to my understanding of current AGW crisis, it's the big oil companies who "contrived" (i.e. brought about) the crisis, and climate scientists have exposed the big oil actions are responsible for it, and not a vice versa.
The definition of the word contrive (to bring about, to plot) indicates my understanding of the Poster's meaning is correct. Or maybe someone can point ne to see a different nuance here, rather than fake news I'm currently seeing. In any case, the poster is very dubious, if one can understand it like I've at my fisrt glance.
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Evan at 11:32 AM on 12 June 2017SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause
ubrew12 @18, did you forget a link?
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MartinJB at 10:46 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
OPOF (@6)
Even if one agreed with all you said, it is still important to understand costs.
They can help to undstand the equity of a given plan - e.g. how much of the cost is born by different countries over which time period? - and can be useful in choosing between mitigation options.
In addition, and relevant in this context, understanding those estimates can help when discussing the issue with folks like too, who cite $100 trillion as a reason not to participate in the Paris Climate Agreement. He thinks $100 trillion is a big number. But if that $100tn is really over all countries and includes costs of existing commitments and is not additional to BAU infrastructure costs, then maybe it doesn't look like such a big number afterall.
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too at 10:29 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Not sure where you are getting your numbers @Tom Curtis. My numbers come from http://data.okfn.org/data/core/co2-fossil-global from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population and from the CO2 readings from Mauna Loa. When you plot these you get a positive correlation. I can't share a graphic because this site does not allow you to upload an image, just link to an image. At the risk of being banned or censored, here is the link to the tweets of the images:
https://twitter.com/theobjobserver/status/874058050411405314
https://twitter.com/theobjobserver/status/874059165404213250
It would help if you cited the sources of your data specifically. There is no possible way that either of these graphics could be interpreted as having a negative correlation.
BTW, I agree @nigelj that we should return to the actual topic at hand, which is the economics argument versus sociopathic argument. The Malthusian Catastrophe was simply a throw-away comment about something I feel is rather obvious. CO2 increase and climate change has anthropogenic causes. Anthropogenic CO2 output increases as populations increase. I'm really confused here, are you arguing that population increases do not increase CO2 production by humans? Because if that is the case, wouldn't that throw anthropogenic cause of climate change into question? And obviously, that is not the case.
Back to economics:
https://www.nei.org/Master-Document-Folder/Backgrounders/Fact-Sheets/The-Value-of-Energy-Diversity
Cost per MWh
Nuclear - $108 per MWh
Solar - $144 per MWh
Wind - $221 per MWhhttps://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_in_the_united_states
4 Billion MW hours United States in 2016Cost to generate:
$432 Trillion nuclear
$576 Trillion solar
$884 Trillion windModerator Response:[RH] Please read Tom's comment more carefully. You are improperly applying Malthus to climate change because Malthus makes a specific claim relative to food and population. Just because both are rising does not indicate a Malthusian correlation. Please acknowledge this error on your part before moving on to other topics.
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ubrew12 at 10:03 AM on 12 June 2017SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause
"He is being very cheeky." That's being generous. I've looked over most of his 'points' and the level of cherry-picking, mathematical flimflammery, and outright obfuscation make it hard to conclude he 'accidentally' pied-pipered his way into this river with his enchanted flock behind him.
I keep being told by family and friends that 'current global warming is natural'. I finally decided to graph what these people mean by 'natural', since they can't be bothered to do so themselves. This distribution (temperature change in C per century, for the last 220 centuries) is based on 3 graphs you can find here on skeptical science or at realclimate. It was not my intent to be perfect, I just wanted to indicate to people what they mean by 'natural climate change', when they claim such of the current warming. The distribution is perfectly accurate for the last 20 centuries, a bit less accurate for the 100 centuries before that, and even less accurate for the 100 centuries before that. That's not important. This graphs purpose was simply to locate 'natural' for skeptics who can't seem to define it themselves.
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Tom Curtis at 09:31 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Just out of interest, I determined the relationship between the rate of increase of world population and the rate of increase of CO2 concentration for the years 2000-2016, ie, those for which we have annual data on population. Interestingly, a linear regression shows a negative slope. That is, the greater rate of growth in population, the lower the rate of growth in CO2 concentration, and vise versa. That is because the rate of growth in population has been consistently declining over that period, having peaked around 1962, while the rate of growth in CO2 concentration continues to increase. The correlation between the two is -0.356.
Moderator Response:[RH] From a moderation standpoint, Too needs to address this salient point before making any other comments. Any distractions from this will be deleted.
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nigelj at 08:31 AM on 12 June 2017SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause
Ok here are a few analogies related to the article. First some background. As we know, global warming is a relentless long term process of increasing temperatures, driven by burning fossil fuels, but natural cycles make this an uneven process with temporary flat periods. But these are not enough to stop the underlying climate change process.
By analogy it is like watching television. From time to time you get loss of transmission or pixellation that blanks out the picture for a short period, but transmission then continues.The physical forces driving the television have not stopped.
And yes people ask how does such a small quantity of CO2 change the climate? There are tons of analogies:
1)Transistors amplify currents using a few atoms of certain substances added to the device that make it act sort of like a gate, and all it takes are a small number of atoms. (I'm a bit rusty on exactly how these things work but its along those lines)
2) Catalytic converters in cars reduce quite significant quantities of certain noxious gases using only small quantities of rare earth metals that act as catalysts.
I agree wuth Ubrew's comments critical of Giaever. This guy should know better that you cannot compare predictable and steady seasonal fluctuations that we have learned to live with against a relentless increase in long term temperatures with its implications. It's a rate of change problem really. He is being very cheeky.
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too at 07:50 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Yes, the Scientific American article cites the United Nations Population Fund, the Global Population and Environment Program at the non-profit Sierra Club, the Worldwatch Institute, a nonprofit environmental think tank. The Biological Diversity quotes Global Environmental Change from Elsevier. Are you saying that these institutions are not legitimate science and research institutions?
Added to that, I thought that 97% of all climate scientists agreed that climate change is anthropogenic and that this figure comes from an analysis of scientific papers. Are you saying that is not the case, because I think that is pretty much a fact that that is the case.
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Evan at 07:46 AM on 12 June 2017SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause
ubrew12@13. I though of another example where a minor change has a big effect. The numbers are not exact, but you will get the point. During the 2007 economic recession, gasoline consumption dropped by about 10% (I think it was lower, but don't want to exaggerate and can't find a good source), but this caused the price to drop from $4/gallon to a little over $1/gallon (at least in Minnesota in the US). Is it obvious that a 10% reduction of one thing should cause about a 300% reduction of another thing?
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nigelj at 07:40 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Too @14, I'm only saying climate is a population / mathusian issue in very general terms and has some similar attributes, and that I think you have a interesting point to make. Tom Curtis is technically correct by the way that agw is not really a malthisian problem in a strict sense, but I look a little more broadly at things.
Read my point 1) again and this shows how it is not strictly a malthusian problem - provided we reduce emissions and we have that option.
And there seems little point discussing definitions too much on this.
I think the real issue is whether its viable to solve the climate problem by putting all our resources into reducing rates of popultion increase as opposed to other measures, and I briefly described this doesn't appear viable to me. Or at the very least it we need to put resources into both renewable energy and reducing rates of population growth. The maths deciding the balance would be very complicated but I'm sure I have read an article where a researcher analysed the issue and did calculations. But seriously you dont need to do some research paper to see that using reducing rates of population growth as a main strategy has huge, seemingly insurmountable problems.
Plenty of studies have found its plausible to reduce emissions with renewable energy etc and I have seen on this website studies studies that find Paris could achieve more than 0.2 degrees and up to 1 degree which is very significant.
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too at 07:28 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
In response to the moderator, citations for climate science blaming population growth are as follows:
Paul and Anne Ehrlich:
http://www.populationmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Population-Bomb-Revisited-Paul-Ehrlich-20096.pdf
Additional citations:
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/climate/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/population-growth-climate-change/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/03/population-growth-and-climate-change-fewer-people-does-not-mean-more-co2
Moderator Response:[PS] Better but hardly science papers - did you actually read your cites?
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too at 07:22 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Sorry, forgot the reference: http://www.economicsdiscussion.net/articles/malthusian-theory-of-population-explained-with-its-criticism/1521
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too at 07:20 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Perhaps what we need to do is to use Malthus' own words to describe his theory in order to prevent misinterpretation and people from adding their own interpretation. To use his own words: “By nature human food increases in a slow arithmetical ratio; man himself increases in a quick geometrical ratio unless want and vice stop him."
We can restate this simply. "By nature CO2 absorption increases in a slow arithmetical ratio; man's CO2 production increases in a quick geometrical ratio unless want and vice stop him."
I think that is pretty clearly a Malthusian catastrophe definition. And these are Malthus' own words so please do not try to add things that have nothing to do with the definition of Malthus' theory.
Moderator Response:[RH] Your "restatement" is not just fundamentally wrong, it's a classic a straw man. And no, those are not Malthus' words since you clearly reconstructed them and misapplied them to a completely different topic. You can't rephrase someone's words and call them "their own words."
Malthus was talking about food production and consumption. Period.
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