780 thoughts to “Open Thread Non Petroleum- January 1, 2017”
Renewables in the Trump era | S&P Global Market: “… many doubt Congress would deliberately hurt an industry that ‘has matured to a level where we’re part of the U.S. economy,’ Soltage LLC CEO Jesse Grossman said.
In addition to tax incentives and an increasing appetite for clean energy among corporate buyers, RPS requirements are expected to serve as a big market driver. Such policies, which are on the books in 29 states and Washington, D.C., have accounted for more than half of the increase in renewable power generation in the U.S. since 2000, according to Galen Barbose, a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.”
“For now, money is not a problem for renewables, with available capital outstripping the supply of lucrative projects, said Josh Goldstein, senior vice president of finance and capital markets at solar project developer Recurrent Energy LLC, a subsidiary of solar panel manufacturer Canadian Solar Inc. And Trump’s ascension is unlikely to change those fundamentals.”
States Will Lead on Climate Change in the Trump Era – The New York Times: “Even now, many states will be able to meet the Clean Power Plan’s targets by following through on planned investments and increasing energy efficiency, according to M. J. Bradley and Associates, a research and consulting firm. Some populous states have set targets that are even more ambitious and appear to be on track to meet them.”
There are some very good maps with this article. According to one, coal is the least expensive way to generate electricity only in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin. For rest of the country, natural gas, wind, or nuclear are cheaper than coal.
California will lead on climate change in the Trump era
Sometimes it pays to be patient! Less than two hours after posting a comment that I would have preferred to see here in this fresh thread, Dennis puts this fresh thread up leaving my recent comment on a dying thread! Cest la vie!
Here’s some good New Years news from my neck of the woods:
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has awarded the first grant through the Clean Energy Finance Facility for the Caribbean and Central America (CEFF-CCA), to help develop a 37 megawatt solar farm in Westmoreland.
CEFF-CCA will provide support to Rekamniar Capital Limited, the project developer, to partner with independent power producer Neoen on forming the Eight Rivers Energy Company, which will build the solar facility, according to a release from the US embassy in Kingston.
The purpose of the grant is to support selected legal, consulting and engineering costs in late stage project development, it said.
The project will connect to the national grid under a power purchase agreement with Jamaica’s Office of Utility Regulation. Once completed, the Eight Rivers facility will generate some of the lowest cost electricity on the island, the release said.
edit: On a unrelated matter, I posted a comment on the previous thread, describing two 15 kW solar carports being put up by the local utility, one of which was unfinished. Well, I drove past the unfinished one last night and guess what? Done! Modules up and inverters mounted, looking very clean and finished like! Looks like somebody had a December 31 deadline!
Hi Island boy,
Sorry for the delay.
Just repost the comments here.
No need to apologize. It was my impatience that got the better of me.
I did some snooping yesterday evening and took some pics of the completed arrays and encountered the utility owned EV being charged at their head office. Below is a pic of the arrays (60 module ~ 15 kW at the head office and 80 module ~ 20 kW at the bill payment office) and the EV. Why I think this is significant is that these are pictures of facilities owned by the monopoly electrical utility in the island and they seem to be positioning to push solar PV and EVs.
“15 kW at the head office ”
What would that be ? About 6 to 8 cars for about 50 miles per day.
According to data from the Table, “Solar energy and surface meteorology” at this nifty little web page, Kingston, Jamaica gets between 4.25 and 6.65 kWh/m²/day of solar energy. The following table shows the output of a 15 kW array for each month using the data from the page linked to above:
Month Insolation Output
Month| kWh/m²/d| kWh
Jan | 4.66 | 2166.9
Feb | 5.29 | 2301.15
Mar | 6.13 | 2850.45
Apr | 6.68 | 3006
May | 6.3 | 2929.5
Jun | 6.65 | 2992.5
Jul | 6.64 | 3087.6
Aug | 6.25 | 2906.25
Sep | 5.8 | 2610
Oct | 5.25 | 2441.25
Nov | 4.55 | 2047.5
Dec | 4.25 | 1976.25
Total| | 31315.35
Assuming ten percent charging losses, this is enough to fully charge a 30 kWh Nissan Leaf battery, good for 107 miles each time according to the EPA, 949 times. This would allow 101,538 miles of travel and offset 4,062 gallons of gasoline for a fleet with an average overall fuel economy of 25 mpg. At current prices that is $15,434 worth of gasoline so, if the modules cost say, US$0.75 per watt the array would have cost $11,250 and the gasoline displaced would pay off the cost of the modules in a little over eight months!
Note that these are grid tied systems so, what they are really doing is offsetting the use of electricity at the facilities by at least 4.25 kWh per day, per kW of installed capacity. At the current retail price of electricity in Jamaica (US$0.24) the 31315.35 kWh of electricity is worth $7,515 so, that would pay off the cost of the modules in less than two years.
I think it is safe to say that, as the price of PV technology, advanced batteries and EVs continues to decline, that will set a cap for the price of oil which if exceeded, will see a wholesale shift to the use of PV and EVs in tropical, small island states. In all likelihood, that price cap is already below $100
The image below contains a solar resource map of Jamaica with a Google map of the whole island below it with some distance measurements to give an idea of the size of the island. To the right of both of those maps is another Google map showing a north-south slice of the island, including the capital city, with the red marker showing the location of the 80 kW array pictured above and again, some distance measurements to illustrate the area covered by the city.
Maybe somebody can examine the maps and tell me again why solar PV and EVs can’t work for tropical small island states?
Islandboy, you have way too much sun and not far enough to drive, so those cars will power the homes too. 🙂
Islandboy,
Solar energy makes a lot of sense in most tropical areas where there’s not too much cloud cover. More so in islands that are energetically isolated. And more so if as you said the quality of the fuel can be a very serious issue. And even more if the national grid is not very reliable.
Unless you can install micro-hydro there is no way you can beat solar under that set of circumstances.
Solar electricity becomes even more of a compelling argument for smaller island nations that in most cases have hardly anything at all to export, or at least hardly anything in large enough exportable quantities to pay for imported fossil fuels.
Tourism is ok, so long as the overall international economy keeps on trucking, , the planes keep arriving, the tour boats keep sailing into port.
But if the economy turns sour, solar infrastructure installed when times are good will keep on producing when times turn sour.
I wonder how long it will be before there is enough demand for refrigerators that will keep food well chilled or frozen for seventy two hours or longer that they become available as commodity appliances, available at any appliance store ,or big box type retailer, as opposed to being available only by special order at double or more the usual price of a similarly sized refrigerator.
Let’s see what additional parts would be necessary to build such refrigerators. First off, a large enough compartment to have a supply of ice that will keep things cold via absorbing heat as it melts for three days. Second, insulation at probably at least twice as good, as measured by R value. Third, a couple of extra sensors, and a rather small battery adequate to run the little fan that will be needed to circulate the air inside the fridge, keeping it uniformly cold. That little fan can be made to run on the same dc voltage as the battery, with a gizmo added to allow it to run on ac grid juice as well.
My wild ass guess is that a refrigerator that sells for eight hundred to a thousand today could be upgraded this way for no more than a couple of hundred bucks more, maybe even less.
Does any body know about how often, on average, tropical islands suffer cloudy weather longer than three days in a row?
Even when the weather is bad, you still get some juice from a domestic solar system, probably enough to keep a fridge going, saving the cost of spoiled food.
But you also want some lights, radio, internet, cooling fans, etc.
And some folks in bad health simply have to have air conditioning and other electrical apparatus available. My Dad is one such person, but I have had to run a generator only once in the last three or four years years to keep his room cool, and maybe once to keep the lights on in the winter for a day or so every three or four years on average.
Our local grid is probably more dependable than most others in rural areas subject to thunderstorms and freezing rain , etc, both of which result in downed transmission lines due to falling trees.
( I’m delaying purchase of a domestic system for now because the price of pv stuff is falling like a rock, and I can’t afford not to wait, given that I do have a large back up generator, 18 kilowatt continuous duty, and a back up for my back up ,6 kilowatts, AND an ever smaller one that puts out only two thousand watts, which is still enough for the refrigerator, but not enough for either the well pump or the ac.
Most farmers have this much or more backup capacity available, not only because the grid goes down occasionally out in the boonies, but also because running large enough cable to outlying buildings where you need electricity only once in a long while is very costly. It’s cheaper to just haul a generator to the place it’s needed under such circumstances.
You use the little ones to run power tools out in the field.
Two well maintained older machines , with one as backup, are less likely to let you down than one NEW one, and cost you a hell of a lot less, over the years. I invest the savings.
There’s an awful lot of these islands. These will be the early market for batteries; they’ll pay way more than the mainland and give the battery makers the experience they need to cut costs and raise volume production. Then it moves on to the mainland.
Hi IslandBoy,
That’s not exactly how I came up with my WAG estimate. Oldfarmermac says I’m stupid. So correct me if I’m wrong.
I simply took your 15 kW and multiplied it times 3.3(approximate miles traveled per kW in an EV). This gave me 50. Then the average day per year has 12 hours of light. But, my understanding is that only about half of that 12 hours is productive solar generation. So I said 6 to 8 vehicles.
“US$0.75 per watt the array would have cost $11,250 and the gasoline displaced would pay off the cost of the modules in a little over eight months!”
From my understanding of your post. I don’t think $.75 is a fair or accurate number. $.75 only covers the cost of the panels. There is a cost to install the panels. A project engineers rule of thumb is that labor costs is 2 to 1 of material. This might be a little off in this application but you also have cost of wires, switches, conduit, inverts, etc. In addition, there is the cost of the car port that the array is mounted on. That car cover looks about 40 x 40. I don’t see that happening for less than $20 a foot. Which would cost $32,000.
7 cars a day at 50 miles per day equals 127,750 miles per year. It looks like you came up with 101,538 miles of travel per year.
“Then the average day per year has 12 hours of light. But, my understanding is that only about half of that 12 hours is productive solar generation. So I said 6 to 8 vehicles.”
You were somewhat lucky that you were even in the ballpark. I got some training in solar (following on the words of one “westexas”) so it there is quite a bit moire to it than that. To assess the production of any solar PV facility one must examine the solar resource for the location. The map above comes from one source, other sources include for the USA, the NREL web site which has tons of detailed info. In the trade we use the insolation data as in kWh/m²/d, sometimes loosely converted to “Peak Sun Hours”, a figure that represents what the solar output would be if the sun just appeared at high noon and stayed there for however many Peak Sun Hours before disappearing again, rather than taking it’s usual trek across the sky. Peak Sun Hours are calculated based on historical ground based and satellite data for a given location that includes the effects of cloud cover, smog and haze. It makes it possible to predict the performance of a system in a given location with a fair amount of accuracy.
The map below is a reduced size (5%) image of a map available at the NREL web site here. You can use it to compare the solar resource of anywhere in the US with Germany and Spain. From the map yon can deduce that an array in Seattle, Washington will produce less than half of what the same array could produce in almost any location in the desert southwest. So to complete my long winded response your method of estimation wasn’t all that bad, it’s just that you got lucky with the lower end of your guess of 6-8 Peak Sun Hours matching the upper end of the 4.25-6.68 data from NASA.
“From my understanding of your post. I don’t think $.75 is a fair or accurate number. $.75 only covers the cost of the panels. There is a cost to install the panels.”
That is why I was actually being very careful with my wording, “gasoline displaced would pay off the cost of the modules“. AFAICT only local expertise and labor was used. I witnessed the guys doing the fabrication (welding) of the supports and they looked very local to me, read that as labor costs being a fraction of what they would be in the US. As a result I dare not even hazard a guess as to what the final cost of the project was.
Being as the owner of the projects is the utility, all the design and planning would have been done by their renewable department staff and the permitting and inspection costs were probably zero. If the supports (car cover) cost what you estimate, they probably cost more than the modules, inverters and balance of system costs put together.
They will probably write the carports off as a marketing expense. IMO these were put up in the specific locations where they were put up for marketing purposes more than for the actual electricity they are going to produce. When you look at the location of the 80 kW array, the premises is quite large and they could easily have stuck it somewhere it would be less visible. Instead they put it in the highest visibility location on the lot. I will attach a picture showing an elevated billboard right next to it in a comment immediately following this one. Incidentally, the billboard is likely to cast a considerable shadow over the array in he early morning hours, several months out of the year. There are other signals that their intent was not to maximize yield. Try and make out what the the billboard says!
Is this marketing or what?
Here it is zoomed in a bit!
Hi IslandBoy
Here are a couple of link you may be interested in. There’s a couple of picture of HB city hall solar parking lot and the local Walmart.
You know, I’m mildly amazed that ALASKA has better insolation than Germany. The whole US is going to switch over faster than I thought.
I’m in upstate NY, and it’s really not that bad here is it?
>that will set a cap for the price of oil
That is what renewables do in general. They suck the profit out of the fuel business, which is the world’s most profitable.
As I am shipping my daughter out to St. Vincent to save the world, I’d be curious to know if anyone is seriously marketing solar in the islands.
“I think it is safe to say that, as the price of PV technology, advanced batteries and EVs continues to decline, that will set a cap for the price of oil which if exceeded, will see a wholesale shift to the use of PV and EVs in tropical, small island states. In all likelihood, that price cap is already below $100”
I’ve been repeatedly trying to calculate that cap. Here’s the basic calculation, with the pessimistic assumption that the car charges at night, so you need both a home (or grid, doesn’t matter) battery and a car battery.
CS == local cost per watt of solar panel install, inclusive of wiring, inverter etc.
LS == panel useful lifetime in years
S == sun-hours per day
CB == local cost per kwh capacity of batteries, inclusive of wiring, inverter, etc
LB == lifetime of batteries, years
CA == price premium (negative for discount) for electric auto over comparable gas auto
LA == lifetime of automobile, years
MD == miles driven per year
F = efficiency in kwh / mile of electric car
MPG = miles-per-gallon of alternative gasoline car
CG = local price of gasoline, $/gallon
Assume no inflation, cash purchase, and nothing better to invest your money in. Because the calculations get way more complicated with higher discount rates than 0.
CS * 1000 / (S * 365 * LS) == production cost per kwh
CB / (365 * LB) == overnight storage cost per kwh
( CS * 1000 / (S * 365 * LS) + CB / (365 * LB) ) == levelized cost of electricity per kwh
F * CS * 1000 / (S * 365 * LS) +F * CB / (365 * LB) == dollars per mile to operate electric car
CA / (LA * MD) == premium paid for upfront purchase, per mile
CG / MPG = dollars per mile to operate gas car
At fuel cost parity,
F * CS * 1000 / (S * 365 * LS) +F * CB / (365 * LB) + CA / (LA * MD) == CG / MPG
So this is the cap for the price of gasoline:
MPG * F * CS * 1000 / (S * 365 * LS) + MPG * F * CB / (365 * LB) + MPG * CA / (LA * MD)
(It’s actually a bit lower since electric cars have lower maintenance costs.)
So, interesting. Plug in these values:
MPG = 50 (best possible scenario for gas cars)
F = .333
CS = $3 (high US costs)
S = 5 (reasonable Hawaii number)
LS = 25
CB = $407.5 (Tesla Powerwall)
LB = 10
CA = $10,000
LA = 10
MD = 7000 (Hawaii, and note that driving more makes electric cars look better financially)
You get a cap on the gas price of $5.33. Obviously this isn’t very interesting, but the components are more interesting: most of this comes from the price premium on the car. Cut the price premium to $1000 and the cap on the gas price is $3.19; cut it to $0 and the cap is $2.95. The price premiums for electric cars are basically disappearing in the next few years.
Oh, and cut the cost of the solar install from $3/watt to $1.60 per watt (which is already possible in parts of the country, all of Australia and Germany) and should be true everywhere), you cut the price cap by $0.51. Cut the price of the home/grid battery from $407 to $300 (extremely likely in the next couple of years) and you cut the price cap by $0.49 cents. Do both and eliminate the premium and you have a cap of $1.95.
Assume a worse gas car of 25 mpg and even with the most pessimistic assumptions listed above, the price cap drops in half, to $2.66.
Now, assume 25 mpg, $1.60/watt solar, $300/kwh battery, and $0 car premium, and you get a price cap of $0.97.
In actual fact there’s another cap — the existing grid electricity price (CG).
MPG * F * CG + MPG * CA / (LA * MD)
At Hawaii’s astronomical grid prices, this is higher than the solar + battery price cap. But at mainland prices of 11 cents / kwh, this already sets a rather low cap — with a price premium of $0 for electric cars, the cap turns out to be $1.83.
Couldn’t tell you yet which of these prices is really the cap right now in any given location. And it makes a surprising amount of difference, because $2.50 gas is compatible with $75 oil, while $2.00 gas is only compatible with $60 oil, and $1.50 gas is only compatible with $45 oil, and $1 gas is only compatible with $30 oil.
Obviously this isn’t a hard cap. It takes time for people to switch cars. The point is that oil prices above the cap, whatever it is in any given year at any particular location, cause massive permanent demand destruction.
What I can tell you is that I think the cap will be below $2 retail gasoline almost everywhere within about two years. Demand destruction will follow. Don’t expect oil to ever go back above $60.
Thanks Nate. Excellent.
At first glance, you seem to be ignoring PV module efficiency? Or is that somehow wrapped up in Hawaii’s 5 hours of sunshine figure?
PV efficiency doesn’t really matter, because there is no shortage of space to deploy them. All that matters is price.
Of course for some niche applications efficiency does matter, but they do not affect the cost of solar to the grid.
At some stage prices will fall so far that higher efficiency will start reducing deployment cost, and then PV efficiency will be used to cut the prices, but we are a long way from that point.
Good work Nathanael. In real life we saw that prices of $3.50 to $4.50 per gallon of gasoline tended to reduce demand. If prices rise to that level again, the alternatives of HEV and BEV’s will become much sought after.
Even if the initial transistion is to plug-in HEV’s that will reduce the use of fuel to about 1/3 and allow time for the charge point structure to develop.
Agreed, unless nuclear has a large technological and economic leap, it will become the other black sheep of the energy family. Aside from all the other problems, it is just too expensive.
The latest from The Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers. Among other articles the Toshiba meltdown may be of interest. As a radiologist I had an interest in the LNT (Linear No-Threshold} radiation model (and associated regulations) dating back to the late 1950’s. LNT remains controversial to this day. http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/fukushima-commentary.html
I believe the linear no threshhold debate is over and done with, except as an academic question.
It’s impossible to prove harm, when considering the effects of extremely small amounts of poisons, or radiation, or exposure to allergens, etc, except by statistical methods, and at some point, statistical noise overwhelms any very faint signal.
As a practical matter, this means nobody gives a crap, except hypochondriacs, about getting a dental x ray, or flying cross country at thirty thousand feet, etc.
I had a discussion along these lines with a nursing professor who said one day that a few grams of ethanol used as a preservative in a medicine has never harmed anybody. Then a few days later, she said there is no such thing as any toxin such as ethanol having a safe threshhold exposure level.
You can bet I didn’t bring this up in class in front of other students!
She hemmed and hawed around and finally said that although there IS a risk involved in consuming a couple of grams of ethanol, it’s entirely trivial, as a practical matter.
No matter how low the level may be at which harm can be demonstrated, the level can be made still lower, until harm cannot be demonstrated, at least not using existing technology.
The real question is HOW high the level of any given pollutant, radiation, etc, must be to cause harm, or conversely, how much exposure can be tolerated without harm.
Harm can be demonstrated at extremely low levels, in respect to ionizing radiaton, no doubt.
If you set the exposure level LOW enough, then it’s possible to say that perhaps every frog in the entire world has been exposed to malathion.It lasts, and it gets around.
I once read an essay by a mathematician in which essay he maintains that if Jesus actually existed, historically, then by now his constituent atoms are so well dispersed that it is likely every human alive has at least one of them in his own body.
There is almost for dead sure a low enough exposure level even for ionizing radiation that the organism in the experiment will suffer no harm.
When the frogs are mutating in the streams and when many of the frog species are dying out, that is evidence.
The testing was done to simulate local stream concentrations where frogs and tadpoles were deformed, and lower concentrations also.
Then there is malathion, supposedly not toxic to humans. Just let the chemical or it’s dispersion in water sit out in the hot sun for a period of time, iso-malathion forms which is highly toxic to humans. Do you think every county board of health worker tests the malathion for iso formation before using it again? Yet it is sprayed all over areas for mosquito control, right near humans.
So if you don’t care about the fish, frogs, other amphibians and birds, maybe you will care about the neurotoxic people.
We are screwing the natural world badly and doing ourselves harm too.
Backatcha GF,
I am NOT arguing that malathion is safe, or that the chemicals that are created when it decomposes are safe, at concentrations KNOWN to cause harm.
What I am getting at, or trying to get at , is the ACADEMIC question, whether ANY amount of malathion, or other pollutant, is LITTLE ENOUGH that exposure to it will result in no harm.
The flip side of this argument is the one about socalled medicines that supposedly still work when diluted to ridiculously low concentrations. They DON’T.
I am not a scientist, by profession, but I do have some background training that involves the management of chemicals, food additives or supplements, etc.
And I have yet to see any convincing evidence that any given chemical DOES result in identifiable harm at concentrations below some threshold.
It could be that malathion starts causing problems when it’s only one percent as concentrated as it is now, in open waters. I won’t argue otherwise, this is entirely possible.
But cut that concentration by another order of magnitude, and you might have a very hard time demonstrating harm. And if you DID, well my argument still holds, the concentration could be cut by another order of magnitude, making it even more difficult to prove an effect.
Take it all the way to the most ridiculous extreme. I could dump a very small quantity of malathion in a body of water that is entirely free of it, in front of you, and if the quantity is small enough, and the body of water large enough, you won’t even be able to detect the presence of the malathion, after allowing sufficient time for it to disperse.
Hence it would be impossible to prove harm arising from it at such a low concentration.
It follows that the No Linear Threshold debate is an academic question, rather than a practical question.
I worry a little once in a while about what malathion might have done to ME, or might still do to me. I used a lot of it, years ago.
I would never argue that any particular chemical is safe , in absolute terms. Pesticides in particular present some knotty problems in terms of the trade offs involved.
The worst of them have been phased out here in the USA, and in some other countries. But there are more that are doing more harm than good, taken all around.
It’s hard to impossible to say which would be worse, or conversely which is better, doing without, and planting a LOT more acres, or using them , and planting the usual lesser acreage.
“Take it all the way to the most ridiculous extreme. I could dump a very small quantity of malathion in a body of water that is entirely free of it, in front of you, and if the quantity is small enough, and the body of water large enough, you won’t even be able to detect the presence of the malathion, after allowing sufficient time for it to disperse. ”
The point of the research was to show that very low concentrations have large effects since they appear to be too small to activate the anti-body system in animals.
Instrumental lowest detectability limits have no relationship to biological effects, two completely different systems.
Nuclear power plants, built the way we have built them in the past, are certainly too expensive.
But there is plenty of reason to believe that nuclear power could possibly be cost competitive, IF the industry were able to afford the necessary research and development, which are necessary in any industry if costs are to be brought down, reliability and safety up, etc.
Getting new designs approved, achieving some standardization, etc, are damned near impossible as the rules are written today. Nobody can afford the costs, or deal with the decades long time line from concept to permission to build a prototype, etc.
I am not predicting it will happen, but there are other people, and other governments, that appear to be willing to take the necessary chances , and a nuclear renaissance cannot be entirely ruled out.
There are no guarantees that batteries, or other electrical energy storage strategies will work any better than nukes, which are noteworthy for churning out lots of juice around the clock, so much so that in the past it has been wasted keeping office towers lit up like amusement parks during the wee hours.
It seems that it IS possible to build a nuke that simply cannot run away or melt down.
Spent hot fuel is another question altogether, but it also seems to be possible to build nukes that can burn up such fuel, and that do not generate very much hot waste.
I’m not advocating building a lot of new nukes, but rather just pointing out that nuclear power may actually be safe and cost competitive at some future time.
Oh yeah, apart from the nuclear waste problem, TRIGAs are fine. Best reactor design ever.
However, *they don’t generate power*.
Their niche is also disappearing. Anything you can do with a TRIGA you can do with a cyclotron, although in some cases it is more expensive. But it creates much less waste and is proliferation-resistant — there’s a campaign to replace all the medical isotopes made with reactors with cyclotrons for anti-proliferation reasons. Cyclotrons are great.
Back in 1964 Isaac Asimov predicted a bright future in 50 years for nuclear power. He was a smart guy, but his idea of nuclear power was what he called a nuclear battery, basically a box you could hook up to an electrical circuit and get power from.
We are far from achieving this. All nuclear power plants produce is heat and hard radiation. Most of the plant is a Rube Goldberg device to convert this into something useful. Fusion is supposed to be a great leap forward, but it is basically the same thing.
The beauty of wind and solar is that the simply produce electricity without side effects or marginal costs.
This article makes a few points about the decline of the coal industry that I haven’t seen elsewhere.
Trump's Coal Illusion – Milken Institute Review: “Appalachian coal companies seem to understand the bad news better than Appalachian voters — and have more options to manage the damage. The watchword for Big Coal (or what’s left of it) is ‘ride the horse in the direction it is going,’ largely by diversifying. For example, Consol Energy, the Pittsburgh-based coal company, made more money in fracking for natural gas last year than in mining coal. One can only hope that the new president will see the need to give Appalachian miners the resources to begin a comparable transition to a sustainable means of survival.”
To put a lot of effort into preserving a few thousand coal jobs or even adding another thousand is self-defeating. As mentioned in the article the external cost of coal is very high. Also the job growth would be very limited. Helping the renewable industry is where the job growth really lies.
The U.S. power sector is already on track to reach the CPP’s 2024 interim goal, as utilities decarbonize for business reasons, not political ones. GTM Research reports 23 percent of all large-scale solar installed in 2016 was voluntarily procured by utilities outside of federal or state mandates.”
Maybe large installations will go through in some states, but the red states could easily squash some of that. Red states could also make local laws and code that will cause residential solar installations to be more difficult and expensive. It’s not just the Prez we will have to deal with, the Congress is under control and the judiciary will be, so with about 30 percent of the people represented, how will that play out?
Residential solar is really hard to squash. It makes people *mad* when Big Government tries to force them to buy from the Big Corporate Utility instead of having individual self-reliance with home solar panels.
Guerrilla (unlicensed, unpermitted) solar panels are springing up in Europe.
It helps that Barry Goldwater, Jr. is a solar advocate.
The Conservative Case For Solar | Inside Energy: “This is only one block in Pebble Creek – a retirement community west of Phoenix with over 4,000 homes. Twenty-five percent of those homes have rooftop solar, and new ones are coming online almost as fast as the homes are being built, says Miller.”
The fact that solar scales down so well makes it hard to quash. It’s like swatting a room full of flies.
Wind is unkillable, I believe, because farmers like it, and they are politically powerful, especially in the Midwest.
The other problem opponents of renewables have is that at the margin, renewable energy is free. That makes it impossible to price them out of spot markets.
Taken together, this means that as Nathanael suggests, renewables are likely to put a major squeeze on the world’s most profitable industry, fossil fuel. There is nothing corrupt governments can do about it.
Did the fossil fuel industry get up in arms about hydropower? Hydropower produces 16 percent of the world’s electricity. So what is the big deal over PV and wind power? It’s cheaper and cleaner. Just by it’s nature it should supplant most of fossil fuel electricity generation with time.
This article is a “glass half full, have empty” piece. What the US does or doesn’t do won’t screw up the rest of the world, but there are still massive challenges ahead.
Trump's rhetoric on climate change not the greatest threat – Business Insider: “… in international affairs, Trump and his proposed secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, the Exxon chairman, will confront a world of intertwined interests in which climate change has moved from being an inconvenient environmental side issue in the early 1990s to a keystone focal point now, said Andrew Light, a George Mason University professor focused on climate policy.”
I am hoping that Trump and his administration turn out to be something of a Trojan horse when it comes to renewables: Publicly support fossil fuels, but privately cut deals to increase renewables.
Rick Perry greener energy secretary than you think—commentary: “A quick look at Perry’s record as Texas Governor highlights the point. During his tenure, natural gas production climbed 50 percent, while oil production soared by 260 percent. However, the growth of the wind industry under Perry’s tenure was even more dramatic, growing from only 116 megawatts of production in 2000 to over 11,000 megawatts in 2013.
If Texas was a country, it would rank as the fifth largest producer of wind power in the world, supplying Texas with approximately 10 percent of its power needs. In addition to promoting wind generation, Rick Perry’s administration promoted the rapid growth of transmission infrastructure needed to carry that wind energy from its source in the Panhandle and western part of the state to major load centers.”
Just as GE discovered that being a finance company was more lucrative than making appliances, perhaps solar companies will make their money by loaning money to homeowners buying solar.
Tesla giving up residential solar leasing to be in the Florida ‘sunshine’ market – and it might be the company’s future | Electrek: “If the trends of a report put out by EnergySage, ‘Solar Marketplace Intel Report, Data from H2 2015 to H1 2016’, are to be believed then the lease companies ought be evolving models as fast as they can: 63% of EnergySage users preferred ownership to a loan – but a full 99% of who went on to buy, actually got a loan or paid cash versus a lease. These market forces are already happening and Tesla, being the largest player in this field, saw it. SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive already announced that the company expects to reduce the number of leases while loans and cash purchases increase. Multiple loan products have been tested – with the MyPower program being canceled and a new, simplified program implemented. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also commented that SolarCity will continue this trend under Tesla.”
Just as GE discovered that being a finance company was more lucrative than making appliances, perhaps solar companies will make their money by loaning money to homeowners buying solar.
Yeah, and that right there is the essence of the problem with the operating system on which our economy and society run. We need to find a way to reward production of actual things of value to people more, than the destructive process of sucking wealth out of communities. That should be made as painful a process as possible for those that try to engage in it!
Just an example of what one comes across around here when trying to change a money making system. You can end up in the drink if you persist. Some people take their positions and businesses very seriously, even though they run poorly and inefficiently.
Parking minimums mean that you need a quarter acre lot to open a taco stand in America. That is why is is better to be rich and a lousy cook than poor and a good cook when you open a restaurant in America. You can buy your recipes from a chain.
That explains what is wrong with American cooking.
Musk is a slick guy. He merges with SolarCity, gets Panasonic to put up the money and expertise to run his solar panel factory, gets New York state to give tax credits, and lets Trump claim credit for creating jobs in the US.
I hope it all works because we need renewables to be where the GOP throws its support.
Five challenges facing Tesla after SolarCity merger – The Buffalo News: “Musk succeeded in getting shareholders to buy into his vision that the $2.1 billion merger was a linchpin in his vision of turning Tesla into a renewable energy powerhouse, offering solar panels, electric vehicles and the batteries that each uses.”
What happens to Tesla when an affordable EV shows up with high efficiency in wheel motors, a battery that has twice the charge density per weight, and has flash capacitors or hydraulic pressure assist to capture almost all of the braking energy for reuse?
I am not talking about too much new tech here, a lot of it has already been invented and patented.
What happens when the disrupter gets disrupted?
What happens when the disrupter gets disrupted?
Maybe he get’s into the coal mining business and creates lots of new jobs and makes America The Greatest Nation the world has ever seen!
Meanwhile the rest of the world is shorting oil, gas and coal in favor of wind and solar.
Maybe he starts building resorts and casinos – on Mars.
Yeah and then we will be able to compare unemployment rates between planets… maybe some of the coal miners can be retrained to mine the asteroid belt.
Hi GF,
Your point is rock solid.
IF the economy remains more or less functional, new tech is going to wipe out the old so fast the odds are that no single company can dominate any large industry very long, except maybe in cases where a big firewall of patents can stymie the competition.
Now about wheel motors- They have problems associated with them, especially in high performance automotive applications. A first principle in auto design is to get the weight onto the suspension, and out of the wheels, for better handling and performance. There’s not much weight to be saved anyway, or much efficiency to be gained, because the electric motor used now is already very compact and efficent.
The energy that can be recovered from braking can be used with the present set up to recharge the battery already.
I owned a box of wrenches so big that I could barely lift it before I figured out my pecker was designed as a dual purpose appendage, ;-).
Don’t work on cars for money anymore, but my new garage, under construction, is fifty by sixty feet, plenty of room for two project cars. One’s an old truck that I’m in the process of converting to running on firewood, lol. I haven’t decided on the other one yet.
All the regular’s here have a standing invitation to drop in for an afternoon or overnight in the event they ever pass thru my neck of the woods.I’m not far from the intersection of I77 and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Nothing would please me better than an evening spent talking nature, politics and technology with any of you guys, face to face over some REAL artisan whiskey, or whatever else your pleasure might be.
A few may not believe it, without seeing it, but we have indoor plumbing! 😉
Siemens has had an in-wheel motor for a number of years now. Since the coupling is magnetic, no gears are involved thus more efficient and no drive shaft or shaft joints to wear out. It can be in two or four wheels giving a true all wheel drive with full independent control. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLD6X860cLQ
As far as the regenerative braking it is currently very inefficient (10 to 30 percent) since the battery cannot take the charge that fast. Using flash capacitors or hydraulic pressure storage allows about 50 to 90 percent of the braking energy to be recovered.
Agreed, regenerative braking will work really well if these “flash capacitors” work out in automotive operations. I don’t really have any idea how much an automotive wheel motor would have to weigh, but it would have to be heavier than just an ordinary wheel.
Wheel motors will be one of the NEXT BIG THINGS in machinery where weight, acceleration, and handling characteristics are not major considerations.
I might live long enough to own a farm tractor with wheel motors, lol.
The drive wheels I use now are actually ballasted, with a calcium chloride solution in the drive wheels, because the extra weight adds traction and stability on slopes. Acceleration is a non issue when you are not going to be going over ten mph max, when actually working.
Ford has done some serious research on hydraulic energy storage in trucks, but apparently decided the cost and weight of such a system is too great to install it in a truck.
I lost my links when my old computer died, but Ford had some of these systems on actual trucks out on actual highways for testing purposes.
If I remember correctly, the best prototype tested would stop a dump truck from fifty five mph, and accelerate it back up to thirty five mph without any help from the engine.
The hydraulics industry is mature,and I don’t see any real reason to hope for any substantial reduction in the cost of using hydraulics to salvage braking energy. The necessary components,except the storage tanks, are already off the shelf and manufactured by the tens of thousands to be used in construction and farm machinery.
You would need a reversible motor in this case, to use as a pump when slowing down, and a motor when accelerating the truck.
She will probably HAVE to run oil over gas, because getting tight enough gas seals in a compact enough motor/ pump unit to last for tens of thousands of cycles at the necessary pressures is most likely going to be either outrageously costly, or impossible. Dealing with hydraulic oil at two thousand psi or more requires the finest industrial quality components,and dealing with a gas at such pressures, and up from there, apparently requires rocket tech.
The tanks needed may be doable at a reasonable cost within the near future, given the progress in using materials such as carbon fiber.
Rimac already has wheel motors but they haven’t managed to bring their prices down.
Turns out charge density per weight matters less than price. I do know of a design which is better on both, but nobody’s interested in commercializing it (it’s too blue-sky).
The Rimac indeed has four motors, but they are not *in* the wheels.
>> The Concept_One is powered by four extremely powerful permanent magnet electric motors, one for each wheel, located in the centre of both axles. <<
There’s more!
>> Each of the four motors is connected to an independent gearbox. While the front motors have single-ratio reduction gearboxes, each rear motor has its own two-speed dual-carbon-clutch gearbox. This helps us to have great acceleration while also having a very high top speed. <<
Wind and solar works well for farmers. Wind is great for Midwestern farmers, and solar is great for anyone with a barn that has a south facing roof.
That is why the GOP won’t really try to stop it.
Javier said “That’s from Mann et al., 2008. It is not only the National Academy of Sciences that disagrees with that article. It has been demonstrated that the famous hockey-stick is fake. ”
Our in house climate denier posted that the “hockey stick” global temperature record was disproven, a fake even.
Here is a discussion on that subject: https://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm
Make your own judgment.
The Daily Show – Burn Noticed
Published on Sep 23, 2014
The historic People’s Climate March takes place in New York City while a House of Representatives committee struggles with the basic principles of global warming.
Lilliput has nothing on us.
Make your own judgement
By reading a heavily biased piece from an alarmist activist place?
Michael Mann is discredited. Even the IPCC has dumped him. His 1998 “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction is now missing from the paleotemperature graph in chapter 5 of WG1 AR5. The Medieval Warm Period is back in full force as the Medieval Climate Anomaly and his infamous 1998 article in Nature is not even mentioned in a Bibliography on paleotemperatures that contains more than a thousand citations. HE HAS BEEN DUMPED. You can check it by yourself.
Mark Steyn has written a book entitled “A disgrace to his profession”, that collects scientist’s opinions on Mann’s dubious science – ranging from qualified known skeptics to Nobel prize winners, consensus supportive climatologists, and even colleagues and co-workers of Mann. This is part of his defense against the defamation suit that Mann filed on him. It looks like a big mistake from Mann’s part, and nobody in Science has come forward to support him publicly. http://www.amazon.com/Disgrace-Profession-Josh-ebook/dp/B013TZFRGE/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1439476458&sr=1-4&keywords=mark+steyn
Some of the cites:
3373.txt: Raymond Bradley (a coauthor of Mann’s reconstruction): ” Furthermore, the model output is very much determined by the time series of forcing that is selected, and the model sensitivity which essentially scales the range. Mike only likes these because they seem to match his idea of what went on in the last millennium, whereas he would savage them if they did not. Also–& I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year “reconstruction”.
1527.txt: Dendrochronologist Rob Wilson writes: ” There has been criticism by Macintyre of Mann’s sole reliance on RE, and I am now starting to believe the accusations. ”
4241.txt: Rob Wilson again: ” The whole Macintyre issue got me thinking…I first generated 1000 random time-series in Excel … The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about. ”
2009.txt: Keith Briffa (his data on Yamal tree rings was used in the reconstruction): ” I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here! ”
3994.txt: John Mitchell (Met Office) commenting on draft IPCC report: ” Is the PCA (Principal Component Analysis) approach robust? Are the results statistically significant? It seems to me that in the case of MBH (Mann’s article) the answer in each is no. ”
0497.txt: Jones to Mann in 1999: ” Keith didn’t mention in his Science piece but both of us think that you’re on very dodgy ground with this long-term decline in temperatures on the 1000 year timescale.
0562.txt: Simon Tett (Met Office), discussing revising a paper: ” No justification for regional reconstructions rather than what Mann et al did (I don’t think we can say we didn’t do Mann et al because we think it is crap!) “.
2383.txt: Tim Barnett in 2004: ” maybe someone(s) ought to have another look at Mann’s paper. His statistics were suspect as I remember… ”
1656.txt: Douglas Maraun (UEA): ” I think, that “our” reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not especially honest.
4133.txt: David Rind (NASA GISS): ” what Mike Mann continually fails to understand, and no amount of references will solve, is that there is practically no reliable tropical data for most of the time period, and without knowing the tropical sensitivity, we have no way of knowing how cold (or warm) the globe actually got. ”
It is comforting to see that science can overcome this type of fraudulent assaults, even if the method is a slow drive into obscurity instead of a withdrawal of the article that would be the appropriate way.
Do you know that Michael Mann claimed in the lawsuit that he was a recipient of the Nobel Price? The Nobel Price Office had to issue an statement that he was not. Looks like a good way to start. I wish him luck because he has very little to gain and a lot to loose in terms of reputation from the suit.
The data was not Mann’s to begin with. It was the reconstruction of the chronology by funny statistics that was Mann’s fabrication. This was all exposed by McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003. Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemisphere Average Temperature Series. Energy & Environment Vol. 14, No. 6, 751-771
Mann’s reconstruction used numerous proxies and assigned different weights to them in order to get the desired hockey stick graph. McIntyre and McKitrick demonstrated that:
– 99% of the time, noise signal would give a similar hockey stick result.
– The final reconstruction was dependent on a single proxy series, the Sheep Mountain series of bristlecone pines, whose authors, Graybill and Idso (1993) had cautioned was not a valid climate proxy. If removed, the hockey stick disappeared. Computer files at the University server proved that Mann was aware of that.
– That when proper statistics were applied to the same data that Mann et al. used, the reconstruction showed a very robust Medieval Warm Period.
Its conclusion was that the main conclusion from Mann’s reconstruction “the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported by the Mann, Bradley and Hughes 1998/99 [work]”
Only climate alarmists with complete disregard for integrity in climate science continue to support and use Michael mann’s hockey stick. IPCC doesn’t give it any value any more.
“Michael Mann is discredited. ”
Only in the very small community of deniers. Here are enuf hockey sticks to form a league.
“Only climate alarmists with complete disregard for integrity in climate science ”
That’s called “projection”. Deniers have no integrity.
Only by a very small community of deniers.
Oh no. Everybody in climatology knows now how he manipulated the proxies to get a result not supported by the evidence. A US Senate committee lead by a statistician concluded that the data did not support the main conclusion of the work. Pretty damning. And everybody knows how he pretended to be a Nobel Prize recipient and was shun down by the Nobel Institute. Pretty shameful.
And I do not consider myself a denier of anything, as each and every point of view that I hold is based on empirical evidence and scientific literature, as I demonstrate with citations, links and figures.
For decades I used to believe in the catastrophic climate narrative, as the evidence appeared to support it during the 80’s and 90’s. However quite recently I decided to look at the evidence myself, and found out with great surprise that the catastrophic narrative is based mostly on assumptions, and the evidence does not support it.
“Everybody in climatology knows now how he manipulated the proxies”
Almost all of them knows he didn’t.
“A US Senate committee lead by a statistician concluded that the data did not support the main conclusion of the work. ”
Wegman, not Mann, was discredited.
The so-called Wegman Report (14 July, 2006), written by statistician Edward Wegman, David W. Scott and Yasmin Said, purported to critically examine Michael Mann’s “Hockey Stick” “past temperature” reconstruction and its critiques by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKittrick. The report is now remembered as the epitome of global warming denier stupidity, in terms of both its factual errors and its college freshman-level plagiarism from textbooks and Wikipedia. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Wegman_Report
Plagiarism charges against Wegman[edit]
Wegman’s institution, George Mason University, confirmed in October 2010 that they were investigating misconduct charges, following a March 2010 formal complaint by Raymond S. Bradley alleging plagiarism and fabrications in the Wegman Report. A 250-page study by computer scientist John Mashey, posted on the “Deep Climate” website, claims that 35 of the 91 pages in the Wegman Report were plagiarized, and “often injected with errors, bias and changes of meaning.” Wegman responded that he was “very well aware of the report”, but at the university’s request would not comment further until all issues were settled.[72] Reviews by outside experts contacted by USA Today found plagiarism from textbooks which was obvious and inappropriate; the social network analysis section had also been partly copied from Wikipedia. Wegman said there was “speculation and conspiracy theory” in John Mashey’s analysis, and said that “[t]hese attacks are unprecedented in my 42 years as an academic and scholar.” He stated that the Wegman Report never “intended to take intellectual credit for any aspect of paleoclimate reconstruction science or for any original research aspect of social network analysis.”[73] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wegman_Report
“I do not consider myself a denier of anything,”
Deniers are always in denial.
“I do not consider myself a denier of anything.”
Really? Anything? Anything at all? Actually that’s quite a comical comment. Let’s see, does he not deny getting his neighbor’s cute wife pregnant? Does he not deny the Earth is round (or flat)? Or, does he not even deny 2 + 2 = 11? He should deny EVERYTHING (safer) or, ideally, not comment at all. 🙂
Don’t be childish
Javier is a poor-man’s proxy for Richard Lindzen. Go after Lindzen
Typical side attack when nobody could demonstrate that the conclusions from the report were incorrect.
McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003 also stands unchallenged. Everybody knows what Michael Mann did with the proxies.
Why hasn’t Javier been banned yet? He’s just repeating lies which have already been debunked. It’s *boring*.
Whackamole
“Michael Mann is discredited. Even the IPCC has dumped him. His 1998 “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction is now missing from the paleotemperature graph in chapter 5 of WG1 AR5.”
Javier, not Mann, is discredited…
it might not come as a surprise that one of the most egregious misrepresentations of the IPCC’s latest report involves the Hockey Stick and conclusions about the uniqueness of modern warming.
An urban legend seems to be circulating around the echo chamber of climate change denial, including contrarian blogs and fringe rightwing news sites. The claim is that the IPCC has “dropped” or “trashed” the Hockey Stick conclusion regarding the unprecedented nature of recent warmth.
A good rule of thumb is that the more insistent climate change deniers are about any particular talking-point, the greater the likelihood is that the opposite of what they are claiming actually holds. The IPCC has, in fact, actually strengthened its conclusions regarding the exceptional nature of modern warmth in the new report. A highlighted box in the “summary for policy-makers” states the following (emphasis mine):
In the northern Hemisphere, the period 1983-2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1,400 years (medium confidence).
The original 1999 Hockey Stick study (and the 2001 Third IPCC Assessment report) concluded that recent northern hemisphere average warmth was likely unprecedented for only the past 1,000 years. The 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment extended that conclusion back further, over the past 1,300 years (and it raised the confidence to “very likely” for the past 400 years). The new, Fifth IPCC Assessment has now extended the conclusion back over the past 1,400 years. By any honest reading, the IPCC has thus now substantially strengthened and extended the original 1999 Hockey Stick conclusions.
In the northern Hemisphere, the period 1983-2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1,400 years (medium confidence).
But I also believe that to be true. I do believe that the evidence points that probably we are warmer now than during the Medieval warm period. As usual warmists miss the point because they don’t understand anything.
The hockey stick was a fraudulent reconstruction that erased both the warming prior to the Medieval Warm Period and the cooling afterwards leading to the Little Ice Age. It left a monotonic straight constant rate cooling for over a thousand years all the way to the present warming, that he placed starting in 1900. It has been completely discredited. IPCC has reinstated the Medieval Warm Period, and modern warming starts about 1850, which is the point I have been discussing all along with GoneFishing and provided ample evidence that it is the expert scientists consensus. Now you can believe whatever you want, but don’t think that science is on your side, because it is not.
Javier said:
” As usual warmists miss the point because they don’t understand anything.”
As usual, a case of psychological projection.
A good recent example of this is the ongoing situation regarding Richard Lindzen
From the article: This leaves the claims of defamation against Simberg and Steyn. Here, the authors’ tendency to treat their own views as facts caused them problems. “[The] argument is that the statements are not verifiably false because they are simply Mr. Simberg’s opinion,” the court says, before going on to note that, “in the article Mr. Simberg does not employ language normally used to convey an opinion, such as ‘in my view,’ or ‘in my opinion,’ or ‘I think.’ The article’s assertions about Dr. Mann’s deception and misconduct are stated objectively, as having been ‘shown and ‘revealed’ by the CRU e-mails.—snip—- the court concludes, claims of Mann’s misconduct in these columns are statements of fact. In this case, they’d be protected if they were right. But the court’s concluded it’s likely they’re not. While Simberg and Steyn felt that the Penn State investigation of Mann was a sham, they again failed to provide any reason to believe that. In contrast, the court was impressed by the investigative body there, going so far as to name all of its members and their credentials.
“Even if appellants’ skepticism of the Penn State report were to be credited by a jury as a valid reason for not taking its conclusions seriously,” the court goes on, “that leaves three other reports, from separate investigatory bodies in academia and government, on both sides of the Atlantic, that also found no wrongdoing.” It also notes that there have been seven investigations in total that haven’t found wrongdoing, that Mann’s scientific conclusions were accepted by a National Academies of Science panel that looked into matters, and that the results have been validated by additional research since.
So: you base your opinion on a guy who (if we believe the appeals court) is about to lose a defamation suit at trial.
Actually it looks like Steyn is about to win the defamation suit at trial. Steyn doesn’t have to prove any wrongdoing from Mann’s part. He is just exercising his right to free speech. Mann has to prove that Steyn criticism was not covered by free speech right. Tough one.
Actually it looks like Steyn is about to win
No it doesn’t.
You suffer from Steyn’s problem: an opinion not backed up by any evidence, that you present as a fact.
Do you have even a shred of evidence for this? Maybe a reference of some kind? Did you read the decision and draw something else out of it? Because if you didn’t (and if you did, you should have posted it, eh?) you should have couched your language in terms of “I think” , or “in my opinion”.
You obviously didn’t read the quote in the middle of my comment: the court concludes, claims of Mann’s misconduct in these columns are statements of fact. In this case, they’d be protected if they were right. But the court’s concluded it’s likely they’re not. (emphasis mine.)
To simplify: they presented lies as fact. If the lies were truths, they’d be golden. Unfortunately, their lies turned out to be lies. So, not protected speech.
In light of the fact that I have legal references, where are yours? The free speech angle you bring up is what the article is debunking.
Or were you just waiting until time had passed in hopes I wouldn’t keep an eye on my comment?
In any case, might you, or anyone reading this, know how I might be able to install a GFCI combination light-switch and electrical outlet– a Leviton Smartlockpro X7299-W (?)– (or another recommended?) in place of a simple 2-wire (plus ground) switch loop wall light switch, where only those wires come into the box?
I tried the diagram in the image, for example, but it doesn’t appear to work with the Leviton… and I’m still alive to talk about it.
I assume you did download and read the PDF instruction sheet and went through the trouble shooting and that you have a good volt/ohm meter. I looked at it and it seems pretty straightforward. Without knowing what readings you are getting or the specifics of your home wiring it’s hard to give advice one way or another.
Hi Fred,
Thanks, yes the PDF is online and I have a copy of it with the device. It doesn’t document my kind of circuit that you see an illustration of– a simple 2-wire (plus ground) switch loop, if I have the terminology right. I have come across some info online that seems to suggest that what is wanted– keeping the light switch but adding an outlet with it– is not possible with the product and my kind of light-switch circuit, where the white wire is also ‘hot’. In any case, I am heading back to the hardware store later today.
You can’t do what you’re trying to do there if that is indeed a switch-loop, because you don’t have the neutral wire to feed the GFCI receptacle. Using the bare ground for neutral will trip the GFCI. It would be functional using a non-GFCI receptacle, but not per code and not recommended either. If it’s possible to pull a 14/3 from the light fixture to the switch by using the current 14/2, that would be one way around the problem. That might not be possible for several reasons, the most likely one being the possibility of the switch-loop wire being stapled to a stud or ceiling joist along the way.
A simpler fix might be possible if you’re lucky enough that the switch is on an interior wall and there’s an outlet on the other side of that wall, in the same stud-space as the switch. Usually pretty easy in that case to fish a wire from one to the other.
Good luck.
Thanks, Stanley. That’s the sense I got and helps to confirm things.
Interhemispheric teleconnections, global glaciers, and temperature reconstructions at the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool support that globally temperatures changed in a similar way.
It shows very clearly that the bottom of the LIA took place between 1600-1650, and that the LIA ended around 1850 after the very cold relapse of 1815. Since the bottom of the LIA global warming is 370 years old, and since the end of LIA is 170 years old. During most of this time global warming has been driven mostly by natural factors, as anthropogenic forcing is only considered to have become significant around 1950.
As you would say the consensus of experts on past millennium temperatures is this one, not the one you defend. As you would say you are denying the science of paleoclimatology.
You need to rewrite climate history to support your narrative that man started global warming. As I have said that is a clear symptom that you are wrong and that you know it. You know something has gone real fishy with your position when I can refute you using science from the National Academy of Sciences and the IPCC.
Don’t feed the trolls.
Who really needs all these things in nature? Climate? Who needs that? Then all of the weather going on inside the climate, there is that too, it gets boring talking about the weather, been doing it for thousands of years. It is time to talk about something more, the climate, the change in the climate, the climate science, the accumulation of climate data, a glacier of the stuff. Now it has to be all about the climate and no more talk of the weather. Coal? Oil? Who needs those gifts from nature? Why do people hate coal and oil so much? They are not really trying to hurt anybody. It’s not right and it’s not fair.
Also, there is too much emphasis on solar and wind energies and too little emphasis on the importance of coal and oil, both of which are essential for modern existence as we know it, so it has to be more fair and balanced. Coal and oil are beat upon relentlessly while solar and wind enjoy much adoration and and accentuation. Very unfair!
No sympathy for coal whatsoever, just cold hearted rejection. Every ounce of energy is expended to use less oil, oil represents everything that always goes wrong. Too much time and energy expended on the advantages of solar and wind, are given an unfair amount of time and space.
I demand more talk about the weather and much less talk about the climate, complete acceptance of coal and oil, and no rejection! Wind and solar are optional. Why bother with them at all?
They’re open to scrutiny, no free ride for wind and solar while coal and oil pay the piper.
The priorities are firmly established, too many people rocking the coal and oil boat while piling high the solar and wind basket of eggs.
Crow and humble pie are from nature too. Might be the only meal available, it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.
It seems likely to me that pretty soon the lid will fly off that particular pressure cooker.
Some very stressed out oil workers are likely to start sabotaging production pretty soon.
Things are getting really tough in Venezuela.
I have a hunch that those countries and economies that have most of their eggs in fossil fuels will fail in the near future. That includes places like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Brazil, to name a few. BTW, by coincidence or not, they also happen to have rigid authoritarian forms of government with very high levels of corruption. Too bad that this seems to be the model that the current US administration would like to emulate as well!
Interestingly our local denialist and contrarian seems to be getting more and more shrill if not desperate… The only explanation for his behavior that makes any sense to me, is that he has a political or economic agenda closely tied to fossil fuel interests! May I suggest everyone just ignore him.
Let’s find other topics to discuss. Maybe then he will lose interest and go back under his bridge. His horse is dead and no matter how hard he wants to beat it, it isn’t going to get up.
Edit: This just showed up…
That paragon of unbiased news sources The New York Post has a piece today on Mann’s lawsuit. Gotta love the choice of words…
Mann’s suit claims bloggers Mark Steyn, on NR’s site, and Rand Simberg, on CEI’s, defamed him when they slammed his global-warming research, particularly his famous hockey stick graph — an illustration of how temperatures have recently surged.
Simberg accuses Mann of having “molested and tortured” the data, much as disgraced Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky molested kids. Steyn quotes Simberg, calls the hockey stick “fraudulent” and likens Mann’s methodology to a “circus.”
Yep Fred, a very sensitive bugger. Needs to chill and try and actually understand the physics. After declaring the hockey stick false then putting up another slightly modified hockey stick, I do wonder about the cognitive ability.
Doesn’t matter anyway, Arctic Ocean melting, Greenland melting, Antarctica melting. Gives one a hint that extreme changes are happening in a short span of time.
Yes, you really don’t want to let him have the last word but eventually realize he’s a troll and will respond with something even more idiotic when you reply.
Hi Fred,
As usual, I am with you, maybe not on the same page all the time, but sure as hell in the same book.
Do you really think Brazil is so dependent on fossil fuel revenues that the country is truly at risk for this reason?
Now about Javier. I don’t believe in censorship, and there really are people who are quite knowledgeable who don’t believe forced warming is or will be a big problem.
When I nail somebody , I like to wait until I can really nail them, in such a fashion that no real defense is left to them.
Javier has really really REALLY stuck his foot in it, as a biologist, or from the pov of ANY scientist, actually, in ignoring the precautionary principle, and saying we ought not worry about warming, at least for now.
One of my most important goals, at this time, is to find ways to express reality as it is known to real scientists, in terms accessible to laymen. So here goes a try at it, in terms a knowledgeable layman can understand.
IF Javier really knows his stuff, then there is no way he can FAIL to know that the effects of ff pollution will be slow to appear, at first, like new money in an account drawing compound interest. But as time passes, NEW money is ADDED in ever increasing quantity, year after year. One day you wake up, after a few decades of saving on a regular basis, and suddenly realize you have a LOT of money in the bank, lol. Or excess heat in the environment.
Just about anybody who can walk and talk at the same time understands what is meant by the old saying that a stitch in time saves nine, and anybody with a technical background simply must understand that a very serious problem can be ignored safely for a long time- in the event the long term doesn’t matter.
My old Chevy truck WILL eventually be so rusty I simply can’t maintain it any longer. No problem, I can get another truck. The long term doesn’t matter in the case of worn out old trucks.
BUT there isn’t any other place we can go to live. We need to be doing something about the climate rust that is inevitable while it’s still feasible, because when an truck finally breaks in half on the road someplace………. it’s over.
And even if it IS possible to make repairs once the rust problem is OBVIOUS, it’s still a one stitch expense to fix it early, and a nine stitch expense to fix it later.
Knowledgeable laymen, and professional with tech backgrounds , know that being absolutely certain what will happen, in terms of real world events, over time, is simply not possible in many cases, probably most cases. Too many things can change, too many things can go “right” or “wrong” .
But this does not mean we can’t use our technical knowledge as an additional tool, along with day to day “common sense” to come up with a pretty good idea what will happen, and whether it will be good for us, or bad, in many cases, and forced warming is one of them.
Lots of things are REALLY good for us, within a given range, for instance red meat, milk, and potatoes. You can grow up big and strong on a diet rich in these foods, but when you get older………. it’s best to cut WAY back on them.
One or two glasses of wine can mean pleasant conversation, maybe even getting laid. A couple of bottles means a hangover, and maybe a nasty fight.
When Javier points out a big wheat crop, or greening in some places, even overall, as evidence that more CO2 in the atmosphere is GOOD, but ignores the obvious and dead certain conclusion that too much MAY BE VERY DANGEROUS, as a practical matter in respect to our day to day lives, he exposes himself as either technically incompetent, as a biologist, or else as something he professes not to be- a fossil fuels mouthpiece.
Note, I use the words “may be very dangerous” because the precautionary principle is the hammer I’m using to drive some nails in his coffin.
No ethical and competent biologist would ever ignore the precautionary principle, unless he is simply not bright enough, or well informed enough- in respect to the climate question- in basic physics and basic probability theory.
We all know about somebody who thinks tobacco is harmless because they knew somebody who smoked two packs of Camels a day and still lived to be over ninety.
It IS possible that forced warming will not get bad enough to cause any real problems. It’s also possible to drive and drink, or eat all the wrong foods, and not die in an accident, or from diabetes. That doesn’t mean it’s wise to take unnecessary chances.
If we are going to win the political battle for the minds and souls of this country when the issue is the environment, we are going to have to do it by way of reasoning and arguments that do not reflect badly on the culture and ethics of the people who are opposed to the general social philosophy of the current day D party, because social solidarity trumps technical facts when naked apes decide who is a friend, an insider, a group member, or an outsider, a stranger, a foe.
Like it or not, there are more than enough people who are culturally and socially conservative in the traditional sense to get their way, politically, as often as not. And even though the demographics are against them, they will remain a potent force for at least another ten to twenty years.
My goal is to win them over by allowing them to come to the “right” conclusions of their own free will. Injecting the “wrong” sort of social and cultural politics into the argument guarantees they won’t change their minds, so I am not planning on even MENTIONING such politics in my book, except where I can’t avoid doing so.
All suggestions that might help will be greatly appreciated.
Do you really think Brazil is so dependent on fossil fuel revenues that the country is truly at risk for this reason?
Brazil is NOT Venezuela and certainly has other options, it is not by any means a one trick pony. There is no doubt in my mind that a large part of the economic mess it currently finds itself in, is due to the last administrations having pretty much bet the farm on a continued revenue from oil.
Petrobras is state controlled and it produced quite the gravy train for a long time. To be fair the wealth it produced helped bring a lot of the population out of extreme poverty. Unfortunately the corrupt politicians in control of most of that wealth didn’t do a very good job of investing in alternatives and the promises of the past can no longer be kept. The current administration is just as corrupt as the last two and is now pushing austerity. Very bad move, because the people are quite angry.
The Brazilian people are not happy campers and are not taking this situation lying down. I fully expect to see a lot of social unrest and more of the kicking the bums out kind of situations as just happened in the mayoral elections of the two largest cities, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro which elected people from outside the traditional political system. My hunch is there will be a lot more that happening.
But the good news is the Brazilian judicial system seems to be working well and the country as a whole is firmly behind democratic ideals. Brazil also has a large national territory, vast resources. It also has a well developed and diverse industrial base. Excellent universities that are producing world class scientists, engineers and doctors. It also seems to be waking up to the potential of alternative energy and the new industrial and digital revolution. The greatest asset Brazil has, is its ethnically diverse population!
I’m not counting Brazil out by any means but they are in for a turbulent transition.
As for our resident contrarian I’d much prefer it if he spent his time using his knowledge in more productive ways. If it is true that he holds a PhD in microbiology maybe he could comment on the link I posted the other day of George Church’s talk and CRISPER-cas9 technology. Maybe he could discuss topics like genomics and how that might affect our futures or the ethical implications of using gene drives to change or even completely eliminate wild populations of pathogen carrying vector insects such as the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
Unfortunately he seems more interested in the pseudo science of anthropogenic climate change denialism. If that is all he want’s to talk about then as far as I’m concerned I’m not going to bother with him any more.
Cheers!
“May I suggest everyone just ignore him.” Lesson number one: NEVER FEED A TROLL.
Another hard day on the planet, the climate debate slogs on, a grueling, grinding endless arguing of what the world is doing today, besides making life a little more miserable and much more uncomfortable. The misery index is on the rise.
I see the cars, I hear the roaring traffic, and then I shout, “My God, what have we done?”
Then the starter doesn’t engage, the ring gear ain’t gonna turn, won’t crank, no combustion unless the crank shaft is turning, nothing. Gotta go get a new starter to continue singing the song. I’ll be back, shouldn’t be too long.
Wouldn’t electric vehicles be less complicated? Press the ‘on’ button, shift to ‘go’, let the computer do the rest, you can drink your favorite beverage and watch TV.
With an ICE, you are under the frame and pulling off the worn out starter.
Drinking is more productive.
For Dennis, and or Ron Patterson,
What are the odds that this site will remain up permanently, as an archive, in the event the two of you must eventually give it up , and nobody suitable to you two guys comes forward to run it?
I’m thinking maybe I ought to copy it all just in case.
Do. You can also use webcite to force a copy of every page you’re interested in to be kept on their website.
Wayback Machine
I know just about every body in this forum will have to hold their noses to read it, because it’s from the National Review, but never the less, this link is about something that is of considerable interest to anybody wondering what the future economic and political landscape will look like, and it has a LOT of relevant data in it.
Generally speaking, when the NR posts statistics, they are accurate, although they MAY be cherrypicked, lol.
Read it for insight, the subject is well worth some discussion here. Basically it boils down to this. Will we move, or stay put, and why, and where too, etc.
I personally know people who have moved. One younger first cousin jokes that he lives on jets, due to traveling almost non stop, due to his work, and while he has a house near his parents house, he will never actually live in it. He will settle down someplace more interesting and exotic. A recently graduated second cousin just packed her bags for Northern Virginia, and the jobs and shopping available to young women in Fairfax and Alexandria. She could probably do as well in Charlotte, money wise, but she wants to be involved in making policy, even if only as a low level staffer someplace in the federal government.
And I have a couple of relatives that will never move due to collecting some bennies from the welfare state, in the form of a subsidized rental home. It’s theirs so long as they stay, but if they give it up…….. they may never get another subsidized house, and a few hundred bucks a month matters a hell of a lot, if you are hard up.
Lots of food for thought………..
The only reason I didn’t go to Alaska to work on the pipeline is that I was head over heels in love AND lust at the time, MY Little Chicadee ( courtesy of Mencken? ) Hot Young Blossom ( courtesy of Twain) told me in no uncertain terms SHE wasn’t going, and that she MIGHT be there for me when I got back.
If I had ever gotten established in the Pacific Northwest, in one of the more pristine areas, I would might never have come back here, except to visit.
Oh, this article is all correct, but he doesn’t explain that the obvious conclusion is that we need government benefits to be location-transferrable.
Hi Nathaniel,
NR is a hard core right side organization, and that makes it easy to understand that they won’t say much about making such benefits portable.
But NR is really good at pointing out relevant information that is seldom covered anywhere else. I also read a number of hard left publications for the same reason, they too point out a lot of relevant information seldom covered in the mainstream.
I hope there will be a few comments indicating the places other forum members are thinking about selecting as their long term homes. I doubt anybody will be choosing southern California, lol.
But suppose wind and solar power get to be SUPER cheap, and that there are cost breakthroughs in desalinating sea water……….. If those two aces hit the table for California, then California can still function as a society.
“I doubt anybody will be choosing southern California, lol.”
“But it’s too soon to judge. China, for instance, may attempt to seize the moral high ground by stepping up its efforts to protect the climate – effectively taking over as world leader in the bid to protect the planet. That might not suit the future president.”
I fully expect China to do exactly that. They seem to have a long term plan to switch to a truly sustainable economy based on renewables. I realize that looking at their smog filled urban skies and vast numbers of coal fired electricity generating plants it may not look that way right now.
I think we will see a very different China emerging from all the ashes of their fossil fuel use. Using fossil fuels as a means to and end makes sense only if that end is a 100% renewables based new economy! Too bad the US seems to want to go back in time with its current fossil fuel based energy policies.
I hope so Fred, really I do. I spent seven odd years in China and have divided feelings. On the one hand they have a well educated population who tend to have a very long term perspective. On the other hand I’ve been driven across Beijing to “enjoy” exclusive dinners (I discovered) featuring rare or endangered species on the menu – BECAUSE the menu contained rare or endangered species!
I’d argue like a madman about this and the response was always the same: “It’s good to have different opinions.” And, most Chinese seem to aspire to owning a high-powered Mercedes. Alas, so so much is about prestige there (everywhere).
‘I spent seven odd years in China and have divided feelings. On the one hand they have a well educated population who tend to have a very long term perspective. On the other hand I’ve been driven across Beijing to “enjoy” exclusive dinners (I discovered) featuring rare or endangered species on the menu – BECAUSE the menu contained rare or endangered species!’
One thing working in favor of China working toward renewables is that it isn’t a capitalist democracy. The government can still exert control and direction. And while there is a rising middle class and wealthy in China who want luxuries, they also can see what uncontrolled pollution looks like. So there is visible proof that there should be attention paid to air quality and environmental concerns.
And why not let the wealthy have very expensive electric or fuel efficient cars? Status doesn’t necessarily require massive carbon use.
China is *already* doing exactly that.
I did like Christine Todd Whitman back in the day. It was an error on her part to be in the Republican Party (which treated her abominably), but people make these errors….
“Trumpenlumpenprole ”
Word of the day.
I’m ‘Lumpen Pro’ over at Zero Hedge, but don’t really comment there very often. I just wanted to do the nickname-squatter thing.
But I will have to look up your Trumpenlumpenprole…
I was thinking of having ‘Lumpen Pro (Let’s Go Golfing)’ but thought it maybe too much, at least in terms of letters for the nickname registration.
I think ‘Puffalar (Your Five-Alarm Puff)’ is as far as I want to go for now, not including the previous Throbbing Orville Reddenbudders, which some might remember.
…Ah, those were the halcyon days… when everything seemed possible… Ron was running POB… and journalism was real… (haha, ok just kidding about that)… and Space X on Mars, with its stranded crew in desperate straights, broadcasting their every last word to Earth’s captives, was just a tequila away… (well it still is)…
Anyway, I would like to take this opportunity to wish Everyone (And Then Some), a puffy 2017. (It could get pretty swollen.)
Doug, I very much share her concerns and sincerely hope that there are a few sane true conservatives left who will stand up to what I see as a last ditch power grab by the fossil fuel interests. The choice of people surrounding Mr Trump and especially Mr. Rex Tillerson and the general coziness with Russia and Putin make me think that there is something very rotten in Denmark and it smells a lot like crude!
From the linked article:
Details of Mr Trump’s climate policy are not yet clear, but his team have talked about boosting coal, opening new oil pipelines, and allowing mining on public wilderness or drilling in the Arctic.
On the political side, they have suggested quitting the global climate deal, scrapping President Obama’s clean power plan, and dismantling the US energy department along with the EPA itself.
The first part is very bad business policy in view of the fact that renewables are now cheaper that any fossil fuels and continuing to get cheaper by the day. Of course if you are in the fossil fuel business and happened to be faced with trillions of dollars worth of stranded assets as things go south for you that it is certainly understandable but still not excusable.
Because of the current state of available scientific knowledge, the second part borders on being a crime against humanity and should be dealt with accordingly in an international court of law! The consequences of this deliberate disinformation campaign affect the most desenfranchised members of the human population to the benefit of the very few.
Expanding drilling of oil and natural gas will keep prices low, which won’t please companies currently in business, so I question the extent to which the Trump administration will follow through on this.
There are multiple articles about the decline of coal, so there isn’t much the Trump administration can do with that.
So the big question is whether the Trump administration recognizes where the jobs and the money are heading, or whether they are determined to prop up fossil fuels at all costs.
Of particular interest to residents of small island states:
HECO’s new plan filed with regulators outlines how it will use demand management, battery storage and biofuels to avoid importing liquefied gas supplies and phase out oil generation, ultimately moving faster than the state has mandated towards an all-renewables supply mix.
HECO’s plan envisions continued growth of private rooftop solar and the use new inverters and control technology to help integrate 165,000 private systems by 2030. That would more than double the number of systems on the utility’s grid today.
In addition to eliminating proposals for LNG imports, the utility also eschewed a plan for inter-island transmission cables. Connecting now-separate Hawaiian grids could provide benefits, the PSIP said, but one of the goals of the report was to design a 100% renewables mix without them.
Under the state’s renewable energy mandate, HECO is supposed to reach 40% renewables by the end of 2030, but said its plan targets 72% in that same timeframe. HECO’s proposal estimates that the renewable energy capacity after 2030 could exceed 100% of demand when taking into account customers’ generation of electricity for their own use, “as well as the anticipated widespread use of battery storage.”
By 2020, the island of Molokai will be 100% renewable, through a proposed mix of solar, wind, battery storage and biofuels. In that same period, Hawaii Island is forecast to reach an RPS of 80%, Maui 63%, and 40% on Oahu, where most of the state’s population is located.
However, the utility warned that investments in grid infrastructure, as well as rising oil prices, “are expected to increase the typical residential bill over the next several years,” before customers see them gradually decline beginning in the mid-2020s.
Bold in body of text, mine.
Demand Destruction:
BTW, took possession of a new LEAF just before Christmas. It’s a very pleasant car to drive. Have had lots of snowy icy hills to climb since and it has performed well.
dollarsperbbl, Posted on December 21, 2016 by benham
A number of forces, technical and economic, are conspiring to unseat the internal combustion engine (ICE) as the prime mover for transportation. The future powering of China and India looks more electric, efficient and urban, stranding ICE vehicles and oil product demand with it.
That forward ICE growth line looks terminal. If your prime market is ICE cars only, you are facing a world of mature, globally-installed competition vying for a diminishing stream of revenue.
However, the rise of the EV curve presents great opportunity – and a great threat too, especially if your competitors react to it quicker and more effectively than you do.
Too aggressive? Let’s take a look at how giant automaker Ford sees this world from their analysts presentation of September this year:
— chart —
Although this is a schematic, if we take the proportions seriously Ford is calculating about 60% of vehicle sales will be HEV (hybrid EVs) or ZEVs (zero-emission EVs) by 2030. Irrespective of the precise numbers, and hybrid / plug-in hybrid ratios, the general trend is now clearly causing a strategic shift in car industry investment and priorities.
The oil industry views this world of pervasive EV uptake very differently, and resists its claims. But they may be relatively powerless to prevent it.
Thus, BP and other oil majors, project an alternative reality.
In BP’s latest forecast regarding EVs and oil demand, EV fleet growth is a non-starter – their view is that it takes until 2035 to reach a fleet size of EVs – 70 million – that Ford projects might occur around 12 years earlier in 2023. Chevron and Exxon Exxon have similar views.
These oil company’s CEOs are sufferring from severe cognitive dissonance, they are the perfect example of a group that will be completely blindsided by the rapid EV disruption.
My guess is that Ford is much closer to the truth.
It took only 13 years for the horse to be 100% eliminated by the ICE in New York City at the begining of the 20th century.
.
It may take a little longer than Ford is projecting, but they’re in the right ballpark. BP is waaay off.
It’s good to know what Ford is projecting. Now that Big Auto is recognizing that the end of ICE is near, that means they’ll all switch over to EVs quicker.
(I have to work out the timing on when to get out of my Tesla stock. It’s going to boom regardless of other EV makers as long as it is taking business away from ICEs — and then as EVs start to take over the whole market, as they go from 50% of the market to 100%, it’ll face competitive headwinds.)
Bloomberg, by Chris Martin December 30, 2016, 12:52 PM EST
Spot prices fell to a record-low of 36 cents a watt this week
Some companies’ cost structures remain competitive, even with prices this low.
Canadian Solar Inc., the second-biggest supplier, reported costs of 37 cents in the third quarter, down from 39 cents in the second quarter. The company has said its costs are among the lowest in the industry, and it expects to reach 29 cents a watt by the fourth quarter of 2017. Many of its competitors expect costs in the low 30s by then, Osborne said.
Was just checking prices of solar panels on SunElec’s site in Miami. In case anyone has an interest or need:
They have an ad up offering 50,000 FREE 34 Watt, 6 volt, used solar roofing tiles. The panels are currently located in California, shipping is $2.70 per panel to Miami. other locations may be extra.
Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with SunElec
I have found that used panels are very popular in rural areas (where, among other things, there is plenty of space and so efficiency is not important), while urban areas with smaller rooftops put a higher premium on getting newer and more efficient panels. We’ll see “cascading” effects.
Clearly yet another irrational alarmist,
DAVID HEMPLEMAN-ADAMS URGES CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION AFTER ARCTIC VOYAGE
“The 60-year-old set off from Bristol in June to circumnavigate the Arctic polar region by boat, a trip traditionally taking about three years. His team managed it in four months and one day which confirmed, he said, his “worst fears” about disappearing ice.”
Probably just slightly senile or victim of mass hysteria. We know Arctic sea ice extent last September was higher than in 2007, so no melting for 9 years now, despite two record warm years in a row, 2015 and 2016.
What is so urgent about something that hasn’t changed in 9 years? Perhaps next September there will be even more ice. Nobody knows.
Global Warming 2016: Arctic Spin
The useful thing about a canary in a coal mine is that it warns you of danger before the danger kills you.
When 2016 began last January 1st, the average temperature throughout the Arctic was fully 18°F (10°C) hotter than usual for New Year’s day, and the extent of sea ice in the Arctic was lower than ever before recorded for that date:
The extra-high temperatures and extra-low sea ice with which the Arctic started the year, was just the beginning.
Arctic sea ice generally grows in extent during the first two months of the year (it being winter and all), and in that regard 2016 was no exception. It didn’t maintain its lowest-for-this-date status on all days, but did skirt the lowest-yet-seen extent consistently during the months of January and February:
Nobody who knows Arctic sea ice was surprised by this. It has been on the decline, overall, for decades, so it’s no surprise that this year’s levels would be at or near their lowest. It’s part and parcel of the ongoing trend of the loss of sea ice in the Arctic.
Nor was it a surprise that, even with an ongoing trend, it wasn’t always at its lowest-ever. Most everything in nature, including sea ice, doesn’t just follow a trend, it also constantly fluctuates. Added to the overall tendency-
I was disappointed that this thread has started with the climate change. At least I got some non-climate articles up in the beginning.
I think you’re wrong in the comment above that because China is a “centrally controlled” they will consequently be more likely to implement laws/policies that will streamline the adoption of “green” solutions to smog, etc. In fact, their central government has very limited control over provinces that, for the most part, simply go their own way. Further, and unfortunately, corruption is rampant; I’ve witnessed this on too many occasions. What happens in China usually depends on who pays the bigger bribe. This is gradually changing but the key word is gradually.
Ok Doug, I get it now. It’s OK to bate Javier with “DAVID HEMPLEMAN-ADAMS URGES CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION AFTER ARCTIC VOYAGE”. But when he reply’s with nonsense one should not reply back because that’s feeding the conman. Got it !
Nor was it a surprise that, even with an ongoing trend, it wasn’t always at its lowest-ever.
Nothing is ever a surprise for the alarmist crowd. If it is the lowest ever is proof of global warming, and if not is just a natural fluctuation.
What we have is a period 2007-2016 deemed to be the warmest in thousands of years, that includes 2015 and 2016, the two warmest years ever registered, and yet there has been no significant Arctic sea ice melting, and in fact the situation this past September was more Arctic sea ice than on September 2007.
The obvious conclusion is that there is not a direct linear relationship between global average temperatures and Arctic sea ice. Science has known that to be the case for quite some time, as Arctic sea ice is related to Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Yet alarmists continue to beat the dead horse that the Arctic is going to melt soon due to global warming. Well, sorry you just don’t understand the science behind Arctic sea ice dynamics and year after year for the next couple of decades your predictions of doom for Arctic sea ice are going to fail miserably. Everybody is going to see that climate alarmism amounts to a big pile of nothing.
In the meantime 2016, the warmest year registered showed more sea ice than 2007 and 2012, and 2017 will again show more Arctic sea ice than 2007, because the trend has changed, and you just don’t have a clue of that.
Just one more bogus measurement, implying that sea ice extent actually measures the amount of ice in an area. It does not, in fact it does not generally even come close.
Sea Ice Extent does not indicate how much of the ocean is actually covered with ice. It indicates how much ocean is covered with at least 15% ice. That means that a given value say 10 million square kilometers can have actual ice cover of from 1.5 km2 to 10 km2 of ice.
For a given amount of ice, sea ice extent can change dramatically due to storms, wind, and currents. Those changes do not reflect any real change in the amount of ice cover, merely ocean that has at least 15% cover.
Sea ice area is a better value since it reports the amount of actual surface cover. However, the thickness of the ice is not taken into account, thus the actual amount of ice is still unknown.
Arctic sea ice volume hasn’t changed either since 2007 according to the Danish Meteorological Institute.
Nice cherry picking, almost correct but still losing volume from 2007 to now. You need to actually understand natural variation not just use it to cherry pick.
I can do that too. Sept ice volume fell from 14,000 km3 to 3500 km3 between 2001 and 2012. That is almost 4 times the average rate of loss. But then it rose some, and the last two years it has fallen at 2500 km3. That’s more than three times the average rate of volume loss.
The actual average loss of Sept ice volume is 3200 km3 per decade +- 1000 km3.
Except that nobody is measuring sea ice volume.
PIOMAS is a model that is fed the exact same satellite pictures that are being used to measure sea ice extent. It can hardly be an improvement over sea ice extent to add a model over the same data and then say that the result is more reliable.
But to alarmists, as long as the data indicates a worsening, it doesn’t matter if it comes out of a model or corresponds to an actual measurement of something real.
Wrong again. It’s not just satellite data.
It is checked against surface based data.
From the PIOMAS site:
“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.”
Javier, it appears you do not understand the term sea ice extent.
Oh come on GoneFishing,
Arctic sea ice is many millions of square kilometers and nobody is measuring anything on 95% of that area.
US-Navy submarines and oceanographic moorings measurements are just too sparse to produce a significant amount of data.
It is the same old satellite pics being recycled and algorithm treated and then the output is labelled as volume.
Are you really that dumb as to how they confirm results?
Hi Javier,
2007 was a particularly low year for the Arctic Sea Ice minimum, so of course it looks like the trend is flat if that is chosen as a starting point. This selective choice of data is commonly called Cherry picking.
As you do this quite often, it calls all your arguments into question.
Dennis,
I have already told you many times that 2007 was a special year, and that a change of trend looks very likely in a lot of related measurements, and it is defended in several scientific publications. Your blind mathematical analysis that presupposes no knowledge about the nature and causality of the data is preventing you from seeing this.
Now please try to tell me that there has been no change of trend in North Atlantic ocean temperatures at about the same time. See graph below. Notice the year when the change of trend took place, and notice that it is the same timeframe that we are discussing in the Arctic sea ice.
It is not cherry picking. It is knowledge.
Hi Javier,
Perhaps you have the causality reversed. Also there can be heat transfer to the ocean depth below 700 meters not shown in your chart and the Gulf Stream moves a great deal of water from south t North so looking at heat content of a section of the ocean is not all that relevant, one has to look at Global ocean heat content. Your knowledge in this case seems superficial.
How to Save $23 Trillion Per Year: 100% Renewable Energy for the World
By: Jeff Masters , 4:02 PM GMT on January 02, 2017
…in a series of talks last month in San Francisco at the annual meeting of The American Geophysical Union—the world’s largest conference on climate change. Stanford professor Dr. Mark Jacobson outlined a plan to power 139 nations of the world for all purposes—including electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, industry, and agriculture/forestry/fishing—using a mix of approximately 37% wind, 58% solar, 4% hydropower, and 1% geothermal, wave, and tidal power. He argued that his plan would:
1) Replace 80% of business-as-usual power by 2030, and 100% by 2050
2) Reduce power consumption by 42.5% because of electricity’s better work:energy ratio, efficiency, and lack of mining needed
3) Create 24.3 million more jobs than lost
4) Eliminate 3.5 million premature air pollution deaths per year and save $23 trillion (7.6% of GDP) in air pollution health costs per year by 2050 (for comparison: the World Bank estimated in 2016 that air pollution in 2013 killed 5.5 million people, with non-health care costs of over $5 trillion)
5) Save $28.5 trillion per year in avoided climate change costs by potentially keeping global warming 1.5°C below pre-industrial levels
6) Reduce war by creating energy-independent countries
7) Decentralize energy production, thereby reducing power outages, terrorism threats to energy installations, and energy poverty
Miracles never cease. Today in a local paper, I read that the senior republican in our Virginia state government , excepting the office of governor, has floated a proposal to decriminalize possession of small amounts of pot, having come to understand that it’s “insane” in his own words for us to keep locking up people for this when beer and tobacco are legal.
And if those on the D side were to give up on calling R’s stupid, ignorant, selfish, etc, to some extent ( whether the insults are deserved, or not is irrevelant in context ) we might just see a LOT faster progress in scaling up wind and solar power, etc.
It’s WORTH noting that Texas is as red as red can get, ditto some midwestern farm states, etc, where the wind resource is good, and these states are the ones where the wind industry is doing best. I fully expect Texas to go gangbusters on solar as well, within the next few years, supposing the price of solar farms keeps dropping, and especially if the price of gas and oil go up.
Them there selfish self centered stupid ignorant redneck republicans may be pretty dumb, but they can still count money, and they will be happy to sell some of the gas and oil they save using themselves by going renewable to them there nose in the air, morally superior snooty Yankees who otherwise just might freeze in the dark.
But there are still things happening every day that make me want to scream.
Both books are among the most important in American literature, with a lot of people who are not afraid to say so saying that Huck Finn stands head and shoulders above all the rest, that it’s the greatest book ever written by an American. Personally I believe it is one of the ten or so most important books written within the last couple of centuries, possibly excepting purely technical works such as those of Darwin, etc.
Both had a GREAT deal to do with opening my own eyes, after growing up in a backwoods southern mountain neighborhood where there were no blacks, except migrant farm laborers , to be seen unless we went to town. And town was like another world, back then, to kid like me, although it was only a half hour ride in the back of my Dad’s truck.
Read this link, and read what a dozen or more HIGHLY respected, very well known black authors and other black movers and shakers have had to say about Twain. Then join me in wanting to scream.
Folks who are only capable of dealing in sound bites might as well not click the link, they will be wasting their time.
Jesus H. Christ!! I almost wish I hadn’t clicked on that link. It made me angry and I think it may have caused a significant reduction in my already diminishing number of still functioning brain cells!
For the record, I read Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at the very tender age of ten!
By the time I was a teenager, I had already been exposed to the real world and had friends who lived in the shanty towns of Sao Paulo. In some ways, I’d say there were many parallels between my friends and Jim.
The parent, Marie Rothstein-Williams, made an emotional plea at a school board meeting Nov. 15, saying the works had disturbed her teenage son, a biracial student at Nandua High School on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
“I’m not disputing this is great literature,” Rothstein-Williams said. “But there is (sic) so much racial slurs in there and offensive wording that you can’t get past that (sic), and right now we are a nation divided as it is.”
If you are going to comment on the work of one of the greatest American literary talents, then at the very least you should consider the historical context of his work. Not to mention that it might behoove you to demonstrate basic competence in the usage of the Anglo Saxon vernacular.
As for protecting a teenager from the writings Mark Twain? WTF! Huck Finn should be required reading for every kid in Junior high!
“If you are going to comment on the work of one of the greatest American literary talents, then at the very least you should consider the historical context of his work.”
No every naughty word should be expunged from each and every book going back to the beginning of time; except for those offensive phrases in the Old Testament, of course, because that’s God’s Word.
“Huck Finn should be required reading for every kid in Junior high!” Totally and 150% agree, especially for you Yanks! No, for EVERY kid. I simply cannot image a childhood without Huckleberry “Huck” Finn, and Huck Finn in its original unadulterated perfect pure form.
No every naughty word should be expunged from each and every book going back to the beginning of time; except for those offensive phrases in the Old Testament, of course, because that’s God’s Word.
Umm, would that also include editing the original ancient Norse texts describing the wild fertility sessions between Thor and Sif? 😉
.
Thor and Sif are married (newlyweds), give the kids a break man. 🙂
For those who didn’t click, some things , copied from the link, heavyweight black leaders have had to say about Clemens/Twain:
“Jim is the best example in nineteenth-century fiction of the average Negro slave (not the tragic mulatto or noble savage), illiterate, superstitious, yet clinging to his hope for freedom, to his love for his own. And he is completely believable, whether arguing that Frenchmen should talk like people, or doing most of the work on the raft.”
—The Negro in American Fiction (1937)
Sterling Brown
Literary critic, professor at Howard University
“It is this treatment of race that makes Pudd’nhead Wilson as contemporary as Little Rock, and Mark Twain as modern as Faulkner, although Twain died when Faulkner was in knee pants.”
—introduction to Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson (1959)
(There is a zero possibility that anybody who has ever read Pudd’n Head Wilson believes Twain was a racist, unless that reader happens to be ………. never mind, any body who CAN read simply could not be THAT stupid. My own comment in these parentheses. )
Langston Hughes
Poet, social activist, columnist
“Nobody calls Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson a novel of racial protest, but the comment it makes on what they call race relations is pretty strong. It’s a wild book. I’ve never seen anything so strong.”
—interview in the San Francisco Chronicle (1964)
LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka)
Poet, novelist, essayist
“The spoken idiom of Negro Americans, its flexibility, it musicality, its rhythms, free-wheeling diction, and metaphors, as projected in Negro American folklore, were absorbed by the creators of our great nineteenth-century literature even when the majority of blacks were still enslaved. Mark Twain celebrated it in the prose of Huckleberry Finn.”
— (1970)
Ralph Ellison
Novelist, literary critic
Perhaps the greatest compliment ever paid to Twain, this one
“Huckleberry Finn is a black novel. Yes, you’ve seen pictures of Samuel Clemens, and he’s white. Super white. White hair. White suit. White skin. But nobody’s ever seen Mark Twain, who was a figment—and a pigment—of Samuel Clemens’ imagination. And Mark Twain was black.”
—address delivered in Hartford, Connecticut (1985)
David Bradley
Novelist, Winner of Pen-Faulkner award
“The 1880s saw the collapse of civil rights for Blacks as well as the publication of Huckleberry Finn. This collapse was an effort to bury the combustible issues Twain raised in his novel. The nation, as well as Tom Sawyer, was deferring Jim’s Freedom in agonizing play.”
— (1996)
Toni Morrison
Novelist, Nobel Prize Winner
“Seriously, though, two things people throughout history have held in common are hatred and humor. I am proud that, like Mark Twain, I have been able to use humor to lessen people’s hatred.”
—on receiving first Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center (1998)
Richard Pryor
Comedian
I point these things out because quite a few people in the PC establishment would burn Twain’s books if they could.
There are idiots on the faculty of just about every university with more than a couple of thousand students, and there are plenty of people who are ready to attack Twain simply because they are so ignorant that they think they are occupying the high moral ground in so doing, and also because they flatter themselves as being lofty thinkers.
I can’t remember for sure how old I was when I first read Huck Finn, but I was still a kid, probably about twelve, maybe fourteen, one who had never been outside his parochial backwoods community except by way of books.
The passages in the book dealing with Jim’s realization that his little girl was deaf, and the others about his personal agonies, hit me in my emotional solar plexus like Mike Tyson’s fist.
My entire view of the world changed that day, just as it did the day I realized evolution is a fact, and that the Seven Days of Creation story is a myth. I don’t know how old I was then, but I think I was about ten or eleven, because that’s when my parents bought us kids an encyclopedia. It took me most of a year to read it all, pretty much page by page, all nineteen volumes. But I did read a LOT of other books in the meantime, lol, because my backwoods school library had at least a couple of thousand to choose from.
“And if those on the D side were to give up on calling R’s stupid, ignorant, selfish, etc, to some extent we might just see a LOT faster progress in scaling up wind and solar power, etc.”
??????? I guess this explains why the Republicans elected a President with the maturity of a poorly disciplined 6th grader.
If you don’t like the way the shoe fits, get a new style
If you are actually so stupid you cannot understand that constantly badmouthing people whose VOTES YOU NEED to win elections is a piss poor strategy, there is little or no point in trying to explain it to you AGAIN, but a dedicated teacher never gives up.
There is plenty of good evidence that on average people of all political stripes actually have a fairly positive attitude in respect to renewable energy, although of course those people with the tightest connections to the fossil fuel industry have the least positive attitudes, and they do tend to be R’s more so than D’s.
You will apparently NEVER get your head around it, but it’s a basic fact that tens of millions of socially and culturally conservative people are opposed to subsidizing renewable energy not because they have anything against renewable energy in and of itself, but RATHER because they correctly see it as something strongly favored by their perceived enemies, people like YOU.
In a war of any sort, you don’t normally support policies strongly favored by the enemy, and we are engaged in a hot, long running culture war in the USA right now.
And even though it is possible to make a very good case that Trump isn’t even a big R Republican, as a lot of large D Democrats made a case that Sanders is not a Democrat, Trump, who hijacked the R party, and the R party won the last big battle, a few weeks back.
Millions of people, tens of millions of people, voted AGAINST HRC, and the D social and cultural agenda, rather than FOR Trump. The average establishment big R Republican hated his guts early on, and still hates his guts, although most of them got behind him once he got the nomination.
They won their bet on a piss poor candidate they never wanted.
YOU LOST YOUR BET on a candidate that was the worst one ever nominated by the D party , in terms of electability, in the modern era , bar none.
Conservative opposition to renewable energy , etc, absolutely IS partly the fault of conservatives being heavily invested both materially and culturally in the status quo, and IS partly the fault of the spreading of FUD by Koch brothers types in the media, etc.
But it IS also partly the consequence of renewable energy being a sort of COLLATERAL DAMAGE when culturally and socially conservative voters aim their assassin’s ballots at a candidate such as HRC.
Facts, as some pretty smart people in this forum often remind the rest of us, are stubborn things, and WILL make themselves known and felt, over time.
Now pardon my language, but I am in sort of a bad mood,due to a headache that won’t go away, and here are a couple of xxxxing FACTS that not even a lame brain can deny.
Texas and North Carolina are red states, two of the reddest, as a matter of fact.
Texas is the leader by a mile in wind, and not just because the state is so big, either. North Carolina is up near the top, nationally , in terms of solar power.
The people of these two redder than red states have no problems with expanding their renewable energy industries. They believe in renewable energy, by and large, even as they also believe in separating girls and guys in bathrooms, by and large.
You will never get your head around it, but Tar Heels and Texans actually like renewable energy. It’s HRC , and the overall D party social and cultural philosophy they DON’T like.
There are plenty of politically red folks in many places in this country who support renewable energy. But they would rather pass on renewable energy, in a hell of a lot of cases, than to support a candidate such as HRC for prez.
Some of the most conservative people I know, in religious and cultural terms, are seriously talking about buying solar systems of their own, and a few of them have bought already, because they believe in inflation, and because being ignorant stupid dumb ass hicks , they happen to know from firsthand experience that things that come out of holes in the ground, such as coal, don’t grow back, and that the price of fossil fuel fired electricity MUST go up, and up some more, eventually.
YOU will never get your head around it, but such people LIKE to have control of their own affairs, and generating some of their own electricity is a highly satisfying experience for them. They don’t often go around badmouthing their electrical utility, but you can take it to the bank that they prefer to have the option of being partially or wholly free of THAT monopoly , when such freedom is possible, as a practical matter.
And they are figuring out in increasing numbers,year after year, that they CAN at least be partially free in this respect. So they will buy a personal pv system, but they will still vote against HRC, because they neither trust her nor like her, nor do they like a lot of what she stands for.
YOU will never get YOUR head around it, but millions of people had a hard time making up their mind who they would vote for, or whether they would stay home.
JUST one colossally stupid remark , from the mouth of YOUR candidate, convinced probably upwards of a million or more of those fence sitters to either stay home, or vote for Trump.
Mad dog attack mode worked for Trump, because he ran as an outsider storming the battlements of the establishment. Clinton ran as an ESTABLISHMENT business as usual candidate, and that sort of candidate can’t get away with insulting the opposition or middle of the road voters.
Neither can her followers afford this practice.
Now what we say in a forum such as this one, which has a very limited audience, doesn’t matter much, because very few people, in relation to the size of the country, will ever even know it even exists, let alone read it.
But when you and others who badmouth conservatives HERE, you are exceedingly likely to also badmouth them in other LARGER forums.
The point I am trying to get across is that if you want to win elections, it behooves you to at least cut back on it, if you enjoy it so much you just can’t give it up.
“If you are actually so stupid you cannot understand that constantly badmouthing people”
It looks like the Conservative Oldfarmermac doesn’t see the irony in his own statement of personal attacks. Who would of guessed ? Me
“the tightest connections to the fossil fuel industry have the least positive attitudes, and they do tend to be R’s more so than D’s.”
How quickly you forget. I told you I was invested heavily in the oil industry. I have now learned from the master Trump how to manipulate Conservative voters. I make fun of them and they vote again their own self interest. Which keeps putting more money in my pocket and keeps themselves poor. Who would of guessed it was that simple? The Republican one percent.
Mac, you really should get over your hate for HRC. I think it’s your conscious giving you a headache. I haven’t mentioned her for weeks, but you can’t seem to stop hating on her. What ever happened to that good old bible verse “love thy neighbor”. I guess that’s bullshit too.
Tomorrow
This is what brought me back. Same old stuff from you.
“I haven’t mentioned her in weeks. ”
HuntingtonBeach says:
01/02/2017 AT 6:17 PM
“And if those on the D side were to give up on calling R’s stupid, ignorant, selfish, etc, to some extent we might just see a LOT faster progress in scaling up wind and solar power, etc.”
??????? I guess this explains why the Republicans elected a President with the maturity of a poorly disciplined 6th grader.
If you don’t like the way the shoe fits, get a new style
REPLY
I haven’t forgotten, and I have devoted a great deal of study to that old KJB, as well as lesser study to the other most important religious works.
You did indeed tell us you are invested in fossil fuels, and I did indeed point out that there is substantial element of hypocrisy involved between the talk you talk and the walk you walk.
I am, culturally speaking, somewhat of a Baptist, of the southern independent flavor, although I don’t take any church dogma , period, of ANY church or ANY religion seriously in respect to the natural sciences.
You obviously don’t know doo doo from apple butter when it comes to Protestant Christianity. IF you did, IF you actually were in possession of some KNOWLEDGE of the day to day workings of it, you would understand that that old KJB was created by a bunch of guys who were as good at practical psychology, and with as deep an understanding of the needs of the leadership of the church , as the faculty of the psyc department of any Ivy League university.
It’s so full of caveats, and exceptions, and scenarios useful in justifying bending or breaking the rules on occasions when bending and breaking them is necessary, or highly desirable, that a preacher can justify leading his congregation to work on Sunday, or to take their pitchforks to the backside of the lord of the manor.
Sure love thy neighbor is is in there. So is an eye for an eye. Both are there because both are needed as a practical matter in the real world.
I never attack anybody, until they attack me and mine. You and people like you make a HOBBY of attacking people like my old Daddy, who would give you half of his last bite of bread, literally, if he were to run across you starving in the street- if he were still able to get to the street himself, which is debatable. He hasn’t made it that far unassisted for some time.
I mentioned that HRC’s story in a nutshell is the story of the Greek tragedies, rising high to fall far short, often fatally. That’s literature, there are no Gods. The Gods didn’t elect Trump just to take him down, as somebody else remarked, apparently without understanding.
I don’t waste my time or energy hating anybody. Hate’s for losers, mostly, but it’s a very useful tool in the hands of skillful leaders, when it’s VERY helpful in inspiring the foot soldiers to charge the enemy.
In a fight, it ‘s always best to keep your cool, as an individual, you are far more likely to win that way.
I don’t hate either HRC or Trump. I have zero use for either of them, because I have no respect for them as individuals, and I firmly believe that neither of them is morally or ethically fit to be president.
If you had ever bothered to ask me what I think of Clinton taken ALL AROUND, I would have had a fair number of positive things to say about her, immediately, some of which I HAVE mentioned here, but not repeatedly.
She displayed some great qualities, and helped in bringing about some positive changes, but her flaws in the end brought her down. That’s basically what the Greek tragedies are all about, rising high, and falling due to flaws.
I might be able to think of something good to say about Trump, eventually, but so far I am still coming up blank on that job.
I don’t hate Clinton nor do I hate any other politician. I have contempt for a lot of politicians, and rather low opinions of quite a few of the ones who are in power at this moment.
Actually I PITY Clinton, to some extent, in the same sense as I pity anybody else who has suffered great personal setbacks and or losses.
Here is one thing, although it is not exactly to his personal credit, in terms of my opinion of him, so it’s not actually a positive comment in terms of reflecting well on him as an individual.
He HAS forced the establishment both on the right and the left to face up to the FACT that the people of this country are thoroughly pissed and disillusioned with business as usual politics.
I see you are still reading my comments, as evidenced by your replies, although you have childishly said in the past that you don’t , or would not, because they are too long, etc. 😉
I do still get out and work a few hours every day, but I also spend hours every day working on my book, and so I am free to drop in and out of this forum several times a day.
We can continue this exchange indefinitely. because I will not allow you to have the last word, if you attack me or my cultural homies.
I won’t ordinarily reply to your other comments, though, unless you say something really stupid, or you attack working class people in general.
They have their faults, no question whatsoever, but those faults are mostly NOT THEIR FAULT. Your sort are just too stupid to understand this rather obvious fact.
And given that hardly anybody else here ever has anything to say in depth , with nuance, in defense of the working class in this country, I say a hell of a lot more than I would otherwise, having the field, and the moral obligation, as I see it, pretty much to myself.
“They have their faults, no question whatsoever, but those faults are mostly NOT THEIR FAULT.”
What ever happened to the Conservative Republican personal responsibility mantra ? I guess that’s bullshit too.
“You and people like you make a HOBBY of attacking people like my old Daddy”
Don’t be a 6th grader and quit playing the victim. Take responsibility for your actions.
“hypocrisy involved between the talk you talk and the walk you walk.”
Mixing your ideology and financial investments limits your return. I will leave that mistake to the poor hard working Conservatives and their voting habits. If I buy or sell a few thousand shares of VLO. That’s not going to make one bit of difference to globe warming. But it does make my pocketbook fat.
Up 12K this afternoon on VLO up $2.12 or 3.1% today. Sorry you missed out on the Koch brothers refinery play.
Love the Trumpster Koch puppet
Oh, and I don’t think that’s a tattoo under your skin.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m enjoying this.
People don’t select the culture or the geography they are born to, and they don’t select their parents, although such simple observations are a little too complicated for you understand them.
“What ever happened to the Conservative Republican personal responsibility mantra ? I guess that’s bullshit too.”
It no doubt comes as a big surprise to you , but most liberals and big D Democrats pay homage to the personal responsibility mantra. I have however met a few over the years that seem to believe they are entitled to live as THEY please on tax money, writing poetry for instance, or creating so call art such as the piss Christ.
“Don’t be a 6th grader and quit playing the victim. Take responsibility for your actions.”
You still don’t get it, and probably wouldn’t get it even if somebody were to hit you upside the head with a brick.
If we want to go there, and talk about the current and recent political situation in terms of VICTIMS, well, well WELL……….
I suppose you haven’t HEARD YET, but the Trumpsters mopped the floor with YOUR Democratic party. I am neither a Republican , nor a Democrat, in terms of party allegiance. I ‘m not a victim.
If there has been A VICTIM, in personal terms, meaning any particular person, in the ongoing cultural war,her initials are HRC.
Your comments in regard to your business interests are classic hardcore right wing fare. I suppose you are too dumb to understand that you OUGHT to be just a LITTLE embarrassed to say such things, considering your stated political convictions.
Of course there are many lesser victims, folks who were running for Senate seats, house seats, various state and local level offices, etc.
You think I’m a Trump fan, but then you aren’t capable of doing any real actual thinking.
If I WERE a Trump fan, I would be in the VICTOR’S camp, you see…….. but you don’t…… because you don’t see at all.
The Democratic Party, and the country as a whole are the victims, with Trump the winner, and the R party in even greater control of the federal government, and the large majority of state and local governments.
As for the following:
“Oh, and I don’t think that’s a tattoo under your skin.”
Would you care to demonstrate the possession of big enough balls to translate that remark in unmistakable every day English? The idiom or allusion escapes me, perhaps, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt , for the moment, concerning what you imply.
As far as enjoying this exchange is concerned,it’s always fun to win, and I ‘m winning by such a wide margin it’s embarrassing to me that you don’t just give up.
I don’t have a second or third team to send in, or I would turn you over to the third stringers.
But I don’t and I won’t walk away and forfeit. It would be a lot more fun if you were a LOT smarter, and a LOT better informed.
I have real arguments to offer. Consider this link.
“This election was effectively decided by 107,000 people in these three states. Trump won the popular vote there by that combined amount.”
The three states referred to are the ones that cost Clinton the election, Michigan, Wisconsin , and Pennsylvania.
Trump won in Michigan by only about ten thousand votes, out of close to five MILLION cast.
In Wisconson, Trump got less than one percent more votes than Clinton. IF just ONE Trump voter out of each hundred had voted for Clinton…… she would have won.
Ditto Pennsylvania.
Folks with working brains, folks with open minds, folks who know JUST A LITTLE about how to win friends and influence people, JUST MIGHT come to the conclusion that if people like you had been smart enough to say nothing, or as little as possible, about the opposition voters ethics, morals, culture, etc, Clinton would have WON, given such razor thin margins of victory.
I have posted this link before. It would do YOU a great deal of good to read it, and take it to heart.
If you want to play in the mud, that’s fine with me. I’m used to wearing tall rubber boots. The bullshit gets pretty deep on the farm. I know how to deal with it.
Now if any body else is reading this, keep in mind my point that it matters VERY little what we say HERE, because the audience is small, in real terms, and MINUTE in terms of the country as a whole.
But if you want to win middle of the road voters over to your side, in significant numbers, and even win over a hard core opponent once in a while…….
It’s best not go around badmouthing those hoped for voters ethics, morals, culture, economic or educational status, etc, in public, or in other forums where the audience is often hundreds or thousands of times as large as this one.
It’s best not to keep bringing up how many Americans were conned by the billionaire set. It’s just embarrassing, though they probably do not even know it yet or are trying not to know.
Back to the 1800’s.
Let’s make America great again for billionaires. The lower classes don’t need health insurance, jobs, social security. They need to learn how to fend for themselves, stand on their own two feet and make money for the one percent.
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, because the candidate who eventually wins the nomination may not be the one best situated to win the election.
But I AM a damned stubborn old fart, and not very busy, and so long as anybody disputes this argument on my part, I will defend it.
Tell me what YOU think. Do you think that maybe one percent of the voters ( in the big three trump rust belt states ) who voted for Trump might have either voted for Clinton, or stayed home, if the Clinton campaign had shown a little more consideration and RESPECT for the working class and socially conservative people of those same three big rust belt states???
Did you ever get a date with a girl after she heard you make repeated remarks critical of her ethics, or morals, or culture, or the beliefs of her mother and father??
Does a successful salesman make fun of his potentially lucrative customer- IN PUBLIC?
You are one of the guys with your head on straight, you without a doubt understand what I am talking about.
But your mileage may vary, maybe you think only one tenth of one percent of those particular Trump voters would have either switched or stayed home. That’s ok, disagreeing with the EXTENT of the problem does not indicate you are incapable of understanding it exists.
Now our good cyber buddy HB has accused me of helping Trump win, although I am but one individual in a small forum.
A couple of days ago, he said his apparently substantial ( big enough to brag about it, anyway ) investment in the oil refining industry doesn’t matter, he’s just one little guy getting his own while the getting is still good, and so he shouldn’t be held to account for talking the environmental talk , while walking the Trump style business walk.
I can still have a lot more fun out of him, if he wishes to continue.
Old Farmer
As far as my own beliefs and from listening to some of my friends who are working class stiffs, I think that the biggest factor was that Trump gave the impression he was going to help the working guy, could relate to them and make it better. His brash attitude of brushing off all accusations then attacking back was also a big pull for some people. One friend of mine, an independent business owner, thought there was zero problem with his attitude and actions, even liked them. So rather than Hillary’s lack it was Trump’s weird ability to draw out certain voters that other candidates could not.
What has me concerned is that for the second time lately the president was not elected by popular vote. In this case it is even more disconcerting since he has such polarized views, doesn’t listen well and has a frothing republican congressional majority that is already smashing at any small gains the Democrats made despite the potential harm to people.
Good replies, Mac.
I can’t think why anyone would believe you’re a Trumper.
I just hope your country doesn’t bring down the rest of the world as your leadership creates and lurches into one crisis after another.
Good luck. (Personally, I don’t think Trump will make 2 years and …..). Anyway, good luck and good health.
Arctic air temperature for the last 3 months of each year. This is essentially the first half of the freezing season for Arctic ice.
2015 was a record high, and 2016 beat it rather soundly. Instead of the normal -22C, the average temperature for the last 3 months of 2016 was about -11C. The formation of ice is related to the square root of the temperature delta below the freezing point of seawater (-1.8C), so sea ice thickness has been increasing at about 60-70% of its normal rate.
On the rise since 1970.
Any graph for Arctic Ocean water temperatures?
Today will be a good day to drive around in my truck and put on a couple of extra hundred miles just for fun!
I’ll need ten gallons of gas. There will be about 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline burned in a day and today is another day of it, so ten extra gallons is minutely insignificant.
100,000,000 electric vehicles in the pipeline and you will run into some significant resource limits.
Means price increases, more costs, more expense.
A continued reliance on oil, coal consumption is set to increase as population increases, is what it will be now and in the future. Fossil fuels will keep doing what they do best, provide usable energy for the masses. Run economies all over the world.
It is not going to be significant disruptive change, no matter what the maharishis say about all of those wonderful, marvelous, fabulous renewable energies. They have their limits, can’t do what everyone says they can.
Fossil fuels still call all of the shots.
That’s how the cookie crumbles, even in 2017.
Out with the old tired renewable energy song and dance, in with the new and improved oil age, oil and coal always have a beat and rhythm people love to hear. How the hell do you spell rhythm? People love to sing and dance when their favorite tune is playing. Lots of songs with coal and oil as the theme.
“They gave him his orders in Monroe, Virginia…”
“We ain’t got a barrel of money, we may look ragged and funny, but we’re traveling along, singing our song, side by side.”
You see it right there in song.
Oil is not going to go away, the wish is not going to be granted, no way, no how, not in your lifetime. Coal will be hauled by the ton all day long.
When they have been paying the piper, they call the tune. Everybody loves to sing along.
That is the way it is and just how things are in the real world. History tells us that is how things are and how things will be again tomorrow just like it is today.
harumph!
“That is the way it is” are you channeling Walter Cronkite?
“100,000,000 electric vehicles in the pipeline and you will run into some significant resource limits”
Which resources in particular do you think are limited?
“We ain’t got a barrel of money…”
Could have been a whiskey barrel or a beer barrel.
“Oil is not going to go away”
Oil is going away, we are pumping and burning it away each day. How can it not go away?
“History tells us that is how things are and how things will be again tomorrow just like it is today.”
Nope, it’s different today. A lot of things are different today. The devil is in the details.
“It is not going to be significant disruptive change, no matter what the maharishis say about all of those wonderful, marvelous, fabulous renewable energies. They have their limits, can’t do what everyone says they can.”
Everyone? I bet you look at a seed or young plant and say it will never amount to much. Yet years later it could be a bush or a tree.
Don’t worry about oil, every dog has it’s day, oil will have had two centuries.
Hey, don’t you know that only about three percent of oil is extractable? That leaves 97 percent still there for the taking. Plenty of oil in the ground. It is not going to go to zero, ever.
If it does, no EVs either then. If there are a hundred thousand EVs produced, you will need to mine x tons of lithium. 100,000,000 EVs will need 1000x tons of lithium. You will strain the mining capacity, bend it severely.
Can’t mine lithium for nothing and it is going to require fossil fuels to extract the lithium. Limited resources right there.
Nice try.
Thanks for the info RW.
You are right RW, I looked into a barrel of oil and could not see the bottom. There must be a huge amount in there to be bottomless.
Strong December Cooling Leads to 2016 Being Statistically Indistinguishable from 1998
The resulting 2016 annual average global temperature anomaly is +0.50 deg. C, which is (a statistically insignificant) 0.02 deg. C warmer than 1998 at +0.48 deg. C. We estimate that 2016 would have had to be 0.10 C warmer than 1998 to be significantly different at the 95% confidence level. Both 2016 and 1998 were strong El Nino years.
With or without El Niño, very little warming for the past 18 years. Anybody younger that 18 years has not experienced global warming.
Javier, there are now 4 groups which use the MSU/AMSU data to assess changes in the Earth’s “temperature. Spencer and Christy’s LT product exhibits the least warming of the 4. The LT is a correction to the MT, which is based on a theoretical model. Their work has yet to be published, so it’s not possible to assess what they did. The earlier UAH TLT correction to the TMT also shows greater warming, with a trend thru November of 0.15 K/decade vs. 0.12 for the LT. The RSS TLT global trend is 0.135 K/decade. For the Northern Hemisphere, where most people live, the UAH LT trend is 0.15 vs. 0.18 for the RSS TLT. The RSS TLT does not include any data south of 70S because the high elevations of the antarctic ice sheet strongly intrude into the scans of the MSU/AMSU instruments. Spencer and Christy refuse to consider that this is a problem, even though they originally warned other users of their gridded data about the situation. I don’t have the latest data from the NOAA/STAR group, as they have a new version, but the last time I looked their results showed even greater warming. The U Washington group provides only tropical data.
So, tell us, why do you insist on focusing on only the UAH data? Aren’t you simply parroting Spencer’s claims, without any effort to assess what these guys are doing? Aren’t you just cherry picking?
RSS, UAH, and HadCrut have small differences and this is to be expected, but all three show the same situation of little warming in the 21st century. This evidence does not depend on a particular dataset or even on a particular way of measuring temperatures. All three indicate that as of January 2017 temperatures are back to the pre-El Niño 2001-2015 average.
Hi Javier,
But 17 or 19 year olds have seen much more warming than 18 year olds over their lifetimes.
Another cherry pick, is that all you have?
Dennis,
What I have is very little warming outside the strong El Niño during the entire 21st century. It is a reason not to be alarmed from climate change.
The 21st century has been 16 years, not enough time to tell much, from 1979 the rise in temperature has been 0.14 C per decade or 1.4 C per century.
Looking at 16 years is silly. Thirty six or fifty years is much better. Or we could use 166 years if you prefer.
“Anybody younger that 18 years has not experienced global warming.”
Perhaps you mean anybody younger than 18 who is living in the troposphere. The ones living on the surface of the planet experienced an increase of 0.49 degrees F between ’98 and ’15, and ’16 was even warmer. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201513
Liberal Lies!
It was cold in the beer cooler at the Monster Truck Rally!
That’s just temporary weather related El Niño warming, not global warming. One or two warmer years and then back to the 21st century average.
This is HadCrut4 surface data, not tropospheric data. It says the same.
“That’s just temporary weather related El Niño warming”
Stop the bullshit; so was ’98.
Exactly my point. From strong El Niño, to strong El Niño, without significant warming in between.
Not exactly what you would expect for a period where 1/3 of all anthropogenic GHGs were emitted. Clearly CO2 has not been driving (lack of) global warming for the past 18 years.
“Clearly CO2 has not been driving (lack of) global warming for the past 18 years.”
Nah! It’s just been melting a little ice, that’s all! I wonder what would happen if there were no ice to melt?
islandboy,
You are incorrect in your assumptions. For the last 35 years of global warming global sea ice has been remarkably constant, with loses in the Arctic compensated by gains in the Antarctic.
And we do know what happens when there is no ice to melt. Nothing happens. The Eemian was a warmer interglacial and the Arctic was essentially free of ice during the summers. And guess what, polar bears made it just fine. There were more polar bears during the Eemian than in the 1960’s, before anthropogenic global warming.
“In contrast, interglacial and major interstadial intervals are characterized by higher marine productivity suggestive of reduced ice cover. The most prominent evidence is that planktonic foraminifers typical of subpolar, seasonally open water lived in the central Arctic Ocean during the last interglacial (MIS 5e) as well as during a younger, relatively warm MIS 5a. Given that one of these areas, north of Greenland, is presently characterized by especially thick and widespread ice, most of the Arctic Ocean may have been free of summer ice cover during these intervals.”
Figure 2 from the paper shows how polar bears (pale blue) have been able to survive several interglacials warmer than present. What has caused the crash in polar bears, and brown bears, and black bears, is man, not climate change.
“From strong El Niño, to strong El Niño, without significant warming in between.”
From strong El Niño, to strong El Niño, with 0.27 degrees C of warming thru last year. Jan-Nov ’16 was roughly another 0.15 degrees C above that.
That is consistent with the warming trend of the last 45 years.
Neither El Niño, nor La Niña years can be consistent with any warming trend, as they are weather and not climate. No warming between 2001-2014 when no strong El Niño or La Niña took place.
“No warming between 2001-2014 when no strong El Niño or La Niña took place.”
It did, of course; 0.2 degrees… same trend
2001–0.54 degrees C
2014—0.74 degrees C
Maybe you should pick ’01 and ’11; that’s only 0.03 degrees. Don’t get confused and pick ’10, 0.70 degrees; that brings us back to the trend https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201513
“Neither El Niño, nor La Niña years can be consistent with any warming trend”
Chart below uses all the University of Alabama-Huntsville Global data from December 1978 to April 2015 (when the data was last downloaded by me) and compares it to BEST data (with anomaly adjusted so the mean of both datasets is the same over the period).
Over that period the temperature trend was 0.139 C per decade for UAH and 0.169 C per decade for BEST. There is quite a bit of modelling used to derive satellite temperature data and some people don’t trust models unless they agree with the results. Perhaps the UAH data is correct and those models can be trusted, but those other models which suggest an ECS of 2.9 C or more are incorrect. Those “incorrect” models do match the BEST data from 1850 to 2015 pretty well, models with higher or lower ECS don’t match observed temperature data as well.
Dennis, selecting a period for analysis is not cherry picking.
“Global mean surface temperature over the past 20 years (1993–2012) rose at a rate of 0.14 ± 0.06 °C per decade (95% confidence interval). This rate of warming is significantly slower than that simulated by the climate models participating in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). To illustrate this, we considered trends in global mean surface temperature computed from 117 simulations of the climate by 37 CMIP5 models. By averaging simulated temperatures only at locations where corresponding observations exist, we find an average simulated rise in global mean surface temperature of 0.30 ± 0.02 °C per decade (using 95% confidence intervals on the model average). The observed rate of warming given above is less than half of this simulated rate, and only a few simulations provide warming trends within the range of observational uncertainty.”
Do you think they cherry picked the dates?
Jon Fyfe and Nathan Gillett are Canadian climate modelers. Francis Zwiers literally wrote the book on climate statistics (w/von Storch): Statistical Analysis in Climate Research. Fyfe was a lead author for the AR4; Gillett is a lead author for the AR5 Chapter 9; Zwiers is Vice Chair for WG1 of AR5.
So one of the best climate statisticians doesn’t agree with you that analyzing 20 years is cherry picking. Your opinion is just that.
Hey, can you do me a good price on glace cherries with all those you are picking? Why not just compare 2014 with 2014 to show that temperature is not changing? Picking your data to fit your hypothesis fails science 101, you should fit hypothesis to the data.
NAOM
Hi Javier
How did they justify only 20 years of data?
A better method is to see how 20 year trends have changed.
Just look at 20 year windows from 1979 to 1996. Consider the change in trend over these 17 different sets of temperatures.
Pretty easy to do.
Nobody has ever claimed there is not natural variability. Thats the straw man.
They don’t justify using only 20 years of data. They just analyze global warming over the last 20 years and over the last 15 years:
“The inconsistency between observed and simulated global warming is even more striking for temperature trends computed over the past fifteen years (1998–2012). For this period, the observed trend of 0.05 ± 0.08 °C per decade is more than four times smaller than the average simulated trend of 0.21 ± 0.03 °C per decade (Fig. 1b). It is worth noting that the observed trend over this period — not significantly different from zero — suggests a temporary ‘hiatus’ in global warming.”
Please note that these climate scientists are far from being skeptics. They are IPCC responsible climatologists with a very good knowledge of statistics. Much better than mine and probably yours.
The analysis of the last 15 years or 20 years is not cherry picking despite your insistence. Cherry picking is when you start your analysis on a valley and end it on a peak, or vice versa, trying to misrepresent the situation. For example any analysis of temperatures that ends in 2016 should be aware that ending on a peak inflates the result.
Hi Javier,
The CMIP5 simulations used a guess at future emissions from 2005 to 2012 whereas the actual temperature data reflects actual emissions.
I and some colleagues recently looked closely at how well the CMIP5 simulation design has held up (Schmidt et al., 2014) and found that there have been two significant issues – the first is that volcanoes (and the cooling associated with their emissions) was underestimated post-2000 in these runs, and secondly, that solar forcing in recent years has been lower than was anticipated. While these are small effects, we estimated that had the CMIP5 simulations got this right, it would have had a noticeable effect on the ensemble. We illustrate that using the dashed lines post-1990. If this is valid (and I think it is), that places the observations well within the modified envelope, regardless of which product you favour.
The 2015-16 El Niño has pushed global temperatures back into the CMIP5 envelop, but it will fall back out again in 2017. Gavin is going to have it more and more difficult to defend that those models are performing. They keep increasing every year, while temperatures don’t.
Two world-leading clean energy projects have opened in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
A £3m industrial plant is capturing the CO2 emissions from a coal boiler and using the CO2 to make valuable chemicals. It is a world first.
And just 100km away is the world’s biggest solar farm, making power for 150,000 homes on a 10 sq km site.
The dramatically falling costs of solar energy from the supply chain to the final product could see the average global price of solar power become cheaper than coal within the next 10 years, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which is a position echoed by other experts.
Last year was another breakthrough year for solar energy, as prices tumbled to levels that would have been barely believable just 12 months previous. Amongst the most dramatic solar headlines of 2016 were three significant solar price world records being broken, first in Dubai, then in Mexico, and finally in Abu Dhabi, where a jaw dropping bid of US 2.42 cents per kWh was entered in a tender for a utility-scale project in the UAE.
This has given way to revitalized enthusiasm that solar PV will be the most prevalent energy source of the future, as analysts have scrambled to update forecasts for average solar prices in the coming years; with exciting results. Fresh 2017 analysis from leading market analysts BNEF has now predicted that the average global price for solar power could be less than coal within just 10 years, which is actually not so unbelievable, considering that it is already cheaper than coal in some parts of the world.
Incredibly, average solar prices are down 62% since 2009, with cuts to costs coming right along the industry’s supply chain, from the manufacturing of polysilicon, up to the manufacturing of modules, and even across the balance of systems technology, such as inverters and trackers. Currently, the average price for solar capacity installed at utility-scale solar plants is $1.14 per watt, with this expected to drop below a dollar by 2022, and then to just 73 cents by 2025, which is when it would drop below coal, according to BNEF.
Carbon Dioxide might play a direct role in melting glaciers and other ice formations.
Carbon dioxide enhances fragility of ice crystals
“Ice caps and glaciers cover 7% of the Earth, greater than the land area of Europe and North America combined, and play an important role in global climate. The small-scale failure mechanisms of ice fracture, however, remain largely elusive. In particular, little understanding exists about how the presence and concentration of carbon dioxide molecules, a significant component in the atmosphere, affects the propensity of ice to fracture. Here we use atomic simulations with the first-principles based ReaxFF force field capable of describing the details of chemical reactions at the tip of a crack, applied to investigate the effects of the presence of carbon dioxide molecules on ice fracture. Our result shows that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide molecules significantly decrease the fracture toughness of the ice crystal, making it more fragile. Using enhanced molecular sampling with metadynamics we reconstruct the free energy landscape in varied chemical microenvironments and find that carbon dioxide molecules affect the bonds between water molecules at the crack tip and decrease their strength by altering the dissociation energy of hydrogen bonds. In the context of glacier dynamics our findings may provide a novel viewpoint that could aid in understanding the breakdown and melting of glaciers, suggesting that the chemical composition of the atmosphere can be critical to mediate the large-scale motion of large volumes of ice.”
Some Texas energy veterans remember an engaged, pro-business governor, while others worry of a ‘pay-to-play’ DOE
In mid-December, President-elect Donald Trump announced he would name former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) to head the Department of Energy, a seemingly ironic choice, since Perry once proposed shuttering the entire agency.
Perry called the decision a “tremendous honor,” but has said little of his plans for the agency. Even so, his coming nomination has divided energy observers, with some arguing he is not as qualified as the scientists who led the DOE under President Obama.
The split extends to the Texas energy sector, where some worry his approach will favor a pay-to-play DOE. Others, though, say his strategy of putting business ahead of policy could work at the department.
“Rick Perry will be a breath of fresh air because he is committed to protecting the environment while making Americans less dependent on other nations for our energy needs,” Texas Oil & Gas Association President Todd Staples emailed Utility Dive.
“The combination of industry innovation and science-based policies championed by Gov. Perry has made Texas the number one oil and natural gas producer in the nation,” Staples added.
And let’s all not forget Rick Perry 5 years ago in his first failed presidential campaign couldn’t remember the name of the department Trump is asking him to lead.
PERRY: I will tell you, it is three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, Education, and the — What’s the third one there? Let’s see.
(LAUGHTER)
PAUL: Five.
PERRY: Five. Okay. Commerce, Education, and the —
[UNKNOWN]: EPA?
PERRY: EPA. There you go.
Q: Seriously — is EPA one you are talking about?
PERRY: No, sir, no, sir. We are talking about the — agencies of government — EPA needs to be rebuilt.
Q: You can’t — you can’t name the third one?
PERRY: The third agency of government I would — I would do away with Education, the —
Q: Commerce.
PERRY: Commerce and, let’s see. I can’t. The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops.
So how will governor Perry operate the DOE? He doesn’t believe the scientists about global warming. He wanted to eliminate the DOE, the very department he will head. He is not a scientist, so he will probably be an antagonist. Maybe we will get lots of windmills out of it, if we are lucky. Mostly we will get change.
“President-elect Donald Trump has selected former Texas Gov. Rick Perry — who famously once forgot that he wanted to abolish the Energy Department — to be secretary of energy, two sources familiar with the transition process told NBC News on Monday night. ”
“As governor, Perry championed the oil industry, questioning science that shows that greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change and deriding what he called “the secular carbon cult.”
At a presidential town hall in 2011, he said, “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” ”
At a presidential town hall in 2011, he said, “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” “
It needs to be pointed out that, “there are a substantial number of scientistspoliticians who have manipulated datathe conversation so that they will have dollars rolling into their projectspockets.”
There!
Fixed!
All the growth in the Texas economy under Gov. Perry happened across diverse industries and lifted up the working, middle, and upper classes alike. In fact, the rate and duration of growth occurred nearly at Economic Miracle levels. Now, with Trump as president and Gov. Perry hopefully overseeing the all-important fossil fuel sector of the federal government, the rest of the U.S. will finally get to experience the same thrill as Texans did as skyrocketing economic growth empowered industries and individuals to operate at maximum potential.
Rick Perry was governor of Texas during record oil price increases from 2002 to 2014. Let’s keep this in perspective. The last couple of years not so good.
Yet the point remains, an extremely business-friendly government that also allows for a high degree of personal freedom is simply an inseparable part of the Texas Identity. They are obvious qualities Gov. Perry would bring with him to Washington. Only in a liberal’s mind would any of those things be something worthy of contempt and hatred. Such is one of the reasons why the left keeps on losing election after election.
Dave H, all I have to say to the neo-conservatives and the liberals is they are in for a shock, a big one. In fact thinking about it there will be successive shocks over the next decade.
“shock, a big one”
Could you explain ?
The level of potential chaos environmentally, socially, economically, politically and militarily has climbed to a point where like rogue waves, forces will come to a head.
Stability in the world is declining overall.
Oh come on, you mean Trump doesn’t make you feel safe in bed at night ? Maybe you should leave the light on.
If history repeats it’s self. 2008 is 1929 and we are living in Germany 1938. That only gives Trump a year before he invades another country and starts rounding up the infidels.
I was talking about the global situation.
I think you need sleep, not making much sense now.
If you don’t see the similarities, than you are in the same group of passive Germans who slept during the 30’s. It’s naive to think it couldn’t happen again.
I know it’s taboo to point this out, but that needs to change. America isn’t special or exempt from it happening here. We aren’t living in your fathers America. We are much closer to globe political chaos than climate.
The levels, pressures and dangers do seem to be cranking up and lurking, HuntingtonBeach… A lit match or cigar over a spread-out pool of gasoline look benign enough to the Darwin Award runner-ups, but just let the vapors rise and/or the match/cig fall and see how fast things cascade.
I am hoping Trump and Perry are so pro-business that they see where the energy money will be coming from. Coal is declining, natural gas and oil are costing more to produce, and renewable energy prices are dropping and that industry is generating quite a few American jobs.
The numbers will likely favor expanding renewables and depending less on fossil fuels. We’ll see the extent to which they do want to make deals with businessmen like Musk and Bill Gates.
“U.S. will finally get to experience the same thrill as Texans did as skyrocketing economic growth empowered industries and individuals to operate at maximum potential.”
Are you advocating that oil and gas production be expanded in the US to such an extent that prices stay low and more oil and gas companies go out of business?
I’m advocating for a reasonable energy policy that doesn’t discriminate against certain forms of energy due entirely to ideological reasons or dubious “settled science.” As far as O & G development, the main priorities need to be lifting burdensome regulations, ending needless EPA overreach, and making the overall permitting/regulatory process faster and more efficient.
Those may happen under Trump/Perry, but regulations aren’t keeping oil prices down.
Faster permitting might encourage more oil production, which will keep prices down.
That seems to me to be oil’s big problem. Allowing even more oil and gas to hit the market is good if you want low prices. Not so good if you want to see $100 a barrel again.
I’m advocating for a reasonable energy policy that doesn’t discriminate against certain forms of energy due entirely to ideological reasons or dubious “settled science.”
Sounds reasonable! Two minor quibbles, oil, gas and coal are NOT forms of energy, they are FUELS and need to be burned to produce HEAT energy. That is still a dirty and very inefficient way to produce and use ENERGY in this day and age. Whether you like it or not that much IS settled science.
So maybe we can start by leveling the playing field and letting market forces take their natural course, eh? There is a reason Texas has been investing heavily in wind and solar, it’s because it makes ECONOMIC and business sense!
With nearly 18,000 megawatts of capacity, Texas, if it were a country, would be the sixth-largest generator of wind power in the world, right behind Spain. Now Texas is preparing to add several thousand megawatts more—roughly equal to the wind capacity that can be found in all of California. Most of these turbines are in west Texas, one of the most desolate and windy regions in the continental United States. Fifteen years ago, when the groundwork for this boom was being set, this area had little but cotton and grain farms, oil fields, scrub and dry riverbeds, and small towns that were mostly withering
Based on your idea of fairness maybe we could start by eliminating all subsidies for fossil fuel production and include the cost of all externalities, i.e. the free ride the fossil fuel producers have enjoyed for a long time and see how things shake out, shall we? After all what is good for the goose should be good for the gander, right?
Internationally, governments provide at least $775 billion to $1 trillion annually in subsidies, not including other costs of fossil fuels related to climate change, environmental impacts, military conflicts and spending, and health impacts. This figure varies each year based on oil prices, but it is consistently in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Greater transparency in reporting would allow for more precise figures.
When externalities are included, as in a 2015 study by the International Monetary Fund, the unpaid costs of fossil fuels are upward of $5.3 trillion annually – which works out to a staggering $10 million per minute.
And I’m not even a big fan of the IMF’s ideology…
Right now clean energies are cost competitive with oil and gas without subsidies and they will become even cheaper as time goes on.
I think everyone in the oil industry should watch these three presentations and think deeply about what is said and what the implications to their business model might be.
Even though the last one may seem somewhat off topic it addresses the underlying issues with our current economic system’s operating system.
This is the 21st century not the 13th, things are changing all over the world and there is a perfect storm of disruptive technologies that is on the horizon.
By all means the development of new sources of energy is crucial as fossil fuels become more expensive to produce and start to decline. Otherwise we will not have a future.
But the role of governments is to help in the research to develop and improve new sources and vectors of energy, not to force a transition for which we are neither ready not capable right now and that is resulting in curtailing the access of poor people to the energy they need to survive.
Spain made that mistake in 2009 betting very strongly for new renewables with heavy subsidies. The result, besides increasing Spain debt problems, has been a strong increase in electricity prices. There have been cases of old people dying from fires from candles in houses where electricity was cut for lack of payment. The left that carried out the push in renewables when they were in power, that ultimately led to the rise in prices is now blaming those deaths on electric companies policies and greed.
The real transition that has been taking place has not been towards less carbon, but towards more hydrogen, as coal and oil are being increasingly substituted where possible by methane (CH4). This is giving us time to develop new renewables and new nuclear and we should not waste it due to ideological woes. The danger of nuclear is nothing compared to the danger of insufficient energy in the future. Spain has had nuclear energy for many decades and not a single victim from it. Yet nuclear is being discarded without a clear alternative.
I am in favor of solar, I am in favor of wind, I am in favor of hydro, I am in favor of fossil fuels, and I am in favor of nuclear. I am very much against lack of energy.
Javier,
Most are not for a lack of energy. I agree there can be bad policy for pushing renewable energy. Fred suggested that subsidizing fossil fuel production is a bad idea, tax the externalities from fossil fuel pollution and eliminate tax subsidies for fossil fuels (already the case in Europe, but not the US) and let the market decide the winners.
Currently nuclear and fossil fuels don’t compete very well with wind and solar in many places, this is likely to continue as wind and solar costs continue to fall.
Not much point in propping up fossil fuel and nuclear, soon they will become stranded assets so it is wasted investment.
“Currently nuclear and fossil fuels don’t compete very well with wind and solar in many places, this is likely to continue as wind and solar costs continue to fall.”
As far as I know, new renewables have not increased much in terms of percentage of global energy that they produce, which indicates that fossil fuels and nuclear are increasing as fast as new renewables. Tens of nuclear plants are being built in Asia, and demand for fossil fuels continues growing above 1% every year.
Are we being realistic?
“As far as I know, new renewables have not increased much in terms of percentage of global energy that they produce, which indicates that fossil fuels and nuclear are increasing as fast as new renewables.”
As far as you know? Over what time period have renewables not increased their percentage contribution? See my comment further down. The contribution from solar up 100 fold in eight years (0.01% to 1%).
In another seven weeks or so the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly should be updated with the data for December 2016 at which time I will be able to update the chart below with the annual data for 2016. The table on which the chart is based has “Solar” going from 0.013% in 2005 to 0.94 in 2015 and “Renewables”, which is mostly wind, going from 2.13% in 2005 to 6.65% in 2015.
Renewable generation has increased significantly since 2000 in several developed nations in Europe and Asia. India and China have very ambitious targets. Solar is booming in Chile and Australia, is starting to take off in the Middle East and their are other countries/regions like Brazil and Africa are developing plans.
Clearly you have not watched any of the videos Fred linked to. You really should, before you post anything like this again.
So, Islandboy,
You mean this graph from BP 2016 report data is actually false and renewables do not account for just 2.8% of primary energy production in 2015?
Apparently renewables grew from 2.4% the previous year.
Meanwhile fossil fuel energy has gone down from 86.8% in 2000 to 86.1% in 2015, a 0.7% decrease in 15 years.
Will those videos from Fred change these numbers? Make them look better?
You also answered my other question. We are not being realistic.
Will those videos from Fred change these numbers? Make them look better?
Perhaps you need a primer in exponential growth where the rate of growth is itself exponential.
But you need faith on the exponential growth sustaining in the future. There are multiple reasons why the exponential growth might not sustain, as individual countries appear to peak and decay in their renewable energy investments.
I am a faithless person.
Hi Javier,
Non-fossil fuel energy consumption has increased quite a bit. Also keep in mind that the actual exergy produced by fossil fuels is not very high, for liquid fuels used for ground transportation probably less than 10% of the energy from the fossil fuel ends up as useful work when all the energy used for extracting, transporting, refining, and distributing the fuel are added to the thermal losses in an internal combustion engine (ICE). There are losses for win and solar as well, but they are far lower so less total energy is needed to replace fossil fuel energy.
Output from Wind and Solar have been growing at 30% per year (combined output).
This rapid rate of increase will no doubt fall over time, but oil and natural gas increased by about 6.5% per year from 1915 to 1973 (58 years) and growth was limited by demand. Wind and solar can grow at least at the rate of 6.5% and more likely by 7 or 8% per year as long as energy demand supports it. The eventual peak and decline of fossil fuels (including coal) is likely to result in robust demand for non-fossil fuel energy unless the rate of growth of per capita real GDP (about 1.4% per year from 1965 to 2015 on average) slows substantially. This is possible due to a Depression for perhaps a 10 year period, but eventually the economy will recover.
I am not opposed to nuclear, but do not think it should be subsidized, all types of energy should compete on a level playing field with any negative externalities taxed or regulated appropriately. No free rides for polluters.
In addition to what Dennis said above, the BP report deals with primary energy while most of my discussions deal with electrical energy. The fact is renewables are making their biggest impact in the electrical generation sector for the time being.
As has been said elsewhere, (linked utility dive article) transportation also accounts for a huge share of primary energy use. As batteries improve in price/performance electrical energy can become a larger contributor in the transport sector, starting with road and rail and maybe on day even extending to aviation.
Barring some black swan event like extreme FF industry sponsored political action, renewables and EVs will eventually put a small but growing dent in FF consumption. In another seven weeks or so I expect to update the chart below with the annual data for 2016. I have included a line for wind in this latest rendering. IMO opinion the updated chart will show 2016 as the year it becomes obvious that renewables, solar in particular can “move the needle”.
Islandboy,
We are planning to move our transportation almost fully to electricity, and now transportation is 87% fossil fuels. The correct measurement of our progress is how much of our total energy comes from renewables.
Dennis,
I agree that subsidies distort the market. The way to support more desirable energy sources is through research, in my opinion.
Nuclear has become prohibitively expensive in Occident due to very strict regulations. We built a lot of nuclear in the 60’s and 70’s and it was not so expensive. The safety record for that nuclear has been quite good. No accident and no single victim in Spain for over 5 decades. Beats every other industry by much.
We should be able to do it better now.
Don’t forget carl Icahn. He attempted a hostile takeover of usa steel industry.
He very quietly got added to trumps informal cabinet.
High price for oil spurred the fracking boom. Reduction in taxes for gas drillers helped spur the natural gas boom. No amount of money or policy can make the wind blow, but Perry certainly was for it, it made money and diversified the energy portfolio of Texas. Climate change was never in his view. He permitted 12 new coal fired power plants during his tenure, only eight got built, but other states were not building them.
Basically, if it made money he was for it, except solar PV. Texas is a prime solar energy region, yet it is just now getting started and was not aided by Perry.
So he is an everything goes kind of guy, except solar PV. Maybe he will come around on that.
But never confuse him with climate. Just show the money.
Although some people think sea ice is just being measured by photographs, the most comprehensive method is to use microwave emissions from the ice that are detected by remote sensing satellites. This gives the advantage of continuous day and night coverage, through cloud coverage and an assessment of the concentration of sea ice. It is also not temperature sensitive as is infrared detection.
GF – some of the most accurate measurements might now be available from ESA. They combine CRYOSAT for thick ice and SMOS for thin ice. Cryosat only works when there isn’t melting. SMOS measurements were improved in October and combing the two methods is recent.
“Carrying a radiometer, SMOS was designed capture images of brightness temperature. While these images can be turned into information on soil moisture and ocean salinity to improve our understanding of the water cycle, it turns out that these data can also be used to measure sea ice.
“In contrast, CryoSat carries a radar altimeter that measures freeboard of sea ice, which is the distance between the waterline and the top of the ice.”
Hawaii’s energy sector is most known for the solar energy it can produce in abundance, but the state is taking a holistic approach to reducing emissions by looking beyond carbon-free power. Also central to the state’s transformation will be the adoption of electric vehicles and an increase in efficiency.
“Hawaii’s push to create a clean energy future is becoming a reality,” said Luis Salaveria, director of the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism, which oversees the Hawaii State Energy Office (HSEO). He added that the state has made “tremendous strides to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels,” with about 25% of all electricity sales now coming from renewable sources.
EV registrations accelerated at a double-digit pace in 2016, the report found, with more than 5,000 in the state. The state has more than 500 charging points, including more than 300 on the most populous island of Oahu, home to more than 3,400 EVs.
“While hugely important, the state’s 2045 deadline to reach 100 percent renewables in electricity sales left out something crucial: transportation,” the report says. “To truly achieve energy independence and break Hawaii’s addiction to fossil fuels, the state must revolutionize the transportation sector.
Arctic Ocean is now dominated by younger and thinner ice.
Arctic Ocean is now dominated by younger and thinner ice.
Not according to NSIDC. Ice age is increasing since 2007.
Javier, shame on you, putting those dumb arrows in. the trends are downward.
Anyway, the vertical axis looks wrong, labeled as percent yet only goes as high as 1.
At maximum ice (February) the 2+ year ice had fallen from 38% to 12 %between 1985 and 2009. There is no graph for 5+ year ice that I could find. Rates f loss of multi-year ice are around -16% per decade.
“We establish a signal of pervasive and persistent multidecadal (~60–90 year) fluctuations… Covariability between sea ice and Atlantic multidecadal variability as represented by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index is evident during the instrumental record. This observational evidence supports recent modeling studies that have suggested that Arctic sea ice is intrinsically linked to Atlantic multidecadal variability.
Given the demonstrated covariability between sea ice and the AMO, it follows that a change to a negative AMO phase in the coming decade(s) could —to some degree— temporarily ameliorate the strongly negative recent sea-ice trends.”
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.
“In recent decades, rapid changes in the Arctic have been documented (e.g. Alkire et al. 2007). Most interpretations of the recent decline in Arctic sea ice extent have focused on the role of anthropogenic forcing (e.g. Johannessen et al. 2004), with some allowance for natural variability… But according to stadium-wave projections, and according to our interpretation of stadium-wave evolution, this trend should reverse, under the condition that the stadium-wave hypothesis captures 20th century dynamics correctly. Rebound in WIE, followed by ArcSib should occur after the estimated 2006 minimum of WIE and maximum of AMO.”
The change of trend is known and explained by scientists. But you haven’t understood it despite me telling you repeated times. Come next September it is very likely that there will be more sea ice in the Arctic than in 2007, and it will then be 10 years without melting despite global warming, despite El Niño, despite warm record years, and despite all the CO2 emitted in those 10 years.
Do you understand the difference between one percent and one hundred percent?
We can have fun extending your meaningless arrows back one, two or even eleven data points. It’s good practice for the kiddies, drawing arrows, gives them better hand eye coordination. Also shows them how people can get almost any answer they want from a variable data set, if they don’t use proper methods.
Whatever. Facts are stubborn. Arctic sea ice has not diminished since 2007. Some scientists believe a change of trend has taken place and the situation will last for decades.
Welcome the “unexpected” pause in Arctic sea ice melting.
Keep repeating your mantra “reality is not happening, we can fake our way out of this”.
I looked at the NSDIC data and you did choose 2007 since it was an anomalous low point, however even in a few years the sea ice extent is now lower than 2007.
That anomalous low point was sold to us as the confirmation of our worst fears about Arctic sea ice.
It turns out it was a pivotal point for a change of trend towards increasing Arctic sea ice stability. Just the opposite.
Alarmists are the only ones denying reality and selling snake oil. Their predictions always fail, so they move to new even direr predictions a little farther in the future. “Just wait, things are going to really turn bad any time now.” People are not buying that.
Lol, Javier.
troll lol
The lifestyle of my neighbor who is ninety nine percent sure headed to bankruptcy court hasn’t declined over the last ten years. He’s hiding his deteriorating status by borrowing more and more , using the proceeds of one loan to pay off other older loans, and abusing his property, by deferring maintenance.
My own lifestyle, except for being tied to the house with a short chain in order to look after my Dad, has not changed appreciably over the last ten years, but my financial situation is substantially improved, due to some property I own has appreciating in spectacular fashion.
Simple outward measures of well being, or conditions in the natural world, can and do often hide ominous ( and sometimes happy ! ) changes, for a period of time.
The extra heat energy is going into the water, for the most part, and has been, for a while now. Soon enough, but I can’t say when, a new balance between ocean water temperatures, and land and air temperatures will make itself felt.
I will not dispute that SOME warming is harmful, in terms of our overall economic status, world wide. I’m not saying a little warming is DEFINITELY GOOD, but rather that in economic terms it might not be BAD, on average.
But a little BEER is good too.
So’s a little red meat, a little sex, a little of lots of things.
Too much beer results in great pain.
And too much beer combined with sex occasionally results in MORE problems, lol. Feedbacks are real.
If you are really doing your best to tell it like it is, and you really are a competent biologist, then you must acknowledge that the physics, as expounded by professionals in that field, indicate we are in for a HOT kitchen.
So you are a microbiologist?
Tell us what sort of precautions you would INSIST on, if you were heading up a research project investigating a fast moving , highly contagious and frequently fatal disease, with no known cure.
IF you don’t believe in the precautionary principle, you are a dangerous man indeed, because people who don’t know any better might actually listen to you, WILL listen to you, as a matter of fact.
And if you are competent, in general terms, you simply MUST know that while a decade is a long time in the affairs of our day to day lives, it’s only a yawn or two , in terms of the next few centuries.
As I have remarked by way of example on other occasions, if a youngster puts some money aside, on a regular basis, even a very modest amount, and it draws compound interest, he will possess a substantial sum.
Now it IS possible that the warming trend we have experienced in recent times IS the result of natural variations. I don’t think it is possible to prove otherwise by purely mathematical reasoning.
But all the INDICATIONS point to forced warming, and we do collectively know a hell of a lot about astronomy these days, including solar output, orbital variations, and that sort of variable. We also know a hell of a lot about plate tectonics, etc, all of which have had a hell of a lot to do with past climatic cycles, and will determine future cycles as well.
And unless I am VERY badly mistaken, nobody is coming forward with any evidence that known astronomical or geological factors are in play in such a way that they could explain recent warming, or be reasonably expected to offset any forced warming over the next few centuries.
Now I do agree with some of the things you have to say, in particular that perhaps some of the attention being paid to warming, and some of the resources that are apt to be devoted to it could be better spent on conservation efforts on the ground, such as preserving some critical natural habitats before it’s too late.
My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that the odds are pretty high that ten billion dollars spent on reducing CO2 emissions by such inefficient methods as CCS would return ten or twenty times as big an an environmental bang, if that money were spent on providing free birth control to poor people everywhere.
And while it’s obvious to me that you are right about some things you have to say about science and politics, hardly anybody else in this particular forum will agree with me on this point.
For everybody else, I refer them to the bigger and broader point in that very famous and extremely influential novel with the courtroom scene when the successful defense lawyer tells the jury to just imagine that the little girl had blond hair, before they convict HER Daddy of doing what they would have done themselves, in the same situation.
Change the names of the people involved, and the subject matter, and most of us are perfectly willing to believe that most people go along to get along, both personally and professionally.
But peer review still really does work, and it works ACROSS the different fields of science. If physicists, chemists, geologists, biologists in general, agricultural scientists, etc, were to all be criticizing the climate science establishment, you would have a SERIOUS point in emphasizing the need to go along to get along.
You do have a serious point when you emphasize that too much research depends on government money, and that there should be more private money going to research.
And I don’t believe the forum would be better off, in absolute terms, if you were banned. I don’t believe in censorship.
But neither do I believe you can come up with a sound answer, as a biologist, when it comes to the importance of the precautionary principle, etc, having ignored it in your comments.
You must realize, if you are capable of critical thinking, and know what’s involved, that waiting for evidence that will satisfy the Koch brothers means waiting until it’s too late to do anything meaningful in terms of solving the problem.
So- The ball’s in your court.
“then you must acknowledge that the physics, as expounded by professionals in that field, indicate we are in for a HOT kitchen.”
The physics does not indicate such thing, Climate sensitivity is UNKNOWN.
I believe in taking reasonable precautions against known risks. What if I tell you that we should dedicate 20% of our economic output to take precautions against being hit by an asteroids, and another 20% against a Carrington event? I mean the loses would be such that anything we expend to prevent that is well worth it, and we really don’t know how long we have until that happens. The first thing is to decide how much we are going to expend and what effect is likely to have that money.
I am a molecular biologist, not a microbiologist. Yet quite some knowledge about microbiology. The risk of being seriously hit by a bad strain of some highly contagious disease is in my opinion a bigger risk than climate change. We do take measures against that, but nobody knows if it would suffice. I have serious doubts that it would.
“nobody is coming forward with any evidence that known astronomical or geological factors are in play in such a way that they could explain recent warming”
There is a millennial cycle in solar activity. Around the year 1 AD coincides with the Roman Warm Period. Around the year 1000 AD coincides with the Medieval Warm Period. Around the year 2000 AD coincides with the Modern Warm Period. We do not know the mechanisms by which changes in solar activity could affect significantly the climate, but there is quite a lot of evidence that they do, and some hypothesis are being pushed forward. The most serious one proposes that changes in UV radiation warm the stratospheric ozone causing atmospheric reorganizations by a top down mechanism. If you are really interested see:
Haigh, J. D., and M. Blackburn. “Solar influences on dynamical coupling between the stratosphere and troposphere.” Space Science Reviews 125.1-4 (2006): 331-344. http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/190/1/ISSI2005_final.pdf
I defend peer review as the worst system except for all the others.
“You must realize, if you are capable of critical thinking, and know what’s involved, that waiting for evidence … means waiting until it’s too late to do anything meaningful in terms of solving the problem.”
First we should know if there is a problem, shouldn’t we? That the world has been warming for the past 170 years has not been a problem, but has actually solved one.
Hi Javier,
Whatever is not much of an argument and cherry picking is considered pseudoscience by most.
Dennis,
Arctic sea ice stopped declining when it did. No picking any date there. There will be a pause until it starts declining again. Already 9 years and contrary to expectations.
Not according to NSIDC. Ice age is increasing since 2007.
No: you could title this little bit of arrow-drawing “Ice Age Decreasing Since 2006.”
My point being that, as GF notes above, Javier is a cherry-picker.
For trend analysis you joint highs to highs and lows to lows. A downward trend requires both lower highs and lower lows. This is pretty simple stuff in trend analysis.
For 2 year and older ice there is no longer lower lows and lower highs. The trend is no longer downwards.
“For trend analysis you joint highs to highs and lows to lows.” On what planet? Trend analysis generally refers to techniques for extracting an underlying pattern of behavior in a time series which would otherwise be hidden by noise. In science it is regression analysis that is normally used to understand which among the independent variables are related to the dependent variable.
I’ve always wondered what color the sky is on the planet Javier resides on.
It is way different from Earth.
He’s gotta be a paid troll or psychiatrically unbalanced. Nobody is that ignorant of reality.
“an uptrend is classified as a series of higher highs and higher lows, while a downtrend is one of lower lows and lower highs.”
It is not my fault if you are so ignorant as not knowing pretty simple stuff. From this planet. Read the article so you learn to spot a trend.
INVESTOPEDIA as a scientific reference? You’ve got to be kidding; that’s pathetic.
Doug, it’s a lot more correct than many of the references he cites.
True.
So now you need to be a scientist to spot a trend.
Your religion is getting weirder.
Give it up already. You’re a trainwreck.
Nope, I am likely to be right, and one day you will have to accept it. It will be time to eat crow the day you finally realize your trust was misplaced and we are at no risk from climate change.
March (maximum ice)
In 1985 the area of 1st year ice was only slightly larger than the area of 5th year and older (2500 km2 and 2200 km2)
Now the area of first year ice is 5000 km2 and the area of fifth +year ice is 200 km2.
Looks to me like the old ice is disappearing.
Maybe if you joint highs to highs and lows to lows you’ll find a trend in that data. Then you can make a major… No maybe not.
Instead you could listen to Peter Wadhams. Peter is an ‘expeditionary’ scientist and Emeritus Professor of Ocean Physics from Cambridge. His observations of the Arctic ice for over 4 decades makes him one of the worlds authorities on the subject.
Wadhams shows how sea ice is the ‘canary in the mine’ of planetary climate change. He describes how it forms and the vital role it plays in reflecting solar heat back into space and providing an ‘air conditioning’ system for the planet.
He shows how a series of rapid feedbacks in the Arctic region are accelerating change there more rapidly than almost all scientists (and political authorities), have previously realized. Dangers of further acceleration are very real.
“Wadhams has visited the Polar Regions more often than any other living scientist – 50 times since he was on the first ship to circumnavigate the Americas in 1970 – and has a uniquely authoritative perspective on the changes they have undergone and where those changes will lead. From his observations and the latest scientific research, he describes how dramatically sea ice has diminished over the past three decades, to the point at which, by the time this book is published, the Arctic may be free of ice for the first time in 10,000 years.”
Peter Wadhams is a crackpot with a serious mental problem.
“Professor Peter Wadhams insists three scientists may have been murdered. Seymour Laxon died after a fall while Tim Boyd was struck by lightning. Katharine Giles was crushed to death by a truck while cycling in London. Prof Wadhams believes they were killed by oil lobby workers.”
He already predicted the final collapse of Arctic sea ice by 2016.
So according to him there is no more Arctic sea ice during the summers.
Quite some expert you have chosen to trust.
Do you have any valid critique of his professional work? You clearly are reduced to ad hominem attacks. What a prestigious institution it must have been that gave you a PhD. You clearly know little about science or the scientific process. Perhaps Arctic sea ice will be gone by September 2020. Wow! Peter was off by four years. I guess you can have his job at Cambridge lol what a troll. I read your posts and I actually feel embarrassed for you.
“Do you have any valid critique of his professional work?”
I already did. Peter Wadham has already produced and publicized two utterly failed Arctic ice-free predictions.
In science if the predictions from your hypothesis fail so spectacularly, it means that you are wrong. His failure to recognize this problem and his insistence that he is still right clearly shows that his professional work is bad.
“You have said on several occasions that summer Arctic sea ice would disappear by the middle of this decade. It hasn’t. Are you being alarmist?
No. There is a clear trend down to zero for summer cover… Next year or the year after that, I think it will be free of ice in summer… Ice-free means the central basin of the Arctic will be ice-free and I think that that is going to happen in summer 2017 or 2018.
The Guardian: ‘Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice’
Quite some expert you are trusting. I think you can put some new music to that old tune.
That’s the best you got eh? Wow. I’m embarrassed for you.
Peter Wadhams and survivalist his follower. Quite a team.
Even the mainstream media is having doubts about Wadhams despite providing sensationalism on a yearly basis.
They used to have this format, but they changed it because it was too easy to see that Arctic sea ice age was increasing.
You think that graph shows that Arctic sea ice age is increasing? Are you color blind or innumerate?
Situation in 2015 is the same or better as in 2007, and shows improvement from 2012. It shows the same information as all the rest of Arctic data.
Look at the situation, as you call it, in 1983 and compare it to the situation in 2015. Try not to cherry pick the middle bits. It’s hard but you can do it. Think back to grad school.
Arctic sea ice stopped declining when it did. No picking any date there. There will be a pause until it starts declining again. Already 9 years and contrary to expectations.
Different graph, or can’t you see the difference? Two of the ages are blended making the bottom one look bigger. , yearly values are blended together, the time span is earlier, does not reach 2016.
You probably do not even understand how the age determination process works.
Hi Javier,
No you do a linear regression, rather than draw arrows.
Then if you have a significant reason to choose a certain starting and ending points, you should look at how the trend changes when the window is moved. A big change in trend indicates a lack of statistical significance.
Most scientists are well aware of this.
Dennis,
I have already showed that a change of trend in Arctic sea ice in 2007 has already been identified in several papers analyzing the dependency of Arctic sea ice on AMO. No need to wait 30 years for more data. Arctic sea ice is doing what is expected to do by some scientists. Not melt.
Do you live in a parallel dimension or something because you’re clearly not tuned into reality?
Lacks 4 years of data that shows no melting for 9 years. Propaganda videos are not worth much.
Can you spot a trend? Why is it propaganda? Is it false data? If so please link reference to real data. You’re weak tea Javier. Normal people would feel shame after being dragged through the facts so often. I suggest you either lack the ability to feel shame or you’re paid to serve this drivel.
Here’s another link that is not missing four years. All better now? Does this meet the Javier standard of scientific rigour?
“Normal people would feel shame after being dragged through the facts so often.”
Because you are not bringing facts to the table. Nobody is measuring Arctic ice volume. It is modeled.
You should try to find your facts in scientific articles and then we can discuss them, not in Youtube.
Getting your science in Youtube it is no wonder that you sport such wacky ideas.
Height times area = volume
Yes, the volume is measured by satellites that measure height of ice and measure area.
You really don’t understand how models are used in science. Do you think they are just made up? I think they use actual data.
The satellite data is actually checked against measurements made in the ocean.
You are just blowing wind.
You are inventing that GoneFishing.
“PIOMAS is a numerical model with components for sea ice and ocean and the capacity for assimilating some kinds of observations. For the ice volume simulations shown here, sea ice concentration information from the NSIDC near-real time product are assimilated into the model to improve ice thickness estimates and SST data from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis are assimilated in the ice-free areas. NCEP/NCAR reanalysis SST data are based on the global daily high-resolution Reynolds SST analyses using satellite and in situ observations (Reynolds and Marsico, 1993; Reynolds et al., 2007). Atmospheric information to drive the model, specifically wind, surface air temperature, and cloud cover to compute solar and long wave radiation are specified from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis. The pan-Arctic ocean model is forced with input from a global ocean model at its open boundaries located at 45 degrees North.”
Volume is not measured. Is modeled. Make believe data. As they say, a simulation.
PIOMASS uses ICESAT2 data. That and other satellites measure freeboard height of the ice, in this case using multiple laser beams. Data is taken every 2.3 feet and submarines have confirmed the accuracy to be less than 0,5 meter.
Yes, they then have to calculate the ice volume from freeboard height of ice, so I guess that is your idea of a simulation. We do know how ice floats.
The paragraph I put is from PIOMAS site. They themselves call their ice volume product a simulation.
If you measure something, you don’t call it a simulation.
Hi Javier,
The relationship between AMO and Arctic Sea ice minimum is quite weak.
From 1979 to 2015 the R squared between Arctic Sea Ice Minimum and AMO is 41%.
Hi Javier,
A linear regression on the Arctic Sea Ice minimum as the dependent variable and AMO and natural log of atmospheric CO2 as the independent variables, shows that the AMO is not statistically significant with a t-stat of 0.03 (where about a t stat of 2 or higher suggests statistical significance at the 95% level), where natural log of CO2 has a t stat of about 7 (absolute value).
Also the regression has an R squared of 76% using two independent variables (AMO and ln(CO2)).
The regression for arctic sea ice minimum vs natural log of CO2 (AMO not included) also has an R squared of 76%.
Both regressions use data from 1979 to 2015.
Hi Dennis,
There is a very clear phase inverse relationship that extends over several cycles. The variability that both display prevents a closer match.
Obviously if you take the relationship over to the 1600s with proxies, the relationship with CO2 falls flat on its face.
And for the last cycle the relationship holds quite well even if there is no match between peaks and valleys in the yearly variability.
Why does everyone care so much that Javier doesn’t think climate change is a problem.
Its OK if he doesn’t, he is not the decision maker, any more than you or I.
Better to spend the mental energy on much more important matters- like birth control and protection of class I/II farmland soils.
I bet both Javier, Fred M, and Huntington Beach can all agree on that.
Besides constantly being called delusional and a liar, Javier has stopped all reasonable discussion of climate change on this site. To confuse the topic and silence us is his success.
As far as investigating the earth, if you think that is not important, fine. We do live on this planet and need to know how and why it operates, considering we are now one of the forces involved.
We do not need people obsessionally muddying the knowledge and discussion. This site can be viewed all over the world.
There already is birth control and farmland already has lots of scientists studying it. However I would like to see your thoughts on those, so start a discussion.
Just for the record guys. My lying eyes tell me that, most of the long term temperature graphs Javier has been posting, including the one above, show an extremely disturbing uptick in temperatures over the last couple of decades.
This is even more disturbing when my lying eyes again tell me that this is following a very gradual, long term, cooling trend.
Great work, Javier!
Some food for thought.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
Say what you like about my bloody murderous government,’ I says, ‘but don’t insult me poor bleedin’ country.
Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
Our ‘neoconservatives’ are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.
Edward Abby
Extremism, even with the best of intentions, is hardly ever good. In fact it can be horrible.
The stage is being set for a form of extremism.
Good morning GF,
I’m afraid you’re right, that our government is headed towards becoming more authoritarian and extremist in a lot of aspects.
There’s a lot of food for thought in this link, but unfortunately the thoughts are mostly unpleasant ones.
It’s time to be seriously contemplating thinkers and philosophers along the lines of Edward Abbey, who is one of my favorites.
“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
Many others said this same thing in somewhat different words, sooner, but that only makes it more instead of less relevant.
I have been trying very hard to find something I can do for which I do not need government permission. I guess there are a few things left but in order to be able to do them, I have to do things that need permission. Even my dog needs a license.
Freedom, ain’t it wonderful?
As tyrants take control of democracies, they typically:
1. Exaggerate their mandate to govern – claiming, for example, that they won an election by a landslide even after losing the popular vote.
2. Repeatedly claim massive voter fraud in the absence of any evidence, in order to restrict voting in subsequent elections.
3. Call anyone who opposes them “enemies.”
4. Turn the public against journalists or media outlets that criticize them, calling them “deceitful” and “scum.”
5. Hold few if any press conferences, preferring to communicate with the public directly through mass rallies and unfiltered statements.
6. Tell the public big lies, causing them to doubt the truth and to believe fictions that support the tyrants’ goals.
7. Blame economic stresses on immigrants or racial or religious minorities, and foment public bias and even violence against them.
8. Attribute acts of domestic violence to “enemies within,” and use such events as excuses to beef up internal security and limit civil liberties.
9. Threaten mass deportations, registries of religious minorities, and the banning of refugees.
10. Seek to eliminate or reduce the influence of competing centers of power, such as labor unions and opposition parties.
11. Appoint family members to high positions of authority
12. Surround themselves with their own personal security force rather than a security detail accountable to the public.
13. Put generals into top civilian posts
14. Make personal alliances with foreign dictators.
15. Draw no distinction between personal property and public property, profiteering from their public office.
In some countries there is a military coup, but I don’t think the US military would do that. They might actively protest an incompetent or dangerous president, but I don’t think they would violently get rid of the president and put themselves in power instead.
Another way is for another country to defeat the authoritarian government. I don’t see other countries attempting to take us down militarily. But perhaps they can do it economically and through disabling, from afar, various systems (e.g., electricity grid, banking, the Internet).
An overwhelming majority of Ford EV owners expect to replace their current EV with a new one, additional Ford research shows. Specifically:
92 percent of battery electric car customers say they will purchase another battery electric vehicle as their next purchase
87 percent of plug-in hybrid customers want another plug-in for their next vehicle
When nothing is owed or deserved or expected
And your life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected
You’ll wake up in the morning and go about your daily bidness regardless of who is sitting in the Opal Office.
Now if oil were to be gone, not there at all, your life would change dramatically.
R Walter,
I completely agree with you. Too much credit is given to the person in charge, both for good or bad. When history is studied under economic, climatic, and social trends, it becomes clear that most times the people in charge are just riding the wave, and taking the credit when things improve.
Obviously incompetent people with too much power can always make things significantly worse regardless of conditions, but that rarely happens with democracies, where time is limited and there are multiple checks to excessive power.
The 2011 Arab spring that has turned into several civil wars and the failure of Lybia as a state (with our help), is a clear example of the effect of economic trends that resulted from the increase in oil prices followed by an increase in food prices on countries with very young populations where a very large part of people’s income is dedicated to food and fuel. Leaders that had been stable for many decades took the blame then and the media sold us the stupid lie that it was a desire for democracy.
Oil will go, but health insurance and social security will go first. Won’t matter if there is oil or not for a lot of people. They will be cursing those using it.
Got this quote from Rice Farmer and was with link to the article below.
“Unfortunately, the bad news is even worse. Fossil fuels are needed to manufacture and deploy renewables. There appears to be simple-minded belief that we could use the electricity from renewables to power not only industrial civilization, but also the hardware scrap-and-build cycle. This belief overlooks the crucial difference between fossil fuels and renewables. In the case of fossil fuels, nature did all the heavy lifting for us by producing biomass on a vast scale and then putting it in gigantic pressure cookers. Humans just have to dig or pump out the products and refine them. With renewables, we must do this ourselves over immense areas of land. In other words, fossil fuel energy is concentrated, stored energy, while that from renewables is diffuse, real-time energy. Using electricity from renewables to run the industrial machine would be prohibitively expensive. But there’s another major factor that most people completely overlook: Large-scale infrastructure like wind and solar farms needs to be financed with debt — LOTS of debt, and that requires a sound financial system. Unfortunately, the global economy and financial system are doomed. Furthermore, although there could be a post-crash revival, the system will never recover to the current scale because net energy is already too low, and will continue to decline. — RF”
I feel that the term EROEI as it pertains to renewables should be clarified. It’s electricity energy returned on fossil fuel energy invested. The manufacturing of renewables consumes fossil fuel.
From that article.
“Rather, the default endpoint is merely the wreckage of an industrial civilization that didn’t prepare properly. Such a society would be forced to make due with the energy budget available from renewables like all past civilizations. That’s a lot less than we in industrialized countries use, and, more important, far less than we could have if we make sensible and serious plans and implement them starting now.”
I’ve been concerned about this since the Carter days. We saw the coming of the end of oil and could prepared for it then. The oil discoveries that have happened since then could have bought us time to make an orderly transition.
But we didn’t take 30-50 years to prepare. We still have people fighting the idea. So fossil fuels will become more expensive, people will be forced to use less, and their lifestyles will change anyway.
We’ll do fine eliminating those energy uses that are just wasteful. And we’ll be okay eliminating consumption we don’t need for survival (e.g., vacation trips on airplanes).
If we pare down to essentials, then we can see how many people living what kind of lives we can support with mostly renewables. Personally I think many of us will be better with a simpler, more energy-efficient lives. It will be different, but I think it will be better.
CLIMATE CHANGE IN 2016: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
“I am also hopeful that the economic position of renewable energy continues to improve. If so, the president of the USA won’t matter. We will be on a path to a cleaner safer world just based on unstoppable economics.”
“Sales of greener vehicles in Dubai look set to rise in the coming years as the government steps up its bid to reduce the emirate’s carbon footprint….
“The introduction of quotas for hybrid cars in government vehicle fleets, combined with campaigns aimed at encouraging Dubai’s motorists to switch to environmentally friendly automobiles, is expected to open up new markets for the industry.”
The points made in your above comments are the biggest single ones in arguing for forcing the transition away from fossil fuels, and towards renewable energy as fast as possible. IF the transition is not far enough along by the time it becomes obvious to men and women on the street that the fossil fuel supply is finite and diminishing, we won’t be able to manage a successful transition.
At one time, I believed the argument that it would never be possible to scale up renewable energy to the point we could continue not only live modern, dignified, comfortable lives without fossil fuels………. I believed that most of us would PERISH for lack of fossil fuels.
I still believe it is more probable than not that a substantial part of the world population WILL perish, as fossil fuels deplete, and as the overall environmental situation gets worse, due to using them.
But the engineers and scientists who used to post good articles and data indicating that the hoped for transition is impossible are mostly keeping their mouths shut these days.
They may be professionals, professional engineers, and professional scientists, but they are still just naked apes under their clothes, and they don’t want to admit they were wrong any more than anybody else, so they don’t produce any new articles repeating their old argument , NOW THAT the prices of both have fallen dramatically, and continue to fall, that renewable energy can’t giterdone.
Of course it will be necessary to change our wasteful ways, and use energy far more efficiently, and waste far less of it, but there is no real reason that I can see that we can’t have an industrial civilization that runs entirely on renewable energy, at some point in time.
“Sufficient unto the day are the needs thereof is ” is a little bit of wisdom we ought to carve in stone above our doors. If we can, and we can, get to say seventy to ninety percent renewable energy within the next generation or two, there will be enough accessible fossil fuels remaining to meet the final critical needs of society for a LONG time after that.
We don’t really need to be TOO CONCERNED about how people will live a few centuries down the future road, except as an academic exercise.
If we pull thru the next century or so more or less whole, but perhaps far fewer in number, the folks who come later will be ok in respect to fossil fuel troubles.
I for one have simply enormous respect for, even awe of, the power of LEVIATHAN, the sovereign state, as it exists today, when it comes to solving problems…….. once the people and the leaders of LEVIATHANS come to understand that their very asses are on the line, and that a war time economic reorganization is called for, in order to deal with the problem, whatever it may be.
Fifty thousand miles of HVDC transmission lines can probably be built for a minor fraction of the cost of fifty thousand miles of freeways, which are ALREADY built, and need only to be MAINTAINED.
Most people will have a hard time getting their heads around it, but if the shit is once well and truly in the fan, but the situation is not TOO FAR GONE, that fifty thousand miles of new HVDC can be built RIGHT OVER THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAYS, anyplace the highways are suitably routed. Power lines seldom fall, we live and drive under them every day without a second thought.
I have DONE construction work. Building such a power line on a war time basis over an existing highway would cost way the hell less than half what it costs to build cross country from scratch under the current rules.
IF as we all seem to expect, the population peaks and gradually begins to decline, we will need less of everything in the way of substantial up front investments requiring lots of energy and raw materials, such as new houses, new water and sewer systems, new schools, hospitals, etc. All these things can be maintained and upgraded at reasonable cost.
There is no reason at all that automobiles can’t be built to last fifty years by repairing and upgrading them. Standardize the hard points at which suspension components, engines or motors, or batteries are attached, use rust proof materials for the body shell, viola, you have a fifty year car, maybe even a hundred year car. Then there’s the RADICAL idea that maybe we don’t even HAVE to have cars, lol.
I have pointed out several times that my hand made artisan furniture has already allowed my family to avoid replacing it at least TWICE with new throw away furniture, and that it will save the energy and materials used in making and shipping new throw away furniture for THIS house for at least a couple of centuries. Both the house and the furniture will last that long easily, properly cared for.
But if we don’t get far enough along…… soon enough…….. If the cards fall in such a way that even LEVIATHAN can’t successfully deal with fossil fuel depletion and environmental degradation, due to being awakened and enraged TOO LATE………..
As a practical matter, the future of the human species , and most of the other larger species of animals and plants, are all dependent on our winning this bet.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
It is absolutely true that everyone now alive will perish. The important thing is the Total fertility ratio(TFR), which will continue to fall, after about 200 years or so it is likely that World population will fall to 2 billion or less as World TFR falls to 1.5. This is mostly a question of rates.
Hi Dennis,
Sometimes I fail to put in enough detail or context to make my thoughts clear.
The reason I fear that a substantial portion of the world population may perish due to fossil fuel depletion and environmental degradation is that when resources get to be in desperately short supply, wars happen, and the next round of large scale hot war may be fought with weapons that are so much more effective than the ones used in the past it’s scary to even THINK about how many people may die.
Then there’s the farmers perspective.
Cows and people die regionally, when the supply of water and or food fails. . Other cows and other people in other regions generally continue to do fine.
As fossil fuels deplete, and as the environment degrades, the impacts will be extreme in some places, even as they are hardly even noticeable in others, except in a derivative fashion.
Drought and starvation in Sub Saharan Africa for instance barely makes the news here in the USA, but troubles there may eventually result in troubles here, due to economic and political entanglement of American and African affairs.
Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be mentioned on the front page once a decade, if there were no oil in that part of the world, lol.
Barring near miracles, most of the people there are going to starve or migrate , eventually, when the oil money runs out.
And the ones who don’t migrate early, with money, while the money is still good, are going to be met at national borders with barbed wire and machine guns, in more cases than otherwise.
Bottom line, one farmer’s cows starve or freeze, another farmer has no problem, if he lives far away, where there is no drought, or no extreme blizzard.
Farmers with feed and water are glad to get more cows at bargain prices………… but people who are suffering and tightening their own belts are not much inclined to welcome immigrants, especially immigrants who look different, talk differently, believe in different cultural values, and have little or nothing to offer in the way of supporting themselves, except by taking the jobs of LOCAL people who are often as not just barely getting by.
I’m talking physical and political realities, rather than indulging in the sort of wishful thinking so popular among the holier than thou faction. I have NEVER met even the first one of that type that works with his hands, or operates a machine in a factory.
I posted a link to an article at the Huffington Post a few days back, where in the author tells us about a speaker at the last D party convention trying to fire up the crowd by asking the delegates who worked with their hands to raise those hands.
DEAD SILENCE, not a hand went up.
Anybody who can’t understand the implications of this SIGN of political reality is in need of some mind expanding drugs.
So long as democracy survives there , NO COUNTRY is ever willingly going to allow impoverished migrants to come in ,in large numbers,numbers up into the millions, when times are already tough on the domestic front.
Modern day Germany is one of the most progressive countries in the world in terms of allowing people in, maybe (?) in part because Germans these days are still suffering from the guilt trip associated with WWII.
But the current government has come pretty close to losing power , and may yet, as the result in VERY large part of having allowed in immigrants to the tune of about one percent of the national population.
And so far as authoritarian governments are concerned, it’s hard to imagine a scenario involving such a government allowing more than a handful of new people to come in, except maybe for professionals such as doctors or engineers.
The USA ought to be able to pull thru without many people perishing due to starvation or exposure due to ff depletion and climate troubles, assuming good leadership.
But even here we may see a significant number of people dying as the result of violent social upheavals associated with people losing their livelihoods due to some industries shutting down, etc.
It’s going to be BAD in some places.
DON’T get caught in Egypt!
Yeah, and you can’t run a G5 smartphone on DOS. Guess we’ll just have to do things differently,eh?
For the record, I no longer buy the argument that we can’t be 100% renewable.
Some people will embark on that path others won’t.
“For the record, I no longer buy the argument that we can’t be 100% renewable.”
With you all the way Fred.
See my eleven seventeen comment above concerning the reasons I changed my mind.
Whatever my other faults may be , I don’t mind admitting I have been wrong when the evidence to that effect is clear and compelling, lol.
Mauna Loa Observatory | Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations
January 2, 2017
407.05 ppm
NOAA-ESRL
January 2, 2016
401.83 ppm
More than 5 ppm in one year! That while the world is supposed to be cutting back on CO2 output. Maybe the sinks are starting to fail. If that were true we could see a doubling by 2050.
I bet the young people just can’t wait to enjoy this new level a few decades from now.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, enjoying 45F today, snow and ice all melted on the ground. Lake is opening up, water birds appreciating that one. Just a three winters ago it was hitting highs of 10F at this time and lows of minus 15 or lower. Half the winters are warm now.
Days are getting longer. Still some cold to come, but a brighter cold.
You clearly haven’t heard about the recent El Niño and its effect on atmospheric CO2. Why I am not surprised. Thinking that the increase is related to a change in our emissions really shows your ignorance.
You’re not only a troll you’re also rude. I can’t quite gather why your rudeness is tolerated here. Are you comic relief? You very clearly have an agenda that has nothing to do with the honest examination of facts and data.
And you say I am rude while insulting me?
I am regularly insulted and personally attacked by several people for defending my ideas and knowledge. I think I am taking it rather well and not descending to the low level that some of them, including you, show.
If GoneFishing talks like he knows what he is talking about, but displays complete ignorance about basic features of the issue, like the influence of El Niño on atmospheric CO2 increase, I don’t see anything wrong with telling him. Next time he could ask and the people that know, like me, can gladly explain it to him, and even provide supporting articles. There is nothing wrong with being ignorant about something unless you try to pretend that you know just because you have read a newspaper article.
“try to pretend that you know just because you have read a newspaper article”
Now that is basically a perfect description of these non-petroleum threads on this website!
So Paul, what have you been reading lately?
Don’t be shy, do let us know.
You can’t just read something about some topic and then declare yourself an all-knowing expert about that topic. The obsessed climate change devotees around here seem to think otherwise, though.
Survivalist,
He does not have very good reading comprehension either. I said that the sinks might be failing. That means that they are either not absorbing as much or are actually outputting CO2. So if the ocean, which is a CO2 sink, is outputting CO2, then the sinks are failing.
Funny how the Nino has been over for a while now, but the CO2 rise keeps accelerating.
Give it a few years and we can see where the Arctic methane is gonna take us.
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. Providing these CO2 measurements with no supporting context will cause many readers to come to incorrect conclusions about what the measurements actually mean.
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.“
AND… The earth’s crust is made up of several elements: oxygen, 47 percent; silicon, 27 percent; aluminum, 8 percent; iron, 5 percent; calcium, 4 percent; magnesium, potassium and sodium, 2 percent. The crust is divided into huge plates that float on the mantle, the next layer.
Aren’t facts out of context wonderful?!
BTW, I think we’ve seen that same exact post from you before LT and we complimented you on your deep level of knowledge, for someone in Jr. High.
Tks, for the refresher!
Standing Rock Protectors Target Dakota Access’s Profits to Further Strain Pipeline
When I was a young fellow I could stand at the western edge of my hometown and look out toward a rustic rural land. Between me and a great river thirty miles away there was woods, some farms, and a few villages. When you left town, you really left town.
Just 40 years later that same area was full of developments, shopping malls and strip malls, some farms lost, villages got taken over and grew, more traffic and a lot more people. The super highways were pretty much done and the land was covered with houses and condos where farms and woods had been. A very fragmented landscape and not nearly as much food could be grown there anymore.
So where does it end? How far can “progress” take us? How much will the cities take from the countryside as they become megalopolises?
Judith Curry is retiring from Georgia Tech–
The writing was on the wall for her, as reality overwhelmed ideology.
Science was Satan for Judith.
With 168 published peer-reviewed articles and two major textbooks she has nothing more to demonstrate in Academic science. Her climate studies private company is doing good and she has requested emeritus status at Georgia Tech. She will continue to do great whatever she pursues. Her contributions to climate science will only grow with time.
2016 EDGES 1998 AS WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD
Yes, before we are reminded, concern is long-term temperature trends, not short-term spikes and dips. I think the minimum meaningful temperature interval average is something like 30 years.
Yes, some surface datasets show a lot of man-made warming.
Javier do you believe climate change/global warming is a conspiracy? The climate scientists are leaning on the scales? Holding a match to the meter? They’re in it for the grant money? lol oh man you’re hurtin’ dude! Are you sure you got a PhD? In science right?
Nope, I do not believe in a global warming conspiracy, but it is clear that certain databases have been adjusted with a warming bias. No conspiracy required for that.
Surface databases come with a 90% confidence range, yet time and again changes made to them violate that range hugely. This indicates the 90% confidence range actually means nothing, and no trust can be deposited in such immature data.
In 2008 global average temperature difference between 1910 and 2000 in GISS LOTI database was 0.45°C. By 2016 the difference has become 0.70°C. That additional warming of 0.25°C that took place in the database is by definition man-made warming in the sense the cartoon indicates.
Is that the best you can do? You’re like a scratched record skipping the same groove over and over again. Get with the program snowflake. You’re embarrassing yourself again. For a guy with a PhD you sure seem ignorant.
And curiously the warming rate was exactly the same between satellite data and surface data until the pause started then they started to diverge. this divergence was produced “a posteriori” through adjustments to the surface data.
If you don’t think it’s a conspiracy then why did you post that cartoon? Is that what you feel is important information to contribute to a discussion about facts and data? You have an agenda Javier. Your talking points are very circular. You have no interest in a discussion about facts, data or science. Later dude. You’re a joke.
I posted the cartoon because it is funny and because it illustrates a real concern.
How much of the warming present in the databases is real and how much is the result of methodology?
One of the problems that we have is that proxies do not show as much warming as instruments. There are several possible explanations for that problem, but all of them share a concern. There is no way a comparison between instrumental and proxy temperatures could provide a meaningful result.
Sounds like a tough race: anybody giving odds?
TENFOLD JUMP IN GREEN TECH NEEDED TO MEET GLOBAL EMISSIONS TARGETS
“Green innovations must be developed and spread globally 10 times faster than in the past if we are to limit warming to below the Paris Agreement’s 2 degrees C target.”
I bet that many people could cut their use of fossil fuels by 20 to 50% without using any new high tech products. Many businesses have already reduced use, but there is probably still a lot room for improvement.
The next step is to modify systems and processes so less fossil fuel is needed. Using power from PV and wind is a great way to get around fossil fuel use. Those are both maturing technologies.
Of course the biggest savings is in elimination. EV’s eliminate the direct burning of fossil fuel if sourced from renewable energy. For meetings, Skype or something similar eliminates a lot of transport fuel.
If we go to carbon technology and 3D printing, manufacturing can be very local.
Of course better power storage technology is needed to bring about the renewable revolution and supplant both coal and natural gas in most places.
Pumping energy can be reduced with changes in pipe diameter and curve radius.
One of the big things that people need to realize is that using renewables, electric cars and making buildings near zero carbon use will drop our energy use dramatically compared to fossil fuels. Use of new composites will reduce the mass of material needed and change the demand on metals.
New battery technology will use carbon and materials other than lithium.
I don’t see the technology as a problem. I see the infrastructure we already possess and the tendency to use old methodology over new as a major problem.
I do not believe in any way that we will keep the rise below 2C no matter what we do or what happens. But the energy transistion is not all about climate change, as we all know. It will slow climate change but we need to address an unsustainable culture as the prime driver of change. Even if we could stop climate change in it’s tracks, our unsustainable civilization would crash and burn soon anyway.
Actually, the post by Survivalist further up got me thinking about this and here’s my perspective.
When I first became aware of Peak Oil it was sometime around the end of 2007 or early 2008. I was quite perturbed since the stuff I was reading and watching made it seem that by 2010 or so TS would have HTF, certainly by 2012 we would be deep in it. I remember seeing a clip of Bob Hirsch, author of The Hirsch Report. saying (in 2005) that, it would take 20 years or so to prepare for the effects of Peak Oil and that “the world is absolutely not ready”. I remember the run up to the 2008 US presidential elections and folks at the oil drum deriding the “drill baby, drill!” crowd. When the GFC hit in 2008 I thought, that was our “Oh shit!” moment and it was going to be downhill all the way from there. I was more concerned about Peak Oil than global warming and thought it was silly to be using global warming as a rally cry to embrace an energy transition (to renewables) rather than Peak Oil even though the results of tackling either would be quite similar.
Back then, there were zero plug-in cars available for purchase and any that existed were left overs from the CARB Zero Emissions Mandates of the 90s or DIY projects built by EV enthusiasts. In 2007 solar energy constituted about 0.01% of global electricity production with global capacity at the end of 2007 of less than 9 GW. From the article I linked to in an earlier comment, How will Rick Perry run the Department of Energy? ;
Installed wind capacity in 2005 was 1,992 MW when Perry signed the RPS bill. It was 7,113 MW in 2008 when the Perry administration committed to completing the CREZ build.
Fast forward to today and starting with Texas wind from the quoted article;
Installed capacity had doubled to 14,098 MW by the end of 2014, when Perry left office. It is now approaching 19,000 MW.
Global solar capacity is now expected to be somewhere in the region of 300GW by the end of 2016 (233+~70) and by some estimates is contributing more than 1% to the global electricity supply. If you take a look at the December 2016 Plug-In Electric Vehicle Sales Report Card over at insideevs.com there are now some 30 plug-in cars available in the state of California, with most major global brands represented. Worldwide sales for 2016 with partial data for December for the US only, are 664,437. According to the text accompanying a graphic in this September 1, 2016, article over at hybridcars.com, Americans Buy Their Half-Millionth Plug-in Car
Since 2010, cumulative sales have been 499,199 units. Since 2008, including low-volume models not regularly reported, the total is 506,450 – comprised of 52.8 percent battery electrics, and 47.2 percent PHEVs.
Global cumulative numbers for PHEVs passed the 1 million mark in September 2015.
So, with global sales for 2016 expected to be over 750,000 the 2 million mark can’t be far away.
My favorite technology sage, Tony Seba, is on record as saying that there is the distinct possibility that the Clean Disruption, of which he speaks, could accelerate. There are signs that this may be happening, even without any big technical breakthroughs. For anyone reading who is unfamiliar with Seba’s ideas, he posits that exponentially improving technologies, even if the annual improvements are quite modest, will eventually overwhelm and disrupt their competition. As one who buys into that idea, having witnessed it several times over during my lifetime, I am cautiously optimistic. Not sure I want to give any odds though!
City of Huntington Beach Solar Project is Complete
The combined effect of ice and snow on the planet is about -20 watts/m2. Loss of both ice and snow due to warming and melting could then cause up to 20 watts/m2 increase in heating. Just losing the summer Arctic ocean ice and reducing the snow line will cause 2 to 6 watts/m2 gain in heating.
With a 20 watt range just from snow and ice, I think we need to take the warming we are causing very seriously. Just a few watts can initiate a 2 to 10 times amplification of global warming.
This does not take into account CO2 and methane releases from oceans and permafrost, which even if they are slow will steadily add GHG to the atmosphere and if destabilization occurs in certain areas, the additions could be large and fast.
I suspect that by 2100 we will have at least 6 watts/m2 heating to deal with, low end estimate.
Talking again about runaway positive feedbacks that do not exist GoneFishing?
“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.
our records would correspond in the model to an Arctic Ocean sea-ice cover in summer at 8 ky B.P. that was less than half of the record low 2007 level. The general buildup of sea ice from ~6 ky B.P. agrees with the LOVECLIM model, showing that summer sea-ice cover, which reached its Holocene maximum during the LIA, attained its present (~2000) extent at ~ 4 ky B.P.”
Did you read that? Less than half Arctic ice than in 2007. One thousand kilometers North of present position. No runaway effect. As temperatures decreased, sea ice increased.
ALARMISM IS UNJUSTIFIED.
As a scientist, I like to explore the reality and boundaries of the system we live in. If you don’t like that, no need to comment. Those are not runaway feedbacks Javier. You are the alarmist, always overreacting, making false claims, hounding anyone who dares post anything related to global warming let alone explore the situation.
I no longer read most of your references, too much is hogwash. Waste of time.
Do you ever actually think for yourself or just regurgitate climate denier papers and cherry picked graphs? You certainly are not interested in discussion of a topic, just a constant negativism.
Sorry you don’t understand albedo or natural feedbacks. Maybe you should discuss things with someone who doesn’t know much, they might listen to you. Most people here seem to think you are full of hot air.
Maybe you think you are the Wizard of Oz and no one will look behind the curtain. Too late for that, that ship sailed a long time ago.
Have fun.
Would you care to elaborate what a climate denier paper is?
Why would any serious journal (like Science in this case) care to publish a scientific paper that goes against best scientific principles?
You are just showing your bias. You talk about discussing issues but any paper that doesn’t support your view gets automatically labelled as a climate denier paper and therefore can be safely ignored. No longer read. Hogwash. Waste of time. That’s not the way of science.
I do not make false claims. Everything I claim is supported in scientific literature and most times constitutes consensus view within the subfield.
Arctic sea ice was very much reduced during Holocene climate optimum compared to the present situation. Every expert in the subfield knows that and it is well reflected in the literature. If you don’t believe that, what is your source that defends the opposite?
If it was so much reduced a few thousand years ago, why is it such a big deal that it is reducing now?
If you want to discuss this issue and respond to my questions now you have the opportunity.
“If it was so much reduced a few thousand years ago, why is it such a big deal that it is reducing now?”
Pay attention, this may be news to you, but there is a lot more CO2 and other GHG gases in the atmosphere than back then. GHG are also currently on the rise.
So as the ice and snow melts the forcings are combined this time around. The forcings form CO2 and the forcing from albedo change. This in turn warms the land and oceans, which give off more GHG gases. That in turn warms things further. Get the picture?
It’s fairly simple, but you apparently missed it.
So three major mechanisms come into play, albedo change, changes to ocean circulation due to freshwater added to ocean water and GHG release from land and water.
You still haven’t told us what a climate denier paper is, how to spot one, and why journals publish them.
I am perfectly aware of the unusual levels of GHGs that we enjoy in our atmosphere. There is general agreement that they produce warming. We are still discussing how much warming since after 35 years we still do not know, nor have constrained the value of climate sensitivity.
Current temperatures are unusual for this late in the interglacial, and we should be thankful for that, but they are not unusual for this not so warm interglacial. Opinions abound, but it is probable that the Holocene Climate Optimum was warmer than now. Clearly global glaciers and Arctic sea ice were very much reduce. So higher temperatures and lower albedo. No known problem came from that.
Ice albedo is a minor factor, not a major one. Most of the albedo from the Earth is contributed by the atmosphere. Surface albedo is a minor component, and Arctic albedo is just a small part of surface albedo. The small changes that we are seeing in Arctic sea ice during the present global warming ought to be a small contribution to a small part of a small component. No point in being carried away by changes in Arctic albedo.
So you are not too concerned about one degree of warming? Really?
“Six thousand years ago, when the world was one degree warmer than it is now, the American agricultural heartland around Nebraska was desert. It suffered a short reprise during the dust- bowl years of the 1930s, when the topsoil blew away and hundreds of thousands of refugees trailed through the dust to an uncertain welcome further west. The effect of one-degree warming, therefore, requires no great feat of imagination. ”
Much more here: http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm
Tisk tisk, you’re talking to the wall again Fish.
I already said this once before but I think there’s no harm repeating. This warming of one degree here or there is a whole bunch of nothing. I use where I live as an example. I live in Albuquerque. Here we go through an average 44F of warming every year, for at ABQ airport on the SE side of downtown the average hi in the warmest month (July) is 90.1F while the average hi in the coldest month (December) is 46.1F. Now it’s been awhile since my last arithmetic class but I think I still know enough to know 90.1 – 46.1 = 44. I’ll also say I didn’t just make up some numbers either. They are lifted straight from the Albuquerque wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albuquerque,_New_Mexico#Climate).
So here’s what I’ll say is going on…I think many times these scientists toss around some numbers here, some fancy data there, and assume nobody will question them on any of it or that everybody aside from other scientists is so ignorant they can’t do independent research for themselfs concerning scientific theory. Well that seems like a real old fashioned way of thinking. It might have worked in the old days where just being a scientist was enough to make most people believe everything you said but it just doesn’t work these days when we have the internet at our fingertips. Now in an instant, anybody who thinks something is wrong with what a scientist says can do a fact check.
The example is the wiki page with Albuquerque climate data I showed. In the old days finding that kind of info would have taken lots of time and work…probably you would’ve needed a trip or 2 down to the library. Most people won’t go through that kind of hassle, so they would’ve just accepted 1 degree warming as unusual or frightening, because some scientists said so. With the internet though anyone can look up the actual climate data real quick. Then you can get perspective on climate change that’s real versus climate change that’s all hype.
First, all temperatures are in Centigrade not Fahrenheit. Second, weather is not climate.
Here is a primer for you learn the difference. Click the tabs at the top to change the pages. Yes they are scientists at Woods Hole Research Center, but I think they are pretty smart in their area and you might want to listen to them. http://whrc.org/publications-data/understanding-climate-change-a-primer/
Why do you mix temperatures and precipitations GoneFishing? How are they related?
Clearly in the 1930’s the situation was much worse than now. Where the 1930’s warmer than now in the US?
You missed the analogy. Comprehension is a tough thing to come by for some.
Why do you keep thinking I am writing these articles when they are clearly cited? Strange behavior.
You are the one bringing those confusing articles. If you don’t say anything we must assume that you agree with them.
In this video sea ice thinner than 1.5 meters is black/it’s not expressed visually. Legend at bottom.
Perhaps Javier could come up with some ad hominem attacks for Mr Zack Labe also? It is his style. Perhaps he will call Zack ignorant or find a prediction made that didn’t come true. In Javier’s mind failed predictions invalidate all work you ever did and all data you ever collected. This is the scientific process don’t ya know, right Janvier!? Zack’s data is flawless and its presentation is informative, so it must be a weakness in character that is his problem. Perhaps Javier will be kind enough to enlighten us all to the flaws in Mr Zack Labe’s character. Please, if you have time?
Do you mean I should leave ad hominem attacks to alarmists against skeptic scientists only? Alarmists love character assassination when it comes to skeptic scientists. Peter Wadhams is however a special case, as he is deranged. Many alarmists are truly embarrassed of him.
I’ll not waste my time with twitter efforts by students. Let him publish his data in peer reviewed scientific literature before considering it.
Oh look at you up on the cross! Ad hominem attacks is probably what you’re best at. Stick to it. Justify it anyway you like.
The total number of new car sales in the US is about 17.5 million per year. 2016 sales of plug-in vehicles was 155,243. That is less than one percent. I think that there is going to have to be a massive change in EV sales to make a dent in the fossil fuel burned by cars. I am a little depressed by the numbers.
Luckily hybrids are selling better, 9 million sold worldwide and 45% of that was in the US. 4 million very efficient cars sold in the US last year, not too bad.
Still the average new car sales weighted mpg for cars sold in April 2016 was 25.1. Not great, people are still buying power and size. Manufacturers are still feeding status and glitz. Gives lots of room for improvement though. Maybe 30 mpg by 2020? One can hope, though one can be disappointed.
Have you watched any Clean Disruption videos? If not, you should. If you have, can you point out any serious flaws in Seba;s reasoning and projections?
I just don’t see production going from a half million a year to 90 million per year in fourteen years. That is 18o times gain in 14 years.
Maybe it can be done, but it just seems a huge leap for something that is barely cutting it’s teeth right now.
The IEA projects about 10 percent penetration of EV into the world stock of vehicles by 2030. There is also the possibility that the hydrogen powered car will make surge forward.
I just don’t see production going from a half million a year to 90 million per year in fourteen years. That is 18o times gain in 14 years.
I guess you wouldn’t have seen smart phone shipments hitting 1 billion in 2013 either but, they did and have actually increased slightly since then. Look at World EV Sales Up 39% In November, Tesla Model S And Nissan LEAF Battle For 2016 Title In December and look at the two charts. Of the World’s Top 10 Selling Plug-In Cars, a full four are Chinese models most people have never heard of and of the rest, only four are available in the US!
Of the World’s Top 10 Plug-In Car Manufacturers in terms of unit sales, three are Chinese including the number 1, three are European, two are Japanese and only two are American. The top two are companies that did not exist prior to 2003. That sort of indicates a disruptive situation. Tesla is decimating sales of premium sedans in most markets where they are available and Seba projects that this pattern will continue as 200 mile range EVs become available in lower cost market segments.
As for EIA projections, if they’re anything like their projections for solar PV growth, I would just ignore them. Forecasts from BP are not very encouraging either. Surprise! I have not heard anybody else make projections that are even remotely close to Seba’s claim that all new cars will be electric within the next thirteen years, by 2030.
“I guess you wouldn’t have seen smart phone shipments hitting 1 billion in 2013 either but, they did and have actually increased slightly since then”
Suer Islandboy, if building and selling cars was the same as building and selling smartphones. Not even close, plus the customer might not return for 10 to 15 years.
In order to reach the 2030 goal EV sales would have to more than double every two years, just to reach current production of cars.
That would mean the last two years would have to go from 40 million cars per year to 90 million cars per year. Are you sure that can even happen? That is what exponential growth means.
It’s not like they are having babies, the manufacturing, mining, transporting and sales points have to grow that fast, along with the charge points and service points. Considering a plant has to be built ahead of time, the manufacturing has to grow faster.
In reality, the early growth would have to be much higher, probably doubling every year or more, then growth will slow as it reaches a high volume.
GF, the whole thing is waaay more nuanced than just replacing ICEs with electric motors and batteries. At 29 minutes into the earlier video, Seba says:
Essentially we’re not going to need cars. What we need from a car is mobility, on demand, at a fair price and by the evidence, early evidence looks like on a per mile basis we’re going to pay 10 x less for this kind of service, car on demand. So, self driving car plus on demand, so we’re not going to need to own a car. This is called car as a service or at least I call it that and remember 15 years ago when we talked about software as a service, that everything would be on the cloud? Folks would say, “Me use software as a service, I don’t think so” and now of course most of the industry is as a service. So conclusion. If we have a car as a service society we’re not going to need eighty percent of the cars that we have now. So the industry the car industry is going to go from selling a hundred million cars a year to selling 20 million cars a year. So the auto industry will be massively disrupted.
Bold mine.
Excerpted from Tony Seba’s Clean Disruption Keynote presentation at the Swedbank Nordic Energy Summit in Oslo, Norway, March 17th, 2016 is the eleven and a half minute segment, for those who don’t want to watch 40 minutes or more of video and are interested in the concept in a nutshell:
So while many here might think I am obsessed with Seba and his ideas, they just might be overlooking the dark side to his projections that is very much in line with the idea, frequently touted on this site, that in the future we are going to be forced to use far less energy and other resources in our day to day lives. The dark side has really sinister repercussions for high volume auto manufacturing. Let me repeat what he in essence is saying, “we’re not going to need eighty percent of the cars that we have now!”
I repeat.
80% FEWER CARS WITH NO LOSS IN MOBILITY!
Nice dream, but I have gone through the practicality of it and he may be right for city dwellers (who often don’t own cars anyway), but for the rest of us it will not work very well. I can see his point about needing less vehicles, but there will also be two billion more people soon and they many more with higher lifestyles. So not sure what number. Also with less vehicles, they won’t handle the commuter surge or weekend travel surge, so people won’t go to work or travel.
I did a simulation on autonomous cars and found they need to travel up to twice as far to pick up and give rides to passengers. That means a vehicle will not only be putting miles on all day instead of just an hour or two a day at most, but it will have to travel up to twice as far to produce the same passenger miles. So cars will need to be replaced much more often than before, possibly every two to three years. So I do not see how manufacturing will be that much less.
In a ride call system, how does it handle the surge of people commuting? Much like the passenger railroad it will have extra vehicles sitting doing nothing to handle the surge. The number of cars needed has to be equivalent to the number of commuters needing them. They also need staging areas near where people actually live and work, areas spread all over so they don’t have to double travel at night.
So heavy ride sharing would have to be instituted to actually reduce the number of cars. Want to sit with a lot of strangers each day in a car and no driver? Want to wait an extra half hour or more each way while people are picked up and dropped off?
How would one go shopping, pick up the kids and do other errands on the way home, without essentially fully occupying the vehicle? Other people won’t want to wait for that nor will there be room. So the person would have to call another car after arriving home to do errands that would have already been accomplished.
I am sure versions of the autonomous taxi system will be in place in some areas, but it is energetically inefficient and impractical for many.
Having a car sit there at my beck and call for fifteen years is more efficient and more practical, plus I can outfit for my personal needs and let it sit half the day or more where I go without extra charges. I fit won’t work for me or my friends, it won’t work for a lot of people.
Autonomous cars will be great for people who can no longer drive. Whether they own them or they call them as a taxi service, or rent them for the day or weekend.
I can see people taking very long trips since they can now will not have to worry about falling asleep.
“Nice dream, but I have gone through the practicality of it and he may be right for city dwellers (who often don’t own cars anyway), but for the rest of us it will not work very well.”
I have thought about a lot of what you said and agree with much of it but how old are you? I’m 55 and if you’re anywhere close to that, how do you know how the younger folk (millenials?) are thinking? A flashy smart phone seems to be more of a status symbol for them than a flashy car and I’ve heard from younger guys that, the girls judge you by your phone. If you haven’t got a smart phone you’re not going to get any dates.
They socialize way different than we do and it seems even their concept of friends includes people they have never met face to face. Frankly, I don’t get social media but maybe that just means I’m turning into a typical old fart!
It’s all going to happen, just the mix and the timing might be off a bit. I look at Tony Sheba warning us to move on, if he is off ten years the so be it . If half the cars are EV’s in 2030 and most of the others are hybrids, that would be great. Can’t forget the hydrogen powered ones either.
Autonomous technology is scary for people, having a bunch of robot cars running around will take a bit of getting used to before they are fully accepted. Still, it looks like it will happen.
Sometime between 2030 and 2050, most cars will just hum along. Who knows what technology will exist then.
That is if we make the transistion, a lot can go wrong before 2050. I am planning on being fully transistioned before 2020.
As far as the kids around here, they do have smart phones, laptops and Skype but they all have cars too.
Perhaps it won’t work for rural folk but I think cities will have a lot few cars.
Just 3000 Ride-Share Vehicles Could Replace NYC’s Whole Taxi Fleet
Over the past five years, mobile tech has allowed companies like Uber, Lyft, and Juno to disrupt traditional travel with a new ride-hail industry worth billions. According to recent figures from the Massechusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a mere 3000 ride-pools could even handle the business of New York City’s entire taxi fleet with hardly any delay—provided, of course, that riders are willing to share.
A study by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) revealed this week that ride-sharing platforms similar to UberPOOL and Lyft Line could handle the passenger traffic of NYC’s 14,000 taxis with just a few thousand vehicles. In addition, the team says, such programs could help reduce congestion on city streets (if not its sidewalks) by an impressive 300%.
Fred, none of us know how it will really turn out. Maybe just about the time NYC is eliminating most cars, it will get washed over by the ocean.
However, last time I was there almost all the cars were not taxis, so taking over the taxis will do very little.
You will be surprised as to who is actually driving in NYC.
“Census data show that more city residents than suburbanites drive to work in Manhattan every day, according to Mr. Schaller. He estimated that 263,000 people in 19 counties in and around New York City drive regularly to jobs in Manhattan below 60th Street. Of those, 53 percent, or 141,000, live in the five boroughs, Mr. Schaller said. The greatest numbers are from Queens, with 51,300, and Brooklyn, with 33,400. About 23,900 auto commuters live in Manhattan, while 17,400 are from the Bronx and 15,200 from Staten Island. The suburban area with the most auto commuters to Manhattan is Nassau County, with 22,091 people driving to work in the borough, followed by Bergen County, with 19,975.
When plotted on a map, the data make a striking picture, showing that some of the densest concentrations of auto commuters are from the outer fringes of Queens and Brooklyn, where access to subways is limited.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/nyregion/12traffic.html
When considering over 800,000 vehicles entering Manhattan every weekday, the solution is not more cars or different kinds of cars, or different taxis.
Hi,GF Island Boy,
I don’t have any firm opinions as to how fast electrics will displace ice cars, but I can add a few comments, to throw more light on the subject.
” there will also be two billion more people soon and they many more with higher lifestyles. So not sure what number. Also with less vehicles, they won’t handle the commuter surge or weekend travel surge, so people won’t go to work or travel.”
That two billion is scary for sure, but most of them will be urbanites, and poor, and not only must cars be built for them, if they are to have cars, there will have to be a lot more new roads built as well. So maybe the landscape will change far more in favor of mass transit in cities with fast growing populations , and nothing much in the way of EITHER autos OR mass transit at the moment. My guess is that where autos are already numerous, they will continue to dominate, from the inertia effect, if nothing else. Where they are scarce today, mass transit advocates will have a far better shot at getting the buses, subways, etc, that they want, and that will be cheaper as well, for the typical local person, on average.
Now as far as the commuter surge is concerned, if it gets to the point, and I believe it will, that calling for a hired self driving car is substantially cheaper than owning a car, my guess is that employers will change the way they schedule workers hours, so as to hire help more economically.
A large factory may really need to change over from shift to shift abruptly, every body coming in and leaving at the same hour. But I have worked in such a place, and there’s no reason quite a few of the workers couldn’t punch in and out on staggered schedules.
It would hard to stagger the hours teachers need to be at school, by more than an hour or so, but there’s no real reason that some or maybe even most of the people working in large offices can’t have schedules offset all thru the day, and the night as well, if they work nights.
Consider : Suppose you need a cheap employee who MUST drive to your job site these days, and this employee spends four thousand bucks a year getting to and from work. Now if you can arrange things so this hypothetical employee can get to work for half that, or less, then you won’t have to pay as much out in wages, overall, because your employee will have the same amount of AFTER COMMUTING EXPENSE income while you are paying him a couple of thousand bucks less. You will have more applicants at the same offered wage, if you don’t cut the wage, and thus win by getting a BETTER employee.
So employers will often find it to their advantage to find ways to stagger workers schedules, for reasons of their own.
“I did a simulation on autonomous cars and found they need to travel up to twice as far to pick up and give rides to passengers”.
You are likely I in the money, depending on the assumptions you used, if they hold true.
But there CAN BE or COULD be some new factors coming into play that are not usually mentioned in this sort of discussion. I believe ” the rules” will change dramatically.
People are VERY reluctant to share their cars, and personal stuff, and schedules, etc, with strangers, and they are reluctant to share their car even with a known coworker, for fear of accidents, the coworker begging for a side trip, being late, etc.
But consider this. Most people don’t mind really mind riding a bus or train or plane, IF it happens to be going WHERE they want , WHEN they want, with very few or no stops along the way , and it will bring them BACK, with few or no stops or detours, at the end of the workday.
The worry about being held liable for an accident with a hired self driving car will be the for hire car company’s problem. The car itself won’t belong to the picky sort of person who gets hot , or distressed, about a little wear and tear, a muddy foot print on the carpet, etc. And the people who share a ride, using a hired car on a regular schedule, will get to know each other via social media, and check each other out, and agree to divide the expense according to who is most inconvenienced by being the first picked up, the last dropped off, etc. They can have a little agreement , for example, that IF one rider wants to detour to the drug store , he pays the entire cost for that day, and each rider can ask for one detour every so many days, etc. ETC. Or agree that there will BE NO DETOURS, period, unless forced by road conditions, etc.
Two people, or a dozen, could share a car this way, or a van. They wouldn’t ever have to worry about an obnoxious rider, or a dangerous rider, the way you do on a bus sometimes, or the subway.
“That means a vehicle will not only be putting miles on all day instead of just an hour or two a day at most”
You may well be right, but otoh hand most cars these days are used no more than roughly ONE hour a day on average , and so the for hire car actually bringing in revenue TWO HOURS would still be cheap, in terms of capital expense.
I think that ride sharing will become VERY popular, as sharing gets easier, more socially acceptable, the worries melt away, see the above. Hence ride sharing will probably bring in enough revenue to be a profitable investment, even if it sits around most of the time. . Sharing would still be far cheaper than owning, for the riders, who will be ABLE TO RESERVE their shared car well in advance , to the extent they know their schedule.
And the for hire company will be able to put their cars where they need to be , in advance, in most cases, for the next rush hour, so as to maximize revenue miles.
You say that because the hired car will be running dead head a lot of miles ( trucker vernacular for running no load, no revenue )
” cars will need to be replaced much more often than before, possibly every two to three years. So I do not see how manufacturing will be that much less.”
No doubt this dead head mileage will be a really factor. BUT- and this is a HUGE BUT- the issue of automobile and light truck durability is a VASTLY complicated can of worms, for a LOT of reasons.
Let’s start with the reasons why a given individual buys a given new car, and how much he drives it , and how long he keeps it, etc. In the first analysis, most people do buy a car because they really do need one, to get to work, to shopping etc. Not many people buy A car , their only car, SOLELY or primarily as a toy or status symbol, etc.
But once they have decided in favor of buying, price, status, style, personal preferences, etc, seem to be the primary factors involved, with reliability, durability, etc playing second or third fiddle. Price and status apparently count for as much , together, as everything else put together, in selecting the particular make and model. Most industry observers agree about these things, these are not just my OWN opinions.
The result of this mix of buyer hot buttons is that the industry produces dozens of models, with hundreds of variations, which are constantly being “refreshed” mostly by changing the styling of the car, with new features added also being important, the object being to SELL MORE CARS. The new car buyer wants another new one, so as to show it off, and to stroke his own ego.
I am dead sure , as a former professional gearhead, and owner and operator of machinery, etc, that the next few remarks are the kind you can take to the bank.
The result, when it comes to the cost of maintaining cars,and building them to LAST, is a fucking disaster, except for the dealers , parts stores, and mechanics, lol.
Standardization is THE PRIMARY KEY to economical maintenance and operation of motor vehicles. I can do a given job on a given car the third or fourth time in less than half the time, and sometimes in ten percent of the time, it takes to do the same job on a different make and model.
As a mechanic working in a shop dedicated to a certain make and model BUILT FOR COMMERCAL SERVICE I can get by with a third of the specialized or ” dedicated” tools a mechanic working in a full service garage must own. The stock room needs to stock only a tenth as many parts, while sending out a tenth as often for something not already on the premises. I still need to know all the technical principles, etc, but I need to know only a quarter, or maybe only a tenth, as much material as a guy working where anything that shows up comes thru the door.
And then there is the issue of cost versus reliability and durability, when designing a car or truck. The nature of the car business is that while cars are classed as durable goods, they are actually throw away or disposable goods, with most cars going to wrecking yards with eighty to ninety nine percent of the component parts in perfectly servicable condition, and as often as not in as “good as new” condition.
You can bet your last dime that a heavy duty truck has every nearly every part designed and manufactured to last twenty years , or five hundred thousand miles, excepting routine replacement parts. Making parts that are TWICE or even five or ten times as durable and reliable often costs only a very few percentage points more. A ten cent bolt that is prone to fail in ten years due to rust can be made out of a rust resistant alloy good for thirty or forty years or longer, for another penny, if it’s a small fastener , and the actual cost of manufacture is only a fraction of the cost of actually installing it in the vehicle. Ditto just about any part. An ordinary steel and aluminum muffler costs twice as much to manufacture as an old all steel muffler, but lasts several times longer. A stainless steel muffler costs double or triple again, but it lasts virtually forever- and since it will never need replacement, the owner will never have to PAY for having it replaced, which can cost as much or more than the muffler itself.
It surprises the hell out of most people to learn that a mechanic can change out the same parts on a big over the road truck in as little as ten percent of the time he needs to change out the SAME equivalent parts on a typical automobile, but it’s true. Commercial trucks are DESIGNED to be easy to work on. When you flip up the hood on a commercial truck, you will NEVER find that you must remove five or six other parts to get at the alternator. This extra work is almost sop, almost to be EXPECTED in working on cars these days. The alternator may be accessible, but it might take most a whole day to install a water pump. Putting a new water pump on a commercial truck rarely takes more than an hour or so.
The bottom line in respect to durability, reliability, long life, and low maintenance costs, boils down to this.
For hire car companies will mostly be using cars that are designed and built to last indefinitely, and to be fast and easy to fix, when they MUST be fixed, and they will NOT be compelled to get new ones every few years on the basis of style, performance, or status, which are the big drivers of car sales these days.
It’s not possible to build and sell cars designed to last indefinitely, and easy to work on, and still build them in a thousand different variations, and cheap enough to junk them just because they are ten or fifteen years old, and getting a little shabby appearance wise. So cars these days are built only well enough to last ten to twenty years, and up to around 300 k miles , with a little luck and with good maintenance. After that, and in more cases much sooner than 300k miles , it’s cheaper to get a newer car , in most cases, than it is to keep up the old one.
Standardized , built to last commercial trucks are often driven three hundred thousand miles within the first three years , and drivers don’t ordinarily even think twice about starting cross country in a truck with a million miles on it.
Now back to the RIDER’S pov.
Once you are hiring a car, you probably won’t give a very loud hoot, if it is brand new, or ten or even twenty years old, if it looks nice, it’s clean, and it has the essential features demanded by people in your economic bracket.
ONE PERCENTERS in Connecticut will likely share cars mostly as a matter of convenience, and an actual desire, to ride to and from the office with a coworker. Hell, they probably live in the same subdivision next door to the country club ANYWAY. Two lawyers riding in the same car can get an extra billable hour in, without faking it, lol.
THEIR hired cars will be VERY nice cars. The cars they OWN, for going out in the evening, will be even nicer, but not at risk of getting road salt and dirt on them, or dinged on the parking lot, etc on a day to day basis.
Mill hands and farm laborers in my part of the world will settle for a car with a good heater for our ten degree F winter days and windows that roll down for our hundred degree August days, if it’s cheap enough.
“In a ride call system, how does it handle the surge of people commuting? ”
I touched on this above , since you mentioned it above.
“How would one go shopping, pick up the kids and do other errands on the way home, without essentially fully occupying the vehicle?”
People who know each other well, as ride sharing commuters, can either decide on NO stops, or agree among themselves that they will stop at a certain supermarket, etc, for a certain length of time, on certain days, on the way home. Even if some of them can’t manage altogether by hiring a car, they may still be able to save a lot of money by cutting back from two OWNED cars, to just one.
It will also be possible to order your groceries, and have the supermarket guys , human or robotic, load them in the car FOR you, potentially at any hour the car is available at a DIRT CHEAP OFF PEAK rate. So you won’t even have to go grocery shopping on a regular basis any more. You can even split the cost of the car for this trip with your next door neighbor. 😉 There will be plenty of room in the car for two family’s groceries, with no passengers.
It occurs to me that you might even get your groceries cheaper, since you will be paying electronically, and the various items can be loaded directly from a stock room, rather than from retail displays. If you order a few hours ahead, with a flexible delivery time, the store guys can work more efficiently. A cashier with no line at her register can be getting your non refrigerated items boxed up, etc. The car company may even offer you a super cut rate delivery, if you will accept it at a certain time, because one of your neighbors has hired the car to be at his house twenty or thirty minutes later.
“Having a car sit there at my beck and call for fifteen years is more efficient and more practical, plus I can outfit for my personal needs and let it sit half the day or more where I go without extra charges. I fit won’t work for me or my friends, it won’t work for a lot of people”
This is likely to remain true for a long time, maybe permanently, for a lot of individuals.
It will remain true for ME, considering that IF I NEED TO GO at three am, it will be an emergency trip . Twenty minutes could be the difference between being dead, or sitting around drooling in a wheel chair, unable to even wipe my own backside, and coming home after a couple of days in the hospital almost as good as new.
I will ALWAYS have a car or truck ready to roll, although I might not be able to drive it myself.
Y ou might need two cars, for now, to deal with family needs, etc. Many familes are more or less compelled to have at least two cars, in order to make things work. Later on, once autonomous hired are available, you might be able get along just fine with one OWNED car and one car hired as needed, and save a lot of money.
I’m not saying I am right about of these things, excepting the stuff about repairing and maintaining cars, selling cars, etc. That you can take to the bank, no problem at all.
I am mentioning these other possibilities to flesh out the conversation, and also to make sure I don’t forget any of them. I ‘m copying everything here at POB that seems relevant into files I use to work on my book, so my comments are also working notes.
Any comments pro or con are most definitely welcome, even if they make me look like a fool. Better took for one today, than known for one later on. 😉
Another point in favor of self driving for hire cars.
Background:
I understand that a fair number of people who work in places such as Manhattan, or near the White House, etc, actually hire a taxi NOW , on a shared basis, on a regular schedule, to drop them off and pick them up at work, so as to avoid the hassles of driving, and paying for parking, etc..
Some of these people routinely drive their own personal automobile to a designated jump off spot, where parking is either cheap or free, and where they get together for the rest of their commute, which may then be as little as a couple more one way miles. This is apparently be cheaper than parking two or three cars in some places.
It saves the riders a lot of time as well, if the taxi can drop them at the front entrance of their place of employment, rather than walking a quarter of a mile from their PAID parking spots, or even farther, to the office.
With the stage set, let’s talk about HOV lanes, and other political card tricks that may be the rule, rather than the exception, a few more years down the road.
Government sometimes puts a burden on a certain group or class of people, in order to achieve a particular goal, because putting in on the people, or the tax payer in general, paying out of existing general revenues, won’t work. It’s either force SOME people to pay the cost, or leave it off.
( Ocare is a prime and recent example. Wonderful goal, but big backlash from the people who take a big hit paying more so others can pay less. )
In the case of commuters, and crowded highways, and environmental safeguards, putting the costs off fixing things on certain people, namely the commuters who are sitting stalled in traffic jams on those over crowded roads, may be a LOT easier accomplished. WHY?
Because the BENEFITS of paying more will MOSTLY accrue directly to them, in the form of faster, safer, less irritating commuting.
So – such commuters may not grumble much, if at all, about being required to pay a daily toll, if the toll is spent on adding a lane or two. AND if they are offered the OPTION of riding in a car with two or three other people, toll free, they will have that one more incentive to share a ride to work.
The NEXT step is to FORBID any car with less than say FOUR passengers from using the fast lanes at all. THAT will get the attention of the lawyers, CPA’s, doctors, etc who don’t give a crap about five or ten bucks a day, either way. They most certainly DO give a crap about their own peace of mind, and their limited free time. 😉
Bottom line, it will probably be politically practical to offer enough of a carrot, while waving a big enough stick, to convince a hell of a lot of people around our larger cities that ride sharing is their best option.
But maybe what happens in the US is less important than what happens in the rest of the world? If the US wants to maintain a 1950s mentality and much of the rest of the world considers life in the 21st century, perhaps it will shift power away from the US. Perhaps not dealing with fossil fuel realities will result in the decline of the US as a global power.
There was a time when the US wanted to be first to create the atomic bomb, the first to get to the moon, wanted the same technological advances as Japan, and so on. Maybe now we have become complacent and no longer strive to more forward with science and technology.
What happened to those World’s Fairs which intrigued us with visions of a better future through technology?
Times have changed, but world’s fairs still go on, they are just different now.
What person is going to be impressed with new tech, when they can access it on the internet just after it happens? So the themes are different and the places are too.
“The next World’s Fair is scheduled for Spring 2015 in Milan Italy, but expo-goers who are looking to catch the latest glimpse at the “world of tomorrow,” will be disappointed. “A lot of Americans imagine World’s Fairs as they were in the 1930s and the 1960s, but the medium has changed,” says World’s Fair consultant Urso Chappell. “Whereas the focus was on progress or the space age and things like that at one time, the themes tend to be more environmental now,” he adds.
With smaller scope and a concentration on solving problems rather than trumpeting triumphs, World’s Fairs just don’t capture the imagination like they used to. Milan’s theme — Feeding the planet, energy for life — focuses on ending hunger and developing food sustainability. By contrast, the 1939 World’s Fair’s Dawn of a New Day slogan exuded aspirational wonder and 1964’s (which had its 50th anniversary last week), centered on Peace Through Understanding. ”
“A controversial paper published two years ago that concluded there was no detectable slowdown in ocean warming over the previous 15 years – widely known as the “global warming hiatus” – has now been confirmed using independent data in research led by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley Earth, a non-profit research institute focused on climate change.
The 2015 analysis showed that the modern buoys now used to measure ocean temperatures tend to report slightly cooler temperatures than older ship-based systems, even when measuring the same part of the ocean at the same time. As buoy measurements have replaced ship measurements, this had hidden some of the real-world warming.
After correcting for this “cold bias,” researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded in the journal Science that the oceans have actually warmed 0.12 degrees Celsius (0.22 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since 2000, nearly twice as fast as earlier estimates of 0.07 degrees Celsius per decade. This brought the rate of ocean temperature rise in line with estimates for the previous 30 years, between 1970 and 1999.
This eliminated much of the global warming hiatus, an apparent slowdown in rising surface temperatures between 1998 and 2012. Many scientists, including the International Panel on Climate Change, acknowledged the puzzling hiatus, while those dubious about global warming pointed to it as evidence that climate change is a hoax.”
more religion from the so called “warmists”!
(apologies if this has already been posted above!)
The article is incorrect. Most scientists still acknowledge the existence of the pause after the publication of Karl et al., 2015, and the changes introduced to surface temperature databases.
“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. Recent research that has identified and corrected the errors and inhomogeneities in the surface air temperature record (Karl et al., 2015) is of high scientific value. Investigations have also identified non-climatic artefacts in tropospheric temperatures inferred from radiosondes30 and satellites, and important errors in ocean heat uptake estimates. Newly identified observational errors do not, however, negate the existence of a real reduction in the surface warming rate in the early twenty-first century relative to the 1970s–1990s.”
Authors in that paper: John C. Fyfe, Gerald A. Meehl, Matthew H. England, Michael E. Mann, Benjamin D. Santer, Gregory M. Flato, Ed Hawkins, Nathan P. Gillett, Shang-Ping Xie, Yu Kosaka and Neil C. Swart.
A list of who is who in climate denialism.
Hi Javier,
Your response does not seem very open minded. It seems closer to religious belief than scientific thinking.
do you expect us to believe that these new results, published on January 4th, have already been discredited by the scientific community?? Have you had a chance to read the paper, review the data, and discuss the conclusions with other scientists?
The only one that appears to be a CLIMATE ALARMIST here, is you, as you seem hellbent on going to extraordinary lengths to refute any and all new posted links on climate change research. Even to the point of discrediting the character of the researchers. I am OK with questioning results, but this is ridiculous.
Are we to believe that you do all this for the greater good of humanity? Where do you find the time? Don’t you have more important things to do, like a day job? Or is paralyzing this blog your actual day job? Be honest! 🙂
and by the way, the reference you cited quotes a “reduced rate” or “slowdown” in warming, not a “pause.” Just an FYI to get your ducks in a row for future discussion. The evidence suggests that you are twisting words to support your narrative.
chilyb,
do you expect us to believe that these new results, published on January 4th, have already been discredited by the scientific community??
.
No, I expect you to read and understand the issue before making a comment attacking me.
Hausfather et al., 2017 is a confirmation that the corrections introduced by Karl et al., 2015 to the ocean surface temperature database are justified.
But Karl et al., 2015 was already read, reviewed and discussed by the scientific community. The corrections were generally accepted but the conclusion that they meant that the Pause had not existed was not. After introducing Karl et al., 2015 corrections now confirmed by Hausfather et al., 2017 the slowdown in warming is still present in the data.
Whether calling it “pause”, “hiatus” or “slowdown” is the same. We are all referring to the same phenomenon. A rose by any other name is still a rose.
Hi Javier,
Wait. You are confusing me. You said “the article is incorrect.” So you do agree with the results in the science advances paper, Hausfather et al, just not their conclusions. You need to be more clear.
I copied their concluding remarks:
“Concluding remarks
Adjustments to correct for inhomogeneities in SSTs in recent years have a large impact on the resulting decadal-scale global temperature trends. Assessing the effectiveness of these adjustments is critical to improving our understanding of the structure of modern climate changes and the extent to which trends in recent periods may have been anomalous with respect to longer-term warming. Using independent IHSST series, we find that NOAA’s new ERSSTv4 effectively corrects a significant cooling bias present in ERSSTv3b during the past two decades without introducing any detectable residual trend bias. We also conclude that two other widely used composite SST series, HadSST3 and COBE-SST, likely suffer from spurious cooling biases present in ship-based records in recent years.”
so labeling the warming over the last few years as a “slowdown” (relative to previous years) instead of a “pause/hiatus” is actually not the same in your mind. Isn’t this exactly what you are taking issue with?
CLIMATE CHANGE: FRESH DOUBT OVER GLOBAL WARMING ‘PAUSE’
“A controversial study that found there has been no slowdown in global warming has been supported by new research….As a result, the authors said that the warming experienced in the first 15 years of the 21st Century was “virtually indistinguishable” from the rate of warming between 1950-99, a time generally acknowledged to have seen significant rates of warming from human emissions of CO2.”
CLIMATE CHANGE: FRESH DOUBT OVER GLOBAL WARMING ‘PAWS’
This proves beyond any shadow of a DOUBT that global warming is NOT felineogenic.
“Just because cats like it warm doesn’t mean they are bad for the environment!”
This comment paid for by the CAT as Trophic Lobby…
Forgot the obligatory pict. Who cares about polar bears…
.
For anybody, a request for information
“WeHappyFew ” posted this paragraph in a comment in the last previous open topic thread.
“There are potential feedbacks here. Polar waters can be stratified by salinity rather than temperature (as is most common outside the poles). Solar energy can penetrate deeply into the clear water, but cannot escape through convection, being trapped by the salinity gradient. This reminds me of the solar ponds which were a brief fad a few decades ago before PV became so inexpensive. Cold fresh water at the surface traps warm salty water below, allowing solar heat to build up at depth.”
Any information or links about these “solar ponds which were a brief fad” will be appreciated, and thanks in advance.
Hi OFM, don’t have any links but I very distinctly remember swimming in shallow natural ponds trapped behind sand dunes on the coast down in Brazil about 30 years ago. The ponds received ocean water at high tide and cool water from a fresh water stream. As the dunes shifted some of these would form isolated ponds that fit the description of what you are talking about. The dense salt water at the bottom of the ponds would become quite hot.
Back then I just thought it was an interesting natural phenomenon.
I suppose I was experiencing a senior moment when I posted my request. I should have gone straight to google.
But I have been reading extensively for years about various renewable energy technologies, and this is one that is apparently seldom or never mentioned on renewables sites.
It’s easy to see why.
The water wont’ get hot enough to drive a turbine, etc, worth a hoot, and highly concentrated brine is a hell of a mess to deal with in terms of corrosion , leaks, paying for the salt, etc.
And such a salt water pool wouldn’t work very well as a recreational pool. Not many people would want to go in, if it’s really concentrated, and actually swimming in it would result in mixing the water vertically anyway.
Just using an insulating transparent cover that lets the sun thru to the water, while substantially inhibiting evaporation and the associated loss of heat is obviously a far better solution in terms of hassles and costs. I have such a cover already, for my existing pool, and it works great.
But a salt water pool of this sort might work like a charm as a thermal reservoir if built in a place the soil is relatively impervious to water, as is some of the red clay in places on my farm. I could put in a plastic liner, and use plastic pipe as the heat exchanger, to supply warm water to a WATER SOURCE heat pump. With a cover, and a wind break, such a pool would probably trap and hold enough heat that running the heat pump would hardly even budge the electric meter. .
But OTOH, a small lake constructed and used for the same purpose can probably double up as fish habitat, and as a swimming hole as well, without buying the salt, or dealing with it.
I will probably be going to a ground or water source heat pump for the house within the next two or three years. There’s plenty of water, plenty of room, and I have the equipment and expertise to do the whole job, excepting the license needed for handling the gas lines. But they’re essentially the same as the ones on cars, and I’ve done hundreds of car ac jobs over the last fifty years. You can still do your own or a friends legally, so long as you don’t dump refrigerant, or charge for the work.
I can most likely install the whole kit and kaboodle from the pipes in the water to some additional duct work in the house with a strong backed helper.
And if there is any REASON to dump refrigerant, such as installing new parts, ninety nine percent of the time, it will have already LEAKED OUT ANYWAY.
2017 CHEVROLET BOLT EV VS. 2016 TESLA MODEL S 60: HIGH-VOLTAGE
More than any EV that’s come before it, the Bolt makes emissions-free, environmentally friendly transportation a realistic proposition for millions of Americans. It has made the current crop of pricey, short-range electric cars from BMW, Nissan, and others utterly irrelevant.
So the Jetson-like family will have one Bolt and one Volt. Great for families with none to two kids. Grandma can squeeze in somewhere. The robo dog can bolt onto the back.
Yep, the Nissan Leaf is looking like an overpriced town car. At 107 mile range and $30,000 price it is no bargain anymore. Should be worthless in a few years since they have a history of battery problems.
HB brags about making money in oil walking the dirty money walk while talking the environmentally pure talk.
( I do not personally consider an investment in oil to be unethical, or any thing to be ashamed of, but he apparently does, since he took it on himself to make fun of me for making a remark about wanting oil to last until my oil burning equipment is worn out and electric cars are cheap. Folks with satisfactory reading comprehension skills, having read this in the context of my many remarks here, would correctly select ” dry humor ” or “humor” as the right response in evaluating this remark on a standardized reading comprehension test of the sort commonly given to high school kids. )
His previous remarks, about making fat profits in oil, which he aimed at me, but hit his own toes, when taken in combination with this current comment, are the best example of the classic Republican money bag ” fuck you I’m getting ( or got ) mine” stereotypical, hypocritical double talk I can remember encountering in THIS forum.
Even the Rockefeller family foundation is moving out of oil, and may have finished divestment already.
I AM having a good time, HB, and I hope you can come back with a better response than usual. A six year old girl who is good at verbal judo could put you flat on your metaphorical trash talking backside in a matter of seconds, without drawing even one deep breath.
But I will concede a minor point involving my description of HRC as the worst possible candidate the D’s could have run last time. She WAS the worst of the TWO candidates actually running is the D primaries as a consequence of her having such an octopus like grip on the party machinery that she scared away everybody else who had any significant name recognition or backing from running AT ALL, with the sole exception of Sanders.
And she WAS the worst possible choice among all the nationally known Democrats in the country this past year, in terms of the baggage she brought into the campaign with her.
And incidentally, every time you or anybody else refers to me as Mr Email Server, etc, which is happening some other places, it’s a win for me, another point for me, you see, except you DON’T see, because my object is to get any D’s who read my stuff to do a little more critical thinking and a little less mindless jumping on bandwagons in the future, when it comes to who they support in primaries.
D voters aren’t STUPID any more so than R voters. On average they are better educated and better informed in general- which I have said many times before, this is nothing new. But they ARE subject to the same failings as virtually all the rest of us nekkid apes, including failure to think for themselves, when such thinking is called for, rather than just going along with the crowd on the assumption that the crowd is right, that there’s no need to worry about things going wrong.
I will never forget the day MY old ag teacher wrote ASS and U and ME on the chalkboard, when I made an unwarranted assumption involving the control of a contagious disease in livestock during a class room discussion. ASSUME the crowd is right………… and pay the price, if your assumption is unwarranted.
He came over and popped me one gently upside my head, as male friends are wont to do, and said he had FAITH in me never forgetting that teachable moment, and well over half a century later, I still haven’t forgotten that EVER so enlightening experience. I remember it almost as well as the day I found out first hand about the birds and the bees, but not nearly so fondly , lol.
And here’s another point I don’t think I have mentioned here before. Clinton told her supporters, and potential Sanders supporters, that Sanders was un electable due to his proposal that basically boiled down to paying for college with tax money.
Clinton obviously planned ( since way back when ) on shifting the cost of health care onto the tax payer rather than the individual, which DOES happen to be a position I heartily agree with personally.
Does anybody here believe a lifetime of health care is affordable compared to four years at college,considering that college has a well known and pronounced effect on lifetime earnings, and contributions to the public treasury?
I have consistently advocated a health care system for this country modeled on the ones that prevail in Western Europe and Canada, because the one we have simply doesn’t work worth a damn, in terms of costs OR results.
I am NOT an R ( Republican ) partisan, so I DON’T have to PRETEND I believe in our current system due to partisan tribal loyalties. 😉
On the OTHER hand, not being a D partisan, I don’t have to PRETEND that we have a satisfactory public school system, for partisan reasons. Perhaps I ought to express this belief somewhat differently, and say I am not compelled to PRETEND the current system can be made right, without smashing it to bits, and starting over, on a clean slate.
I am free to advocate busting up the teachers and the D party’s hold on the public schools.
Most teachers apparently don’t have a clue, but they have as a group actually maneuvered themselves into a serf like position, politically, on the D party plantation, in a manner of speaking.
When a profession aligns its well being present and future with one party or another, the members all too often find themselves taken for granted. Hard ball is the name of the game in politics, and anybody on either side who thinks their party leadership is NECESSARILY their friend is apt to have ANOTHER think coming.
Of course being on the plantation is not always bad, sometimes it’s VERY good- UNTIL you start being taken for granted. BUT previously happy campers who get to feeling unappreciated do have ways of making their displeasure felt, along about election time. Their beliefs in a nutshell can be expressed in traditional American folk vernacular thus, “You ‘sposed to dance with the one what brung ya”.
I have known quite a few teachers over the years, and a substantial number of them were minorities. I have lived IN a highly segregated city, with a huge majority black population, and in adjacent counties, a couple mostly white, another one about evenly divided, at different times.
And ya know what? My professional acquaintances, my FELLOW teachers, were quite consistent in talking that old D party talk, in terms of maintaining the school system status quo, even as three quarters or more of them, all shades, were personally engaged in moving OUT of the city, so they could enroll their kids in better schools. Some of the remaining quarter stayed put as a matter of principle, which I respect, and made up for the shortcomings of the schools by tutoring their own kids. A very few enrolled their kids in one of the small handful of reputable private schools, especially the one associated with the Catholic church.
And it wasn’t that the city schools weren’t adequately funded- they were, in comparison to many nearby counties funding per pupil.
In one on one, face to face PRIVATE conversations with the better teachers, the ones who actually brought the right sort of personal and professional qualities to the classroom, the prevailing opinion, by a wide margin, was that fixing failing schools within the context of the then present day system as very close to impossible, for a simple reason. Most of the teachers were then , and this remains true today, people with jobs who were content to do no more than necessary in order to collect their check and bennies. The second biggest problem was, and remains a system organized around a thousand rules that have everything to do with politics, of every sort, but little to do with the actual education of kids. Heads that were brave enough to rise above the crowd were hammered down, fast, by the system. Folks who wanted to rise up above the crowd found themselves pulled down again by the crowd, which ALWAYS protects itself first. Anybody wanting to do things differently found a thousand barriers in his path, a good many of them put there by well meaning individuals and pressure groups, with the best of intentions, but the worst of actual consequences.
If any body wants a better, more entertaining version of this sorry tale, I suggest they read a little book called The PETER PRINCIPLE.
There’s a sequel, titled The PETER PRESCRIPTION. Read them both for insight, and for laughs.
It’s not good for your peace of mind to think about your status too much, when you are IN THE BAG, politically.Your political masters don’t have to pay very much attention to you under such circumstances. . They can ignore you, take you for granted, leave you twisting in the wind, because after all, when the opposition knows you are in the OTHER party’s bag, there’s not much point in trying to coax you out. Unless……
UNLESS- unless, I say again, your political masters are so brazen as to actually RUB your nose in such unsavory facts that as far as the party is concerned, you’re not important anymore , that you’re somebody to be treated with contempt, somebody who is maybe a little less than fit to mingle with the leadership’s children, a little too ignorant, an embarrassment to the women in Prada and the men in English suits and Italian shoes , UNWORTHY of EVEN ONE SEAT at that recent big D party meeting at which the speaker asked to see the working hands present- and got a thunderous silence for his reply.
And how does an elitist D candidate go about rubbing working class noses, the noses of the ones that brought them to national power, in the dirt ? It’s oh so easy, all that is necessary is hang out with banksters and advocate offshoring the jobs of the folks getting their noses soiled.
In case such a D is not sure she is rubbing HARD ENOUGH, she can take the banksters money DIRECTLY, in the form of actual cash on the barrel head, a quarter of a million or so a pop, for making a rather short speech. THAT will get the point across for her, for sure. SARCASM INTENDED for those incapable of recognizing it without a label.
Now it’s also a fact that (formerly ) reliable partisan voters can and do occasionally flee the party, or actually rebel, as evidenced by the results in the three big Rust Belt states that cost Clinton the WH.
Yes, Clinton won the popular vote. It actually surprised the hell out of me that she lost, up until late in the evening when I started seeing the results from states such as Virginia, where her margin was about HALF what the polls predicted. I expected her margin to be less, knowing my home state politics well, but not THAT much less. This in turn left me wondering how far the polls might be off in the Rust Belt, and I got that answer in the wee hours— TOO FAR, for Clinton.
Every body here knows what they say on the sports shows.
Statistics are for losers.
Many a football game has been won by the team that gained fewer yards rushing and passing, or that suffered more interceptions and sacks on offense than the opposing team.
If there is a movement to do away with the Electoral College, I will probably support it, but the observation holds.
STATISTICS ARE FOR LOSERS.
Now about that Chevy BOLT. I hope they sell like ice water in hell. GM has a huge mostly well oiled dealer network, and is thus in an excellent position to leave some smaller auto companies in the dust.
But GM has failed to put the ball across the goal line on several past occasions, and success is by no means assured in this case.
The companies that are only a year or two behind may be in a position to leapfrog Chevy if arriving at the party a year or two late allows them to bring EVEN BETTER cars to market.
Ford has stolen a march on EVERYBODY in the light truck market, by going to aluminum bodies ahead of all the other truck builders. That savings in weight is already built in to allow for the extra weight involved in building the hybrid F150 promised for delivery in the near future.
Furthermore,it will be easier to justify keeping a rust free FORD truck on the road years and years longer than steel bodied trucks, helping justify the costs of hybrid and eventually pure electric designs.
It will likely take other truck builders at least a couple of years to get their aluminum body ducks in a row, maybe longer. Thousands of changes must be made in order to go with aluminum.
And Tesla in particular may have firewall of patents around game changing technology and ways of doing business which will make up for the lack of that huge dealer network.
Furthermore, while old folks as a group have a fairly positive opinion of Chevy cars and trucks, younger people are far more apt to go with a make with a more attractive public persona. Tesla is the golden haired kid on the block these days, the one the human youngsters are excited about.
Old Farmer Mac, I think American car makers have been putting out much better products due to competition from Asia. At least Tesla, Ford and Chevy have.
I think the Volt is a great concept and has shown itself to be a very good car, the battery management system is great and the battery improvements keep coming.
The Bolt will probably turn out to be a very good EV.
Tesla has had it’s problems but it takes care of them, they are not only paving the way but setting the bar. The other manufacturers are jumping higher because of them.
I think we have entered a golden age of driving. Cars last longer with fewer repairs, they have great road performance, comfort features even in trucks. It looks like the EV’s are going to continue that legacy and I think it will be a worldwide legacy.
Sure there will be a few duds, but most will be great vehicles, giving service for a long time. They certainly are safer than they used to be, and might even get safer than now.
Those design and research teams work hard. Their creativity, constrained by the limits of pollution, efficiency, cost and size, is amazing. Each part is designed to operate under awful conditions for long periods of time. Mistakes are few considering the complexity of the system they have to integrate into for each car design. We should have a National Car Designers day just so we stop taking this amazing amount of work and success for granted.
I will bet that people in the 1930’s did not generally take cars for granted. The darn things give their all and sometimes save our lives, so tilt a glass to the automobiles and their creators. They bring almost everyone safely back home at the end of the day, day after day.
Hi GF,
I agree, cars are WAY better than they have ever been before, and the large majority of Yankee domestic models are as good, or VERY close to being as good as comparably priced Japanese and European models. Saying a Ford has twenty percent more problems than a comparable Honda makes the Ford look bad, but looking thru the other end , using the lens as a telescope instead of a microscope, tells you that you have a ninety nine point nine eight percent chance of of taking a problem free cross country trip in a new Honda where as in the Ford the odds are only ninety nine point nine seven percent in your favor. What this actually means is that if ten thousand Honda owners set out to tour the USA, and ten thousand Ford owners do likewise, maybe four or five Hondas break down, where as maybe five or six Fords break down. These are out of my hat numbers, for illustrative purposes only.
My opinion this year is that the death of the personal automobile has been greatly exaggerated.
If things turn out as we now expect, technically speaking, so that scarce and expensive oil doesn’t FORCE us to give up our cars, I don’t have any problem at all in agreeing that overall we will be driving as MORE rather than less , over the next few decades at least.
My opinions about the future of the personal auto have been all over the map in recent years, depending on what I thought at the time might most likely happen in the oil market, and how the overall economy does.
One factor that will be more important than in the past, for some time to come, is that young folks aren’t making enough money these days to afford cars AND all the other things they want MORE than they want a car.So they are driving less, for now, but my opinion is that as they get older, they will want a car very badly indeed, and will get at least one per household in most cases.
My reasoning is simple. A relatively minor investment in a car enables the owner / driver of it to live in substantially better housing, in substantially more desirable neighborhoods, for a hell of a lot less total money that it takes to live as well, comparably , in a city neighborhood where one can live well WITHOUT a car.
Mass transit may come on like gangbusters, I hope it does. But I can’t see mass transit being built to the extent it really cuts very far into the market for cars, or tens of millions of units of highly desirable, affordable housing being built in cities, where empty lots are almost non existent, and building new means tearing down old but serviceable housing.
And I now believe that plug in hybrids and pure electric cars will own the auto market within the next couple of decades, meaning in turn that suburbanites will not have to spend too big a chunk of their income on getting around, even if oil hits two hundred bucks or more.
If for some reason, any reason, plug in cars fail to take over, and oil gets to be outrageously expensive, I predict that we will see doctors, lawyers and Indian Chiefs driving cars to work that are very low, very narrow,with no more than two seats arranged fore and aft rather than side by side, very light , and capable of cruising at no more than maybe forty five mph. But such a car propelled by a nifty little lawnmower sized engine ought to get a hundred mpg easily enough, lol.
The Chevy Bolt probably WILL be a great success. But I have been wrong often enough when predicting the future that nowadays I reflexively take a contrarian view about betting any one company will dominate.
If you talk up Tesla, I will probably respond by talking up Nissan or GM, lol.
All the major auto builders have a shot at owning a large piece of the auto pie for a long time to come. The Leaf may be short on range NOW, but down the road Nissan may leapfrog both Chevy and Tesla. etc.
The young couples around here have to deal with the reality that two breadwinners are needed, so two cars are usually needed.
As far as numbers go, by age 19 70 percent have licenses. By 24 it’s 80 percent and by 44 it’s maxed at about 90 percent.
So we might be seeing a 10 percent or less drop in interest in driving. That would be a maximum of 22 million less drivers.
Considering the number of drivers increased by about 70 million in the 20 years between 24 and 44, the number of drivers is still increasing.
Maybe for a while the young people are sharing cars and rides, but most still get licensed. What better way to fund a car if mom and dad won’t do it? Get your friends to help pay for it and give them rides or let them drive.
I am sure some are delaying, plus more people are in cities now. Where I live, no car is a real problem.
U.S. Refiners Open Export Spigot to Meet Latin American Need
U.S. refiners exported record amounts of oil products last week, taking market share from struggling competitors in Mexico and the Caribbean.
Almost 4 million barrels a day of gasoline, distillates like diesel and heating oil, and propane left the country as refiners in Texas and Louisiana processed the most crude in at least 24 years. Demand has grown this year as competitors in Latin America sputtered out with maintenance issues,
Centuries may not get into their stride for a decade or two.
This blog assumes that there is a major energy transition underway: from a 20th century model to a 21st one, from a giant-size but inflexible, extractive and stand-alone system, to a more scalable, manufactured and grid-connected version.
Now, with its sixteenth year about to close, maybe this century has had enough time to show itself in terms of the start of this conversion.
On that basis, we will briefly look at three large-scale themes in the energy world, and see how they played out in 2016 – and what that might mean for 2017 and beyond:
• Incremental Growth versus Total Supply,
• The Relentless Rise of Scalable Technologies, and
• The Manufacturing of Global Energy
I heard on NPR this morning that the heads of four government agencies are going to Trump Towers to try and give Donald intelligence.
“Chinese state media warned U.S. President-elect Donald Trump that he’ll be met with “big sticks” if he tries to ignite a trade war or further strain ties. “There are flowers around the gate of China’s Ministry of Commerce, but there are also big sticks hidden inside the door – they both await Americans,” the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper wrote in an editorial Thursday in response to Trump’s plans to nominate lawyer Robert Lighthizer, who has criticized Beijing’s trade practices, as U.S. trade representative.
Are we even sure that Trump is an American?! Has he released the long form of his birth certificate? How do we know it wasn’t photoshopped?!
He acts and looks Russian to me
Good luck trying to give Trump intelligence!
Might be easier teaching a slime mold to pole vault.
US Special Operations Forces Deploy to 138 Nations, 70 Percent of the World’s Countries
This from John Kemps – BEST IN ENERGY daily mailer.
Beijing’s smog mirrors the notorious killer fogs of London
London’s smog: news from London in 1952 similar to current news reporting from China
London smog is estimated to have killed at least 4,000 people in just a few days in Dec 1952
So China did not learn from history and is repeating it amplified. They can do it better. Had problems in the US too.
Welcome to the future folks,
JAPANESE INSURANCE FIRM REPLACES 34 STAFF WITH AI
“The firm believes it will increase productivity by 30%…It expects to save around $1.2m a year in salaries after the 200m yen AI system is installed later this month… Japan’s Mainichi reports that the system is based on IBM Japan Ltd’s Watson, which IBM calls a “cognitive technology that can think like a human”.
Think I’ll just mozey on down to the hardware store where I noticed a curvy blonde robot in the window awhile back….. Yeah, they do the dishes too apparently.
JAPANESE INSURANCE FIRM REPLACES 34 STAFF WITH AI
LOL! the AI can’t be worse at risk assessment than our local contrarian science deniers, can they? When AI finally takes over I doubt they will put up with that kind of nonsense.
Oh good god. This is how you go bankrupt. One thing that certain well-paid paranoid humans are very good at is at spotting attempts to game the system.
It may be possible to replace the more credulous and less competent insurance underwriters with a computer, but the *very moment* you start automating your underwriting, people will start figuring out how to game your underwriting system, and bankrupt you.
Systems like Watson are nowhere near smart enough to spot deliberate calculated attempts to manipulate them. Heck, neither are most humans. This is why underwriting is traditionally a highly-skilled job.
Forget about the so-called climate change hiatus — a period beginning in 1998 when the increase in the planet’s temperature reportedly slowed — it doesn’t exist, according to a new study that found the planet’s ocean temperatures are warming faster than previously thought.
The findings support similar results from a 2015 study published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the journal Science. However, doubters of climate change attacked that study, prompting the researchers of the new study to examine the data anew.
“Our results mean that essentially NOAA got it right, that they were not cooking the books,” study lead author Zeke Hausfather, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group.
This is quite a long article. I have quoted only the first three paragraphs. But as I have said before, the thin ice that climate change deniers are standing on… is getting thinner.
the thin ice that climate change deniers are standing on… is getting thinner.
Actually it is not getting any thinner.
Consensus climate scientists like John Fyfe, Michael Mann, Ben Santer, et al., already examined the implications of Karl et al., 2015 corrections to the surface database and declared that their inclusion did not affect the existence of the pause:
“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. Recent research that has identified and corrected the errors and inhomogeneities in the surface air temperature record (Karl et al., 2015) is of high scientific value. Investigations have also identified non-climatic artefacts in tropospheric temperatures inferred from radiosondes30 and satellites, and important errors in ocean heat uptake estimates. Newly identified observational errors do not, however, negate the existence of a real reduction in the surface warming rate in the early twenty-first century relative to the 1970s–1990s.”
Authors in that paper: John C. Fyfe, Gerald A. Meehl, Matthew H. England, Michael E. Mann, Benjamin D. Santer, Gregory M. Flato, Ed Hawkins, Nathan P. Gillett, Shang-Ping Xie, Yu Kosaka and Neil C. Swart.
The new paper doesn’t change anything. Karl et al., modifications had already been included in GISS and NOAA surface temperature databases and accepted by those that trust them. As Fyfe et al., 2016 clearly demonstrate the inclusion of these corrections does not eliminate the pause.
You keep using that word, “pause”. I do not think it means what you think it means.
What’s a consensus scientist? It appears that even amoung the authors of the paper Javier posts here there is not much concensus on what should be said about the claims the paper makes. Concensus scientists. That’s a good one. Is that what you are Javier, a consensus scientist?
“Point of clarification: Although I am a co-author of the Fyfe et al. paper, I disagree with the sentence at the start of the ‘Claims and counterclaims’ section of the paper. My views are represented here.”~Ed Hawkins
Perhaps Javier would like us to believe that a car previously doing 60 mph that has now slowed down to 10 mph has in actuality come to a complete stop and is likely at any moment to start moving in reverse.
Concensus scientist (as Javier calls him) Ed Hawkins has some interesting articles posted on his blog.
Survivalist did you bother to read the phrase with which Ed Hawkins disagrees in the paper? Looks like you didn’t.
Ed Hawkins views are in the link you put:
“Overall, there is compelling evidence that there has been a temporary slowdown in observed global surface warming, especially when examined relative to our expectations, which can be explained by a combination of factors.”
He clearly disagrees with Karl and Lewandowski, and says so.
Why are you trying to twist what Hawkins says? Gross manipulation?
Yes I read it. I did not try twist Ed’s words. Please quote me the passage of my writing where you think I did so. Or alternately retract the allegation that I did so if you cannot cite evidence for your claim.
It is you that is trying to twist words. Here is my case for making that statement about you. You are saying that a slow down is a pause. That a reduction in speed is a stop. What is at issue here is do you consider a slow down to be a pause? Is a reduction in the rate of forward travel the same as a halt in forward travel? If I was driving a car and you were my passenger would you ask me why I stopped the car if I reduced the travel speed from 60 mph to 10 mph? You would look pretty stupid if you did. Try focus on what is being discussed and let’s get to a conclusion. Your red herrings and attempts to obfuscate are very transparent. The primary thing that’s getting thinner around here is your credibility as someone who can stay focused on the topic of a simple conversation. Are you sure you have a PhD? Logical and focused discussion seems to be challenging for you.
“Consensus climate scientists like John Fyfe, Michael Mann, Ben Santer, et al., already examined the implications of Karl et al., 2015 corrections to the surface database and declared that their inclusion did not affect the existence of the pause” ~ Javier.
“The new paper doesn’t change anything. Karl et al., modifications had already been included in GISS and NOAA surface temperature databases and accepted by those that trust them. As Fyfe et al., 2016 clearly demonstrate the inclusion of these corrections does not eliminate the pause.” ~ Javier
What do you think the word pause means Javier? It seems you might have a different idea about what this word means than everyone else in the world. Perhaps your English is weak?
“Firstly, climate scientists agree that global warming has not ‘stopped’ – global surface temperatures and ocean heat content have continued to increase, sea levels are still rising, and the planet is retaining ~0.5 days of the sun’s incoming energy per year.” ~ Ed Hawkins http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2016/making-sense/
If you think a slow down is synonymous with a pause then you should probably get yourself a dictionary. Or google it. It’s basic English. The only manipulation going on here is your misrepresentation of words and meanings.
Let’s keep it simple Javier. A simple question with a yes or no answer. Answer me this Dr Javier- is a slow down the same as a pause?
Here’s a hint:
Pause- noun- a temporary stop in action.
Slow down- noun- to move more slowly. A reduction in speed.
Please answer the question. It will provide us all with insight as to whether you suffer from gross ignorance and misunderstand the meaning of simple words, or perhaps that you are on the other hand engaging in gross misrepresentation of the claims made by the papers you cite.
Ya learn something new everyday eh Doc?
Survivalist,
The pause is the common name given to that period or to the lack of expected warming during that period in the scientific literature. Just google “Pause in global warming” in Google scholar and you will get thousands of legitimate scientific articles hits.
Typical of alarmists to try to rewrite history and now say that only skeptics talk about the pause.
The thing is that all these changes in sea surface temperature databases, that scientists are discussing in these papers, do not affect satellite temperature databases, that show a complete lack of warming between 2001 and 2014.
I’ll take that to mean that your answer to my question above is ‘yes’, and that it is your belief that it is acceptable in a scholarly discussion about scientific facts and data to refer to a slow down as a pause, because as you put it the slow down was not expected. That a reduction in speed is called a halt, because as you put it the reduction was not forecast. If I was driving 60mph and slowed down to 10mph you would ask me why I stopped if you had not expected me to slow down. Brilliant man! Your talents are wasted! You should work for NASA and fix all their problems.
We’re discussing facts and data Javier. Not what you feel is typical of alarmists. Try to stay focused.
Does that purple line on your chart look horizontal to you Janvier? Look closely. Get the ruler out, if you have one. Does it represent a “complete lack of warming”? Perhaps we should next discuss what you think the words ‘complete’ and ‘lack’ mean. You’re quite the scientist aren’t ya? Have fun with your word games Javier. Word games are clearly your agenda. Not facts and data. Some PhD you are.
Well the facts are that the names “pause” and “hiatus” are widely used in the scientific bibliography, and therefore acceptable to define the period of reduced warming during the early 21st century.
The rate of warming is very dependent on the database of choice and period of study. For example between 2001-2014, before the El Niño, Two satellite databases UAH, and RSS, and one surface database, HadCrut4, show negative rates of warming.
The best way to analyze rate of warming is to look at rate of warming.
According to the UK Met Office the rate of warming dropped to zero during the period considered, as it has done during similar periods in the past.
“There is no benefit in wrestling with pigs. You get dirty, and the pigs enjoy it.”
–George Bernard Shaw
But as I have said before, the thin ice that climate change deniers are standing on… is getting thinner.
It’s over, has been for a long time.
Even ideologically crippled, like Judith Curry, have given up—-
Reality, as the smoke clears and they start screaming in a fetal position, will be harsh.
All roads lead to proverbial Rome…
The ‘imperialists’ will do what they can to eat their cake and have it too, come hell or high’, with such likely strategies as enlisting and/or pimping the gamed/duped, gullible, unethical and/or naive; with AGW denialism; with tax-theft-propped multipronged EV/PV/’Private-NASA’ posterboys like Musk; with increased police and general militarism and surveillance and assorted ‘sanctions’ and econ/imprisonment threats; with ongoing fake-news accusations and NSA-style shit; and with pseudorenewable-peddling (by current and former oil companies-cum-governpimps that are investing in them) such as to places like Jamaica, apparently with funding from the likes of the ostensible CIA-front, USAID, the outfit that got bounced from Bolivia apparently, maybe from Peru, and who knows from where else.
“We’ve been tracking the dirty work of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for several decades now — a Federal government agency that claims its main charge to be administering U.S. foreign assistance around the world:
‘USAID is the lead U.S. Government agency that works to end extreme global poverty and enable resilient, democratic societies to realize their potential.’ (via usaid.gov)
The reality of USAID is something very different. USAID is also a traditional CIA front organization, allowing the agency access to an array of places and things around the globe.
On August 11th of this year, 21WIRE’s report on USAID’s secret operation against Cuba detailed how the agency ‘established a fake HIV prevention workshop in Cuba where their young recruits worked to turn young people against the Castro regime.’
The attached image of a graffitied USAID advert appears somewhere in the Middle East… They forgot the double quotes around ‘AID’.
Insideevs.com fas finally completed the December 2016 Plug-In Electric Vehicle Sales Report Card. The final figure for plug-in sales for the US for 2016, 159,139 beating the previous high mark for annual sales set in 2014 by over 25%.
The charts at the following link have also been updated.
Yes, the ceaseless, mindless, myopic promos of the corporatocracy’s industrial output, and denials of anthropogenic climate change and assorted idiocies like those is a near-guarantee that Earth will continue on its merry journey as an escaped lab-experiment toward hell. Thank you, islandboyAlan, Javier et al.. You are credits to your species. Keep up the good work in 2017 and beyond. Work it ’till it doesn’t work anymore. You’ll be long gone relatively soon anyway. So, after that, it’s not your problem.
“Children? What are those? We lay eggs.”
2017 starts with the same Arctic sea ice extent as the previous four years.
Despite record warm year and great concern about Arctic temperatures being higher than average, Arctic sea ice is showing one more year a greater than expected resilience to melting.
What most people fail to realize is that during the winter the Arctic is in permanent darkness, and losing a great amount of heat to space through IR radiation 24 hours a day. The warmer the Arctic and the less sea ice, the more heat is lost to space.
In 2016 between the strong El Niño and the warm Arctic, a huge amount of energy has been lost to space, so the planet as a system has cooled down significantly. That is the reason temperatures have experienced such a huge drop in all databases. With the AMO turning negative, lower than average solar activity, and no La Niña in sight, the planet is not going to regain the lost energy any time soon. Do not expect warmer than 21st century average years for the near future.
“What most people fail to realize is that during the winter the Arctic is in permanent darkness” ~ Javier
Actually I’m rather sure most folks got that one figured out. But thanks for the update Doc. Where would we be without you? Do you have any more breath taking insights into what most folks don’t know?
“That is the reason temperatures have experienced such a huge drop in all databases” ~ Javier
All data bases? http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Use the link. See the average in green. Select the year from options on left. Looks well above normal in this data base. However the recent huge drop in Arctic temps over the last few months could be because it recently become winter there now. It’s dark too.
“Do not expect warmer than 21st century average years for the near future.” ~ Javier
Would you care to expand on that statement and perhaps stake your reputation on a prediction? I’d like to see how good you are at making predictions. Are you forecasting a decrease in the rate of warming, a pause (look it up) in warming, or cooling? What is your prediction Dr Javier?
What you don’t seem to understand is that the warmer the Arctic during the winter, the more heat is lost to space, and the more the planet cools. High temperatures also favor high snow precipitations and high ice formation. Greenland is way above average this winter in terms of surface mass gain.
Would you care to expand on that statement and perhaps stake your reputation on a prediction?
Sure, no problem. My prediction depends on the database considered, but it can be stated in the following way:
For 2017 and 2018 the annual global average temperature will not be significantly (≥ 0.1°C) above the average for 2001-2016.
For September 2017 and September 2018, Arctic sea ice extent as defined and measured by the Danish Meteorological Institute and OSISAF, will not be lower than for September 2007.
Year after year the planet is telling us that climate catastrophism is unjustified. We would do better trying to protect the planet from us. We are the problem, not the climate.
Greenland surface mass balance according to DMI (modeled). The warmer the Arctic, the higher the snow precipitations. A negative feedback.
“What you don’t seem to understand is that the warmer the Arctic during the winter, the more heat is lost to space” ~ Javier
I’m well aware the the planet loses heat to space. Duh. Thanks for the update doc. How do you know what I do and do not understand? What indication do you have that concludes you to believe that I don’t know that the earth loses heat to space. Your straw man arguments and your little rhetorical games are pathetic. You claim to have a PhD yet you feel it’s acceptable to speak imprecisely and use the words pause and slow down as if they are synonyms. You’re a joke.
With regards to your prediction please define ‘significantly’. For a guy with a PhD making a prediction you speak very inprecisely. You’re not exactly captain of the debate club are you?
I find it hard to believe that you have much of an education at all.
“What most people fail to realize is that during the winter the Arctic is in permanent darkness”~ Javier
Are you for real? Do you actually think most people don’t realize this? It’s hard not to insult you because you come across as such an incredibly stupid and ignorant person and you continuously set up straw man arguments based on your assumptions of what people do and do not know. Why don’t you try sticking to scientific facts and data as well as using words more precisely? Your ad hominem attacks, loose and inprecise use of words and straw dog arguments make it hard to conclude that you are not a complete buffoon. PhD indeed. I’ve had more intelligent scientific conversations with undergrads.
Survivalist,
You might know that the warmer the Arctic during the winter, the more the Earth cools down, but clearly most people in this place do not, and the media doesn’t either, judging by the alarmism of their articles about the phenomenon, as if some cooling of the planet was negative at this time.
It is reported as something negative, while it is clearly positive.
What does that have to do with you telling me what I know? You’re all over the road dude. Try to stay focused. Completing a discussion to a conclusion without changing topic seems very hard for you. You don’t seem to bright.
“For 2017 and 2018 the annual global average temperature will not be significantly (≥ 0.1°C) above the average for 2001-2016.
For September 2017 and September 2018, Arctic sea ice extent as defined and measured by the Danish Meteorological Institute and OSISAF, will not be lower than for September 2007.” ~ Javier
Noted. And if you’re wrong you can join Wadhams and all the others with failed predictions.
What if the the Danish Meteorological Institute and OSISAF do not agree on the data? What if one validates your prediction but the other refutes it? What then doc? Why don’t you pick just one database? Let’s have a precise prediction and a precise standard to measure that prediction Dr Javier. No wiggle room. No obfuscating. And what data base would you like to use for your global average temperature prediction? Pick just one.
Noted. And if you’re wrong you can join Wadhams and all the others with failed predictions.
And if I am right?
What if the the Danish Meteorological Institute and OSISAF do not agree on the data?
The Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI SAF) is the EUMETSAT facility providing the data to the DMI. They are not two databases, they together produce one. OSISAF is cited as the source in DMI graphs. I thought you might have known that.
The temperature prediction, as it is stated in terms of the previous years average, is valid for any of the main databases. GISS, BEST, HadCrut, UAH, RSS. Failure by half of them is failure. Most probably all of them will agree in confirming or refuting my prediction.
Just pick one data base dude. You say”“For 2017 and 2018 the annual global average temperature will not be significantly (≥ 0.1°C) above the average for 2001-2016.” I’m gonna measure the success or the failure of that prediction against one data base. You get to pick it. If you can’t pick one data base as the yardstick by which your prediction will be measured then we’ll assume that you’re too cowardly to make a prediction. It’s pretty simple doc. I know you want to make it vague and complex but let’s keep it simple. Pick a data base snowflake. It’s not hard. If all those data bases don’t exactly agree on what the 2001 to 2016 average is, or what the 2017 and 2018 averages are above it I’m not going to be letting you weasel out of it with your childish word games. Get your balls on Janvier. It’s prediction time.
“And if I’m right?” ~ Javier
Then your right. Duh. You need a dictionary or something?
HadCrut4 will do.
This result has much to do with how sea ice extent is calculated, but little connection to the actual condition of the ice. Since I just saw this, I took the liberty of copying a response from NSIDC to Bill Fothergill on this topic, posted on the ASIF message board today. In case anyone is interested!
“Thank you for contacting NSIDC. Indeed we have received a couple of similar questions in the recent past, but it is because of these questions that we can make our products better; they are much appreciated. We will address this shortly in the latest version of the Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis post that is slated to be published momentarily. In short, this is an artifact of the way that the Sea Ice Index calculates the monthly means. This can be best explained with an example:
Imagine one 10 x 10 km grid cell (100 sq km). Over a 30-day month, it is covered by 100% on 5 days and the other 25 days it is ice free. So the daily sea ice extent is 100 sq km on 5 days and 0 sq km on 25 days. If you just average those 30 values together:
(5×100 sq km + 25×0)/30 = 16.67 sq km
So your monthly average extent in this method is 16.67 sq km.
If you do it the way the Sea Ice Index does it, you average 100% ice on 5 days and 0% on 25 days;
(5×100% +25×0)/30 = 16.67%
So the average monthly concentration is 16.67%. Since that is >15% that grid cell is considered “ice-covered” for the month and the extent is the area of that grid cell, or 100 sq km.
Thus, in this example the one method – average each daily total extent – gives you a value of 16.67 sq km. In the other method – calculated a monthly average field and then calculating total extent – gives you a value of 100 sq km
Moving forward, we will make a decision on best practices. Thank you for your attention to these details, please let me know if you have any questions.
Regards, Greg”
Interesting! That 15% thing is weak tea. If 15% of my house was insured against fire, or was 100% covered 15% of the time, it’d hardly seem right to say that my house is covered with fire insurance. In fact doing so would make me look kinda ignorant of the facts. Kinda like turning to someone who’s driving slower than they were a few moments before and asking them why they stopped the car. If someone said that to me while I was driving I’d say ‘cuz we got a flat tire, get out and help me change it’ lol Then I’d ask them if they’ve had a stroke and why they tried exiting a moving vehicle.
DENNIS, BAN JAVIER PLEASE.
This is getting boring. I have to sift through this garbage trolling to find the interesting posts.
Javier is wrecking the site. Tell him he needs to stop spreading denialist bullshit or you’ll ban him. You can’t tolerate this sort of trolling.
For some reason, banning and/or censoring viewpoints and opinions they disagree with or just plain don’t like is a common request by liberals. They demand these “safe spaces” where they can hide out from the world, hoping never to be exposed to anybody with a worldview different from their own. I don’t understand any of it.
(Is that you Javier or one of your buddies from the troll den?) I wasn’t aware that liberals requested censorship on a more frequent basis than conservatives. You must be privy to very special insider information. I’d suggest that the request is made because Javier a troll. It’s not hard to understand if you try putting yourself in the shoes of someone who likes to hear from intelligent and informative people and not from trolls with an agenda to play word games and obscufate facts. It’s got very little to do with liberal vs conservative political ideologies or safe spaces. Javier is entitled to his opinion but he’s not entitled to his own facts, or his own definitions of words. Javier is a troll. Did you realize that during the winter the Arctic is in permanent darkness or did you need Dr Javier to bring you up to speed on that?
The dangers of denial are vast. Right now many scientists, ones that know human caused warming is occurring, are denying or strongly reducing the potential effects of several natural forcings. This is a three-fold problem, certain scientists are ignored even after presenting convincing evidence, others back off on their claims. Worst of all it reduces the value of exploring these feedbacks, reduces funding and effort in those areas and segments the scientific community.
What people think of as true climate deniers are easily identified and rebutted, they do a lot of harm but after a while their game becomes obvious. It doesn’t fit reality.
I think climate denial goes much further up the scientific food chain. The form of denial makes it much more difficult to determine or refute, since they strongly wear the cloak of consensus in climate change and global warming. Those on the frontier or not so well supported are easily pushed aside by those with strong reputations. So we stand at a time when only a portion of global warming and it’s effects on climate change are fully recognized. The more dangerous portion is still in the dark closet or under the bed of science. Very little light is being shown upon the natural forcings and their combined effects.
++++++++++++
I was reading somewhere that it only takes about 0.4 watts per square meter to cause the yearly ice loss in the Arctic Ocean. Then after thinking about that published calculation, I realized the author had not included the reflected radiation or any radiation balance at all. If it were all incoming light it would be closer to 2 watts per m2 needed since much of light is reflected. However since snow and ice almost fully absorb longwave infrared, it could be far less than 2.
The rest would go into heating the Arctic Ocean itself and the air. The effects of heat trapping by clouds and fog are also a factor, even in the dark winter Arctic night. Then there are ocean currents, moving energy about.
A simple calculation can hide a lot of reality if not fully explored.
“So we stand at a time when only a portion of global warming and it’s effects on climate change are fully recognized. The more dangerous portion is still in the dark closet or under the bed of science. Very little light is being shown upon the natural forcings and their combined effects.”
I believe in global warming and don’t even bother to read the debates here because they make no difference to me.
If the situation is really much worse than even the scientists are telling us, and if there is nothing we can do to moderate the outcome, then I’m not sure why we need to know other than to emotionally confront the coming disasters. If anything, being told there is nothing we can do might encourage people to do even more of what they are currently do because it won’t make a difference.
I can deal with the “it’s serious and this is what we can do,” but not the “it’s a catastrophe and there is nothing we can do.”
If we have a partial knowledge and try to slow or stop global warming, the result will at best be partial or completely ineffective.
If we have a more complete knowledge of what is going on in the world, then better determinations can be made as to what to do and not to do.
We can just shoot willy nilly at a complex system, the results could just as easily backfire.
Right now the only thing we seem to be doing is trying to slow the output of manmade GHG’s. Maybe someday we will even stop putting out CO2. The amount counts, the rate is not quite as important. However when things get more severe and obvious, I am sure geo-engineering will be attempted. If we do not know how earth systems work, it will be a shot in the dark.
You speak of giving up, I speak of finding out and recognizing what really is going on in total. If the answer is that reducing human generated CO2 or stopping it will do little, best to know what else is happening and decide if action there will be needed.
There is a lot at stake here, giving up is not an option and no one said the answers would be easy or are even known yet. They will never be known if we don’t even understand the system functions or refuse to recognize the system at all.
“If we have a more complete knowledge of what is going on in the world, then better determinations can be made as to what to do and not to do.”
I think the knowledge is valuable. And someone should be collecting it, just as it is important for some scientists to speculate on the origins of the universe.
But some of what is researched in science is fairly removed from day-to-day life.
Unless we have ways for the human race to collectively deal with global warming and climate change, I’m not sure more knowledge will translate into better action.
Let’s say a scientist can very accurately predict the melting of the polar ice caps and what will happen next. Will the goal be to prevent that or to create a timetable of actions to deal with the consequences?
I believe in global warming, but even I, who supports the concept and the research, feel removed from the consequences. And even when its consequences begin to impact me, my family, and my community directly, I’m not sure I will know what all of us can do to prevent further problems.
I guess what I am saying is this.
So there is climate change denial. So what? It only matters if it prevents us from taking action.
The scientific community can debate the nuances of climate and GHGs and natural forcing all it wants. But what matters to the global population is how it impacts animal, plant, and human life.
Now, if this scientific research can be translated into predictions concerning severe weather, flooding, drought, etc. that will have meaningful impact for the average person.
If it can’t, then we’ll likely continue to treat global warming research as pure scientific research which may or may not get funded by universities, governments, and businesses.
Luckily the same things that reduce pollution and help solve our energy problems also reduce global warming. For the people on the ground, all the things to be done are already fairly well laid out.
The information that is being ignored and the information that we are not gathering will probably have to be dealt with on a multi-national level. Once the processes are better understood, it will become obvious that reduction of CO2 will have to go hand and hand along with a general reduction in fossil fuel burning, combined with more efficient lifestyles and business operations.
Hopefully the world political situation calms down so that a unified front can be established once the knowledge base is stronger and the occurrences become plainer. It might take losing a few cities or having crops fail in first world regions, but before that we should be working on carbon reduction and gaining strong field data to advance the science.
Nathanael, you haven’t seen nothing yet. At least Javing has a basic story line that he adheres too. In two weeks the President of the Divided State of America is going to con you with his nonsense. As his Conservative Right Wing Christen Republicans take away Civil Rights, Medicare, Social Security,ACA, cut taxes for the wealthy and dismantle the peoples safety net.
I’m with Putin, Americans will get what they deserve.
People often get the government they deserve. USA is likely on its last legs. Javier’s story line is very circular. He just repeats the same worn out mantras over and over. It’s kind of pathetic really, not unlike Paul Helvick and his liberal vs conservative thing when it’s really ignorance vs intelligence. I’m pretty sure Paul won’t be splitting the atom any time soon. There’s not much talent in America anymore. The only thing left to do is turtle and wait for the pain. There is no hope.
“Fifty percent of Americans can name four characters from “The Simpsons,” but only two out of five can name all three branches of the federal government. No more than one in seven can find Iraq on a map.” https://www.amazon.ca/Just-How-Stupid-Are-We/dp/0465014933
“USA is likely on its last legs” “just plain old down in the dirt dumb”
Trump got 60 million votes. I agree with you.
Just remember, 70 percent of voters did not vote for Trump.
I can’t help but think that Trump has picked a team to do the most damage to the USA.
NAOM
I’m pretty sure that that’s the plan. Trump is gonna change the topic of the discussion every time he opens his mouth and use the incompetence of others to deflect criticism of his own mismanagement. I think he’s gonna pump and dump the entire American economy. His business partners and the investors that paid for his campaign are gonna get very rich. OTOH congress might impeach him pretty quick. They’re on to him.
Perhaps if enough Trump voters suffer economically under Trump they will look for an alternative.
On the other hand, the GOP seems to be trying to make it impossible to throw them out of office or change their form of government. They may rewrite the laws so that voters can’t vote anyone out and the likely-far-right Supreme Court will uphold those laws.
In terms of renewable energy and the environment, my hope is that China is big enough and economically powerful enough that it can move forward without regard to US politics.
And overall, if the rest of the world figures out it can’t count on the US, then perhaps the US will slip as a global power.
Is that a good scenario under Trump? No. But perhaps it will help the planet.
It’s still hard for me to fathom that I may be living through the decline of the US. But better that than nothing being done globally to protect the planet.
It is as if we are a resistance movement operating within enemy territory. When your “leader” is a national and international security risk, you may have to bring down your own country to slow the global damage.
Naw, you’ll only end up playing WhackaMole.
NAOM
OFM, and others considering PV installation.
Here is a wholesale supplier of components and systems.
If you can do you own ground mount installation, you can save a lot of money.
I haven’t looked over the details of the inverter and other components,
but you can purchase a pallet of PV working out to between 0.72 and 1.03 $/W currently!
One or two pallets would be great for most people and that would come out to between 5-20K, if choosing from their current stock. Check it out- http://www.wholesalesolar.com/bulk-solar-panels-by-the-pallet
Thanks Hickory,
But I’m already committed all the surplus cash I expect to put my greedy paws on this year to projects that will be going up in price, rather than down, as I hope will continue to be the case with pv.
Fences, new pasture where the orchard used to be, another small lake for ambiance and the lifetime supply of fish and fun catching them, more equipment for the workshop. The more of this sort of stuff I get, the more I seem to want.
If I can locate enough large diameter at the right price, I will build a traditional water wheel to power a generator. There’s plenty of water in the stream on my place, but the gradient is gentle, and getting a permit to construct a dam on a stream as big as this one is an expensive time consuming pain in the ass, and any way the dam itself would be cost several times my net worth, by the time the state and the feds finish specifying an elephant where a mouse would serve quite well.
I can divert some water, maybe a quarter of the flow, into a pipe running right along side the stream for about four hundred feet, and get enough fall at the business end to put in a four or five foot diameter overshot wheel, four or five feet across. The water will go right back into the stream, at a place with a solid rock bottom, and there will be a near zero impact on the stream and the assorted little creatures that live in it. I ‘m thinking I can get over a thousand watts, continuous net output.
Sounds good OFM, but keep that PV source on your list for later on. I think you are smart for getting the ground/water source heat pump (as mentioned earlier).
Check out the Antarctic Monthly Sea Ice Extent Anomaly Graph
Arctic and Antarctic are both on this page. Select your option.
Sea ice is experiencing a large decline in both hemispheres.
Sea ice is experiencing a large decline in both hemispheres.
How is that relevant? Is that in any way related to global warming?
If you think it is, would you show what is the correlation between global sea-ice and temperatures or CO2? Have you just cherry picked one year out of 35 for which there are measurements?
Show us your deep understanding of the relationship between global sea ice and climate change. I am sure it will be fascinating.
Yawn. Do you have some kind of conflict seeking personality disorder or something?
“How is that relevant? Is that in any way related to global warming” ~ Javier
If you can’t figure out the answer to that question by yourself you should give back your PhD. If you have one.
“Have you just cherry picked one year out of 35 for which there are measurements?” ~ Javier
I just posted a link to some interesting date dude. Maybe think about booking a follow up appointment and getting your meds rebalanced.
Just what I thought. You have no idea, so good old tactic of attacking the person pointing to your lack of knowledge.
So other people know: There is no known relationship between global sea ice levels and global warming. For the last 35 years loses in Arctic sea ice have been compensated by gains in Antarctic sea ice so global sea ice levels have remained essentially constant.
“For the last 35 years loses in Arctic sea ice have been compensated by gains in Antarctic sea ice so global sea ice levels have remained essentially constant.”
Nice mantra, no one outside of Javierville believes it though.
NSDIC data disagrees though.
Why only data to 2010? Because it recovered afterwards?
“Will the Midwesterners who voted for Candidate Trump be screwed-six-ways-to-Sunday by their idol’s relationship with Russia? will they see their living standard evaporate? will they see their social security, medicaid, medicare benefits end? will they see accountability of the political classes diminish? – Most likely.
Will they learn anything from it? – Most unlikely. Any lessons that are learned will be learned by their children and grand children – not by the people that actually voted. As reported in may surveys after the polls, a majority of these people do not want Donald Trump to release his tax returns because they already know it will highlight their personal failure to choose properly. Rather than face this deeply personal embarrassment – they would prefer to feed the country to criminal hordes.”
Conservative Republicans “just plain old down in the dirt dumb”
Hey Hunt.Beach,
You and I hold many similar views on policy, but I got to say partisanship is a very ugly set of clothing to wear, whether it is blue or red.
And yes, I am extremely embarrassed/worried by the choice our country has made, and the ridiculous electoral college system that degrades democracy.
But people need encouragement to think outside their box, rather than just being called ‘deplorable’.
How is this:
Keith Olbermann Has A Message To Share With Your Trump-Supporting (OFM) Friends
After “W”, Obama let go of the past and moved forward. That’s exactly the opposite of what is happening now. Being nice to Republicans doesn’t work. Now they are doubling down. They need to own the mess their going to make this time.
You know, personal responsibility
Olbermann is interesting. Very bright. A world class baseball expert. Years ago he had a fun feud with Bill O’Reilly. I watched both on my two TV’s at 5:00 PM Eastern. He was fired from MSNBC and a sports channel, primarily for being obnoxious. He is now devoting his life to fight Trump.
>> He is now devoting his life to fight Trump. <<
A worthy cause…
Hi HB,
Aren’t you the SAME guy who threw out a remark about ME telling a lie often enough that it becomes accepted as the truth?
I hereby challenge you to a duel to the death, insulting each other, using any verbal weapon available, or yet to be invented.
Now I don’t mind publicly admitting that I am a COWARDLY character, and wouldn’t issue this challenge, except for the fact that I am totally confident I’m better informed, and all around smarter than you.
The odds are also good to excellent that I have more free time, and that I can type faster than you too boot.
Besides which, everybody knows all about the social standing and reputation of people who sell cars and trucks- even Mack trucks.
I will mail anybody in this forum who will supply me with an address a post office money order for twenty bucks, made out to that person , or to their favorite charity, if he can point to just one comment, IN CONTEXT, that I have ever made in this forum, in support of Trump.
Comments pointing out the DANGER, and the reasons FOR that danger, that Clinton might lose are excluded from this offer. Pointing out Clinton’s shortcomings is NOT the same thing as supporting Trump.
I’m just one little inconsequential blogger, and no more a mover or shaker of politics in this world than you are a mover or shaker in the world of air pollution, as an individual investor in the oil industry, and thus responsible for our climate troubles.
I’ve said some few nice things about Clinton , from time to time, not being a partisan. Just within the last couple of days I have remarked that I am fully on board with going to a single payer health care system in this country, which has long been one of her biggest goals, although she has been coy about saying so in so many words.
I did post a Trump joke about his administration turning out to be the most transparent in history, leaving off the punch line, hoping somebody here would post it.
So why will the Trump administration be the most open administration ever?
Because Trump can’t keep his mouth shut about ANYTHING.
Now instead of calling you stupid, or ignorant, or a partisan true believer, TODAY, I am merely going to post the press release sent out by Judicial Watch, which just won ANOTHER court case involving HRC’s email system, which she after all TOLD us she created only for the sake of convenience, ya know.
Obviously anybody who is unwilling to take her word on it MUST be an ignorant, stupid, sexist, xenophobic racist ” I got mine, fuck you everybody else ” Koch brothers type double talking big R republican.
Anybody that brags about making fat profits in oil, walking the fossil fuels walk, while talking the green talk, in a forum such as this one, and makes a habit of blaming her loss and Trump’s win on helpless, witless, ignorant old farmers, who has obviously never read any book except a KJB, and only the EASY words in that one, and believes the world is flat, and that Santa Clause is real…………
Now that sort of person would very likely be NAIVE enough to believe her…….. or maybe he’s a hard core partisan willing to repeat the same old twaddle forever, rather than admitting he has made a colossal mistake, and compounded it by propping it up with a series of further mistakes, and so suffer the resulting loss of face.
I have seen a bunch of drunks and little kids deny perfectly obvious facts, in an effort to brazen out their problems. I had one visiting here recently deny he was throwing rocks at our pet chickens, to my face, in front of his parents, who PRETENDED that they BELIEVED him. Something about their body language said otherwise.
They won’t be back as guests, ever again.
( I didn’t embarrass them any more than necessary, or escalate the situation by pulling out my phone and showing them the video I shot five minutes previously.
I got acquainted with this kid and his bad habits years ago, the whole COMMUNITY knows to beware of him . But I showed it to a third party, who knows the parents well enough to talk to them heart to heart, face to face , privately. )
You hang in there old buddy and never forget that there are always a few DUMB foot soldiers in every movement who can be kept in line by badmouthing anybody who might get them to thinking about the shortcomings of their movement, and the faults of their leaders.
So – You know this already, and I give you this, you are at least consistent in bad mouthing me, and thus doing what you can to keep the dumbest of your Clinton camp foot soldiers eyes from thinking about what REALLY went wrong.
You would make a GOOD Sunday school teacher, since you have repeated your lines until they have become truths in your own mind.
That’s what makes for a good Sunday school teacher, the ability to teach the myth, and bad mouth evil sinners and profess total shock that anybody would ever question the lesson , and righteously maintain that those who do are heretics, doomed to burn in hell, who are never to be trusted , who MUST be excluded from the community……. unless of course they repudiate everything they have ever said or believed, and join up themselves.
Thanks for helping me get thru to more people than I would otherwise, here, because I am ready to move ON in respect to Clinton’s short comings, and to the future of the D party, whenever you are.
But keep on calling me a Trump lover, and I will continue as usual.
Here are three links, I always strive to give good measure.
I can easily post some more, if you wish. All you need do , if you want me too, is call me a liar, or a Trump supporter.
Maybe I will post all the next dozen or so out of the ones written or delivered as speeches etc, by well known large D organizations ,or consistent supporters of such organizations, or well known large D individuals.
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.
Back atcha once more , HB
Some people know and understand the game of politics, and like a lawyer, can play the game from either side, as an adviser or coach, paid or unpaid.
Some people just whine , and sling mud, because that’s all they know how to do.
I ‘m not a partisan. I understand the game. I do think of myself as a patriot of sorts, and stand ready to defend my country from my government, and sometimes doing so involves forcing people to face up to their errors.
For now, the prevailing D party dogma is that Clinton was robbed, because the American people are stupid, and enough of them voted for Trump for him to STEAL the election.
That dogma plays VERY well in an echo chamber dominated by disappointed Clintonites. It plays well enough, for now, as a sermon to the larger party choir, putting the blame on the people, rather than the party itself, and the candidate in particular.
But in WON’T play well when the campaigning starts, next time around, no, it won’t play well at all.
The people who want D’s in congress, and a D in the White House, will abandon your sort of childish whining in favor of serious thought. And while they won’t be saying uncomplimentary things about HRC, publicly, they won’t be saying much about her at all.
In meeting rooms behind closed doors, they will be saying what I have been saying all along, that she was a lousy candidate in terms of the public’s perceptions of her, and a lousy campaigner. They will be saying we must and will do things DIFFERENTLY this time.
The lessons of the loss, the ones I have been talking about, you see, except you don’t see, will have sunk in, and they will be incorporated into the next campaign.
Admitting this sort of thing involves a somewhat embarrassing loss of face, so I don’t expect any atta boys from the regulars here who are with no more than a couple of exceptions all hard core D partisans.
But the fact that they don’t come out and say so doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking about what I have been saying, and gradually admitting to themselves that I have been right, all along, as a general thing.
The D party won’t nominate a candidate with such a train load of baggage again. The candidate next time around will be a person who is better suited to winning middle of the road voters, and one that’s at least marginally acceptable to cultural and social conservatives.
The odds are excellent that I will still be around for another four years. If this forum survives, I will probably still be posting a comment here , then, from time to time, although I expect to have a site of my own within that time frame.
The odds are also excellent that you will be gone, and forgotten.
Everything I have been saying will be taken into account in the next cycle of D primaries, and the next D candidate’s campaign platform, and campaign strategy, quietly. QUIETLY.
I will be vindicated.
A truly disinterested observer might wonder if you are actually a Trump troll yourself, pretending to be a Democrat, while continuously saying things that remind folks who voted for Trump , or stayed home, WHY they did so.
You are doing a GREAT job in this respect, while accomplishing nothing more FOR the party than proving that there are D’s who are as ignorant, and as mean spirited, as any Trump supporter.
I don’t expect any of the guys here to call you out, but I know half a dozen young and committed D women, from attending Sanders events, who would gladly spit on you for making the lube and nephew remark you posted in the other thread.
You’re a porch dog, and you would roll over on your back and pee yourself before you would ever venture out into the real world,off the cyber porch, and insult a random individual MAN by making that same comment.
Please keep it up. You’re advancing my agenda for me, which is to force the D party to wake up to reality as fast as possible. Some candidates running in upcoming midterm and off year elections are already campaigning.
Trump didn’t WIN in any sense except the LITERAL sense.
Trump won because the D party and HRC made a MESS out of the entire nominating process, and then the campaign after that.
Clinton and her cronies LOST, they dropped the ball, repeatedly. Clinton and her cronies let Trump and his cronies make a fool out of her, and the D party at large.
They threw it away.
Blaming the loss on the people is about as good a way of ensuring that you will lose again as can be imagined.
It obviously hasn’t occurred to you, and people like you, that those SAME people will be voting again , NEXT time, has it?? They won’t forget what you have been saying about them in the meantime.
Keep it up, you may yet find a way to make an even bigger fool of yourself.
I support most of what the D party stands for these days , but not everything , and so must remain an independent. Partisans have to pretend they believe in things they don’t.
I disagree with a huge portion of what the R party stands for these days, but I do support some R positions and policies.
I will remain an independent, and tell it like it is, or at least like I see it.
Indian Maverick is brilliant. I highly recommend following his column.
A lot of talk about the climate and not much talk about the weather. Nobody can do anything about the weather unless you are a weather engineer at haarp. har
The record low that I have ever seen, been there to see and feel what cold is, was -42° F in the winter of 97-98. Not a day for water skiing. You can’t define cold until you find out for yourself what cold is. Not dark side of the moon cold, but cold. If you go anywhere, it is to buy beer and gas.
The record high for any summertime temperature was in 1988, the thermometer was at 108° F in the shade. It was hot. The summer of 2015 was hot, but not like 1988. Never saw it so hot as it was then in 1988. You had to quaff a few.
1959-60-61 were dry years and crops were stressed. 1963 was a good year, an oil well was drilled and it struck oil, it has pumped for 53 years now. 1964 was a good year for wheat. 1966, would ride the combine into the late evening until the sickle bar had rough cutting. My teeth were black with dust and dirt, combining is work that makes you smile all day long. Bins full of wheat and barley, tons of beans. If you want to see exponential growth, plant a bushel of wheat to an acre of black soil.
The sun rises, the sun sets, sunrise, sunset. Swiftly go the years, as the song goes.
Rambling on, muttering musings, never mind. Back to the regularly scheduled program. Whatever that is.
It was the weather that caused all the trouble RW. Being born hairless and not getting enough hair to cover the body, humans were subject to cold, rain, wind, etc. Did OK in the heat, but not always.
So we started inventing things, clothing, which meant hunting animals. Then rocks, sharp rocks, clubs, spears, all to get food and clothing. No more hunting the wild asparagus.
Apparently we couldn’t stop there and ended up here. We had to talk to each other to hunt in groups and plan our next move, since we were not the biggest, strongest or the best. The mammoths and giant sloths didn’t have a chance.
Now we have umbrellas, raincoats, galoshes, coats and long underwear to deal with the weather. Shoes too.
Being wimpy, we build huts, houses, buildings and such. Mostly to keep our stuff dry and warm but for us too.
If we could handle the weather, none of this would have happened.
Vast ice shelf poised to crack off Antarctica.
”
A vast iceberg, expected to be one of the biggest ever recorded with an area almost the size of the U.S. state of Delaware or the Caribbean island state of Trinidad and Tobago, is poised to break off Antarctica.
A rift, slowly developing across the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula in recent years, expanded abruptly last month, growing by about 18 km (11 miles). It is now more than 80 km long with just 20 km left before it snaps, scientists said.
“The Larsen C Ice shelf in Antarctica is primed to shed an area of more than 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles) following further substantial rift growth,” scientists at Project Midas at the University of Swansea in Wales said in a statement.”
CLIMATE CHANGE COULD TRIGGER STRONG SEA LEVEL RISE
About 15,000 years ago, the ocean around Antarctica has seen an abrupt sea level rise of several meters. The changes that are currently taking place in a disturbing manner resemble those 14,700 years ago. At that time, changes in atmospheric-oceanic circulation led to a stratification in the ocean with a cold layer at the surface and a warm layer below. Under such conditions, ice sheets melt more strongly than when the surrounding ocean is thoroughly mixed. This is exactly what is presently happening around the Antarctic.
If major geologic and environmental changes are happening fast enough for us ephemeral beings to notice and watch, it is happening really fast. One meter rise in a century might just get everyone’s attention.
Except that it won’t happen. Sea level rise is modest.
Nothing ever changes in Javierville.
GoneFishing,
Global warming is very old news. We had full realization of it in 1988. That was 30 years ago.
Some people are scared of it, but humanity at large isn’t, because we have not reduce our emissions. We have increased them greatly. Actions speak louder than words. The Paris accords mean that humanity is not going to reduce its emissions significantly in the future. Hansen was very clear about it.
Does this look like our governments really believe that we are in serious danger? I would say clearly not.
After 30 years of paying attention to it, global warming hasn’t turned sour on us. We are still enjoying its benefits. We just went in 2015-16 through a test of how the world does with 0.4°C more and everything went fine and we even got a record wheat crop. So global warming in the years ahead, if it continues, is likely to continue being beneficial.
I was so surprised by the lack of warming in the 21st century that I actually went and checked the evidence that the science has produced. No clear support for the alarmist view.
It is not Javierville but Gaia who is saying that the alarmist narrative is wrong.
“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.”
Charles Mackay 1841.
This will go down in history books as the biggest folly in the history of humankind. Scientists are going to come out severely tarnished for the participation of many of them, and statements like the 97% agreement. This is going to haunt us for generations. We should have kept neutral and stick to the evidence as the method demands.
Nothing ever changes in Javierville.
It’s like the movie Groundhog Day, only stupider.
Javierville is where you go when you discover the Arkansas Ozarks is too intellectually intimidating. But I guess that’s unfair to the Ozarks.
Don’t worry Doug the folks in the Ozarks are more closed minded than Javierville residents.
.
15,000 years ago the planet was coming out of a glacial period. Obliquity was rising, increasing the year-round insolation received by both poles. Just the opposite of nowadays.
We are a couple of thousand years from reaching the average duration of an interglacial. Obliquity is falling at its fastest rate in 40,000 years, while summer northern high latitude insolation is at a minimum. Most people don’t realize how precious our little warming is.
Yawn. Using GHCNv4 monthly data, Svalbard had the 3rd highest 2016 temp departure globally (+8.9°F)
I thought the Northern Greenland cherry picked data was the deniers choice?
Vize (79.5N/77.0E) was No. 1 (+12.6°F above normal) and Imetkrenkeli (80.6N/58.0E) was No. 2 (+11.8°F above normal). It’s a heatwave.
But we knew many years ago that ethanol was an energetic and CO2 flop. I always thought the mandate went through to help farmers make more money and increase food prices.
Yes, that’s my understanding, too. Many in the renewable community have always been skeptical of it. But it was a popular concept with corn farmers and their politicians.
It was always political—
Welfare for farmers in the Midwest, and big giveaways to corporate contracts for production.
Both sides of the Aisle were pigs at the trough.
here,in Iowa,cannot get rid of ethanol\\\nobody supports that…ethanol is,so very good,to the state—bringing in—MANY JOBS OPPORTUNITIES AND MONEY\~
What will you do with it once there are no cars using it?
NAOM
Oh no, higher temperatures mean less snow and it’s killing the yellow cedars. Roots frozen due to increasing lack of snow.
The trees are in the cypress family and are not true cedars, which are part of the pine family. They have grown to 200 feet and can live more than 1,200 years.
More than 1,544 square miles containing yellow cedar — mostly north of Vancouver Island, British Columbia — have experienced upward of 70 percent mortality. Another 20,207 square miles remain, but many of the trees will be vulnerable if projected warming occurs.
Researchers found little mortality in trees at higher elevations in Washington and Oregon where snow level has not diminished and roots have not been exposed to freezing temperatures. Conversely, in some areas, such as parts of Vancouver Island, there’s no snow where yellow cedar grows, but temperatures never drop sufficiently to freeze their roots, Buma said.
Residents of coastal Maine speak out against tanker transport of Canada’s tar sands oil. Banning dangerous supertankers and barges in U.S. waters is the single-best means we have to protect our coasts and our planet from the next generation of climate-wrecking tar sands oil.
Once again, Javier has consumed all the oxygen in our virtual room…
How?
One way was to misrepresent the ice age percentage survival graph as if it shows the actual amount of multi-year and first year ice. It does not, of course, and GoneFishing posted a chart using NSIDC data that shows the true picture – 2016 has drastically less multi-year ice than 2007.
Javier’s first response to that data?
Change the subject quickly to Wadham’s failed prediction.
His final response, after several prompts pointing out his obvious howler?
… “NSIDC does not agree with that graph.” …(ie NSIDC does not agree with its own data!) … and posted a different graph that confirms that 2016 much less than 2007, but this time as a percentage, not the total amounts.
…..
A second successful misdirection? … No Surface Warming for 12 YEARS!!!
Notice how this true fact gets gradually morphed into “no warming” then “no global warming”… This is the basis of Javier’s misdirection…
When respondents object, he cites Fyfe (an IPCC author), showing only PART of the picture.
To repeat, it’s perfectly true that surface warming was slower than predicted by the models for a period of 15 years recently. Fyfe published a paper, Javier posted the graph showing the mismatch.
But of course that is only part of the picture. Javier always, always, always cherrypicks or selectively presents data – never the complete picture. Fyfe presents the COMPLETE picture in his portion of the IPCC report (see attached figure)…
Part 1 of Javier’s deceitful omission of Fyfe’s facts:
Surface warming was also FASTER than predicted for the preceding 15 years – panel (b) of attached figure. Then slower for 1998 to 2012 – panel (a). The long term (1951 to 2012) warming rate was exactly as predicted – panel (c).
Part 2 of Javier’s deceitful omission of Fyfe’s facts:
Global warming of the entire climate system did indeed warm at roughly the same rate as predicted by the models (actually a little faster), even over short time frames, even for 1998 to 2012 (the hiatus/pause) – panel (d). It warmed at the rate predicted by models for the preceding 15 years – panel (e) . And it warmed at the predicted rate for longer periods (1951 – 2012), too – panel (f).
By concentrating on the smallest portion of the climate system (by mass) – the atmosphere – Javier easily led dozens of poster around and around through hundreds of posts that all miss the point – BADLY…
… the surface air temperature is almost entirely determined by the surface SEA temperature
… The SEA surface temperature is about 0.8 to 0.4C WARMER than the air above it. The oceans lose heat to the air (after being heated by the sun).
… The distribution of warmer and colder surface waters is almost entirely determined by ocean currents/wind oscillations like the PDO, IPO, ENSO, and AMO.
… These oscillations do not cause warming to appear out of nothing – conservation of energy applies. They can only redistribute heat, it is a zero-sum game for ocean heat content.
… Ocean Heat Content is rising, and ACCELERATING. The most recent period – even the pause/hiatus – has seen warming that is significantly faster than the preceding period (more than twice as fast). This fact is confirmed by the accelerating rate of sea level rise.
… The models do a great job of predicting the true, overall, complete warming rate – both short and long term.
…
(Go read the IPCC report, WGI AR5 Technical Supplement to see the original figure and its context.)
Yeah changing the subject is the cornerstone of his rhetorical style. It’s pretty hard to conclude a discussion about a specific topic with Janvier as each response from him is an attempt to distract by injecting a new topic. Interestingly enough Janvier has made some predictions now too so in the near future we can see how it turns out. He’s a total flake when it comes to something as simple as what the word pause means in comparison to the term slow down. Apperently in his glossary of term they’re synonymous. That’s just stupid. Guys got a PhD in troll. Science? Not so much.
Since you brought up NSIDC data, here’s a question I need answered. Before I can read all of this post. How much of NSIDC’s operations are funded by taxes and public grants?
I don’t know for sure but I’d say ‘lots’ is a fair guess.
I always wonder why people with computers and internet cannot look up the simple things themselves?
Perhaps they need dialogue. It took me about 4 seconds to get a rough enough idea.
Then that tells me all I need to know. I’m not going to trust any organization funded with taxes and public grants. Anyway at least not until Trump gets in office and cleans house. Right now most federal organizations have people appointed by Obama. His Democratic Party obviously is going all out to push the climate change agenda.
Earth to Harmon, give me a break
Saw that one coming.
Yep. Pretext to a dialogue. He must be sitting just across from Javier at the Troll Brigades sock puppet centre.
And by the way, Trumps not gonna clean up nothing! Him and his Russian Oilgarch buddies are gonna pull the biggest pump and dump stock market scam in history. It’s gonna be epic! (Or maybe he’s just their useful idiot)
Me too! I feel much more comfortable trusting organizations funded with donations and private money, especially money from sources that have done really well from extracting and using fossil fuels. You know, Heartland Institute, Energy Research Institute, Fox News, you get the drift. 😉
The meme that carbon reduction climate policy is a global governmental conspiracy for political control is kind of funny when you think about it.
Distributed energy systems are shaping up to be the solution to the problem. Isn’t the democratization of energy supply the opposite of what you would want as a dictator or oligarch?
For less than $20k investment I could buy a used Nissan Leaf and a 3kW rooftop PV array that would provide >12,000 miles of travel per year. The PV would last >25 years.
Small price to pay for energy freedom from the likes of Arabs and Texans. 😉
Distributed energy systems are shaping up to be the solution to the problem.
Yes, when people get their heads around the idea that having their own power offers more freedom than being dependent on be entities for it, maybe they will embrace the concept.
That’s one thing that unites the survivalists and the sustainability types. One group may be more right wing, and the other more left wing, but both support the idea of generating their own power.
Why are you telling such lies, Wehappyfew?
Are you really that ignorant about what you post, or are you simply trying to deceive people in the blog?
About everything that you say about CMIP5 is untrue.
CMIP5 was agreed upon in 2008:
“At a September 2008 meeting involving 20 climate modeling groups from around the world, the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM), with input from the IGBP AIMES project, agreed to promote a new set of coordinated climate model experiments. These experiments comprise the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5).” http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/
CMIP5 was first delivered in 2011:
“The IPCC/CMIP5 schedule is now available and the three key dates are as follows:
Februrary 2011: First model output is expected to be available for analysis” http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/
CMIP5 did not predict anything for 1984-1998 as you say. You can’t predict the past. The way CMIP5 was set was the following:
“There are two sets of core near-term integrations, as indicated by Fig. 3. The first is a set of 10-yr hindcasts initialized from observed climate states near the years 1960, 1965, and every 5 yr to 2005. In these 10-yr simulations, it will be possible to assess the skill of the forecast system in predicting climate statistics for times when the initial climate state may exert some detectable influence. The other core integrations extend the 10-yr simulations initialized in 1960, 1980, and 2005 by an additional 20 yr, ending up with two 30-yr hindcasts, and one 30-yr prediction to the year 2035.”
Taylor, Karl E., Ronald J. Stouffer, and Gerald A. Meehl. “An overview of CMIP5 and the experiment design.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 93.4 (2012): 485. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00094.1
The predictions from CMIP5 start in 2005, with the obvious advantage of being done in 2010 and published in 2011-12.
The long term (1951 to 2012) warming rate was exactly as predicted – panel (c).
You mean that by publishing in 2011 they got the long term warming from 1951-2012 correct? Quite an achievement I would say.
Wehappyfew, you have managed to demonstrate everybody that you have no idea of CMIP5, and that you like to talk about what you don’t know. After this your accusations of misrepresentation are simply laughable. But thanks, it was fun to read your post.
are you drunk?
Javier,
It might be best if you take a break and try again in the morning. Your post makes no attempt to refute the facts I have posted – it seems to ramble around with no clear point.
You’ve made no effort to correct your mistake about the multi-year ice survival charts. I will take that as a tacit admission that GoneFishing was absolutely correct, and you were wrong – multi-year has declined by enormous amounts, including the span from 2007 to 2016.
…..
CMIP5 is used in the Fyfe papers YOU brought up, I did not broach the subject. The rest of your response seems to be entirely projection.
Fyfe used CMIP5 hindcasts compared to the surface temperature observations. The IPCC WGI AR5 TS Box3 used CMIP3 and 5 to compare global and surface warming rates to model-derived simulations (hindcasts).
You’ve brought up a lot of deflection, but you did not address Fyfe’s and the IPCC’s chart and use of CMIP at all. If you don’t like sources that use CMIP as hindcasts (as your confused ramblings might be interpreted to mean), why did you cite Fyfe? He used hindcasts.
Please cite one fact I “say about CMIP” that’s untrue. Not unrelated new papers like the ones above. Cite a phrase in Fyfe’s work or the IPCC WGI that shows I misrepresented their use of CMIP.
You have read the IPCC reports, haven’t you? From your fact-free and off-tangent response, it might be taken as evidence you cannot directly address the points I raised from the IPCC reports because you have not read them, or don’t remember them.
For example… from the IPCC section I’ve been referring to…
“During the 15-year period beginning in 1998, the ensemble of HadCRUT4 GMST trends lies below almost all model-simulated trends (Box TS.3, Figure 1a), whereas during the 15-year period ending in 1998, it lies above 93 out of 114 modelled trends (Box TS.3, Figure1b; HadCRUT4 ensemble mean trend 0.26°C per decade, CMIP5 ensemble mean trend 0.16°C per decade). ”
By way of contrast, you’ve now been caught misleading by omitting the second bolded finding above by Fyfe published in the IPCC report… and you have no response except bluster and deflection.
Get some sleep, try to regain your focus in the morning… sundowner syndrome can be very debilitating and confusing.
Have a nice picture of surface temps to help you relax…
Breaking News- Javier just got owned. Stay tuned for incoherent rambling.
Please cite one fact I “say about CMIP” that’s untrue.
“Surface warming was also FASTER than predicted for the preceding 15 years”
No prediction could have been made in 2013 (AR5 date) about 1984-1998
“The long term (1951 to 2012) warming rate was exactly as predicted”
No prediction could have been made in 2013 about 1951-2012
“Global warming of the entire climate system did indeed warm at roughly the same rate as predicted by the models (actually a little faster), even over short time frames, even for 1998 to 2012 (the hiatus/pause)”
Global warming could not be predicted by models that were made afterwards.
“It warmed at the rate predicted by models for the preceding 15 years “
No prediction could have been made in 2013 about 1984-1998
“And it warmed at the predicted rate for longer periods (1951 – 2012), too”
No prediction could have been made in 2013 about 1951-2012
Everything you said in that comment about CMIP5 was untrue. There is no mystery in models reproducing past climate, as they can be adjusted to do that. It is when they predict future climate when they fail spectacularly.
What the IPCC says is: “The observed GMST has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years (Box TS.3, Figure 1a, c). Depending on the observational data set, the GMST trend over 1998–2012 is estimated to be around one third to one half of the trend over 1951–2012.”
That is how they define the hiatus. And you don’t seem to distinguish a hindcast from a forecast.
And discounting the 2015-16 El Niño, that is weather, not climate, there has been very little warming in the 21st century. That is a fact that the IPCC AR5 recognizes. You would do well in recognizing it too, or you could be labelled as science deniers.
So it appears your entire response is to tone-troll the distinction between “predicting” vs “hindcasting” using climate models?
Fine. My language was not up to your high standards. Please substitute “hindcasting” in place of “predicting” in my posts above. Mea Culpa.
You are perfectly fine with Fyfe’s and the IPCC’s hindcasts using the CMIP model results now?
If so, we can restate your deceptions in the language you demand:
Fyfe and the IPCC found that hindcasts for the period 1998-2012 severely overestimated the observed surface warming. You cited this as proof that models are terrible, or maybe to imply that warming has stopped. But you omitted and failed to mention:
1. The fact that the model hindcasts UNDERestimated the observed surface warming for the preceding 15 year period, and
2. The hindcasts were exactly accurate for the long-term comparisons.
That is TWO blatant deceptions-by-omission.
So once again, you have retreated to cherrypicking time periods when weather and natural variability are large enough to obscure the long term change in climate. You ignore the obvious fact that such periods of slow surface warming are common in the instrumental record, and are always followed and preceded by periods of faster than average surface warming.
I bet you cannot even bring yourself to read, much less post here, what the IPCC forecasted after the 1998-2012 slowdown ended.
…..
You ignore the complete climate system – the atmosphere being the smallest part – which is warming at a steadily accelerating rate. There has been no pause or hiatus in total climate system warming – even for 1998 to 2012. The heat imbalance caused by GHGs accelerated during that period compared to the previous 15 years, and it continues to accelerate as shown in the chart below.
Hindcasts mean nothing, Wehappyfew. They do not constitute evidence of anything except of capacity to program a model.
The 0-2000 m ocean increase in heat content amounts to a tiny increase in temperature. According to the Argo page:
“Levitus et al 2012, recently, and Domingues et al (2008) and Levitus et al (2009) previously, have estimated the multi-decadal upper ocean heat content using best-known corrections to systematic errors in the fall rate of expendable bathythermographs (Wijffels et al, 2008). 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
Now explain to me why the 0.06°C of apparently well mixed temperature increase in the 0-2000 m ocean since the 1960’s is so alarming.
While you are at it, please point me in the direction of any scientific article that discusses a mechanism by which that heat can make it out of the ocean and make a difference.
All that heat content is much ado about nothing, and one of the clearest indications that some scientists are trying to scare people without supporting evidence. You clearly have been fooled Wehappyfew. All those GigaJoules amount to less than 0.1°C.
Javier, you said:
““Hindcasts mean nothing, Wehappyfew. They do not constitute evidence of anything except of capacity to program a model.”
If hindcasts “do not constitute evidence for anything”, why did you cite Fyfe (2012) and Fyfe (2013)???
Fyfe compared hindcasts for short timespans and and found they did NOT match observations. The models can NOT be “programmed” to match the observations – for 15 year timespans.
I completely agree with Fyfe’s analysis and conclusions, but now you don’t? … even though you cited hims to support your points?
Alternatively, you accept Fyfe’s method of comparing observations to hindcasts, but now you are unwilling to say so, now that the full context of Fyfe’s work in the WGI TS has been point out to you. The context which shows you have been dishonest by omitting important findings by Fyfe.
Confused or dishonest – let us know how we should interpret your flipflopping on Fyfe’s work.
…
Of course all denialists work very hard to deflect attention away from Ocean Heat Content and the climate system’s energy imbalance.
The steady acceleration of OHC is strong evidence that increasing GHGs are forcing the imbalance, and because it is so steady, there is nothing to cherrypick from.
But you will try to mislead us in some other way…
“Now explain to me why the 0.06°C of apparently well mixed temperature increase in the 0-2000 m ocean…”
That, right there, is a falsehood.
The increase in temperatures (and thus OHC) is not “well mixed”. Even a cursory glance at the data shows otherwise. With your vast experience in posting denialist talking points on many fora, you should know these data inside and out.
EITHER you are blatantly dishonest – attempting to distract attention from the reality of the OHC data…
…OR you are so confused and ignorant of these data that you have regurgitated a common denialist trope without knowing anything about it.
This guy mops the floor and then paints the walls with Javier
Here it is.
This is what you all have been waiting for, the actual predictions for climate change and as a bonus what we need to do about it. Read the paper carefully, there is a lot going on there but it is in clear language. The author appears to believe we still have control over the situation, at least some of it. That is the good news. The bad news is what we have to do to stop global warming and climate change from getting way out of hand. We need to stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and reduce CO2 concentration to below 350 ppm. That is a big order, especially since we have not made any real dent in even slowing CO2, it seems it is still rising. So the stop pumping it into the atmosphere has not even really started yet, just nibbling at it.
“The seven atmospheric scientists predict a global warming of “almost unprecedented magnitude” in the next century. It might even be sufficient to melt and dislodge the ice cover of West Antarctica, they say, eventually leading to a worldwide rise of 15 to 20 feet in the sea level. In that case, they say, it would “flood 25 percent of Louisiana and Florida, 10 percent of New Jersey and many other lowlands throughout the world” within a century or less.”
So here we are 35 years later, a third of a century has past and we have got about 90 mm (0.3 feet) of sea level raise instead of the 5 feet promised for a third of a century. So Jim has only been 94% wrong.
Actual Eemian highstand was 6.6-7 meters above present sea level, reached over about 3000 years at a global temp about 2C higher, and as much as 8C higher in Greenland. Hansen paper modeled 15 meters in 500 years. Off by an order of magnitude.
How? Start with a regional Antarctic GCM that runs over an order of magnitude hot in hindcast over Antarctic observation since 1957 (up to ~5C warming versus observed ~0-0.25C. Then run impossible RCP8.5 for 2 centuries, reaching >1100 ppm in 2100 and >2200ppm in 2200. Then assume no subsequent sinking. Finally, import the Greenland summer melt mechanism for iceberg calving to Antarctica where there is no summer melt except on the peninsula.
Amazing that after 35 years there are people still falling for that old debunked prediction.
Lol Did your PhD come with a volume?
The villagers are up in arms at the site of their old enemy. If only they could read and comprehend, but they are just peasants.
A look at the record low Arctic seaice near Svalbard
On September 20, 2016, 376 members of the National Academy of Sciences, including 30 Nobel laureates, published an open letter to draw attention to the serious risks of climate change. The letter warns that the consequences of opting out of the Paris agreement would be severe and long-lasting for our planet’s climate and for the international credibility of the United States.
A full list of signers follows the text of the letter.
An Open Letter Regarding Climate Change From
Concerned Members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
Human-caused climate change is not a belief, a hoax, or a conspiracy. It is a physical reality. Fossil fuels powered the Industrial Revolution. But the burning of oil, coal, and gas also caused most of the historical increase in atmospheric levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. This increase in greenhouse gases is changing Earth’s climate.
Our fingerprints on the climate system are visible everywhere. They are seen in warming of the oceans, the land surface, and the lower atmosphere. They are identifiable in sea level rise, altered rainfall patterns, retreat of Arctic sea ice, ocean acidification, and many other aspects of the climate system. Human-caused climate change is not something far removed from our day-to-day experience, affecting only the remote Arctic. It is present here and now, in our own country, in our own states, and in our own communities.
Members of the media interested in speaking with one of the organizers of the letter should contact responsiblescientists@gmail.com.
The fact is, climate change is poorly understood and typically even wrongly communicated by otherwise competent scientists. The truth is, much of the scientific talk centers around CO2 or CH3 while then largely ignoring H2O in all it’s various forms. Yet H2O is what regulates earth’s heat balances. Planet earth’s circadian rhythms along with it’s axis of rotation should produce dark nights with cooling through radiation. However the radiation cooling mechanism, the circadian rhythm of earth, has been upset by nighttime activities: streetlights, homes, vehicles, industry, and such. Without the nighttime cooling through circadian rhythm, earth’s water accumulates heat. Warm water then has a higher vapor pressure, to be relieved through negative feedback in the form of precipitation. So ultimately, actual science shows that today’s global warming has a real good chance of inducing tomorrow’s ice age.
Lol Speaking of poorly understood:
A circadian rhythm is a roughly 24 hour cycle in the physiological processes of living beings, including plants, animals, fungi and cyanobacteria. In a strict sense, circadian rhythms are endogenously generated, although they can be modulated by external cues such as sunlight and temperature.
With regards to the rest of your post- finish your high school
physics class and then get back to us.
With regards to the rest of your post- finish your high school
physics class and then get back to us.
Talk of being rude, Survivalist.
You are a poster child on how to establish and maintain an echo chamber.
Do you actually believe you are a tolerant person or are you aware of your image as a bigot?
Are you drinking heavily? You seem most incoherent.
What makes you think I give half a rats ass about what you think of me? You’re a guy with a PhD who makes less sense than an undergrad. You don’t even understand the meaning of simple words like ‘pause’ and how to use them properly in a sentence.
“You are a poster child on how to establish and maintain an echo chamber.”
And yet here you are. Coming back for another serving. If you don’t like it you could always just turn off your computer or do something else. Trolls gotta troll though. Gotta pay the bills right? What’s it pay to work in a troll brigade anyway?
“So ultimately, actual science shows that today’s global warming has a real good chance of inducing tomorrow’s ice age.”
Yeah I woke up yesterday and my kitchen fridge was a solid block of ice. Turns out the cat accidentally unplugged it in the night. Lol I’ll have whatever it is your smoking.
You are very easy to ignore, Survivalist, as your level of knowledge about climate is so low. If you have a childish behavior I don’t care. It is not my problem.
I do enjoy my exchanges about climate with some people here. And it is always fun to poke the stick into the hornets nest and watch the buzzing. Your stings don’t reach me.
It is good for you guys to keep the perspective and not let yourselves get carried away by alarmism. The catastrophic narrative is going to fail spectacularly as it always does. It is better if you are not too deep into that mass hysteria.
Oh come on! Don’t go all passive aggressive on me!
LOL!! Can’t wait to meet the young lady who calls herself the ‘Troll Slayer’, she has a PhD in nuclear physics and a black belt in judo!
Maybe Dennis will start a 3rd thread called Javiervillie or ‘discuss alternate reality with climate denier sock puppets’. His phd obviously didn’t come with a volume button. It might be nice if he had is own thread to crawl around in.
be nice to have her join in here but I guess she has her time cut out already.
NAOM
A circadian rhythm is a roughly 24 hour cycle in the physiological processes of living beings,
C’mon, Survivalist, ya know, the whole ‘Gaia’ living earth thing, eh?
Of course our MOTHER earth is a living, breathing being, even though she is made mostly of rocks. You aren’t discriminating against rocks now, are you? So of course she has circadian rhythms… she even has 17 year cicadian rythyms. There are more things in heaven and Earth, Survivalist, than are dreamt of in your science.
Hey, just because some of the people posting here lately are somewhat dumber than rocks doesn’t mean that you have to be rude and tell them that to their faces, by suggesting they got an F in Fysics.
“dumber than rocks” Don’t knock rocks. Earth tide is the displacement of the Earth’s surface caused by gravity of the Moon and Sun. Its main component has meter-level amplitude at periods of 12-ish hours. 🙂
And if gravity (etc.) is (are) part of the mechanism of the ‘absolute infinite consciousness’ of the universe (of which we are its cute little self-similar fractal buds [waves] Hi, buds! ^u^), then rocks, and whatever else, are part of it… and the ideas of living and non-living sort of dissolve and, at once, are and aren’t, etc..
Operation, Dental Stalagfill
Hey, I have a serious question for you Doug (‘phonetic’ past-tense for ‘dig’, incidentally, so kind of appropriate for someone who has practiced geology, yes?) or whoever wants to take a stab(/fill):
If one finely-ground a hard mineral or material, like teeth, would it then be possible to completely dissolve it in some kind of solution whereby, when electricity was passed through it, the dissolved material could precipitate fast and good enough on the surface of an intact tooth, or teeth, in one’s mouth, rather like, perhaps, how cave stalagmites form?
Could we create some kind of setup for this to happen, like a surface-electrified 3D mold container or cap for a tooth or teeth– let’s say, a 3D print– of the desired replacement of the missing top surfaces that had succumbed over time to cavities and general wear and tear?
Would this make any sense and, if so, more sense over current dental tech and, if so, if we could get this to work, how long would one have to sleep and/or walk around with electrified teeth? How many layers of mineral precipitate can form on surfaces over how much time? Would electricity even be the best bet to facilitate this process? If not, what else?
Well you could always program (dental) plaque to leave deposits dental enamel which is (I think) mainly hydroxyapatite which is (I suppose) much like the common mineral apatite. But why stop there, you could just program plaque to deposit gold: if the process is too slow (like millions of years) you might decide to go with stainless steel; I remember meeting girls in Siberia who had stainless steel fillings. I guess you realize by now I don’t have the slightest idea what the fuck I’m talking about. Cheers, Dig — because I’m still alive 🙂
LOL
Are you still digging though, aside from gardening?
I still dig single malt, pretty girls & … & …, well, that’s pretty much it.
Yes of course, classics that don’t seem to lose their sheen. I’m a big fan of Russian women, as well as the language.
Speaking of which, how were the Siberian girls, including the ones with the stainless steel fillings? And, while I’m at it, how does a stainless steel filling get filled (unless it is as a near-whole tooth, screwed into the bottom part of the old tooth)?
What is the best single malt in your opinion, BTW?
If one finely-ground a hard mineral or material, like teeth, would it then be possible to completely dissolve it in some kind of solution whereby, when electricity was passed through it, the dissolved material could precipitate fast and good enough on the surface of an intact tooth, or teeth, in one’s mouth, rather like, perhaps, how cave stalagmites form?
Yikes! Instead of trying to electroplate my teeth, since going to a dentist is usually a rather unpleasant experience as it is, I think I’d much rather go with something like this…
Tissue regeneration: Researchers create gel that regrows tooth enamel, eliminates pain associated with tooth decay
November 23, 2015
Posted by DentistryIQ Editors
Researchers say tooth gel will regrow enamel and cover painful blemishes.
tissue regeneration – newly formed enamelDual discoveries in tissue regeneration at the University of Southern California propose a promising method to regrow nonliving hard tissue, lessening or even eliminating pain associated with tooth decay, which the National Institutes of Health calls the most prevalent chronic disease.
ADDITIONAL READING | Periodontal regeneration: Back to the future
Janet Moradian-Oldak, a dentistry professor at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC, has investigated methods to regrow tooth enamel for the past two decades. The process is especially tricky because unlike bone, mature enamel cannot rejuvenate. Tooth enamel is a nonliving tissue.
Or else just go full monthy and regenerate whole teeth from stem cells.
Pam Yelick, G89, a professor of orthodontics and director of the division of craniofacial and molecular genetics, and her colleagues are developing ways to grow healthy new teeth and bone from dental stem cells—a type of “universal cell” that can morph into many different types of oral tissue. After harvesting the stem cells from healthy adult tooth pulp, Yelick’s team isolates them in the lab and gradually coaxes them into forming new tooth buds, the tiny clusters of soft tissue that eventually grow into a mature tooth.
Assorted Climate Denialists Mysteriously Sign Up For Bleeding-Edge Dental-Electroplating Research In Exchange For Unspecified Sums From Government-Sponsored Private Donors
Inquiries regarding the sums’ amounts; the validity of the research; and their connections with climate remain unanswered at this time.
I figured that you’d come up with somethings like those, and did think of 3D printing a tooth from solution too.
But I thought to give Dig, you and company first dibs before looking into it myself.
I thought even Javier with some apparent understanding in, what is it, molecular biology(?), might chime in as well. But I guess he’s got his hands full with (and may only be funded for) climate and the interpersonal comedic routines I’ve been noticing of late on here.
It’s amusing, but of course it’s also not amusing at all… But perhaps all good comedy is, paradoxically, variously underpinned by the latter, ay?
Thanks and I’ll check the links out a little later.
Speaking of the paradox of comedy, your ‘Yikes!’ was a nice touch, BTW, and I’m tempted to concur… So I guess it’s safe to assume that you and maybe most people won’t be signing up as guinea pigs for that kind of research anytime soon…
So I guess it’s safe to assume that you and maybe most people won’t be signing up as guinea pigs in that kind of research anytime soon…
As a commercial diver I had to occasionally do arc welding and cutting underwater. Especially in salt water, that was enough to make my fillings conduct all the electricity I’ll ever want in my mouth… so definitely NO THANKS!
No! No! No! The last thing I would ever do is knock rocks! LOL!
If something is gneiss, I’d never take it for granite 😉
Well-done, Sir!
Yeah, pay more attention in your chemistry class too.
NAOM
ever since the left got histerical over climate change i’ve been dumping my used motor oil right down the storm drain. screw them.
Good idea.
Did you know that petroleum literally means rock oil? Returning the oil to its original home is nourishing to the earth, and the metal bits are healthy, too!
To work best, you need to be in the proper geological setting. The areas of South Florida closest to sea level are the most deficient in petroleum nutrients. You should move there, and teach all your new neighbors the benefits of natural rock oil for the earth.
And teach the kids, too! They can enjoy the benefits for many years, centuries, and even millennia!
To work best, you need to be in the proper geological setting. The areas of South Florida closest to sea level are the most deficient in petroleum nutrients. You should move there, and teach all your new neighbors the benefits of natural rock oil for the earth.
Yo, wehappyfew, that would only work if he changes his handle to Señor Razler and learns Spanish or Creole and gets a deep tan. Otherwise the locals will think he’s an Immigration officer and won’t talk to him…
I think this important video that Doug introduced above got lost in the village attack.
So here it is again. Farewell to Arctic Ice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUsHfkAiWsY
Enjoy and understand.
Lol village attack. That’s a good one.
Yeah, the people in general and especially our political and global economic leaders who are very much still beholden to the notion of economic growth don’t seem to want to understand that the current system only benefits a very tiny minority of very wealthy individuals. There is a cultural and ideological war underway between the old way of doing things, exemplified by groups such as Koch Industries led by people who are interested in holding on to power.
It is no coincidence that the US government is now under almost complete control of these forces. How did we get to the point that our current ‘President’ elect is openly refuting, what every one of our intelligence agencies is telling us, that our election process was influenced and manipulated by the Russians. He has appointed Rex Tillerson who is good buddies with Putin to be our Secretary of State? really?! WTF?! I won’t even mention all the climate change deniers in congress and his other political appointees to the head the EPA and that department I can’t remember the name of…
The massive attack of the climate change denialists who have descended on this very discussion site is but another example of the forces at play. Make no mistake, these are the paid lackeys of very powerful people who are not happy with ideas that put their control and sources of income at risk. They are not interested in the truth.
I’m not sure if anyone here has watched a video I have already posted a few times of a talk by Douglas Rushkoff, American media theorist:
His talk is mostly about the digital economy but the most important take away in my view is about the underlying operating system that our economy is running on today.
When it was designed, who designed it, why they designed it the way they did, and what that means for they way the world works today.
There are many disruptions happening all around us right now not the least of which is one that will create a massive reset of the global economic operating system. I think the silver lining in Trump’s presidency will be the glaring light that will be focused on all the flaws and injustices of the current system. Maybe the people will finally wake up and really the drain the swamp and fight back against these entrenched interests which are contrary to their own.
Side note: this constant attempt to frame climate change discussions as left or right, conservative or liberal, Democrat and Republican is just standard incitement of us against them. It serves their purposes only and is a tried and true propaganda tool.
Cheers!
America in four years.
Only if we keep doing, what we are doing, the way we are doing it…
It could look more like Utrecht with a distributed clean energy grid.
.
You have not seen the new regime in action yet. I heard several of them talking on NPR and had to turn it off.
Oh yes I have! Their trolls are right here on this site knocking on the door already.
Fortunately no one here takes them (him) seriously; unfortunately they (he) take up (waste) a lot of space.
Hey Fred! You know what I would find deeply satisfying, if it weren’t for the likelihood that there would be huge amounts of collateral damage that would adversely affect a huge amount of people, including yours truly?
A scenario where, as soon as the president elect and his goons have an early major success story in their crusade against science, a major piece of global warming doo doo hits the fan and splatters all over him, his cabinet and the contrarian army!
You know, something like an ice free arctic, ushering some really freakish weather and blowing away temperature or drought or flooding or sea level rise or any combination of records. Icing on the cake would be a set of results that thoroughly contradict the assurances of our resident contrarian that warming is not happening, arctic ice is not disappearing but, in fact growing, glaciers are not retreating and the like.
Something that would cause the whole bunch of them to just have to STFU, for a while at worst and forever at best. Alas, as I said before, such an occurrence would likely be very bad news for a huge portion of the biosphere, in which event, me and my smugness might end up being very short lived.
I wish there was some way the contrarians man made global warming could be proven wrong, even in the twisted minds of the most vehement global warming deniers, without a doubt, before things getting FUBAR.
edit in bold following Doug’s reply.
“I wish there was some way the contrarians could be proven wrong without things getting FUBAR.”
Contrarians HAVE already been proven wrong; the problem is they’ll prolong BAU and make the disaster worse than it has to be — fucked up beyond all recognition/ repair/ reason/ redemption.
Sorry Doug, I sometimes forget that this denial thing is an extreme right wing, largely US (and apparently Spanish) phenomenon. Living on an island slightly less the 500 miles south southeast of the southern most tip of the mainland US, it is so “in your face” with cable news channels and other US TV content dominating the local TV experience. One can easily lose sight of the fact that, the US is not the world!
A scenario where, as soon as the president elect and his goons have an early major success story in their crusade against science, a major piece of global warming doo doo hits the fan and splatters all over him, his cabinet and the contrarian army!
Hey islandboy, I read you loud and clear!
But as you already seem to be well aware, be careful what you wish for since we could be on the verge of a number of tipping points as it is…
Giant iceberg, 5,000 square kilometers, set to calve from Larsen C Ice Shelf, Antarctica
Date:
January 6, 2017
Source:
British Antarctic Survey
Summary:
A huge iceberg looks set to break away from the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. Satellite observations from December 2016 show a growing crack in the ice shelf which suggests that an iceberg with an area of up to 5,000 square kilometers is likely to calve soon.
Don’t worry Fred, more ice will flow right down into the ocean to replace it.
GF, does that work kinda like a giant slushy toilet flush?
I don’t know Fred. Never had a giant slushy in my toilet to flush. I think it’s more like a giant, very slow, frozen flume ride.
Farewell to Arctic Ice
Arctic sea ice isn’t going anywhere any time soon. It is likely that 10 years from now there will be more sea ice in the Arctic than now, not less.
That’s reads extent, not volume, Javier.
Sesame Street, in one skit, maybe with Grover, might suggest that more melting may cause more fresh water to accumulate on the surface of the ocean, which then freezes at a higher temperature and is also less dense, so it’s more on top where it is more exposed to the cold. So I think even the kids will understand that. How about you?
Would you also understand that a warming climate would create more ice extent temporarily if more fresh water were melting? The kids might.
The skit with Grover could also have Grover sprinkle a bit of salt on Sesame Street when it is covered with ice to have it melt it to enhance the point that fresh ice is frozen, whereas salty ice melts at similar temperatures.
That said, I’m surprised that there is not more ice than your graph shows.
“Seawater is denser than both fresh water and pure water… The freezing point of seawater decreases as salt concentration increases.” ~ Wikipedia
Incidentally, did you hear that Judith Curry seems to be quitting? What do you make of that?
FWIW, I seem to recall reading, maybe even quoting it hereon, something to the effect that, when Judith is ‘confronted’, she ‘runs away’. So maybe this is in keeping with her character.
That’s reads extent, not volume, Javier.
Extent is measured, volume is modeled.
Caelan, of course I understand what you say about freshwater. Not precisely new information. Do you realize that what you describe is a negative feedback, more melting -> more sea ice, of the many that skeptics defend that exist and that essentially oppose change?
Judith Curry is free to do whatever she wants as anybody else. I think it takes courage to renounce to a tenured position, but her company is doing so well that requires more of her time. You are free to judge her or anybody else, but your judgement says more about you than about her.
“Extent is measured, volume is modeled.” ~ Javier
So what? You don’t like models now?
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)”
Judith Curry, as anybody else, as you write, is ‘free’ to do whatever she wants, but there are consequences, like there are consequences to throwing C02 into the atmosphere.
We cannot just ‘run away’ from Earth like Judith can from academe…
And maybe that’s the problem with both you and Judith.
Fukushima and, ostensibly, Venus ‘ran away’ and look what happened.
“Extent is measured, volume is modeled.” ~ Javier
The volume exists in reality, Javier, and feedbacks have their own counterfeedbacks.
It’s a cherrypicker’s paradise, though, while our real paradise continues to run away…
We don’t know what are the consequences to throwing C02 into the atmosphere. Perhaps they are mostly positive. That’s what it looks.
I don’t know but doesn’t look like Judith is running away from anything. It seems she is just moving to better things.
Our paradise might be running away. It certainly looks like that. But not from climate change.
“We don’t know what are the consequences to throwing C02 into the atmosphere. Perhaps they are mostly positive. That’s what it looks… Our paradise might be running away. It certainly looks like that. But not from climate change.” ~ Javier
^^ Well there it is right there– signed, sealed and delivered…
‘We don’t know– but mostly positive‘;
‘running away– but not with climate.’
‘No-oh, uh-uh, no-way.’…
Like car commercials, where there are no roadkills, no gridlocks, no fatal accidents, no geospacial/human-scale/community fragmentation/dislocation from car-centric development, no financial or maintenance costs, etc., just ‘the freedom of the open road’…
Like the promulgation of assorted technologies-of-the-years to the relative exclusion of how technology actually ends up playing out in the hands of humans…
Like ‘the economy’ or ‘non-negotiable lifestyles’ that ignore natural systems and/or frame them as ‘externalities’…
Like the degradation of the natural terrestrial system– oh, except climate, of course…
These are ‘selective realities’, Javier, from lost, sleep-walking members, who like it that way, of a runaway species.
Yep. September 2007 to September 2016. The 10 lowest Arctic sea ice extents on record. In a row. Probably gonna start going back up hard and fast real soon. Lol. What a troll.
Speaking of dumbing it down for Javier; Sesame Street was cool but what about grade 9 science? It seems to me that as the Arctic ice melts the ratio of its surface area to its volume will play a role. The old cubed to squared ratio. As its mass decreases its surface are will increase in proportion to its volume. Thereby increasing its rate of melt.
Do you understand the difference between volume and area? Can you picture a scenario in which the volume has decreased but the area has not. If the ice got thinner but the area stayed the same then that means the volume decreased. Cube to square relationship. Grade 9 science.
Oh yeah, cherry pick an autumn month when things are getting colder. Now let us see you post 30+ years with no cherry picking.
NAOM
September is the month of minimum extent every year. You are not very versed in this ice thing, are you notanoilman?
That is exactly why you can’t cherry pick it. Increase follows minimum.
NAOM
“How rare were the unusually high temperatures around the North Pole in November–December 2016 and how were they influenced by anthropogenic climate change?
Remember Survivalist, more heat was lost to space from the Arctic in October-December 2016 that in the same period of any other previous year.
Perhaps it has to do with the severe cold spell we are having over Europe. 20 people frozen to death already in Poland, Italy and other countries. Perhaps we could do with a little more global warming. Last El Niño winter was mild and had less casualties.
What are you talking about? Did you even read the article?
Why have a fireplace when you can have one on your big screen TV with music.
Don’t have to haul wood, no ashes, the tv, while it is on, produces heat, so it does the job of a fireplace without burning wood.
Good thing to be connected to the grid, not much interruption with all of those energy sources out there gettin’ er done.
Hydro, nuclear, natural gas, fuel oil, coal make up the base for the capacity to generate and deliver electricity, a very usable formic energy, in mass quantities, hands down.
Solar and wind, not so much.
That is what is in the real world.
6,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Per square mile. That’s solar in the real world.
“For the last 35 years loses in Arctic sea ice have been compensated by gains in Antarctic sea ice so global sea ice levels have remained essentially constant.” ~ Javier
Are you color blind? Does that look ‘essentially constant’ to you? What do you think ‘essentially constant’ means? Is this gonna be one of those things again like where you call a ‘slow down’ a ‘pause’?
If you find all those coloured squigillie lines too confusing then check out this image.
Arctic sea ice loss linked to rising anthropogenic CO2 emissions
A new study published in the journal Science links Arctic sea ice loss to cumulative CO2 emissions in the atmosphere through a simple linear relationship (Figure 6). Researchers conducting the study, including NSIDC scientist Julienne Stroeve, examined this linear relationship based on observations from the satellite and pre-satellite era since 1953, and in climate models. The observed relationship is equivalent to a loss of 3 square meters (32 square feet) for every metric ton of CO2 added to the atmosphere, compared the average from all the climate models of 1.75 square meters (19 square feet). This smaller value, or lower sensitivity, from the models is consistent with findings that the models tend to be generally conservative relative to observations in regard to how fast the Arctic has been losing its summer ice cover. The observed rate of ice loss per metric ton of CO2 allows individuals to more easily grasp their contribution to Arctic sea ice loss.
There hasn’t been any melting in the Arctic since 2007, so all those tons of CO2 from 9 years have failed to do their job properly.
“those tons of CO2 from 9 years have failed to do their job properly.” ~ Javier
And why would the tons of CO2 from the 9 years be doing their job properly, as you call it, by now? Do you think the CO2 from yesterday is “doing its job” today? I assume that “doing its job” means contributing to global warming. Are you sure you have a PhD? It doesn’t seem like it. You just don’t seem very thoughtful, intelligent or well educated. You seem kinda weird.
To say what the rate of ice loss is per metric ton of CO2 is silly. The causality has not been established so they are putting the cart before the horse. A linkage has been established by other researchers between sea ice and AMO. If true the “CO2 melts the ice” hypothesis is going to be wrong.
“To say what the rate of ice loss is per metric ton of CO2 is silly” ~ Javier
What are you talking about? The article is about length of time to maximum warming after carbon dioxide emission.
“There hasn’t been any melting in the Arctic since 2007, so all those tons of CO2 from 9 years have failed to do their job properly.” ~ Javier
Why would all those tons of CO2 from the last 9 years be expected to impact September sea ice extent from 2007 to 2016? What do you mean by “do their job properly”?
9 years lol talk about cherry picking! Are you blind in your left eye?
“Through 2015, the linear rate of decline for September Arctic ice extent over the satellite record is 13.4% per decade. The nine lowest September ice extents over the satellite record have all occurred in the last nine years.”
“Through 2016, the linear rate of decline for September is 87,200 square kilometers (33,700 square miles) per year, or 13.3 percent per decade. While the absolute seasonal minimum for 2016 was tied with 2007 as second lowest, the average extent for the month of September 2016 of 4.72 million square kilometers (1.82 million square miles) ends up being fifth lowest in the satellite record, behind both 2012 and 2007.” http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Maybe Javier just isn’t familiar with the website of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre.
Yet no melting since 2007. I didn’t cherry picked that date. It is the date when Arctic sea ice stopped melting. It appears to be AMO related.
Concurrently the temperature of the North Atlantic is falling quite fast.
Since N Atlantic temps are back to 1986 levels, why is sea ice at record low extent, area, and volume today? Shouldn’t it have risen back to similar levels as in 1986?
Instead, the minimum, the maximum, the annual average… by any measure you might choose to cherrypick, sea ice is very far from 1986 levels.
This should be a clue that AMO cycles might have coincidentally matched sea ice for LESS than a full cycle period, but that maybe temperature in the area where sea ice actually forms and melts (far to the north of the AMO area) is more important… see below.
Yes exactly, Survivalist… cherrypicking, Javier’s main tool.
After an exceptionally steep drop in 2007, all short term trends that start in 2007 will be lower than the long term decline rate.
2007 and 2012 were so far below the trend that it has taken a while for subsequent years to catch up. The past two years are exactly on the linear down trend, as per the chart below.
The next time the summertime Arctic weather favors melting, the 2007 and 2012 lows will be exceeded. But there will be no long term recovery unless Arctic temperatures decline back to normal. With the polar amplification of global warming, that simply cannot happen short of a supervolcano or human intervention.
2007 and 2012 were exceptional melt years not just because they were warm, but because the weather favored export of old thick ice, and clear skies quickly formed low albedo melt ponds. Other years with similar temperatures did not reach the same extent lows at minimum… the weather (beyond just the temperatures) was unfavorable for melting.
Arctic temps, supporting the points above about years with warming vs years with warming plus exceptional melting.
(is there any way to post TWO pics in one comment?)
If your only tool is linear extrapolation you are in for a few surprises in climatology.
The melting season is also becoming shorter since 2007. This year it ended on September 11, a very early date for the last decade.
What joke, now you are getting desperate to fit your handy little file of pre-packaged denier talking points into the sea ice trend conversation.
Variations in sea ice minimum?? REALLY???
No trend, no correlation to final extent, no relationship to temperatures…see chart below
He’s a hardcore denialist; I doubt anyone here views him as anything other than a nuisance. If he had a properly functioning brain Javier would be be embarrassed by his empty comments and slink away. But sadly, he appears determined to hijack this Blog with never ending prattle.
“The melting season is also becoming shorter” ~ Javier
It seems that the date of the minimum is not the best way to determine the length of the melt season. I guess you’d have to look at when the melt season began too and not just when it ended. Then count the number of days from the beginning to the end. That would equal the length. Learn something new every day eh Doc?
NSIDC, NASA Say Arctic Melt Season Lengthening, Ocean Rapidly Warming
“Despite large regional variations in the beginning and end of the melt season, the Arctic melt season has lengthened on average by five days per decade from 1979 to 2013.
Still, weather makes the timing of the autumn freeze-up vary a lot from year to year.”
“The researchers calculated the increase in solar radiation absorbed by the ice and ocean for the period ranging from 2007 to 2011, which in some areas of the Arctic Ocean exceed 300 to 400 megajoules per square meter, or the amount of energy needed to thin the ice by an additional 3.1 to 4.2 feet (97 to 130 centimeters).”
“If air and ocean temperatures are similar, the ocean is not going to lose heat to the atmosphere as fast as it would when the differences are greater,” said Linette Boisvert, co-author of the paper and a cryospheric scientist at Goddard. “In the last years, the upper ocean heat content is much higher than it used to be, so it’s going to take a longer time to cool off and for freeze up to begin.”
Maybe he’s a cognitively impaired stroke survivor or something?
More likely a paid shill and troll.
The melting season is also becoming shorter since 2007.
The long term trend calculated by NASA, cited by Survivalist, is longer melt season by 5 days/decade.
I didn’t see any statistics in the article for the robustness of that trend, but I think we can safely assume NASA wouldn’t publish the finding if the trend were statistically insignificant.
You, on the other hand have a well known habit of drawing arrows and eyeballing trends, on top of picking every cherry in sight.
Did you do a change point analysis to see if there is a statistically justifiable change of trend in 2007 to support your claim?
TIA.
The fact is that Arctic melting season has been shortening since 2007.
This fact together with the lack of Arctic sea ice melting since 2007, the change in AMO in 2006, and the cooling of the North Atlantic since 2007 reinforces the evidence that in 2007 a change of trend took place in Arctic sea ice dynamics.
Statistics might take some time to confirm it, but astute observers like Miles et al., 2014, Wyatt & Curry, 2014, and me, have already realized the fact.
This allows us to make more sound predictions about Arctic sea ice than the extrapolating crowd.
It’s the same stupid argument as his arrows on the “ice stopped melting in 2007” game.
2007 and 2012 exceeded the long term trend. If they hadn’t and instead had been more on par then the trend would have continued on a more linear track. But because they exceeded the trend Javier states that the trend has stopped. Orwellian double-speak. More melting in 2007 and 2012 than the melting trend had predicted has, in what we shall call ‘the mind of Javier’, ended the melting trend. His 2007 to 2016 game with the arrows is ridiculous. It’s like saying a sudden burst of speed has ended the acceleration trend. It’s not possible that this dude has a PhD.
Yeah, now draw the same arrows starting 2006.
CHERRY PICKED.
NAOM
Javier Cherrypicking.
Monthly extent was lower in 2016 than 2007 for 10 months.
Monthly extent was higher in 2016 than 2007 for 2 months.
There are two cherries to pick from in that data set. You found one of them. Congratulations
Now let’s look at all the data…
Your data seems to have a problem at the starting year and ending year. You really should look at the 37 years for which we have data.
The deviations in global sea ice are always temporary and up to 2 million square kilometers. Only the Arctic oscillates by about 9 million square kilometers every year.
You really cannot make much from this year variability, don’t you?
Ok first of all its not “my data”. Whose data it is is well referenced.
The graph you posted does not include the last 12 months.
Here’s a similar presentation with recent data included. It was all available in my post above. You just have to take the time to look.
When a person says ‘the last 35 years’ most folks would take that to mean that it includes the most recent year as well the 34 that preceded it. Perhaps you have a different definition of ‘the last 35 years’ than the rest of humanity does. It would hardly be a surprise if you did. The flexible definition of words that express specific meanings does appear to be the cornerstone of you modus operandi.
What I make of this data is it demonstrates that the statement “For the last 35 years loses in Arctic sea ice have been compensated by gains in Antarctic sea ice so global sea ice levels have remained essentially constant.” is incorrect. It’s painfully obvious.
The graph you posted does not include the last 12 months.
So what. It is the graph that I had. But if your argument that global sea ice is declining with global warming rests in the last 12 months, then you have already lost your argumentation.
There is 37 years of data in that graph. If there is no clear trend in there, then global warming and global sea ice are not related.
The data clearly demonstrates that despite present global warming, global sea ice has been remarkably stable. I know it is obvious and I know it is painful to you because you would like that Arctic and Antarctic sea ice were both melting fast.
“So what. It is the graph that I had” ~ Javier
Use the one I have. It’s more useful in answering the question at hand. If you had looked at the links I posted then you would have had it too.
“But if your argument that global sea ice is declining with global warming rests in the last 12 months, then you have already lost your argumentation.” ~ Javier
I have already told you what my argument is. This is the third time now. My argument is- your statement “For the last 35 years loses in Arctic sea ice have been compensated by gains in Antarctic sea ice so global sea ice levels have remained essentially constant.” is incorrect. I know it’s hard for you to follow a simple conversation. I think I’ve summed it up and recapped it for you quite nicely. If you still don’t get it let me know.
I have already told you what my argument is. This is the third time now.
Your argument is full of air. I only care about the evidence. The evidence shows no clear trend in 37 years of measurements of global sea ice.
As you cannot dismiss that evidence, what you say is pointless.
Your graph disproves your claim. There is a clear trend in the data, but the compressed scale makes it hard to see.
Please calculate the actual trend in these data, find the statistical significance, and don’t forget to account for auto-correlation…
… then you can make claims about the trend or lack of trend in these data.
You’re not too bright are ya?
“For the last 35 years loses in Arctic sea ice have been compensated by gains in Antarctic sea ice so global sea ice levels have remained essentially constant.” ~ Javier
That statement is not true. Global sea ice levels have not remained essentially constant. Look at the most recent data in the 35 year data set. If you want to ignore that data and look like an idiot then go ahead.
Global sea ice in 1997-2000 was about the same as 2013-15. Not much of a change then, right?
Lol “not much”? I guess that depends on what you think “not much” means. How about we start using precise numbers there PhD guy. How about we use measurements instead of normative terms? What’s your PhD in, humanities?
Looking at the data for ALL months, not just cherrypicking the minimum…
Clear down trend for Arctic ice, statistically significant.
Much smaller up trend for Antarctic, not statistically significant, now falling far below all previous historical levels.
No downtrend for the Arctic since 2007 according to DMI.
If 2007 to 2012 minimums were all on the red line instead of below it would you then agree that 2007 to 2016 would have a downtrend? If minimum annual Arctic sea ice extent had been slightly greater in those years would then the downtrend be restored?
You don’t understand.
AMO is turning negative. North Atlantic is cooling. 2006-7 was the turning point.
Arctic sea ice is just reflecting that. It is not melting since then and it won’t melt until those conditions change again, maybe in a couple of decades.
I know it. Miles et al., 2014 know it. Wyatt & Curry, 2014 know it. You don’t know it. You will.
Proper statistical analysis/sampling for climate says we have to wait at least 30 years, yes?
If so, then no one ‘knows it’.
Who told you that Caelan?
Do you really think that we have to wait 30 years to know that there was a change of trend in North Atlantic temperatures in 2007?
What do you do with trends that are shorter than 30 years? Ignore them?
Why don’t you just answer the question that was posed in the comment you replied to instead of trying to tell me that I’m not aware of something? How do you know what I am and am not aware of! Do you think this strategy makes you seem smart? Why can’t you stick to the topic of a conversation without constantly changing it? Is it because you’re trying to avoid answering it?
Once again. If 2007 to 2012 minimums were all on the red line instead of below it would you then agree that 2007 to 2016 would have a downtrend? If minimum annual Arctic sea ice extent had been slightly greater in those years would then the downtrend be restored? It’s a yes or no answer.
I don’t play hypothetical games.
If the data was different I would study the data before coming to a conclusion. That is what I always do.
If Arctic sea ice had not stopped melting in 2007 and the trend had continued, I would not be defending that the Arctic sea ice had stopped melting in 2007. I just follow the evidence wherever it takes me.
Lol what a troll
“Climate is the statistics of weather, usually over a 30-year interval.” ~ Wikipedia
Granted, there is a ‘usually’ qualification.
Nevertheless, how long have we been burning fossil fuel? ~180 years? That’s a trend. There might also be some other under-30-year trends in there, some of which may counterbalance others.
Why cherry pick 2007. 2002/2003 would blow your hypothesis out of the water.
NAOM
2007 is not cherry picked. It is the year Arctic sea ice stopped melting. Nobody selected it.
2007 is not the year that Arctic ice stopped melting. It’s the first year that the Arctic ice melting greatly exceeded the downward trend line. Do you think that “the first year that the Arctic ice melting greatly exceeded the trend line” is synonymous with “the first year the Arctic ice stopped melting”? PhD indeed. You know less than an undergrad.
Cherry ripe, cherry ripe,
Ripe I cry,
Full and fair ones
Come and buy.
Cherry ripe, cherry ripe,
Ripe I cry,
Full and fair ones
Come and buy
NAOM
That looks like an overall downtrend. Am I reading that graph properly, or has Javier lost it?
Same global sea ice in 1997-2000 as in 2013-15. Not much of a trend, then.
“Same global sea ice in 1997-2000 as in 2013-15. Not much of a trend” ~ Javier
I am talking about an apparent overall downtrend over ~30 years, such that the graph seems to show, as opposed to short non-contiguous snippets of time as you highlight.
For some reason, I am suddenly reminded of the expression to the effect that some people will be dead by their own hands before they accept some things.
Janvier is alternating his comments between Arctic sea ice extent and global sea ice extent. He started up page with a graph about Arctic sea ice extent.
Now he’s talking about global sea ice extent. It’s rather difficult to conduct an intelligent conversation with a person who changed the topic every time they open their mouth. But let’s be honest. An intelligent conversation is not what Javier comes here to provide.
You found another data set to cherrypick… congratulations!
Of course the majority of the monthly charts show 2016 as the lowest. A few show a tie, and… of course… you found a few to cherrypick.
The average of all months is far lower for 2016 than 2007, as Dennis has pointed out numerous times.
Most look like this:
Who cares about May?
I thought alarmists were worried that the Arctic could become ice free during the summers soon.
May, June and July have the highest Arctic solar insolation – with 24 hour sunlight.
With May extent, in particular, hitting new lows, that means reflective ice is replaced with darker melt pools and open blue water – that is positive albedo feedback starting earlier and earlier.
Cherrypicked September minimums are useless for albedo feedback, as the sun is right on the horizon – nearly zero insolation.
That albedo feedback is not strong enough to:
– Reduce sea ice at the end of the melting season that hasn’t decreased since 2007.
– Lengthen the melting season that has been shortening since 2007.
Why should we care?
Choosing one month out of twelve is cherrypicking.
Reduced albedo increases the amount of solar energy absorbed by the Arctic Ocean. This ocean is stratified by salinity, instead of temperature (as the other oceans are). This allows the increased energy absorbed to penetrate to greater than usual depths, instead of convecting up to the surface to be radiated away.
This is a reservoir of hidden heat that survives and intensifies from year to year.
Any increase in extent for just a few years, in cherrypicked months only, is statistically insignificant…
… Or have you done a change point analysis to support your frivolous and tiresome claim of a change in trend?
“Choosing one month out of twelve is cherrypicking.”
Yeah, well. It is the way alarmists have been doing it for years when the minimum was going down.
I guess everything alarmists do becomes cherrypicking the moment skeptics do it.
A reservoir of hidden heat? Alarmists are becoming more fantasists with time. Do they really think people actually believe such things?
Global ice shows a weak trend. It bottomed in 2006-2007, and then again in 2011-2012, but has since recovered to the same levels it had in the late 90’s in the 2013-2015 period.
2016 might have been a bad year, but Special Sensor Microwave Imager and Sounder (SSMIS) on the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F-17 satellite that provides passive microwave brightness temperatures (and derived Arctic and Antarctic sea ice products) failed in April 2016, so the data for 2016 is suspect until it is confirmed that it is not affected by this problem. In any case one year doesn’t affect the overall picture.
So same global sea ice in 2013-15 as in 1997-2000 is what I would call essentially constant. Since that period includes nine of the ten warmest years on record, I would say that it is remarkable that no sea ice melting has taken place on a global scale.
Figure from:
Parkinson, C. L., & DiGirolamo, N. E. (2016). New visualizations highlight new information on the contrasting Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice trends since the late 1970s. Remote Sensing of Environment, 183, 198-204.
If your “analysis” of the long term trend consists of Cherrypicking 10 months out of the 2013-2015 period that are blue in the lower panel of your pretty chart…
… while they are surrounded by many, MANY more dark red and orange months…
… and your chart is not even up to date – the last few months being far below all previous months…
…and you never bother with actually computing a trend, or a confidence interval for that trend, or compute its statistical significance, and you haven’t even done any change point analysis to justify a change in the trend…
… it is clear you are desperate to find any shred of justification, no matter how weak, for your crumbing mental model of the climate.
Reality is coming up hard against your frail understanding of the world. Reality is winning.
Arctic sea ice is not decreasing. There will be more of it in 2017 than in 2016. You should be happy about it.
“no sea ice melting has taken place on a global scale.” ~ Javier
Tucker interviewed Judith Curry on his show on Friday. She was really blowing the lid off of what is really going on at public universities in this country regarding climate change research. It was a good discussion, and Tucker is now planning a multi-part series exploring just what we do actually know about climate change and all of what we don’t…I will watch for it coming soon.
JUDITH CURRY FULL INTERVIEW WITH TUCKER CARLSON (1/6/2017)
She sounds quite reasonable. She’s not denying anything. She’s saying there’s a lot of uncertainty and we don’t really know how much we are contributing to climate change.
That she has been so much attacked for saying something so reasonable is an indication of how politicized and unscientific climatology has become.
She has 168 peer reviewed articles, so it is not as she doesn’t know what she is talking about.
It goes back to the point I and others (such as those– who I’ve also likely quoted– doing climate science) have made some time ago, and that is that if there is any doubt– and there usually is, and lots of it– in this and any other regard, including WRT ‘energy transition’, it needs to be approached with great caution, plural input, and responsibility, etc..
This is not what happens nearly enough, however, and is in part why I mention the term, ‘escaped lab-experiment’, along with its context, elsewhere in this thread.
It’s like, “Problems? What problems? And/Or, don’t worry, be happy, and/or we’ll worry about it later, and/or we’ll keep kicking the cans down the road.”
To paraphrase Ron Patterson sometimes, this kind of thing really pisses me off.
Human specializations, such that are found in science, and that are made possible from energy surpluses from such sources as food and oil, are nevertheless their own lenses/myopias, as fabulous as they may be in their own regards.
Recall what Thomas Kuhn once said… To paraphrase…
‘It is the lens which determines what we can see.’…
Thus, in effect, our self-handicapped culture has become a little like someone with ‘special needs’– you know; the good folks that need a little help to do some things that others can do on their own?
Sure, the nihilists might suggest that that will blow open a whole lot of fine holes as ecological niches, but to what ends, such as to our own?
Javier, please read the sourcewatch link in wharf rat’s post below.
She is obviously quite deranged.
Lol in Javier’s world Judith Curry is a rock of integrity! Wadhams and Hanson? None. Not a shred. What a troll.
Wing-nut
The Right and Left Hand Tag Teams
Science is funded/supported/nurtured by what? Government? Taxes? Coercion? Vested/private/personal interests? Money? Status? Power? One, some or all of the above? Jello pudding?
If science is funded and/or its output influenced by coercive or otherwise dubious/self-defeating structures, such that all human structures may fundamentally have elements of, then what of it, of science?
Is it even science? Was it ever?
(Was America ever ‘great’? What does ‘America’ even mean?)
What does Tainter, for example, say about complexity and collapse? How complex is the ‘institution of science’ currently? Is it a backyard, basement, garage, lone endeavor?
Maybe this whole convolution with climate is one coal mine canary of cultural collapse…
Where Judith and Javier (J&J), et le reste, are mere players.
Maybe J&J are the same person. A kind of tag team.
“Georgia Tech Prof quits over craziness in climate science”
Climate science isn’t quite as crazy today. She’s been suffering from PTSD ever since the Koch Bros-funded Berkeley Earth study she was part of came up with findings the exact opposite of what she knew they would find….
Judith A. Curry is chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She runs a climate blog and has been invited by Republicans on several occasions to testify at climate hearings about uncertainties in climate understanding and predictions. Climate scientists criticize her uncertainty-focused climate outreach communication for containing elementary mistakes and inflammatory assertions unsupported by evidence. Curry is a regular at Anthony Watts’ denier blog, as well as Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit, another denier site. She has further embarrassed herself (and her university) by using refuted denier talking points and defending the Wegman Report, eventually admitting she hadn’t even read it in the first place.[1]
Hillary lost the election because the Russians hacked the election!
A great big lie.
Hillary lost because the Affordable Care Act is not affordable and is hardly care. People want change, they want the ACA gone for good.
She lost the election because the Democrats are a bunch of crybullies who never stop complaining about the stupid voters who know nothing about who to vote for.
The Democrats lost because they don’t want to govern, they want to rule.
The Democrats can get lost. Good riddance to a bunch of losers who will never learn.
They’re in the dustbin of history now, it is over for them. You can thank the voters of America for rejecting the Democrats and their crazy policies.
Too bad the Republicans are still here. Good riddance to them too when they are finally gone for good.
Both parties are obsolete, do not represent anybody anymore.
What a relief it will be when they are dead and gone.
Both parties are still doing their best to represent the people who pay their respective bills.
It WOULD be really great if both parties could somehow experience a rebirth as more accountable and transparent organizations.
Nature abhors a vacuum, when men cease to believe in God, they do not henceforth believe in NOTHING.
It’s good to be careful about what you wish for, because you may actually get it.
It’s hard to say what might happen if the people of this country were to reject both parties, but if that scenario comes to pass, one things for sure. Times will be INTERESTING sure enough.
My personal opinion is that the D party is experiencing some deep and painful soul searching for now, and that the result of this soul searching will be a turn back towards more traditional D party politics and away from the politics of globalism , etc. The D’s will be able to win handily in my opinion if they manage this change of course well.
Let’s not forget that the large majority of old folks in this country are dependent on government checks, and that every year millions more boomers morph from tax payers to tax eaters, as they start collecting their federal bennies.
Let’s not forget that in a hell of a lot of small towns, and rural areas, that government employees constitute the biggest single block of wage earners, and that they control the political balance of power in countless larger towns and probably in most fair sized to large cities as well.
The D party isn’t in any danger of rolling over and dying quietly, although it lost the recent barfight, badly , and will be licking it’s wounds for a while. There’s plenty of reason to expect the D party to come back strong within the easily foreseeable future, assuming the people who will be running it remember this last past election, and act like coaches, and put the best the party has to offer on the playing field, instead of acting like parents, and putting their own kid out there, regardless of the kid’s ability to play and win.
It’s harder for me to say where the R party is headed, long term. If the D party insists on keeping it’s head buried, in terms of the culture war, the R’s will probably continue to win elections from dog catcher to president for a long time yet.
But in the long run, it’s going to become obvious to the men and women on the street that the D party is right about the environment, right about renewable energy, right about safety nets, and so forth.
These are comforting thoughts that lead to reasonable expectations of a return to power by the D party, but there’s a MAJOR problem or obstacle with this line of reasoning.
The problem is that the large majority of people tend to vote their perceived best SHORT TERM to medium term interests. A man truly anxious , or scared , about his employment prospects is very apt to vote R, in times like these, and people who are disgusted with the overall cultural agenda the D party has been pushing for all it’s worth in recent years will continue to vote against the D’s on that basis alone.
The D’s can win by being more realistic about WHO they take for granted. The hard core identity politics voter is IN the Democratic Party bag, and will stay there, without a doubt. It’s safe for the party to take this voter for granted, to a substantial extent, because while he may grumble, the odds are very good that he will still show up and vote the D ticket. The odds of such a voter voting R are so small it’s safe to totally ignore the very idea.
BUT it is not at ALL safe for the D party to take working class people as a group, as a voting block, for granted.That mistake put Trump, who was smart enough to capitalize on it, in the White House as prez elect.
That’s a mistake that the D party will hopefully avoid making again.
Trump is so awful that even Clinton would have beaten him, if she had avoided that mistake.
Of course she was awful herself, in terms of public trust, charisma, flip flopping, arrogance, etc.
Now I’m going to indulge myself and just go ahead and post some stuff NOW,instead of later, to see what sort of response HB can come up with in reply.
Here are a couple of good items, one being part of the Judicial Watch press release , concerning the reversal of a recent court decision in favor of Clinton, which will likely result in even more stink trailing after her.
xxxx
(Washington DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding today’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a case that would require Secretary of State John Kerry to seek the help of the attorney general in recovering additional Hillary Clinton emails:
The courts seem to be fed up with the Obama administration’s refusal to enforce the rule of law on the Clinton emails. Today’s appeals court ruling rejects the Obama State Department’s excuses justifying its failure to ask the attorney general, as the law requires, to pursue the recovery of the Clinton emails. This ruling means that the Trump Justice Department will have to decide if it wants to finally enforce the rule of law and try to retrieve all the emails Clinton and her aides unlawfully took with them when they left the State Department.
The appellate ruling reverses a decision in which the District Court declared “moot” a Judicial Watch’s lawsuit challenging the failure of Secretary of State John Kerry to comply with the Federal Records Act (FRA) in seeking to recover the emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other high level State Department officials who used non-“state.gov” email accounts to conduct official business (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. John F. Kerry (No. 16-5015)). According to the FRA, if an agency head becomes aware of “any actual, impending, or threatened unlawful removal . . . or destruction of [agency] records,” he or she “shall notify the Archivist . . . and with the assistance of the Archivist shall initiate action through the Attorney General for the recovery of [those] records.”
An appellate panel found:
Appellants sought the only relief provided by the Federal Records Act—an enforcement action through the Attorney General. But nothing the Department did (either before or after those complaints were filed) gave appellants what they wanted. Instead of proceeding through the Attorney General, the Department asked the former Secretary to return her emails voluntarily and similarly requested that the FBI share any records it obtained. Even though those efforts bore some fruit, the Department has not explained why shaking the tree harder—e.g., by following the statutory mandate to seek action by the Attorney General—might not bear more still. It is therefore abundantly clear that, in terms of assuring government recovery of emails, appellants have not “been given everything [they] asked for.” Absent a showing that the requested enforcement action could not shake loose a few more emails, the case is not moot.
In May 2015 Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after the State Department failed to take action following a letter to Kerry “notifying him of the unlawful removal of the Clinton emails and requesting that he initiate enforcement action pursuant to the FRA,” including working through the Attorney General to recover the emails. Judicial Watch’s lawsuit subsequently was consolidated with a later lawsuit by Cause of Action Institute. This ruling reverses a January 2016 decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissing the case and remands it.
What do you have in the way of personal insults to offer in reply , HB? It’s perfectly obvious you are reduced to calling me names, which run off me like water off a duck’s back. My old hide is thick and leathery. 😉
Both parties are obsolete, do not represent anybody anymore.
Don’t worry buddy we’ll have two brand new parties soon enough.
They will be called Remocrats and Depublicans!
If you want a different system, you’ve got to support changes in campaign funding laws.
It has gotten so expensive to run for office that politicians are always seeking money. The rich and the corporations have more of it so their wishes tend to carry more political weight.
What I am counting on is that Silicon Valley money will start to replace old industry money and Silicon Valley values are at least closer to mine than the conservative politicians. They support science and technology, immigration, renewable energy, etc.
Dere vill only be one party, Comrade. Da Trumpeteers.
In Soviet America, the government, elects you!
Interesting paper on the acceleration of tributary glaciers when buttressing ice shelves break away.
Changes in ice-shelf buttressing following the collapse of Larsen A
Ice Shelf, Antarctica, and the resulting impact on tributaries
ABSTRACT. The dominant mass-loss process on the Antarctic Peninsula has been ice-shelf collapse, including the Larsen A Ice Shelf in early 1995. Following this collapse, there was rapid speed up and thinning of its tributary glaciers. We model the impact of this ice-shelf collapse on upstream tributaries, and
compare with observations using new datasets of surface velocity and ice thickness. Using a two-horizontal-
dimension shallow shelf approximation model, we are able to replicate the observed large increase
in surface velocity that occurred within Drygalski Glacier, Antarctic Peninsula. The model
results show an instantaneous twofold increase in flux across the grounding line, caused solely from
the reduction in backstress through ice shelf removal. This demonstrates the importance of ice-shelf buttressing for flow upstream of the grounding line and highlights the need to explicitly include lateral stresses when modelling real-world settings. We hypothesise that further increases in velocity and flux
observed since the ice-shelf collapse result from transient mass redistribution effects. Reproducing
these effects poses the next, more stringent test of glacier and ice-sheet modeling studies.
For those interested in the effects of climate change in their region (USA), here is the National Climate Assessment Report. http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/
Fortunately living in Florida, I have nothing to worry about…
So I dedicate this song to everyone participating in this thread! I suggest we learn the lyrics so we can all join hands and sing it together.
You got it Fred, nothing to worry about. Just a little experiment and we got most of the world to participate. Saved us a ton of funding, the people are so generous, burning all that stuff to make the experiment work! What could go wrong, it’s only parts per million and parts per billion?
By the way, the control planet is Venus and the lower boundary is Mars.
I still can’t figure out why people want to go to Mars, Venus is so much more earthlike with a real atmosphere, similar gravity and so nice and warm. I guess the visibility is usually better on Mars, still it’s cold there. I think it’s probably because of all those books and movies about Mars.
Repeat after me, there are no canals on Mars.
Nice! And in the related videos column on the right:
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)”
It is alleged you are either confused or dishonest. Have you nothing to say to that?
Let’s all take a vote. Who thinks Javier should be banned because he’s an idiot?
Maybe instead of banning him, we should award him a trophy for the best parody of a science and climate change denier in the history of the internet. The man is pure comedy gold! He is a satirist extraordinaire, an absolute master in the art of Poe! I give him five thumbs up for his unparalleled performance, it is beyond brilliant! His consistently precise punch line delivery can only be the result of a life long pursuit of comedic excellence! I salute him. He is the Rodney Dangerfield of climate science stand up! Bravo!
Lol yeah you have a point. It’s like when you grab someone’s hand and smack them with it. “What are you doing? Don’t hit yourself. Why are you hitting yourself? What’s wrong with you?” He is one of the more entertaining sock puppets that’s for sure. Pretending to have a PhD is the icing on the cake!
You should refrain from constantly insulting me. It reflects poorly on you and on the blog.
I’m not constantly insulting you. I guess I should check though and ask, what do you think the word ‘constantly’ means?
“You are very easy to ignore, Survivalist” ~ Javier
And yet here you are again. Unable to do it. Maybe you don’t know what the word ‘ignore’ means. Lol what a troll.
OFM had a question a while back about the energy needed to melt sea ice (and the land based ice sheets, too? … I don’t remember)…
… anyway, PIOMAS has a nice little summary of the answer for SEA ICE, at least, on their page:
“It takes energy to melt sea ice. How much energy? The energy required to melt the 16,400 Km^3 of ice that are lost every year (1979-2010 average) from April to September as part of the natural annual cycle is about 5 x 10^21 Joules. For comparison, the U.S. Energy consumption for 2009 (www.eia.gov/totalenergy) was about 1 x 10^20 J. So it takes about the 50 times the annual U.S. energy consumption to melt this much ice every year. This energy comes from the change in the distribution of solar radiation as the earth rotates around the sun.
To melt the additional 280 km^3 of sea ice, the amount we have have been losing on an annual basis based on PIOMAS calculations, it takes roughly 8.6 x 10^19 J or 86% of U.S. energy consumption.
However, when spread over the area covered by Arctic sea ice, the additional energy required to melt this much sea ice is actually quite small. It corresponds to about 0.4 Wm^-2 . That’s like leaving a very small and dim flashlight bulb continuously burning on every square meter of ice. Tracking down such a small difference in energy is very difficult, and underscores why we need to look at longer time series and consider the uncertainties in our measurements and calculations.”
0.4 Watts/m^2 is less than the average global energy imbalance due to GHGs. Most of that extra energy is currently going into the ocean, but there’s plenty around for melting, too.
“December 2016 sea ice volume was 11,200 km3 , nearly 1000 km3 below the previous record for December in 2012.”
“2016 December volume was 52% below the maximum December ice volume in 1979, 39% below the 1979-2015 mean, and about 1.3 standard deviations below the long term trend line.”
The past 24 hours of commenting activity on this thread has actually gotten me interested in getting into the mindset of you climate change extremists/crusaders. Do you guys truly believe that posting all these links and pieces of information about climate change is actually accomplishing anything worthwhile?
From the way I currently see things, most of the leading posts by the climate change “experts” here appear intended to bait Javier into yet another argumentative merry-go-round where everybody involved just winds up looking like an idiot. Also, speaking of being “experts” in climate change, why do most of you hide behind nicknames instead of using your real name? Finally, given the amount of time some of you people seem to spend here, I suggest doing something that’s a bit healthier. Get outside, go for a walk, read a book. Why spend hours arguing just for the sake of arguing?
How, exactly, is this kind of response supposed to help your cause?
What, exactly, makes you think I want help?
I didn’t ask you if you wanted help. Though quite honestly, I’m seeing signs of mental illness in both you and Javier and think you both need help. You two have been arguing about nonsense for hours at a time for days at a time. About a third of the nearly 700 posts (at present) in this thread have come from you two!
“How, exactly, is this kind of response supposed to help your cause?”
What makes you think I want help for a cause? And just what do you think my cause is?
“You two have been arguing about nonsense for hours at a time for days at a time. About a third of the nearly 700 posts (at present) in this thread have come from you two!”
So what? Why do you care what me and Javier do?
The non-petroleum threads were a good place to discuss/observe politics. I also enjoyed reading from people like Oldfarmermac, R Walter, or Boomer II, even if I didn’t always agree with them. But now you and Javier have come in, and it’s like you’ve thrown a bunch of trash all over the place.
Yep. All Javier all the time. He must get paid by the hour. Maybe you need a ‘safe space’.
I could really do without all the climate change discussions here (both pro and con). There are other places I can go for that.
What I come here for is primarily info on the decline rates for LTO. I want to know the future of drilling in these areas.
I’m also interested in the overall economics of energy, and I find what is posted here of interest, though I know there are a lot of websites covering renewables, so I can find much of that information elsewhere.
But this forum has been my best source to know what is happening with well decline rates, so I never like to see that info buried under lots of other posts.
I suppose it does help to have a separate non-petroleum post to catch all the climate related discussions, but it has definitely gotten overwhelming recently. I skim over much of it, but I did happen to see this comment and my name included, so I thought I would weigh in.
Maybe Javier is a new type of troll, trained to try and fit in by agreeing with viewpoints that are generally agreed by any group he participates in, as long as those view points are not concerned with the target subject of his handlers, global warming. His dogged determination to counter any suggestions that global warming is a threat leave me no choice to conclude that he is a man on a mission, possibly being paid. Nobody would persist, as he has, in a forum where he is clearly not convincing a single member to change their mind, unless his target audience is not the members of the forum but those who might visit and find the posts alarming. Gotta soothe the fears. Can’t have the peons getting worried about global warming!
Seems to me to be a strategy straight out of the Koch brothers play-book!
That’s a very astute observation. Javier seems to seek acceptance through energy related comments but seeks conflict through climate science related comments. Once in a conflict he also likes to play the victim card. I’m convinced he’s a sock puppet aka a paid troll.
I suggested to him that if 2007 to 2012 minimums were closer to the red lines, i.e. had a greater annual sea ice minimum, then the downward trend would continue along the red line. But because the minimum sea ice extent exceeded the trend created by the red line he claims “it has stopped melting since 2007”. So, a greater annual sea ice minimum would appear to restore the downward trend, but, in what we shall refer to as the mind of Javier, melting that exceeds the downward trend ends the downward trend. It’s Orwellian double-speak i.e. more ice area at the 2007 to 2012 minimum restores the downward trend. Less ice and the downward trend disappears. I tried asking him a question in that thread to state as such but, after trying to change the conversation to AMO, Javier then said “I don’t play hypothetical games”. He clings varaciously to some extremely rediculous arguments. I believe that he is not as well educated as he claims to be.
“Nobody would persist, as he has, in a forum where he is clearly not convincing a single member to change their mind, unless his target audience is not the members of the forum but those who might visit and find the posts alarming.”
Exactly! Trademark of a troll.
Actually has anyone noticed that once Javier responds to a comment either no one else comments (discussion silenced), or people waste a lot fo time refuting his claims (discussion derailed).
I think he has succeeded in chilling and ending discussion of the topic, which is the one of the major goals of a climate denier troll.
Casting doubt and confusing the issue is very effective in the propaganda war against humanity.
Hey, none of us are going to win any points by being nice or polite or providing facts! This is all about obfuscation, misinformation and casting of doubt.
Soooo!
Here’s some more great Music by Pig With The Face Of A Boy!
Climate Change Denier
He talks about solar cycles
Says they’ll never make him pay
He says an Exon-funded study says
That everything’s okay
He loves to show you the emails
See how the liberals conspire
He’s a middle-class, middle-brow, middle-weight, middle-aged Climate change denier.
Enjoy! 🙂
“or people waste a lot fo time refuting his claims (discussion derailed).”
Guilty as charged lol
“Maybe Javier is a new type of troll, trained to try and fit in by agreeing with viewpoints that are generally agreed by any group he participates in, as long as those view points are not concerned with the target subject of his handlers, global warming.”
Island boy has an adult sized brain, never mind his kid sized handle. As far as internet trolling goes, he’s probably right, Javier is displaying all the signs of a SOPHISTICATED troll.
This sort of sophistication displayed in such consistent fashion day in and day out, on the part of one individual, and posted on a single web site, does seem to be a new development, but the practice is as old as history.
At one time I put a great deal of time into reading everything I could find about how the old Russian commies operated, back in the days of the USSR.
They leveraged their limited reserves of hard currency this way very effectively indeed, by supporting a large number of small organizations that usually had relatively few members and hardly any power at all, except that the members thereof could and did do just as Island Boy suggests Javier is doing today, agreeing on some key points, by way of camouflage, but disagreeing on one or more major point, thereby discrediting the target or enemy organization, slowing the progress of the enemy’s work on a worthwhile goal, etc.
In a lot of cases, the large majority of the members of these organizations didn’t even realize they were being played like a violin. So long as they created controversy, and diverted ENERGY and ATTENTION away from any activities that strengthened the target or enemy, thus improving the relative balance of power between the target and the USSR, the commies earned a big overall return on their very minimal investment.
I haven’t posted anything for a long time indicating I know much about the history of Nazi Germany, because there always seems to be somebody around eager to call ME a nazi. But the only way to I could ever truly understand how and why Hitler came to power was to read some thick books written by serious historians , books about Hitler, and his political movement. I read them, and more than a little about the history of the Russian commie era as well. China was not yet a major player on the world stage, so I didn’t get very deep into modern Chinese history. Maybe someday I will have the leisure and inclination to do so.
I no longer have these books handy, and can’t quote them, but it’s WELL worth noting that IF some wealthy individuals had not supplied Hitler and his cronies with relatively modest sums of money at various times when he was still only a local rabble rouser, unknown to the larger public, and not yet well known even to the people who would later form the core of the nazi movement, he most likely would have died without having earned more than a footnote or two in history. He used those critical early donations to spread the word,and attract new followers, by establishing or buying a newspaper, etc, henceforth devoted to telling it HIS way.
Later on, he won the support of the long established and very powerful families that owned some of the biggest and most important German industries. These rich folks of course thought that they could use Hitler and his movement with impunity, but he fooled the shit out of them, and wound up using THEM, the end result being that more than a few of them lost their very lives, and most of them lost their vast fortunes, when he started and lost WWII.
I could go on to draw parallels between that period in German history, and possible developments in Yankee history over the next few years, but I leave that task as homework for those with a yen to express their worries about , and contempt for, Trump and his Trumpster buddies and friends and unwitting foot soldiers.
I’m worried myself, but there are plenty of other forum members who can do as well or better than I can in fleshing out these worries. And while I am contemptuous of Trump himself, and his better educated, better informed supporters, I have no contempt for his foot soldiers, the ordinary working people who voted their convictions and fears, having arrived at their decision using such data as they had available to them.
If Einstein had been born to poor illiterate peasant parents, in a community where nearly everybody was illiterate, he most likely would have died illiterate himself. We don’t CHOOSE the circumstances into which we are born, and while I believe as much as anybody in personal initiative and the work ethic, there is still a LOT of truth in such sayings as “It takes a village”, lol.
Except for the fact that I happened to go to a very decent but still backwoods school, and came along at a time when standardized testing was just being implemented, etc, and did well on these tests, and consequently was offered the opportunity to be the first in my known extended family to go off to university, I would have probably become a successful local tradesman, or maybe even a preacher, instead of a follower of Darwin and other such heretics. 😉
Now having said ALL this, it’s altogether possible that Javier is dead serious, that he is not a troll. I expect most of us have met at least one or two people who were well educated within some narrow specialty, but clueless in respect to the bigger picture.
I don’t have clue to go on, as to his competence within his specialty, but his disregard for the precautionary principle , and for the usual norms involved in respect to taking into account the A B C’s of other fields indicates to me that he is EITHER woefully ill informed in terms of understanding the BIG picture, OR ELSE that he is a troll.
We all go thru life on a day to day basis relying on the MEASURED judgements, the PROFESSIONAL opinions, of people to whom we necessarily trust our affairs. Sometimes such a person can tell us with absolute certainty what will happen in the event we pursue a certain course of action. At other times, they can only say that the odds are so and so that doing certain things will produce particular results.
In terms understandable to SOME laymen at least, by way of example, I can tell the owner of an automobile that if his water pump is leaking, and he continues to drive it without adding coolant as fast as it leaks out, he WILL be needing some VERY expensive engine repairs, or a new engine. There is absolutely no question about it, running an auto engine dry or low enough of coolant for any length of time, say more than five to thirty minutes INEVITABLY results in severe damage.
If he tells me he is planning on trading his car in next year, and wants to skip the next couple of scheduled oil changes to save a few bucks, I can tell him that he will PROBABLY get away with doing so, but he might also wind up paying for some major engine work.
It’s perfectly reasonable to conclude that any scientist of any stripe, or any engineer, etc, who advises you to ignore the precautionary principle, when countless other professionals in his same or related lines of work , scientists who mostly do NOT have any skin in the game, advises you that it is ok to ignore the precautionary principle……….. Well to say the least, you should ignore him in terms of his ADVICE , as a general rule, although some of what he has to say may be well worth serious consideration, as for instance his remarks about paying less attention to warming, and more to on the ground conservation efforts.
Whether he should be banned from a particular forum is another question altogether. My personal take is that I enjoy watching the dog fight, and that I have learned a good bit about climate science as a result of reading these Javier versus every body else exchanges. 😉
And for what it is worth, I don’t think there is any real reason to worry about any random new reader of this forum being taken in by Javier, or anybody else who might be trolling.
Anybody who follows such a forum as this one obviously has a serious interest in the topics we discuss here, and thus will read quite a lot of the articles and comments posted by the members.
Such a person will almost inevitably conclude that Dennis, Fred, Doug, and other like minded members are in the right, and that Javier is in the wrong.
As the lawyers say , the (vast) preponderance of the evidence indicates that Javier is the kid out of step , and that the rest of the band is marching to the music. 😉
There’s no better way to learn about and come to appreciate a complex subject that to read such exchanges, except to pursue formal studies, and most people have neither the opportunity nor the inclination to do so.
In the case of the man on the street who does NOT read and follow the site, and the debates and comments, nothing is gained, or lost, by banning Javier. The general public is not even aware that this forum EXISTS.
I don’t care either way, if he stays, or goes.
My guess , for what it’s worth , is that Dennis and Ron are very reluctant to ban him due to their strong personal commitment to maintaining free and open access.
Hi islandboy. Maybe Javier is a new type of troll, trained to try and fit in by agreeing with viewpoints that are generally agreed by any group he participates in, as long as those view points are not concerned with the target subject of his handlers, global warming. His dogged determination to counter any suggestions that global warming is a threat leave me no choice to conclude that he is a man on a mission, possibly being paid.
The percentage of the thread that is devoted to Javier is ludicrous.
The question is not whether he is being paid, but whether Dennis will finally notice that his behaviour is not consistent with that of most users (OFM puts in as many words, it seems, but they are in big chunks you can ignore. 🙂 )
This little sub-thread shows the level of frustration of the usual posters.
If Dennis won’t do something, we can.
If every Javier comment in the next main post (which must be coming soon) was met with the same non-response from several of the usual posters- not funny, not snarky, just dismissive- we would make our point.
A dog pile after each comment, all saying the same thing.
“Go Fuck Yourself, Javier.” is my suggestion. (With NO followup. Four words, in and out. NO ENGAGEMENT.)
Or we can let this crap go on and on for no reason.
-Lloyd
Then again, rather than being a paid troll, he is just a ideologically crippled Wing Pawn?
“The past 24 hours of commenting activity on this thread has actually gotten me interested in getting into the mindset of you climate change extremists/crusaders.” ~ Paul Helvick
And your posts have gotten me interested in “getting into the mindset” of climate deniers and sock puppets. It’s an interesting topic! Anybody interested in the forces and personalities behind climate change denial should definitely look into it.
And your posts have gotten me interested in “getting into the mindset” of climate deniers and sock puppets. It’s an interesting topic! Anybody interested in the forces and personalities behind climate change denial should definitely look into it.
Ah, yes, it is a truly fascinating topic. It involves multiple facets from many fields of science, from biological and human evolution, anthropological studies of tribalism, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, history, social studies, economics, political science, etc… etc… There is a lot of converging knowledge and solid scientific research that explains much of their mindset. They are, after all, just your typical clever great apes, as are all of us here.
Though my own opinion is, that we would all be in a much better place if more people took the time and effort to understand everything that I mentioned above and worked on getting beyond some of our innate primitive programming. As most of us realize our tribe size has grown exponentially and humans have shown in the past that they are at least somewhat capable of reprogramming themselves through cultural advances and the propagation of memes.
Though memes can of course swing either way and be beneficial or pathological.
Time will tell if we can do that and survive as a species with some form of benign technological civilization.
I would like to suggest that those who still insist on denying climate science and reality might at the very least stop being so proud to self identify as ‘Skeptics’, given that the original use of that word was used to denote a member of Pyrrho’s philosophical school of ancient Greece, who maintained that real knowledge of things is impossible.
Science has since moved us beyond that point and we now know with a fairly high degree of confidence that it is indeed possible to know quite a bit about nature and the world around us…
Cheers!
Javier presents highly twisted, cherry picked data and that needs to be pointed out to others reading. We would rather he did not do it. It would be nice for him to present real, undistorted data that we may discuss. As for nyms, I have been on blogs where death threats happen so I will stay behind mine, thank you, btw is yours your real name?
NAOM
Trends in sea ice thickness/volume are another important indicator of Arctic climate change. While sea ice thickness observations are sparse, here we utilize the ocean and sea ice model, PIOMAS (Zhang and Rothrock, 2003), to visualize October sea ice thickness from 1979 to 2016. Sea ice less than 1.5 meters is masked out (black) to emphasize the loss of thicker, older ice. Updated through November 2016.
It is currently colder in Jacksonville, FL (26 F) than the northern tip of Alaska, Barrow (27 F).
4:35 AM – 8 Jan 2017
PIOMAS December data for Arctic ice volume came out. The trend is down and accelerating. The predicted data from PIOMAS has been checked against Cryosat and comes out slightly low – but with a constant factor, so the trend would be broadly the same using the measured data. Things look likely to continue hitting record lows through the winter.
The running average annual volume is still not at a minimum (that was February 2013) but the fall has accelerated and a new minimum looks likely soon (the daily volume took a big drop in rate of increase around March last year and those figures will increasingly dominate in the average figures).
Speaking as a life long observer of the way the news is reported, or ignored, according to the inclinations of the press, I am happy to keep up with some of the news by reading it at wiki pedia. The msm generally repeats the same thirty to second sound bite sort of coverage over and over, endlessly, so that if you read one random msm source every few days, you have likely read ninety percent or more of what you will find at any other source, unless you have subscriptions that allow you to read long in depth articles. I don’t have have much in the way of subscriptions these days, excepting a few that are for specialists, and don’t cover politics.
So that’s s where I’m following the Russian election hacking issue.
Of course it’s possible for partisans to slant the coverage there too, but it’s less likely to be the case.
So, here’s a question. Has anybody here who is following this closely in the mainstream who also read the wiki pedia article all the way thru in the last few days?
If so , do you think it’s on the money? Balanced?
In my estimation, it is, but in my estimation the msm coverage is not. What I have read in the liberalish leaning part of the msm is all breathless indignation and outrage in tone, with little and more often than not nothing in the way of acknowledgement that while the Russians very likely ( but not for DEAD sure imo ) did do more or less what they are accused of, Assange may nevertheless be telling the truth.
The rightish leaning portion of the msm is doing what it can to make the D’s look bad, which is to be expected. If the situation were reversed, party wise, so would be the tone of the coverage.
Stealing the emails was a dirty trick, regardless of who stole them. But only a few people, excepting right wingers who obviously have their own partisan agendas, are bothering to point out that while stealing them was dirty, the activities so exposed on the part of the D party were arguably worse, and that the public has a right to know about such stuff.
I don’t see any acknowledgement, not that I have looked very hard, that Assange himself might be a victim of Russian duplicity. It’s altogether possible, in my opinion, that the Russians not only stole this stuff but that they ALSO fed it to him in such a way that he DOES believe it came from elsewhere.
One thing I am sure of, although I can’t prove it with statistics, is that a LOT of people who previously expressed favorable opinions of Assange and wiki leaks changed their tune once the coverage turned to Clinton and D party issues.
We all believe what we WANT to believe, and even if we have known the messenger or source long enough to trust him, or it, we don’t have any problem deciding that trust was misplaced,if we don’t like a NEW message. 😉
One thing is for dead sure. The Russians have historically put a substantial effort into this sort of business, almost all the way back to the day the commies first got into power.
The amusing thing is that the leftish leaning elite in this country vehemently denied, long and loud, the validity of the evidence of this long term Russian monkey biz and accused the rightish leaning wing of the American establishment of libel/slander and partisan politics in even mentioning this business. Now the spies they formerly despised are the good guys. 😉
Bottom line, my opinion is that the odds are twenty to one or higher that the Russians are guilty as charged, but I am also willing to consider the possibility that others may have stolen the emails as well. More than one convenience store has been robbed twice, and more than one person who has been subjected to an extensive background check,etc, has sold out the private or government organization that provided him with a paycheck for various reasons.
Some of these people in my opinion are genuine patriots. Some are individuals getting even with their employer for personal reasons. Some are simply whistle blowers exposing things they think need sunshine, even as they continue soldiering on, reporting to work, and doing work once there that needs to be done.
My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that while it’s stretching it to claim that Clinton DEFINITELY lost because of the email issue, it MIGHT have cost her the WH.
Most of the people would have voted the way they did, in my opinion, had this issue never come up, but the race was so close in some states that it could have been THE difference. I can express this possibility somewhat differently by saying the email issue is was ONE of the straws that broke Clinton’s back. If any one straw had been missing from her load of baggage, she might have won another state or two, where the race was close.
Considering how close the race was in the three states that cost her the election, it IS possible to make a fair to good case, that the email issue was THE straw that broke her back.Large D partisan observers can make a very good case that the email issue was THE issue that determined the election, at least to their own satisfaction, but then they WANT to believe Clinton lost because the R’s cheated.
My own opinion is that the people in those last three rust belt states went for Trump MOSTLY because of their economic problems, and MOSTLY because they came to the conclusion that Clinton was not really on their side, and proved it,in THEIR opinion, by ignoring them and hanging out with the banksters, whereas Trump at least paid them the courtesy of campaigning for their votes.
I don’t think there is any way to say for sure , either way. Anybody who does claim to know FOR SURE is in my opinion a partisan, and expressing his opinion. He may believe he’s right, or he might be just doing what he can to make his home team look better.
The real takeaway is that if you want to play this sort of game, you had best make sure you don’t get caught playing for all the marbles. The consequences range anywhere from embarrassment and loss of face to pokey time, if you get caught.
There is no question at all in my mind that the R party does and did engage in similar dirty tricks, but sometimes you DO get away without getting caught. The R’s lucked out this time, in this respect.
In this case it may well have cost Clinton, and the D Party, the WH, and control of the Senate, with the knock on consequence of Trump putting at least one of his homies on the Supreme Court.
You put your right foot in
You take your right foot out
You put your right foot in
And you shake it all about
You do the hokey pokey
And you turn yourself around
That’s what it’s all about
What it is all about the hokey pokey?
Makes more sense than Javier, don’t you think?
I’m assuming the hokey pokey remark is aimed in my direction.
At least HB has made a moderate remark this time, which is encouraging.
Maybe he ‘s decided I have enough links to big D Democrats who think like I do that he doesn’t want me posting two or three every time he takes a poke. I do indeed have them, and can easily find more, lol.
And it is possible to interpret my comment, loosely, as changing my own position.
But I haven’t.What I have done is recognize that there is some truth in the argument that the emails hurt Clinton, and that they could have possibly been the last thing on the balance beam scale that tipped the vote in Trump’s favor in some places, where it was close. I haven’t DENIED that possibility at any previous time.
If any body had asked me , I would have said that there is some truth in the argument that the emails hurt Clinton, and COULD have been a crucial factor in her losing in some places where the race was close. But my personal opinion is that the emails were just one of many factors.
Trump did after all win only by the proverbial hair in the three Rust Belt states that put him over the top.
I remain firm in my conviction that she brought too much baggage into the race from the beginning, and made too many mistakes in total in her campaign, this being the best explanation why she LOST.
I may be all wrong, there is no way to know for SURE, but I am totally convinced that just about any Democrat with a little charisma, and without the baggage, and better polling numbers in terms of public perceptions of character, consistency, etc, could have beaten Trump handily , if he or she had run a competent campaign.
I’m on your side.
Comrades on the Left (not progressives or liberals- they are the worse) look upon reformist politics with amusement.
Mac,
I don’t consider myself particularly well-informed, but I’ll offer my impressions anyway and it’s easy enough for anyone not interested to just skip my drivel and move on.
I’m quite distrustful of the msm, so I only watch enough of it to get an idea of the headlines, while trying to read between the lines (listen between the lies?) to see if I’m interested enough to search on-line for more enlightening information. But then how am I to know if what I read on-line is truthful? Usually I just try to read enough information by different sources till I can satisfy myself that I’ve found the “experts”, or at least someone who seems to know what they’re talking about. By now, I suppose my cynicism might be showing. Good enough. Over the course of my life I’ve learned to not be as trusting as my nature/early-life nurture lead me to be. What was that saying? “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you”.
Now to your question. After hearing about the released emails, my concern wasn’t so much about who did the hacking as it was about what the emails revealed, and if they were genuine. I’ve not heard msm show much concern for those points. Seems to me it’s akin to getting caught with your hand in the cookie-jar, and complaining about the catcher sneaking up on you.
The msm’s and DNC’s indignation at the idea that Russia would try to influence an election in the US doesn’t wash well with me either. Do they want to pretend that the US doesn’t interfere in elections in foreign countries, or topple foreign governments? Bullshit! Truckloads of it!
Did the email release influence my vote? No. Trump’s adolescent bullying manner, his seeming lack of command of the English language, or grasp of enough knowledge of the subject matter to put together a couple of coherent sentences on any significant subject, makes me fear what might happen under his watch. Another point that might seem trivial to others, what’s that orange thing on his head? I have a bit of trouble trusting a man who is so insecure that he goes to very much trouble to cover his damn head! Most of the men in my family go bald, usually early. I’ve always sworn I’d just polish my head before I’d wear a comb-over. Aside from the fact that I find it hard to believe that any rich person really has my best interests at heart. Guess that covers Clinton too, huh? So I didn’t vote at all.
The more I watch what happens in government and business, the more I can identify with Joe Bageant, rest his soul.
Anyway, enough already!
Take care,
SW
“I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you”
“So I didn’t vote at all”
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put (America) together again.
I suggest Trumps buddies are gonna get rich orchestrating the biggest pump and dump stock market scam in history. It involves the entire American economy. Everyone will love Trump when the pump is to the top. Oil to $140 and the Dow to 23,000. Then comes the dump. America will be left in ruins for decades.
Or maybe congress will impeach him and the road to collapse will be traveled more slowly.
Hi Stanley,
I GET IT, I understand totally where you are coming from.
But there ARE some people who have money, even TONS of money, who do care about folks who are hard up. Bill Gates for instance is spending megabucks on solutions to the worst problems that afflict poor people.
And it is possible to know what the truth is, if you are willing to work at learning it. But the more complicated the subject, the more time and study you have to invest to become knowledgeable. So the trick is to learn who to trust,and to what extent.
You can trust your own personal dentist to be a sob when it comes to charging you two weeks take home for an hour of HIS time, if you are poor working class, but you can rest assured he’s telling it straight when he tells you its hell on your teeth to eat candy.
Trump scarces the CRAP out of me.
Some people will never get it, but I was NOT trying to help get him elected, over the last year or so, but rather trying to get D party primary voters to act like adults,NEXT TIME, and support the candidate (s) are best qualified in terms of public support, across the voter spectrum, in terms of getting elected.
A good forty to fifty percent of the country, to put it as simply as possible, had NO USE for Clinton, period. A substantial portion of the people who won her the popular vote voted AGAINST Trump rather than for her, which was what I SHOULD have done, except I was sure she had Virginia in the bag.
She got the nomination the same way a kid that can’t hit and run gets on the first string baseball team. The coaches, or in this case, the primary voters, made a huge mistake. Trump was the least qualified, most ignorant,most uncouth, least trustworthy candidate in R party history , and probably the scariest major party candidate in the history of the USA, and he STILL beat Clinton.
Enuf said.
Temperature here plunged to 10F this morning, 5F due tomorrow. Minimum here is minus 20F. Not far from me it can hit minus 30F.
So that got me thinking, how well will an electric car do in the winter around here.
I found an article where a fellow had tested his Tesla Model S with 85 kWh battery pack down to 10F in the winter. Average winter range dropped to 143 and hit a low of 113 miles per charge. This is a car rated at 265 miles range. So the car goes from decent range in warm weather to local runabout in winter.
If you have the smaller battery version, the average would have been 112 mile range in winter.
Today in Moscow is -30C (-22F)
In some parts of Russia -40-50 (-40-58F)
At these temperatures the battery will likely quickly discharge even if the car is parked
Normally the battery discharges at 1 percent per day.
Here is some advice from a fellow that has used his Tesla S into his third Canadian winter. Beside having no ability to recharge and no regenerative brakes until the battery heats up above freezing, probably want to keep the car on the charge line just to pre-warm it. Also want to get better winter tires or you might go nowhere at all.
So it looks like Tesla at least, and probably all the other car companies using the same basic battery tech will have to add some more insulation, to the battery packs. Of course a well insulated battery is also a battery that will overheat if subjected to a heavy load for more than a very short time, maybe as little as only a few minutes.
But I have no doubt that car companies will figure out ways to giterdone at a reasonable cost. I can think of several things that would work myself, but I don’t have any real idea what they would cost , or how practical these things would be.
You could for instance install a double layer shield around and under the battery that has one layer capable of sliding a little bit, lining holes up in both layers for cooling, and add a fan to force more air thru, when cooling is needed. Slide it the other way and if the right material is used, it could have an impressive r value, even if light and only a couple of inches thick. . Adding insulation over the top could be managed by using the right kind of extra thick carpet and pad in the interior.
When dealing with chemical reactions, they are generally temperature sensitive. Add increasing internal resistance with lower temperature and lower total charge capacity, you have a problem if the battery gets very cold.
For now, keeping the battery warm is important. Spare capacity is even more important because one can’t always stop the car at a charge site. EV’s are hitting the 300 mile range, soon to be 400. At that point, even a 50% drop in capacity would be adequate for most users.
I wonder if having a separate heater, say hydrogen powered, for the car and battery would solve the problem in the northern areas. That way the battery could be kept warm enough and the cockpit heating could be supplied by the heater instead of the battery. Probably have to start out using propane or natural gas until the hydrogen got to be more available. Only be used for the battery when parked away from a charging station. OFM’s idea of variable insulation could be used also to reduce fuel or power usage.
Something I have often wondered about is whether it is now or will soon be possible to manufacture a durable, workable and affordable super efficient insulation.
Suppose you could manufacture little glass or ceramic spheres, very thin walled, so that whatever gas is inside the sphere at the time it is formed reacts with the material of the sphere, and plates out on the inner surface. BAM! INSTANT VACUUM !
Make a slurry out ofa mixture of materials that contains as many of these spheres as possible, with the mixture itself being a high quality insulator.
Now if you could spray that on the inner hidden surfaces of the passenger compartment of an automobile, you could probably cut the need for heating and cooling by half.
Adding another layer of some tough material to protect the insulation from road gravel, salt, and so forth, and it would work on the undercarriage too.
IF any body does this, and gets a patent, I’m gonna sic a parasite lawyer after them, for stealing my idea, and black mail them for enough money to move someplace way up north during the summer. 😉
I second the motion on ultra-insulation Mac.
I’d love to see someone (psst, hey, Elon) bring the cost of Aerogel down to an affordable level and incorporate it into a structural sheathing panel, say with a value of >R-7. This would be a huge, huge deal in the residential building industry.
Picture of Aerogel below. Really remarkable stuff.
Mike Voorhies hiked over to the ravine, where he discovered something odd. Throughout north central Nebraska, the ground contains a layer of silver ash, about a foot thick—the remnants of a massive volcanic eruption some 12 million years ago. But a cross-section of the gully’s walls revealed an ash layer ten feet deep. “I noticed a little jawbone with teeth. I jumped down and started cleaning off the surface of the ash and taking samples of it, wondering what could cause this,” says Voorhies, now 70. He had found the skull of a baby rhinoceros.
Evidence for megascale flooding at the end of the most recent ice age, is not limited to North America, but has been documented from all over the world. This evidence supports the conclusion that large scale super-flooding events were globally ubiquitous throughout the ice age, but occurred with exceptional power and size at or near its conclusion. Among the places around the planet from which proof is emerging of floods of extraordinary size – Siberia especially, in the Altai Mountains region near the Siberian/Mongolian border, hosts evidence for massive floods equivalent in scale and power to the largest western USA floods. Across northern Europe megaflood evidence is found in abundance. South America, too, shows extensive evidence for massive catastrophic flooding in the recent geological past, as does Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East and Northern Africa. However, for the time being, our focus will be on the great floods of North America. Eventually, however, it will be our goal to document and correlate this imposing mass of evidence for global catastrophe with a view to understanding its origin and causes. Then, we will be in a better position to address the question of social and cultural consequences.
However, during the second half of the Twentieth Century, with improved dating, and with more precise and detailed stratigraphy available, it became apparent that the climate changes associated with the onset and termination of ice ages occurred much more rapidly than believed by earlier workers. As the Twentieth Century drew to a close, high-resolution records bore witness to climate changes that occurred with astonishing speed and severity.
That’s how Mother Nature rocks and rolls.
To market to market to buy a fat pig, home again, home again, dancing a jig.
The hotspot that is now under Yellowstone has been causing massive destruction for a long time, three mega-eruptions in the last 2.1 million years. Many other smaller eruptions too. Not a healthy place to be on occasion.
How much volcanic activity has there been at Yellowstone since the most recent giant eruption?
Since the most recent giant caldera-forming eruption, 640,000 years ago, approximately 80 relatively nonexplosive eruptions have occurred. Of these eruptions, at least 27 were rhyolite lava flows in the caldera, 13 were rhyolite lava flows outside the caldera and 40 were basalt vents outside the caldera. Some of the eruptions were approximately the size of the devastating 1991 Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, and several were much larger. The most recent volcanic eruption at Yellowstone, a lava flow on the Pitchstone Plateau, occurred 70,000 years ago.
How often do volcanic eruptions occur at Yellowstone?
Three extremely large explosive eruptions have occurred at Yellowstone in the past 2.1 million years with a recurrence interval of about 600,000 to 800,000 years. More frequent eruptions of basalt and rhyolite lava flows have occurred before and after the large caldera-forming events. For example, scientists have identified at least 27 different rhyolite lava flows that erupted after the most recent caldera eruptions, about 640,000 years ago, from vents inside the caldera. The most recent was about 70,000 years ago. Many of these eruptions were separated in time by several tens of thousands of years. Because the evidence of earlier eruptions may have been either buried or destroyed, we do not really know how often the volcano has actually erupted
For those who like to plan ahead, star HIP 85605 is due to make an appearance nearby in less than a half million years from now. Another close approach is due from Gliese 710 in 1.35 million years.
Both stars look like they will pass through the Oort Cloud creating havoc among all the comets out there. Some could come Earth’s way.
Yeah, if humanity is still around, disrupting a collection of Ort planetesimals could present an inconvenience. Let’s see if we can get past Herr Trump first.
It shouldn’t be too many years after the singularity that we will invent time TV and just take a look.
Yes, I was joking.
Here is a site discussing the cold weather limitations of the Nissan Leaf. The leaf is particularly challenged because of it’s short range (100 to 120 miles) even during summer weather. I am not in ‘Chicagoland’, but I am in IL at the same latitude and relative weather conditions, per se. My round trip commute without recharging is 72-75 miles. My drive is about half at 45-55mph and half 30-35 with mild elevation changes. I can drive it down til about 20 degrees f before I have to change plans. Fortunately, I have a rider whose home is about 10 miles closer to work, and I leave it at his house. This way we can still drive most of the trip emissions free. It is a minor inconvenience, but so is pumping gas at -10f. Plus his garage is kept at 65f and the car doesn’t need much help from the heat on the way to work.
Winter range is really a difficult one to predict, because it depends on time, temp, and trip conditions. If you have a traffic jam to deal with, that adds time for the heat to run, and it eats range with a shovel at -10f. Above freezing it is more forgiving. If you can forego heat, the range can be closer to warm weather to some degree. There are posts on MNL about heating the Leaf via alternate methods.
Several startups are developing projects that integrate blockchain and solar energy. Their ideas range from developing alt-coins for trading and incentivizing power production to using smart contracts for administering energy transactions.
SolarCoin
SolarCoin is an eco-minded cryptocurrency that aims to incentivize solar power production. The coin was launched in 2014 and hopes to drive the generation of 97,500 terawatt hours worth of solar power over 40 years. It originally used a proof-of-work system for verification but has since switched over to a proof-of-stake-time system because it is more environmentally friendly. Anyone can mine the coins, from individuals to solar farms. For every 1 MWh of electricity generated (and verified by a third party), the producer recieves one SolarCoin. Solar farms wanting to earn extra income by generating SolarCoin coins for the power they produce don’t have to pay anything to participate, and SolarCoin does not take any of the power; it merely provides the coins as an incentive to produce clean energy.
Granted, one SolarCoin is worth under 7 cents at the time of writing, but then Bitcoin was only worth about 30 cents when it was the same age. The hope is that enough people will have confidence in the coin to give it real value and allow it to be used in transactions.
Current (no pun intended) value of Bitcoin:
1 Bitcoin equals
$916.91 US Dollar
Bitcoin was the best-performing currency of 2016
NOTE: not just the best performing crypto currency of 2016, but the best performing CURRENCY!
I won’t pretend to give others financial advice but at 7 cents a SolarCoin, I think this is a real ground floor opportunity and I’m going to invest some of my own meager funds in a it and thereby put some of my money where my mouth is. I think it is a much safer, and ethically more palatable bet than putting it in some other more traditional investment options…
Cheers!
FredM,
cc: DougL
Pursuant to all the hoo-haw up above, not what you’re talking about here, I have an assignment for you:
Go to Tamino’s site, which you are to have been checking each day anyway (the quiz will be on Wednesday) and scroll down to October 18th. Read the post Extreme Cherry Crush; might be a good idea to save it. Keep in mind that this assignment is for your continuing benefit and is not a one-off.
Feliz ano nuevo, since I don’t know the Portuguese for it, and the tilde is to be supplied by the reader. Yes, I prefer “nh” too.
But you see, Survivalist, what you may not understand, or at least appreciate, is that Javier may be a maverick.
BTW, I suddenly feel like having a bowl of cherry sherbet.
Hey Synapsid,
Feliz Ano Novo! No tilde needed in Portuguese 🙂
Re Tamino, Cherry Crush… LOL! Yeah, it is the same old shit and the same old flies too. It’s amazing how one fly in particular just keeps on buzzing and buzzing.
Synapsid,
OK, mission accomplished and thanks doubly for the heads up: you’re a treasure. There are so many comments from EXTREME CHERRY ICE I’m tempted to copy and paste here that I don’t know where to begin. BTW since Javier has pretty much hijacked Ron and Dennis’ Blog I suspect I’ll be spending most of my spare time on Open Mind; like that they include astronomy discussions as well. Very interested in hearing Fred’s take.
Take care man.
Think of it this way, the so called ‘Pests’ may actually turn out to be a feature and not a BUG, if we start harvesting them for protein instead of killing them with poisons… Methinks a lot more things will be changing besides just the climate.
Hey Doug, I think that wherever we decided to spend our free time to follow our interests we will have to take our insect repellent and fly swatters with us. Though I think that astronomy may still be a safe haven from trolls and other pests.
Cheers!
Good luck guys. It’s been fun at times, when the villagers were quiet. But lately there has been a bit too much negative feedback.
On the weather depends the harvest. On the harvest depends everything.
Well that first one sure puts us in a fine fix.
The Rise of The Garage Labs
Just an off-the-cuff quickie…
I am about half of the way into a video with Judith Curry that references a book written some time ago, called ‘The Republic of Science‘, which could be a kind of ‘guiding light’ or ‘playbook’ for Judith…
The gist, so far, seems to be that the, say, ‘creative science maverick/dissenter’, is less able, in a large-scale centralized, bureaucratic, monolithic setup that science has presumably become, to be so.
While this is important a topic, such as with regard, for example, to conflicts-of-interest on both sides– public or private— it’s also important, however, to distinguish true creative dissent from mere claims of such, amid scams, snake oils and latchings onto particular concepts as ways to mask or otherwise address personal/professional failings or misgivings.
This isn’t to necessarily suggest this for Judith, or Javier, but it may be that these sorts of identifications may be particularly attractive to some.
It is quite possible that this whole issue may represent another facet of the beginnings of decentralization, relocalization and the general and increasing malaise and decline of global industrial civilization, taking large-scale centralized so-called-government and science down with it.
Ironically, in a way, this may make Judith a bit of a ‘maverick’, if not in the way she or others may necessarily think.
In any case, the video may be well worth a watch or listen, if only to get a better sense of, or help mull over, the issues it touches on.
The gist, so far, seems to be that the, say, ‘creative science maverick/dissenter’, is less able, in a large-scale centralized, bureaucratic, monolithic setup that science has presumably become, to be so.
Sure, all large-scale centralized, bureaucratic, monolithic organizations have inherent structural and hierarchical issues. I still would be very unwilling to throw away the babies such as NASA or NOAA with the bath water!
Furthermore, there is a huge difference between the true ‘creative science maverick/dissenter’ and a crank or someone who is knowingly dishonest and an active disseminator of falsehoods.
.
“I still would be very unwilling to throw away the babies such as NASA or NOAA with the bath water! ” ~ Fred Magyar
Sure, and some of the babies can even throw themselves out of the baths and maybe, for example, into such hot tubs as Space X or Monsanto.
I wonder where Judith will be going.
Neither Space X or Monsanto are what I consider to be truly pure scientific organizations, I expect Space X has some great maverick engineers and Monsanto does hire scientists but they are the last places I would expect to find maverick scientists. I would expect the true mavericks to be at the universities or private labs. Though you never know.
Couldn’t care less where Judith goes…
I was being relatively sarcastic about Space X, Monsanto and Judith, Fred, but I hear you. I’m inclined to resent the lot, as you might imagine.
If Space X is tax-slave-funded, then it is essentially just a branch of NASA.
Incidentally, does Patrick Moore, formerly of Greenpeace, work with Monsanto full-time? I seem to recall Javier quoting him.
“On Folta, they found that Monsanto funded University of Florida a total of $25,000 USD earmarked to organise and travel to 12 science communications events. So out came the attacks that Folta was a liar, hypocrite and Monsanto shill. Folta had said in the past that he had never received funding from Monsanto for research, and these travel expenses for science communications events were clearly not part of research funding (and for anyone who has ever organised events, 25K is actually peanuts).
I deeply respect not only Folta’s integrity, but also his courage and perseverance to engage the mudslingers. But as it is said on the farm, if you want to wrestle a pig, prepare to get muddy.
There is no bigger wrestler in the shill-pit than Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He took…” ~ Judith Curry
I agree, a little cutting against the grain is good, and keeps the storm troopers wondering what is on the other side of the door that are smashing in.
However, we are beyond a postmodern world, where reality does have some (if not all) significance.
I think you summed up Judith perfectly:
as ways to mask or otherwise address personal/professional failings or misgivings.
It was kind of fun to have some of the comment in bold.
I spent some time watching a couple of the very long “episodes” over at EVTV (Archives at http://www.evtv.me.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/vidarch.html) the two episodes being ones that address the installation of a Tesla Motors drive unit in a Volkswagen Vanagon. 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 and 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. OFM if you’re even slightly interested in the content of his site, ie. blog and video archive I’d, be interested in what you think about him. Hell. you might even stumble upon some material for your book!
Thanks Islandboy,
I have a lot of problems with video. My service is dsl, and supposed to be ok for video, but it’s not,really. How about a link to any blog this guy has?
I’m not much of a rugged individualist, for sure. I do believe in self reliance, at least in terms of living within ones means , taking responsibility for one’s own circumstances, to the extent possible, and that sort of thing.
But I actually live pretty much like almost anybody else in the forum, in terms of buying my food at super markets, using the grid, driving a conventional car, etc etc.
But in terms of being able to live more self reliantly, should it become necessary, I’m in way better shape than all the other regulars, except maybe one or two such as Paulo.
And I do keep a lot of stuff on hand that other people don’t, and wouldn’t even if they could. It’s not that I’m much worried about being UNABLE to buy this stuff in case of an emergency, such as war suddenly breaking out, or a super storm, or Clinton getting elected ( HEY , that was a JOKE, ok?) but rather having it is actually a cost free insurance policy, and a better way to save, for me, than holding cash. I lose occasionally, but overall, prices have gone up faster than money in the bank accumulates interest, and buying in quantity usually means I get a real break on the price as well.
Top brand name engine oil costs me three fifty or so a quart, bought a case at a time at a place I’m a regular customer, where as the same brands are at least a dollar more even at Walmart, etc.
Now here’s an example to knock your socks off. Bulk lime, loaded on my truck at the local farm supply costs eighteen bucks a ton. Bagged lime at the cheapest local big box store, the same exact stuff, chemically, but pelleted instead of ground to a fine powder, costs approximately TEN times as much, per pound. Name branded insecticides that homeowners buy as a five percent powder for their tomato plants at the big box store costs me even LESS than ten cents on the dollar as concentrate in quantities large enough to grow tomatoes commercially, at the farm supply , but you have to have pesticide applicator’s permit to buy the concentrate.
I pay about thirty five cents on the dollar for fruit trees, compared to what the same trees cost at the lawn and garden center at local big box stores, but I buy a LOT , at least twenty five, at one time, or else I pool my order with a couple of neighbors, in order to buy at the real wholesale price directly from the nursery. And buying direct , you know WHERE your trees came from, and WHO grew them.
And just to be sure anybody and everybody is clear on the subject, I would rather Clinton were the prez elect than Trump. I ALWAYS said Trump would be worse, and that I was afraid he might win, at times. At other times I was sure Clinton had it in the bag.
Neither of them imo is morally and ethically qualified for the office.
I voted Green, without any moral conflict about putting Trump in office, because I was SURE Virginia was safe for Clinton.
But I would have wrote in Sanders, or something along that line, if I had no choice except either Clinton or Trump.
The time is way the hell past and gone when we can live as individuals, or in mostly self sufficient small communities.Big government these days is almost as critical to our survival as oxygen from the air. But I would prefer it not be any bigger than necessary.
Hi OFM, I’ve reposted a slightly edited version of the above with a link to the home page and one particular blog post at the new non-petroleum thread
Renewables in the Trump era | S&P Global Market: “… many doubt Congress would deliberately hurt an industry that ‘has matured to a level where we’re part of the U.S. economy,’ Soltage LLC CEO Jesse Grossman said.
In addition to tax incentives and an increasing appetite for clean energy among corporate buyers, RPS requirements are expected to serve as a big market driver. Such policies, which are on the books in 29 states and Washington, D.C., have accounted for more than half of the increase in renewable power generation in the U.S. since 2000, according to Galen Barbose, a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.”
“For now, money is not a problem for renewables, with available capital outstripping the supply of lucrative projects, said Josh Goldstein, senior vice president of finance and capital markets at solar project developer Recurrent Energy LLC, a subsidiary of solar panel manufacturer Canadian Solar Inc. And Trump’s ascension is unlikely to change those fundamentals.”
States Will Lead on Climate Change in the Trump Era – The New York Times: “Even now, many states will be able to meet the Clean Power Plan’s targets by following through on planned investments and increasing energy efficiency, according to M. J. Bradley and Associates, a research and consulting firm. Some populous states have set targets that are even more ambitious and appear to be on track to meet them.”
There are some very good maps with this article. According to one, coal is the least expensive way to generate electricity only in parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin. For rest of the country, natural gas, wind, or nuclear are cheaper than coal.
California will lead on climate change in the Trump era
Sometimes it pays to be patient! Less than two hours after posting a comment that I would have preferred to see here in this fresh thread, Dennis puts this fresh thread up leaving my recent comment on a dying thread! Cest la vie!
Here’s some good New Years news from my neck of the woods:
Jamaica gets first grant under US clean energy finance facility
edit: On a unrelated matter, I posted a comment on the previous thread, describing two 15 kW solar carports being put up by the local utility, one of which was unfinished. Well, I drove past the unfinished one last night and guess what? Done! Modules up and inverters mounted, looking very clean and finished like! Looks like somebody had a December 31 deadline!
Hi Island boy,
Sorry for the delay.
Just repost the comments here.
No need to apologize. It was my impatience that got the better of me.
I did some snooping yesterday evening and took some pics of the completed arrays and encountered the utility owned EV being charged at their head office. Below is a pic of the arrays (60 module ~ 15 kW at the head office and 80 module ~ 20 kW at the bill payment office) and the EV. Why I think this is significant is that these are pictures of facilities owned by the monopoly electrical utility in the island and they seem to be positioning to push solar PV and EVs.
“15 kW at the head office ”
What would that be ? About 6 to 8 cars for about 50 miles per day.
According to data from the Table, “Solar energy and surface meteorology” at this nifty little web page, Kingston, Jamaica gets between 4.25 and 6.65 kWh/m²/day of solar energy. The following table shows the output of a 15 kW array for each month using the data from the page linked to above:
Month Insolation Output
Month| kWh/m²/d| kWh
Jan | 4.66 | 2166.9
Feb | 5.29 | 2301.15
Mar | 6.13 | 2850.45
Apr | 6.68 | 3006
May | 6.3 | 2929.5
Jun | 6.65 | 2992.5
Jul | 6.64 | 3087.6
Aug | 6.25 | 2906.25
Sep | 5.8 | 2610
Oct | 5.25 | 2441.25
Nov | 4.55 | 2047.5
Dec | 4.25 | 1976.25
Total| | 31315.35
Assuming ten percent charging losses, this is enough to fully charge a 30 kWh Nissan Leaf battery, good for 107 miles each time according to the EPA, 949 times. This would allow 101,538 miles of travel and offset 4,062 gallons of gasoline for a fleet with an average overall fuel economy of 25 mpg. At current prices that is $15,434 worth of gasoline so, if the modules cost say, US$0.75 per watt the array would have cost $11,250 and the gasoline displaced would pay off the cost of the modules in a little over eight months!
Note that these are grid tied systems so, what they are really doing is offsetting the use of electricity at the facilities by at least 4.25 kWh per day, per kW of installed capacity. At the current retail price of electricity in Jamaica (US$0.24) the 31315.35 kWh of electricity is worth $7,515 so, that would pay off the cost of the modules in less than two years.
I think it is safe to say that, as the price of PV technology, advanced batteries and EVs continues to decline, that will set a cap for the price of oil which if exceeded, will see a wholesale shift to the use of PV and EVs in tropical, small island states. In all likelihood, that price cap is already below $100
The image below contains a solar resource map of Jamaica with a Google map of the whole island below it with some distance measurements to give an idea of the size of the island. To the right of both of those maps is another Google map showing a north-south slice of the island, including the capital city, with the red marker showing the location of the 80 kW array pictured above and again, some distance measurements to illustrate the area covered by the city.
Maybe somebody can examine the maps and tell me again why solar PV and EVs can’t work for tropical small island states?
Islandboy, you have way too much sun and not far enough to drive, so those cars will power the homes too. 🙂
Islandboy,
Solar energy makes a lot of sense in most tropical areas where there’s not too much cloud cover. More so in islands that are energetically isolated. And more so if as you said the quality of the fuel can be a very serious issue. And even more if the national grid is not very reliable.
Unless you can install micro-hydro there is no way you can beat solar under that set of circumstances.
Solar electricity becomes even more of a compelling argument for smaller island nations that in most cases have hardly anything at all to export, or at least hardly anything in large enough exportable quantities to pay for imported fossil fuels.
Tourism is ok, so long as the overall international economy keeps on trucking, , the planes keep arriving, the tour boats keep sailing into port.
But if the economy turns sour, solar infrastructure installed when times are good will keep on producing when times turn sour.
I wonder how long it will be before there is enough demand for refrigerators that will keep food well chilled or frozen for seventy two hours or longer that they become available as commodity appliances, available at any appliance store ,or big box type retailer, as opposed to being available only by special order at double or more the usual price of a similarly sized refrigerator.
Let’s see what additional parts would be necessary to build such refrigerators. First off, a large enough compartment to have a supply of ice that will keep things cold via absorbing heat as it melts for three days. Second, insulation at probably at least twice as good, as measured by R value. Third, a couple of extra sensors, and a rather small battery adequate to run the little fan that will be needed to circulate the air inside the fridge, keeping it uniformly cold. That little fan can be made to run on the same dc voltage as the battery, with a gizmo added to allow it to run on ac grid juice as well.
My wild ass guess is that a refrigerator that sells for eight hundred to a thousand today could be upgraded this way for no more than a couple of hundred bucks more, maybe even less.
Does any body know about how often, on average, tropical islands suffer cloudy weather longer than three days in a row?
Even when the weather is bad, you still get some juice from a domestic solar system, probably enough to keep a fridge going, saving the cost of spoiled food.
But you also want some lights, radio, internet, cooling fans, etc.
And some folks in bad health simply have to have air conditioning and other electrical apparatus available. My Dad is one such person, but I have had to run a generator only once in the last three or four years years to keep his room cool, and maybe once to keep the lights on in the winter for a day or so every three or four years on average.
Our local grid is probably more dependable than most others in rural areas subject to thunderstorms and freezing rain , etc, both of which result in downed transmission lines due to falling trees.
( I’m delaying purchase of a domestic system for now because the price of pv stuff is falling like a rock, and I can’t afford not to wait, given that I do have a large back up generator, 18 kilowatt continuous duty, and a back up for my back up ,6 kilowatts, AND an ever smaller one that puts out only two thousand watts, which is still enough for the refrigerator, but not enough for either the well pump or the ac.
Most farmers have this much or more backup capacity available, not only because the grid goes down occasionally out in the boonies, but also because running large enough cable to outlying buildings where you need electricity only once in a long while is very costly. It’s cheaper to just haul a generator to the place it’s needed under such circumstances.
You use the little ones to run power tools out in the field.
Two well maintained older machines , with one as backup, are less likely to let you down than one NEW one, and cost you a hell of a lot less, over the years. I invest the savings.
There’s an awful lot of these islands. These will be the early market for batteries; they’ll pay way more than the mainland and give the battery makers the experience they need to cut costs and raise volume production. Then it moves on to the mainland.
Hi IslandBoy,
That’s not exactly how I came up with my WAG estimate. Oldfarmermac says I’m stupid. So correct me if I’m wrong.
I simply took your 15 kW and multiplied it times 3.3(approximate miles traveled per kW in an EV). This gave me 50. Then the average day per year has 12 hours of light. But, my understanding is that only about half of that 12 hours is productive solar generation. So I said 6 to 8 vehicles.
“US$0.75 per watt the array would have cost $11,250 and the gasoline displaced would pay off the cost of the modules in a little over eight months!”
From my understanding of your post. I don’t think $.75 is a fair or accurate number. $.75 only covers the cost of the panels. There is a cost to install the panels. A project engineers rule of thumb is that labor costs is 2 to 1 of material. This might be a little off in this application but you also have cost of wires, switches, conduit, inverts, etc. In addition, there is the cost of the car port that the array is mounted on. That car cover looks about 40 x 40. I don’t see that happening for less than $20 a foot. Which would cost $32,000.
7 cars a day at 50 miles per day equals 127,750 miles per year. It looks like you came up with 101,538 miles of travel per year.
“Then the average day per year has 12 hours of light. But, my understanding is that only about half of that 12 hours is productive solar generation. So I said 6 to 8 vehicles.”
You were somewhat lucky that you were even in the ballpark. I got some training in solar (following on the words of one “westexas”) so it there is quite a bit moire to it than that. To assess the production of any solar PV facility one must examine the solar resource for the location. The map above comes from one source, other sources include for the USA, the NREL web site which has tons of detailed info. In the trade we use the insolation data as in kWh/m²/d, sometimes loosely converted to “Peak Sun Hours”, a figure that represents what the solar output would be if the sun just appeared at high noon and stayed there for however many Peak Sun Hours before disappearing again, rather than taking it’s usual trek across the sky. Peak Sun Hours are calculated based on historical ground based and satellite data for a given location that includes the effects of cloud cover, smog and haze. It makes it possible to predict the performance of a system in a given location with a fair amount of accuracy.
The map below is a reduced size (5%) image of a map available at the NREL web site here. You can use it to compare the solar resource of anywhere in the US with Germany and Spain. From the map yon can deduce that an array in Seattle, Washington will produce less than half of what the same array could produce in almost any location in the desert southwest. So to complete my long winded response your method of estimation wasn’t all that bad, it’s just that you got lucky with the lower end of your guess of 6-8 Peak Sun Hours matching the upper end of the 4.25-6.68 data from NASA.
“From my understanding of your post. I don’t think $.75 is a fair or accurate number. $.75 only covers the cost of the panels. There is a cost to install the panels.”
That is why I was actually being very careful with my wording, “gasoline displaced would pay off the cost of the modules“. AFAICT only local expertise and labor was used. I witnessed the guys doing the fabrication (welding) of the supports and they looked very local to me, read that as labor costs being a fraction of what they would be in the US. As a result I dare not even hazard a guess as to what the final cost of the project was.
Being as the owner of the projects is the utility, all the design and planning would have been done by their renewable department staff and the permitting and inspection costs were probably zero. If the supports (car cover) cost what you estimate, they probably cost more than the modules, inverters and balance of system costs put together.
They will probably write the carports off as a marketing expense. IMO these were put up in the specific locations where they were put up for marketing purposes more than for the actual electricity they are going to produce. When you look at the location of the 80 kW array, the premises is quite large and they could easily have stuck it somewhere it would be less visible. Instead they put it in the highest visibility location on the lot. I will attach a picture showing an elevated billboard right next to it in a comment immediately following this one. Incidentally, the billboard is likely to cast a considerable shadow over the array in he early morning hours, several months out of the year. There are other signals that their intent was not to maximize yield. Try and make out what the the billboard says!
Is this marketing or what?
Here it is zoomed in a bit!
Hi IslandBoy
Here are a couple of link you may be interested in. There’s a couple of picture of HB city hall solar parking lot and the local Walmart.
https://lbpost.com/place/2000005775-sunedison-to-install-four-solar-power-plants-in-long-beach
https://lbpost.com/place/2000005775-sunedison-to-install-four-solar-power-plants-in-long-beach
https://www.google.com/search?q=walmart+solar+parking+lot+huntington+beach&espv=2&biw=1088&bih=593&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiOoIXeq6rRAhVpy1QKHbvFBBwQ_AUICSgE#imgrc=jxdML3X89uRBIM%3A
Make An Impact !
You know, I’m mildly amazed that ALASKA has better insolation than Germany. The whole US is going to switch over faster than I thought.
I’m in upstate NY, and it’s really not that bad here is it?
>that will set a cap for the price of oil
That is what renewables do in general. They suck the profit out of the fuel business, which is the world’s most profitable.
As I am shipping my daughter out to St. Vincent to save the world, I’d be curious to know if anyone is seriously marketing solar in the islands.
“I think it is safe to say that, as the price of PV technology, advanced batteries and EVs continues to decline, that will set a cap for the price of oil which if exceeded, will see a wholesale shift to the use of PV and EVs in tropical, small island states. In all likelihood, that price cap is already below $100”
I’ve been repeatedly trying to calculate that cap. Here’s the basic calculation, with the pessimistic assumption that the car charges at night, so you need both a home (or grid, doesn’t matter) battery and a car battery.
CS == local cost per watt of solar panel install, inclusive of wiring, inverter etc.
LS == panel useful lifetime in years
S == sun-hours per day
CB == local cost per kwh capacity of batteries, inclusive of wiring, inverter, etc
LB == lifetime of batteries, years
CA == price premium (negative for discount) for electric auto over comparable gas auto
LA == lifetime of automobile, years
MD == miles driven per year
F = efficiency in kwh / mile of electric car
MPG = miles-per-gallon of alternative gasoline car
CG = local price of gasoline, $/gallon
Assume no inflation, cash purchase, and nothing better to invest your money in. Because the calculations get way more complicated with higher discount rates than 0.
CS * 1000 / (S * 365 * LS) == production cost per kwh
CB / (365 * LB) == overnight storage cost per kwh
( CS * 1000 / (S * 365 * LS) + CB / (365 * LB) ) == levelized cost of electricity per kwh
F * CS * 1000 / (S * 365 * LS) +F * CB / (365 * LB) == dollars per mile to operate electric car
CA / (LA * MD) == premium paid for upfront purchase, per mile
CG / MPG = dollars per mile to operate gas car
At fuel cost parity,
F * CS * 1000 / (S * 365 * LS) +F * CB / (365 * LB) + CA / (LA * MD) == CG / MPG
So this is the cap for the price of gasoline:
MPG * F * CS * 1000 / (S * 365 * LS) + MPG * F * CB / (365 * LB) + MPG * CA / (LA * MD)
(It’s actually a bit lower since electric cars have lower maintenance costs.)
So, interesting. Plug in these values:
MPG = 50 (best possible scenario for gas cars)
F = .333
CS = $3 (high US costs)
S = 5 (reasonable Hawaii number)
LS = 25
CB = $407.5 (Tesla Powerwall)
LB = 10
CA = $10,000
LA = 10
MD = 7000 (Hawaii, and note that driving more makes electric cars look better financially)
You get a cap on the gas price of $5.33. Obviously this isn’t very interesting, but the components are more interesting: most of this comes from the price premium on the car. Cut the price premium to $1000 and the cap on the gas price is $3.19; cut it to $0 and the cap is $2.95. The price premiums for electric cars are basically disappearing in the next few years.
Oh, and cut the cost of the solar install from $3/watt to $1.60 per watt (which is already possible in parts of the country, all of Australia and Germany) and should be true everywhere), you cut the price cap by $0.51. Cut the price of the home/grid battery from $407 to $300 (extremely likely in the next couple of years) and you cut the price cap by $0.49 cents. Do both and eliminate the premium and you have a cap of $1.95.
Assume a worse gas car of 25 mpg and even with the most pessimistic assumptions listed above, the price cap drops in half, to $2.66.
Now, assume 25 mpg, $1.60/watt solar, $300/kwh battery, and $0 car premium, and you get a price cap of $0.97.
In actual fact there’s another cap — the existing grid electricity price (CG).
MPG * F * CG + MPG * CA / (LA * MD)
At Hawaii’s astronomical grid prices, this is higher than the solar + battery price cap. But at mainland prices of 11 cents / kwh, this already sets a rather low cap — with a price premium of $0 for electric cars, the cap turns out to be $1.83.
Couldn’t tell you yet which of these prices is really the cap right now in any given location. And it makes a surprising amount of difference, because $2.50 gas is compatible with $75 oil, while $2.00 gas is only compatible with $60 oil, and $1.50 gas is only compatible with $45 oil, and $1 gas is only compatible with $30 oil.
Obviously this isn’t a hard cap. It takes time for people to switch cars. The point is that oil prices above the cap, whatever it is in any given year at any particular location, cause massive permanent demand destruction.
What I can tell you is that I think the cap will be below $2 retail gasoline almost everywhere within about two years. Demand destruction will follow. Don’t expect oil to ever go back above $60.
Thanks Nate. Excellent.
At first glance, you seem to be ignoring PV module efficiency? Or is that somehow wrapped up in Hawaii’s 5 hours of sunshine figure?
PV efficiency doesn’t really matter, because there is no shortage of space to deploy them. All that matters is price.
Of course for some niche applications efficiency does matter, but they do not affect the cost of solar to the grid.
At some stage prices will fall so far that higher efficiency will start reducing deployment cost, and then PV efficiency will be used to cut the prices, but we are a long way from that point.
Good work Nathanael. In real life we saw that prices of $3.50 to $4.50 per gallon of gasoline tended to reduce demand. If prices rise to that level again, the alternatives of HEV and BEV’s will become much sought after.
Even if the initial transistion is to plug-in HEV’s that will reduce the use of fuel to about 1/3 and allow time for the charge point structure to develop.
10 Reasons Trump Won't Lead A Nuclear Renaissance | OilPrice.com
Agreed, unless nuclear has a large technological and economic leap, it will become the other black sheep of the energy family. Aside from all the other problems, it is just too expensive.
The latest from The Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers. Among other articles the Toshiba meltdown may be of interest. As a radiologist I had an interest in the LNT (Linear No-Threshold} radiation model (and associated regulations) dating back to the late 1950’s. LNT remains controversial to this day. http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/fukushima-commentary.html
I believe the linear no threshhold debate is over and done with, except as an academic question.
It’s impossible to prove harm, when considering the effects of extremely small amounts of poisons, or radiation, or exposure to allergens, etc, except by statistical methods, and at some point, statistical noise overwhelms any very faint signal.
As a practical matter, this means nobody gives a crap, except hypochondriacs, about getting a dental x ray, or flying cross country at thirty thousand feet, etc.
I had a discussion along these lines with a nursing professor who said one day that a few grams of ethanol used as a preservative in a medicine has never harmed anybody. Then a few days later, she said there is no such thing as any toxin such as ethanol having a safe threshhold exposure level.
You can bet I didn’t bring this up in class in front of other students!
She hemmed and hawed around and finally said that although there IS a risk involved in consuming a couple of grams of ethanol, it’s entirely trivial, as a practical matter.
Perhaps it should be over with. But it is not. http://atomicinsights.com/national-academy-sciences-moving-towards-beir-viii/
Actually the very low level toxins can be quite harmful.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2002-04-16/news/0204160202_1_frogs-atrazine-weed-killer
http://www.chem-tox.com/malathion/research/frog.htm
No matter how low the level may be at which harm can be demonstrated, the level can be made still lower, until harm cannot be demonstrated, at least not using existing technology.
The real question is HOW high the level of any given pollutant, radiation, etc, must be to cause harm, or conversely, how much exposure can be tolerated without harm.
Harm can be demonstrated at extremely low levels, in respect to ionizing radiaton, no doubt.
If you set the exposure level LOW enough, then it’s possible to say that perhaps every frog in the entire world has been exposed to malathion.It lasts, and it gets around.
I once read an essay by a mathematician in which essay he maintains that if Jesus actually existed, historically, then by now his constituent atoms are so well dispersed that it is likely every human alive has at least one of them in his own body.
There is almost for dead sure a low enough exposure level even for ionizing radiation that the organism in the experiment will suffer no harm.
When the frogs are mutating in the streams and when many of the frog species are dying out, that is evidence.
The testing was done to simulate local stream concentrations where frogs and tadpoles were deformed, and lower concentrations also.
Then there is malathion, supposedly not toxic to humans. Just let the chemical or it’s dispersion in water sit out in the hot sun for a period of time, iso-malathion forms which is highly toxic to humans. Do you think every county board of health worker tests the malathion for iso formation before using it again? Yet it is sprayed all over areas for mosquito control, right near humans.
So if you don’t care about the fish, frogs, other amphibians and birds, maybe you will care about the neurotoxic people.
We are screwing the natural world badly and doing ourselves harm too.
Backatcha GF,
I am NOT arguing that malathion is safe, or that the chemicals that are created when it decomposes are safe, at concentrations KNOWN to cause harm.
What I am getting at, or trying to get at , is the ACADEMIC question, whether ANY amount of malathion, or other pollutant, is LITTLE ENOUGH that exposure to it will result in no harm.
The flip side of this argument is the one about socalled medicines that supposedly still work when diluted to ridiculously low concentrations. They DON’T.
I am not a scientist, by profession, but I do have some background training that involves the management of chemicals, food additives or supplements, etc.
And I have yet to see any convincing evidence that any given chemical DOES result in identifiable harm at concentrations below some threshold.
It could be that malathion starts causing problems when it’s only one percent as concentrated as it is now, in open waters. I won’t argue otherwise, this is entirely possible.
But cut that concentration by another order of magnitude, and you might have a very hard time demonstrating harm. And if you DID, well my argument still holds, the concentration could be cut by another order of magnitude, making it even more difficult to prove an effect.
Take it all the way to the most ridiculous extreme. I could dump a very small quantity of malathion in a body of water that is entirely free of it, in front of you, and if the quantity is small enough, and the body of water large enough, you won’t even be able to detect the presence of the malathion, after allowing sufficient time for it to disperse.
Hence it would be impossible to prove harm arising from it at such a low concentration.
It follows that the No Linear Threshold debate is an academic question, rather than a practical question.
I worry a little once in a while about what malathion might have done to ME, or might still do to me. I used a lot of it, years ago.
I would never argue that any particular chemical is safe , in absolute terms. Pesticides in particular present some knotty problems in terms of the trade offs involved.
The worst of them have been phased out here in the USA, and in some other countries. But there are more that are doing more harm than good, taken all around.
It’s hard to impossible to say which would be worse, or conversely which is better, doing without, and planting a LOT more acres, or using them , and planting the usual lesser acreage.
“Take it all the way to the most ridiculous extreme. I could dump a very small quantity of malathion in a body of water that is entirely free of it, in front of you, and if the quantity is small enough, and the body of water large enough, you won’t even be able to detect the presence of the malathion, after allowing sufficient time for it to disperse. ”
The point of the research was to show that very low concentrations have large effects since they appear to be too small to activate the anti-body system in animals.
Instrumental lowest detectability limits have no relationship to biological effects, two completely different systems.
Nuclear power plants, built the way we have built them in the past, are certainly too expensive.
But there is plenty of reason to believe that nuclear power could possibly be cost competitive, IF the industry were able to afford the necessary research and development, which are necessary in any industry if costs are to be brought down, reliability and safety up, etc.
Getting new designs approved, achieving some standardization, etc, are damned near impossible as the rules are written today. Nobody can afford the costs, or deal with the decades long time line from concept to permission to build a prototype, etc.
I am not predicting it will happen, but there are other people, and other governments, that appear to be willing to take the necessary chances , and a nuclear renaissance cannot be entirely ruled out.
There are no guarantees that batteries, or other electrical energy storage strategies will work any better than nukes, which are noteworthy for churning out lots of juice around the clock, so much so that in the past it has been wasted keeping office towers lit up like amusement parks during the wee hours.
It seems that it IS possible to build a nuke that simply cannot run away or melt down.
Spent hot fuel is another question altogether, but it also seems to be possible to build nukes that can burn up such fuel, and that do not generate very much hot waste.
I’m not advocating building a lot of new nukes, but rather just pointing out that nuclear power may actually be safe and cost competitive at some future time.
Happy Nuke Year http://www.forbes.com/sites/rodadams/2016/12/31/nei-asks-for-assistance-to-make-2017-a-happy-nuke-year/#fd45b397c4b5 Yes a reactor can be safe. See Edward Teller and the inherently safe Triga reactor, 1956. For years there was one of these – and a nuclear engineering program at UCSB.https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/the-future-of-nuclear-power-let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom/
Oh yeah, apart from the nuclear waste problem, TRIGAs are fine. Best reactor design ever.
However, *they don’t generate power*.
Their niche is also disappearing. Anything you can do with a TRIGA you can do with a cyclotron, although in some cases it is more expensive. But it creates much less waste and is proliferation-resistant — there’s a campaign to replace all the medical isotopes made with reactors with cyclotrons for anti-proliferation reasons. Cyclotrons are great.
Back in 1964 Isaac Asimov predicted a bright future in 50 years for nuclear power. He was a smart guy, but his idea of nuclear power was what he called a nuclear battery, basically a box you could hook up to an electrical circuit and get power from.
We are far from achieving this. All nuclear power plants produce is heat and hard radiation. Most of the plant is a Rube Goldberg device to convert this into something useful. Fusion is supposed to be a great leap forward, but it is basically the same thing.
The beauty of wind and solar is that the simply produce electricity without side effects or marginal costs.
This article makes a few points about the decline of the coal industry that I haven’t seen elsewhere.
Trump's Coal Illusion – Milken Institute Review: “Appalachian coal companies seem to understand the bad news better than Appalachian voters — and have more options to manage the damage. The watchword for Big Coal (or what’s left of it) is ‘ride the horse in the direction it is going,’ largely by diversifying. For example, Consol Energy, the Pittsburgh-based coal company, made more money in fracking for natural gas last year than in mining coal. One can only hope that the new president will see the need to give Appalachian miners the resources to begin a comparable transition to a sustainable means of survival.”
To put a lot of effort into preserving a few thousand coal jobs or even adding another thousand is self-defeating. As mentioned in the article the external cost of coal is very high. Also the job growth would be very limited. Helping the renewable industry is where the job growth really lies.
No matter the president, solar outlook increasingly bright | TheHill: “It’s widely suspected the Clean Power Plan, intended to reduce state emissions through low-carbon infrastructure, will not survive, but this won’t change state-level clean energy trends.
The U.S. power sector is already on track to reach the CPP’s 2024 interim goal, as utilities decarbonize for business reasons, not political ones. GTM Research reports 23 percent of all large-scale solar installed in 2016 was voluntarily procured by utilities outside of federal or state mandates.”
Maybe large installations will go through in some states, but the red states could easily squash some of that. Red states could also make local laws and code that will cause residential solar installations to be more difficult and expensive. It’s not just the Prez we will have to deal with, the Congress is under control and the judiciary will be, so with about 30 percent of the people represented, how will that play out?
Residential solar is really hard to squash. It makes people *mad* when Big Government tries to force them to buy from the Big Corporate Utility instead of having individual self-reliance with home solar panels.
Guerrilla (unlicensed, unpermitted) solar panels are springing up in Europe.
It helps that Barry Goldwater, Jr. is a solar advocate.
The Conservative Case For Solar | Inside Energy: “This is only one block in Pebble Creek – a retirement community west of Phoenix with over 4,000 homes. Twenty-five percent of those homes have rooftop solar, and new ones are coming online almost as fast as the homes are being built, says Miller.”
The fact that solar scales down so well makes it hard to quash. It’s like swatting a room full of flies.
Wind is unkillable, I believe, because farmers like it, and they are politically powerful, especially in the Midwest.
The other problem opponents of renewables have is that at the margin, renewable energy is free. That makes it impossible to price them out of spot markets.
Taken together, this means that as Nathanael suggests, renewables are likely to put a major squeeze on the world’s most profitable industry, fossil fuel. There is nothing corrupt governments can do about it.
Did the fossil fuel industry get up in arms about hydropower? Hydropower produces 16 percent of the world’s electricity. So what is the big deal over PV and wind power? It’s cheaper and cleaner. Just by it’s nature it should supplant most of fossil fuel electricity generation with time.
This article is a “glass half full, have empty” piece. What the US does or doesn’t do won’t screw up the rest of the world, but there are still massive challenges ahead.
Trump's rhetoric on climate change not the greatest threat – Business Insider: “… in international affairs, Trump and his proposed secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, the Exxon chairman, will confront a world of intertwined interests in which climate change has moved from being an inconvenient environmental side issue in the early 1990s to a keystone focal point now, said Andrew Light, a George Mason University professor focused on climate policy.”
I am hoping that Trump and his administration turn out to be something of a Trojan horse when it comes to renewables: Publicly support fossil fuels, but privately cut deals to increase renewables.
Rick Perry greener energy secretary than you think—commentary: “A quick look at Perry’s record as Texas Governor highlights the point. During his tenure, natural gas production climbed 50 percent, while oil production soared by 260 percent. However, the growth of the wind industry under Perry’s tenure was even more dramatic, growing from only 116 megawatts of production in 2000 to over 11,000 megawatts in 2013.
If Texas was a country, it would rank as the fifth largest producer of wind power in the world, supplying Texas with approximately 10 percent of its power needs. In addition to promoting wind generation, Rick Perry’s administration promoted the rapid growth of transmission infrastructure needed to carry that wind energy from its source in the Panhandle and western part of the state to major load centers.”
Just as GE discovered that being a finance company was more lucrative than making appliances, perhaps solar companies will make their money by loaning money to homeowners buying solar.
Tesla giving up residential solar leasing to be in the Florida ‘sunshine’ market – and it might be the company’s future | Electrek: “If the trends of a report put out by EnergySage, ‘Solar Marketplace Intel Report, Data from H2 2015 to H1 2016’, are to be believed then the lease companies ought be evolving models as fast as they can: 63% of EnergySage users preferred ownership to a loan – but a full 99% of who went on to buy, actually got a loan or paid cash versus a lease. These market forces are already happening and Tesla, being the largest player in this field, saw it. SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive already announced that the company expects to reduce the number of leases while loans and cash purchases increase. Multiple loan products have been tested – with the MyPower program being canceled and a new, simplified program implemented. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also commented that SolarCity will continue this trend under Tesla.”
Just as GE discovered that being a finance company was more lucrative than making appliances, perhaps solar companies will make their money by loaning money to homeowners buying solar.
Yeah, and that right there is the essence of the problem with the operating system on which our economy and society run. We need to find a way to reward production of actual things of value to people more, than the destructive process of sucking wealth out of communities. That should be made as painful a process as possible for those that try to engage in it!
We need a new economic operating system!
Douglas Rushkoff, “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBrRvkPvvJg
Hey you dere, ya trying to rock da boat. We got special shoes for dat. Ya like fish?
Hey you dere, ya trying to rock da boat.
Who me? Didn’t think you could rock the Titanic…
“End of the Ship” by Roy Zimmerman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNi1sevKNd0
Just an example of what one comes across around here when trying to change a money making system. You can end up in the drink if you persist. Some people take their positions and businesses very seriously, even though they run poorly and inefficiently.
Parking minimums mean that you need a quarter acre lot to open a taco stand in America. That is why is is better to be rich and a lousy cook than poor and a good cook when you open a restaurant in America. You can buy your recipes from a chain.
That explains what is wrong with American cooking.
Musk is a slick guy. He merges with SolarCity, gets Panasonic to put up the money and expertise to run his solar panel factory, gets New York state to give tax credits, and lets Trump claim credit for creating jobs in the US.
I hope it all works because we need renewables to be where the GOP throws its support.
Five challenges facing Tesla after SolarCity merger – The Buffalo News: “Musk succeeded in getting shareholders to buy into his vision that the $2.1 billion merger was a linchpin in his vision of turning Tesla into a renewable energy powerhouse, offering solar panels, electric vehicles and the batteries that each uses.”
What happens to Tesla when an affordable EV shows up with high efficiency in wheel motors, a battery that has twice the charge density per weight, and has flash capacitors or hydraulic pressure assist to capture almost all of the braking energy for reuse?
I am not talking about too much new tech here, a lot of it has already been invented and patented.
What happens when the disrupter gets disrupted?
What happens when the disrupter gets disrupted?
Maybe he get’s into the coal mining business and creates lots of new jobs and makes America The Greatest Nation the world has ever seen!
Meanwhile the rest of the world is shorting oil, gas and coal in favor of wind and solar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9QoPWPV8Zo
Jochen Wermuth:”Short yourself or collapse!”
Stopping Climate Change by Moving Trillions (Jochen Wermuth, Wermuth Asset Management)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtzG77iWHk8#t=144.784179
Maybe he starts building resorts and casinos – on Mars.
Yeah and then we will be able to compare unemployment rates between planets… maybe some of the coal miners can be retrained to mine the asteroid belt.
Hi GF,
Your point is rock solid.
IF the economy remains more or less functional, new tech is going to wipe out the old so fast the odds are that no single company can dominate any large industry very long, except maybe in cases where a big firewall of patents can stymie the competition.
Now about wheel motors- They have problems associated with them, especially in high performance automotive applications. A first principle in auto design is to get the weight onto the suspension, and out of the wheels, for better handling and performance. There’s not much weight to be saved anyway, or much efficiency to be gained, because the electric motor used now is already very compact and efficent.
The energy that can be recovered from braking can be used with the present set up to recharge the battery already.
I owned a box of wrenches so big that I could barely lift it before I figured out my pecker was designed as a dual purpose appendage, ;-).
Don’t work on cars for money anymore, but my new garage, under construction, is fifty by sixty feet, plenty of room for two project cars. One’s an old truck that I’m in the process of converting to running on firewood, lol. I haven’t decided on the other one yet.
All the regular’s here have a standing invitation to drop in for an afternoon or overnight in the event they ever pass thru my neck of the woods.I’m not far from the intersection of I77 and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Nothing would please me better than an evening spent talking nature, politics and technology with any of you guys, face to face over some REAL artisan whiskey, or whatever else your pleasure might be.
A few may not believe it, without seeing it, but we have indoor plumbing! 😉
Siemens has had an in-wheel motor for a number of years now. Since the coupling is magnetic, no gears are involved thus more efficient and no drive shaft or shaft joints to wear out. It can be in two or four wheels giving a true all wheel drive with full independent control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLD6X860cLQ
As far as the regenerative braking it is currently very inefficient (10 to 30 percent) since the battery cannot take the charge that fast. Using flash capacitors or hydraulic pressure storage allows about 50 to 90 percent of the braking energy to be recovered.
Agreed, regenerative braking will work really well if these “flash capacitors” work out in automotive operations. I don’t really have any idea how much an automotive wheel motor would have to weigh, but it would have to be heavier than just an ordinary wheel.
Wheel motors will be one of the NEXT BIG THINGS in machinery where weight, acceleration, and handling characteristics are not major considerations.
I might live long enough to own a farm tractor with wheel motors, lol.
The drive wheels I use now are actually ballasted, with a calcium chloride solution in the drive wheels, because the extra weight adds traction and stability on slopes. Acceleration is a non issue when you are not going to be going over ten mph max, when actually working.
Ford has done some serious research on hydraulic energy storage in trucks, but apparently decided the cost and weight of such a system is too great to install it in a truck.
I lost my links when my old computer died, but Ford had some of these systems on actual trucks out on actual highways for testing purposes.
If I remember correctly, the best prototype tested would stop a dump truck from fifty five mph, and accelerate it back up to thirty five mph without any help from the engine.
The hydraulics industry is mature,and I don’t see any real reason to hope for any substantial reduction in the cost of using hydraulics to salvage braking energy. The necessary components,except the storage tanks, are already off the shelf and manufactured by the tens of thousands to be used in construction and farm machinery.
You would need a reversible motor in this case, to use as a pump when slowing down, and a motor when accelerating the truck.
She will probably HAVE to run oil over gas, because getting tight enough gas seals in a compact enough motor/ pump unit to last for tens of thousands of cycles at the necessary pressures is most likely going to be either outrageously costly, or impossible. Dealing with hydraulic oil at two thousand psi or more requires the finest industrial quality components,and dealing with a gas at such pressures, and up from there, apparently requires rocket tech.
The tanks needed may be doable at a reasonable cost within the near future, given the progress in using materials such as carbon fiber.
Rimac already has wheel motors but they haven’t managed to bring their prices down.
Turns out charge density per weight matters less than price. I do know of a design which is better on both, but nobody’s interested in commercializing it (it’s too blue-sky).
The Rimac indeed has four motors, but they are not *in* the wheels.
>> The Concept_One is powered by four extremely powerful permanent magnet electric motors, one for each wheel, located in the centre of both axles. <<
There’s more!
>> Each of the four motors is connected to an independent gearbox. While the front motors have single-ratio reduction gearboxes, each rear motor has its own two-speed dual-carbon-clutch gearbox. This helps us to have great acceleration while also having a very high top speed. <<
http://www.rimac-automobili.com/en/press/releases/concept_one-vs-tesla-p90d-vs-laferrari/
Note that both Tesla and Rimac use reduction gearboxes.
Oh, yeah, you need the motors above the springs or the car rides really harshly.
Look at the hard drive industry for guidance. All the manufacturers went broke, but the industry carried on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manufacturers
Wind and solar works well for farmers. Wind is great for Midwestern farmers, and solar is great for anyone with a barn that has a south facing roof.
That is why the GOP won’t really try to stop it.
Javier said “That’s from Mann et al., 2008. It is not only the National Academy of Sciences that disagrees with that article. It has been demonstrated that the famous hockey-stick is fake. ”
Our in house climate denier posted that the “hockey stick” global temperature record was disproven, a fake even.
Here is a discussion on that subject: https://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm
Make your own judgment.
Make your own judgment.
This is from back in the good old days…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPgZfhnCAdI
The Daily Show – Burn Noticed
Published on Sep 23, 2014
The historic People’s Climate March takes place in New York City while a House of Representatives committee struggles with the basic principles of global warming.
Lilliput has nothing on us.
By reading a heavily biased piece from an alarmist activist place?
Michael Mann is discredited. Even the IPCC has dumped him. His 1998 “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction is now missing from the paleotemperature graph in chapter 5 of WG1 AR5. The Medieval Warm Period is back in full force as the Medieval Climate Anomaly and his infamous 1998 article in Nature is not even mentioned in a Bibliography on paleotemperatures that contains more than a thousand citations. HE HAS BEEN DUMPED. You can check it by yourself.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter05_FINAL.pdf
Mark Steyn has written a book entitled “A disgrace to his profession”, that collects scientist’s opinions on Mann’s dubious science – ranging from qualified known skeptics to Nobel prize winners, consensus supportive climatologists, and even colleagues and co-workers of Mann. This is part of his defense against the defamation suit that Mann filed on him. It looks like a big mistake from Mann’s part, and nobody in Science has come forward to support him publicly.
http://www.amazon.com/Disgrace-Profession-Josh-ebook/dp/B013TZFRGE/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1439476458&sr=1-4&keywords=mark+steyn
Some of the cites:
3373.txt: Raymond Bradley (a coauthor of Mann’s reconstruction): ” Furthermore, the model output is very much determined by the time series of forcing that is selected, and the model sensitivity which essentially scales the range. Mike only likes these because they seem to match his idea of what went on in the last millennium, whereas he would savage them if they did not. Also–& I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year “reconstruction”.
1527.txt: Dendrochronologist Rob Wilson writes: ” There has been criticism by Macintyre of Mann’s sole reliance on RE, and I am now starting to believe the accusations. ”
4241.txt: Rob Wilson again: ” The whole Macintyre issue got me thinking…I first generated 1000 random time-series in Excel … The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about. ”
2009.txt: Keith Briffa (his data on Yamal tree rings was used in the reconstruction): ” I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here! ”
3994.txt: John Mitchell (Met Office) commenting on draft IPCC report: ” Is the PCA (Principal Component Analysis) approach robust? Are the results statistically significant? It seems to me that in the case of MBH (Mann’s article) the answer in each is no. ”
0497.txt: Jones to Mann in 1999: ” Keith didn’t mention in his Science piece but both of us think that you’re on very dodgy ground with this long-term decline in temperatures on the 1000 year timescale.
0562.txt: Simon Tett (Met Office), discussing revising a paper: ” No justification for regional reconstructions rather than what Mann et al did (I don’t think we can say we didn’t do Mann et al because we think it is crap!) “.
2383.txt: Tim Barnett in 2004: ” maybe someone(s) ought to have another look at Mann’s paper. His statistics were suspect as I remember… ”
1656.txt: Douglas Maraun (UEA): ” I think, that “our” reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not especially honest.
4133.txt: David Rind (NASA GISS): ” what Mike Mann continually fails to understand, and no amount of references will solve, is that there is practically no reliable tropical data for most of the time period, and without knowing the tropical sensitivity, we have no way of knowing how cold (or warm) the globe actually got. ”
It is comforting to see that science can overcome this type of fraudulent assaults, even if the method is a slow drive into obscurity instead of a withdrawal of the article that would be the appropriate way.
Do you know that Michael Mann claimed in the lawsuit that he was a recipient of the Nobel Price? The Nobel Price Office had to issue an statement that he was not. Looks like a good way to start. I wish him luck because he has very little to gain and a lot to loose in terms of reputation from the suit.
The data was not Mann’s to begin with. It was the reconstruction of the chronology by funny statistics that was Mann’s fabrication. This was all exposed by McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003. Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemisphere Average Temperature Series. Energy & Environment Vol. 14, No. 6, 751-771
Mann’s reconstruction used numerous proxies and assigned different weights to them in order to get the desired hockey stick graph. McIntyre and McKitrick demonstrated that:
– 99% of the time, noise signal would give a similar hockey stick result.
– The final reconstruction was dependent on a single proxy series, the Sheep Mountain series of bristlecone pines, whose authors, Graybill and Idso (1993) had cautioned was not a valid climate proxy. If removed, the hockey stick disappeared. Computer files at the University server proved that Mann was aware of that.
– That when proper statistics were applied to the same data that Mann et al. used, the reconstruction showed a very robust Medieval Warm Period.
A US Senate Committee was stablished:
Ad hoc Committee report on the “Hockey stick” global climate reconstruction
http://a-sceptical-mind.com/Documents/WegmanReport.pdf
Its conclusion was that the main conclusion from Mann’s reconstruction “the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported by the Mann, Bradley and Hughes 1998/99 [work]”
Only climate alarmists with complete disregard for integrity in climate science continue to support and use Michael mann’s hockey stick. IPCC doesn’t give it any value any more.
“Michael Mann is discredited. ”
Only in the very small community of deniers. Here are enuf hockey sticks to form a league.
http://environmentalforest.blogspot.com/2013/10/enough-hockey-sticks-for-team.html
“Only climate alarmists with complete disregard for integrity in climate science ”
That’s called “projection”. Deniers have no integrity.
Oh no. Everybody in climatology knows now how he manipulated the proxies to get a result not supported by the evidence. A US Senate committee lead by a statistician concluded that the data did not support the main conclusion of the work. Pretty damning. And everybody knows how he pretended to be a Nobel Prize recipient and was shun down by the Nobel Institute. Pretty shameful.
And I do not consider myself a denier of anything, as each and every point of view that I hold is based on empirical evidence and scientific literature, as I demonstrate with citations, links and figures.
For decades I used to believe in the catastrophic climate narrative, as the evidence appeared to support it during the 80’s and 90’s. However quite recently I decided to look at the evidence myself, and found out with great surprise that the catastrophic narrative is based mostly on assumptions, and the evidence does not support it.
“Everybody in climatology knows now how he manipulated the proxies”
Almost all of them knows he didn’t.
“A US Senate committee lead by a statistician concluded that the data did not support the main conclusion of the work. ”
Wegman, not Mann, was discredited.
The so-called Wegman Report (14 July, 2006), written by statistician Edward Wegman, David W. Scott and Yasmin Said, purported to critically examine Michael Mann’s “Hockey Stick” “past temperature” reconstruction and its critiques by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKittrick. The report is now remembered as the epitome of global warming denier stupidity, in terms of both its factual errors and its college freshman-level plagiarism from textbooks and Wikipedia.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Wegman_Report
Plagiarism charges against Wegman[edit]
Wegman’s institution, George Mason University, confirmed in October 2010 that they were investigating misconduct charges, following a March 2010 formal complaint by Raymond S. Bradley alleging plagiarism and fabrications in the Wegman Report. A 250-page study by computer scientist John Mashey, posted on the “Deep Climate” website, claims that 35 of the 91 pages in the Wegman Report were plagiarized, and “often injected with errors, bias and changes of meaning.” Wegman responded that he was “very well aware of the report”, but at the university’s request would not comment further until all issues were settled.[72] Reviews by outside experts contacted by USA Today found plagiarism from textbooks which was obvious and inappropriate; the social network analysis section had also been partly copied from Wikipedia. Wegman said there was “speculation and conspiracy theory” in John Mashey’s analysis, and said that “[t]hese attacks are unprecedented in my 42 years as an academic and scholar.” He stated that the Wegman Report never “intended to take intellectual credit for any aspect of paleoclimate reconstruction science or for any original research aspect of social network analysis.”[73]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wegman_Report
“I do not consider myself a denier of anything,”
Deniers are always in denial.
“I do not consider myself a denier of anything.”
Really? Anything? Anything at all? Actually that’s quite a comical comment. Let’s see, does he not deny getting his neighbor’s cute wife pregnant? Does he not deny the Earth is round (or flat)? Or, does he not even deny 2 + 2 = 11? He should deny EVERYTHING (safer) or, ideally, not comment at all. 🙂
Don’t be childish
Javier is a poor-man’s proxy for Richard Lindzen. Go after Lindzen
http://contextearth.com/2016/12/31/lindzen-doth-protest-too-much/
“Go after Lindzen” Why, his (Lindzen’s) Myths have already been exposed.
CLIMATE MISINFORMER: Richard Lindzen
https://skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Richard_Lindzen.htm
Typical side attack when nobody could demonstrate that the conclusions from the report were incorrect.
McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003 also stands unchallenged. Everybody knows what Michael Mann did with the proxies.
Why hasn’t Javier been banned yet? He’s just repeating lies which have already been debunked. It’s *boring*.
Whackamole
“Michael Mann is discredited. Even the IPCC has dumped him. His 1998 “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction is now missing from the paleotemperature graph in chapter 5 of WG1 AR5.”
Javier, not Mann, is discredited…
it might not come as a surprise that one of the most egregious misrepresentations of the IPCC’s latest report involves the Hockey Stick and conclusions about the uniqueness of modern warming.
An urban legend seems to be circulating around the echo chamber of climate change denial, including contrarian blogs and fringe rightwing news sites. The claim is that the IPCC has “dropped” or “trashed” the Hockey Stick conclusion regarding the unprecedented nature of recent warmth.
A good rule of thumb is that the more insistent climate change deniers are about any particular talking-point, the greater the likelihood is that the opposite of what they are claiming actually holds. The IPCC has, in fact, actually strengthened its conclusions regarding the exceptional nature of modern warmth in the new report. A highlighted box in the “summary for policy-makers” states the following (emphasis mine):
In the northern Hemisphere, the period 1983-2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1,400 years (medium confidence).
The original 1999 Hockey Stick study (and the 2001 Third IPCC Assessment report) concluded that recent northern hemisphere average warmth was likely unprecedented for only the past 1,000 years. The 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment extended that conclusion back further, over the past 1,300 years (and it raised the confidence to “very likely” for the past 400 years). The new, Fifth IPCC Assessment has now extended the conclusion back over the past 1,400 years. By any honest reading, the IPCC has thus now substantially strengthened and extended the original 1999 Hockey Stick conclusions.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/28/ipcc-climate-change-deniers
But I also believe that to be true. I do believe that the evidence points that probably we are warmer now than during the Medieval warm period. As usual warmists miss the point because they don’t understand anything.
The hockey stick was a fraudulent reconstruction that erased both the warming prior to the Medieval Warm Period and the cooling afterwards leading to the Little Ice Age. It left a monotonic straight constant rate cooling for over a thousand years all the way to the present warming, that he placed starting in 1900. It has been completely discredited. IPCC has reinstated the Medieval Warm Period, and modern warming starts about 1850, which is the point I have been discussing all along with GoneFishing and provided ample evidence that it is the expert scientists consensus. Now you can believe whatever you want, but don’t think that science is on your side, because it is not.
Javier said:
As usual, a case of psychological projection.
A good recent example of this is the ongoing situation regarding Richard Lindzen
http://contextearth.com/2016/12/31/lindzen-doth-protest-too-much/
Javier is a nobody. Richard Lindzen is a somebody that has been wrong on nearly everything he has touched.
Re: Mr. Steyn:
Climate researcher’s defamation suit about insulting columns is on
Can you keep calling someone a fraud after they’ve been cleared multiple times?
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/12/climate-researchers-defamation-suit-about-insulting-columns-is-on/
From the article:
This leaves the claims of defamation against Simberg and Steyn. Here, the authors’ tendency to treat their own views as facts caused them problems. “[The] argument is that the statements are not verifiably false because they are simply Mr. Simberg’s opinion,” the court says, before going on to note that, “in the article Mr. Simberg does not employ language normally used to convey an opinion, such as ‘in my view,’ or ‘in my opinion,’ or ‘I think.’ The article’s assertions about Dr. Mann’s deception and misconduct are stated objectively, as having been ‘shown and ‘revealed’ by the CRU e-mails.—snip—- the court concludes, claims of Mann’s misconduct in these columns are statements of fact. In this case, they’d be protected if they were right. But the court’s concluded it’s likely they’re not. While Simberg and Steyn felt that the Penn State investigation of Mann was a sham, they again failed to provide any reason to believe that. In contrast, the court was impressed by the investigative body there, going so far as to name all of its members and their credentials.
“Even if appellants’ skepticism of the Penn State report were to be credited by a jury as a valid reason for not taking its conclusions seriously,” the court goes on, “that leaves three other reports, from separate investigatory bodies in academia and government, on both sides of the Atlantic, that also found no wrongdoing.” It also notes that there have been seven investigations in total that haven’t found wrongdoing, that Mann’s scientific conclusions were accepted by a National Academies of Science panel that looked into matters, and that the results have been validated by additional research since.
So: you base your opinion on a guy who (if we believe the appeals court) is about to lose a defamation suit at trial.
Actually it looks like Steyn is about to win the defamation suit at trial. Steyn doesn’t have to prove any wrongdoing from Mann’s part. He is just exercising his right to free speech. Mann has to prove that Steyn criticism was not covered by free speech right. Tough one.
Actually it looks like Steyn is about to win
No it doesn’t.
You suffer from Steyn’s problem: an opinion not backed up by any evidence, that you present as a fact.
Do you have even a shred of evidence for this? Maybe a reference of some kind? Did you read the decision and draw something else out of it? Because if you didn’t (and if you did, you should have posted it, eh?) you should have couched your language in terms of “I think” , or “in my opinion”.
You obviously didn’t read the quote in the middle of my comment: the court concludes, claims of Mann’s misconduct in these columns are statements of fact. In this case, they’d be protected if they were right. But the court’s concluded it’s likely they’re not. (emphasis mine.)
To simplify: they presented lies as fact. If the lies were truths, they’d be golden. Unfortunately, their lies turned out to be lies. So, not protected speech.
In light of the fact that I have legal references, where are yours? The free speech angle you bring up is what the article is debunking.
Or were you just waiting until time had passed in hopes I wouldn’t keep an eye on my comment?
We will see when the verdict comes.
Mark Steyn..
https://www.desmogblog.com/mark-steyn
Why hasn’t Javier been banned yet? His dishonest spam is really clogging up an otherwise-interesting comments section.
Javier, did you miss my previous quote/comment about Mann and the Hockey Stick Controversy?
It would seem fairly obvious to any reasonably-astute non-expert-in-climate reading it that Mann and the hockey stick graph is fine, yes?
In any case, might you, or anyone reading this, know how I might be able to install a GFCI combination light-switch and electrical outlet– a Leviton Smartlockpro X7299-W (?)– (or another recommended?) in place of a simple 2-wire (plus ground) switch loop wall light switch, where only those wires come into the box?
I tried the diagram in the image, for example, but it doesn’t appear to work with the Leviton… and I’m still alive to talk about it.
I assume you did download and read the PDF instruction sheet and went through the trouble shooting and that you have a good volt/ohm meter. I looked at it and it seems pretty straightforward. Without knowing what readings you are getting or the specifics of your home wiring it’s hard to give advice one way or another.
Hi Fred,
Thanks, yes the PDF is online and I have a copy of it with the device. It doesn’t document my kind of circuit that you see an illustration of– a simple 2-wire (plus ground) switch loop, if I have the terminology right. I have come across some info online that seems to suggest that what is wanted– keeping the light switch but adding an outlet with it– is not possible with the product and my kind of light-switch circuit, where the white wire is also ‘hot’. In any case, I am heading back to the hardware store later today.
You can’t do what you’re trying to do there if that is indeed a switch-loop, because you don’t have the neutral wire to feed the GFCI receptacle. Using the bare ground for neutral will trip the GFCI. It would be functional using a non-GFCI receptacle, but not per code and not recommended either. If it’s possible to pull a 14/3 from the light fixture to the switch by using the current 14/2, that would be one way around the problem. That might not be possible for several reasons, the most likely one being the possibility of the switch-loop wire being stapled to a stud or ceiling joist along the way.
A simpler fix might be possible if you’re lucky enough that the switch is on an interior wall and there’s an outlet on the other side of that wall, in the same stud-space as the switch. Usually pretty easy in that case to fish a wire from one to the other.
Good luck.
Thanks, Stanley. That’s the sense I got and helps to confirm things.
GoneFishing,
This is Figure 5.8 from IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, Working Group 1. It shows reconstructed NH temperatures for the past millennium.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter05_FINAL.pdf
Interhemispheric teleconnections, global glaciers, and temperature reconstructions at the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool support that globally temperatures changed in a similar way.
It shows very clearly that the bottom of the LIA took place between 1600-1650, and that the LIA ended around 1850 after the very cold relapse of 1815. Since the bottom of the LIA global warming is 370 years old, and since the end of LIA is 170 years old. During most of this time global warming has been driven mostly by natural factors, as anthropogenic forcing is only considered to have become significant around 1950.
As you would say the consensus of experts on past millennium temperatures is this one, not the one you defend. As you would say you are denying the science of paleoclimatology.
You need to rewrite climate history to support your narrative that man started global warming. As I have said that is a clear symptom that you are wrong and that you know it. You know something has gone real fishy with your position when I can refute you using science from the National Academy of Sciences and the IPCC.
Don’t feed the trolls.
Who really needs all these things in nature? Climate? Who needs that? Then all of the weather going on inside the climate, there is that too, it gets boring talking about the weather, been doing it for thousands of years. It is time to talk about something more, the climate, the change in the climate, the climate science, the accumulation of climate data, a glacier of the stuff. Now it has to be all about the climate and no more talk of the weather. Coal? Oil? Who needs those gifts from nature? Why do people hate coal and oil so much? They are not really trying to hurt anybody. It’s not right and it’s not fair.
Also, there is too much emphasis on solar and wind energies and too little emphasis on the importance of coal and oil, both of which are essential for modern existence as we know it, so it has to be more fair and balanced. Coal and oil are beat upon relentlessly while solar and wind enjoy much adoration and and accentuation. Very unfair!
No sympathy for coal whatsoever, just cold hearted rejection. Every ounce of energy is expended to use less oil, oil represents everything that always goes wrong. Too much time and energy expended on the advantages of solar and wind, are given an unfair amount of time and space.
I demand more talk about the weather and much less talk about the climate, complete acceptance of coal and oil, and no rejection! Wind and solar are optional. Why bother with them at all?
They’re open to scrutiny, no free ride for wind and solar while coal and oil pay the piper.
The priorities are firmly established, too many people rocking the coal and oil boat while piling high the solar and wind basket of eggs.
Crow and humble pie are from nature too. Might be the only meal available, it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.
Things are getting really tough in Venezuela.
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/01/01/venezuela-military-is-making-money-off-countrys-diminished-food-supply.html
It seems likely to me that pretty soon the lid will fly off that particular pressure cooker.
Some very stressed out oil workers are likely to start sabotaging production pretty soon.
Things are getting really tough in Venezuela.
I have a hunch that those countries and economies that have most of their eggs in fossil fuels will fail in the near future. That includes places like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Brazil, to name a few. BTW, by coincidence or not, they also happen to have rigid authoritarian forms of government with very high levels of corruption. Too bad that this seems to be the model that the current US administration would like to emulate as well!
Interestingly our local denialist and contrarian seems to be getting more and more shrill if not desperate… The only explanation for his behavior that makes any sense to me, is that he has a political or economic agenda closely tied to fossil fuel interests! May I suggest everyone just ignore him.
Let’s find other topics to discuss. Maybe then he will lose interest and go back under his bridge. His horse is dead and no matter how hard he wants to beat it, it isn’t going to get up.
Edit: This just showed up…
That paragon of unbiased news sources The New York Post has a piece today on Mann’s lawsuit. Gotta love the choice of words…
Mann’s suit claims bloggers Mark Steyn, on NR’s site, and Rand Simberg, on CEI’s, defamed him when they slammed his global-warming research, particularly his famous hockey stick graph — an illustration of how temperatures have recently surged.
Simberg accuses Mann of having “molested and tortured” the data, much as disgraced Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky molested kids. Steyn quotes Simberg, calls the hockey stick “fraudulent” and likens Mann’s methodology to a “circus.”
http://nypost.com/2017/01/01/michael-mann-court-decision-threatens-the-first-amendment/
Yep Fred, a very sensitive bugger. Needs to chill and try and actually understand the physics. After declaring the hockey stick false then putting up another slightly modified hockey stick, I do wonder about the cognitive ability.
Doesn’t matter anyway, Arctic Ocean melting, Greenland melting, Antarctica melting. Gives one a hint that extreme changes are happening in a short span of time.
Yes, you really don’t want to let him have the last word but eventually realize he’s a troll and will respond with something even more idiotic when you reply.
Hi Fred,
As usual, I am with you, maybe not on the same page all the time, but sure as hell in the same book.
Do you really think Brazil is so dependent on fossil fuel revenues that the country is truly at risk for this reason?
Now about Javier. I don’t believe in censorship, and there really are people who are quite knowledgeable who don’t believe forced warming is or will be a big problem.
When I nail somebody , I like to wait until I can really nail them, in such a fashion that no real defense is left to them.
Javier has really really REALLY stuck his foot in it, as a biologist, or from the pov of ANY scientist, actually, in ignoring the precautionary principle, and saying we ought not worry about warming, at least for now.
One of my most important goals, at this time, is to find ways to express reality as it is known to real scientists, in terms accessible to laymen. So here goes a try at it, in terms a knowledgeable layman can understand.
IF Javier really knows his stuff, then there is no way he can FAIL to know that the effects of ff pollution will be slow to appear, at first, like new money in an account drawing compound interest. But as time passes, NEW money is ADDED in ever increasing quantity, year after year. One day you wake up, after a few decades of saving on a regular basis, and suddenly realize you have a LOT of money in the bank, lol. Or excess heat in the environment.
Just about anybody who can walk and talk at the same time understands what is meant by the old saying that a stitch in time saves nine, and anybody with a technical background simply must understand that a very serious problem can be ignored safely for a long time- in the event the long term doesn’t matter.
My old Chevy truck WILL eventually be so rusty I simply can’t maintain it any longer. No problem, I can get another truck. The long term doesn’t matter in the case of worn out old trucks.
BUT there isn’t any other place we can go to live. We need to be doing something about the climate rust that is inevitable while it’s still feasible, because when an truck finally breaks in half on the road someplace………. it’s over.
And even if it IS possible to make repairs once the rust problem is OBVIOUS, it’s still a one stitch expense to fix it early, and a nine stitch expense to fix it later.
Knowledgeable laymen, and professional with tech backgrounds , know that being absolutely certain what will happen, in terms of real world events, over time, is simply not possible in many cases, probably most cases. Too many things can change, too many things can go “right” or “wrong” .
But this does not mean we can’t use our technical knowledge as an additional tool, along with day to day “common sense” to come up with a pretty good idea what will happen, and whether it will be good for us, or bad, in many cases, and forced warming is one of them.
Lots of things are REALLY good for us, within a given range, for instance red meat, milk, and potatoes. You can grow up big and strong on a diet rich in these foods, but when you get older………. it’s best to cut WAY back on them.
One or two glasses of wine can mean pleasant conversation, maybe even getting laid. A couple of bottles means a hangover, and maybe a nasty fight.
When Javier points out a big wheat crop, or greening in some places, even overall, as evidence that more CO2 in the atmosphere is GOOD, but ignores the obvious and dead certain conclusion that too much MAY BE VERY DANGEROUS, as a practical matter in respect to our day to day lives, he exposes himself as either technically incompetent, as a biologist, or else as something he professes not to be- a fossil fuels mouthpiece.
Note, I use the words “may be very dangerous” because the precautionary principle is the hammer I’m using to drive some nails in his coffin.
No ethical and competent biologist would ever ignore the precautionary principle, unless he is simply not bright enough, or well informed enough- in respect to the climate question- in basic physics and basic probability theory.
We all know about somebody who thinks tobacco is harmless because they knew somebody who smoked two packs of Camels a day and still lived to be over ninety.
It IS possible that forced warming will not get bad enough to cause any real problems. It’s also possible to drive and drink, or eat all the wrong foods, and not die in an accident, or from diabetes. That doesn’t mean it’s wise to take unnecessary chances.
If we are going to win the political battle for the minds and souls of this country when the issue is the environment, we are going to have to do it by way of reasoning and arguments that do not reflect badly on the culture and ethics of the people who are opposed to the general social philosophy of the current day D party, because social solidarity trumps technical facts when naked apes decide who is a friend, an insider, a group member, or an outsider, a stranger, a foe.
Like it or not, there are more than enough people who are culturally and socially conservative in the traditional sense to get their way, politically, as often as not. And even though the demographics are against them, they will remain a potent force for at least another ten to twenty years.
My goal is to win them over by allowing them to come to the “right” conclusions of their own free will. Injecting the “wrong” sort of social and cultural politics into the argument guarantees they won’t change their minds, so I am not planning on even MENTIONING such politics in my book, except where I can’t avoid doing so.
All suggestions that might help will be greatly appreciated.
Do you really think Brazil is so dependent on fossil fuel revenues that the country is truly at risk for this reason?
Brazil is NOT Venezuela and certainly has other options, it is not by any means a one trick pony. There is no doubt in my mind that a large part of the economic mess it currently finds itself in, is due to the last administrations having pretty much bet the farm on a continued revenue from oil.
Petrobras is state controlled and it produced quite the gravy train for a long time. To be fair the wealth it produced helped bring a lot of the population out of extreme poverty. Unfortunately the corrupt politicians in control of most of that wealth didn’t do a very good job of investing in alternatives and the promises of the past can no longer be kept. The current administration is just as corrupt as the last two and is now pushing austerity. Very bad move, because the people are quite angry.
The Brazilian people are not happy campers and are not taking this situation lying down. I fully expect to see a lot of social unrest and more of the kicking the bums out kind of situations as just happened in the mayoral elections of the two largest cities, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro which elected people from outside the traditional political system. My hunch is there will be a lot more that happening.
But the good news is the Brazilian judicial system seems to be working well and the country as a whole is firmly behind democratic ideals. Brazil also has a large national territory, vast resources. It also has a well developed and diverse industrial base. Excellent universities that are producing world class scientists, engineers and doctors. It also seems to be waking up to the potential of alternative energy and the new industrial and digital revolution. The greatest asset Brazil has, is its ethnically diverse population!
I’m not counting Brazil out by any means but they are in for a turbulent transition.
As for our resident contrarian I’d much prefer it if he spent his time using his knowledge in more productive ways. If it is true that he holds a PhD in microbiology maybe he could comment on the link I posted the other day of George Church’s talk and CRISPER-cas9 technology. Maybe he could discuss topics like genomics and how that might affect our futures or the ethical implications of using gene drives to change or even completely eliminate wild populations of pathogen carrying vector insects such as the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
Unfortunately he seems more interested in the pseudo science of anthropogenic climate change denialism. If that is all he want’s to talk about then as far as I’m concerned I’m not going to bother with him any more.
Cheers!
“May I suggest everyone just ignore him.” Lesson number one: NEVER FEED A TROLL.
Another hard day on the planet, the climate debate slogs on, a grueling, grinding endless arguing of what the world is doing today, besides making life a little more miserable and much more uncomfortable. The misery index is on the rise.
I see the cars, I hear the roaring traffic, and then I shout, “My God, what have we done?”
Then the starter doesn’t engage, the ring gear ain’t gonna turn, won’t crank, no combustion unless the crank shaft is turning, nothing. Gotta go get a new starter to continue singing the song. I’ll be back, shouldn’t be too long.
Wouldn’t electric vehicles be less complicated? Press the ‘on’ button, shift to ‘go’, let the computer do the rest, you can drink your favorite beverage and watch TV.
With an ICE, you are under the frame and pulling off the worn out starter.
Drinking is more productive.
For Dennis, and or Ron Patterson,
What are the odds that this site will remain up permanently, as an archive, in the event the two of you must eventually give it up , and nobody suitable to you two guys comes forward to run it?
I’m thinking maybe I ought to copy it all just in case.
Do. You can also use webcite to force a copy of every page you’re interested in to be kept on their website.
Wayback Machine
I know just about every body in this forum will have to hold their noses to read it, because it’s from the National Review, but never the less, this link is about something that is of considerable interest to anybody wondering what the future economic and political landscape will look like, and it has a LOT of relevant data in it.
Generally speaking, when the NR posts statistics, they are accurate, although they MAY be cherrypicked, lol.
Read it for insight, the subject is well worth some discussion here. Basically it boils down to this. Will we move, or stay put, and why, and where too, etc.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443420/poor-americans-moving-less-often-even-miserable-conditions
I personally know people who have moved. One younger first cousin jokes that he lives on jets, due to traveling almost non stop, due to his work, and while he has a house near his parents house, he will never actually live in it. He will settle down someplace more interesting and exotic. A recently graduated second cousin just packed her bags for Northern Virginia, and the jobs and shopping available to young women in Fairfax and Alexandria. She could probably do as well in Charlotte, money wise, but she wants to be involved in making policy, even if only as a low level staffer someplace in the federal government.
And I have a couple of relatives that will never move due to collecting some bennies from the welfare state, in the form of a subsidized rental home. It’s theirs so long as they stay, but if they give it up…….. they may never get another subsidized house, and a few hundred bucks a month matters a hell of a lot, if you are hard up.
Lots of food for thought………..
The only reason I didn’t go to Alaska to work on the pipeline is that I was head over heels in love AND lust at the time, MY Little Chicadee ( courtesy of Mencken? ) Hot Young Blossom ( courtesy of Twain) told me in no uncertain terms SHE wasn’t going, and that she MIGHT be there for me when I got back.
If I had ever gotten established in the Pacific Northwest, in one of the more pristine areas, I would might never have come back here, except to visit.
Oh, this article is all correct, but he doesn’t explain that the obvious conclusion is that we need government benefits to be location-transferrable.
Hi Nathaniel,
NR is a hard core right side organization, and that makes it easy to understand that they won’t say much about making such benefits portable.
But NR is really good at pointing out relevant information that is seldom covered anywhere else. I also read a number of hard left publications for the same reason, they too point out a lot of relevant information seldom covered in the mainstream.
I hope there will be a few comments indicating the places other forum members are thinking about selecting as their long term homes. I doubt anybody will be choosing southern California, lol.
But suppose wind and solar power get to be SUPER cheap, and that there are cost breakthroughs in desalinating sea water……….. If those two aces hit the table for California, then California can still function as a society.
“I doubt anybody will be choosing southern California, lol.”
Your loss, not mine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHaGFE0szJk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsC3CxXZryY
“If those two aces hit the table for California, then California can still function as a society.”
You have no clue what your talking about. Just Noise.
DONALD TRUMP MAKES TOP REPUBLICAN FEAR ENVIRONMENTAL FUTURE
She said: “I find it very worrisome that there seems to be a disdain for the science on protecting the environment…”
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38484730
“But it’s too soon to judge. China, for instance, may attempt to seize the moral high ground by stepping up its efforts to protect the climate – effectively taking over as world leader in the bid to protect the planet. That might not suit the future president.”
I fully expect China to do exactly that. They seem to have a long term plan to switch to a truly sustainable economy based on renewables. I realize that looking at their smog filled urban skies and vast numbers of coal fired electricity generating plants it may not look that way right now.
I think we will see a very different China emerging from all the ashes of their fossil fuel use. Using fossil fuels as a means to and end makes sense only if that end is a 100% renewables based new economy! Too bad the US seems to want to go back in time with its current fossil fuel based energy policies.
I hope so Fred, really I do. I spent seven odd years in China and have divided feelings. On the one hand they have a well educated population who tend to have a very long term perspective. On the other hand I’ve been driven across Beijing to “enjoy” exclusive dinners (I discovered) featuring rare or endangered species on the menu – BECAUSE the menu contained rare or endangered species!
I’d argue like a madman about this and the response was always the same: “It’s good to have different opinions.” And, most Chinese seem to aspire to owning a high-powered Mercedes. Alas, so so much is about prestige there (everywhere).
‘I spent seven odd years in China and have divided feelings. On the one hand they have a well educated population who tend to have a very long term perspective. On the other hand I’ve been driven across Beijing to “enjoy” exclusive dinners (I discovered) featuring rare or endangered species on the menu – BECAUSE the menu contained rare or endangered species!’
One thing working in favor of China working toward renewables is that it isn’t a capitalist democracy. The government can still exert control and direction. And while there is a rising middle class and wealthy in China who want luxuries, they also can see what uncontrolled pollution looks like. So there is visible proof that there should be attention paid to air quality and environmental concerns.
And why not let the wealthy have very expensive electric or fuel efficient cars? Status doesn’t necessarily require massive carbon use.
China is *already* doing exactly that.
I did like Christine Todd Whitman back in the day. It was an error on her part to be in the Republican Party (which treated her abominably), but people make these errors….
“Trumpenlumpenprole ”
Word of the day.
I’m ‘Lumpen Pro’ over at Zero Hedge, but don’t really comment there very often. I just wanted to do the nickname-squatter thing.
But I will have to look up your Trumpenlumpenprole…
I was thinking of having ‘Lumpen Pro (Let’s Go Golfing)’ but thought it maybe too much, at least in terms of letters for the nickname registration.
I think ‘Puffalar (Your Five-Alarm Puff)’ is as far as I want to go for now, not including the previous Throbbing Orville Reddenbudders, which some might remember.
…Ah, those were the halcyon days… when everything seemed possible… Ron was running POB… and journalism was real… (haha, ok just kidding about that)… and Space X on Mars, with its stranded crew in desperate straights, broadcasting their every last word to Earth’s captives, was just a tequila away… (well it still is)…
Anyway, I would like to take this opportunity to wish Everyone (And Then Some), a puffy 2017. (It could get pretty swollen.)
Private Idaho
Doug, I very much share her concerns and sincerely hope that there are a few sane true conservatives left who will stand up to what I see as a last ditch power grab by the fossil fuel interests. The choice of people surrounding Mr Trump and especially Mr. Rex Tillerson and the general coziness with Russia and Putin make me think that there is something very rotten in Denmark and it smells a lot like crude!
From the linked article:
Details of Mr Trump’s climate policy are not yet clear, but his team have talked about boosting coal, opening new oil pipelines, and allowing mining on public wilderness or drilling in the Arctic.
On the political side, they have suggested quitting the global climate deal, scrapping President Obama’s clean power plan, and dismantling the US energy department along with the EPA itself.
The first part is very bad business policy in view of the fact that renewables are now cheaper that any fossil fuels and continuing to get cheaper by the day. Of course if you are in the fossil fuel business and happened to be faced with trillions of dollars worth of stranded assets as things go south for you that it is certainly understandable but still not excusable.
Because of the current state of available scientific knowledge, the second part borders on being a crime against humanity and should be dealt with accordingly in an international court of law! The consequences of this deliberate disinformation campaign affect the most desenfranchised members of the human population to the benefit of the very few.
Expanding drilling of oil and natural gas will keep prices low, which won’t please companies currently in business, so I question the extent to which the Trump administration will follow through on this.
There are multiple articles about the decline of coal, so there isn’t much the Trump administration can do with that.
So the big question is whether the Trump administration recognizes where the jobs and the money are heading, or whether they are determined to prop up fossil fuels at all costs.
Of particular interest to residents of small island states:
Hawaii Electric aims to hit 100% renewables 5 years early with new power supply plan
Bold in body of text, mine.
Demand Destruction:
BTW, took possession of a new LEAF just before Christmas. It’s a very pleasant car to drive. Have had lots of snowy icy hills to climb since and it has performed well.
The End of the ICE Age: The Internal Combustion Engine Could Soon Become A Stranded Asset
dollarsperbbl, Posted on December 21, 2016 by benham
A number of forces, technical and economic, are conspiring to unseat the internal combustion engine (ICE) as the prime mover for transportation. The future powering of China and India looks more electric, efficient and urban, stranding ICE vehicles and oil product demand with it.
The oil industry views this world of pervasive EV uptake very differently, and resists its claims. But they may be relatively powerless to prevent it.
Thus, BP and other oil majors, project an alternative reality.
In BP’s latest forecast regarding EVs and oil demand, EV fleet growth is a non-starter – their view is that it takes until 2035 to reach a fleet size of EVs – 70 million – that Ford projects might occur around 12 years earlier in 2023. Chevron and Exxon Exxon have similar views.
These oil company’s CEOs are sufferring from severe cognitive dissonance, they are the perfect example of a group that will be completely blindsided by the rapid EV disruption.
My guess is that Ford is much closer to the truth.
It took only 13 years for the horse to be 100% eliminated by the ICE in New York City at the begining of the 20th century.
.
It may take a little longer than Ford is projecting, but they’re in the right ballpark. BP is waaay off.
It’s good to know what Ford is projecting. Now that Big Auto is recognizing that the end of ICE is near, that means they’ll all switch over to EVs quicker.
(I have to work out the timing on when to get out of my Tesla stock. It’s going to boom regardless of other EV makers as long as it is taking business away from ICEs — and then as EVs start to take over the whole market, as they go from 50% of the market to 100%, it’ll face competitive headwinds.)
Solar Panels Now So Cheap Manufacturers Probably Selling at Loss
Bloomberg, by Chris Martin December 30, 2016, 12:52 PM EST
Spot prices fell to a record-low of 36 cents a watt this week
Was just checking prices of solar panels on SunElec’s site in Miami. In case anyone has an interest or need:
They have an ad up offering 50,000 FREE 34 Watt, 6 volt, used solar roofing tiles. The panels are currently located in California, shipping is $2.70 per panel to Miami. other locations may be extra.
Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with SunElec
I have found that used panels are very popular in rural areas (where, among other things, there is plenty of space and so efficiency is not important), while urban areas with smaller rooftops put a higher premium on getting newer and more efficient panels. We’ll see “cascading” effects.
Clearly yet another irrational alarmist,
DAVID HEMPLEMAN-ADAMS URGES CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION AFTER ARCTIC VOYAGE
“The 60-year-old set off from Bristol in June to circumnavigate the Arctic polar region by boat, a trip traditionally taking about three years. His team managed it in four months and one day which confirmed, he said, his “worst fears” about disappearing ice.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-wiltshire-38488784
Probably just slightly senile or victim of mass hysteria. We know Arctic sea ice extent last September was higher than in 2007, so no melting for 9 years now, despite two record warm years in a row, 2015 and 2016.
What is so urgent about something that hasn’t changed in 9 years? Perhaps next September there will be even more ice. Nobody knows.
Global Warming 2016: Arctic Spin
The useful thing about a canary in a coal mine is that it warns you of danger before the danger kills you.
When 2016 began last January 1st, the average temperature throughout the Arctic was fully 18°F (10°C) hotter than usual for New Year’s day, and the extent of sea ice in the Arctic was lower than ever before recorded for that date:
The extra-high temperatures and extra-low sea ice with which the Arctic started the year, was just the beginning.
Arctic sea ice generally grows in extent during the first two months of the year (it being winter and all), and in that regard 2016 was no exception. It didn’t maintain its lowest-for-this-date status on all days, but did skirt the lowest-yet-seen extent consistently during the months of January and February:
Nobody who knows Arctic sea ice was surprised by this. It has been on the decline, overall, for decades, so it’s no surprise that this year’s levels would be at or near their lowest. It’s part and parcel of the ongoing trend of the loss of sea ice in the Arctic.
Nor was it a surprise that, even with an ongoing trend, it wasn’t always at its lowest-ever. Most everything in nature, including sea ice, doesn’t just follow a trend, it also constantly fluctuates. Added to the overall tendency-
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2016/12/global-warming-2016-arctic-spin.html#more
DON’T FEED THE TROLL, IT ENCOURAGES HIM
I was disappointed that this thread has started with the climate change. At least I got some non-climate articles up in the beginning.
I think you’re wrong in the comment above that because China is a “centrally controlled” they will consequently be more likely to implement laws/policies that will streamline the adoption of “green” solutions to smog, etc. In fact, their central government has very limited control over provinces that, for the most part, simply go their own way. Further, and unfortunately, corruption is rampant; I’ve witnessed this on too many occasions. What happens in China usually depends on who pays the bigger bribe. This is gradually changing but the key word is gradually.
Ok Doug, I get it now. It’s OK to bate Javier with “DAVID HEMPLEMAN-ADAMS URGES CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION AFTER ARCTIC VOYAGE”. But when he reply’s with nonsense one should not reply back because that’s feeding the conman. Got it !
Nothing is ever a surprise for the alarmist crowd. If it is the lowest ever is proof of global warming, and if not is just a natural fluctuation.
What we have is a period 2007-2016 deemed to be the warmest in thousands of years, that includes 2015 and 2016, the two warmest years ever registered, and yet there has been no significant Arctic sea ice melting, and in fact the situation this past September was more Arctic sea ice than on September 2007.
The obvious conclusion is that there is not a direct linear relationship between global average temperatures and Arctic sea ice. Science has known that to be the case for quite some time, as Arctic sea ice is related to Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Yet alarmists continue to beat the dead horse that the Arctic is going to melt soon due to global warming. Well, sorry you just don’t understand the science behind Arctic sea ice dynamics and year after year for the next couple of decades your predictions of doom for Arctic sea ice are going to fail miserably. Everybody is going to see that climate alarmism amounts to a big pile of nothing.
In the meantime 2016, the warmest year registered showed more sea ice than 2007 and 2012, and 2017 will again show more Arctic sea ice than 2007, because the trend has changed, and you just don’t have a clue of that.
Just one more bogus measurement, implying that sea ice extent actually measures the amount of ice in an area. It does not, in fact it does not generally even come close.
Sea Ice Extent does not indicate how much of the ocean is actually covered with ice. It indicates how much ocean is covered with at least 15% ice. That means that a given value say 10 million square kilometers can have actual ice cover of from 1.5 km2 to 10 km2 of ice.
For a given amount of ice, sea ice extent can change dramatically due to storms, wind, and currents. Those changes do not reflect any real change in the amount of ice cover, merely ocean that has at least 15% cover.
Sea ice area is a better value since it reports the amount of actual surface cover. However, the thickness of the ice is not taken into account, thus the actual amount of ice is still unknown.
Arctic sea ice volume hasn’t changed either since 2007 according to the Danish Meteorological Institute.
Nice cherry picking, almost correct but still losing volume from 2007 to now. You need to actually understand natural variation not just use it to cherry pick.
I can do that too. Sept ice volume fell from 14,000 km3 to 3500 km3 between 2001 and 2012. That is almost 4 times the average rate of loss. But then it rose some, and the last two years it has fallen at 2500 km3. That’s more than three times the average rate of volume loss.
Anyone can do cherry picking, but it just makes the person look like a con man.
See. http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAprSepCurrent.png
The actual average loss of Sept ice volume is 3200 km3 per decade +- 1000 km3.
Except that nobody is measuring sea ice volume.
PIOMAS is a model that is fed the exact same satellite pictures that are being used to measure sea ice extent. It can hardly be an improvement over sea ice extent to add a model over the same data and then say that the result is more reliable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_of_sea_ice#Sea_ice_volume
But to alarmists, as long as the data indicates a worsening, it doesn’t matter if it comes out of a model or corresponds to an actual measurement of something real.
Wrong again. It’s not just satellite data.
It is checked against surface based data.
From the PIOMAS site:
“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.”
Javier, it appears you do not understand the term sea ice extent.
Oh come on GoneFishing,
Arctic sea ice is many millions of square kilometers and nobody is measuring anything on 95% of that area.
US-Navy submarines and oceanographic moorings measurements are just too sparse to produce a significant amount of data.
It is the same old satellite pics being recycled and algorithm treated and then the output is labelled as volume.
Are you really that dumb as to how they confirm results?
Hi Javier,
2007 was a particularly low year for the Arctic Sea Ice minimum, so of course it looks like the trend is flat if that is chosen as a starting point. This selective choice of data is commonly called Cherry picking.
As you do this quite often, it calls all your arguments into question.
Dennis,
I have already told you many times that 2007 was a special year, and that a change of trend looks very likely in a lot of related measurements, and it is defended in several scientific publications. Your blind mathematical analysis that presupposes no knowledge about the nature and causality of the data is preventing you from seeing this.
Now please try to tell me that there has been no change of trend in North Atlantic ocean temperatures at about the same time. See graph below. Notice the year when the change of trend took place, and notice that it is the same timeframe that we are discussing in the Arctic sea ice.
It is not cherry picking. It is knowledge.
Hi Javier,
Perhaps you have the causality reversed. Also there can be heat transfer to the ocean depth below 700 meters not shown in your chart and the Gulf Stream moves a great deal of water from south t North so looking at heat content of a section of the ocean is not all that relevant, one has to look at Global ocean heat content. Your knowledge in this case seems superficial.
How to Save $23 Trillion Per Year: 100% Renewable Energy for the World
By: Jeff Masters , 4:02 PM GMT on January 02, 2017
…in a series of talks last month in San Francisco at the annual meeting of The American Geophysical Union—the world’s largest conference on climate change. Stanford professor Dr. Mark Jacobson outlined a plan to power 139 nations of the world for all purposes—including electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, industry, and agriculture/forestry/fishing—using a mix of approximately 37% wind, 58% solar, 4% hydropower, and 1% geothermal, wave, and tidal power. He argued that his plan would:
1) Replace 80% of business-as-usual power by 2030, and 100% by 2050
2) Reduce power consumption by 42.5% because of electricity’s better work:energy ratio, efficiency, and lack of mining needed
3) Create 24.3 million more jobs than lost
4) Eliminate 3.5 million premature air pollution deaths per year and save $23 trillion (7.6% of GDP) in air pollution health costs per year by 2050 (for comparison: the World Bank estimated in 2016 that air pollution in 2013 killed 5.5 million people, with non-health care costs of over $5 trillion)
5) Save $28.5 trillion per year in avoided climate change costs by potentially keeping global warming 1.5°C below pre-industrial levels
6) Reduce war by creating energy-independent countries
7) Decentralize energy production, thereby reducing power outages, terrorism threats to energy installations, and energy poverty
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/how-to-save-23-trillion-per-year-100-renewable-energy-for-the-world
Miracles never cease. Today in a local paper, I read that the senior republican in our Virginia state government , excepting the office of governor, has floated a proposal to decriminalize possession of small amounts of pot, having come to understand that it’s “insane” in his own words for us to keep locking up people for this when beer and tobacco are legal.
And if those on the D side were to give up on calling R’s stupid, ignorant, selfish, etc, to some extent ( whether the insults are deserved, or not is irrevelant in context ) we might just see a LOT faster progress in scaling up wind and solar power, etc.
It’s WORTH noting that Texas is as red as red can get, ditto some midwestern farm states, etc, where the wind resource is good, and these states are the ones where the wind industry is doing best. I fully expect Texas to go gangbusters on solar as well, within the next few years, supposing the price of solar farms keeps dropping, and especially if the price of gas and oil go up.
Them there selfish self centered stupid ignorant redneck republicans may be pretty dumb, but they can still count money, and they will be happy to sell some of the gas and oil they save using themselves by going renewable to them there nose in the air, morally superior snooty Yankees who otherwise just might freeze in the dark.
But there are still things happening every day that make me want to scream.
http://ibankcoin.com/maven/2017/01/01/virginia-school-district-mulls-ban-on-huckleberry-finn-and-to-kill-a-mockingbird/
Both books are among the most important in American literature, with a lot of people who are not afraid to say so saying that Huck Finn stands head and shoulders above all the rest, that it’s the greatest book ever written by an American. Personally I believe it is one of the ten or so most important books written within the last couple of centuries, possibly excepting purely technical works such as those of Darwin, etc.
Both had a GREAT deal to do with opening my own eyes, after growing up in a backwoods southern mountain neighborhood where there were no blacks, except migrant farm laborers , to be seen unless we went to town. And town was like another world, back then, to kid like me, although it was only a half hour ride in the back of my Dad’s truck.
Read this link, and read what a dozen or more HIGHLY respected, very well known black authors and other black movers and shakers have had to say about Twain. Then join me in wanting to scream.
Folks who are only capable of dealing in sound bites might as well not click the link, they will be wasting their time.
Jesus H. Christ!! I almost wish I hadn’t clicked on that link. It made me angry and I think it may have caused a significant reduction in my already diminishing number of still functioning brain cells!
For the record, I read Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at the very tender age of ten!
By the time I was a teenager, I had already been exposed to the real world and had friends who lived in the shanty towns of Sao Paulo. In some ways, I’d say there were many parallels between my friends and Jim.
The parent, Marie Rothstein-Williams, made an emotional plea at a school board meeting Nov. 15, saying the works had disturbed her teenage son, a biracial student at Nandua High School on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
“I’m not disputing this is great literature,” Rothstein-Williams said. “But there is (sic) so much racial slurs in there and offensive wording that you can’t get past that (sic), and right now we are a nation divided as it is.”
If you are going to comment on the work of one of the greatest American literary talents, then at the very least you should consider the historical context of his work. Not to mention that it might behoove you to demonstrate basic competence in the usage of the Anglo Saxon vernacular.
As for protecting a teenager from the writings Mark Twain? WTF! Huck Finn should be required reading for every kid in Junior high!
“If you are going to comment on the work of one of the greatest American literary talents, then at the very least you should consider the historical context of his work.”
No every naughty word should be expunged from each and every book going back to the beginning of time; except for those offensive phrases in the Old Testament, of course, because that’s God’s Word.
“Huck Finn should be required reading for every kid in Junior high!” Totally and 150% agree, especially for you Yanks! No, for EVERY kid. I simply cannot image a childhood without Huckleberry “Huck” Finn, and Huck Finn in its original unadulterated perfect pure form.
No every naughty word should be expunged from each and every book going back to the beginning of time; except for those offensive phrases in the Old Testament, of course, because that’s God’s Word.
Umm, would that also include editing the original ancient Norse texts describing the wild fertility sessions between Thor and Sif? 😉
.
Thor and Sif are married (newlyweds), give the kids a break man. 🙂
For those who didn’t click, some things , copied from the link, heavyweight black leaders have had to say about Clemens/Twain:
“Jim is the best example in nineteenth-century fiction of the average Negro slave (not the tragic mulatto or noble savage), illiterate, superstitious, yet clinging to his hope for freedom, to his love for his own. And he is completely believable, whether arguing that Frenchmen should talk like people, or doing most of the work on the raft.”
—The Negro in American Fiction (1937)
Sterling Brown
Literary critic, professor at Howard University
“It is this treatment of race that makes Pudd’nhead Wilson as contemporary as Little Rock, and Mark Twain as modern as Faulkner, although Twain died when Faulkner was in knee pants.”
—introduction to Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson (1959)
(There is a zero possibility that anybody who has ever read Pudd’n Head Wilson believes Twain was a racist, unless that reader happens to be ………. never mind, any body who CAN read simply could not be THAT stupid. My own comment in these parentheses. )
Langston Hughes
Poet, social activist, columnist
“Nobody calls Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson a novel of racial protest, but the comment it makes on what they call race relations is pretty strong. It’s a wild book. I’ve never seen anything so strong.”
—interview in the San Francisco Chronicle (1964)
LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka)
Poet, novelist, essayist
“The spoken idiom of Negro Americans, its flexibility, it musicality, its rhythms, free-wheeling diction, and metaphors, as projected in Negro American folklore, were absorbed by the creators of our great nineteenth-century literature even when the majority of blacks were still enslaved. Mark Twain celebrated it in the prose of Huckleberry Finn.”
— (1970)
Ralph Ellison
Novelist, literary critic
Perhaps the greatest compliment ever paid to Twain, this one
“Huckleberry Finn is a black novel. Yes, you’ve seen pictures of Samuel Clemens, and he’s white. Super white. White hair. White suit. White skin. But nobody’s ever seen Mark Twain, who was a figment—and a pigment—of Samuel Clemens’ imagination. And Mark Twain was black.”
—address delivered in Hartford, Connecticut (1985)
David Bradley
Novelist, Winner of Pen-Faulkner award
“The 1880s saw the collapse of civil rights for Blacks as well as the publication of Huckleberry Finn. This collapse was an effort to bury the combustible issues Twain raised in his novel. The nation, as well as Tom Sawyer, was deferring Jim’s Freedom in agonizing play.”
— (1996)
Toni Morrison
Novelist, Nobel Prize Winner
“Seriously, though, two things people throughout history have held in common are hatred and humor. I am proud that, like Mark Twain, I have been able to use humor to lessen people’s hatred.”
—on receiving first Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center (1998)
Richard Pryor
Comedian
I point these things out because quite a few people in the PC establishment would burn Twain’s books if they could.
There are idiots on the faculty of just about every university with more than a couple of thousand students, and there are plenty of people who are ready to attack Twain simply because they are so ignorant that they think they are occupying the high moral ground in so doing, and also because they flatter themselves as being lofty thinkers.
I can’t remember for sure how old I was when I first read Huck Finn, but I was still a kid, probably about twelve, maybe fourteen, one who had never been outside his parochial backwoods community except by way of books.
The passages in the book dealing with Jim’s realization that his little girl was deaf, and the others about his personal agonies, hit me in my emotional solar plexus like Mike Tyson’s fist.
My entire view of the world changed that day, just as it did the day I realized evolution is a fact, and that the Seven Days of Creation story is a myth. I don’t know how old I was then, but I think I was about ten or eleven, because that’s when my parents bought us kids an encyclopedia. It took me most of a year to read it all, pretty much page by page, all nineteen volumes. But I did read a LOT of other books in the meantime, lol, because my backwoods school library had at least a couple of thousand to choose from.
“And if those on the D side were to give up on calling R’s stupid, ignorant, selfish, etc, to some extent we might just see a LOT faster progress in scaling up wind and solar power, etc.”
??????? I guess this explains why the Republicans elected a President with the maturity of a poorly disciplined 6th grader.
If you don’t like the way the shoe fits, get a new style
If you are actually so stupid you cannot understand that constantly badmouthing people whose VOTES YOU NEED to win elections is a piss poor strategy, there is little or no point in trying to explain it to you AGAIN, but a dedicated teacher never gives up.
There is plenty of good evidence that on average people of all political stripes actually have a fairly positive attitude in respect to renewable energy, although of course those people with the tightest connections to the fossil fuel industry have the least positive attitudes, and they do tend to be R’s more so than D’s.
You will apparently NEVER get your head around it, but it’s a basic fact that tens of millions of socially and culturally conservative people are opposed to subsidizing renewable energy not because they have anything against renewable energy in and of itself, but RATHER because they correctly see it as something strongly favored by their perceived enemies, people like YOU.
In a war of any sort, you don’t normally support policies strongly favored by the enemy, and we are engaged in a hot, long running culture war in the USA right now.
And even though it is possible to make a very good case that Trump isn’t even a big R Republican, as a lot of large D Democrats made a case that Sanders is not a Democrat, Trump, who hijacked the R party, and the R party won the last big battle, a few weeks back.
Millions of people, tens of millions of people, voted AGAINST HRC, and the D social and cultural agenda, rather than FOR Trump. The average establishment big R Republican hated his guts early on, and still hates his guts, although most of them got behind him once he got the nomination.
They won their bet on a piss poor candidate they never wanted.
YOU LOST YOUR BET on a candidate that was the worst one ever nominated by the D party , in terms of electability, in the modern era , bar none.
Conservative opposition to renewable energy , etc, absolutely IS partly the fault of conservatives being heavily invested both materially and culturally in the status quo, and IS partly the fault of the spreading of FUD by Koch brothers types in the media, etc.
But it IS also partly the consequence of renewable energy being a sort of COLLATERAL DAMAGE when culturally and socially conservative voters aim their assassin’s ballots at a candidate such as HRC.
Facts, as some pretty smart people in this forum often remind the rest of us, are stubborn things, and WILL make themselves known and felt, over time.
Now pardon my language, but I am in sort of a bad mood,due to a headache that won’t go away, and here are a couple of xxxxing FACTS that not even a lame brain can deny.
Texas and North Carolina are red states, two of the reddest, as a matter of fact.
Texas is the leader by a mile in wind, and not just because the state is so big, either. North Carolina is up near the top, nationally , in terms of solar power.
The people of these two redder than red states have no problems with expanding their renewable energy industries. They believe in renewable energy, by and large, even as they also believe in separating girls and guys in bathrooms, by and large.
You will never get your head around it, but Tar Heels and Texans actually like renewable energy. It’s HRC , and the overall D party social and cultural philosophy they DON’T like.
There are plenty of politically red folks in many places in this country who support renewable energy. But they would rather pass on renewable energy, in a hell of a lot of cases, than to support a candidate such as HRC for prez.
Some of the most conservative people I know, in religious and cultural terms, are seriously talking about buying solar systems of their own, and a few of them have bought already, because they believe in inflation, and because being ignorant stupid dumb ass hicks , they happen to know from firsthand experience that things that come out of holes in the ground, such as coal, don’t grow back, and that the price of fossil fuel fired electricity MUST go up, and up some more, eventually.
YOU will never get your head around it, but such people LIKE to have control of their own affairs, and generating some of their own electricity is a highly satisfying experience for them. They don’t often go around badmouthing their electrical utility, but you can take it to the bank that they prefer to have the option of being partially or wholly free of THAT monopoly , when such freedom is possible, as a practical matter.
And they are figuring out in increasing numbers,year after year, that they CAN at least be partially free in this respect. So they will buy a personal pv system, but they will still vote against HRC, because they neither trust her nor like her, nor do they like a lot of what she stands for.
YOU will never get YOUR head around it, but millions of people had a hard time making up their mind who they would vote for, or whether they would stay home.
JUST one colossally stupid remark , from the mouth of YOUR candidate, convinced probably upwards of a million or more of those fence sitters to either stay home, or vote for Trump.
Mad dog attack mode worked for Trump, because he ran as an outsider storming the battlements of the establishment. Clinton ran as an ESTABLISHMENT business as usual candidate, and that sort of candidate can’t get away with insulting the opposition or middle of the road voters.
Neither can her followers afford this practice.
Now what we say in a forum such as this one, which has a very limited audience, doesn’t matter much, because very few people, in relation to the size of the country, will ever even know it even exists, let alone read it.
But when you and others who badmouth conservatives HERE, you are exceedingly likely to also badmouth them in other LARGER forums.
The point I am trying to get across is that if you want to win elections, it behooves you to at least cut back on it, if you enjoy it so much you just can’t give it up.
“If you are actually so stupid you cannot understand that constantly badmouthing people”
It looks like the Conservative Oldfarmermac doesn’t see the irony in his own statement of personal attacks. Who would of guessed ? Me
“the tightest connections to the fossil fuel industry have the least positive attitudes, and they do tend to be R’s more so than D’s.”
How quickly you forget. I told you I was invested heavily in the oil industry. I have now learned from the master Trump how to manipulate Conservative voters. I make fun of them and they vote again their own self interest. Which keeps putting more money in my pocket and keeps themselves poor. Who would of guessed it was that simple? The Republican one percent.
Mac, you really should get over your hate for HRC. I think it’s your conscious giving you a headache. I haven’t mentioned her for weeks, but you can’t seem to stop hating on her. What ever happened to that good old bible verse “love thy neighbor”. I guess that’s bullshit too.
Tomorrow
This is what brought me back. Same old stuff from you.
“I haven’t mentioned her in weeks. ”
HuntingtonBeach says:
01/02/2017 AT 6:17 PM
“And if those on the D side were to give up on calling R’s stupid, ignorant, selfish, etc, to some extent we might just see a LOT faster progress in scaling up wind and solar power, etc.”
??????? I guess this explains why the Republicans elected a President with the maturity of a poorly disciplined 6th grader.
If you don’t like the way the shoe fits, get a new style
REPLY
I haven’t forgotten, and I have devoted a great deal of study to that old KJB, as well as lesser study to the other most important religious works.
You did indeed tell us you are invested in fossil fuels, and I did indeed point out that there is substantial element of hypocrisy involved between the talk you talk and the walk you walk.
I am, culturally speaking, somewhat of a Baptist, of the southern independent flavor, although I don’t take any church dogma , period, of ANY church or ANY religion seriously in respect to the natural sciences.
You obviously don’t know doo doo from apple butter when it comes to Protestant Christianity. IF you did, IF you actually were in possession of some KNOWLEDGE of the day to day workings of it, you would understand that that old KJB was created by a bunch of guys who were as good at practical psychology, and with as deep an understanding of the needs of the leadership of the church , as the faculty of the psyc department of any Ivy League university.
It’s so full of caveats, and exceptions, and scenarios useful in justifying bending or breaking the rules on occasions when bending and breaking them is necessary, or highly desirable, that a preacher can justify leading his congregation to work on Sunday, or to take their pitchforks to the backside of the lord of the manor.
Sure love thy neighbor is is in there. So is an eye for an eye. Both are there because both are needed as a practical matter in the real world.
I never attack anybody, until they attack me and mine. You and people like you make a HOBBY of attacking people like my old Daddy, who would give you half of his last bite of bread, literally, if he were to run across you starving in the street- if he were still able to get to the street himself, which is debatable. He hasn’t made it that far unassisted for some time.
I mentioned that HRC’s story in a nutshell is the story of the Greek tragedies, rising high to fall far short, often fatally. That’s literature, there are no Gods. The Gods didn’t elect Trump just to take him down, as somebody else remarked, apparently without understanding.
I don’t waste my time or energy hating anybody. Hate’s for losers, mostly, but it’s a very useful tool in the hands of skillful leaders, when it’s VERY helpful in inspiring the foot soldiers to charge the enemy.
In a fight, it ‘s always best to keep your cool, as an individual, you are far more likely to win that way.
I don’t hate either HRC or Trump. I have zero use for either of them, because I have no respect for them as individuals, and I firmly believe that neither of them is morally or ethically fit to be president.
If you had ever bothered to ask me what I think of Clinton taken ALL AROUND, I would have had a fair number of positive things to say about her, immediately, some of which I HAVE mentioned here, but not repeatedly.
She displayed some great qualities, and helped in bringing about some positive changes, but her flaws in the end brought her down. That’s basically what the Greek tragedies are all about, rising high, and falling due to flaws.
I might be able to think of something good to say about Trump, eventually, but so far I am still coming up blank on that job.
I don’t hate Clinton nor do I hate any other politician. I have contempt for a lot of politicians, and rather low opinions of quite a few of the ones who are in power at this moment.
Actually I PITY Clinton, to some extent, in the same sense as I pity anybody else who has suffered great personal setbacks and or losses.
Here is one thing, although it is not exactly to his personal credit, in terms of my opinion of him, so it’s not actually a positive comment in terms of reflecting well on him as an individual.
He HAS forced the establishment both on the right and the left to face up to the FACT that the people of this country are thoroughly pissed and disillusioned with business as usual politics.
I see you are still reading my comments, as evidenced by your replies, although you have childishly said in the past that you don’t , or would not, because they are too long, etc. 😉
I do still get out and work a few hours every day, but I also spend hours every day working on my book, and so I am free to drop in and out of this forum several times a day.
We can continue this exchange indefinitely. because I will not allow you to have the last word, if you attack me or my cultural homies.
I won’t ordinarily reply to your other comments, though, unless you say something really stupid, or you attack working class people in general.
They have their faults, no question whatsoever, but those faults are mostly NOT THEIR FAULT. Your sort are just too stupid to understand this rather obvious fact.
And given that hardly anybody else here ever has anything to say in depth , with nuance, in defense of the working class in this country, I say a hell of a lot more than I would otherwise, having the field, and the moral obligation, as I see it, pretty much to myself.
“They have their faults, no question whatsoever, but those faults are mostly NOT THEIR FAULT.”
What ever happened to the Conservative Republican personal responsibility mantra ? I guess that’s bullshit too.
“You and people like you make a HOBBY of attacking people like my old Daddy”
Don’t be a 6th grader and quit playing the victim. Take responsibility for your actions.
“hypocrisy involved between the talk you talk and the walk you walk.”
Mixing your ideology and financial investments limits your return. I will leave that mistake to the poor hard working Conservatives and their voting habits. If I buy or sell a few thousand shares of VLO. That’s not going to make one bit of difference to globe warming. But it does make my pocketbook fat.
Up 12K this afternoon on VLO up $2.12 or 3.1% today. Sorry you missed out on the Koch brothers refinery play.
Love the Trumpster Koch puppet
Oh, and I don’t think that’s a tattoo under your skin.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m enjoying this.
People don’t select the culture or the geography they are born to, and they don’t select their parents, although such simple observations are a little too complicated for you understand them.
“What ever happened to the Conservative Republican personal responsibility mantra ? I guess that’s bullshit too.”
It no doubt comes as a big surprise to you , but most liberals and big D Democrats pay homage to the personal responsibility mantra. I have however met a few over the years that seem to believe they are entitled to live as THEY please on tax money, writing poetry for instance, or creating so call art such as the piss Christ.
“Don’t be a 6th grader and quit playing the victim. Take responsibility for your actions.”
You still don’t get it, and probably wouldn’t get it even if somebody were to hit you upside the head with a brick.
If we want to go there, and talk about the current and recent political situation in terms of VICTIMS, well, well WELL……….
I suppose you haven’t HEARD YET, but the Trumpsters mopped the floor with YOUR Democratic party. I am neither a Republican , nor a Democrat, in terms of party allegiance. I ‘m not a victim.
If there has been A VICTIM, in personal terms, meaning any particular person, in the ongoing cultural war,her initials are HRC.
Your comments in regard to your business interests are classic hardcore right wing fare. I suppose you are too dumb to understand that you OUGHT to be just a LITTLE embarrassed to say such things, considering your stated political convictions.
Of course there are many lesser victims, folks who were running for Senate seats, house seats, various state and local level offices, etc.
You think I’m a Trump fan, but then you aren’t capable of doing any real actual thinking.
If I WERE a Trump fan, I would be in the VICTOR’S camp, you see…….. but you don’t…… because you don’t see at all.
The Democratic Party, and the country as a whole are the victims, with Trump the winner, and the R party in even greater control of the federal government, and the large majority of state and local governments.
As for the following:
“Oh, and I don’t think that’s a tattoo under your skin.”
Would you care to demonstrate the possession of big enough balls to translate that remark in unmistakable every day English? The idiom or allusion escapes me, perhaps, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt , for the moment, concerning what you imply.
As far as enjoying this exchange is concerned,it’s always fun to win, and I ‘m winning by such a wide margin it’s embarrassing to me that you don’t just give up.
I don’t have a second or third team to send in, or I would turn you over to the third stringers.
But I don’t and I won’t walk away and forfeit. It would be a lot more fun if you were a LOT smarter, and a LOT better informed.
I have real arguments to offer. Consider this link.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/swing-state-margins/
Here’s a critical fact, extracted from this link.
“This election was effectively decided by 107,000 people in these three states. Trump won the popular vote there by that combined amount.”
The three states referred to are the ones that cost Clinton the election, Michigan, Wisconsin , and Pennsylvania.
Trump won in Michigan by only about ten thousand votes, out of close to five MILLION cast.
In Wisconson, Trump got less than one percent more votes than Clinton. IF just ONE Trump voter out of each hundred had voted for Clinton…… she would have won.
Ditto Pennsylvania.
Folks with working brains, folks with open minds, folks who know JUST A LITTLE about how to win friends and influence people, JUST MIGHT come to the conclusion that if people like you had been smart enough to say nothing, or as little as possible, about the opposition voters ethics, morals, culture, etc, Clinton would have WON, given such razor thin margins of victory.
I have posted this link before. It would do YOU a great deal of good to read it, and take it to heart.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-convince-someone-when-facts-fail/
You don’t have any thing to work with.
If you want to play in the mud, that’s fine with me. I’m used to wearing tall rubber boots. The bullshit gets pretty deep on the farm. I know how to deal with it.
Now if any body else is reading this, keep in mind my point that it matters VERY little what we say HERE, because the audience is small, in real terms, and MINUTE in terms of the country as a whole.
But if you want to win middle of the road voters over to your side, in significant numbers, and even win over a hard core opponent once in a while…….
It’s best not go around badmouthing those hoped for voters ethics, morals, culture, economic or educational status, etc, in public, or in other forums where the audience is often hundreds or thousands of times as large as this one.
It’s best not to keep bringing up how many Americans were conned by the billionaire set. It’s just embarrassing, though they probably do not even know it yet or are trying not to know.
Back to the 1800’s.
Let’s make America great again for billionaires. The lower classes don’t need health insurance, jobs, social security. They need to learn how to fend for themselves, stand on their own two feet and make money for the one percent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfp2O9ADwGk
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, because the candidate who eventually wins the nomination may not be the one best situated to win the election.
But I AM a damned stubborn old fart, and not very busy, and so long as anybody disputes this argument on my part, I will defend it.
Tell me what YOU think. Do you think that maybe one percent of the voters ( in the big three trump rust belt states ) who voted for Trump might have either voted for Clinton, or stayed home, if the Clinton campaign had shown a little more consideration and RESPECT for the working class and socially conservative people of those same three big rust belt states???
Did you ever get a date with a girl after she heard you make repeated remarks critical of her ethics, or morals, or culture, or the beliefs of her mother and father??
Does a successful salesman make fun of his potentially lucrative customer- IN PUBLIC?
You are one of the guys with your head on straight, you without a doubt understand what I am talking about.
But your mileage may vary, maybe you think only one tenth of one percent of those particular Trump voters would have either switched or stayed home. That’s ok, disagreeing with the EXTENT of the problem does not indicate you are incapable of understanding it exists.
Now our good cyber buddy HB has accused me of helping Trump win, although I am but one individual in a small forum.
A couple of days ago, he said his apparently substantial ( big enough to brag about it, anyway ) investment in the oil refining industry doesn’t matter, he’s just one little guy getting his own while the getting is still good, and so he shouldn’t be held to account for talking the environmental talk , while walking the Trump style business walk.
I can still have a lot more fun out of him, if he wishes to continue.
Old Farmer
As far as my own beliefs and from listening to some of my friends who are working class stiffs, I think that the biggest factor was that Trump gave the impression he was going to help the working guy, could relate to them and make it better. His brash attitude of brushing off all accusations then attacking back was also a big pull for some people. One friend of mine, an independent business owner, thought there was zero problem with his attitude and actions, even liked them. So rather than Hillary’s lack it was Trump’s weird ability to draw out certain voters that other candidates could not.
What has me concerned is that for the second time lately the president was not elected by popular vote. In this case it is even more disconcerting since he has such polarized views, doesn’t listen well and has a frothing republican congressional majority that is already smashing at any small gains the Democrats made despite the potential harm to people.
Good replies, Mac.
I can’t think why anyone would believe you’re a Trumper.
I just hope your country doesn’t bring down the rest of the world as your leadership creates and lurches into one crisis after another.
Good luck. (Personally, I don’t think Trump will make 2 years and …..). Anyway, good luck and good health.
South Pacific sea-Level rise migrants on the move
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2017/01/south-pacific-sea-level-rise-migrants.html
Chart of the Day:
Arctic air temperature for the last 3 months of each year. This is essentially the first half of the freezing season for Arctic ice.
2015 was a record high, and 2016 beat it rather soundly. Instead of the normal -22C, the average temperature for the last 3 months of 2016 was about -11C. The formation of ice is related to the square root of the temperature delta below the freezing point of seawater (-1.8C), so sea ice thickness has been increasing at about 60-70% of its normal rate.
On the rise since 1970.
Any graph for Arctic Ocean water temperatures?
Today will be a good day to drive around in my truck and put on a couple of extra hundred miles just for fun!
I’ll need ten gallons of gas. There will be about 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline burned in a day and today is another day of it, so ten extra gallons is minutely insignificant.
100,000,000 electric vehicles in the pipeline and you will run into some significant resource limits.
Means price increases, more costs, more expense.
A continued reliance on oil, coal consumption is set to increase as population increases, is what it will be now and in the future. Fossil fuels will keep doing what they do best, provide usable energy for the masses. Run economies all over the world.
It is not going to be significant disruptive change, no matter what the maharishis say about all of those wonderful, marvelous, fabulous renewable energies. They have their limits, can’t do what everyone says they can.
Fossil fuels still call all of the shots.
That’s how the cookie crumbles, even in 2017.
Out with the old tired renewable energy song and dance, in with the new and improved oil age, oil and coal always have a beat and rhythm people love to hear. How the hell do you spell rhythm? People love to sing and dance when their favorite tune is playing. Lots of songs with coal and oil as the theme.
“They gave him his orders in Monroe, Virginia…”
“We ain’t got a barrel of money, we may look ragged and funny, but we’re traveling along, singing our song, side by side.”
You see it right there in song.
Oil is not going to go away, the wish is not going to be granted, no way, no how, not in your lifetime. Coal will be hauled by the ton all day long.
When they have been paying the piper, they call the tune. Everybody loves to sing along.
That is the way it is and just how things are in the real world. History tells us that is how things are and how things will be again tomorrow just like it is today.
harumph!
“That is the way it is” are you channeling Walter Cronkite?
“100,000,000 electric vehicles in the pipeline and you will run into some significant resource limits”
Which resources in particular do you think are limited?
“We ain’t got a barrel of money…”
Could have been a whiskey barrel or a beer barrel.
“Oil is not going to go away”
Oil is going away, we are pumping and burning it away each day. How can it not go away?
“History tells us that is how things are and how things will be again tomorrow just like it is today.”
Nope, it’s different today. A lot of things are different today. The devil is in the details.
“It is not going to be significant disruptive change, no matter what the maharishis say about all of those wonderful, marvelous, fabulous renewable energies. They have their limits, can’t do what everyone says they can.”
Everyone? I bet you look at a seed or young plant and say it will never amount to much. Yet years later it could be a bush or a tree.
Don’t worry about oil, every dog has it’s day, oil will have had two centuries.
Hey, don’t you know that only about three percent of oil is extractable? That leaves 97 percent still there for the taking. Plenty of oil in the ground. It is not going to go to zero, ever.
If it does, no EVs either then. If there are a hundred thousand EVs produced, you will need to mine x tons of lithium. 100,000,000 EVs will need 1000x tons of lithium. You will strain the mining capacity, bend it severely.
Can’t mine lithium for nothing and it is going to require fossil fuels to extract the lithium. Limited resources right there.
Nice try.
Thanks for the info RW.
You are right RW, I looked into a barrel of oil and could not see the bottom. There must be a huge amount in there to be bottomless.
Chart of the day
Global Satellites: 2016 not Statistically Warmer than 1998
January 3rd, 2017 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Strong December Cooling Leads to 2016 Being Statistically Indistinguishable from 1998
The resulting 2016 annual average global temperature anomaly is +0.50 deg. C, which is (a statistically insignificant) 0.02 deg. C warmer than 1998 at +0.48 deg. C. We estimate that 2016 would have had to be 0.10 C warmer than 1998 to be significantly different at the 95% confidence level. Both 2016 and 1998 were strong El Nino years.
With or without El Niño, very little warming for the past 18 years. Anybody younger that 18 years has not experienced global warming.
Javier, there are now 4 groups which use the MSU/AMSU data to assess changes in the Earth’s “temperature. Spencer and Christy’s LT product exhibits the least warming of the 4. The LT is a correction to the MT, which is based on a theoretical model. Their work has yet to be published, so it’s not possible to assess what they did. The earlier UAH TLT correction to the TMT also shows greater warming, with a trend thru November of 0.15 K/decade vs. 0.12 for the LT. The RSS TLT global trend is 0.135 K/decade. For the Northern Hemisphere, where most people live, the UAH LT trend is 0.15 vs. 0.18 for the RSS TLT. The RSS TLT does not include any data south of 70S because the high elevations of the antarctic ice sheet strongly intrude into the scans of the MSU/AMSU instruments. Spencer and Christy refuse to consider that this is a problem, even though they originally warned other users of their gridded data about the situation. I don’t have the latest data from the NOAA/STAR group, as they have a new version, but the last time I looked their results showed even greater warming. The U Washington group provides only tropical data.
So, tell us, why do you insist on focusing on only the UAH data? Aren’t you simply parroting Spencer’s claims, without any effort to assess what these guys are doing? Aren’t you just cherry picking?
Eric,
I regularly use RSS, UAH and HadCrut. Here I am using HadCrut4:
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-1-2017/#comment-590832
So why do you say I insist in using UAH?
RSS, UAH, and HadCrut have small differences and this is to be expected, but all three show the same situation of little warming in the 21st century. This evidence does not depend on a particular dataset or even on a particular way of measuring temperatures. All three indicate that as of January 2017 temperatures are back to the pre-El Niño 2001-2015 average.
Hi Javier,
But 17 or 19 year olds have seen much more warming than 18 year olds over their lifetimes.
Another cherry pick, is that all you have?
Dennis,
What I have is very little warming outside the strong El Niño during the entire 21st century. It is a reason not to be alarmed from climate change.
The 21st century has been 16 years, not enough time to tell much, from 1979 the rise in temperature has been 0.14 C per decade or 1.4 C per century.
Looking at 16 years is silly. Thirty six or fifty years is much better. Or we could use 166 years if you prefer.
“Anybody younger that 18 years has not experienced global warming.”
Perhaps you mean anybody younger than 18 who is living in the troposphere. The ones living on the surface of the planet experienced an increase of 0.49 degrees F between ’98 and ’15, and ’16 was even warmer.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201513
Liberal Lies!
It was cold in the beer cooler at the Monster Truck Rally!
That’s just temporary weather related El Niño warming, not global warming. One or two warmer years and then back to the 21st century average.
This is HadCrut4 surface data, not tropospheric data. It says the same.
“That’s just temporary weather related El Niño warming”
Stop the bullshit; so was ’98.
Exactly my point. From strong El Niño, to strong El Niño, without significant warming in between.
Not exactly what you would expect for a period where 1/3 of all anthropogenic GHGs were emitted. Clearly CO2 has not been driving (lack of) global warming for the past 18 years.
“Clearly CO2 has not been driving (lack of) global warming for the past 18 years.”
Nah! It’s just been melting a little ice, that’s all! I wonder what would happen if there were no ice to melt?
islandboy,
You are incorrect in your assumptions. For the last 35 years of global warming global sea ice has been remarkably constant, with loses in the Arctic compensated by gains in the Antarctic.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
And we do know what happens when there is no ice to melt. Nothing happens. The Eemian was a warmer interglacial and the Arctic was essentially free of ice during the summers. And guess what, polar bears made it just fine. There were more polar bears during the Eemian than in the 1960’s, before anthropogenic global warming.
Polyak, Leonid, et al. “History of sea ice in the Arctic.” Quaternary Science Reviews 29.15 (2010): 1757-1778.
“In contrast, interglacial and major interstadial intervals are characterized by higher marine productivity suggestive of reduced ice cover. The most prominent evidence is that planktonic foraminifers typical of subpolar, seasonally open water lived in the central Arctic Ocean during the last interglacial (MIS 5e) as well as during a younger, relatively warm MIS 5a. Given that one of these areas, north of Greenland, is presently characterized by especially thick and widespread ice, most of the Arctic Ocean may have been free of summer ice cover during these intervals.”
Miller, Webb, et al. “Polar and brown bear genomes reveal ancient admixture and demographic footprints of past climate change.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109.36 (2012): E2382-E2390.
Figure 2 from the paper shows how polar bears (pale blue) have been able to survive several interglacials warmer than present. What has caused the crash in polar bears, and brown bears, and black bears, is man, not climate change.
“From strong El Niño, to strong El Niño, without significant warming in between.”
From strong El Niño, to strong El Niño, with 0.27 degrees C of warming thru last year. Jan-Nov ’16 was roughly another 0.15 degrees C above that.
That is consistent with the warming trend of the last 45 years.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature
Neither El Niño, nor La Niña years can be consistent with any warming trend, as they are weather and not climate. No warming between 2001-2014 when no strong El Niño or La Niña took place.
“No warming between 2001-2014 when no strong El Niño or La Niña took place.”
It did, of course; 0.2 degrees… same trend
2001–0.54 degrees C
2014—0.74 degrees C
Maybe you should pick ’01 and ’11; that’s only 0.03 degrees. Don’t get confused and pick ’10, 0.70 degrees; that brings us back to the trend
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201513
“Neither El Niño, nor La Niña years can be consistent with any warming trend”
EN, LN, and all years… parallel trends
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20160120/
And another cherry pick, you are on a roll.
Anyone convinced?
Chart below uses all the University of Alabama-Huntsville Global data from December 1978 to April 2015 (when the data was last downloaded by me) and compares it to BEST data (with anomaly adjusted so the mean of both datasets is the same over the period).
Over that period the temperature trend was 0.139 C per decade for UAH and 0.169 C per decade for BEST. There is quite a bit of modelling used to derive satellite temperature data and some people don’t trust models unless they agree with the results. Perhaps the UAH data is correct and those models can be trusted, but those other models which suggest an ECS of 2.9 C or more are incorrect. Those “incorrect” models do match the BEST data from 1850 to 2015 pretty well, models with higher or lower ECS don’t match observed temperature data as well.
Dennis, selecting a period for analysis is not cherry picking.
Take for example:
Fyfe, John C., Nathan P. Gillett, and Francis W. Zwiers. “Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years.” Nature Climate Change 3.9 (2013): 767-769.
“Global mean surface temperature over the past 20 years (1993–2012) rose at a rate of 0.14 ± 0.06 °C per decade (95% confidence interval). This rate of warming is significantly slower than that simulated by the climate models participating in Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). To illustrate this, we considered trends in global mean surface temperature computed from 117 simulations of the climate by 37 CMIP5 models. By averaging simulated temperatures only at locations where corresponding observations exist, we find an average simulated rise in global mean surface temperature of 0.30 ± 0.02 °C per decade (using 95% confidence intervals on the model average). The observed rate of warming given above is less than half of this simulated rate, and only a few simulations provide warming trends within the range of observational uncertainty.”
Do you think they cherry picked the dates?
Jon Fyfe and Nathan Gillett are Canadian climate modelers. Francis Zwiers literally wrote the book on climate statistics (w/von Storch): Statistical Analysis in Climate Research. Fyfe was a lead author for the AR4; Gillett is a lead author for the AR5 Chapter 9; Zwiers is Vice Chair for WG1 of AR5.
So one of the best climate statisticians doesn’t agree with you that analyzing 20 years is cherry picking. Your opinion is just that.
Hey, can you do me a good price on glace cherries with all those you are picking? Why not just compare 2014 with 2014 to show that temperature is not changing? Picking your data to fit your hypothesis fails science 101, you should fit hypothesis to the data.
NAOM
Hi Javier
How did they justify only 20 years of data?
A better method is to see how 20 year trends have changed.
Just look at 20 year windows from 1979 to 1996. Consider the change in trend over these 17 different sets of temperatures.
Pretty easy to do.
Nobody has ever claimed there is not natural variability. Thats the straw man.
Hi Dennis,
It seems I didn’t put the link correctly.
http://weather.unbc.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Paper_2.pdf
They don’t justify using only 20 years of data. They just analyze global warming over the last 20 years and over the last 15 years:
“The inconsistency between observed and simulated global warming is even more striking for temperature trends computed over the past fifteen years (1998–2012). For this period, the observed trend of 0.05 ± 0.08 °C per decade is more than four times smaller than the average simulated trend of 0.21 ± 0.03 °C per decade (Fig. 1b). It is worth noting that the observed trend over this period — not significantly different from zero — suggests a temporary ‘hiatus’ in global warming.”
Please note that these climate scientists are far from being skeptics. They are IPCC responsible climatologists with a very good knowledge of statistics. Much better than mine and probably yours.
The analysis of the last 15 years or 20 years is not cherry picking despite your insistence. Cherry picking is when you start your analysis on a valley and end it on a peak, or vice versa, trying to misrepresent the situation. For example any analysis of temperatures that ends in 2016 should be aware that ending on a peak inflates the result.
Hi Javier,
The CMIP5 simulations used a guess at future emissions from 2005 to 2012 whereas the actual temperature data reflects actual emissions.
A good discussion at link below
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/06/noaa-temperature-record-updates-and-the-hiatus/
Gavin Schmidt writes:
I and some colleagues recently looked closely at how well the CMIP5 simulation design has held up (Schmidt et al., 2014) and found that there have been two significant issues – the first is that volcanoes (and the cooling associated with their emissions) was underestimated post-2000 in these runs, and secondly, that solar forcing in recent years has been lower than was anticipated. While these are small effects, we estimated that had the CMIP5 simulations got this right, it would have had a noticeable effect on the ensemble. We illustrate that using the dashed lines post-1990. If this is valid (and I think it is), that places the observations well within the modified envelope, regardless of which product you favour.
see also
http://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2105.epdf?referrer_access_token=0E86ziy2HysHul5Y4MOiF9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0N4NPgDFgfHJ2b91zjF64w30CipXaPRqIKM314rg1g_WOihxK8MTbSw0tRbgCF5xkEdriLn8q_aifMFetkY-n23LNVq_H9n0aeukAIQXfzp-_Z_ZV3e06ETIbafqZfEnb-zfPgCKHgUZSHTLQlA4kVJjfhP57nCjToIySH9J_Z4OyzAMvoMCa0FsOLENL3DYZWz8oAFGIRGxrwiGG8uK1Pv-eqHawACzno0GVNXrFjv3A%3D%3D&tracking_referrer=www.realclimate.org
Dennis,
The 2015-16 El Niño has pushed global temperatures back into the CMIP5 envelop, but it will fall back out again in 2017. Gavin is going to have it more and more difficult to defend that those models are performing. They keep increasing every year, while temperatures don’t.
It might be back!
https://twitter.com/philklotzbach/status/816324035457880064
Two world-leading clean energy projects have opened in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
A £3m industrial plant is capturing the CO2 emissions from a coal boiler and using the CO2 to make valuable chemicals. It is a world first.
And just 100km away is the world’s biggest solar farm, making power for 150,000 homes on a 10 sq km site.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38391034
Solar on course to become the world’s cheapest source of energy within the next 10 years
Carbon Dioxide might play a direct role in melting glaciers and other ice formations.
Carbon dioxide enhances fragility of ice crystals
“Ice caps and glaciers cover 7% of the Earth, greater than the land area of Europe and North America combined, and play an important role in global climate. The small-scale failure mechanisms of ice fracture, however, remain largely elusive. In particular, little understanding exists about how the presence and concentration of carbon dioxide molecules, a significant component in the atmosphere, affects the propensity of ice to fracture. Here we use atomic simulations with the first-principles based ReaxFF force field capable of describing the details of chemical reactions at the tip of a crack, applied to investigate the effects of the presence of carbon dioxide molecules on ice fracture. Our result shows that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide molecules significantly decrease the fracture toughness of the ice crystal, making it more fragile. Using enhanced molecular sampling with metadynamics we reconstruct the free energy landscape in varied chemical microenvironments and find that carbon dioxide molecules affect the bonds between water molecules at the crack tip and decrease their strength by altering the dissociation energy of hydrogen bonds. In the context of glacier dynamics our findings may provide a novel viewpoint that could aid in understanding the breakdown and melting of glaciers, suggesting that the chemical composition of the atmosphere can be critical to mediate the large-scale motion of large volumes of ice.”
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0022-3727/45/44/445302/meta;jsessionid=563F8C583B40C5779A40482A9E2D9C6F.c1.iopscience.cld.iop.org
http://www.iop.org/news/12/oct/page_58615.html
How will Rick Perry run the Department of Energy?
And let’s all not forget Rick Perry 5 years ago in his first failed presidential campaign couldn’t remember the name of the department Trump is asking him to lead.
PERRY: I will tell you, it is three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, Education, and the — What’s the third one there? Let’s see.
(LAUGHTER)
PAUL: Five.
PERRY: Five. Okay. Commerce, Education, and the —
[UNKNOWN]: EPA?
PERRY: EPA. There you go.
Q: Seriously — is EPA one you are talking about?
PERRY: No, sir, no, sir. We are talking about the — agencies of government — EPA needs to be rebuilt.
Q: You can’t — you can’t name the third one?
PERRY: The third agency of government I would — I would do away with Education, the —
Q: Commerce.
PERRY: Commerce and, let’s see. I can’t. The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/09/rick-perry-forgets-agencies_n_1085249.html
So how will governor Perry operate the DOE? He doesn’t believe the scientists about global warming. He wanted to eliminate the DOE, the very department he will head. He is not a scientist, so he will probably be an antagonist. Maybe we will get lots of windmills out of it, if we are lucky. Mostly we will get change.
“President-elect Donald Trump has selected former Texas Gov. Rick Perry — who famously once forgot that he wanted to abolish the Energy Department — to be secretary of energy, two sources familiar with the transition process told NBC News on Monday night. ”
“As governor, Perry championed the oil industry, questioning science that shows that greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change and deriding what he called “the secular carbon cult.”
At a presidential town hall in 2011, he said, “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” ”
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-picks-energy-department-opponent-rick-perry-energy-secretary-sources-n695241
At a presidential town hall in 2011, he said, “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” “
It needs to be pointed out that, “there are a substantial number of
scientistspoliticians who have manipulateddatathe conversation so that they will have dollars rolling into theirprojectspockets.”There!
Fixed!
All the growth in the Texas economy under Gov. Perry happened across diverse industries and lifted up the working, middle, and upper classes alike. In fact, the rate and duration of growth occurred nearly at Economic Miracle levels. Now, with Trump as president and Gov. Perry hopefully overseeing the all-important fossil fuel sector of the federal government, the rest of the U.S. will finally get to experience the same thrill as Texans did as skyrocketing economic growth empowered industries and individuals to operate at maximum potential.
Rick Perry was governor of Texas during record oil price increases from 2002 to 2014. Let’s keep this in perspective. The last couple of years not so good.
Yet the point remains, an extremely business-friendly government that also allows for a high degree of personal freedom is simply an inseparable part of the Texas Identity. They are obvious qualities Gov. Perry would bring with him to Washington. Only in a liberal’s mind would any of those things be something worthy of contempt and hatred. Such is one of the reasons why the left keeps on losing election after election.
Dave H, all I have to say to the neo-conservatives and the liberals is they are in for a shock, a big one. In fact thinking about it there will be successive shocks over the next decade.
“shock, a big one”
Could you explain ?
The level of potential chaos environmentally, socially, economically, politically and militarily has climbed to a point where like rogue waves, forces will come to a head.
Stability in the world is declining overall.
Oh come on, you mean Trump doesn’t make you feel safe in bed at night ? Maybe you should leave the light on.
If history repeats it’s self. 2008 is 1929 and we are living in Germany 1938. That only gives Trump a year before he invades another country and starts rounding up the infidels.
I was talking about the global situation.
I think you need sleep, not making much sense now.
If you don’t see the similarities, than you are in the same group of passive Germans who slept during the 30’s. It’s naive to think it couldn’t happen again.
I know it’s taboo to point this out, but that needs to change. America isn’t special or exempt from it happening here. We aren’t living in your fathers America. We are much closer to globe political chaos than climate.
The levels, pressures and dangers do seem to be cranking up and lurking, HuntingtonBeach… A lit match or cigar over a spread-out pool of gasoline look benign enough to the Darwin Award runner-ups, but just let the vapors rise and/or the match/cig fall and see how fast things cascade.
Changing Lanes
I am hoping Trump and Perry are so pro-business that they see where the energy money will be coming from. Coal is declining, natural gas and oil are costing more to produce, and renewable energy prices are dropping and that industry is generating quite a few American jobs.
The numbers will likely favor expanding renewables and depending less on fossil fuels. We’ll see the extent to which they do want to make deals with businessmen like Musk and Bill Gates.
“U.S. will finally get to experience the same thrill as Texans did as skyrocketing economic growth empowered industries and individuals to operate at maximum potential.”
Are you advocating that oil and gas production be expanded in the US to such an extent that prices stay low and more oil and gas companies go out of business?
I’m advocating for a reasonable energy policy that doesn’t discriminate against certain forms of energy due entirely to ideological reasons or dubious “settled science.” As far as O & G development, the main priorities need to be lifting burdensome regulations, ending needless EPA overreach, and making the overall permitting/regulatory process faster and more efficient.
Those may happen under Trump/Perry, but regulations aren’t keeping oil prices down.
Faster permitting might encourage more oil production, which will keep prices down.
That seems to me to be oil’s big problem. Allowing even more oil and gas to hit the market is good if you want low prices. Not so good if you want to see $100 a barrel again.
I’m advocating for a reasonable energy policy that doesn’t discriminate against certain forms of energy due entirely to ideological reasons or dubious “settled science.”
Sounds reasonable! Two minor quibbles, oil, gas and coal are NOT forms of energy, they are FUELS and need to be burned to produce HEAT energy. That is still a dirty and very inefficient way to produce and use ENERGY in this day and age. Whether you like it or not that much IS settled science.
So maybe we can start by leveling the playing field and letting market forces take their natural course, eh? There is a reason Texas has been investing heavily in wind and solar, it’s because it makes ECONOMIC and business sense!
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602468/the-one-and-only-texas-wind-boom/
With nearly 18,000 megawatts of capacity, Texas, if it were a country, would be the sixth-largest generator of wind power in the world, right behind Spain. Now Texas is preparing to add several thousand megawatts more—roughly equal to the wind capacity that can be found in all of California. Most of these turbines are in west Texas, one of the most desolate and windy regions in the continental United States. Fifteen years ago, when the groundwork for this boom was being set, this area had little but cotton and grain farms, oil fields, scrub and dry riverbeds, and small towns that were mostly withering
Based on your idea of fairness maybe we could start by eliminating all subsidies for fossil fuel production and include the cost of all externalities, i.e. the free ride the fossil fuel producers have enjoyed for a long time and see how things shake out, shall we? After all what is good for the goose should be good for the gander, right?
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
Internationally, governments provide at least $775 billion to $1 trillion annually in subsidies, not including other costs of fossil fuels related to climate change, environmental impacts, military conflicts and spending, and health impacts. This figure varies each year based on oil prices, but it is consistently in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Greater transparency in reporting would allow for more precise figures.
When externalities are included, as in a 2015 study by the International Monetary Fund, the unpaid costs of fossil fuels are upward of $5.3 trillion annually – which works out to a staggering $10 million per minute.
And I’m not even a big fan of the IMF’s ideology…
Right now clean energies are cost competitive with oil and gas without subsidies and they will become even cheaper as time goes on.
I think everyone in the oil industry should watch these three presentations and think deeply about what is said and what the implications to their business model might be.
The breakthrough in renewable energy (vpro backlight documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyrbKBZ6SU
http://tonyseba.com/portfolio-item/clean-disruption-of-energy-and-transportation/
Douglas Rushkoff Deconstructs the Digital Economy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87TSoqnZass&t=2660s
Even though the last one may seem somewhat off topic it addresses the underlying issues with our current economic system’s operating system.
This is the 21st century not the 13th, things are changing all over the world and there is a perfect storm of disruptive technologies that is on the horizon.
By all means the development of new sources of energy is crucial as fossil fuels become more expensive to produce and start to decline. Otherwise we will not have a future.
But the role of governments is to help in the research to develop and improve new sources and vectors of energy, not to force a transition for which we are neither ready not capable right now and that is resulting in curtailing the access of poor people to the energy they need to survive.
Spain made that mistake in 2009 betting very strongly for new renewables with heavy subsidies. The result, besides increasing Spain debt problems, has been a strong increase in electricity prices. There have been cases of old people dying from fires from candles in houses where electricity was cut for lack of payment. The left that carried out the push in renewables when they were in power, that ultimately led to the rise in prices is now blaming those deaths on electric companies policies and greed.
The real transition that has been taking place has not been towards less carbon, but towards more hydrogen, as coal and oil are being increasingly substituted where possible by methane (CH4). This is giving us time to develop new renewables and new nuclear and we should not waste it due to ideological woes. The danger of nuclear is nothing compared to the danger of insufficient energy in the future. Spain has had nuclear energy for many decades and not a single victim from it. Yet nuclear is being discarded without a clear alternative.
I am in favor of solar, I am in favor of wind, I am in favor of hydro, I am in favor of fossil fuels, and I am in favor of nuclear. I am very much against lack of energy.
Javier,
Most are not for a lack of energy. I agree there can be bad policy for pushing renewable energy. Fred suggested that subsidizing fossil fuel production is a bad idea, tax the externalities from fossil fuel pollution and eliminate tax subsidies for fossil fuels (already the case in Europe, but not the US) and let the market decide the winners.
Currently nuclear and fossil fuels don’t compete very well with wind and solar in many places, this is likely to continue as wind and solar costs continue to fall.
Not much point in propping up fossil fuel and nuclear, soon they will become stranded assets so it is wasted investment.
“Currently nuclear and fossil fuels don’t compete very well with wind and solar in many places, this is likely to continue as wind and solar costs continue to fall.”
As far as I know, new renewables have not increased much in terms of percentage of global energy that they produce, which indicates that fossil fuels and nuclear are increasing as fast as new renewables. Tens of nuclear plants are being built in Asia, and demand for fossil fuels continues growing above 1% every year.
Are we being realistic?
“As far as I know, new renewables have not increased much in terms of percentage of global energy that they produce, which indicates that fossil fuels and nuclear are increasing as fast as new renewables.”
As far as you know? Over what time period have renewables not increased their percentage contribution? See my comment further down. The contribution from solar up 100 fold in eight years (0.01% to 1%).
In another seven weeks or so the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly should be updated with the data for December 2016 at which time I will be able to update the chart below with the annual data for 2016. The table on which the chart is based has “Solar” going from 0.013% in 2005 to 0.94 in 2015 and “Renewables”, which is mostly wind, going from 2.13% in 2005 to 6.65% in 2015.
Renewable generation has increased significantly since 2000 in several developed nations in Europe and Asia. India and China have very ambitious targets. Solar is booming in Chile and Australia, is starting to take off in the Middle East and their are other countries/regions like Brazil and Africa are developing plans.
Clearly you have not watched any of the videos Fred linked to. You really should, before you post anything like this again.
So, Islandboy,
You mean this graph from BP 2016 report data is actually false and renewables do not account for just 2.8% of primary energy production in 2015?
Apparently renewables grew from 2.4% the previous year.
Meanwhile fossil fuel energy has gone down from 86.8% in 2000 to 86.1% in 2015, a 0.7% decrease in 15 years.
Will those videos from Fred change these numbers? Make them look better?
You also answered my other question. We are not being realistic.
Will those videos from Fred change these numbers? Make them look better?
Perhaps you need a primer in exponential growth where the rate of growth is itself exponential.
Exponential Growth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjlEJNfsOKc
Fred,
But you need faith on the exponential growth sustaining in the future. There are multiple reasons why the exponential growth might not sustain, as individual countries appear to peak and decay in their renewable energy investments.
I am a faithless person.
Hi Javier,
Non-fossil fuel energy consumption has increased quite a bit. Also keep in mind that the actual exergy produced by fossil fuels is not very high, for liquid fuels used for ground transportation probably less than 10% of the energy from the fossil fuel ends up as useful work when all the energy used for extracting, transporting, refining, and distributing the fuel are added to the thermal losses in an internal combustion engine (ICE). There are losses for win and solar as well, but they are far lower so less total energy is needed to replace fossil fuel energy.
Output from Wind and Solar have been growing at 30% per year (combined output).
This rapid rate of increase will no doubt fall over time, but oil and natural gas increased by about 6.5% per year from 1915 to 1973 (58 years) and growth was limited by demand. Wind and solar can grow at least at the rate of 6.5% and more likely by 7 or 8% per year as long as energy demand supports it. The eventual peak and decline of fossil fuels (including coal) is likely to result in robust demand for non-fossil fuel energy unless the rate of growth of per capita real GDP (about 1.4% per year from 1965 to 2015 on average) slows substantially. This is possible due to a Depression for perhaps a 10 year period, but eventually the economy will recover.
I am not opposed to nuclear, but do not think it should be subsidized, all types of energy should compete on a level playing field with any negative externalities taxed or regulated appropriately. No free rides for polluters.
In addition to what Dennis said above, the BP report deals with primary energy while most of my discussions deal with electrical energy. The fact is renewables are making their biggest impact in the electrical generation sector for the time being.
As has been said elsewhere, (linked utility dive article) transportation also accounts for a huge share of primary energy use. As batteries improve in price/performance electrical energy can become a larger contributor in the transport sector, starting with road and rail and maybe on day even extending to aviation.
Barring some black swan event like extreme FF industry sponsored political action, renewables and EVs will eventually put a small but growing dent in FF consumption. In another seven weeks or so I expect to update the chart below with the annual data for 2016. I have included a line for wind in this latest rendering. IMO opinion the updated chart will show 2016 as the year it becomes obvious that renewables, solar in particular can “move the needle”.
Islandboy,
We are planning to move our transportation almost fully to electricity, and now transportation is 87% fossil fuels. The correct measurement of our progress is how much of our total energy comes from renewables.
Dennis,
I agree that subsidies distort the market. The way to support more desirable energy sources is through research, in my opinion.
Nuclear has become prohibitively expensive in Occident due to very strict regulations. We built a lot of nuclear in the 60’s and 70’s and it was not so expensive. The safety record for that nuclear has been quite good. No accident and no single victim in Spain for over 5 decades. Beats every other industry by much.
We should be able to do it better now.
Don’t forget carl Icahn. He attempted a hostile takeover of usa steel industry.
He very quietly got added to trumps informal cabinet.
High price for oil spurred the fracking boom. Reduction in taxes for gas drillers helped spur the natural gas boom. No amount of money or policy can make the wind blow, but Perry certainly was for it, it made money and diversified the energy portfolio of Texas. Climate change was never in his view. He permitted 12 new coal fired power plants during his tenure, only eight got built, but other states were not building them.
Basically, if it made money he was for it, except solar PV. Texas is a prime solar energy region, yet it is just now getting started and was not aided by Perry.
So he is an everything goes kind of guy, except solar PV. Maybe he will come around on that.
But never confuse him with climate. Just show the money.
Although some people think sea ice is just being measured by photographs, the most comprehensive method is to use microwave emissions from the ice that are detected by remote sensing satellites. This gives the advantage of continuous day and night coverage, through cloud coverage and an assessment of the concentration of sea ice. It is also not temperature sensitive as is infrared detection.
https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/study/passive_remote_sensing.html
GF – some of the most accurate measurements might now be available from ESA. They combine CRYOSAT for thick ice and SMOS for thin ice. Cryosat only works when there isn’t melting. SMOS measurements were improved in October and combing the two methods is recent.
“Carrying a radiometer, SMOS was designed capture images of brightness temperature. While these images can be turned into information on soil moisture and ocean salinity to improve our understanding of the water cycle, it turns out that these data can also be used to measure sea ice.
“In contrast, CryoSat carries a radar altimeter that measures freeboard of sea ice, which is the distance between the waterline and the top of the ice.”
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/SMOS/Satellite_cousins_have_ice_covered
Yes, I think we have a fairly good handle on the volume of ice, the area coverage of ice and sea surface height changes.
As if to support my exercise above:
Report: Electric vehicles, energy efficiency help drive Hawaii’s energy transformation
Arctic Ocean is now dominated by younger and thinner ice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj1G9gqhkYA
Hey maybe the ice will get older and fatter…
Not according to NSIDC. Ice age is increasing since 2007.
Javier, shame on you, putting those dumb arrows in. the trends are downward.
Anyway, the vertical axis looks wrong, labeled as percent yet only goes as high as 1.
At maximum ice (February) the 2+ year ice had fallen from 38% to 12 %between 1985 and 2009. There is no graph for 5+ year ice that I could find. Rates f loss of multi-year ice are around -16% per decade.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2009/04/arctic-sea-ice-younger-thinner-as-melt-season-begins/
Image below contained in this site:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2015/
GoneFishing,
You will have to take your problems with that graph to the NSIDC
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2015/10/2015-melt-season-in-review/
The arrows are there so you don’t miss when the change in trend took place in 2007. This change in trend has been explained by scientists since 2014;
A signal of persistent Atlantic multidecadal variability in Arctic sea ice
M.W. Miles et al. 2014. Geophys. Res. Lett., 41, 463–469.
http://folk.uib.no/ngftf/CV/PDF_Furevik/miles_et_al_grl_2014.pdf
“We establish a signal of pervasive and persistent multidecadal (~60–90 year) fluctuations… Covariability between sea ice and Atlantic multidecadal variability as represented by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index is evident during the instrumental record. This observational evidence supports recent modeling studies that have suggested that Arctic sea ice is intrinsically linked to Atlantic multidecadal variability.
Given the demonstrated covariability between sea ice and the AMO, it follows that a change to a negative AMO phase in the coming decade(s) could —to some degree— temporarily ameliorate the strongly negative recent sea-ice trends.”
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.
“In recent decades, rapid changes in the Arctic have been documented (e.g. Alkire et al. 2007). Most interpretations of the recent decline in Arctic sea ice extent have focused on the role of anthropogenic forcing (e.g. Johannessen et al. 2004), with some allowance for natural variability… But according to stadium-wave projections, and according to our interpretation of stadium-wave evolution, this trend should reverse, under the condition that the stadium-wave hypothesis captures 20th century dynamics correctly. Rebound in WIE, followed by ArcSib should occur after the estimated 2006 minimum of WIE and maximum of AMO.”
The change of trend is known and explained by scientists. But you haven’t understood it despite me telling you repeated times. Come next September it is very likely that there will be more sea ice in the Arctic than in 2007, and it will then be 10 years without melting despite global warming, despite El Niño, despite warm record years, and despite all the CO2 emitted in those 10 years.
Do you understand the difference between one percent and one hundred percent?
We can have fun extending your meaningless arrows back one, two or even eleven data points. It’s good practice for the kiddies, drawing arrows, gives them better hand eye coordination. Also shows them how people can get almost any answer they want from a variable data set, if they don’t use proper methods.
Whatever. Facts are stubborn. Arctic sea ice has not diminished since 2007. Some scientists believe a change of trend has taken place and the situation will last for decades.
Welcome the “unexpected” pause in Arctic sea ice melting.
Keep repeating your mantra “reality is not happening, we can fake our way out of this”.
I looked at the NSDIC data and you did choose 2007 since it was an anomalous low point, however even in a few years the sea ice extent is now lower than 2007.
That anomalous low point was sold to us as the confirmation of our worst fears about Arctic sea ice.
It turns out it was a pivotal point for a change of trend towards increasing Arctic sea ice stability. Just the opposite.
Alarmists are the only ones denying reality and selling snake oil. Their predictions always fail, so they move to new even direr predictions a little farther in the future. “Just wait, things are going to really turn bad any time now.” People are not buying that.
Lol, Javier.
troll lol
The lifestyle of my neighbor who is ninety nine percent sure headed to bankruptcy court hasn’t declined over the last ten years. He’s hiding his deteriorating status by borrowing more and more , using the proceeds of one loan to pay off other older loans, and abusing his property, by deferring maintenance.
My own lifestyle, except for being tied to the house with a short chain in order to look after my Dad, has not changed appreciably over the last ten years, but my financial situation is substantially improved, due to some property I own has appreciating in spectacular fashion.
Simple outward measures of well being, or conditions in the natural world, can and do often hide ominous ( and sometimes happy ! ) changes, for a period of time.
The extra heat energy is going into the water, for the most part, and has been, for a while now. Soon enough, but I can’t say when, a new balance between ocean water temperatures, and land and air temperatures will make itself felt.
I will not dispute that SOME warming is harmful, in terms of our overall economic status, world wide. I’m not saying a little warming is DEFINITELY GOOD, but rather that in economic terms it might not be BAD, on average.
But a little BEER is good too.
So’s a little red meat, a little sex, a little of lots of things.
Too much beer results in great pain.
And too much beer combined with sex occasionally results in MORE problems, lol. Feedbacks are real.
If you are really doing your best to tell it like it is, and you really are a competent biologist, then you must acknowledge that the physics, as expounded by professionals in that field, indicate we are in for a HOT kitchen.
So you are a microbiologist?
Tell us what sort of precautions you would INSIST on, if you were heading up a research project investigating a fast moving , highly contagious and frequently fatal disease, with no known cure.
IF you don’t believe in the precautionary principle, you are a dangerous man indeed, because people who don’t know any better might actually listen to you, WILL listen to you, as a matter of fact.
And if you are competent, in general terms, you simply MUST know that while a decade is a long time in the affairs of our day to day lives, it’s only a yawn or two , in terms of the next few centuries.
As I have remarked by way of example on other occasions, if a youngster puts some money aside, on a regular basis, even a very modest amount, and it draws compound interest, he will possess a substantial sum.
Now it IS possible that the warming trend we have experienced in recent times IS the result of natural variations. I don’t think it is possible to prove otherwise by purely mathematical reasoning.
But all the INDICATIONS point to forced warming, and we do collectively know a hell of a lot about astronomy these days, including solar output, orbital variations, and that sort of variable. We also know a hell of a lot about plate tectonics, etc, all of which have had a hell of a lot to do with past climatic cycles, and will determine future cycles as well.
And unless I am VERY badly mistaken, nobody is coming forward with any evidence that known astronomical or geological factors are in play in such a way that they could explain recent warming, or be reasonably expected to offset any forced warming over the next few centuries.
Now I do agree with some of the things you have to say, in particular that perhaps some of the attention being paid to warming, and some of the resources that are apt to be devoted to it could be better spent on conservation efforts on the ground, such as preserving some critical natural habitats before it’s too late.
My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that the odds are pretty high that ten billion dollars spent on reducing CO2 emissions by such inefficient methods as CCS would return ten or twenty times as big an an environmental bang, if that money were spent on providing free birth control to poor people everywhere.
And while it’s obvious to me that you are right about some things you have to say about science and politics, hardly anybody else in this particular forum will agree with me on this point.
For everybody else, I refer them to the bigger and broader point in that very famous and extremely influential novel with the courtroom scene when the successful defense lawyer tells the jury to just imagine that the little girl had blond hair, before they convict HER Daddy of doing what they would have done themselves, in the same situation.
Change the names of the people involved, and the subject matter, and most of us are perfectly willing to believe that most people go along to get along, both personally and professionally.
But peer review still really does work, and it works ACROSS the different fields of science. If physicists, chemists, geologists, biologists in general, agricultural scientists, etc, were to all be criticizing the climate science establishment, you would have a SERIOUS point in emphasizing the need to go along to get along.
You do have a serious point when you emphasize that too much research depends on government money, and that there should be more private money going to research.
And I don’t believe the forum would be better off, in absolute terms, if you were banned. I don’t believe in censorship.
But neither do I believe you can come up with a sound answer, as a biologist, when it comes to the importance of the precautionary principle, etc, having ignored it in your comments.
You must realize, if you are capable of critical thinking, and know what’s involved, that waiting for evidence that will satisfy the Koch brothers means waiting until it’s too late to do anything meaningful in terms of solving the problem.
So- The ball’s in your court.
“then you must acknowledge that the physics, as expounded by professionals in that field, indicate we are in for a HOT kitchen.”
The physics does not indicate such thing, Climate sensitivity is UNKNOWN.
I believe in taking reasonable precautions against known risks. What if I tell you that we should dedicate 20% of our economic output to take precautions against being hit by an asteroids, and another 20% against a Carrington event? I mean the loses would be such that anything we expend to prevent that is well worth it, and we really don’t know how long we have until that happens. The first thing is to decide how much we are going to expend and what effect is likely to have that money.
I am a molecular biologist, not a microbiologist. Yet quite some knowledge about microbiology. The risk of being seriously hit by a bad strain of some highly contagious disease is in my opinion a bigger risk than climate change. We do take measures against that, but nobody knows if it would suffice. I have serious doubts that it would.
“nobody is coming forward with any evidence that known astronomical or geological factors are in play in such a way that they could explain recent warming”
There is a millennial cycle in solar activity. Around the year 1 AD coincides with the Roman Warm Period. Around the year 1000 AD coincides with the Medieval Warm Period. Around the year 2000 AD coincides with the Modern Warm Period. We do not know the mechanisms by which changes in solar activity could affect significantly the climate, but there is quite a lot of evidence that they do, and some hypothesis are being pushed forward. The most serious one proposes that changes in UV radiation warm the stratospheric ozone causing atmospheric reorganizations by a top down mechanism. If you are really interested see:
Haigh, J. D., and M. Blackburn. “Solar influences on dynamical coupling between the stratosphere and troposphere.” Space Science Reviews 125.1-4 (2006): 331-344.
http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/190/1/ISSI2005_final.pdf
Gray, Lesley J., et al. “Solar influences on climate.” Reviews of Geophysics 48.4 (2010).
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009RG000282/full
“But peer review still really does work”
I defend peer review as the worst system except for all the others.
“You must realize, if you are capable of critical thinking, and know what’s involved, that waiting for evidence … means waiting until it’s too late to do anything meaningful in terms of solving the problem.”
First we should know if there is a problem, shouldn’t we? That the world has been warming for the past 170 years has not been a problem, but has actually solved one.
Hi Javier,
Whatever is not much of an argument and cherry picking is considered pseudoscience by most.
Dennis,
Arctic sea ice stopped declining when it did. No picking any date there. There will be a pause until it starts declining again. Already 9 years and contrary to expectations.
Not according to NSIDC. Ice age is increasing since 2007.
No: you could title this little bit of arrow-drawing “Ice Age Decreasing Since 2006.”
My point being that, as GF notes above, Javier is a cherry-picker.
For trend analysis you joint highs to highs and lows to lows. A downward trend requires both lower highs and lower lows. This is pretty simple stuff in trend analysis.
For 2 year and older ice there is no longer lower lows and lower highs. The trend is no longer downwards.
“For trend analysis you joint highs to highs and lows to lows.” On what planet? Trend analysis generally refers to techniques for extracting an underlying pattern of behavior in a time series which would otherwise be hidden by noise. In science it is regression analysis that is normally used to understand which among the independent variables are related to the dependent variable.
I’ve always wondered what color the sky is on the planet Javier resides on.
It is way different from Earth.
He’s gotta be a paid troll or psychiatrically unbalanced. Nobody is that ignorant of reality.
“an uptrend is classified as a series of higher highs and higher lows, while a downtrend is one of lower lows and lower highs.”
http://www.investopedia.com/university/technical/techanalysis3.asp
It is not my fault if you are so ignorant as not knowing pretty simple stuff. From this planet. Read the article so you learn to spot a trend.
INVESTOPEDIA as a scientific reference? You’ve got to be kidding; that’s pathetic.
Doug, it’s a lot more correct than many of the references he cites.
True.
So now you need to be a scientist to spot a trend.
Your religion is getting weirder.
Give it up already. You’re a trainwreck.
Nope, I am likely to be right, and one day you will have to accept it. It will be time to eat crow the day you finally realize your trust was misplaced and we are at no risk from climate change.
March (maximum ice)
In 1985 the area of 1st year ice was only slightly larger than the area of 5th year and older (2500 km2 and 2200 km2)
Now the area of first year ice is 5000 km2 and the area of fifth +year ice is 200 km2.
Looks to me like the old ice is disappearing.
Maybe if you joint highs to highs and lows to lows you’ll find a trend in that data. Then you can make a major… No maybe not.
Instead you could listen to Peter Wadhams. Peter is an ‘expeditionary’ scientist and Emeritus Professor of Ocean Physics from Cambridge. His observations of the Arctic ice for over 4 decades makes him one of the worlds authorities on the subject.
ClimateMatters.TV – Farewell to Arctic Ice: http://arctic-news.blogspot.ca/
Wadhams shows how sea ice is the ‘canary in the mine’ of planetary climate change. He describes how it forms and the vital role it plays in reflecting solar heat back into space and providing an ‘air conditioning’ system for the planet.
He shows how a series of rapid feedbacks in the Arctic region are accelerating change there more rapidly than almost all scientists (and political authorities), have previously realized. Dangers of further acceleration are very real.
“Wadhams has visited the Polar Regions more often than any other living scientist – 50 times since he was on the first ship to circumnavigate the Americas in 1970 – and has a uniquely authoritative perspective on the changes they have undergone and where those changes will lead. From his observations and the latest scientific research, he describes how dramatically sea ice has diminished over the past three decades, to the point at which, by the time this book is published, the Arctic may be free of ice for the first time in 10,000 years.”
Peter Wadhams is a crackpot with a serious mental problem.
Have three climate change scientists been ASSASSINATED? The astonishing claim made by a Cambridge professor
“Professor Peter Wadhams insists three scientists may have been murdered. Seymour Laxon died after a fall while Tim Boyd was struck by lightning. Katharine Giles was crushed to death by a truck while cycling in London. Prof Wadhams believes they were killed by oil lobby workers.”
He already predicted the final collapse of Arctic sea ice by 2016.
Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years
So according to him there is no more Arctic sea ice during the summers.
Quite some expert you have chosen to trust.
Do you have any valid critique of his professional work? You clearly are reduced to ad hominem attacks. What a prestigious institution it must have been that gave you a PhD. You clearly know little about science or the scientific process. Perhaps Arctic sea ice will be gone by September 2020. Wow! Peter was off by four years. I guess you can have his job at Cambridge lol what a troll. I read your posts and I actually feel embarrassed for you.
“Do you have any valid critique of his professional work?”
I already did. Peter Wadham has already produced and publicized two utterly failed Arctic ice-free predictions.
In science if the predictions from your hypothesis fail so spectacularly, it means that you are wrong. His failure to recognize this problem and his insistence that he is still right clearly shows that his professional work is bad.
“You have said on several occasions that summer Arctic sea ice would disappear by the middle of this decade. It hasn’t. Are you being alarmist?
No. There is a clear trend down to zero for summer cover… Next year or the year after that, I think it will be free of ice in summer… Ice-free means the central basin of the Arctic will be ice-free and I think that that is going to happen in summer 2017 or 2018.
The Guardian: ‘Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice’
Quite some expert you are trusting. I think you can put some new music to that old tune.
That’s the best you got eh? Wow. I’m embarrassed for you.
Peter Wadhams and survivalist his follower. Quite a team.
Even the mainstream media is having doubts about Wadhams despite providing sensationalism on a yearly basis.
Look at this chart:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1837.0;attach=39920;image
Amazing!
Heh Duncan, I’ve been jointing highs to highs and lows to lows and can’t see any worrying trends so everything must be OK up there.
Only 23000 km3 to go.
Has Javier said anything about this?
Is there anything he can do to make this graph look right?
Please help.
“Is there anything he can do to make this graph look right?”
Yes; he can use the technique of Axel the Dowser, and tilt the graph.
https://skepticalscience.com/Nils-Axel-Morner-wrong-about-sea-level-rise.html
NSIDC does not agree with that graph.
They used to have this format, but they changed it because it was too easy to see that Arctic sea ice age was increasing.
You think that graph shows that Arctic sea ice age is increasing? Are you color blind or innumerate?
Situation in 2015 is the same or better as in 2007, and shows improvement from 2012. It shows the same information as all the rest of Arctic data.
Look at the situation, as you call it, in 1983 and compare it to the situation in 2015. Try not to cherry pick the middle bits. It’s hard but you can do it. Think back to grad school.
Arctic sea ice stopped declining when it did. No picking any date there. There will be a pause until it starts declining again. Already 9 years and contrary to expectations.
Different graph, or can’t you see the difference? Two of the ages are blended making the bottom one look bigger. , yearly values are blended together, the time span is earlier, does not reach 2016.
You probably do not even understand how the age determination process works.
Hi Javier,
No you do a linear regression, rather than draw arrows.
Then if you have a significant reason to choose a certain starting and ending points, you should look at how the trend changes when the window is moved. A big change in trend indicates a lack of statistical significance.
Most scientists are well aware of this.
Dennis,
I have already showed that a change of trend in Arctic sea ice in 2007 has already been identified in several papers analyzing the dependency of Arctic sea ice on AMO. No need to wait 30 years for more data. Arctic sea ice is doing what is expected to do by some scientists. Not melt.
Wow look at all the “not melting”
https://youtu.be/YgiMBxaL19M
Do you live in a parallel dimension or something because you’re clearly not tuned into reality?
Lacks 4 years of data that shows no melting for 9 years. Propaganda videos are not worth much.
Can you spot a trend? Why is it propaganda? Is it false data? If so please link reference to real data. You’re weak tea Javier. Normal people would feel shame after being dragged through the facts so often. I suggest you either lack the ability to feel shame or you’re paid to serve this drivel.
Here’s another link that is not missing four years. All better now? Does this meet the Javier standard of scientific rigour?
https://youtu.be/9NP0L1PG9ag
Actually it doesn’t, you know why?
“Normal people would feel shame after being dragged through the facts so often.”
Because you are not bringing facts to the table. Nobody is measuring Arctic ice volume. It is modeled.
You should try to find your facts in scientific articles and then we can discuss them, not in Youtube.
Getting your science in Youtube it is no wonder that you sport such wacky ideas.
Height times area = volume
Yes, the volume is measured by satellites that measure height of ice and measure area.
You really don’t understand how models are used in science. Do you think they are just made up? I think they use actual data.
The satellite data is actually checked against measurements made in the ocean.
You are just blowing wind.
You are inventing that GoneFishing.
“PIOMAS is a numerical model with components for sea ice and ocean and the capacity for assimilating some kinds of observations. For the ice volume simulations shown here, sea ice concentration information from the NSIDC near-real time product are assimilated into the model to improve ice thickness estimates and SST data from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis are assimilated in the ice-free areas. NCEP/NCAR reanalysis SST data are based on the global daily high-resolution Reynolds SST analyses using satellite and in situ observations (Reynolds and Marsico, 1993; Reynolds et al., 2007). Atmospheric information to drive the model, specifically wind, surface air temperature, and cloud cover to compute solar and long wave radiation are specified from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis. The pan-Arctic ocean model is forced with input from a global ocean model at its open boundaries located at 45 degrees North.”
Volume is not measured. Is modeled. Make believe data. As they say, a simulation.
PIOMASS uses ICESAT2 data. That and other satellites measure freeboard height of the ice, in this case using multiple laser beams. Data is taken every 2.3 feet and submarines have confirmed the accuracy to be less than 0,5 meter.
Yes, they then have to calculate the ice volume from freeboard height of ice, so I guess that is your idea of a simulation. We do know how ice floats.
The paragraph I put is from PIOMAS site. They themselves call their ice volume product a simulation.
If you measure something, you don’t call it a simulation.
Hi Javier,
The relationship between AMO and Arctic Sea ice minimum is quite weak.
From 1979 to 2015 the R squared between Arctic Sea Ice Minimum and AMO is 41%.
Hi Javier,
A linear regression on the Arctic Sea Ice minimum as the dependent variable and AMO and natural log of atmospheric CO2 as the independent variables, shows that the AMO is not statistically significant with a t-stat of 0.03 (where about a t stat of 2 or higher suggests statistical significance at the 95% level), where natural log of CO2 has a t stat of about 7 (absolute value).
Also the regression has an R squared of 76% using two independent variables (AMO and ln(CO2)).
The regression for arctic sea ice minimum vs natural log of CO2 (AMO not included) also has an R squared of 76%.
Both regressions use data from 1979 to 2015.
Hi Dennis,
There is a very clear phase inverse relationship that extends over several cycles. The variability that both display prevents a closer match.
Obviously if you take the relationship over to the 1600s with proxies, the relationship with CO2 falls flat on its face.
And for the last cycle the relationship holds quite well even if there is no match between peaks and valleys in the yearly variability.
Why does everyone care so much that Javier doesn’t think climate change is a problem.
Its OK if he doesn’t, he is not the decision maker, any more than you or I.
Better to spend the mental energy on much more important matters- like birth control and protection of class I/II farmland soils.
I bet both Javier, Fred M, and Huntington Beach can all agree on that.
Besides constantly being called delusional and a liar, Javier has stopped all reasonable discussion of climate change on this site. To confuse the topic and silence us is his success.
As far as investigating the earth, if you think that is not important, fine. We do live on this planet and need to know how and why it operates, considering we are now one of the forces involved.
We do not need people obsessionally muddying the knowledge and discussion. This site can be viewed all over the world.
There already is birth control and farmland already has lots of scientists studying it. However I would like to see your thoughts on those, so start a discussion.
Just for the record guys. My lying eyes tell me that, most of the long term temperature graphs Javier has been posting, including the one above, show an extremely disturbing uptick in temperatures over the last couple of decades.
This is even more disturbing when my lying eyes again tell me that this is following a very gradual, long term, cooling trend.
Great work, Javier!
Some food for thought.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
Say what you like about my bloody murderous government,’ I says, ‘but don’t insult me poor bleedin’ country.
Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
Our ‘neoconservatives’ are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.
Edward Abby
Extremism, even with the best of intentions, is hardly ever good. In fact it can be horrible.
The stage is being set for a form of extremism.
Good morning GF,
I’m afraid you’re right, that our government is headed towards becoming more authoritarian and extremist in a lot of aspects.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/house-gop-faceplant-on-ethics-coup-shows-public-shame-still-matters_us_586bfc31e4b0eb58648acae4
There’s a lot of food for thought in this link, but unfortunately the thoughts are mostly unpleasant ones.
It’s time to be seriously contemplating thinkers and philosophers along the lines of Edward Abbey, who is one of my favorites.
“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
Many others said this same thing in somewhat different words, sooner, but that only makes it more instead of less relevant.
I have been trying very hard to find something I can do for which I do not need government permission. I guess there are a few things left but in order to be able to do them, I have to do things that need permission. Even my dog needs a license.
Freedom, ain’t it wonderful?
As tyrants take control of democracies, they typically:
1. Exaggerate their mandate to govern – claiming, for example, that they won an election by a landslide even after losing the popular vote.
2. Repeatedly claim massive voter fraud in the absence of any evidence, in order to restrict voting in subsequent elections.
3. Call anyone who opposes them “enemies.”
4. Turn the public against journalists or media outlets that criticize them, calling them “deceitful” and “scum.”
5. Hold few if any press conferences, preferring to communicate with the public directly through mass rallies and unfiltered statements.
6. Tell the public big lies, causing them to doubt the truth and to believe fictions that support the tyrants’ goals.
7. Blame economic stresses on immigrants or racial or religious minorities, and foment public bias and even violence against them.
8. Attribute acts of domestic violence to “enemies within,” and use such events as excuses to beef up internal security and limit civil liberties.
9. Threaten mass deportations, registries of religious minorities, and the banning of refugees.
10. Seek to eliminate or reduce the influence of competing centers of power, such as labor unions and opposition parties.
11. Appoint family members to high positions of authority
12. Surround themselves with their own personal security force rather than a security detail accountable to the public.
13. Put generals into top civilian posts
14. Make personal alliances with foreign dictators.
15. Draw no distinction between personal property and public property, profiteering from their public office.
Consider yourself warned.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-15-warnings-signs-of-impending-tyranny_us_586d3170e4b0eb58648b817b?section=us_politics
And how do we stop this?
In some countries there is a military coup, but I don’t think the US military would do that. They might actively protest an incompetent or dangerous president, but I don’t think they would violently get rid of the president and put themselves in power instead.
Another way is for another country to defeat the authoritarian government. I don’t see other countries attempting to take us down militarily. But perhaps they can do it economically and through disabling, from afar, various systems (e.g., electricity grid, banking, the Internet).
Hybrid F-150 and Transit coming…
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2017/01/03/ford-adding-electrified-f-150-mustang-transit-by-2020.html
Quote…
An overwhelming majority of Ford EV owners expect to replace their current EV with a new one, additional Ford research shows. Specifically:
92 percent of battery electric car customers say they will purchase another battery electric vehicle as their next purchase
87 percent of plug-in hybrid customers want another plug-in for their next vehicle
When nothing is owed or deserved or expected
And your life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected
Head Full of Doubt by The Avett Brothers
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iEr9gMYdkHI
How is Trump going to make a difference?
You’ll wake up in the morning and go about your daily bidness regardless of who is sitting in the Opal Office.
Now if oil were to be gone, not there at all, your life would change dramatically.
R Walter,
I completely agree with you. Too much credit is given to the person in charge, both for good or bad. When history is studied under economic, climatic, and social trends, it becomes clear that most times the people in charge are just riding the wave, and taking the credit when things improve.
Obviously incompetent people with too much power can always make things significantly worse regardless of conditions, but that rarely happens with democracies, where time is limited and there are multiple checks to excessive power.
The 2011 Arab spring that has turned into several civil wars and the failure of Lybia as a state (with our help), is a clear example of the effect of economic trends that resulted from the increase in oil prices followed by an increase in food prices on countries with very young populations where a very large part of people’s income is dedicated to food and fuel. Leaders that had been stable for many decades took the blame then and the media sold us the stupid lie that it was a desire for democracy.
Oil will go, but health insurance and social security will go first. Won’t matter if there is oil or not for a lot of people. They will be cursing those using it.
Got this quote from Rice Farmer and was with link to the article below.
“Unfortunately, the bad news is even worse. Fossil fuels are needed to manufacture and deploy renewables. There appears to be simple-minded belief that we could use the electricity from renewables to power not only industrial civilization, but also the hardware scrap-and-build cycle. This belief overlooks the crucial difference between fossil fuels and renewables. In the case of fossil fuels, nature did all the heavy lifting for us by producing biomass on a vast scale and then putting it in gigantic pressure cookers. Humans just have to dig or pump out the products and refine them. With renewables, we must do this ourselves over immense areas of land. In other words, fossil fuel energy is concentrated, stored energy, while that from renewables is diffuse, real-time energy. Using electricity from renewables to run the industrial machine would be prohibitively expensive. But there’s another major factor that most people completely overlook: Large-scale infrastructure like wind and solar farms needs to be financed with debt — LOTS of debt, and that requires a sound financial system. Unfortunately, the global economy and financial system are doomed. Furthermore, although there could be a post-crash revival, the system will never recover to the current scale because net energy is already too low, and will continue to decline. — RF”
http://resourceinsights.blogspot.ca/2017/01/the-100-percent-renewable-energy-future.html?m=1
I feel that the term EROEI as it pertains to renewables should be clarified. It’s electricity energy returned on fossil fuel energy invested. The manufacturing of renewables consumes fossil fuel.
From that article.
“Rather, the default endpoint is merely the wreckage of an industrial civilization that didn’t prepare properly. Such a society would be forced to make due with the energy budget available from renewables like all past civilizations. That’s a lot less than we in industrialized countries use, and, more important, far less than we could have if we make sensible and serious plans and implement them starting now.”
I’ve been concerned about this since the Carter days. We saw the coming of the end of oil and could prepared for it then. The oil discoveries that have happened since then could have bought us time to make an orderly transition.
But we didn’t take 30-50 years to prepare. We still have people fighting the idea. So fossil fuels will become more expensive, people will be forced to use less, and their lifestyles will change anyway.
We’ll do fine eliminating those energy uses that are just wasteful. And we’ll be okay eliminating consumption we don’t need for survival (e.g., vacation trips on airplanes).
If we pare down to essentials, then we can see how many people living what kind of lives we can support with mostly renewables. Personally I think many of us will be better with a simpler, more energy-efficient lives. It will be different, but I think it will be better.
CLIMATE CHANGE IN 2016: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
“I am also hopeful that the economic position of renewable energy continues to improve. If so, the president of the USA won’t matter. We will be on a path to a cleaner safer world just based on unstoppable economics.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/jan/02/climate-change-in-2016-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly
Measnwhile,
ELECTRIC CAR SALES SET TO EXPLODE IN DUBAI
“Sales of greener vehicles in Dubai look set to rise in the coming years as the government steps up its bid to reduce the emirate’s carbon footprint….
“The introduction of quotas for hybrid cars in government vehicle fleets, combined with campaigns aimed at encouraging Dubai’s motorists to switch to environmentally friendly automobiles, is expected to open up new markets for the industry.”
http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Electric-Car-Sales-Set-To-Explode-In-Dubai.html
.
Oi!
Poor job. It clearly shows its borrowed.
No problem, allow me…
.
Much better, thank you.
Hi GF, Survivalist,
The points made in your above comments are the biggest single ones in arguing for forcing the transition away from fossil fuels, and towards renewable energy as fast as possible. IF the transition is not far enough along by the time it becomes obvious to men and women on the street that the fossil fuel supply is finite and diminishing, we won’t be able to manage a successful transition.
At one time, I believed the argument that it would never be possible to scale up renewable energy to the point we could continue not only live modern, dignified, comfortable lives without fossil fuels………. I believed that most of us would PERISH for lack of fossil fuels.
I still believe it is more probable than not that a substantial part of the world population WILL perish, as fossil fuels deplete, and as the overall environmental situation gets worse, due to using them.
But the engineers and scientists who used to post good articles and data indicating that the hoped for transition is impossible are mostly keeping their mouths shut these days.
They may be professionals, professional engineers, and professional scientists, but they are still just naked apes under their clothes, and they don’t want to admit they were wrong any more than anybody else, so they don’t produce any new articles repeating their old argument , NOW THAT the prices of both have fallen dramatically, and continue to fall, that renewable energy can’t giterdone.
Of course it will be necessary to change our wasteful ways, and use energy far more efficiently, and waste far less of it, but there is no real reason that I can see that we can’t have an industrial civilization that runs entirely on renewable energy, at some point in time.
“Sufficient unto the day are the needs thereof is ” is a little bit of wisdom we ought to carve in stone above our doors. If we can, and we can, get to say seventy to ninety percent renewable energy within the next generation or two, there will be enough accessible fossil fuels remaining to meet the final critical needs of society for a LONG time after that.
We don’t really need to be TOO CONCERNED about how people will live a few centuries down the future road, except as an academic exercise.
If we pull thru the next century or so more or less whole, but perhaps far fewer in number, the folks who come later will be ok in respect to fossil fuel troubles.
I for one have simply enormous respect for, even awe of, the power of LEVIATHAN, the sovereign state, as it exists today, when it comes to solving problems…….. once the people and the leaders of LEVIATHANS come to understand that their very asses are on the line, and that a war time economic reorganization is called for, in order to deal with the problem, whatever it may be.
Fifty thousand miles of HVDC transmission lines can probably be built for a minor fraction of the cost of fifty thousand miles of freeways, which are ALREADY built, and need only to be MAINTAINED.
Most people will have a hard time getting their heads around it, but if the shit is once well and truly in the fan, but the situation is not TOO FAR GONE, that fifty thousand miles of new HVDC can be built RIGHT OVER THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAYS, anyplace the highways are suitably routed. Power lines seldom fall, we live and drive under them every day without a second thought.
I have DONE construction work. Building such a power line on a war time basis over an existing highway would cost way the hell less than half what it costs to build cross country from scratch under the current rules.
IF as we all seem to expect, the population peaks and gradually begins to decline, we will need less of everything in the way of substantial up front investments requiring lots of energy and raw materials, such as new houses, new water and sewer systems, new schools, hospitals, etc. All these things can be maintained and upgraded at reasonable cost.
There is no reason at all that automobiles can’t be built to last fifty years by repairing and upgrading them. Standardize the hard points at which suspension components, engines or motors, or batteries are attached, use rust proof materials for the body shell, viola, you have a fifty year car, maybe even a hundred year car. Then there’s the RADICAL idea that maybe we don’t even HAVE to have cars, lol.
I have pointed out several times that my hand made artisan furniture has already allowed my family to avoid replacing it at least TWICE with new throw away furniture, and that it will save the energy and materials used in making and shipping new throw away furniture for THIS house for at least a couple of centuries. Both the house and the furniture will last that long easily, properly cared for.
But if we don’t get far enough along…… soon enough…….. If the cards fall in such a way that even LEVIATHAN can’t successfully deal with fossil fuel depletion and environmental degradation, due to being awakened and enraged TOO LATE………..
As a practical matter, the future of the human species , and most of the other larger species of animals and plants, are all dependent on our winning this bet.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
It is absolutely true that everyone now alive will perish. The important thing is the Total fertility ratio(TFR), which will continue to fall, after about 200 years or so it is likely that World population will fall to 2 billion or less as World TFR falls to 1.5. This is mostly a question of rates.
Hi Dennis,
Sometimes I fail to put in enough detail or context to make my thoughts clear.
The reason I fear that a substantial portion of the world population may perish due to fossil fuel depletion and environmental degradation is that when resources get to be in desperately short supply, wars happen, and the next round of large scale hot war may be fought with weapons that are so much more effective than the ones used in the past it’s scary to even THINK about how many people may die.
Then there’s the farmers perspective.
Cows and people die regionally, when the supply of water and or food fails. . Other cows and other people in other regions generally continue to do fine.
As fossil fuels deplete, and as the environment degrades, the impacts will be extreme in some places, even as they are hardly even noticeable in others, except in a derivative fashion.
Drought and starvation in Sub Saharan Africa for instance barely makes the news here in the USA, but troubles there may eventually result in troubles here, due to economic and political entanglement of American and African affairs.
Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be mentioned on the front page once a decade, if there were no oil in that part of the world, lol.
Barring near miracles, most of the people there are going to starve or migrate , eventually, when the oil money runs out.
And the ones who don’t migrate early, with money, while the money is still good, are going to be met at national borders with barbed wire and machine guns, in more cases than otherwise.
Bottom line, one farmer’s cows starve or freeze, another farmer has no problem, if he lives far away, where there is no drought, or no extreme blizzard.
Farmers with feed and water are glad to get more cows at bargain prices………… but people who are suffering and tightening their own belts are not much inclined to welcome immigrants, especially immigrants who look different, talk differently, believe in different cultural values, and have little or nothing to offer in the way of supporting themselves, except by taking the jobs of LOCAL people who are often as not just barely getting by.
I’m talking physical and political realities, rather than indulging in the sort of wishful thinking so popular among the holier than thou faction. I have NEVER met even the first one of that type that works with his hands, or operates a machine in a factory.
I posted a link to an article at the Huffington Post a few days back, where in the author tells us about a speaker at the last D party convention trying to fire up the crowd by asking the delegates who worked with their hands to raise those hands.
DEAD SILENCE, not a hand went up.
Anybody who can’t understand the implications of this SIGN of political reality is in need of some mind expanding drugs.
So long as democracy survives there , NO COUNTRY is ever willingly going to allow impoverished migrants to come in ,in large numbers,numbers up into the millions, when times are already tough on the domestic front.
Modern day Germany is one of the most progressive countries in the world in terms of allowing people in, maybe (?) in part because Germans these days are still suffering from the guilt trip associated with WWII.
But the current government has come pretty close to losing power , and may yet, as the result in VERY large part of having allowed in immigrants to the tune of about one percent of the national population.
And so far as authoritarian governments are concerned, it’s hard to imagine a scenario involving such a government allowing more than a handful of new people to come in, except maybe for professionals such as doctors or engineers.
The USA ought to be able to pull thru without many people perishing due to starvation or exposure due to ff depletion and climate troubles, assuming good leadership.
But even here we may see a significant number of people dying as the result of violent social upheavals associated with people losing their livelihoods due to some industries shutting down, etc.
It’s going to be BAD in some places.
DON’T get caught in Egypt!
Yeah, and you can’t run a G5 smartphone on DOS. Guess we’ll just have to do things differently,eh?
For the record, I no longer buy the argument that we can’t be 100% renewable.
Some people will embark on that path others won’t.
http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2015/pr-50states-renewable-energy-060815.html
“For the record, I no longer buy the argument that we can’t be 100% renewable.”
With you all the way Fred.
See my eleven seventeen comment above concerning the reasons I changed my mind.
Whatever my other faults may be , I don’t mind admitting I have been wrong when the evidence to that effect is clear and compelling, lol.
Mauna Loa Observatory | Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations
January 2, 2017
407.05 ppm
NOAA-ESRL
January 2, 2016
401.83 ppm
More than 5 ppm in one year! That while the world is supposed to be cutting back on CO2 output. Maybe the sinks are starting to fail. If that were true we could see a doubling by 2050.
I bet the young people just can’t wait to enjoy this new level a few decades from now.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, enjoying 45F today, snow and ice all melted on the ground. Lake is opening up, water birds appreciating that one. Just a three winters ago it was hitting highs of 10F at this time and lows of minus 15 or lower. Half the winters are warm now.
Days are getting longer. Still some cold to come, but a brighter cold.
You clearly haven’t heard about the recent El Niño and its effect on atmospheric CO2. Why I am not surprised. Thinking that the increase is related to a change in our emissions really shows your ignorance.
You’re not only a troll you’re also rude. I can’t quite gather why your rudeness is tolerated here. Are you comic relief? You very clearly have an agenda that has nothing to do with the honest examination of facts and data.
And you say I am rude while insulting me?
I am regularly insulted and personally attacked by several people for defending my ideas and knowledge. I think I am taking it rather well and not descending to the low level that some of them, including you, show.
If GoneFishing talks like he knows what he is talking about, but displays complete ignorance about basic features of the issue, like the influence of El Niño on atmospheric CO2 increase, I don’t see anything wrong with telling him. Next time he could ask and the people that know, like me, can gladly explain it to him, and even provide supporting articles. There is nothing wrong with being ignorant about something unless you try to pretend that you know just because you have read a newspaper article.
“try to pretend that you know just because you have read a newspaper article”
Now that is basically a perfect description of these non-petroleum threads on this website!
So Paul, what have you been reading lately?
Don’t be shy, do let us know.
You can’t just read something about some topic and then declare yourself an all-knowing expert about that topic. The obsessed climate change devotees around here seem to think otherwise, though.
Survivalist,
He does not have very good reading comprehension either. I said that the sinks might be failing. That means that they are either not absorbing as much or are actually outputting CO2. So if the ocean, which is a CO2 sink, is outputting CO2, then the sinks are failing.
Funny how the Nino has been over for a while now, but the CO2 rise keeps accelerating.
Give it a few years and we can see where the Arctic methane is gonna take us.
https://youtu.be/PUsHfkAiWsY
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. Providing these CO2 measurements with no supporting context will cause many readers to come to incorrect conclusions about what the measurements actually mean.
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.“
AND… The earth’s crust is made up of several elements: oxygen, 47 percent; silicon, 27 percent; aluminum, 8 percent; iron, 5 percent; calcium, 4 percent; magnesium, potassium and sodium, 2 percent. The crust is divided into huge plates that float on the mantle, the next layer.
Aren’t facts out of context wonderful?!
BTW, I think we’ve seen that same exact post from you before LT and we complimented you on your deep level of knowledge, for someone in Jr. High.
Tks, for the refresher!
Standing Rock Protectors Target Dakota Access’s Profits to Further Strain Pipeline
http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2016/12/29/standing-rock-protectors-target-dakota-accesss-profits-to-further-strain-pipeline/
When I was a young fellow I could stand at the western edge of my hometown and look out toward a rustic rural land. Between me and a great river thirty miles away there was woods, some farms, and a few villages. When you left town, you really left town.
Just 40 years later that same area was full of developments, shopping malls and strip malls, some farms lost, villages got taken over and grew, more traffic and a lot more people. The super highways were pretty much done and the land was covered with houses and condos where farms and woods had been. A very fragmented landscape and not nearly as much food could be grown there anymore.
So where does it end? How far can “progress” take us? How much will the cities take from the countryside as they become megalopolises?
Judith Curry is retiring from Georgia Tech–
The writing was on the wall for her, as reality overwhelmed ideology.
Science was Satan for Judith.
With 168 published peer-reviewed articles and two major textbooks she has nothing more to demonstrate in Academic science. Her climate studies private company is doing good and she has requested emeritus status at Georgia Tech. She will continue to do great whatever she pursues. Her contributions to climate science will only grow with time.
2016 EDGES 1998 AS WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD
Yes, before we are reminded, concern is long-term temperature trends, not short-term spikes and dips. I think the minimum meaningful temperature interval average is something like 30 years.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170104130257.htm
Obviously, all atmospheric records.
On Earths surface, when humans actually live, 1998 was left far in the rear view mirron long ago.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5FvYtPOYKbY/VLmsJDSagtI/AAAAAAAAAQg/VCbwpHT5aqc/s1600/2014isontrend.png
Yes, some surface datasets show a lot of man-made warming.
Javier do you believe climate change/global warming is a conspiracy? The climate scientists are leaning on the scales? Holding a match to the meter? They’re in it for the grant money? lol oh man you’re hurtin’ dude! Are you sure you got a PhD? In science right?
https://youtu.be/9NP0L1PG9ag
Nope, I do not believe in a global warming conspiracy, but it is clear that certain databases have been adjusted with a warming bias. No conspiracy required for that.
Surface databases come with a 90% confidence range, yet time and again changes made to them violate that range hugely. This indicates the 90% confidence range actually means nothing, and no trust can be deposited in such immature data.
In 2008 global average temperature difference between 1910 and 2000 in GISS LOTI database was 0.45°C. By 2016 the difference has become 0.70°C. That additional warming of 0.25°C that took place in the database is by definition man-made warming in the sense the cartoon indicates.
Is that the best you can do? You’re like a scratched record skipping the same groove over and over again. Get with the program snowflake. You’re embarrassing yourself again. For a guy with a PhD you sure seem ignorant.
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/1/e1601207
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~kdc3/papers/ihsst2016/background.html
And curiously the warming rate was exactly the same between satellite data and surface data until the pause started then they started to diverge. this divergence was produced “a posteriori” through adjustments to the surface data.
If you don’t think it’s a conspiracy then why did you post that cartoon? Is that what you feel is important information to contribute to a discussion about facts and data? You have an agenda Javier. Your talking points are very circular. You have no interest in a discussion about facts, data or science. Later dude. You’re a joke.
I posted the cartoon because it is funny and because it illustrates a real concern.
How much of the warming present in the databases is real and how much is the result of methodology?
One of the problems that we have is that proxies do not show as much warming as instruments. There are several possible explanations for that problem, but all of them share a concern. There is no way a comparison between instrumental and proxy temperatures could provide a meaningful result.
Sounds like a tough race: anybody giving odds?
TENFOLD JUMP IN GREEN TECH NEEDED TO MEET GLOBAL EMISSIONS TARGETS
“Green innovations must be developed and spread globally 10 times faster than in the past if we are to limit warming to below the Paris Agreement’s 2 degrees C target.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170103152452.htm
I bet that many people could cut their use of fossil fuels by 20 to 50% without using any new high tech products. Many businesses have already reduced use, but there is probably still a lot room for improvement.
The next step is to modify systems and processes so less fossil fuel is needed. Using power from PV and wind is a great way to get around fossil fuel use. Those are both maturing technologies.
Of course the biggest savings is in elimination. EV’s eliminate the direct burning of fossil fuel if sourced from renewable energy. For meetings, Skype or something similar eliminates a lot of transport fuel.
If we go to carbon technology and 3D printing, manufacturing can be very local.
Of course better power storage technology is needed to bring about the renewable revolution and supplant both coal and natural gas in most places.
Pumping energy can be reduced with changes in pipe diameter and curve radius.
One of the big things that people need to realize is that using renewables, electric cars and making buildings near zero carbon use will drop our energy use dramatically compared to fossil fuels. Use of new composites will reduce the mass of material needed and change the demand on metals.
New battery technology will use carbon and materials other than lithium.
I don’t see the technology as a problem. I see the infrastructure we already possess and the tendency to use old methodology over new as a major problem.
I do not believe in any way that we will keep the rise below 2C no matter what we do or what happens. But the energy transistion is not all about climate change, as we all know. It will slow climate change but we need to address an unsustainable culture as the prime driver of change. Even if we could stop climate change in it’s tracks, our unsustainable civilization would crash and burn soon anyway.
Actually, the post by Survivalist further up got me thinking about this and here’s my perspective.
When I first became aware of Peak Oil it was sometime around the end of 2007 or early 2008. I was quite perturbed since the stuff I was reading and watching made it seem that by 2010 or so TS would have HTF, certainly by 2012 we would be deep in it. I remember seeing a clip of Bob Hirsch, author of The Hirsch Report. saying (in 2005) that, it would take 20 years or so to prepare for the effects of Peak Oil and that “the world is absolutely not ready”. I remember the run up to the 2008 US presidential elections and folks at the oil drum deriding the “drill baby, drill!” crowd. When the GFC hit in 2008 I thought, that was our “Oh shit!” moment and it was going to be downhill all the way from there. I was more concerned about Peak Oil than global warming and thought it was silly to be using global warming as a rally cry to embrace an energy transition (to renewables) rather than Peak Oil even though the results of tackling either would be quite similar.
Back then, there were zero plug-in cars available for purchase and any that existed were left overs from the CARB Zero Emissions Mandates of the 90s or DIY projects built by EV enthusiasts. In 2007 solar energy constituted about 0.01% of global electricity production with global capacity at the end of 2007 of less than 9 GW. From the article I linked to in an earlier comment, How will Rick Perry run the Department of Energy? ;
Fast forward to today and starting with Texas wind from the quoted article;
Global solar capacity is now expected to be somewhere in the region of 300GW by the end of 2016 (233+~70) and by some estimates is contributing more than 1% to the global electricity supply. If you take a look at the December 2016 Plug-In Electric Vehicle Sales Report Card over at insideevs.com there are now some 30 plug-in cars available in the state of California, with most major global brands represented. Worldwide sales for 2016 with partial data for December for the US only, are 664,437. According to the text accompanying a graphic in this September 1, 2016, article over at hybridcars.com, Americans Buy Their Half-Millionth Plug-in Car
This page The State of United States’ Plug-In Vehicles has a lot of nice charts and pegs the number of cumulative plug-in cars sold in the US between 2010 and Dec 2, 2016 at 541,275. According to this article over at cleantechnica.com, EVs Will Save The World (With Help From Energy Efficiency & Renewables)
So, with global sales for 2016 expected to be over 750,000 the 2 million mark can’t be far away.
My favorite technology sage, Tony Seba, is on record as saying that there is the distinct possibility that the Clean Disruption, of which he speaks, could accelerate. There are signs that this may be happening, even without any big technical breakthroughs. For anyone reading who is unfamiliar with Seba’s ideas, he posits that exponentially improving technologies, even if the annual improvements are quite modest, will eventually overwhelm and disrupt their competition. As one who buys into that idea, having witnessed it several times over during my lifetime, I am cautiously optimistic. Not sure I want to give any odds though!
City of Huntington Beach Solar Project is Complete
http://huntingtonbeachca.gov/Residents/News_Publications/sands/winter_12/city-news.pdf
The combined effect of ice and snow on the planet is about -20 watts/m2. Loss of both ice and snow due to warming and melting could then cause up to 20 watts/m2 increase in heating. Just losing the summer Arctic ocean ice and reducing the snow line will cause 2 to 6 watts/m2 gain in heating.
With a 20 watt range just from snow and ice, I think we need to take the warming we are causing very seriously. Just a few watts can initiate a 2 to 10 times amplification of global warming.
This does not take into account CO2 and methane releases from oceans and permafrost, which even if they are slow will steadily add GHG to the atmosphere and if destabilization occurs in certain areas, the additions could be large and fast.
I suspect that by 2100 we will have at least 6 watts/m2 heating to deal with, low end estimate.
Talking again about runaway positive feedbacks that do not exist GoneFishing?
“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.
our records would correspond in the model to an Arctic Ocean sea-ice cover in summer at 8 ky B.P. that was less than half of the record low 2007 level. The general buildup of sea ice from ~6 ky B.P. agrees with the LOVECLIM model, showing that summer sea-ice cover, which reached its Holocene maximum during the LIA, attained its present (~2000) extent at ~ 4 ky B.P.”
Funder et al. 2011. Science 333 6043 747-750.
“A 10,000-Year Record of Arctic Ocean Sea-Ice Variability—View from the Beach”
Did you read that? Less than half Arctic ice than in 2007. One thousand kilometers North of present position. No runaway effect. As temperatures decreased, sea ice increased.
ALARMISM IS UNJUSTIFIED.
As a scientist, I like to explore the reality and boundaries of the system we live in. If you don’t like that, no need to comment. Those are not runaway feedbacks Javier. You are the alarmist, always overreacting, making false claims, hounding anyone who dares post anything related to global warming let alone explore the situation.
I no longer read most of your references, too much is hogwash. Waste of time.
Do you ever actually think for yourself or just regurgitate climate denier papers and cherry picked graphs? You certainly are not interested in discussion of a topic, just a constant negativism.
Sorry you don’t understand albedo or natural feedbacks. Maybe you should discuss things with someone who doesn’t know much, they might listen to you. Most people here seem to think you are full of hot air.
Maybe you think you are the Wizard of Oz and no one will look behind the curtain. Too late for that, that ship sailed a long time ago.
Have fun.
Would you care to elaborate what a climate denier paper is?
Why would any serious journal (like Science in this case) care to publish a scientific paper that goes against best scientific principles?
You are just showing your bias. You talk about discussing issues but any paper that doesn’t support your view gets automatically labelled as a climate denier paper and therefore can be safely ignored. No longer read. Hogwash. Waste of time. That’s not the way of science.
I do not make false claims. Everything I claim is supported in scientific literature and most times constitutes consensus view within the subfield.
Arctic sea ice was very much reduced during Holocene climate optimum compared to the present situation. Every expert in the subfield knows that and it is well reflected in the literature. If you don’t believe that, what is your source that defends the opposite?
If it was so much reduced a few thousand years ago, why is it such a big deal that it is reducing now?
If you want to discuss this issue and respond to my questions now you have the opportunity.
“If it was so much reduced a few thousand years ago, why is it such a big deal that it is reducing now?”
Pay attention, this may be news to you, but there is a lot more CO2 and other GHG gases in the atmosphere than back then. GHG are also currently on the rise.
So as the ice and snow melts the forcings are combined this time around. The forcings form CO2 and the forcing from albedo change. This in turn warms the land and oceans, which give off more GHG gases. That in turn warms things further. Get the picture?
It’s fairly simple, but you apparently missed it.
So three major mechanisms come into play, albedo change, changes to ocean circulation due to freshwater added to ocean water and GHG release from land and water.
You still haven’t told us what a climate denier paper is, how to spot one, and why journals publish them.
I am perfectly aware of the unusual levels of GHGs that we enjoy in our atmosphere. There is general agreement that they produce warming. We are still discussing how much warming since after 35 years we still do not know, nor have constrained the value of climate sensitivity.
Current temperatures are unusual for this late in the interglacial, and we should be thankful for that, but they are not unusual for this not so warm interglacial. Opinions abound, but it is probable that the Holocene Climate Optimum was warmer than now. Clearly global glaciers and Arctic sea ice were very much reduce. So higher temperatures and lower albedo. No known problem came from that.
Ice albedo is a minor factor, not a major one. Most of the albedo from the Earth is contributed by the atmosphere. Surface albedo is a minor component, and Arctic albedo is just a small part of surface albedo. The small changes that we are seeing in Arctic sea ice during the present global warming ought to be a small contribution to a small part of a small component. No point in being carried away by changes in Arctic albedo.
So you are not too concerned about one degree of warming? Really?
“Six thousand years ago, when the world was one degree warmer than it is now, the American agricultural heartland around Nebraska was desert. It suffered a short reprise during the dust- bowl years of the 1930s, when the topsoil blew away and hundreds of thousands of refugees trailed through the dust to an uncertain welcome further west. The effect of one-degree warming, therefore, requires no great feat of imagination. ”
Much more here:
http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm
Tisk tisk, you’re talking to the wall again Fish.
I already said this once before but I think there’s no harm repeating. This warming of one degree here or there is a whole bunch of nothing. I use where I live as an example. I live in Albuquerque. Here we go through an average 44F of warming every year, for at ABQ airport on the SE side of downtown the average hi in the warmest month (July) is 90.1F while the average hi in the coldest month (December) is 46.1F. Now it’s been awhile since my last arithmetic class but I think I still know enough to know 90.1 – 46.1 = 44. I’ll also say I didn’t just make up some numbers either. They are lifted straight from the Albuquerque wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albuquerque,_New_Mexico#Climate).
So here’s what I’ll say is going on…I think many times these scientists toss around some numbers here, some fancy data there, and assume nobody will question them on any of it or that everybody aside from other scientists is so ignorant they can’t do independent research for themselfs concerning scientific theory. Well that seems like a real old fashioned way of thinking. It might have worked in the old days where just being a scientist was enough to make most people believe everything you said but it just doesn’t work these days when we have the internet at our fingertips. Now in an instant, anybody who thinks something is wrong with what a scientist says can do a fact check.
The example is the wiki page with Albuquerque climate data I showed. In the old days finding that kind of info would have taken lots of time and work…probably you would’ve needed a trip or 2 down to the library. Most people won’t go through that kind of hassle, so they would’ve just accepted 1 degree warming as unusual or frightening, because some scientists said so. With the internet though anyone can look up the actual climate data real quick. Then you can get perspective on climate change that’s real versus climate change that’s all hype.
First, all temperatures are in Centigrade not Fahrenheit. Second, weather is not climate.
Here is a primer for you learn the difference. Click the tabs at the top to change the pages. Yes they are scientists at Woods Hole Research Center, but I think they are pretty smart in their area and you might want to listen to them.
http://whrc.org/publications-data/understanding-climate-change-a-primer/
Why do you mix temperatures and precipitations GoneFishing? How are they related?
Clearly in the 1930’s the situation was much worse than now. Where the 1930’s warmer than now in the US?
You missed the analogy. Comprehension is a tough thing to come by for some.
Why do you keep thinking I am writing these articles when they are clearly cited? Strange behavior.
You are the one bringing those confusing articles. If you don’t say anything we must assume that you agree with them.
In this video sea ice thinner than 1.5 meters is black/it’s not expressed visually. Legend at bottom.
https://mobile.twitter.com/robertoglezcano/status/812386029244190720/video/1
Zack Labe has an interesting Twitter feed if you like data sets. He’s working on his PhD (for real not pretend just for trolling)
https://mobile.twitter.com/ZLabe/status/812682211757608960/photo/1
Maybe even Javier can spot the trend?
https://mobile.twitter.com/ZLabe/status/812743680071180289/photo/1
https://mobile.twitter.com/ZLabe/status/798913080168095744
Perhaps Javier could come up with some ad hominem attacks for Mr Zack Labe also? It is his style. Perhaps he will call Zack ignorant or find a prediction made that didn’t come true. In Javier’s mind failed predictions invalidate all work you ever did and all data you ever collected. This is the scientific process don’t ya know, right Janvier!? Zack’s data is flawless and its presentation is informative, so it must be a weakness in character that is his problem. Perhaps Javier will be kind enough to enlighten us all to the flaws in Mr Zack Labe’s character. Please, if you have time?
Do you mean I should leave ad hominem attacks to alarmists against skeptic scientists only? Alarmists love character assassination when it comes to skeptic scientists. Peter Wadhams is however a special case, as he is deranged. Many alarmists are truly embarrassed of him.
I’ll not waste my time with twitter efforts by students. Let him publish his data in peer reviewed scientific literature before considering it.
Oh look at you up on the cross! Ad hominem attacks is probably what you’re best at. Stick to it. Justify it anyway you like.
The total number of new car sales in the US is about 17.5 million per year. 2016 sales of plug-in vehicles was 155,243. That is less than one percent. I think that there is going to have to be a massive change in EV sales to make a dent in the fossil fuel burned by cars. I am a little depressed by the numbers.
Luckily hybrids are selling better, 9 million sold worldwide and 45% of that was in the US. 4 million very efficient cars sold in the US last year, not too bad.
Still the average new car sales weighted mpg for cars sold in April 2016 was 25.1. Not great, people are still buying power and size. Manufacturers are still feeding status and glitz. Gives lots of room for improvement though. Maybe 30 mpg by 2020? One can hope, though one can be disappointed.
Have you watched any Clean Disruption videos? If not, you should. If you have, can you point out any serious flaws in Seba;s reasoning and projections?
The most recent is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfXKxThT4HY , It is an hour longer than one from two years ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBkND76J91k but, it contains references to developments that have taken place in the last two years.
I just don’t see production going from a half million a year to 90 million per year in fourteen years. That is 18o times gain in 14 years.
Maybe it can be done, but it just seems a huge leap for something that is barely cutting it’s teeth right now.
The IEA projects about 10 percent penetration of EV into the world stock of vehicles by 2030. There is also the possibility that the hydrogen powered car will make surge forward.
I just don’t see production going from a half million a year to 90 million per year in fourteen years. That is 18o times gain in 14 years.
I guess you wouldn’t have seen smart phone shipments hitting 1 billion in 2013 either but, they did and have actually increased slightly since then. Look at World EV Sales Up 39% In November, Tesla Model S And Nissan LEAF Battle For 2016 Title In December and look at the two charts. Of the World’s Top 10 Selling Plug-In Cars, a full four are Chinese models most people have never heard of and of the rest, only four are available in the US!
Of the World’s Top 10 Plug-In Car Manufacturers in terms of unit sales, three are Chinese including the number 1, three are European, two are Japanese and only two are American. The top two are companies that did not exist prior to 2003. That sort of indicates a disruptive situation. Tesla is decimating sales of premium sedans in most markets where they are available and Seba projects that this pattern will continue as 200 mile range EVs become available in lower cost market segments.
As for EIA projections, if they’re anything like their projections for solar PV growth, I would just ignore them. Forecasts from BP are not very encouraging either. Surprise! I have not heard anybody else make projections that are even remotely close to Seba’s claim that all new cars will be electric within the next thirteen years, by 2030.
“I guess you wouldn’t have seen smart phone shipments hitting 1 billion in 2013 either but, they did and have actually increased slightly since then”
Suer Islandboy, if building and selling cars was the same as building and selling smartphones. Not even close, plus the customer might not return for 10 to 15 years.
In order to reach the 2030 goal EV sales would have to more than double every two years, just to reach current production of cars.
That would mean the last two years would have to go from 40 million cars per year to 90 million cars per year. Are you sure that can even happen? That is what exponential growth means.
It’s not like they are having babies, the manufacturing, mining, transporting and sales points have to grow that fast, along with the charge points and service points. Considering a plant has to be built ahead of time, the manufacturing has to grow faster.
In reality, the early growth would have to be much higher, probably doubling every year or more, then growth will slow as it reaches a high volume.
GF, the whole thing is waaay more nuanced than just replacing ICEs with electric motors and batteries. At 29 minutes into the earlier video, Seba says:
Bold mine.
Excerpted from Tony Seba’s Clean Disruption Keynote presentation at the Swedbank Nordic Energy Summit in Oslo, Norway, March 17th, 2016 is the eleven and a half minute segment, for those who don’t want to watch 40 minutes or more of video and are interested in the concept in a nutshell:
The Self-Driving Vehicle Disruption – End Of Parking & Car Ownership by 2030
So while many here might think I am obsessed with Seba and his ideas, they just might be overlooking the dark side to his projections that is very much in line with the idea, frequently touted on this site, that in the future we are going to be forced to use far less energy and other resources in our day to day lives. The dark side has really sinister repercussions for high volume auto manufacturing. Let me repeat what he in essence is saying, “we’re not going to need eighty percent of the cars that we have now!”
I repeat.
80% FEWER CARS WITH NO LOSS IN MOBILITY!
Nice dream, but I have gone through the practicality of it and he may be right for city dwellers (who often don’t own cars anyway), but for the rest of us it will not work very well. I can see his point about needing less vehicles, but there will also be two billion more people soon and they many more with higher lifestyles. So not sure what number. Also with less vehicles, they won’t handle the commuter surge or weekend travel surge, so people won’t go to work or travel.
I did a simulation on autonomous cars and found they need to travel up to twice as far to pick up and give rides to passengers. That means a vehicle will not only be putting miles on all day instead of just an hour or two a day at most, but it will have to travel up to twice as far to produce the same passenger miles. So cars will need to be replaced much more often than before, possibly every two to three years. So I do not see how manufacturing will be that much less.
In a ride call system, how does it handle the surge of people commuting? Much like the passenger railroad it will have extra vehicles sitting doing nothing to handle the surge. The number of cars needed has to be equivalent to the number of commuters needing them. They also need staging areas near where people actually live and work, areas spread all over so they don’t have to double travel at night.
So heavy ride sharing would have to be instituted to actually reduce the number of cars. Want to sit with a lot of strangers each day in a car and no driver? Want to wait an extra half hour or more each way while people are picked up and dropped off?
How would one go shopping, pick up the kids and do other errands on the way home, without essentially fully occupying the vehicle? Other people won’t want to wait for that nor will there be room. So the person would have to call another car after arriving home to do errands that would have already been accomplished.
I am sure versions of the autonomous taxi system will be in place in some areas, but it is energetically inefficient and impractical for many.
Having a car sit there at my beck and call for fifteen years is more efficient and more practical, plus I can outfit for my personal needs and let it sit half the day or more where I go without extra charges. I fit won’t work for me or my friends, it won’t work for a lot of people.
Autonomous cars will be great for people who can no longer drive. Whether they own them or they call them as a taxi service, or rent them for the day or weekend.
I can see people taking very long trips since they can now will not have to worry about falling asleep.
“Nice dream, but I have gone through the practicality of it and he may be right for city dwellers (who often don’t own cars anyway), but for the rest of us it will not work very well.”
I have thought about a lot of what you said and agree with much of it but how old are you? I’m 55 and if you’re anywhere close to that, how do you know how the younger folk (millenials?) are thinking? A flashy smart phone seems to be more of a status symbol for them than a flashy car and I’ve heard from younger guys that, the girls judge you by your phone. If you haven’t got a smart phone you’re not going to get any dates.
They socialize way different than we do and it seems even their concept of friends includes people they have never met face to face. Frankly, I don’t get social media but maybe that just means I’m turning into a typical old fart!
It’s all going to happen, just the mix and the timing might be off a bit. I look at Tony Sheba warning us to move on, if he is off ten years the so be it . If half the cars are EV’s in 2030 and most of the others are hybrids, that would be great. Can’t forget the hydrogen powered ones either.
Autonomous technology is scary for people, having a bunch of robot cars running around will take a bit of getting used to before they are fully accepted. Still, it looks like it will happen.
Sometime between 2030 and 2050, most cars will just hum along. Who knows what technology will exist then.
That is if we make the transistion, a lot can go wrong before 2050. I am planning on being fully transistioned before 2020.
As far as the kids around here, they do have smart phones, laptops and Skype but they all have cars too.
Perhaps it won’t work for rural folk but I think cities will have a lot few cars.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2017/01/03/just-3000-ride-share-vehicles-could-replace-nycs-whole-taxi-fleet/#98cc4e9706fd
Just 3000 Ride-Share Vehicles Could Replace NYC’s Whole Taxi Fleet
Over the past five years, mobile tech has allowed companies like Uber, Lyft, and Juno to disrupt traditional travel with a new ride-hail industry worth billions. According to recent figures from the Massechusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a mere 3000 ride-pools could even handle the business of New York City’s entire taxi fleet with hardly any delay—provided, of course, that riders are willing to share.
A study by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) revealed this week that ride-sharing platforms similar to UberPOOL and Lyft Line could handle the passenger traffic of NYC’s 14,000 taxis with just a few thousand vehicles. In addition, the team says, such programs could help reduce congestion on city streets (if not its sidewalks) by an impressive 300%.
Fred, none of us know how it will really turn out. Maybe just about the time NYC is eliminating most cars, it will get washed over by the ocean.
However, last time I was there almost all the cars were not taxis, so taking over the taxis will do very little.
You will be surprised as to who is actually driving in NYC.
“Census data show that more city residents than suburbanites drive to work in Manhattan every day, according to Mr. Schaller. He estimated that 263,000 people in 19 counties in and around New York City drive regularly to jobs in Manhattan below 60th Street. Of those, 53 percent, or 141,000, live in the five boroughs, Mr. Schaller said. The greatest numbers are from Queens, with 51,300, and Brooklyn, with 33,400. About 23,900 auto commuters live in Manhattan, while 17,400 are from the Bronx and 15,200 from Staten Island. The suburban area with the most auto commuters to Manhattan is Nassau County, with 22,091 people driving to work in the borough, followed by Bergen County, with 19,975.
When plotted on a map, the data make a striking picture, showing that some of the densest concentrations of auto commuters are from the outer fringes of Queens and Brooklyn, where access to subways is limited.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/nyregion/12traffic.html
When considering over 800,000 vehicles entering Manhattan every weekday, the solution is not more cars or different kinds of cars, or different taxis.
Hi,GF Island Boy,
I don’t have any firm opinions as to how fast electrics will displace ice cars, but I can add a few comments, to throw more light on the subject.
” there will also be two billion more people soon and they many more with higher lifestyles. So not sure what number. Also with less vehicles, they won’t handle the commuter surge or weekend travel surge, so people won’t go to work or travel.”
That two billion is scary for sure, but most of them will be urbanites, and poor, and not only must cars be built for them, if they are to have cars, there will have to be a lot more new roads built as well. So maybe the landscape will change far more in favor of mass transit in cities with fast growing populations , and nothing much in the way of EITHER autos OR mass transit at the moment. My guess is that where autos are already numerous, they will continue to dominate, from the inertia effect, if nothing else. Where they are scarce today, mass transit advocates will have a far better shot at getting the buses, subways, etc, that they want, and that will be cheaper as well, for the typical local person, on average.
Now as far as the commuter surge is concerned, if it gets to the point, and I believe it will, that calling for a hired self driving car is substantially cheaper than owning a car, my guess is that employers will change the way they schedule workers hours, so as to hire help more economically.
A large factory may really need to change over from shift to shift abruptly, every body coming in and leaving at the same hour. But I have worked in such a place, and there’s no reason quite a few of the workers couldn’t punch in and out on staggered schedules.
It would hard to stagger the hours teachers need to be at school, by more than an hour or so, but there’s no real reason that some or maybe even most of the people working in large offices can’t have schedules offset all thru the day, and the night as well, if they work nights.
Consider : Suppose you need a cheap employee who MUST drive to your job site these days, and this employee spends four thousand bucks a year getting to and from work. Now if you can arrange things so this hypothetical employee can get to work for half that, or less, then you won’t have to pay as much out in wages, overall, because your employee will have the same amount of AFTER COMMUTING EXPENSE income while you are paying him a couple of thousand bucks less. You will have more applicants at the same offered wage, if you don’t cut the wage, and thus win by getting a BETTER employee.
So employers will often find it to their advantage to find ways to stagger workers schedules, for reasons of their own.
“I did a simulation on autonomous cars and found they need to travel up to twice as far to pick up and give rides to passengers”.
You are likely I in the money, depending on the assumptions you used, if they hold true.
But there CAN BE or COULD be some new factors coming into play that are not usually mentioned in this sort of discussion. I believe ” the rules” will change dramatically.
People are VERY reluctant to share their cars, and personal stuff, and schedules, etc, with strangers, and they are reluctant to share their car even with a known coworker, for fear of accidents, the coworker begging for a side trip, being late, etc.
But consider this. Most people don’t mind really mind riding a bus or train or plane, IF it happens to be going WHERE they want , WHEN they want, with very few or no stops along the way , and it will bring them BACK, with few or no stops or detours, at the end of the workday.
The worry about being held liable for an accident with a hired self driving car will be the for hire car company’s problem. The car itself won’t belong to the picky sort of person who gets hot , or distressed, about a little wear and tear, a muddy foot print on the carpet, etc. And the people who share a ride, using a hired car on a regular schedule, will get to know each other via social media, and check each other out, and agree to divide the expense according to who is most inconvenienced by being the first picked up, the last dropped off, etc. They can have a little agreement , for example, that IF one rider wants to detour to the drug store , he pays the entire cost for that day, and each rider can ask for one detour every so many days, etc. ETC. Or agree that there will BE NO DETOURS, period, unless forced by road conditions, etc.
Two people, or a dozen, could share a car this way, or a van. They wouldn’t ever have to worry about an obnoxious rider, or a dangerous rider, the way you do on a bus sometimes, or the subway.
“That means a vehicle will not only be putting miles on all day instead of just an hour or two a day at most”
You may well be right, but otoh hand most cars these days are used no more than roughly ONE hour a day on average , and so the for hire car actually bringing in revenue TWO HOURS would still be cheap, in terms of capital expense.
I think that ride sharing will become VERY popular, as sharing gets easier, more socially acceptable, the worries melt away, see the above. Hence ride sharing will probably bring in enough revenue to be a profitable investment, even if it sits around most of the time. . Sharing would still be far cheaper than owning, for the riders, who will be ABLE TO RESERVE their shared car well in advance , to the extent they know their schedule.
And the for hire company will be able to put their cars where they need to be , in advance, in most cases, for the next rush hour, so as to maximize revenue miles.
You say that because the hired car will be running dead head a lot of miles ( trucker vernacular for running no load, no revenue )
” cars will need to be replaced much more often than before, possibly every two to three years. So I do not see how manufacturing will be that much less.”
No doubt this dead head mileage will be a really factor. BUT- and this is a HUGE BUT- the issue of automobile and light truck durability is a VASTLY complicated can of worms, for a LOT of reasons.
Let’s start with the reasons why a given individual buys a given new car, and how much he drives it , and how long he keeps it, etc. In the first analysis, most people do buy a car because they really do need one, to get to work, to shopping etc. Not many people buy A car , their only car, SOLELY or primarily as a toy or status symbol, etc.
But once they have decided in favor of buying, price, status, style, personal preferences, etc, seem to be the primary factors involved, with reliability, durability, etc playing second or third fiddle. Price and status apparently count for as much , together, as everything else put together, in selecting the particular make and model. Most industry observers agree about these things, these are not just my OWN opinions.
The result of this mix of buyer hot buttons is that the industry produces dozens of models, with hundreds of variations, which are constantly being “refreshed” mostly by changing the styling of the car, with new features added also being important, the object being to SELL MORE CARS. The new car buyer wants another new one, so as to show it off, and to stroke his own ego.
I am dead sure , as a former professional gearhead, and owner and operator of machinery, etc, that the next few remarks are the kind you can take to the bank.
The result, when it comes to the cost of maintaining cars,and building them to LAST, is a fucking disaster, except for the dealers , parts stores, and mechanics, lol.
Standardization is THE PRIMARY KEY to economical maintenance and operation of motor vehicles. I can do a given job on a given car the third or fourth time in less than half the time, and sometimes in ten percent of the time, it takes to do the same job on a different make and model.
As a mechanic working in a shop dedicated to a certain make and model BUILT FOR COMMERCAL SERVICE I can get by with a third of the specialized or ” dedicated” tools a mechanic working in a full service garage must own. The stock room needs to stock only a tenth as many parts, while sending out a tenth as often for something not already on the premises. I still need to know all the technical principles, etc, but I need to know only a quarter, or maybe only a tenth, as much material as a guy working where anything that shows up comes thru the door.
And then there is the issue of cost versus reliability and durability, when designing a car or truck. The nature of the car business is that while cars are classed as durable goods, they are actually throw away or disposable goods, with most cars going to wrecking yards with eighty to ninety nine percent of the component parts in perfectly servicable condition, and as often as not in as “good as new” condition.
You can bet your last dime that a heavy duty truck has every nearly every part designed and manufactured to last twenty years , or five hundred thousand miles, excepting routine replacement parts. Making parts that are TWICE or even five or ten times as durable and reliable often costs only a very few percentage points more. A ten cent bolt that is prone to fail in ten years due to rust can be made out of a rust resistant alloy good for thirty or forty years or longer, for another penny, if it’s a small fastener , and the actual cost of manufacture is only a fraction of the cost of actually installing it in the vehicle. Ditto just about any part. An ordinary steel and aluminum muffler costs twice as much to manufacture as an old all steel muffler, but lasts several times longer. A stainless steel muffler costs double or triple again, but it lasts virtually forever- and since it will never need replacement, the owner will never have to PAY for having it replaced, which can cost as much or more than the muffler itself.
It surprises the hell out of most people to learn that a mechanic can change out the same parts on a big over the road truck in as little as ten percent of the time he needs to change out the SAME equivalent parts on a typical automobile, but it’s true. Commercial trucks are DESIGNED to be easy to work on. When you flip up the hood on a commercial truck, you will NEVER find that you must remove five or six other parts to get at the alternator. This extra work is almost sop, almost to be EXPECTED in working on cars these days. The alternator may be accessible, but it might take most a whole day to install a water pump. Putting a new water pump on a commercial truck rarely takes more than an hour or so.
The bottom line in respect to durability, reliability, long life, and low maintenance costs, boils down to this.
For hire car companies will mostly be using cars that are designed and built to last indefinitely, and to be fast and easy to fix, when they MUST be fixed, and they will NOT be compelled to get new ones every few years on the basis of style, performance, or status, which are the big drivers of car sales these days.
It’s not possible to build and sell cars designed to last indefinitely, and easy to work on, and still build them in a thousand different variations, and cheap enough to junk them just because they are ten or fifteen years old, and getting a little shabby appearance wise. So cars these days are built only well enough to last ten to twenty years, and up to around 300 k miles , with a little luck and with good maintenance. After that, and in more cases much sooner than 300k miles , it’s cheaper to get a newer car , in most cases, than it is to keep up the old one.
Standardized , built to last commercial trucks are often driven three hundred thousand miles within the first three years , and drivers don’t ordinarily even think twice about starting cross country in a truck with a million miles on it.
Now back to the RIDER’S pov.
Once you are hiring a car, you probably won’t give a very loud hoot, if it is brand new, or ten or even twenty years old, if it looks nice, it’s clean, and it has the essential features demanded by people in your economic bracket.
ONE PERCENTERS in Connecticut will likely share cars mostly as a matter of convenience, and an actual desire, to ride to and from the office with a coworker. Hell, they probably live in the same subdivision next door to the country club ANYWAY. Two lawyers riding in the same car can get an extra billable hour in, without faking it, lol.
THEIR hired cars will be VERY nice cars. The cars they OWN, for going out in the evening, will be even nicer, but not at risk of getting road salt and dirt on them, or dinged on the parking lot, etc on a day to day basis.
Mill hands and farm laborers in my part of the world will settle for a car with a good heater for our ten degree F winter days and windows that roll down for our hundred degree August days, if it’s cheap enough.
“In a ride call system, how does it handle the surge of people commuting? ”
I touched on this above , since you mentioned it above.
“How would one go shopping, pick up the kids and do other errands on the way home, without essentially fully occupying the vehicle?”
People who know each other well, as ride sharing commuters, can either decide on NO stops, or agree among themselves that they will stop at a certain supermarket, etc, for a certain length of time, on certain days, on the way home. Even if some of them can’t manage altogether by hiring a car, they may still be able to save a lot of money by cutting back from two OWNED cars, to just one.
It will also be possible to order your groceries, and have the supermarket guys , human or robotic, load them in the car FOR you, potentially at any hour the car is available at a DIRT CHEAP OFF PEAK rate. So you won’t even have to go grocery shopping on a regular basis any more. You can even split the cost of the car for this trip with your next door neighbor. 😉 There will be plenty of room in the car for two family’s groceries, with no passengers.
It occurs to me that you might even get your groceries cheaper, since you will be paying electronically, and the various items can be loaded directly from a stock room, rather than from retail displays. If you order a few hours ahead, with a flexible delivery time, the store guys can work more efficiently. A cashier with no line at her register can be getting your non refrigerated items boxed up, etc. The car company may even offer you a super cut rate delivery, if you will accept it at a certain time, because one of your neighbors has hired the car to be at his house twenty or thirty minutes later.
“Having a car sit there at my beck and call for fifteen years is more efficient and more practical, plus I can outfit for my personal needs and let it sit half the day or more where I go without extra charges. I fit won’t work for me or my friends, it won’t work for a lot of people”
This is likely to remain true for a long time, maybe permanently, for a lot of individuals.
It will remain true for ME, considering that IF I NEED TO GO at three am, it will be an emergency trip . Twenty minutes could be the difference between being dead, or sitting around drooling in a wheel chair, unable to even wipe my own backside, and coming home after a couple of days in the hospital almost as good as new.
I will ALWAYS have a car or truck ready to roll, although I might not be able to drive it myself.
Y ou might need two cars, for now, to deal with family needs, etc. Many familes are more or less compelled to have at least two cars, in order to make things work. Later on, once autonomous hired are available, you might be able get along just fine with one OWNED car and one car hired as needed, and save a lot of money.
I’m not saying I am right about of these things, excepting the stuff about repairing and maintaining cars, selling cars, etc. That you can take to the bank, no problem at all.
I am mentioning these other possibilities to flesh out the conversation, and also to make sure I don’t forget any of them. I ‘m copying everything here at POB that seems relevant into files I use to work on my book, so my comments are also working notes.
Any comments pro or con are most definitely welcome, even if they make me look like a fool. Better took for one today, than known for one later on. 😉
Another point in favor of self driving for hire cars.
Background:
I understand that a fair number of people who work in places such as Manhattan, or near the White House, etc, actually hire a taxi NOW , on a shared basis, on a regular schedule, to drop them off and pick them up at work, so as to avoid the hassles of driving, and paying for parking, etc..
Some of these people routinely drive their own personal automobile to a designated jump off spot, where parking is either cheap or free, and where they get together for the rest of their commute, which may then be as little as a couple more one way miles. This is apparently be cheaper than parking two or three cars in some places.
It saves the riders a lot of time as well, if the taxi can drop them at the front entrance of their place of employment, rather than walking a quarter of a mile from their PAID parking spots, or even farther, to the office.
With the stage set, let’s talk about HOV lanes, and other political card tricks that may be the rule, rather than the exception, a few more years down the road.
Government sometimes puts a burden on a certain group or class of people, in order to achieve a particular goal, because putting in on the people, or the tax payer in general, paying out of existing general revenues, won’t work. It’s either force SOME people to pay the cost, or leave it off.
( Ocare is a prime and recent example. Wonderful goal, but big backlash from the people who take a big hit paying more so others can pay less. )
In the case of commuters, and crowded highways, and environmental safeguards, putting the costs off fixing things on certain people, namely the commuters who are sitting stalled in traffic jams on those over crowded roads, may be a LOT easier accomplished. WHY?
Because the BENEFITS of paying more will MOSTLY accrue directly to them, in the form of faster, safer, less irritating commuting.
So – such commuters may not grumble much, if at all, about being required to pay a daily toll, if the toll is spent on adding a lane or two. AND if they are offered the OPTION of riding in a car with two or three other people, toll free, they will have that one more incentive to share a ride to work.
The NEXT step is to FORBID any car with less than say FOUR passengers from using the fast lanes at all. THAT will get the attention of the lawyers, CPA’s, doctors, etc who don’t give a crap about five or ten bucks a day, either way. They most certainly DO give a crap about their own peace of mind, and their limited free time. 😉
Bottom line, it will probably be politically practical to offer enough of a carrot, while waving a big enough stick, to convince a hell of a lot of people around our larger cities that ride sharing is their best option.
But maybe what happens in the US is less important than what happens in the rest of the world? If the US wants to maintain a 1950s mentality and much of the rest of the world considers life in the 21st century, perhaps it will shift power away from the US. Perhaps not dealing with fossil fuel realities will result in the decline of the US as a global power.
There was a time when the US wanted to be first to create the atomic bomb, the first to get to the moon, wanted the same technological advances as Japan, and so on. Maybe now we have become complacent and no longer strive to more forward with science and technology.
What happened to those World’s Fairs which intrigued us with visions of a better future through technology?
Times have changed, but world’s fairs still go on, they are just different now.
What person is going to be impressed with new tech, when they can access it on the internet just after it happens? So the themes are different and the places are too.
“The next World’s Fair is scheduled for Spring 2015 in Milan Italy, but expo-goers who are looking to catch the latest glimpse at the “world of tomorrow,” will be disappointed. “A lot of Americans imagine World’s Fairs as they were in the 1930s and the 1960s, but the medium has changed,” says World’s Fair consultant Urso Chappell. “Whereas the focus was on progress or the space age and things like that at one time, the themes tend to be more environmental now,” he adds.
With smaller scope and a concentration on solving problems rather than trumpeting triumphs, World’s Fairs just don’t capture the imagination like they used to. Milan’s theme — Feeding the planet, energy for life — focuses on ending hunger and developing food sustainability. By contrast, the 1939 World’s Fair’s Dawn of a New Day slogan exuded aspirational wonder and 1964’s (which had its 50th anniversary last week), centered on Peace Through Understanding. ”
http://time.com/79600/the-fall-of-the-fair/
http://phys.org/news/2017-01-steady-oceans-years.html
“A controversial paper published two years ago that concluded there was no detectable slowdown in ocean warming over the previous 15 years – widely known as the “global warming hiatus” – has now been confirmed using independent data in research led by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley Earth, a non-profit research institute focused on climate change.
The 2015 analysis showed that the modern buoys now used to measure ocean temperatures tend to report slightly cooler temperatures than older ship-based systems, even when measuring the same part of the ocean at the same time. As buoy measurements have replaced ship measurements, this had hidden some of the real-world warming.
After correcting for this “cold bias,” researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded in the journal Science that the oceans have actually warmed 0.12 degrees Celsius (0.22 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since 2000, nearly twice as fast as earlier estimates of 0.07 degrees Celsius per decade. This brought the rate of ocean temperature rise in line with estimates for the previous 30 years, between 1970 and 1999.
This eliminated much of the global warming hiatus, an apparent slowdown in rising surface temperatures between 1998 and 2012. Many scientists, including the International Panel on Climate Change, acknowledged the puzzling hiatus, while those dubious about global warming pointed to it as evidence that climate change is a hoax.”
more religion from the so called “warmists”!
(apologies if this has already been posted above!)
The article is incorrect. Most scientists still acknowledge the existence of the pause after the publication of Karl et al., 2015, and the changes introduced to surface temperature databases.
See for example Fyfe et al., 2016:
Fyfe, John C., et al. “Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown.” Nature Climate Change 6.3 (2016): 224-228.
https://courses.eas.ualberta.ca/eas570/warming_slowdown.pdf
“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. Recent research that has identified and corrected the errors and inhomogeneities in the surface air temperature record (Karl et al., 2015) is of high scientific value. Investigations have also identified non-climatic artefacts in tropospheric temperatures inferred from radiosondes30 and satellites, and important errors in ocean heat uptake estimates. Newly identified observational errors do not, however, negate the existence of a real reduction in the surface warming rate in the early twenty-first century relative to the 1970s–1990s.”
Authors in that paper: John C. Fyfe, Gerald A. Meehl, Matthew H. England, Michael E. Mann, Benjamin D. Santer, Gregory M. Flato, Ed Hawkins, Nathan P. Gillett, Shang-Ping Xie, Yu Kosaka and Neil C. Swart.
A list of who is who in climate denialism.
Hi Javier,
Your response does not seem very open minded. It seems closer to religious belief than scientific thinking.
do you expect us to believe that these new results, published on January 4th, have already been discredited by the scientific community?? Have you had a chance to read the paper, review the data, and discuss the conclusions with other scientists?
The only one that appears to be a CLIMATE ALARMIST here, is you, as you seem hellbent on going to extraordinary lengths to refute any and all new posted links on climate change research. Even to the point of discrediting the character of the researchers. I am OK with questioning results, but this is ridiculous.
Are we to believe that you do all this for the greater good of humanity? Where do you find the time? Don’t you have more important things to do, like a day job? Or is paralyzing this blog your actual day job? Be honest! 🙂
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/1/e1601207
and by the way, the reference you cited quotes a “reduced rate” or “slowdown” in warming, not a “pause.” Just an FYI to get your ducks in a row for future discussion. The evidence suggests that you are twisting words to support your narrative.
chilyb,
.
No, I expect you to read and understand the issue before making a comment attacking me.
Hausfather et al., 2017 is a confirmation that the corrections introduced by Karl et al., 2015 to the ocean surface temperature database are justified.
But Karl et al., 2015 was already read, reviewed and discussed by the scientific community. The corrections were generally accepted but the conclusion that they meant that the Pause had not existed was not. After introducing Karl et al., 2015 corrections now confirmed by Hausfather et al., 2017 the slowdown in warming is still present in the data.
Whether calling it “pause”, “hiatus” or “slowdown” is the same. We are all referring to the same phenomenon. A rose by any other name is still a rose.
Hi Javier,
Wait. You are confusing me. You said “the article is incorrect.” So you do agree with the results in the science advances paper, Hausfather et al, just not their conclusions. You need to be more clear.
I copied their concluding remarks:
“Concluding remarks
Adjustments to correct for inhomogeneities in SSTs in recent years have a large impact on the resulting decadal-scale global temperature trends. Assessing the effectiveness of these adjustments is critical to improving our understanding of the structure of modern climate changes and the extent to which trends in recent periods may have been anomalous with respect to longer-term warming. Using independent IHSST series, we find that NOAA’s new ERSSTv4 effectively corrects a significant cooling bias present in ERSSTv3b during the past two decades without introducing any detectable residual trend bias. We also conclude that two other widely used composite SST series, HadSST3 and COBE-SST, likely suffer from spurious cooling biases present in ship-based records in recent years.”
so labeling the warming over the last few years as a “slowdown” (relative to previous years) instead of a “pause/hiatus” is actually not the same in your mind. Isn’t this exactly what you are taking issue with?
CLIMATE CHANGE: FRESH DOUBT OVER GLOBAL WARMING ‘PAUSE’
“A controversial study that found there has been no slowdown in global warming has been supported by new research….As a result, the authors said that the warming experienced in the first 15 years of the 21st Century was “virtually indistinguishable” from the rate of warming between 1950-99, a time generally acknowledged to have seen significant rates of warming from human emissions of CO2.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38513740
CLIMATE CHANGE: FRESH DOUBT OVER GLOBAL WARMING ‘PAWS’
This proves beyond any shadow of a DOUBT that global warming is NOT felineogenic.
“Just because cats like it warm doesn’t mean they are bad for the environment!”
This comment paid for by the CAT as Trophic Lobby…
Forgot the obligatory pict. Who cares about polar bears…
.
For anybody, a request for information
“WeHappyFew ” posted this paragraph in a comment in the last previous open topic thread.
“There are potential feedbacks here. Polar waters can be stratified by salinity rather than temperature (as is most common outside the poles). Solar energy can penetrate deeply into the clear water, but cannot escape through convection, being trapped by the salinity gradient. This reminds me of the solar ponds which were a brief fad a few decades ago before PV became so inexpensive. Cold fresh water at the surface traps warm salty water below, allowing solar heat to build up at depth.”
Any information or links about these “solar ponds which were a brief fad” will be appreciated, and thanks in advance.
Hi OFM, don’t have any links but I very distinctly remember swimming in shallow natural ponds trapped behind sand dunes on the coast down in Brazil about 30 years ago. The ponds received ocean water at high tide and cool water from a fresh water stream. As the dunes shifted some of these would form isolated ponds that fit the description of what you are talking about. The dense salt water at the bottom of the ponds would become quite hot.
Back then I just thought it was an interesting natural phenomenon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_pond
http://www.green-trust.org/solarpond.htm
http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7607&context=rtd
Thanks, Fred , GF
I suppose I was experiencing a senior moment when I posted my request. I should have gone straight to google.
But I have been reading extensively for years about various renewable energy technologies, and this is one that is apparently seldom or never mentioned on renewables sites.
It’s easy to see why.
The water wont’ get hot enough to drive a turbine, etc, worth a hoot, and highly concentrated brine is a hell of a mess to deal with in terms of corrosion , leaks, paying for the salt, etc.
And such a salt water pool wouldn’t work very well as a recreational pool. Not many people would want to go in, if it’s really concentrated, and actually swimming in it would result in mixing the water vertically anyway.
Just using an insulating transparent cover that lets the sun thru to the water, while substantially inhibiting evaporation and the associated loss of heat is obviously a far better solution in terms of hassles and costs. I have such a cover already, for my existing pool, and it works great.
But a salt water pool of this sort might work like a charm as a thermal reservoir if built in a place the soil is relatively impervious to water, as is some of the red clay in places on my farm. I could put in a plastic liner, and use plastic pipe as the heat exchanger, to supply warm water to a WATER SOURCE heat pump. With a cover, and a wind break, such a pool would probably trap and hold enough heat that running the heat pump would hardly even budge the electric meter. .
But OTOH, a small lake constructed and used for the same purpose can probably double up as fish habitat, and as a swimming hole as well, without buying the salt, or dealing with it.
I will probably be going to a ground or water source heat pump for the house within the next two or three years. There’s plenty of water, plenty of room, and I have the equipment and expertise to do the whole job, excepting the license needed for handling the gas lines. But they’re essentially the same as the ones on cars, and I’ve done hundreds of car ac jobs over the last fifty years. You can still do your own or a friends legally, so long as you don’t dump refrigerant, or charge for the work.
I can most likely install the whole kit and kaboodle from the pipes in the water to some additional duct work in the house with a strong backed helper.
And if there is any REASON to dump refrigerant, such as installing new parts, ninety nine percent of the time, it will have already LEAKED OUT ANYWAY.
2017 CHEVROLET BOLT EV VS. 2016 TESLA MODEL S 60: HIGH-VOLTAGE
More than any EV that’s come before it, the Bolt makes emissions-free, environmentally friendly transportation a realistic proposition for millions of Americans. It has made the current crop of pricey, short-range electric cars from BMW, Nissan, and others utterly irrelevant.
http://www.motortrend.com/cars/chevrolet/bolt-ev/2017/2017-chevrolet-bolt-ev-vs-2016-tesla-model-s-60/
So the Jetson-like family will have one Bolt and one Volt. Great for families with none to two kids. Grandma can squeeze in somewhere. The robo dog can bolt onto the back.
Yep, the Nissan Leaf is looking like an overpriced town car. At 107 mile range and $30,000 price it is no bargain anymore. Should be worthless in a few years since they have a history of battery problems.
HB brags about making money in oil walking the dirty money walk while talking the environmentally pure talk.
( I do not personally consider an investment in oil to be unethical, or any thing to be ashamed of, but he apparently does, since he took it on himself to make fun of me for making a remark about wanting oil to last until my oil burning equipment is worn out and electric cars are cheap. Folks with satisfactory reading comprehension skills, having read this in the context of my many remarks here, would correctly select ” dry humor ” or “humor” as the right response in evaluating this remark on a standardized reading comprehension test of the sort commonly given to high school kids. )
His previous remarks, about making fat profits in oil, which he aimed at me, but hit his own toes, when taken in combination with this current comment, are the best example of the classic Republican money bag ” fuck you I’m getting ( or got ) mine” stereotypical, hypocritical double talk I can remember encountering in THIS forum.
Even the Rockefeller family foundation is moving out of oil, and may have finished divestment already.
I AM having a good time, HB, and I hope you can come back with a better response than usual. A six year old girl who is good at verbal judo could put you flat on your metaphorical trash talking backside in a matter of seconds, without drawing even one deep breath.
But I will concede a minor point involving my description of HRC as the worst possible candidate the D’s could have run last time. She WAS the worst of the TWO candidates actually running is the D primaries as a consequence of her having such an octopus like grip on the party machinery that she scared away everybody else who had any significant name recognition or backing from running AT ALL, with the sole exception of Sanders.
And she WAS the worst possible choice among all the nationally known Democrats in the country this past year, in terms of the baggage she brought into the campaign with her.
And incidentally, every time you or anybody else refers to me as Mr Email Server, etc, which is happening some other places, it’s a win for me, another point for me, you see, except you DON’T see, because my object is to get any D’s who read my stuff to do a little more critical thinking and a little less mindless jumping on bandwagons in the future, when it comes to who they support in primaries.
D voters aren’t STUPID any more so than R voters. On average they are better educated and better informed in general- which I have said many times before, this is nothing new. But they ARE subject to the same failings as virtually all the rest of us nekkid apes, including failure to think for themselves, when such thinking is called for, rather than just going along with the crowd on the assumption that the crowd is right, that there’s no need to worry about things going wrong.
I will never forget the day MY old ag teacher wrote ASS and U and ME on the chalkboard, when I made an unwarranted assumption involving the control of a contagious disease in livestock during a class room discussion. ASSUME the crowd is right………… and pay the price, if your assumption is unwarranted.
He came over and popped me one gently upside my head, as male friends are wont to do, and said he had FAITH in me never forgetting that teachable moment, and well over half a century later, I still haven’t forgotten that EVER so enlightening experience. I remember it almost as well as the day I found out first hand about the birds and the bees, but not nearly so fondly , lol.
And here’s another point I don’t think I have mentioned here before. Clinton told her supporters, and potential Sanders supporters, that Sanders was un electable due to his proposal that basically boiled down to paying for college with tax money.
Clinton obviously planned ( since way back when ) on shifting the cost of health care onto the tax payer rather than the individual, which DOES happen to be a position I heartily agree with personally.
Does anybody here believe a lifetime of health care is affordable compared to four years at college,considering that college has a well known and pronounced effect on lifetime earnings, and contributions to the public treasury?
I have consistently advocated a health care system for this country modeled on the ones that prevail in Western Europe and Canada, because the one we have simply doesn’t work worth a damn, in terms of costs OR results.
I am NOT an R ( Republican ) partisan, so I DON’T have to PRETEND I believe in our current system due to partisan tribal loyalties. 😉
On the OTHER hand, not being a D partisan, I don’t have to PRETEND that we have a satisfactory public school system, for partisan reasons. Perhaps I ought to express this belief somewhat differently, and say I am not compelled to PRETEND the current system can be made right, without smashing it to bits, and starting over, on a clean slate.
I am free to advocate busting up the teachers and the D party’s hold on the public schools.
Most teachers apparently don’t have a clue, but they have as a group actually maneuvered themselves into a serf like position, politically, on the D party plantation, in a manner of speaking.
When a profession aligns its well being present and future with one party or another, the members all too often find themselves taken for granted. Hard ball is the name of the game in politics, and anybody on either side who thinks their party leadership is NECESSARILY their friend is apt to have ANOTHER think coming.
Of course being on the plantation is not always bad, sometimes it’s VERY good- UNTIL you start being taken for granted. BUT previously happy campers who get to feeling unappreciated do have ways of making their displeasure felt, along about election time. Their beliefs in a nutshell can be expressed in traditional American folk vernacular thus, “You ‘sposed to dance with the one what brung ya”.
I have known quite a few teachers over the years, and a substantial number of them were minorities. I have lived IN a highly segregated city, with a huge majority black population, and in adjacent counties, a couple mostly white, another one about evenly divided, at different times.
And ya know what? My professional acquaintances, my FELLOW teachers, were quite consistent in talking that old D party talk, in terms of maintaining the school system status quo, even as three quarters or more of them, all shades, were personally engaged in moving OUT of the city, so they could enroll their kids in better schools. Some of the remaining quarter stayed put as a matter of principle, which I respect, and made up for the shortcomings of the schools by tutoring their own kids. A very few enrolled their kids in one of the small handful of reputable private schools, especially the one associated with the Catholic church.
And it wasn’t that the city schools weren’t adequately funded- they were, in comparison to many nearby counties funding per pupil.
In one on one, face to face PRIVATE conversations with the better teachers, the ones who actually brought the right sort of personal and professional qualities to the classroom, the prevailing opinion, by a wide margin, was that fixing failing schools within the context of the then present day system as very close to impossible, for a simple reason. Most of the teachers were then , and this remains true today, people with jobs who were content to do no more than necessary in order to collect their check and bennies. The second biggest problem was, and remains a system organized around a thousand rules that have everything to do with politics, of every sort, but little to do with the actual education of kids. Heads that were brave enough to rise above the crowd were hammered down, fast, by the system. Folks who wanted to rise up above the crowd found themselves pulled down again by the crowd, which ALWAYS protects itself first. Anybody wanting to do things differently found a thousand barriers in his path, a good many of them put there by well meaning individuals and pressure groups, with the best of intentions, but the worst of actual consequences.
If any body wants a better, more entertaining version of this sorry tale, I suggest they read a little book called The PETER PRINCIPLE.
There’s a sequel, titled The PETER PRESCRIPTION. Read them both for insight, and for laughs.
It’s not good for your peace of mind to think about your status too much, when you are IN THE BAG, politically.Your political masters don’t have to pay very much attention to you under such circumstances. . They can ignore you, take you for granted, leave you twisting in the wind, because after all, when the opposition knows you are in the OTHER party’s bag, there’s not much point in trying to coax you out. Unless……
UNLESS- unless, I say again, your political masters are so brazen as to actually RUB your nose in such unsavory facts that as far as the party is concerned, you’re not important anymore , that you’re somebody to be treated with contempt, somebody who is maybe a little less than fit to mingle with the leadership’s children, a little too ignorant, an embarrassment to the women in Prada and the men in English suits and Italian shoes , UNWORTHY of EVEN ONE SEAT at that recent big D party meeting at which the speaker asked to see the working hands present- and got a thunderous silence for his reply.
And how does an elitist D candidate go about rubbing working class noses, the noses of the ones that brought them to national power, in the dirt ? It’s oh so easy, all that is necessary is hang out with banksters and advocate offshoring the jobs of the folks getting their noses soiled.
In case such a D is not sure she is rubbing HARD ENOUGH, she can take the banksters money DIRECTLY, in the form of actual cash on the barrel head, a quarter of a million or so a pop, for making a rather short speech. THAT will get the point across for her, for sure. SARCASM INTENDED for those incapable of recognizing it without a label.
Now it’s also a fact that (formerly ) reliable partisan voters can and do occasionally flee the party, or actually rebel, as evidenced by the results in the three big Rust Belt states that cost Clinton the WH.
Yes, Clinton won the popular vote. It actually surprised the hell out of me that she lost, up until late in the evening when I started seeing the results from states such as Virginia, where her margin was about HALF what the polls predicted. I expected her margin to be less, knowing my home state politics well, but not THAT much less. This in turn left me wondering how far the polls might be off in the Rust Belt, and I got that answer in the wee hours— TOO FAR, for Clinton.
Every body here knows what they say on the sports shows.
Statistics are for losers.
Many a football game has been won by the team that gained fewer yards rushing and passing, or that suffered more interceptions and sacks on offense than the opposing team.
If there is a movement to do away with the Electoral College, I will probably support it, but the observation holds.
STATISTICS ARE FOR LOSERS.
Now about that Chevy BOLT. I hope they sell like ice water in hell. GM has a huge mostly well oiled dealer network, and is thus in an excellent position to leave some smaller auto companies in the dust.
But GM has failed to put the ball across the goal line on several past occasions, and success is by no means assured in this case.
The companies that are only a year or two behind may be in a position to leapfrog Chevy if arriving at the party a year or two late allows them to bring EVEN BETTER cars to market.
Ford has stolen a march on EVERYBODY in the light truck market, by going to aluminum bodies ahead of all the other truck builders. That savings in weight is already built in to allow for the extra weight involved in building the hybrid F150 promised for delivery in the near future.
Furthermore,it will be easier to justify keeping a rust free FORD truck on the road years and years longer than steel bodied trucks, helping justify the costs of hybrid and eventually pure electric designs.
It will likely take other truck builders at least a couple of years to get their aluminum body ducks in a row, maybe longer. Thousands of changes must be made in order to go with aluminum.
And Tesla in particular may have firewall of patents around game changing technology and ways of doing business which will make up for the lack of that huge dealer network.
Furthermore, while old folks as a group have a fairly positive opinion of Chevy cars and trucks, younger people are far more apt to go with a make with a more attractive public persona. Tesla is the golden haired kid on the block these days, the one the human youngsters are excited about.
Old Farmer Mac, I think American car makers have been putting out much better products due to competition from Asia. At least Tesla, Ford and Chevy have.
I think the Volt is a great concept and has shown itself to be a very good car, the battery management system is great and the battery improvements keep coming.
The Bolt will probably turn out to be a very good EV.
Tesla has had it’s problems but it takes care of them, they are not only paving the way but setting the bar. The other manufacturers are jumping higher because of them.
I think we have entered a golden age of driving. Cars last longer with fewer repairs, they have great road performance, comfort features even in trucks. It looks like the EV’s are going to continue that legacy and I think it will be a worldwide legacy.
Sure there will be a few duds, but most will be great vehicles, giving service for a long time. They certainly are safer than they used to be, and might even get safer than now.
Those design and research teams work hard. Their creativity, constrained by the limits of pollution, efficiency, cost and size, is amazing. Each part is designed to operate under awful conditions for long periods of time. Mistakes are few considering the complexity of the system they have to integrate into for each car design. We should have a National Car Designers day just so we stop taking this amazing amount of work and success for granted.
I will bet that people in the 1930’s did not generally take cars for granted. The darn things give their all and sometimes save our lives, so tilt a glass to the automobiles and their creators. They bring almost everyone safely back home at the end of the day, day after day.
Hi GF,
I agree, cars are WAY better than they have ever been before, and the large majority of Yankee domestic models are as good, or VERY close to being as good as comparably priced Japanese and European models. Saying a Ford has twenty percent more problems than a comparable Honda makes the Ford look bad, but looking thru the other end , using the lens as a telescope instead of a microscope, tells you that you have a ninety nine point nine eight percent chance of of taking a problem free cross country trip in a new Honda where as in the Ford the odds are only ninety nine point nine seven percent in your favor. What this actually means is that if ten thousand Honda owners set out to tour the USA, and ten thousand Ford owners do likewise, maybe four or five Hondas break down, where as maybe five or six Fords break down. These are out of my hat numbers, for illustrative purposes only.
My opinion this year is that the death of the personal automobile has been greatly exaggerated.
If things turn out as we now expect, technically speaking, so that scarce and expensive oil doesn’t FORCE us to give up our cars, I don’t have any problem at all in agreeing that overall we will be driving as MORE rather than less , over the next few decades at least.
My opinions about the future of the personal auto have been all over the map in recent years, depending on what I thought at the time might most likely happen in the oil market, and how the overall economy does.
One factor that will be more important than in the past, for some time to come, is that young folks aren’t making enough money these days to afford cars AND all the other things they want MORE than they want a car.So they are driving less, for now, but my opinion is that as they get older, they will want a car very badly indeed, and will get at least one per household in most cases.
My reasoning is simple. A relatively minor investment in a car enables the owner / driver of it to live in substantially better housing, in substantially more desirable neighborhoods, for a hell of a lot less total money that it takes to live as well, comparably , in a city neighborhood where one can live well WITHOUT a car.
Mass transit may come on like gangbusters, I hope it does. But I can’t see mass transit being built to the extent it really cuts very far into the market for cars, or tens of millions of units of highly desirable, affordable housing being built in cities, where empty lots are almost non existent, and building new means tearing down old but serviceable housing.
And I now believe that plug in hybrids and pure electric cars will own the auto market within the next couple of decades, meaning in turn that suburbanites will not have to spend too big a chunk of their income on getting around, even if oil hits two hundred bucks or more.
If for some reason, any reason, plug in cars fail to take over, and oil gets to be outrageously expensive, I predict that we will see doctors, lawyers and Indian Chiefs driving cars to work that are very low, very narrow,with no more than two seats arranged fore and aft rather than side by side, very light , and capable of cruising at no more than maybe forty five mph. But such a car propelled by a nifty little lawnmower sized engine ought to get a hundred mpg easily enough, lol.
The Chevy Bolt probably WILL be a great success. But I have been wrong often enough when predicting the future that nowadays I reflexively take a contrarian view about betting any one company will dominate.
If you talk up Tesla, I will probably respond by talking up Nissan or GM, lol.
All the major auto builders have a shot at owning a large piece of the auto pie for a long time to come. The Leaf may be short on range NOW, but down the road Nissan may leapfrog both Chevy and Tesla. etc.
The young couples around here have to deal with the reality that two breadwinners are needed, so two cars are usually needed.
As far as numbers go, by age 19 70 percent have licenses. By 24 it’s 80 percent and by 44 it’s maxed at about 90 percent.
So we might be seeing a 10 percent or less drop in interest in driving. That would be a maximum of 22 million less drivers.
Considering the number of drivers increased by about 70 million in the 20 years between 24 and 44, the number of drivers is still increasing.
Maybe for a while the young people are sharing cars and rides, but most still get licensed. What better way to fund a car if mom and dad won’t do it? Get your friends to help pay for it and give them rides or let them drive.
I am sure some are delaying, plus more people are in cities now. Where I live, no car is a real problem.
U.S. Refiners Open Export Spigot to Meet Latin American Need
U.S. refiners exported record amounts of oil products last week, taking market share from struggling competitors in Mexico and the Caribbean.
Almost 4 million barrels a day of gasoline, distillates like diesel and heating oil, and propane left the country as refiners in Texas and Louisiana processed the most crude in at least 24 years. Demand has grown this year as competitors in Latin America sputtered out with maintenance issues,
http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/u-s-refiners-open-export-spigot-to-meet-latin-american-need/
2017: 21st Century Energy Gets Underway
Centuries may not get into their stride for a decade or two.
This blog assumes that there is a major energy transition underway: from a 20th century model to a 21st one, from a giant-size but inflexible, extractive and stand-alone system, to a more scalable, manufactured and grid-connected version.
Now, with its sixteenth year about to close, maybe this century has had enough time to show itself in terms of the start of this conversion.
On that basis, we will briefly look at three large-scale themes in the energy world, and see how they played out in 2016 – and what that might mean for 2017 and beyond:
• Incremental Growth versus Total Supply,
• The Relentless Rise of Scalable Technologies, and
• The Manufacturing of Global Energy
http://www.dollarsperbbl.com/
I heard on NPR this morning that the heads of four government agencies are going to Trump Towers to try and give Donald intelligence.
“Chinese state media warned U.S. President-elect Donald Trump that he’ll be met with “big sticks” if he tries to ignite a trade war or further strain ties. “There are flowers around the gate of China’s Ministry of Commerce, but there are also big sticks hidden inside the door – they both await Americans,” the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper wrote in an editorial Thursday in response to Trump’s plans to nominate lawyer Robert Lighthizer, who has criticized Beijing’s trade practices, as U.S. trade representative.
Are we even sure that Trump is an American?! Has he released the long form of his birth certificate? How do we know it wasn’t photoshopped?!
He acts and looks Russian to me
Good luck trying to give Trump intelligence!
Might be easier teaching a slime mold to pole vault.
US Special Operations Forces Deploy to 138 Nations, 70 Percent of the World’s Countries
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38993-the-year-of-the-commando-us-special-operations-forces-deploy-to-138-nations-70-percent-of-the-world-s-countries
I wonder how many Trump could name?
This from John Kemps – BEST IN ENERGY daily mailer.
Beijing’s smog mirrors the notorious killer fogs of London
London’s smog: news from London in 1952 similar to current news reporting from China
London smog is estimated to have killed at least 4,000 people in just a few days in Dec 1952
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/learn-about-the-weather/weather-phenomena/case-studies/great-smog
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2012/dec/05/great-smog-london-1952-archive
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Big-Smoke-Routledge-Revivals/dp/0415672031
So China did not learn from history and is repeating it amplified. They can do it better. Had problems in the US too.
Welcome to the future folks,
JAPANESE INSURANCE FIRM REPLACES 34 STAFF WITH AI
“The firm believes it will increase productivity by 30%…It expects to save around $1.2m a year in salaries after the 200m yen AI system is installed later this month… Japan’s Mainichi reports that the system is based on IBM Japan Ltd’s Watson, which IBM calls a “cognitive technology that can think like a human”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38521403
Think I’ll just mozey on down to the hardware store where I noticed a curvy blonde robot in the window awhile back….. Yeah, they do the dishes too apparently.
JAPANESE INSURANCE FIRM REPLACES 34 STAFF WITH AI
LOL! the AI can’t be worse at risk assessment than our local contrarian science deniers, can they? When AI finally takes over I doubt they will put up with that kind of nonsense.
Oh good god. This is how you go bankrupt. One thing that certain well-paid paranoid humans are very good at is at spotting attempts to game the system.
It may be possible to replace the more credulous and less competent insurance underwriters with a computer, but the *very moment* you start automating your underwriting, people will start figuring out how to game your underwriting system, and bankrupt you.
Systems like Watson are nowhere near smart enough to spot deliberate calculated attempts to manipulate them. Heck, neither are most humans. This is why underwriting is traditionally a highly-skilled job.
This just out: Forget About Global Warming Pause — It Doesn’t Exist
Forget about the so-called climate change hiatus — a period beginning in 1998 when the increase in the planet’s temperature reportedly slowed — it doesn’t exist, according to a new study that found the planet’s ocean temperatures are warming faster than previously thought.
The findings support similar results from a 2015 study published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the journal Science. However, doubters of climate change attacked that study, prompting the researchers of the new study to examine the data anew.
“Our results mean that essentially NOAA got it right, that they were not cooking the books,” study lead author Zeke Hausfather, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group.
This is quite a long article. I have quoted only the first three paragraphs. But as I have said before, the thin ice that climate change deniers are standing on… is getting thinner.
Actually it is not getting any thinner.
Consensus climate scientists like John Fyfe, Michael Mann, Ben Santer, et al., already examined the implications of Karl et al., 2015 corrections to the surface database and declared that their inclusion did not affect the existence of the pause:
Fyfe, John C., et al. “Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown.” Nature Climate Change 6.3 (2016): 224-228.
https://courses.eas.ualberta.ca/eas570/warming_slowdown.pdf
“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. Recent research that has identified and corrected the errors and inhomogeneities in the surface air temperature record (Karl et al., 2015) is of high scientific value. Investigations have also identified non-climatic artefacts in tropospheric temperatures inferred from radiosondes30 and satellites, and important errors in ocean heat uptake estimates. Newly identified observational errors do not, however, negate the existence of a real reduction in the surface warming rate in the early twenty-first century relative to the 1970s–1990s.”
Authors in that paper: John C. Fyfe, Gerald A. Meehl, Matthew H. England, Michael E. Mann, Benjamin D. Santer, Gregory M. Flato, Ed Hawkins, Nathan P. Gillett, Shang-Ping Xie, Yu Kosaka and Neil C. Swart.
The new paper doesn’t change anything. Karl et al., modifications had already been included in GISS and NOAA surface temperature databases and accepted by those that trust them. As Fyfe et al., 2016 clearly demonstrate the inclusion of these corrections does not eliminate the pause.
You keep using that word, “pause”. I do not think it means what you think it means.
https://mobile.twitter.com/hausfath/status/817071574645817345/photo/1
What’s a consensus scientist? It appears that even amoung the authors of the paper Javier posts here there is not much concensus on what should be said about the claims the paper makes. Concensus scientists. That’s a good one. Is that what you are Javier, a consensus scientist?
“Point of clarification: Although I am a co-author of the Fyfe et al. paper, I disagree with the sentence at the start of the ‘Claims and counterclaims’ section of the paper. My views are represented here.”~Ed Hawkins
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2016/making-sense/
Perhaps Javier would like us to believe that a car previously doing 60 mph that has now slowed down to 10 mph has in actuality come to a complete stop and is likely at any moment to start moving in reverse.
Concensus scientist (as Javier calls him) Ed Hawkins has some interesting articles posted on his blog.
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk
Survivalist did you bother to read the phrase with which Ed Hawkins disagrees in the paper? Looks like you didn’t.
Ed Hawkins views are in the link you put:
“Overall, there is compelling evidence that there has been a temporary slowdown in observed global surface warming, especially when examined relative to our expectations, which can be explained by a combination of factors.”
He clearly disagrees with Karl and Lewandowski, and says so.
Why are you trying to twist what Hawkins says? Gross manipulation?
Yes I read it. I did not try twist Ed’s words. Please quote me the passage of my writing where you think I did so. Or alternately retract the allegation that I did so if you cannot cite evidence for your claim.
It is you that is trying to twist words. Here is my case for making that statement about you. You are saying that a slow down is a pause. That a reduction in speed is a stop. What is at issue here is do you consider a slow down to be a pause? Is a reduction in the rate of forward travel the same as a halt in forward travel? If I was driving a car and you were my passenger would you ask me why I stopped the car if I reduced the travel speed from 60 mph to 10 mph? You would look pretty stupid if you did. Try focus on what is being discussed and let’s get to a conclusion. Your red herrings and attempts to obfuscate are very transparent. The primary thing that’s getting thinner around here is your credibility as someone who can stay focused on the topic of a simple conversation. Are you sure you have a PhD? Logical and focused discussion seems to be challenging for you.
“Consensus climate scientists like John Fyfe, Michael Mann, Ben Santer, et al., already examined the implications of Karl et al., 2015 corrections to the surface database and declared that their inclusion did not affect the existence of the pause” ~ Javier.
“The new paper doesn’t change anything. Karl et al., modifications had already been included in GISS and NOAA surface temperature databases and accepted by those that trust them. As Fyfe et al., 2016 clearly demonstrate the inclusion of these corrections does not eliminate the pause.” ~ Javier
What do you think the word pause means Javier? It seems you might have a different idea about what this word means than everyone else in the world. Perhaps your English is weak?
“Firstly, climate scientists agree that global warming has not ‘stopped’ – global surface temperatures and ocean heat content have continued to increase, sea levels are still rising, and the planet is retaining ~0.5 days of the sun’s incoming energy per year.” ~ Ed Hawkins
http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2016/making-sense/
If you think a slow down is synonymous with a pause then you should probably get yourself a dictionary. Or google it. It’s basic English. The only manipulation going on here is your misrepresentation of words and meanings.
Let’s keep it simple Javier. A simple question with a yes or no answer. Answer me this Dr Javier- is a slow down the same as a pause?
Here’s a hint:
Pause- noun- a temporary stop in action.
Slow down- noun- to move more slowly. A reduction in speed.
Please answer the question. It will provide us all with insight as to whether you suffer from gross ignorance and misunderstand the meaning of simple words, or perhaps that you are on the other hand engaging in gross misrepresentation of the claims made by the papers you cite.
Ya learn something new everyday eh Doc?
Survivalist,
The pause is the common name given to that period or to the lack of expected warming during that period in the scientific literature. Just google “Pause in global warming” in Google scholar and you will get thousands of legitimate scientific articles hits.
Or go to the Met Office
The recent pause in warming
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/recent-pause-in-warming
Or Nature Journal
Held, Isaac M. “Climate science: The cause of the pause.” Nature 501.7467 (2013): 318-319.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v501/n7467/abs/501318a.html
Typical of alarmists to try to rewrite history and now say that only skeptics talk about the pause.
The thing is that all these changes in sea surface temperature databases, that scientists are discussing in these papers, do not affect satellite temperature databases, that show a complete lack of warming between 2001 and 2014.
I’ll take that to mean that your answer to my question above is ‘yes’, and that it is your belief that it is acceptable in a scholarly discussion about scientific facts and data to refer to a slow down as a pause, because as you put it the slow down was not expected. That a reduction in speed is called a halt, because as you put it the reduction was not forecast. If I was driving 60mph and slowed down to 10mph you would ask me why I stopped if you had not expected me to slow down. Brilliant man! Your talents are wasted! You should work for NASA and fix all their problems.
We’re discussing facts and data Javier. Not what you feel is typical of alarmists. Try to stay focused.
Does that purple line on your chart look horizontal to you Janvier? Look closely. Get the ruler out, if you have one. Does it represent a “complete lack of warming”? Perhaps we should next discuss what you think the words ‘complete’ and ‘lack’ mean. You’re quite the scientist aren’t ya? Have fun with your word games Javier. Word games are clearly your agenda. Not facts and data. Some PhD you are.
Well the facts are that the names “pause” and “hiatus” are widely used in the scientific bibliography, and therefore acceptable to define the period of reduced warming during the early 21st century.
The rate of warming is very dependent on the database of choice and period of study. For example between 2001-2014, before the El Niño, Two satellite databases UAH, and RSS, and one surface database, HadCrut4, show negative rates of warming.
The best way to analyze rate of warming is to look at rate of warming.
According to the UK Met Office the rate of warming dropped to zero during the period considered, as it has done during similar periods in the past.
“There is no benefit in wrestling with pigs. You get dirty, and the pigs enjoy it.”
–George Bernard Shaw
But as I have said before, the thin ice that climate change deniers are standing on… is getting thinner.
It’s over, has been for a long time.
Even ideologically crippled, like Judith Curry, have given up—-
Reality, as the smoke clears and they start screaming in a fetal position, will be harsh.
All roads lead to proverbial Rome…
The ‘imperialists’ will do what they can to eat their cake and have it too, come hell or high’, with such likely strategies as enlisting and/or pimping the gamed/duped, gullible, unethical and/or naive; with AGW denialism; with tax-theft-propped multipronged EV/PV/’Private-NASA’ posterboys like Musk; with increased police and general militarism and surveillance and assorted ‘sanctions’ and econ/imprisonment threats; with ongoing fake-news accusations and NSA-style shit; and with pseudorenewable-peddling (by current and former oil companies-cum-governpimps that are investing in them) such as to places like Jamaica, apparently with funding from the likes of the ostensible CIA-front, USAID, the outfit that got bounced from Bolivia apparently, maybe from Peru, and who knows from where else.
USAID: A CIA Front ‘In Desperate Need of Adult Supervision’
The attached image of a graffitied USAID advert appears somewhere in the Middle East… They forgot the double quotes around ‘AID’.
The Wiki entry on Herbert Hoover notes that he was overwhelmed by The Great Depression. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/01/will_donald_trump_be_fdr_or_jimmy_carter.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_fb_top
Insideevs.com fas finally completed the December 2016 Plug-In Electric Vehicle Sales Report Card. The final figure for plug-in sales for the US for 2016, 159,139 beating the previous high mark for annual sales set in 2014 by over 25%.
The charts at the following link have also been updated.
http://www.casteyanqui.com/ev/usa_sales/index.html
2017 should be very interesting!
Yes, the ceaseless, mindless, myopic promos of the corporatocracy’s industrial output, and denials of anthropogenic climate change and assorted idiocies like those is a near-guarantee that Earth will continue on its merry journey as an escaped lab-experiment toward hell. Thank you, islandboyAlan, Javier et al.. You are credits to your species. Keep up the good work in 2017 and beyond. Work it ’till it doesn’t work anymore. You’ll be long gone relatively soon anyway. So, after that, it’s not your problem.
“Children? What are those? We lay eggs.”
2017 starts with the same Arctic sea ice extent as the previous four years.
Despite record warm year and great concern about Arctic temperatures being higher than average, Arctic sea ice is showing one more year a greater than expected resilience to melting.
What most people fail to realize is that during the winter the Arctic is in permanent darkness, and losing a great amount of heat to space through IR radiation 24 hours a day. The warmer the Arctic and the less sea ice, the more heat is lost to space.
In 2016 between the strong El Niño and the warm Arctic, a huge amount of energy has been lost to space, so the planet as a system has cooled down significantly. That is the reason temperatures have experienced such a huge drop in all databases. With the AMO turning negative, lower than average solar activity, and no La Niña in sight, the planet is not going to regain the lost energy any time soon. Do not expect warmer than 21st century average years for the near future.
“What most people fail to realize is that during the winter the Arctic is in permanent darkness” ~ Javier
Actually I’m rather sure most folks got that one figured out. But thanks for the update Doc. Where would we be without you? Do you have any more breath taking insights into what most folks don’t know?
“That is the reason temperatures have experienced such a huge drop in all databases” ~ Javier
All data bases?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Use the link. See the average in green. Select the year from options on left. Looks well above normal in this data base. However the recent huge drop in Arctic temps over the last few months could be because it recently become winter there now. It’s dark too.
“America’s northernmost city, a mere 1,300 miles away from the North Pole, pushed above freezing on New Year’s Day. Utqiaġvik, formerly known as Barrow, Alaska, soared to a high of 36 degrees on Jan. 1”
https://www.wunderground.com/news/alaska-florida-record-warmth-january2017
“Do not expect warmer than 21st century average years for the near future.” ~ Javier
Would you care to expand on that statement and perhaps stake your reputation on a prediction? I’d like to see how good you are at making predictions. Are you forecasting a decrease in the rate of warming, a pause (look it up) in warming, or cooling? What is your prediction Dr Javier?
What you don’t seem to understand is that the warmer the Arctic during the winter, the more heat is lost to space, and the more the planet cools. High temperatures also favor high snow precipitations and high ice formation. Greenland is way above average this winter in terms of surface mass gain.
Sure, no problem. My prediction depends on the database considered, but it can be stated in the following way:
For 2017 and 2018 the annual global average temperature will not be significantly (≥ 0.1°C) above the average for 2001-2016.
For September 2017 and September 2018, Arctic sea ice extent as defined and measured by the Danish Meteorological Institute and OSISAF, will not be lower than for September 2007.
Year after year the planet is telling us that climate catastrophism is unjustified. We would do better trying to protect the planet from us. We are the problem, not the climate.
Greenland surface mass balance according to DMI (modeled). The warmer the Arctic, the higher the snow precipitations. A negative feedback.
“What you don’t seem to understand is that the warmer the Arctic during the winter, the more heat is lost to space” ~ Javier
I’m well aware the the planet loses heat to space. Duh. Thanks for the update doc. How do you know what I do and do not understand? What indication do you have that concludes you to believe that I don’t know that the earth loses heat to space. Your straw man arguments and your little rhetorical games are pathetic. You claim to have a PhD yet you feel it’s acceptable to speak imprecisely and use the words pause and slow down as if they are synonyms. You’re a joke.
With regards to your prediction please define ‘significantly’. For a guy with a PhD making a prediction you speak very inprecisely. You’re not exactly captain of the debate club are you?
I find it hard to believe that you have much of an education at all.
“What most people fail to realize is that during the winter the Arctic is in permanent darkness”~ Javier
Are you for real? Do you actually think most people don’t realize this? It’s hard not to insult you because you come across as such an incredibly stupid and ignorant person and you continuously set up straw man arguments based on your assumptions of what people do and do not know. Why don’t you try sticking to scientific facts and data as well as using words more precisely? Your ad hominem attacks, loose and inprecise use of words and straw dog arguments make it hard to conclude that you are not a complete buffoon. PhD indeed. I’ve had more intelligent scientific conversations with undergrads.
Survivalist,
You might know that the warmer the Arctic during the winter, the more the Earth cools down, but clearly most people in this place do not, and the media doesn’t either, judging by the alarmism of their articles about the phenomenon, as if some cooling of the planet was negative at this time.
For example:
Here by Doug Leighton
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-dec-22-2016/#comment-589921
And here by George Kaplan
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-dec-17-2016/#comment-589789
It is reported as something negative, while it is clearly positive.
What does that have to do with you telling me what I know? You’re all over the road dude. Try to stay focused. Completing a discussion to a conclusion without changing topic seems very hard for you. You don’t seem to bright.
“For 2017 and 2018 the annual global average temperature will not be significantly (≥ 0.1°C) above the average for 2001-2016.
For September 2017 and September 2018, Arctic sea ice extent as defined and measured by the Danish Meteorological Institute and OSISAF, will not be lower than for September 2007.” ~ Javier
Noted. And if you’re wrong you can join Wadhams and all the others with failed predictions.
What if the the Danish Meteorological Institute and OSISAF do not agree on the data? What if one validates your prediction but the other refutes it? What then doc? Why don’t you pick just one database? Let’s have a precise prediction and a precise standard to measure that prediction Dr Javier. No wiggle room. No obfuscating. And what data base would you like to use for your global average temperature prediction? Pick just one.
And if I am right?
The Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI SAF) is the EUMETSAT facility providing the data to the DMI. They are not two databases, they together produce one. OSISAF is cited as the source in DMI graphs. I thought you might have known that.
The temperature prediction, as it is stated in terms of the previous years average, is valid for any of the main databases. GISS, BEST, HadCrut, UAH, RSS. Failure by half of them is failure. Most probably all of them will agree in confirming or refuting my prediction.
Just pick one data base dude. You say”“For 2017 and 2018 the annual global average temperature will not be significantly (≥ 0.1°C) above the average for 2001-2016.” I’m gonna measure the success or the failure of that prediction against one data base. You get to pick it. If you can’t pick one data base as the yardstick by which your prediction will be measured then we’ll assume that you’re too cowardly to make a prediction. It’s pretty simple doc. I know you want to make it vague and complex but let’s keep it simple. Pick a data base snowflake. It’s not hard. If all those data bases don’t exactly agree on what the 2001 to 2016 average is, or what the 2017 and 2018 averages are above it I’m not going to be letting you weasel out of it with your childish word games. Get your balls on Janvier. It’s prediction time.
“And if I’m right?” ~ Javier
Then your right. Duh. You need a dictionary or something?
HadCrut4 will do.
This result has much to do with how sea ice extent is calculated, but little connection to the actual condition of the ice. Since I just saw this, I took the liberty of copying a response from NSIDC to Bill Fothergill on this topic, posted on the ASIF message board today. In case anyone is interested!
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1611.msg98271.html#msg98271
“Thank you for contacting NSIDC. Indeed we have received a couple of similar questions in the recent past, but it is because of these questions that we can make our products better; they are much appreciated. We will address this shortly in the latest version of the Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis post that is slated to be published momentarily. In short, this is an artifact of the way that the Sea Ice Index calculates the monthly means. This can be best explained with an example:
Imagine one 10 x 10 km grid cell (100 sq km). Over a 30-day month, it is covered by 100% on 5 days and the other 25 days it is ice free. So the daily sea ice extent is 100 sq km on 5 days and 0 sq km on 25 days. If you just average those 30 values together:
(5×100 sq km + 25×0)/30 = 16.67 sq km
So your monthly average extent in this method is 16.67 sq km.
If you do it the way the Sea Ice Index does it, you average 100% ice on 5 days and 0% on 25 days;
(5×100% +25×0)/30 = 16.67%
So the average monthly concentration is 16.67%. Since that is >15% that grid cell is considered “ice-covered” for the month and the extent is the area of that grid cell, or 100 sq km.
Thus, in this example the one method – average each daily total extent – gives you a value of 16.67 sq km. In the other method – calculated a monthly average field and then calculating total extent – gives you a value of 100 sq km
Moving forward, we will make a decision on best practices. Thank you for your attention to these details, please let me know if you have any questions.
Regards, Greg”
Interesting! That 15% thing is weak tea. If 15% of my house was insured against fire, or was 100% covered 15% of the time, it’d hardly seem right to say that my house is covered with fire insurance. In fact doing so would make me look kinda ignorant of the facts. Kinda like turning to someone who’s driving slower than they were a few moments before and asking them why they stopped the car. If someone said that to me while I was driving I’d say ‘cuz we got a flat tire, get out and help me change it’ lol Then I’d ask them if they’ve had a stroke and why they tried exiting a moving vehicle.
DENNIS, BAN JAVIER PLEASE.
This is getting boring. I have to sift through this garbage trolling to find the interesting posts.
Javier is wrecking the site. Tell him he needs to stop spreading denialist bullshit or you’ll ban him. You can’t tolerate this sort of trolling.
For some reason, banning and/or censoring viewpoints and opinions they disagree with or just plain don’t like is a common request by liberals. They demand these “safe spaces” where they can hide out from the world, hoping never to be exposed to anybody with a worldview different from their own. I don’t understand any of it.
(Is that you Javier or one of your buddies from the troll den?) I wasn’t aware that liberals requested censorship on a more frequent basis than conservatives. You must be privy to very special insider information. I’d suggest that the request is made because Javier a troll. It’s not hard to understand if you try putting yourself in the shoes of someone who likes to hear from intelligent and informative people and not from trolls with an agenda to play word games and obscufate facts. It’s got very little to do with liberal vs conservative political ideologies or safe spaces. Javier is entitled to his opinion but he’s not entitled to his own facts, or his own definitions of words. Javier is a troll. Did you realize that during the winter the Arctic is in permanent darkness or did you need Dr Javier to bring you up to speed on that?
Disinformation and propaganda are tools of war.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12290-016-0395-5
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/global-warming-skeptic.html#.WG-8Nrd-vow
The dangers of denial are vast. Right now many scientists, ones that know human caused warming is occurring, are denying or strongly reducing the potential effects of several natural forcings. This is a three-fold problem, certain scientists are ignored even after presenting convincing evidence, others back off on their claims. Worst of all it reduces the value of exploring these feedbacks, reduces funding and effort in those areas and segments the scientific community.
What people think of as true climate deniers are easily identified and rebutted, they do a lot of harm but after a while their game becomes obvious. It doesn’t fit reality.
I think climate denial goes much further up the scientific food chain. The form of denial makes it much more difficult to determine or refute, since they strongly wear the cloak of consensus in climate change and global warming. Those on the frontier or not so well supported are easily pushed aside by those with strong reputations. So we stand at a time when only a portion of global warming and it’s effects on climate change are fully recognized. The more dangerous portion is still in the dark closet or under the bed of science. Very little light is being shown upon the natural forcings and their combined effects.
++++++++++++
I was reading somewhere that it only takes about 0.4 watts per square meter to cause the yearly ice loss in the Arctic Ocean. Then after thinking about that published calculation, I realized the author had not included the reflected radiation or any radiation balance at all. If it were all incoming light it would be closer to 2 watts per m2 needed since much of light is reflected. However since snow and ice almost fully absorb longwave infrared, it could be far less than 2.
The rest would go into heating the Arctic Ocean itself and the air. The effects of heat trapping by clouds and fog are also a factor, even in the dark winter Arctic night. Then there are ocean currents, moving energy about.
A simple calculation can hide a lot of reality if not fully explored.
“So we stand at a time when only a portion of global warming and it’s effects on climate change are fully recognized. The more dangerous portion is still in the dark closet or under the bed of science. Very little light is being shown upon the natural forcings and their combined effects.”
I believe in global warming and don’t even bother to read the debates here because they make no difference to me.
If the situation is really much worse than even the scientists are telling us, and if there is nothing we can do to moderate the outcome, then I’m not sure why we need to know other than to emotionally confront the coming disasters. If anything, being told there is nothing we can do might encourage people to do even more of what they are currently do because it won’t make a difference.
I can deal with the “it’s serious and this is what we can do,” but not the “it’s a catastrophe and there is nothing we can do.”
If we have a partial knowledge and try to slow or stop global warming, the result will at best be partial or completely ineffective.
If we have a more complete knowledge of what is going on in the world, then better determinations can be made as to what to do and not to do.
We can just shoot willy nilly at a complex system, the results could just as easily backfire.
Right now the only thing we seem to be doing is trying to slow the output of manmade GHG’s. Maybe someday we will even stop putting out CO2. The amount counts, the rate is not quite as important. However when things get more severe and obvious, I am sure geo-engineering will be attempted. If we do not know how earth systems work, it will be a shot in the dark.
You speak of giving up, I speak of finding out and recognizing what really is going on in total. If the answer is that reducing human generated CO2 or stopping it will do little, best to know what else is happening and decide if action there will be needed.
There is a lot at stake here, giving up is not an option and no one said the answers would be easy or are even known yet. They will never be known if we don’t even understand the system functions or refuse to recognize the system at all.
“If we have a more complete knowledge of what is going on in the world, then better determinations can be made as to what to do and not to do.”
I think the knowledge is valuable. And someone should be collecting it, just as it is important for some scientists to speculate on the origins of the universe.
But some of what is researched in science is fairly removed from day-to-day life.
Unless we have ways for the human race to collectively deal with global warming and climate change, I’m not sure more knowledge will translate into better action.
Let’s say a scientist can very accurately predict the melting of the polar ice caps and what will happen next. Will the goal be to prevent that or to create a timetable of actions to deal with the consequences?
I believe in global warming, but even I, who supports the concept and the research, feel removed from the consequences. And even when its consequences begin to impact me, my family, and my community directly, I’m not sure I will know what all of us can do to prevent further problems.
I guess what I am saying is this.
So there is climate change denial. So what? It only matters if it prevents us from taking action.
The scientific community can debate the nuances of climate and GHGs and natural forcing all it wants. But what matters to the global population is how it impacts animal, plant, and human life.
Now, if this scientific research can be translated into predictions concerning severe weather, flooding, drought, etc. that will have meaningful impact for the average person.
If it can’t, then we’ll likely continue to treat global warming research as pure scientific research which may or may not get funded by universities, governments, and businesses.
Luckily the same things that reduce pollution and help solve our energy problems also reduce global warming. For the people on the ground, all the things to be done are already fairly well laid out.
The information that is being ignored and the information that we are not gathering will probably have to be dealt with on a multi-national level. Once the processes are better understood, it will become obvious that reduction of CO2 will have to go hand and hand along with a general reduction in fossil fuel burning, combined with more efficient lifestyles and business operations.
Hopefully the world political situation calms down so that a unified front can be established once the knowledge base is stronger and the occurrences become plainer. It might take losing a few cities or having crops fail in first world regions, but before that we should be working on carbon reduction and gaining strong field data to advance the science.
Nathanael, you haven’t seen nothing yet. At least Javing has a basic story line that he adheres too. In two weeks the President of the Divided State of America is going to con you with his nonsense. As his Conservative Right Wing Christen Republicans take away Civil Rights, Medicare, Social Security,ACA, cut taxes for the wealthy and dismantle the peoples safety net.
I’m with Putin, Americans will get what they deserve.
People often get the government they deserve. USA is likely on its last legs. Javier’s story line is very circular. He just repeats the same worn out mantras over and over. It’s kind of pathetic really, not unlike Paul Helvick and his liberal vs conservative thing when it’s really ignorance vs intelligence. I’m pretty sure Paul won’t be splitting the atom any time soon. There’s not much talent in America anymore. The only thing left to do is turtle and wait for the pain. There is no hope.
“Fifty percent of Americans can name four characters from “The Simpsons,” but only two out of five can name all three branches of the federal government. No more than one in seven can find Iraq on a map.”
https://www.amazon.ca/Just-How-Stupid-Are-We/dp/0465014933
“60% of Trump voters … think there’s a War on Christmas to 25% who say there isn’t … In fact 24% of Trump voters say that the War on Christmas concerns them more than a potential war with China would.”
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_National_121916.pdf
That is not simply a lack of education. It’s just plain old down in the dirt dumb.
https://youtu.be/6MubunsD-7g
“USA is likely on its last legs” “just plain old down in the dirt dumb”
Trump got 60 million votes. I agree with you.
Just remember, 70 percent of voters did not vote for Trump.
I can’t help but think that Trump has picked a team to do the most damage to the USA.
NAOM
I’m pretty sure that that’s the plan. Trump is gonna change the topic of the discussion every time he opens his mouth and use the incompetence of others to deflect criticism of his own mismanagement. I think he’s gonna pump and dump the entire American economy. His business partners and the investors that paid for his campaign are gonna get very rich. OTOH congress might impeach him pretty quick. They’re on to him.
Perhaps if enough Trump voters suffer economically under Trump they will look for an alternative.
On the other hand, the GOP seems to be trying to make it impossible to throw them out of office or change their form of government. They may rewrite the laws so that voters can’t vote anyone out and the likely-far-right Supreme Court will uphold those laws.
In terms of renewable energy and the environment, my hope is that China is big enough and economically powerful enough that it can move forward without regard to US politics.
And overall, if the rest of the world figures out it can’t count on the US, then perhaps the US will slip as a global power.
Is that a good scenario under Trump? No. But perhaps it will help the planet.
It’s still hard for me to fathom that I may be living through the decline of the US. But better that than nothing being done globally to protect the planet.
It is as if we are a resistance movement operating within enemy territory. When your “leader” is a national and international security risk, you may have to bring down your own country to slow the global damage.
Naw, you’ll only end up playing WhackaMole.
NAOM
OFM, and others considering PV installation.
Here is a wholesale supplier of components and systems.
If you can do you own ground mount installation, you can save a lot of money.
I haven’t looked over the details of the inverter and other components,
but you can purchase a pallet of PV working out to between 0.72 and 1.03 $/W currently!
One or two pallets would be great for most people and that would come out to between 5-20K, if choosing from their current stock. Check it out-
http://www.wholesalesolar.com/bulk-solar-panels-by-the-pallet
Thanks Hickory,
But I’m already committed all the surplus cash I expect to put my greedy paws on this year to projects that will be going up in price, rather than down, as I hope will continue to be the case with pv.
Fences, new pasture where the orchard used to be, another small lake for ambiance and the lifetime supply of fish and fun catching them, more equipment for the workshop. The more of this sort of stuff I get, the more I seem to want.
If I can locate enough large diameter at the right price, I will build a traditional water wheel to power a generator. There’s plenty of water in the stream on my place, but the gradient is gentle, and getting a permit to construct a dam on a stream as big as this one is an expensive time consuming pain in the ass, and any way the dam itself would be cost several times my net worth, by the time the state and the feds finish specifying an elephant where a mouse would serve quite well.
I can divert some water, maybe a quarter of the flow, into a pipe running right along side the stream for about four hundred feet, and get enough fall at the business end to put in a four or five foot diameter overshot wheel, four or five feet across. The water will go right back into the stream, at a place with a solid rock bottom, and there will be a near zero impact on the stream and the assorted little creatures that live in it. I ‘m thinking I can get over a thousand watts, continuous net output.
Sounds good OFM, but keep that PV source on your list for later on. I think you are smart for getting the ground/water source heat pump (as mentioned earlier).
Check out the Antarctic Monthly Sea Ice Extent Anomaly Graph
https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/
Arctic and Antarctic are both on this page. Select your option.
Sea ice is experiencing a large decline in both hemispheres.
How is that relevant? Is that in any way related to global warming?
If you think it is, would you show what is the correlation between global sea-ice and temperatures or CO2? Have you just cherry picked one year out of 35 for which there are measurements?
Show us your deep understanding of the relationship between global sea ice and climate change. I am sure it will be fascinating.
Yawn. Do you have some kind of conflict seeking personality disorder or something?
“How is that relevant? Is that in any way related to global warming” ~ Javier
If you can’t figure out the answer to that question by yourself you should give back your PhD. If you have one.
“Have you just cherry picked one year out of 35 for which there are measurements?” ~ Javier
I just posted a link to some interesting date dude. Maybe think about booking a follow up appointment and getting your meds rebalanced.
Just what I thought. You have no idea, so good old tactic of attacking the person pointing to your lack of knowledge.
So other people know: There is no known relationship between global sea ice levels and global warming. For the last 35 years loses in Arctic sea ice have been compensated by gains in Antarctic sea ice so global sea ice levels have remained essentially constant.
“For the last 35 years loses in Arctic sea ice have been compensated by gains in Antarctic sea ice so global sea ice levels have remained essentially constant.”
Nice mantra, no one outside of Javierville believes it though.
NSDIC data disagrees though.
Why only data to 2010? Because it recovered afterwards?
This one is better, up to date, shows both.
Always keep an eye on what Tamino has to say.
Does this look like sea ice levels are constant?
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/global-sea-ice
There’s no way you have a PhD. I have a hard time believing that you have a high school diploma. You’re just not very smart.
ROFL! Javier complaining about cherry picking!!!!
NAOM
Trump, the oligarchs and Putin
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/?utm_content=buffer55e4b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
http://indianmavericks.blogspot.ca/2017/01/president-elect-donald-trumps-russia.html?m=1
From Indianmaverick –
“Will the Midwesterners who voted for Candidate Trump be screwed-six-ways-to-Sunday by their idol’s relationship with Russia? will they see their living standard evaporate? will they see their social security, medicaid, medicare benefits end? will they see accountability of the political classes diminish? – Most likely.
Will they learn anything from it? – Most unlikely. Any lessons that are learned will be learned by their children and grand children – not by the people that actually voted. As reported in may surveys after the polls, a majority of these people do not want Donald Trump to release his tax returns because they already know it will highlight their personal failure to choose properly. Rather than face this deeply personal embarrassment – they would prefer to feed the country to criminal hordes.”
Conservative Republicans “just plain old down in the dirt dumb”
Hey Hunt.Beach,
You and I hold many similar views on policy, but I got to say partisanship is a very ugly set of clothing to wear, whether it is blue or red.
And yes, I am extremely embarrassed/worried by the choice our country has made, and the ridiculous electoral college system that degrades democracy.
But people need encouragement to think outside their box, rather than just being called ‘deplorable’.
How is this:
Keith Olbermann Has A Message To Share With Your Trump-Supporting (OFM) Friends
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/keith-olbermann-trump-supporters_us_586f0eede4b02b5f858825ca
I know we do Hickory
After “W”, Obama let go of the past and moved forward. That’s exactly the opposite of what is happening now. Being nice to Republicans doesn’t work. Now they are doubling down. They need to own the mess their going to make this time.
You know, personal responsibility
Olbermann is interesting. Very bright. A world class baseball expert. Years ago he had a fun feud with Bill O’Reilly. I watched both on my two TV’s at 5:00 PM Eastern. He was fired from MSNBC and a sports channel, primarily for being obnoxious. He is now devoting his life to fight Trump.
>> He is now devoting his life to fight Trump. <<
A worthy cause…
Hi HB,
Aren’t you the SAME guy who threw out a remark about ME telling a lie often enough that it becomes accepted as the truth?
I hereby challenge you to a duel to the death, insulting each other, using any verbal weapon available, or yet to be invented.
Now I don’t mind publicly admitting that I am a COWARDLY character, and wouldn’t issue this challenge, except for the fact that I am totally confident I’m better informed, and all around smarter than you.
The odds are also good to excellent that I have more free time, and that I can type faster than you too boot.
Besides which, everybody knows all about the social standing and reputation of people who sell cars and trucks- even Mack trucks.
I will mail anybody in this forum who will supply me with an address a post office money order for twenty bucks, made out to that person , or to their favorite charity, if he can point to just one comment, IN CONTEXT, that I have ever made in this forum, in support of Trump.
Comments pointing out the DANGER, and the reasons FOR that danger, that Clinton might lose are excluded from this offer. Pointing out Clinton’s shortcomings is NOT the same thing as supporting Trump.
I’m just one little inconsequential blogger, and no more a mover or shaker of politics in this world than you are a mover or shaker in the world of air pollution, as an individual investor in the oil industry, and thus responsible for our climate troubles.
I’ve said some few nice things about Clinton , from time to time, not being a partisan. Just within the last couple of days I have remarked that I am fully on board with going to a single payer health care system in this country, which has long been one of her biggest goals, although she has been coy about saying so in so many words.
I did post a Trump joke about his administration turning out to be the most transparent in history, leaving off the punch line, hoping somebody here would post it.
So why will the Trump administration be the most open administration ever?
Because Trump can’t keep his mouth shut about ANYTHING.
Now instead of calling you stupid, or ignorant, or a partisan true believer, TODAY, I am merely going to post the press release sent out by Judicial Watch, which just won ANOTHER court case involving HRC’s email system, which she after all TOLD us she created only for the sake of convenience, ya know.
Obviously anybody who is unwilling to take her word on it MUST be an ignorant, stupid, sexist, xenophobic racist ” I got mine, fuck you everybody else ” Koch brothers type double talking big R republican.
Anybody that brags about making fat profits in oil, walking the fossil fuels walk, while talking the green talk, in a forum such as this one, and makes a habit of blaming her loss and Trump’s win on helpless, witless, ignorant old farmers, who has obviously never read any book except a KJB, and only the EASY words in that one, and believes the world is flat, and that Santa Clause is real…………
Now that sort of person would very likely be NAIVE enough to believe her…….. or maybe he’s a hard core partisan willing to repeat the same old twaddle forever, rather than admitting he has made a colossal mistake, and compounded it by propping it up with a series of further mistakes, and so suffer the resulting loss of face.
I have seen a bunch of drunks and little kids deny perfectly obvious facts, in an effort to brazen out their problems. I had one visiting here recently deny he was throwing rocks at our pet chickens, to my face, in front of his parents, who PRETENDED that they BELIEVED him. Something about their body language said otherwise.
They won’t be back as guests, ever again.
( I didn’t embarrass them any more than necessary, or escalate the situation by pulling out my phone and showing them the video I shot five minutes previously.
I got acquainted with this kid and his bad habits years ago, the whole COMMUNITY knows to beware of him . But I showed it to a third party, who knows the parents well enough to talk to them heart to heart, face to face , privately. )
You hang in there old buddy and never forget that there are always a few DUMB foot soldiers in every movement who can be kept in line by badmouthing anybody who might get them to thinking about the shortcomings of their movement, and the faults of their leaders.
So – You know this already, and I give you this, you are at least consistent in bad mouthing me, and thus doing what you can to keep the dumbest of your Clinton camp foot soldiers eyes from thinking about what REALLY went wrong.
You would make a GOOD Sunday school teacher, since you have repeated your lines until they have become truths in your own mind.
That’s what makes for a good Sunday school teacher, the ability to teach the myth, and bad mouth evil sinners and profess total shock that anybody would ever question the lesson , and righteously maintain that those who do are heretics, doomed to burn in hell, who are never to be trusted , who MUST be excluded from the community……. unless of course they repudiate everything they have ever said or believed, and join up themselves.
Thanks for helping me get thru to more people than I would otherwise, here, because I am ready to move ON in respect to Clinton’s short comings, and to the future of the D party, whenever you are.
But keep on calling me a Trump lover, and I will continue as usual.
Here are three links, I always strive to give good measure.
http://www.npr.org/2017/01/06/508385203/bernie-sanders-says-trump-won-because-democrats-are-out-of-touch
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/ct-the-clinton-campaigns-email-use-wasnt-just-careless-it-was-dangerous-20161223-story.html
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/appeals-court-revives-suits-over-hillary-clinton-emails-232990
I can easily post some more, if you wish. All you need do , if you want me too, is call me a liar, or a Trump supporter.
Maybe I will post all the next dozen or so out of the ones written or delivered as speeches etc, by well known large D organizations ,or consistent supporters of such organizations, or well known large D individuals.
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.
Back atcha once more , HB
Some people know and understand the game of politics, and like a lawyer, can play the game from either side, as an adviser or coach, paid or unpaid.
Some people just whine , and sling mud, because that’s all they know how to do.
I ‘m not a partisan. I understand the game. I do think of myself as a patriot of sorts, and stand ready to defend my country from my government, and sometimes doing so involves forcing people to face up to their errors.
For now, the prevailing D party dogma is that Clinton was robbed, because the American people are stupid, and enough of them voted for Trump for him to STEAL the election.
That dogma plays VERY well in an echo chamber dominated by disappointed Clintonites. It plays well enough, for now, as a sermon to the larger party choir, putting the blame on the people, rather than the party itself, and the candidate in particular.
But in WON’T play well when the campaigning starts, next time around, no, it won’t play well at all.
The people who want D’s in congress, and a D in the White House, will abandon your sort of childish whining in favor of serious thought. And while they won’t be saying uncomplimentary things about HRC, publicly, they won’t be saying much about her at all.
In meeting rooms behind closed doors, they will be saying what I have been saying all along, that she was a lousy candidate in terms of the public’s perceptions of her, and a lousy campaigner. They will be saying we must and will do things DIFFERENTLY this time.
The lessons of the loss, the ones I have been talking about, you see, except you don’t see, will have sunk in, and they will be incorporated into the next campaign.
Admitting this sort of thing involves a somewhat embarrassing loss of face, so I don’t expect any atta boys from the regulars here who are with no more than a couple of exceptions all hard core D partisans.
But the fact that they don’t come out and say so doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking about what I have been saying, and gradually admitting to themselves that I have been right, all along, as a general thing.
The D party won’t nominate a candidate with such a train load of baggage again. The candidate next time around will be a person who is better suited to winning middle of the road voters, and one that’s at least marginally acceptable to cultural and social conservatives.
The odds are excellent that I will still be around for another four years. If this forum survives, I will probably still be posting a comment here , then, from time to time, although I expect to have a site of my own within that time frame.
The odds are also excellent that you will be gone, and forgotten.
Everything I have been saying will be taken into account in the next cycle of D primaries, and the next D candidate’s campaign platform, and campaign strategy, quietly. QUIETLY.
I will be vindicated.
A truly disinterested observer might wonder if you are actually a Trump troll yourself, pretending to be a Democrat, while continuously saying things that remind folks who voted for Trump , or stayed home, WHY they did so.
You are doing a GREAT job in this respect, while accomplishing nothing more FOR the party than proving that there are D’s who are as ignorant, and as mean spirited, as any Trump supporter.
I don’t expect any of the guys here to call you out, but I know half a dozen young and committed D women, from attending Sanders events, who would gladly spit on you for making the lube and nephew remark you posted in the other thread.
You’re a porch dog, and you would roll over on your back and pee yourself before you would ever venture out into the real world,off the cyber porch, and insult a random individual MAN by making that same comment.
Please keep it up. You’re advancing my agenda for me, which is to force the D party to wake up to reality as fast as possible. Some candidates running in upcoming midterm and off year elections are already campaigning.
Trump didn’t WIN in any sense except the LITERAL sense.
Trump won because the D party and HRC made a MESS out of the entire nominating process, and then the campaign after that.
Clinton and her cronies LOST, they dropped the ball, repeatedly. Clinton and her cronies let Trump and his cronies make a fool out of her, and the D party at large.
They threw it away.
Blaming the loss on the people is about as good a way of ensuring that you will lose again as can be imagined.
It obviously hasn’t occurred to you, and people like you, that those SAME people will be voting again , NEXT time, has it?? They won’t forget what you have been saying about them in the meantime.
Keep it up, you may yet find a way to make an even bigger fool of yourself.
I support most of what the D party stands for these days , but not everything , and so must remain an independent. Partisans have to pretend they believe in things they don’t.
I disagree with a huge portion of what the R party stands for these days, but I do support some R positions and policies.
I will remain an independent, and tell it like it is, or at least like I see it.
Indian Maverick is brilliant. I highly recommend following his column.
A lot of talk about the climate and not much talk about the weather. Nobody can do anything about the weather unless you are a weather engineer at haarp. har
The record low that I have ever seen, been there to see and feel what cold is, was -42° F in the winter of 97-98. Not a day for water skiing. You can’t define cold until you find out for yourself what cold is. Not dark side of the moon cold, but cold. If you go anywhere, it is to buy beer and gas.
The record high for any summertime temperature was in 1988, the thermometer was at 108° F in the shade. It was hot. The summer of 2015 was hot, but not like 1988. Never saw it so hot as it was then in 1988. You had to quaff a few.
1959-60-61 were dry years and crops were stressed. 1963 was a good year, an oil well was drilled and it struck oil, it has pumped for 53 years now. 1964 was a good year for wheat. 1966, would ride the combine into the late evening until the sickle bar had rough cutting. My teeth were black with dust and dirt, combining is work that makes you smile all day long. Bins full of wheat and barley, tons of beans. If you want to see exponential growth, plant a bushel of wheat to an acre of black soil.
The sun rises, the sun sets, sunrise, sunset. Swiftly go the years, as the song goes.
Rambling on, muttering musings, never mind. Back to the regularly scheduled program. Whatever that is.
It was the weather that caused all the trouble RW. Being born hairless and not getting enough hair to cover the body, humans were subject to cold, rain, wind, etc. Did OK in the heat, but not always.
So we started inventing things, clothing, which meant hunting animals. Then rocks, sharp rocks, clubs, spears, all to get food and clothing. No more hunting the wild asparagus.
Apparently we couldn’t stop there and ended up here. We had to talk to each other to hunt in groups and plan our next move, since we were not the biggest, strongest or the best. The mammoths and giant sloths didn’t have a chance.
Now we have umbrellas, raincoats, galoshes, coats and long underwear to deal with the weather. Shoes too.
Being wimpy, we build huts, houses, buildings and such. Mostly to keep our stuff dry and warm but for us too.
If we could handle the weather, none of this would have happened.
Vast ice shelf poised to crack off Antarctica.
”
A vast iceberg, expected to be one of the biggest ever recorded with an area almost the size of the U.S. state of Delaware or the Caribbean island state of Trinidad and Tobago, is poised to break off Antarctica.
A rift, slowly developing across the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula in recent years, expanded abruptly last month, growing by about 18 km (11 miles). It is now more than 80 km long with just 20 km left before it snaps, scientists said.
“The Larsen C Ice shelf in Antarctica is primed to shed an area of more than 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles) following further substantial rift growth,” scientists at Project Midas at the University of Swansea in Wales said in a statement.”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-antarctica-iceberg-idUKKBN14Q1MW
CLIMATE CHANGE COULD TRIGGER STRONG SEA LEVEL RISE
About 15,000 years ago, the ocean around Antarctica has seen an abrupt sea level rise of several meters. The changes that are currently taking place in a disturbing manner resemble those 14,700 years ago. At that time, changes in atmospheric-oceanic circulation led to a stratification in the ocean with a cold layer at the surface and a warm layer below. Under such conditions, ice sheets melt more strongly than when the surrounding ocean is thoroughly mixed. This is exactly what is presently happening around the Antarctic.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170105123158.htm
If major geologic and environmental changes are happening fast enough for us ephemeral beings to notice and watch, it is happening really fast. One meter rise in a century might just get everyone’s attention.
Except that it won’t happen. Sea level rise is modest.
Nothing ever changes in Javierville.
GoneFishing,
Global warming is very old news. We had full realization of it in 1988. That was 30 years ago.
Some people are scared of it, but humanity at large isn’t, because we have not reduce our emissions. We have increased them greatly. Actions speak louder than words. The Paris accords mean that humanity is not going to reduce its emissions significantly in the future. Hansen was very clear about it.
Does this look like our governments really believe that we are in serious danger? I would say clearly not.
After 30 years of paying attention to it, global warming hasn’t turned sour on us. We are still enjoying its benefits. We just went in 2015-16 through a test of how the world does with 0.4°C more and everything went fine and we even got a record wheat crop. So global warming in the years ahead, if it continues, is likely to continue being beneficial.
I was so surprised by the lack of warming in the 21st century that I actually went and checked the evidence that the science has produced. No clear support for the alarmist view.
It is not Javierville but Gaia who is saying that the alarmist narrative is wrong.
“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.”
Charles Mackay 1841.
This will go down in history books as the biggest folly in the history of humankind. Scientists are going to come out severely tarnished for the participation of many of them, and statements like the 97% agreement. This is going to haunt us for generations. We should have kept neutral and stick to the evidence as the method demands.
Nothing ever changes in Javierville.
It’s like the movie Groundhog Day, only stupider.
Javierville is where you go when you discover the Arkansas Ozarks is too intellectually intimidating. But I guess that’s unfair to the Ozarks.
Don’t worry Doug the folks in the Ozarks are more closed minded than Javierville residents.
.
15,000 years ago the planet was coming out of a glacial period. Obliquity was rising, increasing the year-round insolation received by both poles. Just the opposite of nowadays.
We are a couple of thousand years from reaching the average duration of an interglacial. Obliquity is falling at its fastest rate in 40,000 years, while summer northern high latitude insolation is at a minimum. Most people don’t realize how precious our little warming is.
Yawn. Using GHCNv4 monthly data, Svalbard had the 3rd highest 2016 temp departure globally (+8.9°F)
I thought the Northern Greenland cherry picked data was the deniers choice?
Vize (79.5N/77.0E) was No. 1 (+12.6°F above normal) and Imetkrenkeli (80.6N/58.0E) was No. 2 (+11.8°F above normal). It’s a heatwave.
Janvier’s BS gets a good treatment at this link
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/extreme-cherry-ice/
You decide if he has the PhD he claims to.
Like global warming denial, another one bites the dust:
It’s Final — Corn Ethanol Is Of No Use
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/04/20/its-final-corn-ethanol-is-of-no-use/#5aa0b55c2ca2
But we knew many years ago that ethanol was an energetic and CO2 flop. I always thought the mandate went through to help farmers make more money and increase food prices.
Yes, that’s my understanding, too. Many in the renewable community have always been skeptical of it. But it was a popular concept with corn farmers and their politicians.
It was always political—
Welfare for farmers in the Midwest, and big giveaways to corporate contracts for production.
Both sides of the Aisle were pigs at the trough.
here,in Iowa,cannot get rid of ethanol\\\nobody supports that…ethanol is,so very good,to the state—bringing in—MANY JOBS OPPORTUNITIES AND MONEY\~
What will you do with it once there are no cars using it?
NAOM
Oh no, higher temperatures mean less snow and it’s killing the yellow cedars. Roots frozen due to increasing lack of snow.
The trees are in the cypress family and are not true cedars, which are part of the pine family. They have grown to 200 feet and can live more than 1,200 years.
More than 1,544 square miles containing yellow cedar — mostly north of Vancouver Island, British Columbia — have experienced upward of 70 percent mortality. Another 20,207 square miles remain, but many of the trees will be vulnerable if projected warming occurs.
Researchers found little mortality in trees at higher elevations in Washington and Oregon where snow level has not diminished and roots have not been exposed to freezing temperatures. Conversely, in some areas, such as parts of Vancouver Island, there’s no snow where yellow cedar grows, but temperatures never drop sufficiently to freeze their roots, Buma said.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/study-documents-tree-species-decline-due-climate-warming-44601921
Tankers carrying tar sands oil to move through US waters off the coast of Maine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkFnu6XaqaU
Residents of coastal Maine speak out against tanker transport of Canada’s tar sands oil. Banning dangerous supertankers and barges in U.S. waters is the single-best means we have to protect our coasts and our planet from the next generation of climate-wrecking tar sands oil.
Once again, Javier has consumed all the oxygen in our virtual room…
How?
One way was to misrepresent the ice age percentage survival graph as if it shows the actual amount of multi-year and first year ice. It does not, of course, and GoneFishing posted a chart using NSIDC data that shows the true picture – 2016 has drastically less multi-year ice than 2007.
Javier’s first response to that data?
Change the subject quickly to Wadham’s failed prediction.
His final response, after several prompts pointing out his obvious howler?
… “NSIDC does not agree with that graph.” …(ie NSIDC does not agree with its own data!) … and posted a different graph that confirms that 2016 much less than 2007, but this time as a percentage, not the total amounts.
…..
A second successful misdirection? … No Surface Warming for 12 YEARS!!!
Notice how this true fact gets gradually morphed into “no warming” then “no global warming”… This is the basis of Javier’s misdirection…
When respondents object, he cites Fyfe (an IPCC author), showing only PART of the picture.
To repeat, it’s perfectly true that surface warming was slower than predicted by the models for a period of 15 years recently. Fyfe published a paper, Javier posted the graph showing the mismatch.
But of course that is only part of the picture. Javier always, always, always cherrypicks or selectively presents data – never the complete picture. Fyfe presents the COMPLETE picture in his portion of the IPCC report (see attached figure)…
Part 1 of Javier’s deceitful omission of Fyfe’s facts:
Surface warming was also FASTER than predicted for the preceding 15 years – panel (b) of attached figure. Then slower for 1998 to 2012 – panel (a). The long term (1951 to 2012) warming rate was exactly as predicted – panel (c).
Part 2 of Javier’s deceitful omission of Fyfe’s facts:
Global warming of the entire climate system did indeed warm at roughly the same rate as predicted by the models (actually a little faster), even over short time frames, even for 1998 to 2012 (the hiatus/pause) – panel (d). It warmed at the rate predicted by models for the preceding 15 years – panel (e) . And it warmed at the predicted rate for longer periods (1951 – 2012), too – panel (f).
By concentrating on the smallest portion of the climate system (by mass) – the atmosphere – Javier easily led dozens of poster around and around through hundreds of posts that all miss the point – BADLY…
… the surface air temperature is almost entirely determined by the surface SEA temperature
… The SEA surface temperature is about 0.8 to 0.4C WARMER than the air above it. The oceans lose heat to the air (after being heated by the sun).
… The distribution of warmer and colder surface waters is almost entirely determined by ocean currents/wind oscillations like the PDO, IPO, ENSO, and AMO.
… These oscillations do not cause warming to appear out of nothing – conservation of energy applies. They can only redistribute heat, it is a zero-sum game for ocean heat content.
… Ocean Heat Content is rising, and ACCELERATING. The most recent period – even the pause/hiatus – has seen warming that is significantly faster than the preceding period (more than twice as fast). This fact is confirmed by the accelerating rate of sea level rise.
… The models do a great job of predicting the true, overall, complete warming rate – both short and long term.
…
(Go read the IPCC report, WGI AR5 Technical Supplement to see the original figure and its context.)
Yeah changing the subject is the cornerstone of his rhetorical style. It’s pretty hard to conclude a discussion about a specific topic with Janvier as each response from him is an attempt to distract by injecting a new topic. Interestingly enough Janvier has made some predictions now too so in the near future we can see how it turns out. He’s a total flake when it comes to something as simple as what the word pause means in comparison to the term slow down. Apperently in his glossary of term they’re synonymous. That’s just stupid. Guys got a PhD in troll. Science? Not so much.
Since you brought up NSIDC data, here’s a question I need answered. Before I can read all of this post. How much of NSIDC’s operations are funded by taxes and public grants?
I don’t know for sure but I’d say ‘lots’ is a fair guess.
https://nsidc.org/about/sponsors.html
They’d probably tell you if you asked them.
I always wonder why people with computers and internet cannot look up the simple things themselves?
Perhaps they need dialogue. It took me about 4 seconds to get a rough enough idea.
Then that tells me all I need to know. I’m not going to trust any organization funded with taxes and public grants. Anyway at least not until Trump gets in office and cleans house. Right now most federal organizations have people appointed by Obama. His Democratic Party obviously is going all out to push the climate change agenda.
Earth to Harmon, give me a break
Saw that one coming.
Yep. Pretext to a dialogue. He must be sitting just across from Javier at the Troll Brigades sock puppet centre.
And by the way, Trumps not gonna clean up nothing! Him and his Russian Oilgarch buddies are gonna pull the biggest pump and dump stock market scam in history. It’s gonna be epic! (Or maybe he’s just their useful idiot)
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/12/19/the-curious-world-of-donald-trumps-private-russian-connections/?utm_content=buffer55e4b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Me too! I feel much more comfortable trusting organizations funded with donations and private money, especially money from sources that have done really well from extracting and using fossil fuels. You know, Heartland Institute, Energy Research Institute, Fox News, you get the drift. 😉
The meme that carbon reduction climate policy is a global governmental conspiracy for political control is kind of funny when you think about it.
Distributed energy systems are shaping up to be the solution to the problem. Isn’t the democratization of energy supply the opposite of what you would want as a dictator or oligarch?
For less than $20k investment I could buy a used Nissan Leaf and a 3kW rooftop PV array that would provide >12,000 miles of travel per year. The PV would last >25 years.
Small price to pay for energy freedom from the likes of Arabs and Texans. 😉
Distributed energy systems are shaping up to be the solution to the problem.
Yes, when people get their heads around the idea that having their own power offers more freedom than being dependent on be entities for it, maybe they will embrace the concept.
That’s one thing that unites the survivalists and the sustainability types. One group may be more right wing, and the other more left wing, but both support the idea of generating their own power.
Why are you telling such lies, Wehappyfew?
Are you really that ignorant about what you post, or are you simply trying to deceive people in the blog?
About everything that you say about CMIP5 is untrue.
CMIP5 was agreed upon in 2008:
“At a September 2008 meeting involving 20 climate modeling groups from around the world, the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM), with input from the IGBP AIMES project, agreed to promote a new set of coordinated climate model experiments. These experiments comprise the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5).”
http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/
CMIP5 was first delivered in 2011:
“The IPCC/CMIP5 schedule is now available and the three key dates are as follows:
Februrary 2011: First model output is expected to be available for analysis”
http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/
CMIP5 did not predict anything for 1984-1998 as you say. You can’t predict the past. The way CMIP5 was set was the following:
“There are two sets of core near-term integrations, as indicated by Fig. 3. The first is a set of 10-yr hindcasts initialized from observed climate states near the years 1960, 1965, and every 5 yr to 2005. In these 10-yr simulations, it will be possible to assess the skill of the forecast system in predicting climate statistics for times when the initial climate state may exert some detectable influence. The other core integrations extend the 10-yr simulations initialized in 1960, 1980, and 2005 by an additional 20 yr, ending up with two 30-yr hindcasts, and one 30-yr prediction to the year 2035.”
Taylor, Karl E., Ronald J. Stouffer, and Gerald A. Meehl. “An overview of CMIP5 and the experiment design.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 93.4 (2012): 485.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00094.1
The predictions from CMIP5 start in 2005, with the obvious advantage of being done in 2010 and published in 2011-12.
You mean that by publishing in 2011 they got the long term warming from 1951-2012 correct? Quite an achievement I would say.
Wehappyfew, you have managed to demonstrate everybody that you have no idea of CMIP5, and that you like to talk about what you don’t know. After this your accusations of misrepresentation are simply laughable. But thanks, it was fun to read your post.
are you drunk?
Javier,
It might be best if you take a break and try again in the morning. Your post makes no attempt to refute the facts I have posted – it seems to ramble around with no clear point.
You’ve made no effort to correct your mistake about the multi-year ice survival charts. I will take that as a tacit admission that GoneFishing was absolutely correct, and you were wrong – multi-year has declined by enormous amounts, including the span from 2007 to 2016.
…..
CMIP5 is used in the Fyfe papers YOU brought up, I did not broach the subject. The rest of your response seems to be entirely projection.
Fyfe used CMIP5 hindcasts compared to the surface temperature observations. The IPCC WGI AR5 TS Box3 used CMIP3 and 5 to compare global and surface warming rates to model-derived simulations (hindcasts).
You’ve brought up a lot of deflection, but you did not address Fyfe’s and the IPCC’s chart and use of CMIP at all. If you don’t like sources that use CMIP as hindcasts (as your confused ramblings might be interpreted to mean), why did you cite Fyfe? He used hindcasts.
Please cite one fact I “say about CMIP” that’s untrue. Not unrelated new papers like the ones above. Cite a phrase in Fyfe’s work or the IPCC WGI that shows I misrepresented their use of CMIP.
You have read the IPCC reports, haven’t you? From your fact-free and off-tangent response, it might be taken as evidence you cannot directly address the points I raised from the IPCC reports because you have not read them, or don’t remember them.
For example… from the IPCC section I’ve been referring to…
“During the 15-year period beginning in 1998, the ensemble of HadCRUT4 GMST trends lies below almost all model-simulated trends (Box TS.3, Figure 1a), whereas during the 15-year period ending in 1998, it lies above 93 out of 114 modelled trends (Box TS.3, Figure1b; HadCRUT4 ensemble mean trend 0.26°C per decade, CMIP5 ensemble mean trend 0.16°C per decade). ”
By way of contrast, you’ve now been caught misleading by omitting the second bolded finding above by Fyfe published in the IPCC report… and you have no response except bluster and deflection.
Get some sleep, try to regain your focus in the morning… sundowner syndrome can be very debilitating and confusing.
Have a nice picture of surface temps to help you relax…
Breaking News- Javier just got owned. Stay tuned for incoherent rambling.
“Surface warming was also FASTER than predicted for the preceding 15 years”
No prediction could have been made in 2013 (AR5 date) about 1984-1998
“The long term (1951 to 2012) warming rate was exactly as predicted”
No prediction could have been made in 2013 about 1951-2012
“Global warming of the entire climate system did indeed warm at roughly the same rate as predicted by the models (actually a little faster), even over short time frames, even for 1998 to 2012 (the hiatus/pause)”
Global warming could not be predicted by models that were made afterwards.
“It warmed at the rate predicted by models for the preceding 15 years “
No prediction could have been made in 2013 about 1984-1998
“And it warmed at the predicted rate for longer periods (1951 – 2012), too”
No prediction could have been made in 2013 about 1951-2012
Everything you said in that comment about CMIP5 was untrue. There is no mystery in models reproducing past climate, as they can be adjusted to do that. It is when they predict future climate when they fail spectacularly.
What the IPCC says is:
“The observed GMST has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years (Box TS.3, Figure 1a, c). Depending on the observational data set, the GMST trend over 1998–2012 is estimated to be around one third to one half of the trend over 1951–2012.”
That is how they define the hiatus. And you don’t seem to distinguish a hindcast from a forecast.
And discounting the 2015-16 El Niño, that is weather, not climate, there has been very little warming in the 21st century. That is a fact that the IPCC AR5 recognizes. You would do well in recognizing it too, or you could be labelled as science deniers.
So it appears your entire response is to tone-troll the distinction between “predicting” vs “hindcasting” using climate models?
Fine. My language was not up to your high standards. Please substitute “hindcasting” in place of “predicting” in my posts above. Mea Culpa.
You are perfectly fine with Fyfe’s and the IPCC’s hindcasts using the CMIP model results now?
If so, we can restate your deceptions in the language you demand:
Fyfe and the IPCC found that hindcasts for the period 1998-2012 severely overestimated the observed surface warming. You cited this as proof that models are terrible, or maybe to imply that warming has stopped. But you omitted and failed to mention:
1. The fact that the model hindcasts UNDERestimated the observed surface warming for the preceding 15 year period, and
2. The hindcasts were exactly accurate for the long-term comparisons.
That is TWO blatant deceptions-by-omission.
So once again, you have retreated to cherrypicking time periods when weather and natural variability are large enough to obscure the long term change in climate. You ignore the obvious fact that such periods of slow surface warming are common in the instrumental record, and are always followed and preceded by periods of faster than average surface warming.
I bet you cannot even bring yourself to read, much less post here, what the IPCC forecasted after the 1998-2012 slowdown ended.
…..
You ignore the complete climate system – the atmosphere being the smallest part – which is warming at a steadily accelerating rate. There has been no pause or hiatus in total climate system warming – even for 1998 to 2012. The heat imbalance caused by GHGs accelerated during that period compared to the previous 15 years, and it continues to accelerate as shown in the chart below.
I see today that you have again repeated your recent falsehood about sea ice, even after clear and unambiguous data was presented here that proved you wrong. You even posted a chart that contradicted your own claim!
(http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-1-2017/#comment-591003)
Sad…
Hindcasts mean nothing, Wehappyfew. They do not constitute evidence of anything except of capacity to program a model.
The 0-2000 m ocean increase in heat content amounts to a tiny increase in temperature. According to the Argo page:
“Levitus et al 2012, recently, and Domingues et al (2008) and Levitus et al (2009) previously, have estimated the multi-decadal upper ocean heat content using best-known corrections to systematic errors in the fall rate of expendable bathythermographs (Wijffels et al, 2008). 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
Now explain to me why the 0.06°C of apparently well mixed temperature increase in the 0-2000 m ocean since the 1960’s is so alarming.
While you are at it, please point me in the direction of any scientific article that discusses a mechanism by which that heat can make it out of the ocean and make a difference.
All that heat content is much ado about nothing, and one of the clearest indications that some scientists are trying to scare people without supporting evidence. You clearly have been fooled Wehappyfew. All those GigaJoules amount to less than 0.1°C.
Javier, you said:
““Hindcasts mean nothing, Wehappyfew. They do not constitute evidence of anything except of capacity to program a model.”
If hindcasts “do not constitute evidence for anything”, why did you cite Fyfe (2012) and Fyfe (2013)???
Fyfe compared hindcasts for short timespans and and found they did NOT match observations. The models can NOT be “programmed” to match the observations – for 15 year timespans.
I completely agree with Fyfe’s analysis and conclusions, but now you don’t? … even though you cited hims to support your points?
Alternatively, you accept Fyfe’s method of comparing observations to hindcasts, but now you are unwilling to say so, now that the full context of Fyfe’s work in the WGI TS has been point out to you. The context which shows you have been dishonest by omitting important findings by Fyfe.
Confused or dishonest – let us know how we should interpret your flipflopping on Fyfe’s work.
…
Of course all denialists work very hard to deflect attention away from Ocean Heat Content and the climate system’s energy imbalance.
The steady acceleration of OHC is strong evidence that increasing GHGs are forcing the imbalance, and because it is so steady, there is nothing to cherrypick from.
But you will try to mislead us in some other way…
“Now explain to me why the 0.06°C of apparently well mixed temperature increase in the 0-2000 m ocean…”
That, right there, is a falsehood.
The increase in temperatures (and thus OHC) is not “well mixed”. Even a cursory glance at the data shows otherwise. With your vast experience in posting denialist talking points on many fora, you should know these data inside and out.
EITHER you are blatantly dishonest – attempting to distract attention from the reality of the OHC data…
…OR you are so confused and ignorant of these data that you have regurgitated a common denialist trope without knowing anything about it.
This guy mops the floor and then paints the walls with Javier
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/extreme-cherry-ice/
https://youtu.be/V2f-MZ2HRHQ
Here it is.
This is what you all have been waiting for, the actual predictions for climate change and as a bonus what we need to do about it. Read the paper carefully, there is a lot going on there but it is in clear language. The author appears to believe we still have control over the situation, at least some of it. That is the good news. The bad news is what we have to do to stop global warming and climate change from getting way out of hand. We need to stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and reduce CO2 concentration to below 350 ppm. That is a big order, especially since we have not made any real dent in even slowing CO2, it seems it is still rising. So the stop pumping it into the atmosphere has not even really started yet, just nibbling at it.
Predictions Implicit in “Ice Melt” Paper and Global Implications
http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2015/09/21/predictions-implicit-in-ice-melt-paper-and-global-implications/
Very little credibility.
Jim Hansen has been making the same prediction since 1981.
The New York Times, August 22,1981 Study finds warming trend that could raise sea levels.
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/22/us/study-finds-warming-trend-that-could-raise-sea-levels.html
“The seven atmospheric scientists predict a global warming of “almost unprecedented magnitude” in the next century. It might even be sufficient to melt and dislodge the ice cover of West Antarctica, they say, eventually leading to a worldwide rise of 15 to 20 feet in the sea level. In that case, they say, it would “flood 25 percent of Louisiana and Florida, 10 percent of New Jersey and many other lowlands throughout the world” within a century or less.”
So here we are 35 years later, a third of a century has past and we have got about 90 mm (0.3 feet) of sea level raise instead of the 5 feet promised for a third of a century. So Jim has only been 94% wrong.
Despite that, he keeps going at it knowing that he will be long dead before he is being called a lunatic. But he has no respect from his colleagues. Kevin Trenberth has said of him: Hansen’s study is rife with speculation and ‘what if’ scenarios, and contains many conjectures and huge extrapolations based on quite flimsy evidence.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/dotearth/2015/07/23/whiplash-warning-when-climate-science-is-publicized-before-peer-review-and-publication/
Actual Eemian highstand was 6.6-7 meters above present sea level, reached over about 3000 years at a global temp about 2C higher, and as much as 8C higher in Greenland. Hansen paper modeled 15 meters in 500 years. Off by an order of magnitude.
How? Start with a regional Antarctic GCM that runs over an order of magnitude hot in hindcast over Antarctic observation since 1957 (up to ~5C warming versus observed ~0-0.25C. Then run impossible RCP8.5 for 2 centuries, reaching >1100 ppm in 2100 and >2200ppm in 2200. Then assume no subsequent sinking. Finally, import the Greenland summer melt mechanism for iceberg calving to Antarctica where there is no summer melt except on the peninsula.
Amazing that after 35 years there are people still falling for that old debunked prediction.
Lol Did your PhD come with a volume?
The villagers are up in arms at the site of their old enemy. If only they could read and comprehend, but they are just peasants.
A look at the record low Arctic seaice near Svalbard
http://greatwhitecon.info/resources/arctic-regional-graphs/svalbard-sea-ice-graphs/
recent article on Arctic methane from the ArcticInstitute
http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/climate-change-arctic-security-methane-risks/
for those who would like to continue following the global sea ice plots… here is that updated page:
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/global-sea-ice
Arctic amplification signal is found in all months, but predominately in summer-fall:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL044136/abstract;jsessionid=572475D36FC49C87225E5331422E09F3.f04t04
New analysis shows Lamar Smith’s accusations on climate data are wrong
http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/noaa-temperature-datas-accuracy-confirmed-despite-congressional-objections/
http://responsiblescientists.org/
On September 20, 2016, 376 members of the National Academy of Sciences, including 30 Nobel laureates, published an open letter to draw attention to the serious risks of climate change. The letter warns that the consequences of opting out of the Paris agreement would be severe and long-lasting for our planet’s climate and for the international credibility of the United States.
A full list of signers follows the text of the letter.
An Open Letter Regarding Climate Change From
Concerned Members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
Human-caused climate change is not a belief, a hoax, or a conspiracy. It is a physical reality. Fossil fuels powered the Industrial Revolution. But the burning of oil, coal, and gas also caused most of the historical increase in atmospheric levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. This increase in greenhouse gases is changing Earth’s climate.
Our fingerprints on the climate system are visible everywhere. They are seen in warming of the oceans, the land surface, and the lower atmosphere. They are identifiable in sea level rise, altered rainfall patterns, retreat of Arctic sea ice, ocean acidification, and many other aspects of the climate system. Human-caused climate change is not something far removed from our day-to-day experience, affecting only the remote Arctic. It is present here and now, in our own country, in our own states, and in our own communities.
Members of the media interested in speaking with one of the organizers of the letter should contact responsiblescientists@gmail.com.
The fact is, climate change is poorly understood and typically even wrongly communicated by otherwise competent scientists. The truth is, much of the scientific talk centers around CO2 or CH3 while then largely ignoring H2O in all it’s various forms. Yet H2O is what regulates earth’s heat balances. Planet earth’s circadian rhythms along with it’s axis of rotation should produce dark nights with cooling through radiation. However the radiation cooling mechanism, the circadian rhythm of earth, has been upset by nighttime activities: streetlights, homes, vehicles, industry, and such. Without the nighttime cooling through circadian rhythm, earth’s water accumulates heat. Warm water then has a higher vapor pressure, to be relieved through negative feedback in the form of precipitation. So ultimately, actual science shows that today’s global warming has a real good chance of inducing tomorrow’s ice age.
Lol Speaking of poorly understood:
A circadian rhythm is a roughly 24 hour cycle in the physiological processes of living beings, including plants, animals, fungi and cyanobacteria. In a strict sense, circadian rhythms are endogenously generated, although they can be modulated by external cues such as sunlight and temperature.
With regards to the rest of your post- finish your high school
physics class and then get back to us.
Talk of being rude, Survivalist.
You are a poster child on how to establish and maintain an echo chamber.
Do you actually believe you are a tolerant person or are you aware of your image as a bigot?
Are you drinking heavily? You seem most incoherent.
What makes you think I give half a rats ass about what you think of me? You’re a guy with a PhD who makes less sense than an undergrad. You don’t even understand the meaning of simple words like ‘pause’ and how to use them properly in a sentence.
“You are a poster child on how to establish and maintain an echo chamber.”
And yet here you are. Coming back for another serving. If you don’t like it you could always just turn off your computer or do something else. Trolls gotta troll though. Gotta pay the bills right? What’s it pay to work in a troll brigade anyway?
“So ultimately, actual science shows that today’s global warming has a real good chance of inducing tomorrow’s ice age.”
Yeah I woke up yesterday and my kitchen fridge was a solid block of ice. Turns out the cat accidentally unplugged it in the night. Lol I’ll have whatever it is your smoking.
You are very easy to ignore, Survivalist, as your level of knowledge about climate is so low. If you have a childish behavior I don’t care. It is not my problem.
I do enjoy my exchanges about climate with some people here. And it is always fun to poke the stick into the hornets nest and watch the buzzing. Your stings don’t reach me.
It is good for you guys to keep the perspective and not let yourselves get carried away by alarmism. The catastrophic narrative is going to fail spectacularly as it always does. It is better if you are not too deep into that mass hysteria.
Oh come on! Don’t go all passive aggressive on me!
Here’s a link you might like
https://tonyhellerakastevengoddard.com/category/climate-troll-tips/
Javier,
is this you?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2013/may/22/secret-life-internet-climate-trolls-video
LOL!! Can’t wait to meet the young lady who calls herself the ‘Troll Slayer’, she has a PhD in nuclear physics and a black belt in judo!
Maybe Dennis will start a 3rd thread called Javiervillie or ‘discuss alternate reality with climate denier sock puppets’. His phd obviously didn’t come with a volume button. It might be nice if he had is own thread to crawl around in.
be nice to have her join in here but I guess she has her time cut out already.
NAOM
A circadian rhythm is a roughly 24 hour cycle in the physiological processes of living beings,
C’mon, Survivalist, ya know, the whole ‘Gaia’ living earth thing, eh?
Of course our MOTHER earth is a living, breathing being, even though she is made mostly of rocks. You aren’t discriminating against rocks now, are you? So of course she has circadian rhythms… she even has 17 year cicadian rythyms. There are more things in heaven and Earth, Survivalist, than are dreamt of in your science.
Hey, just because some of the people posting here lately are somewhat dumber than rocks doesn’t mean that you have to be rude and tell them that to their faces, by suggesting they got an F in Fysics.
“dumber than rocks” Don’t knock rocks. Earth tide is the displacement of the Earth’s surface caused by gravity of the Moon and Sun. Its main component has meter-level amplitude at periods of 12-ish hours. 🙂
And if gravity (etc.) is (are) part of the mechanism of the ‘absolute infinite consciousness’ of the universe (of which we are its cute little self-similar fractal buds [waves] Hi, buds! ^u^), then rocks, and whatever else, are part of it… and the ideas of living and non-living sort of dissolve and, at once, are and aren’t, etc..
Operation, Dental Stalagfill
Hey, I have a serious question for you Doug (‘phonetic’ past-tense for ‘dig’, incidentally, so kind of appropriate for someone who has practiced geology, yes?) or whoever wants to take a stab(/fill):
If one finely-ground a hard mineral or material, like teeth, would it then be possible to completely dissolve it in some kind of solution whereby, when electricity was passed through it, the dissolved material could precipitate fast and good enough on the surface of an intact tooth, or teeth, in one’s mouth, rather like, perhaps, how cave stalagmites form?
Could we create some kind of setup for this to happen, like a surface-electrified 3D mold container or cap for a tooth or teeth– let’s say, a 3D print– of the desired replacement of the missing top surfaces that had succumbed over time to cavities and general wear and tear?
Would this make any sense and, if so, more sense over current dental tech and, if so, if we could get this to work, how long would one have to sleep and/or walk around with electrified teeth? How many layers of mineral precipitate can form on surfaces over how much time? Would electricity even be the best bet to facilitate this process? If not, what else?
Well you could always program (dental) plaque to leave deposits dental enamel which is (I think) mainly hydroxyapatite which is (I suppose) much like the common mineral apatite. But why stop there, you could just program plaque to deposit gold: if the process is too slow (like millions of years) you might decide to go with stainless steel; I remember meeting girls in Siberia who had stainless steel fillings. I guess you realize by now I don’t have the slightest idea what the fuck I’m talking about. Cheers, Dig — because I’m still alive 🙂
LOL
Are you still digging though, aside from gardening?
I still dig single malt, pretty girls & … & …, well, that’s pretty much it.
Yes of course, classics that don’t seem to lose their sheen. I’m a big fan of Russian women, as well as the language.
Speaking of which, how were the Siberian girls, including the ones with the stainless steel fillings? And, while I’m at it, how does a stainless steel filling get filled (unless it is as a near-whole tooth, screwed into the bottom part of the old tooth)?
What is the best single malt in your opinion, BTW?
If one finely-ground a hard mineral or material, like teeth, would it then be possible to completely dissolve it in some kind of solution whereby, when electricity was passed through it, the dissolved material could precipitate fast and good enough on the surface of an intact tooth, or teeth, in one’s mouth, rather like, perhaps, how cave stalagmites form?
Yikes! Instead of trying to electroplate my teeth, since going to a dentist is usually a rather unpleasant experience as it is, I think I’d much rather go with something like this…
http://www.dentistryiq.com/articles/2015/11/researchers-create-gel-that-regrows-tooth-enamel-eliminates-pain-associated-with-tooth-decay.html
Tissue regeneration: Researchers create gel that regrows tooth enamel, eliminates pain associated with tooth decay
November 23, 2015
Posted by DentistryIQ Editors
Researchers say tooth gel will regrow enamel and cover painful blemishes.
tissue regeneration – newly formed enamelDual discoveries in tissue regeneration at the University of Southern California propose a promising method to regrow nonliving hard tissue, lessening or even eliminating pain associated with tooth decay, which the National Institutes of Health calls the most prevalent chronic disease.
ADDITIONAL READING | Periodontal regeneration: Back to the future
Janet Moradian-Oldak, a dentistry professor at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC, has investigated methods to regrow tooth enamel for the past two decades. The process is especially tricky because unlike bone, mature enamel cannot rejuvenate. Tooth enamel is a nonliving tissue.
Or else just go full monthy and regenerate whole teeth from stem cells.
http://now.tufts.edu/articles/promise-growing-new-teeth
Pam Yelick, G89, a professor of orthodontics and director of the division of craniofacial and molecular genetics, and her colleagues are developing ways to grow healthy new teeth and bone from dental stem cells—a type of “universal cell” that can morph into many different types of oral tissue. After harvesting the stem cells from healthy adult tooth pulp, Yelick’s team isolates them in the lab and gradually coaxes them into forming new tooth buds, the tiny clusters of soft tissue that eventually grow into a mature tooth.
Assorted Climate Denialists Mysteriously Sign Up For Bleeding-Edge Dental-Electroplating Research In Exchange For Unspecified Sums From Government-Sponsored Private Donors
I figured that you’d come up with somethings like those, and did think of 3D printing a tooth from solution too.
But I thought to give Dig, you and company first dibs before looking into it myself.
I thought even Javier with some apparent understanding in, what is it, molecular biology(?), might chime in as well. But I guess he’s got his hands full with (and may only be funded for) climate and the interpersonal comedic routines I’ve been noticing of late on here.
It’s amusing, but of course it’s also not amusing at all… But perhaps all good comedy is, paradoxically, variously underpinned by the latter, ay?
Thanks and I’ll check the links out a little later.
Speaking of the paradox of comedy, your ‘Yikes!’ was a nice touch, BTW, and I’m tempted to concur… So I guess it’s safe to assume that you and maybe most people won’t be signing up as guinea pigs for that kind of research anytime soon…
So I guess it’s safe to assume that you and maybe most people won’t be signing up as guinea pigs in that kind of research anytime soon…
As a commercial diver I had to occasionally do arc welding and cutting underwater. Especially in salt water, that was enough to make my fillings conduct all the electricity I’ll ever want in my mouth… so definitely NO THANKS!
No! No! No! The last thing I would ever do is knock rocks! LOL!
If something is gneiss, I’d never take it for granite 😉
Well-done, Sir!
Yeah, pay more attention in your chemistry class too.
NAOM
ever since the left got histerical over climate change i’ve been dumping my used motor oil right down the storm drain. screw them.
Good idea.
Did you know that petroleum literally means rock oil? Returning the oil to its original home is nourishing to the earth, and the metal bits are healthy, too!
To work best, you need to be in the proper geological setting. The areas of South Florida closest to sea level are the most deficient in petroleum nutrients. You should move there, and teach all your new neighbors the benefits of natural rock oil for the earth.
And teach the kids, too! They can enjoy the benefits for many years, centuries, and even millennia!
To work best, you need to be in the proper geological setting. The areas of South Florida closest to sea level are the most deficient in petroleum nutrients. You should move there, and teach all your new neighbors the benefits of natural rock oil for the earth.
Yo, wehappyfew, that would only work if he changes his handle to Señor Razler and learns Spanish or Creole and gets a deep tan. Otherwise the locals will think he’s an Immigration officer and won’t talk to him…
https://youtu.be/xQW_4kowyZ4
That’s awful. You should be ashamed of yourself. Oil is a terrible contaminant. It always has to be properly recycled.
Do you think your political ideas justify harming the environment on which our own existence depends? You are terribly wrong.
https://youtu.be/xQW_4kowyZ4
I think this important video that Doug introduced above got lost in the village attack.
So here it is again. Farewell to Arctic Ice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUsHfkAiWsY
Enjoy and understand.
Lol village attack. That’s a good one.
Yeah, the people in general and especially our political and global economic leaders who are very much still beholden to the notion of economic growth don’t seem to want to understand that the current system only benefits a very tiny minority of very wealthy individuals. There is a cultural and ideological war underway between the old way of doing things, exemplified by groups such as Koch Industries led by people who are interested in holding on to power.
It is no coincidence that the US government is now under almost complete control of these forces. How did we get to the point that our current ‘President’ elect is openly refuting, what every one of our intelligence agencies is telling us, that our election process was influenced and manipulated by the Russians. He has appointed Rex Tillerson who is good buddies with Putin to be our Secretary of State? really?! WTF?! I won’t even mention all the climate change deniers in congress and his other political appointees to the head the EPA and that department I can’t remember the name of…
The massive attack of the climate change denialists who have descended on this very discussion site is but another example of the forces at play. Make no mistake, these are the paid lackeys of very powerful people who are not happy with ideas that put their control and sources of income at risk. They are not interested in the truth.
I’m not sure if anyone here has watched a video I have already posted a few times of a talk by Douglas Rushkoff, American media theorist:
Douglas Rushkoff Deconstructs the Digital Economy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87TSoqnZass&t=2660s
His talk is mostly about the digital economy but the most important take away in my view is about the underlying operating system that our economy is running on today.
When it was designed, who designed it, why they designed it the way they did, and what that means for they way the world works today.
There are many disruptions happening all around us right now not the least of which is one that will create a massive reset of the global economic operating system. I think the silver lining in Trump’s presidency will be the glaring light that will be focused on all the flaws and injustices of the current system. Maybe the people will finally wake up and really the drain the swamp and fight back against these entrenched interests which are contrary to their own.
Side note: this constant attempt to frame climate change discussions as left or right, conservative or liberal, Democrat and Republican is just standard incitement of us against them. It serves their purposes only and is a tried and true propaganda tool.
Cheers!
America in four years.
Only if we keep doing, what we are doing, the way we are doing it…
It could look more like Utrecht with a distributed clean energy grid.
.
You have not seen the new regime in action yet. I heard several of them talking on NPR and had to turn it off.
Oh yes I have! Their trolls are right here on this site knocking on the door already.
Fortunately no one here takes them (him) seriously; unfortunately they (he) take up (waste) a lot of space.
Hey Fred! You know what I would find deeply satisfying, if it weren’t for the likelihood that there would be huge amounts of collateral damage that would adversely affect a huge amount of people, including yours truly?
A scenario where, as soon as the president elect and his goons have an early major success story in their crusade against science, a major piece of global warming doo doo hits the fan and splatters all over him, his cabinet and the contrarian army!
You know, something like an ice free arctic, ushering some really freakish weather and blowing away temperature or drought or flooding or sea level rise or any combination of records. Icing on the cake would be a set of results that thoroughly contradict the assurances of our resident contrarian that warming is not happening, arctic ice is not disappearing but,
in factgrowing, glaciers are not retreating and the like.Something that would cause the whole bunch of them to just have to STFU, for a while at worst and forever at best. Alas, as I said before, such an occurrence would likely be very bad news for a huge portion of the biosphere, in which event, me and my smugness might end up being very short lived.
I wish there was some way
the contrariansman made global warming could be provenwrong, even in the twisted minds of the most vehement global warming deniers, without a doubt, before things gettingFUBAR.edit in bold following Doug’s reply.
“I wish there was some way the contrarians could be proven wrong without things getting FUBAR.”
Contrarians HAVE already been proven wrong; the problem is they’ll prolong BAU and make the disaster worse than it has to be — fucked up beyond all recognition/ repair/ reason/ redemption.
Sorry Doug, I sometimes forget that this denial thing is an extreme right wing, largely US (and apparently Spanish) phenomenon. Living on an island slightly less the 500 miles south southeast of the southern most tip of the mainland US, it is so “in your face” with cable news channels and other US TV content dominating the local TV experience. One can easily lose sight of the fact that, the US is not the world!
A scenario where, as soon as the president elect and his goons have an early major success story in their crusade against science, a major piece of global warming doo doo hits the fan and splatters all over him, his cabinet and the contrarian army!
Hey islandboy, I read you loud and clear!
But as you already seem to be well aware, be careful what you wish for since we could be on the verge of a number of tipping points as it is…
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170106131954.htm
Giant iceberg, 5,000 square kilometers, set to calve from Larsen C Ice Shelf, Antarctica
Date:
January 6, 2017
Source:
British Antarctic Survey
Summary:
A huge iceberg looks set to break away from the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. Satellite observations from December 2016 show a growing crack in the ice shelf which suggests that an iceberg with an area of up to 5,000 square kilometers is likely to calve soon.
Don’t worry Fred, more ice will flow right down into the ocean to replace it.
GF, does that work kinda like a giant slushy toilet flush?
I don’t know Fred. Never had a giant slushy in my toilet to flush. I think it’s more like a giant, very slow, frozen flume ride.
Arctic sea ice isn’t going anywhere any time soon. It is likely that 10 years from now there will be more sea ice in the Arctic than now, not less.
That’s reads extent, not volume, Javier.
Sesame Street, in one skit, maybe with Grover, might suggest that more melting may cause more fresh water to accumulate on the surface of the ocean, which then freezes at a higher temperature and is also less dense, so it’s more on top where it is more exposed to the cold. So I think even the kids will understand that. How about you?
Would you also understand that a warming climate would create more ice extent temporarily if more fresh water were melting? The kids might.
The skit with Grover could also have Grover sprinkle a bit of salt on Sesame Street when it is covered with ice to have it melt it to enhance the point that fresh ice is frozen, whereas salty ice melts at similar temperatures.
That said, I’m surprised that there is not more ice than your graph shows.
Incidentally, did you hear that Judith Curry seems to be quitting? What do you make of that?
FWIW, I seem to recall reading, maybe even quoting it hereon, something to the effect that, when Judith is ‘confronted’, she ‘runs away’. So maybe this is in keeping with her character.
Extent is measured, volume is modeled.
Caelan, of course I understand what you say about freshwater. Not precisely new information. Do you realize that what you describe is a negative feedback, more melting -> more sea ice, of the many that skeptics defend that exist and that essentially oppose change?
Judith Curry is free to do whatever she wants as anybody else. I think it takes courage to renounce to a tenured position, but her company is doing so well that requires more of her time. You are free to judge her or anybody else, but your judgement says more about you than about her.
“Extent is measured, volume is modeled.” ~ Javier
So what? You don’t like models now?
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/
The Runaways
Judith Curry, as anybody else, as you write, is ‘free’ to do whatever she wants, but there are consequences, like there are consequences to throwing C02 into the atmosphere.
We cannot just ‘run away’ from Earth like Judith can from academe…
And maybe that’s the problem with both you and Judith.
Fukushima and, ostensibly, Venus ‘ran away’ and look what happened.
The volume exists in reality, Javier, and feedbacks have their own counterfeedbacks.
It’s a cherrypicker’s paradise, though, while our real paradise continues to run away…
We don’t know what are the consequences to throwing C02 into the atmosphere. Perhaps they are mostly positive. That’s what it looks.
I don’t know but doesn’t look like Judith is running away from anything. It seems she is just moving to better things.
Our paradise might be running away. It certainly looks like that. But not from climate change.
“We don’t know what are the consequences to throwing C02 into the atmosphere. Perhaps they are mostly positive. That’s what it looks… Our paradise might be running away. It certainly looks like that. But not from climate change.” ~ Javier
^^ Well there it is right there– signed, sealed and delivered…
‘We don’t know– but mostly positive‘;
‘running away– but not with climate.’
‘No-oh, uh-uh, no-way.’…
Comments/Points-of-Views/Promulgations-as-cherry-picks/-selective-realities…
Like car commercials, where there are no roadkills, no gridlocks, no fatal accidents, no geospacial/human-scale/community fragmentation/dislocation from car-centric development, no financial or maintenance costs, etc., just ‘the freedom of the open road’…
Like the promulgation of assorted technologies-of-the-years to the relative exclusion of how technology actually ends up playing out in the hands of humans…
Like ‘the economy’ or ‘non-negotiable lifestyles’ that ignore natural systems and/or frame them as ‘externalities’…
Like the degradation of the natural terrestrial system– oh, except climate, of course…
These are ‘selective realities’, Javier, from lost, sleep-walking members, who like it that way, of a runaway species.
Yep. September 2007 to September 2016. The 10 lowest Arctic sea ice extents on record. In a row. Probably gonna start going back up hard and fast real soon. Lol. What a troll.
http://blog.arcs-pro.jp/en/.assets/3_SIE_annual-minimum_eng.png
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/arctic-zone/detect/detection-images/ice-seaice-extent/N_09_plot_2016.png
Speaking of dumbing it down for Javier; Sesame Street was cool but what about grade 9 science? It seems to me that as the Arctic ice melts the ratio of its surface area to its volume will play a role. The old cubed to squared ratio. As its mass decreases its surface are will increase in proportion to its volume. Thereby increasing its rate of melt.
http://grade9sciencepedagogics.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/47844626/Elodea%20-%20lab%20report%20template%20with%20comments.pdf
The Arctic ice hasn’t melted in 9 years.
Do you understand the difference between volume and area? Can you picture a scenario in which the volume has decreased but the area has not. If the ice got thinner but the area stayed the same then that means the volume decreased. Cube to square relationship. Grade 9 science.
Oh yeah, cherry pick an autumn month when things are getting colder. Now let us see you post 30+ years with no cherry picking.
NAOM
September is the month of minimum extent every year. You are not very versed in this ice thing, are you notanoilman?
That is exactly why you can’t cherry pick it. Increase follows minimum.
NAOM
“How rare were the unusually high temperatures around the North Pole in November–December 2016 and how were they influenced by anthropogenic climate change?
https://wwa.climatecentral.org/analyses/north-pole-nov-dec-2016/
Remember Survivalist, more heat was lost to space from the Arctic in October-December 2016 that in the same period of any other previous year.
Perhaps it has to do with the severe cold spell we are having over Europe. 20 people frozen to death already in Poland, Italy and other countries. Perhaps we could do with a little more global warming. Last El Niño winter was mild and had less casualties.
What are you talking about? Did you even read the article?
Why have a fireplace when you can have one on your big screen TV with music.
Don’t have to haul wood, no ashes, the tv, while it is on, produces heat, so it does the job of a fireplace without burning wood.
Good thing to be connected to the grid, not much interruption with all of those energy sources out there gettin’ er done.
Hydro, nuclear, natural gas, fuel oil, coal make up the base for the capacity to generate and deliver electricity, a very usable formic energy, in mass quantities, hands down.
Solar and wind, not so much.
That is what is in the real world.
6,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Per square mile. That’s solar in the real world.
“For the last 35 years loses in Arctic sea ice have been compensated by gains in Antarctic sea ice so global sea ice levels have remained essentially constant.” ~ Javier
Fail!
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_extent_byyear_b.png
Are you color blind? Does that look ‘essentially constant’ to you? What do you think ‘essentially constant’ means? Is this gonna be one of those things again like where you call a ‘slow down’ a ‘pause’?
If you find all those coloured squigillie lines too confusing then check out this image.
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/giomas/grf/giomas-anomaly-all-GLOBAL.png
Link to multiple charts
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/global-sea-ice
Arctic sea ice loss linked to rising anthropogenic CO2 emissions
A new study published in the journal Science links Arctic sea ice loss to cumulative CO2 emissions in the atmosphere through a simple linear relationship (Figure 6). Researchers conducting the study, including NSIDC scientist Julienne Stroeve, examined this linear relationship based on observations from the satellite and pre-satellite era since 1953, and in climate models. The observed relationship is equivalent to a loss of 3 square meters (32 square feet) for every metric ton of CO2 added to the atmosphere, compared the average from all the climate models of 1.75 square meters (19 square feet). This smaller value, or lower sensitivity, from the models is consistent with findings that the models tend to be generally conservative relative to observations in regard to how fast the Arctic has been losing its summer ice cover. The observed rate of ice loss per metric ton of CO2 allows individuals to more easily grasp their contribution to Arctic sea ice loss.
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/
There hasn’t been any melting in the Arctic since 2007, so all those tons of CO2 from 9 years have failed to do their job properly.
“those tons of CO2 from 9 years have failed to do their job properly.” ~ Javier
And why would the tons of CO2 from the 9 years be doing their job properly, as you call it, by now? Do you think the CO2 from yesterday is “doing its job” today? I assume that “doing its job” means contributing to global warming. Are you sure you have a PhD? It doesn’t seem like it. You just don’t seem very thoughtful, intelligent or well educated. You seem kinda weird.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/9/12/124002/pdf
To say what the rate of ice loss is per metric ton of CO2 is silly. The causality has not been established so they are putting the cart before the horse. A linkage has been established by other researchers between sea ice and AMO. If true the “CO2 melts the ice” hypothesis is going to be wrong.
“To say what the rate of ice loss is per metric ton of CO2 is silly” ~ Javier
What are you talking about? The article is about length of time to maximum warming after carbon dioxide emission.
“There hasn’t been any melting in the Arctic since 2007, so all those tons of CO2 from 9 years have failed to do their job properly.” ~ Javier
Why would all those tons of CO2 from the last 9 years be expected to impact September sea ice extent from 2007 to 2016? What do you mean by “do their job properly”?
9 years lol talk about cherry picking! Are you blind in your left eye?
“Through 2015, the linear rate of decline for September Arctic ice extent over the satellite record is 13.4% per decade. The nine lowest September ice extents over the satellite record have all occurred in the last nine years.”
See September 2015 compared to previous years
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2015/10/
“Through 2016, the linear rate of decline for September is 87,200 square kilometers (33,700 square miles) per year, or 13.3 percent per decade. While the absolute seasonal minimum for 2016 was tied with 2007 as second lowest, the average extent for the month of September 2016 of 4.72 million square kilometers (1.82 million square miles) ends up being fifth lowest in the satellite record, behind both 2012 and 2007.”
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Maybe Javier just isn’t familiar with the website of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre.
Yet no melting since 2007. I didn’t cherry picked that date. It is the date when Arctic sea ice stopped melting. It appears to be AMO related.
Concurrently the temperature of the North Atlantic is falling quite fast.
All related but you have no clue.
Decreased surface salinity? Increased ocean stratification?
Since N Atlantic temps are back to 1986 levels, why is sea ice at record low extent, area, and volume today? Shouldn’t it have risen back to similar levels as in 1986?
Instead, the minimum, the maximum, the annual average… by any measure you might choose to cherrypick, sea ice is very far from 1986 levels.
This should be a clue that AMO cycles might have coincidentally matched sea ice for LESS than a full cycle period, but that maybe temperature in the area where sea ice actually forms and melts (far to the north of the AMO area) is more important… see below.
Yes exactly, Survivalist… cherrypicking, Javier’s main tool.
After an exceptionally steep drop in 2007, all short term trends that start in 2007 will be lower than the long term decline rate.
2007 and 2012 were so far below the trend that it has taken a while for subsequent years to catch up. The past two years are exactly on the linear down trend, as per the chart below.
The next time the summertime Arctic weather favors melting, the 2007 and 2012 lows will be exceeded. But there will be no long term recovery unless Arctic temperatures decline back to normal. With the polar amplification of global warming, that simply cannot happen short of a supervolcano or human intervention.
2007 and 2012 were exceptional melt years not just because they were warm, but because the weather favored export of old thick ice, and clear skies quickly formed low albedo melt ponds. Other years with similar temperatures did not reach the same extent lows at minimum… the weather (beyond just the temperatures) was unfavorable for melting.
Arctic temps, supporting the points above about years with warming vs years with warming plus exceptional melting.
(is there any way to post TWO pics in one comment?)
If your only tool is linear extrapolation you are in for a few surprises in climatology.
The melting season is also becoming shorter since 2007. This year it ended on September 11, a very early date for the last decade.
What joke, now you are getting desperate to fit your handy little file of pre-packaged denier talking points into the sea ice trend conversation.
Variations in sea ice minimum?? REALLY???
No trend, no correlation to final extent, no relationship to temperatures…see chart below
He’s a hardcore denialist; I doubt anyone here views him as anything other than a nuisance. If he had a properly functioning brain Javier would be be embarrassed by his empty comments and slink away. But sadly, he appears determined to hijack this Blog with never ending prattle.
“The melting season is also becoming shorter” ~ Javier
It seems that the date of the minimum is not the best way to determine the length of the melt season. I guess you’d have to look at when the melt season began too and not just when it ended. Then count the number of days from the beginning to the end. That would equal the length. Learn something new every day eh Doc?
NSIDC, NASA Say Arctic Melt Season Lengthening, Ocean Rapidly Warming
“Despite large regional variations in the beginning and end of the melt season, the Arctic melt season has lengthened on average by five days per decade from 1979 to 2013.
Still, weather makes the timing of the autumn freeze-up vary a lot from year to year.”
“The researchers calculated the increase in solar radiation absorbed by the ice and ocean for the period ranging from 2007 to 2011, which in some areas of the Arctic Ocean exceed 300 to 400 megajoules per square meter, or the amount of energy needed to thin the ice by an additional 3.1 to 4.2 feet (97 to 130 centimeters).”
“If air and ocean temperatures are similar, the ocean is not going to lose heat to the atmosphere as fast as it would when the differences are greater,” said Linette Boisvert, co-author of the paper and a cryospheric scientist at Goddard. “In the last years, the upper ocean heat content is much higher than it used to be, so it’s going to take a longer time to cool off and for freeze up to begin.”
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nsidc-nasa-say-arctic-melt-season-lengthening-ocean-rapidly-warming/
Maybe he’s a cognitively impaired stroke survivor or something?
More likely a paid shill and troll.
The melting season is also becoming shorter since 2007.
The long term trend calculated by NASA, cited by Survivalist, is longer melt season by 5 days/decade.
I didn’t see any statistics in the article for the robustness of that trend, but I think we can safely assume NASA wouldn’t publish the finding if the trend were statistically insignificant.
You, on the other hand have a well known habit of drawing arrows and eyeballing trends, on top of picking every cherry in sight.
Did you do a change point analysis to see if there is a statistically justifiable change of trend in 2007 to support your claim?
TIA.
The fact is that Arctic melting season has been shortening since 2007.
This fact together with the lack of Arctic sea ice melting since 2007, the change in AMO in 2006, and the cooling of the North Atlantic since 2007 reinforces the evidence that in 2007 a change of trend took place in Arctic sea ice dynamics.
Statistics might take some time to confirm it, but astute observers like Miles et al., 2014, Wyatt & Curry, 2014, and me, have already realized the fact.
This allows us to make more sound predictions about Arctic sea ice than the extrapolating crowd.
It’s the same stupid argument as his arrows on the “ice stopped melting in 2007” game.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-1-2017/#comment-591519
2007 and 2012 exceeded the long term trend. If they hadn’t and instead had been more on par then the trend would have continued on a more linear track. But because they exceeded the trend Javier states that the trend has stopped. Orwellian double-speak. More melting in 2007 and 2012 than the melting trend had predicted has, in what we shall call ‘the mind of Javier’, ended the melting trend. His 2007 to 2016 game with the arrows is ridiculous. It’s like saying a sudden burst of speed has ended the acceleration trend. It’s not possible that this dude has a PhD.
Yeah, now draw the same arrows starting 2006.
CHERRY PICKED.
NAOM
Javier Cherrypicking.
Monthly extent was lower in 2016 than 2007 for 10 months.
Monthly extent was higher in 2016 than 2007 for 2 months.
There are two cherries to pick from in that data set. You found one of them. Congratulations
Now let’s look at all the data…
Your data seems to have a problem at the starting year and ending year. You really should look at the 37 years for which we have data.
The deviations in global sea ice are always temporary and up to 2 million square kilometers. Only the Arctic oscillates by about 9 million square kilometers every year.
You really cannot make much from this year variability, don’t you?
Source University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Cryosphere
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
Ok first of all its not “my data”. Whose data it is is well referenced.
The graph you posted does not include the last 12 months.
Here’s a similar presentation with recent data included. It was all available in my post above. You just have to take the time to look.
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_extent.png
When a person says ‘the last 35 years’ most folks would take that to mean that it includes the most recent year as well the 34 that preceded it. Perhaps you have a different definition of ‘the last 35 years’ than the rest of humanity does. It would hardly be a surprise if you did. The flexible definition of words that express specific meanings does appear to be the cornerstone of you modus operandi.
What I make of this data is it demonstrates that the statement “For the last 35 years loses in Arctic sea ice have been compensated by gains in Antarctic sea ice so global sea ice levels have remained essentially constant.” is incorrect. It’s painfully obvious.
Here too
Extent ,Area and Area Anomoly.
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_extent.png
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_area.png
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_area_normanomaly.png
So what. It is the graph that I had. But if your argument that global sea ice is declining with global warming rests in the last 12 months, then you have already lost your argumentation.
There is 37 years of data in that graph. If there is no clear trend in there, then global warming and global sea ice are not related.
The data clearly demonstrates that despite present global warming, global sea ice has been remarkably stable. I know it is obvious and I know it is painful to you because you would like that Arctic and Antarctic sea ice were both melting fast.
“So what. It is the graph that I had” ~ Javier
Use the one I have. It’s more useful in answering the question at hand. If you had looked at the links I posted then you would have had it too.
“But if your argument that global sea ice is declining with global warming rests in the last 12 months, then you have already lost your argumentation.” ~ Javier
I have already told you what my argument is. This is the third time now. My argument is- your statement “For the last 35 years loses in Arctic sea ice have been compensated by gains in Antarctic sea ice so global sea ice levels have remained essentially constant.” is incorrect. I know it’s hard for you to follow a simple conversation. I think I’ve summed it up and recapped it for you quite nicely. If you still don’t get it let me know.
Your argument is full of air. I only care about the evidence. The evidence shows no clear trend in 37 years of measurements of global sea ice.
As you cannot dismiss that evidence, what you say is pointless.
Your graph disproves your claim. There is a clear trend in the data, but the compressed scale makes it hard to see.
Please calculate the actual trend in these data, find the statistical significance, and don’t forget to account for auto-correlation…
… then you can make claims about the trend or lack of trend in these data.
You’re not too bright are ya?
“For the last 35 years loses in Arctic sea ice have been compensated by gains in Antarctic sea ice so global sea ice levels have remained essentially constant.” ~ Javier
That statement is not true. Global sea ice levels have not remained essentially constant. Look at the most recent data in the 35 year data set. If you want to ignore that data and look like an idiot then go ahead.
Global sea ice in 1997-2000 was about the same as 2013-15. Not much of a change then, right?
Fail
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_area_byyear_b.png
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_extent_byyear_b.png
Lol “not much”? I guess that depends on what you think “not much” means. How about we start using precise numbers there PhD guy. How about we use measurements instead of normative terms? What’s your PhD in, humanities?
Looking at the data for ALL months, not just cherrypicking the minimum…
Clear down trend for Arctic ice, statistically significant.
Much smaller up trend for Antarctic, not statistically significant, now falling far below all previous historical levels.
No downtrend for the Arctic since 2007 according to DMI.
http://osisaf.met.no/p/new_ice_extent_graphs.php
If 2007 to 2012 minimums were all on the red line instead of below it would you then agree that 2007 to 2016 would have a downtrend? If minimum annual Arctic sea ice extent had been slightly greater in those years would then the downtrend be restored?
You don’t understand.
AMO is turning negative. North Atlantic is cooling. 2006-7 was the turning point.
Arctic sea ice is just reflecting that. It is not melting since then and it won’t melt until those conditions change again, maybe in a couple of decades.
I know it. Miles et al., 2014 know it. Wyatt & Curry, 2014 know it. You don’t know it. You will.
Proper statistical analysis/sampling for climate says we have to wait at least 30 years, yes?
If so, then no one ‘knows it’.
Who told you that Caelan?
Do you really think that we have to wait 30 years to know that there was a change of trend in North Atlantic temperatures in 2007?
What do you do with trends that are shorter than 30 years? Ignore them?
Why don’t you just answer the question that was posed in the comment you replied to instead of trying to tell me that I’m not aware of something? How do you know what I am and am not aware of! Do you think this strategy makes you seem smart? Why can’t you stick to the topic of a conversation without constantly changing it? Is it because you’re trying to avoid answering it?
Once again. If 2007 to 2012 minimums were all on the red line instead of below it would you then agree that 2007 to 2016 would have a downtrend? If minimum annual Arctic sea ice extent had been slightly greater in those years would then the downtrend be restored? It’s a yes or no answer.
I don’t play hypothetical games.
If the data was different I would study the data before coming to a conclusion. That is what I always do.
If Arctic sea ice had not stopped melting in 2007 and the trend had continued, I would not be defending that the Arctic sea ice had stopped melting in 2007. I just follow the evidence wherever it takes me.
Lol what a troll
“Climate is the statistics of weather, usually over a 30-year interval.” ~ Wikipedia
Granted, there is a ‘usually’ qualification.
Nevertheless, how long have we been burning fossil fuel? ~180 years? That’s a trend. There might also be some other under-30-year trends in there, some of which may counterbalance others.
Why cherry pick 2007. 2002/2003 would blow your hypothesis out of the water.
NAOM
2007 is not cherry picked. It is the year Arctic sea ice stopped melting. Nobody selected it.
2007 is not the year that Arctic ice stopped melting. It’s the first year that the Arctic ice melting greatly exceeded the downward trend line. Do you think that “the first year that the Arctic ice melting greatly exceeded the trend line” is synonymous with “the first year the Arctic ice stopped melting”? PhD indeed. You know less than an undergrad.
Cherry ripe, cherry ripe,
Ripe I cry,
Full and fair ones
Come and buy.
Cherry ripe, cherry ripe,
Ripe I cry,
Full and fair ones
Come and buy
NAOM
That looks like an overall downtrend. Am I reading that graph properly, or has Javier lost it?
Same global sea ice in 1997-2000 as in 2013-15. Not much of a trend, then.
“Same global sea ice in 1997-2000 as in 2013-15. Not much of a trend” ~ Javier
Fail
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_area_byyear_b.png
I am talking about an apparent overall downtrend over ~30 years, such that the graph seems to show, as opposed to short non-contiguous snippets of time as you highlight.
For some reason, I am suddenly reminded of the expression to the effect that some people will be dead by their own hands before they accept some things.
Janvier is alternating his comments between Arctic sea ice extent and global sea ice extent. He started up page with a graph about Arctic sea ice extent.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-1-2017/#comment-591519
Now he’s talking about global sea ice extent. It’s rather difficult to conduct an intelligent conversation with a person who changed the topic every time they open their mouth. But let’s be honest. An intelligent conversation is not what Javier comes here to provide.
You found another data set to cherrypick… congratulations!
Of course the majority of the monthly charts show 2016 as the lowest. A few show a tie, and… of course… you found a few to cherrypick.
The average of all months is far lower for 2016 than 2007, as Dennis has pointed out numerous times.
Most look like this:
Who cares about May?
I thought alarmists were worried that the Arctic could become ice free during the summers soon.
May, June and July have the highest Arctic solar insolation – with 24 hour sunlight.
With May extent, in particular, hitting new lows, that means reflective ice is replaced with darker melt pools and open blue water – that is positive albedo feedback starting earlier and earlier.
Cherrypicked September minimums are useless for albedo feedback, as the sun is right on the horizon – nearly zero insolation.
That albedo feedback is not strong enough to:
– Reduce sea ice at the end of the melting season that hasn’t decreased since 2007.
– Lengthen the melting season that has been shortening since 2007.
Why should we care?
Choosing one month out of twelve is cherrypicking.
Reduced albedo increases the amount of solar energy absorbed by the Arctic Ocean. This ocean is stratified by salinity, instead of temperature (as the other oceans are). This allows the increased energy absorbed to penetrate to greater than usual depths, instead of convecting up to the surface to be radiated away.
This is a reservoir of hidden heat that survives and intensifies from year to year.
Any increase in extent for just a few years, in cherrypicked months only, is statistically insignificant…
… Or have you done a change point analysis to support your frivolous and tiresome claim of a change in trend?
“Choosing one month out of twelve is cherrypicking.”
Yeah, well. It is the way alarmists have been doing it for years when the minimum was going down.
I guess everything alarmists do becomes cherrypicking the moment skeptics do it.
A reservoir of hidden heat? Alarmists are becoming more fantasists with time. Do they really think people actually believe such things?
Global ice shows a weak trend. It bottomed in 2006-2007, and then again in 2011-2012, but has since recovered to the same levels it had in the late 90’s in the 2013-2015 period.
2016 might have been a bad year, but Special Sensor Microwave Imager and Sounder (SSMIS) on the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F-17 satellite that provides passive microwave brightness temperatures (and derived Arctic and Antarctic sea ice products) failed in April 2016, so the data for 2016 is suspect until it is confirmed that it is not affected by this problem. In any case one year doesn’t affect the overall picture.
So same global sea ice in 2013-15 as in 1997-2000 is what I would call essentially constant. Since that period includes nine of the ten warmest years on record, I would say that it is remarkable that no sea ice melting has taken place on a global scale.
Figure from:
Parkinson, C. L., & DiGirolamo, N. E. (2016). New visualizations highlight new information on the contrasting Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice trends since the late 1970s. Remote Sensing of Environment, 183, 198-204.
If your “analysis” of the long term trend consists of Cherrypicking 10 months out of the 2013-2015 period that are blue in the lower panel of your pretty chart…
… while they are surrounded by many, MANY more dark red and orange months…
… and your chart is not even up to date – the last few months being far below all previous months…
…and you never bother with actually computing a trend, or a confidence interval for that trend, or compute its statistical significance, and you haven’t even done any change point analysis to justify a change in the trend…
… it is clear you are desperate to find any shred of justification, no matter how weak, for your crumbing mental model of the climate.
Reality is coming up hard against your frail understanding of the world. Reality is winning.
Arctic sea ice is not decreasing. There will be more of it in 2017 than in 2016. You should be happy about it.
“no sea ice melting has taken place on a global scale.” ~ Javier
Fail
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_area_byyear_b.png
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_extent_byyear_b.png
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_area_normanomaly.png
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/giomas/grf/giomas-year-GLOBAL.png
Tucker interviewed Judith Curry on his show on Friday. She was really blowing the lid off of what is really going on at public universities in this country regarding climate change research. It was a good discussion, and Tucker is now planning a multi-part series exploring just what we do actually know about climate change and all of what we don’t…I will watch for it coming soon.
JUDITH CURRY FULL INTERVIEW WITH TUCKER CARLSON (1/6/2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMn880WDRGQ
She sounds quite reasonable. She’s not denying anything. She’s saying there’s a lot of uncertainty and we don’t really know how much we are contributing to climate change.
That she has been so much attacked for saying something so reasonable is an indication of how politicized and unscientific climatology has become.
She has 168 peer reviewed articles, so it is not as she doesn’t know what she is talking about.
It goes back to the point I and others (such as those– who I’ve also likely quoted– doing climate science) have made some time ago, and that is that if there is any doubt– and there usually is, and lots of it– in this and any other regard, including WRT ‘energy transition’, it needs to be approached with great caution, plural input, and responsibility, etc..
This is not what happens nearly enough, however, and is in part why I mention the term, ‘escaped lab-experiment’, along with its context, elsewhere in this thread.
It’s like, “Problems? What problems? And/Or, don’t worry, be happy, and/or we’ll worry about it later, and/or we’ll keep kicking the cans down the road.”
To paraphrase Ron Patterson sometimes, this kind of thing really pisses me off.
Human specializations, such that are found in science, and that are made possible from energy surpluses from such sources as food and oil, are nevertheless their own lenses/myopias, as fabulous as they may be in their own regards.
Recall what Thomas Kuhn once said… To paraphrase…
‘It is the lens which determines what we can see.’…
Thus, in effect, our self-handicapped culture has become a little like someone with ‘special needs’– you know; the good folks that need a little help to do some things that others can do on their own?
Sure, the nihilists might suggest that that will blow open a whole lot of fine holes as ecological niches, but to what ends, such as to our own?
Javier, please read the sourcewatch link in wharf rat’s post below.
She is obviously quite deranged.
Lol in Javier’s world Judith Curry is a rock of integrity! Wadhams and Hanson? None. Not a shred. What a troll.
Wing-nut
The Right and Left Hand Tag Teams
Science is funded/supported/nurtured by what? Government? Taxes? Coercion? Vested/private/personal interests? Money? Status? Power? One, some or all of the above? Jello pudding?
If science is funded and/or its output influenced by coercive or otherwise dubious/self-defeating structures, such that all human structures may fundamentally have elements of, then what of it, of science?
Is it even science? Was it ever?
(Was America ever ‘great’? What does ‘America’ even mean?)
What does Tainter, for example, say about complexity and collapse? How complex is the ‘institution of science’ currently? Is it a backyard, basement, garage, lone endeavor?
Maybe this whole convolution with climate is one coal mine canary of cultural collapse…
Where Judith and Javier (J&J), et le reste, are mere players.
Maybe J&J are the same person. A kind of tag team.
But what difference does that really make?
What Difference Does It Make?
“Georgia Tech Prof quits over craziness in climate science”
Climate science isn’t quite as crazy today. She’s been suffering from PTSD ever since the Koch Bros-funded Berkeley Earth study she was part of came up with findings the exact opposite of what she knew they would find….
Bombshell: Koch-Funded Study Finds ‘Global Warming Is Real’, ‘On The High End’ And ‘Essentially All’ Due To Carbon Pollution
https://thinkprogress.org/bombshell-koch-funded-study-finds-global-warming-is-real-on-the-high-end-and-essentially-all-due-to-be07aeadc3de#.9xcxwg5yv
Judith A. Curry is chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She runs a climate blog and has been invited by Republicans on several occasions to testify at climate hearings about uncertainties in climate understanding and predictions. Climate scientists criticize her uncertainty-focused climate outreach communication for containing elementary mistakes and inflammatory assertions unsupported by evidence. Curry is a regular at Anthony Watts’ denier blog, as well as Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit, another denier site. She has further embarrassed herself (and her university) by using refuted denier talking points and defending the Wegman Report, eventually admitting she hadn’t even read it in the first place.[1]
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Judith_Curry
No amount of faith will change the electron shell configuration of a CO2 molecule so that it doesn’t react to long wave IR.
Atmospheric CO2
Growth Rate
2005 – 2014
2.11 ppm per year
1995 – 2004
1.87 ppm per year
1985 – 1994
1.42 ppm per year
1975 – 1984
1.44 ppm per year
1965 – 1974
1.06 ppm per year
1959 – 1964
(6 years only)
0.73 ppm per year
Interesting. Perhaps that increase to 2.11/year is kicking in now.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/9/12/124002/pdf
‘Overwhelmed’ Massachusetts Nuclear Power Plant Spikes with Radiation
http://peakoil.com/enviroment/overwhelmed-massachusetts-nuclear-power-plant-spikes-with-radiation
Hillary lost the election because the Russians hacked the election!
A great big lie.
Hillary lost because the Affordable Care Act is not affordable and is hardly care. People want change, they want the ACA gone for good.
She lost the election because the Democrats are a bunch of crybullies who never stop complaining about the stupid voters who know nothing about who to vote for.
The Democrats lost because they don’t want to govern, they want to rule.
The Democrats can get lost. Good riddance to a bunch of losers who will never learn.
They’re in the dustbin of history now, it is over for them. You can thank the voters of America for rejecting the Democrats and their crazy policies.
Too bad the Republicans are still here. Good riddance to them too when they are finally gone for good.
Both parties are obsolete, do not represent anybody anymore.
What a relief it will be when they are dead and gone.
Both parties are still doing their best to represent the people who pay their respective bills.
It WOULD be really great if both parties could somehow experience a rebirth as more accountable and transparent organizations.
Nature abhors a vacuum, when men cease to believe in God, they do not henceforth believe in NOTHING.
It’s good to be careful about what you wish for, because you may actually get it.
It’s hard to say what might happen if the people of this country were to reject both parties, but if that scenario comes to pass, one things for sure. Times will be INTERESTING sure enough.
My personal opinion is that the D party is experiencing some deep and painful soul searching for now, and that the result of this soul searching will be a turn back towards more traditional D party politics and away from the politics of globalism , etc. The D’s will be able to win handily in my opinion if they manage this change of course well.
Let’s not forget that the large majority of old folks in this country are dependent on government checks, and that every year millions more boomers morph from tax payers to tax eaters, as they start collecting their federal bennies.
Let’s not forget that in a hell of a lot of small towns, and rural areas, that government employees constitute the biggest single block of wage earners, and that they control the political balance of power in countless larger towns and probably in most fair sized to large cities as well.
The D party isn’t in any danger of rolling over and dying quietly, although it lost the recent barfight, badly , and will be licking it’s wounds for a while. There’s plenty of reason to expect the D party to come back strong within the easily foreseeable future, assuming the people who will be running it remember this last past election, and act like coaches, and put the best the party has to offer on the playing field, instead of acting like parents, and putting their own kid out there, regardless of the kid’s ability to play and win.
It’s harder for me to say where the R party is headed, long term. If the D party insists on keeping it’s head buried, in terms of the culture war, the R’s will probably continue to win elections from dog catcher to president for a long time yet.
But in the long run, it’s going to become obvious to the men and women on the street that the D party is right about the environment, right about renewable energy, right about safety nets, and so forth.
These are comforting thoughts that lead to reasonable expectations of a return to power by the D party, but there’s a MAJOR problem or obstacle with this line of reasoning.
The problem is that the large majority of people tend to vote their perceived best SHORT TERM to medium term interests. A man truly anxious , or scared , about his employment prospects is very apt to vote R, in times like these, and people who are disgusted with the overall cultural agenda the D party has been pushing for all it’s worth in recent years will continue to vote against the D’s on that basis alone.
The D’s can win by being more realistic about WHO they take for granted. The hard core identity politics voter is IN the Democratic Party bag, and will stay there, without a doubt. It’s safe for the party to take this voter for granted, to a substantial extent, because while he may grumble, the odds are very good that he will still show up and vote the D ticket. The odds of such a voter voting R are so small it’s safe to totally ignore the very idea.
BUT it is not at ALL safe for the D party to take working class people as a group, as a voting block, for granted.That mistake put Trump, who was smart enough to capitalize on it, in the White House as prez elect.
That’s a mistake that the D party will hopefully avoid making again.
Trump is so awful that even Clinton would have beaten him, if she had avoided that mistake.
Of course she was awful herself, in terms of public trust, charisma, flip flopping, arrogance, etc.
Now I’m going to indulge myself and just go ahead and post some stuff NOW,instead of later, to see what sort of response HB can come up with in reply.
Here are a couple of good items, one being part of the Judicial Watch press release , concerning the reversal of a recent court decision in favor of Clinton, which will likely result in even more stink trailing after her.
xxxx
(Washington DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding today’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a case that would require Secretary of State John Kerry to seek the help of the attorney general in recovering additional Hillary Clinton emails:
The courts seem to be fed up with the Obama administration’s refusal to enforce the rule of law on the Clinton emails. Today’s appeals court ruling rejects the Obama State Department’s excuses justifying its failure to ask the attorney general, as the law requires, to pursue the recovery of the Clinton emails. This ruling means that the Trump Justice Department will have to decide if it wants to finally enforce the rule of law and try to retrieve all the emails Clinton and her aides unlawfully took with them when they left the State Department.
The appellate ruling reverses a decision in which the District Court declared “moot” a Judicial Watch’s lawsuit challenging the failure of Secretary of State John Kerry to comply with the Federal Records Act (FRA) in seeking to recover the emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other high level State Department officials who used non-“state.gov” email accounts to conduct official business (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. John F. Kerry (No. 16-5015)). According to the FRA, if an agency head becomes aware of “any actual, impending, or threatened unlawful removal . . . or destruction of [agency] records,” he or she “shall notify the Archivist . . . and with the assistance of the Archivist shall initiate action through the Attorney General for the recovery of [those] records.”
An appellate panel found:
Appellants sought the only relief provided by the Federal Records Act—an enforcement action through the Attorney General. But nothing the Department did (either before or after those complaints were filed) gave appellants what they wanted. Instead of proceeding through the Attorney General, the Department asked the former Secretary to return her emails voluntarily and similarly requested that the FBI share any records it obtained. Even though those efforts bore some fruit, the Department has not explained why shaking the tree harder—e.g., by following the statutory mandate to seek action by the Attorney General—might not bear more still. It is therefore abundantly clear that, in terms of assuring government recovery of emails, appellants have not “been given everything [they] asked for.” Absent a showing that the requested enforcement action could not shake loose a few more emails, the case is not moot.
In May 2015 Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after the State Department failed to take action following a letter to Kerry “notifying him of the unlawful removal of the Clinton emails and requesting that he initiate enforcement action pursuant to the FRA,” including working through the Attorney General to recover the emails. Judicial Watch’s lawsuit subsequently was consolidated with a later lawsuit by Cause of Action Institute. This ruling reverses a January 2016 decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissing the case and remands it.
What do you have in the way of personal insults to offer in reply , HB? It’s perfectly obvious you are reduced to calling me names, which run off me like water off a duck’s back. My old hide is thick and leathery. 😉
Both parties are obsolete, do not represent anybody anymore.
Don’t worry buddy we’ll have two brand new parties soon enough.
They will be called Remocrats and Depublicans!
If you want a different system, you’ve got to support changes in campaign funding laws.
It has gotten so expensive to run for office that politicians are always seeking money. The rich and the corporations have more of it so their wishes tend to carry more political weight.
What I am counting on is that Silicon Valley money will start to replace old industry money and Silicon Valley values are at least closer to mine than the conservative politicians. They support science and technology, immigration, renewable energy, etc.
Dere vill only be one party, Comrade. Da Trumpeteers.
In Soviet America, the government, elects you!
Interesting paper on the acceleration of tributary glaciers when buttressing ice shelves break away.
Changes in ice-shelf buttressing following the collapse of Larsen A
Ice Shelf, Antarctica, and the resulting impact on tributaries
ABSTRACT. The dominant mass-loss process on the Antarctic Peninsula has been ice-shelf collapse, including the Larsen A Ice Shelf in early 1995. Following this collapse, there was rapid speed up and thinning of its tributary glaciers. We model the impact of this ice-shelf collapse on upstream tributaries, and
compare with observations using new datasets of surface velocity and ice thickness. Using a two-horizontal-
dimension shallow shelf approximation model, we are able to replicate the observed large increase
in surface velocity that occurred within Drygalski Glacier, Antarctic Peninsula. The model
results show an instantaneous twofold increase in flux across the grounding line, caused solely from
the reduction in backstress through ice shelf removal. This demonstrates the importance of ice-shelf buttressing for flow upstream of the grounding line and highlights the need to explicitly include lateral stresses when modelling real-world settings. We hypothesise that further increases in velocity and flux
observed since the ice-shelf collapse result from transient mass redistribution effects. Reproducing
these effects poses the next, more stringent test of glacier and ice-sheet modeling studies.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022143016000770
Yeah, I think Doug posted this talk by Prof. Richard Alley addressing some of the physics of ice sheet buttressing a while back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7MNA44RMNA&t=2s
For those interested in the effects of climate change in their region (USA), here is the National Climate Assessment Report.
http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/
Fortunately living in Florida, I have nothing to worry about…
So I dedicate this song to everyone participating in this thread! I suggest we learn the lyrics so we can all join hands and sing it together.
Take it away folks!
Climate Change Deniers’ Anthem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skVrKVJb1Sc
Great choir! Are they from Egypt?
You got it Fred, nothing to worry about. Just a little experiment and we got most of the world to participate. Saved us a ton of funding, the people are so generous, burning all that stuff to make the experiment work! What could go wrong, it’s only parts per million and parts per billion?
By the way, the control planet is Venus and the lower boundary is Mars.
I still can’t figure out why people want to go to Mars, Venus is so much more earthlike with a real atmosphere, similar gravity and so nice and warm. I guess the visibility is usually better on Mars, still it’s cold there. I think it’s probably because of all those books and movies about Mars.
Repeat after me, there are no canals on Mars.
Nice! And in the related videos column on the right:
The Koch Brothers & Their Amazing Climate Change Denial Machine
I think this video says it all.
https://youtu.be/9NP0L1PG9ag
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. You have missed out on the opportunity to reply to a very intelligent question that was directed at you. You just kinda left it hanging.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-1-2017/#comment-591496
It is alleged you are either confused or dishonest. Have you nothing to say to that?
Let’s all take a vote. Who thinks Javier should be banned because he’s an idiot?
Maybe instead of banning him, we should award him a trophy for the best parody of a science and climate change denier in the history of the internet. The man is pure comedy gold! He is a satirist extraordinaire, an absolute master in the art of Poe! I give him five thumbs up for his unparalleled performance, it is beyond brilliant! His consistently precise punch line delivery can only be the result of a life long pursuit of comedic excellence! I salute him. He is the Rodney Dangerfield of climate science stand up! Bravo!
Lol yeah you have a point. It’s like when you grab someone’s hand and smack them with it. “What are you doing? Don’t hit yourself. Why are you hitting yourself? What’s wrong with you?” He is one of the more entertaining sock puppets that’s for sure. Pretending to have a PhD is the icing on the cake!
You should refrain from constantly insulting me. It reflects poorly on you and on the blog.
I’m not constantly insulting you. I guess I should check though and ask, what do you think the word ‘constantly’ means?
“You are very easy to ignore, Survivalist” ~ Javier
And yet here you are again. Unable to do it. Maybe you don’t know what the word ‘ignore’ means. Lol what a troll.
OFM had a question a while back about the energy needed to melt sea ice (and the land based ice sheets, too? … I don’t remember)…
… anyway, PIOMAS has a nice little summary of the answer for SEA ICE, at least, on their page:
“It takes energy to melt sea ice. How much energy? The energy required to melt the 16,400 Km^3 of ice that are lost every year (1979-2010 average) from April to September as part of the natural annual cycle is about 5 x 10^21 Joules. For comparison, the U.S. Energy consumption for 2009 (www.eia.gov/totalenergy) was about 1 x 10^20 J. So it takes about the 50 times the annual U.S. energy consumption to melt this much ice every year. This energy comes from the change in the distribution of solar radiation as the earth rotates around the sun.
To melt the additional 280 km^3 of sea ice, the amount we have have been losing on an annual basis based on PIOMAS calculations, it takes roughly 8.6 x 10^19 J or 86% of U.S. energy consumption.
However, when spread over the area covered by Arctic sea ice, the additional energy required to melt this much sea ice is actually quite small. It corresponds to about 0.4 Wm^-2 . That’s like leaving a very small and dim flashlight bulb continuously burning on every square meter of ice. Tracking down such a small difference in energy is very difficult, and underscores why we need to look at longer time series and consider the uncertainties in our measurements and calculations.”
0.4 Watts/m^2 is less than the average global energy imbalance due to GHGs. Most of that extra energy is currently going into the ocean, but there’s plenty around for melting, too.
“December 2016 sea ice volume was 11,200 km3 , nearly 1000 km3 below the previous record for December in 2012.”
“2016 December volume was 52% below the maximum December ice volume in 1979, 39% below the 1979-2015 mean, and about 1.3 standard deviations below the long term trend line.”
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
Global Ice Viewer
Divided into four categories: Glaciers, Greenland and Iceland, Arctic, and Antarctic.
http://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/global-ice-viewer/#/
The past 24 hours of commenting activity on this thread has actually gotten me interested in getting into the mindset of you climate change extremists/crusaders. Do you guys truly believe that posting all these links and pieces of information about climate change is actually accomplishing anything worthwhile?
From the way I currently see things, most of the leading posts by the climate change “experts” here appear intended to bait Javier into yet another argumentative merry-go-round where everybody involved just winds up looking like an idiot. Also, speaking of being “experts” in climate change, why do most of you hide behind nicknames instead of using your real name? Finally, given the amount of time some of you people seem to spend here, I suggest doing something that’s a bit healthier. Get outside, go for a walk, read a book. Why spend hours arguing just for the sake of arguing?
https://youtu.be/xQW_4kowyZ4
How, exactly, is this kind of response supposed to help your cause?
What, exactly, makes you think I want help?
I didn’t ask you if you wanted help. Though quite honestly, I’m seeing signs of mental illness in both you and Javier and think you both need help. You two have been arguing about nonsense for hours at a time for days at a time. About a third of the nearly 700 posts (at present) in this thread have come from you two!
“How, exactly, is this kind of response supposed to help your cause?”
What makes you think I want help for a cause? And just what do you think my cause is?
“You two have been arguing about nonsense for hours at a time for days at a time. About a third of the nearly 700 posts (at present) in this thread have come from you two!”
So what? Why do you care what me and Javier do?
The non-petroleum threads were a good place to discuss/observe politics. I also enjoyed reading from people like Oldfarmermac, R Walter, or Boomer II, even if I didn’t always agree with them. But now you and Javier have come in, and it’s like you’ve thrown a bunch of trash all over the place.
Yep. All Javier all the time. He must get paid by the hour. Maybe you need a ‘safe space’.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-1-2017/#comment-591213
I could really do without all the climate change discussions here (both pro and con). There are other places I can go for that.
What I come here for is primarily info on the decline rates for LTO. I want to know the future of drilling in these areas.
I’m also interested in the overall economics of energy, and I find what is posted here of interest, though I know there are a lot of websites covering renewables, so I can find much of that information elsewhere.
But this forum has been my best source to know what is happening with well decline rates, so I never like to see that info buried under lots of other posts.
I suppose it does help to have a separate non-petroleum post to catch all the climate related discussions, but it has definitely gotten overwhelming recently. I skim over much of it, but I did happen to see this comment and my name included, so I thought I would weigh in.
The real question is, why does Javier feel so compelled to respond to every mention of global warming? Does he suffer from OCD? Is he part of The Koch Brothers & Their Amazing Climate Change Denial Machine? His consistent behavior certainly follows their play-book except that he very occasionally says something nice about renewable energy or supports some environmental cause or says something about reducing the human pollution footprint on the planet or comments about the need to reduce the human population.
Maybe Javier is a new type of troll, trained to try and fit in by agreeing with viewpoints that are generally agreed by any group he participates in, as long as those view points are not concerned with the target subject of his handlers, global warming. His dogged determination to counter any suggestions that global warming is a threat leave me no choice to conclude that he is a man on a mission, possibly being paid. Nobody would persist, as he has, in a forum where he is clearly not convincing a single member to change their mind, unless his target audience is not the members of the forum but those who might visit and find the posts alarming. Gotta soothe the fears. Can’t have the peons getting worried about global warming!
Seems to me to be a strategy straight out of the Koch brothers play-book!
That’s a very astute observation. Javier seems to seek acceptance through energy related comments but seeks conflict through climate science related comments. Once in a conflict he also likes to play the victim card. I’m convinced he’s a sock puppet aka a paid troll.
Look at this post with chart by Javier
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-january-1-2017/#comment-591519
I suggested to him that if 2007 to 2012 minimums were closer to the red lines, i.e. had a greater annual sea ice minimum, then the downward trend would continue along the red line. But because the minimum sea ice extent exceeded the trend created by the red line he claims “it has stopped melting since 2007”. So, a greater annual sea ice minimum would appear to restore the downward trend, but, in what we shall refer to as the mind of Javier, melting that exceeds the downward trend ends the downward trend. It’s Orwellian double-speak i.e. more ice area at the 2007 to 2012 minimum restores the downward trend. Less ice and the downward trend disappears. I tried asking him a question in that thread to state as such but, after trying to change the conversation to AMO, Javier then said “I don’t play hypothetical games”. He clings varaciously to some extremely rediculous arguments. I believe that he is not as well educated as he claims to be.
“Nobody would persist, as he has, in a forum where he is clearly not convincing a single member to change their mind, unless his target audience is not the members of the forum but those who might visit and find the posts alarming.”
Exactly! Trademark of a troll.
Actually has anyone noticed that once Javier responds to a comment either no one else comments (discussion silenced), or people waste a lot fo time refuting his claims (discussion derailed).
I think he has succeeded in chilling and ending discussion of the topic, which is the one of the major goals of a climate denier troll.
Casting doubt and confusing the issue is very effective in the propaganda war against humanity.
Hey, none of us are going to win any points by being nice or polite or providing facts! This is all about obfuscation, misinformation and casting of doubt.
Soooo!
Here’s some more great Music by Pig With The Face Of A Boy!
Climate Change Denier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h74DTdTlCk
He talks about solar cycles
Says they’ll never make him pay
He says an Exon-funded study says
That everything’s okay
He loves to show you the emails
See how the liberals conspire
He’s a middle-class, middle-brow, middle-weight, middle-aged Climate change denier.
Enjoy! 🙂
“or people waste a lot fo time refuting his claims (discussion derailed).”
Guilty as charged lol
“Maybe Javier is a new type of troll, trained to try and fit in by agreeing with viewpoints that are generally agreed by any group he participates in, as long as those view points are not concerned with the target subject of his handlers, global warming.”
Island boy has an adult sized brain, never mind his kid sized handle. As far as internet trolling goes, he’s probably right, Javier is displaying all the signs of a SOPHISTICATED troll.
This sort of sophistication displayed in such consistent fashion day in and day out, on the part of one individual, and posted on a single web site, does seem to be a new development, but the practice is as old as history.
At one time I put a great deal of time into reading everything I could find about how the old Russian commies operated, back in the days of the USSR.
They leveraged their limited reserves of hard currency this way very effectively indeed, by supporting a large number of small organizations that usually had relatively few members and hardly any power at all, except that the members thereof could and did do just as Island Boy suggests Javier is doing today, agreeing on some key points, by way of camouflage, but disagreeing on one or more major point, thereby discrediting the target or enemy organization, slowing the progress of the enemy’s work on a worthwhile goal, etc.
In a lot of cases, the large majority of the members of these organizations didn’t even realize they were being played like a violin. So long as they created controversy, and diverted ENERGY and ATTENTION away from any activities that strengthened the target or enemy, thus improving the relative balance of power between the target and the USSR, the commies earned a big overall return on their very minimal investment.
I haven’t posted anything for a long time indicating I know much about the history of Nazi Germany, because there always seems to be somebody around eager to call ME a nazi. But the only way to I could ever truly understand how and why Hitler came to power was to read some thick books written by serious historians , books about Hitler, and his political movement. I read them, and more than a little about the history of the Russian commie era as well. China was not yet a major player on the world stage, so I didn’t get very deep into modern Chinese history. Maybe someday I will have the leisure and inclination to do so.
I no longer have these books handy, and can’t quote them, but it’s WELL worth noting that IF some wealthy individuals had not supplied Hitler and his cronies with relatively modest sums of money at various times when he was still only a local rabble rouser, unknown to the larger public, and not yet well known even to the people who would later form the core of the nazi movement, he most likely would have died without having earned more than a footnote or two in history. He used those critical early donations to spread the word,and attract new followers, by establishing or buying a newspaper, etc, henceforth devoted to telling it HIS way.
Later on, he won the support of the long established and very powerful families that owned some of the biggest and most important German industries. These rich folks of course thought that they could use Hitler and his movement with impunity, but he fooled the shit out of them, and wound up using THEM, the end result being that more than a few of them lost their very lives, and most of them lost their vast fortunes, when he started and lost WWII.
I could go on to draw parallels between that period in German history, and possible developments in Yankee history over the next few years, but I leave that task as homework for those with a yen to express their worries about , and contempt for, Trump and his Trumpster buddies and friends and unwitting foot soldiers.
I’m worried myself, but there are plenty of other forum members who can do as well or better than I can in fleshing out these worries. And while I am contemptuous of Trump himself, and his better educated, better informed supporters, I have no contempt for his foot soldiers, the ordinary working people who voted their convictions and fears, having arrived at their decision using such data as they had available to them.
If Einstein had been born to poor illiterate peasant parents, in a community where nearly everybody was illiterate, he most likely would have died illiterate himself. We don’t CHOOSE the circumstances into which we are born, and while I believe as much as anybody in personal initiative and the work ethic, there is still a LOT of truth in such sayings as “It takes a village”, lol.
Except for the fact that I happened to go to a very decent but still backwoods school, and came along at a time when standardized testing was just being implemented, etc, and did well on these tests, and consequently was offered the opportunity to be the first in my known extended family to go off to university, I would have probably become a successful local tradesman, or maybe even a preacher, instead of a follower of Darwin and other such heretics. 😉
Now having said ALL this, it’s altogether possible that Javier is dead serious, that he is not a troll. I expect most of us have met at least one or two people who were well educated within some narrow specialty, but clueless in respect to the bigger picture.
I don’t have clue to go on, as to his competence within his specialty, but his disregard for the precautionary principle , and for the usual norms involved in respect to taking into account the A B C’s of other fields indicates to me that he is EITHER woefully ill informed in terms of understanding the BIG picture, OR ELSE that he is a troll.
We all go thru life on a day to day basis relying on the MEASURED judgements, the PROFESSIONAL opinions, of people to whom we necessarily trust our affairs. Sometimes such a person can tell us with absolute certainty what will happen in the event we pursue a certain course of action. At other times, they can only say that the odds are so and so that doing certain things will produce particular results.
In terms understandable to SOME laymen at least, by way of example, I can tell the owner of an automobile that if his water pump is leaking, and he continues to drive it without adding coolant as fast as it leaks out, he WILL be needing some VERY expensive engine repairs, or a new engine. There is absolutely no question about it, running an auto engine dry or low enough of coolant for any length of time, say more than five to thirty minutes INEVITABLY results in severe damage.
If he tells me he is planning on trading his car in next year, and wants to skip the next couple of scheduled oil changes to save a few bucks, I can tell him that he will PROBABLY get away with doing so, but he might also wind up paying for some major engine work.
It’s perfectly reasonable to conclude that any scientist of any stripe, or any engineer, etc, who advises you to ignore the precautionary principle, when countless other professionals in his same or related lines of work , scientists who mostly do NOT have any skin in the game, advises you that it is ok to ignore the precautionary principle……….. Well to say the least, you should ignore him in terms of his ADVICE , as a general rule, although some of what he has to say may be well worth serious consideration, as for instance his remarks about paying less attention to warming, and more to on the ground conservation efforts.
Whether he should be banned from a particular forum is another question altogether. My personal take is that I enjoy watching the dog fight, and that I have learned a good bit about climate science as a result of reading these Javier versus every body else exchanges. 😉
And for what it is worth, I don’t think there is any real reason to worry about any random new reader of this forum being taken in by Javier, or anybody else who might be trolling.
Anybody who follows such a forum as this one obviously has a serious interest in the topics we discuss here, and thus will read quite a lot of the articles and comments posted by the members.
Such a person will almost inevitably conclude that Dennis, Fred, Doug, and other like minded members are in the right, and that Javier is in the wrong.
As the lawyers say , the (vast) preponderance of the evidence indicates that Javier is the kid out of step , and that the rest of the band is marching to the music. 😉
There’s no better way to learn about and come to appreciate a complex subject that to read such exchanges, except to pursue formal studies, and most people have neither the opportunity nor the inclination to do so.
In the case of the man on the street who does NOT read and follow the site, and the debates and comments, nothing is gained, or lost, by banning Javier. The general public is not even aware that this forum EXISTS.
I don’t care either way, if he stays, or goes.
My guess , for what it’s worth , is that Dennis and Ron are very reluctant to ban him due to their strong personal commitment to maintaining free and open access.
Hi islandboy.
Maybe Javier is a new type of troll, trained to try and fit in by agreeing with viewpoints that are generally agreed by any group he participates in, as long as those view points are not concerned with the target subject of his handlers, global warming. His dogged determination to counter any suggestions that global warming is a threat leave me no choice to conclude that he is a man on a mission, possibly being paid.
The percentage of the thread that is devoted to Javier is ludicrous.
The question is not whether he is being paid, but whether Dennis will finally notice that his behaviour is not consistent with that of most users (OFM puts in as many words, it seems, but they are in big chunks you can ignore. 🙂 )
This little sub-thread shows the level of frustration of the usual posters.
If Dennis won’t do something, we can.
If every Javier comment in the next main post (which must be coming soon) was met with the same non-response from several of the usual posters- not funny, not snarky, just dismissive- we would make our point.
A dog pile after each comment, all saying the same thing.
“Go Fuck Yourself, Javier.” is my suggestion. (With NO followup. Four words, in and out. NO ENGAGEMENT.)
Or we can let this crap go on and on for no reason.
-Lloyd
Then again, rather than being a paid troll, he is just a ideologically crippled Wing Pawn?
theres a nice write up on his ideas here.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/extreme-cherry-ice/
“The past 24 hours of commenting activity on this thread has actually gotten me interested in getting into the mindset of you climate change extremists/crusaders.” ~ Paul Helvick
And your posts have gotten me interested in “getting into the mindset” of climate deniers and sock puppets. It’s an interesting topic! Anybody interested in the forces and personalities behind climate change denial should definitely look into it.
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2016/11/alt-right-pro-trump-ex-scientist-judith.html
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2015/11/turned-not-tossed-judith-curry-denier.html
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2017/01/dumb-as-anthony-watts-complains.html
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2016/09/do-wuwt-ers-live-on-another-planet-dim.html
http://greatwhitecon.info/2016/02/the-2016-arctic-winter-sea-ice-puzzle/
#fakenews#sockpuppet#abnormalpsychology#gas-lighting#wuwt#judithcurry
And your posts have gotten me interested in “getting into the mindset” of climate deniers and sock puppets. It’s an interesting topic! Anybody interested in the forces and personalities behind climate change denial should definitely look into it.
Ah, yes, it is a truly fascinating topic. It involves multiple facets from many fields of science, from biological and human evolution, anthropological studies of tribalism, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, history, social studies, economics, political science, etc… etc… There is a lot of converging knowledge and solid scientific research that explains much of their mindset. They are, after all, just your typical clever great apes, as are all of us here.
Though my own opinion is, that we would all be in a much better place if more people took the time and effort to understand everything that I mentioned above and worked on getting beyond some of our innate primitive programming. As most of us realize our tribe size has grown exponentially and humans have shown in the past that they are at least somewhat capable of reprogramming themselves through cultural advances and the propagation of memes.
Though memes can of course swing either way and be beneficial or pathological.
Time will tell if we can do that and survive as a species with some form of benign technological civilization.
I would like to suggest that those who still insist on denying climate science and reality might at the very least stop being so proud to self identify as ‘Skeptics’, given that the original use of that word was used to denote a member of Pyrrho’s philosophical school of ancient Greece, who maintained that real knowledge of things is impossible.
Science has since moved us beyond that point and we now know with a fairly high degree of confidence that it is indeed possible to know quite a bit about nature and the world around us…
Cheers!
Javier presents highly twisted, cherry picked data and that needs to be pointed out to others reading. We would rather he did not do it. It would be nice for him to present real, undistorted data that we may discuss. As for nyms, I have been on blogs where death threats happen so I will stay behind mine, thank you, btw is yours your real name?
NAOM
Trends in sea ice thickness/volume are another important indicator of Arctic climate change. While sea ice thickness observations are sparse, here we utilize the ocean and sea ice model, PIOMAS (Zhang and Rothrock, 2003), to visualize October sea ice thickness from 1979 to 2016. Sea ice less than 1.5 meters is masked out (black) to emphasize the loss of thicker, older ice. Updated through November 2016.
http://sites.uci.edu/zlabe/files/2016/12/sit_PIOMAS_mask_November.gif
404
Air temperatures over Arctic Ocean >5°C above normal so far this Dec w/ some areas >15°C — partly in response to record low seaice cover
https://mobile.twitter.com/ZLabe/status/813764833405521921/photo/1
It is currently colder in Jacksonville, FL (26 F) than the northern tip of Alaska, Barrow (27 F).
4:35 AM – 8 Jan 2017
PIOMAS December data for Arctic ice volume came out. The trend is down and accelerating. The predicted data from PIOMAS has been checked against Cryosat and comes out slightly low – but with a constant factor, so the trend would be broadly the same using the measured data. Things look likely to continue hitting record lows through the winter.
The running average annual volume is still not at a minimum (that was February 2013) but the fall has accelerated and a new minimum looks likely soon (the daily volume took a big drop in rate of increase around March last year and those figures will increasingly dominate in the average figures).
This is quite a nice view on Arctic sea ice
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www.moyhu.org/blog/polview.html
Speaking as a life long observer of the way the news is reported, or ignored, according to the inclinations of the press, I am happy to keep up with some of the news by reading it at wiki pedia. The msm generally repeats the same thirty to second sound bite sort of coverage over and over, endlessly, so that if you read one random msm source every few days, you have likely read ninety percent or more of what you will find at any other source, unless you have subscriptions that allow you to read long in depth articles. I don’t have have much in the way of subscriptions these days, excepting a few that are for specialists, and don’t cover politics.
So that’s s where I’m following the Russian election hacking issue.
Of course it’s possible for partisans to slant the coverage there too, but it’s less likely to be the case.
So, here’s a question. Has anybody here who is following this closely in the mainstream who also read the wiki pedia article all the way thru in the last few days?
If so , do you think it’s on the money? Balanced?
In my estimation, it is, but in my estimation the msm coverage is not. What I have read in the liberalish leaning part of the msm is all breathless indignation and outrage in tone, with little and more often than not nothing in the way of acknowledgement that while the Russians very likely ( but not for DEAD sure imo ) did do more or less what they are accused of, Assange may nevertheless be telling the truth.
The rightish leaning portion of the msm is doing what it can to make the D’s look bad, which is to be expected. If the situation were reversed, party wise, so would be the tone of the coverage.
Stealing the emails was a dirty trick, regardless of who stole them. But only a few people, excepting right wingers who obviously have their own partisan agendas, are bothering to point out that while stealing them was dirty, the activities so exposed on the part of the D party were arguably worse, and that the public has a right to know about such stuff.
I don’t see any acknowledgement, not that I have looked very hard, that Assange himself might be a victim of Russian duplicity. It’s altogether possible, in my opinion, that the Russians not only stole this stuff but that they ALSO fed it to him in such a way that he DOES believe it came from elsewhere.
One thing I am sure of, although I can’t prove it with statistics, is that a LOT of people who previously expressed favorable opinions of Assange and wiki leaks changed their tune once the coverage turned to Clinton and D party issues.
We all believe what we WANT to believe, and even if we have known the messenger or source long enough to trust him, or it, we don’t have any problem deciding that trust was misplaced,if we don’t like a NEW message. 😉
One thing is for dead sure. The Russians have historically put a substantial effort into this sort of business, almost all the way back to the day the commies first got into power.
The amusing thing is that the leftish leaning elite in this country vehemently denied, long and loud, the validity of the evidence of this long term Russian monkey biz and accused the rightish leaning wing of the American establishment of libel/slander and partisan politics in even mentioning this business. Now the spies they formerly despised are the good guys. 😉
Bottom line, my opinion is that the odds are twenty to one or higher that the Russians are guilty as charged, but I am also willing to consider the possibility that others may have stolen the emails as well. More than one convenience store has been robbed twice, and more than one person who has been subjected to an extensive background check,etc, has sold out the private or government organization that provided him with a paycheck for various reasons.
Some of these people in my opinion are genuine patriots. Some are individuals getting even with their employer for personal reasons. Some are simply whistle blowers exposing things they think need sunshine, even as they continue soldiering on, reporting to work, and doing work once there that needs to be done.
My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that while it’s stretching it to claim that Clinton DEFINITELY lost because of the email issue, it MIGHT have cost her the WH.
Most of the people would have voted the way they did, in my opinion, had this issue never come up, but the race was so close in some states that it could have been THE difference. I can express this possibility somewhat differently by saying the email issue is was ONE of the straws that broke Clinton’s back. If any one straw had been missing from her load of baggage, she might have won another state or two, where the race was close.
Considering how close the race was in the three states that cost her the election, it IS possible to make a fair to good case, that the email issue was THE straw that broke her back.Large D partisan observers can make a very good case that the email issue was THE issue that determined the election, at least to their own satisfaction, but then they WANT to believe Clinton lost because the R’s cheated.
My own opinion is that the people in those last three rust belt states went for Trump MOSTLY because of their economic problems, and MOSTLY because they came to the conclusion that Clinton was not really on their side, and proved it,in THEIR opinion, by ignoring them and hanging out with the banksters, whereas Trump at least paid them the courtesy of campaigning for their votes.
I don’t think there is any way to say for sure , either way. Anybody who does claim to know FOR SURE is in my opinion a partisan, and expressing his opinion. He may believe he’s right, or he might be just doing what he can to make his home team look better.
The real takeaway is that if you want to play this sort of game, you had best make sure you don’t get caught playing for all the marbles. The consequences range anywhere from embarrassment and loss of face to pokey time, if you get caught.
There is no question at all in my mind that the R party does and did engage in similar dirty tricks, but sometimes you DO get away without getting caught. The R’s lucked out this time, in this respect.
In this case it may well have cost Clinton, and the D Party, the WH, and control of the Senate, with the knock on consequence of Trump putting at least one of his homies on the Supreme Court.
You put your right foot in
You take your right foot out
You put your right foot in
And you shake it all about
You do the hokey pokey
And you turn yourself around
That’s what it’s all about
What it is all about the hokey pokey?
Makes more sense than Javier, don’t you think?
I’m assuming the hokey pokey remark is aimed in my direction.
At least HB has made a moderate remark this time, which is encouraging.
Maybe he ‘s decided I have enough links to big D Democrats who think like I do that he doesn’t want me posting two or three every time he takes a poke. I do indeed have them, and can easily find more, lol.
And it is possible to interpret my comment, loosely, as changing my own position.
But I haven’t.What I have done is recognize that there is some truth in the argument that the emails hurt Clinton, and that they could have possibly been the last thing on the balance beam scale that tipped the vote in Trump’s favor in some places, where it was close. I haven’t DENIED that possibility at any previous time.
If any body had asked me , I would have said that there is some truth in the argument that the emails hurt Clinton, and COULD have been a crucial factor in her losing in some places where the race was close. But my personal opinion is that the emails were just one of many factors.
Trump did after all win only by the proverbial hair in the three Rust Belt states that put him over the top.
I remain firm in my conviction that she brought too much baggage into the race from the beginning, and made too many mistakes in total in her campaign, this being the best explanation why she LOST.
I may be all wrong, there is no way to know for SURE, but I am totally convinced that just about any Democrat with a little charisma, and without the baggage, and better polling numbers in terms of public perceptions of character, consistency, etc, could have beaten Trump handily , if he or she had run a competent campaign.
I’m on your side.
Comrades on the Left (not progressives or liberals- they are the worse) look upon reformist politics with amusement.
Mac,
I don’t consider myself particularly well-informed, but I’ll offer my impressions anyway and it’s easy enough for anyone not interested to just skip my drivel and move on.
I’m quite distrustful of the msm, so I only watch enough of it to get an idea of the headlines, while trying to read between the lines (listen between the lies?) to see if I’m interested enough to search on-line for more enlightening information. But then how am I to know if what I read on-line is truthful? Usually I just try to read enough information by different sources till I can satisfy myself that I’ve found the “experts”, or at least someone who seems to know what they’re talking about. By now, I suppose my cynicism might be showing. Good enough. Over the course of my life I’ve learned to not be as trusting as my nature/early-life nurture lead me to be. What was that saying? “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you”.
Now to your question. After hearing about the released emails, my concern wasn’t so much about who did the hacking as it was about what the emails revealed, and if they were genuine. I’ve not heard msm show much concern for those points. Seems to me it’s akin to getting caught with your hand in the cookie-jar, and complaining about the catcher sneaking up on you.
The msm’s and DNC’s indignation at the idea that Russia would try to influence an election in the US doesn’t wash well with me either. Do they want to pretend that the US doesn’t interfere in elections in foreign countries, or topple foreign governments? Bullshit! Truckloads of it!
Did the email release influence my vote? No. Trump’s adolescent bullying manner, his seeming lack of command of the English language, or grasp of enough knowledge of the subject matter to put together a couple of coherent sentences on any significant subject, makes me fear what might happen under his watch. Another point that might seem trivial to others, what’s that orange thing on his head? I have a bit of trouble trusting a man who is so insecure that he goes to very much trouble to cover his damn head! Most of the men in my family go bald, usually early. I’ve always sworn I’d just polish my head before I’d wear a comb-over. Aside from the fact that I find it hard to believe that any rich person really has my best interests at heart. Guess that covers Clinton too, huh? So I didn’t vote at all.
The more I watch what happens in government and business, the more I can identify with Joe Bageant, rest his soul.
Anyway, enough already!
Take care,
SW
“I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you”
“So I didn’t vote at all”
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put (America) together again.
America gets the government it deserves
Say hello to Trumps pick for treasury secretary.
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/
Drain the swamp indeed.
I suggest Trumps buddies are gonna get rich orchestrating the biggest pump and dump stock market scam in history. It involves the entire American economy. Everyone will love Trump when the pump is to the top. Oil to $140 and the Dow to 23,000. Then comes the dump. America will be left in ruins for decades.
Or maybe congress will impeach him and the road to collapse will be traveled more slowly.
Hi Stanley,
I GET IT, I understand totally where you are coming from.
But there ARE some people who have money, even TONS of money, who do care about folks who are hard up. Bill Gates for instance is spending megabucks on solutions to the worst problems that afflict poor people.
And it is possible to know what the truth is, if you are willing to work at learning it. But the more complicated the subject, the more time and study you have to invest to become knowledgeable. So the trick is to learn who to trust,and to what extent.
You can trust your own personal dentist to be a sob when it comes to charging you two weeks take home for an hour of HIS time, if you are poor working class, but you can rest assured he’s telling it straight when he tells you its hell on your teeth to eat candy.
Trump scarces the CRAP out of me.
Some people will never get it, but I was NOT trying to help get him elected, over the last year or so, but rather trying to get D party primary voters to act like adults,NEXT TIME, and support the candidate (s) are best qualified in terms of public support, across the voter spectrum, in terms of getting elected.
A good forty to fifty percent of the country, to put it as simply as possible, had NO USE for Clinton, period. A substantial portion of the people who won her the popular vote voted AGAINST Trump rather than for her, which was what I SHOULD have done, except I was sure she had Virginia in the bag.
She got the nomination the same way a kid that can’t hit and run gets on the first string baseball team. The coaches, or in this case, the primary voters, made a huge mistake. Trump was the least qualified, most ignorant,most uncouth, least trustworthy candidate in R party history , and probably the scariest major party candidate in the history of the USA, and he STILL beat Clinton.
Enuf said.
Temperature here plunged to 10F this morning, 5F due tomorrow. Minimum here is minus 20F. Not far from me it can hit minus 30F.
So that got me thinking, how well will an electric car do in the winter around here.
I found an article where a fellow had tested his Tesla Model S with 85 kWh battery pack down to 10F in the winter. Average winter range dropped to 143 and hit a low of 113 miles per charge. This is a car rated at 265 miles range. So the car goes from decent range in warm weather to local runabout in winter.
If you have the smaller battery version, the average would have been 112 mile range in winter.
http://www.teslarati.com/tesla-battery-range-sub-zero-snowy-conditions/
What is the range at minus 20F?
Today in Moscow is -30C (-22F)
In some parts of Russia -40-50 (-40-58F)
At these temperatures the battery will likely quickly discharge even if the car is parked
Normally the battery discharges at 1 percent per day.
Here is some advice from a fellow that has used his Tesla S into his third Canadian winter. Beside having no ability to recharge and no regenerative brakes until the battery heats up above freezing, probably want to keep the car on the charge line just to pre-warm it. Also want to get better winter tires or you might go nowhere at all.
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/cold-weather-driving.64591/
So it looks like Tesla at least, and probably all the other car companies using the same basic battery tech will have to add some more insulation, to the battery packs. Of course a well insulated battery is also a battery that will overheat if subjected to a heavy load for more than a very short time, maybe as little as only a few minutes.
But I have no doubt that car companies will figure out ways to giterdone at a reasonable cost. I can think of several things that would work myself, but I don’t have any real idea what they would cost , or how practical these things would be.
You could for instance install a double layer shield around and under the battery that has one layer capable of sliding a little bit, lining holes up in both layers for cooling, and add a fan to force more air thru, when cooling is needed. Slide it the other way and if the right material is used, it could have an impressive r value, even if light and only a couple of inches thick. . Adding insulation over the top could be managed by using the right kind of extra thick carpet and pad in the interior.
When dealing with chemical reactions, they are generally temperature sensitive. Add increasing internal resistance with lower temperature and lower total charge capacity, you have a problem if the battery gets very cold.
For now, keeping the battery warm is important. Spare capacity is even more important because one can’t always stop the car at a charge site. EV’s are hitting the 300 mile range, soon to be 400. At that point, even a 50% drop in capacity would be adequate for most users.
I wonder if having a separate heater, say hydrogen powered, for the car and battery would solve the problem in the northern areas. That way the battery could be kept warm enough and the cockpit heating could be supplied by the heater instead of the battery. Probably have to start out using propane or natural gas until the hydrogen got to be more available. Only be used for the battery when parked away from a charging station. OFM’s idea of variable insulation could be used also to reduce fuel or power usage.
Something I have often wondered about is whether it is now or will soon be possible to manufacture a durable, workable and affordable super efficient insulation.
Suppose you could manufacture little glass or ceramic spheres, very thin walled, so that whatever gas is inside the sphere at the time it is formed reacts with the material of the sphere, and plates out on the inner surface. BAM! INSTANT VACUUM !
Make a slurry out ofa mixture of materials that contains as many of these spheres as possible, with the mixture itself being a high quality insulator.
Now if you could spray that on the inner hidden surfaces of the passenger compartment of an automobile, you could probably cut the need for heating and cooling by half.
Adding another layer of some tough material to protect the insulation from road gravel, salt, and so forth, and it would work on the undercarriage too.
IF any body does this, and gets a patent, I’m gonna sic a parasite lawyer after them, for stealing my idea, and black mail them for enough money to move someplace way up north during the summer. 😉
I second the motion on ultra-insulation Mac.
I’d love to see someone (psst, hey, Elon) bring the cost of Aerogel down to an affordable level and incorporate it into a structural sheathing panel, say with a value of >R-7. This would be a huge, huge deal in the residential building industry.
Picture of Aerogel below. Really remarkable stuff.
The Earth’s forces at work.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/evotourism/evolution-world-tour-ashfall-fossil-beds-nebraska-6171451/
Mike Voorhies hiked over to the ravine, where he discovered something odd. Throughout north central Nebraska, the ground contains a layer of silver ash, about a foot thick—the remnants of a massive volcanic eruption some 12 million years ago. But a cross-section of the gully’s walls revealed an ash layer ten feet deep. “I noticed a little jawbone with teeth. I jumped down and started cleaning off the surface of the ash and taking samples of it, wondering what could cause this,” says Voorhies, now 70. He had found the skull of a baby rhinoceros.
http://www.cosmographicresearch.org/ice_age_floods.htm
Evidence for megascale flooding at the end of the most recent ice age, is not limited to North America, but has been documented from all over the world. This evidence supports the conclusion that large scale super-flooding events were globally ubiquitous throughout the ice age, but occurred with exceptional power and size at or near its conclusion. Among the places around the planet from which proof is emerging of floods of extraordinary size – Siberia especially, in the Altai Mountains region near the Siberian/Mongolian border, hosts evidence for massive floods equivalent in scale and power to the largest western USA floods. Across northern Europe megaflood evidence is found in abundance. South America, too, shows extensive evidence for massive catastrophic flooding in the recent geological past, as does Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East and Northern Africa. However, for the time being, our focus will be on the great floods of North America. Eventually, however, it will be our goal to document and correlate this imposing mass of evidence for global catastrophe with a view to understanding its origin and causes. Then, we will be in a better position to address the question of social and cultural consequences.
However, during the second half of the Twentieth Century, with improved dating, and with more precise and detailed stratigraphy available, it became apparent that the climate changes associated with the onset and termination of ice ages occurred much more rapidly than believed by earlier workers. As the Twentieth Century drew to a close, high-resolution records bore witness to climate changes that occurred with astonishing speed and severity.
That’s how Mother Nature rocks and rolls.
To market to market to buy a fat pig, home again, home again, dancing a jig.
The hotspot that is now under Yellowstone has been causing massive destruction for a long time, three mega-eruptions in the last 2.1 million years. Many other smaller eruptions too. Not a healthy place to be on occasion.
How much volcanic activity has there been at Yellowstone since the most recent giant eruption?
Since the most recent giant caldera-forming eruption, 640,000 years ago, approximately 80 relatively nonexplosive eruptions have occurred. Of these eruptions, at least 27 were rhyolite lava flows in the caldera, 13 were rhyolite lava flows outside the caldera and 40 were basalt vents outside the caldera. Some of the eruptions were approximately the size of the devastating 1991 Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, and several were much larger. The most recent volcanic eruption at Yellowstone, a lava flow on the Pitchstone Plateau, occurred 70,000 years ago.
How often do volcanic eruptions occur at Yellowstone?
Three extremely large explosive eruptions have occurred at Yellowstone in the past 2.1 million years with a recurrence interval of about 600,000 to 800,000 years. More frequent eruptions of basalt and rhyolite lava flows have occurred before and after the large caldera-forming events. For example, scientists have identified at least 27 different rhyolite lava flows that erupted after the most recent caldera eruptions, about 640,000 years ago, from vents inside the caldera. The most recent was about 70,000 years ago. Many of these eruptions were separated in time by several tens of thousands of years. Because the evidence of earlier eruptions may have been either buried or destroyed, we do not really know how often the volcano has actually erupted
https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/yellowstone_sub_page_54.html
For those who like to plan ahead, star HIP 85605 is due to make an appearance nearby in less than a half million years from now. Another close approach is due from Gliese 710 in 1.35 million years.
Both stars look like they will pass through the Oort Cloud creating havoc among all the comets out there. Some could come Earth’s way.
http://www.universetoday.com/117778/rogue-star-hip-85605-on-collision-course-with-our-solar-system-but-earthlings-need-not-worry/
http://www.businessinsider.com/star-hurting-towards-solar-system-2016-12?r=UK&IR=T
Yeah, if humanity is still around, disrupting a collection of Ort planetesimals could present an inconvenience. Let’s see if we can get past Herr Trump first.
It shouldn’t be too many years after the singularity that we will invent time TV and just take a look.
Yes, I was joking.
Here is a site discussing the cold weather limitations of the Nissan Leaf. The leaf is particularly challenged because of it’s short range (100 to 120 miles) even during summer weather.
I am not in ‘Chicagoland’, but I am in IL at the same latitude and relative weather conditions, per se. My round trip commute without recharging is 72-75 miles. My drive is about half at 45-55mph and half 30-35 with mild elevation changes. I can drive it down til about 20 degrees f before I have to change plans. Fortunately, I have a rider whose home is about 10 miles closer to work, and I leave it at his house. This way we can still drive most of the trip emissions free. It is a minor inconvenience, but so is pumping gas at -10f. Plus his garage is kept at 65f and the car doesn’t need much help from the heat on the way to work.
Winter range is really a difficult one to predict, because it depends on time, temp, and trip conditions. If you have a traffic jam to deal with, that adds time for the heat to run, and it eats range with a shovel at -10f. Above freezing it is more forgiving. If you can forego heat, the range can be closer to warm weather to some degree. There are posts on MNL about heating the Leaf via alternate methods.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=17102
Paging Island boy, Thought you might be interested in this.
http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/08/how-blockchain-is-impacting-clean-energy/
Several startups are developing projects that integrate blockchain and solar energy. Their ideas range from developing alt-coins for trading and incentivizing power production to using smart contracts for administering energy transactions.
SolarCoin
SolarCoin is an eco-minded cryptocurrency that aims to incentivize solar power production. The coin was launched in 2014 and hopes to drive the generation of 97,500 terawatt hours worth of solar power over 40 years. It originally used a proof-of-work system for verification but has since switched over to a proof-of-stake-time system because it is more environmentally friendly. Anyone can mine the coins, from individuals to solar farms. For every 1 MWh of electricity generated (and verified by a third party), the producer recieves one SolarCoin. Solar farms wanting to earn extra income by generating SolarCoin coins for the power they produce don’t have to pay anything to participate, and SolarCoin does not take any of the power; it merely provides the coins as an incentive to produce clean energy.
Granted, one SolarCoin is worth under 7 cents at the time of writing, but then Bitcoin was only worth about 30 cents when it was the same age. The hope is that enough people will have confidence in the coin to give it real value and allow it to be used in transactions.
Current (no pun intended) value of Bitcoin:
1 Bitcoin equals
$916.91 US Dollar
Bitcoin was the best-performing currency of 2016
NOTE: not just the best performing crypto currency of 2016, but the best performing CURRENCY!
I won’t pretend to give others financial advice but at 7 cents a SolarCoin, I think this is a real ground floor opportunity and I’m going to invest some of my own meager funds in a it and thereby put some of my money where my mouth is. I think it is a much safer, and ethically more palatable bet than putting it in some other more traditional investment options…
Cheers!
FredM,
cc: DougL
Pursuant to all the hoo-haw up above, not what you’re talking about here, I have an assignment for you:
Go to Tamino’s site, which you are to have been checking each day anyway (the quiz will be on Wednesday) and scroll down to October 18th. Read the post Extreme Cherry Crush; might be a good idea to save it. Keep in mind that this assignment is for your continuing benefit and is not a one-off.
Feliz ano nuevo, since I don’t know the Portuguese for it, and the tilde is to be supplied by the reader. Yes, I prefer “nh” too.
Extreme Cherry Ice
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/10/18/extreme-cherry-ice/
But you see, Survivalist, what you may not understand, or at least appreciate, is that Javier may be a maverick.
BTW, I suddenly feel like having a bowl of cherry sherbet.
Hey Synapsid,
Feliz Ano Novo! No tilde needed in Portuguese 🙂
Re Tamino, Cherry Crush… LOL! Yeah, it is the same old shit and the same old flies too. It’s amazing how one fly in particular just keeps on buzzing and buzzing.
Synapsid,
OK, mission accomplished and thanks doubly for the heads up: you’re a treasure. There are so many comments from EXTREME CHERRY ICE I’m tempted to copy and paste here that I don’t know where to begin. BTW since Javier has pretty much hijacked Ron and Dennis’ Blog I suspect I’ll be spending most of my spare time on Open Mind; like that they include astronomy discussions as well. Very interested in hearing Fred’s take.
Take care man.
Think of it this way, the so called ‘Pests’ may actually turn out to be a feature and not a BUG, if we start harvesting them for protein instead of killing them with poisons… Methinks a lot more things will be changing besides just the climate.
Hey Doug, I think that wherever we decided to spend our free time to follow our interests we will have to take our insect repellent and fly swatters with us. Though I think that astronomy may still be a safe haven from trolls and other pests.
Cheers!
Good luck guys. It’s been fun at times, when the villagers were quiet. But lately there has been a bit too much negative feedback.
Not good news for the Arctic:
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2017/01/piomas-january-2017.html
Here’s a recent radio interview with Neven Curlin
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-december-15-2016-1.3896671/like-watching-a-train-wreck-blogger-quits-writing-about-climate-change-1.3898022
To put it mildly, I am not an optimist. I believe that human civilization is based upon a lot of grain production.
https://youtu.be/YToMoNPwTFc
In the video at the link above there is a very interesting Seneca Cliff presented in a chart just after the 46 min 30 second mark.
And another link for those that like agriculture.
https://youtu.be/_M8sxAdeju0
On the weather depends the harvest. On the harvest depends everything.
Well that first one sure puts us in a fine fix.
The Rise of The Garage Labs
Just an off-the-cuff quickie…
I am about half of the way into a video with Judith Curry that references a book written some time ago, called ‘The Republic of Science‘, which could be a kind of ‘guiding light’ or ‘playbook’ for Judith…
The gist, so far, seems to be that the, say, ‘creative science maverick/dissenter’, is less able, in a large-scale centralized, bureaucratic, monolithic setup that science has presumably become, to be so.
While this is important a topic, such as with regard, for example, to conflicts-of-interest on both sides– public or private— it’s also important, however, to distinguish true creative dissent from mere claims of such, amid scams, snake oils and latchings onto particular concepts as ways to mask or otherwise address personal/professional failings or misgivings.
This isn’t to necessarily suggest this for Judith, or Javier, but it may be that these sorts of identifications may be particularly attractive to some.
It is quite possible that this whole issue may represent another facet of the beginnings of decentralization, relocalization and the general and increasing malaise and decline of global industrial civilization, taking large-scale centralized so-called-government and science down with it.
Ironically, in a way, this may make Judith a bit of a ‘maverick’, if not in the way she or others may necessarily think.
In any case, the video may be well worth a watch or listen, if only to get a better sense of, or help mull over, the issues it touches on.
The gist, so far, seems to be that the, say, ‘creative science maverick/dissenter’, is less able, in a large-scale centralized, bureaucratic, monolithic setup that science has presumably become, to be so.
Sure, all large-scale centralized, bureaucratic, monolithic organizations have inherent structural and hierarchical issues. I still would be very unwilling to throw away the babies such as NASA or NOAA with the bath water!
Furthermore, there is a huge difference between the true ‘creative science maverick/dissenter’ and a crank or someone who is knowingly dishonest and an active disseminator of falsehoods.
.
Sure, and some of the babies can even throw themselves out of the baths and maybe, for example, into such hot tubs as Space X or Monsanto.
I wonder where Judith will be going.
Neither Space X or Monsanto are what I consider to be truly pure scientific organizations, I expect Space X has some great maverick engineers and Monsanto does hire scientists but they are the last places I would expect to find maverick scientists. I would expect the true mavericks to be at the universities or private labs. Though you never know.
Couldn’t care less where Judith goes…
I was being relatively sarcastic about Space X, Monsanto and Judith, Fred, but I hear you. I’m inclined to resent the lot, as you might imagine.
If Space X is tax-slave-funded, then it is essentially just a branch of NASA.
Incidentally, does Patrick Moore, formerly of Greenpeace, work with Monsanto full-time? I seem to recall Javier quoting him.
I agree, a little cutting against the grain is good, and keeps the storm troopers wondering what is on the other side of the door that are smashing in.
However, we are beyond a postmodern world, where reality does have some (if not all) significance.
I think you summed up Judith perfectly:
as ways to mask or otherwise address personal/professional failings or misgivings.
It was kind of fun to have some of the comment in bold.
I spent some time watching a couple of the very long “episodes” over at EVTV (Archives at http://www.evtv.me.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/vidarch.html) the two episodes being ones that address the installation of a Tesla Motors drive unit in a Volkswagen Vanagon. 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 and 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. OFM if you’re even slightly interested in the content of his site, ie. blog and video archive I’d, be interested in what you think about him. Hell. you might even stumble upon some material for your book!
Thanks Islandboy,
I have a lot of problems with video. My service is dsl, and supposed to be ok for video, but it’s not,really. How about a link to any blog this guy has?
I’m not much of a rugged individualist, for sure. I do believe in self reliance, at least in terms of living within ones means , taking responsibility for one’s own circumstances, to the extent possible, and that sort of thing.
But I actually live pretty much like almost anybody else in the forum, in terms of buying my food at super markets, using the grid, driving a conventional car, etc etc.
But in terms of being able to live more self reliantly, should it become necessary, I’m in way better shape than all the other regulars, except maybe one or two such as Paulo.
And I do keep a lot of stuff on hand that other people don’t, and wouldn’t even if they could. It’s not that I’m much worried about being UNABLE to buy this stuff in case of an emergency, such as war suddenly breaking out, or a super storm, or Clinton getting elected ( HEY , that was a JOKE, ok?) but rather having it is actually a cost free insurance policy, and a better way to save, for me, than holding cash. I lose occasionally, but overall, prices have gone up faster than money in the bank accumulates interest, and buying in quantity usually means I get a real break on the price as well.
Top brand name engine oil costs me three fifty or so a quart, bought a case at a time at a place I’m a regular customer, where as the same brands are at least a dollar more even at Walmart, etc.
Now here’s an example to knock your socks off. Bulk lime, loaded on my truck at the local farm supply costs eighteen bucks a ton. Bagged lime at the cheapest local big box store, the same exact stuff, chemically, but pelleted instead of ground to a fine powder, costs approximately TEN times as much, per pound. Name branded insecticides that homeowners buy as a five percent powder for their tomato plants at the big box store costs me even LESS than ten cents on the dollar as concentrate in quantities large enough to grow tomatoes commercially, at the farm supply , but you have to have pesticide applicator’s permit to buy the concentrate.
I pay about thirty five cents on the dollar for fruit trees, compared to what the same trees cost at the lawn and garden center at local big box stores, but I buy a LOT , at least twenty five, at one time, or else I pool my order with a couple of neighbors, in order to buy at the real wholesale price directly from the nursery. And buying direct , you know WHERE your trees came from, and WHO grew them.
And just to be sure anybody and everybody is clear on the subject, I would rather Clinton were the prez elect than Trump. I ALWAYS said Trump would be worse, and that I was afraid he might win, at times. At other times I was sure Clinton had it in the bag.
Neither of them imo is morally and ethically qualified for the office.
I voted Green, without any moral conflict about putting Trump in office, because I was SURE Virginia was safe for Clinton.
But I would have wrote in Sanders, or something along that line, if I had no choice except either Clinton or Trump.
The time is way the hell past and gone when we can live as individuals, or in mostly self sufficient small communities.Big government these days is almost as critical to our survival as oxygen from the air. But I would prefer it not be any bigger than necessary.
Hi OFM, I’ve reposted a slightly edited version of the above with a link to the home page and one particular blog post at the new non-petroleum thread
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-jan-8-2017/#comment-591685
Thought it would be best to avoid having to keep coming back here.