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Comments 47101 to 47150:

  1. A 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.

  2. Recursive 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.

  3. citizenschallenge at 07:09 AM on 26 March 2013
    Recursive 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.

  4. New 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'.

  5. michael sweet at 04:28 AM on 26 March 2013
    A 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.

  6. michael sweet at 04:23 AM on 26 March 2013
    A 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.

  7. 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. 

  8. New 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.

  9. New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming

    TNiazi,

    Could temperature increase be leading and not lagging the green house gases increase?

    No.

    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.

  10. 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. 

  11. Pete Dunkelberg at 02:26 AM on 26 March 2013
    Arctic 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. 

  12. New 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

  13. A 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.

  14. Recursive 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.

  15. New 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?

      

  16. A 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.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML-1

    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

  17. Recursive 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.

  18. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    citizenschallenge:

    Science needs defending from people who misrepresent it.

    Well said.

  19. New 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.

  20. citizenschallenge at 01:34 AM on 26 March 2013
    Recursive 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 !

  21. michael sweet at 01:34 AM on 26 March 2013
    A 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.

  22. Recursive 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.  

  23. New 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

  24. A 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". :-)

  25. New 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.

  26. 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. 

  27. Recursive 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.
  28. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Craig: One way that the ocean can transfer heat to the atmosphere even though the local air temperature is warmer than the water temperature is through evaporation.  When water evaporates, the water vapor carries off the heat energy required to change from the liquid sate to a gaseous state, leaving the remaining water a little cooler.  Air masses are more mobile than the ocean waters, and when they move to a cooler region, the water vapor condenses as rain or snow, leaving the heat energy in the atmossphere.

  29. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Craig, here's Levitus et al. 2012.  The methodology section will give you part of the answer.  

    CO2 does not warm the oceans independent of the indirect downward longwave radiation mechanism (increased skin temp forces a "deepening" of the convective temp gradient) and the direct method of surface layer mixing.  

    Also, the ocean-atmosphere relationship is extraordinarily complex and is the reason why modeling requires massive computing power.  One can also add ice into the mix: global ice mass loss has accelerated in the last decade, despite what appears to be a surface temp flattening.

    Moderator Response: [JH] My apologies for inadvertently deleting the following post: "On Craig's last question: the ocean heats up until it overcomes the skin temp. This is a very complex process, since the ocean surface is churning at the same time. Also, atmospheric temp across the ocean's surface is not uniform, nor is solar input (cloudiness complicates things). Ocean circulation is another factor. That's why the SST map looks rather marbled (and would look even worse close up). "If you want to know much, much more, in excruciating detail, go to SoD."
  30. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    I am also curious about what would cause the proposed increased heat content of the oceans to "come out" and thus warm the climate. My curiosity is built around the assumption that the warmer air mass must have transferred heat to the ocean ( warmer to colder ) and that raises the thought that the atmosphere would have to get colder than the ocean for it ( the air ) to be warmed by the sea.

    In the meantime the atmospoheric CO2 continues to rise leading to a warmer atmosphere.

  31. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    mandas,

    there is no controversy about the well established fact that many climate change deniers are also conspiracy theorists.

    Huh?

    Climate change deniers do not exist.

    Climate change denial does not exist.

  32. Glenn Tamblyn at 21:55 PM on 25 March 2013
    Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Brad @52:

    "Tom, you may find this hard to believe but I don't doubt the reality of AGW. My only agenda, or axe to grind if you like, is defending the integrity of science.Tom, you may find this hard to believe but I don't doubt the reality of AGW. My only agenda, or axe to grind if you like, is defending the integrity of science."

    So in what way; which parts of 'science' need defending? From what?

  33. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Thanks Chris.  But you'd do your yourself a service, and us, and perhaps the planet, if you'd use plain english :)

  34. Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack

    Thanks for the good suggestion, gpwayne. Fixed now.

    ---

    Pete, that's a good question, but keep in mind, as useful a tool the DMI temp graph is, it doesn't measure, but models temperatures above 80N, which is only a part of the Arctic Circle (see for instance the Uni Bremen SIC map to get an idea of the area above 80N, second circle from the North Pole). I think this is the main reason for the discrepancy between this year and last year.

    On this post's image with the temp anomalies in the lower right corner you can see that most of the heat since January has been around the Greenland and Baffin Bay area. You can compare that to this image I used last year for my winter analysis. Again, see lower right image for 2012 JFM temp anomalies. There, more heat is within the 80N circle.

    A comparison between the images gives an idea, but they are not completely identical. For this year's image the anomaly colour range extends from -7 to +7, but for last year's image it's -5 to +5. In April's winter analysis I will of course compare apple to apple.

    It's also good to remember that high pressure areas cause cloudless skies, meaning that a lot of heat gets radiated out of the Arctic. Last year didn't have highs of this magnitude.

  35. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    What brought about the shift from increasing atmospheric temperatures to increasing ocean temperatures?

    Will this change be sustained or will the air go back to rapid warming again?

    Presumably the oceans are being warmed by the atmosphere, or alternatively the atmosphere is being cooled by the ocean acting as a heat sink. With the reduced warming of the atmosphere will the warming of the oceans slow down or is the CO2 concentration warming the oceans independently of the air temperature?

    I was under the impression the ARGO buoys only measure down to 700m at present. Is there a program under way to measure temperatures all the way down to the sea bed?

     

    Sorry for all the questions but the paper seems aimed at specialists who probably know all this wheras I am just an inquisitive amateur.

    Moderator Response: (Rob P) See this SkS post:How Increasing Carbon Dioxide Heats the Ocean.
  36. Enhanced SkS Graphics Provide New Entry Point into SkS Material

    Nice work guys.

    I wonder what's the criteria for some of the graphics to be honoured in SkS Climate Graphics page?

    I ask because in those ~5y of its existance, SkS produced far more graphics that included therein. For example, in the Carttons category, we have new image every weeks, but only one (santa on melter NPole) in Graphics page... Just curius.

  37. Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack

    Thanks for the good suggestion, gpwayne. Fixed now.

    ---

    Pete, that's a good question, but keep in mind, as useful a tool the DMI temp graph is, it doesn't measure, but models temperatures above 80N, which is only a part of the Arctic Circle (see for instance the Uni Bremen SIC map to get an idea of the area above 80N, second circle from the North Pole). I think this is the main reason for the discrepancy between this year and last year.

    On this post's image with the temp anomalies in the lower right corner you can see that most of the heat since January has been around the Greenland and Baffin Bay area. You can compare that to this image I used last year for my winter analysis. Again, see lower right image for 2012 JFM temp anomalies. There, more heat is within the 80N circle.

    A comparison between the images gives an idea, but they are not completely identical. For this year's image the anomaly colour range extends from -7 to +7, but for last year's image it's -5 to +5. In April's winter analysis I will of course compare apple to apple.

    It's also good to remember that high pressure areas cause cloudless skies, meaning that a lot of heat gets radiated out of the Arctic. Last year didn't have highs of this magnitude.

  38. A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy

    "So... extracting uranium from the oceans is a feasible plan, but storing wind and solar power for later use is not.

    Right, we've crossed the 'five fold crazy' line. I'm done here"

    Extracting uranium from the oceans is proven technology:

    www.neutron.kth.se/courses/reactor_physics/NEA-redbook2003.pdf

    See page 22.

    Fo course, we don't need to mine uranium from the oceans yet, but perhaps in a hundred or two hundred years it will be worthwhile. Until that time, there are still vast amounts of uranium in conventional mines. But it's good to know that the amount of uranium we can get is virtually limitless.

    BTW, don't worry about going crazy. It happens to a lot of people once they start realising that everything they thought they knew about nuclear power is wrong. Breaking down one's own indoctrination can cause feelings of stress and uncertainty, but it will pass. Don't give up!

  39. A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy

    "How would you propose to solve the mismatch between supply (which is ideally constant at a high capacity factor) and demand (which fluctuates over a wide range) at high penetrations of nuclear power?

    The places I've checked have a difference between minimum demand and maximum demand over the course of a year of about 2.5:1, and over the course of a day as much as 2:1."

    We can simply look to France, which have a couple of their nuclear generating plants working in load-following mode. 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. 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. French electricity is far, far less co2 intensive than German power, and is far cheaper, for example.

    "Also, if you're going to use fast breeders to counter the claim that there are genuine and well-founded concerns about uranium supply, then you should also be up-front about the cost of electricity from those fast breeders and the current state of production readiness of the technology. Exactly how far away are we from large-scale rollout of fast breeders (especially given how far behind schedule and over budget the first two EPRs are, and they're conventional reactors!)? How much CO2 can be abated by continuing to build wind farms at the present rate in the meantime?"

    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. The Russians have a fast reactor, the BN600 which they are already selling commercially for export. The technology is here. It works. Yes, it is a little bit more expensive than conventional once-through nuclear power plants, but this will probably change sometime this century or the next. In order to move to a low-co2, nuclear energy supply, breeders, fast breeders, and fast reactors will be built. Another reason to build such plants is because they result in far less nuclear waste. However, since the amount of nuclear waste is already very small for nuclear, making it even smaller is not a very important goal. For example, in the French nuclear power system, the total amount of nuclear waste per Frenchman is the size of a 20 EURO-cent coin. Tiny, tiny amount of waste, in other words. Easily handled.

    Wind farms can abate a lot of co2 emissions. But not enough, because they cannot supply most of the electricity you need. You need backup, which will be powdered coal or natural gas. Burning coal or gas releases huge amounts of carbon per unit of energy, compared to nuclear power. An energy system running on wind farms (and solar farms) and natural gas backup generators will not nearly achieve the amount of co2 reduction that we need, unless the amount of wind farms and solar farms becomes unreasonably large, leading to massive curtailment and massive hits to the economics.

  40. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Chappo@4

    OHC  - Ocean Heat Content (you found it)

    LST - Land surface temps

    AHC- Atmosphere Heat Content (I concede may have made it up)

    ENSO - ElNino Southern Oscilation Index

    ARGO - refered in the article itself

  41. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Geoff Chambers @89, if I understand you correctly, you have asked me to not analyze what you say because you feel free to express opinions you do not believe online.  Is that correct?

    If so, there is indeed no point in analyzing, or responding to any thing you write; for there is no reason to suppose you willingness to express opinions you do not hold is limited on any point.

    It also raises an interesting point for the moderators.  What exactly is the comment policy on people who accuse themselves of dishonesty?

    Regardless, given your now stated policy on being truthful in expressing your opinions online, I feel that I have no choice but to regard you as a troll in future.

  42. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Dana,

    Eyeballing the figure, it look as if the warming rates of all layers have been faster in the first half of last decade 2000-4 than today. What's the explanation? Would it be that current ENSO have been slowly transitioning to ElNino?

    Second question. Those dashed W/m2 lines are hard to align with 3 trends in order to estimate how the ocean is balancing its energy. If we were to estimate that, would it be in the order of 0.5 or 0.7W ? And what's the relationship between that energy flux and TOA radiative imbalance? I guess not necessarily 1:1...

  43. A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy

    "Let's start with understanding the basics before we move to extract all the uranium from the world ocean. How do we keep rats out of the switchboards of nuclear power plants? More to the point, how do we account for the foible of human nature that means we overlook the possibility of a rat interrupting the primary flow of cooling water at a fission generation facility?"

    The best solution would be to use fission technology that is not dependent on flowing cooling water. Inherently safe reactors, in other words. Current commercial reactor technology is based on scaled-up versions of 1950's submarine reactor technology. While the submarine reactors are inherently safe, when they were scaled-up for commercial power generation, the inherent safety feature was lost due to core power scaling more quickly than heat dissipation capacity (i.e. volume increased more than surface area of the core), and the need for uninterrupted cooling was introduced.

    In order to mitigate the problem of not having absolute containment, all nuclear reactors today were fitted and are fitted with secondary containment structures which will capture most or all of the radioactivity in case of 'rats in the swithcboard'. This worked well at TMI and reasonably well at Fukushima, although at Fukushima, some volatile radioactive material escaped through human failure (wrong operation of emergency vents), although the amount lost was arguably not very dangerous. While Fukushima is measurably contaminated with radionuclides, the contamination is rather benign, as stated recently by the WHO. Even in the worst case prognosis, about 1000 lives will in future be cut short due to Fukushima, which of course is a tiny, tiny amount of health effect compared to the at least 1.000.000 people *every year* who die from fossil burning polution world wide. In the EU alone, the usage of coal burning generating plants causes 18.000 people te die *every year*. While we need nuclear power to be as safe as possible, it is necessary to compare any health effects to the alternative: coal. To make nuclear power safer, it would be good to move to reactor designs that are not dependent on forced cooling.

  44. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Chris - could you kindly translate your plethora of acronyms into plain english please ?


    Ps:  OHC - Acronyms and Abbreviations - The Free Dictionary
    acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/OHCAcronym, Definition. OHC, Overhead Camshaft. OHC, Outer Hair Cells. OHC, Ocean Heat Content. OHC, Ontario Health Coalition (Canada). OHC, Order of the ...

    - What does D-LST stand for? D-LST Acronym / Abbreviation Meaning ...
    worddetail.org/acronym_and_abbreviation/d-lst25+ items – Find out more on D-LST similar meanings, acronyms and ...
    No Abbreviation Stand For
    1 D-LST Drug lymphocyte stimulation test
    1 D-M Diencephalon-mesencephalon
    What does LST stand for? LST Acronym / Abbreviation Meaning ...
    worddetail.org/acronym_and_abbreviation/lst/2LST abbreviation stands for: Leishmanin skin test. There are 62 meanings or full forms for LST in total. | Page: 2.

  45. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    Does the ocean heat data suggest that 'global warming' only started around 1975 (ironically as solar irradiance started to decrease somewhat). Or rather what little warming did occur before that date was being dumped into the low thermal mass of the atmosphere?  I suppose we would need to know more about ocean temperatures before the 1950s to confirm that, but based on the limited timespan of measurements it's an interesting possibility.

  46. New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated

    That confirms my opinion pronounced here a year or two ago, that we should use OHC as the measure of GW rate. We should virtually discontinue watching the LST with their ElNino/LaNina perturbations. Those perturbations have much  lesser impact on OHC. In fact, current LaNina cycle should have "apparently" increased the OHC, contributing to the subject acceleration.

    Few yaers back, we did not know how to measure OHC, now with the ARGO float we do measure it better and better. At some point I guess we may measure it so accurately that the difference betwen OHC and AHC (from global and vertical temps profile) will be used as a measure of ENSO.

  47. geoffchambers at 18:48 PM on 25 March 2013
    Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Tom Curtis

    Please stop analysing my answers. I gave Timothey Mcveigh etc as examples of things I might say in an online survey. Or not. Since I see what you’re getting at, I’ve decided that I no longer believe that Prince Philip killed Lady Di. So there.

    See what I mean? Ask someone face to face who they’ll vote for and they’ll likely give you an honest answer. Ask questions on-line about subjects hardly anyone knows about , with no possibility of saying you don’t know and anything can happen. Or nothing.

    I know nothing about McVeigh, so the only honest answer would be “don’t know”. But this wasn’t permitted in the survey, and so I would have been tempted to go for ”strong belief” one way or the other. I believe strongly in people having strong opinions. I don’t believe in on-line surveys, (-snip-).

    By the way, the age range was from 10 to 95, according to the paper. Another reason for naming LOG12 as Unusual Survey of the Year.

    Moderator Response: [DB] Inflammatory snipped.
  48. Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack

    Could I suggest it might be more accurate, and appropriate, to echo Neven's description - that the Greenland ice sheet surface was melting, rather than claim that "almost all of the Greenland Ice Sheet was melting at one point" which is not the kind of scientifically accurate description I have come to expect from SkS?

  49. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Geoff Chambers @78 (conspiracy theory).

    Well, I'm glad we have that sorted.  I cannot help noting, however, that your "I tend to find it credible" is considerably weaker than your WUWT statement that "I strongly agree".  It is also a far cry from considering it credible that CIA agents may be tempted to perform illegal acts, and considering simply part of their job (as indicated at WUWT).

    For the record, I have no opinion on Timothy McVeigh because I lack relevant information (and have never tried to find it).  I consider a plot to kill Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jnr implausible, and that while there is some suggestive evidence in the first case (I have not examined the second), it is insufficient to overcome the inherent implausibility of the theory and there is counter evidence.  So, my response is to refuse to answer the McVeigh question as any answer would mispresent my opinion; to weakly disagree on the Kennedy assassination, and to strongly disagree on the Martin Luther King assassination.  I strongly disagree with all other CY theories on the survey.

    All three scenarios are sufficiently plausible that they could be true (absent all evidence); but not sufficiently plausible that you would accept them in the absence of strong evidence.

    The question though, is not whether they are true or not.  In LOG12, the survey tests for the likelihood of accepting a conspiracy theory.  Somebody who accepts only one theory is still a conspiracy theorist but is not particularly prone to accepting them.  Somebody who accepts three, particularly somebody who strongly agrees with three...  Well, it seems to me they are setting a very low bar for acceptance for conspiracy theories.  They are reasonably classified as prone to conspiracist ideation.

  50. Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations

    Geoff Chambers @78:

    1)  Each recursive theory which shows "unreflexive counterfactual thinking" shows counterfactual thinking in that they could only be valid criticisms of LOG12 if at least one of the "skeptic" blogs had posted the survey.  As none of them did, the theories in question presupose counterfactual conditions for relevance.

    This is most obvious in theory 5:

    "Di fferent versions of the survey (5). Because question order was counterbalanced between di fferent versions of the LOG12 survey, links to the various versions were quasi-randomly assigned to participating blogs. The existence of di fferent versions of the survey gave rise to several hypotheses, for example that ". . . the most troubling new revelation appears to be that some climate skeptic blogs got di fferent questionaires [sic] than their counterpart AGW advocate blogs. . . . this negates the study on the basis of inconsistent sampling".  This hypothesis rests on counterfactual thinking: Even if survey versions had di ffered on some variable other than question order, given that none of the "skeptic" blogs posted the link and hence did not contribute responses, any claim regarding the published data based on those di fferences among versions rests on a counterfactual state of the world. Arguably, this hypothesis also rests on the presumption of nefarious intent and the belief that something must be wrong (NI, MbW )."

    (My emphasis)

    Clearly the quoted claim that the different question order "negates the study" is counterfactual in that, as the "skeptic" blogs never published the survey, the different question order for "skeptic" blog versions of the survey had no impact on the data collected.  Ergo it has no impact on the published paper.

    This is explained in LCOM13 each time the claim is made.  It is even explained that the claim that "skeptic" blogs were contacted later "... never matured to the point of clarifying how this delay could have had any bearing on the outcome of the study ...", but it is included as counterfactual in that any criticism of the database and hence paper based on the delayed contact must necessarilly be counterfactual.   

    Your inability to understand the explanation represents neither a flaw in the paper, nor a slander of any person (named or otherwise).

    2)  The fact that John Cook notified people of the survey on the SkS twitter feed rather than on the blog site itself is not an error in LCOM13 as LCOM13 does not make any claim to the contrary.  Rather, they quote a claim in LOG12, which does make that claim.  That is entirely appropriate because the actual event is not germaine to LCOM13, whereas the reported event against which the various hypotheses where directed was.

    3)  I am disinclined to say anybody is without bias, myself included.  More importantly, so were LCOM13, who only indicated that the two authors of LCOM13 who were also authors of LOG12 had a particular cause of bias, and that as a control for that, they were excluded from the data collection.

    Consequently, your claim that LCOM13 "... insist on the fact that the authors of the content analysis have been chosen for their lack of bias", is pure bunk and a straightforward misprepresentation of the claims in LCOM13.  Where I as hypercritical as you are, I would no doubt charge you with lying here.  Instead, I suspect you are simply so upset by the paper that you have not bothered to read carefully what it actually says.

    Again, your inability to read and comprehend what was written in LCOM13 is not a valid criticism of LCOM13

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