707 thoughts to “Open Thread- Non Petroleum, Jan 8, 2017”
With Javier enjoying a well earned day off from his trolling duties, Vladimir and Mr Tillerson have asked me to fill in as the climate denialist obfuscator for today (only).
Today’s topic the supervisors have handed me is to come up with a way to hide the incline in the surface temps since 1970, or to somehow confuse the perception of the trend in the temperature increase.
So I’ve been doing some cherrypicking, and I think I’ve found a pretty good one – I hope Javier will chime in later to see if he can think of any ways to tweak it.
Here’s the story…
Since 1970, when the so-called warming “trend” is supposed to have really gotten going, we have had 4 full solar cycles, measured peak-to-peak, and 3 full cycles measured trough-to-trough.
I’ve calculated the trend in temperature for both kinds of full cycle – that makes 7 cycles that cover the timespan 1970 to 2014. We haven’t finished the current cycle, so it wouldn’t be scientific to include a partial cycle – that would introduce a bias.
Averaging all 7 trends together, we see that the average trend from 1970 to 2014 is 0.0796 degC/decade!
That is less than half of the trend calculated by the alarmists for the same period!!!!1!!111!!!
And remember, this includes all the data in the time span, nothing is left out, so you can’t call this “cherrypicking”.
Here’s the chart for each calculation (I even used that totally biased alarmist site SkepticalScience, so all you alarmists HAVE to accept my calculations as completely valid and indisputable).
Canis lupus x Canis lupus familiaris will not be the subspecies familiaris, too much wolf in the phenotype, not enough dog, it’ll be a wild animal. I’ve seen one, can’t be domesticated.
Dogs pack and can become wild. They won’t be man’s best friend. An Animal Farm scenario.
Then there are humans who act more like hyenas than humans. Kill each other by the millions at times, completely out of control.
Alaric, a Visigoth, besieged Rome and fed his army with food headed for Rome while driving Romans into starvation. You gotta eat and might as well have some fun with starving Romans in the meantime.
The genetics of the canids is a complete mess. Most species of canids can cross reproduce producing fertile offspring, violating one of the original definitions of species and showing that there is no possible way of defining the term species in a comprehensive and rigorous way. Nature does not make the distinction.
Wolfs cannot be domesticated, they can only be tamed. To me this is a serious issue in the theory that dogs are domesticated wolfs. Then we have another issue. Wolfs establish hierarchy through reproductive rights. Only the alpha couple reproduces and sex rights are strongly enforced. That is their nature. On the other hand dogs establish hierarchy through food access rights. The alpha dogs eat first, while reproduction is not curtailed and it is free for the taking. Wolfs are specialized in large prey, while dogs are specialized in medium and small prey. They have a very similar aspect and interbreed easily, but they do look as different species in terms of behavior, and this is as important for evolution as morphology.
Some animals can be domesticated, most cannot. Essentially all animals that could be domesticated were so long ago. Primitive man had plenty of time to accomplish that. Two common features are shared by most domesticated animals:
– In most cases the wild version became extinct or extremely residual. The wild animals could not compete with their domesticated siblings. Wolfs however have been very common everywhere, making them an exception.
– When domesticated animals go feral, they quickly shed human selection traits in a few generations and their aspect reverts to the wild type. This is not the case of dogs, that when they go feral they quickly adopt a dingo-like aspect, quite different from a wolf phenotype. They don’t go back to a wolf status.
It is my opinion that the story that dogs are domesticated wolfs has serious holes in it. As a molecular biologist, the genetic argument doesn’t look as determinant to me, given the complexities of the canids genetics and the complete mess up of dogs genetics since it became domesticated. Alternative possibilities are not been given serious consideration, as usual. The African wild dog (Lycaon pictus), unrelated to dogs, shows however how a wild dog species would have looked like and behaved before domestication, and posterior extinction of the wild population. As dogs are so closely related to wolfs, the fossils of a putative wild dog species ancestor to domestic dogs could be already at museums, unrecognized.
I am skeptic of the narrative that prehistoric men took wolf pups and turned them into dogs. Nobody has been able to repeat that feat anywhere in thousands of years.
As seems to be more and more the usual thing, the more Javier tells us the score……. the more credibility he loses.
Anybody who cares to check it out can read all about the Russian guy who basically turned foxes into dogs over the course of less than fifty generations, by way of selective breeding.
And hardly anybody at all , so far as I know, disputes that hogs, cats, various cattle, horses, etc were at one time all wild species. But Javier might , since I have mentioned it.;-)
Now it IS possible that the wolves that were the ancestors of dogs had a few genes in them that have been lost, over the last few thousands of years, that made them more amenable to becoming domesticates. Hell’s bells, it’s even possible that the population of wolves, the species or subspecies, that was the ancestor of dogs, went extinct since dogs were domesticated.
Humans by no means HAD to engage in selective breeding from SCRATCH, and domesticate wolves DELIBERATELY, the way we breed crops and livestock these days.
Cooperation between species can and does occur, as is amply documented, and when this cooperation happens over a long period of time, either or both species may be de facto selectively inadvertently bred for certain behavioral traits. Wolves that found advantageous to hang around near humans would have gradually evolved behaviors that made them more susceptible to accepting humans as members of the pack- which is in essence what DOGS are all about.
They accept us as dominant dogs, and lick our hands, and roll over and pee themselves , when confronted with dominant humans.
And there are always the outliers, the freaks, the unlikely accidents, that pop up, like snow white cotton tail rabbits, or the ORIGINAL golden delicious apple tree, which was so valuable a very sturdy steel cage was built around it to prevent it from being stolen, lol.
Something along that line may have contributed mightily to the domestication of wolves.
The fact that nobody has selectively bred wolves and turned them into dogs is entirely irrevelant, because nobody has tried it, over any extended period of generations that would give them a fair shot at success.
Now having said this much, I recognize that there is a possibility that there was once a species, or a sub species of the various wolves, , now extinct, or a couple of such species, or a hybrid of such species , part wolf, that might have been the original ancestors of dogs.
It might even be reasonable to say that there was a species, or subspecies,what we farmers refer to as breeds or cultivars, that could be CALLED a dog, before it’s domestication, but the FACT remains that it MUST have been a CLOSE relative of wolves, as is obvious from the fact that dogs and wolves do produce fertile offspring.
Javier’s problem, one of them at least, is that he apparently thinks he knows a lot more than he does, and consequently paints himself into corners that are hard or impossible to defend effectively.
I am not a biologist, but I have enough credits either in or related to the field that I’m pretty close to having enough for a bachelors degree, if they were properly distributed. Most of them are dated, though.
You talk about possibilities. I talk about evidence. That’s the difference between narratives and science. People are more fond of narratives and abhor the uncertainties that accompany science.
We do not know if dogs descend from wolves. It is generally assumed, and the arguments are based on closeness of both species morphological and genetically.
However, the evidence I have outlined contradicts that hypothesis. And in science the evidence has nothing to do with personal credibility. By mixing both issues you show that science is not your thing.
I have discussed this issue with other biologists, and while some of them still think that dogs come from wolves, all of them accept that not all the evidence supports that conclusion.
what do you do when you are not sowing the seeds of doubt?
How wonderfully charming you are to have a conversation with. There must be a queue of folks waiting to share discourse with you.
Javier,
Some or all of us here don’t know your full name (assuming Javier is even your first name), what you look like, where, how, or if you work, what your science background or work is (i.e., does it include being on here?), and stuff like that. And this isn’t a science forum, either.
The aforementioned, too, appears to require that you, or the ‘manufacture, cultivation or mythologizing of you’, be taken on certain levels of blind faith and/or ‘your good word’.
Taking things on faith, (to say nothing of cherry-picking, etc.) doesn’t strike me too much like the practice of science, and seems to suggest, as you write, ‘ that science is not your thing’, except of course where it conveniently suits you for it to be. But that’s not science, either.
And those are what appear to be at least some of your contradictions hereon.
Lastly, now that I think about it, this also puts you precariously close to what I’ve called, the ‘drive-by’s’, with regard to being relatively anonymous and specialized in ‘FUDging’ the anthropogenic climate change issue. IOW, you appear to share a ‘common signature’.
(FUD = Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt)
If I owned this blog, I would consider offering you some sort or sorts of ultimatum(s), based on some of the above (and other) concerns, or, failing that, you’d be asked to leave and/or a democratic vote put to that effect.
Back atcha Javier,
I don’t see that you have posted any thing approaching evidence that dogs AREN’T descended from wolves. When we don’t know, we usually go with the preponderance of the evidence, or by Occam’s Razor, in reaching decisions, at least for conversational purposes.
As I remarked above, I ‘m not a fully qualified, degree holding biologist, but you won’t win any debates with the agricultural science community concerning the domestication of animals, lol. There are LOTS of researchers at the cutting edge in my broad field, guys and girls with doctorates in everything from microbiology to oceanography to various specialties within the genetics field to math and physics, lol.
I know only a little or nothing about most of these specialties, but I can read what such scientists publish in the agricultural press, for us working stiffs.
I don’t take issue with your interpretation of the possibilities, in this case, but rather with your habitual combative and abrasive style.
And now that I have gone back and reread your comment, I see you actually did include the all important words ” my opinion”. I try to remember to insert them often , in my own comments.
So – I owe you something in the way of an apology for my remark concerning your remarks about the ancestry of dogs. You hereby have it.
You might actually be right, dogs could be descended from a now extinct species- but as you yourself have pointed out- nature doesn’t draw nice sharp lines in defining species the way we naked apes do. If there was such a hypothetical species, it would have necessarily been close kin to the various wolves.
I don’t think I have ever run across an expert in domestic animal genetics who is is opposed to the accepted wisdom that animal behaviors have sometimes changed in somewhat radical fashion, as the result of domestication.
But to be honest, I never went looking for such an expert, lol.
“Anybody who cares to check it out can read all about the Russian guy who basically turned foxes into dogs over the course of less than fifty generations, by way of selective breeding.”
This paper is from way back in 2011, which was still the prehistoric days of genomics, CRISPER-cas9 was not yet a cheap and ubiquitous technology and doing a full fox genome for base pair by base pair comparison would still have been a somewhat cost prohibitive endeavor …
Perhaps someone knows of more comprehensive and more recent research on this topic.
Sequence comparison of prefrontal cortical brain transcriptome from a tame and an aggressive silver fox (Vulpes vulpes)
Abstract
Background
Two strains of the silver fox (Vulpes vulpes), with markedly different behavioral phenotypes, have been developed by long-term selection for behavior. Foxes from the tame strain exhibit friendly behavior towards humans, paralleling the sociability of canine puppies, whereas foxes from the aggressive strain are defensive and exhibit aggression to humans. To understand the genetic differences underlying these behavioral phenotypes fox-specific genomic resources are needed.
Results
cDNA from mRNA from pre-frontal cortex of a tame and an aggressive fox was sequenced using the Roche 454 FLX Titanium platform (> 2.5 million reads & 0.9 Gbase of tame fox sequence; >3.3 million reads & 1.2 Gbase of aggressive fox sequence). Over 80% of the fox reads were assembled into contigs. Mapping fox reads against the fox transcriptome assembly and the dog genome identified over 30,000 high confidence fox-specific SNPs. Fox transcripts for approximately 14,000 genes were identified using SwissProt and the dog RefSeq databases. An at least 2-fold expression difference between the two samples (p < 0.05) was observed for 335 genes, fewer than 3% of the total number of genes identified in the fox transcriptome.
Conclusions
Transcriptome sequencing significantly expanded genomic resources available for the fox, a species without a sequenced genome. In a very cost efficient manner this yielded a large number of fox-specific SNP markers for genetic studies and provided significant insights into the gene expression profile of the fox pre-frontal cortex; expression differences between the two fox samples; and a catalogue of potentially important gene-specific sequence variants. This result demonstrates the utility of this approach for developing genomic resources in species with limited genomic information.
Even with traditional selective breeding without high-tech, dogs and maybe other animals, can be bred into having health and/or physical problems, and can apparently suffer for them as well.
Rather like factory farm and lab animals, bred for mistreatment in the name of morally-bankrupt institutions of science and technology.
Some may also be unable to survive in the wild.
This brings into question the idea of human self-domestication, and how far down its path they wish to tread before they are so far down it that they cannot survive in the wild anymore.
This assumes, of course, that the inverse has not yet happened; that ‘the wild’ has not yet fully succumbed to a glorified zoo/’Truman show’.
Perhaps the main underlying tragedy of technology– rather maybe like the technologies involved in skewing oil-depletion profiles– is in the masking, delaying and amplifying of future problems from it.
When all is said and done, maybe all technology really is, at least in the hands of humans as they currently seem to be, is just a glorified can, kicked down the road.
Here’s an interesting and recent article on the ancestry of dogs.
Dogs were domesticated at least twice, a new study suggests.
Genetic analyses of a 4,800-year-old Irish dog and 59 other ancient dogs suggest that canines and humans became pals in both Europe and East Asia long before the advent of farming, researchers report June 3 in Science. Later, dogs from East Asia accompanied their human companions to Europe, where their genetic legacy trumped that of dogs already living there, the team also concludes.
That muddled genetic legacy may help explain why previous studies have indicated that dogs were domesticated from wolves only once, although evidence hasn’t been clear about whether this took place in East Asia, Central Asia or Europe. The idea that dogs came from East Asia or Central Asia is mostly based on analysis of DNA from modern dogs, while claims for European origins have been staked on studies of prehistoric pups’ genetics. “This paper combines both types of data” to give a more complete picture of canine evolution, says Mietje Germonpré, a paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, who was not part of the study.
Understanding this domestication process may illuminate humans’ distant past — dogs were probably the first domesticated animal and may have paved the way for taming other animals and plants.
Javier,
You point out an interesting difference between basis for hierarchy in wolves and in dogs: wolf hierarchy is based on access to reproduction while that of dogs is based on access to food.
I wonder if that difference came out of domestication. I’d describe domestication broadly as taking control of animals’ feeding and reproduction–we decide where and when domesticated animals eat, and we decide, within fairly broad limits for some species, which individual mates with which. We took away the reproductive hierarchy from dogs, but there remained the possibility of dominance in feeding.
Just a thought.
“Just a thought.”
It’s a rock solid thought.
Don’t ask me for links or quotes, at this late date, but ag professors routinely include it in relevant courses. There’s not much work done in the broad field of biology that they DON’T mention, eventually, in one class or another, considering that agriculture is basically APPLIED biology.
Synapsid,
It is true that it cannot be discarded that dogs lost their original hierarchy basis during their domestication process.
Although it is evidence of an important difference, it is not proof of a different origin. It is often the case that evidence can be interpreted in different ways.
In the case of Alfred Wegener’s continental drift theory, he presented evidence that the same fossil species occupied contiguous areas in South America and Africa, or Africa and India. This evidence was also not proof as it could be explained with the species jumping the ocean, or an unknown precursor species occupying a much wider area.
However Occam’s razor favors the simplest common explanations. By itself the hierarchy argument is not much, but together with the different morphological reversal when going feral suggests that the simplest common explanation is that they are different species in origin.
This is a matter that cannot be resolved with available evidence and the dog is closely related to the wolf anyway. The way science deals with this type of uncertainty is by avoiding absolute statements and leaving the door open to alternative explanations in case more evidence is found.
The narratives that are often found even in scientific publications for things for which solid proof is absent are incorrect and lead people to believe in things that can be wrong.
I have a wolf story. While scouting the tundra 200 miles north of the Arctic circle in western Alaska I witnessed a surreal wolf pack attack strategy play out before my eyes. On the far hill side a small group of caribou were grazing. Out in front of them perhaps a mile or more a 5 animals wolf pack trotted into view. It consisted of one very large snow white wolf, one very large solid black wolf and 3 somewhat smaller grey wolves. The black wolf and the 3 smaller grey ones set up in a funnel shape on the hill side and bedded down. As the caribou grazed into the funnel the largest most visible white wolf circled around and begin to attack from the rear driving the heard of the caribou right into the funnel. The way it was set up ran just like a football play. I wish I had my video camera that day. What ever wolves are they damn sure aren’t dogs.
I have a friend who has a border collie that retrieves over two hundred objects by name, and that’s less than half the number some others of that breed can distinguish by spoken words.
I posted a comment at the end of the 700 plus comments in the previous non-petroleum thread and don’t want to have to keep visiting that thread for further discussion so, I’m re-posting it her with a few minor changes, having watched another episode on EVTV.
I spent some time watching a couple three of the very long “episodes” over at EVTV (Archives at http://www.evtv.me.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/vidarch.html) two of the episodes being ones that address the installation of a Tesla Motors drive unit in a Volkswagen Vanagon that they are converting into an EV. I own one with a worn out motor that has been siting for years and have always thought it’s design made for easy motor swaps and conversions so their tinkering interests me. My reason for bringing this up here is not the wealth of technical info in their videos and blog posts but, the main character on the web site, Jack Rickard.
Jack can be interesting if you’re a real gear head. He has got down and dirty with every EV he could get his hands on and has been busy, figuring out how the latest crop of modern, factory built EVs work, with a view to mixing and matching components from different manufacturers in his home-brew conversions. He and his team are developing a kit that he hopes will let you control any drive train and display things like energy use, remaining range, component temperatures etc. He starts each (long) episode with a review of news since the previous episode before going into the technical stuff. He is NOT shy about discussing politics and international affairs either.
I found his most recent episode really interesting on the politics front, with Jack declaring that he supports Trump, despite disagreeing with most of his “policies”, Trump’s non-interventionist stance appearing to be the one area he is in total agreement with. Listening to him rant reminded me of exchanges between OFM and HB. He seems to be a conservative and a Republican, calling Bernie Sanders an honest man with many ideas he does not agree with. On the other hand he is a big proponent of renewable energy and EVs and getting off oil, sort of like he believes in a fairly near term peak in oil production. He does not seem to be on board with global warming (see his blog post http://evtv.me/2016/12/predicting-weather-dancing-land-buffoons/ ), but he is a big fan of Elon Musk of Tesla Motors who is big on Peak Oil and man made global warming. I can’t remember hearing him give any opinions on Obamacare. He appears not to favor the idea of “big government” but, appears to trust big corporate interests even less.
To me, Jack Rickard gives some interesting insights as to why Trump won. A guy like Jack might have held his nose and voted for Sanders over Trump but, there was no way he could have voted for Hillary. He conforms to what OFM thinks should be real conservative values of rugged individualism and independence from utilities etc. He has expressed confidence in Trump’s leadership abilities so, it will be interesting to see what happens with Trump and his goons in respect to the expectations of guys like Jack! OFM if you’re even slightly interested in the content of his site, ie. blog and video archive available at http://evtv.me/, I’d be interested in what you think about him. Hell. you might even stumble upon some material for your book!
Hey Islandboy, I had kinda of followed Jack in the past but he had fallen off my radar recently. Tks for reminding me of him. Just watched a few of his recent videos and he seems to be trucking along, (no pun intended) just fine!
He has expressed confidence in Trump’s leadership abilities so, it will be interesting to see what happens with Trump and his goons in respect to the expectations of guys like Jack!
Personally I have very little confidence in Trump’s abilities to do much one way or the other. Though I have deep concerns about the people he is surrounding himself with. However if he is just smart enough to stay out of the way of people like Jack then the US might still have some life left in it. The Jack’s of the world are the people who will put the final stake through the fossil fuel vampire’s heart and put the final nails in its coffin.
As long as Jack’s kind of conservatism is allowed to flourish and they help push us towards an alternative energy future based on renewables, wind, solar, decentralized microgrids, electric vehicles etc… and slowly kill off the need for fossil fuels because electricity from renewables just makes so much more sense from a purely economic point of view, then I really don’t care if they personally believe in anthropogenic global warming or not.
BTW did you see my post on the cryptocurrency ‘SolarCoin’?
Cheers!
My apologies for not responding to your SolarCoin post earlier. I wanted to take a closer look before responding. I don’t quite get how this cryptocurrency stuff works but, I guess this is a good opportunity to find out!
I have invested a sum of money in training in solar PV and some modules and inverters. I have one system up and running at the apartment I live in and have done the conduit runs and started running the wiring for a second system at a commercial premises that, I intend to operate under a lease type arrangement. Both systems will be connected to the inverter manufacturers web portal to allow on line monitoring so hopefully SolarCoin will be able to use the portal for validation of output. If so, I should be good to go and this might be a good way to add value to my investment while also adding value to the SolarCoin Network.
Thanks!
Well, we can be thankful that there is now SolarCoin, a new digital currency. It has something to do with solar panels installed to generate electricity. The current coin of the realm, the LunarCoin, is in lunacy mode.
Also referred to as the dollar.
Thanks, I haven’t read him yet, but being the arrogant old nekkid ape that I am, I can tell you already that I will like this guy, and that he mostly gets it, at the gut level, about politics and working people , just from a super fast scan.
But he has a problem that he shares with TONS of people who have technical expertise in one or two relatively narrow fields, but no little or no knowledge of the BIG PICTURE that forms in the mind of a person who has a broad background knowledge of the major physical sciences, namely physics, chemistry, geology, biology, etc.
Any body who isn’t on board with forced global warming being either a sure thing, or at least a thing that is highly PROBABLE, lacks this big picture understanding of the sciences. Of course there is a SMALL chance that forced warming won’t be a problem, but it’s so small it’s prudent to ignore it. It is NOT however prudent to deny that it exists.
An understanding of the monkey ape mind is also critically important. I won’t have a firm opinion of this guy in that respect until I read his stuff at leisure but at first glance… he gets it.
OFM–
Being a country boy, you might appreciate this:
I haven’t checked up on this general issue for a while , but it’s well known that certain classes of persistent chemicals tend to be absorbed by plants, and then by animals that eat those plants, and by predators , and by predators OF predators, and so on , up the food chain, until it gets to the point that concentrations are high enough it’s unwise to eat some fish and animals.
It IS good to know ( although there is obviously a great deal of environmental damage , a huge amount, in the exclusion zone ) that animals such as the wild boar are thriving there. Some of them are damned likely to develop cancers, or bear deformed young, but indications so far at least are that enough of them will be ok that the species can cope with the radiation.
And now we have an actual real world benchmark useful in evaluating the problems associated with runaway nukes, etc.
It’s a hell of a black cloud that doesn’t have at least a little bit of silver lining in it someplace.
Trump’s non-interventionist stance appearing to be the one area he is in total agreement with.
Is he suggesting that he believes that Trump is in favor of allowing countries in the Middle East muddle through on their own without US intervention?
I don’t think that’s remotely realistic. Trump is in favor of the old fashioned kind of intervention, where the US ignores democratic idealism (IMO support for local democracy movements is in the long-term interest of the US) and supports dictators as long as they support the short-term Realpolitik geopolitical interests of the US. The best example: Saudi Arabia, which has enjoyed massive support from the US. It’s instructive that the Shah of Iran lost power the very second that his suppression of dissent lost US support.
US support of the Shah was enormously counter-productive for the long-term interests of both the US and the ME, but but all evidence says that it’s the kind of thing that Trump would support enthusiastically.
Seems climate scientists keep spreading liberal lies!
Maybe climate scientists should go home and actually practice what they preach i.e. cutting down their consumption of fossils by 80% and to stop flying across the world to backslap each other at conferences. Plenty of people remember how these scientists predicted a new ice age in the 70’s and never apologized when they got it wrong. There were a number of pop fiction books written on this at the time. The high priests of science are ignored because they don’t follow what they preach and they never apologize when they are incorrect. The public doesn’t trust them.
” Plenty of people remember how these scientists predicted a new ice age in the 70’s and never apologized when they got it wrong. There were a number of pop fiction books written on this at the time”
Those people are remembering something that never happened, except in “pop fiction”..
The global cooling myth
group @ 14 January 2005 – (Français)
Every now and again, the myth that “we shouldn’t believe global warming predictions now, because in the 1970’s they were predicting an ice age and/or cooling” surfaces. Recently, George Will mentioned it in his column (see Will-full ignorance) and the egregious Crichton manages to say “in the 1970’s all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming” (see Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion ). You can find it in various other places too [here, mildly here, etc]. But its not an argument used by respectable and knowledgeable skeptics, because it crumbles under analysis. That doesn’t stop it repeatedly cropping up in newsgroups though.
I should clarify that I’m talking about predictions in the scientific press. There were some regrettable things published in the popular press (e.g. Newsweek; though National Geographic did better). But we’re only responsible for the scientific press. If you want to look at an analysis of various papers that mention the subject, then try http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/.
If the alarmist interpretation of the CO2 hypothesis is correct, they should not be afraid of the truth. There should be no need to rewrite history and eliminate the 1940-75 cooling and its consequences.
–Start quote–
Interest in decadal to centennial timescales also contributed to the calls for action. The views on long-term climate change, however, were split. Some scientists projected a warming trend and others focused on the gradual cooling as suggested by the global surface temperature record from the 1940s through the 1960s. The cooling theory attracted the interests of many scientists, including glaciologists. In January 1972, geologists George Kukla of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences and Robert Matthews of Brown University convened a working conference of top European and American investigators in Providence, Rhode Island, to discuss “The Present Interglacial, How and When will it End?”
They summarized their results in Science (October 1972). Kukla had by this time accepted a visiting scientist position at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory. In a rather bold move, they followed up their Science article with a letter to President Nixon calling for federal action based on the main conclusion of the conference:
“ …a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experienced by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon. The cooling has natural cause and falls within the rank of processes which produced the last ice age. This is a surprising result based largely on recent studies of deep sea sediments.”
Kukla and Matthews concluded their letter with the following concern:
“It might also be useful for Administration to take into account that the Soviet Union, with large scientific teams monitoring the climate change in Arctic and Siberia, may already be considering these aspects in its international moves.”
The White House assigned the Kukla-Matthews letter to the Bureau of International Scientific and Technological Affairs of the State Department. They circulated the letter to the highest level Federal interagency body concerned with atmospheric sciences, the Interdepartmental Committee for Atmospheric Sciences (ICAS), for “review and appropriate action”. The ICAS then established an ad hoc Panel on the Present Interglacial to respond to the letter.
On August 1, 1974, the chairman of the White House Environmental Resources Committee wrote to Secretary of Commerce Frederick Dent:
“Changes in climate in recent years have resulted in unanticipated impacts on key national programs and policies. Concern has been expressed that recent changes may presage others. In order to assess the problem and to determine what concerted action ought to be undertaken, I have decided to establish a subcommittee on Climate Change.”
–End quote–
NOAA’s Climate Analysis Center was established in 1979 as a consequence of scientists concern for a cooling world.
“The present global cooling, which reversed the warm trend of the 1940’s, is still under way. Even though man-made pollution may have contributed to the observed fluctuations, the bulk of the change is probably of natural origin (Mitchell). The present cooling is especially demonstrable in certain key regions in arctic and subarctic latitudes. Thus, snowbanks today cover areas of Baffin Island that were seasonally free of snow for the 30 or 40 years preceding the present summer cooling (Andrews, Barry, Bradley, Miller, and Williams); pack ice around Iceland is once again becoming a serious hindrance to navigation (2); and warmth-loving animals, such as armadillos, which expanded northward into the American Midwest in the first half of the century, are now retreating southward (Schultz).”
Lots of articles and scientists concerned by the cooling. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00335894/2/3
An entire issue of Quaternary Research, dedicated to “The end of the present interglacial”
Some well known people there like Ruddiman and Dansgaard.
We all know the result.
The extrapolators, those predicting a continuation of the cooling trend ended up being wrong.
This time will be the same. The extrapolators are going to be wrong again.
Climate is always changing and multidecadal trends alternate between warming and cooling regardless of what we do.
Why do you lie, Javier? Why the interest in rewriting science on behalf of Putin and the Kochs?
The problem is that since 1850 the “Cooling” has been far smaller than the “warming” and the overall trend of warming has been about 0.78 C per century for the past 130 years (1886-2015) and for the past 65 years the rate of increase has increased to 1.19 C per century.
As I have said many times the variation in the rate of warming over shorter periods of 31-35 years is a given.
There is a strong element of chance in Mother Nature’s distribution of the cards she deals out in a never ending stream.
I wonder how long it might be, if ever , before weather forecasters know enough enough, and have data enough, to reliably predict such events.
It’s critically important that government agencies such as NASA be funded well enough to continue the necessary research and data collection that will make such forecasts possible.
Atmospheric temperature measured by satellites sets new record in 2016.
Analysis of mid to upper tropospheric temperature by Remote Sensing Systems shows record global
warmth in 2016 by a large margin.
Using the latest version (Version 4.0) of the “Temperature Total Troposphere” (TTT) dataset, RSS
scientists showed that 2016 was 0.31 degrees F warmer than the previous record, set in 1998. The third
warmest year occurred in 2010. In addition, 9 out of 12 months for 2016 were the warmest of that
month ever recorded in the satellite record. By this we mean that January 2016 was the warmest
January, etc., for all months except for May, June and December (the December record was set in 2015).
What ever happened to the lower troposphere which is the part where life is?
Nothing to report there?
TLT v3.3 also set a record in 2016 despite a known cooling bias, which is clear by simply reading the linked press release.
Oh yes, but another one of those non-statistically significant records that get ample diffusion. By how much this time? 0.02°C?
Very scary global warming according to RSS
If this was an oil production or oil discovery chart nobody would defend an increase based on that, but being a temperature chart a lot of people change their glasses and see that global warming is increasing and we are likely to get toasted soon. Talk about being in denial.
Sounds like a desperate attempt to change the subject to me Mr. Troll.
Thanks Wharf Rat,
Also from that press release they say the temperature lower trophosphere (TLT) also set a record, but they need to update to a new version which eliminates a known cooling bias in RSS TLT version 3.3.
RSS TLT version 3.3 contains a known cooling bias. We are working to eliminate the bias in the new version of TLT. Even with these known cooling biases, 2016 was a record warm year in TLT v3.3. In fact, 2016 was a record warm year in all RSS tropospheric temperature products (TLT v3.3, TMT v3.3, TTT v3.3, TMT v4.0 and TTT v4.0
There is an awful lot of “data manipulation” with satellites. This is from UAH.
The paper focuses on the mid-troposphere (TMT), the authors are working on an update to the lower troposphere (TLT) temperature measurement.
Every dataset that doesn’t show enough warming requires adjustment. The problem is that we don’t know how much warming is real and how much methodological. No wonder that instruments and proxies show such difference.
Hi Javier,
That is the kind of response I would expect from someone who didn’t read or understand the paper.
He’s a biologist, probably went over his head without ruffling his hair.
NAOM
Hi Javier,
How do we determine what the proxies show? We use the instrumental data to calibrate. Any divergence between instruments and proxies is likely to be a problem with the Proxy rather than the reverse.
Pretty basic stuff.
Hi Javier several data sets have been adjusted to show less warming. In every case there are good reasons for adjusting the data. Implying otherwise suggests you do little more than read abstracts and look at charts for climate science papers.
Do you have a specific criticism of the Mears paper?
Even with the known cooling bias in the RSS version 3.3 TLT the trend is 0.135 K/decade from Jan 1979 to Dec 2016.
Perhaps it looks different if we cherry pick 1998 as a start year, I prefer to use all the data as this is a short 27 years.
As your Mears paper points out, UAH is diverging more and more from the TCWV measurements. Here’s a graph showing how it has also diverged from actual thermometer measurements take from balloon radiosondes in the troposphere.
Consilience of multiple lines of evidence…
It looks like the big problem is the transition from MSU to AMSU instruments around 2000 (besides the fact that neither instrument was originally intended for long-term measurement of temperature at all – the onboard calibration for the sensor is a joke).
This chart shows the difference each year between satellite-derived temperature estimates and the in situ thermometer readings on radiosondes.
Consilience of multiple lines of evidence…
A problem with that. Mearns has showed a very good agreement between satellite measurements and HadAT, the globally gridded radiosonde temperature anomalies database.
And…
Your graph exactly confirms my point, and reinforces the bad fit shown by my previous chart.
1. UAH has the worst fit to radiosonde data, RSS is closer.
2. The fit for both is pretty good up to 2000 when the AMSU instruments were deployed, then UAH starts to diverge.
3. Your chart only goes to 2011 and uses the old UAH v5.5 – we are many versions past that now (they adjust a lot, seeming to copy whatever RSS did last year)
4. UAH v6 (as I showed) has even worse divergence than v5.5 (which you showed)
5. The divergence since 2011 – shown on my chart, but not yours – has accelerated.
6. Averaging over the entire timespan – mostly good fits in the beginning and the later years of bad fits – is a good way to hide the problem that occurred starting in the middle.
7. Again, Javier, you are always out of date with your data… you lost almost 5 years of data!!! This is like cherrypicking, but just from laziness.
The differences between sampled RSS, sampled UAH, and HadAT or other radiosonde databases are not significant, Wehappyfew. All your points are wrong.
The graph is from Carl Mears RRS site. If he hasn’t updated it you can take it up to him. I try to use published graphs or graphs posted in official sites whenever possible.
See figures 4 and 5. Radiosondes validate satellite temeperatures.
Your incompetence at reading a graph continues.
Your graph confirms mine.
Mine shows the difference between data sets over a scale of 0.6C. Yours shows the whole data set range on a scale that spans 2.1C, so the difference are harder to see on your graph, but they ARE essentially the SAME as on my graph.
1. Notice that in your graph, the HadAT data (black line) and satellite data (red and orange line) are almost indistinguishable around 1985-1989, 1993-1994, 2002-2003. This where my graph shows their delta = ZERO. Your graph confirms that the satellite data match the radiosonde data very closely for those years, and confirms that my graph, even using a different radiosonde network, got almost exactly the same results for those years.
2. Notice the divergences in the left half… less than a tenth of a degree C, mostly – IN BOTH charts, your and mine… around 1990-1991 the black is above the red by about 0.05C, on BOTH. For 1995-2000, the black is BELOW the red – a positive divergence on BOTH charts – of about 0.1C.
3. Look at the divergence increasing steadily on the right half of YOUR graph. The black line is always above the red after 2003, they almost touch again for 2008, but not quite.
4. The difference on YOUR chart, from 2003 to 2011 is about 0.1C… the difference on MY chart from 2003-2011 is about 0.1C, the narrowing divergence in 2008 is also captured.
5. The divergence on MY chart, for which your chart has no data, continues to increase after 2011. This may explain why Mears and the RSS team updated their algorithm recently, and the new version 4.0 has a higher trend than the old version 3.3 you have shown – to MATCH the RADIOSONDE DATA BETTER!
It appears that scientist like Mears adjust their thinking when new data are collected. They’ve refined their algorithm to better fit the radiosonde thermometer and satellite water vapor data. ALL the data.
You, on the other hand, prefer to use the old, incomplete, not-up-to-date data to support your arguments.
Wehappyfew,
Pretending that radiosondes temperature database agrees with surface databases better is a joke.
Radiosondes are a patchy collection from sparse measurements from multiple instruments with different calibrations and irregular collections with near zero ocean coverage. They are anything but a quality temperature record.
And that shows in that radiosondes present the opposite temperature trends to both surface records and satellites.
From 1979 to about 2001 radiosondes show a very low rate of warming, while both satellites and surface show an identical rate of warming.
From 2001 to present radiosondes show a much higher rate of warming, when both surface and satellites show a reduced rate of warming.
It just happens that the radiosonde increased rate of warming since 2001 matches better surface records than satellites, so now suddenly radiosondes are to be trusted and satellites are the odd measurement.
That’s bullshit. Satellites are a much higher quality measurement for global average temperatures than radiosondes and with a lot more consistency and coverage. You cannot use low quality measurements to shoot down high quality measurements.
Global positioning satellite radio ocultation is a completely different physical principle measurement of temperatures that does not rely on AMSU or MSU instruments, and confirms satellite measurements.
Mears correction of RSS to introduce more warming during the hiatus is his choice. As an alarmist he was so unhappy with his measurements not showing warming that he regularly poo-pooed on satellite measurements saying we should trust surface measurements better. Not exactly a presentation card for unbiased research.
But science is unforgiving. Any bias introduced in the way we measure temperatures to keep the CO2 narrative going will come to haunt us in the future and will have to be undone showing the true extent of the manipulation that some scientists engaged. A lot of trust will be lost.
Your entire comment is based on factually incorrect assumptions. It especially falls apart here:
“From 1979 to about 2001 radiosondes show a very low rate of warming, while both satellites and surface show an identical rate of warming.
From 2001 to present radiosondes show a much higher rate of warming, when both surface and satellites show a reduced rate of warming.”
These two sentences are the opposite of true. Why you choose to lie about simple facts like trends from readily available datasets is beyond me.
The True Facts:
1. The Radiosonde trend from 79-01 is NOT very different from tropospheric satellite estimates for the same period.
2. Radiosonde, Surface, and Satellite ALL show higher rates of warming from 2001 to 2016 compared to 1979 to 2001. The warming rate does NOT show a “reduced rate of warming” compared to 79-01.
RatPac A global seasonal 850-300mb shows very little warming for the 1979-2001 period. Much less than UAH, RSS, or GISS LOTI, that show essentially the same warming rate for the period.
UAH: 0.132°C/decade
RatPac A: 0.084°C/decade
Particularly disturbing is the period 1995-2001 when RatPac A lags significantly during a period of rapid warming.
The attempt to discredit UAH using RatPac A falls flat on its face despite your feeble attempts at confounding the issue.
… A completely different method based on a different physical principle, the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Radio Occultation (RO) data set, also supports satellite measurements.
So the consilience of evidence actually supports satellite measurements, versus some surface measurements.
Another study confirming the slowdown in surface warming from 2002 to 2014, matching every single index of surface and tropospheric temperatures… consilience indeed.
And once AGAIN, Javier, you present data without the most recent years shown – cherrypicking through laziness.
Does the new method confirm the new record highs in surface and tropospheric temps?
Does it match to new record highs in Total Column Water Vapor measured by satellite? (which RSS shows to correlate exactly with temps?) … see chart below (up to date, btw)
If so, then we have a new tool to evaluate the uppermost, least massive part of the climate system.
“And once AGAIN, Javier, you present data without the most recent years shown – cherrypicking through laziness.”
You are funny. It is a peer reviewed published scientific work. That data has undergone review, and is available at the link provided for anybody to check that is legit, and check the interpretation of the authors.
You come with a graph of unknown origin, clearly not from a reputable organization or scientific article, without even providing a link, and claiming that it correlates with temperatures, without showing it.
Have you made it? If not, why do you talk about laziness?
They have a plot of the same data, but it is not up to date, so I plotted them myself – twould be hypocritical to complain about your habit of using non-up-to-date data and then post a graph myself without the latest data when it is readily available. See out-of-date RSS graph below.
The fact that you do not even know about this well-known satellite measurement and its correlation to surface temperature is… disturbing.
Are you seriously trying to argue that you’ve never even GLANCED at the RSS webpages and data?
Never paid much attention to TPW data. After all its measurement is complex:
“Water vapour plays a dominant role in the climate change debate. However, observing water vapour over a climatological time period in a consistent and homogeneous manner is challenging.”
Malderen, R. Van, et al. “A multi-site intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis.” Atmospheric Measurement Techniques 7.8 (2014): 2487-2512.
Perhaps that is why Mears et al., limit their analysis to the tropical oceans, as apparently outside the tropical oceans the relationship between temperatures and TPW no longer holds so tightly.
Doesn’t look to me as a very strong argument.
Hi Javier,
14 years too short to tell us much. Try 30 years.
Friends of Earth is retiring controversial anti-fracking advertisement after investigation by authorities.
Green group says controversial fracking leaflet probe dropped
Friends of the Earth (FoE) said yesterday that the UK’s advertising regulator had dropped a case into a leaflet it produced on fracking.
Trade body UK Onshore Oil and Gas (UKOOG) said the Advertising Standards Association (ASA) had ruled that a number of claims made in the leaflet “Pat Saved Her Home From Fracking. You Can Save Yours too” were misleading.
UKOOG said the ASA had taken issue with claims that fluid used in fracking would contaminate drinking water, that fracking had increased asthma rates in the US, that the controversial gas extraction technique raised the risk of cancer, and that it would cause house prices to plummet.
UKOOG said FoE had agreed to withdraw all the claims and would refrain from repeating them.
Ken Cronin, chief executive of UKOOG, said independent scientific, health and regulatory experts had concluded that the information in the leaflet was fundamentally false.
Mr Cronin said: “The opponents of onshore oil and gas development must withdraw their scaremongering rhetoric and argue on the basis of the facts, which quite clearly show that the risks associated with fracking can be mitigated by the strong regulation and world renowned best practice that we benefit from in the UK.”
UKOOG said the ASA would publish the ruling today.
But FoE said the case, brought by Cuadrilla, had been “closed with no formal ruling”.
Donna Hume, senior campaigner, Friends of the Earth, said Cuadrilla had made the complaint to “distract from the real issues about fracking, and how burning fossil fuels is dangerous for climate change”.
She said: “This is a pro-fracking company doing all they can to shut down opposition to fracking. It hasn’t worked though. What’s happened instead is that the ASA has dropped the case without ruling.
“We continue to campaign against fracking, alongside local people, because the process of exploring for and extracting shale gas is inherently risky for the environment, this is why fracking is banned or put on hold in so many countries.”
After consideration by the ASA of complaints received, the following companies and organisations agreed to amend or withdraw advertising without the need for a formal ruling:
Advertiser Date Number of Complaints Media Sector
Friends of the Earth 4 January 2017 2 Insert Non-commercial
My, my. Friends of Earth keep lying. “What’s happened instead is that the ASA has dropped the case without ruling.”. No case dropping. Informally resolved by accused organization agreement to withdraw advertising. The preferred way of resolving cases rather than have a ruling against.
Apparently you are entitled to have no ethics or accountability when you are trying to save the planet while making a living out of it.
ASA was kind of angry at the lies being spread again by Friends of Earth.
“One week into 2017 and the action we’ve taken to stop misleading ad claims about fracking by Friends of the Earth has hit the national media and prompted widespread debate and commentary. But amidst the reports, the public comments by the parties involved and the social media chatter, there’s a risk that the facts become obscured.
So let me be clear. We told Friends of the Earth that based on the evidence we’d seen, claims it made in its anti-fracking leaflet or claims with the same meaning cannot be repeated, and asked for an assurance that they wouldn’t be. Friends of the Earth gave us an assurance to that effect. Unless the evidence changes, that means it mustn’t repeat in ads claims about the effects of fracking on the health of local populations, drinking water or property prices.
Friends of the Earth has said we “dropped the case”. That’s not an accurate reflection of what’s happened. We thoroughly investigated the complaints we received and closed the case on receipt of the above assurance. Because of that, we decided against publishing a formal ruling, but plainly that’s not the same thing as “dropping the case”. Crucially, the claims under the microscope mustn’t reappear in ads, unless the evidence changes. Dropped cases don’t have that outcome.
Resolving cases informally, usually following our receipt of an assurance that claims won’t be repeated, is an important tool in our toolkit, allowing us to be proportionate and targeted in how we tackle problems. No-one should be under any illusion that the process of looking into these matters is anything other than rigorous. “
Friends of the Earth’s opinion is as irrelevant to the conversation as you ramblings, which are either grouchy old engineer syndrome or paid shilling. Can’t wait for your proof of cold fusion.
You’re playing politics, not presenting evidence.
Er, what we are talking about is precisely that Friends of Earth claims that fracking constitutes a serious health hazard is not supported by evidence, and thus constitutes false advertisement.
You are the one that looks grouchy about the issue. I really don’t care that much, but I think that if fracking is required to get the oil and gas we need, then it is going to get done, because it is a lot worse for our health not to have it.
Hi Javier,
I find it interesting that you claim to “not really care” that much. I barely have time to read this blog, among others. So how do you find the time to post in such high volume? Do you have another job, or is this your actual job? Based on the evidence, one might think you are sponsored by an oil gas industry lobbyist.
In the Jan 1 Open Thread there was a chart on north atlantic ocean temperatures for 0-700 meters deep from the website at the link below:
On that website there is also information on global ocean temperature from 0 to 2000 meters.
There was a claim that something changed in 2007, this is not apparent looking at the entire ocean which is interconnected and local temperatures change due to ENSO, AMO, PDO as well as atmospheric circulation changes (which affects surface mixing due to wind) such as the QBO.
Chart below shows Global Ocean temperatures from 0 to 2000 meters.
There was a claim that something changed in 2007
The claim referred to the North Atlantic specifically.
If you want to know what is going on, you should read
It is the temperature in the Arctic, not the North Atlantic that affects sea ice.
The heat content of the ocean is estimated by temperature measurements.
Could melting ice be affecting the ocean temperature? While there is ice in my glass the temperature of the water stays pretty close to 0 C.
The AMO, ENSO, and PDO will affect ocean mixing and they are a big part of natural variability. Using AMO, ENSO, and atmospheric carbon dioxide a very simple multiple linear regression on annual data from 1871 to 2000 yields a reasonable “model” of Global temperature (though not physics based and very oversimplified). I call this CAMOSOI (Carbon, AMO, and SOI) and the R squared from 1871-2000 is 89%, the TCR is 1.74C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2, a carbon only model for 1871-2000 has an R squared of 70%. The 2001-2015 model is out of sample and matches temperature data fairly well. The data and model linear trend is very similar from 1871-2015.
Javier please! Give it a rest! We know and understand you compulsion to respond to and refute every single comment that suggests CO2 is causing global warming. Trust me we know! But you have got to let it go! Try and ignore that little voice inside your head that keeps telling you, “you must”. We konw it’s hard but, please try! For the sake of humanity (and our sanity) 😉
Anyone who believes in a coordinated climate change conspiracy by academics should be forced to attend one faculty meeting and one granting agency meeting.
Hi Javier,
The drop in heat content in the 0-700 m of ocean from 60-0W and 35-65N (North Atlantic Ocean) after 2007 is matched by an increase in ocean heat content from 0-700 m in Arctic Gateway.
This is shown in 4 charts following the chart you posted earlier from climate4you.
Then click on “Arctic gateway seas (20W-40E. 70-80N) heat content 0-700 m depth”
Dennis,
What do you mean by “it is matched”?
If you are trying to say that oceans on average have been warming, we agree. If you are trying to connect changes in temperatures between different oceans and seas you are going to need evidence.
The relationship between North Atlantic ocean temperatures and NAO are by definition. The relationship between NAO and Arctic sea ice is supported on ample evidence published in several articles.
Hi Javier,
The Chart you posted did not cover the same area used to define the AMO.
The chart you posted was 30-65N, 60W-0, but the AMO is 0-60N, 80W-0.
Chart below for 1980 to 2016 North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperatures in Celsius.
Not sure what you mean, again, Dennis.
There appears to be good correlation between surface temperatures in AMO region and 0-700 m heat content in North Atlantic region for the past 30 years. I agree they are not the same, but they appear to move in concert.
Hi Javier,
It is the sea surface temperature that matters for AMO. The annual data I have shown above from NOAA.
we get chart below. The annual data makes more sense to correlate with Arctic sea ice extent and the correlation is not as strong as with CO2 or Global temperature.
Dennis,
Everything that is pretty much linearly increasing between 1979 and 2003 shows a strong correlation. The problem comes when there is a change of trend, and some things like Arctic sea ice or temperatures can change trend, while others like CO2 cannot.
Hi Javier,
If the correlation only works in some places, it might not be very useful.
I looked at annual average Global Sea Ice Extent from 1979-2015 and threw out years with incomplete data (1987,1988).
A multivariable linear regression on annual average global sea ice extent (GSI) as the dependent variable and AMO and BEST LO data as the independent variables shows that AMO is not statistically significant for GSI.
A “model” using BEST LO only has a correlation coefficient of 65% and an R squared of about 43%.
This is similar to a correlation with time in years, so it does not explain much. In any case this (not very good) “model” suggests global sea ice extent decreases by 1.5 million km squared from 1979 to 2015 for every 1 C increase in Global land ocean temperatures.
Hi Javier,
Climate is very variable, so the “change in trend” is just natural fluctuation over periods of less than 25 or 30 years, in fact if there is indeed a natural 65 (or 60 or 70) year cycle (physical basis so far not well explained), then longer periods of 65 years would be more important. We don’t have to explain every wiggle due to ENSO, AMO, PDO, etc.
Dennis,
Global warming is also in great part a natural fluctuation on a centennial scale.
Hi Javier,
The empirical data from 1871 to 2015 says otherwise. Find me a model that does not include the natural log of atmospheric carbon dioxide which explains the change in global temperatures from 1871 to 2015 and I might be convinced.
Hand waves are not convincing.
Dennis,
No handwaving. CO2 is not responsible for most of that:
Hi Javier,
First, the error bars for those reconstuctions are very large, so before 1700 we can’t really tell what temperature was very precisely.
For the instrumental period, especially after 1850, natural variation alone does not explain the overall trend in temperature change.
Absolutely true that most of the change in temperature change before 1750 was natural, so not really telling us anything new. The changes in temperature from 500 to 1750 CE were mostly due to changes in solar output and volcanic eruptions along with the usual variation in temperature due to changes in ocean currents.
Dennis,
It is absurd to think that the multi-centennial fluctuations of climate have stopped since 1950, but that is the official line of IPCC.
Study of multi-centennial cycles supports that we should be warming, as we are. So there is an unrecognized natural contribution. This clearly explains why when this natural contribution stops we get a hiatus. CO2 hypothesis has no explanation for hiatuses. As CO2 increases warming should accelerate if it is the primary driver. Hiatuses demonstrate a big natural contribution to global warming that science cannot explain properly because of its fixation on anthropogenic causes for the past 35 years.
That is a great site, Dennis…
Thank you for teaching us all about a very important new (to me at least) resource for ocean data.
To follow up on your comment about OHC for the N atlantic compared to the Arctic gateway, it looks like Javier’s favorite graph show that the very large region of the N Atlantic has lost about 0.9 * 10^22J of heat since 2007, while the 3 regions of the Arctic gateway you pointed out have gained about 1.2 *10^22J in total over the same time span.
And since the size of the regions are so different, the smaller Arctic regions must have increased a lot more in terms of temperature than the very large N Atlantic in order for the absolute heat content to have changed by roughly similar amounts.
I agree. One of my favourite things about the comments section of this blog is the links and references to other sites. The links that get posted by all you folks are great. I appreciate it.
Hi Guys,
You can thank Javier for that web site, it was on the chart he posted for the heat anomaly of the North Atlantic.
Indeed… a strong argument for not banning deniers, as long as they bring data to the discussion.
Also that place was set and is kept by Ole Humlum, a very well known skeptic climate scientist. 😉
Javier,
Thank you for pointing it out.
And I for one am glad he persists, because I am fleshing out my knowledge of the nuances of climate science as a result of the debate.
A lot of great data gets posted here in response to Javier’s assertions.
Yes, and having a relatively well reasoned opposing viewpoint is useful.
My sense is that Javier does not “deny” that Global Warming occurs due to an increase in Greenhouse gases, only that the magnitude of that warming is smaller than many who post on this blog suggest (including me).
The 19 CMIP3 models covered by MAGICC 6 (a climate model emulator) have equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) ranging from 1.9 C to 5.5 C and all but 2 models range in ECS from 2 to 4 C, with a mean (when high and low models are removed) of 2.7 C and a median of 2.54 C.
Javier has suggested 1.65 C, but I think he may mean TCR instead of ECS.
IPCC estimates 1.5 to 4.5 C with a mean estimate of 3 C for ECS.
If the mean estimate for ECS is correct and Fossil fuels are limited due to depletion, we may see anthropogenic carbon emission limited to 1000 Pg C which some main stream climate scientists (Allen et al 2009) suggest may keep us at 2 C or less above 1850-1900 mean global temperatures.
An inherent contradiction for many people here is that they maintain a position of catastrophic warming with limited fossil fuels.
One has to believe that ECS is toward the high end of estimates (4 C or more) if fossil fuels are limited to my “low” scenarios for such a position to make sense. Even with my “medium” fossil fuel scenarios (which many people here think are too optimistic), a realistic estimate of future non-fossil fuel energy growth still keeps total anthropogenic carbon emissions close to 1000 Pg (plus or minus 100 Pg C).
I see the solution as a rapid energy transition from fossil to non-fossil fuel, which will be needed whether anthropogenic climate change is in fact a serious problem or not.
I also believe labels such as “alarmist”, “denier”, or “troll” generate much heat and very little light. No doubt people believe such labels give strength to their arguments, but I believe the reverse is true.
Hi Dennis,
I suppose if one wants to say that global warming will be catastrophic it would be good of them to say why. Certainly humans, who live in environments that range from the tropics to the Arctic, will not be impacted physiologically by a couple or a few degrees. However, our agricultural system perhaps might be impacted heavily. This is an interesting presentation by David Battisti on climate change and food. The 46 min 30 second mark is quite good as it presents plant yield vs temperature. Average temps may only increase slightly and day to day temps will fluctuate on either side of the mean, but plant yields will fluctuate widely. If warming is to be catastrophic it may well be due to its impacts on grain production. It seems to me that human civilization as we know it is based on a tremendous amount of grain production.
Now maybe human civilization will relocate its agricultural production zones, or as people in southern Vermont like to call them, ‘farms’, to locations further north, but I doubt it will provide a timely remedy. Agriculture is based upon assumptions of geographical and ecological continuity. It’s likely those assumptions will soon no longer be viable. High food prices to me seem to rip the social order apart. The ‘Arab Spring’ is in many ways certainly an example of the human response to increased food prices.
David Pimentel has interesting thoughts on the topic too.
having watched those two videos I have to agree with Survivalist’s main point:
If warming is catastrophic it may well be due to its impacts on grain production.
My take away from those videos is that the 2C increase in average global temperatures may already be more than enough to cause an agricultural catastrophe of unprecedented proportions due to making yields wildly unpredictable in the not too distant future.
Can anyone say with 100% certainty that that is what will happen? No, of course not!
The chances that someone’s house will burn down is also a low probability and most people understand the need for taking safety precautions and getting fire insurance for unforeseen eventualities.
If you’d like to ruin an otherwise fine day just google images for famine.
Risk management is not governed by certainty. Waiting for scientific certainty to be established ensures that your risk management strategy will be too little too late. Risk management is based upon responding to probabilities.
Hi Survivalist,
I agree the problems are potentially catastrophic, but consider that global land temperatures have risen in 2015 to about 1.7 C higher than the 1850-1899 average (using Berkeley Earth data).
To my knowledge, yields have held up so far though we could see considerably more than 2 C of warming on land, maybe 2.3 C.
I cannot predict if another 0.6 C of warming will be enough to cause yield failures. Old Farmer Mac might be able to guess better. We would be at this temperature on land for roughly 2060 to 2250 based on MAGICC 6 emulation of the GISS Model EH (CMIP3) and about 1000 Pg of carbon emissions.
Thanks Dennis,
I would like to kindly emphasize the obvious and say that grain does not respond to global average land temperature. It responds to the tempertaure at the location at which it is being grown. Several smallish areas in the northern hemisphere account for a vast majority of the worlds grain production. I feel it is forecasts of temperatures at those locations that should govern our concern. Rice is a grain also, and we should know that a large amount is grown within 1 meter of sea level. No need to wait for a sea level rise though. A saline intrusion secondary to a storm wave will likely precede sea level rise.
A bit dated but still interesting.
“Nearly half the world’s grain is produced in just three countries: China, the United States, and India.”
I highly recommend viewing talks by David Battisti. Many are on YouTube.
I feel grain production is very vulnerable at any moment. Temps is but one of a litany of problems.
Hi Survivalist,
I don’t have enough information to be able to predict future weather, just Northern hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere average land temperatures.
Hi Survivalist,
A comparison with 1880 compares current temperatures with a relatively cold period in the past 11,000 years. If one considers the Marcott et al 2013 analysis, the Holocene climactic optimum (HCO) was about 0.4 C above the 1961-1990 average temperature.
Using Marcott and Mann et al 2008 data the Holocene pre-industrial (before 1750) is about 0.2 C above the 1951-1980 Global land ocean average and the HCO about 0.25 C above that average.
Also note that the “pre-industrial” usually used is the 1850-1899 mean which is about 0.36 C below the 1951-1980 mean temperature.
For Northern Hemisphere Land temperatures the temperature in 2013 was about 1.5 C above the 1850-1899 mean, the CMIP3 median model suggests another 1.3 C rise in temperature above 2013 levels and about 2.3 C above the 1851-1980 mean.
I do not have the expertise to determine if crop failures would result from another 1.3 C increase in average land temperatures above 2013 levels, which is likely by 2060 if the median CMIP3 model is correct.
Hi Survivalist,
My expectation is that emissions will fall between RCP2.6 an RCP4.5.
Chart below is for temperature predictions for the GISS model, from paper linked below.
If you click on the chart you get a larger image, but for the US bread basket it looks like 1.5 to 2.5 C, again I don’t know if that is enough to hurt grain yields, I am not a farmer.
“I feel grain production is very vulnerable at any moment.”
Yes the future always looks bleak to the alarmist. And dire predictions always keep moving towards the future as it becomes the present.
No way to defeat that. I just hope you enjoy it.
As usual, Javier’s data are correct, but cherrypicked, incomplete, lacking context, not up-to-date, and he uses them draw unsupported sweeping conclusions.
Heat content by hemisphere (most recent data compared to 10 years ago):
SH
2006 3rd qtr … 5.74
2016 3rd qtr … 8.80
an increase of … 3.06 * 10^22J
NH
2006 3rd qtr … 6.23
2016 3rd qtr … 10.98
an increase of … 4.75 * 10^22J
Here’s a good little article on Javier and his cherry pie.
Well, we just watched the 2015-16 El Niño end with a precipitous fall of 0.5°C so far (it hasn’t stopped falling yet). Over 6 times more that what Tamino calculated. Where is global warming when you need it?
I would tell him what I think of him on his blog, but he only accepts comments from fanboys.
What Tamino doesn’t understand, and GoneFishing, Survivalist, Wehappyfew, and others here don’t understand is that 2007 is not cherry picked, it has been chosen by Nature.
2007 is the year Arctic sea ice melting stopped reaching new seasonal minima.
2007 is the year the melting season length stopped increasing and started decreasing.
2007 is the year North Atlantic heat content stopped increasing and started decreasing.
2007 is the year the AMO stopped increasing.
Nature chose 2007, not me. That’s what Tamino doesn’t understand, and why he is going to be wrong and I will be right. Miles et al., 2014 and Wyatt & Curry 2014 explained it in their publications and the referees accepted their arguments as correct and not cherry picking.
For the next decade or two, AMO will continue its negative phase, and Arctic sea ice will continue showing great resilience. Alarmists will have to look for something else to get alarmed. I am sure they will find something.
2007 is the year Arctic sea ice melting stopped reaching new seasonal minima.
Factually incorrect…
a Lie…
a Mistake…
Incompetent reading of charts…
take your pick
Sept Sea Ice Extent also stopped reaching new lows in 1985, 1990, 1995, 2002, 2005, 2007 (yay! Javier got that one right!!), and 2012.
The best Javier can come up with is to insult the person who discredited his data and analysis. Phd indeed. He’s becoming very childish.
We know what happened in 2012. It is an outlier that was due to a freak combination of storms. It was not a climate cause, but a weather cause.
“2007 is the year Arctic sea ice melting stopped reaching new seasonal minima.” ~ Javier
Fail
2007 is the year the AMO stopped increasing.
ALSO Factually incorrect…
a Lie… etc
AMO stopped increasing and fell by a large amount around 1880 to 1910… no change sea ice extent.
AMO increased a lot from 1910 to 1950’s… little change in sea ice.
AMO stopped increasing and fell by a very large amount around 1950 to 1975… sea ice extent fell by a small amount.
AMO increased a lot from 1975 to 2000’s… sea ice extent fell a LOT.
AMO stopped increasing around 2005 to 2010… is still very close to those most recent highs… and sea ice extent reached a new low a few years later in 2012.
The correlation of sea ice extent and AMO is shown below, with the sea ice inverted to show Javier’s preferred causation direction. Obviously they are sometimes correlated and sometimes anti-correlated, as might be expected for two mostly independent time series.
That’s just one Arctic sea ice reconstruction that appears to be quite incorrect. Check this other one:
Wrong again!
There are several sea ice extent reconstructions. Most are pretty similar.
I used the most respected one, the one good enough to be listed by NSIDC:
Yours is similar to mine, but doesn’t go back as far, so it’s fit to AMO is slightly better, lacking all the beginning parts where the fit is terrible.
Once again, looking at only part of the data gets you in trouble and shows you are either misleading yourself, attempting to mislead us (LYING), or badly confused by data, graphs, etc.
Here’s another, pasted onto the bottom of our current 2…
Yours is similar to mine, but doesn’t go back as far,
The ice data from old is really crappy. Not reliable at all except for a few places like Iceland.
When you use data for the places where it was really measured, then it still agrees with AMO. And when you use proxies for previous centuries, it still agrees with AMO.
Hi Javier,
When we use the best Northern Hemisphere sea ice (NSI) extent data from 1979-2015 (annual average and throw out 1987 and 1988 which have incomplete data), we find R=88% for a regression of NSI against BEST Global land ocean temperature and R=73% for ASI vs AMO.
When a multiple linear regression on BEST LO and AMO is done, AMO is not statistically significant (t stat=0.76, where t stat >2 indicates significance at 95% probability level.) The R is the same (88%) as for the NSI vs BEST LO regression so AMO does not tell us much about Northern hemisphere sea ice extent.
So using less data and focusing on yearly variability you don’t see the relationship. Quite a conclusion.
Hi Javier,
In this case the best data by far is the 1979-2016 data for sea ice extent, you have already questioned the rest of the data, be consistent.
Dennis,
Do you realize that we have sampled properly only a window of increasing AMO?
Paleo data indicates Arctic sea ice correlates with AMO on the long term. Not necessarily on a yearly basis.
Northern Hemisphere temperatures also appear to show a trend-dependence to AMO and PDO.
See Farneti et al 2016 paper link in wehappyfew comment.
“There hasn’t been any melting in the Arctic since 2007” ~ Javier
“Javier has also resorted to another denier favorite: computing a “trend” based on a time span that’s way to short. Way too short. Ten years, from 2007 to 2016. And, in classic fashion, he omits to estimate any uncertainty with that “trend.”
Let’s do the math for him.
Using September average sea ice extent from NSIDC, and using only the data from 2007 through 2016, the estimated trend by linear regression is +18 thousand km^2 per year. Upward!!! But, the “margin of error” (95% confidence interval) for that figure is somewhere between +142 thousand km^2/yr and -105 thousand km^2/yr. Downward”
From PIOMASS data
Model Validation and Uncertainty
“PIOMAS has been extensively validated through comparisons with observations from US-Navy submarines, oceanographic moorings, and satellites. In addition model runs were performed in which model parameters and assimilation procedures were altered. From these validation studies we arrive at conservative estimates of the uncertainty in the trend of ± 1.0 103 km3/decade. The uncertainty of the monthly averaged ice volume anomaly is estimated as ±0.75 103 km3. Total volume uncertainties are larger than those for the anomaly because model biases are removed when calculating the anomalies. The uncertainty for October total ice volume is estimated to be ±1.35 103 km3 . Comparison of winter total volumes with other volume estimates need to account for the fact that the PIOMAS domain currently does not extend southward far enough to cover all areas that can have winter time ice cover. Areas in the Sea of Okhotsk and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are partially excluded from the domain. Details on model validation can be found in Schweiger et al. 2011 and (here). Additional information on PIOMAS can be found (here)
A comprehensive library of sea ice thickness data for model validation has been compiled and is available (here)”
There are lots of papers published in Nature on the same subject which come to different conclusions.
Your claims on sea ice don’t seem to match the data. Look at annual sea ice extent and the link between AMO and Sea ice extent is not statistically significant, selecting those areas for sea ice that are “well measured” and leaving out the rest of the “poorly measured” areas, may not tell us much. For the very good data from 1979 to 2016, AMO is not a statistically significant determinant of sea ice in the Northern hemisphere or global sea ice extent. Global land ocean temperature is for both and HadSST is for the northern hemisphere (haven’t tried it yet for global sea ice extent.)
Dennis,
There are lots of papers published in Nature on the same subject which come to different conclusions.
Hmm. Science not settled then.
Look at annual sea ice extent
Why would I want to do that? I want to define the trend of the minimum extent as it has been done by alarmists for decades. When the data no longer supports the alarmism then we have to change the rules at mid game and start looking at something different.
What matters is the maximum extent and the minimum extent. The path is irrelevant because it does not matter whether the freezing or melting took place early or late in the season. Maximum and minimum tells us how much freezing and melting took place during the entire season.
You are just trying to introduce confusion and noise with your yearly averages that don’t represent the amount of ice produced or melted but the distribution of the process.
Hi Javier,
I have repeatedly said there is a great deal of uncertainty and use the data to illustrate what the empirical evidence shows.
I agree that science is never settled, there is always more to learn.
Wehappyfew,
It is your data that is suspect. Providing just two data points, ending on a big El Niño. I recommend you go to the scientific peer-reviewed literature as your main source of information.
This was just published last month (Dec. 2016)
Llovel, W., & Terray, L. (2016). Observed southern upper-ocean warming over 2005–2014 and associated mechanisms. Environmental Research Letters, 11(12), 124023.
Figure 1:
Hi Javier,
The link between Sea ice and AMO (Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation) is based on sea surface temperature. Weather the deep ocean in the Southern or Northern hemisphere is warming more over an 8 year period is of little consequence for sea ice it is sea surface temperatures (SST) that matter, particularly in the Arctic and Southern Ocean.
Dennis,
Sea surface temperatures depend also on subsurface temperatures and rate of vertical mixing. And vertical mixing depends on wind speed and tides. Everything is interconnected in climate.
The question is if in 2007 changed other factors besides Arctic sea ice melting minimum. The answer is yes. North Atlantic ocean temperatures changed trend, and the melting season started shortening. As both things can affect sea ice this is a clear indication that we are not dealing with internal variability that can be treated statistically. It is a change of natural conditions that some scientists have noticed and agree with their hypothesis.
Hi Javier,
A better hypothesis is just natural variability. Yes everything is interconnected, that is quite obvious, looking at the empirical data, a link between AMO and average annual Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent does not show as being statistically significant over the 1979 to 2016 period. A better hypothesis is that sea ice extent is determined in part by global land ocean temperatures.
An alternative hypothesis is that NSI is linked to Global sea surface temperature (SST).
To test this, a regression on northern hemisphere sea ice extent (annual average) with HadSST3.1 suggests a decrease of 3.1 million km sq of Northern hemisphere sea ice extent for each 1 C rise in Global SST, the 95% confidence interval is 2.4 to 3.8 million km sq decrease per degree C of Global SST rise.
As before the temperature (in this case ocean surface temperature) vs NSI results in a higher R (84%) than the AMO vs NSI regression (R=75%) and a multiple regression for NSI vs SST and AMO shows low statistical significance for AMO (t stat =0.93) and a similar R to NSI vs SST.
Dennis,
Little understanding of the processes leads to incorrect results even if correlation appears high.
Arctic sea ice does not depend on global sea surface temperatures. It depends on Arctic sea surface and subsurface temperatures. And Arctic sea surface and subsurface temperatures depend on North Atlantic sea surface and subsurface temperatures, as that is the current that feeds the Arctic. Delays in the system can produce a low correlation due to the annual variability being shifted. Polar atmospheric temperatures are a smaller factor because the ice forms from the sea water and therefore depends absolutely on its temperature.
The period of observation 1979-2007 corresponds to an increasing AMO. It is too short for what appears to be a ~60 year oscillation. From now on the two hypothesis make opposite predictions. The CO2 hypothesis predicts a continuation of the 30 year downward trend in Arctic sea ice. The AMO hypothesis predicts a change of trend starting in 2007. As Feynman famously said:
“In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.”
So in a few years we’ll find out what controls Arctic sea ice, and I am betting for AMO. The September trend since 2007 is in full agreement with its prediction, not with CO2 hypothesis prediction.
Hi Javier,
Well by your reasoning the sea ice should not depend on the AMO, because the AMO does not measure arctic sea surface temperature.
The global ocean temperature is rising, the water in the Arctic is connected with the rest of the ocean through various flows determined by several different cycles. As the AMO measures the detrended sea surface temperature fluctuations in the North Atlantic, it will not reflect the deeper ocean temperature necessarily as there are deepwater flows that can also vary depending on temperature changes in the southern Atlantic Ocean as well as interconnections and flows between the Atlantic and Indian and the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean.
As ice forms on the surface of the ocean the sea surface temperature is very relevant.
The empirical data suggests the hypothesis that the AMO is an important determinant of Northern Hemisphere Sea ice is not supported.
Global land ocean temperatures or Global sea surface temperatures explain some of the change in NH Sea ice extent, with an R squared of about 70%. Other natural variability besides AMO may explain the rest.
“Polar atmospheric temperatures are a smaller factor because the ice forms from the sea water and therefore depends absolutely on its temperature.”
The temperature of the air above open water has one hell of a lot to do with how fast the water freezes, especially if there is enough wind to lift droplets into the air, where the small mass of a droplet , in relation to the comparatively HUGE surface area of a droplet, allows it to freeze almost instantly.
But it’s true that once the ice covers the water, the air temperature matters to a far lesser extent, because the ice acts as insulation.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
I imagine it depends mostly on the water temperature, but the air temperature will influence the water temperature, the water in areas not covered with ice will mix with the water under the ice and that will be affected by air temperature.
Also Javier is fixated on CO2, but all of the models on sea ice that I have presented look at Global land ocean temperature or Global sea surface temperature.
Javier has claimed the AMO is the same as North Atlantic sea surface temperatures, but that is incorrect.
He has also said the North Atlantic feeds the Arctic Ocean which is correct, the rest of the oceans feed the North Atlantic, so Global sea surface temperature is very relevant, deeper ocean data is also relevant, but all oceans are interconnected so the global ocean temperatures are very relevant.
The fact is that the AMO is not statistically significant where northern hemisphere sea ice is concerned.
Dennis,
“Javier has claimed the AMO is the same as North Atlantic sea surface temperatures, but that is incorrect.”
It is correct.
“The AMO is identified as a coherent pattern of variability in basin-wide North Atlantic SSTs with a period of about 60–80 years [Schlesinger and Ramankutty, 1994].
Indices of the AMO have traditionally been based on the average SST anomaly for the North Atlantic north of the equator [Enfield et al., 2001] (Figure 1), where the SST (from HADISST [Rayner et al., 2003]) northern limit was kept at 60°N to avoid problems with sea ice changes.”
Trenberth, K. E., and D. J. Shea (2006), Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L12704, doi:10.1029/2006GL026894.
Hi Javier,
Yes the AMO is based on North Atlantic Sea Surface temperatures.
Method:
Use the Kaplan SST dataset (5×5).
Compute the area weighted average over the N Atlantic, basically 0 to 70N.
Detrend that time series
Optionally smooth it with a 121 month smoother.
For those who require unaltered data, the following is an “not detrended” version of the N. Atlantic monthly averages with the 1951-1980 NOAA ERSST climatology added back in.
The AMO removes the trend from the North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature.
So something can be “based on” North Atlantic SST without being “the same as” North Atlantic SST
You are the one that doesn’t understand Dennis,
Take North Atlantic SST 0°-60°N, 0°-80°W. Plot. You’ve got AMO.
Anomaly is optional, filtering is optional, detrending is optional. These are just different ways of presenting the same data.
As simple as that.
I looked quickly at ENSO and its effect on northern hemisphere sea ice. A multiple linear regression on HadSST and ENSO has an R squared of 79% and both SST and ENSO are significant at the 95% level. When AMO is also added (3 independent variables rather than 2, the R squared is unchanged and AMO is not statistically significant (t stat is 1).
Chart below for this new very simple “model”.
You might try a lag for the ENSO released heat to make its way to the Arctic. You may have to go to monthly numbers to find the best time span to lag by.
Hi Wehappyfew,
There may well be a lag, but I am trying to keep the analysis simple. Feel free to tweek,
Feel free to add lags. My main point was to test the AMO hypothesis and when AMO is added it is not statistically significant, though perhaps with the right lag it would be, but I prefer not to data mine.
Hi Javier,
The data for AMO and North Atlantic SST can be found at link below
The North Atlantic SST anomaly from the 1951-1980 average (labelled NASST) and the AMO are plotted in chart below.
They are not the same, if you believe they are you are incorrect.
Come on Dennis,
You just proved my point, thanks. It is exactly the same data with different treatment (detrending). As Trenberth points out in his article detrending is just a usual way of presenting AMO data, but by no means universal and it was not done in the original papers that described AMO.
Once again, you have posted data that are not up to date. Since the last date shown in those graphs, SH OHC has fallen precipitously, while NH OHC has risen equally fast.
Fall 2016 is many months after the effects of the “big El Nino” subsided in the global OHC data, and is irrelevant anyway, as both hemispheres are represented in the tropical zone where El Nino has a large effect.
… rather than reading off your list of denier talking points.
The broader context, as always, is also missing from your remarks…
…the global average heat content of the entire climate system is rising, and accelerating.
… regional variations are large at times, but only reflect redistribution within the global heat reservoir
… the increase in heat content of the climate system is solely due to human produced GHGs, as all the known natural influences are flat or negative (like solar).
Hi Javier,
That paper is well done. There is no discussion of sea ice they simply report that 90% of the heat increase in the top 2000 m of ocean are in the Southern Hemisphere (mostly Pacific and Indian Oceans). They also discuss that the increase in ocean heat matches well with TOA energy flux along with mechanisms for the heat transport to the deeper ocean.
An interesting piece, but not suggestive of a stall in Arctic Sea ice melt.
Hi Dennis,
My citation of that paper is not to support a stall in Arctic Sea ice melt, but to support that ocean warming has taken place mainly in the Southern Hemisphere during the period considered.
Your global ocean chart says very little. Some oceans warm, while others cool. The North Atlantic has been cooling since 2007.
Chart below for annual average North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature from 1979-2016.
I assume you know that the AMO detrends the North Atlantic Sea Surface temperatures as it measures the oscillation about the rising trend in Global sea surface temperatures.
Dennis,
AMO is going down according to all three indices.
This graph is up to 2015 and includes 3 AMO indices compared to North Atlantic hurricane ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy):
Blue= North Atlantic ACE
Red= NOAA’s AMO
Yellow= Van Oldenborgh (2009) AMO
Purple= Klotzbach/Gray (2008) AMO
The North Atlantic has been cooling, surface and 0-700 m. I haven’t checked 700-2000 m. With the North Atlantic cooling, Western Europe is unlikely to warm much, and US is unlikely to get a lot of strong hurricanes. Arctic sea ice will show increased resilience. The North Atlantic current is the one bringing warm waters to the Arctic. As it is cooler it will provide less heat.
Hi Javier,
The AMO is not the same as North Atlantic Sea Surface temperature.
The AMO detrends the North Atlantic Sea Surface temperature. So the trend has to be added back to look at sea surface temperature.
The AMO signal is usually defined from the patterns of SST variability in the North Atlantic once any linear trend has been removed. This detrending is intended to remove the influence of greenhouse gas-induced global warming from the analysis. However, if the global warming signal is significantly non-linear in time (i.e. not just a smooth linear increase), variations in the forced signal will leak into the AMO definition. Consequently, correlations with the AMO index may mask effects of global warming.[4]
For those who require unaltered data, the following is an “not detrended” version of the N. Atlantic monthly averages with the 1951-1980 NOAA ERSST climatology added back in.
N. Atlantic SST averages, unsmoothed & not detrended (1856 to present) and the climatolgy used (from the NOAA ERSST V2 SST, interpolated to a 5×5 grid).
Dennis,
We already talked about this. You should try to remember. The AMO signal does not require to be detrended. Some authors and institutions detrend it and other authors don’t. The Wikipedia is wrong on that.
“The AMO is identified as a coherent pattern of variability in basin-wide North Atlantic SSTs with a period of about 60–80 years [Schlesinger and Ramankutty, 1994].
Indices of the AMO have traditionally been based on the average SST anomaly for the North Atlantic north of the equator [Enfield et al., 2001] (Figure 1), where the SST (from HADISST [Rayner et al., 2003]) northern limit was kept at 60°N to avoid problems with sea ice changes. We use a 70-year (1901–70) base period as it covers roughly one full cycle of the AMO. The AMO is given by smoothing from a 10-year running mean [Goldenberg et al., 2001; Enfield et al., 2001] or similar low-pass filter (Figure 1). In most cases the variability has been highlighted by detrending the data [Enfield et al., 2001; McCabe et al., 2004; Sutton and Hodson, 2005; Knight et al., 2005], and a linear trend is provided in Figure 1 for reference.”
Trenberth, K. E., and D. J. Shea (2006), Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L12704, doi:10.1029/2006GL026894.
AMO was defined without detrending and is detrended for convenience. However for many comparisons the non-detrended data has to be used.
AMO is North Atlantic sea surface temperature by definition. Basin wide and from equator to 60°N, although some authors and institutions restrict the area because they defend it gives a better signal.
Notice how both are AMO, one detrended and the other not.
Hi Javier,
Generally when one refers to AMO in current climate science it is the detrended version, and Wikipedia is not wrong. That is the current science, things have changed since 1994.
Today AMO means the trend has been removed, the “not detrended” North Atlantic SST is simply the North Atlantic SST.
If you are correct that there are two different AMOs, de trended and not detrended, then one needs to be clear which one they are using. Most of the “AMO” data you have presented (except the not de-trended Trenbeth chart) has been de-trended and is not the same as North Atlantic SST.
Javier,
The Chart from you 1/11/17, 6:55 AM comment is clearly the detrended AMO,
So the possibility of two different kinds of AMO ( not detrended and leaving in the rising trend due to global warming since 1850) which is relatively uncommon in the literature or AMO (detrended) which is standard practice by climate scientists in 2017.
Most people would simply refer to an AMO that is not detrended as the North Atlantic sea surface temperature anomaly (NASST).
This would eliminate any confusion with the AMO, which Wikipedia is correct in saying is detrended.
If you are going to continue to call two different things AMO, then at least be clear which is which or you simply waste everyone’s time.
So say AMO detrended or AMO not detrended so we compare apples to apples.
Dennis,
Detrending the data is simply a way of highlighting the variability around the mean at the expense of the trend.
As any data representation procedure (like different ways of projecting a 2D world map), it has advantages and disadvantages. Scientists use one or the other depending on their needs. Both ways are clearly accepted in the scientific literature as both represent the same phenomenon in different ways.
There is no confusion as it is very clear if the presented AMO has trend or not. To compare AMO with Arctic sea ice you need it to have its proper trend. You cannot compare something that has been detrended with something that hasn’t and pretend a meaningful result.
Renewables investment in UK will fall 95% over next three years – study
Analysis reveals extent of decline because of subsidy cuts and raises concerns about Britain meeting emissions targets
“Investment in windfarms will fall off a “cliff edge” over the next three years and put the UK’s greenhouse gas reduction targets at risk, a thinktank has found.
More than £1bn of future investment in renewable energy projects disappeared over the course of 2016, the Green Alliance found when it analysed the government’s latest pipeline of major infrastructure plans.
Investment in wind, solar, biomass power and waste-to-energy projects will decline by 95% between 2017 and 2020, it added.
While a slowdown in green energy investment had been expected after ministers cut several subsidy schemes over the last 18 months, the figures lay bare the dramatic extent of the decline.
“This cliff edge needs to be avoided if the UK is to meet its world leading carbon budgets and Paris agreement pledge,” Green Alliance said in its analysis.”
This study supports the notion that renewable energy projects are very dependent on subsidies.
This is interesting. The UK faces a particular dilemma. UK coal resources are all but, exhausted, having powered the country through the industrial revolution, two wars and the better part of the 20th century. The UK is after all an island so it’s mineral resources are obviously finite. North Sea oil gave the UK economy a new lease of life starting during the Thatcher years and probably was more contributory to the improved economic performance than any government policies. UK oil and natural gas production peaked in 1999 and by 2005 they had become a net importer of NG. By 2007 they also became a net importer of petroleum.
I guess this partly explains the UK governments commitment to fund the expansion of the Hinkley Point Nuclear facility, despite it being the most expensive electricity the UK consumer will probably ever know. Having bought into the narrative that renewable energy could never power the UK, despite the excellent wind resources, they have no other options. Add the fact that they will also need to transition away from the use of FF for the transport sector and industrial, commercial, institutional and residential heating and the dilemma grows even larger.
It would appear to me that continuing to subsidize renewable energy would be a wise investment in a sustainable future even remotely resembling what obtains now on the basis of declining FF resources alone. Investing in the exploitation of more FF resources seems to be pointless even if one were to ignore emissions targets altogether. Without a miracle, the UK is fucked!
>> Without a miracle, the UK is fucked! <<
No man, nothing is fucked here ~ The Dude (see Big Lebowski)
We have so much wind here in the UK it's not true. Scotland was 59% renewables in 2015. See graphic:
Sorry, I was just responding to the contents of the article posted by Javier. From what I gather, the Tories have not exactly embraced a push to renewables, instead taking actions that are resulting in a situation where,
“Investment in windfarms will fall off a “cliff edge” over the next three years and put the UK’s greenhouse gas reduction targets at risk, a thinktank has found.
More than £1bn of future investment in renewable energy projects disappeared over the course of 2016, the Green Alliance found when it analysed the government’s latest pipeline of major infrastructure plans.
Investment in wind, solar, biomass power and waste-to-energy projects will decline by 95% between 2017 and 2020, it added.”
Which is what lead me to state, “Having bought into the narrative that renewable energy could never power the UK, despite the excellent wind resources, they have no other options.” It is because the powers that be appear to want to “leave it up the market to sort it out” rather than continue to provide incentives for renewables, IMO the UK is toast. If you have all the wind resources in the world and no turbines to harvest the energy, the wind resources won’t do you any good. If you wait for the market to provide the price signals to sort it out, you will be caught out in the open with your pants down!
IMO it would better to make some sacrifice now, in preparation for what we know is going to happen anyway and have an easier go of it in the future, than to wait it out and have to make a mad scramble when things start getting tough. Y2K ended up being a non event exactly because people were forewarned and proactive, taking the steps necessary to avert disaster. That type of approach does not seem to sit well with the people running the show these days.
Do you know of any plans to substantially increase wind generation in the UK, so as to be able to carry a much greater portion of the load? More solar PV could contribute significantly more during summer but, that doesn’t seem to be part of the plan either!
islandboy, I enjoy your posts and viewpoint. My naive hope is that renewables, being cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear, will replace said FFs and nukes here in the UK.
However, I hope I do not underestimate the power (momentum) of the status quo, and their resistance to change.
IIRC, offshore wind is increasingly economically viable (even as the Tory govt opposes onshore wind). Tesla Powerpacks are being installed for utility level storage.
Renewables in the UK increased from 21.0% to 22.3% of UK electricity last year. (Ahead of USA’s 16.9%, behind Germany’s 35.5%).
So, no man, nothing is fucked here. New shit has come to light 🙂
A golden future for UK-China trade and investment | UKTI blog: “Only this March, China’s State Development Investment Corporation announced they will invest £185m in offshore wind assets in Scottish waters. Scotland is a global pioneer in the field of renewable energy and we expect further Chinese investment in UK renewable energy reaching £240-£300m/year over the next five years.”
Here’s what that Guardian mentioned that Javier didn’t quote.
“’The picture of private sector investment is very clear: it is rapidly moving away from high carbon infrastructure. In contrast, public sector high carbon investment is rising, although slowly,’ the authors wrote.”
China set to invest over £100 billion in UK infrastructure by 2025, says Pinsent Masons: “The report finds that of the £105 billion, the leading recipients will be the energy, real estate and transport sectors. The UK energy sector will be the biggest target for Chinese capital, with investment in projects including nuclear energy, wind power generation and photovoltaic power generation could be set to reach £43.5 billion by 2025.”
They threw it all away on a nuclear bet that will end up costing them far more than they ever expected – if it is ever completed.
NAOM
The UK surely does have the wind………. but WILL it be developed BEFORE it’s too late to save the UK’s economy from recession or depression or maybe even outright collapse, in the face of vicious competition in the seller’s market place for the finished goods and services the UK exports?
Importing raw materials and exporting finished goods , or services, is a tough way to make a living any time, considering the ever increasing competition, and it’s going to be a LOT tougher when the price of fossil fuels go way up, and other countries that HAVE developed their renewable potentials don’t have to pay for more than a minor fraction of the imported energy the UK will have to buy on the open market………………
It takes a long time to build a big wind farm and transmission lines and so forth.
Now about than nuke… It may never be completed, sure enough.
And I don’t go out of my way to defend nuclear power, but in a forum such as this one, nuclear power gets virtually all the badmouth and none of the credit due to it.
There’s more than just ONE way to paint a partisan picture of any subject, including clean energy.
Nearly all of us including yours truly endlessly pound the renewables drum, and talk endlessly about the externalized costs of fossil fuels and nukes.
What we generally do NOT do is own up to the indisputable, incontestable fact that for now and for quite some time to come, we WILL be using quite a lot of fossil fuel juice, and a lot of nuclear juice, because we HAVE NO CHOICE, other than to do without.
Now the less of something you have, the more valuable it becomes,in most cases. Electricity is like that. It takes only a little to keep your food fresh and your lights on. When you have lots of it, it’s easy to go off for the day or a week without turning down the heat and turning off the lights.
MY guess, for what it’s worth, is that one day the people of the UK will be VERY glad indeed that they have that nuclear juice…….. if the plant is finally on line.
I’m not saying it WILL happen SOON, or very often, but there WILL most likely be times when the wind DOES NOT blow hard enough, over a wide enough area, during the dead of winter, to meet the critical needs of the UK, with whatever number of wind farms the country manages to build.
It’s fine to talk about overbuilding double or triple to cover such contingencies, but speaking as a life long observer of people and politics………..
The people of the UK will be LUCKY if they get enough wind infrastructure built within the next twenty or thirty years to cover all their needs on days with just FAIR winds.
And from the looks of the investment figures, such as they are, and where the money is coming from, well the Chinese are going to have the last laugh, because they are turning the world upside down , and the English, who used to have colonies and possessions such that the sun never set on their empire, will be remitting a hell of a big fraction of their national income to their Chinese colonial masters.
It’s arguably more profitable to use sharecroppers to grow farm crops, under certain conditions, than it is to use slaves. You don’t have to fly your flag, and have troops on the ground, to OWN a colony these days. All you have to do is have legal title to the essential infrastructure of the colony, and bleed the people there at whatever rate the market will bear……..
In times gone by, such arrangements were put in place, and displaced, by force of arms, as often as not.
History doesn’t repeat, but it DOES rhyme, as some wag once said.
We westerners are going to be in one hell of a fix, when the day comes (IF the time comes ) when we must go hat in hand to the Chinese, and ask them to supply us with the steel and skilled workers we need to build some warships and air craft so we can kick them out of our countries.
There’s a bigger goddamned box to be considered in evaluating globalization than the economists that teach the courses want to talk about.
Neither the Germans nor the Russians have forgotten the Siege of Stalingrad,which has one hell of a lot to do with Germany pushing so hard to break the IMPORTED fossil fuel habit, although it’s seldom mentioned.
You can bet your last can of beans that the Chinese have not forgotten the opium wars.
A rather interesting article on global sea ice extent published January 5
“Sea ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic set record low extents every day in December, continuing the pattern that began in November. Warm atmospheric conditions persisted over the Arctic Ocean, notably in the far northern Atlantic and the northern Bering Sea. Air temperatures near the Antarctic sea ice edge were near average. For the year 2016, sea ice extent in both polar regions was at levels well below what is typical of the past several decades.”
“The gap between the 1981 to 2010 average and the 2016 combined ice extent for December now stands at about 3.0 million square kilometers (1.16 million square miles), down from a peak difference of just over 4 million square kilometers (1.50 million square miles) in mid-November.”
These sorts of analyses over the claimed extent of remaining sea ice always get me interested, particularly in what these public sector career scientists leave unsaid. That is, the global climate-not to mention the ice nearest to the poles-has been going through constant change all throughout history. This change has taken place ever since the creation of our planet and will continue long after man’s reign over the planet comes to an end. Something further to ponder related to this, without natural global warming in the ancient past, most of the Northern Hemisphere-encompassing many of our current homes and neighborhoods-would still be covered in glaciers miles tall. Places as far south as Missouri would’ve felt the impacts. Only in the past 10,000 years have these glaciers finally molten, leaving behind such treasures as the Great Lakes, the Finger Lakes, and thousands of other bodies of water which allowed Europeans to come to this continent to build a bountiful civilization where none could thrive before.
In conclusion, my best advice to the average citizen who sees climate change as a concern is to stop needless worrying. Being that I work in close contact with a major public research university, I have a deep understanding of how a fundamental part of being a career scientist these days is securing funding for future experimentation and research. Naturally, competition and wrangling among fellow career scientists is the most important factor in determining where the dollars get doled out. Furthermore, as in any business dealing of this kind, scientists must have a “sizzle” to their work in order to secure the money-here is where the scientists’ supposed sense of climate urgency comes in, not to mention alarmism, appeals to emotion, complicity with the mainstream media, etc. Again, the best course of action is to remain calm and rationally look at the issue. When these virtues prevail, climate change simply becomes a nonentity on the scale of matters that are truly important in world affairs.
Yep, natural variation fer sure… right up until that CO2 started going up for some reason.
Hi WeHappyfew,
Edit: The chart from Kinnard et al 2011 is for late summer (Sept Northern hemisphere sea ice), so for Sept 2016 the Northern hemisphere sea ice extent was 4.72 million square kilometers. So I should have found the article first.
We should probably use annual averages for such a chart. For the most recent 12 months ending in Nov 2015 the 12 month average was 10.1 million kilometers squared. So you may be overstating your case and this is as credible as cherry picking by others (nope I am wrong see above.)
Chart below has 12 month average from Dec through Nov (so most of 2016 could be included) from 1989-2016 (in 1987 and 1988 there was missing data so I start in Dec 1988 and end in Nov 2016).
I agree that running 12 month averages are a great way to depict the state of the ice. It includes all the data rather than cherrypicking one month out of 12 or one day out of 365.
I think the minimum is one of the LEAST useful measures for the state of the ice, but to be consistent with Kinnard, as you said, I plotted the 2012 minimum of 3.6 Mkm^2 for the “you are here” point. The variation since that most recent record minimum is not visible at this scale.
Much more important to the health of the ice, and the implications for climate, is the amount of ice during the late spring and during summer, when 24 hour sun makes the poles the place that receives more solar insolation than anywhere else on the planet. Reflective ice and snow keeps the planet cool, and allows the ice to survive to the next year. Multi-year ice is much more reflective and durable than first-year ice.
Unfortunately, the multi-year ice is almost gone… we have about 5% left of the 5+ year old ice compared to the 1980’s.
With record high temps continuing in both the Arctic and Antarctic (see plot below), I see a high probability of new record lows, especially in the late spring and summer, as there is a lot of very thin ice that never experienced the deep cold needed to thicken up… it will melt very fast as temps rise in the spring (for the Arctic spring coming up… the Antarctic is already at record lows for summer right now).
That means a lot of solar energy absorbed by dark blue ocean instead of reflected back to space.
Hi Wehappyfew,
One problem with putting a single year minimum on that kinnard et al 2011 chart is that the chart has 40 year averages, so your minimum should probably be the 1979 to 2016 September average (6.3 million sq km) to be consistent with that chart in my opinion.
I agree the melting will continue, though it is far from clear what the future rate will be. At some point carbon emissions will be reduced and atmospheric CO2 will stabilize and very gradually decrease (see Archer 2005). Sea surface temperatures will continue to gradually rise but the rate of increase will slow over time as the flow of heat to the deeper ocean eventually matches the heat absorbed by the ocean surface (probably after about 250 years). At that point further SST increases at the global level will be small. In the future there may be an ice free Arctic Ocean from August to Oct, but it will refreeze to some level each winter.
A lot will depend on total carbon emissions and how quickly we reduce all greenhouse gas emissions from all sources.
This is very difficult to predict.
I agree the melting will continue
So what if it doesn’t? What if there is no melting for the next 10-20 years?
And what if there is? You really think “your side” is right don’t you? Or do you just give that impression to try and convince anyone that might stumble upon this web site that, “the science is not settled” and keep the Koch brothers happy in so doing? You are a real piece of work!
“And what if there is? You really think “your side” is right don’t you?”
I am a scientist. If the evidence demonstrates that I am wrong, I have to change my view. I do it all the time. I don’t care if CO2 is responsible for all the warming. I just don’t think it is because I don’t see the evidence for that.
If AMO turns negative, yet Arctic sea ice continues following its melting trend, then the AMO hypothesis is wrong. There is no way around it. But right now I am convinced I am right because the AMO hypothesis is supported by hundreds of years of data, not just 30, and the behavior of Arctic sea ice since 2007 is what could be predicted by the AMO hypothesis, not the CO2 hypothesis.
Since 2007 we have had a great increase in atmospheric CO2 levels, and the two warmest years on surface record back to back, 2015 and 2016, and yet September Arctic sea ice has kept its upward trend. Lots of alarmist predictions have failed. The CO2 hypothesis has no explanation for it, the AMO hypothesis does.
Hi Javier,
We don’t really have good sea ice extent data for the entire Northern hemisphere for hundreds of years.
Dennis,
You didn’t say what happens if there is no Arctic sea ice melting for the next 10-20 years.
Hi Javier,
I am more concerned with temperature, there is a possibility there might be a slowdown in warming followed by an increased rate of warming.
I agree the AMO has an influence on temperature, the relationship with sea ice from 1979-2015 is not very strong.
Temperature is related pretty strongly with Northern hemisphere sea ice.
“I work in close contact with a major public research university”
Contract cleaner?
NAOM
It’s likely that Javier comments here under multiple pseudonyms.
What a bunch of trolls you guys are. Nobody can post a point of view different to yours without being immediately personally attacked by the pack.
Yet Tom J. is completely correct. 7000 years ago the ice limit was 1000 km North of its current position in Greenland, and the Arctic enjoyed regularly sea-ice free summers. Alarmists enjoy comparing current conditions with the Little Ice Age and get all worked up. The Little Ice Age sucked big time.
Less Ice In Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 Years Ago
Recent mapping of a number of raised beach ridges on the north coast of Greenland suggests that the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was greatly reduced some 6000-7000 years ago. The Arctic Ocean may have been periodically ice free.
“We present a sea-ice record from northern Greenland covering the past 10,000 years. Multiyear sea ice reached a minimum between ~8500 and 6000 years ago, when the limit of year-round sea ice at the coast of Greenland was located ~1000 kilometers to the north of its present position.”
Funder, Svend, et al. “A 10,000-year record of Arctic Ocean sea-ice variability—view from the beach.” Science 333.6043 (2011): 747-750.
By creating a hostile environment to climate skepticism you accomplish nothing. People will not post their thoughts because they don’t like being abused by rude trolls, but they will still hold their doubts. And since catastrophic climate predictions have been such a failure, the dominant hypothesis is doubly discredited by its abusive methods and by its failures.
Hi Javier,
The Dominant hypothesis is an ECS of 3 C and TCR of about 1.8 C.
There are those that think ECS is higher (I will call them pessimists) and those that believe ECS is lower (I will call them optimists).
Most climate scientists are between these extremes.
One mistake that many climate scientists make is the belief that fossil fuels are very abundant which leads to scenarios such as RCP8.5 with 5000 Pg of total anthropogenic carbon emissions, a more realistic scenario is RCP4.5, but even that is similar to my “high” fossil fuel scenario which is likely too optimistic. Probably 1000 to 1200 Pg of total carbon emissions is a more realistic scenario.
If Allen et al 2009 (link below) is correct, and I am also correct that fossil fuels will be limited, then 2 C above the 1850-1900 Global land ocean mean is about as high as we will go if ECS is about 2.7 C (similar to GISS model E2.)
Climate science is plagued with wild speculation based on impossible scenarios. While low estimates are vigorously rejected by the establishment, high estimates don’t raise any reaction because they advance the cause. Hardly the environment for good science and we are all going to pay the price.
I am definitely in the camp of those scientists that defend that ECS is below 2.5 and probably closer to 1.5 than 2.0. So you would call me an optimist.
However I should point to you that the actions of the governments of the planet indicate that their level of worry must be similar to mine.
The CO2 hypothesis of global warming started to be the dominant theory in the early 80’s. By the late 80’s everybody (including me) was convinced of it. There was no skepticism in the late 80’s to early 00’s. Yet nothing has been done about it. 30 years later global emissions have continued to depend exclusively on economical factors and had grown unaffected. Rich people still buy beach front properties, whose prices have not sunk below market. Almost nothing is being done in terms of protecting coastal cities from rising seas.
Acts speak louder than words. The governments of the Earth and the elites are not worried by climate change. I suppose they have looked into the evidence with their scientific advisors in a better way than I can. They say one thing but they act the opposite. They sell us big accords like Kyoto and Paris and nothing gets done.
Don’t you recognize this stark contradiction between what they say and what they do? In the face of a clear planetary emergency, like an asteroid coming our way, they would be acting very different.
Hi Javier,
I see the evidence differently. The data from 1850 to 2016 suggests a transient climate response of 1.75 C. AOGCM and Earth System Models that reproduce global temperatures well from 1880 to 2015 generally have an ECS of about 2.5 to 3.5 C and the ensemble mean for CMIP5 was about 3.2 C for ECS.
I am sure you are aware that global land temperature has risen faster than sea surface temperatures (SST) from 1880 to 2015.
Based on the geophysics and geochemistry carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for a long time after carbon emissions cease. I will go with Archer 2005 on this and am not convinced by simple analyses that suggest carbon dioxide levels will fall quickly after emissions are reduced, I believe you will be hard pressed to find peer reviewed literature to the contrary.
Let’s assume atmospheric CO2 stabilizes at 425 ppm. This suggests a radiative forcing of about 2.27 W/m^2 and atmospheric CO2 will remain close to this level for thousands of years. So the ocean will gradually warm due to this excess heat input and approach some equilibrium surface temperature. The transient climate response would increase global temperatures by about 1.1 C in this scenario, but the delayed ocean warming in response to the 2.27 W/m^2 radiative forcing input would increase temperature a further 0.65 C over hundreds of years.
This scenario has assumed very limited carbon emissions (960 Pg C) and has ignored ice and snow albedo feedback and vegetation feedback as well as potential carbon releases from melting permafrost, so even with such limited emissions there is the potential for warming greater than 1.7 C above pre-industrial Holocene average temperatures (which may be close to the 1971-2000 mean). Ice sheet melt and permafrost melt in response to warming need a lot more work to model properly.
Hi Dennis,
As you know the low ECS values are well supported in the scientific literature too. This is an issue that won’t be resolved any time soon. Therefore we should consider that the values of warming that you obtain are just a possibility.
“I am sure you are aware that global land temperature has risen faster than sea surface temperatures (SST) from 1880 to 2015.”
Actually this is not correct. Apparently land and sea surface take turns at leading warming at different times as the figure below shows. This makes sense because otherwise they would diverge intolerably over time.
Your emissions assumptions are probably more correct than most, but your CO2 half life assumptions are very pessimistic. About 80% of the CO2 could decline in as little as 80-160 years, and only the remaining 20% should have a very long life. If we ever get to decrease our emissions we should see what happens with atmospheric levels and get a better idea.
The figure shows rate of warming for land, sea surface and global by MetOffice, and the result of subtracting SST-SAT to highlight the three periods, with the middle one showing faster sea surface warming than land warming.
Says the person who calls a notable explorer “demented”.
If you want to be respected
1) respect others and the blog
2) present your information in a manner worthy of the PhD you claim to be and that would pass science 101
NAOM
notanoilman,
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t care about your respect. But you should behave yourself anyway.
That applies to you as well, presenting distorted data to reach your conclusion is certainly not ‘behaving yourself’ especially from one who claims high qualifications.
NAOM
The data and evidence I present is always from scientific publications or research institutions.
My opinion and conclusions based on the evidence are mine, and I am entitled to them.
You think I am wrong, I am fine with that. You say that I distort the data and you are distorting the truth, because I don’t touch the data.
So just because you disagree with me you resort to ad hominem attacks and telling lies about me. Clearly you feel that you cannot defend your position on scientific grounds alone, as Dennis does. Your insults and lies tell more about you than about me, as usual.
You distort the data by selecting out of it that which supports your claims and ONLY that. You frequently choose out of date data sets to avoid the updates that would spoil your arguments. Yes, you choose well published information, I just wish you would build a case around the complete data rather than prune the data to fit your case. Dennis is doing a good enough job, I will leave him to it. Now, let us see YOU do some proper scientific work instead of playing tricks that would have ended your prospect of ever getting a PhD.
NAOM
“Now, let us see YOU do some proper scientific work instead of playing tricks that would have ended your prospect of ever getting a PhD.
NAOM”
Indeed, tricky about the PhD. The current example is pundit Monica Crowley, who has been outed as a serial plagiarist with regards to her dissertation.
The key to getting a PhD is being original. If you have a novel theory, then you have a much better chance of getting through.
People like Crowley and Javier rely on being a motor mouth — quantity instead of quality … yet they are eventually found out for what they are.
The sad thing is that in this Trump-age it’s possible that Crowley will feel no repercussions for her past work. The bar has been lowered, not only for political science but also for real science. Just have to look at all the #FakeScience climate sites such as WUWT and Judith Curry’s blog. Those are the ones that Javier contributes to, before he gains false confidence and starts spewing on this site.
Again back to your fallacious “guilt by association” arguments Webby?
Doesn’t matter that I had no idea who this Crowley is. Your moral standards are worth of former IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri.
Try to get some of your data torture science published instead of criticizing scientists of such stature that you could never aspire to even bring them coffee.
notanoilman,
This is a blog inhabited by several people bringing only one side of the debate and claiming that science is on their side. I am just demonstrating how false is their premise. Lots of science defuses alarmism.
No point in presenting data here that the wold is warming or that CO2 is collaborating in the warming, as we all agree on that.
Your contributions to the climate debate are invariably negative as anybody perusing your comments can quickly attest. Don’t bring any high standard on me when your standard is so low.
Javier can’t describe what he did for his dissertation because it may give his identity away. That’s why he is resigned to lashing out at others.
And Javier probably should know who Monica Crowley is, because she was nominated by Trump as his top National Security Council advisor.
“Try to get some of your data torture science published instead of criticizing scientists of such stature that you could never aspire to even bring them coffee.”
Yup. Lindzen is the denier scientist I have set my sites on.
“This is a blog inhabited by several people bringing only one side of the debate and claiming that science is on their side. “
This is a big lie, as what I am doing in some respects has no bearing on either “side” of the AGW debate.
For example, I am researching the foundations of QBO, which exists independent of whether there is an AGW signal or not.
Yet it just so happens that the originator of the (IMO) flawed QBO theory is Richard Lindzen, who happens to be an AGW denier. But what shouldn’t surprise anyone is that someone like Lindzen would get the theory wrong. He simply claimed victory too early and people believed him. And as it is 40 years later, it will take some time to unwind from the narrative he created.
Webby, I don’t give a damn about Trump, and I have no idea who is in his cabinet.
Do you know who is in the cabinet of current Spanish president? Then shut up.
I say:
“This is a blog inhabited by several people bringing only one side of the debate and claiming that science is on their side. “
And you say that this is a big lie because you are not one of them?
Did I say you were one of them? No? Then shut up.
You are just a mediocre academic that doesn’t get his research published and has a personal animosity towards me and several prominent skeptics. You just want to discuss your issues, which frankly nobody else gives a hoot except Dennis.
As you are so skewed in your animosity and attacks you are actually quite comic.
“You are just a mediocre academic that doesn’t get his research published”
As a non-academic presenting at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco last month
So Javier, are you stuck with “publishing” on the failed Curry’s blog ?
I don’t pretend to do climate research as you do.
I write blog articles that help people understand complex issues in paleo climatology. Is a way of putting my knowledge to good use. Curry’s blog has a very wide exposure and is frequented by a lot of people with interest in climatology, including real climate researchers with published articles.
Actually a lot more people with interest in science read Curry’s blog than articles published in specialized journals.
“Actually a lot more people with interest in science read Curry’s blog than articles published in specialized journals.”
The wrong kind of people of course. Those that voted for Trump, for example. Who cares about that readership?
Given that, it’s also important to debunk denier scientists such as Curry and Lindzen and their ridiculous theories. That they know little about AGW is borne out by their failed theories is other areas of atmospheric sciences.
I am familiar with Glenn Ford and Bruce Dixon. They are very angry at times but seem to be a bit more polite to people they meet via the internet. I see that sometimes you get quite angry too, but your jump to tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings sure did come quick.
I realize that it is almost impossible to keep politics out of things, but I referenced to the Science article because alimbiquated posted it and it seemed germane to the general tone of this thread.
It contains stuff like….
United States Mid-Century Strategy
FOR DEEP DECARBONIZATION
PS> and that’s Mr. tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemming.
Hi Ezrydermike/Mr. Etc.,
You might have saved us some time, and maybe a little bit of nonsense, if you skipped over most of your comment and more or less just settled on this bit:
“…that’s Mr. tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemming.” ~ Ezrydermike
Which is pretty much in agreement, yes?
Anyway, ‘clean energy’ isn’t really clean and ‘deep decarbonization’ is less of a ‘strategy’ and more of a response to a natural ultimatum.
The irreversible momentum of mentally deficient, tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings ?
I’m going to assume that you probably consider yourself to be one of the anointed few, who are superior to rest of us, poor, mentally deficient, tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings and that you think you are immune to any and all ideological memes. Am I right?
Perhaps you are under the influence of your own biases.
Maybe watch this short talk by Julia Galef: Why you think you’re right — even if you’re wrong
Maybe some of the people here who post articles like the one above are not really just some tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings. Maybe they are the ones who are able to see things more clearly…
Cheers!
Edit: Recommended reading: ‘Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus’
By Douglas Rushkof
‘Jobs’ in the traditional sense are a thing of the past, we are going to need a new social operating system. So neither Obama or Trump get it. ‘Human Resources’ is a dirty word in my view, your mileage may vary…
You ‘added’ ‘mentally deficient’, in your italics, Fred, and then ran with it.
This, at minimum, appears both as a straw man fallacy, and to mislead by the use of italics, as though it’s a quote, and the ‘insertion’ of the term-in-question.
Perhaps you think poorly– and as such– of your readership, thus, perhaps, even of yourself, since that particular style is corrupt.
It also undermines the rest of your comment (and your future comments), which, as a result, it won’t, nor should it, be bothered with.
I guess you don’t associate mentally deficient, with tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings, do you?
I guess you also don’t consider such a statement somewhat condescending and insulting either…
Let me put it another way, when you state that a group of people are mindfucked are you implying that you yourself are not? If so what is it about you, that makes you impervious to one form or another of mindfucking? Are you somehow mentally superior to the mind fucked lemmings you speak of? And if that is the case then why wouldn’t you give others the benefit of the doubt with respect their mental integrity and resilience.
Cheers!
“I guess you don’t associate mentally deficient, with tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings, do you?” ~ Fred Magyar
I guess not ay?
Apparently you do, since you wrote it.
And you can argue about it and similar at length, over a few Malbecs, with whoever has the time to blow.
My point is that it is a pretty good bet, that someone who characterizes anybody else as a tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemming, is basically a presumptuous arrogant jerk who doesn’t seem much interested in any civil exchange of ideas. And you were the one who wrote that!
+1
You conveniently removed its pluralization and question mark at its end, which of course removes its generalization and inconclusivity and which, along with your snarl words and the aforementioned, really seems to gut your apparent notions of ‘civil discourse’.
It would be especially laughable if it weren’t so ridiculous and a waste of one’s time, (if maybe suggestive of your possible understanding of communications propaganda/’fake news’).
But for charity’s sake, here’s my quote again, in all its glory, for your special needs:
“The irreversible momentum of tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings?“
You conveniently removed its pluralization and question mark at its end, which of course removes its generalization and inconclusivity…
Oh, my bad! You are sooo right! That changes everything…
The irreversible momentum of tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings?
Oh yeah, with the plural and question mark added back in, it has all the hallmarks of a completely innocuous statement which no one could possibly ever misconstrue as anything other than a genuine attempt at civility.
A polished, gilded turd, is till a turd!
“…that’s Mr. tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemming.” ~ Ezrydermike
^^ Now that’s singular.
(With special thanks to Ezrydermike.
Just a friendly reminder to remember the ‘Mr.’ attribute, too, Fred, while you’re playing in/with your own turds, bored as you seem.)
Why are conservatives such hypocrites?
“As they know they will only be defeated – their only joy or reward comes from trolling their liberal opponents.”
In decadence and decline, the U,S. has produced two strong strains of fascism that now vie for supremacy. The First Black President, now outgoing, represents the “cosmopolitan, global obsessed” variety of fascist. Donald Trump hails from an older fascist strain, “crude and petty, too ugly for global prime time.” At this stage in history, the two corporate parties seem incapable of producing anything other than fascists of one kind or the other.
Barack Obama was a savior – of a drowning ruling class. Under his administration, Wall Street rose from near-death to new heights of speculative frenzy, awash in capital brutally extracted from the vanishing assets and past and future earnings of the vast majority of the population, or gifted in the form of trillions in free money at corporate-only Federal Reserve windows. The Big Casino, reduced to a rubble of its own contradictions in 2008, ushered in the New Year just shy of the once-fantastical 20,000 mark. Analysts credited Donald Trump’s victory for the bankers’ bacchanal, but it was Obama who made the party possible by overseeing the restructuring of the U.S. economy to accommodate and encourage the hyper-consolidation of capital – another way to describe the deliberate deepening of economic (and political) inequality. Having accomplished the mission assigned him by Wall Street in return for record-breaking contributions to his first campaign, Obama is said to be angling for a hot-money squat in Silicon Valley, the super-rich sector that was most supportive of his presidency.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is melting quicker than the Wicked Witch of the West, principally due to the failure of traditionally Democratic working (and out of work) people of all races to turn out on November 8 – a perfectly understandable response to a party and a system that offers them absolutely nothing but grief, in ever quickening increments. The merciless downsizing of the American worker is a central element of Obama’s legacy. Real wages had been frozen or declining for decades. However, economic restructuring in the Age of Obama demanded that millions of workers be crushed all the way through the floor to a lower level of hell: temporary, contract, not-really-a-job, part-time “gig” employment. If the 1930s squatter shanty-towns called “Hoovervilles” were testaments to President Herbert Hoover’s economic policies, then the maddeningly precarious, no guaranteed hours, no benefits, zero job security, fraction of a shift, arbitrarily scheduled employment of today should be called ObamaJobs. A new study by economists at Princeton and Harvard universities shows that an astounding 94% of the 10 million jobs created during the First Black President’s two terms in office were ObamaJobs.
Hi Duncan,
You’re probably going to hear from my old friend HB about what a dirty rotten TRUMPSTER you are , for posting your nine seventeen comment. 😉
Please post a link to it, as well.
I don’t know how long it’s going to be before the shit hits the fan, hard and fast, but whoever wrote your quote is an exceptionally perceptive individual.
I will take this opportunity to repeat my argument that working class people who ordinarily would have voted D voted R in large enough numbers to put Trump over the top, in the states that put him there, not because they really wanted Trump but rather to send a ” Fuck you!” message, in desperation, loud and clear, to Clinton and the D party Prada and English suit establishment.
I will remain a non partisan , in principle, as a blogger and writer, so as to be able to point out bullshit where I encounter it, without having to observe tribal taboos that involve defending bullshit.It’s knee dip on the D side, and hip deep on the R side, lol.
But as a practical matter, as an individual at the local level, I will be doing what I can, as time permits, towards helping the D party get it’s shit together in terms of winning the votes of people who DON’T wear Prada and English suits.
And I’m doing everything I can to get my own economic hatches battened down nice and tight, but I am also assuming that the federal old age safety net, or welfare state, if you prefer the term, will likely last as long as I do.
If anybody who reads this forum is interested in perhaps living and working , part time, on a small diversified farm, operated by yours truly, a university trained pro who gets it in respect to the environment, I would like to get in touch with them.
Ownership, with owner financing, is a real possibility, medium to long term. Decent housing ( heat pump, adequate space, free cut your own firewood, acre plus deer proof fenced garden spot with irrigation included, secluded beautiful spot , lots of wildlife, etc, etc) will be available a very moderate cost, in the six hundred bucks range including all utilities. Five minutes from a National Park, in the heart of bluegrass country, etc.
Wages would have to be very modest, but the time spent working could also be rather modest, as little as ten to fifteen hours per week, or no work at all, if we don’t get along, and you can still stick around a year or two , month to month, same money for the housing. The free OJT would be worth quite a bit, potentially hundreds of thousands, if put to long term use. If I say so myself, I am a world class jack of all trades, having spent the last fifty years doing this , that, and the other, as it suited me.
Once you have a solid background in ONE trade, the second one comes faster and easier……… the fourth or fifth one takes hardly any time at all to get the basics down pat.
“According to him, the dystopia of the Wachowski Brothers’ Matrix trilogy is already here: the technological-industrial ‘machine’ is already running the world, a world where individual humans are but insignificant little cogs with barely any autonomy. No single human being – neither the most powerful politician, nor the most powerful businessman – has the power to rein in the system. They necessarily have to follow the inexorable logic of what has been unleashed.” ~ G Sampath on John Zerzan
————
“I will remain a non partisan…
I will be doing what I can… towards helping the D party get it’s shit together in terms of winning the votes of people…” ~ Oldfarmermac/Glen McMillian
…Trapped as we are…
Trapped we may be, but we are still free, until we quit the fight and surrender.
I don’t personally have any problem wearing two hats, maybe because I’m a little more of an outlier than the average nekkid ape, or maybe because I have trained my self to be able to do it.
You can lead footsoldiers , of any sort, Republicans, Democrats, church members, union members, real soldiers,etc around and lead them where YOU want them to go by preaching the party line of whichever party or special interest you represent, and treat them like children or cattle, manipulating their emotions and thinking by cherry picking the data you allow them to hear, etc etc.
I won’t have any trouble convincing a foot soldier voter to vote D, on the basis of his personal welfare, if he is in need of socialized medicine, because not only do I want the D’s to win, I want this country to have decent affordable health care. BUT I won’t be mentioning any of the arguments AGAINST socialized medicine.
And when I talk to a foot soldier R type guy, I won’t argue against his free market inclinations, which predispose him to vote against the D’s he sees, with some justification, as opposed to allowing him to run his business without overdoing the taxes and regulations. What I will do is punch his hot buttons involving his having to pay a price for pollution dumped in his water supply by folks upstream, forcing HIS town to pay for a bigger, better, more sophisticated water treatment plant, or killing the fish in the river where his Dad used to take him as a kid, etc.
This won’t convert him to an environmental single issue voter, and voting D, but it WILL start him along the road towards voting as as independent, some of the time, and every little bit helps.
On the other hand, as the author of a book ( as yet unpublished) I am planning on writing not for the consumption of foot soldiers, but rather for the LEADERS of foot soldiers. Leaders need to know the real score. They need to see and comprehend the big picture. Otherwise they are prone to making awful blunders.
Any body smart enough to be a real and EFFECTIVE leader has to understand that there there really are two sides to almost every question. If you don’t KNOW the other fellow, you can’t really hope to win him over to your side, or to defeat him in a contest, whether it’s a ball game, or an election.
I will give two examples. If Hitler had been willing to listen to his professional soldiers in the field, and done as they urged him to do, and truly and sincerely worked to help the people of Russia kick out Stalin and his commies, the odds are high the invasion of Russia would have succeeded. There are numerous professional soldiers and some military historians who say so.
But he didn’t know the Russian people, and apparently didn’t even understand that they were not even the enemy. He proceeded to MAKE enemies of them.
The D’s lost the last election because the leaders in charge didn’t understand that the voters in those last big three Rust Belt states were SUPER PISSED about being taken for granted. If Clinton had made half a dozen campaign stops up that way, and speeches to the effect that she really did give a xxxx about those voters, she would be prez elect.It WAS that close.
If these two blunders aren’t game changers , I don’t know what a game changer IS.
“The D’s lost the last election because the leaders in charge didn’t understand that the voters in those last big three Rust Belt states were SUPER PISSED about being taken for granted. If Clinton had made half a dozen campaign stops up that way, and speeches to the effect that she really did give a xxxx about those voters, she would be prez elect.It WAS that close.
If these two blunders aren’t game changers , I don’t know what a game changer IS.”
“Oldfarmermac says:
01/04/2017 AT 9:52 AM
Hi GF,
I’m ready to move on, in this respect , in this forum, in terms of my campaign to get people to at least THINK about who they vote for in future D party primaries,”
*********************
“Mr.Server aka KGB Boris Email” so what is it ? Are you going to shut your pie hole or continue your Russian support ?
Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him
Testifying before the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday, James Comey said he could not comment in public on a possible investigation into allegations of links between Russia and the Trump campaign.
“I would never comment on investigations – whether we have one or not – in an open forum like this, so I really can’t answer one way or another,” said Comey, at a hearing into the US intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia intervened in the election to benefit Trump.
Do the math Conservative Country Boy, your constantly saying your so smart.
Please don’t respond, just stay true to your word and cut the civics lesson. You wore that horse out a long time ago.
It’s time for “Mr. Boris EmailServer aka KGB” out
Changed my mind, R2D2, 😉
Now as far as Trump goes, I have always said he would was and would be worse than Clinton, and so far he appears to be proving me right in that assessment.
I said right along that I thought Clinton, as bad as she was, objectively speaking as a political COACH, would win, except here and there when I got worried that Trump WOULD win,
I am VERY HAPPY when somebody, anybody at all, still responds to one of my comments along the lines of WHY CLINTON lost, as if he has absolutely no conception of day to day political realities, because he is obviously as blind as a bat, so to speak, when it comes to stepping back from his partisan loyalty to Clinton as the candidate, and taking a SOBER look at WHY she should NEVER have been the candidate at all.
Clinton fans are like a parent who pays for the uniforms, and the football, and then insists that HIS kid gets to be the starting quarterback even though he can’t run, can’t throw, and can’t read the strategy of the opposing team.
I don’t know that you were or remain a big Clinton fan, but admitting you were wrong isn’t easy, in any case, because that involves a loss of face.
Now a few days back I challenged another regular to answer this question. Does he believe that if Clinton had gone to the Rust Belt, as the candidate, and had made some serious efforts up that way,instead of IGNORING those voters, she would have WON, considering that she lost those three states combined by the proverbial hair? The total margin was only around a hundred thousand votes in those three states out of about five million cast, iirc.
He dodged the question. He replied, but he DID NOT ANSWER IT. He talked about not what Clinton did or did not do, but other things.
WILL YOU?
MY goal is to do all I can, at this level, to force hard core D types to face up to the reality that Clinton was simply a piss poor choice as candidate, given the mood of the country, and her baggage train.
It DOES NOT MATTER even a tinker’s damn, if the baggage is real, or the figment of old country boy conservative imaginations. The FACT is that virtually EVERY major poll indicated that a HUGE portion of the voting public did not TRUST Clinton, and did not LIKE Clinton, even before the primary season got underway.
In retrospect, TONS of big D democrats have already faced up to the obvious truth, that she and her team ran a LOUSY campaign, even going so far as to not only badmouth the simple but NUMEROUS working class people she needed, her team bad mouthed the most progressive, idealistic, best educated and numerous young voters in the country- Sanders fans.
But the Sanders camp is alive and well, and hopefully the future of the party.Clinton won’t amount to much more than an old war horse brought out for parades and rallies from here on out.
You just don’t run a candidate dragging a cannonball chained to her leg if you have GOOD SENSE. You run somebody else, and you take the opposition seriously, and run on the REAL issues, rather than identity politics, and globalization, at a time when the fucking REAL core of the party is BLEEDING and REELING , economically speaking.
NOW you tell me , MR Smarter Than An Old Farmer , just how damned HOT you would have been if a republican candidate had been the Sec of State, and had that secret email server, and dealt with the investigation thereof the same way, destroying and hiding the evidence, lying bald faced about the PURPOSE of the system, etc, taking MILLIONS of dollars in CHECKS for making trivial speeches, while pretending to be “tough on Wall Street”, etc, etc, etc.
I sort of THINK that you would maintain that the public has a right to know about that sort of monkey biz, so long as it’s the opposition caught out.
Incidentally Bill Clinton himself said that by the time the last of the email news broke, the public had already made up it’s mind about that issue, and that it didn’t really matter. That opinion, coming from probably the sharpest politician alive in America, is worth noting, and was borne out by the fact that Clinton won the popular vote, etc, where she was truly EXPECTED to win,and nationally as well.
But STATISTICS are for losers, as they say in sports. She lost where it REALLY counted, because she blew it.
And don’t forget, TRUMP WAS EVEN WORSE, hated by even more people than hated Clinton, but he really ran as an OUTSIDER.
It is an incontestable fact that the R party establishment hated his guts, although it is now licking his hand like the dog it is. HE HIJACKED the R party, whereas Clinton gradually over time built up her old time insider machine until she basically OWNED the D party machinery. She ran as the BAU candidate, when the country was DESPERATE for CHANGE. BIG mistake, in retrospect.
Maybe you will never get it, but remind me, and I will do what I can to make sure that people willing to STEP BACK and look at it from a reasonable distance understand why Clinton lost, when a better candidate would have won easily.
For Sky Daddy’s sake , she managed to do the near impossible, which was to lose to a candidate hated by the establishment of his own HIJACKED party, with lots of party elders badmouthing HIM in no uncertain terms, a candidate that had as bad or WORSE numbers when it came to public trust, etc.
Wake up, it’s time to quit feeling sorry for yourself, and inventing reasons why she lost. She managed it all by herself, with the help of insider yes guys and gals who failed to tell her the TRUTH about what was happening, either because they were too imperceptive to GET IT, or because they were hoping to still be part of the inner circle after the election, instead of PURGED, hoping she would win anyway.
I have often pointed out that there really isn’t anything much in the way of conflict of REAL and INFORMED conservatism, as opposed to PARTISANSHIP that calls itself conservative, when you once get down to the really important issues.
NOTHING could possibly be more conservative for instance, in terms of the TRUE meaning of the word, than taking a proactive stance on protecting the environment.
The Russians have always had a long subcurrent of hatred thrown against them by the Western Europeans. Russian heritage is Euro-Asian. There is a long history of Nordic blood mixing with Slavic blood and following the Mongol invasions with Mongolian and Turkic blood from Central Asia.
Russian features tend to be more ‘asianish’ than Teutonic stock or Anglo Saxon stock. The Russians have faced multiple European invasions for their territory. Going by the Russian press, they’ve had enough of trying to be European and are instead developing their own unique cultural style based on their unique Eurasian heritage.
Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it, and “it” has a way of morphing up into something unrecognizable, or diametrically opposed to your original wish, as often as not.
I daresay not a single person who was all so hot for Hillary operating as a federal policy maker, in trying take personal control of health care policy, back then, will remember to mention WHY Trump will most likely get away with putting family members in positions of great power and influence.
As a matter of fact, I expect most of them won’t even REMEMBER this precedent, because we remember a lot like we BELIEVE.
We believe what we please, and we remember what we please, as a general rule. Right, left, middle of the road, even abominable snowmen, if they exist, we are ALL of us subject to this failing. A very few of us make a conscious effort to back away from our own cultural and political home turf, and get a clear look at the big picture, even going so far as trying really hard to see things from the point of view of their bitterest enemies.
Backing off this way, so as to get a big picture look, is a skill that can be learned, and cultivated. A good way to learn it is to read some great psychological novels. Huck Finn and Puddn’head Wilson, by Twain, together constitute a superb two part combination, probably the best EVER written, in terms of allowing a person to get into the minds of people at the opposite end of the material, cultural, and economic yardstick.
a href=”https://www.pv-magazine.com/2017/01/10/china-continues-dominance-of-global-renewable-energy/”>China continues dominance of global renewable energy
IEEFA notes another detail which is not lost on Western PV makers – that China’s growing investment in wind and solar manufacturing is sharply driving down costs. “The extent of China’s domestic investment in renewables has surpassed all expectations, with the resulting technology development and economies of scale driving down costs to the point where renewables are exceeding grid parity in an increasing number of market segments” declares the report’s introduction.
The organization, which is based in the “rust belt” city of Cleveland, Ohio, also slips in a note of warning for the United States, alluding to danger of potential neglect of this growth sector by President-Elect Donald Trump and the Republican Congress. “A change in leadership in the U.S. is likely to widen China’s global leadership in industries of the future, building China’s dominance in these sectors in terms of technology, investment, manufacturing and employment,” warns IEEFA.
If HB is only on vacation or something, it’s ok, he will be back soon, and needle me, and keep me energized,and consequently I will post more links like this one.
If he has decided he’s been whipping a dead horse, maybe somebody else will come forward to play devil’s advocate. I WAS enjoying the game. 😉
Anybody who really wants to know in DEPTH, to understand with nuance, why Clinton lost the election, will do WELL to read this link carefully.
You can’t really EXPECT to do better your next term at bat, unless you understand WHY you struck out your last turn.
Average fuel economy of new light-duty vehicle sold in US dropped in December 2016; down for full year
“The value for December 2016 is up 4.8 mpg since October 2007 (the first month of their monitoring), but down 0.6 mpg from the peak of 25.5 mpg reached in August of 2014.”
I prefer to think this is a “darkest before the dawn” situation, as EVs and PHEVs sales are, on a year-to-year basis, exploding. The variety of vehicle types continues to expand. Luxury performance sedans (Tesla and BMW). Everyman hatchback PHEV’s (Chevy Volt). Super-green hybrid (Prius Prime). Small CUV EV (Chevy Bolt EV). The classic mini-van (Chrysler Pacifica PHEV). Motorcycles (Zero’s)
The days of calling EV’s “Obama cars” and “flammable” are done. R’s, D’s, and I’s all buy them. They are fun to drive. With many billions of road miles now, their safety record has been proven exemplary, with several rated 5 stars.
Prices have dropped, range has improved, long-distance charging infrastructure grows by the minute.
I call “Bottom” for the most-recent mpg sag. The oil price plunge is over. EV’s are now past a toe hold and getting a solid foothold in the auto market.
The next big auto buzz phrase will be “does that thing have a ludicrous mode?”
“””
I call “Bottom” for the most-recent mpg sag. The oil price plunge is over. EV’s are now past a toe hold and getting a solid foothold in the auto market. “”””
I think HVACman’s on the money.
Daily CO2
January 9, 2017: 406.20 ppm
January 9, 2016: 402.23 ppm
Disclaimer: The atmosphere is composed of about 78% Nitrogen and 21% Oxygen by volume. No other gas constitutes more than 1%. CO2 is, in fact, a trace gas representing approximately 0.04% of the volume of dry air in the atmosphere. Showing only that CO2 concentration has risen slightly within the last year without providing supporting context will lead many readers into making incorrect conclusions about the true significance of CO2 measurements.
Additionally reference Wikipedia Atmopshere of Earth entry: The three major constituents of air, and therefore of Earth’s atmosphere, are nitrogen, oxygen, and argon. Water vapor accounts for roughly 0.25% of the atmosphere by mass. The concentration of water vapor (a greenhouse gas) varies significantly from around 10 ppm by volume in the coldest portions of the atmosphere to as much as 5% by volume in hot, humid air masses, and concentrations of other atmospheric gases are typically quoted in terms of dry air (without water vapor). The remaining gases are often referred to as trace gases, among which are the greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.
Hi Louis,
Radiative Forcing due to increased greenhouse gases and the associated feedbacks is well understood. For some basic information on climate science try:
Figure 1 shown below, but with the file size limit here its much better to see it in the paper at the link above
(a) Seasonal mean global mean surface temperature (GMST, in \dgn C) anomalies, relative to the 20th-century mean, for the 1910-2015 period. (b) Seasonal mean PDO index, derived as the leading principal component of de-meaned monthly SST anomalies in the North Pacific Ocean, poleward of 20 \dgn N, and for the period 1910-2015. Decades shaded in light blue mark negative phases of the PDO and corresponding ‘hiatus’ periods. (c) The Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) index, calculated as the detrended low-pass filtered SST area-weighted average over the North Atlantic (0\dg to 70\dgn N) from the Kaplan SST data set for the 1910-2015 period. Decades shaded in light blue mark negative phases of the AMV. Black curves in (a), (b) and (c) represent decadal variations after applying a gaussian filter to each time series.
Wehappyfew,
We are all finally starting to agree. The influence of oceanic oscillations on global temperatures rate of change is determinant. Temperatures respond to an oceanic cycle and therefore are not showing the feared acceleration that most scientists inferred from late 20th century data.
I believe that in the figure posted the last change of period showed in 2015 is premature. It disagrees with previous periods length. It is more probable that the 2015-16 El Niño has just been a hiatus in the hiatus, and we are going back to the 21st century little to no warming situation.
If you think we agree, then you have not read the paper, maybe only skimmed it, glancing at the figures.
The main point is that decadal variations in surface warming are determined by ocean/wind oscillations, while GLOBAL warming continues, has not paused at all, and accelerates. The underlying long term trend is determined by the change in the energy imbalance caused by GHG forcings.
You, on the other hand, seem to be a 1st LoT denier, believing that the oscillations themselves “determine” the warming rate. That’s like thinking the wagging tail determines where the dog on the leash is going to go.
The main point is that decadal variations in surface warming are determined by ocean/wind oscillations
We agree on that.
while GLOBAL warming continues
We agree on that.
has not paused at all, and accelerates.
We disagree on that. Rate of warming is variable and doesn’t show a significant acceleration. How can you defend an acceleration at the same time you just posted a figure that shows a 15 year hiatus ending two years ago?
The underlying long term trend is determined by the change in the energy imbalance caused by GHG forcings.
This is an hypothesis based on assumptions. Evidence shows the long term trend starting around 1850, so it cannot be caused by GHG forcing. We already discussed this.
“How can you defend an acceleration at the same time you just posted a figure that shows a 15 year hiatus ending two years ago?”
I’ve been trying to teach you the difference between the SURFACE and the GLOBE. They are not the same thing. Warming at the SURFACE is a two-dimensional feature. It tells you little about the GLOBE which has THREE dimensions. It’s true we live on that two dimensional surface, so we care alot about it, and we have lots of measurements of it. But like the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlamp, we might miss seeing the important facts farther from our gaze.
Acceleration in GLOBAL warming for all parts of the climate system – Atmosphere, Land, Ice, Ocean… measured in units of Joules of heat absorbed by the GLOBE per second is shown in this table extract:
Table 1: Global Flux Imbalance During Selected Periods. From Nuccitelli et al. (2012).
Net Heat Content Increase (W/m2)
1970-2008 … … 0.31 ± 0.078
1980-2008 … … 0.37 ± 0.068
1990-2008 … … 0.46 ± 0.063
2000-2008 … …0.53 ± 0.11
2002-2008 … … 0.73 ± 0.16
There are many more papers that have shown this acceleration:
Industrial-era global ocean heat uptake doubles in recent decades
Peter J. Gleckler, et al
Tracking ocean heat uptake during the surface warming hiatus
Wei Liu, et al
Ocean heat uptake and the global surface temperature record
Whitmarsh, et al
The IPCC has extensive coverage of this (you didn’t read it, that’s becoming more and more clear)
… and a pretty picture to show the data freely available here…
We were sold that global warming was about surface warming. Now that there is no surface warming outside El Niño years we are sold that it is the oceans that matter.
Yet the oceans have warmed by a tiny amount. “For the upper 700m, the increase in heat content was 24 x 1022 J (±2.S.E.) since 1955. This is consistent with the comparison by Roemmich and Gilson (2009) of Argo data with the global temperature time-series of Levitus et al (2005), finding a warming of the 0 – 2000 m ocean by 0.06°C since the (pre-XBT) early 1960’s.” http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/global_change_analysis.html
According to Argo 0.06°C since the early 1960’s. And the oceans of the Earth are terribly cold. Their average temperature is just 3.9°C. And nobody can figure out how those 0.06°C could come out of the ocean without violating the laws of thermodynamics.
The ocean can therefore be considered a huge heat sink, so that total system warming alarmism is severely misplaced.
The surface warming rate measured over 9-year averages has oscillated between 0.0 and 0.4C decade for more than half a century – you posted the chart showing this.
The current 9-year surface warming rate is 0.4C. You only look at the previous low warming rate of 0.0C that occurred years ago ago.
The long-term rate averages out to be identical to the rate predicted by the heat imbalance caused by GHGs.
The heat imbalance is absorbed by the oceans, so studying that tells you far more about the true rate of warming today than waiting 9 or 15 or 30 years to wait for the oscillations to average out.
Obsessed about the pause from 2002 to 2012, but ignoring the identical pause from 1986 to 1995, or the previous pause before that. Why? Because the stair-step advance shows that any individual pause is certain to be followed by another step up.
The last pause has already been replaced by another steep advance, but you deny its existence, even though it exactly matches the oscillation pattern in the chart from the UKMet you posted in the previous open thread.
Rumors about the death of the pause have been greatly exaggerated. Let’s see what happens next.
If you study Earth’s paleoclimate on the centennial, millennial and multimillennial scales warming always occurs until it doesn’t, and then comes cooling. Being in one of the coldest ice ages of the past 500 million years underscores that the real danger is going back to the temperatures that are more prevalent for the Quaternary Ice Age in which we are.
Having studied similar warming periods in the past, I believe global warming will continue perhaps until around 2100 to be followed by an irregular moderate descent in temperatures towards a level more in agreement with this late in an interglacial.
We are in a hiatus period during which a strong El Niño has taken place, but the hiatus should last until about 2035. Then the next step that you talk about in global warming should take place for another ~30 years. Hopefully there won’t be any strong volcano to throw some cooling for a few years and spoil the party.
Hi Javier,
You are wrong that atmospheric CO2 will decrease quickly. It will not fall to 280 ppm for 100,000 years, it is basic geochemistry.
Re-read Archer 2005. The 1750-1910 period was unusual in the frequency of large volcanic eruptions. Most of the Holocene before 1750 CE averaged close to or slightly above the 1951-1980 Global land ocean mean temperature with atmospheric CO2 about 275-280 ppm (mean level) over the Holocene before 1750 CE.
Concern over Global cooling is misplaced for the next 100,000 years or more based on geophysics and geochemistry.
Hi Dennis,
Archer 2005 is an hypothesis based on assumptions.
We have a worse knowledge of CO2 half life than we have of ECS. And nobody has ever showed evidence that high CO2 levels can prevent a glaciation. In fact we do have evidence of past glaciations with much higher CO2 levels.
Regarding volcanic eruptions, we do know that they only affect climate for a few years. The Holocene Climate Optimum was the period with highest volcanic activity in tens of thousands of years, and was at the same time the warmest. That is the importance of volcanic eruptions in climate.
Confidence that Global cooling is not going to take place in the future is not supported at all by evidence. Quite the contrary, Global cooling is almost guaranteed to take place in a few centuries to a few millennia.
GHG forcing started rising in 1750, not 1850.
The effect is logarithmic, so the small changes from lower levels have a stronger warming effect.
GHG forcing started rising in 1750, not 1850.
The effect is logarithmic, so the small changes from lower levels have a stronger warming effect.
By now you should know the value of anthropogenic forcing including both GHGs and aerosols, as believed by IPCC.
Prior to 1975 it is believed by your alarmist mates that aerosols essentially compensated for most of GHGs forcing, so anthropogenic forcing was essentially non existent.
There is no strong effect that you can claim prior to 1975 if you adhere to dogma.
What a load of bollocks!
You must have a limited folder of denier charts ready to go. Maybe that’s why you couldn’t find one that shows temperature and forcing back to 1750!
You are seriously arguing – from that chart that only goes back to 1880 – that human forcing were ZERO before 1880???
That is incompetence of a very special sort. There is literally zero data in your chart to make a claim about 1750 to 1880, because the chart does not contain any data from that time period!!!
Is that clear enough?
Let’s look at a longer term chart to see what actually happened from 1750 to 1880…
What a load of bollocks!
I know, and I agree. But as the figure shows and as the following site shows, that is what James Hansen says in several of his publications between 2005-2011: http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Forcings/
James Hansen is supposed to be knowledgeable about these things.
You must have a limited folder of denier charts ready to go.
That’s a very good one. I am rolling over the floor. James Hansen the denier. We should tell him. He’s got to love that.
Sigh….
It is SO TEDIOUS to have to explain your own graph to you time after time.
Hansen graph shows NET anthro forcing increasing from 1880 to the present. The blue line is not as far below zero as the red line is above it for every year shown. It says nothing about forcing before 1880
MY GRAPH shows forcing increasing from 1880 to present – just like Hansen’s – but ALSO shows forcings increasing from 1750 to 1880.
The “bollocks” was referring to your inability to comprehend the data you presented in graphical form. And your drawing conclusions about what happened before 1880 without any data.
Yeah, right.
You thought it was a denier chart and it is from one of the biggest alarmists. LOL
Hi We happy few,
We don’t have very good sea surface data prior to 1850, so using BEST Land Ocean data is the best we can do.
Javier,
Hansen is not a denier but there is some stuff he has done that many main stream climate scientists do not agree with (especially after about 2008).
So the “dogma” is not that aerosols masked all the forcing from greenhouse gases from 1940 to 1970.
The influence from aerosols is probably somewhat smaller than Hansen has sometimes asserted.
Hi Javier,
Using only atmospheric carbon dioxide explains the overall trend very well. Perhaps the other greenhouse gases were roughly offset by aerosols or changes in cloud cover. The C model (natural log of atmospheric CO2) vs BEST land ocean temperature has an R squared of 70 % for a regression on 1866 to 2000. The 2001-2015 data is out of sample, notice how the “model” underestimates temperatures after 2000.
“Using only atmospheric carbon dioxide explains the overall trend very well.”
Perhaps to you, not to me. There was strong cooling 1890-1920, followed by strong warming 1920-1940, followed by important cooling 1950-1975, then again strong warming 1975-2002, then little to no warming 2003-2014.
None of that is reproduced by atmospheric carbon dioxide. Perhaps that is the reason adjustments to the temperature databases have approximated the temperature curve to the CO2 trend.
Hi Javier,
For something as complex as climate, a single variable explaining 70% of the variation over 130 years is pretty good.
Find me another single variable that can explain the temperature trend as well.
I doubt you can.
Yes correlation is not causation, but we have a physical model that this data confirms.
Hi Javier,
Also I use the BEST data which Judith Curry was a coauthor of at least one paper.
The Berkeley Earth Group’s data is very transparent.
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study has created a preliminary merged data set by combining 1.6 billion temperature reports from 16 preexisting data archives. Whenever possible, we have used raw data rather than previously homogenized or edited data. After eliminating duplicate records, the current archive contains over 39,000 unique stations. This is roughly five times the 7,280 stations found in the Global Historical Climatology Network Monthly data set (GHCN-M) that has served as the focus of many climate studies. The GHCN-M is limited by strict requirements for record length, completeness, and the need for nearly complete reference intervals used to define baselines. We have developed new algorithms that reduce the need to impose these requirements (see methodology), and as such we have intentionally created a more expansive data set.
That is a SUBSET of all the adjustments made to the global surface temperature data. If you used ALL the data, instead of cherrypicking, the correlation would go the other way.
The RAW DATA at the beginning of the global series is far lower than the adjusted data, making the warming trend appear to be larger than it actually is.
But scientists ADJUST the data, based on the known properties of old thermometers, weather stations, sampling procedures and times, etc… to make it more accurate.
Would you rather use the LESS accurate data that shows a faster trend in the warming rate?
Hi Dennis,
I believe CO2 has contributed to the warming of the planet as much as you believe natural factors have contributed. We just have reversed the importance of their respective contributions.
Our faith on the power of GHGs to warm the planet is based exclusively on the coincidence of a major warming period, 1975-2002, with a major increase in CO2. Scientists had to explain two things. Why it warmed so much between 1920-45 without a major increase in CO2, and why it cooled so much between 1950-1975 with a major increase in CO2. This was accomplished two ways. The first by choosing a cooling forcing for aerosols that matched a good part of the cooling, and then by changing the records to reduced both the 1920-45 warming and 1950-75 cooling to get a more straight trend that matched better the rise in CO2.
Nature is refusing to cooperate with fitting the evidence to the hypothesis. The 2003-2014 hiatus in the face of the biggest increase in GHGs is a sore issue. The response again has been to change the records to increase warming during the hiatus period in sea surface records that are low confidence. They also have to change satellite records (RSS) or discredit them (UAH).
Problem is Nature seems bent on not collaborating. The El Niño has been a moral push. The hiatus has been declared dead. But oceanic oscillations are unfavorable and solar activity has entered a centennial minimum. A lot of heat has been lost in the El Niño and through Arctic unusual warming and this means lower temperatures going forward for quite a few years. The hiatus is likely to resurrect in about 3-4 years.
It is clear that most people have not bought the catastrophic narrative, as climate change is never an important issue in elections anywhere. Just check the amount of time dedicated to it in the three US presidential debates, and I can assure you the issue wasn’t even mentioned in the two elections that Spain had in the past year.
Science is almost fully invested in the CO2 hypothesis, conservation NGOs have come to depend on climate change for a lavish funding, and bureaucrats have built an important structure that depends on climate change being an issue. The CO2 hypothesis is not going to suffer a quick dead. As Charles Mackay said: “Every age has its peculiar folly: Some scheme, project, or fantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the force of imitation.”
And “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
The catastrophic CO2 hypothesis is going to continue making direr and direr predictions despite mounting evidence against, until one day in the future you will also come to think that alarmism regarding climate change has been grossly exaggerated.
Hi Javier,
I do not have and “alarmist” viewpoint.
You repeatedly claim that forcing from CO2 or aerosols are “chosen” to be at some level.
My analyses are based on physical models and data. The “level” of forcing from carbon dioxide, aerosols, total solar irradiance (TSI), AMO, or ENSO are based on observations and statistical analysis.
Now we could cherry pick certain data to get the results you like, but most would not call that science, I certainly wouldn’t.
Hi Dennis,
Your climate analysis is done with very imperfect knowledge about climate mechanisms.
It is the same as doing oil analysis with completely unreliable reserves data. Whatever conclusions you reach are guaranteed to not happen.
HI Javier,
If we add AMO and SOI to natural log of carbon dioxide we get a slightly better model, regression on 1886-2010, R squared is 91 %.
The only other thing I have ever read that impresses me so much in terms of heavy industry HAPPENING is an account of Ford’s River Rouge plant. I have a book about it, someplace.
“Iron ore in one end, CARS out the other” seems to be the phrase most often used to describe it.
That article contains the answer to those who complain about the recyclability of cells. That is one MoFo of a plant
When climatology is outlawed, only outlaws will have thermometers
They can pry my sling psychrometer from my cold dead fingers.
Carbon dioxide – it’s not just for soda anymore.
They can pry my sling psychrometer from my cold dead fingers.
I think you really mean your warm dead fingers… 😉
Earth on the edge: Record breaking 2016 was close to 1.5°C warming
05 January 2017
2016 confirmed as the warmest year on record, warmer than 2015 by close to 0.2°C
Global temperatures reached a peak in February 2016 around 1.5°C higher than at the start of the Industrial Revolution
Extreme conditions impacting several regions across the Earth
The first global analysis of the whole of 2016 has confirmed last year as the warmest on record and saw the planet near a 1.5°C warming, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
This is interesting. Copernicus is part of the ECMWF, The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, a consortium of 34 countries dedicated to weather forecast and meteorological analysis.
Their system is called ERA-Interim, a reanalysis system that integrates millions of real time data from a series of different atmospheric and surface parameters to produce forecasts up to 10 days ahead twice a day. It is considered by experts to be the best forecast system in the world.
ERA-Interim is one of several databases that showed global cooling during most of the 21st century. In this case between 2005 and 2014. RSS and UAH also showed cooling during that period. On a regional basis CET, Central England database the oldest running in the world that agrees quite well with Northern Hemisphere land databases, also showed cooling.
Reanalysis is still quite new, but it has a good advantage: This is a system on which people’s lives depend, and produced and financed by 34 countries with diverse governments and interests. Nobody is going to purposely introduce biases in it.
Obviously the prior cooling has ended with the 2015-2016 El Niño, but already the big drop in temperatures globally suggests that we might go back to the 21st century average rather fast.
ROFL. Must have gotten his training at Trump University.
…but already the big drop in temperatures globally suggests that we might go back to the 21st century average rather fast.
You mean the average over the last 16 years? Because that’s how many years of the 21st century have elapsed so far. Looks like there hasn’t been any drop at all in global average temperatures.
All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880. Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with 15 of the 16 warmest years on record occurring since 2001. The year 2015 was the first time the global average temperatures were 1 degree Celsius or more above the 1880-1899 average. Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase
Yes the Earth has been warming for at least 170 years, we all agree on that. As a consequence we are in a warm period. But the rate of surface warming depends on multidecadal oceanic oscillations as Wehappyfew can tell you, and for the last 15 years, except for the strong El Niño years of 2015-16, there has been little to no warming.
Solar variability does not correlate with temperatures on a yearly to decadal basis.
We are very lucky that global warming has taken place. Conditions during the Little Ice Age were appalling and climate related famines reduced the population of some Northern countries by double digit percentages in certain years.
The surface temperature oscillates around the underlying warming rate, which is controlled by GHGs. See chart below.
Temperatures in the instrumental era have never departed far from the forcing predicted by CO2 levels. The deepest negative divergences are from volcanoes. The small negative divergences are mostly Las Ninas. The positive divergences are all from Los Ninos. The very large positive divergences around 1940 are from back-to-back-to-back Los Ninos aligned with (or caused by) the positive IPO phase.
Javier predicts this relationship will suddenly change, RIIIIIGGHT about NOW! … and temps will go sideways.
I predict the temperature will not diverge below the red line by more than 0.15C without a major volcano. It will not fall below the red line by more than 0.05 without a La Nina.
I predict the temperature will rise above the red line by about 0.05 to 0.12 for El Nino years, and about 0.15 or a bit more for a super El Nino like 1997-1998.
ENSO neutral years without volcanoes will be within 0.05C of the red line about 90% of the time.
Where does that graph come from?
Why is CO2 lagged 10 years? Why do the values go only to 380 ppm when we are at >400 ppm?
Do you have any peer reviewed science to support that graph?
I made the graph myself from NOAA global land/sea temperatures, Mauna Loa CO2, and Law Dome ice core data for CO2 before 1955.
The lag is due to the well-known thermal inertia of the climate system due to the ocean heat sink. Many have studied this and found the lag could be from a few years to several decades.
Ricke and Caldeira might be the most recent study published. If you start there and work back through their references and citations, you will see how this works.
Also Royce and Lam get into the math of this.
Again, are you seriously trying to claim you did not know about this idea? This is an integral part of the IPCC reports. It goes back many decades. Have you even READ the IPCC reports???
The latest value is 380 ppm because that is what the lag does. The temperature today is correlated with the CO2 level from 10 years ago.
The choice of 10 years for my graph was made by making a logarithmic best fit for all the possible lag choices from zero to 20 years. All the fits got much worse after about 14 years or less than 6 years. Ten years was the best but not by a lot compared to the others in the range from 8-12 years.
The bonus from this lagged fit is that we can make a relatively informed estimate of temperatures ten years out, knowing today’s CO2 level. Today’s CO2 concentration of 404 ppm will result in a temperature of 1.03C ± 0.05 for 2026 (compared to 0.92C for 2015).
NOAA hasn’t published their 2016 value yet, but it will be close to 0.92 or 0.93C.
I see. You have built your own little crystal ball. And you want us to believe it has predictive powers. We just have to trust you. No need for expensive complicated climate models. Your little system tells us ±0.25°C what the temperature will be in 10 years. Not ±0.05 but ±0.25 as that is what it shows at 310 ppm. And since CO2 has been growing at about 1.5 ppm/year, how can you get so many points between 308-312 ppm? Where temperatures increasing or decreasing, but not CO2?
It doesn’t matter. Correlation is not causation, and there are periods when there is no increase in temperatures, called hiatus, yet CO2 keeps increasing. So your little exercise means little indeed. I rather stick with real science.
“CO2 has been growing at about 1.5 ppm/year”
Have you never looked at the CO2 data?
From the Law Dome data, from 1936 to 1950, Co2 increased LESS THAN ONE PPM. So yes, temperatures fluctuated naturally as they tend to do – weather, you know – but CO2 did not increase. The net change in temperature over that time span of 1936 to 1950 was essentially ZERO.
Of course, the Law Dome data is inherently smoothed due to the long closing time of the air bubbles in the ice, so the actual trajectory of CO2 was doubtlessly more complex, but there is little doubt that the Great Depression and WW2 had a suppressing effect on CO2 output.
I agree that nearly 100% of the variation around the red line will be within ±0.25C, but no one expresses confidence intervals that way. We scientific folks use the 1 or 2 sigma variation from the mean. So that’s what I did – 90% within 0.05C.
Another way to put this is… the chances of a Pinatubo, or 3 Los Ninos in a row are not high, so almost all (90% as I said before) of the temps will be within 0.05C just as they have in the past.
Functionally, this is identical to Dennis’s regressions of CO2 to temperature, just adding a lag, and displaying it as a scatter diagram of CO2 vs Temp, instead of Time vs Temp. I can draw it the other way too… see below, with projections of future CO2 levels and resulting temps out to 2050.
And of course, correlation does not prove causation, etc, etc. But when the correlation is this good, and has continued for almost a century and a half, hoping and depending on it to suddenly change right now because we wish to continue burning our precious hydrocarbons (like burning the Mona Lisa to heat the Louvre)… not good risk management.
Your logarithmic lagged CO2 graph looks wrong.
You shouldn’t have that many points around 310±3 ppm. That’s only 6 ppm and CO2 has been increasing all the time. As the graph is lagged those dots correspond to a higher CO2 concentration. Not credible so many points for such little change in CO2.
Reading fail, Javier.
Can you please increase the font size on your browser?
As I already state above, Law Dome CO2 data increased less than 1 ppm over the time span 1936 to 1950. There was a pause in the CO2 increase!
Sorry for the all-caps, but Javier can’t see words anymore, only pictures.
Can someone send an email to Javier asking him to increase the font size on his monitor? I don’t think he can see this message.
Then the problem is with the temperatures. According to your second graph between 1910 and 1956 you have a +0.75°C followed by a -0.5°C, all of that with almost no change in CO2 as you have so well showed.
How are those changes in temperatures explained in the absence of significant changes in GHGs?
Hi Javier,
The explanation consists of two words. Natural variability.
The natural variability is mostly due to AMO, ENSO, Aerosols, and TSI.
Hi Dennis,
“The natural variability is mostly due to AMO, ENSO, Aerosols, and TSI.”
That you know. Then we have all the other things that you don’t know, like the effect of clouds, winds, ozone… variability.
You can’t quantify the natural component, and therefore you can’t quantify the anthropogenic component.
A 1% change in global average cloud coverage would have a bigger effect that the change in GHGs. And we don’t know how cloud coverage has changed.
A decrease in wind speed would have the effect of reduce cooling from ocean vertical mixing, and we do know that a reduction in wind speed has taken place.
Too many uncertainties for your confidence on the explanatory power of CO2.
“The very large positive divergences around 1940 are from back-to-back-to-back Los Ninos aligned with (or caused by) the positive IPO phase.”
Hopefully somebody will throw a little light on this particular time period for me, add in some some explanatory details.
Thanks !
Sure,
NOAA measures a very sharp spike in ocean temps that lasted from ~1940 to 1945ish… see chart below.
This occurred because of 3 strong Los Ninos that occurred in a row – late 1939/early 40, 40/41, and 41/42.
This is a bit unusual, but it can happen when the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) is in a strong positive phase. PDO+ phase tends to encourage the formation of El Nino and suppressed the chances of La Nina. PDO- does the opposite. In 1907-1976 we had 3 strong Las Ninas, with one El Nino sandwiched in there… negative PDO, surface temps fell.
So the blue dots that are way above the red line by about 0.25C around 310 ppm in my chart above – those are from 1940-1945.
There is some debate about how accurate those ocean temps are during that little ruckus we had back then with the Japs and Krauts. Some of the guys taking temperature measurements might have been distracted by the torpedoes and such. The other long-term temperature indices don’t show quite as much of a bump for those years, they made different choices about how to weight and average the rather sparse data coverage of the wartime period.
In the long run, it doesn’t matter too much, as all deviation like this are temporary, and soon return to the long term trend determined by the forcings (which is mostly CO2 for the last 150 years).
I love those arrows Javier throws in to try get his point across. The guy should do stand up comedy.
If the arrow continues at the other side of El Niño warming we are all going to have a good laugh.
He uses highly sophisticated regression analysis techniques to pinpoint his trends.
.
They are not needed. The lack of warming between 2005 and 2014 in ERA interim is clear to everybody. Time will tell if it continues after El Niño.
Less random than Javier’s comments and at least it’s original and not denier talking points.
I am unconvinced, but it does contain a 4 year prediction on ENSO, so we will see how that goes.
That ENSO prediction is compatible with 4 years of below 21st century average temperatures, so I like that. Survivalist will not be happy, as he believes global warming increases the frequency of El Niño.
Hi Javier,
Maybe you just don’t understand the math and physics. Very interesting stuff Webhubbletelescope,
hopefully this will lead to a paper. Thanks.
yea, I don’t really care about the prediction aspect at the moment. I do care about getting the geophysics right, which is the most fascinating aspect of climate variability.
If ENSO is actually the result of sloshing of the oceans caused by the slight variations in the earth’s rotation rate, then that would become a fundamental part of our understanding. Yet, that will still take a lot more convincing of others working on this topic.
But if we get a big La Nina in 2019 (am I reading your prediction line correctly?), we’ll know where to send the Nobel Prize for Climatology… 😉
Las Niñas are more frequent during hiatus periods like the one we are experiencing. Chances are we will see a La Niña in the next 3 years.
Ah-ha Javier,
“That ENSO prediction is compatible with 4 years of below 21st century average temperatures, so I like that.”
So, are you a scientist with no agenda, just following wherever the evidence leads? Or maybe, as many humans are (maybe even all, including myself?) just another ape with a job, looking for “evidence” that supports your view?
Guess I should just get back to work on my own rat-killing.
Stan
As I have stated AMO has stopped growing, North Atlantic ocean is cooling, we are entering a centennial low in solar activity, and Arctic sea ice has stopped melting.
The hypothesis is that the hiatus will continue for 10-20 more years.
The evidence will decide but seeing that other people’s predictions are congruent is always satisfactory. If the evidence contradicts the hypothesis, then the hypothesis must be scratched. That is something that alarmists don’t understand. They believe their hypothesis is true regardless of what the climate does.
Hi Javier,
If we look at the 21 year centered moving average of the North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature (or not detrended AMO), there is no evidence that the North Atlantic has started a cooling phase. Though if the trend of the past 165 years is followed, this might begin soon and a hiatus (or at least a slow down in the rate of warming would be expected).
Does that mean that carbon dioxide is not important? No.
It simply means that the AMO might be a big part of the natural variability along with ENSO, volcanic eruptions, and changes in TSI. This is how the other 30% of climate change not explained by changes in atmospheric CO2 levels can be explained.
Using AMO, ENSO, Aerosols and TSI, about 22% of 30% of the variation in temperature not explained by changes in atmospheric CO2 is accounted for leaving about 8% of this variation unexplained by an exceedingly simple multivariate linear model.
Dennis,
Concluding from your little fitting exercise that CO2 is 70%, and natural is 30% is meaningless.
“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
John von Neumann.
The fact that temperatures can go down for decades while CO2 increases, and the fact that the first half of 20th century warming is not statistically different to the last half indicate that CO2 is not the primary driver of temperature changes (i.e. <50%).
Hi Javier,
Lots of times temperature has decreased over 9 year periods. For climate we look at 31 year periods or longer. What does the trend look like for the past 31 years?
Using Berkeley Earth Monthly Global land ocean data for the past 31 years from:
We get the chart below with a trend of 1.93 C per century.
Dennis,
Besides a warming trend, temperatures on the Earth have displayed a 60-90 years oscillation. We call the non warming parts of this oscillation “hiatus.” So far they are broadly:
1890-1920
1945-1975
2003-?
The existence of this oscillation, is very well described in the scientific literature, but not so well incorporated in the IPCC dogma. You ignore it at your peril (of being mistaken).
So when the time is right, the oceanic oscillation does show up, the Arctic sea ice stops decreasing, and the temperatures show a reduced rate of warming, you can:
a) Ignore the evidence and support the reworking of temperature databases to eliminate the hiatus from the records, and retrench into the need of 30 years of data, while showing data for the 30 years of oscillation warming extrapolated into the future.
b) Accept that a change in the oscillation is taking place as expected and that one of its conclusions is that the rate of warming has been overestimated due to considering only the upswing phase of the oscillation, as an increased rate.
Your choice depends on whether you want to defend your beliefs or you want to be right.
Hi Javier,
I agree the ocean cycles affect the rate of warming.
As it is a cycle we would not expect there to be a trend. We can also use a 65 year trend.
Dennis,
1.24°C/century is likely to be closer to the general trend. It would mean 1.03°C more by 2100. We can live with that.
One of the problems with your models is that they assume that our knowledge of forcings is correct, when it is very uncertain.
We don’t know the forcing of CO2 as it depends on ECS which is under debate for over 35 years now. And we have never examined a grand solar minimum with modern instruments. The solar forcing is calculated exclusively from changes in TSI, when paleo data indicates a more profound effect. The correlation between cold periods of the past and below average solar activity is very strong, better than with CO2, yet we don’t have an explanation for that, so it is not properly accounted for.
Hypothesis are being investigated that suggest that below average solar activity for prolonged periods could induce atmospheric rearrangements through changes in stratospheric ozone that transmit top down to the troposphere.
If we have the forcings wrong, and CO2 forcing is lower than assumed, and solar forcing is higher than assumed then the natural contribution is larger than assumed.
Hi Javier,
The “models” assume nothing about the forcing, it is a simple multiple linear regression on the data from 1881-2010 (I chose 130 years in case the 65 year cycle proposed by some is correct).
The value of TCR is the coefficient of the natural log of atmospheric CO2 from the multiple linear regression multiplied by the natural log of 2 (for a doubling of CO2).
I simply put the data in a spreadsheet and perform a linear regression and report the results, the only choice is which variables to include, I do not “choose” the coefficients.
As to what we can live with, ecologists seem to have a different take on this than you. It is not clear that a molecular biologist would see the big picture correctly,
but it may not be a catastrophe if warming is limited to 1.5 C above the 1971-2000 global mean temperature (which is roughly the same as the Holocene average before 1750 CE).
You are correct that we do not know the ECS, if it is 2.5 C we may be ok, if it is 3.5 C we may not be. The uncertainty is reason to be cautious in my view. Moving to non-fossil fuel energy as quickly as possible seems a wise choice given this uncertainty.
Dennis,
The assumptions are already implicit in the data that you use for your linear regressions.
Hi Javier,
Really? Do you stand by such nonsense?
So now you distrust the observational data because it does not support your hypothesis?
Indeed this is an interesting approach to “science”.
There are no assumptions in observational data except that the laws of physics apply.
Do you deny that the laws of physics are correct? Most people take them as a pretty fair approximation of reality, but perhaps in microbiology things are different.
Dennis,
I do not distrust observational data. However you assume that solar effect is through TSI, while it could be through UV warming of stratospheric ozone. And you assume that clouds have a neutral effect on climate so you don’t include them (you couldn’t). And you assume no role for changes in wind speed.
This means your model means nothing.
“And you assume no role for changes in wind speed.”
Highly credentialed deniers such as Richard Lindzen claim to understand wind speeds in the stratosphere. Yet, they can’t formulate the most fundamental model to explain what is observed:
As Dennis said, we like to look at the physics first.
Hi Javier,
If we do a multiple linear regression with Global Land Ocean Temperature (BEST data) as the dependent variable and the natural log of atmospheric Carbon, ENSO, Aerosols, and AMO as independent variables we have a basic model I call the CSAM Model (inspired by Webhubbletelescope’s CSALT Model).
The regression on data from 1881 to 2010 has an R squared of 92% and a correlation coefficient of 96%. The model vs data from 1886 to 2015 (130 years) is presented in the chart below. The model underestimates the temperature trend slightly. The TCR for a doubling of CO2 is 2.22 C with a 95% confidence interval of 2.09 C to 2.35 C. All 4 independent variables are significant at the 95% level (t stats are 34 for C, 10 for AMO, 5 for ENSO, and 4 for Aerosols, 2 indicates significance at 95% level).
Hi Javier,
As an alternative to a model which includes carbon, we can try the hypothesis that atmospheric carbon has no effect on Global temperature and that all warming is due to natural cycles.
I note that you have never proposed that atmospheric carbon dioxide has no effect on warming, you argue that it’s effect is not very important, so this model takes that argument to it’s extreme.
I call it the SAM model and it is identical to the CSAM model above with the natural log of atmospheric carbon dioxide dropped from the model (AMO, ENSO, and Aerosols are the only independent variables). The R squared of the model is 24% and the correlation coefficient is 51%. The temperature trend from 1886 to 2015 for the model is 0.09 C per century vs 0.78 C per century for the land ocean temperature data. Of the two hypotheses, the one that includes the natural log of atmospheric carbon dioxide seems to match the empirical data from Berkeley Earth somewhat better.
The comment that I responded to above applies to every regression I have done. There are no assumptions beyond the choice of variables, this is nearly pure empiricism (the choice of independent variables is informed by physics and chemistry).
The assumptions are implicit in the data. If you use TSI values in W/sq m you assume that is the only way solar variability affects climate.
UV changes are bigger than TSI, and affect O3 in the stratosphere warming it considerably. Your model knows nothing of that.
Hi Javier,
That is a hypothesis that would need to be confirmed by data. Not much data supports that contention.
It is possible that the 8% of variation not explained by my oversimplified model could be explained by many other possible natural variables. One would need some data to back it up, hypotheses alone don’t really cut it.
Dennis,
check your gmail
Dennis,
“That is a hypothesis that would need to be confirmed by data. Not much data supports that contention.”
I agree that it is an hypothesis that needs more data support, but the bibliography on it is starting to be significant.
The main problem is that we have not had the opportunity to study a multi-decadal solar minimum during modern times. This is probably changing as we are entering one.
I like it.
Eyeballing the remaining residuals, it looks like they correspond to solar TSI variations. A weak solar cycle in 1901 to 1912 lines up the negative divergence from the model. The record strong cycles in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s line up with the positive divergence for those decades.
I also think it’s possible that both the solar and CO2 forcings might fit better with a lag, as I have done with CO2 above.
Have you tried that, or would you be willing to give it a shot?
Hi We happy few,
I don’t think the lags are necessary and one needs some physical justification for the length of the lags otherwise it is simply a data fitting exercise.
If you are interested I can post a link to the spreadsheet and you can introduce whatever lags you want. I could include a solar cycle.
I added total solar irradiance (T) and regression has R-squared of 93 % and CC of 97%, I will call that model CSMAT. TCR is 2.09 C for CO2 doubling with 95% confidence interval of 1.95 C to 2.24 C. Regression on 1881-2010 data chart below is 1886-2016, again the model slightly underestimates temperature trend from 1886 to 2015.
Chart below, not all that different from CSAM, but all 5 independent variables have t stats above 3.45 (TSI is lowest absolute value) in absolute value.
Looks good.
The physical justification for a lag is the thermal inertia of the ocean.
Fast oscillations like ENSO and volcanic aerosols have little long-term impact, but the long-term secular shifts in solar (not the 11 year cycle), and CO2 have enough time for the forcing variations to sink into the deeper ocean.
The 11 year solar cycle is just about the right length for the ocean’s thermal inertia to dampen most of its signal.
…..
I would appreciate a look at your spreadsheet, thanks.
The fit is pretty good without any lags so as we don’t know what the “correct” lag should be, it seems artificially adding it for a better fit seems unwise. Feel free to try it.
Get back to us in 2031 when we have 31 years of 21st century data, until then use 31 year periods or longer to tell us about no warming, anything shorter is weather not climate.
Dennis,
Just because you say so. There are literally hundreds of papers on the hiatus that is shorter than 31 years. So the field is ignoring your opinion on what constitutes climate.
To be fair I always have 100% confidence in any text that has been leaked to the general public, especially when it contains paragraphs highlighted with yellow marker and the document has been labeled as: CONFIDENTIAL/SENSITIVE SOURCE
I trust Trump and Putin about as far as I can throw them, but seriously?!
But yes, it is all pretty weird stuff…
I’m pretty sure that if FSB had hidden video footage of Trump getting freaky with Russian prostitutes that it wouldn’t be very well known or easy to find out about.
If Russian representatives stated to Trump’s representatives that they have compromising photos and videos of him it doesn’t mean necessarily that it was material obtained while he was in Russia. It could just as well be a New York hotel or the back of a limo on the express way.
I think trump is the type that could be easily compromised by two girls winking at him. I’m sure FSB has been all over this guy from day one. If they weren’t it wouldn’t look good on their annual performance review.
I watched Trump on the tee-vee tube a little while ago, and he firmly denied the allegations, even saying that he was a germ-a-phobe. I thought maybe some smart-ass reporter should have asked him how that squared with “grabbing them by the pussy”! I mean germs are germs, and a man’s gotta be careful, right?
Oh well.
I don’t know why they call it hand sanitizer. It works great on the whole body!
AES Distributed Energy, Inc. (AES DE, Boulder, CO, U.S.) and Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) on January 10th, 2017 announced a power purchase agreement (PPA) for an innovative plant that will provide solar power together with the benefits of battery-based energy storage for optimal balancing of generation with peak demand.
The project consists of a 28 MW solar photovoltaic (PV) system and a 20 MW five-hour duration energy storage system (ESS).
The system will be located on former sugar land between Lāwaʻi and Kōloa on Kauaʻi’s south shore. It will be the largest solar-plus-utility-scale-battery system in the state of Hawaiʻi and one of the biggest storage systems in the world.
“Energy from the project will be priced at 11 cents per kWh and will provide 11 percent of Kauaʻi’s electric generation, increasing KIUC’s renewable sourced generation to well over 50 percent,” said KIUC’s President and Chief Executive Officer, David Bissell.
How about something to get everyone’s mind off of climate change. Drinking is encouraged.
COMMAND AND CONTROL is a minute-by-minute account of this long-hidden story. Putting a camera where there was no camera that night, Kenner brings this nonfiction thriller to life with stunning original footage shot in a decommissioned Titan II missile silo.
Guess who is soon to have the launch codes to those thousands of nuclear weapons?!
Someone with a very thin skin, a hot temper and a very short fuse… What could possibly go wrong over the next four years?
Hopefully Cheeto Boy will be too busy with Tweets, and the Flat Earth Cabinet not competent enough to know how.
That’s what I am hoping, too. He seems to be more concerned with how Hollywood and entertainers view him than world affairs. Of course, if he thought the masses in the US would be impressed if he dropped a few bombs, he might do it.
Back when we built our big masonry barn, I held out for putting the bottom floor underground, which we did. This was back in the sixties. One reason was that I believed we right really need it as a fallout shelter someday, but there were other good reasons as well, for instance it’s always cool but never freezes , even in ten days straight with zero F lows, which is about as bad as it ever gets here, and then only once in a LONG while.
I haven’t given any real thought to doing the necessary additional work to make it into a good shelter since the Berlin Wall came down.
UNTIL NOW.
The very thought is depressing as hell, but being a pack rat and a firm believer in monetary inflation in the cost of building materials out running the interest rates banks pay on savings, I have nearly all the materials needed on hand, and the necessary know how, and I guess I need to keep on thinking about it.
Unwelcome jobs and unwelcome news are best dealt with in a timely manner, because the longer you put off dealing with them, the greater the wear and tear on the nerves.
On the other hand I don’t expect to live a WHOLE lot longer, and emerging from a fall out shelter incapable of dealing with a post nuke war world due to old age is not a pleasant thought either.
King County Metro will buy more than 100 battery-powered electric buses, following what officials called a successful test in Bellevue last year.
The Hague (AFP) – All Dutch trains are now 100 percent powered by electricity generated by wind energy, the national railway company NS said Tuesday, calling it a world first.
“Since the first of January, 100 percent of our trains are running on wind energy,” NS spokesman Ton Boon told AFP.
Dutch electricity company Eneco won a tender launched by NS two years ago and the two firms signed a 10-year deal setting January 2018 as the date by which all NS trains should run on wind energy.
“So we in fact reached our goal a year earlier than planned,” said Boon, adding that an increase in the number of wind farms across the country and off the coast of The Netherlands had helped NS achieve its aim.
Eneco and NS said on a joint website that some 600,000 passengers daily are “the first in the world” to travel thanks to wind energy. NS operates about 5,500 train trips a day.
One windmill running for an hour can power one train across some 200 kilometres (120 miles), the companies said. They now hope to reduce the energy used per passenger by 35 percent by 2020 compared with 2005.
Law Firm Establishes Clean Energy Legal Team
January 09, 2017
Richmond, Va.-headquartered law firm Hunton & Williams LLP has formed a global, cross-disciplinary legal team to advise corporations and investors on issues related specifically to sustainability and efforts to increase the use of renewable energy.
As part of the firm’s renewable energy practice group, the sustainability and corporate clean power team will counsel corporations and investors on matters related to clean power procurement; green bonds and similar clean power financing and investment transactions; the development of sustainable facilities, including data centers; tax equity investments; joint ventures with renewable energy companies; securities law compliance; renewable energy certificate trading; project permitting and real estate; and environmental law compliance.
“Retailers, manufacturers and technology companies are either entering the renewable energy arena for the first time or are significantly bolstering their current positions,” says partner Eric R. Pogue, who heads the firm’s efforts in this space. “This multidisciplinary initiative will focus on the unique legal issues that companies face in meeting their sustainability and clean power procurement goals.”
A traditional baseball umpire calls them the way they are.
A modern umpire calls them as he sees them.
A POST MODERN umpire says they don’t exist until he calls them.
It’s hard to know how Trump’s economic policies will affect US and global economics. I’m expecting another recession because global growth is slowing and the US is due for one.
While recessions are hard, they also curb consumption, which should slow the use of fossil fuels.
This article lays out one possible scenario.
How Donald Trump could create a financial crisis – The Washington Post: “What, then, might be the economic consequences of the president-elect’s tax cuts, tariffs and deregulation? Well, as we’ll get to in a minute, they sure seem like they would raise the odds of a financial crisis happening overseas, and maybe here too. It’s a story about the dollar and housing.”
The Post guy probably has the better crystal ball, but the Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday predicting good growth due to Trump cutting taxes and regulations.
I personally think harder rather than better times are more likely, long term, but “better” times are altogether possible in the short term, in some respects at least.
I wouldn’t bet either way, but Trump appears to be inheriting an economy on the upswing, and the up cycle part might last a while regardless of what he does or does not do. OTOH, maybe the up cycle IS peaking, and a down trend is on the way, REGARDLESS of what Trump does.
Back in the Reagan era, I read accounts blaming economic problems on Reagan’s budget. He wasn’t as big a fool as some people think, at least in this case. He replied that it was sort of premature to blame his budget on current day problems, being as it wouldn’t be in effect for some time to come. The country was still on the previous budget that day.
What a president does or does not do, in terms of economic policy, is not apt to make much if any difference in the very near term, but it can make a HUGE difference, in the medium to long term.
You can perk up an old tired worker FOR A WHILE by goosing him with stimulants and pain killers.
He collapses or dies all the quicker, but he WILL do more, for a while.
I think the economy (both US and global) is going to turn down and I don’t think there is anything Trump can do to stop it.
I don’t know what might trigger it, but I just don’t see anything on the horizon other than public and private spending on renewables that would create lots of jobs and put money into the system. Of course, I would expect those projects would be financed by public and private debt, but perhaps they would create enough economic boost to pay back the debt.
I don’t think tax cuts will do much. Lots of companies already have cash. They could fund projects, but often they prefer to buy back stock. I don’t see how giving them even more cash will change that thinking.
The hottest four door luxury boat on the market ,when equipped with the premium performance package now does it even faster than super cars that cost three times as much, when “ludicrous PLUS” mode is activated.
Musk may not be the world’s greatest salesman, but he sure as hell is in the running, when it comes to understanding how to do a Monty Python chop off their arms and legs skit on the competition. 😉
This four door country club boat, with room for enough luggage for a vacationing family, is the fastest car in the world to sixty mph that you can actually just walk in a store or dealership and buy, simply by paying for it.
And a newly licensed sixteen year old girl could drive it down the dragstrip without any expensive learning curve involving replacement tires, transmissions, axles and engines, not to mention accidents. The Tesla will launch dead straight, and stay straight. It’s a LOT of fun going sideways when you hit a gear upshifting, and it’s a lot of fun to see the tire smoke, and hear the engine in a conventional car screaming like a bull ape, but it’s best to watch somebody else pay for it, unless you have money to burn, lol.
Three to six runs down the strip will EAT five or six hundred dollars, or more, worth of tires on a conventional hot car. If it’s an Italian status mobile, figure on a couple of thousand bucks on up to ten thousand or MORE to “refresh” things after couple of weekends.
A Tesla CAN lay rubber, but only if you WANT it to.
carbon dioxide increased its atmospheric concentration by 2.77 parts per million during 2016. This was the third fastest rate of increase in the NOAA record following 2015 at a 3.03 ppm annual increase and 1998 at a 2.93 annual increase.
With regards to global warming the most important question that I think needs answering is ‘so what?’. What are the impacts? An analysis of this question is revealing as to why we should care. Especially as it relates to to that food you see in front of your face every time you desire it. Irregardless of David Whitehouse, er I mean Javier, and his endless objections, I think we can agree it’s happening. Now what?
Frequency of Extreme El Niños to Double in the 21st Century
Increasing frequency of extreme El Niño events due to greenhouse warming
That is not what the IPCC defends in AR5.
“There is no concrete evidence linking the powerful El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event to climate change, says leading climate scientist Fredolin Tangang.
A news story on Malaysian news website malaysiakini.com quotes climatologist and oceanographer Professor Dr Fredolin Tangang of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, the National University of Malaysia, as saying that this year’s El Niño was even more extreme than the severe phenomena experienced in 1982/82 and 1997/98 but that there is “no conclusive evidence that the occurrence of El Nino (frequency and intensity) is influenced by climate change”.
Tangang served from 2008 to 2015 as vice-chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations climate science agency.
Tangang stated that the IPCC, in its latest report released in 2013, did not come up with a conclusion on the inter-relation between El Niño and global warming. He said that unlike typhoons, which the IPCC concluded would increase in intensity as global warming intensified, El Niño occurrences did not switch in frequency or intensity due to climate change.
“El Niño is a naturally occurring phenomenon, which is part of the inter-annual variability associated with oscillation of the atmosphere-ocean interaction in the Pacific Ocean that occurs in a two- to seven-year cycle,” he explained.”
So far we have not seen any increase in El Niño frequency, no evidence supporting those assertions.
I’m sure most people have heard of the movie called Alive. From the time of the plane crash until the time the surviving group engaged in eating the flesh of the deceased was 72 hours. Hunger is quite a force.
I feel that food supply is often overlooked in the climate debate. And indeed it is perhaps the thing that matters most. The Arab Spring indicates that increased food prices, and the human responses to the, can destabilize entire regions very quickly.
“When shelled organisms are at risk, the entire food web may also be at risk. Today, more than a billion people worldwide rely on food from the ocean as their primary source of protein.”
From the perspective of hazard assessment and risk analysis it seems to me that terrestrial and aquatic food sources are severely threatened. The complex system that puts food in front of your face is extremely vulnerable to ecological disruptions that result from increased CO2 in the air and water . I believe it’s just a matter of a short time until food disruption events occur. Humans don’t typically address problems until the problem is kicking them in the face.
Temps over northern hemisphere land areas, where most of the world’s grain is grown, and ocean ph are perhaps the leading indicators to be aware of if interested in anticipating food production/harvest disruptions.
We just had the world record wheat crop the warmer year on record. That should ease your fears. Global warming takes place preferentially at higher latitudes prolonging the growth season.
I don’t have fears. I have concerns.
I recommend this presentation on the topic of climate and food security.
If you can’t watch it all just check out 46 min 30 seconds mark and watch for a short time.
With regards to CO2 increases in the atmosphere and its connection to CO2 increases in the ocean the impact is clear. More CO2 in the water lowers the pH. This will likely undermine the food web that provides a significant portion of humanities protein and a great deal of economic activity.
This will likely undermine the food web that provides a significant portion of humanities protein.
As well as the food web that supports so many other living creatures many of them highly social and possibly even sentient to one degree or another.
I have personally lived better than most royalty could ever have dreamed of even a couple of centuries ago. I don’t fear for myself or my own demise. I would like to see humanity evolve into a humbler less arrogant species with more compassion for our fellow man and also for the myriad species with which we share this tiny blue dot.
I posted this picture once before and I post it here again to remind us all as to the fragility and how vulnerable is our atmosphere, it is our main protection from the harshness of space. At the very least we should set aside our hubris and apply the precautionary principle to do what we can to protect it.
.
Nice pic. Thanks.
I feel that ocean acidification is vastly under appreciated. Why it’s not a larger part of the fossil fuel/climate change discussion is odd. It’s very straight forward. I believe I read that the pH of the ocean by Hawaii has dropped from 8.1 to 8.05 since 2003 or so. I’ll have to find it again. Much more and it’s game over for the base of the ocean food chain. Sad.
I have often ranted about ocean acidification in the past. I started scuba diving in the mid 1970s and have witnessed first hand the devastation of many a coral reef. Note to deniers: spare me the lecture on all the other stressors affecting reefs, I know about them, And warm water is a biggy! Oh, lest we forget, pH is a logarithmic scale.
Ocean acidification appears to be a non-issue. That is why there is a sudden silence on it. False alarmism.
The ocean surface has maybe dropped 0.1 pH unit from ~8.1 to ~8.0 over 165 years with some of the man-made CO2 absorbed. Long term measurements are actually very sparse.
So to make it sound more scary for ordinary people: the tell us that it is a logarithmic scale and that “acidity” (H+ concentration) has increased by 30%. But they “forget” to tell that the pH still is basic, so no acidification, but neutralization in proper chemistry language, that the pH difference between poles and equator is about a full pH unit, that the pH within the coral reefs can change by a full pH unit within a day, and that fish can swim into much larger pH differences without harm or that corals and coccoliths did evolve and grow in periods with much higher temperatures and CO2 levels than today.
There is a wash of studies many of them badly made, with fish tanks where pH is raised suddenly. The result is highly contradictory, low reliable findings. You can defend one thing or the opposite.
For example increased carbon dioxide enhances plankton growth and this is supposed to be good. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160116215419.htm
S. Rivero-Calle, A. Gnanadesikan, C. E. Del Castillo, W. M. Balch, S. D. Guikema. Multidecadal increase in North Atlantic coccolithophores and the potential role of rising CO2. Science, 2015; 350 (6267): 1533
As someone who has kept both fresh and saltwater aquariums for well over three decades, I can tell you without the slightest shadow of a doubt, that anyone who claims pH is not an important parameter is just plain full of shit!
And as usual you make simplistic obfuscating statements such as this:
For example increased carbon dioxide enhances plankton growth and this is supposed to be good.
That is a bald faced lie by omission since it glosses over some of the real the concerns of the scientists doing these studies in the very link you provide.
“Something strange is happening here, and it’s happening much more quickly than we thought it should,” said Anand Gnanadesikan, associate professor in the Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins and one of the study’s five authors.
Gnanadesikan said the Science report certainly is good news for creatures that eat coccolithophores, but it’s not clear what those are. “What is worrisome,” he said, “is that our result points out how little we know about how complex ecosystems function.” The result highlights the possibility of rapid ecosystem change, suggesting that prevalent models of how these systems respond to climate change may be too conservative, he said.
Not to mention if you create an environmental forcing that benefits cocolithophores that same forcing might negatively impact some other fauna or flora, case in point:
When the percentage of coccolithophores in the community goes up, the relative abundance of other groups will go down. The authors found that at local scales, the relative abundance of another important algal class, diatoms, had decreased over the 45 years of sampling.
So Javier why do hate diatoms so much? Or maybe you just hate the krill that are known to feed on diatoms or is it you dislike the cetaceans such as baleen whales that feed on krill.
You are really quite a piece of work!
Clarification: Krill do feed on coccolithophores, however:
Another cause of the decline in the krill population was caused by a diatom concentration drop in the Bering Sea that occurred in 1998 during a coccolithophore bloom. Coccolithophores are also part of the krill’s diet, and the concentration drop caused them to grow smaller. Kill are unable to feed on the smaller coccolithophore, resulting in less available food for the krill.
People who make simplistic statements like CO2 is good for plants or say we should just go ahead and fertilize the oceans with iron to create algal blooms are what I call BLOOMING IDIOTS! They should be made to sit in the corner wearing bright orange cone hats with DUNCE written on them!
That’s pure alarmism from your part, Fred.
Proportions between diatoms, coccolithophores, dinoflagellates and zooplancton have been naturally very variable in the past.
Current levels of coccolithophores are lower than during the Holocene Climate Optimum, which is yet another indication that we are not as warm as then, so the growth of coccolithophores at the expense of diatoms shouldn’t worry us the least, as the world was very productive during the HCO.
We should worry to not overfish and pollute the oceans and that would be our biggest contribution to the recovery of marine ecosystems.
Source:
Werne, Josef P., et al. “Climate‐induced variations in productivity and planktonic ecosystem structure from the Younger Dryas to Holocene in the Cariaco Basin, Venezuela.” Paleoceanography 15.1 (2000): 19-29. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/1998PA000354/pdf
That’s pure alarmism from your part, Fred.
Yeah! I’m sure the whales, penguins, seals, squid, fish and and all the hundreds of other organisms that depend on krill to survive will just find something else to feed on when the krill population is reduced due to coccolithophore blooms!
Thing is, ecosystems and food webs are like beautiful tapestries. You can pull out a thread or two here and there and you won’t even notice.
Keep pulling out threads and sooner or later the whole darn tapestry just falls apart.
Fred,
“Yeah! I’m sure the whales, penguins, seals, squid, fish and and all the hundreds of other organisms that depend on krill to survive will just find something else to feed on when the krill population is reduced due to coccolithophore blooms!”
whales, penguins, seals, squid, fish, and so on, did fine during the HCO when coccolithophores were more abundant than now. Why should they have a problem now?
The point you keep missing is this quote from the authors of the paper you linked to:
“What is worrisome,” he said, “is that our result points out how little we know about how complex ecosystems function.” The result highlights the possibility of rapid ecosystem change, suggesting that prevalent models of how these systems respond to climate change may be too conservative, he said.
It seems to me this is a very deliberate attempt on your part to keep obfuscating the truth. Arguing that because we don’t know exactly how things will unfold in future and that therefore we needn’t worry about climate change and its impacts on ecosystems is just plain disingenuous to the extreme.
Fred,
It is certainly worrisome that with so little knowledge we pretend to act drastically (with little perspectives of success) to fix a supposed problem when the evidence that the increase in CO2 and temperatures are doing actual damage is weak while the evidence that they are doing good is very strong.
Javier says:
…the evidence that the increase in CO2 and temperatures are doing actual damage is weak while the evidence that they are doing good is very strong.
You are so right! CO2 is food for plants! I’m sure the best way forward is to add as much CO2 to the atmosphere as humanly possible in as short a time span as we can!
This public interest message brought to you by the friends and supporters of President elect Trump, Rex Tillerson, The Koch Brothers, Vladimir Putin and Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Naimi, to name a few of the people who are concerned about there not being enough CO2 in the atmosphere and are doing everything in their power to change that!
They extend their thanks and deepest gratitude to the foot soldier’s like Javier, who are doing their dirty work for them!
Javier,
You and other so-called ‘AGW-denialists’ may look upon Fred’s commentary with a certain peculiar sense of, say, general complacency, such as with regard to, among other reasons, his playing with/in another’s ‘turd’, as he suggests, and ‘reverse-polishing’ it to boot .
Some people make hypocrisy and, say, ‘inverted cherry-picking’, look like a Sunday picnic, while Fred seems to blissfully flirt with putting himself under the very term he is ‘inserting’ into the ‘evidence’, namely, ‘mentally deficient’.
But, hey, as it is said, ‘If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them…’ by playing with another’s turd (and making it your own). LOL
“…who are doing their dirty work for them!” ~ Fred Magyar
LOL
Caelan,
I consider myself a skeptic. I do know the world has warmed (even by personal experience), and I do believe humans have contributed to it, and that the increase in GHGs has to be partially responsible.
I just think the anthropogenic factor is overplayed, and the natural factor is underplayed, and believe that both warming and CO2 increase have been very net positive. I believe climate alarmism is unjustified on the face of empirical evidence.
Fred is concerned with the environment and with the end of fossil fuels. I share those worries with him, so our disagreements to me are more of a matter of detail. He puts a large share of the blame on climate change while I put it on human population growth.
For such small disagreement we are bound to fight endlessly. That is the nature of things. But while I respect Fred’s position and beliefs, he doesn’t respect mines. That is a character issue. You either respect those that disagree with you or you don’t. Respecting those that disagree on some issues but not others doesn’t cut it.
Fair enough, Javier. Onward and upward…
“Ocean acidification appears to be a non-issue. That is why there is a sudden silence on it. False alarmism.”
Only somebody who has had severe hangovers during his chemistry lectures would claim such nonsense.
Even with basic understanding of chemistry and chemical equilibria it becomes clear that change of pH to lower values has ugly implications when we talk about the ability of the oceans to store CO2.
Nonsense. You have to pay more attention. Natural CO2 sinks are increasing.
Airborne fraction has gone down from 60% to 40% in just 4 decades.
I know, I know. Things are going to get much worse some time soon, or so models say.
“Every liberal offended or irritated is a victory for the conservative cause”
Javier obviously doesn’t have much else on the go as far as a life goes. He’s here to argue that ocean acidification is no big thing. That’s laughable.
I am no conservative. I do not support Trump, nor did I vote for the conservative party in my country’s last elections, nor in any of the elections for over 10 years. Once again you miss the mark.
I believe in global warming, and in peak oil. I support every form of energy including renewables. I used to believe in catastrophic global warming due to increased CO2 until about three years ago when I looked into the evidence myself by reading the scientific articles. Instead of confirmation I found a severe lack of evidence and paleoclimatology says we have it wrong. I also found a lot of history rewriting, reinterpretation, and bullying, that is a very bad sign of being wrong. If you are right you don’t need any of that.
I became an skeptic from studying the evidence, not from political convictions. Climate change is only a political issue in a few English-speaking countries. In the rest of the world it is not questioned, but not considered an important issue by most at both sides of the political line. There are absolutely no climate debate in Spain. If you think I am unusual for the US, I am a lot more unusual for Spain.
Americans are generally tremendously ignorant about what goes on in the rest of the world. They think their culture, politics and climate debates apply equally to the rest of the world. They don’t.
And there is zero evidence that ocean acidification constitutes any problem. We have tons of evidence that overfishing, tourism and pollution are doing a huge damage to the world’s reefs, and with the exception of Australia, very little is being done about it. We are just watching their destruction while claiming it is climate change’s fault.
“I would like to see humanity evolve into a humbler less arrogant species with more compassion for our fellow man…” ~ Fred Magyar
——
“No asshole, you missed my point completely…
Fuck you and everybody who thinks like you!
If the site owners want to ban me and my comment should they find it offensive, go right ahead I really don’t give a shit anymore !” ~ Fred Magyar
“…is basically a presumptuous arrogant jerk…” ~ Fred Magyar
Be the change you seek, Fred, and dispense with the lip-service, which will likely go a ways toward perhaps some of us shedding less crocodile tears of joy for your ‘warmth’ and ‘sincerity’, as well as reducing the temptation to, say, put ‘Fake Fred’ after some of your quotes.
Hey Caelan, here is a another quote you can add to your list of things I have said. In this case specifically directed towards you ! “Fuck You and the horse you rode in on!”
Cheers!
Let’s all accept the fact that Javier doesn’t use the same dictionary as the rest of us.
Pause and hiatus both mean to slow down.
Concern means alarmism.
The guys in another dimension.
What horse?
It’s all relative, Freddy-poo, such as when you play with other people’s turds. Then, practically everyone is on a horse when you do that.
If you’re going to do so, at least do us a favor and place it, like a ‘good’ boy, on the compost heap afterward, won’tcha? At least take it outside.
And give that potty-mouth a good sudsing while you’re at it.
I believe that as the ocean temperature increases less carbon dioxide will dissolve (solubility of CO2 in H2O decreases as temperature increases). So over time the decreased pH of the ocean is likely stop and perhaps reverse especially when atmospheric CO2 stops increasing probably around 2060 if carbon emissions from fossil fuels are reduced and we remain close to the 1000 Pg carbon emission limit proposed by Allen et al 2009.
Government review likely to back Swansea Bay tidal lagoon
£1.3bn plan is seen as ‘pathfinder’ for six bigger plants, which could generate more than 10% of UK’s electricity
It’s worth noting that Republican opposition to renewable energy is partly due to the influence of the legacy FF industries, and partly due to ignorance. But it might be due more than anything else, on the part of the man in the street, to collateral damage, meaning that opposition to renewable energy is not actually about renewable energy at all, but rather part and parcel of conservative opposition to the liberal social agenda, simply because the liberal element of the D coalition has championed renewable energy.
We need to find ways to separate energy issues from social issues. Finding them is not impossible, but it’s a tough job.
Iowa is at the head of the list in this survey when it comes to companies locating there in order to get access to renewable energy. There are TONS of R’s in Iowa, lol.
Guys and gals, if there ARE any in this forum, whose interests and work don’t require them to keep up with cutting edge research in the fundamentals of biology most likely won’t have heard much about the way plants respond to their environment in ways very much analogous to the way animals behave to environmental cues.
If I were a young guy again, I would do things differently, and spend most of my life on the sort of research described in this link.
“A forest is much more than what you see,” says ecologist Suzanne Simard. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery — trees talk, often and over vast distances. Learn more about the harmonious yet complicated social lives of trees and prepare to see the natural world with new eyes.
Of the many converging fields of science that are providing us with unequivocal evidence of anthropogenic effects of human activities on our ecosystems and biomes, it is the work of field biologists and especially ecologists that I find most compelling.
People who deny climate change and spend their time arguing about things like physics and atmospheric chemistry, which more often than not they do not understand nor are qualified to comment on anyway, seem to understand even less about how ecosystems actually work.
There is quite a bit of fascinating work on how entire ecosystems have evolved networks of symbiotic and co-operative organisms. We are just beginning to crack how evolution works on the ecosystem level. Which is one of the main reasons that I really start to worry when people start talking about geoengineering the whole planet…
Cheers!
I’ve been noticing some stuff about the vegetation on my island that I don’t remember seeing in my younger days. Vines (creepers) seem to be flourishing extremely well especially in the sections of the island that get above average rainfall. In some cases it looks like these vines could smother the very vegetation they are growing over, to the point where they could possibly stunt their growth, if not kill them.
There is supposedly a disease that is affecting citrus on the island. Commercial growers seem to have done whatever is necessary to prevent their orchards from being wiped out but one orange tree on the grounds of the small apartment complex where I live has died. A grapefruit tree a hundred yards or so further down the street has also died as has a grapefruit tree 30 miles away at my family’s homestead in the rural parts of the island. Here’s what’s weird, another grapefruit tree at the oposit end of my apartment block to where the orange tree was, is still surviving. The surviving tree is growing under the shade of some larger trees with the twenty foot (6 m) back wall of a neighboring commercial building fifteen feet or so to the west. The result of all this shading is that this tree does not get exposed to direct sunlight after mid day.
This has me wondering, is it just the disease that is affecting the citrus or is there a component of the changes in the local climate starting to stress the plants to the point of them dying? Why is the partially shaded grapefruit tree not dead yet despite showing signs of the same affliction that killed at least two other citrus plants within a hundred yard radius?
Finally, I am increasingly noticing an invasion of leucaena all over the island.
Leucaena is a genus of flowering plants in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the legume family Fabaceae. It contains about 24 species of trees and shrubs, which are commonly known as leadtrees.[3] They are native to the Americas, ranging from Texas in the United States south to Peru.[4] The generic name is derived from the Greek word λευκός (leukos), meaning “white,” referring to the flowers.[5]
Uses
Leucaena species are grown for their variety of uses, including as green manure, a charcoal source, livestock fodder, and for soil conservation. The seeds (jumbie beans) can be used as beads. Leucaena planted for firewood on an area of 120 km2 (46 sq mi) will yield an energy equivalent of 1 million barrels of oil per year. Anthelmintic medicines are made from extracts of Leucaena seeds in Sumatra, Indonesia.
Some species (namely Leucaena leucocephala) have edible fruits (as unripe) and seeds. The seeds of Leucaena esculenta (in Mexico called guaje or huaje) are eaten with salt in Mexico. In other species high levels of mimosine may lead to hair loss and infertility in non-ruminants
It is a fast growing legume (nitrogen fixer) that is listed in one Wikipedia article as an invasive species. I have started to wonder how, when and why it was introduced to the island, assuming it is not indigenous to the island. A quick search indicates it might be indigenous so, why is the population exploding now? Is it that increasing concentration of the plant food CO² in the atmosphere favor nitrogen fixers over non-nitrogen fixers, especially on depleted soils? One area where leucaena seems to be doing particularly well is anywhere that was formerly used to grow sugar cane. The growing and harvesting practices (including burning the cane fields before harvesting) in Jamaica have left the soils in many cane growing areas in a severely depleted state, requiring heavy fertilizer use to grow any useful crops. The ability to re-grow after bush fires also seems to favor leucaena in these same areas.
One thing that occurs to me from one of the Wikipedia articles is that maybe, leucaena could be grown as an energy crop (firewood, charcoal or feedstock for pyrolysis based processes), providing energy and restoring nitrogen balance to depleted soils at the same time.
Questions, questions!
Hi Fred,
Unfortunately humans have already geoengineered the planet through excess carbon emissions. We might have to do some engineering to reduce atmospheric carbon, though it would be best to do as little as possible (things like reduced deforestation and reforestation and maybe better farming practices to attempt to sequester more carbon in soil).
Another approach is to use cement that absorbs carbon dioxide rather than release it, the first step is to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels to zero as quickly as possible. In the mean time ecologists can consider ways to safely reduce atmospheric carbon levels without causing other problems.
How come these events keep happening, when scientists and MSNBC say they should be impossible on a planet supposedly warming up to dangerous levels? My thought and prayers go out to all those dealing this global warming cold snap, especially families of the people dead from hypothermia.
Hi Miss Peggy!
I’m just an old hog trying to learn more about this stuff. So, would you please post links to those “scientists and MSNBC” saying these winter WEATHER events should be impossible on a warming planet?
Thanks
P.S. Apologies to all you folks that have good sense and educate me daily. Sometimes I get a bit crazy and just gotta release it.
Hi Stanley! Here are two articles you will want to check out. They come from independent media, not the scientists or mainstream media which are extremely corrupt and dishonest, and pushers of an extreme leftist agenda. Check out the comments also. They note how very cold weather wasn’t in the original predictions by the powerful global warming crowd.
“In 2016, the contiguous United States (CONUS) average temperature was 54.9°F, 2.9°F above the 20th century average. This was the second warmest year for the CONUS, behind 2012 when the annual average temperature was 55.3°F. This marks the 20th consecutive year that the annual average temperature for the CONUS was above the 20th century average. The last year with a below-average temperature was 1996. Since 1895, the CONUS has observed an average temperature increase of 0.15°F per decade.”
“This will be the third year in a row we’ve set a new record. It’s time we paid attention.”
“We set a new record low for annual average sea ice extent in the northern hemisphere:”
“In addition, we set a new record low for annual average sea ice extent over the entire globe” https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/global-warmings-record-year/
I guess it must be all that global cooling that those non scientist folks have figured out is going on.
guess it must be all that global cooling that those non scientist folks have figured out is going on.
Tsk, tsk, tsk! Survivalist, the problem is that you are getting your information from actual scientists. They are all corrupt and part of a global conspiracy.
You really should get with the program and start getting your news from the independent media! You know you can trust them!
They come from independent media, not the scientists or mainstream media which are extremely corrupt and dishonest, and pushers of an extreme leftist agenda. Check out the comments also.
Peggy Hahn
Now if you are going to trust someone, would you trust actual scientists who have dedicated their lives and careers to the pursuit of knowledge or the scientifically illiterate people like the ones commenting in the links kindly provided by Peggy…
Tough choice!
You know what’s funny? Every single time I see posts by the likes of “Peggy Hahn” (the troll brigade), the image below just pops into my head!
Thanks for the heads-up! Guess I’d better get my long-sleeve shirts out. I thought it had been unusually warm for this time of year here in north Alabama. Matter of fact, I even rode my old antique motorsicle today. Guess I’ve been influenced to much by them damn ignernt scientists!
What kind of bike?
Well today it’s warmer at the North Pole than it is in central Alberta/Canada so I guess all the cold air had to go somewhere.
How come these events keep happening, when scientists and MSNBC say they should be impossible on a planet supposedly warming up to dangerous levels?
Peggy, perhaps you are just another troll but even if you are, you need to up your game a couple of notches . We expect the trolls who show up around here to at least demonstrate that they know the difference between WEATHER and CLIMATE! Google it!
My own ancestry is Hungarian and right now the weather in Hungary is so cold the Danube which normally flows ice free during most of the year has a lots of ice in it. And you can walk on the lake Balaton because it is frozen solid. This phenomenon is caused by winter weather.
.
Meanwhile in Hudson Bay Canada it’s forecast to rain in the middle of winter. Must be global cooling. Maybe next time one of these anti science folks has a headache they’ll get a drill and let the evil spirits out.
I’ll bet they will be happy to become members of ITAG, you just can’t make this shit up! That would be the ‘International Trepanation Advocacy Group’ http://www.trepan.com/
Skull trepanation has usually been considered a strange oddity by archeologists, anthropologists and neuroscientists. With nearly complete unanimity those professions consider trepanation to be some inexplicably superstitious and outdated practice for which there is no justification in the modern world. In short they believe that skull trepanation has no scientific basis.
The view at ITAG has been in direct opposition to the above positions. The hypothesis here at ITAG has been that making a opening in the skull favorably alters movement of blood through the brain and improves brain functions which are more important than ever before in history to adapt to an ever more rapidly changing world.
Yeah, makes sense to me!
Hey, maybe someone can set up a trepanation clinic in Washington, for the members of our new administration and especially the older members of our congress and the senate. If anyone could use an improvement in brain function, they would be at the top of my list!
Heck they could set it up right next to the barbershop…
A clear prediction from global warming is that while regionally the amount of snow might vary, due to an increase in air humidity, globally the amount of snow should decrease and the snow season should shorten, leading to a reduction in extreme snow events as the world warms.
“New York Times writer Peter Fox took to the editorial pages to pen an op-ed called the “End of Snow” which argued that global warming meant that there could be no more snowy areas to hold future Winter Olympic games.
But past predictions of “snow free” winters and even an “ice-free” Arctic have failed to materialize. Here are some past predictions that winter as we know it would become a thing of the past.
1.) Scientists predicted in 2000 that kids would grow up without snow. It was 14 years ago now when UK climate scientists argued that global warming would make snowfall a “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” Dr. David Viner, a scientist with the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia, told the UK Independent in 2000.
After the wettest winter in 248 years, the UK was hit with snowstorms last week. Last year, the UK’s climate authority predicted that this winter would be drier than usual, with only a 15 percent chance of being wet. They were very wrong.
2.) It’s been 10 years since scientists predicted the “end of skiing” in Scotland. An article from the UK’s Guardian in 2004 quoted scientists and environmentalists predicting the demise of Scotland’s winter sports industry, including more remarks from Dr. David Viner, who had already predicted the end of snow in Britain.
“Unfortunately, it’s just getting too hot for the Scottish ski industry,” said Dr. Viner. “It is very vulnerable to climate change; the resorts have always been marginal in terms of snow and, as the rate of climate change increases, it is hard to see a long-term future.”
“Adam Watson, from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Banchory, Aberdeenshire, believes the industry has no more than 20 years left,” the Guardian reported.
Viner and Watson must have been surprised to see the BBC report that Scottish mountains may be their snowiest since 1945.
3.) The Arctic would be “ice-free” by now. “Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” Gore said in 2008.
Gore was echoing the predictions made by American scientist Wieslaw Maslowsk in 2007, who said that “you can argue that may be our projection of [an ice-free Arctic by 2013] is already too conservative.”
But in 2013, Arctic sea ice coverage was up 50 percent from 2012 levels. Data from Europe’s Cryosat spacecraft showed that Arctic sea ice coverage was nearly 2,100 cubic miles by the end of this year’s melting season, up from about 1,400 cubic miles during the same time last year.
4.) Environmentalists predicted the end of spring snowfall. In March 2013, the Union of Concerned Scientists predicted that warmer springs would mean declines in snow cover.
“Warmer, earlier springs are a clear signal of a changing climate,” the group said. “March temperatures have grown 2.1 degrees (F) hotter, on average, in the United States since reliable record-keeping began in 1880s. Similarly, the first leaves have started appearing on plants several days earlier than they used to across the country.”
But the record levels of snowfall to hit this year may have caught UCS off guard. On Monday, the U.S. east coast was hit with a massive snowstorm that stretched for 1,300 miles and those in the Baltimore-D.C. area were hit with a 141-year record cold of 4 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday morning.
“Many places tied or broke record lows all over the Eastern half of the U.S.,” reported CBS Baltimore.
5.) The end of skiing. Ski towns across the country were worried about their prospects when temperatures temporarily rose up into 50s and 60s in early February. Scientists were fanning the flames by predicting that winter towns could see more hardships ahead due to global warming.
“There’s going to be good years and there’s going to be god-awful years,” said Terry Root, senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “The globe is warming so rapidly, and variability is increasing so much – both of those things together, I’m glad I don’t have stock in ski areas.”
But this year has not been all that bad for winter towns. The town of Loveland, Colorado got more than 300 inches of snow this winter, reports CBS Denver, adding that with “snow continuing to pile up at ski areas many are putting this winter in their top 10.” For Loveland, 300 inches is still below normal, but a far cry from the end of snowy winters.”
So as usual some scientists like Viner and Watson have been selling alarmist predictions that fail spectacularly. In fact this year we saw snow in the Sahara, something that hasn’t been seen in 40 years and that according to models should have become much rarer.
Javier, your canned responses to the suggestion that global warming is not a problem because it hasn’t been modelled 100% correctly are weak, and repetitive. You’re like a scratched record. While snow in the Sahara might get Peggy and the Breitbart crowd all hotted up I’m rather sure nobody here finds it evidence that global warming is not happening.
“Climate modeling may be hard, but these guys are good. The skeptic may not believe in their models, but as Niels Bohr once replied when he was asked by a visitor to his home in Tisvilde if he really believed a horseshoe above his door would bring him good luck, “Of course not… but I am told it works even if you don’t believe in it.”
One of the nice things about models is you can ask what conditions have to change to make the results change. As Murray Gell-Mann says, models are prostheses for the imagination. They help you think about ways in which you might interpret data, even complicated data.
Models are just tools to facilitate ways of thinking about reality, no one who creates and uses them in their daily work mistakes them for actual reality.
I’m rather sure nobody here finds it evidence that global warming is not happening.
You are missing your target as I believe global warming is happening. The difference is that I believe that it is good for us, not catastrophic.
Snow in the Sahara is evidence that alarmist predictions from some scientists 15 years ago are a complete failure. Snow is not at risk from global warming and there can even be more of it in some places.
That it melts earlier is just the logical consequence of global warming. Spring comes earlier and this is a good thing, because it means that plants and animals have more time and better conditions to grow and reproduce. All over Europe there are more trees and birds than 30 years ago. All at the expense of a few less days of skiing.
Shorter winters are a huge bonus at high latitudes.
“I think Greenpeace is going to come out toasted from the climate change debacle once the climate starts cooling in the near future.” ~ Javier
Conservation groups have espoused themselves to global warming scare, and will suffer the same fate. As a conservationist, I used to have great respect for Greenpeace. Not anymore.
Things like this show they are anything but conservationists now.
“All over Europe there are more trees and birds than 30 years ago” ~ Javier
The reason there’s more trees than 1990’s is reforestation programs, not AGW/ increased CO2. But it’s a wasted effort due to negative impacts of AGW.
“But European forests face an uncertain future. More frequent heat waves, droughts and fires are reducing their health and productivity, with the region warming faster than the global average.”
“By 2090, the area burned by forest fires in the European Union could increase by 200% because of climate change, according to a new study published in the journal Regional Environmental Change.”
“Furthermore, climate change, with more frequent droughts and rising temperatures, has been confirmed as one of the driving forces behind the risk of fire.”
The reason there’s more trees than 1990’s is reforestation programs
Sorry, you don’t get to choose the causes. These are multifactorial including reforestation, farmland abandonment, increase in CO2, lengthening of the growing season, and expansion of the treeline. The last three due to climate change.
“Since the 20th century, the annual increment of forests in Europe (in terms of area and growing stock) has increased due to advances in forest management practices, genetic improvement and, in central Europe, the cessation of site-degrading practices. Abandoned farmland in high and mid latitudes is reverting to forest, which store much more carbon than the previous cropland.
Forests and other wooded land cover approximately 190 million ha. (1.9 million km2) in the EEA region, and this area has increased over the last decades [i]. Forest biomass has also grown over the past two decades, at an accelerating rate, as a consequence of a number of factors. A time series for 17 EEA countries shows an increase in growing stock from 85 million m3 (5.4 m3 ha-1) in 1990 to 110 million m3 (5.9 m3 ha-1) in 2010 [ii]. This has been explained primarily by the growth of young forests in Europe, which have not reached maturity, and by the increasing carbon concentration in the atmosphere. Furthermore, several studies have already noted longer growing seasons in several species, shifts in tree line and changes in species distribution. However, in some central and western forest areas of Europe, forest growth has been reduced in the last 10 years due to storms, pests and diseases.
[i] Forest Europe, UNECE and FAO, State of Europe’s forests, 2011: status & trends in sustainable forest management in Europe. (Aas, Norway: Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe, Forest Europe, Liaison Unit Oslo, 2011), http://www.twosides.info:8080/content/rsPDF_223.pdf.
[ii] Forest Europe, UNECE and FAO, State of Europe’s forests, 2011.”
Climate change has been very good for forests in most regions of the world.
Birds populations in Europe are experimenting changes according to landscape changes, with expansion of forests birds and contraction of farm birds. Almost all protected bird species are showing very good rate of recovery of several % year after year, indicating that climate change is not a significant negative factor.
For a great report of the success of European conservation efforts in a very beautifully illustrated guide for the most iconic species, full of scientific data and references, it is very worth seeing:
This is the situation in Hungary, which is pretty typical for Europe.
Discounting long distance migrant species whose conservation is an issue because of the conservation situation in Africa and Asia, there is a general increase in bird populations except for farmland species.
Szép, Tibor, et al. “Population trends of common breeding and wintering birds in Hungary, decline of longdistance migrant and farmland birds during 1999–2012.” Ornis Hungarica 20.2 (2012): 13-63.
Birds are on the recovery in Europe despite climate change
Do you just make shit up as you go?
You just have no clue and like to spread fear. As you don’t know shit about what you talk you like to accuse others of your own problem.
Nature conservation in Europe is a story of success. Forest biomass is increasing tremendously, protected species are doing much better, ecosystems are more productive thanks to climate change. Most bird species that do not migrate out of Europe are doing much better.
Some species will be negatively affected by climate change. In Nature there is always winners and losers, however with global warming there are more species that benefit than decline. Just the opposite of global cooling, that kills a lot of plants and animals.
The tropics have a much greater biodiversity and biomass than the poles. This gradient has been known for centuries. Global warming increases biodiversity and biomass capacity at mid-high latitudes, while little harm comes because global warming barely affects the tropics.
Most people are completely ignorant of the biological responses to global warming despite all the evidence available to their eyes. You just have to compare a tropical rain forest to a tundra to point which one is more productive.
“Over a 35-year period, the length of forest fire seasons worldwide increased by 18.7 percent due to more rain-free days and hotter temperatures”
Yep. You just make shit up as you go. You’re all over the road doc. More birds, fluctuating birds, change the subject blah blah blah
You are the one changing subjects all the time Surv. Now to forest fires.
The truth is that the surface that gets burned every year is getting reduced in most developed countries including the USA and Spain.
In the case of Spain (which is pretty typical for Europe) we have a strong increase of forest biomass together with a strong decrease in the surface burned. Our forests are just booming, and this is for a country that was predicted to suffer the effects of climate change more strongly than most.
Image: forest surface burnt between 1961 and 2014 in hectares (1 hectare = 2.47 acres). For the units, the dot is a comma in US.
From the Forbes article: Being aware of the enterprise of science means having a tremendous respect for the people devoting their lives to furthering our understanding of any aspect of the Universe in this fashion, from the instrument builders to the experiment conductors to the data analysts to the theorists working to create an overarching framework.
If some poor ignorant individual doesn’t understand or know how science works I can cut them some slack… but when someone with a PhD in a scientific field consistently disrespects the work of thousands of other scientists from many different fields and areas of research, that tends to piss me off!
Carbon deposit in Congo swamp equal to 20 years of U.S. gas emissions -study
Carbon dioxide is linked to climate change and peatlands, formed from the accumulation of dead plant material, act as “carbon sinks.” Peat does not decompose in a water-logged state but when it dries, the organisms that break down plant material revive and the carbon seeps back into the atmosphere.
It’s very remote but what we’ve seen in south-east Asia is that these once-remote areas have been dried out and converted to oil palm plantations and rice plantations and other forms of industrial agriculture causing a huge release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” Lewis told Reuters.
We would want to be careful not to make too much out of a single data point either on the low side or the high side, otherwise one might be accused of cherry picking.
What is to make too much of facts, to state them? To extrapolate them?
Hi Survivalist,
My comment is simple. A couple of high or low datapoints by themselves tells us very little about climate. It is the trend of the data over 31 years or more that matters. So I would point to the 31 year trend of the temperature data, not to a few warm years due to and El Nino or a few cool years due to a La Nina.
I am unimpressed by single years of data, whether high or low.
YMMV.
Riders on the storm: Ethiopia bids to become wind capital of Africa
Ethiopia inaugurated one of the continent’s largest wind farms in 2013 — the $290 million, 120-megawatt (MW) Ashedoga plant. This was followed by the even larger 153 MW Adama II facility in 2015.
But wind accounted for just 324 MW of Ethiopia’s total output of 4,180 MW at the end of 2015, with the vast majority coming from hydropower.
This picture is set to change with the government’s second “Growth and Transformation Plan,” which will see total output pass 17,000 MW by 2020, and a vastly increased share from the air.
The government has plans for at least five further wind farms, and potentially many more, aiming to deliver up to 5,200 megawatts from wind power within four years. The cost is officially calculated at $3.1 billion, although other estimates place it over $6 billion.
The target of increasing wind output by more than 1,000 percent within four years has been greeted with skepticism in some quarters, but there are reasons to believe.
Maybe global warming would be a good thing- shake up the food supply chain, and cause a lot of flooding.
Could hasten the decline of the human population- good right?
Afterall, we have proven ourselves cruel and undisciplined, rude and greedy. Unworthy of this wonderful place. Grade F for Stewardship, Grade F for Gratitude, Grade F for Wisdom.
I don’t really understand the CO2 balance of a plant / system like this. At first glance, it seems that since a great deal of captured CO2 goes to enhanced oil recovery, it simply takes a bit longer to enter the atmosphere.
….
The first large scale U.S. “clean coal” facility was declared operational Tuesday — by the large energy firm NRG Energy and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corp.
Their Petra Nova project, not far outside of Houston, captured carbon dioxide from the process of coal combustion for the first time in September, and has now piped 100,000 tons of it from the plant to the West Ranch oil field 80 miles away, where the carbon dioxide is used to force additional oil from the ground. The companies say that the plant can capture over 90 percent of the carbon dioxide released from the equivalent of a 240 megawatt, or million watt, coal unit, which translates into 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide per day or over 1 million tons per year. They’re calling it “the world’s largest post-combustion carbon capture system.”
CCS might be economically justifiable if there is a ready long term market for the CO2, such as oil field injection. I for one am comfortable that we will be using oil in substantial quantities for another generation or two, so if the oil field guys think their wells will last that long, helped along by the injected CO2, I say go for it, at least a few times, to see how it works out.
But if the game plays out in such a way that we use a third more coal, per “net to the customer” kilowatt hour, which is an old estimate, but probably in the ball park, in order to inject the CO2 just to get rid of it, without any revenue coming in to help pay the cost……….
Well, in that case, it seems perfectly obvious to me, at least, that we will be far better off, in terms of bang for our dollars, to invest those dollars in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and conservation.
My opinion, bottom line, for what it’s worth is that CCS has some potential as a niche industry, but that’s about it, because it looks as if it’s always going to cost a hell of a lot.
The scrubber technology used to separate the CO2 may not be mature, but it’s not in its infancy by any means. The odds of the costs of this tech going a lot lower probably aren’t very good. All the rest of the tech involved, such as pipelines and pumping stations, IS mature, and the costs of this tech will be going UP rather than down, as the costs of the raw materials needed go up due to depletion, etc, and the cost of the energy needed to run the pumps, and manufacture the pipe, etc, continues to rise, due to the depletion of fossil fuels.
Now if the price of electricity goes DOWN, as the result of renewables eating the coal and gas industry’s lunch, then in that case……… Well we won’t really NEED CCS, lol, if we can get wind and solar power from where it’s cheap to produce to where it’s needed.
That’s another big question mark, but doing it is easy as pie, from the engineering pov. The question mark is all about the politics, getting the permits, dealing with the nimby’s, paying for the long distance transmission lines, shooting a few ff industry lobbyists as a precautionary measure ( just joking!) etc.
There might be one exception to this last observation. Some coal or gas fired generation will most likely be needed for quite a long time, a half a century or longer in my estimation. I say this because I think the option of using some coal and gas to provide the backup capacity needed for times when renewables come up short otherwise will be a better all around deal for the country, and the world, than overbuilding renewables by a capacity factor of two or three to solve the bad weather / storage issue.
But THEN, suppose we invest some mega bucks in this industry, and the cost of electricity storage DOES nosedive, which is possible, and even a sure bet, in the opinion of a lot of people who work in the field?
Nothing’s ever simple anymore.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
At some point in the future we may want to try to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but I agree CCS is probably the least efficient way to do this, better to attempt to reduce tropical deforestation and enhance afforestation in temperate areas, possibly more grass fed meat and less tilling on farms would also help sequester more carbon in soil.
I think the option of using some coal and gas to provide the backup capacity needed for times when renewables come up short otherwise will be a better all around deal for the country, and the world, than overbuilding renewables by a capacity factor of two or three to solve the bad weather / storage issue.
The study that proposed such a high capacity factor didn’t test the optimal solution (due to computing constraints): high cost, high efficiency storage for daily variation, and very low cost, low efficiency storage for seasonal storage. The optimal level of overbuilding is likely less than 2x the average.
The very low cost solution for seasonal storage already exists, in the form of underground hydrogen. Very cheap, and existing tech in use right now.
Show me some links about actual proven examples of hydrogen being stored underground at any cost.
I am not an engineer, but I got my basic chemistry, and as a tradesman, I tell you like it is, there ain’t no free lunch involving hydrogen. It has to be STRIPPED out of either water or natural gas, at substantial expense, and the stripping involves not only a monetary expense, it also consumes a substantial amount of energy in the process. It’s an inefficient process, round trip, energetically, if you burn the hydrogen.
Now if fuel cells eventually get to be CHEAP, that would be a new ball game, in terms of using hydrogen as an energy storage medium. because fuel cells can be very efficient, compared to centralized generating plants powered by gas turbines or boilers.
Hydrogen from any source other than natural gas is rather expensive.
Then there’s the not so handy fact that hydrogen molecules when held in a container at high pressure just pass right thru, like air thru cloth, unless you make the container out of something exotic.
It won’t be easy to manage hydrogen at high pressure in large volumes. It is not generally considered practical to mix more than a rather minor percentage in with natural gas, due to it escaping thru the plumbing.
Now I am NOT saying it won’t work, that hydrogen can’t be stored in large quantities , or produced in large quantities.
But I haven’t seen any actual DEMONSTRATIONS proving it will can be cheap. If we ever have enough off peak or off season wind and solar power, then the energy input will be cheap. The rest of the costs ?
ONE problem that I have with environmentalists and the environmental movement is that they tend to get RIGHTEOUS, and want everything absolutely snow white, sort of like hard core Republicans sometimes insist that an unfettered free market is the solution, and hard core Democrats insist that every body should have essentially free health care at tax payer expense.
The problem with that is that SOME people refuse to accept any responsibility for their own actions. Back in my younger days, I used to ride motorcycles, and I rode them hard and fast, recklessly, in fact. I was lucky, I never crashed except at low speeds off the highway where there were no oncoming trucks to make a greasy spot out of my remains. Back then, I would have paid my own bills, or gotten some minimal charity care, and become a cripple, maybe.
Now, if we get what I want, namely a basically tax paid single payer system modeled after current Western European systems, then idiots ( I WAS one then in that respect ) who crash and need a million dollars worth of care will expect ME to pay for it. Privatized pleasure, socialized costs. Maybe we can figure out ways to make idiots pay for their own idiocy, but I’m not holding my breath.
There will always be some emissions of CO2 and other pollutant gases into the atmosphere, and insisting on a religious standard in one case, NO FOSSIL FUEL ELECTRICITY , while my cows continue to fart methane, and we continue to burn coal to manufacture steel, or clear land for agriculture to feed people, is a patently ridiculous way to manage public affairs.
There are legitimate costs, and legitimate benefits, to be considered in respect to virtually ANY business. The costs of using a minor amount of natural gas, or coal if necessary, in order to provide some backup capacity, as opposed to building a LOT more wind and solar farms, etc, is almost for sure trivial, considering the infrastructure already exists. It’s sunk money, we can’t get it back, but that doesn’t mean we have to ABANDON the remaining value of that investment.
The law of diminishing returns tells us we will get less and less bang for every dollar invested in wind and solar farms. The flip side of that law tells us that the juice that can be provided at need, a few days here and there, by existing coal and gas plants is VERY valuable indeed.
Now I could be all wrong, maybe it will be economically feasible to build out renewables to such an extent we CAN safely totally do away with fossil fuel fired electricity.
But my money says doing it is going to cost an arm and a leg, because the last ten percent of capacity might only be needed a week or two in an average year.
Money is fungible , ya see. If we can use an old existing gas fired plant, or even an existing coal fired plant a few days or weeks a year, we will most likely save mega bucks.
THOSE megabucks can be put to better uses, perhaps building more mass transit, or paying for upgrading the HVAC systems of offices, homes, and factories.
My state Highway Dept spent over a million bucks preserving or recreating a pathetic little patch of so called wetland a little while back, a few miles from where I live. It will never amount to a hill of beans, because …… because this just doesn’t really work, the scale is too small. There was never any real wetland ecology there to start with. .
There was a big farm for sale a few miles down the road that DID have fifty acres or more of high quality wetlands, not to mention substantial stands of timber, springs, varied wildlife, etc, that could have been bought for a quarter of a million, and set aside as a permanent little part of the state park system, even if it were never to be “developed ” by adding picnic tables, etc.
But no, we are BY GOD going to preserve every square foot , at outrageous costs, of anything that even LOOKS remotely like a wetland, if the highway department has work to do nearby. This is environmentalism taken to an extreme , environmentalism as RELIGION.
Shutting down every last coal and gas fired plant when using them only a few days here and there, is almost for dead sure a MAJOR waste of money that could be far better spent on OTHER environmental issues.
actual proven examples of hydrogen being stored underground at any cost.
Underground hydrogen storage is the practice of hydrogen storage in underground caverns,[1][2] salt domes and depleted oil/gas fields.[3][4] Large quantities of gaseous hydrogen have been stored in underground caverns by ICI for many years without any difficulties.[5] The storage of large quantities of hydrogen underground in solution-mined salt domes,[6] aquifers[7] or excavated rock caverns or mines can function as grid energy storage[8] which is essential for the hydrogen economy.[9] By using a turboexpander the electricity needs for compressed storage on 200 bar amounts to 2.1% of the energy content.[10]
The Chevron Phillips Clemens Terminal in Texas has stored hydrogen since the 1980s in a solution-mined salt cavern. The cavern roof is about 2,800 feet (850 m) underground. The cavern is a cylinder with a diameter of 160 feet (49 m), a height of 1,000 feet (300 m) and a usable hydrogen capacity of 1,066 million cubic feet (30.2×106 m3), or 2,520 metric tons (2,480 long tons; 2,780 short tons).[11]
I figured you would come up with salt mine storage, because I google for examples before I question the existence of such examples.
Now tell us how many old salt mines are spread here and there at handy spots all over the USA, and the rest of the industrialized world.
In relation to the need, the answer is there are so few there is no hope of storing hydrogen in them in any quantity useful as backup fuel for the grid on a national or world wide basis.
How much do you think it will cost to refurbish the existing pipeline system that distributes natural gas ? You can’t use it for hydrogen, except at rather low concentrations mixed with natural gas.
And the infrastructure needed to separate hydrogen from natural gas itself would have to be built, on a grand scale, which won’t happen for peanuts.
There is a near zero chance we will quit using fire as a source of heat for various purposes. We will be generating CO2 in excess quantities so long as we continue to have an industrial civilization.
I am all for lowering the amount generated as much as possible, as a practical matter.
Maybe an analogy would help.
A lot of people I know, who need to keep an eye on their money, keep an old gas hog car ready to go, even though they use it only occasionally, when their go to car is in the shop, or they need two cars at the same time.
The fact that the backup car is a gas hog doesn’t really matter, because the cost of putting gasoline in it once a month, or once every couple of months, is trivial, in comparison to buying another newer more economical car. They can put the savings thus realized into other projects, such as new windows, or a heat pump, etc.
Keeping the old car, if the money saved by doing so is spent wisely is a bargain. Keeping some of the existing fossil fuel generating infrastructure ready as backup will likewise prove to be more economical than overbuilding wind and solar farms and small scale solar to the point we can totally rely on renewable electricity.
If we spend the savings wisely, we can lower CO2 emissions that way FASTER and probably to a greater extent than we can by going entirely renewable.
ZERO fossil fuel use is a RELIGIOUS goal, as a practical matter.
Mac, just one point. The storage, for oil, gas or hydrogen, is not in old salt mines but salt dome storage. That is hollowed out salt domes created for the specific purpose of storage.
The salt caverns are created by drilling wells into massive salt domes and injecting them with freshwater to dissolve the salts. The dissolved salt is then pumped back out and either piped several miles offshore or reinjected into disposal wells. This process, called solution mining, creates caverns of very precise dimensions that can hold anywhere from 6 to 35 million barrels of oil. The average cavern can hold 10 million barrels of oil, and at 200 feet (61 meters) wide by 2,000 feet (610 meters) high, it’s big enough to comfortably fit Chicago’s Sears Tower inside [source: DOE].
But sometimes these salt caverns spring a leak. That can happen when they misjudge where the edge of the salt dome is and hollow out the cavern too close to the edge.
The cavern in question – Bayou Choctaw Cavern 20 near Baton Rouge – now sits within 60 feet from the edge of a salt dome, defying federal requirements for a salt barrier of at least 300 feet to contain stored material. Seismic research in 2009 detected the problem and showed that the cavern had leached toward the edge of the salt dome.
Columns of salt that intrude through overlying sediment units.
No the oil is not stored at the edges of the salt dome as shown in the above illustration. That illustration shows how oil is trapped in the reservoir rock that is tilted up by the salt dome. Drillers then drill right next to the salt dome and capture the oil.
there ain’t no free lunch involving hydrogen. It has to be STRIPPED out of either water or natural gas, at substantial expense
Of course. The most cost effective use for wind or solar electricity is to replace FF power directly. But, once wind/solar grow past a certain point you’ll have surplus power at certain times, and occasional shortfalls.
As we’ve discussed at other times, it’s normal and cost effective to overbuild generation – the current grid is overbuilt to the tune of about 2.5:1 – about 1100GW of capacity vs 450GW of average generation.
It’s likely to be cost effective to overbuild wind and solar to 150% to 200% of average generation, which means that *most* of the time you’ll have a lot of very, very cheap power. Essentially free power.
And, that power can be put to use electrolyzing water into hydrogen, which can be stored in cheap underground storage and burned in cheap generators. Fuel cells may make sense, but they won’t be necessary, as efficiency really isn’t that important in this application, because the source power will be essentially free.
Hi Nick,
The studies I have seen that assume no technological breakthroughs suggest that overbuilding wind and solar capacity (by about 3 times average load) is the cheapest solution up to about 90% of average load hours. It is possible that using hydrogen, batteries or vehicle to grid (or a combination of all three) will be the cheapest way to supply the missing 10% of total load hours,using natural gas will also work and perhaps be cheaper until natural gas becomes scarce. Coal is a bad idea as it is high carbon for the energy provided, doubtful that coal will be needed.
Dennis,
The study you’re thinking of tested batteries and a “wind-gas” kind of storage in separate scenarios, but didn’t test the optimal combination of the two (due to computing constraints).
It’s a bit of a theoretical question: a 100% renewable grid is a long way off, and by then there will be many more and better solutions. There are a lot of possibilities even now (for just one instance, ammonia could be used instead of hydrogen), and there will be more.
But…3x overbuilding may sound a bit expensive to some, and it’s worth pointing out that it’s unlikely to be necessary.
The odds imo are that “we ain’t seen nothing yet” when it comes to Trump’s shortcomings.
But otoh, he might actually do something useful. That remains to be seen.
I find that I must admit that he has at least SAID something that virtually everybody knows is true. Big Pharma IS and HAS BEEN getting away with murder ever since I can remember.
There’s a perfectly easy and so far as I can see, entirely workable solution to the cost of researching new drugs. Put the research bill on the federal budget, separating it from manufacturing and distribution costs, and that would take away one major excuse Big Pharma uses to justify the outrageous costs of drugs.
If I had money in the stock market, I would start looking at any stocks that look like politically handy targets for such attacks, and be ready for pump and dump from the flip side.
There’s probably a handy dandy phrase equivalent to ” pump and dump” to describe the process by which an attack can be made on a company or industry, knocking the price down, creating a buyer’s opportunity, as a political insider, knowing the attack either won’t succeed or will be deliberately abandoned if it gets out of hand and actually does threaten to succeed.
( There is a possibility that such an attack can achieve a life of it’s own, politically, and be hard to stop. The attack on the laws against pot didn’t start as a deliberate plot against drug companies, but they resulted in such successes that the end of pot prohibition is now within sight, it’s no longer over the horizon. The activists who got the ball rolling can move on , if they want, the ball will continue to roll. )
In any case, such an attack will knock down a company’s or an industry’s stock price.
If you KNOW,as an insider, or can guess,as a cynical but savvy observer of the political scene, that the attack will be negotiated away, or abandoned, you can buy the dip, and make some sure thing bucks.
Is there an equivalent short hand term that means the opposite of pump and dump ?
I’m taking bets that he’s impeached ASAP. The intelligence services and the old guard Republicans clearly prefer Pence over Trump.
Ample justification, but are there enough R congress critters who will cross the line and hold hands with the D’s to actually do it??
I don’t think so, as things stand right now.
But let a few GOOD reporters get their hands on the evidence of just one or two obviously indefensible and underhanded deals, post inauguration, on the part of Trump and or his homies, and it could happen.
When that happens, assuming it does, I’m going to be laughing at all the Clinton partisans who got their undies in a bunch defending her secretive ways, and the hiding or destruction of what was obviously either evidence that she DID, or evidence that she DIDN’T, either way, lol, break a lot of laws, or at the least bend them into pretzels, as they rant and rage and foam at the mouth about Trump and HIS more or less equivalent tricks. There’s no doubt he will make use of the same sort of solutions, when the need arises.
But HIS story line won’t be that the deletions are only those about yoga and weddings. He ‘ll have to come up with some new topics, maybe the identities of his wig makers, and the past employment history of some of his most INTIMATE associates, lol.
McCain will lead the charge. The R’s will impeach Trump. He’s not their friend. He’s an outsider. Pence is their man.
Yes, I think McCain will lead the campaign. He’s just been elected to another 6 year term, probably his last, so his career isn’t on the line.
He’s military, so I think he respects the military and its intelligence.
Given the times he grew up in, I can’t see him trusting Russia.
He must be annoyed that he lost the presidency and the clearly lesser man, Trump, won.
And I have read the GOP would much prefer Pence to Trump.
So if McCain can get enough evidence to remove Trump, he’s probably the one best to do it. It could be part of his legacy — to save the country from Trump.
John McCain passes dossier alleging secret Trump-Russia contacts to FBI
McCain is all over Trump. The knives are out for Trump and it’s the R’s leading it. There’s no R loyalty for Trump.
I don’t know what anyone else’s definition of batshit crazy is, but I have some pretty serious concerns about this guy who is a mere two weeks from having access to our nuclear launch codes… Am I just being a little too paranoid about all of this?
Was all of what he said during the campaign something we can now just ignore?
Here’s a 9 minute compilation of clips from the campaign and interviews with him.
I especially worry about him saying that the military will not refuse to obey his orders even if what he orders is illegal or is a crime against humanity. I hope if and when we are faced with such a situation we have people in our military who are true American patriots… Good luck to all of us!
Will American troops and officers obey illegal orders?
At first glance, at large scale, the answer is no, if the orders are clearly illegal and contrary to the spirit of the law. I know some military people, including some officers, but none of high rank.
But at the small scale, there are rotten apples in every truck load, if not every individual barrel, and a determined politician or general with clout enough, meaning he has access to the WH, could easily find a few men and officers willing to play dirty, given time to look for them, and get them together in one place. A small team of specialists with access to normally confidential or secret data can assassinate almost anybody. The only real defense against that sort of assassin is to prevent him from finding out where you will be, at some given time.
And over a period of time, hopefully longer than four years, it’s possible for a strongly entrenched executive branch to gradually put yes men, instead of real men, in positions of great responsibility, and gradually transfer a military establishment loyal to its country and the rule of law into an establishment subject to the rule of men.
As Edward Abbey and others before him have said, a patriot must stand ready to defend his country from his government.
The VAST majority of men and women who wear the uniform of the USA are patriots, and in the event of need, the odds are excellent that at least a few of them will come forward and spill any rotten Trump beans involving criminal misuse the military, except maybe at a very small scale.
Sunshine can put a stop to that sort of crap, if it is brought out into the light soon enough.
“Will American troops and officers obey illegal orders?”
I don’t see much evidence they’ve ever been refused. In fact there seems to be evidence that troops peruse opportunities to do illegal things even if not ordered too.
The troops who launch ICBMs are selected based upon psychological testing. If they get an order to launch then they launch. That’s the drill. They don’t consult legal. They launch. No questions. Having said that I feel that Trump is interested in making money. That means hyping threats that sell F35’s (fighting terrorism doesn’t require F35’s) like war with China. But you don’t actually have the war with China. That’s bad for business. And the F35 is a POS. It’s just a sales gimmick.
When you don’t see much evidence that they’ve refused it has mostly to do with the fact that they haven’t been asked to do illegal shit. And when the occasional illegal order is disobeyed, you are VERY unlikely to hear about it. Such matters are dealt with internally, for the most part, and while the proceedings aren’t necessarily kept secret, they aren’t deliberately publicized.
Now war IS a thoroughly nasty business, and there will ALWAYS be some things done that aren’t kosher, but I don’t think you are dumb enough to believe that all the people in ANY really large organization always play by the rules.
Sometimes it’s NECESSARY , when the stakes are ALL THE MARBLES, that you as as individual in uniform trust the system to give you a proper order, and execute it, based on the good judgement ( OR POSSIBLE LACK THEREOF, that goes without saying) of your superiors, who are someplace else and in possession of information you don’t have.
If you do believe that the guys who are on the boomer subs , or bunkers near the silos, ought not obey their orders, all I can say is that you are dangerously short of real world sense , and have a BAD case of hate them Republican war mongers, or some such blind spot.
In that case, I refer you to the people of Poland , on the day they woke up to the German invasion, and to the guys at Pearl Harbor on a Sunday morning within the living memory of a LOT of people I know. The NEXT time, it won’t be conventional war, if it involves a REAL attack on any larger, more powerful country.
It WILL be the sort of attack that can only be prevented, hopefully, HOPEFULLY, by the threat of Mutual Assured Destruction, and we sure as hell want somebody in charge of actually launching who WILL launch if ordered to do so.
Now maybe you heard or have read that famous Kerry speech about our troops acting worse than those of Genghis Khan in Vietnam.
Now only a FOOL would deny that our guys did in fact on occasion lose their cool, or panic, and do some awful things, and that in fact a VERY VERY FEW actually did commit atrocities. And only a fool would believe Kerry told the sober truth in that speech, rather than wildly exaggerating, knowing he was throwing red meat to his partisan audience, and that he would never be held to account, because politicians can say damned near anything in a speech, at no risk except to their election or reelection.
But I personally know, or used to know, at one time or another, probably at least a hundred guys who were THERE , on the ground, actually FIGHTING. I ‘m talking about guys I know or knew well enough to routinely discuss without a qualm or second thought things that can get you locked up here and now for the rest of your days, such as dealing meth, or murdering the guy your wife ran off with. Blood kin, close blood kin. Half the people I know in these hills are the salt of the earth, but a good tenth of them would never see daylight again if convicted of ten percent of the crimes they have committed over the years.
Not a single one of my drinking buddies denies that bad shit did happen, but every last one of them sayn it was VERY MUCH the exception to the rule, rather than routine, and none of the lot says he witnessed such behaviors as shooting prisoners, or burning houses for the fun of it.
Perhaps you ought to read a little ORWELL. He’s quite famous for his portrayal of how sovereign states ( countries and governments ) can turn into monsters, but he also said quite a lot of things like this.
“”People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
If you actually know any significant number of soldiers well, you would know the absurdity of thinking they will blindly obey an order to do something that is clearly unlawful. If such an order comes down from the top, it means the executive branch, the WH, knows about it, and approves of it, and the presumption must be that it is justified for some reason not known.
If it originates at a low level, obeying it carries a very real risk of long term imprisonment, depending on what it is, because the higher up levels of leadership DON’T want scandals that harm the military, and can destroy their own careers. So they come down HARD on somebody caught looting or selling stolen supplies, etc.
Your typical man ( or woman) in an American uniform is a morally upright family man or woman, with their son in the Boy Scouts, rather than a knuckle dragger.
Now given time, with the wrong kind of politicians in power, it’s altogether possible for a military that has enormous respect for the law, as do all the modern western country militaries, to be subverted, by way of putting the wrong men in charge, who will in turn seek out OTHER men either incompetent or corrupt or both, and turned into the sort of military that Hitler created in his SS.
IF you read the news, there is no way you can fail to know that SOME uniformed cops commit murders and robberies and allow certain criminal elements to operate freely in exchange for bribes. Do you go round ranting about the cops like you do the military, because a few of them ought to be in jail, rather than jailing people?
Or do you recognize that cops are , by and large, honest, capable, and competent, with ( RELATIVELY) very few scumbags and low lifes wearing the cop uniform? The one big exception to this rule appears to be in cities where low life politicians have been in power for a long time. The police departments in such cities are prone to becoming badly corrupted, over time, because corrupt mayors and city councils put yes men in charge of them. Corruption runs downhill like sewage.
I drink a beer, sometimes two, a lot of afternoons with four or five old Vietnam vets and half a dozen or so guys who aren’t vets at all. We’re all old farts, and get together habitually about two pm at the farm shop that belongs to one of us, within a hundred feet of one of my property lines. This way we get our beer CHEAP, buying it by the case, you see, and the ONLY people there are ones we WANT there. If you want something stronger, that’s ok. Two of them HATE republicans, and the rest don’t pay much attention to politics. All of them hated their time there, and what they had to do. All of them were kids I knew growing up, and three of them are family, not nuclear, but extended. I have ample reason to see these things as I see them.
Other folks mileage WILL vary.
Trump scares me too.
Whether the f35 is or is not a good fighter is irrelevant to this discussion. It for sure has a lot of problems, but if the problems are solved, it also has some awesome strengths, and a lot of pilots who have flown one think that once they have enough seat time, and it’s debugged, they would rather fly it in combat than anything else.
There is not a lot of resistance to committing war crimes or crimes against humanity at the leading edge of the sword. Granted, in times of war it’s better to be reining in stallions than whipping mules, but gratuitous violence after action on the objective is severely psychopathic behaviour.
The list of war crimes committed by patriots is endless.
My childhood friends who were in the down and dirty, in the rain and mud in Vietnam, will admit under the right circumstances that they killed some women and children, without KNOWING for sure that they were doing the right thing, in terms of their own survival.
But after seeing a couple of other guys lose their life taking the chance on not killing women and kids , they decided that when in doubt, they would do whatever looked as if doing it would improve the oddds of their leaving alive, instead of a rubber bag.
War is a NASTY business. Nobody who knows anything about it argues otherwise, or that soldiers don’t kill people unnecessarily, in the heat of the moment, or because they are scared, or lack judgement.
And sometimes the supposed atrocities are actually quite reasonable responses to enemy actions and reactions.
My Dad’s generation fought WWII. I have spent many an evening talking about it with guys who were there, and read a lot of books about it.
Some people who may or may not know better think our troops massacred Germans out of spite and hatred, and that happened, but not even in one tenth of the numbers they throw out.
Our guys found out that the way to get Germans to surrender was to give them an ultimatum, surrender or die.
Previous to adopting that tactic, they would fight on and kill as many Yankees as they could, and then when it looked like any further resistance would get THEM killed, THEN they would surrender, AFTER killing a number of our guys.
Our guys on the ground were understandably not much interested in playing the game that way, so they shot quite a few Germans who did surrender. If I had been there, and a couple of my best friends had died in such circumstances, because the Germans held out till the last minute, and then surrendered, I would most likely have shot a couple myself. Maybe more than a couple.
The word got around, and the tactic ( partly inadvertent, partly deliberate policy) worked. Germans learned to surrender early, without killing very many Yankees, if they wanted to live themselves, and go home again.
I have sided with and defended Fernando in this forum, when he posted comments here about Venezuela and Cuba, etc.
“Chávez propped up the Cuban economy with cheap oil, and in return the Cubans sent thousands of doctors, to help start a network of health clinics. After Chávez barely survived a 2002 coup attempt, the Cubans also sent teams of military and intelligence advisers who taught their Venezuelan counterparts how to surveil and disrupt the political opposition Cuban-style, with close monitoring, harassment, and strategic arrests.”
This is from The NEW YORKER, which is not exactly the same sort of outfit as Fox News.
The more I look into it, the more obvious it becomes he tells it like it is, and has been doing so, right along.
I didn’t get the link to the article, which is a long one, even for that august publication, but anybody who wants to read some real , in depth, and balanced reporting about conditions in that unfortunate country will not find a better example in ENGLISH.
Just google Venezuela plus failed state plus New Yorker.
Hello!
There is global warming. The climate changed around 18,000 years ago when the ice sheet melted. Flooded everything in sight.
There is global cooling, glaciers form, winter stays, does not become warmer, Summer is delayed and screeches to a halt. Winter lasts 10,000 years and more! Humans give names to ice sheets, study why they form and why the ice sheets subside. The answer is the earth warms for some reason. Some nut named Milankovitch gave us a hint of what possibly takes place. Add 23.5 to 43, during the winter when the earth is tilted away from the sun, the 43rd parallel is situated at the latitude of the Arctic Circle, 66 degrees some minutes and seconds.
It’s crazy, I know, seems impossible, but it does happen. Amazing.
However, you cannot burn 10,000,000 metric tons of oil and 20,000,000 metric tons of coal each and every day and think that it is not going to influence what is happening in the atmosphere.
The oil and coal burned has to have some direct effect on the air you breathe.
Drive your car into the garage, close the doors and windows, leave the car running and see what happens to the air trapped inside of the garage. Without a fresh air source, the car’s engine will use all of the oxygen and nitrogen, combustion will cease, the engine will stall.
Use up most of the available oxygen in a lake, fish will die, a fish kill takes place. Biological oxygen demand is a real feenominon.
Have a nice day.
About a Trump impeachment.
This is from the viewpoint of a COACH or outside analyst with no skin in the game commenting on the possibility.
The R’s are too numerous for an impeachment effort to succeed, that’s obvious to even a six year old, unless some of them cross the party line, abandoning the home turf, joining with the enemy, in a manner of speaking. That’s tough for a politician who knows damned well he owes his office to the support of his party, which is the case in nearly every case. Sanders is effectively alone, in the Senate, as an independent, that should make my point clear.
But there are some R’s who are from states where independents and D’s are rather numerous, the sort who are often referred to contemptously as RINO , republican in name only. But being sympathetic to more liberal positions and values allows them to win in their states, that’s also obvious. And if they DON’T win……. A RINO is in a far better position than anybody else in the R party to cross the line, because he is not endangering his own position to the same extent as an R from a more conservative state.
So … count up the RINO’s and things look better already for the D’s in terms of a possible impeachment effort. They will be the first to cross over, and there are as many as six of them , depending on who you ask, any given day.
Then consider that while the press really does go after any big time politician with a vengeance, once there’s blood in the water, the more leftish to middle of the road msm seems to be larger and more powerful than the rightish more conservative leaning wing, at least in my personal estimation.
And in my opinion, the leftish to middle press is HIGHLY motivated, above and beyond the usual state of affairs, to go for a big bite of Trump’s ample backside. If they get the ball rolling, the rest of the msm press, the Fox wing , will join in, helping spread the bad news ( for Trumpsters ) while doing so. The Fox wing won’t have any choice in this matter, except to soft pedal it’s coverage. Ratings “trump” everything else in the news biz, lol.
So again things look a little better from the D point of view.
Next, it’s perfectly safe to say that a very substantial part of the D party coalition, and a lot of D office holders, not to mention millions of independent voters, and a SIGNIFICANT number of big R Republicans, so called conservatives, and a few REAL conservatives, would LOVE to see Trump impeached, although the office holders and D party establishment will mostly coyly pretend this is not true, until they deem it safe to say so in publicly that it IS true. This sort of pretense is sop politics.
Bottom line, speaking as an impartial observer, my opinion is that there is a very real chance he will be impeached, if any good evidence justifying impeachment comes to light. ( I’m talking about evidence which cannot be disproven, or or pooh poohed into the public ignoring it, the way Clinton pooh poohed her partisans into giving her a free pass on her email problem. )
I can’t estimate the odds , speaking as an impartial observer, other than to say there is a significant well above zero possibility he WILL be impeached, especially if the D’s win big in the mid term elections.
At the personal level, given that I believe , as some comedian put it , that the very best Trump joke of them all is TRUMP HIMSELF ( although he is NOT to be underestimated) my gut feeling is that the odds are at least fair , and maybe good, that he WILL be impeached.
The odds FOR impeachment will go up if Trump continues to bad mouth the various safety net policies in place now, and really tries to dismantle them, because his supporters are nekkid apes, under their clothes, just like a Harvard professor, and subject like everybody else to falling prey to the cognitive dissonance disease.
A sharp brick upside the head works WONDERS in terms of curing THAT disease. TENS of MILLIONS of Trump voters and supporters are already DEPENDENT on those same safety nets, and will switch sides in a hurry, if they suddenly realize they TRULY ARE at risk of being thrown under the one percenter’s bus.
But Trump’s not stupid, when it comes to reading the political tea leaves, and while he got where he is by badmouthing those policies, he is probably smart enough not to do enough damage to them to seriously endanger his own position and reelection. So my guess is that the rhetoric along that line will be gradually softened, and no truly major changes implemented in this respect. Some corners along these lines will be cut, as many corners as he thinks he can get away with, in my opinion, but again I doubt any wholesale level changes will be implemented , in terms of Medicare, Social Security, etc.
He can probably get away with gutting OCARE, because not very many of his supporters are ON OCARE , or expect to be , except if FORCED onto it. But damned near all of them are expecting to collect their Social Security and Medicare bennies, etc, and a HELL OF A LOT of them are already old, already ON these programs, and a hell of a lot more are old enough they are already seriously thinking about the day they quit work and start collecting rather than PROVIDING tax money.
The thing that really worries me about Trump is that he will have plenty of support from the R controlled legislative branch and thus get away with mayhem on the environmental front. He might also stick his mouth in a place that gets us involved in an unnecessary war, but the odds of that are trivial , in my opinion, compared to the odds that environmental laws and regulations will be rewritten, or ignored.
Clinton and her fans were denied the WH, but there IS a real possibility they will get the last laugh.
I hope my old buddy HB is gradually coming around to the realization that I am NOT a Trumpster.
If he hangs around here, he will find I will be posting plenty of raw red meat PERFECTLY suited to his appetite, lol, unless either Dennis and Ron indicate they want me to back off.
I won’t be having much to say about HRC from here on out, unless somebody posts comments to the effect that Trump stole the election , versus her losing due to running a poor campaign, etc.
Fake/True news- who can tell these days.
“Comey’s family threatened by Russian agents….. unless he played to Putins script”
Putin stole the election, not Trump.
Personally I believe that it’s complete and total bullshit that Putin would actually threaten the family of the head of the FBI. The spy and counterspy and espionage game isn’t played that way, because retaliation is SURE to be SWIFT and SURE. Putin has a family of his own, and many thousands of important underlings in positions where assassinating any one of them would be child’s play for professionals with government backing. It’s more of the same sort of bullshit that losers invent to justify their losses in their own self pitying eyes.
Now as to whether Putin “stole the election” by hacking the D party emails, and releasing them, that’s altogether possible, but so far as I can see, it hasn’t been proven, to MY satisfaction. If the shoe were on the other foot, most of the D partisans, about ninety nine percent of them, would be pooh poohing this story as Republicans crying foul.
They would be saying that while maybe the latter day commies ( they’re still close kin to commies, but something different these days) stole the emails, it’s the R’s own fault they had any emails worth stealing that would result in their losing the election, if publicized.
If the D’s hadn’t been playing dirty, and not only playing dirty, but playing dirty inside the confines of THEIR OWN PARTY PROCESSES,against their own, the release of any stolen emails would have HELPED them win rather than hindering them.
There is very little question in my mind that the Clinton secret server email controversy cost her millions of votes, but she won the popular vote ANYWAY. And there is no question in my mind that the emails hacked from other D party sources cost the D’s MORE millions of votes.
But let’s just pretend for a moment that a couple of true blue American guys n girls working for the New York Times found out about all these less than savory goings on inside the D party, by way of somebody inside the party with access to the emails getting pissed enough to spill the rotten beans. Maybe some body got fired, and wanted to retaliate for instance, or was “cheated” out of promotion that should have been theirs, in their eyes, etc, and called up the modern day equivalent of the guys who broke the Nixon scandals.
Now would the D’s crying foul be crying about the NYT stealing the election? Some would, no doubt, millions would in my opinion.
Nobody except good little boys and girls who have badges to prove they never missed Sunday School for years at a time believes that any political party plays by the rules when it’s convenient and deemed safe to break the rules.
In the real world, you take your chances, whether by going in to work on icy roads, or by bending and breaking the rules. If you have an accident on the way, or you get caught, you pay the price.
The D’s got caught, and a case can be made that they paid the price, but it’s not a very good case in my opinion, because the indisputable fact is that Trump is IN and Clinton is OUT because Trump won and Clinton LOST the three big Rust Belt States that Trump WON.
I personally believe that a STRONG case can be made that Clinton lost those three states, which are normally safe turf for D politicians, not because of the emails, etc, but rather because she fucked up royally in not campaigning like she meant it there, spending her time instead hobnobbing with banksters and corporate execs and various identity issue voters who are important, ethically and morally, but not numerous enough to matter in a presidential election.
The people who USED to work in the Rust Belt who lost their jobs to globalization, or FEAR losing their jobs , well now, THOSE folks ARE numerous enough to matter, in terms of winning and losing their states.
Nose in the air well educated D types INVARIABLY get their pone ( courtesy of Twain) as members of professions or owners of businesses, or workers in businesses, that are not endangered much if at all by globalization. Between THEIR real world worries, and the worries of D’s who actually punch time clocks, or work in offices in industries where EVERYBODY’s job ultimately depends on that time clock being punched, there is a gap as vast as the gap between east and west, a chasm that makes the Grand Canyon look like it was dug by a couple of little boys with Daddy’s shovel in Momma’s new flower bed.
Let’s suppose for a minute you are a white middle class professional, with an eighteen year old daughter, well raised, as you see it, who starts hanging out with black guys or Muslims at college. You will ok with that, but if you say it doesn’t worry you just a little, if she show’s up with a minority or Muslim or other unusual boyfriend, and Grandmother and Grandfather, conventional fifties types of American men and women, are still alive at eighty five, the odds are about ninety nine percent that you are lying if you say it won’t create a serious family issue.
Now let’s suppose she comes home with a guy who is not only a different color, or from a different cultural background , but obviously is not a legit student, and he has way the fuck too much money, and doesn’t know how to talk or act in your house. NOW try pretending you don’t have a problem.
I AM one of the sort of people who works in Michigan, punching a time clock. I KNOW how such people feel about globalization, and about Clinton hobnobbing with the one percenters, not even BOTHERING TO TALK working class talk to us, spending her time ELSEWHERE, walking the walk with the global one percenter elite, collecting a quarter of a million at a pop for trivial little speeches , kept secret, mind you.
For her, and her campaign team, and the party as a whole, to assume that such voters are safely in the bag, when they are either already out of work, or worried sick about being out of work, is about as colossal and STUPID a mistake as could be made.
Times have changed. It still takes people who hold deeply to certain values and political opinions and are loyal to certain party a long time to realize that things have changed, because we don’t LIKE to admit even to ourselves that our friends are taking us for granted, or worse, fucking us over.
But change HAS happened, and even redneck construction guys have smart phones, and are cruising the net, reading the ALTERNATIVE press, during the fifteen minutes they are allowed to put their tools down between seven am and twelve noon to catch their breath. Their daddies got their news from the three big networks, and the local paper, assuming their daddies read anything at all, which is not a safe assumption.
The foot soldiers of both the D and R parties these days don’t trust their parties any more, and they are desperate for change. The working class voters who voted FOR Trump in those three states weren’t so much voting FOR him , as sending an emphatic middle finger message to the Clinton camp.
Clinton had it in the bag, if she had had sense enough to listen to Bill C, who is in my estimation the smartest, most perceptive politician alive today, in terms of having a super sensitive finger on the pulse of the public, and knowing how to connect with them, on a personal basis. He tried to tell her, and her campaign team, that they were campaigning in the WRONG places.
The long time safe D voters who put Trump in the White House would have been willing to overlook the bankster one percenter globalization walk , if she had come home to them, and pretended she still loved them, and swore she would not stray again, but she wasn’t smart enough to do so.
In relation to my seven forty seven am rant, this sort of news is the kind of thing that both D’s and R’s could have counted on not being widely publicized twenty or thirty years ago, making it safe , or at least much safer, to vote against the interests of their constituencies, and in favor of big biz .
The net has changed things, and more people have internet in their pocket these days than used to have daily papers in their homes. This sort of news cannot be kept quiet anymore, and when elections are close…….
““On Wednesday night, amid Senate votes for a bill that brought us one step closer to repealing the Affordable Care Act, a bipartisan group voted against an amendment to that bill proposed by Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar that could have paved the way for cheaper drugs to be imported from Canada. While a surprising number of Republicans (12) voted for the amendment, 13 Democrats voted against it. The amendment was rejected by a 46-52 vote.”
Basically the amendment would have allowed drugs to be imported from Canada, where big pharma sells patented drugs far cheaper to them there furriners than to true blue gen wine ‘Merkins.
And that ain’t right. And anybody with fucking dimes worth of moral integrity will say so loud and clear.
Of course it’s the R party’s fault , to at least twice or three times the extent it’s the D party’s fault that this sorry state of affairs persists, but still ……. thirteen D’s voted against this amendment.
In politics, you don’t so much have friends as you have allies, from the man on the street’s pov, and your allies are not necessarily to be trusted. Ya gotta keep an eye on them, and the internet has changed things, making it possible.
A couple of editors in the office of a big city paper, or a couple of execs at big three tv network no longer control whether the man on the street knows about this sort of sausage making.
I’m sure our Outstanding Leader has a plan.
(I’m trying to get in the swing of things– and North Korea and Cheeto Boy seem a good fit)
Explaining Oil’s Political Clout
There’s an obvious explanation. But it’s false.
Let me start with two obvious points – only one of which is true. The first is that the oil industry has huge political influence. The second is that its clout reflects the industry’s economic heft.
The first point is definitely true. As Political Wire recently observed:
“Nearly every to top level appointment in Trump’s cabinet has ties to the oil and gas industries or is a vocal climate change denier. This includes former Gov. Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy, Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator , Gov. Nikki Haley as U.N. Ambassador, Rep. Ryan Zinke as Secretary of Interior, Wilbur Ross as Secretary of Commerce and Sen. Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. In addition, Gen. Michael Flynn is a former oil industry lobbyist and Larry Kudlow, who is expected to be head of the Council of Economic Advisers, is a longtime climate denier and defender of Koch Industries.”
That’s real clout. Trump’s cabinet is an extreme case, but it’s been obvious for a long time that the GOP and the oil industry were joined at the hip. Just look at the last few GOP platforms and look at how much they have to say about expanding drilling and cutting regulations on the industry.
It’s the second point that’s false. The industry’s political influence far outstrips its economic heft. True, it’s a huge industry, with $220 billion in U.S. revenues in 2014 (before the bottom fell out of oil prices). Exxon, the industry leader, has a current market capitalization of $375 billion. That’s big bucks. But it’s not that big in the scheme of things. That $220 billion in revenue is just a hair over 1% of our $18 trillion economy. And Exxon’s market worth is only about 2/3 of an Apple or a Google.
Mostly agree Nick, but I have a couple different additional ways of looking at it:
1. The fossil fuel industry has been, for the most part, far more profitable than any other single industry, ever. They lose money hand over fist in the bust times, but the big boys are able to ride it out, and usually acquire loads of valuable assets (both above ground and below) at pennies on the dollar. During the busts, much of the losses are absorbed by naive small investors in companies that go bankrupt.
During the boom times, Oil and Gas are usually at the top of the list of most profitable companies, both on a margin percentage basis, and in absolute dollar amounts. They can buy a lot of influence with just a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars of pure net profit.
Apple and Google have large market caps, true, but their margins are usually smaller. I think in terms of absolute dollar profit, tech does not beat Oil and Gas during the boom years.
2. Assets. Tech assets are all intangible and ephemeral. What value would we place on Intel’s chip fab factory that was used to make 8088 processors in the 80’s? Zero. Patents expire, technology advances. But oil in the ground in 1980 was worth a lot of money. The same oil still in the ground today is worth even more.
The total dollar value of all the proved reserves in the world times the $/barrel price??? … VERY large. Add in the unproved, the yet-to-be-discovered, the resources, assume some technology advances to move those resources into reserves and lower the cost of existing reserves… that is an unimaginable amount of money…. quadrillions of dollars? I don’t know for sure. It’s a lot. But it’s value rests entirely on some very very crucial assumptions.
Safe assumptions:
Technology will improve, lowering costs and moving resources into reserves
Discovery will continue to find oil and gas
Not-so-safe assumptions:
A growing market will exist for their products
That market will continue to be extremely inelastic (few substitutes available)
Externalities will continue to be ignored (the cost to the environment is not paid by the producer)
So where does a lobbyist with a quadrillion dollar asset to protect invest her hookers and blow?
She tries to shore up those not-so-safe assumptions:
Attack the substitutes like renewables and electric cars to preserve market inelasticity
Deny and suppress even the possibility that externalities exist (like climate change)
Maybe try to raise the birthrate to ensure a growing market by attacking abortion and contraception??? … (now I sound like a conspiracy theorist…LOL)
One thing that always bothers me when economists talk about the importance of given industries and companies is that they usually fail – in day to day talk- to point out a really important fact.
IF Exon, were to vanish in a puff of smoke taking away all the physical assets of the company, it would make one hell of a difference, even though Exon owns less than two percent of the assets of the oil industry, according to what I have read. Didn’t save the link, should have.
If Microsoft or Apple were to do the same, but leaving behind their existing software, it wouldn’t really make much difference at all, except to the stock holders. The rest of the computer industry would happily step in and fill the void very quickly indeed.
This leads me to wonder just how long, in principle, such behemoths as Apple and Microsoft can dominate their industry or AN industry. I suppose the answer is as long as they stay ahead of the competition in terms of the customer strongly preferring their product.
This leads me to speculate that there may come a time when the computing industry hits a wall in terms of innovation, so that a typical customer can buy an entirely generic machine and generic that will do everything he needs or wants done without paying the MS or Apple price premium. I have owned up before now that I’m the biggest computer klutz in this forum, but it appears to me that the open source movement really does have the potential to eventually slay such Goliaths as Apple and Microsoft.
If I were the HR manager of a huge company, and working up an employment application to be used for every incoming new employee, it would most definitely have a space on it for the potential new employee to indicate if she can demonstrate proficiency in any open source software.
And I would see to it that the word would get around, quietly, that kids coming thru the door who don’t NEED MS or Apple to do their entry level jobs are preferentially hired, everything else equal, if they can use generic computers running open source software.
If what I read is accurate, some entire countries are in the process of freeing themselves of the expense of paying year after year to RENT the software they use for day to day operations, saving megabucks in the process.
But it’s been a while since I have seen any news on this front.
It’s striking that both of these comments are about the fact that Oil & Gas and related industries are far less competitive than Tech industries. That’s partly due to the barriers to entry of new competition caused by physical infrastructure, and partly due to aggressive efforts to prevent competition.
As a result, research shows that people with comparable skills and experience are paid substantially more in the O&G industry. Same is true of finance and health. On the other hand, people in food related industries are paid substantially less for comparable skills.
That’s what so remarkable about Elon Musk: he’s broken into both the car industry and space travel, both of which have had enormous barriers to entry.
At this point I think the transition to EVs is irreversible, but the world would be far better off if it had happened a long time ago – the first hybrid-electric was invented by Porsche in 1904.
BTW, Mac, I would argue that the productivity gains due to deep familiarity with high quality and industry standard software are far more important than the licensing costs. Managers who try to save money on computers, software, office space, etc at the cost of employee productivity are saving pennies and losing dollars. I’ve always stayed with Wintel PCs, even though they’re arguably technically inferior to Macs, due to their being a business standard, the greater availability of application software and the cost of an additional learning curve. OTOH, I use iPhones (and iPads) for the same reasons: the much greater availability of software, and the lack of an additional learning curve (because they were really the first smart phones).
Hi Nick,
It’s good to see you back, I was afraid you might have moved on to some other forum. I don’t agree with you all the time, but you always offer strong arguments, and I read them with care , and learn something frequently.
I have no problem at all agreeing that WHEN you can make good use of them, proprietary hardware and soft ware are EXCELLENT investments.
But it’s perfectly obvious to me that there are literally millions and millions of people using computers for ordinary every day cut and dried tasks that can be handled perfectly well using generic software so as to avoid paying Bill Gates year after year after year…….. forever???
Patents eventually expire, but copyrights are goddamned near immortal.
The guy at the nearest community college who teaches any and or all of the computer classes offered there tells me that once you can run Windows, you can learn to run open source in four to six weeks well enough to do any basic computer task. He’s a big Linux fan himself.
He says there is no doubt at all that the expense of training low level employees to use open source software is trivial compared to the potential savings.
But it won’t happen, because nobody wants to bother with the transition, at least not here in the USA and other rich countries. You are totally correct in saying that because we ARE standardized on Windows and pc’s we will stay on them, due to inertia. Nobody wants to spend a few hours showing a new shipping clerk how to do using open source.
BUT…… At the last place I worked, as a maintenance tech, the SAME four or five guys have been keeping inventory and preparing the same documents that must go with every driver picking up a load……. for over twenty YEARS. I wonder how much Bill Gates has made off of the plant owner just for the four computers these guys use.
Are you acquainted with the Dvorak keyboard? It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, in terms of easy typing, but the various vested interests with skin in the qwerty game made damned sure it never caught on, back in the days when you had to build a typewriter to EITHER the qwerty OR the Dvorak layout.
A O E U I are my left hand home row keys and D H T N S are my right home row. You can do over two thousand common words on the home row alone versus only couple of hundred on the home row using qwerty. You hit mostly right left right left with either hand, hardly any two or three letter one hand strings, hardly any reaching for keys.
A few people DO know about Dvorak, and some of them have clout enough to get it installed as a freebie on just about every desktop Windows machine and a lot of Macs too. All you have to do to use it is turn it on. I have a short cut icon that toggles from Dvorak to qwerty on my tool bar. I was never able to master touch typing using qwerty, in spite of putting hundreds of miserable hours into the effort , but I got my show on the road with Dvorak in a matter of about forty hours, using a free tutorial program.
Expert Dvorak typists can type circles around expert qwerty typists. I’m old, and my fingers are stiff and arthritic, and clubby , but I don’t have any trouble at all doing sixty to seventy words per minute. I’m sure that if I had learned Dvorak back in my younger days, I could have typed well over a hundred words per minute without any conscious effort.
I have asked about eight or ten public school teachers who teach keyboarding and computer classes their opinion of it, and so far, not a one of them had even HEARD of Dvorak.
It’s good to see you back
Thanks. It’s always fun or interesting to debate/banter with you.
you can learn to run open source in four to six weeks well enough to do any basic computer task.
Four to six weeks. If he’s assuming a standard 40 hours, that’s about 200 hours. At $28 per hour (the US median average white collar hourly wage) that’s an investment of $5,600. For me that would be (ahem) a lot more.
Now, I pay $80 per year for 5 licenses for MS-Office. Replacing that appears to give a return on investment of 1.4%, or much less.
He says there is no doubt at all that the expense of training low level employees to use open source software is trivial compared to the potential savings.
You don’t need MS-Office for low level employees: you can buy awfully cheap PCs and just use the basic word processing “accessory” programs that come built in. You don’t need PCs: you can give them the modern equivalent of dumb terminals for simple repetitive tasks. Non professionals often use dedicated software for the task at hand (inventory, communication, payroll, etc., etc) anyway.
Seriously, AFAICT the only justification for investing in alternatives to the Wintel monopoly (as annoying as it is) is the availability of very, very cheap labor. That applies to bored teenagers and a lot of developing countries, but not many people in the US.
Hi Nick,
He means that once you have the abc’s down, which he teaches in his one semester freshman level course, which meets for two hours, twice a week, you could learn the abc’s of open source software in half a semester, in his class room,four hours per week, with the first course as prereq. That’s considerably less than forty hours of freshman level community college student time in class, but add in study and practice time, homework time, and the student probably has to put in around another thirty to forty hours.
The cost of teaching such a course would be trivial, since the labs and computers are there already, and the only real additional expense is for the instructor. He’s not getting paid a hell of a lot, that’s for sure.
I doubt if you would ever argue that you would prefer to hire LESS knowledgeable employees. More knowledge, everything else equal, indicates more initiative, on the part of the potential new employee. Everything else held EQUAL, that’s reason enough alone to take the young woman who can run open source.
The problem is that the community college does not WANT the course taught. I leave it to you as homework to figure out WHY.
HINT… It just might have a little something to do with the awesome size of the bureaucracy that has decided on MS, since that’s all it knows itself, and where it finds political and business support.
The typewriter companies, and the typing teachers establishment sure as hell were never interested in Dvorak, which is way the hell superior to qwerty, and they never will be.
Here and there the odd individual teacher may exhibit a little interest in experimentation, but her head is very quickly hammered down to the level of the go along to get along crowds head.
Mac,
Let’s back up. Are you talking about 1)installing and maintaining open source Operating Systems? or 2) programming applications to run under OS OS’s? or 3) using competitors to Microsoft Office, like OpenOffice/LibreOffice?
Each of the three are distinct skill sets (though 1 and 2 are closer to each other than 3).
“BTW, Mac, I would argue that the productivity gains due to deep familiarity with high quality and industry standard software are far more important than the licensing costs. “
When I see stuff like that I get a little hot under the collar. I have had it up to here with Microsoft’s “high quality and industry standard software”! Their upgrades are more about making their older software obsolete so they can force users into upgrading, than about technical and usability improvements. In some cases the upgrade from one MS software version to another introduces a steeper learning curve than switching to Open Source equivalent would.
Case in point. I am a fairly technical person (geek) and switched to OpenOffice/LibreOffice for my own personal use, when OO first became available. So one day I have to use MS Office and surprise! Everything looks different (“ribbon” interface) and I cant find shit anymore! I have to spend time figuring out how to do stuff I used to be able to do with my eyes closed! In about twenty years of using Open Source software, I can’t recall feeling quite as humiliated by an “upgrade”.
The switch from Windows 7 to 8 was another “biggie”, ostensibly so the interface across all devices with an operating system from MS would be consistent. So we now have a MS desktop OS with an interface that was designed for use with mobile, touch screen devices. In the meantime Windows Phone has been a colossal flop and MS has very little hope of ever regaining a foothold in the phone OS market now dominated by Android but, we still have an interface on our desktops/laptops that should feel very familiar to users of the now defunct Windows Phone OS! Great! AFAIK, Apple has, wisely IMO, not tried to make their desktop OS look and feel like iOS used on their tablets and phones.
However many people are employed by Microsoft, they are a minute fraction of the software developers worldwide. I am a supporter and avid user of open source software and find the idea that everyone who uses a computer has to pay for a MS license to do so, absurd. I actually go out of my way to use an open source alternative, even if I have to miss out on some “bells and whistles” for a while. Open source software has a way of catching up and then surpassing it’s proprietary counterparts! I think there’s a good chance Open Source operating systems might be embraced in developing countries first, then spread to Europe and finally the US.
One note about open source versus proprietary software. I was introduced t the concept of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) through my interest in open source software. Obviously, vendors of software that survive by selling software are threatened by open source, free software and I have seen my fair share of the spreading of FUD in the software arena. I have also seen similar tactics used in relation to the use of vitamins and supplements, including mega-doses of certain vitamins, versus patented prescription drugs. You see the same thing with EVs, in fact any time an entrenched, powerful, wealthy organization is threatened by disruptive competition, I have learned to expect and look out for “FUD”, with respect to whatever threatens it. As a result, the tactics being used by Javier and the troll brigade are eerily familiar to me, with his emphasis on uncertainties and his stressing that “the science is not settled yet”. Way to go! but, I see right through them and their corporate backers.
For an interesting view of browser and OS market share over the past fifteen years, click on the links below.
Uncertainty is a core issue in science. I understand that “a fairly technical person” doesn’t get that.
Just so you know, I consider myself fairly technical compared to many of the people who comment on this site. On the other hand, I have selected the components and assembled a PC on which I can boot any one of four operating systems, Windows 7, Mac OSX, Linux (Ubuntu) and one you’ve probably never heard of, Haiku. Why did I do it? Maybe just to prove that it can done, maybe I was just bored but, anyway, I thought it was an interesting challenge!
I can design, do the financial analysis and install solar PV systems but, I do not have a degree, not even a BSc. to be honest, so I guess that makes me only “a fairly technical person” in this crowd. To the average man on the street I’m probably an uber-geek. I did get three years higher education in electrical engineering and my engineering training taught me that in a situation of uncertainty, you compensate with a factor of safety, you know, do stuff to eliminate or at least reduce the risk of catastrophic failure.
I understand that “a fairly technical person” someone lacking engineering training doesn’t get that.
A whole lot of ‘technical skills’ are utterly useless in a natural setting. We don’t need Haiku, Hurd or anything else along those lines to live happy, comfortable lives. In fact, they more often than not appear to get in the way of that.
And yet we continue to chase, with blissful glee as if under the spells of hallucinogenics, our ‘assorted demises’, wrapped up in tantalizing ribbons of technology.
Much of our lives, or illusions thereof (zombifications), and illusions of what we think we need, are manufactured for us, and which we buy into, hook, line and sinker.
So I think many of us need to wake up, AlanFromTheIslandboy, before we can’t anymore. We are trapped in a very real waking dream. A Plato’s Cave. A Matrix.
I certainly appreciate the many thankless hours put in by developers of open source software. Their work improves the whole software ecosystem enormously – it provides competition and new ideas and helps keep the monopolies honest and cheap.
I suppose I’m a little like the operator of commercial vehicles who’s waiting for a good electric alternative from a major manufacturer.
I ran my whole (small) IT empire on open source before I retired. Best thing (apart from zero licence costs) was the ability to fix/tweak things in the original product.
I now do all my computing in the cloud using a Chromebook. Fast, cheap, reliable. Best computer I’ve ever owned.
[And, files are backed up locally automatically, in case I’m ever off line.]
I ran my whole (small) IT empire on open source before I retired. Best thing (apart from zero licence costs) was the ability to fix/tweak things in the original product.
Yeah, I’ve done that. But…it takes a lot of time. It’s not efficient. And, if you’re supporting other people, you can never take a vacation!
I now do all my computing in the cloud using a Chromebook
Yes, that’s the modern equivalent of a dumb terminal. Good for basic stuff, not so good for using AutoCad (which isn’t available on Linux either, AFAIK).
~ The FLOSsiety Poem~ A Peak Oil Barrel Exclusive
A little poetry
For a FLOSSiety
Gliese 581g
Or Hyperdemocracy?
‘Which is more easy?’,
Asks Caelan To Nick G?
“I suppose I’m a little like the operator of commercial vehicles who’s waiting for a good electric alternative from a major manufacturer.” ~ Nick G
A major manufacturer that’s also run as a cooperative, within an equitable culture and real, pure democratic government…
A ‘FLOSS society’…
That’s the challenge…
Harder than going to…
Mars, Titan, or maybe even Gliese 581g?
Impossible?
Maybe any technology is impossible, if we are…
And only comes around for a little while…
Not long enough to make any extraterrestrial niches viable…
Civilization is no more than an accelerator of gradient reduction. Unfortunately, because everything is seen as a gradient to be reduced and armed with our new arsenal of technological tools, we are consuming most everything in our omnivorous metabolism. Energy has flowed, but mostly through fossil fuel gradient reduction which will soon be over. The matter in the nutrient cycle of civilization never has flowed, it has been dispersed in an entropic manner. Soils and phosphorus have ended-up in the oceans while most everything else has ended-up in a landfill. Mature ecosystems have been consumed and replaced with monocultures whose days are limited. Your average farmland has had the life squeezed out of it and depends upon technologically produced additives to be productive. Additionally there’s no way to render harmless most of the technology relatedl pollution which accumulates in the biosphere. Each city is building a waste mountain, like giant cellular waste vacuoles that will fester long after the technological organism dies.
Some say the answer is to filter the oceans for uranium or capture CO2 from the air. This is ridiculous when we don’t even have enough net energy to maintain the existing infrastructure and human populations. And by the way, world governments want more growth, obviously a well-considered plan for the future. Dissipative structures require a cold-sink so that high grade energy may flow through them and be exhausted into that sink. The two largest sinks on the planet apart from the cold blackness of space above our atmospheric blanket, are the Arctic and Antarctic and they are rapidly losing ice mass. The difference in temperature between the tropics and poles are what create the dissipative structures of our weather, the winds and currents. When they’re gone and the heat doesn’t move as effectively, then many ecosystem and technological structures will be unable to adequately exhaust their metabolic waste heat and will perish as when nearly 15,000 people died in a heat wave in France in 2003. It’s a small step from near-equillibrum to equillibrium when things get too hot.
Sounds like there might be changes afoot, eh? 😉
“the availability of abundant, low-cost energy allowed economists to abandon earlier concerns with the exhaustion of natural resources and represent material life instead as a system of monetary circulation – a circulation that could expand indefinitely without any problem of physical limits. Economics became a science of money ….”
Long on opinion, but short on facts.
The biggest heat sink in the Planet is the oceans that have an average temperature of just 3.9°C.
Polar caps are a feature of Ice Ages. For 90% of the past 540 million years the Earth didn’t have any polar caps.
Polar regions act as a heat sink by radiating heat to space. As the sea surface is almost always warmer than the polar lower troposphere, sea ice acts as an insulator limiting the amount of heat that is lost, specially during the 6 month long winter night. It is actually a negative feedback. The colder the planet the less heat is lost at the poles, and vice versa.
When Arctic sea ice experienced an unusual decline in 2012 due to storms, polar scientists were surprised by the strong rebound in sea ice that took place in 2012-13. With less sea ice the sea surface lost a lot more heat freezing more solidly, while the increased humidity caused more snow.
The poles regulate to the amount of heat flowing through them. If the planet is warmer there is less need for extensive sea ice. During the Holocene Climatic Optimum the Arctic became free of sea ice during summers. In a warmer world, with more CO2 than the previous glacial period, agriculture finally became possible, and was discovered independently seven times in a few thousand years.
“Polar regions act as a heat sink by radiating heat to space.” ~ Javier
Radiating heat to space is heat sinking?
Northen Hemisphere land vs global land and oceans, with trendlines, using the Hadley CRU database which goes back to 1850
Has anybody seen any analysis as to why there is that recent divergence between the northern hemisphere trend and global over the last few years? And is the trend real – e.g. have the numbers been corrected for the sampling biases introduced by ships engine intake measurements that have been recently noted (would that impact the south more as it has much more water than land compared to the north)?
A few thoughts, too many and my brain gets cobwebs.
I thought a nom de plume of Chuck D. would be a good one to use. As in Charlie Darwin, naturalist non pareil, the God of Natural Selection, Origins of the Species, that nonchalant jazz.
Also, as in ‘chucked’, gone, not extant, extinct. Those things and other stuff.
But I’m not gonna. Somebody else can, like Charles Darwin. Can’t have a Darwinian world without the one and only Charles Darwin and his dog, hms beagle. har
Anybody see the video of the baby orangutan clinging to its mother dying of starvation?
That lazy mother orangutan should go get a job and stop hanging out in the jungles that no longer belong to her.
Humans are there now, she has to get with the times or die.
It’s a Darwinian world and humans are going to make sure it is.
Chuck D has been taken – “Once again, back is the incredible, Rhyme animal, The uncannable D, Public Enemy Number One” – maybe not in the Darwin “… endless forms most beautiful” class, but still pretty good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_D
The only real hope for the rest of the biosphere, and maybe half of the nekkid apes still alive and young today, may be that some really radical outfit creates and releases a bug that is unstoppable, catching, and permanent, in terms of rendering every woman exposed to it sterile after having ONE child. I hate to sound sexist, but after giving the matter due thought, I can’t remember hearing about any men actually having babies, lol.
Somebody would eventually find a cure, or a vaccine that works, but with a little luck, that might take twenty years or so , lol. By then the population would have fallen quite a bit, and likely continue to fall, because with all the resources freed up as the result of having few children around, women could move up in the world a lot faster than they have been in recent times, and that’s pretty fast already, in a lot of places.
With all that extra time and money on their hands the industrial complex would wind up and suck the planet dry of resources. Plus any children that did grow up, would be spoiled, self-interested, domineering brats. Add to that a large number of people moving up into a material rich societal level and both the natural and resource world would not stand a chance. The robots could take care of the old rich people. The poor people would have to fend for themselves.
Any rich person can use resources and pollute a hundred times faster than a rich person.
Did you ever wonder why most science deniers are right wing republicans? And why most who accept science are left leaning democrats?
Those were rhetorical questions, I think I already know the answer. Most right wing republicans come from a Fundamentalist Christian background. They are trained almost from birth to deny science. They don’t believe their ancient ancestors were apes. So when you start out denying one science, evolution, it just naturally follows that you will distrust science on other subjects as well, like climate science.
When your go to guy is a Talking Snake who hangs out with the Rib Woman down by the Magical Tree, it can only be The Truth!
We downloaded the Twitter bios for people who follow either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. That ended up being about 8 million tiny 160-character self-portraits. (Curious about how we did this? Read our methodology.)
Mostly the profiles paint a story of identity: parental status, professional and personal accomplishments, hobbies, niche interests, a favorite Bible quote or the type of car someone drives. The bios suggest a divided nation, where a single word, like NASCAR or Buddhist, reveals a person’s politics.
Thanks R2D2, that site is a lot of fun. It is just so easy to see the mindset of the average Trump or Clinton supporter.
The word was Christian.
And the term here was Human Rights.
Ron, perhaps the best way to deal with climate change science is think of belief in it as a kind of continuum, just like as all things in life. The truth in this case can be placed between believing in a changing climate that’s due only to human causes and believing in a climate changing that’s due only to natural (non-human) reasons. Again, truth is somewhere between those ends.
The thoughts of what we could be doing to deal with changing climate also lay along this spectrum. On one side are those extremists and activists who desire humanity make massive changes to alter lifestyles. Then the other end is represented by the conspiracy theorists who deny everything.
So taking the middle ground within the spectrums, there are probably some changes mankind can make to cool down the climate. Things like were done in the past to remove pollution, clean up the air, patch the O Zone hole and so on. However, arguing with people telling them they must give up [insert thing or freedom] or life on earth as they know it will end is counterproductive and demeaning. That’s the kind of behavior that leads intelligent people to see gambling our future away on scientific theory as some kind of big scam.
However, arguing with people telling them they must give up [insert thing or freedom] or life on earth as they know it will end is counterproductive and demeaning.
Charles, I have never argued with anyone on this list and told them what they must give up. I really don’t expect anyone to give up anything. I have stated, many times in the past, that people will continue to do exactly what they are doing. People do not hear an argument and change. Well, damn few do anyway.
However I do believe that life on earth as we know it will end. But that is an opinion I gather from looking at the way people are behaving right now, and the full realization that they will not change their behavior. I have stated many times before, on this list and on The Oil Drum, that: People do not hear an argument of coming disaster and act. They do nothing until that disaster hits then they react.
Of course when I say “people” I am speaking of the vast majority of people. There are a few, a very few, that regardless of any early indoctrination, have the intelligence, and perhaps a genetic tendency to doubt, to overcome that early indoctrination.
Again, the post you replied to was not an argument. It was an observation followed by an explanation of why we observe things to be that way. That is, if you had religious bullshit drummed into your head since birth, then you are very likely a right wing republican. But if you had science and reason drummed into your head since birth then you are very likely a left leaning democrat. I know, there are a few exceptions but damn few that’s for sure.
” People do not hear an argument of coming disaster and act. They do nothing until that disaster hits then they react.”
Ron may be a tad on the pessimistic or cynical side , in some respects, but he has an excellent grasp of the way nekkid apes think and behave. In the case of this quote, I agree with him, one hundred percent, with the caveat that there are SOME people, not very many , who really do think about problems that won’t make themselves felt for another generation or longer.
This is why I argue that we should all be praying to the Sky Daddy or Sky Mommie, or rock or snake or waterfall or volcano of our personal choice for a series of PEARL HARBOR WAKE UP BRICKS upside our collective nekkid ape heads.
These bricks need to be nice and sharp , and cause a great deal of pain and bleeding, and they need to arrive at frequent intervals, because it takes a while to pound a hole in a nekkid ape skull large enough to let in a new thought, never mind a whole new perspective.
But the injuries must not be so great as to cripple us so that we CAN’T respond appropriately to the problems they bring to our attention.
I utterly detest the thought of paying taxes to replace waterfront houses, because the risk of replacing them should be on the owners, rather than the taxpayer. There’s not a snowball’s chance on a red hot stove that MY house will be destroyed by a hurricane , and even less chance, if it were so destroyed , for me to get a new house courtesy of the tax payer. Anybody who has money enough to live on the beach has money enough to eat his own losses, so far as I am concerned, because he sure as hell has NO intention of sharing either his house , or his profits from owning it, with ME. If his house gets wiped out in a super storm, it’ll be a socialized loss, if it doesn’t , it will be private profits.
But- having said this, a couple of super storms that wipe out a big stretch of beach this summer, and another next summer, etc, would serve well as wakeup bricks.
A killer heat wave that kills by the thousands would be another.
A fish kill on the grand scale would be another. Maybe somebody sinking a couple of super tankers in a narrow sea lane ……… a blight that wipes out a major staple food crop……… a new highly contagious disease that spreads like the flu, but KILLS reliably, rather than only occasionally , as the flu kills………
It’s going to take a HELL of a lot of pain and blood to get the collective attention of the human race. Nothing less will giterdone.
“They do nothing until that disaster hits then they react.” ~ Ron Patterson
Until it’s on top of them, or hits them smack upside the head, for two more expressions.
Scientists are perhaps viewed by some as educated and elite members of the establishment. The right wing anti establishment crowd seems to reject such things as education as those are the characteristics of their opponents. Some of them seem to think that the next big breakthrough will come from Joe six pack tinkering in his garage. There has been a real dumbing down of the right wing base lately. Back in Nixon days the Republican base was your rich yacht club crowd and the Dems base was blue collar Union types. Now the Dems shill for a Wall Strreet and Trump is supported by whatever passes for blue collar these days. I heard some well educated professor types tell me they voted for Trump because they thought he’d go to DC and drain the swamp and kick the game board over and scatter the pieces. It’s odd that folks expected Trump to keep his campaign promises.
I feel that Trump represents a crisis cult movement. He offers ethnic mythology (make America great again) and magical thinking. If there’s one thing about folks that buy into ethnic mythology and magical thinking it is this- they ain’t big into the sciences. Many societies and civilizations formed crisis cults during collapse. ISIS is a crisis cult. As was the Nazi Party as it formed after the collapse of the German Empire. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a crisis cult formed during the weakening/collapse of the Qing Dynasty. The Ghost Dance Movement was a crisis cult former after the American cavalry defeated the Plains Indians. Those stone monoliths on Easter island probably have something to do with a crisis cult. Crisis cults are often political groups. Look for features of ethnic mythology and magical thinking. The Tea Party Movement seems to be the serious start to the right wing blue collar types going off the deep end. Right after the financial crash. Trumpism is a crisis cult.
“George Bush brought out the ugly in America (overall true, though I actually do/did give him credit for sometimes minimizing it, too). No rose colored memories of those days, but they’re going to look like summer at Happy Hippie Camp compared to the next few years. ”
-Atrios
Global sea ice records broken (again)
According to NSIDC data, the Global sea ice area record for lowest minimum has just been broken, as shown on this Wipneus graph…
This measure doesn’t tell us all that much about the health of either Arctic or Antarctic regions, if only because the seasons move in opposite directions (nevertheless, the Global sea ice trend is down). It’s just an interesting statistical factoid.
However, climate risk deniers often use the Global sea ice metric as an argument that nothing is wrong and AGW is a hoax. In other words, the recent growth in Antarctic sea ice offsets the loss of Arctic sea ice (it doesn’t), even though the poles are literally worlds apart and are pretty much incomparable (except for the sea ice bit).
Using this logic, it would seem that this new record minimum means there is something wrong with sea ice and AGW isn’t a hoax. I wonder how they will spin this one. If they report it to their loyal readers, that is.
If the predictions for next week’s weather (a virtual hurricane over the North Pole for three days) turn out to be correct then the Arctic ice is going to get completely clobbered, and it’s already been going the wrong direction recently anyway.
A 19-station index along the Arctic Ocean observed only 5 below normal days in 2016
Meanwhile Billings, Montana hasn’t had a day yet this year that was less than 10 degrees below normal. At this point, the month of January is running 20 degrees below normal. It’s odd, but somehow the climate change enthusiasts always seem to neglect mentioning these kinds of cold events whenever they happen.
000
CXUS55 KBYZ 141055
CF6BIL
PRELIMINARY LOCAL CLIMATOLOGICAL DATA (WS FORM: F-6)
STATION: BILLINGS MT
MONTH: JANUARY
YEAR: 2017
LATITUDE: 45 47 N
LONGITUDE: 108 32 W
TEMPERATURE IN F: :PCPN: SNOW: WIND :SUNSHINE: SKY :PK WND
================================================================================
1 2 3 4 5 6A 6B 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
12Z AVG MX 2MIN
DY MAX MIN AVG DEP HDD CDD WTR SNW DPTH SPD SPD DIR MIN PSBL S-S WX SPD DR
================================================================================
1 18 6 12 -14 53 0 0.04 1.4 8 9.5 21 10 M M 7 19 27 30
2 7 -6 1 -25 64 0 0.08 1.7 10 6.6 16 360 M M 9 1 20 360
3 3 -9 -3 -29 68 0 T T 10 7.1 15 220 M M 5 1 17 220
4 7 -9 -1 -27 66 0 T T 10 11.7 17 300 M M 4 21 220
5 5 -10 -2 -28 67 0 0.00 0.0 9 20.4 32 230 M M 2 8 39 230
6 14 3 9 -17 56 0 0.00 0.0 8 18.1 35 240 M M 6 8 39 230
7 18 -4 7 -19 58 0 T T 8 5.9 15 210 M M 5 16 210
8 14 6 10 -16 55 0 0.00 0.0 8 8.4 17 20 M M 9 17 20
9 21 8 15 -12 50 0 0.06 0.7 7 8.1 23 40 M M 9 1 28 40
10 19 -1 9 -18 56 0 0.06 1.0 8 10.6 25 20 M M 8 189 25 20
11 6 -1 3 -24 62 0 0.06 1.4 10 8.6 24 240 M M 8 18 28 240
12 12 2 7 -20 58 0 0.00 0.0 9 12.9 28 240 M M 3 89 32 240
13 25 8 17 -10 48 0 0.00 0.0 9 18.2 25 230 M M 0 29 230
================================================================================
SM 169 -7 761 0 0.30 6.2 146.1 M 75
================================================================================
AV 13.0 -0.5 11.2 FASTST M M 6 MAX(MPH)
MISC ----> # 35 240 # 39 230
================================================================================
NOTES:
# LAST OF SEVERAL OCCURRENCES
COLUMN 17 PEAK WIND IN M.P.H.
PRELIMINARY LOCAL CLIMATOLOGICAL DATA (WS FORM: F-6) , PAGE 2
STATION: BILLINGS MT
MONTH: JANUARY
YEAR: 2017
LATITUDE: 45 47 N
LONGITUDE: 108 32 W
[TEMPERATURE DATA] [PRECIPITATION DATA] SYMBOLS USED IN COLUMN 16
AVERAGE MONTHLY: 6.2 TOTAL FOR MONTH: 0.30 1 = FOG OR MIST
DPTR FM NORMAL: -20.2 DPTR FM NORMAL: 0.10 2 = FOG REDUCING VISIBILITY
HIGHEST: 25 ON 13 GRTST 24HR 0.12 ON 10-11 TO 1/4 MILE OR LESS
LOWEST: -10 ON 5 3 = THUNDER
SNOW, ICE PELLETS, HAIL 4 = ICE PELLETS
TOTAL MONTH: 6.2 INCHES 5 = HAIL
GRTST 24HR 1.7 ON M 6 = FREEZING RAIN OR DRIZZLE
GRTST DEPTH: 10 ON 11, 4 7 = DUSTSTORM OR SANDSTORM:
VSBY 1/2 MILE OR LESS
8 = SMOKE OR HAZE
[NO. OF DAYS WITH] [WEATHER - DAYS WITH] 9 = BLOWING SNOW
X = TORNADO
MAX 32 OR BELOW: 13 0.01 INCH OR MORE: 5
MAX 90 OR ABOVE: 0 0.10 INCH OR MORE: 0
MIN 32 OR BELOW: 13 0.50 INCH OR MORE: 0
MIN 0 OR BELOW: 7 1.00 INCH OR MORE: 0
[HDD (BASE 65) ]
TOTAL THIS MO. 761 CLEAR (SCALE 0-3) 2
DPTR FM NORMAL 260 PTCLDY (SCALE 4-7) 7
TOTAL FM JUL 1 3447 CLOUDY (SCALE 8-10) 4
DPTR FM NORMAL 125
[CDD (BASE 65) ]
TOTAL THIS MO. 0
DPTR FM NORMAL 0 [PRESSURE DATA]
TOTAL FM JAN 1 0 HIGHEST SLP M ON M
DPTR FM NORMAL 0 LOWEST SLP 29.46 ON 9
[REMARKS]
It’s odd, but somehow the CLIMATE change enthusiasts always seem to neglect mentioning these kinds of cold events whenever they happen.
Oh Jeeez Usss, Whiskey! Tango! Foxtrot! what does the extreme cold WEATHER in Billings Montana for the first half of the first month of 2017 have to do with GLOBAL CLIMATE?
Yes, I get it. Since it mentions warm temperatures, Survivalist’s post is about climate, while my post, mentioning cold temperatures, is about weather.
Pure comedy gold!
One was temps for a year and one was temps for two weeks?
Nope. Both are weather. But alarmists are skewed.
Hi Steven Haner,
Both are weather. 31 year trends for global variables such as land ocean temperature or sea ice extent would be climate related, IMO.
Yessir, it sure got cold for you. Must be making those heating bills skyrocket. Blame the Canadians for sending down that cold air. Edmonton is way north of you and it’s 33F right now. Expected to hit 41F as a high on Wednesday.
Billings Montana area is 41.6 square miles compared to the planet which is 196.9 million square miles. Sorry, cold Billings is lost in the noise and has no measurable effect upon global climate. 🙁
Now you must know you’re not telling the full story here. Edmonton is easily subject to Chinook winds in the middle of winter, and that kind of warming isn’t at all unusual, even with the city’s northern location.
You must have also forgotten to mention that Edmonton, like Billings, has been unusually cold so far this month as well. Edmonton International Airport is reporting an average temperature of -17.9 °C for Jan 1-13. The normal January temperature there is -12.1 °C.
Nope, just went north on google map until I found a city then reported the temps. Just happened to be Edmonton.
So have you looked at the changes in the Jetstream? Lots of us have experienced the arctic chill hitting even far to the south. Yet the average temperature is rising over regions and over the globe.
Next time it hits 20F higher than average, send us a weather update.
Edmonton was is plus 2*C tomorrow. Plus 3 on Monday.
Extreme cold winters fuelled by jet stream and climate change
Weather has been unusually cold this January over most of the Northern Hemisphere. Not only North America, but also Europe is in a very cold spell.
January temperatures are going to display an even lower anomaly than December, which means that the post El Niño is completely eliminating all the anomaly increasing that we saw over 2015-16. Looks like back to the hiatus to me.
This is RSS up to December. Anybody betting how low it will get in January?
It’s the end of It’s The End of The World As We Know It and I Feel Fine!
:.(. .
…Bu-u-u-ut, from what is understood, Franklin Lopez (AKA The Stimulator) is switching gears. I appreciate his other work, and it’s pretty good quality as well.
I agree–
My RCP friends really get defensive.
RCP?
Revolutionary Communist Party: http://revcom.us
Totally attached to a vanguard, and vertical structure.
Carp Fishing on Valium.
Lovely. You could almost print the site out and tape/staple it to some poles around town…
I should look into something like that for Permaea.
What is it that forces an animal, a deer, a bird, to react to an earthquake before it happens?
An instinctive reaction, they know something is not right, they stop what they are doing and move. They hightail it, take flight. They feel what is happening right to the bone.
On the other hand, humans usually continue to do their work, most, not all, are brainwashed, dogmatic. Don’t want to leave their comfort zone. Couch locked. Indoctrination is complete, mission accomplished. They continue to do the same things over and over time and time again. Never change, no hope, the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. No way out.
Corralled, imprisoned, have to shake those chains.
Just a grim existence, a worldwide global gulag awaits us all. George Orwell wrote some of it down on paper.
How can it get any worse?
Here’s one way:
An election causes all of the political brainwashed idiots to go out of their brainwashed skulls, nuts. Conditioned like a Pavlov dog. Good God Almighty, give them all a rattle, the cry babies they still are, brainwashed through and through. They will never grow up, been conditioned to stop using their brains at all and they don’t, if they had one, they would use it. At some point, it will be useless to be a Republican, like now, yesterday, it was useless to be a Democrat. People have to get it through their thick brainwashed skulls that elections are meaningless. Noise, a nuisance. Get over it.
It is not what you are conditioned to believe it is. Period.
It all goes on like it does because people are brainwashed. Conditioned, trained, robots.
Happy now?
But hey, cheer up, things could be worse. So I cheered up and sure enough, things got worse.
“The Global Media-Industrial Complex, representing the fragmented self-consciousness of human civilization, has served simply to allow the most powerful vested interests within the prevailing order to perpetuate themselves and their interests ….”
Yes, and it is operating exactly as it was designed. Should come as no surprise to anyone with at least two firing synapses. To be able to fundamentally change this reality then you need to start by understanding how it is that current operating system came to be. I.E. Who designed it, when it was designed, and why it was designed the way it was. Even though it benefits the wealthy few it is a system that has been running on autopilot for a long time and even those that have benefited from it aren’t really aware of it, nor have they quite grasped the fact that it may have run its course in terms of usefulness.
I keep posting links to the talks by Douglas Rushkof.
‘Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus’.
I recommend reading his book by the same name.
Yep, a railway comes to the village, it grows into a rich town and many villagers are left in the dust. Growth and “progress” always has a downside.
Right now a huge number of people are facing job loss because of increasing internet sales means downsizing in the retail stores. Now that is progress. Moving toward a cyberspace/machine/robotized/computerized world where people are needed less and less. People become superfluous unless they feed the needs of the machine. Hail Great Metropolis.
That’s pretty much how I see it. Today’s machines have eliminated more jobs than they have created. We have an excess global labor force. So labor doesn’t have much leverage anymore. People aren’t needed to keep the wealthy wealthy. Sure, the wealthy will want some people around, but it isn’t like the old days where you needed lots of human labor to grow food and manufacturer goods.
The question is, who the hell really wants a JOB?!
Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept. People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves. They made shoes, plucked chickens, or created value in some way for other people, who then traded or paid for those goods and services.
Douglas Rushkoff
Now if you are arguing that we have an unsustainable global overpopulation problem, then I am in full agreement, but that is a totally different discussion.
Destitute people want jobs. Non-creative people want jobs. They don’t care if they have to feed a machine or wait in line for somebody else to drop/not show; they want a job. To provide a service or create something usually means having backing and funding initially.
So what do we do with the 50 percent or more who cannot get a job in the future? Do we hand them just enough money so they can buy stuff to keep the machines running?
I agree that the idea that people need jobs in order to generate income in order to buy stuff is not the only economic model and may well be outdated when machines can do much of what people used to do.
One way to benefit all of society is to use machines to reduce the amount of “work” people need to do. Having everyone make a decent living working just 20 hours a week.
That doesn’t mean people can’t have meaningful lives. They can raise children, generate art, enjoy nature. etc. Ideally we would be free to do what we want without regard to how much it pays, or even if it pays anything at all.
Speaking at the National Press Club Wednesday, outgoing Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced a new “scientific integrity” policy for an agency recently wracked by concerns about how an administration led by President-elect Donald Trump will treat employees who worked on climate change and other sensitive energy-related issues.
“It’s part of establishing the environment that allows scientists to do their work, to stay with us, and to recruit new people,” Moniz said in announcing the new policy.
Moniz, a physicist, gave an example of his own role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal. “Seven of our laboratories were providing near real-time support to our negotiating positions in a highly technical negotiation,” Moniz said, “and I certainly needed correct answers, stated clearly, as opposed to anything that somebody may have thought was the answer I wanted. That would not be helpful.”
Moniz’s remarks come as the energy department releases a first-ever report on the state of 17 national laboratories, and the secretary offered praise for the scientists who work at them and highlighted extensively the centrality of science to the agency’s mission.
But the new scientific integrity policy also follows a move by the Trump transition team to send the department a questionnaire asking for the names of personnel who had attended meetings related to climate change (although Moniz did not mention this in his remarks).
The new policy states as its “cornerstone” that “all scientists, engineers, or others supported by DOE are free and encouraged to share their scientific findings and views.” That includes talking to the media, giving public talks, and even expressing views on social media (though these can’t be attributed to the government).
The seven-page policy prevents other agency employees, such as political appointees or press officers, from leaning on or torquing scientific findings. “Under no circumstance may anyone, including a public affairs officer, ask or direct any researcher to alter the record of scientific findings or conclusions,” the document states.
Climate Change Is the World’s Biggest Risk, in 3 Charts
The rise of the machines isn’t the biggest threat to humanity. It’s climate change, extreme weather and other environmental factors.
The World Economic Forum surveyed 750 experts on what the most likely and impactful risks facing humanity are in 2017. In a report released Thursday, they ranked extreme weather as the most likely risk and the second-most impactful, trailing only the use of weapons of mass destruction. Climate change is responsible for driving an increase in the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events, notably heat waves.
Failing to adapt to or mitigate climate change and a host of other climate-connected risks including water and food crises and involuntary migration also rank in the top 10
if the thunder doesn’t get you then the lightening will
Hey I live in Florida the lightning capital of the US. I’ll take getting hit by thunder over getting hit by lightning, any day! 😉
Looks like the “pause” never happened. New NOAA temperature data confirmed.
The upshot, says Hausfather, is that “at least globally, it’s impossible to differentiate the rate of warming over the last say 18 years from the longer term rate of warming, over the last 30 or 50 years…I don’t think we can say any more that we have evidence that global warming has slowed down in any way.”
“There are still questions about why the rate of warming in one decade could be a little slower than the rate of warming in another, or a little faster,” he continues. “But I don’t think we can really say that there was a discernible long-term hiatus.”
Any intelligent discussion? No. Then I take that to mean there is no refuting the data or the results.
Which is why I have pretty much given up on any attempt at any civil exchange of ideas around here. The only good way to respond to the deluge of BS is with derision and ridicule. I think Doug was right, it might be time to move on to other more productive fora where there still might be a genuine intellectual exploration of ideas occurring and where there is still a modicum of civility left.
Cheers!
Anybody who sees ocean acidification as a non-concern is beyond worth talking to. ‘Hey we’ve had mass extinctions before and everything turned out ok. What’s the biggie?’ Javier is pure comedy gold. Someone should take all his responses and parody him in a comedy. All the dialouge is right here just waiting for a screenplay. He’s a laugh. I’ll post this link and we’ll see what bat shit crazy comedy gold he comes up with next. He’s better than Trump and Palin all rolled into one.
As usual lots of claims but no evidence, Surv. Surely if ocean acidification is such a big problem there should not be difficult at all to collect evidence of the actual damage that it is doing now.
Unless it is of course a future problem like so many with climate scaremongering. Or predicted by computer models that fail their predictions. Too many people with crystal balls playing scientist.
We do have tons of evidence of the damage made by overfishing, tourism and pollution to coral reefs and marine ecosystems. This damage is accumulating. Instead of solving these problems that are clear and present danger we put our money and efforts into some fictional “ocean acidification threat.”
A sapient species we are not. We are eroding and destroying the biodiversity of the biosphere and instead of working to solve that problem that we have well identified its cause and magnitude, we invent a fictional unsolvable problem and throw tons of money and political leverage at it. Homo imprudens should be our name.
we put our money and efforts into some fictional “ocean acidification threat.”
Sorry, but ocean acidification is NOT a fictional threat! It has profound ecological and economical implications. There is good news and bad news from studies like the one mentioned in the link below. But to say it is a some fictional threat is truly beyond the pale.
January 12, 2017
Ocean acidification to hit West Coast Dungeness crab fishery, new assessment shows
I’m sure you can cherry pick the article to support whatever you wish and you can complain that a model was used, etc… etc… but that would be obfuscation at its worst.
As usual your article says it “will likely suffer”. So again it is just a promise of bad things to come in the future.
How come ocean acidification has been taking place for at least five decades, and yet we cannot demonstrate any damage? Yet models and some scientists predict is going to be a huge problem in the future with zero evidence.
We know marine ecosystems experiment much bigger swings in pH on a daily basis. Yet no problem.
You guys can criticize me as much as you want for what I say, but it is all blah-blah-blah if you cannot show how five decades of ocean acidification have harmed marine ecosystems.
pH and TCO2 are just too variable with depth and different oceans to demonstrate that a small change is going to be a big problem.
The parasites attach themselves to a single moose by the tens of thousands, winter ticks whose adult females can expand to the size of a grape and engorge themselves with up to four milliliters of blood.
They are an insidious pest that is killing an average of 70 percent of moose calves across Maine and New Hampshire, and their deadly work is being aided by warming temperatures and shorter winters that allow the ticks to survive longer, scientists believe.
“The moose are being literally drained of blood. This is about as disgusting as it gets out there,” said Pete Pekins, chairman of the Natural Resources Department at the University of New Hampshire.
Bunch of alarmists biologists, they can’t possibly know for sure that anthropogenic global warming has anything to do with tick survival rates due to shorter winters etc… They just want tax payer funding for their pseudo scientific research so they can live the good life!
Yeah, make America Great again!
Similar to the government and terrorists sucking the money out of us for over a decade now.
Just put long lasting flea and tick collars on the moose population. That should solve that problem. It’s not like we can make Maine colder.
it might be time to move on to other more productive fora
Looks like moving to more tightly closed echo chambers where opposition is censored, Fred. Try Tamino’s Open Mind (Tell me what you brag and tell you what you lack). No skeptics allowed there.
Actually I was thinking of fora where completely different fields of science and technology are discussed, I’m more interested in conversations about things like materials science, nanotechnology, cognitive neuroscience, AI, culture, languages, anthropology, synthetic biology, genomics, marine biology, evolutionary biology, ecosystems, etc…
While I certainly think peak oil and climate change are issues that are going to impact our global civilization in a very big way and need to be addressed. I find the conversation here has gotten rather stale and uninteresting.
I consider myself a citizen of the world and while I live in the US, I know that the US is not the best or the greatest or the most advanced society in the world today by a lot of measures. I think the US is a work in progress with great potential, but right now it seems to have gone seriously off the rails with it’s anti science attitude, anti intellectual leadership and I’m not just talking about the current administration about to come into office.
So I just have a lot of other interests that I would like to explore…as an example, I really like Jack Rickard’s EVTV site. He happens to be a conservative, religious, climate change denier and a Trump supporter to boot but he has been doing great work with solar technology and EVs. There is a lot I can learn from him and others like him.
Cheers!
Fred, it’s possible to ignore the troll and have a discussion.
Yeah, I guess so… see my comment above about ocean acidification to Javier. When someone who claims to have a PhD in molecular biology makes statements that a high school student with a basic understanding of chemistry and biology knows are false, what should be the response? Ignore it?
Should we not be able to have an intelligent discussion about the inherent complexities of non linear dynamic systems?
Our knowledge about such things, while certainly incomplete imperfect and somewhat fuzzy around the edges, is not non existent! We actually know quite a bit. When Joe six pack, poo poos chaos math, biochemistry, and our understanding of the science of marine ecosystems, I just shrug and roll my eyes… there is no basis for an intelligent civil discussion with a scientist and I use that term loosely, who goes out of his or her way to deny science.
I knew some very dumb PhD’s. Like anything there is a wide variation and then there is the long tail.
…and then there is the long tail.
LOL! I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, in that you are referring to a statistical tail and not something else… 😉
Maybe it’s a double tail?
I deny bold statements without supporting evidence, as any scientist should do. Climatology is a pitiful scientific discipline with lots of wishy-washy articles based on computer games. Most of that has zero value yet quite a lot of it is used to support unfounded alarmism.
“Our results support previous findings of a reduced rate of surface warming over the 2001-2014 period – a period in which anthropogenic forcing increased at a relatively constant rate.
Newly identified observational errors (Karl et al., 2015) do not, however negate the existance of a real reduction in the surface warming rate in the early twenty-first century relative to the 1970s-1990s.
This slowdown is evident in time series of GMST and in the global mean temperature of the lower troposphere.”
Hausfather et al., 2017 is a confirmation of Karl et al., 2015. So nothing new and Fyfe et al., 2016 confirmation of the hiatus is still valid. See for example the November 2016 article that Wehappyfew posted here: http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-jan-8-2017/#comment-591836
Farneti, R. (2017). Modelling interdecadal climate variability and the role of the ocean. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 8(1).
And the figure clearly labelled with the recent hiatus.
Wehappyfew is not a hiatus denier as you are.
Still no sign of any intelligent discussion, doubly confirmed now.
ExxonMobil gave big to U.S. Senate panel in charge of Rex Tillerson’s confirmation:
I’m sure we can suspend all causal relationships, and have perfect equanimity.
The odds that XOM gave something to most are all of the Republican Senators on ANY panel or committee is pretty good. XOM’s PAC contributed to 35 Republican Senators and 2 Dems. And just a wholes mess of R Representatives, plus a few Dem’s. XOM paints their $$$ influence with a very broad brush.
Job Growth In Solar And Renewable Energy Sector Outpaces Fossil Fuels
June 5th, 2016 by Steve Hanley
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) based in Dubai has just released a report that says jobs in the solar and renewable energy sectors are increasing faster than employment opportunities in fossil fuel industry for the first time. It says 8.1 million people worldwide had jobs in the clean energy in 2015, up from 7.7 million in 2014, according to Bloomberg.
U.S Solar Jobs Boom While Oil, Coal Struggle
Katie Fehrenbacher
Updated: Jan 12, 2016 2:38 PM Eastern
More Americans are now installing solar panels on building rooftops than mining coal or extracting oil and gas, according to a report released Tuesday by the non-profit solar advocacy group The Solar Foundation.
The shift is a profound one that highlights how U.S. clean energy, both solar and wind, have emerged as large and rapidly growing sectors. It also shows how many traditional fossil fuel industries like coal and oil have struggled to expand in recent years.
Citizensclimatelobby.org
There are more jobs in renewable energy than in oil, gas, and coal combined
By Heather Smith on May 31, 2016
Share Tweet A word to the burly coal miners who complained that cutting coal out of our energy mix would take away their jobs when the Climate Action Plan was up for debate. Jobs in solar energy now outnumber jobs in coal mining and the oil and gas industry added together, says a new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
Solar may be taking away old jobs, but it’s offering new ones. That’s especially true for women. IRENA found that the renewable energy sector employs more women than oil, gas, and coal. In fact, the percentage of women working in solar is rising — up from 19 percent in 2013 to 24 percent of the estimated 209,000 solar jobs in the United States. That’s not yet great — women hold 47 percent of the jobs in our economy. But it’s still a higher percentage than in the bro-topia that is the conventional energy industry.
Now that is making America Great! More women working with clean solar and fewer men mining coal!
Cheers!
Hi Fred,
I know you get it already, but I wanted to say hi anyway, and this reply is in a good spot considering your comment.
If the issue is handled correctly, from the point of view of WINNING, we can convince people by the tens of millions who VOTE R that renewable energy is right down their philosophical and political alley, in terms of what it really means to be a conservative, versus being a REPUBLICAN.
It’s one of the most unfortunate accidents of history ( a foregone accident, arguably, but nevertheless ) that environmental issues have gotten to be ALMOST inextricably entangled with the right left cultural war raging in this country.When it comes down to science and facts versus preferences and tribal loyalties in a culture war, preferences and tribal loyalties trump facts nearly every time.
( EVENTUALLY the facts make themselves known in ways obvious even to the most prejudiced of observers , but WAITING for Miami to be under water to prove the case is maybe not the best strategy, lol. )
The various special interests that control the Republican party establishment have managed to hijack the word ” conservative” for cynical and hypocritical partisan purposes. The word “liberal” was once a respectable word too, but the R’s managed to trash it as well, for the same reason.This strategy has worked out quite well for the Koch brothers types who REALLY control R party politics.
Working class people go along, because the R party is either WITH the ordinary working class in this country, depending on the particular issue, or PRETENDS to be with the working class, on the remaining issues.
It doesn’t matter much what we say about people who take Jesus seriously either because they really do believe, or because they are cynics using Jesus as a tool. ( My firm opinion is that only a few members of the Amway owing De Vos family REALLY do believe in Heaven and Hell, etc)
It doesn’t matter much because the audience here is small, and VERY few serious believers ever follow a forum such as this one anyway.
But when we participate in OTHER forums, ESPECIALLY in forums where lots of working class and R types are to be found as participants or lurkers, we are more apt to succeed in making converts to the renewable energy cause if we stick to talking about personal control of our personal affairs, small and local government versus big government when appropriate, small business versus BIG business, the kind that’s too big for its britches, the wisdom of making long term investments, even if the near term return is modest, versus spending the money on instant gratification aka flashy new cars, etc, .
Depending on the forum, the audience, and the particular topic on any particular day, it can be advantageous to point out that if there were no oil in Sand Country, we would n’t have any reason to be spending mega bucks on military interventions in that part of the world, and that we could be spending that money here,on things that would do us a lot more good.
It can be good to point out, depending on the audience, that a hell of a large part of the threat to our privacy and civil liberties arises from the generally accepted facts that most of the terrorist threat arises from Sand Country, and that if we weren’t OVER THERE, the terrorists wouldn’t be OVER HERE. From there it follows that our government( MORE at the behest of the R wing than the D wing, but both wings are responsible ) wouldn’t have any justification and political cover for monitoring our phone calls, etc. This argument can be VERY effective with both libertarian left leaning types, and so called conservative R leaning types that are distrustful of government in general.
I pray to all the Sky Daddies, Sky Mommies, Volcanoes, Snakes, Waterfalls, and various assorted other entities, real or imagined, that these comments will be taken to heart, because after a lifetime of studying people , I am absolutely convinced that this is THE BEST route, and the ONLY PRACTICAL ROUTE, that will allow us as environmentalists in general, and renewable energy advocates in particular, to get thru to folks on the other side of the culture war.
I live right in there with countless people who are Trump type voters, and I can say with certainty that damned few of them are opposed to renewable energy for any reason at all having to do with renewable energy in and of itself. They are opposed because the OTHER SIDE in the cultural war is in favor, mostly, but also because they believe it’s too expensive and too unreliable.
We can win the numbers argument, easily enough, but frontal assaults on the cultural front don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of success, except by waiting for the older folks to die off, and younger ones to take their place, and even then, success is not assured.
We have get around the R party’s cultural Maginot Line by detouring , by bypassing it, and come in from the sides and the rear, using the arguments that DO resonate with R voters and middle of the roaders who are opposed to or ambivalent about renewable energy.
It’s one of the most unfortunate accidents of history ( a foregone accident, arguably, but nevertheless ) that environmental issues have gotten to be ALMOST inextricably entangled with the right left cultural war raging in this country.
It’s not an accident. Protecting the profitability of resource extraction in general, and fossil fuels in particular, is central to the Koch strategy, and the Kochs are central to the long-term war on government in general, and environmental regs in particular.
Why do we think the Kochs are attacking government?? Because only government can regulate resources and fossil fuels.
Why do Trump voters hate government? Because they’ve been told to do so, by a long term, calculated propaganda campaign intended to cripple government.
In order to protect fossil fuels…
lol America hasn’t been Great for a while now and that’s not changing anytime soon. Maybe let’s invade Grenada again. It’ll probably go our way and would make us feel like winners. Haven’t won a war since Panama. We’re due.
Try Nauru. 21 sq km and no army. Can be done in a couple hours. They’ll probably be happy about it.
And that was against a ex CIA employee of the month!
Regaeding the link to WUWT, we call that guy Wondering Willis in climate science circles.
If we want some laughs we refer to Willis’s naive “scientific” interpretations.
Hi TT,
The guy you linked to seems to be comfortable with the assumption ( fact to those of us who understand the science) that sea level is rising , and that it will rise about six inches to a foot, AT THE CURRENT rate of rise, within a century.
Now of course the scientific community believes the RATE if rise is very likely to go up, and so the six inches to a foot over the next century is in the opinion of the scientific community more apt to be two or three feet.
Now here’s a little something for you to think about, in case you have any skin in Florida.
“In flat, low-lying Florida, “for each foot of sea level rise, the shoreline moves inland 300 feet,” Englander told the AIA-Florida last summer.
“The beach doesn’t matter. One foot could be a mile inland on tidal rivers.”
Get it? If you own property in Florida, within one hundred fifty feet of the shore line, it will be under water by the end of this century at the latest. It might be underwater within the next twenty or thirty years. GOING BY DATA posted by YOUR guy, the one YOU linked to.
“No less an organization that the American Institute of Architects’ Florida-Caribbean chapter has adopted a policy that its members should plan for 3 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. Many scientists believe the 3-foot estimate is inadequate; the rise could be 6 feet or more.”
Sea level has been rising for over 100 years.
These two pictures of Miami are separated by over 50 years of sea level rise.
it will be under water by the end of this century at the latest.
Based on the available evidence I would say it won’t.
Karegar, M. A., Dixon, T. H., & Engelhart, S. E. (2016). Subsidence along the Atlantic Coast of North America: Insights from GPS and late Holocene relative sea level data. Geophysical Research Letters, 43(7), 3126-3133. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL068015/full
Don’t believe your lying eyes!
No. Don’t believe in narratives that convert complex problems into easy ones.
Very little can be done to fix subsidence problems. Drastic CO2 cuts aren’t going to change atmospheric levels any time soon even if done globally, when clearly there is no global interest. So both subsidence and sea level rise are going to continue.
But it is a very slow problem. Past 50 years have not seriously affected Florida, so no reason to think the next decades will. It is an engineering problem. Most of Netherlands should be under water, so we know how to deal with this problem since the 16th century.
To say that shutting down the carbon economy is going to help Florida stay above water is a lie. If it negatively affects the economy it will have the opposite effect.
With sea level rising in Florida at 3.3 mm per year over the 1990 to 2008 period, I think that the couple of spots shown on the map with zero and 1 mm per year subsidence in northern Florida don’t mean much.
Will we want to save Miami as it goes underwater?
This is not Amsterdam, or even Venice.
Not any major institutions or centers of finance or science.
New York- sure, and San Francisco will be defended if we are not in total collapse.
Houston? Close call.
The whole Eastern Seaboard is not looking good.
… involved depositing 12 million cubic yards of sand on the shoreline.”
Meanwhile, over here, we appear to have a Javier-nourishment project going on…
Hey, guys, how goes the project?
Thanks Caelan, I suspected that is what happened.
Truth be told it is much worse than that…
We are at the point we have to import our sand form places like the Bahamas. I’ve lived in South Florida for almost a quarter of a century now and I don’t need graphs to tell me seas have been rising. I see it with my own eyes on a daily basis. Beach erosion is a constant and despite denier rhetoric the city of Miami is spending millions and millions of dollars to mitigate its effects.
Through the wall of hotels that line its shore is the city’s central draw: the wide, white stretch of Miami Beach’s beach.
The beach is the centerpiece of the city’s promise of escape — escape from cold winters or college classes or family, where you can drink goblets of bright green liquor and cruise down Ocean Drive in a rented tangerine Lamborghini before retiring to the warm sand. To the casual observer, the beach may look like the only natural bit of the city, a fringe of shore reaching out from under the glass and pastel skyline. But this would be false: the beach is every bit as artificial as the towers and turquoise pools. For years the sea has been eating away at the shore, and the city has spent millions of dollars pumping up sand from the seafloor to replace it, only to have it wash away again. Every handful of sand on Miami Beach was placed there by someone.
That sand is washing away ever faster. The sea around Miami is rising a third of an inch a year, and it’s accelerating. The region is far from alone in its predicament, or in its response to an eroding coast:
I admit I will feel a bit of schadenfreude when Trump Towers sinks beneath the encroaching seas.
I don’t think you can stop or even delay sea level rise with a beach. You are going to need dykes for that.
LOL! Javier, you haven’t spent much time on South Beach, have you? If you had you would at least know the difference between ‘Dykes’ and ‘Dikes’
First, dikes to mitigate sea level rise in Miami, just won’t work, it ain’t the Netherlands.
Second, the dykes of South Beach would make sure you knew the difference between them, and dikes. You probably wouldn’t want to get on their bad sides…
I know English isn’t your first language but I just couldn’t resist!
Edit: Your typo is even funnier given that South Beach is noted for its large LGBT community. Most of them are staunch advocates for climate change mitigation and they are very aware of sea level rise on SoBe!
They will do what they have to and can but, eventually, many cities may have to be abandoned, but may prove to be great future ‘reefs’…
On how they came to be, we will see intelligent fish giving Powerfish presentations in one of their many office cubicles… with special payed guest appearances by Javierfish on how the oceans may be cooling, but how it’s nothing to worry about, since, for example, there will be plenty of space in and around the equator and in the crushing (but cozy, says Javierfish) ocean depths, such as in and around hydrothermal vents…
Is there not more plastic trash in the oceans than fish? Something I read not too long ago.
Humans seem to be destroying the earth at an ever increasing pace and at their own peril.
It was fun while it lasted.
Unfortunately, the costs of this rampant alarmism will be huge, as coastal communities will struggle to comply with a meaninglessly exaggerated risk.
The only good news is that sea level pays no attention to what NOAA and the rest of the activist-ridden government and non-government organizations say … and sooner or later, this will become too evident for even the most ardent climate activist to ignore.
Hey TT you should come down and talk to the mayor of Miami. He must be one of those alarmists!
Yup, WUWT and its chief “scientist” Wondering Willis is quite a site to behold.
Warning, this link is not to a SOUND BITE, it’s for those willing to put a few minutes into understanding what is really driving politics in the state of Michigan, other than economic trends beyond the power of individuals to do anything about them.
Understanding requires a healthy measure of NUANCE, if you want to understand well enough to fight back.
Oh god! Amway… The MLM pyramid scheme brought to you by the Christian right.
I have more respect for the ethics and business practices of Bernie Madoff…
U.S. Class action settlement[edit]
On November 3, 2010, Amway announced that it had agreed to pay $56 million – $34 million in cash and $22 million in products – to settle a class action that had been filed in Federal District Court in California in 2007.[8] The class action, which had been brought against Quixtar and several of its top-level distributors, alleged fraud, racketeering, and that the defendants operated as an illegal pyramid scheme.
Source Wikipedia
The story is pretty much the same in many other countries around the world. These people are scum!
Come now, lets not put scum in the same category.
Scum at least has a biophysical function.
Nekkid apes can be counted on to believe what they WANT to believe, whether they have working brains, or don’t.
But some of us, left, right, or indifferent are willing to look at evidence that cannot be easily cherry picked, and change their minds , if necessary, to accomodate facts previously unknown to them.
This link has a chart in it that shows graphically what the record book shows for about the last century for the USA. Record new daily high temperatures have been outpacing new daily lows by a substantial margin.
And anybody who knows even a LITTLE ( which is about all I know about the field of statistics ) knows that as more high records are set, the number of new ones that WILL be set, in following years, will decline, UNLESS there’s a TREND toward higher daily highs. The trend is perfectly obvious. Even as the record book has been filling up with new daily high records, year after year, the number of new ones being set is holding steady, or increasing.
And about record WARM daily lows:
“Examining all of the record low temperatures yields another dramatic result — since the first of the year, the number of all-time warm low-temperature records is outpacing the corresponding cold ones by a ratio of more than 6-to-1. This emphasizes that warmer nights are a major factor in the overall warming trend, not just hotter days.”
Is there a handy well recognized acronym or phrase used to indicate a new daily record WARMER low for the day?
“Nekkid apes can be counted on to believe what they WANT to believe, whether they have working brains, or don’t.”
Which raises the questions:
Did the Russians interfere with the American election ?
Did OFM “believe what he WANTED to believe” on his reason of hate for HRC ? or was it influenced by fake news Russian style ?
Was OFM continued ranting again HRC prior to the election the type of smear tactic that supported Russian influance ?
Ron Patterson says:
10/13/2016 AT 6:56 PM
Mac, excuse me if I doubt that your sarcasm light is really on.
But please excuse me if I am wrong. So to remove all doubt whatsoever, please just tell us where you stand on this election. Are you for Trump or Clinton? Just tell us where you stand and then we can go from there.
Oldfarmermac says:
10/13/2016 AT 9:56 PM
Hi Ron,
Since I am convinced that the overall the environmental issue is so important that it trumps all other issues combined, I want a D in the WH.
I don’t want to trust big government any farther than is absolutely necessary
I worked a lot of hours for Sanders, who is an HONORABLE man, and one I believe you could vote for without a second thought.
Personally I will be voting a third party or writing in somebody”
“HuntingtonBeach says:
01/06/2017 AT 7:16 PM
Oh Mr. Boris EmailServer aka KGB,
Just admit who you work for and Vladimir signs your checks. Because it will be even more embarrassing for yourself. If after all that speed typing, the world found out you did it pro bono.
There are over 90 colleges in Michigan. The top 50 alone have over 500,000 students. Had those on the Left, who refused to support Bernie’s call for them to vote for Clinton, hadn’t spread every fake news story against her that they could get from Republican and Russian sites (remember the fake REPORT about her ” immanent indictment ” weeks before the election) in order to get them to NOT vote for her, we wouldn’t be confronted with TRUMPUTlN and Republican rule. Same is true for Wisconsin, where there’s over 300,000 students and Pennsylvania, where there’s over 300 colleges, with the top 25 alone accounting for 600,000 students. We warned those who refused to support Bernie’s plea to vote for Clinton about what would happen if TRUMPUTlN won and they called us ” fear mongers ” using ‘negative motivation’ to get people to vote for Clinton when they were using every negative and C R 0 0 K E D means to get people NOT to vote for her.
Hi there R2 D2
You’re apparently about as blind to Clinton’s obvious flaws as HB, and as unwilling to face up to why she lost.
Those college guys and girls you think of as republican and Trump stooges are the future of the Democratic party. They ‘re not stupid and they’re not ignorant.
They recognized Clinton for what she is, or was, and wanted someone better, rather than a shopworn old hypocrite Republican lite “business as usual with the banksters and globalists” person as their nominee.
Two of the hardest of the hard core young feminists I ever met, lesbians and long term lovers, made no secret of the fact that they would spit on H Clinton for staying with Bill C. These are not exactly what you would call Trumpster girls, no siree. They’re very free with this opinion. They see her as one of the biggest hypocrites alive.
Now perhaps you think that that sort of character judgement is irrevelant. I don’t. Millions of other people were remembering Clinton flipflopping on issues of principle, and in their own minds, thinking of her going with whatever positions she thought would be winners. That sort of voter didn’t trust her not to flip again, once in office.
Other people are entitled to their own opinion, as you are entitled to yours,
Maybe a couple of million other women felt the same way to the extent they just stayed home , maybe???? Of course a hard core partisan wouldn’t hold it against Clinton that she was in business in her younger days with a bunch of people who went to jail, etc. And a hard core partisan would just conveniently forget about the email system, and Cattle Gate , or cynically accuse the opposition of bitching about such little indiscretions, while forgetting WHO COMMITTED THEM.
Apparently you are another one of the kind who don’t believe in principled opposition to YOUR preferred candidate. There wouldn’t have been any Sanders uprising , and near upset, if Clinton had been true to the D party’s roots. Her octopus like control of the party machinery scared EVERY OTHER DEMOCRAT, except Sanders from even making a run.
That little fact in and of itself ought to be enough to enable any body with a working brain and a reasonable grasp of American politics that Clinton is or was an old time machine style politician.Any examination of her donors shows where her REAL loyalties lie.
The kids understand this stuff. They wanted CHANGE. The people who voted for Trump wanted change. The COUNTRY wanted change.
Trump was smart enough to run on change, and Clinton was dumb enough to run on business as usual. She had the example of Bill’s campaigns to go by, and Obama’s as well.
She blew it.
I don’t know of a single one college student , personally, that voted for Trump, or ever had anything nice to say about him, among the ones I met at Sanders meetings.
I’m trying to get it across the way a visiting coach brought in to explain to a baseball team why it lost a game, and how WIN the next game, by doing things differently, on the practice field , and DURING the next game.
Clinton OWNED your team, and put herself in as the candidate, the same way the family that pays for the ball field and the uniforms insists on putting THEIR kid on the ball team, no matter if he can hit, or run, or throw the ball. . She was a lousy candidate, and she lost. Get used to it. She not only lost, she lost to the biggest clown in the history of American politics, for at least as far back as………. maybe ALL the way back.
FOR FIVE YEARS ! Trump called president OBAMA an illegitimate president” and stirred up conservative HATE with baseless, lies! I think Trump should get no Less, Republicans are Hypocrites of the first order.
Besides Trump is a Russian that really makes him illegitimate president”
Just wait its going to come out. And when it does shame on those who voted for him.
Your either with us or against us. Why do you support Conrad Trump ?
You mean you think President Pussy Grabber is illegitimate just because his pappy was an orangutan?
Hi HB,
I ‘m glad to see you’re back, but I had some dim hopes that maybe you were doing a little quiet thinking. I see your’re your same old self. I’m not surprised.
PLEASE don’t forget to include some REALLY nasty insults, or you won’t be helping me make my case.
Which raises the questions:
“Did the Russians interfere with the American election ?”
There is a very real possibility they were involved in hacking D emails, for sure, but other than that, I haven’t seen much in the way of indications that they did other things. They are certainly capable of such tricks. On the other hand, I personally have a great deal of respect for Assange, and until I see some actual proof otherwise, I plan on standing by him. I have remarked before, somewhere along the line, that this sort of thing is right down Putin’s alley.
If you want to talk about any OTHER possible interference in the election on the part of the Russians, I ‘m ready to listen.
YOU may have forgotten just HOW LITTLE the Obama justice department has done to prosecute banksters that committed fraud on the industrial scale, that meeting at the airport, the countless lies ( FOR CONVENIENCE I put in my secret server HRC) told, etc, so while you are free to make up your mind NOW, I will wait a while yet.
You see every thing thru your partisan glasses that selectively let thru what you want to see, and block everything else. To the best of my memory, you have never posted a single comment indicating that you support any initiative of the R party, or respect any of the members of the R coalition, proving your partisanship beyond a shadow of a doubt.
I on the other hand post numerous and lengthy comments in favor of a number of major D policy positions, and only a couple in favor of R party policies, proving I am NOT a partisan.
In the meantime, I will point out that our own government has been up to the same general sort of tricks pretty much forever as the Russians stand accused of. I will not be at all surprised if they are eventually proven guilty, but I want to see the evidence.
The more important question is whether the people of this country, the VOTERS, people like us, have the right to know about what really goes on behind closed doors.
I believe we have a RIGHT TO KNOW. I believe that the Clinton machine’s right to privacy in respect to its octopus like grip on the D party machinery , and the dirty tricks it pulled, is subservient to, less important, than the right of the people of this country to know what was going on.
Without whistleblowers and reporters, etc, we would wind up living in a police state sooner, rather than later. The FAR MORE IMPORTANT thing in my estimation, is that we KNOW more about Clinton as a person, and a politician, etc, compared to WHO broke the email scandal.
“Did OFM “believe what he WANTED to believe” on his reason of hate for HRC ? or was it influenced by fake news Russian style ?”
First off, I learned many many years ago that is a complete waste of my own time and energy, and detrimental to my own peace of mind and happiness , to HATE anybody, but I really doubt you are perceptive enough to understand this sort of thing.
Clinton is a very mixed bag. I admire her for some things she has stood up for, and have contempt – REAL contempt- for her in respect to a lot of things I know to be incontestably true, regarding her personal and political history. I don’t hate her, and but neither do I respect her, because her flaws outweigh her good points using MY scales. If you want to go into her history with me starting with Cattle Gate, we can do so ONE little scandal after another, such as the fact that a lot of her early business associates wound up in jail. Wanna talk about it? I’m ready when you are.
I don’t hate ANYBODY. I understand that the kid on a street corner , black or white, or yellow in a few instances, selling meth is just part of reality, like the polio virus, or rats, or butterflys or a mountain stream or the birds I spent an hour watching this past afternoon. Hating him would be a waste of my time and energy. Hating a former lover would be a waste of my time and energy.
“Was OFM continued ranting again HRC prior to the election the type of smear tactic that supported Russian influance ?”
HEY LOSER, I worked for the D candidate that had the best polling numbers by a mile, against Trump, you chump. You have the mindset of a small child, and apparently always will, because you are simply unable to deal with the reality that Clinton managed to lose to the biggest joke in the history of American politics way the hell back farther than I can remember.
I don’t remember which comedian said it first, but any way, paraphrased, The biggest and best Trump joke of all is Trump himself.
Your candidate managed to LOSE to this colossal joke of a madman, and you hang around feeling sorry for yourself, and trying to blame it on me. Well , you bragged about being just one fucking little guy, talking the environmental talk, which means D talk, and vice versa, while walking the R walk in the oil biz. And you justify yourself by saying you’re just one little guy.
Well, so am I, I’m just one little guy.
I always said Trump would be worse, and that he MIGHT win. He proved me right on the winning, and he looks like he is making every possible effort to prove me right about his being worse.
“Ron Patterson says:
10/13/2016 AT 6:56 PM
Mac, excuse me if I doubt that your sarcasm light is really on.”
“But please excuse me if I am wrong. So to remove all doubt whatsoever, please just tell us where you stand on this election. Are you for Trump or Clinton? Just tell us where you stand and then we can go from there.”
I wanted Sanders in the WH, after that, second choice, Clinton, but I could not have brought myself to vote for Clinton for ANY REASON AT ALL, considering what I think of her, other than TO VOTE AGAINST TRUMP. Virginia was considered rock solid safe for Clinton, so I was free to vote green. I don’t actually know whether I would have held my nose and voted for her, or just stayed home, if Virginia had been in doubt. I posted remarks that I would stay home and cry for my country if it came down to Clinton versus Trump before it was clear it WOULD be Clinton versus Trump.
I have great respect for Ron P both as a person, from what I know about him, and as the founder of this forum, so all I will say about him , otherwise , is that he is a self identified hard core D partisan, and that’s all, other than to say I don’t think he thinks I’m a Trumpster, at least not NOW.
Maybe he did then. I don’t know. We share a lot of values and beliefs and opinions, but I ‘m more prone to changing my mind. A few years back we were both pretty much hard core doomers, but recently I have become cautiously optimistic that we CAN turn the corner on peak resources without industrial civilization crashing and burning. etc. His recent comments indicate he still thinks our ultimate destination is hell on earth. Maybe he’s right, maybe I’m right.
Hard core partisans ALWAYS have a very tough time accepting any message or messenger that contradicts their personal beliefs or threatens their comfort zone.
Oldfarmermac says:
10/13/2016 AT 9:56 PM
Hi Ron,
Since I am convinced that the overall the environmental issue is so important that it trumps all other issues combined, I want a D in the WH.
I don’t want to trust big government any farther than is absolutely necessary
I worked a lot of hours for Sanders, who is an HONORABLE man, and one I believe you could vote for without a second thought.
Personally I will be voting a third party or writing in somebody”
I voted Green.
“HuntingtonBeach says:
01/06/2017 AT 7:16 PM
Oh Mr. Boris EmailServer aka KGB,
Just admit who you work for and Vladimir signs your checks. Because it will be even more embarrassing for yourself. If after all that speed typing, the world found out you did it pro bono.
You’re still the sort of nincompoop true believing foot soldier that is not only willing but eager to shoot any messenger who brings bad news, or any person who points out the flaws in your position.
I was a hard core conservative for YEARS, back when the old USSR and the USA were engaged in the COLD WAR, in very large part because so many big D Democrats, and liberal / leftish leaning intellectuals had their heads stuck so far up their asses that they defended and applauded the commies, while painting this country as the bad guys, for a combination of two basic reasons, one ,partisanship, and two, stupidity.
SOMEHOW, they managed to over look the fact that the Iron Curtain existed to keep the people behind it, BEHIND IT, to keep them from escaping. It takes a really colossally stupid person to overlook that sort of thing, or a scumbag cynic, or maybe a true believing foot soldier, to justify for partisan reasons, by saying it was there because they were afraid of us.
You are currently displaying the same sort of stupidity in refusing to acknowledge that Clinton blew it, partly as the result of coming into the election with the worst negatives of any candidate in living memory, OTHER THAN THE CLOWN she managed to lose to, and partly because she was arrogant , and assembled a “YES” guy and girl campaign team.
She would have won, if she hadn’t been so arrogant, and so lacking in judgement, as to diss the people in the three big Rust Belt states, despite all her other mistakes, by taking them for granted, and not showing up there to make at least a token few appearances to reassure the people of those states that she at least knew they EXIST.
She didn’t have any trouble finding time time to make a number of speeches to her homie elite one percenter friends from WALL STREET, at a quarter million or so a pop. The people who voted for Trump , in order to send a message by voting AGAINST her tend to remember such things while standing in line at the unemployment office.
She would have won if she had had brains enough to run as a real Democrat, rather than a Republican clone, on economic matters.
And the people who supported her, blindly, refusing to recognize her flaws as a candidate, nominated her. She lost, and THEY lost.
It’s your doofus blind heroine worship, as much as anything else, that put Trump in the WH.
MacBoris EmailServer aka KGB,
Your continued conservative hate rants showed you “believe what he WANTED to believe”without facts and watch to much Fox(Fake) News.
MacBoris says below- “But if you actually FOLLOW Fox News, and can think a little, you will soon understand what is actually happening”
BTW, how is that special lube working out of you ? Make sure you don’t get any on yourself.
Scrub is dead right, twelve volts is plenty for all the lighting circuits in a car. Old headlights fade, you get new ones, they burn out anyway, eventually. The cost of replacing them is trivial in terms of the big picture.
And twelve volts is plenty for an automobile starter motor, which normally only operates a few seconds at a time.
But when you start building electric motors and generators that need to operate continuously for any length of time, while dealing with substantial amounts of power, going up on the voltage has very powerful effect in terms of being able to reduce the size of conductors,field windings, armatures, etc.
Twelve volts is on the way out, in terms of hybrid and pure electric drive trains. Too many amps flowing to get the job done. Up the voltage four times, you can theoretically cut the amps in circuit by a factor of four, while still dealing with the same amount of power. But practical considerations but in , and the advantage is not quite as good as the theory, for instance it takes fewer battery cells in series to produce lower voltages, and more cells means more expense and more risk of premature battery failure.
There has been a movement afoot in the auto industry to go to 48 volts for a LONG time, but it has never taken off until now for various reasons. One was that it costs a lot more to make nice tight connections that aren’t subject to arcing and failure, and you have to connect a LOT of wires in a car. You have to use better quality hardware with 48 volts from the front bumper to the back in order to prevent shorts, but it’s lighter, and uses less copper.
You’re still reduced to personal insults, because you don’t HAVE any arguments worth mentioning, loser. Porch doggie.
So go on off someplace in a corner, and play with yourself. Every time you make such a remark, you improve the odds for me of achieving my goal, but your’re such a mental midget you can’t understand that, so please remember to do so at least a couple of times a week.
It’s ok, because the Sanders camp is on it’s way UP and into power, whereas the Clinton camp is on it’s way OUT, to a substantial extent already.
Here’s some factual material that makes my case. ONE HELL of a lot of life long big D Democrats were never satisfied with Clinton in the first place, and as time goes on, more will be joining the Sanders inspired movement back to the roots of the D party.
It’s necessary for both factions to talk unity, but in reality it’s a dog fight for control of the heart and soul of the party, and Sanders supporters have won a lot of victories already, considering that Clinton more or less owned the party machinery outright, and all the BIG MONEY donors, the one percenter bankster elite , are were on Clinton’s team. Some of them may be thinking about abandoning a sunk ship by now, though, or just going over to Trump.
Would you like me to work up a list of the Clinton team members who are GONE now, in terms of holding party positions, mostly for dirty work on Clinton’s behalf?
And the Sanders camp is winning elections too, not a whole lot yet, but hopefully more soon.
Earth to MacBoris, Sanders is not a Democrat. Your HRC HATE runs deep.
“Sanders joins Democratic leadership, isn’t officially a Democrat. He says he’ll continue to identify as an independent, despite running for president as a Democrat. Bernie Sanders was just appointed to the Senate Democratic leadership team. But the Vermont senator still isn’t becoming an official member of the party.Nov 16, 2016”
This link is one of the single most informative ones I have found, and the data in it is easily accessible to anybody who is graphically literate, meaning most business oriented types who studied any sort of business at the community college level or higher can interpret the graphs and drawings for himself.
The one thing that gives me hope is the fact that there seems to be some type of a guiding supernatural force behind the whole system that allows so much growth. Some would say that this supernatural force is “only” the laws of physics (and biology and chemistry). To me, the fact that so many structures can self-organize and grow is miraculous, and perhaps evidence of a guiding force behind the whole universe.
I don’t know precisely what is next, but it seems quite possible that there is a longer-term plan for humans that we are not aware of. Some of the religions of the world may have insights on what this plan might be. It is even possible that there may be divine intervention of some type that allows a change in the path that we seem to be on today.
I am open to the argument that there might be some kind of “universal mind” out there. I will listen to your argument, both pro and con. But I am not buying any of that “divine intervention” crap. The destruction of our biosphere, our natural world, and all wild species, is and will be due to to the evolutionary success of one particular species of great ape. Believing God will jump in and save our ass at the last moment is just wishful thinking.
I do fully agree with Gail that we are headed toward a lower energy per capita lifestyle.
Oh get real. Gail is not talking about just lower energy lifestyles, she is talking total collapse. That is unless, as she believes, God will step in at the last minute and fix everything. You know, just as he has done in the past during those plagues, famines and holocausts that he didn’t let happen.
Man will behave in the future just as he has behaved in the past. And so will his god.
And I agree with Gail on total collapse, but not on the divine intervention part. No divine intervention is going to save our ass.
So, you have some issues with the Psychopathic Sky Daddy?
I believe a very primitive “religion” in tribal societies did bring genetic fitness, through group cohesion and possibly some health care benefits.
Currently “Religion” is a parasitic meme set using humans as hosts for its own replication.
I had the opportunity to see her once, live, and even ask her a couple of questions, after she finished her presentation, which was not at all impressive. I’ve seen better a LOT of times in a high school classroom.
Her presentation was canned, no more and no less than a canned sales talk. My personal opinion is that she is not really very bright, or much of a deep thinker, but rather somebody that discovered she has a message that can be sold, and is smart enough to stick to it, so she can continue to sell it.
I don’t know WHAT she actually believes, but we all know that lots of people believe one thing, but say other things, if money is involved.
My opinion is that ninety percent plus of the regulars who comment here are considerably smarter than she is, and have a better grasp of what is likely to come about in the future.
None of this is to deny that she does get it, in some respects, even if she is blind in others. I agree with a number of her talking points, or used too, assuming she hasn’t changed her tune, but I decided a LONG time ago she would never have anything new to say, so I haven’t looked at her stuff in recent years.
” My personal opinion is that she is not really very bright, or much of a deep thinker, but rather somebody that discovered she has a message that can be sold, and is smart enough to stick to it, so she can continue to sell it. ”
That is a very pricise and still polite discription of Gail.
While I’m less privy to Gail’s work than others, from what I have read, it seems to suggest a fair degree of lucidity.
She also seems to have a relatively-large following on her site, at least insofar as what the commentary might suggest– perhaps among the most I’ve seen on any peak oil, societal-decline-related site.
As for taking one’s material on the road/in the spotlight, while mileage may vary, that doesn’t necessarily speak conclusively of the person’s grasp of their subject-matter or their intelligence.
Lastly, I’ve read more than a few times the idea that ‘everyone is a genius’. Unsure what exactly is meant by that, but maybe it means that we can excel exceptionally at some things, and totally bomb at others.
Frames/Snapshots, such as of bombs, are not the full reel of course…
“I decided a LONG time ago she would never have anything new to say, so I haven’t looked at her stuff in recent years.” ~ Oldfarmermac
She also seems to have a relatively-large following on her site, at least insofar as what the commentary might suggest– perhaps among the most I’ve seen on any peak oil, societal-decline-related site.
Yeah, at one time so did James Warren Jones, though his Kool Aid was a little stronger…
Believe it or not, I actually stopped in the middle of adding something like, ‘not that I am necessarily suggesting anything by that’, maybe because I figured it would be obvious and no one would bother with it.
I visit her site regularly.
She seems to be a host for a nasty religious parasitic meme that is using her to replicate.
That said, some good analysis is occasionally available, if one stays in a small enough box.
Are you detecting any sarcasm or charity on her part?
Why write the above post? “I haven’t looked at her stuff in recent years”
Because I am vain enough to think that maybe some people who read this forum are interested in my opinion, lol.
I followed her for a long time at the old TOD site, but in recent years it has become obvious from hearing what she is saying these days is that it’s the same old stuff she was saying back then.
Some people accomodate themselves to new facts, as they become available. Some don’t. Ten years ago, I was extremely pessimistic that renewable energy would ever be cheap enough to scale up sufficiently to support an industrial civilization. I have changed my mind on this truly major point, and now believe renewables are technically doable and that with a little luck, we can manage a successful transition.
When people stick with their old beliefs in spite of overwhelming evidence they are outdated and probably wrong, I point it out.
Maybe I’m wrong. Has she changed her tune ? If so, I will apologize.
“Because I am vain enough to think”
И идиот также
I used to read everything I could find written by ESCAPEES from the old USSR.
They related many stories of figuring out what the truth is, or was, by reading between the lines of the state controlled press, sorting thru what they could read there, and culling out what they believed were actual facts, rather than spin.
Then they reassembled these culled facts into a new narrative, one they believed resulted in their coming up with good to excellent comprehension of the TRUTH.
If you really want to know what’s going on, and what is likely to come to pass in the foreseeable future, it pays to read all sides, at least occasionally.
Most of the regulars here think of Fox News as Faux News, with justification, depending on the subject matter. But if you actually FOLLOW Fox News, and can think a little, you will soon understand what is actually happening, and what is actually true, by sorting out the countless actual easily verifiable facts published there.
This article is pretty much diametrically opposed to the usual political stance of Fox as an institution. You don’t even have to sort and reassemble the facts to come up with your own interpretation.
The writing is on the wall for the ICE , as far as the personal automobile is concerned, and it’s in the process of being written there for light trucks as well.
The executives at all the major car companies in my estimation have had some of their staff put summaries of the prospects medium to long term for the oil industry, and there is hardly any doubt in my mind at all that they understand that with a growing population, and growing prosperity for the most part, especially in lesser developed countries, and a declining one time gift of nature endowment of crude in the ground, that they know gasoline and diesel fuel will eventually be prohibitively expensive, except for the elite, meaning the end of the mass produced automobile…….. UNLESS they transition to electric models.
And we have handed them a superb fig leaf, in terms of allowing them to pretend there will always be plenty of oil…… otherwise car sales would crash IMMEDIATELY, lol.
They can just blame it all on being forced to go the electric route because whale loving tree huggers are FORCING them to, lol.
Suggestion– lose the tee vee.
The more you watch, the less you know.
And find sources from outside the US– where “balanced” is not a issue–
It seems sometimes that TV is far more important to people than other people are. Don’t get in the way of someone’s favorite show or sporting event.
If that “Lose the TV ” was aimed at me, you can take it to the bank that I average less than an hour a month watching tv, usually at some friend’s house at a social event, such as a Kentucky Derby party, etc. I gave up the idiot box back in the early eighties or there about, in favor of reading an additional three or four hours after my work day was over, rather than staring at the box. It’s a habit I have maintained ever since. I own one and it gets a lot of channels.
I haven’t turned it on within the last year, but I get a package deal on internet, local phone, etc so it doesn’t cost me anything. Every once in a while I have guests who bring kids who want to watch tv.
But I do read some stuff from Fox on the net. It pays to read both sides of the press, if you really want to know the score.
Most of the people in this forum detest Fox, and I don’t put in any faith in Fox myself.
Now do you understand WHY I posted this link? I did it to illustrate that even as the “official” line at Fox is conventional R style business as usual, you can even learn the truth about some topics by just reading such factual material as Fox DOES publish.
Anybody with the slightest ability to think for himself can read that link, and draw his own conclusions. Electric cars are the future, regardless of what Fox talking heads may say in other segments, or which politicians the corporate entity supports.
The DENIER of the truth is publishing all the facts necessary for a person who can THINK a little to figure out the truth for himself.
OFM-
I had a gig in Atlanta in the summer and Fall, and being in a hotel, tee vee was available.
Quite disturbing, but insightful, as the bewildered herd knows something is wrong, but hasn’t the critical thinking and education to have a clue as to what that is.
Tee Vee made it worse, but it didn’t matter what you were watching.
“Ever notice headlight fade on a 10 year old car as the copper wire oxidizes?”
Not so much it was a problem . . . you are talking theoretical bullshit about 12V not very useful.
It is standard, relatively inexpensive and, working as I did with heavy equipment, I can tell you mixed fleets of 24 and 48V was an expensive but necessary pain in the arse.
At one stage we had a fleet of 4×4 Nissan service trucks that were 24V start and 12V everything else . . . 12 V works just fine in the real world.
“Let’s start by getting our definitions straight: An Internet troll is someone who comes into a discussion and posts comments designed to upset or disrupt the conversation. Often, in fact, it seems like there is no real purpose behind their comments except to upset everyone else involved. Trolls will lie, exaggerate, and offend to get a response. ”
“They conducted two online studies with over 1,200 people, giving personality tests to each subject along with a survey about their Internet commenting behavior. They were looking for evidence that linked trolling with the “Dark Tetrad” of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. ”
“The next time you encounter a troll online, remember: These trolls are some truly difficult people.
It is your suffering that brings them pleasure, so the best thing you can do is ignore them. “
I am hoping there is a God and His Divine Intervention saves all of our sorry. wretched, helpless souls.
We can all pray that He can and does.
I won’t stand one leg and hold my breath.
If it turns out that God is Allah, Christians are in for a lot of hurt in the afterlife.
The fact that there are so many religions makes it impossible that any one of them is correct. Religion is part of human nature, not of divine nature. Believing that God is going to save you is only positive if you believe He also requires all your effort before helping.
>> The fact that there are so many religions makes it impossible that any one of them is correct. <<
For atheists, this is true. Conservative believers believe their religion is right and the others are wrong. And hence, for them, your statement is wrong.
Liberal believers might be a little more ecumenical, more nuanced, and say that all religions have a grain of truth.
Maybe it's not religion that's the problem, it's conservatives?
The Barnum and Baily circus will be ending but will the Big Top show actually close? The one now covering the land surface and wandering the oceans.
How much more entertaining can we get? All the insane stuff we do to keep the hamster wheel of death turning must be a real winner on the GOD-TV network. What will they do next? Can they make it or take the whole thing down with them?
What a show we must be putting on for all the gods. We better keep up the entertainment or else just a slight push on an asteroid will end the season.
So go out and do something fantastically stupid today. The rest of us will thank you.
Why else give a funny looking mostly hairless weak creature a mind that thinks it’s desires are to be imprinted on the world, yet not make it quite smart enough to do it right? Comedy, drama, soap opera, adventure, disaster; romance; horror; it’s all there for EZ viewing.
sarc?
The Larsen C Ice shelf in Antarctica is primed to shed an area of more than 5000 sq. km following further substantial rift growth. After a few months of steady, incremental advance since the last event, the rift grew suddenly by a further 18 km during the second half of December 2016. Only a final 20 km of ice now connects an iceberg one quarter the size of Wales to its parent ice shelf.
I hope HB sees this, and adds another childish personal insult after his usual fashion. The more he does that, the more likely it is that anybody who reads my political analysis will give it some serious thought, and maybe next time around, if he’s a D, he will vote in the primaries for a candidate without a baggage train a mile long, a candidate that ENTERED the race with just about the worst polling negatives of any D presidential candidate ever.
BAD MOVE.
BAD move, because running such a candidate. you are running an unnecessary risk of LOSING.
There are enough Sanders supporters inside the D party working like hell to take over that there is a very real possibility they WILL gain control of the party.
I guess all the big D guys in English suits and Italian shoes and the big D women in Prada will have to switch parties, when that happens, because otherwise they might have to sit next to a working guy at the DNC , and they would of course die of embarrassment if they were subjected to such an indignity.
How about it HB, porch doggie?
You will roll over on your back and pee yourself if you ever off your porch and out into the street, the first time you encounter a real dog. If you like, I will post a list of people who worked for Clinton who had to give up their party positions because they were caught playing dirty tricks for her, lol.
And I might just go ahead and post a list of Sanders supporters who have won elections while campaigning as such, rather than as Clinton fans.
In the meantime, I encourage any body interested to sign up for THE NEW YORKER email news , which is free. They are running a non stop stream of legitimate criticisms of Trump.
I just got on the list myself, and will be posting links from there starting very soon.
You can put all that “special lube” you want on your political posts. But, your not going to force your conservative hate on me.
Your boy Trump demands apologies from people when people speak truths against him , yet he refuses to apologize for the hateful things that come out of his mouth..plus being the world’s biggest liar. MacBoris your have learned well from your leader.
Force something on you?
I wouldn’t pee on you if you were on fire, lol.
I’m only trying to get as many members and readers as possible to read and then think about what I have been saying in all these many comments.
I couldn’t possibly care less if you live, or die, or never open your eyes to reality.
But I am grateful that you make it so easy for me to get the energy up to post these comments, because I really do want a D in the WH, although you are too stupid to comprehend this rather simple fact.
Nearly all the regulars here, and some lurkers for sure, are capable of some basic critical thinking, and smart enough to know that while they cannot exert any influence on the R party in selecting candidates, or establishing policy, they CAN influence policy and candidate selection in their party , the D party.
And the D’s will start winning again when they get back to their roots, and quit running as Republican Lites on economic policy.
It’s one thing to stick up for all the various special interest groups that vote D, from but they are not numerous enough to win elections without the support of the working class, which is a hundred times bigger.
I mean it’s ok to support the sex change individuals who want to switch bathrooms, but there aren’t enough individuals in that group to put them all in one small town and elect the mayor.
It’s my goal to encourage the D’s in this forum, and nearly everybody here is a D, to do a little thinking about WHY Clinton lost, about where the party and the candidate and the campaign went wrong, and thus be ready to work on making sure the mistakes made last time aren’t repeated next time.
Blaming me won’t help at all. Blaming Trump and the people who voted for him won’t help D’s win next time.
If they want to win next time, they need to do a lot of things differently. NOW is the time to be thinking about these things.
Approximately 70% of ensemble members from latest ECMWF model run calling for #ElNino by July.
We shall see.
We are still behind the “Spring Barrier”, a very uncertain line.
Notice how Javier is now worried.
No one seems to understand ENSO at all, other than it is a dipole oscillation that reverts to a mean of zero.
My model for ENSO is solving the second order differential equation of sloshing within a liquid volume, which is essentially the Mathieu equation. All I do is add the forcing for the sloshing which happen to be the well known cycles in the earth’s rotational velocity and those caused by the moon. The extra twist is to add a biennial modulation, which is an assumed metastable behavior known to exist.
So it’s not so much a prediction as it is the actual physics of ENSO, which will certainly be improved over time as more scientists understand the model.
That’s why Javier is so insecure — someone is actually discussing physics instead of spewing talking points.
The ECMWF has been really accurate as it has become more robust.
The stratosphere at the Arctic latitudes is exhibiting signs of a warming event. If this comes to pass, another round of global cooling over the Northern Hemisphere would be on the way probably towards the end of winter/beginning of spring, regardless of what El Nino does.
It’s going to be real interesting to see if the federal government’s climate experts will attempt to declare 2017 as the warmest year ever, considering the extra scrutiny they are about to receive beginning at noon on Friday.
Gee! Thanks for popping in out of the blue, as you seem to do from time to time and blessing us with this particularly prescient post (brought to us with kind sponsorship of Koch Industries no doubt). What would we do without you?
However my gut tells me that. sometime after noon on Friday, certainly within the next four years, the world and quite possibly the US in particular, is going to experience an unprecedented weather/climate phenomenon (ice free arctic?) and by unprecedented I mean in the recorded history of our civilization. Frankly, if it happens, it couldn’t happen with a better guy in the White House and a better group of people in control of the US government!
It looks like Cheeto Boy will probably be the bag holder.
All these words, yet nothing about the SSW event I mentioned. You’d rather discuss what your “gut” tells you instead of an actual climate indicator?
You post a link to a pretty picture and call that “an actual climate indicator”? Now that’s rich! Why can’t I get this image of a couple of happy guys out of my head?
Just so everybody can see what you’re calling “an actual climate indicator”!
Hi HB,
I see you are MORE determined than ever to make my case for me, thank you.
A few days back I posted a link indicating why I think it’s sort of funny that Trump will likely get away with putting family members in positions of great power, do you remember that?
Basically it comes down to the fact that Bill and Hillary with the blessing of the D party set the precedent when Hillary was formulating health care policy without having any official position authorizing that sort of activity.
I daresay you are don’t know who Daniel Patrick Moynihan IS or was, but he was a very well respected Democrat, who held the office of Senator from the state of New York. He coined the famous phrase ” defining deviancy down” which basically means that our society has been lowering the older traditional standards of behavior so that it’s now ok to do things that were once totally taboo, or at least frowned upon.
Now since you are setting the stage for me , making it SO easy to make a fool out of you, I will explain why the people of this country who voted for Trump gave him a free pass on his “grabbem by the pussy” locker room remarks.
Bill set the precedent in terms of lowering our cultural standards in this particular respect , not just talking about it, but grabbing at least ONE right inside the White House, and grabbing a whole series going back for many years. But that was ok with people like you,without a doubt . It was ok with the D establishment, although a great many had sense enough to be embarrassed by it, and said so, privately. Damned few establishment Democrats ever said much about his record involving women in public though.
And when Clinton worshippers like you wonder why the folks who voted for Trump gave him a free pass, well, they remembered Monica, and all the other women, and basically decided that if it’s ok for a D president to behave that way, and his wife to defend him when he does so, then it must be ok for a R candidate to do the same.
My goal in pursuing this little pissing match is to convince D partisans who make the mistake of assuming that they could get away with running a candidate with Clinton’s baggage train and poll numbers to think long and hard before they nominate another candidate with so many flaws.
She did something just about everybody considered impossible. She managed to lose to a candidate with equally bad or worse polling numbers in terms of trust, etc, a candidate who HIJACKED the R party nominating process. She lost to a candidate that was roundly and repeatedly badmouthed by a good number of the most respected elders of the R party, a candidate the R establishment had no use for AT ALL. ( Until he won. )
Call me a Trumpster every hour on the hour, if you like, I’m ok with that, here in this forum, because it furthers my goal. I have made countless comments here in support of strong environmental laws, workable and affordable health care, etc, and any forum regular who is reading this exchange knows this to be true.
The facts speak for themselves, and you are making it hard for any Clinton partisans in this forum to ignore the actual facts involved in her first winning the nomination, and then losing the election. 😉
My primary goal is to get D’s to think a little, next time around, and nominate somebody with fewer flaws.
My secondary goal is to rub the noses of idiots like you in the evidence of your idiocy.
I feel sorry for you, but not sorry enough to allow you to get the last word, given the importance of the subject.
And remember to stay on your porch. The street is a dangerous place for lap doggies. You might encounter a fact or two, face to face, and I fear you won’t be able to withstand the stress.You might swell up with venom and indignation that the world doesn’t march your drum to such an extent that you burst, like an over heated automobile radiator.
Sling all the mud you like, and bring some help if you can find any.
MacBoris says – “Call me a Trumpster every hour on the hour, if you like, I’m ok with that,”
DJT seems to take cheap shots anywhere he can. New nick name: “Cheap Shot Donny”? Everyone, it appears, that doesn’t align themselves with his or her devotion to anything he says or does is an enemy? Clearly the man has the insecurities of a 13 year old school bully. I want to support what is good for the greater number of American citizens, but this guy is off the charts and in way over his head for the POTUS. “Mr. No One Negotiate Better Than Me”, why don’t you negotiate how best you can serve the country you were dubiously elected to with all the voices in your head and hopefully a deal will be struck for the calmest, dignified, resolute and diplomatic personality. Or is it not on the table?
Today’s recommendation:
The movie “Bottle Schock”. A great movie about wine and set in a place called Napa Valley, wherever that is.
Of course, “Little Big Man” is a classic.
One of the best cult classics is “Rancho Deluxe”.
Been watching movies, the cold spell has been below zero for a good six weeks now.
Is it ok to refer to Donald Trump as dumbass or knothead or brainless twit or bonehead or doughhead?
Just wondering.
Don’t wonder:
‘Nobody wants to buy them’: Frustrated scalpers losing big money trying to sell inauguration tickets
Using the ploy of a “few cents more here, a few cents more there,” appeals are made before state energy regulatory commissions to increase utility rates for millions of customers. Such commissions drive the enactment of renewable energy usage and subsidies. Ignored are the economic hardships imposed on the less fortunate members of society. Everyone pays more; the elite few benefit from these subsidies.
The increase in energy costs is an absolute prediction in a world that is running out of cheap oil on which it totally depends for transportation. It doesn’t help that many countries are transitioning from cheap continuously producing fossil fuels to more expensive intermittent renewables.
The bottom line is that electricity from that project would be over 3 times more expensive than from the outrageously expensive Hinckley Point C nuclear project without taking into consideration expenses incurred on the grid to manage the intermittence.
With the increasing costs of energy the economy becomes less efficient and many businesses fail. It is a recipe for lower growth and more frequent crisis.
It doesn’t help that many countries are transitioning from cheap continuously producing fossil fuels to more expensive intermittent renewables.
Anyone who claims renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels is either ignorant of what has been happening in recent years or has some kind of political or ideological agenda they are invested in.
Furthermore the meme of intermittency is a strawman and a sign that the persons who claims it to be an issue are out of touch with the state of the art.
Ironically it seems to be the same people who deny the implications of burning fossil fuels that also keep pounding the same old drum of the renewables are expensive and intermittent meme!
My hunch is, history will not look kindly on these people.
Edit: Saudia Arabia has already seen the writing on the wall and it looks like the another big fossil fuel player in the world is starting to wake up…
Realizing Russia’s renewable energy potential in 2017
Feb 1, 2016Viktor Katona OPINION
A recently declared Year of the Environment in Russia provides a golden opportunity to bring environmental issues to the public’s eye and create momentum for a much-needed green technology revolution in the country that is rich with natural resources and a highly skilled work force.
Maybe the following article gives a clue to why the troll (Koch) brigade’s posts seem to be getting more shrill!
According to the latest issue of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) monthly “Energy Infrastructure Update” (with data through November 30, 2016), renewable energy accounted for the majority (50.5%) of new U.S. electrical generation put into service during the first eleven months of 2016.
Combined, newly installed capacity from renewable sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) totaled 9,655-MW, surpassing that from natural gas (8,109-MW), nuclear power (1,270-MW), coal (45-MW), and oil (33-MW) combined. **
In the interest of being “fair and balanced”, the double asterisk note at the end of the article reads:
** Note that generating capacity is not the same as actual generation. Electrical production per MW of available capacity (i.e., capacity factor) for renewables is often lower than that for fossil fuels and nuclear power. As noted, the total installed operating generating capacity provided by renewables in 2016 is now about 18.7% of the nation’s total whereas actual electrical generation from renewables year-to-date (according to the latest U.S. Energy Information Administration figures) is roughly 15.1%; however, both of these figures understate renewables’ actual contribution because neither EIA nor FERC fully accounts for all electricity generated by smaller-scale, distributed renewable energy sources.
This is in rough agreement with the data I have been posting on new capacity additions for the past couple of months, whenever the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly web page is updated. Looks like November is going to be another blockbuster month for renewables when the data is released next week Wednesday or thereabouts.
Note also Javier’s logical inconsistency when he writes, “The increase in energy costs is an absolute prediction in a world that is running out of cheap oil on which it totally depends for transportation.” and then immediately goes on to write, “It doesn’t help that many countries are transitioning from cheap continuously producing fossil fuels to more expensive intermittent renewables.”
So, consider the case of the Caribbean islands and many others, that depend on petroleum based liquid fuels for electricity generation as well as transport. Do we wait for oil production to start declining in earnest, when his “absolute prediction” of “the increase in energy costs” becomes a reality, before we attempt to transition to what he claims are “more expensive intermittent renewables”? What is it Javier? What do you suggest the Caribbean (and other) islands do?
What is it Javier? What do you suggest the Caribbean (and other) islands do?
The real question is do you really care what Javier might suggest?
Not really but, it might be interesting to see what additional tortured logic he can come up with!
I already gave you my opinion about energy in islands. Too bad you don’t remember it. Perhaps because you don’t care so why should I repeat it? You can do a search if you want.
Anyone who claims renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels is either ignorant of what has been happening in recent years or has some kind of political or ideological agenda they are invested in.
Okay, here’s one theory as to where Javier might have got his ideas about expensive renewable energy from.
I think it was on NewYears Day that I posted the following story:
OUR said on Tuesday that Eight Rivers’ proposed 33.1 MW solar project would supply energy to the national grid at about US 8.54 cents per kWh. Eight Rivers plans to invest around US$48.7 million in the plant.
So the actual cost of the electricity is going to be ten times less than the erroneous figure (mistake) published in the December 30 article and the construction costs look to be in line with those for utility scale plants in the US at about a buck and a half per watt. If as I suspect, the costs of implementation go down by the time work starts on this project, in addition to producing some of the least expensive electricity on the island, the plant will probably end up one of the most profitable as well. That of course, assumes that the owners of the project did not project any cost declines at the time they submitted their bid.
So much for “more expensive intermittent renewables”!
Fred wrote:
Anyone who claims renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels is either ignorant of what has been happening in recent years or has some kind of political or ideological agenda they are invested in.
Islandboy quoted the numbers:
OUR said on Tuesday that Eight Rivers’ proposed 33.1 MW solar project would supply energy to the national grid at about US 8.54 cents per kWh. Eight Rivers plans to invest around US$48.7 million in the plant.
Well now, 8.54 cents per kWh, that is pretty cheap, but it is a bit over two and one half times as expensive as coal and almost twice that of natural gas.
However, since few petroleum units are used at that cost (petroleum only produced 0.7 percent of U.S. electricity in 2011), it is better to compare nuclear production costs to coal production costs, which averaged 3.23 cents per kilowatt hour in 2011 and to natural gas production costs which averaged 4.51 cents per kilowatt hour.
Hey, now I did not write that so don’t tell me that I am either ignorant or have an ideological agenda. Please direct your wrath at those damn engineers at the Institute for Energy Research. They are the ones who are either ignorant or have an ideological agenda. Though I am not sure which. 😉
EDIT: I just noticed that the Institute for Energy Research got their data from the EIA. So those guys are the ones who are either ignorant or have an ideological agenda. 😉
IER is heavily funded by fossil fuel owners and companies.
GF, all that data is from the EIA, not the IER.
Your next suggestion? A conspiracy theory perhaps?
No., I don’t abide by conspiracy theories, prefer actual data from the source and some reality.
Take a look at AEO2017 and you will see the levelized costs of wind and solar PV are far lower than the graph you presented. In fact the EIA states that “Including available federal tax credits, wind and solar units will be
among the most competitive sources of new generation in 2022”
One must also understand that the levelized cost is a calculation with varying parameters. Also fossil fuel backup costs are often added into the renewable costs. So the data may be there but the calculation can vary.
By 2022? No, no, no. Fred’s statement had nothing to do with 2022. He implied they were cheaper today. And all who differed with that assessment were either ignorant or had an agenda.
Oh OK. My own calculations show the cost of PV power generation right now ranges from $20 to $25 per Megawatt-hr. No tax incentives used, no added costs for fossil baseline power . Just the cost of installation and maintenance of site and infrastructure. Costing is for large solar farm installations not residential.
“Well now, 8.54 cents per kWh, that is pretty cheap, but it is a bit over two and one half times as expensive as coal and almost twice that of natural gas.”
But, if you re-read the quote further up, “Once completed, the Eight Rivers facility will generate some of the lowest cost electricity on the island.” you should realize that the alternatives are not as good outside of the US. This applies to most island states including those under US jurisdiction like Hawaii and Puerto Rico. As a matter of fact, as far as I can ascertain, in the entire Caribbean only the Dominican Republic uses any coal at all. All the islands use petroleum in one form or another for most of their electricity generation with the result that the cost of electricity on my most recent bill, generated on January 12, was about 21.02 US cents for the first 100 kWh, retail. I don’t use more than 100 kWh so I don’t know hat the higher retail rate is.
“Please direct your wrath at those damn engineers at the Institute for Energy Research.”
I learned about the IER back in October 2015 when, in response to a post from a troll using the screen name “Glenn Stehle”, I ended up doing a web search and ultimately composing a response. The result at the top of the page for my web search was :
You can read that and decide for yourself how unbiased the IER is.
Secondly the data being presented is from 2011, five years ago, Renewable energy costs, especially solar PV have gone down significantly since then. You might want to look at a more up to date LCOE analysis from Lazard. If you’re super interested and have the time you could compare and contrast Lazard’s version 6.0 analysis from 2012 with the IER analysis you linked to and the most recent from Lazard.
Competitive bidding for projects has driven global levelised costs of electricity from offshore wind down 22% to a benchmark estimate of $126 per megawatt-hour in H2 2016
Compare that to what the IER graph is suggesting.
Now anyone can suggest that Lazard and/or BNEF has an agenda but the Sourcewatch web page is pretty clear on the foundations and likely motives of the IER.
But, if you re-read the quote further up, “Once completed, the Eight Rivers facility will generate some of the lowest cost electricity on the island.
But of course, if you do not include the cost of the solar panels, construction and start up cost, then solar is very cheap. But of course all that cost is real money… and you cannot exclude it.
You can read that and decide for yourself how unbiased the IER is.
Okay, okay, let me try just one more time to get this very obvious point across. The data is from the EIA! The IER had absolutely nothing to do with the goddamn data!
“The data is from the EIA! The IER had absolutely nothing to do with the goddamn data!”
Except that they are presenting five year old data (August 22, 2012) under the heading “Latest Analysis”, when the variables are changing at a pretty rapid clip. I hope you didn’t get too upset to read anything in my comment past the line you quoted! there is some much more recent data from a source that is less biased AFAICT.
In addition, why consider projections for LCOE for 2017 from the EIA when actual data from 2015-2016 is available?
We all know how the EIA has been low balling renewable projections for years now. Why they have been doing so isn’t even important in the context of this discussion. The fact is the EIA has been very wrong with their projections for renewable capacity additions and were probably equally as wrong in 2011 with their pricing projections for renewables.
I stand by my statement! Solar is already cheaper than oil. For oil to beat it it would have to be sold at $10.00 a barrel. I may or may not have an agenda but it has nothing to with the price of solar, which will to continue to get cheaper still and its EROEI will continue to increase.
Published on May 5, 2016 It’s not in the papers but a silent revolution is moving across the world. Renewable energy is becoming cheaper than from fossil fuels. It means that progressively the choice for wind and solar energy is no longer an ethical one but an economic one. And this will speed up the transfer to renewable energy.
In countries like Brazil, Australia, Chile and parts of the United States people consider renewable energy because of financial reasons. The price of solar and wind energy will continue to drop and in more countries renewable energy will occur.
Dubai Shatters all Records for Cost of Solar with Earth’s Largest Solar Power Plant
Dr. Moritz Borgmann
May 2, 2016 The Emirate of Dubai set a new world record for the cost of solar power on May 1, 2016 with the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) receiving bids for the 800 MW Sheikh Maktoum Solar Park Phase III as low as 3.00 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). This not only marks the lowest cost ever for solar power, but also easily beats all available fossil-fuel options in Dubai on cost.
There are numerous tipping points that are being reached all over the world.
The writing is on all the walls all over the world in Yuuuge Big Bold Red letters! One has to really put on some industrial strength blinders not to see it.
China, Europe drive shift to electric cars as U.S. lags
Electric cars will pick up critical momentum in 2017, many in the auto industry believe – just not in North America.
Tighter emissions rules in China and Europe leave global carmakers and some consumers with little choice but to embrace plug-in vehicles, fuelling an investment surge, said industry executives gathered in Detroit this past week for the city’s annual auto show.
“Car electrification is an irreversible trend,” said Jacques Aschenbroich, chief executive of auto supplier Valeo (VLOF.PA), which has expanded sales by 50 percent in five years with a focus on electric, hybrid, connected and self-driving cars.
In Europe, green cars benefit increasingly from subsidies, tax breaks and other perks, while combustion engines face mounting penalties including driving and parking restrictions.
China, struggling with catastrophic pollution levels in major cities, is aggressively pushing plug-in vehicles. Its carrot-and-stick approach combines tens of billions in investment and research funding with subsidies, and regulations designed to discourage driving fossil-fueled cars in big cities.
To anyone who lives or has lived outside the US for any amount of time this really should come as no surprise. Go to Sao Paulo, according to a recent poll 95% of the population is ready for driverless EVs today.
Anyone who claims renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels is either ignorant of what has been happening in recent years or has some kind of political or ideological agenda they are invested in.
Perhaps you are the one with an agenda.
In Europe it is a fact that the more new renewables a country has, the more expensive is its electricity. You don’t argue with facts.
German energy regulator Bnetza awarded 200 MW of utility-scale power at 8 euro cents a kWh (8.6 U.S. cents) for the auction opened in December, it said Wednesday
It compares residential prices (which include so many taxes and fees that they bear little relationship to underlying costs) to per capita wind and solar capacity, which is also pretty meaningless: the proper metric would be market share of overall kWh generation.
Good morning HB,
I’m sorry to see you falling behind on your job this morning, but I’m RARING to go.
Here’s something for you!
During the 2016 campaign, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton failed to visit several working class states that she and her staff thought were in the bag. Her schedule screamed arrogance and clearly cost her the election, but several Democrats have refused to acknowledge the mistake. Instead, Harry Reid blamed the FBI, President Obama blamed Fox News, while just about everyone else blamed it on the Russians.
Interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile, however, is fortunately doing some of the introspection her party desperately needs.
“I’m not going to sugercoat it. We failed. We came up short,” Brazile said during introductory remarks. “We made some serious mistakes. Some strategic errors. We got cocky about our invincible blue wall and then we saw it crumble because of just a few thousand votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.”
Now I suppose my little porch doggie friend will henceforth be denouncing Brazile as a Trumpster, since she has publicly said exactly the same thing about Clinton, in substantial part, in slightly milder language, than I have been saying for months.
A year or two from now, you will be able to find plenty of acknowledgements , publicly made, by prominent large D guys, to the same effect as the rest of what I have been saying, that the party was under the control of an old time political machine owned by Clinton, and that nominating her was a strategic mistake of the first order.
I ‘m confident the D party will won’t nominate another candidate with her negatives and baggage train for a very long time, but I am NOT arrogant, and I don’t take unnecessary chances when the stakes are so high as to literally involve the survival of our country. Besides, I’m having a good time.
Putin: Those Who Spread Fake Allegations About Trump Are ‘Worse Than Prostitutes’
Despicable Don at it again. I have never in my life detested a president like this. Usually it is a persons policies that you dont like but Herr Trump is the whole package. He does everything wrong and his character is the lowest. He says he has good policies but lies and his party will run over him with their anti-American policies. He only wants to be a part time president. I personally think he should not show up at the inauguration, and run his huuuggge business empire full time. Its okay with me.
Right wing HATE is destroying America, Thanks Boris EmailServer aka KGB
English suits and Prada aren’t doing much to save America. Considering that most sophisticated observers these days say the D party is good on civil rights and that sort of thing, but no better than a Republican Lite alternative to the Republican establishment, it might be a good idea to think a little about how the D party can do BETTER.
I posted a link a couple of days ago showing that THIRTEEN Democrats voted against an amendment proposed by Sanders that would have forced big pharma to treat citizens of THIS country as well as they treat citizens of OTHER countries, namely, negotiating the prices of drugs sold to our government. It’s not at all unusual for big pharma to sell a pill in Canada for a couple of bucks that they sell to the us Yankee taxpayers for five or ten times as much.
You know what, little lap doggie?
You as a Democrat can make a difference in D party policies, and in who the D party runs as candidates for office. You can’t do much as an individual, unless maybe you have made enough dirty oil money to help buy an election, perhaps? And perhaps you are willing to donate it to the D party ? But collectively you could have said no to the worst candidate in D party history, as evidenced by her polling numbers.
YOU have no doubt forgotten, but Sanders ran his race on nickel and dime contributions, the kind working people can afford.
Clinton and her team were too STUPID to understand this sun at high noon obvious evidence that the working people of this country, ESPECIALLY D voting working people, were totally fed up and pissed off with her Republican Lite record, and her Republican Lite platform, and obvious Republican Lite ways of raking in the cash, Trumpster style, while talking working people talk, once in a long while, although she couldn’t be bothered to spend as much time with the working people of the big industrial states that put Trump in the White House as she did making speeches at a quarter million a pop to her bankster buddies. She found all the time in the world for the one percenters, but ZERO time for the people she needed the most, but arrogantly took for granted, assuming they would be docile enough to stay on the D party plantation.
She did go out of her way to make a fool of herself by calling half the country “deplorables” without having brains enough to comprehend that one hell of a lot of the D party base falls within that category, within the context of her remarks.
Arrogance and stupidity! That’s the recipe that enabled her to lose to the worst, most distrusted, most hated R party candidate of all time, a candidate that was thoroughly despised and thoroughly publicly badmouthed by half the elders of the R party. It’s not easy to lose to such a clown as Trump, but she managed it.
If you want to take part in R party policy making, and R party primary races, then you are going to have to switch parties. Come to think of it, you just might be an under cover Trumpster yourself, considering how hard you are yapping trying to prevent any discussion of what the D party needs to do to return to power.
Control of the R party is in the hands of the R party, mostly, but the R party base was so pissed at the R establishment it revolted and nominated Trump……. which SHOULD have been another sharp wake up brick upside Clinton’s head that she needed to abandon the Republican Lite platform and lower herself enough to talk to people who have never seen an English suit, or Prada outfit, and never will, except on tv.
I mean, I know it’s tough when your are the EMPRESS, in every way except that you haven’t yet been crowned, to have to lower yourself that way, but even kings and queens have to do some tough things once in a while.
I don’t necessarily expect the other members of this forum to AGREE with me, but I’m sure some of them are reading my comments, and are thereby hopefully motivated to do a little thinking of their own, and come up with ideas and candidates that are more likely to win, in future elections.
The more new ideas, or old good ones revived, and the more D s running in primaries, the better the chance of the D’s winning back control of DC, not to mention state and local governments.
I’m sure there are plenty of people that can come up with other ideas,which may be better than mine.
And just for the record, when I say “my ideas” I mean the ones I am trying to revive and reuse myself. They aren’t original with me by any means.
Now here’s something from the Huffington Post to support MY interpretation of the factors that cost Clinton the election.
I will post the first paragraph, as an appetizer! Chew it long and carefully little doggie, or you will CHOKE on it , for sure.
The author is a big D Democrat.
“They said they were facing an economic apocalypse, we offered “retraining” and complained about their white privilege. Is it any wonder we lost? One after another, the dispatches came back from the provinces. The coal mines are gone, the steel mills are closed, the drugs are rampant, the towns are decimated and everywhere you look depression, despair, fear. In the face of Trump’s willingness to boldly proclaim without facts or evidence that he would bring the good times back, we offered a tepid gallows logic. Well, those jobs are actually gone for good, we knowingly told them. And we offered a fantastical non-solution. We will retrain you for good jobs! Never mind that these “good jobs” didn’t exist in East Kentucky or Cleveland. And as a final insult, we lectured a struggling people watching their kids die of drug overdoses about their white privilege. Can you blame them for calling bullshit? All Trump could offer was white nationalism as protection against competing with black and brown people. It wasn’t a very compelling case, but it was vastly superior to a candidate who enthusiastically backed NAFTA, seems most at ease in a room of Goldman Sachs bankers and was almost certain to do nothing for these towns other than maybe setting up a local chapter of Rednecks Who Code. We bet that Trump’s manifest awfulness would be enough to let us eke out a win. We were dead wrong. Here’s my version of the Democratic Party autopsy because, make no mistake, the old ways of the Democratic party must die.”
The author gets it. Maybe she will be a Senator herself , or even President someday. If she remains true to what she says here, I will vote for her in a flash if I ever have the opportunity.
Remember, little lap doggie, you have some measure of control of your own party, but zero control of the opposition party.
If you want to win, you will have to work to upgrade your own party’s desirability in the eyes of the working people of this country, because they outnumber the elite by a mile.
Calling me names, and insulting my kind of people won’t put Democrats back in charge.
Working to get the D party back to its real roots can work, and will work, if enough people join in the work.
My personal vote belongs to the D’s , or the greens, or maybe the libertarians, if I can’t in good conscience vote for the D candidate, because for me the environmental issue trumps all the other issues put together.
But I’m a class traitor in this respect, and a political outlier in any respect.
You’re just another little lap doggie, barking at things you don’t understand, and probably never will.
“Why should Sanders allow a Democrat like Schumer—who’s against the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, who played a key role in getting derivates deregulated for the big banks, who takes oodles of cash from oil companies destroying our planet, who stayed silent while police illegally shot at and abused unarmed water protectors fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline—to stand next to him and con less politically-astute Americans into thinking he’s some type of progressive warrior?”
“This does more than damage hearts and minds of progressives: it risks setting up the Democratic Party —which certainly looks like it will still be a bought-off, Republican-lite party in four years— as the protagonist in the 2020 thriller that seeks to take down the evil Republican boogeyman, President Trump.”
“And once victorious, America will be back where it’s been for the last eight years: improving on the surface, but structurally drowning as the majority live paycheck to paycheck while most of the money keeps funneling to Schumer’s donors.”
“But whether it’s Schumer, or Nancy Pelosi, or Cory Booker, or fill-in-the-blank-corporate shill, Sanders is fooling himself if he thinks he’s going to rewire the minds of politicians who long ago stopped thinking of themselves as public servants.”
“There’s a reason all of these folks formally, or informally, endorsed Hillary Clinton before Sanders even launched his presidential bid: they are astoundingly disconnected from the reality of what’s going on in, to borrow a phrase from the un-wise Sarah Palin, real America.”
“None of these Democrats could see the rumblings of a populist, progressive movement exploding across America because none have actually consistently spoken to average working people across America.”
“Instead, they surround themselves with the cocktail-crowd, limousine liberals of America, who write them the checks that keep them in power, where they endlessly fight to stay while claiming victory whenever they deliver crumbs of incremental change to people who need much more.”
“But, Jordan, that’s how our system works, the corporate establishment screams! Change happens slowly, in increments.”
“NO, that’s the excuse the bought-off politicians, “strategists,” and pundits offer to legitimize a system that continually provides major improvements for wealthy donors and corporations, but not for average workers who, despite breaking their backs day-in-and-day-out, don’t have lobbyists or endless bank account on their side.”
“By standing with Schumer and his ilk, Sanders is legitimizing politicians who don’t deserve legitimization. By standing with Schumer and his ilk, Sanders is normalizing politicians who take the corporate road 95 percent of the time, but project themselves as progressive champions 100 percent of the time.”
“Are extremist Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan worse than Democrats like Schumer?
On social issues, absolutely; on economic matters, not by much.”
‘But if Sanders isn’t careful, he’ll repair a corporate-Democratic Party’s badly beaten vehicle for it just as the country predictably turns against President Trump, who by the looks of it, will be delivering one disastrous policy after another.”
“And without flinching, Schumer and the corporate establishment will open the car door, and toss him and the progressive movement he represents out into the muddy ditch—on their road back to power.”
“.. don’t get in the car with Schumer and the oligarchs he represents. Or the ditch most Americans are already stuck in will only get muddier.”
Now I’m only one little guy, and I am not so confident of my reading of the chicken entrails that I will offer Sanders advice on how to proceed. He’s up against a Republican Lite establishment party, and rebuilding it in the image of the REAL or traditional, historical Democratic party, in terms of who it stands for economically is one hell of a tough undertaking.
But if he and his followers don’t succeed, we will in my opinion, continue right on down the same old, same old road, with power and money continually flowing to the one percenters, and the rest of us, excepting the well paid lackeys of the one percenters , experiencing ever lower living standards.
Hardly anybody has posted a comment indicating approval of my analysis of the election, but quite a few have posted a matching opinion about the one percenter issue. Maybe that’s because I’m all wrong, or maybe it’s because very few people are willing to admit that they have been wrong themselves, or that they would rather remain quiet , in order to be seen as members in good standing in a forum that supported Clinton with all it’s heart. Only a few members of any large group of people, under any circumstances, are willing to step out front and publicly point out that errors and mistakes have been made, collectively. That tends to make enemies out of those in the group who worked the hardest promoting mistaken policies and practices.
Those who get it about one percenters and corporate welfare and the concentration of power and money in the hands of a TINY fraction of the people, are halfway there. They recognize the problem is real, and that alone means they are at least looking around for potential solutions.
The only remotely likely possible workable solution, in my estimation, is that the ordinary people of this country get together and recapture control of the Democratic Party, and return it to its roots as the party of the people.
I pray you will give some THOUGHT to what I have been saying all along.You may come to different conclusions, or come up with a different and better solution. I’m ready to listen, but I’m not ready to give up.
For anybody else,
So far as I am concerned, anybody who can’t see that the Democratic Party establishment, as it exists today, is not simply a Republican Lite establishment, in economic terms, is to put it as mildly as possible, either blinded by partisanship, or else has such a shallow knowledge of our national political status quo that he is to put it in plain language, either ignorant or stupid.
— —
уважаемый Mr. Boris EmailServer aka KGB,
Любой, кто думает следующие четыре года, будет подходить не обратил внимание. Найтовы козыря из в любом и каждом кто не соглашается с ним. Это будет примерно каждый в правительстве, Республиканце или Демократе.
“extremist Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan” Презренный Дон в этом снова. Я имею никогда не в моей жизни не переваривал президента подобно этому. Обычно это – политика людей, что вы dont подобно, но Козырь Herr – это целый пакет. Он все неправильно и его характер самое низкое. Он говорит, что он имеет хорошую политику, но неправды и его сторона будет переезжать его с их Анти-американской политикой. Он только хочет быть президентом с неполным рабочим днем. Я лично думаю, что он не должен разоблачать во время инаугурации, и управлять полным рабочим днем деловой империи его huuuggge. Хорошо с нами.
благодарность за ничто LubeMaster
Thanks for the reminder, HB.
It’s easy as pie to find and copy and paste plenty of stuff coming straight from the mouths of big D Democrats who have owned up to the fact that Clinton the candidate BLEW IT.
They won’t make the mistake of nominating such a candidate again. Any other nationally known Democrat could have mopped the floor with Trump, if he or she ran a decent campaign.
I LIVE among the kind of people who make up most of the coaliton that put Trump in the White House.
And while I don’t have hard numbers, my informal conversations with a large sample of them indicate that at least a third of them, and maybe as many as half, possibly even MORE of them, voted AGAINST Clinton, as voted FOR Trump.
The ones who voted against Clinton had decades to make up their minds they didn’t trust her and didn’t like her.
Trump didn’t have to labor under that handicap, being new to the political scene as a candidate.
It’s one thing to go around feeling all brainy and superior, as so many of us are prone to do, bemoaning the INCONTESTABLE FACT that a hell of a lot of people in this country love their guns, and country music, and prefer cheap beer over good wine, and have little or nothing in the way of formal education.
BUT it’s altogether another thing to be smart enough, and well educated enough, to be able to bitch about THIS INCONTESTABLE REALITY , and yet ……
BE DUMB ENOUGH to think that you can safely run a candidate for president that such people DETEST from the word go.
Let’s try to remember that elections are won in the center in this country, and millions of middle of the road voters who are NOT Jesus Freaks, or gun lovers, or xenophobes, or whatever, do not especially care for a politician who displays such arrogance and such an obvious sense of entitlement as to do to suit herself, bending the rules the rest of us have to follow into pretzels, and taking millions of dollars in one percenter checks made out to HER, and tens of millions made out to her family slush fund, from governments, other banksters, foreigners, etc, who are not exactly Boy Scout pack leader prospects, to put it mildly.
A SHITLOAD of those middle of the roaders are either already out of work, or AFRAID they will lose their jobs, because of globalization in large part.
Most people tend to forget how many kids went to school in this country to learn computers and programming, only to graduate to find their hoped for fifty grand starting job has been taken by somebody in India making ten percent as much.
I can’t think of a SOUL I have ever met who actually has to work with his hands and his back who is in favor of open borders, of more immigrants. I have met hundreds of such people over the years.
The D party might not actually BE in favor of open borders , of allowing MILLIONS more workers into the country, but it’s VERY easy to draw the conclusion that this is D policy by reading the news and listening to the debate. Many millions of people DO BELIEVE wide open immigration IS D party policy, and therefore are VERY reluctant to vote D.
My personal belief is that these political middle of the roaders are mostly rather reluctant to express what is actually on their mind, in public, because they DON’T want to appear to be any less modern, liberal, and open minded than other people they work with and associate with, if they are in white collar businesses and industries.
But once they are in the privacy of the voting booth, are they going to vote for what they maybe paid a little lip service to, or are they going to vote what they perceive to be their own best personal interests? Even HB can figure that one out.
These are the people, or most of them, that tripped up the pollsters last time around. Clinton’s margin in Virginia was half what the pollsters predicted.
Hey, whether you LIKE IT or LUMP IT, reality is reality,and must be DEALT with.
If D’s want to win, then they need to be thinking VERY hard about running candidates that are acceptable to people who live paycheck to pay check, and are worried about their jobs.
Slick PR people don’t control the minds of the people anymore, although losers like HB like to think they do, which makes it easy for them to excuse Clinton’s loss.
Just about every redneck on construction jobs has a smart phone in his pocket these days, and that’s where people are going for their news and information and to decide who their friends are, and who their enemies are.
It’s utterly STUPID to talk about working class people not knowing who their friends are, in the meanwhile nominating and supporting a candidate that in their estimation stands more with the enemy, a REPUBLICAN LITE candidate, than a candidate they can believe in…………
AND THEN to COUNT ON such a Republican Lite candidate to win, at a time when the country is in turmoil, with half the electorate afraid of being forced to lower their standard of living, or being reduced to outright poverty,………
Well, that route leads to surprises. SURPRISE, Trump is your new president.
There IS such a thing as the precautionary principle.
xxxx
Are those, kisses?
Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative. John Stuart Mill
I watched that. It was very good. There are a couple of nuclear options that prevents a meltdown even if all power, including local diesel power, is lost. But red tape may cause them to be delayed until it is too late.
Terra Power looks interesting esp if the low level stuff can be used as fuel
Hi Ron,
It’s good to see you are still around and as plain spoken and opinionated as ever. 😉
I admire you for sticking to your guns and to what you believe, and I may be even more opinionated than you, taken all around. 😉
Here’s hoping your health is holding up well, considering your years.
One thing in particular I have always admired about you is that although you are a proud liberal big D Democrat, you do not hesitate to call bullshit when you step in it, even if what you have to say conflicts with the usual dogma of the D party.
You are for instance the only self proclaimed big D liberal Democrat that I know of personally who does not hesitate at all to tell it like it is when the subject is Middle Eastern society and culture. Ordinarily the only people who will say what you have had to say on those subjects are right wingers, who are then called names by liberal pundits and PC types, who are invariably big L LIBERALS.
Damned few people are willing to publicly say anything that conflicts with any tribal taboo, and one of the biggest taboos is pointing out cases where the tribe is NOT telling it like it is. These rules apply to both every social group and to both parties of course.
I personally tell it like it is, or at least the way I think it is, regardless of which party I am criticizing, and the only way I can do this is to count myself as an independent , with a tendency to think in conservative terms. REAL conservatives don’t have any problem approving of tough environmental laws, etc, or equal rights for every body , or tossing out things that obviously harms the country, and putting something better in place. That in particular would be our health care system.
It’s REPUBLICANS that oppose such values, laws , and changes. They CALL themselves conservatives, but they’re not, in the true sense of the word, used in the way an engineer would use it.
I must of course admit that in the minds of the public, and most people who vote R, Republican and Conservative are synonyms, interchangeable words meaning the same thing.
You got me to thinking about this by posting a reasonably open minded and even favorable comment about nuclear power, which is generally considered taboo among big D Democrats, since it pisses off so many people in the big environmental tent, which is located well inside the D party’s political property lines, lol.
Maintaining my position as an independent allows me to criticize environmentalists and environmentalism when criticism is appropriate.
The anti nuclear community has taken their fear ( justified ) and distrust (also justified) of the nuclear industry to a religious extreme, and very skillfully manipulated public opinion to the point that research and development of new reactor technology has been more or less stopped dead in its tracks for the last fifty years or so.
History may eventually show that this was a COLOSSAL mistake. We are going to need reliable base load power, forever, and while it may be POSSIBLE to have it by way of storage and overbuilding of renewables, there is NO GUARANTEE whatsoever that this is economically feasible, or that it the necessary infrastructure will be built even if it IS feasible.
Having a viable- meaning affordable and safe -nuclear option would be priceless insurance.
And the fight against the construction and use of a long term hot wasted storage facility may eventually prove to be the biggest single tactical mistake the environmental camp has ever or will ever make.
The reason is pie simple. Large quantities of hot waste are stored at nearly every working nuke. The odds of a bad accident at any ONE of these places are many times higher than the odds of a bad accident at one good long term storage facility, and there are DOZENS of nukes scattered all over the USA.
And if there is a really bad accident at a nuke, the hot waste may well be a hell of a lot bigger problem, environmentally, than the relatively small amount of fuel actually IN the reactor.
Unfortunately political games are played without the partisans on either side paying much attention to such potential problems. The R’s are guilty way more often than the D’s.
If HB quits calling me a Trumpster, etc, I will get busy roasting the R’s, but virtually every body else in the forum is already on THAT job anyway,and has BEEN on it for years, so I don’t feel any need to get in a rush about it.
Here’s hoping for a few more good years for you.
Mac,
I think any sensible person will agree that M.E./Arab culture has some serious problems.
But, the US and the UK have not historically intervened in the ME for idealistic purposes, like raising the consciousness of the local population. They’ve been in the M.E. for Great Power goals, like controlling the oil supply. Likewise, when people in the M.E. have fought with the US and UK, it hasn’t really been about religion, even if religion is the normal way people in the ME get organized.
So, for the most part focusing on the cultural deficiencies of people in the M.E. is just scapegoating and a distraction tactic.
Hi Nick,
Basically I agree with you.
But I am talking about cognitive dissonance, Politically Correct BULLSHIT, which is a disease of the left, and hypocrisy. There are one hell of a lot of holier than thou liberals who go around preaching tolerance, who want to rip me a new asshole , for telling the truth about some OTHER cultures, while they pour scorn on the culture of tens of millions of people who live in THIS country.
And goddamned nearly EVERYBODY, right or left, goes along with this sort of bullshit. When you can talk to a person, or read what he writes, and see that EVERY single thought is consistent with EITHER left or right wing politics, then you’re dealing with a partisan who is willing to ignore the truth for partisan purposes- unless maybe that person is too ignorant or stupid to think a little for himself.
Well, here are a few thoughts:
Politically Correct
is a phrase created by anti-progress strategists as a tactic to discredit tolerance, civility and good christian compassion. It was intended to create the impression that people who advocate such values are in fact oppressing those who are trying to maintain negative values. It’s an inversion of reality. Using the phrase does no good.
liberals who go around preaching tolerance, who want to rip me a new asshole , for telling the truth about some OTHER cultures
You’re feeling angry and insulted. I respect that, but…that’s not a place which will help you communicate. You yourself have said this many times about your local community: you won’t get anywhere talking to people while insulting them. I know it’s an annoying thing…but you were right then, and it applies now: you won’t communicate effectively with anger.
To the extent to which “liberals” are being inconsistent, I think one reason is different expectations: they expect more from their own country. It may not be fair, but they participate in the American idea of exceptionalism: that the US is or should be better than the rest of the world.
OTOH, I’m not sure that this inconsistency is as common as it may seem: I suspect that the people who don’t like criticism of ME culture probably aren’t mostly the same people who criticize US rural/southern culture.
Finally…I gotta say it again: the whole question of ME culture is mostly a red herring, a distraction from the real issue which is that ME religion isn’t really the problem: the problem is that the US supports dictators in the ME, and those people who live in the ME who want a better world perceive the US, mostly correctly, as an enemy.
When pundits and TV characters talk about people in the ME being motivated by radical Islam, they’re spreading misinformation: people in the ME are mostly motivated by the good old fashioned pursuit of freedom and prosperity, which the US has been helping to block for quite some time.
People in the ME are not so different from you and I. They just want the US, in the words of the old joke, to “take your foot off my oxygen line”.
“I personally tell it like it is, or at least the way I think it is, regardless of which party I am criticizing”
“If HB quits calling me a Trumpster, etc, I will get busy roasting the R’s”
These two statement seem to be contradictory to me. But hey, maybe in the backwoods of Virginia it makes sense. I really think the second statement is a cry for help. Because HuntingtoBeach is treating OFM the way OFM treated HRC for the prior 12 months before the election.
What comes around, goes around. Karma
Keep it up, doggie.
You’re sort of stupid even for a DOG.
And remember that if people like you had had sense enough to run a candidate with favorable polling numbers, and a reputation for trustworthiness, and actually BEING a real DEMOCRAT, rather than a REPUBLICAN LITE, a D would be moving into the WH this week.
Here, we see that the price of a completely installed solar array has been and continues to be considerably cheaper in Germany than in the US. The gap seems to have been around two dollars all along. Now that the price in Germany has fallen to two dollars, solar is now twice as expensive in the US as it is in Germany.
There are things to be said for the USA being a large and very diverse collection of states and localities within those states, but the lack of a comprehensive and understandable national building code isn’t one of them.
But we will eventually catch up, or get close, in terms of what it costs to do a turnkey job here in the USA.
IF the Germans were to have been relocated en masse to the American Southwest twenty years ago, they would probably be pretty close TODAY to having enough solar infrastructure to run just about everything, just about every day, and be well on the way towards having built enough actual or defacto storage to get thru the nights and periods of bad weather using very little fossil fuel.
By defacto storage I mean such things as dumping a truck load of crushed stone in the crawl space of a new house, and embedding some duct work and some wiring in it, and using surplus solar power to heat up this thermal reservoir for night time heat, or adding a couple of cubic feet of storage to a really well insulated refrigerator, for extra ice, thereby ensuring that the refrigerator does not need to run at night, or even a couple of days and nights.
I have encountered a few Germans on jobs,I understand that the ones who come here on German projects tend to be their elite, it’s nevertheless true that a German carpenter in his mid twenties generally knows more than an American carpenter in his mid forties.
There IS something to be said for formal training in a no nonsense well structured environment, as opposed to learning in a slip slod fashion on the job, the way we do it here in the USA, with maybe a little training in the very basics in a high school vocational class.
Most of the kids that wind up in such classes aren’t qualified to become good carpenters, because so help me Sky Daddy, most of them don’t learn enough math in the eight or ten years they are in school PREVIOUS to taking a carpentry class to do the calculations a truly competent carpenter must do.
This is not to say that we don’t have a LOT of highly competent trades people. We do, and the best of them are as good or better as any in the world, but our average trades worker is not as well trained and motivated as the average German tradesman.
Germans HAVE to do a better job, or they would be out of business, because they don’t have the advantages we do in terms of cheap domestic energy and raw materials, and because we can sell a higher percentage of production domestically.
What Is Holding Renewable Energy Back?
By Todd Royal – Jan 13, 2017, 4:13 PM CST
Bloomberg is now reporting that solar energy is cheaper than coal, and could become the lowest form of energy within a decade. Economies of scale are causing solar to drop from an average of $1.14 a watt all the way to 0.73 cents per watt by 2025.
Several agencies, from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab to the International Energy Agency, all confirm this rapid decline in costs. Capacity for solar is doubling, causing the supply chain to be lower for bank loan premiums and manufacturing capacity in the solar energy space. Now with Tesla’s gigafactory opening the cost of batteries is also expected to drop for electric vehicles and home battery systems.
China also plans to invest over $360 billion on renewable energy and fuels to help decrease the smog issues the country is currently experiencing. Unsafe, coal-fired power plants are currently suffocating the country’s air supply.
We could be entering a new era in energy, and an era renewable investors and environmental advocates have been touting this century. Unfortunately, there are glaring weaknesses being over looked. For renewables to truly breakthrough into a low-cost, scalable energy along the lines of coal, oil, and natural gas numerous obstacles such as costs, back-up generation power, storage, and grid modernization will need to be solved.
Yes, costs are technically going down for solar and wind, but can that truly be translated onto a larger scale? While costs for manufacturing and kilowatts per hour are dropping, the final costs when it comes to large-scale renewables are more nuanced. For this reason, despite the need for clean fuel in both emerging and developed economies, renewable market share remains well below that of conventional forms of energy. The BP Statistical Review of Global Energy in 2015 showed renewables provided only 2.4 percent of total worldwide energy needs, hydroelectric power generated 6.8 percent and nuclear came in at 4.4 percent. Moreover, no matter how much renewables are touted as a replacement for fossil fuels, and even with positive economies of scale, it is unlikely that they will overtake coal, oil and natural gas in the near future.
It is not price that determines whether or not one energy form is advantageous to another, it is functionality. Can solar and wind function the same as fossil fuels.
The answer is they cannot. Fossil fuels lift the barge and tote the bale. Something solar and wind wishes it will do, but definitely can’t… at all. The capacity is not there.
Fossil fuels do the job that renewables will not be able to do. The fact of the matter, that is the fact, Jack.
Therein lies the rub.
Keep dreaming, it helps a lot.
Hi RW,
You have a way of making the obvious OBVIOUS, which is a useful trick, because so many of us manage to overlook the obvious, until it’s rammed down our throats.
” The capacity is not there.”
Literally true, today.
It may be within the easily foreseeable future , and maybe even before old farts like us are gone. I’m presuming you are old, because you show signs of it in your thinking, in more ways than one. Age brings wisdom, but it may also bring on a stubborn but mistaken belief that old beliefs are still and will always be true beliefs.
“Keep dreaming, it helps a lot.” True dat!
Dreams work wonders in reducing anxiety and stress sometimes, and one of those times is this one.
And the bigger a change is needed, the more dreaming is needed up front to encourage people to work on it.
For now and for some time to come, renewables CAN’T actually REPLACE fossil fuels, not in most cases and not in most places.
But renewables are good enough, and cheap enough , NOW, to DISPLACE up to half or more of the quantity of fossil fuel we burn to generate electricity, in a lot of places. In some places, they’re good enough if the people there are willing to adapt their life styles to vagaries of wind and clouds, well, the people in that sort of place COULD get along with very very little in the way of fossil fuels.
This is good enough that it’s worth while to keep the pedal to the metal on the renewables front.
The more renewable energy we produce, the longer our finite supply of fossil fuels will last, and the cheaper we can buy them.
As a matter of fact, I believe that whatever we spend on subsidizing renewables will be returned to us, along with a nice fat profit, by way of reducing the both the quantity and the price of the fossil fuels we WILL be buying and burning for quite some time yet.
I can’t prove it, and I can’t find any professionally produced papers indicating that I am right about it. Any links to such papers, or other sources dealing with this topic will be greatly appreciated , and thanks in advance.
I’m talking about money, straight up, and nothing but money, in terms of computing the answer.
People who work for money understand money better than anything else, when it comes to day to day life. It’s hard to get them interested in anything remote from their day to day problems, such feeding the kids and fixing the car and hanging onto the job. Life for them is all about this week, and this year. The far distant future is something they don’t have either the time nor the energy to take seriously. So talking to them about climate is not an effective strategy, and talking to them about air pollution is not an effective strategy, unless they have a family member with a lung problem. Talking to them about the cancer they may get decades down the road just makes them TIRED, and they are tired ALREADY.
Show them how they can cut back on what they spend on electricity, and you can get their attention.
I approve of the Manning decision. Don’t know about any of the others, but my guess is that a few of them will do ok, and the rest will be back in jail soon enough. I scrolled down thru the first fifty, all were small time drug dealers handed long sentences.
This looks a hell of a lot better than Clinton’s last list, which most had a lot of big money scum bags on it.
Obama has shown himself to be an upright man in keeping the little fella on his list. I doubt if any of them had friends willing to make a big donation in order to win a favorable decision.
Another Obama Spin:
This helps explain why we don’t know that Obama, who says he recognizes the threat to humanity posed by climate change, still invested at least $34 billion to promote fossil fuel projects in other countries. That is three times as much as George W Bush spent in his two terms, almost twice that of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and Bill Clinton put together.
Obama financed 70 foreign fossil fuel projects. When completed they will release 164 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year — about the same output as the 95 currently operating coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. He financed two natural gas plants on an island in the Great Barrier Reef, as well as two of the largest coalmines on the planet.
Obama did have his Clean Power Plan for the US, estimated to reduce carbon emissions by 2.5 billion tons over 15 years. But the foreign projects he approved will produce about the same carbon emissions as the Clean Power Plan savings. These foreign emissions increases financed by Obama aren’t counted toward US totals, but the impact on climate change is identical regardless the place of origin.
Hi Duncan,
I’ve always said that Obama has done a passable job, and is a better prez than the R guy would have been, but except for personal rights and things in that line, I maintain that the D party, as it exists today, is pretty much best described as a Republican Lite party.
But taken all around, the D’s are never the less a hell of a lot better on the environment.
They wouldn’t do half of what could be done to STOP pollution, short term, if they were in control of DC, but it’s a safe bet they would subsidize renewables and renewables research and thus make it possible to transition away from old dirty industries and to cleaner ones.
It never fails to amuse me that when you find a person wearing both an environmentalist and a globalist hat they never stop to consider that CO2 released on one side of the world is thoroughly mixed in the atmosphere on the other side of the world well within a year.
So they are perfectly willing to impose the costs of compliance with good environmental regulation on OUR industries and industrial workers at the same time giving Asian competitors a free pass.
NOTHING GAINED, in terms of our one world wide environment. They get to cry righteous cynical ” crocodile tears” about American working people losing their jobs, and feel righteous about cleaning up around home, at the same time they impoverish a large number of our own people, at the SAME TIME they buy cheap foreign goods, while paying peanuts to such former industrial workers as go into yard work.
But while this scenario works out beautifully for a while, if you are professional class, or get your living as as investor, or you work in a field where you are insulated from any foreign competition, say you are a teacher, cop, nurse, or just about any government employee, no body overseas can put you out of work, even if they move here.
But after a while…….. you move enough industries overseas….. you don’t have enough customers any more, because so many former industrial workers are either flipping burgers, or unemployed. So then you hire MORE COPS , more jailers, more social workers, and spend more on security cameras, because those former workers WILL DO whatever they can to make a buck, and crime DOES pay, and it can pay VERY well.
And you pay out more and more in taxes to pay for an ever expanding safety net, because if you DON’T then the rabble will RIOT, and THAT’S a little too dangerous to deal with it.
And eventually,you get something you ASKED for, without quite realizing it.
You get enough of the people of three big generally IN THE BAG for the D’s states hurting and scared and mad enough to abandon the party plantation, and go on the politicial warpath, and send an unmistakeable middle finger message to the D party about talking ( every once in a while for a couple of minutes ) the working people ‘s talk, while walking the one percenter walk.
It pays to be careful about what you wish for, because you often get more than you bargained for, when you get it.
Well, the Republican Lite D’s got what they wished for, in terms of the cultural war, by forcing changes mostly thru the courts down the throats of half or maybe more of the country that didn’t want those changes, and that set the stage for losing the popular vote everywhere except California and in and around the bigger cities.
And the globalist Republican Lite economic platform got them something they DIDN’T want as well.
It got them Trump.
A great deal lost.
“So they are perfectly willing to impose the costs of compliance with good environmental regulation on OUR industries and industrial workers at the same time giving Asian competitors a free pass.”
MacBoris, you just can’t help seeing yourself as the victim can you. After a century of the US being the leading emitter of CO2. Now you think it time for China to lead.
Only in the right wing backwoods
Hi HB,
You’re still my little lap doggie, and you still understand about as much as you WANT to understand , which is almost nothing.
What went on for the last century is relevant, but that’s spilt milk, and what’s going on NOW is what’s important in deciding how well the environment will or will not be protected, and how well we live here in the USA.
What’s going on NOW determines who WINS ELECTIONS NOW.
Only a fool would deny that countries like China have a major competitive advantage running dirty, because running clean costs substantially more.
Facts are stubborn things. One is that CO2 and other greenhouse gases travel with the wind, and another is that our own people here in the USA are seeing their standard of living fall if they work in any of the industries that have been exported, or in a field that supports those industries.
Another is that we are forced to expand our welfare state, and our law enforcement establishment as the result of people losing their jobs that paid well enough to live turning to crime and welfare.
And while YOU are still pretending it’s somebody else’s fault that your candidate lost……..
People who are actually WILLING to think a little are coming around to accepting the FACT that ENOUGH historically reliable D voters in the states that put Trump in the WH sent HRC and her elitist homies and the current day REPUBLICAN LITE D party an unmistakable middle finger message.
And you know what?
That collective working class middle finger is less than an inch from your nose.
Now let’s all pray to our preferred Rock or Snake or Waterfall or Sky Daddy or Mommy that we get thru the four years more or less whole, and the D’s run a LIKABLE candidate , WITHOUT a mile long baggage train, WITH favorable poll numbers, next time.
If the D party runs such a candidate next time, the odds are EXCELLENT the D’s will win in a landslide, if that candidate has the trust of the working people of this country.
It’s worth thinking about that a significant number of formerly reliable D voters are moving up in the world, and that as they move up, being hard working entrepreneurs, or entering the professions, they have a POWERFUL incentive to want lower taxes, etc, and because they WANT to live is places that are the kind associated with R types, suburbs where everything is neat and clean and there are no street people, etc.
Fully assimilated immigrants and minorities that have made it into the middle class may no longer be reliable D voters, as they were in the past.
I don’t personally believe the Democrats have a good shot at winning control again for the next decade or maybe two decades without the solid support of the working class.
After that, demographic changes might put them back in power.
“What went on for the last century is relevant, but that’s spilt milk, and what’s going on NOW is what’s important”
Had only Mr. MacBoris Doublestandard EmailServer aka KGB only applied his new BS to HRC last year. You wouldn’t be crying for help now.
Your a Republican hypocrite
I guess it’s time to just use some plain language.
HB, you are a goddamned FOOL.
But hang in there, because you help me stay motivated to work on waking up the D party to reality, and thus getting back to winning elections.
Most likely somebody beat me to this but electrons are cheap.
Just in case you haven’t been back to the peakoilbarrel.com home page lately, there are a couple of new posts up and it’s been posted on the new non petroleum thread.
With Javier enjoying a well earned day off from his trolling duties, Vladimir and Mr Tillerson have asked me to fill in as the climate denialist obfuscator for today (only).
Today’s topic the supervisors have handed me is to come up with a way to hide the incline in the surface temps since 1970, or to somehow confuse the perception of the trend in the temperature increase.
So I’ve been doing some cherrypicking, and I think I’ve found a pretty good one – I hope Javier will chime in later to see if he can think of any ways to tweak it.
Here’s the story…
Since 1970, when the so-called warming “trend” is supposed to have really gotten going, we have had 4 full solar cycles, measured peak-to-peak, and 3 full cycles measured trough-to-trough.
I’ve calculated the trend in temperature for both kinds of full cycle – that makes 7 cycles that cover the timespan 1970 to 2014. We haven’t finished the current cycle, so it wouldn’t be scientific to include a partial cycle – that would introduce a bias.
here are the numbers:
start…… end……. trend
1970….. 1980….. 0.083
1980….. 1990….. 0.059
1990….. 2002….. 0.195
2002…. 2014….. -0.014
1976….. 1987….. 0.131
1987….. 1997….. 0.025
1997….. 2009…. 0.078
Averaging all 7 trends together, we see that the average trend from 1970 to 2014 is 0.0796 degC/decade!
That is less than half of the trend calculated by the alarmists for the same period!!!!1!!111!!!
And remember, this includes all the data in the time span, nothing is left out, so you can’t call this “cherrypicking”.
Here’s the chart for each calculation (I even used that totally biased alarmist site SkepticalScience, so all you alarmists HAVE to accept my calculations as completely valid and indisputable).
You need a hobby. Ever try woodworking?
http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/happer-the_truth_about_greenhouse_gases.pdf
Canis lupus familiaris Linnaeus, 1758
Taxonomic Serial No.: 726821
Kingdom Animalia – Animal, animaux, animals
Subkingdom Bilateria
Infrakingdom Deuterostomia
Phylum Chordata – cordés, cordado, chordates
Subphylum Vertebrata – vertebrado, vertébrés, vertebrates
Infraphylum Gnathostomata
Superclass Tetrapoda
Class Mammalia Linnaeus, 1758 – mammifères, mamífero, mammals
Subclass Theria Parker and Haswell, 1897
Infraclass Eutheria Gill, 1872
Order Carnivora Bowdich, 1821 – cachorro do mato, carnívoro, gato do mato, lontra, carnivores, carnivores
Suborder Caniformia Kretzoi, 1938 – dog-like carnivores
Family Canidae Fischer, 1817 – coyotes, dogs, foxes, jackals, wolves
Genus Canis Linnaeus, 1758 – dogs, foxes, jackals
Species Canis lupus Linnaeus, 1758 – Wolf, Gray Wolf, Lobo gris, loup
Subspecies Canis lupus familiaris Linnaeus, 1758 – domestic dog
https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=726821#null
Canis lupus x Canis lupus familiaris will not be the subspecies familiaris, too much wolf in the phenotype, not enough dog, it’ll be a wild animal. I’ve seen one, can’t be domesticated.
Dogs pack and can become wild. They won’t be man’s best friend. An Animal Farm scenario.
Then there are humans who act more like hyenas than humans. Kill each other by the millions at times, completely out of control.
Alaric, a Visigoth, besieged Rome and fed his army with food headed for Rome while driving Romans into starvation. You gotta eat and might as well have some fun with starving Romans in the meantime.
Read all about it:.
http://www.thefinertimes.com/Ancient-Wars/sack-of-rome.html
The genetics of the canids is a complete mess. Most species of canids can cross reproduce producing fertile offspring, violating one of the original definitions of species and showing that there is no possible way of defining the term species in a comprehensive and rigorous way. Nature does not make the distinction.
Wolfs cannot be domesticated, they can only be tamed. To me this is a serious issue in the theory that dogs are domesticated wolfs. Then we have another issue. Wolfs establish hierarchy through reproductive rights. Only the alpha couple reproduces and sex rights are strongly enforced. That is their nature. On the other hand dogs establish hierarchy through food access rights. The alpha dogs eat first, while reproduction is not curtailed and it is free for the taking. Wolfs are specialized in large prey, while dogs are specialized in medium and small prey. They have a very similar aspect and interbreed easily, but they do look as different species in terms of behavior, and this is as important for evolution as morphology.
Some animals can be domesticated, most cannot. Essentially all animals that could be domesticated were so long ago. Primitive man had plenty of time to accomplish that. Two common features are shared by most domesticated animals:
– In most cases the wild version became extinct or extremely residual. The wild animals could not compete with their domesticated siblings. Wolfs however have been very common everywhere, making them an exception.
– When domesticated animals go feral, they quickly shed human selection traits in a few generations and their aspect reverts to the wild type. This is not the case of dogs, that when they go feral they quickly adopt a dingo-like aspect, quite different from a wolf phenotype. They don’t go back to a wolf status.
It is my opinion that the story that dogs are domesticated wolfs has serious holes in it. As a molecular biologist, the genetic argument doesn’t look as determinant to me, given the complexities of the canids genetics and the complete mess up of dogs genetics since it became domesticated. Alternative possibilities are not been given serious consideration, as usual. The African wild dog (Lycaon pictus), unrelated to dogs, shows however how a wild dog species would have looked like and behaved before domestication, and posterior extinction of the wild population. As dogs are so closely related to wolfs, the fossils of a putative wild dog species ancestor to domestic dogs could be already at museums, unrecognized.
I am skeptic of the narrative that prehistoric men took wolf pups and turned them into dogs. Nobody has been able to repeat that feat anywhere in thousands of years.
As seems to be more and more the usual thing, the more Javier tells us the score……. the more credibility he loses.
Anybody who cares to check it out can read all about the Russian guy who basically turned foxes into dogs over the course of less than fifty generations, by way of selective breeding.
And hardly anybody at all , so far as I know, disputes that hogs, cats, various cattle, horses, etc were at one time all wild species. But Javier might , since I have mentioned it.;-)
Now it IS possible that the wolves that were the ancestors of dogs had a few genes in them that have been lost, over the last few thousands of years, that made them more amenable to becoming domesticates. Hell’s bells, it’s even possible that the population of wolves, the species or subspecies, that was the ancestor of dogs, went extinct since dogs were domesticated.
Humans by no means HAD to engage in selective breeding from SCRATCH, and domesticate wolves DELIBERATELY, the way we breed crops and livestock these days.
Cooperation between species can and does occur, as is amply documented, and when this cooperation happens over a long period of time, either or both species may be de facto selectively inadvertently bred for certain behavioral traits. Wolves that found advantageous to hang around near humans would have gradually evolved behaviors that made them more susceptible to accepting humans as members of the pack- which is in essence what DOGS are all about.
They accept us as dominant dogs, and lick our hands, and roll over and pee themselves , when confronted with dominant humans.
And there are always the outliers, the freaks, the unlikely accidents, that pop up, like snow white cotton tail rabbits, or the ORIGINAL golden delicious apple tree, which was so valuable a very sturdy steel cage was built around it to prevent it from being stolen, lol.
Something along that line may have contributed mightily to the domestication of wolves.
The fact that nobody has selectively bred wolves and turned them into dogs is entirely irrevelant, because nobody has tried it, over any extended period of generations that would give them a fair shot at success.
Now having said this much, I recognize that there is a possibility that there was once a species, or a sub species of the various wolves, , now extinct, or a couple of such species, or a hybrid of such species , part wolf, that might have been the original ancestors of dogs.
It might even be reasonable to say that there was a species, or subspecies,what we farmers refer to as breeds or cultivars, that could be CALLED a dog, before it’s domestication, but the FACT remains that it MUST have been a CLOSE relative of wolves, as is obvious from the fact that dogs and wolves do produce fertile offspring.
Javier’s problem, one of them at least, is that he apparently thinks he knows a lot more than he does, and consequently paints himself into corners that are hard or impossible to defend effectively.
I am not a biologist, but I have enough credits either in or related to the field that I’m pretty close to having enough for a bachelors degree, if they were properly distributed. Most of them are dated, though.
You talk about possibilities. I talk about evidence. That’s the difference between narratives and science. People are more fond of narratives and abhor the uncertainties that accompany science.
We do not know if dogs descend from wolves. It is generally assumed, and the arguments are based on closeness of both species morphological and genetically.
However, the evidence I have outlined contradicts that hypothesis. And in science the evidence has nothing to do with personal credibility. By mixing both issues you show that science is not your thing.
I have discussed this issue with other biologists, and while some of them still think that dogs come from wolves, all of them accept that not all the evidence supports that conclusion.
what do you do when you are not sowing the seeds of doubt?
How wonderfully charming you are to have a conversation with. There must be a queue of folks waiting to share discourse with you.
Javier,
Some or all of us here don’t know your full name (assuming Javier is even your first name), what you look like, where, how, or if you work, what your science background or work is (i.e., does it include being on here?), and stuff like that. And this isn’t a science forum, either.
The aforementioned, too, appears to require that you, or the ‘manufacture, cultivation or mythologizing of you’, be taken on certain levels of blind faith and/or ‘your good word’.
Taking things on faith, (to say nothing of cherry-picking, etc.) doesn’t strike me too much like the practice of science, and seems to suggest, as you write, ‘ that science is not your thing’, except of course where it conveniently suits you for it to be. But that’s not science, either.
And those are what appear to be at least some of your contradictions hereon.
Lastly, now that I think about it, this also puts you precariously close to what I’ve called, the ‘drive-by’s’, with regard to being relatively anonymous and specialized in ‘FUDging’ the anthropogenic climate change issue. IOW, you appear to share a ‘common signature’.
(FUD = Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt)
If I owned this blog, I would consider offering you some sort or sorts of ultimatum(s), based on some of the above (and other) concerns, or, failing that, you’d be asked to leave and/or a democratic vote put to that effect.
Back atcha Javier,
I don’t see that you have posted any thing approaching evidence that dogs AREN’T descended from wolves. When we don’t know, we usually go with the preponderance of the evidence, or by Occam’s Razor, in reaching decisions, at least for conversational purposes.
As I remarked above, I ‘m not a fully qualified, degree holding biologist, but you won’t win any debates with the agricultural science community concerning the domestication of animals, lol. There are LOTS of researchers at the cutting edge in my broad field, guys and girls with doctorates in everything from microbiology to oceanography to various specialties within the genetics field to math and physics, lol.
I know only a little or nothing about most of these specialties, but I can read what such scientists publish in the agricultural press, for us working stiffs.
I don’t take issue with your interpretation of the possibilities, in this case, but rather with your habitual combative and abrasive style.
And now that I have gone back and reread your comment, I see you actually did include the all important words ” my opinion”. I try to remember to insert them often , in my own comments.
So – I owe you something in the way of an apology for my remark concerning your remarks about the ancestry of dogs. You hereby have it.
You might actually be right, dogs could be descended from a now extinct species- but as you yourself have pointed out- nature doesn’t draw nice sharp lines in defining species the way we naked apes do. If there was such a hypothetical species, it would have necessarily been close kin to the various wolves.
I don’t think I have ever run across an expert in domestic animal genetics who is is opposed to the accepted wisdom that animal behaviors have sometimes changed in somewhat radical fashion, as the result of domestication.
But to be honest, I never went looking for such an expert, lol.
“Anybody who cares to check it out can read all about the Russian guy who basically turned foxes into dogs over the course of less than fifty generations, by way of selective breeding.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Domesticated_Red_Fox
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160912-a-soviet-scientist-created-the-only-tame-foxes-in-the-world
This paper is from way back in 2011, which was still the prehistoric days of genomics, CRISPER-cas9 was not yet a cheap and ubiquitous technology and doing a full fox genome for base pair by base pair comparison would still have been a somewhat cost prohibitive endeavor …
Perhaps someone knows of more comprehensive and more recent research on this topic.
Still, a very interesting paper.
http://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2164-12-482
Sequence comparison of prefrontal cortical brain transcriptome from a tame and an aggressive silver fox (Vulpes vulpes)
Abstract
Background
Two strains of the silver fox (Vulpes vulpes), with markedly different behavioral phenotypes, have been developed by long-term selection for behavior. Foxes from the tame strain exhibit friendly behavior towards humans, paralleling the sociability of canine puppies, whereas foxes from the aggressive strain are defensive and exhibit aggression to humans. To understand the genetic differences underlying these behavioral phenotypes fox-specific genomic resources are needed.
Results
cDNA from mRNA from pre-frontal cortex of a tame and an aggressive fox was sequenced using the Roche 454 FLX Titanium platform (> 2.5 million reads & 0.9 Gbase of tame fox sequence; >3.3 million reads & 1.2 Gbase of aggressive fox sequence). Over 80% of the fox reads were assembled into contigs. Mapping fox reads against the fox transcriptome assembly and the dog genome identified over 30,000 high confidence fox-specific SNPs. Fox transcripts for approximately 14,000 genes were identified using SwissProt and the dog RefSeq databases. An at least 2-fold expression difference between the two samples (p < 0.05) was observed for 335 genes, fewer than 3% of the total number of genes identified in the fox transcriptome.
Conclusions
Transcriptome sequencing significantly expanded genomic resources available for the fox, a species without a sequenced genome. In a very cost efficient manner this yielded a large number of fox-specific SNP markers for genetic studies and provided significant insights into the gene expression profile of the fox pre-frontal cortex; expression differences between the two fox samples; and a catalogue of potentially important gene-specific sequence variants. This result demonstrates the utility of this approach for developing genomic resources in species with limited genomic information.
Even with traditional selective breeding without high-tech, dogs and maybe other animals, can be bred into having health and/or physical problems, and can apparently suffer for them as well.
Rather like factory farm and lab animals, bred for mistreatment in the name of morally-bankrupt institutions of science and technology.
Some may also be unable to survive in the wild.
This brings into question the idea of human self-domestication, and how far down its path they wish to tread before they are so far down it that they cannot survive in the wild anymore.
This assumes, of course, that the inverse has not yet happened; that ‘the wild’ has not yet fully succumbed to a glorified zoo/’Truman show’.
Perhaps the main underlying tragedy of technology– rather maybe like the technologies involved in skewing oil-depletion profiles– is in the masking, delaying and amplifying of future problems from it.
When all is said and done, maybe all technology really is, at least in the hands of humans as they currently seem to be, is just a glorified can, kicked down the road.
Here’s an interesting and recent article on the ancestry of dogs.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-dna-tells-two-origins-dogs
Dogs were domesticated at least twice, a new study suggests.
Genetic analyses of a 4,800-year-old Irish dog and 59 other ancient dogs suggest that canines and humans became pals in both Europe and East Asia long before the advent of farming, researchers report June 3 in Science. Later, dogs from East Asia accompanied their human companions to Europe, where their genetic legacy trumped that of dogs already living there, the team also concludes.
That muddled genetic legacy may help explain why previous studies have indicated that dogs were domesticated from wolves only once, although evidence hasn’t been clear about whether this took place in East Asia, Central Asia or Europe. The idea that dogs came from East Asia or Central Asia is mostly based on analysis of DNA from modern dogs, while claims for European origins have been staked on studies of prehistoric pups’ genetics. “This paper combines both types of data” to give a more complete picture of canine evolution, says Mietje Germonpré, a paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, who was not part of the study.
Understanding this domestication process may illuminate humans’ distant past — dogs were probably the first domesticated animal and may have paved the way for taming other animals and plants.
Javier,
You point out an interesting difference between basis for hierarchy in wolves and in dogs: wolf hierarchy is based on access to reproduction while that of dogs is based on access to food.
I wonder if that difference came out of domestication. I’d describe domestication broadly as taking control of animals’ feeding and reproduction–we decide where and when domesticated animals eat, and we decide, within fairly broad limits for some species, which individual mates with which. We took away the reproductive hierarchy from dogs, but there remained the possibility of dominance in feeding.
Just a thought.
“Just a thought.”
It’s a rock solid thought.
Don’t ask me for links or quotes, at this late date, but ag professors routinely include it in relevant courses. There’s not much work done in the broad field of biology that they DON’T mention, eventually, in one class or another, considering that agriculture is basically APPLIED biology.
Synapsid,
It is true that it cannot be discarded that dogs lost their original hierarchy basis during their domestication process.
Although it is evidence of an important difference, it is not proof of a different origin. It is often the case that evidence can be interpreted in different ways.
In the case of Alfred Wegener’s continental drift theory, he presented evidence that the same fossil species occupied contiguous areas in South America and Africa, or Africa and India. This evidence was also not proof as it could be explained with the species jumping the ocean, or an unknown precursor species occupying a much wider area.
However Occam’s razor favors the simplest common explanations. By itself the hierarchy argument is not much, but together with the different morphological reversal when going feral suggests that the simplest common explanation is that they are different species in origin.
This is a matter that cannot be resolved with available evidence and the dog is closely related to the wolf anyway. The way science deals with this type of uncertainty is by avoiding absolute statements and leaving the door open to alternative explanations in case more evidence is found.
The narratives that are often found even in scientific publications for things for which solid proof is absent are incorrect and lead people to believe in things that can be wrong.
I have a wolf story. While scouting the tundra 200 miles north of the Arctic circle in western Alaska I witnessed a surreal wolf pack attack strategy play out before my eyes. On the far hill side a small group of caribou were grazing. Out in front of them perhaps a mile or more a 5 animals wolf pack trotted into view. It consisted of one very large snow white wolf, one very large solid black wolf and 3 somewhat smaller grey wolves. The black wolf and the 3 smaller grey ones set up in a funnel shape on the hill side and bedded down. As the caribou grazed into the funnel the largest most visible white wolf circled around and begin to attack from the rear driving the heard of the caribou right into the funnel. The way it was set up ran just like a football play. I wish I had my video camera that day. What ever wolves are they damn sure aren’t dogs.
I have a friend who has a border collie that retrieves over two hundred objects by name, and that’s less than half the number some others of that breed can distinguish by spoken words.
I posted a comment at the end of the 700 plus comments in the previous non-petroleum thread and don’t want to have to keep visiting that thread for further discussion so, I’m re-posting it her with a few minor changes, having watched another episode on EVTV.
I spent some time watching
a couplethree of the very long “episodes” over at EVTV (Archives at http://www.evtv.me.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/vidarch.html) two of the episodes being ones that address the installation of a Tesla Motors drive unit in a Volkswagen Vanagon that they are converting into an EV. I own one with a worn out motor that has been siting for years and have always thought it’s design made for easy motor swaps and conversions so their tinkering interests me. My reason for bringing this up here is not the wealth of technical info in their videos and blog posts but, the main character on the web site, Jack Rickard.Jack can be interesting if you’re a real gear head. He has got down and dirty with every EV he could get his hands on and has been busy, figuring out how the latest crop of modern, factory built EVs work, with a view to mixing and matching components from different manufacturers in his home-brew conversions. He and his team are developing a kit that he hopes will let you control any drive train and display things like energy use, remaining range, component temperatures etc. He starts each (long) episode with a review of news since the previous episode before going into the technical stuff. He is NOT shy about discussing politics and international affairs either.
I found his most recent episode really interesting on the politics front, with Jack declaring that he supports Trump, despite disagreeing with most of his “policies”, Trump’s non-interventionist stance appearing to be the one area he is in total agreement with. Listening to him rant reminded me of exchanges between OFM and HB. He seems to be a conservative and a Republican, calling Bernie Sanders an honest man with many ideas he does not agree with. On the other hand he is a big proponent of renewable energy and EVs and getting off oil, sort of like he believes in a fairly near term peak in oil production. He does not seem to be on board with global warming (see his blog post http://evtv.me/2016/12/predicting-weather-dancing-land-buffoons/ ), but he is a big fan of Elon Musk of Tesla Motors who is big on Peak Oil and man made global warming. I can’t remember hearing him give any opinions on Obamacare. He appears not to favor the idea of “big government” but, appears to trust big corporate interests even less.
To me, Jack Rickard gives some interesting insights as to why Trump won. A guy like Jack might have held his nose and voted for Sanders over Trump but, there was no way he could have voted for Hillary. He conforms to what OFM thinks should be real conservative values of rugged individualism and independence from utilities etc. He has expressed confidence in Trump’s leadership abilities so, it will be interesting to see what happens with Trump and his goons in respect to the expectations of guys like Jack! OFM if you’re even slightly interested in the content of his site, ie. blog and video archive available at http://evtv.me/, I’d be interested in what you think about him. Hell. you might even stumble upon some material for your book!
Hey Islandboy, I had kinda of followed Jack in the past but he had fallen off my radar recently. Tks for reminding me of him. Just watched a few of his recent videos and he seems to be trucking along, (no pun intended) just fine!
He has expressed confidence in Trump’s leadership abilities so, it will be interesting to see what happens with Trump and his goons in respect to the expectations of guys like Jack!
Personally I have very little confidence in Trump’s abilities to do much one way or the other. Though I have deep concerns about the people he is surrounding himself with. However if he is just smart enough to stay out of the way of people like Jack then the US might still have some life left in it. The Jack’s of the world are the people who will put the final stake through the fossil fuel vampire’s heart and put the final nails in its coffin.
As long as Jack’s kind of conservatism is allowed to flourish and they help push us towards an alternative energy future based on renewables, wind, solar, decentralized microgrids, electric vehicles etc… and slowly kill off the need for fossil fuels because electricity from renewables just makes so much more sense from a purely economic point of view, then I really don’t care if they personally believe in anthropogenic global warming or not.
BTW did you see my post on the cryptocurrency ‘SolarCoin’?
Cheers!
My apologies for not responding to your SolarCoin post earlier. I wanted to take a closer look before responding. I don’t quite get how this cryptocurrency stuff works but, I guess this is a good opportunity to find out!
I have invested a sum of money in training in solar PV and some modules and inverters. I have one system up and running at the apartment I live in and have done the conduit runs and started running the wiring for a second system at a commercial premises that, I intend to operate under a lease type arrangement. Both systems will be connected to the inverter manufacturers web portal to allow on line monitoring so hopefully SolarCoin will be able to use the portal for validation of output. If so, I should be good to go and this might be a good way to add value to my investment while also adding value to the SolarCoin Network.
Thanks!
Well, we can be thankful that there is now SolarCoin, a new digital currency. It has something to do with solar panels installed to generate electricity. The current coin of the realm, the LunarCoin, is in lunacy mode.
Also referred to as the dollar.
Thanks, I haven’t read him yet, but being the arrogant old nekkid ape that I am, I can tell you already that I will like this guy, and that he mostly gets it, at the gut level, about politics and working people , just from a super fast scan.
But he has a problem that he shares with TONS of people who have technical expertise in one or two relatively narrow fields, but no little or no knowledge of the BIG PICTURE that forms in the mind of a person who has a broad background knowledge of the major physical sciences, namely physics, chemistry, geology, biology, etc.
Any body who isn’t on board with forced global warming being either a sure thing, or at least a thing that is highly PROBABLE, lacks this big picture understanding of the sciences. Of course there is a SMALL chance that forced warming won’t be a problem, but it’s so small it’s prudent to ignore it. It is NOT however prudent to deny that it exists.
An understanding of the monkey ape mind is also critically important. I won’t have a firm opinion of this guy in that respect until I read his stuff at leisure but at first glance… he gets it.
OFM–
Being a country boy, you might appreciate this:
No amount of barbecue sauce will help!
http://www.guns.com/2017/01/03/gun-control-heartburn-radioactive-boars-are-amok-in-fukushima/
I haven’t checked up on this general issue for a while , but it’s well known that certain classes of persistent chemicals tend to be absorbed by plants, and then by animals that eat those plants, and by predators , and by predators OF predators, and so on , up the food chain, until it gets to the point that concentrations are high enough it’s unwise to eat some fish and animals.
It IS good to know ( although there is obviously a great deal of environmental damage , a huge amount, in the exclusion zone ) that animals such as the wild boar are thriving there. Some of them are damned likely to develop cancers, or bear deformed young, but indications so far at least are that enough of them will be ok that the species can cope with the radiation.
And now we have an actual real world benchmark useful in evaluating the problems associated with runaway nukes, etc.
It’s a hell of a black cloud that doesn’t have at least a little bit of silver lining in it someplace.
Trump’s non-interventionist stance appearing to be the one area he is in total agreement with.
Is he suggesting that he believes that Trump is in favor of allowing countries in the Middle East muddle through on their own without US intervention?
I don’t think that’s remotely realistic. Trump is in favor of the old fashioned kind of intervention, where the US ignores democratic idealism (IMO support for local democracy movements is in the long-term interest of the US) and supports dictators as long as they support the short-term Realpolitik geopolitical interests of the US. The best example: Saudi Arabia, which has enjoyed massive support from the US. It’s instructive that the Shah of Iran lost power the very second that his suppression of dissent lost US support.
US support of the Shah was enormously counter-productive for the long-term interests of both the US and the ME, but but all evidence says that it’s the kind of thing that Trump would support enthusiastically.
Seems climate scientists keep spreading liberal lies!
http://anewdomain.net/incoming-anti-science-trump-admin-why-americans-should-fear-lawmakers-fear-science/
Maybe climate scientists should go home and actually practice what they preach i.e. cutting down their consumption of fossils by 80% and to stop flying across the world to backslap each other at conferences. Plenty of people remember how these scientists predicted a new ice age in the 70’s and never apologized when they got it wrong. There were a number of pop fiction books written on this at the time. The high priests of science are ignored because they don’t follow what they preach and they never apologize when they are incorrect. The public doesn’t trust them.
” Plenty of people remember how these scientists predicted a new ice age in the 70’s and never apologized when they got it wrong. There were a number of pop fiction books written on this at the time”
Those people are remembering something that never happened, except in “pop fiction”..
The global cooling myth
group @ 14 January 2005 – (Français)
Every now and again, the myth that “we shouldn’t believe global warming predictions now, because in the 1970’s they were predicting an ice age and/or cooling” surfaces. Recently, George Will mentioned it in his column (see Will-full ignorance) and the egregious Crichton manages to say “in the 1970’s all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming” (see Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion ). You can find it in various other places too [here, mildly here, etc]. But its not an argument used by respectable and knowledgeable skeptics, because it crumbles under analysis. That doesn’t stop it repeatedly cropping up in newsgroups though.
I should clarify that I’m talking about predictions in the scientific press. There were some regrettable things published in the popular press (e.g. Newsweek; though National Geographic did better). But we’re only responsible for the scientific press. If you want to look at an analysis of various papers that mention the subject, then try http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/
Why do you lie wharf rat?
Why that interest in rewriting history?
If the alarmist interpretation of the CO2 hypothesis is correct, they should not be afraid of the truth. There should be no need to rewrite history and eliminate the 1940-75 cooling and its consequences.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outreach/proceedings/cdw29_proceedings/Reeves.pdf
–Start quote–
Interest in decadal to centennial timescales also contributed to the calls for action. The views on long-term climate change, however, were split. Some scientists projected a warming trend and others focused on the gradual cooling as suggested by the global surface temperature record from the 1940s through the 1960s. The cooling theory attracted the interests of many scientists, including glaciologists. In January 1972, geologists George Kukla of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences and Robert Matthews of Brown University convened a working conference of top European and American investigators in Providence, Rhode Island, to discuss “The Present Interglacial, How and When will it End?”
They summarized their results in Science (October 1972). Kukla had by this time accepted a visiting scientist position at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory. In a rather bold move, they followed up their Science article with a letter to President Nixon calling for federal action based on the main conclusion of the conference:
“ …a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experienced by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon. The cooling has natural cause and falls within the rank of processes which produced the last ice age. This is a surprising result based largely on recent studies of deep sea sediments.”
Kukla and Matthews concluded their letter with the following concern:
“It might also be useful for Administration to take into account that the Soviet Union, with large scientific teams monitoring the climate change in Arctic and Siberia, may already be considering these aspects in its international moves.”
The White House assigned the Kukla-Matthews letter to the Bureau of International Scientific and Technological Affairs of the State Department. They circulated the letter to the highest level Federal interagency body concerned with atmospheric sciences, the Interdepartmental Committee for Atmospheric Sciences (ICAS), for “review and appropriate action”. The ICAS then established an ad hoc Panel on the Present Interglacial to respond to the letter.
On August 1, 1974, the chairman of the White House Environmental Resources Committee wrote to Secretary of Commerce Frederick Dent:
“Changes in climate in recent years have resulted in unanticipated impacts on key national programs and policies. Concern has been expressed that recent changes may presage others. In order to assess the problem and to determine what concerted action ought to be undertaken, I have decided to establish a subcommittee on Climate Change.”
–End quote–
NOAA’s Climate Analysis Center was established in 1979 as a consequence of scientists concern for a cooling world.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/178/4057/190
“The present global cooling, which reversed the warm trend of the 1940’s, is still under way. Even though man-made pollution may have contributed to the observed fluctuations, the bulk of the change is probably of natural origin (Mitchell). The present cooling is especially demonstrable in certain key regions in arctic and subarctic latitudes. Thus, snowbanks today cover areas of Baffin Island that were seasonally free of snow for the 30 or 40 years preceding the present summer cooling (Andrews, Barry, Bradley, Miller, and Williams); pack ice around Iceland is once again becoming a serious hindrance to navigation (2); and warmth-loving animals, such as armadillos, which expanded northward into the American Midwest in the first half of the century, are now retreating southward (Schultz).”
Lots of articles and scientists concerned by the cooling.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00335894/2/3
An entire issue of Quaternary Research, dedicated to “The end of the present interglacial”
Some well known people there like Ruddiman and Dansgaard.
We all know the result.
The extrapolators, those predicting a continuation of the cooling trend ended up being wrong.
This time will be the same. The extrapolators are going to be wrong again.
Climate is always changing and multidecadal trends alternate between warming and cooling regardless of what we do.
Why do you lie, Javier? Why the interest in rewriting science on behalf of Putin and the Kochs?
“Climate is always changing”
The mating cry of Loonis denialati
http://grist.org/science/when-someone-tells-you-the-climate-is-always-changing-show-them-this-cartoon/
Maybe it pays well?
Hi Javier,
The problem is that since 1850 the “Cooling” has been far smaller than the “warming” and the overall trend of warming has been about 0.78 C per century for the past 130 years (1886-2015) and for the past 65 years the rate of increase has increased to 1.19 C per century.
As I have said many times the variation in the rate of warming over shorter periods of 31-35 years is a given.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/atmospheric-river-from-hawaii-pounding-northern-california-threatening-nevada-flooding-snow-rain-storms/
There is a strong element of chance in Mother Nature’s distribution of the cards she deals out in a never ending stream.
I wonder how long it might be, if ever , before weather forecasters know enough enough, and have data enough, to reliably predict such events.
It’s critically important that government agencies such as NASA be funded well enough to continue the necessary research and data collection that will make such forecasts possible.
Atmospheric temperature measured by satellites sets new record in 2016.
Analysis of mid to upper tropospheric temperature by Remote Sensing Systems shows record global
warmth in 2016 by a large margin.
Using the latest version (Version 4.0) of the “Temperature Total Troposphere” (TTT) dataset, RSS
scientists showed that 2016 was 0.31 degrees F warmer than the previous record, set in 1998. The third
warmest year occurred in 2010. In addition, 9 out of 12 months for 2016 were the warmest of that
month ever recorded in the satellite record. By this we mean that January 2016 was the warmest
January, etc., for all months except for May, June and December (the December record was set in 2015).
http://images.remss.com/papers/rsstech/Jan_5_2017_news_release.pdf
What ever happened to the lower troposphere which is the part where life is?
Nothing to report there?
TLT v3.3 also set a record in 2016 despite a known cooling bias, which is clear by simply reading the linked press release.
Oh yes, but another one of those non-statistically significant records that get ample diffusion. By how much this time? 0.02°C?
Very scary global warming according to RSS
If this was an oil production or oil discovery chart nobody would defend an increase based on that, but being a temperature chart a lot of people change their glasses and see that global warming is increasing and we are likely to get toasted soon. Talk about being in denial.
Sounds like a desperate attempt to change the subject to me Mr. Troll.
Thanks Wharf Rat,
Also from that press release they say the temperature lower trophosphere (TLT) also set a record, but they need to update to a new version which eliminates a known cooling bias in RSS TLT version 3.3.
RSS TLT version 3.3 contains a known cooling bias. We are working to eliminate the bias in the new version of TLT. Even with these known cooling biases, 2016 was a record warm year in TLT v3.3. In fact, 2016 was a record warm year in all RSS tropospheric temperature products (TLT v3.3, TMT v3.3, TTT v3.3, TMT v4.0 and TTT v4.0
There is an awful lot of “data manipulation” with satellites. This is from UAH.
http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/readme.04Mar2015
Those who want to understand some of the problems with satellite temperature measurement should read the paper linked below.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0744.1
The paper focuses on the mid-troposphere (TMT), the authors are working on an update to the lower troposphere (TLT) temperature measurement.
Every dataset that doesn’t show enough warming requires adjustment. The problem is that we don’t know how much warming is real and how much methodological. No wonder that instruments and proxies show such difference.
Hi Javier,
That is the kind of response I would expect from someone who didn’t read or understand the paper.
He’s a biologist, probably went over his head without ruffling his hair.
NAOM
Hi Javier,
How do we determine what the proxies show? We use the instrumental data to calibrate. Any divergence between instruments and proxies is likely to be a problem with the Proxy rather than the reverse.
Pretty basic stuff.
Hi Javier several data sets have been adjusted to show less warming. In every case there are good reasons for adjusting the data. Implying otherwise suggests you do little more than read abstracts and look at charts for climate science papers.
Do you have a specific criticism of the Mears paper?
Name calling does not count.
Hi Javier,
Data for RSS TLT from
http://data.remss.com/msu/graphics/TLT/time_series/RSS_TS_channel_TLT_Global_Land_And_Sea_v03_3.txt
Even with the known cooling bias in the RSS version 3.3 TLT the trend is 0.135 K/decade from Jan 1979 to Dec 2016.
Perhaps it looks different if we cherry pick 1998 as a start year, I prefer to use all the data as this is a short 27 years.
As your Mears paper points out, UAH is diverging more and more from the TCWV measurements. Here’s a graph showing how it has also diverged from actual thermometer measurements take from balloon radiosondes in the troposphere.
Consilience of multiple lines of evidence…
It looks like the big problem is the transition from MSU to AMSU instruments around 2000 (besides the fact that neither instrument was originally intended for long-term measurement of temperature at all – the onboard calibration for the sensor is a joke).
This chart shows the difference each year between satellite-derived temperature estimates and the in situ thermometer readings on radiosondes.
A problem with that. Mearns has showed a very good agreement between satellite measurements and HadAT, the globally gridded radiosonde temperature anomalies database.
And…
Your graph exactly confirms my point, and reinforces the bad fit shown by my previous chart.
1. UAH has the worst fit to radiosonde data, RSS is closer.
2. The fit for both is pretty good up to 2000 when the AMSU instruments were deployed, then UAH starts to diverge.
3. Your chart only goes to 2011 and uses the old UAH v5.5 – we are many versions past that now (they adjust a lot, seeming to copy whatever RSS did last year)
4. UAH v6 (as I showed) has even worse divergence than v5.5 (which you showed)
5. The divergence since 2011 – shown on my chart, but not yours – has accelerated.
6. Averaging over the entire timespan – mostly good fits in the beginning and the later years of bad fits – is a good way to hide the problem that occurred starting in the middle.
7. Again, Javier, you are always out of date with your data… you lost almost 5 years of data!!! This is like cherrypicking, but just from laziness.
The differences between sampled RSS, sampled UAH, and HadAT or other radiosonde databases are not significant, Wehappyfew. All your points are wrong.
The graph is from Carl Mears RRS site. If he hasn’t updated it you can take it up to him. I try to use published graphs or graphs posted in official sites whenever possible.
http://www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-temperature/validation
See figures 4 and 5. Radiosondes validate satellite temeperatures.
Your incompetence at reading a graph continues.
Your graph confirms mine.
Mine shows the difference between data sets over a scale of 0.6C. Yours shows the whole data set range on a scale that spans 2.1C, so the difference are harder to see on your graph, but they ARE essentially the SAME as on my graph.
1. Notice that in your graph, the HadAT data (black line) and satellite data (red and orange line) are almost indistinguishable around 1985-1989, 1993-1994, 2002-2003. This where my graph shows their delta = ZERO. Your graph confirms that the satellite data match the radiosonde data very closely for those years, and confirms that my graph, even using a different radiosonde network, got almost exactly the same results for those years.
2. Notice the divergences in the left half… less than a tenth of a degree C, mostly – IN BOTH charts, your and mine… around 1990-1991 the black is above the red by about 0.05C, on BOTH. For 1995-2000, the black is BELOW the red – a positive divergence on BOTH charts – of about 0.1C.
3. Look at the divergence increasing steadily on the right half of YOUR graph. The black line is always above the red after 2003, they almost touch again for 2008, but not quite.
4. The difference on YOUR chart, from 2003 to 2011 is about 0.1C… the difference on MY chart from 2003-2011 is about 0.1C, the narrowing divergence in 2008 is also captured.
5. The divergence on MY chart, for which your chart has no data, continues to increase after 2011. This may explain why Mears and the RSS team updated their algorithm recently, and the new version 4.0 has a higher trend than the old version 3.3 you have shown – to MATCH the RADIOSONDE DATA BETTER!
It appears that scientist like Mears adjust their thinking when new data are collected. They’ve refined their algorithm to better fit the radiosonde thermometer and satellite water vapor data. ALL the data.
You, on the other hand, prefer to use the old, incomplete, not-up-to-date data to support your arguments.
Wehappyfew,
Pretending that radiosondes temperature database agrees with surface databases better is a joke.
Radiosondes are a patchy collection from sparse measurements from multiple instruments with different calibrations and irregular collections with near zero ocean coverage. They are anything but a quality temperature record.
And that shows in that radiosondes present the opposite temperature trends to both surface records and satellites.
From 1979 to about 2001 radiosondes show a very low rate of warming, while both satellites and surface show an identical rate of warming.
From 2001 to present radiosondes show a much higher rate of warming, when both surface and satellites show a reduced rate of warming.
It just happens that the radiosonde increased rate of warming since 2001 matches better surface records than satellites, so now suddenly radiosondes are to be trusted and satellites are the odd measurement.
That’s bullshit. Satellites are a much higher quality measurement for global average temperatures than radiosondes and with a lot more consistency and coverage. You cannot use low quality measurements to shoot down high quality measurements.
Global positioning satellite radio ocultation is a completely different physical principle measurement of temperatures that does not rely on AMSU or MSU instruments, and confirms satellite measurements.
Mears correction of RSS to introduce more warming during the hiatus is his choice. As an alarmist he was so unhappy with his measurements not showing warming that he regularly poo-pooed on satellite measurements saying we should trust surface measurements better. Not exactly a presentation card for unbiased research.
But science is unforgiving. Any bias introduced in the way we measure temperatures to keep the CO2 narrative going will come to haunt us in the future and will have to be undone showing the true extent of the manipulation that some scientists engaged. A lot of trust will be lost.
Your entire comment is based on factually incorrect assumptions. It especially falls apart here:
“From 1979 to about 2001 radiosondes show a very low rate of warming, while both satellites and surface show an identical rate of warming.
From 2001 to present radiosondes show a much higher rate of warming, when both surface and satellites show a reduced rate of warming.”
These two sentences are the opposite of true. Why you choose to lie about simple facts like trends from readily available datasets is beyond me.
The True Facts:
1. The Radiosonde trend from 79-01 is NOT very different from tropospheric satellite estimates for the same period.
2. Radiosonde, Surface, and Satellite ALL show higher rates of warming from 2001 to 2016 compared to 1979 to 2001. The warming rate does NOT show a “reduced rate of warming” compared to 79-01.
RATPAC-A 79-01 trend = 0.090C/dec
UAH TMT 79-01 trend = 0.062C/dec
UAH TLT 1979-01 trend = 0.094C/dec
RSS TTT 1979-01 trend = 0.145C/dec
GISS ……….79-01 trend = 0.135C/dec
NOAA …….79-01 trend = 0.128C/dec
RATPAC-A 01-16 trend = 0.232C/dec
UAH TMT 01-16 trend = 0.083C/dec
UAH TLT 01-16 trend = 0.164C/dec
RSS TTT 01-16 trend = 0.141C/dec
GISS ………79-01 trend = 0.175C/dec
NOAA ……79-01 trend = 0.173C/dec
Why do you lie about easily verifiable facts?
Hi Javier,
You will have to show the manipulation of the Berkeley Earth data, nobody has done so.
Do you claim as much? Is it backed up by a peer reviewed paper?
Hi Javier,
There are plenty of problems with the satellite temperature data as well.
See
https://www.skepticalscience.com/satellite-measurements-warming-troposphere-advanced.htm
You are the one that is lying here Wehappyfew.
RatPac A global seasonal 850-300mb shows very little warming for the 1979-2001 period. Much less than UAH, RSS, or GISS LOTI, that show essentially the same warming rate for the period.
UAH: 0.132°C/decade
RatPac A: 0.084°C/decade
Particularly disturbing is the period 1995-2001 when RatPac A lags significantly during a period of rapid warming.
The attempt to discredit UAH using RatPac A falls flat on its face despite your feeble attempts at confounding the issue.
… A completely different method based on a different physical principle, the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Radio Occultation (RO) data set, also supports satellite measurements.
Gleisner, Hans, et al. “Recent global warming hiatus dominated by low‐latitude temperature trends in surface and troposphere data.” Geophysical Research Letters 42.2 (2015): 510-517.
http://www.academia.edu/download/43224590/Recent_global_warming_hiatus_dominated_b20160229-14118-arqucj.pdf
So the consilience of evidence actually supports satellite measurements, versus some surface measurements.
Another study confirming the slowdown in surface warming from 2002 to 2014, matching every single index of surface and tropospheric temperatures… consilience indeed.
And once AGAIN, Javier, you present data without the most recent years shown – cherrypicking through laziness.
Does the new method confirm the new record highs in surface and tropospheric temps?
Does it match to new record highs in Total Column Water Vapor measured by satellite? (which RSS shows to correlate exactly with temps?) … see chart below (up to date, btw)
If so, then we have a new tool to evaluate the uppermost, least massive part of the climate system.
“And once AGAIN, Javier, you present data without the most recent years shown – cherrypicking through laziness.”
You are funny. It is a peer reviewed published scientific work. That data has undergone review, and is available at the link provided for anybody to check that is legit, and check the interpretation of the authors.
You come with a graph of unknown origin, clearly not from a reputable organization or scientific article, without even providing a link, and claiming that it correlates with temperatures, without showing it.
Have you made it? If not, why do you talk about laziness?
Data are from RSS:
ftp://ftp.remss.com/vapor/monthly_1deg/tpw_v07r01_198801_201611.time_series.txt
They have a plot of the same data, but it is not up to date, so I plotted them myself – twould be hypocritical to complain about your habit of using non-up-to-date data and then post a graph myself without the latest data when it is readily available. See out-of-date RSS graph below.
The fact that you do not even know about this well-known satellite measurement and its correlation to surface temperature is… disturbing.
Read this to get up to speed:
http://images.remss.com/papers/rsspubs/Mears_GRL_2007_vapor_temperature_corr.pdf
An overview of water vapor, sea surface temps, climate, etc is on the RSS page:
http://www.remss.com/research/climate
Are you seriously trying to argue that you’ve never even GLANCED at the RSS webpages and data?
Never paid much attention to TPW data. After all its measurement is complex:
“Water vapour plays a dominant role in the climate change debate. However, observing water vapour over a climatological time period in a consistent and homogeneous manner is challenging.”
Malderen, R. Van, et al. “A multi-site intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis.” Atmospheric Measurement Techniques 7.8 (2014): 2487-2512.
Perhaps that is why Mears et al., limit their analysis to the tropical oceans, as apparently outside the tropical oceans the relationship between temperatures and TPW no longer holds so tightly.
Doesn’t look to me as a very strong argument.
Hi Javier,
14 years too short to tell us much. Try 30 years.
Friends of Earth is retiring controversial anti-fracking advertisement after investigation by authorities.
Green group says controversial fracking leaflet probe dropped
Friends of the Earth (FoE) said yesterday that the UK’s advertising regulator had dropped a case into a leaflet it produced on fracking.
Trade body UK Onshore Oil and Gas (UKOOG) said the Advertising Standards Association (ASA) had ruled that a number of claims made in the leaflet “Pat Saved Her Home From Fracking. You Can Save Yours too” were misleading.
UKOOG said the ASA had taken issue with claims that fluid used in fracking would contaminate drinking water, that fracking had increased asthma rates in the US, that the controversial gas extraction technique raised the risk of cancer, and that it would cause house prices to plummet.
UKOOG said FoE had agreed to withdraw all the claims and would refrain from repeating them.
Ken Cronin, chief executive of UKOOG, said independent scientific, health and regulatory experts had concluded that the information in the leaflet was fundamentally false.
Mr Cronin said: “The opponents of onshore oil and gas development must withdraw their scaremongering rhetoric and argue on the basis of the facts, which quite clearly show that the risks associated with fracking can be mitigated by the strong regulation and world renowned best practice that we benefit from in the UK.”
UKOOG said the ASA would publish the ruling today.
But FoE said the case, brought by Cuadrilla, had been “closed with no formal ruling”.
Donna Hume, senior campaigner, Friends of the Earth, said Cuadrilla had made the complaint to “distract from the real issues about fracking, and how burning fossil fuels is dangerous for climate change”.
She said: “This is a pro-fracking company doing all they can to shut down opposition to fracking. It hasn’t worked though. What’s happened instead is that the ASA has dropped the case without ruling.
“We continue to campaign against fracking, alongside local people, because the process of exploring for and extracting shale gas is inherently risky for the environment, this is why fracking is banned or put on hold in so many countries.”
https://www.energyvoice.com/other-news/128020/green-group-says-controversial-fracking-leaflet-probe-dropped/
https://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications.aspx#2
Informally Resolved Cases (51)
After consideration by the ASA of complaints received, the following companies and organisations agreed to amend or withdraw advertising without the need for a formal ruling:
Advertiser Date Number of Complaints Media Sector
Friends of the Earth 4 January 2017 2 Insert Non-commercial
My, my. Friends of Earth keep lying. “What’s happened instead is that the ASA has dropped the case without ruling.”. No case dropping. Informally resolved by accused organization agreement to withdraw advertising. The preferred way of resolving cases rather than have a ruling against.
Apparently you are entitled to have no ethics or accountability when you are trying to save the planet while making a living out of it.
ASA was kind of angry at the lies being spread again by Friends of Earth.
“One week into 2017 and the action we’ve taken to stop misleading ad claims about fracking by Friends of the Earth has hit the national media and prompted widespread debate and commentary. But amidst the reports, the public comments by the parties involved and the social media chatter, there’s a risk that the facts become obscured.
So let me be clear. We told Friends of the Earth that based on the evidence we’d seen, claims it made in its anti-fracking leaflet or claims with the same meaning cannot be repeated, and asked for an assurance that they wouldn’t be. Friends of the Earth gave us an assurance to that effect. Unless the evidence changes, that means it mustn’t repeat in ads claims about the effects of fracking on the health of local populations, drinking water or property prices.
Friends of the Earth has said we “dropped the case”. That’s not an accurate reflection of what’s happened. We thoroughly investigated the complaints we received and closed the case on receipt of the above assurance. Because of that, we decided against publishing a formal ruling, but plainly that’s not the same thing as “dropping the case”. Crucially, the claims under the microscope mustn’t reappear in ads, unless the evidence changes. Dropped cases don’t have that outcome.
Resolving cases informally, usually following our receipt of an assurance that claims won’t be repeated, is an important tool in our toolkit, allowing us to be proportionate and targeted in how we tackle problems. No-one should be under any illusion that the process of looking into these matters is anything other than rigorous. “
https://www.asa.org.uk/News-resources/Media-Centre/2016/Opinion-piece-A-fractious-debate-but-a-clear-outcome.aspx
Friends of the Earth’s opinion is as irrelevant to the conversation as you ramblings, which are either grouchy old engineer syndrome or paid shilling. Can’t wait for your proof of cold fusion.
You’re playing politics, not presenting evidence.
Er, what we are talking about is precisely that Friends of Earth claims that fracking constitutes a serious health hazard is not supported by evidence, and thus constitutes false advertisement.
You are the one that looks grouchy about the issue. I really don’t care that much, but I think that if fracking is required to get the oil and gas we need, then it is going to get done, because it is a lot worse for our health not to have it.
Hi Javier,
I find it interesting that you claim to “not really care” that much. I barely have time to read this blog, among others. So how do you find the time to post in such high volume? Do you have another job, or is this your actual job? Based on the evidence, one might think you are sponsored by an oil gas industry lobbyist.
In the Jan 1 Open Thread there was a chart on north atlantic ocean temperatures for 0-700 meters deep from the website at the link below:
http://www.climate4you.com/
On that website there is also information on global ocean temperature from 0 to 2000 meters.
There was a claim that something changed in 2007, this is not apparent looking at the entire ocean which is interconnected and local temperatures change due to ENSO, AMO, PDO as well as atmospheric circulation changes (which affects surface mixing due to wind) such as the QBO.
Chart below shows Global Ocean temperatures from 0 to 2000 meters.
The claim referred to the North Atlantic specifically.
If you want to know what is going on, you should read
Wyatt, Marcia Glaze, and Judith A. Curry. “Role for Eurasian Arctic shelf sea ice in a secularly varying hemispheric climate signal during the 20th century.” Climate dynamics 42.9-10 (2014): 2763-2782.
http://cns7prod.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/Curry,%20Wyatt%20paper.pdf
ENSO, AMO, and PDO have a big impact on surface and lower troposphere temperatures between other things.
Argo shows that all the warming in the ocean is taking place in the Southern Hemisphere (60°S-20°S):
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n2/full/nclimate2872.html
Figure 5:
Hi Javier,
It is the temperature in the Arctic, not the North Atlantic that affects sea ice.
The heat content of the ocean is estimated by temperature measurements.
Could melting ice be affecting the ocean temperature? While there is ice in my glass the temperature of the water stays pretty close to 0 C.
The AMO, ENSO, and PDO will affect ocean mixing and they are a big part of natural variability. Using AMO, ENSO, and atmospheric carbon dioxide a very simple multiple linear regression on annual data from 1871 to 2000 yields a reasonable “model” of Global temperature (though not physics based and very oversimplified). I call this CAMOSOI (Carbon, AMO, and SOI) and the R squared from 1871-2000 is 89%, the TCR is 1.74C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2, a carbon only model for 1871-2000 has an R squared of 70%. The 2001-2015 model is out of sample and matches temperature data fairly well. The data and model linear trend is very similar from 1871-2015.
Javier please! Give it a rest! We know and understand you compulsion to respond to and refute every single comment that suggests CO2 is causing global warming. Trust me we know! But you have got to let it go! Try and ignore that little voice inside your head that keeps telling you, “you must”. We konw it’s hard but, please try! For the sake of humanity (and our sanity) 😉
Anyone who believes in a coordinated climate change conspiracy by academics should be forced to attend one faculty meeting and one granting agency meeting.
Hi Javier,
The drop in heat content in the 0-700 m of ocean from 60-0W and 35-65N (North Atlantic Ocean) after 2007 is matched by an increase in ocean heat content from 0-700 m in Arctic Gateway.
This is shown in 4 charts following the chart you posted earlier from climate4you.
http://www.climate4you.com/SeaTemperatures.htm
Then click on “Arctic gateway seas (20W-40E. 70-80N) heat content 0-700 m depth”
Dennis,
What do you mean by “it is matched”?
If you are trying to say that oceans on average have been warming, we agree. If you are trying to connect changes in temperatures between different oceans and seas you are going to need evidence.
The relationship between North Atlantic ocean temperatures and NAO are by definition. The relationship between NAO and Arctic sea ice is supported on ample evidence published in several articles.
Hi Javier,
The Chart you posted did not cover the same area used to define the AMO.
The chart you posted was 30-65N, 60W-0, but the AMO is 0-60N, 80W-0.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/catalog/climind/AMO.html
Also the AMO is based on sea surface temperature which is very different from the heat content of the top 700 m of ocean.
See
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/correlation/amon.us.long.mean.data
Chart below for 1980 to 2016 North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperatures in Celsius.
Not sure what you mean, again, Dennis.
There appears to be good correlation between surface temperatures in AMO region and 0-700 m heat content in North Atlantic region for the past 30 years. I agree they are not the same, but they appear to move in concert.
Hi Javier,
It is the sea surface temperature that matters for AMO. The annual data I have shown above from NOAA.
for a 25 month running mean from
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/gcos_wgsp/Timeseries/Plot/
we get chart below. The annual data makes more sense to correlate with Arctic sea ice extent and the correlation is not as strong as with CO2 or Global temperature.
Dennis,
Everything that is pretty much linearly increasing between 1979 and 2003 shows a strong correlation. The problem comes when there is a change of trend, and some things like Arctic sea ice or temperatures can change trend, while others like CO2 cannot.
Hi Javier,
If the correlation only works in some places, it might not be very useful.
I looked at annual average Global Sea Ice Extent from 1979-2015 and threw out years with incomplete data (1987,1988).
Data from
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/extent/sea-ice/G/0
A multivariable linear regression on annual average global sea ice extent (GSI) as the dependent variable and AMO and BEST LO data as the independent variables shows that AMO is not statistically significant for GSI.
A “model” using BEST LO only has a correlation coefficient of 65% and an R squared of about 43%.
This is similar to a correlation with time in years, so it does not explain much. In any case this (not very good) “model” suggests global sea ice extent decreases by 1.5 million km squared from 1979 to 2015 for every 1 C increase in Global land ocean temperatures.
Hi Javier,
Climate is very variable, so the “change in trend” is just natural fluctuation over periods of less than 25 or 30 years, in fact if there is indeed a natural 65 (or 60 or 70) year cycle (physical basis so far not well explained), then longer periods of 65 years would be more important. We don’t have to explain every wiggle due to ENSO, AMO, PDO, etc.
Dennis,
Global warming is also in great part a natural fluctuation on a centennial scale.
Hi Javier,
The empirical data from 1871 to 2015 says otherwise. Find me a model that does not include the natural log of atmospheric carbon dioxide which explains the change in global temperatures from 1871 to 2015 and I might be convinced.
Hand waves are not convincing.
Dennis,
No handwaving. CO2 is not responsible for most of that:
Hi Javier,
First, the error bars for those reconstuctions are very large, so before 1700 we can’t really tell what temperature was very precisely.
For the instrumental period, especially after 1850, natural variation alone does not explain the overall trend in temperature change.
Absolutely true that most of the change in temperature change before 1750 was natural, so not really telling us anything new. The changes in temperature from 500 to 1750 CE were mostly due to changes in solar output and volcanic eruptions along with the usual variation in temperature due to changes in ocean currents.
Dennis,
It is absurd to think that the multi-centennial fluctuations of climate have stopped since 1950, but that is the official line of IPCC.
Study of multi-centennial cycles supports that we should be warming, as we are. So there is an unrecognized natural contribution. This clearly explains why when this natural contribution stops we get a hiatus. CO2 hypothesis has no explanation for hiatuses. As CO2 increases warming should accelerate if it is the primary driver. Hiatuses demonstrate a big natural contribution to global warming that science cannot explain properly because of its fixation on anthropogenic causes for the past 35 years.
That is a great site, Dennis…
Thank you for teaching us all about a very important new (to me at least) resource for ocean data.
To follow up on your comment about OHC for the N atlantic compared to the Arctic gateway, it looks like Javier’s favorite graph show that the very large region of the N Atlantic has lost about 0.9 * 10^22J of heat since 2007, while the 3 regions of the Arctic gateway you pointed out have gained about 1.2 *10^22J in total over the same time span.
And since the size of the regions are so different, the smaller Arctic regions must have increased a lot more in terms of temperature than the very large N Atlantic in order for the absolute heat content to have changed by roughly similar amounts.
I agree. One of my favourite things about the comments section of this blog is the links and references to other sites. The links that get posted by all you folks are great. I appreciate it.
Hi Guys,
You can thank Javier for that web site, it was on the chart he posted for the heat anomaly of the North Atlantic.
Indeed… a strong argument for not banning deniers, as long as they bring data to the discussion.
Also that place was set and is kept by Ole Humlum, a very well known skeptic climate scientist. 😉
Javier,
Thank you for pointing it out.
And I for one am glad he persists, because I am fleshing out my knowledge of the nuances of climate science as a result of the debate.
A lot of great data gets posted here in response to Javier’s assertions.
http://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card
Hi Survivalist,
Yes, and having a relatively well reasoned opposing viewpoint is useful.
My sense is that Javier does not “deny” that Global Warming occurs due to an increase in Greenhouse gases, only that the magnitude of that warming is smaller than many who post on this blog suggest (including me).
The 19 CMIP3 models covered by MAGICC 6 (a climate model emulator) have equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) ranging from 1.9 C to 5.5 C and all but 2 models range in ECS from 2 to 4 C, with a mean (when high and low models are removed) of 2.7 C and a median of 2.54 C.
Javier has suggested 1.65 C, but I think he may mean TCR instead of ECS.
IPCC estimates 1.5 to 4.5 C with a mean estimate of 3 C for ECS.
If the mean estimate for ECS is correct and Fossil fuels are limited due to depletion, we may see anthropogenic carbon emission limited to 1000 Pg C which some main stream climate scientists (Allen et al 2009) suggest may keep us at 2 C or less above 1850-1900 mean global temperatures.
An inherent contradiction for many people here is that they maintain a position of catastrophic warming with limited fossil fuels.
One has to believe that ECS is toward the high end of estimates (4 C or more) if fossil fuels are limited to my “low” scenarios for such a position to make sense. Even with my “medium” fossil fuel scenarios (which many people here think are too optimistic), a realistic estimate of future non-fossil fuel energy growth still keeps total anthropogenic carbon emissions close to 1000 Pg (plus or minus 100 Pg C).
I see the solution as a rapid energy transition from fossil to non-fossil fuel, which will be needed whether anthropogenic climate change is in fact a serious problem or not.
I also believe labels such as “alarmist”, “denier”, or “troll” generate much heat and very little light. No doubt people believe such labels give strength to their arguments, but I believe the reverse is true.
Hi Dennis,
I suppose if one wants to say that global warming will be catastrophic it would be good of them to say why. Certainly humans, who live in environments that range from the tropics to the Arctic, will not be impacted physiologically by a couple or a few degrees. However, our agricultural system perhaps might be impacted heavily. This is an interesting presentation by David Battisti on climate change and food. The 46 min 30 second mark is quite good as it presents plant yield vs temperature. Average temps may only increase slightly and day to day temps will fluctuate on either side of the mean, but plant yields will fluctuate widely. If warming is to be catastrophic it may well be due to its impacts on grain production. It seems to me that human civilization as we know it is based on a tremendous amount of grain production.
https://youtu.be/YToMoNPwTFc
And another link for those that like to consider the agriculture impacts of a couple degrees warming.
https://youtu.be/_M8sxAdeju0
Now maybe human civilization will relocate its agricultural production zones, or as people in southern Vermont like to call them, ‘farms’, to locations further north, but I doubt it will provide a timely remedy. Agriculture is based upon assumptions of geographical and ecological continuity. It’s likely those assumptions will soon no longer be viable. High food prices to me seem to rip the social order apart. The ‘Arab Spring’ is in many ways certainly an example of the human response to increased food prices.
David Pimentel has interesting thoughts on the topic too.
http://www.ciesin.org/docs/004-138/004-138.html
having watched those two videos I have to agree with Survivalist’s main point:
If warming is catastrophic it may well be due to its impacts on grain production.
My take away from those videos is that the 2C increase in average global temperatures may already be more than enough to cause an agricultural catastrophe of unprecedented proportions due to making yields wildly unpredictable in the not too distant future.
Can anyone say with 100% certainty that that is what will happen? No, of course not!
The chances that someone’s house will burn down is also a low probability and most people understand the need for taking safety precautions and getting fire insurance for unforeseen eventualities.
If you’d like to ruin an otherwise fine day just google images for famine.
Risk management is not governed by certainty. Waiting for scientific certainty to be established ensures that your risk management strategy will be too little too late. Risk management is based upon responding to probabilities.
Hi Survivalist,
I agree the problems are potentially catastrophic, but consider that global land temperatures have risen in 2015 to about 1.7 C higher than the 1850-1899 average (using Berkeley Earth data).
To my knowledge, yields have held up so far though we could see considerably more than 2 C of warming on land, maybe 2.3 C.
I cannot predict if another 0.6 C of warming will be enough to cause yield failures. Old Farmer Mac might be able to guess better. We would be at this temperature on land for roughly 2060 to 2250 based on MAGICC 6 emulation of the GISS Model EH (CMIP3) and about 1000 Pg of carbon emissions.
Thanks Dennis,
I would like to kindly emphasize the obvious and say that grain does not respond to global average land temperature. It responds to the tempertaure at the location at which it is being grown. Several smallish areas in the northern hemisphere account for a vast majority of the worlds grain production. I feel it is forecasts of temperatures at those locations that should govern our concern. Rice is a grain also, and we should know that a large amount is grown within 1 meter of sea level. No need to wait for a sea level rise though. A saline intrusion secondary to a storm wave will likely precede sea level rise.
A bit dated but still interesting.
“Nearly half the world’s grain is produced in just three countries: China, the United States, and India.”
http://www.earth-policy.org/indicators/C54
KSA is interesting too for those that like Ag.
http://www.world-grain.com/articles/news_home/World_Grain_News/2016/03/Saudi_Arabia_ends_domestic_whe.aspx?ID=%7B50E0E390-7C3F-46A6-B832-54FA58F140B2%7D&cck=1
Not sure what’s changed since this was written.
“Over northern hemisphere land areas we’ve already warmed 2°C (3.6°F) since just 1880.”
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/global-temperature-update-3/
I highly recommend viewing talks by David Battisti. Many are on YouTube.
I feel grain production is very vulnerable at any moment. Temps is but one of a litany of problems.
Hi Survivalist,
I don’t have enough information to be able to predict future weather, just Northern hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere average land temperatures.
Hi Survivalist,
A comparison with 1880 compares current temperatures with a relatively cold period in the past 11,000 years. If one considers the Marcott et al 2013 analysis, the Holocene climactic optimum (HCO) was about 0.4 C above the 1961-1990 average temperature.
Using Marcott and Mann et al 2008 data the Holocene pre-industrial (before 1750) is about 0.2 C above the 1951-1980 Global land ocean average and the HCO about 0.25 C above that average.
Also note that the “pre-industrial” usually used is the 1850-1899 mean which is about 0.36 C below the 1951-1980 mean temperature.
For Northern Hemisphere Land temperatures the temperature in 2013 was about 1.5 C above the 1850-1899 mean, the CMIP3 median model suggests another 1.3 C rise in temperature above 2013 levels and about 2.3 C above the 1851-1980 mean.
I do not have the expertise to determine if crop failures would result from another 1.3 C increase in average land temperatures above 2013 levels, which is likely by 2060 if the median CMIP3 model is correct.
Hi Survivalist,
My expectation is that emissions will fall between RCP2.6 an RCP4.5.
Chart below is for temperature predictions for the GISS model, from paper linked below.
If you click on the chart you get a larger image, but for the US bread basket it looks like 1.5 to 2.5 C, again I don’t know if that is enough to hurt grain yields, I am not a farmer.
https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/na08200a.html
“I feel grain production is very vulnerable at any moment.”
Yes the future always looks bleak to the alarmist. And dire predictions always keep moving towards the future as it becomes the present.
No way to defeat that. I just hope you enjoy it.
As usual, Javier’s data are correct, but cherrypicked, incomplete, lacking context, not up-to-date, and he uses them draw unsupported sweeping conclusions.
Heat content by hemisphere (most recent data compared to 10 years ago):
SH
2006 3rd qtr … 5.74
2016 3rd qtr … 8.80
an increase of … 3.06 * 10^22J
NH
2006 3rd qtr … 6.23
2016 3rd qtr … 10.98
an increase of … 4.75 * 10^22J
Here’s a good little article on Javier and his cherry pie.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/extreme-cherry-ice/
I recommend following the links embedded in the article and looking at Javier’s guest post at sock puppet echo chamber wuwt.
What an honor to deserve an article by the great Tamino.
This is the same moron that said:
“My result indicates that el Niño led to 0.08 deg.C warmer temperature in 2015. That’s hardly enough to explain the record heat, which was mainly due to global warming.”
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/el-nino-and-the-2015-record-breaking-heat/
Well, we just watched the 2015-16 El Niño end with a precipitous fall of 0.5°C so far (it hasn’t stopped falling yet). Over 6 times more that what Tamino calculated. Where is global warming when you need it?
I would tell him what I think of him on his blog, but he only accepts comments from fanboys.
What Tamino doesn’t understand, and GoneFishing, Survivalist, Wehappyfew, and others here don’t understand is that 2007 is not cherry picked, it has been chosen by Nature.
2007 is the year Arctic sea ice melting stopped reaching new seasonal minima.
2007 is the year the melting season length stopped increasing and started decreasing.
2007 is the year North Atlantic heat content stopped increasing and started decreasing.
2007 is the year the AMO stopped increasing.
Nature chose 2007, not me. That’s what Tamino doesn’t understand, and why he is going to be wrong and I will be right. Miles et al., 2014 and Wyatt & Curry 2014 explained it in their publications and the referees accepted their arguments as correct and not cherry picking.
For the next decade or two, AMO will continue its negative phase, and Arctic sea ice will continue showing great resilience. Alarmists will have to look for something else to get alarmed. I am sure they will find something.
2007 is the year Arctic sea ice melting stopped reaching new seasonal minima.
Factually incorrect…
a Lie…
a Mistake…
Incompetent reading of charts…
take your pick
Sept Sea Ice Extent also stopped reaching new lows in 1985, 1990, 1995, 2002, 2005, 2007 (yay! Javier got that one right!!), and 2012.
The best Javier can come up with is to insult the person who discredited his data and analysis. Phd indeed. He’s becoming very childish.
We know what happened in 2012. It is an outlier that was due to a freak combination of storms. It was not a climate cause, but a weather cause.
“2007 is the year Arctic sea ice melting stopped reaching new seasonal minima.” ~ Javier
Fail
2007 is the year the AMO stopped increasing.
ALSO Factually incorrect…
a Lie… etc
AMO stopped increasing and fell by a large amount around 1880 to 1910… no change sea ice extent.
AMO increased a lot from 1910 to 1950’s… little change in sea ice.
AMO stopped increasing and fell by a very large amount around 1950 to 1975… sea ice extent fell by a small amount.
AMO increased a lot from 1975 to 2000’s… sea ice extent fell a LOT.
AMO stopped increasing around 2005 to 2010… is still very close to those most recent highs… and sea ice extent reached a new low a few years later in 2012.
The correlation of sea ice extent and AMO is shown below, with the sea ice inverted to show Javier’s preferred causation direction. Obviously they are sometimes correlated and sometimes anti-correlated, as might be expected for two mostly independent time series.
That’s just one Arctic sea ice reconstruction that appears to be quite incorrect. Check this other one:
Wrong again!
There are several sea ice extent reconstructions. Most are pretty similar.
I used the most respected one, the one good enough to be listed by NSIDC:
https://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g10010-sea-ice-1850-onward/G10010_SIBT1850.pdf
Yours is similar to mine, but doesn’t go back as far, so it’s fit to AMO is slightly better, lacking all the beginning parts where the fit is terrible.
Once again, looking at only part of the data gets you in trouble and shows you are either misleading yourself, attempting to mislead us (LYING), or badly confused by data, graphs, etc.
Here’s another, pasted onto the bottom of our current 2…
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL032507/full
The ice data from old is really crappy. Not reliable at all except for a few places like Iceland.
When you use data for the places where it was really measured, then it still agrees with AMO. And when you use proxies for previous centuries, it still agrees with AMO.
Hi Javier,
When we use the best Northern Hemisphere sea ice (NSI) extent data from 1979-2015 (annual average and throw out 1987 and 1988 which have incomplete data), we find R=88% for a regression of NSI against BEST Global land ocean temperature and R=73% for ASI vs AMO.
When a multiple linear regression on BEST LO and AMO is done, AMO is not statistically significant (t stat=0.76, where t stat >2 indicates significance at 95% probability level.) The R is the same (88%) as for the NSI vs BEST LO regression so AMO does not tell us much about Northern hemisphere sea ice extent.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/extent/sea-ice/N/0
Dennis,
So using less data and focusing on yearly variability you don’t see the relationship. Quite a conclusion.
Hi Javier,
In this case the best data by far is the 1979-2016 data for sea ice extent, you have already questioned the rest of the data, be consistent.
Dennis,
Do you realize that we have sampled properly only a window of increasing AMO?
Paleo data indicates Arctic sea ice correlates with AMO on the long term. Not necessarily on a yearly basis.
Northern Hemisphere temperatures also appear to show a trend-dependence to AMO and PDO.
See Farneti et al 2016 paper link in wehappyfew comment.
“There hasn’t been any melting in the Arctic since 2007” ~ Javier
“Javier has also resorted to another denier favorite: computing a “trend” based on a time span that’s way to short. Way too short. Ten years, from 2007 to 2016. And, in classic fashion, he omits to estimate any uncertainty with that “trend.”
Let’s do the math for him.
Using September average sea ice extent from NSIDC, and using only the data from 2007 through 2016, the estimated trend by linear regression is +18 thousand km^2 per year. Upward!!! But, the “margin of error” (95% confidence interval) for that figure is somewhere between +142 thousand km^2/yr and -105 thousand km^2/yr. Downward”
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/extreme-cherry-ice/
From PIOMASS data
Model Validation and Uncertainty
“PIOMAS has been extensively validated through comparisons with observations from US-Navy submarines, oceanographic moorings, and satellites. In addition model runs were performed in which model parameters and assimilation procedures were altered. From these validation studies we arrive at conservative estimates of the uncertainty in the trend of ± 1.0 103 km3/decade. The uncertainty of the monthly averaged ice volume anomaly is estimated as ±0.75 103 km3. Total volume uncertainties are larger than those for the anomaly because model biases are removed when calculating the anomalies. The uncertainty for October total ice volume is estimated to be ±1.35 103 km3 . Comparison of winter total volumes with other volume estimates need to account for the fact that the PIOMAS domain currently does not extend southward far enough to cover all areas that can have winter time ice cover. Areas in the Sea of Okhotsk and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are partially excluded from the domain. Details on model validation can be found in Schweiger et al. 2011 and (here). Additional information on PIOMAS can be found (here)
A comprehensive library of sea ice thickness data for model validation has been compiled and is available (here)”
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
“Modeled and with large uncertainties. You can believe on that if you want.” ~ Javier (on PIOMASS)
https://youtu.be/9NP0L1PG9ag
Hi Javier,
There are lots of papers published in Nature on the same subject which come to different conclusions.
Your claims on sea ice don’t seem to match the data. Look at annual sea ice extent and the link between AMO and Sea ice extent is not statistically significant, selecting those areas for sea ice that are “well measured” and leaving out the rest of the “poorly measured” areas, may not tell us much. For the very good data from 1979 to 2016, AMO is not a statistically significant determinant of sea ice in the Northern hemisphere or global sea ice extent. Global land ocean temperature is for both and HadSST is for the northern hemisphere (haven’t tried it yet for global sea ice extent.)
Dennis,
Hmm. Science not settled then.
Why would I want to do that? I want to define the trend of the minimum extent as it has been done by alarmists for decades. When the data no longer supports the alarmism then we have to change the rules at mid game and start looking at something different.
What matters is the maximum extent and the minimum extent. The path is irrelevant because it does not matter whether the freezing or melting took place early or late in the season. Maximum and minimum tells us how much freezing and melting took place during the entire season.
You are just trying to introduce confusion and noise with your yearly averages that don’t represent the amount of ice produced or melted but the distribution of the process.
Hi Javier,
I have repeatedly said there is a great deal of uncertainty and use the data to illustrate what the empirical evidence shows.
I agree that science is never settled, there is always more to learn.
Wehappyfew,
It is your data that is suspect. Providing just two data points, ending on a big El Niño. I recommend you go to the scientific peer-reviewed literature as your main source of information.
This was just published last month (Dec. 2016)
Llovel, W., & Terray, L. (2016). Observed southern upper-ocean warming over 2005–2014 and associated mechanisms. Environmental Research Letters, 11(12), 124023.
Figure 1:
Hi Javier,
The link between Sea ice and AMO (Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation) is based on sea surface temperature. Weather the deep ocean in the Southern or Northern hemisphere is warming more over an 8 year period is of little consequence for sea ice it is sea surface temperatures (SST) that matter, particularly in the Arctic and Southern Ocean.
Dennis,
Sea surface temperatures depend also on subsurface temperatures and rate of vertical mixing. And vertical mixing depends on wind speed and tides. Everything is interconnected in climate.
The question is if in 2007 changed other factors besides Arctic sea ice melting minimum. The answer is yes. North Atlantic ocean temperatures changed trend, and the melting season started shortening. As both things can affect sea ice this is a clear indication that we are not dealing with internal variability that can be treated statistically. It is a change of natural conditions that some scientists have noticed and agree with their hypothesis.
Hi Javier,
A better hypothesis is just natural variability. Yes everything is interconnected, that is quite obvious, looking at the empirical data, a link between AMO and average annual Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent does not show as being statistically significant over the 1979 to 2016 period. A better hypothesis is that sea ice extent is determined in part by global land ocean temperatures.
An alternative hypothesis is that NSI is linked to Global sea surface temperature (SST).
To test this, a regression on northern hemisphere sea ice extent (annual average) with HadSST3.1 suggests a decrease of 3.1 million km sq of Northern hemisphere sea ice extent for each 1 C rise in Global SST, the 95% confidence interval is 2.4 to 3.8 million km sq decrease per degree C of Global SST rise.
As before the temperature (in this case ocean surface temperature) vs NSI results in a higher R (84%) than the AMO vs NSI regression (R=75%) and a multiple regression for NSI vs SST and AMO shows low statistical significance for AMO (t stat =0.93) and a similar R to NSI vs SST.
Dennis,
Little understanding of the processes leads to incorrect results even if correlation appears high.
Arctic sea ice does not depend on global sea surface temperatures. It depends on Arctic sea surface and subsurface temperatures. And Arctic sea surface and subsurface temperatures depend on North Atlantic sea surface and subsurface temperatures, as that is the current that feeds the Arctic. Delays in the system can produce a low correlation due to the annual variability being shifted. Polar atmospheric temperatures are a smaller factor because the ice forms from the sea water and therefore depends absolutely on its temperature.
The period of observation 1979-2007 corresponds to an increasing AMO. It is too short for what appears to be a ~60 year oscillation. From now on the two hypothesis make opposite predictions. The CO2 hypothesis predicts a continuation of the 30 year downward trend in Arctic sea ice. The AMO hypothesis predicts a change of trend starting in 2007. As Feynman famously said:
“In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.”
So in a few years we’ll find out what controls Arctic sea ice, and I am betting for AMO. The September trend since 2007 is in full agreement with its prediction, not with CO2 hypothesis prediction.
Hi Javier,
Well by your reasoning the sea ice should not depend on the AMO, because the AMO does not measure arctic sea surface temperature.
The global ocean temperature is rising, the water in the Arctic is connected with the rest of the ocean through various flows determined by several different cycles. As the AMO measures the detrended sea surface temperature fluctuations in the North Atlantic, it will not reflect the deeper ocean temperature necessarily as there are deepwater flows that can also vary depending on temperature changes in the southern Atlantic Ocean as well as interconnections and flows between the Atlantic and Indian and the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean.
As ice forms on the surface of the ocean the sea surface temperature is very relevant.
The empirical data suggests the hypothesis that the AMO is an important determinant of Northern Hemisphere Sea ice is not supported.
Global land ocean temperatures or Global sea surface temperatures explain some of the change in NH Sea ice extent, with an R squared of about 70%. Other natural variability besides AMO may explain the rest.
“Polar atmospheric temperatures are a smaller factor because the ice forms from the sea water and therefore depends absolutely on its temperature.”
The temperature of the air above open water has one hell of a lot to do with how fast the water freezes, especially if there is enough wind to lift droplets into the air, where the small mass of a droplet , in relation to the comparatively HUGE surface area of a droplet, allows it to freeze almost instantly.
But it’s true that once the ice covers the water, the air temperature matters to a far lesser extent, because the ice acts as insulation.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
I imagine it depends mostly on the water temperature, but the air temperature will influence the water temperature, the water in areas not covered with ice will mix with the water under the ice and that will be affected by air temperature.
Also Javier is fixated on CO2, but all of the models on sea ice that I have presented look at Global land ocean temperature or Global sea surface temperature.
Javier has claimed the AMO is the same as North Atlantic sea surface temperatures, but that is incorrect.
He has also said the North Atlantic feeds the Arctic Ocean which is correct, the rest of the oceans feed the North Atlantic, so Global sea surface temperature is very relevant, deeper ocean data is also relevant, but all oceans are interconnected so the global ocean temperatures are very relevant.
The fact is that the AMO is not statistically significant where northern hemisphere sea ice is concerned.
Dennis,
“Javier has claimed the AMO is the same as North Atlantic sea surface temperatures, but that is incorrect.”
It is correct.
“The AMO is identified as a coherent pattern of variability in basin-wide North Atlantic SSTs with a period of about 60–80 years [Schlesinger and Ramankutty, 1994].
Indices of the AMO have traditionally been based on the average SST anomaly for the North Atlantic north of the equator [Enfield et al., 2001] (Figure 1), where the SST (from HADISST [Rayner et al., 2003]) northern limit was kept at 60°N to avoid problems with sea ice changes.”
Trenberth, K. E., and D. J. Shea (2006), Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L12704, doi:10.1029/2006GL026894.
Hi Javier,
Yes the AMO is based on North Atlantic Sea Surface temperatures.
You are showing a serious lack of understanding.
Try reading
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/timeseries/AMO/
Method:
Use the Kaplan SST dataset (5×5).
Compute the area weighted average over the N Atlantic, basically 0 to 70N.
Detrend that time series
Optionally smooth it with a 121 month smoother.
For those who require unaltered data, the following is an “not detrended” version of the N. Atlantic monthly averages with the 1951-1980 NOAA ERSST climatology added back in.
The AMO removes the trend from the North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature.
So something can be “based on” North Atlantic SST without being “the same as” North Atlantic SST
You are the one that doesn’t understand Dennis,
Take North Atlantic SST 0°-60°N, 0°-80°W. Plot. You’ve got AMO.
Anomaly is optional, filtering is optional, detrending is optional. These are just different ways of presenting the same data.
As simple as that.
I looked quickly at ENSO and its effect on northern hemisphere sea ice. A multiple linear regression on HadSST and ENSO has an R squared of 79% and both SST and ENSO are significant at the 95% level. When AMO is also added (3 independent variables rather than 2, the R squared is unchanged and AMO is not statistically significant (t stat is 1).
Chart below for this new very simple “model”.
You might try a lag for the ENSO released heat to make its way to the Arctic. You may have to go to monthly numbers to find the best time span to lag by.
Hi Wehappyfew,
There may well be a lag, but I am trying to keep the analysis simple. Feel free to tweek,
I used data from
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/table.html
for MEI (an enso index) I used annual data (also for simplicity).
For Temperature I used the annual land ocean data (with air above ice) from link below.
http://berkeleyearth.org/data/
Feel free to add lags. My main point was to test the AMO hypothesis and when AMO is added it is not statistically significant, though perhaps with the right lag it would be, but I prefer not to data mine.
Hi Javier,
The data for AMO and North Atlantic SST can be found at link below
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/timeseries/AMO/
The North Atlantic SST anomaly from the 1951-1980 average (labelled NASST) and the AMO are plotted in chart below.
They are not the same, if you believe they are you are incorrect.
Come on Dennis,
You just proved my point, thanks. It is exactly the same data with different treatment (detrending). As Trenberth points out in his article detrending is just a usual way of presenting AMO data, but by no means universal and it was not done in the original papers that described AMO.
Once again, you have posted data that are not up to date. Since the last date shown in those graphs, SH OHC has fallen precipitously, while NH OHC has risen equally fast.
Fall 2016 is many months after the effects of the “big El Nino” subsided in the global OHC data, and is irrelevant anyway, as both hemispheres are represented in the tropical zone where El Nino has a large effect.
See the latest data here…
https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/basin_data.html
… rather than reading off your list of denier talking points.
The broader context, as always, is also missing from your remarks…
…the global average heat content of the entire climate system is rising, and accelerating.
… regional variations are large at times, but only reflect redistribution within the global heat reservoir
… the increase in heat content of the climate system is solely due to human produced GHGs, as all the known natural influences are flat or negative (like solar).
Hi Javier,
That paper is well done. There is no discussion of sea ice they simply report that 90% of the heat increase in the top 2000 m of ocean are in the Southern Hemisphere (mostly Pacific and Indian Oceans). They also discuss that the increase in ocean heat matches well with TOA energy flux along with mechanisms for the heat transport to the deeper ocean.
An interesting piece, but not suggestive of a stall in Arctic Sea ice melt.
Hi Dennis,
My citation of that paper is not to support a stall in Arctic Sea ice melt, but to support that ocean warming has taken place mainly in the Southern Hemisphere during the period considered.
Your global ocean chart says very little. Some oceans warm, while others cool. The North Atlantic has been cooling since 2007.
Hi Javier,
No the annual data says otherwise for the AMO.
See
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/correlation/amon.us.long.mean.data
Chart below for annual average North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature from 1979-2016.
I assume you know that the AMO detrends the North Atlantic Sea Surface temperatures as it measures the oscillation about the rising trend in Global sea surface temperatures.
Dennis,
AMO is going down according to all three indices.
This graph is up to 2015 and includes 3 AMO indices compared to North Atlantic hurricane ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy):
Blue= North Atlantic ACE
Red= NOAA’s AMO
Yellow= Van Oldenborgh (2009) AMO
Purple= Klotzbach/Gray (2008) AMO
You can find and explanation for the graph here:
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/a-quiet-start-to-the-eastern-pacific-hurricane-and-northwest-pacific-t
The North Atlantic has been cooling, surface and 0-700 m. I haven’t checked 700-2000 m. With the North Atlantic cooling, Western Europe is unlikely to warm much, and US is unlikely to get a lot of strong hurricanes. Arctic sea ice will show increased resilience. The North Atlantic current is the one bringing warm waters to the Arctic. As it is cooler it will provide less heat.
Hi Javier,
The AMO is not the same as North Atlantic Sea Surface temperature.
The AMO detrends the North Atlantic Sea Surface temperature. So the trend has to be added back to look at sea surface temperature.
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_multidecadal_oscillation
The AMO signal is usually defined from the patterns of SST variability in the North Atlantic once any linear trend has been removed. This detrending is intended to remove the influence of greenhouse gas-induced global warming from the analysis. However, if the global warming signal is significantly non-linear in time (i.e. not just a smooth linear increase), variations in the forced signal will leak into the AMO definition. Consequently, correlations with the AMO index may mask effects of global warming.[4]
and
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/timeseries/AMO/
For those who require unaltered data, the following is an “not detrended” version of the N. Atlantic monthly averages with the 1951-1980 NOAA ERSST climatology added back in.
N. Atlantic SST averages, unsmoothed & not detrended (1856 to present) and the climatolgy used (from the NOAA ERSST V2 SST, interpolated to a 5×5 grid).
Dennis,
We already talked about this. You should try to remember. The AMO signal does not require to be detrended. Some authors and institutions detrend it and other authors don’t. The Wikipedia is wrong on that.
“The AMO is identified as a coherent pattern of variability in basin-wide North Atlantic SSTs with a period of about 60–80 years [Schlesinger and Ramankutty, 1994].
Indices of the AMO have traditionally been based on the average SST anomaly for the North Atlantic north of the equator [Enfield et al., 2001] (Figure 1), where the SST (from HADISST [Rayner et al., 2003]) northern limit was kept at 60°N to avoid problems with sea ice changes. We use a 70-year (1901–70) base period as it covers roughly one full cycle of the AMO. The AMO is given by smoothing from a 10-year running mean [Goldenberg et al., 2001; Enfield et al., 2001] or similar low-pass filter (Figure 1). In most cases the variability has been highlighted by detrending the data [Enfield et al., 2001; McCabe et al., 2004; Sutton and Hodson, 2005; Knight et al., 2005], and a linear trend is provided in Figure 1 for reference.”
Trenberth, K. E., and D. J. Shea (2006), Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L12704, doi:10.1029/2006GL026894.
AMO was defined without detrending and is detrended for convenience. However for many comparisons the non-detrended data has to be used.
AMO is North Atlantic sea surface temperature by definition. Basin wide and from equator to 60°N, although some authors and institutions restrict the area because they defend it gives a better signal.
Figure from Trenbeth paper non-detrended and updated to 2011 here:
https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/overview-climate-indices
Notice how both are AMO, one detrended and the other not.
Hi Javier,
Generally when one refers to AMO in current climate science it is the detrended version, and Wikipedia is not wrong. That is the current science, things have changed since 1994.
Today AMO means the trend has been removed, the “not detrended” North Atlantic SST is simply the North Atlantic SST.
If you are correct that there are two different AMOs, de trended and not detrended, then one needs to be clear which one they are using. Most of the “AMO” data you have presented (except the not de-trended Trenbeth chart) has been de-trended and is not the same as North Atlantic SST.
Javier,
The Chart from you 1/11/17, 6:55 AM comment is clearly the detrended AMO,
So the possibility of two different kinds of AMO ( not detrended and leaving in the rising trend due to global warming since 1850) which is relatively uncommon in the literature or AMO (detrended) which is standard practice by climate scientists in 2017.
Most people would simply refer to an AMO that is not detrended as the North Atlantic sea surface temperature anomaly (NASST).
This would eliminate any confusion with the AMO, which Wikipedia is correct in saying is detrended.
If you are going to continue to call two different things AMO, then at least be clear which is which or you simply waste everyone’s time.
So say AMO detrended or AMO not detrended so we compare apples to apples.
Dennis,
Detrending the data is simply a way of highlighting the variability around the mean at the expense of the trend.
As any data representation procedure (like different ways of projecting a 2D world map), it has advantages and disadvantages. Scientists use one or the other depending on their needs. Both ways are clearly accepted in the scientific literature as both represent the same phenomenon in different ways.
There is no confusion as it is very clear if the presented AMO has trend or not. To compare AMO with Arctic sea ice you need it to have its proper trend. You cannot compare something that has been detrended with something that hasn’t and pretend a meaningful result.
Renewables investment in UK will fall 95% over next three years – study
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/04/renewables-investment-uk-fall-95-percent-three-years-study-subsidy-cuts-emissions-targets
Analysis reveals extent of decline because of subsidy cuts and raises concerns about Britain meeting emissions targets
“Investment in windfarms will fall off a “cliff edge” over the next three years and put the UK’s greenhouse gas reduction targets at risk, a thinktank has found.
More than £1bn of future investment in renewable energy projects disappeared over the course of 2016, the Green Alliance found when it analysed the government’s latest pipeline of major infrastructure plans.
Investment in wind, solar, biomass power and waste-to-energy projects will decline by 95% between 2017 and 2020, it added.
While a slowdown in green energy investment had been expected after ministers cut several subsidy schemes over the last 18 months, the figures lay bare the dramatic extent of the decline.
“This cliff edge needs to be avoided if the UK is to meet its world leading carbon budgets and Paris agreement pledge,” Green Alliance said in its analysis.”
This study supports the notion that renewable energy projects are very dependent on subsidies.
This is interesting. The UK faces a particular dilemma. UK coal resources are all but, exhausted, having powered the country through the industrial revolution, two wars and the better part of the 20th century. The UK is after all an island so it’s mineral resources are obviously finite. North Sea oil gave the UK economy a new lease of life starting during the Thatcher years and probably was more contributory to the improved economic performance than any government policies. UK oil and natural gas production peaked in 1999 and by 2005 they had become a net importer of NG. By 2007 they also became a net importer of petroleum.
I guess this partly explains the UK governments commitment to fund the expansion of the Hinkley Point Nuclear facility, despite it being the most expensive electricity the UK consumer will probably ever know. Having bought into the narrative that renewable energy could never power the UK, despite the excellent wind resources, they have no other options. Add the fact that they will also need to transition away from the use of FF for the transport sector and industrial, commercial, institutional and residential heating and the dilemma grows even larger.
It would appear to me that continuing to subsidize renewable energy would be a wise investment in a sustainable future even remotely resembling what obtains now on the basis of declining FF resources alone. Investing in the exploitation of more FF resources seems to be pointless even if one were to ignore emissions targets altogether. Without a miracle, the UK is fucked!
>> Without a miracle, the UK is fucked! <<
No man, nothing is fucked here ~ The Dude (see Big Lebowski)
We have so much wind here in the UK it's not true. Scotland was 59% renewables in 2015. See graphic:
Sorry, I was just responding to the contents of the article posted by Javier. From what I gather, the Tories have not exactly embraced a push to renewables, instead taking actions that are resulting in a situation where,
Which is what lead me to state, “Having bought into the narrative that renewable energy could never power the UK, despite the excellent wind resources, they have no other options.” It is because the powers that be appear to want to “leave it up the market to sort it out” rather than continue to provide incentives for renewables, IMO the UK is toast. If you have all the wind resources in the world and no turbines to harvest the energy, the wind resources won’t do you any good. If you wait for the market to provide the price signals to sort it out, you will be caught out in the open with your pants down!
IMO it would better to make some sacrifice now, in preparation for what we know is going to happen anyway and have an easier go of it in the future, than to wait it out and have to make a mad scramble when things start getting tough. Y2K ended up being a non event exactly because people were forewarned and proactive, taking the steps necessary to avert disaster. That type of approach does not seem to sit well with the people running the show these days.
Do you know of any plans to substantially increase wind generation in the UK, so as to be able to carry a much greater portion of the load? More solar PV could contribute significantly more during summer but, that doesn’t seem to be part of the plan either!
islandboy, I enjoy your posts and viewpoint. My naive hope is that renewables, being cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear, will replace said FFs and nukes here in the UK.
However, I hope I do not underestimate the power (momentum) of the status quo, and their resistance to change.
IIRC, offshore wind is increasingly economically viable (even as the Tory govt opposes onshore wind). Tesla Powerpacks are being installed for utility level storage.
Renewables in the UK increased from 21.0% to 22.3% of UK electricity last year. (Ahead of USA’s 16.9%, behind Germany’s 35.5%).
So, no man, nothing is fucked here. New shit has come to light 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbJ-4vuffhI
Sounds like an opportunity for the Chinese.
A golden future for UK-China trade and investment | UKTI blog: “Only this March, China’s State Development Investment Corporation announced they will invest £185m in offshore wind assets in Scottish waters. Scotland is a global pioneer in the field of renewable energy and we expect further Chinese investment in UK renewable energy reaching £240-£300m/year over the next five years.”
Here’s what that Guardian mentioned that Javier didn’t quote.
“’The picture of private sector investment is very clear: it is rapidly moving away from high carbon infrastructure. In contrast, public sector high carbon investment is rising, although slowly,’ the authors wrote.”
China set to invest over £100 billion in UK infrastructure by 2025, says Pinsent Masons: “The report finds that of the £105 billion, the leading recipients will be the energy, real estate and transport sectors. The UK energy sector will be the biggest target for Chinese capital, with investment in projects including nuclear energy, wind power generation and photovoltaic power generation could be set to reach £43.5 billion by 2025.”
They threw it all away on a nuclear bet that will end up costing them far more than they ever expected – if it is ever completed.
NAOM
The UK surely does have the wind………. but WILL it be developed BEFORE it’s too late to save the UK’s economy from recession or depression or maybe even outright collapse, in the face of vicious competition in the seller’s market place for the finished goods and services the UK exports?
Importing raw materials and exporting finished goods , or services, is a tough way to make a living any time, considering the ever increasing competition, and it’s going to be a LOT tougher when the price of fossil fuels go way up, and other countries that HAVE developed their renewable potentials don’t have to pay for more than a minor fraction of the imported energy the UK will have to buy on the open market………………
It takes a long time to build a big wind farm and transmission lines and so forth.
Now about than nuke… It may never be completed, sure enough.
And I don’t go out of my way to defend nuclear power, but in a forum such as this one, nuclear power gets virtually all the badmouth and none of the credit due to it.
There’s more than just ONE way to paint a partisan picture of any subject, including clean energy.
Nearly all of us including yours truly endlessly pound the renewables drum, and talk endlessly about the externalized costs of fossil fuels and nukes.
What we generally do NOT do is own up to the indisputable, incontestable fact that for now and for quite some time to come, we WILL be using quite a lot of fossil fuel juice, and a lot of nuclear juice, because we HAVE NO CHOICE, other than to do without.
Now the less of something you have, the more valuable it becomes,in most cases. Electricity is like that. It takes only a little to keep your food fresh and your lights on. When you have lots of it, it’s easy to go off for the day or a week without turning down the heat and turning off the lights.
MY guess, for what it’s worth, is that one day the people of the UK will be VERY glad indeed that they have that nuclear juice…….. if the plant is finally on line.
Wars happen. Natural disasters happen. Oddball weather happens, at unpredictable intervals.
I’m not saying it WILL happen SOON, or very often, but there WILL most likely be times when the wind DOES NOT blow hard enough, over a wide enough area, during the dead of winter, to meet the critical needs of the UK, with whatever number of wind farms the country manages to build.
It’s fine to talk about overbuilding double or triple to cover such contingencies, but speaking as a life long observer of people and politics………..
The people of the UK will be LUCKY if they get enough wind infrastructure built within the next twenty or thirty years to cover all their needs on days with just FAIR winds.
And from the looks of the investment figures, such as they are, and where the money is coming from, well the Chinese are going to have the last laugh, because they are turning the world upside down , and the English, who used to have colonies and possessions such that the sun never set on their empire, will be remitting a hell of a big fraction of their national income to their Chinese colonial masters.
It’s arguably more profitable to use sharecroppers to grow farm crops, under certain conditions, than it is to use slaves. You don’t have to fly your flag, and have troops on the ground, to OWN a colony these days. All you have to do is have legal title to the essential infrastructure of the colony, and bleed the people there at whatever rate the market will bear……..
In times gone by, such arrangements were put in place, and displaced, by force of arms, as often as not.
History doesn’t repeat, but it DOES rhyme, as some wag once said.
We westerners are going to be in one hell of a fix, when the day comes (IF the time comes ) when we must go hat in hand to the Chinese, and ask them to supply us with the steel and skilled workers we need to build some warships and air craft so we can kick them out of our countries.
There’s a bigger goddamned box to be considered in evaluating globalization than the economists that teach the courses want to talk about.
Neither the Germans nor the Russians have forgotten the Siege of Stalingrad,which has one hell of a lot to do with Germany pushing so hard to break the IMPORTED fossil fuel habit, although it’s seldom mentioned.
You can bet your last can of beans that the Chinese have not forgotten the opium wars.
A rather interesting article on global sea ice extent published January 5
“Sea ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic set record low extents every day in December, continuing the pattern that began in November. Warm atmospheric conditions persisted over the Arctic Ocean, notably in the far northern Atlantic and the northern Bering Sea. Air temperatures near the Antarctic sea ice edge were near average. For the year 2016, sea ice extent in both polar regions was at levels well below what is typical of the past several decades.”
“The gap between the 1981 to 2010 average and the 2016 combined ice extent for December now stands at about 3.0 million square kilometers (1.16 million square miles), down from a peak difference of just over 4 million square kilometers (1.50 million square miles) in mid-November.”
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/01/low-sea-ice-extent-continues-in-both-poles/
These sorts of analyses over the claimed extent of remaining sea ice always get me interested, particularly in what these public sector career scientists leave unsaid. That is, the global climate-not to mention the ice nearest to the poles-has been going through constant change all throughout history. This change has taken place ever since the creation of our planet and will continue long after man’s reign over the planet comes to an end. Something further to ponder related to this, without natural global warming in the ancient past, most of the Northern Hemisphere-encompassing many of our current homes and neighborhoods-would still be covered in glaciers miles tall. Places as far south as Missouri would’ve felt the impacts. Only in the past 10,000 years have these glaciers finally molten, leaving behind such treasures as the Great Lakes, the Finger Lakes, and thousands of other bodies of water which allowed Europeans to come to this continent to build a bountiful civilization where none could thrive before.
In conclusion, my best advice to the average citizen who sees climate change as a concern is to stop needless worrying. Being that I work in close contact with a major public research university, I have a deep understanding of how a fundamental part of being a career scientist these days is securing funding for future experimentation and research. Naturally, competition and wrangling among fellow career scientists is the most important factor in determining where the dollars get doled out. Furthermore, as in any business dealing of this kind, scientists must have a “sizzle” to their work in order to secure the money-here is where the scientists’ supposed sense of climate urgency comes in, not to mention alarmism, appeals to emotion, complicity with the mainstream media, etc. Again, the best course of action is to remain calm and rationally look at the issue. When these virtues prevail, climate change simply becomes a nonentity on the scale of matters that are truly important in world affairs.
Yep, natural variation fer sure… right up until that CO2 started going up for some reason.
Hi WeHappyfew,
Edit: The chart from Kinnard et al 2011 is for late summer (Sept Northern hemisphere sea ice), so for Sept 2016 the Northern hemisphere sea ice extent was 4.72 million square kilometers. So I should have found the article first.
We should probably use annual averages for such a chart. For the most recent 12 months ending in Nov 2015 the 12 month average was 10.1 million kilometers squared. So you may be overstating your case and this is as credible as cherry picking by others (nope I am wrong see above.)
Chart below has 12 month average from Dec through Nov (so most of 2016 could be included) from 1989-2016 (in 1987 and 1988 there was missing data so I start in Dec 1988 and end in Nov 2016).
I agree that running 12 month averages are a great way to depict the state of the ice. It includes all the data rather than cherrypicking one month out of 12 or one day out of 365.
I think the minimum is one of the LEAST useful measures for the state of the ice, but to be consistent with Kinnard, as you said, I plotted the 2012 minimum of 3.6 Mkm^2 for the “you are here” point. The variation since that most recent record minimum is not visible at this scale.
Much more important to the health of the ice, and the implications for climate, is the amount of ice during the late spring and during summer, when 24 hour sun makes the poles the place that receives more solar insolation than anywhere else on the planet. Reflective ice and snow keeps the planet cool, and allows the ice to survive to the next year. Multi-year ice is much more reflective and durable than first-year ice.
Unfortunately, the multi-year ice is almost gone… we have about 5% left of the 5+ year old ice compared to the 1980’s.
With record high temps continuing in both the Arctic and Antarctic (see plot below), I see a high probability of new record lows, especially in the late spring and summer, as there is a lot of very thin ice that never experienced the deep cold needed to thicken up… it will melt very fast as temps rise in the spring (for the Arctic spring coming up… the Antarctic is already at record lows for summer right now).
That means a lot of solar energy absorbed by dark blue ocean instead of reflected back to space.
Hi Wehappyfew,
One problem with putting a single year minimum on that kinnard et al 2011 chart is that the chart has 40 year averages, so your minimum should probably be the 1979 to 2016 September average (6.3 million sq km) to be consistent with that chart in my opinion.
I agree the melting will continue, though it is far from clear what the future rate will be. At some point carbon emissions will be reduced and atmospheric CO2 will stabilize and very gradually decrease (see Archer 2005). Sea surface temperatures will continue to gradually rise but the rate of increase will slow over time as the flow of heat to the deeper ocean eventually matches the heat absorbed by the ocean surface (probably after about 250 years). At that point further SST increases at the global level will be small. In the future there may be an ice free Arctic Ocean from August to Oct, but it will refreeze to some level each winter.
A lot will depend on total carbon emissions and how quickly we reduce all greenhouse gas emissions from all sources.
This is very difficult to predict.
So what if it doesn’t? What if there is no melting for the next 10-20 years?
And what if there is? You really think “your side” is right don’t you? Or do you just give that impression to try and convince anyone that might stumble upon this web site that, “the science is not settled” and keep the Koch brothers happy in so doing? You are a real piece of work!
“And what if there is? You really think “your side” is right don’t you?”
I am a scientist. If the evidence demonstrates that I am wrong, I have to change my view. I do it all the time. I don’t care if CO2 is responsible for all the warming. I just don’t think it is because I don’t see the evidence for that.
If AMO turns negative, yet Arctic sea ice continues following its melting trend, then the AMO hypothesis is wrong. There is no way around it. But right now I am convinced I am right because the AMO hypothesis is supported by hundreds of years of data, not just 30, and the behavior of Arctic sea ice since 2007 is what could be predicted by the AMO hypothesis, not the CO2 hypothesis.
Since 2007 we have had a great increase in atmospheric CO2 levels, and the two warmest years on surface record back to back, 2015 and 2016, and yet September Arctic sea ice has kept its upward trend. Lots of alarmist predictions have failed. The CO2 hypothesis has no explanation for it, the AMO hypothesis does.
Hi Javier,
We don’t really have good sea ice extent data for the entire Northern hemisphere for hundreds of years.
Dennis,
You didn’t say what happens if there is no Arctic sea ice melting for the next 10-20 years.
Hi Javier,
I am more concerned with temperature, there is a possibility there might be a slowdown in warming followed by an increased rate of warming.
I agree the AMO has an influence on temperature, the relationship with sea ice from 1979-2015 is not very strong.
Temperature is related pretty strongly with Northern hemisphere sea ice.
“I work in close contact with a major public research university”
Contract cleaner?
NAOM
It’s likely that Javier comments here under multiple pseudonyms.
What a bunch of trolls you guys are. Nobody can post a point of view different to yours without being immediately personally attacked by the pack.
Yet Tom J. is completely correct. 7000 years ago the ice limit was 1000 km North of its current position in Greenland, and the Arctic enjoyed regularly sea-ice free summers. Alarmists enjoy comparing current conditions with the Little Ice Age and get all worked up. The Little Ice Age sucked big time.
Less Ice In Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 Years Ago
Recent mapping of a number of raised beach ridges on the north coast of Greenland suggests that the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was greatly reduced some 6000-7000 years ago. The Arctic Ocean may have been periodically ice free.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081020095850.htm
“We present a sea-ice record from northern Greenland covering the past 10,000 years. Multiyear sea ice reached a minimum between ~8500 and 6000 years ago, when the limit of year-round sea ice at the coast of Greenland was located ~1000 kilometers to the north of its present position.”
Funder, Svend, et al. “A 10,000-year record of Arctic Ocean sea-ice variability—view from the beach.” Science 333.6043 (2011): 747-750.
By creating a hostile environment to climate skepticism you accomplish nothing. People will not post their thoughts because they don’t like being abused by rude trolls, but they will still hold their doubts. And since catastrophic climate predictions have been such a failure, the dominant hypothesis is doubly discredited by its abusive methods and by its failures.
Hi Javier,
The Dominant hypothesis is an ECS of 3 C and TCR of about 1.8 C.
There are those that think ECS is higher (I will call them pessimists) and those that believe ECS is lower (I will call them optimists).
Most climate scientists are between these extremes.
One mistake that many climate scientists make is the belief that fossil fuels are very abundant which leads to scenarios such as RCP8.5 with 5000 Pg of total anthropogenic carbon emissions, a more realistic scenario is RCP4.5, but even that is similar to my “high” fossil fuel scenario which is likely too optimistic. Probably 1000 to 1200 Pg of total carbon emissions is a more realistic scenario.
If Allen et al 2009 (link below) is correct, and I am also correct that fossil fuels will be limited, then 2 C above the 1850-1900 Global land ocean mean is about as high as we will go if ECS is about 2.7 C (similar to GISS model E2.)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08019.html
Dennis,
Climate science is plagued with wild speculation based on impossible scenarios. While low estimates are vigorously rejected by the establishment, high estimates don’t raise any reaction because they advance the cause. Hardly the environment for good science and we are all going to pay the price.
I am definitely in the camp of those scientists that defend that ECS is below 2.5 and probably closer to 1.5 than 2.0. So you would call me an optimist.
However I should point to you that the actions of the governments of the planet indicate that their level of worry must be similar to mine.
The CO2 hypothesis of global warming started to be the dominant theory in the early 80’s. By the late 80’s everybody (including me) was convinced of it. There was no skepticism in the late 80’s to early 00’s. Yet nothing has been done about it. 30 years later global emissions have continued to depend exclusively on economical factors and had grown unaffected. Rich people still buy beach front properties, whose prices have not sunk below market. Almost nothing is being done in terms of protecting coastal cities from rising seas.
Acts speak louder than words. The governments of the Earth and the elites are not worried by climate change. I suppose they have looked into the evidence with their scientific advisors in a better way than I can. They say one thing but they act the opposite. They sell us big accords like Kyoto and Paris and nothing gets done.
Don’t you recognize this stark contradiction between what they say and what they do? In the face of a clear planetary emergency, like an asteroid coming our way, they would be acting very different.
Hi Javier,
I see the evidence differently. The data from 1850 to 2016 suggests a transient climate response of 1.75 C. AOGCM and Earth System Models that reproduce global temperatures well from 1880 to 2015 generally have an ECS of about 2.5 to 3.5 C and the ensemble mean for CMIP5 was about 3.2 C for ECS.
I am sure you are aware that global land temperature has risen faster than sea surface temperatures (SST) from 1880 to 2015.
Based on the geophysics and geochemistry carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for a long time after carbon emissions cease. I will go with Archer 2005 on this and am not convinced by simple analyses that suggest carbon dioxide levels will fall quickly after emissions are reduced, I believe you will be hard pressed to find peer reviewed literature to the contrary.
Let’s assume atmospheric CO2 stabilizes at 425 ppm. This suggests a radiative forcing of about 2.27 W/m^2 and atmospheric CO2 will remain close to this level for thousands of years. So the ocean will gradually warm due to this excess heat input and approach some equilibrium surface temperature. The transient climate response would increase global temperatures by about 1.1 C in this scenario, but the delayed ocean warming in response to the 2.27 W/m^2 radiative forcing input would increase temperature a further 0.65 C over hundreds of years.
This scenario has assumed very limited carbon emissions (960 Pg C) and has ignored ice and snow albedo feedback and vegetation feedback as well as potential carbon releases from melting permafrost, so even with such limited emissions there is the potential for warming greater than 1.7 C above pre-industrial Holocene average temperatures (which may be close to the 1971-2000 mean). Ice sheet melt and permafrost melt in response to warming need a lot more work to model properly.
Hi Dennis,
As you know the low ECS values are well supported in the scientific literature too. This is an issue that won’t be resolved any time soon. Therefore we should consider that the values of warming that you obtain are just a possibility.
“I am sure you are aware that global land temperature has risen faster than sea surface temperatures (SST) from 1880 to 2015.”
Actually this is not correct. Apparently land and sea surface take turns at leading warming at different times as the figure below shows. This makes sense because otherwise they would diverge intolerably over time.
Your emissions assumptions are probably more correct than most, but your CO2 half life assumptions are very pessimistic. About 80% of the CO2 could decline in as little as 80-160 years, and only the remaining 20% should have a very long life. If we ever get to decrease our emissions we should see what happens with atmospheric levels and get a better idea.
The figure shows rate of warming for land, sea surface and global by MetOffice, and the result of subtracting SST-SAT to highlight the three periods, with the middle one showing faster sea surface warming than land warming.
Says the person who calls a notable explorer “demented”.
If you want to be respected
1) respect others and the blog
2) present your information in a manner worthy of the PhD you claim to be and that would pass science 101
NAOM
notanoilman,
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t care about your respect. But you should behave yourself anyway.
That applies to you as well, presenting distorted data to reach your conclusion is certainly not ‘behaving yourself’ especially from one who claims high qualifications.
NAOM
The data and evidence I present is always from scientific publications or research institutions.
My opinion and conclusions based on the evidence are mine, and I am entitled to them.
You think I am wrong, I am fine with that. You say that I distort the data and you are distorting the truth, because I don’t touch the data.
So just because you disagree with me you resort to ad hominem attacks and telling lies about me. Clearly you feel that you cannot defend your position on scientific grounds alone, as Dennis does. Your insults and lies tell more about you than about me, as usual.
You distort the data by selecting out of it that which supports your claims and ONLY that. You frequently choose out of date data sets to avoid the updates that would spoil your arguments. Yes, you choose well published information, I just wish you would build a case around the complete data rather than prune the data to fit your case. Dennis is doing a good enough job, I will leave him to it. Now, let us see YOU do some proper scientific work instead of playing tricks that would have ended your prospect of ever getting a PhD.
NAOM
Indeed, tricky about the PhD. The current example is pundit Monica Crowley, who has been outed as a serial plagiarist with regards to her dissertation.
http://money.cnn.com/interactive/news/kfile-monica-crowley-dissertation-plagiarism/
The key to getting a PhD is being original. If you have a novel theory, then you have a much better chance of getting through.
People like Crowley and Javier rely on being a motor mouth — quantity instead of quality … yet they are eventually found out for what they are.
The sad thing is that in this Trump-age it’s possible that Crowley will feel no repercussions for her past work. The bar has been lowered, not only for political science but also for real science. Just have to look at all the #FakeScience climate sites such as WUWT and Judith Curry’s blog. Those are the ones that Javier contributes to, before he gains false confidence and starts spewing on this site.
Again back to your fallacious “guilt by association” arguments Webby?
Doesn’t matter that I had no idea who this Crowley is. Your moral standards are worth of former IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri.
Try to get some of your data torture science published instead of criticizing scientists of such stature that you could never aspire to even bring them coffee.
notanoilman,
This is a blog inhabited by several people bringing only one side of the debate and claiming that science is on their side. I am just demonstrating how false is their premise. Lots of science defuses alarmism.
No point in presenting data here that the wold is warming or that CO2 is collaborating in the warming, as we all agree on that.
Your contributions to the climate debate are invariably negative as anybody perusing your comments can quickly attest. Don’t bring any high standard on me when your standard is so low.
Javier can’t describe what he did for his dissertation because it may give his identity away. That’s why he is resigned to lashing out at others.
And Javier probably should know who Monica Crowley is, because she was nominated by Trump as his top National Security Council advisor.
Yup. Lindzen is the denier scientist I have set my sites on.
http://contextearth.com/2016/12/31/lindzen-doth-protest-too-much/
Javier said:
This is a big lie, as what I am doing in some respects has no bearing on either “side” of the AGW debate.
For example, I am researching the foundations of QBO, which exists independent of whether there is an AGW signal or not.
Yet it just so happens that the originator of the (IMO) flawed QBO theory is Richard Lindzen, who happens to be an AGW denier. But what shouldn’t surprise anyone is that someone like Lindzen would get the theory wrong. He simply claimed victory too early and people believed him. And as it is 40 years later, it will take some time to unwind from the narrative he created.
Webby, I don’t give a damn about Trump, and I have no idea who is in his cabinet.
Do you know who is in the cabinet of current Spanish president? Then shut up.
I say:
“This is a blog inhabited by several people bringing only one side of the debate and claiming that science is on their side. “
And you say that this is a big lie because you are not one of them?
Did I say you were one of them? No? Then shut up.
You are just a mediocre academic that doesn’t get his research published and has a personal animosity towards me and several prominent skeptics. You just want to discuss your issues, which frankly nobody else gives a hoot except Dennis.
As you are so skewed in your animosity and attacks you are actually quite comic.
“You are just a mediocre academic that doesn’t get his research published”
As a non-academic presenting at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco last month
http://contextearth.com/2016/11/21/presentation-at-agu-2016-on-december-12/
So Javier, are you stuck with “publishing” on the failed Curry’s blog ?
I don’t pretend to do climate research as you do.
I write blog articles that help people understand complex issues in paleo climatology. Is a way of putting my knowledge to good use. Curry’s blog has a very wide exposure and is frequented by a lot of people with interest in climatology, including real climate researchers with published articles.
Actually a lot more people with interest in science read Curry’s blog than articles published in specialized journals.
“Actually a lot more people with interest in science read Curry’s blog than articles published in specialized journals.”
The wrong kind of people of course. Those that voted for Trump, for example. Who cares about that readership?
Given that, it’s also important to debunk denier scientists such as Curry and Lindzen and their ridiculous theories. That they know little about AGW is borne out by their failed theories is other areas of atmospheric sciences.
The irreversible momentum of clean energy
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/01/06/science.aam6284.full
good post, beat me too it.
associated article…
http://mashable.com/2017/01/09/obama-clean-energy-irreversible/#.XRDezyvlmqc
Hey you two, is that (circular) propaganda/doublespeak?
The irreversible momentum of tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings?
Who’s the author?
President Obama is the author of the Science article
Yes it appears that way.
I’m in the middle of reading Duncan’s comment/quote, which appears to come from, or is at least carried by, Black Agenda Report.
I am familiar with Glenn Ford and Bruce Dixon. They are very angry at times but seem to be a bit more polite to people they meet via the internet. I see that sometimes you get quite angry too, but your jump to tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings sure did come quick.
I realize that it is almost impossible to keep politics out of things, but I referenced to the Science article because alimbiquated posted it and it seemed germane to the general tone of this thread.
It contains stuff like….
United States Mid-Century Strategy
FOR DEEP DECARBONIZATION
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/mid_century_strategy_report-final.pdf
Anyway, hope today is a bit less angry for you.
PS> and that’s Mr. tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemming.
Hi Ezrydermike/Mr. Etc.,
You might have saved us some time, and maybe a little bit of nonsense, if you skipped over most of your comment and more or less just settled on this bit:
Which is pretty much in agreement, yes?
Anyway, ‘clean energy’ isn’t really clean and ‘deep decarbonization’ is less of a ‘strategy’ and more of a response to a natural ultimatum.
The irreversible momentum of mentally deficient, tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings ?
I’m going to assume that you probably consider yourself to be one of the anointed few, who are superior to rest of us, poor, mentally deficient, tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings and that you think you are immune to any and all ideological memes. Am I right?
Perhaps you are under the influence of your own biases.
Maybe watch this short talk by Julia Galef: Why you think you’re right — even if you’re wrong
https://www.ted.com/talks/julia_galef_why_you_think_you_re_right_even_if_you_re_wrong
Maybe some of the people here who post articles like the one above are not really just some tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings. Maybe they are the ones who are able to see things more clearly…
Cheers!
Edit: Recommended reading: ‘Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus’
By Douglas Rushkof
‘Jobs’ in the traditional sense are a thing of the past, we are going to need a new social operating system. So neither Obama or Trump get it. ‘Human Resources’ is a dirty word in my view, your mileage may vary…
You ‘added’ ‘mentally deficient’, in your italics, Fred, and then ran with it.
This, at minimum, appears both as a straw man fallacy, and to mislead by the use of italics, as though it’s a quote, and the ‘insertion’ of the term-in-question.
Perhaps you think poorly– and as such– of your readership, thus, perhaps, even of yourself, since that particular style is corrupt.
It also undermines the rest of your comment (and your future comments), which, as a result, it won’t, nor should it, be bothered with.
Makes me think of the recent fake news issue…
See also
Why don’t you go think about it some more?
I guess you don’t associate mentally deficient, with tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings, do you?
I guess you also don’t consider such a statement somewhat condescending and insulting either…
Let me put it another way, when you state that a group of people are mindfucked are you implying that you yourself are not? If so what is it about you, that makes you impervious to one form or another of mindfucking? Are you somehow mentally superior to the mind fucked lemmings you speak of? And if that is the case then why wouldn’t you give others the benefit of the doubt with respect their mental integrity and resilience.
Cheers!
I guess not ay?
Apparently you do, since you wrote it.
And you can argue about it and similar at length, over a few Malbecs, with whoever has the time to blow.
My point is that it is a pretty good bet, that someone who characterizes anybody else as a tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemming, is basically a presumptuous arrogant jerk who doesn’t seem much interested in any civil exchange of ideas. And you were the one who wrote that!
+1
You conveniently removed its pluralization and question mark at its end, which of course removes its generalization and inconclusivity and which, along with your snarl words and the aforementioned, really seems to gut your apparent notions of ‘civil discourse’.
It would be especially laughable if it weren’t so ridiculous and a waste of one’s time, (if maybe suggestive of your possible understanding of communications propaganda/’fake news’).
But for charity’s sake, here’s my quote again, in all its glory, for your special needs:
You conveniently removed its pluralization and question mark at its end, which of course removes its generalization and inconclusivity…
Oh, my bad! You are sooo right! That changes everything…
The irreversible momentum of tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemmings?
Oh yeah, with the plural and question mark added back in, it has all the hallmarks of a completely innocuous statement which no one could possibly ever misconstrue as anything other than a genuine attempt at civility.
A polished, gilded turd, is till a turd!
“…that’s Mr. tax-coerced, ideologically-mindfucked lemming.” ~ Ezrydermike
^^ Now that’s singular.
(With special thanks to Ezrydermike.
Just a friendly reminder to remember the ‘Mr.’ attribute, too, Fred, while you’re playing in/with your own turds, bored as you seem.)
Why are conservatives such hypocrites?
“As they know they will only be defeated – their only joy or reward comes from trolling their liberal opponents.”
http://indianmavericks.blogspot.ca/2017/01/why-are-conservatives-such-hypocrites.html?m=1
Hi Duncan,
You’re probably going to hear from my old friend HB about what a dirty rotten TRUMPSTER you are , for posting your nine seventeen comment. 😉
Please post a link to it, as well.
I don’t know how long it’s going to be before the shit hits the fan, hard and fast, but whoever wrote your quote is an exceptionally perceptive individual.
I will take this opportunity to repeat my argument that working class people who ordinarily would have voted D voted R in large enough numbers to put Trump over the top, in the states that put him there, not because they really wanted Trump but rather to send a ” Fuck you!” message, in desperation, loud and clear, to Clinton and the D party Prada and English suit establishment.
I will remain a non partisan , in principle, as a blogger and writer, so as to be able to point out bullshit where I encounter it, without having to observe tribal taboos that involve defending bullshit.It’s knee dip on the D side, and hip deep on the R side, lol.
But as a practical matter, as an individual at the local level, I will be doing what I can, as time permits, towards helping the D party get it’s shit together in terms of winning the votes of people who DON’T wear Prada and English suits.
And I’m doing everything I can to get my own economic hatches battened down nice and tight, but I am also assuming that the federal old age safety net, or welfare state, if you prefer the term, will likely last as long as I do.
If anybody who reads this forum is interested in perhaps living and working , part time, on a small diversified farm, operated by yours truly, a university trained pro who gets it in respect to the environment, I would like to get in touch with them.
Ownership, with owner financing, is a real possibility, medium to long term. Decent housing ( heat pump, adequate space, free cut your own firewood, acre plus deer proof fenced garden spot with irrigation included, secluded beautiful spot , lots of wildlife, etc, etc) will be available a very moderate cost, in the six hundred bucks range including all utilities. Five minutes from a National Park, in the heart of bluegrass country, etc.
Wages would have to be very modest, but the time spent working could also be rather modest, as little as ten to fifteen hours per week, or no work at all, if we don’t get along, and you can still stick around a year or two , month to month, same money for the housing. The free OJT would be worth quite a bit, potentially hundreds of thousands, if put to long term use. If I say so myself, I am a world class jack of all trades, having spent the last fifty years doing this , that, and the other, as it suited me.
Once you have a solid background in ONE trade, the second one comes faster and easier……… the fourth or fifth one takes hardly any time at all to get the basics down pat.
————
…Trapped as we are…
Trapped we may be, but we are still free, until we quit the fight and surrender.
I don’t personally have any problem wearing two hats, maybe because I’m a little more of an outlier than the average nekkid ape, or maybe because I have trained my self to be able to do it.
You can lead footsoldiers , of any sort, Republicans, Democrats, church members, union members, real soldiers,etc around and lead them where YOU want them to go by preaching the party line of whichever party or special interest you represent, and treat them like children or cattle, manipulating their emotions and thinking by cherry picking the data you allow them to hear, etc etc.
I won’t have any trouble convincing a foot soldier voter to vote D, on the basis of his personal welfare, if he is in need of socialized medicine, because not only do I want the D’s to win, I want this country to have decent affordable health care. BUT I won’t be mentioning any of the arguments AGAINST socialized medicine.
And when I talk to a foot soldier R type guy, I won’t argue against his free market inclinations, which predispose him to vote against the D’s he sees, with some justification, as opposed to allowing him to run his business without overdoing the taxes and regulations. What I will do is punch his hot buttons involving his having to pay a price for pollution dumped in his water supply by folks upstream, forcing HIS town to pay for a bigger, better, more sophisticated water treatment plant, or killing the fish in the river where his Dad used to take him as a kid, etc.
This won’t convert him to an environmental single issue voter, and voting D, but it WILL start him along the road towards voting as as independent, some of the time, and every little bit helps.
On the other hand, as the author of a book ( as yet unpublished) I am planning on writing not for the consumption of foot soldiers, but rather for the LEADERS of foot soldiers. Leaders need to know the real score. They need to see and comprehend the big picture. Otherwise they are prone to making awful blunders.
Any body smart enough to be a real and EFFECTIVE leader has to understand that there there really are two sides to almost every question. If you don’t KNOW the other fellow, you can’t really hope to win him over to your side, or to defeat him in a contest, whether it’s a ball game, or an election.
I will give two examples. If Hitler had been willing to listen to his professional soldiers in the field, and done as they urged him to do, and truly and sincerely worked to help the people of Russia kick out Stalin and his commies, the odds are high the invasion of Russia would have succeeded. There are numerous professional soldiers and some military historians who say so.
But he didn’t know the Russian people, and apparently didn’t even understand that they were not even the enemy. He proceeded to MAKE enemies of them.
The D’s lost the last election because the leaders in charge didn’t understand that the voters in those last big three Rust Belt states were SUPER PISSED about being taken for granted. If Clinton had made half a dozen campaign stops up that way, and speeches to the effect that she really did give a xxxx about those voters, she would be prez elect.It WAS that close.
If these two blunders aren’t game changers , I don’t know what a game changer IS.
“The D’s lost the last election because the leaders in charge didn’t understand that the voters in those last big three Rust Belt states were SUPER PISSED about being taken for granted. If Clinton had made half a dozen campaign stops up that way, and speeches to the effect that she really did give a xxxx about those voters, she would be prez elect.It WAS that close.
If these two blunders aren’t game changers , I don’t know what a game changer IS.”
“Oldfarmermac says:
01/04/2017 AT 9:52 AM
Hi GF,
I’m ready to move on, in this respect , in this forum, in terms of my campaign to get people to at least THINK about who they vote for in future D party primaries,”
*********************
“Mr.Server aka KGB Boris Email” so what is it ? Are you going to shut your pie hole or continue your Russian support ?
Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-report-russia/
Testifying before the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday, James Comey said he could not comment in public on a possible investigation into allegations of links between Russia and the Trump campaign.
“I would never comment on investigations – whether we have one or not – in an open forum like this, so I really can’t answer one way or another,” said Comey, at a hearing into the US intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia intervened in the election to benefit Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/james-comey-trump-russia-links-investigation-senate
Do the math Conservative Country Boy, your constantly saying your so smart.
Please don’t respond, just stay true to your word and cut the civics lesson. You wore that horse out a long time ago.
It’s time for “Mr. Boris EmailServer aka KGB” out
Changed my mind, R2D2, 😉
Now as far as Trump goes, I have always said he would was and would be worse than Clinton, and so far he appears to be proving me right in that assessment.
I said right along that I thought Clinton, as bad as she was, objectively speaking as a political COACH, would win, except here and there when I got worried that Trump WOULD win,
I am VERY HAPPY when somebody, anybody at all, still responds to one of my comments along the lines of WHY CLINTON lost, as if he has absolutely no conception of day to day political realities, because he is obviously as blind as a bat, so to speak, when it comes to stepping back from his partisan loyalty to Clinton as the candidate, and taking a SOBER look at WHY she should NEVER have been the candidate at all.
Clinton fans are like a parent who pays for the uniforms, and the football, and then insists that HIS kid gets to be the starting quarterback even though he can’t run, can’t throw, and can’t read the strategy of the opposing team.
I don’t know that you were or remain a big Clinton fan, but admitting you were wrong isn’t easy, in any case, because that involves a loss of face.
Now a few days back I challenged another regular to answer this question. Does he believe that if Clinton had gone to the Rust Belt, as the candidate, and had made some serious efforts up that way,instead of IGNORING those voters, she would have WON, considering that she lost those three states combined by the proverbial hair? The total margin was only around a hundred thousand votes in those three states out of about five million cast, iirc.
He dodged the question. He replied, but he DID NOT ANSWER IT. He talked about not what Clinton did or did not do, but other things.
WILL YOU?
MY goal is to do all I can, at this level, to force hard core D types to face up to the reality that Clinton was simply a piss poor choice as candidate, given the mood of the country, and her baggage train.
It DOES NOT MATTER even a tinker’s damn, if the baggage is real, or the figment of old country boy conservative imaginations. The FACT is that virtually EVERY major poll indicated that a HUGE portion of the voting public did not TRUST Clinton, and did not LIKE Clinton, even before the primary season got underway.
In retrospect, TONS of big D democrats have already faced up to the obvious truth, that she and her team ran a LOUSY campaign, even going so far as to not only badmouth the simple but NUMEROUS working class people she needed, her team bad mouthed the most progressive, idealistic, best educated and numerous young voters in the country- Sanders fans.
But the Sanders camp is alive and well, and hopefully the future of the party.Clinton won’t amount to much more than an old war horse brought out for parades and rallies from here on out.
You just don’t run a candidate dragging a cannonball chained to her leg if you have GOOD SENSE. You run somebody else, and you take the opposition seriously, and run on the REAL issues, rather than identity politics, and globalization, at a time when the fucking REAL core of the party is BLEEDING and REELING , economically speaking.
NOW you tell me , MR Smarter Than An Old Farmer , just how damned HOT you would have been if a republican candidate had been the Sec of State, and had that secret email server, and dealt with the investigation thereof the same way, destroying and hiding the evidence, lying bald faced about the PURPOSE of the system, etc, taking MILLIONS of dollars in CHECKS for making trivial speeches, while pretending to be “tough on Wall Street”, etc, etc, etc.
I sort of THINK that you would maintain that the public has a right to know about that sort of monkey biz, so long as it’s the opposition caught out.
Incidentally Bill Clinton himself said that by the time the last of the email news broke, the public had already made up it’s mind about that issue, and that it didn’t really matter. That opinion, coming from probably the sharpest politician alive in America, is worth noting, and was borne out by the fact that Clinton won the popular vote, etc, where she was truly EXPECTED to win,and nationally as well.
But STATISTICS are for losers, as they say in sports. She lost where it REALLY counted, because she blew it.
And don’t forget, TRUMP WAS EVEN WORSE, hated by even more people than hated Clinton, but he really ran as an OUTSIDER.
It is an incontestable fact that the R party establishment hated his guts, although it is now licking his hand like the dog it is. HE HIJACKED the R party, whereas Clinton gradually over time built up her old time insider machine until she basically OWNED the D party machinery. She ran as the BAU candidate, when the country was DESPERATE for CHANGE. BIG mistake, in retrospect.
Maybe you will never get it, but remind me, and I will do what I can to make sure that people willing to STEP BACK and look at it from a reasonable distance understand why Clinton lost, when a better candidate would have won easily.
For Sky Daddy’s sake , she managed to do the near impossible, which was to lose to a candidate hated by the establishment of his own HIJACKED party, with lots of party elders badmouthing HIM in no uncertain terms, a candidate that had as bad or WORSE numbers when it came to public trust, etc.
Wake up, it’s time to quit feeling sorry for yourself, and inventing reasons why she lost. She managed it all by herself, with the help of insider yes guys and gals who failed to tell her the TRUTH about what was happening, either because they were too imperceptive to GET IT, or because they were hoping to still be part of the inner circle after the election, instead of PURGED, hoping she would win anyway.
I have often pointed out that there really isn’t anything much in the way of conflict of REAL and INFORMED conservatism, as opposed to PARTISANSHIP that calls itself conservative, when you once get down to the really important issues.
NOTHING could possibly be more conservative for instance, in terms of the TRUE meaning of the word, than taking a proactive stance on protecting the environment.
The Russians have always had a long subcurrent of hatred thrown against them by the Western Europeans. Russian heritage is Euro-Asian. There is a long history of Nordic blood mixing with Slavic blood and following the Mongol invasions with Mongolian and Turkic blood from Central Asia.
Russian features tend to be more ‘asianish’ than Teutonic stock or Anglo Saxon stock. The Russians have faced multiple European invasions for their territory. Going by the Russian press, they’ve had enough of trying to be European and are instead developing their own unique cultural style based on their unique Eurasian heritage.
On ocean temperature measurements
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/09/nasa_measuring_ocean_temperature/
NAOM
Damn it, I just can’t resist this one.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/09/hillary-clinton-helped-pave-way-for-jared-kushner-in-the-white-house.html
Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it, and “it” has a way of morphing up into something unrecognizable, or diametrically opposed to your original wish, as often as not.
I daresay not a single person who was all so hot for Hillary operating as a federal policy maker, in trying take personal control of health care policy, back then, will remember to mention WHY Trump will most likely get away with putting family members in positions of great power and influence.
As a matter of fact, I expect most of them won’t even REMEMBER this precedent, because we remember a lot like we BELIEVE.
We believe what we please, and we remember what we please, as a general rule. Right, left, middle of the road, even abominable snowmen, if they exist, we are ALL of us subject to this failing. A very few of us make a conscious effort to back away from our own cultural and political home turf, and get a clear look at the big picture, even going so far as trying really hard to see things from the point of view of their bitterest enemies.
Backing off this way, so as to get a big picture look, is a skill that can be learned, and cultivated. A good way to learn it is to read some great psychological novels. Huck Finn and Puddn’head Wilson, by Twain, together constitute a superb two part combination, probably the best EVER written, in terms of allowing a person to get into the minds of people at the opposite end of the material, cultural, and economic yardstick.
https://phys.org/news/2017-01-short-lived-greenhouse-gases-centuries-sea-level.html
a href=”https://www.pv-magazine.com/2017/01/10/china-continues-dominance-of-global-renewable-energy/”>China continues dominance of global renewable energy
Google Unveils a 3-Decade Time-Lapse of the Earth
https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/
If HB is only on vacation or something, it’s ok, he will be back soon, and needle me, and keep me energized,and consequently I will post more links like this one.
If he has decided he’s been whipping a dead horse, maybe somebody else will come forward to play devil’s advocate. I WAS enjoying the game. 😉
Anybody who really wants to know in DEPTH, to understand with nuance, why Clinton lost the election, will do WELL to read this link carefully.
You can’t really EXPECT to do better your next term at bat, unless you understand WHY you struck out your last turn.
https://medium.com/mtracey/actually-yes-lets-keep-litigating-the-democratic-primary-edbbedd6c62f#.vh5raj5cy
Average fuel economy of new light-duty vehicle sold in US dropped in December 2016; down for full year
“The value for December 2016 is up 4.8 mpg since October 2007 (the first month of their monitoring), but down 0.6 mpg from the peak of 25.5 mpg reached in August of 2014.”
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2017/01/20170110-umtri.html
“Has that thing got a HEMI in it?”
I prefer to think this is a “darkest before the dawn” situation, as EVs and PHEVs sales are, on a year-to-year basis, exploding. The variety of vehicle types continues to expand. Luxury performance sedans (Tesla and BMW). Everyman hatchback PHEV’s (Chevy Volt). Super-green hybrid (Prius Prime). Small CUV EV (Chevy Bolt EV). The classic mini-van (Chrysler Pacifica PHEV). Motorcycles (Zero’s)
The days of calling EV’s “Obama cars” and “flammable” are done. R’s, D’s, and I’s all buy them. They are fun to drive. With many billions of road miles now, their safety record has been proven exemplary, with several rated 5 stars.
Prices have dropped, range has improved, long-distance charging infrastructure grows by the minute.
I call “Bottom” for the most-recent mpg sag. The oil price plunge is over. EV’s are now past a toe hold and getting a solid foothold in the auto market.
The next big auto buzz phrase will be “does that thing have a ludicrous mode?”
“””
I call “Bottom” for the most-recent mpg sag. The oil price plunge is over. EV’s are now past a toe hold and getting a solid foothold in the auto market. “”””
I think HVACman’s on the money.
Daily CO2
January 9, 2017: 406.20 ppm
January 9, 2016: 402.23 ppm
Disclaimer: The atmosphere is composed of about 78% Nitrogen and 21% Oxygen by volume. No other gas constitutes more than 1%. CO2 is, in fact, a trace gas representing approximately 0.04% of the volume of dry air in the atmosphere. Showing only that CO2 concentration has risen slightly within the last year without providing supporting context will lead many readers into making incorrect conclusions about the true significance of CO2 measurements.
Additionally reference Wikipedia Atmopshere of Earth entry: The three major constituents of air, and therefore of Earth’s atmosphere, are nitrogen, oxygen, and argon. Water vapor accounts for roughly 0.25% of the atmosphere by mass. The concentration of water vapor (a greenhouse gas) varies significantly from around 10 ppm by volume in the coldest portions of the atmosphere to as much as 5% by volume in hot, humid air masses, and concentrations of other atmospheric gases are typically quoted in terms of dry air (without water vapor). The remaining gases are often referred to as trace gases, among which are the greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.
Hi Louis,
Radiative Forcing due to increased greenhouse gases and the associated feedbacks is well understood. For some basic information on climate science try:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=448
Louis is a paid troll! He/she or it, keeps posting this exact same text, over and over and over again! Please don’t respond!
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-1-2017/#comment-591084
.
Oh Javier, that’s just lazy.
Thank you for providing the context that the trace gas, CO2, is an important greenhouse gas.
NAOM
A very thorough review paper came out recently, have not seen it mentioned here, discussing IPO, PDO, AMO and their influence on GMST.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308916933_Modelling_Interdecadal_Climate_Variability_and_the_Role_of_the_Ocean
Figure 1 shown below, but with the file size limit here its much better to see it in the paper at the link above
(a) Seasonal mean global mean surface temperature (GMST, in \dgn C) anomalies, relative to the 20th-century mean, for the 1910-2015 period. (b) Seasonal mean PDO index, derived as the leading principal component of de-meaned monthly SST anomalies in the North Pacific Ocean, poleward of 20 \dgn N, and for the period 1910-2015. Decades shaded in light blue mark negative phases of the PDO and corresponding ‘hiatus’ periods. (c) The Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) index, calculated as the detrended low-pass filtered SST area-weighted average over the North Atlantic (0\dg to 70\dgn N) from the Kaplan SST data set for the 1910-2015 period. Decades shaded in light blue mark negative phases of the AMV. Black curves in (a), (b) and (c) represent decadal variations after applying a gaussian filter to each time series.
Wehappyfew,
We are all finally starting to agree. The influence of oceanic oscillations on global temperatures rate of change is determinant. Temperatures respond to an oceanic cycle and therefore are not showing the feared acceleration that most scientists inferred from late 20th century data.
I believe that in the figure posted the last change of period showed in 2015 is premature. It disagrees with previous periods length. It is more probable that the 2015-16 El Niño has just been a hiatus in the hiatus, and we are going back to the 21st century little to no warming situation.
If you think we agree, then you have not read the paper, maybe only skimmed it, glancing at the figures.
The main point is that decadal variations in surface warming are determined by ocean/wind oscillations, while GLOBAL warming continues, has not paused at all, and accelerates. The underlying long term trend is determined by the change in the energy imbalance caused by GHG forcings.
You, on the other hand, seem to be a 1st LoT denier, believing that the oscillations themselves “determine” the warming rate. That’s like thinking the wagging tail determines where the dog on the leash is going to go.
We agree on that.
We agree on that.
We disagree on that. Rate of warming is variable and doesn’t show a significant acceleration. How can you defend an acceleration at the same time you just posted a figure that shows a 15 year hiatus ending two years ago?
This is an hypothesis based on assumptions. Evidence shows the long term trend starting around 1850, so it cannot be caused by GHG forcing. We already discussed this.
“How can you defend an acceleration at the same time you just posted a figure that shows a 15 year hiatus ending two years ago?”
I’ve been trying to teach you the difference between the SURFACE and the GLOBE. They are not the same thing. Warming at the SURFACE is a two-dimensional feature. It tells you little about the GLOBE which has THREE dimensions. It’s true we live on that two dimensional surface, so we care alot about it, and we have lots of measurements of it. But like the drunk looking for his keys under the streetlamp, we might miss seeing the important facts farther from our gaze.
Acceleration in GLOBAL warming for all parts of the climate system – Atmosphere, Land, Ice, Ocean… measured in units of Joules of heat absorbed by the GLOBE per second is shown in this table extract:
Table 1: Global Flux Imbalance During Selected Periods. From Nuccitelli et al. (2012).
Net Heat Content Increase (W/m2)
1970-2008 … … 0.31 ± 0.078
1980-2008 … … 0.37 ± 0.068
1990-2008 … … 0.46 ± 0.063
2000-2008 … …0.53 ± 0.11
2002-2008 … … 0.73 ± 0.16
There are many more papers that have shown this acceleration:
Industrial-era global ocean heat uptake doubles in recent decades
Peter J. Gleckler, et al
Tracking ocean heat uptake during the surface warming hiatus
Wei Liu, et al
Ocean heat uptake and the global surface temperature record
Whitmarsh, et al
The IPCC has extensive coverage of this (you didn’t read it, that’s becoming more and more clear)
… and a pretty picture to show the data freely available here…
https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
… plus some more data going back to 1865:
We were sold that global warming was about surface warming. Now that there is no surface warming outside El Niño years we are sold that it is the oceans that matter.
Yet the oceans have warmed by a tiny amount.
“For the upper 700m, the increase in heat content was 24 x 1022 J (±2.S.E.) since 1955. This is consistent with the comparison by Roemmich and Gilson (2009) of Argo data with the global temperature time-series of Levitus et al (2005), finding a warming of the 0 – 2000 m ocean by 0.06°C since the (pre-XBT) early 1960’s.”
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/global_change_analysis.html
According to Argo 0.06°C since the early 1960’s. And the oceans of the Earth are terribly cold. Their average temperature is just 3.9°C. And nobody can figure out how those 0.06°C could come out of the ocean without violating the laws of thermodynamics.
The ocean can therefore be considered a huge heat sink, so that total system warming alarmism is severely misplaced.
The surface warming rate measured over 9-year averages has oscillated between 0.0 and 0.4C decade for more than half a century – you posted the chart showing this.
The current 9-year surface warming rate is 0.4C. You only look at the previous low warming rate of 0.0C that occurred years ago ago.
The long-term rate averages out to be identical to the rate predicted by the heat imbalance caused by GHGs.
The heat imbalance is absorbed by the oceans, so studying that tells you far more about the true rate of warming today than waiting 9 or 15 or 30 years to wait for the oscillations to average out.
Obsessed about the pause from 2002 to 2012, but ignoring the identical pause from 1986 to 1995, or the previous pause before that. Why? Because the stair-step advance shows that any individual pause is certain to be followed by another step up.
The last pause has already been replaced by another steep advance, but you deny its existence, even though it exactly matches the oscillation pattern in the chart from the UKMet you posted in the previous open thread.
Rumors about the death of the pause have been greatly exaggerated. Let’s see what happens next.
If you study Earth’s paleoclimate on the centennial, millennial and multimillennial scales warming always occurs until it doesn’t, and then comes cooling. Being in one of the coldest ice ages of the past 500 million years underscores that the real danger is going back to the temperatures that are more prevalent for the Quaternary Ice Age in which we are.
Having studied similar warming periods in the past, I believe global warming will continue perhaps until around 2100 to be followed by an irregular moderate descent in temperatures towards a level more in agreement with this late in an interglacial.
We are in a hiatus period during which a strong El Niño has taken place, but the hiatus should last until about 2035. Then the next step that you talk about in global warming should take place for another ~30 years. Hopefully there won’t be any strong volcano to throw some cooling for a few years and spoil the party.
Hi Javier,
You are wrong that atmospheric CO2 will decrease quickly. It will not fall to 280 ppm for 100,000 years, it is basic geochemistry.
Re-read Archer 2005. The 1750-1910 period was unusual in the frequency of large volcanic eruptions. Most of the Holocene before 1750 CE averaged close to or slightly above the 1951-1980 Global land ocean mean temperature with atmospheric CO2 about 275-280 ppm (mean level) over the Holocene before 1750 CE.
Concern over Global cooling is misplaced for the next 100,000 years or more based on geophysics and geochemistry.
Hi Dennis,
Archer 2005 is an hypothesis based on assumptions.
We have a worse knowledge of CO2 half life than we have of ECS. And nobody has ever showed evidence that high CO2 levels can prevent a glaciation. In fact we do have evidence of past glaciations with much higher CO2 levels.
Regarding volcanic eruptions, we do know that they only affect climate for a few years. The Holocene Climate Optimum was the period with highest volcanic activity in tens of thousands of years, and was at the same time the warmest. That is the importance of volcanic eruptions in climate.
Confidence that Global cooling is not going to take place in the future is not supported at all by evidence. Quite the contrary, Global cooling is almost guaranteed to take place in a few centuries to a few millennia.
GHG forcing started rising in 1750, not 1850.
The effect is logarithmic, so the small changes from lower levels have a stronger warming effect.
By now you should know the value of anthropogenic forcing including both GHGs and aerosols, as believed by IPCC.
Prior to 1975 it is believed by your alarmist mates that aerosols essentially compensated for most of GHGs forcing, so anthropogenic forcing was essentially non existent.
There is no strong effect that you can claim prior to 1975 if you adhere to dogma.
What a load of bollocks!
You must have a limited folder of denier charts ready to go. Maybe that’s why you couldn’t find one that shows temperature and forcing back to 1750!
You are seriously arguing – from that chart that only goes back to 1880 – that human forcing were ZERO before 1880???
That is incompetence of a very special sort. There is literally zero data in your chart to make a claim about 1750 to 1880, because the chart does not contain any data from that time period!!!
Is that clear enough?
Let’s look at a longer term chart to see what actually happened from 1750 to 1880…
I know, and I agree. But as the figure shows and as the following site shows, that is what James Hansen says in several of his publications between 2005-2011:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Forcings/
James Hansen is supposed to be knowledgeable about these things.
That’s a very good one. I am rolling over the floor. James Hansen the denier. We should tell him. He’s got to love that.
Sigh….
It is SO TEDIOUS to have to explain your own graph to you time after time.
Hansen graph shows NET anthro forcing increasing from 1880 to the present. The blue line is not as far below zero as the red line is above it for every year shown. It says nothing about forcing before 1880
MY GRAPH shows forcing increasing from 1880 to present – just like Hansen’s – but ALSO shows forcings increasing from 1750 to 1880.
The “bollocks” was referring to your inability to comprehend the data you presented in graphical form. And your drawing conclusions about what happened before 1880 without any data.
Yeah, right.
You thought it was a denier chart and it is from one of the biggest alarmists. LOL
Hi We happy few,
We don’t have very good sea surface data prior to 1850, so using BEST Land Ocean data is the best we can do.
Javier,
Hansen is not a denier but there is some stuff he has done that many main stream climate scientists do not agree with (especially after about 2008).
So the “dogma” is not that aerosols masked all the forcing from greenhouse gases from 1940 to 1970.
The influence from aerosols is probably somewhat smaller than Hansen has sometimes asserted.
Hi Javier,
Using only atmospheric carbon dioxide explains the overall trend very well. Perhaps the other greenhouse gases were roughly offset by aerosols or changes in cloud cover. The C model (natural log of atmospheric CO2) vs BEST land ocean temperature has an R squared of 70 % for a regression on 1866 to 2000. The 2001-2015 data is out of sample, notice how the “model” underestimates temperatures after 2000.
“Using only atmospheric carbon dioxide explains the overall trend very well.”
Perhaps to you, not to me. There was strong cooling 1890-1920, followed by strong warming 1920-1940, followed by important cooling 1950-1975, then again strong warming 1975-2002, then little to no warming 2003-2014.
None of that is reproduced by atmospheric carbon dioxide. Perhaps that is the reason adjustments to the temperature databases have approximated the temperature curve to the CO2 trend.
Hi Javier,
For something as complex as climate, a single variable explaining 70% of the variation over 130 years is pretty good.
Find me another single variable that can explain the temperature trend as well.
I doubt you can.
Yes correlation is not causation, but we have a physical model that this data confirms.
Hi Javier,
Also I use the BEST data which Judith Curry was a coauthor of at least one paper.
The Berkeley Earth Group’s data is very transparent.
http://berkeleyearth.org/summary-of-findings/
http://berkeleyearth.org/about-data-set/
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study has created a preliminary merged data set by combining 1.6 billion temperature reports from 16 preexisting data archives. Whenever possible, we have used raw data rather than previously homogenized or edited data. After eliminating duplicate records, the current archive contains over 39,000 unique stations. This is roughly five times the 7,280 stations found in the Global Historical Climatology Network Monthly data set (GHCN-M) that has served as the focus of many climate studies. The GHCN-M is limited by strict requirements for record length, completeness, and the need for nearly complete reference intervals used to define baselines. We have developed new algorithms that reduce the need to impose these requirements (see methodology), and as such we have intentionally created a more expansive data set.
That is a SUBSET of all the adjustments made to the global surface temperature data. If you used ALL the data, instead of cherrypicking, the correlation would go the other way.
The RAW DATA at the beginning of the global series is far lower than the adjusted data, making the warming trend appear to be larger than it actually is.
But scientists ADJUST the data, based on the known properties of old thermometers, weather stations, sampling procedures and times, etc… to make it more accurate.
Would you rather use the LESS accurate data that shows a faster trend in the warming rate?
Hi Dennis,
I believe CO2 has contributed to the warming of the planet as much as you believe natural factors have contributed. We just have reversed the importance of their respective contributions.
Our faith on the power of GHGs to warm the planet is based exclusively on the coincidence of a major warming period, 1975-2002, with a major increase in CO2. Scientists had to explain two things. Why it warmed so much between 1920-45 without a major increase in CO2, and why it cooled so much between 1950-1975 with a major increase in CO2. This was accomplished two ways. The first by choosing a cooling forcing for aerosols that matched a good part of the cooling, and then by changing the records to reduced both the 1920-45 warming and 1950-75 cooling to get a more straight trend that matched better the rise in CO2.
Nature is refusing to cooperate with fitting the evidence to the hypothesis. The 2003-2014 hiatus in the face of the biggest increase in GHGs is a sore issue. The response again has been to change the records to increase warming during the hiatus period in sea surface records that are low confidence. They also have to change satellite records (RSS) or discredit them (UAH).
Problem is Nature seems bent on not collaborating. The El Niño has been a moral push. The hiatus has been declared dead. But oceanic oscillations are unfavorable and solar activity has entered a centennial minimum. A lot of heat has been lost in the El Niño and through Arctic unusual warming and this means lower temperatures going forward for quite a few years. The hiatus is likely to resurrect in about 3-4 years.
It is clear that most people have not bought the catastrophic narrative, as climate change is never an important issue in elections anywhere. Just check the amount of time dedicated to it in the three US presidential debates, and I can assure you the issue wasn’t even mentioned in the two elections that Spain had in the past year.
Science is almost fully invested in the CO2 hypothesis, conservation NGOs have come to depend on climate change for a lavish funding, and bureaucrats have built an important structure that depends on climate change being an issue. The CO2 hypothesis is not going to suffer a quick dead. As Charles Mackay said:
“Every age has its peculiar folly: Some scheme, project, or fantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the force of imitation.”
And
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
The catastrophic CO2 hypothesis is going to continue making direr and direr predictions despite mounting evidence against, until one day in the future you will also come to think that alarmism regarding climate change has been grossly exaggerated.
Hi Javier,
I do not have and “alarmist” viewpoint.
You repeatedly claim that forcing from CO2 or aerosols are “chosen” to be at some level.
My analyses are based on physical models and data. The “level” of forcing from carbon dioxide, aerosols, total solar irradiance (TSI), AMO, or ENSO are based on observations and statistical analysis.
Now we could cherry pick certain data to get the results you like, but most would not call that science, I certainly wouldn’t.
Hi Dennis,
Your climate analysis is done with very imperfect knowledge about climate mechanisms.
It is the same as doing oil analysis with completely unreliable reserves data. Whatever conclusions you reach are guaranteed to not happen.
HI Javier,
If we add AMO and SOI to natural log of carbon dioxide we get a slightly better model, regression on 1886-2010, R squared is 91 %.
CAMOSOI (for carbon, AMO, and SOI) model below.
https://electrek.co/2017/01/10/tesla-gigafactory-1-model-3-battery-pack-rooftop-solar/
The only other thing I have ever read that impresses me so much in terms of heavy industry HAPPENING is an account of Ford’s River Rouge plant. I have a book about it, someplace.
“Iron ore in one end, CARS out the other” seems to be the phrase most often used to describe it.
That article contains the answer to those who complain about the recyclability of cells. That is one MoFo of a plant
NAOM
nice little video…
Global surface temperature data 1966-2016 from NASA GISS, broken out by years with El Niño warming influence, La Niña cooling, or neutral, with linear trends for each category. Created by Dana Nuccitelli.
https://skepticalscience.com/conservative-media-cant-stop-denying-no-pause.html
When climatology is outlawed, only outlaws will have thermometers
They can pry my sling psychrometer from my cold dead fingers.
Carbon dioxide – it’s not just for soda anymore.
They can pry my sling psychrometer from my cold dead fingers.
I think you really mean your warm dead fingers… 😉
Earth on the edge: Record breaking 2016 was close to 1.5°C warming
05 January 2017
2016 confirmed as the warmest year on record, warmer than 2015 by close to 0.2°C
Global temperatures reached a peak in February 2016 around 1.5°C higher than at the start of the Industrial Revolution
Extreme conditions impacting several regions across the Earth
The first global analysis of the whole of 2016 has confirmed last year as the warmest on record and saw the planet near a 1.5°C warming, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
http://climate.copernicus.eu/news-and-media/press-room/press-releases/earth-edge-record-breaking-2016-was-close-15%C2%B0c-warming
This is interesting. Copernicus is part of the ECMWF, The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, a consortium of 34 countries dedicated to weather forecast and meteorological analysis.
Their system is called ERA-Interim, a reanalysis system that integrates millions of real time data from a series of different atmospheric and surface parameters to produce forecasts up to 10 days ahead twice a day. It is considered by experts to be the best forecast system in the world.
ERA-Interim is one of several databases that showed global cooling during most of the 21st century. In this case between 2005 and 2014. RSS and UAH also showed cooling during that period. On a regional basis CET, Central England database the oldest running in the world that agrees quite well with Northern Hemisphere land databases, also showed cooling.
Reanalysis is still quite new, but it has a good advantage: This is a system on which people’s lives depend, and produced and financed by 34 countries with diverse governments and interests. Nobody is going to purposely introduce biases in it.
Obviously the prior cooling has ended with the 2015-2016 El Niño, but already the big drop in temperatures globally suggests that we might go back to the 21st century average rather fast.
ROFL. Must have gotten his training at Trump University.
…but already the big drop in temperatures globally suggests that we might go back to the 21st century average rather fast.
You mean the average over the last 16 years? Because that’s how many years of the 21st century have elapsed so far. Looks like there hasn’t been any drop at all in global average temperatures.
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880. Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with 15 of the 16 warmest years on record occurring since 2001. The year 2015 was the first time the global average temperatures were 1 degree Celsius or more above the 1880-1899 average. Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase
Yes the Earth has been warming for at least 170 years, we all agree on that. As a consequence we are in a warm period. But the rate of surface warming depends on multidecadal oceanic oscillations as Wehappyfew can tell you, and for the last 15 years, except for the strong El Niño years of 2015-16, there has been little to no warming.
Solar variability does not correlate with temperatures on a yearly to decadal basis.
We are very lucky that global warming has taken place. Conditions during the Little Ice Age were appalling and climate related famines reduced the population of some Northern countries by double digit percentages in certain years.
The surface temperature oscillates around the underlying warming rate, which is controlled by GHGs. See chart below.
Temperatures in the instrumental era have never departed far from the forcing predicted by CO2 levels. The deepest negative divergences are from volcanoes. The small negative divergences are mostly Las Ninas. The positive divergences are all from Los Ninos. The very large positive divergences around 1940 are from back-to-back-to-back Los Ninos aligned with (or caused by) the positive IPO phase.
Javier predicts this relationship will suddenly change, RIIIIIGGHT about NOW! … and temps will go sideways.
I predict the temperature will not diverge below the red line by more than 0.15C without a major volcano. It will not fall below the red line by more than 0.05 without a La Nina.
I predict the temperature will rise above the red line by about 0.05 to 0.12 for El Nino years, and about 0.15 or a bit more for a super El Nino like 1997-1998.
ENSO neutral years without volcanoes will be within 0.05C of the red line about 90% of the time.
Where does that graph come from?
Why is CO2 lagged 10 years? Why do the values go only to 380 ppm when we are at >400 ppm?
Do you have any peer reviewed science to support that graph?
I made the graph myself from NOAA global land/sea temperatures, Mauna Loa CO2, and Law Dome ice core data for CO2 before 1955.
The lag is due to the well-known thermal inertia of the climate system due to the ocean heat sink. Many have studied this and found the lag could be from a few years to several decades.
Ricke and Caldeira might be the most recent study published. If you start there and work back through their references and citations, you will see how this works.
Also Royce and Lam get into the math of this.
Again, are you seriously trying to claim you did not know about this idea? This is an integral part of the IPCC reports. It goes back many decades. Have you even READ the IPCC reports???
The latest value is 380 ppm because that is what the lag does. The temperature today is correlated with the CO2 level from 10 years ago.
The choice of 10 years for my graph was made by making a logarithmic best fit for all the possible lag choices from zero to 20 years. All the fits got much worse after about 14 years or less than 6 years. Ten years was the best but not by a lot compared to the others in the range from 8-12 years.
The bonus from this lagged fit is that we can make a relatively informed estimate of temperatures ten years out, knowing today’s CO2 level. Today’s CO2 concentration of 404 ppm will result in a temperature of 1.03C ± 0.05 for 2026 (compared to 0.92C for 2015).
NOAA hasn’t published their 2016 value yet, but it will be close to 0.92 or 0.93C.
I see. You have built your own little crystal ball. And you want us to believe it has predictive powers. We just have to trust you. No need for expensive complicated climate models. Your little system tells us ±0.25°C what the temperature will be in 10 years. Not ±0.05 but ±0.25 as that is what it shows at 310 ppm. And since CO2 has been growing at about 1.5 ppm/year, how can you get so many points between 308-312 ppm? Where temperatures increasing or decreasing, but not CO2?
It doesn’t matter. Correlation is not causation, and there are periods when there is no increase in temperatures, called hiatus, yet CO2 keeps increasing. So your little exercise means little indeed. I rather stick with real science.
“CO2 has been growing at about 1.5 ppm/year”
Have you never looked at the CO2 data?
From the Law Dome data, from 1936 to 1950, Co2 increased LESS THAN ONE PPM. So yes, temperatures fluctuated naturally as they tend to do – weather, you know – but CO2 did not increase. The net change in temperature over that time span of 1936 to 1950 was essentially ZERO.
Of course, the Law Dome data is inherently smoothed due to the long closing time of the air bubbles in the ice, so the actual trajectory of CO2 was doubtlessly more complex, but there is little doubt that the Great Depression and WW2 had a suppressing effect on CO2 output.
I agree that nearly 100% of the variation around the red line will be within ±0.25C, but no one expresses confidence intervals that way. We scientific folks use the 1 or 2 sigma variation from the mean. So that’s what I did – 90% within 0.05C.
Another way to put this is… the chances of a Pinatubo, or 3 Los Ninos in a row are not high, so almost all (90% as I said before) of the temps will be within 0.05C just as they have in the past.
Functionally, this is identical to Dennis’s regressions of CO2 to temperature, just adding a lag, and displaying it as a scatter diagram of CO2 vs Temp, instead of Time vs Temp. I can draw it the other way too… see below, with projections of future CO2 levels and resulting temps out to 2050.
And of course, correlation does not prove causation, etc, etc. But when the correlation is this good, and has continued for almost a century and a half, hoping and depending on it to suddenly change right now because we wish to continue burning our precious hydrocarbons (like burning the Mona Lisa to heat the Louvre)… not good risk management.
Your logarithmic lagged CO2 graph looks wrong.
You shouldn’t have that many points around 310±3 ppm. That’s only 6 ppm and CO2 has been increasing all the time. As the graph is lagged those dots correspond to a higher CO2 concentration. Not credible so many points for such little change in CO2.
Reading fail, Javier.
Can you please increase the font size on your browser?
As I already state above, Law Dome CO2 data increased less than 1 ppm over the time span 1936 to 1950. There was a pause in the CO2 increase!
SEE THE DATA AT THIS WEBSITE:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/law/law_co2.txt
THE DATA AT 310 PPM ±3 COPIED BELOW:
1929 306.8
1930 307.2
1931 307.7
1932 308.2
1933 308.6
1934 309.0
1935 309.4
1936 309.8
1937 310.0
1938 310.2
1939 310.3
1940 310.4
1941 310.4
1942 310.3
1943 310.2
1944 310.1
1945 310.1
1946 310.1
1947 310.2
1948 310.3
1949 310.5
1950 310.7
1951 311.1
1952 311.5
1953 311.9
1954 312.4
1955 313.0
1956 313.6
YOU’RE WELCOME!!
Sorry for the all-caps, but Javier can’t see words anymore, only pictures.
Can someone send an email to Javier asking him to increase the font size on his monitor? I don’t think he can see this message.
Then the problem is with the temperatures. According to your second graph between 1910 and 1956 you have a +0.75°C followed by a -0.5°C, all of that with almost no change in CO2 as you have so well showed.
How are those changes in temperatures explained in the absence of significant changes in GHGs?
Hi Javier,
The explanation consists of two words. Natural variability.
The natural variability is mostly due to AMO, ENSO, Aerosols, and TSI.
Hi Dennis,
“The natural variability is mostly due to AMO, ENSO, Aerosols, and TSI.”
That you know. Then we have all the other things that you don’t know, like the effect of clouds, winds, ozone… variability.
You can’t quantify the natural component, and therefore you can’t quantify the anthropogenic component.
A 1% change in global average cloud coverage would have a bigger effect that the change in GHGs. And we don’t know how cloud coverage has changed.
A decrease in wind speed would have the effect of reduce cooling from ocean vertical mixing, and we do know that a reduction in wind speed has taken place.
Too many uncertainties for your confidence on the explanatory power of CO2.
“The very large positive divergences around 1940 are from back-to-back-to-back Los Ninos aligned with (or caused by) the positive IPO phase.”
Hopefully somebody will throw a little light on this particular time period for me, add in some some explanatory details.
Thanks !
Sure,
NOAA measures a very sharp spike in ocean temps that lasted from ~1940 to 1945ish… see chart below.
This occurred because of 3 strong Los Ninos that occurred in a row – late 1939/early 40, 40/41, and 41/42.
This is a bit unusual, but it can happen when the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) is in a strong positive phase. PDO+ phase tends to encourage the formation of El Nino and suppressed the chances of La Nina. PDO- does the opposite. In 1907-1976 we had 3 strong Las Ninas, with one El Nino sandwiched in there… negative PDO, surface temps fell.
So the blue dots that are way above the red line by about 0.25C around 310 ppm in my chart above – those are from 1940-1945.
There is some debate about how accurate those ocean temps are during that little ruckus we had back then with the Japs and Krauts. Some of the guys taking temperature measurements might have been distracted by the torpedoes and such. The other long-term temperature indices don’t show quite as much of a bump for those years, they made different choices about how to weight and average the rather sparse data coverage of the wartime period.
In the long run, it doesn’t matter too much, as all deviation like this are temporary, and soon return to the long term trend determined by the forcings (which is mostly CO2 for the last 150 years).
I love those arrows Javier throws in to try get his point across. The guy should do stand up comedy.
If the arrow continues at the other side of El Niño warming we are all going to have a good laugh.
He uses highly sophisticated regression analysis techniques to pinpoint his trends.
.
They are not needed. The lack of warming between 2005 and 2014 in ERA interim is clear to everybody. Time will tell if it continues after El Niño.
If you want to understand the geophysics of ENSO and El Nino, then read this :
http://contextearth.com/2016/11/21/presentation-at-agu-2016-on-december-12/
Less random than Javier’s comments and at least it’s original and not denier talking points.
I am unconvinced, but it does contain a 4 year prediction on ENSO, so we will see how that goes.
That ENSO prediction is compatible with 4 years of below 21st century average temperatures, so I like that. Survivalist will not be happy, as he believes global warming increases the frequency of El Niño.
Hi Javier,
Maybe you just don’t understand the math and physics. Very interesting stuff Webhubbletelescope,
hopefully this will lead to a paper. Thanks.
yea, I don’t really care about the prediction aspect at the moment. I do care about getting the geophysics right, which is the most fascinating aspect of climate variability.
If ENSO is actually the result of sloshing of the oceans caused by the slight variations in the earth’s rotation rate, then that would become a fundamental part of our understanding. Yet, that will still take a lot more convincing of others working on this topic.
But if we get a big La Nina in 2019 (am I reading your prediction line correctly?), we’ll know where to send the Nobel Prize for Climatology… 😉
Las Niñas are more frequent during hiatus periods like the one we are experiencing. Chances are we will see a La Niña in the next 3 years.
Ah-ha Javier,
“That ENSO prediction is compatible with 4 years of below 21st century average temperatures, so I like that.”
So, are you a scientist with no agenda, just following wherever the evidence leads? Or maybe, as many humans are (maybe even all, including myself?) just another ape with a job, looking for “evidence” that supports your view?
Guess I should just get back to work on my own rat-killing.
Stan
As I have stated AMO has stopped growing, North Atlantic ocean is cooling, we are entering a centennial low in solar activity, and Arctic sea ice has stopped melting.
The hypothesis is that the hiatus will continue for 10-20 more years.
The evidence will decide but seeing that other people’s predictions are congruent is always satisfactory. If the evidence contradicts the hypothesis, then the hypothesis must be scratched. That is something that alarmists don’t understand. They believe their hypothesis is true regardless of what the climate does.
Hi Javier,
If we look at the 21 year centered moving average of the North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature (or not detrended AMO), there is no evidence that the North Atlantic has started a cooling phase. Though if the trend of the past 165 years is followed, this might begin soon and a hiatus (or at least a slow down in the rate of warming would be expected).
Does that mean that carbon dioxide is not important? No.
It simply means that the AMO might be a big part of the natural variability along with ENSO, volcanic eruptions, and changes in TSI. This is how the other 30% of climate change not explained by changes in atmospheric CO2 levels can be explained.
Using AMO, ENSO, Aerosols and TSI, about 22% of 30% of the variation in temperature not explained by changes in atmospheric CO2 is accounted for leaving about 8% of this variation unexplained by an exceedingly simple multivariate linear model.
Dennis,
Concluding from your little fitting exercise that CO2 is 70%, and natural is 30% is meaningless.
“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
John von Neumann.
The fact that temperatures can go down for decades while CO2 increases, and the fact that the first half of 20th century warming is not statistically different to the last half indicate that CO2 is not the primary driver of temperature changes (i.e. <50%).
Hi Javier,
Lots of times temperature has decreased over 9 year periods. For climate we look at 31 year periods or longer. What does the trend look like for the past 31 years?
Using Berkeley Earth Monthly Global land ocean data for the past 31 years from:
http://berkeleyearth.org/data/
We get the chart below with a trend of 1.93 C per century.
Dennis,
Besides a warming trend, temperatures on the Earth have displayed a 60-90 years oscillation. We call the non warming parts of this oscillation “hiatus.” So far they are broadly:
1890-1920
1945-1975
2003-?
The existence of this oscillation, is very well described in the scientific literature, but not so well incorporated in the IPCC dogma. You ignore it at your peril (of being mistaken).
So when the time is right, the oceanic oscillation does show up, the Arctic sea ice stops decreasing, and the temperatures show a reduced rate of warming, you can:
a) Ignore the evidence and support the reworking of temperature databases to eliminate the hiatus from the records, and retrench into the need of 30 years of data, while showing data for the 30 years of oscillation warming extrapolated into the future.
b) Accept that a change in the oscillation is taking place as expected and that one of its conclusions is that the rate of warming has been overestimated due to considering only the upswing phase of the oscillation, as an increased rate.
Your choice depends on whether you want to defend your beliefs or you want to be right.
Hi Javier,
I agree the ocean cycles affect the rate of warming.
As it is a cycle we would not expect there to be a trend. We can also use a 65 year trend.
Dennis,
1.24°C/century is likely to be closer to the general trend. It would mean 1.03°C more by 2100. We can live with that.
One of the problems with your models is that they assume that our knowledge of forcings is correct, when it is very uncertain.
We don’t know the forcing of CO2 as it depends on ECS which is under debate for over 35 years now. And we have never examined a grand solar minimum with modern instruments. The solar forcing is calculated exclusively from changes in TSI, when paleo data indicates a more profound effect. The correlation between cold periods of the past and below average solar activity is very strong, better than with CO2, yet we don’t have an explanation for that, so it is not properly accounted for.
Hypothesis are being investigated that suggest that below average solar activity for prolonged periods could induce atmospheric rearrangements through changes in stratospheric ozone that transmit top down to the troposphere.
If we have the forcings wrong, and CO2 forcing is lower than assumed, and solar forcing is higher than assumed then the natural contribution is larger than assumed.
Hi Javier,
The “models” assume nothing about the forcing, it is a simple multiple linear regression on the data from 1881-2010 (I chose 130 years in case the 65 year cycle proposed by some is correct).
The value of TCR is the coefficient of the natural log of atmospheric CO2 from the multiple linear regression multiplied by the natural log of 2 (for a doubling of CO2).
I simply put the data in a spreadsheet and perform a linear regression and report the results, the only choice is which variables to include, I do not “choose” the coefficients.
As to what we can live with, ecologists seem to have a different take on this than you. It is not clear that a molecular biologist would see the big picture correctly,
but it may not be a catastrophe if warming is limited to 1.5 C above the 1971-2000 global mean temperature (which is roughly the same as the Holocene average before 1750 CE).
You are correct that we do not know the ECS, if it is 2.5 C we may be ok, if it is 3.5 C we may not be. The uncertainty is reason to be cautious in my view. Moving to non-fossil fuel energy as quickly as possible seems a wise choice given this uncertainty.
Dennis,
The assumptions are already implicit in the data that you use for your linear regressions.
Hi Javier,
Really? Do you stand by such nonsense?
So now you distrust the observational data because it does not support your hypothesis?
Indeed this is an interesting approach to “science”.
There are no assumptions in observational data except that the laws of physics apply.
Do you deny that the laws of physics are correct? Most people take them as a pretty fair approximation of reality, but perhaps in microbiology things are different.
Dennis,
I do not distrust observational data. However you assume that solar effect is through TSI, while it could be through UV warming of stratospheric ozone. And you assume that clouds have a neutral effect on climate so you don’t include them (you couldn’t). And you assume no role for changes in wind speed.
This means your model means nothing.
“And you assume no role for changes in wind speed.”
Highly credentialed deniers such as Richard Lindzen claim to understand wind speeds in the stratosphere. Yet, they can’t formulate the most fundamental model to explain what is observed:
http://contextearth.com/2016/12/31/lindzen-doth-protest-too-much/
As Dennis said, we like to look at the physics first.
Hi Javier,
If we do a multiple linear regression with Global Land Ocean Temperature (BEST data) as the dependent variable and the natural log of atmospheric Carbon, ENSO, Aerosols, and AMO as independent variables we have a basic model I call the CSAM Model (inspired by Webhubbletelescope’s CSALT Model).
The regression on data from 1881 to 2010 has an R squared of 92% and a correlation coefficient of 96%. The model vs data from 1886 to 2015 (130 years) is presented in the chart below. The model underestimates the temperature trend slightly. The TCR for a doubling of CO2 is 2.22 C with a 95% confidence interval of 2.09 C to 2.35 C. All 4 independent variables are significant at the 95% level (t stats are 34 for C, 10 for AMO, 5 for ENSO, and 4 for Aerosols, 2 indicates significance at 95% level).
Hi Javier,
As an alternative to a model which includes carbon, we can try the hypothesis that atmospheric carbon has no effect on Global temperature and that all warming is due to natural cycles.
I note that you have never proposed that atmospheric carbon dioxide has no effect on warming, you argue that it’s effect is not very important, so this model takes that argument to it’s extreme.
I call it the SAM model and it is identical to the CSAM model above with the natural log of atmospheric carbon dioxide dropped from the model (AMO, ENSO, and Aerosols are the only independent variables). The R squared of the model is 24% and the correlation coefficient is 51%. The temperature trend from 1886 to 2015 for the model is 0.09 C per century vs 0.78 C per century for the land ocean temperature data. Of the two hypotheses, the one that includes the natural log of atmospheric carbon dioxide seems to match the empirical data from Berkeley Earth somewhat better.
Dennis,
See above:
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-jan-8-2017/#comment-592154
Hi Javier,
The comment that I responded to above applies to every regression I have done. There are no assumptions beyond the choice of variables, this is nearly pure empiricism (the choice of independent variables is informed by physics and chemistry).
The assumptions are implicit in the data. If you use TSI values in W/sq m you assume that is the only way solar variability affects climate.
UV changes are bigger than TSI, and affect O3 in the stratosphere warming it considerably. Your model knows nothing of that.
Hi Javier,
That is a hypothesis that would need to be confirmed by data. Not much data supports that contention.
It is possible that the 8% of variation not explained by my oversimplified model could be explained by many other possible natural variables. One would need some data to back it up, hypotheses alone don’t really cut it.
Dennis,
check your gmail
Dennis,
“That is a hypothesis that would need to be confirmed by data. Not much data supports that contention.”
I agree that it is an hypothesis that needs more data support, but the bibliography on it is starting to be significant.
The main problem is that we have not had the opportunity to study a multi-decadal solar minimum during modern times. This is probably changing as we are entering one.
I like it.
Eyeballing the remaining residuals, it looks like they correspond to solar TSI variations. A weak solar cycle in 1901 to 1912 lines up the negative divergence from the model. The record strong cycles in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s line up with the positive divergence for those decades.
I also think it’s possible that both the solar and CO2 forcings might fit better with a lag, as I have done with CO2 above.
Have you tried that, or would you be willing to give it a shot?
Hi We happy few,
I don’t think the lags are necessary and one needs some physical justification for the length of the lags otherwise it is simply a data fitting exercise.
If you are interested I can post a link to the spreadsheet and you can introduce whatever lags you want. I could include a solar cycle.
I added total solar irradiance (T) and regression has R-squared of 93 % and CC of 97%, I will call that model CSMAT. TCR is 2.09 C for CO2 doubling with 95% confidence interval of 1.95 C to 2.24 C. Regression on 1881-2010 data chart below is 1886-2016, again the model slightly underestimates temperature trend from 1886 to 2015.
—–Coefficients-Standard Error–t Stat
Intercept, -123.63, 30.40496,__ -4.066248
C________3.0174, 0.1056036,__ 28.57374
AMO_____0.4113, 0.040386,____10.18481
ENSO____0.0534, 0.009753,____5.477039
Aerosols,-1.3766, 0.341114, __ -4.035857
TSI,_____0.07804, 0.022564, __ 3.458838398
Chart below, not all that different from CSAM, but all 5 independent variables have t stats above 3.45 (TSI is lowest absolute value) in absolute value.
Looks good.
The physical justification for a lag is the thermal inertia of the ocean.
Fast oscillations like ENSO and volcanic aerosols have little long-term impact, but the long-term secular shifts in solar (not the 11 year cycle), and CO2 have enough time for the forcing variations to sink into the deeper ocean.
The 11 year solar cycle is just about the right length for the ocean’s thermal inertia to dampen most of its signal.
…..
I would appreciate a look at your spreadsheet, thanks.
Hi We happy few,
Link for spreadsheet below.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bvm32rwd4jvfhyh/CSMAT%20-%20Copy.xlsx?dl=0
Hi We happy few,
The fit is pretty good without any lags so as we don’t know what the “correct” lag should be, it seems artificially adding it for a better fit seems unwise. Feel free to try it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bvm32rwd4jvfhyh/CSMAT%20-%20Copy.xlsx?dl=0
Hi Javier,
Get back to us in 2031 when we have 31 years of 21st century data, until then use 31 year periods or longer to tell us about no warming, anything shorter is weather not climate.
Dennis,
Just because you say so. There are literally hundreds of papers on the hiatus that is shorter than 31 years. So the field is ignoring your opinion on what constitutes climate.
Well that got weird fast.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html
To be fair I always have 100% confidence in any text that has been leaked to the general public, especially when it contains paragraphs highlighted with yellow marker and the document has been labeled as: CONFIDENTIAL/SENSITIVE SOURCE
I trust Trump and Putin about as far as I can throw them, but seriously?!
But yes, it is all pretty weird stuff…
I’m pretty sure that if FSB had hidden video footage of Trump getting freaky with Russian prostitutes that it wouldn’t be very well known or easy to find out about.
If Russian representatives stated to Trump’s representatives that they have compromising photos and videos of him it doesn’t mean necessarily that it was material obtained while he was in Russia. It could just as well be a New York hotel or the back of a limo on the express way.
I think trump is the type that could be easily compromised by two girls winking at him. I’m sure FSB has been all over this guy from day one. If they weren’t it wouldn’t look good on their annual performance review.
I watched Trump on the tee-vee tube a little while ago, and he firmly denied the allegations, even saying that he was a germ-a-phobe. I thought maybe some smart-ass reporter should have asked him how that squared with “grabbing them by the pussy”! I mean germs are germs, and a man’s gotta be careful, right?
Oh well.
I don’t know why they call it hand sanitizer. It works great on the whole body!
AES Distributed Energy, KIUC announce plan to construct solar-plus-utility-scale-battery system on the island of Kauaʻi, Hawaii
How about something to get everyone’s mind off of climate change. Drinking is encouraged.
COMMAND AND CONTROL is a minute-by-minute account of this long-hidden story. Putting a camera where there was no camera that night, Kenner brings this nonfiction thriller to life with stunning original footage shot in a decommissioned Titan II missile silo.
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365927736/
Guess who is soon to have the launch codes to those thousands of nuclear weapons?!
Someone with a very thin skin, a hot temper and a very short fuse… What could possibly go wrong over the next four years?
Hopefully Cheeto Boy will be too busy with Tweets, and the Flat Earth Cabinet not competent enough to know how.
That’s what I am hoping, too. He seems to be more concerned with how Hollywood and entertainers view him than world affairs. Of course, if he thought the masses in the US would be impressed if he dropped a few bombs, he might do it.
Back when we built our big masonry barn, I held out for putting the bottom floor underground, which we did. This was back in the sixties. One reason was that I believed we right really need it as a fallout shelter someday, but there were other good reasons as well, for instance it’s always cool but never freezes , even in ten days straight with zero F lows, which is about as bad as it ever gets here, and then only once in a LONG while.
I haven’t given any real thought to doing the necessary additional work to make it into a good shelter since the Berlin Wall came down.
UNTIL NOW.
The very thought is depressing as hell, but being a pack rat and a firm believer in monetary inflation in the cost of building materials out running the interest rates banks pay on savings, I have nearly all the materials needed on hand, and the necessary know how, and I guess I need to keep on thinking about it.
Unwelcome jobs and unwelcome news are best dealt with in a timely manner, because the longer you put off dealing with them, the greater the wear and tear on the nerves.
On the other hand I don’t expect to live a WHOLE lot longer, and emerging from a fall out shelter incapable of dealing with a post nuke war world due to old age is not a pleasant thought either.
King County Metro will buy more than 100 battery-powered electric buses, following what officials called a successful test in Bellevue last year.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/coming-soon-to-a-transit-route-near-you-more-battery-powered-electric-buses/
=
Dutch trains now 100% powered by wind energy….
https://www.yahoo.com/news/dutch-trains-now-powered-wind-energy-180952085.html
The Hague (AFP) – All Dutch trains are now 100 percent powered by electricity generated by wind energy, the national railway company NS said Tuesday, calling it a world first.
“Since the first of January, 100 percent of our trains are running on wind energy,” NS spokesman Ton Boon told AFP.
Dutch electricity company Eneco won a tender launched by NS two years ago and the two firms signed a 10-year deal setting January 2018 as the date by which all NS trains should run on wind energy.
“So we in fact reached our goal a year earlier than planned,” said Boon, adding that an increase in the number of wind farms across the country and off the coast of The Netherlands had helped NS achieve its aim.
Eneco and NS said on a joint website that some 600,000 passengers daily are “the first in the world” to travel thanks to wind energy. NS operates about 5,500 train trips a day.
One windmill running for an hour can power one train across some 200 kilometres (120 miles), the companies said. They now hope to reduce the energy used per passenger by 35 percent by 2020 compared with 2005.
Law Firm Establishes Clean Energy Legal Team
January 09, 2017
Richmond, Va.-headquartered law firm Hunton & Williams LLP has formed a global, cross-disciplinary legal team to advise corporations and investors on issues related specifically to sustainability and efforts to increase the use of renewable energy.
As part of the firm’s renewable energy practice group, the sustainability and corporate clean power team will counsel corporations and investors on matters related to clean power procurement; green bonds and similar clean power financing and investment transactions; the development of sustainable facilities, including data centers; tax equity investments; joint ventures with renewable energy companies; securities law compliance; renewable energy certificate trading; project permitting and real estate; and environmental law compliance.
“Retailers, manufacturers and technology companies are either entering the renewable energy arena for the first time or are significantly bolstering their current positions,” says partner Eric R. Pogue, who heads the firm’s efforts in this space. “This multidisciplinary initiative will focus on the unique legal issues that companies face in meeting their sustainability and clean power procurement goals.”
The global firm comprises more than 750 lawyers serving clients in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia.
http://nawindpower.com/law-firm-establishes-clean-energy-legal-team
Kinda Postmodern?
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-i-maintain-that-truth-is-a-pathless-land-and-you-cannot-approach-it-by-any-path-whatsoever-jiddu-krishnamurti-16-34-77.jpg
Definitions.
A traditional baseball umpire calls them the way they are.
A modern umpire calls them as he sees them.
A POST MODERN umpire says they don’t exist until he calls them.
It’s hard to know how Trump’s economic policies will affect US and global economics. I’m expecting another recession because global growth is slowing and the US is due for one.
While recessions are hard, they also curb consumption, which should slow the use of fossil fuels.
This article lays out one possible scenario.
How Donald Trump could create a financial crisis – The Washington Post: “What, then, might be the economic consequences of the president-elect’s tax cuts, tariffs and deregulation? Well, as we’ll get to in a minute, they sure seem like they would raise the odds of a financial crisis happening overseas, and maybe here too. It’s a story about the dollar and housing.”
The Post guy probably has the better crystal ball, but the Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday predicting good growth due to Trump cutting taxes and regulations.
I personally think harder rather than better times are more likely, long term, but “better” times are altogether possible in the short term, in some respects at least.
I wouldn’t bet either way, but Trump appears to be inheriting an economy on the upswing, and the up cycle part might last a while regardless of what he does or does not do. OTOH, maybe the up cycle IS peaking, and a down trend is on the way, REGARDLESS of what Trump does.
Back in the Reagan era, I read accounts blaming economic problems on Reagan’s budget. He wasn’t as big a fool as some people think, at least in this case. He replied that it was sort of premature to blame his budget on current day problems, being as it wouldn’t be in effect for some time to come. The country was still on the previous budget that day.
What a president does or does not do, in terms of economic policy, is not apt to make much if any difference in the very near term, but it can make a HUGE difference, in the medium to long term.
You can perk up an old tired worker FOR A WHILE by goosing him with stimulants and pain killers.
He collapses or dies all the quicker, but he WILL do more, for a while.
I think the economy (both US and global) is going to turn down and I don’t think there is anything Trump can do to stop it.
I don’t know what might trigger it, but I just don’t see anything on the horizon other than public and private spending on renewables that would create lots of jobs and put money into the system. Of course, I would expect those projects would be financed by public and private debt, but perhaps they would create enough economic boost to pay back the debt.
I don’t think tax cuts will do much. Lots of companies already have cash. They could fund projects, but often they prefer to buy back stock. I don’t see how giving them even more cash will change that thinking.
The hottest four door luxury boat on the market ,when equipped with the premium performance package now does it even faster than super cars that cost three times as much, when “ludicrous PLUS” mode is activated.
Musk may not be the world’s greatest salesman, but he sure as hell is in the running, when it comes to understanding how to do a Monty Python chop off their arms and legs skit on the competition. 😉
https://electrek.co/2017/01/11/tesla-new-ludicrous-model-s-p100d/
This four door country club boat, with room for enough luggage for a vacationing family, is the fastest car in the world to sixty mph that you can actually just walk in a store or dealership and buy, simply by paying for it.
And a newly licensed sixteen year old girl could drive it down the dragstrip without any expensive learning curve involving replacement tires, transmissions, axles and engines, not to mention accidents. The Tesla will launch dead straight, and stay straight. It’s a LOT of fun going sideways when you hit a gear upshifting, and it’s a lot of fun to see the tire smoke, and hear the engine in a conventional car screaming like a bull ape, but it’s best to watch somebody else pay for it, unless you have money to burn, lol.
Three to six runs down the strip will EAT five or six hundred dollars, or more, worth of tires on a conventional hot car. If it’s an Italian status mobile, figure on a couple of thousand bucks on up to ten thousand or MORE to “refresh” things after couple of weekends.
A Tesla CAN lay rubber, but only if you WANT it to.
carbon dioxide increased its atmospheric concentration by 2.77 parts per million during 2016. This was the third fastest rate of increase in the NOAA record following 2015 at a 3.03 ppm annual increase and 1998 at a 2.93 annual increase.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html
All El Niño years.
yep
Frequency of Extreme El Niños to Double in the 21st Century
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/featured-publication/frequency-extreme-el-ninos-double-21st-century
Increasing frequency of extreme El Niño events due to greenhouse warming
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n2/full/nclimate2100.html
what could possibly go wrong?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YToMoNPwTFc
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/323/5911/240
With regards to global warming the most important question that I think needs answering is ‘so what?’. What are the impacts? An analysis of this question is revealing as to why we should care. Especially as it relates to to that food you see in front of your face every time you desire it. Irregardless of David Whitehouse, er I mean Javier, and his endless objections, I think we can agree it’s happening. Now what?
That is not what the IPCC defends in AR5.
“There is no concrete evidence linking the powerful El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event to climate change, says leading climate scientist Fredolin Tangang.
A news story on Malaysian news website malaysiakini.com quotes climatologist and oceanographer Professor Dr Fredolin Tangang of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, the National University of Malaysia, as saying that this year’s El Niño was even more extreme than the severe phenomena experienced in 1982/82 and 1997/98 but that there is “no conclusive evidence that the occurrence of El Nino (frequency and intensity) is influenced by climate change”.
Tangang served from 2008 to 2015 as vice-chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations climate science agency.
Tangang stated that the IPCC, in its latest report released in 2013, did not come up with a conclusion on the inter-relation between El Niño and global warming. He said that unlike typhoons, which the IPCC concluded would increase in intensity as global warming intensified, El Niño occurrences did not switch in frequency or intensity due to climate change.
“El Niño is a naturally occurring phenomenon, which is part of the inter-annual variability associated with oscillation of the atmosphere-ocean interaction in the Pacific Ocean that occurs in a two- to seven-year cycle,” he explained.”
http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/2016/05/09/el-nino-not-due-to-climate-change/
So far we have not seen any increase in El Niño frequency, no evidence supporting those assertions.
I’m sure most people have heard of the movie called Alive. From the time of the plane crash until the time the surviving group engaged in eating the flesh of the deceased was 72 hours. Hunger is quite a force.
I feel that food supply is often overlooked in the climate debate. And indeed it is perhaps the thing that matters most. The Arab Spring indicates that increased food prices, and the human responses to the, can destabilize entire regions very quickly.
“When shelled organisms are at risk, the entire food web may also be at risk. Today, more than a billion people worldwide rely on food from the ocean as their primary source of protein.”
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F
From the perspective of hazard assessment and risk analysis it seems to me that terrestrial and aquatic food sources are severely threatened. The complex system that puts food in front of your face is extremely vulnerable to ecological disruptions that result from increased CO2 in the air and water . I believe it’s just a matter of a short time until food disruption events occur. Humans don’t typically address problems until the problem is kicking them in the face.
Temps over northern hemisphere land areas, where most of the world’s grain is grown, and ocean ph are perhaps the leading indicators to be aware of if interested in anticipating food production/harvest disruptions.
We just had the world record wheat crop the warmer year on record. That should ease your fears. Global warming takes place preferentially at higher latitudes prolonging the growth season.
I don’t have fears. I have concerns.
I recommend this presentation on the topic of climate and food security.
https://youtu.be/YToMoNPwTFc
If you can’t watch it all just check out 46 min 30 seconds mark and watch for a short time.
With regards to CO2 increases in the atmosphere and its connection to CO2 increases in the ocean the impact is clear. More CO2 in the water lowers the pH. This will likely undermine the food web that provides a significant portion of humanities protein and a great deal of economic activity.
http://oceanacidification.co.uk/pdf/1acid_final_091812-pdf.pdf
This will likely undermine the food web that provides a significant portion of humanities protein.
As well as the food web that supports so many other living creatures many of them highly social and possibly even sentient to one degree or another.
I have personally lived better than most royalty could ever have dreamed of even a couple of centuries ago. I don’t fear for myself or my own demise. I would like to see humanity evolve into a humbler less arrogant species with more compassion for our fellow man and also for the myriad species with which we share this tiny blue dot.
I posted this picture once before and I post it here again to remind us all as to the fragility and how vulnerable is our atmosphere, it is our main protection from the harshness of space. At the very least we should set aside our hubris and apply the precautionary principle to do what we can to protect it.
.
Nice pic. Thanks.
I feel that ocean acidification is vastly under appreciated. Why it’s not a larger part of the fossil fuel/climate change discussion is odd. It’s very straight forward. I believe I read that the pH of the ocean by Hawaii has dropped from 8.1 to 8.05 since 2003 or so. I’ll have to find it again. Much more and it’s game over for the base of the ocean food chain. Sad.
I have often ranted about ocean acidification in the past. I started scuba diving in the mid 1970s and have witnessed first hand the devastation of many a coral reef. Note to deniers: spare me the lecture on all the other stressors affecting reefs, I know about them, And warm water is a biggy! Oh, lest we forget, pH is a logarithmic scale.
Ocean acidification appears to be a non-issue. That is why there is a sudden silence on it. False alarmism.
The ocean surface has maybe dropped 0.1 pH unit from ~8.1 to ~8.0 over 165 years with some of the man-made CO2 absorbed. Long term measurements are actually very sparse.
So to make it sound more scary for ordinary people: the tell us that it is a logarithmic scale and that “acidity” (H+ concentration) has increased by 30%. But they “forget” to tell that the pH still is basic, so no acidification, but neutralization in proper chemistry language, that the pH difference between poles and equator is about a full pH unit, that the pH within the coral reefs can change by a full pH unit within a day, and that fish can swim into much larger pH differences without harm or that corals and coccoliths did evolve and grow in periods with much higher temperatures and CO2 levels than today.
There is a wash of studies many of them badly made, with fish tanks where pH is raised suddenly. The result is highly contradictory, low reliable findings. You can defend one thing or the opposite.
For example increased carbon dioxide enhances plankton growth and this is supposed to be good.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160116215419.htm
S. Rivero-Calle, A. Gnanadesikan, C. E. Del Castillo, W. M. Balch, S. D. Guikema. Multidecadal increase in North Atlantic coccolithophores and the potential role of rising CO2. Science, 2015; 350 (6267): 1533
As someone who has kept both fresh and saltwater aquariums for well over three decades, I can tell you without the slightest shadow of a doubt, that anyone who claims pH is not an important parameter is just plain full of shit!
And as usual you make simplistic obfuscating statements such as this:
For example increased carbon dioxide enhances plankton growth and this is supposed to be good.
That is a bald faced lie by omission since it glosses over some of the real the concerns of the scientists doing these studies in the very link you provide.
“Something strange is happening here, and it’s happening much more quickly than we thought it should,” said Anand Gnanadesikan, associate professor in the Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins and one of the study’s five authors.
Gnanadesikan said the Science report certainly is good news for creatures that eat coccolithophores, but it’s not clear what those are. “What is worrisome,” he said, “is that our result points out how little we know about how complex ecosystems function.” The result highlights the possibility of rapid ecosystem change, suggesting that prevalent models of how these systems respond to climate change may be too conservative, he said.
Not to mention if you create an environmental forcing that benefits cocolithophores that same forcing might negatively impact some other fauna or flora, case in point:
When the percentage of coccolithophores in the community goes up, the relative abundance of other groups will go down. The authors found that at local scales, the relative abundance of another important algal class, diatoms, had decreased over the 45 years of sampling.
So Javier why do hate diatoms so much? Or maybe you just hate the krill that are known to feed on diatoms or is it you dislike the cetaceans such as baleen whales that feed on krill.
You are really quite a piece of work!
Clarification: Krill do feed on coccolithophores, however:
https://www.reference.com/pets-animals/eats-krill-d395d67a1466ecdd
Another cause of the decline in the krill population was caused by a diatom concentration drop in the Bering Sea that occurred in 1998 during a coccolithophore bloom. Coccolithophores are also part of the krill’s diet, and the concentration drop caused them to grow smaller. Kill are unable to feed on the smaller coccolithophore, resulting in less available food for the krill.
People who make simplistic statements like CO2 is good for plants or say we should just go ahead and fertilize the oceans with iron to create algal blooms are what I call BLOOMING IDIOTS! They should be made to sit in the corner wearing bright orange cone hats with DUNCE written on them!
That’s pure alarmism from your part, Fred.
Proportions between diatoms, coccolithophores, dinoflagellates and zooplancton have been naturally very variable in the past.
Current levels of coccolithophores are lower than during the Holocene Climate Optimum, which is yet another indication that we are not as warm as then, so the growth of coccolithophores at the expense of diatoms shouldn’t worry us the least, as the world was very productive during the HCO.
We should worry to not overfish and pollute the oceans and that would be our biggest contribution to the recovery of marine ecosystems.
Source:
Werne, Josef P., et al. “Climate‐induced variations in productivity and planktonic ecosystem structure from the Younger Dryas to Holocene in the Cariaco Basin, Venezuela.” Paleoceanography 15.1 (2000): 19-29.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/1998PA000354/pdf
That’s pure alarmism from your part, Fred.
Yeah! I’m sure the whales, penguins, seals, squid, fish and and all the hundreds of other organisms that depend on krill to survive will just find something else to feed on when the krill population is reduced due to coccolithophore blooms!
Thing is, ecosystems and food webs are like beautiful tapestries. You can pull out a thread or two here and there and you won’t even notice.
Keep pulling out threads and sooner or later the whole darn tapestry just falls apart.
Fred,
“Yeah! I’m sure the whales, penguins, seals, squid, fish and and all the hundreds of other organisms that depend on krill to survive will just find something else to feed on when the krill population is reduced due to coccolithophore blooms!”
whales, penguins, seals, squid, fish, and so on, did fine during the HCO when coccolithophores were more abundant than now. Why should they have a problem now?
The point you keep missing is this quote from the authors of the paper you linked to:
“What is worrisome,” he said, “is that our result points out how little we know about how complex ecosystems function.” The result highlights the possibility of rapid ecosystem change, suggesting that prevalent models of how these systems respond to climate change may be too conservative, he said.
It seems to me this is a very deliberate attempt on your part to keep obfuscating the truth. Arguing that because we don’t know exactly how things will unfold in future and that therefore we needn’t worry about climate change and its impacts on ecosystems is just plain disingenuous to the extreme.
Fred,
It is certainly worrisome that with so little knowledge we pretend to act drastically (with little perspectives of success) to fix a supposed problem when the evidence that the increase in CO2 and temperatures are doing actual damage is weak while the evidence that they are doing good is very strong.
Javier says:
…the evidence that the increase in CO2 and temperatures are doing actual damage is weak while the evidence that they are doing good is very strong.
You are so right! CO2 is food for plants! I’m sure the best way forward is to add as much CO2 to the atmosphere as humanly possible in as short a time span as we can!
This public interest message brought to you by the friends and supporters of President elect Trump, Rex Tillerson, The Koch Brothers, Vladimir Putin and Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Naimi, to name a few of the people who are concerned about there not being enough CO2 in the atmosphere and are doing everything in their power to change that!
They extend their thanks and deepest gratitude to the foot soldier’s like Javier, who are doing their dirty work for them!
Javier,
You and other so-called ‘AGW-denialists’ may look upon Fred’s commentary with a certain peculiar sense of, say, general complacency, such as with regard to, among other reasons, his playing with/in another’s ‘turd’, as he suggests, and ‘reverse-polishing’ it to boot .
Some people make hypocrisy and, say, ‘inverted cherry-picking’, look like a Sunday picnic, while Fred seems to blissfully flirt with putting himself under the very term he is ‘inserting’ into the ‘evidence’, namely, ‘mentally deficient’.
But, hey, as it is said, ‘If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them…’ by playing with another’s turd (and making it your own). LOL
LOL
Caelan,
I consider myself a skeptic. I do know the world has warmed (even by personal experience), and I do believe humans have contributed to it, and that the increase in GHGs has to be partially responsible.
I just think the anthropogenic factor is overplayed, and the natural factor is underplayed, and believe that both warming and CO2 increase have been very net positive. I believe climate alarmism is unjustified on the face of empirical evidence.
Fred is concerned with the environment and with the end of fossil fuels. I share those worries with him, so our disagreements to me are more of a matter of detail. He puts a large share of the blame on climate change while I put it on human population growth.
For such small disagreement we are bound to fight endlessly. That is the nature of things. But while I respect Fred’s position and beliefs, he doesn’t respect mines. That is a character issue. You either respect those that disagree with you or you don’t. Respecting those that disagree on some issues but not others doesn’t cut it.
Fair enough, Javier. Onward and upward…
“Ocean acidification appears to be a non-issue. That is why there is a sudden silence on it. False alarmism.”
Only somebody who has had severe hangovers during his chemistry lectures would claim such nonsense.
Even with basic understanding of chemistry and chemical equilibria it becomes clear that change of pH to lower values has ugly implications when we talk about the ability of the oceans to store CO2.
Nonsense. You have to pay more attention. Natural CO2 sinks are increasing.
Airborne fraction has gone down from 60% to 40% in just 4 decades.
I know, I know. Things are going to get much worse some time soon, or so models say.
“Every liberal offended or irritated is a victory for the conservative cause”
http://indianmavericks.blogspot.ca/2017/01/why-are-conservatives-such-hypocrites.html?m=1
Javier obviously doesn’t have much else on the go as far as a life goes. He’s here to argue that ocean acidification is no big thing. That’s laughable.
I am no conservative. I do not support Trump, nor did I vote for the conservative party in my country’s last elections, nor in any of the elections for over 10 years. Once again you miss the mark.
I believe in global warming, and in peak oil. I support every form of energy including renewables. I used to believe in catastrophic global warming due to increased CO2 until about three years ago when I looked into the evidence myself by reading the scientific articles. Instead of confirmation I found a severe lack of evidence and paleoclimatology says we have it wrong. I also found a lot of history rewriting, reinterpretation, and bullying, that is a very bad sign of being wrong. If you are right you don’t need any of that.
I became an skeptic from studying the evidence, not from political convictions. Climate change is only a political issue in a few English-speaking countries. In the rest of the world it is not questioned, but not considered an important issue by most at both sides of the political line. There are absolutely no climate debate in Spain. If you think I am unusual for the US, I am a lot more unusual for Spain.
Americans are generally tremendously ignorant about what goes on in the rest of the world. They think their culture, politics and climate debates apply equally to the rest of the world. They don’t.
And there is zero evidence that ocean acidification constitutes any problem. We have tons of evidence that overfishing, tourism and pollution are doing a huge damage to the world’s reefs, and with the exception of Australia, very little is being done about it. We are just watching their destruction while claiming it is climate change’s fault.
——
Be the change you seek, Fred, and dispense with the lip-service, which will likely go a ways toward perhaps some of us shedding less crocodile tears of joy for your ‘warmth’ and ‘sincerity’, as well as reducing the temptation to, say, put ‘Fake Fred’ after some of your quotes.
Hey Caelan, here is a another quote you can add to your list of things I have said. In this case specifically directed towards you !
“Fuck You and the horse you rode in on!”
Cheers!
Let’s all accept the fact that Javier doesn’t use the same dictionary as the rest of us.
Pause and hiatus both mean to slow down.
Concern means alarmism.
The guys in another dimension.
What horse?
It’s all relative, Freddy-poo, such as when you play with other people’s turds. Then, practically everyone is on a horse when you do that.
If you’re going to do so, at least do us a favor and place it, like a ‘good’ boy, on the compost heap afterward, won’tcha? At least take it outside.
And give that potty-mouth a good sudsing while you’re at it.
You can do it. ^u^
lol Fred. Cheers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ld2oR_G9Zw
Hi Survivalist,
I believe that as the ocean temperature increases less carbon dioxide will dissolve (solubility of CO2 in H2O decreases as temperature increases). So over time the decreased pH of the ocean is likely stop and perhaps reverse especially when atmospheric CO2 stops increasing probably around 2060 if carbon emissions from fossil fuels are reduced and we remain close to the 1000 Pg carbon emission limit proposed by Allen et al 2009.
Hi Dennis,
Thanks. I found this brief article interesting.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F
Government review likely to back Swansea Bay tidal lagoon
£1.3bn plan is seen as ‘pathfinder’ for six bigger plants, which could generate more than 10% of UK’s electricity
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/10/government-review-swansea-bay-tidal-lagoon-electricity
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/energy-secretary-ernest-moniz-celebrates-milestone-in-recovery-from-nuclear-radiation-disaster/
Very good news, a little dated, on the renewables front.
http://legal-planet.org/2017/01/11/a-win-win-energy-law-in-illinois/
It’s worth noting that Republican opposition to renewable energy is partly due to the influence of the legacy FF industries, and partly due to ignorance. But it might be due more than anything else, on the part of the man in the street, to collateral damage, meaning that opposition to renewable energy is not actually about renewable energy at all, but rather part and parcel of conservative opposition to the liberal social agenda, simply because the liberal element of the D coalition has championed renewable energy.
We need to find ways to separate energy issues from social issues. Finding them is not impossible, but it’s a tough job.
http://nawindpower.com/report-the-more-clean-energy-a-state-has-the-more-it-attracts-big-businesses
Iowa is at the head of the list in this survey when it comes to companies locating there in order to get access to renewable energy. There are TONS of R’s in Iowa, lol.
Guys and gals, if there ARE any in this forum, whose interests and work don’t require them to keep up with cutting edge research in the fundamentals of biology most likely won’t have heard much about the way plants respond to their environment in ways very much analogous to the way animals behave to environmental cues.
If I were a young guy again, I would do things differently, and spend most of my life on the sort of research described in this link.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170109-plants-can-see-hear-and-smell-and-respond
Yep, here’s a nice TED talk for the educated layperson:
https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_simard_how_trees_talk_to_each_other
“A forest is much more than what you see,” says ecologist Suzanne Simard. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery — trees talk, often and over vast distances. Learn more about the harmonious yet complicated social lives of trees and prepare to see the natural world with new eyes.
Of the many converging fields of science that are providing us with unequivocal evidence of anthropogenic effects of human activities on our ecosystems and biomes, it is the work of field biologists and especially ecologists that I find most compelling.
People who deny climate change and spend their time arguing about things like physics and atmospheric chemistry, which more often than not they do not understand nor are qualified to comment on anyway, seem to understand even less about how ecosystems actually work.
There is quite a bit of fascinating work on how entire ecosystems have evolved networks of symbiotic and co-operative organisms. We are just beginning to crack how evolution works on the ecosystem level. Which is one of the main reasons that I really start to worry when people start talking about geoengineering the whole planet…
Cheers!
I’ve been noticing some stuff about the vegetation on my island that I don’t remember seeing in my younger days. Vines (creepers) seem to be flourishing extremely well especially in the sections of the island that get above average rainfall. In some cases it looks like these vines could smother the very vegetation they are growing over, to the point where they could possibly stunt their growth, if not kill them.
There is supposedly a disease that is affecting citrus on the island. Commercial growers seem to have done whatever is necessary to prevent their orchards from being wiped out but one orange tree on the grounds of the small apartment complex where I live has died. A grapefruit tree a hundred yards or so further down the street has also died as has a grapefruit tree 30 miles away at my family’s homestead in the rural parts of the island. Here’s what’s weird, another grapefruit tree at the oposit end of my apartment block to where the orange tree was, is still surviving. The surviving tree is growing under the shade of some larger trees with the twenty foot (6 m) back wall of a neighboring commercial building fifteen feet or so to the west. The result of all this shading is that this tree does not get exposed to direct sunlight after mid day.
This has me wondering, is it just the disease that is affecting the citrus or is there a component of the changes in the local climate starting to stress the plants to the point of them dying? Why is the partially shaded grapefruit tree not dead yet despite showing signs of the same affliction that killed at least two other citrus plants within a hundred yard radius?
Finally, I am increasingly noticing an invasion of leucaena all over the island.
It is a fast growing legume (nitrogen fixer) that is listed in one Wikipedia article as an invasive species. I have started to wonder how, when and why it was introduced to the island, assuming it is not indigenous to the island. A quick search indicates it might be indigenous so, why is the population exploding now? Is it that increasing concentration of the plant food CO² in the atmosphere favor nitrogen fixers over non-nitrogen fixers, especially on depleted soils? One area where leucaena seems to be doing particularly well is anywhere that was formerly used to grow sugar cane. The growing and harvesting practices (including burning the cane fields before harvesting) in Jamaica have left the soils in many cane growing areas in a severely depleted state, requiring heavy fertilizer use to grow any useful crops. The ability to re-grow after bush fires also seems to favor leucaena in these same areas.
One thing that occurs to me from one of the Wikipedia articles is that maybe, leucaena could be grown as an energy crop (firewood, charcoal or feedstock for pyrolysis based processes), providing energy and restoring nitrogen balance to depleted soils at the same time.
Questions, questions!
Hi Fred,
Unfortunately humans have already geoengineered the planet through excess carbon emissions. We might have to do some engineering to reduce atmospheric carbon, though it would be best to do as little as possible (things like reduced deforestation and reforestation and maybe better farming practices to attempt to sequester more carbon in soil).
Another approach is to use cement that absorbs carbon dioxide rather than release it, the first step is to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels to zero as quickly as possible. In the mean time ecologists can consider ways to safely reduce atmospheric carbon levels without causing other problems.
How come these events keep happening, when scientists and MSNBC say they should be impossible on a planet supposedly warming up to dangerous levels? My thought and prayers go out to all those dealing this global warming cold snap, especially families of the people dead from hypothermia.
http://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-washington-portland-vancouver-gorge-weather-snow-ice-historic/
http://www.kgw.com/weather/snow-totals-around-metro-area-break-records/385224561
http://koin.com/2017/01/11/photos-historic-snowfall-in-portland-metro/
Hi Miss Peggy!
I’m just an old hog trying to learn more about this stuff. So, would you please post links to those “scientists and MSNBC” saying these winter WEATHER events should be impossible on a warming planet?
Thanks
P.S. Apologies to all you folks that have good sense and educate me daily. Sometimes I get a bit crazy and just gotta release it.
Hi Stanley! Here are two articles you will want to check out. They come from independent media, not the scientists or mainstream media which are extremely corrupt and dishonest, and pushers of an extreme leftist agenda. Check out the comments also. They note how very cold weather wasn’t in the original predictions by the powerful global warming crowd.
http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/01/06/record-cold-and-snow-has-descend-upon-the-planet/
http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/cold-snap-climate-change/2016/12/30/id/766140/
And yet;
“In 2016, the contiguous United States (CONUS) average temperature was 54.9°F, 2.9°F above the 20th century average. This was the second warmest year for the CONUS, behind 2012 when the annual average temperature was 55.3°F. This marks the 20th consecutive year that the annual average temperature for the CONUS was above the 20th century average. The last year with a below-average temperature was 1996. Since 1895, the CONUS has observed an average temperature increase of 0.15°F per decade.”
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201613
“This will be the third year in a row we’ve set a new record. It’s time we paid attention.”
“We set a new record low for annual average sea ice extent in the northern hemisphere:”
“In addition, we set a new record low for annual average sea ice extent over the entire globe”
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/global-warmings-record-year/
I guess it must be all that global cooling that those non scientist folks have figured out is going on.
guess it must be all that global cooling that those non scientist folks have figured out is going on.
Tsk, tsk, tsk! Survivalist, the problem is that you are getting your information from actual scientists. They are all corrupt and part of a global conspiracy.
You really should get with the program and start getting your news from the independent media! You know you can trust them!
They come from independent media, not the scientists or mainstream media which are extremely corrupt and dishonest, and pushers of an extreme leftist agenda. Check out the comments also.
Peggy Hahn
Now if you are going to trust someone, would you trust actual scientists who have dedicated their lives and careers to the pursuit of knowledge or the scientifically illiterate people like the ones commenting in the links kindly provided by Peggy…
Tough choice!
You know what’s funny? Every single time I see posts by the likes of “Peggy Hahn” (the troll brigade), the image below just pops into my head!
Strange how that happens, isn’t it? 😉
Cheech and Chong?
Dumb and Dumber
More like Rich and Richer!
Dancing Lessons From The Man
(spinning-bow-tie-fan-stand-directly-in-front-global-cooling mix)
Dancing Lessons From The Man
(spinning-bow-tie-fan-stand-directly-in-front-global-cooling mix)
Peggy-dear!
Thanks for the heads-up! Guess I’d better get my long-sleeve shirts out. I thought it had been unusually warm for this time of year here in north Alabama. Matter of fact, I even rode my old antique motorsicle today. Guess I’ve been influenced to much by them damn ignernt scientists!
What kind of bike?
Well today it’s warmer at the North Pole than it is in central Alberta/Canada so I guess all the cold air had to go somewhere.
How come these events keep happening, when scientists and MSNBC say they should be impossible on a planet supposedly warming up to dangerous levels?
Peggy, perhaps you are just another troll but even if you are, you need to up your game a couple of notches . We expect the trolls who show up around here to at least demonstrate that they know the difference between WEATHER and CLIMATE! Google it!
My own ancestry is Hungarian and right now the weather in Hungary is so cold the Danube which normally flows ice free during most of the year has a lots of ice in it. And you can walk on the lake Balaton because it is frozen solid. This phenomenon is caused by winter weather.
.
Meanwhile in Hudson Bay Canada it’s forecast to rain in the middle of winter. Must be global cooling. Maybe next time one of these anti science folks has a headache they’ll get a drill and let the evil spirits out.
I’ll bet they will be happy to become members of ITAG, you just can’t make this shit up! That would be the ‘International Trepanation Advocacy Group’
http://www.trepan.com/
Skull trepanation has usually been considered a strange oddity by archeologists, anthropologists and neuroscientists. With nearly complete unanimity those professions consider trepanation to be some inexplicably superstitious and outdated practice for which there is no justification in the modern world. In short they believe that skull trepanation has no scientific basis.
The view at ITAG has been in direct opposition to the above positions. The hypothesis here at ITAG has been that making a opening in the skull favorably alters movement of blood through the brain and improves brain functions which are more important than ever before in history to adapt to an ever more rapidly changing world.
Yeah, makes sense to me!
Hey, maybe someone can set up a trepanation clinic in Washington, for the members of our new administration and especially the older members of our congress and the senate. If anyone could use an improvement in brain function, they would be at the top of my list!
Heck they could set it up right next to the barbershop…
A clear prediction from global warming is that while regionally the amount of snow might vary, due to an increase in air humidity, globally the amount of snow should decrease and the snow season should shorten, leading to a reduction in extreme snow events as the world warms.
“New York Times writer Peter Fox took to the editorial pages to pen an op-ed called the “End of Snow” which argued that global warming meant that there could be no more snowy areas to hold future Winter Olympic games.
But past predictions of “snow free” winters and even an “ice-free” Arctic have failed to materialize. Here are some past predictions that winter as we know it would become a thing of the past.
1.) Scientists predicted in 2000 that kids would grow up without snow. It was 14 years ago now when UK climate scientists argued that global warming would make snowfall a “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” Dr. David Viner, a scientist with the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia, told the UK Independent in 2000.
After the wettest winter in 248 years, the UK was hit with snowstorms last week. Last year, the UK’s climate authority predicted that this winter would be drier than usual, with only a 15 percent chance of being wet. They were very wrong.
2.) It’s been 10 years since scientists predicted the “end of skiing” in Scotland. An article from the UK’s Guardian in 2004 quoted scientists and environmentalists predicting the demise of Scotland’s winter sports industry, including more remarks from Dr. David Viner, who had already predicted the end of snow in Britain.
“Unfortunately, it’s just getting too hot for the Scottish ski industry,” said Dr. Viner. “It is very vulnerable to climate change; the resorts have always been marginal in terms of snow and, as the rate of climate change increases, it is hard to see a long-term future.”
“Adam Watson, from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Banchory, Aberdeenshire, believes the industry has no more than 20 years left,” the Guardian reported.
Viner and Watson must have been surprised to see the BBC report that Scottish mountains may be their snowiest since 1945.
3.) The Arctic would be “ice-free” by now. “Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” Gore said in 2008.
Gore was echoing the predictions made by American scientist Wieslaw Maslowsk in 2007, who said that “you can argue that may be our projection of [an ice-free Arctic by 2013] is already too conservative.”
But in 2013, Arctic sea ice coverage was up 50 percent from 2012 levels. Data from Europe’s Cryosat spacecraft showed that Arctic sea ice coverage was nearly 2,100 cubic miles by the end of this year’s melting season, up from about 1,400 cubic miles during the same time last year.
4.) Environmentalists predicted the end of spring snowfall. In March 2013, the Union of Concerned Scientists predicted that warmer springs would mean declines in snow cover.
“Warmer, earlier springs are a clear signal of a changing climate,” the group said. “March temperatures have grown 2.1 degrees (F) hotter, on average, in the United States since reliable record-keeping began in 1880s. Similarly, the first leaves have started appearing on plants several days earlier than they used to across the country.”
But the record levels of snowfall to hit this year may have caught UCS off guard. On Monday, the U.S. east coast was hit with a massive snowstorm that stretched for 1,300 miles and those in the Baltimore-D.C. area were hit with a 141-year record cold of 4 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday morning.
“Many places tied or broke record lows all over the Eastern half of the U.S.,” reported CBS Baltimore.
5.) The end of skiing. Ski towns across the country were worried about their prospects when temperatures temporarily rose up into 50s and 60s in early February. Scientists were fanning the flames by predicting that winter towns could see more hardships ahead due to global warming.
“There’s going to be good years and there’s going to be god-awful years,” said Terry Root, senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “The globe is warming so rapidly, and variability is increasing so much – both of those things together, I’m glad I don’t have stock in ski areas.”
But this year has not been all that bad for winter towns. The town of Loveland, Colorado got more than 300 inches of snow this winter, reports CBS Denver, adding that with “snow continuing to pile up at ski areas many are putting this winter in their top 10.” For Loveland, 300 inches is still below normal, but a far cry from the end of snowy winters.”
http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/04/top-5-failed-snow-free-and-ice-free-predictions/
So as usual some scientists like Viner and Watson have been selling alarmist predictions that fail spectacularly. In fact this year we saw snow in the Sahara, something that hasn’t been seen in 40 years and that according to models should have become much rarer.
OMG! SNOW EXISTS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skVrKVJb1Sc
Climate Change Deniers’ Anthem
Javier, your canned responses to the suggestion that global warming is not a problem because it hasn’t been modelled 100% correctly are weak, and repetitive. You’re like a scratched record. While snow in the Sahara might get Peggy and the Breitbart crowd all hotted up I’m rather sure nobody here finds it evidence that global warming is not happening.
“Climate modeling may be hard, but these guys are good. The skeptic may not believe in their models, but as Niels Bohr once replied when he was asked by a visitor to his home in Tisvilde if he really believed a horseshoe above his door would bring him good luck, “Of course not… but I am told it works even if you don’t believe in it.”
http://www.popsci.com/is-climate-too-complex-to-model-or-predict
There are examples of models being too conservative, rather than alarmist as deniers portray them.
https://skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=35
Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama
https://skepticalscience.com/climate-scientists-esld.html
“Climate modeling may be hard, but these guys are good. The skeptic may not believe in their models,…
Some thoughts on how to think about models in general…
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mathematics-of-evolution-q-a-with-biologist-marcus-feldman/
One of the nice things about models is you can ask what conditions have to change to make the results change. As Murray Gell-Mann says, models are prostheses for the imagination. They help you think about ways in which you might interpret data, even complicated data.
Models are just tools to facilitate ways of thinking about reality, no one who creates and uses them in their daily work mistakes them for actual reality.
These are interesting looks at snow cover
Tony Heller’s Snow Job
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/01/01/tony-hellers-snow-job/
Part 2
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/01/03/tony-hellers-snow-job-part-2/
This ones for Peggy
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/12/19/a-winters-day/
Survivalist,
You are missing your target as I believe global warming is happening. The difference is that I believe that it is good for us, not catastrophic.
Snow in the Sahara is evidence that alarmist predictions from some scientists 15 years ago are a complete failure. Snow is not at risk from global warming and there can even be more of it in some places.
That it melts earlier is just the logical consequence of global warming. Spring comes earlier and this is a good thing, because it means that plants and animals have more time and better conditions to grow and reproduce. All over Europe there are more trees and birds than 30 years ago. All at the expense of a few less days of skiing.
Shorter winters are a huge bonus at high latitudes.
“I think Greenpeace is going to come out toasted from the climate change debacle once the climate starts cooling in the near future.” ~ Javier
http://peakoilbarrel.com/eia-says-shale-continues-to-decline/#comment-550135
Conservation groups have espoused themselves to global warming scare, and will suffer the same fate. As a conservationist, I used to have great respect for Greenpeace. Not anymore.
Things like this show they are anything but conservationists now.
“All over Europe there are more trees and birds than 30 years ago” ~ Javier
Fail
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215006600
https://phys.org/news/2014-11-reveals-startling-decline-european-bird.html
The reason there’s more trees than 1990’s is reforestation programs, not AGW/ increased CO2. But it’s a wasted effort due to negative impacts of AGW.
“But European forests face an uncertain future. More frequent heat waves, droughts and fires are reducing their health and productivity, with the region warming faster than the global average.”
http://www.nature.com/news/sustainability-five-steps-for-managing-europe-s-forests-1.17159
“By 2090, the area burned by forest fires in the European Union could increase by 200% because of climate change, according to a new study published in the journal Regional Environmental Change.”
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/about/news/20140908-REC-fires.html
“Furthermore, climate change, with more frequent droughts and rising temperatures, has been confirmed as one of the driving forces behind the risk of fire.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140813103505.htm
“Climate Change Has Doubled Western U.S. Forest Fires, Says Study”
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/3343
Do you just make shit up as you go?
Sorry, you don’t get to choose the causes. These are multifactorial including reforestation, farmland abandonment, increase in CO2, lengthening of the growing season, and expansion of the treeline. The last three due to climate change.
http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/forest-growth-1/assessment
“Since the 20th century, the annual increment of forests in Europe (in terms of area and growing stock) has increased due to advances in forest management practices, genetic improvement and, in central Europe, the cessation of site-degrading practices. Abandoned farmland in high and mid latitudes is reverting to forest, which store much more carbon than the previous cropland.
Forests and other wooded land cover approximately 190 million ha. (1.9 million km2) in the EEA region, and this area has increased over the last decades [i]. Forest biomass has also grown over the past two decades, at an accelerating rate, as a consequence of a number of factors. A time series for 17 EEA countries shows an increase in growing stock from 85 million m3 (5.4 m3 ha-1) in 1990 to 110 million m3 (5.9 m3 ha-1) in 2010 [ii]. This has been explained primarily by the growth of young forests in Europe, which have not reached maturity, and by the increasing carbon concentration in the atmosphere. Furthermore, several studies have already noted longer growing seasons in several species, shifts in tree line and changes in species distribution. However, in some central and western forest areas of Europe, forest growth has been reduced in the last 10 years due to storms, pests and diseases.
[i] Forest Europe, UNECE and FAO, State of Europe’s forests, 2011: status & trends in sustainable forest management in Europe. (Aas, Norway: Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe, Forest Europe, Liaison Unit Oslo, 2011), http://www.twosides.info:8080/content/rsPDF_223.pdf.
[ii] Forest Europe, UNECE and FAO, State of Europe’s forests, 2011.”
Climate change has been very good for forests in most regions of the world.
Image https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04/watch-how-europe-is-greener-now-than-100-years-ago/
Birds populations in Europe are experimenting changes according to landscape changes, with expansion of forests birds and contraction of farm birds. Almost all protected bird species are showing very good rate of recovery of several % year after year, indicating that climate change is not a significant negative factor.
For a great report of the success of European conservation efforts in a very beautifully illustrated guide for the most iconic species, full of scientific data and references, it is very worth seeing:
http://bigfiles.birdlife.cz/ebcc/WildlifeComeback_in_Europe-the_recovery_of_selected_mammal_and_bird_species.pdf
This is the situation in Hungary, which is pretty typical for Europe.
Discounting long distance migrant species whose conservation is an issue because of the conservation situation in Africa and Asia, there is a general increase in bird populations except for farmland species.
Szép, Tibor, et al. “Population trends of common breeding and wintering birds in Hungary, decline of longdistance migrant and farmland birds during 1999–2012.” Ornis Hungarica 20.2 (2012): 13-63.
Birds are on the recovery in Europe despite climate change
You just have no clue and like to spread fear. As you don’t know shit about what you talk you like to accuse others of your own problem.
Nature conservation in Europe is a story of success. Forest biomass is increasing tremendously, protected species are doing much better, ecosystems are more productive thanks to climate change. Most bird species that do not migrate out of Europe are doing much better.
Some species will be negatively affected by climate change. In Nature there is always winners and losers, however with global warming there are more species that benefit than decline. Just the opposite of global cooling, that kills a lot of plants and animals.
The tropics have a much greater biodiversity and biomass than the poles. This gradient has been known for centuries. Global warming increases biodiversity and biomass capacity at mid-high latitudes, while little harm comes because global warming barely affects the tropics.
Most people are completely ignorant of the biological responses to global warming despite all the evidence available to their eyes. You just have to compare a tropical rain forest to a tundra to point which one is more productive.
“Over a 35-year period, the length of forest fire seasons worldwide increased by 18.7 percent due to more rain-free days and hotter temperatures”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150720133631.htm
Yep. You just make shit up as you go. You’re all over the road doc. More birds, fluctuating birds, change the subject blah blah blah
You are the one changing subjects all the time Surv. Now to forest fires.
The truth is that the surface that gets burned every year is getting reduced in most developed countries including the USA and Spain.
In the case of Spain (which is pretty typical for Europe) we have a strong increase of forest biomass together with a strong decrease in the surface burned. Our forests are just booming, and this is for a country that was predicted to suffer the effects of climate change more strongly than most.
Image: forest surface burnt between 1961 and 2014 in hectares (1 hectare = 2.47 acres). For the units, the dot is a comma in US.
The data is similar for the US.
Worth reading for perspective
http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/01/11/the-two-questions-that-determine-your-scientific-literacy/#616a85803a2d
From the Forbes article:
Being aware of the enterprise of science means having a tremendous respect for the people devoting their lives to furthering our understanding of any aspect of the Universe in this fashion, from the instrument builders to the experiment conductors to the data analysts to the theorists working to create an overarching framework.
If some poor ignorant individual doesn’t understand or know how science works I can cut them some slack… but when someone with a PhD in a scientific field consistently disrespects the work of thousands of other scientists from many different fields and areas of research, that tends to piss me off!
Carbon deposit in Congo swamp equal to 20 years of U.S. gas emissions -study
Carbon dioxide is linked to climate change and peatlands, formed from the accumulation of dead plant material, act as “carbon sinks.” Peat does not decompose in a water-logged state but when it dries, the organisms that break down plant material revive and the carbon seeps back into the atmosphere.
It’s very remote but what we’ve seen in south-east Asia is that these once-remote areas have been dried out and converted to oil palm plantations and rice plantations and other forms of industrial agriculture causing a huge release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” Lewis told Reuters.
http://news.trust.org/item/20170111180504-j3bkk/
Why not give it to the Job Creators?
http://www.wildcalifornia.org/blog/publiclands/public-land-giveaway/
(we are so screwed)
The last one:
https://vimeo.com/195356436
This is an interesting article from a column I learnt about by reading comments here.
“This will be the third year in a row we’ve set a new record. It’s time we paid attention.”
“We set a new record low for annual average sea ice extent in the northern hemisphere:”
“In addition, we set a new record low for annual average sea ice extent over the entire globe”
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/global-warmings-record-year/
Hi Survivalist,
We would want to be careful not to make too much out of a single data point either on the low side or the high side, otherwise one might be accused of cherry picking.
What is to make too much of facts, to state them? To extrapolate them?
Hi Survivalist,
My comment is simple. A couple of high or low datapoints by themselves tells us very little about climate. It is the trend of the data over 31 years or more that matters. So I would point to the 31 year trend of the temperature data, not to a few warm years due to and El Nino or a few cool years due to a La Nina.
I am unimpressed by single years of data, whether high or low.
YMMV.
Riders on the storm: Ethiopia bids to become wind capital of Africa
Ethiopia inaugurated one of the continent’s largest wind farms in 2013 — the $290 million, 120-megawatt (MW) Ashedoga plant. This was followed by the even larger 153 MW Adama II facility in 2015.
But wind accounted for just 324 MW of Ethiopia’s total output of 4,180 MW at the end of 2015, with the vast majority coming from hydropower.
This picture is set to change with the government’s second “Growth and Transformation Plan,” which will see total output pass 17,000 MW by 2020, and a vastly increased share from the air.
The government has plans for at least five further wind farms, and potentially many more, aiming to deliver up to 5,200 megawatts from wind power within four years. The cost is officially calculated at $3.1 billion, although other estimates place it over $6 billion.
The target of increasing wind output by more than 1,000 percent within four years has been greeted with skepticism in some quarters, but there are reasons to believe.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/20/africa/ethiopia-wind-power/
Maybe global warming would be a good thing- shake up the food supply chain, and cause a lot of flooding.
Could hasten the decline of the human population- good right?
Afterall, we have proven ourselves cruel and undisciplined, rude and greedy. Unworthy of this wonderful place. Grade F for Stewardship, Grade F for Gratitude, Grade F for Wisdom.
I don’t really understand the CO2 balance of a plant / system like this. At first glance, it seems that since a great deal of captured CO2 goes to enhanced oil recovery, it simply takes a bit longer to enter the atmosphere.
….
The first large scale U.S. “clean coal” facility was declared operational Tuesday — by the large energy firm NRG Energy and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corp.
Their Petra Nova project, not far outside of Houston, captured carbon dioxide from the process of coal combustion for the first time in September, and has now piped 100,000 tons of it from the plant to the West Ranch oil field 80 miles away, where the carbon dioxide is used to force additional oil from the ground. The companies say that the plant can capture over 90 percent of the carbon dioxide released from the equivalent of a 240 megawatt, or million watt, coal unit, which translates into 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide per day or over 1 million tons per year. They’re calling it “the world’s largest post-combustion carbon capture system.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/10/americas-first-clean-coal-plant-is-now-operational-and-another-is-on-the-way/?utm_term=.73edef77d488
CCS might be economically justifiable if there is a ready long term market for the CO2, such as oil field injection. I for one am comfortable that we will be using oil in substantial quantities for another generation or two, so if the oil field guys think their wells will last that long, helped along by the injected CO2, I say go for it, at least a few times, to see how it works out.
But if the game plays out in such a way that we use a third more coal, per “net to the customer” kilowatt hour, which is an old estimate, but probably in the ball park, in order to inject the CO2 just to get rid of it, without any revenue coming in to help pay the cost……….
Well, in that case, it seems perfectly obvious to me, at least, that we will be far better off, in terms of bang for our dollars, to invest those dollars in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and conservation.
My opinion, bottom line, for what it’s worth is that CCS has some potential as a niche industry, but that’s about it, because it looks as if it’s always going to cost a hell of a lot.
The scrubber technology used to separate the CO2 may not be mature, but it’s not in its infancy by any means. The odds of the costs of this tech going a lot lower probably aren’t very good. All the rest of the tech involved, such as pipelines and pumping stations, IS mature, and the costs of this tech will be going UP rather than down, as the costs of the raw materials needed go up due to depletion, etc, and the cost of the energy needed to run the pumps, and manufacture the pipe, etc, continues to rise, due to the depletion of fossil fuels.
Now if the price of electricity goes DOWN, as the result of renewables eating the coal and gas industry’s lunch, then in that case……… Well we won’t really NEED CCS, lol, if we can get wind and solar power from where it’s cheap to produce to where it’s needed.
That’s another big question mark, but doing it is easy as pie, from the engineering pov. The question mark is all about the politics, getting the permits, dealing with the nimby’s, paying for the long distance transmission lines, shooting a few ff industry lobbyists as a precautionary measure ( just joking!) etc.
There might be one exception to this last observation. Some coal or gas fired generation will most likely be needed for quite a long time, a half a century or longer in my estimation. I say this because I think the option of using some coal and gas to provide the backup capacity needed for times when renewables come up short otherwise will be a better all around deal for the country, and the world, than overbuilding renewables by a capacity factor of two or three to solve the bad weather / storage issue.
But THEN, suppose we invest some mega bucks in this industry, and the cost of electricity storage DOES nosedive, which is possible, and even a sure bet, in the opinion of a lot of people who work in the field?
Nothing’s ever simple anymore.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
At some point in the future we may want to try to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but I agree CCS is probably the least efficient way to do this, better to attempt to reduce tropical deforestation and enhance afforestation in temperate areas, possibly more grass fed meat and less tilling on farms would also help sequester more carbon in soil.
I think the option of using some coal and gas to provide the backup capacity needed for times when renewables come up short otherwise will be a better all around deal for the country, and the world, than overbuilding renewables by a capacity factor of two or three to solve the bad weather / storage issue.
The study that proposed such a high capacity factor didn’t test the optimal solution (due to computing constraints): high cost, high efficiency storage for daily variation, and very low cost, low efficiency storage for seasonal storage. The optimal level of overbuilding is likely less than 2x the average.
The very low cost solution for seasonal storage already exists, in the form of underground hydrogen. Very cheap, and existing tech in use right now.
Show me some links about actual proven examples of hydrogen being stored underground at any cost.
I am not an engineer, but I got my basic chemistry, and as a tradesman, I tell you like it is, there ain’t no free lunch involving hydrogen. It has to be STRIPPED out of either water or natural gas, at substantial expense, and the stripping involves not only a monetary expense, it also consumes a substantial amount of energy in the process. It’s an inefficient process, round trip, energetically, if you burn the hydrogen.
Now if fuel cells eventually get to be CHEAP, that would be a new ball game, in terms of using hydrogen as an energy storage medium. because fuel cells can be very efficient, compared to centralized generating plants powered by gas turbines or boilers.
Hydrogen from any source other than natural gas is rather expensive.
Then there’s the not so handy fact that hydrogen molecules when held in a container at high pressure just pass right thru, like air thru cloth, unless you make the container out of something exotic.
It won’t be easy to manage hydrogen at high pressure in large volumes. It is not generally considered practical to mix more than a rather minor percentage in with natural gas, due to it escaping thru the plumbing.
Now I am NOT saying it won’t work, that hydrogen can’t be stored in large quantities , or produced in large quantities.
But I haven’t seen any actual DEMONSTRATIONS proving it will can be cheap. If we ever have enough off peak or off season wind and solar power, then the energy input will be cheap. The rest of the costs ?
ONE problem that I have with environmentalists and the environmental movement is that they tend to get RIGHTEOUS, and want everything absolutely snow white, sort of like hard core Republicans sometimes insist that an unfettered free market is the solution, and hard core Democrats insist that every body should have essentially free health care at tax payer expense.
The problem with that is that SOME people refuse to accept any responsibility for their own actions. Back in my younger days, I used to ride motorcycles, and I rode them hard and fast, recklessly, in fact. I was lucky, I never crashed except at low speeds off the highway where there were no oncoming trucks to make a greasy spot out of my remains. Back then, I would have paid my own bills, or gotten some minimal charity care, and become a cripple, maybe.
Now, if we get what I want, namely a basically tax paid single payer system modeled after current Western European systems, then idiots ( I WAS one then in that respect ) who crash and need a million dollars worth of care will expect ME to pay for it. Privatized pleasure, socialized costs. Maybe we can figure out ways to make idiots pay for their own idiocy, but I’m not holding my breath.
There will always be some emissions of CO2 and other pollutant gases into the atmosphere, and insisting on a religious standard in one case, NO FOSSIL FUEL ELECTRICITY , while my cows continue to fart methane, and we continue to burn coal to manufacture steel, or clear land for agriculture to feed people, is a patently ridiculous way to manage public affairs.
There are legitimate costs, and legitimate benefits, to be considered in respect to virtually ANY business. The costs of using a minor amount of natural gas, or coal if necessary, in order to provide some backup capacity, as opposed to building a LOT more wind and solar farms, etc, is almost for sure trivial, considering the infrastructure already exists. It’s sunk money, we can’t get it back, but that doesn’t mean we have to ABANDON the remaining value of that investment.
The law of diminishing returns tells us we will get less and less bang for every dollar invested in wind and solar farms. The flip side of that law tells us that the juice that can be provided at need, a few days here and there, by existing coal and gas plants is VERY valuable indeed.
Now I could be all wrong, maybe it will be economically feasible to build out renewables to such an extent we CAN safely totally do away with fossil fuel fired electricity.
But my money says doing it is going to cost an arm and a leg, because the last ten percent of capacity might only be needed a week or two in an average year.
Money is fungible , ya see. If we can use an old existing gas fired plant, or even an existing coal fired plant a few days or weeks a year, we will most likely save mega bucks.
THOSE megabucks can be put to better uses, perhaps building more mass transit, or paying for upgrading the HVAC systems of offices, homes, and factories.
My state Highway Dept spent over a million bucks preserving or recreating a pathetic little patch of so called wetland a little while back, a few miles from where I live. It will never amount to a hill of beans, because …… because this just doesn’t really work, the scale is too small. There was never any real wetland ecology there to start with. .
There was a big farm for sale a few miles down the road that DID have fifty acres or more of high quality wetlands, not to mention substantial stands of timber, springs, varied wildlife, etc, that could have been bought for a quarter of a million, and set aside as a permanent little part of the state park system, even if it were never to be “developed ” by adding picnic tables, etc.
But no, we are BY GOD going to preserve every square foot , at outrageous costs, of anything that even LOOKS remotely like a wetland, if the highway department has work to do nearby. This is environmentalism taken to an extreme , environmentalism as RELIGION.
Shutting down every last coal and gas fired plant when using them only a few days here and there, is almost for dead sure a MAJOR waste of money that could be far better spent on OTHER environmental issues.
actual proven examples of hydrogen being stored underground at any cost.
Underground hydrogen storage is the practice of hydrogen storage in underground caverns,[1][2] salt domes and depleted oil/gas fields.[3][4] Large quantities of gaseous hydrogen have been stored in underground caverns by ICI for many years without any difficulties.[5] The storage of large quantities of hydrogen underground in solution-mined salt domes,[6] aquifers[7] or excavated rock caverns or mines can function as grid energy storage[8] which is essential for the hydrogen economy.[9] By using a turboexpander the electricity needs for compressed storage on 200 bar amounts to 2.1% of the energy content.[10]
The Chevron Phillips Clemens Terminal in Texas has stored hydrogen since the 1980s in a solution-mined salt cavern. The cavern roof is about 2,800 feet (850 m) underground. The cavern is a cylinder with a diameter of 160 feet (49 m), a height of 1,000 feet (300 m) and a usable hydrogen capacity of 1,066 million cubic feet (30.2×106 m3), or 2,520 metric tons (2,480 long tons; 2,780 short tons).[11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_hydrogen_storage
I figured you would come up with salt mine storage, because I google for examples before I question the existence of such examples.
Now tell us how many old salt mines are spread here and there at handy spots all over the USA, and the rest of the industrialized world.
In relation to the need, the answer is there are so few there is no hope of storing hydrogen in them in any quantity useful as backup fuel for the grid on a national or world wide basis.
How much do you think it will cost to refurbish the existing pipeline system that distributes natural gas ? You can’t use it for hydrogen, except at rather low concentrations mixed with natural gas.
And the infrastructure needed to separate hydrogen from natural gas itself would have to be built, on a grand scale, which won’t happen for peanuts.
There is a near zero chance we will quit using fire as a source of heat for various purposes. We will be generating CO2 in excess quantities so long as we continue to have an industrial civilization.
I am all for lowering the amount generated as much as possible, as a practical matter.
Maybe an analogy would help.
A lot of people I know, who need to keep an eye on their money, keep an old gas hog car ready to go, even though they use it only occasionally, when their go to car is in the shop, or they need two cars at the same time.
The fact that the backup car is a gas hog doesn’t really matter, because the cost of putting gasoline in it once a month, or once every couple of months, is trivial, in comparison to buying another newer more economical car. They can put the savings thus realized into other projects, such as new windows, or a heat pump, etc.
Keeping the old car, if the money saved by doing so is spent wisely is a bargain. Keeping some of the existing fossil fuel generating infrastructure ready as backup will likewise prove to be more economical than overbuilding wind and solar farms and small scale solar to the point we can totally rely on renewable electricity.
If we spend the savings wisely, we can lower CO2 emissions that way FASTER and probably to a greater extent than we can by going entirely renewable.
ZERO fossil fuel use is a RELIGIOUS goal, as a practical matter.
Mac, just one point. The storage, for oil, gas or hydrogen, is not in old salt mines but salt dome storage. That is hollowed out salt domes created for the specific purpose of storage.
What is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
The salt caverns are created by drilling wells into massive salt domes and injecting them with freshwater to dissolve the salts. The dissolved salt is then pumped back out and either piped several miles offshore or reinjected into disposal wells. This process, called solution mining, creates caverns of very precise dimensions that can hold anywhere from 6 to 35 million barrels of oil. The average cavern can hold 10 million barrels of oil, and at 200 feet (61 meters) wide by 2,000 feet (610 meters) high, it’s big enough to comfortably fit Chicago’s Sears Tower inside [source: DOE].
But sometimes these salt caverns spring a leak. That can happen when they misjudge where the edge of the salt dome is and hollow out the cavern too close to the edge.
Cavern problem prompts sale of stored U.S. oil
The cavern in question – Bayou Choctaw Cavern 20 near Baton Rouge – now sits within 60 feet from the edge of a salt dome, defying federal requirements for a salt barrier of at least 300 feet to contain stored material. Seismic research in 2009 detected the problem and showed that the cavern had leached toward the edge of the salt dome.
Now a lot of people will ask: What is a salt dome?
Columns of salt that intrude through overlying sediment units.
No the oil is not stored at the edges of the salt dome as shown in the above illustration. That illustration shows how oil is trapped in the reservoir rock that is tilted up by the salt dome. Drillers then drill right next to the salt dome and capture the oil.
there ain’t no free lunch involving hydrogen. It has to be STRIPPED out of either water or natural gas, at substantial expense
Of course. The most cost effective use for wind or solar electricity is to replace FF power directly. But, once wind/solar grow past a certain point you’ll have surplus power at certain times, and occasional shortfalls.
As we’ve discussed at other times, it’s normal and cost effective to overbuild generation – the current grid is overbuilt to the tune of about 2.5:1 – about 1100GW of capacity vs 450GW of average generation.
It’s likely to be cost effective to overbuild wind and solar to 150% to 200% of average generation, which means that *most* of the time you’ll have a lot of very, very cheap power. Essentially free power.
And, that power can be put to use electrolyzing water into hydrogen, which can be stored in cheap underground storage and burned in cheap generators. Fuel cells may make sense, but they won’t be necessary, as efficiency really isn’t that important in this application, because the source power will be essentially free.
Hi Nick,
The studies I have seen that assume no technological breakthroughs suggest that overbuilding wind and solar capacity (by about 3 times average load) is the cheapest solution up to about 90% of average load hours. It is possible that using hydrogen, batteries or vehicle to grid (or a combination of all three) will be the cheapest way to supply the missing 10% of total load hours,using natural gas will also work and perhaps be cheaper until natural gas becomes scarce. Coal is a bad idea as it is high carbon for the energy provided, doubtful that coal will be needed.
Dennis,
The study you’re thinking of tested batteries and a “wind-gas” kind of storage in separate scenarios, but didn’t test the optimal combination of the two (due to computing constraints).
It’s a bit of a theoretical question: a 100% renewable grid is a long way off, and by then there will be many more and better solutions. There are a lot of possibilities even now (for just one instance, ammonia could be used instead of hydrogen), and there will be more.
But…3x overbuilding may sound a bit expensive to some, and it’s worth pointing out that it’s unlikely to be necessary.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-oge_us_5876b2f5e4b03c8a02d555ba
The odds imo are that “we ain’t seen nothing yet” when it comes to Trump’s shortcomings.
But otoh, he might actually do something useful. That remains to be seen.
I find that I must admit that he has at least SAID something that virtually everybody knows is true. Big Pharma IS and HAS BEEN getting away with murder ever since I can remember.
There’s a perfectly easy and so far as I can see, entirely workable solution to the cost of researching new drugs. Put the research bill on the federal budget, separating it from manufacturing and distribution costs, and that would take away one major excuse Big Pharma uses to justify the outrageous costs of drugs.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/11/how-big-pharma-can-survive-trump-commentary.html
If I had money in the stock market, I would start looking at any stocks that look like politically handy targets for such attacks, and be ready for pump and dump from the flip side.
There’s probably a handy dandy phrase equivalent to ” pump and dump” to describe the process by which an attack can be made on a company or industry, knocking the price down, creating a buyer’s opportunity, as a political insider, knowing the attack either won’t succeed or will be deliberately abandoned if it gets out of hand and actually does threaten to succeed.
( There is a possibility that such an attack can achieve a life of it’s own, politically, and be hard to stop. The attack on the laws against pot didn’t start as a deliberate plot against drug companies, but they resulted in such successes that the end of pot prohibition is now within sight, it’s no longer over the horizon. The activists who got the ball rolling can move on , if they want, the ball will continue to roll. )
In any case, such an attack will knock down a company’s or an industry’s stock price.
If you KNOW,as an insider, or can guess,as a cynical but savvy observer of the political scene, that the attack will be negotiated away, or abandoned, you can buy the dip, and make some sure thing bucks.
Is there an equivalent short hand term that means the opposite of pump and dump ?
I’m taking bets that he’s impeached ASAP. The intelligence services and the old guard Republicans clearly prefer Pence over Trump.
Ample justification, but are there enough R congress critters who will cross the line and hold hands with the D’s to actually do it??
I don’t think so, as things stand right now.
But let a few GOOD reporters get their hands on the evidence of just one or two obviously indefensible and underhanded deals, post inauguration, on the part of Trump and or his homies, and it could happen.
When that happens, assuming it does, I’m going to be laughing at all the Clinton partisans who got their undies in a bunch defending her secretive ways, and the hiding or destruction of what was obviously either evidence that she DID, or evidence that she DIDN’T, either way, lol, break a lot of laws, or at the least bend them into pretzels, as they rant and rage and foam at the mouth about Trump and HIS more or less equivalent tricks. There’s no doubt he will make use of the same sort of solutions, when the need arises.
But HIS story line won’t be that the deletions are only those about yoga and weddings. He ‘ll have to come up with some new topics, maybe the identities of his wig makers, and the past employment history of some of his most INTIMATE associates, lol.
McCain will lead the charge. The R’s will impeach Trump. He’s not their friend. He’s an outsider. Pence is their man.
Yes, I think McCain will lead the campaign. He’s just been elected to another 6 year term, probably his last, so his career isn’t on the line.
He’s military, so I think he respects the military and its intelligence.
Given the times he grew up in, I can’t see him trusting Russia.
He must be annoyed that he lost the presidency and the clearly lesser man, Trump, won.
And I have read the GOP would much prefer Pence to Trump.
So if McCain can get enough evidence to remove Trump, he’s probably the one best to do it. It could be part of his legacy — to save the country from Trump.
John McCain passes dossier alleging secret Trump-Russia contacts to FBI
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-given-dossier-by-john-mccain-alleging-secret-trump-russia-contacts
McCain is all over Trump. The knives are out for Trump and it’s the R’s leading it. There’s no R loyalty for Trump.
I don’t know what anyone else’s definition of batshit crazy is, but I have some pretty serious concerns about this guy who is a mere two weeks from having access to our nuclear launch codes… Am I just being a little too paranoid about all of this?
Was all of what he said during the campaign something we can now just ignore?
Here’s a 9 minute compilation of clips from the campaign and interviews with him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82BqNNa9BfI
Donald Trump is “really good at war”
I especially worry about him saying that the military will not refuse to obey his orders even if what he orders is illegal or is a crime against humanity. I hope if and when we are faced with such a situation we have people in our military who are true American patriots… Good luck to all of us!
Will American troops and officers obey illegal orders?
At first glance, at large scale, the answer is no, if the orders are clearly illegal and contrary to the spirit of the law. I know some military people, including some officers, but none of high rank.
But at the small scale, there are rotten apples in every truck load, if not every individual barrel, and a determined politician or general with clout enough, meaning he has access to the WH, could easily find a few men and officers willing to play dirty, given time to look for them, and get them together in one place. A small team of specialists with access to normally confidential or secret data can assassinate almost anybody. The only real defense against that sort of assassin is to prevent him from finding out where you will be, at some given time.
And over a period of time, hopefully longer than four years, it’s possible for a strongly entrenched executive branch to gradually put yes men, instead of real men, in positions of great responsibility, and gradually transfer a military establishment loyal to its country and the rule of law into an establishment subject to the rule of men.
As Edward Abbey and others before him have said, a patriot must stand ready to defend his country from his government.
The VAST majority of men and women who wear the uniform of the USA are patriots, and in the event of need, the odds are excellent that at least a few of them will come forward and spill any rotten Trump beans involving criminal misuse the military, except maybe at a very small scale.
Sunshine can put a stop to that sort of crap, if it is brought out into the light soon enough.
“Will American troops and officers obey illegal orders?”
I don’t see much evidence they’ve ever been refused. In fact there seems to be evidence that troops peruse opportunities to do illegal things even if not ordered too.
The troops who launch ICBMs are selected based upon psychological testing. If they get an order to launch then they launch. That’s the drill. They don’t consult legal. They launch. No questions. Having said that I feel that Trump is interested in making money. That means hyping threats that sell F35’s (fighting terrorism doesn’t require F35’s) like war with China. But you don’t actually have the war with China. That’s bad for business. And the F35 is a POS. It’s just a sales gimmick.
https://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/15/who_pays_the_pro_war_pundits
When you don’t see much evidence that they’ve refused it has mostly to do with the fact that they haven’t been asked to do illegal shit. And when the occasional illegal order is disobeyed, you are VERY unlikely to hear about it. Such matters are dealt with internally, for the most part, and while the proceedings aren’t necessarily kept secret, they aren’t deliberately publicized.
Now war IS a thoroughly nasty business, and there will ALWAYS be some things done that aren’t kosher, but I don’t think you are dumb enough to believe that all the people in ANY really large organization always play by the rules.
Sometimes it’s NECESSARY , when the stakes are ALL THE MARBLES, that you as as individual in uniform trust the system to give you a proper order, and execute it, based on the good judgement ( OR POSSIBLE LACK THEREOF, that goes without saying) of your superiors, who are someplace else and in possession of information you don’t have.
If you do believe that the guys who are on the boomer subs , or bunkers near the silos, ought not obey their orders, all I can say is that you are dangerously short of real world sense , and have a BAD case of hate them Republican war mongers, or some such blind spot.
In that case, I refer you to the people of Poland , on the day they woke up to the German invasion, and to the guys at Pearl Harbor on a Sunday morning within the living memory of a LOT of people I know. The NEXT time, it won’t be conventional war, if it involves a REAL attack on any larger, more powerful country.
It WILL be the sort of attack that can only be prevented, hopefully, HOPEFULLY, by the threat of Mutual Assured Destruction, and we sure as hell want somebody in charge of actually launching who WILL launch if ordered to do so.
Now maybe you heard or have read that famous Kerry speech about our troops acting worse than those of Genghis Khan in Vietnam.
Now only a FOOL would deny that our guys did in fact on occasion lose their cool, or panic, and do some awful things, and that in fact a VERY VERY FEW actually did commit atrocities. And only a fool would believe Kerry told the sober truth in that speech, rather than wildly exaggerating, knowing he was throwing red meat to his partisan audience, and that he would never be held to account, because politicians can say damned near anything in a speech, at no risk except to their election or reelection.
But I personally know, or used to know, at one time or another, probably at least a hundred guys who were THERE , on the ground, actually FIGHTING. I ‘m talking about guys I know or knew well enough to routinely discuss without a qualm or second thought things that can get you locked up here and now for the rest of your days, such as dealing meth, or murdering the guy your wife ran off with. Blood kin, close blood kin. Half the people I know in these hills are the salt of the earth, but a good tenth of them would never see daylight again if convicted of ten percent of the crimes they have committed over the years.
Not a single one of my drinking buddies denies that bad shit did happen, but every last one of them sayn it was VERY MUCH the exception to the rule, rather than routine, and none of the lot says he witnessed such behaviors as shooting prisoners, or burning houses for the fun of it.
Perhaps you ought to read a little ORWELL. He’s quite famous for his portrayal of how sovereign states ( countries and governments ) can turn into monsters, but he also said quite a lot of things like this.
“”People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
If you actually know any significant number of soldiers well, you would know the absurdity of thinking they will blindly obey an order to do something that is clearly unlawful. If such an order comes down from the top, it means the executive branch, the WH, knows about it, and approves of it, and the presumption must be that it is justified for some reason not known.
If it originates at a low level, obeying it carries a very real risk of long term imprisonment, depending on what it is, because the higher up levels of leadership DON’T want scandals that harm the military, and can destroy their own careers. So they come down HARD on somebody caught looting or selling stolen supplies, etc.
Your typical man ( or woman) in an American uniform is a morally upright family man or woman, with their son in the Boy Scouts, rather than a knuckle dragger.
Now given time, with the wrong kind of politicians in power, it’s altogether possible for a military that has enormous respect for the law, as do all the modern western country militaries, to be subverted, by way of putting the wrong men in charge, who will in turn seek out OTHER men either incompetent or corrupt or both, and turned into the sort of military that Hitler created in his SS.
IF you read the news, there is no way you can fail to know that SOME uniformed cops commit murders and robberies and allow certain criminal elements to operate freely in exchange for bribes. Do you go round ranting about the cops like you do the military, because a few of them ought to be in jail, rather than jailing people?
Or do you recognize that cops are , by and large, honest, capable, and competent, with ( RELATIVELY) very few scumbags and low lifes wearing the cop uniform? The one big exception to this rule appears to be in cities where low life politicians have been in power for a long time. The police departments in such cities are prone to becoming badly corrupted, over time, because corrupt mayors and city councils put yes men in charge of them. Corruption runs downhill like sewage.
I drink a beer, sometimes two, a lot of afternoons with four or five old Vietnam vets and half a dozen or so guys who aren’t vets at all. We’re all old farts, and get together habitually about two pm at the farm shop that belongs to one of us, within a hundred feet of one of my property lines. This way we get our beer CHEAP, buying it by the case, you see, and the ONLY people there are ones we WANT there. If you want something stronger, that’s ok. Two of them HATE republicans, and the rest don’t pay much attention to politics. All of them hated their time there, and what they had to do. All of them were kids I knew growing up, and three of them are family, not nuclear, but extended. I have ample reason to see these things as I see them.
Other folks mileage WILL vary.
Trump scares me too.
Whether the f35 is or is not a good fighter is irrelevant to this discussion. It for sure has a lot of problems, but if the problems are solved, it also has some awesome strengths, and a lot of pilots who have flown one think that once they have enough seat time, and it’s debugged, they would rather fly it in combat than anything else.
There is not a lot of resistance to committing war crimes or crimes against humanity at the leading edge of the sword. Granted, in times of war it’s better to be reining in stallions than whipping mules, but gratuitous violence after action on the objective is severely psychopathic behaviour.
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/10/the-crimes-of-seal-team-6/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/world/middleeast/25abuse.html
The list of war crimes committed by patriots is endless.
My childhood friends who were in the down and dirty, in the rain and mud in Vietnam, will admit under the right circumstances that they killed some women and children, without KNOWING for sure that they were doing the right thing, in terms of their own survival.
But after seeing a couple of other guys lose their life taking the chance on not killing women and kids , they decided that when in doubt, they would do whatever looked as if doing it would improve the oddds of their leaving alive, instead of a rubber bag.
War is a NASTY business. Nobody who knows anything about it argues otherwise, or that soldiers don’t kill people unnecessarily, in the heat of the moment, or because they are scared, or lack judgement.
And sometimes the supposed atrocities are actually quite reasonable responses to enemy actions and reactions.
My Dad’s generation fought WWII. I have spent many an evening talking about it with guys who were there, and read a lot of books about it.
Some people who may or may not know better think our troops massacred Germans out of spite and hatred, and that happened, but not even in one tenth of the numbers they throw out.
Our guys found out that the way to get Germans to surrender was to give them an ultimatum, surrender or die.
Previous to adopting that tactic, they would fight on and kill as many Yankees as they could, and then when it looked like any further resistance would get THEM killed, THEN they would surrender, AFTER killing a number of our guys.
Our guys on the ground were understandably not much interested in playing the game that way, so they shot quite a few Germans who did surrender. If I had been there, and a couple of my best friends had died in such circumstances, because the Germans held out till the last minute, and then surrendered, I would most likely have shot a couple myself. Maybe more than a couple.
The word got around, and the tactic ( partly inadvertent, partly deliberate policy) worked. Germans learned to surrender early, without killing very many Yankees, if they wanted to live themselves, and go home again.
I have sided with and defended Fernando in this forum, when he posted comments here about Venezuela and Cuba, etc.
“Chávez propped up the Cuban economy with cheap oil, and in return the Cubans sent thousands of doctors, to help start a network of health clinics. After Chávez barely survived a 2002 coup attempt, the Cubans also sent teams of military and intelligence advisers who taught their Venezuelan counterparts how to surveil and disrupt the political opposition Cuban-style, with close monitoring, harassment, and strategic arrests.”
This is from The NEW YORKER, which is not exactly the same sort of outfit as Fox News.
The more I look into it, the more obvious it becomes he tells it like it is, and has been doing so, right along.
I didn’t get the link to the article, which is a long one, even for that august publication, but anybody who wants to read some real , in depth, and balanced reporting about conditions in that unfortunate country will not find a better example in ENGLISH.
Just google Venezuela plus failed state plus New Yorker.
Hello!
There is global warming. The climate changed around 18,000 years ago when the ice sheet melted. Flooded everything in sight.
There is global cooling, glaciers form, winter stays, does not become warmer, Summer is delayed and screeches to a halt. Winter lasts 10,000 years and more! Humans give names to ice sheets, study why they form and why the ice sheets subside. The answer is the earth warms for some reason. Some nut named Milankovitch gave us a hint of what possibly takes place. Add 23.5 to 43, during the winter when the earth is tilted away from the sun, the 43rd parallel is situated at the latitude of the Arctic Circle, 66 degrees some minutes and seconds.
It’s crazy, I know, seems impossible, but it does happen. Amazing.
However, you cannot burn 10,000,000 metric tons of oil and 20,000,000 metric tons of coal each and every day and think that it is not going to influence what is happening in the atmosphere.
The oil and coal burned has to have some direct effect on the air you breathe.
Drive your car into the garage, close the doors and windows, leave the car running and see what happens to the air trapped inside of the garage. Without a fresh air source, the car’s engine will use all of the oxygen and nitrogen, combustion will cease, the engine will stall.
Use up most of the available oxygen in a lake, fish will die, a fish kill takes place. Biological oxygen demand is a real feenominon.
Have a nice day.
About a Trump impeachment.
This is from the viewpoint of a COACH or outside analyst with no skin in the game commenting on the possibility.
The R’s are too numerous for an impeachment effort to succeed, that’s obvious to even a six year old, unless some of them cross the party line, abandoning the home turf, joining with the enemy, in a manner of speaking. That’s tough for a politician who knows damned well he owes his office to the support of his party, which is the case in nearly every case. Sanders is effectively alone, in the Senate, as an independent, that should make my point clear.
But there are some R’s who are from states where independents and D’s are rather numerous, the sort who are often referred to contemptously as RINO , republican in name only. But being sympathetic to more liberal positions and values allows them to win in their states, that’s also obvious. And if they DON’T win……. A RINO is in a far better position than anybody else in the R party to cross the line, because he is not endangering his own position to the same extent as an R from a more conservative state.
So … count up the RINO’s and things look better already for the D’s in terms of a possible impeachment effort. They will be the first to cross over, and there are as many as six of them , depending on who you ask, any given day.
Then consider that while the press really does go after any big time politician with a vengeance, once there’s blood in the water, the more leftish to middle of the road msm seems to be larger and more powerful than the rightish more conservative leaning wing, at least in my personal estimation.
And in my opinion, the leftish to middle press is HIGHLY motivated, above and beyond the usual state of affairs, to go for a big bite of Trump’s ample backside. If they get the ball rolling, the rest of the msm press, the Fox wing , will join in, helping spread the bad news ( for Trumpsters ) while doing so. The Fox wing won’t have any choice in this matter, except to soft pedal it’s coverage. Ratings “trump” everything else in the news biz, lol.
So again things look a little better from the D point of view.
Next, it’s perfectly safe to say that a very substantial part of the D party coalition, and a lot of D office holders, not to mention millions of independent voters, and a SIGNIFICANT number of big R Republicans, so called conservatives, and a few REAL conservatives, would LOVE to see Trump impeached, although the office holders and D party establishment will mostly coyly pretend this is not true, until they deem it safe to say so in publicly that it IS true. This sort of pretense is sop politics.
Bottom line, speaking as an impartial observer, my opinion is that there is a very real chance he will be impeached, if any good evidence justifying impeachment comes to light. ( I’m talking about evidence which cannot be disproven, or or pooh poohed into the public ignoring it, the way Clinton pooh poohed her partisans into giving her a free pass on her email problem. )
I can’t estimate the odds , speaking as an impartial observer, other than to say there is a significant well above zero possibility he WILL be impeached, especially if the D’s win big in the mid term elections.
At the personal level, given that I believe , as some comedian put it , that the very best Trump joke of them all is TRUMP HIMSELF ( although he is NOT to be underestimated) my gut feeling is that the odds are at least fair , and maybe good, that he WILL be impeached.
The odds FOR impeachment will go up if Trump continues to bad mouth the various safety net policies in place now, and really tries to dismantle them, because his supporters are nekkid apes, under their clothes, just like a Harvard professor, and subject like everybody else to falling prey to the cognitive dissonance disease.
A sharp brick upside the head works WONDERS in terms of curing THAT disease. TENS of MILLIONS of Trump voters and supporters are already DEPENDENT on those same safety nets, and will switch sides in a hurry, if they suddenly realize they TRULY ARE at risk of being thrown under the one percenter’s bus.
But Trump’s not stupid, when it comes to reading the political tea leaves, and while he got where he is by badmouthing those policies, he is probably smart enough not to do enough damage to them to seriously endanger his own position and reelection. So my guess is that the rhetoric along that line will be gradually softened, and no truly major changes implemented in this respect. Some corners along these lines will be cut, as many corners as he thinks he can get away with, in my opinion, but again I doubt any wholesale level changes will be implemented , in terms of Medicare, Social Security, etc.
He can probably get away with gutting OCARE, because not very many of his supporters are ON OCARE , or expect to be , except if FORCED onto it. But damned near all of them are expecting to collect their Social Security and Medicare bennies, etc, and a HELL OF A LOT of them are already old, already ON these programs, and a hell of a lot more are old enough they are already seriously thinking about the day they quit work and start collecting rather than PROVIDING tax money.
The thing that really worries me about Trump is that he will have plenty of support from the R controlled legislative branch and thus get away with mayhem on the environmental front. He might also stick his mouth in a place that gets us involved in an unnecessary war, but the odds of that are trivial , in my opinion, compared to the odds that environmental laws and regulations will be rewritten, or ignored.
Clinton and her fans were denied the WH, but there IS a real possibility they will get the last laugh.
I hope my old buddy HB is gradually coming around to the realization that I am NOT a Trumpster.
If he hangs around here, he will find I will be posting plenty of raw red meat PERFECTLY suited to his appetite, lol, unless either Dennis and Ron indicate they want me to back off.
I won’t be having much to say about HRC from here on out, unless somebody posts comments to the effect that Trump stole the election , versus her losing due to running a poor campaign, etc.
Fake/True news- who can tell these days.
“Comey’s family threatened by Russian agents….. unless he played to Putins script”
Putin stole the election, not Trump.
Personally I believe that it’s complete and total bullshit that Putin would actually threaten the family of the head of the FBI. The spy and counterspy and espionage game isn’t played that way, because retaliation is SURE to be SWIFT and SURE. Putin has a family of his own, and many thousands of important underlings in positions where assassinating any one of them would be child’s play for professionals with government backing. It’s more of the same sort of bullshit that losers invent to justify their losses in their own self pitying eyes.
Now as to whether Putin “stole the election” by hacking the D party emails, and releasing them, that’s altogether possible, but so far as I can see, it hasn’t been proven, to MY satisfaction. If the shoe were on the other foot, most of the D partisans, about ninety nine percent of them, would be pooh poohing this story as Republicans crying foul.
They would be saying that while maybe the latter day commies ( they’re still close kin to commies, but something different these days) stole the emails, it’s the R’s own fault they had any emails worth stealing that would result in their losing the election, if publicized.
If the D’s hadn’t been playing dirty, and not only playing dirty, but playing dirty inside the confines of THEIR OWN PARTY PROCESSES,against their own, the release of any stolen emails would have HELPED them win rather than hindering them.
There is very little question in my mind that the Clinton secret server email controversy cost her millions of votes, but she won the popular vote ANYWAY. And there is no question in my mind that the emails hacked from other D party sources cost the D’s MORE millions of votes.
But let’s just pretend for a moment that a couple of true blue American guys n girls working for the New York Times found out about all these less than savory goings on inside the D party, by way of somebody inside the party with access to the emails getting pissed enough to spill the rotten beans. Maybe some body got fired, and wanted to retaliate for instance, or was “cheated” out of promotion that should have been theirs, in their eyes, etc, and called up the modern day equivalent of the guys who broke the Nixon scandals.
Now would the D’s crying foul be crying about the NYT stealing the election? Some would, no doubt, millions would in my opinion.
Nobody except good little boys and girls who have badges to prove they never missed Sunday School for years at a time believes that any political party plays by the rules when it’s convenient and deemed safe to break the rules.
In the real world, you take your chances, whether by going in to work on icy roads, or by bending and breaking the rules. If you have an accident on the way, or you get caught, you pay the price.
The D’s got caught, and a case can be made that they paid the price, but it’s not a very good case in my opinion, because the indisputable fact is that Trump is IN and Clinton is OUT because Trump won and Clinton LOST the three big Rust Belt States that Trump WON.
I personally believe that a STRONG case can be made that Clinton lost those three states, which are normally safe turf for D politicians, not because of the emails, etc, but rather because she fucked up royally in not campaigning like she meant it there, spending her time instead hobnobbing with banksters and corporate execs and various identity issue voters who are important, ethically and morally, but not numerous enough to matter in a presidential election.
The people who USED to work in the Rust Belt who lost their jobs to globalization, or FEAR losing their jobs , well now, THOSE folks ARE numerous enough to matter, in terms of winning and losing their states.
Nose in the air well educated D types INVARIABLY get their pone ( courtesy of Twain) as members of professions or owners of businesses, or workers in businesses, that are not endangered much if at all by globalization. Between THEIR real world worries, and the worries of D’s who actually punch time clocks, or work in offices in industries where EVERYBODY’s job ultimately depends on that time clock being punched, there is a gap as vast as the gap between east and west, a chasm that makes the Grand Canyon look like it was dug by a couple of little boys with Daddy’s shovel in Momma’s new flower bed.
Let’s suppose for a minute you are a white middle class professional, with an eighteen year old daughter, well raised, as you see it, who starts hanging out with black guys or Muslims at college. You will ok with that, but if you say it doesn’t worry you just a little, if she show’s up with a minority or Muslim or other unusual boyfriend, and Grandmother and Grandfather, conventional fifties types of American men and women, are still alive at eighty five, the odds are about ninety nine percent that you are lying if you say it won’t create a serious family issue.
Now let’s suppose she comes home with a guy who is not only a different color, or from a different cultural background , but obviously is not a legit student, and he has way the fuck too much money, and doesn’t know how to talk or act in your house. NOW try pretending you don’t have a problem.
I AM one of the sort of people who works in Michigan, punching a time clock. I KNOW how such people feel about globalization, and about Clinton hobnobbing with the one percenters, not even BOTHERING TO TALK working class talk to us, spending her time ELSEWHERE, walking the walk with the global one percenter elite, collecting a quarter of a million at a pop for trivial little speeches , kept secret, mind you.
For her, and her campaign team, and the party as a whole, to assume that such voters are safely in the bag, when they are either already out of work, or worried sick about being out of work, is about as colossal and STUPID a mistake as could be made.
Times have changed. It still takes people who hold deeply to certain values and political opinions and are loyal to certain party a long time to realize that things have changed, because we don’t LIKE to admit even to ourselves that our friends are taking us for granted, or worse, fucking us over.
But change HAS happened, and even redneck construction guys have smart phones, and are cruising the net, reading the ALTERNATIVE press, during the fifteen minutes they are allowed to put their tools down between seven am and twelve noon to catch their breath. Their daddies got their news from the three big networks, and the local paper, assuming their daddies read anything at all, which is not a safe assumption.
The foot soldiers of both the D and R parties these days don’t trust their parties any more, and they are desperate for change. The working class voters who voted FOR Trump in those three states weren’t so much voting FOR him , as sending an emphatic middle finger message to the Clinton camp.
Clinton had it in the bag, if she had had sense enough to listen to Bill C, who is in my estimation the smartest, most perceptive politician alive today, in terms of having a super sensitive finger on the pulse of the public, and knowing how to connect with them, on a personal basis. He tried to tell her, and her campaign team, that they were campaigning in the WRONG places.
The long time safe D voters who put Trump in the White House would have been willing to overlook the bankster one percenter globalization walk , if she had come home to them, and pretended she still loved them, and swore she would not stray again, but she wasn’t smart enough to do so.
In relation to my seven forty seven am rant, this sort of news is the kind of thing that both D’s and R’s could have counted on not being widely publicized twenty or thirty years ago, making it safe , or at least much safer, to vote against the interests of their constituencies, and in favor of big biz .
The net has changed things, and more people have internet in their pocket these days than used to have daily papers in their homes. This sort of news cannot be kept quiet anymore, and when elections are close…….
““On Wednesday night, amid Senate votes for a bill that brought us one step closer to repealing the Affordable Care Act, a bipartisan group voted against an amendment to that bill proposed by Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar that could have paved the way for cheaper drugs to be imported from Canada. While a surprising number of Republicans (12) voted for the amendment, 13 Democrats voted against it. The amendment was rejected by a 46-52 vote.”
Basically the amendment would have allowed drugs to be imported from Canada, where big pharma sells patented drugs far cheaper to them there furriners than to true blue gen wine ‘Merkins.
And that ain’t right. And anybody with fucking dimes worth of moral integrity will say so loud and clear.
Of course it’s the R party’s fault , to at least twice or three times the extent it’s the D party’s fault that this sorry state of affairs persists, but still ……. thirteen D’s voted against this amendment.
In politics, you don’t so much have friends as you have allies, from the man on the street’s pov, and your allies are not necessarily to be trusted. Ya gotta keep an eye on them, and the internet has changed things, making it possible.
A couple of editors in the office of a big city paper, or a couple of execs at big three tv network no longer control whether the man on the street knows about this sort of sausage making.
I’m sure our Outstanding Leader has a plan.
(I’m trying to get in the swing of things– and North Korea and Cheeto Boy seem a good fit)
Explaining Oil’s Political Clout
There’s an obvious explanation. But it’s false.
Let me start with two obvious points – only one of which is true. The first is that the oil industry has huge political influence. The second is that its clout reflects the industry’s economic heft.
The first point is definitely true. As Political Wire recently observed:
“Nearly every to top level appointment in Trump’s cabinet has ties to the oil and gas industries or is a vocal climate change denier. This includes former Gov. Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy, Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator , Gov. Nikki Haley as U.N. Ambassador, Rep. Ryan Zinke as Secretary of Interior, Wilbur Ross as Secretary of Commerce and Sen. Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. In addition, Gen. Michael Flynn is a former oil industry lobbyist and Larry Kudlow, who is expected to be head of the Council of Economic Advisers, is a longtime climate denier and defender of Koch Industries.”
That’s real clout. Trump’s cabinet is an extreme case, but it’s been obvious for a long time that the GOP and the oil industry were joined at the hip. Just look at the last few GOP platforms and look at how much they have to say about expanding drilling and cutting regulations on the industry.
It’s the second point that’s false. The industry’s political influence far outstrips its economic heft. True, it’s a huge industry, with $220 billion in U.S. revenues in 2014 (before the bottom fell out of oil prices). Exxon, the industry leader, has a current market capitalization of $375 billion. That’s big bucks. But it’s not that big in the scheme of things. That $220 billion in revenue is just a hair over 1% of our $18 trillion economy. And Exxon’s market worth is only about 2/3 of an Apple or a Google.
http://legal-planet.org/2017/01/04/explaining-oils-political-clout/
Mostly agree Nick, but I have a couple different additional ways of looking at it:
1. The fossil fuel industry has been, for the most part, far more profitable than any other single industry, ever. They lose money hand over fist in the bust times, but the big boys are able to ride it out, and usually acquire loads of valuable assets (both above ground and below) at pennies on the dollar. During the busts, much of the losses are absorbed by naive small investors in companies that go bankrupt.
During the boom times, Oil and Gas are usually at the top of the list of most profitable companies, both on a margin percentage basis, and in absolute dollar amounts. They can buy a lot of influence with just a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars of pure net profit.
Apple and Google have large market caps, true, but their margins are usually smaller. I think in terms of absolute dollar profit, tech does not beat Oil and Gas during the boom years.
2. Assets. Tech assets are all intangible and ephemeral. What value would we place on Intel’s chip fab factory that was used to make 8088 processors in the 80’s? Zero. Patents expire, technology advances. But oil in the ground in 1980 was worth a lot of money. The same oil still in the ground today is worth even more.
The total dollar value of all the proved reserves in the world times the $/barrel price??? … VERY large. Add in the unproved, the yet-to-be-discovered, the resources, assume some technology advances to move those resources into reserves and lower the cost of existing reserves… that is an unimaginable amount of money…. quadrillions of dollars? I don’t know for sure. It’s a lot. But it’s value rests entirely on some very very crucial assumptions.
Safe assumptions:
Technology will improve, lowering costs and moving resources into reserves
Discovery will continue to find oil and gas
Not-so-safe assumptions:
A growing market will exist for their products
That market will continue to be extremely inelastic (few substitutes available)
Externalities will continue to be ignored (the cost to the environment is not paid by the producer)
So where does a lobbyist with a quadrillion dollar asset to protect invest her hookers and blow?
She tries to shore up those not-so-safe assumptions:
Attack the substitutes like renewables and electric cars to preserve market inelasticity
Deny and suppress even the possibility that externalities exist (like climate change)
Maybe try to raise the birthrate to ensure a growing market by attacking abortion and contraception??? … (now I sound like a conspiracy theorist…LOL)
One thing that always bothers me when economists talk about the importance of given industries and companies is that they usually fail – in day to day talk- to point out a really important fact.
IF Exon, were to vanish in a puff of smoke taking away all the physical assets of the company, it would make one hell of a difference, even though Exon owns less than two percent of the assets of the oil industry, according to what I have read. Didn’t save the link, should have.
If Microsoft or Apple were to do the same, but leaving behind their existing software, it wouldn’t really make much difference at all, except to the stock holders. The rest of the computer industry would happily step in and fill the void very quickly indeed.
This leads me to wonder just how long, in principle, such behemoths as Apple and Microsoft can dominate their industry or AN industry. I suppose the answer is as long as they stay ahead of the competition in terms of the customer strongly preferring their product.
This leads me to speculate that there may come a time when the computing industry hits a wall in terms of innovation, so that a typical customer can buy an entirely generic machine and generic that will do everything he needs or wants done without paying the MS or Apple price premium. I have owned up before now that I’m the biggest computer klutz in this forum, but it appears to me that the open source movement really does have the potential to eventually slay such Goliaths as Apple and Microsoft.
If I were the HR manager of a huge company, and working up an employment application to be used for every incoming new employee, it would most definitely have a space on it for the potential new employee to indicate if she can demonstrate proficiency in any open source software.
And I would see to it that the word would get around, quietly, that kids coming thru the door who don’t NEED MS or Apple to do their entry level jobs are preferentially hired, everything else equal, if they can use generic computers running open source software.
If what I read is accurate, some entire countries are in the process of freeing themselves of the expense of paying year after year to RENT the software they use for day to day operations, saving megabucks in the process.
But it’s been a while since I have seen any news on this front.
It’s striking that both of these comments are about the fact that Oil & Gas and related industries are far less competitive than Tech industries. That’s partly due to the barriers to entry of new competition caused by physical infrastructure, and partly due to aggressive efforts to prevent competition.
As a result, research shows that people with comparable skills and experience are paid substantially more in the O&G industry. Same is true of finance and health. On the other hand, people in food related industries are paid substantially less for comparable skills.
That’s what so remarkable about Elon Musk: he’s broken into both the car industry and space travel, both of which have had enormous barriers to entry.
At this point I think the transition to EVs is irreversible, but the world would be far better off if it had happened a long time ago – the first hybrid-electric was invented by Porsche in 1904.
BTW, Mac, I would argue that the productivity gains due to deep familiarity with high quality and industry standard software are far more important than the licensing costs. Managers who try to save money on computers, software, office space, etc at the cost of employee productivity are saving pennies and losing dollars. I’ve always stayed with Wintel PCs, even though they’re arguably technically inferior to Macs, due to their being a business standard, the greater availability of application software and the cost of an additional learning curve. OTOH, I use iPhones (and iPads) for the same reasons: the much greater availability of software, and the lack of an additional learning curve (because they were really the first smart phones).
Hi Nick,
It’s good to see you back, I was afraid you might have moved on to some other forum. I don’t agree with you all the time, but you always offer strong arguments, and I read them with care , and learn something frequently.
I have no problem at all agreeing that WHEN you can make good use of them, proprietary hardware and soft ware are EXCELLENT investments.
But it’s perfectly obvious to me that there are literally millions and millions of people using computers for ordinary every day cut and dried tasks that can be handled perfectly well using generic software so as to avoid paying Bill Gates year after year after year…….. forever???
Patents eventually expire, but copyrights are goddamned near immortal.
The guy at the nearest community college who teaches any and or all of the computer classes offered there tells me that once you can run Windows, you can learn to run open source in four to six weeks well enough to do any basic computer task. He’s a big Linux fan himself.
He says there is no doubt at all that the expense of training low level employees to use open source software is trivial compared to the potential savings.
But it won’t happen, because nobody wants to bother with the transition, at least not here in the USA and other rich countries. You are totally correct in saying that because we ARE standardized on Windows and pc’s we will stay on them, due to inertia. Nobody wants to spend a few hours showing a new shipping clerk how to do using open source.
BUT…… At the last place I worked, as a maintenance tech, the SAME four or five guys have been keeping inventory and preparing the same documents that must go with every driver picking up a load……. for over twenty YEARS. I wonder how much Bill Gates has made off of the plant owner just for the four computers these guys use.
Are you acquainted with the Dvorak keyboard? It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, in terms of easy typing, but the various vested interests with skin in the qwerty game made damned sure it never caught on, back in the days when you had to build a typewriter to EITHER the qwerty OR the Dvorak layout.
A O E U I are my left hand home row keys and D H T N S are my right home row. You can do over two thousand common words on the home row alone versus only couple of hundred on the home row using qwerty. You hit mostly right left right left with either hand, hardly any two or three letter one hand strings, hardly any reaching for keys.
A few people DO know about Dvorak, and some of them have clout enough to get it installed as a freebie on just about every desktop Windows machine and a lot of Macs too. All you have to do to use it is turn it on. I have a short cut icon that toggles from Dvorak to qwerty on my tool bar. I was never able to master touch typing using qwerty, in spite of putting hundreds of miserable hours into the effort , but I got my show on the road with Dvorak in a matter of about forty hours, using a free tutorial program.
Expert Dvorak typists can type circles around expert qwerty typists. I’m old, and my fingers are stiff and arthritic, and clubby , but I don’t have any trouble at all doing sixty to seventy words per minute. I’m sure that if I had learned Dvorak back in my younger days, I could have typed well over a hundred words per minute without any conscious effort.
I have asked about eight or ten public school teachers who teach keyboarding and computer classes their opinion of it, and so far, not a one of them had even HEARD of Dvorak.
It’s good to see you back
Thanks. It’s always fun or interesting to debate/banter with you.
you can learn to run open source in four to six weeks well enough to do any basic computer task.
Four to six weeks. If he’s assuming a standard 40 hours, that’s about 200 hours. At $28 per hour (the US median average white collar hourly wage) that’s an investment of $5,600. For me that would be (ahem) a lot more.
Now, I pay $80 per year for 5 licenses for MS-Office. Replacing that appears to give a return on investment of 1.4%, or much less.
He says there is no doubt at all that the expense of training low level employees to use open source software is trivial compared to the potential savings.
You don’t need MS-Office for low level employees: you can buy awfully cheap PCs and just use the basic word processing “accessory” programs that come built in. You don’t need PCs: you can give them the modern equivalent of dumb terminals for simple repetitive tasks. Non professionals often use dedicated software for the task at hand (inventory, communication, payroll, etc., etc) anyway.
Seriously, AFAICT the only justification for investing in alternatives to the Wintel monopoly (as annoying as it is) is the availability of very, very cheap labor. That applies to bored teenagers and a lot of developing countries, but not many people in the US.
Hi Nick,
He means that once you have the abc’s down, which he teaches in his one semester freshman level course, which meets for two hours, twice a week, you could learn the abc’s of open source software in half a semester, in his class room,four hours per week, with the first course as prereq. That’s considerably less than forty hours of freshman level community college student time in class, but add in study and practice time, homework time, and the student probably has to put in around another thirty to forty hours.
The cost of teaching such a course would be trivial, since the labs and computers are there already, and the only real additional expense is for the instructor. He’s not getting paid a hell of a lot, that’s for sure.
I doubt if you would ever argue that you would prefer to hire LESS knowledgeable employees. More knowledge, everything else equal, indicates more initiative, on the part of the potential new employee. Everything else held EQUAL, that’s reason enough alone to take the young woman who can run open source.
The problem is that the community college does not WANT the course taught. I leave it to you as homework to figure out WHY.
HINT… It just might have a little something to do with the awesome size of the bureaucracy that has decided on MS, since that’s all it knows itself, and where it finds political and business support.
The typewriter companies, and the typing teachers establishment sure as hell were never interested in Dvorak, which is way the hell superior to qwerty, and they never will be.
Here and there the odd individual teacher may exhibit a little interest in experimentation, but her head is very quickly hammered down to the level of the go along to get along crowds head.
Mac,
Let’s back up. Are you talking about 1)installing and maintaining open source Operating Systems? or 2) programming applications to run under OS OS’s? or 3) using competitors to Microsoft Office, like OpenOffice/LibreOffice?
Each of the three are distinct skill sets (though 1 and 2 are closer to each other than 3).
“BTW, Mac, I would argue that the productivity gains due to deep familiarity with high quality and industry standard software are far more important than the licensing costs. “
When I see stuff like that I get a little hot under the collar. I have had it up to here with Microsoft’s “high quality and industry standard software”! Their upgrades are more about making their older software obsolete so they can force users into upgrading, than about technical and usability improvements. In some cases the upgrade from one MS software version to another introduces a steeper learning curve than switching to Open Source equivalent would.
Case in point. I am a fairly technical person (geek) and switched to OpenOffice/LibreOffice for my own personal use, when OO first became available. So one day I have to use MS Office and surprise! Everything looks different (“ribbon” interface) and I cant find shit anymore! I have to spend time figuring out how to do stuff I used to be able to do with my eyes closed! In about twenty years of using Open Source software, I can’t recall feeling quite as humiliated by an “upgrade”.
The switch from Windows 7 to 8 was another “biggie”, ostensibly so the interface across all devices with an operating system from MS would be consistent. So we now have a MS desktop OS with an interface that was designed for use with mobile, touch screen devices. In the meantime Windows Phone has been a colossal flop and MS has very little hope of ever regaining a foothold in the phone OS market now dominated by Android but, we still have an interface on our desktops/laptops that should feel very familiar to users of the now defunct Windows Phone OS! Great! AFAIK, Apple has, wisely IMO, not tried to make their desktop OS look and feel like iOS used on their tablets and phones.
However many people are employed by Microsoft, they are a minute fraction of the software developers worldwide. I am a supporter and avid user of open source software and find the idea that everyone who uses a computer has to pay for a MS license to do so, absurd. I actually go out of my way to use an open source alternative, even if I have to miss out on some “bells and whistles” for a while. Open source software has a way of catching up and then surpassing it’s proprietary counterparts! I think there’s a good chance Open Source operating systems might be embraced in developing countries first, then spread to Europe and finally the US.
One note about open source versus proprietary software. I was introduced t the concept of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) through my interest in open source software. Obviously, vendors of software that survive by selling software are threatened by open source, free software and I have seen my fair share of the spreading of FUD in the software arena. I have also seen similar tactics used in relation to the use of vitamins and supplements, including mega-doses of certain vitamins, versus patented prescription drugs. You see the same thing with EVs, in fact any time an entrenched, powerful, wealthy organization is threatened by disruptive competition, I have learned to expect and look out for “FUD”, with respect to whatever threatens it. As a result, the tactics being used by Javier and the troll brigade are eerily familiar to me, with his emphasis on uncertainties and his stressing that “the science is not settled yet”. Way to go! but, I see right through them and their corporate backers.
For an interesting view of browser and OS market share over the past fifteen years, click on the links below.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
Uncertainty is a core issue in science. I understand that “a fairly technical person” doesn’t get that.
Just so you know, I consider myself fairly technical compared to many of the people who comment on this site. On the other hand, I have selected the components and assembled a PC on which I can boot any one of four operating systems, Windows 7, Mac OSX, Linux (Ubuntu) and one you’ve probably never heard of, Haiku. Why did I do it? Maybe just to prove that it can done, maybe I was just bored but, anyway, I thought it was an interesting challenge!
I can design, do the financial analysis and install solar PV systems but, I do not have a degree, not even a BSc. to be honest, so I guess that makes me only “a fairly technical person” in this crowd. To the average man on the street I’m probably an uber-geek. I did get three years higher education in electrical engineering and my engineering training taught me that in a situation of uncertainty, you compensate with a factor of safety, you know, do stuff to eliminate or at least reduce the risk of catastrophic failure.
I understand that
“a fairly technical person”someone lacking engineering training doesn’t get that.A whole lot of ‘technical skills’ are utterly useless in a natural setting. We don’t need Haiku, Hurd or anything else along those lines to live happy, comfortable lives. In fact, they more often than not appear to get in the way of that.
And yet we continue to chase, with blissful glee as if under the spells of hallucinogenics, our ‘assorted demises’, wrapped up in tantalizing ribbons of technology.
Much of our lives, or illusions thereof (zombifications), and illusions of what we think we need, are manufactured for us, and which we buy into, hook, line and sinker.
So I think many of us need to wake up, AlanFromTheIslandboy, before we can’t anymore. We are trapped in a very real waking dream. A Plato’s Cave. A Matrix.
I certainly appreciate the many thankless hours put in by developers of open source software. Their work improves the whole software ecosystem enormously – it provides competition and new ideas and helps keep the monopolies honest and cheap.
I suppose I’m a little like the operator of commercial vehicles who’s waiting for a good electric alternative from a major manufacturer.
I ran my whole (small) IT empire on open source before I retired. Best thing (apart from zero licence costs) was the ability to fix/tweak things in the original product.
I now do all my computing in the cloud using a Chromebook. Fast, cheap, reliable. Best computer I’ve ever owned.
[And, files are backed up locally automatically, in case I’m ever off line.]
I ran my whole (small) IT empire on open source before I retired. Best thing (apart from zero licence costs) was the ability to fix/tweak things in the original product.
Yeah, I’ve done that. But…it takes a lot of time. It’s not efficient. And, if you’re supporting other people, you can never take a vacation!
I now do all my computing in the cloud using a Chromebook
Yes, that’s the modern equivalent of a dumb terminal. Good for basic stuff, not so good for using AutoCad (which isn’t available on Linux either, AFAIK).
~ The FLOSsiety Poem~
A Peak Oil Barrel Exclusive
A little poetry
For a FLOSSiety
Gliese 581g
Or Hyperdemocracy?
‘Which is more easy?’,
Asks Caelan To Nick G?
A major manufacturer that’s also run as a cooperative, within an equitable culture and real, pure democratic government…
A ‘FLOSS society’…
That’s the challenge…
Harder than going to…
Mars, Titan, or maybe even Gliese 581g?
Impossible?
Maybe any technology is impossible, if we are…
And only comes around for a little while…
Not long enough to make any extraterrestrial niches viable…
Or to save our own…
Or maybe this:
http://earthfirstjournal.org/wp-content/themes/monkey-wrenched/images/monkeywrench.png
Sounds like there might be changes afoot, eh? 😉
“the availability of abundant, low-cost energy allowed economists to abandon earlier concerns with the exhaustion of natural resources and represent material life instead as a system of monetary circulation – a circulation that could expand indefinitely without any problem of physical limits. Economics became a science of money ….”
Long on opinion, but short on facts.
The biggest heat sink in the Planet is the oceans that have an average temperature of just 3.9°C.
Polar caps are a feature of Ice Ages. For 90% of the past 540 million years the Earth didn’t have any polar caps.
Polar regions act as a heat sink by radiating heat to space. As the sea surface is almost always warmer than the polar lower troposphere, sea ice acts as an insulator limiting the amount of heat that is lost, specially during the 6 month long winter night. It is actually a negative feedback. The colder the planet the less heat is lost at the poles, and vice versa.
When Arctic sea ice experienced an unusual decline in 2012 due to storms, polar scientists were surprised by the strong rebound in sea ice that took place in 2012-13. With less sea ice the sea surface lost a lot more heat freezing more solidly, while the increased humidity caused more snow.
The poles regulate to the amount of heat flowing through them. If the planet is warmer there is less need for extensive sea ice. During the Holocene Climatic Optimum the Arctic became free of sea ice during summers. In a warmer world, with more CO2 than the previous glacial period, agriculture finally became possible, and was discovered independently seven times in a few thousand years.
Radiating heat to space is heat sinking?
Northen Hemisphere land vs global land and oceans, with trendlines, using the Hadley CRU database which goes back to 1850
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vnh/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:12/plot/crutem4vnh/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/trend
Has anybody seen any analysis as to why there is that recent divergence between the northern hemisphere trend and global over the last few years? And is the trend real – e.g. have the numbers been corrected for the sampling biases introduced by ships engine intake measurements that have been recently noted (would that impact the south more as it has much more water than land compared to the north)?
A few thoughts, too many and my brain gets cobwebs.
I thought a nom de plume of Chuck D. would be a good one to use. As in Charlie Darwin, naturalist non pareil, the God of Natural Selection, Origins of the Species, that nonchalant jazz.
Also, as in ‘chucked’, gone, not extant, extinct. Those things and other stuff.
But I’m not gonna. Somebody else can, like Charles Darwin. Can’t have a Darwinian world without the one and only Charles Darwin and his dog, hms beagle. har
Anybody see the video of the baby orangutan clinging to its mother dying of starvation?
That lazy mother orangutan should go get a job and stop hanging out in the jungles that no longer belong to her.
Humans are there now, she has to get with the times or die.
It’s a Darwinian world and humans are going to make sure it is.
Chuck D has been taken – “Once again, back is the incredible, Rhyme animal, The uncannable D, Public Enemy Number One” – maybe not in the Darwin “… endless forms most beautiful” class, but still pretty good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJdgY3V5gec
Rumble in the jungle: Orangutan slaps a tourist in the face
The only real hope for the rest of the biosphere, and maybe half of the nekkid apes still alive and young today, may be that some really radical outfit creates and releases a bug that is unstoppable, catching, and permanent, in terms of rendering every woman exposed to it sterile after having ONE child. I hate to sound sexist, but after giving the matter due thought, I can’t remember hearing about any men actually having babies, lol.
Somebody would eventually find a cure, or a vaccine that works, but with a little luck, that might take twenty years or so , lol. By then the population would have fallen quite a bit, and likely continue to fall, because with all the resources freed up as the result of having few children around, women could move up in the world a lot faster than they have been in recent times, and that’s pretty fast already, in a lot of places.
With all that extra time and money on their hands the industrial complex would wind up and suck the planet dry of resources. Plus any children that did grow up, would be spoiled, self-interested, domineering brats. Add to that a large number of people moving up into a material rich societal level and both the natural and resource world would not stand a chance. The robots could take care of the old rich people. The poor people would have to fend for themselves.
Any rich person can use resources and pollute a hundred times faster than a rich person.
More Liberal Lies!:
https://twitter.com/DekeArndt/status/819680239706116098
Did you ever wonder why most science deniers are right wing republicans? And why most who accept science are left leaning democrats?
Those were rhetorical questions, I think I already know the answer. Most right wing republicans come from a Fundamentalist Christian background. They are trained almost from birth to deny science. They don’t believe their ancient ancestors were apes. So when you start out denying one science, evolution, it just naturally follows that you will distrust science on other subjects as well, like climate science.
When your go to guy is a Talking Snake who hangs out with the Rib Woman down by the Magical Tree, it can only be The Truth!
We downloaded the Twitter bios for people who follow either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. That ended up being about 8 million tiny 160-character self-portraits. (Curious about how we did this? Read our methodology.)
Mostly the profiles paint a story of identity: parental status, professional and personal accomplishments, hobbies, niche interests, a favorite Bible quote or the type of car someone drives. The bios suggest a divided nation, where a single word, like NASCAR or Buddhist, reveals a person’s politics.
http://data.huffingtonpost.com/2016/we-the-tweeple
Thanks R2D2, that site is a lot of fun. It is just so easy to see the mindset of the average Trump or Clinton supporter.
The word was Christian.
And the term here was Human Rights.
Ron, perhaps the best way to deal with climate change science is think of belief in it as a kind of continuum, just like as all things in life. The truth in this case can be placed between believing in a changing climate that’s due only to human causes and believing in a climate changing that’s due only to natural (non-human) reasons. Again, truth is somewhere between those ends.
The thoughts of what we could be doing to deal with changing climate also lay along this spectrum. On one side are those extremists and activists who desire humanity make massive changes to alter lifestyles. Then the other end is represented by the conspiracy theorists who deny everything.
So taking the middle ground within the spectrums, there are probably some changes mankind can make to cool down the climate. Things like were done in the past to remove pollution, clean up the air, patch the O Zone hole and so on. However, arguing with people telling them they must give up [insert thing or freedom] or life on earth as they know it will end is counterproductive and demeaning. That’s the kind of behavior that leads intelligent people to see gambling our future away on scientific theory as some kind of big scam.
However, arguing with people telling them they must give up [insert thing or freedom] or life on earth as they know it will end is counterproductive and demeaning.
Charles, I have never argued with anyone on this list and told them what they must give up. I really don’t expect anyone to give up anything. I have stated, many times in the past, that people will continue to do exactly what they are doing. People do not hear an argument and change. Well, damn few do anyway.
However I do believe that life on earth as we know it will end. But that is an opinion I gather from looking at the way people are behaving right now, and the full realization that they will not change their behavior. I have stated many times before, on this list and on The Oil Drum, that: People do not hear an argument of coming disaster and act. They do nothing until that disaster hits then they react.
Of course when I say “people” I am speaking of the vast majority of people. There are a few, a very few, that regardless of any early indoctrination, have the intelligence, and perhaps a genetic tendency to doubt, to overcome that early indoctrination.
Again, the post you replied to was not an argument. It was an observation followed by an explanation of why we observe things to be that way. That is, if you had religious bullshit drummed into your head since birth, then you are very likely a right wing republican. But if you had science and reason drummed into your head since birth then you are very likely a left leaning democrat. I know, there are a few exceptions but damn few that’s for sure.
” People do not hear an argument of coming disaster and act. They do nothing until that disaster hits then they react.”
Ron may be a tad on the pessimistic or cynical side , in some respects, but he has an excellent grasp of the way nekkid apes think and behave. In the case of this quote, I agree with him, one hundred percent, with the caveat that there are SOME people, not very many , who really do think about problems that won’t make themselves felt for another generation or longer.
This is why I argue that we should all be praying to the Sky Daddy or Sky Mommie, or rock or snake or waterfall or volcano of our personal choice for a series of PEARL HARBOR WAKE UP BRICKS upside our collective nekkid ape heads.
These bricks need to be nice and sharp , and cause a great deal of pain and bleeding, and they need to arrive at frequent intervals, because it takes a while to pound a hole in a nekkid ape skull large enough to let in a new thought, never mind a whole new perspective.
But the injuries must not be so great as to cripple us so that we CAN’T respond appropriately to the problems they bring to our attention.
I utterly detest the thought of paying taxes to replace waterfront houses, because the risk of replacing them should be on the owners, rather than the taxpayer. There’s not a snowball’s chance on a red hot stove that MY house will be destroyed by a hurricane , and even less chance, if it were so destroyed , for me to get a new house courtesy of the tax payer. Anybody who has money enough to live on the beach has money enough to eat his own losses, so far as I am concerned, because he sure as hell has NO intention of sharing either his house , or his profits from owning it, with ME. If his house gets wiped out in a super storm, it’ll be a socialized loss, if it doesn’t , it will be private profits.
But- having said this, a couple of super storms that wipe out a big stretch of beach this summer, and another next summer, etc, would serve well as wakeup bricks.
A killer heat wave that kills by the thousands would be another.
A fish kill on the grand scale would be another. Maybe somebody sinking a couple of super tankers in a narrow sea lane ……… a blight that wipes out a major staple food crop……… a new highly contagious disease that spreads like the flu, but KILLS reliably, rather than only occasionally , as the flu kills………
It’s going to take a HELL of a lot of pain and blood to get the collective attention of the human race. Nothing less will giterdone.
Until it’s on top of them, or hits them smack upside the head, for two more expressions.
Scientists are perhaps viewed by some as educated and elite members of the establishment. The right wing anti establishment crowd seems to reject such things as education as those are the characteristics of their opponents. Some of them seem to think that the next big breakthrough will come from Joe six pack tinkering in his garage. There has been a real dumbing down of the right wing base lately. Back in Nixon days the Republican base was your rich yacht club crowd and the Dems base was blue collar Union types. Now the Dems shill for a Wall Strreet and Trump is supported by whatever passes for blue collar these days. I heard some well educated professor types tell me they voted for Trump because they thought he’d go to DC and drain the swamp and kick the game board over and scatter the pieces. It’s odd that folks expected Trump to keep his campaign promises.
I feel that Trump represents a crisis cult movement. He offers ethnic mythology (make America great again) and magical thinking. If there’s one thing about folks that buy into ethnic mythology and magical thinking it is this- they ain’t big into the sciences. Many societies and civilizations formed crisis cults during collapse. ISIS is a crisis cult. As was the Nazi Party as it formed after the collapse of the German Empire. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a crisis cult formed during the weakening/collapse of the Qing Dynasty. The Ghost Dance Movement was a crisis cult former after the American cavalry defeated the Plains Indians. Those stone monoliths on Easter island probably have something to do with a crisis cult. Crisis cults are often political groups. Look for features of ethnic mythology and magical thinking. The Tea Party Movement seems to be the serious start to the right wing blue collar types going off the deep end. Right after the financial crash. Trumpism is a crisis cult.
“George Bush brought out the ugly in America (overall true, though I actually do/did give him credit for sometimes minimizing it, too). No rose colored memories of those days, but they’re going to look like summer at Happy Hippie Camp compared to the next few years. ”
-Atrios
Global sea ice records broken (again)
According to NSIDC data, the Global sea ice area record for lowest minimum has just been broken, as shown on this Wipneus graph…
This measure doesn’t tell us all that much about the health of either Arctic or Antarctic regions, if only because the seasons move in opposite directions (nevertheless, the Global sea ice trend is down). It’s just an interesting statistical factoid.
However, climate risk deniers often use the Global sea ice metric as an argument that nothing is wrong and AGW is a hoax. In other words, the recent growth in Antarctic sea ice offsets the loss of Arctic sea ice (it doesn’t), even though the poles are literally worlds apart and are pretty much incomparable (except for the sea ice bit).
Using this logic, it would seem that this new record minimum means there is something wrong with sea ice and AGW isn’t a hoax. I wonder how they will spin this one. If they report it to their loyal readers, that is.
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2017/01/global-sea-ice-records-broken-again.html
If the predictions for next week’s weather (a virtual hurricane over the North Pole for three days) turn out to be correct then the Arctic ice is going to get completely clobbered, and it’s already been going the wrong direction recently anyway.
A 19-station index along the Arctic Ocean observed only 5 below normal days in 2016
http://ak-wx.blogspot.ca/2017/01/arctic-update.html
Meanwhile Billings, Montana hasn’t had a day yet this year that was less than 10 degrees below normal. At this point, the month of January is running 20 degrees below normal. It’s odd, but somehow the climate change enthusiasts always seem to neglect mentioning these kinds of cold events whenever they happen.
000
CXUS55 KBYZ 141055
CF6BIL
PRELIMINARY LOCAL CLIMATOLOGICAL DATA (WS FORM: F-6)
STATION: BILLINGS MT
MONTH: JANUARY
YEAR: 2017
LATITUDE: 45 47 N
LONGITUDE: 108 32 W
TEMPERATURE IN F: :PCPN: SNOW: WIND :SUNSHINE: SKY :PK WND
================================================================================
1 2 3 4 5 6A 6B 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
12Z AVG MX 2MIN
DY MAX MIN AVG DEP HDD CDD WTR SNW DPTH SPD SPD DIR MIN PSBL S-S WX SPD DR
================================================================================
1 18 6 12 -14 53 0 0.04 1.4 8 9.5 21 10 M M 7 19 27 30
2 7 -6 1 -25 64 0 0.08 1.7 10 6.6 16 360 M M 9 1 20 360
3 3 -9 -3 -29 68 0 T T 10 7.1 15 220 M M 5 1 17 220
4 7 -9 -1 -27 66 0 T T 10 11.7 17 300 M M 4 21 220
5 5 -10 -2 -28 67 0 0.00 0.0 9 20.4 32 230 M M 2 8 39 230
6 14 3 9 -17 56 0 0.00 0.0 8 18.1 35 240 M M 6 8 39 230
7 18 -4 7 -19 58 0 T T 8 5.9 15 210 M M 5 16 210
8 14 6 10 -16 55 0 0.00 0.0 8 8.4 17 20 M M 9 17 20
9 21 8 15 -12 50 0 0.06 0.7 7 8.1 23 40 M M 9 1 28 40
10 19 -1 9 -18 56 0 0.06 1.0 8 10.6 25 20 M M 8 189 25 20
11 6 -1 3 -24 62 0 0.06 1.4 10 8.6 24 240 M M 8 18 28 240
12 12 2 7 -20 58 0 0.00 0.0 9 12.9 28 240 M M 3 89 32 240
13 25 8 17 -10 48 0 0.00 0.0 9 18.2 25 230 M M 0 29 230
================================================================================
SM 169 -7 761 0 0.30 6.2 146.1 M 75
================================================================================
AV 13.0 -0.5 11.2 FASTST M M 6 MAX(MPH)
MISC ----> # 35 240 # 39 230
================================================================================
NOTES:
# LAST OF SEVERAL OCCURRENCES
COLUMN 17 PEAK WIND IN M.P.H.
PRELIMINARY LOCAL CLIMATOLOGICAL DATA (WS FORM: F-6) , PAGE 2
STATION: BILLINGS MT
MONTH: JANUARY
YEAR: 2017
LATITUDE: 45 47 N
LONGITUDE: 108 32 W
[TEMPERATURE DATA] [PRECIPITATION DATA] SYMBOLS USED IN COLUMN 16
AVERAGE MONTHLY: 6.2 TOTAL FOR MONTH: 0.30 1 = FOG OR MIST
DPTR FM NORMAL: -20.2 DPTR FM NORMAL: 0.10 2 = FOG REDUCING VISIBILITY
HIGHEST: 25 ON 13 GRTST 24HR 0.12 ON 10-11 TO 1/4 MILE OR LESS
LOWEST: -10 ON 5 3 = THUNDER
SNOW, ICE PELLETS, HAIL 4 = ICE PELLETS
TOTAL MONTH: 6.2 INCHES 5 = HAIL
GRTST 24HR 1.7 ON M 6 = FREEZING RAIN OR DRIZZLE
GRTST DEPTH: 10 ON 11, 4 7 = DUSTSTORM OR SANDSTORM:
VSBY 1/2 MILE OR LESS
8 = SMOKE OR HAZE
[NO. OF DAYS WITH] [WEATHER - DAYS WITH] 9 = BLOWING SNOW
X = TORNADO
MAX 32 OR BELOW: 13 0.01 INCH OR MORE: 5
MAX 90 OR ABOVE: 0 0.10 INCH OR MORE: 0
MIN 32 OR BELOW: 13 0.50 INCH OR MORE: 0
MIN 0 OR BELOW: 7 1.00 INCH OR MORE: 0
[HDD (BASE 65) ]
TOTAL THIS MO. 761 CLEAR (SCALE 0-3) 2
DPTR FM NORMAL 260 PTCLDY (SCALE 4-7) 7
TOTAL FM JUL 1 3447 CLOUDY (SCALE 8-10) 4
DPTR FM NORMAL 125
[CDD (BASE 65) ]
TOTAL THIS MO. 0
DPTR FM NORMAL 0 [PRESSURE DATA]
TOTAL FM JAN 1 0 HIGHEST SLP M ON M
DPTR FM NORMAL 0 LOWEST SLP 29.46 ON 9
[REMARKS]
It’s odd, but somehow the CLIMATE change enthusiasts always seem to neglect mentioning these kinds of cold events whenever they happen.
Oh Jeeez Usss, Whiskey! Tango! Foxtrot! what does the extreme cold WEATHER in Billings Montana for the first half of the first month of 2017 have to do with GLOBAL CLIMATE?
Weather vs. Climate: Crash Course Kids #28.1 – YouTube
Video for difference between climate and weather video▶ 4:33
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbAWny7FV3w
Yes, I get it. Since it mentions warm temperatures, Survivalist’s post is about climate, while my post, mentioning cold temperatures, is about weather.
Pure comedy gold!
One was temps for a year and one was temps for two weeks?
Nope. Both are weather. But alarmists are skewed.
Hi Steven Haner,
Both are weather. 31 year trends for global variables such as land ocean temperature or sea ice extent would be climate related, IMO.
Yessir, it sure got cold for you. Must be making those heating bills skyrocket. Blame the Canadians for sending down that cold air. Edmonton is way north of you and it’s 33F right now. Expected to hit 41F as a high on Wednesday.
Billings Montana area is 41.6 square miles compared to the planet which is 196.9 million square miles. Sorry, cold Billings is lost in the noise and has no measurable effect upon global climate. 🙁
Now you must know you’re not telling the full story here. Edmonton is easily subject to Chinook winds in the middle of winter, and that kind of warming isn’t at all unusual, even with the city’s northern location.
You must have also forgotten to mention that Edmonton, like Billings, has been unusually cold so far this month as well. Edmonton International Airport is reporting an average temperature of -17.9 °C for Jan 1-13. The normal January temperature there is -12.1 °C.
Nope, just went north on google map until I found a city then reported the temps. Just happened to be Edmonton.
So have you looked at the changes in the Jetstream? Lots of us have experienced the arctic chill hitting even far to the south. Yet the average temperature is rising over regions and over the globe.
Next time it hits 20F higher than average, send us a weather update.
Edmonton was is plus 2*C tomorrow. Plus 3 on Monday.
Extreme cold winters fuelled by jet stream and climate change
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161026081551.htm
Steve,
Weather has been unusually cold this January over most of the Northern Hemisphere. Not only North America, but also Europe is in a very cold spell.
January temperatures are going to display an even lower anomaly than December, which means that the post El Niño is completely eliminating all the anomaly increasing that we saw over 2015-16. Looks like back to the hiatus to me.
This is RSS up to December. Anybody betting how low it will get in January?
It’s over, go home:
https://vimeo.com/195356436
It’s the end of It’s The End of The World As We Know It and I Feel Fine!
:.(. .
…Bu-u-u-ut, from what is understood, Franklin Lopez (AKA The Stimulator) is switching gears. I appreciate his other work, and it’s pretty good quality as well.
I agree–
My RCP friends really get defensive.
RCP?
Revolutionary Communist Party:
http://revcom.us
Totally attached to a vanguard, and vertical structure.
Carp Fishing on Valium.
Lovely. You could almost print the site out and tape/staple it to some poles around town…
I should look into something like that for Permaea.
http://nypost.com/2017/01/13/northeast-is-warming-faster-than-the-rest-of-the-world/
What is it that forces an animal, a deer, a bird, to react to an earthquake before it happens?
An instinctive reaction, they know something is not right, they stop what they are doing and move. They hightail it, take flight. They feel what is happening right to the bone.
On the other hand, humans usually continue to do their work, most, not all, are brainwashed, dogmatic. Don’t want to leave their comfort zone. Couch locked. Indoctrination is complete, mission accomplished. They continue to do the same things over and over time and time again. Never change, no hope, the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. No way out.
Corralled, imprisoned, have to shake those chains.
Just a grim existence, a worldwide global gulag awaits us all. George Orwell wrote some of it down on paper.
How can it get any worse?
Here’s one way:
An election causes all of the political brainwashed idiots to go out of their brainwashed skulls, nuts. Conditioned like a Pavlov dog. Good God Almighty, give them all a rattle, the cry babies they still are, brainwashed through and through. They will never grow up, been conditioned to stop using their brains at all and they don’t, if they had one, they would use it. At some point, it will be useless to be a Republican, like now, yesterday, it was useless to be a Democrat. People have to get it through their thick brainwashed skulls that elections are meaningless. Noise, a nuisance. Get over it.
It is not what you are conditioned to believe it is. Period.
It all goes on like it does because people are brainwashed. Conditioned, trained, robots.
Happy now?
But hey, cheer up, things could be worse. So I cheered up and sure enough, things got worse.
“The Global Media-Industrial Complex, representing the fragmented self-consciousness of human civilization, has served simply to allow the most powerful vested interests within the prevailing order to perpetuate themselves and their interests ….”
Yes, and it is operating exactly as it was designed. Should come as no surprise to anyone with at least two firing synapses. To be able to fundamentally change this reality then you need to start by understanding how it is that current operating system came to be. I.E. Who designed it, when it was designed, and why it was designed the way it was. Even though it benefits the wealthy few it is a system that has been running on autopilot for a long time and even those that have benefited from it aren’t really aware of it, nor have they quite grasped the fact that it may have run its course in terms of usefulness.
I keep posting links to the talks by Douglas Rushkof.
‘Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus’.
I recommend reading his book by the same name.
Yep, a railway comes to the village, it grows into a rich town and many villagers are left in the dust. Growth and “progress” always has a downside.
Right now a huge number of people are facing job loss because of increasing internet sales means downsizing in the retail stores. Now that is progress. Moving toward a cyberspace/machine/robotized/computerized world where people are needed less and less. People become superfluous unless they feed the needs of the machine. Hail Great Metropolis.
That’s pretty much how I see it. Today’s machines have eliminated more jobs than they have created. We have an excess global labor force. So labor doesn’t have much leverage anymore. People aren’t needed to keep the wealthy wealthy. Sure, the wealthy will want some people around, but it isn’t like the old days where you needed lots of human labor to grow food and manufacturer goods.
The question is, who the hell really wants a JOB?!
Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept. People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves. They made shoes, plucked chickens, or created value in some way for other people, who then traded or paid for those goods and services.
Douglas Rushkoff
Now if you are arguing that we have an unsustainable global overpopulation problem, then I am in full agreement, but that is a totally different discussion.
Destitute people want jobs. Non-creative people want jobs. They don’t care if they have to feed a machine or wait in line for somebody else to drop/not show; they want a job. To provide a service or create something usually means having backing and funding initially.
So what do we do with the 50 percent or more who cannot get a job in the future? Do we hand them just enough money so they can buy stuff to keep the machines running?
I agree that the idea that people need jobs in order to generate income in order to buy stuff is not the only economic model and may well be outdated when machines can do much of what people used to do.
One way to benefit all of society is to use machines to reduce the amount of “work” people need to do. Having everyone make a decent living working just 20 hours a week.
That doesn’t mean people can’t have meaningful lives. They can raise children, generate art, enjoy nature. etc. Ideally we would be free to do what we want without regard to how much it pays, or even if it pays anything at all.
Speaking at the National Press Club Wednesday, outgoing Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced a new “scientific integrity” policy for an agency recently wracked by concerns about how an administration led by President-elect Donald Trump will treat employees who worked on climate change and other sensitive energy-related issues.
“It’s part of establishing the environment that allows scientists to do their work, to stay with us, and to recruit new people,” Moniz said in announcing the new policy.
Moniz, a physicist, gave an example of his own role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal. “Seven of our laboratories were providing near real-time support to our negotiating positions in a highly technical negotiation,” Moniz said, “and I certainly needed correct answers, stated clearly, as opposed to anything that somebody may have thought was the answer I wanted. That would not be helpful.”
Moniz’s remarks come as the energy department releases a first-ever report on the state of 17 national laboratories, and the secretary offered praise for the scientists who work at them and highlighted extensively the centrality of science to the agency’s mission.
But the new scientific integrity policy also follows a move by the Trump transition team to send the department a questionnaire asking for the names of personnel who had attended meetings related to climate change (although Moniz did not mention this in his remarks).
The new policy states as its “cornerstone” that “all scientists, engineers, or others supported by DOE are free and encouraged to share their scientific findings and views.” That includes talking to the media, giving public talks, and even expressing views on social media (though these can’t be attributed to the government).
The seven-page policy prevents other agency employees, such as political appointees or press officers, from leaning on or torquing scientific findings. “Under no circumstance may anyone, including a public affairs officer, ask or direct any researcher to alter the record of scientific findings or conclusions,” the document states.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/11/on-the-eve-of-trump-obamas-energy-dept-leaves-behind-a-new-scientific-integrity-policy/?utm_term=.15906ef04767
The DOE policy..
https://energy.gov/downloads/department-energy-scientific-integrity-policy
Climate Change Is the World’s Biggest Risk, in 3 Charts
The rise of the machines isn’t the biggest threat to humanity. It’s climate change, extreme weather and other environmental factors.
The World Economic Forum surveyed 750 experts on what the most likely and impactful risks facing humanity are in 2017. In a report released Thursday, they ranked extreme weather as the most likely risk and the second-most impactful, trailing only the use of weapons of mass destruction. Climate change is responsible for driving an increase in the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events, notably heat waves.
Failing to adapt to or mitigate climate change and a host of other climate-connected risks including water and food crises and involuntary migration also rank in the top 10
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-change-worlds-biggest-risk-charts-21050
if the thunder doesn’t get you then the lightening will
Hey I live in Florida the lightning capital of the US. I’ll take getting hit by thunder over getting hit by lightning, any day! 😉
Looks like the “pause” never happened. New NOAA temperature data confirmed.
The upshot, says Hausfather, is that “at least globally, it’s impossible to differentiate the rate of warming over the last say 18 years from the longer term rate of warming, over the last 30 or 50 years…I don’t think we can say any more that we have evidence that global warming has slowed down in any way.”
“There are still questions about why the rate of warming in one decade could be a little slower than the rate of warming in another, or a little faster,” he continues. “But I don’t think we can really say that there was a discernible long-term hiatus.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/04/noaa-challenged-the-global-warming-pause-now-new-research-says-the-agency-was-right/?utm_term=.55632198e5d7
I think they need to take a better look at aerosols, since coal consumption has increased dramatically in the last two decades.
Hiatus deniers. Har har.
Liberal Lies!
(it was cold in the beer cooler at the Monster Truck Rally)
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5FvYtPOYKbY/VLmsJDSagtI/AAAAAAAAAQg/VCbwpHT5aqc/s1600/2014isontrend.png
More like persistence confirmers! Rah! Rah!
Spelled ‘har’ backwards.
har
RAH
ARH
RHA
AHR
HRA
HAR!
Any intelligent discussion? No. Then I take that to mean there is no refuting the data or the results.
Which is why I have pretty much given up on any attempt at any civil exchange of ideas around here. The only good way to respond to the deluge of BS is with derision and ridicule. I think Doug was right, it might be time to move on to other more productive fora where there still might be a genuine intellectual exploration of ideas occurring and where there is still a modicum of civility left.
Cheers!
Anybody who sees ocean acidification as a non-concern is beyond worth talking to. ‘Hey we’ve had mass extinctions before and everything turned out ok. What’s the biggie?’ Javier is pure comedy gold. Someone should take all his responses and parody him in a comedy. All the dialouge is right here just waiting for a screenplay. He’s a laugh. I’ll post this link and we’ll see what bat shit crazy comedy gold he comes up with next. He’s better than Trump and Palin all rolled into one.
https://skepticalscience.com/Ocean-acidification-threatens-entire-marine-food-chains.html
As usual lots of claims but no evidence, Surv. Surely if ocean acidification is such a big problem there should not be difficult at all to collect evidence of the actual damage that it is doing now.
Unless it is of course a future problem like so many with climate scaremongering. Or predicted by computer models that fail their predictions. Too many people with crystal balls playing scientist.
We do have tons of evidence of the damage made by overfishing, tourism and pollution to coral reefs and marine ecosystems. This damage is accumulating. Instead of solving these problems that are clear and present danger we put our money and efforts into some fictional “ocean acidification threat.”
A sapient species we are not. We are eroding and destroying the biodiversity of the biosphere and instead of working to solve that problem that we have well identified its cause and magnitude, we invent a fictional unsolvable problem and throw tons of money and political leverage at it. Homo imprudens should be our name.
we put our money and efforts into some fictional “ocean acidification threat.”
Sorry, but ocean acidification is NOT a fictional threat! It has profound ecological and economical implications. There is good news and bad news from studies like the one mentioned in the link below. But to say it is a some fictional threat is truly beyond the pale.
http://www.washington.edu/news/2017/01/12/ocean-acidification-to-hit-west-coast-dungeness-crab-fishery-new-assessment-shows/
January 12, 2017
Ocean acidification to hit West Coast Dungeness crab fishery, new assessment shows
I’m sure you can cherry pick the article to support whatever you wish and you can complain that a model was used, etc… etc… but that would be obfuscation at its worst.
As usual your article says it “will likely suffer”. So again it is just a promise of bad things to come in the future.
How come ocean acidification has been taking place for at least five decades, and yet we cannot demonstrate any damage? Yet models and some scientists predict is going to be a huge problem in the future with zero evidence.
We know marine ecosystems experiment much bigger swings in pH on a daily basis. Yet no problem.
You guys can criticize me as much as you want for what I say, but it is all blah-blah-blah if you cannot show how five decades of ocean acidification have harmed marine ecosystems.
pH and TCO2 are just too variable with depth and different oceans to demonstrate that a small change is going to be a big problem.
Source: http://funwithkrill.blogspot.com.es/2012/09/seawater-chemistry-north-atlantic-vs.html
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/13/winter-ticks-exact-heavy-toll-new-england-moose/PmpQ3QAHm9C1imAxkzMhDM/story.html
Ticks devastate Maine, N.H. moose populations
The parasites attach themselves to a single moose by the tens of thousands, winter ticks whose adult females can expand to the size of a grape and engorge themselves with up to four milliliters of blood.
They are an insidious pest that is killing an average of 70 percent of moose calves across Maine and New Hampshire, and their deadly work is being aided by warming temperatures and shorter winters that allow the ticks to survive longer, scientists believe.
“The moose are being literally drained of blood. This is about as disgusting as it gets out there,” said Pete Pekins, chairman of the Natural Resources Department at the University of New Hampshire.
Bunch of alarmists biologists, they can’t possibly know for sure that anthropogenic global warming has anything to do with tick survival rates due to shorter winters etc… They just want tax payer funding for their pseudo scientific research so they can live the good life!
Yeah, make America Great again!
Similar to the government and terrorists sucking the money out of us for over a decade now.
Just put long lasting flea and tick collars on the moose population. That should solve that problem. It’s not like we can make Maine colder.
Looks like moving to more tightly closed echo chambers where opposition is censored, Fred. Try Tamino’s Open Mind (Tell me what you brag and tell you what you lack). No skeptics allowed there.
Actually I was thinking of fora where completely different fields of science and technology are discussed, I’m more interested in conversations about things like materials science, nanotechnology, cognitive neuroscience, AI, culture, languages, anthropology, synthetic biology, genomics, marine biology, evolutionary biology, ecosystems, etc…
While I certainly think peak oil and climate change are issues that are going to impact our global civilization in a very big way and need to be addressed. I find the conversation here has gotten rather stale and uninteresting.
I consider myself a citizen of the world and while I live in the US, I know that the US is not the best or the greatest or the most advanced society in the world today by a lot of measures. I think the US is a work in progress with great potential, but right now it seems to have gone seriously off the rails with it’s anti science attitude, anti intellectual leadership and I’m not just talking about the current administration about to come into office.
So I just have a lot of other interests that I would like to explore…as an example, I really like Jack Rickard’s EVTV site. He happens to be a conservative, religious, climate change denier and a Trump supporter to boot but he has been doing great work with solar technology and EVs. There is a lot I can learn from him and others like him.
Cheers!
Fred, it’s possible to ignore the troll and have a discussion.
Yeah, I guess so… see my comment above about ocean acidification to Javier. When someone who claims to have a PhD in molecular biology makes statements that a high school student with a basic understanding of chemistry and biology knows are false, what should be the response? Ignore it?
Should we not be able to have an intelligent discussion about the inherent complexities of non linear dynamic systems?
Our knowledge about such things, while certainly incomplete imperfect and somewhat fuzzy around the edges, is not non existent! We actually know quite a bit. When Joe six pack, poo poos chaos math, biochemistry, and our understanding of the science of marine ecosystems, I just shrug and roll my eyes… there is no basis for an intelligent civil discussion with a scientist and I use that term loosely, who goes out of his or her way to deny science.
I knew some very dumb PhD’s. Like anything there is a wide variation and then there is the long tail.
…and then there is the long tail.
LOL! I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, in that you are referring to a statistical tail and not something else… 😉
Maybe it’s a double tail?
I deny bold statements without supporting evidence, as any scientist should do. Climatology is a pitiful scientific discipline with lots of wishy-washy articles based on computer games. Most of that has zero value yet quite a lot of it is used to support unfounded alarmism.
Thanks for your opinion piece, Javier.
The interpretation of the data was refuted in:
Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown
J.C. Fyfe et al. 2016. Nature Climate Change 6, 224–228.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n3/full/nclimate2938.html
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2938
“Our results support previous findings of a reduced rate of surface warming over the 2001-2014 period – a period in which anthropogenic forcing increased at a relatively constant rate.
Newly identified observational errors (Karl et al., 2015) do not, however negate the existance of a real reduction in the surface warming rate in the early twenty-first century relative to the 1970s-1990s.
This slowdown is evident in time series of GMST and in the global mean temperature of the lower troposphere.”
Hausfather et al., 2017 is a confirmation of Karl et al., 2015. So nothing new and Fyfe et al., 2016 confirmation of the hiatus is still valid. See for example the November 2016 article that Wehappyfew posted here:
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-jan-8-2017/#comment-591836
Farneti, R. (2017). Modelling interdecadal climate variability and the role of the ocean. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 8(1).
And the figure clearly labelled with the recent hiatus.
Wehappyfew is not a hiatus denier as you are.
Still no sign of any intelligent discussion, doubly confirmed now.
ExxonMobil gave big to U.S. Senate panel in charge of Rex Tillerson’s confirmation:
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2017/01/exxonmobil-gave-big-to-us-senate-panel.html
I’m sure we can suspend all causal relationships, and have perfect equanimity.
The odds that XOM gave something to most are all of the Republican Senators on ANY panel or committee is pretty good. XOM’s PAC contributed to 35 Republican Senators and 2 Dems. And just a wholes mess of R Representatives, plus a few Dem’s. XOM paints their $$$ influence with a very broad brush.
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cycle=2016&cmte=C00121368
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/13/not-tired-of-winning-yet/
making america great one ruling at a time??
Yeah, whatever…
http://gas2.org/2016/06/05/job-growth-solar-renewable-energy-sector-fossil-fuels/
Job Growth In Solar And Renewable Energy Sector Outpaces Fossil Fuels
June 5th, 2016 by Steve Hanley
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) based in Dubai has just released a report that says jobs in the solar and renewable energy sectors are increasing faster than employment opportunities in fossil fuel industry for the first time. It says 8.1 million people worldwide had jobs in the clean energy in 2015, up from 7.7 million in 2014, according to Bloomberg.
http://fortune.com/2016/01/12/solar-jobs-boom/
U.S Solar Jobs Boom While Oil, Coal Struggle
Katie Fehrenbacher
Updated: Jan 12, 2016 2:38 PM Eastern
More Americans are now installing solar panels on building rooftops than mining coal or extracting oil and gas, according to a report released Tuesday by the non-profit solar advocacy group The Solar Foundation.
The shift is a profound one that highlights how U.S. clean energy, both solar and wind, have emerged as large and rapidly growing sectors. It also shows how many traditional fossil fuel industries like coal and oil have struggled to expand in recent years.
Citizensclimatelobby.org
There are more jobs in renewable energy than in oil, gas, and coal combined
By Heather Smith on May 31, 2016
Share Tweet
A word to the burly coal miners who complained that cutting coal out of our energy mix would take away their jobs when the Climate Action Plan was up for debate. Jobs in solar energy now outnumber jobs in coal mining and the oil and gas industry added together, says a new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
Solar may be taking away old jobs, but it’s offering new ones. That’s especially true for women. IRENA found that the renewable energy sector employs more women than oil, gas, and coal. In fact, the percentage of women working in solar is rising — up from 19 percent in 2013 to 24 percent of the estimated 209,000 solar jobs in the United States. That’s not yet great — women hold 47 percent of the jobs in our economy. But it’s still a higher percentage than in the bro-topia that is the conventional energy industry.
Now that is making America Great! More women working with clean solar and fewer men mining coal!
Cheers!
Hi Fred,
I know you get it already, but I wanted to say hi anyway, and this reply is in a good spot considering your comment.
If the issue is handled correctly, from the point of view of WINNING, we can convince people by the tens of millions who VOTE R that renewable energy is right down their philosophical and political alley, in terms of what it really means to be a conservative, versus being a REPUBLICAN.
It’s one of the most unfortunate accidents of history ( a foregone accident, arguably, but nevertheless ) that environmental issues have gotten to be ALMOST inextricably entangled with the right left cultural war raging in this country.When it comes down to science and facts versus preferences and tribal loyalties in a culture war, preferences and tribal loyalties trump facts nearly every time.
( EVENTUALLY the facts make themselves known in ways obvious even to the most prejudiced of observers , but WAITING for Miami to be under water to prove the case is maybe not the best strategy, lol. )
The various special interests that control the Republican party establishment have managed to hijack the word ” conservative” for cynical and hypocritical partisan purposes. The word “liberal” was once a respectable word too, but the R’s managed to trash it as well, for the same reason.This strategy has worked out quite well for the Koch brothers types who REALLY control R party politics.
Working class people go along, because the R party is either WITH the ordinary working class in this country, depending on the particular issue, or PRETENDS to be with the working class, on the remaining issues.
It doesn’t matter much what we say about people who take Jesus seriously either because they really do believe, or because they are cynics using Jesus as a tool. ( My firm opinion is that only a few members of the Amway owing De Vos family REALLY do believe in Heaven and Hell, etc)
It doesn’t matter much because the audience here is small, and VERY few serious believers ever follow a forum such as this one anyway.
But when we participate in OTHER forums, ESPECIALLY in forums where lots of working class and R types are to be found as participants or lurkers, we are more apt to succeed in making converts to the renewable energy cause if we stick to talking about personal control of our personal affairs, small and local government versus big government when appropriate, small business versus BIG business, the kind that’s too big for its britches, the wisdom of making long term investments, even if the near term return is modest, versus spending the money on instant gratification aka flashy new cars, etc, .
Depending on the forum, the audience, and the particular topic on any particular day, it can be advantageous to point out that if there were no oil in Sand Country, we would n’t have any reason to be spending mega bucks on military interventions in that part of the world, and that we could be spending that money here,on things that would do us a lot more good.
It can be good to point out, depending on the audience, that a hell of a large part of the threat to our privacy and civil liberties arises from the generally accepted facts that most of the terrorist threat arises from Sand Country, and that if we weren’t OVER THERE, the terrorists wouldn’t be OVER HERE. From there it follows that our government( MORE at the behest of the R wing than the D wing, but both wings are responsible ) wouldn’t have any justification and political cover for monitoring our phone calls, etc. This argument can be VERY effective with both libertarian left leaning types, and so called conservative R leaning types that are distrustful of government in general.
I pray to all the Sky Daddies, Sky Mommies, Volcanoes, Snakes, Waterfalls, and various assorted other entities, real or imagined, that these comments will be taken to heart, because after a lifetime of studying people , I am absolutely convinced that this is THE BEST route, and the ONLY PRACTICAL ROUTE, that will allow us as environmentalists in general, and renewable energy advocates in particular, to get thru to folks on the other side of the culture war.
I live right in there with countless people who are Trump type voters, and I can say with certainty that damned few of them are opposed to renewable energy for any reason at all having to do with renewable energy in and of itself. They are opposed because the OTHER SIDE in the cultural war is in favor, mostly, but also because they believe it’s too expensive and too unreliable.
We can win the numbers argument, easily enough, but frontal assaults on the cultural front don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of success, except by waiting for the older folks to die off, and younger ones to take their place, and even then, success is not assured.
We have get around the R party’s cultural Maginot Line by detouring , by bypassing it, and come in from the sides and the rear, using the arguments that DO resonate with R voters and middle of the roaders who are opposed to or ambivalent about renewable energy.
It’s one of the most unfortunate accidents of history ( a foregone accident, arguably, but nevertheless ) that environmental issues have gotten to be ALMOST inextricably entangled with the right left cultural war raging in this country.
It’s not an accident. Protecting the profitability of resource extraction in general, and fossil fuels in particular, is central to the Koch strategy, and the Kochs are central to the long-term war on government in general, and environmental regs in particular.
Why do we think the Kochs are attacking government?? Because only government can regulate resources and fossil fuels.
Why do Trump voters hate government? Because they’ve been told to do so, by a long term, calculated propaganda campaign intended to cripple government.
In order to protect fossil fuels…
lol America hasn’t been Great for a while now and that’s not changing anytime soon. Maybe let’s invade Grenada again. It’ll probably go our way and would make us feel like winners. Haven’t won a war since Panama. We’re due.
Try Nauru. 21 sq km and no army. Can be done in a couple hours. They’ll probably be happy about it.
And that was against a ex CIA employee of the month!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/02/aussie-chief-scientist-renewable-energy-push-hurts-the-poor/
Fuck the poor!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcLAJbvwNQU
Fossil fuels are GREAT for the poor, google the costs of kerosene use in Africa or India.
file under, how does one lose all credibility :
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/14/noaa-jumps-the-shark-in-tampa-bay/
Regaeding the link to WUWT, we call that guy Wondering Willis in climate science circles.
If we want some laughs we refer to Willis’s naive “scientific” interpretations.
Hi TT,
The guy you linked to seems to be comfortable with the assumption ( fact to those of us who understand the science) that sea level is rising , and that it will rise about six inches to a foot, AT THE CURRENT rate of rise, within a century.
Now of course the scientific community believes the RATE if rise is very likely to go up, and so the six inches to a foot over the next century is in the opinion of the scientific community more apt to be two or three feet.
Now here’s a little something for you to think about, in case you have any skin in Florida.
“In flat, low-lying Florida, “for each foot of sea level rise, the shoreline moves inland 300 feet,” Englander told the AIA-Florida last summer.
“The beach doesn’t matter. One foot could be a mile inland on tidal rivers.”
Get it? If you own property in Florida, within one hundred fifty feet of the shore line, it will be under water by the end of this century at the latest. It might be underwater within the next twenty or thirty years. GOING BY DATA posted by YOUR guy, the one YOU linked to.
“No less an organization that the American Institute of Architects’ Florida-Caribbean chapter has adopted a policy that its members should plan for 3 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. Many scientists believe the 3-foot estimate is inadequate; the rise could be 6 feet or more.”
Sea level has been rising for over 100 years.
These two pictures of Miami are separated by over 50 years of sea level rise.
Based on the available evidence I would say it won’t.
Really?
http://images1.miaminewtimes.com/imager/u/blog/8013352/barge_side.jpg
http://images1.miaminewtimes.com/imager/u/blog/8013356/barge_angle_1_.jpg
Sometimes it doesn’t add up?
It doesn’t add up unless you can tell apart sea level rise from subsidence.
“it is impossible to discern a sea level rise from land subsidence.
Land subsidence may result from
– sediment loading or
– sediment compaction following groundwater extraction.”
https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/GRD/GPS/Projects/CB/SUBSIDENCE/subsidence.html
Karegar, M. A., Dixon, T. H., & Engelhart, S. E. (2016). Subsidence along the Atlantic Coast of North America: Insights from GPS and late Holocene relative sea level data. Geophysical Research Letters, 43(7), 3126-3133.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL068015/full
Don’t believe your lying eyes!
No. Don’t believe in narratives that convert complex problems into easy ones.
Very little can be done to fix subsidence problems. Drastic CO2 cuts aren’t going to change atmospheric levels any time soon even if done globally, when clearly there is no global interest. So both subsidence and sea level rise are going to continue.
But it is a very slow problem. Past 50 years have not seriously affected Florida, so no reason to think the next decades will. It is an engineering problem. Most of Netherlands should be under water, so we know how to deal with this problem since the 16th century.
To say that shutting down the carbon economy is going to help Florida stay above water is a lie. If it negatively affects the economy it will have the opposite effect.
With sea level rising in Florida at 3.3 mm per year over the 1990 to 2008 period, I think that the couple of spots shown on the map with zero and 1 mm per year subsidence in northern Florida don’t mean much.
Will we want to save Miami as it goes underwater?
This is not Amsterdam, or even Venice.
Not any major institutions or centers of finance or science.
New York- sure, and San Francisco will be defended if we are not in total collapse.
Houston? Close call.
The whole Eastern Seaboard is not looking good.
“The 1981 nourishment of Miami Beach
Meanwhile, over here, we appear to have a Javier-nourishment project going on…
Hey, guys, how goes the project?
Thanks Caelan, I suspected that is what happened.
Truth be told it is much worse than that…
We are at the point we have to import our sand form places like the Bahamas. I’ve lived in South Florida for almost a quarter of a century now and I don’t need graphs to tell me seas have been rising. I see it with my own eyes on a daily basis. Beach erosion is a constant and despite denier rhetoric the city of Miami is spending millions and millions of dollars to mitigate its effects.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/17/13660014/miami-beach-sand-erosion-nourishment-climate-change
Through the wall of hotels that line its shore is the city’s central draw: the wide, white stretch of Miami Beach’s beach.
The beach is the centerpiece of the city’s promise of escape — escape from cold winters or college classes or family, where you can drink goblets of bright green liquor and cruise down Ocean Drive in a rented tangerine Lamborghini before retiring to the warm sand. To the casual observer, the beach may look like the only natural bit of the city, a fringe of shore reaching out from under the glass and pastel skyline. But this would be false: the beach is every bit as artificial as the towers and turquoise pools. For years the sea has been eating away at the shore, and the city has spent millions of dollars pumping up sand from the seafloor to replace it, only to have it wash away again. Every handful of sand on Miami Beach was placed there by someone.
That sand is washing away ever faster. The sea around Miami is rising a third of an inch a year, and it’s accelerating. The region is far from alone in its predicament, or in its response to an eroding coast:
I admit I will feel a bit of schadenfreude when Trump Towers sinks beneath the encroaching seas.
I don’t think you can stop or even delay sea level rise with a beach. You are going to need dykes for that.
LOL! Javier, you haven’t spent much time on South Beach, have you? If you had you would at least know the difference between ‘Dykes’ and ‘Dikes’
First, dikes to mitigate sea level rise in Miami, just won’t work, it ain’t the Netherlands.
Second, the dykes of South Beach would make sure you knew the difference between them, and dikes. You probably wouldn’t want to get on their bad sides…
I know English isn’t your first language but I just couldn’t resist!
Edit: Your typo is even funnier given that South Beach is noted for its large LGBT community. Most of them are staunch advocates for climate change mitigation and they are very aware of sea level rise on SoBe!
They will do what they have to and can but, eventually, many cities may have to be abandoned, but may prove to be great future ‘reefs’…
On how they came to be, we will see intelligent fish giving Powerfish presentations in one of their many office cubicles… with special payed guest appearances by Javierfish on how the oceans may be cooling, but how it’s nothing to worry about, since, for example, there will be plenty of space in and around the equator and in the crushing (but cozy, says Javierfish) ocean depths, such as in and around hydrothermal vents…
The Ocean Congress
Is there not more plastic trash in the oceans than fish? Something I read not too long ago.
Humans seem to be destroying the earth at an ever increasing pace and at their own peril.
It was fun while it lasted.
Unfortunately, the costs of this rampant alarmism will be huge, as coastal communities will struggle to comply with a meaninglessly exaggerated risk.
The only good news is that sea level pays no attention to what NOAA and the rest of the activist-ridden government and non-government organizations say … and sooner or later, this will become too evident for even the most ardent climate activist to ignore.
Hey TT you should come down and talk to the mayor of Miami. He must be one of those alarmists!
Yup, WUWT and its chief “scientist” Wondering Willis is quite a site to behold.
Warning, this link is not to a SOUND BITE, it’s for those willing to put a few minutes into understanding what is really driving politics in the state of Michigan, other than economic trends beyond the power of individuals to do anything about them.
Understanding requires a healthy measure of NUANCE, if you want to understand well enough to fight back.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/betsy-dick-devos-family-amway-michigan-politics-religion-214631
Oh god! Amway… The MLM pyramid scheme brought to you by the Christian right.
I have more respect for the ethics and business practices of Bernie Madoff…
U.S. Class action settlement[edit]
On November 3, 2010, Amway announced that it had agreed to pay $56 million – $34 million in cash and $22 million in products – to settle a class action that had been filed in Federal District Court in California in 2007.[8] The class action, which had been brought against Quixtar and several of its top-level distributors, alleged fraud, racketeering, and that the defendants operated as an illegal pyramid scheme.
Source Wikipedia
The story is pretty much the same in many other countries around the world. These people are scum!
Come now, lets not put scum in the same category.
Scum at least has a biophysical function.
Nekkid apes can be counted on to believe what they WANT to believe, whether they have working brains, or don’t.
But some of us, left, right, or indifferent are willing to look at evidence that cannot be easily cherry picked, and change their minds , if necessary, to accomodate facts previously unknown to them.
This link has a chart in it that shows graphically what the record book shows for about the last century for the USA. Record new daily high temperatures have been outpacing new daily lows by a substantial margin.
http://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/graphics/record-highs-vs-record-lows
And anybody who knows even a LITTLE ( which is about all I know about the field of statistics ) knows that as more high records are set, the number of new ones that WILL be set, in following years, will decline, UNLESS there’s a TREND toward higher daily highs. The trend is perfectly obvious. Even as the record book has been filling up with new daily high records, year after year, the number of new ones being set is holding steady, or increasing.
And about record WARM daily lows:
“Examining all of the record low temperatures yields another dramatic result — since the first of the year, the number of all-time warm low-temperature records is outpacing the corresponding cold ones by a ratio of more than 6-to-1. This emphasizes that warmer nights are a major factor in the overall warming trend, not just hotter days.”
Is there a handy well recognized acronym or phrase used to indicate a new daily record WARMER low for the day?
“Nekkid apes can be counted on to believe what they WANT to believe, whether they have working brains, or don’t.”
Which raises the questions:
Did the Russians interfere with the American election ?
Did OFM “believe what he WANTED to believe” on his reason of hate for HRC ? or was it influenced by fake news Russian style ?
Was OFM continued ranting again HRC prior to the election the type of smear tactic that supported Russian influance ?
Ron Patterson says:
10/13/2016 AT 6:56 PM
Mac, excuse me if I doubt that your sarcasm light is really on.
But please excuse me if I am wrong. So to remove all doubt whatsoever, please just tell us where you stand on this election. Are you for Trump or Clinton? Just tell us where you stand and then we can go from there.
Oldfarmermac says:
10/13/2016 AT 9:56 PM
Hi Ron,
Since I am convinced that the overall the environmental issue is so important that it trumps all other issues combined, I want a D in the WH.
I don’t want to trust big government any farther than is absolutely necessary
I worked a lot of hours for Sanders, who is an HONORABLE man, and one I believe you could vote for without a second thought.
Personally I will be voting a third party or writing in somebody”
“HuntingtonBeach says:
01/06/2017 AT 7:16 PM
Oh Mr. Boris EmailServer aka KGB,
Just admit who you work for and Vladimir signs your checks. Because it will be even more embarrassing for yourself. If after all that speed typing, the world found out you did it pro bono.
There are over 90 colleges in Michigan. The top 50 alone have over 500,000 students. Had those on the Left, who refused to support Bernie’s call for them to vote for Clinton, hadn’t spread every fake news story against her that they could get from Republican and Russian sites (remember the fake REPORT about her ” immanent indictment ” weeks before the election) in order to get them to NOT vote for her, we wouldn’t be confronted with TRUMPUTlN and Republican rule. Same is true for Wisconsin, where there’s over 300,000 students and Pennsylvania, where there’s over 300 colleges, with the top 25 alone accounting for 600,000 students. We warned those who refused to support Bernie’s plea to vote for Clinton about what would happen if TRUMPUTlN won and they called us ” fear mongers ” using ‘negative motivation’ to get people to vote for Clinton when they were using every negative and C R 0 0 K E D means to get people NOT to vote for her.
Hi there R2 D2
You’re apparently about as blind to Clinton’s obvious flaws as HB, and as unwilling to face up to why she lost.
Those college guys and girls you think of as republican and Trump stooges are the future of the Democratic party. They ‘re not stupid and they’re not ignorant.
They recognized Clinton for what she is, or was, and wanted someone better, rather than a shopworn old hypocrite Republican lite “business as usual with the banksters and globalists” person as their nominee.
Two of the hardest of the hard core young feminists I ever met, lesbians and long term lovers, made no secret of the fact that they would spit on H Clinton for staying with Bill C. These are not exactly what you would call Trumpster girls, no siree. They’re very free with this opinion. They see her as one of the biggest hypocrites alive.
Now perhaps you think that that sort of character judgement is irrevelant. I don’t. Millions of other people were remembering Clinton flipflopping on issues of principle, and in their own minds, thinking of her going with whatever positions she thought would be winners. That sort of voter didn’t trust her not to flip again, once in office.
Other people are entitled to their own opinion, as you are entitled to yours,
Maybe a couple of million other women felt the same way to the extent they just stayed home , maybe???? Of course a hard core partisan wouldn’t hold it against Clinton that she was in business in her younger days with a bunch of people who went to jail, etc. And a hard core partisan would just conveniently forget about the email system, and Cattle Gate , or cynically accuse the opposition of bitching about such little indiscretions, while forgetting WHO COMMITTED THEM.
Apparently you are another one of the kind who don’t believe in principled opposition to YOUR preferred candidate. There wouldn’t have been any Sanders uprising , and near upset, if Clinton had been true to the D party’s roots. Her octopus like control of the party machinery scared EVERY OTHER DEMOCRAT, except Sanders from even making a run.
That little fact in and of itself ought to be enough to enable any body with a working brain and a reasonable grasp of American politics that Clinton is or was an old time machine style politician.Any examination of her donors shows where her REAL loyalties lie.
The kids understand this stuff. They wanted CHANGE. The people who voted for Trump wanted change. The COUNTRY wanted change.
Trump was smart enough to run on change, and Clinton was dumb enough to run on business as usual. She had the example of Bill’s campaigns to go by, and Obama’s as well.
She blew it.
I don’t know of a single one college student , personally, that voted for Trump, or ever had anything nice to say about him, among the ones I met at Sanders meetings.
I’m trying to get it across the way a visiting coach brought in to explain to a baseball team why it lost a game, and how WIN the next game, by doing things differently, on the practice field , and DURING the next game.
Clinton OWNED your team, and put herself in as the candidate, the same way the family that pays for the ball field and the uniforms insists on putting THEIR kid on the ball team, no matter if he can hit, or run, or throw the ball. . She was a lousy candidate, and she lost. Get used to it. She not only lost, she lost to the biggest clown in the history of American politics, for at least as far back as………. maybe ALL the way back.
FOR FIVE YEARS ! Trump called president OBAMA an illegitimate president” and stirred up conservative HATE with baseless, lies! I think Trump should get no Less, Republicans are Hypocrites of the first order.
Besides Trump is a Russian that really makes him illegitimate president”
Just wait its going to come out. And when it does shame on those who voted for him.
Your either with us or against us. Why do you support Conrad Trump ?
You mean you think President Pussy Grabber is illegitimate just because his pappy was an orangutan?
Hi HB,
I ‘m glad to see you’re back, but I had some dim hopes that maybe you were doing a little quiet thinking. I see your’re your same old self. I’m not surprised.
PLEASE don’t forget to include some REALLY nasty insults, or you won’t be helping me make my case.
Which raises the questions:
“Did the Russians interfere with the American election ?”
There is a very real possibility they were involved in hacking D emails, for sure, but other than that, I haven’t seen much in the way of indications that they did other things. They are certainly capable of such tricks. On the other hand, I personally have a great deal of respect for Assange, and until I see some actual proof otherwise, I plan on standing by him. I have remarked before, somewhere along the line, that this sort of thing is right down Putin’s alley.
If you want to talk about any OTHER possible interference in the election on the part of the Russians, I ‘m ready to listen.
YOU may have forgotten just HOW LITTLE the Obama justice department has done to prosecute banksters that committed fraud on the industrial scale, that meeting at the airport, the countless lies ( FOR CONVENIENCE I put in my secret server HRC) told, etc, so while you are free to make up your mind NOW, I will wait a while yet.
You see every thing thru your partisan glasses that selectively let thru what you want to see, and block everything else. To the best of my memory, you have never posted a single comment indicating that you support any initiative of the R party, or respect any of the members of the R coalition, proving your partisanship beyond a shadow of a doubt.
I on the other hand post numerous and lengthy comments in favor of a number of major D policy positions, and only a couple in favor of R party policies, proving I am NOT a partisan.
In the meantime, I will point out that our own government has been up to the same general sort of tricks pretty much forever as the Russians stand accused of. I will not be at all surprised if they are eventually proven guilty, but I want to see the evidence.
The more important question is whether the people of this country, the VOTERS, people like us, have the right to know about what really goes on behind closed doors.
I believe we have a RIGHT TO KNOW. I believe that the Clinton machine’s right to privacy in respect to its octopus like grip on the D party machinery , and the dirty tricks it pulled, is subservient to, less important, than the right of the people of this country to know what was going on.
Without whistleblowers and reporters, etc, we would wind up living in a police state sooner, rather than later. The FAR MORE IMPORTANT thing in my estimation, is that we KNOW more about Clinton as a person, and a politician, etc, compared to WHO broke the email scandal.
“Did OFM “believe what he WANTED to believe” on his reason of hate for HRC ? or was it influenced by fake news Russian style ?”
First off, I learned many many years ago that is a complete waste of my own time and energy, and detrimental to my own peace of mind and happiness , to HATE anybody, but I really doubt you are perceptive enough to understand this sort of thing.
Clinton is a very mixed bag. I admire her for some things she has stood up for, and have contempt – REAL contempt- for her in respect to a lot of things I know to be incontestably true, regarding her personal and political history. I don’t hate her, and but neither do I respect her, because her flaws outweigh her good points using MY scales. If you want to go into her history with me starting with Cattle Gate, we can do so ONE little scandal after another, such as the fact that a lot of her early business associates wound up in jail. Wanna talk about it? I’m ready when you are.
I don’t hate ANYBODY. I understand that the kid on a street corner , black or white, or yellow in a few instances, selling meth is just part of reality, like the polio virus, or rats, or butterflys or a mountain stream or the birds I spent an hour watching this past afternoon. Hating him would be a waste of my time and energy. Hating a former lover would be a waste of my time and energy.
“Was OFM continued ranting again HRC prior to the election the type of smear tactic that supported Russian influance ?”
HEY LOSER, I worked for the D candidate that had the best polling numbers by a mile, against Trump, you chump. You have the mindset of a small child, and apparently always will, because you are simply unable to deal with the reality that Clinton managed to lose to the biggest joke in the history of American politics way the hell back farther than I can remember.
I don’t remember which comedian said it first, but any way, paraphrased, The biggest and best Trump joke of all is Trump himself.
Your candidate managed to LOSE to this colossal joke of a madman, and you hang around feeling sorry for yourself, and trying to blame it on me. Well , you bragged about being just one fucking little guy, talking the environmental talk, which means D talk, and vice versa, while walking the R walk in the oil biz. And you justify yourself by saying you’re just one little guy.
Well, so am I, I’m just one little guy.
I always said Trump would be worse, and that he MIGHT win. He proved me right on the winning, and he looks like he is making every possible effort to prove me right about his being worse.
“Ron Patterson says:
10/13/2016 AT 6:56 PM
Mac, excuse me if I doubt that your sarcasm light is really on.”
“But please excuse me if I am wrong. So to remove all doubt whatsoever, please just tell us where you stand on this election. Are you for Trump or Clinton? Just tell us where you stand and then we can go from there.”
I wanted Sanders in the WH, after that, second choice, Clinton, but I could not have brought myself to vote for Clinton for ANY REASON AT ALL, considering what I think of her, other than TO VOTE AGAINST TRUMP. Virginia was considered rock solid safe for Clinton, so I was free to vote green. I don’t actually know whether I would have held my nose and voted for her, or just stayed home, if Virginia had been in doubt. I posted remarks that I would stay home and cry for my country if it came down to Clinton versus Trump before it was clear it WOULD be Clinton versus Trump.
I have great respect for Ron P both as a person, from what I know about him, and as the founder of this forum, so all I will say about him , otherwise , is that he is a self identified hard core D partisan, and that’s all, other than to say I don’t think he thinks I’m a Trumpster, at least not NOW.
Maybe he did then. I don’t know. We share a lot of values and beliefs and opinions, but I ‘m more prone to changing my mind. A few years back we were both pretty much hard core doomers, but recently I have become cautiously optimistic that we CAN turn the corner on peak resources without industrial civilization crashing and burning. etc. His recent comments indicate he still thinks our ultimate destination is hell on earth. Maybe he’s right, maybe I’m right.
Hard core partisans ALWAYS have a very tough time accepting any message or messenger that contradicts their personal beliefs or threatens their comfort zone.
Oldfarmermac says:
10/13/2016 AT 9:56 PM
Hi Ron,
Since I am convinced that the overall the environmental issue is so important that it trumps all other issues combined, I want a D in the WH.
I don’t want to trust big government any farther than is absolutely necessary
I worked a lot of hours for Sanders, who is an HONORABLE man, and one I believe you could vote for without a second thought.
Personally I will be voting a third party or writing in somebody”
I voted Green.
“HuntingtonBeach says:
01/06/2017 AT 7:16 PM
Oh Mr. Boris EmailServer aka KGB,
Just admit who you work for and Vladimir signs your checks. Because it will be even more embarrassing for yourself. If after all that speed typing, the world found out you did it pro bono.
You’re still the sort of nincompoop true believing foot soldier that is not only willing but eager to shoot any messenger who brings bad news, or any person who points out the flaws in your position.
I was a hard core conservative for YEARS, back when the old USSR and the USA were engaged in the COLD WAR, in very large part because so many big D Democrats, and liberal / leftish leaning intellectuals had their heads stuck so far up their asses that they defended and applauded the commies, while painting this country as the bad guys, for a combination of two basic reasons, one ,partisanship, and two, stupidity.
SOMEHOW, they managed to over look the fact that the Iron Curtain existed to keep the people behind it, BEHIND IT, to keep them from escaping. It takes a really colossally stupid person to overlook that sort of thing, or a scumbag cynic, or maybe a true believing foot soldier, to justify for partisan reasons, by saying it was there because they were afraid of us.
You are currently displaying the same sort of stupidity in refusing to acknowledge that Clinton blew it, partly as the result of coming into the election with the worst negatives of any candidate in living memory, OTHER THAN THE CLOWN she managed to lose to, and partly because she was arrogant , and assembled a “YES” guy and girl campaign team.
She would have won, if she hadn’t been so arrogant, and so lacking in judgement, as to diss the people in the three big Rust Belt states, despite all her other mistakes, by taking them for granted, and not showing up there to make at least a token few appearances to reassure the people of those states that she at least knew they EXIST.
She didn’t have any trouble finding time time to make a number of speeches to her homie elite one percenter friends from WALL STREET, at a quarter million or so a pop. The people who voted for Trump , in order to send a message by voting AGAINST her tend to remember such things while standing in line at the unemployment office.
She would have won if she had had brains enough to run as a real Democrat, rather than a Republican clone, on economic matters.
And the people who supported her, blindly, refusing to recognize her flaws as a candidate, nominated her. She lost, and THEY lost.
It’s your doofus blind heroine worship, as much as anything else, that put Trump in the WH.
MacBoris EmailServer aka KGB,
Your continued conservative hate rants showed you “believe what he WANTED to believe”without facts and watch to much Fox(Fake) News.
MacBoris says below- “But if you actually FOLLOW Fox News, and can think a little, you will soon understand what is actually happening”
BTW, how is that special lube working out of you ? Make sure you don’t get any on yourself.
Scrub is dead right, twelve volts is plenty for all the lighting circuits in a car. Old headlights fade, you get new ones, they burn out anyway, eventually. The cost of replacing them is trivial in terms of the big picture.
And twelve volts is plenty for an automobile starter motor, which normally only operates a few seconds at a time.
But when you start building electric motors and generators that need to operate continuously for any length of time, while dealing with substantial amounts of power, going up on the voltage has very powerful effect in terms of being able to reduce the size of conductors,field windings, armatures, etc.
Twelve volts is on the way out, in terms of hybrid and pure electric drive trains. Too many amps flowing to get the job done. Up the voltage four times, you can theoretically cut the amps in circuit by a factor of four, while still dealing with the same amount of power. But practical considerations but in , and the advantage is not quite as good as the theory, for instance it takes fewer battery cells in series to produce lower voltages, and more cells means more expense and more risk of premature battery failure.
There has been a movement afoot in the auto industry to go to 48 volts for a LONG time, but it has never taken off until now for various reasons. One was that it costs a lot more to make nice tight connections that aren’t subject to arcing and failure, and you have to connect a LOT of wires in a car. You have to use better quality hardware with 48 volts from the front bumper to the back in order to prevent shorts, but it’s lighter, and uses less copper.
You’re still reduced to personal insults, because you don’t HAVE any arguments worth mentioning, loser. Porch doggie.
So go on off someplace in a corner, and play with yourself. Every time you make such a remark, you improve the odds for me of achieving my goal, but your’re such a mental midget you can’t understand that, so please remember to do so at least a couple of times a week.
It’s ok, because the Sanders camp is on it’s way UP and into power, whereas the Clinton camp is on it’s way OUT, to a substantial extent already.
Here’s some factual material that makes my case. ONE HELL of a lot of life long big D Democrats were never satisfied with Clinton in the first place, and as time goes on, more will be joining the Sanders inspired movement back to the roots of the D party.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/democrats-clinton-sanders-dnc-233648
It’s necessary for both factions to talk unity, but in reality it’s a dog fight for control of the heart and soul of the party, and Sanders supporters have won a lot of victories already, considering that Clinton more or less owned the party machinery outright, and all the BIG MONEY donors, the one percenter bankster elite , are were on Clinton’s team. Some of them may be thinking about abandoning a sunk ship by now, though, or just going over to Trump.
Would you like me to work up a list of the Clinton team members who are GONE now, in terms of holding party positions, mostly for dirty work on Clinton’s behalf?
And the Sanders camp is winning elections too, not a whole lot yet, but hopefully more soon.
Earth to MacBoris, Sanders is not a Democrat. Your HRC HATE runs deep.
“Sanders joins Democratic leadership, isn’t officially a Democrat. He says he’ll continue to identify as an independent, despite running for president as a Democrat. Bernie Sanders was just appointed to the Senate Democratic leadership team. But the Vermont senator still isn’t becoming an official member of the party.Nov 16, 2016”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/independent-bernie-sanders-democratic-leadership-231486
Later LubeMaster
This link is one of the single most informative ones I have found, and the data in it is easily accessible to anybody who is graphically literate, meaning most business oriented types who studied any sort of business at the community college level or higher can interpret the graphs and drawings for himself.
http://www.climatesignals.org/data/record-high-temps-vs-record-low-temps
Hansen did a paper on this a few years ago.
The idea of 20:1 to 50:1 ratios implies a completely new climate.
You had me going Gail, that is until I read the very last two paragraphs in your article:
2017: The Year When the World Economy Starts Coming Apart
The one thing that gives me hope is the fact that there seems to be some type of a guiding supernatural force behind the whole system that allows so much growth. Some would say that this supernatural force is “only” the laws of physics (and biology and chemistry). To me, the fact that so many structures can self-organize and grow is miraculous, and perhaps evidence of a guiding force behind the whole universe.
I don’t know precisely what is next, but it seems quite possible that there is a longer-term plan for humans that we are not aware of. Some of the religions of the world may have insights on what this plan might be. It is even possible that there may be divine intervention of some type that allows a change in the path that we seem to be on today.
I am open to the argument that there might be some kind of “universal mind” out there. I will listen to your argument, both pro and con. But I am not buying any of that “divine intervention” crap. The destruction of our biosphere, our natural world, and all wild species, is and will be due to to the evolutionary success of one particular species of great ape. Believing God will jump in and save our ass at the last moment is just wishful thinking.
I do fully agree with Gail that we are headed toward a lower energy per capita lifestyle.
Oh get real. Gail is not talking about just lower energy lifestyles, she is talking total collapse. That is unless, as she believes, God will step in at the last minute and fix everything. You know, just as he has done in the past during those plagues, famines and holocausts that he didn’t let happen.
Man will behave in the future just as he has behaved in the past. And so will his god.
And I agree with Gail on total collapse, but not on the divine intervention part. No divine intervention is going to save our ass.
So, you have some issues with the Psychopathic Sky Daddy?
I believe a very primitive “religion” in tribal societies did bring genetic fitness, through group cohesion and possibly some health care benefits.
Currently “Religion” is a parasitic meme set using humans as hosts for its own replication.
I had the opportunity to see her once, live, and even ask her a couple of questions, after she finished her presentation, which was not at all impressive. I’ve seen better a LOT of times in a high school classroom.
Her presentation was canned, no more and no less than a canned sales talk. My personal opinion is that she is not really very bright, or much of a deep thinker, but rather somebody that discovered she has a message that can be sold, and is smart enough to stick to it, so she can continue to sell it.
I don’t know WHAT she actually believes, but we all know that lots of people believe one thing, but say other things, if money is involved.
My opinion is that ninety percent plus of the regulars who comment here are considerably smarter than she is, and have a better grasp of what is likely to come about in the future.
None of this is to deny that she does get it, in some respects, even if she is blind in others. I agree with a number of her talking points, or used too, assuming she hasn’t changed her tune, but I decided a LONG time ago she would never have anything new to say, so I haven’t looked at her stuff in recent years.
” My personal opinion is that she is not really very bright, or much of a deep thinker, but rather somebody that discovered she has a message that can be sold, and is smart enough to stick to it, so she can continue to sell it. ”
That is a very pricise and still polite discription of Gail.
While I’m less privy to Gail’s work than others, from what I have read, it seems to suggest a fair degree of lucidity.
She also seems to have a relatively-large following on her site, at least insofar as what the commentary might suggest– perhaps among the most I’ve seen on any peak oil, societal-decline-related site.
As for taking one’s material on the road/in the spotlight, while mileage may vary, that doesn’t necessarily speak conclusively of the person’s grasp of their subject-matter or their intelligence.
Lastly, I’ve read more than a few times the idea that ‘everyone is a genius’. Unsure what exactly is meant by that, but maybe it means that we can excel exceptionally at some things, and totally bomb at others.
Frames/Snapshots, such as of bombs, are not the full reel of course…
She also seems to have a relatively-large following on her site, at least insofar as what the commentary might suggest– perhaps among the most I’ve seen on any peak oil, societal-decline-related site.
Yeah, at one time so did James Warren Jones, though his Kool Aid was a little stronger…
Believe it or not, I actually stopped in the middle of adding something like, ‘not that I am necessarily suggesting anything by that’, maybe because I figured it would be obvious and no one would bother with it.
I visit her site regularly.
She seems to be a host for a nasty religious parasitic meme that is using her to replicate.
That said, some good analysis is occasionally available, if one stays in a small enough box.
Are you detecting any sarcasm or charity on her part?
Why write the above post? “I haven’t looked at her stuff in recent years”
Because I am vain enough to think that maybe some people who read this forum are interested in my opinion, lol.
I followed her for a long time at the old TOD site, but in recent years it has become obvious from hearing what she is saying these days is that it’s the same old stuff she was saying back then.
Some people accomodate themselves to new facts, as they become available. Some don’t. Ten years ago, I was extremely pessimistic that renewable energy would ever be cheap enough to scale up sufficiently to support an industrial civilization. I have changed my mind on this truly major point, and now believe renewables are technically doable and that with a little luck, we can manage a successful transition.
When people stick with their old beliefs in spite of overwhelming evidence they are outdated and probably wrong, I point it out.
Maybe I’m wrong. Has she changed her tune ? If so, I will apologize.
“Because I am vain enough to think”
И идиот также
I used to read everything I could find written by ESCAPEES from the old USSR.
They related many stories of figuring out what the truth is, or was, by reading between the lines of the state controlled press, sorting thru what they could read there, and culling out what they believed were actual facts, rather than spin.
Then they reassembled these culled facts into a new narrative, one they believed resulted in their coming up with good to excellent comprehension of the TRUTH.
If you really want to know what’s going on, and what is likely to come to pass in the foreseeable future, it pays to read all sides, at least occasionally.
Most of the regulars here think of Fox News as Faux News, with justification, depending on the subject matter. But if you actually FOLLOW Fox News, and can think a little, you will soon understand what is actually happening, and what is actually true, by sorting out the countless actual easily verifiable facts published there.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/01/15/china-europe-drive-shift-to-electric-cars-as-u-s-lags.html
This article is pretty much diametrically opposed to the usual political stance of Fox as an institution. You don’t even have to sort and reassemble the facts to come up with your own interpretation.
The writing is on the wall for the ICE , as far as the personal automobile is concerned, and it’s in the process of being written there for light trucks as well.
The executives at all the major car companies in my estimation have had some of their staff put summaries of the prospects medium to long term for the oil industry, and there is hardly any doubt in my mind at all that they understand that with a growing population, and growing prosperity for the most part, especially in lesser developed countries, and a declining one time gift of nature endowment of crude in the ground, that they know gasoline and diesel fuel will eventually be prohibitively expensive, except for the elite, meaning the end of the mass produced automobile…….. UNLESS they transition to electric models.
And we have handed them a superb fig leaf, in terms of allowing them to pretend there will always be plenty of oil…… otherwise car sales would crash IMMEDIATELY, lol.
They can just blame it all on being forced to go the electric route because whale loving tree huggers are FORCING them to, lol.
Suggestion– lose the tee vee.
The more you watch, the less you know.
And find sources from outside the US– where “balanced” is not a issue–
It seems sometimes that TV is far more important to people than other people are. Don’t get in the way of someone’s favorite show or sporting event.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/04/ways-screens-are-ruining-your-familys-life_n_3860927.html
If that “Lose the TV ” was aimed at me, you can take it to the bank that I average less than an hour a month watching tv, usually at some friend’s house at a social event, such as a Kentucky Derby party, etc. I gave up the idiot box back in the early eighties or there about, in favor of reading an additional three or four hours after my work day was over, rather than staring at the box. It’s a habit I have maintained ever since. I own one and it gets a lot of channels.
I haven’t turned it on within the last year, but I get a package deal on internet, local phone, etc so it doesn’t cost me anything. Every once in a while I have guests who bring kids who want to watch tv.
But I do read some stuff from Fox on the net. It pays to read both sides of the press, if you really want to know the score.
Most of the people in this forum detest Fox, and I don’t put in any faith in Fox myself.
Now do you understand WHY I posted this link? I did it to illustrate that even as the “official” line at Fox is conventional R style business as usual, you can even learn the truth about some topics by just reading such factual material as Fox DOES publish.
Anybody with the slightest ability to think for himself can read that link, and draw his own conclusions. Electric cars are the future, regardless of what Fox talking heads may say in other segments, or which politicians the corporate entity supports.
The DENIER of the truth is publishing all the facts necessary for a person who can THINK a little to figure out the truth for himself.
OFM-
I had a gig in Atlanta in the summer and Fall, and being in a hotel, tee vee was available.
Quite disturbing, but insightful, as the bewildered herd knows something is wrong, but hasn’t the critical thinking and education to have a clue as to what that is.
Tee Vee made it worse, but it didn’t matter what you were watching.
Not only for EV’s. 12V Electrical systems are not very useful. Excessive I squared R loss @ 12V is a killer. Only 1/16 of power losses @ 48V. Ever notice headlight fade on a 10 year old car as the copper wire oxidizes?
http://embedded-computing.com/guest-blogs/the-rise-of-48v-mild-hybrid-vehicles/
Yair . . .
“Ever notice headlight fade on a 10 year old car as the copper wire oxidizes?”
Not so much it was a problem . . . you are talking theoretical bullshit about 12V not very useful.
It is standard, relatively inexpensive and, working as I did with heavy equipment, I can tell you mixed fleets of 24 and 48V was an expensive but necessary pain in the arse.
At one stage we had a fleet of 4×4 Nissan service trucks that were 24V start and 12V everything else . . . 12 V works just fine in the real world.
Cheers.
Out with the old?
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2017/01/old-sea-ice-is-vanishing-in-thawing.html
This may have been posted before – but it’s relevant to at least half the stuff on this post from a quick scan through:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-online-secrets/201409/internet-trolls-are-narcissists-psychopaths-and-sadists
“Let’s start by getting our definitions straight: An Internet troll is someone who comes into a discussion and posts comments designed to upset or disrupt the conversation. Often, in fact, it seems like there is no real purpose behind their comments except to upset everyone else involved. Trolls will lie, exaggerate, and offend to get a response. ”
“They conducted two online studies with over 1,200 people, giving personality tests to each subject along with a survey about their Internet commenting behavior. They were looking for evidence that linked trolling with the “Dark Tetrad” of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism. ”
“The next time you encounter a troll online, remember: These trolls are some truly difficult people.
It is your suffering that brings them pleasure, so the best thing you can do is ignore them. “
Thanks for the link George. Recommended.
I guess if it wasn’t premeditated, it’s OK?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-would-legalize-accidentally-driving-into-and-killing-protesters_us_587a3dabe4b0e58057ff1ebc?j1shw9gh95vkl9dx6r
I am hoping there is a God and His Divine Intervention saves all of our sorry. wretched, helpless souls.
We can all pray that He can and does.
I won’t stand one leg and hold my breath.
If it turns out that God is Allah, Christians are in for a lot of hurt in the afterlife.
The fact that there are so many religions makes it impossible that any one of them is correct. Religion is part of human nature, not of divine nature. Believing that God is going to save you is only positive if you believe He also requires all your effort before helping.
>> The fact that there are so many religions makes it impossible that any one of them is correct. <<
For atheists, this is true. Conservative believers believe their religion is right and the others are wrong. And hence, for them, your statement is wrong.
Liberal believers might be a little more ecumenical, more nuanced, and say that all religions have a grain of truth.
Maybe it's not religion that's the problem, it's conservatives?
The Barnum and Baily circus will be ending but will the Big Top show actually close? The one now covering the land surface and wandering the oceans.
How much more entertaining can we get? All the insane stuff we do to keep the hamster wheel of death turning must be a real winner on the GOD-TV network. What will they do next? Can they make it or take the whole thing down with them?
What a show we must be putting on for all the gods. We better keep up the entertainment or else just a slight push on an asteroid will end the season.
So go out and do something fantastically stupid today. The rest of us will thank you.
Why else give a funny looking mostly hairless weak creature a mind that thinks it’s desires are to be imprinted on the world, yet not make it quite smart enough to do it right? Comedy, drama, soap opera, adventure, disaster; romance; horror; it’s all there for EZ viewing.
sarc?
The Larsen C Ice shelf in Antarctica is primed to shed an area of more than 5000 sq. km following further substantial rift growth. After a few months of steady, incremental advance since the last event, the rift grew suddenly by a further 18 km during the second half of December 2016. Only a final 20 km of ice now connects an iceberg one quarter the size of Wales to its parent ice shelf.
http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/larsen-c-ice-shelf-poised-to-calve/
The NASA data conspiracy theory and the cold sun
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/01/the-nasa-data-conspiracy-theory-and-the-cold-sun/
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/democrats-clinton-sanders-dnc-233648
I hope HB sees this, and adds another childish personal insult after his usual fashion. The more he does that, the more likely it is that anybody who reads my political analysis will give it some serious thought, and maybe next time around, if he’s a D, he will vote in the primaries for a candidate without a baggage train a mile long, a candidate that ENTERED the race with just about the worst polling negatives of any D presidential candidate ever.
BAD MOVE.
BAD move, because running such a candidate. you are running an unnecessary risk of LOSING.
There are enough Sanders supporters inside the D party working like hell to take over that there is a very real possibility they WILL gain control of the party.
I guess all the big D guys in English suits and Italian shoes and the big D women in Prada will have to switch parties, when that happens, because otherwise they might have to sit next to a working guy at the DNC , and they would of course die of embarrassment if they were subjected to such an indignity.
How about it HB, porch doggie?
You will roll over on your back and pee yourself if you ever off your porch and out into the street, the first time you encounter a real dog. If you like, I will post a list of people who worked for Clinton who had to give up their party positions because they were caught playing dirty tricks for her, lol.
And I might just go ahead and post a list of Sanders supporters who have won elections while campaigning as such, rather than as Clinton fans.
In the meantime, I encourage any body interested to sign up for THE NEW YORKER email news , which is free. They are running a non stop stream of legitimate criticisms of Trump.
I just got on the list myself, and will be posting links from there starting very soon.
You can put all that “special lube” you want on your political posts. But, your not going to force your conservative hate on me.
Your boy Trump demands apologies from people when people speak truths against him , yet he refuses to apologize for the hateful things that come out of his mouth..plus being the world’s biggest liar. MacBoris your have learned well from your leader.
Force something on you?
I wouldn’t pee on you if you were on fire, lol.
I’m only trying to get as many members and readers as possible to read and then think about what I have been saying in all these many comments.
I couldn’t possibly care less if you live, or die, or never open your eyes to reality.
But I am grateful that you make it so easy for me to get the energy up to post these comments, because I really do want a D in the WH, although you are too stupid to comprehend this rather simple fact.
Nearly all the regulars here, and some lurkers for sure, are capable of some basic critical thinking, and smart enough to know that while they cannot exert any influence on the R party in selecting candidates, or establishing policy, they CAN influence policy and candidate selection in their party , the D party.
And the D’s will start winning again when they get back to their roots, and quit running as Republican Lites on economic policy.
It’s one thing to stick up for all the various special interest groups that vote D, from but they are not numerous enough to win elections without the support of the working class, which is a hundred times bigger.
I mean it’s ok to support the sex change individuals who want to switch bathrooms, but there aren’t enough individuals in that group to put them all in one small town and elect the mayor.
It’s my goal to encourage the D’s in this forum, and nearly everybody here is a D, to do a little thinking about WHY Clinton lost, about where the party and the candidate and the campaign went wrong, and thus be ready to work on making sure the mistakes made last time aren’t repeated next time.
Blaming me won’t help at all. Blaming Trump and the people who voted for him won’t help D’s win next time.
If they want to win next time, they need to do a lot of things differently. NOW is the time to be thinking about these things.
Approximately 70% of ensemble members from latest ECMWF model run calling for #ElNino by July.
https://twitter.com/philklotzbach/status/821001198765342721
Webhubtelescope model says no.
Somebody is going to have a failed model by July.
We shall see.
We are still behind the “Spring Barrier”, a very uncertain line.
Notice how Javier is now worried.
No one seems to understand ENSO at all, other than it is a dipole oscillation that reverts to a mean of zero.
My model for ENSO is solving the second order differential equation of sloshing within a liquid volume, which is essentially the Mathieu equation. All I do is add the forcing for the sloshing which happen to be the well known cycles in the earth’s rotational velocity and those caused by the moon. The extra twist is to add a biennial modulation, which is an assumed metastable behavior known to exist.
So it’s not so much a prediction as it is the actual physics of ENSO, which will certainly be improved over time as more scientists understand the model.
That’s why Javier is so insecure — someone is actually discussing physics instead of spewing talking points.
The ECMWF has been really accurate as it has become more robust.
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3148
(However Lorenz developed chaos theory with weather models)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Norton_Lorenz
The stratosphere at the Arctic latitudes is exhibiting signs of a warming event. If this comes to pass, another round of global cooling over the Northern Hemisphere would be on the way probably towards the end of winter/beginning of spring, regardless of what El Nino does.
It’s going to be real interesting to see if the federal government’s climate experts will attempt to declare 2017 as the warmest year ever, considering the extra scrutiny they are about to receive beginning at noon on Friday.
Gee! Thanks for popping in out of the blue, as you seem to do from time to time and blessing us with this particularly prescient post (brought to us with kind sponsorship of Koch Industries no doubt). What would we do without you?
However my gut tells me that. sometime after noon on Friday, certainly within the next four years, the world and quite possibly the US in particular, is going to experience an unprecedented weather/climate phenomenon (ice free arctic?) and by unprecedented I mean in the recorded history of our civilization. Frankly, if it happens, it couldn’t happen with a better guy in the White House and a better group of people in control of the US government!
It looks like Cheeto Boy will probably be the bag holder.
All these words, yet nothing about the SSW event I mentioned. You’d rather discuss what your “gut” tells you instead of an actual climate indicator?
You post a link to a pretty picture and call that “an actual climate indicator”? Now that’s rich! Why can’t I get this image of a couple of happy guys out of my head?
Just so everybody can see what you’re calling “an actual climate indicator”!
Hi HB,
I see you are MORE determined than ever to make my case for me, thank you.
A few days back I posted a link indicating why I think it’s sort of funny that Trump will likely get away with putting family members in positions of great power, do you remember that?
Basically it comes down to the fact that Bill and Hillary with the blessing of the D party set the precedent when Hillary was formulating health care policy without having any official position authorizing that sort of activity.
I daresay you are don’t know who Daniel Patrick Moynihan IS or was, but he was a very well respected Democrat, who held the office of Senator from the state of New York. He coined the famous phrase ” defining deviancy down” which basically means that our society has been lowering the older traditional standards of behavior so that it’s now ok to do things that were once totally taboo, or at least frowned upon.
Now since you are setting the stage for me , making it SO easy to make a fool out of you, I will explain why the people of this country who voted for Trump gave him a free pass on his “grabbem by the pussy” locker room remarks.
Bill set the precedent in terms of lowering our cultural standards in this particular respect , not just talking about it, but grabbing at least ONE right inside the White House, and grabbing a whole series going back for many years. But that was ok with people like you,without a doubt . It was ok with the D establishment, although a great many had sense enough to be embarrassed by it, and said so, privately. Damned few establishment Democrats ever said much about his record involving women in public though.
And when Clinton worshippers like you wonder why the folks who voted for Trump gave him a free pass, well, they remembered Monica, and all the other women, and basically decided that if it’s ok for a D president to behave that way, and his wife to defend him when he does so, then it must be ok for a R candidate to do the same.
My goal in pursuing this little pissing match is to convince D partisans who make the mistake of assuming that they could get away with running a candidate with Clinton’s baggage train and poll numbers to think long and hard before they nominate another candidate with so many flaws.
She did something just about everybody considered impossible. She managed to lose to a candidate with equally bad or worse polling numbers in terms of trust, etc, a candidate who HIJACKED the R party nominating process. She lost to a candidate that was roundly and repeatedly badmouthed by a good number of the most respected elders of the R party, a candidate the R establishment had no use for AT ALL. ( Until he won. )
Call me a Trumpster every hour on the hour, if you like, I’m ok with that, here in this forum, because it furthers my goal. I have made countless comments here in support of strong environmental laws, workable and affordable health care, etc, and any forum regular who is reading this exchange knows this to be true.
The facts speak for themselves, and you are making it hard for any Clinton partisans in this forum to ignore the actual facts involved in her first winning the nomination, and then losing the election. 😉
My primary goal is to get D’s to think a little, next time around, and nominate somebody with fewer flaws.
My secondary goal is to rub the noses of idiots like you in the evidence of your idiocy.
I feel sorry for you, but not sorry enough to allow you to get the last word, given the importance of the subject.
And remember to stay on your porch. The street is a dangerous place for lap doggies. You might encounter a fact or two, face to face, and I fear you won’t be able to withstand the stress.You might swell up with venom and indignation that the world doesn’t march your drum to such an extent that you burst, like an over heated automobile radiator.
Sling all the mud you like, and bring some help if you can find any.
MacBoris says – “Call me a Trumpster every hour on the hour, if you like, I’m ok with that,”
DJT seems to take cheap shots anywhere he can. New nick name: “Cheap Shot Donny”? Everyone, it appears, that doesn’t align themselves with his or her devotion to anything he says or does is an enemy? Clearly the man has the insecurities of a 13 year old school bully. I want to support what is good for the greater number of American citizens, but this guy is off the charts and in way over his head for the POTUS. “Mr. No One Negotiate Better Than Me”, why don’t you negotiate how best you can serve the country you were dubiously elected to with all the voices in your head and hopefully a deal will be struck for the calmest, dignified, resolute and diplomatic personality. Or is it not on the table?
Today’s recommendation:
The movie “Bottle Schock”. A great movie about wine and set in a place called Napa Valley, wherever that is.
Of course, “Little Big Man” is a classic.
One of the best cult classics is “Rancho Deluxe”.
Been watching movies, the cold spell has been below zero for a good six weeks now.
Is it ok to refer to Donald Trump as dumbass or knothead or brainless twit or bonehead or doughhead?
Just wondering.
Don’t wonder:
‘Nobody wants to buy them’: Frustrated scalpers losing big money trying to sell inauguration tickets
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/nobody-wants-to-buy-them-frustrated-scalpers-losing-big-money-trying-to-sell-inauguration-tickets/
Using the ploy of a “few cents more here, a few cents more there,” appeals are made before state energy regulatory commissions to increase utility rates for millions of customers. Such commissions drive the enactment of renewable energy usage and subsidies. Ignored are the economic hardships imposed on the less fortunate members of society. Everyone pays more; the elite few benefit from these subsidies.
People now pay through the nose for energy.
https://www.masterresource.org/ckoch/koch-energy-minorities/
The increase in energy costs is an absolute prediction in a world that is running out of cheap oil on which it totally depends for transportation. It doesn’t help that many countries are transitioning from cheap continuously producing fossil fuels to more expensive intermittent renewables.
The craziness of some renewable projects like the tidal generation project at Swansea, UK, is clearly explained at:
Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon and Baseload Tidal Generation in the UK
http://euanmearns.com/swansea-bay-tidal-lagoon-and-baseload-tidal-generation-in-the-uk/
The bottom line is that electricity from that project would be over 3 times more expensive than from the outrageously expensive Hinckley Point C nuclear project without taking into consideration expenses incurred on the grid to manage the intermittence.
With the increasing costs of energy the economy becomes less efficient and many businesses fail. It is a recipe for lower growth and more frequent crisis.
It doesn’t help that many countries are transitioning from cheap continuously producing fossil fuels to more expensive intermittent renewables.
Anyone who claims renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels is either ignorant of what has been happening in recent years or has some kind of political or ideological agenda they are invested in.
Furthermore the meme of intermittency is a strawman and a sign that the persons who claims it to be an issue are out of touch with the state of the art.
Ironically it seems to be the same people who deny the implications of burning fossil fuels that also keep pounding the same old drum of the renewables are expensive and intermittent meme!
My hunch is, history will not look kindly on these people.
Edit: Saudia Arabia has already seen the writing on the wall and it looks like the another big fossil fuel player in the world is starting to wake up…
http://www.russia-direct.org/opinion/realizing-russias-renewable-energy-potential-2017
Realizing Russia’s renewable energy potential in 2017
Feb 1, 2016Viktor Katona OPINION
A recently declared Year of the Environment in Russia provides a golden opportunity to bring environmental issues to the public’s eye and create momentum for a much-needed green technology revolution in the country that is rich with natural resources and a highly skilled work force.
Maybe the following article gives a clue to why the troll (Koch) brigade’s posts seem to be getting more shrill!
First Eleven Months of 2016: New Renewable Electrical Capacity Exceeds That From Gas, Oil, and Nuclear Combined
In the interest of being “fair and balanced”, the double asterisk note at the end of the article reads:
This is in rough agreement with the data I have been posting on new capacity additions for the past couple of months, whenever the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly web page is updated. Looks like November is going to be another blockbuster month for renewables when the data is released next week Wednesday or thereabouts.
Note also Javier’s logical inconsistency when he writes, “The increase in energy costs is an absolute prediction in a world that is running out of cheap oil on which it totally depends for transportation.” and then immediately goes on to write, “It doesn’t help that many countries are transitioning from cheap continuously producing fossil fuels to more expensive intermittent renewables.”
So, consider the case of the Caribbean islands and many others, that depend on petroleum based liquid fuels for electricity generation as well as transport. Do we wait for oil production to start declining in earnest, when his “absolute prediction” of “the increase in energy costs” becomes a reality, before we attempt to transition to what he claims are “more expensive intermittent renewables”? What is it Javier? What do you suggest the Caribbean (and other) islands do?
What is it Javier? What do you suggest the Caribbean (and other) islands do?
The real question is do you really care what Javier might suggest?
Not really but, it might be interesting to see what additional tortured logic he can come up with!
I already gave you my opinion about energy in islands. Too bad you don’t remember it. Perhaps because you don’t care so why should I repeat it? You can do a search if you want.
Anyone who claims renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels is either ignorant of what has been happening in recent years or has some kind of political or ideological agenda they are invested in.
Okay, here’s one theory as to where Javier might have got his ideas about expensive renewable energy from.
I think it was on NewYears Day that I posted the following story:
Eight Rivers Energy Company gets US funding for Jamaica’s largest solar plant
It contained the following lines:
Once completed, the Eight Rivers facility will generate some of the lowest cost electricity on the island.
The OUR has said that Eight Rivers plans to supply energy to the national grid at about US$0.854 per kilowatt hour.
Now, having read that, Javier must have thought to himself, “Holy Cow! That there is some really expensive electricity!”
If only if he had clicked on the link immediately above the two quoted sentences in the article:
READ: OUR selects Eight Rivers for renewable project
He would have been able to read the following:
OUR said on Tuesday that Eight Rivers’ proposed 33.1 MW solar project would supply energy to the national grid at about US 8.54 cents per kWh. Eight Rivers plans to invest around US$48.7 million in the plant.
So the actual cost of the electricity is going to be ten times less than the erroneous figure (mistake) published in the December 30 article and the construction costs look to be in line with those for utility scale plants in the US at about a buck and a half per watt. If as I suspect, the costs of implementation go down by the time work starts on this project, in addition to producing some of the least expensive electricity on the island, the plant will probably end up one of the most profitable as well. That of course, assumes that the owners of the project did not project any cost declines at the time they submitted their bid.
So much for “more expensive intermittent renewables”!
Fred wrote:
Anyone who claims renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels is either ignorant of what has been happening in recent years or has some kind of political or ideological agenda they are invested in.
Islandboy quoted the numbers:
OUR said on Tuesday that Eight Rivers’ proposed 33.1 MW solar project would supply energy to the national grid at about US 8.54 cents per kWh. Eight Rivers plans to invest around US$48.7 million in the plant.
Well now, 8.54 cents per kWh, that is pretty cheap, but it is a bit over two and one half times as expensive as coal and almost twice that of natural gas.
Electric Generating Costs: A Primer
However, since few petroleum units are used at that cost (petroleum only produced 0.7 percent of U.S. electricity in 2011), it is better to compare nuclear production costs to coal production costs, which averaged 3.23 cents per kilowatt hour in 2011 and to natural gas production costs which averaged 4.51 cents per kilowatt hour.
Hey, now I did not write that so don’t tell me that I am either ignorant or have an ideological agenda. Please direct your wrath at those damn engineers at the Institute for Energy Research. They are the ones who are either ignorant or have an ideological agenda. Though I am not sure which. 😉
EDIT: I just noticed that the Institute for Energy Research got their data from the EIA. So those guys are the ones who are either ignorant or have an ideological agenda. 😉
IER is heavily funded by fossil fuel owners and companies.
GF, all that data is from the EIA, not the IER.
Your next suggestion? A conspiracy theory perhaps?
No., I don’t abide by conspiracy theories, prefer actual data from the source and some reality.
Take a look at AEO2017 and you will see the levelized costs of wind and solar PV are far lower than the graph you presented. In fact the EIA states that “Including available federal tax credits, wind and solar units will be
among the most competitive sources of new generation in 2022”
One must also understand that the levelized cost is a calculation with varying parameters. Also fossil fuel backup costs are often added into the renewable costs. So the data may be there but the calculation can vary.
By 2022? No, no, no. Fred’s statement had nothing to do with 2022. He implied they were cheaper today. And all who differed with that assessment were either ignorant or had an agenda.
Oh OK. My own calculations show the cost of PV power generation right now ranges from $20 to $25 per Megawatt-hr. No tax incentives used, no added costs for fossil baseline power . Just the cost of installation and maintenance of site and infrastructure. Costing is for large solar farm installations not residential.
“Well now, 8.54 cents per kWh, that is pretty cheap, but it is a bit over two and one half times as expensive as coal and almost twice that of natural gas.”
But, if you re-read the quote further up, “Once completed, the Eight Rivers facility will generate some of the lowest cost electricity on the island.” you should realize that the alternatives are not as good outside of the US. This applies to most island states including those under US jurisdiction like Hawaii and Puerto Rico. As a matter of fact, as far as I can ascertain, in the entire Caribbean only the Dominican Republic uses any coal at all. All the islands use petroleum in one form or another for most of their electricity generation with the result that the cost of electricity on my most recent bill, generated on January 12, was about 21.02 US cents for the first 100 kWh, retail. I don’t use more than 100 kWh so I don’t know hat the higher retail rate is.
“Please direct your wrath at those damn engineers at the Institute for Energy Research.”
I learned about the IER back in October 2015 when, in response to a post from a troll using the screen name “Glenn Stehle”, I ended up doing a web search and ultimately composing a response. The result at the top of the page for my web search was :
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_for_Energy_Research
You can read that and decide for yourself how unbiased the IER is.
Secondly the data being presented is from 2011, five years ago, Renewable energy costs, especially solar PV have gone down significantly since then. You might want to look at a more up to date LCOE analysis from Lazard. If you’re super interested and have the time you could compare and contrast Lazard’s version 6.0 analysis from 2012 with the IER analysis you linked to and the most recent from Lazard.
Just to illustrate how outdated the IER study is, look at H2 2016 LCOE: Giant fall in generating costs from offshore wind from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Compare that to what the IER graph is suggesting.
Now anyone can suggest that Lazard and/or BNEF has an agenda but the Sourcewatch web page is pretty clear on the foundations and likely motives of the IER.
But, if you re-read the quote further up, “Once completed, the Eight Rivers facility will generate some of the lowest cost electricity on the island.
But of course, if you do not include the cost of the solar panels, construction and start up cost, then solar is very cheap. But of course all that cost is real money… and you cannot exclude it.
You can read that and decide for yourself how unbiased the IER is.
Okay, okay, let me try just one more time to get this very obvious point across. The data is from the EIA! The IER had absolutely nothing to do with the goddamn data!
“The data is from the EIA! The IER had absolutely nothing to do with the goddamn data!”
Except that they are presenting five year old data (August 22, 2012) under the heading “Latest Analysis”, when the variables are changing at a pretty rapid clip. I hope you didn’t get too upset to read anything in my comment past the line you quoted! there is some much more recent data from a source that is less biased AFAICT.
In addition, why consider projections for LCOE for 2017 from the EIA when actual data from 2015-2016 is available?
We all know how the EIA has been low balling renewable projections for years now. Why they have been doing so isn’t even important in the context of this discussion. The fact is the EIA has been very wrong with their projections for renewable capacity additions and were probably equally as wrong in 2011 with their pricing projections for renewables.
I stand by my statement! Solar is already cheaper than oil. For oil to beat it it would have to be sold at $10.00 a barrel. I may or may not have an agenda but it has nothing to with the price of solar, which will to continue to get cheaper still and its EROEI will continue to increase.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyrbKBZ6SU
The breakthrough in renewable energy (vpro backlight documentary)
Published on May 5, 2016
It’s not in the papers but a silent revolution is moving across the world. Renewable energy is becoming cheaper than from fossil fuels. It means that progressively the choice for wind and solar energy is no longer an ethical one but an economic one. And this will speed up the transfer to renewable energy.
In countries like Brazil, Australia, Chile and parts of the United States people consider renewable energy because of financial reasons. The price of solar and wind energy will continue to drop and in more countries renewable energy will occur.
http://www.apricum-group.com/dubai-shatters-records-cost-solar-earths-largest-solar-power-plant/
Dubai Shatters all Records for Cost of Solar with Earth’s Largest Solar Power Plant
Dr. Moritz Borgmann
May 2, 2016
The Emirate of Dubai set a new world record for the cost of solar power on May 1, 2016 with the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) receiving bids for the 800 MW Sheikh Maktoum Solar Park Phase III as low as 3.00 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). This not only marks the lowest cost ever for solar power, but also easily beats all available fossil-fuel options in Dubai on cost.
Then a bid in Chile beat that one…
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/18/new-low-solar-price-record-set-chile-2-91%C2%A2-per-kwh/
There are numerous tipping points that are being reached all over the world.
The writing is on all the walls all over the world in Yuuuge Big Bold Red letters! One has to really put on some industrial strength blinders not to see it.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autoshow-electrics-analysis-idUSKBN14Z0KW
China, Europe drive shift to electric cars as U.S. lags
Electric cars will pick up critical momentum in 2017, many in the auto industry believe – just not in North America.
Tighter emissions rules in China and Europe leave global carmakers and some consumers with little choice but to embrace plug-in vehicles, fuelling an investment surge, said industry executives gathered in Detroit this past week for the city’s annual auto show.
“Car electrification is an irreversible trend,” said Jacques Aschenbroich, chief executive of auto supplier Valeo (VLOF.PA), which has expanded sales by 50 percent in five years with a focus on electric, hybrid, connected and self-driving cars.
In Europe, green cars benefit increasingly from subsidies, tax breaks and other perks, while combustion engines face mounting penalties including driving and parking restrictions.
China, struggling with catastrophic pollution levels in major cities, is aggressively pushing plug-in vehicles. Its carrot-and-stick approach combines tens of billions in investment and research funding with subsidies, and regulations designed to discourage driving fossil-fueled cars in big cities.
To anyone who lives or has lived outside the US for any amount of time this really should come as no surprise. Go to Sao Paulo, according to a recent poll 95% of the population is ready for driverless EVs today.
Perhaps you are the one with an agenda.
In Europe it is a fact that the more new renewables a country has, the more expensive is its electricity. You don’t argue with facts.
German energy regulator Bnetza awarded 200 MW of utility-scale power at 8 euro cents a kWh (8.6 U.S. cents) for the auction opened in December, it said Wednesday
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2016/01/german-solar-power-costs-drop-5-8-percent-in-government-auction.html
That chart is meaningless.
It compares residential prices (which include so many taxes and fees that they bear little relationship to underlying costs) to per capita wind and solar capacity, which is also pretty meaningless: the proper metric would be market share of overall kWh generation.
Good morning HB,
I’m sorry to see you falling behind on your job this morning, but I’m RARING to go.
Here’s something for you!
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2017/01/16/brazile-dems-got-cocky-in-2016-election-n2272201
During the 2016 campaign, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton failed to visit several working class states that she and her staff thought were in the bag. Her schedule screamed arrogance and clearly cost her the election, but several Democrats have refused to acknowledge the mistake. Instead, Harry Reid blamed the FBI, President Obama blamed Fox News, while just about everyone else blamed it on the Russians.
Interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile, however, is fortunately doing some of the introspection her party desperately needs.
“I’m not going to sugercoat it. We failed. We came up short,” Brazile said during introductory remarks. “We made some serious mistakes. Some strategic errors. We got cocky about our invincible blue wall and then we saw it crumble because of just a few thousand votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.”
Now I suppose my little porch doggie friend will henceforth be denouncing Brazile as a Trumpster, since she has publicly said exactly the same thing about Clinton, in substantial part, in slightly milder language, than I have been saying for months.
A year or two from now, you will be able to find plenty of acknowledgements , publicly made, by prominent large D guys, to the same effect as the rest of what I have been saying, that the party was under the control of an old time political machine owned by Clinton, and that nominating her was a strategic mistake of the first order.
I ‘m confident the D party will won’t nominate another candidate with her negatives and baggage train for a very long time, but I am NOT arrogant, and I don’t take unnecessary chances when the stakes are so high as to literally involve the survival of our country. Besides, I’m having a good time.
Putin: Those Who Spread Fake Allegations About Trump Are ‘Worse Than Prostitutes’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cia-director-trump-nazi-repugnant_us_587e158ee4b0d4cc088482ce
Despicable Don at it again. I have never in my life detested a president like this. Usually it is a persons policies that you dont like but Herr Trump is the whole package. He does everything wrong and his character is the lowest. He says he has good policies but lies and his party will run over him with their anti-American policies. He only wants to be a part time president. I personally think he should not show up at the inauguration, and run his huuuggge business empire full time. Its okay with me.
Right wing HATE is destroying America, Thanks Boris EmailServer aka KGB
English suits and Prada aren’t doing much to save America. Considering that most sophisticated observers these days say the D party is good on civil rights and that sort of thing, but no better than a Republican Lite alternative to the Republican establishment, it might be a good idea to think a little about how the D party can do BETTER.
I posted a link a couple of days ago showing that THIRTEEN Democrats voted against an amendment proposed by Sanders that would have forced big pharma to treat citizens of THIS country as well as they treat citizens of OTHER countries, namely, negotiating the prices of drugs sold to our government. It’s not at all unusual for big pharma to sell a pill in Canada for a couple of bucks that they sell to the us Yankee taxpayers for five or ten times as much.
You know what, little lap doggie?
You as a Democrat can make a difference in D party policies, and in who the D party runs as candidates for office. You can’t do much as an individual, unless maybe you have made enough dirty oil money to help buy an election, perhaps? And perhaps you are willing to donate it to the D party ? But collectively you could have said no to the worst candidate in D party history, as evidenced by her polling numbers.
YOU have no doubt forgotten, but Sanders ran his race on nickel and dime contributions, the kind working people can afford.
Clinton and her team were too STUPID to understand this sun at high noon obvious evidence that the working people of this country, ESPECIALLY D voting working people, were totally fed up and pissed off with her Republican Lite record, and her Republican Lite platform, and obvious Republican Lite ways of raking in the cash, Trumpster style, while talking working people talk, once in a long while, although she couldn’t be bothered to spend as much time with the working people of the big industrial states that put Trump in the White House as she did making speeches at a quarter million a pop to her bankster buddies. She found all the time in the world for the one percenters, but ZERO time for the people she needed the most, but arrogantly took for granted, assuming they would be docile enough to stay on the D party plantation.
She did go out of her way to make a fool of herself by calling half the country “deplorables” without having brains enough to comprehend that one hell of a lot of the D party base falls within that category, within the context of her remarks.
Arrogance and stupidity! That’s the recipe that enabled her to lose to the worst, most distrusted, most hated R party candidate of all time, a candidate that was thoroughly despised and thoroughly publicly badmouthed by half the elders of the R party. It’s not easy to lose to such a clown as Trump, but she managed it.
If you want to take part in R party policy making, and R party primary races, then you are going to have to switch parties. Come to think of it, you just might be an under cover Trumpster yourself, considering how hard you are yapping trying to prevent any discussion of what the D party needs to do to return to power.
Control of the R party is in the hands of the R party, mostly, but the R party base was so pissed at the R establishment it revolted and nominated Trump……. which SHOULD have been another sharp wake up brick upside Clinton’s head that she needed to abandon the Republican Lite platform and lower herself enough to talk to people who have never seen an English suit, or Prada outfit, and never will, except on tv.
I mean, I know it’s tough when your are the EMPRESS, in every way except that you haven’t yet been crowned, to have to lower yourself that way, but even kings and queens have to do some tough things once in a while.
I don’t necessarily expect the other members of this forum to AGREE with me, but I’m sure some of them are reading my comments, and are thereby hopefully motivated to do a little thinking of their own, and come up with ideas and candidates that are more likely to win, in future elections.
The more new ideas, or old good ones revived, and the more D s running in primaries, the better the chance of the D’s winning back control of DC, not to mention state and local governments.
I’m sure there are plenty of people that can come up with other ideas,which may be better than mine.
And just for the record, when I say “my ideas” I mean the ones I am trying to revive and reuse myself. They aren’t original with me by any means.
Now here’s something from the Huffington Post to support MY interpretation of the factors that cost Clinton the election.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-democratic-party-deserves-to-die_us_58236ad5e4b0aac62488cde5
I will post the first paragraph, as an appetizer! Chew it long and carefully little doggie, or you will CHOKE on it , for sure.
The author is a big D Democrat.
“They said they were facing an economic apocalypse, we offered “retraining” and complained about their white privilege. Is it any wonder we lost? One after another, the dispatches came back from the provinces. The coal mines are gone, the steel mills are closed, the drugs are rampant, the towns are decimated and everywhere you look depression, despair, fear. In the face of Trump’s willingness to boldly proclaim without facts or evidence that he would bring the good times back, we offered a tepid gallows logic. Well, those jobs are actually gone for good, we knowingly told them. And we offered a fantastical non-solution. We will retrain you for good jobs! Never mind that these “good jobs” didn’t exist in East Kentucky or Cleveland. And as a final insult, we lectured a struggling people watching their kids die of drug overdoses about their white privilege. Can you blame them for calling bullshit? All Trump could offer was white nationalism as protection against competing with black and brown people. It wasn’t a very compelling case, but it was vastly superior to a candidate who enthusiastically backed NAFTA, seems most at ease in a room of Goldman Sachs bankers and was almost certain to do nothing for these towns other than maybe setting up a local chapter of Rednecks Who Code. We bet that Trump’s manifest awfulness would be enough to let us eke out a win. We were dead wrong. Here’s my version of the Democratic Party autopsy because, make no mistake, the old ways of the Democratic party must die.”
The author gets it. Maybe she will be a Senator herself , or even President someday. If she remains true to what she says here, I will vote for her in a flash if I ever have the opportunity.
Remember, little lap doggie, you have some measure of control of your own party, but zero control of the opposition party.
If you want to win, you will have to work to upgrade your own party’s desirability in the eyes of the working people of this country, because they outnumber the elite by a mile.
Calling me names, and insulting my kind of people won’t put Democrats back in charge.
Working to get the D party back to its real roots can work, and will work, if enough people join in the work.
My personal vote belongs to the D’s , or the greens, or maybe the libertarians, if I can’t in good conscience vote for the D candidate, because for me the environmental issue trumps all the other issues put together.
But I’m a class traitor in this respect, and a political outlier in any respect.
You’re just another little lap doggie, barking at things you don’t understand, and probably never will.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/bernie-sanders-has-the-right-message-but-the-wrong-strategy/
“Why should Sanders allow a Democrat like Schumer—who’s against the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, who played a key role in getting derivates deregulated for the big banks, who takes oodles of cash from oil companies destroying our planet, who stayed silent while police illegally shot at and abused unarmed water protectors fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline—to stand next to him and con less politically-astute Americans into thinking he’s some type of progressive warrior?”
“This does more than damage hearts and minds of progressives: it risks setting up the Democratic Party —which certainly looks like it will still be a bought-off, Republican-lite party in four years— as the protagonist in the 2020 thriller that seeks to take down the evil Republican boogeyman, President Trump.”
“And once victorious, America will be back where it’s been for the last eight years: improving on the surface, but structurally drowning as the majority live paycheck to paycheck while most of the money keeps funneling to Schumer’s donors.”
“But whether it’s Schumer, or Nancy Pelosi, or Cory Booker, or fill-in-the-blank-corporate shill, Sanders is fooling himself if he thinks he’s going to rewire the minds of politicians who long ago stopped thinking of themselves as public servants.”
“There’s a reason all of these folks formally, or informally, endorsed Hillary Clinton before Sanders even launched his presidential bid: they are astoundingly disconnected from the reality of what’s going on in, to borrow a phrase from the un-wise Sarah Palin, real America.”
“None of these Democrats could see the rumblings of a populist, progressive movement exploding across America because none have actually consistently spoken to average working people across America.”
“Instead, they surround themselves with the cocktail-crowd, limousine liberals of America, who write them the checks that keep them in power, where they endlessly fight to stay while claiming victory whenever they deliver crumbs of incremental change to people who need much more.”
“But, Jordan, that’s how our system works, the corporate establishment screams! Change happens slowly, in increments.”
“NO, that’s the excuse the bought-off politicians, “strategists,” and pundits offer to legitimize a system that continually provides major improvements for wealthy donors and corporations, but not for average workers who, despite breaking their backs day-in-and-day-out, don’t have lobbyists or endless bank account on their side.”
“By standing with Schumer and his ilk, Sanders is legitimizing politicians who don’t deserve legitimization. By standing with Schumer and his ilk, Sanders is normalizing politicians who take the corporate road 95 percent of the time, but project themselves as progressive champions 100 percent of the time.”
“Are extremist Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan worse than Democrats like Schumer?
On social issues, absolutely; on economic matters, not by much.”
‘But if Sanders isn’t careful, he’ll repair a corporate-Democratic Party’s badly beaten vehicle for it just as the country predictably turns against President Trump, who by the looks of it, will be delivering one disastrous policy after another.”
“And without flinching, Schumer and the corporate establishment will open the car door, and toss him and the progressive movement he represents out into the muddy ditch—on their road back to power.”
“.. don’t get in the car with Schumer and the oligarchs he represents. Or the ditch most Americans are already stuck in will only get muddier.”
Now I’m only one little guy, and I am not so confident of my reading of the chicken entrails that I will offer Sanders advice on how to proceed. He’s up against a Republican Lite establishment party, and rebuilding it in the image of the REAL or traditional, historical Democratic party, in terms of who it stands for economically is one hell of a tough undertaking.
But if he and his followers don’t succeed, we will in my opinion, continue right on down the same old, same old road, with power and money continually flowing to the one percenters, and the rest of us, excepting the well paid lackeys of the one percenters , experiencing ever lower living standards.
Hardly anybody has posted a comment indicating approval of my analysis of the election, but quite a few have posted a matching opinion about the one percenter issue. Maybe that’s because I’m all wrong, or maybe it’s because very few people are willing to admit that they have been wrong themselves, or that they would rather remain quiet , in order to be seen as members in good standing in a forum that supported Clinton with all it’s heart. Only a few members of any large group of people, under any circumstances, are willing to step out front and publicly point out that errors and mistakes have been made, collectively. That tends to make enemies out of those in the group who worked the hardest promoting mistaken policies and practices.
Those who get it about one percenters and corporate welfare and the concentration of power and money in the hands of a TINY fraction of the people, are halfway there. They recognize the problem is real, and that alone means they are at least looking around for potential solutions.
The only remotely likely possible workable solution, in my estimation, is that the ordinary people of this country get together and recapture control of the Democratic Party, and return it to its roots as the party of the people.
I pray you will give some THOUGHT to what I have been saying all along.You may come to different conclusions, or come up with a different and better solution. I’m ready to listen, but I’m not ready to give up.
For anybody else,
So far as I am concerned, anybody who can’t see that the Democratic Party establishment, as it exists today, is not simply a Republican Lite establishment, in economic terms, is to put it as mildly as possible, either blinded by partisanship, or else has such a shallow knowledge of our national political status quo that he is to put it in plain language, either ignorant or stupid.
— —
уважаемый Mr. Boris EmailServer aka KGB,
Любой, кто думает следующие четыре года, будет подходить не обратил внимание. Найтовы козыря из в любом и каждом кто не соглашается с ним. Это будет примерно каждый в правительстве, Республиканце или Демократе.
“extremist Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan” Презренный Дон в этом снова. Я имею никогда не в моей жизни не переваривал президента подобно этому. Обычно это – политика людей, что вы dont подобно, но Козырь Herr – это целый пакет. Он все неправильно и его характер самое низкое. Он говорит, что он имеет хорошую политику, но неправды и его сторона будет переезжать его с их Анти-американской политикой. Он только хочет быть президентом с неполным рабочим днем. Я лично думаю, что он не должен разоблачать во время инаугурации, и управлять полным рабочим днем деловой империи его huuuggge. Хорошо с нами.
благодарность за ничто LubeMaster
Thanks for the reminder, HB.
It’s easy as pie to find and copy and paste plenty of stuff coming straight from the mouths of big D Democrats who have owned up to the fact that Clinton the candidate BLEW IT.
They won’t make the mistake of nominating such a candidate again. Any other nationally known Democrat could have mopped the floor with Trump, if he or she ran a decent campaign.
I LIVE among the kind of people who make up most of the coaliton that put Trump in the White House.
And while I don’t have hard numbers, my informal conversations with a large sample of them indicate that at least a third of them, and maybe as many as half, possibly even MORE of them, voted AGAINST Clinton, as voted FOR Trump.
The ones who voted against Clinton had decades to make up their minds they didn’t trust her and didn’t like her.
Trump didn’t have to labor under that handicap, being new to the political scene as a candidate.
It’s one thing to go around feeling all brainy and superior, as so many of us are prone to do, bemoaning the INCONTESTABLE FACT that a hell of a lot of people in this country love their guns, and country music, and prefer cheap beer over good wine, and have little or nothing in the way of formal education.
BUT it’s altogether another thing to be smart enough, and well educated enough, to be able to bitch about THIS INCONTESTABLE REALITY , and yet ……
BE DUMB ENOUGH to think that you can safely run a candidate for president that such people DETEST from the word go.
Let’s try to remember that elections are won in the center in this country, and millions of middle of the road voters who are NOT Jesus Freaks, or gun lovers, or xenophobes, or whatever, do not especially care for a politician who displays such arrogance and such an obvious sense of entitlement as to do to suit herself, bending the rules the rest of us have to follow into pretzels, and taking millions of dollars in one percenter checks made out to HER, and tens of millions made out to her family slush fund, from governments, other banksters, foreigners, etc, who are not exactly Boy Scout pack leader prospects, to put it mildly.
A SHITLOAD of those middle of the roaders are either already out of work, or AFRAID they will lose their jobs, because of globalization in large part.
Most people tend to forget how many kids went to school in this country to learn computers and programming, only to graduate to find their hoped for fifty grand starting job has been taken by somebody in India making ten percent as much.
I can’t think of a SOUL I have ever met who actually has to work with his hands and his back who is in favor of open borders, of more immigrants. I have met hundreds of such people over the years.
The D party might not actually BE in favor of open borders , of allowing MILLIONS more workers into the country, but it’s VERY easy to draw the conclusion that this is D policy by reading the news and listening to the debate. Many millions of people DO BELIEVE wide open immigration IS D party policy, and therefore are VERY reluctant to vote D.
My personal belief is that these political middle of the roaders are mostly rather reluctant to express what is actually on their mind, in public, because they DON’T want to appear to be any less modern, liberal, and open minded than other people they work with and associate with, if they are in white collar businesses and industries.
But once they are in the privacy of the voting booth, are they going to vote for what they maybe paid a little lip service to, or are they going to vote what they perceive to be their own best personal interests? Even HB can figure that one out.
These are the people, or most of them, that tripped up the pollsters last time around. Clinton’s margin in Virginia was half what the pollsters predicted.
Hey, whether you LIKE IT or LUMP IT, reality is reality,and must be DEALT with.
If D’s want to win, then they need to be thinking VERY hard about running candidates that are acceptable to people who live paycheck to pay check, and are worried about their jobs.
Slick PR people don’t control the minds of the people anymore, although losers like HB like to think they do, which makes it easy for them to excuse Clinton’s loss.
Just about every redneck on construction jobs has a smart phone in his pocket these days, and that’s where people are going for their news and information and to decide who their friends are, and who their enemies are.
It’s utterly STUPID to talk about working class people not knowing who their friends are, in the meanwhile nominating and supporting a candidate that in their estimation stands more with the enemy, a REPUBLICAN LITE candidate, than a candidate they can believe in…………
AND THEN to COUNT ON such a Republican Lite candidate to win, at a time when the country is in turmoil, with half the electorate afraid of being forced to lower their standard of living, or being reduced to outright poverty,………
Well, that route leads to surprises. SURPRISE, Trump is your new president.
There IS such a thing as the precautionary principle.
xxxx
Are those, kisses?
Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative. John Stuart Mill
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnstuart201721.html
Today in 2017, here in America, John Stuart Mill would replace the words ‘conservatives’ and ‘conservative’ with the words ‘liberals’ and ‘liberal’.
Can’t believe how pigheaded and intransigent liberals have become, they’re nothing more than stupid conservatives.
They need some serious help.
NOVA
The Nuclear Option
Aired: 01/10/17 Expires: 02/08/17
How will we power the planet without wrecking the climate?
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365930275/
I watched that. It was very good. There are a couple of nuclear options that prevents a meltdown even if all power, including local diesel power, is lost. But red tape may cause them to be delayed until it is too late.
Terra Power looks interesting esp if the low level stuff can be used as fuel
Hi Ron,
It’s good to see you are still around and as plain spoken and opinionated as ever. 😉
I admire you for sticking to your guns and to what you believe, and I may be even more opinionated than you, taken all around. 😉
Here’s hoping your health is holding up well, considering your years.
One thing in particular I have always admired about you is that although you are a proud liberal big D Democrat, you do not hesitate to call bullshit when you step in it, even if what you have to say conflicts with the usual dogma of the D party.
You are for instance the only self proclaimed big D liberal Democrat that I know of personally who does not hesitate at all to tell it like it is when the subject is Middle Eastern society and culture. Ordinarily the only people who will say what you have had to say on those subjects are right wingers, who are then called names by liberal pundits and PC types, who are invariably big L LIBERALS.
Damned few people are willing to publicly say anything that conflicts with any tribal taboo, and one of the biggest taboos is pointing out cases where the tribe is NOT telling it like it is. These rules apply to both every social group and to both parties of course.
I personally tell it like it is, or at least the way I think it is, regardless of which party I am criticizing, and the only way I can do this is to count myself as an independent , with a tendency to think in conservative terms. REAL conservatives don’t have any problem approving of tough environmental laws, etc, or equal rights for every body , or tossing out things that obviously harms the country, and putting something better in place. That in particular would be our health care system.
It’s REPUBLICANS that oppose such values, laws , and changes. They CALL themselves conservatives, but they’re not, in the true sense of the word, used in the way an engineer would use it.
I must of course admit that in the minds of the public, and most people who vote R, Republican and Conservative are synonyms, interchangeable words meaning the same thing.
You got me to thinking about this by posting a reasonably open minded and even favorable comment about nuclear power, which is generally considered taboo among big D Democrats, since it pisses off so many people in the big environmental tent, which is located well inside the D party’s political property lines, lol.
Maintaining my position as an independent allows me to criticize environmentalists and environmentalism when criticism is appropriate.
The anti nuclear community has taken their fear ( justified ) and distrust (also justified) of the nuclear industry to a religious extreme, and very skillfully manipulated public opinion to the point that research and development of new reactor technology has been more or less stopped dead in its tracks for the last fifty years or so.
History may eventually show that this was a COLOSSAL mistake. We are going to need reliable base load power, forever, and while it may be POSSIBLE to have it by way of storage and overbuilding of renewables, there is NO GUARANTEE whatsoever that this is economically feasible, or that it the necessary infrastructure will be built even if it IS feasible.
Having a viable- meaning affordable and safe -nuclear option would be priceless insurance.
And the fight against the construction and use of a long term hot wasted storage facility may eventually prove to be the biggest single tactical mistake the environmental camp has ever or will ever make.
The reason is pie simple. Large quantities of hot waste are stored at nearly every working nuke. The odds of a bad accident at any ONE of these places are many times higher than the odds of a bad accident at one good long term storage facility, and there are DOZENS of nukes scattered all over the USA.
And if there is a really bad accident at a nuke, the hot waste may well be a hell of a lot bigger problem, environmentally, than the relatively small amount of fuel actually IN the reactor.
Unfortunately political games are played without the partisans on either side paying much attention to such potential problems. The R’s are guilty way more often than the D’s.
If HB quits calling me a Trumpster, etc, I will get busy roasting the R’s, but virtually every body else in the forum is already on THAT job anyway,and has BEEN on it for years, so I don’t feel any need to get in a rush about it.
Here’s hoping for a few more good years for you.
Mac,
I think any sensible person will agree that M.E./Arab culture has some serious problems.
But, the US and the UK have not historically intervened in the ME for idealistic purposes, like raising the consciousness of the local population. They’ve been in the M.E. for Great Power goals, like controlling the oil supply. Likewise, when people in the M.E. have fought with the US and UK, it hasn’t really been about religion, even if religion is the normal way people in the ME get organized.
So, for the most part focusing on the cultural deficiencies of people in the M.E. is just scapegoating and a distraction tactic.
Hi Nick,
Basically I agree with you.
But I am talking about cognitive dissonance, Politically Correct BULLSHIT, which is a disease of the left, and hypocrisy. There are one hell of a lot of holier than thou liberals who go around preaching tolerance, who want to rip me a new asshole , for telling the truth about some OTHER cultures, while they pour scorn on the culture of tens of millions of people who live in THIS country.
And goddamned nearly EVERYBODY, right or left, goes along with this sort of bullshit. When you can talk to a person, or read what he writes, and see that EVERY single thought is consistent with EITHER left or right wing politics, then you’re dealing with a partisan who is willing to ignore the truth for partisan purposes- unless maybe that person is too ignorant or stupid to think a little for himself.
Well, here are a few thoughts:
Politically Correct
is a phrase created by anti-progress strategists as a tactic to discredit tolerance, civility and good christian compassion. It was intended to create the impression that people who advocate such values are in fact oppressing those who are trying to maintain negative values. It’s an inversion of reality. Using the phrase does no good.
liberals who go around preaching tolerance, who want to rip me a new asshole , for telling the truth about some OTHER cultures
You’re feeling angry and insulted. I respect that, but…that’s not a place which will help you communicate. You yourself have said this many times about your local community: you won’t get anywhere talking to people while insulting them. I know it’s an annoying thing…but you were right then, and it applies now: you won’t communicate effectively with anger.
To the extent to which “liberals” are being inconsistent, I think one reason is different expectations: they expect more from their own country. It may not be fair, but they participate in the American idea of exceptionalism: that the US is or should be better than the rest of the world.
OTOH, I’m not sure that this inconsistency is as common as it may seem: I suspect that the people who don’t like criticism of ME culture probably aren’t mostly the same people who criticize US rural/southern culture.
Finally…I gotta say it again: the whole question of ME culture is mostly a red herring, a distraction from the real issue which is that ME religion isn’t really the problem: the problem is that the US supports dictators in the ME, and those people who live in the ME who want a better world perceive the US, mostly correctly, as an enemy.
When pundits and TV characters talk about people in the ME being motivated by radical Islam, they’re spreading misinformation: people in the ME are mostly motivated by the good old fashioned pursuit of freedom and prosperity, which the US has been helping to block for quite some time.
People in the ME are not so different from you and I. They just want the US, in the words of the old joke, to “take your foot off my oxygen line”.
“I personally tell it like it is, or at least the way I think it is, regardless of which party I am criticizing”
“If HB quits calling me a Trumpster, etc, I will get busy roasting the R’s”
These two statement seem to be contradictory to me. But hey, maybe in the backwoods of Virginia it makes sense. I really think the second statement is a cry for help. Because HuntingtoBeach is treating OFM the way OFM treated HRC for the prior 12 months before the election.
What comes around, goes around. Karma
Keep it up, doggie.
You’re sort of stupid even for a DOG.
And remember that if people like you had had sense enough to run a candidate with favorable polling numbers, and a reputation for trustworthiness, and actually BEING a real DEMOCRAT, rather than a REPUBLICAN LITE, a D would be moving into the WH this week.
Here, we see that the price of a completely installed solar array has been and continues to be considerably cheaper in Germany than in the US. The gap seems to have been around two dollars all along. Now that the price in Germany has fallen to two dollars, solar is now twice as expensive in the US as it is in Germany.
https://energytransition.org/2015/05/solar-twice-as-expensive-in-us-as-in-germany/
There are things to be said for the USA being a large and very diverse collection of states and localities within those states, but the lack of a comprehensive and understandable national building code isn’t one of them.
But we will eventually catch up, or get close, in terms of what it costs to do a turnkey job here in the USA.
IF the Germans were to have been relocated en masse to the American Southwest twenty years ago, they would probably be pretty close TODAY to having enough solar infrastructure to run just about everything, just about every day, and be well on the way towards having built enough actual or defacto storage to get thru the nights and periods of bad weather using very little fossil fuel.
By defacto storage I mean such things as dumping a truck load of crushed stone in the crawl space of a new house, and embedding some duct work and some wiring in it, and using surplus solar power to heat up this thermal reservoir for night time heat, or adding a couple of cubic feet of storage to a really well insulated refrigerator, for extra ice, thereby ensuring that the refrigerator does not need to run at night, or even a couple of days and nights.
I have encountered a few Germans on jobs,I understand that the ones who come here on German projects tend to be their elite, it’s nevertheless true that a German carpenter in his mid twenties generally knows more than an American carpenter in his mid forties.
There IS something to be said for formal training in a no nonsense well structured environment, as opposed to learning in a slip slod fashion on the job, the way we do it here in the USA, with maybe a little training in the very basics in a high school vocational class.
Most of the kids that wind up in such classes aren’t qualified to become good carpenters, because so help me Sky Daddy, most of them don’t learn enough math in the eight or ten years they are in school PREVIOUS to taking a carpentry class to do the calculations a truly competent carpenter must do.
This is not to say that we don’t have a LOT of highly competent trades people. We do, and the best of them are as good or better as any in the world, but our average trades worker is not as well trained and motivated as the average German tradesman.
Germans HAVE to do a better job, or they would be out of business, because they don’t have the advantages we do in terms of cheap domestic energy and raw materials, and because we can sell a higher percentage of production domestically.
What Is Holding Renewable Energy Back?
By Todd Royal – Jan 13, 2017, 4:13 PM CST
Bloomberg is now reporting that solar energy is cheaper than coal, and could become the lowest form of energy within a decade. Economies of scale are causing solar to drop from an average of $1.14 a watt all the way to 0.73 cents per watt by 2025.
Several agencies, from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab to the International Energy Agency, all confirm this rapid decline in costs. Capacity for solar is doubling, causing the supply chain to be lower for bank loan premiums and manufacturing capacity in the solar energy space. Now with Tesla’s gigafactory opening the cost of batteries is also expected to drop for electric vehicles and home battery systems.
China also plans to invest over $360 billion on renewable energy and fuels to help decrease the smog issues the country is currently experiencing. Unsafe, coal-fired power plants are currently suffocating the country’s air supply.
We could be entering a new era in energy, and an era renewable investors and environmental advocates have been touting this century. Unfortunately, there are glaring weaknesses being over looked. For renewables to truly breakthrough into a low-cost, scalable energy along the lines of coal, oil, and natural gas numerous obstacles such as costs, back-up generation power, storage, and grid modernization will need to be solved.
Yes, costs are technically going down for solar and wind, but can that truly be translated onto a larger scale? While costs for manufacturing and kilowatts per hour are dropping, the final costs when it comes to large-scale renewables are more nuanced. For this reason, despite the need for clean fuel in both emerging and developed economies, renewable market share remains well below that of conventional forms of energy. The BP Statistical Review of Global Energy in 2015 showed renewables provided only 2.4 percent of total worldwide energy needs, hydroelectric power generated 6.8 percent and nuclear came in at 4.4 percent. Moreover, no matter how much renewables are touted as a replacement for fossil fuels, and even with positive economies of scale, it is unlikely that they will overtake coal, oil and natural gas in the near future.
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/What-Is-Holding-Renewable-Energy-Back.html
It is not price that determines whether or not one energy form is advantageous to another, it is functionality. Can solar and wind function the same as fossil fuels.
The answer is they cannot. Fossil fuels lift the barge and tote the bale. Something solar and wind wishes it will do, but definitely can’t… at all. The capacity is not there.
Fossil fuels do the job that renewables will not be able to do. The fact of the matter, that is the fact, Jack.
Therein lies the rub.
Keep dreaming, it helps a lot.
Hi RW,
You have a way of making the obvious OBVIOUS, which is a useful trick, because so many of us manage to overlook the obvious, until it’s rammed down our throats.
” The capacity is not there.”
Literally true, today.
It may be within the easily foreseeable future , and maybe even before old farts like us are gone. I’m presuming you are old, because you show signs of it in your thinking, in more ways than one. Age brings wisdom, but it may also bring on a stubborn but mistaken belief that old beliefs are still and will always be true beliefs.
“Keep dreaming, it helps a lot.” True dat!
Dreams work wonders in reducing anxiety and stress sometimes, and one of those times is this one.
And the bigger a change is needed, the more dreaming is needed up front to encourage people to work on it.
For now and for some time to come, renewables CAN’T actually REPLACE fossil fuels, not in most cases and not in most places.
But renewables are good enough, and cheap enough , NOW, to DISPLACE up to half or more of the quantity of fossil fuel we burn to generate electricity, in a lot of places. In some places, they’re good enough if the people there are willing to adapt their life styles to vagaries of wind and clouds, well, the people in that sort of place COULD get along with very very little in the way of fossil fuels.
This is good enough that it’s worth while to keep the pedal to the metal on the renewables front.
The more renewable energy we produce, the longer our finite supply of fossil fuels will last, and the cheaper we can buy them.
As a matter of fact, I believe that whatever we spend on subsidizing renewables will be returned to us, along with a nice fat profit, by way of reducing the both the quantity and the price of the fossil fuels we WILL be buying and burning for quite some time yet.
I can’t prove it, and I can’t find any professionally produced papers indicating that I am right about it. Any links to such papers, or other sources dealing with this topic will be greatly appreciated , and thanks in advance.
I’m talking about money, straight up, and nothing but money, in terms of computing the answer.
People who work for money understand money better than anything else, when it comes to day to day life. It’s hard to get them interested in anything remote from their day to day problems, such feeding the kids and fixing the car and hanging onto the job. Life for them is all about this week, and this year. The far distant future is something they don’t have either the time nor the energy to take seriously. So talking to them about climate is not an effective strategy, and talking to them about air pollution is not an effective strategy, unless they have a family member with a lung problem. Talking to them about the cancer they may get decades down the road just makes them TIRED, and they are tired ALREADY.
Show them how they can cut back on what they spend on electricity, and you can get their attention.
http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/tuesday-january-17th-kgb-white-house?mbid=nl_170117_Daily&CNDID=48654290&spMailingID=10245691&spUserID=MTc4OTMyODYzNjk0S0&spJobID=1081397176&spReportId=MTA4MTM5NzE3NgS2
And I didn’t think Boris EmailServer aka KGB had a sense of humor
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/01/17/along-with-chelsea-manning-here-are-the-other-people-who-received-pardons-and-commutations-from-obama/?utm_term=.036b4863e878
I approve of the Manning decision. Don’t know about any of the others, but my guess is that a few of them will do ok, and the rest will be back in jail soon enough. I scrolled down thru the first fifty, all were small time drug dealers handed long sentences.
This looks a hell of a lot better than Clinton’s last list, which most had a lot of big money scum bags on it.
Obama has shown himself to be an upright man in keeping the little fella on his list. I doubt if any of them had friends willing to make a big donation in order to win a favorable decision.
Another Obama Spin:
This helps explain why we don’t know that Obama, who says he recognizes the threat to humanity posed by climate change, still invested at least $34 billion to promote fossil fuel projects in other countries. That is three times as much as George W Bush spent in his two terms, almost twice that of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and Bill Clinton put together.
Obama financed 70 foreign fossil fuel projects. When completed they will release 164 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year — about the same output as the 95 currently operating coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. He financed two natural gas plants on an island in the Great Barrier Reef, as well as two of the largest coalmines on the planet.
Obama did have his Clean Power Plan for the US, estimated to reduce carbon emissions by 2.5 billion tons over 15 years. But the foreign projects he approved will produce about the same carbon emissions as the Clean Power Plan savings. These foreign emissions increases financed by Obama aren’t counted toward US totals, but the impact on climate change is identical regardless the place of origin.
Hi Duncan,
I’ve always said that Obama has done a passable job, and is a better prez than the R guy would have been, but except for personal rights and things in that line, I maintain that the D party, as it exists today, is pretty much best described as a Republican Lite party.
But taken all around, the D’s are never the less a hell of a lot better on the environment.
They wouldn’t do half of what could be done to STOP pollution, short term, if they were in control of DC, but it’s a safe bet they would subsidize renewables and renewables research and thus make it possible to transition away from old dirty industries and to cleaner ones.
It never fails to amuse me that when you find a person wearing both an environmentalist and a globalist hat they never stop to consider that CO2 released on one side of the world is thoroughly mixed in the atmosphere on the other side of the world well within a year.
So they are perfectly willing to impose the costs of compliance with good environmental regulation on OUR industries and industrial workers at the same time giving Asian competitors a free pass.
NOTHING GAINED, in terms of our one world wide environment. They get to cry righteous cynical ” crocodile tears” about American working people losing their jobs, and feel righteous about cleaning up around home, at the same time they impoverish a large number of our own people, at the SAME TIME they buy cheap foreign goods, while paying peanuts to such former industrial workers as go into yard work.
But while this scenario works out beautifully for a while, if you are professional class, or get your living as as investor, or you work in a field where you are insulated from any foreign competition, say you are a teacher, cop, nurse, or just about any government employee, no body overseas can put you out of work, even if they move here.
But after a while…….. you move enough industries overseas….. you don’t have enough customers any more, because so many former industrial workers are either flipping burgers, or unemployed. So then you hire MORE COPS , more jailers, more social workers, and spend more on security cameras, because those former workers WILL DO whatever they can to make a buck, and crime DOES pay, and it can pay VERY well.
And you pay out more and more in taxes to pay for an ever expanding safety net, because if you DON’T then the rabble will RIOT, and THAT’S a little too dangerous to deal with it.
And eventually,you get something you ASKED for, without quite realizing it.
You get enough of the people of three big generally IN THE BAG for the D’s states hurting and scared and mad enough to abandon the party plantation, and go on the politicial warpath, and send an unmistakeable middle finger message to the D party about talking ( every once in a while for a couple of minutes ) the working people ‘s talk, while walking the one percenter walk.
It pays to be careful about what you wish for, because you often get more than you bargained for, when you get it.
Well, the Republican Lite D’s got what they wished for, in terms of the cultural war, by forcing changes mostly thru the courts down the throats of half or maybe more of the country that didn’t want those changes, and that set the stage for losing the popular vote everywhere except California and in and around the bigger cities.
And the globalist Republican Lite economic platform got them something they DIDN’T want as well.
It got them Trump.
A great deal lost.
“So they are perfectly willing to impose the costs of compliance with good environmental regulation on OUR industries and industrial workers at the same time giving Asian competitors a free pass.”
MacBoris, you just can’t help seeing yourself as the victim can you. After a century of the US being the leading emitter of CO2. Now you think it time for China to lead.
Only in the right wing backwoods
Hi HB,
You’re still my little lap doggie, and you still understand about as much as you WANT to understand , which is almost nothing.
What went on for the last century is relevant, but that’s spilt milk, and what’s going on NOW is what’s important in deciding how well the environment will or will not be protected, and how well we live here in the USA.
What’s going on NOW determines who WINS ELECTIONS NOW.
Only a fool would deny that countries like China have a major competitive advantage running dirty, because running clean costs substantially more.
Facts are stubborn things. One is that CO2 and other greenhouse gases travel with the wind, and another is that our own people here in the USA are seeing their standard of living fall if they work in any of the industries that have been exported, or in a field that supports those industries.
Another is that we are forced to expand our welfare state, and our law enforcement establishment as the result of people losing their jobs that paid well enough to live turning to crime and welfare.
And while YOU are still pretending it’s somebody else’s fault that your candidate lost……..
People who are actually WILLING to think a little are coming around to accepting the FACT that ENOUGH historically reliable D voters in the states that put Trump in the WH sent HRC and her elitist homies and the current day REPUBLICAN LITE D party an unmistakable middle finger message.
And you know what?
That collective working class middle finger is less than an inch from your nose.
Now let’s all pray to our preferred Rock or Snake or Waterfall or Sky Daddy or Mommy that we get thru the four years more or less whole, and the D’s run a LIKABLE candidate , WITHOUT a mile long baggage train, WITH favorable poll numbers, next time.
If the D party runs such a candidate next time, the odds are EXCELLENT the D’s will win in a landslide, if that candidate has the trust of the working people of this country.
It’s worth thinking about that a significant number of formerly reliable D voters are moving up in the world, and that as they move up, being hard working entrepreneurs, or entering the professions, they have a POWERFUL incentive to want lower taxes, etc, and because they WANT to live is places that are the kind associated with R types, suburbs where everything is neat and clean and there are no street people, etc.
Fully assimilated immigrants and minorities that have made it into the middle class may no longer be reliable D voters, as they were in the past.
I don’t personally believe the Democrats have a good shot at winning control again for the next decade or maybe two decades without the solid support of the working class.
After that, demographic changes might put them back in power.
“What went on for the last century is relevant, but that’s spilt milk, and what’s going on NOW is what’s important”
Had only Mr. MacBoris Doublestandard EmailServer aka KGB only applied his new BS to HRC last year. You wouldn’t be crying for help now.
Your a Republican hypocrite
I guess it’s time to just use some plain language.
HB, you are a goddamned FOOL.
But hang in there, because you help me stay motivated to work on waking up the D party to reality, and thus getting back to winning elections.
Most likely somebody beat me to this but electrons are cheap.
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/2016-hottest-year-record-humans-blame/
Just in case you haven’t been back to the peakoilbarrel.com home page lately, there are a couple of new posts up and it’s been posted on the new non petroleum thread.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/16/politics/tom-price-bill-aiding-company/index.html
So much for draining the swamp.