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BaerbelW at 18:24 PM on 17 March 2017Paced version of Denial101x starting on March 21!
Nigelj - if you join us in our MOOC (if you haven't already taken it!), you'll see that your theory is fairly close to what is going on. We have a lot of material about the 4 points you mention (and some more), but also some insights into what to do about it and how to tackle it.
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nigelj at 15:48 PM on 17 March 2017Paced version of Denial101x starting on March 21!
Sounds good. Here is my theory of climate change denial, for what it's worth, and it breaks down into a four stage process:
1. Obviously the fossil fuel industry and some other business has vested interests in continuation of fossil fuel use. Vested interests are clearly turning some people into denial of the science.
In fact we all have some degree of vested interests, as we own cars, but some people are more protective of their interests, and worried about impacts on fuel prices, or the reliability of electric cars. Others are more open to accepting change, and inform themselves that the worries are exaggerated.
2. I think there's a political dimension in terms of worries about government rules about reducing emissions, and government power and the right role of government. This is turning into quite a partisan battle between conservatives and liberals. However there are strong justifications for environmental regulations or things like carbon taxes, originating in basic, mainstream economic theory.
3. Then there are a range of psychological factors, such as confirmation bias, human tendencies to think short term, peer group pressures, and being tricked by logical fallacies, and other propoganda and deceptive arguments from denialist campaigns.
4. We also have an element of political grid lock, in terms of politicians being captive to big campaign donors. This is a tough one.
It's all reminiscent of the tobacco issue some years back, but on a much more massive level.
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nigelj at 11:34 AM on 17 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Doug C @27
I agree totally, but I think there are two separate issues, and you need to separate them out. There is this frustrating guy Scott Adams and science communication, and then there is climate scepticism (or denialism if you prefer this term).
Firstly Scott Adams is critical of climate scientists for allegedly not communicating things well enough. Personally I think scientists do a pretty good job explaining this stuff. There are plenty of good, clear books on the issue and websites, as you point out, like NASA has some good material, and of course this website. Nobody can plead ignorance.
Scott also complains of various apparent contradictions or problems as he sees them with models not being 100%, or disagreement on climate sensitivity etc. Well the climate issue is complex, as I alluded to above, because we can't put the planet in a laboratory and adjust various knobs on Co2 etc. What we have is a range of different types of evidence, and we have to assess how it all adds up. Evolution is similar in complexity, in that there are gaps in the fossil record that can't ever be filled, because fossils only formed under a few chance, specific geological processes. We have to do the best with the information we have.
Scott needs to understand this and read some of the detail on climate science. There are plety of explanations for frustrating aspects of the science "if" you put in the effort to read up in an open minded way, and they are explanations in plain langauge, and this website has plenty.
I can't work out if he is lazy, or a closet sceptic and fixed in his views. He may have a personality disorder, but that's secondary to me. Others have moaned about science communication.
Could scientists communicate it all better? Well I suppose it's possible for any of us to do better, but you cannot over simplify, and I think they do pretty well. You just have to listen, and google if something seems needing more explanation or amplification!
The simplest way I could put climate science as I understand it as a lay person, with only some basic university science is as follows: We have solid evidence CO2 absorbs heat, and temperatures have increased since CO2 has increased. We have causation and correlation, the two fundamentals of science.
We can exclude other factors like solar changes because causation is weak and correlation is non existent recently. We also have another powerful proof in that models have made generally good predictions. Predictive ability is a good proof.
The trouble is such a chain of factors means there are several things sceptics can attack. But I have some faith most people get the basics, and see the strength of the theory.
Secondly we have climate change scepticism, or denialism if you prefer the term. We have people like Ted Cruz, Donald Trump etc.
(A good book on the healthy, rational form of scepticism is 'Skeptic" by Michael Shermer.)
But regarding climate scepticism, this has turned into denialism, and general craziness with a vast range of deceitful and nonsenscial claims.
I think there are several drivers of climate science denialism: Obviously the fossil fuel industry has vested interests. in fact we all do a little as we own cars, but some people are more protective of their interests, and worried about costs of petrol increasing etc, and others are more open to accepting change. But vested interests are clearly turning some people into denial of the science.
I think there's a political dimension in terms of worries about government rules about reducing emissions, and government power. This is turning into quite a partisan battle between conservatives and liberals. However there are strong justifications for environmental regulations originating in basic, mainstream economic theory.
Then there are a range of psychological factors, such as confirmation bias, tendencies to think short term, peer group pressures, and being tricked by logical fallacies and other propoganda from denialist campaigns.
We also have an element of political grid lock in terms of politicians being captive to big campaign donors.
I'ts all reminiscent of the tobacco issue some years back, but on a whole other level.
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Digby Scorgie at 10:53 AM on 17 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Tom Curtis @21
I read about this by following a link to a recent paper. And as you'd expect, I'm damned if I'd be able to find it again! However, the bit that sticks in my mind is that they measured the CO2 concentration in a room and asked those working there how they felt about (I think) their mental alertness. It seems that they didn't like it when the concentration started to exceed 600 ppm. There was a lot more to the paper but I admit I'm not qualified to say more.
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Doug_C at 10:14 AM on 17 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Whatever he is I don't think there is any excuse for anyone to attack scientists and claim there is a deficiency in information available to understand the fundamentals of global warming and climate change.
I have some second year college science courses but no degree so I have some science literacy but I'm definitely not a professional. About a decade ago I got frustrated with being unable to get a clear idea of what was going on with climate change and all the contradictory views and began my own research. I spent many hours reading IPCC reports, articles from climatologists like James Hansen, books by "skeptics" who claim there is no such thing as human forced global warming and books about the extensive denial campaign.
At some point I had a rather unpleasant awakening that some climatologists have described of going through a period of despair when they realized what their research was saying and how no action was being taken to address it. This lasted for several months for me.
There's no question in my mind now that the science supporting anthropogenic global warming is extensive and very well supported. If a person is willing to commit to the time and energy that is required to get a meaningful grasp of this issue it is more than possible with all the information out there now. I think it requires a choice either conscious or unconsious to remain in ignorance about this issue. In one of the books I read by a Scottish scientist - I forget his name - he talked about something he refered to as consensus trance reality where people use a short-hand form of information to deal with the complexities of modern life that prevents them from fully grasping some complex issues like climate change. Maybe group-think is another term that aaplies.
Whatever the case, it's clear that there is some deep psychological factors at work on a wide scale that prevents a lot of people from coming to terms with what is actually happening in the world around them not just with this issue but many others. They follow a mental shorthand that is often written by others against the common interest. I think this is in part what the extensive climate change denial disinformation campaign is targeted to do.
From what I read here Skeptical Science is part of an effort to come to terms with the psychology behind denial which I think is crucial. It seems to me that Adams and his supporters would make good case studies in the dynamics of denial. Instead of informing themselves of the true dimensions of this subject they take the approach of shooting the messenger.
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Tom Curtis at 06:46 AM on 17 March 2017Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
JohnFornaro @, if you look at the increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration during past warming events and use those increases to predict the modern CO2 increase, the maximum increase expected for the current warming is about 10-20 ppmv. This is most obvious in the change between glacial and interglacial shows a change in atmospheric CO2 of 15.8 +/- 0.6 ppmv/oC (Epica Dome C, 2 StDev confidence interval). Given the current increase of about 1oC over the preindustrial average, that would lead to an expectation of a 16 ppmv increase in atmospheric CO2.
That is likely an overestimate given that the long intervals involved allow time for slow processes (such as much of the tropical forest turning into open savannah and vice versa) to take place. Comparison with the CO2 increase over the MWP which, globally, was nearly as hot as the 1990s, shows that short term processes such as would have had an influence on 20th century CO2 levels result in even smaller relative increases in CO2 concentration:
That's not the only evidence against the idea that the modern CO2 increase is driven by the temperature increase, but it should be sufficient.
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John Hartz at 06:35 AM on 17 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
Chriskoz: I'll stick with "pseudo-science poppycock."
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nigelj at 06:02 AM on 17 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Rob Honeycutt @25. You seem sure hes sociopathic. Fair enough, you have interacted with the guy, I have only read a few of his comments.
Perhaps hes a cynical sociopath.
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nigelj at 05:41 AM on 17 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
Nick Palmer @17, I like your 4D approach.
I just avoid the term lies, unless I'm very sure. Lies are false statements with deliberate intention to deceive. An intentional untruth. It's hard to be sure people are doing this because its hard to see into their minds and motives.
I have used the terms deceitful and delusional and just plain silly, and I get less kickback as well. It's also much easier to be certain these are reasonable accusations, and easier to back them up.
Lies are different from being deceitful, being misleading, or making a mistake, or being ignorant, or obtuse. It is subtly different from speculating or making things up. Donald Trump does a good deal of all of these things in my opinion, but telling them apart is a challenge. People lump them all together as lies, but it's not strictly accurate to do this.
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Mal Adapted at 04:48 AM on 17 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
A recent very fashionable term "fake news", "fake facts" sounds more polite than "denial" or "denialism", maybe we should switch to it here?
Feel free to switch in your own comments, but deniers deny, and while AGW-denial may be understandable it can never be respectable. For the sake of concision if nothing else, I 'll never abandon those words voluntarily.
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Tom Dayton at 03:08 AM on 17 March 2017Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
JohnFornaro, the claim you read that "the minsiscule amount of CO2 that is emitted by mankind is forcing the warming, becasue of a logarithmic relationship... Thus, less and less of a percentage of human emitted CO2 has a greater and greater effect on the climate" is incorrect.
First: As I explained in my previous two replies to you, the CO2 emitted by mankind is not "miniscule," because what matters for warming is that humans are responsible for 100% of the rise in atmospheric total CO2, and the rise in that total has been more than 30% since 1850. CO2 emissions do correlate well with total atmospheric level, and the causal link is provided by the evidence described in the original post at the top of the page you are reading right now. (CO2 measurements are indeed reliable.) It is the increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that matters, not the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere relative to other gases.
Second: The argument you cited has the logarithmic effect backward. An increase in the absolute amount (number of molecules) of CO2 in the atmosphere has less, not more, of an effect the more CO2 already is in the atmosphere. But scientists always take that into account, by referring to the (nearly) identical amount of warming from the absolute amount of CO2 doubling, regardless of whether the initial (pre-doubling) amount was large or small.
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Tom Dayton at 02:46 AM on 17 March 2017Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
JohnFornaro, for more details, please also read these posts:
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bvangerven at 01:24 AM on 17 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
@Wake
According to the Milankovich cycles, the earth should now be slowly cooling.
Besides, greenhouse warming is different from warming by more insolation (the Milankovich cycles cause more or less insolation, based on variations in the earth’s orbit). Greenhouse warming has its specific characteristics: nights warm more than days (if the current warming was due to more insolation, days would heat up more than nights), and winters warm more than summers. Also, the lowest layer of the atmosphere – the troposphere – is warming up while the layer above it – the stratosphere – is even cooling (if the current warming was caused by more insolation, the stratosphere would warm up as well).
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Tom Dayton at 00:38 AM on 17 March 2017Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
JohnFornaro: Your understanding that "the current warming cycle is releasing more naturally sequestered carbon into the atmo than mankind is emitting" is incorrect. As is explained by the post we are commenting on right now, the naturally sequestered carbon (sequestered as "fossilized" substances that we use as fuels) is being released by humans burning those fossil fuels, thereby putting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
The amount we thereby release is not "miniscule" in the context that matters for warming. The amount we release is enough to outstrip the abilities of the natural sinks to absorb it. Consequently, humans are responsible for 100% of the increase in CO2 over at least the past 60 years, and nearly that percent since about 1850.
Please read the Basic tabbed pane at the top of this page, then flip to the Intermediate tabbed pane and read that.
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JohnFornaro at 00:24 AM on 17 March 2017Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
#291 mr_alanng
"Each big tree can absorb 1 ton of carbon dioxide a year."
Very few people would disagree that planting trees is a good idea to ameliorate the effects of burning fossil fuels. Here's a popular telling of the carbon sequestration available in a forest:
"'An approximate value for a 50-year-old oak forest would be 30,000 pounds of carbon dioxide sequestered per acre,' said Timothy J. Fahey, professor of ecology in the department of natural resources at Cornell University. 'The forest would be emitting about 22,000 pounds of oxygen.'"
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/science/how-many-pounds-of-carbon-dioxide-does-our-forest-absorb.html
30,000 pounds is 15 short tons. 15 short tons is 13.6 metric tonnes.
Information on forest density is here:
https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/4580
I'm afraid that your figure is way too high.
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JohnFornaro at 00:04 AM on 17 March 2017Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
Hi all. I've posted hardly at all on this site due to time constraints. However, I have read the first page and the last page very carefully.
My predilection is that AGW is probably happening, but that mankind's affect [effect?] on the climate is not catastrophic.
I would like to point out that there are, in my opinion, three sides to the AGW question as it pertains to CO2 emitted by humans. There are those who believe in the "consensus" that humans are forcing the climate. There are those who deny that the human influence on the climate is large enough to force it.
There is a third group, those people who do not know which side of this matter is correct, and who are looking for truth.
Anyhow... here's the background, followed by my question.
I first started reading up on a related thread here on SkepSci...
https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=25&t=1232&&a=18#comments
...on Page 1 of that thread, back in 2007, is the argument that warming is likely to be causing CO2 release. This argument holds, as I understand it, that mankind, while emitting a lot of CO2, is not the major CO2 emitter on the planet, but that the current warming cycle is releasing more naturally sequestered carbon into the atmo than mankind is emitting.
I understand the argument that it is thought that the minsiscule amount of CO2 that is emitted by mankind is forcing the warming, becasue of a logarithmic relationship, but the apparent leverage of that warming has not yet been proven. My understanding is that CO2 on forces the water vapor cycle in some fashion. Thus, less and less of a percentage of human emitted CO2 has a greater and greater effect on the climate.
My question is this: Is this the proper page/thread to discuss the 'Warming is Releasing' argument?
*********************************
BTW, I did notice one comment on page one, even though the comments were made back in 2008.
Mizimi #30: "It's a complex subject, [fraught] with difficulties - but ... deal with overpopoulation and the 'global warming problem' will fade away."
Moderator Response:[TD] I turned your link into a link; in future please do that yourself with the link tool when you write your comment.
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JohnFornaro at 22:48 PM on 16 March 2017It's the sun
Rob Honeycutt: Thanks.
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Nick Palmer at 22:25 PM on 16 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
NigelJ @13 makes a plea for people not to accuse denialists of being liars. While fighting them online, I dropped this all-out assault on their honesty a while back. Nowadays, I use the 4D approach which covers all of the spectrum. 4D stands for deceived, deceitful, deluded or dumb. I think that covers all of them. Oddly enough, I get far less kickback when using all the three or four words than when just describing someone as being a liar or an idiot
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averageJon14744 at 16:26 PM on 16 March 2017Global Surface Temperature: Going Down the Up Escalator, Part 1
It looks like Cliff Harris and Randy Mann decided to fire up Print Shop again and change the year on the 1998 peak to 2016.
The place where the temperature line crosses the baseline in is now somewhere between 2016 and the 2020s.
Is this progress?
http://www.longrangeweather.com/images/gtemps.jpg -
Doug_C at 14:34 PM on 16 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
I guess my point was there's really no justification for the influence that the fossil fuel sector is effectively buying within academia, just it does the same with policy makers and the public at large with things like the extremely well funded denial campaign.
It can not be claimed that due to limited alternatives we're forced to rely on the fossil fuel sector decades into the future. This self-sustaining paradigm of the fossil fuel sector receiving the bulk of revenues worldwide in the energy market then using a significant portion of that across society to make sure fossil fuels remain the dominant product is highly destructive, something that academia should be focused on dealing with effectively not enabling.
It's going to be a decision between continuing course with fossil fuel use and suffer the inevitable catastrophic impacts or radically change course which will by necessity create a great deal of stranded assets as fossil fuels are phased out. That will include that part of academia that has allowed itself to be influenced this way.
Experts in fossil fuel use better become an anachronism and soon.
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chriskoz at 13:16 PM on 16 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
A recent very fashionable term "fake news", "fake facts" sounds more polite than "denial" or "denialism", maybe we should switch to it here?
Ben, in this interview, uses the new term in a very cheerful way to the gtear effect. I admire him for his casual attitude while talking about issues that will be classified in the future as social deceptions & environmental crimes, the attitude required by the program's format (comedy). I would not be able to do the same in Ben's shoes: I'm getting angry when I see irrational arguments or logical fallacy in the arguments of any discutant. It takes quite a skill to fight irrationale with a laugh.
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:03 PM on 16 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
nigelj... That's interesting, because in my interactions with him online, that's almost exactly how I'd describe him.
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nigelj at 12:50 PM on 16 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
Sailing free @14, yes say that "you are wrong and look it up" or something similar, but with some detail obviously on what you think on the issues.
I'm merely saying I think be careful before accusing people of lying, or getting very rude with people by calling them names. The denialists are trying to bait people into losing control.
Having said that I see nothing wrong with telling people their thinking is a bit idiotic, occasionally. Theres no point being excessively polite either, and boring everyone to tears. Hope I'm not being contradictory.
It's finding a balance somewhere between blatant rudeness and over politeness. It's just my opinion, and you can do whatever you want.
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nigelj at 12:33 PM on 16 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Rob Honeycutt @6, I just have a comment on your suspicions that this Scott Adams displays sociopathic tendencies.
I think you are right he has some personality issue, but maybe not sociopathic as such. I did stage 1 (introductory) psychology and have come across sociopathic people. The defining characteristics are lack of conscience and empathy, lying with impunity (well beyond the norm) and hyper self confidence, and strong controlling tendencies. I'm not seeing this with Adams so much.
In fact sociopathy is in the class of disorders which is just an extreme variation of normal behaviour. You have a spectrum between extreme empathy towards sociopathy at the other extreme. Most of us are somewhere in the middle.
He has some features of sociopathy but not enough to fill the description.
I think Adams is more an extreme cynic and extreme nuisance and intellectually lazy, and a bit obsessive. Being a very extreme cynic could possibly become a personality disorder.
He is worried about apparent contradictions (so he alleges) in the climate issue. Well it can be frustrating, but there are reasons for all the stuff he complains about if you start digging. Climate change will be a complex mix of things going on because of the number of variables and the fact we cant put the planet in a lab, but theres enough evidence for high levels of certainty on what's going on.
I can however think of a few politicians who look a bit sociopathic.
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Doug_C at 12:30 PM on 16 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
@Wake
"There are several "safe" nuclear power cycles but we had protests on every campus in California and in the streets and so PG&E closed down all but one I believe. And this one is due to end soon. They didn't want "safer" nuclear power - they wanted an entire end to it."
There are modern Pressurized and Boiling Water reactor designs that have significant safety factors designed into them, thorium fueled molten salt reactors are a complete departure from solid fueled reactors. First off as described they simply can not melt down, the fissile material is already in a salt solution that is circulated through a gaphite core and to a heat exchange loop. They also aren't pressurized and can not undergo catastrophic loss of coolant. Fission products like Xenon-135 that make solid fuel rods unusuable after a few years can be be removed while the reactor is running. This can also be done with medical radio-isotopes used in imaging and cancer treatment, every molten salt reactor is also medical grade radioisotope producer.
In terms of waste a single stage thorium fueled MSR uses about 50% of the fuel input as compared to less than 1% for PWRs and BWRs. A two stage thorium reactor with an outer loop containing thorium in molten salt being transmuted by neutron capture would give almost 99% fuel efficiency. These reactors also run at much higher temperatures meaning much higher thermal efficiency with the result that water is not necessary for cooling to produce power but it does increase efficiency even more.
In a state like California with severe pressures on water resources something like an MSR could actually produce large amounts of electricty, a constant supply of medical radioisotopes and desalinate sea water. As for safety, to shut off an MSR you turn off the core circulation pumps and the cooling fan for the frozen salt plug in the reactor vessel drain. It melts and you core drains into sub-critical storage under the reactor.
The waste produced by thorium fueled MSRs is much less and easier to handle than solid fueled reactors. Instead of large amounts of solid fuel needing to be stored safely for thousands of years, much of the by-products coming out of an MSR are commercially valuable like the radioisotopes, Xenon for high efficiency deep mission rocket engine and even small amounts of noble metals like gold and platinum.
Most of the waste is much lighter fission products with short half lifes which have decayed to ground state within 10 years and the remainder is hazardous for about 300 years, that's slightly over 10% of the total waste.
A thorium powered MSR gives much less waste, valuable materials in constant production, can be used to desalinate large amounts of sea water, can't melt down, has much higher thermal efficiency and is fueled by an element in the same abundance as lead.
If we began large scale conversion of our energy production to thorium based MSRs there wouldn't be an energy shortage, and our carbon emissions would drop significantly within decades. This in combination with all other low carbon energy resources. There's more than enough energy to replace fossil fuels, and do so in a way that has benefits that oil, coal and gas never will.
That is one option and there are many goods ones that if implemented in a planned phaseout of fossil fuels would at least give us a shot at mitigation of climate change. Itès netirely possible that we will need in the coming decades to go to a carbon negative energy model to avoid catastrophic impacts.
Moderator Response:[PS] Just a heads up that this is rapidly heading offtopic. Please do not turn this thread into a place for arguing the pros and cons of nuclear power. Those interested in the topic are invited to use BraveNewClimate instead.
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Philippe Chantreau at 11:56 AM on 16 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
To elaborate on that, we do see impaired cognition in COPD patients having exacerbations and other patients who are hypercarbic for other reasons. In fact, altered mental status is a relatively early warning sign that will prompt us to do an arterial blood gas analysis, as the patient could positive end pressure ventilation, usually non invasive but that can progress to invasive if there is no response.
However, there has to be a significant departure from baseline, which can be very high for some COPD sufferers who learn to function with much higher levels of CO2 than the normal population. In fact, these patients often do not benefit from oxygen at all, because their ventilatory rate regulation (which happens in the brain stem) is modified and responds to variation in oxygen content rather than CO2 in a normal person. Additional oxygen reduces their respiratory drive.
I am not sure about how much of a fraction of CO2 in ambient air would be equivalent to what they experience through impaired ventilation.
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Philippe Chantreau at 11:47 AM on 16 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
From what I know, hypoxia is much more likely to affect cognition and the brain will also be much sensitive to hypoxemia than hypercapnia. Without looking at the study mentioned by Tom, I'm assuming that, in general, recirculated air would be more likely to cause impaired cognition due to the decreased oxygen content and corresponding decreased gas exchange. There may be other effects than cognitive due to impaired exchange of the CO2, the main being acidosis, which is not good news.
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Tom Curtis at 11:36 AM on 16 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Digby Scorgie @20, the standard view is that reduced cognitive function at about 1000 ppmv is due to accumulation of other gases in minute traces. CO2 is just a useful indicator of poor ventilation. One study I looked at that purported to show otherwise did not show reduced cognitive function when high CO2 levels were generated by introducing CO2, although they did when lower CO2 levels were generated by recirculating interior air. To my mind, that confirms the conventional view rather than rebuts it. (Unfotunately I do not have the study to hand or I would give more detail.) Of course, there may be other studies that do show an effect from CO2 only at levels potentially obtainable by CO2 emissions in the next 100-200 years, but the idea should be regarded as controversial at least.
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michael sweet at 11:27 AM on 16 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
I looked at hte reference Rob Honeycutt posted at 18. It said:
"In 2014, roughly 85% of primary energy use in Iceland came from indigenous renewable resources. There of 66% was from geothermal."
Most of the remaining energy was generated using Hydro. The non-renewable energy was primarily oil for transportation and fishing. When they switch to electric cars they will be almost 100% renewable.
70% of their electricity (which is very cheap since there are no fuel costs) is used to make aluminum which is exported. Geothermal energy is so cheap they use a lot of it to heat outdoor swimming pools!
The Icelanders will lead the way to show others how to go carbon free! Too bad their model cannot be reproduced in many other areas. You would think that Hawaii could access geothermal.
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Digby Scorgie at 11:16 AM on 16 March 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
sauerj @18
I had a look at your story. I like the atom-bomb analogy. A concept I thought of that might help is to liken atmospheric CO2 to a goldilocks gas: too little and the planet freezes, too much and the planet sweats.
One thing you could perhaps consider is to clarify the effect that the sheer inertia of the climate system has. As I understand it, for example, the last time CO2 levels were at 400 ppm was a little over three million years ago in the Pliocene. At that time average global temperatures were two or three degrees Celsius higher than today, there was not much snow and ice around, and sea levels were some 25 metres higher. We'll get there too, but it'll take time for the climate system to reach the new equilibrium. In the meantime, CO2 levels are rising even higher . . .
A final point concerns something I learnt only recently. It seems that people are not comfortable with CO2 concentrations above about 600 ppm. The more it exceeds that level, the greater the cognitive decline that sets in. This is all the more reason to limit emissions.
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sailingfree at 10:40 AM on 16 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
Thank you nigelj. So I simply say to Wake, "you are wrong, look it up".
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nigelj at 09:44 AM on 16 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
I have looked at two of the Santer video's, and they are great videos, clear, concise, perfectly true, and the guy is warm and has a sense of humour. You couldn't expect more in two minutes. If people still don't get it, maybe they are just closed minded.
Saying the satellite record showed no warming was always false. Clearly the warming trend was obvious, and is now even more obvious since the 2015 and 2016 temperatures were released.
I have a very low opinion of climate denialists views and tactics, however I don't think it's wise to call people liars or dishonest, unless you are very sure, and proving lies is hard. Cruz is probably repeating and exaggerating some denialist claim that the satellite warming does not appear as strong as surface warming. The public won't like it if things descend to a shouting match of the form, "you are a liar, no I'm not a liar" or personal attacks, and will turn their back on the whole climate thing.
However Cruz is plain wrong, and he needs to be told exactly that in those words. It's fair to be strongly and bluntly critical of Cruz for not respecting overwhelming expert commentary that there's a warming trend, and not respecting simple, accepted mathematical tools to establish such trends, that are used throughout science and are fully proven to be valid. Cruz should also be strongly criticised for relying on just one data set, especially when there are concerns over it's reliability.
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Doug_C at 08:30 AM on 16 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
I think it's also important to point out that for science to operate as intended it must leave room for doubt and modification. The denial of science faces no such challenges.
Deniers can claim with full certainty than the Earth is in fact not warming, or if it is it's not because of us. Or even that we're now in a cooling trend. All with perfect certainty but little to no factual support. This can be traced directly back to the tobacco lobby which took almost exactly the same approach of not just challenging the data but attacking the scientific method itself.
The background claim of deniers isn't just that the data is wrong on climate change but that science itself is unreliable because it all includes an error margin. Not explaining that everything does, it's just that in science this is incorporated and quantified in a way that isn't in most other disciplines. With the result that successively complex ideas can be built into comprehensive bodies of knowledge that can be effectively tested.
It's simply easier to tell most people that something is right or wrong and much more difficult to communicate the complex inter-relationships that give us a much better understanding of the natural world through science.
In a largley PR battle - as we see with climate change - scientists have one arm tied behind their back bacause they will not categorically deny anything...and neither should they. They speak in probabilities and the best information currently available.
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Philippe Chantreau at 08:11 AM on 16 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
I think we are veering too far off the subject while injecting some reality to counter Wake's unsupported assertions. The subject of this thread is the manipulation of data, misrepresentation of science and abuse of public trust by specific individuals. Ben Santer has gone through a pretty thorough process and demonstrates that the word denier is entirely appropriate to designate some who have distorted the scientific findings.
Wake is making a strong case to reinforce that demonstration by throwing anything he can find at the wall to see if something sticks, and in the process tries to represents some science as saying exactly the opposite of what it actually says.
Nonetheless, the arguments presented by Wake do not belong on this thread. If he wants to talk about glacial cycles, there are threads for that. This one here is about deniers in a position of power misleading the public. If he dislikes the word denier, he can attempt to go through Ben Santer's analysis and show by some solid reasoning that Santer is wrong. I doubt that it's possible to do without a messy divorce from reality. I hope mods move this discussion where it belongs; we are getting distracted by smoke and mirrors. The issue is the blatant nonsense spewed by Ted Cruz, let's stick to that.
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Doug_C at 07:37 AM on 16 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
As an example of what I'm saying, individual activity has little impact if official policy includes activity that maintains the use of fossil fuel.
I haven't had a car for a decade and walk, bike or ride transit for transportation.
But it's official policy here to encourage the growth of tar sands development that over the next several decades will add billions more tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at a time when almost all the available evidence indicates that will result in catastrophic impacts.
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Doug_C at 07:16 AM on 16 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
@ Wake
"fossil fuel companies do not "create" a virtual monopoly. The population as a whole decides what they wish to buy and does so. You have the alternative of electric cars, bicycle or walking. Over the last 6 years I have put more miles on my bicycles than on my car. Many of my friends do not even own cars. Neither do they use commercial airlines. Do you?"
The amount of money that goes into determining policy and also the subsidies that are then sent back to the sector involved argues strongly against that. Renewables are almost certainly competing against a fixed deck where "cheap" fossil fuels hold the strategic high ground.
The population as a whole is almost entirely left out of decision making processes, something we see here - Canada - constantly. So instead of comprehensive programs to begin a system wide transition to a low carbon dioxide emitting energy model, there is a piecemeal approach to renewables but a system wide approach to maintaining fossil fuel production with the result that there will be decades more of extensive use of fossil fuels at the level of burning billions of tons a year with the current "business as usual". Resulting in the catastrophic impacts that have already begun and will likely increase.
As has been explained, this is not because there are not alternatives, there are many. It's due to multi-level actions on the part of involved industry that we aren't seeing the large scale transition to renewable energy resources. First off to deny there is even a need to transition off of their products that can be traced right back to the disinformation campaign created by the tobacco lobby. Secondly by massively funded lobbying to sway policy makers at all levels to continue the use of fossil fuels.
This has been the pattern with growing force and apparentness since at least the late 1980s and it could be argued it started a decade earlier. While at the same time the technology for producing low carbon emitting energy has rapidly matured.
Best practices with the best technology available are clearly not being applied on the largest scale when the evidence is looked at. We are still in a policy holding pattern that continues the massive burning of fossil fuels at a time when the valid science is stating clearly the likely catastrophic impacts.
Fossil fuels are not cheap or sustainble on any level when the likely consequences of their use is social, economic and ecological losses on a level hard to contemplate let alone quantify.
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Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
Wake #2:
"…. you will see that the Milankovitch Cycles suggest that we should be in a warmer part of their cycles."No!
The summer insolation at high northern latitudes won’t change much over the next 20,000 years. If we were in an ice age (or more precisely a glacial period) right now, we would almost certainly stay there for at least the next 25,000 years without any human intervention.Hmm….it seems that Tom was faster than me with his graph in #9, but here is mine!
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Tom Curtis at 06:52 AM on 16 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
Rob Honeycutt @18, it is almost as though he was in denial about AGW.
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Tom Curtis at 06:51 AM on 16 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
Wake @2, following on from Mal Adapted's comment, here is the insolation at 65o North in a more detailed scale:
The image is from WUWT, from a post in which David Archibald argues we are entering a new ice age. He, however, has prior form which indicates he does not know what he is talking about when it comes to temperature predictions, but the graph is accurate. As can be easily seen on that graph, summer insolation at 65o North is near a minimum but still declining. Absent some other driver of climate, we would still be cooling. Instead we have soared to temperatures comparable to those at the Holocene Climate Optimum.
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Rob Honeycutt at 06:08 AM on 16 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
I'm having trouble grasping what could possibly be "unreliable" about geothermal energy. In fact, of all sources of energy, where it works well, it would be more reliable than any other sources. Iceland gets 25% of their electricity from geothermal due to their local geology.
I have a real problem with people, like Wake, who state things that are clearly wrong, won't listen when corrected, and then go on to repeat and add to their errors.
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Mal Adapted at 05:55 AM on 16 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
Wake:
If you observe earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Paleoclimatology_Evidence/ you will see that the Milankovitch Cycles suggest that we should be in a warmer part of their cycles.
Actually, you won't see that. The time resolution of the graphs on that page isn't sufficient. In fact, climate scientists generally agree that we've passed the peak warming in this inter-glacial, and without the fossil carbon we've returned to the atmosphere it would be cooling.
So whether man has anything to do with the warming climate is what the question is and that is not answered. Calling those who suggest this "deniers" in the same sort of personal insults that the "deniers" are forbidden to do on this site.
They are called [AGW-]deniers because it's long since been shown that the warming is at least %100 anthropogenic, that is, the sum of "natural" forcings is cooling. There's no shame in not knowing that initially, but anyone who insists that "whether man has anything to do with the warming climate" hasn't been answered, when it's easy enough to find out that it has, is in denial.
On the Internet, you can find all the evidence and analysis that supports the lopsided consensus of working climate scientists for AGW, but you also can find a lot of false facts and logical fallacies. You'll need to know how to tell the difference, and not assume that you have all the knowledge you need to contradict genuine experts until you're one of them (when you are, everyone will know it). Otherwise, get used to being called an AGW-denier.
In particular, if the US National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of the UK, two of the world's most respected scientific bodies, jointly publish in 2014 a report that begins with (emphasis in the original),
CLIMATE CHANGE IS ONE OF THE DEFINING ISSUES OF OUR TIME. It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth’s climate.
then you should be very skeptical of anyone who says it's still not certain!
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Tom Curtis at 05:53 AM on 16 March 2017As EPA head, Scott Pruitt must act on climate change
Wake @7:
"I have stated elsewhere..."
And you were thoroughly refuted elsewhere as well. Responding to a refutation of your views be simply restating them on another thread is bad form. If done repeatedly it shows you to be a troll, and is violation of the SkS comments policy.
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Philippe Chantreau at 05:48 AM on 16 March 2017As EPA head, Scott Pruitt must act on climate change
www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/8/605/2016/essd-8-605-2016.html
www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n10/fig_tab/nclimate1942_F1.html
www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Carbon+Uptake
Wake is making strange arguments and offering no references. The carbon cycle is not nearly as mysterious as he suggests, and the oceans are a well known carbon sink. Sinks are the reason why atmosheric carbon has not risen as much as could be expected at first glance from human emissions, which are indeed staggering. USGS estimates the total anthropogenic contribution to be close to 100X that of volcanic activity, so it is indeed a geological scale event that we are witnessing. Wake is correct in his assessment that the rise is entirely due to human emissions.
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nigelj at 05:46 AM on 16 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
Wake @12
"Firstly - geothermal and biomass aren't really "renewables". Geothermal sources are extremely rare in the USA and most other places as well. And they are of questionable "reliability".
I live in New Zealand. We get 10% of our electricity from geothermal and more is planned. I have never heard of any reliability problems at all in the last 50 years, and I take an interest in this sort of thing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_New_Zealand#Geothermal
Solar output does fall on cloudy days. I think its reasonable to suggest the design engineers would actually be aware of this, and things would be designed accordingly with enough capacity to cope with varied conditions.
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Tom Curtis at 05:33 AM on 16 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
Wake @12, the data for California renewable sources comes from the California Energy Commission, as does the table to which you link. Further, allowing for rounding the data in the pie chart @6 is the same as that from the table to which you linked except for two entries. First, the table shows 7,500 GWh of biomass vs 8,600 GWh on the pie chart. However, the table shows "data as of July, 11 2016", whereas the pie chart is from a document published in Oct, 2016 and "last updated December, 22 2016". In other words, the pie chart represents more recent data, and is to be preferred on that ground.
The other difference is that the table shows a total energy use of 295,405 GWh compared to 255,300 GWh on the pie chart. Looking in the fine print of the report in which the pie chart was published, that is because that data excluded power used to pump water in pumped hydro schemes along with "excluded entities", ie, "...electricity delivered to federal Department of Energy facilities, military bases, water pumping facilities such as the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, utility use, electric vehicle charging, and street lighting" which are excluded from the renewable energy target by the statute. A case can be made that the exclusion of pumping costs for pumped hydro is appropriate, but the other is not for the purposes of this discussion. Consequently I am quite happy to use the data from the table for which you provided the link.
Using that table, we still find a combined 13.9% of Californian power production, and 14.2% of Californian power usage coming from wind and solar. This represents an underestimate because rooftop solar is not included. Further, part of the mix of "unspecified sources of power" are from hydro plants (presumably large scale hydro). Regardless of the underestimate, the data from the table is an order of magnitude larger than your "3% and a normal year will give them 2%" estimate for all "alternative power", ie, non-fossil fuel or nuclear power.
At some point you need to start acknowledging errors, and correcting them or you will no longer be taken seriously.
On a side note, given San Francisco's latitude (37.8o North) the best yearly average power for a fixed solar panel will be obtained by tilting the panel 37.8o from the horizontal towards the south. That will give peak power in spring and autumn, and reduced power in summer and winter. You may prefer more winter or (I think more likely in California) summer power. Peak summer power will be obtained with a 15o tilt, while peak winter power requires a 40o tilt. You may also prefer more power in the afternoon, which requires a slight tilt towards the west. Any of these alterations will reduce your total annual production, but increase the production at the most convenient times and seasons. The idea that the system will produce effectively nothing with a 10o tilt is bunk.
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Rob Honeycutt at 05:28 AM on 16 March 2017As EPA head, Scott Pruitt must act on climate change
Wake... "Exactly how can the science be undeniable with huge gaps between the modeling and reality?"
You keep making completely unsubstantiated statements that are not based in fact. Take some time to read up on these issues before you make such sweeping and inaccurate statements.
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Philippe Chantreau at 05:20 AM on 16 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
This could be more appropriate for another thread (glacial cycles). I am well aware, as are all others who have done the least bit of digging on the subject, of Milankovitch cycles. Unlike what Wake suggests ("injecting more energy"), the cycles do not change how much energy is received from the Sun but rather its ditribution on the surface, which is especially important in the Northern hemisphere. Tamino has examined the issue in some detail in the past.
I followed the link in Wake's post and the graphs posted do not indicate at all that we should be heading into a warmer period. In fact, it is exactly the opposite: we are coming from a warm period, called interglacial when considered in the context of glaciation cycles. The global climate should be getting cooler, sea ice and land ice should be slowly increasing if it was only up to Milankovitch cycles. This is clearly visible in the 2 graphs at the bottom right of the page linked by Wake. There is a large body of research about the subject, with graphs that are easier to read than the ones on the linked NASA page (long time scale). Most sources show that these are normally slow changes. SkS also has examined the argument hinged on "coming out of an ice age" although the more common argument pertains to the so-called "Little Ice Age."
We have had on multiple occasions posters referencing legitimate science and attempting to make it say the opposite of what it actually says. It shouldn't be a suprise that this kind of argument is not well received.
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nigelj at 05:18 AM on 16 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
Wake @2 says"
"If you observe earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Paleoclimatology_Evidence/ you will see that the Milankovitch Cycles suggest that we should be in a warmer part of their cycles."
I can't see this in the article. In fact the following article on milankovitch cycles clearly states "We are currently in a decreasing phase, which under normal circumstances, without the excess GHG’s, would cool the climate system"
ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/milankovitch-cycles
In any event the changes from the Milankovitch cycle cause very small changes in temperature over thousands of years, and cannot possibly explain the rapidity of warming over the last 50 years.
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Doug_C at 05:18 AM on 16 March 2017Ben Santer on Seth Meyer’s Late Show – How Climate Deniers Lie
Slight correction in my above comment, photons emitted by the Earth's surface are of course of much longer wavelength that those emitted from the surface of the Sun.
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Wake at 05:02 AM on 16 March 2017The fossil fuel industry's invisible colonization of academia
Rob, you are correct in that cattlefeed did slip my mind. And I was referring to corn used directly as food and not as a sweetening or bulk products added to most other manufactured foods. These are neither necessary or particularly healthy.
As for solar: www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2016/04/2015-top-ten-pv-cell-manufacturers.html As you can see that more than half of the world's solar panels are made by the top ten companies. The majority of the other 47% is made in the Philipines and other far eastern areas.
Only one of the companies is American and most of their production is in Malaysia.
Who would have expected that the heating bill in the summer would be lower than in the winter? But my electricity bill has risen over the last three years from $20 to $40 a month and that is steady regardless of season. And I do not live in a particularly large home at 1400 square feet and homes in places like Illinois or Texas or Florida in middle class neighborhoods are usually nearly twice that area with the same number of bedrooms and baths. What's more I keep my heater settings to 62 most of the time raising to 68 only in the morning for a couple of hours and in the evening until 10 pm. If you are inplying that I am wasting energy and therefore that is why my bill would be so high you're incorrect. What's more I have double insulated windows and insulated attic. Something that most homes in this area do not. And for all of that I have to wear a jacket inside of my home most of the winter. And I'll warrant that I'm in much better health than you are.
My conversation has nothing whatsoever to do with the private purchase of solar panels. That is your call and you are welcome to it.
Doug - fossil fuel companies do not "create" a virtual monopoly. The population as a whole decides what they wish to buy and does so. You have the alternative of electric cars, bicycle or walking. Over the last 6 years I have put more miles on my bicycles than on my car. Many of my friends do not even own cars. Neither do they use commercial airlines. Do you?
You have alternatives and yet proclaim a monopoly. It wasn't the oil companies that closed down the nuclear power plants in California. It was the environmentalists. There are several "safe" nuclear power cycles but we had protests on every campus in California and in the streets and so PG&E closed down all but one I believe. And this one is due to end soon. They didn't want "safer" nuclear power - they wanted an entire end to it.
Do you think that there will be less CO2 generated by burning some other form of carbon? That is curious indeed.
I will ask you as well as others - with your complaints about fossil fuels have you stopped driving? Most power comes from fossil fuels so even electric cars burn fuel even if you appologize for it by saying that you get better fuel economy. The "Energy Stored On Investment" of all battery systems is lousy. Using excess electricity generated by renewable energy sources to pump water back into dams when available is some 25 times more efficient than the very best battery systems. That should tell you something. All of this completely ignores the problems that large scale batteries use rare materials that are enviromentally unfriendly to mine and refine.
Moderator Response:[JH] Sloganeering snipped.
For a detailed assessment of the multiple issues about nuclear power in California, see:
Nuclear Power in California : 2007 Status Report, prepared by MRW & Associates, Inc., for the California Energy Commission.
Abstract
This consultant report examines how nuclear power issues have evolved since publication of the consultant report, Nuclear Power in California: Status Report, which was prepared for the 2005 Integrated Energy Policy Report (2005 IEPR). The report focuses on four broad subject areas: 1) nuclear waste issues, 2) costs of nuclear power, 3) environmental and societal impacts of nuclear power, and 4) nuclear power in the United States in the coming years. Nuclear waste issues include the status of a federal repository at Yucca Mountain, the proposed federal reprocessing program, and issues related to the transportation of nuclear waste. The costs of nuclear power are addressed from three angles: the costs of operating California’s current nuclear power plants, the costs of building and operating new nuclear power plants, and the cost implications of a “nuclear renaissance.” Environmental and societal impacts discussed include the environmental implications of nuclear power, the role of nuclear power in climate change policy, and the security implications of nuclear power generation. Finally, the future of nuclear power is addressed by considering the safety and reliability of the aging U.S. nuclear fleet, license extensions that could keep the current fleet operating for an additional 20 years, and the development of new nuclear power plants in the United States. The report concludes by offering potential implications for California from these events.
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