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nigelj at 08:41 AM on 6 February 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #5
The article by Ute Kreis is very vague and wordy to me, and appears to be saying that we can't keep warming under 1.5 degrees because we are going too slow with mitigation due to social factors we can't change (?). If that's correct, why couldn't they just say so? Whether they are right is another issue. I like to always be a little bit positive and think there's at least a possibility we could speed up, but the psychological, political, social and financial road blocks in the way are indeed huge.
Thanks John Hartz for your many good articles and views over the years. My criticism isn't directed at you.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:35 AM on 6 February 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #5
The following conclusion is missing an important point.
“In order to be equipped for a warmer world, we have to anticipate changes, get the affected parties on board, and take advantage of local knowledge. Instead of just reacting, we need to begin an active transformation here and now.”
Adaptations will only be 'reasonably sustainable' if there is confidence that any impact overshoot of 1.5 C will still be significantly less than 2.0 C and will be rapidly drawn back down below 1.5 C.
Without reasonable certainty about the magnitude of the peak climate impact level it will be very hard to develop 'required adaptations' that will be sustainable, especially if the peak impact level will exceed 2.0 C.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:29 AM on 6 February 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #5
I share Eddie and John's persistent desire to increase awareness and improve understanding of the socioeconomic-political changes required to limit harm done and develop a better future for humanity.
Limiting the harm of climate change impacts is only part, but a significant part, of the required effort to achieve the development of sustainable improvements.
Less climate change impact makes it easier to achieve, and improve on, the Sustainable Development Goals. That highlights the important point that needs to be repeatedly made: Any overshoot of 1.5 C level of impacts needs to be reversed by unprofitable technological actions that rapidly undo the CO2 overshoot. And those unprofitable harmless actions need to be started Now and be paid for by all of the wealthiest humans today (they can figure out how to distribute the penalty among themselves).
Getting that repair of harm done is understandably even harder to achieve than 'limiting the magnitude of harm done'. But that does not mean it is pointless to try to get more people to care to learn about the changes, especially the systemic ones, required to limit harm done and develop sustainable improvements for humanity.
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John Hartz at 00:19 AM on 6 February 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #5
@ EddieEvans #1:
God willing, I will become an octogenarian in July of this year, I am still carrying a baton and will continue to do so until the Grim Reaper pries it from my hand. I have six grandkids — all under the age of fifteen. I do what I do for them.
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EddieEvans at 21:27 PM on 5 February 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #5
1.5-degree Goal not plausible
Social change more important than physical tipping pointsOn the new climate change, my wife says I "sound like a broken record" on a failed paradigm, but I won't give it up. Saving one-time life forms on earth will require humanity to get serious and change the dominant social, political, and economic paradigm. I think that Stephen Gardner's A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change explains the origins of the crisis, and it starts at home.
Parts per million atmospheric greenhouse gases continue to rise, and technological remedies have the headlines.
IMHO, ignoring the systemic growth ideology's deception, denial, and delay only perpetuates the earth's global warming. Now, baby boomers step aside as each generation must. I'm watching a clear, intentional handoff of the same ideology and rising GHGs to following generations, as they, in turn, will hand off GHGs to those following them.
It starts at home.
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:01 AM on 4 February 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
The points made by Bob Loblaw @21 can be described in general using the understanding that I try to present (and I am still learning/developing).
Achieving a good result requires collaboration, even in competitions for status (competition is brilliant ... or not). That requires collaborative ‘agreed’ governing of actions of the involved/competing parties to limit the harm and risk of harm. One ‘competitor’ pursuing benefit in a more harmful or riskier way can spoil things for everyone.
The starting point is understanding the importance of having the actions of all individuals governed/limited by the pursuit of learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. Governing of individuals that way is important for any group to develop sustainable improvements, including business and political organizations. And that understanding naturally leads to appreciating the importance of interacting groups being governed to not harm others and ideally help others, including business and political organizations. And that naturally leads to understanding the importance of ‘that type of governing’ being applied to all of current day human activity, including not harming future generations of humanity.
Any collaborative effort could be seen as a ‘monopoly or oligarchy’. But that does not make it a harmful unsustainable development. The understanding is that everything needs to be governed by the pursuit of awareness and understanding of how to be less harmful and more helpful. There are a diversity of ways for that type of governing to happen. And each governing system can be harmfully compromised by the potential for ‘people or groups of people to be tempted to try to benefit from being more harmful and less helpful’.
Harmful misleading competitors pursuing perceptions of status can harmfully compromise any political or business system/collaboration. Ensuring that participants pursuing benefit are not harmful is very challenging.
Back to electricity generation and distribution collective collaborations:
Harmful ‘disruptions’ need to be restricted/corrected. New developments, or change, are not always helpful harm reduction. But, established participants, especially large powerful ones, need to be unable to impede ‘helpful harm reducing disruption’. And, to be sustainable, the collective needs to pursue reduced harmfulness even if the ‘improvements’ would be more expensive, less profitable, or less popular.
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Bob Loblaw at 12:21 PM on 3 February 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
Considering electrical generation to be a natural monopoly may depend on scale. New Zealand, as a pair of islands (albeit large ones) represents a pretty closed system for electrical power. I imagine that makes it much easier to think of it as a single system.
Contrast that with North America, which has a huge grid covering many states and provinces - but limits on how far electrical power can and will be transported to other jurisdictions. California wlil not be getting power from Quebec (eastern Canada), but Quebec does sell power eastern Canadian provinces and several NE US states. There are many companies that provide local transport and distribution, but there are many players in the large-scale generation scenario.
Locally and within small regions, a "natural monopoly" may be a reasonable argument, but the game changes when it comes to large amounts of power covering huge areas.
The inter-connectedness of these many sub-grids was exemplified in 2003, when one operator went unstable and took out large areas of the US and Canada. Some areas were without power for several weeks.
The management of these connected grids requires extensive cooperation. It's hard to imagine it working without some regulation by government.
Although there may be many players in the generation game at the large scale, incorporating many players at the small scale (a home with solar panels, a town with a wind generator, etc.) is much more complicated. To balance load, the grid must be managed so that large generation capacity blends with many small ones that can be much more variable. That would seem to be a lot easier when all that is in control of a single "natural monopoly", rather than a bunch of companies fighting over who gets a slice of the pie.
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michael sweet at 09:51 AM on 3 February 2023Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
The current price estimate for NuScale power (the first modular reactor to propose building a plant) has been increased to $89/MWH. That includes $4 billion in subsidies from the government and $30 per MWh from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Typical utility scale solar installations currently cost about $24 per MWH in the USA although that also includes some subsidies from the IRA. Perhaps the next proposed modular reactor will be able to reduce the price so that they are only a factor of two greater than solar power.
For those new to the nuclear argument, NuScale said in 2008 that they would have operating reactors by 2020. I doubt that the NuScale reactors will be built.
Nuclear is too expensive, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.
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nigelj at 07:51 AM on 3 February 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
Scaddenp and Bob
I will clarify. I was suggesting that both electricity generation and lines networks are natural monopolies. Generally my understanding is that cities globally have in the past been supplied typically by one local generating company (private or government owned) so this is effectively a natural monoply. Not many places had competing generating companies until this has been deliberately forced on them by governments, and therefore this is somewhat contrived. However maybe this is wrong. I'm basing my account on material I have read somewhere now forgotten.
I'm also just a bit sceptical of the entire competing electricity market idea. In New Zealand the entire generation and lines system was once governmnet owned and run. It was broken up into about 5 generating companies and turned into a competing market, but the outcome seems a bit underwhelming to me. Prices of electricity started climbing after years of being quite stable, and the system has failed to provide enough generation to comfortably work in dry years, and theres constant criticism of the system in the media. However its probably too late to go back to a state owned centralised system, and we just have to make the market work as well as possible.
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:10 AM on 3 February 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
Hi Everyone,
I want to clarify that in my comment @10 I raised the point about deregulation in response to peppers’ implication that California has higher cost electricity because of Government pursuit of renewable electricity generation and that the pursuit of less harmful energy systems caused other harmful results.
I also wish to clarify how my comment @12, though made regarding deregulation, directly relates to the points in the OP. The government actions, and what people do to take advantage of them, should be evaluated on the basis of ‘reducing harm done and assisting those who need assistance to live decent basic lives’.
A very helpful, likely the best currently developed, perspective for evaluating government actions (or business actions ... or any actions) is the Sustainable Development perspective. More sustainable developments are understandably less harmful than a lot of what has been developed. And the required actions include the replacement of harmful developed activities with less harmful alternatives even if the less harmful alternative is more expensive. Developing sustainable improvements may also require shutting down harmful activity even if a less harmful replacement is not developed. However, sustainable developments must also assist people who are living less than decent basic lives sustainably improve their lives.
For-profit and government leadership actions are only motivated to pursue sustainable development if it is more popular or more profitable than the more harmful alternatives. If everyone rigorously and competently ‘pursued increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful and how to be less harmful and more helpful to others who need assistance’, then for-profit and government would be strongly motivated to develop sustainable improvements. However, the freedom to ‘promote positive perceptions, including misunderstandings, that result in reduced awareness and delayed understanding of what is harmful and how to be less harmful and more helpful’ makes it challenging to motivate leadership (in business and government) to aggressively pursue reduction of harm and effective assistance for those who need assistance.
So, in a system that allows the freedom to promote and prolong harmful developed beliefs and actions, the best hope for effectively limiting harm done is government action that promotes increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful. Getting that government action to happen is hard to do when harmful development is regionally popular or profitable. The grand-fathering of harmful fossil fuel extraction operations in California, not requiring already built operations to be significantly less harmful because that would result in the operations stopping (including the stopping of employment and government revenue), is an example of harmful government resistance to reducing harm done.
That type of harmful, less helpful, government/business action is the result of voters/consumers who are willing to be, or are interested in being:
- less aware of the harm done, or believing that no harm is being done
- convinced that they are not being harmed by the harmful action, and convinced that they are harmed by actions that would reduce the harm done
- tempted to believe that the ‘positives that they have been convinced of justify the limited understanding they have of the harm done’
- motivated by other interests making them less concerned, less aware, or resist learning about the developed harm being done
All that said, I believe the most helpful and sustainable actions are the ones that result in reduced energy consumption, as long as the associated material consumption is also as harmless as possible. The health harm of vapours from spray-foam insulation, and the higher flammability of 'cheaper quicker options', comes to mind.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:38 AM on 3 February 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
nigel:
Yes, there is an important distinction between electricity production, and what the industry calls "transmission and delivery" (or "T&D").
T&D is clearly a system that is a natural monopoly. Having 20 different companies all stringing cables across the land in an attempt to sell you power would be highly inefficient. Production/generation is more flexible.
Generation, on the other hand, is very difficult to control in the context of "my customer needs power now, I will produce it and put it into the system now". It's not as though the electrons I am putting into the grid at the moment are labelled, and the same ones that are delivered to the customer that bought power from me.
So, the "free market" generation needs to follow rules and pricing variations in a controlled fashion. And the T&D system still needs to be regulated in a fashion that is fair to all.
As an electricity seller, I would obviously prefer to have my sunk capital costs spread over as much revenue-generating sales as possible, so if I can rig the rules to my advantage at the expense of my competitors, so much the better. The last thing I want is to spend money on generating capacity that sits idle most of the time.
In a "free market" that is dominated by a few large producers that have the ear of the regulators, it can be very difficult for small producers to effectively compete in the market. Hence the number of states in the U.S. that have been enacting legislation to make life difficult for small renewable power operations. The politicians are pushed by the established companies/lobbyists (usually fossil-fuel driven) who want to preserve their position.
Which goes to say that the system needs rules and regulations, and that means the government needs to be involved. And that means government involvement in trying to influence the demand side of the power/electricity equation, too.
In Canada, traditional electricity systems used to be regulated monopolies - at least within one province or major region. Some were (and still are) state-owned, while others have seen much more privatization (even the T&D side). Prices still follow a lot of regulation. We haven't gone as deeply into deregulation as some countries, but the pressures are there.
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Eclectic at 22:34 PM on 2 February 2023The escalator rises again
Jim Hunt,
begorrah and to be sure, your appearance in the comments columns of Deniosphere blogs is always a welcome find. But, as you say, it can be an uphill battle to appear at all.
At WUWT, I was thinking of Nick Stokes and a small stalwart band of scientifically-minded commenters (largely pseudonymous) who provide most of the justification for any sane person to read that blog. Without them, WUWT would be little better than a tiresome repetitious display of anger, un-science, wingtardism, conspiracism, and childish sour-grapes. [Have I omitted anything there?]
Still, WUWT provides a useful exhibit of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. Interesting & educational, for readers who wish to gaze into the Abysses which the human mind is capable of achieving.
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Jim Hunt at 21:17 PM on 2 February 2023The escalator rises again
I feel sure that I count as a "scientifically-minded commenter", which is no doubt why Mr. Watts "banned" me from commenting on his eponymous blog many years ago.
We did offer Mr. Monckton the opportunity to reply publicly to the points raised by Bill The Frog’s culinary themed article, but for some reason he declined. As you point out he will no doubt shortly be proclaiming that there's been "101 months with no warming at all!". -
Eclectic at 15:23 PM on 2 February 2023The escalator rises again
Mr Monckton is still at it. As it is the start of the new month, we will find (within a few days) a Monckton article on WattsUpWithThat blog proclaiming that there has been No Warming for X years & Y months.
X = 8 years or thereabouts. Year after year, the figure remains roughly the same. The figure X is arrived at by a methodology which is a blend of abstruse & absurd. And despite the step-like escalation of surface temperature [well, actually the UAH air temperature series is used . . . which is appropriate for the level near Everest's peak]. Somehow, each pause of the escalation is seen (by Monckton & acolytes) as being conclusive proof that AGW has permanently halted, and that the climate scientists are all wrong.
I confess I enjoy reading the the Monckton article each month ~ there is typically a surge of 200 - 300 comments underneath . . . where the Usual Suspects (the acolytes, plus occasional awefully astute comments by the Great Man himself) manage to rehash much of their creed. They also get to express outrage against the few scientifically-minded commenters who enjoy pointing out the deficiencies of the whole exercise.
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scaddenp at 11:05 AM on 2 February 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
nigelj - I consulted into the sector (mostly on thermal efficiency) quite a bit over time of transition until a few years ago. My perception is that market had issues to begin with but it has improved in fits and starts. It did let non-government players into the market so you have more than just the competing SOEs at play. Small operators wanting to build a wind farm or solar farm have near equal access. Distribution of electricity is clearly a natural monopoly but I dont think generation is.
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nigelj at 06:15 AM on 2 February 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
Bob Loblow and others. New Zealand has an electricity market driven by a system of spot prices, and about 5 private sector competing generating companies and a state owned lines company.
For decades the provision of electricity was essentially a monopoly, and in the 1990s it was broken up into several generating companies in a competing market governed by complicated rules. This appeared to be driven by a neo liberal ideology that business competition is always best
I'm in favour of competition as a general rule with most products and services, but the provision of electricity looks to me like a "natural monopoly" and the attempts to break this up and create a market seems contrived and quite problematic in practice. Do you (and others) agree?
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Bob Loblaw at 05:26 AM on 2 February 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
This topic is starting to go over old ground and run off-topic a bit, but I wanted to follow up on OPOF's deregulation tangent.
The argument for deregulation is usually "competition will bring prices down". That has not worked well in the presence of oligopolies - particularly when the different companies work together to maximize their profits.
Deregulation sometimes created rules on how prices were determined - when supply was low, prices went up (and high supply would supposedly lead to low prices). It wasn't truly a "free market" - it was a rules-based calculation of the rates that companies could charge, that could respond to "market conditions" on a minutely or hourly basis.
The catch was that companies would sometimes collude, so that A would shut a plant down "for emergency maintenance" on Thursday, if B agreed to do the same with their power plant the following Tuesday. Each shutdown would drive spot prices up, so that B made gobs of money on Thursday, and A got their turn next Tuesday. Both made much more profit via the gamesmanship. (Guess who got hosed.)
Enron made a lot more money as an energy broker/trader than they did as a producer of anything - until they got caught in their accounting scandals. (The Enron page I linked to also talks about California's electricity deregulation.)
And when Texas saw major distruptions in electricity production in 2021, some consumers saw extreme costs as the rules of "free market pricing" drove the cost of electricity sky high.
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Bob Loblaw at 05:03 AM on 2 February 2023The escalator rises again
That's a good read, Jim. It's always time-consuming to show the errors in what appear to be simple results by people of the ilk of Monckton.
As for predictions of when they'll come up with a "new" claim of "no warming since..."? We've had a few years of La Nina and we're due for a warm El Nino year, so I'm going to guess we'll see if coming soon.
I've posted the following graphic in the past, and I just checked the timing of the original. I created it in July 2016. By then it was obvious that 2016 was going to be a warm year. By then it was obvious that a warm year like 2016 was going to give start to a whole new "no warming since..." meme.
So, my prediction is that the next one will probably be "no warming since 2023..." or "no warming since 2024..." We know that the false skeptic's material will be updated by a simple search/replace like this one.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:51 AM on 2 February 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
peppers,
When you investigate 'deregulation' keep the following understanding regarding for-profit in mind.
The objective of for-profit is maximiaing profit. It's objective is not:
- minimizing harm done
- maintaining and increasing the quality of servces and products
- maintaining and improving the conditions experienced by workers
- developing sustainable activity
And note that a 'business-minded' government, like the ones often elected in regions like California, can have similar objectives of maximizing the profit of for-profit activity which compromes their leadership actions to be more harmful and be less helpful to those needing assistance ... because that is popular, and popularity wins elections.
And an important point is understanding the ways that misleading marketing 'promoting positive perceptions like the greatness of for-profit' impedes learning about what is harmful and delays the development of popularity for being less harmful and more helpful to others.
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Jim Hunt at 19:40 PM on 1 February 2023The escalator rises again
Should you wish to predict the next time the "repetitious claim" will be reheated here is a 2016 preprint detailing a comprehensive mathematical model of "skeptical" behaviour:
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2016/03/how-to-make-a-complete-rss-of-yourself/
"If Mr Monckton’s sausages leave an awfully bad taste in the mouth, it could be due to the fact that they are full of tripe."
Not to mention the obligatory quotation from Richard Feynman:
"Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -
nigelj at 08:18 AM on 1 February 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
Minerals dissolved in sea water:
Note particulary the concentrations of uranium compared to lithium.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:02 AM on 1 February 2023How climate change spurs megadroughts
Here is an update on the NPR reporting about the Colorado River Basin water problem I linked to @15.
KUNC report: "Federal pressure mounts as states attempt to break Colorado River standoff"
The States involved have not been able to agree to solve the problem. And it is implied in the reporting that some State leadership may be happier if they are able to 'blame the Feds for imposing restrictions'.
The full series of reports are available at the following link.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:50 AM on 1 February 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #4
Here is some newer news that raises a very important point regarding the ‘objectives of human actions today’. It is reporting 'new research', but relates to my comment @1.
NPR News Item “AI is predicting the world is likely to hit a key warming threshold in 10-12 years”
The important point is the unfortunate, and incorrect, ways that the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 C and 2.0 C are discussed.
The common sense needs to be that it is harmfully incorrect to refer to the 1.5 C target as ‘potentially, or actually, dead’. That incorrect way of thinking about the targets would be likely to also make 2.0 C ‘dead’.
The required understanding is that, ideally, human action would keep global warming impacts below 1.5 C. If the powerful among the current generation is unwilling to make that happen, if the leadership actions taken indicate that 1.5 C will be exceeded, then the portion of the population most responsible for making the problem worse has to be required to pay today to start removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. And that ‘non-profitable action’ needs to be done with the least harmful of the currently developed technologies for doing that, not the least expensive. And any improvements that would further reduce the harm of those ‘removal operations already started’ would need to be implemented as modifications of existing operations, not just be part of new items built. And continued inaction to limit the harm done would trigger a larger 'penalty to do more 'now' to remove CO2.
The science has long been clear that limiting harm done requires human global warming impacts to be brought back below 1.5 C. That will require unprofitable actions that need to be as harmless as possible. It is almost certain that the only way that will happen, and most effectively happen, is if the most harmful portion of the current population, those who benefited most from the developed problem and those who are currently benefiting most from continuing to make the problem worse, will not give up their harmful desires ‘they have to pay now, and be required to fix the problem as harmlessly as possible’. That penalty mechanism is likely the only way to keep human impacts below 2.0 C and minimize the magnitude and duration of an overshoot of impact above 1.5 C without having 'the solutions be new unnecessarily harmful developments'.
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peppers at 11:33 AM on 31 January 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
HI Forever,
Ill have to study up on the deregulation someone, maybe you, mentioned that before. Apparently it is a factor Im not familiar with.
Nigelj, I did not know about the lithium in the sea. That intriques me.
Thx tons, D
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nigelj at 06:04 AM on 31 January 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
Peppers @9, while there are several hundred billion tons of uranium dissolved in sea water attempts to extract it have not been encouraging. It doesnt look like it will ever be economic.
There are trillions of tons of lithium dissolved in sea water and this has been extracted experimentally with quite good success. Its more costly than conventional lithium mining, but not prohibitely so and will probably be a good viable future source of lithium. Some geothermal bores are also rich in lithium and the potential quantities are enormous. This sort of thing is all easily googled so I'm not going to spend time posting links.
If we look back historically before the climate issue, the world has had a mixture of types of electricity generation, and many individual countries have had a mix of generation. New Zealand has had a mixture of hydro power, geothermal power, and coal fired plant. Since the warming problem we have closed most coal fired plants added gas fired plant and added wind power and a little bit of solar power. My point is while theres a tendency to want one singular power source thats perfect, it probably doesn't exist, and the future will also be a mixture of things including some limited nuclear power.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:17 AM on 31 January 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
peppers @9,
Regarding "... why does California apply doubling electricity costs to cover State programs of exploring and implimenting alternative sources ..." including the context you present it in.
A major part of the higher California electricity cost appears to be the result of 'deregulation (shift to for-profit competition)'. That has been observed to result in higher costs in every state that deregulated their electricity supply. The higher cost is not the result of the chosen method of electricity generation. It is due to the way the 'competition system operates to maximize profit for the major electricity generators'.
Also, the lower cost way of operating the system created situations that, under extreme wind conditions, caused failures that sparked wild fires because the very dry vegetation was not far enough away from broken power-lines. So the new operating procedure is to cut back power transmission when strong winds will blow in areas with dry vegetation. It is impractical to keep vegetation far away from where broken transmission lines may reach.
But a part of the California electricity cost is covering the legal penalty for the wild fires caused by the for-profit competitive electrical system operation that was the result of the government decision to deregulate.
The government of California is not 'applying a doubling of cost'. The real costs of deregulation are emerging.
Regarding "They are not encouraging the healthiest sources of power at all, ..."
That appears to be a misunderstanding resulting from the perspective of 'cheaper is better'. When all the harmful impacts of the energy alternatives are thoroughly considered all of the fossil fuel options are very harmful compared to solar or wind or hydro. Note that harmfulness is not restricted to 'human health impacts' and it also includes 'risks of harm, not just immediately identifiable harms to people'.
A more important concern regarding the specific situation of lower income people being unable to afford the basic needs of a decent life is "Why does the socioeconomic-political system fail to ensure that everybody is able to live at least a basic decent life?" GDP has risen faster than population (globally, and in almost every region) and yet extreme poverty remains to different degrees in almost every region (the Social Democracies of Europe and some small island nations appear to be the possible exceptions). What is wrong with the developed socioeconomic-political systems? The problem is likely the popularity of the 'positives of potential personal benefit' keeping people from learning about what is harmful and how to be less harmful and more helpful to others. A lot of what has developed is harmful and unsustainable. The required changes of understanding and behaviour will shatter many 'powerful positive perceptions'.
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peppers at 21:41 PM on 30 January 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
Thanks for all the input. Ill go over all of this in time.
Micheal, California's 44M have 2.5 times the rate for electricity than Washington States 8M. Nothing amusing there.
Forever, with the sentiment that unhealthy fuels should carry higher costs to diminish theri use, why does California apply doubling electricity costs to cover State programs of exploring and implimenting alternative sources, among covering other programs of wildfires and subsidies to the poor? Of which these policies increase their poor. They are not encouraging the healthiest sources of power at all, and it is punitive in nature to the common working citizen, such as my renters.
I was too general on the nuclear. There is enough uranium in the sea for thousands of years, but it is impractical in many ways to imagine the increased accidents and security needed for thousands more reactors. maybe not all power, but a small reactor outside each city, like so many nuclear subs. They are claming huge strides in safety and reuse of all waste, etc.
Nigelj, no we should not bury our heads in the sand. Something must be done. But in lieu of finding a real actionable solution, punishing the populous to hope to reduce global emissions 7% (if we achieve cutting our use in half) from the US is a bit doomy. As another said, if we settle on that we do not pursue more strongly an actual working solution. For now we need a backup when night comes, or the wind dies or snowpack is slow that year. We can work to lower needing fossil fuel to 1/3 of the time is the hieght of these goals. They are not worth doing as I see it, just to do something.
And 7% is the amount of new consumers added to the world every year, as we passed 8B on November 22,2022, and will find 9B in 2037. Thats one a and a half times the California population added each year, spread across and increasing the energy use in every global area and zone. The US will add California's population again within 35 years.
My 3 year old's day school is packed and Im not going to consider that this is the problem. This is what many of these solutions are based in, that the peoples behaviors are the problem. They should suffer. I am not fatalistic; im interested in the pie in the sky, or the 'pennecillin' solution to be found that will address this. Its actually, in my opinion, the only way. I do not have a moments thought it will not be found.
I have also told I have been a landlord for decades and how do I have a 3 year old! Yes Ill be throwing him a ball at 18 from my walker!
Thanks all. Best D
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:45 PM on 30 January 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
Hi peppers,
In addition to the responses by nigelj and michael sweet, I would add that it is very common for people to believe that 'cheaper is better'. As an engineer I understand the importance of doing something as inexpensively as possible. But as an engineer I would also always limit the alternatives being considered to 'very safe options' for good reason. And as an engineer I have repaired many built items, or limited their use, or taken them out of service because it became known that they were not as safe as they should be.
A major problem today is the prevalence of the belief that marketplace competition naturally develops safe results and would promptly remove or correct harmful developments. The opposite is actually closer to the truth because 'more harmful is usually cheaper and easier'. And 'the positive of more profitable' makes it less likely that developed items will be corrected to be less harmful by the marketplace.
Without external governing to limit harm done (requiring things to be more expensive) the marketplace will 'naturally' produce more harmful results in both senses of 'more'. Developed items will 'naturally' be more harmful (as harmful as can be gotten away with for as long as possible). And if/when developments are deemed to be too harmful, the replacements are likely to just be 'more' harmful options.
That brings up the type of 'belief' you are concerned about. The alternatives implemented being 'more harmful'. Things can indeed be very harmful if the potential harm is not well investigated before the new way 'replaces' the option that is deemed to be 'too harmful'. But that means that using natural gas should have been much more expensive long ago. And it also means that nuclear generation should have been more expensive, and hydro power. Even solar and wind power should be more expensive to address the potential harmful impacts.
The bottom line is that 'reduced energy consumption' is the required correction. And the power generated for 'essential energy consumption' needs to be 'as harmless as possible', not 'the cheaper way'.
The promotion of, and focus on, the positives, like lower cost, can result in reduced investigation and consideration of the potential negatives. Even if negatives are known, the developed desire for the positives can cause people to ignore, dismiss or excuse the negatives. That 'desire for the promoted positives' can make people disagree with, distrust or dislike anyone trying to help others learn about the harm being done.
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michael sweet at 06:16 AM on 30 January 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
Peppers,
Your post is confusing. It is not clear what you are in favor of and what you are railing against.
In post 1 you rail against electricity and the OP for supporting using more of it in our homes. In post 5 you support some uses of electricity but apparently not others.
Your data on heating homes using either gas or electricity is way outdated. A heat pump is more than three times more efficient than past electrical resistance heating so the cost of electrical heating by your numbers would be less than $60. Gas is much more expensive but since you have no reference it is impossible to know how much more expensive. Gas in 2022 was about triple the cost in 1999 and double the cost in 2021. source Gas prices are unikely to come down since so much is now exported. In addition, if you install a heat pump you get air conditioning for free. That is important in areas like Wshington state where the new temperatures need air conditioning becaause of global warming.
I find it amusing that you support pie in the sky like nuclear power and power beaming when neither of these technologies can compete on price with existing solar and wind. Solar and wind are the cheapest power in the world today. Installing as much renewable energy as possible as fast as possible will lower everyones power bills and clean up the environment at the same time. Your claims about more expensive power are simply false.
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nigelj at 06:09 AM on 30 January 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
Peppers,
Your main concern seems to be that the transition to renewables and an electricity based energy system is going to cost people money in various ways. And it will and personally I think we should just acknowledge that. However read the research studies and it wont cost so much as to be impractical, even based on known technologies now. Theres plenty of material easily googled.
You also mentioned that we are taking a leap of faith that the technology will improve and become cheaper in the future. Theres some truth in this to an extent. We can actually be quite confident that the technology will improve and costs will drop a certain amount, based on what we know, and various studies anaylse this, but we dont know with the same certaintly if the costs will drop a whole lot.
However we have no real other option than a new energy system, as a civilisation because we will run out of fossil fuels anyway or extraction costs will get prohibitive, sometimes in the next 50 - 100 years. A transition to an economy based on electricity or synthetic fuels is therefore inevitable. We will either sink or swim. The climate problem has just bought the issue forwards.
I do see some positives: In New Zealand electric cars with just modest tax payer subsidies are now cost competitive to buy with mid price family friendly ICE cars and approximately four times cheaper to run. The point being they are now an attrractive package all things considered and sales have increased recently. Plenty of studies show the planet does have enough raw materials for the transition.
Solar and Wind are now providing much lower cost power than fossil fuels (refer to the Lazard energy analysis available free online) although as we need to build storage costs will probably go back to where fossil fuel costs have been.
In my view nuclear power has its place because its clean zero carbon energy, but there isnt enough uranium to power the world entirely by nuclear power for significant lengths of time. Remember the uranium gets pretty much used up and cant be recycled as well as the materials used to make solar and wind farms. And building nuclear power stations is a painfully slow process. So nuclear power can only be part of the solution at best. Fusion power might be a good long term solution but is still decades away despite some recent advances.
Gas where I live does provide relatively low cost cooking and heating. For people very dependent on gas the transition to things like heat pumps would be expensive for them. This is an area where the government will have to assist people with the costs, and it seems that America is doing this given other articles on this website.
For all those reasons I strongly support the move to zero carbon energy with renewables as the main component of that, and I strongly support electrified transport, perhaps with some PHEV as well, although Im getting a bit doomy like Evan about how quickly we will do all this. However its better to at least try to make some progress than just bury our heads in the sand.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:13 AM on 30 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #4
The following CBC News item helps understand the challenges of getting people to learn about the harmful consequences of fossil fuel use, especially the climate change impact consequences.
Why don't we talk about acid rain and the ozone hole anymore? Scientists debunk misinformation
There are significant differences between the 'globally acted on and considered to have been reasonably resolved SO2 and Ozone issues' and the climate change harm of fossil fuel use. In addition to the 'immediate potential negative impact on influential people of a failure to address the problem' a major difference is the amount of 'developed perceptions of prosperity and superiority' that have to be given up to address the problem. However, there are other important things that can be learned from how each issue was addressed.
The SO2 (acid rain) problem was a developed problem that was impacting the environment that influential people, including large groups of voters, could identify with and potentially experience. But even the undeniable harm done did not motivate rapid correction everywhere. Some European nations led the transition to reduced SO2 emissions, including 'low sulphur' and 'ultra-low sulphur' diesel. Other nations, including the USA and Canada delayed implementing the harm reduction technology because of the competitive trade advantages of the lower cost of not leading the transition. That delay also kept cleaner diesel engines developed in the nations leading the transition from being import competition because they would not run as well on the dirtier fuel. But the major difference from the climate change challenge is that 'more harm done' was acceptable while technology development occurred to reduce the problem. And a critical difference is that sulphur emissions did not have to be 'almost entirely eliminated'. Also, removal of sulphur from the atmosphere is not required.
The ozone problem, like the SO2 problem, was also allowed to 'take some time to be solved'. And a major difference from the climate change challenge is that only a small part of the global economy was impacted by the required corrections of what had developed. The global agreement regarding the mitigation of the ozone problem was able to wait for new technology to develop. Also, the rate of harmful ozone impacts did not have to be brought to 'net-zero'. And actions were not required to remove harmful excess ozone impacts.
The climate change challenge requires the ending of a developed activity that is a massive part of the global socioeconomic system. And there is the added potentially unpopular requirement for the people who benefited most from the current accumulated problem to pay for removing excess harmful impacts. There is no time to wait for 'new cheaper technology to be developed' ('waiting for cheaper alternatives to be developed' through the past 30 years has developed the current undeniably harmful reality). The currently developed technology for removing CO2 needs to be built and be operating today. However, only technology that is well understood to have minimal 'other' negative impacts should be built and operated, even if cheaper alternatives are available.
For the climate change challenge, and so many other matters that matter to the future of humanity, the measure of acceptability of what has been developed and the alternatives needs to be 'essentially harmless'. Compromising the pursuit of being as harmless as possible 'because of other considerations' will fail to develop sustainable solutions. That reality is a major impediment to efforts to increase awareness and understanding of the climate change challenge. The science is solid. But it requires a lot of developed preferences and perceptions of status to be given up.
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stranger1548 at 02:32 AM on 30 January 2023The connection between Hurricane Sandy and global warming
Thanks MA Rogers and OPOF.
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peppers at 02:00 AM on 30 January 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
HI Forever (again!) and Micheal,
We do need to reduce co2 emissions.
Forever, correct at 61% from fossil, 19% nuclear and 20% alternatives from the Dept of Energy. I am a proponent of the nuke, based on outcomes of that becoming much cleaner, using own waste and the liquid salt as coolant being safer.
I did not look in to deregulating, but I see the outcomes of different types of fuel based on my observations over 45 years of landlording. Running electric heaters as opposed to natural gas is 5 times more expensive. $35 of NG heats a month of $170 electric heat in an apartment.
When I critique this article it is in the ways we fool ourselves that we are operating in achievable or useable terms. It takes 3 years of co2 ( of the replaced gas car) to make a Tesla, 2 to 3 years based on location and use factors. The diesel mining of the lithium, aluminum being 8 times more emitting than making steel, same plastic in the car, etc.
The main push is faith. That these processes will get better. But more than faith, this delves in to propaganda as well. Few to none of these things will address the issue except to cause more spending and higher bills. Tell me we are just hopeful these things will later address the situation and Ill see it as an honest communication to me.
But switching to electric can allow a larger bite of alternatives, when they can come in to play. Thats all that is being said. And many times the cost is supposed to be sucked up I guess. As if people have this money.
I also see this power beaming, aiming sunlight from orbit to power stations on earth. 24/7 is the key. THAT would be a wonderful use of money and tech. And the new nuke... All better than setting groups of people against other groups down here on earth.
Micheal, probably the most useful things on this list of ten are the 5 items of insulation, double pane windows and etc. We can afford to want that in the US, if we dont care to feed anyone else with those funds. We are at 15.6 per capita on emissions in the US and China emits twice what we do. But they are 4 times larger, meaning thier per capita is 7.5. If we could come to match thier per capita we would affect the co2 total 7% globally.
That does not strike me as fatalistic. It makes me want to aim efforts to things that will properly solve this. And as important, not have us fracture and fight and lecture on another on this.
Thanks tons, D
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MA Rodger at 21:56 PM on 29 January 2023The connection between Hurricane Sandy and global warming
stranger1548 @9,
Perhaps a link to Kossin et al (2020) 'Global increase in major tropical cyclone exceedance probability over the past four decades' would assist.
More generally, idea that tropical cyclones will be fewer but more intense is a pretty basic finding when considering the impacts of a warmer climate. While the warmer seas will cause cyclones to reach higher intensities, the fators which assist in cyclone formation are reduced (cyclones being kilometer-high funnels built of nothing but swirling air).
Perhaps it is worth mentioning the problems of deciding if a storm in, say, the 1890s or even the 1950s reached Force 3 or even whether the number of storms in the early record is significantly wrong. Thus with reliable records stretching back just fifty years (so using satellite data) it is very easy to argue that any trends found in the records of storm numbers are just some form of natural variability. Where I think such argument can be dismissed is in the seasonal ACE data. The graphic below is a couple of years out of date (snatched from Wikipedia which also has an interesting graph plotting PDI & SST and which also needs updating [PDI is similar to ACE but for landfall cyclones]), with 2021 ACE=145 and 2022 ACE=95, thus 2022 breaking the run of "above normal" seasons. So over the full record back to 1850, we see 46 of these "above normal" seasons in the North Atlantic (the graph below only shows back to 1950) with 18 of these in the last 30 years and just 28 in the 143 years 1850-1992. And it is pretty-much impossible to find anything approaching the run of six "above normal" seasons 2016-21 in the earlier records, this accounting for the potential for any significant errors in those records.
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One Planet Only Forever at 10:59 AM on 29 January 2023The connection between Hurricane Sandy and global warming
I hope the more knowledgable people involved in SkS can provide more helpful information.
But I found the following by searching the internet for information about 'cyclone intensity' rather than the 'hurricane' sub-set term:
Intensity of tropical cyclones is probably increasing due to climate change
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stranger1548 at 10:05 AM on 29 January 2023The connection between Hurricane Sandy and global warming
Sorry, this is the only reference I could find to hurricanes. My question is that it seems I've for read for years that there is no scientific consensus on increasing numbers of hurricanes but that there is consensus on growing intensity. Exchanging posts with a skeptic I failed to back the statement on hurricane intensity. The studies I've looked use modeling the future but as we know the word modeling only receives derision from climate skeptics. I couldn't find any actual proof that hurricanes have intensified. I couldn’t find any climate signals that support the premise.
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Charlie_Brown at 06:29 AM on 28 January 2023It's Urban Heat Island effect
HamletsGhost @69
You say “The Greenhouse Gas model does not account for any heat transfer arising from rain-cooled macadam.” By greenhouse gas model, perhaps you are referring to the models for radiant energy transfer in the atmosphere. MODTRAN In Infrared Light in the Atmosphere is one such model available to everyone and can be used to clearly demonstrate the powerful effect of greenhouse gases. Urban heat island effects, including changes to albedo, evaporation, transpiration, precipitation, and energy production, are negligible compared to radiant energy loss to space. Actually, while the changes in these effects are tiny, the hydrologic cycle, convection, and conduction in the troposphere are built into the atmospheric temperature profile (lapse rate) upon which radiant energy transfer models are based. All that you have described are ways that energy moves around within a small portion of the troposphere and they do not have any significant effect on the global average temperature profile of the atmosphere. You jump to an incorrect conclusion that “In omitting the fact of transfer, the Greenhouse Gas model must be inaccurate.” Then to say that “Within a model that takes into account UHI-created weather patterns and rain-cooled macadam, atmospheric increase in carbon dioxide is less as the cause of global warming than an index of burning” is simply not true.
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One Planet Only Forever at 05:53 AM on 28 January 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
peppers,
The latest data on US electricity generation appears to be on the following EIA Frequently Asked Questions response "What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source?"
That indicates fossil fuels are 61% of the generation mix in 2021. But that is declining. The 2022 percentage will be lower.
And the decline may be rapid. When was the "Over 80%" you referred to? In the recent past? Or are you recalling data from further in the past. The more recent the "over 80%" data point is the more rapid the decline of fossil fuel generation has been.
Anther important point is the fatal flaw of the developed socioeconomic-political systems that 'focus on the positives of lower cost' and 'dismiss or excuse any consideration of harm done'. More harmful is cheaper in most situations.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:57 AM on 28 January 2023It's Urban Heat Island effect
The biggest failing in Hamlet'sGhost's comment #69 is his use of the phrase 'Greenhouse Gas model". There is no such model - what we do use in climatology is models of things like radiation transfer, energy conservation, fluid motion, conduction, the hydrological cycle, cloud formation and precipitation, etc., all built together into broad-scope "climate models". Greenhouse gas effects are the result of the well-understood radiation tranfser part of that - as they play out across all the combined physics.
There is also no such thing as an "Urban Heat Island model" - unless it's a creation of HamletsGhost's imagination. The urban heat island effect is a combination of energy balances, surface properties, changes in evaporation due to availability of water (see "hydrological cycle"), etc. All those physical properties and processes are part of "climate models" HamletsGhost's idea that UHI is something excluded from our climate models is bizarre.
In short, HamletsGhost has no idea what he is talking about.
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michael sweet at 13:58 PM on 27 January 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
Peppers,
Five of the ten tips do not involve electricity. What is your beef?
In any case, in order to control Global Warming we need to switch all energy use to electricity. The heat pumps described in two tips are much more efficient than fossil heaters. More efficient appliances save money even if electricity is expensive.
Similarly, electric vehicles are cheaper to own than ICE cars because they are much more fuel efficient and they require much less maintenance.
The remainng tips suggst that you plan ahead so that you can take advantage of as many rebates as possible. What is wrong with that?
Please pay more attention to the articles you comment on.
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One Planet Only Forever at 13:53 PM on 27 January 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
peppers,
My first observation is that you may have cherry-picked a location and a month as the basis for the claim you try to make.
My quick internet search for the broader matter of "california electricity prices" identified the following NYTs article "Why Are Energy Prices So High? Some Experts Blame Deregulation." that seems to provide an excellent explanation.
It appears that all of the states that 'deregulated' their electricity systems have seen their rates increased relative to the regulated states. And the higher costs are not due to the way the electricity is generated. They are due to the way that the deregulated system operates.
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One Planet Only Forever at 09:17 AM on 27 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Evan,
I appreciate the value of the Keeling Curve as evidence that the required change of direction of over-developed harmful human ways of living is occurring. And, of course, my concern is all harms, not just climate change harm. But the generalized point can be made by focusing on climate change.
Developed popular and profitable climate change harm, the powerful resistance to ending the harm, and the even stronger resistance to repairing the harm done, is a clear example of many other harmful impacts developed by misleading marketplace over-development of human ways of living. And a very harmfully misleading aspect is a focus on the positives. That focus on the positives delays and resists learning about the negatives. It also excuses the negatives ‘because of the perceived positives’. An example of climate change impact reduction misleading marketing is the Alberta production of oil sands for export being claimed to be working towards being net-zero by 2050. That sounds good until you realize that there will be other harms produced by the activity in Alberta, potentially even new harms as a result of ‘focusing on the positives’ of the actions that ‘get to net-zero carbon impact of the part of the fossil fuel system happening in Alberta’. And the real eye-popping negative is that actions ‘outside of Alberta’ related to those ‘net-zero Alberta exports’ are not going to be close to net-zero. The total global impacts needs to be ‘net-zero’, not just parts of it. However, the impacts of people already living better than basic decent lives need to lead the transition to ‘total global net-zero’. So Alberta oil sands production becoming net-zero by 2035 would be genuinely helpful, with the understanding that before 2060 there would be no export market for what Alberta wants to benefit from exporting export.
Back to the Keeling Curve. In spite of the value of the Keeling Curve the more important measure of the required transition to limit harm done is the amount of global average surface temperature increase above pre-industrial levels. The uncertainty of the relationship between CO2 levels and resulting average temperature makes the temperature a more relevant measure. The science strives to narrow the range of CO2 levels to be targeted. But the understanding that 1.0 C is where we should be striving to eventually get back to in order to limit future harmful consequences is clear. And the CO2 levels for 1.0 C warming are now well known (proven due to the lack of corrections of development direction to limit harm done to 1.0 C). And the CO2 levels for 1.5 C warming will also almost certainly become known in the near future. Hopefully the CO2 levels for 2.0 C warming will never be proven by the lack of correction of human development. That is the ‘BIG IF’. The science is clear that ‘when’ the upper limit on global harm is reached the the higher the magnitude of that peak the more harm is done to the future. And the harm done includes the extra unprofitable effort required to bring the level of harm back down below 1.5 C. And the sooner it is brought back down the better. The science also indicates the disastrous consequences ‘If’ the correction does not happen, or happens too slowly (and the correction has been happening too slowly because of the incorrect economic ideology that requires ‘perpetually more, never less, especially never less for people with higher status and more power’).
Important points are:- ‘When’ is the appropriate term for the science of climate change impacts.
- ‘If’ is the term for socioeconomic-political results.
So my current understanding is that ‘when’, scientifically, total global human activity transforms to the point of no longer causing accumulating global warming impacts, and continues to transform to reducing CO2 levels at an increasing rate, there may even be a delay of response in the Keeling Curve.
The annual rate of human impacts is the important item to track. And the Keeling Curve is one of many measures for tracking harmful human impacts. Global fossil fuel use is another way to track things. The current situation is ‘human activity impacts cause significant annual increase of CO2 levels’. The curve of human impacts on CO2 levels needs to be brought down to ‘Zero’ and continue to be brought below zero, removing CO2, to limit and repair the harm done by human impacts. Admittedly some of the harm done will not be able to be repaired. And some of the repairs, like reversing glacier retreat (regrowing glaciers), may take a long time. So limiting the magnitude of harm done needs to be the ‘governing objective’ rather than compromising that objective by attempting to protect developed status quo perceptions.
That leads to understanding that continuing to ‘grow global economic perceptions based on the developed ideology that promotes the positives and tries really hard to ignore or dismiss the negatives’ makes the future required corrections more dramatic. And, pushed too far, the result will be socioeconomic-political collapse that ‘catches a lot of people by surprise’.
Optimism for the future of humanity does require the ‘ending of harm done’ to be ‘when not if’. There is no improving future for humanity ‘if harmful ways of living are not ended’. Developing harmless replacements for developed harmful ways of living can help. But some 'developed popular and profitable activities' likely need to be 'restricted to only help the poorest live better'. And the amount of harm done to the future continues to increase until the harmful activity is ended. And improving the future requires efforts to repair the harm already done. And all of that is contrary to developed popular socioeconomic-political ideology.
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peppers at 21:05 PM on 26 January 2023Checklist: How to take advantage of brand-new clean energy tax credits
Electricity is a delivery method, not a power source. My fear is getting trapped in the higher cost. You can make electricity from natural gas for instance, but not the reverse, and over 80% of electricity is still made from coal, gas, etc. Here is a blurb about electricity costs ( in Ca. ): Bureau of Labor Statistics, Geographic Information, Western
News Release, 1/18/23: The 26.0 cents per kWh Los Angeles households paid for electricity in December 2022 was 57.6 percent more than the nationwide average of 16.5 cents per kWh. Last December, electricity costs were 69.0 percent higher in Los Angeles compared to the nation. An intregal part of this article is that electricity is a better costing alternative. It actually appears as a trap. -
MA Rodger at 18:03 PM on 26 January 2023Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
pewtergod @145,
It is actualy untrue to say H2O & CH4 absorb at the same frequency but such argument becomes a little technical so the exact wording of the claim is required to properly rebut what is being argued.
The graphic below is much-used (although not a good explanation of the power of CO2 as a GHG) and show the frequencies absorbed by different atmospheric gases. The Earth only emits at frequencies longer than 5 microns so it is only the right-hand portion of the graph which is of interest.
And even if H2O did absorb/emit at the same frequencies as CO2 it would be a flawed argument from the denialists as CO2 is present up to 50 km (way above the bulk of the H2O), and it is the height of emissions into space that determines the GHG effect.
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pewtergod at 06:56 AM on 26 January 2023Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
Why can't I find anything about methane and water vapor?
Climate denialists keep saying they absorb the same frequency, and I can't find a rebuttal.
Moderator Response:[PS] Just enter "Water vapour" or "methane" in the search box on top left. You will find plenty like "Water vapour is the most powerful GHG" myth. (spoiler: water vapour is a powerful GHG but its concentration is temperature dependent so it is a feedback not a forcing). You find detail on relative importance of gases here.
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Evan at 22:53 PM on 25 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
OPOF, thank you for your comments. We missed you in this conversation. :-)
"My current understanding is that when the Keeling Curve levels off, when human activity is no longer causing CO2 levels to increase, there should not be a significant further increase of the global average surface temperature."
According to the best climate science, IF, not when, the Keeling Curve levels off, we will still have "warming in the pipeline". To have no significant further increase of global average temperature the Keeling Curve must decrease, as would happen for a time if we were to reach net-zero emissions. This is what I address in my recent paper Climate Confusion.
I wrote that paper because there is confusion about the implications of different emissions pathways. Many are thinking that recent scientific research shows that we can limit the warming to no more than we've already caused, but as Hausfather notes, this science dates back to 2008 and is not a new result.
"The best available evidence shows that, on the contrary, warming is likely to more or less stop once carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reach zero, meaning humans have the power to choose their climate future.
When scientists have pointed this out recently, it has been reported as a new scientific finding. However, the scientific community has recognised that zero CO2 emissions likely implied flat future temperatures since at least 2008. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 special report on 1.5C also included a specific focus on zero-emissions scenarios with similar findings"
But it's rise to prominence now is causing confusion between what happens if the Keeling Curve levels off and what happens if we reach net-zero emissions. These are two different scenarios, but the science behind each has been known for a long time and is not a new result.
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One Planet Only Forever at 15:35 PM on 25 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
I have been an interested follower of this discussion. I am optimistic about humanity in the long term, but pessimistic about the short term.
My current understanding is that when the Keeling Curve levels off, when human activity is no longer causing CO2 levels to increase, there should not be a significant further increase of the global average surface temperature.
However, I also understand that increasing temperatures will activate feedback mechanisms that will increase CO2 levels. Therefore, before the Keeling Curve is levelled off, any activated feedback mechanisms will require more reduction of human impacts than would have been required before the feedbacks were triggered. In other words, more warming makes it harder for humans to reduce human impacts enough to ‘level-off the Keeling Curve’ (get to net-zero).
Also, the science (from decades ago) indicates that warming above 1.0 C risks significant harm (now proven). And warming beyond 2.0 C is considered to be very risky (hopefully never proven). That understanding is the basis for the 1.5 C objective that is paired with the need to limit the peak impact level to less than 2.0 C. (Refer to the Story of the Week “1.5 and 2°C: A Journey Through the Temperature Target That Haunts the World” in the “2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #50”)
Developed governing economic ideology is justifiably questioned. The short term competitive pursuit of status interests over-powering the reduction of harm is detrimental to the global future of humanity. Also, the perceived need for constant growth of activity that is perceived to be profitable develops harmful results.
The removal of excess CO2, levels above 1.5 C impacts, is now almost certain to be required. CO2 impacts exceeding 1.5 C are ‘in the pipeline’ because it will take time to correct the current harmfully over-developed activity that is the result of a lack of actions to limit impacts through the past 30 years. And the marketplace will not naturally develop CO2 removal to bring peak human impacts back down to 1.5 C levels because that will never be a profitable activity. External governing will be required to make it happen.
External governing of economic activity will also be required to limit the amount that impacts exceed 1.5 C before they are drawn back down. A key understanding is that the area under the global average temperature curve needs to be minimized to limit the future challenges. The more that 1.5 C level of impacts is exceeded the more harm is done. The longer the 1.5 C level is exceeded the more harm is done. But the required changes of the developed governing socioeconomic-political systems are contrary to ‘popular developed socioeconomic ideology and the developed status-quo’.
So, in my comment @2 I expressed optimism about the long term future of humanity. However, I am also pessimistic about how harmful the impacts of the ‘over-developed harmful marketplace system fuelled by marketing that is focused on promoting positive impressions’ will be before that system is corrected (I made a similar point in my comment @4 on the SkS item “Can induction stoves convince home cooks to give up gas?”). That pessimism will be reduced when a significant amount of ‘unprofitable’ CO2 removal facilities are operating. The sooner those ‘correction of harm done’ facilities are operating the sooner there is justification for optimism that there will be a sustained improving future for humanity.
Many of the supposedly highest status people today are obliged to pay for carbon removal facilities to be built and operated in the current day. That activity cannot ethically be pushed off to be a ‘future, development that will continue to face reluctance to be implemented because it is not profitable’. And it is important for those ‘unpopular and unprofitable’ facilities to be almost certain to be harmless. Less expensive and ‘more harmful in other ways’ ways of appearing to reduce the harm of CO2 need to be understood to be unacceptable. It is important to see evidence of leadership pursuing the limiting of harm done, not claiming to be reducing harm done by actions that are harmful in other ways. All harmful impacts need to be limited to sustainable Planetary Boundary levels of impact, not just CO2.
Therefore, I am hopeful and optimistic about the long term future of humanity. But I am skeptical/pessimistic regarding how soon there will be evidence to support that optimism. I am justifiably concerned about how much harm will be done that future generations have to overcome in order to develop sustainable improvements. Sustainable improvements can be achieved almost Forever within the Boundaries of this One Amazing Planet if that is a governing objective, which it really should be.
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Evan at 12:50 PM on 25 January 20232023 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #2
Rob, rather than a long rebuttal, I refer you to a paper I published recently on this very subject titled "Climate Confusion." In it I deal with the very subject we're discussing, and reference the Hausfather paper.
There are only very special conditions where we don't have warming in the pipeline: all of humanity come together to do the right thing and nature plays nice. I will continue to point people to the Keeling Curve as the best assessment of how we're doing and what to expect. In the meantime, Hausfather's paper presents a result of a scientific modeling study, and is not an assessment of the likely trajectory of the Keeling Curve.
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Philippe Chantreau at 12:11 PM on 25 January 2023It's Urban Heat Island effect
A quick addition for the sake of clarity:
HamletsGhost mentions land breezes. A land breeze is kind of the opposite phenomenon of a sea breeze. In land breeze conditions, the land surface cools down and reaches a lower temperature than the adjacent sea surface. They are usually stongest in the morning, when the temperature gradient is the largest. As a result, air flows from the land toward the sea, where air rises by convection. Although some sea breezes are known to reach far over land (it's relative, the farthest reaches identified are about 200 miles in tropical regions), land breezes are usually weaker and seldom reach beyond the 30 miles range off the coast.
In any case, it is worth emphasizing that a land breeze brings cooler air from the land over the sea surface. A sea breeze occurs during the day, when the land surface heats up quicker than the water and reaches a higher temperature. Air then rises over land and cooler air comes from the sea. These local patterns have been studied.
There is research suggesting that increased urbanization plays a role in decreasing trends in sea and land breezes, although no clear trend appears to be identifiable on a larger, global scale.
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scaddenp at 11:25 AM on 25 January 2023It's Urban Heat Island effect
I am also mystified by the energy budget here. Radiation absorbed by low albedo areas, tend to radiate that back in infrared which is absolutely part of the models. Conductive transfer to rainwater is negible by comparison. Take a small amount of conductive heat transfer from a very small part of the area of the world going into a very large body of water and I would challenge you to measure the effect. I suspect it would hard to measure the effect on even the rivers flowing through a city let alone the ocean but happy to contradicted by data
