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Comments 26301 to 26350:

26301. wili at 14:55 PM on 14 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       Does it matter whether the price of wind has gone down or not? Doesn't it only matter if it's cheaper than coal? As it seems to be, in the US, at least, according to this eia chart: www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/assumptions/pdf/table_8.2.pdf

26302. wili at 14:48 PM on 14 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       Isn't some sea transport already at least assisted by wind (and not just small sail boats)?

26303. saileshrao at 13:29 PM on 14 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       RedBaron @138:

       The answers to your questions are in the poster that you can download here. Specifically,

       Grasslands and Pasturelands (Grazing lands + Extensive grazing lands in IPCC parlance) constitute 47.3 MKm2 of land area worldwide in 2014 (it is 46 MKm2 in the IPCC AR5 Land use block diagram). In total, these lands contained 52.8 GtC in 2014.
       
       The 19.6 MKm2 of grasslands that used to be forests in 1800 contained 27.5 GtC. When reverted to their original forest biomes and upon forest maturity, this land sequestered 292.7 GtC so that the difference is 265.1 GtC, which is the stated result. We also assumed that the CO2 levels in the atmosphere didn't change during the forest regeneration as fossil fuels continue to get burned.

26304. wili at 13:12 PM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

       chris mentioned trend. I was wondering, given the much lauded reports that CO2 emissions stalled this year:

       When might we expect such a thing, if it is real, to show up in a discernable way, in the atmospheric CO2 consentration data?

       Can we factor out the effects of the current El Nino to determine whether there there is an underlying flattening of the Keeling Curve that is being hidden by this relatively short term phenomenon?

       Or would we just have to wait many years to see if there is a change in the long-term trend, and if so, how many years?

       Thanks ahead of time for any light anyone can throw in my general direction on this.

26305. saileshrao at 12:48 PM on 14 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Tom Curtis @137:

       First, Indeed, I do pursue a nonviolent, vegan "agenda". I consider it inhuman to deliberately hurt innocent animals unnecessarily. So does Pope Francis, since he stated in the Laudato Si,
       "It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly."
       That is Ahimsa and that is Veganism. Veganism is not a diet, but a moral stance and it is precisely the modern implementation of Ahimsa.

       Second, Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word that first appeared in the Rig Veda. It is the negation of "Himsa", which means to cause deliberate suffering to innocent beings unnecessarily. Indeed, Gandhi said in his 1931 speech to the London Vegetarians Union that he tried to pursue a vegan diet several times (though the word was not coined until the 1950s) but failed, most likely because he did not have ready access to a sufficient variety of plant-based foods. Today, given the smorgasbord of nuts, grains, seeds, fruits and vegetables available to the affluent worldwide, the American Dietetic Association has stated that it is unnecessary to eat animal foods of any kind at any stage of the human lifecycle. Indeed, since animal foods accumulate environmental toxins by orders of magnitude up the food chain, and since humans are pumping billions of tons of freshly produced environmental toxins annually, it is increasingly more unhealthy to consume animal foods, than to go on a vegan diet.
       
       In addition, In India until the 1960s, the cow was generally treated very well and milk was drawn from the mother for human use only after her baby finished drinking her/his fill. While such treatment might have been consistent with Ahimsa, I'm truly disgusted by the treatment of the cow in India today almost as much as I have always been horrified by her enslavement, exploitation and oppression in Western countries.

       Third, I don't understand your reference to Net Primary Productivity (NPP) cooption. I assume you mean that you disagree with the biomass estimates in the XKCD graphic?

       The XKCD graphic was specifically about land mammals and was based on Vaclav Smil's book. The estimate by Barnosky in the PNAS paper is for megafauna on land. But there is an independent line of evidence confirming these estimates - in the IPCC AR5.
       
       The IPCC AR5 Land Use block diagram in WG3/CH11/p.836 shows that the livestock system consume 7.27 GtC of dry matter biomass as food extracted from 45% of the ice-free land area of the planet, while humans consume 1.54 GtC. Subtracting out the meat/dairy/egg/waste output and considering the annual change in biomass to be negligible, we see that livestock metabolize 4.69 GtC while humans metabolize 0.93 GtC. Therefore, livestock metabolize 5X the dry matter biomass as all humans.

       The reason livestock metabolize 5X the biomass as all humans when livestock biomass is estimated to be around 3X the biomass of all humans is because the livestock mix is skewed towards a preponderance of babies and juveniles. Ultimately, it is the consumption that matters more than their physical mass.

       In addition, in the 2014 edition of its annual Living Planet Report, the World Wildlife Fund reported that the Living Planet Index (LPI), which measures the biomass of over 10,000 representative mammal, amphibian, bird, reptile and fish species, had declined by 52% between 1970 and 2010. During that same 40 year period, the human population of the world almost doubled from 3.7 billion to 7 billion and human per capita consumption also nearly doubled so that the net human impact on the planet nearly quadrupled. Unlike the standard predator-prey ecological model that predicts a reduction in predator intake as prey population declines, human beings have deployed technologies to continue the exponential increase in our consumption despite significant declines in the LPI. For instance, we now use remote sensors, satellite imagery and big data software technologies to track and catch fish stocks in the ocean even as they swim at depths of 2000m below sea level. If such exponential growth in the human impact on the planet continues apace into the future, it is easy to show that the remaining biodiversity of the planet will be extinguished by 2025. Therefore it appears inevitable that global lifestyle changes will be imposed upon humanity within the next 1-2 decades and it is incumbent upon us to ask what global lifestyle changes can be adopted voluntarily today so that they result in a softer transition towards a sustainable future.
       
       Fourth, I presume that you accept my statements on the deleterious effect of livestock production on 1) biodiversity loss and on 2) desertification. Otherwise, focusing on just my third point would fall under "Cherry Picking" in John Cook's list of denial types.
       
       Even in the third point, the CO2 fertilization factor varies across forest biomes as we show in the table in our poster here. The highest value is 1.76 for tropical evergreen forests and the lowest is 1.12 for boreal deciduous forests. We also started from 1800, not 1850. Unfortunately, the HYDE database has more uncertainty as we go back further, but as Bill Ruddiman has pointed out, deforestation has been happening for thousands of years, not just in the industrial era. 
       
       Please note that we also validated our results with 20 year regrowth measurements from Silver et al.

26306. One Planet Only Forever at 12:38 PM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

       Forgot to link the NOAA CO2 Movie in my previous comment.

26307. One Planet Only Forever at 12:37 PM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

       chriskoz,

       I have also been following the CO2 levels reported by NOAA. The CO2 Movie presents the understood CO2 levels through the past 800,000 years. Until the recent spike due to human impacts the maximum CO2 level was 300 ppm about 300,000 years ago.

       So, ever since human impacts pushed the CO2 levels above 300 ppm we have been at CO2 levels that humanity, and much of the life on this planet that humanity has adapted to be a (supposedly) sustainable part of, had never previously experienced.

26308. chriskoz at 12:01 PM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #50
       

       COP21 conclusion coincided with a very notable global milestone.

       They've just updated na average global monthly CO2 at NOAA. But IMO it's not the monthly value but it is the trend which is the most important metric. Find the tend in the last column of the monthly data and note that 400ppm was breached (400.17) for the first time in october 2015.

       This is the true global average CO2 concentration (excluding seasonal fluctuations), and this is the first time we as humanity (not a selected site such as in the Arctic or MaunaLoa) really reached 400. A milestone not to be proud of, considering it was (as you scroll the data up) still <370 at the turn of the certury and 350 just ten years earlier as I remember it from my primary school books at the time.

26309. Wol at 09:32 AM on 14 December 2015
       The Road to Two Degrees, Part Three: Equity, inertia and fairly sharing the remaining carbon budget
       

       @6: 2% . Try here.

        

       Thanks. I did see this in NS in 2011. I wonder what the figure is four years later. I notice that (according to the article, anyway) they didn't seem to include all the desktop machines - only laptops. If true, that's very strange because desktops must be far more energyintensive and there must be vast numbers more than laptops.

26310. RedBaron at 09:24 AM on 14 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       @saileshrao 136,

       I cant see the paper to judge the acuracy, nor even exactly to what grasslands you are refering. Most the historical grasslands are gone. For example the tallgrass prairie of N America is somewhere around 95% extirpated, currently either in crop production or slowly turning to desert due to undergrazing. However, of special note, there is no other ecosystem in America that removes as much carbon[1]. Converting the remnant to forest, if you could, would only decrease sequestration long term not increase it. Although you might get a short term gain in some cases. The shortgrass prairie still has some remenant, but it is too dry to support a true forest for the most part. Undergrazing even more destructive to that ecosystem.

       Perhaps you mean deforested areas instead of grassland pastures? Most deforested areas were done so to harvest lumber, or plant crops, not to make pasture. Usually only going to pasture once the soil deteriorates so badly nothing of value but scrub or weeds will grow. The very reason pasture is used being that previously mentioned trait, no other ecosystem sequesters as much carbon in the soil, and hense no other ecosystem regenerates the soil faster. Now of course once the soil is regenerated, then letting it go to savanna, woods, forest is an option. Just keep in mind savanna and woods both still support grazing.

       Still without being able to actually see the paper, hard to review it. Did it even subtract the carbon sequestration from lost grassland before adding the carbon sequestered by forest? Is it counting actual long term sequestered carbon in the long or stable cycle? Or short - medium term sequestered carbon in above ground biomass? IE the active cycle? Active cycle carbon reaches a saturation point as forest matures.

       Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. I am afraid that link you posted only makes a claim. Where is the evidence?

26311. Tom Curtis at 07:58 AM on 14 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       saileshrao:

       First, while the phrase "rabid vegan" is certainly ad hominen, and inappropriate, there is no doubt that you are pursuing a vegan agenda.

       Second, I find your cooption of the principle of ahimsa to veganism dubious at best.  For those who do not know, ahimsa is the principle of non-violence espoused by Ghandi, and which has deep roots in Indian religious tradition.  I do not think there is any doubt that Ghandi was its most prominent, and foremost proponent in the modern era yet he was a lacto-vegetarian.  Granted he aspired to veganism, but drank goats milk for health reasons.  In doing so he made a clear moral distinction between eating dairy products, and eating meat (which he said he would not do, even at risk of his life - see second link in the previous sentence).

       On a side note, despite my very great respect for Ghandi, I do not accept ahimsa as a moral principle on the basis that a moral code should not be a suicide pact.  While ahimsa worked for Ghandi in India, it would not have worked in South Africa, and would certainly not have worked for the jews against Hitler.

       Third, and more directly on topic, the cooption of Net Primary Production (NPP) by humans is significantly overstated by the XKCD cartoon shown on your website (and by Andy Skuce above).  While the 110 MtC in domestic animals and 40 MtC in humans is massively more than the vertebrates, it pales in comparison to the 400 MtC in marine invertebrates, 700 MtC in land invertebrates, 4500 MtC in fungi, and multiple tens of thousands of MtC in prokaryotes. (Sourced from the same source used by XKCD, see apendix F.)

       Fourth, turning to your poster at the AGU, you postulate that restoring 19.6 million Km^2 of land to forest would sequester 265.2 GtC.  Given that the cumulative emissions from LUC since 1850 amounts to 170 GtC, that is dubious.  You appear to require the reforestation to sequester >55% more carbon then the deforestation emitted.  Poster's not being papers, and hence not self explanatory, I cannot see your justification for that assumption.  It may be premised on the CO2 fertization effect which show prominently.  However, the global CO2 fertilization effect amounts to 30 GtC, 32% of the shortfall.  So, in the first instance it is unreasonable to expect the CO2 fertilization effect to make up the discrepancy from 15% of the land; and in the second instance, if the reversion of the land has a sufficient sequestration effect as to reduce the atmospheric CO2, it will also reverse the CO2 fertilization effect - turning the biosphere (and ocean) into net sources rather than net sinks.

       Your refuge from these inconsistentcies appears to be that the IPCC got it wrong because the world's scientists are biased by their meat eating habit.  This strikes me as far too similar to Monckton's similar charge of bias based on the world's scientists percieved authoritarian, internationalist and bureaucratic political views.  A conspiracy view of science is a conspiracy view of science no matter what the politics of the proponent.  However, even granting you are correct on this point, if biomes contain more carbon than previously estimated (as is required by your figures), then equally the airborne fraction of CO2 from combined FF&LUC emissions must be much smaller than IPCC estimates.  It follows that your 256 GtC will result in a reduction of significantly less than 50 ppmv of CO2.  That would make it a very minor player relative to industrial emissions with regard to future CO2 concentration history.

       Bringing in my meat eating bias, it would also make it a very economically and gastronomically expensive sequestration measure.   

26312. HK at 04:48 AM on 14 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #50
       

       The Norwegian blogger Hans Petter Jacobsen has written an interesting piece about surface temperatures vs. temperatures measured by satellites and radiosondes (balloons).
       It’s quit telling how radiosonde data (especially RATPAC A) show a stronger warming in recent years than the satellite data do.

       

       Also note how the radiosonde data show a strong cooling in the stratosphere, which is an important fingerprint of warming caused by increased greenhouse effect and not by solar activity.

       

       A somewhat shortened version of this piece in Norwegian can be found here.

26313. jpjmarti at 04:37 AM on 14 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       Figure for your convenience 

26314. jpjmarti at 04:25 AM on 14 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       The link I provided does not contradict what I said. Read the whole thing and not just the spin. Page 48 shows a figure of the project costs as a function of time. As you can see there is almost no change since early 2000. The capacity factor during this time has changed only slightly (elsewhere in the report) so the unit cost is almost the same. You can say that costs have decreased recently, but that is based on cherry picking 2009 as a base year and looking at costs from then on. As for citing PPA costs...report cautions "Finally, because the PPA prices in the Berkeley Lab sample are
       reduced by the receipt of state and federal incentives (e.g., the levelized PPA prices reported here would be at least $15/MWh higher without the PTC, ITC, or Treasury Grant), and are also influenced by various local policies and market characteristics, they do not directly represent wind energy generation costs." PPA costs are costs AFTER subsidies.

26315. saileshrao at 23:02 PM on 13 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Foolonthehill @73:
       
       With regard to the use of the term "rabid vegan" in this forum, it falls under the "ad hominem" variety of scientific denial. Unfortunately, the scientific community is in denial on the leading role of Animal Agriculture in causing our environmental ills because most scientists consume animal foods.
       
       In Rio 1992, there were 3 conventions that were originated as UN conventions:
       1. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity,
       2. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and
       3. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
       
       The first two conventions are not receiving much attention and indeed, their web sites (cbd.int & unccd.int) still look like their 90s version, because Animal Agriculture is indisputably the leading cause of these environmental devastations. But even with respect to climate change, it is only through accounting chicanery that we are pretending that Animal Agriculture is not a leading cause of climate change. As our AGU paper shows, the foregone carbon sequestration alone through Animal Agriculture exceeds the 240 GtC that humans have added to the atmosphere since 1750!

26316. Tristan at 22:00 PM on 13 December 2015
       Analysis: the key announcements from Day 1 at COP21
       

       So given the built-in exit clause, what happens if the GOP wins the next election and exits? 

26317. meteorquake at 21:00 PM on 13 December 2015
       Plant stomata show higher and more variable CO2 levels
       

       This was an interesting thread for me (being interested as a lay person in botany).

       I noted from the top that stomatal change from increased CO2 could be simulated by stress from lack of water, and that the graphs provided by D Middleton of stomata were taken in swamp vegetation (ie not lacking water).

       I would also be aligned with the notion that it may be hard to compare plants of today with those that look apparently the same a long time back. Plants form many variants within a species and like may not in fact be being compared with genetic like, unless one can find something sufficiently universal to plants as a whole or a genus.

       The thread is a few years old - I wonder if anyone has any updates to add to it?

       David

26318. scaddenp at 17:17 PM on 13 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       Given that no. one priority is stopping burning coal, wind energy can be very useful part of the electricity mix for that. As for transport, heavy transport like trucks are small proportion of total energy use. Biofuel could easily handle all the needs for my country.

26319. Tom Curtis at 15:29 PM on 13 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       denisaf @6:

       1)  The "weak energy source" you mention actually has a total energy resource equal to 100 times current total human energy use.

       2)   Intermittency can be tackled in several ways, including by tapered use, chemical storage, geographically dispersed turbines, and elevating the wind turbines (see video below).  It follows that it is only an engineering problem, not a limit.

       3)  Electricity is unsuitable as a power source for large mobile units such as trucks and planes.  It has already been demonstrated as usefull for personal transport, and for rail networks.  It is certainly suitable for any stationay energy need.  As such, wind power (which produces electricity) is potentially suitable for the majority of our energy needs (75% plus).  That hardly represents a niche market.

       I doubt, of course, that wind will provide all our energy needs.  That will be some combination of wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, wave, hydro and nuclear power.  Of those, wind may be the largest single component, and will certainly be in the top three.  It is absurd, on that basis, to say wind has a "niche role" as, on the same basis you would need to say that solar, or nuclear, or for that matter, currently, coal has a "niche role".

       So, to summarize, your argument dogmatic assertions are either entirely wrong, or simply based on the assumption that the technology of wind energy cannot significantly advance on what is currently commercially deployed, despite several advances approaching commercial deployment:

26320. saileshrao at 14:59 PM on 13 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Jim Eager@62:

       As humans, we are all biased. I am an unabashed advocate of Ahimsa (nonviolence) and prefer that my biases stem from that position.

26321. saileshrao at 14:54 PM on 13 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       OnceJolly @61:

       The accumulated biomass of the animals is already accounted for in the block diagram. The net input is 7.27 Gt, the net output is 2.58 Gt leaving the rest as 4.69 Gt metabolized.

26322. bozzza at 12:53 PM on 13 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       You've certainly correctly pointed out that wind power can't do everything but to say it can't do anything is illogical and notably relies on unquantified argument.

       It comes down to cost in the end: this is where the waters get very deep.

26323. Tom Dayton at 12:27 PM on 13 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #50
       

       Owen: Tamino just posted about that discrepancy, which has been increasing since about 2000. Dana N. has heard a rumor that a paper about satellite temperature measurement problems. Others have elaborated that rumor into Po-Chedley & Co. at U. Washington preparing a treatment of satellite measurement of TLT similar to what they did for TMT. Satellite measure of troposphere historically has lagged ENSO by three months or more. If this time instead troposphere fails to show large El Niño response, that will be further evidence of satellites gone awry around 2000.

26324. denisaf at 12:21 PM on 13 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       Wind power can only fill a niche role because it ineffectively use a weak energy source, winds, to supply only electrical energy. That is, it is an ecologically costly intermittent process with limited application. It cannot replace the concentrated energy in the liquid fuels needed for land, sea and air transport.

26325. Owen at 11:47 AM on 13 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #50
       

       Further on satellite data:  the satellite data has in prior years responded to a greater positive extent to El Nino (and negatively to La Niña) than surface temps - doesn't seem to be the case with the current El Niño.

26326. Owen at 11:44 AM on 13 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #50
       

       Has anyone published (or posted here perhaps) on the difference between radiosonde (RATPAC) and satellite (UAH, RSS) data?  The satellite measurements seem to have problems.

26327. mikeh1 at 09:50 AM on 13 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       @jpjmarti at 1.

       Your own link appears to contradict your claims. p 46

       "Wind turbine prices have dropped substantially in recent years, despite continued technological advancements that have yielded increases in hub heights and especially rotor diameters."

       " project-level installed costs appear to have peaked in 2009/2010, with substantial declines since that time" 

26328. vindor at 06:08 AM on 13 December 2015
       Climate's changed before
       

       i didnt find any appropriate section where to post this, so i try my luck here.

       i recently attended an speach on agronomy and soil death where the INRA ingenieur bourguignon claude mentioned the cooling effect of forest and the influence of roman deforestation on mediteranean climate. Intrigued i tried to find any studies on global warming impact of deforestation but almost everything is focusing on CO2. I managed to find something here : http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150325/ncomms7603/full/ncomms7603.html

       but nothing on this website. So i guess my comment is how come there is almost no study on the possible role of the massive deforestation and the warming of the 20th century.

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] If you enter the word "deforestation" into this site's search box and click "Go", you will find a plethora of articles that address deforestation in some manner. 

26329. One Planet Only Forever at 09:02 AM on 12 December 2015
       The Road to Two Degrees, Part Three: Equity, inertia and fairly sharing the remaining carbon budget
       

       Joel_Huberman @3

       My intent was to address more than the redistribution of wealth within a nation.

       As rustneversleeps mentioned the actions identified by the article (and actually required to advance humanity to a lasting better future) are more than redistributing wealth within a nation.

       Wealthy nations with a perception of wealth due to their history of benefiting from fossil fuel burning owe compensation to other nations for CO2 impacts and assistance to developing nations so they can bypass the damaging step of fossil fuel burning as they advance (and the wealthy nations that should be financially compensating and assisting other nations includes nations like Saudi Arabia who continue to try to maintain a perception that they are a developing nation needing CO2 impact compensation and assistance).

       The collection of the taxes to pay for the compensation of other nations is what I was addressing. And my main objective was to make sure that investors in pursuits of profit benefiting form the burning of fossil fuels wold not be able to avoid payment of taxes by having only end consumers pay (soem will say every cost will just be passed on to consumers, but that is not how markets work. In a market the attempts to pass on costs may price fossil fuel burning related businesses out of business compared to alternatives). So the measures you mentioned are appropriate proposals but a significant part if the funds collected through those measures would need to be dedicated to assistance of those in other nations most in need of assistance.

       I understand that change of purpose of the measures may mean that those essential to develop measures have less than a snowball's chance in hell of ever appealing to many people in the US. I hope that the population of the US can collectively overcome the challenge of limiting the success of unacceptable pursuers of wealth and power. The future of humanity relies on that (in every nation), the sooner the better.

26330. william5331 at 07:03 AM on 12 December 2015
       2015 SkS Weekly Digest #47
       

       Just recently the Prime Minister of New Zealand stated that he wouldn't consider a greater commitment to limiting carbon emissions until new technology made this possible.  In our case, our major emissions are methane from animal burps.  This is such a cop out and outside his pay grade.  The job of legislators is to legislate and there is so much that they could do right now.  They only have to go for the low hanging fruit.  No need for subsidies.  For instance:

       Tip the playing field legislatively to be favourable to electric cars, solar panels small and large wind and hydro

       Insititute Jim Hansen's Tax and Dividend but here I would make a tiny change.  Give the money by electronic transfer to every registered tax payer.  The data base already exists which would make the proceedure much less expensive to institute.  You don't have to be paying tax, just be registered.

       No need to go on.  You will have lots of such ideas which could be done by politicians right now.  However PPCT (who pays the piper calls the tune).  If we don't get vested interests out of paying for elections, none of this will ever happen.

       http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/ppct.html

26331. bozzza at 05:06 AM on 12 December 2015
       The Road to Two Degrees, Part Three: Equity, inertia and fairly sharing the remaining carbon budget
       

       @ 10, it is a conundrum for sure: this is the problem of Government intervention into the market place, aka 'picking winners'.

         Fossil fuels were picked and economies were built around them meaning the extraction of that intervention is increasingly difficult to make as lives and jobs and personal wealth depend on them- you can't just end it and risk anarchy from the resulting billions of unemployed. The market forces that now exist all sit on the fossil fuel base hence blood for oil wars etc...

         Global action sounds great but Australia still thinks it is too good for the world unfortunately. Yay, we can buy houses and call tradesmen to do stuff.

26332. bozzza at 04:50 AM on 12 December 2015
       Betting against global warming is a sure way to lose money
       

       @1, are you saying tools don't need adjusting?

       Why aren't we all still driving model t's around??

26333. Tom Dayton at 03:38 AM on 12 December 2015
       Satellites show no warming in the troposphere
       

       Even Roy Spencer now admits that satellite "measurements" of tropospheric temperature cannot and must not be used as proxies for surface temperature measurements, due to major unresolved issues in the assumptions used in the complex conversions of the microwave measurements into estimates of temperatures. (Spencer is one of the two main people responsible for the "UAH" satellite-based troposphere temperature estimations.)

26334. wili at 03:09 AM on 12 December 2015
       The Road to Two Degrees, Part Three: Equity, inertia and fairly sharing the remaining carbon budget
       

       TomC wrote: "they would rather destroy the world than be fair"

       Nicely put, and sadly, all too true.

26335. wili at 03:05 AM on 12 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       Congratulations to Professor John Abraham for being nominated for teacher of the year at St. Thomas U.

       www.stthomas.edu/news/professor-year-finalists-announced/

26336. RedBaron at 02:08 AM on 12 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       @scaddenp

       You said, " I am intrigued. How does undergrazing lead to desert?"

       You are right, it is a water thing, but once again you need to take that reductionism and put it back together as part of a whole. It is water, but water in the soil. Water infiltration rates and holding capacity of the soil is dependant on SOM and cover. The brush and scrub that succeeds after undergrazing in dry brittle environments leads to bare soil and losses of SOM, which starts a downward spiral of increased runoff and erosion, more rapid evaporation, ultimately to desertification just like overgrazing does.

       The important part to this thread being SOM is carbon and we have far too much in the atmosphere and worldwide far too little in the soil.

26337. knaugle at 01:18 AM on 12 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       The problem with wind is that it is not a fixed entity.  In California, I've seen plots of wind output, and it is very dirunal, particularly in the Summer:

       https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/the-daily-cycle-of-wind-power-in-california/

       This means that other base load plants where need to reduce power in the evening and ramp up during the day.  I know that nuclear plants in this country were not designed with this king of daily cycle in mind.  At a minimum California also needs large amounts of other renewables to even out the wind cycle.  Solar might fit the bill  because its output will be stronger in the middle of the day when the wind tapers off, but not every geographic location is the same in this respect.

26338. CBDunkerson at 23:04 PM on 11 December 2015
       Wind energy is a key climate change solution
       

       From the linked report: "Wind PPA prices have reached all-time lows. After topping out at nearly $70/MWh for PPAs executed in 2009, the national average levelized price of wind PPAs that were signed in 2014 (and that are within the Berkeley Lab sample) fell to around $23.5/MWh nationwide—a new low..."

       The brief increase in wind power costs from ~2001 to 2009 does not change the overall sharply downward trend of the past 40 years... or the fact that current costs are the lowest ever... and still dropping. Wind costs less today than it did 15 years ago. The technology is still improving. Your cited 'evidence' contradicts your position.

26339. Tom Curtis at 18:52 PM on 11 December 2015
       The Road to Two Degrees, Part Three: Equity, inertia and fairly sharing the remaining carbon budget
       

       TonyW, see table 3 ("Current per capita CO2e emissions - consumption based").  As the current agreements being negotiated are based on inertia (again see above), the per capita emissions, whether consumption or production based, are not factored into the agreements.  Further, the moving baseline (2005 rather than 1990) penalizes those nations that reduced emissions early (primarilly Europe).  In essence, the western nations - and in particular the US and Australia - are only paying lip service to equity in the agreements in any event.  Their position seems to be that they would rather destroy the world than be fair.  Such niceties as the distinction between per capita consumption based and per capita production based emissions is so far from their concerns as to be practically irrelevant.  At least for this round of negotiations.

26340. TonyW at 18:31 PM on 11 December 2015
       The Road to Two Degrees, Part Three: Equity, inertia and fairly sharing the remaining carbon budget
       

       In a way, the notion of individual nations contributions should be related to all emissions caused by their individual economies, not just emissions coming from within their borders. China's growth, for example, is partly due to that country producing a vast array of products destined for other countries (it's difficult to buy anything, here in NZ, that wasn't made or packed in China). This would further complicate actions but demontrates, I think, that this is a global problem and requires a global strategy rather than a collection of individual nation strategies.

26341. denisaf at 15:20 PM on 11 December 2015
       The Road to Two Degrees, Part Three: Equity, inertia and fairly sharing the remaining carbon budget
       

       This is an interesting anthropocentric discussion. The reality is that people only make decisions, good and bad, and it is the operation of the infrastructure that uses the fossil fuels. Changing the infrastructure to reduce the rate of usage of fossil fuels will be a slow, eco costly process in those circumstances where that is possible. There are no reasonable alternative liquid fuels for land, sea and air transportation needs. ironically, society is very dependent on the goods and services this infrastructure currently provides. Of course, they are also dependent on the impact of the climate on many of their actvities, including eating food and using water!

26342. Joel_Huberman at 13:33 PM on 11 December 2015
       The Road to Two Degrees, Part Three: Equity, inertia and fairly sharing the remaining carbon budget
       

       rustneversleeps @4

       I apologize. I unintentionally misled you. The goal of carbon fee & dividend is not to redistribute income but to increase the price of fossil fuels and their products, making alternate energy sources more attractive. The redistribution of income would be a consequence of the dividend component. The dividend component is provided for purposes of internal equity (so low users of fossil fuels would not be penalized) and for purposes of making the deal attractive to conservatives (no increase in the size of government; all income returned to the people).

       If carbon fee & dividend were implemented in the USA, the increasing the price of fossil fuels and their products would have the effect of reducing their use, compared to fossil-fuel-independent energy sources and products. If Americans behave like the rational purchasers that economists tend to think they are, then they'll purchase less fossil-fuel-dependent stuff and more fossil-fuel-independent stuff. Thus Americans will move from generating much more CO₂ than average to closer-to-average, and eventually to zero generation of CO₂ (when the carbon fee becomes sufficiently high and alternative energy infrastructure is readily available).

26343. scaddenp at 11:50 AM on 11 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Um, 14% of beef is feedlot, not 95%.

       "There are also large tracts undergrazed and slowly turning to desert because of this". I am intrigued. How does undergrazing lead to desert? I would have thought desert was a water thing. Fence anything off from grazing here and it rapidly turns into woodland, even in dry areas.

       I agree about the false dichotomy. There is more than one way to fix most problems. You get the same thing from hard-line socialists. "AGW cant be solved without ending capitalism". Yeah, right. Or, the "we must go back horse and cart pre-industrial world". Vegans are a varied lot in my experience. Their evangelization efforts (those that do) often sound to me more like justifying to themselves their choices. Like many things we do, (including climate-change denial) the choice is often value-based with post-hoc rationalization. Making choices based on data is not a natural human activity even for scientists.

26344. Tom Curtis at 10:44 AM on 11 December 2015
       The Road to Two Degrees, Part Three: Equity, inertia and fairly sharing the remaining carbon budget
       

       scaddenp @6, I suggest the most important part of the article to which you link is the final paragraph:

       "Raghavan and Ma suggest that attempts to create more energy-efficient internet devices, while worth pursuing, will not do much to lower global energy consumption. Instead, they propose that we should think about how the internet can replace more energy-intensive activities. Their calculations show that a meeting that takes place by video-conference uses an average of one hundredth as much energy as one in which participants took a flight so that they could sit down together. Replacing just one in four of those meetings by a video call, they add, would save as much power as the entire internet consumes."

26345. RedBaron at 10:27 AM on 11 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       @scaddenp #130,

       You said,"I would also say that there is a big difference between what can be done and is being done." 

       Agreed 95% of beef in the US is feedlot and 50% of the grasslands are overgrazed. Very little of the rest is actually MIRG, although there is a big push by the USDA to change that, even a demonstration here in central OK last week. Very convincing I might add. There are also large tracts undergrazed and slowly turning to desert because of this. USA is a big country. even with all that, there are plenty of inovative farmers developing models for the next revolution in agriculture, leaps and bounds ahead of the rest.

       The only reason I even started that line of discussion in the thread was to point out the false dichotomy logic flaw. You have an industry contributing to AGW. The false dichotomy being that the only choice to change that is end agriculture/animal husbandry or accept the climate impact. There is a third option of improving the production model. I actually know dozens of ways farmers have made improvements crop farmers, ranchers and integrated combination farms. I am developing one myself as of yet unproven. But all that specifics is off topic and only serves to aide AGW denialists by diverting the attention away from the real problems we have existing right now.

       You do understand why AGW denialists are using that false dichotomy right? Since we have to eat, the false dichotomy becomes only 1 choice, ignore the whole thing. And the reason the Vegans like the false dichotomy is they change it to "convert the whole world to veganism or ignore AGW" and hope to gain recruits.

26346. scaddenp at 09:51 AM on 11 December 2015
       The Road to Two Degrees, Part Three: Equity, inertia and fairly sharing the remaining carbon budget
       

       2% . Try here.

26347. Wol at 09:35 AM on 11 December 2015
       The Road to Two Degrees, Part Three: Equity, inertia and fairly sharing the remaining carbon budget
       

       What is the estimate of the energy usage worldwide of all the servers, databases etc that the internet uses, as a ratio of total energy use?

26348. scaddenp at 08:07 AM on 11 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       I would also say that there is a big difference between what can be done and is being done. Across whole of US, grazing is not net Co2e sink at the moment and nor can you blame feedlots only. It appears with appropriate management, you can make grazing a net sink. However, it would also seem possible that can make grain production a net sink as well. Other considerations come into this.

26349. MA Rodger at 07:07 AM on 11 December 2015
       Betting against global warming is a sure way to lose money
       

       Mark R @18.

       UAH TLT v6.0 is flat 1998-to-date but has a positive trend 1999-to-date.

       Regarding the difference between v6.0 & v5.6, you can also include the difference between them & RSS and with surface measurements like HadCRUT4.

       Although there has been a lot of talk of UAHv5.6 showing less warming that the surface measurements, if you ignore the first 5 years of UAHv5.6, the trend is indistinguishable - UAH 0.175ºC/decade against HadCRUT 0.178ºC/decade.

       The difference in trend between UAH TLT v6.0 and v5.6 is large with RSS sitting in between. (See rolling-average graph two clicks down here) The profile of v6.0-RSS shows many of the same features as v5.6-v6.0 but with v5.6 the difference in trend greater plus and there is a big bulge centred on 1998. Given the ziggy-wobbles in HadCRUT-v6.0 appear concurrent with El Chichon & Pinatuba, plus the big bulge sort of makes sense with a similar timing, I do wonder if the effect resulting from that extra 1,000m of altitude between average v6.0 and average v5.6 could have a lot to do with aerosol/cloud.

26350. scaddenp at 06:45 AM on 11 December 2015
       How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
       

       Redbaron. Thanks very much for that Conant et al reference. That is what I was looking for. That is truly impressive and also directly counter to NZ experience which means someone needs to figure out why. I have passed it to friends for comment.

       In NZ, dairy farmers pour masses of industrial nitrogen onto grassland. I would gratified to hear that MIRG in US doesnt? I would also love to know what the stocking rate is. Do you know?

       If I understand correctly, you believe the very best measured methane oxidation rates in grassland are also degraded and could be improved? Despite being same for unmanaged native grassland? Do have data to support the idea that MIRG increases methane oxidation rates?

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