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Comments 3201 to 3250:

3201. sekwisniewski at 01:55 AM on 3 September 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      Replying to 311:

      1. You can't add opportunity emissions to lifecycle emissions, because it violates the conservation of mass, if those lifecycle emissions are then used to calculate physical emissions. 

      2. Another counterfactual to maintaining nuclear is replacing it with a mix of fossil and renewable sources. Fossil backup of renewables is suggested in Abbott (2012). Renewables replacing nuclear wouldn't reduce emissions either according to your logic, which does not seem to be a good framing.

      3. Yes, but when nuclear covers new demand opportunity emissions of = 0.

      4. Absolutely, we've got to take the overall picture into account, which is studied in the field of energy systems modeling.

3202. Bob Loblaw at 00:05 AM on 3 September 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      A few problems with that list, sekwisniewski.

      1. It doesn't matter whether you label them as "nuclear' or "fossil". The emissions end up in the atmosphere.
      2. If nuclear is being built to replace existing nuclear, then it doesn't replace fossil-fuel-based capacity and does nothing to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
      3. Other sources coming on line now can also cover future demand.
      4. Yes. The calculations need to cover all sources of electricity, and all the CO2 emissions that are produced if a particular path is chosen. Cherry picking a compartmentalized view - where you only count emissions when a plant is operating (e.g., wind vs. nuclear) and you ignore how this fits into the overall picture - is a bad approach.
3203. sekwisniewski at 23:50 PM on 2 September 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      A few problems with the opportunity emissions of nuclear:

      1. if they are added to lifecycle emissions, they'd need to be subtracted from fossil emisions,
      2. nuclear may be built to replace aging nuclear (repowering),
      3. nuclear coming online in the future may cover new demand arising from clean electrification,
      4. any other source should have opportunity emissions added too.
3204. rip71749 at 11:09 AM on 2 September 2022
      What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet?
      

      It's hard to be optimistic.  Record temperatures, record fires (Siberia burns year round and Russia started flaring and burning their natural gas that they don't want to send to Europe because they can't shut down their wells), record floods, shrinking albedo and record amounts of fossil fuels used.  Countries are trying to find new sources of fossil fuels.  I live in southern Calif and the temp yesterday was 112oF and probably warmer today and all next week, really hot!  China is turning more to coal, probably India too.  Clearly the world has to work together to solve these problems, and then you look at the top 4 fossil fuel emitters - China, US, India and Russia.  It's hard to imagine those 4 ever working together.  6' by 2100 sounds conservative to me.

3205. Bob Loblaw at 10:22 AM on 2 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      Thanks, Baerbel, for that information on arXiv. It indeed seems to be simply a place for people to upload papers with little regard to quality. They may or may not be papers that are submitted elsewhere. Calling something a "publication" because one puts a copy on arXiv is hubris at the extreme.

      On their "About" page, arXiv states the following (emphasis mine):

      Material is not peer-reviewed by arXiv - the contents of arXiv submissions are wholly the responsibility of the submitter and are presented “as is” without any warranty or guarantee. By hosting works and other materials on this site, arXiv, Cornell University, and their agents do not in any way convey implied approval of the assumptions, methods, results, or conclusions of the work.

      The main arXiv page actually has a warning related to Covid-19 submissions (again, emphasis mine):

      Important: e-prints posted on arXiv are not peer-reviewed by arXiv; they should not be relied upon without context to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information without consulting multiple experts in the field.

      I agree with MA Rodger's initial evaluation of the merit of these "publications" - not worth the time to look at.

3206. Bob Loblaw at 10:05 AM on 2 September 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      The mention of "opportunity costs" ties into what I suspected may be leading to the differences in estimates/opinions here.

      "Opportunity cost" is a common term in economics, and may need a little explaining. Let's say that I have $1000 sitting in a bank account, making 3% interest. One point of view is "hey, that's great! In a year, I'll have $1030! What a good investment!" But if a different investment vehicle will turn that $1000 into $1050 in a year, then I am actually losing out on $20 of lost income - $20 of money that could have been mine next year if I had switched investments. Although I think I am making $30 in the year, I have lost the opportunity to make another $20 - the "opportunity cost" of my current choice of investment.

      What Michael Sweet is saying is that the "cost" of nuclear needs to include the lost opportunity of reducing carbon emissions while we wait for nuclear to be built. The carbon emissions in the next 30 years will be either 30 years of wind built today, or 10 years of fossil fuels plus 20 years of nuclear if we say "but direct emissions from nuclear are as good or better than wind".

      Going back to the $1000 investment, are we further ahead if we invest at 3% for 30 years, or nothing for 10 years and 5% for 20 years? You need to include the opportunity cost of "nothing for 10 years" to make an accurate comparison.

      It's kind of like Popeye's friend Wimpy: "I'll gladly pay you next Tuesday for a hamburger today".

3207. wayne19608 at 09:05 AM on 2 September 2022
      What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet?
      

      MA Rodger, I think ive read that in numerous postings by Hansen and others over time. You seem to confirm at least partially with respect to 13mya

3208. MA Rodger at 08:40 AM on 2 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      There was mention @10 of previous SkS words on van Wijngaarden and Happer. This 'mention' may refer to the treatment one of their un-published papers got in this thread from a year ago.

      The top 3 listed 'publications' are the only ones that have these two authors van Wijngaarden and Happer, their first cooperation writing since they were doing physics back thirty years ago.

      These 3 listed 'publications' seem rather odd to me. It is as though some other un-attributed authors have contributed to the work but who then had no input into the final version. I say that as many of the numbers presented are not entirely wrong) but the way the papers are written sets them out to give the wrong conclusion. And there are rather too many inconsistencies suggesting too many cooks.

      Thus, for example, the third in the list tells us it is a "a summary of a more detailed paper on radiative forcing by greenhouse gases that the authors plan to publish in the near future." And while there are two different titles given for this "more detailed paper" of which there is no sign, they are presumably referring to the top two in the list, all three being pretty similar in their coverage but strangely different in how they say it (and none of which get published). And strangely this 'third' paper 'summary' gives an odd message in its abstract that doesn't really match that given the full account. I call the message in the abstract 'odd' as it tells us not to be scared by methane because it is adding a forcing only one-tenth the CO2 forcing (which agrees with the NOAA AGGI numbers of the last decade) and that together they are adding a climate forcing of +0.05Wm^-2/y (which is 50% higher than the NOAA AGGI numbers of the last decade) but this will apparently only increase global temperatures by +0.012ºC/y (this about half the warming rate of the last decade).

      Within the full text, this message is lost with the message being that CO2 is far more powerful a GHG than methane but that the biggest power of a GHG is when it is at low concentration which is why small increases of methane have such a big effect molecule-for-molecule that the higher concentrations of CO2, this being entirely true. But so what?

      Untangling the totality of all this strangeness would be quite a task but given the papers are evident garbage, such a debunking task isn't really merited.

3209. michael sweet at 07:26 AM on 2 September 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      John Oneil:

      In your post at 392 you claimed:

      "'Over the last 50 years, countries that adopted nuclear power consistently reduced emissions intensity, by more than three times as much as those that went without nuclear."'

      Your link was apparently not peer reviewed.  Your most recent links suggest similar reductions between nuclear and renewables.  My cite found renewables resulted in less emissions.  As I said at 296, I doubt we will agree on his topic since different papers reach different conclusions.

       Your citations only address emissions during the running of nuclear plants, the opportunity cost emissions of nuclear are about 10 times the total emissions of wind and solar due to the very long build times of nuclear.  They are calculated in Jacobson 2009, linked above at 304, and are the main reason Jacobson rejects nuclear as a future power source.  In addition, since it takes 10-14 years on average to build a single nuclear plant we would see no nuclear power from proposed plants before 2035.  That is after all electricity should be converted to low catbon.  2035 is too late.

      Nuclear is too expensive, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.

3210. BaerbelW at 06:43 AM on 2 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      Just to clarify what ArXiv is and isn't, here is the beginning of the Wikipedia entry for it:

      arXiv (pronounced "archive"—the X represents the Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩)[1] is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not peer review. It consists of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, electrical engineering, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, mathematical finance and economics, which can be accessed online.  [...]

      So, it's a somewhat moderated archive but nothing close to a peer reviewed journal and having papers listed there, doesn't really tell you anything about their quality.

      As it was mentioned upthread, there is a successor to or at least archive of Beall's list of potentially predatory publishers available at https://beallslist.net/

      Hope this helps!

3211. Bob Loblaw at 06:05 AM on 2 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      A followup to my own comment @14:

      Looking a bit further into arxiv.org, I was able to find the two papers that van Wijngaarden lists on his publication record. There are also two more there, also co-authored with Happer.

      None of the four give an indication - on the main page for each providing the abstract, or in the linked PDF files - that they have been submitted to or accepted in any actual journals. I don't know if this is normal for arxiv.org or not.

3212. Bob Loblaw at 00:08 AM on 2 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      Cowpuncher:

      Both Happer and van Wijingaarden are physicists with no real background in climate science.

      From van Wijingaarden's profile page at York University, his research area is:

      Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics

      High-precision laser spectroscopy; Laser cooling and atom trapping; Ultracold atoms, Bose-Einstein condensation, and quantum information; Optical lattices; Environmental pollutant monitoring and climate change.

      I highlighted the "climate change" part. It is not really his area of expertise. His publication list shows several recent climate-related titles. Looking at the titles, some are simple data analysis papers. Looking at some of the "journals",  I notice that two of the papers with Happer are listed as "Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics arXiv". As far as I can tell, this is not an actual journal - just a place for people to post "papers". The PDFs are hosted on van Wijingaarden's York U web site, and give no indication that they have actually been published anywhere. They did not show up when I searched on arxiv.org.

      Another paper is listed as "accepted Open Atmospheric Journal (2016)". Also links to a PDF on his own web page. I can find a journal called "Open Atmospheric Science Journal", but that paper does not appear in a search for "Wijingaarden" on their web page. Downloading the PDF from the YorkU site shows that the full title of the journal really is "Open Atmospheric Science Journal", and it lists Bentham Open as the publisher. Bentham Science Publishers has a page on Wikipedia, which notes:

      Bentham Open, its open access division, has received criticism for questionable peer-review practices as well as invitation spam; it was listed as a "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open access publisher" in Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory publishers, before the list went defunct.

      Some of the "publications" give no journal name at all.

      To put it bluntly - that list of "publications" is padded to the extreme. You may wish to believe that these "papers" represent some radically-innovative evidence that the field of climate science is keep the truth hidden. It is much more likely that they are crap, and the only way that the authors can "publish" them is to place them in locations where literally any old crap is accepted.

3213. Bob Loblaw at 23:12 PM on 1 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      Rosross @ 4:

      Do not confuse "science" and "stuff that people pretend is science". Yes, a lot of crap that people do and push as part of their agenda is crap, and not deserving of being call science proper. But that is the trick - just because someone wraps up their crap in sciencey terms does not make it science. I can call my Ford Pinto a Lamborghini Countach, but that does not make it one.

      The fact is that using the terms that come from science helps the shysters sell their swamp land in Florida. People are fooled, because of their lack of knowledge and background in science. It looks sciencey, and without the critical thinking skills that are discussed in this blog post, people get fooled.

      And even "scientists" that have successful careers are sometimes fooled. A successful academic career can result from publishing a lot of poor quality work. Publish or perish. Quantity, not quality. Sometimes they just want to fool others to move their career along. Other times, they fool themselves into thinking their long list of publications in poor quality journals actually represents "good science".

      Hopefully, the information in the blog post helps people recognize what really is good science from the boatloads of crap that are sold under the "science" sign.

3214. MA Rodger at 21:06 PM on 1 September 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      John ONeill @306,

      You do your reputation no favours when you say of Wagner (2021) 'CO2 emissions of nuclear power and renewable energies: a statistical analysis of European and global data' that you "don't believe the authors have any connection to the nuclear industry." You appear not to even have noted that there was but one author. And had you checked you would find Frederick Wagner was an emeritus professor of Plasma Physics, so deeply connected to the technology, and that his commentary (eg here) shows his connections also to the industry. But that doesn't make his paper unreliable although it is good to read such work before nailing its colours to your own masthead, even if as in this case the battle is against a pretty easy target, which Sovacool et al (2020) certainly is. Maybe you have not noted that presented @303 is another swip at Sovacool et al., namely Fell et al (2020) 'Nuclear power and renewable energy are both associated with national decarbonization'.

3215. TVC15 at 18:42 PM on 1 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      @8 Cowpuncher
      "By breathing out, we are simply returning to the air the same CO2 that was there to begin with".
      
      Source: Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?

3216. TVC15 at 18:40 PM on 1 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      @8 Cowpuncher
      
      Happer has a long list of touted climate myths.
      
      Climate Misinformation by Source: William Happer

3217. John ONeill at 18:17 PM on 1 September 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      This 2021 paper refutes the conclusions of Sovacool et al. I don't believe the authors have any connection to the nuclear industry.

      link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-01508-7.pdf

      CO2 emissions of nuclear power and renewable energies:
      a statistical analysis of European and global data

      'Our results are in complete contradiction to a recent publication (Sovacool et al. in Nat Energy 5:928–935,2020. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-020-00696-3). The authors of this paper conclude that nuclear power does not reduce the CO2 emissions, but renewable power efficiently does. In addition, they argue that these two technologies crowd out each other. The possible reason for their claims may result from a specific conditioning of the data. In contrast, our analysis clearly confirms the adequacy of both nuclear and renewable power generation.'

3218. Eclectic at 17:39 PM on 1 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      Rosross @4 :

      You are certainly correct - to some extent.   ( I agree with "OPOF" on that. )

      OPOF makes good points on the unhappy level of corruption/marketization of modern science.  It is something which a cynic would regard as difficult to avoid in this modern commercial world.

      #  Nevertheless, Rosross, the modern science system is like modern democracy  ~ far from perfect, yet better than any alternative so far tried.   If you have a more perfect (and practical !) system in mind, then it would be most interesting to read your description of it.   (Doubtless you know the old joke about the overly-critical voyeur.)

       

      Cowpuncher @8  ~ sorry, but your vanWijngaarden publications link shows as "highly insecure" and my computer won't proceed.   If you have some excellently salient points (from Wijngaarden & colleagues) then please summarize those points.

      Happer and vanW have received some earlier attention here at SkS  ~ and as far as I recall, they were not making any notable advance in climate science.   Basically, theirs was a re-hash of already-understood material . . . plus a large dob of bizarre motivated reasoning (but not as extreme as Lindzen's stuff).    ~Motivated reasoning strongly influenced by political extremism, I mean.   In other words, very poor science.

3219. TVC15 at 17:11 PM on 1 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      Thank you Guest Author for this well written piece!  I wish everyone on this planet had a copy to read! 

3220. Cowpuncher at 16:16 PM on 1 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      Thanks scaddenp.  I checked both your references and I didnt see "junk" in Happer's comment about CO2 being breathed out.  Also the list of "myths" are points of view shared by many scientists.  Some appear wrong, others sensible.  I suggest checking out  https://wvanwijngaarden.info.yorku.ca/publications/  It seems to me to include studies that deserves to be published and not shunned from a political perspective.  As I commented on the original paper it seems only some "new discoveries" can get published.

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] Link activated.
      
      The web software here does not automatically create links. You can do this when posting a comment by selecting the "insert" tab, selecting the text you want to use for the link, and clicking on the icon that looks like a chain link. Add the URL in the dialog box.
      
      

      Note: the link does not seem problematic to my browser (later comment by eclectic notwithstanding).

3221. scaddenp at 13:52 PM on 1 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      Cowpuncher - dont know van Wijingaarden, but in Happer case, yep, it is really hard to get your politically-motivated junk published. Getting basic errors through peer-review is a tough process.  If you have somehow missed Happer's problems - then try here skepticalscience.com/Evidence-Squared-10-Debunking-William-Happer-carbon-cycle-myth.html and here skepticalscience.com/William_Happer_arg.htm

3222. Cowpuncher at 13:03 PM on 1 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      I am interested in the quote:  "Scientists are incentivized to find new discoveries, errors in each other’s work, or disconfirm existing knowledge, not to go with the flow. Individual scientists may dissent from the consensus... ".  In light of this why have scientists like van Wijngaarden and Happer found it difficult to have their work published?  Should this section of the paper not elaborated on the role that politics plays in science?

3223. One Planet Only Forever at 12:37 PM on 1 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      Rosross @4,

      In a limited evidence based way I agree with you. A clear case is the ways that the 'science' of marketing is abused.

      There are many harmful misleading marketers. Regarding climate science they have misled people to delay the rate of increased awareness and understanding of climate science. They want to delay learning among the general (voting) population because that learning would lead to more rapid corrections of what has become popular and profitable. Those corrections, and making amends for harm done, would be disadvantageous to the misleading marketers and their misled fans.

3224. DK_ID at 12:27 PM on 1 September 2022
      What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet?
      

      I had read of this study. I wish the expected minimum of GL melt were added to the expected SLR from land glaciers and thermal expansion plus an expected contribution from Antarctica. I believe SLR is tracking at or above IPCC maximum expectatons which would give 3-ft by 2100 without much contribution from the big ice sheets. The ARs have started icluded a footnote re the unlikely but feasible collapse of portions of the big ice sheets. But isn't collapsing how the Laurentide sheet left so quickly?

      Hansen, et al 2015 showed that melt water from the GIS could slow the overtuning current resulting in more warmth staying in the Southern Ocean at the same depth as the grounding line for Antarctic draining glaciers. DeConto Pollard 2015 modeled collapse mechanisms (structural instabilities) of tall ice cliffs produced by melting and calving of those glaciers.

      So I'd think the bad news from GL means bad news for the west and east Antarctic Ice Sheets and expected SLR by 2100 could be closer to 6' in a moderate emissions scenario. The question is, how much of that is already locked in? I understand the compulsion to not be too unconservative, but maybe it's time for a realistic look at what we are really expecting.

3225. rosross at 10:47 AM on 1 September 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      This is an excellent article on what science should be, what science claims to be, what science at its very best must be, but the reality is that in this day and age and for much too long, this is not what the scientific system of enquiry is. That is the problem.
      
      This essay is like the Church in  centuries past claiming what it is, while ignoring the corruption and distortions inherent in its system. 
      
      Much of modern science is not science by any stretch of imagination and the vested agendas who use it as tool and weapon, make it impossible for it to be real science, good science. If only the scientific system of enquiry were as the writers so breathlessly describes. But it is not.

3226. sekwisniewski at 03:59 AM on 1 September 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      "Who do you believe?" - wow, so much science! What is going here, folks? Is this some kind of bait for trolls? This thread does not look like a serious effort to summarize knowledge on nuclear, so I don't think anyone will respond.

      Moderator Response:

      [PS] As stated in the article, the primary purpose of this thread is to keep nuclear discussions away from other threads for people who want to talk about it. No one on the SksSc team has any particular expertise in the science of nuclear power though some frequent commentators here are well versed.
      
      SksSc would welcome guest contributions that are willing to focus on peer-reviewed papers. We would especially welcome any peer-reviewed rebuttals of Abbott. We are not particularly interested in the opinions of self-proclaimed experts that are not willing to back their assertions with reviewed references.

      Other sites are definitely a better place to discuss the economics, safety and politics of nuclear power.

3227. MA Rodger at 23:10 PM on 31 August 2022
      What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet?
      

      wayne @1,

      I'm not sure of which 'geological record' you are looking at, but I would reckon the tectonocally-changing 'geology' itself had some impact on the relative global temperature & thus sea level back when CO2 was last up at 425ppm.

      The last time we saw 425ppm would be back 13 million years ago when the Arctic had no ice caps. The Arctic began getting seriously icy about 3 million years ago, apparently due to the Panama Isthmus forming to connect N & S America. There was also a widening of Drakes Passage at this time. The climate went through some interesting periods at this time 3my ago, with a period of warming with rising CO2 (but not quite back up to 425ppm) leading on to cooling & the icy Arctic.

3228. michael sweet at 22:36 PM on 31 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      Sekwisniewski:

      Analysis of lifecycle emissions of nuclear power compared to renewables by scientists generally indicate that nuclear plants emit 5-10 times as much carbon dioxide as renewables.  Nuclear industry sources find emissions are comparable.  Who do you believe?.

      Jacobson 2009 reviews the data at that time.   Since 2009 renewables have reduced their emissions while nuclear has not changed.  In addition, Jacobson calculates emissions due to opportunity cost.  

      It takes about 2-4 years to plan and build wind and solar plants.  It takes about 10-14 years to plan and build a nuclear plant.  For the entire time you are building the nuclear plant you have to use fossil fuels.  You save much more carbon by building the rapidly completed renewable energy plants.

      Since 2009 the cost of renewables has plummeted.  Nuclear costs have risen.  Nuclear reduces carbon much slower and at much greater cost.  For me that is not "on par" with wind and solar.   Some people do not care about time and cost and feel nuclear is comparable.

3229. wayne19608 at 22:05 PM on 31 August 2022
      What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet?
      

      I thought I read that at 425ppm global sea rise would be 25m just based on the geological record?

3230. sekwisniewski at 21:09 PM on 31 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      Both renewables and nuclear decarbonize.

      Fell, H., Gilbert, A., Jenkins, J. D., & Mildenberger, M. (2022). Nuclear power and renewable energy are both associated with national decarbonization. Nature Energy, 7(1), 25-29. [Link]

      ...which is a response to flawed analysis found here:

      Sovacool, B. K., Schmid, P., Stirling, A., Walter, G., & MacKerron, G. (2020). Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power. Nature Energy, 5(11), 928-935. [Link]

      Nuclear is low carbon, on par with wind and solar, right?

3231. scvblwxq1 at 13:13 PM on 31 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      Your welcome. The US wants to bring factories back from China. They could put some in Brazil in exchange for keeping the rainforest and the factories could provide employment for those that were converting the rainforest into farms and probably many others. Plus the US companies would get cheap labor.

3232. Bob Loblaw at 07:47 AM on 31 August 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      I really like this post, too.

      One of the things that might raise eyebrows is the claim that with science "bad ideas are weeded out and good ideas are built upon". In this sentence, the words "bad" and "good" have a fairly specific context. As described later in the article, this is not about moral good or moral bad, or good/bad as personal preferences. It is about ideas that enable us to make good evaluations of the world around us - evaluations that help us understand and predict how the world works (whether we like it or not).

      Good ideas also gives us clues to the uncertainty in our understanding. People who are dogmatically certain about their viewpoints are not being very scientific. (And, yes, the IPCC looks at uncertainties.)

      One of the ways that science works is by looking at competing explanations from the point of view of "what is the difference in the predictions they make?" If two ideas result in no differences, then they are functionally identical. Only by their differences can you tell them apart - and then going out and observing what actually happens will tell you which idea is more likely to be correct. A track record of accurate predictions gives confidence.

      And we prefer explanations that can make a lot of accurate predictions with fewer assumptions. If every prediction fails and requires adding new assumptions to fit the observations, then the explanation is not very good.

      With good scientific ideas, we can get reliable predictions about things we have not yet seen or measured - what will happen if we add more CO2 to the atmosphere, where to dig to find gold, how to make a faster airplane, what will be most the likely outcome of a particular medical treatment, etc. We know that falling off a tall building is dangerous because we truly do understand that gravity still works.

3233. nigelj at 07:37 AM on 31 August 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      Excellent commentary. I dont recall learning anything  in school about the scientific method or the purpose of science or logical thinking skills. The cynic in me thinks this is because the education system didn't want young people learning analytical skills, and  thinking too much for themselves, and therefore maybe challenging the teachers!

3234. One Planet Only Forever at 05:14 AM on 31 August 2022
      A next-level water crisis: Colorado River Basin faces Tier 2 restrictions
      

      Jimspy,

      Agreed that self interest governed by the pursuit of increased awareness and understanding of what is harmful is essential to sustainably improve things (truly make things better).

      The best 'certain to be viable' futures for humanity appear to require all humans to be governed by the pursuit of learning and accepting the diversity of ways to be human that fit into, are sustainable parts of, the robust diversity of life on this amazing planet.

      Everyone self governing that way would be great ... But that is unlikely (a fantasy). Some people will likely need to be governed by others to limit the harm they cause in pursuit of personal benefit.

3235. BaerbelW at 04:51 AM on 31 August 2022
      Reposted articles from Thinking is Power
      

      Updated the overview page for our Thinking is Power reposts with a mention of Melanie Trecek-King's highly recommended article Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters

3236. jimspy at 04:50 AM on 31 August 2022
      A next-level water crisis: Colorado River Basin faces Tier 2 restrictions
      

      "Self interested pursuit of benefit" is OK as long as it is informed by the human capacity for abstraction and the realization that altruism, or even pseudo-altruism, can inure to one's benefit.  It's called "enlightened self-interest." I fear we as a species have been losing that quality of late.  

3237. One Planet Only Forever at 04:42 AM on 31 August 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      This is another excellent presentation by Melanie.

      That should be a reasonable common sense understanding. I think the following are related reasonable common sense understandings:

      • Evidence reduces the range of reasonable explanations for what is going on.
      • To be sustainable, explanations have to be consistent with all of the available evidence (observations and information).
      • When reliable new evidence that is not consistent with a developed understanding emerges, the understanding needs to be updated to be consistent with all of the available, now expanded, reliable evidence.
      • Ethical and moral understanding needs to be fundamentally governed by the pursuit of increased awareness and understanding of actions that are harmful to others with the objective being to sustainably improve circumstances for others and make amends for harm done.
      • Scientific discovery of harm done is an important part of moral and ethical development. And morals and ethics should be expected to evolve as more is learned. But people benefiting from understandably harmful beliefs and actions can be expected to resist learning to be less harmful and more helpful (lots of evidence confirms that understanding).
3238. Likeitwarm at 03:19 AM on 31 August 2022
      CO2 effect is saturated
      

      @MA Rodger 657

      Again, my apologies for going off topic.

      Thanks for the lengthy and indepth explanation.  I don't think I have seen such an explanation anywhere else I've looked.  I think it should be more prominently displayed for those like myself who do not understand how GHG's work to warm the atmosphere.

      It'll take me a 7 days of studying and contemplating your explanation, but I'm sure to have better understanding then.

      Best to you.

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] I have added a lengthy moderators comment to your earlier post.

3239. michael sweet at 00:43 AM on 31 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      Macquigg:

      I went to comment on your "more neutral forum" and I have been blocked. I only posted there once and did not violate the site rules.

      The moderators here allow nuclear posters. So much for your "neutral" forum.

3240. MA Rodger at 20:12 PM on 30 August 2022
      CO2 effect is saturated
      

      Likeitwarm @654&655,
      My comment @639 was specifically tailored and indeed a little nuanced to keep discussion within the thread's topic. So straying beyond that topic in a response would not be unsurprising.

      One point to make is that the pressure at the tropopause is usually given as a fifth of surface pressure (200 hPa) and certainly not a tenth. And its altitude commonly given as 12km.
      But more exactly, the tropopause changes in height and pressure a lot by latitude and also a bit by the seasons. It can be as high as 17km with pressures down to 110 hPa over the tropics and as low as 8km over the poles with pressures up to 310 hPa.
      

      CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere up to the top of the stratosphere at 50km altitude. (The bulk of atmospheric water vapour rains out low down in the troposphere, as demonstraed by the moderator-appended graphic @654.)

      You still seem concerned that high up in the atmosphere, the CO2 at altitude is well spread out as the pressure falls (so about a fifth the density at the tropopause) and also colder so there would be less thermal energy.
      And it is fundamentally this reduction in energy with altitude that drives the greenhouse effect.

      The greenhouse effect is all about the altitude at which upward-emitted IR can find holes inbetween the greenhouse gases above**, allowing the IR to escape from the atmosphere and exit into space.
      If that altitude were low down, the atmosphere will indeed be relatively warm and thus thermally energetic. This energy means the CO2 gets a lot of the thumping from air mollecules that sends it into the flap that can emit IR in the 15 micron wave band. And warmer air at this emissions altitude means there is a lot of the flapping CO2 at the emission altitude and thus a lot of IR pouring through the holes into space, cooling the planet.
      Note this emission altitude will always have the same amount of CO2 above. It is this physical presence determines the altitude where those holes appear to allow IR into space.

      When you then add CO2, the altitude with holes out to space becomes higher. And as the troposphere cools with altitude, and the air higher up is less energetic, it gives the CO2 less of a thumping, so with this dropping temperature there is less CO2 flapping and so there is less IR pourng out into space because of that additional CO2. That means less cooling so the planet will have to warm to find a new hotter equilibrium temperature.

      And don't think of this reduction as a small effect. There is 3,000,000,000,000 tons of CO2 in tha atmosphere and ~20% of it (so 600 billion tons) is up there playing a planet-warming game of 'catch the photon' high in the upper troposphere and today shooting something like 5,000TW out into space. (By comparison, today mankind's global primary energy use is 18TW.)
      Add more CO2 and it will still be the top 600 billion tons of it playing that game of catch, but being now higher and thus colder, playing it with a little less vigour and so shooting a little less out into space.

      (** The emission altitude isn't constant across the 15 micron wave band. The very centre of it, a narrow band on 15 microns, emits into space from way up in the stratosphere while the outer edges of the wave band still allow IR into space low down in the troposphere. These all move upwards with extra atmospheric CO2.)

       

3241. John ONeill at 16:42 PM on 30 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      'You keep posing conspiracy theories about governments sabotaging nuclear.'

      Hardly conspiracy theories. Governors Brown in California and Cuomo in New York, Prime Minister Naoto Kan in Japan, and Presidents Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan and Moon Jae-in of South Korea, made no secret of their determination to close their respective nuclear industries. In Europe, Green parties have been demanding the energy portfolio in return for joining coalitions, and then closing reactors even when it means funding new gas plants or resurrecting coal.

3242. John ONeill at 16:07 PM on 30 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      'The nuclear industry in France, the largest adoptor of nuclear, is collapsing because their reactors have reached the end of their life.'

      In fact it's the newest reactors that may have stress cracks in some of the emergency shutdown piping - the older ones are fine.

3243. Eclectic at 13:02 PM on 30 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      Scvblwxq1 @19 , thank you for the reference to the IPCC source ~ which I found on Page 8, A.3 (the 13% figure) and more on A.3.1.

      The 13% is for all agricultural CO2 nett emission (agricultural, forestry, and other land use activities.  Presumably this includes fossil fuel burn by harvesters & tractors & other field machinery ~ but this was not clearly stated, as far as seen by me.  And are logging trucks and sawmilling included? ).

      (Please note that for USA, the EPA states total greenhouse gas emissions by source as:  11% from agricultural sector;  13% from commercial/residential;  24% from industry;  25% from electricity generation;  27% from transport.    For the Third World countries, "agricultural" emissions would be higher in proportion to GNP but  lower in absolute amounts, owing to a mix of lower machinery yet higher deforestation [in South America and South-East Asia].

      While you are correct to wish to abolish deforestation, I am guessing that you do not wish to abolish all agriculture.

      And even so, it would be more logical for you to aim at abolishing that 75% plus, which constitutes the fossil fuel CO2 emission.  AGW by itself will contribute to deforestation & land degradation, over the coming century or two.

3244. scvblwxq1 at 12:20 PM on 30 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      Paying to reduce deforestation may not cost too much. According to NBC news it only makes 8.2 billion a year. That should be affordable for the world if they really want to reduce CO2 emissions.

      Rainforest contribution to the economy

3245. Likeitwarm at 12:18 PM on 30 August 2022
      CO2 effect is saturated
      

      I've done it again.  I'll move any other questions to https://skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm

3246. scvblwxq1 at 11:47 AM on 30 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      Well I went to the source of the 20% figure the IPCC and they said that human land use accounts for 13 percent of human CO2 emissions and the natural response to human use caused 29 percent of total CO2 emissions.

      'Climate Change and Land'
      An IPCC Special Report on climate change, desertification,
      land degradation, sustainable land management, food security,
      and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems

       IPCC Special Report 2019

      This is in Summary for Polymakers>A.3

      page 7

3247. Likeitwarm at 11:24 AM on 30 August 2022
      CO2 effect is saturated
      

      I looked up the preassure at the tropopause.  My bad assumption that that was the altitude of water.  The chart said .1 bar.  Pressure at sea is 1 bar.  Your chart shows 2km.  I agree.  I still have the question about how does CO2 in such small amounts, .04%, act as the control knob for the atmosphere when water is so completely overwhelming?  Is CO2 more populated above 2km? And I add at any altitude.  It doesn't hold the energy. It loses it to surrounding air very rapidly, if it happens to get hit with a photon.  Where is the emperical evidence or laboratory experiment that proves it has caused the increase in temperature?  I read your page at https://skepticalscience.com/CO2-trace-gas.htm.  No emperical evidence just a loose correlation and assumption that because temp went up 1.5F since 1880 and CO2 concentration went up that CO2 caused the increase in temperature.  Recent temperatures have been flat or falling since 2015 and CO2 concentration has continued to climb.

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] Confusion between air pressure and air density would be avoided by reading pretty much any introductory meteorology text.

      You ask how CO2 absorbing photons heats the atmosphere, while in the same breath saying that the energy is lost to the surroundings. Exactly. The energy gets added to surrounding molecules by collision, so the entire atmosphere at that location gets heated. In turn, a more heated atmosphere has more energy, and when energy is transferred to GHG molecules by collision with other molecules, the GHG molecules will sometimes emit that energy as radiation. Those are the fundamentals of radiative transfer in the atmosphere. Then, climate scientists add in all the other energy transfers involved (atmospheric motions, evaporation, condensation, etc.), and - gee golly - adding CO2 causes warming.

      You can read about this absorption process in detail over at Eli Rabett's blog.

      As for temperatures: you link to a site that says "It uses unadjusted surface temperatures." The site gives absolutely no indication on that main page how it handles spatial representation of individual stations, or how varying station numbers or locations affect the result over time. Adjustments are absolutely necessary to account for instrumentation, location, and sampling changes. THe source of data they use - METARS - is real-time weather observations, which have not gone through much QA/QC to weed out bad data. Without this information, it is impossible to know the validity of the analysis and methodology. Honest scientists publish the methodology they use.

      Recently, in response to another comment here, I posted a link to RealClimate's analysis of observed temperatures versus model predictions. They provide an image that includes four reputable global temperature analyses:

      

       

      The only way you can get "no warming since 2015" is by cherry-picking a peak in the noise. By the same methodology, I could say "oh, my, look at how fast it has been warming since 2017!!!". The same "no warming..." claims were being made in the years after 1998 (a huge El Nino year) - until it became obvious that warming was continuing. Then when the post-2015 period came along, the fake skeptic industry appeared to do a search-and-replace, substituting 2015 for 1998. You don't do trend analysis on a noisy by cherry picking a peak (especially one from a known cause - no more than you would conclude that the tide is no longer rising because the water level on the beach isn't as high as it was at the crest of the last wave.

      Guess. what? We have a page on that, too.

      And we have a graphic and a name for the tactic: the Escalator. (It's down the right hand side of every page here.) You can read about how the graphic is constructed here.

       

       

3248. John ONeill at 10:05 AM on 30 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      Thanks, I've been looking over the Sovacool paper.

3249. Likeitwarm at 04:50 AM on 30 August 2022
      CO2 effect is saturated
      

      @MA Rodger 639

      Sorry for taking so long to get back. 

      You said "The essential mechanism is that the CO2 greenhouse effect operates higher up in the atmosphere, above the bulk of of the atmospheric water vapour. Thus it is CO2 which determines the altitude from which the IR in this band is emitted into space, thus the amount of this IR emitted into space (determined by the atmospheric temperature of the point of emission) and thus it is CO2 which determines the amount of greenhouse warming from this waveband."
      Could you explain what is the action of CO2 at those altitudes where the air is 1/10th the density and thus I guess there is a proportionate amount of CO2. With that little CO2 and the fact that it well might have lost a lot of energy by then, I don't understand how such a small amount of ~15um radiation is such a control factor for the whole atmosphere.

      Thanks

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] You are again asserting things that make no sense.

      Have  you actually looked to see at what altitude the air density is 1/10th of the surface value? This is easy stuff to look up.

      Early Google hit: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/standard-atmosphere-d_604.html

      Density is 1/10 of surface value at an altitude between 30 and 40 km. The same table tells you that this is well into the stratosphere, where temperature is now decreasing with height. This is not "the upper atmosphere" that MA Rodger is referring to. The troposphere, where nearly all water vapour is found, is the first 10-12 km. In fact, most of the water vapour is found in the first few km. You are off by an order of magnitude.

      

       

      You are also acting (again) as if 15um is the only wavelength of importance. It is not. And the upper atmosphere (troposphere) is not working in isolation. It is linked to the rest of the atmosphere. Scientists look at this in its entirety - not as isolated compartments of tidbits of information.

      You can use this link to MODTRAN to examine how different parameters and variables affect IR radiation transfer. You would be far better off using your time to experiment with that web site and try to answer your own questions.

      Until you learn how the atmosphere works as a system, you will continue to fail to understand these issues. I suggest that you get yourself an introductory climate and/or weather text book suitable for an undergraduate program, and read it.

       

3250. One Planet Only Forever at 04:41 AM on 30 August 2022
      A next-level water crisis: Colorado River Basin faces Tier 2 restrictions
      

      The failure of leadership of the 7 states to collaboratively agree to limits that would avoid harmful future regional consequences for seems to be a lot like the failure of national leaderships to collaboratively agree to limit climate change harm done to the future of global humanity.

      Regional leadership pursuing regional popularity and perceptions of prosperity, including perceptions of superiority relative to others, is a serious problem. It forces higher level leadership to intervene to try to limit the regional harmful unsustainable activity. And regional pursuers of popular support and perceptions of prosperity can be expected to try to blame external higher level 'leadership by others' for any regional perceptions of loss.

      Self interested pursuit of benefit is potentially one of the most harmful human characteristics. And its developed perceptions of success can make it harder to govern and limit the harm it does.

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