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One Planet Only Forever at 11:31 AM on 10 July 2014El Niño in 2014: Still On the Way?
A very clear and thorough presentation of this multi-faceted aspect of our planet's complex, but increasingly better understood, climate system.
In the opening of the 3rd last paragraph I believe you transposed east and west. I believe it should be:
"This means that further Kelvin waves will makes their way across the Pacific Ocean, thus transporting more ocean heat from west to east, and giving the system a further nudge toward El Niño when it reaches the eastern Pacific in about two months time."
Moderator Response:(Rob P) - Thanks for pointing that out. Now fixed.
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Logan at 10:53 AM on 10 July 2014Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
There is a more recent paper on the topic:
Burton, Michael R., Georgina M. Sawyer, and Domenico Granieri. "Deep carbon emissions from volcanoes." Rev Mineral Geochem 75 (2013): 323-354.
This estimates that the total volcanic emission is 637 million tonnes per year.
Most existing volcanoes have not been measured, so all estimates have large uncertainties.
Moderator Response:[PS] Added link to paper
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howardlee at 10:25 AM on 10 July 2014New Jersey science education standards may be blocked by climate contrarians
Result! The NJ BOE did adopt the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which includes climate science.
The NJ BOE press release is here. Interestingly it is being spun as a re-adoption of existing standards rather than an adoption of new standards.
CBDunkerson - you were right!
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scaddenp at 07:04 AM on 10 July 2014Models are unreliable
I have responded to nearlyman's complaint of "its too hard" in a more suitable thread.
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scaddenp at 07:03 AM on 10 July 2014CO2 limits will make little difference
Responding to points by nearlyman in another thread. You might like to read the article above. There are a couple of points to make about China. While it is building more coal capacity, the figure for new coal plants misses coal plants taken out of production as too old and inefficient. Second, China's investment is renewables is large and investing in nuclear.
The other point is that West has simply exported emissions to China. A carbon tax on imported goods made with coal energy would hasten further the move to renewables. Coal is substitutable. The sooner we stop building more plants the better. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:31 AM on 10 July 2014Models are unreliable
It's interesting. I see people who do other forms of modeling coming from two different sides to diss climate modeling. One side comes from financial modeling where the modeling is purely statistical. The other side is from engineering modelers, who say that the physics can't be sufficiently constrained to return reliable data.
These are two completely contradictory positions, with both sides claiming to have a deep understanding of modeling.
All modeling is wrong. That's just a fact. The point of modeling is that it is instructive. It teaches you things that you otherwise could not understand in the absence of the models.
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grindupBaker at 05:54 AM on 10 July 2014El Niño in 2014: Still On the Way?
Just eyeballing the figures and computing with error bars as wide as a spiv I get:
450 degree-metres 7,700 km latitude 2,200 km longtitude
=7.6 * 10**18 kg-degrees
=31 zettajoulesDoes that sound about right or does somebody have a better estimate of the heat content in that pool of warm water vis-a-vis the temperature benchmark for its anomaly ?
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Dikran Marsupial at 05:08 AM on 10 July 2014Models are unreliable
nearlyman, there is a *big* difference between models used for financial prediction and climate models, which is that climate models are based on physics, rather than being statistical models that have been fit to the data. With statistical models, the more parameters you have in the model, the (exponentially) more data you need to estimate their parameters correctly (the "curse of dimensionality"). This is not the case with physics based models, where most of the parameters of the models are constrained by physics (i.e. we can perform separate experiments to characterise what different components of the model do).
However, if you really do believe the models are "laughably wrong", that suggests to me that perhaps you have been getting your information on the performance of models from the blogsphere, rather than from the journal papers (or even blog articles written by those who have read and understood the journal papers). If you would like to give a specific example of a model projection that is "laughably wrong" (as JH suggests), I am sure that there will be plenty of people here willing to discuss it with you. If you are unwilling to provide specifics, I suspect your posts will be viewed as trolling; this is intended as well meant advice. -
DSL at 04:29 AM on 10 July 2014Models are unreliable
nearlyman, just out of curiosity, and to get a baseline understanding, what counts--for you--as "laughably wrong" where climate modeling is concerned?
Moderator Response:[JH] I addressed nearlyman's assertion in a Moderator's comment to his post.
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nearlyman at 04:16 AM on 10 July 2014Models are unreliable
I spent my career building models of financial markets. The notion that a model is 'good' if it correctly predicts unseen data from the historical record is laughable (i.e. the model is tested on a rolling window of data to see if it accurately predicts the subsequent unseen period).
There are two problems, one well understood and one almost universally ignored. The first is that as new explanatory variables are added to the model to improve the forecast accuracy, the unreliability of the model increases. This can be calculated - and almost always means that in complex systems, simple models outperform as predictors even though they are less accurate when back tested. Any discussion of the models that does not discuss this trade off is nonsense. In markets this means that the 'best' models are only slightly better than random, but are reliably better - the key then is risk management. I believe that the same should apply to a complex system like climate. The uncertainty in a 'good' model will make it useless for predicting the future and only useful for risk management.
The less common problem ignored by scientists in many many disciplines, is that knowing what models do not work is a hidden 'look ahead' that is the bane of quant reseachers in financial markets. For example, when building a model of the stock market, it is very very difficult to forget that it crashed in 1987. This knowledge influences the choices that model builders make - they just cannot help themselves. That is why so few people make money in systemaic trading - it is not just a scientific, mathematical, statistical and computational challenge - it is philosophically and psychologically challenging. In markets it doesn't really matter - long live the deluded models with their artificial certainty! They represent profit opportunity for other participants. In building climate models we do not have this comfort.
For the record, I believe that the world is warming and that this will have consequences. I also believe that the models are laughably wrong and that there only reliable attribute is that they will continue to fail to predict the outcome at any useful level of accuracy once unleashed on truly unknown data (otherwise known as the future).
The sooner the debate moves on to how we manage the risk of a warming planet, the better.
Oh, by the way, it is also obvious that we cannot stop it warming by flying less or driving a Prius. This is is not just an economic observation (though economics alone mean it will not happen) but also an obvious consequence of the prisoner's dilemma. Why should I stop flying if the Chinese are building a new coal fired power station every week? I repeat risk management - if it warms by more than X, what could/should we do? That is where the money and time should be spent.
Moderator Response:[JH] You assert:
I also believe that the models are laughably wrong and that there only reliable attribute is that they will continue to fail to predict the outcome at any useful level of accuracy once unleashed on truly unknown data (otherwise known as the future).
Please document the sources of your expressed "beliefs."
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wili at 02:53 AM on 10 July 2014El Niño in 2014: Still On the Way?
May I suggest that, if you want this excellent piece to be fully accessible to all interested readers, you avoid the temptation of lapsing into acronym speak. I have been following this thing for quite a while, but I still forget, for example, what WWV is. Yes, you spell it out early on. But most interested but casual readers don't scour every word from beginning to end, but skim for the parts that interest them most. But when, as they skim, they hit more and more bewildering acronyms, the less likely they are to persevere. Thanks, again, for a great, informative piece. I hope it can be made even more informative for many more people with just some relatively minor adjustments.
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howardlee at 23:14 PM on 9 July 2014New Jersey science education standards may be blocked by climate contrarians
CBDunkerson - I hope you are right, and we'll find out tonight. Clearly Climate Parents were sufficiently concerned to mobilize and organize a petition, having seen the adoption derailed elsewhere.
I too live in NJ. From my conversations it's clear that most people here drink the Fox Kool-Aid when it comes to climate change, and regular editorials in the main newspaper - the Star Ledger - are very climate skeptical (like this and this). My eldest son went from K to 12 in NJ without a single science fair, and more than half his friends did not believe in evolution. Science seems to take much more of a back seat in education and popular discourse here compared to my experience in the UK.
Here's hoping that the NJ BOE does the right thing for our kids.
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funglestrumpet at 21:45 PM on 9 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
David Rose is the wrong target. He would not get published if his work were not in line with that of the Mail Group's management, who must therefor be the target. Go after them, and David Rose and any like him will be caught in the cross-fire.
There is another aspect to be considered. It just might be the case that the Mail Group is following private briefing by the government. Why would the government do this? Read the Our Finite World blog and the Peak Prosperity blog and watch Oil, Smoke and Mirrors (www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVzJhlvtDms) and Peak mining & implications for natural resource management - Simon Michaux (www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFyTSiCXWEE). Oil, Smoke and Mirrors contains an interview with Michael Meacher, Minister of State for the Environment under Prime Minister Blair, which is worth watching for an insight into government policy. I think it would be difficult to read and watch these and still think that b.a.u. is remotely in possible. It certainly explains why the government might privately brief a newspaper's editor if it wanted the public to think that b.a.u. was not harmful in any way.
This site, having gained a reputation for honesty, should decide what it does about discussing the resource situation we face. Carry on as though b.a.u. is the likely outcome, or try and fix just what the climate is likely to be like and thus inform policy decisions accordingly.
Perhaps sks could do worse than call for an enquiry into how the press (and blogs?) should handle matters of concern to the security of the country. I have in mind a Leverson type of enquiry, but dealing with science, not scandal. Surely, we need something more formal than private briefings, if indeed they are in play. We need to decide how we deal with any who profit from publishing 'facts' harmful to their country that they can reasonably be assumed to know to be false. I don't see how that harms the principle of free speech, indeed surely it strengthens it. Today, you simply cannot believe anything a newspaper prints. If I knew that the author of a newspaper article and his editor could be punished, perhaps even banned from working in the media, I would believe what it says. Isn't that for the good of all?
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ubrew12 at 07:29 AM on 9 July 2014New Jersey science education standards may be blocked by climate contrarians
"America’s slumping education.. (currently ranked 23rd in the world)" Like many, I assumed that applied to K-12 only, but this article indicates that this mediocrity extends through college. A quote: "America’s perceived international dominance of higher education... rests largely on global rankings of TOP universities.... The fair way to compare the two systems... would be to conduct something like a PISA for higher education. That had never been done until late 2013, when the O.E.C.D. published exactly such a study... As with the measures of K-12 education, the United States battles it out for last place, this time with Italy and Spain. Countries that traditionally trounce America on the PISA test of 15-year-olds, such as Japan and Finland, also have much higher levels of proficiency and skill among adults."
Fortunately, Wyoming is pioneering a new way of teaching these inconvenient truths: ignore them. CBDunkerson@1: glad to see NJ isn't about to follow Wyoming's lead.
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Chris Snow at 05:12 AM on 9 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
What's important in Antarctica is what is happening to the land ice and surprise, surprise, the Mail on Sunday doesn't say anything about that. After all, if all the Antarctic land ice were to suddenly destabilise and fall into the sea, then sea ice extent would rise dramatically and sea levels would rise by about 60 metres. Presumably, David Rose would regard this as nothing to worry about.
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MA Rodger at 03:18 AM on 9 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
Regarding pre-1979 Antarctic Sea Ice:-
Tamino was using HADISST ice concentrations which use all sorts of data to create a very ambitious gridded reconstruction.
If seeing is believing, there is the Numbus-5 data for 1973-6 as well as the Nimbus-1 data for September 1964. Figure 5-13 in Zwally et al (1983) shows SIA from Nimbus-5 as high or higher than this recent "record" anomaly, while Figure 4 in Meier et al (2013) directly compares SIE from Nimbus-1 with 1979-2012 data (although sadly not the same 1979-2012 SIE values as derived by NSIDC) showing yet more ice back in the 1960s. -
CBDunkerson at 02:27 AM on 9 July 2014New Jersey science education standards may be blocked by climate contrarians
I'm going to have to challenge you on this one.
I actually live in New Jersey and have been following this issue, but haven't seen any indication that the standards might not pass. Indeed, the 'Education Week' article linked in the text seems to be more acknowledging that evolution and global warming deniers exist, and therefore could theoretically try to oppose adoption, than suggesting that anyone has actually done so.
To quote some other passages from the same article;
'That said, opponents on the basis of those factors "haven't come out of the woodwork yet [in New Jersey]," Heinz told me. "And our current standards have both those ideas in them already."'
'A recent article from online news service NJ Spotlight said the state board seems enthusiastic about the new standards and that educators have known "the shift has been coming for a few years."'
I think New Jersey's deceased (and living) scientists can rest easy on this issue. Our governor's climate denying policies in relation to the state shoreline would be a very different story.
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ubrew12 at 01:01 AM on 9 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
If Tamino's Antarctic sea ice extent reconstruction (1870-2010) is correct (extent in 10^6 km2)
(or, see third graph in this link), Antarctica's sea ice extent mostly collapsed between 1940 and 1980. Although there's been a rise in extent since 1980, you can see that, taken in context, its in the noise. The bottom line is that Antarctica's sea ice is less than half of what it was a century ago, and shows no indication that it will recover its former glory.
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wili at 22:42 PM on 8 July 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #27
Thanks, chris. Those are also covered at http://climatestate.com/2014/07/07/new-mechanism-uncovered-causing-potentially-rapid-antarctic-glacier-melt/. So what _will_ the new upward-revised melt rate be for WAIS given this study? How much more and faster will slr go up even than the already upward-revised sea-level-rise from the earlier studies this year? Is a meter rise before mid-century starting to look more probable? What about the ranges for the end of the century? Is anyone putting all these new findings together to come up with a new range of probable slr rates?
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chriskoz at 19:01 PM on 8 July 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #27
In addition to the recent study by Matt England from USNW, which discussed the link between strenghtening trde winds and ocean warming, now we have another study from UNSW, by Paul Spence, also co-authored by Matt:
which discusses the antarctic surface water warming as the result of strenghteting circumpolar winds. The bad news from this latest study is: the WAIS melt rate will be revised upwarda when the results of this study are incorporated into melting models. Extra sea water warming that exceeds 2 °C is darn lot.
Also available (at least for me in Aus) are: the smh press release and full text from smh
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One Planet Only Forever at 15:12 PM on 8 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
The persistence of the popularity of unfounded claim-making, not reporting, like the Mail's can best be explained by a consistency of thought processes by some people.
People who desire benefits from actions that are unacceptable are eager to create and accept unacceptable excuses for the things they want to get away with benefiting from. They are consistently unacceptable in their thoughts and actions. And the worst of them cannot be expected to change their mind. They will persist in attempting to get as much benefit from unacceptable actions and attitudes as they can get away with.
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Tom Curtis at 14:02 PM on 8 July 2014Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
NotAFossil @215 starts by saying, "If science was based on popular opinion, the earth would still be flat - and at the center of the universe."
When you first arrive at SkS, you see a button "Newcomers Start Here". If you follow it, it provides you with (among other things) a paragraph on good places for newcomers to start, including "Warming Indicators", "10 Human Fingerprints on Climate Change", "empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming", and then in the following paragraph, "Global Warming in a Nutshell" and "The History of Climate Science". The last of those also appears as a button on the home page, as does "The Big Picture". Of these, only the last mentions consensus at all, and that only the consensus of economists. Rather than focussing on the consensus, they all focus on the emperical evidence which shows global warming to be real, human caused, and potentially catastrophic.
The core of this website are the 176 rebutals to pseudo-skeptical myths about global warming. Of those, only 14 (8%) discuss the consensus. The rest primarilly focus on the scientific evidence for AGW (there are a few dealing with discussions of fraud). Of course, that 8% does not represent the level of SkS interest in the consensus. Rather, it reflects the level of pseudo-skeptic misinformation trying to persuade the uninformed that no consensus exists, even though it clearly does. (Note, due to an idiosyncrasy of the SkS search engine, it will search draft blog posts in addition to ones actually published. At least 1 of the 14 rebutals above is still in draft form, so is not actually part of the 176 published arguments. Ergo, 8% is an overstatement of the actual figure.)
From this, it is very clear that SkS realizes that it is not the consensus but the scientific evidence itself that is the real reason for accepting AGW. They discuss the consensus only to show the false claim by pseudo-skeptics that there is no consensus, that climate scientists are heavilly divided about AGW, is in fact a false claim.
Despite this, we repeatedly get pseudo-skeptics like NotAFossil who come in with their little slogans as if SkS ever argued that science is settled by consensus. They show by the way the focus on the consensus issue that, not only are they arguing a strawman, but they are actively avoiding engaging with the evidence that is so copiously presented elsewhere on SkS.
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scaddenp at 11:44 AM on 8 July 2014Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
Not to pile on too much, but not looking at public opinion but at informed opinion. Informed opinion since 2nd Century BC was that world was round.
We now have 3 different studies with different methodologies coming to same conclusion as to the state of scientific consensus. (the lastest published result is this one which is survey of publications).
It is absolutely given that a consensus does not make a theory correct. However, it is a myth that there is no scientific consensus. For policy makers, going with the consensus is the only rational choice. If you were ill, would you be like this guy? It's not like there is any other credible theory of climate.
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Bob Loblaw at 10:21 AM on 8 July 2014Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
NotAFossil:
The first step in writing a scientific paper or theses is the literature review. You are unlikely to advance the science if you don't know what it is. Knowledgable scientists base their opinions on the published literature, as well as their own work.
Follow the links to see what the quoted studies say. Then also follow this link to the paper that was based on "The Consensus Project" work (menu item at the top of the SkS page), where the "survey" is a survey of the literature - first by looking at abstracts, then by getting feedback from the authors of papers.
The result? The scientific literature on "global climate change" and "global warming" (the keywords in the search) is also almost universally in support of the idea that humans are responsible for over half of the recent warming.
This is scientific evidence that knowledgable, informed scientists are largely in agreement on the basics, which refutes the alternative argument that there is still significant scientific debate on whether or not humans are having an effect.
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Rob Honeycutt at 09:53 AM on 8 July 2014Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
The difference, NAFFFA (@215), is that realizing the world is a sphere is a a result of a scientific process. It was the result of careful observation. Same with the heliocentricity. Casual observation might make you think the sun revolves around the world, but it was careful scientific research that gave us the real answer.
Climate science is the same. We now have 150+ years of careful research showing us that CO2 is the biggest control knob managing the temperature of the earth. That nearly all researchers agree with this position is not surprising, given the overwhelming body of research.
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NotAFossilFuelFundedAnything... at 09:12 AM on 8 July 2014Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
If science was based on popular opinion, the earth would still be flat - and at the center of the universe. A two-question, vaguely worded survey of scientists, regardless of their qualifications, should not be tossed around like its scientific evidence of anything.
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CBDunkerson at 00:37 AM on 8 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
funglestrumpet wrote: "...personal transport that can go futher than the local supermarket without needing a flatbed truck to get it back home."
Chevy Volt? Nissan Leaf? Tesla?
We're well past the 'local use only' stage of electric vehicles. The Volt only has a 38 mile electric range, but that is enough to cover most daily automobile usage. The Leaf's 100 mile range covers something like 98%, and Tesla's 265 mile range (more with an extra battery pack) is good for anything short of non-stop cross country driving... and even that would be possible if their battery switching stations proliferate.
Granted, these vehicles are pricey, but the cost of rechargeable batteries is coming down almost as fast as solar... which is also helping with the need to store solar power in general.
Solar power and electrical storage are clearly going to supplant fossil fuel electricity production over the next few decades. That has been obvious for a few years now and getting moreso all the time. The only places you see fossil fuel generation increasing are the developing world (where they are ramping up every form of power generation they can) and temporarily in places like Japan and Germany that have shut down nuclear. Everywhere else you've got renewable power, mostly solar, growing faster than everything else combined. Transportation isn't as obvious, but a conversion from petroleum to electric power is now within reach and will be helped along by the falling price of solar electric power.
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PhilippeChantreau at 00:29 AM on 8 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
Well Glenn I can't say that I would ever advise to disagree with Thermodynamics... :-)
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Glenn Tamblyn at 20:05 PM on 7 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
funglestrumpet
""Or better still, seek some much needed councelling."
The image of the Koch's and similar seeking 'councelling' might just do my head in. Like we have just fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland and discovered it ain't too bad.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 20:02 PM on 7 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
And someone from the Tea Party agreeing with left-wing renewable advocates!!!!
WOW.
This isn't just technically disruptive. It could be amazingly politically disruptive as well. The Koch's may come to regret ever starting the Tea Party.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 19:46 PM on 7 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
Phillippe
"Of course, it would involve changing the ways of the old fashioned monopolistic utilities in place in the US, which have a lot of friends in the right places..."
But there are a lot of other folks, hard-headed money people, who will vote with their check-books. In the long run (perhaps not so long) if I had to back big-money and politics against big-money and thermodynamics I would back the latter.
The politicians may get away with protecting big-business from 'the people'. But they struggle to protect big-business from other big-business.
Eventually even the dinosaurs were forced to look up and pay attention to the huge disruptive streak arcing across the sky
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PhilippeChantreau at 13:16 PM on 7 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
The pdf was interesting. The smaller scale systems they prototyped were only in the 100-200 kW range, I think. I'm envisioning an integrated solar/PHES turn key system at the scale of a regular house that would allow you to keep your refrigerator going and charge your car at night, then during the day recharge, and feed the grid when you're not home and not needing much power. If you could price the whole system, installed, at 100 grands, you could have a 200K house for 300 k with the added benefit of being truly carbon neutral or even negative over its lifetime. Such a house would likely have been priced that high anyway only 6 or 7 years ago, and for no good reason. That would make Steve Jobs look like a caveman.
Of course, it would involve changing the ways of the old fashioned monopolistic utilities in place in the US, which have a lot of friends in the right places...
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Paul D at 04:08 AM on 7 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
PhilippeChantreau @ 17
The gas they are using is I believe Argon, which may go some way to help??
Just found this article, which includes a photo of a prototype machine, I have not seen a photo of it before:
http://www.isentropic.co.uk/uploads/Article_Recharge_News.pdf
Moderator Response:[PS] Fixed link
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PhilippeChantreau at 01:35 AM on 7 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
Paul, I have to admit the PHES technology by Isentropic looks really impressive on paper. The scalable aspect is especially interesting in my opinion. I wonder how long you can keep the energy in storage without thermic losses. Still, it seems to open all sorts of possibilities. Thanks for sharing.
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Paul D at 01:22 AM on 7 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
ianw01 they recently posted this Youtube video:
Which explains in detail how it (PHES) works.
They are currently developing/building a grid level system which will be tested at a substation in the Midlands region on the UK grid. -
ianw01 at 23:34 PM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
Paul D @ 13:
Thanks for the fascinating link. That round trip efficiency of 72%-80% is impressive! -
Paul D at 19:05 PM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
funglestrumpet @ 4
It appears that tractor manufactures are replacing the hydraulic systems on some new models with electric systems. Effectively the tractor has a diesel generator on board and the wheels and attached equipment are electrically driven.
That suggests that there is a path in the future to fully electric tractors.
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Paul D at 18:49 PM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
ianw01@ 3
My favorite energy storage system is being developed by Isentropic. It ticks all the boxes regarding cost, efficiency, non exotic material use, reproducibility at any location and old school engineering (none of that nano rubbish and complex chemistry etc, just engines, pipes and steel containers). -
Tom Curtis at 15:07 PM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
From Peru @11, another way of saying that photovolatic cells absorb 85% of light is to say they have an albedo of 0.15. For comparison, here are the abledos of several common surfaces:
Surface Typical
albedo
Fresh asphalt 0.04
Worn asphalt 0.12
Conifer forest
(Summer) 0.08, 0.09 to 0.15
Deciduous trees 0.15 to 0.18
Bare soil 0.17
Green grass 0.25
Desert sand 0.40
New concrete 0.55
Ocean ice 0.5–0.7
Fresh snow 0.80–0.90As you can see, the albedo of photovoltaic cells is comparable to that of trees and soil, and not significantly different from that of grass. Indeed, with 15% of the incident energy being converted to electricity, the waste heat at source of a PV cell is only 60% of incident energy, 15% less than is the case with grass, and comparable to desert sand.
It is true that the energy converted to electricity is eventually dissipated as waste heat. However, the energy from fossil fuels is also dissipated as waste heat so that the net gain in waste heat is no greater than that from equivalent energy generation from fossil fuels (for PV cells in deserts), and much less than that for PV cells in areas naturally covered by grasses or forests. Indeed, as electricity generation from fossil fuels is inefficient in terms of the energy content of the fuel, use of PV cells even in deserts rather than fossil fuels will reduce the current waste heat generation.
The upshot is that generating power with PV will reduce industrial waste heat relative to current levels. Globally, this will make us better of by a small amount (waste heat being only a minor forcing). That is in addition to the far larger impact from reduced GHG forcing from the use of renewable energy.
It is true that large PV farms may have significant regional effects on climate. In that, however, they are no different from any other human development, including farming and reforestation (which generates equivalent amounts of waste heat). If that is considered a problem, it can be offset by increasing the albedo of the infrastructure surrounding the PV cells (eg, cement roads rather that asphalt, whitened roofs).
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From Peru at 14:03 PM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
I recently found a review paper that states:
"Even renewable energies produce local heat, although they provide a greater thermal reduction benefit by avoiding CO2 emissions.
Photovoltaic solar panels are mainly black or dark with very low albedo and high emissivity, typically:
- absorbing about 85% of the incoming light,
- 15% of this is converted into electricity,
- the remainder 70% of the energy is turned into heat.
Millstein [see reference 93 in linked article] found that the large-scale adoption of desert PV, with only 16% albedo reduction, lead to significant local temperature increases (+0.4 ºC) and regional changes in wind patterns"
Source:
Tingzhen Ming , Renaudde_Richter , Wei Liu , Sylvain Caillol
"Fighting global warming by climate engineering: Is the Earth radiation management and the solar radiation management any option for fighting climate change?"
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 31 (2014)
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032113008460
As good as solar and other renewables are, can we be sure that are actually 100% climate neutral? They don't emit CO2, but emit waste heat and change the land surface albedo. Maybe big solar farms will need be built with big mirrors incorporated, to compensate for the warming due to the lowered albedo.
Waste heat on the other hand, is much more difficult to handle. The 2nd law of thermodynamics make impossible to recycle all of it into useful work (energy) so some amount of waste heat is unavoidable. At least "waste heat forcing" is one to two order of magnitude lower than greenhouse forcing, so at current energy growth rates there are still a few centuries before the impact is significant.
A few centuries, however, is still extremely rapid for geological standards. I imagine a situation a few centuries in the future, when, after avoiding greenhouse global warming, the problem returns, this time with waste heat instead of greenhouse gases emissions.
Then, since the root cause of warming is energy consumption, the only option left will be stopping the growth of energy consumption, and if necessary, even reverse it. This could mean either:
- decouple energy and economic growth completely. I don't know if this is physically possible
- switching to a steady-state economy, where the growth of GDP should tend to zero.
What do you think?
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scaddenp at 13:46 PM on 6 July 2014There is no consensus
Murmur, it is absolutely given that a consensus does not make a theory correct. However, this is article is putting to bed the myth that there is no scientific consensus. For policy makers, going with the consensus is the only rational choice. If you were ill, would you be like this guy? It's not like there is any other credible theory of climate.
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Murmur at 13:11 PM on 6 July 2014There is no consensus
97% ? Pfff... Until 1887, 100% of scientists agreed on the existence of aether...
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Tom Curtis at 10:39 AM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
sunweb @7:
1) Wikipedia gives an Energy Return on Investment (EROI) of 6.8 for photo-voltaic in the US, compared to 80 for coal in the US. Assuming the invested energy comes from coal, that means each KwH of energy from photovoltaics generates only 15% of the CO2 emissions of coal over its lifetime. That remains a very substantial gain in the task of tackling global warming, and will improve as more and more electricity is generated from low carbon energy sources.
2) A number of studies (including Murphy and Hall 2010, from which the Wikipedia figures are drawn) show the EROI of fossil fuels is declining over time. In contrast, that of renewable energy is improving over time.
3) The figures for fossil fuel EROI typically quoted are misleading as they for the thermal energy returned from combustion. Thermal energy conversion to electricity tends to be inefficient for fossil fuels, radically reducing its EROI when the output energy is measured in terms of electricity production. In contrast, photovoltaic and wind power are directly generated as electricity, and must pay an efficiency cost to generate thermal energy. Therefore their EROI for electricity production is understated. Estimates of EROI for electricity production (rather than thermal energy) give photovoltaics an EROI of 10.2 compared to the 12.8 for coal (see Hall, Lambert and Balogh, 2013, Fig 3):
Similar efficiencies apply in transport, where the majority of thermal energy form fossil fuels is lost as heat or noise, while electric vehicles have energy efficiencies near double that of fossil fuels.
4) Economic analyses of the limitations of low EROI (so long as the EROI is above 1) are of limited applicability to renewable energy in that the low efficiency is at point of production. Given that renewable energies are effectively unlimited relative to current or projected populations and economic activity over the next century, low EROI's merely require greater energy production at source from renewable resources. The potential of Solar Breeder factories makes EROI's potentially redundant for economic analysis.
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Catprog at 10:11 AM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
@sunweb 7-Assuming all the costs are electricity here in Australia you can get $2/watt panels installed. Assuming the manufactures get half price electricity , it would only take 8 years to generate enough power to offset the usage.If you use retail rates that drops to 4 years.-I have seen wind turbines that have returns using 6 months. -
villabolo at 05:34 AM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
@funglestrumpet #4
Tractor trailers would be an excellent choice for a battery operated vehicle. The trailer has a lot of volume some of which can house a large battery array. The top of the trailer can also have solar cells though I realize it wouldn't be enough to drive the truck - maybe for running the air conditioner or heater.
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sunweb at 04:13 AM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
Solar and wind capturing devices are not alternative energy sources. For the physical devices – for wind, photovoltaices, solar hot water, hot air panels - the sun and wind are there, are green, are sustained. The devices that are used to capture the sun and wind’s energy are an extension of the fossil fuel supply system. There is a massive infrastructure of mining, processing, manufacturing, fabricating, installation, transportation and the associated environmental assaults. There would be no sun or wind capturing devices with out this infrastructure. This infrastructure is not green, sustainable, or renewable. The making of the these devices inadvertently but directly supports fracking, tar sands and deep ocean drilling because of the need for this infrastructure. In addition, the Energy Returned on Energy Invested (ERoEI) is very low for all solar devices. It takes years if ever to repay the energy it took to make, install, and maintenance these devices. I invite you to view these essays. This essay has diagrams and pictures of how we get copper, aluminum, glass, black chrome – the chemicals, heavy machinery, and industrial processes that are necessary to make the devices to capture the energy of the sun and wind. http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/12/machines-making-machines-making.html and this one has similar information and includes research on ERoEI http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2014/03/reality-again.html And even if you could get around the environmental degradation, the low ERoEI and could amass enough extra energy to reproduce the capturing devices and their equipment, then how about the rest of the STUFF of high tech, high energy society? http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/10/to-make-light-bulb.html and http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-small-fan.html
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kmalpede at 02:58 AM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
Fungelsrumpet took the words right out of my mouth. This is fantastic news.
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shastatodd at 02:18 AM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
now solar is so cheap it is powering waste... no need for silly energy audits or conservation... no need to consider the embedded energy, toxic waste, mining & c02 which is involved with manufacturing "magic solar". no need to change our lifestyles or think about the limitations of living on a finite planet with finite resources...
woo-hoo... we are all saved... sigh
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funglestrumpet at 01:32 AM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
Now let's find a way of feeding all this cheap electricity into tractors and trucks, and into personal transport that can go futher than the local supermarket without needing a flatbed truck to get it back home.
Once that little problem is cracked, it won't matter how much the fossil fuel industry spends on campaigns against combating climate change because people's purses will call the shots. They'll have to find another way to harm the planet and with it their kids, their country and themselves. Or better still, seek some much needed councelling.
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ianw01 at 01:23 AM on 6 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
Unaddressed is the question of storage. Those long cold calm winter nights cannot be ignored, and as things stand now we still need full traditional generating capacity on standby for those times.
On a positive note, here is an exciting development on ammonia-based storage.
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