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RedRoseAndy at 01:41 AM on 25 September 2024Correcting myths about the cost of clean energy
The Labour Government in the UK are in a rush to get to get clean energy by 2030. Due to the last Conservative Government there are few onshore wind turbines in the UK, but their planning permission allows them to be made taller to take bigger blades, and if we add the maximum height allowed by the planning permission we can approximately triple the amount of electricity generated. And of course the infrastructure is already built so we can triple onshore wind turbine electricity in months. This is a win win as infrastructure takes a long time to put in, and at great expense. Great British Energy can hit the ground running by picking the lowest hanging fruit. Octopus Energy is already buying up 10% of our onshore wind turbines to heighten our onshore wind turbines, and we can do the other 90% by paying the owners to do the work, or nationalizing them.
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MA Rodger at 00:07 AM on 23 September 2024The doom spiral
Jan @4,
I don't think I can agree with your assertion that with AGW, "we are now flying blind."
Climate scientists are well aware of the potential for nasty surprises being stoked by humanity's greenhouse gas emissions. For some time now, the message has been that anything warmer than a +1.5ºC world is running the risk of bringing on some of those nasty surprises. (This safety limit was originally +2.0ºC prior to ~2010.) Mind, extinction of the human race will be far from the first nasty surprise to arrive. Of course, logically it would be the last but, that said, it would be a long long way down the road in terms of global tmperature rise.
The big risk we face not addressing AGW (which is where we are today) is messing the climate enough to bring the global economy crashing down around our ears, an economy the vast majority of humanity rely on to keep them fed and watered.You do make some very brave assertions which I consider are difficult to support.
As an example, I would question some of your comment on the "methane feedback."
Present natural methane emissions have not been easily quantified but they are included in the climate modelling and their growth has been a part of the projected methane forcing. Certainly recent work suggests the modelled natural emissions are running behind the assessed natural emissions and projections are not capturing the full picture. But this is not to the extent that natural methane would become a significant feedback mechanism. (See for instance Kleine et al (2021) or Zhang et al (2023).) However, the increase in natural methane emissions is one of the potential nasty surpises.One area of natural methane emissions where people often express great concern is the Arctic emissions, an understandable concern but one which is misplaced. Years ago I went down this road myself.
But it should be said that your brave assertions do require supporting evidence.
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emerlin at 21:08 PM on 22 September 2024Veganism is the best way to reduce carbon emissions
Guilhem,
thanks for your detailed post! Very compelling and thorough.
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Eclectic at 05:07 AM on 21 September 2024The doom spiral
Jan @4 , your ideas are all very fine.
But rather than basing your thoughts on climate models and/or on speculations ~ you could look at the Earth's geological history. Such as what happened during the warmer period of the Eemian, around 120,000 years ago.
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The doom spiral
Sadly, climate scientist have no time to follow the path single discussions on feedbacks take. Therefore, they think models can in anyway predict what is comming. Unfortunately they can't! So many models errors of Earth system developments now amerging that one can only vomit.
Thererby, models miss way too many feedbacks which are now soming into motion.
The Amazon is now trapped in the vicious cycle, speeding up its collapse decades earlier then predicted. Antarctic heatwaves and see ice losses also happens decades earlier then predicted.
The methane feedback has started while models did not see a significant signal till 2100 to emerge. The methane modul of models is crap! But do not know if the new one is already deployed.
Be it as it may, the warmings of the Arctic methane bomb are now out and will increase the comming years as recent observational studies are quite worring. Not only Yedoma permafrost emits much more, but the real danger will be geological methane from methane hydrates and gas rich sediment layers, which is a wild card, which is ever more observed and documented - methane of thermogenic origion reaches the atmosphere where measurements have been made, while ground water melts its way downward through cracs driven by osmosis.
Marine heatwaves, a feedback of oceans warming too fast, are also not predicable by models as they are driven by small scale to global circulation patterns in the oceans and atmosphere. We have now the first MHW in the North Pacific reaching in its peak regions some 7-8°C above the 1981-2011 average (one cause: Asian flooding amplifying the subtropical North Pacfic high via hot upper air currents).
Not only that marine heatwaves expanded non-linear, they are also a game changer in terms of ocean heat uptake, circulation patterns, and extreme events. Models were not able to predict their spread which can only be described as nuts.
Next problem we face is that over the oceans first 300m ocean heat is now building up, in the mode water and intermediate water mass regions the heat buildup spreads to deeper layers with subsurface water masses warming, freshening, and expanding. Very bad sign indeed!
First study came now out that vertical mixing of the oceans could already be suppresed by increasing stratification. Further, we see worrying changes in mode water masses in the Northern Hemisphere. At the same time recent changes around Antarctica (e.g. warming and hemispheric temperature gradient declining -oops!) are also worrying as it has been the Southern Ocean that had been mostly responsible for the monotoic trend of incrasing heat uptake the last 20 years - intensfying winds around Antarctica the major reson (Ozone hole supported that development of increasing hemispheric temeprature gradient).
Just now the experts of ocean mxing and ocean heat uptake trying frantically to find out which processes controlls heat uptake of the oceans as we did never really loocked into it. But now the changes become so worrying that our simple assumption that the oceans would continue their monotoic trend in increasing heat uptake like nothing was amiss doesn't matter how fast we warm our planet had been way too simple.
If ocean heat uptake declines from 90% of the extra energy to 80%, the whole goes fast bam, as a too fast warming had been the problem in the first place.
And if oceans should start to take less than 90% of the extrem energy kept in the system, all the other feedbacks will be triggered.
This can go very fast! Doomer? Stupid framing of the system, as the above is in all points a real possibility as we do not know when and how fast feedbacks could start to synchronize.
And if this should happen the only chance humanity will have, will be to reduce GHG conrentrations in the atmsphere as fast as we can do it united as a species figthing for its own survival!
Sadly, many climate scientist have become statisticans and thereby they have lost contact with reality as the discussions deep in the mechanics of our climate systems point something very clear out:
We are now flying blind and even an extinction level event is a possibility whch can progress fast!
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Bob Loblaw at 10:34 AM on 20 September 20242024's unusually persistent warmth
Pattimer @ 6:
A change in salinity would be something I would consider to be a change in chemistry, and the resulting change in density would be something I would consider to be a change in physics. As salinity and density are important considerations in global ocean circulation patterns, yes a major shift in salinity could result in changing ocean circulation and changing where in the system (deep ocean, shallow ocean, atmosphere) thermal energy is stored.
In terms of process, higher temperatures usually means more evaporation, which increases salinity. Higher salinity means higher density. But a lot of the small-scale circulation in the upper ocean (60-100m) is wind-driven. Salinity does play a role in larger/deeper ocean circulation.
You may wish to read this SkS repost from RealClimate, from last February, on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.
I think we're in agreement that time will tell, as more data comes available and more analysis is done.
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pattimer at 07:13 AM on 20 September 20242024's unusually persistent warmth
.... however IF there were enough changes in the surface salinity of the oceans for example resulting in circulation changes with less heat sinking would this be classified as a physical or chemical change? Would it matter anyway what we called it?
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pattimer at 06:07 AM on 20 September 20242024's unusually persistent warmth
Bob:-
Thank you for your reply.
I cannot explain a mechanism for my speculation. It is because I am both concerned and puzzled by these observations that I ask these questions and will keep a look out to see how this pans out as undoubtedly many experts will be following this up.
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Bob Loblaw at 05:21 AM on 20 September 20242024's unusually persistent warmth
pattimer:
To have chemistry or biology affect atmospheric temperatures, you need to argue that there is a mechanism by which those changes in chemistry and/or biology lead to a physical change in atmospheric heat storage.
For ocean chemistry, you would need to have chemical reactions that release enough energy to lead to increased ocean temperatures, which would then lead to increased atmospheric temperatures. This seems highly unlikely, but I'm open to suggestions.
For biological activity, the same applies. Photosynthesis is a possible suspect, as that consumes energy at the surface. The energy that goes into photosynthesis would otherwise go into the other energy transfers that occur at the surface: emission of IR radiation back to the atmosphere, transfer of heat (thermal energy) into the atmosphere, transfer of heat into the ocean or land, or the evaporation of water (which then goes into the atmosphere in the form of latent heat, and is released to thermal energy when the vapour condenses again). If there is less photosynthesis, then more energy would go into the other fluxes, but where?
...but photosynthesis is already part of the system (as is heat released as carbon is oxidized), and you'd have to argue a change in biological activity that is pretty large.
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pattimer at 20:19 PM on 19 September 20242024's unusually persistent warmth
Bob Loblaw:
You may be right, and probably so. However the chemistry of the oceans is changing and changes in biology will affect this outwith photosynthesis. The oceans are becoming more acidic for example (although I am not saying that changes in air borne fraction of CO2 is involved here as that presumably would have been accounted for).
We will see if this pattern of unexplained increased air temperatures persist on the long term or not, through the different phases of the El Nino La Nina.
Certainly worrying regardless.
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Mal Adapted at 23:10 PM on 18 September 2024The doom spiral
Thank you!
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BaerbelW at 15:24 PM on 18 September 2024The doom spiral
Mal Adapted @1
Thanks for the heads-up. I just now sent an email to Zeke to let him and Andrew know about the issue.
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Mal Adapted at 07:14 AM on 18 September 2024The doom spiral
Hi, Andrew,
I'm not on X, but I saw this fresh post by you here! Do you know why DNS lookup currently fails for theclimatebrink.com?
$ nslookup skepticalscience.com 8.8.8.8
Server: 8.8.8.8
Address: 8.8.8.8#53Non-authoritative answer:
Name: skepticalscience.com
Address: 192.73.240.141$ nslookup theclimatebrink.com 8.8.8.8
Server: 8.8.8.8
Address: 8.8.8.8#53Non-authoritative answer:
*** Can't find theclimatebrink.com: No answerI first noticed it about an hour ago.
TIA.
Your Bulldog, Mal
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Bob Loblaw at 05:07 AM on 18 September 20242024's unusually persistent warmth
pattimer:
My first reaction is to think "nothing chemical or biological". The energy sink that we see as global warming is entirely physical - thermal energy. Plant photosynthesis does store energy from the sun, but that is essentially offset by the release of energy as biological carbon decomposes.
Most of the energy imbalance (solar radiation absorbed, minus infrared radiation emitted out to space) goes into oceans. The heat capacity of air (the entire atmosphere) is a tiny fraction of the heat capacity of the oceans.
Our routine temperature observations only cover small proportions of the ocean/atmosphere systems. Our most detailed ones are air temperature near the surface - your everyday weather station data. When you see global air temperature fluctuating during El Nino cycles, we are seeing a shift between what stays in the atmosphere and what goes into oceans.
I think it will take time to figure out just what part of the oceans is storing less heat during this period of warmer atmospheric temperatures. And even more time to understand just exactly how the physics has played out.
...but my gut says "physics", not chemistry or biology.
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pattimer at 19:57 PM on 17 September 20242024's unusually persistent warmth
Could there be some change in the Oceans other than the El Nino cycle, perhaps chemically or biologically that is limiting the oceans previous ability to absorb as much of the global to absorb as much of the global warming
?Moderator Response:[PS] cleaned up multiple comments
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BaerbelW at 06:44 AM on 15 September 2024FLOATER: A Tool-Kit for evaluating Claims
Melanie Trecek-King published a video summary of her FLOATER toolkit on September 12, 2024:
Enjoy!
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nigelj at 06:19 AM on 14 September 2024How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts
David acct @8, I agree there is a lot of misinformation by both sides. However I didn't say or imply wind provided plenty of output in other states. Much of the country had low levels of wind. I didnt dispute that.
The point I was trying to make is that other states did not have big problems with generation because their system is better managed than Texas, and has better de-icing equipment. The reason Texas had a disaster was not renewables, or intermittency of renewables, or fossil fules per se. It was lack of de-icing equipment reflecting bad management by Ercot.
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David-acct at 21:34 PM on 13 September 2024How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts
Nigelj
Thanks for the comment.
As I stated, there is tremendous amount of misinformation being pushed by both sides who try to affix blame for the Texas fiasco on only fossil fuels or only renewables. The reality is that all forms of electric generation performed very poorly in the ERCOT grid. The major difference is that ERCOT was heavily dependent on natural gas because it was known 3-4 days in advance that wind was going to produce very little over the next 8-10 days due to the lack of wind . Unfortunately, electric generation from natural gas had a catastrophic failure at a time when it was known that wind could not perform.I am always surprised by the claim that wind did perform on the other grids. That claim is easily debunked by reviewing the electric generation by source at the EIA grid monitor site. Both the performance of the SWPP and the MISO grids of electric generation from wind very similar to the performance of the ERCOT grid over that same time period.
regarding the icing, less than 10% of the wind loss was due to blades icing up, (probably less than 5%), in summary, the icing was a very minor factor with the loss of wind generation. The loss of wind generation due to icing is a common denier talking point, sounds good, but it is false.
Again thanks for your comments
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BaerbelW at 15:24 PM on 12 September 2024Co-designing the Cranky Uncle Vaccine game in East Africa
If you want to learn more about this co-design process for the Cranky Uncle Vaccine game, head over to the UNICEF-website where they have started to publish the five part series "Seriously Cranky: the uncle we all have helps build the skills we all need to resist misinformation". The first two case studies are already available as PDFs for download:
Case study 1/5 (3MB)
Case study 2/5 (8MB)
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nigelj at 06:08 AM on 12 September 2024How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts
David acct. Regarding the Texas power blackout in 2021. I find what you say confusing. You seem to partly blame wind power for the problems, because it didn't generate enough power due to lack of wind. This is not the case. Although there was a lack of wind, the system designers know the wind intermittency issues of wind power and the system is designed with that in mind to ensure it can cope.
The primary reason for the power crisis was cold weather freezing up some wind turbine blades and the gas supply infrastructure. Most of the failure was in the gas infrastructure.
These ice related problems were in turn due to to a lack of de-cing equipment due to ERCOTS irresponsible management of the system and the failure of Ercots oversight body (some of which you mentioned). My reading is that Ercots irresponsible management seems to be driven by a libertarian leaning, excessively business friendly, cost cutting ethos that dislikes regulations and puts safety, ability to handle extreme situations, and grid stability last.
Other states did not have the same blackouts including states with significant wind and solar power. The cold weather icing issue also lead to a cascade of other failures and bad decisions.
References:
www.integrityenergy.com/blog/texas-winter-storm-2021-explained/
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David-acct at 21:46 PM on 11 September 2024How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts
Below is a statement in the FERC report which is linked in the article.
Here is a statement from FERC
"Today’s final report highlights the critical need for stronger mandatory electric reliability standards, particularly with respect to generator cold weather-critical components and systems. Notably, a combination of freezing issues (44.2 percent) and fuel issues (31.4 percent) caused 75.6 percent of the unplanned generating unit outages, derates and failures to start. Of particular note, protecting just four types of power plant components from icing and freezing could have reduced outages by 67 percent in the ERCOT region, 47 percent in the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and 55 percent in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator South (MISO) regions. Natural gas-fired units represented 58 percent of all generating units experiencing unplanned outages, derates or failures to start. The remaining portion was comprised of wind (27 percent), coal (6 percent), solar (2 percent) and other generation types (7 percent), with four nuclear units making up less than 1 percent. "
A couple of points worth noting:
Not only did ERCOT have significant outages of fossil fuel generation, but so did the MISO and SPP grids, both of which were also near collapse.
Wind had 27% outage in addition to a loss of another 30-40% due to the lack of wind. That loss was continental wide. -
David-acct at 21:45 PM on 11 September 2024How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts
Mr Sweet
First point is that I was only addressing the failure of the fossils fuels during Feb 2021 in Texas along the failure of wind and solar. C
Curious why someone should not review the raw data. The raw data is the foundation of understanding the facts. The Raw data doesnt lie. The EIA clearly shows the electric generation from both fossil fuel and wind and solar performed poorly during the freeze. That is consistent with the FERC report. The EIA website clearly shows fossil fuel lost around 35-40% of electric generation for 3 ½ days in ERCOT while Electric generation from Wind and solar lost a considerably percentage of electric generation for nearly 10 days across all of north america
You also mention the failure of grid in texas, yet you fail to note that both the SPP grid and the MSO grid were also near collapse.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:52 AM on 11 September 2024How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts
I agree with Michael Sweet’s comment @3. However, David-acct does raise important points:
- electricity generation systems need to perform essential services adequately under extreme circumstances.
- it is important to be more fully aware – less misunderstanding (David-acct raises this general concern while appearing to fail to be ‘more generally aware’ as noted by Michael Sweet)
Regarding the need for robust performance:
- The existing electricity system in Texas obviously failed to be developed robust enough. This is a ‘marketplace failure’ that the leadership of Texas failed to act to correct (especially their action to keep the Texas grid isolated to avoid federal requirements that would have made it more robust).
- There is indeed a concern that a renewable electricity system compromised by marketplace interests would also fail to be developed to be robust enough. The marketplace could also fail to make the renewable system as harmless and sustainable as it could be (less harmful and more sustainable ways tend to be more difficult and more expensive. Easier and cheaper generally wins marketplace competitions).
Additional matters that people should be more aware of or have a fuller and better understanding of:
- There can be conflicting interests regarding water storage for hydro-electric generation. A desire for water for irrigation could lead to a reduction of water stored for electricity. And a desire to have capacity in the storage reservoir to act as a flood abatement measure would reduce the storage for electricity. The solution would be to build bigger storage features that have adequate capacity for electricity plus these other interests.
- Reduced energy demand needs to be the objective. Technological development that reduces energy demand needs to be prioritized over developments that do not reduce energy demand. The marketplace has a history of failing to do that sort of thing.
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michael sweet at 02:51 AM on 11 September 2024How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts
David-acct:
As we have previously discussed here:
"This example proves beyond doubt that examining cherry picked factoids without any analysis is a complete waste of time. Please do not cite raw data any more. You need to cite analysis of data that filter out gross errors.:" (my emphasis)
Citing the raw EIA data is simply a waste of everyones time. Your factoid that wind was low in Texas in February, 2021 does not prove anything.
As I have repeatedly cited for you, Jacobson et al 2022 has studied this period of time. He finds with his analysis of the data that a completely renewable energy system would be able to fulfill all energy needs nationwide during the period of time you have picked out. If you want to argue that renewable energy cannot supply all required energy you must provide a peer reviewed analysis of the data showing that Jacobson is incorrect. Many other energy researchers have found that completely renewable energy systems can provide all required energy 100% of the time.
I note that all Jacobson's modeling and weather data are posted on line so that anyone can easily check the time period that you refer to. There are scientists who disagree with Jacobson who presumably use the data to check Jacobsons work. Since they have not suggested any time world wide where the weather was so anomalous that Jacobson was incorrect the conclusion is that his model is accurate.
In the current fossil system hydro power is stored to use for peak production every day since nuclear and other baseload plants cannot fulfil peak requirements and require immense storage daily. In a renewable system, hydro will be saved for times when wind and/or solar production is low. This alone would cover a lot of low wind for several weeks. Other storage like batteries will cover the rest.
I have proven that your cherry picked factoids and raw data are incorrectly analyzed. You are wasting our time with your raw data. Spend more time reading the peer reviewed literature and less on denier websites.
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David-acct at 21:55 PM on 10 September 2024How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts
sorry forgot to attached the link
Always best to provide the raw data for study
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David-acct at 21:54 PM on 10 September 2024How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts
There is absolutely no question the electric generation from fossil fuels had a catastrophic failure on February 15, 2021 whereby approximately 36% electric generation from fossil fuels was lost for 36 hours and then was down by approximately 20% for another 40 hours.
Unfortunately there is a lot misunderstanding and misrepresentation on both sides.
At the same time, electric generation from wind and solar dropped off significantly in the ERCOT grid, Starting on Feb 8 2021, electric generation from wind dropped nearly 50-70%, reaching nearly zero on the critical Feb 15th for 15 hours. The drought from wind generation lasted through FEb 20th , a total of 10 days vs the 3 ½ days for the fossil fuel loss. Further the percentage drop was much more severe than the loss of fossil fuel generation.
As the EIA grid monitor shows, Unfortunately, the loss of Wind and solar was across the entire United States and north america. Wind droughts are typically continentally wide in north america as they are in Europe.
I have provided a link to the EIA gov website which has the raw data.
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mwalt at 10:04 AM on 6 September 2024Five ingenious ways people could beat the heat without cranking the AC
Energy is neither created nor destroyed; "true heat energy"--( not temperature) causes any material to be "hot" (temperature wise) based on the specific heat capacity of the hot material.
If the "heat energy" can be utilized in any other way then the temperature of the affected material will be reduced. For exampl, it may be thought that the brakes of an automobile slow or stop the automobile; actually the brakes cause the kinetic energy of the vehicle to be converted to heat (The brakes get hot!.) If that kinetic energy is utilized in another way--such as the electro motive force of a generato--then the energy of the vehicle's momentum is converted to electricity rather than heat. This emf will slow or stop the vehicle without the high temperature otherwise converted by traditional braking, e.g, in the case of a hybrid or electric vehicle, the energy is converted by the emf of generators which then charge the batteries.
The point here is that if the heat of, say asphal, can be converted into some productive use, then the asphalt will, necessarily, be cooler! The solar radiation does not need to be reflected back to the atmospher, if somehow the solar energy could be utilized in a creative way--say some version of a solar cell--then the energy could be converted into electricity! Another method to convert and utilize the "heat" of the asphalt would be by imbedding coils or heat pipes within the substrate of the asphal/road, create steam or other heat transfer method To be used to effectivly heat water, Freon or the like.Again, this would, necessarily, reduce the temperature of the asphalt roadway or concrete walkways.
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michael sweet at 02:01 AM on 6 September 2024Five ingenious ways people could beat the heat without cranking the AC
Red Rose Andy:
You have obviously not endured the combination of very high heat and humidity that many people who live in tropical areas have to deal with. Even at night where I live in Florida when it is over 83oF with a dew point of 80 or higher no amount of fans will ever make you feel a cold sting. It is too hot for the human body to cool off. Arizona is worse than Florida. Scientists have documented fatal air temperatures where the heat index is so high that even in a hurricane wind in the shade humans cannot cool off and die from the heat.
I personally have spent many nights near the equator where it was extremely hot at night when we were soaked with sweat and had fans blowing directy on us, and that was in areas that are not the hottest in the world.
I do not need to mention that poor people cannot afford the fans or the electricity to run them you want to use.
Of course your simple ideas cannot be applied to farm animals which will all die from the heat. Over 700,000 livestock died recently in South Korea, a country that is not especially hot and has the money to use fans. Already crop yields have dropped worldwide because of heat and drought caused by climate change. Just look an Wyoming in the USA where drought has caused a drop in arable land. Think of how many cattle can be raised in the Sahara dessert.
Of course we can all put on our Rose Colored glasses and say everything looks fine until the cost of basic foodstuffs becomes too high for billions of people.
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RedRoseAndy at 23:41 PM on 5 September 2024Five ingenious ways people could beat the heat without cranking the AC
While I would suggest to everyone that they should be getting a personal body cooler if they can afford it, there are many in the world who can not; for them I have a cheap solution, namely using the wind chill factor. This is the lowering of the body temperature due to the passing flow of lower temperature air. To use the wind chill factor to keep cool on a hot, and potentially dangerous day, just cover your naked flesh with cold water and stand in front of a fan until chilly. If you have done it too long you will feel a cold sting even in the hottest countries (“Jack Frost”), so adjust the time in front of the fan you are using, which will vary from model to model.
With the death rates mounting due to record temperatures over record days this invention can save lives. Fans are both cheaper than air conditioning, and better for the environment.
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Bob Loblaw at 04:39 AM on 5 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
MA Rodger @ 22:
Although that may seem to answer the direct question that rkcannon asks in comment 16, he finishes that comment by saying "It seems CO2 is not influencing T at all." To come to such a conclusion, it seems that he simply does not see or rejects all the synchronous rises and dips in the CO2 and temperature lines that precede that last spike. The explanation of those synchronous CO2 and T changes involves both T leading to an increase in CO2, followed by CO2 causing further increases in T.
David Kirtley's comment @ 6 is intended to challenge the argument that only T causes all the CO2 increase, all the time. If so, then why do we not see a huge increase in T before the recent large increase in CO2?
rkcannon appears to be ignoring any cause-effect for the previous cycles of T/CO2, and only looks at the last spike.
I saw "appears", because rkcannon has not bothered to return to this discussion to clarify his question or comment. We can speculate about what he really meant until the cows come home, but he is the only one who can really tell us.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:44 AM on 5 September 2024New paper about detecting climate misinformation on Twitter/X
Rapid identification and correction of on-line presentations of misunderstanding is indeed an important pursuit, and not just misunderstanding regarding climate science and climate change. It is a critical part of the leadership actions required to limit the harm done by people who desire more “freedom to believe and do whatever they want”. And it is very important to limit the harm done by undeserving status/influence winners like Elon Musk.
The following quote from the new paper points out the Musk Twitter/X challenge for collective leadership actions attempting to limit the damage done by misunderstandings caused by the production and promotion of misinformation and disinformation.
These findings have practical implications. Adopting our model could help Twitter/X to augment and enhance ongoing manual fact-checking procedures by offering a computer-assisted procedure for finding the tweets most likely to contain climate misinformation. This adoption could make finding and responding to climate-related misinformation more efficient and help Twitter/X enforce policies to reduce false or misleading claims on the platform. Yet environmental groups have shown that Twitter/X ranks dead last among major social media platforms in its policies and procedures for responding to climate misinformation and there is little evidence that X will improve these procedures in the near term41. Alternatively, our model could provide the basis for an API that Twitter/X users could employ to assess climate-related claims they are seeing in their feeds. Overall, the potential practical applications of our model underscores the need for continued academic work to monitor misinformation on Twitter/X and raises important questions on the data needed to hold social media platforms accountable for the spread of false claims.
The last sentence underscores the challenge of limiting the harm done by undeserving higher status/influence winners like Musk. The following PBS item about X in Brazil highlights the challenge of “hold(ing) social media platforms accountable for the spread of false claims.”
PBS - Brazilian judge suspends Musk’s X platform for refusing to name a legal representative.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:06 AM on 5 September 2024What should you do to prepare for the climate change storm?
Here is some additional information for TWFA, and others who have developed and share misunderstandiings like they have, to thoughtfully consider and respond to.
Today, NPR published the following report: “Coastal flooding is getting more common, even on sunny days”. It is a detailed evidence-based report about the current and future reality regarding the impacts of recent rapid sea level rise due to global warming caused by human activities on this planet. It includes the following quotes:
"The costs of high-tide flooding are enormous. Even a few inches of water can make neighborhoods inaccessible to some residents, including those who use wheelchairs or rely on strollers to transport young children. And standing water can also snarl commutes, block emergency vehicles and cause secondary flooding if sewers back up into buildings or overflow into natural bodies of water."
"Sea levels don’t rise at the same rate everywhere, and the effects of high-tide flooding are even more pronounced in places where sea levels are rising most rapidly, the report notes. In the last 25 years or so, the number of days with high-tide flooding has increased by a whopping 250% or more in many regions, including along the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Mid-Atlantic and the Pacific Islands."
"And there’s no reprieve in sight, as global temperatures continue to increase and sea levels continue to rise. The average number of annual high-tide flood days for the U.S. is expected to top 45 days by mid-century. Local governments in many coastal areas are racing to upgrade infrastructure to withstand salt water, improve sewers and drainage and budget for the costs of damage and disruption from high-tide flooding."
"While high-tide flood forecasts do not consider flooding from storms, the same sea level rise that is driving more sunny day floods also exacerbates coastal storm flooding, as residents of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina experienced following Hurricane Debby. The storm came ashore in Florida as a weak Category 1 hurricane and was quickly downgraded to a Tropical Storm, but storm surge and rain has nonetheless caused catastrophic flooding across the Southeast, in part because rising seas mean the ocean is closer to the built-up coastline."
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MA Rodger at 19:27 PM on 4 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
rkcannon @16.
Assuming Mark Johnson @18 is correct and you do refer to the graphic posted @6 (which seems entirely sensible), your question has still not been properly addressed.
And that presumably is to ask why the CO2 fluctuations through recent ice ages (180ppm to 280ppm) are associated with large temperature fluctuations (10ºC peak-to-peak) but the larger recent anthropogenic CO2 (280ppm to 420ppm) doesn't result in any commensurate temperature increase in the graph.
There are a number of factors to consider.
(1) The forcing from changes in CO2 is logarithmic, so the recent CO2 forcing would be slightly smaller than the ice age forcing (2.2Wm^-2 as opposed to 2.4Wm^-2).
(2) It takes time for the temperature to react to an imposed forcing so only about two-thirds of any CO2-forced increase would have occurred in the decades of man-made warming so far.
(3) The ice age CO2 forcing was not the major forcing through ice ages. The change in albedo due to the shrinking ice sheets and the rising oceans would be double the CO2 forcing. Other factors like methane and dust were also in play. (The orbital forcing that triggers ice ages is very minor.) Increasing CO2 contributed perhaps a third of the ice age forcings.
(4) The temperatures being plotted are from the EPIC ice core data and thus Antarctic temperatures which wobbled tiwce as much as global temperatures through the ice ages. (Note the modern CO2 value has been added, marked with an asterisk. Grafting on the modern EPIC temperature record would be difficult, and would not show much as the instrument record is more wobble than rise.)
So taking (1) to (4) into account, the 10ºC ice age cycle in the graphic @6 would be a little smaller, say 90% (1) then a third off (2) then two-thirds off (3) and finally halved (4). So the global temperature should be very roughly something like [10ºC x 0.9 x 0.67 x 0.33 x 0.5 =] +1ºC which is pretty-much what we see globally today. -
Bob Loblaw at 05:10 AM on 4 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
Mark Johnson:
To understand the fundamental error made by Koutsoyiannis, I suggest you go to the PubPeer discussion of an earlier paper that I referenced in comment 3. In particular, read the second comment on that discussion, where Gavin Cawley (who posts here as Dikran Marsupial - e.g., comment #1) demonstrates how the methodology used by Koutsoyiannis is utterly incapable of telling the difference between three different signals - one with a steady increase, one with a steady decrease, and one with no long-term trend.
Since Koutsoyiannis' methodology is incapable of telling the difference in trend between those three signals, it is by definition incapable of helping decide whether the past century of generally increasing CO2 and generally increasing temperature are related in any way.
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Mal Adapted at 04:22 AM on 4 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
Mark Johnson, this is an example of why it's wise to lurk awhile before before commenting here. Your comment may seem reasonable to newcomers, but amounts to tone trolling when one considers rkcannon's history of gratuitous denialism. Believe it or not, there are professional disinformers out there taking advantage of naive expectations like yours.
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TWFA at 03:09 AM on 4 September 2024New paper about detecting climate misinformation on Twitter/X
It appears [Snipped] the authors would be exellent candidates to be the founding and governing directors of the Ministry Of Truth.
Moderator Response:[BL} It appears that you have unfinished business on a thread where you commented two weeks ago.
Participation in the comments threads at SkS requires that you engage in legitimate, constructive dialog with other participants. You are violating the sloganeering section of the Comments Policy, which states:
No sloganeering. Comments consisting of simple assertion of a myth already debunked by one of the main articles, and which contain no relevant counter argument or evidence from the peer reviewed literature constitutes trolling rather than genuine discussion. As such they will be deleted.
On the previous thread, you made unsupported assertions that have been refuted by other comments. You have provided no response to any of that material. You will not be allowed to start a new thread of unsupported assertions until you go back to that thread and respond to your critics. Suitable responses could include:
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Bob Loblaw at 02:28 AM on 4 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
Mark Johnson @ comment 18:
No, rkcannon @ 16 is not clearly referring to anything specific. For his first comment on this thread, he just comes up with one statement (in two sentences), and can't be bothered to tells us whether he's looking at the original post, or one of the comments? Did he put more than 20 seconds of thought into his question?
Even if we look at the graph in comment 6, which spike is he referring to? Possibly the last one, but he has not take the time to write a clear comment explaining exactly what he is looking at or explain his reasoning. And he has not returned to clarify what he means - which I asked him to do.
rkcannon has a history here. which includes several occasions of throwing out one-liner "gotcha" kinds of questions, and then not bothering top engage in any constructive discussion when his errors are pointed out. That behaviour is "hardly conducive to constructive debate".
And yes, I have read the Koutsoyiannis paper referred to in this post. I have also read the comments on that paper and an earlier one on PubPeer, as I indicated in comment 3. The comment from rkcannon @ 16 comes on the heels of one he made on another thread. In that thread, rkcannon quoted the abstract of another Koutsoyiannis paper (emphasis added):
Recent studies have provided evidence, based on analyses of instrumental measurements of the last seven decades, for a unidirectional, potentially causal link between temperature as the cause and carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) as the effect.
Similar statements appear in several Koutsoyiannis papers. The statistical technique used by Koutsoyiannis is incapable of detecting multi-directional processes, and it is incapable of detecting correlations at multiple time scales. Even though Koutsoyiannis et al do not state it or imply it, it is an essential characteristic of their method. The fact that they do not even realize this is why Koutsoyiannis keeps producing papers that contain the same basic error. In essence, they have assumed their conclusion as a result of their methodology.
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Mal Adapted at 01:20 AM on 4 September 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
Aw, hell! Beware of hasty editing. Replace only the first occurrence of "collective" with "individual", not the second. That's my whole point!
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Mal Adapted at 01:15 AM on 4 September 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
Er - y'all can replace "collective" with "individually" in my previous comment, please
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Mal Adapted at 01:08 AM on 4 September 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
Except for the accent, that Australian Senator could have been the late Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), or Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) of the US upper house, i.e. "the world's most exclusive club". Sadly, Rennick's arguments are transparently motivated by his self-interest, like most politicians: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!". Upton Sinclair's epigram is an English-language commonplace, understood implicitly by all mature climate realists. We know very well that no reality-based case for anthropogenic climate change will ever persuade these guys. We can all enjoy a snicker amongst ourselves at Potholer 54's otherwise-infuriating documentation of political craft, but the only collective individual action most of us can realistically take is to try to ensure he's not re-elected.
You Australians will have to handle that problem yourselves, I'm afraid. Here in the US, I'm taking heart from the latest Six Americas report from Yale's Climate Change Communications program. Americans who were "alarmed" or "concerned" about climate change have gone from minority to majority since 2013, while those who were "disengaged", "doubful" and "dismissive" fell from 33% to 28%. The number of us who were "cautious" ten years ago has fallen from 26% to 15%. Heh. "Cautious", hell! Any of us who lived through the PNW heat dome of 2021, for example, have seen the wiser side of caution: namely collective action to cap global warming. I can't otherwise account for the changes over time, but they surely must be in Kamala Harris's favor, no?
Moderator Response:[BL] Edited as requested (I think) - although individually we can only vote once, and election results represent collective action.
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Mark Johnson at 01:01 AM on 4 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
Bob Loblaw @ 17:
He's clearly referring to the graph in post 6, not figure 6. It took me 20 seconds to realize this - perhaps you could have taken 20 seconds of your own time before jumping down his throat?
And by the way, his question is a reasonable one and deserves a civil reponse. Using language like 'what on earth...?', 'are you seriously thinking..?', '..some tiny feature that you think..' are hardly conducive to constructive debate.
And if you'd actually read Koutsoyiannis et al, you would know that they absolutely do not say or even imply 'that there is only one cause in one direction at all time scales'.
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nigelj at 07:21 AM on 3 September 20242024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #35
The mantra is dont worry about climate change because when it gets bad we will find great technical solutions. To me its like saying don't worry about smoking tobacco because by the time you get sick, there will be excellent treatments. Yeah sure there will be. Its 100% guaranteed.
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Bob Loblaw at 05:05 AM on 3 September 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
Yes, another good video from Potholer54. I think I share his sarcastic sense of humour - and at some point as you look at this level of denial from a politician you have to make a choice between crying and laughing at it.
I am currently reading Authoritarian Nightmare - Trump and his Followers, by John Dean and Bob Altemeyer. (Yes, John Dean of Watergate fame). Much of the social psychology it discusses is from Bob Altemeyer's career studying what he termed authoritarian follower psychology. You can access much of Altemeyer's material (including an ebook The Authoritarians), at https://theauthoritarians.org/.
Dean and Altemeyer discuss two psychological aspects of the extreme devotion to the sort of politicians' messages exposed by Potholer: they refer to "social dominators", who treat every interaction as a situation where they need to dominate others (or other groups), and authoritarian followers, who are highly susceptible to being led down the garden path by authority figures. When someone comes along that tells them what they want to hear, they lose any ability to critically evaluate what they are being told. Being lied to isn't a problem as long as the message confirms what they deeply want to believe.
Large numbers of authoritarian follower voters and lying power-hungry demagogue politicians is not a good mix.
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Bob Loblaw at 04:42 AM on 3 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
rkcannon @ 16:
What on earth are you talking about? Figure 6 does not have temperature in it, so what temperature graph are you referring to? And figure 6 is showing short-term variation that includes annual or shorter times. It is a rate of change graph, not a cumulative storage graph. And which "very high spike" are you referring to? What year?
...and are you seriously thinking that every temporary spike in CO2 (really, rate of CO2 change, if you are using figure 6) will lead to a temperature spike? It takes time for global temperatures to change. The atmosphere alone has a sufficiently large heat capacity that it takes months for an energy imbalance of a few W/m2 to reach a new equilibrium. If you take the shallow ocean mixed layer (<100m depth), the heat capacity means it take a decade or two for it to adjust. When you take the deeper ocean into account, the time lag increases proportionally.
...and CO2 is not the only factor affecting temperature. especially on the shorter time scales.
By thinking that every little short-term spike in CO2 has to correlate with a spike in temperature, you are making exactly the sort of basic error that Koutsoyiannis et al have made (several times). Koutsoyiannis has assumed that there is only one cause in one direction at all times scales, and has completely ignored the multi-factor and multi-time-scale nature of the carbon cycle and global temperature - and done it using a technique that removes the multi-decade slow rise in CO2 and how it correlates with global temperature.
It seems that you are not looking at the whole system, and focusing narrowly on some tiny feature that you think disproves the big picture.
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rkcannon at 03:29 AM on 3 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
Why don't we see a higher temp spike along with the very high CO2 spike in the graph in 6? It seems CO2 is not influencing T at all.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:21 AM on 3 September 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
Eclectic (and John Mason),
Thanks for pointing to the entertaining and informative Potholer54 video.
I have an opinion to share regarding the claims that Rennick makes on his official web-based communications” (that I consider to quite likely be a correct understanding)
- On the header band of his official web page (shown at 4:50, and many other times, in the video) he claims to be “Working for all Australians”
- On his self-promotion image at 15:15 (Just before the shift into ‘The opinion room’) Rennick claims “What binds us together is much more than what drives us apart”.
Those two claims make sense if:
- the 'us' in the second claim is the diverse collective of anti-intellectual resisters of learning who appreciate that they have power if they vote together for their extensive diversity of deliberately conserved misunderstanding and associated deliberate limited awareness.
- 'Australians' in the first claim is restricted to the sub-set of anti-intellectuals in Australia.
A significant portion of the population in many nations undeniably collectively vote for leadership that aligns with their interest in prolonging, and attempting to increase the popularity of, misunderstanding and the related required limited awareness.
It seems that Senator Rennick is one of the many anti-intellectual leadership candidates who consciously chooses to ‘work’ on ways to continue to get as many of the diversity of anti-intellectual resisters of learning to vote for him rather than driving away voters who choose to passionately ‘resist learning’.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:26 AM on 3 September 2024CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration
rkcannon:
An earlier paper by Koutsoyiannis was debunked on this post here at SkS. He has been repeating the same basic bogus analysis in a series of papers, all of which are basically junk.
In the snippet you copy (which appears to be the start of the abstract), he again repeats his assertion of "evidence ... for a unidirectional, potentially causal link between temperature as the cause and carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) as the effect." This claim appears in most (all?) his previous works, and it is still "not even wrong".
I notice that Koutsoyiannis has again chosen an MDPI journal for his assertions. MDPI does not have a particularly good reputation, having been a go-to location for a lot of bad papers that do not get proper review.
Is there any reason to think that Koutsoyiannis has actually gotten something right this time? For the most part, papers by Koutsoyiannis are simply not worth reading.
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rkcannon at 01:35 AM on 3 September 2024CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration
Link to previous comment
https://www.mdpi.com/2413-4155/6/1/17
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rkcannon at 01:34 AM on 3 September 2024CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration
Regarding C14, the gradual decline may be due to the nuclear tests that created C14 that is decaying or disappearing naturally. Ref this paper. Also this paper also looks at 13C/12C ratio, saying the following. Is there discussion on this somewhere?
Net Isotopic Signature of Atmospheric CO2 Sources and Sinks: No Change since the Little Ice Age
by Demetris Koutsoyiannis
[ORCID]
Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Heroon Polytechneiou 5, 157 72 Zographou, Greece
Sci 2024, 6(1), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/sci6010017
Submission received: 19 December 2023 / Revised: 23 February 2024 / Accepted: 29 February 2024 / Published: 14 March 2024
Abstract
Recent studies have provided evidence, based on analyses of instrumental measurements of the last seven decades, for a unidirectional, potentially causal link between temperature as the cause and carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) as the effect. In the most recent study, this finding was supported by analysing the carbon cycle and showing that the natural [CO2] changes due to temperature rise are far larger (by a factor > 3) than human emissions, while the latter are no larger than 4% of the total. Here, we provide additional support for these findings by examining the signatures of the stable carbon isotopes, 12 and 13. Examining isotopic data in four important observation sites, we show that the standard metric δ13C is consistent with an input isotopic signature that is stable over the entire period of observations (>40 years), i.e., not affected by increases in human CO2 emissions. In addition, proxy data covering the period after 1500 AD also show stable behaviour. These findings confirm the major role of the biosphere in the carbon cycle and a non-discernible signature of humans. -
pattimer at 22:27 PM on 2 September 20242024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #35
It's undoubtedly true that we need to both face denial and how to create solutions ( both at government/ national level and at the individual level). Sceptical science does a superb job at rebutting denial. I also think denial is part of the continual procrastination process and many of those such as the GWFP that have played a huge role in denial of climate change have changed their procrastination strategies. It seems that they will make political gain by accepting long term strategies for climate action giving us "world leading targets"which they will then make further political gain by reneging on them when the time comes to implement them. Another strategy is raising false hopes that are completely unrealistic to delay implementing existing strategies such as implying that our boilers and cars in the future will have hydrogen delivered along pipes. This they know will make people delay personal changes that would otherwise reduce their fossil fuel consumption. So we not only need to face denial of the climate science but also the denial of solutions that could be presently implemented. I personally arrange regularly visits to my home by small groups of individuals to address the myths about heat pumps for example that the procrastinators have been successful in flooding social media with in the same way they spread climate denial.
