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JvD at 19:31 PM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
KR. "I did not see your source for truck mounted fission reactors before. Reading it I see that they are not praticable. No shielding for operators! Keep up trying to convince people."
I brought up the truckmounted nuke plant only as an example of what is possible. You are trying to make it sound as if this is a major part of my argument. Shielding reactor cores is as simple as pooring concrete, by the way. Concrete is an excellent radiation shield.
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Craig King at 19:29 PM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
@Glen . . thanks for that analogy but surely ultimately the two pools would be at the same level. Likewise surely the atmosphere cannot be warmed by the ocean to a temperature higher than the ocean.
With regards to the evaporation, surely while it does lower the temperature of the water it cannot raise the temperature of the air above that of the ocean. I am thinking at a global rather than a topical sense.
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Pierre-Normand at 19:17 PM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Rob Painting,
That's very useful. Thank you. If there indeed was this slowdown in sea level rise, aerosols and ENSO would seem to possibly account for everything, including Figure 1 above. Aerosols would account for part of the reduction in OHC trend, while El Nino dominated ENSO would further flatten this trend while contributing to the remaining small rate of sea level rise through water run-off (adding up to the small contribution from continued ice-sheet and glacier melt). Everything seems to fit.
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philipm at 19:02 PM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Add in the fact that much more of the Antarctic than previously thought is grounded below sea level (reported on the BBC web site; full paper here), and things have taken a decided turn for the worse. Warmer oceans + lots of ice grounded below sea level … do I need to join the dots?
Maybe Hansen was right back in 2007 about the potential for very rapid sea level rise:
There is enough information now, in my opinion, to make it a near certainty that IPCC BAU climate forcing scenarios would lead to a disastrous multi-meter sea level rise on the century timescale.
– and the scary thing is that Hansen issued this warning without the latest data on how much of the Antarctic is grounded below sea level.
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Rob Painting at 18:47 PM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Pierre-Normand - There is some scientific literature that suggests a slowdown in sea level rise (SLR) coinciding with the slowing of ocean heat content during the 1960's to 70's.
Church (2004) has this SLR slowdown during the 1960's, and Kohl & Stammer (2008) have this persisting into the 1970's.
There is a great deal of variation between all the sea level estimates prior to modern satellite-based observations, but it may not be necessary to invoke novel mechanisms.
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Rob Painting at 17:10 PM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Brenty - The increased level of atmospheric sulfate aerosols from tropical volcanoes over the last decade, blocked sunlight reaching the Earth's surface, which has contributed to a very slight reduction in warming. This is not the same as your claim.
There are a number of problems with the idea of undersea volcanoes warming the ocean, but the greatest obstacle is that the volcanoes would have to be upside down on the sea surface, because the heat is originating at the surface and propagating downwards.
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Pierre-Normand at 17:02 PM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Bob Loblaw,
Tanks for helping me there. Reading your post I had an 'Aha!' moment and wondered how I hadn't thought of that obvious time delay explanation. I knew a bit about the mixed layer, thermocline, etc. But trying to think it through, much of my puzzlement remains. Such an explanation would possibly explain a pause in sea level rise while OHC continues to rise. But how can the reverse occur? If the ocean rise is a delayed response to past warming, this means that heat previously sunken in deep layers is now moving to upper layers... How might this happen?
El Nino or neutral events that follow La Nina events also tend to result in a net transfer of run-off water from lands to oceans. So this may also contribute to the sea level rise in spite of the reduced OHC increase. El Ninos events of course promote such a reduction.
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Brenty at 15:33 PM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Given that the increased activity of above ground volcanoes is supposed to be stopping global warming, I presume this increased activity is limited to those 30% of volcanoes and not the 70% that we can't see under the oceans. Given that there are enormous numbers of undersea volcanoes (I have seen estimates of a million or more) I guess there would have to be some extra deep ocean warming when more erupt than usual.
The tectonic plates are now supposed to be moving a little more than they were in the 20th C. This should manifest in a higher incidence of great (8+) earthquakes. In fact since 2004 the incidence rate has increased by around a factor of 6 or 7. I don't think there a good enough records to measure how much the above ground volcanic activity has increased but if Alex Kirby is correct then the same must be occuring undersea.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 14:23 PM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
The concepts behind Fast Breeder Reactors are certainly a major advance over earlier designs - much greater intrinsic safety, massively lower dangerous wastes produced, able consume a lot of existing wastes, and can even run on Thorium. However, they are still at the proof of concept/pilot stage. They are years away from serious scale commercial deployment.
Should money be poured into developing them? Absolutely. Particularly if that development can produce modular designs that don't need to be specially designed for each installation.
But that does not justify any slowdown in deployment of Renewables. Any and every technology that can save a kilogram of CO2 going into the atmsphere now should be used to the maximum possible now! FBR's, as a viable option are quite some years away. But our CO2 problem is today.
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JasonB at 14:18 PM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
I wrote:
According to the World Nuclear Association, your reserves are off by a factor of ten: 5,327,200 tonnes. Oops. And right now, with nuclear power representing less than 6% of world energy production, the consumption rate is 68,000 tonnes/year. That means that at the current rate of consumption we have less than 80 years' worth of uranium left.
Oops indeed — it's not JvD's reserves that were off by a factor of ten, it was the consumption rate per reactor per year that was off by a factor of more than 100. Not sure how I misread the "5.000.000" but my conclusions stand.
Anyway, current consumption rate divided by the 435 reactors in use equates to 156 tonnes of Uranium/year, not 1 tonne/year. It seems likely that JvD was referring to the rate of consumption of U235 per year, which would be about 1 tonne/year, but the problem is that the reserves are not reported as tonnes of U235 but as tonnes of Uranium, of which only about 0.7% is U235.
There are many different estimates of the actual time left at the current rate of consumption but they're all in the 50-100 year ballpark, including the OECD's red book. I'd certainly be concerned about embarking on a program to build over 6,000 conventional reactors that I'm budgeting on running for 60 years under those circumstances, even if we can assume that more reserves will be found and exploited as demand went up.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 14:00 PM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Craig
'The ocean lag means heat will come out of the oceans' idea is a common interpretation of the meaning of the lag but it is wrong. An anlogy might help.
I have two swimming pools I want to increase the level of, a little toddlers pool and an olympic size pool. They are connected by a pipe so water can flow between them and they will have the same water level. I start adding water to the toddlers pool and it's level rises. As that happens water starts to flow through the pipe to the olympic pool. But it's level rises much more slowly because of its much greater volume.
Eventually I might even see the rise in the level in the toddlers pool slow down so that it is only rising as fast as the olympic pool. What is happening is that as fast as I add water to the toddlers pool, the same amount flows out through the pipe to raise the level of the big pool. This will continue until I stop adding water to the toddlers pool and they can all reach equilibrium.
The big pool is restricting the rate at which the little pool can rise. But when I stop adding water, the final level in the toddlers pool isn't because water starts flowing into it from the olympic pool. It is because water stops flowing out of it to the olympic pool.
The water in my anaolgy is heat, toddlers pool is the heat content of the atmosphere, the olympic pool is the heat content of the oceans.
To extend the analogy, instead of just turning on a tap to fill the pools, imagine that I have a float valve - if the level is too low, water flows in until the level rises to the setting on the valve then the valve closes. The height setting on the float valve is the Greenhouse Effect. This determines how much heat needs to be in the system.
So if I increase the GH effect by adding CO2, I am doing the equivalent of adjusting the float valve to a higher level. If I was just filling the toddlers pool (atmosphere) the level would have risen very quickly. But since most of the extra water (heat) actually has to go into filling the olympic pool (ocean) that retards the rise of the toddlers pool.
If I make a one-off adjustment to the float valve, it takes some time for it all to catch-up. In reality I am continually lifting the valve higher and higher; continually adding more and more CO2. So even the toddlers pool alone would need to keep rising to catch up although alone it could do that quickly. But even if I stopped right now, and didn't adjust the valve any further, it would still take substantial time for the Olympic pool to catch up and all rising to stop.
But at no time does water (heat) need to flow the other way.
We could extend this analogy; instead of 1 olympic pool, we could have a linked series of mini-olympic pools, each one connected to the next. The rise of each pool would be retarded by the delay in raising the level of the next pool in the chain. Each of these mini-olympic pools would then correspond to different layers and regions in the oceans.
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JasonB at 13:54 PM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
KR — sorry, yes, the quotes were from JvD but the initial sentence was in response to your request to stay on-topic. :-)
As an aside, I'm not that strongly against about nuclear power, as long as it's not in my backyard; if the Chinese want to go ahead and build 30 new reactors in addition to their wind farms, I see that as a useful reduction in CO2 emissions vs what would be the case if they built coal instead. What I don't like is people with massive blind spots in regard to the issues with nuclear power blowing every little problem with renewables out of proportion in their efforts to capitalise on the potential benefits of AGW to their favoured solution. Nuclear has been around for a long time now, it still costs a lot of money, has unique hazards, and major obstacles that need to be overcome if it is to scale up to a useful level. China has been able to build nuclear power plants on time and on budget, but that's partly thanks to a skilled workforce willing to work 10 hour days, 7 days/week, for Chinese wages, and (although I have no proof of this) I suspect partly because the Chinese probably aren't as demanding when it comes to safety. Olkiluoto, on the other hand, is now up to €8.5 billion for one conventional 1.6 GW reactor that has taken eight years to build so far and counting. And we're supposed to believe that magically we can now build fast breeders at scale, starting any day now, without any problems?
It seems to me that solving the storage and distribution problems with intermittent renewables will be a lot easier.
As an interesting aside, the global nuclear power production has been roughly 2500-2600 TWh per year for the past decade. From 2010-2011 wind power production increased by 118 TWh (from 341 TWh to 460 TWh). At that rate of increase it would take only 20 years to be generating as much power per year as the entire world's nuclear fleet just with wind power alone, and there have only been four years since 1980 where the increase in nuclear power generation per year has exceeded that rate of increase (1984, 1985, 1987, and 1988). (Note that I'm talking about actual power generated here, not nameplate capacity, so it's taking into account the fact that wind has a capacity factor of only about 30% while nuclear has a capacity factor of about 90%. The only difference between them is that wind is intermittent while nuclear is flat; demand, of course, fluctuates.)
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Bob Loblaw at 12:42 PM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Pierre-Normand:
Due to time lags in moving energy/heat around, there is no reason to think that deeper ocean temperature changes will be in lock-step with surface changes. The upper ocean mixed-layer (60-100m) will interact with the atmosphere quite quickly, but deeper ocean temperatures can be responding to surface changes from decades ago.
A similar phenomenon happens on land: at depths of a few tens of cm, the daily cycle of surface temperature is both reduced in amplitude and lagged in time. The maximum or minimum temperature at 10-20 cm depth will happen several hours after the surface max/min. (Details depend on the thermal properties.)
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Bob Loblaw at 12:29 PM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
barry:
I remember Roger Sr.'s arguments in favour of using ocean heat content (OHC), rather than atmospheric temperatures. I think he was active in discussions at both SkS and RealClimate at the time. A few things I remember were:
- I had the impression he really only wanted to look at recent OHC, particularly Argo data, and particularly the 0-700m depth. I also had the impression that he wanted to do that because it suggested less warming (compared to 0-2000m data) and was a much shorter record than surface temperatures. The short record made it easier to justify a "wait and see" position - a "we don't have enough data for long enough" position. Overall, an argument for the status quo, AKA "business as usual". I thought his preference was based on the conclusions he could draw from it (avoiding stuff that gave the "wrong" message), rather than a rigorous scientific analysis.
- I remember discussions (particularly at RC) about him claiming that you could "see the heat moving" and actually estimate the fluxes just by looking at changes in ocean temperature. He seemed to not have a clue about the differences between "flux" and "flux divergence", and could never actually describe a methodology by which you could calculate the fluxes. It was all pretty hand-wavey, and left me with the impression that he really didn't know what he was talking about.
That said - yes, the total energy content of the earth-atmosphere system would be a nice thing to have, but keep in mind a couple of things:
- even though it is noisier, the records of surface air and sea surface temperatures go back a long way, and we have well over 100 years of near-global coverage
- surface temperatures and deeper ocean temperatures are linked by physics, so the long surface temperature record can't wander willy-nilly all over the place, independent of deeper ocean temperatures.
- thus, limitations noted, the surface temperature record is still useful.
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John Hartz at 12:17 PM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
@mehus #19:
The article that you have provided the link to is:
Volcanic Eruptions May be Masking ‘Lost’ Warming by Alex Kirby, Climate News Network/Climate Central, Mar 11, 2013
As fate would have it. the following article by the same writer was posted today:
Volcanic Eruption in Iceland Did Little to Lower CO2 by Alex Kirby, Climate News Network/Climate Central, Mar 25, 2013
Both articles are based on peer reviewed published papers that suggest volcanic aerosols have played a part in the recent slow down of atmospheric warming. Neither article suggests that volcanic aerosols were the sole cause.
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dana1981 at 11:49 AM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
mehus @19 - I believe that paper is actually discussing the lack of warming higher in the atmosphere, but it could also explain the slight slowdown in ocean warming over the past few years.
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mehus at 11:25 AM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
I have a question for the crowd. A recent paper suggested that volcano aerosol emissions were to blame for a lack expected warming over the last decade or so. Here's a link to climatecentral's coverage: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/volcanoes-may-mask-lost-warming-15683
This research would seem to contradict that paper. Are these papers in fact contradicting each other or ????
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Pierre-Normand at 11:25 AM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
The apparently very low rate of ocean heat content increase from 1958 to 1984 was very puzzling to me, even accounting for the error bars. I had assumed for some time that despite the 1940-1970 slowdown in global surface warming (partially explained by a rising concentration of sulphate aerosols) the OHC was still increasing very much during that period as the continued sea level rise apparently testifies. But now, if the mid 20th century slowdown in global surface warming occurs at the same time as a slowdown in OHC increase, how do we account for the lack of slow down in the rate sea level rise from 1958 to 1984?
StBarnabas's remark seemd very enlightening and suggestive to me. Could it have been that much more heat was propotionately gained by the upper warmer layers of the oceans (where the thermal expansion coefficient is much higher)? Unfortunately, the breakdown of layers in Figure 1 above doesn't seem to support that hypothesis. So I remain puzzled. What caused the sea levels to rise so much during that period of very slow OHC increase? (Melting ice sheets contributed little, I think).
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Andy Skuce at 11:04 AM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
As a Skeptical Science contributor and regular, I should say that I am grateful for this discussion about a subject that I really should learn more about. It is frustrating for me that such discussions actually range a little too widely and it might help if we isolated one subject at a time (nuclear waste, intermittency and the grid, uranium ore resources, energy storage options, demand management etc). I realize that all these subjects interact and can't be entirely considered in isolation but some better focus would be helpful for beginners.
Some of the comments in this thread are longer than some SkS blogposts, so I would encourage everyone here to consider submitting a focussed blog post on some aspect of this huge and important problem.
I have one question for Joris. What do you think of this report: California’s Energy Future - The View to 2050?
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John Hartz at 10:52 AM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
Beleive it or not, the State of Kansas has visions of becoming the "Saudi Arabia of Wind." Read about it in the article, New transmission lines funnel wind-generated electricity out of Kansas. by Dan Voorhis, Wichita Eagle/McClatchy Newspapers, Mar 25, 2013.
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Mark-US at 10:47 AM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
As for mechanisms, for one thing, Antarctica is producing a lot less very-cold "bottom water" in the offshore basins.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Southern-Ocean-research-shows-continuing-deep-ocean-change_CSIRO.html
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barry1487 at 10:18 AM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
chriskoz @ 1
That confirms my opinion pronounced here a year or two ago, that we should use OHC as the measure of GW rate.
That has long been the opinion of Roger Pielke Senior, whose views have received some attention here at SkS. While OHC may be the best indicator, nothing would be better than the completest accounting of all the energy in the system - surface, ocean, ice, atmosphere etc. -
A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
JasonB - I assume you are responding to JvD with these quotes? You might want to identify whose comments you're talking about :)
I suspect a well-written SkS post on nuclear options and possibilities for mitigating greenhouse gases would be useful, but quite frankly that hasn't been (as far as I know) a recurring denial myth - it's not even on John Cooks list.
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JasonB at 09:34 AM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
KR,
Apologies for the off-topic post but if I could just correct the record on two points that would be great.
If you think we cannot ramp up nuclear to replace fossil fuels, then what hope is there that solar panels and wind turbines will do it?
The "production" I was referring to was uranium fuel production, which naturally isn't an issue for wind or solar because neither need fuel.
To put things into context, Olkiluoto reactor 3, a 3rd generation conventional reactor, was started in 2005. Since 2005, the world has added 223 GW of wind capacity (http://www.gwec.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/GWEC-PRstats-2012_english.pdf), equivalent to about 80 GW of nuclear power, or 50 Olkiluoto reactors.
One nuclear power plant requires one ton of uranium per year. So if we build 10.000 nukes, we need 10.000 tons of uranium, per year. Known reserves are more than 5.000.000 tons, so we have at least 500 years of fuel for 10.000 nuclear generating stations in known reserves. In other words, we don't have to turn to the oceans or the other unconventional resources for at least 500 years. So what is the problem?
The problem is your numbers.
According to the World Nuclear Association, your reserves are off by a factor of ten: 5,327,200 tonnes. Oops. And right now, with nuclear power representing less than 6% of world energy production, the consumption rate is 68,000 tonnes/year. That means that at the current rate of consumption we have less than 80 years' worth of uranium left.
Scale consumption up by a factor of 15 and what happens?
And that's not even the whole problem. Right now, primary production (i.e. what is coming out of the mines) is only enough to satisfy 58% of current demand. Do you really think that Olympic Dam and Ranger can nearly double production overnight, just to satisfy current demand when Russia stops selling its stockpiles? Even under modest expansions of nuclear power there are question marks about uranium supply through to 2030.
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BBD at 07:24 AM on 26 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Late to the party, as usual.
I see that Brad Keyes has been quoting me, albeit now snipped. As I have explained to BK elsewhere, I was completely wrong in what I said and admit it freely. I have put some effort into un-fooling myself since. It would have been very easy to change my screen name when I changed my views, but I chose not to. This is periodically embarrassing, but I prefer to acknowledge my errors and post only under one screen name.
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citizenschallenge at 07:09 AM on 26 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Sphaerica at 02:01 AM on 26 March, 2013
citizenschallenge,Shorter answer: Science needs defending from people who declare that science needs defending as an excuse to tear down actual science, because they don't like what the science is telling them.
==============
Well said. I tip my hat to you sir.
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CBDunkerson at 04:46 AM on 26 March 2013New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming
TNiazi wrote: "Is there any credible graph that shows the relation between green house gases and surface temperature on a time scale of days or weeks instead of years and decades !"
Depends on which greenhouse gases you are talking about. Gases like CO2 and methane quickly mix throughout the atmosphere and thus take a long time to accumulate a significant change in any given area. Water vapor, on the other hand, can vary wildly in concentration by locale. You might have a 100 degree Fahrenheit day in both Florida and Utah, but the humidity (i.e. water vapor level) in Florida is almost always going to be much higher. As a result, once the sun goes down Florida and other humid areas lose heat more slowly than Utah and other arid regions due to the difference in greenhouse gas levels. That is, as most people know, deserts get cold fast once the sun goes down while humid areas can stay hot and sticky all night.
Offhand, I don't know of any graphs showing this greenhouse impact of water vapor on temperatures over short time frames, but it generally falls into the realm of 'common knowledge'.
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michael sweet at 04:28 AM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
JvD,
I did not see your source for truck mounted fission reactors before. Reading it I see that they are not praticable. No shielding for operators! Keep up trying to convince people. You have certainly convinced me that nuclear is not an option at all. I used to be agnostic about nuclear and have worked with radiation so that is not a big deal for me. Seeing the material you cite I no longer consider nuclear much of an option.
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michael sweet at 04:23 AM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
JvD,
The background for my citation is here.
Nuclear: As with hydroelectricity, the EROI estimates for nuclear power span a very large range. Some claim that the EROI is actually less than 1—which would mean that the whole process is not a source of energy, but rather a sink—whereas others (such as the World Nuclear Association, an industry group) estimate that the EROI is much higher than perhaps any other source of energy, around 40 to 60 when using centrifuge enrichment. I drew on a paper that reviewed many studies, and estimated the EROI to be 5. Lenzen, “Life cycle energy and greenhouse gas emissions of nuclear energy: A review,” Energy Conversion and Management (2008) (my emphasis)
As usual, nuclear makes wild claims of energy returned. I notice you did not cite a source, even though you ask me for one. Scientific American has a good reputation as a neutral observer. You still have not provided a citation for truck mounted fission reactors. I will not comment on this thread again until you provide this citation since if you do not it shows you are not debating in good faith, just making up stuff as you go along.
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A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
While the advantages/disadvantages of nuclear power are an interesting topic, they are a red herring in regards to the actual topic of this thread - the capabilities of renewable power to supply baseload/ongoing energy demands.
In that regard, and in reply to a number of assertions made recently:
- Widespread distribution has been shown to reduce irregularity of supply by many orders of magnitude.
- The US NREL has studied and considers a US 50% electrical supply with wind/solar, and a total of 80% for all renewables, possible by 2050.
- NREL has also shown that 35% penetration by wind/solar in the Western US can be accomplished, and "not require extensive infrastructure if changes are made to operational practices", contrary to assertions re: penetration made on this thread.
- European integration in a heterogenous environment will be more challenging, but it may be that the majority of the issues are political/regulatory.
- See the several other studies listed in the opening post (OP) in this regard - there is a great deal of evidence supporting baseload renewable capabilities. Note that varying supply is addressed in these studies.
Please - stay on topic.
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DSL at 03:26 AM on 26 March 2013New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming
And, of course, it would be strange if CO2, CH4, etc. exhibited different behavior if put into the atmosphere by natural process versus being put into the atmosphere by human emission. CO2 can be a forcing or a feedback.
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Bob Lacatena at 03:17 AM on 26 March 2013New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming
TNiazi,
Could temperature increase be leading and not lagging the green house gases increase?
No.
- There is a known physical mechanism by which increased greenhouse gases would increase temperatures. The known physical mechanisms by which increasing temperatures increase (or, in some cases, decrease) atmospheric greenhouse gases of various types (e.g. ocean outgassing, melting permafrost and methane hyrdates, large scale die-off of forests due to climate change, etc.) primarily operate over very, very large time scales -- not days.
- There is a good accounting for the various sources and sinks of carbon in the earth system. See Climage Change Cluedo (Clue for North Americans) for one of many good breakdowns on this site. Another (again, of many) is this discussion.
- If the temperature increase were somehow raising greenhouse gas levels, you still need to (a) explain what is causing the temperature increase if not GHGs and (b) explain why rising greenhouse gas levels are not, contrary to the physics, causing warming. So in your hopes of simplifying the problem by dissociating GHG from temperature, you've instead introduced two new, insurmountable issues.
3a is difficult, because based on all other known climate factors (solar activity, aerosols, etc.) the earth should be cooling.
3b is difficult, because the basic theory of greenhouse gas effects on climate has been proposed, studied and reinforced through a variety of fields (physics, chemistry, atmospheric physics, paleoclimate studies, etc.) over hundreds of years. You need to disprove several hundred years of science to make and prove the claim that GHGs do not influence temperatures.
So, in the end, your request is a fool's errand. You need to erase a million other points of data in order to get to the conlusion you are hoping to reach with a simple graph of daily temperatures versus GHG levels.
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New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming
TNiazi - No, nothing credible. On the short term the noise from basic weather, not to mention the seasonal CO2 signal seen from hemispheric growth cycles (drop in CO2 over hemispheric spring/summer, rise over the fall/winter), far outweigh the slow changes from greenhouse gas forcings.
A number of 'skeptic' blogs have made such short-graphs, often removing long term trends (differencing or just detrending), and attempting from that to argue a disconnect between GHGs and climate - but such attempts are invariably flawed depictions of short term trendless variation with the long term changes removed.
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Pete Dunkelberg at 02:26 AM on 26 March 2013Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack
Thanks Neven. I'll watch for your winter review. Clear sky lets more radiation out while strong winds out of the Arctic must be replaced by possibly warmer air from elsewhere. Transfer of energy to the Arctic and from there to the universe is a large element of global heat balance, and evidently easy to underestimate.
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StBarnabas at 02:19 AM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
C_p is in fact very constant with pessure and temperature, (less than 1% for realistic values). Though it does vary with considerably with salinity (drops in saline water such as the Med where the salinity can be about 37-38ppt rather than the more normal 35ppt). What varies considerably with temperature is the thermal expansion coefficient. Warm water expands a lot more than cold water. Typical values of the thermal expansion coefficient are 0.0551e-3 0.1690e-3 0.2591e-3 and 0.3351e-3 for 0, 10, 20 and 30 degrees C respectively.
a) Heat going into the deep ocean slows sea level rise
b) Monitoring sea level rise will give clues as to where the heat is going. The fact that it is seems to be a fairly constant 3.2 mm/year despite rapidly increasing ice melt indicates that a lot more of the heat must be going into the lower ocean
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JvD at 02:14 AM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
"I read an article in the most recent Scientific American that stated that nuclear power has the lowest Energy Invested for Energy Output of any of the currently used power systems. That doesn't look good for the long term."
Isn't that just dandy. You read an article. Care to provide a source? A scientific one? Even in a worst case scenario, nuclear power stations have an EROEI of 12. In the best case, such as Vattenfall's generating stations in Sweden, the EROEI is >50. In future, with gen4 nuclear power plants, EROEI could be >100.
Now, what is your source saying that nuclear power has the worst EROEI? I bet you have none.
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Brad Keyes at 02:14 AM on 26 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
(-snip-)
Moderator Response:[DB] Note to all participants: The posting rights of Mr. Keyes have been deemed forfeit due to dishonesty on the part of Mr. Keyes, earlier:
Brad Keyes at 22:12 PM on 25 March 2013
So in what way; which parts of 'science' need defending? From what?
From scientists who've found "a balance between being honest and being effective."
In a nutshell.
Mr. Keyes then offered up this delineation of his first comment noted above with this:
Brad Keyes at 22:49 PM on 25 March 2013
DSL—I was alluding to Stephen Schneider's ethics.
BBD performs a masterful, morally righteous takedown on it here.
Mr. Keyes then confirmed his intellectual dishonesty on this thread with this statement:
Brad Keyes at 00:11 AM on 26 March 2013
Tom,
I repeat: where have I referred to Schneider or his ethics?
You're the only person on this thread who's talking about Schneider. Why? What's the relevance?
There can be no place in this forum for those who abuse the presumption of inherent honest and integrity. Especially for those who torture the truth, stretching and distorting it beyond all recognition.
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TNiazi at 02:12 AM on 26 March 2013New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming
Is there any credible graph that shows the relation between green house gases and surface temperature on a time scale of days or weeks instead of years and decades ! Could temperature increase be leading and not lagging the green house gases increase?
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JvD at 02:10 AM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
"As for not needing them yet, perhaps you should actually look carefully at the actual (and probable) reserves and think about what that means for plants that you want to construct now that are supposed to last 40-60 years, and then think about the fact that you need to scale up nuclear power about 15-fold to replace fossil fuels. Oh, and also ponder just how much production is actually capable of ramping, and just how few mines actually contain the majority of the known reserves."
If you think we cannot ramp up nuclear to replace fossil fuels, then what hope is there that solar panels and wind turbines will do it?
One nuclear power plant requires one ton of uranium per year. So if we build 10.000 nukes, we need 10.000 tons of uranium, per year. Known reserves are more than 5.000.000 tons, so we have at least 500 years of fuel for 10.000 nuclear generating stations in known reserves. In other words, we don't have to turn to the oceans or the other unconventional resources for at least 500 years. So what is the problem?
I already explained the situation with nuclear fuel inexhaustibility in a comment above, and I provided a reference to a report giving you all the information. You are being willfully ignorant, which is typical of a AGW denier, not of a rational person.
And you, Micheal Sweet, are ignorant for thanking Jason, who has added nothing substantial but basically just repeated wrong arguments previously made by others. Both of you need to get serious, otherwise we will get nowhere.
Anyway, here is an explanation of the US army's ML-1 portable nuclear power station program. It was abandoned decades ago because oil is cheap, but it could be restarted at any time. Therefore: truck mounted nuclear power stations are *not* incredible. They *are* technically feasible. If and when oil should become too expensive, they *will* be built. You may find this impoossible to imagine, but that is your loss.
Recently, Greenpeace published an updated version of their [R]Evolution scenario for my country, the Netherlands. Just like I have been trying to tell you, Greenpeace sees my country install 70 GW of solar and wind power, which is an installed capacity about 6 times the maximum demand. You can deny this all you want, reality falsifies your denial.
www.greenpeace.nl/Global/nederland/report/2013/klimaat%20en%20energie/energy-revolution-scenario.pdf
Finally, here is a very recent research report from the OECD partnership, which explains why intermittent renewables add significant hidden system costs, and calculates them. This report corroborates my viewpoint completely. To get with the program, you need to study this report, or else learn to live with the fact that you are operating from a position of willfull ignorance.
www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2012/system-effects-exec-sum.pdf
Now, I'm getting really frustrated with the low level of discussion we are having here. There is routine dismissal of scientific research going on here. This is no way to proceed. At this point, I would thank you for explaining to me whether any of you are ready to accept the purport of science, yes or no, concerning this issue. Otherwise, time is simply being wasted for all of us. If necessary, please re-read my comments in this thread, which contain all my main arguments backed up by credible scientific research.
Thank you,
Joris
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Bob Lacatena at 02:01 AM on 26 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
citizenschallenge,
Shorter answer: Science needs defending from people who declare that science needs defending as an excuse to tear down actual science, because they don't like what the science is telling them.
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Brad Keyes at 02:00 AM on 26 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
citizenschallenge:
Science needs defending from people who misrepresent it.
Well said.
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dana1981 at 01:57 AM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
perseus @2 - the pre-1975 ocean data in this paper look similar to the surface data, in that they did not warm much during mid-century, likely due to aerosol cooling offsetting greenhouse gas warming. That's an interesting point, because some suspect that the mid-century surface 'cooling' was due mainly to natural cycles, but if that were the case, we would expect to see ocean warming during that period. That being said, the uncertainty during that timeframe is rather large.
chriskoz @4 - could be due to increased aerosol emissions, or the transition to Argo data, or something else. The W/m2 trends depend on what timeframe you're looking at. Since 2000 it's close to 1 W/m2, but obviously the trend decreases if you start before that.
Craig @6 - see the end of the Some 'Missing Heat' Found section. They suspect it's due to a shift to the negative PDO phase, though that was discussed in the supplementary info, which I didn't have a chance to read.
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citizenschallenge at 01:34 AM on 26 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Sorry JH, but I'm going to bit, quick'n dirty:
The question: "So in what way; which parts of 'science' need defending? From what?"
~ ~ ~
Science needs defending from people who misrepresent it.
Science needs defending from people who believe it is OK to quote mind and cherry pick in order to defend a preconceived notion.
Science needs defending from people who mangle the intellectual playing field and ignore the fact that no Earth Science study is ever perfect and the job of scientists is to separate the grain from the chaff.
Science needs defending from people who forget that scientists learn from their mistakes, acknowledge doubts and flaws, and move forward in a nonstop effort to distill the best provisional consensus possible from the evidence that's available, as the pursuit of further understanding continues.
Science needs defending from people who refuse to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes.
Science needs defending from people who believe their political causes allow them commit intellectual atrocity after intellectual atrocity.
Science needs defending from people who resort to paranoid and vicious personal attacks rather than focus on LEARNING !
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michael sweet at 01:34 AM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
Jason
Thank you for providing some data about JvD's claims about France. I said at the start of this discussion that nuclear supporters on this site have provided little to support their position. Since JvD has a list of problems he says are solved, but do not appear solved to me, I remain unconvinced. On the contrary, I see that nuclear supporters are unable to justify their position. Perhaps we can power their computers with the truck mounted reactors JvD described here. The plans are in Isacc Asimovs Foundation novel.
Really JvD, you must recognise that you are proposing what you would like to be the situation and not what actually exists. Provide a reference for your truck mounted fission reactors, or even a link that suggests it might be feasible in the next 50 years. You must provide something beyond your strongly felt positions to convince others to change their minds. Your arguments have not proven credible here. You have made a number of claims that are obviously incorrect. When I see several claims (like truck mounted fiddion reactors) that are obviously false I doubt the rest of what you say. The rest of what you say has holes that I can drive a truck through and I am not even really opposed to nuclear.
I read an article in the most recent Scientific American that stated that nuclear power has the lowest Energy Invested for Energy Output of any of the currently used power systems. That doesn't look good for the long term.
Nuclear may have a place in the future energy system, and it may be large, but you have not provided convincing evidence that will be the case.
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John Hartz at 01:25 AM on 26 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
@Brad Keyes & Tom Curtis:
Your recent exchange of comments about "Schneider's ethics" has been deleted because it was "off topic." Please keep in mind that this comment thread (or the comment thread to any SkS article for that matter) is not a public chat-room. Please stay on topic, or refrain from posting comments.
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Lazarus at 01:16 AM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Trenberth recently mentioned the mising heat here;
http://www.rmets.org/weather-and-climate/climate/energy-and-climate-dr-kevin-e-trenberth
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JasonB at 00:49 AM on 26 March 2013A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
We can simply look to France, which have a couple of their nuclear generating plants working in load-following mode.
Yes, and exactly what is the average capacity factor in France? And how expensive is nuclear power once that capacity factor is included in the calculation?
The French obtain 80% of their electricity using nuclear power. So your claim that only 40% can be done with nuclear is falsified by reality.
Only if you ignore the fact that France is interconnected with its neighbours and so therefore can export electricity when demand drops (allowing it to have a much higher nuclear penetration than its own market allows, and it still has the lowest capacity factor of any nuclear country in the world) and also import electricity when demand exceeds supply (so even then there's actually not enough nuclear capacity to meet France's own peak demand). When you take into account the entire network what's the nuclear penetration work out to again?
And perhaps you can tell everyone what happened during the heatwave of 2003? Bit of a problem in a warming world, don't you think?
The French, by the way, have the lowest cost and lowest co2 intensity electrity of any OECD country, which proves that nuclear is low co2 *and* low cost.
Or that the French power price does not accurately reflect the true cost of generating that power, as evidenced by EDF's financial woes. That's the thing about state-owned utilities, they don't always charge the true cost for political reasons. We paid 12.5c/kWh here for our coal-fired power for about a decade before the government decided that the taxpayer could no longer subsidise electricity consumers and gradually started raising retail prices until they're now nearly double that.
Perhaps France wasn't such a good example after all.
We don't need to build fast breeders yet, although we know how to do it. Many countries have built fast breeders, such as France and Japan.
Ah, yes, Japan. This would be the reactor that's run for what, a total of 20 months since it was completed in 1991. Perhaps another bad example?
As for not needing them yet, perhaps you should actually look carefully at the actual (and probable) reserves and think about what that means for plants that you want to construct now that are supposed to last 40-60 years, and then think about the fact that you need to scale up nuclear power about 15-fold to replace fossil fuels. Oh, and also ponder just how much production is actually capable of ramping, and just how few mines actually contain the majority of the known reserves.
And it's funny what you think is "easy". :-)
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sauerj at 00:33 AM on 26 March 2013New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
If we state that we know total OHC, then by definition, we are stating that we know the integrated profile of ocean 'masses X temps' globally from sea-surface to sea-bed. If so, then it is certainly possible to express OHC not only as joules but as avg-weighted temp by simply dividing OHC by total mass. Note: I am simplifying this math by assuming Cp is constant thru-out the ocean profile. Rigorous research would include Cp variations [=fx(T & salt-content, etc)] into the profiling if found significant.
Better yet: Has any research been done to express O+AHC (combine the two) on an integrated "mass x heat capacity" weighted-avg basis (I would be very surprised if not). If so, this expression would be better because it would keep ENSO events 'inside the thermal box' and thus eliminate the "confounding" ENSO factoring when looking at OHC or AHC in isolation (as is common on LST graphs & also done in Fig-1 above, i.e. with the 1998 El-Nino notation).
Same as with my paragraph #1 above, if we state that oceans are 90% of the heat content, then we are stating that we know all the masses & heat capacities globally (from outer atmos down to lower sea-bed). Therefore, we have all the know-how to express O+AHC on either a joule basis or, better yet, on a 'wgtd mass x Cp' temp basis (the latter simply by dividing the joule value by total 'mass x Cp'). In my opinion, the latter is a more visceral, and therefore, better expression.
Is any research moving in the direction of developing a total integrated weighted-avg O+A heat content or temp? This would seem to be worth consideration.
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New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
Craig King - In short, ocean variations such as the ENSO affect the rate of heat absorption by the oceans - La Nina exposing colder waters to the surface, warming the ocean faster but cooling the atmosphere, while El Nino slows ocean warming leaving more of the energy imbalance in the atmosphere. Given that >93% of warming is going into the oceans, ~2.3% into the atmosphere, even a small rate change in ocean warming relative to the total greenhouse gas imbalance will have a huge effect on air temperatures.
Note that the energy flow is sun -> ocean -> atmosphere -> space, not the atmosphere -> ocean. A warming atmosphere causes ocean warming by slowing that energy flow from the ocean to the atmosphere. But if ENSO and other variations bring cold water to the surface, reducing atmospheric heating, air temperatures will then drop.
In other words, the atmosphere is to the ocean as the tail is to the dog - tied to ocean temperatures, but far more variable, even moving backwards at times.
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Brad Keyes at 00:23 AM on 26 March 2013Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
Glenn,
So in what way; which parts of 'science' need defending? From what?
From scientists who've found a balance between being honest and being effective.
Moderator Response: [JH] I am tempted to delete this comment for being "off topic", but will let it stand because it is so obtuse. I encourage Glenn and others not to respond under the "Do not feed the trolls" doctrine that we all should subscribe to.
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