There are side-effects to energy efficiency. First is saving money, but that aside, look carefully at the other effects.
Let’s say you add insulation to your home and seal up air leaks. Beside reducing direct heat loss and not having to heat that cold air (or invert that for hot days), one will not run the furnace as much, saving electricity, reducing air inputs for the furnace, extending the life of the heating unit. Now if one even adds a couple of thermal solar panels to the south side of the house, all those benefits get enhanced plus more money savings.
Same with a car, if one consolidated trips and in general reduces miles traveled per year, the maintenance costs fall, the car lasts years longer and you could end up owning a classic.
Higher efficiency reduces the materials flow through the whole system. Less fuel drilled, pumped, refined, transported, pumped and burned. Same with electric power, less draw saves equipment maintenance and replacement down the line right to the mines.
Proper maintenance goes right along with all of the above. Makes things run more efficiently and last longer, win -win. Can’t beat that. Might just keep you from burning or crashing too.
We can take efficiency too far, those last few percent can get really expensive.
Of course the best way is not to have to use that energy in the first place. That is an area that really needs to be looked at thoroughly.
Of course if you can afford a heat pump setup, an EV and enough PV with batteries, well that disconnects you from the whole external energy system right there (insulate and seal the house first) and uses the latest most efficient means of providing your energy needs. Well, not for food.
Just buy quality so it lasts.
Food efficiency. Starches are cheap so no need to grow them. With vegetables running several dollars a pound, it’s worth gardening if you have the space, water and sunlight. Healthy for you too.
Saves trips to the store and if you can food for winter storage saves that giant supply system to bring food from who knows where in the world.
So if everything uses half the energy and lasts twice as long, the energy savings might add up to a global 70 or 75%.
We just have to be careful that the systems feeding the efficient mechanism do not themselves propagate energy use. Computers and cell phones are an example of that. The computers and cell phones can be very efficient but all the systems serving them had to be added and are a daily drain on the energy system.
Another big idea is recycling. consider this film:
For the lazy, it’s about converting human waste into fuel. This sounds like a doubtful business model, but the company doesn’t just make money on selling the fuel — it also makes money disposing of the waste. It’s hard to compete with a company whose material costs are negative.
This means part of the energy market is covered by free. On the one hand it encourages waste, but on the other it depresses investment in “high gain” fossil fuel recovery.
I can’t provide numbers at this time, and the numbers are always uncertain due to transportation costs, and the costs of alternatives, etc, but it is VERY likely in my opinion that Africans will do better to use their number one and number two, as some delicate folks refer to them, as fertilizers rather than as fuel.
But if these must be transported a long way, and the cost of drying them is minimal due to using solar energy, etc, it might be economically more efficient to burn them sometimes.
I have not checked out the link but I know more than a little about the nutrient content of manures, the costs of purchased mined and manufactured fertilizers, etc.
Of course the ash left is worth something in terms of mineral content, and greatly concentrated, which might make the difference.
Probably true, but I suspect people would prefer to see it burnt rather than used to make food, so you might have problems selling the stuff.
In the end, ideas like this are like designs in biology: They don’t have to be perfect, just good enough to survive.
The interesting thing is that something that costs less than nothing — that is, something people will pay you to take off their hands — is being transformed into something that can be sold.
In the US the waste disposal problem is similar and could be solved in a similar way, and on a much larger scale. Vast quantities of inflammable materials are expensively stored in landfills, instead of being used to generate electricity, and at the sale time vast amounts of capital are being invested in drilling holes to find stuff that can be burned in a power plant. Makes no sense at all, especially since most of the resulting electricity gets wasted anyway.
Hi Me,
Your handle makes it feel as if I were writing in a diary, rather than to someone else, lol.
Most people DO seem to have a problem with eating food produced using human or other animal fertilizers, but only so long as somebody is for some reason continuously pointing out the use of the manures, human or otherwise.
Most of our food these days in richer western countries is NOT produced using manures, for the simple reason manure is not available in adequate quantities, and such animal manure as is available is all too often in the wrong place and shipping it to where it could be put to good use costs too much. So it goes into lagoons, which some of the nutrients run off, some remain in sediments that accumulate and might eventually be recycled into the fields, or might simply be left there, as if the lagoon were a land fill.
In the case of human manure, there are many people who are squeamish about it, and out of an abundance of political caution, politicians put in laws and regulations forbidding its use across the board in some cases.
Now there ARE good reasons to be cautious about using human manure, but if it is heat treated, or composted, it’s safe to use, because these processes kill parasite eggs and germs that cause communicable diseases.
Most of us eat some food that is produced using manures without ever realizing we are doing so.
Lots of farmers spread manure from feed lot operations, milking barns, horse stables, etc, on their cropland, and some of that land is used to produce veggies, some of it to produce grain used to make bread or feed meat animals, etc.
Every dairy cow in a pasture is eating grass partly fertilized by her own manure, lol.
Few people understand that there are actual codified standards for the maximum content of rat hair, rat feces, insects, etc, for the flour used to make bread.
And these standards are NOT ZERO, because zero is not achievable.
You eat a rat turd every now and then, if you eat bread, but that turd has been finely pulverized, and except maybe for barfing because I have reminded you of it, it will you no harm.
I don’t know much about wine, but it is my understanding that some of the very finest, and most exclusive of wine, is still produced by monks who fertilizer their vineyards with their own urine, which they collect in barrels for use in the vineyards. This was a routine practice in historical times.
There is strong possibility that in the future we will be using human manure, which is often referred to by advocates for doing so as humanure, to raise food on the grand scale, rather than spending tons of money to treat it and dispose of it while wasting the extremely valuable and expensive nutrients in it.
Sometimes I day dream about turning a large stretch of desert or other vacant land near a big city into a biofuel manufacturing plant, the energy supplied by the sun, and the nutrients and raw materials supplied by raw sewage pipelined to the site.
Interesting followup: The EU decided to sue the German government today for allowing farmers to spread too much manure, and causing nitrate pollution.
Applying too much of any fertilizer at one time will result in contaminating run off water and maybe ground water as well.
But applying ” too much” in terms of strict water quality management standards is “not enough” in a lot of cases to get the highest production and profits.
There are necessary trade offs to be made, and if they have the animals, they must dispose of the manure somehow, lol.
Glad to see some ‘Soil Carbon Concepts catching on to the extent that Prince Charles and A French Government Group http://4p1000.org/understand are getting their feet wet to promotebiological soil carbon sequestration as a way to reduce atmospheric CO2 and mitigate some of the effects of Climate Change. http://tinyurl.com/zulul7s
This is one one those little things nobody notices, that could make a big difference. Charles has backed a few goofy causes in his day, but this makes sense.
In a cart-before-the-horse culture, true disruption isn’t a CRISPR horse, a Uber taxi, or a self-pushing horse, etc..
It is putting the horse before the cart…
And, perhaps more importantly, effectively addressing and solving the underlying problem of why the cart was before the horse in the first place.
Caelan, you seem to have this misguided notion that disruption is somehow something evil that is planned, or politically motivated or even worse some sort of vast global conspiracy.
Since I highly doubt you have even the slightest idea as to what CRISPR-cas9 actually is, let alone how it works, I won’t bore you with a dissertation on how or why it is a truly disruptive technology but like all technology it is but a tool with its pros and cons.
Technological disruption, BTW, is neither a good or necessarily a bad thing but something that just happens all the time. For example when early humans learned to control fire in caves in South Africa almost a million years ago that was pretty disruptive. To rail against disruption is akin to shaking your fists at the sky because biological evolution has occurred or humans learned how to burn coal to power steam engines… but I digress.
However, here’s some perspective and a bit of history on horses and urban life in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It wasn’t as romantic a life as some might think… and the disruptive technology of horseless carriages was at the time a rather significant improvement… and that particular disruption has now brought us to another historical cross roads with climate change. That of course is another dissertation.
From Horse Power
to Horsepower
B Y E R I C M O R R I S
IN 1 8 9 8 , D E L E G A T E S F R O M A C R O S S T H E GLO B E
gathered in New York City for the world’s first international
urban planning conference. One topic dominated the discussion. It was
not housing, land use, economic development, or infrastructure. The
delegates were driven to desperation by horse manure.
The horse was no newcomer on the urban scene. But by the late
1800s, the problem of horse pollution had reached unprecedented
heights. The growth in the horse population was outstripping even the
rapid rise in the number of human city dwellers. American cities were
drowning in horse manure as well as other unpleasant byproducts of
the era’s predominant mode of transportation: urine, flies, congestion,
carcasses, and traffic accidents. Widespread cruelty to horses was a form
of environmental degradation as well.
The situation seemed dire. In 1894, the Times of London estimated
that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in
horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded
that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third-story
windows. A public health and sanitation crisis of almost unimaginable
dimensions loomed.
And no possible solution could be devised. After all, the horse had
been the dominant mode of transportation for thousands of years.
Horses were absolutely essential for the functioning of the nineteenthcentury
city—for personal transportation, freight haulage, and even
mechanical power. Without horses, cities would quite literally starve.
…In addition, horses often fell, on average once every hundred miles of travel. When this took place, the horse (weighing on average 1,300 pounds) would have to be helped to its feet, which was no mean feat. If injured badly, a fallen horse would be shot on the spot or simply abandoned to die, creating an obstruction that clogged streets and brought traffic to a halt. Dead horses were extremely unwieldy, and although special horse removal vehicles were employed, the technology of the era could not easily move such a burden. As a result, street cleaners often waited for the corpses to putrefy so they could more easily be sawed into pieces and carted off. Thus the corpses rotted in the streets, sometimes for days, with less than appealing consequences for traffic circulation, aesthetics, and public health.
That is a problem with the city jungles, all the manure couldn’t grow a thing.
Why didn’t they transport it to farms in the region to promote growth of crops?
Definitely a poor management situation that city hall was ignoring to keep up the graft.
So the solution was to replace the biological “pollution” concentrated in cities with chemical pollution and distribute that to the rural areas and around the world, including the oceans. What a great idea, forced democracy so the cities could be cleaner, yet still choked with pollution and stench, just a different sort. Noisy too.
But smoke and pollution were signs of money back then, still are in many places.
Sounds like there was a good supply of horse meat available, should have been eaten.
Now we are facing the results of those decisions.
Horses replaced by automobiles and trucks, electric trolley, trains, and planes. Sailing ships replaced by steamers, then diesel powered ships.
World ecosystem replaced by ????
The world’s ecosystem is rapidly being replaced by a completely human run world. Unless of course we blow it and wipe ourselves out.
Consider the statistic that the wild elephant population in Africa has fallen by 90% in the last century. What does it tell us? It tells us that someone is keeping track of how many wild elephants there are in Africa. So they are really wild at all.
The same applies to the North Atlantic fish stocks, which are mostly under EU control.
Conservation is a rearguard action, as my father told me in the 60s. I realized there was an alternative to the end of the world when I went hiking in the Black Forest in 1980, and noticed the trees were planted in rows.
The most successful human societies tame nature completely, but without struggling against it. So pumping out ground water in Antelope Valley to grow alfalfa (and lawn grass) was dumb, but terraced rice fields in Northern Vietnam are smart. Those now-desiccated alfalfa fields are rapidly being converted to solar farms, a much better use of the land.
The final point is that good solutions are holistic — as I mentioned elsewhere here, we need to stop solving problems separately. So for example, the EU has banned landfills, and governments have reacted by incinerating household waste, which reduces the need to import fossil fuels.
Here’s a satellite picture showing how farmers in the Imperial Valley are switching to solar.
“Land near a big city sometimes may be bought cheaply
and built up by the generous use of stable manure. If good
farming is practiced, there is a fair chance of success by
this method. The author has seen land appreciate in value
more than 800 per cent in 5 years by the use of city stable
manure, while at the same time giving a consistent profit in
crops grown. And if these profits are made by the use of
manure purchased in the large city markets at upward of $1
per ton, how much greater profits are to be made by the use
of similar material in many places where it may be obtained
for the expense of hauling.”
Before the arrival of the truck and tractor, hauling manure was a truly expensive undertaking. Hauling it more than maybe five or ten miles in a horse drawn wagon would have consumed so much horse feed, and time, and wear and tear on the wagon and the horses, that going much farther than that would have resulted in a monetary loss, depending on the roads. Roads back in those days were generally more ruts and mud or dust , intermingled with pot holes and rocks, than otherwise. Pulling a ton on a wagon on such a road, round trip ten miles could easily be a brutal can see to can’t see all day job.
I have never hauled on a public road with a wagon and team,but I drove a wagon a little when I was a kid, on the farm.
My grand parents grew up with wagons and horses, and did so routinely. My maternal grand father told me that in good weather, and the road in the best condition, mid summer when the days are longest, he could leave at the crack of dawn, with a team and a ton or so of produce loaded the previous evening, and deliver to town and pick up a few things and just barely make it back by dark- most of the time. When the road was muddy, he just didn’t go. The round trip was less than twenty five miles and probably less than twenty two, but I can’t be sure, because the road has been rerouted, and the market he delivered to closed before I was born. He owned one of the first cars in the immediate neighborhood, and one of the first tractors as well,by the time he was in his thirties.
It amuses me no end that various people are always coming up with the ancient idea that manure is good for farm soil, lecturing farmers just like teenagers discovering the world of adulthood, and lecturing their parents.
I doubt if there was a single working farmer near NYC that didn’t put what manure he had available to good use, although there are incompetents in every line of work.
In Northern Europe the make heavy use of manure for fertilizer, which gives the country air a special tang.
This has been going on since the late Roman Empire, resulting in a thick layer of fertile “plaggen” soil over the less fertile original. In many places it is two meters deep. This is a picture of an excavation of a Roman/German battlefield. The artifacts are all just below the clear line between the soil types.
The Plaggen were poor soil from forrests and moorland which was used as litter in stables. The then enriched stuff was put on the fields.
The cutting of the Plaggen (Placken in Low German) was a cruel work, therefore, a heavy work is still called Plackerei in German.
According to german Wikipedia the plaggen agriculture started in the 10th century under the influence of strong squires.
The areas where the plaggen were produced showed dramatic erosion and were often lost for intensive agriculture and became heathland.
In China sometimes in 1940’s there was still active boat haulage on Yangtze river for the night soil. In cities there was a special workforce that collected it from houses, using special wheelbarrow andd took it to the boats. Wheelbarrowman got paid per load, so there was a wide-spread habit of ading some water to the load… and apparently the boatowners added to their load some river water as needed to get a full load. On the return trip from the upriver farms they carried at least some farm produce, salads, whatever…
Anybody who wants to KNOW SOMETHING about preindustrial agriculture in a densely populated country REALLY ought to read Farmers of Forty Centuries.
If you haven’t read it………. well, you REALLY ought to.
Hi Fred,
You may wish to re-read my comment again, as it is suspected by your response that you don’t understand it, or don’t want to, or want to run along your own, literally shitty, tangent, regardless.
(For one, disruption is contextual. We need to look at what is being disrupted, how and why, etc.. Looking to the current system, such as a corporation– apparently a ‘person’ by ‘law’– as a relatively undemocratic force in disruptive technology seems a good example of an ass-backwards disruption, a problem waiting to happen that will likely ‘necessitate’ a call for yet another technofix. Like a perpetual racket. [Can you hear the sound of money in the background?])
By the way, whatever happened to your previous asinine announcement that you wouldn’t respond to any of my subsequent comments. Now, you’re likely my most frequent responder. How does that feel?
Anyway, of course the cart before the horse is just an idiom for doing things ass-backwards.
Techno-fixes looking for a problem; techno-fixes for the wrong sorts of problems; techno-fixes to techno-problems; techno for techno’s sake; insufficiently-tested techno-apps, such as that treat the world like a laboratory, or that kick the can down the road, like with nuclear waste; and techno-fixes to problems we shouldn’t have had in the first place, etcetera, can be, or are, ass-backwards, to be charitable in many cases.
But this sort of thing’s a religion with some people. I get that. Perhaps you’re not much different in that regard than Javier with climate or trying to convert a Jehovah’s Witness. Ain’t gonna happen. Give it up, Cae.
And that’s in large part why we are in the predicaments we are in. Because humans are doing things ass-backwards and putting the cart before the horse and thinking that’s ok, cuz it’s a CRISPR horse.
Incidentally, your mention of whether I know about CRISPR or not actually underscores the point that not all of us are or can be this or the other specialist, and (so) rely on them all the time in a highly-complex ass-backwards society; specialists that jerk around and sleep on the job, etc., and have all the failings of the typical human.
Yair . . .
Dunno Fred Magyar.
I have seen that dissertation by Mr. Morris before.
The sentiments expressed don’t jell with photographs and illustrations from the period and I am inclined to think Mr Morris is playing a little fast and loose with the truth of the situation.
That last bolded section is questionable. Perhaps carcases were permitted to rot in the streets but it certainly would not have been necessary because of lack of technology
I was once a less than average bush butcher but with a couple of knives and a decent axe I reckon I could have reduced a draught horse to manageable pieces in maybe half an hour.
When I read statements I know to be incorrect it tends colour my vision as to the veracity of the rest of the piece.
There obviously would have been a “problem” but a little difficult now to determine the extent.
I have a piece somewhere on another hard drive dealing with the situation in London where the loss of the manure and bedding that was used to produce crops on the flatland now covered by Heathrow airport caused a fundamental shift in how Londoners were fed.
Cheers.
Three million pounds per day of horse manure in NYC and 40,000 gallons of horse urine, sure no problem Scrub. Just another day trying not to get shit all over shoes and dresses walking across streets.
Just think what the streets would be like when it rained or even worse when it was very dry and formed dust clouds of manure. Sweet.
Apparently, like oil, there was a glut of manure so stable owners had to start paying to have it removed to farms. Even the farms were overwhelmed for a period of time.
Should have run it out by the railroad car.
Dunno Scrub, I wasn’t there…
Perhaps you are right and those stories are all Bull Horse Shit! Regardless, Mr. Morris’supposed spin on the story or its precise veracity about the difficulties with dealing with the horse carcass problem, It seems you are quibbling about something that still kinda misses the essential point I was making about disruption, eh?
Quick google search on the topic brings up many hits other than Mr Morris’version, perhaps they had a problem, perhaps they didn’t. Either way they probably had a lot of manure and flies to deal with… a situation still ripe for the eventual disruption caused by the emergence of the horseless carriage. And no matter how you slice or dice it that disruption didn’t happen because of some evil dictatorship holding the reins of power and imposing his or her will on the population at large. You might just as well place the blame on Hayagriva, the hindu horse god!
The Horse & the Urban Environment – The Environmental Literacy … https://enviroliteracy.org/environment…/the-horse-the-urban-environme…
While the nineteenth century American city faced many forms of environmental … from its streets, and late as 1916 Chicago carted away 9,202 horse carcasses. … The crisis of the 1890s and early twentieth century, involving public health fears …
The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 … in respect: urine, flies, congestion, carcasses, and traffic accidents. … As the cities grew in population and size, more horses were needed. … At the turn of the 20th century, William Phelps Eno was responsible for: …. What would have happened had the automobile not been invented, or if the technology …
Robert H. Friis – 2007 – Health & Fitness
… with the overflow of outNew York City, Early 20th Century door privies located behind … In 1880, 15,000 horse carcasses were removed from the city’s streets; ..
The Horse Manure Problem | Big Picture News, Informed Analysis https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/03/…/the-horse-manure-problem/
Mar 29, 2011 – In the late 1800s cities were drowning in smelly, dirty, disease-spreading horse manure. … Masters thesis explored the reality of horse-based transportation in 19th-century cities. … In the words of Morris, in the early years of the 20th century: … Without such measures they say, the worst will happen..
Everyone is entitled to do their own horse shit research 😉
Cheers!
The people who wrote about horse manure being inches and in low spots in the street a foot deep or more were telling it like it was. The folks who wrote about it being much deeper than that were engaging in hyperbole, , or fibbing , just as many people do today.
A very substantial percentage of horses, oxen, dairy cows, and sheep that met untimely ends WERE eaten, although the people involved in doing the selling and the eating weren’t prone to talk about it and especially not to write about it.
Some local people here eat any cow that they can put their hands on that has been hit by a car, although the usual practice is to bury the carcass.
If you are ready to take advantage of the situation, and get such a cow free, which is the usual price, two men working together with a small winch, a pickup truck, a few hand tools, and a garden hose can have five hundred pounds or more of beef on ice within three or four hours with good luck and a very short ride, or within a day even with a longer ride. That’s a hell of a good return for people who work for peanut wages, or who are out of work.
I have reason to suspect that they also eat horses that have been hurt accidentally, rather than burying them, meaning they get paid, PLUS they get the meat.
And I have very good reason to believe that they butcher horses routinely, but very quietly. The folks who owned the horse headed for the butcher tend to get very upset about their pet being eaten.
Horses can be had for peanuts compared to beef animals these days. A while back I could get one for free, no problem.
There is nothing wrong with eating horse meat, except we are conditioned not to. Ditto eating a crippled up cow, if you get her butchered quick enough. Modern hunters and hunter gatherers routinely eat deer and other game animals that have been shot and found dead hours or even a day or more later, if the weather is cold enough, without a second thought.
Not many were left to rot in the street , at least not in most towns and cities at most times, but it happened, in rough enough neighborhoods. A two horse team can very easily drag a dead horse, and even one horse can get the job done, working a few minutes and resting a few minutes.
It is almost impossible to exaggerate how nasty and foul smelling and dangerous large cities were at times. It was routine in English cities for raw sewage to flow in ditches in the streets, over flowing with every rain, and people walked in the middle of the street so as to keep from getting drenched with the contents of chamber pots dumped from second story or higher windows.
It’s easy to find descriptions of these conditions written by people on the spot in various books.
Scrub is right, you can do a rough job butchering a horse or cow in an hour or so, with nothing BUT an axe. I have seen it done on a cow when the weather turned very nasty, blowing freezing rain, when neighbors were butchering for home use. Home butchering is not very common around here these days, but my own immediate family and most farm people in this area routinely butchered their own beef and pork well into the fifties, and my folks butchered our own occasionally even in the nineties, but more as part of preserving old traditions than otherwise.
Now you raise the cow, but you have a licensed and inspected meat packer pick her up, alive, or haul her yourself, and go and get your meat frozen rock hard, nicely wrapped, two days later. This saves a hell of a lot of money, and people who don’t farm ought to be doing it, by way of just paying a farmer for the animal and calling the butcher. This is perfectly legal, so long as you pay the farmer first.
Climate Change: Spring Snow Cover
“Records from the last five decades show that on average, spring snow is disappearing earlier in the year than it did in the past, with the most rapid declines in snow-covered area occurring in June. Across the Northern Hemisphere, the total area covered by snow during March and April has also shrunk over time.
The graph shows average area covered by snow in the Northern Hemisphere during March and April as the difference from the 1981-2010 average.” https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-spring-snow-cover
Snow cover anomalies northern hemisphere for June.
from Rutgers Global Snow Lab
Yep, small amounts of increase during the low light times, see. Try to focus on the important.
Hi Gone fishing,
Not a big difference in light from fall to spring as far as I know.
Winter you are correct.
Come on Dennis, think. You are showing a lack of knowledge of an extremely basic property.
First day of fall at 40 N 12 hours, last day of fall 9 hours, average is 10.5 hours, average altitude at noon is 38 deg.
First day of spring at 40N 12 hours, last day of spring 15 hours, average is 13.5 hours, average altitude at noon is 62 deg.
At 60 north fall has average of 9 hours of daylight. Spring has 15.5 hours average daylight.
Average altitude of sun in fall is 18.5 deg, Average altitude of sun at noon in spring is 41.5 degrees.
Looking at the insulation curves below you can see the symmetry around the summer solstice. Spring and Summer have almost the same total insolation, while Fall and Winter have almost the same insolation though far less total in the north. The minor difference in symmetry is due to the slight elliptical nature of the earth orbit.
So your analysis that Fall and Spring have the same solar insolation is completely wrong. It couldn’t be more off. Spring and Summer have the same. Fall and Winter have the same insolation.
As I said, stick with the important. Spring has far more insolation and far more change in snow cover area over time than fall or winter. Thus the albedo effect is maximized then, and amplified the further north you go since the spring/summer insolation is most of the total annual insolation in the far north. Losing snow/ice cover earlier in the northern spring has the largest effect on warming.
Hi Gone fishing
Yes spring and summer would have roughly equal insolation. I was mistaken.
That is why the climate scientists graph and watch the spring and summer periods in the Arctic.
Hi Gone fishing,
There was not a chart for summer snow cover extent.
Note that about 2 million sq km of the NH SCE is snow cover on Greenland, so that would be a likely minimum during summer at least until 2100, so the change in energy absorbed during summer from Northern hemisphere reduced SCE would be cut in half from my estimate above. Most of the change would be from spring SCE.
Do you account for the fact that spring is only 3 months of the year when you consider the increase in energy absorbed due to a decrease in albedo. So if summer was relatively unchanged in snow cover extent there would be little change there, but a 2 W/m^2 average increase during spring would amount to about 0.5 W/m^2 (or less because SCE has increased in fall and winter). Also the Arctic circle has a relatively small land area of 14.5 million square kilometers, about 3% of the surface area of the planet. Outside of the Arctic circle there is very little snow cover during the summer with the exception of southern Green land whose ice sheet extends south of the Arctic circle.
and looked at summer snow cover extent in the Northern Hemisphere(NH). Snow cover extent(SCE) has decreased in summer as well, though snow cover is much lower on average from 1972-2016 (1967-1971 data was dropped due to many missing summer weeks) during summer relative to spring. Average NH SCE was 4 million sq km during summer vs 24 million sq km over the 1972-2016 period during spring.
If we assume about 320 W/m^2 average insolation between the equinoxes in the snow belt and about a 0.5 change in albedo from spring and summer snow (generally melting so lower albedo than new snow) to land we get about a 2.9 W/m^2 increased forcing if we get a decrease of 9.28 million sq km from 1994 to 2094 (rate of decrease has been 0.0928 million sq km per year from 1972 to 2016). Over 12 months we would divide by 4 to get 0.725 W/m^2. For summer NH SCE we could see at most 4 million sq km less snow from the average level of the 1972-2016 period, so from 1994-2094 we would see an increase of 1.3 W/m^2 over this 3 month summer period and for the year we would divide by 4 to get 0.325 W/m^2. The total would be roughly 1 W/m^2. Chart below for summer snow cover.
Don’t forget you have to factor clouds and other items into the total albedo estimates. For example, we know the earth is getting greener, this has a tendency to drop albedo .
Hi Fernando,
We are not to sure what will happen with clouds, yes the earth has gotten greener, but as temperatures increase this might not continue, hard to predict.
The assumptions I have made (a continuation of a past linear trend) may also be incorrect, it might accelerate or decelerate, also unclear.
I just assume the models are roughly correct, others believe they are either too high or too low. Basically we don’t really know.
My opinion is that the uncertainty is reason to be cautious. Burn less fossil fuel today (or as little as possible), we can always burn it later if ECS turns out to be very low. It is more difficult to reduce atmospheric CO2 later.
Fernando, the use of actual insolation takes clouds into account.
I don’t have any data on the latest changes due to growth in the boreal and arctic regions, but it certainly is a factor to take into account.
Using a yearly average insolation of 25o watts/m2 gives a loss of snow anomaly of +150 watts/m2.
With an average absorbance anomaly of 150 watts/ m2 and an average of 16 million km2 annual snow cover (northern hemisphere) the whole earth radiation forcing changes by 4.5 watts/m2 for total loss of snow cover.
Considering CO2 is given 1.6 watts/m2 forcing, that is far above current CO2 forcing.
This does not include the Arctic Ocean changes or any Southern hemisphere changes in snow cover or sea ice.
What is also very important is that huge expanses of permafrost, rivers, lakes, ponds and land are exposed to up to 500 watts/m2 of insolation weeks and months earlier than usual. This is a significant factor in the production of natural methane and CO2.
Hi Gonefishing,
Unlikely that there will be no snow cover by 2100 so not very realistic. Also 500 W/m^2 is at the North pole for 4 weeks, 400 W/m^2 is more reasonable guess for maybe the peak 3 month period. For the June 21- Sept 21 period, snow cover is already pretty low and negative values are not likely, the minimum will be determined by the size of the Greenland ice sheet (about 2 Million km^2). The snow change will mostly be a spring effect which reduces the period with 400 W/m^2 that has much snow albedo effect to 90 days.
I don’t have the insolation data to do it month by month. Estimating by reading off your chart and using linear trends for each month and the assumption that the minimum will be no lower than 2 million km^2 (Greenland snow cover), I get about a 0.8 W/m^2 increase in radiation absorbed by the surface by 2100. There will indeed be feedback effects from melting permafrost which are difficult to estimate, the Earth system models attempt to do this, but they no doubt are imperfect (as is the case for all models).
It’s too complicated to get a believable estimate for total albedo using a climate model. They haven’t had a quality long term program to measure earthshine for as long as they should have, and the feedbacks are a bowl of spaghetti. I tried playing with this a couple of years ago, and decided it just got too complicated.
My main interest in this area is the geoengineering application. For example, let’s say we change the DNA of spruce and similar trees to produce more volatile organic compounds, which can help form more clouds? I can think of several research avenues we do need to take in this area.
Hi Gone fishing,
You said up to 500 W/m^2. There are not a lot of lakes and rivers at the north pole so it’s probably a little less than that for most lakes and rivers, also there is not a lot of permafrost at 90N, just sea ice. Maybe up to 480 W/m^2 would be about right. Oh and the average snow cover extent from 1980 to 2010 in June is about 10 million km squared. It is unlikely to fall below 2 million km^2 unless the entire Greenland ice sheet melts (which won’t happen by 2100, maybe by 2500) so a more realistic estimate would be 480/2*8/510/12=0.3 W/m^2 averaged over the entire year for the change in June SCE. July would be less due to lower insolation and less change in sea ice (1.67 sq km), August even less (o.8 km sq), May would be (8.8 sq km) and April 5.1 sq km. All estimates are for 100 years and are the change in snow cover extent, just estimate the insolation.
Indeed it is complicated, which is exactly the reason why geoengineering is a bad idea. Kind of like building a bridge with no understanding of basic mechanics and strength of materials.
Better to reduce emissions, far more sensible an option. Research on better energy sources and higher efficiency is a better way to spend our money. Maybe cement that reduces atmospheric CO2 and research on farming practices that reduce carbon emissions are also good avenues.
I am not a big fan of genetic engineering seems there is a lot of potential for negative unintended consequences.
Geoengineering is a good idea if it’s based on what nature does, not what current industrial technology does.
So Dennis, as you have suggested about something else; government stepping in and directing a kind of global WW2 mobilizing effort to bring back true community and planting lots of native trees and plants might help naturally geoengineer our way to a more stable planet and secure future. (As long as government steps out afterward. ‘u^ )
Incidentally, I just caught some fragments of GoneFishing and Dennis Coyne talking about seasons, snow, albedo, and insolation… So what is the general conclusion from that if anything?
Dennis, sorry don’t have much time now to discuss.
I did make an error though, the average annual snow cover for NH is actually larger than I stated. It’s not 15 million km2, it’s 25 million km2 which increases the forcing for snow loss to 7.5 watts/m2.
Dennis, I said up to 500 w/m2, as in an upper limit. Are you joking or just pulling my leg with responses like that?
Hi Gone fishing I misread at first. What do you mean by average annual snow cover.
You seem to be contradicting yourself, first you say spring and summer are what is important, I agree. The average snow cover in spring and summer is much smaller than 25 million km^2.
Do you expect it will stop snowing in winter from 50 N to 90 N? Not very likely under any realistic scenario (between RCP4.5 and RCP 2.6).
Oh and since 1980 in the northern hemisphere(NH) fall and winter snow cover extent has been increasing, so we would need to see a change in trend.
I get about 6 W/m^2 under the unrealistic assumption of average NH snow cover extent falling to zero, I suppose that’s possible under RCP8.5, which would require fossil fuel resources more than 3 times higher than any reasonable estimate. (5000 Pg of carbon emissions, when possibly 1600 Pg is reasonable, my “high” fossil fuel scenario.)
No contradictions Dennis, just calculating on the loss of snow cover. Of course, losing most of the snow cover, even in winter, is realistic, has happened many times before.
I will put a more comprehensive answer at the bottom of the page for you instead of doing the narrowed run-on.
Hi Gone fishing,
Yes I missed the up to at first, sorry.
Does total loss of snow cover seem reasonable? For the 25 million km^2 average SCE, a change to zero with average insolation of 250 W/m^2 would indeed be 6 W/m^2. The current trend is 6.8 million km^2 per century or about 1.7 W/m^2 per century. I trust the month by month estimates more which results in about half that change, in addition the data from 2000 to 2014 for the Arctic suggests about 0.19 W/m^2 per century (the 10 W/m^2 increase over the Arctic Ocean from 2000-2014 during June , July and August). That estimate includes albedo change from snow and sea ice as measured by satellite.
If we add the change from spring NH snow cover reduction that I have assumed (0.45 W/m^2 per century), we would be at about 0.65 W/m^2, we would need to add spring sea ice extent change in March, April, June, and Sept which would add 0.29 W/m^2, which brings the total to about 1 W/m^2 per century. Note that as temperature levels off and snow cover decreases to some minimum (which is unlikely to be zero) the ice-snow albedo feedback diminishes in magnitude.
There are other feedbacks from permafrost and vegetation changes but that analysis is more complex. Carbon cycle models attempt to deal with that complexity.
Hi Gone fishing,
It will be interesting to see your evidence for no winter snow, maybe you are talking about mid Pliocene or earlier. It would seem the evidence is pretty scant for Pliocene, so it is unclear what you evidence would be for very different snow cover extent for periods before 1 million years ago.
Hi Gone fishing,
You often cite a 10 W/m^2 change in energy absorbed in the arctic probably from
This is for the period June, July and August and refers to an average over the Arctic ocean. The area of the arctic ocean is 5.4 million km^2 and the Earth’s area is 510 million Km^2, in addition this is only 3 months so for the year we would divide by 4
10*5.4/510/4=0.026 W/m^2 increase for the planet, this is over a 14 year period, so for 100 years this would be 0.026/14*100=0.18 W/m^2. The change may well be non-linear, we do not really know, some models such as GISS Model E2-R get the sea ice extent roughly correct. Chart below from p 467 of
NH sea ice is ok, but the model underestimates SH sea ice.
This webpage shows the current trends and how the system works. Generalizing, we can say that less sea ice seems to cause more snow fall. Evidently we are getting more snow, and the snow melts easier in warm summers. I’m trying to chase down salinity data for the Kara Sea, I think it ought to be getting slightly fresher. But I’m not sure.
“Witness Al Finnell described the terrifying scene as a Tesla vehicle spun out of control, collided with a tree, and exploded into a ‘big ball of fire.’ The crash killed two people…”
The world’s safest car just blew up like a bomb but that message seems to be getting lost amidst the larger coverage about Tesla.
For years and years, Tesla has never made a nickel despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars. But the company is beloved by the predictable monetary elites that seek more and more control over the rest of us.
Here at DB… We don’t like the car and much more than that, we don’t like the implications behind it.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is fairly clear about his goals. He wants to create an electric, self-driving car…
Extend the logic and you come the inevitable conclusion that larger entities will have to support Tesla’s vision. These entities will surely be linked to some sort of government control.
Don’t pay your ticket? Have a confrontation of some sort outside of the home? Or simply fall afoul of one of a plethora of rules and regulations that increasingly hem-in behavior… and…
You will get up in the morning and your car won’t start because someone has flagged your behavior…
There are other issues as well. Musk is running a vast corporation with other people’s money. But if you look elsewhere you will see other titanic entities are throwing their resources behind the development of technology, especially robots.
It would be one thing if these technological innovations were being developed by entrepreneurs. But one of the biggest developer of robot technology – deadly technology at that – is the Pentagon…
How many people wake up in the morning and decide they’re going to build a robot that will kill people automatically?
But that’s what is going on. This technology is being developed by huge corporations with virtually unlimited funds. These corporations wouldn’t exist without monopoly central banking and a variety of rules and regulations to support them and ensure they have little or no competition.
The world today is technocratic and fascist. It is run by gigantic corporations that would not exist without laws and judicial decisions that guarantee their viability no matter how incompetently they operate.
These corporations work hand-in-glove with governments around the world….
In other words, the technological progress that we are supposed to celebrate is actually being organized for nefarious purposes…
A normal entrepreneurial society in which individuals and groups applied technology with an eye toward marketplace acceptance might end up with completely different kinds of technology.
What else do we learn? ‘Lithium-ion battery cell fires are tough to put out’, Indiana Fire Trucks Battalion Chief Kevin Jones said.’
A team of hackers in China gained remote access to a Tesla Model S and manipulated systems including the brakes, The Hacker News reports. Thankfully, the hackers were not the bad kind — they were researchers from Keen Security Lab — though their ability to gain access to a Tesla’s controller area network (CAN Bus) demonstrated security flaws that could be exploited by those wanting to do harm.
The brakes weren’t the only system the security researchers were able to control (from a distance of 12 miles): The trunk lid, turn signals, mirrors, sunroof, windshield wipers and infotainment screen could all be accessed remotely.
‘As far as we know, this is the first case of remote attack which compromises CAN Bus to achieve remote controls on Tesla cars’, the security researchers wrote in their blog describing the vulnerability. ‘We have verified the attack vector on multiple varieties of Tesla Model S.’ ”
I recently watched a nearly brand new tractor and trailer burn to the ground on the side of the highway, with two tanker trucks and a half a dozen firemen able to do nothing more than keep the fire from spreading into the adjacent woods.
Teslas are among the very safest cars in the world, if not THE safest, and everybody who keeps up with such things knows it, except Caelan, lol.
There’s more than one way to measure profit. The stock holders have mostly done exceedingly well. I wish I had bought some myself.
You’re comparing a car to a tractor and trailer, and anecdotally?
Anyway, here’s a snip of the article above (linked) that, for brevity (something that you can relate to), I didn’t include:
“The Tesla Model S is ‘known’ for being fabulously safe. As the article informs us, it achieved the highest National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rating of any car ever tested.
Conclusion: Except when it explodes.”
Tesla hasn’t been around long enough; it still has yet to perfect, if it ever will, its cars’ self-driving capacity (which apparently was implicated in a recent death); it has a very limited market so far (and the way the market appears to be going, there’s a question as to whether it might remain limited and become more limited as time progresses); there’s more to a car than safety; and there’s more to safety than meets the eye.
Besides, a ‘safe car’ is a bit of an oxymoron anyway. Didn’t that newsclip I just posted mention that two people died?
“…and everybody who keeps up with such things knows it, except Caelan, lol.” Oldfarmermac
Oh, well, you see that’s because I work in law during the day, in architecture at night and in teaching at twilight, so my time to follow Tesla’s safety record for example, and brush up on CRISPR’s progress of course, is fairly limited.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I am volunteering in cooking at a local hospital on my lunch breaks, so have to go and prepare some veggies now.
The chances of getting killed by a burning car are tiny. The real problem is bad road design. Car crashes are the leading cause of death for Americans under 14, and a lot of the victims are pedestrians.
Since you’re so worried about traffic safety, I’m sure this presentation will interest you.
I’d also like to point out that bad urban planning plays a huge role in the terrible results America gets in this area compared to other rich countries.
For example, drunk driving is a major issue, but in most cities bars are required by law to provide off-street parking for their customers, and bars are forbidden within walking distance of most homes. Bars are not required to be within walking distance of public transportation or a taxi stand. In Europe most people live within walking distance of a bar, so people don’t drive drunk as much.
Getting back to the holistic design remark I made elsewhere in this thread, you can’t solve car safety issues by looking at cars alone. You need to look at road design. And you can’t deal with road design issues without looking at urban planning as a whole. And of course urban design affects car design as well, since Europeans are much less interested in oversized passenger vehicles than Americans are, mostly thanks to urban design choices. Europeans eschew surface parking, and this partially explains the lower energy consumption, and traffic safety. And so on.
You need to look at stuff like equability and all members of communities taking part in decisions surrounding their own locales.
Roadways don’t come from nowhere. They come, often, if not always, from a tax-coerced public that pay for some things they wouldn’t necessarily if they had a choice.
So, essentially, the highways that you drive your stupid cars on are built via theft and lack of democratic input.
“So, essentially, the highways that you drive your stupid cars on are built via theft and lack of democratic input.”
Redefining words and ideas just turns it into meaningless chatter.
We have taxation with representation, it is a common agreement to build and maintain roads. It is the responsibility of the citizens to maintain the public infrastructure. No theft and a modicum of democracy.
“stupid cars” – so drive a Smart Car.
Speaking of, as you write, ‘meaningless chatter’, the point of a representative is to represent.
If you had true representation, then you’d have a representative saying that so-and-so refuses to pay for this and that, and so they wouldn’t.
You have taxation with ideological indoctrination– as is in apparent evidence by your comment.
It is the responsibility of citizens to transcend the ideological indoctrination that it is their responsibility by way of the business-end of a gun (and/or assorted dynamics to that effect) to, for example, maintain the public infrastructure.
We don’t need illegitimate coercion to make things happen. Quite the opposite. Some of us only think we do, until maybe the whole thing comes apart. Hey, POB peak oil/collapse blog right?
A ‘Smart Car’ is an oxymoron and a good example of yet more ideological indoctrination-cum-candycane-striped-green-and-whitewashing, like a ‘Nissan Leaf’, or car commercials absent of smog, pollution, roadkill, sprawl, fertile-land pave-overs, noise, habitat destruction, horrific accidents, stress, fractured communities, general urban/suburban blights, or gridlock.
Including the latter, for examples, are responsible car commercials.
You want to talk about responsibility? Then let’s have it.
Real responsibility wouldn’t likely put us squarely where we are right now as a species.
Coerced, ideological brainwashing would.
Oh, well, you see that’s because I work in law during the day, in architecture at night and in teaching at twilight, so my time to follow Tesla’s safety record for example, and brush up on CRISPR’s progress of course, is fairly limited.
Yet interestingly enough you somehow seem to find plenty of time to keep up with Tesla’s crashes.
Have you also checked on the statistics of ICE automobile crashes and deaths? How many ICEs caught fire recently? Guess what, people die in cars all the time and I’ve never heard anyone claim that TESLAs were 100% safe. Regardless, TESLAs are pretty safe compared to the average car on the road.
My guess is driver error is a more significant safety issue than the technology under the hood.
Tractor trailers burn to the ground more often than Tesla cars, on a per vehicle or per mile basis.
And while you may be satisfied that the car “exploded” I have seen that term used many times by ignorant or unethical writers and reporters who wished to dramatize their work.
I am willing to bet that if there is any additional coverage later on that I run across, I will find that the car will simply have burned up, with the fire starting relatively slowly, as car fires usually do. I have watched a number of cars burn, both accidentally and deliberately, the deliberate fires being set for training purposes.
A car makes one hell of a fire once it is fully engaged. There’s a lot of paint, insulation, fabric, rubber, plastic, lubricating oil, etc in a car, and when the metal gets hot, and the paint starts vaporizing, she will reach right up into the sky, rolling black smoke like a house afire. Plus the gasoline in a conventional car of course.
And then, there might have been things being hauled in the car such as paint thinner, or even hard liquor, or even cooking oil, that burn like hell once started.
Besides, a ‘safe car’ is a bit of an oxymoron anyway. Didn’t that newsclip I just posted mention that two people died?
Caelan, get real! People slip and die on sidewalks every day! Does that mean sidewalks are inherently dangerous? Even the main stream media recognizes that this accident has zero to do with the car’s technology.
Another witness, Al Finnell, told The Associated Press that he saw the car hit the tree before it bounced around and exploded. “… all the car parts went up in the air and I had to accelerate just to get away from it,” he said.
Jones explained that the accident occurred after the driver lost control of the vehicle while driving at a high speed. He also made it clear that large fires following high-speed crashes are not unique to electric vehicles.
Cars are not sidewalks, Fred, nor are electric fires the same as petrol fires. Follow your own advice and get real yourself.
Yellow rag news.
Here is the more relevant headline.
HORSES KILLED PEOPLE AT SEVEN TIMES THE RATE OF CARS.
What about in their materials extractions, manufacture, maintenance and disposal? Factory accidents? pollution? Roadkill? Sprawl? Habitat destruction? C02? Etc.?
Some seem to just be reading the headlines and/or latching onto snippets and would do well to expand their view and consider for example, stuff like my previous post about technology.
Also, consider effects of forms of technology over time, such as with regard to industrial agro and oil dependence and depletion and soil degradation and so forth.
Then when you have done that, then come talk to me with something more than myopic quips from snips.
Anyway, I didn’t raise the horse thing per se, Fred did. I just used an idiom that included it.
I’m going outside. I recommend it. Have a nice day.
“What about in their materials extractions, manufacture, maintenance and disposal? Factory accidents? pollution? Roadkill? Sprawl? Habitat destruction? C02? Etc.?”
We already had all that.
Do you have a point or are you just knee-jerk moaning?
A sort of thanks for putting that up. Many memories brought back. Painful ones. Time and again, fossil fuel reminds us of what it can do, what it can destroy, we just ignore that. That must change.
NAOM
Yair . . .
Gotcha NAOM.
I stumbled across it on another site and was pretty upset when I put it up.
Arctic ice running average annual volume continued rapid decline in October. It should flatten out in November as 2015 had slow growth in the second half. Nevertheless daily values have fallen below 2012 and are at the moment the lowest on record for the date.
What is critical is the multi-year ice is a low percentage now. Most of the ice is annual now, easier to melt.
Also the minimum ice period (Sept) is hitting low enough to give the first Arctic Ocean ice free days by 2025. At that point much of the Arctic Ocean will have been low albedo for months during the high insolation period.
Also the thick ice that is being formed is right in the path where it can be quickly expelled out of the Fram strait so won’t stay around long enough to help with stabilising the surrounding thin ice.
If abrupt climate change doesn’t look like this what would it be like (i.e. the apparent rapid Arctic warming of 5 to 10 degrees over a few years identified in the core samples in the past)?
HOW EACH ONE OF US CONTRIBUTE TO ARCTIC SEA ICE MELT
“The rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice is one of the most direct indicators of the ongoing climate change on our planet. Over the past forty years, the ice cover in summer has shrunk by more than half, with climate model simulations predicting that the remaining half might be gone by mid-century unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced rapidly. However, a number of studies have indicated that climate models underestimate the loss of Arctic sea ice, which is why the models might not be the most suitable tools to quantify the future evolution of the ice cover….
While climate models also simulate the observed linear relationship between sea ice area and CO2 emissions, they usually have a much lower sensitivity of the ice cover than has been observed. The Science study finds that this is most likely because the models underestimate the atmospheric warming in the Arctic that is induced by a given carbon-dioxide emission. It seems that it’s not primarily the sea ice models that are responsible for the mismatch. The ice just melts too slowly in the models because their Arctic warming is too weak.”
WARMING OCEAN WATERS ARE MELTING ANTARCTIC ICE SHELVES AT AN UNPRECEDENTED RATE
“In the case of the Antarctic ice shelves, the more the submarine ice melts, more ice is exposed to warm water. It becomes a runaway process, which makes it unstable, notes geophysicist Ala Khazendar, polar expert at NASA JPL. Furthermore, the melting process seems to be irreversible.”
What happens when Antartica’s glaciers flow into the sea? “The simple answer is we don’t know. And that’s the scary part,” warns Khazendar.
To most people that part I bolded means that since science doesn’t know everything, we can’t really trust science or scientists, so we shouldn’t worry about it.
Because it has retrograde grounding for most of its length the whole Thwaites glacier could melt out in one year (and may have done in the past) once the ocean reaches past it’s grounding line. That would mean almost instantaneous global sea level rise of several feet.
Tks, George! Somehow, I’m no longer scared, I guess I’ve gotten to the acceptance stage of the five stages of grief.
LOL!
I’m paraphrasing here but I think I got the gist of the quote right: “Senators are among the most frustrated people on the planet because what is happening in the world today is so much bigger than they are”
My only remaining regret in life is that I’m probably just a few years too old to scuba dive the Trump International Beach Resort in Miami. 😉
Fred, after listening to Richard Alley, best for you to wear a PFD 24/7 and keep the scuba stuff nearby – maybe on a trailer for your bike.
and keep the scuba stuff nearby – maybe on a trailer for your bike.
I just might take to sleeping with my scuba stuff and kayak right under my bed 🙂
I do not like the correlation between current CO2 output and sea ice area. Albedo changes have become a major driver in the Arctic Ocean. That will only increase with time. The warm air being driven north due to changes in the jet stream is another factor. Also sea ice area is a very nebulous measure with 100 percent cover being given to as low as 15% actual ice cover.
Also there is a 40 to 100 year lag in heating so we are probably looking at results from a much earlier period.
I find the correlation quite suspect and probably very much off. The Arctic Ocean will have fully open periods at current CO2 levels. Increasing levels will only hasten the process.
Following PIOMAS minima gives the first fully open Arctic at about 2025.
“I find the correlation quite suspect and probably very much off.”
Totally agree. Basically, there are too many variables. We’ve gone from a relatively predictable state to one controlled more-and-more by feedback. Wildfires alone (with their associated soot) are but one of many examples.
Totally agree. Basically, there are too many variables. We’ve gone from a relatively predictable state to one controlled more-and-more by feedback.
Aside from a very minor quibble with your terms, there are too many state variables, count me in the agreeable camp as well 🙂
So, yeah! From George’s link to Richard Alley’s lecture: “Cliffs solve the Pilocene” Who’d a thunk?
Remember that 450 cm sea level rise Dennis alluded to the other day? looks like that not only was that not a typo but might be a rather significant underestimation of actual future sea level rise in the relatively near term, just a few decades.
Especially since Alley states that even a mere 1C rise could be a severe insult to the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. So if that is truly the case then the significance of long term trends of diminishing CO2 emissions from reduced availability of fossil fuels is not something in and of itself, to be all that optimistic about. Obligatory disclaimer: I happen to be one of those, card carrying pessimists, though we prefer to call ourselves, realists.
But hey, the sun has fewer spots these days, so I could be looking forward to my own little ice sheets, glaciers and icebergs in South Florida.
Cheers!
Hi Fred,
The mid-Pliocene was about 1 to 2 C warmer than today and sea level was about 25 meters higher. It will take some time to melt the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. The mid Pliocene Warm period was roughly 200,000 years, we don’t really know how quickly sea level might rise. If we get a huge melt pond trapped behind an ice shelf that suddenly lets go, it could happen very quickly.
I am no glaciologist so I don’t really know what is realistic.
I go with the main stream scientists and my own estimates of fossil fuel resources likely yo be extracted.
That limits us to scenarios no higher than RCP4.5 and realistic (in my view) scenarios could get us to roughly to the average of RCP2.6 and RCP4.5.
In some of your “less realistic” moments you wax poetic about all of the disruptive technologies that are out there.
I suppose one could deem it “realistic” that all of those technologies will create the worst of all possible consequences in every case. Basic knowledge of statistics should make it apparent that such a view is not all that realistic.
There is uncertainty to be sure. Lets say we estimate 10 different phenomena that are linked together in the natural world and each has an uncertainty of +/-sigma. There might be some combination of each of those 10 estimates such that if they all happened to be at the one sigma bound either high or low in just the right combination it would lead to a very bad outcome.
So what are the chances of this occurring? If the uncertainty is normally distributed and sigma is one standard deviation, there would be about a 16% chance that one variable would be one sigma or more than the mean estimate. We would need this to occur for 10 variables (doesn’t really matter if the value is above or below the mean estimate). So the probability would be 0.16^10 or 1.1E-8. Call me optimistic, but to me, the person who thinks something with a probability of 0.0000012% is a sure thing, is a pessimist. And yes I know there unknown unknowns.
The pessimist thinks these are all negative, the realist would simply say we don’t know, it could go either way.
Recent ice sheet models I have read about predict modest sea level rise with RCP 4.5 about 2 to 6.7 meters by 2500 and 0 to 0.7 meters by 2100.
The mid-Pliocene was about 1 to 2 C warmer than today and sea level was about 25 meters higher. It will take some time to melt the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. The mid Pliocene Warm period was roughly 200,000 years, we don’t really know how quickly sea level might rise. If we get a huge melt pond trapped behind an ice shelf that suddenly lets go, it could happen very quickly.
Dennis, to be fair, I’ll grant you that Alley in the talk George linked to above was giving more than a few caveats about sudden collapse during his talk. However he was suggesting that it is within the realm of a physical possibility that certain ice sheets might suffer catastrophic collapse.
He specifically explained how the sudden collapse of buttressing ice by a mechanism of cliffing brought about sudden sea level rise and when this was factored into the models it seemed to help explain what happened during the Pliocene to cause sudden sea level rise, with only a relatively small temperature increase of a mere degree or two.
Now, whether or not one can call him a purveyor of the main stream climate science view may indeed be up for debate.
Though given that he is a conservative Republican, his testimony before Congress could at the very least, be called entertaining 😉
Alley seemed to really want to avoid being pinned down on the anthropogenic warming question. I can understand that, since he is primarily a glaciologist not a climate scientist and also republican.
We are in trouble if the scientists keep skating around the real questions like that. That California Rep was good though, kept moving toward the answer he wanted. “It’s nature, not us.”
I have seen other scientists give weak responses. Only a few seem to be able to put their points across and not get distracted or avoid.
Almost as bad as the “everything will work out just right automatically” guys.
Hi Gone fishing,
Nothing happens automatically. If people choose to not develop non-fossil fuel energy, things will not be good.
One problem with painting the worst case scenario as the most likely option is that people give up trying to make positive changes. Having a plan for what needs to be done and a plan of action might get things moving in the right direction.
There will be sea level rise and there will be warming, we don’t know how much.
We do know that the less carbon we emit the better off we will be, especially if higher estimates of Earth system sensitivity(ESS) are correct, my guess is that Hansen’s estimate of 4.2 C for ESS is about right. That would imply we need to get to 390 ppm for CO2 equivalent in the long run to stay at 2 C above 1850-1900 average temperature. It is not clear if carbon gets sequesterd fast enough by nature to accomplish that.
It’s called science Dennis, ever heard of boundary values? I am just trying to be realistic and not underplay all the forcings.
I am also examining the limits of the forcings.
It would be nice if we could just turn this whole global warming thing off or even down, but sadly that would not change the direction or rate of many of our other predicaments. In fact it might make them worse.
People don’t give up because conditions get worse, they actually finally get moving. If you keep downplaying the realities, then they ignore it. Which is mostly what is happening now. Your idea that peak fossil fuels might limit the CO2 output from industry and transport. Might be the only throttle we have, but from what I observe and analyze, the natural forcings are well on their way now and the human forcings are not really slowing down.
You have stated we will be limited by fossil fuel availability and the temperature rise will be limited, level and fall in a short time. Sounds automatic to me. Nobody really becoming very responsible, just being forced into renewables and alternatives by depleting fossil fuels and price.
Sounds way too convenient and coincidental to me.
…the CO2 output from industry and transport. Might be the only throttle we have, but from what I observe and analyze, the natural forcings are well on their way now and the human forcings are not really slowing down.
Not to mention the cascading dominoes set in motion in all those feedback loops 🙂
.
Cute Fred, now we just need one that shows a glacier being pushed over the edge as is happening in Antarctica.
Death for lack of buttressing. Worse than the Attack of the Monoliths. They could be stopped.
Hi Gone fishing,
Yep, I set the boundry value at realistic limits.
Well I have said nothing in my scenarios assumes that they will happen automatically.
There are many possible paths we might take.
I often use terms such as very difficult to accomplish, or may happen if carbon taxes and other appropriate policy actions are taken or that a Economic depression in roughly 2030 (give or take 5 years) might lead to the necessary policy action (under the assumption that by 2030 people will realize that a shortage of fossil fuels will be permanent unless action is taken to replace them).
Other paths could be chosen such that we just burn as much fossil fuel as possible and the result would be something slightly worse than RCP4.5. I suppose all sorts of worst case scenarios might emerge so it just is a matter of what one believes are reasonable boundries.
I have repeatedly asked people if they think RCP 8.5 seems likely. Steve Mohr concluded that most IPPC scenarios (TAR)were not reasonable due to fossil fuel constraints. So I base my estimates on likely fossil fuel resources.
I do not expect temperatures will fall in a short time, if emissions stop abruptly as in my energy transition scenario from a week ago temperatures decrease a bit maybe from 2 C to 1.8 C (over a 40 year period) and then gradually rise as the ocean warms (over hundreds of years), there will be Earth system feedbacks (melting of ice sheets and vegetation changes) that will also cause long term warming, this might be offset by carbon being sequestered naturally to some degree, the results are not clear. The temperature changes are likely to be relatively small after 2100, basically temperature will be driven by natural variability around 2 C (assuming anthropogenic emissions cease) for thousands of years, based on the ensemble mean of 9 carbon models evaluated in AR4.
More research is needed, we don’t really know (or I don’t in any case.)
Hi Fred,
Two degrees may well lead to high levels of sea level rise, my main point is that we don’t know how quickly that will occur. The recent paper in Nature suggests 6 meters for RCP4.5, maybe 7 meters, but the model could be wrong, maybe it will be more, but it will take 5000 years rather than 500.
I am not a glaciologist, I just read the work that others have done.
We have it somewhat easy, since most of the variables are pointed in the same direction it is more a matter of timing and degree than which way things will go.
But if things keep as they are, it will be like a Toyota with the accelerator stuck. Good thing things rarely stay as they are.
Have you been keeping up with the James Webb infrared telescope progress? Looks like it is complete and ready for testing.
Apparently it will be tested for vibration and they have a large vacuum chamber to focus it properly, though I assume they have to really lower the temperature to simulate the space conditions in which it will operate.
It’s too big to go as is, so the telescope folds up for launch. Then it will unfold 1.5 million km from earth at L2. Next it must unfurl a 5 piece very thin sun shield to protect from earth and sun radiation. So there are multiple mechanical things that can go wrong in the deployment.
Barring problems, the large size of the gold coated mirror combines with the most sensitive infrared sensors ever built to look deep into the universe (far back in time).
An astronomer on NPR said the James Webb telescope could detect a bee at the distance of the moon, both from sunlight reflected from it and from it’s own thermal radiation. Very impressive.
“Have you been keeping up with the James Webb infrared telescope progress?”
Is the Pope a Catholic? Of course I’ve been keeping up with the JWT. Jesus man…. 🙂
What is the planned launch vehicle?
The telescope will be launched on an Ariane 5 ECA rocket. This is the European contribution to the project or rather part of their contribution..
Hi Gone fishing,
The GISS Model E2-R TCADI has Global mean temperature at about 16.3 C in 2050 (1.1 C above 1996-2005 mean), the chart below shows the Sea Ice predictions vs surface air temperature (SAT), the E2-R model does better matching historical data for both temperature and sea ice (blue dots and lines) from page 252 of
They do all the RCPs. The relationship is between Surface air temperature and sea level, the SAT I gave was for RCP4.5 in 2050, which I should have said, my apologies. They have 1.1 C above the 1996-2005 mean temperature in 2050, I used BEST Land Ocean temperature (I probably should have used GISTEMP) to estimate temperature in 2000 (I used centered 5 year average.)
In 2100 the estimate for RCP4.5 is 1.8C above 2000 SAT or 0.7C higher than 2050. This would be about 17 C and September sea ice would not quite be at zero based on the RCP4.5 scenario.
Mistake above, I said sea level but meant sea ice extent as a percentage of Northern hemisphere area vs surface air temperature (SAT).
The GISS Model E2-R does a pretty fair job at arctic sea ice and arctic temperatures, though the AR5 model mean (for 30 models or so) does not do as well.
Hi George Kaplan,
For the 12 month running mean of sea ice extent the linear fit points to 2200 for ice free Arctic for the 12 month mean and the parabolic fit points to 2100. September zero ice would be sooner. About 2123 for linear fit and 2076 for the parabolic fit.
An interesting un-snow story from Alaska.
While the eastern us was getting some heavy snow, they were getting – nothing – some rain.
This is true. I have lived by choice in Fairbanks for 40 years. Back in the old days it started snowing in October. Now it rained hard most of August and then cleared up. The ground fog burns off in the morning and the sky is clear. This never happened before. Usually we never see the sun for months. Now it’s daily. Good for solar power, relatively speaking when maximum sunshine can be as low as 3-1/2 hours per day. But bad for the winter sports I came to Alaska for. I remember once getting enough snow to drive dogs on October 1. That will never happen again. I treasure those memories.
Douglas
Arctic Sea Ice Concentration September 07 2016
Announcement: Moody’s: Unfunded pension liabilities now exceed debt for many large US local governments
Maybe you could explain what that means. I don’t know much about pension funds, how they are grown or invested and how long they can go before getting in trouble. How debt relates to pension funding needs explaining too.
I know these are governments so they act differently than corporations.
So I would appreciate some background and context.
I was going to ask the same question: What does “pension liabilities exceeding debt” mean? — and explained so an economic ignoramus can understand.
Debt generally refers to bonds issued by the local government. These are similar to “commercial paper”, but typically are exempt from income tax, and often have long terms.
Unfunded pension liability simply means that they have a bunch of employees who have been promised a certain level of pension benefits after they retire, and their actuaries project that the total payout will be larger than the pension fund’s income (usually a combination of employee and employer contributions, fairly similar to FICA except that local government tries to fund ahead and invest the contributions).
Why is there a problem? The biggest single reason is excessively early retirements, in part due to a misguided imitation of the US military pension, which was created post WWI to induce the retirement of unneeded service members. The US military pension system should have eliminated early retirement long ago, but…that’s a different problem.
IF you believe that the USA is better off with a standing professional army manned by men ( and women) with substantial training and experience, then the early retirement system is necessary, or else we wouldn’t be able to keep those men and women re enlisting.
Personally I believe we do need such an army, although I also believe it could stand a good pruning.
Early retirement is NOT the primary reason pension funds, and their managers get into big trouble.
The real reason for the troubles are basically two fold, one the workers manage to extract promises from management, ESPECIALLY government management, beyond the ability of the tax payer to handle the bill, in the case of government, and the ability of the company or industry to generate sufficient profits in the case of businesses.
It takes an exceedingly optimistic person, one who never stops to look at downsides, to believe that we will always be able to pay out more and more and more and more yet again, on the basis of HOPED for future prosperity.
Entire industries have vanished due to being displaced by new technology, etc, and quite a few local governments have made promises to their employees that were nothing less than insane, but politicians don’t really give a rat’s ass about budget problems ten or twenty years down the road, as a general rule. It’s too easy to buy votes and peace and tranquillity on the worker front by just promising the sky today, knowing that you will have moved on to another position , or be retired or dead when the bill comes due.
And of course a company in an industry what is shrinking is not very likely to generate the profits needed to both stay in business and pay out the huge sums owed for pension benefits.
Any body who seriously thinks Uncle Sam has even a foggy idea how he is going to make good all the promises he has made is BADLY mistaken, even if the economy does well on a more or less continuous basis.
Demographic changes alone are probably going to be more than ample to wreck programs such as Social Security and Medicare over the long term.
Eternal growth is not in the cards, and anybody with a good grasp of the basics of the life sciences knows it. And without eternal growth, an eternally increasing debt load cannot be managed.
the early retirement system is necessary, or else we wouldn’t be able to keep those men and women re enlisting.
Why? It seems to me the opposite: we lose good people to early retirement.
Why is early retirement necessary?
“Why? It seems to me the opposite: we lose good people to early retirement.”
If you check, OFM was talking about an army, which has a leader pyramid.
Without early retirement there is no chance to avoid to many chieftains. You only keep the good ones, most officers are retired as Majors/Colonels.
The German Reichwehr had this system between 1921 and 1933.
Without early retirement there is no chance to avoid to many chieftains.
Don’t almost all organizations have this problem? Early retirement is very expensive, and non-selective: the best people can leave more easily to find opportunities in the private sector, perhaps as revolving-door lobbyists and salespeople.
Why did the German Reichwehr drop this system after 1933?
“Why did the German Reichwehr drop this system after 1933?”
Serious question?
Hitler expanded the Reichswehr/Wehrmacht dramatically, there was suddenly a huge demand for officers.
If you have to retire officers after 20 years you face difficulties to provide enough civilian jobs for them, they are 40 years old and have a quite special skill set.
If you have to retire officers after 20 years you face difficulties to provide enough civilian jobs for them
That’s true for a lot of industries. What do petroleum geologists do when the oil industry crashes??
On the other hand, that’s why the US created an early-retirement program after WWI: there was a sudden surge of soldiers who were suddenly unneeded. But…that’s a temporary down sizing problem.
If an organization chooses to reduce staff with an early retirement program it will be very expensive. It should be narrowly targeted toward jobs that are unneeded, and such programs should be *TEMPORARY*.
Which is why I asked about the Reichswehr/Wehrmacht: the early retirement program wasn’t restarted after WWII…which was sensible.
An army has the problem that it needs a lot of platoon/company commanders but only few generals.
The company officers have to be quite young.
You have to propose a model that solves this problem without early retirement. 🙂
An army has the problem that it needs a lot of platoon/company commanders but only few generals.
Doesn’t every organization have this problem? Your low level staff will need supervisors – roughly 1 for every 6 to 10 staff. The number of mid level managers drops by roughly the same ratio, as does higher level managers and the very top managers.
How are the armed services different in this way?
“Doesn’t every organization have this problem? Your low level staff will need supervisors – roughly 1 for every 6 to 10 staff. ”
In a university or company you can maintain the pyramide because some of the mid level managers can do this job their whole career.
A company leader has very likely to be younger than 40 years for physical reasons, hence, there is no real chance to maintain a pyramide without early retirement or a huge surplus of higher rankes, for which actually there is no job, bloated staffs are not there by chance.
You’re thinking of field people – people out on the battlefield. That only includes about 20% of the people in the armed services – the rest are in central command, or running the warehouse, or accounting or the motor pool. And, company commanders are perhaps 20% of people in the field. That’s 4% or less of the total.
So, why offer early retirement to the other 96%??
And, why not just offer the target group of company commanders a position supervising the motor pool, with a raise?
“That only includes about 20% of the people in the armed services”
The enlisted men retire early. They usually get only 8 year contracts. 🙂
And some many of the support troops would also be in the field in wartime and can expect some (unplanned) action as infantry, the 50 year old guy with beer belly is not the solution. 🙂
Check the Wehrmacht in 1944, a good read is Martin van Creveld’s “Fighting power”.
You can of course outsource some of the admin stuff, one does not need a kindergarten officer. 🙂
However, to assume that you can get enough young company officers and maintain a pyramide at the same time is not possible. Sorry, it worked in the 19th century because most officers retired (without pay) after a few years as 1st Lt. or Captain, these times are gone.
the early retirement system is necessary, or else we wouldn’t be able to keep those men and women re enlisting.
Maybe just pay them more??
The real reason for the troubles are basically two fold, one the workers manage to extract promises from management, ESPECIALLY government management, beyond the ability of the tax payer to handle the bill
Yes, specifically excessively early retirement. There’s no good reason for all employees to be able to retire at age 50. That means the ratio of pensioners to working employees is way too high.
A degree by degree account of what will happen on earth as the temperature rises. Important to note that positive feedbacks take over quickly. Don’t let the timing throw you, if it doesn’t happen by 2050 it will happen not long after that. The scenarios below give a great perspective on even 2 to 2 degrees warming, which is very much guaranteed at this point. Unless we become globally organized, very technically advanced and can act in unison to control the planetary climate system in the next few decades. Otherwise no continental glaciers on the planet and hippos in the Thames (if we didn’t eat them all). Abrupt change of 2 to 3 degrees C is a world changer, but not a world destroyer, although it will be very tough to maintain agriculture as we know it, meanwhile facing the millions of people migrating to escape sea level rise, droughts, storms and starvation. All of them want to eat too and have a place to live.
Global Warming our Future:
BETWEEN TWO AND THREE DEGREES OF WARMING
Up to this point, assuming that governments have planned carefully and farmers have converted to more appropriate crops, not too many people outside subtropical Africa need have starved. Beyond two degrees, however, preventing mass starvation will be as easy as halting the cycles of the moon. First millions, then billions, of people will face an increasingly tough battle to survive.
To find anything comparable we have to go back to the Pliocene – last epoch of the Tertiary period, 3m years ago. There were no continental glaciers in the northern hemisphere (trees grew in the Arctic), and sea levels were 25 metres higher than today’s. In this kind of heat, the death of the Amazon is as inevitable as the melting of Greenland. The paper spelling it out is the very one whose apocalyptic message so shocked in 2000. Scientists at the Hadley centre feared that earlier climate models, which showed global warming as a straightforward linear progression, were too simplistic in their assumption that land and the oceans would remain inert as their temperatures rose. Correctly as it would turn out, they predicted positive feedback.
Warmer seas absorb less carbon dioxide, leaving more to accumulate in the atmosphere and intensify global warming. On land, matters would be even worse. Huge amounts of carbon are stored in the soil, the half-rotted remains of dead vegetation. The generally accepted estimate is that the soil carbon reservoir contains some 1600 gigatonnes, more than double the entire carbon content of the atmosphere. As soil warms, bacteria accelerate the breakdown of this stored carbon, releasing it into the atmosphere.
NASA says “Based on a range of plausible emission scenarios, average surface temperatures could rise between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the 21st century.”
Also NASA says:
“Climate Feedbacks
Greenhouse gases are only part of the story when it comes to global warming. Changes to one part of the climate system can cause additional changes to the way the planet absorbs or reflects energy. These secondary changes are called climate feedbacks, and they could more than double the amount of warming caused by carbon dioxide alone. The primary feedbacks are due to snow and ice, water vapor, clouds, and the carbon cycle.”
Meanwhile, on Thursday, a UN review of national pledges to cut carbon said they fall short of levels needed to keep the rise in global temperatures under two degrees C. In fact, they found pledges from governments that have ratified the accord see the world on track for a rise in temperatures by the end of this century of between 2.9 and 3.4 degrees C. Simultaneously, oil and gas production around the world continues to increase at a very healthy rate and Dennis assures us these high production rates will continue more-or-less on toward infinity.
BTW,
Quoting Watcher from our parallel thread: “In the International Energy Outlook 2016 (IEO2016) Reference case, worldwide consumption of petroleum and other liquid fuels increases from 90 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2012 to 100 million b/d in 2020 and 121 million b/d in 2040…
Much of the growth in world liquid fuels consumption is projected for the emerging, non-Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (non-OECD) economies of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, where strong economic growth and rising populations increase the demand for those fuels.”
Hi Doug,
The question is are those projections reasonable? My opinion is that they are not, has your view on fossil fuel resources changed? Maybe you are think that fossil fuels won’t deplete or that we will develop technology that will increase the extraction rate.
“The question is are those projections reasonable?”
Of course not but neither are yours (in my opinion). I expect we will continue to burn FF like they’re going out of style followed by a steep decline. I’ve no idea when this will happen because it depends on unpredictable events (such as the world economy).
Hi Doug,
So you think decline should be steeper and that output should be higher than I have assumed. I also assume we will burn as much as we can produce in my scenarios and when I have fossil fuel use decrease sharply you say it isn’t realistic. What is a “reasonable” rate of decline in your view 2% per year is too slow, how about 4% or 6 %, note that the faster the decline the better.
I don’t want to be accused of being too “optimistic”.
Of course it doesn’t matter, you will say that either way. 🙂
Yes, 2% per year is too slow so you’re overly optimistic. However, as you know, I could always agree with you Dennis but then we’d BOTH always be wrong. 🙂
Hi Doug,
Whenever we agree, I double check my assumptions, cause one of them must be wrong. 🙂
But seriously, if I have fossil fuel emissions decline too fast you would also say that is too optimistic. So 2% too low, how high is too high?
Is 10% ok, how about 20%? Do you see the problem? Pessimism on fossil fuel quickly becomes optimism on climate change.
Hi Doug,
Does the fossil fuel use decline steeply enough in your view in the scenario below? Too optimistic?
Hi Doug,
You have often poked fun at my fossil fuel scenarios, calling them “fantasyland scenarios”. In the past you have seemed to favor my lower scenarios (perhaps suggesting that even these were too high). Have you changed your thinking?
Do you now believe that the high scenario is too low? Does the RCP6 scenario seem about right? I show carbon emissions for my low, medium, and high fossil fuel scenarios (no attempt to reduce emissions is assumed, the decline is due to depletion) compared with the RCP4.5 and RCP6 scenarios used by the MAGICC 6 emulator.
Do you believe that the high scenario is too low?
Dennis, what I believe counts for naught. What I expect is the world to carry on more-or-less as always to the point we are hit by an (mostly) unpredictable triple whammy conceivably in the form of economic collapse maybe combined with a global pandemic and even more vicious regional wars (with refugees headed in every which direction).
What I don’t believe in is a nice comfortable (and convenient) transition to a world with nine billion souls getting their power from the sun and wind. And, I think all long term projections are total bull shit because the planet, as we know it, isn’t sustainable and humans are too reactionary to do what needs to be done — even if it were possible.
Hi Doug,
I doubt an energy transition will be easy or convenient and yes people are slow to change. Typically when there is not enough of something the price of that thing (assuming it is a thing people want to acquire) increases. Let’s assume at some point (we don’t know when) fossil fuel output is current prices is too low to meet demand, then the price rises until the amount that people will purchase at the higher price is equal to output. Output will continue to decrease due to depletion and prices are likely to rise some more.
Until there is an economic recession (which cannot be predicted in advance) the cost of alternatives to fossil fuel will become relatively cheap compared to fossil fuel so demand for those alternatives will increase. As the demand for the alternatives increases innovation and economies of scale are likely to lead to decreases in the cost of alternative energy in a positive feedback loop.
None of this scenario is likely to happen smoothly or easily, the smooth lines drawn on a chart are intended to be a general path about which reality will oscillate above and below in a fashion impossible to predict.
In fact I expect a severe recession at some point (with a WAG of 2030) which might be the smack in the head the World needs to make some positive changes (carbon taxes, research and development, and lots of other stuff).
In addition many demographers expect that population will peak in 2070 at around 9.3 billion and could decline quite rapidly if total fertility ratios (TFR) fall to under 1.75 (a level which many nations have reached) at the World level. The TFR fell from 6 in 1965 to 2.5 in 2015, progress is possible, in my view.
Something that can slow progress is the belief that any change is negative, I think positive change is possible, though perhaps not likely. If so, we should still try to improve things as best we can.
Well, good news is the Chinese push for renewable energy is the largest that world has ever seen. And, the global figure for solar panels installed last year was half a million per day. So, not too shabby. 🙂
Wait, Doug, is that you? Did Nick G steal your handle. 🙂
You just never know when people will come together as strange bedfellows…
Hi Doug,
I am just trying to understand your position. You say carbon emissions matter (to some degree), even though feedbacks are more important. I would say the feedbacks are largely a result of the carbon emissions.
I noticed you have never commented on the RCP scenarios, but logic would suggest that if the high scenario should decline more than 2% per year that even RCP4.5, as shown on my chart has carbon emissions that are too high, wouldn’t you agree?
And RCP6 would be totally unrealistic if RCP4.5 is already too high.
“I am just trying to understand your position.”
What? Even I don’t understand my position Dennis; besides, it moves around a bit. Sort of like the weather. But, basically you come across a bit like a Prima Donna sometimes and so I push back. No hard feelings though. Really! 🙂
In all cases the production of fossil fuels peaks and declines.
The IPCC however believes that the peak will be much later for RCP6 (2080) and RCP8.5 (2100), in fact for RCP8.5 a plateau is maintained at the 2100 level for 50 years with emission levels at three times the 2015 rate of emissions.
There are some people who seem to believe these scenarios are reasonable, but not me.
Hi Gone fishing,
NASA’s “plausible emissions scenarios” are RCP2.6 to RCP8.5. Only RCP2.6 and RCP4.5 are plausible and that reduces the range of estimates by the GISS Model E2-R (which matches historical observations best) from 1.8 to 2.6 C.
“assuming that governments have planned carefully and farmers have converted to more appropriate crops”
Yeah, right. The farmers will be planting the crops they get the most subsidy on and the governments will subsidise the crops those farmers produce so as not to face the backlash of farmers going out of business. A vicious circle. Let us just remember what ‘assume’ means.
NAOM
And the rest of that quote” not too many people outside subtropical Africa need have starved. Beyond two degrees, however, preventing mass starvation will be as easy as halting the cycles of the moon. First millions, then billions, of people will face an increasingly tough battle to survive.”
Starvation tends to change the mindset.
Hi GF,
I think the odds are probably on your side, rather than Dennis’s, when it comes to catastrophic climate change, but my opinion is colored by my personal experiences and technical background.
Just to be clear, I do not have the necessary skills to seriously examine the climate models, but if I have had any sort of “career” at all, other than as a world class rolling stone, going from one thing to the next, that career would be ” independent scholar” meaning I have spent my time reading about anything and everything having to do with naked apes and the sciences.
If I were to be charged with deciding upon a legend to be carved above the entrance of an academic building, my choice would be this.
“The world is a non linear place.”
When you consider any given general topic, having to do with either men or science and technology, or random natural events, linearity is usually temporary, giving way to non linearity, over any extended period of time. The time frame may seem pretty long to us, given that our brains are programmed to deal with time in intervals ranging from a second, so we can dodge a flying fist or rock or snake, to a generation or two, so we can raise kids.
The old joke about the mechanized factory with only one man, and a dog in it, applies. The man is to call the maintenance guys if they are needed, and the dog is to make sure the man doesn’t touch any thing.
Mucking around with the adjustments and inputs of any machine is apt to result in catastrophic problems.
Who can tell us all about the negative feed back mechanisms that are supposed to keep the world from getting a LOT warmer than it is now?
Apparently, nobody has any real idea what they might be, if they even exist, other than the possibility of cloud cover reflecting more incoming sun.
It won’t take much change at all to wipe out conventional agriculture for a year in a major bread basket. Drought as we know it NOW has pretty much wiped out food production on the many times, over large areas. Witness our own DUST BOWL.
Turn the screws just a little , and such a drought might stick around twice as long, or four times as long, and cover four times the area.
Dead people are maybe going to be piled up in front of fences at national borders, and worse. The people manning the machine guns will use them, because they will understand that if they don’t, their own families will be at that much higher risk of starvation.
Or maybe not.
There may be some things happening that safely vents the pressure cooker, before it explodes. An emerging contagious disease, if it spreads like flu, could wipe out a major chunk of the population in entire countries, once the shit is well into the fan, because containing it would be impossible, under chaotic conditions.
Or maybe conditions will go downhill slowly enough that people everywhere decide birth control is the greatest thing ever , and governments will employ draconian measures to make sure it is used by those with a different opinion of it.
My personal opinion, redneck conservative if anybody wishes to label it so, is that we ought to be taking the physical and ecological security of our country as seriously as we take atom bombs, fighters, bombers, tanks, and rifles, because the risk is obviously just as serious, in terms of both likelihood and consequences.
I don’t think it is possible to prevent a general collapse of our species, due to our being in overshoot on a global basis, but if we get our shit together, we probably have a pretty good shot at making sure most or maybe even all of us here in this country can pull thru the crisis more or less whole. Times will get to be pretty tough, even here, but tough is not the same as dead from starvation, disease, exposure, or murder for your last can of beans.
Or just maybe the incurable optimists will be right, and most of us will pull thru world wide. Maybe, but the odds against our avoiding a hard crash, world wide, are ninety nine percent, at least.
It’s a Darwinian world, and I want my country to be one of the places that pull thru WITHOUT a catastrophic crash.
Nothing in this comment should be interpreted as indicating I am against supplying generous amounts of aid to countries that will make good use of it, in avoiding local collapse.
Too late to edit, I want my country to be one of the places that MIGHT pull thru without a catastrophic crash.
When I said the odds are ninety nine percent against pulling thru world wide without a hard crash, I should have said the ENTIRE world.
With good luck, meaning mostly good leadership, and the rest being continued good progress in renewables, recycling, efficiency, low birth rates, etc, there is reason to believe that a number of countries can pull thru ok, very skinny compared to recent flush times, but hey if you can’t be rich, poor to ok is a hell of a lot better than dead, lol.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
Do you assume that the physicists that develop the Earth system models think that all of the responses in the earth system are linear?
There is an interesting dichotomy on this blog of those that think fossil fuels are much more limited than I do, which would imply that my “low” fossil fuel will be more sensible to them (or possibly too optimistic) and those that think that climate change will be very severe (which may imply that my “high” fossil fuel scenario is too low.)
In the future I will just stick with my medium scenario (roughly between the high and low scenarios.
Worst possible cases are possible, whether they are likely depends on a lot of factors which are unlikely to all align in such a way to result in those worse case scenarios. This would be akin to an assumption that in the face of World Depression 2, that all major nations have dictators like Hitler come to power in response. I suppose that is a possibility, but it seems unlikely.
Seems more likely there will be a mix of bad and good, at least to me.
Note that one of the non-linear responses that reduces the extent of warming is that as CO2 is added to the atmosphere the response is logarithmic so an increase from 280 to 560 ppm would be expected to roughly double the forcing due to CO2 and the associated fast feedbacks (water vapor, lapse rate, sea ice, snow cover, and clouds). Global temperatures respond slowly to this forcing due to the thermal inertia of the ocean, we would quickly see about a 2 C rise in temperature and then as the ocean slowly warms we would expect another 1 C rise in global temperatures (but that takes 500 years or so). This ignores other feedbacks such as emissions from melting permafrost and melting ice sheets which might operate over longer time frames.
Note that this assumes CO2 in the atmosphere remains at 560 ppm long term, if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced close to zero the CO2 in the atmosphere will slowly fall over time.
The Earth system sensitivity takes account of all the feedbacks (both slow and fast feedbacks) and is estimated by James Hansen to be about 4.2 C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 based on evidence from paleoclimatology. So eventually we would need to have atmospheric CO2 fall to 390 ppm to reach the 2 C “safe” limit above pre-industrial global temperature. A simple “Bern-like” carbon model suggests atmospheric CO2 might peak in a scenario with 1000 Gt of carbon emissions at about 460 ppm in 2060 and fall to 390 ppm by 2400 CE. My Bern model assumes the fixed fraction of the standard Bern-type carbon model declines with a Tau of 250,000 years where the standard model assumes this 22% fraction of carbon emissions remains in the atmosphere forever (Tau=infinity). The Tau=250,000 is similar to CO2 falling from 280 to 180 ppm over 110,000 years somewhat similar to the glacial interglacial cycle of the last 800,000 years.
Overshoot will be reduced as we use fewer fossil fuels and as population peaks and declines. The problems will not solve themselves, proper policy is the only thing that will work. Carbon taxes would be a better policy than the government selecting winners through policy targets. Set a long term policy of gradually increasing carbon taxes, adjusted as needed over time as the quantity of carbon emissions is measured. The taxes collected can be returned to each citizen as a fee and dividend or be used to reduce income taxes for the middle class or even used for deficit reduction.
Hi Dennis,
“Do you assume that the physicists that develop the Earth system models think that all of the responses in the earth system are linear?”
Not at all. But I do think that there are practical and professional considerations involved in creating the models that result in the predicted results probably being on the milder or less dangerous side, rather than overstating the results.
Politicians have a way of making their influence felt, and in order to get along, the climate science establishment in my opinion has to avoid saying very much, in official terms, about the worst case possibilities. So – by the time the entire job start to finish, is presented in the form of official results, the results are very possibly or maybe, even probably, toned down somewhat.
Coming with bad news is bad enough, but coming with REALLY bad news is apt to get you shot, in terms of political support. Politicians don’t like to be associated with doom and gloom, at all, and will only allow the association so long as there is a silver lining in the black cloud, a possible solution to the problem.
This does not mean individual scientists speaking as individuals can’t say what they think, at least so long as they have academic tenure, or money of their own, lol.
Then there is the obvious fact that scientists , and other real professionals, such as engineers, tend to be conservative in making assumptions, and prefer not to make them without good solid reasons. I am not talking about being risk averse in the engineering sense, whereby an engineer builds a bridge five times as strong as strictly necessary, so as to reduce the odds of it failing to near zero.
I am referring to the scientists going out on a limb, and basing their work in part on any assumption they cannot properly justify.
This means that if the climate science establishment does not understand a possible positive feed back effect , or have a satisfactory way to quantify it, then it will not likely be included in the models until it is better understood, and thus can be properly modeled.
And I just don’t hear much at all about new negative feed back mechanisms, but there is plenty of news about possible new positive feed back mechanisms.
So my gut feeling is that the scientific establishment feels compelled to speak its piece in softer language than a lot of climate scientists would prefer.
Beyond that, I am a huge believer in non linearity, as the result of everything I have ever studied to any extent. Start with the lost horseshoe nail that cost a king his kingdom, and wind up with say for instance electronic cameras destroying the film industry, or a new disease emerging , such as the chesnut blight, which pretty much wiped out the most valuable tree species native to the eastern half of the country.
You may well be right about the models producing good results. I hope you are, because the predicted results are more than enough to upset the global ecological and economic apple cart in catastrophic fashion.
“There is an interesting dichotomy on this blog of those that think fossil fuels are much more limited than I do, which would imply that my “low” fossil fuel will be more sensible to them (or possibly too optimistic) and those that think that climate change will be very severe (which may imply that my “high” fossil fuel scenario is too low.)
In the future I will just stick with my medium scenario (roughly between the high and low scenarios. ”
I think there is more coal than you do, but given the extraordinarily fast growth of the renewable energy industries, my opinion is that your estimates of future consumption of fossil fuels are as good as anybody’s and very reasonable.
Let’s go back to the politics of climate science a minute. It is very much to the advantage of the environmental movement to exaggerate the scope of the troubles associated with burning fossil fuels. Expecting any particular envirnmentalist or environmental organization, public or private , to actually say that we WILL NOT be burning all that oil, coal, and gas is naive, to put it as gently as possible.
The hard science is one thing, the human element is something else altogether. Tell a man that drinking more and more beer will eventually kill him, but if you also tell him that beer will soon be in short supply, and he won’t be able to get nearly as much as usual, and that it will be too expensive to drink much anyway, i and he will surely conclude he might as well drink all he wants NOW without worrying about his liver LATER.
At one time I believed we would burn every lump of coal we could dig up, and every drop of oil, as a matter of necessity, nay desperation, but I don’t believe that anymore.
“Worst possible cases are possible, whether they are likely depends on a lot of factors which are unlikely to all align in such a way to result in those worse case scenarios. This would be akin to an assumption that in the face of World Depression 2, that all major nations have dictators like Hitler come to power in response. I suppose that is a possibility, but it seems unlikely.
Seems more likely there will be a mix of bad and good, at least to me.”
I agree, but I worry that a few of the undesirable positive feed backs may result in a whole cascade of ADDITIONAL undesirable positive feed backs.
” Note that one of the non-linear responses that reduces the extent of warming is that as CO2 is added to the atmosphere the response is logarithmic so an increase from 280 to 560 ppm would be expected to roughly double the forcing due to CO2 and the associated fast feedbacks (water vapor, lapse rate, sea ice, snow cover, and clouds). Global temperatures respond slowly to this forcing due to the thermal inertia of the ocean, we would quickly see about a 2 C rise in temperature and then as the ocean slowly warms we would expect another 1 C rise in global temperatures (but that takes 500 years or so). This ignores other feedbacks such as emissions from melting permafrost and melting ice sheets which might operate over longer time frames.
Note that this assumes CO2 in the atmosphere remains at 560 ppm long term, if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced close to zero the CO2 in the atmosphere will slowly fall over time.
The Earth system sensitivity takes account of all the feedbacks (both slow and fast feedbacks) and is estimated by James Hansen to be about 4.2 C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 based on evidence from paleoclimatology. So eventually we would need to have atmospheric CO2 fall to 390 ppm to reach the 2 C “safe” limit above pre-industrial global temperature. A simple “Bern-like” carbon model suggests atmospheric CO2 might peak in a scenario with 1000 Gt of carbon emissions at about 460 ppm in 2060 and fall to 390 ppm by 2400 CE. My Bern model assumes the fixed fraction of the standard Bern-type carbon model declines with a Tau of 250,000 years where the standard model assumes this 22% fraction of carbon emissions remains in the atmosphere forever (Tau=infinity). The Tau=250,000 is similar to CO2 falling from 280 to 180 ppm over 110,000 years somewhat similar to the glacial interglacial cycle of the last 800,000 years. ”
I am not so well informed as you , in terms of paleo climate history, but I have read quite a bit about it, and consider your summary , and Hansen’s conclusions, to be reasonable.
But when we go from this level of climate change in and of itself, then we must next go to the effects this change will have on the world wide ecology, and in human terms, the effect it will have on food production in particular, and the viability of vast streches of the planet as naked ape habitat in more general terms. At this point we are touching on things where I DO have substantial expertise, although I am not a working scientist but rather a professionally trained agriculturist.
You can take this to the bank, there is a ninety nine percent probability that if the planet warms up just another two or three degrees, there will be hell to pay in human terms, on the grand scale, over vast expanses of the globe.
Think just three straight years of intense drought over the Indian sub continent for example.
We already know for example what bark beetles can do to an evergreen forest when the average temperature rises just a few degrees LOCALLY . And if the average world wide rises two degrees, local temperatures over large areas will likely rise five, or maybe even ten degrees.
“Overshoot will be reduced as we use fewer fossil fuels and as population peaks and declines. ”
True enough, if things work out that way.
What I am afraid of is that overshoot is going to take care of itself in the usual brutal way that Mother Nature deals with it BEFORE the population peaks and declines in a peaceable non violent fashion.
My personal guess is that while some favorably situated countries such as the USA and Canada have a good, maybe even excellent, shot at pulling thru without suffering catastrophic troubles, most countries are too poor, and too poorly lead, and getting started with too in the way of resources, too late, to manage a successful transition. Such countries will pay the price in human suffering, if I am right.
I might be wrong.Maybe the renewable energy industries, conservation, efficiency, and good prudent management will enable nearly all people and countries to avoid collapse due to overshoot.
You might be right, things might work out ok for just about everybody. I do not argue that you are wrong, but I WORRY that you are wrong.
“The problems will not solve themselves, proper policy is the only thing that will work. Carbon taxes would be a better policy than the government selecting winners through policy targets. Set a long term policy of gradually increasing carbon taxes, adjusted as needed over time as the quantity of carbon emissions is measured. The taxes collected can be returned to each citizen as a fee and dividend or be used to reduce income taxes for the middle class or even used for deficit reduction.”
I totally agree with you about the carbon tax idea. When it comes to the government setting polices that determine what will come about economically, I also tend to agree, because such policies can start us down roads with no place to turn around and reverse course. Once we settle on any given technology or social model, we may be stuck with it for a LONG time.
But I am very much in favor of spending lots of tax money on research of all kinds, being confident that while most research pays only small dividends , the occasional big winner pays the entire bill with plenty of profit, with trickle down ensuring that just about everybody eventually gets a share.
And I think that sometimes the potential for avoiding possible future problems is great enough to justify the risk of getting stuck in a technical or social rut as the result of government meddling in the economy.
If for instance we can manage a timely successful switch to mostly wind and solar sourced electricity, the reduction in the use of coal as generating fuel will pay a highly significant dividend in terms of public health, and the wind and solar industries will employ many times more men that coal mining.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
Note that the warming under a scenario where anthropogenic carbon emissions from 1800-2200 is about 1000 Gt of carbon (3664 Gt CO2) or less (about 540 Gt of carbon has been emitted already) is likely to be about 2 C above preindustrial (1850-1900) temperatures temperatures have already risen by about 1 C, so we are talking about 1 C above current temperatures over the next 70 years or so and then temperatures will stabilize or slowly drop over many thousands of years.
Would you expect a 1 C rise in global temperatures to have the severe effects you outline above?
I do not expect everything will work out ok.
It depends on the choices humans make, last night was not encouraging as it seems humans are not very smart, at least in this nation.
The future does not look bright. Maybe things always do align such that the worst case scenario is most likely.
The scientists give their best estimates in my view and yes they don’t speculate on potential positive feedbacks that have no physical basis, the models are based on physics pure and simple (though it is not simple at all). There is much in physical behavior that is non-linear, so that is a given.
Nobody in climate science believes that the system behaves linearly. Sometimes the complexity is simplified into linear models so that most people can grasp them, this is just a teaching device.
Back atcha one more time, Dennis
I believe we are in the same book virtually all the time, the same chapter nearly all the time, and the same page most of the time.
Trump is bad news, environmentally. Very bad indeed.
I did not intend to say that you think EVERYTHING will work out ok, but rather that you seem to think we can turn the fossil fuels corner without the crash killing most of us on the collective bus of humanity, etc. I compose on the fly, which is not always good, but this is a conversation, not a book.
Hi Gone fishing,
When were the periods of zero snow cover extent in the Northern Hemisphere during winter? Are you talking about Miocene (about 5.5 to 7 million years ago) or earlier. Pliocene warm period modelling shows average temperatures in winter from 60 N to 90 N at roughly -10C, seems doubtful that there was no snow in winter. Also not likely during quartenary, in my view. Less snow cover extent maybe, but at some point the warmer temperatures and higher humidity may lead to more winter snow fall which might offset the faster spring melting due to higher temperatures.
From Wikipedia on Mid-Pliocene “Model simulations of mid-Pliocene climate produce warmer conditions at middle and high latitudes, as much as 10–20 °C warmer than today above 70°N.” And the model simulations are generally low (see below).
Keep trying Dennis you will find something meaningful one of these times. I am sure a little snow on the partially frozen winter waters of the Arctic Ocean and a little snow in the dark of the far northern Arctic night that melts quickly as soon as the sun rises again make a huge difference in albedo. 🙂
Even if 20 percent of the snow is left, it will exist only far north during low light times only and not have much albedo effect. Face it Dennis, 6 w/m2 or more coming down the pipeline just from snow loss. That will push other natural forcings even more.
Not much need for more CO2 than your models present to get temperatures up 6C or more.
Try to remember that the Greenland ice sheet is not really very old, doesn’t go past the previous glaciation. Even the oldest ice in Antarctica is only 1.5 million years old. There have been many ice free times and short term winter snow is meaningless at the poles as far as albedo goes.
You might want to read this
“The temperatures recorded in the samples, right through the peak of warming 55 million years ago, were consistently about 18 degrees higher than those projected by computer models trying to “backcast” what the Arctic was like at the time, according to one of the papers.” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/science/earth/01climate.html
Hippos in the Thames during Eemian. Look it up.
Hi Gone fishing,
The planet was very different millions of years ago.
You can speculate about snow cover, but recent models show -10 C.
That paper uses the Hadley Climate models and shows average global temperatures about 3 C above 1850-1900 average temperatures. From 60 N to 90 N average temperatures were about 6.2 C above 1850-1900 temperatures at those latitudes. See figure 7 on page 1117 which shows the average annual temperature from 45 N to 90N of about -10C. Note also that the Hadley models have relatively high climate sensitivity. There were also Wooly Mammoths and Mastodons during the Eemian, the world looked much different 125,000 years ago.
From Wikipedia on Greenland ice sheet
In a 2013 study published in Nature, 133 researchers analyzed a Greenland ice core from the Eemian interglacial. They concluded that GIS had been 8 degrees C warmer than today. Resulting in a thickness decrease of the northwest Greenland ice sheet by 400 ± 250 metres, reaching surface elevations 122,000 years ago of 130 ± 300 metres lower than at present.[12]
Also
The ice in the current ice sheet is as old as 110,000 years.[3] The presence of ice-rafted sediments in deep-sea cores recovered off of northeast Greenland, in the Fram Strait, and south of Greenland indicated the more or less continuous presence of either an ice sheet or ice sheets covering significant parts of Greenland for the last 18 million years.
I guess it is unlikely we will convince each other. I am not particularly convinced that there was very little snow, Hansen has lower estimates of mid Pliocene warmth of 1-2C above 1951-1980 temperatures. So there is quite a bit of uncertainty.
On your 6 C estimate, maybe you are going by older estimates by Hansen more recent estimates are about 4.2 C for Earth system sensitivity based on the modern size of ice sheets.
I will go with James Hansen’s estimates.
Mid Pliocene was about 400 ppm for atmospheric CO2 some models give about a 2 C result for global temp above pre-industrial and others about 3.5 C. For the models with 2 C change ESS would be 3.9 C and for those with delta T of 3.5C ESS is 6.8 C, quite a large range, the mean would be 5.1 C. More work needs to be done on this.
No, I do not depend upon Hansen for my values. I tend to do my own thinking and calculations, forbidden as that is in these days of dependence on experts. But the experts seem a bit confused themselves and keep coming up with a wide variety of conclusions and opinions.
Well, I certainly have learned a lot from these discussion. Mostly I have learned that due to the wide variation in piecemeal studies, the scientific papers can be quoted and re-interpreted similar to the Bible.
It seems one merely has to pick and choose, then make claims.
Even to the point of concluding that wooly mammoths and hippopotamus lived in the same climatic range.
Hi Gone fishing,
The point was very simple there were different animals in different places 125,000 years ago than there are today. The model simulations show mid Pliocene temperatures of 2-3.5 C higher than pre-industrial with a mean of about 2.7 C. Atmospheric CO2 is estimated at between 350 and 450 ppm with a mean of 400 ppm.
This gives us a rough idea of Earth system sensitivity. You overestimate the contribution of snow cover extent which is not known during the mid-Pliocene, though it would seem the models could have guessed at this and probably used it to estimate albedo to determine temperature changes.
For all months from March to Sept and estimating insolation for each month. I assume albedo changed by 0.5 because melting snow has lower albedo and over most of this period there would be little fresh snow and lots of melting. I assume in this case that snow cover extent falls to zero from the end of the linear trend in 2015 from March to Sept (other months are ignored because there is little insolation).
The total snow albedo feedback is 1.1 W/m^2, almost 6 times smaller than your estimate of 6 W/m^2. Note that this estimate is likely to be too high as the change in snow cover extent has been overestimated by assuming it falls to zero from March through Sept. The trend for Sept snow cover extent has been increasing by 1% per year over the 1967-2016 period in the Northern hemisphere(NH). There is also and increasing trend over the 1967-2015 period in the NH for Oct, Nov and Dec. For Feb 1967-2016 there is also and increasing trend, Jan has been flat. I have ignored these months however, but it suggests that warmer temperatures leads to increasing snow cover extent during the fall and winter period.
You are missing the big one here for the mid-Pliocene, the orbital fluctuations which can swing hemispherical radiation by up to 100 w/m2. I don’t know what cycles were back then, but since the ice age had not stared yet, the planet was being heated by other feedbacks, probably bare ground and forest cover. The rise of mountain ranges slowly lowered the CO2 levels, allowing more ocean and land absorption. Once the ice sheets started, the CO2 got sequestered.
One can assume that the feedback from snow and ice in the mid-Pliocene was already gone. Arctic temps would have been much higher than plus 2C, so snow/ice would not have had much effect since it’s range was small.
Currently, northern hemisphere snow albedo sensitivity is about 1.0 w/m2 per degree K. So a rise of 3C will give an added 3.0 w/m2 (global) which will kick in an added water vapor component which melts more snow and causes more methane/CO2 from land and ocean heating.
Not much point in going further than that.
The orbital forcing in the northern hemisphere will stay above current levels for at least 40,000 years and when it does drop below it is not by much. So reformation of ice sheets and large snow cover are unlikely.
If there is massive volcanic action or human action to cause insolation to fall then snow and ice sheets might reform temporarily.
The snow that melts in March exists at low latitude (35 to 45N) from Nov to March. The average insolation for that period in that region is at least 180 w/m2.
So you have 15.6/510=.031 area of earth
180 w/m2 *0.5 *5/12 * 0.031 =1.16 w/m2 global for March melted snow
not 0.266 as you come up with.
So just the March melt is as big as your total for all snow melt and there is still a lot of snow to melt.
Holy miscalculation Batman!
I mean not the 0.127 you came up with, eight times lower.
DC,
Mammoths during the Eemian, yes. What is your source for their being wooly mammoths?
There have been quite a few species of mammoth. When wooly mammoths entered North America south of the ice they found the Columbian mammoth already there in a range extending from the northern US down into southern Mexico. Both species descend from the steppe mammoth of Eurasia (the wooly mammoth, the cold-adapted mammoth, was the younger of the two) and my guess is that the Eemian mammoth that lived with hippos in England was the steppe mammoth.
(Some of us consider the steppe mammoth and the Columbian mammoth to be the same species, since you ask.)
Hi Synapsid,
I was not suggesting that the Wooly Mammoth was in the UK, just that there were different animals during the Eemian than today in various places. From Wikipedia:
The woolly mammoth diverged from the steppe mammoth about 400,000 years ago in eastern Asia.
So while the hippo was in the Thames, the Wooly Mammoth may have been in other parts of Eurasia and North America.
Also from Wikipedia:
A 2008 genetic study showed that some of the woolly mammoths that entered North America through the Bering land bridge from Asia migrated back about 300,000 years ago and had replaced the previous Asian population by about 40,000 years ago, not long before the entire species became extinct.[76]
I have two locations near me where both mastodons and wooly mammoth skeletons have been found. One in a hollow and another in what is currently a swamp, so since there were a lot of bones in each I suspect natural traps.
Hi Gone fishing,
If winter and fall don’t matter, then your 6 W/m^2 approximation no longer holds as the snow cover extent is much smaller in spring and especially summer, in fact the change in summer snow extent would only be about 4 million km^2,
I did the month by month calculations with reasonable assumptions of snow cover extent decrease and it is not close to the value based on the average snow cover extent for the year. If only spring and summer are important, then use the average snow cover extent for spring and summer and we get about 2.7 W/m^2 with the unrealistic (in my opinion) assumption that spring snow cover extent decreases to zero, this is also an over estimate because it has assumed constant snow cover extent over the spring and summer, considering the extent month by month results in lower change in energy absorbed because insolation is variable and the highest changes in snow cover would be in the earlier months of the year when insolation is lower. Snow cover extent from June through Sept is quite low already so not a lot of change there.
First of all I did not say that fall and winter snowfall did not matter, that is your typical spin on responses to me. I said that a low amount of snowfall in the dark high Arctic regions would not matter. Obvious, since there is no light. At least obvious to me. Obviously further south (snow reaches to 35 N latitude) winter and fall
I used the average snowfall cover not the total. The average is time weighted. Your assumptions are incorrect. The actual value is 7.5 watts/m2 using a reduced insolation to compensate for latitudinal changes. The 6 w/m2 value compensates for residual northern snow such as Greenland, though that may be higher since Greenland ice sheet albedo drops during the summer.
Of course we can now add in the Arctic Ocean albedo changes, but I don’t feel like another useless argument.
Hi Gonefishing,
Which assumptions are incorrect? Do you assume all snow is new snow, I assume a mix of old and new snow with snow albedo averaging 0.65 and ground to average 0.15 for an average change of albedo of 0.5 from snow to no snow conditions. Insolation is estimated from the insolation chart as the average of 60-90 N which seems appropriate for the spring and summer period, possibly March and April should use 60 N as the insolation estimate. Doing so increases the snow albedo feedback from March to Sept to 1.3 W/m^2 if SCE in NH falls to zero for those months from 2015 levels (using trend line for the 2015 estimate).
I found a study that gives the albedo feedback forcing from the Northern Hemisphere cryosphere at 1.0 (W/m2)/ K.
With three degrees warming that would mean 3.0 W/m2 forcing. Couple water vapor forcing which gives another 6 W/m2 and then for good measure I will throw in a 1.0 W/m2 from natural methane and CO2 release.
That is an additional 10 watts/m2 giving a final temperature of 11C above pre -industrial.
Or if you don’t like the natural methane-CO2 feedback, it will be 10 C above pre-industrial.
That does not account for extra CO2 released from warming oceans. Nor does it account for loss of aerosols as we finally stop burning coal and oil. I am not sure about aerosols from wood so will leave that up in the air for now.
Hmmm, sounds like adding a shot of CO2 to the atmosphere is more dangerous than most think.
Sounds like we need to reduce the atmospheric
Oh, I see what you are doing there…So you are going to leave aerosols, up in the air, eh?
🙂
Hi Gone fishing,
The other feed backs such as water vapor, lapse rate (which reduces the RF by about 0.6 W/m^2/K and you forgot to add), and possibly the carbon and methane releases from thawing permafrost might already be included in the estimate you gave, just as the various fast feedbacks are already included when the radiative forcing increase from a doubling of carbon dioxide is estimated. The amount of fossil fuels is limited and likely to lead to about 2.5 C of warming at most.
I looked at both sea ice and snow cover extent for the Northern hemisphere and assumed all snow and sea ice extent decreases to zero from March through September and used monthly estimates of insolation, the increase in radiation absorbed is at most 3.1 W/m^2 regardless of temperature from snow and ice albedo feedback alone once the Greenland ice sheet melts entirely. Such a scenario is not realistic for reasonable carbon emission scenarios (RCP 4.5 or lower).
No doubt the climate scientist are unaware of those various feedbacks. 🙂 The RCP scenarios reduce the emission of aerosols, though there will continue be some from volcanoes and forest and peat fires, so emissions will not be zero.
From the last glacial maximum to the present the change in global temperatures has been about 3.5 C, so perhaps you need to rethink your mental model. In the Northern hemisphere there was a lot more ice and snow during the LGM with Northern Hemisphere ice sheets about 10 times larger than today.
A similar increase in atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial would bring us to about 435 ppm, so your talking about a 10 C change in temperature so if the response was linear to the natural log of atmospheric CO2 we would need to see about 1000 ppm for atmospheric CO2 if we assume the response is the same as from the LGM to Holocene transition. Due to smaller ice sheets most scientists believe the response will be smaller more like 4.2 C rather than 5.5 C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. We know what has happened in the past, this constrains the estimates of ESS.
Do you have a link to the study you found or at least author and year the paper was published?
You seem to have a tendency to double count.
To get 3 C of warming from reasonable emission scenarios the feedbacks from water vapor, lapse rate, snow and ice albedo, carbon cycle feedbacks, reduced aerosols, basically everything except ice sheet loss is already included in the temperature change estimate in response to a change in radiative forcing. You take the 3 C of temperature increase and then add all these feedbacks a second time to get a higher estimate for the temperature change, you could do this several times and get the temperature increase as high as you would like. To infinity and beyond 🙂
Nope, the figure is for albedo changes only. Sorry, keep grasping at straws.
I subtracted out Greenland even though it loses albedo all summer and compensated for the short summer period where now snow exists. I did not include the Arctic Ocean in the calculation. I get 5.5 watts/m2 global for loss of snow cover.
I think you are not including fall and winter insolation, which since the snow line can reach down to 35 north and is often at 40 north for several months, a large amount of reflected energy is not accounted for by your ignoring 6 months of the year.
(we have an average of 10.5 hours of daylight at 40 north for those two seasons and snow cover can be for 3 of those months right into March). Most of the land area is below the Arctic circle.
Even right now Russia is covered all the way into China/Mongolia. Alaska is covered, half of Canada, all of Norway, Finland, Sweden, Scotland.
Adding in the Arctic Ocean would give another forcing.
Just spent the last hour and a half watching it. Kinda depressing (to say the least) with slight glimmers of hope but decent information value.
Hi Island boy,
Ron Patterson posted it in a previous thread.
It seems like we are all like the Austrians in 1913 arguing who our next Hapsburg Ruler is going to be.
Line up and make your choice, it’s all you have.
So what is the area per person on earth when we reach 10 billion people?
Given a land area of 57 million square miles, subtract out the desert and mountains giving about 24 million square miles. Subtract out about 5 million square miles for areas too cold for most human life, giving 19 million square miles.
10E9/ 19E6 gives 526 people per square mile. Since at least half of that will be needed for agriculture and industry, that makes for 1052 people per square mile or a 162 foot square per person. Probably best just to stack them in tall bee-hive type structures and get some free space out there.
Maybe the housing towers can be combined with malls and they never have to leave them, except the few that need to go to work or supervise the robotic run farms, mines and power plants.
“Maybe the housing towers can be combined with malls and they never have to leave them,”
The name of the city that overwhelms the earth will be “The Hive” and the nature of life within it has been explored in a sci fi novel,titled the same, which was pretty good, technically. Sorry I can’t remember who wrote it. It’s sure to be out of print, and I don’t think it sold very many copies.
I know a few city guys and girls who would never voluntarily leave such a place, once in it, assuming they were to have a satisfactory income.
We have a way to go yet, 16 percent total infrastructure coverage so far. The biggest human coverage is farms and ranchlands, size of South America and size of Africa respectively. Added all up humans and their activities occupy a little less than half the land surface. Our effects are felt over the whole globe though.
Interesting part is that 95% of the world’s population is concentrated on 10 percent of the land surface. So there are still some large spaces out there.
There are over three trillion trees in the world. If we and nature burn half of them, that is 1.5 trillion tons of carbon released into the atmosphere.
This is my new drinking song!
There’re three trillion trees in the world,
three trillion trees!
Chop one down or burn it to the ground,
and there’s 2,999,999,999,999 trees in the world…
Repeat until you run out of beer trees!
Which ever comes first.
🙂
BTW, in tropical rain forests, a single tree might harbor 4,500 different species of insects.
Here’s a good book for those geniuses who propose brilliant ideas such as geoengineering without having any idea as to how ecosystems work.
goo.gl/AuROaXcontent_copyCopy short URL
Environmental Science: Systems and Solutions
By Michael L. McKinney, Robert M. Schoch
Hint, ecosystems are non linear systems with very high state variable numbers. For the engineers out there, that means their control panels have millions and millions of little knobs, buttons, and levers to set. Initial conditions settings for each of them can make a big difference in the final outcome for how the system operates. And people think they can just add a few million tons of iron to fertilize algae growth in the ocean to sequester CO2?
Think ‘Butterfly Effect’ for 4,500 species of insects on a single tree. No two trees, even of the same species have identical micro ecosystems.
We have been geo-engineering the planet for a long time now. It is apparently not working well for most of the other species and some humans are quit grumpy about it also.
Fred, apparently all those other species did not work out. They are incapable of defense from a hairless ape with a big head and hands. Getting rid of dinosaurs and letting mammals develop further was not a good idea. Who planned that one? Maybe after the reset, creatures will be more capable.
Don’t worry Fred, Hillary will fix it all. (Runs off laughing insanely)
“Don’t worry Fred, Hillary will fix it all. (Runs off laughing insanely)”
Amendment due to election results.
Worry Fred, worry a lot!
Will it never end?
HERBIVORY, CLIMATE CHANGE FACTORS MAY SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE BVOC EMISSIONS FROM BOREAL CONIFERS
“Boreal conifer forests are sources of biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions into the atmosphere. Global warming exposes boreal trees to biotic stress caused by insect outbreaks and they are also affected by abiotic climate change factors.”
They attempt to estimate the carbon emissions from forest and peat fires using satellite data, it is included in land use change emissions. On average land use change emissions has been about 1.1 billion tonnes of carbon (Gt C) per year from 2010 to 2014 and 1.4 Gt C per year from 1950 to 2014.
Cumulative land use change emissions from 1750-2014 were 190+/-65 billion tonnes, based on scientific estimates (see page 376 of paper linked above.) I suppose we could put a upper limit of 3000 Gt C on the burning of all trees if we wanted to set a hard boundry, that would be an increase of more than a factor of 10 above the one sigma cumulative estimate for the past 264 years. The RCP scenarios range from 173 to 216 Gt of carbon emissions from 1800-2200 for land use change (RCP4.5 is lowest and RCP2.6 is highest). The 1500 Gt C emission estimate might be a bit pessimistic, over the long term, the trees grow back absorbing some of the carbon from the atmosphere in the process.
Future human action and future natural action will not be the same as historical or current actions.
Tell the trees how easy it is to grow in the deserts and red rock country, or the great savannahs that use to be forest. I am sure they will be consoled.
There was a buck about 100 yards from my front door two mornings ago. I would have been a broadside shot through the lungs and heart. I let him get away for the hunt on another day. Next time, it will be different.
A little gunpowder, a brass jacket, a primer, a projectile, maybe a 243, a pull of the trigger, down goes the deer. It’ll take a few hours to butcher the deer, but there will be something to eat.
You have to eat and rabbit food doesn’t have the nutrients to satisfy the micelles in your muscular system. My arm needs plenty of strength to lift a glass of beer. For the vittles, venison on a plate cooked to perfection.
Forget oil, gunpowder packs a punch.
Be sure to vote for somebody today, I am going to write-in Alfred E. Newman, my first choice.
About the only person qualified for the job.
Why don’t you go for president, you make more sense than a lot of candidates?
I second that.
I expect Clinton to win , but there is a small gnawing doubt in my gut that she might lose. Note that although I have ISSUES with her ethics and past flip flopping record, I have NEVER said Trump would be a better president , or even as good. For the record, I think Trump would be a disaster in the WH.
Let’s go back to my argument a couple of days ago that Trump’s nomination is in very large part the result of political backlash on the part of hard core R party voters. I will amend that argument from saying or implying it is not JUST or ONLY because of backlash against the liberal policies that have been put it place, and the cultural changes that have occurred, over the last few decades, say since the sixties.
But I do contend that WITHOUT the backlash against such policies and changes in the culture, Trump would never have been nominated.
So – liberal politics are a very large and essential part of the EXPLANATION of this backlash, in my opinion.
Let’s not forget that the REPUBLICAN PARTY AS SUCH HATES TRUMP’S GUTS. Nobody, or almost nobody, in the R party establishment, wanted Trump, but as I see things , the party for various reasons, some practical, some selfish, took a crap on the wants and desires on the hard core R party foot soldier voter. The practical reasons boil down to the fact that since elections are mostly won in the middle in this country, the party had the choice of running relatively liberal candidates often referred to as RINO’s, Republicans in name only, or losing the seats, in elections ranging from dog catcher to the WH. The selfish reasons boil down to the basic fact that the R party is more or less controlled by big business interests that are in a position to dictate a substantial part of the party platform.
Now the average liberal I know seems to think the average foot soldier R voter has a brain about the size of a chicken’s , and knows next to nothing about national and world affairs, and is thus easily lead around by the nose by the party. There is a certain amount of truth, quite a bit of truth, in this argument, and no realist who knows doo doo from apple butter about American politics would ever argue otherwise.
But I know lots of such people on a personal basis, and most of them recognize something or a lot about the shortcomings of the R party ‘s positions, and are willing to talk about them, in person with another R party type person. But in public they keep their mouth shut, the same way a hell of a lot of D voters keep their mouth shut about their issues with Clinton. Both R and D party line voters often see their real choice as the lesser of two evils, in whole or in some significant part.
Now since I scribble here, in order to enjoy the conversation, and learn as much as I can, and to discover the blind spots in my own thinking, etc, I am hoping somebody can lay out a rational scenario, taking into account the current day American cultural and economic paradigm, that makes a GOOD case for Trump being the R party nominee, WITHOUT taking into account conservative voter backlash against the social and political changes we have experienced in recent decades.
Don’t forget that MOST people don’t do a whole lot of thinking. If they don’t like you, because you represent values they don’t like, they will vote against you, ignoring other issues. Ditto about voting FOR you of course.
The great thing about this forum is that virtually every regular here is capable of serious thinking, and has a sufficient storehouse of sound data between his ears to work with, and actually USES his head, at least most of the time. This is not to say there are no partisans here, but while they stick tight to their message, ALL the time, indicating partisanship, as I judge the matter, they still muster good sound arguments rather than repeating talking points.
I am also wondering if anybody else here thinks as I do that there is a significant chance that Trump will bolt the R party, where he is a most unwelcome crasher anyway, and take a substantial number of the party foot soldier core with him.
If he does, the consequences are in my opinion pretty much unpredictable, because the remnants of the R party will have to come up with new positions, and there are a lot of relatively conservative D voters who might like the ” NEW AND IMPROVED” R party, since the folks and policies they don’t like will mostly be found henceforth in the Trump camp.
But overall, it seems dead certain, in my opinion at least, barring some very bad
“future history” luck, that this country is headed towards the current day Western European political, social and economic model, which will be good for the country over all and especially good for the less well of people in this country as well.
Demographics alone virtually guarantee it.
Well,
It’s 2049 Mountain Time on Election Eve.
It is starting to look as if the people may elect Supreme Chancellor Trump.
God help us all.
Good evening, and good luck.
FIVE HOTTEST YEARS ON RECORD HAVE OCCURRED SINCE 2011
“This report confirms that the average temperature in 2015 had already reached the 1 degree C mark. We just had the hottest five-year period on record, with 2015 claiming the title of hottest individual year. Even that record is likely to be beaten in 2016.”
“The rise in temperatures is linked directly to the increase in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. In 2015 the WMO says the annual mean concentrations of CO2 were at the symbolically important level of 400 parts per million (ppm), having grown by between 1.9ppm and 2.99ppm between 2011 and 2015.”
“The effects of climate change have been consistently visible on the global scale since the 1980s: rising global temperature, both over land and in the ocean; sea-level rise; and the widespread melting of ice,” said the WMO’s Petteri Taalas.
400 ppm is not that symbolically important, just a round number (versus square or oblong numbers). Now 666 ppm will be important, because it will get as hot as hell then.
Yeah, but while 666 might be of some importance, to overheated penguins, an oblong number, it ain’t! 🙂
In case anyone is wondering what all the fuss is about…
Is everybody here so depressed they are drinking instead of following the election results?
I am afraid it looks as if Trump might win, as of right now.
I TRIED to tell everybody the D’s were making a super major mistake in running Clinton because of her negatives, and that they could have run virtually anybody else with a better chance of winning. Almost other D candidate would be mopping the floor with Trump because of HIS negatives.
Hanging around with too many liberals and reading too many liberal oriented web sites, and cutting back on conservative sites etc, may have caused me to make a fool of myself saying earlier that Clinton would win by a comfortable to large margin.
If the R’s were running anybody but Trump or Cruz, anybody with a little charisma, the R’s would be mopping the floor with Clinton.
The mistake was running Saunders when a centrist candidate was needed. He was too far to the left.
NAOM
Hi Notanoilman,
That is why Clinton won the primary, but in hindsight Bernie would have had a better chance against Trump. Given the choice most of the states that went for Clinton would have elected Sanders, but his chances might have been better in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire. Many were voting against the establishment, Bernie not be considered an establishment candidate. Oh well, interesting times.
You still don’t get it. This is not Dems vs Republicans. The establishment from both parties plus the media is against the Trump ticket. What you are witnessing today is the commoners vs the elite, the screwed vs the parasites, the workers vs the paid. This is a vote against Obama and his inability to reverse the great recession.
Personally I’m torn between feeling good or pity for the majority voters. Since neither Trump or any other possible President/ legislators, has the power to get us out of the energy and thus financial drain the globe is in. Just like Brexit and the Arab Spring, this is a mighty fine display of determination and ‘ a can do attitude’ , but it wont be enough to make a significant difference. IOW who is set into office makes little difference as we come up against the laws of physics, which in this case is the depletion and diminishing rate of the energy derived from fossil fuels.
You talk about the possibility of an economic recession in several years due to peak oil, but refuse to see the economic depression that we are waist deep in already due to the rapidly reducing amount of energy trickling down to the end consumer.
Full disclosure I didn’t see this coming either, after having witnessed Bernie being thrown under the bus by the Clintons and their mafia.
Hi FB,
It looks like Trump has won. I agree that this is about the commoners versus the elite, but I don’t see it as a repudiation of Obama, other than that he is a social / cultural liberal.
This election is mostly about the people having powerful aversion to Clinton, at the gut level. Personally I have never trusted her, from the time I first read about Cattle Gate on, and I am on record as saying that the reason Clinton lost to Obama eight years ago, Obama being virtually unknown on the national stage, is that even then a huge percentage of D voters were desperate for ” anybody BUT Hillary”.
So for the next eight years she worked like a dog to acquire the defacto ownership of the D party machinery, and succeeded brilliantly in this undertaking.
But the younger generation refused to listen to HER supporters claims that her troubles were the result of her enemies.
When I tried to point out that her problems were of her own making, just about every D I talked to on the net told me I was just drinking the GREAT RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY kool aid.
Her arrogance in general, and her thumbing her nose at the spirit if not the letter of security law in particular drove the final nails in her political coffin. Throw in a few million bucks in secret speeches loot, while insisting she was for the little people, etc.
Make it clear at last even to the most idealistic Democrat just how vicious and unprincipled she is , personally , in her pursuit of the WH, as evidenced by the dirty tricks employed against Sanders, at the national party level, in collusion with her personal allies who held nearly all of the key party positions. ETC.
I could go on all day, but even so, I thought she was going to win yesterday morning.
I will go to my grave convinced that just about any other Democrat would have beaten Trump easily.
The Republicans put up a very good trash campaign this time. They usually do but Trump took it a bit higher. Anyone believing the media is a bit naïve. People tend to feed off what they want to hear and that is what happened.
Still, votes are 50:50, so maybe the system is bent too. Actually at current count Hillary has more, but there are still some uncounted votes out there. Probably end up within one million which is one small city determining the vote if it was decided by votes.
Hi GF,
The electoral college system probably ought to be scrapped, but it was put in place originally so that the smaller states would be willing to enter into a political alliance with the larger, far more populous states which could otherwise maybe have taken advantage of the size difference. You know that of course, but some others may not.
Now I am totally with it when it comes to most of the big critical parts of the modern D party platform, such as truly equal status in respect to civil rights, environmental protection, subsidies for renewable energy, affordable health care for EVERYBODY, etc.
So- this may be the only time I ever flat out disagree with you.
Of course the R party and its allies did everything possible by way of throwing mud at Clinton, but that goes both ways, always has, always will. Most of the most damaging coverage of her lapses of judgement, to put it mildly, came from leading msm organizations such as the NYT, the Washington Post, etc, which set the tone for most of the rest of the MSM, excepting talk radio and Fox.
I used to be a card carrying ACLU and union member, with the Operating Engineers. I was a teacher, and a member of the NEA, and I lived and worked and socialized mostly with Democrats for a LONG time, living in a bohemian neighborhood city apartment, hanging around the university, dating Yankee girls who fled Yankee winters, marrying one of them, a Jewish girl from the Big Apple.
So I know D politics and culture from the INSIDE, as well as redneck culture from growing up in it, and coming back to visit here in the hills with my Bible thumping pistol packing native tribe for months every year, and finally moving back here for good.
And I knew ( and still know) lots of very decent people who usually voted D but who wanted anybody but Hillary eight years ago and anybody but Hillary during the just past nomination process.
The Great Right Wing Conspiracy was not responsible for Cattle Gate, which I have NEVER seen defended by ANY person who is mathematically literate in terms of defending the math.
The Great Right Wing Conspiracy was not responsible for opening the eyes of the millions of well educated youngsters who came to realize just how arrogant and power hungry an old machine style politician is.
The Great Right Wing Conspiracy was not responsible for a number of her early close personal business associates spending a great deal of time in the Graybar Hotel. Lawyers are supposed to have better judgement about who they hang out with.
The Great Right Wing Conspiracy is not responsible for her skating on very thin legal ice with her secret email system, which totally pissed off countless people including lots of Democrats with her thumbing her nose at the rules everybody else is expected to obey, etc.
Then of course there are the millions of single issue voters, such as people who happen to believe abortion is murder, who may actually outnumber single issue abortion rights voters, etc.
And then the economy is not doing all that great, which is always a drag on the party with the incumbent prez.
I am sorry and surprised that she lost, not because I voted for her, but because Trump is going to be a loose cannon and Sky Daddy alone knows what sort of foolishness he will get up to. She would have been better for the environment by a mile, and I am a single issue environment voter in recent times, so I voted Green. I was confident she would get Virginia without needing to hold my nose and vote for her myself.
No one particular factor such as the economy, or ethics, or arrogance, or her treatment of the Sanders camp, can explain her loss. But with the results being so close, without any one of those factors working against her, everything else equal, she dead sure would have won.
Trump is worse, but the thing is, it takes a hell of a long time for the truth to finally sink in at the gut level when you don’t want to believe it. The D’s didn’t have time enough for the truth about Trump to sink into the guts of the independents who voted for him.
But the R’s have had decades to make sure the independent voter got a belly full of Clinton.
It’s a Darwinian world. It will continue to orbit the sun, but I fear that within four years there will be a hell of a lot more environmental damage done than if Clinton had won.
Dealing with the coming energy crisis, which is not really here yet as I see things, will be put off four more years.
I can’t see any real bright spots in a Trump presidency.
Hi Mac.
I too am despondent; 60 miles from the USA (where I am currently located) doesn’t seem far enough right now.
As for Fernando and his idea that the Republicans will keep Trump in check, well, I fear the GOP even more than Trump. The idea that people like Chris Christie (who may end up in charge of the transition and get a cabinet post) will act as a moral compass for Trump is laughable.
I also fear 50 million over-armed, under-educated rednecks who will be shocked- shocked, I say- when Trump turns out to be something other than they thought. If they thought Obama was against the little guy and for big money, well –surprise! Trump is big money and is unlikely to change tax structures that made him a billion dollars (minimum.) Even if the manufacturing jobs come back, the unions that made them survivable won’t: it’s going to be fun for people to try and live on $8 an hour with no path upward (assuming that somehow the jobs aren’t taken by automation.)
So: Roe V. Wade goes. Black men continue to get shot. Gay marriage and rights go. Women will find advances rolled back.
But the real work of the GOP- gerrymandering and pandering to the elites (low corporate taxes and breaks for the wealthy, reductions in social welfare transfers) will go on.
It’s the worst of both worlds, really.
I’m also thinking of buying stock in construction firms in southern Arizona, though I think my timing is late.
-Lloyd
You may be right about Hillary, it doesn’t matter anymore. But I have deep concerns about Donald and his Republican Senate.
As soon as anyone gets a fairly clear picture of where the nation is headed and what the vision for the future , please post.
I have already dumped any thought of a fast renewable takeover. Another setback of 4 to 8 years is enough to wreck the train.
So, should we be investing in coal now? Actually, its depressing. Eight years is potentially almost a decade of ongoing otiosity — IOW, a disaster!
It is always more difficult to build than destroy, more difficult to preserve than poison, more difficult to save than lose.
So eight years of backsliding will equate to 15 to 20 years of hard effort to overcome the losses, if ever.
We do not have the time for this. This is the critical decade that will set the stage for the future.
“We do not have the time for this. This is the critical decade that will set the stage for the future.” So true, so sad.
Guys, please watch the video I linked to in my post below this one, “Why Solar PV Power Plants Will Fundamentally Change the Way We Power the Planet”. The main speaker, a CEO of a utility scale, solar PV facility developer, is claiming that fossil fuel plants are being canceled because, the investors do not see any way that they can make money in the face of competition from solar.
The FF lobby are going to have to come up with some pretty neat tricks to stop that snowball from rolling down the hill! Even if they do, that will only affect the US and might benefit the rest of the world as products and developments are steered towards more receptive markets with maybe a slight glut contributing to slightly lower prices for the rest of the world.
Islandboy, that snowball will melt before it rolls very far down the hill. 🙂
“I have already dumped any thought of a fast renewable takeover. “
Well, I dunno. I watched the following video a couple days ago and things seem to be close to the point where un-subsidised renewables, solar PV in particular, are competitive on price with fossil fuels.
A Joint Production of the USC Urban Growth Seminar Series and the Schwarzenegger Institute for State & Global Policy.
Over eighty percent of the energy used worldwide today is from fossil fuels. That’s a changing paradigm though as renewable energy continues to gain momentum, and proven technologies such as solar power are rapidly growing more cost effective and efficient. Join Dr. Buttgenbach for this presentation as he explains why photovoltaic (PV) power plants are becoming mainstream, and what economic and technological factors are driving this growth. Topics discussed will include national and global renewable trends, irradiance patterns, solar pricing vis-‐à-‐vis natural gas, energy storage, distributed versus utility generation, and more. This session will appeal to renewable energy experts and novices alike.
Speaker:
Tom Buttgenbach, Ph.D.
President and Co-Founder, 8minutenergy Renewables
Discussants:
Detlof von Winterfeldt
Director, Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events
Professor, USC
Bonnie Reiss
Global Director, Schwarzenegger Institute for State & Global Policy
Tom Buttgenbach, Ph.D., is president and co‐founder of 8minutenergy. He brings over 20 years of executive management experience in large-scale solar PV, land entitlement, project development, M&A, and capital structuring and origination. Tom has led transactions totaling over $5 billion involving over 15,000 acres of land development, and closed over 1,400MW in power purchase agreements.
Prior to co-founding 8minutenergy, he was a successful entrepreneur and fund manager working on Wall Street with Alliance Bernstein, a $500 billion fund, leading the investment banking group of RCLCO, where he has transacted and developed large scale real estate development projects in the US and Mexico, and as a project manager for McKinsey & Company in Europe and the US. He earned his Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from the California Institute of Technology.
The main speaker opens the talk, relating a conversation he had with an executive, about plans for NG plants in Texas being scrapped because the owners foresee that they will not be able to compete with solar. This is in Texas with no incentives worth mentioning. It remains to be seen, what the Koch brothers can come up with to thwart renewables at this stage, without it being obvious to the public that they’re being screwed.
Note that despite huge amounts being spent by “Consumers for Smart Solar”, the political action committee funded by Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy among others, Amendment 1 failed to pass. This is in a state that re-elected Marco Rubio and made a significant contribution to Trump’s victory.
Thanks Islandboy,
That is encouraging. I did notice his projection for renewables is not as fast as my more aggressive energy transition scenario, which assumes all fossil fuels are replaced by 2059. This was based on fast growth at the start in 2016 with a gradual slowdown over time to 8% /year growth after 2030. In that video the coal and oil go away fairly quickly, but natural gas is used until 2080 or so. The first energy transition scenario I did was somewhat slower growth of 7%/year with fossil fuels replaced by 2075. Some complained that was too slow. The slow scenario was about 1050 Pg of total carbon emissions and the aggressive scenario about 940 Pg of carbon emissions. Getting it much lower will be a challenge, maybe it is technically possible, I doubt it is realistic, though this video makes me wonder. Solar in the southwest and wind in the plains, all connected with HVDC to the rest of the nation would seem to be a plan. Hydro and nuclear backup plus a little battery and natural gas backup.
Maybe some solar in other areas as well, but start in the low cost areas first.
Islandboy,
Certainly price will play a part in the renewable energy growth and certain regions or areas will expand due to better conditions.
However the video also explains the critical role that government mandates play in the development of new solar implementation. I know in my state there has been a big push for solar PV mostly due to government mandate to power companies to replace a percentage of their power with renewables combined with subsidies to homeowners to install them. The growth has been fast despite not being the optimum solar region for PV, good but more like the average for the US, not like California.
To remove federal stimulus, federal loans to startups as will probably happen, plus force an non-level playing field tilted toward fossil fuels, will slow the growth of renewable energy and cause many start-ups to fail or even never start.
A renewable energy startup, battery builder, EV builder is taking a huge chance as it is. Since the technology is in flux, next year might see a cheaper, better technology developed elsewhere that wipes that startup out.
Without government mandates, general government support, it’s wild west city with the bad guys coming into town to mess with you and take over if possible.
Harold Hamm as Energy Secretary.
What else do you need to know?
-Lloyd
PS. I’m also looking forward to the show trial of Hillary Clinton. President Obama should do a Gerry Ford and pardon her for any crimes she may have committed.
Then he should pardon Snowden.
And fire Comey…though I doubt that would last.
-L
I have already dumped any thought of a fast renewable takeover.
I don’t see the forces of darkness being able to hold things back all that much!
Renewables already make economic sense on their own, I see them taking over quickly despite any deliberate resistance deployed against them.
There’s a reason there are wind farms in the heart of Texas and it isn’t because of Obama, it’s because it makes Texans money… 🙂
Hi Fred,
I like your dose of optimism (some might call it Pollyannaish, but I need a dose of sunshine, so it’s good for me).
After last night, I am tending to agree with Gone fishing and Doug Leighton this morning.
Things look pretty bleak to me.
Dennis, for a dose of sunshine, watch the video I linked to above, “Why Solar PV Power Plants Will Fundamentally Change the Way We Power the Planet”. It basically makes the point Fred is making, with some numbers to back it up.
Dennis,
After last night, I am tending to agree with Gone fishing and Doug Leighton this morning.
Uh Oh! Compared to that statement, Trump becoming the 45th president of the US wasn’t even an extraordinary political event!
Now I’m really beginning to wonder if the law of gravity is truly just an illusion.
🙂
Roads? where we’re going we don’t need roads…
Yeah I guess I was not happy with the election result, if it was Romney or Bush it would be ok, I haven’t felt like this since Reagan was elected and I thought the World would end. That turned out ok, but Trump seems far worse than Reagan. Reagan would be considered a RINO by many Republicans based on his policies.
Fred, if we were just dealing with depletion of fossil fuels and not a series of major problems all at once, it would not be a big deal to slow growth of renewables temporarily. I didn’t say stop, just slow. With all the problems (predicaments) going on at once it is mandatory to grow and accelerate the growth of renewables over the next few decades. Loss of momentum now can have debilitating results when the forces of global warming, fossil fuel depletion, food and water depletion, etc. all start coming together. We may not have the ability to push forward if we wait too long. Thing might just go down to fast, and then it’s into the long dark night.
This is the critical period to make a peaceful and strong transisition, we have waited too long now to slow down.
The US could become a 2nd or 3rd world nation while others push strongly ahead due to better focus and leadership. We will take others down with us too.
Hi Gone fishing,
I agree 100%. I was not aware the solar projects had become competitive with only the federal investment tax credit, that is a positive sign, but I agree that it will not be enough.
We can hope that Trump was lying to get elected and that he really believes in climate change, or that he will see the expansion of renewable energy as a business opportunity. Harold Hamm as Energy Secretary suggests that is unlikely.
Maybe oil prices will rise, that will help a bit, again not really enough.
Grasping at straws…
It does not look good.
GF,
You said: The US could become a 2nd or 3rd world nation while others push strongly ahead due to better focus and leadership. We will take others down with us too.
Yeah, the US citizens that voted for Trump did so because they already live in 2nd and 3rd world conditions…
Let me be clear, though I’ve tried to make a few upbeat comments about renewables, I’m still a hardcore realist and realize that a Trump presidency could absolutely be the nudge that sends us and the rest of humanity spiraling down a road to a hellish future.
Antarctic ice shelves don’t care what Trump or the GOP think and sea level rise is going to get Trump’s resorts in Miami probably sooner than later.
Despite the schadenfreude, it will not help any of us.
In any case, his rhetoric regarding the Paris Climate Talks and saying he will pull the US out, there is a whole world outside of the US and not everyone is completely insane…
Should be an interesting 4 years!
Yes Fred, the ROW is not all insane. Europe is way ahead of us in energy conservation, China will follow, India next and probably a long list of countries. They all believe in global warming and can see fossil energy has limits.
Makes the US look like 1890’s coal mine owners.
Just when we were making progress. Going to be flushed and you know who will keep pulling the handle.
Well, forget about any climate projection under 3C. 8C here we come. If the USA does not change, other countries, such as India, will not. We are done.
NAOM
Well, to be fair, the one bright spot was that Amendment 1 was defeated in Florida.
As a non-American and almost non-political person one thing your new president said especially worries me: “Regulations have grown into a massive job-killing industry. The regulation industry is one business I will absolutely put an end to on day one,” (Trump said in September). Apparently he also said he would cancel of all payments to UN climate change programs. Of course political candidates always say stuff that never materializes but the tone is not exactly comforting. BTW what is Amendment 1?
Doug, Amendment 1 was an effort to amend the constitution of the state of Florida to ensure that third part ownership of solar generating facilities would remain illegal. This status has prevented outfits like the Elon Musk (Tesla Motors) affiliated, Solar City from bringing their “no money down”, lease to own, model of deployment to Florida.
For “the sunshine state” one of the remarkable things about Florida is the almost complete lack of solar (thermal or PV) in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area, very noticeable when approaching any of the regional airports. Not a panel in sight!
Hey Doug,
You asked: BTW what is Amendment 1?
The link I provided explains it and includes a link to the text of the actual amendment. Though reading it is a headache inducing mumbo jumbo of legalese.
In a nutshell, it is: A utility-backed solar amendment to the state constitution was defeated by voters after a rough-and-tumble campaign that saw environmental groups fiercely oppose the measure.
Amendment 1 would provide for state and local regulation of solar power while prohibiting those without solar from subsidizing those who produce it. Opponents said the measure was misleading and would discourage development of solar.
Nothing I have ever heard Trump say is what I would define as comforting 🙂
Yeah, he could do a lot of serious damage being the loose cannon that he is. Though to be frank, until construction starts on THE wall with Mexico actually footing the bill, I’ll take everything he has said during the campaign, with more than a few grains of NaCl…
Cheers!
islandboy & Fred: thanks.
“I’ll take everything he has said during the campaign, with more than a few grains of NaCl…” I think (expect and hope) this is correct. Why would Senate & House go along with madcap schemes? That said, I’d bet oil drilling will now be allowed in formerly prohibited areas of Alaska, etc.
I’m curious to see what’s gonna happen when Koch brothers puppets like Mitch McConnel and James Inhoffe start to introduce legislation to open the legs of the US so that the Kochs can just slide right in! Wonder how long it’s gonna take for them to get started and if “the Donald” is going to realize that his angry, working class, male constituents are going to be the losers in the long run?
Been thinking, today. It didn’t gel before but this reminds me of something. KGB playbook 101.
Get a sympathetic, controllable leader into a country then start pulling the puppet chains. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine etc. This is so standard a Russian method of gaining control of another country.
NAOM
The basket of deplorables showed up at the polls to vote. The deplorables were sure not to vote for the person who dubbed them deplorables.
The Affordable Care Act belongs to the Democrats and especially Hillary. Americans have had it up to here with the everything about it, fed up.
It should be evident that is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
People didn’t vote for Trump, they voted against Hillary, they just don’t like her, end of discussion. Trump was the only choice to keep Hillary from becoming POTUS. Americans didn’t want her there, at all.
Purdy much the story.
Welcome to New Russia.
Sarah Palin announced to be the Minister Of Information (Control)
In Soviet Russia, information searches for you. 🙂
Ocare didn’t get nearly as much play as I thought it would, because outrage burns out fairly fast, and so it was mostly burned down as an issue, compared to if it had been put in last year.
But I have talked to a number of people personally who used to vote D who voted R because they were hit with a major new bill in the mid four figures for something they didn’t want, and lots of people who believe they can’t get moved to full time on their current part time jobs because of OCare.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
Yes people hate to have to pay their way. The free ride is much cheaper. We can roll back the ACA and go back to the good old days where people with no health care insurance got their medical care in emergency rooms. A recipe for very high health care costs subsidzed by those with health insurance (who would pay higher premiums) and the government (which would pay more for medicare and Medicaid reimbursement.
When the bill was passed a government health insurance option should have been part of the bill.
We can try again in 2050 or maybe 2150.
Hi Dennis,
I am sure you are aware that I consistently advocate that we adopt a health care system modeled on the ones currently in place in countries such as the UK, Germany, France, etc.
The D’s hearts were in the right place, mainly, but they went for incremental change that seems to have done very little or nothing to actually lower costs, except for the people who get a big subsidy, at the expense of people who are paying a high premium.
My personal opinion is that this approach backfired politically, helping the R’s win.
It seems some what strange to me that nobody here agrees with me about the realities ( in my opinion at least, realities ) of political backlash.
I pointed out out several times here that everybody should be careful about what they wish for, because they may get it. And whatever you get politically virtually always has strings, or grenades, attached.
But the responses, such as they were, indicate that the consensus view here seems to be that by advocating slower change, I was or am advocating no change at all.
Well, we got extraordinarily fast social and cultural change, and the strings and grenades attached are reality now, in the form of Trump and the R party all the way.
Maybe now I will get a little grudging credit as having some insight into the big picture, in terms of politics. Moving slower culturally might have been the safer and surer path, long term, was my argument. I think maybe events have proven me correct in that respect.
So far the hard core D’s I know are in shock, and not yet ready to consider that Trump won because Clinton was an incredibly flawed candidate. They are mostly insisting that Trump won because the media and the establishment was on his side.
Sometime back I said here that the D party would learn a hell of a lesson about running a candidate with crippling negatives if the R’s win, and likewise the R’s would have learned a similar lesson about crapping on the party foot soldiers wants and desires while catering to the party fat cats, if Trump were to lose the election to Clinton….. because Trump GOT the nomination mostly because the R party establishment was in the habit of crapping on the R party foot soldier core.
Talk radio and Fox were on his side, and some business type sites,likewise, but by and large the media were on Clinton’s side, and mostly portrayed the R party as backward, corrupt, sleazy, etc, compared to the D party.
I listen to NPR anytime I am on the road, and sometimes in the house, and I never heard a single full minute even once that didn’t sound slanted, either obviously or subtly, towards Clinton, of political commentary, except from the occasional token conservative guest.
I read the Atlantic, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the NYT, the LA Times, etc, for an hour or two most days, and three or four conservative publications such as the National Review, which have relatively minuscule circulations a couple of hours a week.
Maybe I am the dingaling, but in my estimation, anybody who thinks the establishment media, taken all around, were on Trumps side is hopelessly naive or grasping at straws and suffering from denial.
I am not sure if you are sarcastic or serious in saying 2050, but I think the D’s will be back in power a hell of a lot sooner than that, maybe as soon as 2024.
I have obviously been “ahead of my time” in saying the demographic and cultural factors are all lined up for the Democrats and liberals, but that doesn’t mean I am a CENTURY ahead of my time as a political prophet, lol.
We have ample reason to think that economic times will remain tough, over the next couple of election cycles, and that they will likely to continue to get even tougher, after that, due to natural resource problems, the scary international situation, the very real problem with the social safety net expanding faster than our ability to pay for it, with fewer kids, and more old folks, etc.
Tough times mean the out party has a big advantage in presidential election years. I don’t see the R party doing much if anything at all to fix most of our economic problems, except maybe for the one per center class.
If the economy had been just a little better, Clinton would have won. If she had sounded just a little less arrogant and entitled, she might have won. I am still having a hard time coming to grips with Trump winning, given that I was sure Clinton had it in the bag a few days back.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
What change do you propose? The AFA was slow change. The thing that few realize is that without the AFA health insurance would likely have been more expensive rather than less expensive. A government option was a no brainer to keep costs down, essentially it would be medicare for everyone, but those under 65 would have to pay, if they chose it over private insurance. If the private insurers are as efficient as they claim they should be able to provide the insurance at the same or lower cost and still be profitable. If we are too worried about political backlash then there would be no progress, no voting for women or African Americans, not a World I would care to live in. We took many steps backwards during the Reagan revolution, unfortunately young people decided to volte for third party candidates or stay home, I can’t imagine many of them voted for Trump, but who knows, usually young people tend to be a little more liberal and a little less fearful than middle aged white men.
On the 2050, that was a ballpark estimate, Clinton tried in 1994 or so and failed, it had to wait another 15 years and with this set back I figure another 30 years or so in my current pessimistic mood, or maybe 130 years because I usually am too optimistic. 🙂
Dennis is right. Government is supposed to protect it’s citizens and help with large problems that business and society have not solved given such large amounts of time.
The business of government should not be to harm the citizenry, nor should it be focused to help narrow special interests such as big business and big money.
The trickle down theory does not work well in a business paradigm that prefers to invest in automation or move things overseas and keep most of the money locked up, circulating within business enterprises. A huge portion of the citizenry gets ostracized economically and politically. Probably why Donald is is coming into power now, they think he is a solution.
If they are not helping the people and getting the ecomomic monster that is the medical system under control (as well as others) then much harm occurs.
“Now looking back at all we’ve planned
We let so many dreams
Just slip through our hands
Why must we wait so long
Before we’ll see
How sad the answers
To those questions can be
Do you know where you’re going to
Do you like the things that life is showing you
Where are you going to
Do you know
Do you get
What you’re hoping for
When you look behind you
There’s no open doors
What are you hoping for
Do you know…”
“Trump represents, to the people, the superhero, ‘Mr. Economy’. That’s why I think there’s a big chance he’ll get elected. BAU–oil-growth-based BAU– is slowly going down the funnel, and many people– those for example who are part of the hidden unemployment statistics– may need someone who looks like they might be able to bring it back from the brink. Enter Trump, the lowbrow high-end entrepreneur and real estate guy, or whatever. From what I’ve seen and heard, Trump talks like someone who some of[sic] might have, as a relative, friend, neighbor or acquaintance, over at their home, maybe after a drink or more.”
” If there is a crisis then the government will step in as in WW2 and much can be accomplished when the country works together with a purpose.” ~ Dennis Coyne
Hey Caelan,
Think Different!
Come join the fun! https://www.thinkdif.co/schedule
There has to be something in there that might interest even you.
Who cares about Depublicans and Remocrats, they’re pretty much irrelevant.
😉
“Think Different!” ~ Fred Magyar Apple, Inc.
‘u^
Sure, Fred. I’ll check it out later after some ongoing work on Permaea, thanks.
Permaeans will regardless probably be leveraging many aspects of that kind of thing within their ethical and ecological framework, and along their evolutionary frontiers and outposts of survival & thriving… Perhaps it’s worth noting, FWIW, that, ostensibly, Denisovans, Neanderthals, and who knows who or what else, got admixed and/or died out.
“By comparing the genomes of apes, Denisovans, Neanderthals, and modern humans, scientists hope to identify DNA segments unique to the different groups. Early results already suggest modern humans underwent genetic changes involved with brain function and nervous system development, including ones involved in language development, after splitting from Neanderthals and Denisovans. Identifying and understanding these genetic tweaks could help explain why our species survived and thrived while our close relatives died out.” ~ National Geographic
LOL!
If you can get past your prejudices and knee jerk reactions to the fact that the messenger happens to be Fred Magyar, at the very least listen to the opening presentation. Yeah, it’s almost 2 hrs long…
And don’t get too hung up on the Robert Scoble talking about technology for mixed VR with reality. Maybe skip past that to listen more carefully to Nikki Silvestri and Paul Mason. https://www.thinkdif.co/headliners/dif-live-launch
Cheers!
I just wrote that I would check it out later. If you can get past your own, you will notice. ;D
Hi Caelan,
Yes, definitely should have been “might” rather than “will”. Maybe the country will pull together when the crisis becomes apparent, that is what has happened in the past, though the future may be very different. Is Canada going to build a wall? Probably wouldn’t get the US to pay, but it might be a good investment. 🙂
Hi Dennis,
I am hearing the word, ‘secession’ more often these days…
It’s possible that new geopolitical ‘walls’ may go up within your own neck of the woods.
Good work on the image-sizing by the way, if you have anything to do with it.
Another perspective:
US ELECTION RESULT: EUROPEANS STUNNED BY DEAFENING TRUMP ROAR
“Key EU nations France, Germany and the Netherlands are steaming towards elections next year with increasing numbers of voters biting at the bit to give what they believe to be a self-serving elite – and their attack dogs: market capitalism, multiculturalism and globalisation – a good kicking…. By far and away the most effusive European reaction to the US elections came from the jubilant leaders of populist anti-establishment parties from Budapest, to Berlin, Vienna and beyond.”
“Investors’ focus on executive pay has increased since the financial crisis in 2008 and is a hot topic in the UK, where Prime Minister Theresa May is attempting to close an “unhealthy” and “irrational” gap between what companies pay their workers and their executives.”
TRUMP ‘THREAT’ TO DOMINATE UN CLIMATE NEGOTIATIONS
“Some 20,000 participants are meeting in Marrakech for two weeks, starting on Monday, to agree new rules to limit warming on the planet.These plans were boosted when the Paris Climate Agreement came into force last week. However Mr Trump, who calls climate change a “hoax”, has vowed to cancel the deal if elected… The ice caps don’t negotiate, and neither do rising seas. Donald Trump’s moral failure to acknowledge the climate crisis might very well mean planetary disaster if he is elected.” Oops!
“While negotiators await the outcome of the US election, there are several other factors that might also slow progress in these talks. One key element that might hold things up is the fact that so far only 100 have ratified the Paris agreement. There is a concern that it would be unfair if these early adopters had the chance to set the future rules under which all countries would have to operate.”
I am assuming that soon only personal and private group action will be left for us. Even that will hit heavy headwinds in the near future.
Not changing my personal plans, might even spur me to go further.
What this election showed was that when adding the fringe element to the Republican vote, it barely made 50 percent. Still, a lot of change can happen in four years and Donald promised change, lots of change.
When observations do not fit accepted laws, the observations are being misinterpreted or are incomplete.
Puzzle me this, if dark matter does not interact with normal matter, how does it produce a one way gravitational field? Essentially a tractor beam, since it does not get pulled toward the galaxy as Newton’s laws would necessitate of normal matter? Does the tractor beam work in all directions or only toward normal matter?
And why only around galaxies, why not everywhere? Why a sphere if it does not interact with matter? What makes it form a sphere surrounding the galaxy.
Now informational space.
“Using insights from string theory, black hole physics and quantum information theory we argue that the positive dark energy leads to a thermal volume law contribution to the entropy that overtakes the area law precisely at the cosmological horizon. Due to the competition between area and volume law entanglement the microscopic de Sitter states do not thermalise at sub-Hubble scales: they exhibit memory effects in the form of an entropy displacement caused by matter. ”
Yikes. If the language is not understandable then how is one to interpret the meaning?
Why can’t large mass distributions such as galaxies affect space so that gravity does not have a uniform Newtonian relationship as we see in our nearby space? Or maybe we just are not seeing all the normal mass that is really there? Or both.
What if gravity is just not a simple r-squared law? How about that?
We probably just need a new equation of gravity where G is not a constant.
Hi Gone fishing,
What do you mean, you can’t change the gravitational contstant? Q does it all the time, just for kicks. 🙂
It was tough for mere mortals to get his sense of humor.
Probably have to make the exponent variable too.
I’ve just finished looking through state by state election results for yesterday’s presidential election at the URL; https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&q=us+election+2016. This page allows you to look at the results for each state which then shows you a map of the state with the counties that voted Republican in red and those that voted Democrat in blue.
The difference between the political leanings of rural versus urban America are extremely striking. Even in staunchly red states like Texas there are areas that vote Democrat and these areas are all urban with the exception of some counties close to the Mexican border. I assume that those areas adjacent be to the Mexican border have large immigrant populations that are scared of Trump. Even in the solidly Democrat state of California, the more rural northern California counties voted for Trump. Similarly Washington state and Oregon had the cities voting for Clinton and the rural areas voting for Trump.
I’m curious about the factors that make rural folk so staunchly against the Democrats that they can vote for a guy who is caught on tape saying “When you’re famous you can do anything. You can grab em by the pussy”. Conversely what is it that makes urban folk able to forgive the transgressions of Hillary Clinton?
“1. Corprocracy. The Dems need to decide whether they are a party of the people or the corporations. Clinton’s campaign coffers were filled by Corporate America. Bernie Sanders ran a campaign that rejected corporate financing. WikiLeaks made it clear that Clinton’s victory in the Democratic primaries over Sanders was engineered through electoral chicanery. The Dems wound up alienating progressives within the party. It will never be known for certain if Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump, but Sanders would not have fared worse than what Hillary Clinton did.
2. Anti-war. Hillary Clinton is a hawk. She is the American politician predominantly responsible for the debacle, the war crime, behind the destruction of Libya. She has been linked to the support of terrorists. She announced she would declare a no-fly zone over Syria, despite putting the US on a potential war footing against Russia. Yet Americans had made clear to Obama that they didn’t want to be involved in more militarism in Syria. Trump comes across as less militaristic. He is the candidate that talked of getting host countries to pay more for America’s overseas military bases.
3. Diplomacy. Hillary Clinton likened Russian president Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler. She engaged in saber rattling with Russia. Trump says he’ll talk to Russia and talk to China. Bombastic as Trump can seem to be, he can also strike a tone to powerful nations that is more conciliatory than that of Clinton.
4. Jobs. When Trump came out against offshoring of American jobs he resonated with American workers. Trump came out against the corporate-coveted Trans Pacific Partnership, which Clinton initially was for until she put her finger up in the political winds and pulled a volte-face. To her credit, Clinton did call for a $12 federal minimum wage which was more than the measly $10 federal minimum wage Donald Trump supports.
5. Anti-establishmentarianism. Bernie Sanders was a self-declared democratic socialist contending the Democratic Party primaries. This caused considerable consternation for the corporatists among the Dems. Trump was also an outsider, so much so that he was shunned by the elitists within the Republican Party: the Bushes, Paul Ryan, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and not one of the Fortune 100 CEOs supported Trump.
6. Anti-corruption. The government and its myriad spy networks that vacuum up information, public and private, on the citizenry can also be the bane of government officials, as Hillary Clinton and her team have found out. Her use of a non-government server for classified emails has cast Clinton, at best, as reckless and, at worst, criminal. The pay-to-play Clinton Foundation also came under intense scrutiny. It smelled bad. Judging by the response from the revelation of all these shenanigans, one can surmise that WikiLeaks did indeed have some effect on the election.
7. Personality politics. Trump had no need to resort to flinging mud at Hillary Clinton as she was mired knee-deep in her own muck. But she did not hesitate to dig up dirt to smear Trump with. For many people it came across as distraction. Her platform was not inspiring enough people to enter or stay in the Clinton camp, so she sought to scare people out of the Trump tent.
8. Scapegoating. In order to dig herself out from her own muck, Clinton did not deny the substance of what was revealed about her (how could she? They were her own emails); instead she sought to blame the messenger who she identified as Russia. The problem is that the messengers were not Russians but rather Washington insiders.
9. Polls. The polls that the media reports can not be trusted. Polling results depend on the questions being asked, how the questions are asked, who is asking the question, and who is being asked the question. If you mess with the mechanics of polls, then screwed-up poll results should be expected.
10. Media. The corporate media was heavily skewed against the man, Donald Trump, that they maligned. Trump was not the preferred establishment candidate, and the media made this known. This is one plausible explanation for media reporting of unreliable polls that elevated Clinton over Trump.
11. Mandate. Many are calling it a landslide. Trump and the Republicans have claimed all three departments of government. Despite this can Trump claim a mandate? Voters perceived this election as a choice between two unattractive right-wing candidates. Clinton was exceedingly unpopular and Trump maybe more so. If the election is mainly the result of people voting to prevent Clinton from getting into the Oval Office, then this should not be interpreted as a mandate for Trump’s platform.”
Duncan, “1. Corprocracy. The Dems need to decide whether they are a party of the people or the corporations.
But!, but!, but!…. I thought The Corporations, WERE people, no?!
Otherwise you raise some good points.
Cheers!
Thanks Duncan, but maybe I should have been more explicit. What I want to understand is why rural folk tend to vote Republican while city folk tend to vote Democrat? It is the clear cut difference between urban and rural folk that exists in all but Hawaii, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and West Virginia I’m curious about.
If you look at all the other states, the rural counties are solidly red and in most cases, any blue counties that exist are in or close to major cities. Why is it that there are not more rural counties that vote Democrat or urban counties that vote Republican?
I kinda get why Hillary lost (Trump didn’t really “win”) and I get that a wide swath of voters are fed up with politicians that claim they want to represent the voters but end up representing some corporate master or the other. I get that Trump’s supporters think that he is rich enough to be able to refuse political contributions and can do whatever the heck he wants to do. I get most of Duncan’s laundry list but what I don’t get is why are there so many rural counties that vote Republican and so few urban counties that vote Republican?
islandboy.
I live in a rural area. This has been gradually coming, yet nobody in the media saw it, in fact they are still not highlighting it enough.
My home county has leaned Republican since WW2.
In my home county in 2008, which is 97% white, Obama received 44%.
In 2012 Obama received 33% of the vote.
In this election Clinton only received 23%.
There are several counties within one hour of me where Clinton received in the teens, including one at 13% and another at 12%.
Trump’s win absolutely is the result of a rural landslide. Yet, even though it is obvious, I haven’t heard the media discussing this as much as they should. It is the primary reason he will be President.
My guesses as to the reasons this has occurred:
Guns.
Social issues.
Fossil fuel issues. (Most who work in industry are rural.)
Media ignores/looks down on rural areas.
Feeling that governments financially short change rural areas.
Rural areas experiencing brain drain, falling populations, lower paying jobs.
Rural demographics (older, whiter).
I am not advocating for Trump, nor saying rural people are correct on these issues, just trying to answer your question.
Women here supported Trump big time, really a head scratcher.
Islandboy,
Do you read John Michael Greer’s “Archdruid Report”? His post this evening touches on the subject you’re asking about, though he doesn’t really go into detail about the why’s.
Stan
Duncan, did you author that?
If not, can you please cite your source when quoting?
Islandboy, the rural areas want some money too and want to be included more in society. Not saying this is the way to do it, but they are looking at the bottom dollar and want some change. Rural areas are parasitized by cities, provide all or most of the food, water, materials and energy to the cities, yet are not well paid or represented.
Hi Gone fishing,
Aren’t there agricultural subsidies from the government that flow to rural areas, support for education, student loans, medicare, subsidies for the petroleum industry including master limited partnerships which allow reduced taxes (I believe this is only allowed in the petroleum industry)?
On a per capita basis it is not clear that less money flows to rural areas.
I thought the main complaint in rural areas is that they wanted the government out of their lives, except perhaps when it comes to personal decisions about whether to continue a pregnancy, then the government should decide, or that seems to be the opinion of Trump who would like to see Roe v Wade overturned.
Hi Island Boy,
I will have more to say in a long comment later, but Trump got away with saying that sort of thing because that sort of thing really only matters in certain political circles where you have to toe the line on insulting ANYBODY, excepting southerners in general, white southerners in particular, and white southern males specifically. You actually get bonus points for insulting white southern males if you are in rarefied liberal circles,double bonus if you mention Jesus, or God, etc even such circles as this very forum. My sarcasm light is flashing, but irregularly, it doesn’t know if it ought to be bright or dim.
In actuality, most of us yankees, southern variety included, are used to hearing this sort of stuff, and are not much bothered by it anymore. Have you listened to popular music, watched American tv, etc, in recent times?
And men DO talk locker room shit, even preachers do it sometimes, I have heard it personally. But you have to be part of the inner circle to hear it.
But here’s the kicker. The folks who voted for Trump said what’s fair for the goose is fair for the gander. One woman I talked to put it this way, HILL stood by Bill, which is to her way of thinking, the same thing as doing it, and Bill without any doubt in MY mind had his way with a number of women, although most liberals will go to their graves convinced all the women who said so were trash who were paid for so saying.
If you drive the getaway car, and your husband robs the bank………. as she puts it, you aren’t any better than he is, and Trump is no worse.
To a Trump voter, it’s a wash.
The vast majority of women I have spoken with about Clinton and Trump, who voted for Trump, have near zero respect for Hill as a person, for putting up with him. They see her as a gold digger, who stuck around for the gold, both literal and political.
Women, they say, aren’t supposed to put up with that sort of thing anymore, which is a very LIBERAL sort of thing to say of course, coming from older southern women. The women who do believe in her gave her a pass on this matter, some of them seeing it simply as a matter of playing hard ball for all the marbles, no holds barred, no rules except WIN. I can respect that pov, no problem at all. I understand and respect BOTH points of view.
The young women I met at Sanders affairs mostly stayed home. They would NEVER vote for Trump, but the shit she threw at Sanders alienated them to the point most of them wouldn’t vote for her either.
Well, she did manage to get the literal gold, with her nuclear family now controlling a quarter billion dollar foundation, not to mention ten million or so in speaking fees alone, and she got within a whisker of moving back into the WH.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
A sensible young woman would be concerned about the Supreme court appointments made by Trump. Unless your definition of “young woman” is just younger than you. You might consider women of childbearing age to be “girls”. Aren’t some of these women concerned about the rights of their daughters?
Hi Dennis,
This is well worth adding a little nuance. I will copy it to the new thread as well as reply here.
It is a habit that I often refer to both men and women as boys and girls or girls and guys etc. It’s local idiom, and not derogatory in intent.
The Sanders camp women are in my personal experience are in favor of liberally interpreted personal rights including abortion, with a few exceptions, I have no idea how many as a percentage, but probably it’s a very small percentage of anti abortion advocates.
Now here is something that the typical average liberal who strongly supports abortion just can’t get his head around.
Older rural women, and a substantial percentage of urban females believe in their hearts that abortion is murder.
Given that my two surviving sisters are one percenters, and one of the two is a professor in nursing school, and specializes in the care of premature infants, and routinely has a hand in saving the lives of some so small and poorly developed that they were SURE to die as little as ten years ago, I can understand the “murder ” point of view easily enough. It is worth noting that despite what she does otj, she is an abortion rights advocate, but she is opposed personally to any past about four months or so, losing sleep over them. ( Not that she can do any thing for a four month preemie.)
Go smoke a little good dope, or drop some acid, or just free yourself from your mindset, and let your intellect roam free, and consider this.
You are in jail, the womb, thru no fault of your own, and condemned to die, day after tomorrow, by way of being aborted. But if for some reason your mother to be goes into labor, and you are born, and extremely lucky, there is at least a slight possibility that you LIVE.
It really is arbitrary as hell saying you are not a human being because you have not yet breathed freely in open air.
Having said all this, I am personally in favor of women having the right to decide for themselves, although it bothers me at the personal level.
Now as far as older rural women go, if they hold to the more stereotypical conservative viewpoint, they don’t expect their daughters to need abortions only rarely.
There is a trade off they make, in considering that issue, along with the many others involved in the rural urban divide. So they can be for ” reproductive freedom” while coming down on the Trump side of the political divide in the voting booth.
For what it is worth, I personally think the media has a super strong vested interest in whipping up outrage , and that while Trump is dangerous, he is not apt to run as wild as the media proposes. Consider the thousand headlines about the stock market crashing, versus the dozen about it bouncing right back, etc.
I don’t think he will actively push some policies that would be strongly detrimental to his longer term interests.
Politicians playing to their core constituencies exaggerate when campaigning, and back off if elected, so as to make fewer enemies. He won’t lose more than a tiny handful of one issue right to life voters by doing so, but he will avoid alienating millions of younger, better educated women to an even greater extent than he has already.
But given that he is such an incredibly loose cannon,I will not make a firm prediction about ANYTHING he might do, except gut environmental protection laws, if he can, change tax law in favor of the rich, etc, if he can.
So it’s not hopeless but it sure would have felt (a bit) better with a different election result.
RECORD HOT YEAR MAY BE THE NEW NORMAL BY 2025
“That means the record hot summer of 2013 in Australia — when we saw temperatures approaching 50°C in parts of Australia, bushfires striking the Blue Mountains in October, major impacts to our health and infrastructure and a summer that was so hot it became known as the “angry summer” — could be just another average summer season by 2035.
“But if we reduce emissions drastically to the lowest pathway recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (RCP2.8), then we will never enter a new normal state for extreme seasons at a regional level in the 21st Century.”
“Based on a specific starting point, we determined a new normal occurred when at least half of the years following a record year were cooler and half warmer. Only then can a new normal state be declared,” she said.
“It gives us hope to know that if we act quickly to reduce greenhouse gases, seasonal extremes might never enter a new normal state in the 21st Century at regional levels for the Southern Hemisphere summer and Northern Hemisphere winter,” Dr Lewis said.
“But if we don’t act quickly Australia’s “angry summer” of 2013 may soon be regarded as mild. Imagine for a moment, if a summer season like 2013 became average. The likely impacts of an extremely hot year in 2035 would beyond anything our society has experienced.”
Instead of mining coal and having the Chinese burn it for money, maybe they should be mining Antarctica and bring ice to the deserts to cool and hydrate them. Forest growth in an area can induce a rain cycle.
The acting quickly would mean curtailing coal mining activity and fossil fuel extraction everywhere.
Does anyone here think that will happen quickly?
WMO sees a world where climate change is accelerating fast and approaching irreversible impacts.
Maybe you should forward the link to Donald (and Javier)?
I can waste my time in more fun ways.
The climate is changing? Really?! I wonder What could possibly cause something like that?
BTW, if you want to waste some time I invite one and all to explore some of the talks and topics here. https://www.thinkdif.co/
The conversations are a bit more interesting than the what we all just witnessed during the recent presidential elections. Plus a good part of the crowd there seems to be a lot less grey than most of us here and there are more ladies too. So you can get a better perspective of what young people around the world are thinking and doing.
…This session will explore the emergence of complexity in living and non-living systems. Dr Melik Demirel’s research is at the interface of life, materials and computational sciences. From gene regulation to biological circuits, biology offers us complex systems to study. In particular, he is working on protein self-assembly. Proteins are polymers that provide a variety of building blocks for designing biological materials. Structural proteins are key to the creation of many new, high strength materials. His team has developed a method for production of structural protein using industrial biotechnology. More recent work has focused on unique property of self-healing in proteins. Self-healing structural proteins provide not only high strength polymeric materials but also will help the discovery of novel properties for clinical applications such as orthopedic devices for repair, and biodegradable gels for wound healing in the near future.
While a mind might be a terrible thing to waste, wasting a little time now and then is ok, plus I find it a nice antidote to all the doom and gloom in the world!
Cheers!
OK so what about the possibility we wind up determining there’s more pro instead of con about the globe warming? Could that article be nothing more than just the same old same old gloom and doom from the global bureaucrats?
Anyway under the forthcoming Trump Administration it’d be of greatest public benefit to set the official government position on the matter that global warming cannot be definitively proven as man made. All these government agencies studying the climate need to be made aware the sun and solar eruptions are the primary influences of climate and heat processes here on earth.
Hi George,
The solar influence is pretty minor, insolation changes a bit due to Milankovitch effects and the solar cycle, but the sunspot stuff is not convincing to most scientists as an important driver of climate change. Changes in atmospheric CO2 are well correlated with global temperature changes (30 year average temperatures especially) though clearly there is some natural variability due to the solar cycle (relatively minor), Milankovitch cycles (over very long 100,000 year cycles affecting glacial-interglacial cycles), volcanoes, and atmospheric and oceanic cycles (probably driven in part by the lunar cycle).
Chart below shows centered 20 year global average temperatures vs natural log of atmospheric CO2 from 1900 to 2003. R squared is 0.92.
I am sure they will declare non- manmade despite all evidence to the contrary. Evidence and reality has nothing to do with it. Keeping certain corporations working and happy is what it is all about. Otherwise the campaign contributions stop.
Anyway under the forthcoming Trump Administration it’d be of greatest public benefit to set the official government position on the matter that global warming cannot be definitively proven as man made.
Yeah, and while we’re at it, let’s set the official government position on all matters of science, we can start with the laws of gravity, or maybe thermodynamics. Let’s just abolish those first. Then we can tackle the Theory of Evolution…, Big Bang, General Theory of Relativity, Round Earth Theory, etc… etc…
Hey, maybe we can even bring back Lysenkoism, of course we could rename it Trumpoism.
Guess what George, climate change can and has been proven to be caused by CO2 emissions due to fossil fuels burned by humans. And that is just the tip of the iceberg, no pun intended!
BTW, I forgot to ask, did you graduate from Trump University?
South of the border they are bracing for hard times.
“His victory stunned, saddened and worried Mexicans, forcing the country’s highest government officials Wednesday morning to call for calm and pledge to work with the United States. The wave of national anxiety sent financial markets here into turmoil as a new, uncertain era in relations with the United States began.
I’ll see if I can pick up some opinion tomorrow. Last night, a lot of people were off the streets and I presume were following the results. I feel really uncomfortable, here, at the moment. I’m thinking of making a ‘No Soy Americano’ T-shirt. 🙁
NAOM
I’m thinking of making a ‘No Soy Americano’ T-shirt.
Hey, NAOM, before you do that, remember that Americano, includes North, Central and South Americans. And they ain’t all bad! 🙂
True, but here it is used to refer to greengos.
NAOM
Will put feedback in next thread.
NAOM
French Nuclear Power plants shut down -Black Swan event – coal plants being brought back on line
The situation is actually much more interesting. There is a quite good chance – according to the weather over the artic region -that we get a very cold winter in 2016/17. In this case the French housholds produce a high demand – peak then is 100 GW – due to the widespread use of electric heating systems.
The last time, that was 2011/12, this peak demand was (oh irony) covered by German wind power. 🙂
This year we would even see a lower number of French NPPs running. Ulenspiegel buys popcorn.
Ulenspiegel buys popcorn.
Make sure it is a really big bag 🙂
Had a nice record tying 72 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday for November 9th, better than the record low of -18 F. Global warming makes life better and easier!
7.4 billion people, 7.4 billion kilograms of CO2 exhaled from human bodies each day right into the air.
7.4 million metric tonnes of CO2 entered the atmosphere in one day from humans alone.
Possibly the most important single thing we forget the most often:
http://grist.org/energy-policy/energy-efficiency-awesome/
There are side-effects to energy efficiency. First is saving money, but that aside, look carefully at the other effects.
Let’s say you add insulation to your home and seal up air leaks. Beside reducing direct heat loss and not having to heat that cold air (or invert that for hot days), one will not run the furnace as much, saving electricity, reducing air inputs for the furnace, extending the life of the heating unit. Now if one even adds a couple of thermal solar panels to the south side of the house, all those benefits get enhanced plus more money savings.
Same with a car, if one consolidated trips and in general reduces miles traveled per year, the maintenance costs fall, the car lasts years longer and you could end up owning a classic.
Higher efficiency reduces the materials flow through the whole system. Less fuel drilled, pumped, refined, transported, pumped and burned. Same with electric power, less draw saves equipment maintenance and replacement down the line right to the mines.
Proper maintenance goes right along with all of the above. Makes things run more efficiently and last longer, win -win. Can’t beat that. Might just keep you from burning or crashing too.
We can take efficiency too far, those last few percent can get really expensive.
Of course the best way is not to have to use that energy in the first place. That is an area that really needs to be looked at thoroughly.
Of course if you can afford a heat pump setup, an EV and enough PV with batteries, well that disconnects you from the whole external energy system right there (insulate and seal the house first) and uses the latest most efficient means of providing your energy needs. Well, not for food.
Just buy quality so it lasts.
Food efficiency. Starches are cheap so no need to grow them. With vegetables running several dollars a pound, it’s worth gardening if you have the space, water and sunlight. Healthy for you too.
Saves trips to the store and if you can food for winter storage saves that giant supply system to bring food from who knows where in the world.
So if everything uses half the energy and lasts twice as long, the energy savings might add up to a global 70 or 75%.
We just have to be careful that the systems feeding the efficient mechanism do not themselves propagate energy use. Computers and cell phones are an example of that. The computers and cell phones can be very efficient but all the systems serving them had to be added and are a daily drain on the energy system.
Another big idea is recycling. consider this film:
http://www.bbc.com/specialfeatures/horizonsbusiness/seriessix/powering-africa/?vid=p04dv33p
For the lazy, it’s about converting human waste into fuel. This sounds like a doubtful business model, but the company doesn’t just make money on selling the fuel — it also makes money disposing of the waste. It’s hard to compete with a company whose material costs are negative.
This means part of the energy market is covered by free. On the one hand it encourages waste, but on the other it depresses investment in “high gain” fossil fuel recovery.
I can’t provide numbers at this time, and the numbers are always uncertain due to transportation costs, and the costs of alternatives, etc, but it is VERY likely in my opinion that Africans will do better to use their number one and number two, as some delicate folks refer to them, as fertilizers rather than as fuel.
But if these must be transported a long way, and the cost of drying them is minimal due to using solar energy, etc, it might be economically more efficient to burn them sometimes.
I have not checked out the link but I know more than a little about the nutrient content of manures, the costs of purchased mined and manufactured fertilizers, etc.
Of course the ash left is worth something in terms of mineral content, and greatly concentrated, which might make the difference.
Probably true, but I suspect people would prefer to see it burnt rather than used to make food, so you might have problems selling the stuff.
In the end, ideas like this are like designs in biology: They don’t have to be perfect, just good enough to survive.
The interesting thing is that something that costs less than nothing — that is, something people will pay you to take off their hands — is being transformed into something that can be sold.
In the US the waste disposal problem is similar and could be solved in a similar way, and on a much larger scale. Vast quantities of inflammable materials are expensively stored in landfills, instead of being used to generate electricity, and at the sale time vast amounts of capital are being invested in drilling holes to find stuff that can be burned in a power plant. Makes no sense at all, especially since most of the resulting electricity gets wasted anyway.
Hi Me,
Your handle makes it feel as if I were writing in a diary, rather than to someone else, lol.
Most people DO seem to have a problem with eating food produced using human or other animal fertilizers, but only so long as somebody is for some reason continuously pointing out the use of the manures, human or otherwise.
Most of our food these days in richer western countries is NOT produced using manures, for the simple reason manure is not available in adequate quantities, and such animal manure as is available is all too often in the wrong place and shipping it to where it could be put to good use costs too much. So it goes into lagoons, which some of the nutrients run off, some remain in sediments that accumulate and might eventually be recycled into the fields, or might simply be left there, as if the lagoon were a land fill.
In the case of human manure, there are many people who are squeamish about it, and out of an abundance of political caution, politicians put in laws and regulations forbidding its use across the board in some cases.
Now there ARE good reasons to be cautious about using human manure, but if it is heat treated, or composted, it’s safe to use, because these processes kill parasite eggs and germs that cause communicable diseases.
Most of us eat some food that is produced using manures without ever realizing we are doing so.
Lots of farmers spread manure from feed lot operations, milking barns, horse stables, etc, on their cropland, and some of that land is used to produce veggies, some of it to produce grain used to make bread or feed meat animals, etc.
Every dairy cow in a pasture is eating grass partly fertilized by her own manure, lol.
Few people understand that there are actual codified standards for the maximum content of rat hair, rat feces, insects, etc, for the flour used to make bread.
And these standards are NOT ZERO, because zero is not achievable.
You eat a rat turd every now and then, if you eat bread, but that turd has been finely pulverized, and except maybe for barfing because I have reminded you of it, it will you no harm.
I don’t know much about wine, but it is my understanding that some of the very finest, and most exclusive of wine, is still produced by monks who fertilizer their vineyards with their own urine, which they collect in barrels for use in the vineyards. This was a routine practice in historical times.
There is strong possibility that in the future we will be using human manure, which is often referred to by advocates for doing so as humanure, to raise food on the grand scale, rather than spending tons of money to treat it and dispose of it while wasting the extremely valuable and expensive nutrients in it.
Sometimes I day dream about turning a large stretch of desert or other vacant land near a big city into a biofuel manufacturing plant, the energy supplied by the sun, and the nutrients and raw materials supplied by raw sewage pipelined to the site.
Interesting followup: The EU decided to sue the German government today for allowing farmers to spread too much manure, and causing nitrate pollution.
Applying too much of any fertilizer at one time will result in contaminating run off water and maybe ground water as well.
But applying ” too much” in terms of strict water quality management standards is “not enough” in a lot of cases to get the highest production and profits.
There are necessary trade offs to be made, and if they have the animals, they must dispose of the manure somehow, lol.
Glad to see some ‘Soil Carbon Concepts catching on to the extent that Prince Charles and A French Government Group http://4p1000.org/understand are getting their feet wet to promotebiological soil carbon sequestration as a way to reduce atmospheric CO2 and mitigate some of the effects of Climate Change. http://tinyurl.com/zulul7s
This is one one those little things nobody notices, that could make a big difference. Charles has backed a few goofy causes in his day, but this makes sense.
In a cart-before-the-horse culture, true disruption isn’t a CRISPR horse, a Uber taxi, or a self-pushing horse, etc..
It is putting the horse before the cart…
And, perhaps more importantly, effectively addressing and solving the underlying problem of why the cart was before the horse in the first place.
Caelan, you seem to have this misguided notion that disruption is somehow something evil that is planned, or politically motivated or even worse some sort of vast global conspiracy.
Since I highly doubt you have even the slightest idea as to what CRISPR-cas9 actually is, let alone how it works, I won’t bore you with a dissertation on how or why it is a truly disruptive technology but like all technology it is but a tool with its pros and cons.
Technological disruption, BTW, is neither a good or necessarily a bad thing but something that just happens all the time. For example when early humans learned to control fire in caves in South Africa almost a million years ago that was pretty disruptive. To rail against disruption is akin to shaking your fists at the sky because biological evolution has occurred or humans learned how to burn coal to power steam engines… but I digress.
However, here’s some perspective and a bit of history on horses and urban life in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It wasn’t as romantic a life as some might think… and the disruptive technology of horseless carriages was at the time a rather significant improvement… and that particular disruption has now brought us to another historical cross roads with climate change. That of course is another dissertation.
http://www.uctc.net/access/30/Access%2030%20-%2002%20-%20Horse%20Power.pdf
From Horse Power
to Horsepower
B Y E R I C M O R R I S
IN 1 8 9 8 , D E L E G A T E S F R O M A C R O S S T H E GLO B E
gathered in New York City for the world’s first international
urban planning conference. One topic dominated the discussion. It was
not housing, land use, economic development, or infrastructure. The
delegates were driven to desperation by horse manure.
The horse was no newcomer on the urban scene. But by the late
1800s, the problem of horse pollution had reached unprecedented
heights. The growth in the horse population was outstripping even the
rapid rise in the number of human city dwellers. American cities were
drowning in horse manure as well as other unpleasant byproducts of
the era’s predominant mode of transportation: urine, flies, congestion,
carcasses, and traffic accidents. Widespread cruelty to horses was a form
of environmental degradation as well.
The situation seemed dire. In 1894, the Times of London estimated
that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in
horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded
that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third-story
windows. A public health and sanitation crisis of almost unimaginable
dimensions loomed.
And no possible solution could be devised. After all, the horse had
been the dominant mode of transportation for thousands of years.
Horses were absolutely essential for the functioning of the nineteenthcentury
city—for personal transportation, freight haulage, and even
mechanical power. Without horses, cities would quite literally starve.
…In addition, horses often fell, on average once every hundred miles of travel. When this took place, the horse (weighing on average 1,300 pounds) would have to be helped to its feet, which was no mean feat. If injured badly, a fallen horse would be shot on the spot or simply abandoned to die, creating an obstruction that clogged streets and brought traffic to a halt. Dead horses were extremely unwieldy, and although special horse removal vehicles were employed, the technology of the era could not easily move such a burden. As a result, street cleaners often waited for the corpses to putrefy so they could more easily be sawed into pieces and carted off. Thus the corpses rotted in the streets, sometimes for days, with less than appealing consequences for traffic circulation, aesthetics, and public health.
That is a problem with the city jungles, all the manure couldn’t grow a thing.
Why didn’t they transport it to farms in the region to promote growth of crops?
Definitely a poor management situation that city hall was ignoring to keep up the graft.
So the solution was to replace the biological “pollution” concentrated in cities with chemical pollution and distribute that to the rural areas and around the world, including the oceans. What a great idea, forced democracy so the cities could be cleaner, yet still choked with pollution and stench, just a different sort. Noisy too.
But smoke and pollution were signs of money back then, still are in many places.
Sounds like there was a good supply of horse meat available, should have been eaten.
Now we are facing the results of those decisions.
Horses replaced by automobiles and trucks, electric trolley, trains, and planes. Sailing ships replaced by steamers, then diesel powered ships.
World ecosystem replaced by ????
The world’s ecosystem is rapidly being replaced by a completely human run world. Unless of course we blow it and wipe ourselves out.
Consider the statistic that the wild elephant population in Africa has fallen by 90% in the last century. What does it tell us? It tells us that someone is keeping track of how many wild elephants there are in Africa. So they are really wild at all.
The same applies to the North Atlantic fish stocks, which are mostly under EU control.
Conservation is a rearguard action, as my father told me in the 60s. I realized there was an alternative to the end of the world when I went hiking in the Black Forest in 1980, and noticed the trees were planted in rows.
The most successful human societies tame nature completely, but without struggling against it. So pumping out ground water in Antelope Valley to grow alfalfa (and lawn grass) was dumb, but terraced rice fields in Northern Vietnam are smart. Those now-desiccated alfalfa fields are rapidly being converted to solar farms, a much better use of the land.
The final point is that good solutions are holistic — as I mentioned elsewhere here, we need to stop solving problems separately. So for example, the EU has banned landfills, and governments have reacted by incinerating household waste, which reduces the need to import fossil fuels.
Here’s a satellite picture showing how farmers in the Imperial Valley are switching to solar.
https://www.google.de/maps/place/Imperial+Valley/@32.6589171,-115.6383359,12420m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x80d703a89c441295:0x3acccf251350553f!8m2!3d32.7375477!4d-114.9633007
And here’s an interesting articale from 1916 about exporting manure from NYC.
https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/IND43843056/PDF
“Land near a big city sometimes may be bought cheaply
and built up by the generous use of stable manure. If good
farming is practiced, there is a fair chance of success by
this method. The author has seen land appreciate in value
more than 800 per cent in 5 years by the use of city stable
manure, while at the same time giving a consistent profit in
crops grown. And if these profits are made by the use of
manure purchased in the large city markets at upward of $1
per ton, how much greater profits are to be made by the use
of similar material in many places where it may be obtained
for the expense of hauling.”
Before the arrival of the truck and tractor, hauling manure was a truly expensive undertaking. Hauling it more than maybe five or ten miles in a horse drawn wagon would have consumed so much horse feed, and time, and wear and tear on the wagon and the horses, that going much farther than that would have resulted in a monetary loss, depending on the roads. Roads back in those days were generally more ruts and mud or dust , intermingled with pot holes and rocks, than otherwise. Pulling a ton on a wagon on such a road, round trip ten miles could easily be a brutal can see to can’t see all day job.
I have never hauled on a public road with a wagon and team,but I drove a wagon a little when I was a kid, on the farm.
My grand parents grew up with wagons and horses, and did so routinely. My maternal grand father told me that in good weather, and the road in the best condition, mid summer when the days are longest, he could leave at the crack of dawn, with a team and a ton or so of produce loaded the previous evening, and deliver to town and pick up a few things and just barely make it back by dark- most of the time. When the road was muddy, he just didn’t go. The round trip was less than twenty five miles and probably less than twenty two, but I can’t be sure, because the road has been rerouted, and the market he delivered to closed before I was born. He owned one of the first cars in the immediate neighborhood, and one of the first tractors as well,by the time he was in his thirties.
It amuses me no end that various people are always coming up with the ancient idea that manure is good for farm soil, lecturing farmers just like teenagers discovering the world of adulthood, and lecturing their parents.
I doubt if there was a single working farmer near NYC that didn’t put what manure he had available to good use, although there are incompetents in every line of work.
In Northern Europe the make heavy use of manure for fertilizer, which gives the country air a special tang.
This has been going on since the late Roman Empire, resulting in a thick layer of fertile “plaggen” soil over the less fertile original. In many places it is two meters deep. This is a picture of an excavation of a Roman/German battlefield. The artifacts are all just below the clear line between the soil types.
The Plaggen were poor soil from forrests and moorland which was used as litter in stables. The then enriched stuff was put on the fields.
The cutting of the Plaggen (Placken in Low German) was a cruel work, therefore, a heavy work is still called Plackerei in German.
According to german Wikipedia the plaggen agriculture started in the 10th century under the influence of strong squires.
The areas where the plaggen were produced showed dramatic erosion and were often lost for intensive agriculture and became heathland.
In China sometimes in 1940’s there was still active boat haulage on Yangtze river for the night soil. In cities there was a special workforce that collected it from houses, using special wheelbarrow andd took it to the boats. Wheelbarrowman got paid per load, so there was a wide-spread habit of ading some water to the load… and apparently the boatowners added to their load some river water as needed to get a full load. On the return trip from the upriver farms they carried at least some farm produce, salads, whatever…
Anybody who wants to KNOW SOMETHING about preindustrial agriculture in a densely populated country REALLY ought to read Farmers of Forty Centuries.
If you haven’t read it………. well, you REALLY ought to.
Hi Fred,
You may wish to re-read my comment again, as it is suspected by your response that you don’t understand it, or don’t want to, or want to run along your own, literally shitty, tangent, regardless.
(For one, disruption is contextual. We need to look at what is being disrupted, how and why, etc.. Looking to the current system, such as a corporation– apparently a ‘person’ by ‘law’– as a relatively undemocratic force in disruptive technology seems a good example of an ass-backwards disruption, a problem waiting to happen that will likely ‘necessitate’ a call for yet another technofix. Like a perpetual racket. [Can you hear the sound of money in the background?])
By the way, whatever happened to your previous asinine announcement that you wouldn’t respond to any of my subsequent comments. Now, you’re likely my most frequent responder. How does that feel?
Anyway, of course the cart before the horse is just an idiom for doing things ass-backwards.
Techno-fixes looking for a problem; techno-fixes for the wrong sorts of problems; techno-fixes to techno-problems; techno for techno’s sake; insufficiently-tested techno-apps, such as that treat the world like a laboratory, or that kick the can down the road, like with nuclear waste; and techno-fixes to problems we shouldn’t have had in the first place, etcetera, can be, or are, ass-backwards, to be charitable in many cases.
But this sort of thing’s a religion with some people. I get that. Perhaps you’re not much different in that regard than Javier with climate or trying to convert a Jehovah’s Witness. Ain’t gonna happen. Give it up, Cae.
And that’s in large part why we are in the predicaments we are in. Because humans are doing things ass-backwards and putting the cart before the horse and thinking that’s ok, cuz it’s a CRISPR horse.
Incidentally, your mention of whether I know about CRISPR or not actually underscores the point that not all of us are or can be this or the other specialist, and (so) rely on them all the time in a highly-complex ass-backwards society; specialists that jerk around and sleep on the job, etc., and have all the failings of the typical human.
Yair . . .
Dunno Fred Magyar.
I have seen that dissertation by Mr. Morris before.
The sentiments expressed don’t jell with photographs and illustrations from the period and I am inclined to think Mr Morris is playing a little fast and loose with the truth of the situation.
That last bolded section is questionable. Perhaps carcases were permitted to rot in the streets but it certainly would not have been necessary because of lack of technology
I was once a less than average bush butcher but with a couple of knives and a decent axe I reckon I could have reduced a draught horse to manageable pieces in maybe half an hour.
When I read statements I know to be incorrect it tends colour my vision as to the veracity of the rest of the piece.
There obviously would have been a “problem” but a little difficult now to determine the extent.
I have a piece somewhere on another hard drive dealing with the situation in London where the loss of the manure and bedding that was used to produce crops on the flatland now covered by Heathrow airport caused a fundamental shift in how Londoners were fed.
Cheers.
Three million pounds per day of horse manure in NYC and 40,000 gallons of horse urine, sure no problem Scrub. Just another day trying not to get shit all over shoes and dresses walking across streets.
Just think what the streets would be like when it rained or even worse when it was very dry and formed dust clouds of manure. Sweet.
Apparently, like oil, there was a glut of manure so stable owners had to start paying to have it removed to farms. Even the farms were overwhelmed for a period of time.
Should have run it out by the railroad car.
Dunno Scrub, I wasn’t there…
Perhaps you are right and those stories are all
BullHorse Shit! Regardless, Mr. Morris’supposed spin on the story or its precise veracity about the difficulties with dealing with the horse carcass problem, It seems you are quibbling about something that still kinda misses the essential point I was making about disruption, eh?Quick google search on the topic brings up many hits other than Mr Morris’version, perhaps they had a problem, perhaps they didn’t. Either way they probably had a lot of manure and flies to deal with… a situation still ripe for the eventual disruption caused by the emergence of the horseless carriage. And no matter how you slice or dice it that disruption didn’t happen because of some evil dictatorship holding the reins of power and imposing his or her will on the population at large. You might just as well place the blame on Hayagriva, the hindu horse god!
The Horse & the Urban Environment – The Environmental Literacy …
https://enviroliteracy.org/environment…/the-horse-the-urban-environme…
While the nineteenth century American city faced many forms of environmental … from its streets, and late as 1916 Chicago carted away 9,202 horse carcasses. … The crisis of the 1890s and early twentieth century, involving public health fears …
bytesdaily.blogspot.com/2011/07/great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894.html
The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894
… in respect: urine, flies, congestion, carcasses, and traffic accidents. … As the cities grew in population and size, more horses were needed. … At the turn of the 20th century, William Phelps Eno was responsible for: …. What would have happened had the automobile not been invented, or if the technology …
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0763747629
Robert H. Friis – 2007 – Health & Fitness
Robert H. Friis – 2007 – Health & Fitness
… with the overflow of outNew York City, Early 20th Century door privies located behind … In 1880, 15,000 horse carcasses were removed from the city’s streets; ..
The Horse Manure Problem | Big Picture News, Informed Analysis
https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/03/…/the-horse-manure-problem/
Mar 29, 2011 – In the late 1800s cities were drowning in smelly, dirty, disease-spreading horse manure. … Masters thesis explored the reality of horse-based transportation in 19th-century cities. … In the words of Morris, in the early years of the 20th century: … Without such measures they say, the worst will happen..
Everyone is entitled to do their own horse shit research 😉
Cheers!
The people who wrote about horse manure being inches and in low spots in the street a foot deep or more were telling it like it was. The folks who wrote about it being much deeper than that were engaging in hyperbole, , or fibbing , just as many people do today.
A very substantial percentage of horses, oxen, dairy cows, and sheep that met untimely ends WERE eaten, although the people involved in doing the selling and the eating weren’t prone to talk about it and especially not to write about it.
Some local people here eat any cow that they can put their hands on that has been hit by a car, although the usual practice is to bury the carcass.
If you are ready to take advantage of the situation, and get such a cow free, which is the usual price, two men working together with a small winch, a pickup truck, a few hand tools, and a garden hose can have five hundred pounds or more of beef on ice within three or four hours with good luck and a very short ride, or within a day even with a longer ride. That’s a hell of a good return for people who work for peanut wages, or who are out of work.
I have reason to suspect that they also eat horses that have been hurt accidentally, rather than burying them, meaning they get paid, PLUS they get the meat.
And I have very good reason to believe that they butcher horses routinely, but very quietly. The folks who owned the horse headed for the butcher tend to get very upset about their pet being eaten.
Horses can be had for peanuts compared to beef animals these days. A while back I could get one for free, no problem.
There is nothing wrong with eating horse meat, except we are conditioned not to. Ditto eating a crippled up cow, if you get her butchered quick enough. Modern hunters and hunter gatherers routinely eat deer and other game animals that have been shot and found dead hours or even a day or more later, if the weather is cold enough, without a second thought.
Not many were left to rot in the street , at least not in most towns and cities at most times, but it happened, in rough enough neighborhoods. A two horse team can very easily drag a dead horse, and even one horse can get the job done, working a few minutes and resting a few minutes.
It is almost impossible to exaggerate how nasty and foul smelling and dangerous large cities were at times. It was routine in English cities for raw sewage to flow in ditches in the streets, over flowing with every rain, and people walked in the middle of the street so as to keep from getting drenched with the contents of chamber pots dumped from second story or higher windows.
It’s easy to find descriptions of these conditions written by people on the spot in various books.
Scrub is right, you can do a rough job butchering a horse or cow in an hour or so, with nothing BUT an axe. I have seen it done on a cow when the weather turned very nasty, blowing freezing rain, when neighbors were butchering for home use. Home butchering is not very common around here these days, but my own immediate family and most farm people in this area routinely butchered their own beef and pork well into the fifties, and my folks butchered our own occasionally even in the nineties, but more as part of preserving old traditions than otherwise.
Now you raise the cow, but you have a licensed and inspected meat packer pick her up, alive, or haul her yourself, and go and get your meat frozen rock hard, nicely wrapped, two days later. This saves a hell of a lot of money, and people who don’t farm ought to be doing it, by way of just paying a farmer for the animal and calling the butcher. This is perfectly legal, so long as you pay the farmer first.
Climate Change: Spring Snow Cover
“Records from the last five decades show that on average, spring snow is disappearing earlier in the year than it did in the past, with the most rapid declines in snow-covered area occurring in June. Across the Northern Hemisphere, the total area covered by snow during March and April has also shrunk over time.
The graph shows average area covered by snow in the Northern Hemisphere during March and April as the difference from the 1981-2010 average.”
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-spring-snow-cover
Snow cover anomalies northern hemisphere for June.
from Rutgers Global Snow Lab
Northern Hemisphere Spring Snow Extent
Hi Gone Fishing,
For winter and fall the trend is increasing see
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=1
and
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=4
Yep, small amounts of increase during the low light times, see. Try to focus on the important.
Hi Gone fishing,
Not a big difference in light from fall to spring as far as I know.
Winter you are correct.
Come on Dennis, think. You are showing a lack of knowledge of an extremely basic property.
First day of fall at 40 N 12 hours, last day of fall 9 hours, average is 10.5 hours, average altitude at noon is 38 deg.
First day of spring at 40N 12 hours, last day of spring 15 hours, average is 13.5 hours, average altitude at noon is 62 deg.
At 60 north fall has average of 9 hours of daylight. Spring has 15.5 hours average daylight.
Average altitude of sun in fall is 18.5 deg, Average altitude of sun at noon in spring is 41.5 degrees.
Looking at the insulation curves below you can see the symmetry around the summer solstice. Spring and Summer have almost the same total insolation, while Fall and Winter have almost the same insolation though far less total in the north. The minor difference in symmetry is due to the slight elliptical nature of the earth orbit.
So your analysis that Fall and Spring have the same solar insolation is completely wrong. It couldn’t be more off. Spring and Summer have the same. Fall and Winter have the same insolation.
As I said, stick with the important. Spring has far more insolation and far more change in snow cover area over time than fall or winter. Thus the albedo effect is maximized then, and amplified the further north you go since the spring/summer insolation is most of the total annual insolation in the far north. Losing snow/ice cover earlier in the northern spring has the largest effect on warming.
Hi Gone fishing
Yes spring and summer would have roughly equal insolation. I was mistaken.
That is why the climate scientists graph and watch the spring and summer periods in the Arctic.
Hi Gone fishing,
There was not a chart for summer snow cover extent.
Note that about 2 million sq km of the NH SCE is snow cover on Greenland, so that would be a likely minimum during summer at least until 2100, so the change in energy absorbed during summer from Northern hemisphere reduced SCE would be cut in half from my estimate above. Most of the change would be from spring SCE.
Do you account for the fact that spring is only 3 months of the year when you consider the increase in energy absorbed due to a decrease in albedo. So if summer was relatively unchanged in snow cover extent there would be little change there, but a 2 W/m^2 average increase during spring would amount to about 0.5 W/m^2 (or less because SCE has increased in fall and winter). Also the Arctic circle has a relatively small land area of 14.5 million square kilometers, about 3% of the surface area of the planet. Outside of the Arctic circle there is very little snow cover during the summer with the exception of southern Green land whose ice sheet extends south of the Arctic circle.
I gathered data from http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/table_area.php?ui_set=2
and looked at summer snow cover extent in the Northern Hemisphere(NH). Snow cover extent(SCE) has decreased in summer as well, though snow cover is much lower on average from 1972-2016 (1967-1971 data was dropped due to many missing summer weeks) during summer relative to spring. Average NH SCE was 4 million sq km during summer vs 24 million sq km over the 1972-2016 period during spring.
If we assume about 320 W/m^2 average insolation between the equinoxes in the snow belt and about a 0.5 change in albedo from spring and summer snow (generally melting so lower albedo than new snow) to land we get about a 2.9 W/m^2 increased forcing if we get a decrease of 9.28 million sq km from 1994 to 2094 (rate of decrease has been 0.0928 million sq km per year from 1972 to 2016). Over 12 months we would divide by 4 to get 0.725 W/m^2. For summer NH SCE we could see at most 4 million sq km less snow from the average level of the 1972-2016 period, so from 1994-2094 we would see an increase of 1.3 W/m^2 over this 3 month summer period and for the year we would divide by 4 to get 0.325 W/m^2. The total would be roughly 1 W/m^2. Chart below for summer snow cover.
Don’t forget you have to factor clouds and other items into the total albedo estimates. For example, we know the earth is getting greener, this has a tendency to drop albedo .
Hi Fernando,
We are not to sure what will happen with clouds, yes the earth has gotten greener, but as temperatures increase this might not continue, hard to predict.
The assumptions I have made (a continuation of a past linear trend) may also be incorrect, it might accelerate or decelerate, also unclear.
I just assume the models are roughly correct, others believe they are either too high or too low. Basically we don’t really know.
My opinion is that the uncertainty is reason to be cautious. Burn less fossil fuel today (or as little as possible), we can always burn it later if ECS turns out to be very low. It is more difficult to reduce atmospheric CO2 later.
Fernando, the use of actual insolation takes clouds into account.
I don’t have any data on the latest changes due to growth in the boreal and arctic regions, but it certainly is a factor to take into account.
Using a yearly average insolation of 25o watts/m2 gives a loss of snow anomaly of +150 watts/m2.
With an average absorbance anomaly of 150 watts/ m2 and an average of 16 million km2 annual snow cover (northern hemisphere) the whole earth radiation forcing changes by 4.5 watts/m2 for total loss of snow cover.
Considering CO2 is given 1.6 watts/m2 forcing, that is far above current CO2 forcing.
This does not include the Arctic Ocean changes or any Southern hemisphere changes in snow cover or sea ice.
What is also very important is that huge expanses of permafrost, rivers, lakes, ponds and land are exposed to up to 500 watts/m2 of insolation weeks and months earlier than usual. This is a significant factor in the production of natural methane and CO2.
Hi Gonefishing,
Unlikely that there will be no snow cover by 2100 so not very realistic. Also 500 W/m^2 is at the North pole for 4 weeks, 400 W/m^2 is more reasonable guess for maybe the peak 3 month period. For the June 21- Sept 21 period, snow cover is already pretty low and negative values are not likely, the minimum will be determined by the size of the Greenland ice sheet (about 2 Million km^2). The snow change will mostly be a spring effect which reduces the period with 400 W/m^2 that has much snow albedo effect to 90 days.
I don’t have the insolation data to do it month by month. Estimating by reading off your chart and using linear trends for each month and the assumption that the minimum will be no lower than 2 million km^2 (Greenland snow cover), I get about a 0.8 W/m^2 increase in radiation absorbed by the surface by 2100. There will indeed be feedback effects from melting permafrost which are difficult to estimate, the Earth system models attempt to do this, but they no doubt are imperfect (as is the case for all models).
It’s too complicated to get a believable estimate for total albedo using a climate model. They haven’t had a quality long term program to measure earthshine for as long as they should have, and the feedbacks are a bowl of spaghetti. I tried playing with this a couple of years ago, and decided it just got too complicated.
My main interest in this area is the geoengineering application. For example, let’s say we change the DNA of spruce and similar trees to produce more volatile organic compounds, which can help form more clouds? I can think of several research avenues we do need to take in this area.
Hi Gone fishing,
You said up to 500 W/m^2. There are not a lot of lakes and rivers at the north pole so it’s probably a little less than that for most lakes and rivers, also there is not a lot of permafrost at 90N, just sea ice. Maybe up to 480 W/m^2 would be about right. Oh and the average snow cover extent from 1980 to 2010 in June is about 10 million km squared. It is unlikely to fall below 2 million km^2 unless the entire Greenland ice sheet melts (which won’t happen by 2100, maybe by 2500) so a more realistic estimate would be 480/2*8/510/12=0.3 W/m^2 averaged over the entire year for the change in June SCE. July would be less due to lower insolation and less change in sea ice (1.67 sq km), August even less (o.8 km sq), May would be (8.8 sq km) and April 5.1 sq km. All estimates are for 100 years and are the change in snow cover extent, just estimate the insolation.
—–, delta SCE, insolation, delta RF
April, 5.1, 250, 0.104
May, 8.8, 420, 0.302
June, 7.42, 475, 0.288
July, 1.67, 447, 0.061
August, 0.8, 344, 0.022
Hi Fernando,
Indeed it is complicated, which is exactly the reason why geoengineering is a bad idea. Kind of like building a bridge with no understanding of basic mechanics and strength of materials.
Better to reduce emissions, far more sensible an option. Research on better energy sources and higher efficiency is a better way to spend our money. Maybe cement that reduces atmospheric CO2 and research on farming practices that reduce carbon emissions are also good avenues.
I am not a big fan of genetic engineering seems there is a lot of potential for negative unintended consequences.
Geoengineering is a good idea if it’s based on what nature does, not what current industrial technology does.
So Dennis, as you have suggested about something else; government stepping in and directing a kind of global WW2 mobilizing effort to bring back true community and planting lots of native trees and plants might help naturally geoengineer our way to a more stable planet and secure future. (As long as government steps out afterward. ‘u^ )
Incidentally, I just caught some fragments of GoneFishing and Dennis Coyne talking about seasons, snow, albedo, and insolation… So what is the general conclusion from that if anything?
Dennis, sorry don’t have much time now to discuss.
I did make an error though, the average annual snow cover for NH is actually larger than I stated. It’s not 15 million km2, it’s 25 million km2 which increases the forcing for snow loss to 7.5 watts/m2.
Dennis, I said up to 500 w/m2, as in an upper limit. Are you joking or just pulling my leg with responses like that?
Hi Gone fishing I misread at first. What do you mean by average annual snow cover.
You seem to be contradicting yourself, first you say spring and summer are what is important, I agree. The average snow cover in spring and summer is much smaller than 25 million km^2.
Do you expect it will stop snowing in winter from 50 N to 90 N? Not very likely under any realistic scenario (between RCP4.5 and RCP 2.6).
Oh and since 1980 in the northern hemisphere(NH) fall and winter snow cover extent has been increasing, so we would need to see a change in trend.
I get about 6 W/m^2 under the unrealistic assumption of average NH snow cover extent falling to zero, I suppose that’s possible under RCP8.5, which would require fossil fuel resources more than 3 times higher than any reasonable estimate. (5000 Pg of carbon emissions, when possibly 1600 Pg is reasonable, my “high” fossil fuel scenario.)
No contradictions Dennis, just calculating on the loss of snow cover. Of course, losing most of the snow cover, even in winter, is realistic, has happened many times before.
I will put a more comprehensive answer at the bottom of the page for you instead of doing the narrowed run-on.
Hi Gone fishing,
Yes I missed the up to at first, sorry.
Does total loss of snow cover seem reasonable? For the 25 million km^2 average SCE, a change to zero with average insolation of 250 W/m^2 would indeed be 6 W/m^2. The current trend is 6.8 million km^2 per century or about 1.7 W/m^2 per century. I trust the month by month estimates more which results in about half that change, in addition the data from 2000 to 2014 for the Arctic suggests about 0.19 W/m^2 per century (the 10 W/m^2 increase over the Arctic Ocean from 2000-2014 during June , July and August). That estimate includes albedo change from snow and sea ice as measured by satellite.
If we add the change from spring NH snow cover reduction that I have assumed (0.45 W/m^2 per century), we would be at about 0.65 W/m^2, we would need to add spring sea ice extent change in March, April, June, and Sept which would add 0.29 W/m^2, which brings the total to about 1 W/m^2 per century. Note that as temperature levels off and snow cover decreases to some minimum (which is unlikely to be zero) the ice-snow albedo feedback diminishes in magnitude.
There are other feedbacks from permafrost and vegetation changes but that analysis is more complex. Carbon cycle models attempt to deal with that complexity.
Hi Gone fishing,
It will be interesting to see your evidence for no winter snow, maybe you are talking about mid Pliocene or earlier. It would seem the evidence is pretty scant for Pliocene, so it is unclear what you evidence would be for very different snow cover extent for periods before 1 million years ago.
Hi Gone fishing,
You often cite a 10 W/m^2 change in energy absorbed in the arctic probably from
https://www.nasa.gov/press/goddard/2014/december/nasa-satellites-measure-increase-of-sun-s-energy-absorbed-in-the-arctic
This is for the period June, July and August and refers to an average over the Arctic ocean. The area of the arctic ocean is 5.4 million km^2 and the Earth’s area is 510 million Km^2, in addition this is only 3 months so for the year we would divide by 4
10*5.4/510/4=0.026 W/m^2 increase for the planet, this is over a 14 year period, so for 100 years this would be 0.026/14*100=0.18 W/m^2. The change may well be non-linear, we do not really know, some models such as GISS Model E2-R get the sea ice extent roughly correct. Chart below from p 467 of
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2014/2014_Miller_mi08910y_corrected.pdf
NH sea ice is ok, but the model underestimates SH sea ice.
This webpage shows the current trends and how the system works. Generalizing, we can say that less sea ice seems to cause more snow fall. Evidently we are getting more snow, and the snow melts easier in warm summers. I’m trying to chase down salinity data for the Kara Sea, I think it ought to be getting slightly fresher. But I’m not sure.
https://bamwx.com/2016/10/26/eurasian-snow-cover-the-polar-vortex-how-it-relates-to-us-winter-energy-winter/
‘Big ball of fire’: Witness describes Tesla’s crash, explosion (Nov. 4, 2016)
Tesla, ‘World’s Safest Car,’ Explodes Like a Bomb
Chinese hackers control Tesla brakes, lights from 12 miles away
I recently watched a nearly brand new tractor and trailer burn to the ground on the side of the highway, with two tanker trucks and a half a dozen firemen able to do nothing more than keep the fire from spreading into the adjacent woods.
Teslas are among the very safest cars in the world, if not THE safest, and everybody who keeps up with such things knows it, except Caelan, lol.
There’s more than one way to measure profit. The stock holders have mostly done exceedingly well. I wish I had bought some myself.
You’re comparing a car to a tractor and trailer, and anecdotally?
Anyway, here’s a snip of the article above (linked) that, for brevity (something that you can relate to), I didn’t include:
Tesla hasn’t been around long enough; it still has yet to perfect, if it ever will, its cars’ self-driving capacity (which apparently was implicated in a recent death); it has a very limited market so far (and the way the market appears to be going, there’s a question as to whether it might remain limited and become more limited as time progresses); there’s more to a car than safety; and there’s more to safety than meets the eye.
Besides, a ‘safe car’ is a bit of an oxymoron anyway. Didn’t that newsclip I just posted mention that two people died?
Oh, well, you see that’s because I work in law during the day, in architecture at night and in teaching at twilight, so my time to follow Tesla’s safety record for example, and brush up on CRISPR’s progress of course, is fairly limited.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I am volunteering in cooking at a local hospital on my lunch breaks, so have to go and prepare some veggies now.
The chances of getting killed by a burning car are tiny. The real problem is bad road design. Car crashes are the leading cause of death for Americans under 14, and a lot of the victims are pedestrians.
Since you’re so worried about traffic safety, I’m sure this presentation will interest you.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/visionzero/pages/the-plan/the-plan.shtm
I’d also like to point out that bad urban planning plays a huge role in the terrible results America gets in this area compared to other rich countries.
For example, drunk driving is a major issue, but in most cities bars are required by law to provide off-street parking for their customers, and bars are forbidden within walking distance of most homes. Bars are not required to be within walking distance of public transportation or a taxi stand. In Europe most people live within walking distance of a bar, so people don’t drive drunk as much.
Getting back to the holistic design remark I made elsewhere in this thread, you can’t solve car safety issues by looking at cars alone. You need to look at road design. And you can’t deal with road design issues without looking at urban planning as a whole. And of course urban design affects car design as well, since Europeans are much less interested in oversized passenger vehicles than Americans are, mostly thanks to urban design choices. Europeans eschew surface parking, and this partially explains the lower energy consumption, and traffic safety. And so on.
You need to look at stuff like equability and all members of communities taking part in decisions surrounding their own locales.
Roadways don’t come from nowhere. They come, often, if not always, from a tax-coerced public that pay for some things they wouldn’t necessarily if they had a choice.
So, essentially, the highways that you drive your stupid cars on are built via theft and lack of democratic input.
“So, essentially, the highways that you drive your stupid cars on are built via theft and lack of democratic input.”
Redefining words and ideas just turns it into meaningless chatter.
We have taxation with representation, it is a common agreement to build and maintain roads. It is the responsibility of the citizens to maintain the public infrastructure. No theft and a modicum of democracy.
“stupid cars” – so drive a Smart Car.
Speaking of, as you write, ‘meaningless chatter’, the point of a representative is to represent.
If you had true representation, then you’d have a representative saying that so-and-so refuses to pay for this and that, and so they wouldn’t.
You have taxation with ideological indoctrination– as is in apparent evidence by your comment.
It is the responsibility of citizens to transcend the ideological indoctrination that it is their responsibility by way of the business-end of a gun (and/or assorted dynamics to that effect) to, for example, maintain the public infrastructure.
We don’t need illegitimate coercion to make things happen. Quite the opposite. Some of us only think we do, until maybe the whole thing comes apart. Hey, POB peak oil/collapse blog right?
A ‘Smart Car’ is an oxymoron and a good example of yet more ideological indoctrination-cum-candycane-striped-green-and-whitewashing, like a ‘Nissan Leaf’, or car commercials absent of smog, pollution, roadkill, sprawl, fertile-land pave-overs, noise, habitat destruction, horrific accidents, stress, fractured communities, general urban/suburban blights, or gridlock.
Including the latter, for examples, are responsible car commercials.
You want to talk about responsibility? Then let’s have it.
Real responsibility wouldn’t likely put us squarely where we are right now as a species.
Coerced, ideological brainwashing would.
Oh, well, you see that’s because I work in law during the day, in architecture at night and in teaching at twilight, so my time to follow Tesla’s safety record for example, and brush up on CRISPR’s progress of course, is fairly limited.
Yet interestingly enough you somehow seem to find plenty of time to keep up with Tesla’s crashes.
Have you also checked on the statistics of ICE automobile crashes and deaths? How many ICEs caught fire recently? Guess what, people die in cars all the time and I’ve never heard anyone claim that TESLAs were 100% safe. Regardless, TESLAs are pretty safe compared to the average car on the road.
My guess is driver error is a more significant safety issue than the technology under the hood.
OMG! News Flash! Gasoline is highly flammable!
Car Crashes Into Gas Station Catching Fire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88XSCHg76_c
Tractor trailers burn to the ground more often than Tesla cars, on a per vehicle or per mile basis.
And while you may be satisfied that the car “exploded” I have seen that term used many times by ignorant or unethical writers and reporters who wished to dramatize their work.
I am willing to bet that if there is any additional coverage later on that I run across, I will find that the car will simply have burned up, with the fire starting relatively slowly, as car fires usually do. I have watched a number of cars burn, both accidentally and deliberately, the deliberate fires being set for training purposes.
A car makes one hell of a fire once it is fully engaged. There’s a lot of paint, insulation, fabric, rubber, plastic, lubricating oil, etc in a car, and when the metal gets hot, and the paint starts vaporizing, she will reach right up into the sky, rolling black smoke like a house afire. Plus the gasoline in a conventional car of course.
And then, there might have been things being hauled in the car such as paint thinner, or even hard liquor, or even cooking oil, that burn like hell once started.
Besides, a ‘safe car’ is a bit of an oxymoron anyway. Didn’t that newsclip I just posted mention that two people died?
Caelan, get real! People slip and die on sidewalks every day! Does that mean sidewalks are inherently dangerous? Even the main stream media recognizes that this accident has zero to do with the car’s technology.
Another witness, Al Finnell, told The Associated Press that he saw the car hit the tree before it bounced around and exploded. “… all the car parts went up in the air and I had to accelerate just to get away from it,” he said.
Jones explained that the accident occurred after the driver lost control of the vehicle while driving at a high speed. He also made it clear that large fires following high-speed crashes are not unique to electric vehicles.
Cars are not sidewalks, Fred, nor are electric fires the same as petrol fires. Follow your own advice and get real yourself.
Yellow rag news.
Here is the more relevant headline.
HORSES KILLED PEOPLE AT SEVEN TIMES THE RATE OF CARS.
What about in their materials extractions, manufacture, maintenance and disposal? Factory accidents? pollution? Roadkill? Sprawl? Habitat destruction? C02? Etc.?
Some seem to just be reading the headlines and/or latching onto snippets and would do well to expand their view and consider for example, stuff like my previous post about technology.
Also, consider effects of forms of technology over time, such as with regard to industrial agro and oil dependence and depletion and soil degradation and so forth.
Then when you have done that, then come talk to me with something more than myopic quips from snips.
Anyway, I didn’t raise the horse thing per se, Fred did. I just used an idiom that included it.
I’m going outside. I recommend it. Have a nice day.
“What about in their materials extractions, manufacture, maintenance and disposal? Factory accidents? pollution? Roadkill? Sprawl? Habitat destruction? C02? Etc.?”
We already had all that.
Do you have a point or are you just knee-jerk moaning?
Yair . . .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-150d11df-c541-44a9-9332-560a19828c47
A sort of thanks for putting that up. Many memories brought back. Painful ones. Time and again, fossil fuel reminds us of what it can do, what it can destroy, we just ignore that. That must change.
NAOM
Yair . . .
Gotcha NAOM.
I stumbled across it on another site and was pretty upset when I put it up.
I too remember.
Kinda interesting:
http://map.norsecorp.com/#/
Arctic ice running average annual volume continued rapid decline in October. It should flatten out in November as 2015 had slow growth in the second half. Nevertheless daily values have fallen below 2012 and are at the moment the lowest on record for the date.
What is critical is the multi-year ice is a low percentage now. Most of the ice is annual now, easier to melt.
Also the minimum ice period (Sept) is hitting low enough to give the first Arctic Ocean ice free days by 2025. At that point much of the Arctic Ocean will have been low albedo for months during the high insolation period.
Also the thick ice that is being formed is right in the path where it can be quickly expelled out of the Fram strait so won’t stay around long enough to help with stabilising the surrounding thin ice.
If abrupt climate change doesn’t look like this what would it be like (i.e. the apparent rapid Arctic warming of 5 to 10 degrees over a few years identified in the core samples in the past)?
HOW EACH ONE OF US CONTRIBUTE TO ARCTIC SEA ICE MELT
“The rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice is one of the most direct indicators of the ongoing climate change on our planet. Over the past forty years, the ice cover in summer has shrunk by more than half, with climate model simulations predicting that the remaining half might be gone by mid-century unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced rapidly. However, a number of studies have indicated that climate models underestimate the loss of Arctic sea ice, which is why the models might not be the most suitable tools to quantify the future evolution of the ice cover….
While climate models also simulate the observed linear relationship between sea ice area and CO2 emissions, they usually have a much lower sensitivity of the ice cover than has been observed. The Science study finds that this is most likely because the models underestimate the atmospheric warming in the Arctic that is induced by a given carbon-dioxide emission. It seems that it’s not primarily the sea ice models that are responsible for the mismatch. The ice just melts too slowly in the models because their Arctic warming is too weak.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161104145708.htm
Meanwhile,
WARMING OCEAN WATERS ARE MELTING ANTARCTIC ICE SHELVES AT AN UNPRECEDENTED RATE
“In the case of the Antarctic ice shelves, the more the submarine ice melts, more ice is exposed to warm water. It becomes a runaway process, which makes it unstable, notes geophysicist Ala Khazendar, polar expert at NASA JPL. Furthermore, the melting process seems to be irreversible.”
http://futurism.com/warming-ocean-waters-are-melting-antarctic-ice-shelves-at-an-unprecedented-rate/
What happens when Antartica’s glaciers flow into the sea? “The simple answer is we don’t know. And that’s the scary part,” warns Khazendar.
To most people that part I bolded means that since science doesn’t know everything, we can’t really trust science or scientists, so we shouldn’t worry about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEmooR68hoQ
Nonlinear Dynamics, Modeling, and the Environmental Sciences: Ideas and Tools
Great lecture (once again) Fred. Thanks.
You may have seen this before but it’s the scariest climate change lecture I’ve seen recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7MNA44RMNA
Because it has retrograde grounding for most of its length the whole Thwaites glacier could melt out in one year (and may have done in the past) once the ocean reaches past it’s grounding line. That would mean almost instantaneous global sea level rise of several feet.
Tks, George! Somehow, I’m no longer scared, I guess I’ve gotten to the acceptance stage of the five stages of grief.
LOL!
I’m paraphrasing here but I think I got the gist of the quote right: “Senators are among the most frustrated people on the planet because what is happening in the world today is so much bigger than they are”
My only remaining regret in life is that I’m probably just a few years too old to scuba dive the Trump International Beach Resort in Miami. 😉
Fred, after listening to Richard Alley, best for you to wear a PFD 24/7 and keep the scuba stuff nearby – maybe on a trailer for your bike.
and keep the scuba stuff nearby – maybe on a trailer for your bike.
I just might take to sleeping with my scuba stuff and kayak right under my bed 🙂
I do not like the correlation between current CO2 output and sea ice area. Albedo changes have become a major driver in the Arctic Ocean. That will only increase with time. The warm air being driven north due to changes in the jet stream is another factor. Also sea ice area is a very nebulous measure with 100 percent cover being given to as low as 15% actual ice cover.
Also there is a 40 to 100 year lag in heating so we are probably looking at results from a much earlier period.
I find the correlation quite suspect and probably very much off. The Arctic Ocean will have fully open periods at current CO2 levels. Increasing levels will only hasten the process.
Following PIOMAS minima gives the first fully open Arctic at about 2025.
“I find the correlation quite suspect and probably very much off.”
Totally agree. Basically, there are too many variables. We’ve gone from a relatively predictable state to one controlled more-and-more by feedback. Wildfires alone (with their associated soot) are but one of many examples.
Totally agree. Basically, there are too many variables. We’ve gone from a relatively predictable state to one controlled more-and-more by feedback.
Aside from a very minor quibble with your terms, there are too many state variables, count me in the agreeable camp as well 🙂
So, yeah! From George’s link to Richard Alley’s lecture: “Cliffs solve the Pilocene” Who’d a thunk?
Remember that 450 cm sea level rise Dennis alluded to the other day? looks like that not only was that not a typo but might be a rather significant underestimation of actual future sea level rise in the relatively near term, just a few decades.
Especially since Alley states that even a mere 1C rise could be a severe insult to the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. So if that is truly the case then the significance of long term trends of diminishing CO2 emissions from reduced availability of fossil fuels is not something in and of itself, to be all that optimistic about. Obligatory disclaimer: I happen to be one of those, card carrying pessimists, though we prefer to call ourselves, realists.
But hey, the sun has fewer spots these days, so I could be looking forward to my own little ice sheets, glaciers and icebergs in South Florida.
Cheers!
Hi Fred,
The mid-Pliocene was about 1 to 2 C warmer than today and sea level was about 25 meters higher. It will take some time to melt the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. The mid Pliocene Warm period was roughly 200,000 years, we don’t really know how quickly sea level might rise. If we get a huge melt pond trapped behind an ice shelf that suddenly lets go, it could happen very quickly.
I am no glaciologist so I don’t really know what is realistic.
I go with the main stream scientists and my own estimates of fossil fuel resources likely yo be extracted.
That limits us to scenarios no higher than RCP4.5 and realistic (in my view) scenarios could get us to roughly to the average of RCP2.6 and RCP4.5.
In some of your “less realistic” moments you wax poetic about all of the disruptive technologies that are out there.
I suppose one could deem it “realistic” that all of those technologies will create the worst of all possible consequences in every case. Basic knowledge of statistics should make it apparent that such a view is not all that realistic.
There is uncertainty to be sure. Lets say we estimate 10 different phenomena that are linked together in the natural world and each has an uncertainty of +/-sigma. There might be some combination of each of those 10 estimates such that if they all happened to be at the one sigma bound either high or low in just the right combination it would lead to a very bad outcome.
So what are the chances of this occurring? If the uncertainty is normally distributed and sigma is one standard deviation, there would be about a 16% chance that one variable would be one sigma or more than the mean estimate. We would need this to occur for 10 variables (doesn’t really matter if the value is above or below the mean estimate). So the probability would be 0.16^10 or 1.1E-8. Call me optimistic, but to me, the person who thinks something with a probability of 0.0000012% is a sure thing, is a pessimist. And yes I know there unknown unknowns.
The pessimist thinks these are all negative, the realist would simply say we don’t know, it could go either way.
Recent ice sheet models I have read about predict modest sea level rise with RCP 4.5 about 2 to 6.7 meters by 2500 and 0 to 0.7 meters by 2100.
The mid-Pliocene was about 1 to 2 C warmer than today and sea level was about 25 meters higher. It will take some time to melt the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. The mid Pliocene Warm period was roughly 200,000 years, we don’t really know how quickly sea level might rise. If we get a huge melt pond trapped behind an ice shelf that suddenly lets go, it could happen very quickly.
Dennis, to be fair, I’ll grant you that Alley in the talk George linked to above was giving more than a few caveats about sudden collapse during his talk. However he was suggesting that it is within the realm of a physical possibility that certain ice sheets might suffer catastrophic collapse.
He specifically explained how the sudden collapse of buttressing ice by a mechanism of cliffing brought about sudden sea level rise and when this was factored into the models it seemed to help explain what happened during the Pliocene to cause sudden sea level rise, with only a relatively small temperature increase of a mere degree or two.
Now, whether or not one can call him a purveyor of the main stream climate science view may indeed be up for debate.
Though given that he is a conservative Republican, his testimony before Congress could at the very least, be called entertaining 😉
Prof. Richard Alley Testifies Before Congress on Climate Change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJMsP2fnqYw
Alley seemed to really want to avoid being pinned down on the anthropogenic warming question. I can understand that, since he is primarily a glaciologist not a climate scientist and also republican.
We are in trouble if the scientists keep skating around the real questions like that. That California Rep was good though, kept moving toward the answer he wanted. “It’s nature, not us.”
I have seen other scientists give weak responses. Only a few seem to be able to put their points across and not get distracted or avoid.
Almost as bad as the “everything will work out just right automatically” guys.
Hi Gone fishing,
Nothing happens automatically. If people choose to not develop non-fossil fuel energy, things will not be good.
One problem with painting the worst case scenario as the most likely option is that people give up trying to make positive changes. Having a plan for what needs to be done and a plan of action might get things moving in the right direction.
There will be sea level rise and there will be warming, we don’t know how much.
We do know that the less carbon we emit the better off we will be, especially if higher estimates of Earth system sensitivity(ESS) are correct, my guess is that Hansen’s estimate of 4.2 C for ESS is about right. That would imply we need to get to 390 ppm for CO2 equivalent in the long run to stay at 2 C above 1850-1900 average temperature. It is not clear if carbon gets sequesterd fast enough by nature to accomplish that.
It’s called science Dennis, ever heard of boundary values? I am just trying to be realistic and not underplay all the forcings.
I am also examining the limits of the forcings.
It would be nice if we could just turn this whole global warming thing off or even down, but sadly that would not change the direction or rate of many of our other predicaments. In fact it might make them worse.
People don’t give up because conditions get worse, they actually finally get moving. If you keep downplaying the realities, then they ignore it. Which is mostly what is happening now. Your idea that peak fossil fuels might limit the CO2 output from industry and transport. Might be the only throttle we have, but from what I observe and analyze, the natural forcings are well on their way now and the human forcings are not really slowing down.
You have stated we will be limited by fossil fuel availability and the temperature rise will be limited, level and fall in a short time. Sounds automatic to me. Nobody really becoming very responsible, just being forced into renewables and alternatives by depleting fossil fuels and price.
Sounds way too convenient and coincidental to me.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/04/30/another-typical-day-for-greenland-scientists-find-more-reasons-it-will-melt-faster/
…the CO2 output from industry and transport. Might be the only throttle we have, but from what I observe and analyze, the natural forcings are well on their way now and the human forcings are not really slowing down.
Not to mention the cascading dominoes set in motion in all those feedback loops 🙂
.
Cute Fred, now we just need one that shows a glacier being pushed over the edge as is happening in Antarctica.
Death for lack of buttressing. Worse than the Attack of the Monoliths. They could be stopped.
Hi Gone fishing,
Yep, I set the boundry value at realistic limits.
Well I have said nothing in my scenarios assumes that they will happen automatically.
There are many possible paths we might take.
I often use terms such as very difficult to accomplish, or may happen if carbon taxes and other appropriate policy actions are taken or that a Economic depression in roughly 2030 (give or take 5 years) might lead to the necessary policy action (under the assumption that by 2030 people will realize that a shortage of fossil fuels will be permanent unless action is taken to replace them).
Other paths could be chosen such that we just burn as much fossil fuel as possible and the result would be something slightly worse than RCP4.5. I suppose all sorts of worst case scenarios might emerge so it just is a matter of what one believes are reasonable boundries.
I have repeatedly asked people if they think RCP 8.5 seems likely. Steve Mohr concluded that most IPPC scenarios (TAR)were not reasonable due to fossil fuel constraints. So I base my estimates on likely fossil fuel resources.
See pp 154-155 at link below
http://ogma.newcastle.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:6530
My energy transition scenarios are never presented as what will happen, but what might happen and I try to be clear about the assumptions that I make.
http://live.magicc.org/
For no attempt to reduce fossil fuel use, we would see roughly, 3 C by 2100 if the higher estimates of ECS are correct (4.5 C).
Other science suggests about 1000 Pg of total carbon emissions from 1750 to 2500 has about a 50% chance of keeping us below 2 C.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/abs/nature08019.html
Can be downloaded at
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eg9dk4xaffjcx84/Allen_et_al-2009-Nature.sup-1.pdf?dl=0
Hi Gone fishing,
I do not expect temperatures will fall in a short time, if emissions stop abruptly as in my energy transition scenario from a week ago temperatures decrease a bit maybe from 2 C to 1.8 C (over a 40 year period) and then gradually rise as the ocean warms (over hundreds of years), there will be Earth system feedbacks (melting of ice sheets and vegetation changes) that will also cause long term warming, this might be offset by carbon being sequestered naturally to some degree, the results are not clear. The temperature changes are likely to be relatively small after 2100, basically temperature will be driven by natural variability around 2 C (assuming anthropogenic emissions cease) for thousands of years, based on the ensemble mean of 9 carbon models evaluated in AR4.
More research is needed, we don’t really know (or I don’t in any case.)
Hi Fred,
Two degrees may well lead to high levels of sea level rise, my main point is that we don’t know how quickly that will occur. The recent paper in Nature suggests 6 meters for RCP4.5, maybe 7 meters, but the model could be wrong, maybe it will be more, but it will take 5000 years rather than 500.
I am not a glaciologist, I just read the work that others have done.
Sea level rise from a recent model
Fig 5 page 596 article linked below.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7596/full/nature17145.html
Article can be downloaded below
https://www.dropbox.com/s/saxi9jkuz6cmyzv/DeConto-Pollard-2016-Contribution-of-Antarctica.pdf?dl=0
We have it somewhat easy, since most of the variables are pointed in the same direction it is more a matter of timing and degree than which way things will go.
But if things keep as they are, it will be like a Toyota with the accelerator stuck. Good thing things rarely stay as they are.
Have you been keeping up with the James Webb infrared telescope progress? Looks like it is complete and ready for testing.
http://www.space.com/34593-james-webb-space-telescope-complete-2018-launch.html
Apparently it will be tested for vibration and they have a large vacuum chamber to focus it properly, though I assume they have to really lower the temperature to simulate the space conditions in which it will operate.
It’s too big to go as is, so the telescope folds up for launch. Then it will unfold 1.5 million km from earth at L2. Next it must unfurl a 5 piece very thin sun shield to protect from earth and sun radiation. So there are multiple mechanical things that can go wrong in the deployment.
Barring problems, the large size of the gold coated mirror combines with the most sensitive infrared sensors ever built to look deep into the universe (far back in time).
An astronomer on NPR said the James Webb telescope could detect a bee at the distance of the moon, both from sunlight reflected from it and from it’s own thermal radiation. Very impressive.
“Have you been keeping up with the James Webb infrared telescope progress?”
Is the Pope a Catholic? Of course I’ve been keeping up with the JWT. Jesus man…. 🙂
What is the planned launch vehicle?
The telescope will be launched on an Ariane 5 ECA rocket. This is the European contribution to the project or rather part of their contribution..
Hi Gone fishing,
The GISS Model E2-R TCADI has Global mean temperature at about 16.3 C in 2050 (1.1 C above 1996-2005 mean), the chart below shows the Sea Ice predictions vs surface air temperature (SAT), the E2-R model does better matching historical data for both temperature and sea ice (blue dots and lines) from page 252 of
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/na08200a.html
Which emissions pathway do they use?
Hi Fernando,
They do all the RCPs. The relationship is between Surface air temperature and sea level, the SAT I gave was for RCP4.5 in 2050, which I should have said, my apologies. They have 1.1 C above the 1996-2005 mean temperature in 2050, I used BEST Land Ocean temperature (I probably should have used GISTEMP) to estimate temperature in 2000 (I used centered 5 year average.)
In 2100 the estimate for RCP4.5 is 1.8C above 2000 SAT or 0.7C higher than 2050. This would be about 17 C and September sea ice would not quite be at zero based on the RCP4.5 scenario.
Mistake above, I said sea level but meant sea ice extent as a percentage of Northern hemisphere area vs surface air temperature (SAT).
Hi Doug,
From
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/mi08910y.html
The GISS Model E2-R does a pretty fair job at arctic sea ice and arctic temperatures, though the AR5 model mean (for 30 models or so) does not do as well.
Hi George Kaplan,
For the 12 month running mean of sea ice extent the linear fit points to 2200 for ice free Arctic for the 12 month mean and the parabolic fit points to 2100. September zero ice would be sooner. About 2123 for linear fit and 2076 for the parabolic fit.
An interesting un-snow story from Alaska.
While the eastern us was getting some heavy snow, they were getting – nothing – some rain.
https://www.adn.com/we-alaskans/article/kiss-snowy-alaska-winters-goodbye/2016/01/03/
This is true. I have lived by choice in Fairbanks for 40 years. Back in the old days it started snowing in October. Now it rained hard most of August and then cleared up. The ground fog burns off in the morning and the sky is clear. This never happened before. Usually we never see the sun for months. Now it’s daily. Good for solar power, relatively speaking when maximum sunshine can be as low as 3-1/2 hours per day. But bad for the winter sports I came to Alaska for. I remember once getting enough snow to drive dogs on October 1. That will never happen again. I treasure those memories.
Douglas
Arctic Sea Ice Concentration September 07 2016
Announcement: Moody’s: Unfunded pension liabilities now exceed debt for many large US local governments
https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-Unfunded-pension-liabilities-now-exceed-debt-for-many-large–PR_357522
Maybe you could explain what that means. I don’t know much about pension funds, how they are grown or invested and how long they can go before getting in trouble. How debt relates to pension funding needs explaining too.
I know these are governments so they act differently than corporations.
So I would appreciate some background and context.
I was going to ask the same question: What does “pension liabilities exceeding debt” mean? — and explained so an economic ignoramus can understand.
Debt generally refers to bonds issued by the local government. These are similar to “commercial paper”, but typically are exempt from income tax, and often have long terms.
Unfunded pension liability simply means that they have a bunch of employees who have been promised a certain level of pension benefits after they retire, and their actuaries project that the total payout will be larger than the pension fund’s income (usually a combination of employee and employer contributions, fairly similar to FICA except that local government tries to fund ahead and invest the contributions).
Why is there a problem? The biggest single reason is excessively early retirements, in part due to a misguided imitation of the US military pension, which was created post WWI to induce the retirement of unneeded service members. The US military pension system should have eliminated early retirement long ago, but…that’s a different problem.
IF you believe that the USA is better off with a standing professional army manned by men ( and women) with substantial training and experience, then the early retirement system is necessary, or else we wouldn’t be able to keep those men and women re enlisting.
Personally I believe we do need such an army, although I also believe it could stand a good pruning.
Early retirement is NOT the primary reason pension funds, and their managers get into big trouble.
The real reason for the troubles are basically two fold, one the workers manage to extract promises from management, ESPECIALLY government management, beyond the ability of the tax payer to handle the bill, in the case of government, and the ability of the company or industry to generate sufficient profits in the case of businesses.
It takes an exceedingly optimistic person, one who never stops to look at downsides, to believe that we will always be able to pay out more and more and more and more yet again, on the basis of HOPED for future prosperity.
Entire industries have vanished due to being displaced by new technology, etc, and quite a few local governments have made promises to their employees that were nothing less than insane, but politicians don’t really give a rat’s ass about budget problems ten or twenty years down the road, as a general rule. It’s too easy to buy votes and peace and tranquillity on the worker front by just promising the sky today, knowing that you will have moved on to another position , or be retired or dead when the bill comes due.
And of course a company in an industry what is shrinking is not very likely to generate the profits needed to both stay in business and pay out the huge sums owed for pension benefits.
Any body who seriously thinks Uncle Sam has even a foggy idea how he is going to make good all the promises he has made is BADLY mistaken, even if the economy does well on a more or less continuous basis.
Demographic changes alone are probably going to be more than ample to wreck programs such as Social Security and Medicare over the long term.
Eternal growth is not in the cards, and anybody with a good grasp of the basics of the life sciences knows it. And without eternal growth, an eternally increasing debt load cannot be managed.
the early retirement system is necessary, or else we wouldn’t be able to keep those men and women re enlisting.
Why? It seems to me the opposite: we lose good people to early retirement.
Why is early retirement necessary?
“Why? It seems to me the opposite: we lose good people to early retirement.”
If you check, OFM was talking about an army, which has a leader pyramid.
Without early retirement there is no chance to avoid to many chieftains. You only keep the good ones, most officers are retired as Majors/Colonels.
The German Reichwehr had this system between 1921 and 1933.
Without early retirement there is no chance to avoid to many chieftains.
Don’t almost all organizations have this problem? Early retirement is very expensive, and non-selective: the best people can leave more easily to find opportunities in the private sector, perhaps as revolving-door lobbyists and salespeople.
Why did the German Reichwehr drop this system after 1933?
“Why did the German Reichwehr drop this system after 1933?”
Serious question?
Hitler expanded the Reichswehr/Wehrmacht dramatically, there was suddenly a huge demand for officers.
If you have to retire officers after 20 years you face difficulties to provide enough civilian jobs for them, they are 40 years old and have a quite special skill set.
If you have to retire officers after 20 years you face difficulties to provide enough civilian jobs for them
That’s true for a lot of industries. What do petroleum geologists do when the oil industry crashes??
On the other hand, that’s why the US created an early-retirement program after WWI: there was a sudden surge of soldiers who were suddenly unneeded. But…that’s a temporary down sizing problem.
If an organization chooses to reduce staff with an early retirement program it will be very expensive. It should be narrowly targeted toward jobs that are unneeded, and such programs should be *TEMPORARY*.
Which is why I asked about the Reichswehr/Wehrmacht: the early retirement program wasn’t restarted after WWII…which was sensible.
An army has the problem that it needs a lot of platoon/company commanders but only few generals.
The company officers have to be quite young.
You have to propose a model that solves this problem without early retirement. 🙂
An army has the problem that it needs a lot of platoon/company commanders but only few generals.
Doesn’t every organization have this problem? Your low level staff will need supervisors – roughly 1 for every 6 to 10 staff. The number of mid level managers drops by roughly the same ratio, as does higher level managers and the very top managers.
How are the armed services different in this way?
“Doesn’t every organization have this problem? Your low level staff will need supervisors – roughly 1 for every 6 to 10 staff. ”
In a university or company you can maintain the pyramide because some of the mid level managers can do this job their whole career.
A company leader has very likely to be younger than 40 years for physical reasons, hence, there is no real chance to maintain a pyramide without early retirement or a huge surplus of higher rankes, for which actually there is no job, bloated staffs are not there by chance.
You’re thinking of field people – people out on the battlefield. That only includes about 20% of the people in the armed services – the rest are in central command, or running the warehouse, or accounting or the motor pool. And, company commanders are perhaps 20% of people in the field. That’s 4% or less of the total.
So, why offer early retirement to the other 96%??
And, why not just offer the target group of company commanders a position supervising the motor pool, with a raise?
“That only includes about 20% of the people in the armed services”
The enlisted men retire early. They usually get only 8 year contracts. 🙂
And some many of the support troops would also be in the field in wartime and can expect some (unplanned) action as infantry, the 50 year old guy with beer belly is not the solution. 🙂
Check the Wehrmacht in 1944, a good read is Martin van Creveld’s “Fighting power”.
You can of course outsource some of the admin stuff, one does not need a kindergarten officer. 🙂
However, to assume that you can get enough young company officers and maintain a pyramide at the same time is not possible. Sorry, it worked in the 19th century because most officers retired (without pay) after a few years as 1st Lt. or Captain, these times are gone.
the early retirement system is necessary, or else we wouldn’t be able to keep those men and women re enlisting.
Maybe just pay them more??
The real reason for the troubles are basically two fold, one the workers manage to extract promises from management, ESPECIALLY government management, beyond the ability of the tax payer to handle the bill
Yes, specifically excessively early retirement. There’s no good reason for all employees to be able to retire at age 50. That means the ratio of pensioners to working employees is way too high.
A degree by degree account of what will happen on earth as the temperature rises. Important to note that positive feedbacks take over quickly. Don’t let the timing throw you, if it doesn’t happen by 2050 it will happen not long after that. The scenarios below give a great perspective on even 2 to 2 degrees warming, which is very much guaranteed at this point. Unless we become globally organized, very technically advanced and can act in unison to control the planetary climate system in the next few decades. Otherwise no continental glaciers on the planet and hippos in the Thames (if we didn’t eat them all). Abrupt change of 2 to 3 degrees C is a world changer, but not a world destroyer, although it will be very tough to maintain agriculture as we know it, meanwhile facing the millions of people migrating to escape sea level rise, droughts, storms and starvation. All of them want to eat too and have a place to live.
Global Warming our Future:
BETWEEN TWO AND THREE DEGREES OF WARMING
Up to this point, assuming that governments have planned carefully and farmers have converted to more appropriate crops, not too many people outside subtropical Africa need have starved. Beyond two degrees, however, preventing mass starvation will be as easy as halting the cycles of the moon. First millions, then billions, of people will face an increasingly tough battle to survive.
To find anything comparable we have to go back to the Pliocene – last epoch of the Tertiary period, 3m years ago. There were no continental glaciers in the northern hemisphere (trees grew in the Arctic), and sea levels were 25 metres higher than today’s. In this kind of heat, the death of the Amazon is as inevitable as the melting of Greenland. The paper spelling it out is the very one whose apocalyptic message so shocked in 2000. Scientists at the Hadley centre feared that earlier climate models, which showed global warming as a straightforward linear progression, were too simplistic in their assumption that land and the oceans would remain inert as their temperatures rose. Correctly as it would turn out, they predicted positive feedback.
Warmer seas absorb less carbon dioxide, leaving more to accumulate in the atmosphere and intensify global warming. On land, matters would be even worse. Huge amounts of carbon are stored in the soil, the half-rotted remains of dead vegetation. The generally accepted estimate is that the soil carbon reservoir contains some 1600 gigatonnes, more than double the entire carbon content of the atmosphere. As soil warms, bacteria accelerate the breakdown of this stored carbon, releasing it into the atmosphere.
http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm
NASA says “Based on a range of plausible emission scenarios, average surface temperatures could rise between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the 21st century.”
Also NASA says:
“Climate Feedbacks
Greenhouse gases are only part of the story when it comes to global warming. Changes to one part of the climate system can cause additional changes to the way the planet absorbs or reflects energy. These secondary changes are called climate feedbacks, and they could more than double the amount of warming caused by carbon dioxide alone. The primary feedbacks are due to snow and ice, water vapor, clouds, and the carbon cycle.”
Meanwhile, on Thursday, a UN review of national pledges to cut carbon said they fall short of levels needed to keep the rise in global temperatures under two degrees C. In fact, they found pledges from governments that have ratified the accord see the world on track for a rise in temperatures by the end of this century of between 2.9 and 3.4 degrees C. Simultaneously, oil and gas production around the world continues to increase at a very healthy rate and Dennis assures us these high production rates will continue more-or-less on toward infinity.
BTW,
Quoting Watcher from our parallel thread: “In the International Energy Outlook 2016 (IEO2016) Reference case, worldwide consumption of petroleum and other liquid fuels increases from 90 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2012 to 100 million b/d in 2020 and 121 million b/d in 2040…
Much of the growth in world liquid fuels consumption is projected for the emerging, non-Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (non-OECD) economies of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, where strong economic growth and rising populations increase the demand for those fuels.”
Hi Doug,
The question is are those projections reasonable? My opinion is that they are not, has your view on fossil fuel resources changed? Maybe you are think that fossil fuels won’t deplete or that we will develop technology that will increase the extraction rate.
“The question is are those projections reasonable?”
Of course not but neither are yours (in my opinion). I expect we will continue to burn FF like they’re going out of style followed by a steep decline. I’ve no idea when this will happen because it depends on unpredictable events (such as the world economy).
Hi Doug,
So you think decline should be steeper and that output should be higher than I have assumed. I also assume we will burn as much as we can produce in my scenarios and when I have fossil fuel use decrease sharply you say it isn’t realistic. What is a “reasonable” rate of decline in your view 2% per year is too slow, how about 4% or 6 %, note that the faster the decline the better.
I don’t want to be accused of being too “optimistic”.
Of course it doesn’t matter, you will say that either way. 🙂
Yes, 2% per year is too slow so you’re overly optimistic. However, as you know, I could always agree with you Dennis but then we’d BOTH always be wrong. 🙂
Hi Doug,
Whenever we agree, I double check my assumptions, cause one of them must be wrong. 🙂
But seriously, if I have fossil fuel emissions decline too fast you would also say that is too optimistic. So 2% too low, how high is too high?
Is 10% ok, how about 20%? Do you see the problem? Pessimism on fossil fuel quickly becomes optimism on climate change.
Hi Doug,
Does the fossil fuel use decline steeply enough in your view in the scenario below? Too optimistic?
Hi Doug,
You have often poked fun at my fossil fuel scenarios, calling them “fantasyland scenarios”. In the past you have seemed to favor my lower scenarios (perhaps suggesting that even these were too high). Have you changed your thinking?
Do you now believe that the high scenario is too low? Does the RCP6 scenario seem about right? I show carbon emissions for my low, medium, and high fossil fuel scenarios (no attempt to reduce emissions is assumed, the decline is due to depletion) compared with the RCP4.5 and RCP6 scenarios used by the MAGICC 6 emulator.
Do you believe that the high scenario is too low?
Dennis, what I believe counts for naught. What I expect is the world to carry on more-or-less as always to the point we are hit by an (mostly) unpredictable triple whammy conceivably in the form of economic collapse maybe combined with a global pandemic and even more vicious regional wars (with refugees headed in every which direction).
What I don’t believe in is a nice comfortable (and convenient) transition to a world with nine billion souls getting their power from the sun and wind. And, I think all long term projections are total bull shit because the planet, as we know it, isn’t sustainable and humans are too reactionary to do what needs to be done — even if it were possible.
Hi Doug,
I doubt an energy transition will be easy or convenient and yes people are slow to change. Typically when there is not enough of something the price of that thing (assuming it is a thing people want to acquire) increases. Let’s assume at some point (we don’t know when) fossil fuel output is current prices is too low to meet demand, then the price rises until the amount that people will purchase at the higher price is equal to output. Output will continue to decrease due to depletion and prices are likely to rise some more.
Until there is an economic recession (which cannot be predicted in advance) the cost of alternatives to fossil fuel will become relatively cheap compared to fossil fuel so demand for those alternatives will increase. As the demand for the alternatives increases innovation and economies of scale are likely to lead to decreases in the cost of alternative energy in a positive feedback loop.
None of this scenario is likely to happen smoothly or easily, the smooth lines drawn on a chart are intended to be a general path about which reality will oscillate above and below in a fashion impossible to predict.
In fact I expect a severe recession at some point (with a WAG of 2030) which might be the smack in the head the World needs to make some positive changes (carbon taxes, research and development, and lots of other stuff).
In addition many demographers expect that population will peak in 2070 at around 9.3 billion and could decline quite rapidly if total fertility ratios (TFR) fall to under 1.75 (a level which many nations have reached) at the World level. The TFR fell from 6 in 1965 to 2.5 in 2015, progress is possible, in my view.
Something that can slow progress is the belief that any change is negative, I think positive change is possible, though perhaps not likely. If so, we should still try to improve things as best we can.
Well, good news is the Chinese push for renewable energy is the largest that world has ever seen. And, the global figure for solar panels installed last year was half a million per day. So, not too shabby. 🙂
Wait, Doug, is that you? Did Nick G steal your handle. 🙂
You just never know when people will come together as strange bedfellows…
Hi Doug,
I am just trying to understand your position. You say carbon emissions matter (to some degree), even though feedbacks are more important. I would say the feedbacks are largely a result of the carbon emissions.
I noticed you have never commented on the RCP scenarios, but logic would suggest that if the high scenario should decline more than 2% per year that even RCP4.5, as shown on my chart has carbon emissions that are too high, wouldn’t you agree?
And RCP6 would be totally unrealistic if RCP4.5 is already too high.
“I am just trying to understand your position.”
What? Even I don’t understand my position Dennis; besides, it moves around a bit. Sort of like the weather. But, basically you come across a bit like a Prima Donna sometimes and so I push back. No hard feelings though. Really! 🙂
Hi Doug,
You insult me, but no hard feelings, very nice.
Hi Doug,
That is funny.
I guess you have not read any of the following:
http://peakoilbarrel.com/oil-shock-models-with-different-ultimately-recoverable-resources-of-crude-plus-condensate-3100-gb-to-3700-gb/
http://peakoilbarrel.com/world-natural-gas-shock-model/
http://peakoilbarrel.com/coal-shock-model/
In all cases the production of fossil fuels peaks and declines.
The IPCC however believes that the peak will be much later for RCP6 (2080) and RCP8.5 (2100), in fact for RCP8.5 a plateau is maintained at the 2100 level for 50 years with emission levels at three times the 2015 rate of emissions.
There are some people who seem to believe these scenarios are reasonable, but not me.
Hi Gone fishing,
NASA’s “plausible emissions scenarios” are RCP2.6 to RCP8.5. Only RCP2.6 and RCP4.5 are plausible and that reduces the range of estimates by the GISS Model E2-R (which matches historical observations best) from 1.8 to 2.6 C.
See http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/na08200a.html
table 1 on page 250
“assuming that governments have planned carefully and farmers have converted to more appropriate crops”
Yeah, right. The farmers will be planting the crops they get the most subsidy on and the governments will subsidise the crops those farmers produce so as not to face the backlash of farmers going out of business. A vicious circle. Let us just remember what ‘assume’ means.
NAOM
And the rest of that quote” not too many people outside subtropical Africa need have starved. Beyond two degrees, however, preventing mass starvation will be as easy as halting the cycles of the moon. First millions, then billions, of people will face an increasingly tough battle to survive.”
Starvation tends to change the mindset.
Hi GF,
I think the odds are probably on your side, rather than Dennis’s, when it comes to catastrophic climate change, but my opinion is colored by my personal experiences and technical background.
Just to be clear, I do not have the necessary skills to seriously examine the climate models, but if I have had any sort of “career” at all, other than as a world class rolling stone, going from one thing to the next, that career would be ” independent scholar” meaning I have spent my time reading about anything and everything having to do with naked apes and the sciences.
If I were to be charged with deciding upon a legend to be carved above the entrance of an academic building, my choice would be this.
“The world is a non linear place.”
When you consider any given general topic, having to do with either men or science and technology, or random natural events, linearity is usually temporary, giving way to non linearity, over any extended period of time. The time frame may seem pretty long to us, given that our brains are programmed to deal with time in intervals ranging from a second, so we can dodge a flying fist or rock or snake, to a generation or two, so we can raise kids.
The old joke about the mechanized factory with only one man, and a dog in it, applies. The man is to call the maintenance guys if they are needed, and the dog is to make sure the man doesn’t touch any thing.
Mucking around with the adjustments and inputs of any machine is apt to result in catastrophic problems.
Who can tell us all about the negative feed back mechanisms that are supposed to keep the world from getting a LOT warmer than it is now?
Apparently, nobody has any real idea what they might be, if they even exist, other than the possibility of cloud cover reflecting more incoming sun.
It won’t take much change at all to wipe out conventional agriculture for a year in a major bread basket. Drought as we know it NOW has pretty much wiped out food production on the many times, over large areas. Witness our own DUST BOWL.
Turn the screws just a little , and such a drought might stick around twice as long, or four times as long, and cover four times the area.
Dead people are maybe going to be piled up in front of fences at national borders, and worse. The people manning the machine guns will use them, because they will understand that if they don’t, their own families will be at that much higher risk of starvation.
Or maybe not.
There may be some things happening that safely vents the pressure cooker, before it explodes. An emerging contagious disease, if it spreads like flu, could wipe out a major chunk of the population in entire countries, once the shit is well into the fan, because containing it would be impossible, under chaotic conditions.
Or maybe conditions will go downhill slowly enough that people everywhere decide birth control is the greatest thing ever , and governments will employ draconian measures to make sure it is used by those with a different opinion of it.
My personal opinion, redneck conservative if anybody wishes to label it so, is that we ought to be taking the physical and ecological security of our country as seriously as we take atom bombs, fighters, bombers, tanks, and rifles, because the risk is obviously just as serious, in terms of both likelihood and consequences.
I don’t think it is possible to prevent a general collapse of our species, due to our being in overshoot on a global basis, but if we get our shit together, we probably have a pretty good shot at making sure most or maybe even all of us here in this country can pull thru the crisis more or less whole. Times will get to be pretty tough, even here, but tough is not the same as dead from starvation, disease, exposure, or murder for your last can of beans.
Or just maybe the incurable optimists will be right, and most of us will pull thru world wide. Maybe, but the odds against our avoiding a hard crash, world wide, are ninety nine percent, at least.
It’s a Darwinian world, and I want my country to be one of the places that pull thru WITHOUT a catastrophic crash.
Nothing in this comment should be interpreted as indicating I am against supplying generous amounts of aid to countries that will make good use of it, in avoiding local collapse.
Too late to edit, I want my country to be one of the places that MIGHT pull thru without a catastrophic crash.
When I said the odds are ninety nine percent against pulling thru world wide without a hard crash, I should have said the ENTIRE world.
With good luck, meaning mostly good leadership, and the rest being continued good progress in renewables, recycling, efficiency, low birth rates, etc, there is reason to believe that a number of countries can pull thru ok, very skinny compared to recent flush times, but hey if you can’t be rich, poor to ok is a hell of a lot better than dead, lol.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
Do you assume that the physicists that develop the Earth system models think that all of the responses in the earth system are linear?
There is an interesting dichotomy on this blog of those that think fossil fuels are much more limited than I do, which would imply that my “low” fossil fuel will be more sensible to them (or possibly too optimistic) and those that think that climate change will be very severe (which may imply that my “high” fossil fuel scenario is too low.)
In the future I will just stick with my medium scenario (roughly between the high and low scenarios.
Worst possible cases are possible, whether they are likely depends on a lot of factors which are unlikely to all align in such a way to result in those worse case scenarios. This would be akin to an assumption that in the face of World Depression 2, that all major nations have dictators like Hitler come to power in response. I suppose that is a possibility, but it seems unlikely.
Seems more likely there will be a mix of bad and good, at least to me.
Note that one of the non-linear responses that reduces the extent of warming is that as CO2 is added to the atmosphere the response is logarithmic so an increase from 280 to 560 ppm would be expected to roughly double the forcing due to CO2 and the associated fast feedbacks (water vapor, lapse rate, sea ice, snow cover, and clouds). Global temperatures respond slowly to this forcing due to the thermal inertia of the ocean, we would quickly see about a 2 C rise in temperature and then as the ocean slowly warms we would expect another 1 C rise in global temperatures (but that takes 500 years or so). This ignores other feedbacks such as emissions from melting permafrost and melting ice sheets which might operate over longer time frames.
Note that this assumes CO2 in the atmosphere remains at 560 ppm long term, if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced close to zero the CO2 in the atmosphere will slowly fall over time.
The Earth system sensitivity takes account of all the feedbacks (both slow and fast feedbacks) and is estimated by James Hansen to be about 4.2 C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 based on evidence from paleoclimatology. So eventually we would need to have atmospheric CO2 fall to 390 ppm to reach the 2 C “safe” limit above pre-industrial global temperature. A simple “Bern-like” carbon model suggests atmospheric CO2 might peak in a scenario with 1000 Gt of carbon emissions at about 460 ppm in 2060 and fall to 390 ppm by 2400 CE. My Bern model assumes the fixed fraction of the standard Bern-type carbon model declines with a Tau of 250,000 years where the standard model assumes this 22% fraction of carbon emissions remains in the atmosphere forever (Tau=infinity). The Tau=250,000 is similar to CO2 falling from 280 to 180 ppm over 110,000 years somewhat similar to the glacial interglacial cycle of the last 800,000 years.
Overshoot will be reduced as we use fewer fossil fuels and as population peaks and declines. The problems will not solve themselves, proper policy is the only thing that will work. Carbon taxes would be a better policy than the government selecting winners through policy targets. Set a long term policy of gradually increasing carbon taxes, adjusted as needed over time as the quantity of carbon emissions is measured. The taxes collected can be returned to each citizen as a fee and dividend or be used to reduce income taxes for the middle class or even used for deficit reduction.
Hi Dennis,
“Do you assume that the physicists that develop the Earth system models think that all of the responses in the earth system are linear?”
Not at all. But I do think that there are practical and professional considerations involved in creating the models that result in the predicted results probably being on the milder or less dangerous side, rather than overstating the results.
Politicians have a way of making their influence felt, and in order to get along, the climate science establishment in my opinion has to avoid saying very much, in official terms, about the worst case possibilities. So – by the time the entire job start to finish, is presented in the form of official results, the results are very possibly or maybe, even probably, toned down somewhat.
Coming with bad news is bad enough, but coming with REALLY bad news is apt to get you shot, in terms of political support. Politicians don’t like to be associated with doom and gloom, at all, and will only allow the association so long as there is a silver lining in the black cloud, a possible solution to the problem.
This does not mean individual scientists speaking as individuals can’t say what they think, at least so long as they have academic tenure, or money of their own, lol.
Then there is the obvious fact that scientists , and other real professionals, such as engineers, tend to be conservative in making assumptions, and prefer not to make them without good solid reasons. I am not talking about being risk averse in the engineering sense, whereby an engineer builds a bridge five times as strong as strictly necessary, so as to reduce the odds of it failing to near zero.
I am referring to the scientists going out on a limb, and basing their work in part on any assumption they cannot properly justify.
This means that if the climate science establishment does not understand a possible positive feed back effect , or have a satisfactory way to quantify it, then it will not likely be included in the models until it is better understood, and thus can be properly modeled.
And I just don’t hear much at all about new negative feed back mechanisms, but there is plenty of news about possible new positive feed back mechanisms.
So my gut feeling is that the scientific establishment feels compelled to speak its piece in softer language than a lot of climate scientists would prefer.
Beyond that, I am a huge believer in non linearity, as the result of everything I have ever studied to any extent. Start with the lost horseshoe nail that cost a king his kingdom, and wind up with say for instance electronic cameras destroying the film industry, or a new disease emerging , such as the chesnut blight, which pretty much wiped out the most valuable tree species native to the eastern half of the country.
You may well be right about the models producing good results. I hope you are, because the predicted results are more than enough to upset the global ecological and economic apple cart in catastrophic fashion.
“There is an interesting dichotomy on this blog of those that think fossil fuels are much more limited than I do, which would imply that my “low” fossil fuel will be more sensible to them (or possibly too optimistic) and those that think that climate change will be very severe (which may imply that my “high” fossil fuel scenario is too low.)
In the future I will just stick with my medium scenario (roughly between the high and low scenarios. ”
I think there is more coal than you do, but given the extraordinarily fast growth of the renewable energy industries, my opinion is that your estimates of future consumption of fossil fuels are as good as anybody’s and very reasonable.
Let’s go back to the politics of climate science a minute. It is very much to the advantage of the environmental movement to exaggerate the scope of the troubles associated with burning fossil fuels. Expecting any particular envirnmentalist or environmental organization, public or private , to actually say that we WILL NOT be burning all that oil, coal, and gas is naive, to put it as gently as possible.
The hard science is one thing, the human element is something else altogether. Tell a man that drinking more and more beer will eventually kill him, but if you also tell him that beer will soon be in short supply, and he won’t be able to get nearly as much as usual, and that it will be too expensive to drink much anyway, i and he will surely conclude he might as well drink all he wants NOW without worrying about his liver LATER.
At one time I believed we would burn every lump of coal we could dig up, and every drop of oil, as a matter of necessity, nay desperation, but I don’t believe that anymore.
“Worst possible cases are possible, whether they are likely depends on a lot of factors which are unlikely to all align in such a way to result in those worse case scenarios. This would be akin to an assumption that in the face of World Depression 2, that all major nations have dictators like Hitler come to power in response. I suppose that is a possibility, but it seems unlikely.
Seems more likely there will be a mix of bad and good, at least to me.”
I agree, but I worry that a few of the undesirable positive feed backs may result in a whole cascade of ADDITIONAL undesirable positive feed backs.
” Note that one of the non-linear responses that reduces the extent of warming is that as CO2 is added to the atmosphere the response is logarithmic so an increase from 280 to 560 ppm would be expected to roughly double the forcing due to CO2 and the associated fast feedbacks (water vapor, lapse rate, sea ice, snow cover, and clouds). Global temperatures respond slowly to this forcing due to the thermal inertia of the ocean, we would quickly see about a 2 C rise in temperature and then as the ocean slowly warms we would expect another 1 C rise in global temperatures (but that takes 500 years or so). This ignores other feedbacks such as emissions from melting permafrost and melting ice sheets which might operate over longer time frames.
Note that this assumes CO2 in the atmosphere remains at 560 ppm long term, if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced close to zero the CO2 in the atmosphere will slowly fall over time.
The Earth system sensitivity takes account of all the feedbacks (both slow and fast feedbacks) and is estimated by James Hansen to be about 4.2 C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 based on evidence from paleoclimatology. So eventually we would need to have atmospheric CO2 fall to 390 ppm to reach the 2 C “safe” limit above pre-industrial global temperature. A simple “Bern-like” carbon model suggests atmospheric CO2 might peak in a scenario with 1000 Gt of carbon emissions at about 460 ppm in 2060 and fall to 390 ppm by 2400 CE. My Bern model assumes the fixed fraction of the standard Bern-type carbon model declines with a Tau of 250,000 years where the standard model assumes this 22% fraction of carbon emissions remains in the atmosphere forever (Tau=infinity). The Tau=250,000 is similar to CO2 falling from 280 to 180 ppm over 110,000 years somewhat similar to the glacial interglacial cycle of the last 800,000 years. ”
I am not so well informed as you , in terms of paleo climate history, but I have read quite a bit about it, and consider your summary , and Hansen’s conclusions, to be reasonable.
But when we go from this level of climate change in and of itself, then we must next go to the effects this change will have on the world wide ecology, and in human terms, the effect it will have on food production in particular, and the viability of vast streches of the planet as naked ape habitat in more general terms. At this point we are touching on things where I DO have substantial expertise, although I am not a working scientist but rather a professionally trained agriculturist.
You can take this to the bank, there is a ninety nine percent probability that if the planet warms up just another two or three degrees, there will be hell to pay in human terms, on the grand scale, over vast expanses of the globe.
Think just three straight years of intense drought over the Indian sub continent for example.
We already know for example what bark beetles can do to an evergreen forest when the average temperature rises just a few degrees LOCALLY . And if the average world wide rises two degrees, local temperatures over large areas will likely rise five, or maybe even ten degrees.
“Overshoot will be reduced as we use fewer fossil fuels and as population peaks and declines. ”
True enough, if things work out that way.
What I am afraid of is that overshoot is going to take care of itself in the usual brutal way that Mother Nature deals with it BEFORE the population peaks and declines in a peaceable non violent fashion.
My personal guess is that while some favorably situated countries such as the USA and Canada have a good, maybe even excellent, shot at pulling thru without suffering catastrophic troubles, most countries are too poor, and too poorly lead, and getting started with too in the way of resources, too late, to manage a successful transition. Such countries will pay the price in human suffering, if I am right.
I might be wrong.Maybe the renewable energy industries, conservation, efficiency, and good prudent management will enable nearly all people and countries to avoid collapse due to overshoot.
You might be right, things might work out ok for just about everybody. I do not argue that you are wrong, but I WORRY that you are wrong.
“The problems will not solve themselves, proper policy is the only thing that will work. Carbon taxes would be a better policy than the government selecting winners through policy targets. Set a long term policy of gradually increasing carbon taxes, adjusted as needed over time as the quantity of carbon emissions is measured. The taxes collected can be returned to each citizen as a fee and dividend or be used to reduce income taxes for the middle class or even used for deficit reduction.”
I totally agree with you about the carbon tax idea. When it comes to the government setting polices that determine what will come about economically, I also tend to agree, because such policies can start us down roads with no place to turn around and reverse course. Once we settle on any given technology or social model, we may be stuck with it for a LONG time.
But I am very much in favor of spending lots of tax money on research of all kinds, being confident that while most research pays only small dividends , the occasional big winner pays the entire bill with plenty of profit, with trickle down ensuring that just about everybody eventually gets a share.
And I think that sometimes the potential for avoiding possible future problems is great enough to justify the risk of getting stuck in a technical or social rut as the result of government meddling in the economy.
If for instance we can manage a timely successful switch to mostly wind and solar sourced electricity, the reduction in the use of coal as generating fuel will pay a highly significant dividend in terms of public health, and the wind and solar industries will employ many times more men that coal mining.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
Note that the warming under a scenario where anthropogenic carbon emissions from 1800-2200 is about 1000 Gt of carbon (3664 Gt CO2) or less (about 540 Gt of carbon has been emitted already) is likely to be about 2 C above preindustrial (1850-1900) temperatures temperatures have already risen by about 1 C, so we are talking about 1 C above current temperatures over the next 70 years or so and then temperatures will stabilize or slowly drop over many thousands of years.
Would you expect a 1 C rise in global temperatures to have the severe effects you outline above?
I do not expect everything will work out ok.
It depends on the choices humans make, last night was not encouraging as it seems humans are not very smart, at least in this nation.
The future does not look bright. Maybe things always do align such that the worst case scenario is most likely.
The scientists give their best estimates in my view and yes they don’t speculate on potential positive feedbacks that have no physical basis, the models are based on physics pure and simple (though it is not simple at all). There is much in physical behavior that is non-linear, so that is a given.
Nobody in climate science believes that the system behaves linearly. Sometimes the complexity is simplified into linear models so that most people can grasp them, this is just a teaching device.
Back atcha one more time, Dennis
I believe we are in the same book virtually all the time, the same chapter nearly all the time, and the same page most of the time.
Trump is bad news, environmentally. Very bad indeed.
I did not intend to say that you think EVERYTHING will work out ok, but rather that you seem to think we can turn the fossil fuels corner without the crash killing most of us on the collective bus of humanity, etc. I compose on the fly, which is not always good, but this is a conversation, not a book.
Hi Gone fishing,
When were the periods of zero snow cover extent in the Northern Hemisphere during winter? Are you talking about Miocene (about 5.5 to 7 million years ago) or earlier. Pliocene warm period modelling shows average temperatures in winter from 60 N to 90 N at roughly -10C, seems doubtful that there was no snow in winter. Also not likely during quartenary, in my view. Less snow cover extent maybe, but at some point the warmer temperatures and higher humidity may lead to more winter snow fall which might offset the faster spring melting due to higher temperatures.
From Wikipedia on Mid-Pliocene “Model simulations of mid-Pliocene climate produce warmer conditions at middle and high latitudes, as much as 10–20 °C warmer than today above 70°N.” And the model simulations are generally low (see below).
Keep trying Dennis you will find something meaningful one of these times. I am sure a little snow on the partially frozen winter waters of the Arctic Ocean and a little snow in the dark of the far northern Arctic night that melts quickly as soon as the sun rises again make a huge difference in albedo. 🙂
Even if 20 percent of the snow is left, it will exist only far north during low light times only and not have much albedo effect. Face it Dennis, 6 w/m2 or more coming down the pipeline just from snow loss. That will push other natural forcings even more.
Not much need for more CO2 than your models present to get temperatures up 6C or more.
Try to remember that the Greenland ice sheet is not really very old, doesn’t go past the previous glaciation. Even the oldest ice in Antarctica is only 1.5 million years old. There have been many ice free times and short term winter snow is meaningless at the poles as far as albedo goes.
You might want to read this
“The temperatures recorded in the samples, right through the peak of warming 55 million years ago, were consistently about 18 degrees higher than those projected by computer models trying to “backcast” what the Arctic was like at the time, according to one of the papers.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/01/science/earth/01climate.html
Hippos in the Thames during Eemian. Look it up.
Hi Gone fishing,
The planet was very different millions of years ago.
You can speculate about snow cover, but recent models show -10 C.
See
http://www.geosci-model-dev.net/5/1109/2012/
That paper uses the Hadley Climate models and shows average global temperatures about 3 C above 1850-1900 average temperatures. From 60 N to 90 N average temperatures were about 6.2 C above 1850-1900 temperatures at those latitudes. See figure 7 on page 1117 which shows the average annual temperature from 45 N to 90N of about -10C. Note also that the Hadley models have relatively high climate sensitivity. There were also Wooly Mammoths and Mastodons during the Eemian, the world looked much different 125,000 years ago.
From Wikipedia on Greenland ice sheet
In a 2013 study published in Nature, 133 researchers analyzed a Greenland ice core from the Eemian interglacial. They concluded that GIS had been 8 degrees C warmer than today. Resulting in a thickness decrease of the northwest Greenland ice sheet by 400 ± 250 metres, reaching surface elevations 122,000 years ago of 130 ± 300 metres lower than at present.[12]
Also
The ice in the current ice sheet is as old as 110,000 years.[3] The presence of ice-rafted sediments in deep-sea cores recovered off of northeast Greenland, in the Fram Strait, and south of Greenland indicated the more or less continuous presence of either an ice sheet or ice sheets covering significant parts of Greenland for the last 18 million years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet
I guess it is unlikely we will convince each other. I am not particularly convinced that there was very little snow, Hansen has lower estimates of mid Pliocene warmth of 1-2C above 1951-1980 temperatures. So there is quite a bit of uncertainty.
On your 6 C estimate, maybe you are going by older estimates by Hansen more recent estimates are about 4.2 C for Earth system sensitivity based on the modern size of ice sheets.
I will go with James Hansen’s estimates.
Mid Pliocene was about 400 ppm for atmospheric CO2 some models give about a 2 C result for global temp above pre-industrial and others about 3.5 C. For the models with 2 C change ESS would be 3.9 C and for those with delta T of 3.5C ESS is 6.8 C, quite a large range, the mean would be 5.1 C. More work needs to be done on this.
http://www.clim-past.net/9/191/2013/
No, I do not depend upon Hansen for my values. I tend to do my own thinking and calculations, forbidden as that is in these days of dependence on experts. But the experts seem a bit confused themselves and keep coming up with a wide variety of conclusions and opinions.
Well, I certainly have learned a lot from these discussion. Mostly I have learned that due to the wide variation in piecemeal studies, the scientific papers can be quoted and re-interpreted similar to the Bible.
It seems one merely has to pick and choose, then make claims.
Even to the point of concluding that wooly mammoths and hippopotamus lived in the same climatic range.
Hi Gone fishing,
The point was very simple there were different animals in different places 125,000 years ago than there are today. The model simulations show mid Pliocene temperatures of 2-3.5 C higher than pre-industrial with a mean of about 2.7 C. Atmospheric CO2 is estimated at between 350 and 450 ppm with a mean of 400 ppm.
This gives us a rough idea of Earth system sensitivity. You overestimate the contribution of snow cover extent which is not known during the mid-Pliocene, though it would seem the models could have guessed at this and probably used it to estimate albedo to determine temperature changes.
Using data on snow cover extent from
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/extent/snow-cover/namgnld/7
For all months from March to Sept and estimating insolation for each month. I assume albedo changed by 0.5 because melting snow has lower albedo and over most of this period there would be little fresh snow and lots of melting. I assume in this case that snow cover extent falls to zero from the end of the linear trend in 2015 from March to Sept (other months are ignored because there is little insolation).
month, delta SCE, insolation, delta RF
April—13——250——0.266
May—-8.8—–420——0.302
June—-4.8—–475——0.186
July—–2.2—–447——0.080
August–2.2—–344——0.062
Sept—-3.9—–220——0.070
March–15.6—-100——0.127
The total snow albedo feedback is 1.1 W/m^2, almost 6 times smaller than your estimate of 6 W/m^2. Note that this estimate is likely to be too high as the change in snow cover extent has been overestimated by assuming it falls to zero from March through Sept. The trend for Sept snow cover extent has been increasing by 1% per year over the 1967-2016 period in the Northern hemisphere(NH). There is also and increasing trend over the 1967-2015 period in the NH for Oct, Nov and Dec. For Feb 1967-2016 there is also and increasing trend, Jan has been flat. I have ignored these months however, but it suggests that warmer temperatures leads to increasing snow cover extent during the fall and winter period.
You are missing the big one here for the mid-Pliocene, the orbital fluctuations which can swing hemispherical radiation by up to 100 w/m2. I don’t know what cycles were back then, but since the ice age had not stared yet, the planet was being heated by other feedbacks, probably bare ground and forest cover. The rise of mountain ranges slowly lowered the CO2 levels, allowing more ocean and land absorption. Once the ice sheets started, the CO2 got sequestered.
One can assume that the feedback from snow and ice in the mid-Pliocene was already gone. Arctic temps would have been much higher than plus 2C, so snow/ice would not have had much effect since it’s range was small.
Currently, northern hemisphere snow albedo sensitivity is about 1.0 w/m2 per degree K. So a rise of 3C will give an added 3.0 w/m2 (global) which will kick in an added water vapor component which melts more snow and causes more methane/CO2 from land and ocean heating.
Not much point in going further than that.
The orbital forcing in the northern hemisphere will stay above current levels for at least 40,000 years and when it does drop below it is not by much. So reformation of ice sheets and large snow cover are unlikely.
If there is massive volcanic action or human action to cause insolation to fall then snow and ice sheets might reform temporarily.
The snow that melts in March exists at low latitude (35 to 45N) from Nov to March. The average insolation for that period in that region is at least 180 w/m2.
So you have 15.6/510=.031 area of earth
180 w/m2 *0.5 *5/12 * 0.031 =1.16 w/m2 global for March melted snow
not 0.266 as you come up with.
So just the March melt is as big as your total for all snow melt and there is still a lot of snow to melt.
Holy miscalculation Batman!
I mean not the 0.127 you came up with, eight times lower.
DC,
Mammoths during the Eemian, yes. What is your source for their being wooly mammoths?
There have been quite a few species of mammoth. When wooly mammoths entered North America south of the ice they found the Columbian mammoth already there in a range extending from the northern US down into southern Mexico. Both species descend from the steppe mammoth of Eurasia (the wooly mammoth, the cold-adapted mammoth, was the younger of the two) and my guess is that the Eemian mammoth that lived with hippos in England was the steppe mammoth.
(Some of us consider the steppe mammoth and the Columbian mammoth to be the same species, since you ask.)
Hi Synapsid,
I was not suggesting that the Wooly Mammoth was in the UK, just that there were different animals during the Eemian than today in various places. From Wikipedia:
The woolly mammoth diverged from the steppe mammoth about 400,000 years ago in eastern Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth
So while the hippo was in the Thames, the Wooly Mammoth may have been in other parts of Eurasia and North America.
Also from Wikipedia:
A 2008 genetic study showed that some of the woolly mammoths that entered North America through the Bering land bridge from Asia migrated back about 300,000 years ago and had replaced the previous Asian population by about 40,000 years ago, not long before the entire species became extinct.[76]
I have two locations near me where both mastodons and wooly mammoth skeletons have been found. One in a hollow and another in what is currently a swamp, so since there were a lot of bones in each I suspect natural traps.
Hi Gone fishing,
If winter and fall don’t matter, then your 6 W/m^2 approximation no longer holds as the snow cover extent is much smaller in spring and especially summer, in fact the change in summer snow extent would only be about 4 million km^2,
I did the month by month calculations with reasonable assumptions of snow cover extent decrease and it is not close to the value based on the average snow cover extent for the year. If only spring and summer are important, then use the average snow cover extent for spring and summer and we get about 2.7 W/m^2 with the unrealistic (in my opinion) assumption that spring snow cover extent decreases to zero, this is also an over estimate because it has assumed constant snow cover extent over the spring and summer, considering the extent month by month results in lower change in energy absorbed because insolation is variable and the highest changes in snow cover would be in the earlier months of the year when insolation is lower. Snow cover extent from June through Sept is quite low already so not a lot of change there.
First of all I did not say that fall and winter snowfall did not matter, that is your typical spin on responses to me. I said that a low amount of snowfall in the dark high Arctic regions would not matter. Obvious, since there is no light. At least obvious to me. Obviously further south (snow reaches to 35 N latitude) winter and fall
I used the average snowfall cover not the total. The average is time weighted. Your assumptions are incorrect. The actual value is 7.5 watts/m2 using a reduced insolation to compensate for latitudinal changes. The 6 w/m2 value compensates for residual northern snow such as Greenland, though that may be higher since Greenland ice sheet albedo drops during the summer.
Of course we can now add in the Arctic Ocean albedo changes, but I don’t feel like another useless argument.
Hi Gonefishing,
Which assumptions are incorrect? Do you assume all snow is new snow, I assume a mix of old and new snow with snow albedo averaging 0.65 and ground to average 0.15 for an average change of albedo of 0.5 from snow to no snow conditions. Insolation is estimated from the insolation chart as the average of 60-90 N which seems appropriate for the spring and summer period, possibly March and April should use 60 N as the insolation estimate. Doing so increases the snow albedo feedback from March to Sept to 1.3 W/m^2 if SCE in NH falls to zero for those months from 2015 levels (using trend line for the 2015 estimate).
I found a study that gives the albedo feedback forcing from the Northern Hemisphere cryosphere at 1.0 (W/m2)/ K.
With three degrees warming that would mean 3.0 W/m2 forcing. Couple water vapor forcing which gives another 6 W/m2 and then for good measure I will throw in a 1.0 W/m2 from natural methane and CO2 release.
That is an additional 10 watts/m2 giving a final temperature of 11C above pre -industrial.
Or if you don’t like the natural methane-CO2 feedback, it will be 10 C above pre-industrial.
That does not account for extra CO2 released from warming oceans. Nor does it account for loss of aerosols as we finally stop burning coal and oil. I am not sure about aerosols from wood so will leave that up in the air for now.
Hmmm, sounds like adding a shot of CO2 to the atmosphere is more dangerous than most think.
Sounds like we need to reduce the atmospheric
Oh, I see what you are doing there…So you are going to leave aerosols, up in the air, eh?
🙂
Hi Gone fishing,
The other feed backs such as water vapor, lapse rate (which reduces the RF by about 0.6 W/m^2/K and you forgot to add), and possibly the carbon and methane releases from thawing permafrost might already be included in the estimate you gave, just as the various fast feedbacks are already included when the radiative forcing increase from a doubling of carbon dioxide is estimated. The amount of fossil fuels is limited and likely to lead to about 2.5 C of warming at most.
I looked at both sea ice and snow cover extent for the Northern hemisphere and assumed all snow and sea ice extent decreases to zero from March through September and used monthly estimates of insolation, the increase in radiation absorbed is at most 3.1 W/m^2 regardless of temperature from snow and ice albedo feedback alone once the Greenland ice sheet melts entirely. Such a scenario is not realistic for reasonable carbon emission scenarios (RCP 4.5 or lower).
No doubt the climate scientist are unaware of those various feedbacks. 🙂 The RCP scenarios reduce the emission of aerosols, though there will continue be some from volcanoes and forest and peat fires, so emissions will not be zero.
From the last glacial maximum to the present the change in global temperatures has been about 3.5 C, so perhaps you need to rethink your mental model. In the Northern hemisphere there was a lot more ice and snow during the LGM with Northern Hemisphere ice sheets about 10 times larger than today.
A similar increase in atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial would bring us to about 435 ppm, so your talking about a 10 C change in temperature so if the response was linear to the natural log of atmospheric CO2 we would need to see about 1000 ppm for atmospheric CO2 if we assume the response is the same as from the LGM to Holocene transition. Due to smaller ice sheets most scientists believe the response will be smaller more like 4.2 C rather than 5.5 C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. We know what has happened in the past, this constrains the estimates of ESS.
Do you have a link to the study you found or at least author and year the paper was published?
You seem to have a tendency to double count.
To get 3 C of warming from reasonable emission scenarios the feedbacks from water vapor, lapse rate, snow and ice albedo, carbon cycle feedbacks, reduced aerosols, basically everything except ice sheet loss is already included in the temperature change estimate in response to a change in radiative forcing. You take the 3 C of temperature increase and then add all these feedbacks a second time to get a higher estimate for the temperature change, you could do this several times and get the temperature increase as high as you would like. To infinity and beyond 🙂
Nope, the figure is for albedo changes only. Sorry, keep grasping at straws.
I subtracted out Greenland even though it loses albedo all summer and compensated for the short summer period where now snow exists. I did not include the Arctic Ocean in the calculation. I get 5.5 watts/m2 global for loss of snow cover.
I think you are not including fall and winter insolation, which since the snow line can reach down to 35 north and is often at 40 north for several months, a large amount of reflected energy is not accounted for by your ignoring 6 months of the year.
(we have an average of 10.5 hours of daylight at 40 north for those two seasons and snow cover can be for 3 of those months right into March). Most of the land area is below the Arctic circle.
Even right now Russia is covered all the way into China/Mongolia. Alaska is covered, half of Canada, all of Norway, Finland, Sweden, Scotland.
Adding in the Arctic Ocean would give another forcing.
Six degrees could change the world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_pb1G2wIoA
More CO2 from cheeseburgers in the US than from all the SUV’s in the US.
Anybody posted this yet?
Before the Flood – Full Movie | National Geographic
Just spent the last hour and a half watching it. Kinda depressing (to say the least) with slight glimmers of hope but decent information value.
Hi Island boy,
Ron Patterson posted it in a previous thread.
It seems like we are all like the Austrians in 1913 arguing who our next Hapsburg Ruler is going to be.
Line up and make your choice, it’s all you have.
So what is the area per person on earth when we reach 10 billion people?
Given a land area of 57 million square miles, subtract out the desert and mountains giving about 24 million square miles. Subtract out about 5 million square miles for areas too cold for most human life, giving 19 million square miles.
10E9/ 19E6 gives 526 people per square mile. Since at least half of that will be needed for agriculture and industry, that makes for 1052 people per square mile or a 162 foot square per person. Probably best just to stack them in tall bee-hive type structures and get some free space out there.
Maybe the housing towers can be combined with malls and they never have to leave them, except the few that need to go to work or supervise the robotic run farms, mines and power plants.
“Maybe the housing towers can be combined with malls and they never have to leave them,”
The name of the city that overwhelms the earth will be “The Hive” and the nature of life within it has been explored in a sci fi novel,titled the same, which was pretty good, technically. Sorry I can’t remember who wrote it. It’s sure to be out of print, and I don’t think it sold very many copies.
I know a few city guys and girls who would never voluntarily leave such a place, once in it, assuming they were to have a satisfactory income.
We have a way to go yet, 16 percent total infrastructure coverage so far. The biggest human coverage is farms and ranchlands, size of South America and size of Africa respectively. Added all up humans and their activities occupy a little less than half the land surface. Our effects are felt over the whole globe though.
Interesting part is that 95% of the world’s population is concentrated on 10 percent of the land surface. So there are still some large spaces out there.
There are over three trillion trees in the world. If we and nature burn half of them, that is 1.5 trillion tons of carbon released into the atmosphere.
This is my new drinking song!
There’re three trillion trees in the world,
three trillion trees!
Chop one down or burn it to the ground,
and there’s 2,999,999,999,999 trees in the world…
Repeat until you run out of
beertrees!Which ever comes first.
🙂
BTW, in tropical rain forests, a single tree might harbor 4,500 different species of insects.
Here’s a good book for those geniuses who propose brilliant ideas such as geoengineering without having any idea as to how ecosystems work.
goo.gl/AuROaXcontent_copyCopy short URL
Environmental Science: Systems and Solutions
By Michael L. McKinney, Robert M. Schoch
Hint, ecosystems are non linear systems with very high state variable numbers. For the engineers out there, that means their control panels have millions and millions of little knobs, buttons, and levers to set. Initial conditions settings for each of them can make a big difference in the final outcome for how the system operates. And people think they can just add a few million tons of iron to fertilize algae growth in the ocean to sequester CO2?
Think ‘Butterfly Effect’ for 4,500 species of insects on a single tree. No two trees, even of the same species have identical micro ecosystems.
We have been geo-engineering the planet for a long time now. It is apparently not working well for most of the other species and some humans are quit grumpy about it also.
Fred, apparently all those other species did not work out. They are incapable of defense from a hairless ape with a big head and hands. Getting rid of dinosaurs and letting mammals develop further was not a good idea. Who planned that one? Maybe after the reset, creatures will be more capable.
Don’t worry Fred, Hillary will fix it all. (Runs off laughing insanely)
“Don’t worry Fred, Hillary will fix it all. (Runs off laughing insanely)”
Amendment due to election results.
Worry Fred, worry a lot!
Will it never end?
HERBIVORY, CLIMATE CHANGE FACTORS MAY SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE BVOC EMISSIONS FROM BOREAL CONIFERS
“Boreal conifer forests are sources of biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions into the atmosphere. Global warming exposes boreal trees to biotic stress caused by insect outbreaks and they are also affected by abiotic climate change factors.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161107112642.htm
Nature fighting back forming ozone that hurts us.
Hi Gone fishing,
No doubt you are aware of this site, but others may not be
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/
The paper covering the details is at
http://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/7/349/2015/essd-7-349-2015.pdf
They attempt to estimate the carbon emissions from forest and peat fires using satellite data, it is included in land use change emissions. On average land use change emissions has been about 1.1 billion tonnes of carbon (Gt C) per year from 2010 to 2014 and 1.4 Gt C per year from 1950 to 2014.
Cumulative land use change emissions from 1750-2014 were 190+/-65 billion tonnes, based on scientific estimates (see page 376 of paper linked above.) I suppose we could put a upper limit of 3000 Gt C on the burning of all trees if we wanted to set a hard boundry, that would be an increase of more than a factor of 10 above the one sigma cumulative estimate for the past 264 years. The RCP scenarios range from 173 to 216 Gt of carbon emissions from 1800-2200 for land use change (RCP4.5 is lowest and RCP2.6 is highest). The 1500 Gt C emission estimate might be a bit pessimistic, over the long term, the trees grow back absorbing some of the carbon from the atmosphere in the process.
Future human action and future natural action will not be the same as historical or current actions.
Tell the trees how easy it is to grow in the deserts and red rock country, or the great savannahs that use to be forest. I am sure they will be consoled.
There was a buck about 100 yards from my front door two mornings ago. I would have been a broadside shot through the lungs and heart. I let him get away for the hunt on another day. Next time, it will be different.
A little gunpowder, a brass jacket, a primer, a projectile, maybe a 243, a pull of the trigger, down goes the deer. It’ll take a few hours to butcher the deer, but there will be something to eat.
You have to eat and rabbit food doesn’t have the nutrients to satisfy the micelles in your muscular system. My arm needs plenty of strength to lift a glass of beer. For the vittles, venison on a plate cooked to perfection.
Forget oil, gunpowder packs a punch.
Be sure to vote for somebody today, I am going to write-in Alfred E. Newman, my first choice.
About the only person qualified for the job.
Why don’t you go for president, you make more sense than a lot of candidates?
I second that.
I expect Clinton to win , but there is a small gnawing doubt in my gut that she might lose. Note that although I have ISSUES with her ethics and past flip flopping record, I have NEVER said Trump would be a better president , or even as good. For the record, I think Trump would be a disaster in the WH.
Let’s go back to my argument a couple of days ago that Trump’s nomination is in very large part the result of political backlash on the part of hard core R party voters. I will amend that argument from saying or implying it is not JUST or ONLY because of backlash against the liberal policies that have been put it place, and the cultural changes that have occurred, over the last few decades, say since the sixties.
But I do contend that WITHOUT the backlash against such policies and changes in the culture, Trump would never have been nominated.
So – liberal politics are a very large and essential part of the EXPLANATION of this backlash, in my opinion.
Let’s not forget that the REPUBLICAN PARTY AS SUCH HATES TRUMP’S GUTS. Nobody, or almost nobody, in the R party establishment, wanted Trump, but as I see things , the party for various reasons, some practical, some selfish, took a crap on the wants and desires on the hard core R party foot soldier voter. The practical reasons boil down to the fact that since elections are mostly won in the middle in this country, the party had the choice of running relatively liberal candidates often referred to as RINO’s, Republicans in name only, or losing the seats, in elections ranging from dog catcher to the WH. The selfish reasons boil down to the basic fact that the R party is more or less controlled by big business interests that are in a position to dictate a substantial part of the party platform.
Now the average liberal I know seems to think the average foot soldier R voter has a brain about the size of a chicken’s , and knows next to nothing about national and world affairs, and is thus easily lead around by the nose by the party. There is a certain amount of truth, quite a bit of truth, in this argument, and no realist who knows doo doo from apple butter about American politics would ever argue otherwise.
But I know lots of such people on a personal basis, and most of them recognize something or a lot about the shortcomings of the R party ‘s positions, and are willing to talk about them, in person with another R party type person. But in public they keep their mouth shut, the same way a hell of a lot of D voters keep their mouth shut about their issues with Clinton. Both R and D party line voters often see their real choice as the lesser of two evils, in whole or in some significant part.
Now since I scribble here, in order to enjoy the conversation, and learn as much as I can, and to discover the blind spots in my own thinking, etc, I am hoping somebody can lay out a rational scenario, taking into account the current day American cultural and economic paradigm, that makes a GOOD case for Trump being the R party nominee, WITHOUT taking into account conservative voter backlash against the social and political changes we have experienced in recent decades.
Don’t forget that MOST people don’t do a whole lot of thinking. If they don’t like you, because you represent values they don’t like, they will vote against you, ignoring other issues. Ditto about voting FOR you of course.
The great thing about this forum is that virtually every regular here is capable of serious thinking, and has a sufficient storehouse of sound data between his ears to work with, and actually USES his head, at least most of the time. This is not to say there are no partisans here, but while they stick tight to their message, ALL the time, indicating partisanship, as I judge the matter, they still muster good sound arguments rather than repeating talking points.
I am also wondering if anybody else here thinks as I do that there is a significant chance that Trump will bolt the R party, where he is a most unwelcome crasher anyway, and take a substantial number of the party foot soldier core with him.
If he does, the consequences are in my opinion pretty much unpredictable, because the remnants of the R party will have to come up with new positions, and there are a lot of relatively conservative D voters who might like the ” NEW AND IMPROVED” R party, since the folks and policies they don’t like will mostly be found henceforth in the Trump camp.
But overall, it seems dead certain, in my opinion at least, barring some very bad
“future history” luck, that this country is headed towards the current day Western European political, social and economic model, which will be good for the country over all and especially good for the less well of people in this country as well.
Demographics alone virtually guarantee it.
Well,
It’s 2049 Mountain Time on Election Eve.
It is starting to look as if the people may elect Supreme Chancellor Trump.
God help us all.
Good evening, and good luck.
FIVE HOTTEST YEARS ON RECORD HAVE OCCURRED SINCE 2011
“This report confirms that the average temperature in 2015 had already reached the 1 degree C mark. We just had the hottest five-year period on record, with 2015 claiming the title of hottest individual year. Even that record is likely to be beaten in 2016.”
“The rise in temperatures is linked directly to the increase in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. In 2015 the WMO says the annual mean concentrations of CO2 were at the symbolically important level of 400 parts per million (ppm), having grown by between 1.9ppm and 2.99ppm between 2011 and 2015.”
“The effects of climate change have been consistently visible on the global scale since the 1980s: rising global temperature, both over land and in the ocean; sea-level rise; and the widespread melting of ice,” said the WMO’s Petteri Taalas.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37900400
400 ppm is not that symbolically important, just a round number (versus square or oblong numbers). Now 666 ppm will be important, because it will get as hot as hell then.
Yeah, but while 666 might be of some importance, to overheated penguins, an oblong number, it ain’t! 🙂
In case anyone is wondering what all the fuss is about…
The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences® (OEIS®)
https://oeis.org/A002378
Oblong (or promic, pronic, or heteromecic) numbers: a(n) = n*(n+1).
.
Those mathematicians must have been bored that day.
Well, mathematicians just happen to be purer than the rest of us mortals.
Purity:
https://xkcd.com/435/
Is everybody here so depressed they are drinking instead of following the election results?
I am afraid it looks as if Trump might win, as of right now.
I TRIED to tell everybody the D’s were making a super major mistake in running Clinton because of her negatives, and that they could have run virtually anybody else with a better chance of winning. Almost other D candidate would be mopping the floor with Trump because of HIS negatives.
Hanging around with too many liberals and reading too many liberal oriented web sites, and cutting back on conservative sites etc, may have caused me to make a fool of myself saying earlier that Clinton would win by a comfortable to large margin.
If the R’s were running anybody but Trump or Cruz, anybody with a little charisma, the R’s would be mopping the floor with Clinton.
The mistake was running Saunders when a centrist candidate was needed. He was too far to the left.
NAOM
Hi Notanoilman,
That is why Clinton won the primary, but in hindsight Bernie would have had a better chance against Trump. Given the choice most of the states that went for Clinton would have elected Sanders, but his chances might have been better in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire. Many were voting against the establishment, Bernie not be considered an establishment candidate. Oh well, interesting times.
You still don’t get it. This is not Dems vs Republicans. The establishment from both parties plus the media is against the Trump ticket. What you are witnessing today is the commoners vs the elite, the screwed vs the parasites, the workers vs the paid. This is a vote against Obama and his inability to reverse the great recession.
Personally I’m torn between feeling good or pity for the majority voters. Since neither Trump or any other possible President/ legislators, has the power to get us out of the energy and thus financial drain the globe is in. Just like Brexit and the Arab Spring, this is a mighty fine display of determination and ‘ a can do attitude’ , but it wont be enough to make a significant difference. IOW who is set into office makes little difference as we come up against the laws of physics, which in this case is the depletion and diminishing rate of the energy derived from fossil fuels.
You talk about the possibility of an economic recession in several years due to peak oil, but refuse to see the economic depression that we are waist deep in already due to the rapidly reducing amount of energy trickling down to the end consumer.
Full disclosure I didn’t see this coming either, after having witnessed Bernie being thrown under the bus by the Clintons and their mafia.
Hi FB,
It looks like Trump has won. I agree that this is about the commoners versus the elite, but I don’t see it as a repudiation of Obama, other than that he is a social / cultural liberal.
This election is mostly about the people having powerful aversion to Clinton, at the gut level. Personally I have never trusted her, from the time I first read about Cattle Gate on, and I am on record as saying that the reason Clinton lost to Obama eight years ago, Obama being virtually unknown on the national stage, is that even then a huge percentage of D voters were desperate for ” anybody BUT Hillary”.
So for the next eight years she worked like a dog to acquire the defacto ownership of the D party machinery, and succeeded brilliantly in this undertaking.
But the younger generation refused to listen to HER supporters claims that her troubles were the result of her enemies.
When I tried to point out that her problems were of her own making, just about every D I talked to on the net told me I was just drinking the GREAT RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY kool aid.
Her arrogance in general, and her thumbing her nose at the spirit if not the letter of security law in particular drove the final nails in her political coffin. Throw in a few million bucks in secret speeches loot, while insisting she was for the little people, etc.
Make it clear at last even to the most idealistic Democrat just how vicious and unprincipled she is , personally , in her pursuit of the WH, as evidenced by the dirty tricks employed against Sanders, at the national party level, in collusion with her personal allies who held nearly all of the key party positions. ETC.
I could go on all day, but even so, I thought she was going to win yesterday morning.
I will go to my grave convinced that just about any other Democrat would have beaten Trump easily.
The Republicans put up a very good trash campaign this time. They usually do but Trump took it a bit higher. Anyone believing the media is a bit naïve. People tend to feed off what they want to hear and that is what happened.
Still, votes are 50:50, so maybe the system is bent too. Actually at current count Hillary has more, but there are still some uncounted votes out there. Probably end up within one million which is one small city determining the vote if it was decided by votes.
Hi GF,
The electoral college system probably ought to be scrapped, but it was put in place originally so that the smaller states would be willing to enter into a political alliance with the larger, far more populous states which could otherwise maybe have taken advantage of the size difference. You know that of course, but some others may not.
Now I am totally with it when it comes to most of the big critical parts of the modern D party platform, such as truly equal status in respect to civil rights, environmental protection, subsidies for renewable energy, affordable health care for EVERYBODY, etc.
So- this may be the only time I ever flat out disagree with you.
Of course the R party and its allies did everything possible by way of throwing mud at Clinton, but that goes both ways, always has, always will. Most of the most damaging coverage of her lapses of judgement, to put it mildly, came from leading msm organizations such as the NYT, the Washington Post, etc, which set the tone for most of the rest of the MSM, excepting talk radio and Fox.
I used to be a card carrying ACLU and union member, with the Operating Engineers. I was a teacher, and a member of the NEA, and I lived and worked and socialized mostly with Democrats for a LONG time, living in a bohemian neighborhood city apartment, hanging around the university, dating Yankee girls who fled Yankee winters, marrying one of them, a Jewish girl from the Big Apple.
So I know D politics and culture from the INSIDE, as well as redneck culture from growing up in it, and coming back to visit here in the hills with my Bible thumping pistol packing native tribe for months every year, and finally moving back here for good.
And I knew ( and still know) lots of very decent people who usually voted D but who wanted anybody but Hillary eight years ago and anybody but Hillary during the just past nomination process.
The Great Right Wing Conspiracy was not responsible for Cattle Gate, which I have NEVER seen defended by ANY person who is mathematically literate in terms of defending the math.
The Great Right Wing Conspiracy was not responsible for opening the eyes of the millions of well educated youngsters who came to realize just how arrogant and power hungry an old machine style politician is.
The Great Right Wing Conspiracy was not responsible for a number of her early close personal business associates spending a great deal of time in the Graybar Hotel. Lawyers are supposed to have better judgement about who they hang out with.
The Great Right Wing Conspiracy is not responsible for her skating on very thin legal ice with her secret email system, which totally pissed off countless people including lots of Democrats with her thumbing her nose at the rules everybody else is expected to obey, etc.
Then of course there are the millions of single issue voters, such as people who happen to believe abortion is murder, who may actually outnumber single issue abortion rights voters, etc.
And then the economy is not doing all that great, which is always a drag on the party with the incumbent prez.
I am sorry and surprised that she lost, not because I voted for her, but because Trump is going to be a loose cannon and Sky Daddy alone knows what sort of foolishness he will get up to. She would have been better for the environment by a mile, and I am a single issue environment voter in recent times, so I voted Green. I was confident she would get Virginia without needing to hold my nose and vote for her myself.
No one particular factor such as the economy, or ethics, or arrogance, or her treatment of the Sanders camp, can explain her loss. But with the results being so close, without any one of those factors working against her, everything else equal, she dead sure would have won.
Trump is worse, but the thing is, it takes a hell of a long time for the truth to finally sink in at the gut level when you don’t want to believe it. The D’s didn’t have time enough for the truth about Trump to sink into the guts of the independents who voted for him.
But the R’s have had decades to make sure the independent voter got a belly full of Clinton.
It’s a Darwinian world. It will continue to orbit the sun, but I fear that within four years there will be a hell of a lot more environmental damage done than if Clinton had won.
Dealing with the coming energy crisis, which is not really here yet as I see things, will be put off four more years.
I can’t see any real bright spots in a Trump presidency.
Hi Mac.
I too am despondent; 60 miles from the USA (where I am currently located) doesn’t seem far enough right now.
As for Fernando and his idea that the Republicans will keep Trump in check, well, I fear the GOP even more than Trump. The idea that people like Chris Christie (who may end up in charge of the transition and get a cabinet post) will act as a moral compass for Trump is laughable.
I also fear 50 million over-armed, under-educated rednecks who will be shocked- shocked, I say- when Trump turns out to be something other than they thought. If they thought Obama was against the little guy and for big money, well –surprise! Trump is big money and is unlikely to change tax structures that made him a billion dollars (minimum.) Even if the manufacturing jobs come back, the unions that made them survivable won’t: it’s going to be fun for people to try and live on $8 an hour with no path upward (assuming that somehow the jobs aren’t taken by automation.)
So: Roe V. Wade goes. Black men continue to get shot. Gay marriage and rights go. Women will find advances rolled back.
But the real work of the GOP- gerrymandering and pandering to the elites (low corporate taxes and breaks for the wealthy, reductions in social welfare transfers) will go on.
It’s the worst of both worlds, really.
I’m also thinking of buying stock in construction firms in southern Arizona, though I think my timing is late.
-Lloyd
You may be right about Hillary, it doesn’t matter anymore. But I have deep concerns about Donald and his Republican Senate.
As soon as anyone gets a fairly clear picture of where the nation is headed and what the vision for the future , please post.
I have already dumped any thought of a fast renewable takeover. Another setback of 4 to 8 years is enough to wreck the train.
So, should we be investing in coal now? Actually, its depressing. Eight years is potentially almost a decade of ongoing otiosity — IOW, a disaster!
It is always more difficult to build than destroy, more difficult to preserve than poison, more difficult to save than lose.
So eight years of backsliding will equate to 15 to 20 years of hard effort to overcome the losses, if ever.
We do not have the time for this. This is the critical decade that will set the stage for the future.
“We do not have the time for this. This is the critical decade that will set the stage for the future.” So true, so sad.
Guys, please watch the video I linked to in my post below this one, “Why Solar PV Power Plants Will Fundamentally Change the Way We Power the Planet”. The main speaker, a CEO of a utility scale, solar PV facility developer, is claiming that fossil fuel plants are being canceled because, the investors do not see any way that they can make money in the face of competition from solar.
The FF lobby are going to have to come up with some pretty neat tricks to stop that snowball from rolling down the hill! Even if they do, that will only affect the US and might benefit the rest of the world as products and developments are steered towards more receptive markets with maybe a slight glut contributing to slightly lower prices for the rest of the world.
Islandboy, that snowball will melt before it rolls very far down the hill. 🙂
“I have already dumped any thought of a fast renewable takeover. “
Well, I dunno. I watched the following video a couple days ago and things seem to be close to the point where un-subsidised renewables, solar PV in particular, are competitive on price with fossil fuels.
Why Solar PV Power Plants Will Fundamentally Change the Way We Power the Planet
The main speaker opens the talk, relating a conversation he had with an executive, about plans for NG plants in Texas being scrapped because the owners foresee that they will not be able to compete with solar. This is in Texas with no incentives worth mentioning. It remains to be seen, what the Koch brothers can come up with to thwart renewables at this stage, without it being obvious to the public that they’re being screwed.
Note that despite huge amounts being spent by “Consumers for Smart Solar”, the political action committee funded by Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy among others, Amendment 1 failed to pass. This is in a state that re-elected Marco Rubio and made a significant contribution to Trump’s victory.
Thanks Islandboy,
That is encouraging. I did notice his projection for renewables is not as fast as my more aggressive energy transition scenario, which assumes all fossil fuels are replaced by 2059. This was based on fast growth at the start in 2016 with a gradual slowdown over time to 8% /year growth after 2030. In that video the coal and oil go away fairly quickly, but natural gas is used until 2080 or so. The first energy transition scenario I did was somewhat slower growth of 7%/year with fossil fuels replaced by 2075. Some complained that was too slow. The slow scenario was about 1050 Pg of total carbon emissions and the aggressive scenario about 940 Pg of carbon emissions. Getting it much lower will be a challenge, maybe it is technically possible, I doubt it is realistic, though this video makes me wonder. Solar in the southwest and wind in the plains, all connected with HVDC to the rest of the nation would seem to be a plan. Hydro and nuclear backup plus a little battery and natural gas backup.
Maybe some solar in other areas as well, but start in the low cost areas first.
Islandboy,
Certainly price will play a part in the renewable energy growth and certain regions or areas will expand due to better conditions.
However the video also explains the critical role that government mandates play in the development of new solar implementation. I know in my state there has been a big push for solar PV mostly due to government mandate to power companies to replace a percentage of their power with renewables combined with subsidies to homeowners to install them. The growth has been fast despite not being the optimum solar region for PV, good but more like the average for the US, not like California.
To remove federal stimulus, federal loans to startups as will probably happen, plus force an non-level playing field tilted toward fossil fuels, will slow the growth of renewable energy and cause many start-ups to fail or even never start.
A renewable energy startup, battery builder, EV builder is taking a huge chance as it is. Since the technology is in flux, next year might see a cheaper, better technology developed elsewhere that wipes that startup out.
Without government mandates, general government support, it’s wild west city with the bad guys coming into town to mess with you and take over if possible.
Harold Hamm as Energy Secretary.
What else do you need to know?
-Lloyd
PS. I’m also looking forward to the show trial of Hillary Clinton. President Obama should do a Gerry Ford and pardon her for any crimes she may have committed.
Then he should pardon Snowden.
And fire Comey…though I doubt that would last.
-L
I have already dumped any thought of a fast renewable takeover.
I don’t see the forces of darkness being able to hold things back all that much!
Renewables already make economic sense on their own, I see them taking over quickly despite any deliberate resistance deployed against them.
There’s a reason there are wind farms in the heart of Texas and it isn’t because of Obama, it’s because it makes Texans money… 🙂
Hi Fred,
I like your dose of optimism (some might call it Pollyannaish, but I need a dose of sunshine, so it’s good for me).
After last night, I am tending to agree with Gone fishing and Doug Leighton this morning.
Things look pretty bleak to me.
Dennis, for a dose of sunshine, watch the video I linked to above, “Why Solar PV Power Plants Will Fundamentally Change the Way We Power the Planet”. It basically makes the point Fred is making, with some numbers to back it up.
Dennis,
After last night, I am tending to agree with Gone fishing and Doug Leighton this morning.
Uh Oh! Compared to that statement, Trump becoming the 45th president of the US wasn’t even an extraordinary political event!
Now I’m really beginning to wonder if the law of gravity is truly just an illusion.
🙂
Roads? where we’re going we don’t need roads…
Yeah I guess I was not happy with the election result, if it was Romney or Bush it would be ok, I haven’t felt like this since Reagan was elected and I thought the World would end. That turned out ok, but Trump seems far worse than Reagan. Reagan would be considered a RINO by many Republicans based on his policies.
Fred, if we were just dealing with depletion of fossil fuels and not a series of major problems all at once, it would not be a big deal to slow growth of renewables temporarily. I didn’t say stop, just slow. With all the problems (predicaments) going on at once it is mandatory to grow and accelerate the growth of renewables over the next few decades. Loss of momentum now can have debilitating results when the forces of global warming, fossil fuel depletion, food and water depletion, etc. all start coming together. We may not have the ability to push forward if we wait too long. Thing might just go down to fast, and then it’s into the long dark night.
This is the critical period to make a peaceful and strong transisition, we have waited too long now to slow down.
The US could become a 2nd or 3rd world nation while others push strongly ahead due to better focus and leadership. We will take others down with us too.
Hi Gone fishing,
I agree 100%. I was not aware the solar projects had become competitive with only the federal investment tax credit, that is a positive sign, but I agree that it will not be enough.
We can hope that Trump was lying to get elected and that he really believes in climate change, or that he will see the expansion of renewable energy as a business opportunity. Harold Hamm as Energy Secretary suggests that is unlikely.
Maybe oil prices will rise, that will help a bit, again not really enough.
Grasping at straws…
It does not look good.
GF,
You said:
The US could become a 2nd or 3rd world nation while others push strongly ahead due to better focus and leadership. We will take others down with us too.
Yeah, the US citizens that voted for Trump did so because they already live in 2nd and 3rd world conditions…
Let me be clear, though I’ve tried to make a few upbeat comments about renewables, I’m still a hardcore realist and realize that a Trump presidency could absolutely be the nudge that sends us and the rest of humanity spiraling down a road to a hellish future.
Antarctic ice shelves don’t care what Trump or the GOP think and sea level rise is going to get Trump’s resorts in Miami probably sooner than later.
Despite the schadenfreude, it will not help any of us.
In any case, his rhetoric regarding the Paris Climate Talks and saying he will pull the US out, there is a whole world outside of the US and not everyone is completely insane…
Should be an interesting 4 years!
Yes Fred, the ROW is not all insane. Europe is way ahead of us in energy conservation, China will follow, India next and probably a long list of countries. They all believe in global warming and can see fossil energy has limits.
Makes the US look like 1890’s coal mine owners.
Just when we were making progress. Going to be flushed and you know who will keep pulling the handle.
Well, forget about any climate projection under 3C. 8C here we come. If the USA does not change, other countries, such as India, will not. We are done.
NAOM
Well, to be fair, the one bright spot was that Amendment 1 was defeated in Florida.
http://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2016/11/solar-amendment-1-results-107202
Cheers!
Hi Fred,
As a non-American and almost non-political person one thing your new president said especially worries me: “Regulations have grown into a massive job-killing industry. The regulation industry is one business I will absolutely put an end to on day one,” (Trump said in September). Apparently he also said he would cancel of all payments to UN climate change programs. Of course political candidates always say stuff that never materializes but the tone is not exactly comforting. BTW what is Amendment 1?
Doug, Amendment 1 was an effort to amend the constitution of the state of Florida to ensure that third part ownership of solar generating facilities would remain illegal. This status has prevented outfits like the Elon Musk (Tesla Motors) affiliated, Solar City from bringing their “no money down”, lease to own, model of deployment to Florida.
See”
Updated: Florida Supreme Court won’t take solar Amendment 1 off ballot
and
Florida solar Amendment 1, Washington carbon tax amendment struck down in election
For “the sunshine state” one of the remarkable things about Florida is the almost complete lack of solar (thermal or PV) in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area, very noticeable when approaching any of the regional airports. Not a panel in sight!
Hey Doug,
You asked: BTW what is Amendment 1?
The link I provided explains it and includes a link to the text of the actual amendment. Though reading it is a headache inducing mumbo jumbo of legalese.
In a nutshell, it is: A utility-backed solar amendment to the state constitution was defeated by voters after a rough-and-tumble campaign that saw environmental groups fiercely oppose the measure.
Amendment 1 would provide for state and local regulation of solar power while prohibiting those without solar from subsidizing those who produce it. Opponents said the measure was misleading and would discourage development of solar.
Nothing I have ever heard Trump say is what I would define as comforting 🙂
Yeah, he could do a lot of serious damage being the loose cannon that he is. Though to be frank, until construction starts on THE wall with Mexico actually footing the bill, I’ll take everything he has said during the campaign, with more than a few grains of NaCl…
Cheers!
islandboy & Fred: thanks.
“I’ll take everything he has said during the campaign, with more than a few grains of NaCl…” I think (expect and hope) this is correct. Why would Senate & House go along with madcap schemes? That said, I’d bet oil drilling will now be allowed in formerly prohibited areas of Alaska, etc.
I’m curious to see what’s gonna happen when Koch brothers puppets like Mitch McConnel and James Inhoffe start to introduce legislation to open the legs of the US so that the Kochs can just slide right in! Wonder how long it’s gonna take for them to get started and if “the Donald” is going to realize that his angry, working class, male constituents are going to be the losers in the long run?
It actually won – But not enough Yes votes for a Constitution amendment. Congratulations to the Citizens of Nevada
http://www.lasvegasnow.com/news/nevada-approves-measure-to-break-up-nv-energys-monopoly
Been thinking, today. It didn’t gel before but this reminds me of something. KGB playbook 101.
Get a sympathetic, controllable leader into a country then start pulling the puppet chains. Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine etc. This is so standard a Russian method of gaining control of another country.
NAOM
The basket of deplorables showed up at the polls to vote. The deplorables were sure not to vote for the person who dubbed them deplorables.
The Affordable Care Act belongs to the Democrats and especially Hillary. Americans have had it up to here with the everything about it, fed up.
It should be evident that is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
People didn’t vote for Trump, they voted against Hillary, they just don’t like her, end of discussion. Trump was the only choice to keep Hillary from becoming POTUS. Americans didn’t want her there, at all.
Purdy much the story.
Welcome to New Russia.
Sarah Palin announced to be the Minister Of Information (Control)
In Soviet Russia, information searches for you. 🙂
Ocare didn’t get nearly as much play as I thought it would, because outrage burns out fairly fast, and so it was mostly burned down as an issue, compared to if it had been put in last year.
But I have talked to a number of people personally who used to vote D who voted R because they were hit with a major new bill in the mid four figures for something they didn’t want, and lots of people who believe they can’t get moved to full time on their current part time jobs because of OCare.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
Yes people hate to have to pay their way. The free ride is much cheaper. We can roll back the ACA and go back to the good old days where people with no health care insurance got their medical care in emergency rooms. A recipe for very high health care costs subsidzed by those with health insurance (who would pay higher premiums) and the government (which would pay more for medicare and Medicaid reimbursement.
When the bill was passed a government health insurance option should have been part of the bill.
We can try again in 2050 or maybe 2150.
Hi Dennis,
I am sure you are aware that I consistently advocate that we adopt a health care system modeled on the ones currently in place in countries such as the UK, Germany, France, etc.
The D’s hearts were in the right place, mainly, but they went for incremental change that seems to have done very little or nothing to actually lower costs, except for the people who get a big subsidy, at the expense of people who are paying a high premium.
My personal opinion is that this approach backfired politically, helping the R’s win.
It seems some what strange to me that nobody here agrees with me about the realities ( in my opinion at least, realities ) of political backlash.
I pointed out out several times here that everybody should be careful about what they wish for, because they may get it. And whatever you get politically virtually always has strings, or grenades, attached.
But the responses, such as they were, indicate that the consensus view here seems to be that by advocating slower change, I was or am advocating no change at all.
Well, we got extraordinarily fast social and cultural change, and the strings and grenades attached are reality now, in the form of Trump and the R party all the way.
Maybe now I will get a little grudging credit as having some insight into the big picture, in terms of politics. Moving slower culturally might have been the safer and surer path, long term, was my argument. I think maybe events have proven me correct in that respect.
So far the hard core D’s I know are in shock, and not yet ready to consider that Trump won because Clinton was an incredibly flawed candidate. They are mostly insisting that Trump won because the media and the establishment was on his side.
Sometime back I said here that the D party would learn a hell of a lesson about running a candidate with crippling negatives if the R’s win, and likewise the R’s would have learned a similar lesson about crapping on the party foot soldiers wants and desires while catering to the party fat cats, if Trump were to lose the election to Clinton….. because Trump GOT the nomination mostly because the R party establishment was in the habit of crapping on the R party foot soldier core.
Talk radio and Fox were on his side, and some business type sites,likewise, but by and large the media were on Clinton’s side, and mostly portrayed the R party as backward, corrupt, sleazy, etc, compared to the D party.
I listen to NPR anytime I am on the road, and sometimes in the house, and I never heard a single full minute even once that didn’t sound slanted, either obviously or subtly, towards Clinton, of political commentary, except from the occasional token conservative guest.
I read the Atlantic, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the NYT, the LA Times, etc, for an hour or two most days, and three or four conservative publications such as the National Review, which have relatively minuscule circulations a couple of hours a week.
Maybe I am the dingaling, but in my estimation, anybody who thinks the establishment media, taken all around, were on Trumps side is hopelessly naive or grasping at straws and suffering from denial.
I am not sure if you are sarcastic or serious in saying 2050, but I think the D’s will be back in power a hell of a lot sooner than that, maybe as soon as 2024.
I have obviously been “ahead of my time” in saying the demographic and cultural factors are all lined up for the Democrats and liberals, but that doesn’t mean I am a CENTURY ahead of my time as a political prophet, lol.
We have ample reason to think that economic times will remain tough, over the next couple of election cycles, and that they will likely to continue to get even tougher, after that, due to natural resource problems, the scary international situation, the very real problem with the social safety net expanding faster than our ability to pay for it, with fewer kids, and more old folks, etc.
Tough times mean the out party has a big advantage in presidential election years. I don’t see the R party doing much if anything at all to fix most of our economic problems, except maybe for the one per center class.
If the economy had been just a little better, Clinton would have won. If she had sounded just a little less arrogant and entitled, she might have won. I am still having a hard time coming to grips with Trump winning, given that I was sure Clinton had it in the bag a few days back.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
What change do you propose? The AFA was slow change. The thing that few realize is that without the AFA health insurance would likely have been more expensive rather than less expensive. A government option was a no brainer to keep costs down, essentially it would be medicare for everyone, but those under 65 would have to pay, if they chose it over private insurance. If the private insurers are as efficient as they claim they should be able to provide the insurance at the same or lower cost and still be profitable. If we are too worried about political backlash then there would be no progress, no voting for women or African Americans, not a World I would care to live in. We took many steps backwards during the Reagan revolution, unfortunately young people decided to volte for third party candidates or stay home, I can’t imagine many of them voted for Trump, but who knows, usually young people tend to be a little more liberal and a little less fearful than middle aged white men.
On the 2050, that was a ballpark estimate, Clinton tried in 1994 or so and failed, it had to wait another 15 years and with this set back I figure another 30 years or so in my current pessimistic mood, or maybe 130 years because I usually am too optimistic. 🙂
Dennis is right. Government is supposed to protect it’s citizens and help with large problems that business and society have not solved given such large amounts of time.
The business of government should not be to harm the citizenry, nor should it be focused to help narrow special interests such as big business and big money.
The trickle down theory does not work well in a business paradigm that prefers to invest in automation or move things overseas and keep most of the money locked up, circulating within business enterprises. A huge portion of the citizenry gets ostracized economically and politically. Probably why Donald is is coming into power now, they think he is a solution.
If they are not helping the people and getting the ecomomic monster that is the medical system under control (as well as others) then much harm occurs.
Do You Know Where You’re Going To
Donald J. Trump:
” If there is a crisis then the government will step in as in WW2 and much can be accomplished when the country works together with a purpose.” ~ Dennis Coyne
Hey Caelan,
Think Different!
Come join the fun!
https://www.thinkdif.co/schedule
There has to be something in there that might interest even you.
Who cares about Depublicans and Remocrats, they’re pretty much irrelevant.
😉
‘u^
Sure, Fred. I’ll check it out later after some ongoing work on Permaea, thanks.
Permaeans will regardless probably be leveraging many aspects of that kind of thing within their ethical and ecological framework, and along their evolutionary frontiers and outposts of survival & thriving… Perhaps it’s worth noting, FWIW, that, ostensibly, Denisovans, Neanderthals, and who knows who or what else, got admixed and/or died out.
LOL!
If you can get past your prejudices and knee jerk reactions to the fact that the messenger happens to be Fred Magyar, at the very least listen to the opening presentation. Yeah, it’s almost 2 hrs long…
And don’t get too hung up on the Robert Scoble talking about technology for mixed VR with reality. Maybe skip past that to listen more carefully to Nikki Silvestri and Paul Mason.
https://www.thinkdif.co/headliners/dif-live-launch
Cheers!
I just wrote that I would check it out later. If you can get past your own, you will notice. ;D
Hi Caelan,
Yes, definitely should have been “might” rather than “will”. Maybe the country will pull together when the crisis becomes apparent, that is what has happened in the past, though the future may be very different. Is Canada going to build a wall? Probably wouldn’t get the US to pay, but it might be a good investment. 🙂
Hi Dennis,
I am hearing the word, ‘secession’ more often these days…
It’s possible that new geopolitical ‘walls’ may go up within your own neck of the woods.
Good work on the image-sizing by the way, if you have anything to do with it.
Another perspective:
US ELECTION RESULT: EUROPEANS STUNNED BY DEAFENING TRUMP ROAR
“Key EU nations France, Germany and the Netherlands are steaming towards elections next year with increasing numbers of voters biting at the bit to give what they believe to be a self-serving elite – and their attack dogs: market capitalism, multiculturalism and globalisation – a good kicking…. By far and away the most effusive European reaction to the US elections came from the jubilant leaders of populist anti-establishment parties from Budapest, to Berlin, Vienna and beyond.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37925716
I wonder why:
AUSTRALIA INVESTORS VENT ANGER OVER EXECUTIVE PAY
“Investors’ focus on executive pay has increased since the financial crisis in 2008 and is a hot topic in the UK, where Prime Minister Theresa May is attempting to close an “unhealthy” and “irrational” gap between what companies pay their workers and their executives.”
https://www.ft.com/content/21ac7cf4-a619-11e6-8b69-02899e8bd9d1
More Wednesday morning joy:
TRUMP ‘THREAT’ TO DOMINATE UN CLIMATE NEGOTIATIONS
“Some 20,000 participants are meeting in Marrakech for two weeks, starting on Monday, to agree new rules to limit warming on the planet.These plans were boosted when the Paris Climate Agreement came into force last week. However Mr Trump, who calls climate change a “hoax”, has vowed to cancel the deal if elected… The ice caps don’t negotiate, and neither do rising seas. Donald Trump’s moral failure to acknowledge the climate crisis might very well mean planetary disaster if he is elected.” Oops!
“While negotiators await the outcome of the US election, there are several other factors that might also slow progress in these talks. One key element that might hold things up is the fact that so far only 100 have ratified the Paris agreement. There is a concern that it would be unfair if these early adopters had the chance to set the future rules under which all countries would have to operate.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37888317
I am assuming that soon only personal and private group action will be left for us. Even that will hit heavy headwinds in the near future.
Not changing my personal plans, might even spur me to go further.
What this election showed was that when adding the fringe element to the Republican vote, it barely made 50 percent. Still, a lot of change can happen in four years and Donald promised change, lots of change.
GF, you might find this interesting:
NEW THEORY OF GRAVITY MIGHT EXPLAIN DARK MATTER
http://astronomynow.com/2016/11/08/new-theory-of-gravity-might-explain-dark-matter/
When observations do not fit accepted laws, the observations are being misinterpreted or are incomplete.
Puzzle me this, if dark matter does not interact with normal matter, how does it produce a one way gravitational field? Essentially a tractor beam, since it does not get pulled toward the galaxy as Newton’s laws would necessitate of normal matter? Does the tractor beam work in all directions or only toward normal matter?
And why only around galaxies, why not everywhere? Why a sphere if it does not interact with matter? What makes it form a sphere surrounding the galaxy.
Now informational space.
“Using insights from string theory, black hole physics and quantum information theory we argue that the positive dark energy leads to a thermal volume law contribution to the entropy that overtakes the area law precisely at the cosmological horizon. Due to the competition between area and volume law entanglement the microscopic de Sitter states do not thermalise at sub-Hubble scales: they exhibit memory effects in the form of an entropy displacement caused by matter. ”
Yikes. If the language is not understandable then how is one to interpret the meaning?
Why can’t large mass distributions such as galaxies affect space so that gravity does not have a uniform Newtonian relationship as we see in our nearby space? Or maybe we just are not seeing all the normal mass that is really there? Or both.
What if gravity is just not a simple r-squared law? How about that?
We probably just need a new equation of gravity where G is not a constant.
Hi Gone fishing,
What do you mean, you can’t change the gravitational contstant? Q does it all the time, just for kicks. 🙂
It was tough for mere mortals to get his sense of humor.
Probably have to make the exponent variable too.
I’ve just finished looking through state by state election results for yesterday’s presidential election at the URL; https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&q=us+election+2016. This page allows you to look at the results for each state which then shows you a map of the state with the counties that voted Republican in red and those that voted Democrat in blue.
The difference between the political leanings of rural versus urban America are extremely striking. Even in staunchly red states like Texas there are areas that vote Democrat and these areas are all urban with the exception of some counties close to the Mexican border. I assume that those areas adjacent be to the Mexican border have large immigrant populations that are scared of Trump. Even in the solidly Democrat state of California, the more rural northern California counties voted for Trump. Similarly Washington state and Oregon had the cities voting for Clinton and the rural areas voting for Trump.
I’m curious about the factors that make rural folk so staunchly against the Democrats that they can vote for a guy who is caught on tape saying “When you’re famous you can do anything. You can grab em by the pussy”. Conversely what is it that makes urban folk able to forgive the transgressions of Hillary Clinton?
“1. Corprocracy. The Dems need to decide whether they are a party of the people or the corporations. Clinton’s campaign coffers were filled by Corporate America. Bernie Sanders ran a campaign that rejected corporate financing. WikiLeaks made it clear that Clinton’s victory in the Democratic primaries over Sanders was engineered through electoral chicanery. The Dems wound up alienating progressives within the party. It will never be known for certain if Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump, but Sanders would not have fared worse than what Hillary Clinton did.
2. Anti-war. Hillary Clinton is a hawk. She is the American politician predominantly responsible for the debacle, the war crime, behind the destruction of Libya. She has been linked to the support of terrorists. She announced she would declare a no-fly zone over Syria, despite putting the US on a potential war footing against Russia. Yet Americans had made clear to Obama that they didn’t want to be involved in more militarism in Syria. Trump comes across as less militaristic. He is the candidate that talked of getting host countries to pay more for America’s overseas military bases.
3. Diplomacy. Hillary Clinton likened Russian president Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler. She engaged in saber rattling with Russia. Trump says he’ll talk to Russia and talk to China. Bombastic as Trump can seem to be, he can also strike a tone to powerful nations that is more conciliatory than that of Clinton.
4. Jobs. When Trump came out against offshoring of American jobs he resonated with American workers. Trump came out against the corporate-coveted Trans Pacific Partnership, which Clinton initially was for until she put her finger up in the political winds and pulled a volte-face. To her credit, Clinton did call for a $12 federal minimum wage which was more than the measly $10 federal minimum wage Donald Trump supports.
5. Anti-establishmentarianism. Bernie Sanders was a self-declared democratic socialist contending the Democratic Party primaries. This caused considerable consternation for the corporatists among the Dems. Trump was also an outsider, so much so that he was shunned by the elitists within the Republican Party: the Bushes, Paul Ryan, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and not one of the Fortune 100 CEOs supported Trump.
6. Anti-corruption. The government and its myriad spy networks that vacuum up information, public and private, on the citizenry can also be the bane of government officials, as Hillary Clinton and her team have found out. Her use of a non-government server for classified emails has cast Clinton, at best, as reckless and, at worst, criminal. The pay-to-play Clinton Foundation also came under intense scrutiny. It smelled bad. Judging by the response from the revelation of all these shenanigans, one can surmise that WikiLeaks did indeed have some effect on the election.
7. Personality politics. Trump had no need to resort to flinging mud at Hillary Clinton as she was mired knee-deep in her own muck. But she did not hesitate to dig up dirt to smear Trump with. For many people it came across as distraction. Her platform was not inspiring enough people to enter or stay in the Clinton camp, so she sought to scare people out of the Trump tent.
8. Scapegoating. In order to dig herself out from her own muck, Clinton did not deny the substance of what was revealed about her (how could she? They were her own emails); instead she sought to blame the messenger who she identified as Russia. The problem is that the messengers were not Russians but rather Washington insiders.
9. Polls. The polls that the media reports can not be trusted. Polling results depend on the questions being asked, how the questions are asked, who is asking the question, and who is being asked the question. If you mess with the mechanics of polls, then screwed-up poll results should be expected.
10. Media. The corporate media was heavily skewed against the man, Donald Trump, that they maligned. Trump was not the preferred establishment candidate, and the media made this known. This is one plausible explanation for media reporting of unreliable polls that elevated Clinton over Trump.
11. Mandate. Many are calling it a landslide. Trump and the Republicans have claimed all three departments of government. Despite this can Trump claim a mandate? Voters perceived this election as a choice between two unattractive right-wing candidates. Clinton was exceedingly unpopular and Trump maybe more so. If the election is mainly the result of people voting to prevent Clinton from getting into the Oval Office, then this should not be interpreted as a mandate for Trump’s platform.”
Duncan,
“1. Corprocracy. The Dems need to decide whether they are a party of the people or the corporations.
But!, but!, but!…. I thought The Corporations, WERE people, no?!
Otherwise you raise some good points.
Cheers!
Thanks Duncan, but maybe I should have been more explicit. What I want to understand is why rural folk tend to vote Republican while city folk tend to vote Democrat? It is the clear cut difference between urban and rural folk that exists in all but Hawaii, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and West Virginia I’m curious about.
If you look at all the other states, the rural counties are solidly red and in most cases, any blue counties that exist are in or close to major cities. Why is it that there are not more rural counties that vote Democrat or urban counties that vote Republican?
I kinda get why Hillary lost (Trump didn’t really “win”) and I get that a wide swath of voters are fed up with politicians that claim they want to represent the voters but end up representing some corporate master or the other. I get that Trump’s supporters think that he is rich enough to be able to refuse political contributions and can do whatever the heck he wants to do. I get most of Duncan’s laundry list but what I don’t get is why are there so many rural counties that vote Republican and so few urban counties that vote Republican?
islandboy.
I live in a rural area. This has been gradually coming, yet nobody in the media saw it, in fact they are still not highlighting it enough.
My home county has leaned Republican since WW2.
In my home county in 2008, which is 97% white, Obama received 44%.
In 2012 Obama received 33% of the vote.
In this election Clinton only received 23%.
There are several counties within one hour of me where Clinton received in the teens, including one at 13% and another at 12%.
Trump’s win absolutely is the result of a rural landslide. Yet, even though it is obvious, I haven’t heard the media discussing this as much as they should. It is the primary reason he will be President.
My guesses as to the reasons this has occurred:
Guns.
Social issues.
Fossil fuel issues. (Most who work in industry are rural.)
Media ignores/looks down on rural areas.
Feeling that governments financially short change rural areas.
Rural areas experiencing brain drain, falling populations, lower paying jobs.
Rural demographics (older, whiter).
I am not advocating for Trump, nor saying rural people are correct on these issues, just trying to answer your question.
Women here supported Trump big time, really a head scratcher.
Islandboy,
Do you read John Michael Greer’s “Archdruid Report”? His post this evening touches on the subject you’re asking about, though he doesn’t really go into detail about the why’s.
Stan
Duncan, did you author that?
If not, can you please cite your source when quoting?
Islandboy, the rural areas want some money too and want to be included more in society. Not saying this is the way to do it, but they are looking at the bottom dollar and want some change. Rural areas are parasitized by cities, provide all or most of the food, water, materials and energy to the cities, yet are not well paid or represented.
Hi Gone fishing,
Aren’t there agricultural subsidies from the government that flow to rural areas, support for education, student loans, medicare, subsidies for the petroleum industry including master limited partnerships which allow reduced taxes (I believe this is only allowed in the petroleum industry)?
On a per capita basis it is not clear that less money flows to rural areas.
I thought the main complaint in rural areas is that they wanted the government out of their lives, except perhaps when it comes to personal decisions about whether to continue a pregnancy, then the government should decide, or that seems to be the opinion of Trump who would like to see Roe v Wade overturned.
Hi Island Boy,
I will have more to say in a long comment later, but Trump got away with saying that sort of thing because that sort of thing really only matters in certain political circles where you have to toe the line on insulting ANYBODY, excepting southerners in general, white southerners in particular, and white southern males specifically. You actually get bonus points for insulting white southern males if you are in rarefied liberal circles,double bonus if you mention Jesus, or God, etc even such circles as this very forum. My sarcasm light is flashing, but irregularly, it doesn’t know if it ought to be bright or dim.
In actuality, most of us yankees, southern variety included, are used to hearing this sort of stuff, and are not much bothered by it anymore. Have you listened to popular music, watched American tv, etc, in recent times?
And men DO talk locker room shit, even preachers do it sometimes, I have heard it personally. But you have to be part of the inner circle to hear it.
But here’s the kicker. The folks who voted for Trump said what’s fair for the goose is fair for the gander. One woman I talked to put it this way, HILL stood by Bill, which is to her way of thinking, the same thing as doing it, and Bill without any doubt in MY mind had his way with a number of women, although most liberals will go to their graves convinced all the women who said so were trash who were paid for so saying.
If you drive the getaway car, and your husband robs the bank………. as she puts it, you aren’t any better than he is, and Trump is no worse.
To a Trump voter, it’s a wash.
The vast majority of women I have spoken with about Clinton and Trump, who voted for Trump, have near zero respect for Hill as a person, for putting up with him. They see her as a gold digger, who stuck around for the gold, both literal and political.
Women, they say, aren’t supposed to put up with that sort of thing anymore, which is a very LIBERAL sort of thing to say of course, coming from older southern women. The women who do believe in her gave her a pass on this matter, some of them seeing it simply as a matter of playing hard ball for all the marbles, no holds barred, no rules except WIN. I can respect that pov, no problem at all. I understand and respect BOTH points of view.
The young women I met at Sanders affairs mostly stayed home. They would NEVER vote for Trump, but the shit she threw at Sanders alienated them to the point most of them wouldn’t vote for her either.
Well, she did manage to get the literal gold, with her nuclear family now controlling a quarter billion dollar foundation, not to mention ten million or so in speaking fees alone, and she got within a whisker of moving back into the WH.
Hi Old Farmer Mac,
A sensible young woman would be concerned about the Supreme court appointments made by Trump. Unless your definition of “young woman” is just younger than you. You might consider women of childbearing age to be “girls”. Aren’t some of these women concerned about the rights of their daughters?
Hi Dennis,
This is well worth adding a little nuance. I will copy it to the new thread as well as reply here.
It is a habit that I often refer to both men and women as boys and girls or girls and guys etc. It’s local idiom, and not derogatory in intent.
The Sanders camp women are in my personal experience are in favor of liberally interpreted personal rights including abortion, with a few exceptions, I have no idea how many as a percentage, but probably it’s a very small percentage of anti abortion advocates.
Now here is something that the typical average liberal who strongly supports abortion just can’t get his head around.
Older rural women, and a substantial percentage of urban females believe in their hearts that abortion is murder.
Given that my two surviving sisters are one percenters, and one of the two is a professor in nursing school, and specializes in the care of premature infants, and routinely has a hand in saving the lives of some so small and poorly developed that they were SURE to die as little as ten years ago, I can understand the “murder ” point of view easily enough. It is worth noting that despite what she does otj, she is an abortion rights advocate, but she is opposed personally to any past about four months or so, losing sleep over them. ( Not that she can do any thing for a four month preemie.)
Go smoke a little good dope, or drop some acid, or just free yourself from your mindset, and let your intellect roam free, and consider this.
You are in jail, the womb, thru no fault of your own, and condemned to die, day after tomorrow, by way of being aborted. But if for some reason your mother to be goes into labor, and you are born, and extremely lucky, there is at least a slight possibility that you LIVE.
It really is arbitrary as hell saying you are not a human being because you have not yet breathed freely in open air.
Having said all this, I am personally in favor of women having the right to decide for themselves, although it bothers me at the personal level.
Now as far as older rural women go, if they hold to the more stereotypical conservative viewpoint, they don’t expect their daughters to need abortions only rarely.
There is a trade off they make, in considering that issue, along with the many others involved in the rural urban divide. So they can be for ” reproductive freedom” while coming down on the Trump side of the political divide in the voting booth.
For what it is worth, I personally think the media has a super strong vested interest in whipping up outrage , and that while Trump is dangerous, he is not apt to run as wild as the media proposes. Consider the thousand headlines about the stock market crashing, versus the dozen about it bouncing right back, etc.
I don’t think he will actively push some policies that would be strongly detrimental to his longer term interests.
Politicians playing to their core constituencies exaggerate when campaigning, and back off if elected, so as to make fewer enemies. He won’t lose more than a tiny handful of one issue right to life voters by doing so, but he will avoid alienating millions of younger, better educated women to an even greater extent than he has already.
But given that he is such an incredibly loose cannon,I will not make a firm prediction about ANYTHING he might do, except gut environmental protection laws, if he can, change tax law in favor of the rich, etc, if he can.
So it’s not hopeless but it sure would have felt (a bit) better with a different election result.
RECORD HOT YEAR MAY BE THE NEW NORMAL BY 2025
“That means the record hot summer of 2013 in Australia — when we saw temperatures approaching 50°C in parts of Australia, bushfires striking the Blue Mountains in October, major impacts to our health and infrastructure and a summer that was so hot it became known as the “angry summer” — could be just another average summer season by 2035.
“But if we reduce emissions drastically to the lowest pathway recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (RCP2.8), then we will never enter a new normal state for extreme seasons at a regional level in the 21st Century.”
“Based on a specific starting point, we determined a new normal occurred when at least half of the years following a record year were cooler and half warmer. Only then can a new normal state be declared,” she said.
“It gives us hope to know that if we act quickly to reduce greenhouse gases, seasonal extremes might never enter a new normal state in the 21st Century at regional levels for the Southern Hemisphere summer and Northern Hemisphere winter,” Dr Lewis said.
“But if we don’t act quickly Australia’s “angry summer” of 2013 may soon be regarded as mild. Imagine for a moment, if a summer season like 2013 became average. The likely impacts of an extremely hot year in 2035 would beyond anything our society has experienced.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161109114726.htm
Instead of mining coal and having the Chinese burn it for money, maybe they should be mining Antarctica and bring ice to the deserts to cool and hydrate them. Forest growth in an area can induce a rain cycle.
The acting quickly would mean curtailing coal mining activity and fossil fuel extraction everywhere.
Does anyone here think that will happen quickly?
WMO sees a world where climate change is accelerating fast and approaching irreversible impacts.
http://mashable.com/2016/11/08/un-climate-report-warmest-five-years/#fySqrjOj9Eq3
Maybe you should forward the link to Donald (and Javier)?
I can waste my time in more fun ways.
The climate is changing? Really?! I wonder What could possibly cause something like that?
BTW, if you want to waste some time I invite one and all to explore some of the talks and topics here.
https://www.thinkdif.co/
The conversations are a bit more interesting than the what we all just witnessed during the recent presidential elections. Plus a good part of the crowd there seems to be a lot less grey than most of us here and there are more ladies too. So you can get a better perspective of what young people around the world are thinking and doing.
I thought this was an interesting session:
https://www.thinkdif.co/open-mic/programmable-soft-materials
…This session will explore the emergence of complexity in living and non-living systems. Dr Melik Demirel’s research is at the interface of life, materials and computational sciences. From gene regulation to biological circuits, biology offers us complex systems to study. In particular, he is working on protein self-assembly. Proteins are polymers that provide a variety of building blocks for designing biological materials. Structural proteins are key to the creation of many new, high strength materials. His team has developed a method for production of structural protein using industrial biotechnology. More recent work has focused on unique property of self-healing in proteins. Self-healing structural proteins provide not only high strength polymeric materials but also will help the discovery of novel properties for clinical applications such as orthopedic devices for repair, and biodegradable gels for wound healing in the near future.
While a mind might be a terrible thing to waste, wasting a little time now and then is ok, plus I find it a nice antidote to all the doom and gloom in the world!
Cheers!
OK so what about the possibility we wind up determining there’s more pro instead of con about the globe warming? Could that article be nothing more than just the same old same old gloom and doom from the global bureaucrats?
Anyway under the forthcoming Trump Administration it’d be of greatest public benefit to set the official government position on the matter that global warming cannot be definitively proven as man made. All these government agencies studying the climate need to be made aware the sun and solar eruptions are the primary influences of climate and heat processes here on earth.
Hi George,
The solar influence is pretty minor, insolation changes a bit due to Milankovitch effects and the solar cycle, but the sunspot stuff is not convincing to most scientists as an important driver of climate change. Changes in atmospheric CO2 are well correlated with global temperature changes (30 year average temperatures especially) though clearly there is some natural variability due to the solar cycle (relatively minor), Milankovitch cycles (over very long 100,000 year cycles affecting glacial-interglacial cycles), volcanoes, and atmospheric and oceanic cycles (probably driven in part by the lunar cycle).
Chart below shows centered 20 year global average temperatures vs natural log of atmospheric CO2 from 1900 to 2003. R squared is 0.92.
I am sure they will declare non- manmade despite all evidence to the contrary. Evidence and reality has nothing to do with it. Keeping certain corporations working and happy is what it is all about. Otherwise the campaign contributions stop.
Anyway under the forthcoming Trump Administration it’d be of greatest public benefit to set the official government position on the matter that global warming cannot be definitively proven as man made.
Yeah, and while we’re at it, let’s set the official government position on all matters of science, we can start with the laws of gravity, or maybe thermodynamics. Let’s just abolish those first. Then we can tackle the Theory of Evolution…, Big Bang, General Theory of Relativity, Round Earth Theory, etc… etc…
Hey, maybe we can even bring back Lysenkoism, of course we could rename it Trumpoism.
Guess what George, climate change can and has been proven to be caused by CO2 emissions due to fossil fuels burned by humans. And that is just the tip of the iceberg, no pun intended!
BTW, I forgot to ask, did you graduate from Trump University?
South of the border they are bracing for hard times.
“His victory stunned, saddened and worried Mexicans, forcing the country’s highest government officials Wednesday morning to call for calm and pledge to work with the United States. The wave of national anxiety sent financial markets here into turmoil as a new, uncertain era in relations with the United States began.
“We will have for the next four years, at least, a president of the United States who actively campaigned and centrally campaigned against Mexico’s interests. Full stop. Period,” said Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister. “It’s an unmitigated disaster for Mexico.””
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/with-trump-victory-mexicos-worst-fears-are-realized/2016/11/09/f36a9ac0-a680-11e6-ba46-53db57f0e351_story.html
I’ll see if I can pick up some opinion tomorrow. Last night, a lot of people were off the streets and I presume were following the results. I feel really uncomfortable, here, at the moment. I’m thinking of making a ‘No Soy Americano’ T-shirt. 🙁
NAOM
I’m thinking of making a ‘No Soy Americano’ T-shirt.
Hey, NAOM, before you do that, remember that Americano, includes North, Central and South Americans. And they ain’t all bad! 🙂
True, but here it is used to refer to greengos.
NAOM
Will put feedback in next thread.
NAOM
French Nuclear Power plants shut down -Black Swan event – coal plants being brought back on line
http://www.ecowatch.com/france-nuclear-power-shut-down-2086414462.html
The situation is actually much more interesting. There is a quite good chance – according to the weather over the artic region -that we get a very cold winter in 2016/17. In this case the French housholds produce a high demand – peak then is 100 GW – due to the widespread use of electric heating systems.
The last time, that was 2011/12, this peak demand was (oh irony) covered by German wind power. 🙂
This year we would even see a lower number of French NPPs running. Ulenspiegel buys popcorn.
Ulenspiegel buys popcorn.
Make sure it is a really big bag 🙂
Had a nice record tying 72 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday for November 9th, better than the record low of -18 F. Global warming makes life better and easier!
7.4 billion people, 7.4 billion kilograms of CO2 exhaled from human bodies each day right into the air.
7.4 million metric tonnes of CO2 entered the atmosphere in one day from humans alone.
It can’t be stopped.
Yes it can. Solves 2 problems at the same time.
NAOM