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Comments 40051 to 40100:

40051. John Hartz at 07:39 AM on 11 December 2013
       Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
       

       An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

       From the SkS Comments Policy:

       No dogpiling. In the interests of civility and to enable people to properly express their opinions, we discourage 'piling on'. If a comment already has a response, consider carefully whether you are adding anything interesting before also responding. If a participant appears to be being 'dog piled', the moderator may designate one or two people from each side of the debate as the primary disputants and require that no other people respond until further notified. On topic comments on other matters not being discussed by the primary disputants will still be welcome.

40052. Ken in Oz at 07:27 AM on 11 December 2013
       Global warming is unpaused and stuck on fast forward, new research shows
       

       It's been unfortunate that surface air temperatures are seen as the definitive measure of change to our climate; global heat content seems to be measuring more direct, actual change to the climate system. Keep at it Dana; like some metaphorical version of Ekman pumping, the understanding that the oceans are where most of the heat is (still) going and that there has been no 'pause' is gradually being carried deeper into the ocean of conscious and unconscious thinking and discussion of climate change.

       As for surface air temperatures, I though Foster and Rahmstorf did very well at showing that the 'pause' is an artifact of natural variation over an ongoing warming trend. Seems like even one or two more la Nina years than el Nino during a period of 15 years can and would create the illusion of warming speeding up, slowing down or pausing. 

       I'd like to point out that the 'pause' is evidence of ongoing global warming; up (more el Nino) and level off (more la Nina) is clearly indicative of warming. It would need to be up (el Ninos) and down (la Ninas) for warming to have 'stopped' or 'paused'. Up, level off, up level off, in staircase/Escalator style is warming.

40053. scaddenp at 06:29 AM on 11 December 2013
       Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
       

       At risk of dogpiling. Photosynthesis dramatically drops in efficiency at around 32C and basically shuts down at 37C. And then there is the problem of water see Dai 2010. (seriously, look at the map from Dai). Both add up to considerable less food available than today - triggers for previous collapse of civilizations. No amount of technology beats thermodynamics. I strongly doubt all civilizations everywhere would completely collapse but extremely bad things would happen needlessly if we let climate change too quickly.

       You say you know technology and human nature. How well do you know those civilizations that did collapse?  A lot of technology is concentrated in skills of very few - how much disruption would it take to fracture that skill base?

       What economic studies exist show that is economically advantageous to transition now. The costs of mitigation are less than costs of adaption but we dont do so. Why? Because voters will believe any sort of comfortable lie rather than accept the need (as Milton Friedman pushed) to pay for externalities. We are not paying the full cost of coal. We are leaving that to future generations to pay. We need pricing on coal so that it stays in the ground.

40054. Rob Honeycutt at 05:45 AM on 11 December 2013
       Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
       

       Bill said... "We will have time to adapt."

       I beg to differ. If you look at the ice core record, the climate system can make very abrupt changes with far less purturbation than we're currently imposing on the system. Look at the Younger-Dryas. A climate shift equal about to moving from Atlanta to New York in a decade or so.

       The problem is, we don't know what causes those abrupt shifts and we don't know when they might occur.

40055. Rob Honeycutt at 05:40 AM on 11 December 2013
       Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
       

       Bill...  What's the old saying? "A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing."

       As Bob points out, you're missing the big picture. And Bob is only pointing out a few of the complicating factors. You also have to consider that human population is going to be approaching 10B right about the same time things start to get bad. We already see social unrest when grain prices rise and bread becomes unaffordable to those in poverty. Amplify that and you've got some serious global problems. It's horrendous to see people starving in parts of Africa. Imagine that but with numbers approaching a billion or more. This is not something that technology is going to solve.

       Sea level rise is also not just a matter of moving coastlines. The worse problem is the amplification of storm surges. We already see this with a small amount of sea level rise and larger storms. Make that a meter of SLR and storm surges are going to extend much further inland, also making habitation anywhere near a coastline influence by tropical storms impossible. Think, the entire US eastern seaboard. Think,  Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai... this is not in the least insignificant.

       When you say worst case of 10C, that's probably as close as one could get to a complete collapse of the world's current ecosystem. That would mean that a good portion of the lower latitudes would be unihabitable due to temperature extremes at various times during a year. With Arctic amplification, that would be much greater in the north. So, it's not just a matter of everyone migrating further north because you're going to have a large number of days during the summer that are also going to be unihabitable due to temperature extremes.

       Another element you're ignoring is that, at that level (10C) we'd possibly see the ocean surface go anoxic. Richard Alley explains it here at minute 20:00. 

       Would humans survive this? Maybe, probably, but nothing like we know today. Likely a tiny fraction of the current human population. And the worst part would be the utterly immense amount of human suffering that would occur in the process.

       And the even worse part (worse than worst) would be... it would have been entirely avoidable, at a cost today of 2% of global GDP.

40056. BillCollins at 05:26 AM on 11 December 2013
       Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
       

       Bob,

          I am in no way a denialist or a dismissive. My position is that we should transition to energy and fuels that reduce the impact as quickly as possible. But the most likely reality is that we will not do it until it is economically advantageous to do so. Given the new oil supplies and natural gas coming on line from fracking, we will continue having an economical oil supply for decades to come. I hope that we can produce cleaner sources of energy sooner than that to quicken that transition time. Ultimately people will make decisions based on their pocket books and oil is here for a while. As a species we collectively do not worry about the future. That is reality.

          Your Spanish Flu comparison doesn't really hold water. I agree that if we had a pandemic situation that wiped out say 90% of the world, it would takes a few decades to get society back to the functional level where we are now. But we will not lose our technical knowledge. The difference here is that this is a slow moving danger. It is not a tsunami. We will have time to adapt. We will move our cities, our industries, our farms. So there is not NYC, SF, or LA? THe loss of all our coastal cities is a tragedy, but not the end of the world.  Of course there will be wars and famine. In my post I never said that we have nothing to worry about. I said that civilization will survive this and prosper.

          My position is not in conflict with working to achieve  sustainable energy capabilities. On the contrary, realizing that the solution has to be about economics more so than awareness should focus our efforts on where it will do the most good. When people post that in the future we will be living in a Stone Age, it detracts from the validity of the problem and how to solve it by alienating realistic and hopeful people.

        

40057. Bob Lacatena at 04:24 AM on 11 December 2013
       Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
       

       Bill,

       Your story is sadly oversimplified. 

       1. Econimic upheaval... many industries will be affected, either directly (sea level rise, shifting agricultural zones, etc.) or indirectly (changes in transportation methods, power sources, etc.).  When economies change, people and sometimes entire cities (e.g. Detroit) lose their place in the economy.
       2. Refugees and warfare... dwindling/shifting resources always leads to upheaval and violence (see the Arab Spring, as the most recent of a long history of examples)
       3. Storm damage... climate change will come with greater dangers from storms, which will in turn have an economic and human cost.
       4. If all of the world's ice melts, and if temperatures go up 10C, we will not still have cities.  Sea levels would rise tens of meters.  2/3rds of human population or more would be displaced.  Agricultural impacts would be untenable.  Food shortages and the resulting, violent social upheaval would be a death knell.
       5. Of course, you presented a worst case scenario which need not come to pass.  The biggest danger from climate change right now is that we have to stop using fossil fuels at some point.  If we wait until the costs are too high, then we will need to abandon fossil fuels so quickly that the transition will be anything but painless.  My personal guess is that 3/5 of the world's population will simply be cut out of the energy pie, and forced to return to pre-industrial existence.  The remainder will have to learn a new life style using behavior changes, frugal energy use, and renewables -- and it will be absolutely nothing like the world we live in today.

       What shocks me is the way people think that an 80 year old period of technological stability means that it can never end.  Countless powerful human civilizations have fallen over the course of history, many of them as a result of climate change, and yet some people seem to think that imagining such a thing in our case is impossible -- and yet our current society is so precariously positioned that it is frightening.

       We are so specialized and interconnected that many people are utterly incapable of surviving in anything but our interconnected society.  Imagine what would happen just as the result of something like the outbreak of a Spanish flu, something that wipes out even a small percentage of the population.  We do not run a society with much in the way of wiggle room for major industries, jobs and tasks.

       Our society and civilization is very, very far from safely grounded.  Something as huge as climate change is guaranteed to knock the foundation out from underneath, if we wait too long to address the problem.

       I think it's really funny (in a sad way) that Dismissives deny climate change, shouting alarmingly, "Alarmist!  What you ask would destroy our economy!" when in fact acting now would incur a small price (10 years ago would have been way better), while delaying any further virtually guarantees the outcome that they use to scare people away from effective and reasonable action.

40058. BillCollins at 03:54 AM on 11 December 2013
       Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
       

       I don't pretend to have any depth of knowledge around climate change, but I do know technology and human nature. For all of you who believe that civilization will collapse, let's walk through a worst case scenario. All of the ice in the world melts. Temperatures go up 10C. We will still have cities. Technology will still advance. It will not happen in a year or a decade. We will not need to move out of the coastal cities suddenly, we will just stop building in them or near the ocean. As older people die, young people will move inland. Yes it is bad, people will starve and be displaced, but it is not the end of civilization. There will still be a few billion well-fed educated people on the planet. We will make it through this with flying colors.

40059. lennartvdl at 02:16 AM on 11 December 2013
       Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise
       

       Tom @23,

       Thanks for the nice sketch of your risk approach, which I think is quite reasonable. I do have some questions though.

       How do you/we best estimate the potential (moral and economic) risks, costs and benefits of (not) investing in adaptation vs mitigation? Or put differently: what would be your preferred adaptation and mitigation policy goals?

       For example: should we use the risk of 1.5 meters of SLR by 2100 as a worst-case in adaptation planning, as long as there’s no strong mitigation policy in place? And if so, on what grounds should we ignore the risk estimate of the circa 17% of experts who think there’s a substantial risk of 1.75 meters or more by 2100 under BAU? We have to draw a line somewhere, but why should that be the line?

       And what should be our mitigation goal? Should it be the 6% per year global CO2 emissions reductions that Hansen et al recently argued for? What (economic or other) risks would such a goal/policy entail? Or should it be the 50% reductions by 2050 that UNFCCC still has its goal (on paper at least)? What risks would remain with that less ambitious goal, for SLR and other effects, and how do you/we weigh all those risks?

       For example: it seems even with strong mitigation there’s at least some risk of more than 1.5 meters of SLR by 2100 and more than 4 meters by 2300. With less mitigation the risks will be higher. How much risk should we as global society accept, and what does this imply for the risks that specific countries, regions and cities should accept, such as small island states, Bangladesh and others?

       I hope you could explain some more where your reasoning would lead us, and am certainly willing to explore and discuss where for example Hansen’s prescription could lead us, if your advice would be substantially different from his.

       Thanks again for your input, Lennart

40060. Tom Curtis at 17:01 PM on 10 December 2013
       Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise
       

       lennartvdl @21, I will concentrate to the upper likely estimate (83% confidence bound) for rcp 8.5 in 2100, as the range of opinions is shown by this graph from Real Climate:

       

        

        As can be seen, there is a long tail of opinion with the highest value at 6 meters.  So, how should this guide us as policy makers (or voters for policy makers).  Well, first we recognize that we are not expert, so that our independant judgement based on the evidence we look at is likely to be far more unreliable than that of the experts, both because we have less information, and because we have less experience in the field, leading us to be prone to "rooky mistakes".  Second, we recognise that scientists, as scientists are also prone to mistakes; but that they are self correcting at an institutional level.  (Ideally they would be self correcting at an individual level, but the history of science shows that to be an ideal rather than a universal reality.)  Therefore we focus on the areas of agreement among scientists rather than the outliers.

       At that stage, we notice that while there is a long tail, the number of experts in the tail from 2 meters up (14) is less than the number of experts who are lowballing the risk (17 with an estimate of 0.5 meters).  The two groups more or less cancel each other out, and we are left with the two central groups (1 - 1.5 meters).

       Third, we are cautious, but not overly so in our estimate.  Therefore we take the upper bound of the concensus estimates.  Hence 1.5 meters.

       As an actual policy maker, I would do that more formally, or at least I would get my appropriate staff to do so.  I would get them to develop a Probability Density Function of the expert estimates.  Further, I would get them to develop cost/benefit evaluations for my nation for a range of adaption responses relative to the range of estimates.  I would then attempt to begin the adaption program with the best expected utility given the PDF from the expert elicitation (withing budget).  As cost increase substantially with sea level rise, this would result in an adaption response targeted for the upper range of the PDF, but within the main body of upper estimates (ie, most likely 1-1.5 meters).  It would be higher for nations like Bangladesh and and lower for nations like Australia; higher for states like Florida, and lower for states like Oregon.  I would also need to normalize the sea level rise values relative to expected local rise for a given global rise, as the sea level rise is not the same in all areas.

       The concentration you show on upper estimates by the most extremely pessimistic experts is not a rational response to sea level rise.  It ignores most of the evidence, and all of the costs of responding, which are substantial.

       Finally, I have focussed on adaption because mitigation must have the same policy in response to all the risks of global warming plus OA.  As sea level rise is a minor portion of that risk (while still substantial) it has little effect on assessing the need for mitigation.  We should be mitigating anyway, even if we thought sea level rise was going to peak at 100 cm, and the ideal level of mitigation would only rise slightly with sea level rises of 3 meters by 2100. 

40061. chriskoz at 12:43 PM on 10 December 2013
       2013 SkS Weekly Digest #49
       

       This news may inspire the knucle-head denialists, because their own conservative hero-president attitude:

       Reagan eco-warrior

       It's funny how the author's trying to explain with his/er text averything controversial, i.e. latest "GW slowed down...".

       Certainly, the Montreal Protocol contributed to e.g. the birth of the meme that James Hansen "over-estimated rate of warming" back in 1988. But the latest hiatus in surface temp increase has little to do with Montreal...

40062. Leto at 07:20 AM on 10 December 2013
       4 Hiroshima bombs per second: a widget to raise awareness about global warming
       

       Note to the widget programmer. It misbehaves on Firefox. The widget in the sidebar is smaller than the one in the post, and the smaller one repaints only half of the right-most digit as the number climbs. If the number ends on a 3 when first displayed, for instance, the right half of a 3 will stay in place while the left half climbs. It is often not possible to make out what number is intended. The larger in-post version behaves as intended.

       
       It is not simply a total-screen-real-estate issue, because I have Firefox open on a massive screen at present. It may be related to squeezing the widget into the side bar, which is fairly narrow. Happy to send screenshots if needed.

40063. lennartvdl at 06:22 AM on 10 December 2013
       Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise
       

       Some more results from figure 2:

       - 7 out 72 experts think there's about a 5% chance of 7 meters or more by 2300 under BAU, with the highest estimate about 15 meters.

       - 5 out of 72 experts think there's about a 17% chance of 6 meters or more by 2300 under BAU, with a highest estimate of almost 10 meters.

       - 3 out 74 experts think there's about a 17% chance of 3 meters or more by 2300 even in the best case, with 3.5 meters as highest estimate.

       - 3 out of 74 experts think there's about a 5% chance of 4 meters or more by 2300 in the best case, with almost 8 meters as the highest estimate. 

40064. lennartvdl at 06:05 AM on 10 December 2013
       Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise
       

       To return to the paper itself: in the conclusion it says that 13 experts (out of 82) think there's about a 17% chance that SLR by 2100 could be more than 2 meters in the RCP 8.5 scenario. So it seems about 16% of the experts think there's a substantial risk of 2 meters or more in the worst-case.

       Figure 2 of the paper shows that 5 out of 82 experts think there's about a 5% chance that SLR by 2100 could be 3 meters or more in this BAU scenario, with the highest estimate about 7 meters. So it seems about 6% of the experts think there's some risk of more than 3 meters of SLR by 2100 in the worst-case.

       But even in the strong mitigation scenario of RCP 3 three experts out of 84 think there's about a 5% chance of more than about 1.5 meters of SLR by 2100., with the highest estimate around 2 meters. So it seems almost 4% of the experts think that even in the best case there's some risk of more than 1.5 meters of SLR by 2100.

       About 50% of the experts think that in this best case there's about a 17% chance of more than 0.6 meters of SLR by 2100 and about a 5% chance of more than 0.7 meters. So even in the best case there seems to be a significant risk of more than 60 cm of SLR around 2100.

40065. nigelj at 06:00 AM on 10 December 2013
       Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously
       

       I think the movie would be good and I agree a personal emotiponal connection is important, as long as the movie doesnt over hype anything.

       One of the other issues with climate change is the huge scale of the issue, namely moving away from fossil fuels. I suspect most people struggle with that challenge, and need to be shown a picture of a viable world without fossil fuels.

       Once people can see a future, they will relax and be more accepting of change and the costs of change. Right now they are fearful and go into denial or fatalistic acceptance of climate change.

40066. Tom Curtis at 04:50 AM on 10 December 2013
       Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise
       

       michael sweet @19, agreed on all points.

40067. Tom Curtis at 04:47 AM on 10 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       John Hartz @24, I doubt it, although I do not know.  Including it, however, would not substantially alter the reported GDP in that, first, it was a small percentage of the oil now being sold; second, much of the illegal funds was obtained by diverting money from the oil for food program, which was accounted for; and third, because it was diverted to private holdings, it would not have had the multiplier effect within the economy that normal trade generates.  Indeed, for illegal profits to have made up the difference in the GDP, they would have to be in order of $US 170 billion.  That is at least an order of magnitude greater than estimates of Saddam's black market oil sales prior to the 2nd US/Iraqi war.    Consequently, while we cannot be certain that the Iraqi PPP per capita GDP is over 100% greater than that prior to the second US/Iraq War, there is little doubt that it is much larger than before the war. 

40068. wili at 04:40 AM on 10 December 2013
       2013 SkS Weekly Digest #49
       

       I like the cartoon (I was glad to see it run in our local paper).There were also voices over the last few decades that could have been shown in those boxes expressing greater and greater alarm at inaction in the face of ever-more-clear threats, who also now have to say that it is too late to avoid unimaginably bad and now inevitable consequences of our past inaction. But of course further inaction (which is what seems to be in the cards at this point) will further doom us to even worse consequences.
          I see that it looks as though Dana's upcoming piece "Global warming is unpaused and stuck on fast forward, new research shows" will likely be along something like those lines.

40069. LiarDenier at 03:34 AM on 10 December 2013
       Most of the last 10,000 years were warmer
       

       I normally just read this blog for information and am now posting for the first time. Morgan Wright is an active denier who trolls many climate blogs and sometimes pretends to be a climate scientist to state his denialist lies. He actually has his own denier blog at hyzercreek.com/hillofshizzle.htm so be aware because he recently used a lot of information he got from this thread on his blog...he spun the bit about 1855 and GISP2/local proxy his way. Don't fed the troll.

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] What exactly do you mean by your statement, "Don't feed the troll"? As best as I can determine, Morgan Wright has not posted a comment on this thread.

       Upon further review, I see that Morgan Freeman did in fact post on this comment thread under a different user name, Steven Foster. Morgan Freeman and his sock puppet have been banned from posting on SkS.  

40070. meb58 at 02:24 AM on 10 December 2013
       Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously
       

       I think humanity cares...but the challenge is complex on a global scale, challenging on a scale of time leaving, in my opinion, a good chunk of humanity to peck away solutions in ways that seem reasonable.  If you step back, the challenge is monumental with no concerted frame work in place for most of humanity to follow.  For some, recycling news papers, cans and plastic is all they can do...I myself am not much beyond this.  Humanity has to march along the same, clear, chord.   That we do not agree on the science presents a pretty big hurdle, and leap into one camp or the other. 

       Humanity - non science folk - is keen to follow I hope.  But I feel we attach to emotion better than we do raw science.  and perhaps this film begins to do just that.

40071. John Hartz at 02:04 AM on 10 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       @Tom Curtis #23: Sadam Huessein and his henchmen accumulated much personal wealth through illegal means (e.g. selling petroleum on the black market) during their reign. Is this taken into account in the World Bank's computation of Iraq's GDP  during this time period?  

40072. michael sweet at 01:52 AM on 10 December 2013
       Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise
       

       Tom,

       I do not think that that we substantially disagree.  Reasonable people may have different concerns when looking at projections many years in the future.

       It is surreal when I suggest that having the homes of several hundred million people destroyed, along with a considerable percentage of the best farmland in the world, is a problem.  You return that we have to keep our eye on the big problems, not the smaller ones and I have to agree. What kind of a discussion is that?  Hopefully Hansen's message  will start to sink in and something will be done.

40073. Tom Curtis at 01:49 AM on 10 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       John Hartz @19 inline, Iraq has a population of around 31 million, and around 1 million regugees external to the borders (ie, excluding IDP and returned refugees).  That means including them in the per capita population would reduce per capita GDP by at most 3.25%, a minimal impact relative to the PPP per capita GDP growth of just over 100% since 2003.  Given the removal of sanctions, it would be extraordinary of Iraq's economy had not improved.

40074. Smith at 00:51 AM on 10 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       I cannot help but wonder, however, how the thousands of Iragi refugees residing in other Mideast countries are accounted for in the World Bank's computations.

       I do not know, but per capita GDP was the metric chosen by the author and the World Bank was their chosen source for the data.  The claim is not accurate and should be corrected, particularly in the context of an article discussing media reporting accuracy.  

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] This matter certainly bears further review by the author of the OP -- especially since the link embedded in the statement you have called into question is also to the World Bank data base. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

40075. Tom Curtis at 00:20 AM on 10 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       JH inline @17:

       Iraq GDP per capita (PPP), 1999-2011.

       Also, Iraq's "Economy grows but how many benefit?"

40076. Smith at 00:06 AM on 10 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       Sorry the last point in my post No. 19 should read;

       Iraqi GDP per capita currently (2012) was $6455 USD.  

40077. Smith at 00:00 AM on 10 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       Please specify the source of your data.

       The acronym "GDP" was hyperlinked to the World Bank, which is the same source hyperlinked as the citation for the claim that "Iraqi per capita GDP has so far failed to return to prewar levels".

       Iraqi GDP per capita pre-war (2001) was $772 USD. 

       Iraqi GDP per capita pre-war (2001) was $6455 USD. 

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] Thank you. I obviously did not see that "GDP" had a link embedded in it. I cannot help but wonder, however, how the thousands of Iragi refugees residing in other Mideast countries are accounted for in the World Bank's computations.  

40078. CBDunkerson at 23:52 PM on 9 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       JH, Smith's numbers line up with the chart and 'knowledge graph' produced when Googling "Iraq GDP". Google cites the World Bank as their source. The link in the article above also goes to World Bank data on Iraq, and shows the same $210.3 billion figure for 2012 as Google has, but not the history. I found the history at this page, and it too matches Google once you click through the different time periods.

40079. CBDunkerson at 23:34 PM on 9 December 2013
       2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #49B
       

       The 'line charge' thing is a total scam. In Arizona, the first state to rule on it, ALEC and the power companies were pushing for a $100 per customer monthly line charge. That's more than the total monthly electric bill of most households. Even the $5 per month charge they eventually settled on is pure highway robbery. There are over 100 million 'households' in the US (for 300 million people). Even if we ignore businesses, charging each of those 100 million households $5 per month would mean $500 million per month available for grid maintenance. For that kind of money they could replace the entire US electric grid every ten years or so. Instead, most of the equipment in use is over a century old.

       Yes, there is some hypothetical amount of money that power companies spend to keep the electric grid operating. The fact that it stops operating every time a strong storm blows through or a squirrel chews on the wrong wire ought to be a clue that this amount isn't very large. In some places the power companies are actually making money on solar because it generates power at peak usage times and they get to sell the power at peak rates while paying the solar generators a flat rate. In other cases the peak rate gets passed on to the solar generator, but the power companies are still benefitting because they can produce steady baseload power (the least expensive) rather than having to ramp up as much for the peaks.

       In all likelihood, the money power companies make off of selling 'excess' solar power to their customers is greater than the amount they 'lose' by not charging the solar generators for maintenance of the electric grid. However, the profits they lose from those people generating their own electricity are even greater... and they are introducing these grossly inflated line charges as a way to discourage solar power generation and still get their profits even though they no longer supply the electricity.

       William's point about applying the same rates to all customers is the correct way to go. The $5 'line charge' in Arizona is only being applied to solar producers. The proper way to implement it would have been to apply the new $5 charge to all customers and decrease the cost of electricity such that on average the total monthly bill wouldn't change.

       That said, $5 per customer is a low enough 'tax on solar' / 'fossil fuel subsidy' that it will do little to slow the growth of solar power. The fact that it was kept so low shows that the fossil fuel industry is already losing their political clout... and as that happens they will begin to lose some of their big subsidies, leading to higher costs, which will drive more adoption of solar (and/or wind), and the whole thing will just continue to snowball. The fossil fuel industry is dying. Finally.

40080. Johnny Vector at 22:46 PM on 9 December 2013
       2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #49B
       

       William:  To be fair, at some level of solar input, load balancing does start to become a more difficult job.  However at that point the cost of upgrading the grid to handle it, divided by the number of producers, is still a small cost.  I'm happy to pay that cost.

       Not to mention that in large parts of the US, peak power demand occurs precisely when peak solar power is available, since the power is being used to remove solar-generated heat from buildings.  Which makes solar generation from individual buildings inherently load-leveling.

40081. Smith at 22:19 PM on 9 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       Iraqi per capita GDP has so far failed to return to prewar levels,

       This claim is not accurate.  Iraqi per capita GDP in 2001 was $772, it was $6455 in 2012.  That is nearly a ten fold increase in Iraqi per capita GDP.  

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] Please specify the source of your data.

40082. funglestrumpet at 21:02 PM on 9 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       John Hartz @ 8

       The point that I was making, with proof of same, was that not all conspiracy theories are false and this site, in saying that climate deniers are likely to be conspiracy theorists supports the media's meme that they are.

       It is no good complaining about media manipulation of the public's opinion on climate change while supporting their manipulation of the public's opinion on other matters.

       Important as it surely is, climate change is not the only game in town. If sks wants to have an effect on the media, it needs to support others who also wish to have the same effect on the same media.

       How that was off topic is a mystery to me. (I note that later posts have disappeared into w.m.d. and wars fought over them.)

       Moderator Response:

       [JH] I apparently misread your initial post. My apologies for deleting it.

40083. mercpl at 20:06 PM on 9 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       I have used the Iraq war to illustrate to conservatives (Liberals here in Australia) how hypocritical their views on climate change action are.

       The reasoning of Bush, Blair and Howard used to justify the Iraq war was essentially this:

       We think that there is a very high probability that Saddam Hussein has Weapons of Mass Destruction.  If this is true then the consequences of allowing this to continue will be very severe.  Therefore we cannot wait for absolute certainty, we must act now.

       That was a logically consistent argument and the decision to invade Iraq was justified if (and its a very big IF)  Saddam did posses WMD.

       Now, if only the conservatives would apply the same logic to Global Warming but instead they refuse to acknowledge the consequences and demand that we wait for absolute certainty.

40084. nigelj at 18:46 PM on 9 December 2013
       New Video: Making the Plio Scene – What the Past tells us about Sea Level
       

       Very good video. There is a useful book called After the Ice about human communities after the last ice age ended. The book presents evidence of a period of rapid sea level rise of several metres in about 50 years.

       Remains were found in some countries of settlements relocating to higher ground several times over. Past climate history needs more emphasis in the media, as its easy to relate to historical situations.

40085. nigelj at 17:48 PM on 9 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       I agree with the article, the media were unquestioning over the rather weak claims about weapons of mass destruction. The media  seem to let many ridiculous sceptical claims on climate science go unanswered (apart from the work of this site). Whether this is journalistic ignorance on the science, or bias its hard to tell and is possibly both.

       However theres no point wringing your hands, only the mainstream climate science community can move to better engage with the media, and ensure its case is put fairly, and that sceptical claims are properly scrutinised.

40086. John Hartz at 14:30 PM on 9 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       The spin-meisters in the Bush-Cheney Administration purposely embedded the media into the shock and awe invasion of Iraq. That mechanism succesfully co-opted the U.S. media. There is no parallel mechanism in place when it comes to communicating the science  of climate change.

40087. Tom Curtis at 12:33 PM on 9 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       Warren Hindmarsh @11, WMD in Iraq were presented to the UN by the UN agency (ie, the IAEA), as possibly existing in Iraq, but that there was no confirmation either that they existed or had been destroyed.  Further, it was presented by the IAEA that Iraq was in fact cooperating with inspections.  Those views were in fact correct.

       That you, instead of drawing the analogy to Hans Blix's statements, draw it to that of a politically motivated actor shows your analogy to be deceptive rather than informative.  If you want to draw the analogy, draw it between like and like (IAEA and IPCC).  Of course, if you do, the lesson from the analogy would be that the IPCC reports are fair minded, and as reliable as is permited given the evidence, while clearly drawing attention to where the evidence is insufficient to support conclusions, or make the conclusions tentative.

40088. Warren Hindmarsh at 11:44 AM on 9 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       Good analogy, but it doesn't support your position. Both WMD and CAGW were presented to the UN (remember Colin Powell presentation on WMD and the IPCC on CAGW) as irrefutable facts, governments around the world accepted the propositions on face value.  There were skeptics on both presentations who questioned the lack of evidence they were howled down.  The results lives and billions wasted.

40089. John Hartz at 09:26 AM on 9 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       Nigelj, One Planet Only Forever, Philippe Chantreau, and Rob Painting:

       Thank you all for taking the time to post thoughtful responses to keitho's diatribes.

       I aplogoize for not getting on top ofthis situation earlier thatn I did, but I was focused on producing the Weekly Digest,

40090. John Hartz at 08:59 AM on 9 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       keitho: All of your posts have been deleted because they were nothing more than argumentative sloganeering and generally off-topic. All response to your comments were also deleted.

       Please read the SkS Comments Policy and adhere to it.  If you do not, you will forfeit your privilege to post comments.

40091. John Hartz at 05:35 AM on 9 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       Funglestrumpet: Your post was deleted because it was off-topic. 

       The topic of the OP is a comparison of the media coverage of the Iraq war to its coverage of climate change. 

       Conspiracy theories about the Sept 11 attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York are not on topic.

40092. Roger D at 04:47 AM on 9 December 2013
       Media failure on Iraq War repeated in climate change coverage
       

       I think the analogy that is the topic of this OP does hold up. In both cases, the mainsteam media's coverage misinformed opinion.  It's been well documented how the need for invasion was marketed and its probable costs downplayed during the fake "emergency" sold by the Bush Administration.

       I think what is maybe confusing about the analogy is that while the media's coverage of both WMD and AGW resulted (is resulting in the case of AGW) in many more people believing untruths, one was a case where action was being justified and one is a case where inaction is being justified.

       I think the analogy will hold up in this way too: after it becomes widely apparent that there was a failure to portray the AGW situation in a way that accurately reflects honest/ dilegent reporting of what is actually known vs unknown, it would be as hard to find people defending their staunch assertions that AGW is harmless as it is to find those willing to admit the degree of their support for the Iraq war today.  Many of those supporting inaction may die before it is so blatantly obvious that they were mistaken, but if some of them are still around in decades to come they could rightfully put much blame on the media.

       On Iraq, I though Frank Rich's book "the Greatest Story Ever Sold" was very good.  It has timeline of what those in the know actually thought vs what the Bush Admin spun, with a largely malable or complicit media to help.  It's pretty shocking to see the the filtering of information that occurred and the focus on "evidence" that painted the picture of a potential mushroom cloud.  Rich even gets into the fake expert reports used in the runup to the invsion. A similar timeline will be able to be made for the disinformers on AGW of today vs what is actually known.

        

40093. william5331 at 04:18 AM on 9 December 2013
       2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #49B
       

       By the by, the power company gains a huge advantage too.  With lots of renewable energy being fed into the grid, they don't have to build an extra gas powered generator for peak shaving - a power station that is only used occasionally and hence isn't financially worth while.  They can store this extra power by simple pumped storage to be used as needed.

40094. william5331 at 04:14 AM on 9 December 2013
       2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #49B
       

       That first article on ALEC is a shocker.  At least they have shown their hand as clearly as is possible.  As with all good lies, there is a grain of truth in what they say.  By having a grid tie system, you gain the considerable advantage of not having to buy a full set of batteries every 7 years or so and your power is distributed to other users. You get a service from the power company. But the fee you pay should take the form of a simple, transparent line charge.  One little proviso here, though.  The power company must be forced to charge the same line charge to the user and the user/generator.  Otherwise the solar panel owner will end up paying a huge line charge and a small kWh charge while the simple user the reverse.

       http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/solar-power-and-ratchet.html

       http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2009/09/german-fit-system-brilliant.html

40095. dana1981 at 03:17 AM on 9 December 2013
       Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues
       

       devadatta @69 - basically yes. Church was one of our co-authors and provided his full data set for our paper.

40096. KiwiInOz at 14:59 PM on 8 December 2013
       2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #49B
       

       That ALEC mob would have been supporting Great Britain in the US War of Independence!

40097. Tom Curtis at 10:38 AM on 8 December 2013
       Experts say the IPCC underestimated future sea level rise
       

       Michael Sweet @17, the UNEP report shows 15 million (10% of the population) effected, not inundated.  It also shows 17,000 km² (11.5%) inundated.  The percentage inundates will be lower than the 10% because the coastal area effected is not, for the most part a high population area (for Bangladesh).  I am not entirely sure what is meant by "effected" given that a larger area has already been effected by increased salinity, and the entire country will be effected by increased riverine flood levels with higher sea levels.  Presumably it means that part of the population whose land is either inundated or becomes vulnerable to storm surge.

       That quibble aside, I do not disagree with anything you say.  Bear in mind that I am responding to the claim that:

       "And adding the risk of large and fast SLR to other severe climate risks probably does change the maths into making even relatively limited global warming a civilizational threat, that we better insure ourselves against, as far as we still can."

       My point has not been that sea level rise is costless, or even low cost.  It is that relative to other effects of global warming it is a minor cost, and that given that tackling global warming will be expensive, the costs from sea level rise would not justify it alone.  Therefore sea level rise is not likely to cause a level of global warming that does not threaten our civilization to become a threat to that civilization.  In this it is unlike threats from ocean acidification, anoxia, ecosystem collapse and simple ongoing temperature increases which within two centuries with BAU could rise to levels which make the tropics seasonally uninhabitable.  Thus, while from Bangladesh's perspective (and Florida's), sea level rise is the most imminent and dangerous threat from global warming, this is not so globally where it ranks well down the list.

40098. nigelj at 08:35 AM on 8 December 2013
       Climate Change: Years of Living Dangerously
       

       Fair comments Rob Painting. I accept people arent fully informed of the consequences of climate change, especially at an individual level. And its important as I only gave up smoking when I realised the full range of health risks.

       I have been concerned whether a forum like this is the right place, but its better than leaving it to over dramatised movies.

40099. vrooomie at 07:38 AM on 8 December 2013
       2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #49B
       

       All mentions of "ALEC" should be in caps, to delineate it as an it; 'Alec' is a person. Great report!

40100. nigelj at 07:26 AM on 8 December 2013
       2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #49B
       

       Apparently some meteorologists are sceptical of climate change. Of course some of this is probably quite healthy scepticism, but I think an element of this is likely to be driven by professional jealousy. It may also be simply a poor understanding of the issues, and I suspect some meteorologists get bogged down in natural cycles given their job.

       I just hope that they carefully consider the origins of their scepticism, and whether its rigorous and based on the evidence. It is very confusing for the public to see disagreement like this.

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