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Old Mole at 10:27 AM on 17 May 2013Who is Paying for Global Warming?
Gentlemen:
Sorry to have been so late to the discussion, but hasn't it occurred to anyone that the figures in the "% of Total Production Exported" start to get completely cockeyed around Russia? Call me math challenged, but it seems to me that if say, Venezuela exports more than twice as much as it uses domestically, it would amount to more than 1.5%, and that the 20 Mtonnes that China exports out of over 3000 wouldn't amount to nearly 5%.
Could this be corrected?
Best wishes,
Mole
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dhogaza at 10:11 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Ray:
"However there have been several who have disagreed with all the proposals of plate tectonics leading to comments such as this "Criticism of plate tectonics has increased in line with the growing number of observational anomalies.""
Google search on that phrase returned four hits, all related to one person, who has published in one place, the "Journal of Scientific Exploration", which specializes in crank science articles that can't get published in the scientific literature.
" Is this a forerunner of what might happen with the "settled science" of anthropogenic climate change?"
Crank science rejection of climate science is already with us, of course. Our cranks will continue to be with us forever, I'm sure.
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scaddenp at 08:54 AM on 17 May 2013The anthropogenic global warming rate: Is it steady for the last 100 years? Part 2.
MS1 "I think their paper failed " really? The paper investigated how much of the variability of the temperature record could be accounted from assuming simple relationship with 3 known causes of internal variability. Rypdal 2012 showed it could be improved but F&R is remarkable successful. Tests with only using part of the data for training show it also a robust predictor of future variability.
If the ENSO index was substantially flawed or there was significant non-linearity, this isnt born out by the success of their prediction. If you believe that the prediction can be improved significantly by other indexes or method, then show us.
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Matt Fitzpatrick at 08:34 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Re: mattn
"Why did you use global climate change as a search term rather than anthropogenic...?"
Probably a precautionary measure. Since survey responders were looking for endorsement of anthropogenicity, using that as a search term could have biased the result. It probably would have reduced the proportion of "neutrals", and may have affected the "endorses" versus "rejects" as well.
Not to change the subject, but I find the ad hominem and conspiracy ideation I'm seeing in responses elsewhere on the Internet rather depressing. True, that kind of response is nothing new, but since I participated in this (albeit minimally), it's personal now.
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dana1981 at 08:31 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
mattn @53 - had we searched for 'anthropogenic', we might have missed some of the 'rejection' studies attributing global warming to other factors.
It's also possible that a group might investigate certain impacts from 2°C warming (for example) without necessarily accepting that 2°C warming will happen, or if it does, that it would necessarily be human-caused.
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Ray at 08:19 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Composer99 @26. Not sure that using platre techtonics as an example of settled science in this context is a good idea especially when you couple it with "Third, that humans are causing global warming is not an opinion. Based on the available evidence it is a settled fact". Plate techtonics was first elaborated in the 1960s and rapidly gained acceptance. However this was said about this acceptance "A hypothesis that is appealing for its unity or simplicity acts as a filter, accepting reinforcement with ease but tending to reject evidence that does not seem to fit" Othersd agreed stating "this is admirable description of what has happened in the field of earth dynamics, where one hypothesis -- the new global tectonics -- has been permitted to override and overrule all other hypotheses."
You'd have to agree there are some similarities between the current situation on global warming. But I can hear you say, "plate tectonics is now agreed to by every one and anthropogenic climate change will be also" However there have been several who have disagreed with all the proposals of plate tectonics leading to comments such as this "Criticism of plate tectonics has increased in line with the growing number of observational anomalies." Is this a forerunner of what might happen with the "settled science" of anthropogenic climate change?
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Utahn at 08:16 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
One interesting approach to addressing that concern about adjutication (apologies if in the article), would be to take all the disagreements and judge them in one direction or the other. This would give you a range of possible outcomes if one person (or one way of leaning) was right or the other. I bet it woudln't change the final answer much at all, but woudl be kind of interesting. I suspect most of the shifts woudl be from no opinion to endorsement or vice versa, i.e. changing the proportion with an endorsement or not, but not much the percentages...
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Tom Curtis at 08:16 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
yphilj @49, looking at the scientitsts self assessments, in 1991 endorsements constituted approximately 80% of papers that took a position on AGW. Although a strong majority, that does does not constitute a consensus IMO. It is, however, based on a small number of repsonses and may not be representative. Against that, the small number of self assessements still represents about 20-25% of papers assessed in the abstracts, and the IPCC 1990 report certainly did not endorse a consensus that AGW was occurring and significant. So while Kevin C is correct that a consensus was forming in the 1970s, it did not solidify until the early 1990s. Certainly it has existed since 2001.
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mattn at 08:13 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Couple questions:
1) Why did you use global climate change as a search term rather than anthropogenic, which is often used in the literature? I looked at a paper of mine, out of curiousity, and I never used climate change as a phrase even though the paper was on tropical trends in an A1B scenario.
2) Why are so many of the papers "impacts papers"? These aren't papers about climate science per se, they usually are more along the lines of: given a 2C global increase increase what happens at location x? Also, is there anyone who would write an impacts paper about the impact of no global warming?
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Tom Curtis at 07:47 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Barry @38, the blog by Brandon Shollenberger at Lucia's essentially points out that:
1) "While criteria for determining ratings were defined prior to the rating period, some clarifications and amendments were required as specific situations presented themselves."
and that
2) "Initially, 27% of category ratings and 33% of endorsement ratings disagreed. Raters were then allowed to compare and justify or update their rating through the web system, while maintaining anonymity. Following this, 11% of category ratings and 16% of endorsement ratings disagreed; these were then resolved by a third party."
Instead of merely quoting to the paper to that effect (as I have done), however, he has taken some examples out of context from the hacked forum contents and deliberately not quoted the discussion of these points in the paper even though he knew that they existed so as to create the impression that SKS had acted in an underhanded way.
Victor Venema makes a fair comment on Shollenberger's approach:
"From Anthony Watts I expect any kind of deception. If something is written on WUWT, by now I initially assume that the opposite is true. From The Blackboard I had a better impression. Had there not been a discussion about the broken link to the article, I might not become suspicious and have checked the article. From now on I will put you in the Watts category until you have shown you deserve better."
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Bob7905 at 07:32 AM on 17 May 2013The evidence for climate change WITHOUT computer models or the IPCC
Kevin C @20
Thanks for the clarification. I was being dense and had misread what you had suggested @15 for the modified date range.
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scaddenp at 06:28 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Michel, while concensus doesnt mean the science is correct, the scientific consensus is the best basis for policy decisions on just about anything. This paper shows that while there might be debate at politcal level, there isnt at the science level.
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Kevin C at 05:36 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
yphilj: That's a very good question. The current paper shows a robust consensus back to 1991. The only similar earlier work I'm aware of is this paper covering the period 1965-1979 (including the 70's of the mythical 'global cooling' predictions). They found 7 papers predicting cooling, 19 neutral and 42 warming.
Of the cooling papers, one was Rasool and Schneider 1991. By the end of the 70's Schneider had changed his mind. Three more of the cooling papers were equivocal on the question - see Ari's page here.
On this basis you could probably argue that the consensus was emerging during the 70's.
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citizenschallenge at 04:25 AM on 17 May 2013Schmitt and Happer manufacture doubt
Scott, I hear you when it comes to the early space program. Man those astronauts were the coolest, heck they were demi-gods to us kids. In fact, it took a while for me to accept that Schmitt's fallen off his rocker... but accept it I have.
But, the main reason I've dropped in - is to say thanks to Dumb Scientist for writing this article and to SkepticalScience for their sharing/reposting policy - which I have again taken advantage of: http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2013/05/dr-harrison-schmitt-and-dr-william.html
As for the Wall Street Journal, might I offer some further reading:
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2010 | citizenschallenge.blogspot
{#11a} SPPI, Monckton, Seitz, WSJ - anatomy of a character assassination
Containing:
Seitz’s Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1996, Op-EdBen Santer’s censored reply ~ Wall Street Journal letter to Ed, June 25, 1996
IPCC’s censored reply ~ Wall Street Journal letter to Ed, June 25, 1996
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Saturday, January 28, 2012
WSJ claims there’s “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” (part two)
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Dumb Scientist at 04:07 AM on 17 May 2013Schmitt and Happer manufacture doubt
Dikran's response to jdixon1980 is correct. High CO2 levels hundreds of millions of years ago partially compensate for the fainter young Sun, but that's slow enough to ignore over "only" millions of years.
Sadly, I didn't notice your other question until just now. I completely agree with KR's comments on that thread, and amusingly also just linked the same page showing that CO2 is rising faster than exponentially.
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yphilj at 03:45 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
When did the scientific consensus on climate change decisively emerge? Early '90s, '80s, earlier? Is this too subjective a question? I suppose another way of asking this is when was the last time anthropogentic climate change was seriously argued about in a scientific journal?
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Dikran Marsupial at 03:24 AM on 17 May 2013Schmitt and Happer manufacture doubt
Assuming that 3,000,000,000 years ago TSI was 20% lower than today and that the Sun had been brightening linearly: 3.2 million years is approximately 1/1000th of that time period so one would expect the drop in lumionosity to be 1/1000th of that 20%, which is essentially negligible (vastly less than the difference in the 11 year solar cycle, which IIRC is about 0.1%).
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jdixon1980 at 03:16 AM on 17 May 2013Schmitt and Happer manufacture doubt
DS, re: solar activity, your response to Schmitt and Happer points to the obviously directly relevant fact that solar activity hasn't increased significantly since 1950, while global temperature has.
I have also read that the sun has an extremely slow trend of increasing intensity, e.g., from the Wikipedia entry on the geologic temperature record:
"Some evidence does exist however that the period of 2,000 to 3,000 million years ago was very generally colder and more glaciated than the last 500 million years. This is thought to be the result of solar radiation approximately 20% lower than today.[citation needed]"
and
"According to standard solar theories, the sun will gradually have increased in brightness as a natural part of its evolution after having started with an intensity approximately 70% of its modern value."
My question is this - what do we know about the solar irradiance at the last time the atmosphere was at 400 ppm, which a brief web search tells me was during the Pliocene epoch, about 3.2-5 million years ago? If TSI was significantly lower then, wouldn't that tend to suggest that the climate forcing from 400 ppm now will be even stronger than it was the last time, also tending to undermine the denier argument that we shouldn't worry about 400 ppm (and counting) because it has happened before?
I must admit that when I started to type this comment, I was confident that the answer to this question was that TSI was much lower a few million years ago, and I was going to suggest that you add that point as another argument against Schmitt and Happer. But after searching for a bit, it might be that I was just misremembering having read that there is a clear long-term solar warming trend on the time scale of millions of years, when it is actually billions. Can you or someone here clear me up on this point?
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dana1981 at 03:05 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
bert @25 - our full ratings database should be available in the supplementary material (though I don't have time to look at the moment).
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dana1981 at 03:04 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
barry @37 - define what you (or Lucia) mean by "independent".
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miffedmax at 02:52 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
This is a great study.
One thing it shows (and that was really driven home to me when I participated in John's follow-up survey) is how conservative most scientists are with their projections and statements. Where most of us in other fields would be screaming "is" and "will" climatalogists whisper "might be" and "could."
I contrast that with the tone of the so-called skeptics who usually speak in sweeping absolutes.
Anyway, just a few thoughts from a member of the generally unwashed public who has found this site invaluable in getting off the fence when it comes to climate change.
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CBDunkerson at 02:48 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Wow. I saw a short article on this study earlier today, but somehow didn't make the connection to the SkS project. Now that I search Google News it seems like there is a lot of great press around this. Congrats all!
Amazing that so many people in this thread apparently would, "...expect every geological paper to note in its abstract that the Earth is a spherical body that orbits the sun?" Just when you think the 'skeptics' cannot get any more ridiculous...
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:36 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Another thing that I thought was interesting about the results was that, given the challenges of varying interpretation, how consistent the results actually were. I think that speaks volumes about the robustness of the process that John set up.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:33 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
As I remember it, it would have been utterly impossible to discuss any specific paper between two raters. You're going through so many of them at a time and they're coming at you in a random manner. There were some discussions involving the definitions of the categories, but I think that's about it. Such as, one issue that came up for me was, mitigation. If a paper is a migitation paper, is it not, by default, then implicitly accepting AGW?
I think everyone had to interpret the categories in their own way. And the self-raters had to do the same. That's the whole point to having lots of different people doing the work and using a very large sample size.
And besides, what I think keeps getting ignored over at Lucia's place is that, heck, the SkS raters were far more conservative in their ratings than the scientists who actually wrote the papers. The whole point of getting the scientists to rate the papers was to build in a check on potential bias from the SkS ratings.
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Dikran Marsupial at 02:19 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
The system described in MarkR's comment is rather like the peer review process used in some of the top conferences in my field (machine learning). First the reviewers are selected by the programme committee from a pool of volunteer revewers. Like the pool of reviewers used by this project, the pool of reviewers will not be independent in the sense of not working with eachother, or not being friends, or having common interests. Each paper is assigned three or more reviewers, neither of which know the identity of their fellow reviewers. Once the reviews are completed in isolation the reviewers get to see the comments made by the other reviewers and have an opportunity to revise their review, but this is again done anonymously. The review process for such conferences provides "independent" reviews in the same sense as used in this survey, and provides a reasonable prescedent for the approach that was taken.
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MarkR at 02:07 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
37. barry, I can specifically comment on the latter parts regarding disagreement.
We were aware of the user handles of who had done some ratings, but we didn't know who had done which ratings. In the paper we described this as 'two independent, anonymized raters'. So on Lucia's last point about hashing out disagreements, we knew we had disagreed with one of the other 23 raters, but we did not know with whom.
At the very beginning of the process there were a number of questions about difficult cases or missing aspects of the system we used. For example, a number of papers had no abstract (or a truncated abstract), and the best way to highlight these for removal from the analysis was discussed.
There were very few such special cases and we can be confident are results are solid because we found we were more conservative than the authors!
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John Mason at 01:59 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
I would say that this indicates that the SKS reviewers were actually rather conservative and self-skeptical.
That sounds rather like us lot, Dikran!
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Dikran Marsupial at 01:43 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
barry, it seems to me that they are clutching at straws. Independent means merely that the two raters did not discuss the particular paper that they were reviewing in arriving at their judgements on that paper. That doesn't mean that uncertainty in how the criteria should be applied cannot be discussed in a more general context.
The authors of the papers themselves generally rated their work as more strongly supporting AGW than did the SKS reviewers, which is the opposite of what you would expect if "independence" os the SKS reviewers was an issue. I would say that this indicates that the SKS reviewers were actually rather conservative and self-skeptical.
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NewYorkJ at 01:20 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Congrats on this work. It sounds like quite an effort, and getting 1200 scientists to participate in categorizing their own work (important considering how studies are routinely spun by a certain crowd) is impressive.
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barry1487 at 01:13 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
At Lucia's they quote one of the authors as saying that the rating was not strictly independent.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means/
And provide graphics backing up that point. How independent was the rating? -
barry1487 at 01:10 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
I would like to know if there was a marked difference between the ratings for abstracts/papers under the two different search terms.
It is possible (likely?) that searching under 'global warming' might yield more positive results re the consensus than 'global climate change.' Would it be worthwhile comparing to see if the results have been begged by the search terms? -
Tom Curtis at 00:54 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
HJones @34, that is incorrect. The way the opening sentence now reads, it states that:
1) Over 12,000 papers were surveyed; and
2) A 97% concensus was found in the survey.
As it happens, a 97% concensus of papers stating a position on AGW was found. As a matter of logic, if a 97% concensus of papers stating a position on AGW is found, then a 97% concensus is found; and hence (2) is true.
You resist this conclusion because it is a rule of conversational implicature that relevant information will be provided. Given that rule and only the lead sentence, it follows by conversational implicature (but not by logical implicature) that the concensus is of the 12,000 papers. However, the lead sentence did not appear alone. It appeared as part of an article which made it clear that the concensus was restricted to those papers actually stating a position. As it is a cardinal rule of interpretation that sentences be interpreted in context, it follows that the sentence is not misleading.
The worst that can be said of it is that poor phrasing creates an unnecessary distraction. Regardless of whether it is a reasonable distraction, I am sure no harm would be done in ammending the sentence by adding the bolded words from my 32. However, that is not your criticism and your criticism is wrong. Correctly stated your criticism is that the lead sentence creates a false impression by ignoring the rules of conversational implicature; whereas what has actually happened is that you have gained a false impression by ignoring the rule that all sentences must be interpreted in context.
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HJones at 00:27 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Tom Curtis,
Your bold highlights is very clear. However, that is not what is the lead in statement to this article. That was the purpose of my comment, and the only purpose btw. The openning statement is misleading, if your bold highlight is added, I would have no problem with the statement, or converseladd the reference to the number of papers that take a position. The way the statement now reads, 97% of 12000 papers support the position, which is not accurate!
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Dikran Marsupial at 00:24 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
@Tom, well quite! ;o) I like to ask questions that help people to make their point clearly. In this case the ability to specify a scientific topic where Michel could at least argue a concensus exists using his own definition would at least show that he himself thought that the word had a meaningful use in a scientific context and that this wasn't merely an excercise in rhetoric. The ball is in Michel's court.
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Tom Curtis at 00:23 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
H Jones @29, the sentence "A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature stating a position on the issue that humans are causing global warming" is not a contradiction. As it is formed from the lead sentence of the article simply by adding the bolded words, and that addition amounts to a conjunction it follows that the lead sentence is true if the ammended sentence is true.
This may not be apparent because in normal communication we expect relevent facts and qualifications to be stated, which the lead sentence did not to. It could be argued, therefore, that while formally true, the lead sentence had a misleading (conversational) implication. That seems, however, a ridiculous claim given that the lead sentence is immediately followed by a massive figure clearly stating the qualification you suppose to be misleadingly left out. The best, therefore, that can be said of your comment is that it is quibbling. The lead sentence is neither false, nor misleading in context, a fact that is readilly apparent.
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ianw01 at 00:20 AM on 17 May 2013Schmitt and Happer manufacture doubt
Their second sentence makes it obvious that it was motivated by political/idealological considerations, rather than being driven by the science. They refer to a "... the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production ...".
How people with "credentials" like that can write such nonsense is incredible.
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Tom Curtis at 00:12 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Dikran Marsupial @28:
1) How couild Michel possibly know that there was a scientific concensus on any particular theory by his definition? The only way to determine it would be by an exhaustive survey of all relevent experts (and no such exhaustive surveys exist in any field) or an exhaustive survey of all relevant literature including non-peer reviewed literature. His definition is clearly intended only to turn "There is no scientific consensus on climate change" into a trivial truth with no more information content than informing people that all bachelors are unmarried. Presumably the next step will be an equivocation so as to confuse people into thinking there is no scientific consensus as defined in the paper (and wikipedia).
2) It is informative, however, to look at some of the fields in which it is known that their is no consensus (by Michel's definition). These include not only the fields heavilly disputed on ideological grounds such as climate science and biological science, but also such theories as relativity, geocentrism, and even the theory that the Earth is not flat. The failure of even heliocentrism and the theory that the Earth is round to command a concensus by Michel's definition shows just how pointless it is.
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Kevin C at 00:05 AM on 17 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
HJones: Your paraphrase of my statement misrepresents my statement which you quote directly below it. Further, you disregard my subsequent paragraph which clarifies the issue.
It's really very simple: The study distinguished between papers which do not address the question of the human contribution to global warming, and papers which addressed the question and were undecided on the answer. To argue that papers which do not address the question should be counted as 'undecided' in quantifying the level of consensus is preposterous. -
HJones at 23:45 PM on 16 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Kevin C @19,
A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing global warming.
I believe that the openning statement to this post is in disagreement with your response to JRT256. You state that the article clearly states that the 97% is only for papers that took a position
Secondly, the paper is very clear that the 97% consensus is among papers which stated a position.
The openning state is at-best misleading, and needs to be corrected.
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Dikran Marsupial at 23:31 PM on 16 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Michel, Wikipedia describes scientific concensus as "Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. "
This seems pretty reasonable to me. If you describe "consensus" as being "reached when nobody expresses his or her opposition to one view", then there is no concensus on any scientific topic as there is no field in which there are no dissenters from the mainstream view. This means that either the word "concensus" is meaningless in a scientific context, or your definition of "concensus" is not appropriate.
Can you name a scientific topic on which there is concensus according to your definition?
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cRR Kampen at 22:58 PM on 16 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Michel, look at the top left of this page below 'Most used climate myths', number 4 (guess that one will be updated :) ).
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Composer99 at 22:55 PM on 16 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Michel:
First, on what basis should we accept your definition of consensus over the implicit/explicit definition/denotation used in the paper?
Second, minuscule proportions of contrarians notwithstanding, consensus absolutely does exist in other areas of science: special/general relativity, quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, germ theory of disease, to name a few.
Third, that humans are causing global warming is not an opinion. Based on the available evidence it is a settled fact.
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bert at 22:20 PM on 16 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
John, Dana,
In to your paper, ‘endorsement’ comes in three different ways:
A. Explicit, with quantification;
B. Explicit, without quantification;
C. Implicit.However, your paper (nor the supplementary info) doesn’t provide a proper breakdown of the various groups. Can you enlighten on this? In particular the results for group A respectively B.
Thanks in advance,
Bert Amesz
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JvD at 21:59 PM on 16 May 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
@JasonB. You write:
"Ignoring the fact that naval nuclear reactors are much more expensive per kWh, is it "propaganda" to point out that the levelised cost of electricity of new nuclear power is extremely sensitive to the load factor?"
They are not much more expensive. Typical navy nukes such as are installed on nuclear aircraft carriers cost around 7 ct/kwh, according to US Navy own figures (look it up yourself plz, I forget the source). This is expensive compared to stationary, commercial NPP's, but not *much more* expensive. Also, building such plants on land instead of in limited space on ships will allow some cost reductions. In fact, the first ever NPP to supply electricity to the grid was a beeched naval nuke built in the '50's at Shippingport, I memory serves.
"You seem to be confusing generation power with storage capacity, which is surprising for someone trying to lecture others. "a few dozen extra GW of storage" makes no sense."I'm hoping you practice reading comprehension. When we are talking about storage, tow kinds of capacity are relevant: storage capacity, and power capacity. When I say: GW of capacity, I'm referring to power capacity. When I say GWh of capacity, I'm referring to storage capacity. This is normal practice in power engineering communications. No reason to initiate a quibble over this. If anything, you are exposing your own lack of routine in discussing these kinds of issues.
"The Nordel power system has a storage capacity of about 120 TWh (and I have seen reports that there is the potential to expand it to as much as 205 TWh) and the UCTE grid has another 57 TWh, for a total of 177 TWh. (Link)
That's enough storage (note the units) to power the EU-27 for 177,000 GWh/363 GW = 487 hours = 20 days = nearly three weeks with no other electricity generation at all — no wind, no solar, nothing. Nordel alone actually has enough for nearly two weeks."
Yes the storage is enough for this, but there is no power capacity to deliver 300 GW (as you confirm) much less absorb the 2000 GW of power that the Greenpeace EU renewables fleet will be delivering for storage. If the pumped hydro cannot absorb 2000 GW, then that pumped hydro can play no role in reducing curtailment of renewables. If the capacity to absorb renewable power is limited to 100GW, then, in worst case, 1900 GW of renewables will need to be curtailed during a windy, sunny day in Europe. This is my point, and you are not addressing it.
Please address how the Greenpeace-proposed 2600 GW of renewables for Europe will not be regularly and significantly curtailed, using your own figure of 363 GW average power usage if you want.
"Now, in order for it to be able to do that, obviously three things need to happen:
1. Big interconnects between Scandinavia and Europe so the power can be efficiently transferred back and forth. (Hence NORD.LINK, NorNed, NorGer, HVDC Norway–UK, Scotland–Norway interconnector, etc.)
2. The existing hydro-electric dams upgraded to pumped storage so they can pump water back up into the reservoir when electricity is cheap, thereby storing it (rather than simply relying on nature to replenish the dams).
3. Install more and larger generators so the peak power output can be increased (current max. for Nordel is 46 GW because that's all they need at the moment)."
On point 1. This can be done, and is already done. Extra links have already been built, and more will be built. No problem here.On point 2. This is not a minor exercise problem, because the number of locations suitable for this is much smaller than mere hydropower. To covert to pumped storage, you need an upper lake AND a lower lake. I recollect a Scnandinavian research estimate of about 100 GW of capacity that could be built across Scandinavia in suitable locations. Of course, as you rightly point out, more GW could be installed at the same site, although the storage time and load factor would decrease and hence the economics.
On point 3. Additional GW's cannot be added endlessly to any particular pumped storage site, because GW's are also limited by water flow rates that need to conform to ecological and safety regulations. That is why scandinavian authorities work with the ~100 GW max potential figure for power capacity of pumped hydro in Scandinavia, which estimate already includes optimism about ecological feasibility. More certain is the availability of a few dozen extra GW's that would cause limited and perhaps acceptable ecological damage.
"Then why don't you read it? Your source is talking about breeders."
I am very much aware my source is talking about breeders and fast reactors. Only the breeder reactor (or the fast reactor) is relevant to the discussion of inexhaustible energy supply. I (perhaps falsely) assumed this to be self-evident. Thermal uranium reactors cannot be part of an inexhaustible energy supply for obvious reasons.
Anti-nuclear propaganda has several import main ambitions, one of which is to convince the public that fast reactors, breeders and fast breeders are not commercialisable. They are half-right. The commercial argument for such reactors is based mainly on the improvement of uranium usage efficiency. But as long as uranium prices are as low as they are today, fast reactors or breeders are not commercial. Typically, nuclear energineering experts use the rule of thumb that a breeder or fast reactor will always be at least 20% more expensive than a once-through reactor. This is too much to justify only on the basis of the uranium fuel savings at current uranium prices. There is an important caveat to this though. The Russians have been developing their fast reactor BN-xxx series for decades, and have recently started exporting commercial versions. These reactors are competitive because the Russians have been able to leverage the cost benefit of the specific low-pressure reactor design they are using. So although the reactor is more expensive to build, it is far cheaper to operate and maintain, which, apparently, allows them to compete with traditional once through thermal reactor designs like the AP1000 and EPR.
Anyway, I'm sorry if I did not state clearly enough that when discussing te eon-scale energy supply picture, the once-through thermal uranium fuel fuel cycle is utterly irrelevant. Therefore, it is completely superfluous to assess the longevity of the uranium (and thorium) resource bases by assuming only once-through thermal uranium reactors, because you will automatically conclude that uranium is not sufficiently abundant to support eon-scale nuclear power. Perhaps that is why anti-nuke advocates always insist on assuming only once-through thermal reactors will ever be built, because otherwise they will be forced to concluded that uranium and thorium supplies are inexhaustible on the scale of eons.
For additional information, one can review the various long-term nuclear power strategy reviews that are available from different sources. All of these sources conclude that fast reactors and breeders will be built in force from around the middle of the century, or whenever uranium price development calls for it, or whenever the populations demands a solution for nuclear waste. I assume you know that all virtually all very long lived nuclear waste can be burned as fuel in fast reactors, so fast reactors may eventually be fast-tracked if populations demand cheap and effective solution to nuclear waste.
Concerning load following, the French have long augmented several of their NPP's for improved load following, so this is not limited to naval NPP's. EPR and AP1000 both support 5%/min. load following per standard design.
Concerning the lack of commercial fast reactors or breeders, please refer to my explanation that current low uranium prices do not call for commercialisation of fast reactor or breeders today. Initial R&D on fast reactors and breeders was initiated during a time when uranium supplies were thought to be limited enough to warrant the R&D. But as recently as the '60 and '70 it became clear that uranium supplies were abundant enough to leave fast reactors and breeders to the future. I remember having already explained this in a previous post on this thread.
Thank you,
JvD
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Michel at 21:48 PM on 16 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Majority is given when, out of a group of consulted people, more votes are given to one view than to other ones.
Unanimity happens when all voting people positively chose one view, without any exception.
Consensus will be reached when nobody expresses his or her opposition to one view.All of this happens in opinion polls or formal votes, but not in science.
So, what is the fuss about grading scientific papers in the way they convey [or not] opinions?
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gws at 21:04 PM on 16 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Thank you and congratulations to John and the team for this effort and the resulting paper and excellent post here.
While there is -- so to say -- nothing new here, i.e. the consensus was present 20 years ago and so was the (successful) denial ot it, there appears to be a difference when looking into the mainstream press: the spread of this "news" is somewhat astonishing.
I think the denier reaction may therefore provide a good study case of the pschycological effect and response to being told that you are in denial. It has already started ...
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shoyemore at 20:13 PM on 16 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
Congratulations to the Skeptical Science team!
The paper has also made an impact around some news sites, I hope that grows.
www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/28d54536-bd7b-11e2-a735-00144feab7de.html
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JvD at 20:12 PM on 16 May 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
@michael sweet. You said:
"Yet every night France has to export substantial amounts of their nuclear power since their generation capacity is greater than their baseline usage. Why is it good for France to export nuclear but bad for Germany to export renewables? Provide citations to support your wild claim that wind and solar facilities only last 15 years. I previously noted several nuclear plants that have been withdrawn from service because of maintenance issues. Your 100 year claim is simply false."
France exports this electricy for profit, whereas Germany exports their electricy far below cost. Politicians in my country (Netherlands) are takign note of this, and considering reducing the ambition for build out of wind/solar in The Netherlands precisely because The Netherlands is already benefitting from near-free (or even negative cost!) solar/wind power from Germany oftentimes. Of course, the solar/wind power we get from Germany is not really free. Far from it. But it's costs are paid by German citizens, rather than the buyer of the electricy. This suits The Netherlands just fine. Especially since we have a lot of natural gas power plants which can deal relatively well with deep load following. But it is a false comfort. Once the German population decides it wants to stop subsidizing solar/wind energy, The Netherlands will not be able to import near-free subsidized German power anymore. We will have to start paying the cost of energy again ourselves. So the Netherlands can never rely on Germany for providing us some of its excess renewable power in future.
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MarkR at 20:08 PM on 16 May 2013Skeptical Science Study Finds 97% Consensus on Human-Caused Global Warming in the Peer-Reviewed Literature
18. Ed Davies, it would depend on the statement of the result in the abstract. I don't remember encountering one that did not discuss the impacts in a way that was translatable to the question are we causnig most of the recent global warming?
e.g. if someone found a very large negative feedback then the abstract would put it in context in terms of climate sensitivity or impact on warming estimates, as the abstract is supposed to provide background. A large negative feedback would likely lead to a small climate sensitivity and would therefore be a rejection by the definitions in Table 2 of the paper.
But if they found a small negative or positive feedback without specifying the overall effect on warming, then it would be put as no position.
We were cautious here, tending towards 'no position' in our ratings. This is confirmed by the scientists' responses compared with ours: more than half of our 'no position' abstracts were rated as 'endorsement' by the scientists who actually wrote the papers! A few 'no positions' were rated as 'rejection' by the authors too, but on average the scientists rated 0.6 classifications closer to endorsement than we did, on the 7-point classification scale.
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JvD at 20:04 PM on 16 May 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
@Tom Curtis. you wrote:
"1) Fail safe design, so that in the complete breakdown of power supply and or mechanical systems the reactor shuts down safely; and
2) No net environmental impact for ore to waste. The idea here being that uranium ore is a naturally occuring low level environmental hazard. That fact allows a straightforward definition of safe disposal of nuclear waste. That is, if radiation count at the surface of a waste disposal site is no greater than at the original ore body, and the waste is stored in a way that is proof to leeching and as expensive to reprocess as the original ore, then waste disposal has no net environmental impact and can be considered safe.
Do you agree that these are reasonable constraints on the nuclear industry?"
I agree. Furthermore, these constraints should count for all energy industries. What we need is a level playing field. So if there is for example a gas pipeline break that kills people (which happens all the time, in all countries using natural gas) then clearly all natural gas pipelines worldwideneed to be shut down immediately until there is a thorough review of their safety, and full list of recommendations to improve safety to the minimum level of nuclear power, just as what was done in Japan and Germany after Fukushima. Otherwise there is no level playing field. It won't do to consider deaths due to natural gas explosions, wind turbine blade tossing, people falling of their roofs while cleaning solar panels, etc as somehow different from deaths due to radiation accidents. All these deaths are known and they should be treated equally.
Concerning the safe storage of wastes, we know from the Oklo uranium deposits (which contain numerous natural nuclear reactors) that radioactive products from nuclear fission are contained by such geologies. So returning HLW to such mines is a first indication that safe storage of fission products is easy and in existence. We can engineer storage facilities that are even better than the naturally occuring nuclear waste storage sites that have been found at Oklo, but it is nonsense to suppose that 'there is no solution to nuclear waste' Clearly, there is. Even nature itself - with no engineered radiation barriers - does a very good job.
Concerning fail-safe reactor esign. The modern AP1000 and EPR NPP's contain many of such features. Most 4th generation reactor design are even safer still, because they don't rely on passive, non-energised safety systems, but rather on reactor physics that require no safety systems at all, passive or active.
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