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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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too at 07:07 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
@niglej - Correct, the basis of a Malthusian Catastrophe is that unchecked population growth causes a catastrophic effect. That is what is being stated today by climate science. Population growth is causing an imbalance in CO2 levels that, left unchecked, will lead to a catastrophe. This is very straight-forward.
The particular form of mitigation to avoid such a catastrophe has zero bearing on the defition of something as a Malthusian Catastrophe.
Moderator Response:[PS] Tiresome. Please cite your evidence that climate science blames change on population growth. Quit the sloganeering (maybe take a moment to actually read the science).
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.
Moderating this site is a tiresome chore, particularly when commentators repeatedly submit offensive, off-topic posts or intentionally misleading comments and graphics or simply make things up. We really appreciate people's cooperation in abiding by the Comments Policy, which is largely responsible for the quality of this site.
Finally, please understand that moderation policies are not open for discussion. If you find yourself incapable of abiding by these common set of rules that everyone else observes, then a change of venues is in the offing.Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter, as no further warnings shall be given.
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nigelj at 06:44 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
I could accept that climate change could be a malthusian catastrophe at least in theory, or has some similar attributes. The basis of Mathus argument is exponential population growth leads to "some form" of breakdown generally related to resource and environmental issues.
But the theory breaks down when applied in the real world as follows.
1) It is only going to become a malthusian catastrophe if no alternatives to fossil fuels are found and we have alternatives. So it becomes more a question of where money is best spent.
2)Most experts project that population growth will essentially stabilse sometime from 2050 - 2100 as remaining developing countries inevitably move through a demographic transition, so the problem is already decreasing.
3) Countries are already doing all you can practically expect to stabilse population growth. To some extent it is a cultural issue about family size and these things take time to change.
4) Throwing trillions at the population growth problem rather than renewable energy seems unlikely to me to do much to speed up the demographic transition.
5) Its unlikely that giving trillions away to developing countries to reduce population growth would be popular politically, and even less likely that it would actually be spent on birth control, better health care or the like and much could be squandered.
6) moral restraint will never stop population growth, and sorry but with respect, its a totaly unrealistic argumment if you look at history.
7) It may be sensible to promote birth control, and some western aid to poor countries on this seems pragmatic, but this morally and politically contentious, and efforts so far are slow to achieve results. It will work and is a desirable strategy, but is a slow process.
8) Even if trillions were poured into reducing rates of population growth, results would almost certainly come too late to reduce dangerous levels of climate change. This is one of the key problems.
9) Even if you reduce rates of population growth emissions from existing populations are still a huge problem, and so you are back considering the need for renewabale energy etc.
Conclusion: Trying to solve the climate problem "purely" by spending all the available money on reducing population growth is fraught with insurmountable problems, and reducing emissions is more plausible.
But sensible efforts should be made to reduce rates of popultion growth. This makes sense for many reasons including both climate issues and other issues, so at least some global resources should be put into reducing rates of population growth.
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Tom Curtis at 06:07 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
too @11, if food consumption could be reduced to zero calories per day for all people, then the arithmetic increase of food production would not place any restraint on the exponential increase in population. In consequence, given that hypothesis, Malthus could not have inferred the potential of a Malthusian catastrophe. The fact that GHG emissions can in principle (and at current technology, can in practise at some indeterminate economic cost) makes a fundamental difference in the problem. Calling the AGW problem a "Malthusian catastrophe", therefore, in misleading in the extreme. You summarize the problem by saying:
"The definition of Malthusian theory is the that population increase would outpace the ability of the Earth to support. This is what climate change says. Population, by proxy of CO2 output, is increasing at a rate that currently outpaces the ability of the Earth to support."
But with a net emissions intensity of zero, population can vary freely with no impact of GHG emissions. Indeed, hunter gatherer, or purely agrarian populations also can have populations vary freely with no impact on GHG emissions. They may be more prone to the conventional food production based Malthusian catastrophe, but again this demonstrates that AGW is not a Malthusian problem.
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Evan at 05:43 AM on 12 June 2017SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause
Correction to my last post (Evan@14). I said,
"And ice raises sea level." What I meant to say, of course, is "And melting land ice raises sea level."
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Evan at 05:09 AM on 12 June 2017SkS Analogy 7 - Christmas Dinner and the Faux Pause
ubrew12@13 Yes, I like the building analogy.
Go back to the Columbia Space Shuttle accident. The engineers knew that a chunk of foam hit the wings 2 days after lift-off, and it was estimated to be 2 lbs. They reasoned that it was like a piece of foam from a styrofoam cooler hitting a truck on the highway, and so they ignored it. (This is a case of an analogy being dangerous). They reasoned that the foam just bounces off and does not damage the truck. But when the physicists sad down and did a detailed calculation (the type done in high-school physics classes), they found that the chunk of supposedly inconsequential foam exerted a force of more than 1 ton of force. The devil is in the details, but unfortunately this calculation was not done until after the tragedy.
No, a temperature increase of 1C does not seem like a big deal, and most scientists agree that if we stopped at 1C we would probably be OK. 2C is where things really get interesting (and we have already locked in 2C), so we have already locked in a 0.6% increase. Suppose somebody makes an income of $50,000/yr, and with that they are just paying the bills and getting by. Pull out $300 and offer it to them. What kind of response will you get? Is $300 inconsequential to someone making $50,000/yr? The reason it is not inconsequential is that we do not compare to the magnitude of the gross income, but the comparison should be made to the magnitude of the net income. A person just getting by (i.e., in equilibrium), is delighted at a $300 gift, because it may represent their net savings for a year. So for a world that is in equilibrium, 1-2C is HUGE (sorry for yelling). It is not about the gross magnitude, but about the deviation from an equilibrium point.
Or take the Indianapolis 500. Take a care and magically increase its speed by 0.6%. Is that worth something? It means the race requires about 1 minute less if you could increase your spedd by 0.6%. Next time you watch a race, count how many cars go by in 1 minute and see if that kind of time difference represents an advantage. This is not a perfect analogy, but again illustrates the point that 2C, or 0.6% can mean a lot.
But I think the real point about this is that it is simply not intuitive that a 1-2C increase will be that bad, except when considering that ice at -0.5C does not melt and ice at 0.5C does melt.
But perhaps the real problem is the concept of distributions. 1C is the average temperature increase so far, and yet in the places where ice lives we know that the warming is closer to 3C. What will the temperature difference be at the poles when our locked-in 2C warming is finally manifested? I think that even Nobel Laureates know what a temperature increase does to ice.
And ice raises sea level.
And of course there is the other problem of ocean acidifcation. I'm sure that Nobel Laureates know that too much CO2 in the water is not good. At least that's what my mother told me many years ago.
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too at 04:56 AM on 12 June 2017There is no consensus
The point is that scientific consensus can be wrong. Nobody disputes the following:
- Prior to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, a magical “luminiferous aether” was considered by scientific consensus as the medium for the propagation of light. Einstein was actually still trying to work the aether into the theory of relativity as late as 1924. Evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether
- Prior to the 1970’s, the scientific consensus for macro geologic processes was not plate tectonics. Evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics
- Prior to the 1980’s, the scientific consensus was that there was no such thing as dark energy and dark matter. Scientific consensus was that we could see 100% of the matter and energy in the universe. We now understand that visible matter and energy represent only a small fraction of the matter and energy in the universe. Evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy
- Prior to the 1980’s, scientific consensus would tell you that sauropods lived in lakes and that dinosaurs were cold blooded and extinct. We now understand these things to be entirely false.
The point is that simply pointing to scientific consensus is not fool-proof. I think this is a valuable input to the discussion.
Moderator Response:[PS] You are again indulging in the strawman arguments. Where is the claim that scientific consensus is foolproof? The claim is:
1/ There is a scientific consensus on the cause of current warming (and a very strong one at that)
2/ That the scientific consensus (particularly when strong) is the rational basis for policy making (on any technical topic).
Feel free to bring evidence against the claim but dont bother disputing non-claims.Take your sophistry elsewhere.
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too at 04:30 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
@Tom Curtis, your argument is not correct. Preventative checks be it based on moral restraint or some other mechanism can achieve a zero population growth rate just as emissions can be zero. Let's be clear. The Mathulsian aspect of both arguments is that some variable growing exponentially that is tied to population growth is outstripping the ability of the planet to support. That is what is occurring today with climate change, nobody disputes this fact. A growing population needs more energy and thus more CO2 emissions. How this is mitigated has nothing to do with Malthusian doctrine. With respect to food, this was mitigated by increased food production in excess of population growth thanks to technological advancements. This is also a potential mitigation for climate change, increasing CO2 sinks thanks to technology. In theory, we could also decrease CO2 output per person. Similarly we could decrease food consumption per person, decrease baby output per person, etc. The definition of Malthusian theory is the that population increase would outpace the ability of the Earth to support. This is what climate change says. Population, by proxy of CO2 output, is increasing at a rate that currently outpaces the ability of the Earth to support.
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Tom Curtis at 04:11 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
too @9, making people poorer would only restrain population growth, and hence be a "preventative check" if making people poorer would reduce the rate of population growth - something it fails to do. In the meantime, in stark contrast to the relationship between food and population, GHG emmissions can be reduced to zero while maintaining an industrial society. Consequently, it can be reduced to zero regardless of population growth. Ergo, AGW is not a Malthusian Catastrophe.
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too at 03:35 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
Malthusian catastrophes can be defined by your equation:
Food Consumed = Food Consumption per unit GDP * GPD per unit Population * Population
Rich people eat more than poor people. Thus by Malthusian logic, making people poorer would suffice as a "preventative check". Malthusian catastrophes do not require that the variable x necessarily grow with increated population. This is specifically address by Malthus, although he emphasized "moral restraint.
http://study.com/academy/lesson/malthusian-theory-of-population-growth-definition-lesson-quiz.html
Climate Change = Malthusian Catastrophe
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Tom Curtis at 02:50 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
too @8, following your second link, you find a definition of the Malthusian catastrophe" as:
"There is a variable x that is growing exponentially. This growth is caused by people. Continued, uncontrolled growth in this variable will result in the end of the world."
Firstly, that definition is inadequate. It is too strong, because in Thomas Malthus' prediction was of collapse of the population, not an "end of the world". It is also inadequate because for a Malthusian catastrophe, the variable x must necessarilly grow with increased population. If there is a way for x to grow without an increase in population, the problem is not Mathusian. More importantly, if there is a way to decrease x without decreasing population, the problem is also not Mathusian.
Net emissions are often approximated by the equation:
Emissions = Emissions per unit GDP * GDP per unit Population * Population
Clearly emissions can be reduced by reducing GDP per unit population, or by reducing emissions per unit GDP. The possibility of either means that global warming is not a Malthusian catastrophe. In fact most recommended solutions to AGW focus on reducing emissions per unit GDP (ie, emissions intensity).
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too at 02:15 AM on 12 June 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #23
@One Planet Only Forever - Yes.
It is absolutely correct to look at something that will cost x and reduce temperatures by y and say, look there is a better way to spend .5x and reduce temperatures by 2y.
The Paris climate agreement was completely ineffective and would have cost huge sums of money. It was a placebo. It did nothing. Better to be rid of it and actually focus on solving the problem rather than pointing to it as the solution when it did zero, zilch, nada.
http://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-negligible-impact-of-paris-climate-promises
I would much rather solve the problem than do nothing. That being said, climate change is really just a repackaging of a Malthusian catastrophe.
(snip)
https://theobjectiveobserverblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/11/the-climate-bomb/
Moderator Response:[RH] Again, we're not here to advertise your personal blog.
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