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PluviAL at 13:07 PM on 14 April 2014Climate imbalance – disparity in the quality of research by contrarian and mainstream climate scientists
In 1982, the relatively new concept of CO2 induced climate change was intuitively forecasted. One prediction was a large volcanic eruption in early 1990s that would help scientists calibrate models. Pinatubo happened and Jim Hansen calibrated his models and became a motivated desciple of climate action.
The conclusion of the forecast was that civilization would either put a tax on carbon or fail in controlling climate change. The other pertinent forecast was that the arc of interest in the subject would mature in the decade of 2000 to 2010. Civilization has not really activated a tax on carbon.
Now as public interest in the subject wanes, according to the old frecast, will we successfully tax carbon? Has civilization failed to act on time to avert feedback loops that will through us into chaos?
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Noel Wauchope at 13:05 PM on 14 April 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #15B
The Internet is actually awash with articles about thorium - all praising it.
But the general theme is always the same.
Thorium reactors are basically a form of REPROCESSING
Reporocessing is pitched as the alternative to deep burial of wasters.Big pitch going on in UK - where local opposition to waste burial is strong.
So - the whole thorium thing is about a way to keep the nuclear industry going, rather than shutting it down
It's about persuading the world that wastes are not wastes, but are valuable resources.
An attractive story - as it solves the problem of local opposition to waste burial sites. Conveniently ignores the fact that the thorium reactors themselves produce become wastes - that will need burial.
All this would mean that the problem of wastes is passed on to future generations.
In tandem, goes the story that ionising radiation is OK - it is after all "background radiation". For an example of what a lie that is, consider Caesium 134 and 137. It did not exist on earth until nuclear fission. All the caesium 137 and 134 now in water soil air - all came from a nuclear power source - largely atomic bomb testing in the 50s and 60s.
Now - it's all "natural" - background radiation. And now radiation at low levels is not a worry anyway.
Two lies working together to keep the nuclear industry going. One could add the lies about the ineffectiveness of energy efficiency and renewable energy
Amen -
Noel Wauchope at 13:02 PM on 14 April 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #15B
"his appointment, though, does suggest the project has political clout. The team plan to fire up a prototype thorium reactor in 2015. Like India’s, this will use solid fuel. But by 2017 the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics expects to have one that uses a trickier but better fuel, molten thorium fluoride."
The plan is to come up with a design by 2015 - not an actual operating reactor
." But a better way is to turn the element into its fluoride, mix that with fluorides of beryllium and lithium to bring its melting-point down from 1,110ºC to a more tractable 360ºC, and melt the mixture"
The plan is to work out how to do this temperature reduction - hasn't actually been done yet"there is less than a hundredth of the quantity and its radioactivity falls to safe levels within centuries, instead of the tens of millennia for light-water waste".
This is actually not true. Yes, the volume of wastes is smaller, but it is so intensely radioactive that it requires the same size of containment as the original wastes would. Some of the fissile products do last for thousands of years, e.g technetium-99 (half-life of over 200,000 years)And the pitch about 'only centuries' is revealing - do we want to have to guard these wastes for centuries? Is that OK?
Not able to be turned into weapons? In fact, it can be done . It's just more difficult.
Left out of this argument is the constant need for plutonium and/or enriched uranium to keep the fissile process happening.
This means a source of plutonium/enriched uranium nearlby - this means not only import of these but a continuous terrorism risk . The thorium reactor and its ancillary sources and eventual wastes form a lovely terrorism target. Even more fun , if there are dozens of little reactors.
Moderator Response:[DB] Please limit the usage of Bold text. Over-usage is considered the same as all-caps (shouting).
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ubrew12 at 08:56 AM on 14 April 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #15B
The media's inability to report anything straighforward about Global Warming was served with some sarcasm in this 3 min piece on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
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DMarshall at 05:59 AM on 14 April 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #15B
The Economist article on Thorium is paywalled.
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chriskoz at 13:43 PM on 13 April 2014Climate imbalance – disparity in the quality of research by contrarian and mainstream climate scientists
It's worth adding the recent "Stadium Wave" hypothesis by Judith Curry to this list, as it just has received a solid debunking by Mike Mann. For details, go to the article I just referenced in the weekly roundup thread.
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chriskoz at 13:32 PM on 13 April 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #15B
Natural ocean cycle has offset manmade warming
This is a rather poorly written article about the most recent publication by Mike Mann. The author does not even mention Mann's name. Also the secondary conclusion of this publication is not mentioned: the debunking of a famous "Stadium Wave" hypotehesis by Judith Curry. Mann has shown that "Stadium Wave" hypothesis a byproduct of incorrectly applied statistical analysis. Curry will be fuming and we have another nail to the coffin of a contrarian hypothesis.
Read much better, detailed summary here:
Waving Good Bye To The Stadium Wave Model: About that global warming hiatus
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villabolo at 09:30 AM on 13 April 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #15B
Concerning the Thorium reactors the problem with any radioactive substance is that the waste material can be used by terrorists as a weapon irrespective of any explosive capabilities. It only needs to be ground into a fine powder and dispersed in the air.
I don't know how radiogenic materials are stored but it's not likely to be well guarded.
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Jubble at 04:49 AM on 13 April 2014Climate imbalance – disparity in the quality of research by contrarian and mainstream climate scientists
I'd be interested to know what percentage of the contrarian papers have since been found to be incorrect? Are there any that have not?
I guess one could ask the same of those papers affirming the climate science, although that might not be so simple a task given there are so many.
This point may be have been addressed in the paper itself, which I am unable to read as it requires a subscrition at the moment.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:45 AM on 13 April 2014Climate imbalance – disparity in the quality of research by contrarian and mainstream climate scientists
It is clear that some people will not “change their thought processes and motivations” just because the better understanding of all the available information contradicts what they prefer to believe (or in this case what they want others to believe). Only when these people among the “contrarians to climate science” are acknowledged as being irrational is there hope that they would begin to more rationally pursue the best understanding of the issue, even when that better understanding will result in them rationally understanding the loss of personal opportunity for maximum benefit from unsustainable and harmful activities that is required by that better understanding.
It may be helpful to use a different term to refer to people whose actions indicate a high degree of certainty that they are not genuinely interested in developing a continuously improved best understanding of what is going on, motivated by a resistance to the changes of human activity that is required by that improved understanding.
Maybe “deliberate irrational objectors” should be the term for people who strive to create doubts regarding the best understanding of the results of the climate science even though their familiarity with “all of the available information” should not lead them to try to make the claims they try to get away with. These are people who deliberately object to the understanding that would result from a reasoned and rational evaluation of all the available information. And their motivation for being “deliberate irrational objectors” is clear. The current developed socioeconomic system created a lot of people who desire the personal benefits they can obtain from deliberately pursuing benefit from unsustainable and harmful actions. That is a very powerful motivation. And the deliberate irrational objections it can lead to must be recognized and called what they most likely are.
Having said that, the term deliberate irrational objector can be manipulated to lead thoughts away from the intended description of the person, to make it seem disparaging or unfair. It almost becomes necessary to describe the term every time it is used to make it more difficult for the deliberate irrational objectors to deliberately irrationally object to it, but they still will try.
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Michael Whittemore at 00:33 AM on 13 April 2014Climate imbalance – disparity in the quality of research by contrarian and mainstream climate scientists
As wrong as this may sound, I don't think we can ever expect people to do anything. If governments won't do it, it won't get done. The only way I could see this working is if there became a contract between nations that sign up to reduce carbon which only allows them to do 80% of all business between each other.
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funglestrumpet at 20:23 PM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
Rodger D @ 13
And he would probably be able to find a quote from one of the all too many 'guns for hire' so-called experts that say that the sea-ice was not bouncing back and indeed, like the surface temperatures, was extremely variable. Being able to prove one's point by turning to the science of an issue, does not automatically result in public acceptance. If it did, they too would be 97% in favour of urgent action to combat climate change. The only reason that I can put it down to is that the media have undue influence, which they abuse, and an all too gullible public acceptance ot their output. The Mail group is far from unique in this matter. If Mr Rose and all those like him, including peers of the realm, could be shown to the satisfaction of a jury that they had deliberately made statements that they had to have known to be false, then I see that as worthy of sanction. Others on this site disagree with me. But I am sure that if such sanctions had been in place from long ago, we would today have a much better informed public and a political class much in fear of losing votes if they did not act on the matter. I think that that loss of freedom is a price worth paying if it saves lives.
Scientists themselves are not immune from being influenced by the media. I am confident that the majority reading this will believe the official line on 9/11 and see conspiracy theorists, such as myself as tinfoil hat wearing loonies. Yet if one turns to p45 of NIST's Final Report on the collapse of WTC7, one will find that NIST (reluctantly) accept that it collapsed at free-fall acceleration for 100 feet. In truth, all I have done is what I always try to do, namely see what science has to say. this time it says there has to have been an input of energy sufficient to remove the tens of thousands of tons of structural steel and concrete that was stopping the building from collapsing at all. Hence my position that, nukes, directed engery beams, aliens etc notwithstanding, WTC 7 was brought down by the use of explosives. I mention that only to make the point that even scientists can be fooled if they drop their guard. (The price of "freedom etc.")
As for your comments on Tverberg, as you say, you are no expert. What I was suggesting was that her work needs to be professionally debunked or accepted as valid. It will be something that the faux skeptics will latch onto sooner or later and it would be better if this side of the fence were not caught on the back foot. One thing is very clear is that oil will become more and more scarce with a consequent effect on transport costs, that will in turn screw up economic growth, cause a retraction from globilisation and generally disrupt how economies operate. And all that at a time when interests rates will start to climb and the little bits of paper that we call money will eventually be seen for what they are: only little bits of paper. That will surely have an effect on BAU and with it carbon emissions. I just think it would make sense, if valid, if those notions were built into the climate models. We will only be able to validify them by investigation, which is what I am suggesting. The last thing we need is for the media to have yet another reason to knock the IPCC. I can Mr Rose sharpening his quill even as I write.
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Tom Curtis at 12:07 PM on 12 April 2014Climate Models Show Remarkable Agreement with Recent Surface Warming
Klapper @59:
HadISST1: ENSO (the El Nino Southern Oscilation) is no more directly measured by a pure El Nino/La Nina index than it is by a pure SOI index. Further, the El Nino fluctuations themselves are caused by changes in the strength of the Walker circuation, which is caused by changes in pressure between the Central and Western Pacific. Thus the SOI measures a direct link in the causal chain of El Ninos. The change in relative pressure may be caused in part by changes relative changes in temperature. Relative changes in temperature are no measurable by taking the average SST of a small area. Your claim that NINO 3.4 measures a direct forcing is false. Indeed, it is the SOI that measures a direct forcing, rather than NINO 3.4. Had you used the Trans Nino Index (TNI), you would at least have an arguable case ("arguable" in that it is not clear that the relevant areas are the best for measuring the causality).
PDO: The PDO is closely entwined with ENSO, but it is not clear in which direction the causation flows. It is also irrelevant in that once you have included the ENSO signal, you have de facto included the PDO signal on global warming as well (because they are so closely entwined). Therefore the PDO is a distraction in this discussion.
Error: If the baseline error results in models over stating warming, variations around that baseline will bring models and observations into close agreement, or great divergence. Thus, if the baseline trend in observations is 0.17 C/decade and that in models is 0.2 C/decade, a +/- 0.04 C/decade influence on the observed trend will result in discrepancies between -0.01 and + 0.07 C. Such variations are not arguments to think the baseline discrepancy is more than about 15%. Rather they are reasons to think that it is about 15% +/- 15% - where the +/- represents not the error in the estimate but the variation around the baseline discrepancy.
This is the last time I will make that point. If you cannot see that by now, it is because you will not see it. The possibility that the model error is not large is too uncomfortable for you to deal with, so you reject it regardless of the evidence.
""models over estimate cooling from models": Sorry for that. My previous post was written early in the morning after an entirely sleepless night due to insomnia. As a result a number of mistypings crept in.
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barry1487 at 11:51 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
"The continuing furore caused by The Mail on Sunday’s revelations – which will now be amplified by the return of the Arctic ice sheet – has forced the UN’s climate change body to hold a crisis meeting."
Wayback machine captures only go back to September 28, the date the Mail article was changed, but if you search the above sentence in la google, it is quoted as above at many links, mostly on September 8, the day after Mail article was published.
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Roger D at 10:08 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
Under the hypothetical future you note in your post, you believe Rose would be able to "say with some pride that he used his skills in the only way he knew how" to keep his family from poverty. Really? He could not find another avenue, that would not involve repeatedly trying to confuse his readers to keep his family out of this hypothetical poverty? I doubt that.
To continue the conversation, I think a reasonable response from his offspring to such a contention from Rose would be: "Dad, what were you thinking? I mean, this article for example on how sea ice is bouncing back is obviuosly disingenuous based on the information available to you at the time; it is misleading. Did you really have to put that stuff out there? You are not a stupid man. I reject that you had no choice and reject that you didn't know you were wrong to do it. Don't put it on me."
As for Tverberg's contentions, I'm no expert on peak oil, etc, but she seems like she is probably an outlier from her peers. Her graph of Estimate of future energy production in the event of an economic crash driven by factors that result in drastically lower oil (and other?) energy use which shows a sharp, steady decrease in total energy production beginning in a hypothetical 2015 crash and declining to 1970 level within 10 years would obviously mean society is struggling. But that's a big IF to essentially "count on" when something closer to BAU, which seems more likely, will result in serious problems for societies.
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chriskoz at 09:21 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
An interesting, well balanced article at popsci.com.au talks about wind industry impacts on bats:
Wind Turbines Kill More Than 600,000 Bats A Year. What Should We Do?
So the problem is not about infrasound as FF monguls and climate science deniers claim (debunked by DB@23); the problem is about "barotrauma" - the extreme barometric stress on small species due to sudden air pressure fluctuations up to the point thier lungs can explode. The small migratory species like hoary bats are mostly affected. The disturbing aspect is that we don't even know the percentage of population being killed so we don't know the extents of the problem. But according to the precautionary principle we should still restrict the deployment of wind farms in the affected areas.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:41 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
PluviAL @21,
I am not opposed to civilization, or popularity, or pursuit of profit as long as all humans limit their activities to truly sustainable actions. I point out that those who will not limit their activities in that way are the only real problems (trouble-makers), on this planet. And the system of values they want needs to be changed. They need to adapt to a sustainable reality, even if they don't want to.
I do not consider your comment to be a valid rebuttal of my criticisms of the current socioeconomic system and the results it develops. Please provide specific proof that the pursuit of popular interest or profit based on the current method of deciding value has any potetial to generate a sustainable better future for all, keeping the following in mind.
The damaging and unsustainable ways to get pleasure, comfort, convenience or profit will always be cheaper, more popular and more profitable in a system that fails to account for all impacts, particularly one ignoring the using up of a limited opportunity to the bitterest of its ends of potential benefit, no matter how damaging the activity is, just because it is something that can be gotten away with (The global easy to get helium, critical for medical uses, is being consumed by party balloons? Absurd, yet the natural result of pursuit of popularity and profit limited to the concerns of only a portion of the population and to their personal lifetime).
The only valued activity should be improved ways of living that can be chosen to be done by all humans forever on this amazing planet without reducing the amount or diversity of life. That means that the first measure of acceptability of any activity would need to be conclusive proof that the entire human population can develop to do the activity and continue it forever, until something sustainable but better was developed. And that would also require the curtailing of any activity that had been gotten away with but was learned to be unsustainable and damaging.
The filter to ensure that only sustainable human activity occur compete is deliberately not in place. Many among the wealthy and powerful do not want to adapt to limiting their opportunity in that way (they want all the freedom they can possibly get away with), mainly because they know they don't have what it takes to succeed in that type of competition. THey even fight against the development of better understanding of the uacceptability fo what they have been getting away with.
Pluvenergy, and nuclear, and any other human activity on this planet should first have to pass the true sustainability test. Then the competition of popularity and a profit system would become more relevant. That would liklely result in less energy consumption, meaning not living in places requiring larger amounts of energy consumption. It also would mean less consumption of other things (and consuming better quality and more durable things), and no consumption of non-renewables (full recycling as a last resort of acceptability). That adaptation of lifestyle may not be as popular or as profitable as the things that can currently be gotten away with, but at least it could last and be enjoyed into the future.
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funglestrumpet at 07:48 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
"However, one thing is for certain: these actions, once committed, are written into history and so can never be undone. Whatever the outcome of the climate crisis, once recorded, they will not be forgotten. One cannot help wondering if that is how some people really want to be remembered in future."
Why on earth should Mr Rose worry about the future when he can point to a body of opinion that supports his stance on climate change? He earns his money today by writing such pieces that are the subject of this posting. If his children do raise the issue with him at some future date, then he will be able to point to the soup kitchens, the homeless, the food banks, etc., which are also written in history, and say with some pride that he used his skills in the only way he knew how to keep his family from having to use them. He doesn' even face sanction from society as a whole or from his profession, if it can be described thus.
Sks readers might dislike Mr Rose, but the readership of this blog are vastly outnumbered by the readership of the Daily Mail, not to mention the Mail on Sunday and those who prefer the output of the Murdoch empire. Even if one tries to get some movement from the scientists involved in climate change, one gets told in no uncertain terms that free speech must rule the day. I'll get my son to put words to that effect on his gravestone, if climate change takes him.
However, it seem much more likely that economic collapse will probably get him first. According to <ahref="http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/04/11/oil-limits-and-climate-change-how-they-fit-together/#more-38919">this</a> article by a highly regarden actuary, Gail Tverberg, who specialises in climate change, among other issues, climate change will soon by the least of our worries.
She sees the IPCC RCP2.6 scenario as the most likely way temperatures will go. I don't know whether she is correct, but she certainly tries to support her views scientifically. The referenced article is only the latest in a series of postings by her that seem to draw largly favourable comments. Those who follow the link will find that it centres on climate change and how oil supply, or rather the lack of it, is going to have a much more dramatic effect, and much sooner. Sorry if this is off-topic, but I think it is important that climate scientists study her work and either debunk it, or see that it is taken into consideration. I know from a lot of other sources that BAU is thought highly unlikely by many in the financial sector.
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Don9000 at 06:14 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
LCBozo@8
I think I understand what you are saying. Still, it's important, I think, to remember that Darwing proposed his theory with no real way to explain how it worked. In other words, the only real doubt about it on this planet was put to bed with the discovery of DNA's role in life. Up until we understood that DNA carried the inheritable information and genetic variation that all living things pass along to their offspring and in doing so allow for evolutionary change, Darwin's theory was in that sense a theory without a known causal mechanism to explain how it worked, but that no longer applies. Thus, we can confidently say that Darwin' explanation is supported by all the relevant facts. In this sense, Darwin's theory is fact-based, or true, or correct, or, in fact, is a fact of life since there is no other plausible explanation outside of the realm of religion. Thus, I think the debate about fact versus theory on this topic is about semantics.
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John Mason at 05:39 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
#9 Don - hence there being a very good case for web-archiving plus of course screengrabs. The more of these things we have the better!
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Daniel Bailey at 05:39 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
"There's no need to be a conservation science denier, as Bailey is."
Strawman. I make no claims as to downplaying conservation science or being a pro-windpower advocate to the extent of minimizing their environmental impacts upon aviation populations. The organized attacks on climate science by fossil fuel-funded outlets include attacks on renewable energy. The parroting of unfactual and context-less birdkill information is just carbon-hype when the actual context is examined. Context I endeavored to provide in this thread.
And it's "Daniel".
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Don9000 at 05:34 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
Seeing Mike@4's comment about the change puts me in mind of Winston Smith and Orwell's 1984. I wonder if the Mail and other publications with sad denialist records on this topic, won't simply delete all their bilge when they eventually give in to reality. Clearly, it would be easy to do.
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LCBozo at 05:21 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
I would acknowledge the "Black Swan" principle when assigning % probabilities. Would a physicist claim there is a 99.9% probability that gravity exists? The existence of evolution is a fact, how it works is a theory. We can't assign such probabilities, as it presupposes we have some knowledge of what the 100% would be in the first place. -
localis at 05:21 AM on 12 April 2014Climate imbalance – disparity in the quality of research by contrarian and mainstream climate scientists
quote: "Despite the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming supported by peer-reviewed research, expert opinion, the IPCC reports, and National Academies of Science and other scientific organizations from around the world, a large segment of the population remains unconvinced on the issue."
I guess a large segment of the population (ie.the majority) aren't even aware of the evidence regarding AGW one way or the other. I think we kid ourselves that far more people share our concerns or interest in climate change than actually do. Not only do we need to silence the damage done by deniers we need to convince many that they need to start considering the issue in the first place.
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StBarnabas at 04:35 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
@2 and 3. The likelihood that climate change is happening amd man made is > 95%. The likleihood that evolution is true is close to certainty that I would not know how many nines to put after 99.9%. The fact that people choose to put dogma before reality is depressing and sadly means that getting robust climate change policy will be an uphill struggle for years to come.
StB
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IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
dhogaza - I would note that your response to my comment is (a) to a large extent not responding to what I wrote, and (b) rather over the top in tone. "Do you think they're stupid, or what" and "Real Scientists (assuming you can accept the possibility that a biologist can be a scientist) do study these things" are rather insulting statements - I do not think they are justified from what I said.
What I said was that the raw numbers for cross-species bird kills shows a four order of magnitude difference between wind power and other factors, and that with only that information there is little indication of threat to specific species. That requires specific studies of those species, their habitat intersection with wind power, evaluation of whether their flight profiles are at an altitude threatened by wind power, and most importantly data about species kills. Data which you have only now provided a (single) link to - you had not previously.
In reference to the prairie chickens, for at least the greater prairie chicken, Sandercock 2013 notes "wind turbines have little effect on greater prairie chickens, and that these grassland birds are more affected by rangeland management practices and by the availability of native prairie and vegetation cover at nest sites". That seems to be the case for the various references I found for the lesser prairie chicken, that the threat to them is far more about habitat (their range needs and their avoidance of tall structures as potential raptor sites) than about bird kills from collisions with either the blades or towers. Results like these make habitat preservation an important aspect of wind power.
An interesting discussion - but please ramp down on the rhetoric and tone.
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dhogaza at 03:59 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Let me finish by pointing out that conservation scientists understand that most wind farm installations do not cause significant impacts on populations of birds at risk.
The problem is when people like David Bailey extrapolate this to mean that no wind turbine installations can cause significant impacts on populations of birds at risk. Further extrapolation leads to claims that we don't need to take threatened or other at-risk species into consideration when siting wind farms, nor do we need to monitor or study impacts.
Wrong.
In reality, most siting studies tend to show that a given proposed wind farm doesn't pose a significant risk. Most. Not all.
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dhogaza at 03:44 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
KR:
And, yes, Real Scientists (assuming you can accept the possibility that a biologist can be a scientist) do study these things. There's quite a bit of literature out there. Here's just one example:
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/59/3/257.short
That's just the abstract. I have the print copy at home,.
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dhogaza at 03:40 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
KR:
You could start by asking why the industry always states that a lot more birds are killed by other causes rather than detail mortality by species.
Do you think they're stupid, or what?
"Do you have comparative mortality factors specifically for the lesser prairie chicken?"
lesser prairie chicken is already listed as a threatened species under the ESA. By definition every dead prairie chicken is more important from a conservation point of view than the death of, say, a starling.
"Given the four orders of magnitude higher bird kills by other factors"
Wow, four orders of magnitude!
There are only a bit more than 17,000 lesser prairie chickens in the wild. There are 150 million starlings alone. I will let you calculate how many orders of magnitude difference that represents.
Bailey includes tidbits such as:
"Cat's out of the proverbial bag. Per Loss et al 2013, feral cats kill most of the 87,000 times as many birds (in the US alone) than do all of the wind turbines in the world do, combined."
Again, no mention of species distribution, and again, this is intentional.
There is also this from Bailey, which is downright offensive:
"But climate deniers aren't interested in facts that disagree with their desired outcome."
I am no climate denier. The wildlife biologists I know are not climate deniers. I am not anti-wind power, nor are the wildlife biologists I know and have worked with over time in conservation contexts.
On the other hand, one might claim that those that equate a single starling death with that of the death of a member of a highly threatened species like lesser prairie chicken is a conservation science denier.
I'm used to this crap, being labelled "anti-environment", "climate science denier", etc simply because I point out that wind turbines are an important source of mortality for certain species at risk in certain portions of the country. The industry and friends began labelling conservation biologists as being "anti-environmental" (think about that for a minute) over two decades ago. The industry itself has reluctantly become more self-aware over time. People like David Bailey not so much.
"climate denier". Harumph. Stuff it.
Regarding Altamont, Bailey is trumpeting the success of mitigation (much better siting, removal of the old derrick-style supports that provided perches for perch-hunting species like red-tails, etc etc).
This is good news. Wind power supporters like myself who also understand conservation issues regarding certain species of birds have been very happy that newer windmill designs, attention to siting, etc have improved the situation.
We can have wind power and we can mitigate bird mortality if we pay attention to detail. There's no need to be a conservation science denier, as Bailey is.
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John Mason at 03:39 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
Mike - somewhere on this system I have a screengrab of the paragraph in question. The error was not to webcite it. Next time....
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michael sweet at 00:48 AM on 12 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Dhogaza,
Daniel provided links to a number of studies. One I looked at studied raptor fatalities in the Altamont area, which I have previously heard about as a center of raptor deaths. Daniel claims that a study showed that shooting, poison and cars killed more raptors than windmills. Can you provide data to support your claim that Daniels claim was incorrect? It seems to me that Daniel cares about raptors and has provided data to support his claim that they are not significantly affected.
Wind generator operators are still looking into this issue because they are trying to have a green image.
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IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
dhogaza - Do you have comparative mortality factors specifically for the lesser prairie chicken? Or other bird species of interest?
Given the four orders of magnitude higher bird kills by other factors, arguing that windmills pose an existential threat to specific species is going to take some solid data. It's good that the wind power industry is being prompted to mitigate windmill/bird kills, but the raw cross-species data doesn't inherently support the hypothesis of a significant threat.
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dhogaza at 23:43 PM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Daniel Bailey:
Comparing raw numbers of birds killed is useless. From a conservation perspective, the death of one starling is not equivalent to the death of one lesser prairie chicken. I could just as easily say we shoudn't be worried about gun deaths in the US because cars kill more oppossums in the US than guns kill people.
Concerns about windmills killing bird species of concern is legitimate. Fortunately the wind power industry itself (after governmental prodding) is taking the issue more seriously than people like you.
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chriskoz at 17:44 PM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
LCBozo@22,
Arizona's large Agua Caliente Solar Project generates electricity at a wholesale cost of about 22 cents per kilowatt hour whereas the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station is about 3 cents per kilowatt hour
Can you provide the source of your claim? And what does your figure of 3 cents per kWh at Palo Verde include? Does it include (besides fuel and operation cost) amortisation of construction, spent fuel disposal and decommissioning cost?
A simple check at Wikipedia reveals that your figure is unrealistic up to the point of defying logic. Most of the studies cited there estimate the nuke energy cost at $0.25-0.30 per kWh (i.e. ten times higher) and growing up in recent years. That cost growth may be dues to recent tightening of safety standards and stricter spent fuel management and decommissioning standards (virtually non-existent in nuke haydays). Ben Sovacool, the most known nuke economic expert, estimates here a new 1GWe nuke plant to cost 41.2 to 80.3 cents/kWh produced. That's very high cost. And the economics of such cost would explain why nuke industry is declining in recent decade. And with the costs proliferating and the shrinking suply of high quality U ore, it will continue to decline, regardless of your logic defying enthusiasm.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:23 PM on 11 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
The Mail artcile tried in vain to discredit the connection between climate change and violent conflict. The truth is that "competition" to maximize potential benefits from fossil fuels has created massive amounts of violent and damaging conflicts. And that will only get worse as very undesrevingly wealthy and powerful people fight even more viciously for the most unsustainable opportunity to benefit they can get get away with.
Climate change due to excess CO2 is a clear problem. The success of attempts to get away with and prolong unsustainable and damaging pursuits makes the chances of the development of a sustainable better future for all, the only viable future for humanity, highly unlikely.
The socioeconomic system needs to be changed. And the ones benefiting the most from the current fatally flawed system know it. And they don't want to have to 'adapt' to a different circumstance. They don't want to participate in the development of the gift a better future for all. They only want benefit for themselves.
The resistance to the development of the best understanding of things through activities like climate science is easy to understand.
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Daniel Bailey at 13:55 PM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
In reality, cars kill 2,800 birds for every 1 killed by a wind turbine.
And cars kill more pedestrians than windmills kill birds. Is it time to ban cars yet?
The leading causes of Raptor deaths in the Altamont study:
1. Shooting
2. Poison
3. CarsBut climate deniers aren't interested in facts that disagree with their desired outcome.
Per Erickson 2005:
Table 2–Summary of predicted annual avian mortality.
Buildings_______________ 550 million
Power lines_____________ 130 million
Cats___________________ 100 million
Automobiles_____________ 80 million
Pesticides_______________ 67 million
Communications towers___ 4.5 million
Wind turbines___________ 28.5 thousand
Airplanes________________ 25 thousandCat's out of the proverbial bag. Per Loss et al 2013, feral cats kill most of the 87,000 times as many birds (in the US alone) than do all of the wind turbines in the world do, combined. That's 3.7 BILLION bird deaths per year, by cats alone...in the US. Or about 10 MILLION per day, as compared to about 2 per day per wind turbine.
Seems the bird holocaust is getting out of...paw. Meow.
This study from the EPA of Sweden documents siting strategies successful in alleviating most wind turbine bird mortalities:
To Debunk the Anti-Wind Myth of 14,000 Abandoned Wind Turbines in California:
LINKAnd now dogs are being employed to assist in carcass searches:
A good resource:
Furthermore, the ongoing Exeter University Wind Turbine Bat Research Programme examined the Resilient Energy Great Dunkilns in order to understand the effects of wind turbines on bat populations.
The researchers used trained dogs to check for any dead bats. No dead bats were found and this correlates with Exeter's research on similar sized wind turbines where bat mortality rates have also been found to be low to non-existent.
Lastly, the Association of Australian Acoustical Consultants has rejected claims that the frequencies created by wind turbines can have adverse health issues, saying the infrasound generated is often less than a person’s heart-beat.
To sum: About 2 birds and 2 bats per day, per wind turbine.
Versus everything else, which are many orders of magnitude deadlier.
Let's move on to actual, substantive issues.
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Klapper at 12:56 PM on 11 April 2014Climate Models Show Remarkable Agreement with Recent Surface Warming
@Tom Curtis #58:
NINO3.4 from Hadisst1 is a perfectly fine proxy for ENSO. By your comments, it shows the same pattern as SOI, it has full temporal coverage, and no trend over the last 100 years which is all I looked at. Anyway, it was handy and met my criteria so I used it. The more pertinent fact is that it is a direct forcing as I've noted before, unlike SOI which is indirect.
Looking at your graph, I'm thinking that the pattern displayed is heavily influenced by the PDO. The peak ENSO "warm" trend looks to be a 30 year period ending in 1998. The error between CMIP5 and SAT in this period is 0.14 - .16C/decade = -0.02C/decade. However, the error now is much larger. The 30 year trend ending in 2014 is 0.17C/decade for SAT and 0.25C/decade, or +.08C/decade. I think you are implying that volcanic overcooling errors in the models account for the big difference in model error during the cool ENSO phase vs the warm ENSO phase.
I'm not sure what you mean by "models over estimate cooling from models"; I assume you mean volcanoes. You are right the models probably overcool during volcanic episodes, however since you don't quantify it's unclear whether the effect is large or small. We both agree on the sign of the bias for volcanoes, and the sign of the bias for ENSO over the last 30 years, but it seems we don't agree on the magnitude. With no numbers on the table perhaps we'll just wait a few more years and comment on the state of the divergence then.
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LCBozo at 10:09 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Rob Honeycutt: I certainly don't mean to imply that nuclear power is the only way to go. And, though I have a few problems with the overt alarmist nature of the climate change lobby, I'm more concerned about eliminating carbon based energy production, period, via free market venture capitalism (though I wonder where that is anymore).
Presently, nuclear power — third/fourth generation nuclear energy plant designs, are about the only way to quickly provide for massive 24/7 clean energy production.
If you count the total radioactive releases from all the nuclear plant accidents, it doesn't even come close to that continuously released from dirt burner chimneys.
I worked as a startup engineer, and maintenance programs planner (instrumentation) at PVNGS (Palo Verde Nuclear Generation Station)... I have some perspective. For one, we worked (I retired in 2012) for the plant, not any persons. Which is to say, we worked for the laws of physics, which underlie every aspect of nuclear power generation.
PVNGS has virtually a small private army protecting the plant. Guards walk around in full body armor, and carry handguns, as well as fully automatic weapons. About a fourth of the guys I worked with had, as a hobby, continuing formal tactical firearms training — handgun, rifle, shotgun. I dare say, any bad-guy morons trying to penetrate PVNGS would not make it through the security gate. If they did, they would quickly become, well, discorporate. Our first priority was public safety and nuclear safety. Second is worker (industrial) safety, after that was productivity.
In energy production one pound of nuclear fuel equals about 6,000 barrels of oil! Personally, I think burning carbon based fuels is primitive! I think the concept of small modular reactors which run a 5 year refuel cycle, vs. the 18 month refuel cycle of PW reactors (bubblers go about 2 years between refueling) is the way to go.
After utilities have invested ~$30 billion into a government sponsored waste disposal (which I call, future fuel) site — with nothing to show, APS built its own dry-cask storage facility. If the morons in D.C. had any technical knowledge, they would understand that waste is really future fuel, and dry-cask storage is the most effective way to provide for future nuclear fuel — if we went the breeder route.
Arizona's large Agua Caliente Solar Project generates electricity at a wholesale cost of about 22 cents per kilowatt hour whereas the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station is about 3 cents per kilowatt hour. Solar cells degrade at the rate of about 1 percent per year (though improving). Solar is great for rooftops, but covering the Sonoran Desert with hundreds of square miles of solar panels to eventually replace dirt burners and natural gas generators will not happen. Also, the subsidizing of these green energy sources is unsustainable, and an economic tipping point will occur long before they could replace conventional energy production. The only real long-term resolution for large scale energy production is fusion power. Geothermal is another viable technology that has minimal environmental impact.
The worst property of nuclear power plants is cost, but the investment is very long term, as major components can be replaced (PVNGS has new steam generators and heads — even got a bit more power efficiency). PVNGS generates massive scale electricity, and may well be operational for more than 100 years. It produces about 3 x 1,400 megawatts, with ~ 95% availability. If utilities would embrace liquid metal, and HTG nuclear plants, I bet the cost would drop per megawatt hour production, as the primary high pressure steam (NSSS) systems are responsible for much of the construction and maintenance costs. Breeders, with onsite fuel reprocessing would make so much sense!
Large-scale wind generators kill an estimated 1.4 million birds and bats every year. This will only increase as wind generation increases — not exactly a "green" side effect! Then we have both the solar and gas back-up generators which often supply quite a good percent of these "clean" energy sources electrical output.
It really boils down to: is there really a probability that AGW will push the earth environment to catastrophic levels, or is this just some weird political/science project? I personally would love to see more technical rigor in school curriculum, with emphasis on "we can do anything," rather than all the wrist wringing, "...but it isn't a perfect solution..." so do nothing attitude.
I helped send men to the moon, was in on the original HMG (carbon/graphite fiber) research, and helped startup half a dozen nuclear plants. I find it hard to accept this once great nation being so politically and technologically constipated. We can produce nuclear weapons when at war with other humans, but can't use available technology to bring about peace when presumably at war with our planet?
Yeah, I like nuclear energy produced electricity. Nuclear plants are the safest place I've ever worked.
One of nuclear powers biggest enemies has been the Oil and Coal industry! Try the movie, "Pandora's Promise."
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Tom Curtis at 08:36 AM on 11 April 2014Climate Models Show Remarkable Agreement with Recent Surface Warming
Klapper @57:
NINO 3.4:
1) Nino 3.4 is the SST in the region from 5 degrees North and 5 degrees south, and from 170 degrees West and 120 degrees West.
2) The full NINO 3.4 record (Jan 1870-Jan2014) shows a statistically significant warming trend of 0.014 +/- 0.008 C/decade (2 standard deviations confidence interval).
3) The 100 year record does not show a statistically significant warming trend because it start years fall conveniently on a cluster of El Nino years, while its end years fall on a cluster of La Nina years.
4) The underlying observations for HadISST1 do not properly correct for differences in methods of measurement of SST. That is the difference between HadSST3 and other SST products.
5) All of this is beside the point. Given that you are wedded to NINO 3.4 using HadISST1, here are the recent running 30 year trends for that record. As you can see, they show the same pattern as that from the SOI. The consequence is that, since November 2005, ENSO as measured by NINO 3.4 (HadISST1) causes observed temperature trends to fall further below modelled trends than would be the case without ENSO. With SOI annual values, since 2005 ENSO has the same effect. Perhaps next time you dispute a data source, you will show that your preffered data source actually make a difference to the point at hand, and is not simply a red herring as your introduction of NINO 3.4 (HadISST1) has been.
Trends:I have shown conclusively that if models over estimate cooling from models, then there will be a divergence in model and observed trends due to recent volcanism on top of any baseline discrepancy. That divergence would start around 2002. I have also shown conclusively that ENSO will cause a further divergence in the same direction since about 2005. Yet you base your argument for a large baseline discrepancy between models and observations on the increasing divergence since 2004? Seriously?
I assume the cherry pick was accidental, but even you must now recognize that estimate the baseline divergence based on a period over the whole of which it is known that extraneious factors exagerate the observed discrepancy is not sound. If persisted it, it is not honest.
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Mike3267 at 08:25 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
A very small point. Rose's Mail column, "PUBLISHED: 18:37 EST, 7 September 2013 | UPDATED: 13:45 EST, 28 September 2013", does not now contain any mention of a crisis meeting. It may have been changed. It now reads:
"The continuing furore caused by The Mail on Sunday’s revelations – which will now be amplified by the return of the Arctic ice sheet – has forced the UN’s climate change body to reconsider its position."
You, and others, quoted it as saying:
"The continuing furore caused by The Mail on Sunday’s revelations – which will now be amplified by the return of the Arctic ice sheet – has forced the UN’s climate change body to hold a crisis meeting."
The phrase "crisis meeting" does still appear in at least one comment on Rose's column.
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Tom Curtis at 07:40 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
WheelsOC @2, long before I began discussing climate change on the internet, I was heavilly involved in the evolution wars. I did so not out of religious conviction, or any particular enjoyment, but because I beleived that people who train themselves in poor reasoning in one area of their life will do so in others. Raise a child a creationist and you raise them to not recognize good science, and to be easilly fooled by pseudo-science, something I thought must inevitably be harmful to our civilization. Little did I know my fears were already being realized. In any event, one of the things that first struck me on encountering global warming deniers was the amazing similarity between the arguments of the creationists, and those of the deniers. It is as though the took creationist argument as a "how to" manual for pseudo-science.
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WheelsOC at 07:06 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
So there we have it. Distorted. Misleading. Misrepresentation. Selective quotation. All of that will come as no surprise to Skeptical Science regulars who have seen us, over the years, taking on individuals and organisations who tend to use such tactics to get their political agenda across. And it often seems that they never give up.
I seen much of the same for years by focusing on another group of denialists; the anti-evolutionists. Quote-mining and spin is such a major part of their toolbox that it's becoming one of their distinctive characteristics. A very incomplete but very representative sample can be found here, which might help reinforce one's ability to spot the practice in action. The easier it is to recognize, the more efficient it is to deal with the tactic regardless of the subject.
More on topic, I've seen someone use the exact same misrepresentation of WG2 Chapter 9, regarding human migration risks. They didn't cite the Daily Mail in doing so, but it did happen the Monday after that piece was published. The IPCC's summary of Tacoli (2009) was quoted out of context to make it seem as though the WG2 itself concluded that "current alarmist predictions [...] are not supported by past experiences of responses to droughts and extreme weather events and predictions for future migration flows are tentative at best," without any indication that this was a description of just one paper considered by the IPCC. Obviously, the real conclusion of the WG was very different from their summary of a single paper.
When dealing with people quoting the IPCC in ways that seem to contradict the IPCC, always be mindful of the potential for quote-mining. Check the source and put their statements in context. That's usually enough to rebut the whole argument. -
PluviAL at 06:20 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
One Planet OF: Granting that sustainablity is abolutely critical, there is room to appreciate the marvel of humanitie's achievements. That achievement is the purpose of life, and so the justification for all the marvels of the Universe. Not to be narsisitic, but this column and this conversation are as marvelous and worthwhile of the planet as the species we endanger.
That is to say, give civilization a break, and let us work this thing out. We have talked about how Pluvinergy, wether it works or not is not the question, is one concept which can make the planet verdant, and continue the ascent of civilization. If so, the question of mitigation and coping entail the conviction that we can do both. Therefore, civilization is not worthless; it is the universe's proudes achievement, as backards as we might, or might not be, in this ascention.
As far as profitability; it is as lovely as scinece, to those who espose it, and it is equally productive. The IPCC report is moving in the right direction, that it makes anti-climate change people happy is good too; we can start talking from common ground.
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John Hartz at 05:30 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
@dhogaza: Since it appears that Poster is now arguing with him/heself, we might as well let him/her stew in hs/her own juices.
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dhogaza at 05:05 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Poster:
"Dhogaza has stated my comment @ 6 above that sceptics are unconvinced that humans are the sole and root cause of climate change is a strawman mischaracterisation of climate science."
Climate science entails much more than the study of the last 250 years of the 4.5 billion years of the earth's history. I stand by my statement.
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PluviAL at 04:52 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Rob H: We all propose the solution from what we know best, and our oun kids are alwyas the cutest too. That's human nature. LZBozo is right, and I don't think so LZ. Breeder technology is the necessary alternative to quadruple energy availablity for a growing world economy. In my consideration, growth, is increasing wealth, and can equal a more verdant world. It all depends on benign, verdant, energy.
Breeder technology does have the problem of plutonium proliferation, which in turn requires greater government vigilance, so that is a mixed bag. The only energy concept, besides nuclear-breeder, which is on scale of need, and which is nearly 100% benign is Pluvinergy. If it works is another question. It is many, many, orders of magnitude easier to develop than fusion. Fusion is pie in the sky; it allways has been, and alway will be avilable, 15 years in the future.
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Poster9662 at 04:48 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
Dhogaza has stated my comment @ 6 above that sceptics are unconvinced that humans are the sole and root cause of climate change is a strawman mischaracterisation of climate science. I refer Dhogaza to an article published in the Guardian in July 2012 (http://tinyurl.com/nj34b2u). There are many commnets in this article commenting on the role of humans in climate change.
Comments such as "The Earth's land has warmed by 1.5C over the past 250 years and "humans are almost entirely the cause".
"Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases,"
There are other similar comments that don't gel too well with "strawman mischaracterisation of climate science".
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Hyperactive Hydrologist at 03:00 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
The problem with adaptation is that it is a reactive rather than proactive response. Given the broard range of uncertainty in climate models, at the regional scale, it is very difficult to design adaptaion measures which are appropriate. It's all well and good saying "we can adapt" but if we don't know what we are adapting to then we run the risk of making things worse or wasting resources. Saying we can adapt also gives people the excuse to put off mitigation for a few more years without considering the risks involved. Also the cost of long term adaptation measures never really seems to be taken into account. How much will it cost to protect all the worlds coastal cities from 0.5-1m of sea level rise?
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MA Rodger at 02:44 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC issue official rebuttal to more David Rose/Daily Mail nonsense
The errors within Richard Tol's work mentioned by the IPCC press release had already resulted in a spat between Tol & Bob Ward. The account Ward gives of Tol's behaviour does perhaps intimate some dark doings, with an initial less controversial version of Tol's WGII Chapter 10 "leaked to a blog for climate change ‘sceptics’" and then a section is quietly inserted into the final draft on "‘Aggregate impacts’ which was based almost entirely on Professor Tol’s 2013 paper", this being the source of the mentioned errors.
Of course, Tol is one of Nigel Lawson's GWPF so nothing would surprise me. In the Mail article, Tol says of the spat between him & Ward - "It’s all about taking away my credibility as an expert.” Well, I suppose, if he feels he can act like one of Lawson's Gentleman Who Prefers Fantasy, then his credibility will indeed be rather difficult to hold on to.
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P.T. Goodman at 02:32 AM on 11 April 2014IPCC says adapt and mitigate to tackle climate risks
@Poster
Because they were scientists.
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