450 thoughts to “Open Thread, Non-Petroleum Dec. 17, 2016”

  1. Go Siemens!
    http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/12/this-extra-330-is-the-fastest-climbing-electric-powered-airplane-ever/
    Companies like Boeing and Airbus are working on electric drives with the power-to-weight ratio needed for transport aircraft. German electronics firm, Siemens, is doing the same and actually has a lead on the big airframers. In 2015, it unveiled the SP260D, an electric motor that weighs 110lbs (50kg) and produces 260kW (348hp)—a power-to-weight ratio of five kilowatts per kilogram.

    “That’s a world record in this class,” Dr. Frank Anton, Siemens head of eAircraft confirms. “Powerful electric motors used in industry have a power/weight ratio of, at most, one kilowatt per kilogram, and in the automotive industry they reach two kilowatts per kilogram at best.

    1. Hi Fred,

      Hopefully we will live to see a few NON EXPERIMENTAL planes flying on E juice. 😉

      I am not an engineer, but I fear such motors, at least at the present stage of development, are probably rather inefficient, as electric motors go, because they almost for dead sure throw off a LOT of heat. Just about every electrically powered machine I have ever dealt with does the same when you push it to the extreme. The electric starter motors on car engines for instance, are grossly overloaded in relation to their design, and usually burn out well within five minutes of continuous full load operation. They last because they are seldom needed for more than a few seconds at a time.

      1. Old Farmer, Siemens is at the top of it’s game inventing and producing electric motors. Years ago they produced an in-wheel motor for cars that was more efficient than current electric vehicle systems. The SP260D is 95% efficient, far better than internal combustion engines and even jet turbines. This is true state of the art engineering. There is also an article below this one that discusses hybrid aircraft.

        http://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDesignArticles/ArticleID/12805/Inside-Siemens-Record-Breaking-Electric-Aircraft-Motor.aspx

      2. I am not an engineer, but I fear such motors, at least at the present stage of development, are probably rather inefficient, as electric motors go, because they almost for dead sure throw off a LOT of heat.

        OK, Not a problem here’s a tid bit straight from the horse’s Siemen’s mouth… 😉

        To be fair the idea is to use electric motors like these in hybrid aircraft not in 100% E-aircraft.

        http://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDesignArticles/ArticleID/12805/Inside-Siemens-Record-Breaking-Electric-Aircraft-Motor.aspx

        Designing a High-Performance Motor
        Achieving a power-to-weight ratio of five kW/kg in a large electric motor is no easy task, so Siemens approached it from every conceivable angle. They began with some of their existing motors, testing all of the components individually, and reducing materials whenever possible. Engineers found that the aluminum endshield, the part of the motor housing that supports the bearing and protects the motor’s internals, was quite heavy.

        To reduce its weight, Siemens developed a sophisticated computer model of the endshield. The software represents the endshield as 100,000 separate parts and then simulates each element’s performance under various force conditions. At that point the algorithm conducts millions of trial-and-error simulations, eventually finding components that can be eliminated or reduced. The process helped engineers redesign the endshield, turning it into a filigree (lattice-like) structure with the same performance at less than half the weight. They’re also working on a prototype made from a carbon-fiber composite, which will reduce the weight by another factor of two.

        Inside the motor, the rotor’s permanent magnets are configured into a Halbach array, which produces a stronger magnetic field with less material. The stator is made of an easy-to-magnetize cobalt-iron alloy. The motor’s windings are surrounded by a special cooling liquid that conducts heat but not electricity. Lead engineer Dr. Frank Anton said, “We use direct-cooled conductors and directly discharge the loss of copper to an electrically non-conductive cooling liquid — which in this case can be, for example, silicone oil or Galden.”

        I prefer to support a world view that acts against the continuation of the use of fossil fuels in all aspects of our lives, therefore I give Siemens a huge thumbs up for it’s R&D efforts.

        Some people still seem to think coal mining jobs and a 13th century top down economic model are the greatest thing since sliced bread, I’m not one of them. I’m more of a progressive, big data, peer to peer, AI endorsing, synthetic biology advocate and cryptocurrency anti establishment kind of guy. Oh, I also see the potential for anthropogenic catastrophic climate change as one of the biggest threats to humanity and life on this planet.

        Cheers!

        1. What may not be immediately obvious to some is that, these advances in electric motors will also have applications on the ground. Imagine what the car guys will be able to achieve with smaller, lighter, more powerful motors. I have often wondered if ceramics and composites could be used to make electric motors lighter. The approach taken to lighten the endshield should be applicable to every component of the motor.

          1. What may not be immediately obvious to some is that, these advances in electric motors will also have applications on the ground.

            Yup! 🙂 I don’t think even Tony Seba saw this coming… a 260kW (348hp)—a power-to-weight ratio of five kilowatts per kilogram electric motor available today.

            Disruption takes many forms and happens incredibly fast, I don’t think any of us has the slightest idea as to what kinds of technological advances are going to surprise us.

            Granted modern civilization may still crash and burn without any hope of recovery and a few remaining human apes will be sitting around fires in caves.

            2. I am of course all for research into every possible way to improve energy efficiency, and there is no doubt there will be useful spinoffs from such research as Seimens is doing with super high output electric motors.

              But if a motor is made super light via using carbon fiber for the housing, etc, who should be getting the attaboys?

              I think maybe the credit for this advance in particular should go to the carbon fiber pioneers, but this is not to say Siemens isn’t also a carbon fiber pioneer. I read about carbon fiber for years and years and years, before I ever actually started seeing it in day to day use, and it’s still used sparingly due to the high cost of it.

              I use some of their stuff, and it’s invariably top quality stuff. My opinion is that while Siemens products are usually a little more expensive initially , they are cheaper in the long run, compared to their competitors.

              The very large majority of such research takes decades to make it from prototypes built at enormous expense to niche applications to wide scale commercial application.

              And the Seimens guys are talking about having liquid cooling in an electric motor, fer Chrissake. That’s all even a backyard engineer needs to know to know that power output has been goosed at the expense of energy efficiency- and in an air plane, the juice is going to have to come from an on board battery or fuel cell.

              This might be an ok tradeoff, if it allows a plane to get off the ground, by running the motor flat out for just a minute or two, then cutting back the juice, so it would run without running hot, once aloft. The juice wasted as heat for that minute or two would be more than offset by the weight savings using the ultra light electric motor for the duration of the flight.

              It won’t bother me, a few years down the road, if somebody here digs up this comment, and proves me wrong, but my money says there won’t be any electric air planes for sale for at least ten to twenty years, if then.

              Sometimes I am GLAD to be proven wrong.

            3. “And the Seimens guys are talking about having liquid cooling in an electric motor, fer Chrissake. That’s all even a backyard engineer needs to know to know that power output has been goosed at the expense of energy efficiency- and in an air plane, the juice is going to have to come from an on board battery or fuel cell.”

              OFM,

              I can’t speak for the Siemens hybrid aircraft motors, but I know in-detail how most EV motors are engineered. First, they are among the most efficient motors in the world – usually exceeding 95% efficient, using sophisticated permanent magnet or induction cage rotors and low-resistance stator windings. Second, they are among the most power-dense machines in the world, as both weight and volume are huge issues. Finally, they almost all are liquid-cooled. I suspect the Siemens motor – being an electric drive motor used in the most challenging mobile-machine in the world – an airplane – has been similarly engineered. .

              You probably have seen a conventional 200 HP irrigation pump motor. Big, heavy, lots of cooling fins low-level air intakes, and integral internal cooling fan. It is over 93% efficient, but still has to dissipate about 10 kW of heat – about like two electric oven broilers running continuously.

              Now picture that same situation in a motor the size of a fruitcake can, buried inside the driven machinery and with no access to cooling air. The ONLY way to do it is to use liquid cooling. They all do it. The Volt. The Bolt EV. Tesla. The Leaf. The BMW i3. They all have some sort of glycol cooling system and radiator in the front to cool the “drive unit” (the motor/transmission) and the power electronics (which also have huge power density and heat dissipation issues requiring liquid cooling, despite being over 97% efficient).

              Liquid cooling is not a sign of “goosed” equipment at the expense of efficiency. It improves efficiency, as it takes a lot less parasitic energy to run cooling pumps than conventional air cooling fans. It also keeps the windings cooler than air-cooled (think of an old air-cooled VW engine vs a liquid-jacketed V-8), which reduces winding resistance, which improves efficiency and reduces winding insulation breakdown issues.

              Finally, liquid-cooling the motors and thermal electronics allows efficient heat recovery through a heat exchanger that can be used to heat the passenger cabin or battery. Tesla uses it for the battery heat. The Kia Soul EV uses a variation of that concept for its passenger cabin HVAC.

              This is not backyard engineering. Thermal management systems (TMS) for the new generation of mobile machinery is one of the HVAC/refrigeration engineering’s new frontiers. The SAE now hosts symposiums dedicated solely to TMS , where the world’s top TMS engineers gather to share and learn.

      3. At this point electric trainers are available commercially and becoming rather popular. Next come other small private planes. The limitation is really how much battery you can pack into the plane (range) while keeping the weight down.

          1. Not trainers, but some e-planes out there:

            http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/10-electric-planes-to-watch

            Found some trainer aircraft:

            http://www.flyingmag.com/aircraft/new-electric-trainer-pipistrel-takes-flight

            http://www.pipistrel.si/news/wattsup-the-new-2seat-electric-trainer-took-its-maiden-fligh

            https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2014/august/27/pipistrel-introduces-electric-trainer

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiADDbeFanU

            http://www.sunflyer.com/

            http://www.businessinsider.com/electric-aircraft-sunflyer-2016-5

    2. So Javier’s working the climate angle while you’re working the crony-capitalist corporate angle. Do you two do a high-five behind the scenes at the end of the day?

      See also

  2. One thing I like to remind others of is that if you REALLY want to know what’s going on, if you would prefer to be INFORMED, rather than a happy foot soldier who knows only as much as his general or party leaders WANTS him to know, is that it’s good policy to read the opposition press, mainstream and alternate, at least a few minutes a day.

    I am sure I could have found this on the back page of any major paper, but I scan my
    “google news”, Bing news, Yahoo News bookmarks at least four or five times every day ( retired ya know! ) and I didn’t see it. Doesn’t prove it wasn’t there of course.

    I picked it up at Fernando’s blog, which is an EXCELLENT source of news about Cuba and Venezuela, so long as you keep in mind that Fernando is an unabashed partisan- he makes every effort to make sure you know it , too, he doesn’t hide it! 😉

    xxxxx
    US State Department warns against travel to Venezuela
    Posted: 16 Dec 2016 07:52 AM PST
    A little bit late, but the USA State Department is warning citizens not to travel to Venezuela. As of right now, on Friday morning Caracas time, I’m seeing reports of looting, disturbances and riots in cities from San Cristobal in Western Venezuela to Maturin in the eastern oil field region.

    Warning follows:

    “The U.S. Department of State warns U.S. citizens against travel to Venezuela due to violent crime, social unrest, and pervasive food and medicine shortages.

    All U.S. direct-hire personnel and their families assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas are subject to an embassy movement policy that limits their travel within Caracas and other parts of the country. These security measures may restrict the services the Embassy can provide. Country-wide shortages of food, water, medicine, electricity, and other basic goods have led to social unrest, including violence and looting. Security forces have arrested individuals, including U.S. citizens, and detained them for long periods with little or no evidence of a crime. The U.S. Embassy may not be notified of the detention of a U.S. citizen and consular access to detainees may be denied or severely delayed. The detained citizen may be denied access to proper medical care, clean water, and food. This replaces the Travel Warning issued July 15, 2016.”

    Site link

    https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/alertswarnings/venezuela-travel-warning.html

    As he points out, in his comments, this is sort of LATE being taken care of.

    The only reason I can think why this has taken so long is that maybe the folks at the State Dept have a policy of saying as little as possible about Venezuela, in view of the Obama Cuba initiative.

    I am open minded about that, but Fernando believes it’s a colossal mistake.

    1. Um, I don’t think I really need a warning from the State Department telling me it’s not in my best interest to visit Venezuela or Aleppo at this juncture in history, any more than I might need a warning that I shouldn’t rappel down into the crater of an active volcano on the verge of an eruption… But perhaps there are those among us who do need such warnings.

      1. “so long as you keep in mind that Fernando is an unabashed partisan”

        This is like the pot calling the kettle black

        1. This is acknowledging that Fernando IS a partisan, and not only admits it but emphasizes it, so that anybody who reads his stuff knows where he is coming from.

          It’s a literal display of actual intellectual integrity and honesty on my part, and on Fernando’s. The regulars here know where Fernando and I stand on the Cuban and Venezuelan situations, but any body who lurks here only occasionally probably would not know we are partisans, in respect to these issues, and how that influences our opinions and interpretations of any objective facts.

          Note that I do not necessarily agree with Fernando about the Obama initiative opening up relationships with Cuba. He may be right, it could be a hell of a mistake, but otoh, the old policies we have pursued since I was a kid haven’t worked out to get rid of the Castro dictatorship either. Maybe it’s time for a new approach.

          Now about partisans in general:
          There are partisans who insist THEIR words or thoughts are holy writ, never to be questioned, and get huffy as hell if you even point out that they are partisans. So far as THEY are concerned , they are ANOINTED, in a religious fashion, and what they have to say is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and anything anybody else says is at best an opposition talking point or worse.

          Such partisans as a general rule always have something derogatory to say about anybody who disagrees with them.

          When I point out lots of things that are accepted as obvious facts by any body except HRC true believers, our own HB is remarkably consistent in insinuating I am Trumpster busy repeating ” Republican talking points”.

          Well, as a matter of undisputed fact, there are quite a lot of people who are long term insider members of the D party, some of them holders of high offices, who agree with me, in general terms, regarding what I have had to say about this last election, the candidates, the flaws of the candidates, etc.

          SO HB- are these people repeating Republican talking points, or not?

          If you like, I can post the names of some of them, portions of their resumes, and some quotes.

          And while nit pickers can make a nit picking case that Trump is not a Republican, and other nit pickers can make a nit picking case that Sanders is not a Democrat, personally I don’t take either case seriously.

          When somebody runs in the R party nominating contests, ditto the D party, then he or she is respectively an R or a D, for all practical matters, except in the mind of people so enamored of a particular candidate they clutch at any straw handy to avoid recognizing they have backed a loser.

          There are still D people who don’t want to admit Sanders had a right to run as a D, and R people who don’t recognize Trump as a real Republican, even after winning on the R party ticket.

          But every hard core D I have run across is PERFECTLY happy to call Trump a Republican, lol.

          Now if somebody, anybody , wants to console himself with the thought that Sanders mucked up the election for Clinton, that’s their privilege, and there’s nothing I nor anybody else can do about it, not really.

          But I really do wonder how such a person can bring himself to believe that Sanders fans are not Democrats, and how I can be repeating R talking points, when these same points have been made countless times by Democrats who supported Sanders, rather than Clinton.

          Shall I put it in terms and language that even an illiterate old Bible thumper from the heart of the backwoods can understand?

          ‘Cuz hit gotta be that them there Sanders guys’n girls are all sneaking “blicans, out to pull’ em off a coup, ‘n steal Hillary’s ‘nheruntunce , what she’s been waiting fer, till Obama uz outta the way, for the R’s………. iffen this here ignerent ole farmer Mac really is repeating R talking points.

          Cuz iffen he’s a closet R, then soz most alla them there Sanders voters.

          Got to be one er, “tuther , can’ be both ‘t same time.

          That there Great Right Wing Conspiracy must go way on back, on past what Hillary thunk……… far enough back for fer that there old e R dirty tricks squad to some how r nuther hood wink’n bamboozul millions ‘n billions uv them there overedjikated spoilt college kids ‘n the likes uv ’em inter votin’ fer Sanders, u see?

          Methinks most of us here have heard of cognitive dissonance, lol.

          Of course it COULD be that I am the one suffering from it.

          Quotes on request, but maybe not until tomorrow.

            1. Hi HB,

              Unless I am mistaken, Hillary said she would work to legalize pot. And incidentally, the percentage of all the leftish liberal leaning well educated people I have ever known who smoke is much higher than the percentage of poorly educated right leaning people among my acquaintances, who tend to prefer beer, booze,and zanax to pot. This is not to say that lots of that sort don’t smoke, but rather that pot is more commonly used by younger folks , who are more liberal, than by older people, overall.

              Not many Trump types are in favor of legalizing pot, except the ones who are stupid enough to believe Trump actually stands for small government. He does, in terms of allowing his rich friends to do as they please, and dismantling programs such as food stamps and social security, but in terms of personal freedom and privacy …….NO.

              I never said HRC didn’t have her good points. My argument in a nutshell all along was that she might actually lose to the worst R candidate in history, and unfortunately, I was right.

              Would you like for me to go ahead and post some of the quotes I mentioned ?

              I will be glad to do so, just for you!

              Here’s one, for an appetizer.

              https://americafirstpatriots.com/bernie-slips-admits-hillary-unpopular-candidate-ever/

              IF you believe it’s fake news simply because it’s from a right winger site, prove it with a denial from the Sanders camp, lol.

              My point at the moment is simply to prove that I have not been merely repeating so called right wing talking points, as you accuse me of doing.

              I will go to my grave utterly convinced that damned near any D with a touch of charisma and reasonably decent poll numbers would have mopped the floor with Trump, so long as that D campaigned on getting back to the real roots of the party, rather than on globalism, identity politics,and bankster’s money.

              Of course Clinton would have won if she had listened to Bill, and campaigned on getting back to the party’s most important and numerous true roots, the working class, rather than as a snobbish holier than thou patrician , looking down her nose at the very people she needed the most.

              It’s pretty close to xxxxing insane to tell people in coal country you will help them out with job training programs in recompense for taking their jobs when they are utterly convinced, and correctly convinced, that the promise is empty, and could not be kept even if sincerely meant.

              Middle aged and older people who haven’t been in a class room since they were kids, and didn’t usually learn much then, and have since forgotten most of THAT, know better than to believe that more than maybe five percent of them will ever land new jobs requiring some education.

              The proposed training programs just don’t work, for a ton of practical reasons, and when they DO, well, then, the jobs aren’t THERE, where the people are who need them, if they exist at ALL.

              As one of my neighbors put it, by the time you get thru a couple of years, starving, waiting for the jobs program, and two more starving while attending the community college, IF you are qualified to be admitted, hoping for that new job, by the time the you graduate, well,

              “Them xxxxing politicians has sent THAT job to Chiner too.”

              Well educated such people are not, but they are NOT stupid.

              They have LONG memories.

            2. And since I take being accused of being a Republican personally, or at least repeating Republican talking points, here’s another. I copied this from Huffington Post.

              XXXX

              While saying she was “outraged” by the apparent influence of a foreign adversary, Brazile said Democrats ultimately carry the blame for their loss. “Donald Trump cracked the blue wall, OK?” Brazile said. “He cracked the blue wall. We had a blue wall; we should’ve maintained it. We should’ve kept it.”

              XXXX

              Get that? Brazile herself said the D’s were ultimately responsible for their own loss.

            3. And just to prove I can be childish too, when it suits my mood, here’s another. Being childish is fun, sometimes.

              From NPR, this is Obama himself.

              Obama told NPR that he disagreed with suggestions the party should change its policy platforms, instead attributing losses to messaging and strategy.

              “I don’t think there’s something wrong with the core argument that the Democratic Party has made for years,” the president said. “And the reason we know that is because on the individual issues that Democrats talk about there’s strong support. For example, the minimum wage. In every survey across the country, people support a higher minimum wage. There are clearly, though, failures on our part to give people in rural areas or in ex-urban areas, a sense day-to-day that we’re fighting for them or connected to them.”

              The president said his party has “ceded too much territory” to Republicans in local races. “I am a proud Democrat,” he said, “but I do think that we have a bias towards national issues and international issues.”

              It’s the economy.

              Obama blamed part of that on the political conversation, and what topics are magnified during campaigns. Voters, he said, “may know less about the work that my administration did on trying to promote collective bargaining or overtime rules. But they know a lot about the controversy around transgender bathrooms. Because it’s more controversial, it attracts more attention.”

              Local issues, working class issues, the economy, this is straight from what I sometimes humor intended refer do as NATIONAL PROPAGANDA RADIO , which I listen to quite often.

              Basically Obama said running on identity politics was a big mistake, because that mistake sucked up too much attention, resulting in the local economic issues, on a local basis, as is the Rust Belt states that gave Trump the election, being IGNORED, mostly , by the Clinton campaign.

              He said the D’s lost because of poor messaging and strategy. In other words, because the Clinton campaign make a lot of basic mistakes.

              Now so far as I can tell, the preponderance of the evidence, as they say in civil court, indicates that Obama IS a big D Democrat. 😉

        2. We are all part of our conditions, etc.
          (dependent origination as the Buddhists point out) .

          However, after Batista fell, and the brutal right wing dictatorship collapsed, where did Fernando go?
          Fascist Spain, under Franco, another brutal right wing dictatorship.

          Dependent Origination?

          1. Hi Duncan,

            Let’s ask him, personally.

            My impression is that he had relatives there, and that Spain was not as bad as Castro’s Cuba, in terms of the economy and repression of personal freedom, at least not by the time Fernando would have moved there.

            How about it Fernando? Here’s hoping you are still at least lurking here!

            When did you move to Spain, and why?

            1. After I was suspended from school for asking a politically incorrect question, I told my parents I was going to swim out. They asked me to hang on to see what they could arrange, and about a year later I boarded a KLM charter, a 707 with 152 minors, mostly boys ranging in age between 10 and 14 years old. The flight included four Dutch adults, volunteers who were there to keep discipline during the trip.

              When we arrived in Spain we were divided into two groups: about 10 boys and all the girls were taken somewhere else. The rest of us, roughly 125 boys, were put aboard buses and taken to a UN refugee camp located in the outskirts.

              Over the next few days we were interviewed by a group of young ladies working for the UN refugee committee. In those days they had set up refugee camps for people leaving the communist camp, and the one I was in was part of a network, one set up for boys under 16. The girls were kept in a separate location near El Escorial.

              i didn’t know the full score until I arrived in Spain. As it turns out the Castro regime was selling our emigration rights, there were private contributions to finance charters by several European airlines, and the UN put up the cash for the camp facilities. I was told our group had put the number of minors processed through the system at over 8000. As far as I know this wasn’t published in the media. Many years later I was called by a college professor who had my name from one of my camp mates, who wanted to interview me about my experience, but I never saw anything published about us.

              The system included an option for us to apply for a US student visa, which required we get picked by a US family. We also had to pass a background check, and a medical exam. As it turns out I had very high grades, had won several awards, and was in the national B swim team (where I had been swimming the long distance races). This seemed to put me at the head of the line, so I got picked up by a very nice family, moved to a Jewish suburb in NY, joined sports teams, became first board for the school chess team, and even learned to crew in a racing sail boat.

              At that time I wasn’t too worried about political niceties. I volunteered to join the Israeli army when I was 16, but they laughed at me. At that point I figured out I would focus on finishing school and join the USA army, so I could go to Vietnam and kill communists.

              I hope this helps you understand where I’m coming from.

              Regarding Venezuela, the looting hadnt ended in some areas as of Sunday night. I read a note written by an engineer in Puerto Ordaz saying they were trying to get weapons and preparing for the arrival of a looting mob from Ciudad Bolivar. According to this guy, the mob had looted all the stores in that city (population about 380,000), the national guard had lost control, and the urban areas had isolated themselves with barricades.

              He said in Puerto Ordaz they were very worried because the word was ciudad Bolivar was out of food, and so they expected starving people to try to move to Puerto Ordaz. It appears Puerto Ordaz is also running low on food, so they weren’t too keen on sharing.

              Meanwhile in Caracas, Maduro got on national tv and reported it had been a very good week, danced around and hailed Chávez and Bolivar. They set up cameras to show as if he had a large crowd of supporters, but the effect was ruined by a guy who got on a nearby building and showed a video of the real deal. He had about 400-500 on the street, and they had been placed with lots of flags and banners to make believe it was a much larger crowd.

              Regarding Cuba. Let’s say the USA strategy had yielded poor results in Cuba. This doesn’t mean Obama’s strategy is any better. Obama (and the USA media) sell falsehoods: that there are only two options, a) the status quo or b) what Oabama is doing. The other falsehood being sold is that Obama’s move has improved things for Cubans. It really hasn’t. Repression is much worse, the economy doesn’t improve.

              And to make matters even worse,,now that they see Castro is getting USA blessing to run his slave camp as he wishes, guys like Maduro, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Ortega in Nicaragua are working hard to evolve to fully fledged dictatorships. What Obama is leaving behind is a huge disaster, which will require a lot of hard effort to roll back and fix.

      2. Hi Fred,

        Nobody ever went broke overestimating the ignorance of the public. 😉

        If I were young and footloose , Cuba would be one of the very first places I would visit.

        And for what it’s worth, it has generally been my opinion that anytime a repressive government finally does open up so outsiders can come and go, and so information necessary to the conduct of business can flow, the net effect is to weaken and maybe even bring down the repressive government…… not right away, but over a period of years.

        Once a country like the old USSR gained enough well educated professional people, it became impossible for the government to hide the truth from them. An engineer reading papers purlioned or purchased from American professional journals and trade publications read a few dozen of them…….. Well he would easily read between the lines and come to understand that our Yankee economy was leaving their commie economy in the dust………

        I am one of the very few people who ever bothered to hunt down and read the first hand accounts of successful soviet era defectors, reading all I could find. One young guy in particular was trained as both a physician and a military officer, and pointed out that his medical training allowed him to understand that advanced countries didn’t ordinarily have serious epidemic disease outbreaks, so quarantines were hardly ever needed, but that in poor and backward countries , the medical establishment found it necessary to resort to quarantines as the routine method of controlling epidemics.

        His military responsibilities resulted in his being aware of just how many places , and how often, his country found it necessary to resort to quarantines. As a doctor, he was not actually privy to that information, unless personally involved.

        These observations were instrumental in allowing him to come to understand the real score, that his government was routinely lying to the people.

        Bottom line, I’m agnostic, in terms of whether Obama’s Cuba initiative will help Cubans gain their freedom sooner, or help the Castro regime hang on longer.

        I think its way out in any case, within another decade, or two at the most, no matter what. If I thought the regime was still healthy, and likely to last a LONG time, I would be very much in favor of the opening. My idea is that the opening might be good for the regime short term, but that it will probably be bad for it long term.

        You let a zillion American tourists in there with smart phones in their pockets and purses, and get to talking to Cubans, face to face, and sharing pictures of their families, and their pets, and their homes, etc……. Well it won’t be hard for a young Cuban woman to see that the guy who’s trying to get into her pants feeds his DOG better than she eats herself, maybe………..

        Such pictures alone might well be the tinder that sets off a revolution.

        But I’m willing to give Obama’s initiative a serious try, because after half a century, his regime is still there, still in power. The old policies haven’t worked.

        And I recognize that Castro HAS accomplished quite a lot, in the face of substantial obstacles. Cubans are literate, and healthy, etc, which is a damned sight more than can be said for a lot of right wing regimes. Fuck, it’s more than can be said for a lot of my neighbors and relatives.

        I seldom try to fix a problem with the same tool for more than an hour at the most, lol. After that , I try something different. Maybe it really is time for new political tools where Cuba is concerned.

        Ditto Venezuela as well.

        1. Castro didn’t accomplish anything out of the ordinary other than murder tens of thousands and create a terrible dictatorship. Most of you simply swallow a propaganda line which creates an image of healthy well educated slaves working hard for their communist party owners.

          You are identical to southerners who claim slave owners did so much for their slaves. And then you wonder why, when these regimes fall, nobody in their right mind ever wants to go back to communism.

      3. I forgot to mention, many companies operating in Venezuela use the official State Department warnings to guide their employees’ travel abroad. This revised warning will lead to cancelled trips, the replacement of expats by nationals, and/or shut down of activities,

        This will impact the oil industry, which currently uses a small work force for key jobs in some sectors. There are also a few small companies performing small contracts in refineríes, compressor plants, etc. The large compressor plants won’t be operational in the future unless they start issuing contracts with “war zone” clauses which pay huge bonuses.

        The expat shut down should also impact Canadians, Europeans, and a few others. These companies have to be careful, because if an employee is hurt they face a large liability. The employee can claim working conditions changed and they did nothing to address the problem.

        I also expect other countries will be restricting their travel and rotations. This may even include the Chinese, because Chinese owned businesses were getting looted and burned down before other businesses in several cities.

        A few minutes ago I heard the governor of Bolivar State talk on the radio, trying to explain to the population what’s going on. He’s not addressing their concerns, talking the usual bs, defending Maduro, etc. The word is the national guard lost control of a large portion of ciudad bolivar, and there is an urgent order for all military personnel to return to their posts, including the ones on vacation, leave, etc.

        1. There was an article yesterday in a Spanish newspaper about Venezuelan retirees abroad, about half in Spain, that stopped receiving their pensions a year ago. They still haven’t been told anything. After working hard for their entire lives, they have been left to hang out dry, and are living in poverty out of Spanish charities.

          It is important to take notice of the real value of government promises when things turn sour. Any government.

          1. This an automatic translation of the first paragraph with a link to the article in Spanish.

            “VENEZUELA

            Retirement in red

            Thousands of Venezuelan pensioners abroad have stopped receiving the money of their retirement in the last year, the great majority in Spain

            Venezuelan pensioners living abroad have stopped counting for Venezuela. For a year – and in some cases – they check their balance at the bank daily in the hope of receiving the pension. But income never comes. The agency responsible for transferring them abroad stopped sending the money they have earned during a lifetime of work without any notification. There are thousands around the world, 12,000 according to calculations of the Venezuelan Assembly, controlled by the opposition, and associations of Venezuelans abroad. More than half of them live in Spain, but there is also a strong presence in the United States, Canada, Argentina or Italy. The Venezuelan Chancellery eludes explaining the defaults.”

            http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/12/12/actualidad/1481555301_525316.html

            It follows the personal stories of several of them. Impossible not to feel sadness for this old age middle class people suddenly found in poverty with no fault of their own.

            1. I know of one lady, about 75, who is in that situation. Lucky for her she owns a small apartment she shares with a 50 year old daughter and they have a small business selling knick knacks and antiques.

  3. A high-resolution record of Greenland mass balance
    “Between January 2011 and December 2014 we estimate that the Greenland Ice Sheet lost an average of 269 ± 51 Gt/yr of snow and ice. The observed deficit indicates an annual contribution of 0.74 ± 0.14 mm/yr to global mean sea level, which is approximately double the 1992–2011 mean [Shepherd et al., 2012]. “

    1. I dunno GF,
      I think you might be looking at this the wrong way…
      .

      1. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

            2. Very funny. I guess the arrival of the first hundred army ants at your feet would not disturb you since it is only a small percentage of the total.

        2. Cool comment Duncan, especially “truth drowned in a sea of irrelevance” bit. Reminds me of the perpetual prattle espoused here by our in-house climate change denier.

          Here’s another famous quote for you: “How long will it take for the sea level to rise two feet? I mean, think about it, if your ice cube melts in your glass it doesn’t overflow; it’s displacement. I mean, this is some of the things they’re talking about mathematically and scientifically don’t make sense.” Ex-Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX).

          1. Ex-Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX).

            Whenever I see R-TX, my mind automatically transposes it into T-REX, just another extinct dinosaur.

            1. “When faced with unbridled wildness of reality, dinosaurs fall into fevered delusions of grandeur. In fits of madness, they recreate the world in their own overblown image, bull-dozing the wild and replacing it with a wasteland that reflects their own emptiness. Where there was once the incredibly complex diversity of nature, there is now the dead simplicity of asphalt and concrete.” ― Curious George Brigade

            2. “Whenever I see R-TX, my mind automatically transposes it into” self centered opportunist with no morals

            3. “Whenever I see R-TX, my mind automatically transposes it into T-REX, just another extinct dinosaur”.

              Fred, you must live in an alternative universe where facts cease to exist?
              http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/house

              the only political animals going extinct are green party progressive fascist…now back to making america great again??

            4. Yo, TT, are you going to take issue with every instance of sarcastic expression from now on?!

              And as for: the only political animals going extinct are green party progressive fascist…now back to making america great again??

              I’d say you are either ignorant of history or you and don’t have the slightest clue what fascism is and believe that our recent visitor here, Mr. Mark Frei, who posted a link to the alt-right Breitbart site is a shining example of a ‘Great America’. Because if you do you might want to remember that this country lost a lot of lives fighting against the Nazis and what they stood for!

              “Arbeit macht frei” (German pronunciation: [ˈaɐ̯baɪt ˈmaxt ˈfʁaɪ]) is a German phrase meaning “work sets you free”. The slogan is known for appearing on the entrance of Auschwitz and other labour camps.

              BTW, posting your little flag icon brings to mind that: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” – Samuel Johnson, 1775

            5. Hi Fred.
              BTW, posting your little flag icon brings to mind that: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” – Samuel Johnson, 1775

              Or more colloquially:
              Wrapping a turd in the flag doesn’t make it chocolate.
              It just gets the flag dirty.

              -Lloyd

            6. I made the same point, a long time ago, about TT’s use of the flag.

              It doesn’t advance his cause at all, except among the choir, so to speak. TT, you are not preaching to the choir in this church, lol.

              You are turning off people, rather than turning them on. But maybe that’s what you want, maybe you are just happy to be gloating.

            7. Republicans get fewer House votes every election; they’ve just gerrymandered themselves into power.

            8. I am sure that the D party would never ever ever ever be guilty of even the tiniest bit of gerrymandering, never has been, and never will be.

              SARCASM LIGHT ON.

          2. Hey Doug, like ‘lies of omission’, some forms of ‘denialism’ or, say, ‘blind faith’, don’t have to necessarily be obvious nor limited to the climate or ‘religion proper’.
            They can also include looking, with great faith, to the crony-capitalist plutarchy system and its soulless, ‘counter-social/nature’ complexities, technologies and corporate outfits for ‘solutions’ and/or ‘transitions’ away from the very disasters that they had a hand in creating.

            What do Solar Impulse, CRISPR, Artificial Intelligence, 3D printing and self-driving electric cars, for examples, all have in common?

            You could fool yourself in thinking (and suggesting and peddling) that they were ‘disruptive or leading-edge technologies’, alone, but what if they were something else, among other things?

            What if they were all various forms of detachment from nature, ourselves, true community and freedom and ethics?
            What if they were all bubbles, built around us as technological walls and prison bars that many couldn’t quite see or even recognize as such? That were somehow denied?

            And that were ceaselessly celebrated, argued for, and/or promoted as within their own denialistic frameworks of omission, rather like AGW denial perhaps?

            Like what Duncan just mentioned regarding Huxley, and…

            Machine Intelligence Makes Morals More Important

            “Machine intelligence is here, and we’re already using it to make subjective decisions. But the complex way AI grows and improves makes it hard to understand and even harder to control. In this cautionary talk, techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci explains how intelligent machines can fail in ways that don’t fit human error patterns — and in ways we won’t expect or be prepared for. ‘We cannot outsource our responsibilities to machines’, she says. ‘We must hold on ever tighter to human values and human ethics.’

            “Requiem for the Republic
            A hungry people neither listens to reason nor is mollified by fair treatment or swayed by any appeals.
            —Seneca (c. 5 BC–65 AD), On the Shortness of Life.1
            Dark Clouds Ahead.” ~ Duncan Idaho

            Appeals as we go over the cliff…

            Adorations
            “…Love as we’re falling down…”

            1. What do Solar Impulse, CRISPR, Artificial Intelligence and 3D printing, self-driving electric cars, for examples, all have in common?

              Well obviously one thing they have in common is that you don’t understand much about them and they upset you and scare you. And that’s fair, they are results of technology and tools that can be used for good or not.

              BTW, let’s not forget big data, genomics, synthetic biology, completely artificial organisms, extreme prosthetics, head transplants, gene drives, etc… etc… etc.. However whether you like this reality or not these technologies and tools exist now. These genies are already out of the bottle. You can’t put them back. So you and everyone else will need to learn how to live with them for better or for worse.

              Here, you want to get even more upset, watch this:
              https://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_what_will_humans_look_like_in_100_years

              We can evolve bacteria, plants and animals — futurist Juan Enriquez asks: Is it ethical to evolve the human body? In a visionary talk that ranges from medieval prosthetics to present day neuroengineering and genetics, Enriquez sorts out the ethics associated with evolving humans and imagines the ways we’ll have to transform our own bodies if we hope to explore and live in places other than Earth.

              Oh, BTW, you can stick your head in the sand and be a neoluddite and you can call me and others names for alerting you to these realities that already exist or you can educate yourself and learn more about all of this. Your choice!

            2. You bet it’s our choice.

              It’s our choice and our prerogative to accept real technology that is truly by and for us, ‘The People’, and to question and reject fake technology by and for assorted elites in the current greed-based model– in fact, reject the whole model.

              “Oh, BTW, you can… be a neoluddite and you can call me and others names…” ~ Fred Magyar

              We ‘can’, but you do call people names and your hackneyed ‘luddite’ fallacy is not an argument…

              …and casts a dubious shadow over your general attitude regarding truth, people and life and makes some of your comments, where so-called technology is concerned, reminiscent of Javier’s where AGW is concerned.

              Oh, and perpetually ignoring ethics, and ramming things down people’s throats and insisting that they have to just ‘learn to live with it’, among other rationalizations, is the stuff wars are made of.

              Conscience

              “Despite it all, we never learn…”

            3. Oh, and perpetually ignoring ethics, and ramming things down people’s throats and insisting that they have to just ‘learn to live with it’, among other rationalizations, is the stuff wars are made of.

              Og apologies to you for all the technological innovations created by man since he conquered fire and made his first stone tools. Which BTW, were these incredibly fine stone barbs inset into stone spear heads, which gave the weak little apes the ability to take down giant mammoths and defend themselves against predators such as saber tooth tigers and exterminate all our homo cousins such as the neanderthals.

              Check out professor and archaeologist Curtis Marean’s talk, he is the third speaker at this event.

              https://origins.asu.edu/events/conversation-inconvenient-truths-love-extinctions

              Marean is a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and the associate director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. He is interested in the relation between climate and environmental change and human evolution, both for its significance as a force driving past human evolution, and as a challenge to be faced in the near future. Curtis has focused his career on developing field and laboratory teams and methods that tap the synergy between the disciplines to bring new insights to old scientific problems. He has spent over 20 years doing fieldwork in Africa, and conducting laboratory work on the field-collected materials, with the goal of illuminating the final stages of human evolution – how modern humans became modern.

              More apologies from Og for his lack of ethics for inventing spears but there were all these tasty mammoths roaming around and lot’s of saber tooth tigers and a bunch of peace loving neanderthals that need to be exterminated etc… but at the end of day you are about 50,000 years too late to complain about things as they are, the ball started rolling a long time ago…

              You might as well complain about the law of gravity!

            4. Ethics, empathy, cooperation, symbiosis and the like are and/or can be selected for and included in evolutionary adaptations and strategies for survival– as real as gravity– especially where some sets or members of a species are helping to drive their food supplies, cultures and communities extinct– rather like saber toothed cats and mammoths.

              It doesn’t seem be much good to have a predator-prey and/or parasite-host relationship within one’s own species, does it?

              Incidentally, and interestingly, Dmitry Orlov mentions, in one of James Howard Kunstler’s most recent podcasts, something along these lines with regard to socio/psychopathology. If recalled, it goes something like how he thinks that, although the current dystopia might (mal)adaptively select in some ways for sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies, if or as it unravels, conditions may begin to progressively deselect for them.

              “Species move from competition to cooperation because they discover the economic value of cooperating. It is cheaper, more efficient… All you have to do is look at our pentagon budget and see that a tiny fraction of it would really develop countries that we’ve been levelling instead… Very much more cost-effective to make friends of them than it is to keep them as enemies.” ~ Elizabet Sahtouris, (evolutionary biology)

            5. “Hey Doug, like ‘lies of omission’, some forms of ‘denialism’ or, say, ‘blind religious fervor’, don’t have to necessarily be obvious nor limited to the climate.”

              Of course not, but in the current context (I don’t remember who said this): The problem’s not outright lying, it’s omission or de-emphasis of important data and the determination of ‘important’ often depends on one’s values, ulterior motives or (religious) prejudices — unfortunately.

            7. Hi Caelan,

              You say

              “It doesn’t seem be much good to have a predator-prey and/or parasite-host relationship within one’s own species, does it?”

              IF you understand the way evolution actually works, it makes GREAT SENSE. And like it or not, evolution theory (FACT) has more explanatory power than all other theories combined, by a mile.

              If fortune favors it, and fortune has favored our species, it basically wins out in competition with other species, for the most part, and then the competition, driven by relentless, remorseless, indifferent, unalive natural selection pressure, shifts the competition to INTRA species status.

              Predator prey and master slave relationships work, in human terms, at least part of the time ,and quite a lot of the time.

              There are lots of people who look more or less like me around my neck of the woods, but very few who look like the so called Indians who dominated here as little as a little more than three centuries ago.

              Domestic cows and chickens are essentially slaves, in both economic and ecological terms, and thriving due to that status.

              I am very strongly tempted to avoid pointing out another fact, due to nitwits accusing me of racism.

              But facts are facts, and stubborn things. I have lots of black neighbors. The odds are pretty high there would be only a very small number of black people in the USA today, if it weren’t for the fact they originally arrived here in large numbers as slaves.

              It’s a VERY GOOD thing lots of good Christian Yankees,some of them actually being Quakers, were passionate enough about the issue that they were willing to spend a few years down my way getting killed in the process of kicking southern white asses, and setting the slaves free.

              ( So far as I know, none of my own family owned any slaves. Most of us wound up in this area post 1865, and so far as I can find out, any who were here sooner were too hard up to have owned more than the clothes on their back and a mule and some farming tools and a few acres. One slave was generally worth more than everything a backwoods farmer owned all put together. )

            8. Hi Glen,

              Where’s your argument? I’d like to see it. ‘u’
              Just because we have/had it doesn’t mean shit.

              The female praying mantis apparently can eat her mate after, during or maybe even before mating, but I am unsure this kind of relationship translates well to us… well at least not to my tribe. ‘u^

    2. So what? About 0.007% of Greenland ice melts every year. And that causes less than 1 mm in sea level rise. Big deal.

      We are incredibly lucky that the climate is what it is now, and not what it was 400 years ago. Vikings went extinct in Greenland due to cooling. Pre-industrial climate sucked big time.

      1. You are right– Earth had been cooling for 4000 years until we carbonized the atmosphere by using it as a dump.

        And being in a period of “Global Dimming” we should be getting even colder.
        But us rapacious apes have really modified our climate, as the temperature continues its upward climb.

        1. You are right– Earth had been cooling for 4000 years until we carbonized the atmosphere by using it as a dump.

          No. There always have been periods of warming and cooling even within those 4000 years. And the last warming started hundreds of years before we carbonized the atmosphere. Glaciers were receding way before we started burning oil in earnest. You are ignoring the facts and reaching the wrong conclusion.

          1. Oil was discovered in Pennsylvania in 1859, coal had been in use since the 1600’s.
            Rhone Glacier is relatively far south and south facing, making it susceptible to melting in several different ways. Not a good example.
            However it was smaller than it is now over most of the last 11,000 years.
            ” A team of researchers led by two scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have found a novel method to measure this crucial back-and-forth, by measuring isotopes in hunks of stone chipped out from recently exposed bedrock near the edge of the ice. They found that for most of the Holocene Epoch, dating from the end of the last ice age about 11,500 years ago to the present, the Rhone Glacier has been smaller than it is today.” http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/06/03/rhone-glacier-finely-tuned-to-climate-changes/

            1. “I still think we’ll go along as we have been doing.”
              “But how can you say that in the face of this evidence?” protested the agency man.
              The client stared at the presentation, deep in thought. At last he reached for a cigarette and said softly:
              “Don’t confuse me with facts!”

            2. Here’s a small dose of extremely diluted good news from the southern hemisphere. In fact, it might almost be considered diluted enough to edge over into the bad news category… Facts? Who needs them?
              Can’t wait to hear the spin on this one.

              http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/12/e1601610

              RESEARCH ARTICLEEARTH SCIENCES
              Ocean heat drives rapid basal melt of the Totten Ice Shelf
              Stephen Rich Rintoul1,2,*, Alessandro Silvano2,3, Beatriz Pena-Molino1, Esmee van Wijk2, Mark Rosenberg1, Jamin Stevens Greenbaum4 and Donald D. Blankenship4
              + Author Affiliations
              ↵*Corresponding author. Email: steve.rintoul@csiro.au
              Science Advances 16 Dec 2016:
              Vol. 2, no. 12, e1601610

              Abstract

              Mass loss from the West Antarctic ice shelves and glaciers has been linked to basal melt by ocean heat flux. The Totten Ice Shelf in East Antarctica, which buttresses a marine-based ice sheet with a volume equivalent to at least 3.5 m of global sea-level rise, also experiences rapid basal melt, but the role of ocean forcing was not known because of a lack of observations near the ice shelf. Observations from the Totten calving front confirm that (0.22 ± 0.07) × 106 m3 s−1 of warm water enters the cavity through a newly discovered deep channel. The ocean heat transport into the cavity is sufficient to support the large basal melt rates inferred from glaciological observations. Change in ocean heat flux is a plausible physical mechanism to explain past and projected changes in this sector of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and its contribution to sea level.

            3. “Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don’t confuse lack of volatility with stability — ever.” Nassim Taleb

            4. Ah yes, ‘Antifragility’:

              Taleb defines it as follows in Nature:
              Simply, antifragility is defined as a convex response to a stressor or source of harm (for some range of variation), leading to a positive sensitivity to increase in volatility (or variability, stress, dispersion of outcomes, or uncertainty, what is grouped under the designation “disorder cluster”). Likewise fragility is defined as a concave sensitivity to stressors, leading a negative sensitivity to increase in volatility. The relation between fragility, convexity, and sensitivity to disorder is mathematical, obtained by theorem, not derived from empirical data mining or some historical narrative. It is a priori”.[18][19]

              The body of a weight lifter, training for the Olympics is an example of an antifragile system. It improves its weight lifting capability as a direct response to incremental stress of adding more weight during a training regimen. Airline safety is another good example because the knowledge gained from every crash helps make the overall safety of the industry better!

              The climate system, on the other hand is not an antifragile system, it is not improved by shocks or stressors. That is a fundamental fact that those who propose geoengineering fixes simply do not grasp.

              “Climate change is an engineering problem!”
              Rex Tillerson CEO Exxon Mobile

              No, unfortunately it isn’t!
              Engineers are the classic case of people who know just enough to be dangerous. Someone with Rex Tillerson’s power and limited understanding of complex systems is one very very dangerous dude!

            5. Hi Fred,

              I couldn’t quite get my head around a few cubic meters of water per second being a big deal, in terms of major melting.

              So I went looking, and ya got a typo there.

              That should read ten to the sixth rather than 106 m cubed per second.

              Every good student ought to catch his teacher making a typo once in a while, it proves to the teacher the student is paying attention. 😉

              I ALWAYS pay attention to what you have to say.

              Hang in there!

            6. Yep! but it wasn’t the teacher’s or the student’s fault just the way copy and paste works. It should have been:
              (0.22 ± 0.07) × 10^6 m^3 s^−1

              Or better yet a screenshot.
              .

            7. Of course it has been smaller for most of the Holocene Epoch, dating from the end of the last ice age about 11,500 years ago to the present. That is true for almost every glacier. It was called the Holocene Climate Optimum. It is evidence of a warmer past. With a lot less CO2.

            8. Yes, the Northern Hemisphere insolation did peak about 11,500 years ago and fell after that to present. With insolation at a minimum for the last several hundred years, that does not explain the glacier’s recent retreat.

            9. Well CO2 for sure does not explain glacier’s recent retreat that started around 1850. At best it has contributed since around 1950. 100 years late to the warming party.

            11. No, it doesn’t. Global warming from 1850 to 1950 without significant increase in CO2.

        2. And the figure

          CO2 went from 287 to 296 ppm. An insignificant 9 ppm that nowadays we get in 4-5 years.

          1. As I said. it’s in a very sensitive position. Good choice to try and “prove” something, but not an actual good example to use due to it’s southerly location and southerly facing direction (warm side of the mountain). Do you have more northerly examples that might actually show early retreat.
            CO2 went from 270 to 296.

            1. As I said. it’s in a very sensitive position.

              Yes you said that. You are trying to play the exceptionality card, but it only works if you ignore the evidence, because we have ample evidence that global glacier melting started at the bottom of the LIA and accelerated around 1850.

              An article published this week in Nature Geoscience leaves that very clear:
              Roe, Gerard H., Marcia B. Baker, and Florian Herla. “Centennial glacier retreat as categorical evidence of regional climate change.” Nature Geoscience (2016).
              Look at its figure:
              http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/ngeo2863_F1.html

              Hintereisferner (Austria), South Cascade (USA), Franz Josef (New Zealand), Nigardsbreen (Norway). All of them in very sensitive locations because they were all melting before 1900.

              And according to Law Dome CO2 went from 286.8 to 296.1 ppm between 1850 and 1900. Check it if you don’t believe me:
              ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/law/law2006.txt

              Everything you publish is #fakeNews.

            2. Yes, the CO2 was 270 preindustrial increasing through the 1800s. It is now over 400ppm. The southern boundary would be most sensitive to any changes and melt first, but the reality was that it was on an increase then reversed right after the time CO2 started it’s increase.
              So yes, CO2 is the primary driver of temperature increase. Those glaciers are prime examples of the effect of a warming world. Glaciers around the world are melting.

            1. Aren’t you ignoring the temperature changes in your own figure? The reconstructions show huge changes, and even the average, with all the uncertainty that must get from those differences shows them.

              We know of prior warm periods, Minoan, Roman, Medieval. The World didn’t get to them through cooling.

      2. Global warming without CO2 increase. A real problem for alarmists.

        Clearly 19th century fossil fuel burning did not have much impact in atmospheric levels, but global warming took place anyway. After all the planet did get out of the Little Ice Age. Glacier retreat since 1850’s was a global phenomenon.

        ALARMISM IS UNJUSTIFIED.

        1. Little Ice Age was a regional event, Europe and North America. Confusing changes in an ocean current or volcanism with GHG driven global warming or cooling is just wrong. There were actually three cooling periods in the Little Ice Age with warming between each and they were not globally synchronous. It was not really an ice age, just a varying period of cool and warm.

          And if you have been paying attention, natural climate change has not generally been driven by CO2, merely assisted by it. There is never climate change without CO2 change. Increasing warmth increase CO2 which increase warmth.

          1. Little Ice Age was a regional event

            You are really fond of #fakeClimateMemes. Little Ice Age outside the Northern Hemisphere is demonstrated in tropical glaciers from South America, Africa and New Zealand, and by oceanic temperatures at the Indo Pacific Warm Pool.

            Rosenthal, Yair, Braddock K. Linsley, and Delia W. Oppo. “Pacific ocean heat content during the past 10,000 years.” Science 342.6158 (2013): 617-621.

            “We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic intermediate waters were warmer by 2.1 T 0.4°C and 1.5 T 0.4°C, respectively, during the middle Holocene Thermal Maximum than over the past century. Both water masses were ~0.9°C warmer during the Medieval Warm period than during the Little Ice Age and ~0.65° warmer than in recent decades.

            The reconstructed OHC is compared with modern observations for the whole Pacific at the same depth range (5). The comparison suggests that Pacific OHC was substantially higher during most of the Holocene than in the past decade (2000 to 2010), with the exception of the LIA.”

            Evidence supports that LIA was global. Unless you have evidence that it was not, this is the end of the question. Stop repeating #fakeClimateMemes.

            1. You do have a reading comprehension problem.
              “There were actually three cooling periods in the Little Ice Age with warming between each and they were not globally synchronous. It was not really an ice age, just a varying period of cool and warm. “

            2. Exactly as present global warming, with warming periods, like 1910-1945 and 1975-2000, cooling periods like 1945-1975, and neutral periods like 2000-2014. That’s how natural warming and natural cooling operate. CO2 warming however should be continuous and increasing according to climate models. That is not what we are observing.

            3. No climate scientist has ever claimed there is not natural variability.

            4. And what is the contribution of that natural variability and natural forcings to current global warming, Dennis?

            6. Hi Javier,

              The AR5 estimates that natural forcing from 1750 and 2011 was very similar with 2011 being slightly higher (0.05 W/m^2). There have been small fluctuations in solar output over the intervening 261 years as well as volcanic eruptions which reduce the solar energy reaching the surface due to increased sulfur dioxide injected into the stratosphere which scatters some of the incoming solar radiation.

              Much of the global natural variability over multidecadal time scales for the past few millennia has been due to volcanic activity.

              See https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf pp. 691-693

            7. Dennis,

              I asked about evidence of the natural contribution, not estimates based on assumptions.

              The answer is we don’t know.

              Volcanic eruptions only affect temperatures for a few years, until the emissions clear from the atmosphere, and then there is a rebound effect. We know that from Pinatubo and El Chichon, and the paleoclimatic record agrees.

            8. Hi Javier,

              The warming cannot be explained without accounting for the increased CO2. We have estimates of aerosol levels and total solar irradiance. Provide a model that reproduces temperatures that assumes radiative forcing from atmospheric CO2 is very low (say 2 W/m^2 or less including fast feedbacks from clouds and water vapor and lapse rate feedback) and I might be convinced. Hand waves don’t tell me much.

    3. From Wikipedia

      If the entire 2,850,000 cubic kilometres (684,000 cu mi) of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 m (24 ft).[2] The Greenland Ice Sheet is sometimes referred to under the term inland ice, or its Danish equivalent, indlandsis. It is also sometimes referred to as an ice cap.”

  4. The anti-science types in the US are on the wrong side of the money. The newer billionaires have ties to science and technology. The old money may have ties to extraction industries and to manufacturing, but the today’s growth industries are lead by Internet, computer, and technology advancements.

    Musk is now an advisor to Trump and Gates believes he can make a deal with Trump, I don’t think Silicon Valley and those doing science and tech research are going to be discounted by the current administration.

    I’m beginning to wonder if Trump makes appointments to keep his hardcore voters happy, but deals with clean tech Silicon Valley types are being discussed on the side.

    And I suspect that it is Trump’s daughter and son-in-law who are making sure that these folks have access to Trump (and to them). All four of his children sat in on the big tech meeting Trump has last week. So did Pence and Thiel.

    Photo: Who sat where during Trump's meeting with tech leaders – Business Insider

  5. Interesting, but there is a lot more to getting powerplant certifications for aircraft than simply inventing the motor. Extensive long-term testing in aircraft is required which may actually take decades. Then, assuming success, cost effectiveness, and a willing market, the insurance companies have to get on board. Insurance costs,(mostly because on the litigous nature of the US public), is in actual fact often the deciding factor as the costs to negate all risk is factored into development and aquisition costs of any product.

    I used to work in the small aircraft industry. Our company had a fleet of conventionally powered and previously accepted piston driven aircraft. Some of these engines were designed (DESIGNED…not constructed for use) in 1926. We looked at implementing changes in the early ’90s. There was a German firm that had a proven light-weight diesel suitable for aircraft. Not approved for aircraft use. Then, we looked at basically using high-powered but light weight NASCAR powerplants. Not approved, although extremely reliable if run de-rated. Instead, we had to endure using these very heavy and antiquated powerplants. They had dual magnetos, so heavy they took two people to install. It was illegal to convert to electronic ignition. Finally, the company went to turbine aircraft which had already been approved by the industry and accepted by insurance underwriters. The operating and overhaul costs are astronomical. Of course all costs are eventually borne by the customer.

    If you wish to carry customers, insurance and certification costs for any changes bare astronomical. Sorry, I don’t have exact numbers for you as I have been out of the business for almost 20 years. However, I will provide an example. One company I worked for had an owner that basically thought everyone else in the industry was stupid. He was convinced that he could stretch and raise the the capacity of a particular aircraft floats, re-design the cabin seating, and carry more people. I did argue against it and did so publicly within our company. When he was done, it took 3 years for certification and cost in excess of 1 million dollars (cash). That was a lot of money then. When he was finished the aircraft actually performed worse than what it was supposed to replace. He did receive approval from Transport Canada, but the aircraft was un-sellable (if there is such a word)….so, it was a one-off. It eventually crashed and sank. (I left the company long before that happened).

    The main point of this is that any drastic engine design changes eventually has to accept that liability/risk dictates costs. If the aircraft does not carry people it can be designated as experimental and operated under limited conditions. But when people are involved, the risks are huge. That is why change in aviation is slow, and incremental. Even the move to fly-by-wire and electrics instead of hydraulics for control surfaces was a very big deal. Changing ther actual power source is like inventing another planet. The market is not there. I doubt such a powerplant would be suitable for high-altitude flying if it was designed as a hybrid. If it is a hybrid, what would be the point?

    Better off working on passenger trains as far as I’m concerned.

    regards…

    1. Hi Paulo,

      Being being an old gearhead, I read a bunch of stuff about building your own plane, years ago, and powering it with an automobile engine. This can still be done, asfaik, one plane at a time, not for sale or hire, etc.

      There was substantial discussion about the wisdom of trusting automotive sourced components. I remember one author specifically pointing out that an ordinary G M (as in GENERAL MOTORS ) electronic distributor at that time had twice the service life of an aviation approved magneto, lol, as measured by mean time to failure.I have never had any reason to weigh a complete GM eletronic igniton system, but I doubt that TWO of them , complete, would have weighed over thirty pounds at the most.

      Reliable high performance automobile engines can be had for peanuts these days……….

    2. I agree–
      The US needs to get its rail system back to where it was in 1940.

  6. How about this theory? If you are a foreign government wanting to gain a global economic and strategic advantage over the US, one way to do this is to encourage an isolationist, anti-science government in the US.

        1. I will put myself at risk of being taken for a simpleton, and point out that it the old USSR did all it could to manipulate enemy countries, politically and economically, in hopes of reducing the GROWTH RATE of their enemies economic and military power, if not actually reducing them.

          The folks here who ( correctly most of the time imo) accuse the fossil fuel industries and other old, big legacy business interests of sowing fear,uncertainty and doubt may not realize that such manipulation goes back as far as the history of diplomacy. The Russian commies were good at it.

          Just a few men with a few bucks to work with , if they are skillful, and in the right place at the right time, can sometimes “steer” events by way of pushing one or another point of view or agenda.

          For example, just a handful of activists may be enough to get a labor union off the ground and up and running, and just a few journalists pushing a certain interpretation of particular events may actually determine the course of history.

          Putin may be doing the same thing, or have been doing the same thing, very recently, hoping to put Trump in office.

          I ‘m still agnostic in this respect, and willing to believe that he has been hacking emails, etc, but maybe not. There are usually a few very unhappy campers in any large organization, and one of them could be behind the leaks.

  7. I am hoping that Trump’s daughter becomes the insider who champions renewables and reduced carbon use.

    Formal White House roles likely for Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner – NY Daily News: “The younger Trump has played an active role in her father’s transition effort, meeting privately with Al Gore at Trump Tower, participating in a meeting between her dad and Leonardo DiCaprio, another environmental activist. She also sat in on a meeting between Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — Trump’s first as President-elect with a foreign head of government — and reportedly was on a post-election phone call between her father and Argentine President Mauricio Macri.”

    1. I hope so too. Fingers crossed. She’s much saner than Trump and she runs his businesses…

  8. Help me out here folks, and if I ever finish my book, I will give everybody from HB to Fernando to Javier to Fred M to Doug L, as well as Dennis and Ron full billing in the acknowledgements.

    Most or nearly all the folks ( in forums such as this one) who argue that natural variability , rather than man made CO2 pollution is responsible for the observed warming trend ARE trolls, no doubt , but I am absolutely certain, from personal experience meeting such people in real life, that a LOT of them ARE serious.

    I am not saying they are right, but rather that they are sincere.

    Such people know some stuff, but as some old trades guys are prone to say, they know “just enough to be dangerous” and are apt to make mistakes on the job that will get somebody crippled or killed.

    Fred Maygar just pointed out that this Tillerson guy , the EXON honcho is such a guy, that he knows just enough to REALLY fuck things up, unless somebody prevents him from doing so.

    I don’t know if Tillerson is as ignorant as Fred thinks he is, or if he is just a lying cynic, who doesn’t care, so long as he and his buddies still have a few nice clean safe places to live and enjoy a decent environment, while still raking it in by the millions. Ignoramus or cynic, or both, either way he’s dangerous!

    But considering his resume, I am not willing to call him STUPID.

    The thing is , there are literally MILLIONS of people in this country that know just enough to be dangerous about a lot of things, including climate,

    So- hypothetically, I’m talking to a neighbor, or co worker, one who knows about dinosaurs, and ice ages, and coal in Antarctica , and the Earth orbiting the sun, and Milankovitch cycles, need to check my spelling on that, and so forth. But he does NOT know about these things in detail.His knowledge of the natural world is apt is a mile wide, because he has a television, and internet, and maybe even passed Earth Science in the eighth grade, lol, but it’s only an inch deep, because he never took a REAL science class.

    It’s easy for him to understand the greenhouse effect, and rising CO2 levels, but it’s ALSO just as easy for him to conclude that the warming trend may be all natural, or nearly all natural, rather than FORCED . It’s easy for him to come to this conclusion because he is afraid for his job, or because he hates HRC, or for any of a dozen other reasons. They all boil down to the fact that he doesn’t want to believe CO2 pollution is bringing on climate problems, sea level problems, etc. And he knows just enough to be dangerous, to himself, and everybody else, because he will vote his conviction that the current climate science consensus is fraudulent. Just about all of us believe what we WANT to, except when we are confronted with evidence we simply CAN’T overlook or wish away.

    It’s a MAJOR mistake to believe this sort of person is STUPID, or lacking in moral fiber, or is a shill for the fossil fuel status quo. We all do our thinking on the basis of such hard information as we possess, which we believe to be factual, and after that, on our own judgement of the veracity and sincerity of other people, including those working in the various fields of science. My grandparents four or five centuries removed probably believed in a flat earth, and that the sun went around in some odd fashion, so as to account for the day and night, but that is not evidence that they were stupid. It is pretty good evidence, on the other hand, that they were uneducated in what was after all pretty much cutting edge science back in those days.

    So – Since this guy knows SOME stuff that is indisputable and solid science, how do I convince him that the observed warming trend IS the result of CO2 pollution, rather than a natural trend, with the CO2 concentration rising at the same time being merely a coincidence??????

    He is inch deep, mile wide knowledge certainly includes the sound and well accepted observation that correlation is not evidence of causation.

    Any suggestions will be appreciated. I have an idea or two, which I will post after getting some sleep.

    1. But do we need to convince people of climate change to affect behavior?

      I keep returning to economics. Coal is dying because utilities are switching to natural gas. Why? Because it is cheaper.

      It also makes economic sense to drive more fuel-efficient cars. People have enough bills as it is. Why burn up your hard-earned dollars in gasoline or diesel?

      Insulate your house so it doesn’t cost so much to heat and cool.

      Cut down on environmental pollution because it is nice to live in a place with clean water and air. Plus property values go up when there aren’t pollutants nearby. Also, there are fewer health problems in a clean environment. That saves money in medical expenses.

      Another reason to support a different mix in energy is jobs and the economy. Renewables are a growth industry, and they provide jobs across the country. Fossil fuels are using fewer workers, and the jobs that do exist are limited to relatively few states.

      And so on.

      Climate change is just too obscure for most people to respond to. Plus even if they cut back severely on fossil fuels, they won’t see an immediate change in climate.

      1. Yes, it will take some good PR and media campaigns to move the public view toward the necessity of immediate change. What we most need is a strong leadership in climate change action, with both subsidies and pollution laws. If growth in the energy transistion goes linear we might as well just not bother, agriculture will be highly affected as will the hydrologic cycle. Food will get very expensive and in short supply along with lack of water in certain regions.

      2. “But do we need to convince people of climate change to affect behavior?”

        No, business will fix all; it’s the American Way isn’t it?, letting “the market” decide. Let’s go whole hog on this. Do we really need to convince people to use birth control to affect behavior? Nah. They’ll discover kids are expensive and cut back. Do we need to convince people not to leave their kids in a hot car when they go shopping? Nah, the fines are horrendously expensive. In fact, let’s leave ALL behavior to “the market” and allow the cheapest solution to prevail. If burning coal happens to be the cheapest way to heat your house, so be it. BTW, anthropogenic warming and sea level rise will continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes (and feedbacks), even if the gas concentrations are stabilized so, sometimes it takes “the market” awhile to reach its “natural” solution.

        1. But to get a PR campaign from government, you’d need the right politicians in office. Chances are we have at least four more years of anti-climate change rhetoric. So I am saying that the tech billionaires are going to move forward with their ideas anyway.

          And we will have individual states and cities passing low carbon resolutions and regulations.

          And we’ll have countries moving toward that goal.

          But changing what is coming from the DC over the next four years and coming from the anti-climate trolls who post here. How do you propose to do that?

          Your wish is a good one. But how do you plan to implement it?

        2. Hi Doug,

          I personally appreciate your frustration and anger.

          Your sarcasm too.

          But you’re in a tough spot, sort of like an older person trying to tell younger people out enjoying having a keg, and dancing around a big fire on the beach, that the beer that makes even the ugly boys and girls attractive IS going to make all of them fat, and ugly, and sick, if they continue to freely indulge, long term.

          The youngsters on the beach with the keg and the fire don’t WANT to believe you, and while the evidence you are telling it true is easily available, it’s even more easily ignored.

          I have met many people who have great faith in the market solving all problems, and they feel justified in their confidence it will continue to do so, based on their ability to point out countless problems the market has solved in the past.

          People in general unfortunately are having too good a time, too good a life, to even consider giving up fossil fuels, FOR NOW.

          But here and there, a few of us have already experienced the sharp chunks of bricks that reality lets us have upside our heads, and appreciate the gravity of the problem, first hand.

          A few more, those of us who are well informed on the environmental and natural resources fronts, see the black storm clouds headed our way. Most of us never look up. The average guy on the street who DOES occasionally look up assumes an umbrella will solve his problem, or else sees an opportunity to sell some umbrellas.

          The old Greeks had a saying about the mighty suffering mighty falls.

          Those whom the Gods would destroy, first they raise high.

          It may be technically all wrong, but it accurately depicts human behavior. We raise ourselves high, meaning we have a LONG WAY to fall.

      3. Hi Boomer,

        You raise some EXCELLENT points, which incidentally are mostly points I have been using, and advocating for the use of , for some time.

        Renewables make economic sense as well as environmental sense, if you look at the big picture,rather than just the little status quo picture consisting of existing infrastructure and arrangements.

        Renewables are about not just jobs, and higher living standards, and better health.

        There’s are other equally critical issues, such as local control, and physical security.A country that does not need coal won’t ever have to go to war to secure a coal supply.

        I will emphasize these advantages when I publish my book, and do so already, here in this forum and some others as well.

        With some audiences, it’s best to tread lightly when it comes to climate. I don’t talk much about climate when I talk to my neighbors about renewables. They don’t want to hear it, but they are open to the arguments about jobs, local control, better public health, trout fishing, and cheaper energy.

        And most of them are smart enough to understand , although I usually have to point it out to them initially , that when wind and solar power depress the price of coal, by reducing the sale of it to generate electricity, this means that everything they buy that involves coal will be a little cheaper, because all industries pass along all their costs. The sole important exception may be that in the SHORT run, they may pay a VERY little more for electricity. They don’t have any problem seeing that in the long run, as coal runs short, the sun and wind will NOT, they will always be free.!

        In case anybody is wondering, I live near but not right IN coal mining country, and only a very few people, about five or six, I know personally have lost their jobs due to coal industry crash. Almost all of them worked at one small factory that manufactured built to order mining machinery.

    2. Greed is the motivation for denial when it comes to not believing climate science. Essentially no amount of evidence can convince some people that the science is correct. As the old saying goes, “It’s hard to make a man understand when his lifestyle depends upon not understanding.”

      On another note, someone may find this data to be of interest:

      Carbon Dioxide Increases Over Time
      Time Period …….CO2 Increase/year (ppm/year)
      1959-1964 ………………..0.73
      1965-1974 ………………..1.06
      1975-1984 ………………..1.44
      1985-1994 ………………..1.42
      1995-2004 ………………..1.87
      2005-2014 ………………..2.11
      Nov. 2014-Nov. 2015 ……3.02
      Nov. 2015-Nov.2016 ……3.40

      Because El Nino events cause an increase in CO2 concentrations above typical increases, it’s worthwhile to compare the period around the 1998 El Nino event and the 2015 El Nino event.

      Carbon Dioxide Increases Surrounding El Nino Events
      Time Period ………..CO2 Increase (ppm)
      1995-2000 ………………..8.93
      2011-2016 ………………13.29

      The increase during the 2011-2016 period was 48.8% greater than during the 1995-2000 period.

      1. “Greed is the motivation for denial when it comes to not believing climate science.”

        I’m counting on greed to shift the power to the greens when it becomes obvious to politicians that the money is shifting to the tech billionaires and away from the fossil fuel billionaires.

        As I have noted, Trump has meet with Gates and Musk (now one of his business advisors) and his daughter has met with Gore. The fossil fuel industry isn’t going to create more jobs than it already has done. And anyone in the industry knows the oil industry has massive layoffs when bust time come.

        Economics and progress are on the side of the greens. Fossil fuel people don’t have to accept climate change to still see the changes ahead for their industry.

      2. Hi Roger,

        Greed is a powerful motivator, and it unquestionably motivates a lot of people who have plenty already to deny climate science, in hopes of getting even more.

        But, and this is a big old BUT, it’s a major mistake to assume that greed is always or the exclusive reason people don’t believe what the scientific establishment is telling us about climate.

        I personally know four or five people, none of them making forty thousand bucks unless they worked a good bit of overtime, who lost their jobs as the result of the coal market crashing . They USED to work in a little factory here that made mining machinery to order. One of them is a close relative.

        They don’t believe the climate establishment, because they believe environmentalists are their political and cultural enemies.

        Not many of us have a problem believing our enemies are willing to lie for a dollar, or for partisan purposes.

        I can assure you that if I have never seen any greed displayed on the part of these guys . You don’t live high on the hog on forty grand supporting a family, and paying taxes and insurance out of the forty, plus driving to work, etc. I know for a fact that two of them were letting their own teeth rot so as to have enough money to get their kids teeth looked after, even BEFORE they lost their jobs.

        I believe in free markets, but there’s nothing free about a market in which a dentist charges you a hundred bucks for having a technician clean your teeth, a technician who only has two years at a community college and makes twenty bucks, out of that hundred. I think the one I use is making at least three hundred net, and he’s one of the cheapest around here.

        Greedy is the word for such people, who use their political power to make sure they can keep on raking it in at the expense of those who lack such power.

        1. Ask your former-coal-employed people if they believe geologists. IF they do, point to the P-Tr extinction.

          1. Hi Nathaniel,

            I have been able to get it across to two of them, who I see often, socially, that environmental regulations might have hastened the loss of their jobs by a year or two, which is true enough.

            What they WANT to believe is that the loss is the fault of slimy environmentalists and DEMOCRATs such as HRC of course. But while these guys are short on formal education, they aren’t stupid, and once you get their attention, WITHOUT insulting them, and their culture and values, etc, well then……….

            It’s easy enough to point out that the price of natural gas crashed, and that gas is now cheaper than coal, as generating fuel, wherever it is plentiful, and especially where coal has to be shipped a long way. Neither of them realized that the delivered cost of western coal here in the south is five times the mine head price, nor that even at that price, it ‘s cheaper than nearby West Virginia coal.

            They do have some appreciation as well of the environmental impact of coal, in terms of water pollution, public health, etc.

            So – the most I can offer them, as they struggle like hell to find work that pays seventy five percent of what they WERE making, is the knowledge that they are really the victims not of environmentalists, and the D party, but rather of the confluence of natural events. They understand that the furniture industry died here as the result of political decisions involving outsourcing their jobs, but they also understand that the local logging industry is a shadow of it’s former self because the FOREST is no longer what it used to be. The really good timber is gone, and hasn’t had time to grow back, and won’t, on a lot of land, because it has been developed or converted to farm land.

            Such people aren’t STUPID, although they are often ill informed. They understand such changes easily, and quite well, given all the relevant data.

            And they know that life sometimes morphs into a hateful bitch,after being sweet and loving for years and years, and tough times have a way of just HAPPENING, as they have happened to countless people all thru history.

            I don’t have any social contact with the other three.

    3. Oldfarmermac,

      how do I convince him that the observed warming trend IS the result of CO2 pollution, rather than a natural trend, with the CO2 concentration rising at the same time being merely a coincidence??????

      You can’t because there is no solid evidence that can demonstrate that the observed warming is the result of atmospheric CO2 increase. Everybody that had asked about the evidence has come out empty handed. The most you can demonstrate is that CO2 necessarily must have contributed to the observed warming. Nobody knows by how much.

      I’ll offer the insight from somebody from Houston to a blog:

      “Yes, 97% of scientists believe that the world is warming, but that’s only step one of five.

      1: The world is warming
      2: This is due to CO2
      3: This is Bad
      4: We have methods to reduce CO2
      5: These methods do less damage to humanity and the environment than the emissions they reduce

      1 is unquestioned. It’s just the magnitude that’s being discussed. 2 is debatable but at least partially true. The discussion of the magnitude of warming really ties in to the fraction that can be attributed to CO2. Both of these tie in significantly with 3, which is questionable at best. The IPCC really stretched to find damage done by warming and ignore its benefits, especially given that cold and dry weather has historically been far worse than warm and wet, and then there’s the fact of direct CO2 fertilization to consider. 4 is laughable, as “renewables” have routinely and consistently failed to live up to expectations, sequestration is either a joke or a nightmare depending on your point of view, and nothing else is anywhere near the right order of magnitude. 5 is a lie. There is no justification for the deliberate denial of electricity to the world’s poor. There is no justification for the millions of acres dedicated to crops burned in engines, causing mass deforestation, and the endless amounts of corruption fueled by hundreds of billions of government dollars flung around willy-nilly.”

      Now let’s see the opinion of somebody from Scotland looking behind climate change:

      “I’m a bit late here, sorry, but I’ll stick in my tuppence worth and hope it’s welcome. I’m not a scientist, I’m not even well-educated. I’m one of the feeble minded, great unwashed, that are either terrified of GW or puzzled that a valuable trace gas (CO2) which we were led to believe, during rudimentary secondary school science (I’m talking 70’s here folks), is the gas of life, is now a poison.

      As I represent a large majority of taxpayers (not literally of course) across the globe, I hope I have the ability to comment here. My belief is that the political, business and scientific communities have the moral responsibility to represent we thicko’s honestly and fairly. We don’t get it, and surely the job of scientists is to investigate the world, on our behalf, then deliver results in a digestible form. If you have followed the Brexit debate recently (probably a bigger global deal than the Clinton/Trump debacle) you will have seen how badly represented the working man is here by scientists, politicians and the media.

      I digress. I dug a little further into the scientific world and I can’t find any conclusive proof that CO2 causes GW, far less anthropogenic CO2. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I have caused many arguments on a variety of forums by asking that simple question. No one, to date, has shown me the conclusive proof, therefore I must assume the entire CO2 derived, GW/AGW debate is predicated on a hypothesis. Indeed, there seems to be considerable evidence from observational studies that CO2 has lagged temperature rise.

      I also note a study published on the NASA website which shows the planet has greened by 14%, two continents the size of mainland USA of extra greening in the last 30 years, 70% of which is attributed to extra atmospheric CO2. Observational science Vs. a hypothesis?

      My question now is, whilst the planet has reacted positively, by 14% to GW(?) increased CO2, what negative reactions to GW(?) represent a 14% increase? Temperature? Humidity? Sea level rise? Hurricanes? Droughts? etc. etc……….Again, I’m happy to be proven to be talking rubbish.

      I was also reminded of a thought that whizzed through my thick grey matter some time ago.

      I couldn’t understand why, in the face of overwhelming criticism, virtually every westernised nations government collectively, and wholeheartedly, support the concept of AGW. My opinion is that it’s nothing more than business, but not in the sense that it generates profit (although it does for many individuals) rather that it contributes to the lifeblood of business.

      World economies have been in crisis for donkey’s years. The 2008 banking crisis wasn’t unexpected, on the contrary, it was considered merely a matter of time. It exposed the west’s comprehensive mishandling of taxpayers money, many countries teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. And whilst an efficient business should always walk the tightrope of success and bankruptcy, it is unforgivable that politicians allow countries to even dip a toe into the latter.

      But the problem, it seems to me, wasn’t the ‘wealth’ of any particular country, but rather the turnover of taxpayer money. There just isn’t enough revolving round the global marketplace to sustain the global business model.

      Along comes GW, and a perfect opportunity to generate taxpayer income to inject into the system by creating ‘fear of loss’ of the planet. But the cunning devils (politicians) won’t come out and say they are going to tax us more to save economies, they tell us the planet is at risk if we don’t accept subsidies for ‘clean’ energy generation. They then quietly tax our energy bills which generate’s business, creates employment, increases consumer spending etc. and kickstarts the vital cashflow imperative.

      OK, a simplistic view, but I’m a simple guy and must have my information delivered in understandable chunks I can rationalise. If scientists can’t do that, I have to make it up as I go along.

      When I began working in 1976 in the UK, my Income tax bill was around 30%. However pissed off I was at that rate, it covered virtually everything you could imagine, health, water, infrastructure, local councils etc. etc. and carried many nationalised operations that needed to be privatised, coal, steel and British Leyland, British Telecom, British Gas etc. etc. to mention but a few.

      We shed nationalisation, Income tax should have dropped. We introduced VAT (8% then, 20% now), Income tax should have dropped. We shed centrally funded local councils and the council tax was introduced, Income tax should have dropped. I could go on.

      I understand from a variety of sources that the tax burden on middle-income UK is now 40%. I am worse off and made to feel like a pariah to boot.

      And whilst I don’t imagine for a moment that GW taxation is the panacea for global finance, it certainly contributes.

      Governments don’t want the GW pretence to end because it’s too big a collective earner for them.

      The planet’s temperature MAY have risen over the last 100 or so years, but the very means of measuring ground temperature is a slatted white box with a thermometer in it, developed in the 19th Century. Even the paint covering, never mind location, record keeping etc. affects the measurements and the data quality. They were designed as weather stations, not climate stations, so even the premise they are based on is misleading. Similarly, sea temperatures recorded by the cabin boy, when he had the time or inclination, of a ship is hardly an accurate recording of data, as we expect it today. Even satellite data from the mid to late 20th Century is questionable as the science was ‘early days’ and the damn things kept breaking down.

      So to make up for all these inaccurate data sources, the ‘scientist’s’ homogenised the data to make up for bad data, badly recorded data and badly recorded data from unreliable sources. Roll all that up and no matter the belief in homogenisation, it is still little better than guesswork.

      The human race’s future has nothing to do with climate change. It is reliant on bad data, from scientists with a personal agenda, delivered to politicians with their personal agenda, activated by businessmen with their personal agenda, promoted by the media, with their personal agenda.

      Too many fingers in one juicy pie. We are being scammed, and we are being convinced it’s all for our own good.

      Now, the question is, not whether I’m right or not, the question is, how have I come to this conclusion. I was told by a wise businessman, many years ago “perception is reality”.

      My perception, and the perception of many, is that we are being scammed by the GW debate. That perception will grow. And when we dimwit proletariat don’t get answers we demand, we get ugly.

      Thanks for your patience. I may have contributed rubbish, but it’s my perspective.”

      Yours is a lost cause, Oldfarmermac. You might as well throw the towel and join him.

      If you want help in demonstrating that CO2 must necessarily cause some warming I can help, since this is a point of contention that I have with many skeptics to the point that some of them consider me a climate alarmist. I accept that CO2 causes some warming, but not enough to cause a catastrophic outcome. In scientific words, climate sensitivity to CO2 must be lower than currently estimated by defenders of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. I believe in the mild mixed origin global warming hypothesis.

      1. There we have it, from somebody in Houston from a blog. Irrefutable evidence of babbling nonsense being taken seriously by Javier.

        1. And we can’t forget the rambling Scotsman who does not even write like a Scotsman. Seriously?

          1. GF,
            I’m beginning to wonder who wrote that post was it J1 or J2, heck maybe even J3…
            .

            1. Each thing having the mental power of Thing/n where n= the number of things.

        2. GoneFishing,

          As the name at the head of the post indicates, I am talking specifically to Oldfarmermac. Let him decide if he is interested or not in my answer to his question. You are not welcomed at this conversation.

          1. Old Farmer,
            Here are the statements you need to make, written in plain language.

            First CO2 is a heat trapping gas, it helps keep the planet warm along with water vapor. Adding CO2 makes it warmer. Like everything in the world it does not act alone. As the CO2 helps warm the air, water and land the increase in temperature evaporates more water. Water vapor is another heat trapping gas, so it gets warmer. The additional heat from both of those acts to not only increase those two gases in the air from natural sources but also melts ice and snow, exposing dark waters and land. Dark areas heat up when the sun hits them, unlike ice or snow. This in turn makes it warmer and more water vapor goes into the atmosphere.
            CO2 is the like the lever that pushed the rock over the cliff, it sets off a number of other factors that warm the planet.
            Usually this happens naturally, but this time around we gave the system a kick in the pants by dumping a lot of CO2 into the air. So yes the initial cause is manmade, but the following heating is natural, pushed by us but not run by us.
            Once we reduce the CO2 into the air, the water vapor levels will start dropping and eventually the temperature will follow.

            1. Hi GF,
              Thanks. BUT even though your analysis of the global warming problem is basically sound, it’s not the answer I am looking for. The reasons why this is the case will be clear enough to you if you read my long but NOT YET POSTED reply to Javier.

              These reasons are not all that complex or hard to understand, but reducing them to a few clear paragraphs is a tedious job, maybe an impossible job.

              Short cut answers don’t contribute to understanding and solving problems. It may be true that the target of such an answer is stupid, or uneducated and ignorant, or a racist, or a money grubbing rich guy, etc, but such answers don’t contribute to discovering and implementing solutions.

              You can’t really be expected to understand a foreign culture by reading one or two article about it, or visiting a few days, right?

              I have been immersed in the opposing culture in this case, and understand it, but I can’t get that understanding across easily in a few words, any more than an author of a travel piece can do the same. Even a long novel written by a native necessarily just sort of skims the surface , in terms of allowing a foreign reader to REALLY understand his culture.

            2. Probably best to do it by government edict and government subsidies. Recycling got done that way. Even when people understand a problem, it is difficult to not deviate from the actions needed due to other stresses in their lives. Government has fines and guns, keeps people doing what they need to do (ideal situation).

          2. Hi Javier,

            I am working on a reply to your comment, one that addresses the points you make. This is NOT that reply.

            You may rest assured that although most of the regulars here believe you are either a troll, or else that you are mentally deficient, or both, I take your comments seriously.

            This does not mean I share your conclusions, necessarily, but it does mean I appreciate that you have things to say that are highly relevant to the debate. I do agree with you in part in some key respects, and in at least one respect I think maybe you are dead on the money, but won’t get into which one at the moment.

            Nuance is everything, in such a discussion as this, because everything is all tied together, and a minor change in one place can result in big changes in other places.

            Whenever you have something to say about biology in and of itself, or any field of biology, you make great sense, and obviously demonstrate a sound knowledge of this field of science. This is evidence enough in my estimation that you deserve to be heard.

            Every once in a while, a person who has things to say the insiders don’t want to hear is saying things the insiders REALLY need to hear and heed. I feel the same way, here, in this forum, that you likely feel, due to the fact that I have been telling core D’s , who apparently comprise most of the forum membership, things they NEED to hear, if they want to win the next cycle of elections.

            ( It is my sincere belief that I have been telling it like it is, in this respect, but I do understand that maybe I am the one who doesn’t understand, that maybe I’m the kid out of step with the music, rather than the rest of the band, lol, about WHY the D’s lost their asses again, and the R’s are in control of more political offices, high and low, than ever.

            But I BELIEVE I am right. The D’s need to get back to their roots, rather than running as the love child of the republican establishment and the identity politics coalition. What I mean by R love child is the recent tendency to rely on big money, alliances with big business, big industry, big banking, etc. )

      3. Governments don’t want the GW pretence to end because it’s too big a collective earner for them.

        Um then why has the current president elect called climate change a hoax invented by the Chinese? Why has he surrounded himself with climate change deniers and vowed to end regulations put in place by the last administration?Why is he promising to end funding for climate science at NASA and NOAA? Why has the meme of taxpayer money going to fund grants for greedy climate scientist who want to destroy the economy and capitalism been spread ad nauseum?

        It’s because the fossil fuel industry has just taken over the US government and they don’t want the truth to really come out!

        So yesterday all the climate deniers were complaining how all the money going into research was sucking the coffers dry and now you have the gall to claim that Governments don’t want the GW pretence to end because it’s too big a collective earner for them?!

        Talk about having your cake and eating it too, eh?

      4. I agree with Javier. Basic physics tells us CO2 and methane must be warming the planet. But it’s hard to quantify how much of the current trend is due to natural climate oscillations and how much is caused by CO2 and methane concentration increase over the last 150 years.

        Let’s say it’s 60 % due to greenhouse gas concentration changes, 40 % natural. This in turn causes a slight increase in water vapor concentration. The water vapor can turn into clouds. The way the system is modeled, the temperature increase is mostly a result (feedback) of the small temperature increase caused by co2. But the feedback effects aren’t panning out as predicted. The temperature profile in the atmosphere isn’t what the models say it should be. This means the current models aren’t working on all cylinders.

        Next, take the effect to this point. As far as I can tell, the effect is positive. A slightly warmer and more humid air coupled to more co2 is good for vegetation. This means the earth is getting greener.

        But we do have to worry about the future. I believe must of those who read this blog realize that fossil fuels do run out. And when we plug in the numbers we get a peak concentration ranging from say 600 to 700 ppm. Some would say it’s lower.

        So let’s say that, no matter what we do, the concentration peaks at 650 ppm because we have been using up fossil fuels…in that case we would need to understand what does 650 ppm do, and whether it’s worth the effort to reduce that figure to say 550 ppm.

        And this is where the conflict really lies. There’s a camp (call it obama’s) which says there’s no debate, the world must do as he says because the debate is over. There’s a camp says the whole thing is baloney. And there’s a camp which says we do have to worry about it, but the actions we should take aren’t necessarily what Obama wants to do.

        I also want to point out the media is full of blatant lies about global warming impacts at this time. We get a lot of garbage ranging from polar bears nearing extinction to giant super hurricanes and mega droughts which aren’t really attributable to co2. And polar bear populations have increased enormously in recent decades.

        1. Hi Fernando,

          As I have mentioned in the past the uncertainty is reason to be careful. It is much more difficult to remove the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere once it has been emitted than to leave the carbon in the ground.

          There was a time when engineers were less confident about the strength of materials and the quality of the materials they were using so when building a bridge they would overdesign by a factor of 3 or more to be safe.

          Just continuing to burn as much fossil fuel as is economically feasible is a little like the civil engineer building the bridge half as strong as necessary, because he thinks all the materials are a little stronger than average and maybe because he won’t need to cross that bridge. 🙂

          The Earth System Sensitivity is not well constrained, it might be as low as 2.6 C or as high as 5.6 C for a doubling of CO2 concentrations. If you look at the Vostock ice core data, it is clear that the exponential decline for atmospheric CO2 will take about 85,000 years to fall from 280 to 180 ppm (Tau=200,000 years). It is likely that if atmospheric CO2 rises to only 450 ppm by 2110 CE it will take 10,000 years for atmospheric CO2 to fall to 400 ppm. Let’s take a medium ESS estimate of 3.9 C and assume the relationship with ln(CO2) and ERF is linear (it is non-linear concave up). Then global temperature is about 2 C above the 1951-1980 mean in 12,200 CE. The problem is that if ESS is 5.6 C, global temperatures would be 2.9 C. Also note that this is under a scenario with only 1000 Pg of carbon emissions, higher emissions would be much worse and is the reason for legitimate concern. Some paleoclimate evidence suggests a medium ESS estimate might be correct, the lower estimates (less than 3.6 C) for ESS are unlikely to be correct in my view. Probably 4 C is a pretty good ESS estimate based on two Hansen and Sato papers from 2012 and the Global Temperature estimate of Shakun et al 2012.

          http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha05510d.html

          http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120508_ClimateSensitivity.pdf

          http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/full/nature10915.html

          or for Shakun paper

          http://www.atm.damtp.cam.ac.uk/mcintyre/shakun-co2-temp-lag-nat12.pdf

          1. Dennis,

            The Earth System Sensitivity is not well constrained, it might be as low as 2.6 C or as high as 5.6 C for a doubling of CO2 concentrations.

            Or it might be as low as 1.5-2.0°C as defended by Aldrin et al (2012), Ring et al (2012), Otto et al (2013), Masters (2014), Skeie et al (2014), as well as Lewis (2013), Lewis & Curry (2014), and Lewis (2016). To cite only some of the most recent articles.

            The high ECS values are coming from models that do not reproduce observations, while the lower values come from analysis of Earth’s energy budget.

            1. Hi Javier,

              There are not models that do well at an ECS of less than 2.

              Try

              http://www.magicc.org/

              You can download and run the models. The GISS Model EH has the median ECS of the 18 lowest ECS models (I throw out the highest ECS model as it is an outlier.)

              For the CMIP3 models, the GISS Model EH works pretty well.

              For 1951-2015 the trend is similar, but for the earlier 1886-1950 period, the GISS EH model underestimates the temperature trend. (0.56 C/century for model vs 0.76 C/century for data).

              The equations for the lines were placed incorrectly, the line with slope 0.012 is for the GISS EH Model, BEST LO data has slope 0.119, sorry for the mistake.

              Perhaps ECS has decreased in the later period, or simply the models need improvement.

            2. There are not models that do well at an ECS of less than 2.

              Yes, I know Dennis. If the models don’t agree with the data we are supposed to throw away the data. Or tweak it.

              Models have been tuned to reproduce 20th century warming assuming anthropogenic warming from GHGs and anthropogenic cooling from aerosols without knowing these values. If any of the multiple assumptions made in the models is wrong, the models are wrong.

              Now we know models are wrong because they warm too much. How are we going to defend the assumptions made in the models over the evidence?

            3. Hi Javier

              There are 19 cmip3 models emulated by MAGICC 6 the even the median model has too little warming from 1886 to 2015. The ECS of the median model is 2.5 C. I agree the models are not perfect. Over the 1951 to 2015 period the trend of the model matches Berkeley earth data very well.

            4. Hi Javier

              Even models with ECS as high as 3.3 C warm less than the data from 1881 to 2015

          2. Yes Denis, the figures go all over the place. Thus far I don’t find a reason to put climate change near the top of my list. I’m more worried about the actual transition away from fossil fuels. Right now I’m also worried about the warmongering and aggressiveness shown by the neocons and their democrat allies. Their anti Russia campaign is really irresponsible.

            1. Hi Fernando,

              I am worried about both the energy transition and climate change.

              I believe Putin needs to be kept in check, Neville Chamberlain we don’t need in my view. I worry about more than the communist dictators in the World.

            2. Putin isn’t Hitler. What I’m observing is a huge disinformation campaign carried out by the USA media to demonize Putin. What exactly did the guy do? Recover Crimea and Russophile areas in Ukraine? Hell, that’s Russian territory. I’m sorry, but you guys simply don’t understand Russian history…and evidently Obama is a real idiot in this area. Supporting a coup in Ukraine, setting up an anti Russian Mafia (Yes, Poroshenko is a mafia lord known as the Chocolate King), and having NATO troops get close to Moscow is incredibly stupid.

            3. Hi Fernando

              If you were living in Estonia you might feel differently.

        2. Next, take the effect to this point. As far as I can tell, the effect is positive. A slightly warmer and more humid air coupled to more co2 is good for vegetation. This means the earth is getting greener.

          Fernando I sincerely believe you are a highly intelligent extremely competent petroleum engineer! However that statement alone demonstrates that you don’t have any idea how ecosystems work or why you don’t want to start changing conditions on which their stability depends.

          Think about it this way, would you be comfortable allowing a layman off the street, however intelligent he or she might be to walk onto a drilling rig where you are in charge and tell you that as far as they can see, you should ignore the fact that the BOP is not up to spec and you really don’t have to perform any function tests because there is no chance that the rig will ever blow.

          My guess is that you would call security and have that person removed from the premises.

          Ecosystems are multiple orders of magnitude more complex than any engineering problem you have ever dealt with. Unless you have spent a lifetime and your entire career studying them it is very naive to suggest that as far as you can see they are doing fine.

          Unfortunately they aren’t!

      5. Javier, You ought to be embarrassed to post such denier drivel. You have now (if there was any remaining doubt) firmly removed your mask and revealed your true “deny it at all costs” agenda.

    4. Oldfarmermac,

      As you can see you did not get any evidence or suggestion from the usual suspects of the Warmist religion. At most they will point you to their bible, the IPCC assessment report. I asked twice in the previous thread and also got nothing. That should start telling you that it is all faith based. They don’t know why they believe, but 97% of scientists cannot be wrong, even if they have not spoken on the issue.

    5. No idea. The sort of fanatical religious insanity, refusal to listen to any evidence, which we see from deniers like Javier is the same problem we have with people who believe that there is an interfering all-powerful benevolent God actively doing things in the world (a comprehensively disproven hypothesis).

      There’s an ability to believe nonsense which can overpower the rational mind in most people. Even overwhelming evidence will be ignored. This is probably because the rational mind is a tiny fraction of our brain and most of our “thinking” is done through other, non-rational pathways. The list of common cognitive biases in Wikipedia is a good starting point for understanding this.

      Scientific training is supposed to train you to counteract these natural cognitive biases, but most people never get scientific training and even for those who do, it often doesn’t stick, or they only apply it to narrow areas of their lives.

      You’re right that it’s not fair to consider people like Javier “stupid”. The correct term for people like Javier is “insane”, which literally means that their thinking is “unsound”. That’s not really considered polite, though.

      As for how catastrophic highly elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are, really, the P-Tr extinction is all the evidence which is needed. But it’ll be ignored by denialists.

      1. Hi Nathaniel,

        It’s not clear to me precisely who you mean to address in your 12/19/12:59 comment. Please clarify, I may want to respond.

    6. Mac, I was a denier for the longest time, till I read a Ugo Bardi blog post (can’t find the link sometime in 2011 or 2012) . It was convincing in my opinion because it was a mind sized model with no need for complex calculations. More or less it goes like this: The sun is warming 10% per billion years because hydrogen is converted to helium causing it to gradually become more dense. The greater density will eventually lead to a red giant when the helium becomes so dense the core becomes filled with solid helium. So the earth receives way more solar insolation, there must be a mechanism to compensate. The mechanism necessary to control earth temperature most likely controls the amount of heat radiated back into space (as opposed to solar radiation being buried or some other mechanism) and must be persistent in earth’s history. This suggests the candidate will be atmospheric and since in the atmosphere most likely a gas. Further, there must be a feedback loop that controls temperature to the high and low side. Oxygen was mostly absent in early earth history so we can rule that out. Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas, but there have been ice ball earth periods and almost no way for water vapor building up to break an ice ball earth senario. Methane is another possibility but it is not persistent in the atmosphere and there is no way for it to control the earth’s temperature to the high side, ie more heat with in a reasonable temperature cannot remove methane from the atmosphere to lower it’s greenhouse effect. This leaves carbon dioxide, which has been around all of earth’s history and forms a weak acid in water causing geological weathering which removes it from the atmosphere to lower temperature and during iceball earth periods is emitted by valcanos to warm the earth. Further, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have been falling on average over the life of the earth in step with the increasing solar insolation as the sun warms. The sad part is the CO2 concentrations are becoming so low, particularly for the protein rubisco, that most complex life will be wiped out in .5 to a billion years. For brevity I cut out a lot of caveats and this is the big picture. It does not explain the hundred thousand year fluctuations and some other historical drivers. However, I think it is a mind sized model that should convince people to at least be concerned about co2 levels as a driver of earth temperature. Saddest part of all I have a PhD in Biology and should have known all of that way before I did.

  9. The thinking planet, will it survive or just be a blip in geologic history?

    “Can a civilization become integrated into the cyclic functioning of its planet in a sustainable way? This implies a different mode of interaction with the planet than is currently being exhibited by “intelligent” life.

    From a systems perspective, the early stages of this transition are highly unstable because global influence precedes global control. Such a system is characterized by unstable positive feedbacks which threaten catastrophe. Hence the dangers of our current “Anthropocene dilemma”: We have global influence without global self-control. However, global technological influence clearly contains both peril and promise. Conscious awareness and control can also be sources of stabilizing negative feedback. This merely requires recognizing a problem and acting to fix it.”

    A Planet With Brains? The Peril And Potential Of Self-Aware Geological Change
    http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/12/18/506036420/a-planet-with-brains-the-peril-and-potential-of-self-aware-geological-change

  10. One more potential route to convert CO2 into liquid fuels.
    ”
    Graphene quantum dots may offer a simple way to recycle waste carbon dioxide into valuable fuel rather than release it into the atmosphere or bury it underground, according to Rice University scientists.
    Nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots (NGQDs) are an efficient electrocatalyst to make complex hydrocarbons from carbon dioxide, according to the research team led by Rice materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan. Using electrocatalysis, his lab has demonstrated the conversion of the greenhouse gas into small batches of ethylene and ethanol.”

    http://phys.org/news/2016-12-carbon-dots-dash-green-recycling.html

    1. Hi GF,

      So as a practical matter, WHERE is the energy going to come from to run the hydrocarbon combustion reaction BACKWARDS, which requires using a hell of a lot more energy than you can recover by burning the reaction products?

      Maybe some day we will have enough dirt cheap renewable energy we can actually seriously consider removing CO2 directly from the atmosphere, but if we DO, then burning the reaction products would simply PUT IT RIGHT BACK in the atmosphere again.

      I am not altogether simple minded, and realize that this could result, over the long term, in at least stabilizing the CO2 concentration, rather than increasing it by burning even MORE coal, oil, and gas.

      I am neither an engineer, nor an economist, but I do know a little bit about both fields, due to my own professional background and reading extensively for the last half century.

      It appears to me that using any available renewable energy directly, for any economic purpose such as transportation, manufacture of needed or wanted goods, lighting, heating, etc, would be substantially more effective in preventing the concentration of CO2 actually rising,short to medium term.

      It would imo likely also result in CO2 peaking sooner than trying to recycle it from the atmosphere.

      I read all sorts of half baked solutions for pollution at various other blogs. Some sites dealing in alternative agriculture promote burning wood in furnace designed to retain the carbon, combusting only the volatiles, and then using the carbon as a soil amendment, which may or may not improve the soil. ( It does, as a rule, but not in all cases, or if it’s just dumped on the soil .)

      The thing such an analysis misses, or maybe the thing such analysts deliberately over look, is that carbon is fungible with other carbon, and you might as well burn it, as to mine more coal. You actually come out better, environmentally this way, ignoring the soil fertility question, because you avoid the expense and energy consumption and direct environmental damages associated with coal mining.

      Now here’s a question for any engineering guy who hangs out here, and gets the big picture.

      Sure pet coke is nasty stuff.

      But taking into consideration (one ) that it exists, (two ) has to be disposed of, and ( three ) if it is not burnt , then coal must be mined, at additional environmental and monetary expense, to TAKE THE PLACE OF IT, ……..

      Is it cheaper and environmentally preferable to burn it, hopefully in a boiler or steel mill that is well designed to burn up as many of the nasty hydrocarbons as possible, and hopefully responsibly dispose of or recycle the slag, which contains the remaining heavy metals, etc ?

      My guess is that it’s better , overall, to burn it.

      Just disposing of it according to the holy gospel of environmental true believer nut cases, if they get their way, will cost a FORTUNE……… a fortune which could, and ought to be, far better spent on other environmental problems.

      Some people take me for a nut case, because I insist that cleaning up a decommissioned nuke, the way we do it now, costs several times what it ought to, considering the alternative uses of the money spent chasing ever diminishing returns.

      Disposing of spent fuel, and a few tons of especially hot metal from the reactor is one thing. Cleaning up the site as if the object is to prove there was never any nuclear plant there in the first place is another thing altogether.

      Get the fuel out, which is a separate issue, and then pour the entrances to the containment building full of enough concrete , weld the doors, which are incidentally rather well suited to use as armor plate, lol, put in instrumentation to check for water seeping thru, maybe put a few self actuating robotic sniper rifles here and there, which will not shoot outside the perimeter fences, and spend the rest of the money on something that will provide many times the bang for the buck, environmentally…………

      THAT would be my solution, if I were in a position to put it into effect.

      Note, I consider the storage and disposal of hot spent fuel, etc, as a separate problem.

      1. “So as a practical matter, WHERE is the energy going to come from to run the hydrocarbon combustion reaction BACKWARDS, which requires using a hell of a lot more energy than you can recover by burning the reaction products?”

        You do not seem to understand how catalysts work. They provide a lower energy pathway, meaning you do not need “a hell of a lot more energy than you recover”. You only need a small amount of extra energy.
        Energy source, since it’s electrical, can be solar PV or wind energy.

        You do realize that plants make complex carbohydrates from CO2 at ambient temperature and a small amount of sunlight? It’s due to catalysis.

        1. Of course you are right about using renewable energy directly, but even that is not possible since it must be transformed for storage due to intermittency. Also, some applications, such as flight and ships, are not yet ready for direct renewable energy. Someday maybe, but for now a better and less polluting method is preferable to keeping the same old polluting system we have.
          Sucking CO2 out of the air that was made by fossil fuel to make synthetic fuels replaces the fossil fuel and if the process is energized by solar PV, wind or hydro then there is no net gain of CO2 in the atmosphere. It basically removes the fossil fuel from the system. Recycling the CO2 while getting the needed transport.

  11. Coach Lloyd’s Post Game Wrap-up of Open Thread, Non-Petroleum Dec. 13, 2016-243

    Hey there, Fellow Alarmists and fight fans everywhere!

    I’ve been looking at the stats for the Dec. 13th Open Thread.

    Almost 43,000 words.

    Most of them angry!

    6,984 words (by my count) from Javier.

    One word in 6.

    From Dec. 14 at 7:34 EST to Dec. 17 at 10:16am EST, 46 comments out of 243.

    (Other trolls: 5 posts and 527 words.)

    Two lead comments when he has rarely posted leads in the past: essentially picking a fight.

    If he’s not paid, he must have taken some vacation time.

    Or perhaps he is better described as what those in the Start-up world call “self-funded.”

    As of the current time in this thread, things have calmed down a bit: his word count and percentage is considerably lower. Perhaps he had to step away from the keyboard long enough to take a dump. Javier has returned to counter-punching (no lead comments.) He has 6 posts out of 65, as opposed to the ridiculous percentage of the Dec. 13th thread.

    “wehappyfew” posted some notes which I believe merit repeating: first, his contention that Javier is likely not a paid troll. The question of why someone would decide to plague us like this is foremost in my mind.

    Why, Javier? If you’re not paid, why do you like hanging out in a place where you are almost universally reviled, and your methods are continually pointed out as being underhanded? What do you get out of it?

    And yes, I would like an answer.

    From “wehappyfew”’s comment of 12/15/2016 at 5:05 pm :
    Trollish behavior exhibited by Javier here recently:
    – as you point out, immediate and vociferous responses to any conflicting arguments.
    – deflection from looking at all the data, focusing on narrow slices of data, over short timespans.
    -Gish Galloping (a rapid-fire delivery of many wrong or misleading arguments, too many to rebut in a reasonable length post)
    – arguing opposite sides of the same argument, as need to advance his point.
    Some of these behaviours are in evidence in this thread as well.

    So.

    In a lot of ways, Javier’s “contributions” to the last thread amount to what I used to refer to as a “Guest Villain”: on The Oil Drum, a poster who would show up for a few days posting continuously, get smacked down, and never be heard from again.

    His level of posting on this thread is not as irritating (so far.) The question is whether we want to continue to engage him on such small matters on an ongoing basis. Do those of you who respond to him enjoy the effort to engage with his usually trivial points? Or is it out of a sense of duty? (especially as many of us scroll by, as George Kaplan does, and don’t see your thoughts.)

    We are left with a “special case” here: something that in some ways behaves like a paid provocateur, but may have other motives (and I’ll be waiting to hear what they are, Javier.)

    Back to “wehappyfew”:
    He may have wrapped up his own self image and sense of worth in this iconoclastic quack-theory-of-everything-climate-related, and he shows up to regurgitate the latest denier talking point whenever it meshes with his own pet theories.

    So is Javier a 40 year–old dude in a bathrobe in his parent’s basement with a degree he doesn’t use? And if he is, does he deserve different treatment than an entity like Nancy Gebauer, whose motives are more transparent? Is the time it takes Duncan Idaho or Gone Fishing and the rest to compose refutations of Javier’s comments, (and the time it takes us to read them) a good use of their (and our) time?

    Do we want this blog to be about refuting Javier’s cherry-picked arguments?

    I am hoping that the last thread was an anomaly, and that the question becomes moot. Maybe his Christmas vacation started early.

    If not, the question will come up again. In my opinion, Javier unbalances the blog and hijacks the narrative when he behaves as he did in the last thread.

    I don’t think we should let him.

    1. Why, Javier? If you’re not paid, why do you like hanging out in a place where you are almost universally reviled, and your methods are continually pointed out as being underhanded?

      I don’t even understand why the paid trolls are here.

      They aren’t going to convince this forum’s regular readers and their target audience doesn’t read PeakOilBarrel.

      I’d venture to say that many of us here view this as a sign of desperation. The fossil fuel folks see the future, it doesn’t include them, and they are lashing out.

      1. I don’t even understand why the paid trolls are here.

        Still wearing your tin hat?

    2. Lloyd,

      I guess I am the only one here defending a point of view in a debate that is clearly divisive and according to polls is heavily populated at both sides. So if I have to answer to a lot of people, I have to use a lot of words.

      Why don’t you do your little statistics on the amount of written powder spent on my persona? A lot of people instead of discussing the issues are using their posts to write bout me, criticize me, spread conspiracy theories about me, say they ignore me, or directly attack and insult me. And that includes you as one of the leaders of this mob that pretends to clean the blog from (God forgives!) free speech.

      To anybody neutral all this must be very entertaining, but at the same time I am sure some will wonder why if the evidence is so good that CO2 is causing so much warming that we are in a serious crisis, people that express their disbelieve must be attacked and neutralized. That is usually a telltale of ideas imposed from above without enough evidence to sustain on their own.

      1. according to polls
        A twist from the usual “I am a man of science” pose. You’re doing it for the little people!

        And that includes you as one of the leaders of this mob that pretends to clean the blog from (God forgives!) free speech.

        Let’s get something straight here: this is an Academic discussion board. We are here to discuss these issues because we enjoy it, and we (usually) like the people. We are not journalists, and no one here has to engage with you.

        Nobody.

        It’s more like a club.

        And as a club, we get to decide who is a member.

        You become a member by people responding to your ideas. I look at it like being at a dinner party: you don’t monopolize the conversation, particularly if no one gives a crap about your point of view (though if that’s the case, you usually don’t get invited back.) It’s a question of signal to noise: if there’s too much noise, it causes the quality of the conversation to drop, as people won’t wade through it. It makes your dinner party less interesting, and reduces the number and quality of guests you can get in the future.

        Your continual re-hashing of issues most of us consider settled makes my reading here less fun.

        I am not stopping you from proselytizing your ideas. I just refuse to help you do it. The many thoughtful posters here who respond to you give your ideas and your persona a legitimacy they don’t deserve.

        I’m not interfering with free speech.

        In your case, I’m trying to deal with an irritating door-crasher who won’t shut up.

        1. Let’s get something straight here: this is an Academic discussion board.

          That’s a bad start. This is the comments section of a personal blog. You have no say here over who is invited or who isn’t. If you did I would have already been banned. Your only decision space here is about your own comments.

          Unlike my comments, your comments are directed against another commenter here. You are the one showing bad manners.

          You are giving yourself an importance that you don’t have here. You don’t decide anything about the rest and you are on equal terms to all the rest.

          Your reading is less fun because you want this place to be an echo chamber. You have absolutely no problem with the same issues being presented from the consensus point of view. Otherwise you would have also problems with the people presenting them continuously only to acquiescence responses no matter how wrong they are.

          You are trying to get a representation in your attacks to me that nobody has given you. You present as conclusions your conjectures about me without any evidence.

          You might proceed as you wish, but you are just showing yourself as a biased bigot that attacks a commenter because you don’t like what I say and/or the way I say it.

          1. That’s a bad start.—snip–Unlike my comments, your comments are directed against another commenter here. You are the one showing bad manners.

            I call bullshit.

            You suggested previously that my activities were against free expression.
            Now you say they are bad manners in the group.

            My discussion here is about the group.

            The group is energy-related.
            Hence, it can be discussed under Ron’s terms.
            I have presented nothing that I don’t have evidence for, and my attacks are not ad-hominem.

            You are trying to get a representation in your attacks to me that nobody has given you.

            Look at the Coach Lloyd posts and the comments that follow them, and the various other call-outs in the past few threads. I am confident of my support. I view the Coach Lloyd position as primarily janitorial, but fun nonetheless.

            You are giving yourself an importance that you don’t have here. You don’t decide anything about the rest and you are on equal terms to all the rest.

            Every time someone calls “troll”, or posts the link to “I Was a Paid Internet Shill”, or comments that they like my posts, my influence is revealed. As I have said, my constituency is the contributors. Until people I respect say that I should knock it off, well, I’ll just keep on posting.

            And they won’t, because when you are contesting my right to point out that you are doing public relations work for climate change denial (whether paid or not), you’re not denying climate change. Win-win for me!

            You might proceed as you wish, but you are just showing yourself as a biased bigot that attacks a commenter because you don’t like what I say and/or the way I say it.

            As I said, I am not stopping you from doing anything.

            I also find the use of “bigot” as ludicrous: Climate Change Deniers are not a racial or ethnic group.

            As for “biased”, I have made my bias clear from the start.

            And regarding “(who) attacks a commenter because you don’t like what I say and/or the way I say it.”:

            The way you make your comments is valid grounds for discussion, particularly when you go from 0 to 7,000 words in one post. It’s anomalous, and falls in line with my areas of discussion, which are the blog as a whole and each thread as a whole. I view it as my area of study. I have previously stated that I am sometimes more concerned about patterns of postings rather than specific content. I stand by my earlier comments on this. You don’t like it, tough.

            Coach Lloyd is my way of letting everyone else know that they are lots of ways of dealing with irritants.

            We don’t have to deal with you according to your faulty interpretation of how this site works.

            The fact that it will make my reading more pleasant is a side effect.

            1. Javier thinks this blog is an echo chamber.
              Farthest thing from the truth. We are not an echo chamber but individual voices in the wilderness who let the science guide us to the truth.

              Javier is clearly a phony.

            2. Regarding climate science, this place is an echo-chamber, where anybody with an opposite view is not only unwelcomed, but attacked. Nobody here but Oldfarmermac considers the possibility of being wrong on this issue, despite the lack of empirical evidence supporting the catastrophic view of climate change.

            3. Hey Javier,
              I am not discussing AGW, just vanilla geophysics and climate science in my models of ENSO and QBO,

              Perhaps your deep problem is that you are ignoring the fundamentals in your crusade to prove everyone else wrong, lol.

            4. Yes I know. You are always talking about what you do. Must be because nobody else does.

            6. Hi Lloyd,

              While I do personally believe that forced climate VERY LIKELY is one HELL of a problem, I call bullshit on YOU.

              It’s Ron P and Dennis Coyne’s place to say who can and cannot post here, and Ron made it clear a long time ago that so long as a comment touches on the issues he lists up top, at the very head of this blog, they are ok.

              Now I have myself, personally, engaged a couple of the sorts of trolls you mention, here in this blog, with a little help from a couple of other regulars.

              I spent the time necessary to counter their arguments until they gave up and left. Ron finally banned one who kept referring to me as a Nazi, not because he did THAT, but because he made the mistake of posting a cartoon comment that made a genuine Nazi comment about Jewish people.

              Ron believes in freedom of expression, and so does Dennis.

              I also part ways with you not only in respect to Javier’s posting privileges here, in this forum, which IS AFTER ALL the private property of Ron Patterson, unless and until he turns ownership of it over to somebody else, who apparently will be or IS Dennis Coyne.

              I may be an unmitigated redneck in the eyes of some people, but I believe in private property, as well as in the concept of the commons, where in EVERY BODY has property rights, such as the right to clean air.

              Now about trolls, and suspected trolls, in general:

              The membership of this forum consists for the most part of well educated and environmentally attuned and motivated individuals, and they are all great people. HB, if you see this, I want you to know that I know your heart and head are in the right place, although in my judgement you are enough of a loyal member of the HRC faction that you are unwilling to admit the short comings of your faction, at least publicly.

              But with the exception of only a very few individuals, being one of that few myself, the membership has a PROBLEM when it comes to understanding poor people, working people, social conservatives, religious people, and some others, who all together add up to enough people that, well……… resulted for one thing in the election of TRUMP.

              This story illustrates the problem.

              Back in the old days, this English professor at a small New England liberal arts college, a guy who wears Earth Shoes, smokes a pipe, has a beard and glasses and unruly hair, can poets and playwrights, speaks six languages, wears a corduroy coat with elbow patches, etc, etc, sez about the presidential election:

              “I can’t understand how McGovern lost. Every body I know voted for him. ”

              There are others who comment here who have and still do spend some time with truly hard up poor people, and low paid working class people, but I believe I am the ONLY one here who actually grew up among such people, and still lives in intimate contact with them, who also has a solid broad based technical and liberal education. I have lived in both worlds, all the way to hanging around a good sized city university for years,living in a walking neighborhood just off campus, and marrying a young ( and HOT! ) Jewish artist from NYC.

              THEREFORE, justified or not, I consider myself the only real EXPERT in this forum, when it comes to understanding THE BIG PICTURE when the topic turns to the politics of working class or poor American people, and the environmental issue.

              Now here is something that nearly every body in forum seems to have a LOT of trouble understanding and accepting.

              While it is true that most or maybe even all of the ones that post as climate skeptics or denialists ARE trolls, THERE ARE MILLIONS of people who rightly or wrongly, believe the arguments posted by the trolls. MANY MILLIONS.

              You can either work to convert them into friends and allies, or you can bad mouth them, and bad mouth those who post comments reflecting their beliefs, and thus confirm them in their beliefs that you are their ENEMY.

              Now as it happens, I was once upon a time a professional educator, with lots of credits in the field of pedagogy, and professional grade listening skills, which are taught in some other professions I have dabbled in , over the years, such as nursing.

              You can bring ill educated ( thru NO FAULT of their own!) working class people around, show them the light, lead them to the green pastures and cool waters of environmentalism, IF you UNDERSTAND THEM, and display respect for them and their beliefs, even as you gently explain why their beliefs are mistaken in part, sometimes in the whole.

              But banning folks who post comments consistent with what they believe is just about the worst thing you can do, in terms of winning them over.

              Doing THAT merely convinces any that drop in that they are not welcome, that they are looked down on as social rabble not worthy of a place in the forum. This is the best way I can think of to guarantee they will simply block out the environmental message, while embracing the BAU fossil fuel anti environmental message.

              When somebody posts bad arguments, I will take it on myself to refute them, right along.

              I will be posting a long comment later this evening pointing out what I believe are the problems with Javier’s positions, assuming I finish it.

            7. Hi Mac.
              While I do personally believe that forced climate VERY LIKELY is one HELL of a problem, I call bullshit on YOU.

              It’s Ron P and Dennis Coyne’s place to say who can and cannot post here, and Ron made it clear a long time ago that so long as a comment touches on the issues he lists up top, at the very head of this blog, they are ok.

              I have not called for banning Javier (though I wouldn’t object.) Doug did. My comments are within the spirit of the blog as I justified earlier, and are not ad-hominem.

              I said that we didn’t have to engage with him.
              (I did previously ask for more carefully defined terms of service that would make it easier to remove trolls, and did make a point about Javier and Fernando being tricky edge cases.)

              I stand by all of it.

              There are others who comment here who have and still do spend some time with truly hard up poor people, and low paid working class people, but I believe I am the ONLY one here who actually grew up among such people,

              My posts in this thread have nothing to do with class battle, or the election. I am talking about the posters, and more to the point, about me.

              It is about my desire to not have to wade through Javier’s crap to hear what Fred has to say.

              I don’t come here to change anyone’s minds except the people who post here. And of them, only the ones who come here, as you do for the most part, with an open spirit of inquiry. (Though I am aware of the threads as a whole and worry about how they appear to readers (and to a certain extent, to the posters.) As I have pointed out, I don’t like to be a chump, and I do believe that some people post here to twist the narrative for political purposes.)

              I don’t actually think that even if anyone listened to us “alarmists”, that anything can be done. I come here in the hope that there may be some kind of benefit to a little advanced warning about specifics, and because misery loves company.

              The question is whether our loyalty is to the group- the club of people who post, if you will- or to an unseen, unspoken “audience” who may or may not be reading.

              I’ve got more attention writing Coach Lloyd than anything I’ve written here in the past. And yes, it feels good.

              But it makes me wary. Do we allow the buzz of getting a little more screen time and response to influence what we write?

              Do we allow the instinct to counter-punch an obscure argument and show that we know our stuff get ahead of the fact that seven of these comments in a single thread makes our general position (that anthropogenic climate change is real) seem to be under siege, when it is not?

              When somebody posts bad arguments, I will take it on myself to refute them, right along.

              Javier wants to be seen as a legitimate alternative opinion: he hopes to do it by showing that serious people acknowledge and engage him.

              He doesn’t get that by posting stuff here: he gets it by people responding to him. The blog doesn’t legitimize people: the posters do.

              As I have pointed out before, all Javier and those like him need to do to win here (by their terms) is to seed doubt. They don’t have to win points, especially when the points require two BSc’s to fully comprehend.

              Doubt is enough.

              We don’t have to play by their rules, and we don’t have to allow the mechanics of our medium (posting order and volume, for instance) to work for Javier.

              If no one responds, his volume (both word count and metaphorical) goes down.

              End of story.

              The open thread lives and dies with the posters. Ron and Dennis give us an arena, but we decide who we will engage with.

              We do not have a responsibility to re-iterate our discussions over and over because Javier demands attention.

              We are not going to change his mind. The number of people who will understand the refutal of his points is minimal. And I won’t bother to read it, and may in fact miss something interesting someone said because it’s buried under a pile of Javier crap.

              Doug and George have pointed out that they don’t respond to Javier on the subject of climate change. Fred posted “Don’t feed the Trolls.”

              If no one else did either, he’d go away.

              -Lloyd

            8. Not only do I not respond to what some people write, I don’t even read it.

        2. Good one Lloyd.

          Personally I don’t comment on Javier’s remarks; doing so encourages him. Basically he has hijacked this Blog with a lot of presupposing garbage that has nothing to do with science but which effectively frustrates intelligent discussion. I, for one, have picked up a lot of topical info from people like GF and Fred that I really appreciate. And, as a (retired) geologist/geophysicist with an strong engineering background and 40 years working experience as a professional geo-scientist I can occasionally contribute a clarifying tidbit (admittedly not often). Of course, if Dennis and Ron want to continue to allow a disruptive zealot to misappropriate the Blog, that’s their prerogative.

          1. Basically he has hijacked this Blog with a lot of presupposing garbage that has nothing to do with science but which effectively frustrates intelligent discussion.

            Well here is some intelligent discussion as an antidote to the immense volume of recent bullshit from all the science denialists, trolls and other assorted ideologically motivated bottom feeders, who have shown up here lately. Perhaps our discussions have hit a sensitive nerve or two.

            .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbqlhPo5VC4

            AGU’s Arctic Report Card 2016 (December 2016)
            Understanding Climate Change

            This attached image depicts how the typical anti science types would like the public at large to deal with reality! Generally speaking it is a failed strategy.
            .

            1. I propose that increased volume of climate change denials correlates with increased global support for climate change action.

            2. For China, climate change is no hoax – it's a business and political opportunity: “Why, then, is China is pressing ahead with low-carbon initiatives? My research suggests several motives. Chinese leaders want to improve the quality of life in their nation’s cities by reducing air pollution; win large shares of promising export markets for green technologies; and increase China’s ‘soft power’ in international relations. Taking aggressive action to cut carbon emissions helps China in all three areas.”

              “Using data from around the world, economists have found that when countries develop economically they move up an ‘energy ladder.’ The richer a country grows, the more likely it is to swap out cheap polluting fuels in favor of cleaner, more expensive fuels. A natural experiment that occurred in Turkey as natural gas pipelines were built throughout the nation between 2001 and 2014 showed as people gained access to natural gas, air quality improved and mortality rates declined.”

    3. Javier should have been banned long ago. He’s a lost cause and contributes nothing constructive, ever. He’s dishonest in his arguments, lies about his facts, etc. etc. etc.

      Caelan, who is a complete crank who believes we should abandon technology entirely, is much more constructive and interesting.

      1. That’s nonsense, Nathanael, and flame bait to boot, and contributes to the continued erosion of the quality and relevance of the, at least, non-petroleum section of POB, assuming it has any quality or relevance left.

      2. Nathanael,

        I think you are the best example of a troll here. A mixture of absolute ignorance and constant attacks and insults. Run your own blog and ban whoever you wish.

        1. Javier, I wouldn’t answer personal attacks. I either ignore them or give a short seminar to clarify, in a polite fashion, why a particular attack was off the mark.

    1. Old Farmer, here is an older attempt to put pumped storage in a deep iron mine in New Jersey. This one and another in New York state never came to fruition, I think the public does not want them for some reason. I have one pumped storage facility near me but it is on a mountaintop.

      http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/07/business/technology-harnessing-an-underground-source-of-electricity.html

      The Mount Hope project kept trying to come to life but kept getting knocked down, even at a smaller scale.
      http://www.hydroworld.com/articles/2007/05/us-developer-renews-plan-for-mount-hope-pumped-storage.html

    2. Mac,

      Many if not most metal mines tend to generate highly acidic discharges especially where the ore is a sulfide mineral or is associated with pyrite. For this reason, acid mine drainage is considered a serious long-term environmental problem associated with mining. So, mining companies have to jump through hoops to satisfy environmental regulations, hoops that include long term plans to stabilize mine associated water. I think it unlikely that you’d easily get permission to move water around an old mine site (in general). Hydroelectric dams and their associated infrastructure are more likely pumped storage candidates. There is a lot of discussion about this in Norway.

      1. Good point Doug.
        Half the water would need to be removed from the mine and the outflow into a nearby lake would exceed certain allowed mineral limits, even though the mine water had been used as potable water previously.

        “Water from the Mount Hope Mine has been previously used for potable
        purposes, most recently during a drought in 1980. The water quality
        from the mine is within the standards set by the state of New Jersey
        and the USEPA for most parameters measured (Table 3-5). The concen
        trations for iron and chromium were above the standard in a few of the
        samples, but were typically below the recommended levels. Tests for
        organic chemicals found no detectable levels of volatile or semivola
        tile chemicals or pesticides. The water is slightly basic, hard to
        very hard, and contains a high dissolved oxygen content (Halecrest,
        1985).”

        However, during the dewatering process:
        “Mount Hope Lake
        Mine Dewatering – The applicant proposes to dewater the Mount Hope
        Mine complex over a period of one year (Halecrest, 1989a). The staff
        estimates that a pumping rate of up to 8 cfs would be necessary to
        complete dewatering within the proposed schedule. This would result
        in an average discharge from Mount Hope Lake of about 10 cfs, or four
        times the current average discharge of 2.6 cfs. Given that the mine
        water would be pumped to Mount Hope Lake prior to downstream release,
        water quality in Mount Hope Lake would be adversely affected during
        the initial mine dewatering. The lake volume and natural inflow to
        the lake over a year is less than the volume of mine water to be
        pumped into Mount Hope Lake. Therefore, dilution would be limited,
        especially in the low-flow periods, and the concentration of metals in
        Mount Hope Lake would approach those found in Mount Hope Mine. Using
        a precipitation and inflow water balance equation, the staff estimates that the dilution would not be greater than 50 percent. Since the
        mine water concentrations of chromium, copper, iron, manganese, and
        zinc exceed the NJDEP standards for FW-2 waters (Table 3-5), the staff
        concludes that concentrations in Mount Hope Lake would exceed state
        standards during dewatering. Further, copper, iron, and zinc would
        exceed the national criteria for the protection of aquatic life in
        water bodies (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 1986)
        (see Section 4.1.3). In addition, the aluminum, calcium, magnesium,
        potassium, and sodium content of the mine water is quite high.
        Although there are no standards for these metals, their elevated
        concentrations are indicative of hard and highly mineralized water,
        which is not considered desirable. The high levels of metals may also
        affect the lake’s usage as a drinking water source, although it is
        currently not used as a potable water source.”

        Then on into another lake:
        “White Meadow Lake
        Mine Dewatering – During mine dewatering, elevated concentrations of
        some trace metals and high levels of nutrienxs would be discharged to
        White Meadow Lake. These constituents would increase the metals
        loading in White Meadow Lake. The staff used a mass balance equation
        to evaluate the metals loading to White Meadow Lake over time.
        Because limited water quality data are available for White Meadow
        Lake, it was assumed that the initial concentrations of metals
        entering the lake were zero. It was also assumed that White Meadow
        Lake is a well-mixed water body, with no stratification. Dilution of
        the mine water was also taken into account. With mine water dilution
        by normal discharge from Mount Hope Lake, as well as precipitation and
        runoff from the White Meadow Lake watershed, a conservative estimate
        of metals concentrations in White Meadow Lake during mine dewatering
        yields concentrations that reflect the inflow concentrations from
        Mount Hope Lake (Table 4-2). The calculations show a gradual increase
        in metals loading over time, until concentrations in White Meadow Lake
        are equal to concentrations in the influent from Mount Hope Lake.
        Concentrations achieve equilibrium with infliw concentrations within a
        relatively short period because of the small volume of White Meadow
        Lake. Chromium, copper, iron, manganese, and zinc would exceed NJDEP
        standards. Iron and zinc concentrations would exceed the national
        criteria for the protection of aquatic life. The predicted levels of
        aluminum, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium minerals associated
        with hard water conditions indicate that the resulting total hardness
        may exceed average conditions for surface water in this region (Faust
        and Aly, 1983).”

        There was also a lake temperature rise problem that exceeded state limits and a fault line problem.

        FERC environmental impact statement for Mount Hope pumped storage project
        http://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5Qac4dJJfjm7XW0g_vv96-dYKYpLZQ3LPCS8uZQn2Vk6Jzu0ee0EKyr5PxRKzvuSy6PX8jw9MnMMWIOQwfv6QxRmE1w-fgOvHA1KtNx9y0ovuQcKVNLmEq9_auY3W7aTgsYg2DtgtO1bsEC7tUsy9qxeq4VTFGZD8WZK6hNY61-d_R0Px-56JKZTEjxWmytkCVnlDOS5nKf8xVJ5HcHUcxPfcl3xwLMhDNwmjCuYTNqCvyLJzX9sgwY4lJNmIifO_iBFaXPJQ7UVSBQGzGrYsyIWz1eT-HzD5xWeIxOJowsiYSIuSTno

        1. Yeah, I was speaking in general; there’ll be many exceptions. I doubt you’d get permission to move water around in an open pit copper mine (sulfides) but an iron deposit (oxides) would be different. Most mines out my way are porphyry copper (sulfide) deposits with lots of associated pyrite and serious acid water issues.

          1. The Mount Hope project never got permission. It breached several levels of minerals controlled by state law. I don’t know why they did not implement water treatment to remove some of the minerals.
            There was a temperature breach also, which would have meant a cooling tower to keep the pumped lake lower in temperature. Though I do not have any idea why a lake directly sourced from the mine anyway and used as the top water source for pumping would need a temperature restraint, it would not be a living lake.

            They can’t even get a railroad put in now on an existing railbed for commuter traffic, let alone a pumped storage facility.

            1. Hi Doug, GF,

              Thanks for replies. I have only one year of intro level geology, and that back in the dark ages, but I’m better grounded in chemistry and read a lot, and I assume the reason using old mines for pumped storage is so seldom mentioned ties directly to the things you guys have to say.

              Another issue of course would be that installing the large amount of machinery and concrete, etc, needed would probably be very expensive, in relation to the capacity of the proposed system. It seems unlikely that very many old mines have enough excavated volume deep enough for pumped storage to scale up sufficiently.

              And while the geology of some mines might be such that you could continuously pump water up and let it run back down over and over , for years, in huge quantities, I strongly suspect that there would be LOTS of problems with cave ins and shifting stone and soil and the water finding new ways to escape the mine and get out into the nearest stream.

              And about this:

              “They can’t even get a railroad put in now on an existing railbed for commuter traffic, let alone a pumped storage facility.”

              It’s very sad but apparently true that in some places, and probably a LOT of places, true believing, environmental purists insist on SNOW WHITE solutions, ZERO gray allowed, or NOTHING.

              So the good people of this community seem to be allowing such purists to shoot the community’s collective toes off, by blocking a commuter rail line, thus virtually guaranteeing more automobile traffic.

              The people up that way are evidently sold on paying the higher costs of more auto traffic in order to avoid building anything new in their yards. Typical naked ape behavior.

              It will be amusing later on if communities with wind farms find ways to implement substantial tax burdens on their local wind industry, structured in such a way that the costs of this tax burden falls almost entirely on people outside the producing community- on people who could have wind farms of their own, in their own community, except they wouldn’t allow any wind farms to be built.

              The same observation might also apply to solar farms, but there doesn’t seem to be even a hundredth as much opposition to proposed solar farms as there is to proposed wind farms.

            2. It just so happens my region has some very deep mines (2000 to 6000 feet) and the rock is stable. There are state law limits on a number of minerals that would enter lakes and streams. I just don’t think the laws take into account such things as pumped water facilities and need to be modified. They are in place to protect the aquatic life in the area and water sources.
              When push comes to shove, the laws will be modified or exceptions made to get these facilities built, if people are still interested in building them. They are long term profit machines and provide for the public interest, so several will probably be built in the area. One has been operating for decades now.

  14. Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation

    “The covariation of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and temperature in Antarctic ice-core records suggests a close link between CO2 and climate during the Pleistocene ice ages. The role and relative importance of CO2 in producing these climate changes remains unclear, however, in part because the ice-core deuterium record reflects local rather than global temperature. Here we construct a record of global surface temperature from 80 proxy records and show that temperature is correlated with and generally lags CO2 during the last (that is, the most recent) deglaciation. Differences between the respective temperature changes of the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere parallel variations in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation recorded in marine sediments. These observations, together with transient global climate model simulations, support the conclusion that an antiphased hemispheric temperature response to ocean circulation changes superimposed on globally in-phase warming driven by increasing CO2 concentrations is an explanation for much of the temperature change at the end of the most recent ice age.”

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/abs/nature10915.html

    1. Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation

      I hope you are not trying to provide arguments to Oldfarmermac with this article. You really picked a bad example.

      You see ice cores show very clearly at both poles that temperatures precede CO2 changes.

      Since this evidence cannot be disputed, Shakun et al., 2012 attempted a trick. They took 80 proxies, mostly ocean, to try to show that CO2 precedes temperatures, causing warming everywhere except at the poles. This logical challenge inexplicably managed to pass peer review despite its serious flaws that Rud Istvan exposed in his book Blowing Smoke.

      Plotting proxies deglaciation onset and end shows a huge disagreement between them. We know that deglaciation started around 18,000 BP and ended around 9,000 BP based on sea level rise. However proxies used by Shakun et al., show disparities of many thousands of years and do not correspond with the actual warming. No conclusion about lead or lag can possibly be concluded from such jumble of proxies. Over half of the proxies began to warm before CO2 began to rise, and over half continued to warm after CO2 stopped rising.

      Plotting these 80 proxies (green dots) versus several measurements of CO2 (colored dots) shows two things:

      – It cannot be concluded what Shakun et al., conclude.
      – Shakun et al., truncated their CO2 record (black circles) at -6000 BP to avoid showing that since then there was no correlation between CO2 and temperatures.

      So despite what Shakun et al. say, the best evidence available (ice cores) is still showing CO2 lagging temperatures.

      1. More blurbs, no references and unreadable fuzzy pictures. Impressive.

        1. Ah, but here is the data from Shakun et al., 2012.

          http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/extref/nature10915-s2.xls

          Download it, plot it and prove me wrong.

          Or we can examine a more recent paper on this issue and see what it says of Shakun et al., 2012

          Brook, Edward J. “Leads and lags at the end of the last Ice Age.” Science 339.6123 (2013): 1042-1043.
          http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.420.1241&rep=rep1&type=pdf

          “Of course, questions remain. One is how to very precisely relate to the timing of CO2 changes to climate changes recorded in other paleoclimate archives (Shakun et al., 2012), given differences in dating methods.”

          Ouch. It highlights the dating problems of Shakun et al., that I have mentioned.

          The complex, variable and error-prone dating of oceanic proxies cannot give the answer that Shakun et al. wanted, so they invented it. The much more dependable dating of ice cores give the opposite answer.

          1. Rud Istvan is not a credible resource.
            Ice cores only give a point data source, not a global source.

            1. You don’t have to believe anything. Check the data by yourself.

              Ocean proxies cannot be used to date with enough precision changes in temperature to resolve this question. And Istvan and me are not the only ones saying it. Edward Brook says it in Science.

            2. “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
              —Soeren kierkegaard

            3. The issue the shakun types can’t answer is what triggers the co2 increase they claim precedes the temperature increase? On the other hand, insolation changes due to subtle orbital effects can explain why temperature starts rising, and how this in turn increases co2.

            4. That doesn’t bother them. They program their models to undergo GHGs oscillations. They call that science, even lacking any evidence at all. It is useless expensive junk.

          2. Hi Fernando,

            The Orbital configuration can indeed cause local melting during summer and both reduce albedo (leading to warming) as well as lead to vegetation changes which will increase atmospheric CO2. Very little is known with precision for global temperatures from 6000 BP to 20,000 BP.

            From the Brook Paper, in the line following that quoted by Javier:

            The time period around 18,000 years in the ice core record has been difficult to place firmly in an absolute chronology. New annually resolved ice cores and better correlations of ice cores from both hemispheres may alleviate this problem.

            and

            Their analysis indicates that CO2 concentrations and Antarctic temperature were tightly coupled throughout the deglaciation, within a quoted uncertainty of less than 200 years (see figure p 1043).
            Support for this conclusion comes from recent independent work of Pedro et al. ( 4). They used existing CO2 and temperature proxies from coastal Antarctic cores with smaller gas age–ice age differences, but somewhat noisier CO2 data and complex climate histories. They concluded that CO2 lagged temperature by less than 400 years on average over the entire deglaciation and could not exclude the possibility of a slight lead.

            Link to paper below (Javier’s didn’t work for me)

            https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/seminars/pdfs/Brook_Science_2013.pdf

            Note that a tight coupling indicates neither a lead or lag, the resolution is only 200 years so the question of lead or lag is not answered empirically, based on this paper (a comment really as it is very brief).

            1. Note that a tight coupling indicates neither a lead or lag, the resolution is only 200 years so the question of lead or lag is not answered empirically

              Sure, but the average between not excluding the possibility of a slight lead and less than 400 years lag by CO2, still falls in a lag by CO2, as all the rest of the studies using ice cores.

              Nobody has defended a lead by CO2 using ice cores, yet Nathanael believes the evidence is becoming very strong. It is so but only in the sense that lies repeated often enough end up being believed, specially by the one repeating them.

            2. I simply don’t see a physical mechanism which allows CO2 to lead. And to be honest, I’ve been reading about this subject for several years, and all I see is an increasing amount of garbage. I’m glad trump won so we can have some housecleaning and stop the incredible amount of bs that’s pouring forth.

            3. Hi Fernando,

              I agree a lead in the CO2 rise might not make sense and your explanation of orbital changes causing more northern hemisphere insolation and the resulting melting of snow ad ice would lead to more warming, then rising ocean temperatures would lead to a release of some of the dissolved CO2 in the ocean and CO2 levels would rise leading to further feedbacks.

              The lead makes physical sense to me, but it need not be by thousands of years, a couple of 100 years seems more likely. In addition, on a global basis we might see warming and melting in the Northern hemisphere while the Southern hemisphere is cooling. In that case we could potentially see Global temperatures lag the rise in CO2, if the source of CO2 was the Northern ocean while globally temperatures remained fixed.

              It just requires a little imagination. Remember that the poles are not representative of global temperatures as there tends to be polar amplification of temperature changes.

      1. From all what I have read or understand more scientists in the climate fields every day are coming round to the idea of CO2 increases following temperature increases because of the evidence in the ancient past. More people need understanding of CO2 being a trace gas providing many good benefits to plants. That means also many good benefits to the animals and humans who eat up the plant materials.

        1. You are wrong. The evidence in the geological record is becoming very strong that CO2 increases PRECEDED temperature increases. And caused them.

          You are even wronger. While there are some plants which like high CO2, *they do not include our major food crops*. Uh-oh. A world of lots more inedible weeds growing profusely is not helpful to humans.

          You also have perhaps never heard of ocean acidification, which caused the major part of the P-Tr extinction (the biggest ever), and is due to CO2 levels quite directly.

          1. The evidence in the geological record is becoming very strong that CO2 increases PRECEDED temperature increases.

            That’s simply untrue. The best evidence is that CO2 does not precede temperature increases. Lots of bibliography on that.

            1. CO2 just did precede temperature increase, at a high rate also in both CO2 and temperature.

            2. No it didn’t. Temperatures started to rise in 1850, before any significant increase in CO2.

              And not everybody agrees that CO2 is leading temperatures now:

              Humlum, Ole, Kjell Stordahl, and Jan-Erik Solheim. “The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature.” Global and Planetary Change 100 (2013): 51-69.
              http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/18208928/233408642/name/phase+relation+between+atmospheric+carbon+and+global+temperature.pdf

              “Using data series on atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperatures we investigate the phase relation (leads/lags) between these for the period January 1980 to December 2011.

              We find a high degree of co-variation between all data series except 7) and 8), but with changes in CO2 always lagging changes in temperature. The maximum positive correlation between CO2 and temperature is found for CO2 lagging 11-12 months in relation to global sea surface temperature, 9.5-10 months to global surface air temperature, and about 9 months to global lower troposphere temperature.”

        2. You are right in a general sense. This particular thread is full of baloney, personal attacks, and imaginary technology like devices that use CO2 to make fuels 🙂

    1. High speed trains should be shaking on their rails.

      While high speed trains have may still have a niche or two on land, they were never very good candidates for high speed trans oceanic crossings.

          1. Yes Fred that is the Polar Express heading for Santa’s workshop.

  16. Looks like the knowledge about methane release on Arctic warming is already out there. Abrupt climate change at the end of the last glaciation drove large methane releases.
    Abrupt climate change at the end of the last glacial period inferred from trapped air in polar ice
    “The last glacial period was terminated by an abrupt warming event in the North Atlantic similar to 15,000 years before the present, and warming events of similar age have been reported from Low Latitudes. Understanding the mechanism of this termination requires that the precise relative timing of abrupt climate warming in the tropics versus the North Atlantic be known. Nitrogen and argon isotopes in trapped air in Greenland ice show that the Greenland Summit warmed 9 +/- 3 degrees C over a period of several decades, beginning 14,672 years ago. Atmospheric methane concentrations rose abruptly over a similar to 50-year period and began their increase 20 to 30 years after the onset of the abrupt Greenland warming. These data suggest that tropical climate became warmer or wetter (or both) similar to 20 to 80 years after the onset of Greenland warming, supporting a North Atlantic rather than a tropical trigger for the climate event.”
    http://scrippsscholars.ucsd.edu/jseveringhaus/content/abrupt-climate-change-end-last-glacial-period-inferred-trapped-air-polar-ice

    “Nisbet suspects that methane hydrates in the seafloor played a crucial role.
    Sediments deposited beneath the landslide layer were rich in organic materials,
    which produce methane when they decay. The high pressures and low temperatures
    in the ocean would trap the methane as icy hydrates in the pores of undersea
    sediment.

    As the sea level dropped, the pressure at the ocean floor would have fallen,
    making the methane hydrates increasingly unstable. Rothwell says that what
    triggered the Mediterranean slide is unclear. But once the seafloor started to
    slip, methane would have begun to escape from underneath, fuelling the
    landslide. “The escaping gas can lubricate the slide,” says Rothwell.

    The result was a giant slump that spread 500 cubic kilometres of mud over the
    seafloor. Rothwell suspects the landslide would have let loose tsunamis all
    around the Mediterranean coast: “The destructive power must have been
    phenomenal.” ”

    https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15721271-100-sudden-heat-did-disaster-in-the-mediterranean-end-the-last-ice-age/

  17. Four Reasons why the Trump administration should not doubt the Chinese commitment to the Paris Climate agreement | The Huffington Post: “Local leaders across the country discussed with us how they are making the energy revolution a cornerstone of job creation and economic growth in their city or region. In the minds of Chinese government leaders, energy as a source of economic competitiveness no longer revolves around mine workers digging fossil fuel resources out from deep in the ground. It is much more about researchers in lab coats, improving the energy technologies of the future that are rapidly making clean electricity abundant, ubiquitous, and cheap. Industry leaders and real estate developers recognize the early paybacks and competitive advantages associated with energy efficiency and often enabled by IT. And investment and export opportunities in these new technologies are on everyone’s mind.”

    1. I can visualize millions of Chinese technicians wearing lab coats, pedaling slowly on stationary bikes hooked up to electric generators.

  18. China ready for climate leadership says UN- Nikkei Asian Review: “As Haoliang Xu, assistant secretary general of the U.N. and director of the regional bureau for Asia and the Pacific of the U.N. Development Programme, said: ‘Economic basics will induce countries to go for greener production of energy and economy. Anyone who does not recognize this kind of change, and continues to go for coal-based technologies, they will just be driven out of the market.’

    That move away from polluting, carbon-intensive industry presents enormous opportunities for China’s private sector, according to Alan Li, CEO of China Merchants New Energy, a clean energy subsidiary of China Merchants Group, a sprawling state-owned conglomerate.

    ‘A new era is coming,’ Li said. ‘It’s the entire replacement of the old economics with the low-carbon economics. The new economy will be as big as the old economy, or even bigger.'”

    1. If the US doesn’t get with the program, watch for China to slap carbon tarriffs on US goods…

  19. Santorum: Exxon Mobil became ‘alarmist’ on climate change under Tillerson | TheHill: “Exxon Mobil shifted its public position on climate change after Tillerson took over as its CEO in 2006.

    Before his tenure, the company publicly doubted mainstream climate science. But after he took over, the company said there is ‘no question’ human activity has contributed to global warming.

    Exxon Mobil now backs a tax on carbon emissions, has a new internal accounting measure for emissions and has stopped funding groups that reject climate science. Whether Tillerson himself holds those positions is an open question, and one Democrats will likely probe during his confirmation process.”

  20. Two Faces, One Voice?

    “Climate change is an engineering problem!”
    Rex Tillerson CEO Exxon Mobile

    “No, unfortunately it isn’t!
    Engineers are the classic case of people who know just enough to be dangerous. Someone with Rex Tillerson’s power and limited understanding of complex systems is one very very dangerous dude!” ~ Fred Magyar

    “…you can stick your head in the sand and be a neoluddite…” ~ Fred Magyar

    “Which BTW, were these incredibly fine stone barbs inset into stone spear heads, which gave the weak little apes the ability to… exterminate all our homo cousins such as the neanderthals. …and a bunch of peace loving neanderthals… etc… but at the end of day you are about 50,000 years too late to complain about things as they are, the ball started rolling a long time ago…” ~ Fred Magyar

    1. Fred’s point is that technology is a demon which you can’t put back in the bottle. You just have to deal with it. Trying to put it back in the bottle simply does not work.

      His point is practical. You can’t destroy all records of how to create spears and prevent anyone from creating them again… doesn’t work.

      I *wish* we could do that with nuclear fission, but bluntly, doesn’t work.

      1. Are you Fred’s nanny or what?

        I just finished suggesting that technology isn’t exactly technology if it is supposed to be about improving all lives, not just the lives of the so-called 1%.

        We shouldn’t really be caring much about putting ‘it’ back in some bottle if it works the way it’s supposed to, do we? I don’t see our workweeks getting any shorter or our planet getting any better do you? Why’s that? ‘Technology’ again? Well if we are using it to fix it, that sounds an awful lot like a racket, doesn’t it? Disaster capitalism?

        Fred wrote that ‘it’s too late to complain about things’: Is Fred ‘complaining’ about engineers and Tillerson? Sure looks that way. Let Fred speak for himself, although, then again, I’m unsure he can, so ok, thanks for speaking for Fred. LOL

        After-a-tea-making Edit:

        Put another way, Fred may agree with me and not even realize it when he made the remark about Tillerson, engineering and ‘dangerous’…

        While I like to think that I (also) have some good ideas WRT technology and science and where they could go and what they could do, I have practically no say WRT their policy. But do you know who does or will? Take a guess. Because he and people like him will determine science and technology policy, such as WRT funding, education and whatnot. Who do you think? Let me get his pic– it will be in my next comment…

        1. Have you ever read _The Gods Themselves_ by Isaac Asimov? I strongly recommend it. The point it’s making might prevent you from tilting at windmills. I understood Fred’s point; I was trying to explain it to you. He certainly agrees with you about Tillerson.

          I have a pretty negative and pessimistic attitude towards humanity, for reference. Sometimes I think of the problem as one of how to manipulate a bunch of stupid monkeys to prevent us from fouling our own cage and all dying. It’s obvious that rational fact-based argument won’t work on most of the monkeys.

        2. Now, to be fair to Trump, he’s a drop in the ocean… well, maybe lake, WRT my concerns, and he may even prove to pleasantly surprise people (hopium alert), but my point remains.

          …Ok, I just read your subsequent comment. I’m tempted to agree with it, and have heard of the expression, which I’ll look up.

          One thought before getting back to the tea is that my and others’ evolutions– or yours for that matter– don’t have to include clinging to particular social organizations or modes we feel have epic fail baked in. Species can and do branch off. So we don’t necessarily have to convince anyone of anything in particular so to speak. We can preach to our choirs.
          We just have to survive long enough to outlast the bad-acting ‘tribes’ that can’t figure some things out for themselves, despite our best intentions and efforts, wilful ignorance and all that.

          Back to the tea…

        3. “the way it’s supposed t0?”

          “it is supposed to be about improving all lives”

          Your kidding, right ?

          1. Are you kidding? So it’s supposed to wreck lives then? Is that your punch line?

            1. No, it’s a tool. It’s what you make of it and there are always trade offs.

            2. A tool or tools of survival, thriving and comfort, or of discomfort and near-extinction or worse? What do we make of them then… with our supposedly brilliant intelligence?

              Parable [Conundrum] Of The Violent Tribe (46-second video with Ran Prieur)

              What would happen to an apex predator that transcended a predator-prey arms race?
              We may be seeing it play out ‘from within’…

              Human Intelligence and The Environment

              “I’LL BEGIN with an interesting debate that took place some years ago between Carl Sagan, the well-known astrophysicist, and Ernst Mayr, the grand old man of American biology. They were debating the possibility of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. And Sagan, speaking from the point of view of an astrophysicist, pointed out that there are innumerable planets just like ours. There is no reason they shouldn’t have developed intelligent life. Mayr, from the point of view of a biologist, argued that it’s very unlikely that we’ll find any. And his reason was, he said, we have exactly one example: Earth. So let’s take a look at Earth.

              And what he basically argued is that intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation. And he had a good argument. He pointed out that … as you go up the scale of what we call intelligence, they are less and less successful. By the time you get to mammals, there are very few of them as compared with, say, insects. By the time you get to humans, the origin of humans may be 100,000 years ago… We are kind of misled now because there are a lot of humans around, but that’s a matter of a few thousand years, which is meaningless from an evolutionary point of view. His argument was, you’re just not going to find intelligent life elsewhere, and you probably won’t find it here for very long either… He also added, a little bit ominously, that the average life span of a species, of the billions that have existed, is about 100,000 years, which is roughly the length of time that modern humans have existed.

              With the environmental crisis, we’re now in a situation where we can decide whether Mayr was right or not. If nothing significant is done about it, and pretty quickly, then he will have been correct: human intelligence is indeed a lethal mutation. Maybe some humans will survive, but it will be scattered and nothing like a decent existence, and we’ll take a lot of the rest of the living world along with us.”

            3. What you continue to fail to grasp is that the universe isn’t here for your or anyone else’s benefit.
              It just is. Humans have evolved subject to evolutionary pressures just as all other organisms have.

              Modern humans fall into the category of what is known in biology as a super organism. As an example of a super organism from the insect world you can’t understand the emergent properties of the colony as a whole by studying individual ants. You need to study the super organism within the context of it’s place and activities within the entire ecosystem.

              Maybe try reading a few papers and books by E. O. Wilson.

            4. Good morning in the Americas, Fred…

              Have you had your cuppa?

              Synthesis and/or somesuch seems to be relatively chronically missing from your commentary, what do you think?
              I mean, regurgitating some fragments of knowledge gained from a very limited number of books in sweeping pronouncements and making suggestions to read them will only go so far. I guess they will impress some people though. You could always stick a few plucked peacock feathers in Your bottom Tube, dance around, record and upload it, and give us the You Tube link for added effect if you think it might help.

              Synthesis could be viewed perhaps as a kind of mutation, incidentally, which takes the basic code, say something from E.O. Wilson, and evolves it.

              Humans are not ants but even ants can mutate and evolve and break from their colonies and from the rules that govern them, and start new ones. So seems to say the universe anyway. Through me.
              The universe that created us.
              For our benefit.
              Because we are benefiting from life and from within it.
              In fact, we even have a word for it; benefit.
              No point in inventing a word for something that doesn’t exist is there?

              Ditto with the word, ethics, incidentally.

              Have a good day. Let us know if and when you decide on the feathers.

            5. “Not all ants have the same kind of societies. The Australian bulldog ants are among the biggest and most basal of ants. Like virtually all ants, they are eusocial, but their social behaviour is poorly developed compared to other species. Each individual hunts alone, using her large eyes instead of chemical senses to find prey…

              Extreme specialists among these slave-raiding ants, such as the Amazon ants, are incapable of feeding themselves and need captured workers to survive. Captured workers of the enslaved species Temnothorax have evolved a counter strategy, destroying just the female pupae of the slave-making Protomognathus americanus, but sparing the males (who don’t take part in slave-raiding as adults)…” ~ Wikipedia

              “E. O. Wilson has claimed that humans are eusocial, but his arguments have been refuted by a large number of evolutionary biologists, who note that humans do not have division of reproductive labor.” ~ Wikipedia

              And so on…

        4. Hi Caelan,

          I know a few one percenters fairly well, with two of them being close relatives, and the rest being acquaintances for one reason or another, including my doctor, lawyer, dentist, some business people I have worked for, etc.

          I even know a couple of honest to Jesus rich people well enough that they will at least say hello to me on the street.

          You are making a fool of yourself, pardon my blunt language, when you talk about technology being for the one percent.

          I suggest you go camping in the woods , someplace it’s not TOO cold, and take nothing with you except your wits, plus whatever knowledge you may possess about living in the rough. Guaranteed, you will come out of the woods ready to eat ANY sort of junk food within forty eight hours!

          You may be too wrapped up in your own fantasy world to appreciate it, but probably three fourths of all the people you know by name would either be DEAD, or would never have been born, because their parents died too young, if it weren’t for the technology you go round bad mouthing to such an excessive degree.

          Now I do recognize that you score some points occasionally, but you are NOT converting any body to your pov. Lighten up, and you will be more successful.

    2. I bet Tillerson is the master of the universe when it comes to understanding complex systems. I cooperated in an effort together with Exxon engineers and scientists to develop a very sophisticated dynamic system model, and that was about 20 plus years ago. The Exxon employees seemed to think these integrated models were very useful and had no objections to the budgets. This tells me they were already training their engineers in the basic principles.

      I notice there’s a lot of misfiring in the media when it comes to this guy. I think he’s an excellent choice. Definitely better than any Secretary of State since Baker.

      1. “Janitor Jim” Baker was great at cleaning up messes.
        And they were common with the crowd he was hanging with.

      2. I’m not confident he’s make it through Congress. He’d have to sell off much of his business holdings and the recent leak about him being on the board of a Russian/US oil company will cause some issues.

        He may be smart, but he may be too associated with foreign businesses.

        1. He’s going to sell everything. Gets a special tax break written into the law for this type of circumstance, so he’s probably super happy.

  22. A climate change skeptic weighs in on climate change conspiracies, i.e. climate gate and the evil climate change deniers:

    2016 Global Temperature Drop – No more “warming”?

    El Niño trumps CO2. As before, no global warming since 1998, the last peak El Niño year.

    Mother Nature is apparently an evil “climate denier”, and by al-Gore’s fatwas, should be put into prison to shut her up.

    1. The Earth’s overall temperature has been slowly recovering — warming — over the last several hundred years from the cold conditions of the Little Ice Age (LIA), which was at its most cold and chilly in the 1700s, and ended only around 1850. That’s why nearly all the graphs of global temperature show a steady increase since that time, and why some mountain glaciers (but not all) which expanded dramatically during the LIA continue to slowly melt back today. And that is also why the CO2-deceivers will always show graphs of global temperatures starting only after the LIA, so as to dramatically inflame people’s fears about global warming, and to blame the Evil Capitalist West and the Industrial Revolution (which began in earnest only in the early 1800s) for the warming. But before the LIA there was the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), which was warmer than today, with even smaller Alpine glaciers, and a lot less Arctic floating and coastal-ice, with far fewer icebergs and calmer North Atlantic seas — allowing the Vikings to sail out in their low-draft long-boats to establish colonies on Iceland and SW Greenland, and for vineyards to flourish in higher latitudes which today would be too chilly for grapes and such, and without significant sea-level rise or problems with polar bear or penguin populations. Those Arctic species are doing better today than they were 50 years ago, due to continued wildlife protections. What problems have come for polar wildlife has more to do with human hunting and loss of wild-land habitat, than to climate changes or ice abundance. In short, “old-fashioned” environmental issues need a re-emphasis, not the new hocus-pocus of CO2 fabrications and hysteria.

    2. The El Nino Southern Oscillation, which has been episodic since thousands of years ago, creates warm temperatures in the Pacific without any human agency, and this has a powerful effect upon global temperatures, as noted above in the graphic. The ENSO has the strongest correlations to the periods of greatest global temperature rise over the period of record. The peak temperatures of the 20th Century were either during the 1930s and in the late 1990s, times of powerful El Nino episodes. So whatever is driving the longer-term climate cycles which gave us the MWP and LIA, there is an additional factor which gives us the ENSO. All of it affects global temperature, and this does not even begin to address the issue of what created the major Ice Ages and the Interglacial Periods, of which human beings have enjoyed since c.10,000 BC. Ocean temperatures have a powerful effect upon air temperatures, affecting atmospheric humidity and cloud cover most dramatically, far more than the natural trace-gas CO2, which the oceans, volcanoes and even plow agriculture releases into the atmosphere at levels far greater than what is created by burning of fossil fuels.

    https://obrlnews.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/co2-theory-hit-hard-by-recent-global-cooling/

    “The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”
    – George Orwell

    We need to keelhaul Javier, make him pay a high price, the lies and propaganda disseminated with his own personal climate science, backed by his insistence to cite empirical evidence, are abhorrent, just terrible. He probably should be arrested and thrown into a dungeon equipped with the Rack and the Iron Maiden.

    Clearly, a new inquisition is necessary to silence the critics of global anthropogenic climate change caused by the use of fossil fuels by humans.

    We need a Pope of Science to establish a set of laws to counter the deception and outright fraud by these so-called scientists with their skepticism and cynicism pretending to have the knowledge to counter any AGW and climate change in general. Something must be done to bring a hasty end to the heresy.

    It is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.

    har

  23. A 230 plus page report on abrupt climate change. How do we anticipate an abrupt change?

    Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises
    “Climate is changing, forced out of the range of the last million years by levels of
    carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases not seen in Earth’s atmosphere for
    a very long time. Lacking action by the world’s nations, it is clear that the planet
    will be warmer, sea level will rise, and patterns of rainfall will change. But the future is
    also partly uncertain—there is considerable uncertainty about how we will arrive at
    that different climate. Will the changes be gradual, allowing natural systems and societal
    infrastructure to adjust in a timely fashion? Or will some of the changes be more
    abrupt, crossing some threshold or “tipping point” to change so fast that the time between
    when a problem is recognized and when action is required shrinks to the point
    where orderly adaptation is not possible?
    A study of Earth’s climate history suggests the inevitability of “tipping points”—
    thresholds beyond which major and rapid changes occur when crossed—that lead to
    abrupt changes in the climate system. The history of climate on the planet—as read
    in archives such as tree rings, ocean sediments, and ice cores—is punctuated with
    large changes that occurred rapidly, over the course of decades to as little as a few
    years. There are many potential tipping points in nature, as described in this report,
    and many more that we humans create in our own systems. The current rate of carbon
    emissions is changing the climate system at an accelerating pace, making the chances
    of crossing tipping points all the more likely.”

    http://www.mari-odu.org/information/library/documents/18373.pdf

    1. Full of misinformation apparently.

      The current rate of carbon emissions is changing the climate system at an accelerating pace

      There is no acceleration of climate change. One of the strong evidences that CO2 can only be partially responsible. No acceleration in the rise of temperatures, no acceleration in the rise of sea levels, no acceleration in the melting of sea ice (no Arctic sea ice melting in 9 years), no increase in extreme weather events. Nada, nothing. Climate change as if we were not increasing tremendously our emissions. Very suspicious, and clearly not what was predicted from hypothesis. Of course the worsening is always around the corner.

      2. Hi Javier,

        Compare 1886 to 1950 to 1951-2015 for Global Land Ocean temperature, I have picked 65 year intervals so we filter out “long waves”. I believe you will find that the rate of change of Global temperature is different over these two periods. The rate of change will vary over shorter intervals due to ENSO, and volcanic eruptions.

        Chart below uses Berkeley Earth Land Ocean Temperature data and compares the 1886-1950 trend (0.76 C per century) with the 1951-2015 trend (1.19 C per century).

        http://berkeleyearth.org/data/

        1. Hi Dennis,

          I would have preferred ending in 2014, since 2015 is an outlier due to the strong El Niño. But anyway:

          1.19 C/century – 0.76 C/century = 0.43

          0.43 x 100 / 1.19 = 36%

          With CO2 the warming has become 36% higher than previous. Natural warming is still 64%.

          Who knows. It could be more or less correct. I can certainly live with that.

          Still rate of warming has not accelerated. This graph is very clear that the first derivative of warming does not show an increase despite a huge amount of CO2 put in the atmosphere. Counter intuitive.

          1. Hi Javier,

            What causes the “natural” warming?

            Don’t forget that atmospheric CO2 increased from 291 ppm to 311 ppm from 1886 to 1950. ln(311/291)*3/ln(2)=0.3C, possibly changes in aerosols might explain why temperatures rose more than this (0.5 C increase for the trendline). Part of the natural increase was the Global recovery of temperatures after the Krakatoa eruption in 1883.

            From 1950 to 2015 atmospheric CO2 increased from 311 ppm to 399 ppm. ln(399/311)*3/ln(2)= 1.1C, the trendline gives a rise in temperature of 0.8 C, perhaps Pinatabo in 1991 slowed the rise in temperature to a small degree, anthropogenic aerosols may also have slowed temperature rise to some degree.

            1. A regression of natural log of atmospheric CO2 and global land ocean temperature, yields a very simple “model” whose trend line has the same slope as the data from 1850 to 2015.

              We have a reason why increased CO2 would cause warming and the correlation of data with theory indicates which way the causation arrow points (increased CO2 in the atmosphere is the reason for the warming rather than the reverse) the feedback causes confusion, but we know man is dumping lots of CO2 in the atmosphere, the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere since 1850 has not been caused by the rise in temperature.

    2. GF,

      Surely you aren’t suggesting that the people listed below even remotely approach having the depth of knowledge on climate change exhibited by a certain individual who has been posting here lately. That would be unfathomable!

      COMMITTEE ON UNDERSTANDING AND MONITORING
      ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS IMPACTS
      JAMES W.C. WHITE (Chair), University of Colorado, Boulder
      RICHARD B. ALLEY, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
      DAVID E. ARCHER, University of Chicago, IL
      ANTHONY D. BARNOSKY, University of California, Berkeley
      JONATHAN FOLEY, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul
      RONG FU, University of Texas, Austin
      MARIKA M. HOLLAND, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO
      M. SUSAN LOZIER, Duke University, Durham, NC
      JOHANNA SCHMITT, University of California, Davis
      LAURENCE C. SMITH, University of California, Los Angeles
      GEORGE SUGIHARA, University of California, San Diego
      DAVID W. J. THOMPSON, Colorado State University, Fort Collins
      ANDREW J. WEAVER, University of Victoria, British Columbia
      STEVEN C. WOFSY, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
      NRC Staff
      EDWARD DUNLEA, Senior Program Officer
      CLAUDIA MENGELT, Senior Program Officer
      AMANDA PURCELL, Research Associate
      ROB GREENWAY, Program Associate

      BOARD ON ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES AND CLIMATE
      ANTONIO J. BUSALACCHI, JR. (Chair), University of Maryland, College Park
      GERALD A. MEEHL (Vice Chair), National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder,
      Colorado
      LANCE F. BOSART, State University of New York, Albany
      MARK A. CANE, Columbia University, Palisades, NY
      SHUYI S. CHEN, University of Miami, FL
      HEIDI CULLEN, Climate Central, Princeton, NJ
      PAMELA EMCH, Northrup Grumman Aerospace Systems, Redondo Beach, CA
      WILLIAM B. GAIL, Global Weather Corporation, Boulder, CO
      LISA GODDARD, Columbia University, Palisades, NY
      TERRI S. HOGUE, Colorado School of Mines, Golden
      ANTHONY JANETOS, Boston University
      RONALD “NICK” KEENER, JR., Duke Energy Corporation, Charlotte, NC
      JOHN E. KUTZBACH, University of Wisconsin, Madison
      STEPHEN W. PACALA, Princeton University, NJ
      ARISTIDES A.N. PATRINOS, New York University, Brooklyn
      RAYMOND T. PIERREHUMBERT, The University of Chicago, IL
      KIMBERLY PRATHER, University of California, San Diego
      S.T. RAO, North Carolina State University, Raleigh
      DAVID A. ROBINSON, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway
      JOHN T. SNOW, The University of Oklahoma, Norman
      CLAUDIA TEBALDI, Climate Central, Princeton, NJ
      XUBIN ZENG, University of Arizona, Tucson
      Ocean Studies Board Liaison
      DANIEL RUDNICK, University of California, San Diego
      NRC Staff
      AMANDA STAUDT, Director
      EDWARD DUNLEA, Senior Program Officer
      LAURIE GELLER, Senior Program Officer
      KATIE THOMAS, Associate Program Officer
      LAUREN BROWN, Associate Program Officer
      AMANDA PURCELL, Research and Financial Associate
      RITA GASKINS, Administrative Coordinator
      ROB GREENWAY, Program Associate
      SHELLY FREELAND, Senior Program Assistant

      1. I am sure Alfred Wegener had a similarly impressive list of erudite geologists against his theory. Consensus and authority have never resolved anything in science. Evidence does.

        2. Hi Javier,

          When I asked for your alternative, you came up empty.

          Get back to us with alternative hypotheses with better evidence.

          Last time the earth had stabilized at about 400 ppm(3.2 million BP), temperatures were about 2 C warmer than the 1951-1980 Global mean(and sea level at lest 10 meters higher). During most of the Pleistocene it took about 90,000 years for atmospheric CO2 to fall from 280 ppm to 180 ppm. This implies about 55,000 years for atmospheric CO2 to fall from 550 ppm to 400 ppm.

          1. During the first 40,000 of those 55,000 years the Northern Hemisphere will be getting significantly higher insolation than it is now. AKA, melting of the ice sheet and northerly push of any snow line.

            1. Hi Gone fishing,

              I imagine that might delay things as far as falling CO2 levels, though potentially there might also be some uptake by tree growth further north, my model is simply using 800,000 BP to 10,000 BP as an analog, but higher atmospheric CO2 will no doubt change things, so the model probably will not apply well beyond the 180 to 280 ppm range.

            2. I am sure that natural CO2 feeds will increase with temperature but that was not my point.
              What it will do is add a lot of energy to the Northern hemisphere, average of about 12 w/m2 at 60N for 40,000 years.
              Although your point about plant growth is a good one. The forests will move north to the Arctic Ocean replacing the tundra and decrease albedo for those regions, thus absorbing more of the energy increase.

            3. Hi Gone fishing,

              It depends on the type of trees and shrubs, there are other effects of trees besides albedo such as changes in the amount of water vapor, it will probably be evergreens (boreal forest) so albedo would be higher than tundra that was not snow covered. There might be more snow due to higher humidity so the snow line may not move as much as a simple temperature estimate would suggest.

              It will depend in part on the level of C emissions, 1000 Pg will be better than 1500 Pg C, and 900 Pg C would be better still. Much is unknown so it is difficult to predict temperature or precipitation in the future under any scenario.

            4. Funny how most northern areas are experiencing more drought as temperature rises.
              http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/pd/climate/factsheets/howprecipitation.pdf

              In Northwest Canada and Alaska temperature rises of 3-4C have already happened and the extra snowfall is not.

              “In addition to the overall increase, changes in the characteristics of precipitation have also been observed. Much of the precipitation increase appears to be coming as rain, mostly in winter, and to a lesser extent in autumn and spring. The increasing winter rains, which fall on top of existing snow, cause faster snowmelt and, when the rainfall is intense, can result in flash flooding in some areas. Rain-on-snow events have increased significantly across much of the Arctic, for example, by 50% over the past 50 years in western Russia.”
              http://www.greenfacts.org/en/arctic-climate-change/l-3/2-polar-ice-cap-melting.htm

              So far observations seem to contradict your constant declaring of more snowfall with warming. What you get is more winter rainfall events, even in Greenland.

            5. Forget snowfall — winter rain becoming new normal in Alaska and Arctic

              “Rain and ice closes school
              Other parts of Alaska, including areas well to the north, are coping with similar winter rain problems.

              In Fairbanks, where some hardy residents scoff at winter temperatures that sink below minus 40 degrees F, rain last week forced a temporary closure of the local international airport and another day of closures for schools, which already had closed for three days in November because of icy rain. These winter rain school closures have been regular occurrences since 2002, and they include the “Icepocalypse” of November 2010, a major weather event that sent rain as far north as Barrow and created a thick layer of ice in Fairbanks that lasted on some streets for the entire winter.

              Rain and the ice it created forced school closures last week in the Delta-Greely School District southeast of Fairbanks, where winters are normally so cold that there is a popular children’s book, “Recess at 20 Below,” set in that location. Schools in Bethel closed in early December for icy rain conditions considered odd and dangerous by residents accustomed to winter snow, and the Kuskokwim 300 sled dog race, which starts and finishes in Bethel, battled wet and warm conditions.”

              “The International Panel on Climate Change has warned for years that as the Arctic warms, an increasing proportion of high-latitude precipitation will come down as rain rather than snow. Such predictions extend to Alaska specifically, as detailed in a University of Alaska Fairbanks study published last year.”
              “Over the long term, winters are getting warmer in the higher latitudes, meaning more of the precipitation will be in droplet form, not flakes, said John Walsh, chief scientist at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center. “It would be snow in the old days. But now it’s rain,” said Walsh, interviewed on a rainy January day in Fairbanks when the temperature hit 42 degrees. The icy messes will continue as well because the gradual warming will not be enough to change the frozen condition of the ground, he said. “Freezing rain on the surface will likely be more common, gradually, as the weather warms,” he said.”

              https://www.adn.com/arctic/article/winter-rain-expected-become-more-prevalent-far-north/2014/01/29/

            6. Hi Gonefishing,

              Mostly this is based on personal experience. Often very cold winters tend to be less snowy than warmer winters in New England. It is well known that warmer temperatures result in more water vapor in the atmosphere.

              So in some places there may be more rain and in others more snow. My understanding is that snow fall amounts are relatively low in the interior of Antarctica because it is so cold, especially in winter.

              Why are you using AR4?

              See pp 358-361 of

              https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter04_FINAL.pdf

            7. Yes Dennis, at the super extremes of temperature the air is very dry, but most of the Arctic and Antarctic regions are not that extreme. I can see you are not listening to evidence so keep your myth, some of them are fun if they strengthen your agenda. I prefer reality, it’s not always convenient but at least it gives a better view of the world.
              If being warmer and more humid increased snowfall, Florida would be deep in it. 🙂

            8. Hi Gone fishing,

              https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/arctic-meteorology/factors_affecting_climate_weather.html

              Overall, humidity in the Arctic atmosphere is low.  In some places, Arctic air is as dry as air in the Sahara desert.  Humidity tends to be higher over the oceans and in coastal areas in summer, when water vapor evaporates from the relatively warm ocean surfaces.  Humidity is lower over land areas, such as Canada, where there is less water to evaporate.  In winter, humidity is very low because surface temperatures are very cold and very little water evaporates into the atmosphere.  At this time of year, sea ice covers much of the Arctic Ocean, preventing evaporation from ocean water.  However, in areas where there is no sea ice cover in areas, there can be a lot of evaporation and fog can form, making the ocean look as if it is steaming .

              My claim is that more snowfall may off set some of the reduced snow cover. At present in some months NH snow cover is increasing (winter months), this seems to suggest more snowfall don’t you think?

            9. If there is deeper snow, and the dehydration so far does not merit that conclusion, but if there is deeper snow at high latitudes it will not compensate for the reduced snow cover in the lower latitudes which cover much more land area and thus control most of the albedo change. The high latitude deeper snow would just take longer to melt, unless it was rained on which is what is happening now.

            10. GoneFishing,

              You didn’t look at those dates that I gave you, did you?

              The increase in Northern summer insolation while obliquity was falling has never stopped a glaciation. Look at the data instead of chanting mantras.

            11. Hi Javier,

              In the period from 800,000 BP to 200 BP atmospheric CO2 was below 290 ppm, a glaciation is unlikely for the next 130,000 years if 1000 Pg of Carbon or more are emitted from 1750 to 2200 CE.

            12. Two big assumptions there Dennis, both unproven:

              1. That CO2 warms as much as it is currently believed.

              2. That CO2 levels will remain elevated for thousands of years after we are done emitting. Sinks rates suggest that will not be the case.

              So you are betting on two unproven assumptions. I am betting on a continuation of what has been happening for million of years.

            13. Hi Javier,

              You will need to explain why atmospheric CO2 takes 85,000 years to fall from 275 ppm to 180 ppm during Pleistocene. The atmospheric and oceanic chemistry can be found in Archer 2005 (paper at link below).

              https://www.dropbox.com/s/eea8av0q1e9k5lk/archer.2005.fate_co2.pdf?dl=0

              I will go with the climate scientists and the models that reproduce the empirical temperature evidence fairly well.

              I recognize that the ECS is not known, we make different assumptions, I assume the mean estimate of most published research is correct, you assume the lower estimates of ECS are correct, others assume the higher estimates of ECS are correct.

              All these assumptions are unproven. I believe the mean estimate is more likely than either the higher estimates or the lower estimates of ECS.

              Another unproven assumption backed by the opinions of many climate scientists that understand the geochemistry and geophysics far better than me.

            14. Dennis,

              “Another unproven assumption backed by the opinions of many climate scientists that understand the geochemistry and geophysics far better than me.”

              Given the asymmetry of the scientific climate debate, the dominant side is jumping from assumptions to certainty without much challenge. Yet the evidence is lacking. And when there is no evidence the possibility of being wrong is very real.

            15. Your reliance on obliquity as a major factor is erroneous. Obliquity change is the smallest of the various orbital changes, about 2 degrees. The precession is dependent upon a 23.5 degree tilt and the elliptical orbit causes a 23% difference in irradiance around the orbit. Both ar large factors. What really counts is the combination of all those changes matching up with orbital nodes so that NH insolation rises or falls long enough and strongly enough to initiate a change during a particular season.

            16. You really have no idea of what you are talking about.

              This figure is from Imbrie J. et al. 1993. On the structure and origin of major glaciation cycles 2. The 100,000-year cycle. Paleoceanography 8 699-735.

              The upper part (A) is the calculated insolation for every type of cycle in W/m2

              The lower part (B) is the variability displayed by temperatures in (‰ 18O)

              You can see in B that precession has very little effect on temperatures compared to obliquity. This has been known for decades, but you still don’t know it.

            17. Strange diagram. The precession shows a much greater swing in insolation yet has no effect on temperature, the eccentricity shows no change in insolation yet has a large effect on temperature. Makes no sense, especially given the fact that the eccentricity causes a greater than 20 percent irradiance change around the orbit. That amounts to over 200 w/m2 change between aphelion and perihelion. Since the figure applies to 65N it appears that this irradiance difference was not taken into account. When the NH summer aligns with perihelion at most elliptical, the amount of insolation will be much greater than when the precession aligns it with the equinoxes or with winter solstice.

              Javier, the change in the tilt of the earth amounts to only about 2 degrees. It is the actual tilt that causes the differential and that is more than 10 times the wobble. The precession positions the tilt, determining where the nodes are. When the perihelion and NH spring/summer align, that is what makes up to a 100 watt/m2 differential in solar energy to 65 N. The variation in obliquity causes about a 10 watt/m2 change at most.
              Again you fail the magnitude test and this time the phase test too.

              What is happening is the interaction of three changes with different periods and when they align with different nodes of the orbit and each other determines the strength of a given forcing period. This then combines with the albedo changes caused by proceeding and retreating ice sheets and the amount of GHG in the atmosphere. The insolation changes and the albedo change are the dominate factors in this process with GHG’s playing a more minor role.

            18. GoneFishing,

              “Strange diagram. The precession shows a much greater swing in insolation yet has no effect on temperature, the eccentricity shows no change in insolation yet has a large effect on temperature. Makes no sense”

              Exactly. This is confronting hypothesis with evidence. Something that you don’t do. (A) is what should happen according to Milankovitch theory, if temperatures depended on insolation; and (B) is what really happens.

              Precession has a very small effect on global temperatures. Everybody knows that but you. There’s no 23 kyr cycle on temperatures. The problem is that precession increases significantly insolation but only at high latitudes, and simultaneously decreases insolation at the opposite side of the globe by the exact same amount. At what gives at one season, it takes from the other seasons in the same year. It is autocompensated.

              Obliquity however warms or cools both poles simultaneously while having a small effect on the tropics. Thus it changes the equato-polar gradient and affects global heat distribution. Its effect on temperatures is obvious.

              There is no failure of magnitude test. The evidence tells you everything. And the evidence shows that temperatures respond to obliquity, not precession. See by yourself:

            19. I can see you only mimic what you read and do not understand orbital dynamics or how the climate system operates. Ignoring two major factors in the orbital dynamics that actually cause nodal alignments and radiative differential and attributing it to a 2.4 degree wobble is just amazingly obtuse. If you cannot see what is wrong with your scenario, it is a lack of comprehension and understanding of basic principles on your part. That makes it impossible for anyone to convince you of the misrepresentations in that paper.

            20. Waving hands and calling something a mystery when obvious and simple physical principles are at work is just completely strange.

            21. The evidence is there. You can’t refute the evidence. Temperatures follow a 41 kyr cycle, not a 23 kyr cycle. All your handwaving amounts to nothing if your hypothesis doesn’t agree with the evidence.

            22. The paper is looking at the wrong parameters and achieving a false result, which is the reason it makes no sense. Your inability to see this and other fallacies is the cornerstone of your fervor and philosophy. Evidence without comprehension is just noise.

          2. Dennis,

            When I asked for your alternative, you came up empty.

            The alternative is that a good part of the warming is natural. The mechanisms are the same that have been taking place for hundreds of millions of years. The Sun, the clouds, the oceans, the atmosphere.

            What better evidence do you want that the World came out of the Little Ice Age without any help from the humans, and has gone over several periods of multi-centennial cooling, naturally followed by periods of multi-centennial warming. The evidence clearly shows that the climate of the Holocene has not been ruled by CO2 or CH4.

            The current state of climate affairs is a profound mistake driven by our lack of knowledge and the coincidence of modern science with a period of warming and our emissions. We only have good data for a small window where temperatures and GHGs have generally increased.

            I am quite certain that in a couple of decades we will realize our mistake. The importance of CO2 will be downplayed little by little as the warming fails to materialize. The big El Niño has delayed things for a few years. That’s all.

            So Dennis, let’s say that 2025 arrives and temperature averages are the same as 2002-2003. Would you still believe in the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis? And if so, based on what evidence? In 2001 CO2 levels were 370 ppm. Now they are 403 ppm. By 2025 they are likely to be about 425 ppm. An increase of 55 ppm and no change in temperatures. What would you do?

            1. Hi Javier,

              It is unlikely that will be the case, though there is natural variability, so it might be explained by aerosol loading, or by the solar cycle, more heat being absorbed by the ocean. Changes in Global temperatures have been modest during the Holocene with a high of about 0.4 C relative to the 1961-1990 mean and a low of about -0.6 C. The mean global temperature using Marcott 2013 data from 11010 BP to 500 CE and Mann 2008 data from 501 CE to 1750 CE was about 0.2 C above 1961-1990 mean global temperatures. There have been some occasions where the rise in temperature was similar to 1980 to 2005 (1350-1380 CE) based on the Mann et al 2008 reconstruction.

              Two large volcanic eruptions in 1650 and 1660 explain the low temperature in the late 1600s.

              See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_volcanic_eruptions

              There was also a solar grand minimum around this time Maunder minimum

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

              Chart below shows temperatures from 1500 to 2005.

              I will repeat, natural variability is acknowledged, but it does not explain all of the temperature variation. Other factors such as anthropogenic emissions also play a role. Though better understanding of clouds aerosols and atmospheric chemistry is needed to improve current models (also acknowledged by every climate scientist).

            2. Dennis,

              so it might be explained by aerosol loading, or by the solar cycle, more heat being absorbed by the ocean.

              So you mean that it doesn’t matter what happens to temperatures in the future, your hypothesis can explain it all. You don’t realize but your hypothesis has become unfalsifiable by evidence and therefore has left the realm of science. It is up there right with God. Global warming by CO2 can now explain warming and can explain cooling, and whatever happens you won’t stop believing in it.

              Fortunately a lot of scientists will stick to the evidence, and if the warming fails to show they will dump the hypothesis. Watch for the fun when the consensus dissolves.

            3. Hi Javier,

              So far the models match the evidence fairly well.
              Also paleoclimactic evidence supports the fact that ECS is likely to be roughly 3 C (with a range of 2 to 4 C) and that Earth System Sensitivity (ESS) is about 4 C (range of 3 to 5 C for warming from current climate state).

              I hope you are correct and that ECS and ECS is at the lower end of main stream climate estimates.

              The realist within believes this is simply wishful thinking.

              Time will tell whether low, mean, or high estimates of climate sensitivity are correct.

            4. The chart in the comment from 12/19/2016 at 8:39 PM incorrectly used a Global land only reconstruction. In the chart below is the reconstruction based on global land and ocean data. The 21 year centered running average global land ocean temperature estimate from 1500 CE to 1996 CE is plotted below.

              The 1500-1849 mean temperature is -0.49 C relative to the 1961-1990 mean instrumental temperature (Hadley Land Ocean).

          3. Dennis, it seems it doesn’t work that way. We know the carbon sinks take up more co2 as concentration increases. Therefore the sink efficiency seems to be a function of atmospheric concentration and temperature.

            Let’s say (hypothetically, to make this discussion easier to follow) that emissions are 10o units, and sinks take out 50 units. Now let’s assume for the hell of it that we cut emissions to 50 units. But since the sinks are able to remove 50 units, then the net change in concentration is zero.

            I realize it isn’t that simple, but those estimates of yours sure do look way off. This is a bit of a touchy subject for the guys doing the climate models, because the asumptions aren’t properly supported, and we see a lot of baloney thrown in. It’s as if they had a political need to make everything go to hell, so they jazz up the models with what appears to be rather clunky carbon cycles.

            2. That explanation is trivial, Dennis.

              The CO2 that you are seeing during those 85,000 years is not the same. The descent into a glacial period is lethal for a significant part of the biosphere, that for thousands of years releases lots and lots of CO2, as they die and rot. It takes 85,000 years for the oceans to soak up all the CO2 because there is an increased biogenic emission during all that time.

              The initial amount, which is what we are talking about, could be gone in a few centuries. Even less if both oceans and biosphere are soaking it, as it is happening now.

              This is one of your big assumptions that it is likely to be wrong, because you don’t understand the system. A significant cooling will release lots of CO2 from the biosphere. The same as the warming is causing an uptake of lots of CO2 by the biosphere.

              Warm + CO2 is a huge boost for the biosphere.
              Cold – CO2 is terrible for the biosphere.

            3. Hi Javier,

              You need to provide a model to justify. The point is that the carbon cycle was close to being balanced through much of the Holocene from 11,000 BP to 1700 CE with atmospheric CO2 remaining in a narrow range from 260 to 280 ppm. The carbon cycled through the land sink is far smaller in magnitude than the ocean sink which is less affected by glacial interglacial cycles, except for temperature.

              To assume that the ocean and land sinks will continue to sequester carbon at current rates is incorrect, as emissions fall the net rate that carbon is taken up by the biosphere will also fall.

              In addition, warmer temperatures are likely to release a lot of carbon currently sequestered in permafrost, which you seem to be ignoring. There may also be more forest fires at higher temperatures which also may release carbon.

              The carbon models are not perfect, but many believe they underestimate future carbon emissions, rather than the reverse.

            4. Dennis,

              “To assume that the ocean and land sinks will continue to sequester carbon at current rates is incorrect, as emissions fall the net rate that carbon is taken up by the biosphere will also fall.”

              This is not only obviously incorrect but ignores basic physics. How are sinks going to depend on our emissions? How do sinks know how much we emit? Sinks only care about atmospheric levels, and therefore will continue sequestering carbon at current rates until atmospheric levels decrease. It is obvious that atmospheric levels cannot remain as elevated as they are for thousands of years when sinks are absorbing like 1.5 ppm/year. In a hundred years the atmosphere could go down easily by 50-100 ppm provided temperatures don’t fall by much.

            6. Archer says that in 300 years half of it is gone, which is what I say. That 10% lasts for very long is not a problem, nor should affect temperatures long term by much.

            7. “Javier says:
              12/20/2016 AT 5:48 PM
              Archer says that in 300 years half of it is gone, which is what I say. That 10% lasts for very long is not a problem, nor should affect temperatures long term by much.”

              Javier is ignorant about statistical physics. Perhaps we shouldn’t blame him, because I don’t think biologists take any courses in the hard sciences.

            8. Perhaps we shouldn’t blame him, because I don’t think biologists take any courses in the hard sciences.

              WHT, perhaps Javier didn’t take a course in statistical physics but please don’t tar all biologists with being completely mathematically illiterate.

              BTW all is not lost, anyone can sign up for this free, open, online course at MIT.

              https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-592j-statistical-physics-in-biology-spring-2011/

              Statistical Physics in Biology

              Course Features
              This Course at MIT
              Course Description
              Statistical Physics in Biology is a survey of problems at the interface of statistical physics and modern biology. Topics include: bioinformatic methods for extracting information content of DNA; gene finding, sequence comparison, and phylogenetic trees; physical interactions responsible for structure of biopolymers; DNA double helix, secondary structure of RNA, and elements of protein folding; considerations of force, motion, and packaging; protein motors, membranes. We also look at collective behavior of biological elements, cellular networks, neural networks, and evolution.

              Cheers!

            9. Hi Javier,

              Ok lets try this.

              Archer says if emissions were 1000 Pg of carbon half would be sequestered in 300 years. I agree. It is the 500 Pg that remains in the atmosphere which is the problem, that will be about 425 ppm CO2 and it will take another 12,000 years for atmospheric CO2 to fall to 400 ppm. This corresponds with roughly a 2 C increase in temperature above average pre-industrial Holocene conditions based on mid Pliocene warm period evidence.

            12. Given that peer reviewed climate models are being tweaked to yield whatever answers the authors want to have, I’m not sure the peer review does provide a seal of validity.

              The basic physics tells me the sinks take co2 primarily as a function of concentration, and temperature. Secondary factors are the rate of turnover in the ocean, and regional impacts such as dust from the Gobi desert, greening of the tundra and the Sahel, etc.

              What do we know? The sinks are taking up the co2 at increasing rates. What do the “peer reviewed models” do? They are tweaked to downgrade the sinks in the future.

              Based on what I read in the Climategate and Wikileaks literature, it’s evident they did a lot of cooking of data and suppressed careers to impose a climate orthodoxy. This included the fraudulent designation of rcp8.5 as business as usual, coupled to the rigged carbon sinks and the hot models. My conclusion is that we have a form of Lysenkoism in climate science, and there’s a need for some serious housecleaning.

              I didn’t vote for trump, but I’m starting to see the positive side, there’s going to be a reformation of the church of climate orthodoxy, and hopefully things will land so we have objective science being done, where data is of paramount importance,mand the propaganda wars are buried. I’m tired of it.

            13. The most ridiculous climate scientists have names such as Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, Murry Salby, ….

              I essentially destroy Lindzen’s now-failed model of equatorial atmospheric winds here:
              http://contextearth.com/2016/12/20/qbo-split-training/

              The trolls of climate science such as Lindzen and Curry are orders of magnitude more pathetic than the climate science consensus. That’s the way that science works — the general consensus is largely correct yet you can still make advances.

              Fernando, if you can’t keep up with the math and physics and understand the basics, go crawl back into your hole with your buddy Javier.

            14. Fernando says:

              Based on what I read in the Climategate and Wikileaks literature, it’s evident they did a lot of cooking of data and suppressed careers to impose a climate orthodoxy. This included the fraudulent designation of rcp8.5 as business as usual, coupled to the rigged carbon sinks and the hot models. My conclusion is that we have a form of Lysenkoism in climate science, and there’s a need for some serious housecleaning.

              You read ‘Climate Gate’ and Wikipedia?!

              And do you also consider the National Enquirer a reputable source of news?!

            15. Hi Fernando,

              No there are differences in opinion about clouds and aerosols which have not been resolved. Models from CMIP3 range in ECS from 1.9 C to 5.5 C with most between 2.2 C and 3.5 C, the median model is about 2.5 C and the mean is about 2.7 C.

              When looking at the data from 1880 to 2015, the models with ECS of about 3.3 match the temperature trend best.

              The RCP8.5 is based on wishful thing by economists about new technology allowing absurd recovery factors for fossil fuels. I agree RCP4.5 is much more sensible, but even that scenario causes problems if ECS is 3.3 C or more.

      2. You are right Fred, said mentioned person has a much different depth of knowledge than those listed.

  24. China’s New Plans Deepen Action on Climate Change | NRDC: “With uncertainty hanging over the U.S.’s future climate contributions under the Trump Administration, three new Thirteenth Five Year sub-plans released recently by the Chinese government on controlling greenhouse gas emissions, environmental protection and development of the power sector provide assurance that China will continue to deepen its environmental and climate actions regardless of any change in U.S. policies.”

  25. Why China is Dominating the Solar Industry – Scientific American: “’If there was ever a situation where the Chinese have put their whole governmental system behind manufacturing, it’s got to be solar modules,’ Zweibel said. ‘I think they think they can wipe out all the competition in the world. It makes all kinds of sense if you have the staying power.’”

    “’People tend to view negatively that China has taken over [solar] module market share,’ said David Mooney, director of NREL’s strategic energy analysis center. ‘It would have been better if that capacity had stayed in the U.S.’

    ‘Another side of the coin, from my perspective,’ he said, is 250,000 American jobs in the solar panel assembly, installation and maintenance business, many of which wouldn’t have happened without the push from China that dramatically lowered solar module prices.’

    ‘Those jobs can’t be outsourced,’ he said.”

  26. Hi Mac (from above),

    If you decide to talk about global warming in your book maybe provide a basic account of how GHGs absorb infrared, extending the glass-greenhouse analogy? You can easily check out the (hard) science which shows how CO2, being a greenhouse gas, is able to cause warming as well as respond to warming. Unfortunately, doing this rigorously requires an explanation of hetero-polar molecules, like H2O and CO2, (permanent dipole moment) and homo-polar molecules, like N2 and O2, which do not have a permanent dipole moment: hence, do not contribute for “Green House effect”. However, the science is built on over a century of physics and lab analysis, not just on a few graphs taken from ice cores and put up on a screen. Regrettably there is no simple formula for the greenhouse effect, since the details of calculations get complex quickly. But many of us have a hard time accepting science which not grounded in classical (or in this case, quantum) physics.

    I guess my point is that away too much discussion has treated warming as if the line of reasoning is based on contradictory paleo-graphs and little else. The fact is, temperature changes drive CO2 changes and vice versa and the positive feedback between the two accounts for how ice age terminations accelerate much faster than slowly creeping Milankovic forcings. Obviously, feedbacks don’t run forever because, for one, (lowered) albedo extent eventually runs out and of course the carbon dissolved in our oceans is not infinite – and, fossil fuels will soon be exhausted.

    And, here’s a good one for The Book: “Taleb argues convincingly that predictive models are based on Plato’s Theory of Forms, gravitating towards mathematical purity and failing to take some key ideas into account, such as: the impossibility of possessing all relevant information, that small unknown variations in the data can have a huge impact, and flawed theories/models that are based on empirical data and that fail to consider events that have not taken place but could have taken place.”

    1. Hi Doug,

      As you well know, I personally believe that we humans are collectively responsible for most or maybe all of the warming and the additional warming predicted, already baked in, for quite some time to come, and that I believe CO2 pollution being the main cause, etc.

      You can rest assured that there will be a full and honest acknowledgement of the preceding statement in the book , and that I will explain the extremely complicated physics ( as you point out) to the best of my ability, and in terms accessible to laymen.

      My target audience consists of the many many millions of people who for one reason or another are honestly not sure who is telling them the truth. Some of them are barely able to read, a hell of a lot of them never read anything although they could, if they would, and a hell of a lot of them are quite well educated, although not in the hard sciences.

      So – My biggest single problem, at the moment, is this.

      How do I go about explaining this very complicated topic in a way that they can grasp intuitively? It’s not a physics problem, it’s a cultural and social problem.

      The bare bones physics are simple enough. Even a kid understands that a car sitting in the sun with the windows rolled up gets hot.

      My old Daddy topped out in the eighth grade, in a backwoods school, three teachers, hardly any books, etc, and he so far as I know has never picked up a book since then, excepting his Bible, but he used to read a news paper occasionally. Nevertheless he understands greenhouses, intuitively, and built the sun room he lives in now, so he and Momma could BAKE their old arthritic bones in the glorious heat. She will hit a hundred by noon even on a day it’s only about twenty F outside, lol, if the sky is clear.

      Furthermore this sun room is properly oriented to catch the max winter sun, the minimum summer sun getting in due to well designed overhangs, and a couple of big, dense decidious shade trees, etc.
      Uneducated he is , but stupid he is not.

      He designed the sun room himself, without consulting anybody, and told the carpenter what dimensions he wanted , specified the double glazed plate glass, triple being beyond his means at the time, the insulation package, etc.

      He has drawn many a mistaken conclusion, but his reasoning has always been perfectly sound, given the data and knowledge he had available to work with. IF his Daddy had been an engineer, instead of a poor farmer, he likely would have been too.

      Now consider:
      He has no conception of what is meant by the term “peer review”. He knows lawyers are often for sale to the highest bidders, and that politicians are not to be trusted, and that business men of all sorts are in business to make money , and to hell with everybody except them and their own families and friends, etc. He is socially very conservative, but NOTICE just how closely his evaluation of the BAU status quo MATCHES the opinions of many of well educated members of this forum ?

      He was a union man all his working adult life, in the heart of right to work country, but if he ever heard anybody talk about how good unions are out to do good for the COUNTRY, he took them for fools, because he understood that unions are FOR their members. ( He’s REALLY old now, and what he knows and understands these days is debatable. )

      Now since the DATA he has available to work with indicates that lawyers, businessmen, doctors, bankers, politicians, and yes preachers too, habitually look after themselves first and foremost, and he knows damned well that both wings of the political establishment play people like him for pawns, tell me this.

      WHY should HE believe the climate science establishment is telling him the truth? Just about EVERY BODY ELSE has either lied to him, or ripped him off, with the exception of a couple of honestly decent physicians who happen to be satisfied making ONLY a couple of hundred thousand a year.

      You can see that I have my work cut out for me, no doubt. 😉

      But a little at a time, I am making progress.

      I will have to deal with each objection those who doubt the warming consensus one at a time.

      Now here is an example of one way I may deal with the “natural variation is the explanation for observed recent warming ” objection.

      My hoped for readers, and I ‘ m hoping for a couple of dozen at least, lol, understand that variation is a natural and expected part of their personal and economic lives, and of the history of any given sort of business or industry.

      So I will outline the history of a few industries most of them know about, at least in very general terms, and point out how they have boomed, and bottomed, over time, as times changed.This is easily understood. Then I will point out how an individual person or families fortunes or circumstances tend to rise or fall, over time, this also being easily understood, and in BOTH CASES, things already ACCEPTED as part of the world view of the reader.

      Next, I will point out that a business, or a family, or an individual often experiences a period of time, perhaps a rather long period, when things remain remarkably stable, with little change being apparent. Also easily grasped, also consistent with their world view.

      Now, having set the stage, I can explore the concept of a minor but long term change in the flow of resources, or energy or MONEY, can lead to a MAJOR change in the situation of the business or individual. Earning just a few extra dollars that are successfully invested, or spent productively, can vastly elevate a persons material status over a few decades, and spending just a little more, consistently , than comes in eventually leads to poverty, etc.

      At this point, I will have to ask my reader to accept it on faith that the observed rate of warming is too fast to be entirely the result of a natural warming trend, with the evidence for this being found elsewhere, in another part of the book. I WILL NOT argue that some of the warming observed is or may be due to a natural warming trend, because so far as I can see, nobody can prove it is not partially due to a natural trend, and make this point clear as well.

      Then there is the nature of the evidence of warming itself to be considered. In the last analysis, it’s statistical evidence, and everybody knows that there are lies, damned lies,and statistics.

      It’s the sort of evidence that is well accepted by engineers, scientists, statisticians, etc, who are able to cope with it, and a hell of a lot of the warming is obvious even to a blind Republican , such as the loss of Arctic sea ice, etc. I can cope with it, but a hell of a lot of people can’t, and have to take it on faith.

      Now here’s an interesting observation. This is the sort of evidence that prevails in front of a competent judge, or arbitrator, in a civil proceeding.

      BUT if this sort of evidence is introduced into a CRIMINAL trial, well the defense attorney is handed his defense on a silver platter, consisting of the simple observation that correlation is not proof of causation, and that the climate might have warmed , as much or more , even without the green house gas pollution.

      And all the engineers, and statisticians, and climate scientists in the whole effing world CANNOT prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, to somebody who has doubts, that some or maybe even all of the warming, or most of it, might not be the consequence of a natural trend.

      I will not deny this sort of observation, but deal with it, and do the best I can to prove that it is extremely likely that most of the observed warming IS the result of green house gas pollution.

      I will try to do this by way of examples familiar to the target audience, using lots of them, maybe in the form of charts, to save space and readers time.

      It’s three am and time to hit the sack. Regular sleep has been a problem recently.

      1. Yair . . .
        OFM. In the Australian context things have a long way to go before folks will “get it”.

        Until weather/climate events become completely chaotic extreme droughts/floods and wild fires will be seen as a temporary aberration.

        It is all happening too slowly and the average joe in the street is unaffected and refuses to accept he may have to change his ways . . . electric car? You gotta be joking.

        I don’t think a lot of the people (even on here) understand the importance of food.

        Cheers.

      2. Oldfarmermac,

        The bare bones physics are simple enough. Even a kid understands that a car sitting in the sun with the windows rolled up gets hot.

        Nevertheless he understands greenhouses, intuitively

        You won’t get too far if you don’t understand that the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere has little to do with why it gets hot inside a greenhouse or a car.

        Greenhouses and cars get hot because convection is suppressed. It has nothing to do with IR radiation. A greenhouse transparent to IR works equally well because it is the heat that cannot escape from inside, not radiation. That’s why a roof window inside the greenhouse is all its needed to suppress the effect when it gets too hot.

        So try to get your examples right or you will create more confusion than you will solve. The greenhouse effect is a misnomer. The atmosphere and a greenhouse have nothing in common in how they function. Are people that know this and insist in the greenhouse example lying on purpose? I don’t know.

        1. Old Farmer, glass is opaque to long-wave infrared radiation but generally transparent to solar-infrared radiation. So the infrared from the sun is passed through while the long-wave infrared from the warmed interior does not. The plastic materials such as polycarbonates that are uses in greenhouses also absorb infrared. So Javier’s tale about glass and the greenhouse effect is wrong. Plus he does not seem to understand analogy.

          1. HI GF,

            I do not disagree with your observation, technically.

            I understand the basic physics quite well, and I have been in LOTS of greenhouses, representative of all the common types of construction used in this part of the world.

            All of them get hot inside when the sun shines on them, substantially hotter than outside ambient, unless you either open large vents, and maybe turn on the fans as well.

            So Javier has a point, of a sort. So do you.

            Note that I have often commented that I believe in what is CALLED the greenhouse effect. The difference between the two points is trivial, in terms of a layman understanding that atmospheric CO2 IS an effective insulator.

            IF you read what he says carefully, you will see that Javier does not and so far as I have noticed never has said that elevated CO2 levels do not contribute to warming, every thing else equal, but rather that the warming effect is over estimated, and the natural variability underestimated, by the establishment.

            While the odds that he is right, in saying CO2 is nothing to get all frantic about, are miniscule to microscopic, in my personal opinion, I can’t see that anybody can prove according to the standards of criminal law that he is wrong.

            Beyond that, while I have not posed the question to him directly, which I am doing at this time, I have never asked him if he appreciates that HE just might be wrong, according to the same tough standards.

            In any case, it is my personal opinion, and strong belief, that the evidence is good enough, WAY MORE than good enough, that rising CO2 levels, everything else held equal, will result in enough warming to be a grave ( dark pun intended ) matter for a billion or more naked apes, maybe five or six billion.

            This topic gets to be very involved, and I am working on teasing out a way to explain the whole ball of yarn effectively to laymen. I could have picked an easier subject, lol.

            It has been a long time since Javier actually posted much if anything about what HE thinks our environmental priorities ought to be here in this forum. He has allowed himself to get totally wrapped up in defending his views on climate, and thus is not posting anything on what he thinks ought to be done.

            BUT so far as I know, his basic argument , other than the specifics of warming due to CO2 pollution, is more or less this one:

            We are focusing on warming , which if the establishment is right, may be impossible to deal with ANYWAY, to the near exclusion of other problems we COULD do something about, as a practical matter, things we can AFFORD to do. This ” ANY WAY” argument is made quite often by hard core warming advocates, who frequently point out that the warming trend is already baked in, and that there is not a damned thing we can do about it, except possibly cut back on fossil fuels so as to keep it from getting even WORSE. I find it ironic and amusing that people who attack Javier don’t recognize this inconsistency in their own arguments.

            At this point, I will ask Javier to repeat some of his opinions in respect to what he thinks we OUGHT to be doing .

            He will say we should be paying less attention to warming, and putting some of the effort and money into “on the ground ” conservation efforts, but I can’t say anything more specific.

            I find this line of argument to be quite compelling and persuasive, personally, and well worth a thorough discussion in a forum such as this one.

            1. Hi Old Farmer Mac,

              Javier dismisses also how long carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere, perhaps a chemist could explain it better than me.

              Fate of fossil fuel in geologic time by David Archer explains it pretty well.

              He also needs an alternative hypothesis, but does not have one.

              The currently accepted hypothesis is only discarded when a better hypothesis replaces it. That is how science works.

            2. The currently accepted hypothesis is only discarded when a better hypothesis replaces it.

              This is a silly argument. If we know a hypothesis is wrong, we stop believing in it, whether we have a replacement or not.

            3. Hi Javier,

              Well not many agree the hypothesis is wrong, even you. You accept that increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere increase the net radiative forcing, the only difference is you think the effect is smaller than others. Whether global warming is “catastrophic” depends on many factors, ECS, ESS, total carbon emissions, and the effect of rising temperatures on the biosphere.

              Can you give some examples in the philosophy of science when a widely accepted theory has been dropped without a better theory to replace it?

            4. Creationism was dropped from consideration by scientists way before we had an acceptable theory of evolution.

              When Lamarck presented his theory in 1801 every serious scientist accepted that the Earth was very old and had been populated by animals and plants now extinct. Most scientists believed that animals have had to evolved, but nobody knew how. Theories were being presented by many scientists, Comte de Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, William Wells, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Robert Edmond Grant, Charles Lyell, Robert Chambers, and even Charles Darwin.

              They all believed in evolution, as most scientists of the time, but they could not propose a mechanism, and so their theories failed to gain traction. Even Charles Darwin theory became out of fashion by the end of the 19th century because it lacked a mechanism for the source of variability, and was rescued after the discovery of genetics in the 20th century by the NeoDarwinians that incorporated that part.

              If you know that creationism does not explain life on Earth, and believe that living creatures must have evolved, but don’t know how, should you cling to creationism until you figure it out decades later?

              I say no way.

            5. Oldfarmermac,

              I believe we have come to a very dangerous situation in the history of human civilization, because we have had too much success over the past couple of centuries. We have grown our numbers way beyond anything imaginable and at the same time the survival of a great part of humankind has become very dependent on a very complex network of extraction, production and distribution, all based on fossil fuels. We are running over resources, whether renewable or not, exponentially faster, and extracting them from increasingly poorer sources by increasingly efficient methods in a race that can only have one predictable end.

              At the same time that we worry about our species, we should worry as much or more about the rest of the species, that in general terms have underwent an opposite evolution with their numbers and condition so bad that their own long term existence is compromised.

              To complicate things, when economic growth started to falter in the 80’s, it was decided we should engage in debt creation to increase growth. Every debt is a claim on future wealth, but the size of our debt and future economic prospects guarantee that there will be a generalized default on those debts. To prevent a general failure of the financial system, Central Banks all over the World have engaged in unconventional measures creating a monetary liquidity that cannot be reverted and is getting us deeper and deeper into uncharted territory without a way back. Petro used to write about these issues.

              People are noticing that things are not going well, and despite the stabilization of the last years they are voting with their feet. The rise of the populism everywhere, whether right populism or left populism depending on the country, is a general phenomenon in Occidental democracies.

              Part of the economical improvement is due to the crash in oil prices and accompanying commodities. Very opportune. Produced in part by an excessive production in the face of lacklustre demand, but also due to a very big increase in unaccounted for oil in stocks, as Art Berman reported. Curious to say the least because we should be able to measure the oil we have in stock with little problem.

              This is pretty much the situation as I see it, and I believe there is no way out, because we are like the Titanic towards an iceberg. Too big to turn or reduce speed to avoid what is coming.

              Now turning to climate, it was very clear through the 80’s and 90’s that the World was warming. Some scientists believed it was going to become a very serious problem but they could only speculate how serious or when. The public wasn’t showing much interest, but curiously politicians started to show it. Nobody has ever been elected on a climate change fight program, and the issue was barely mentioned in the last US election debates, but many politicians and bureaucrats have made it their main issue, and pretty drastic policies have been already implemented in support of renewable energies even before any damage from climate change can be claimed. The investigation of anthropogenic causes of climate change was made a priority with a large UN organization and lavish funds for anthropogenic climate research. Alarmist scientists are rewarded while skeptics are sunned, ridiculed, and chastised.

              Since we won’t be able to reduce our emissions too much without serious economic damage, and whatever reductions we manage are not going to have an appreciable effect on temperatures, why are politicians so interested in reducing emissions? If they succeed the worsening economy won’t have them re-elected. It might be connected with the fact that we either abandon fossil fuels or they abandon us. Perhaps we are fighting a war by proxy against the consequences of oil depletion and we are being lied as always.

              What should we do now then?

              1. Ignore climate change. It won’t matter. Whether wilfully or not, emissions will go down on due term. The climate is not going to turn sour on us for centuries. This is a non issue.

              2. Try to reign in on population growth. Syria went from 6 millions to 22 millions in just 50 years. Problems magnify and then spread.

              3. Expand protected natural areas and revert human encroachment on natural spaces worldwide. Make every possible effort to boost natural wildlife populations. We are going to need them and they are more important than anything else. We should dedicate all the money from climate to this and then multiply it.

              4. Research alternative forms of energy. Every one of them. Starting with advanced fission methods, like molten salt reactors and Thorium. We are going to need energy. Lots of them and cheap.

              5. Research alternative forms of economy. We are going to need a new type of economy because our economy doesn’t work when there is no growth and that is where we are headed.

              6. Brace for impact.

            6. 5. Research alternative forms of economy. We are going to need a new type of economy because our economy doesn’t work when there is no growth and that is where we are headed

              That is one area that I’m 100% in agreement with you.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D2ONYPnr8c
              TIM JACKSON: PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTH

              Unfortunately the growth based economy is precisely what the new US administration will be trying to push. They can’t envision an alternative paradigm. They will fail!

            7. “Ignore climate change. It won’t matter”
              Fred, did you catch that one?
              Since we are mostly in the process of ignoring climate change, that is a given. However, saying it won’t matter given the devastation that has already occurred is really blatant snake oil.

            8. Yair . . . .

              “However, saying it won’t matter given the devastation that has already occurred is really blatant snake oil.”

              That’s the problem GoneFishing, You go over the top with your statements and lose all credibility.

              What devastation and where?

              If you choose to come back at me with a list I can tell you (as a well read old bushman living in the backblocks) that I will be quite aware of them but,
              as I mentioned up thread, it is happening too slowly.

              There are no DISCERNABLE effects of climate change impinging on the average joe’s lifestyle be they a cowcocky with twenty thousand acres and five hundred head of breeders or the bloke running grader or dump truck for the local authority.

              Some of you folks really need to take the blinkers off and get your head around the human condition . . . nothing will change until it has to.

              With the exception of item four I reckon Javier has a pretty realistic bucket list but things need to get a lot worse before it has a chance.

              Cheers.

            9. Ask the dead corals, the reduced plankton, the dead fish from overheating, the dead Europeans from a heat wave, the dead from increasing major storms and floods, the increasing droughts that kill cattle and crops.
              Ask the dead polar bears and walruses.
              Talk to the people in the Horn of Africa about their region drying out causing starvation and death.
              Talk to me who lost part of his house and nearly lost a family member to a superstorm.
              If you think I go over the top, not usually. I do tend to search boundaries as I was taught, however maybe many have not gone far enough.
              Talk to the Texans that had to kill their cattle from massive drought or farmers out west.
              Talk to the burning forests and the people who fight them and live there.
              There are costs to all these events and they are ongoing. Delaying action is the most expensive of all.
              Study the subject matter for 15 years and get back to me when you have a comprehension of how things actually work.
              Since you side with Javier, I will give you a simply written synopsis of some of the effects of climate change so far.
              http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-point-of-no-return-climate-change-nightmares-are-already-here-20150805

              And just think, this is only the beginning.

            10. Quite a list GoneFishing,

              The problem is that a lot of things are recurrent and thus not global warming related, others are weather, and many are simply false.

              – Whitening of corals is a natural adaptative process as far as we know, and corals recover rather quick. Ask the Australian Bureau of Tourism how the Great Barrier is doing.

              – Heat waves have always taken place. The statistics show that the number of days in the US cont with >100°F has been decreasing since the 1930’s.

              – There’s no increase in major storms. In fact there is a decrease in hurricanes hitting the US.

              – There’s no increase in draughts. Texas is in a multi-year above average precipitation track. Some places might have draughts and some places might have floods, as always.

              – Polar bear numbers are increasing, and there are more polar bears now than at any time since at least the 1970’s. Polar bears global warming story is one of increasing success.

              – Africa is not nearly having the terrible draughts and famines of the 1970’s. The Sahel is greening and most famines are war-related.

              – There always have been superstorms. That your family went through one is no reason to be afraid of climate. They are a weather phenomenon.

              – The surface being burnt by forest fires is a long term decline.

              No need to study 15 years. You just don’t have the evidence to demonstrate any climate change devastation. You are just claiming it without evidence.

          2. glass is opaque to long-wave infrared radiation but generally transparent to solar-infrared radiation. So the infrared from the sun is passed through while the long-wave infrared from the warmed interior does not.

            That is only part of the reason the interior gets hot. The interior gets also hot because the heat generated inside has nowhere to go because it is a closed space. The same heat generated outside disperses rather quickly not because it emits IR, but because it is taken away by the wind. The wind regulates the speed of heat loss and does not work by radiation, but by convection.

            You can build a greenhouse with a plastic that is transparent to IR, like plexiglass and will still work. In fact plexiglass is relatively popular for greenhouses, because it is also transparent to UV.

            1. Javier, you are showing your ignorance again. Plexiglass is polymethylmethacrylate and is not transparent to longwave IR. It is partially transparent to near and mid IR wavelengths.

              Plexiglas sheet absorbs the shorter wavelengths of ultraviolet (UV) energy, but transmits most of the longer wavelengths (those near the visible region). The sheets need UV coatings or they will degrade, become yellow and brittle.

              Do you really think that the atmospheric heat is taken away by the wind to outer space!!!! It’s all radiation, not dispersion as you put it. Yikes!

  27. Postcards From The Future
    A look at a possible future Londons.
    “Postcards From the Future presents new London icons and views within six distinct themes; Flooded London, Hot London, Frozen London, Self Sufficient London, Living in London & Powering London.

    ‘London Postcards From the Future’ were exhibited at the Museum of London from October 2010 to March 2011. They were presented as large scale back-lit transparencies, each pristine image defined by an astonishing degree of clarity and definition. The show became one of the most popular and controversial exhibitions ever hosted by the Museum of London generating unprecedented public and global media interest.”

    http://www.london-futures.com/

    1. Well, at least it’s reassuring there seems scant possibility of Venus-style runaway apocalypse; it’s less reassuring to see what the climate looked like in the ancient eras when CO2 had stood at a high level, levels humanity will eventually see if we burn all available oil and coal. More sobering, people are just barely coming to grips with the implications of a fact scientists have known for decades — the climate system has built-in time lags. That Earth’s temperatures will continue to creep up until the ocean reaches equilibrium with the heated air, until biological systems finish adapting to the new conditions, and until Arctic icecaps melt back to their own equilibrium. Studies show that the consequences of a two degree raise will be severe — and such a rise is more likely than not (even if governments began to take serious action to restrict gas emissions). So, what happens if we don’t act promptly and forcefully? Your London image?

      1. It is not funny when art precedes reality, but it is mind grabbing.
        We are on track for at least a 3C rise in average temps which means the Arctic will see 9C or better. As snow cover recedes, as ice melts back and becomes light absorbing water, exposing more light absorbing terrain, and methane +CO2 exudes from water and land, the effects will be stronger than currently thought.
        Yet there is the possibility of the AMOC slowing or stopping for a period of time, just one more possible action to throw chaotic weather into the mix. And of course there are the unknowns. With Greenland becoming greatly seismically active lately, the ice cap there appears to be destabilizing. Antarctica is showing signs of that too.

        As far as restrictions for gas emissions, it will be a slow process mostly driven by economics and fear of fossil fuel dependency. Politics will play a big part too, in either direction. Some of the planetary tribes are getting together, but no one is putting the pedal to the metal for transistion. Too much noise in the system and too little leadership.
        So prepare for change. It’s coming at us from all directions, including high technology. Living in turmoil seems to be the new state of operation in both nature and civilization. I intend to dampen the effects of these changes in my own life and try to help life elsewhere.

        1. The most recent era in which the Earth was believed to have experienced temperatures of 3 degrees C above pre-Industrial levels was the Pliocene Epoch according to Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. At that time, there was almost no ice anywhere. The sea level was 20 meters (65 feet) or so higher, and forests went to the edge of the Arctic Ocean where there is now tundra.

          Can you imagine Earth with sea level 20 meters or so higher?

          1. My little mountainside farm would be worth a fortune, situated as it is very near a National Park, with a semitropical or tropical climate, and millions of refugees wanting to live on higher ground farther from the sea.

            I could have a harem of young women willing to work at keeping the place nice and growing enough for all of us to eat. 😉

            But unfortunately…… The pleasant dream morphs into a nightmare, with the government confiscating my place, or a bunch of young tough guys taking it away from me and putting me out for compost.

            It might get so hot here everybody able will be moving farther north, to much higher elevations.

          2. Can you imagine Earth with sea level 20 meters or so higher?

            Well, that’s still within the depth limits of recreational scuba diving…

          3. If it happens over two thousand years or more people will not really notice as much, just build inland more and visit the city ruins by boat or aircraft. If surges happen then disasters occur. Nature hardly ever changes evenly, so at times it will be bad, but life will go on.

          4. Can you imagine Earth with sea level 20 meters or so higher?

            Except that we are now within the Quaternary Ice Age, and just taking a brief respite through one of many interglacials. It should be a lot easier to imagine the Northern Continents with a several kms thick ice sheet, because it is a lot more probable that it will happen in the future.

  28. DOE Meeting Summary
    Catastrophic Methane Hydrate Release Mitigation
    “Returning to the 4 GtC release scenario, assume such a release occurs over a oneyear
    period sometime in the next 50 years as result of slope failure. According to the
    Report of the Methane Hydrate Advisory Committee, “Catastrophic slope failure
    appears to be necessary to release a sufficiently large quantity of methane rapidly
    enough to be transported to the atmosphere without significant oxidation or
    dissolution.”
    In this event, methane will enter the atmosphere as methane gas. It will have a
    residence time of several decades and a global warming potential of 62 times that of
    carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
    This would be the equivalent of 248 GtC as carbon dioxide or 31 times the annual
    man-made GHG emissions of today. Put another way, this would have the impact of
    nearly 30 years worth of GHG warming all at once. The result would almost
    certainly be a rapid rise in the average air temperature, perhaps as much as 3°F
    immediately. This might be tolerable if that’s as far as things go. But, just like
    15,000 years ago, if the feedback mechanisms kick in, we can expect rapid melting of
    Greenland and Antarctic ice and an overall temperature increase of 30°F.”

    http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~karin/140/articles/MethaneHydrates.pdf

    1. The Eemian was much warmer than the Holocene and there was no release of methane from clathrates. This is becoming ridiculous. There’s more fantasy in climate change alarmism than in Disneyland.

      1. What is becoming ridiculous Javier? The DOE is looking into geo-engineering methods to counter any possible threats to the atmosphere from fast methane releases due to geologic disruptions. Of course there is nothing they can do if the rate is not high enough to reach an ignitable mixture level. Slow, long term releases are unmanageable.
        Where is the ridiculous part? Methane is a natural part of the system. I thought you were promoting natural changes.
        Could it be you just don’t understand the situation and get frustrated with your inability to comprehend a complex system? That’s OK, Javier, try not to stress yourself. Let the real scientists handle it. Take a trip to Disneyland, all that fake stuff there will make you feel right at home.

        1. The DOE is looking into geo-engineering methods to counter any possible threats to the atmosphere from fast methane releases due to geologic disruptions.

          So don’t you think that if this sort of thing could happen in any meaningful time frame, it should have happened already in the past 800,000 years? We have high resolution CH4 records for the past 800,000 years. Something so big should have caused a big spike in methane levels, followed by a significative increase in CO2 levels, and more importantly an increase in temperatures because of “a global warming potential of 62 times that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.”

          If it hasn’t happened in 800,000 years we shouldn’t worry too much that it is going to happen over the next century.

            1. Prove me wrong. Show when this thing has happened in the last 800,000 years.

      2. I hear they are opening a new ride in Disneyland, it’s called the Future According to Javier, everything is upside down…

      3. The Eemian was roughly 1 C warmer than average global Holocene temperatures based on some studies. If warming reaches 3 C above average Holocene temperatures (up to 1849 CE) there may be some danger of methane release being a problem.

        This possibility is no less ridiculous than an assumption that ECS will be 2 C and ESS will be 2.6 C, which some people take seriously.

        1. Dennis,

          The Eemian was roughly 1 C warmer than average global Holocene temperatures based on some studies.

          Sea levels during the Eemian support that the Eemian was much warmer than the Holocene for a very long time. Most of the ice cap in Greenland melted, and you don’t get that being a little warmer than the Holocene.

    1. The Guardian has gone into full hysteria mode since the elections. I’m sort of enjoying their funny articles. But the ny times takes the gold medal.

      1. Are you confident that foreign governments trust Trump’s leadership abilities?

        1. Who cares? What are they going to do about it? The Europeans are surrender monkeys, invaded by Arabs and other would be terrorists, the Chinese and the Shia are the enemy, Latin Americans and Africans don’t count, Canadians will do as they are told, and Trump will make a deal with Putin, who won’t be too worried abou Trump’s leadership abilities.

          I do wonder if you envision the USA president as the world’s emperor who requires some sort of approval from the nobility in the provinces?

          1. “The Europeans are surrender monkeys, invaded by Arabs and other would be terrorists, the Chinese and the Shia are the enemy, Latin Americans and Africans don’t count, Canadians will do as they are told”

            Only A Fool Would Say That

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrwxO8wb_cc

            A world become one
            Of salads and sun
            Only a fool would say that
            A boy with a plan
            A natural man
            Wearing a white stetson hat
            Unhand that gun begone
            There’s no one to fire upon
            If he’s holding it high
            He’s telling a lie

            I heard it was you
            Talkin’ ’bout a world
            Where all is free
            It just couldn’t be

            And only a fool would say that

            The man in the street
            Draggin’ his feet
            Don’t want to hear the bad news
            Imagine your face
            There is his place
            Standing inside his brown shoes
            You do his nine to five
            Drag yourself home half alive
            And there on the screen
            A man with a dream

            I heard it was you
            Talkin’ ’bout a world
            Where all is free
            It just couldn’t be

            And only a fool would say that

            Anybody on the street
            Has murder in his eyes
            You feel no pain
            And you’re younger
            Then you realize

            I heard it was you
            Talkin’ ’bout a world
            Where all is free
            It just couldn’t be

            And only a fool would say that

    1. Exactly! The current political outcome should never be considered natural, it isn’t!

      There were many others, but “dominance” made them difficult to recognize. Joachim Fest writes in his memoir Not I, “At first, the countless violations of the law by our new rulers still caused a degree of disquiet. But among the incomprehensible features of those months, my father later recalled, was the fact that soon life went on as if such state crimes were the most natural thing in the world.” Those months would turn to years. Not the thousand years that Hitler had predicted, but enough to cause millions of deaths.

      We should not waste our time or imaginations trying to reconfigure Trumpism to explain why all of the “good people” supported him. It is more important to see it for what it is and resist. Hopefully, they will join us. If not, it will not be necessary to call them names, they will have named themselves. </I?

    3. I am concerned that the GOP, currently in control of the White House, Senate and House, and many governorships and state houses, can and will change the laws to the extent that they can’t be removed. The US’s path may be permanently locked in.

      That’s why I look toward the blue states to offer alternatives; economics to limit what the GOP can do; and China to lead the way with renewables and electric transportation.

      While I think voters might want to throw out the GOP if their expectations aren’t realized, if the GOP controls who gets to vote, and what news is allowed to get to the public, and who can’t be voted out of office or removed from office, it may not be possible.

      1. “That’s why I look toward the blue states to offer alternatives; economics to limit what the GOP can do; and China to lead the way with renewables and electric transportation.”

        Toxic Smog Choking Beijing Is So Bad, It’s Grounded Flights

        http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/beijing-smog-prompts-residents-to-flee-seeking-breathable-air_us_5858b932e4b03904470a7675

        Hi Boomer,

        I grew up about dead center in the LA basin. There were days you couldn’t see the houses at the end of the block(900 feet). I just remember the general feeling that there was nothing that could be done about the problem. That didn’t end up being true. A lot of heavy industry has left the area, the population has more than doubled and most of all, California has implemented the toughest regulations in the world.

        I truly believe this air quality success is one of the driving forces that makes California a leader of the blue states today. Most of the 20 million residence who live in the basin today, know and understand that government regulation is a major part of the success to their quality of life.

        Let’s hope the leaders of the world can follow this example and apply it to climate change. The difficult part is that there is not one simple answer to the problem, but tens of thousands of changes that need to be made to our behavior.

        I hope your right

        1. Yes, I am really hoping that blue states do so much better in terms of their economies and lifestyles that the red states finally realize their solutions aren’t working.

          In terms of jobs, I know many of the red states aren’t heading in the right direction. They are hoping that the industries they used to have will come back, but they won’t.

          And they don’t have enough to offer growth industries to relocate there. Tax incentives won’t be enough because a number of companies already have more cash than they need. It’s going to stock buybacks rather than capital investments.

            1. Oil prices are rebounding nicely. I expect oil producing states to have much stronger economies as their excise taxes and royalty income grow and the oil industry economic activity provides an overall boost to state tax income.

            2. Oil companies are bleeding red ink at record pace. I expect burning oil to continue to pollute the environment and kill life prematurely. Costing society cleaning up spills and additional medical expenses. Overall hurting humanity.

            3. All Earthlings will suffer more, as biodiversity continues its death spiral.

    4. I just read the Nazi article.

      A political change didn’t come within Germany. It came because the country lost WWII.

      So will the US swing so far to the right that the only way for us to change is to be forced to do so by an outside power?

      Again, I am hoping that at least as far as energy matters are concerned, China and Europe (and perhaps developing countries) collectively have enough power to shift the world toward renewables and energy efficiency and away from fossil fuels. If the US is economically “defeated” maybe that will force out the far right. Or it could strengthen the far right, but perhaps the damage they do to the environment will be lessened through less global fossil fuel production and consumption. Will the US be sacrificed to save the rest of the world?

      1. China isn’t about to force anything. And the Europeans lack the economic strength to suck on a strawberry milkshake. Besides, they are used to freeloading on the USA for their defense, so that’s that.

  32. That stuff is nothing new, Fred. It has been going on for centuries, ever since laws were writ.

    Stop quoting your laws, we have swords – General Pompey

    And if you really want to know what is happening about it all, how it is happening has been manifested in Berlin; just the way it is all planned. There are no rules, rulers, yes, but no rules.

    The nation is divided, half patriots and half traitors, and no man can tell which from which. – Mark Twain

    Starts with stoning, then to the Reign of Terror, then to WWI.

    Then to Vietnam, over to Iraq, then to Syria, on and on, to the next great fubar.

    It’s getting to be you can’t have a sane world in this world anymore.

  33. Just in case anybody is still wondering if I have been repeating R talking points, here’s something I just copied from the Daily Beast.

    xxxx

    “I offered to help and never heard back from anybody—quite frankly, I wasn’t surprised,” Robert Becker, a veteran organizer who ran Iowa and Michigan operations for the Sanders presidential campaign, told The Daily Beast.
    “There was no outreach to me… but I did get a call three weeks out [from Election Day] from someone who was in the DNC sounding the alarm [about Michigan],” he said. “They didn’t feel like they were getting strong support from [unions members]… I mean, these trade deals that were going on for decades that were enabled by the Democratic Party in large part, they hurt. [The Clinton campaign] didn’t address the anger about this. We picked up on that during the primary. People were furious at these bad trade deals. We were connecting with those voters in Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin… Everyone’s trying to point a finger as to what went wrong, and I just point to the operational malpractice.”
    Of course, everybody will have his or her own explanation and rationalizations for why Trump was just handed the keys to the White House. The defeated Clinton campaign routinely blames the media coverage of its candidate. It repeatedly blames the Russians, and FBI director James Comey’s letters, for the hard loss. “We weren’t measuring the white vote correctly,” Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, further explained late last month at an event at Harvard University.
    “In a race where people wanted fundamental change, Donald Trump sure was a fundamental change,” Mook said. “It was a strength being an outsider.”
    And according to the remnants of Team Bernie, Mook and the rest of the Clinton team need to carve out a large space for self-reflection.
    “For me this is not about Hillary Clinton, this is about HIllary Clinton’s staff becoming too insular, too professional where regular working-class folks did not matter to them,” Kleeb said. “She had too many people [on her campaign] wearing Prada going into pollster meetings, not enough of us.”

    An excerpt from the excerpt:

    We weren’t measuring the white vote correctly,” Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, further explained late last month at an event at Harvard University.

    If Robby Mook isn’t a Democrat, I will quit posting here altogether and just go ahead with something of my own on the net.

    “TOO MANY people wearing Prada” , well, if that’s not the description of elitists, people with money to burn in control of the people’s party, or what is SUPPOSED TO BE the people’s party………….

    Even Donald Trump’s son in law is running stuff supportive of the argument that Sanders would have beaten Trump.

    1. But don’t we now have the billionaire’s club running the show as of January? So what were the voters thinking? The guy puts on a baseball cap and suddenly he is not an elitist?

      1. I am not defending the brains of the voting public. That would be a MISTAKE.

        What I have been trying to get across, no more , and no less, is that Team Clinton threw away what should have been an easy victory, and if D people want to win next time around, they need to listen to sensible people, who try to tell them such things as ” run a candidate with favorable poll numbers, and the common touch, and campaign on the root values of the D party instead of Republican lite ( globalization, etc) and identity politics.

        Team Clinton for got who elects D’s – working people of all ethnicities and races.

        A couple of hundred million people take their jobs and economic security seriously. Hardly any, by comparison, give a hoot about same sex or transgender bathrooms.

    2. “I have been repeating R talking points”

      It’s very clear to myself that before the election Mac you were “repeating R talking points”. I also believe Sanders is the primary number one reason Clinton lost. Sanders never had a chance of winning after early March, but refused to acknowledge it. His continuing to campaign helped reinforce nonsense which the Trump campaign thrived on. Then three months later, the Sanders campaign did a trouble job of uniting the party. The total opposite of what Clinton did for Obama. You yourself are an example of the trouble injustice Sanders did to the Democrat party.

      Mac, your rational of educating the Democrats of Hillary before the election for 2020 doesn’t hold water with me.

      Please don’t respond back to me with a 40 page comment. I will not read it. You should try to think 140 characters. If the President Elect can get his point across that way. Surely you can too.

      1. As someone on the radical side of the political spectrum, who only voted strategically in the reformist political project, examining HRC:

        Voted for Iraq War

        Voted for the Patriot Act

        Voted to bail out her Banksters friends and doners to the tune of 12 trillion dollars

        Voted for the Keystone Pipelind

        Called the TPP the “Gold Standard” of trade agreements

        Was on the Board of Wall Mart

        I could go on—

        Got my vote– you must be kidding!

        1. Fair enough Duncan. I can live with those arguments. Let’s just keep in mind a lot of these are a few years old and we know more now.

          Iraq- With what I believed at the time about 911 and Bush. I agreed with Clinton that Bush should have a big stick to get the inspectors back in Iraq. I near expected Bush to attack Iraq on a lie.

          Patriot Act- It was less than 6 weeks after 911 and 98% of the Senators voted for it. I would pretty much guess 96% had no idea what they were doing. I hate the idea of it and couldn’t tell you today all the reasons I’m against it. Are we better off with it? I guess we will never know.

          Banksters- If you believe the basic story of the 2008 financial crisis. Something had to be done. I don’t think she did something personal or professional to favor any individual. I do believe more justice was needed, but I don’t believe it was expected or should have come from her as Secretary.

          Keystone- From what I knew 7 years ago. I was in favor of it too. I mean what’s one more pipeline. I didn’t think there was other better options.

          TPP- It probably is the Gold Standard and should be approved. What shouldn’t be happening is Congress holding the economy hostage for political reasons. That’s the real problem. If you don’t have a vision of the future and cut budgets. What do you expect ?

          WalMart- Board of Directors, now there is gift job my paper boy could preform. I mean she was the first lady of Arkansas with a law degree.

          I rest my case

      2. Hi HB,

        Nuance and details are for people with brains and the will to use them.

        Twitter is for twits who are interested in sound bites, and hearing what they want to hear, from folks already in their camp, given that they lack the attention span necessary to serious thinking.

        If everybody had bothered to listen, and think, and take time to really understand who Trump is, and what he is , he would have lost.

        Twitter is for Trump voters, and D’s with their heads in the sand.

        Sanders could maybe have won, if it weren’t for the Team Clinton dirty tricks squad.

        She would have won if she hadn’t been so stupid and arrogant as to set up a secret communications systems for reasons that neither she nor any leading D have ever expressly stated or acknowledged, as the case may be, but it sure as hell wasn’t for convenience sake.

        You would have to be a flat out imbecile to believe that explanation. Of course saying you believe it can be explained as a blatant display of partisan hypocrisy, which at least takes away the dunce hat scenario.

        Nobody would have been hammering at her credibility and honesty and respect for the laws the rest of us are expected to follow, in regards to EMAILS, if she hadn’t made that colossal mistake.

        She handed that weapon to the R’s out of STUPIDITY and ARROGANCE.

        NOTE, I always said Trump was worse, and continue to say so.

        Keep your head in the sand, and you will be doing your part to ensure the R’s continue to control Washington thru the next couple of elections at least, maybe even longer.

        IF Clinton had had the best interests of the country in mind, she would have stepped aside for Sanders, who made her look like a clown, in terms of polling numbers, in respect to winning against Trump.

        Anybody who looks at the numbers, in a disinterested non partisan fashion, the way a COACH would look at the numbers, and decide who to put on the first team, knows this is either for sure true, or VERY likely to be true.

        Clinton never had a snowball’s chance in hell of carrying rural flyover America, or the Old South, but she could still have won, if she had listened to the people who tried to get her to campaign on working class issues, instead of identity politics and Republican Lite policies such as globalism.

  34. Maybe the increased efforts by the global warming denier crowd have something to do with the following two stories:

    Renewables challenge natural gas plants on price in latest Lazard analysis

    Lazard’s annual LCOE study, released last week, is widely read in the power sector. The latest edition shows continued cost declines for alternative energy technologies, indicating their enhanced competitiveness without subsidies.

    On an unsubsidized basis, Lazard estimated the LCOE of land-based wind to be between $32/MWh and $62/MWh, lower than that of a combined cycle natural gas plant, which came in at between $48/MWh and $78/MWh.

    Utility-scale solar costs had a smaller range, coming in between $46/MWh and $56/MWh for thin film installations. Rooftop and community solar costs were higher, due largely to scale.

    Solar makes up 37% of new U.S. large-scale generation in 2016

    We all knew that 2016 was going to be a very good year for the U.S. solar market; however no one could say exactly how good.

    Yesterday the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) published a post which provides some of the first concrete numbers for the year. EIA estimates that when all planned projects come online, the United States will have installed 9.5 GW of utility-scale solar over the course of 2016.

    And unlike the data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) monthly Energy Infrastructure Updates, EIA’s latest numbers are in line with what the solar industry is reporting. Mercom Capital and GTM Research have forecast that 13-14 GW of both utility-scale and distributed solar will be installed in the United States this year…

    Note that this is happening before certain cost reductions that are essentially “baked into the cake” have seen the light of day. Case in point is the advent of “kerless” or “Direct Wafer” manufacturing being pioneered by the likes of 1366 Technologies. From a Fortune article:

    A Grown Up Solar Industry Looks to Lower Costs Though Tech

    A nine-year-old startup called 1366 Technologies has developed a new way to make these standard silicon wafers, which it says can cut wafer costs in half. The company forms wafers directly from a pool of molten silicon, cools the wafers, and trims them, in a process similar to making sheets of glass.

    The company says that its process is far quicker, and leaves much less silicon waste, compared to traditional silicon wafer manufacturing. However, the technology isn’t yet commercial.

    1366 Technologies had planned to break ground on a big factory in upstate New York by the end of June. But it will now likely start building the factory closer to 2017.

    I have not been able to determine if construction has actually started on this factory but, if Trump and his goons are not careful, 1366’s first factory could end up in South Korea or China. Was it Gandhi who said “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then …….”?

    1. http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/las-vegas/city-las-vegas-reaches-clean-energy-goal

      By JAMIE MUNKS
      LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
      The city of Las Vegas is now drawing 100 percent of its power from renewable energy sources, a goal officials have been working toward for the better part of a decade.

      The effort moved closer to reality about a year ago when the city expanded its partnership with NVEnergy to deliver the power to run its facilities — everything from City Hall to parks and community centers to streetlights — using clean energy sources.

      The goal was fully realized last week when Boulder Solar 1, the large-scale project near Boulder City, went on line, city and NVEnergy officials announced Monday.

      Mayor Carolyn Goodman said that the city has become a “world leader in sustainability.”

    2. I got this from the link about the Lazard study

      “Even though alternative energy is increasingly cost-competitive and storage technology holds great promise, alternative energy systems alone will not be capable of meeting the baseload generation needs of a developed economy for the foreseeable future. Therefore, the optimal solution for many regions of the world is to use complementary traditional and alternative energy resources in a diversified generation”

      In other words, renewables will remain a support or niche electricity source until there are better, lower cost systems. The main drawback continues to be the lack of cheap energy storage systems.

      1. In other words, renewables will remain a support or niche electricity source until there are better, lower cost systems. The main drawback continues to be the lack of cheap energy storage systems.

        Yeah, says the petroleum engineer, who has a hammer and sees everything as a nail.

        You are obviously not up to speed as to the state of the art in energy storage systems… I’d post links but facts don’t seem to matter to you.

        It is fossil fuels that might remain remain a support or niche electricity source for a relatively short while longer.

        1. Or better, and to speak like Nietzsche, art with a hammer that practices, and then reverses and reevaluates, nihilism.

          http://www.dictionary.com/browse/nihilism

          The closest thing to a nihilist is my dog, everything must be wrecked, destroyed, satisfaction is satiated.

          Humans do the same thing, are nihilistic, burn every drop of oil, burn every ton of coal, plow every inch of ground, cover the earth with wind turbines, coat the earth with solar farms, it never stops, the nihilism.

          The earth is being hammered to a beaten pulp by these nihilists running wild.

          1. Some get first generation Apple 1’s on top of our shoulders and others get super computers. It’s all about the programming.

            My dog never destroyed anything

  35. That is great news Islandboy. With solar and PV becoming comparable or even better in cost than natural gas and coal, the economics alone will drive the growth. Now to get rid of some of those fossil fuel subsidies and it will really take off.
    By the time the amount of renewables gets to be similar in size to the fossil fuel generation, storage should be down in cost also..

    1. Now to get rid of some of those fossil fuel subsidies and it will really take off.

      http://www.ibtimes.com/us-fossil-fuel-subsidies-increase-dramatically-despite-climate-change-pledge-2180918

      According to the report — compiled by Oil Change International and U.K.-based think tank Overseas Development Institute — national subsidies to oil, gas and coal producers amount to $20.5 billion annually in the U.S., with almost all of those being received in the form of tax or royalty breaks. Federal subsidies amount to $17.2 billion annually, while subsidies in a number of oil-, gas- and coal-producing states average $3.3 billion annually.

      Now if add in the indirect subsidies of the cost of externalities Renewables would be way ahead!

      1. You can’t add in the indirect subsidies, it is against the rules of corporate economics to be responsible for the damage they do. Stop getting carried away, you will be called an alarmist.

  36. A rhetorical question. Is there a particular reason that denial of global warming seems to emanate from countries where the official language is English and there are a few individuals and groups that have amassed wealth that is practically obscene, all based on extraction and use of fossil fuels? The UK, US and Australia come readily to mind. Is it that the merchants of doubt are primarily English language speakers and have not got around to translating their misinformation to other languages? Javier and Fernando both have a very good command of English and in the case of Fernando, I can understand him not wanting to accept the arguments around global warming and latching onto the misinformation from the merchants of doubt, his entire career have been built around oil extraction.

    My background is electrical engineering so I’m OK with not having to extract and burn anything to make electricity. I’m convinced that distributed generation from solar PV along with batteries, utility scale solar, pumped storage wind, hydro and demand management, could power a modern industrial civilization with little or no burning of fossil fuels. I’m confident that my ability to make a living will not be compromised either way and in fact is probably better with the vastly larger numbers of electricity generating facilities involved in distributed generation. I cam empathize with those individuals whose skill sets revolve around the exploration and production of fossil fuels, less so with those that have amassed huge fortunes from fossil fuels but I can understand how seeing things that portend the end of their way of life can be very frightening.

    I think the solution to the puzzle can be found in the question, Cui bono? Who benefits? When one approaches the issue of global warming denial with that question, it begins to make some sort of sense. Who stands to gain the most from global warming denial? Who stands to loose the most if global warming is accepted? How does that compare with who will stand to gain from an acceptance of the science around global warming and any attempts to do something about it? Who stands to loose if carbon emissions are restricted? How will denial or acceptance affect the flow of money through various sectors of the economy? Who will be the winners and losers in each case? I rest my case.

    1. Cheap, accessible coal and then oil created the rich countries we have today. As those fuels become more expensive and less accessible, it is reasonable to assume the rich countries of the future will be those who adapt and take advantage of new means of energy production and consumption.

      It’s just kind of crazy that a few companies can dictate the future of an entire country. But then again, it as happened before.

      It’s not that I want to US to decline. It’s that I want what is best for the global environment. I don’t know what our future holds, but I do know that whether it is because of global warming or because of declining fossil fuel supplies, business as usual will not continue.

      1. It’s just kind of crazy that a few companies can dictate the future of an entire country. But then again, it as happened before.

        I think Alex Steffen hits a lot of nails on the head with his recent essay.

        Trump, Putin and the Pipelines to Nowhere
        You can’t understand what Trump’s doing to America without understanding the “Carbon Bubble”

        Alex Steffen
        Planetary futurist; writer, speaker, serial maker of things. Creator, The Heroic Future; co-creator, Worldchanging; author Carbon Zero. http://AlexSteffen.com

        https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/trump-putin-and-the-pipelines-to-nowhere-742d745ce8fd#.l6brt9o1n

        The Carbon Lobby and the Trump Gang
        For high-carbon industries to continue to be attractive investments, then, they must spin a tale of future growth. They must make potential investors believe that even if there is a Carbon Bubble, it is decades away from popping — that their high profits today will continue for the foreseeable future, so their stock is worth buying.
        How would you maintain this confidence?
        You’d dispute climate science — making scientists’ predictions seem less certain in the public mind— and work to gut the capacity of scientists to continue their work (by, for instance, defunding NASA’s Earth Sciences program).
        You’d attack global climate agreements, making them look unstable and weak, and thus unlikely to impact your businesses.
        You’d attack low-carbon competitors politically, attempting to portray the evidence that they can replace high-carbon industries as fraudulent (or at least overly idealistic).
        You’d use every leverage point to slow low-carbon industrial progress — for example, by continuing massive subsidies to oil and gas companies, while attacking programs to develop new energy sources.
        You’d support putting a price on carbon, since this makes you look moderate and engaged, but you’d make sure that the definition of a “reasonable” price on carbon was so low and took so long to implement that it was no real threat to your business, and at worst would replace the dirtiest fossil fuels with others (switching for example from coal to gas).
        You would ally with extremists and other sources of anti-democratic power, in order to be able to fight democratic efforts to cut emissions through the application of threats, instability and violence.
        Most of all, you’d invest as heavily as possible in new infrastructure and supply. For oil and gas companies, this means new exploration and new pipelines. Why would you do this, if you know you may have to abandon these assets before they’ve paid off? Two reasons: First, it sends a signal of confidence to markets that you expect to continue to grow in the future. Second, it’s politically harder to force companies to abandon expensive investments than it is to prevent those systems from being built in the first place — the mere existence of a pipeline becomes an argument for continuing to use it. This, too, bolsters investor confidence. (Note that whether these assets are eventually abandoned or not is of little concern to current investors looking to delay devaluations).

        Here’s the kicker: If you were going to put in place a presidential administration that was dedicated to taking these actions, it would look exactly like what we have now: a cabinet and chief advisors in which nearly every member is a climate denialist with ties to the Carbon Lobby.

        1. I am hoping that the renewable industry has reached or is close to reaching a point where they have more economic leverage than the fossil fuel industry. As long as companies are publicly traded, there will be online discussions about whether or not a particular stock is a good buy. So it will be hard for the fossil fuel companies to control the narrative in investor forums. This is particularly the case if fossil fuel companies lose money. Yes, I know some of the companies are trying to blame regulations for those losses, but if the regulations disappear, drilling increases, and the price stays low, the companies will only have made their situations worse.

          I wouldn’t put it past the Kochs to try to stop renewables and EVs with laws that prevent or hamper them, but I am also hoping that enough companies and citizens are financially benefiting that they will lobby to make these technologies available to them.

          The utility industries have financial reasons to switch from coal to natural gas, and individual states can require more renewables in the mix, so what Trump does shouldn’t prevent that at the state level.

          I don’t know that renewable energy companies can make deals with Trump, but it appears that both Elon Musk and Bill Gates think they can. Perhaps Trump’s cabinet will turn out to be a political cover for a more liberal energy policy.

          In terms of politics, it helps that tech billionaires support renewable energy technology. Their money is just as good as fossil fuel money when it comes to political influence.

          1. The reason I started to read this forum a few years ago was to know more about the future of the Bakken. If it plays out relatively fast, it might signal to other states that fracking is only a short-term economic solution and not to count on it for long-term state income and jobs.

            And I think the future of the Bakken is still important when it comes to Trump policies. If we open up more areas to drilling, and they either decline quickly or are costly to develop, or both, maybe some economic realities will sink in.

        2. Thanks for the link Fred. I’ve not heard of Alex Steffen for years, not since World Changing days. Remember Jamais Cascio too?

  37. There are apparently a lot more glaciers shrinking than growing these days. This is the story of one that has disappeared altogether, within the working lifetime of people who made their living at the ski resort associated with the glacier.

    And with it gone, a Bolivian city nearby has lost it as a source of nice clean water, and the people there are in one hell of a bind, getting their water by truck.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38235094

    1. The Bolivian government is headed by communist Evo Morales, who used to be a coca farmer. Morales enjoyed a boom in the value of Bolivian exports over the last 10 years, but nowadays prices are lower, and the economy is starting to hurt.

      Morales emphasized hand outs and flashy infrastructure, neglected to invest in basic infrastructure, discouraged private investment, nationalized some industries, and his government has become increasingly corrupt.

      The gaps caused by the gradual economic decay caused by left wingers was being covered in part with handouts from Venezuela. But now that Venezuela is approaching complete failure, these handouts aren’t available.

      Morales is precluded from running again by the Bolivian constitution. He tried a plesbicite to see if he could change it, but the people voted no. However, just last week he announced he would run for president again, ignoring the constitution.

      The water shortage is the result of a long term trend, a slightly dryer and warmer climate, enormous population growth, and the new Morales policies, which include lower charges for water. The availability of cheap water and irresponsibility of the water system managers led them to draw down the reservoirs until the feces hit the fan.

      Another newsy item about regime incompetence and corruption is the Chapecoense football team crash. The charter airline which flew the team from Brazil to their death on a Colombian mountainside was connected to Venezuelan boligarchs, is said to have Chinese investors, and cut quite a few corners to get their Bolivian licenses. It seems they weren’t really ready to meet all requirements, but corrupt government officials issued the licenses, and airport authorities also violated regulations. This led to the airplane crash because it ran out of fuel a few mi Utes before the scheduled landing.

      1. Another newsy item about regime incompetence and corruption is the Chapecoense football team crash.

        How so? The pilot, who died in the crash, was a co-owner of the airline. Was he suicidal or was he just too greedy and tried to push the limits of his plane. In any case it was a case of human error and a tragedy. What did this accident have to do with any regime?

  38. NOT GOOD!

    http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-12-20/pesticide-powerhouses-and-the-future-of-farming/

    Maybe I’m fooling myself, but it seems to me that years ago, the D party put up quite a fuss about big businesses being allowed to merge and merge and merge, until only two or three would dominate a key industry.

    NOBODY at all these days seems to be much interested in stopping mergers creating these ever larger, ever more powerful corporations.

    I don’t believe in the concept of ” to big to fail” personally.

    It might be necessary for the government to bail out a company or industry, for the good of the country, but the owners and managers of such businesses and industries should have to give up every last dime. That would go one hell of a long way to ensuring better management, avoiding the need for more bailouts, and be far more just for the rest of us.

    Privatized profits and socialized losses are not the American way- at least, not until recently.

    1. This is why I am wary of GMOs. I understand the science and don’t think the process is inherently dangerous. But the use of the technology seems to be done primarily for agribusiness to further control the global food supply. Patent the crops, then sell them to everyone to sell more agricultural chemicals. A lot of the GMO crops in the US were developed to tolerate herbicides.

      1. Hi Boomer,

        I agree with you double plus in respect to monopolies in any industries that are as critical as the food industry.

        Actual farm operators, the guys who operate the machinery and keep the books, the way I have, are pretty much compelled to go along to get along. GMO patented seed and chemicals are expensive as hell, but you still come out on the bottom line using them, and you mostly can’t compete WITHOUT them anymore, in the key crops where they are now dominant.

        The folks who yak yak yak about alternative farming methods have as a rule never even SEEN what goes on in the industry. You just aren’t going to get rid of five thousand bushels of soy beans, a typical annual production for an average local guy in my neighborhood, where farms are small, or a hundred thousand or two hundred bushels of corn, a typical mid western producers annual production, at a farmers market, or by selling it out of the back of your car to your cowoorkers, lol.

        But the old methods, and traditional seed, etc still work, and if legislation is passed to outlaw these patented seeds and chemicals, we can still produce, only not quite as much.

        Switching back would involve buying some new equipment, and giving the traditional seed industry at least three or four years , best case possible scenario, to ramp up again. It would actually take longer, most likely at least five or six years to restore the capacity to produce traditional seed in adequate quantities.

        But if you wanted to produce a traditional old time crop of corn, you could put your hands on a hundred bushels of seed, no problem, by looking for it, and using plenty of fertilizer, etc, with good weather, good soil, etc, you could easily have eight thousand bushels of seed for the following year, maybe ten thousand. The third year, no bad luck, you would be good to go on your old style corn, there could be seed enough to supply a hell of a lot of neighbors.

        But they would lose their asses growing it in competition with guys using hybrids or gmo corn, and they know it. The best you could hope for is that they might plant a small field, at substantial expense, to have some of their own as a back up emergency seed supply.

        The problem with this solution is that hybrids replaced the old pure lines decades and decades back,and the production of hybrid seed is an altogether different animal. There’s no way to use that old traditional corn to compete against the hybrids that displaced them. Restoring hybrid production would take the six to eight years I mentioned above, most likely.

        And unfortunately, the same damned half dozen or fewer companies dominated and still dominate hybrid seed production.

        It would take some sort of sharp chunk reality brick upside society’s collective head to force any substantial change by way of law and regulation. That’s about the only hope of it happening, in my opinion, and it’s a slim hope.

        But if the worst fears of the anti gmo faction were to be realized, and some genetic monster evolves from a gmo crop, and invades everybody’s reserve pasture( aka front lawn) , or ten million babies are born deformed from their mom eating it……….. as I said, it’s a SLIM hope.

        Going back would mean our expenses would go up, for items such as diesel fuel, new tractors, etc, because we will use more and use them more often for more hours. We will have relatively greater problems with soil erosion, and fertilizer run off, because we will be plowing more and no till is highly dependent on chemicals.

        One bright side aspect is that patents do expire.

        The ideal solution to the problem as I see it would be to have laws, and a justice department that would actually enforce the laws, that prevent any given company from controlling more than some arbitrary percentage of the market for any given kind of seed, and force the owner of the patent to license production of any new critical chemical to competitors. There is ample justification for such a law, on the grounds of the general welfare, which is the justification for the liberal and TRADITIONAL interpretation of the Commerce Clause .

        And while the truth is not always welcome, depending on where and who you are talking to, I try to tell it as I see it. Environmentalists generally DON’T want to hear the whole story about conventional industrial farming.

        Here’s the part they would rather NOT HEAR.

        Take away my weed killers, my hybrid and GMO seed, and my manufactured fertilizers, and I , as a working guy, will have to clear some woodland, and drain some wetland, and plow to the fence lines, every year, to have even a snowball’s chance on a red hot stove of maintaining production.

        Yields would fall so far, collectively, that people would literally be starving within a year, by the millions and millions. We DON’T have the land to spare to do it the old way anymore.

        And the people who tell you it can be done without the chemicals,etc have their heads up their asses, so far they haven’t a prayer of ever knowing what DAYLIGHT is.

        LAB exercises are one thing. Scaling up in the real world is something else altogether.

        SOMETHING ELSE ALTOGETHER.

        NOTE- I am one hundred percent FOR ample and amply funded research into all aspects of agriculture, including ways to make scaling up lab exercises possible. 😉

        There is some hope that we CAN scale up some lab exercise results, but the scaling up is going to take a while.

        There is little hope of any significant change in current bau industrial farming methods is less than a decade.

    1. This is all normal behaviour to be expected from a planet still coming out of the deep throes of an ice age. Glaciers will melt in some regions while occasionally expanding in others. An intriguing academic inquiry would be to ask what sorts of drastic headlines might have been generated by the melting of the massive glaciers that once covered the mid-latitudes of the n. hemisphere, had mass media existed at the time.

      1. Got a reference, or is this just your personal experience observing glaciers over hundreds of years?

          1. Your comment is painfully general and doesn’t seem to be about the ideas presented in the article.

            It is a non-response.

            You could talk about why you don’t think the melting is unusual. You know, kind of like a counter-argument.

            This would require some sort of reference.

            But you don’t.

            1. This is about mountain glaciers rather than Antarctica, but the latest info. 226 out of 227 in clear retreat, some figures about whether that is just an artefact of noisy signal – it isn’t, the glacier extent turns out to be a very good proxy for temperature and smooths out weather effects. Of course the comment above implicitly accepts all of that – the issue there is that it is warming faster than ever because we are “coming out … of a an ice age”. There is no evidence for that.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MhTuTnJJlY

            2. Note all the AGU 2016 youtube press conferences that might come up with this link are worth looking at. There was also a talk on Antarctic glaciers but I haven’t found it on youtube – I think it confirms that it is generally accepted that the collapse of the Thwaites glacier is now guaranteed. The question is timing, and increasingly scientists can’t really say it won’t happen this century if the warming goes on as fast as presently (I can’t remember what this gives as an exact level rise but I think several metres).

            3. You have to watch your wording now so I should add the 226 out of 227 is for glaciers studied, there are almost 200,000 total in the world.

            4. George,

              the glacier extent turns out to be a very good proxy for temperature and smooths out weather effects.

              Not really unless we consider glaciers globally. Glaciers are affected by a lot of factors: precipitations, volcanic eruptions, whether the glacier is a calving glacier or not, the slope of the glacier. A lot more complex that you would think.

              Oerlemans, one of the leading experts in global glaciers published recently a very comprehensive study:
              Leclercq, Paul W., et al. “A data set of worldwide glacier length fluctuations.” The Cryosphere 8.2 (2014): 659-672.
              http://www.the-cryosphere.net/8/659/2014/tc-8-659-2014.pdf

              You are going to love the conclusion:

              “We have presented a data set of worldwide glacier length fluctuations, which combines measurements with different types of glacier length reconstructions. The data set contains the glacier length records for 471 glaciers and it covers the period 1535–2011.

              The available glacier length records show a coherent global glacier signal, of little length change in the 17th to mid-19th century, followed by a general retreat that continued throughout the 20th century. For the observed glaciers, the 20th century retreat was strongest in the first half of the 20th century.”

              Ouch!!! Globally glaciers retreated more when there was little CO2 than when there has been a lot.

              Well. This is what science says, but you are not going to hear it when alarmists talk about how glaciers are crashing.

              This is the much talked acceleration of climate change, only that it appears to be working on reverse. Hardly alarming.

            5. Javier did you actually read the entire paper or just the cherry picked parts that you copied and pasted?

              And did you actually watch the presentation from AGU meeting on Glaciers that George linked to?

              It happens to address exactly the point I bolded in the conclusion excerpted below which is the much more up to date data currently available.

              The available glacier length records show a coherent
              global glacier signal, of little length change in the 17th to
              mid-19th century, followed by a general retreat that continued
              throughout the 20th century. For the observed glaciers,
              the 20th century retreat was strongest in the first half of the
              20th century. Despite these general global trends, the fluctuations
              of individual glaciers vary strongly, indicating that
              the characteristics of individual glaciers play an important
              role. In general, calving glaciers retreated more than landterminating
              glaciers, although the average relative change is
              similar for both glacier types. The observed retreat over the
              20th century confirms that steep glaciers are less sensitive to
              climatic change than glaciers with a gentle slope.
              This data set leaves ample room for improvement. First of
              all it would benefit from including records from regions with
              little or no coverage: northern Asia, Arctic islands of Russia
              and Canada and the Antarctic region. These regions contain
              a large proportion of the world’s glacier volume, and by
              adding data from glaciers in these regions, the data set would
              better represent the global glacier fluctuations. Furthermore,
              as about 35 % of the length records in the data set end before
              2005, many of the included time series could be updated,
              e.g., by the analysis of satellite images as we have done for
              the records on Novaya Zemlya.               The climatic reconstructions
              based on glaciers would benefit from more long-term and
              detailed length records, especially from regions outside of
              Europe and South America.

              Just curious do you understand how many people in Asia alone depend on glaciers for their water? But I’m guessing the coming ice age you are so certain is just around the corner will solve that problem…

            6. “much more up to date data currently available.”

              Leclercq’s work is from 2014 and presents data on glaciers for the past 500 years.

              Do you seriously think that our understanding of glaciers has progressed so much in two years as to make Leclercq’s work obsolete? Not many people would agree with that. The data on those 471 glaciers has been painstakingly collected for several decades, and that data is not going to change.

              Sorry that the evidence does not fit your story.

            7. Javier maybe try some more recent data…

              http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9059

              Regional and global forcing of glacier retreat during the last deglaciation
              Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark, Feng He, Nathaniel A. Lifton, Zhengyu Liu & Bette L. Otto-Bliesner

              Abstract
              The ongoing retreat of glaciers globally is one of the clearest manifestations of recent global warming associated with rising greenhouse gas concentrations. By comparison, the importance of greenhouse gases in driving glacier retreat during the most recent deglaciation, the last major interval of global warming, is unclear due to uncertainties in the timing of retreat around the world. Here we use recently improved cosmogenic-nuclide production-rate calibrations to recalculate the ages of 1,116 glacial boulders from 195 moraines that provide broad coverage of retreat in mid-to-low-latitude regions. This revised history, in conjunction with transient climate model simulations, suggests that while several regional-scale forcings, including insolation, ice sheets and ocean circulation, modulated glacier responses regionally, they are unable to account for global-scale retreat, which is most likely related to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.

              Discussion
              A reassessment of the cosmogenic-nuclide based chronology of glacier fluctuations spanning over 100° of latitude shows that glacier retreat was broadly synchronous with the increase in atmospheric CO2 and global temperature from 18–11 ka. Transient simulations with a coupled global climate model show that modulation by other forcings can explain regional variability in the glacier retreat chronology, with insolation explaining early deglaciation in the western United States, and seesaw responses to the AMOC explaining millennial variability in the Southern Hemisphere. Within dating uncertainties, onset of glacier retreat in the tropics is generally consistent with CO2 forcing, but the existing chronology cannot exclude earlier retreat, possibly identifying the influence of ENSO variability on glacier surface mass balance, or some other as yet unidentified regional forcing. While an imperfect comparison due to differences in time scales and several forcings, there is thus some similarity between glacier retreat over the last deglaciation and the last century. Both exhibit a globally coherent mode of retreat likely associated in large part with rising greenhouse gases, as well as regional variability in the pace and timing of retreat reflecting the operation of regional-scale forcings and heat redistributions within the climate system27,28.

              BTW, from IRIS.ai
              Regional and global forcing of glacier retreat during the last deglaciation
              I’ve identified 284 related papers and grouped them by concept.
              The three main headings are:
              RETREAT
              GLACIER
              DEGLACIATION

            8. Our understanding of glacier movements during last deglaciation is a lot worse than for the last three centuries. Latest glacier movements obliterate and erase evidence from previous movements, so the older the evidence the less conclusive.

              Peter Clark’s group has a bad reputation for lack of rigor with the conclusions that they extract from difficult to interpret proxy data. They already had a serious issue with the way they handled proxy drop out at the end of their Holocene series when an artifact spike in temperatures resulted that was not in the data. A figure was published in major newspapers and they had to recognize that this result could not be concluded from their data. Quite shameful.

    2. Sadly there are not enough researchers or funding to fully examine the poles. We are in for more surprises just do to the fact that we are not observant enough. We will probably get a few surprises from the ocean also.

  40. Another day older and deeper in debt.

    Shortest day of the year is today, Winter Solstice Day. Gotta have one of those.

    It is National Yule Humbug Day today, can’t be without one of those.

    http://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/latest-posts/

    How much CO2 can a forest biome like the freaking redwoods and whispering pines out there in California drink in a day? Less 112 million of them.

    With the three trillion trees scattered across the planet, the amount of CO2 they remove from the atmosphere each day must be quantifiable. One of those unknown knowns. The photosynthesis is happening, CO2 is being removed from the atmosphere and the carbon is fixed by the plant. The old carbon sink brought to you by the Plant Kingdom. Siberia will become rich in the carbon trading market with all those trees acting as a carbon sink.

    You can determine your climate classification by following the Koppen Climate Chart.

    http://hanschen.org/koppen/

  41. Oh no, say it ain’t so!

    There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 1800 ppm or about 4.7 times higher than today. The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Cambrian Period, nearly 7000 ppm — about 18 times higher than today.

    The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today. To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today– 4400 ppm. According to greenhouse theory, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, global temperatures were no warmer than today. Clearly, other factors besides atmospheric carbon influence earth temperatures and global warming.

    http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

    1. The earth was receiving about 50 watts/m2 less irradiance during the Ordovician. CO2 was not as high as stated, more like 8 times higher than today initially, enough to keep the earth warm even with less sunlight. A large continent sat across the south pole at that time, glaciation started there in the mountains as the CO2 fell. Due to mountain building there was a lot of rock weathering which brought the CO2 down in the late Ordovician. Plankton and mosses further reduced the atmospheric CO2. Thus the glaciation started and albedo change takes over from there.

  44. The facts do not support the story that CO2 has melted the glaciers.

    Most of the glacier’s melting took place when CO2 levels were low. The glacier shown is not an exception, but the rule.

    “We have presented a data set of worldwide glacier length fluctuations, which combines measurements with different types of glacier length reconstructions. The data set contains the glacier length records for 471 glaciers and it covers the period 1535–2011.

    The available glacier length records show a coherent global glacier signal, of little length change in the 17th to mid-19th century, followed by a general retreat that continued throughout the 20th century. For the observed glaciers, the 20th century retreat was strongest in the first half of the 20th century.”

    Leclercq, Paul W., et al. “A data set of worldwide glacier length fluctuations.” The Cryosphere 8.2 (2014): 659-672.
    http://www.the-cryosphere.net/8/659/2014/tc-8-659-2014.pdf

    Although increased levels of CO2 might have contributed to the melting of glaciers, they can not be the main cause. Scientists do not know why glaciers have melted, yet some of them, unscientifically, are quick to blame anthropogenic increase in CO2 levels. People are not being told that there is a lot of evidence that does not support the hypothesis that most of the warming is due to the increase in CO2. Clearly the world can warm with or without CO2.

      1. Sorry Fred, you are in the wrong millennium. That paper is for 15,000 years ago.

        Do you seriously think that we know what happened 15,000 years ago better than what happened in 1850?

        1. Hi Fred,

          You may as well talk to a wall. I did my around and around with Javier more than a year ago. There is no point. I now just ignore him and don’t read his BS. If no one responds to him, he will go away. Sooner or later it’s going to start making you look bad responding to a block wall.

          Salute

          “Movin’ On”

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyilHADw1G0

          I get up in the morning and it’s just another day
          Pack up my belongings, I’ve got to get away
          Jump in to a taxi and the time is gettin’ tight
          I got to keep on movin’ on I got a show tonight

          1. That’s how you end up being a climate alarmist. By ignoring the evidence that contradicts your beliefs.

            2. I must disagree for at least three reasons, in no particular order.

              One, I have learned a good bit about the nuances of climate science from reading Javier’s comments and exchanges with other forum members.

              Two, failing to respond to people you do not agree with, (and I disagree with Javier myself, in terms of how dangerous forced warming is or will be, if for no other reason because the precautionary principle applies) then when a person who lacks reasonably decent technical education reads Javier’s comments, then he may take them as gospel, or generally accurate, in spite of the refutations posted by people such as Doug and Fred…….

              Because when you get right down to it, you either have the technical education, or you DON’T.

              MOST people, including most lawyers, accountants, computer programmers, preachers, journalists, laymen of every sort, etc believe what they believe about climate and climate science and forced warming BECAUSE THEY WANT TO BELIEVE what they believe..

              So- If you are a liberal, but have about as much understanding of physics or math or chemistry or biology or any hard science as a hound dog, then you believe in forced warming, because this belief is consistent with your tribal identity.

              But if forced warming and any policies put in place to deal with it threaten your job, or if you just don’t want to believe in it because you are a social conservative or you like things as they are, or you are a big R Republican,then you are apt to be a doubter or denialist, because THIS POSITION or belief is consistent with THAT tribal identity.

              I used to be an educator, and I take SOME things said by preachers seriously. One thing a preacher says is that if you preach your ass off for your whole life, and in all this time lead only one person to Jesus, you efforts have been worthwhile, you have not wasted your time.

              As an educator, you get thru to people ONE AT A TIME.

              A lot of the value of a forum such as this one consists of educational outreach.

              And if you get thru to one person out of the middle third , the politically independent voters, or just one hard core R type, then considering that elections are often close, you have done some useful and potentially critical good work.

              I have personally managed to convert a half dozen or so hard core conservatives from fossil fuel advocates to renewable energy supporters, by simply convincing them that fossil fuels ARE depleting fast enough to be a real problem for them personally within the next few decades.

              ONCE you respectfully get their attention, and talk to them without condescension and moralizin, with your nose in the air, THEN they soon come to also understand and accept the facts one, that we are OIL IMPORTERS, and that, two, our addiction to foreign oil means we are spending megabucks defending our access to that imported oil, and three, that if it weren’t for the fact that we have troops in Sand Country, we could just about forget about any and all terrorism arising in or from oil exporting countries. A nice little kicker is to point out that without the money they get from exporting oil, they would still be riding camels, instead of jet setting around. That one gets a belly laugh, and it’s remembered.

              Once I get this far along, I let it rest, but when the time is ripe again, I bring up some of the more attractive facts associated with wind and solar power, namely, local employment, local tax collections, local control over a substantial part of the energy supply, and then the icing on the cake- the bonus is that the less coal we burn to generate electricity, the cheaper coal ( and gas too) get, due to the loss of market share.

              The BONUS comes in the form of cheaper fertilizer, meaning cheaper food, cheaper steel, meaning cheaper cars, etc, cheaper gas for home heating and cooking etc.

              Javier is not likely to go away, even if he is ignored. It’s best to engage him, and in the process, further the education of any body truly interested in actually learning lots of new stuff about climate, geology, deep time, astronomy, and yes, the nature of the scientific process, as well.

              Any new visitors who have not yet made up their minds, one way or the other, about forced climate change, NEED to see the questions debated. This is one way, maybe the only way, a less technically sophisticated person can come to appreciate how science works, by gradually arriving at the truth, thru the collection and analysis of data, year after year, decade after decade.

              And last but not least, do we REALLY want to exclude those who don’t agree with us? I don’t but others are entitled to their own opinions about excluding people like Javier.

              You can’t convert sinners in bars without going into bars. I strongly suspect I am the only regular here who goes into some right wing sites to post comments, pretty much along the lines of what I post here, excepting advice to Democrats about winning, lol.

              For my troubles in doing so, I am often accused of being senile, or a troll, or worse. I am occasionally called a tree hugging whale loving panties wearing commie queer,etc. I have been called things even worse, but I don’t take such comments seriously, considering where and who they come from.

              So- as a practical matter, I maintain a couple of other identities, as well as posting under my own name, at a few places.

            3. when a person who lacks reasonably decent technical education reads Javier’s comments, then he may take them as gospel, or generally accurate, in spite of the refutations posted by people such as Doug and Fred

              Sorry Oldfarmermac,

              I think you are not paying attention. The evidence I have presented about the glaciers of the Earth has not been refuted. And the reason is simple. It is irrefutable. Most glaciers in the planet melted more between 1850 and 1950 than since 1950. That’s a hard cold fact.

              Global warming started been noticeable around 1850. CO2 is a late comer to the party and we don’t know how much it is contributing. If I were you I wouldn’t bet the farm on CO2 being the main culprit, because the warming since 1950 is not that different from the warming before 1950.

            4. Hi Javier,

              I am paying attention, but in this case I did not do a good job of composing my comment. ( Not a big deal, this is a conversation, and we can add corrections and more detail at no cost.)

              You are correct in saying the evidence you presented about glaciers cannot be refuted, as it appears to me to be actual historical evidence, well documented.

              What I should have said is that your interpretation of this evidence is open to challenge, and that Fred, Doug, HB, and others are presenting equally valid historical evidence , as a rule, and their evidence can no more be refuted,or proven false, than yours.

              You can challenge their interpretations, and they can challenge yours.

              My personal opinion, based on my own extensive reading and knowledge of the basic hard sciences,is that they are far more apt to be correct in predicting a lot of warming, enough to be very troublesome and dangerous, than you are in saying or implying it won’t happen, or that it appears to be unlikely to happen.

              I also believe in the precautionary principle and thus that anything we do to reduce the use of fossil fuels will be good for the environment, while reducing the odds of catastrophic forced climate change.

              But I agree with you that with the conversation and debate focused so intently on climate, we are missing the boat in terms of not doing more on the ground about environmental problems that CAN be solved, or at least minimized , with greater certainty , and at far less cost than trying to force a fast transition away from fossil fuels.

              Ten billion spent on climate initiatives might not even make a noticeable difference in CO2 concentration, but the same ten billion could buy up some rather impressive tracts of land to be held in permanent trust as ecological refuges for plants and animals that would have substantially better changes of surviving in such a refuge than without it.

            5. Thanks for answering Olfarmermac,

              Now I agree 200% with what you say. Evidence is always subject to interpretation, and it can always be interpreted in opposite ways. That is why is so absolutely crucial that we stick to what the evidence shows and disregard any interpretation whether by scientists or non scientists. In particular predictions should be completely disregarded. They never come to pass.

              Glacier evidence does not prove that CO2 is not causing warming, but does not fit either with the narrative that climate response depends mainly on CO2. Many of the arguments that are being pushed regarding the effects of CO2 on climate are simply a matter of interpretation, and sometimes directly non true. As citizens we should be aware by now that we are being fed garbage misinformation most of the time.

              And you are very insightful when pointing out that expending 10 billion on reducing CO2 emissions and research climate change will give as very low bang for the buck as it is doubtful that we can reduce global warming by more than a few tenths of a degree after extraordinary efforts that could damage our economies, while that amount of money would go a long way into repairing damage done to ecosystems worldwide.

              As usual money is finding its way from average people pockets into rich people pockets. But as long as it has an environmental tag, people don’t seem to care that much.

            6. Hi Old Farmer Mac,

              There are two problems climate change and depletion of fossil fuels.

              If there are plenty of fossil fuels so that depletion is not a problem, climate change will be a problem, based on global temperature change from 1850-2015 and changes in atmospheric CO2. This indicates a transient climate response if 2.2 C for a doubling of CO2 which is likely to result in an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 3.3 C (once the ocean has warmed fully).
              This evidence is pretty clear with a simple regression of natural log of atmospheric CO2 versus global temperature. About 82% of the variation in global temperature from 1850-2015 is explained by the change in atmospheric CO2 alone. The variability around the trend is the result of ocean and atmospheric circulation, and volcanic eruptions (solar variability plays a very minor role over the 1850-2015 period).

              If fossil fuel depletion is more of a problem, then climate change will be less of a problem and we might be ok if they are so limited that only 1000 Pg of carbon is emitted.

              In any case the solution is the same to both problems. A rapid transition to other sources of energy such as wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal power, possibly a little nuclear if we can improve the reactor design to make it shut down automatically without power backup.

              A transition away from fossil fuels also alleviates some of the environmental problems (ocean acidification for example).

            7. Hi Javier,

              The warming is significantly different and natural log of CO3 and temperature correlate very well from 1850 to 2015 with 82% of the variation in temperature explained, R squared is 82% of ln(CO2) vs temperature regression.

            8. Hi Dennis,

              Depends on how you define significantly different, but clearly CO2 cannot have been the main factor.

              Temperature data keeps being adjusted, which indicates it is very immature data. Depending on database chosen and considering only periods of warming:

              GISS LOTI:
              1910-1940: +0.51°C
              1975-2013: +0.68°C

              HadCrut4
              1910-1940: +0.51°C
              1975-2013: +0.66°C

              CO2
              1910-1940: 299.3-310.5 Increase: +11 ppm
              1975-2013: 330-396.5 Increase: +66.5 ppm

              An increase in (66.5 – 11) +55.5 ppm in the second period relative to the first resulted in an increase in (0.67 – 0.51) +0.16°C in the second period relative to the first, with the rest of the warming being due to natural causes in both cases.

              A doubling from 300 ppm in 1910 to 600 ppm in the future could result in less than 0.8°C warming due to CO2

            9. Replying to Javier is legitimizing a false narrative as a legitimate narrative and it’s not. He speaks of certainty on a subject of possible grave danger to humanity. The fact is no one really knows what’s going to happen. You can talk about the past 100,000 years or millions of years, but nothing in that time period comes close to what man has been doing to the atmosphere or environment for the last 300 years. There is no model to compare. We are flying blind.

              I put my seat belt on every time I go some where in the car. Because I don’t know what’s going to happen. If Javier wants to race around on a motorcycle with no helmet. Good for us. But when he starts telling others it’s safe. He’s a hole to put a rectal thermometer.

              Like I said, I did my go around with Javier. Nothing is going to change.

              And by the way. “You can’t convert sinners in bars” because their all at church condemning others.

            10. “Replying to Javier is legitimizing a false narrative as a legitimate narrative and it’s not.”

              This would be true IF and ONLY IF the person who replies agrees with Javier.

              ” The fact is no one really knows what’s going to happen.”

              This is actually true. We can say something to the effect that we believe the odds of catastrophic warming if we continue to burn fossil fuels as usual are x percent that there will be catastrophic warming. I would put the odds in the rather high nineties, personally. But we simply can’t be absolutely sure, until after the experiment is run. If you want to convert doubters and even denialists, you would do better to talk about the high likelihood of dangerous warming, and the precautionary principle.

              Now since you have pointed out that nobody knows for sure what is going to happen, then it seems to me that it follows from this statement that there is a NON ZERO chance that Javier is right, that warming is not likely to be bad enough to justify the costs of trying to manage it, when we are desperately short of money to work on other critical environmental problems.

              “And by the way. “You can’t convert sinners in bars” because their all at church condemning others.”

              It appears to me that your are reading literally what is obviously intended to be a metaphorical illustration.

              Now as a matter of actual fact, actual preachers do go into bars, literally and all sorts of other places that are somewhat like bars, in that they are hot spots where problems arise and thrive.

              I make a regular practice of going into metaphorical bars, namely denialist websites, the websites of some hard core right wing papers, etc, and preach the gospel truth about the environment, as revealed to me by real honest to Jesus scientists, lol. Why do you suppose they call me such complimentary names?

              But every once in a while, I score a point in such places, as evidenced by some of the replies, and I have reason to believe a few people in such forums are listening to what I have to say, and gradually shifting their opinions toward the middle ground.

              If you stretch your mind until it creaks and squeaks, maybe you can get it around the idea that occasionally a denialist sinner will wander into our little church of believers in the true sciences, as revealed to us by folks such as Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Crick and Watson, ya get it yet????

              IF we make him welcome, and treat him with respect, we have a shot at adding one more environmentalist to the voter rolls, while at the same time, removing one hard voter from the bau tally. That’s a two fer one.

              And besides , you just proved you read my comment , which isn’t forty pages, but it ain’t twitter.

            11. No that’s how you end up being a denialist which is what you are! HB, is right but I already knew that.

      2. I have presented the data. The evidence that glaciers of the world underwent a great melting between 1850 and 1950, when CO2 could not have been responsible for that. I have presented the map of glacier Jacobshavn Isbrae showing its retreat since 1850. I have presented the photographs of glacier Rhone. I have presented the article describing the biggest glacier dataset in The Cryosphere, where they conclude that the melting in the first half of the 20th century was larger than in the second half.

        You just refuse to believe that the evidence does not support your tenet. You just refuse to believe the evidence painstakingly collected by scientists over decades.

        You Fred are the denialist.

  45. As many of us know that the air around termite mounds is lower in Methane than in the atmosphere and that many well managed livestock ranches are greenhouse gas negative. Now we have some encouraging preliminary data coming in on the methane released from warming permafrost. My guess is that we have far underestimated the methanotrophic bacteria.

    “One climate doomsday scenario can be downgraded, new research suggests.”

    “Decades of atmospheric measurements from a site in northern Alaska show that rapidly rising temperatures there have not significantly increased methane emissions from the neighboring permafrost-covered landscape, researchers reported December 15 at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting”

    http://www.sciencenews.org/article/data-show-no-sign-methane-boost-thawing-permafrost

    1. We can hope that this methanotropic bacteria hypothesis pans out.

      But I am not about to bet MY farm on it. Show me five or six such hopeful hypotheses, and I will agree that the odds are at least fair that one of them will pan out.

      Nevertheless, this is one tibbit more evidence that we should maintain open minds.

      Personally I am quite willing to believe that if CO2 levels reach only about the levels predicted by Dennis Coyne, and other like minded observers, using his middle of the road fossil fuel scenario, warming might not be as bad as most of us think.

      On the other hand, I am also quite willing to believe warming may get as bad as some of the most pessimistic scientists expect. I don’t know, and anybody who insists that he does is running his mouth perhaps a little too freely. It would be best if he qualified his remarks , by saying he believes the odds are thus and so that things will turn out as he expects. Softer language makes more friends, adds more listeners, among those who question your message.

      My OPINION is that the odds are pretty high that warming will reach levels that are economically and ecologically as serious as the proverbial heart attack , or worse.

      There is a certain element of truth in Javier’s remarks about this forum being an echo chamber when it comes to climate.

      Here’s why.

      Some of us want to drive him out, even by banning him if that’s what it takes.

      First off, it’s perfectly ok for the preacher to preach to the choir, and for the choir to discuss the fine points of doctrine and dogma among themselves.It’s enjoyable, uplifting, strengthens community bonds, builds morale for the fight or siege, etc.

      BUT it does little or nothing to bring new members into the church.

      Second, we might not have half as many informative exchanges about climate, WITHOUT Javier, as we do WITH him. I’m an Irishman, and I just LOVE to see one man keep on coming back, and coming back, and doing his best to hang in there, even if he IS wrong. And like it or not, there IS a NON ZERO chance he is right.

      Third, it’s one thing to be surrounded by friends and allies , in conference someplace, with only like minded people around, and say what you actually THINK, and express your actual opinion of those you consider your intellectual, cultural, and or moral inferiors. Presidents, governors, dictators, the managers of large businesses, etc, all have inner circles of specialist advisers, fellow professionals, and confidants that they can and do speak to, freely.

      But when it comes to getting out their MESSAGE, such people hire people who specialize in that job, who hopefully know how to giterdone, don’t you see?

      Now it could be that I am the ONLY person who comments here who believes that a substantial part of the so called redeeming value, lol, of this forum is that it can at least potentially contribute to the education of the large majority of people who do not know much, if anything at all, about the topics we discuss here.

      IF education is part of the picture, then it behooves us to remember that if you want to succeed in converting people to your world view, the odds of success are many times greater if you approach the target audience ( any newcomer here who is not already a committed environmentalist, etc ) courteously, with respect, and kind words, to the extent you can use them honestly, when you disagree and point out errors.

  46. First snow in the Sahara in 40 years. Must be global warming. But they also said that snow was a thing of the past due to global warming. Very confusing.

    1. Yep that right there is the inherant beauty with the whole climate change theory…

      too cold and snowy = must be due to climate change
      too hot and stormy = must be due to climate change
      big floods = must be due to climate change
      big droughts = must be due to climate change
      too many hurricanes = must be due to climate change
      too few hurricanes = must be due to climate change

      So what we’re being taught as the absolute truth by the scientists & the media reporting on them is no matter what happens in the weather & climate any kind of event imaginable can be used to prove climate change theory correct. Meanwhile lift the curtain a bit on whats happening…and you see its all just a vicious circle of public grants, fraud, wealth redistribution, globalization, etc. They gotta keep feeding into the system to keep reaping the riches out of it.

      1. Yes, the science of global climate change is complex and confusing to laymen.

      2. Climate science denialists seek to take science back more than 200 years when it comes to climate. It has been known for over 150 years that CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere, absorbs infrared radiation. In 1896, Svante Arrhenius published a scientific paper in which he calculated a significant temperature increase with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration. His work was based upon the knowledge that CO2 traps heat.

        The carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased dramatically in recent decades.

        It’s not hard to conclude that increasing greenhouse gas concentration will lead to warming. The expectation is that warming will not be globally uniform, it will be more pronounced at higher latitudes. That is largely due to changes in albedo.

        I monitor temperatures throughout northern North America. Let’s look at temperature data for a few locations. First, in terms of Sault Ste. Marie, MI, here is decadal temperature data from 1970 on:

        Decade……………………………………….Average Temperature (oF)
        1970-1979……………………………………………39.77
        1980-1989…………….……………………………..40.18
        1990-1999……………………………………………40.85
        2000-2009……………………………………………42.14
        2010-2015……………………………………………42.61
        2016 is on track to average around 45 F

        Do you see a trend here? I have data going back to 1890 for Sault Ste. Marie and there is no decadal temperature data prior to 1970 that is comparable to the last few decades.

        Here are some temperature data for a wide variety of locations in northern North America:

        Location…………….1971-2000 Ave (oF)….2010-2015 ave (oF)….2016 Temp. Dev. (oF)
        Prudhoe Bay, AK……11.85……………………15.07……………………….+8.14
        Moosonee, Ontario…30.02…………………….32.84……………………….+3.24
        Nome, Alaska….……27.10……………………..27.82………………………+5.38
        Churchill, Man……….19.58…………..…………22.91………………………+2.67
        Iqaluit, Nunnuvut……14.36……………………17.23……………………….+2.45
        Yellowknife, NWT……23.72….………….……..26.66……………..………..+4.33
        Goose Bay, NFL..…..31.10…………..………..33.92……….…………..….+1.26

        The 2016 temperature deviation data in the last column is relative to 1971-2000 averages and is for the January through November period.

        The science associated with climate is solid. That is why all major scientific organizations globally that have made a statement on climate science have stated that the science is solid, that atmospheric temperatures are rising, and that humans are causing the warming. In the U.S., the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Chemical Society and many others endorse the results of climate science.

        For those living in higher northern latitudes, it’s becoming absurd to deny warming because it’s obvious even without temperature data. But there are those who will deny to the bitterest of ends.

        If you question all the data, I would suggest watching the video Chasing Ice, which has time lapse photography of receding glaciers.

        A little recognized outcome of global warming by the general public is that large areas of the globe will get a lot drier, including the contiguous U.S.

        What impact will that have on agriculture in the U.S. and other major agriculture areas? We’ll find out. The breadbasket of America will be a central target.

        If your lifestyle is tied to the consumption of large quantities of fossil fuels, as is the case for most people who live in developed parts of the world today, you may wish that the conclusions that climate science has come to were other than they are.

        Many Americans like the Gospel of Greed promoted by various media sources on TV, radio, print and Internet. The Gospel of Greed justifies acquisitive self-interest above all else. When greed is the primary motive force for people, truth must be sacrificed.

        As the old saying goes, “It’s hard to make a man understanding when his lifestyle depends upon not understanding.”

        But there will be significant consequences to global warming whether one accepts the science or not.

        1. I do not question the data. I question the interpretation of the data and specially the future projections based on faulty models.

          It’s not hard to conclude that increasing greenhouse gas concentration will lead to warming.

          And how much warming would that be? Because if it is a little warming, we shouldn’t care much.

    2. The temperature range in the Sahara Desert from day to night can differ as much as 50 degrees Fahrenheit. The average annual temperature is 86 F. During the hottest months, temperatures range from 100 F to over 120 F. Overnight freezing temperatures are common during the winter.

      So they got a little more moisture than normal for the first time in 40 years. Maybe they can start planting rice paddies soon. They have CO2 which is food for plants and snowfall. On second thought that won’t work this is proof of the New Ice Age and they can open a ski resort…

      1. Oh I agree with you, Fred. Snow in the Sahara means nothing to climate change. However when we get the opposite, and a huge storm causes a great reduction in Arctic sea ice, or when we get a particularly strong heat wave, like in Europe in 2003, it is quickly turned into a global warming argument by some scientists and the press, and nobody protests because it fits the narrative. The protests only arise when the phenomenon doesn’t fit the narrative. If you cannot detect your bias then it is worse than you think.

        Had the example supported global warming everybody here would have agreed. Echo-chamber effect.

      2. Halophyte Crops to Green the World’s Deserts
        “Halophytes are those crops which are salt-tolerant and can survive the blistering heat of the world’s deserts. Many of the crops we presently grow have salt-resistant cousins — all they need is trenches or pipelines to deliver the water inland from the sea.

        Halophytes negate the need to remove the high salt content of ocean water which in itself, is a very costly proposition with desalination plants costing millions of dollars.”

        https://johnbrianshannon.com/2014/10/19/halophyte-crops-to-green-the-worlds-deserts/

      3. Sahara desert weather from someone who was there during WWII. “You can fry an egg on your tank by day and wake up with ice covering the water in your cup”

        NAOM

        PS we, very occasionally, get hail on the ground here, doesn’t last long though.

  47. The Arctic is experiencing another storm bringing anomalously high temperatures. The yearly temperature chart is suggesting it’s more likely than not that the area is going through a rapid transition to warmer temperatures – i.e. from a continental type climate to a maritime one. Likewise the general trends in sea ice extent, area and, especially volume, continue to fall more rapidly (most noticeable in the peripheral seas at the moment as shown in the regional charts in the link below). I think there is one negative feedback that might help in that there is more cloud in winter that reduces insolation, but the study of it’s mechanism is ongoing, however that operated last winter and there was still near record melt and this year will be starting from a lower level.

    https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/site

    1. The Arctic is experiencing another storm bringing anomalously high temperatures.

      So what does it mean?

      It is permanent night now in the Arctic. Temperatures are way below freezing point (blue line in your figure). All that extra heat is going to be radiated to space in the Arctic night. The climate system is losing more heat that it would if the Arctic was colder, so the Earth is cooling more.

      The El Niño transferred a lot of heat from the oceans to the atmosphere, and now that heat is going to leave the planet. At the same time cold air from the Arctic is spreading South cooling lower latitudes. You can expect global temperatures to drop significantly due to this. It is not affecting sea ice which is now similar to 2012 and 2013, but it is affecting snow that it is very much increasing, as it is showing over Greenland. This means more ice this winter and a reduced mass balance loss this year.

      Simpletons think that increased temperatures during the Arctic winter are an ominous sign when in reality they are a promise of increased snow and colder temperatures elsewhere. With the 2015-16 El Niño, and now the Arctic anomaly, the Planet is losing a lot of heat. That heat will not be easily replaced as the Sun is showing lower than average activity. Global average temperatures are going to be lower than 21st century average for the next year or two, while Arctic sea ice is expected to keep up or grow.

      Greenland surface gain according to the Danish meteorological institute.

  48. Climate Denial Crock of the Week
    with Peter Sinclair

    “If you’re an American, you’re likely misinformed about the most dire crisis in our world.”

    “Trump has surrounded himself with more oil industry and oil industry connected people than any president in history (even George W. Bush). You can’t understand what’s going on with Trump unless you understand the oil industry… and you can’t understand the oil industry without understanding climate change.”

    “In case you’re just joining us here on Earth, we’re making the planet hotter. The science is incontrovertible that by burning fossil fuels, we’re changing the planet’s climate. Because the consequences worsen dramatically as we emit more climate pollution and the planet gets hotter, every nation on Earth agreed last year in Paris to hold that temperature rise to two degrees Celsius (2ºC).”

    “At the same time, the innovations we need to create zero-carbon prosperity are already here. From plummeting costs for solar, wind, electric vehicles and green buildings to better approaches to urban planning, agriculture and forestry, we already have the tools we need to start building a much more prosperous world, producing hosts of new companies and millions of jobs. Indeed, a giant building boom is what successful climate action looks like.”

    “The need to keep within our global carbon budget means we must leave most of the coal, oil and gas on the planet unburnt.

    But also, we’ve already set in motion extremely serious climate change. Even if we act decisively now, we will be wrestling with the impacts of that pollution for centuries. So one half of our task is to become zero-carbon societies, but the other is to ruggedize in the face of worsening problems, in many cases by abandoning places that cannot be saved and practices that cannot be continued.”

    “The Carbon Lobby and the Trump Gang

    For high-carbon industries to continue to be attractive investments, then, they must spin a tale of future growth. They must make potential investors believe that even if there is a Carbon Bubble, it is decades away from popping — that their high profits today will continue for the foreseeable future, so their stock is worth buying.

    How would you maintain this confidence?

    You’d dispute climate science — making scientists’ predictions seem less certain in the public mind— and work to gut the capacity of scientists to continue their work (by, for instance, defunding NASA’s Earth Sciences program).
    You’d attack global climate agreements, making them look unstable and weak, and thus unlikely to impact your businesses.
    You’d attack low-carbon competitors politically, attempting to portray the evidence that they can replace high-carbon industries as fraudulent (or at least overly idealistic).
    You’d use every leverage point to slow low-carbon industrial progress — for example, by continuing massive subsidies to oil and gas companies, while attacking programs to develop new energy sources.
    You’d support putting a price on carbon, since this makes you look moderate and engaged, but you’d make sure that the definition of a “reasonable” price on carbon was so low and took so long to implement that it was no real threat to your business, and at worst would replace the dirtiest fossil fuels with others (switching for example from coal to gas).”

    https://climatecrocks.com/2016/12/17/the-weekend-wonk-alex-steffen-on-trump-putin-and-the-carbon-bubble/#more-40973

    1. At first, this might seem a strange response to HB’s comment but, if readers hang in there with me I will explain at the end.

      1366 Technologies, Hanwha Q CELLS announce 19.6% solar cell efficiency using Direct Wafer and Q.ANTUM technologies

      The wafers were produced with 1366’s current production furnaces in Bedford, MA, and the cell fabrication was completed at Hanwha Q CELLS’ Center for Technology Innovation and Quality in Thalheim, Germany.

      “This year we’ve been focused on mass production trials and, together with Hanwha Q CELLS, we’ve continued to push the performance limits of multi-crystalline cells while dramatically reducing their costs,” said Frank van Mierlo.

      “These latest results demonstrate the further potential of the Direct Wafer and Q.ANTUM cell technologies that can break the technical limitations of conventional wafer and cell making processes,” said Kai Petter, Senior Manager, R&D Silicon of Hanwha Q CELLS.

      A search for “1366 technologies hanwha q cells invest” unveils that Hanwha Q CELLS has invested in 1366 Techmologies and a significant relationship has developed between the two companies. Another search for “News” on “1366 Technologies factory” brought up a set of results including this page full of articles about 1366 Technologies, on which I found the following: The promise and the peril of 1366 Technologies discussed at public hearing on tax incentives. From reading some of these articles, it is obvious that, like Musk did for his Nevada Gigafactory, the folks at 1366 are negotiating for the best possible deals for the construction and operation of their factory. It would appear that the local officials are quite keen to have the factory in their jurisdiction and are willing to give quite a bit to make it happen.

      So, here’s the kicker! IMO this is a game changer. If this factory gets built in upstate New York, a state of the art facility will be producing fairly efficient solar PV cells (multi-crystaline), at a very low cost, with very little waste, using mostly clean hydro power for energy. These cells will probably be the lowest cost multi-crystaline PV cells in the world. Now, things are at a critical juncture and if Trump and his goons take an anti-renewables stance and somehow stymie this project, does anybody think this technology is going to disappear? IMO the South Koreans or the Chinese will be only too happy to host a factory that is going to make the lowest cost PV cells in the world and the South Koreans already have a foot in the door through the investment by Hanwha Q CELLS. Bear in mind that Solar City has built their own PV module Gigafactory in upstate New York and there is the prospect that they could also benefit from the low cost PV wafer production by 1366.

      This is precisely what some people here seem to be worried about. Trump and his goons could scare away new technology, clean energy growth industries and the jobs and prosperity that go with them, leaving the US with what most of us here see as industries heading for geriatric care. Grab your popcorn folks!

    2. For high-carbon industries to continue to be attractive investments, then, they must spin a tale of future growth. They must make potential investors believe that even if there is a Carbon Bubble, it is decades away from popping — that their high profits today will continue for the foreseeable future, so their stock is worth buying.

      That carbon bubble is starting to pop as we speak… PV is the cheapest source of power available right now, bar none. 3 cents per kWh in Dubai, equivalent to oil at less than $10.00 a barrel (Source latest talk by Tony Seba). That is the most inconvenient truth of all to those whose stranded assets will soon be worthless.

      The fossil fuel industry should take a lesson from The Dutch Tulip Bubble
      https://www.damninteresting.com/the-dutch-tulip-bubble-of-1637/

  49. Check this out.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2016/12/21/tesla-model-s-wafts-along-like-a-rolls-royce-but-germans-will-catch-up-eventually/#2c3528c1af23

    It’s mostly just speculation about whether Tesla can hang in there once the old line manufacturers figure out how to build electric cars, but it has some thought provoking data. The top of the line Model S is now up to three hundred eighty one miles of advertised range, meaning that under optimum conditions at very moderate speeds it would probably go close to five hundred miles.

    AND
    ” Meanwhile investment banks have been scrambling to update their forecasts. Morgan Stanley recently raised its projection for battery only cars up to three times, now predicting by 2025 an electric car global market share of between 10 and 15%. Volkswagen is now assuming this will hit 25%.”

    It will take a good while even at twenty five percent of the new car market for electric cars to take a big bite out of oil demand, due to the size of the legacy fleet, but if gasoline prices jump, either because oil gets scarce, or more taxes are added to the retail price, or both, then older cars that use more gasoline will be scrapped faster, and well within ten years, the bite will become quite noticeable.

    Now here’s an interesting thought, and all opinions will be appreciated. Think about the number of changes that have come about in terms of poor people getting a little bigger slice of the pie over the last fifty years, and the way OCARE is financed, by sticking it to higher earners , to subsidize low earners. Disregarding Trump, who won’t be around forever, I think it is altogether possible that somebody might put together a coalition of people who DO NOT drive, or fly, and push for higher taxes on motor and aviation fuel, and succeed in getting them.

    IF I were a city dweller stuck riding subways and buses, I would vote for doubling the taxes on gasoline in order to fix up the local transit system, and of course to stick it to those folks in their cars, looking down their noses at me , waiting for the bus. 😉

    I’m ready to vote for a substantial tax on jet fuel right now. It’s almost exactly the same thing as top quality kerosene, which is what my high efficiency oil furnace uses. This would drive down my heating bill. 😉

    It seems very likely to me that Volt like delivery vans and other light trucks will become quite popular within this same time frame as well, and if you can drive the first fifty miles every day in a light commercial vehicle, running deliveries or service calls, you can probably cut your oil consumption by at least fifty percent, and maybe as much as seventy five percent or even more.

    I did some very thorough scientific research in order to be able to come up with this figure, namely I asked the local NAPA store manager how many miles per day his drivers put on his delivery vehicles, annually. He wasn’t sure right off the bat, but he said more than fifty and less than a hundred most days. 😉

    It’s worth mentioning that except on the busiest days, it will be possible to charge these vehicles at least a couple of hours. And even on really busy days, they can get in an hours charging time, while getting loaded for a new run, if the chargers are located properly at the loading bays.

    The local pizza restaurants try to limit deliveries to a radius less than ten miles, with nearly all deliveries being within four or five miles. A part time delivery driver can likely run half his four hour shift with a new VOLT without using any gasoline at all. He might go the whole four hours some days on juice alone.

    1. If Nissan would bring the ENV200 van to the U.S. it would make a great local delivery van.
      Add wireless charging at the van’s designated parking spot at the NAPA store and you’d have no problem making 100% electric deliveries in an urban environment.

      This really will be a great way for parts stores to lower their opex and increase the efficiency of their drivers (no fuel stops ever), as their industry is laid waste by the disruption of EV’s – they could dig their own grave, so to speak.

      Meanwhile, in other disruption news, Foxconn fires 60,000 humans and replaces them with robots.
      http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966

      Truck and taxi drivers will soon be made redundant.

      And if you think your white collar professional job is safe, read this article from NY Mag:
      http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html?_r=0

      A.I. is already better at identifying cancer in imaging than human radiologists, and professional translators better start making other plans.

      My own profession is technical and creative, but I’m pretty sure that deep mind A.I. is already advanced enough to both learn my job, and outperform me, and it probably won’t ever be distracted reading P.O.B.

    1. But the caldera itself is some 39,000 years old, formed by an eruption larger than anything else in the past 200,000 years of European history. A 2010 study in the journal Current Anthropology suggested that this prehistoric outburst — which spewed almost a trillion gallons of molten rock and released just as much sulfur into the atmosphere — set off a “volcanic winter” that led to the demise of the Neanderthals, who died out shortly afterward.

      Garbage. By 39,000 BP Homo neanderthalensis was on its last leg, almost completely displaced by Homo sapiens and reduced to some refuges like the South of the Iberian Peninsula. We are constantly being fed anti-science #fakeNews.

      The site’s last major eruption happened over the course of a week in 1538, when it expelled enough new material to create the cinder cone mountain Monte Nuovo.

      We know 1540 had the warmest European summer known in history and one of the driest.

      Wetter, Oliver, et al. “The year-long unprecedented European heat and drought of 1540–a worst case.” Climatic change 125.3-4 (2014): 349-363.
      https://www.euroclimhist.unibe.ch/media/filer_public/2014/08/04/wetterpfisteretal_-_the_year-long_unprecedented_european_heat_and_drought_of_1540__a_worst_case_-_climatic_change_2014.pdf

      or a more popular view:
      http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/7/2/1311260/-The-Great-European-Heat-Wave-and-Drought-of-1540

      Clearly the 1538 eruption of Campi Flegrei did not have much effect on climate. Why should we be alarmed today? A strong volcanic eruption would alleviate global warming and would show alarmists the effects of global cooling on humankind.

  52. Denier-bots live! Why are online comments’ sections over-run by the anti-science, pro-pollution crowd?

    “creating an army of sockpuppets, with sophisticated “persona management” software that allows a small team of only a few people to appear to be many, while keeping the personas from accidentally cross-contaminating each other.”
    https://thinkprogress.org/denier-bots-live-why-are-online-comments-sections-over-run-by-the-anti-science-pro-pollution-crowd-a15af62c5c13#.vcukv331s

    1. :Denier-bots live! Why are online comments’ sections over-run by the anti-science, pro-pollution crowd?

      Simple because the greedy fossil fuel industries have way more money and clout than the starving climate scientists… and they sure as hell don’t want to share THEIR wealth with the rest of the peons of the world.

      1. The way to change the world is to only purchase things that promote your view of a future you want to live in. It is now possible to personally move away from BAU, to build a life away from it that is not only better but changes the world. If people only cut back 25 percent or more on their use of any polluting item it would make a huge difference. If they took that money and invested it into things that reduce pollution and reduce the chemical cloud we live in, the business of change would grow.

        No business can stand if it’s customers walk away. Stunt their wealth and promote what you believe is healthy.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K91WIBsKu_Y

        Lots more PV going up around me, mostly solar farms but also some residential. Quietly producing energy, no smoke, no pollutants, just doing with thin panels what it takes a whole toxic industry system.

        1. Hi GF,

          It’s sort of ironic that the cost of solar electricity is falling so fast that cash poor individuals such as yours truly can’t justify investing their limited ready funds in projects that return less over the first four or five years than can be saved on the purchase price by simply delaying the purchase about the same length of time.

          I AM spending significant sums on energy efficiency, and environmentally desirable long term projects. I am not ” broke” in the sense that I can’t afford to invest. But I can’t afford to invest in things that pay half or less the return earned on other desirable projects, I need to go for the biggest bang for my limited bucks.

          One thing that I would like to see happen is that the tax laws changed so that people with relatively little taxable income, such as a retired old guy like me, with no pension other than social security, could buy a solar system or electric car on an equal footing with people who are earning high current incomes.

          It wouldn’t cost the country one more dime to give ME a five thousand dollar TAX CREDIT than it does to give somebody else a five thousand dollar tax break on a new electric car, etc, etc.

          Now if such a tax credit were available, the sale of solar systems would take off like rockets. It would probably be necessary to institute some sort of lottery to distribute the credits, which would need to be limited in number, so as not to disrupt the public budget too much, and allow the manufacturers and contractors to double up and triple up on their prices in a runaway bull market.

          For now my estimate is that I will be a lot better off investing the ten grand or so that would be needed to install a decent system in diesel fuel, fencing, lime, fertilizer, etc, so as to provide my hungry fellow citizens with grass fed beef.

          The grading, clearing, and fencing are pretty much one time expenses, and after the first year or two, the need for fertilizer, lime and seed falls off dramatically.

          And except for fuel and fertilizer, the cost of this kind of long term improvement has steadily increased in nominal money on a more or less permanent basis for as long as I care to remember.

          Eventually the actual cash cost, in money, of just about any sort of item bottoms out, and then starts up again, if it continues to sell.

          Old farts can probably remember Bic ball point pens selling for nineteen cents each. Ball points, when they first hit the market, cost quite a bit.

          Now Bic’s sell for two for a buck forty nine the last time I bought a couple.

          So – who is willing to predict or guess when the cost in dollars, nominal or constant, of home scale solar systems will bottom out and start going up again?

          My own guess is that this will come about within five years or so. Component prices may continue to fall longer, but I don’t think the labor component will fall much beyond the next few years.

          Systems installed while building new houses or other buildings might be an exception, with labor costs continuing to fall, in terms of constant money. Standardization is a hell of a lot easier when planning and building new.

  53. https://yearbook.enerdata.net/coal-and-lignite-production.html

    China nearly tripled its coal production. Since 2000, 1377 million tons to 3749 in 2013 time frame.

    Total world production topped 8 billion ton.

    8,000,000,000/365=21,917,808.2192 tons of coal each day. The world burns in ten days what took England to burn in one year circa 1895.

    Looks like each person on earth is going to burn a little over one metric ton of coal each year.

    75,000,000 barrels of crude oil consumed each day, a little above 10,000,000 metric tons of oil burned each day. 10,000,000,000 kilograms. Looks like each person burns about 1.3 kilograms of oil each day.

    When you are consuming coal and oil like it is going out of style, there are bound to be direct effects. Air quality is degraded, lands are laid to waste. You can’t mine copper in Montana forever, it is going to be mined to a screeching halt. Those kinds of activities impact environments, ecologies will change. When you place wind turbines inside an eagle’s airspace, you are impacting the ecology of an ecozone in the most destructive way possible. A crime against another species, a thought crime at that and in addition to. The wheels of justice grind a fine grist. Hard to see the forest for the trees when everyone is blind as a bat.

    When you pass by a refinery, sometimes the air you breathe will take your breath away. Sometimes when an crop duster dusts crops, as soon as the pesticide permeates the air, every rabbit emerges from its rabbit hole and hightails it something fierce. The drift will bring tears to your eyes.

    Humans and the things they do are wreaking havoc, you can’t not have a direct effect on everything that exists. From the birds to the bees, when humans gets involved, some things do go wrong, like everything these days.

    You never know what you can see until you view an image through a 450x microscope.

    1. The increase in pollution has been tremendous. Coal mining pollutes streams and rivers, destroys habitat and causes air pollution. Burning coal causes horrific air pollution, acid rain, and global dimming.
      It is just a small part of the greater picture. Even after a major cleanup and many years the fish in the Hudson River are still so full of PCB’s that they are considered inedible.
      The story goes on and on across the globe, from the old ways of burning fossil fuels to provide heat energy to the new ways of the chemical industry producing worldwide pollution and toxins.
      What makes us grow makes us suffer and die too, the rates of death are still below the rates of growth. For how long?

    2. When you place wind turbines inside an eagle’s airspace, you are impacting the ecology of an ecozone in the most destructive way possible. A crime against another species, a thought crime at that and in addition to.

      Let’s not mention how many birds are killed by glass towers…

      And Palm Oil is the most widely consumed vegetable oil on the planet, and it is in about half of all packaged products sold in the supermarket.

      A century ago there were probably more than 230,000 orangutans in total, but the Bornean orangutan is now estimated to number about 45,000-69,000 (Endangered) and the Sumatran about 7,500 (Critically Endangered).

      Are you going to stop eating your potato chips and popcorn to save orangutan habitat? Didn’t think so. The whole system is FUBAR we need a system reset and that means a new paradigm that includes paying the costs of doing things like using palm oil and driving ICE powered vehicles. And taxing the ever living hell out of fossil fuel use.

      BTW, After being nearly wiped out from existence, the American bald eagle is no longer endangered. Apparently they can survive despite wind turbines…

      2. Let’s not mention how many birds are killed by glass towers…

        Nor sweet little pussy cats.

      3. Hi Fred,
        If the problem is approached properly, I think we have at least a modest shot at getting existing fuel taxes raised, and maybe some new ones legislated, given our changing demographics and culture.

        It’s possible to influence many many peoples behavior just a little, if you have an audience, without their noticing, or caring, if they do notice.

        Consider for instance posting comments on social sites that are concerned with modern life styles, and talk up how cool your new electronic toys are, and how you enjoy them to the point that you like to stick around your house, playing with them, rather than cruising in your status mobile, and that you have even toyed with the idea of spending the five hundred bucks a month you spend on car insurance, property taxes, tags, gasoline, payments, etc, on the last word in phones and computers, etc, and maybe some fancy threads, as well- or just moving to a place where you are right in the heart of the action, and can walk out to the bars and restaurants your kind of people patronize.

        Attacking cars directly doesn’t work very well, because we apparently believe we have a god given right to at least a Chevy and cheap gasoline.

        People get irritated, mad even, when you talk about taking things away, even if they don’t have those particular things, or want them at the moment. But gently divert their attention to other desirable possessions and activities…….. and you are preparing the ground for change.

        So- What’s out there that can take the place of the automobile as status symbol, other than electronic toys???

  54. The American West appears to be in a long term drought. flows of the Colorado river have been on the descent for over one hundred years. The variability and range of the flows also appears to be increasing. Climate change is pushing the trend toward lower flows. This would not normally be a major problem, as migration could occur away from severe drought areas. In modern times the very large populations in the deserts as well as the large agriculture/industrial use of water is quickly compounding the problem. The Colorado reservoir system holds about 4 times the annual flow of the river, yet it too has been stressed lately, reducing reservoirs to the point of being below the output pipe.

    Upper Colorado River Basin
    Flows and Paleohydrology
    “Conclusions
    The observed streamflow record at Lees Ferry provides over one hundred years of data
    indicating a trend of decreasing annual flow from the Upper Colorado River Basin. However, this
    dataset is not long enough to encompass the full range of variability in the system. A number of
    tree-ring streamflow reconstructions have been able to extend the flow record as far back as
    800 C.E. These models not only confirm that the 20th century was a particularly wet period, but
    that past droughts in the 16th and 12th centuries have been much more severe and longer
    lasting than in the observed streamflow record. Furthermore, general climate projections for the
    southwest indicate warmer temperatures and drier conditions, with severe drought conditions
    likely for the late 21st century.
    In a watershed that is over allocated due to negotiations for the 1922 Colorado Compact based
    on a wet period, with growing water demands for an increasing population as well as
    management for conservation of freshwater ecosystems in the region, water resource managers
    are faced with the challenges of balancing these competing water needs in a future that will
    likely have scarcer water resources.”

    https://watershed.ucdavis.edu/education/classes/files/content/page/JennyTa_paleohydrology_031115.pdf

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