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ryland at 02:51 AM on 17 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
Apologies that should read fossil fuel derived energy
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ryland at 02:50 AM on 17 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
Tom Curtis @5 In your discourse you don't include an assessment of the energy costs of producing the PV cells. Should you do so for completeness? I'm rather surprised that, so far, there is no discussion or even mention of nuclear fission or nuclear fusion. Surely these, and particularly the latter, are of considerable relevance to the supply of non-fossil fuel deived energy. As I expect is common knowledge here, development of trial nuclear fusion power stations is underway and it is hoped the technology will be commercially viable before 2050.
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Watchdog at 00:03 AM on 17 March 2015So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…
howardlee @ 29 I fully concur that Deccan Traps is (IMO at least part of) the demise of dinosaurs.. And, Yes, a quantification of the impact effects of Chicxulub are in order - in order to determine just how "regional" in size it was.. A very rough comparison of Chicxulub with the largest H-Bomb tested by the US (Castle Bravo - 15MT): The area of Castle Bravo's crater is c.3.25 sq km, and its Zone of Destruction extended way beyond its crater. The area of Chicxulub's crater - variously estimated at 180-300 km in diameter - is, conservatively, 10,000 Times Larger than the area of C.Bravo's crater. Tunguska's Energy (Siberia, 1908) is estimated as high as 30MT-TNT (similar to C.Bravo). It leveled c.80 Million trees in an area of 2,150 sq km. POINT? The "region" of Destruction wrought by Chiculub must be far larger than "just" its crater..
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It's the sun
Dan Pangburn - "Everything not explicitly considered..." - I suggest you read up on omitted-variable bias, which leads to over or underestimating the effect of the factor(s) you regress upon when you leave out other important causal factors. You've only regressed upon sunspot numbers, but it's impossible get correct results by sequential regression when there are multiple factors in play. You need to regress against all of them at once (hence the use of multiple linear regression).
The physics indicate that insolation is a factor. But the physics also indicate that GHGs, natural and volcanic aerosols, albedo, land use, black carbon, etc., are also causal factors. Physics informs any regression analysis - ignore causal factors, and your analysis will be in error.
I will also note that your equation appears to have roughly 4 free variables (your constnats) to relate a sunspots and a cyclic pattern to a single temperature value - that appears to be more a curve-fitting exercise then a causal analysis. As John von Neumann said,
With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.
A 'break-even' point of 34 sunspots (darn, I was hoping the number would be 42) might fit the data and your equation over a particular period, but you are again utterly ignoring the output side of the equation. Under a doubling of CO2 radiative physics indicates a direct forcing of 3.7 W/m2, and a direct warming of 1.1C (ignoring feedbacks for now). Under those conditions your 'break-even' of 34 sunspots will still lead to a radiative imbalance, a warming; the actual balance point would be where the TSI was 3.7 W/m2 lower to match the decreased energy leaving the climate. There is no fixed breakpoint, what matters is the balance between climate energy input and climate energy output, conservation of energy, and ignoring the output makes your analysis simply a curve-fitting exercise on one aspect of energy input.
And as such, your equation(s) have no predictive power. There is no physical basis for your prediction of a 0.3C temperature drop by 2030 - you've simply ignored multiple causal factors and the energy relationships involved.
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MA Rodger at 22:29 PM on 16 March 2015Arctic sea ice has recovered
Further to #77, it occurred to me that the Feb & Mar SIE data would allow this "late maximum trend" to be examined all the way back to 1979. Plotting SIE(Feb)-SIE(Mar) shows a trend for a freezier March beginning about 20 years ago (1995-2014). That period does yield a statistically significant trend, but not as a date of maximum SIE. Over that period March is getting icier compared with February by 24,000 sq km per year +/-10,000(2sd).
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howardlee at 22:25 PM on 16 March 2015So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…
Joe @ 27 - I have to admit that I just don't know. This post from 2 years ago has some intersting ideas, essentially (a) body size, (b) smart brains, (c) genetic 'evolvability'. This paper suggests mammals may have survived by hibernating through the worst of the catastrophe (no explanation for birds' survival). This paper suggests that creatures able to sustain themselves by eating earthworms survived.
The body size theory is interesting because when you look at the more recent PETM global warming event, evolution tended to select for small body size. But there were small dinosaurs in the Cretaceous, so that can't be the whole explanation. Over to the biologists on that one, but I'm not sure there are clear answers yet.
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Dan Pangburn at 21:54 PM on 16 March 2015It's the sun
KR – There have been some refinements in the 3+ years since the paper you linked to. The current version of the equation has R2 = 0.9049 (95% correlation) when compared to a normalized average of reported averages of average global temperatures. Everything not explicitly considered (such as the 0.09 K s.d. random uncertainty in reported annual measured temperature anomalies, aerosols, CO2, other non-condensing ghg, volcanoes, ice change, etc.) must find room in the unexplained 9.51%. If the effect of CO2 is included, R2 = 0.9061, an insignificant increase.
The analysis includes an approximation of ocean cycles that oscillate, with a period of 64 years, above and below a long-term trend calculated using the time-integral of sunspot number anomalies as a forcing proxy. The ‘break-even’ sunspot number is 34. Above 34 the planet warms, below 34 the planet cools.
Graphs of results, the drivers, method, equation, data sources, history (hind cast to 1610), predictions (to 2037) and a possible explanation of why CO2 change (fossil fuel burning) is NOT not a driver are at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com.
Moderator Response:[JH] The use of "all-caps" is akin to shouting and is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy.
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howardlee at 21:44 PM on 16 March 2015So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…
Watchdog @ 25 - the dates have been refined since then. Also the idea of "antipodeal focusing" of impact energy has been ruled out by scientists who have looked at the association. See @9.
Watchdog @ 28 - You are correct - there's a large crater and it must have been at least a regional disaster. But as I explain in the article, when the evidence for its global reach and its synchronicity with the mass extinctions is examined, it comes up short. Absolutely it's a puzzle, but one that fits in with the fact that the earth has been peppered with impacts (admittedly few as large as Chicxulub) throughout the phanerozoic, and so far none has been linked to a mass extinction except Chicxulub. The point of the article was to highlight that the previously assumed global impacts of the Chicxulub impact are not supported by the geological evidence reported to date, whereas the Deccan eruptions do have very strong date and environmental evidence supporting their role.
As is so often the case, more research is needed, especially on the impact, its high-resolution absolute date, and it's effects.
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MA Rodger at 20:45 PM on 16 March 2015Arctic sea ice has recovered
bozzza @76.
I think the 'trend' is probably very small, far less than those weilding mention of it appear to imply, as I was myself doing @74. It is probably used more a cautionary note that there can be a very late daily maximum.
The daily data from JAXA fails to give a statistically significat trend (and I use 9-day averages to reduce the noise), yielding a rather large +7days per decade +/-15 days. The average for the JAXA data (2003-14) is day 72.4. The climatology from NSIDC (1981-2010) gives the maximum 9-day period as day 70. These two suggest a trend of 1.8 days per decade.
That said, I have elsewhere now bravely called this years maximum as having happened in February (coz I hate faffing about) which would put the 2015 maximum as a very early day 55.
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Leto at 17:52 PM on 16 March 2015Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
bozzza:
www.skepticalscience.com/Extreme-Flooding-In-2010-2011-Lowers-Global-Sea-Level.html
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bozzza at 17:23 PM on 16 March 2015Arctic sea ice has recovered
MA Rodger @ 74, How strong is the trend toward a later maximum freeze?
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bozzza at 15:36 PM on 16 March 2015IPCC is alarmist
The reason the IPCC projections are necessarily conservative is that all participating countries have to agree on the information included!
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bozzza at 15:20 PM on 16 March 2015Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
@ comment 5, is there any particular explanation for the drop in sea level circa 2011 in both the original graphic and the updated graphic? I looked up sunspots and there is some correlation but could that even make sense why it should?
Are there any other explanations that work better?
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bozzza at 14:18 PM on 16 March 2015Animals and plants can adapt
To Anthony @50: Don't know much about birds but mentioning "migration" reminded me of a doco I saw the other night(about "song-birds" I think!?!) that said birds in the Northern hemisphere and the Southern hemisphere act differently. I think there may be a climatic reason to it but I can't remember what it was!
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bozzza at 12:46 PM on 16 March 2015Animals and plants can adapt
Once desertification takes hold it is an irreversible process. That is not to say the rain won't fall elsewhere yet where and in what proportion?
The concept of non-linearity means there are no promises!
Who can tell me if the economic rise of China has yet been reflected in the Keeling curve, for instance?
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Wol at 12:24 PM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
Tom Curtis @ 16.
I apologise: my understanding of "disingenuous" was slightly incorrect in that I have always thought of it as a soft, slightly ironic way of advancing a proposition. Having looked it up I see it refers to insincere, dishonest, untruthful, false, deceitful, duplicitous, lying, mendacious;
hypocritical. Hence the apology.Far from what I intended.
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bozzza at 11:24 AM on 16 March 2015Review of Climatology versus Pseudoscience
The anti-cyclones coming off of Antarctica do not reach into the Australian continent like they once used to and it is a long term observation delivering decreased rainfall to the south of Western Australia. The wind patterns are changing in the Southern Hemisphere aswell --> PURE FACT!
Question: has the economic rise of China been reflected in the Keeling curve yet? DON'T PANIC YET WILL YA!!
Moderator Response:[JH] The use of "all-caps" is akin to shouting and is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy.
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bozzza at 10:40 AM on 16 March 2015Examining Hansen's prediction about the West Side Highway
It pains me to read that a scientist of any qualification could imagine a regular doubling of a rate of sea level rise i.e. a faster than exponential rate of change!
No wonder he corrected himself.. (He did correct himself, didn't he!??!)
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Tom Curtis at 09:30 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
Wol @15, I have read your post, and cannot see any coherent argument. Nor can I see any reason for your offensive comments regarding me. Therefore, other than to note that I have read it, I see no reason to respond.
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Wol at 09:13 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
@Tom Curtis:
You are right but IMO a little disingenuous. As a historical fact yes, the sun has made gas available at a tiny overall efficiency, but who cares?
One might as well argue that all the energy involved in laying down the deposits of the various elements that are used to make PV panels - moving tectonic plates, weathering, sedimentation and the like, should be included in PVs energy budget.
The sun's energy is, whichever way you look at it, essentially unlimited. Making full use of the small percentage that we can tap through wind, wave and solar is really only a matter of scale when you get down to it.
If it is "merely" a choice between an uninhabited earth and more expensive energy, perhaps the latter might be seen as the sensible choice. So many of the deniers' arguments centre on the cost side of the equation, and too many people spend time fruitlessly arguing on their terms.
I will omit mentioning population growth as it seems to be a taboo topic even here.
Moderator Response:[PS] All comments must conform to the comments policy and the closest to a taboo subject is politics. Provided your comments conform to all aspects, then they remain. However, it is hard to see how any discussion about the problem of too many wealthy high-energy consumers could progress without moving into politics.
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Jim Hunt at 08:00 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11A
OPOF @25 - The assorted area measures are based on a grid of sea ice concentration numbers. If a particular grid "square" has 75% concentration then 0.75 x the area of the grid "square" are added to the total. Sum over the entire Arctic.
"Wipneus" at the Arctic Sea Ice Forum calculates the area/extent metrics for a wide variety of satellites and algorithms. For an overview see:
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/resources/arctic-sea-ice-graphs/#Area
Volume is of course the best measure of the "amount" of sea ice left, but it is notoriously difficult to measure!
Bill @30 - Different folks use different satellites, different "algorithms" and different "masks" when doing their sums. On top of which the Scandinavians include the Great Lakes and other obscure places in their "Arctic" calculations! -
Tom Curtis at 07:50 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11A
billthefrog @30, sorry, my error. It appears my powers of observation are no better than yours ;)
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:16 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
Tom @12,
I agree. It is probably more appropriate to name the better alternatives to burning non-renewable gas the 'least consumptive ways of obtaining useable energy from the almost perpetually available energy sources', which would include tidal which is not solar related.
Humans simply need to adapt to living within the means of this amazing planet, and use that knowledge to live within the means of other planets. Regions with insufficient access to that type of virtually eternal energy supply are places humans should not bother trying to live in. And based on the history of locations inhabited that leaves just Antarctica as a place only for scientists and adventurers to explore. Why try to set up any other type of human habitation in a place like that?
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martin3818 at 07:10 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
And here the good news -
global-energy-related-emissions-of-carbon-dioxide-stalled-in-2014.html
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billthefrog at 07:07 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11A
Hi Tom,
I'm afraid I don't know what you mean when you say the Arctic Roos Extent Graphs use different measures.
The top RHS graph shows extent for each year from 2008 onwards.
The lower RHS graph shows extent for 2007, 2009-15 and the 1979-2006 average (+/- 1 stnd dev)
I've pasted these into Powerpoint in order to run a blink comparator, and that's the only difference I'm seeing.
Could you be a bit more specific please? (NB At this point, my wife would take great pleasure in pointing out that I once failed to find a pair of tracksuit bottoms in my kit bag. As the bag was otherwise empty, this speaks volumes regarding my powers of observation.)
cheers bill f
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Watchdog at 06:40 AM on 16 March 2015So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…
Similarities and varying hypotheses aside, some differences between modern birds and non-Avian Dinosaurs are significant. Non-avian dinosaurs, previously presented as being "Cold Blooded", were still not "Warm" Blooded as Birds and Mammals are. The enormity of Chicxulub (estimated to have possessed roughly 100 Million times the Energy of a 1 MegaTon H-Bomb) - cannot be ignored. It left a crater upwards of 190 miles in diameter! Imagine its Shockwave and Ejecta! Same thing with Deccan Traps Volcanic Activity - leaving more than 1 mile thick of basalt lava over 100's of 1000's of km2. Occurring at roughly the exact time as Chicxulub and the date of the End of the Dinosaurs! It's not an Either-Or matrix. It's both! Lastly. We know from today's measurements that even Much smaller volcanic activity lowers Earth's Temperature - because of its blockage of Solar Radiation reaching Earth. Both Major Events: Chicxulub and Deccan Traps, are clearly evidenced in the geological record as being virtually co-simutaneous. Both, obviously, had a Major impact on the Biota..
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Witkh13 at 06:10 AM on 16 March 2015It's the sun
I find it ironic how this group is only skeptical towards proof that violates in what they believe. Climate Change/Global Warming believers are eager to believe others are cherry picking data because their follow acolytes have been proven to cherry pick data and promote biased readings since the beginning.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/10/study-climate-change-is-nothing-new-in-fact-it-was-happening-the-same-way-1-4-billion-years-ago/
http://www.livetradingnews.com/orbital-variations-key-cause-earths-climate-change-98741.htm
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/solar.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/17jan_solcon/
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/scientists-Milankovitch-cycles-orbit-variations/2015/03/11/id/629605/
https://www.heartland.org/sites/all/modules/custom/heartland_migration/files/pdfs/24807.pdf
All the Climate Change/Global Warming acolytes have to answer to this is to cherry pick one major study and then imploy impropriety based on who funded the research. They use degrading, false, slanderous insults instead of actual proof that any impropriety actually occured.
As I said, the acolytes are merely reflecting their own lack of morals or ethics on everyone else. Apparently it is inconcievable to them that someone may actually have a backbone and tell a sponsor to go pound sand.
However, please continue with this elementary sandbox mentality. Those who are without the mental illness of statism are the opposite of impressed.
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Tom Curtis at 05:45 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11A
billthefrog, the Arctic Roos graphs to which I linked not only use different years on the upper panels compared to the lower panels, but also use a different measure of sea ice extent on the right hand upper and right hand lower panels. The do use the same measure of sea ice area on the left hand upper as on the left hand lower panels, however.
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Tom Curtis at 05:42 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
OPOF @9, I agree with your first point, and your last two. With respect to access, people at high latitudes have a very limited access to solar. In the extreme (above the Arctic circle) that access is limited to 3-6 months of the year, with the Sun being either below the horizon or very close to the horizon (where too much energy is lost to the atmosphere) for the rest of the year. Still, a vastly improved access situation than is the case for oil or gas.
With respect to the second, Photovoltaic systems degrade in efficiency over time, and will always need to be replaced after a period. Thermal solar also will suffer from plant degredation though at a slower rate (but higher capital cost to replace). These costs, however, are small relative to the purchase cost of fuel which you undoubtedly had in mind.
So, on these to points, I do no so much disagree with you but think some qualification is needed to make the statements entirely accurate.
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Tom Curtis at 05:33 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
Joel_Huberman @6, absent extensive space borne industries, the rate of extraction of solar energy is restricted to something in the order of 5*10^15 Watts. That represents 5% of the total solar energy falling on the Earth's surface after albedo adjustment and atmospheric absorption. We do not want to change overall albedo, of course, because that would also drive climate change. Nor do we want to extract all solar energy, for energy we extract by solar collectors is not available to drive photosynthesis to provide food, or maintain ecosystems.
For comparison, total human energy consumption for industrial usage is approximately 14.3*10^12 Watts. That means, allowing for a 10% efficiency in extraction, we can supply 35 times our current energy usage from solar power. That is vast, but distinctly finite.
Your point, which is correct, is that for all practical purposes, that supply is available till the end of human existence and so their is no practical end to the supply. However, that still leaves a practical limit on the energy supply in terms of extraction rate. That probably means that for my third paragraph, I should not have used total resource base (ie, 15*10^12*4.5*10^9 Wattyears for solar) but extraction rate, or short term reservoir limited extraction rate (ie, the resource we could theoretically extract over the next century or two centuries) to calculate efficiency. So calculated, both would improve the relative efficiency of gas, but not to a point where it compares favourably with even a small fraction of the solar value.
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JoeT at 05:12 AM on 16 March 2015So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…
Excellent article - thank you for putting it together.
One thing that always puzzled me -— why in the world would avian dinosaurs survive but the non-avian ones become extinct. Does the Deccan trap model offer any insight?
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CTG at 04:38 AM on 16 March 2015So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…
I have always been skeptical of the impact hypothesis. It's interesting that these developments have not made it to the mainstream media, which always talk about the Chicxulub impact being responsible as if it were as certain as the law of gravity.
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billthefrog at 04:35 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11A
@ OPOF
Tom C has already provided a link to the Arctic Roos (Regional Ocean Observing System) operated by the Nansen Environmental & Remote Sensing Centre in Bergen, and this shows side-by-side area/extent graphs. (There is a need to exercise a little care, as Arctic Roos posts 2 pairs of charts. One pair shows each year from 2008 onward, but the other pair has 2008 replaced by 2007.)
If you want to play about with some numbers yourself, I would look at the NSIDC monthly records. As will be obvious from the link, there is an individual file for each month. The monthly average extent and area numbers for every year from 1979 onwards are contained therein.
You correctly observed that need for measurement of sea ice extent is rooted in history. Basically it would give ship captains an idea of where to avoid. The NSIDC FAQ gives a good description of the difference between area and extent, and also describes (in outline) the calculations involved.
cheers bill f
P.S. I have just noticed the shocking apostrophe typo in the final paragraph of my post #14. Am now on the way to turn myself in to* the punctuation police, who will, I feel sure, cut off my privileges. (*As opposed to "turning myself into the punctuation police".)
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uncletimrob at 04:21 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
@ 5 Tom_Curtis. Thank you, I hadn't thought of efficiencies in those terms, only in terms of our conversion into electricity. It's very good to read such insightful stuff.
Tim
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Watchdog at 04:04 AM on 16 March 2015So what did-in the dinosaurs? A murder mystery…
Chicxulub, Deccan Traps & K/T Extinction = Approx 65MYA
Tungusta = c.3 to 3 MegaTonTNT and Flattened 2,000 km2 forest Chicxulub = 1.30x10^8 MT-TNT = c.10^8 times Tungusta Energy Chicxulub Impact Angle = 90°
Deccan Traps = 1,500,000 km2 Lava Flows
India's Global-position on Earth 65MYA = Opposite side from Chiculub
IMO Chicxulub caused Deccan Traps Volcanic Activity.
CONCLUSION? BOTH Chicxulub & Deccan Traps had V.Serious Impacts upon Life/Climate from: (A) Widespread Impact Zone and (B) Magma Fields, and, (C) Particulate Emissions Blocking Sun's Radiation - Which in turn caused (D) Global Freezing; thus killing all Dinosaurs as well v.strongly affecting: Plankton, Tropical Invertebrae, Land Plants, Etc. -
One Planet Only Forever at 02:25 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
Tom Curtis @ 5,
In addition to your efficiency comparison there are many other consideration that favour solar over burning extracted non-renewable gases:
- Solar supply is essentialy perpetual, non-renewable gas isn't
- Everyone can develop to benefit from solar energy, people have to fight over who gets to benefit from non-renewable gas
- Once a solar energy system is set up no new 'purchase' is required, the price of non-renewable gas will inevitably keep going up especially of all impacts have to be paid for upfront leading to more intense fighting over the benefits
- Burning gas still generates excess CO2. It is only half as bad as burning. So it is not a solution.
- Extracting, transporting, and burning non-renewable gas also produces many other unacceptable impacts including NOx and SOx.
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sailrick at 02:11 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
Thanks for the replies. Joel - about what I figured, science learns and moves on.
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:37 AM on 16 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11A
Thanks for the additional pointers again Tom,
What you mention about what happens in May being a more significant indication of what the minimum extent will be than what is happening at this time of year is very easy to see in the NSIDC record of 2012. That year had a large Arctic sea ice extent into May.
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Joel_Huberman at 23:57 PM on 15 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
Sailrick @ 2 & 3, Uncletimrob @ 4: My opinion, upon having skimmed through the paper by Stephens et al., is that the paper is an excellent example of the scientific process at work. The paper builds on current climate science and adds more precise measurements of albedo in the two hemispheres. The authors point out that the albedos of the two hemispheres are more closely matched than models easily predict--but that's not surprising, since models are just models and will always need finer tweaking. There's nothing in this paper that in any way invalidates any aspect of current climate science.
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Joel_Huberman at 23:42 PM on 15 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
Tom Curtis @ 5: Thanks for your very insightful view of energy efficiency. I'll promote that view in all my future efforts to educate. With regard to the Sun's resource size, I think we might as well label it infinite, because the Sun will outlast the planet Earth and will far outlast humans on Earth.
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Tom Curtis at 23:24 PM on 15 March 2015Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
DangerousDan @274, CO2 in beer and some softdrinks (ie, brewed Ginger Beer) comes from fermentation, and as such was originally drawn from the atmosphere by photosynthesis. Because they are originally drawn from the atmosphere, their return to the atmosphere merely completes the cycle. It does not increase atmospheric concentrations.
CO2 in carbonated drinks, however, may come from a variety of sources including fossil CO2, by cracking CO2 from the air by refrigeration, or from by products of other processes. The Coca Cola company, in particular, have stated that most of their CO2 used in drinks comes from by products of other processes, and hence do not constitute additional emissions to those other processes.
Finally, even if all the CO2 in soft drinks was additional emissions, it would constitute a tiny proportion of total emissions. Roy Spencer estimates total emissions from soft drinks as 1.46 million tonnes of CO2 per year. For comparison, the annual emission from fossil fuels 28.6 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. That is, soft drinks would contribute 0.005% of the problem if (contrary to fact) they used no recycled CO2.
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Tom Curtis at 22:20 PM on 15 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
uncletimrob @1, people who say that solar is less efficient than gass are very confused. All energy used on Earth except geothermal comes from the Sun. It may come directly as in solar. It may come indirectly as in wind power (where the winds get their energy from the Sun). For natural gas, the energy came from the Sun long ago. It was converted into chemical energy at about 10% efficiency by photosynthesis. However, most (greater than 99.9%) of the resulting chemical energy was wasted in respiration either by the plant or plant eaters. The miniscule amount of chemical that remained was buried and in a process that lost still more of the energy, converted to gas. The gas was then pumped out of the ground, and distributed (requiring more energy) until finally we get to burn it. Clearly, as an energy source, gas is far more inefficient than solar.
I imagine those who support fossil fuel use into the future will object to a full energy cycle calculation of energy efficiency. They will consider most of the energy efficiency as a spent cost, and therefore irrelevant. A bonus even, as when we burn fuels we are obtaining energy from yesterdays Sun, today.
However, even in those terms solar is far more efficient than any fossil fuel. The simple fact is that whether we use solar or fossil fuels, we are using a fuel with a finite resource base. If you want to calculate efficiency, the only efficiency that matters is the proportion of the finite resource base used to obtain that energy. And the fact is that the finite resource base for solar is so large that it is effectively free for the taking. Each kilowatt hour of solar generated at 10% efficiency of incoming solar radiation represents a far, far smaller proportion of the total resource base of solar power than each kilowatt hour of electricity generated from gas does of the total fossil fuel resource base.
Again, fossil fuel boosters won't be happy with that estimate of efficiency. The reason is that they want to impose an almost irrelevant accounting measure to make their preferred technology look good.
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DangerousDan at 19:31 PM on 15 March 2015Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
Co2 from Man made drinks. Is co2 from say beer. A natural co2 emission? or a human emision. Or does it change after it is consumed. Some co2 is absorbed and expelled by the lungs. The remainder is belched back out?
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uncletimrob at 18:30 PM on 15 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
@3 Sailrick
"And then there's Physics" blog has come interesting commentary on the albedo paper here:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/03/11/new-albedo-paper/
I'm no expert so will leave the argments to those who are, but the blog is worth a look.
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sailrick at 17:29 PM on 15 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
obviously the line from the comment is hyperbolic. the commentor thinking it's another proverbial nail in the coffin of AGW.
I read most of Judith's article about the paper, but am not knowledgeable enough to critique it.
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sailrick at 16:36 PM on 15 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
I came across this in a comment at an NPR article " a new paper appeared that found a colossal error in the climate models"
It refers to a post at Judith Curry's blog, about a new paper on albedo.
Graeme L. Stephens, Denis O’Brien, Peter J. Webster, Peter Pilewski, Seiji Kato, and Jui-lin Li are the authors
Link to manuscript: http://webster.eas.gatech.edu/Papers/albedo2015.pdf
And I was wondering if you are doing an article on it.
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uncletimrob at 15:48 PM on 15 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11B
@ Will natural gas dim solar’s shine? The technology of turning heat into electricity is mature and with a maximunm efficiency of around 60% for gas fired stations IIRC. In comparison PV technology is not so mature or so efficient and there will need to be further advances in storage technology before PV can really contribute a bigger slice of our energy needs. Personally I believe that here in OZ we are well placed for PV to have a bigger input than it currently has.
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SpaceCow at 12:53 PM on 15 March 2015They changed the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'
=( NASA just came out and disproved your definition of Global Warming/Climate Change.
"Global warming: the increase in Earth’s average surface temperature due to rising levels of greenhouse gases.Climate change: a long-term change in the Earth’s climate, or of a region on Earth."
http://pmm.nasa.gov/education/articles/whats-name-global-warming-vs-climate-changeModerator Response:[TD] A) "Disproved" is inaccurate/wrong/odd.
B) Please read that page you linked to, then actually read this Skeptical Science post. Really, read them. Both. Carefully.
C) Feel free to comment again, correcting yourself.
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chriskoz at 12:36 PM on 15 March 2015Scientists link Arctic warming to intense summer heatwaves in the northern hemisphere
According to decade old teachings by Kerry Emanuel, the N Atlantic tropical cyclones supposed to increase in intensity. See e.g. Emanuel 2005 showing increase in hurricane power dissipation index (PDI) in all cyclone regions since 1970. Emanuel 2005 found strong correlation of PDI with regional sea surface temperature.
So, a clarification is needed what "decline in storminess" means here. Is it in both frequency and intensity? Certainly the storms in question cannot be cyclones/tropical storms because that would contradict Kerry's findings.
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Tom Curtis at 12:24 PM on 15 March 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11A
OPOF @25, sea ice area is also reported, and shows a similar dip to that in sea ice extent:
(Source)
It is, however, not at record low values indicating that the ice is more compact than in 2007.
To be quite honest, however, the minimum variation in extent and area does not occur until mid May. Until that point, any difference between different years can be washed out by occurrences in mid May - ie, they are almost irrelevant for predicting September minimums. So while it is interesting that sea ice extent is at record low values, and sea ice area is at near record low values for the time of year, that is still consistent with a September sea ice extent greater than last year, and probably will not result in a new September sea ice minimum.
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