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Comments 26151 to 26200:
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The strong economics of wind energy
Charlie A - Several points:
- Wind/solar are dispatchable when there is excess capacity, which several studies indicate is the most economic approach.
- They are also quite predictable on the order of several days (i.e., weather predictions of wind/clouds), making dealing with generation lows reasonably managable.
- Connecting renewable generation over larger geographic areas hugely decreases potential low periods, as weather patterns are of limited extent (Archer et al 2007) - permitting baseload power even without storage.
- The LOCs above do not include externalities - a conservative estimate of the external costs of coal extraction, pollution, disposal, etc., inicates that the LOC of coal should be three times the base generation cost (Epstein et al 2011), meaning that doubling wind capacity to provide surplus power for lows is a no-brainer.
On a one-to-one generator basis, no, renewables and fossil fuels are not directly comparable. On a system-to-system basis, they are quite comparable, and renewable baseload power is indeed less expensive for economies on a whole.
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Rob Honeycutt at 00:05 AM on 30 December 2015The strong economics of wind energy
jpjmarti @4... The EIA puts LCOE for onshore wind at $73/kWh in the US [link], so the numbers are clearly not out of line, and even are likely understated in this article.
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Leslie Graham at 18:32 PM on 29 December 2015The strong economics of wind energy
The table is wildly underestimating the cost of nuclear if it doesn't include the costs of decommissioning and 'storage' of waste for hundreds of years.
Who pays for that?
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jpjmarti at 17:34 PM on 29 December 2015The strong economics of wind energy
Incredible! You are doing it again. Uncritically parroting whatever lobbyists tell you. Your figure on costs rely on gray literature which in fact seems to be unavailble outside press releases and at least in the case of nuclear costs widely inconsistent with serious sources. This type of "reporting" just undermines the good work you do.
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Rob Painting at 17:25 PM on 29 December 2015A Buoy-Only Sea Surface Temperature Record Supports NOAA’s Adjustments
dazed and confused - IMO the post by Zeke and Kevin does a great job of explaining the issues here. Engine room intakes (ERI) warm the water slightly before it is measured thus, as ERI sampling has changed from a major to minor source of SST data (figure 2), they were likely to introduce a spurious cooling bias. The buoy only reconstruction supports the new version 4 of NOAA's ERSST (figures 3 & 4).
What legitimate basis is there for suspecting that the thermometers aboard the buoys are introducing a spurious trend?
As for the so-called pause, that's dead and buried. The continued warming of sea surface temperatures is consistent with the ongoing build-up of heat in the ocean (some 93% of global warming). That's why, as others have pointed out, it's useful to look at the 'bigger picture'. The scientific evidence is consilient. The warming sea surface temperatures are consistent with the recorded warming of the land surface and warming of the atmosphere. For the subsurface ocean to continue warming as it has, in the background context of a cooling sun over the last four decades, the atmosphere has to warm and direct more downwelling longwave radiation back toward the sea surface. Doing so lowers the thermal gradient through the cool-skin layer and traps more heat in the ocean.
How can there be a pause in warming when the oceans continue to rise as fast as they have? With thermal expansion of seawater and the addition of meltwater showing no signs of slowing down, atmospheric water vapour continuing to increase, heatwaves becoming more frequent and severe, how can anybody take claims of a pause seriously?
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Charlie A at 16:12 PM on 29 December 2015The strong economics of wind energy
In general, you cannot compare directly non-dispatchable power sources like wind and solar with dispatchable sources like coal, gas, and nuclear.
If the wind farms had sufficient backup power storage on site to supply power for several hours (or perhaps several days) of low wind, then the levelized cost of the combined wind turbine + power storage unit could indeed be compared directly to other dispatchable power sources.
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The article says "The cost of balancing out the variable wind power is usually paid by the wind-power producer". Does this mean that the wind-power producer pays to keep a coal or gas plant on hot standby? Please explain what sort of balancing out is paid for by the wind-power producer during low wind days.
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dazed and confused at 13:57 PM on 29 December 2015A Buoy-Only Sea Surface Temperature Record Supports NOAA’s Adjustments
@Eclectic - Greetings
I understand there is a great deal of evidence involved. Just this past week I had the pleasure of meeting a climatologist who has published several papers regarding the warming of fresh water lakes. She was even gracious enough to give me a quick tutorial on the subject.
I agree with you that one set of data isn't the deciding factor. If it turned out that the ERSST4 data was completely bogus, for example, it wouldn't mean that AGW wasn't true, for bad data has no bearing on the truth.
For someone like me, who is new to the game, there is so much hype that it's hard to know who to trust. Therefore, I decided to have a look at the science and methodology involved to the extent I can understand it.
Hopefully, someone more knowledgable than me can address my questions. It seems to me there are some questionable aspects to Karl's adjustments, but I'm perfectly willing to chalk it up to my own ignorance. I'm hoping someone on this site can set me straight.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 13:09 PM on 29 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 3
Ohhh Tom
I like your #3.
That would put a lot of dubious corporate types between a rock and a hard place :-) -
The strong economics of wind energy
LOC -> The per kilowatt hour cost of building and operating a power plant over an assumed financial life and duty cycle.
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jipspagoda at 11:53 AM on 29 December 2015The strong economics of wind energy
What does the term "levelized", in the context of this article, mean? Thanks
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Eclectic at 09:46 AM on 29 December 2015A Buoy-Only Sea Surface Temperature Record Supports NOAA’s Adjustments
@ Dazed And Confused ( #2, #4 ),
Good to skeptical about the methodology of buoy data.
Less good, to be tempted to focus only on the buoy data. As Daniel Bailey says, there is a huge amount of evidence confirming AGW. ( And almost nothing "unconfirming". )
Stand back and look at the bigger picture. Owing to the (GHG-caused) continuous nett inflow of heat energy into the planet, there is no reason to expect any real "hiatus" whatsoever. [ hiatus used in the proper sense : of slow-down or reversal of warming ]
The ocean is vastly important, as the major heat sink of the global warming process . . . and we have no reason (and no hypotheses) that would lead us to believe that it is not warming. If buoy data should fail to confirm "the expected", then we should be very much skeptical about the buoys and their associated methodology of data collection.
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dazed and confused at 09:29 AM on 29 December 2015A Buoy-Only Sea Surface Temperature Record Supports NOAA’s Adjustments
My mistake: On 05:51 AM on 29 December, 2015 I said "I haven't seen a graph of ERSST4 vs. the buoy only trend". Now that I reread the article, this is no longer true, since the article clearly contains such graphs.
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Eclectic at 09:24 AM on 29 December 2015The best of climate science and humanity come together at AGU
One Planet Only ( @30 ),
Fair enough that you wish to consider the consequences of people's denialism.
Yet we still need short labels for them, all the same.
If someone asserts that the world is flat . . . then he is a (science) denier. His motivations and the downstream consequences, are a matter of separate issue.
There are many people (in cold regions) who are mildly doubtful about AGW ~ but only where they haven't given it serious thought. But those nowadays who have spent much time investigating/ reading/ thinking on AGW ~ and yet manage to disagree with the scientific evidence ~ have earned the unflattering label: denier. Just as those who assert "2+2=3" have earned the label of (mathematics) denier.
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chriskoz at 08:47 AM on 29 December 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #52
In 2012 it was East Coast and New York. Now, 3y later, it's the old York accross the ditch.
Unprecedented flooding in Britain
A very remarkable is the current outcome of the review of the country's flood defences by UK env agency:
Apart from conventional flood defences, Mr Rooke also anticipated the government could help people "move electrics up the wall" so homes and businesses could recover faster from floods.
Hmmm, that's the last ditch attempt, short of abandoning hte town. I haven't seen any gov anouncing a measure like that yet, which essentially means all other measures have failed.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:41 AM on 29 December 2015The best of climate science and humanity come together at AGU
Eclectic @24,
I appreciate the desire to have a brief label that connects in a meaningful way to an action that is being addressed. I would clarify that the terms I presented can be applied to a specific action as well as being a general term applicable to a person with a history of a certain category of actions.
"Denier or denialist" only refers to a person not a specific action in question (it required an evaluation of a history of actions to jutify its use). Labelling a person a denier requires an extensive presentation of the history of actions that leads to the person deserving the label (as opposed to beiong able to use a label to address a specific action by a person). And just referring to denial of an aspect of science is unnecessarily limited. The motivation for, and consequences of, the action need to be addressed.
Getting other people to more fully better understand what is going on neds to be the objective. Labeling someone a "denier" may not help. It could be easy for a cherry-picked redeeming action by a person to be used as evidence that the label was not deserved, leading to a rather pointless debate about the applicability of the label.
Hence my preference for the brief terms of reference to specific actions: Helpful, Blindly Harmful, and Deliberately Harmful in the larger context I mentioned. I consider the elaboration of the reason for using them to be a more important matter for someone to better understand than why a person was called a Denier. And the elaboration of helpful/harmful can be briefer than presenting a history of actions by a person to justify the label Denier. And the helpful/harmful actions of a person can then the the basis for considering the application of the label to a person.
And I would add "Mostly Harmless" to the set of labels for actions and people, because I love so many of the thoughts expressed by Douglas Adams. I would love all of human activity to be collectively be shown to be "Helpful" and "Mostly Harmless".
The current developed direction of humans is far too "Deliberately Harmful" for humanity to be able to advance to a lasting better future. Major changes are required, and many perceptions need to be corrected through the development of better understanding of what life is really all about - it is not about what an individual or group desires and might be able to get away with - it is not about popularity and profitability and perceptions of prosperity (in spite of the developed predominance of those things).
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dazed and confused at 08:02 AM on 29 December 2015A Buoy-Only Sea Surface Temperature Record Supports NOAA’s Adjustments
Greetings Daniel B
I'm trying to understand the science and methodologies behind AGW science, so I can make my own informed decision, to the extent possible. I'm happy for you that you've already made that journey.
I don't think I made any claim about AGW one way or the other. You may be right about the converging consilient empirical data confirming AGW, but I have to start somewhere. So I want to understand the NOAA data, especially given all the fuss over the hiatus.
Since the NOAA data will undoubtedly be used as the basis for countless papers, it seems to me worth looking into whether the latest adjustments are valid or not, and whether NOAA has done a good job in general in this area. I think that was the point of the article, and that was what I was hoping to address with my questions.
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Daniel Bailey at 06:44 AM on 29 December 2015A Buoy-Only Sea Surface Temperature Record Supports NOAA’s Adjustments
Fortunately, AGW doesn't rely solely on buoy data. Multiple lines of converging, consilient empirical data exist confirming AGW.
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dazed and confused at 05:51 AM on 29 December 2015A Buoy-Only Sea Surface Temperature Record Supports NOAA’s Adjustments
I am not an expert at any of this by any means, but I do have a few questions, and I don't know where to turn to get answers. If there is a place they are already addressed, either on this site or another, I'd be appreciative of a link. Otherwise, perhaps someone here can help me.
1) Let's leave asside the issue of global warming and the hiatus for a moment. Recent SST data is dominated by buoys during the period in question, from maybe 50% (estimate from graph in article above) to 90% by 2014, see Huang). Moreover the buoys have received higher weighting in ERSST4 (see Karl), making buoy data even more dominant. So is it any surprise that ERSST4 would correlate fairly well with buoy only data, since that's mostly what it's comprised of?
If we are interested in verifying Huang's adjustments (used by Karl), and since these adjustments are to ship temperatures (yes, I know about the buoys being adjusted, but it amounts to the same thing), wouldn't it be more illuminating to compare the buoy record to ERSST4's ship only adjusted record for the time period in question? It seems that would be a better indication of whether the adjustments did their job.
I understand the emphasis on the trend slope, given the hiatus thing. But if the concern is with the veracity of the adjustments, then simply showing that the slope of the trends is similar doesn't really say anything about the correlation over time. After all, two completely unrelated time series can still have the same trend. I haven't seen a graph of ERSST4 vs. the buoy only trend, or any correlation analysis. Has this been done?
2) Why weren't the buoy adjustments taken into consideration from the beginning, rather than waiting until ERSST4? It seems to me that any time you have 2 streams of data from different sources, you must compensate for any systematic bias by normalizing the data. In this case, as soon as buoy data was introduced, shouldn't this have been done?
It might be argued that originally there wasn't enough data to make this adjustment. Wouldn't that impy that the buoy data should have been excluded until enough data was gathered to make that adjustment, rather than introducing "artifacts of data" (Karl's words)? Look at the obvious negative consequence brought about by not being prudent in this matter.
Here's the point: If I'm to be convinced about global warming, I will have to trust and rely on NOAA and the rest of the scientific community, since I can't possibly investigate everything myself. When I see what appears to be a grave lapse of judgement (methodology?), doubt creeps into my mind.
Am I being overly critical of NOAA on this? I'm not a scientist, so I realize that I'm not really in a position to judge this objectively, which is why I pose the question. This is a genuine concern for me.
3) According to Karl, about 1/4 of the change in "hiatus" trend resulted from additional weighting given to buoys. I have looked through Huang and I don't see much explanation. Is there an explanation in Karl's supplemental materials, maybe? I'd like to get a better understanding of what was done and how it was justified.
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I also have questions about the ship bucket adjustment. I think I'll save those for another post.
P.S. This is my first post. I have read the comments policy, and I think I have followed it, but since I am a novice at this site, if I have done something wrong, please be gentle with me.
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scaddenp at 05:21 AM on 29 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 3
Aren't electroral colleges a completely unnecessary relic from horse and pony days? I note that other civilized democracies manage extremely well without them.
To my mind, it should be a constitutional principle that you cant buy an elected official's vote. If you have "lobbiest industry", then you have a democracy in trouble. It implies that the way to get the laws you want is to influence the elected official, rather than campaigns to influence the electorate. It immediately brings into question how the elected member is being influenced. The proper way is public representation to a committee of elected officials considering a new laws. Offering party donations is absolutely the worst way.
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Susan Anderson at 04:23 AM on 29 December 2015The best of climate science and humanity come together at AGU
Though I used to say fake or phony skeptic, I've taken to unskeptical "skeptic" and often enlarge on why that is so. Also unskeptical "skeptic" climate science denier if to pile it on. But I am a fast typist.
Too many people take the argument about denier seriously. It's just a way of derailing the conversation, a form of victim bullying.
Thanks Hank for the references. I've had RC derailments but usually find I can get through if I close the window, sometimes by choosing a specific article. I'm too lazy and ignorant to do all that stuff, but do use antivirus (at least daily) and spybot (weekly) fairly regularly.
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Tom Curtis at 03:14 AM on 29 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 3
Glenn Tamblyn @6, specifically for the US the key, and possible reforms are:
1) Restrict political donations to those by citizens alone (corporations are people, but not citizens under current law);
2) Require donations over a certain level to be public;
3) Require that donations over that level preclude the donator or his full controlled business interests from receiving government contracts;
4) Require electoral college votes to be apportioned proportional to the vote in all states;
5) Require electoral college voters to vote for the person in whose name they were elected in the first instance, but if they are defeated either, in accordance with the direction from that person or according to a pre-election list of secondary preferences.
6) Require reports claiming to be 'news' or 'current affairs' to be fair, balanced, and based on factually correct information. Allow any other reporting as the media like, provided a disclaimer is provided that the report does not purport to meet the standards of 'news' or 'current affairs' with regard to accuracy, etc. (It is not a free speach issue, it is an honest advertizing issue.)
(5) Would be particularly useful in the US as it would allow third party candidates to not simply detract from the vote of one or the other of the primary parties, and would require that whoever is elected president is the least objected to among all candidates.
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Tom Curtis at 03:03 AM on 29 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 3
Factotum @3, I assume from your analogy that you are proposing some form of property based qualification to the right to vote. That being the case, I will note that:
1) Trump is a property holder;
2) The Republican Party (so named because it insists the US is a republic, not a democracy) is traditionally the party of the well to do, ie, the property holders; and
3) The rise of Donald Trump (and before that, of George W Bush, who was also a property holder) has come about because the Republican Party has thought it desirable to harness the less rational part of the US population as a means of bolstering the vote for legislation favourable to the most wealthy.
It is clear from the above that a property based qualification on voting would not prevent the absurdity of a Trump leading the race for nomination for President by the Republican Party; nor the absurdity of the US having elected George W Bush.
I will also note that any property based qualification to vote, or indeed any non-competence qualificaion (such as age, mental well being, and possibly serving a prison sentence) is immoral because:
1) The non-voters would still be subject to the legislation, which thereby constitutes tyranny;
2) The non-voters would still be expected to serve in armed forces, and therefore die for a land that does not allow them the franchise; and
3) The non-voters would still be subject to taxation, even if only indirect taxation (and or course taxation without representation was the anathema of the founding fathers of the US).
Democracy is not the best form of government because it is less worse than the others, but because it, and it alone has the potential to be a moral government that recognizes that all people are equal. Of course, if you don't agree with the declaration of independence, as apparently you do not, you can always move a constitutional ammendment for the US to once more become subject to the Brittish Crown on the basis that the original revolution was not justified in either morality or law.
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Tristan at 00:40 AM on 29 December 2015Temp record is unreliable
Theo, I'd start here for a primer on clouds and climate change.
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scaddenp at 19:25 PM on 28 December 2015Temp record is unreliable
"Slightly off-topic, but with all this talk of "hiatus", are the Milankovich cycles now slowly eroding the warming, cause their effect is well overdue and if you turn down the heater, you will need more blankets."
Milankovitch questions belong with Milankovitch, but short answer is that rate of change of milankovich forcing is 2 orders of magnitude less than rate of change in GHG forcing - ie completely overwhelmed. The signature is different as well. The last time we had 400ppm of CO2, we didnt have ice ages.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 12:49 PM on 28 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 3
Factotum I disagree with the idea of restricting the right to vote. However there are some areas that might be worth considering. Probably not practical but they get to the gist of some of the problems.
- Remove the legal notion that corporations are people and have the same freedom of expression rights. Corporations lying about anything is a criminal offense targetted at the directors.
- Mandate a public interest test and an impartial presentation of information obligation into the licenses for radio and TV stations.
- Maximum ownership rules for the media. No individual or corporation can own or control more than a small section of the media. And yes I am thinking of a certain ex-Australian of dubious repute.
- In parallel with a Bill of Rights, a comparable Bill of Responsibilities, that outlines the reasonable responsibilities of individual citizens. Just getting a 'my rights carry responsibilities with them' discourse might be useful. The notion that we have equal rights but not limitless rights.
- A nations constitution is reviewed, rewritten perhaps, and reratified by its population every 50 years or so. Build into everyones thinking that democracy isn't some static wonderful thing handed down to us by some 'founding fathers' but rather an evolving living thing where the early versions from our history were just the clunky early prototypes. And we are all obliged to be engaged with that process. This is just the price of a ticket into our society.
- Ban all campaign donations and financing. Political parties are funded from the public purse and nothing else.
- Upon being elected, all members of every legislature must resign all membership of political parties and other similar institutions - churches for example. They represent the people of their electorate and their nation, nobody else.
- Maximum inheritance laws. No individual can inherit vast fortunes. Leaving a few million to each of your kids - fine. But passing on vast vast fortunes down through generations is just creating power centres that aren't governed by democratic processes. Vast empires should always be broken up. So a Bill Gates can become a billionaire through his efforts but his kids have to do that again on their own. This is exactly what Bill is doing with his Pledge. It needs to be law.
- The compulsory breakup of any corporation that grows beyond a certain size. A world of huge numbers of smaller corporations would probably work better. Not big enough to dominate they are forced to compete and cooperate instead.
- Adding the teaching of analytical and critical thinking skills into the school curriculum from a young age. Humans aren't necessarily good rational and analytical thinkers but we can all be taught to be.
Just some random thoughts on what a better democracy might look like.
Democracies do suck, sort of. Because they haven't evolved into better democracies. Perhaps America is currently the worst example of the problem because it was one of the first modern democracies to appear. And it was born traumatically rather through evolution. So American thinking about democracy seems to have become frozen around the idea of checks only on government and that the individual can be sovereign in everything.
When in reality a society needs checks and balances on all centres of power. And some checks on ourselves as well. We are not infallable and we all need to recognise that. So long as the process of applying the checks doesn't give any individual or group greater power than others. -
Andy Skuce at 11:57 AM on 28 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 3
Factotum: I couldn't disagree more. Restricting the right to vote by some kind of "qualification" would be disastrous and divisive.
I think I would rather live in a society governed by a popularly-elected President Trump than one ruled by a President Factotum who, it seems, would disenfranchise citizens and render them peasants based on where they shop or some other arbitrary criterion.
If democracies suck and always fail, please point to some historical cases of non-democracies that have thrived and persisted for as long as the G7 nations, for example.
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hank at 07:10 AM on 28 December 2015The best of climate science and humanity come together at AGU
and a last postscript — checked back and during the brief RC "hiatus" that site name was being redirected through a known malware source named "goadvs.com" (I captured the info when I saw it go by, and mailed it to RC at the time). Here is a comprehensive page on how to remove the crap that site puts on computers (Windows, Mac)
https://malwaretips.com/blogs/remove-go-goadvs-com/
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Wol at 06:46 AM on 28 December 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #52
I searched the release of the agreement and (I might have missed it) found zero references to "population numbers".
This is quite extraordinary. Increasing population by 30% will, all things considered, increase emissions by 30%. Everyone knows this.
Global population is the most fundamental parameter in emissions, let alone resource depletion, yet seems to be a taboo topic even amongst climate negotiators. I see little hope for the future until this elephant is recognised.
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shoyemore at 05:07 AM on 28 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 3
factotum,
Don't be so hard on the American people. I have to say, though, it is scary to think that neither Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush would have campaigned on Trump's platform, or engaged in his demagogic rhetoric. However, Trump still has to get nominated, and then he still has to win.
While he pleases an element of the Republican party, he is still very far from the preferences of the median American voter, on a range of issues from social welfare to energy.
It is also scary that some of his opponents, like Cruz, are probably worse than he is, if such a thing is possible.
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GeoffThomas at 16:45 PM on 27 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 2
Hi Guys, I was in Kiribati in 12/03, re-designing and re-building, can you believe it, the Solar power system for a NUN training centre, - they don't make nuns anymore in the West, I believe, but they do in Kiribati, - and such warriors! - Magnificent.
Whatever, the system originally designed by BP, never worked, but of course it worked after I finished, and I truly enjoyed the training and help of the locals, such wonderful and creative people.
But to cut to the chase, already at that time the airport, built by the Americans in WW2 and never flooded, was flooding, Jets had to check the tide charts, breaks were occurring in the surrounding reef of the main lagoon, - we were over at Abaokoro, opposite side of the lagoon from Tarawa, app. 40 kms, and I could tell you such a stirring story of getting the batteries across that lagoon in the canoe with high winds, - all the people in the canoe linked arms and hugged those huge batteries which would otherwise have fallen overboard, the culure is still strong in Abaokoro.. - But in Tarawa, the capital, a feeling of intense stress permeated, - I didn't initially understand, - all the women indicated openness, - ridiculous, young girls especially, not the men, - I was mid 50's, not normally partner material for these younger women, they made all sorts of intimate suggestions, - I have been all over the world, never ever experienced anything like that, and talking to the older nuns, - Western nuns, they said, - they know, they want to escape, - are desperate to escape
Talking to some very intelligent friends back in OZ, one pointed out that these women wanted to continue their genes, family, whatever, - at a very deep level, they would do anything, even cuddle up to an aging old white man, anyone from higher country, leave their beloved culture, to continue life.
William has no idea, I actually suspect Global Warming denying such as his is arrant cowardice, - not prepared to acknowledge that he is wrong, as the consequences are too fierce that he has allied with the mistaken fools who think that money and power is the top.
Perhaps William could go over to Kiribati and bring one of those desperate women back to Australia so their blood could continue, - I actually think Australia should take the population of Kiribati as Kiribus people are very OZ minded, - and even use the Oz currency and would be of huge benefit to us.
With what is happening at the WAIS in Antarctica, let alone anything else, Kiribati will be submerged.
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factotum at 13:50 PM on 27 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 3
I had occasion to write an article about 6 years ago that I called orwells boot. (As far as I can tell it is no. 1 or sometimes no.2 on all search engines. http://factotum666.livejournal.com/829.html The first line is: Orwell's Boot: our inevitable? descent into tyranny
I set forth a lot of information and logic that shows that evolution operates in such a way as to make people unwilling or unable to learn from any source other than their preferred authority. You may also want to read the true believer by eric hoffer.
I think that my article does a fairly good job of predicting Mr. Trump. If we are going to address our most critical problems, we need to figure out how to tweak evolution, or work contrary to how nature works. We are confronting large scale stupid. Trump is capitalizing on that. Not an easy task. Logic will not work. Frankly I see no solution.
Our founding fathers were correct, and we ignored them. Democracies suck and always fail. We made a serious error when we removed any qualification for the right to vote. Consider this: Give the customers of walmart the same voting rights as the share (stake) holders. How long do you think that Walmart will survive?
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Digby Scorgie at 10:28 AM on 27 December 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #51
I had a look at the quotations of scientists and newspapers in the final link above. With one exception, they are all quite reasonable and sensible. The exception is the Wall Street Journal of 14 December 2015. The final sentence of the quotation is enough to evoke homicidal feelings:
The grandiose claims of triumph in Paris represent the self-interest of a political elite that wants more control over the private economy in the U.S. and around the world.
To this my riposte is:
The insensate rejection of science by the Wall Street Journal represents the self-interest of a corporate elite that wants more control over national governance in the US and around the world.
On the one hand, there are the dire consequences of unmitigated climate change. On the other hand, there is the propaganda campaign certain corporations and individuals have waged to sabotage any action designed to avert such change. The item from the Wall Street Journal is an example.
It is difficult to conceive of people so evil that they are willing to countenance the destruction of the planetary environment in the long-term — and human civilization with it — simply to maintain their wealth and power in the short-term.
I hope the foregoing does not constitute a "political" or "ad-hominem" comment. We are after all talking about people trying to stop others from averting a catastrophic future climate. If my language seems too strong, I refer readers to the above-mentioned "homicidal feelings".
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howardlee at 23:55 PM on 26 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 3
Thanks! With Scruggios (or Cruzios) vowing publically to derail the Paris agreement, denial still has plenty of poison in its tail. We may not ever reach the Scruggios of this world directly, but bit by bit hopefully we'll reach enough supporters, parents, sons and daughters, uncles and aunts, to point out that these emperors of denial lack a shred of scientific clothing.
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Gestur at 23:11 PM on 26 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 3
What a remarkably accomplished climate change re-creation of Dickens’ tale you have crafted here, Howard. I thought this last part was especially effective in achieving its end.
Now if we could only get various Senators Scruggio (and others) to read it, including in my case a certain nephew.
Thank you.
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chriskoz at 20:51 PM on 26 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 2
michael sweet@5,
Indeed, fascinating is the comparison of william's blog with Rob's science. Good that DB just crossed the link to that blog but left the link visible for the curiosity readers like me.
Especially funny is william's argument - the main premise of his bunkum - that parrot fish poo: grains of sand somehow compacted by the action of waves and wind, provides building material for bedrock of the atoll to grow keeping apace with SLR.
Even ignoring the absurdity of such outcome of wave and wind forces, the amount of sand (90kg per fish or 90tons per thousands of fish) is nowhere near the amount of building material required. Kiribati has total land area of 811 square kilometers. With an SLR of just 3mm/y, a kindergarten kid can calculate it means some 2.5 million cubic meters of material is needed. So not a thousand but at least 30 million fish (or over a million fish per one island) is needed to physically produce it. I don't know parrot fish population estimates but I'm sure there are not that many of htem around.
As for william's counter of alleged 155k visits, it is likely the same bunkum as the blog text: none of the alleged visitors have left a single word of comment there. I would have left my laughing comment, but decided to keep the history of that blog intact (i.e. rightly deserved, pristine number of zero comments) and commented herein.
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Theo van den Berg at 20:38 PM on 26 December 2015Temp record is unreliable
Hi, I am new to this site. Originally thought it was a deniers site, but recently came across you, when searching for Milankovitch and you had a pretty possitive comprehensive description for it.
My question is about temperature records, but first a bit about me. I live in AUS at -29.7 152.5 in my own 2 square km forest in the mountains. Not bragging here, but rather inspiring others to do the same and put their money where their mouth (blog) is, cause around here 1 square km of beautiful Aussie forest goes for about 50K USD. Between us, we could own half the Amazon and stop them from taking it down. I live in an area called Northern Rivers, cause water is scarce in AUS. Many big rivers here, some 1km wide, good for water, but they do flood. I have my own lake, so plenty of water all year round. I moved here from Melbourne after the big melt in the Arctic in 2007. Always been a GW "enthusiast" and this area would provide a better future, than living in a big City. Any GW tipping point will seriously affect big cities, causing food shortages and riots, a bit like Mad Max. Picked this area cause it is just South of the Gold Coast and the Rain Forests. With GW all that will be slowly moving South, I hope. OK, now for my query.
When I first moved here, most days and night the sky was clear and the temperatures ranged 0-35 in winter and 15 to 45 in summer. But for the last few years, there has been much more cloud cover. I suppose if you warm water, you get more steam. Cloud cover during the day reduces the temperature and clouds at night act as a blanket. But a cloudy day, may have a few hours of clear sky, immediately increasing the temperature.
The weather bureau in AUS (bom.gov.au) only keeps the MIN/MAX/AVR for each day recorded at 9am. Surely, that will in no way capture the changes I am seeing here. Have my own $150 weather station, but it has only been operating since 2012. Surely since COP21, the whole world agrees that the climate is warming, so why do we keep such basic sloppy temperature records. At the current level of cheap technology, the cost of one COP21 lunch would facilitate upgrading all our weather stations. Put them in parallel, so MIN/MAX matches and add a gadget to measure cloud cover (luminosity). So my query is really about the effects of cloud on our climate.
Slightly off-topic, but with all this talk of "hiatus", are the Milankovich cycles now slowly eroding the warming, cause their effect is well overdue and if you turn down the heater, you will need more blankets.
Thanks for listening. (moderator prune as you see fit, but with some feedback please)
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hank at 08:23 AM on 26 December 2015The best of climate science and humanity come together at AGU
And today, "realclimate.org" for me instead tries to connect to 108.168.205.37, and a traceroute goes to IPs located in Stuttgart, then Hesse, then Seattle, Seattle, Dallas, Dallas, then begins reporting steps that time out.
Curiouser and curiouser
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michael sweet at 22:39 PM on 25 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 2
It appears that Williams link is to his denier blog post that claims atoll submergence is not so bad. It is interesting to compare his uninformed blather to the actual facts documented in Rob Paintings references by geologists who actually visited the atolls and made scientific measurements. At the top of his blog is a counter that claims 155,000 page views of his rant. It is difficult to get the general public to take AGW seriously when deniers like William get so many page hits with their plausible but ignorant rants.
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Ger at 21:24 PM on 25 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 1
Potemkin Office, a nice one.
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Rob Painting at 19:09 PM on 25 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 2
As Michael Sweet has pointed out, the important point to note is that the solid reef foundations which formed earlier in the Holocene due to higher relative sea level, and which underpin inhabited coral atolls, are set to be overtopped by rising sea level later this century. See this SkS rebuttal:Coral atolls grow as sea levels rise.
Dickinson (2009) estimates that Kiribati will be overtopped by rising sea level at 2070 at the earliest - see table below:
Not sure why William finds the scientific literature regarding coral atolls and sea level rise so difficult to accept, as you can see that he commented on the coral atoll rebuttal over 4 years ago.
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Gestur at 10:32 AM on 25 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 1
What a lovely, appropriate holiday gift, Charles, I mean Howard. Thanks so much for this, and I look forward to Parts II and III, as a devoted, old fan of this lovely Dickens tale.
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michael sweet at 09:50 AM on 25 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 2
William,
While your link is interesting, a blog post by someone with a BS who is a High School Chemistry teacher (like me, except I have an MS) is not proof. Especially since it contains no peer reviewed references. This post at SkS by Rob Painting, which does reference the peer reviewed literature, states that there was a sea level high stand approximately 4,000 years ago that was approximately 3 meters higher than current sea level.
Atolls like Tarawa, capitol of the country Kiribati (which I have visited) are set on the limestone reef that was formed at the high stand, not on sand dunes as described in your link. These reefs are about 2 meters above current sea level since coral cannot grow up to the high water mark. Once the sea level rises over the hard rock base of the current islands they will be permanently submerged. This will happen even if the coral grows and keeps up with the rising sea level. There are many examples of atolls that are slowly sinking and stay just at sea level. For example Minerva Reef, which I have also visited, has a few sand bars and the main reef that are above sea level at low tide but is conpletely submerged at high water.
The description in your link that the locals can preserve their islands in the face of sea level rise by sufficient care is simply false. These Islanders are at the mercy of the USA and China. Who will take them in when their homes are destroyed by the baked in sea level rise of CO2 already in the atmosphere?
If Rob Painting cares to comment his word is expert on this subject.
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dcpetterson at 06:53 AM on 25 December 2015Arctic sea ice loss is matched by Antarctic sea ice gain
I know it would be a massive project, but I respectfully suggest combing through these excellent "rebuttal" pages and updating them. Several were written years ago, and there is more data now.
The arguments haven't changed, but the graphs and text could be updated to reflect newer data. For example, there have been new sea ice record lows since this article was written.
I know deniers who will whine that things have changed since c. 2011, that trends have "reversed", that sea ice is "recovering". It would be useful, for all the rebuttal pages, to update the data to show these denialist arguments to be as senseless as they are.
Moderator Response:[JH] Updating the rebuttal articles is a priority activity for the all-volunteer SkS author team in 2016.
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howardlee at 06:39 AM on 25 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 2
William - I don't claim to be an attol expert, however I was focusing specifically on the Island of Kiribati, which is based on the Scientific America article by Simon Donner in March this year (linked in the text). It's pretty clear that the island is close to being overtopped (the sea wall anecdote is real) and they also are experincing saline intrusion into their aquifers.
The article you link to is about high sea levels in the Eeemian (last warm interglacial). The orbitally-forced pace of change going into the interglacials was relatively gentle (millenia) compared to modern times (~2 centuries). It seems likely that corals were able to keep up then, but not now. And even if they are able to keep up (ignoring Ocean Acidification for now) that's no help to human infrastructure which can't grow in the same way.
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william5331 at 05:41 AM on 25 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 2
Coral atolls could well be destroyed by climate change but it won't be due to sea level rise.
http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2011/09/by-by-coral-atolls.html
Moderator Response:[DB] Self-referentially linking to your own blog is a thinly-veiled appeal to authority that carries no weight in a venue based on the primary research like this one. You've been warned against this practice in the past.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Moderating this site is a tiresome chore, particularly when commentators repeatedly submit offensive or off-topic posts...or continue to advertise their blog instead of citing the primary research. We really appreciate people's cooperation in abiding by the Comments Policy, which is largely responsible for the quality of this site.
Finally, please understand that moderation policies are not open for discussion. If you find yourself incapable of abiding by these common set of rules that everyone else observes, then a change of venues is in the offing.Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
Advertising snipped.
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MichaelJBMoreau at 02:26 AM on 25 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 1
Linking environmental degradation to A Christmad Carol was done once already by Margaret Atwood in her brilliant Massey Lectures. Should be a must read for all.
See
http://www.amazon.ca/Payback-Debt-Shadow-Side-Wealth/dp/0887848109
The final lecture is the remake of Dickens.
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hank at 01:33 AM on 25 December 2015The best of climate science and humanity come together at AGU
Sorry for the tangent, but in case this is useful to someone. I agree the long time since RC updated suggests they're chasing some problem.
Sidd, which DNS server is your computer showing you? Have you changed to a different one? Checked that when you see a popup?
"Realclimate.org" was sent (during the 'hiatus') to this IP:
208.91.197.217 (Virgin Islands)
For me right now with my ISP's DNS, realclimate.org is connected to108.168.205.78 (Texas)
http://www.intodns.com/realclimate.org shows some issues that may take a while to clear up.
Is it possible your setup queries several different Domain Name Servers and one of them is compromised and hasn't been flushed out?
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Digby Scorgie at 19:20 PM on 24 December 2015The Ghosts of Climate Past, Present and Future: Part 1
Ghosts of climate past, present and future, eh? Hmm. Any connection with the three senators: "see no climate change, hear no climate change, speak no climate change"?
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Riduna at 15:38 PM on 24 December 2015AGU 2015: Scientists offer latest update on worsening state of Arctic
I find this report not only superficial but glaringly incomplete.
It makes no mention of the effects of arctic amplification on the rate of permafrost decay and consequential carbon release.
It makes no mention of the rate of shoreline erosion as a result of ocean warming or resulting exposure of carbon deposits, particularly in yedoma.
It seemingly ignores the prognosis for future rate of Arctic temperature rise caused by the above, particularly as a result of methane releases to the atmosphere.
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Treesong2 at 12:49 PM on 24 December 2015The best of climate science and humanity come together at AGU
I rather like 'skeppo' (cf. 'seppo') for the self-styled skeptics, though it's unlikely to find traction outside of Australia, if at all.
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