Clinton is easilly the least competent politician to run for President on a major party ticket since… oh… 1860, I believe. And she still doesn’t understand why she’s detested. What a loser.
Stupid troll, but I’ll bite.
What’s your metric? Who ran in 1928? What as the percent win for the losing candidate compared to Clinton?
Ability to win contested elections in general.
Clinton had a very bad record on this. Neither of her *two* Senatorial elections were contested seriously (I’m in New York; I know.) She performed worse than Schumer or Gillibrand, both of whom had more serious opposition. And she had no electoral experience before that.
Al Smith had won some really tough gubernatorial elections. And fought difficult primaries.
Look, Clinton would have been a fine staff advisor, but for running for public office? Geez. She’s just no good at it. She got beat in the primary by an unknown named Barack Obama last time round!
Plus she lost to a candidate with the lowest approval ratings ever since they started polling and Clinton’s approval rating is still below Trumps.
“Dr. Vaclav Smil… explored the current state of global and major national energy dependencies and appraised the likely speed of their transformation. In his words, ‘The desirable development of new renewables should not be guided by wishful preferences and arbitrary targets. Using more energy, albeit more efficiently and with lower specific environmental effects, is unlikely to change our fortunes — yet no serious consideration has been given to how to use less, much less.’ “
“You have not addressed why you insist on singling out two particular examples of technology, while ignoring all of those in my ‘little list’… so why pick on EVs and solar panels?” ~ islandboy
The, and/or your, cartoonish ‘EV/PV’ story, meme, mantra and/or fantasy, complete with antagonists, the Evil Kochs, doesn’t seem to quite wash, square and/or stack up with the energy that it’s supposedly peddled, whether consciously or not, to somehow ‘replace’, ‘while we all as a species somehow automagically become efficient, save the climate, and relatively-smoothly transition and maintain general semblance of the current status-quo’. <– That's another reason.
As for my other, related concerns, they are supported in part by my previous comments under previous articles/threads hereon, some of which you, yourself, have left unanswered– conveniently so for your storyline/salary/fantasies perhaps, yes?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” ~ Upton Sinclair
Smil’s a crank, Caelan. Has always been a crank. You’re a crank too, of course, so that’s probably why you like him.
Please learn some math, history, and/or psychology before you post again.
Thanks for the nice crank comment, Nathanael. That your real name? Last name? Age?
Inconveniently for you perhaps, I quote many others aside from Václav, who apparently has a doctorate and was speaking (presumably invited to speak) at McGill University. How about you? Any speaking gigs? Qualifications? Publications?
Let us know and maybe we’ll quote you too if it’s not religious/dogmatic/adolescent and/or based on casual/cavalier online declarations behind an anonymous moniker, unlike Václav Smil.
“Václav Smil is a Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies, and he had also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China.” ~ Wikipedia
Repeat: please learn some math, history, and/or psychology before you post again. You are lacking in all three.
I’m unimpressed.
You can avoid my questions, get the issue of subsidies wrong, and keep repeating relatively empty comments/commands behind an anonymous moniker if you wish (I won’t go as far as to say ‘from mom’s basement’, in part because some mom’s basements might be pretty cool and, say, their own self-contained and chic apartments, and maybe even decent places to go to and be in societal decline/collapse scenarios.) but that calls into question your own command of math, history and/or psychology and so forth. Feel free to enlighten us (and maybe we’ll see if your online puffery is less hot air and more substance, speaking of psychology).
Remember: This is a peak oil/collapse blog, as opposed to a platform for post-adolescent online puffery. Let’s endeavor to honor Dennis’ and Ron’s efforts in POB’s regard.
“Using more energy, albeit more efficiently and with lower specific environmental effects, is unlikely to change our fortunes — yet no serious consideration has been given to how to use less, much less.’ “
Nonsense. The electrification of the heat sector with heat pumps dramatically reduces primary and secondary energy demand. But again: Smil is not convincing, you cite him because he supports your personal (uneducated) opinion, not because he delivers hard data. 🙂
“…industrial manufacturing and cargo transportation — both over land and over sea — could be run almost entirely on variable renewable power sources, with little need for energy storage, transmission networks, balancing capacity or overbuilding renewable power plants. In contrast, the modern high-tech approach of matching energy supply to energy demand at all times requires a lot of extra infrastructure which makes renewable power production a complex, slow, expensive and unsustainable undertaking.
Adjusting energy demand to supply would make switching to renewable energy much more realistic than it is today. There would be no curtailment of energy, and no storage and transmission losses. All the energy produced by solar panels and wind turbines would be used on the spot and nothing would go to waste. “
The ‘other side’ of your example of the heat pump is of course better insulation and windows to take advantage of passive solar, and maybe internal heat sinks. A residential project done to a more extreme degree in this ‘direction’ in some northern latitudes may not even need a heat pump or any other industrial, etc., heating source aside from the passive solar…
And that kind of thinking appears to be somewhat along the lines of Kris De Decker’s and Vaclav Smil’s, as well as my own. In any case, it involves using some simple common sense and frugality, which I guess cheap, abundant energy makes less important.
“…you cite him because he supports your personal (uneducated) opinion, not because he delivers hard data.” ~ Ulenspiegel
It doesn’t take much education, hard data or imagination to put on a sweater, move around a bit, rub your hands together, cozy up to someone, and/or get in the sun, etc., if you’re chilly.
“The ‘other side’ of your example of the heat pump is of course better insulation and windows to take advantage of passive solar, and maybe internal heat sinks. A residential project done to a more extreme degree in this ‘direction’ in some northern latitudes may not even need a heat pump or any other industrial, etc., heating source aside from the passive solar…”
Thank you for providing additional evidence that your cited article is nonsense.
Of course you can use passive solar approach, that is widely done in passive houses and KfW40 houses, however, you still need a heating systen im most parts of Europe. The combination wins.
While heat pumps is ‘something’– although I could chew that issue pretty seriously if I had the time– De Decker’s article, if recalled, is talking about the bigger picture beyond just heat pumps, which not everyone of course has, nor do they have efficient houses, nor do they have efficient countries…
When you have societies attempting to funnel ‘everything’ onto the grid, strange effects can happen, and as I’ve already posted charts of, primary FF energy usage is still whopping in every country I’ve looked at. We have a ways to go, and then there’s Jevon’s Paradox, and MENA refugees to Europe (Why? War? For primary FF energy?), etc..
We can argue about, for example, solar panels or electric vehicles, but if they are being imposed upon people– and the world at large– then that is also yet another reason why they will ultimately fail. It might take awhile, but it will fail. [~ Caelan MacIntyre]
I don’t read Caelan’s BS anymore but that comment alone is a good example of his lack of knowledge and critical thinking skills. Solar panels and electric vehicles are most certainly not being imposed on anyone anywhere. If anything they are being fought tooth and nail by the status quo, at least in the USA. ~ Fred Magyar
I guess Fred (and his critical-thinking skills) have neglected the ‘little detail’ of coercive taxation/subsidies for such things as ‘solar panels and electric vehicles’, or the questionable effects they (and their ‘accessories’) have on the planet as a whole in their mining, manufacture, operation and disposal, when suggesting that they are not imposed on anyone anywhere.
(Maybe it’s a Martian-Space-X frame-of-mind thing.)
Perhaps why in part Fred claims not read ‘my BS’ anymore is because it’s actually often about his own BS, and using his own commentary’s ignorance and stupidity for support and illustration to boot.
“Sorry Fred, just feeling a bit cynical this morning. In fact, I spend more and more of my time keeping up with developments in physics, mathematics and astronomy.” ~ Doug Leighton
“I’m engaged in gainful employment at the moment.” ~ Fred Magyar
It’s not like I haven’t also noticed, after posting my comment/pic of the bees, your ‘social insects’ comment/pic of termites and their mound, along of course with my comment on gravity, and then your own mention of it.
Off you go, then.
Well, you’re just lying now, Caelan. As you should know if you weren’t a crank, there is coercive taxation and subsidies for oil. There are none for solar panels or electric vehicles. They are great for the planet — unlike oil. As you *should* know, if you *wanted* to have a clue, which you *obviously don’t*.
“To date, Tesla has sold nearly 100,000 vehicles, which would put the company near the halfway point of its 200,000 federal tax credit allotment… Nissan, which is expected to debut a second-generation Leaf next year, is about halfway through its credit allotment. General Motors, which has the Bolt and Volt among others, is expected to run out of credits at some point in late 2018 or 2019.Federal tax credits for EVs are a part of broader set of EPA policies, which require congressional approval to adjust. So the Trump administration may not eliminate them prematurely but is unlikely to extend these credits. Without these credits, this market is likely to crash.”
This of course are just the snowflakes on the tip of the icebergs of the coercive/sociopathological matrix of governpimp intervention that includes social and technological engineering– in part also known/enabled as sheeple mindfucking.
“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save… You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.” ~ The Matrix
“You won’t get cooperation out of a hierarchical system. You get enforced directions from the top, and nothing I know of can run like that. I think the world would function extremely well with millions of little cooperative groups, all in relation to each other.” ~ Bill Mollison (permaculture)
Tesla is not the car industry, or even the largest EV producer, and America is not the world, or even the largest car market.
I was responding to this…
“As you should know… there is coercive taxation and subsidies for oil. There are none for solar panels or electric vehicles.” ~ Nathanael
…using the article as an example. So your comment’s moot in that context.
In any case, the article doesn’t just mention Tesla, but it does raise the question about coercive taxation for EV subsidies elsewhere.
Whatever. Your post simply coughs up myopic Republican propaganda, however you try to spin it ex post facto.
The ‘republican propaganda’ is your spin/projection, and remarkably mindless to boot.
BS, Tesla will be just fine once the federal credits run out. The cost of batteries are falling fast and they will be able to reduce the prices to make up for any loss of credits. Plus, the big states like California are increasing the incentives. In California you also get access to the carpool lane – that alone is enough enticement for some.
Some states are increasing taxes and registrations fees on EVs, it’s unfortunate and does reduce EV sales in those states, but hardly eliminates it.
“So those fortunate enough can drive to economic collapse in a Tesla; drive to protests and social unrest in a Tesla; get your car smashed in/with a Tesla; [wait out, at charging stations, the recharging of your Tesla, with a few good beers in a Tesla; drive home drunk in a Tesla; make long detours around flooded, burning, toxified and/or otherwise destroyed neighborhoods in a Tesla; flee impending natural disasters in a Tesla; drive by the former site of your previous spontaneously-combusting Tesla in a Tesla; get crashed into by a self-driving Tesla in a Tesla]; break your Tesla drivetrain on increasingly-unmaintained roadways from decreasing tax-revenue in a Tesla; wonder if you can find another use for, or where you’re going to find a replacement for, your dead battery in a Tesla; wait in line at bank runs in a Tesla; wait increasing times and spend increasing amounts of money for parts and service in a Tesla; drive to increasingly-empty grocery-stores in a Tesla; pick up hitch-hiking economic/ecologic/etc. refugees in a Tesla; drive through economically-depressed neighborhoods and gutted communities in a Tesla; re-adapt your Tesla for urgent self-preservation-related gardening and farm-work in/with a Tesla; get valuable materials stolen from your Tesla with a Tesla; drive home from a personal pink-slip event in a Tesla; pretend to be going to work the next day because you can’t bring yourself to tell anyone yet in a Tesla; camp out your home eviction in a Tesla; drive to an unemployment or welfare office in a Tesla; wait out rolling blackouts in a Tesla; pass by social unrest-vandalized EV recharging stations in a Tesla; trade in your Tesla for food or hunting or gardening equipment with a Tesla; wait for hours every workday in gridlock in a Tesla; commit suicide in a Tesla (but not the tailpipe-carbon-monoxide way); learn how to ‘hunt-and-gather’ along the highway in a Tesla; and last but not least, do roadkill the electric revolution way!” ~ Caelan MacIntyre
*reprinted with permission* [All-New edits in square brackets!]
No question that battery interchange should happen. But auto industry does not standardize anything unless forced. Looks like the performance gap continues to widen. http://insideevs.com/watch-tesla-model-s-beat/
Charging times are getting shorter and shorter even as capacity and range have been getting larger.
For example: “stations capable of providing up to 250 kilometers worth of range within 20 minutes”
And Porsche was the first to announce – they can recharge to 80% in 15 minutes at the new 450KW stations, but others will follow.
Tesla supports battery swapping on the S and X but it’s hard to compete with free supercharging. There hasn’t been a huge demand for it from their customers, so they only built the one test station.
Yes, CM it’s likely way to little way to late to save the world.
battery swapping on Tesla was concept. You can not purchase. I think battery pak will evolve like hard drives did. More logic and power conversion within the Pak.
Hardly like a hard drive. We can see, physically, what is possible with storage – a magnetic area is easy to measure and subdivide. Battery technology, on the other hand, remains a material science that is reaping very little in terms of technological progress. There’s been a lot of enthusiastic approaches addressing ways to store and discharge electrons efficiently; like my favorite with nano-sized peaks and valleys for electrons to nestle within, and so on. All have failed. Not miserably, mind you, but failed to reveal any heretofore unknown capability already achieved by the common Lithium type.
There’s hope yet – but don’t confuse batteries with hard drives again, please. ;->
“Everybody that disagrees with my solar shilling is a crank”
-‘Nathaniel’
It’s not just Nathanael of course, and appears a cross-section of why we’re in the species-funk we’re in…
Rational thought and discourse that forms the foundation of science that some make so much of (except, magically, where it doesn’t suit them) in their quasireligious poses and postures, can (where it magically suits them) be dispensed with and replaced by religious folklore, complete with ‘devils-and-forked/wormed-tongues’ epithets (like as canned responses to critical quotes of their own hypocritical ‘tongues’), self-references-by-declaration, and references to works of fantasy, etc..
…All the while serving themselves up, like cocktail sausages, meatballs and cheap wine on styrofoam platters, with crackers like these…
“It finally dawned on me, that I was, what for most purposes, qualified me as an all around misfit…
I do not distinguish between the worth of a digger of latrines or the head of a university’s medical research lab…” ~ Fred Magyar
“We ought to establish our own little club of misfits, and not allow anybody in except those with backgrounds similar to yours and mine.” ~ OFM
“the questionable effects they (and their ‘accessories’) have on the planet as a whole in their mining, manufacture, operation and disposal”
Ain’t it great that uranium grows on trees, coal magically appears at power plants and ironworks, while oil harmlessly flows out of the ground without any effort?
Which indicates in part why we need to power down now, not after a few decades of maintaining that kind of power/business as usual and betting the planet to build things that increasingly appear will not actually pan out the way some people may think or have been conditioned/duped to think or hope.
“…Scientists Can Now Repaint Butterfly Wings – Thanks to CRISPR…
Note: they can delete genes but still can’t explain how they work in the first place…” JN2
Maybe CRISPR technology can make some humans adapt, rather than the other way around, to the results of other forms of technology that have created scenarios and feelings of boredom, terror, injury, helplessness and/or unhappiness, etc..
Maybe this can be achieved in part by making some people perpetually ‘happy’, more or less no matter what, and sufficiently dumbed-down where they could do the kinds of work that other people, and even robots or immigrants, can’t or won’t do.
Maybe CRISPR can help create a revolutionary human society of hyperspecialization, rather like ant colonies, where people are custom-designed for ultra-repetitive and hyper-limited tasks, and for example, in the process, don’t ask too many questions of the authorities, except those that are work-related of course.
Here’s another one: Since monarch butterflies, to use GoneFishing’s previous example, are apparently somewhat poisonous to some animals (milkweed diet?), let’s indeed change their colors using CRISPR so that these same animals might not be able to recognize them as poisonous. Or maybe their mates won’t recognize them.
I’d bet the opposite will happen – we’ll see the shock doctrine in all it’s glory, which has to be centralised to ensure the money flows to the hegemonies, in all the worst affected areas.
I think they now have a special on the ‘Centralised Hegemony Disconnect Switch’ for PV systems at Home Depot for $99.99, Installation is extra 😉
Just beacuse FPL requires I have the wiring for a grid connection doesn’t mean I actually have to use it. If worse comes to worse you can connect a single LED bulb to their grid and run everything else off grid.
We have an old acquaintance from the Oil Drum who occasionally shows up here now and then, who is 100% off grid, (not in Florida) who welcomes unsuspecting meter readers with smile and a shotgun and a warning that they are trespassing on his property. He is a really nice guy and just does it for a little fun.
Yep
Disaster Capitalism.
Never miss a opportunity to exploit.
The following two sentences from the article are absolute bullshit:
“Government policy dictates that Floridians are required to be connected to the central power grid, even if they have enough solar panels installed to power their entire house. Because of this requirement, a family stuck in areas without power with solar panels installed cannot use them now because doing so could endanger workers trying to restore power for their neighbors.”
First of all, any grid tied inverter sold in the US has to shut down within a very short time if grid power fails as a requirement of the National Electrical Code (NEC 690.61, UL 1741). Secondly there are inverter models, one of which I own, that provide an isolated 15 amp circuit (20A for the newer versions) to be used in the absence of grid power, with certain limitations. Thirdly, a typical battery based system, using an inverter/charger can, if configured appropriately, run the most or all of the circuits in a building, without ever sending power back to the grid, at the same time meeting the requirement “to be connected to the central power grid”.
So, any “family stuck in areas without power with solar panels installed” that “cannot use them now” must not have thoroughly discussed their options with their PV system supplier. Either that, or they could not afford to go with a battery based system and acquired their system before the grid tied units with the battery-less, “off grid” capability became available (2012 or thereabouts). Anybody living in a hurricane prone area that is investing in a PV system should always look for features that, allow for operation in the absence of grid power, even in a limited sense.
grid tied units with the battery-less, “off grid” capability
What brand is that?
SMA (SUNNY BOY TL-US SERIES with Secure Power Supplym US only)
If PV source circuits don’t exceed 415v you can get isolated dc out and run Millions of things with a Mean well HLG driver type A
Lithium battery optional
Just after midnight on Sept. 11, Eugenio Pereira awoke to the sound of tropical-storm-force winds slamming his Gainesville, Florida, home. Hurricane Irma had arrived. At 1:45 a.m., the power flickered out, and he was in total darkness.
Unlike large swaths of Florida that were facing days if not weeks without electricity, Pereira knew he would have power when the sun rose. He had installed rooftop solar panels two weeks before the storm, along with an inverter that allows him to use power from the solar panels without being connected to the grid. The next morning, he plugged an extension cord into the inverter, flipped it on, and let his 7-kilowatt rooftop solar array do the rest. He was able to use his appliances and his Wi-Fi, so he could continue his work as a home-based IT consultant while the neighborhood waited for grid power to came back on.
I’m not even a real electrician, but I can wire a house, and have done so a dozen times, with compliments from the building inspector on the way I do things, meaning I go beyond what the code requires, knowing that the code is only a “reasonable minimum” standard.
I don’t even know the exact name of it, but a while back I installed a disconnect switch for a friend which totally isolates his house and farm from the grid. It works this way. You run the service lines into it, instead of into your distribution panel with your main disconnect breaker, which is typically two hundred amps these days. You continue from this switch to the distribution panel with the 200 amp main breaker.
It has an additional set of three terminals to feed in juice from a generator, as needed.
This switch is built in such a way that it is IMPOSSIBLE for both the generator and the lines from the grid to be simultaneously connected. When you flip it, it’s EITHER grid juice OR generator juice.
It would work just as well hooked to a personal pv system via a suitable inverter of course.
My friend will be using a thirty kilowatt generator powered via the pto of one of his diesel farm tractors, as the need arises.
Every grade A dairy farm I ever visited has a similar set up, because if the power goes off, ya still gotta milk those cows, or they’ll all get sicker than hell, and maybe put you out of business.
You can buy an old American made generator of this sort, with a brand name such as GE on it, built to industrial standards, which produces nice clean juice, for as little as a thousand dollars if you get lucky. It won’t have over a few hundred hours on it if that much, even if it’s forty or fifty years old, if you get it at a farm estate sale. You can expect it to last more or less forever used intermittently, or maybe ten or twenty thousand hours before it needs attention used regularly.
There are two catches, such a generator is rather large , on it’s own skid or wheels, and it can only be powered with a tractor as a practical matter. Tractor engines have governors good enough to keep the engine speed dead on the money.
Either everything I have read about Venezuela for the last year is totally wrong, or else alternet just totally blew it in terms of calling itself a news rather than a propaganda outfit. Of course it may be that Alternet is already known to be all about propaganda rather than the news. I don’t remember reading much if anything at the Alternet site.
It’s impossible to read this link as anything other than a propaganda piece written by or for the Maduro regime.
You are not getting any reliable information from either source.
From what I can tell (from limited primary sources), this is a race between collapse and completion of the Chinese Heavy Oil Refinery.
The Chinese and Goldman Sachs are betting on completion, which will probably be game over for Venezuela returning to its Client State status of the past.
Disclaimer: I know people who write for alternet
Hi Hightrekker,
So what’s your personal evaluation of the competence and ethics of the Maduro regime?
Of the opposition as a whole or in part?
Chavez was a populous wizard.
Won election after election, with international observation.
He crossed the World Bank and international finance.
His death was probably assassination , through introduced toxins (just speculation on my part).
Maduro? Not nearly as much of a leader, but can negotiate the road blocks thrown in front of him.
( very morally malleable)
The Chinese and GS rarely make bad bets.
Opposition?
Maybe 20% of the elite populous, sustained through international covert support.
Can anybody remember Caelan ever posting anything positive ? I mean other than his remarks about permaculture, which are mostly naive, or worse, in terms of demonstrating any understanding in depth of what is REALLY possible, technically, and what is possible as a PRACTICAL matter, in the real world?
Sometime with the next decade or so, more than likely, there will be an oil supply crisis, for one reason or another, and anybody who owns a ragged out old Leaf, Volt or Three will be able to sell it for twice a similar conventional car sells for on the same day.
If we had had government poking it’s nose into every aspect of our lives back when Henry Ford built his first T, he could have gotten a big subsidy for building it in some particular place, etc.
He succeeded in kicking horses and mules off the roads, pdq, and not much later, he played one of the biggest roles in kicking them off the farm as well.
It won’t be much longer before electric cars kick ICE cars off the road. It’s going to happen subsidies or none. Subsidies are helping it happen a FEW YEARS SOONER.
That’s a VERY good thing, in the eyes of anybody who actually knows something about peak oil, environmental issues, and what’s good for humanity as well as the rest of the biosphere.
There’s NO POSSIBLE PATH from our NOW to his hypothetical garden in eden future of small groups of people living in brotherhood, the way the birds and the ants and deer and wolves and bears and antelope and on and on and on SUPPOSEDLY live in his dreams………. OTHER than the path called technology.
Caelan will never understand it, but natures BASIC method of dealing with conflict is violence, epidemic disease, starvation…….. Earlier this summer I had a bird bash its brains out repeatedly attacking its reflection in one of our picture windows. Animals fight to the death as necessary to defend the territory they must have to successfully raise their young.
And anybody who actually knows shit from apple butter about how MEN live in very small groups knows that damned few of us act like SAINTS, lol.
It’s far more likely that unless you happen to be the biggest strongest and smartest male in the group, and the most adept at politics and arranging allegiances, or one of his closest allies, you will get your ass kicked, regularly, your food stolen, regularly, and your woman …… except you won’t have a woman, unless there’s one around not wanted by anybody higher up the totem pole and better able to protect and hold her than YOU.
And while it sounds pretty good to talk about a quiet, peaceful, self supporting agrarian or hunter gatherer way of life………… the TRUTH is that primitive agrarian life is tough as hell, and that the hunter / gatherer way of life is as apt to not result in periodic famine, meaning that you put grandma out with the horses to starve to death, or do something else equally harsh to make survival possible, including raiding neighbors who will fight to the death to hold onto any stash of food, clothing, and weapons they might possess.
I used to BE young, and tough, and could have made it just fine with a few acres and a mule or two and some hand tools, barring accident or other bad luck……… if you define fine as working your ass off in order to have enough beans and potatoes and maybe a chicken once in a while to feed your kids, who MAY be numerous enough to look after you to some extent once you are too old to plow and hoe and chop wood ……… endlessly.. day after day……. until you can’t anymore, and die unless you have kids able and willing to care for you.
Caring for my old father is easy, he has an old age check sufficient to pay the basic bills, including the food and energy bills. Without that check……. and without modern technology………. I would have a HELL of a time at my age keeping us warm and dry and well fed.
Caelan is wasting everybody’s time. I ought to have sense enough to ignore him, but I usually stick it out longer than anybody who thinks I’M the idiot in the public argument.
Even old HB is backing off, when he OUGHT to be helping me spread the news about the Trumps.
OFM, Poz
｡◕‿◕｡
“…natures BASIC method of dealing with conflict is violence, epidemic disease, starvation… Earlier this summer I had a bird bash its brains out repeatedly attacking its reflection in one of our picture windows. Animals fight to the death as necessary to defend the territory they must have to successfully raise their young.
And anybody who actually knows shit from apple butter about how MEN live in very small groups knows that damned few of us act like SAINTS, lol.
It’s far more likely that… you will get your ass kicked, regularly, your food stolen, regularly, and your woman… except you won’t have a woman…
…meaning that you put grandma out with the horses to starve to death, or do something else equally harsh to make survival possible, including raiding neighbors who will fight to the death to hold onto any stash of food, clothing, and weapons they might possess.
…working your ass off in order to have enough beans and potatoes and maybe a chicken once in a while to feed your kids, who MAY be numerous enough to look after you to some extent once you are too old to plow and hoe and chop wood… endlessly.. day after day… until you can’t anymore, and die…” ~ OFM
As usual, you’re talking, or typing, about like a shameless politician.
I suspect you are rather old yourself already, and that without the technology you ALWAYS condemn, YOU would be DEAD already, lol.
And I also strongly suspect that if you were to ever have a position of any significance in a primitive society, it would be equivalent to WORM TONGUE’s position in Tolkien’s Ring trilogy.
Suppress those negative thoughts, Glen. ‘u^
…And, while we’re at it, lets try to wrap our heads around the concept of context; that technology, for example, has different contexts, and that to question it or its fruits, such as in some contexts, doesn’t necessarily mean one is against it, and, say, ‘pro-cave-dwelling’, or ‘republican’, etc.. Reality is, naturally, not black-and-white.
Alas, these kinds of things should go without saying in a supposedly mostly-adult forum.
‘Falling back to default’ as it were, despite these kinds of qualifications– in the style of wilful ignorance or wilful obstinacy perhaps– makes me think of ‘worm brain’, seeing as you mentioned ‘worm tongue’– not that I’m suggesting that of you or anyone else.
I always like your stuff, OFM. I have finally given up on Caelan, who is no longer entertaining due to his refusal to learn anything whatsoever.
If Caelan had been around at the dawn of human history, he would have been the one caveman who constantly preached against the use of stone tools and fire… while happily eating sliced cooked meat scraps, left by his fellow cave dwellers, when they weren’t looking.
Wormtongue, indeed!
The wise speak only of what they know, Gríma son of Gálmód. A witless worm have you become. Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man till the lightning falls.
— Gandalf, The Two Towers
BTW there is someone who has the handle of Killian who comments over at realclimate.org who sounds a lot like Caelan…
Coincidence? Too many trolls too little time to waste on their BS and the regulars over at realclimate already do a good job of ripping him or her to shreds!
I can’t say that I have ‘finally given up on you’, Nathanael, because I don’t normally read your stuff, except for your trolls casted my way. Maybe your commentary will improve, but I have my doubts after reading some other stuff of yours. Feel free to assuage them if you wish, and can.
A thoughtful piece by a person who knows the law and has a good grasp of the politics:
The author is just about dead sure correct that the D’s won’t win enough seats to successfully impeach Trump, but I’m not giving up hope that Mueller or somebody else will uncover enough stinky on Trump to force him to resign, or at least put enough R’s in DC in a position such that they are forced to either turn on Trump or give up their own political careers.
I do not mean Republicans on the hot seat in competitive districts and states would vote to impeach him, but rather that they would support somebody else, just about anybody else for the nomination next time, and publicly denounce him, etc, towards the end of his term, in order to defend themselves.
His chance of winning a second term, barring extraordinary good luck on his part, is now just about zero, and his chance of even getting the R nomination for a second term doesn’t look very good anymore.
I’m thinking all the D’s need to do to mop the floor with the R’s in 2020, the way things are going now, is to run a candidate with a little charisma and a sense of touch for the mood of the country and who is liked or at least respected by the bulk of the people of this country.
The right D at the top of the ticket will have long coattails.
Actually, the weird thing is, I think Trump is going to come out of this term better off politically than the Republicans in Congress, who appear to be trashing their reputation faster than I could possibly believe by wasting their time on quixotic proposals which are (a) doomed to fail and (b) extremely unpopular, and getting lots of airtime talking about how they are trying to do very unpopular things and failing.
There are people that use data from Climate reanalysis to show that we are in a cooling period over the past year or so.
NCEP Climate Forecasting System Reanalysis (CFSR)
Temperature at 2 meters (deg C)
Values averaged across World (90S-90N;0E-360E)
—————————————————————————————
This file was generated by Climate Reanalyzer (http://cci-reanalyzer.org)
Climate Change Institute; University of Maine; USA (http://climatechange.umaine.edu)
The data is monthly and I have taken the 12 month centered mean from mid 2013 to the most recent 12 months (last data point is May 2017). What we find is that the trendline for the 12 month running average is about 15 C per century over this (very short) period. Should we be surprised that the rate has slowed a bit from this very fast rate of increase? My answer would be no, nor should we be surprised if there is a short period of cooling after the very substantial temperature increase over such a sort period. Very few climate scientists (maybe none) expect a long term temperature increase of 15 C per century. The 40 year trend based on NOAA data is about 1.7 C per century and the 1979-2016 trend is 1.6 C per century. Until carbon emissions are reduced this trend will continue or perhaps worsen.
Note that the data in the chart is from a climate reanalysis which uses weather models so it is different from empirical data, for those that distrust models, it might be ignored. The long term trend for this reanalysis (1979-2016) is about 1.4 C per century, slightly lower than the empirical temperature data from the NOAA over the same period.
There are people that use data from Climate reanalysis to show that we are in a cooling period over the past year or so.
That would be me, I guess.
Facts are facts. The problem is with the interpretation.
Much has been made of the end of the pause and the record warm years of 2015 and 2016, when it is clear that a large part of the blame lies with the very strong El Niño of 2015-16 that built over the quasi El Niño conditions of 2014. It remains to be determined how much of that warming was temporary, and will be cooled down in the post-El Niño.
The post-El Niño cooling, a common feature in the temperature record (see for example the year 2000), has been a lot slower this time, because unlike previous strong El Niño events, this one was not followed by a strong La Niña.
So no, it is not surprising in the least that the annual rate of warming has gone negative after El Niño. It is actually expected. The interesting question here is for how long and how much is the cooling going to proceed. Nobody knows, but it could be several years depending on conditions. It will be interesting to follow this cooling as it has the potential to reinstate the pause.
Take Harvey for example. Those first reports of Harvey being a 1,000 year storm were obviously not correct. This is obvious to me, a hydrologist for 30 years. But everyone else must rely on what the media says. n this case, a very well credited sicentists atthe University of Wisconsin used the tools available to evaluate the worst 24 hour rainfall period of Harvey, that proved to be a 1,000-year storm, and then that went rogue. This 1,000-years storm represented an overnight “core dump” or rainfall. This is what a dying, land bound, stalled out hurricane does; it dumps all of its rain in the central core, at night. Houston saw three of these core dumps on three successive nights. But three 1,000-year storms ion three successive nights is not a 1,000-year storm. As we know now from the good work of the folks at Metstat, this entire event 120 hours of rain, was a 25,000-year storm.
Wow still talking to the Russians? Don’t you realize that distraction is at least half the point of trolling?
Put him on ignore.
Hi Javier,
Well not many expected the trend to continue at 15 C/century (which is in fact the trend for the CFSR 12 month centered running mean from mid 2013 to Nov 2016), so a brief cooling trend would be expected by the mainstream science.
I would also note that the difference between the satellite data and other temperature datasets is not that great. There is very wide variation between RSS and UAH and between earlier and later versions, far more so than the temperature data based on measurements with thermometers. Varying in trend from 1.2 C per century (RSS 6) to 1.8 C (RSS 4) per century over a short 37 year period. The average is about 1.5 C per century.
Base on the data at wood for trees, HADCRUT3 has a trend of about 1.4 C per century and GISTEMP about 1.7 C per century over the 1979-2017 period. The average of these two data sets is about 1.55 C per century.
Only by cherry picking high and low data sets would we see a significant difference between the satellite and thermometer based data sets and note that there is a greater difference between the satellite data sets suggesting they might be less reliable (a 50% difference in trend between the two satellite data sets.)
If we compare the latest GISTEMP and HADCRUT 4 datasets, both have about 1.7C per century of warming over the Jan 1979 to August 2017 period. An average of the most up to date data from UAH, RSS , GISTEMP, and HADCRUT. The average of all 4 datasets over the Jan 1979 to August 2017 period is about 1.6 C per century.
Mistake in comment above UAH6 is 1.2 C/ century from 1979-2017 and RSS4 is 1.8 C per century from 1979-2017.
Hi Dennis,
You prefer BEST, and I prefer UAH. A question of preferences as nobody can demonstrate now that one of them is more correct than the other. I worry about land coverage, sea surface coverage, the issue of sea surface versus marine air temperatures, and urban heat island effect, to all of which satellites are impervious. Perhaps we will be able to agree on reanalysis. That remains to be seen.
Past temperatures is not an issue. We can both agree that the world has warmed at ~ 0.15°C/decade, give or take. The issue is future temperatures, and it is obvious that this is a matter subject to a lot of uncertainty.
“The slowdown in the rise of average global temperature had been observed in the recent temperature record, but with the last three record years, this slowdown has ceased.
Prof Stephen Belcher said: “After a period during the early 2000’s when the rise in global mean temperature slowed, the values in 2015 and 2016 broke records and passed 1 °C above pre-industrial levels. Data from the Met Office shows that the long-term rate of global warming has now returned to the level seen in the second half of the 20th century.”
Although there has been scientific debate about the exact framing of the so-called ‘slowdown’, by looking at rolling 15-year trends, the Met Office confirmed that while the globe remained at near record warmth, the rate of global warming did slow between 1999 and 2014, but now this rate has picked up once more.
Global temperatures have risen since pre-industrial times (1850–1900) by around 1 °C. The influences of anthropogenic greenhouse gas release and aerosols explain much of this increase but natural variations in climate, such as the influence of El Niño, mean that the observed temperature rise isn’t even from year to year.
Although global temperatures remained at near record levels throughout, variations in decadal climate in the Pacific led to the slowdown in the rise of Global Mean Surface Temperature.
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) – a pattern of warm and cool phases in Pacific sea-surface temperature – can persist for a decade or more. Coinciding with the slowdown, the PDO has been in a negative phase which increases the subduction of heat to temporarily reduce the rate of anthropogenic climate change from greenhouse gases.
Professor Adam Scaife is head of monthly to decadal prediction at the Met Office Hadley Centre. He said: “The end of the recent slowdown in global warming is due to a flip in Pacific sea-surface temperatures. This was due to a change in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation which entered its positive phase, warming the tropics, the west coast of North America and the globe overall.”
My, oh my! Things I’ve been saying all along. The pause is real, and it was due to natural climate oscillations that can stop global warming on its tracks. These oscillations necessarily have to contribute also to warming when they are in the opposite phase.
However it is not so clear that the PDO is back to its positive phase as prof. Scaife says. The PDO is very much affected by ENSO, but it is back to ~ zero as of last month, so we will see going forward if the negative phase has ended or not. Also the AMO looks like it might be turning down in the near future. If both turn negative the world is going to have a very hard time warming, which I suppose is good news to everybody.
Another interesting thing is this chart from the UK MetOffice article about the rate of change that accompanies the article. I am so surprised that the rate of warming for the 1980-2010 period is so different and so much higher than the rate of warming for the 1915-1950 period that I just became totally convinced of the huge effect that our emissions are having on the warming rate of the planet since 1950. Amazing. That perverse CO2 is turning the world into an oven. I mean, who could dare say that those two periods present a similar rate of warming despite so different emissions?
Hi Javier,
The change in temperature depends more on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the relationship is logarithmic, the water vapor feedback is a very well understood physical phenomenon and is driven by increasing atmospheric CO2 and the well understood physical phenomenon governing that relationship.
I have been saying all along that a claim that mainstream climate scientists believe there is no natural variability is false. It is the long term trend that is important as in the chart below. Also the AMO may have an effect, but it is easily included in simplified models and when it turns positive then it works with the CO2 forcing and rates of warming increase, so any pause would be followed by increased warming rates.
The warming is based on concentration rather than emissions.
Chart below shows NOAA Global Land Ocean Temp, trend 1.76 C per century for past 30 years.
Hi Dennis,
The change in temperature depends more on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere
We don’t know by how much, because otherwise we would not say ECS is 1.5-4.5. Water vapor is not so well understood because unlike CO2 it is not well distributed, so its effect can be high at places and very low at others. And we have no idea of clouds. Do you know that a 1% decrease in cloud cover would completely negate any forcing increase by human produced GHG’s? And we don’t know if clouds have changed and by how much.
It is the long term trend that is important
The long term trend has been warming since ~ 1650 AD. And that long term trend is not due to our emissions. Only since 1950 they become important, and only since 1976 we might see a warming effect from them.
The warming is based on concentration rather than emissions.
Whatever the warming cause, we can only affect our emissions, and every model says the emission reductions we can reasonably make are unlikely to have a noticeable effect on temperatures for a very long time. The more important the natural effect, the less influence we can have on climate, for good or for bad.
Hi Javier,
Using the Mann et al 2008 estimate from 1666 to 1905 (240 years), the temperature trend is 0.1 C per century.
Using BEST Land Ocean data from 1906-1965 the temperature trend increased by a factor of 9 to 0.9 C per century relative to the previous 240 year period. From 1966 to 2015 the rate of warming increases by another 78% to 1.6 C per century, 16 times faster than the 1666 to 1905 rate of warming.
So yes there has been warming for quite a long time after a slow cooling trend after the HCO. The rate of change in temperature has not been very consistent. From 1666-1725 temperature decreased by 0.01 C per century, from 1726-1785 temperature increased at 0.18 C per century, from 1786-1845 a decrease at 0.21 C per century, and from 1846-1905 another decrease of 0.15 per century. So only 60 of the 240 years from 1666 to 1905 saw an increasing trend in temperature (1726-1785), temperature was decreasing slightly over the 120 year period from 1786 to 1905.
Reductions in emissions can reduce future growth in atmospheric CO2 which will reduce future long term increases in global temperature (30 year average temperature) ceteris paribus. I agree uncertainty makes it difficult to predict accurately, which is exactly the reason to be careful, we do not know whether low ECS or high ECS estimates are correct, smart humans make conservative estimates, but use high factors of safety when planning for the future.
If you were building a bridge, would you prefer to use a factor of safety of 2 or 1/2? Assume your children would be using the bridge on a daily basis.
I see you have a lot of faith on the reconstruction of those old instrumental temperatures.
I have more faith on some proxy reconstructions like this one from Moberg et al., 2005. They show a 1000-year peridiocity in temperatures that has been observed also for the first 6 millennia of the Holocene, and evident in drift ice records in the North Atlantic.
They show we are in a natural warm period likely to last until ~ 2100. Obviously if scientists assume most of the observed warming is anthropogenic, they will reach the wrong conclusions.
So far the risk is imaginary, and I don’t think we should worry much about imaginary risks until we have better evidence that they are real. I mean we are talking about a problem that has been known for the past 35 years, and scientists have not been able to come with convincing evidence for any catastrophic outcome in a relevant time frame. In fact doomsday keeps being postponed.
Hi Javier,
What is the cause of the “1000 year” cycle proposed by Moberg?
Without any underlying theory that can be falsified it tells us very little.
Also the Moberg paper is Northern hemisphere temperatures. We are interested in a Global reconstruction.
Also, Moberg et al use wavelets which produces a dimensionless result and then must use the instrumental record to put temperatures onto their reconstruction.
Looks a bit dodgey if one does not trust the instrumental record (which is what you argue all the time, with the exception of satellite temperature data which has all sorts of problems and two different data sets with widely varying trends over a short 38 year period, 1.2 C per century (UAH6) vs 1.8 C per century (RSS4), for TLT from Jan 1979 to July 2017.
The Mann et al 2008 estimate is Global not just Northern Hemisphere so apples to oranges. See
As with any observed phenomenon, the possible cause says nothing about the reality of the observed phenomenon. The seasons have been known to mankind for hundreds of thousands of years before there was an explanation, and that didn’t make them any more real.
That said the most likely cause is a millennial solar variability cycle reflected in solar proxies.
Hi Javier,
We only have decent data for solar output back to about 1600, so any hypothesis about solar variability being the cause of any supposed millennial temperature cycle is highly speculative at best. Any peer reviewed literature based on solar physics which supports your hypothesis? The proxy temperature data has lots of problems as far as trying to reconstruct global temperatures. There are not many global temperature reconstructions, prior to 500 CE. Moberg et al 2005 is Northern hemisphere only.
OK, Javier just became the third person I put on ignore, because Dennis still hasn’t banned him (as he should).
Today is the last day of summer (astronomically speaking) for the northern hemisphere and tomorrow will be the first day of summer for the southern hemisphere. As of today the nights will be longer than the days in the northern hemisphere and shorter than the days in the southern hemisphere. From my perspective, PV system daily yields will be going down in the northern hemisphere and up in the southern hemisphere, except in very specific circumstances where the system has been optimized to for winter production for whatever reason.
Happy Autumnal Equinox everyone! 🙂
Whoa I knew Chevy Truck Month had started again but TIL summer started in the southern hemisphere. ??????
The relevant but generally overlooked FACT is that hardly anybody is better off personally or environmentally spending five or ten grand on a personal pv system than he would be spending the same money on upgrading the energy efficiency of his home and or business.
There are quite a lot of projects I can think of that as an environmentally responsible citizen compelled to pay attention to his bank account that should be nearer the top of my ” to do ” list than installing a pv system.
Beyond the immediate cost benefit analysis, there’s the additional indisputable fact to be considered that every year that passes means I can get a solar system of my own for less money.
We should talk a little about how we can work to improve our personal energy efficiency as home owners and landlords, and as business owners or managers.
Gotta get outside and take care of some chores for now, but will be back later with excerpts from this link.
Yeah. Superinsulation (which requires an HRV) is usually the best payback you can get.
A good article on the psychological reasons why there is climate change denial. There are some suggestions about how to overcome it, though they aren’t as strong as the reasons it exists. Basically change how we present the concept so it doesn’t trigger the psychological resistance.
There is no such thing as climate change denial. Everybody admits that the climate changes.
And like clockwork, the resident denier spews something in response to this. (Which I didn’t read because he’s on ignore now).
As I always say, the baseline scenario now is the end of humanity, but it’s *trivial* to replace this with a golden age of free electricity. Solar and wind and hydro are *cheaper* than fossil fuels. Electric cars are *better* than gasoline cars. Batteries will soon be cheaper than fossil fuels. We just have to get off our duffs and switch.
And those who invest correctly in the transition will strike it rich, too — surely that should be an incentive for some…
“The possible outcomes of the Russia investigation have always been wildly divergent. On one end of the spectrum, it is possible that the Russian government penetrated deep inside the Trump campaign—perhaps with the candidate’s knowledge”
” it is possible that Vladimir Putin’s attack was essentially limited to the hacking and dumping of e-mails from the D.N.C. and John Podesta, that Russia never had any illegal assistance from Trump or his associates, and that the entire Russia-conspiracy-theory industry will look enormously foolish in the years ahead.”
“Even Trump himself, according to some reporting, may have more to fear from Mueller probing the legality of the Trump Organization’s financial dealings than his campaign’s possible interactions with Russia”
” But this week’s disclosures moved the theorizing about Trump and Russia one step closer to becoming a politically devastating blow to Trump’s Presidency.”
Matt Drudge is a classic canditate to be “turned”. He’s a loner, with obvious personal weaknesses / secrets, who has a lot of influence.
Media Matters for America is just one more arm of the Soros Machine trying to install leftist thought into every institution and aspect of American society.
Hey Georgy Porgy,
I think this is the message George Soros might send to you in reply…
Nyald ki a kutyának a seggét!
Fat Al and Soros are conspiring to create a one world government and destroy capitalism by promoting AGW.
And all their friends make money selling propaganda books.
(sarc)
As soon as I see the word “Soros” in a comment I know I am in the presence of a true dingbat.
I hate to be rude but some things just make me crazy.
Is there really still a chance for staying below 1.5 °C global warming?
Filed under: Climate Science — stefan @ 22 September 2017
There has been a bit of excitement and confusion this week about a new paper in Nature Geoscience, claiming that we can still limit global warming to below 1.5 °C above preindustrial temperatures, whilst emitting another ~800 Gigatons of carbon dioxide. That’s much more than previously thought, so how come? And while that sounds like very welcome good news, is it true? Here’s the key points…
Anyone interested can read those points over at realclimate.org but here’s the thing:
Does it all matter?
We still live in a world on a path to 3 or 4 °C global warming, waiting to finally turn the tide of rising emissions. At this point, debating whether we have 0.2 °C more or less to go until we reach 1.5 °C is an academic discussion at best, a distraction at worst. The big issue is that we need to see falling emissions globally very very soon if we even want to stay well below 2 °C. That was agreed as the weaker goal in Paris in a consensus by 195 nations. It is high time that everyone backs this up with actions, not just words.
The point is this, anyone who still thinks that this planet remains viable for 8 plus billion humans in a 3 or 4 °C global warming world has zero understanding of ecosystem tipping points and feedbacks, and certainly doesn’t grasp non linear dynamics and Chaos Theory.
Note: With apologies to Monty Python, I direct this slightly modified quote to the assorted trolls that are both regulars here or just drive by visitors…
“I fart in your general direction! Your mothers were hamsters and your fathers smelt of elderberries!”…
…I wave my private parts at your aunties, you cheesy lot of second hand electric donkey bottom biters”
If the Foo shits wear it!
“The point is this, anyone who still thinks that this planet remains viable for 8 plus billion humans in a 3 or 4 °C global warming world has zero understanding of ecosystem tipping points and feedbacks, and certainly doesn’t grasp non linear dynamics and Chaos Theory.”
Dead on, perfectly centered in the bullseye.
As a practical matter, the real question now is not whether we will have catastrophic warming, but rather how much, how soon, and where.
At one time, for a long time, I believed to the bottom of my redneck heart that virtually ALL of us were doomed, or at best least looking at a very few great grandchildren living an eighteenth century life.
Another degree or less of warming will put farmers out of business over many tens of thousands of square miles, using the techniques and equipment available today, growing the crops they grow today. Maybe some adaptation will be possible, but finding water to irrigate, and money to pay for it, on such an expanded scale, is such an unlikely proposition as to make even talking about it a waste of time.
The typical layman keeps thinking an average increase of a degree simply means that it would be a degree warmer day after day. What it really means is that spring comes earlier, but frosts will still arrive on schedule later,more years than not, wiping out crops planted earlier. If you DON’T plant early, weeds get a big start, and the wind and sun take away soil moisture, and then it gets five or ten degrees HOTTER as likely as not, at some critical period during the growing season, reducing yields by half or more……. assuming enough rain continues to fall. Without enough rain,in combination with unusually hot weather, yields often drop to so near zero as to make harvesting a waste of time.
The weather is going to be excessively hot , and excessively dry, in some of the major bread baskets of the world, there’s no escaping that NOW.
Environmentalists who OUGHT to know better, and people who wet their panties because they no longer believe in god but still want to live forever and are desperately scared that maybe having gmo food will increase their chance of getting cancer by one hundredth of one percent are doing everything in their power to make sure FAMINE is a goddamned SERIOUS risk over the coming decades. GMO etc is our single best hope for maintaining production, especially without using excessive amounts of pesticides that are DEMONSTRATED to be major environmental hazards, lol.
But not to fear, some of us will pull thru if we manage to avoid flat out war on the global scale, and that few, in some places, will continue to live reasonably civilized lives in some places, with a little luck. Those in less fortunate places will survive by going back to yesteryear’s ways of getting their bread, with a very few perhaps even managing to go all the way back to hunter gatherer status.
Now here’s an interesting thought. Although most people are abysmally ignorant when it comes to the nuances of physics, geology, biology, geography, climate, etc, quite a substantial percentage of such people are still nevertheless well acquainted with the way things come to pass in history, with the classic horseshoe nail / kingdom lost story being known to almost every one of them.
We all know a happily married couple who met by accident, with only a few minutes difference in their schedule on some long past day meaning they would never have met.
Such little accidents of history change the future the same way that it is sometimes speculated that a butterfly flapping it’s wings back in deep geological or biological time may have changed the entire future course of history.
Countless such historical accidents have set the course of history in part, with the new parts so determined resulting in ever more changes, until we have the PRESENT. It’s sort of like the one you can get from a lady of the evening, damned hard to get rid of.
The thing is that maybe if enough people run with this thought, and try to explain to our less well informed fellows WHY things are spinning out of control environmentally, using ordinary every day experiences and history, rather than talking mostly in terms of chaos theory, which is ENTIRELY over their heads, we might have more success.
Get the horseshoe nail story across, and then the idea of the horseshoe nail times ten, again, times ten again, and maybe culturally literate people will begin to understand that there’s only so much in the way of resources to work with, even as our numbers continue to grow, and as the environment continues to degrade.
In the meantime, luck alone resulted in my home turf being the mountains of the southeastern USA. This appears to be as good a place as any, all things considered. If it gets TOO DRY, we will still get hurricanes, and one thing that will be ready on my farm before I’m gone is a reservoir that can catch ten to twenty acre feet of precious irrigation water pouring off the mountain over the course of a day or two of torrential rain.
MY dam will never wash out, because the reservoir I’m contemplating will be EXCAVATED , for the most part, and off to one side and above the level of the stream that will feed it, and I will have a normally dry canal to divert and funnel part of the stream around the hillside and into it.
Building it means putting six months off and on a few hours a day riding my biggest big boy’s toy, and burning up a couple of thousand gallons of diesel. Other people burn up that much joy riding in motor homes year after year. The reservoir will be more or less forever, and it will produce fish, in normal times, and if we get a New Mexico or Arizona climate here………… who ever lives here will have water enough to raise plenty of beans and corn and potatoes for a family to live without fear of starvation.
That water will flow to five acres of prime bottom land via gravity, lol.
Such measures, properly implemented, are virtually all upside, hardly any down side at all. The reservoir will provide food and recreation, the dry canal will be grassed and grazed, with nut and fruit trees on the shoulders.
Prepping can be like collecting coins. They will always be worth face value, and silver dimes and quarters put away as collector items are now worth fifty times face value for their bullion content, lol.
Environmentalists who OUGHT to know better, and people who wet their panties because they no longer believe in god but still want to live forever and are desperately scared that maybe having gmo food will increase their chance of getting cancer by one hundredth of one percent are doing everything in their power to make sure FAMINE is a goddamned SERIOUS risk over the coming decades. GMO etc is our single best hope for maintaining production, especially without using excessive amounts of pesticides that are DEMONSTRATED to be major environmental hazards, lol.
I might be loling if it weren’t so tragic!
I’m pretty sure those so called ‘Environmentalists’ who are not biologists, ecologists, agronomists, and anthropologists, yet are vehemently against GMOs from a purely ideological stance are just ignorant of basic science and history. They probably aren’t students of natural history in general let alone the subset of natural history that encompasses the evolution of great apes and how Homo sapiens became a tool maker, learned to use fire, domesticated animals, and started genetically modifying plants and animals by artificial selection and animal husbandry at the dawn of the age of agriculture. Which eventually allowed us to develop the the industrial global civilization in which we find ourselves today.
All humans have done, is sped up the process of natural selection (see T.O.E.) which has been genetically modifying organisms for about 3.8 billion years. So yes, we now have a better understanding of biochemistry and genetics than our old friends the Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel and Darwin could have possibly have ever imagined and we now can use tools such as CRISPR to more precisely edit and modify the genome of organisms.
May I suggest to anyone who is against ‘GMOs’ that they simply stop eating altogether and try to subsist on air and water alone!
Note to all the ‘Eeedjits’ out there! Being pro GMOs is not the same as blindly supporting the politics and economic policies that allow certain global multinational corporations to control and patent GMOs to the detriment of the environment and all humans. My personal view is that all aspects of GMOs should be open source, but THAT is a completely different discussion.
Of all the people I have ever run across on the net, you are one half dozen or so I would most like to have around as a neighbor and campfire drinking companion.
You could contribute more to a conversation around a campfire than 99.999 percent of all the people I have ever talked to.
So many people know about reality from some particular pov, but damned near every body is like one of the blind men examining the elephant, knowing nothing about the elephant other than the part he experiences PERSONALLY or professionally .
It’s so seldom that I run across somebody who actually knows something about poverty FIRST HAND and the REAL ways people must deal with it; about the physical and life sciences; about the realities of the agricultural sciences in particular; and who knows plenty about politics and is YET ready to SAY what he believes, regardless of cultural solidarity………
People who KNOW ENOUGH to be QUALIFIED to think about such issues as GMO’s versus public health and the environment who are also willing to say what they know and think regardless of what their political peer group thinks and believes are so rare that I don’t run across one more than once a decade.
It’s so seldom that I run across somebody who actually knows something about poverty FIRST HAND and the REAL ways people must deal with it; about the physical and life sciences; about the realities of the agricultural sciences in particular; and who knows plenty about politics and is YET ready to SAY what he believes, regardless of cultural solidarity………
I feel equally at ease in a Rio de Janeiro favela as I do with royalty in Denmark, political leaders in various countries and captains of industry around the world. I do not distinguish between the worth of a digger of latrines or the head of a university’s medical research lab. I have thoroughly enjoyed the company of all of the above at one time or another.
Having grown up as a card carrying member of three wildly distinct cultures and during my early years as an adult, having tried to fit in as a member of a number of professional and academic ‘CLUBS’. It finally dawned on me, that I was, what for most purposes, qualified me as an all around misfit. So I ended up following the Groucho Marx doctrines embodied in the following quotes.
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.
Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
Groucho Marx
Cheers!
YES!
We ought to establish our own little club of misfits, and not allow anybody in except those with backgrounds similar to yours and mine.
Mine is not so diverse culturally. I’ve never met any royals even in a greeting line.
And I have never traveled the world.
But as Thoreau said, paraphrased, I’ve seen it all right here in my own village, which extends as far as the Big Apple to the north and south as far as Georgia in terms of knowing people from share croppers, people starving on substandard wages, alcoholics, murdering psychopaths, veritable saints, tradesmen, true believing fundamentalists, etc right on up thru university society and into the lower rungs of the wealthy.
I have two dogs again that are always glad to see me, and at least fifty substantial books on hand that I haven’t had time to read yet, ranging from historical novels to real history to current politics to various technical treatises involving nature in general.
Old age is slowing me down, big time, and the DESIRE to know more is fading away.
It’s taking me a couple of weeks now to read what I used to knock out in three or four days.
But I’ll still manage to finish forty or more worthwhile books before this year is out.
I’ve known some very wealthy, and I agree with Hemingway:
“The rich are different from you and I.
.
.
.
.
They have more money…”.
I’ve noticed one sad similarity: they’re prone to believing really stupid stuff that supports their narrow worldview. For instance, I had one tell me with great sincerity that outside agitators (apparently Russian) had fomented the 1968 Democratic convention riots.
Another classic example: the owner of the Chicago Tribune, Col. McCormick, who believed that commie sympathizers in the US government were holding back Chiang Kai Shek from coming back from Taiwan and retaking China from Mao.
And, of course, the Kochs, who I think are sincere about their loony beliefs, started by their father, who helped found the John Birch Society.
“The John Birch Society (JBS) was a radical right-wing organisation[2] founded by candy manufacturer Robert W. Welch, Jr.Wikipedia’s W.svg in 1958 as a last line of defense against the massively ongoing, clandestine Communist takeover of the United States. An early book by Welch, The Politician, became controversial after it became widely known that an early manuscript included the accusation that President Dwight Eisenhower was a “conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy.”
It’s basically the KKK but with a thin, stringy veneer of political theory (read: more fears of fluorinated water controlling their brains). They basically started libertarianism,[3] which took the cult-ish route of hiding the core tenets from newcomers.
Oil baron Fred C. Koch was also among the original members.”
Come on Nick! This is the 21st century. The Kochs are almost dead… We live in a new age of technological disruption. Wealth is being generated by venture capitalism investing in ‘SMART’ tech savvy startup companies.
This is the age of Google, Amazon, Facebook etc… all powered by the internet!
Well this must explain why I’m not a member of Amazon Prime. I still have both of my 20th century bowls I made in 8th grade wood shop. I know it’s hard to believe, but they both still work. Maintenance includes cleaning them when needed.
I know it’s hard to believe, but they both still work. Maintenance includes cleaning them when needed.
How quaint! Sad to say though, you are living in the past… 😉
You should see the looks I get when I carry things around with them on my head. I know their jealous.
We. Can. Reverse. It. We can get back to 1.5C by aggressive fixation of carbon which is currently in the air.
We have the technology. We just need the political will.
The Arctic is setting up to be as warmer as or warmer than last year. Anomalies over 3 degrees C are predicted for most of this week. The refreeze is going pretty slowly.
And the Antarctic is now starting to melt from a record low starting point, so overall global ice is about to start setting new low records, after a short period where it had been a bit above 2016 (though that year was significantly lower than previous ones).
So how much of the warming has been caused by our emissions?
It is generally considered that the warming in the 1915-1950 period was essentially natural, as human emissions at the time were very small.
We can approach the issue by considering that natural oscillations that continue to operate are responsible for part of the observed warming. The excess warming that can be attributed to human causes then is about 0.05°C/decade, or half a degree per century. That works out at about 0.38°C since 1950.
This is a far more realistic approach to the problem of attribution than to consider that all the warming since 1950 is of human origin. By reducing emissions we might be able to affect a small fraction of the human caused warming, but not the natural warming.
Or one can do an actual analysis looking at data to confirm or refute a number of different hypotheses about what is behind the observed levels of warming. This can easily be done in a spreadsheet using a multiple linear regression of global land ocean temperature (our dependent variable) against a number of independent variables such as:
natural log of atmospheric CO2
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO)
Southern Oscillation Index (SOI aka ENSO)
Aerosols (from volcanoes and pollution)
Total Solar Irradiance (TSI)
Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)
When such a regression is done for all of these 6 independent variables over the period from 1870 to 2012 (the only period where we have data for all seven dependent and independent variables), we find that all of these independent variables are significant at the 99.99% confidence level, with the exception of the PDO. Regression output below including all 6 independent variables listed above. Link to spreadsheet below
Note that I have found that AMO can replace LOD in the model and that including both AMO and LOD, that LOD is no longer statistically significant, note however I did not include a lag of 7 or 8 years for LOD which might explain the lack of statistical significance.
EDIT: I re-checked with a 7 year lag for LOD and when such a lag is assumed, then the LOD becomes statistically significant, which brings us to a CSALTA model, with the A at the end being for “AMO”.
Chart below.
The idea of a lag, made me go back to check on PDO with an added lag.
If a one year lag between the PDO data and temperature is added then the PDO becomes statistically significant (as was the case for LOD with a 7 year lag). That gives us a CSALTAP model (P is PDO).
Note that as more and more terms are added, it becomes less clear that the AMO will have a big effect as changes in ENSO, LOD, and or PDO might counteract the negative phase of the AMO. Ocean heat content is another factor which should be considered, though the time series is short and there are many data problems.
Dennis – you said “Ocean heat content is another factor which should be considered”. But isn’t that not just another factor, but the single most important one. All the circulation oscillations – ENSO, PDO, AMO, IDPO – just change how heat is taken up in the oceans versus the atmosphere. They aren’t, as far as I can tell, changing the overall energy balance of the earth, which is gaining heat. There may be some change in how heat gets drawn down into the deep oceans versus how hot the atmosphere needs to get to achieve a radiative balance, but equally it’s not clear that putting heat into the oceans versus the atmosphere is necessarily a better option based on past extinction events. My experience, from much smaller systems admittedly, has been the bad parts of the cycles, especially when there’s two or three that can reinforce, are much worse overall than the good bits are good. A steady rising linear trend might be preferred to a sudden fast cycle increase on a flat trend, but add a few interacting cycle on an exponential trend with a bit of noise and you risk the really bad events from which there is no recovery.
Even a single cycle on a linear trend can make you think everything is fine if you only get to see half a cycle – things look flat, and then along comes the next half cycle and it’s panic stations – and you only get to see the pattern once the dust settles.
Hi George,
A very simplistic interpretation would be to focus on the AMO only and argue that from 1970 to 2000 there was a positive phase of the AMO which lead to rapid warming and that from 2000-2030 a negative phase for the AMO will lead to less rapid warming. This is far too simple for many reasons. One reason is that there are other cycles such as ENSO, PDO, along with QBO, NAO, changes in the length of day and perhaps others that will influence how rapidly heat is stored and/or released from the ocean.
Yes the heat stored in the ocean is important, but we don’t have very accurate long term measurements of ocean heat content (there are many conflicting estimates) so I cannot include it in a model.
There is indeed a great deal of uncertainty about these various ocean cycles and predicting what they will look like in the future is difficult.
Looking at longer term trends such as 30 year or 60 year temperature averages may give us a better idea of what the overall temperature trend is likely to be. For the Earth system the heat flows into and out of the ocean over time and the rate of heating or cooling of the deep ocean is difficult to model (or it is for me).
The very simple model I have done allows us to look at CO2 alone and guess at the future trend due to CO2, using land only temperatures might give us a better guess at ECS rather than simply TCR.
So are you agreeing or not with the statement “All the circulation oscillations – ENSO, PDO, AMO, IDPO – just change how heat is taken up in the oceans versus the atmosphere.”?
Hi George,
Yes the various ocean cycles (though they are far from simple sinusoidal relations) will affect how quickly heat moves into and out of the deep ocean. So conceptually I agree, my point was that we do not have good long term measurements of ocean temperature (except the surface temperature) over a wide enough area to make very good estimates of how ocean heat content has changed over time.
The very simple CSALTAP (A for AMO and P for PDO which have been added to the original CSALT model at the context earth blog from circa 2013) can be used to look at trends for temperature change due to CO2 alone and “everything” (CSALTAP) over 30 year periods. The difference I will call “non-CO2 temperature trend”.
I did a regression on the data from 1870 to 2005 so I have a short “out of sample” section from 2006 to 2015. I only have complete actual data until 2012 and fill in missing aerosol and LOD data from 2013 to 2015 using the 7 year average of the data for aerosols and LOD from 2006-2012 to fill in missing data.
The trends for the whole model and CO2 alone (using only the CO2 coefficient from the full model) are found for 30 year intervals (1856-1905) and 32 year intervals thereafter (through 2012) and the non-CO2 trend is the model trend minus the CO2 trend (trend is temperature trend over 30 or 32 years). This “non-CO2” temperature trend is highly variable over 30 year periods from 1856 to 2012 as shown in the table below with temperature trend for the model in degrees C per century.
The concept that there may be a negative phase of the combined non-CO2 factors from 2015 to 2045 of between 0.2 C/century and 0.6 C per century which would reduce the warming due to CO2 (assumed at about 1.2 C per century), might reduce the rate of warming from 2015 to 2045 to about 0.5 C per century to 1 C per century with a mean guess of about 0.75 C per century. After 2045 we might expect the positive phase of the non-CO2 factors would lead to higher rates of warming, though perhaps emissions will be rising a slower rate by that time. Hard to know.
Such an optimistic scenario requires one to ignore a number of potential added feedbacks such as reduced aerosols as less fossil fuel is burned, as well as lower albedo due to ice sheet melt, sea ice loss, and reduced snow cover, greenhouse gas releases from increased forest fires and release from soil as permafrost melts.
All of these factors are not well understood and are difficult to predict accurately, other problems include clouds aerosols and their interaction in a warming World.
Our knowledge is limited in the complex interaction of many systems which are themselves understood in a very incomplete manner.
Does an Intrinsic Source Generate a
Shared Low-Frequency Signature in
Earth’s Climate and Rotation Rate?
Hi WHUT,
Thanks. That paper suggests for Global Land Ocean temperatures the LOD lag is 4 years, rather than 8 years.
When such a regression is done for all of these 6 independent variables
Except that they are obviously not independent. Your assumptions are wrong from the start.
Hi Javier,
In the sense that everything is connected, I suppose one could argue that there are no independent variables. This is just a conventional statistical name for a variable.
I guess you would need to clarify which assumptions are wrong.
Do you mean because I have not used the “60 year” time period. Note that for the regression, no time period is chosen.
Javier said: “Except that they are obviously not independent. Your assumptions are wrong from the start.”
He’s ignore-blocking me so he won’t see this, but Javier doesn’t know what he is talking about. He hasn’t done any of the heavy lifting of actually working the regression.
All he does is screen scrape for information and then twists and distorts it until it supports his political position.
The positive aspect is that probably a lot of other other people have set the ignore flag on him as well.
Hi whut,
Javier claims I am wrong very shortly, without argument, no doubt because he does not have one. I have simply used his observations that PDO, ENSO, AMO and other natural cycles are responsible for warming along with other analyses showing aerosols, LOD, and TSI are important as well.
When all of the variables are included with appropriate lags (7 years for LOD and 1 year for PDO) then seven factors are statistically significant for Global land ocean temperatures all of which confirms the many different independent analyses suggesting that the natural log of atmospheric carbon dioxide, AMO, SOI, TSI, Aerosols, LOD, and PDO have an influence on global temperatures is correct. The relative strengths of these various factors are determined by a least squares multilinear regression. As you know this is not really a heavy lift for someone with basic analytical skills.
The chart below shows the model vs data for the CSALTAP model (AMO and PDO added to your CSALT model). The regression was done over some number of years and the final x years of the model are “out of sample”. Javier likes to say we need “predictions” of the model. This model can be held fixed in the future to see how well it does.
I wonder if Javier can guess from the chart where the regression stopped? It was earlier than 2015, but certainly is not clear from the chart when this occurred.
Can anyone pick the year from looking at model vs data ( a range of years will do)?
Probably stopped after the last major volcanic event, ~1993?
Hi Paul,
The regression was on 1870-2005, so the 2006-2015 estimates are “out of sample”. Note that 2013- 2015 used filled in aerosol data based on the average of 2006-2012 aerosol data. It is not clear if aerosols have increased or decreased over those years.
Dennis – that’s a pretty impressive fit. Is it possible to break out the contribution from each of the parameters – e.g. as a stacked graph or even just averaged over say 30 and 100 years?
Apologies if this is shown somewhere else I miss a lot of this stuff from skipping over once Javier plasters his dishonest, self aggrandising bullshit all over the place (which presumably is part of his me-me-me agenda).
Here is another approach to breaking out the contributions
The bottom-line is that likely every one of the temperature wiggles is explainable, and that the CO2 contribution is unmistakable.
Hi George,
Thanks. Just a re-do of work started by Webhubbletelescope at context Earth.
I recently redid the model with annual TSI data (earlier I had taken the centered 11 year average for TSI to look at long term changes rather than the 11 year solar cycle.
I also dropped the Ocean terms (AMO, ENSO, and PDO), reducing the model to Carbon, Aerosols, Length of Day (LOD), and TSI (total solar irradiance). This I label the CALT model and I also substitute HADCRU4 for BEST in the analysis. The regression is on data from 1850-2012 (no Aerosol data after 2012) and I substitute the 2012 data for 2013-2016 for aerosols when calculating the model value for 2013-2016. The slope of the trend line from 1850-2016 is very close and the model under predicts temperature for 2015 and 2016.
Dennis – if I understand correctly the HADCRUT data set use only actual measurements and do not interpolate where data is sparse, as other sets do. So they miss out on a lot of the effect from the poles and generally give lower warming overall – is that your understanding?
I can understand leaving out the circulation effects if you think they are not independent variables, but I’d be interested to see how they affect things. I guess if they are cross correlated you can end up with parameters that cancel out each other and give far too big individual effects (e.g. a big positive cancels a big negative, even if the combined effect is correct – at least in a linear system), but maybe that is a way to check for such inter dependence. The understanding that these cycles play seems to be growing – so natural variation is maybe not so much and the interacting cycles is a bigger influence. I’ve read a couple of recent papers now that indicate we should expect a faster warming as the PDO is now positive, and maybe faster still if the IDPO switches phase (I don’t think you ever have included that, and I’ve actually seen very little about it, maybe becaause the data is so sparse).
Hi George,
Just tried HADCRUT4 for another data set, I usually use the BEST data, The PDO is not statistically significant when ENSO and AMO are included, though I recently realized the LOD lag is about 4 years rather than 8 for Global land ocean temperature. It turns out PDO is not significant with the 4 year LOD lag, TCR for CO2 is 2.1 C for doubled CO2. Model is CSALTA, with the extra A for the included AMO (detrended).
1) I don’t see how the PDO can’t have an effect on temperature – a large chunk of the world’s oceans are warmer or cooler that must feed into air temperature – so presumably AMO (and/or part of the ENSO signal) is taking all the correlation. What would happen if you just added all the indices together and correlated against that.
2) Why are you using CO2 rather than CO2e? As I understand it the aerosol effect and non CO2 GHG effect tend to cancel out, so just using CO2 is a reasonable approximation. But if you are specifically including aerosols shouldn’t the methanes etc. also be included?
Hi George,
CO2e could be used, but I don’t have all the data needed before 1979. I could use a model based estimate from MAGICC6, but that’s the best I would be able to do. Much of the data is not in a format that is easily used.
When PDO is included with the other factors, it is not statistically significant, it is possible there is a lag as there is with Length of day, perhaps including ENSO, hides the effect of PDO.
I was surprised there was not a statistically significant influence from PDO.
When AMO and PDO are added and we regress against the sum (including CSALT in the regression where A is aerosols) the AMO plus PDO sum is not statistically significant (tstat is less than one).
Note that the aerosol forcing is mostly due to volcanoes rather than industrial pollution. CO2 is the dominant forcing for greenhouse gases at least from 1979 to 2016.
Hi George,
CSALT model below, TCR is 2.17 C for doubling of CO2 (Carbon, SOI, Aerosols, LOD, and TSI).
Hi George,
If we leave out all of the oceanic cycles (including ENSO), we have the CALT Model (carbon, aerosols, LOD with 4 year lag, and TSI). TCR is 2.26 C for a doubling of CO2, regression on data from 1871-2012 (same as CSALT above). In all cases clicking on chart will enlarge it.
Hi George,
Probably simpler than you meant, but I added together AMO, PDO, and SOI indices, for an “Ocean index”. That was added to the CALT Model to create CALTO, the ocean index was statistically significant (though adding the three indices together seems rather arbitrary). The TCR is 2.24 in this case.
Any of the RCP downloads has data for all GHGs back to pre-industrial.
Hi George,
Using CO equiv as calculated by MAGICC 6 for RCP4.5 changes very little in the regression. For CO2 e the TCR drops to 1.97 C for a doubling of CO2 equiv, in 1871 (start of model) CO2 equiv was 284 ppm so double would be 568 ppm. (The average CO2 eq from 1871-1900 was 285 ppm). The RCP4.5 scenario reaches that level in 2067 (CO2 at 524 ppm).
CMIP3 model mean is about 2.3 C above pre-industrial in 2067 and in 2015 1.14 C above pre-industrial with BEST LO about 1.13 C above 1871-1900 mean temperature.
So my simple model underestimates the temperature increase relative to the CMIP3 ensemble mean estimated by MAGICC6.
First, a regression doesn’t prove anything. Different regressions can be done and there is no way to know which is the real one, if any. Clearly having a higher correlation does not mean being more correct. Correlation is not causation.
Second, while TSI, aerosol, and CO2 are independent variables not affected significantly by changes in temperatures, the same cannot be said of AMO, PDO, and LoD, where cause and effect cannot be distinguished. If the variables are not independent one falls into circular reasoning which is poison to science. The variables might covariate but not for the reasons assumed.
Your efforts don’t prove anything, and have nothing to do with science. They just give you your own reason to believe in what you believe.
Hi Javier,
One typically tries to confirm hypotheses with observational evidence. It is interesting that you have mentioned AMO, LOD etc as being natural cycles which may be the cause of the “natural warming”. Or do you believe the “natural warming” is the cause of changes in AMO, and LOD? You are not being very clear on which hypotheses you think are correct, or what those hypotheses are.
A major hypothesis that you return to on many occasions is a 60-75 year natural cycle in global temperatures, what is the cause of this cycle in your opinion?
You have mentioned things such as AMO. PDO, ENSO, and LOD in connection with the 60-75 year cycle.
When they are included in a simple regression, you then reject them. Very difficult to follow your thinking.
Hi Javier,
The trend for HADCRU4 is 0.81 C per century from 1907-2016 (120 years).
For the 60 year cycles we have:
1907-1966 trend is 0.76 C per century
1967-2016 trend is 1.65 C per century
Note that your estimate of 0.5 C per century is too low for 1900-2016, the correct estimate is 0.78C per century or 56% higher than your estimate.
Hi Dennis,
If you want to discuss trends you should plot trends, as I have done. Otherwise as trends are very sensitive to the choice of start and end points you can defend anything.
Hi Javier,
Here are the centered 61 year rates of increase in temperature for HADCRUT4 using data from 1850-2016 (centered 61 year rates of change in K per century from 1880-1986). All starting and ending points included.
Prior to 1976 the highest rate was 0.934 K per century, since 1976 the centered 61 year rate of temperature increase has been higher than the 1880-1975 maximum rate in 6 of 11 61 year periods from 1976 to 1986.
I often remark that the environmental question trumps all other questions combined, for reasons that are perfectly obvious to anybody who really understands the environmental crisis.
I just ran across this new site called TransitionVoice, with an article by one Lindsey Curren, who has a way with words.
Here are some of hers.
“You didn’t publicly declare yourself a single-issue voter from here on out — 100% commitment to the climate-and-energy nexus ONLY — and as for everything else: healthcare, education, LGBTQ+, military spending, taxes, immigration, jobs, abortion, whatevs, can all take a WAY back seat.
This shift in politics being because there’s no one to love on a dead planet, no equal rights to win on a dead planet, no wars to fight on a dead planet, no doctors to see on a dead planet, nothing to learn on a dead planet, no genders to opt in or out of on a dead planet, no bodies or babies to save on a dead planet, no government to work with or against on a dead planet, no people to admit or deny on a dead planet, and basically nothing but death on a dead planet.”
I’ve never read a better expressed argument concerning the environment, or anything else.
If North Korea is serious about air testing nuclear bombs with the likely radioactive fallout, and the US is serious about blowing NK away, along with any allies who happen to be in the way, maybe the push to rid the world of excess people starts soon.
Maybe so.
Wars have a way of taking on a life of their own.
Lets hope and pray (figuratively) that it doesn’t come to war.
If doughboy attacks anybody at all with a nuke, as opposed to just testing one over the open ocean, my guess is that the USA WILL do away with NK as it exists today. Whether Trump would use nukes to do so, and whether the top military brass would go along, is somewhat questionable. IF doughboy attacks the USA with a nuke, I think maybe we would use one in return.
It’s my belief that we could simply smother the NK air space with a large number of spy planes and enough attack aircraft to take out any thing dough boy has, before he could launch it, except for whatever he might fire off in the first hours.
And I can comfortably speculate that if even an ICBM is launched, and we have a couple of our older but FASTEST fighter jets onto to the launch signature within a couple of seconds, and they are within say fifty miles, they can take it out before it is high enough to escape them.
Various sources speculate that he may have fifty bombs already. Maybe. Maybe they are small enough to put them on a missile. Maybe not, at least not most of them. Whether he has anywhere close to fifty missiles capable of delivering them, etc, is another debatable question.
If we were to attack NK with our conventional forces, and go balls to the wall without worrying about being called bad names for killing civilians, etc, NK would cease to exist as a political entity within a few hours.
I have read tons of claims that air power can’t giterdone, that it takes troops on the ground to do the job, and in the end, troops on the ground have been necessary in the past. But this is not a Faulkner novel, the past is not the present.
Modern bombs delivered by modern aircraft or cruise missile hit the target dead on the vast majority of the time. There’s a zero possibility NK could survive a flat out air assault using only conventional weapons, because everything essential to the survival of even the NK economy is vulnerable to bombs, everything from the electrical grid, such as it is, to any industrial or laboratory facility not deeply buried or so well camouflaged as to be overlooked. One B one bomber these days can do more damage in a DAY than two dozen B 29’s could do in a month in WWII. And unless it suffers a mechanical malfunction, it will come home as regularly as a civilian airliner, because you can’t shoot them down with conventional antiaircraft weapons. Doughboy doesn’t have a modern air force. Any plane he sends up will be shot down within a matter of minutes.
The biggest question, once a war starts, is what China might do. China is not currently capable of fighting a conventional war outside her borders on very short notice, nor is anybody else for that matter. It takes a while to mobilize and bring troops and equipment up to the front area.
But by the time we and our allies could put enough troops on the ground in NK to really matter, China could likely do so as well, and more of them by a factor of ten probably.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear that dough boy and his leadership have been taken out in a so called surgical strike if anybody can figure out a way to do it. The Chinese themselves might do it, knowing that dough boy might get them involved in a hot war they want NOTHING to do with.
Reliable Interception of ICBM from the surface is fantasy at least for a decade.
I am absolutely convinced that if there is a war it will be between *China* and North Korea. China cannot tolerate trouble on its border.
Apparently China has been actively building up troops on its border with North Korea. Can they fight a conventional war in North Korea on short notice? Well, now they probably can.
I’m watching the Vietnam series and wondering why we are still fighting wars where people are dying. Russia has demonstrated that propaganda can bring about results for much less money than creating a big military machine and invading.
But I suppose if the goal is to quickly reduce the world’s population, war, disease, starvation, and natural disasters are ways to do this. So maybe killing people to remove them from consuming resources could become the goal even if we have the technology to win wars without deaths.
And so, we find that the ‘population problem’ is an ideological and social control, rather than a demographic, issue under capitalism. Fears of a demographic explosion among the impoverished and oppressed, resulting from fecundity and migration, often attributed to ‘feeble-mindedness’, cultural backwardness or genetics, led to the proliferation of eugenic theories, laws and measures. Nor are such ideas relics of a bygone past, as recurrent reported incidents of sterilization abuse directed at Puerto Rican women, indigenous Guatemalan women, African American men and women, and other oppressed groups attest. Most recently, the ideology re-emerged in reports that a Tennessee judge offered reduced sentences for inmates who agree to vasectomies and Nexplanon implants. In recent years, nativists have also dusted off overpopulation arguments to justify immigration control. Lest we think that such reasoning is far-fetched, it behooves us to recall that similar logic resulted in the draconian Immigration Act of 1924…
Addressing the epistemologically and ideologically related arguments of biological determinism, biologist Stephen Jay Gould once pointed out that,
‘The same bad arguments recur every few years with a predictable and depressing regularity.
No mystery attends the reason for these recurrences. They are not manifestations of some underlying cyclicity, obeying a natural law that might be captured in a mathematical formula as convenient as IQ; nor do these episodes represent any hot item of new data or some previously unconsidered novel twist in argument. (‘The Politics of Biological Determinism’, Rethinking Schools 14, no 2 [1999-2000])’
Rather, Gould affirmed, the recurrence of these ideologies is ‘sociopolitical’: they ‘correlate with episodes of political retrenchment, particularly with campaigns for reduced government spending on social programs, or at times of fear among ruling elites, when disadvantaged groups sow serious social unrest or even threaten to usurp power.’ Such is the existential threat to the capitalist order posed by current ecological crises.
On the other hand, in a world governed by principles of ecological integration, human well-being, and participatory democracy, rather that profitability, growth and ‘the invisible hand’, demographic criteria might well become meaningful for rational planning of resource conservation and use.’ ~ Michael Friedman
“There is a widespread assumption that society can transition pretty smoothly and painlessly from carbon-based to renewable energy sources. This assumption is almost certainly over-sanguine. The share of global consumption provided by renewables will undoubtedly continue to rise, but currently stands at barely 3%. The impact of renewables can be exaggerated by reference to capacities rather than actual output. Petroleum alone still accounts for 97% of all energy used for transport.”
Comment:
“I personally have studied all the options you outline and more. As a simple rule all energy supply systems or systems that can produce work. Meaning counter entropic activity. Must conform to two basic rules.
One they must produce more work then is required to replicate them. Two they must be 100% recyclable meaning there can be no losses in retrieval of base elements. Anything less is unsustainable. Meaning it’s a mining activity.
The only thing that conforms to those rules are biological life .
The best way to view our modern industrial society is as a mining operation. All mines eventually are shut in. Not because of exhausted resources, rather because of fit for use issues. The UK has more coal underground then it has produced. The same will happen to oil and copper and iron and and and…
No matter how you cut it our modern world has been an endowment of biological and geological life. It has been squandered.” ~ JT Roberts
“…in the Market State that has emerged, corporations and sovereign states make decisions on the production and distribution of Earth’s common resources more or less as a unitary system—with minimal participation from the people who depend on these commons for their livelihood and well-being. Because our forbears did not account for the biophysical flow of material resources from the environment through the production process and back into the environment, the real worth of natural resources and social labor is not factored into the economy. It is this centralized, hierarchical model that has led to the degradation and devaluation of our commons.
Over the past seventy years especially, the macroeconomic goals of sovereign states—for high levels and rapid growth of output, low unemployment and stable prices—have resulted in a highly dysfunctional world. The global economy has integrated dramatically in recent decades through financial and trade liberalization; yet the market is failing to protect natural and social resources, the state is failing to rectify the economic system, and the global polity is failing to manage its mounting imbalances in global resources and wealth. Without a ‘unified field theory’ of economics to explain how the commons is drastically undervalued and why world society is amassing huge debts to the environment, the poor and future generations, policymakers and their institutions lack the critical tools and support to address the massive instability that is now gripping the global economy. Businesses and governments are facing the Herculean challenge of reducing climate change and pollution while alleviating poverty without economic growth—a task for which the Market State is neither prepared nor designed to handle.
Already the system of state capitalism is breaking down, threatening the entire planet, its institutions and species. When this collapse can no longer be contained and a global monetary crisis ensues, world society will have the choice of creating an economic system that follows the universal laws of biophysics and commons preservation—or accepting a new version of 18th-20th century mechanistic economics, obliging humanity to continue living off the common capital of the planet under corporate feudalism and über-militaristic regimes. Our decision will likely come down to this: global commons or global autarchy. As an economist, I don’t pretend to speak for the conscience of humanity; but as a human being, my heart tells me that we shall see the beginnings of a commons economy in our lifetimes. The long-forsaken global commons are beckoning.”
Any argument taken to the extreme is almost dead sure to result in absurd conclusions. I have no idea who JT Roberts may be, but if you are dumb enough to take his words literally, you are as dumb as every body else here thinks you are.
We aren’t going to ” run out” of anything any time soon, although we are short to desperately short of many resources already. We adapt when we have to. We conserve when we have to, and we do without when we have to, in respect to everything except food water and shelter, for without these three, we die, which solves the problem anyway.
People who make the sorts of arguments you make are generally so ignorant of big picture reality as to be like little kids in the adult world, helpless, unable to think enough and not knowing enough to have any real understanding of what is really going on.
As oil, coal, gas, metal ores, good soil, clean water, and all other resources grow ever shorter in supply, we WILL for the most part use them more efficiently from one year to the next, BECAUSE once we MUST, we will.
We still have ample resources, more than enough to manage a successful transition to a renewable energy economy, IF we continue to work at the job.
It’s likely that a substantial portion of humanity will die hard before this century is out, but that’s actually sop in nature. There’s nothing at all new about famine, epidemics, war, and so forth. Every year I see one or another species go into overshoot, and die back, on the farm, lol.
A substantial portion of us will manage the transition. Unless the planetary ecology goes entirely to hell, we have ENOUGH of just about everything that matters in the USA and Canada to survive just fine for a couple more centuries at least, while we figure out how to wind down our dependence on non renewable resources to zero, or so close to zero that our descendants won’t have to worry about such resources for hundreds and maybe even thousands of years. It will be their problem then.
Sufficient unto the day are the NEEDS there of. We don’t need to waste our time worrying too much about how people are going to live centuries down the road. All we can reasonably do in that respect is to do as little permanent damage to the environment as possible.
“Any argument taken to the extreme is almost dead sure to result in absurd conclusions.” ~ OFM/Oldfarmermac/Glen McMillian
BAU is an ‘extreme argument’ that is leading to ‘absurd conclusions’, like rampant ecological destruction, etc..
Continuing with it, to paraphrase you, ‘for as long as possible’, and slowly using resources more efficiently, such as when crises are on top of us, will probably in many cases be too late and, in any event, won’t bring back some environments/habitats nor species back for a very long time, if ever.
I will resist making comments about your intelligence, because that would be ‘dumb’.
Dingaling,
WHAT I SAID is that a hell of a lot of people are going to die hard, and then you turn around and deny that I understand that we are already maybe up shit creek without a paddle?
You are refusing to acknowledge that WE WILL continue to pursue business as usual because we MUST, rather than because we don’t have sense enough to do otherwise, collectively speaking. You may well be and probably ARE right about THAT, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, lol.
Even a dingaling OUGHT to understand that any transition to a more sustainable, peaceful, tranquil way of life is going to take quite some time, decades and decades at least, to come to pass.
Giving up business as usual NOW, or any time soon, would throw the entire industrial world into a state of chaos that would make a hurricane look like a mild spring breeze. Only a complete idiot would argue otherwise.
IF we manage a successful transition, it will be because BAU enables us to do the research and invent and build out the necessary infrastructure, educate the public, reduce birthrates so that we can reduce the population, etc.
You would take a hatchet to the bottom of a life boat if you were in one at sea, judging by your comments over time.
I have never suffered fools gladly, and I won’t start NOW. If Dennis or Ron see fit, they’re free to ban me, but I won’t allow such drivel as you post to pass unchallenged without calling it what it is, the rantings of a fool.
You may notice that I have often expressed myself similarly in respect to many other people in business and politics, and other members of this forum as well.
I don’t give a hoot what you call me, with a few exceptions that I will respond to in stronger language. I’m not a racist, and I’m not a nazi, and I’m not a child molester. Other than that sort of thing, feel free to call me anything you like.
Old HB calls me Trumpster and worse, and I’m GLAD every time he responds to one of my comments, lol.
I NEED him to make my own points. I sign in as TRUMPSTER when I post comments about how rotten the Trump administration is, lol.
You would be a prime candidate to head up a small church of some sort based on a vision of apocalypse, one of your own devising.
He’s on my ignore list. A lot of words about stuff that I find irrelevant to this forum.
“Giving up business as usual NOW, or any time soon, would throw the entire industrial world into a state of chaos that would make a hurricane look like a mild spring breeze. Only a complete idiot would argue otherwise.” ~ OFM
“…perhaps impoverishing most of the world will slow down environmental destruction.” ~ Boomer II
“Giving up business as usual NOW, or any time soon, would throw the entire industrial world into a state of chaos that would make a hurricane look like a mild spring breeze.” ~ OFM
I consider BAU to be a war waged against people and the living planet– which it is– and so there’s no time left for BAU, Glen. It’s toast.
Therefore there’s also no time left for a very limited set of people figure out, for the rest of us, whether we like it or not, a BAU-oriented transition, using BAU.
Therefore, we need to be talking yesterday about how to rapidly transition out of BAU and into a ‘new set of living arrangements’ that we, our descendants, and the rest of the planet can live with, rather than talking about how to use BAU and its garbage to somehow make some kind of BAU-oriented ‘transition’ (transition to what, and for whom?).
Lobbing all sorts of infantile insults, incidentally, while maybe making your (fragile?) ego feel better, or helping to smoke over the questionable quality of your comments, won’t change that either.
“If North Korea is serious about air testing nuclear bombs with the likely radioactive fallout, and the US is serious about blowing NK away, along with any allies who happen to be in the way, maybe the push to rid the world of excess people starts soon.” ~ Boomer II
Getting out of BAU also includes, of course, getting out of government-as-usual.
“By the time human-capital theory, seeking to value each individual’s marketable skills, had seeped into development programs in the 1990s, calls to invest in girls’ education in the Global South were everywhere. But their appeal to funding agencies turned not on the benefits of education as such but quite explicitly on the indirect economic benefits of population reduction.
Campaigns like Nike’s Girl Effect, launched in 2004, positioned the Third World Girl as the ‘iconic vessel of human capital’. A reliable return on investment, her education would be handsomely paid back in the effects of reduced births on GDP per capita. In one campaign video, a voice-over speaks as the nameless Girl, directly to donors: ‘Invest in me. It makes sense. Start when I am very young. Watch your investment grow, as I do.’. Another video spelled out the cascade of beneficial outcomes: ‘Girl?School?Cow?$?Business?Clean H20?Social Change?Stronger Economy?Better World.’ In the human-capital ideal, economic value displaces not just social goods but the value of life itself. As the logics of surplus life return to the metropole, judicious family planning becomes ‘managed migration’. We see it manifest in ‘points-based’ immigration systems in which human capital—degrees, professional skills—becomes the only measure of fitness for admission.
But the point for Murphy is that to think of these issues through the terms of population is always to conceive of unwanted or surplus life—and thus of disposable life. Population control could hardly be said to ‘harm’ the unborn: Rather, it made the poor across the developing world surplus by definition…
Observers have revived an old Marxist term to describe those global capitalism no longer appears to need: ‘surplus populations’. Automation and deindustrialization reproduce the same divides in the Global North. Surplus populations in rich countries are endemically policed, incarcerated, and killed. Refugees escaping their conditions are brutally repelled from fortress Europe and North America by barbed wire and armed guards — and soon, perhaps, a ‘big beautiful wall’ on the Mexican border—though of course one exists already…
Murphy argues that race was always the subtext of population: That subtext is becoming text, written by the victors of an eco-apartheid, where militarized enclaves of wealth and safety are sealed off from flows of desperate climate refugees.
Scarcity poses a genuine challenge for the collective reproduction of the planet, and human density contributes to it. But neo-Malthusianism is no answer at all. Speculations about the earth in several hundred years aside, what does a renewed emphasis on population produce in the politics of the here and now? Which ends are served when increasing numbers of human beings are spoken of in the same abstraction as rising sea levels? When carbon emissions per capita in the United States are 40 times those of Bangladesh? Population points to babies rather than borders and systemic inequality as culprits for poverty. Free movement, not capital. Plan utopias, not people. Make Kin, Not Borders!“
Hi Caelan,
Sounds good.Kin, not borders!
BUT
As a matter of fact, I know some of both political stripes, lefties and righties, here in the USA, some actually within walking distance, who believe in fencing out anybody less fortunate, or a different color, or of a different culture, etc.
The biggest difference, in this respect, between these two groups, is that the lefties are usually publicly extremely hypocritical about it, preaching one thing, mostly doing the exact opposite, whereas the righties are mostly pretty straight forward about who they want and don’t want for neighbors, and say so publicly. The lefties only say what they really want and believe in private. I know, because I know a few of them quite well, having married into such a family once upon a time.
If you are located somewhere that a few hundred thousand or a million refugees arrive and totally disrupt the local housing, employment, educational, social services, etc, you yourself, Caelan, will sing a far different tune.
But maybe you think you are insulated from the consequences, maybe you believe YOU will not suffer any ill effects from so many new people arriving…… people who will have ENTIRELY different ideas about most of your dogma, people who speak different languages, people who will for the most part do damned little in the short or middle term to support themselves…… long term may or may not be different, they may assimilate, they may not,as proven by the situation in various places.
Be fucking careful for what you wish for, because it may bite off most or all of your own ass when you get it.
Right now we’re talking about allowing a few hundred thousand annually into the USA, and that’s not enough to create a lot of problems, except maybe in particular communities if too many of them want to stick together in such particular communities.
Any body idiotic enough to advocate open borders is advocating people coming into this country, and any other peaceable, civilized, reasonably prosperous country, by the tens of millions.
Caelan is obviously ignorant of the fact that the frontiers of the world are almost all used up already, and the remaining undeveloped portions are being chewed up fast by loggers, farmers, and land developers of various sorts.
The righties and the banksters, along with plenty of business as usual wanna be R’s who are pretend to be D’s thought it would be a GREAT idea to off shore as much as possible of our basic industries that employed our working classes.
Now they are dealing with the consequences, or soon will be………. because you can only fence out so many people effectively. Then you start paying out huge sums in taxes to hire social workers, jailers, cops, judges, etc, to deal with the problem so created.
Now they are dealing, those on the left and in the middle, with the backlash as exemplified by Trump getting elected, because when their communities, values, and livelihoods are threatened, working class people will vote without hesitation for whoever promises to put a stop to immigration.
We have a gated community within walking distance of my own place now. Ya want in, you have to be INVITED , or buy property behind the gates. The people who live there are nearly all rather well to do Yankees from the North East, which means damned near every last one of them is a hypocritical sonofabitch when it comes to his ACTIONS versus his words.
Such people profess LOVE and TOLERANCE and BROTHERHOOD……… for poor people and minorities………. so long as they are comfortably far away. They make goddamned sure as a hard rule than damned few if any poor people or minorities show up in their neighborhood, except if they arrive in the morning wearing servants uniforms, and leave in the afternoon well before dark.
I know, they try to treat me like a servant, because I look like one most of the time, but I happen to have a friend or two who own property inside the gates.. not every last one of the residents is a nose in the air holier than thou hypocrite. The land it’s built on used to belong to one of my great grand parents, and the cousins who sold it to be developed kept a few lots for themselves.
You bring in lots of immigrants, and you create a back lash that will eventually result in the USA going to single payer health care, etc.
Of course the righties are riding high for now, because they had sense enough to understand that the majority of the people of this country,over the last few decades, really didn’t WANT large slices of the cultural revolution rammed down their throats via the courts by the lefties. But they sure as hell got control of the legislative and executive branches of government as part of that backlash, and if they manage to hold onto power much longer, they will own the courts too, from the top down. All that would take right now would be for one or two SC judges to die unexpectedly. Old men die every day, ya know, without expecting it, even ones who have access to the finest medical care.
Nature adapts/evolves, Glen.
Each of us is, in a manner of speaking, our own species whose characteristics we can share with others.
If one of us is a blue jay and the other, a squirrel, we are not going to share the same adaptive strategies, but some of them might be similar, such as the ones related to our similar sizes or habitat preferences.
“Caelan is obviously ignorant of the fact that the frontiers of the world are almost all used up already, and the remaining undeveloped portions are being chewed up fast by loggers, farmers, and land developers of various sorts.” ~ OFM
Tell that to a superweed, a superbug, or a Permaean.
Back atcha, dingaling
I have posted numerous meaningful comments about super bugs and super weeds and invasive species, and I have forgotten more about these things than you will ever learn unless you enroll in a good university and spend the five or six years studying agriculture and ecology. I have those six years, and more, myself.
AND MY GRANDPARENTS AND GREAT GRANDPARENTS taught more as a child about sustainability and living in harmony with nature than you will ever know, under any circumstances.
On September 13, 2017, sea ice extent reached an annual minimum of 4.64 million square kilometers (1.79 million square miles). This was 1.58 million square kilometers (610,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 median extent for the same day, and 1.25 million square kilometers (483,000 square miles) and 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) above the 2012 and 2016 extents for the same day, respectively.
The date of the minimum ice extent for 2017 was two days earlier than the average minimum date of September 15. The earliest annual sea ice minimum in the satellite record occurred on September 5 in the years 1980 and 1987, and the latest on September 23, 1997.
This was 1.58 million square kilometers (610,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 median extent for the same day, and 1.25 million square kilometers (483,000 square miles) and 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) above the 2012 and 2016 extents for the same day, respectively.
Fantastic news! My New Ice Age Miami snow plowing business should be in the ‘GREEN’ er, I mean in the white, in no time at all! Standby for my IPO any day now!
Extent might actually decline again this week, there’s high temperature, especially on the Pacific side, and the smashed up multiyear ice is going to start to be pushed out of the Fram Strait again, after almost three months of no transport.
A slightly above average Arctic sea ice extent minimum for the past decade, according to NOAA.
As it should be. The Earth has warmed and Arctic sea ice has reduced. Sea level has increased. Glaciers have decreased. The expected result is that the latest years have had the highest temperatures and sea levels, and lowest Arctic ice and glaciers.
Besides stating the obvious, that the planet is warming, and it has consequences, the real debate is in another place:
– The warming is a 350 year old trend. Emissions didn’t start it.
– Nobody knows how much our emissions are contributing to the warming.
– We have been measuring the rates for quite some time, and there’s barely some, if any, acceleration.
Nothing in the evidence shows that we are headed to a catastrophe. Linear extrapolation for many decades into the future never works as a predictive tool in complex natural processes, specially when they show clear cyclical behavior.
The IPCC attributed a “greater than 90 percent certainty” to scientists’ assertion that higher greenhouse gas concentrations have trapped more thermal radiation and consequently warmed the planet (IPCC 2007).
Javier agrees CO2 causes warming, but he also believes that natural processes also cause some of the warming, there is statistical evidence that the positive and negative phases of the AMO influence the rate of warming (it slowed warming from 1945 to 1979 and it enhanced the rate of warming from 1980 to 2013).
I think that he contends that it may slow the rate of warming from 2014 to 2047 (his time frames may be slightly different because he uses a 60 year cycle, where I have found the period of the oscillation is about 68 years based on 1856-2016 AMO data).
The analysis is highly simplified and probably misses much.
Hi Javier,
The rate of warming has changed quite a bit over the past 350 years. For the first 250 it was very slow (less than 0.2 C per century) and was mostly “natural” warming, essentially just natural variability. The only natural process with a statistically significant effect on global temperature during the instrumental period that also is clearly a cyclical process (sinusoidal) is the AMO which shows a 68 year period from 1856 to 2016 (best R squared fit of a general sinusoidal function to the data over the 1856 to 2016 period).
There may also be a length of day component that should also be included.
Hi Javier,
The length of day (time it takes the earth to rotate about its axis which varies a few milliseconds from year to year) variations from 1870 to 2005 is not statistically significant when C, AMO, SOI, Aerosols, and TSI are also included in the regression (as was the case for PDO).
Interestingly over the 1992-2013 period the natural log of CO2 was responsible for about 67% of the warming trend 1.28 C per century of a total of 1.89 C per century (using BEST data). The AMO accounted for about 0.7 C per century of the warming over that period. Over the entire positive phase (1979-2013) the average AMO contribution was 0.58 C per century.
If we assume CO2 continues to increase at the same rate over the next 34 years so that warming from CO2 continues at 1.28 C per century and that the negative phase of the AMO counteracts the CO2 warming by 0.58 C per century, we could potentially see the rate of warming slow to 0.7 C per century over the 2014 to 2048 period.
There may be other effects such a reduction of aerosols or increases in solar output or volcanic eruptions as well as other Earth system feedbacks such as carbon and methane releases from melting permafrost and albedo changes all of which may confound this highly simplified analysis.
In any case I can see why you believe there might be a slow down in the rate of warming, it is at least in part due to the potential cooling due to the negative phase of the AMO (likely between 2013 and 2047 in my analysis).
Hi Dennis,
Length of Day (LoD) is one of the two great climate integrators in the system that tell us what is going on. While LoD integrates mainly the atmosphere changes, sea level integrates the ocean energy.
LoD has been increasing as the Earth has been decelerating since ~2003. That change corresponds to the climatic change that started the Pause and is now preventing Arctic melting and producing a low warming rate. https://datacenter.iers.org/eop/-/somos/5Rgv/plotname/213/EOPC04_08_62-NOW_IAU1980-LOD.jpg
For as long as LoD continues increasing there won’t be any significant warming.
Sea level is a slow integrator of energy that shows that the world is in a long warming trend. Sea level also shows the ~60 year oscillation in its rate of change, but it is always positive. Once this positive trend ends, the 350 year old warming will be over. That hopefully won’t happen for many decades.
Dennis, Can you see the increasing desperation of Javier? He is all over the map and is contradicting himself at every step.
Javier has a problem in that all he wants to do is argue and win the argument at all costs.
The issue is one of consistency. It appears that he refuses to believe in consensus climate science on many topics, but then states this : “Never my conjecture. In my articles I don’t add anything to what has been published by climate scientists. 100% science based and fully referenced.”
So the implication is that — according to Javier —
everything that climate scientists find in their research is correct but that their interpretation is completely incorrect, and only he can unwind everything so as to make sense of it.
In other words, Javier is a troll.
Take the example of LOD. Javier cherry-picks and completely twists the data to suit his argument.
Here is the LOD data and the correct interpretation. Notice that the scientists at NASA JPL find that global warming continues in spite of the LOD varation. And that is what Dennis finds in his CASAT regression as well.
Dickey, J. O., S. L. Marcus, and O. de Viron, 2011: Air temperature and anthropogenic forcing: Insights from the solid Earth. J. Climate, 24, 569–574, doi:10.1175/2010JCLI3500.1.
Based on that paper it looks like it should be an 8 year lag of LOD vs Temperature rather than the 7 years I have used.
Hi Javier,
There is about an 8 year lag between changes in LOD and temperature change. Using this 8 year lagged LOD it appears that LOD increased quite a bit from 1968 to 1980 and temperature was rising over this period by about 0.3 C.
I agree that LOD does influence Global temperatures possibly through changes in the angular momentum of the Earth system, the effect can easily be included in a simple model such as CSALT.
Dennis,
“I agree that LOD does influence Global temperatures possibly through changes in the angular momentum of the Earth system”
We ignore by what mechanism LoD changes could affect global temperatures, so we cannot distinguish between that possibility, and the possibility that something is affecting both LoD and temperatures. What doesn’t appear probable is that changes in temperatures affect LoD.
Note that the Dickey et al., 2011 article subscribes to the generally rejected hypothesis of cosmic ray effect on cloud nucleation as a way of explaining the effect of LoD on temperatures.
Hi Javier,
The warming is likely to continue for many centuries, though the rate may slow if we reduce carbon emissions, it will likely take 500 years or more for the ocean to come to equilibrium with the increased radiative forcing due to higher atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, so your hopes will be fulfilled.
Hi Dennis,
All of that is assumptions. We lack the predictive capability to deduct for how long the warming is going to continue. Frequency analysis indicates that due to the millennial oscillation the increase in temperatures might be over by ~ 2100.
We are likely to be in a warm period similar to the Roman Warm Period where temperatures are likely to remain nice for a few centuries, but without further warming.
Hi Javier,
Speculation without any mechanism to explain your millennial cycles, handwaving doesn’t count.
Note that energy considerations and the angular momentum of the planet could easily account for changes in the length of day changing the energy of the Earth system. This is just physics.
Dennis,
The same was said for the glacial cycle. The evidence for multiple glaciations was found before a convincing explanation for them could be identified. Even today some aspects of the Milankovitch theory are unclear.
The evidence for the millennial cycles is clear also. Scientists are progressing in the understanding on how solar variability affects climate. Some models show progress in reproducing the Little Ice Age in terms of solar variability. For example:
This is not speculation. Is science. Hypothesis are being developed. Some things will be wrong and others will be right.
The millennial cycle is a reality, and now is time of warming and we are having warming. I would be more worried if the millennial cycle indicated cooling and we were having warming.
Hi Javier,
The proxy data is not very good many inconsistencies. We have pretty good global data sets for 1517 years. How far back do these millennial cycles go? Where’s your global temperature data for prior to 500 CE.
I think the argument for millennial cycles based on 1500 years of data is pretty weak.
The solar hypothesis is interesting, but relatively unproven, so far the affect of solar variability is relatively minor relative to volcanic eruptions. There is no doubt variability based on the warming and cooling of the deep ocean over time and more work is needed to understand this more fully.
Double whammy by The Sunday Times to global warming catastrophism.
“As egg-on-face moments go, it was a double-yolker. Last week a group of climate scientists published a paper that admitted the estimates of global warming used for years to torture the world’s conscience and justify massive spending on non-carbon energy sources were, er, wrong.
…
Another author, Myles Allan of Oxford, told The Times: “We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models. We haven’t seen that in the observations.”
Allan’s defence of the models, however, was peculiar. He said that they had been assembled a decade ago, so it wasn’t surprising they had deviated from reality. Yet these are the very same models used to make predictions for 50 or 100 years ahead which have saddled taxpayers with huge costs to pay for alternative energy sources. Anybody who doubted their predictive power was labelled an unscientific dolt, a “climate denier” fit to be listed with the Flat Earthers.”
“When 194 nations met in Paris in 2015 and agreed to try to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5C, many scientists dismissed the goal as unattainable.
They said it would be politically and economically impossible to cut emissions fast enough and that the world would have to prepare for the effects of an increase of more than 1.5C, including worse droughts and heatwaves and islands disappearing beneath rising seas.
Now it turns out the scientists were being too pessimistic and had been led astray by computer models which overstated the rate of warming.”
Looks like all those wrong predictions are finally taking a toll on climate catastrophism. Like most scares the global warming scare will be proven wrong.
a “double-yolker!”
LOL, Javier.
You mean like a Siamese Twin?!
.
The models will not get every 10 year period correct, it is longer term 30 year averages that are important.
For the past 30 years that Earth has warmed at about 1.7 C per century, for the past 60 years (1966-2015) the rate of increase in Global temperature has been 1.6 C per century. The previous 60 years (1906-1965), global mean temperature increased at a rate of 0.9 C per century. The long term rate of warming of the past 60 years has increased by about 78% relative to the previous 60 year period (1966-2015 relative to 1906-1965).
By choosing periods in a cyclical phenomenon you are getting the wrong answer every time. Too low sometimes, too high others.
A correct extrapolation of the data predicts lower warming ahead, not higher. You have been foretold.
Hi Javier,
The AMO (detrended so we are looking at AMO rather than general SST warming in the North Atlantic)has peaks in 1945 and 2013 and the cycle is about 68 years by doing an analysis of 1856 to 2016 AMO data. The effect of the AMO on temperature is likely to amount to about 0.06C per decade from 2017 to 2030, so not very significant on a long term trend of 0.17 C per decade for most temperature data sets (UAH6 being the lone exception). Perhaps the rate will slow to 0.16 C per decade.
You should use temperature rather than trends on your charts, what is the 20 C doing on a chart with rates?
BEST Land Ocean Global Temp Anomoly in degrees Celsius relative to the 1951-1980 average. The flat part between 1940 and 1970 is probably due to air pollution over this period. See
You should look better. We are not talking about the AMO here, but about changes in the rate of warming. These are variations in global temperatures. The AMO might be partially responsible for that, but the AMO is a regional phenomenon, while the changes in rate of warming are global.
You might not see it well in the graph as displayed, but you can make it real size with right-click. The 20 C is actually 20th C(entury) average. UK Met Office choice of confusing display, not mine.
The flat part between 1940 and 1970 is probably due to air pollution over this period.
No kidding. The cooling part of the ~60 year periodicity is due to pollution, and the warming part due to anthropogenic gases. Very convenient but false. You are not going to understand climate until you accept the evidence. The ~60 year oscillation has been identified in records for the past three centuries. Your ad-hoc explanations for the past two oscillations don’t hold much water.
Whatever influence we are having on climate is a lot smaller than you calculate.
Hi Javier,
There does not need to be a single explanation. If you are going to claim a cycle due to AMO, then you should know what the cycle is.
The BEST Temp data and AMO model (sine fit to AMO data) in chart below. Note that if the AMO was primarily responsible for temperature changes we should see temperature rise and fall by the same amount and today temperature should be the same as 1878. It isn’t.
Hi Dennis,
If you are going to claim a cycle due to AMO, then you should know what the cycle is.
I don’t need to claim anything and the periodicity is not due to AMO. AMO is just one of several indices that manifest a clear ~60 year oscillation. Among others they are:
-AMO
-PDO
-global temperatures
-ENSO
-Speed of rotation of the Earth
-Arctic sea ice
That you think I am claiming it and it is due to the sea surface temperature changes of the North Atlantic reflected by AMO, only says how little you know of something so central to global warming. Not even seeing it in figures from official climate institutions you are capable of accepting a reality that is beyond any doubt and supported by scores of publications. Whether is it truly cyclic or quasi-cyclic and how predictable it is we don’t know, but that it is real we are certain, as it is in the data. Ockam would start shaving those that think that a different explanation can be given to each phase of the oscillation, pollution when downwards, CO2 when upwards.
Note that if the AMO was primarily responsible for temperature changes we should see temperature rise and fall by the same amount and today temperature should be the same as 1878.
Faulty logic. Temperature is a physical property that integrates many processes that affect it. The ~60 year oscillation affects temperatures and is responsible for the periods of warming and the pauses. There is also an upward trend that is made up primarily of a millennial natural component over which the increase in greenhouse gases is having an effect.
Here is a figure from a recent Trenberth article. He has similar problems to you to understand this, but he links changes in warming to the ~60 year PDO oscillation. Much better than that silly pollution/emissions ad hoc explanation.
I have tested PDO, it is not significantly significant when regressed with natural log of atmospheric CO2, AMO, SOI, aerosols, and TSI, these other 5 factors all have a tstat above 4 so they are statistically significant at the 99.9% level.
As far as the 60 year periodicity, I checked AMO and the best fit for AMO from 1856 to 2016 is 68 years not 60 years, if we assume a simple sinusoidal relationship. ENSO is not a simple sinusoidal relationship, so you are wrong there.
You think you know more than you do.
You can read, not convinced you can do any mathematics or statistics, so it is not clear you understand what you read.
Hi Javier,
If there is a clear 60 year cycle, then demonstrate it.
I started by assuming 60 years for AMO, what I found is that a 68 year cycle works best.
You can ignore that, if you like, I just was letting you know what I found, feel free to ignore it and rely on what you read.
Hi Dennis,
The periodicity of this oscillation is not well determined, but it is very well known. I don’t need to demonstrate its existence because it has already been done to climate scientists satisfaction:
This article has been cited 1080 times according to Google Scholar. 68 times in the first months of 2017. That makes it a very high impact article that is considered very relevant over 20 years later.
“In addition to the well-known warming of ~0.5 °C since the middle of the nineteenth century, global-mean surface temperature records display substantial variability on timescales of a century or less. Accurate prediction of future temperature change requires an understanding of the causes of this variability; possibilities include external factors, such as increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations and anthropogenic sulphate aerosols, and internal factors, both predictable (such as El Niño) and unpredictable (noise). Here we apply singular spectrum analysis to four global-mean temperature records, and identify a temperature oscillation with a period of 65-70 years. Singular spectrum analysis of the surface temperature records for 11 geographical regions shows that the 65-70-year oscillation is the statistical result of 50-88-year oscillations for the North Atlantic Ocean and its bounding Northern Hemisphere continents. These oscillations have obscured the greenhouse warming signal in the North Atlantic and North America. Comparison with previous observations and model simulations suggests that the oscillation arises from predictable internal variability of the ocean-atmosphere system.”
It has been known for 23 years, just not by you. 23 years ago it was demonstrated that to predict future temperatures this oscillation has to be taken into account. That is what I am doing. Why do you think my expectations for Arctic sea ice and warming are better than those of the very expensive models developed by climate scientists? They are forbidden from including known natural oscillations of unknown cause that would project much lower future temperatures and spoil the party. That’s why I will be right and they will be wrong. I let the system tell me how it works, and they try to tell the system how it should work according to our limited knowledge.
If for the next 15 years things go the way I say (very small warming rate, and slight Arctic Ice recovery) skeptics will be proven right and the climate establishment wrong. If the opposite happens (high warming rate and Arctic ice continued demise) then skeptics will be the wrong ones. Simple test. No need to take any drastic measure before we have the result.
Hi Javier,
You claim 60 years in several cases, you repeat this often. I will note the paper you cite suggests 65-70 years, which I agree with, in fact an analysis of the AMO data shows a 68 year period fits the data best.
Note that the PDO and ENSO have very different periods than the AMO.
Whether there is a global oscillation in global temperature that has regular intervals is unknown, but looking at the proxy record the period is far from regular.
Much of the increase and decrease in temperature within Milankovitch cycles might be explained by volcanic activity.
Hi Dennis,
“You claim 60 years in several cases”
The oscillation is present in multiple phenomena with slightly different period and some irregularity between 55-80 years. It is best seen as a quasi-periodicity that is usually referred in the bibliography as the around 60 year oscillation. I don’t claim anything.
“Much of the increase and decrease in temperature within Milankovitch cycles might be explained by volcanic activity.”
Obviously not. The volcanic effect on climate is due to sulfates and particles that settle down in a few years, and therefore is short-lived. Look at Pinatubo or El Chichón if you need confirmation. Milankovitch effect is just the opposite, very gradual and long lived.
Hi Javier,
Volcanic activity affects temperature and will happen at random within existing Milankovitch cycles. The length of the effect depends on the size of the eruption and where it occurs on the planet as weather circulation patterns in some areas will tend to spread the aerosols further than others as will the size of the eruption and whether the aerosols are injected into the stratosphere.
Dennis,
No effect has been demonstrated beyond a few years.
A different thing are the continuous emissions from huge areas that took place in the distant past, like the Deccan traps.
Hi Javier,
The influence that CO2 has on climate matches well with the physical models when simply using statistics. The transient climate response is about 1.75 and the ECS (estimated from a regression of land temperature changes vs CO2, AMO, SOI, and aerosols) is about 3 C.
I don’t calculate anything, a simple multilinear regression using a spreadsheet and the data gives these results. It simply confirms what is in the peer reviewed literature.
Link to spreadsheet with data below TCR=1.75 C for a model using nat log CO2, AMO, SOI, Aerosols, and TSI, all tsats more than 4 and R squared 0.94.
The influence that CO2 has on climate matches well with the physical models when simply using statistics.
Correlation is not causation. Multiple lines of evidence show that the role of CO2 in global warming has been exaggerated. There are numerous estimates of ECS and they disagree by so much that IPCC had to backtrack and go back to the 1.5-4.5 uncertainty. Apparently you know better than IPCC.
It simply confirms what is in the peer reviewed literature.
In peer-reviewed literature you have everything, as I have shown multiple times. Articles that support what you say and articles that contradict it. The bottom line is that we don’t know the effect of CO2 on climate.
Hi Javier,
Yes there is uncertainty. In science hypotheses are tested against data. This very simple analysis tests the hypotheses for statistical significance and relies on a simple regression to determine the coefficients.
The causation is suggested by scientific theory, the correlation simply confirms the theory using empirical data.
This is how science is done.
The majority of evidence supports the hypothesis that CO2 causes warming, the statistical analysis suggests how much of that warming is caused by CO2, confirming the majority viewpoint and very close to the ensemble mean of the different models.
Short term the TCR is about 2 C, after the ocean warms (taking a few hundred years) warming approaches 3.2 C for a doubling of CO2.
This does not account for other feedbacks from carbon released from soil as the planet warms and due to changes in planetary albedo as ice sheets melt on Greenland and Antarctica.
A low short term TCR would argue for less aggressive mitigation. Risks of strong positive feedbacks argue for more aggressive mitigation.
To me the decisive argument is the very high short term external costs of oil & FF, even when you exclude climate change: security costs and the cost of “criteria” pollutants are very high.
Oil and FF are costly, risky and polluting: we should transition away from them ASAP.
Hi Nick,
The models suggest TCR is around 1.8 C for s doubling of CO2, how quickly the ocean warms to raise temperature further is not very clear. As humans mostly live on Land, the TCR for land temperature may be more relevant, and this is about 3 C and is likely a good proxy for global land ocean ECS.
Hmmm. You’re talking about long-term, right?
Personally, I think the rate of technical progress is high enough that a significant discount rate is warranted – that would make the short term more important.
On the other hand…the uncertainties and risks involved swamp such considerations: the risk of positive feedbacks, and the conventional external costs are much larger than is needed to justify an aggressive approach to mitigating climate change.
For instance: why in the world would anyone argue that being hostage to the ME is a good idea? How many trillions do we need to spend on oil wars, and how many thousands of soldiers must come home dead or disabled before we stop this crazyness, and switch to cleaner, faster EVs??
How many millions of children need to get asthma before we get rid of coal? How many millions of Chinese need to die before they switch from coal??
Hi Nick,
For global land temperature, the TCR is 3.2 C, based on the simple regression I have done. That is short term. It is quite likely we will hit at least 500 ppm of CO2, which would correspond to global land temperatures reaching an average of 2.7 C above pre-industrial. Potentially this will be a problem for agriculture and the environment in general.
I agree we should try to make the transition to non-fossil fuels as quickly as possible.
Hopefully technological progress will be as rapid as optimists believe.
The causation is suggested by scientific theory, the correlation simply confirms the theory using empirical data.
This is how science is done.
No, Dennis,
The correlation does not confirm the theory. This is not how science is done. The correlation at best is consistent with the theory. If the theory is correct, it has to be able to produce unique predictions that confirm it. The gravitational effect on light was a prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
The CO2 hypothesis of climate change has an awful track record with predictions that actually fails to confirm it.
Models propose an ECS of ~3°C/doubling, as you defend, and they are overheating hugely from day 1 even when using emissions scenarios that predict a stabilization at 2°C, like RCP4.5.
The hypothesis is wrong. The effect of CO2 on climate is much lower than anticipated.
Hi Javier,
The RCP4.5 does not predict stabilization at 2 C, it is just an emissions scenario corresponding with roughly 4.5 W per square meter of radiative forcing.
The models expect a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in approximately 3.7 W per square meter of radiative forcing increase relative to pre-industrial levels of CO2.
The “natural warming” that you refer to needs to be driven by something. What do you propose besides the obvious increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere?
Hi Dennis,
The RCP4.5 does not predict stabilization at 2 C, it is just an emissions scenario
No need to nitpick. CMIP5 predict a stabilization at 2° C when fed RCP4.5.
The “natural warming” that you refer to needs to be driven by something. What do you propose
We have already talked about this several times.
Study of Holocene climate variability shows that a great part of climate change is due to periodic changes in climate forcings. The LIA was the last occurrence of a ~2400 year pattern of cooling due to lower solar activity, helped by high volcanic activity and higher oceanic turnover due to high tidal activity. The mechanisms are being actively investigated but not yet elucidated enough to be reproduced by models that can’t properly model the interactions between the upper, middle and lower atmosphere.
You can get the details and bibliography at my articles at Climate Etc. blog.
The LIA was a slow multi-centennial cooling. Once the factors that produced the LIA disappeared, the post-LIA is a multi-centennial warming caused simply by the absence of the cooling factors. Solar activity has been very high during the 20th century, and it is not properly considered, as it is the effects of UV on ozone that mediate these changes, not TSI changes, that are very small.
On top of that our emissions have given the post-LIA warming a kick. They are having an effect. Perhaps 25-35% of the warming since 1976 is due to our emissions. The rest is natural and the same way it has been given to us it could be taken from us. And it will be taken in due time, as the interglacial is approaching its end, but that is in such distant future that there is no point in worrying.
Figure below can be clicked on for a larger view. It shows that modelled UV variability (we do not have long term measurements prior to 1980) follows TSI very closely, note that 1360.1 W/m2 can be subtracted from the TSI so that the overall amplitude of TSI changes would be greater than for the UV variability. If we also subtracted 12.05 W/m2 from the UV estimate the amplitude would be about 0.3 W/m2 compared to 1.8 W/m2 for TSI. So your UV argument does not really convince. Potentially UV might have some local effects, but for the overall planetary budget TSI is far more important than UV and the pattern is essentially the same for TSI and UV spectral irradiance.
Figure 5. Shown in the top panel are monthly mean values of total solar irradiance, based on the magnetic flux transport calculations of Wang et al. [2005] that predict a small but significant accumulation of magnetic flux during the first half of the twentieth century, associated with the steadily increasing solar activity cycle amplitudes. In the bottom panel are the changes in UV irradiance at wavelengths from 200 to 295 nm (absorbed in the atmosphere), also based on the flux transport model simulations.
Figure 5 (caption above) is below.
Hi Dennis,
“It shows that modelled UV variability … follows TSI very closely …
So your UV argument does not really convince.”
You don’t appear to know that most in-phase change in solar radiation is due to UV frequencies, and that other parts of the spectra actually change in anti-phase with the solar cycle.
Also you don’t appear to know that unlike for most of the spectrum, UV energy is preferentially delivered to the stratosphere, where most of the ozone is. As the stratosphere is very rarified, the energy changes there due to UV variability are quite large and have effects over stratospheric circulation that are transmitted to the troposphere and that we are only starting to understand.
Hi Javier,
There is much that I don’t know.
That is the data I could find on UV, provide links to back up your claims, as I did.
Most of TSI variability with the solar cycle is in the 200-400 nm UV band. Above 700 nm there is pretty much no change in irradiation with the solar cycle, and above 1000 nm the change is actually opposite to the cycle (see figure 2 from the paper).
Regarding the absorption of UV by ozone at the stratosphere, that is a very generic well known issue.
Yes the fact that UV is absorbed by the Ozone in the stratosphere is obvious, thanks for pointing that out. It was the claim that changes in UV have had an effect on climate that I was interested in and indeed there does seem to be research suggesting that changes in polar climate have resulted from stratospheric ozone depletion. This would be a recent phenomenon due to CFCs and other substances that have damaged the ozone layer.
Analysis including TSI has TSI as not statistically significant, so we drop “T” for a “CASA” model (Carbon, AMO, SOI, and Aerosols), TCR is 3.2 C (an estimate of ECS for Global land ocean). Chart below of CASA, regression on data from 1870 to 2012, R squared is o.90.
Dennis, the answer to the climate riddle does not lie in regression analysis of known variables.
In fact your analysis is meaningless once it includes SOI, as it becomes circular reasoning. ENSO both feeds on temperature changes and produces temperature changes. So I hate to break the news, but all you are doing is wiggle matching between two dependent variables about something that is absolutely known. The relationship between ENSO and global temperatures. In fact ENSO is a relatively good predictor of global temperatures with a variable lag, usually 3-4 moths.
Temperature versus ENSO.
The AMO in your model will help with reproducing the ~60 year oscillation.
The aerosol-CO2 binomial is the core of the CO2 hypothesis proposition. It has been adjusted to provide the trend in the temperature change. That it matches what it has been adjusted to match is no surprise, and proves nothing.
Hi Javier,
The model simply takes known effects to see the relative strengths of the effects.
Yes AMO, ENSO, CO2, LOD, atmospheric carbon dioxide, aerosols from volcanoes, and PDO have all been shown in the peer reviewed literature to affect global land ocean temperature.
You seem not to understand how a regression works.
You seem to be under the impression that I somehow “choose” the coefficients.
Try it yourself, the coefficients are simply the best fit of the data, supporting the theory that global temperature is a function of all of these variables at least over the instrumental period.
“Yes AMO, ENSO, CO2, LOD, atmospheric carbon dioxide, aerosols from volcanoes, and PDO have all been shown in the peer reviewed literature to affect global land ocean temperature.”
This is incorrect. They have been shown to co-variate with temperatures. That they cause temperature variations is an assumption that in some of the cases is reasonable and in others is not.
I understand a regression perfectly well, thanks. It is a best fit approach that finds the best coefficients to adjust one or several variables to a data set. It is just a mathematical adjustment that provides zero information about causal relationships. As it is always said correlation does not imply causation. Those that forget it, learn it the hard way by being often wrong. As it is often the case, as new data is added new coefficients have to be found or even the fit drops, because the solution found is not the real one despite the correlation achieved by this mathematical adjustment over past data.
Hi Javier,
The causal relationships come from physics.
The correlation of data with the theory simply confirms the hypothesis.
How is the gravitational constant determined?
Does empirical evidence have anything to do with it?
Of course there can be spurious correlation, one could claim I suppose that the fact that we measure a relatively constant acceleration of physical objects dropped in a vacuum is just a spurious correlation and does not support the hypotheses of Newton.
All those physicists must be wrong because mistakes have been made in the past. 🙂
The regression is done on data from 1870-2005, so the 2006-2015 model estimates are “out of sample” and data from the years from 2006 to 2015 are not used to determine the coefficients.
You argue that the natural log of CO2 causes very little warming, I and most geophysicists argue that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide results in more warming than you believe to be the case.
This would be a little like Newton and another physicist arguing that g is 10 m/s2 or 5 m/s2.
So they do an experiment to measure g and find that Newton is roughly correct (turns out it is closer to 10). You would claim that nothing has been proved and that correlation does not prove causation.
Newton just shakes his head. 🙂
Hi Javier,
The papers do more than establish correlation, they also give physical arguments for why such a correlation would be likely, maybe you need to read more carefully or study a little physics and chemistry so that you can understand the arguments. 🙂
Hi Javier,
A simple test is to leave natural log of CO2 out of the model, to prove that CO2 has no effect.
When we drop natural log of CO2, then Aerosols, LOD, and PDO are no longer statistically significant. So we retry using AMO, SOI, and TSI vs temperature, we will call this the AST model (for AMO, SOI, and TSI), we will compare with an alternative model which includes natural log of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (C) which we will call the CAST model.
Chart below compares the two models with BEST land ocean temperature, both regressions used 1870-2005 data only.
Which model looks better to you?
Click on chart for larger image.
Dennis,
Does AMO have an additional warming trend? I am suspicious that this may have an AGW signal embedded in it.
If you think it is North Atlantic SST that is significant, then call it that. It is pretty clear that SST would be correlated with Global temperature so this does not have a lot of significance if we are not going to detrend the temperature series.
The TSI becomes statistically insignificant if we use the detrended AMO, so a model of Carbon, NASST, LOD, and Aerosols (CANA) has a TCR for carbon of 1.72 C.
In my opinion NASST is better left out of the analysis, for the same reason why PDO and ENSO should also be left out, but especially it would be the case when using NASST rather than the detrended AMO.
Actually that is not correct, Dennis.
AMO is AMO whether detrended or not. NOAA is very clear in that respect and the bibliography too.
If you use non-detrended AMO perhaps you can take out CO2 from the fit, as the trend will be provided by ocean temperatures. The entire exercise is quite futile.
Hi Javier,
The point is to try to understand why the ocean and land has warmed so including the SST as an independent variable to explain the increase in SST is indeed futile.
If we use the “not detrended AMO” or as the NOAA would call it, the North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature, then we get a very poor fit without CO2, the TCR is reduced to about 1.5 C when we include the sea surface temperature for the North Atlantic as we would expect.
We can only reduce the effect of CO2 to zero if we regress Global land ocean temperatures against global land ocean temperatures, and we get a perfect fit in that case. 🙂
Not much is learned however. It is indeed futile to include sea surface temperature in the independent variables to try to find out something about the rise in sea surface temperature, though perhaps you don’t understand this as you insist that the North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature should be included as an independent variable (rather than the AMO, which is by definition detrended.)
The detrended data makes more sense if we are looking to accentuate the “oscillation” of the AMO.
Have you ever done any statistical analysis, you seem to be missing a lot.
Why do you imagine there is a distinction between AMO and North Atlantic SST?
The focus of the AMO is the sinusoidal nature of the smoothed data, detrending accentuates the sinusoid.
Dennis,
Yup, that’s the untrended version of AMO that you are using, which is better, as far as it goes.
What we ought to do long term is model the AMO similar to what we have for ENSO. It’s probably tides, just like for ENSO.
Dennis, if you compare two things that in origin have a trend and you remove the trend from one of them, you set up an apples to oranges comparison. Remove the trend from temperatures also and compare detrended AMO to detrended temperatures to see the relationship between AMO and temperatures, or compare them both with their trend.
Hi Javier,
Can you explain why including ENSO is circular, but including AMO is not?
Either both should be included or neither as both are statistically significant.
Also if we are going to include AMO “detrended” (aka North Atlantic SST), should we also include SST for all oceans? If not, can you explain why we would include one, but not the other?
Hi Javier,
Note that including the increase in North Atlantic Sea Surface temperature (by not using the detrended AMO) artificially reduces the estimated TCR for CO2 from about 2.2 C to 1.5 C, the increased CO2 is likely the cause of the increased SST which is why we would not use SST as one of the variables in the regression.
No doubt you will not recognize this fact, though if you want to really reduce the apparent TCR for increased CO2, you would suggest global land ocean temperatures vs SST and the natural log of atmospheric CO2 which would drop the TCR for doubled CO2 to under 0.5 C for a doubling of CO2. Maybe someone would think this is valid. 🙂
CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL CAN AND WILL LEAVE PEOPLE DEAD.
According to the Texas penal code, “A person acts with criminal negligence, or is criminally negligent… when he ought to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise….”
The list of ways in which Talbott and his office should have been aware of the substantial risk of ignoring a robust body of scientific evidence, at the tragic expense of the people of Houston, is stunning. As a climate change skeptic, Talbott, who is trained not as a scientist but as an engineer, refused to consider projections of rising sea levels and heavier rainfall. He let developers pour concrete over prairielands that used to soak up that rainfall, exacerbating flooding. He refused to acknowledge that constructing elevated buildings in a floodplain was probably redirecting floods elsewhere. All of the above led to a sharp rise in complaints from increasingly flooded homeowners, activists, and scientists. Instead of preparing Houston for a climate-changed, flood-prone era, Mike Talbott and his office helped it evolve into a deadly urban aquarium waiting to happen.
Aw and the poor liddle denialists are upset at a little science fiction from a climate activist
“The Trial was held in The Hague, Netherlands in 2029 from November 2028 to August 2029…
“The verdicts came down in August of 2029. Sentenced to death for the critical roles they played in retarding any meaning action to mitigate climate change in the United States were as follows.
Sen. James Inhofe, Marc Morano (CFACT), Chris Horner (CEI), Myron Ebell (CEI), Steve Milloy (CEI), Patric Michaels (Cato Institute), Bjorn Lomborg (CCC), Matt Ridley (CWPF)(sic), Christopher Monckton, Fred Singer, Roy Spenser(sic).
Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Donald Trump (President 2017-19), Mike Pence (President 2019-21), Ken Blackwell (Head Domestic Issues (2017-21), Ben Carson (HUD), Myron Bell (EPA), Michael Flynn (was already in prison), Nikki Haley UN Ambassador), Mike Pompeo (CIA), Rick Perry (Secretary of Energy), Reince Priebus (Chief of Staff Trump admin briefly), Scott Pruitt (EPA Admin), Thomas Pyle (DOE), Jeff Sessions (Attorney General under Trump), Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State-Trump), Ryan Zinke (Sec of Interior).
You may note here that the death sentences handed down were heavily weighted towards the Trump/Pence Administration 2017-21 but there was a cogent reason for this. It was determined that after the ratification of the Paris Accords in December of 2016 that the new Trump Administration withdrew the United States from them in May of 2017. This act at this most critical juncture with little or no Carbon Budget left cemented in Abrupt Climate Change for the whole planet although the USA only represented only 25% of the emissions. This was enough to damage irretrievably the momentum coming out of the Paris Accords and to cause other countries setting on the fence to back off their efforts even if they did not publicly announce.
LOL! if you read the full piece, even Al Gore and Bill Clinton served jail time for criminal negligence and not doing enough to mitigate climate change when they could have taken steps to do so!
(Author’s note, the whimsical science fiction piece is meant to be illustrative only. I am not recommending we hold such mass trails yet. I am encouraging everyone who can to vote with their wallet, and to vote at the ballot box for policies that won’t back us collectively into the corner outlined above. As impossible as the trials outlined above may seem they should not be discounted entirely. The best case would be if they do not come to pass.)
My personal view is, that just as the Tobacco companies were eventually held accountable for knowingly putting profits over public health and welfare, so too, the day will come when the individuals in government and business who knowingly lied to the people about the consequences of CO2 emissions and did everything in their power to maintain the status quo, when they knew better and should have taken action to mitigate the effects, will also have to pay the piper for their crimes.
What about the Turtle Whore? That list left out the Turtle Whore.
Which one? I can think of a few…
The one that looks like a turtle. I believe he is the senate majority leader.
Catastrophic climate change is all about science fiction. No surprise.
the day will come when the individuals in government and business who knowingly lied to the people about the consequences of CO2 emissions … will also have to pay the piper for their crimes.
They can always pull out the IPCC reports and show that not even the best among us knew about the consequences. Check those confidence levels at the IPCC reports. You can keep dreaming about those trials, if they are not dismissed they will be lost by claimants.
“Wolf made clear that in order for CLF’s claims to stand, the organization needed to show that ExxonMobil had either caused harm to the plaintiffs or that harm was “imminent.” The CLF complaint was filled with references to the projected effects of climate change by 2050 or 2100, which the judge said didn’t qualify as imminent. He suggested that if the plaintiffs were concerned about the effects of climate change on the facility in 2050, they should refile their case in 2045.”
Unlike with Tobacco industry, this legal battle looks like a losing proposition.
Hi Javier,
what do you think of this 1991 video called “Climate of Concern” produced by Shell Oil?
Being concerned about something is not the same as knowing something. We have been concerned about lots of things that didn’t turned out as advertised: acid rain, the population bomb, the coming ice age, the limits to growth, the ozone hole, and now the climate scare.
Oil companies couldn’t possibly know what scientists did not know. Even now the science of climate is so muddled by uncertainty and imagined scenarios for many decades into the future that it doesn’t make a case.
The limits to growth are turning out to be exactly as The Club of Rome predicted. They were spot on. And the population bomb? 10,000 years ago humans and their animals represented less than one-tenth of one percent of the land and air vertebrate biomass of the earth. Now they are 97 percent. If you think human population is not a very serious threat to civilization as we know it then you are very seriously uninformed concerning the state of civilization.
Despite our anti science administration, NASA Images of Change, because of population growth, urban sprawl, natural disasters and Climate Change. You can deny reality all you want but it doesn’t ‘Change’ it (pun intended!)
You have a curious way of looking at things. Of course you can always find a corner where excess of acidity is a problem, but back in the 80’s and 90’s we were told the forests of the world were facing catastrophic consequences.
New Scientist 1990: Europe’s forests fall to acid rain “25 per cent of Europe’s forests will receive more sulphur than is safe. Sten Nielsson, one of the authors of the report, believes that vast tracts of forest in East Germany and Czechoslovakia will die in the next decade.”
The reality is that European forests have never been better, and forest mass is much higher than in 1900.
Regarding “limits to growth,” their premises were completely wrong: ““Limits to Growth” said total global oil reserves amounted to 550 billion barrels. “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade,” said President Jimmy Carter shortly afterwards. Sure enough, between 1970 and 1990 the world used 600 billion barrels of oil. So, according to the Club of Rome, reserves should have been overdrawn by 50 billion barrels by 1990. In fact, by 1990 unexploited reserves amounted to 900 billion barrels—not counting the tar shales, of which a single deposit in Alberta contains more than 550 billion barrels.
The Club of Rome made similarly wrong predictions about natural gas, silver, tin, uranium, aluminium, copper, lead and zinc. In every case, it said finite reserves of these minerals were approaching exhaustion and prices would rise steeply. In every case except tin, known reserves have actually grown since the Club’s report; in some cases they have quadrupled. “Limits to Growth” simply misunderstood the meaning of the word “reserves”. http://www.economist.com/node/455855
And regarding the population bomb, his author stated: ““The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” it began. “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate, although many lives could be saved through dramatic programs to ‘stretch’ the carrying capacity of the earth by increasing food production and providing for more equitable distribution of whatever food is available.
“Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” it said. “By that time [1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions.”
a “nutritional disaster that seems likely to overtake humanity in the 1970s (or, at the latest, the 1980s). Due to a combination of ignorance, greed, and callousness, a situation has been created that could lead to a billion or more people starving to death…. Before 1985 mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity” in which “the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be nearing depletion.” https://www.wired.com/1997/02/the-doomslayer-2/
A very interesting article on Julian L. Simon, the professor that won the wager to Ehrlich on resource scarcity.
The problem with all this is that is devoid of any fact. The premises are wrong, not the logic. You have the same problem when you talk about the clathrate methane gun, or species extinction rates, or carrying capacity. You don’t get your facts straight because you are a doomer, and doomers don’t like facts. That’s why you are wrong.
I am not very optimistic about our future and I believe we have a serious problem with future oil production in the near term. I agree with you on the seriousness of the Peak Oil situation (that’s why I come here). But the difference between you and me is that I try hard to stick to the facts, and that is why I recognize easily that most scares are fake, and past scares have been proven wrong almost always.
Despite having an awful track record, doomers never desist, they just move to the next scare, hoping to eventually being proven right.
Hi Javier,
you have not made a very compelling case that the limits to growth models are wrong. The reserve numbers they used were based on information available at that time. Nothing you said changes the fact that these are finite resources.
what do you think of this video on limits to resource extraction?
Malthus was right, it is just that he got everything else wrong.
Malthus and the limits to growth could be proven right in 100 years or 200 years, but in the business of predictions the timing is everything.
I subscribe that resources are limited and current rates of consumption are unsustainable. That means we will have to change our ways, and doesn’t make the prophets of doom any more right.
100 years ago people could not imagine how we would be living. In the same way, we can’t imagine how people will be living 100 years from now, or how the climate will be, or even what will worry them.
Javer says everyone else is a doomer:
“The problem with all this is that is devoid of any fact. The premises are wrong, not the logic. You have the same problem when you talk about the clathrate methane gun, or species extinction rates, or carrying capacity. You don’t get your facts straight because you are a doomer, and doomers don’t like facts. That’s why you are wrong.”
except for him … wait ..
I am not very optimistic about our future
Get a mirror, buddy.
I’ve been blogging since 2004 and have never said anything this bleak. Are you here just to argue and pick fights?
“We have been concerned about lots of things that didn’t turned out as advertised: acid rain, the population bomb, the coming ice age, the limits to growth, the ozone hole, and now the climate scare.”
“I subscribe that resources are limited and current rates of consumption are unsustainable. That means we will have to change our ways, …”
you seem to be all over the map. You were referencing the work by Donna and Dennis Meadows, but then switched to Malthus. No one can predict the future (with the possible exception of Nostradamus), but you also casually admit that we have to change our ways. So what exactly is your point? You can’t just go around labeling people as “doomers” and “not doomers,” its much more nuanced than that.
And I would also like to know what you meant by “as advertised,” as you wrote above. Especially since Ron mentioned it.
Maybe you should stick to plotting sea ice extent trend-lines from 2007. At least your story is more consistent! LOL
Chylib,
The unsustainability of our ways is indisputable. The change will take place. Population growth is already decreasing and in due time is likely to turn negative. We will learn to consume less of what there will be less. The change could be traumatic.
The climate is changing. The change has been taking place for centuries and is moderate. Most of the effects are beneficial, a few are not. There is no evidence that a climate catastrophe is in the making.
According to Wikipedia, a doomer is a researcher of current and near future trends who believes that global problems of ecological exhaustion — such as overpopulation, climate change, pollution, and especially peak oil — will cause the collapse of industrial civilization, and a significant human population die-off.
I am enough of a skeptic to recognize that in most cases the assumptions and trends on which those predictions of doom are based, are incorrect or likely to change.
But in the case of Peak Oil I am also a doomer, because on that one I just don’t see how we can get out of the impending problem we face. But my inability to see a solution might be just my limitation. I am skeptic enough to doubt my own conclusions.
“As advertised” is as presented to the people by the media as product of science and thus worth of trust. The population bomb was presented as leading to millions of deaths and huge famines in the 70’s and 80’s, not as creating some undetermined problems in a distant future. We can nearly all agree that the population growth is a problem that manifests in many aspects like a decline of natural environments.
Javier says:
“I am also a doomer”
So now we know that we can’t trust Javier, because he also says “doomers don’t like facts.”
As Maya Angelou said ““When someone shows you who they are, believe them; the first time.”
““Limits to Growth” said total global oil reserves amounted to 550 billion barrels. “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade,”
Javier, please don’t tell me what someone said limits to growth said, instead quote me the passage from limits to growth where it says that. Limits to growth said no such goddamn thing! That passage is nowhere in the book.
Limits to growth stated that, at that time, (1972) 455 billion barrels. And they calculated all known reserves to increase by 5 times current known reserves. That would mean total EUR would be around 2.275 billion barrels. And if the expected rate of increase in consumption was around 3.9% per year then we would have an estimated 20 years of reserves left.
2.275 billion barrels is pretty much spot on. However, they had consumption growing at a much faster rate than it actually grew.
Don’t you see the problem, Javier? Deniers lie like shit. Then people like you who desperately want to believe those lies, repeat them as if they were the truth.
Wake up and smell the coffee. The world is going to hell in a handbasket.
I could reply to your other points but they are all in the same vein.
So you want direct quotes. From the 1972 edition.
page 62 “We have also calculated an exponential index on the assumption that our present known reserves of each resource can be expanded fivefold by new discoveries. This index is shown in column 6. The effect of exponential growth is to reduce the probable period of availability of aluminum, for example, from 100 years to 31 years (55 years with a fivefold increase in reserves). Copper, with a 36-year lifetime at the present usage rate, would actually last only 21 years at the present rate of growth, and 48 years if reserves are multiplied by five.”
So according to them we should have run out of copper, silver, gold, and mercury, and we would be about to run out of aluminium, natural gas, petroleum, tin, and zinc.
Right logic, wrong premises.
page 38 “we can look forward to a world population of around 7 billion persons in 30 more years. And if we continue to succeed in lowering mortality with no better success in lowering fertility than we have accomplished in the past, in 60 years there will be four people in the world for every one person living today.”
World population was 3.8 billion in 1972, which means that a four-fold increase in 60 years would have yielded a total world population of 15 billion by 2030. But the global fertility rate fell from about 6 per woman in 1970 to 2.8 and continues to fall.
Extrapolation almost never works for long periods of time.
page 48 “Furthermore, although total world agricultural production is increasing, food production per capita in the nonindustrialized countries is barely holding constant at its present inadequate level (see figure 9). Do these rather dismal statistics mean that the limits of food production on the earth have already been reached?”
According to the FAO, global food production has more than tripled since 1961, while world population has increased from 3 billion to 7 billion. This means that per capita food has increased by more than a third. The latest figures from the United Nations show that as world population increased by a bit over 10 percent between 2000 and 2009, global food production rose by 21 percent. The number of countries with more than 2600 calories per day per citizen has been increasing steadily.
Bad data, wrong assumptions, unfounded alarmism.
page 48 “The primary resource necessary for producing food is land. Recent studies indicate that there are, at most, about 3.2 billion hectares of land (7.86 billion acres) potentially suitable for agriculture on the earth. Approximately half of that land, the richest, most accessible half, is under cultivation today. The remaining land will require immense capital inputs to reach, clear, irrigate, or fertilize before it is ready to produce food.
…
Figure 10 shows that, even with the optimistic assumption that all possible land is utilized, there will still be a desperate land shortage before the year 2000 if per capita land requirements and population growth rates remain as they are today.”
The population did grow to 7 billion, but per capita land requirements have gone down very fast. The FAO reports that since 1960 cropland has only expanded from 1.4 billion to 1.5 billion hectares. We still have the other half available.
Again right logic, but wrong premises. The decrease in per capita land requirements is a very long trend since the Medieval Period. They decided to ignore it.
page 84 “We might estimate that if the 7 billion people of the year 2000 have a GNP per capita as high as that of present-day Americans, the total pollution load on the environment would be at least ten times its present value.”
Pollution is what does us in at most model runs. But since 1970, the U.S. economy has grown by 200 percent, yet the levels of air pollutants regulated by the federal government have fallen by nearly 60 percent. For example, in both the U.S. and the European Union sulfur dioxide emissions have dropped by nearly 70 percent since 1990. While the number of air pollution deaths have been rising and reaches over 5 million a year, the increase is much slower than the population increase, and the percentage of air pollution deaths with respect to global disease burden is decreasing.
Wrong assumptions. Bad extrapolation. Failure to recognize that an increase in GDP past a certain point can actually reduce pollution.
Don’t you see the problem, Ron? Doomers exaggerate like shit. Then people like you who desperately want to believe those exaggerations, repeat them as if they were the truth.
So according to them we should have run out of copper, silver, gold, and mercury, and we would be about to run out of aluminium, natural gas, petroleum, tin, and zinc.
Javier, as Dennis might say, you are obviously not a “math type”. They were spot on in predicting the EUR of petroleum. And we have used about half that amount, just over one trillion barrels. Actually I think they were a little high with their prediction. I don’t think we will ever recover 2.275 trillion barrels of oil. What they did not anticipate would be the rate “limits to growth” would limit our consumption. Consumption would never grow at a 3.9% as they expected.
I haven’t done the math on your other commodities but I expect you are off as much there as you were on petroleum.
As to the limits on food production in 1972, they posed that as a question, not an actual prediction. Though there has been some increase since then in per acre production the majority of the increase in food production since then has come from clearing forest and grasslands. That is robbing from the wild animal world and giving it to humans and their domestic animals. That is not something I would be bosting about.
Ron, I won’t discuss oil figures with you, but in table 4 they clearly state that with 5 times the known reserves at the time, at the observed rate of consumption growth, reserves should be over in 50 years. That is 2022.
If you predict the second coming of Jesus Christ, and he doesn’t show up, it doesn’t matter that He got caught up in a traffic jam. Of course the prediction must have a reason for failure, of course something didn’t work out as predicted. In the oil case the rate of consumption. In Malthus case the increase in food production. There are many reasons for being wrong and only one for being right.
the majority of the increase in food production since then has come from clearing forest and grasslands.
This is bullshit and you know it. As I said cultivated land has gone from 1.4 billion to 1.5 billion hectares since 1960. That is only a 7% increase. I’ve got enough maths to show you don’t know what you talk about.
Doom predictions are almost always wrong because they are based on wrong assumptions. I’ve lived enough to learn that. You wouldn’t learn it in two lives.
Eventually a doom prediction will turn out right, but that will not make the rest that failed any righter. Doom mentality is a losing proposition, but by all means enjoy it.
Hi Javier,
You seem to not understand how a what if scenario works.
They made an estimate of resources and made an assumption about consumption growth rates, at the time these were the standard estimates for conventional oil.
Eventually oil output will peak (or perhaps it already has) my guess is that by 2030 it will be clear that oil output has peaked (it is likely to be around 2025). I think output decline will be gradual if the peak occurs from 2020 to 2025, by 2035 more rapid decline may occur due to falling demand as rising prices may lead to substitution for land transport. Falling solar prices may lead to less demand for coal and natural gas, hopefully with low levels of output of coal and natural gas by 2060.
Hi Javier,
Note that they said, if fertility improves at the rate it has in the past, then there would be a four fold increase in population. From 1952.5 to 1972.5 total fertility ratios had fallen about 10%. The assumption was that this rate of decrease would continue. That assumption was incorrect, nobody knows the future in advance.
It is pretty easy to criticize the assumptions when we know what has transpired.
I can predict the past with fairly good accuracy, but this is unsurprising. 🙂
Hi Dennis,
You seem to not understand how a what if scenario works.
I do, thanks. The problem is not with imagining scenarios. The problem is with selling them as the most probable future as you do with your 3°C of warming, when it is all based on a set of assumptions and premises that have a higher probability of being wrong, as time and again has been demonstrated.
Note that they said, if fertility improves at the rate it has in the past, then there would be a four fold increase in population
As I said, every prediction is based on a set of assumptions and the prediction doesn’t come true if the assumptions are wrong. That’s what usually happens with long term extrapolations. Fertility rates changed, and warming rates will change, and not in the direction you predict.
It doesn’t matter which one of your assumptions is wrong. Your prediction is equally wrong and you were just a merchant of fear, like the researchers of the Club of Rome “Limits to growth.”
Hi Javier,
I never say ECS is 3 C, I simply say that if it is, this is what will happen.
What I say is that there is great uncertainty about actual ECS. It may be higher or lower than 3 C, you claim special knowledge that it must be lower than 3 C, I make no such claims and simply show what the data indicates from 1870 to 2015, with a TCR of about 1.75 for global land ocean temperatures and a TCR of about 3.2 C for Global land only temperatures.
Potentially there are other factors such as permafrost and ice sheets along with clouds and aerosols and potential non-linear effects which could raise the ECS in the future, or there may be other effects that lower it.
Again we don’t know.
Claims that we know ECS is very low are no more than wishful thinking. Mainstream science suggests ECS is likely close to 3 C (probably between 2.5 and 3.5 C) with higher probability of higher rather than lower values.
Hi Dennis,
The central ECS estimate of 3 is mainly based on models, as observations tend to produce values closer to 2 or even lower.
But all of them are based on the assumption that most of the observed warming is due to CO2 increase. Since this is likely not to be the case, ECS estimates, even the low ones, are biased high.
Current scientific understanding has no guarantee of being correct, and it is usually proven wrong every time a significant scientific advance is made. The names of the greatest scientists are known, Pasteur, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, because they proved that the scientific understanding at the time was incorrect.
70 years of the biggest increase in CO2 in a million years at least have only produced a moderate warming that has barely nudged up a preexisting warming trend and that has mainly had a positive effect on our lives. That’s the reality that the CO2 hypothesis can’t hide. That fact is incompatible with a high ECS and a catastrophic effect of climate change. When in doubt stick to the evidence.
“The central ECS estimate of 3 is mainly based on models, as observations tend to produce values closer to 2 or even lower.”
Not on land, and not long-term as the ocean catches up.
It’s 3C
Hi Javier,
I have used observational evidence to show how much warming is due to CO2, but this is only the transient climate response of about 1.8-2.2 C, it takes time for the ocean to warm and the geochemistry suggests the CO2 will remain in the atmosphere for quite a while, falling from 50% of CO2 emitted to about 10% of emissions over a period of about 35,000 years or so.
So the radiative forcing due to excess CO2 in the atmosphere will warm the oceans over time (about 500 years) so that total warming from “fast feedbacks” plus CO2 will be about 3 C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Other slow feedbacks (carbon from soil, and permafrost and ice sheet melt) will only enhance the climate sensitivity, increasing earth system sensitivity to 3.5 to 4 C.
The TCR for Global land temperature gives a rough indication of ECS, it is about 3.2C, based on the data and various hypotheses about natural and anthropogenic causes of global warming.
Just assumptions, Dennis.
The world will warm until it doesn’t, and then it will cool. The paleoclimatic record is very clear on that respect. Warming periods are always followed by cooling periods. During the Holocene warming periods are just a few centuries long, ours is just running out of time. Despite the exceptionality of CO2 levels, temperature levels are not exceptional. And the warming rate is barely increasing.
The whole thing has been hugely exaggerated based on circumstantial evidence.
Hi Javier,
The assumptions are based on physics.
You assume you know more than everyone else, I do not. I think it likely that the main stream view is correct (as reflected in the most recent AR5 IPCC report).
You assume the main stream view is incorrect.
That is also an assumption, likely an incorrect one.
It’s worth noting that, AFAIK, none of the commodity resource estimates were used directly in the LTG scenarios – those were really simply illustrative. The model was relatively simple: there was a single non-renewable “resource”, and another, smaller renewable resource that represented agriculture.
That’s it. Nothing called energy, no oil, no iron, and certainly no solar, wind, etc.
So…it was a set of scenarios, not forecasts. They were not intended to prove that limits existed, simply to show how a simple model of the economy might behave if hard, fairly sharp edged limits did exist. Basically, they showed how “overshoot” might look.
Finally, we haven’t really yet hit the point where any of the LTG scenarios diverged from BAU, though it’s a little hard to tell.The charts weren’t intended for close reading of dates – the first signs of overshoot might be around 2010 or 2015 – it’s just hard to tell, and it wouldn’t be fair to hold them to such a precise date. So…the LTG scenario projections to this point of things like fertility or economic growth look ok, not especially better or worse than those of conventional economists. We haven’t yet tested whether our future might be consistent with any of the LTG scenarios showing disastrous overshoot.
Hi Javier,
Well one could take the position that because there is uncertainty, we should not be concerned. There is wide uncertainty in equilibrium climate sensitivity(ECS) to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration according to mainstream climate science. ECS is estimated at 1.5 C to 4.5 C (at the 95% confidence level).
One could assume that this necessarily implies that ECS must be at the low end of this range (1.5 C to 2.5 C), but that may either be wishful thinking or confusion between transient climate response (TCR) which happens over the short term (reflected mostly by increases in Global Land only temperatures) and ECS which reflects total Global warming over land and oceans after the ocean has “turned over” in 400-500 years time and come to equilibrium temperature (60 year mean sea surface temperature) with stabilized atmospheric CO2 (say at 500 ppm).
Empirical data for land temperature vs CO2, aerosols, AMO, ENSO, and TSI suggests a TCR for land only temperatures is close to 3 C for a doubling of CO2 which is a good proxy for ECS.
That ignores future carbon emissions from melting permfrost and ice sheets which are likely to lead to higher Earth System Sensitivity over longer time scales (1000 to 10,000 years).
In any case, the precautionary principle suggests using what engineers call a factor of safety to account for our ignorance. So if you aren’t sure how strong to make the bridge, the general approach is to make it 3 or 4 times stronger than calculations suggest, in case some thing is missed.
If you were a civil engineer it seems you would suggest building the bridge at 1/3 to 1/4 the strength we calculate to save on construction costs and because “falling is fun”, and exciting. 🙂
The scientists doing climate prediction have an awful track record, and they talk about things that have never happened in human history, and might or might not happen in the future. We don’t use the precautionary principle on things that might not happen at all, until we have some solid evidence. After all bridges have fallen in the past, so we know that is a real danger.
Take for example a lethal strain of the flu. We know that is a real danger. It happened in 1917 and there are a lot more people in the world and more chances of a lethal strain appearing. That risk is dead serious. It could decimate mankind in a matter of months.
The principal way of spreading of a flu these days is air travel. The precautionary principle would mandate that a 5-day quarantine should be imposed on anybody wanting to do an international air trip, including airline personnel. That would delay the spread of a killer flu and give us some very needed time.
So why do some people want to impose a precautionary principle on a, so far, imaginary risk, when it is not applied on very real risks? If we prefer to ignore real risks that would require a certain level of discomfort for the low percentage of mankind that does air travel, what should we do with imaginary risks whose precaution would affect the way of living of the entire mankind?
Javier said:
“The scientists doing climate prediction have an awful track record, “
Wrong — overall they do an excellent job and climate models do even better with a known forcing. Where they do worse is if they rely on (1) “Unforced Variations” (to borrow the RealClimate term) or (2) if the source of the forcing likely exists but hasn’t been determined.
Where they do best is if the forcing is known. Examples of this include
(a) daily cycle -> solar origin
(b) seasonal cycle -> solar origin
(c) volcanic disturbances -> upper atmosphere aerosol origin
(d) long-term warming -> GHGs
(e) ocean surface tides, ENSO, QBO -> lunar plus solar gravitational
The variation that has yet to be tracked down is the ~60 year variation in global temperature that has been variously linked to PDO, AMO, and LOD. The Length-of-Day connection established by researchers at NASA JPL is most intriguing:
Dickey, J. O., S. L. Marcus, and O. de Viron, 2011: Air temperature and anthropogenic forcing: Insights from the solid Earth. J. Climate, 24, 569–574, doi:10.1175/2010JCLI3500.1.
What causes this variation in LOD is tough to pin down.
Lol imaginary risk
What a side show he’s got going.
Hi Javier,
We know the planet has been warming at a minimum of 1.2 C per century over the past 38 years, you have agreed with this fact.
It is also pretty clear that atmospheric CO2 levels are likely to reach at least 500 ppm and mainstream science predicts these levels will be maintained for thousands of years.
Just because something has never happened does not imply we would not use the precautionary principle.
Even if a bridge or building had never collapsed, or if someone built some new kind of structure that had never been built before an intelligent engineer would build with a factor of safety.
Current data based on land temperatures an a simple regression analysis suggests and equilibrium climate sensitivity of about 3 C. During the HCO atmospheric CO2 was about 260 ppm so a doubling of that level would be 520 ppm. Temperatures were close to today’s levels for many thousands of years during the HCO (possibly about the 1981-2005 average temperature). So three degrees warmer than the HCO temperature level (should conditions similar to the HCO repeat) would be a significant problem, despite your mantra that warmer is always better. I think most biologists, and ecologists disagree with you the implication that the planet can warm by 3 C with no adverse effects.
The fact that this is likely to be a problem is the reason for the precautionary principle.
In short, your argument is far short of convincing.
In addition, all I advocate is that we reduce the use of fossil fuels as much as possible. There are many other good reasons for doing so, such as less pollution and less damage to the environment. Other good reasons are the depletion of fossil fuels and the need to move to alternative types of energy so there will be less economic disruption.
The fact that this is also to lead to less damage to the environment and less social disruption because it is likely to lead to a lower level of environmental damage due to severe climate change is simply an ancillary benefit.
You mostly seem to be in agreement with the second argument, but I am sure that I will never convince you that if higher ECS estimates (3.5 to 4.5 C) are correct and that higher estimates of fossil fuel resources (leading to 1500 Gt of carbon emissions or more) are also correct that we are likely to have a serious global warming problem.
The problem is that we just don’t know. I am willing to admit my ignorance, you seem confident that you know more than everyone else.
I think you are mistaken.
Hi Dennis,
Yes, I accept facts, so I accept the warming. The CO2 rise to 500 ppm is clearly possible within a few decades.
mainstream science predicts these levels will be maintained for thousands of years.
I do not think that has been demonstrated in any way. It is just a hypothesis. CO2 levels are quite dynamic to things like ENSO. And during the LIA CO2 levels went down significantly, so they respond to cooling without much delay.
Just because something has never happened does not imply we would not use the precautionary principle.
There are “no regrets” policies whose cost/benefit relationship does not depend on climate change being a threat.
So three degrees warmer than the HCO temperature level would be a significant problem
Your assumptions are incorrect. You don’t have the correct HCO temperatures, and we are not going to get 3°C, not even 2. Climate sensitivity has been exaggerated. Same problem as with the “Limits to growth.” And emissions will reduce. Plenty of reasons for the catastrophic scenarios to fail. As always.
I don’t disagree with you on oil issues. Just on climate issues. I think that using less fossil fuels is beneficial regardless of climate, as long as we don’t run into energy problems. I am skeptical that we can substitute fossil fuels by intermittent wind and solar in a meaningful time frame.
I think you are mistaken.
Of course you do, and I think you are the mistaken one. But the truth will come out. My scenario is very clear, no significant warming to 2025.
Hi Javier,
You would need to be a little more precise and define “significant” with an actual change of temperature.
You could claim 1 C or even 2 C of warming is not “significant”. Without a number attached your prediction is meaningless.
We will have to wait for a “meaningful” prediction in order to assess your veracity.
Also note that a short term slower rate of warming is of little consequence if it is simply followed by a future period where warming accelerates.
Hi Dennis,
define “significant” with an actual change of temperature.
I already told you and showed you this figure.
I expect by 2025 that HadCRUT4 will be between 0.43 – 0.66°C anomaly in the 1961-1990 baseline. Is that specific enough?
Hi Javier,
You show lots of figures and do not always make clear where they come from as you include doodles of unknown origin.
Your range is quite narrow, I expect temperature to be within the 95% confidence interval of that chart with roughly a 1/40 chance it will be below that range and a 1/40 chance it will be above.
We will have to wait 7 years to see who is correct, note that I am referring to the annual average temperature anomaly.
You often use daily temperatures, would you specify what you expect the annual average temperature will be in 2025?
“…as you include doodles of unknown origin.” ~ Dennis Coyne
LOL
I will propose that we mount an expedition to find out, and that it begin with the Atacama desert, since it is very dry there, so any doodles should remain relatively intact.
Hi Dennis,
That chart is from Ed Hawkins as it says, updated to 2016 and with my temperature target as you requested. The graph shows annual temperature anomaly by Had CRUT4, so that is what I have given.
While we wait those 7 years we shall see if temperatures are trending higher as the models propose, or not. Every year of temperatures trending down will make the model prediction more difficult to succeed. We are close to 2 years of negative temperature change since February 2016.
Hi Javier,
Just look at the ice core data, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels change very slowly over 100,000 years or so. Just look at the evidence. Geochemists figured this out quite a while ago.
Newton’s laws are also just hypotheses, but they work pretty well at non-relativistic velocities. 🙂
Hi Dennis,
Ice core records of CO2 work as a low pass filter smoothing the data. Stomatal records show a much more dynamic response of CO2 to temperatures during the Younger Drias period. Centennial changes are not well reflected in the ice core record giving the false impression that CO2 only changes very slowly.
Hi Javier,
All kinds of problems using stomatal records to estimate CO2 response as they will be affected by temperature and moisture.
There can be local and seasonal changes in Atmospheric CO2, the changes in your chart are likely to be seasonal and/or local effects.
Source?
Dennis,
Rundgren, M., & Beerling, D. (2003). Fossil leaves: effective bioindicators of ancient CO2 levels?. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 4(7).
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002GC000463/full
Everybody knows that predictions are wrong and it’s pretty much taken as a given, but they are nevertheless useful and it doesn’t need to be regurgitated as part of every discussion. Javier seems to have decided he must be some kind of unique genius because he has somehow managed to work that out for himself.
Here’s what actually should be written in a science fiction story taking place somewhere in the not that distant future. Methods of climate change mitigation pushed by liberals and climate researchers lead to monumental increases in the costs of all of life’s daily necessities and regulations which reduce our national living standards. For almost all the time, this story is about gaining more money and control. What’s even more, the methods have no promise of saving people from anything specific because they are so abstract. Although what isn’t abstract, but a completely sure thing is the 20 trillion (and counting) in national debt the left decided to burden our children and grandchildren with by distracting the public with other issues.
Hi Charles,
I am TRULY impressed with the width and depth of your ignorance, assuming you’re not a bot. Prove you’re not by posting a reasonable response, even if it’s just to call ME an idiot, lol.
If you don’t think our nation’s massive debt is a huge threat to the upcoming generations maintaining the American way of life, then that is a true example of ignorance.
Total bot
Back atcha, Charles
I now take you as real, rather than as a bot, although you COULD be a sophisticated bot.
For what it’s worth I agree with you about the vast debt load we have accumulated being a very real threat to the tranquillity and prosperity of this country!
At some point, and we may have passed it already, more promises get to be made than can possibly be kept, especially if it turns out that the working age classes shrink too much in relation to the elderly non working class. The failure to keep such promises can result in revolution, and I mean the real kind, with pitchforks and torches, or pistols and shotguns, or molotov cocktails if the lefties manage to disarm the righties, lol.
IF they succeed in doing that, they may well find at some future time that the POLICE they counted on to DEFEND them from redneck righties such as yours truly are actually their MASTERS, rather than their servants, lol.
So I owe you and apology, and you’re getting it, in this very line.
BUT BUT BUT BUT this does NOT mean that you are right about our environmental problems, or about what we need to do about them. I know. I have the technical education necessary to UNDERSTAND these problems, and although I am a very conservative person in some respects, I tell it like it is, and the facts are all on the side of the liberals and the climate science and environmental establishment, rather than the right wing bau establishment.
You’re hearing this from a person who has seriously called a lot of liberals nincompoops and worse, and a person who has voted R on numerous occasions in the past.
For almost all the time, this story is about gaining more money and control. What’s even more, the methods have no promise of saving people from anything specific because they are so abstract.
Which shouldn’t be a problem for you because you live high on the hog with your paycheck from Koch Industries… Yeah, YOUR story is certainly about gaining more money and control alright and definitely not about saving the environment or the people!
Because nothing will enable my complete subjugation to the state quite so handily as being able to produce all of my own power for home and auto with sunlight harvested from my own rooftop.
Look out! It’s a trap!
Methods of climate change mitigation pushed by liberals and climate researchers lead to monumental increases in the costs of all of life’s daily necessities and regulation
Except – that’s not true. Switching away from fossil fuels will save us all a lot of money.
Oil and coal companies are putting out a lot of misinformation, because THEY will be hurt by the switch.
Hey Nick, I’m pretty sure you’ll get a hoot out of this! I did!
The funny thing is that he’s saying exactly what I’ve been saying: solar (and wind, EVs, etc.) can be strongly justified without even thinking about climate change.
But boy, does he manage to complain about “green” ideas every step of the way!
Ironic, too, that climate deniers usually claim that “green” activists are opposed to free markets, and yet he is infuriated that he has to pay higher rates when demand is higher: “Thanks to PG&E’s new smart-meter system, they can now gouge me more efficiently and on schedule, when I need electricity to keep cool the most. ”
Wow.
IT CAN’T BE DONE! RENEWABLE ENERGY FROM THE SUN WILL NEVER WORK!
I’m busy as Santa in the EVTV shop vainly striving to tease clever out of not very good C++ code. Surrounded by too much equipment costing far too much to do so little. Fumbling with my blighted mind and recall, bereft of friend or assistant, and mired in an overwhelming sense of disorder and detail I’ve failed to address. My aging carcass failing to meet the call…
And as quickly, my own ingratitude smights me across the face with a sudden violence left gasping.
In truth, and oblivious, I preside over 12 or 13 various kilowatts of power ebbing and flowing at the whim of the clouds into and out of a Tesla Model S 85kWh battery pack on the wall with a cavalier indifference to the most humbling miracle of our age. The harnessing of electricity to do our work itself a scant 140 years recent of some 13,000 years of recorded or at least vaguely alluded to human history. As luck would have it, encompassing the brief three score and ten alloted me personally, and perhaps another ten if able.
And here I am with the power of 18 mighty equine steeds at my beck, call and fingertips in our little TEST setup designed and ordered not precisely to DO anything, but just to allow me to play with software and hardware to measure and direct its direction and flow. Assembled for my personal entertainment. Sunlight, silent as sin converted to electricity, measurable in flashing red LED, to iron shafts turning in the breeze.
I wish I knew more about electricity and electronics, because my next middle size project is to build a couple of water wheels and put them in the stream on my farm.
Getting the generators properly matched up to the wheels and the flow of water, and getting the speed of them about right is going to have to be a trail and error process, I can’t afford to hire an engineer.
But the cast offs of industrial civilization have their uses, and I’m an expert in terms of finding uses for things such as old truck axle assemblies. I have one set aside that is intended to transmit three hundred horsepower on a continual basis and carry a ten ton load, likewise, at highway speeds, including hitting potholes, etc, without failing. Ball and roller bearings, very low friction, and I will put the water wheel on one end, and support it cantilevered on a welded up mount out over the water, and take the power off at the other end, using a gearbox salvaged out of another truck to up the revs to something appropriate , probably about 3600.
I’m hoping for about five thousand watts continuous from each one, so long as there’s no drought and they don’t freeze up, which won’t happen very often or very long here.
My out of pocket costs won’t exceed five grand, including purchasing the generator units with self contained voltage regulators, etc, but I don’t have any real idea how long such units will last in continuous service. Maybe I will have to get older, bigger industrial units and just not expect them to put out more than the same or somewhat less watts. I can built the wheels and flumes from my treasure stash aka as crazy Mac’s junkyard. But sooner or later half of my neighbors will show up wanting something from it, ranging from a few feet of rebar to a telephone pole, lol.
Is anybody else getting ten kilowatts pretty much around the clock and around the calendar far the same money?
The actual work isn’t going to be work, it’s recreation, lol.
Find a cheap totalled electric car and repurpose the drivetrain as the generator and turbine shaft, and the battery pack for storage. Hell, just weld some paddle fins on the drive rim and dip a toe in the flow while in regen mode.
🙂
Hillbilly Hydro.
What’s not to love.
Forgot the graphic.
If I could find one cheap enough ,and knew enough to hook up some inverters without ruining either the inverters or battery etc, I would do that in a heart beat!
But I haven’t yet heard of any electric cars that are actually cheap, in respect to my budget, wrecked or not.
Thanks for the suggestion, I’m going to create a search and save it as a book mark for such a car on CL and on some other sites. I might get lucky and find one I can afford, and get even luckier and get somebody good on programming and electronics to come visit for a few days of hillbilly hospitality, drinking artisan’s whiskey, murdering Bambi and having her for dinner, matching wits with coyotes and wild turkeys, and just telling lies over a fire.
Used Smart electric drive cars can be had for $4,500 now, not even wrecked. 17.6 kWh battery.
What would be pretty hilarious if you lived by a river and had enough head would be to build a paddle wheel driven dyno that you could park the car on in regen mode that would charge the car up by rolling the tires.
It would kind of be like a spring loaded wind up toy. Wind er up, and let er rip.
Yair . . .
OFM. I had a friend who spent years tinkering with various waterwheel designs and he gave up on anything with gears, oil bath lubrication, or governing for frequency control . . . he reckoned everything had to be simple.
The last version before he died was a twelve foot overshot wheel with a two inch shaft mounted in greasable plummer blocks charging a small forklift battery by way of 24V Delco (D8) alternator driven by V belts, an inverter converted the 24v DC to 240v AC.
He was a man of modest needs and I think the system provided about five kilowatts and ran very satisfactorily for years after his death until destroyed by cyclone Yasi.
Going the V belt route enabled easy experimentation and alteration of gearing for low winter flows . . . same belts, different pulleys, the alternator was mounted on a slide.
The battery was essentially just an accumulator for the inverter and of course the alternator could run at variable speeds (partially blocked pipe?) without affecting the quality of the out put.
Cheers.
Hi Scrub, it gladdens my heart to see your comment, and if I ever get free of family obligations, and you’re still around too, I would dearly love to see the a bit of the outback, and treat you to whatever you like best in exchange for some conversation about your hands on life.
Having given your comment a few minutes thought, I am already ninety nine percent convinced I ought to just do it YOUR way, but I’m intrigued with Bob’s suggestion concerning using a salvaged electric car as as my generator / storage system.
I can mount EITHER a car or a big DC alternator/ generator that will run ok over a wide range of speeds a few feet uphill and off the side of the stream, by using a long drive shaft or two salvaged from trucks, no problem with flooding, other than that the wheel and flume might conceivably be washed out in a hundred year storm. I would be able to fish them out downstream, given that all the land for a couple of miles belongs to people I know, and the topography flattens downstream so that the stream spreads very wide but shallow and slow right below my place. It’s not that big a stream, ordinarily. In moderately wet weather it runs about a foot deep and five or six feet wide at a fairly good pace. In unusually dry weather, it shrinks to four feet wide and six or eight inches deep in the same spot but it still has a strong current.
My grand parents saw it six to eight feet deep and forty feet across in a place we call “the narrows” and running fast enough to create rapids, sometime back in the early part of the last century. Nobody could remember which year that was, but all the older people I used to know who lived close by remembered seeing it.
For what it’s worth, and it’s only anecdotal evidence, but just about all of my family on both sides that lived thru early childhood lived to be OLD, as in eighty, ninety, and a hundred plus, with over half a dozen known to me personally breaking the century mark.
WHY? I put it down to the fact that they worked hard, physically, ate almost nothing other than simple properly cooked locally produced foods, drank super clean mountain spring water and maybe a little cider and milk and homemade wine, but hardly anything else, breathed clean air, and so forth.
Yair . . .
Gotcha OFM. Thanks for reply.
I too would love to get together with just a couple of my internet friends but alas it is never going to happen.
I like your real world accounts of life as you know it and, although much of the conversation here is way beyond my understanding I enjoy this site and hope my occasional snippets from the other side of the world may be of interest to some.
FWIW, practical electrical engineering isn’t that complicated. You can learn it off Wikipedia. So you probably don’t need to depend on trial and error… look the numbers up from standard tables, use standard formulas…
How wind and solar are starting to eat profits on the oil and gas industry.
“As a first sweep, one might assert that ‘common sense’ would dictate that as a population increases, so does pressure on resources, all else being equal. This is the logic behind the ecological concept of the ‘carrying capacity’ of an ecosystem. It is the basis for the old Club of Rome report, ‘Limits to Growth’. And it is also associated with some versions of the ‘planetary boundaries’ concept.
All else is not equal.
Capital accumulation drives environmental destruction
In a capitalist society natural resources are appropriated by capitalists as exchange values, not use values. That is, it is not their need, utility, aesthetics, etc., but their monetary worth upon exchange, that drives their extraction and subsequent use all the way down the commodity chain to the consumer…
This competition-stimulated thirst to unceasingly grow capital is what drives natural resource extraction and use. Ever-increasing amounts of iron ore or oil are stripped from the ground, ever greater expanses of forest are cut down, more and more fish are scooped from the sea, not to move, house or feed increasing numbers of people, but in order to exploit yet more oil, iron ore, fish or forests. On the other hand, capitalists are only interested in those resources that will turn a profit. These are disarticulated from their environmental matrix and exploited. The rest of that matrix is considered disposable, whatever its importance to our health or the biosphere.
It is important to underline that society is divided into fundamental and conflicting classes whose power to invest or purchase, and exploit natural resources, is dramatically unequal and determined by their position in the production process – whether they own capital and employ labor, or merely own their ability to labor. There is a reason why 71% of global greenhouse gases are emitted by just 100 corporations, according to recent reports.
Thus, it is incorrect to say that demographics drives resource use. Simple demographics ceased to play a dominant role in resource use when capitalist production became generalized. In fact, one could argue that demographics ceased to be the single major determinant when societies divided into classes based on unequal division of the social surplus product.
Both consumption of goods and population growth are over-determined and mediated by capitalism. In other words, multiple and reciprocal causality characterize the relationship between capitalist production, consumption and population growth…
Access to and consumption of resources is generally determined by the market: not by need, but by effective demand (monetary purchasing power), whether the purchaser of a resource/commodity is another capitalist or a worker.
However, both as individuals and social classes, capitalists and workers share neither equal command of effective demand, nor equal institutional access to resources. The laboring classes ultimately only command their ability to work — even a basic wage is not guaranteed. For their part, ownership gives capitalists command of capital and production. And, beyond the capital, itself, they command the institutional and legal structures of the state, giving them the means, say, to force Central American campesinos off land to which the latter hold title, or to build oil pipelines across Native American reservation land.
While it is true that capitalists require consumers of their goods, and consumers’ aggregate demand plays a role in determining product offerings, the aforementioned institutional inequality between a mass of atomized or even organized, mostly working class consumers, and businesses means that production under capitalism dominates consumption, rather than the other way around. This inequality originates in the historic origins of the mass capitalist market in the dissolution of the feudal fiefdoms and enclosure of commons, together with repressive legislation, that deprived tens of thousands of serfs and peasants of their means of subsistence and drove them into the arms of manufacturers and merchants as workers and dependent consumers, a process that is still replicated, today, in the developing nations…
We are socialized in its tenets from cradle-to-grave and in all social spaces, whether at home, in school, at places of worship, or in cultural venues. We embody its expectations. It generates and conditions our needs, even our identities. Neither hippie communes nor consumer cooperatives can provide escape from it. It encompasses increasing masses of commodities…
Capitalists engage in a variety of types of competition in order to capture market share and a multitude of practices to assure product sales, (all the while constantly seeking to lower costs of production and wages). These include price wars, constant bombardment by massive ad campaigns (particularly directed at specific, vulnerable populations), creation of artificial needs and desires, manipulation of biologically hard-wired urges, adulteration and shoddy production, disposable items and planned obsolescence, consumer credit, and so on. Entrepreneurs must market increasing masses of goods…
Consumer struggles can induce some changes, even beneficial ones, but only as long as these correspond to the dynamic of commodity production and the logic of the market… However, these should all be understood as measures that simultaneously legitimize and even extend commodity production and the market, ironically strengthening consumerism and growth. None of these sorts of measures alter the dynamic of capitalist production and marketing, and hence, they provide no real solutions to the biosphere crises. The hegemony of the market CAN be overthrown, but this requires expropriation of the owners of capital and of the production process, and replacement of the oligarchic state by one democratically representing working people…”
Three days backpacking, and when I return it is the same old place.
You get to watch your mind spending 13 hours a day in a sleeping bag looking at the stars.
Where is our friend Frisky?
Is this fall at all? Heat records dropping faster than leaves in the Midwest and Northeast
Large swaths of the U.S. Midwest and Northeast, along with southeast Canada, continued to bake on Monday in some of the region’s highest temperatures ever recorded after the autumnal equinox. The heat is a product of the same sprawling zone of upper-level high pressure that’s slowed the northward treks of Hurricanes Jose and Maria. Meanwhile, it’s been quite chilly across the western U.S., but continent-wide, there have been far more heat records than cold records. One reason: a cloudy, chilly air mass can easily keep daytime highs 20°F or more below average in the arid West, but it’s more difficult to push early-autumn temperatures 20°F or more above average in the more temperate East. Moreover, the clouds and moisture out West have tended to keep nighttime temperatures from plummeting, whereas rich atmospheric moisture has kept nighttime lows back East close to summertime levels.
Hey, it’s cool in Coolidge Kansas though.
Arctic sea ice extent bottomed out the annual in 8th lowest place. The recovery is slow so far. As of most recent JAMA for today’s date it is 5th lowest.
It will be interesting to observe future ice behaviour as it thins, as extent and area values converge, and as volume values start to cross paths with both, below an average of 1 meter thick.
All the ice turned 1 year older at the minimum. There is more old ice this year than in 2015 and 2016. This ice will pile up at the coasts of Canada and Greenland increasing ice thickness.
“All the ice turned 1 year older at the minimum.” – Javier
Are you sure that it doesn’t all turn one year older at the maximum? What is the birthday for arctic ice? When does it turn 2?
“There is more old ice this year than in 2015 and 2016.” – Javier
How old? Source? Very imprecise language as usual.
That statement is either true or false depending upon what period in time of 2017 you are comparing to previous years. As usual you speak very imprecisely and unscientifically.
In a few weeks we will have September 2017 average. In a few months the annual data will be complete and we can see how annual 2017 averages compare to previous years. It will likely be in third lowest place. Javier will suggest this is a victory for climate change risk denial. What a fool.
I know you don’t know this, because you don’t know much about the things that you talk about. But this is the good thing. By reading my posts you can learn a lot.
For NSIDC, Arctic ice birthday is the transition from week 37 to week 38, when all the ice advances one year its age. This year it was September 18.
As September 2017 is having more ice extent than 2016 and 2015, more ice has advanced age and become older. You yourself admitted that there are 7 years with less ice than 2017.
In January through April 2017 there were zero years with less ice.
In May there were three.
In June there were five.
In July there were four.
In August there were two.
2017 is not over yet. Thanks for coming out short bus.
“the last year that global temperatures fell below the 20th-century average was 1976.”
Ya think the FBI went deep and long into HRC’s home brewed email system which would have gotten anybody except a member of the super elite indicted, and most likely jailed, or at least stripped of all security clearances and fired, BECAUSE SHE WAS A DEMOCRAT? Or because she is a WOMAN?
And now we know that her pervert husband( by his own admission ) had a computer with his HRC homey wife’s official state department emails on it, and was obviously a potential black mail subject, and so forth, lol.
Do you still maintain that the VOTERS of this country were NOT ENTITLED TO KNOW THAT, simply because it had been announced she wouldn’t be prosecuted?
You would have howled in glee about this if the perp had been a REPUBLICAN, now, WOULDN’T you ?
Prosecuting super rich, super powerful people with highest possible connections into the power structure is almost impossible, and the decision not to prosecute HRC was based on LACK OF INTENT to allow secret information to fall into the wrong hands, which is apparently a sort of unwritten rule that allows the Justice Department to cut some slack in the cases it WANTS to cut some slack, as when the Department is run by Democrats, and facing the unhappy task of prosecuting a leading Democrat, ditto if it had been a Republican perp and administration.
Nevertheless the FBI in particular and the Justice Department in general, at the career professional level, appear to be ready and willing and WORKING on giving it the OLD SCHOOL TRY.
Intent is HARD to prove, and I’m not claiming and never have claimed that HRC INTENDED to put the country at risk, I have only maintained that she was as dumb as a fence post for doing so, considering she was intending to run for president.
Dumb as she is , in terms of reading the mood of the people, she couldn’t possibly be dumb enough to have taken that risk unless she had some EXTREMELY GOOD REASONS for doin so and thus (fatally ) endangering her prospects. Only a totally naive person, an HRC true believer could possibly believe otherwise.
But of course any cynic and hypocrite with a working brain was and is free to PRETEND to believe she wasn’t out to hide some SERIOUSLY dirty laundry.
YEP. The email scandal cost her the presidency.
But Comey didn’t create the email system, he just did his job. And he was doing it in respect to Trump’s questionable activities too, until he put heat enough on Trump for Trump to fire him.
BIG MISTAKE.
That put the career people who take their ethics seriously at both the Justice Department in general and the FBI in particular in a spot where they are DROOLING at the prospect of biting a giant chunk out of Trump’s ass.
It’s not just a professional law enforcement job now, it’s a personal honor issue for them now.
I just hope Trump is stupid enough to fire Mueller.
Of course there will be somebody ethically flexible enough to do it, when told to do so, because there are always a few of that sort in ANY organization that’s large enough for them to conceal their true nature.
My fondest hope at the moment, politically, is that Trump is fool enough to fire Mueller. That ought to be enough to piss off the people of this country to the extent that they put the D’s back into control of the Senate, and get rid of more than the usual number of incumbent R’s in 2020.
The head of the DEA has announced that he’s quitting because he has no respect for Trump, given that Trump has no respect for the law.
I meant her homey’s husband, not BILL Clinton. He’s apparently just horny, or at least he used to be, lol. I guess old age has probably cured him of most of his bad habits by now.
There was a report in July that indicated the 2016 crash in Antarctic ice was probably weather variation, a bit like the 2012 minimum in the Arctic, except against the trend rather than reinforcing it. But it said the cause was mostly storms in Spring (September to November), whereas the biggest drop was really an early and big melt in late Winter. Also unlike 2012 in the Arctic there has been no recovery yet this year. I’ve never looked at the Antarctic weather before but it’s really symmetric – a big high over Antarctic and six or seven deep lows rotating around it clockwise. Don’t know if that is normal but the lows all look almost hurricane strength, so a particularly stormy season must be something else. I guess that’s what happens if there’s no land to get in the way, but I would think if the Antarctic warms faster and the jet stream gets more loopy, like in the north, it’s going to be a real mess.
” Don’t know if that is normal ”
I’m about as far as expert as you can get, when it comes to the Antarctic climate, but I have read in at least a couple of places that this is more or less the norm.
High winds circle the continent most of the time, with the effect being that the air mass over the ice cap doesn’t mix with air over the ocean nearly as much as would otherwise be expected, due to this band of wind.
Everything you ever wanted to know about global dimming and brightening (no not about education or IQ).
Enjoy the show.
The old saying, “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure” has never been truer. What was once called junk hunting has been replaced by Dumpster Diving. And, that craze was started off by hungry people raiding supermarket trash bins looking for perfectly edible food. No more. Thanks to eBay, Dumpster Diving is now a full time, well paying job for thousands. Here are some secrets to help you get started.
Dumpster diving is actually one of the best possible ways to get yourself arrested for trespassing and even for stealing these days, although there is some good stuff to be found in dumpsters……. once in a long while. Produce and deli food can be found over and over again in the same dumpster, if you can get away with retrieving it. Otherwise, fugetaboutit.
But here’s an enterprising take on the topic. If you make friends with somebody whose job it is to throw out such food or food scraps, they can put them in a bag, on top, last thing, for you for easy retrieval. A local woman I know makes an extra five bucks a day throwing out the scraps at a fried chicken restaurant and then retrieving them this way RIGHT BEFORE the boss arrives to open in the morning. Into her car trunk they go, and from there to her neighbor who feeds them to his dozen rabbit dogs. Five bucks a day is a big help when you make ten bucks an hour or less.
No doubt a lot of less fortunate people eat what they can obtain in similar fashion.
When we kept pigs back when I was a kid, some of our customers who run retail markets put aside their bad fruit and veggies for us, on days they knew we would be making deliveries or passing by, freeing them from having to dispose of this stuff and providing free feed for our pigs. EVERY dollar was important back then.
Flea markets and yard sales are the ticket. Let the people who collect all week to sell on Saturday morning do all the heavy work LOOKING and collecting FOR you, and earn a dollar or two. I hit two local long established flea markets at least once a month, and seldom fail to find at least fifty dollars worth of non perishable stuff I will eventually need for ten or twenty cents on the dollar,plus it’s an enjoyable experience.
Fortunately I have ample dry storage for treasures such as like new toys to be donated at Christmas and seldom used tools- tools which are priceless on the day you do finally need them. My flea market collection of nails alone occupies eight feet of heavy duty shelving. Nails aren’t a big expense but the unscheduled TRIP TO TOWN just to buy a fist full of the correct size and kind is a pain in the backside.
Most of the people who advocate living in or very near the city, as opposed to within say half an hour or so driving time of town, one way, fail to understand that you can easily afford a car and all the expenses associated with owning it, even after allowing for the hassle of commuting to work, because you can save it all back twice or three times over on rent or the cost of home ownership and a dozen other ways by living in the boonies.
When you look at your personal finances in terms of the BIG PICTURE, an hour or more spent commuting into town on a daily basis may be the most profitable hour of your day. A house and grounds, NOT including the farm, such as our home place, rents for eight hundred or so out in the countryside in my neck of the woods. In a decent neighborhood in ANY city or close in suburb I have ever visited, it would rent for twice that easily. It would rent for four thousand and up forty miles outside a place such as Washington DC or LA. Places like this with a comparable VIEW don’t exist near DC, and near LA , rent would probably start at ten thousand with the view and privacy we enjoy.
The crepe myrtles alone, which Dad rooted and planted at zero cash expense back in the early fifties, are worth a hundred grand now, if you want to buy a couple of dozen like them from a company that transplants large trees.
And the next generation to live here will have PLENTY of space for a generously sized GROUND mounted solar system, one ample to keep an electric car charged well enough to commute a hundred and fifty miles per week, if you own two of them and drive them on alternate days. In good weather, you could commute fuel cost free any distance within range of your cars. With some upgrades to the wiring and appliances, they would be able to cut the electricity bill back to the minimum service charge most months.
The Arctic sea ice September minimum extent reached a new record low in 2012 of 3.41 million square kilometers, 44 percent below the 1981-2010 average, and 16 percent below the previous record in 2007. Over the last 13 years, a new record was set four times (2002, 2005, 2007, and 2012) and several other years saw near-record lows, particularly 2008 and 2011. On September 10, 2016, Arctic sea ice extent dipped to 4.14 million square kilometers, reaching a statistical tie with the 2007 minimum for second-lowest in the satellite record. As NSIDC reported in September 2016, the 10 lowest September ice extents over the satellite record have all occurred since 2007.
Arctic sea ice shows the smallest melt in a decade
From maximum to minimum extent the 2017 season has seen a lost of only 10.2 million square kilometers. This is the smallest in 10 years, achieved despite abnormally high Arctic temperatures.
For the past decade, the trend has been towards a smaller melt with 2017 losing 650,000 square kilometers of ice less than 2007. This is nearly the area of Texas.
Also 2017 has seen the 5th largest ice surface mass gain on record in Greenland.
Definitely a good year for Arctic ice lovers and polar bears.
September 15 update
Values for 2011, 2016, 2017 are all within 200 km3. Average ice thickness remains thin, just above minimum September values that occurred in 2010 and 2011.
“we estimate the total mass budget to be close to zero and possibly even positive.”
So how long will it take for Greenland to melt at this rate, and how much is it contributing this year to sea level rise?
Catastrophic climate is a dumb proposition.
‘So how long will it take for Greenland to melt at this rate, and how much is it contributing this year to sea level rise?’ – Short Bus
Ever heard of google? This information is not exactly carved in a stone tablet and hidden on the dark side of the moon.
“Some deniers will never concede anything, even the obvious. No matter how many times they’re shown wrong, they’ll keep repeating the same nonsense endlessly. That’s why some of their “arguments” are better described as “zombie arguments” — even if you kill them, they just come back from the dead.”
“Deniers tend to use the “change the subject” tactic — a lot. When the topic under discussion gets too hot for them, rather than admit any mistake they just switch to another.”
The first author is from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO. Tamino is not a climatologist, just a known data torturer.
And I guess that without any contribution from Greenland this year, and the La Niña watch conditions the detection of accelerated sea level rise is not going to be so imminent.
Hi Javier,
When the sea ice maximum for the year is one of the smallest (or perhaps tied for the smallest since 1979) on record, then there is less ice to melt. Maybe we could look at the percent of ice that melted from maximum to minimum each year. The trend from 1979 to 2016 is clearly positive.
Dennis,
We all know the planet has been warming for 350 years. That means less Arctic sea ice, not more. It is very unlikely, and would frighten me very much, that Arctic sea ice situation goes back to 1979 because that would mean that the planet had entered a very dangerous cooling phase that nobody in his right mind should want.
But to understand present Arctic sea ice dynamics we should look at what the ice is doing in shorter time frames than the 30 years you talk about.
As scientific research has showed there are two periodicities that are important for Arctic sea ice dynamics. One is the ~60 year periodicity that has a downtrend since 1979 to 2007 and is in an uptrend since. You can see that in your graph.
The other one is the ~20 year periodicity that has a downward trend in 1980-1990 and 2001-2012, and upward trend in 1990-2001, and since 2012. You can see that in your graph too.
I have not invented these periodicities. They have been described by scientists and the data supports their existence. We don’t know their cause and we don’t know if they will persist into the future, but if they do it allows to make some predictions that are strikingly different from CO2 hypothesis predictions.
Arctic sea ice should grow in the 2012-2022 period. It should stop growing or grow very little in the 2022-2032 period. And it should grow again in the 2032-2037 period. Around 2037-40 the 60 year cycle should change phase again and we should see rapid loss of Arctic sea ice again probably in the 2053-2063 period.
That’s what the data and past evidence from the pre-satellite era shows, not the linear decline that you defend.
Hi Javier,
You have mentioned wiggle matching in the past. Now it is clear what that is.
It seems to be matching imagined trends with no underlying scientific basis. Not very interesting.
Hi Dennis,
The ~20 year and ~60 year oscillations have been described in scientific articles, so they do have a scientific basis. I just have outlined them for you to see.
Unlike the CO2 hypothesis that can’t be falsified, the natural oscillation hypothesis makes very specific predictions. Those predictions agree with the observation that Arctic sea ice is growing and will continue doing so in the following years. According to CO2 hypothesis Arctic melting should have proceeded during these past 10 years due to increasing CO2 and record high temperatures.
Dennis, you nailed him, and then he comes back with that?
ha ha ha
Hi Javier,
Climate cannot be predicted as precisely as you would like.
Nobody except you expects these scenarios to play out exactly as printed in the IPCC, one would be surprised to see the ensemble mean followed exactly.
What does the stadium wave hypothesis propose as a mechanism, that’s the important part, everything else is stories. Yes the dynamics is complex and controlled experimentation is difficult.
Hi Javier,
In peer reviewed journals what has been explained is some kind of periodicity with no firm hypothesis for the cause. Such periodicity without explanation or mechanism is of little interest.
When a better explanation than CO2 is found that fits the data from 1850 to 2016, then the CO2 hypothesis will be rejected. As it stands there is a very good physical explanation for why CO2 causes warming and the data shows that the TCR is around 2 C for a doubling of CO2 and the TCR for global land temperature suggests an equilibrium climate sensitivity of at least 3 C.
It’s ninety five in the shade here at two pm EDT, which is probably the highest it’s been on this date at this particular spot for at least seventy five years, according to some neighbors who are in the quaint habit of writing down such things on calendars their family have keep as personal journals. They have upwards of a hundred of them now, but not everything noteworthy got a note of course.
But being farmers, one thing they have been careful to keep track of has been dates such as first frost, last frost, first snow, etc, and uncommonly hot or cold weather.
I’m sure the nearest weather station has official daily records but I don’t know how to access them. Doing so would probably require some serious data diving skills and maybe a password, if they haven’t been posted in a public data base. Older records might not even be computerized.
Things are getting pretty close to hell in a hand basket in Venezuela.
I don’t generally do more than scan Fox headlines, but you have to check out both the leftie and the rightie press to get some of the news.
None of the major middle of the road or lefties have this up near the top , you would have do dig for it.
“Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, fresh off calling on the inhabitants of his starving nation to eat rabbits that had been kept as pets, is now asking his army to make sure it has “rifles, missiles and well-oiled tanks at the ready” amid a war of words with the United States.
Maduro made the declaration Monday during a military exercise in the city of Maracay, two days after the Trump administration signed new restrictions imposing bans on the entry of some Venezuelan government officials and their families into the U.S.”
Canada in other news is freezing the assets of a bunch of Maduro’s gang.
I can’t see that he is any better than dough boy, in any respect, although he can’t get away with some things as easily as dough boy, such as having people executed as warnings to stay in line.
It’s not any so called elite that’s stirring up revolution in Venezuela, and it’s not the price of oil that’s THE problem. No other major oil producing country , with the possible exception of a couple of other small countries ruled by people as corrupt as Maduro , is in even remotely similar economic trouble.
It’s fucking corruption, pure and simple , on the part of the ruling elite, that’s THE trouble.
The PEOPLE who aren’t closely aligned with that ruling elite are now actually at risk of starvation.
Venezuela is a country that ought to be self sufficient in food, or damned close, and would be, with competent government.
I seldom ever agree with Trump on anything at all, but he’s probably right this once at least. Venezuela is probably a place it’s best that Yankee citizens avoid, for now, especially with Maduro talking idiocy equal to Trump.
If an American ever wishes to have body and soul united no longer I recommend rural hitch hiking anywhere in Latin America. I’ve known some that did it, but only with Canadian flags on their backpacks.
It’s not really corruption that’s the underlying problem in Venezuela. That’s been going on since the Forty Families.
It’s incompetence.
The incompetence seems to correlate with the people from the most highly lead-poisoned generation getting into power.
I still blame lead poisoning.
Hurricanes are not very friendly to wind turbines and solar PV panels
The ongoing electricity disaster in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria — and on several other Caribbean islands slammed at full force by strong storms — is driving new interest in ways of shifting island power grids toward greater reliance on wind, solar and even, someday, large batteries.
“For the most part, these island grids were completely devastated, and it will be four to six months before most of them can power their islands completely again,” said Chris Burgess, director of projects for the Islands Energy Pprogram at the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Adding more renewables, and moving away from centralized power grids to more so-called “microgrids,” could lower costs and increase resilience in the face of storms, several energy experts said. And island nations, already at the forefront of pushing for action on climate change, have been moving this way for a while.
This is not to say that there was not severe damage to the solar farm shown in the video linked to by Javier. Obviously, this should be taken as a learning experience and there were examples from another video (one of the “related videos” from the side bar of Youtube) of smaller, residential type installations that appeared essentially intact. Another thing from the other video I viewed there would appear to be cause for an inquiry, not just in Puerto Rico but, in all the affected islands as to why some structures fared so badly while others seem essential unscathed (Properties in which the POTUS has an interest).
The experience of Jamaica with Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 is useful since before Gilbert it had been more than 36 years since a major hurricane had made a direct hit on the heavily populated area around the capital city. Much more than half, possibly as much as three quarters of the population of the island lives within an 80 by 20 mile rectangle on the south eastern corner of the island, with the old capital, Spanish Town at the center. Since the last major hurricane before Gilbert, construction practices had become very lax and a lot of short cut construction methods were the norm. Many older buildings that had weathered the previous major hurricane also fared well with hurricane Gilbert but, several fairly substantial (read expensive) dwellings lost their entire roofs, leaving the wealthy occupants exposed to the elements in the middle of the storm. Subsequent investigations revealed that several measures which would have prevented roof loss had not been employed as stipulated by local building codes. Since Gilbert the building codes have been strengthened and home builders are now much more vigilant in ensuring that their contractors are adhering to code, at least as far as proper securing of roofs is concerned.
Many commercial properties lost windows to looters who took advantage of the storm to break windows a nd steal items as large as refrigerators from appliance stores. Most commercial entities that value their glass now have installed steel storm shutters that can be quickly removed and stowed when not needed but, offer sturdy protection from flying debris during a storm. Experience teaches. Obviously there is much to be learned about hardening renewable energy installations in hurricane prone areas. Below is a picture of damage to a solar farm in Puerto Rico. It is not known what date this picture was taken. If it was taken after Irma but before Maria, the damage due to Maria may have been worse.
Two days ago I had to go down to Key West on business. It was a very looong drive through the Keys because the entire highway is clogged with trucks clearing debris. It was also a bit surreal because I was listening to a long broadcast on NPR about the devastation in Puerto Rico as I drove. They had the Mayor of San Juan practically crying while asking for Federal help to keep people from dying and she was asking for diesel for generators… while I’m sure the sun was beaming down on the Island!
BTW, I drove by a small island on which every house was severely damaged and the only thing completely unscathed was a large solar PV array on it’s own independent structure.
It’s time for humanity the get off fossil fuels once and for all! Solar PV with battery backup such as Tesla’s power wall is a huge step in the right direction.
Most of the highway looks pretty much like this.
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Only a problem in anti-paradise climate doom mentality. Observations are well below model predictions, even for scenarios (RCP4.5) that predict a stabilization at +2°C.
So we are not going to get +3°C. We are not going to get +2°C. We might not even get +1.5°C by 2100. We should complain to climate scientists for being shortchanged in our warming expectations.
2016 El Niño has past. Time to go back to the Pause.
‘Time to go back to the pause’
Is that your next failed prediction? You’re batting zero in the predictions department. Shall we do a recap? Indeed sometimes you seem incapable of determining whether or not it’s hot or cold outside in the present moment.
Who would take seriously the inane ramblings of such a failure?
More September Arctic ice extent this year.
Temperatures going down for 19 months (since September 2016).
Things are not going your way now. Let’s see for how long. I was already writing last year about the new Arctic sea ice situation. This is going to last for a couple of decades.
The strong El Niño was the last chance to convince people. Now its over.
Even the scientists that were claiming at Paris that we didn’t have time are now saying that models predict too much warming. They can see what is coming and it isn’t what the catastrophic-climate advocates have been saying.
Their last hope is a strong volcanic eruption that would cover their failures.
Hi Javier,
If all Earth System feedbacks are ignored (there are many of these not included in the models) then RCP4.5 stabilizes at 2.5 C above pre-industrial temperature, not 2 C as you suggest. The radiative forcing from CO2 in the RCP4.5 scenario is about 3.4 W/m2, the rest of the RF is from other greenhouse gases and land use change. The models respond to warming over a long period of time as the ocean warms, but it is correct that temperature stabilizes between 1.75 and 3 C for RCP 4.5. Note that the models have a wide variety of ECS values from 2 to 4.7C, with most clustered around 2.5 to 3.5C. The ensemble mean is 3.2C. I also understand you believe this mean is too high, I maintain that we don’t know what ECS is, it may be higher or lower than the ensemble mean. I am only certain that we are uncertain.
You make claims that cannot be supported except by a claim that all views different from yours are incorrect. That is also known as wishful thinking.
Hi Dennis,
You make claims that cannot be supported
Nope. The claims I make are supported in the scientific literature and in the observations.
Take for example my claim that the Arctic has entered a new phase that is going to see very little melting. It is based on 10 years of observations and on scientific evidence from much earlier published in several scientific articles. Take for example:
Divine, D. V., & Dick, C. (2006). Historical variability of sea ice edge position in the Nordic Seas. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 111(C1). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004JC002851/full
“Historical ice observations in the Nordic Seas from April through August are used to construct time series of ice edge position anomalies spanning the period 1750–2002. While analysis showed that interannual variability remained almost constant throughout this period, evidence was found of oscillations in ice cover with periods of about 60 to 80 years and 20 to 30 years, superimposed on a continuous negative trend.
Given the last cold period observed in the Arctic at the end of the 1960s, our results suggest that the Arctic ice pack is now at the periodical apogee of the low-frequency variability.
We suppose therefore that during decades to come, as the negative phase of the thermohaline circulation evolves, the retreat of ice cover may change to an expansion.”
It must have taken courage to predict an Arctic sea ice expansion in 2006.
As you can see my claims are supported. You don’t like them and disagree with them, and you convince yourself that they are baseless. They are not, and you are the one that is subjected to wishful thinking.
You have bought into the assumptions of the CO2 hypothesis. I haven’t. I remain skeptical and see a very important natural component in the climate processes observed. The only possible conclusion is that the role of CO2 has been overstated and future warming exaggerated.
Year after year observations align with this interpretation. Very little warming since 2003 except for El Niño. Lack of Arctic melting since 2007. Decrease in the speed of rotation since 2003. AMO no longer increasing since ~2009. All these despite rapidly growing atmospheric CO2. Prepare yourself for the possibility of being wrong. You have not interpreted correctly the evidence.
Hi Javier,
You misinterpret my position which is that natural variability can modulate anthropogenic warming, it can enhance anthropogenic warming in some periods and reduce the effect of anthropogenic warming in others. The empirical evidence supports such a position. The system is complex and does not follow a simple linear path. Sea ice thickness continues to fall even though sea ice extent has not fallen as fast as some researchers predicted. Also actual sea ice extent has fallen faster than predicted by Global climate models. I note that you have failed to mention this fact. Is this because the models run too “cool”?
There are a number of factors not included in many global climate models, and further research is needed on the carbon cycle, a lot of carbon could be released from permafrost and this is not accounted for in the models.
sea ice extent has fallen faster than predicted by Global climate models.
Your info is outdated. After 10 years of no melting, that is no longer true. As of September 2017 there is no significant difference between what was predicted by models and observations. I still have to add 2017 to this graph, but it is above 2015 and 2016, and very close to where RCP 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 are. Despite this coincidence, the trends are opposite. Arctic sea ice is going up since 2007 and model ice is going down. They are just crossing.
Hi Javier,
The melt was more rapid than the models predicted through 2012, since that time the trend has moved back towards what the models predicted. You have added a bunch of stuff to the IPCC chart which for RCP4.5 predicts about 4.5 million square km of Northern hemisphere sea ice in 2020. If there is no further sea ice extent melt from 2018-2020, then the models would be too high in 2020. If the NH sea ice extent minimum follows the 2005-2017 trend (0.0555 million square km per year decrease), then the models will be correct, and note this means the actual NH sea ice extent minimum would equal the ensemble mean for RCP4.5. Of course the 95% confidence interval is much wider roughly 3.5 to 6.5 million square km in 2020 as the different models do not agree very well.
Sea ice extent is very weather dependent and difficult to predict.
Hi Javier,
The length of day has an 8 year lag between the change and its effect on global temperature according to the research. So for an affect on temperatures in 2003 you need to look back at 1995. When we do this we find that the 8 year lagged length of day decreased from 2003 to 2011 by 2.1 milliseconds, thus the 8 year lagged speed of rotation of the Earth increased over this period from 2003 to 2011 it did not decrease. Since 2011 it has slowed a bit. The effect on global temperatures is quite minor, from 2003-2011 global temperature would be increased by about 0.04 C per decade from the decrease in the length of day. AMO in the negative phase might also reduce temperature a bit by maybe 0.05 C per decade. Note however that it is unlikely that all of the various oscillations will line up, for example the length of day is unlikely to decrease much further based on past history (2011 was close to a grand minimum for length of day) and lately length of day has been increasing with the lagged 8 year LOD increasing by 0.6 milliseconds from 2011 to 2016, this would reduce the temperature by 0.02 C per decade.
For the past decade CO2 forcing contributed about 0.15 C per decade, if that rate of increase continues and both AMO and LOD cause a relative decrease in warming and the net affect of other factors such as aerosols and SOI are neutral over decadal periods then the rate of warming might be reduced to 0.08 C per decade from recent 30 year rates of about 0.17 C per decade. The AMO seems to be relatively predictable, but the changes in the length of day are less so. My expectation is that warming rates will be between 0.08 C per decade and 0.12 C per decade over the 2013 and 2043 period, though unaccounted for heating of the ocean (and future releases of that heat buildup), changes in the carbon cycle, albedo changes, and aerosol reductions may make this guess too conservative.
The length of day has an 8 year lag between the change and its effect on global temperature according to the research.
What research is that? To my knowledge nobody has demonstrated that LoD has an effect on temperatures. Most scientists believe climate affects LoD and not the opposite, as nobody can figure out how changes in the speed of rotation can affect the climate, while the expansion and contraction of the atmosphere with climate changes is bound to affect the speed of rotation. The causality, however, is far from clear.
The lag is also not well studied, so you can’t assume that it is always 8 years. Actually from the change in LoD in 1972 to the start of global warming in 1976 it was 5 years.
And I don’t think you are tying things together properly. You also assume that you are dealing with independent phenomena, when everything points to their relation. There exists a natural oscillation of 60-80 years that appears to redistribute energy among the different parts of the climate system. As the energy moves it manifests as temperature changes, sea ice changes, atmospheric changes, and speed of rotation changes. The system changes are well described by the Stadium Wave hypothesis as showing leads and lags among the different parts.
Climate models and climate scientists don’t properly account for this oscillation, as it is not reproduced. They have measured the warming from the 1976-2003 positive warming period and assumed it was mainly, if not completely due to CO2. Their models only predict continuous increase in temperatures in the future. Thus the Pause caught them by surprise, when it is the logical next phase in the oscillation. Now they are relieved that the Pause ended without realizing that the recent steep warming was only a temporary interlude due to a very strong El Niño.
That your hypothesis leads you to surprises is a very bad sign.
“Most scientists believe climate affects LoD and not the opposite, as nobody can figure out how changes in the speed of rotation can affect the climate”
The moon modifies the speed of rotation and this causes the ocean’s thermocline to slosh, bringing up warmer or colder waters. This is the mechanism for the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
Listen Javier, if you want to discuss this, I will be at the AGU meeting in New Orleans presenting the research at one of the sessions.
But since he has ignore blocked me, he likely won’t see this.
Hi Javier,
The paper is at link below. Section 3 (Results) discusses the 8 year lag. The paper does not give a very satisfying explanation for the mechanism that might link LOD with temperature except possibly geomagnetic modulation of charged particle fluxes which might affect cloud nucleation.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/2010JCLI3500.1 Abstract
Earth’s rotation rate [i.e., length of day (LOD)], the angular momentum of the core (CAM), and surface air temperature (SAT) all have decadal variability. Previous investigators have found that the LOD fluctuations are largely attributed to core–mantle interactions and that the SAT is strongly anticorrelated with the decadal LOD. It is shown here that 1) the correlation among these three quantities exists until 1930, at which time anthropogenic forcing becomes highly significant; 2) correcting for anthropogenic effects, the correlation is present for the full span with a broadband variability centered at 78 yr; and 3) this result underscores the reality of anthropogenic temperature change, its size, and its temporal growth. The cause of this common variability needs to be further investigated and studied. Since temperature cannot affect the CAM or LOD to a sufficient extent, the results favor either a direct effect of Earth’s core-generated magnetic field (e.g., through the modulation of charged-particle fluxes, which may impact cloud formation) or a more indirect effect of some other core process on the climate—or yet another process that affects both. In all three cases, their signals would be much smaller than the anthropogenic greenhouse gas effect on Earth’s radiation budget during the coming century.
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Hi Javier,
The long term trend is still negative for sea ice in the Northern hemisphere. When the 30 year trend becomes positive, I will be convinced that Northern hemisphere sea ice is expanding. Will there be changes in the short term rate of change in sea ice extent, no doubt, nobody expects the rate of change will be constant over 10 year periods.
If we look 9 year averages of NH ice extent and area the rate of decrease has slowed for the most recent few 9 year periods, no sign of increase yet for the Northern Hemisphere.
When do you predict we will see an increase in the 9 year average sea ice extent or area in the Northern Hemisphere?
When the 30 year trend becomes positive, I will be convinced that Northern hemisphere sea ice is expanding.
By demanding a 30 year trend in a ~60 year oscillation you are bound to be always wrong. After 30 years of expansion you will be convinced that Northern hemisphere sea ice is expanding, and then it will start to contract again and you won’t believe it.
When do you predict we will see an increase in the 9 year average sea ice extent or area in the Northern Hemisphere?
2012 was the lowest value, and the fall prior to 2007 was very steep, while the recovery since 2007 is very modest. The 9 year average will probably turn positive in 2019-20.
Hi Javier,
There are a number of thing left out of climate models or that are poorly understood.
You are confident that none of these things will be problems, you may be right or wrong on this. The optimist believes that the things that are not understood will all have negligible effects. The pessimist believes the effects are likely to be considerable.
The realist says we don’t know what we don’t know and we should not assume a positive outcome in the face of ignorance.
Dennis,
If CO2 was such a serious problem we should know by now. We have run the experiment with 7 decades of very strong increase in CO2. Perhaps the highest increase in more than a million years. All we’ve got is a moderate warming that hasn’t affected our lives. By most measures humankind is at its best.
If CO2 had been a serious problem we would have been screwed. As a “sapiens” species we first do and then we think. Luckily that was not the case.
CO2 hypothesis of climate change is wrong. We already know that. It doesn’t predict what happens. CO2 contribution to climate change is noticeable but not overriding.
We are late for the precautionary principle. We should have applied it at least 50 years ago. By now we already know the hypothesis is wrong and the effects moderate. There is no point in applying a precautionary principle when we already know the answer. It is not needed. If we should stop burning fossil fuels it is not because of their effect on climate. Other reasons are more sound.
CO2 is having the impact that was predicted long ago.
Hi Javier,
As was predicted long ago, ECS of about 2.8 to 3.2 C looks to be about right, so far the thermal lag of the oceans has kept temperature from rising too fast and natural variability in solar output and changes in ocean currents which affect sea surface temperatures, as well as changes in the length of day which seem to be correlated with long term natural temperature changes by some mechanism which is not well understood.
Considering a global land temperature model using BEST data, a model using carbon, Aerosols, ENSO, and AMO (LOD and PDO not statistically significant when including the other 4 factors), we get a TCR of 3.12 C.
I took the 3 year average of best land data and models results to compare model and data in chart below. The trend line for the model from 1870-2015 (data for ENSO only available from 1870) is slightly lower than the actual data.
Yair . . .
Hello and thanks for the thoughtful post islandboy.
What puzzles me are the random failures. Perhaps an individual panel on an array suffered mechanical damage from flying debris allowing the wind to lift it and break it up?
From personal experience conventional panels are pretty tough and can survive pretty much intact even when dislodged from a roof . . . I have a panel well over thirty years old putting out rated output with crazed and shattered glass.
I wonder what would be the situation had Puerto Rico been powered with one of those compact nukes they were speaking of for island States back in the ‘eighties?
You mean the “compact nukes they were are still only speaking of for island States back in the‘eighties ” now? AFAIK “compact nukes” are vaporware. A quick search of the web failed to unearth a single working example of one, not even a prototype. As long as such reactors produce waste from which bomb making material can be extracted, I doubt they will ever see the light of day.
I suspect flying debris might be a major cause of damage for ground mounted arrays. A flying object could tear one module from it’s mountings and compromise the integrity of other modules since one mounting point usually secures two modules, except when it is at the edge of the array. This would have a cascading effect. See my post just below for a look at what the cascading effect might look like.
It would be interesting to get the perspective of Richard Branson with his substantial ground mounted array on his private island that experienced the full wrath of Irma. A video of what might have been the TV room showed the effects of the hurricane including all the glass doors blown out and paint stripped off the wall but, oddly enough the broken TV was still mounted to it’s wall bracket!
Ooops! Oh Shit! A solar farm on Anguilla after Irma!
If it were my business I would be looking for the contractor to take them to court. That damage suggests that a significant safety margin was not employed. Ground mounted arrays should be designed and built for maximum expected winds. A perimeter wall to reduce wind loads and the volume of flying debris might also have been helpful. There is a 700 plus kW array in Jamaica that has a fairly tall perimeter wall and I now see that apart from dissuading theft, it might also be protective in a hurricane.
Having looked at the before and after pics of Richard Branson’s (700 kWp ?) array on Necker Island I am intrigued by the contrast. It appears to be largely intact while the solar farm near the Airport in Anguilla (above) is FUBAR. Both installation experienced similar category 5 hurricane conditions. Why did one suffer so badly while the other did not?
2017 Accumulated Cyclone Energy for the North Atlantic.
Individual storm ACE values are also impressive with 2017 presently showing 3 storms with an individual ACE higher than 40. Only 27 storms with a 40+ ACE value are ever recorded to have formed in the Atlantic. Irma, so far, is the highest ACE for 2017 at 66.6 — which is the second highest individual storm ACE ever for the Atlantic. Jose produced an ACE of 42.2 (24th) and Maria an ACE of 41.4 (26th).
Much better according to a blog by a known unbalanced catastrophic-climate advocate?
NOAA uses ACE, but when catastrophic-climate advocates don’t find an official measurement scary enough they jump into a different one. Same with ice extent and volume.
Simple improvements in detection. Small weather phenomena, specially when at sea, wasn’t properly tracked, so the data is heavily biased. Of course that doesn’t matter to catastrophic-minded climate advocates. Go see what the IPCC says about extreme weather phenomena and how much confidence it places on that evidence that you claim.
I’m not sure if this is properly peer reviewed, but interesting anyway:
ATTRIBUTION OF THE HEAT WAVES AND SUMMER TEMPERATURES IN SOUTHERN EUROPE 2017
The summer of 2017 was marked by extreme heat in Southern Europe.
Scientists with World Weather Attribution (WWA) conducted a multi-method attribution analysis to assess whether and to what extent human-caused climate change played a role in both the record hot summer (June–August) across the Euro-Mediterranean region and three-day heat waves such as the early August heat wave dubbed Lucifer.
In many towns and cities across the Euro-Mediterranean region there is now around a 1 in 10 chance every year for heat waves at least as hot as those in the summer of 2017.
The team found that climate change increased the chances of seeing a summer as hot as 2017 by at least a factor of 10 and a heat wave like Lucifer by at least a factor of four since 1900.
If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase in the atmosphere, a summer like that of 2017 will be normal in the Euro-Mediterranean region by the middle of the century.
Solar Dimming versus Greenhouse Warming changes due to aerosol pollution affecting solar insolation.
Just a conjecture based on a graph that demonstrates that it is false. Global warming started in 1976, when dimming was increasing, not 10 years later as the graph proposes, when dimming started to decrease. There is no correlation.
Asymmetric Hemispheric Warming due to asymmetric pollution
Asymmetric Hemispheric pollution
Hi Gone fishing,
Interesting. I use the GISS aerosol data in my simple models, but I only have data from 1850 to 2012.
We could assume aerosols fall to aero and remain there, but that would include an assumption of no future volcanoes, which seems unrealistic.
So2 is on the rise lately. One could assume that in the late 21st century aerosols may get very low. Volcanoes are generally short term blips.
Ship fuel oil is supposed to drop from 3.5% m/m to 0.5% m/m sulfur in 2020 according to IMO but could be delayed to 2025 depending upon availability of low sulfur fuel. Chinese coal consumption doubled between 2003 and 2007. It seems to be reducing sulfur pollution after 2007. India was on the rise.
Pollution from coal increased dramatically during the last decade but now scrubbers are being used, difficult to get at any hard data for the last few years although SO2 is still monitored.
Here is an interesting article on the subject with references to the AURA project measurements. https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=87154
Typical exudation of volcanic SO2 is on the order of one Tg per year global. Then there are explosive volcanic events which can go beyond even China’s annual 15Tg to 30Tg output.
To give a scale to the matter, Mount Pinatubo gave off 20 Tg SO2 (largest explosive volcanic event in the twentieth century -1991) while “The large 1783-1784 Laki fissure eruption in Iceland released a staggering amount more sulfur dioxide than Pinatubo (approximately 120-million ton vs. 20). Although the two eruptions were significantly different in length and style, the added atmospheric SO2 caused regional cooling of Europe and North America by similar amounts for similar periods of time.” .
To be fair, large volcanic explosions inject much of the SO2 into the stratosphere where it is a more effective and longer lasting sun blocker than tropospheric injection. Thus the short term pulse has large regional and global effects over a period of time longer than the eruptions, sometimes a year or more.
But continuous industrial production of SO2 from thousands of sources globally appears to have fast temperature effect on a large scale. Measurements of reduced regional insolation were up to -20w/m2 back in the 50’s and 60’s. Changes to car exhaust systems, low sulfur fuels and scrubbers on power plants have made a difference, otherwise we would be looking at a quite dim world now since fossil fuel burning is very much increased compared to 1950-1960.
Of course there is still NOx compounds which are produced in similar quantities to SOx compounds. They act as GHG’s and help form tropospheric ozone. All of the particulate aerosols and gases from coal and oil burning form smog. Nasty stuff, that destroys lungs, plants and modifies the radiation properties of the atmosphere. Large brown clouds over eastern China and the nearby ocean are not signs of health for the region or the planet.
Looks like stratospheric data only, good for explosive volcanic activity measures. What about the tropospheric particulates and cloud/haze effects from SOx, NxOx, etc. where most of the industrial sources end up?
Hi Gonefishing,
If you know where to find the global average all rolled up in a convenient data set, I will use it. This is what I could find.
This is a good illustration of why you should put trolls on ignore, instead of fighting with them.
I find the NFL anthem issue interesting. Until 2009 the players were not on the field for the anthem. They were still in the dressing room for the anthem and entered the field soon after. Then DoD began ‘paying for patriotism’ at sporting events (i.e. camouflage baseball uniforms and other gingoistic crap) and as a result players were brought on the field for the anthem. Now that place has become a setting for peaceful nonviolent protest.
The issue here is, we all must support our National Anthem including proudly standing for it with our right hand over our heart whenever and wherever it is played. Where I am from, we were taught always that we put God, Country and Family first. What NFL ownership needs to do is take any kneelers out back for a smackdown if they continue to disrespect our troops by disrespecting our Flag. Unfortunately, the owners are only showing that they are still clueless about this matter. Unless they finally wise up one of these days, NFL TV ratings will continue to suffer.
This message was brought to you by the GOP…or was it the GRU? Hard to tell the difference these days.
He’s five foot-two, and he’s six feet-four,
He fights with missiles and with spears.
He’s all of thirty-one, and he’s only seventeen,
He’s been a soldier for a thousand years.
He’s a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.
And he knows he shouldn’t kill,
And he knows he always will,
Kill you for me my friend and me for you.
And he’s fighting for Canada,
He’s fighting for France,
He’s fighting for the USA,
And he’s fighting for the Russians,
And he’s fighting for Japan,
And he thinks we’ll put an end to war this way.
And he’s fighting for Democracy,
He’s fighting for the Reds,
He says it’s for the peace of all.
He’s the one who must decide,
Who’s to live and who’s to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.
You sound like a Russian Bot! Go fuck yourself!
disrespect our troops by disrespecting our Flag.
That’s so weird. How did the flag get connected to respect for our troops???
It’s a cult, most of whose members are obese and have diabetes so can’t serve anyway. Being ineligible to fight really can make you a warmonger.
I’m in week 4 of my self imposed ban on watching the NFL. So far I haven’t missed seeing the games like I thought I would. My father served in the Marines during WWII and was very proud to have been in that particular branch. I have no interest in supporting an organization that allows “protests” that tarnish the legacies of all the brave men like my father. Talking to some of my friends and going by the plummeting ratings, I’m definitely not alone either.
Again…that’s so weird. How did the flag get connected to respect for our troops???
For me, it is about displaying proper respect for both the flag and the anthem. Whenever you are in public and the anthem is played, if you aren’t standing up straight with your hand over your heart and your cap off your head, you are dishonoring our country along with all the freedoms we get to enjoy.
That’s all just symbolism. Get over it. It is your response that makes the actions of protesters worthwhile in their eyes. You are being trolled and are falling for it. Sticks and stones break bones, words and non violent protest piss people off!
As a side note, I’d never provoke the likes of you since I’m pretty sure you would get violent. At least you sound like you would. I’m not a big fan of symbolism and rituals myself.
For me, it is about displaying proper respect for both the flag and the anthem
let me guess, you are not a black man or some other minority in America, are you? Try walking in their shoes for a change!
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel
Samuel Johnson
Riding your dads coat tails eh. Why didn’t you serve?
It’s kind of a stupid song when you look at it. Jimi Hendrix did a good cover. Other than that it’s pretty lame. Definitely not written by anyone with any talent.
Anthem should be changed to TCB by BTO.
These Are The Restaurants Banning NFL Games Because of Anthem Protests
Amy Parlapiano
Sports Illustrated
September 28, 2017
Some restaurants around the country are responding to the silent anthem protests of NFL players with a “protest” of their own: They’re choosing to potentially lose some business by no longer showing NFL games at their establishments. Here is a list of some of the restaurants who’ve made public announcements about their ‘ban’ on the sport.
[Some of the examples…]
Baxters Family Food and Fun, Hixson, Tennessee
Statement: (via the restaurant’s Facebook page): “We might lose some clients over this but I feel that it’s the right thing to do. Until the NFL comes to its senses on this National Anthem tragedy, we will no longer be showing NFL games at our restaurant. You can still view the college games on Saturday, and we will still be open on Sundays. But my grandfathers fought for our country for that symbol. They lost friends and brothers. My father served under that flag. My grandfather was awarded the Purple Heart with that flag flying high!! And I will not allow anyone to prosper hiding behind the very freedom it created!! So until further notice, we will not be showing the NFL games.”
Canyon Road Barn & Grill, Breckenridge, Texas
Statement: (via the restaurant’s Facebook): “NOTICE: There will be no viewing of any televised NFL games on any of the six big screen TV’s until further notice. For the 99 great things being an American Citizen affords us, there will always be that 1 that ignites some. Freedom of speech being exercised in this establishment so COME FOR THE FOOD BUT STAY AT HOME IF YOU WANT TO WATCH AN NFL GAME 🙂 Put your money where your mouth is…Semper Fi.”
Sarita’s Grill & Cantina Denham; Denham Springs, Louisiana
Statement: (via the restaurant’s Facebook page): “NFL Update. Until further notice, Sarita’s has decided not to broadcast any future NFL games or the NFL Network. We respect everyone’s right to freedom of speech; however, we do not support anyone that disrespects our Flag, our Country and the people who have fought and/or died for the freedoms that we have.”
When did kneeling become disrespectful? Traditionally one knelt before God, and one knelt before the throne.
A flag is a rag and is only as meaningful or as meaning empty as the verity of the principles that it symbolically represents. If the promotional literature advertises justice for all, but the fine print reserves it only for the privileged few, then no respect is deserved, and no respect should be given.
I will stand for it only if it stands for something.
we kneel only to communicate with god. when the national anthem is played we stand up to honor god and country. there cant be no exception.
Here is how a true patriot and leader speaks about the current state of affairs in our country!
Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, along with USAFA leadership, addressed the entire Cadet Wing and USAFA Preparatory School today. Lt. Gen. Silveria left no uncertainties that racism has no place at the Academy.
How the Pentagon Paid for NFL Displays of Patriotism
I will never ‘show respect’ for this government while the current commander in chief is at the helm.
And I have very serious hesitation at all other times as well- wars of choice against Vietnam and Iraq killed over a million civilians. Inexcusable. Evil.
Napalm on women and girls.
I am not in the least bit proud of it.
Maybe after a hundred years of restraint.
Mossygrape – you were taught to put God, Country and Family first, but you seem to have ignored that completely and gone for kangaroo courts, might is right and corporal punishment.
My thought on the anthem/flag issues, back when I was a kid, in school we were taught to respect our country when in public places. We stood at attention every morning to resite the Pledge of Allegiance, loud and proud my 8th grade English teacher would say. Then we were taught to always have our right hand firm near the heart during the Anthem. My thoughts are, children today just aren’t being taught the same values, as when we were children ourselves. That’s what makes them think showing disrespect to the flag in public places is acceptable. Which leads to the ? if they aren’t teaching basic respect and values, what are parents and schools teaching nowdays?
Regards,
Ralph
Cass Tech ’64
One must very clearly know the differences between patriotism and nationalism. Otherwise horrible mistakes can be made, and are being made.
American ‘Nationalists’ seem to have forgotten history’s lessons and think that some Nazis are actually nice people…
Nazi’s? Them again?
Many people think environmentalists and climate scientists are worse than Nazi’s.
Yeah, every time you figure your done with them, bam, they pop up again in a perpetual game of whack a mole!
The worst of all, though, would be an environmentalist who is both a climate scientist and an atheist. Compared to that, a Nazi would almost be a saint… 🙂
Neither one are my strongpoints.
This article provided by Gonefishing is worth quoting from:
“I’ve become increasingly concerned that many American Christians (and perhaps especially evangelicals) confuse patriotism with nationalism to the extent that idolatry lurks close by.
Patriotism is love for one’s country without blinders about its flaws and defects. Patriotism seeks to actualize the highest and best ideals of one’s country which can sometimes look like disloyalty to nationalists. Nationalists tend to confuse “country” with “government” and reject as disloyal all criticism of either. However, criticism of the government can be patriotric. In fact, in America patriotism should be constructively critical toward government.”
“Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, stewed over their own fates, anxious that Moore, a former state Supreme Court judge, would become a national burden for the party because of the long list of incendiary comments he has made on race, religion and sexuality.
Hushed talk of retirements dominated conversations on Capitol Hill, one day after Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) announced that he would not seek reelection in 2018, with Republican lawmakers wondering whether they could survive a GOP political storm that only seems to be growing.”
Earlier on, I was convinced the ACA aka Ocare would be a disaster for the D’s short term, and I was right about that. I also said that long term, it would be remembered as the D’s standing up for the people, and opposing the health care establishment, as a major step on the way to an equitable health care system similar to the ones that dominate in other developed countries such as Canada, France, Germany, etc.
Things are moving faster than ever, and the “long term” has arrived a lot sooner than I expected, in terms of Ocare. The D’s are going to be better off in 2020 in my opinion because of it, if they have sense enough to run a presidential candidate who isn’t perceived as a Republican Lite member of the establishment, one that can light a fire in the bellies of the working classes……… and there are ENOUGH working class people to throw the VAST majority of all elections one way or the other, according to the perceptions of working class voters.
I don’t have any real idea WHAT will actually emerge as law from the R’s and Trump’s tax proposals.
But the D’s are damned fools for not proposing FIRST that the standard deductions be sharply increased.
There are MILLIONS and MILLIONS of people who are NOT in a position to deduct mortgage interest, or write of their cars as business expenses, or do any of the things people with more money can do to reduce their tax bill.
A few hundred bucks extra take home would be as welcome to them as a glass of ice water would be in hell, and they will remember getting it, IF they get it, NOW, as a gift from the REPUBLICANS.
Nevertheless, all things considered, Trump is doing the R party more harm, long term, by being president than he could by donating every dime he has or has ever had , times ten cubed, to the Democrats and joining up with an environmental organization and going around making speeches like a convicted but repentant criminal doing his public service work.
In the meantime, nit wit environmentalists continue to piss off sensible middle of the road voters and righties by pissing and moaning ( by way of example ) about pipelines that carry oil thru the country so that it can be exported from Canada, without having brains enough to understand that while such criticisms resonate with the people already on board, the members of the choir so to speak, they solidify support for the enemy. They’re shooting off their mouth and hitting their own toes, in effect.
There are reasons such pipelines should be built, and anybody with a lick of sense who is HONEST will admit they are good ones. In no particular order:
NEW pipelines are safer by a factor of ten at least than really old pipelines approaching or past the ends of their designed service life, which would otherwise be more heavily used, and used LONGER instead of being taken out of service or replaced with new on the same right of ways. Eventually.
If the oil doesn’t go out thru the USA, it will find it’s way out to the east or west thru Canada, sooner or later, because the Canadians, like every body else, love their government when it’s providing “free ” goodies, and the oil companies will provide as many goodies as necessary to make the deals happen, sooner or later.
Refusing Canada in this matter is a slap in the face to one of our most important allies, not to mention our NEXT DOOR neighbor.
We expect to burn millions of barrels of other countries oil, every day, and we expect it to move freely in international trade, yet we hypocritically try to block Canadian trade in oil?
Middle of the roaders and righties understand that if that oil flows thru the USA, we control access to it in the event of serious troubles in the world in times to come. If it flows thru pipelines financed and even built by various Asian countries, we lose, big time, in terms of political leverage, meaning we are that much CLOSER to having to resort to bullets in the event of hot war erupting. History AIN’T over folks.
We refuse the jobs associated with building and maintaining and running pipelines and maybe some additional refinery or storage capacity, and the tax revenues associated with doing so ??
A little common sense goes a LONG way in politics just as it does in other affairs.
The smart move for the environmentalists in this case would be to use their leverage to extract the price of thousands and thousands of acres of sensitive and yet to be developed land from the oil industries, and put that land into trust as environmentally protected parks or maybe even as wilderness. More votes to be gained than lost that way.
Big win, that way.
This graph illustrates the change in global surface temperature relative to 1951-1980 average temperatures. Sixteen of the 17 warmest years in the 136-year record all have occurred since 2001, with the exception of 1998. The year 2016 ranks as the warmest on record. (Source: NASA/GISS). This research is broadly consistent with similar constructions prepared by the Climatic Research Unit and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The time series below shows the five-year average variation of global surface temperatures. Dark blue indicates areas cooler than average. Dark red indicates areas warmer than average.
Observed records of Atlantic hurricane activity show some correlation, on multi-year time-scales, between local tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the Power Dissipation Index (PDI) —see for example Fig. 3 on this EPA Climate Indicators site. PDI is an aggregate measure of Atlantic hurricane activity, combining frequency, intensity, and duration of hurricanes in a single index. Both Atlantic SSTs and PDI have risen sharply since the 1970s, and there is some evidence that PDI levels in recent years are higher than in the previous active Atlantic hurricane era in the 1950s and 60s.
-According to the total annual ACE Index, cyclone intensity has risen noticeably over the past 20 years, and six of the 10 most active years since 1950 have occurred since the mid-1990s (see Figure 2). Relatively high levels of cyclone activity were also seen during the 1950s and 1960s.
-The PDI (see Figure 3) shows fluctuating cyclone intensity for most of the mid- to late 20th century, followed by a noticeable increase since 1995 (similar to the ACE Index). These trends are shown with associated variations in sea surface temperature in the tropical North Atlantic for comparison (see Figure 3)
re-vaj(?) – sounds like something Gwyneth Paltrow might recommend.
“If Caelan had been around at the dawn of human history, he would have been the one caveman who constantly preached against the use of stone tools and fire… while happily eating sliced cooked meat scraps, left by his fellow cave dwellers, when they weren’t looking.” ~ Fred Magyar
And so it is that, yet again, we have Fred speaking nonsense and, despite himself, and ironically, about Caelan (yet again) supposedly from beyond his juvenile Safe Space from Caelan…
And so it is that Fred will ‘not’ read what I have pasted below (which is probably just as well, in the interest of the protection of his ego)…
“Most people would agree that a person who chooses not to eat certain things is not ‘anti-food’. Similarly, few would argue that people who say ‘eating that will be bad for you’ or ‘you should read the ingredient label’ or ‘I’m trying to eat less red meat’ – are ‘anti-food’…
Those who write about the food-system do not include disclaimers in the front of their works declaring that they are not ‘anti-food’.
The quick retort may be offered that humans need to eat and drink. This is true. But humans also need to live in a world shaped by technologies – whether those technologies be waterwheels and thatched roof cottages, bike wheels and solar panels, or buffering wheels and high rises. But people can choose what they eat and drink, and so too can people choose which technologies they want to live with and amongst…
When technology is discussed today it is done in a way that tends to flatten differences between wildly different kinds of technology. And this is a type of confusion on which those who hurl the term ‘anti-technology’ capitalize…
The actually existing individuals who are opposed to genuinely ‘all’ technology are so few in number as to be statistically insignificant. And those who are most likely to be held up as exemplars of ‘anti-technology’ sentiments (such as anarcho-primitivists) are more likely to be in favor of radically eco-centric technologies as opposed to genuinely wanting zero technology. Granted, those likely to denounce others as ‘anti-technology’ are unlikely to have taken the time to have actually read any of those individuals…
Discussions about the impacts of technology should concern everybody who is effected by these impacts. Namely: everybody. More of these conversations are needed, and in order for that to happen we need to get beyond the absurd idea that it is somehow ‘anti-technology’ to criticize technology. And one of the groups that needs to take an important step in this matter are the critics themselves – who can deal a serious blow to this ideological rubbish by refusing to dance to its tune.
The ‘anti-technology’ figure is a straw man.”
Icing? Cherry? Ok, why not…
“With all due respect, Thomas, old chap, did my comment perchance cause you to get your knickers all in a bunch, eh?” ~ Fred Magyar
“No not at all. I’d say more than those 4 words but I suspect you won’t believe that either, and will again fly off into the land of Narnia. (shrug)
As to your insidious disgusting adhom and your profound arrogant immaturity try this on for size…” ~ Thomas
…
“…Seems you ran out of arguments rather quickly, eh?!…” ~ Fred Magyar
“I’m simply too old and wise to bother wasting my time Fred. Believe whatever you wish because you do and will anyway. (shrug)” ~ Thomas (Real Climate)
A single Tesla Powerpack unit has already saved an Australian town $1.5 million
The system has already paid for itself tenfold
Logan City in Queensland, Australia had recently installed a solar power system for their water treatment plant. Before installing their Powerpack system, they planned to maintain a connection to the grid for when the sun wasn’t shining. After consideration, they opted for a single 95kWh Powerpack system and have since saved an estimated $1.5 million in energy costs.
They didn’t disclose the price of the system, but it is estimated to be around $100,000 – $200,000 and can power the plant 24 hours a day. This rate of a return on investment shows just how much potential these systems have going forward.
I’m a big Tesla fan, and a big believer in renewable energy in general.
But Tesla has been delivering the Power Pack system only a little while, and it defies belief that it could have saved the town over a million bucks in that length of time in purchased grid juice, unless the utility is charging a truly outrageous rate per kilowatt hour.
But Tesla has been delivering the Power Pack system only a little while, and it defies belief that it could have saved the town over a million bucks in that length of time in purchased grid juice,
The biggest savings was not from purchased grid juice, which only amounts to about $50,000.00 a year. It was in not needing the up front capital costs in building a road and installing the infrastructure of the grid connection itself!
Logan City Council, south of Brisbane, has installed solar PV and Tesla Powerpack technology to create an off-grid water treatment solution at its Round Mountain Reservoir, in what is believed to be an Australian first.
Not only has it saved council millions in capital costs compared to installing main grid-connected poles and wires, it has set a precedent it intends to roll out for future infrastructure in the fast-growing region.
Logan Mayor Luke Smith told The Fifth Estate the decision to go off-grid was an easy one to make.
Luke Smith, Logan City Council To put in poles and wires would have required first building a sealed road 3.1 km long for access and inspection purposes – that would have cost around $1.9 million, he said. The current dirt road is 4WD suitable and no upgrade is required for routine maintenance of the solar and storage.
Then there would have been the bill from the energy provider for the poles and wires themselves being put in, which Mr Smith said would have been an “extraordinary amount of money”.>
As well, the council will save about $50,000 a year on electricity costs to operate the electro-chlorination system that will ensure the reservoir’s water is safe to drink.
One of the main reasons a disruptive technology takes off like wild fire once the conditions are right is precisely because of no longer having to build out exorbitantly expensive things like miles of copper wire. I can still remember the tipping point for cell phones in Brazil. When I was a young boy there was no way the vast majority of people could afford the $5,000.00 connection fee for a business line in most urban centers, let alone multiple orders of that amount in a rural setting like the farm my cousins owned in the interior of Sao Paulo state. Compared to that the up front capital costs of putting up cell phone towers was cheap and almost everyone could afford to buy a cell phone and rural areas of Brazil suddenly had access to telephone communications.
Side note:Back in the day in the city of Sao Paulo you might have to wait for 5 years to get that last mile or so of copper wire for a phone line in your home.
Hi Fred,
Makes sense now! The original comment was way to short on details.
Around here, that sort of project would be paid for by the utility, and a few cents added to the bill of every body served by that same utility. Ditto our rural roads, which are subsidized by urban people.
But this is a good deal for urbanites, because otherwise…. they would be in a tough spot for food, lumber, and other stuff from the country side.
At the end of the day it really doesn’t matter how it is paid for, by whom and how those costs are split up if a new technology simply makes the cost of implementing something the old way completely obsolete and unnecessary! Not having to dish out a couple million dollars is always a win in my view.
Cheers!
“…The cornucopian fantasy of ‘LOTS’ of rich Americans driving around in Leafs and Volts commuting to their ‘GOOD’ jobs, depends on our society turning a blind eye to the large swaths of the real poor in the world…” ~ FMagyar
“Furthermore what makes you think those so called ‘GOOD’ jobs will continue to exist? Or the access to ‘EASY’ credit?
Spec, I’d really like to see you and Nick without your rose colored BAU glasses and blinders on, taking a walk on the wild side in some of the poorer parts of the US and more importantly, the rest of the world. You guys really need to step outside of the Matrix for a little bit… Reality ain’t even close to what you guys imagine. But I realize neither one of want’s to hear that technology is not going to save the world you hold so dear!” ~ FMagyar
“…I know that cars, ICE or EV of the type that most people think of when they say automobiles are simply NOT sustainable! What part of ‘unsustainable’ do people not understand?” ~ FMagyar
UK Switches on First Subsidy-Free Solar Farm with Battery Storage
This week, the United Kingdom launched a new solar plant outside the town of Flitwick, about an hour’s drive north of London. But unlike some of the UK’s largest solar installations, the Clayhill Solar Farm was planned and built without any government subsidies or incentive such as feed-in tariffs.
Furthermore, a 6MW battery battery storage unit will complement the 10MW solar plant in the county of Bedfordshire. The installation marks another step forward in the UK’s clean energy future as the current government has made it clear it wants such projects to continue without any subsidies.
Every morning when I wake up and smell the coffee, I stand at attention with hand over heart and recite the pledge of allegiance, sing the Star Spangled Banner, then outside to run the flag up the flag pole and salute the stars and stripes.
Tears well up in my eyes. Something I do every day! Makes me so happy!
I buy season tickets for every professional sports team, have to show patriotism with your wallet too, you know.
What I love the most is the F22 fly over before the Super Bowl! Never have missed one yet! All from my corporate suite, wouldn’t want to sully my presence sitting in the stands with all of the morons and peons. Not gonna happen! A stadium filled with white trash is easily ignored from the glass enclosed luxury suite.
I’m a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam!
Donald Trump is the 300 pound orangutan in the Offal Office.
Gotta go, need to fill my opioid prescription and then a new tattoo, just like all Americans do.
Cheers!
I bet most of you didn’t know this is the very very best massive post maybe ever. Because we believe this beautiful, beautiful post is made in the USA and America is respected again. Respect is the most important word, because when Americans works on a level playing field. We make America Great again, like it was back farther since before Lincoln. Next we are going to cut taxes the worse evil, the most very evil on our job creators. So they can have the mostest money to pay you to work for them. We will make this fair and it’s about time. When ObamaCare is repealed, then and only than you will have the most ever to pay for your TrumpCare. Which you will pay for, that doesn’t cover the most ever number of things that your sick with. Why would our greatest ever American dream want to buy coverage for the worst things we may never, never need.
All Americans must stand to honor our most beautiful flag without questioning our worst past. All Americans needs to pay for a most beautiful wall that very bad Mexico is not willing to pay their most fair share. Trust me, they will pay. Trust me, you will get tired of the best winning ever. Trust me the most, my health care plan will make most fast food on a level playing field the cheapest, very very cheap.
Only real Americans don’t question our wonderful, beautiful flag honoring our soldiers unless their soldiering with a green card. In that case, we send their families home during their tour. Honoring our best flag is black and mostly the best ever white.
I’ve been looking for pictures of damage done to solar arrays by the recent category 5 storms Irma and Maria and have decided to post a set of links to various pages that discuss solar PV and adverse weather. The first link contains a picture I have wanted to see since the passage of Irma, the last image at the bottom of the article is a picture of Richard Branson’s array on Necker Island in the BVI, before and after the storm! All the links contain at least one picture of an array or arrays after the passage of an extreme wind event (not all Irma or Maria) and there is obviously a growing body of work on building solar PV installations that can survive extreme wind events:
I found this final web page very intriguing simply because of it’s source, wattsupwiththat.com . It is a lengthy and detailed blog post by Anthony Watts describing his own 9KW PV system on his home. Strange how even a global warming denier can find a justification to go solar and according to him his decision was based on firm financial justification. Read for yourselves!
Finally, the collage below shows a 700 plus kW array I mentioned in another post. The picture to the rigth is the Google Maps satellite view of the compound. The upper left picture shows the compound as viewed from the south corner and the lower left picture shows a roughly 4×2.25 mile rectangle with the compound in the middle (roughly). The compound is separated from a densely populated squatter community (Central Village) to it’s north west by a river, an industrial area and a highway. A mile to the east is the edge of a dormitory community called Portmore, home to hundreds of thousands and including a few squatter settlements as well. A mile and a half to the south west is the low income community of Lakes Pen. The primary reason for the wall is to reduce the chance of theft by 1) keeping the installation away from the curious gaze of commuters going from Portmore to the old capital, Spanish town and 2) in case you didn’t notice, it aint’ short and it’s got razor wire along the top! That wall might also prove helpful in a hurricane.
Thanks islandboy, great links. IMHO give it another ten hurricanes or so in the Caribbean razing the centralized power grids with diesel powered generator backup systems before people start seriously looking at Micro grid PV with battery backup systems. I’m 100% sure that people will switch when the pain becomes almost unbearable, and it will! I’m pretty sure it will also happen in Florida, the Carolinas and other states bordering the Gulf of Mexico.
BTW, for the record, Jack Rickard from EVTV is a climate science skeptic and Trump supporter and he is 100% in favor of PV and battery backup and EVs too! Depending on fossil fuels is stupid and really expensive.
You’re welcome! I hate to unearth all this interesting stuff and just keep it to myself. 🙂
Like on Wednesday I crashed a seminar put on by the local utility and an international aid agency that shall not be named, to discus whether EVs could help reduce my island’s fuel import bill. A local dealer in used Japanese Domestic Market cars presented on his experience in importing a used Nissan Leaf, going through a certain amount of hassle to get our equivalent of the US DOT certification (MOT for the Brits) and jumping through hoops to get it registered (tags in the US). After he spoke, a banker who was part of the audience asked him a question about cost projections for EVs and batteries etc. to which he responded that he did not know. You know that I did not waste the opportunity to point the banker and the rest of the gathering to the work of Tony Seba. I saw the banker write the name down when I said it and I’m pretty sure he has followed up, since he seemed quite keen on getting an answer to his question. If he has watched any of the Seba videos his mind should be sufficiently blown.
Climate science Nazis everywhere you turn! There is no room on earth for climate scientists, except for the gulags, where they belong! They’re not scientists, just phony fakes through and through when the truth be told.
Green Nazis too, no matter where you go!
It’s an outrage, a crime against humanity and they have no clue!
Let’s haul oak wood chips from the US to the UK because it is green energy! Yeah, right.
James Lovelock on voting Brexit, ‘wicked’ renewables and why he changed his mind on climate change
The cures being advanced on green zealots are often worse than the disease itself, warns the pioneering environmentalist
Nazis come in all colors and stripes, Joseph Goebbels earned a doctorate from Heidelberg University, so we know where they really come from!
Stupid smart people never learn.
I don’t particularly like to agree with Alfred and his nazi talk, but we as environmentalists DO need to be intellectually and factually honest when we make our arguments. Alfred’s RIGHT about one thing, it’s flat out gross stupidity to be burning up considerable quantities of diesel fuel in southeastern USA forests, and hauling wood across the fucking Atlantic to burn it, in the name of environmental cleanliness and practice.
The RIGHT thing to do would be to acknowledge this truth, for what it is, which is another political boondoogle. The right TWO PART POLICY, if we must burn wood in order to avoid burning coal, gas, oil, or splitting atoms, would be, one, to burn it as close as possible to the place it is harvested, acknowledging that national borders mean NOTHING in terms of co2 pollution, etc; and two, to spend the money now wasted on long distance shipping on improving the energy efficiency on the receiving end of the wood chip shipments.
Insulation and new doors and windows are the way to go, especially in a country such as the UK where so much of the housing stock is old and terribly energy inefficient.
Unless we point out such boondoggles for what they are, instead of reflexively defending them, a person who sees them for what they really are takes us for con artists, and is henceforth inclined to believe we are lying when we talk about forced climate change, etc.
Hey Mac, does “Alfred” remind you of anybody?
“Stupid smart people never learn”
Alfred aka R Walter
I don’t particularly like to agree with Alfred and his nazi talk, but we as environmentalists DO need to be intellectually and factually honest when we make our arguments. Alfred’s RIGHT about one thing, it’s flat out gross stupidity to be burning up considerable quantities of diesel fuel in southeastern USA forests, and hauling wood across the fucking Atlantic to burn it, in the name of environmental cleanliness and practice.
Sorry! The guy, whoever he is, is, a fucking troll!
Quoting James Lovelock, who is 98 years old and has no clue about renewables as support for saying that shipping wood chips across the Atlantic is stupid, is pure straw man. OF COURSE IT IS STUPID! so fucking what?! That is obviously NOT an environmentally sound or sustainable idea. So because of that let’s ban solar PV and install a 1000 nuclear power plants?!
Are there people out there who call themselves environmentalist and are nothing more than rabid, ignorant cultists? OF COURSE THERE ARE! but again, so fucking what?!
We all need to stop feeding the trolls on this site! I really wish there was a way to ban them permanently!
Hey Fred, you sound like another one of those Nazi types yourself.
And you sound like one of Putin’s trolls. Fuck off!
Do you have to be so rude and uncouth? You could be a little more accepting and tolerant instead of being an old grouch.
Sadly, more and more, people are less and less tolerant and become more and more intolerant simply because they are fed up.
Doesn’t matter what it is, money, stress, disasters, life’s toils and snares, someone who doesn’t agree with you, it all can become too much.
But it is all good and you go on out and do the best you can!
Cheers!
“Hey Fred, you sound like another one of those Nazi types yourself.” ~ Alfred
If so, it might run in the family:
“My own family had Nazi sympathizers in it, back in Hungary during WWII…” ~ Fred Magyar
Hi Fred,
This reply is not aimed at YOU, personally. You obviously get it.
My point is that such foolishness as hauling firewood across the Atlantic in the name of environmentalism results in making envirnmentalists and the environmental movement look like the GIANT SCAM it is accused of BEING by fossil fuel mouthpieces.
Remember Hillary’s GREAT RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY? Well, there was a certain amount of truth in that explanation for her piss poor rep with half the people of this country, but the FACT of the matter is that she PROVIDED MOST of THE AMMO for the opposition, handing it to the Right Wing on a silver platter, with ribbons and bows. Email server, White Water, Cattle Gate, Bimbo Patrol, talking transparency but operating to the max extent in the shadows, accepting money from scumbags doing business with the government, etc etc etc.
When we don’t scream SCAM about things like ethanol in gasoline, and firewood to Europe, we’re setting ourselves up the same way she did. Setting ourselves up to get our asses kicked.
The bau oriented, rightish leaning public is ALMOST as dumb as a fence post, in scientific terms, but it’s smart enough to understand THIS particular bit of foolishness disguised as environmentally sound policy.
Failure to condemn such foolishness, at every opportunity, destroys the good name of environmentalism, and causes people who DO understand THIS MUCH to dismiss everything else we are trying to get across to them.
Business men are always ready to make a buck, and damned few of them give a fuck HOW they make it, short of armed robbery or outright theft.
If we are to have any credibility with people who CAN and DO think a little, but who DON’T know the abc’s of physics, we MUST condemn such boondoogles as ethanol for automobiles and firewood for Europe as the FUCKING SCAMS THEY ARE. LEGAL, INSTITUTIONALIZED SCAMS.
There are millions of such people. Tens of millions probably.
All too many environmentally conscious people act like hard core Republicans or hard core Democrats act politically. Find a hard core anybody, and he or she is predictably going to defend everything done in the name of his party and condemn everything done in the name of the opposition, regardless of the actual facts.
we MUST condemn such boondoogles as ethanol for automobiles and firewood for Europe as the FUCKING SCAMS THEY ARE. LEGAL, INSTITUTIONALIZED SCAMS.
Right! Anyone who doesn’t, is already either a moron or part of the scam themselves.
Agreeing with trolls like Alfred doesn’t advance any positive discussion about the topic one way or another. I’d rather just ignore him from now on.
Fred — “We all need to stop feeding the trolls on this site! I really wish there was a way to ban them permanently!”
Yes, trolls and “armchair experts” have effectively ruined (hijacked) this site or rather this thread. Obviously the REAL oil experts such as George and Mike are always worth following. Gone Fishing seems to be the only knowledgeable contributor to the climate dynamics debate and yourself on most other issues. The abysmal climate change bickering between Dennis and Javier, neither of whom is a climate scientist, is pathetic beyond words. So, apart from occasional thought-provoking stuff about renewable energy, which is mostly buried in the rubble, what’s left?
Regarding climate science, this is likely the biggest breakthrough in the field in the last 50 years:
Fourier Transforms find the recipe for a signal. Chao is to be commended for this analysis. As a (retired) geophysicist I do appreciate this stuff, however, I suspect a Fourier Analysis is asking a bit much from the non specialist.
In truth, I’m so fed up with all the bullshit here that, apart from the occasional perusal I’ve (mostly) moved on. Excellent post though. Thanks.
That’s a realistic attitude. It’s about finding a cross-section of interests, and if that cross-section approaches zero, there’s limited discussion.
The more specialized the conversation, the smaller the audience must necessarily be.
If the non petroleum portion of this site were to be limited to highly technical discussions requiring advanced studies in geology, astronomy, etc, in turn requiring three or four or more years of study of university level math there wouldn’t be more than three or four people here qualified to comment, and no more than twice that many well enough grounded to follow the conversation.
For what it’s worth, there are plenty of people who can benefit enormously from an extended exchange between somebody such as Dennis and Javier.
There are plenty of people who can learn quite a lot from my own long winded comments about the realities of agriculture, and while these realities may not be as interesting as the interiors of stars or the intricacies of the tides, so long as you have full bellies, not everybody is so sure he will always have a full belly………..
I have spent the last fifty years plus learning all I can about various fields from a to z, in search of understanding the big picture.
One that I have never found time to study formally is climate science, even though it is plays a critical part in my own field.
So………. I have learned a LOT as the result of Javier being here, by way of reading the replies posted by everybody else to his comments.
Sites such as this one are extremely valuable as educational resources to anybody (who is NOT generally technically well educated ) but who IS interested in the actual facts involved in peak oil, the broader environmental questions, human overshoot in particular, renewable energy, the life sciences, the economy, international politics, and other fields which are discussed here to a greater or lesser extent.
I occasionally talk to a physicist or mathematician in person or at other sites who doesn’t know shit from apple butter about the day to day realities that determine whether he will have food five or ten years from now.
Food’s sort of important.
War and the reasons we fight them, or avoid them, are sort of important.
Elections, and why particular parties and nominees win or lose them are sort of important.
As a (retired) geophysicist I do appreciate this stuff, however, I suspect a Fourier Analysis is asking a bit much from the non specialist.
Can’t say I blame you!
If it were not for being deliberately sidetracked by trolls We could have plenty of interesting topics to discuss and fourier analysis is not beyond the comprehension level, even of most college educated laypeople. Though apparently it might be incomprehensible to a tiny subset of PhD microbiologists…
Let’s just call a spade a spade! The discussions here and on many other forums is hijacked by trolls that are pushing very specific agendas and interests. They are definitely not interested in any general scientific topics or even friendly differences of opinion.
Speaking of Fourier Analysis here’s an interesting application:
The study of acoustic signals and the supposed spoken language of the dolphins
Author links open overlay panelVyacheslav A.Ryabov
T. I. Vyazemsky Karadag Scientific Station–Nature Reserve of RAS, 24 Nauki St., Kurortnoye, Feodosiya, 298188, Russian Federation
Received 16 August 2016, Accepted 16 August 2016, Available online 21 August 2016.
Abstract This paper continues studies in the problem of animal language by registering acoustic signals from two quasi-stationary Black Sea bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) using a two-channel system in the frequency band up to 220 kHz with a dynamic range of 81 dB. The packs of mutually noncoherent pulses (NP) generated by the dolphins were matched to the animals. The waveforms and the spectra of these pulses changed from one pulse to another in each pack. In this connection, a suggestion was made that the set of spectral components of each pulse is a ‘word’ of the dolphin’s spoken language and a pack of NPs is a sentence. The paper studied the NP peculiarities in the context of the characteristics of the human spoken language…
…The digitized dolphin signals from the ADC were continuously recorded to the hard drive of a laptop. The recording and processing of the signals were carried out in the PowerGraph 3.3.8 and Adobe Audition 3.0 software packages. Signal spectra were calculated using the 4096-point fast Fourier transform with the Hamming window function. There were no other animals in the pool during signal recording…
Now just for shits and giggles we could connect some dots… (elipsis intended) between Dolphin reproduction success to hurricane intensity and resultant destruction of fishing fleets. If hurricane intensity is found to be influenced in some way by increasing oceanic temperatures due to global warming then a sliver lining might be that fewer fishing fleets are available to limit the food supply of our fellow passengers on this planet, the highly intelligent marine mammals.
Hurricanes: Bad for People, Good for Dolphins
Katrina led to a marine-mammal boom, and Harvey, Irma and Jose might do the same
Massive hurricanes don’t just destroy homes and businesses; they also damage fishing vessels. According to one estimate, Katrina wiped out 87 percent of all the commercial fishing, crabbing, and shrimping vessels in Mississippi. In 2005 and 2006, fishing vessels in that state hauled in nearly one million fewer pounds of seafood.
That means that there were fewer boats in the water and also that there was more food for the dolphins. Commercial fisheries target three quarters of the species that make up the Mississippi dolphins’ diets, and two thirds are fished for sport. More food makes pregnant females more likely to deliver healthy babies, and it also makes them better able to nourish their offspring through their milk.
Who knows, if nothing else, that might at least give the Dolphins and the whales something to talk to each other about! 😉
Fred, Those are amazing spectra. For only a fifth of a millisecond duration, they are incredibly rich without any obvious appearance of harmonics.
If dolphins are trying to communicate with those sounds, it is probably one of the densest forms of information content that I could imagine. I didn’t read the whole paper, but it would seem to be much more dense than human speech.
It’s like Kanji compared to the English alphabet.
If dolphins are trying to communicate with those sounds, it is probably one of the densest forms of information content that I could imagine. I didn’t read the whole paper, but it would seem to be much more dense than human speech.
I’m certainly no expert but find this an absolutely fascinating area of study.
From the discussion section of the paper:
We can assume that, unlike humans, dolphins create every word by combining (with repetition) the corresponding spectral extrema (see Fig. 3), i.e., by combining several spectral extrema, different in frequency and level, that they can reliably distinguish, in a wider (by about 40 times) frequency range. Consequently, the spectral extrema of the ‘words’ in the spoken language of the dolphin play the role of phonemes in the human speech. Also unlike the human, the dolphin pronounces all the phonemes of a word simultaneously. Because of this, the duration of an noncoherent pulse is only 0.08–0.60 ms, and its average duration, i.e., the dolphin word, is about 0.25 ms, which is two to three orders of magnitude less than the duration of the phoneme in the human speech. Such a short duration of a word determines the high temporal and spatial (about 37 cm) resolution of the dolphin’s speech. On the other hand, this result indicates a definite advantage of the dolphin hearing over the human one, as dolphins can analyze complex acoustic pulses of shorter duration (by at least 2–3 orders of magnitude) than humans. Thus the NP interpulse intervals substantially longer than the dolphin words (19–300 ms) also vary within a wide range, which apparently improves the robustness of the dolphin’s speech against reverberation. In other words, the dolphin ‘says’ each following word after the reflections from the previous one have attenuated. However, the dolphin’s speech unfortunately lies beyond the time and frequency characteristics of the human hearing, and is thus unavailable to humans. In contrast to the human perception, dolphins hear human speech, as it falls in the low-frequency limit of their hearing but is weakened due to a substantial reflection of the sound energy at the air–water interface.
“The discussions here and on many other forums is hijacked by trolls that are pushing very specific agendas and interests.”
That’s bullshit and you know it. Every time I post scientific research or evidence that contradicts the official line I get insulted. That is the level of discussion people in this forum want to have about climate issues.
I agree that other scientific issues are very interesting. I don’t have much to add regarding marine mammal language. Animal communication research is a difficult issue where progress does not come easy. I know a little bit more about insect communication, which is essentially a chemical process. Chemical communication in humans is also fascinating.
Hi Ned,
When you bump into an asshole it’s no big deal. It just means you bumped into an asshole. When you bump into assholes all day all the time it means you’re the asshole.
If interesting scientific topics are what you want to discuss, you are best off seeking an invite to one of the $10,000/plate soirees thrown by all the real scientists on the public grant tenure tracks. There you will have a safe place to discuss scientific matters of “great import” while enjoying fancy wine and hors d’oeuvres.
Bye Steve! love this ignore troll button…
(first off, get lost Javer)
The information content in the El Nino signal is essentially composed of two primary lunar signals — the monthly draconic and anomalistic periods, which are modulated by a seasonal signal and the details in the anomalistic signal controlled by the synodic month.
The El Nino signal appears very complex and it has been deemed chaotic by many researchers, but that’s likely not the case, as the model fit has been cross-validated across different parts of the time series.
Unfortunately, can’t really use Fourier transforms to do the fitting of the ENSO time series. Have to stick to the time domain and solve the nonlinear differential equations.
“If interesting scientific topics are what you want to discuss, you are best off seeking an invite to one of the $10,000/plate soirees thrown by all the real scientists on the public grant tenure tracks. There you will have a safe place to discuss scientific matters of “great import” while enjoying fancy wine and hors d’oeuvres.”
Sorry Steven, no one cares.
You are only saying that to deflect from the fact that you attend such events. Anything to toot your own horn, huh?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I am an outsider to earth science circles, and don’t work in academia, so have nothing to do with tenure track anything.
Steven,
Are you saying you actually believe this is a real thing???
Doug
There are only a few percent of the population at best with the mental capability to come close to actually understanding complex multivariate subjects such as global warming or ecological systems. * When one considers that even within those intelligent enough to come to an understanding, many do not choose to understand those subjects or have a different talent set that moves them toward other areas of endeavor.
So how many does that leave? There appear to be only a few hundred actual climate scientists in a world of 7.5 billion people . That is less than .000005% of the population.
The world has less than one million physicists but only about 8000 astrophysicists. (<0.13% and .0001% respectively).
Sure there are maybe 10 million researchers in the world and lots of engineers, generally out of one thousand people you are going to find no one with both the ability and the actual knowledge to accurately comment on a climate science let alone have a solid understanding of the principles.
Since it has become such a politically and economically charged subject and it touches on such a wide variety of fields and endeavors (as well as the whole real living world) there will be many people giving opinions or wanting to enter the conversation. Most of what they say will have errors or misjudgments, be out of date, or narrowly sourced, even if they are trying to be honest and accurate. Many will rely on sources that purposely feed out bad information.
So basically, to finally come to a point, looking for in depth understanding on complex subjects outside of the narrow academic confines in that particular area is like looking for a needle in a haystack or worse.
Set your standards lower and enjoy the discourse more. Once in a while a pearl of wisdom might surface. Otherwise it's a very lonely world when in a crowd of ten thousand or even one hundred thousand, no one is found to be worth listening or talking to.
As to the trolling, it can be highly annoying and rarely adds much to the conversation. Too much time is spent on them, reducing the odds of meaningful and intelligent discourse. Much as a two year old constantly can say no to just about anything, they disagree without real thought or substance.
*No one actually understands these subjects, the best are still on a steep learning curve but we are getting better at it.
Very good points and something that I constantly think about. Easier to find common interests in the residents of a single condo building than with the entire internet at your disposal … that is when it comes to science.
Yep, very little (almost none) of my actual conversations with people concerns climate change or even energy. Lots of other things to talk about and do than those subjects.
Of course if I see some obvious home energy problem I might comment on it. Or if someone else brings up an energy topic, I will have something to say but not in a complex fashion generally, usually in a practical way.
If I slip into scientese, people tend to glaze over or say they didn’t understand a word I just said.
Just remember, knowledge of fluid dynamics can come down to just squeezing the end of a hose to get the water to shoot out further.:-)
Fish — You are a rare gem who sees beyond the bullshit.
Thank you sir.
“If I slip into scientese, people tend to glaze over or say they didn’t understand a word I just said.”
Sometimes you have to do this. Can anyone explain tidal periods apart from just describing the phenomenon?
Start unwinding all these blog posts and MEGO will result but the model is undeniably cross-validated.
In the mean time, AI can now pass most University Entrance Exams in Japan. Not the top university yet, but almost… BTW, Seems that significant numbers of native language speaking humans have pretty lousy reading comprehension. To me that is a lot scarier than any Scifi AI scenario.
NORIKO ARAI
Can a robot pass a university entrance exam?
It’s not everyday you see the PNA so far down in the dumps. All the cold we’re seeing in the Pacific Northwest is the result. Another sign of the new ice age normal about to show up in the coming years?
“Another sign of the new ice age normal about to show up in the coming years?” – No.
Damn it George! I’m trying to get my Miami snow plowing business off the ground here and comments like yours, laced with global warming alarmism, could turn my already skittish investors away. Please stop it!
Now repeat after me: THE ICE AGE IS COMING!
.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but even during the height of the last glaciation Florida rarely got snow. Back then it was a much more interesting place to live.
When winter dawned in Florida during the Ice Age, glaciers were as far away as Illinois and snow only rarely dusted the peninsula.
Escaping the harsher weather to the north were the Paleo-Indians, who lived on Florida’s sand-dune prairies alongside giant sloths, camels and a less-hairy version of the woolly mammoth.
An armadillo called a glyptodont, which was the size of a small car, whacked predators with a tail resembling a spiked club. Saber-toothed cats sported 9-inch fangs — the largest of any feline in Earth’s history. But beavers weighing up to 500 pounds could out-chomp them with teeth up to a foot long.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but even during the height of the last glaciation Florida rarely got snow. Back then it was a much more interesting place to live.
No problem, then I’ll just have to start a New Ice Age Critter Control Business 😉
.
I know—-
I was just commenting a Short Faced Bear would be a problem.
HB’s California Security System and Doormen Inc.
Terrifying! Should strike fear into the hearts of one and all.
Now don’t be mislead by a couple of cute faces. Ivanka can bite off your family jewels in a dog’s second and Melonia can put her 4″ heel through your heart while emptying your wallet without even a kiss. And that’s all before I release the hounds.
WASHINGTON — As he traversed the world on taxpayer-funded flights, Tom Price made it a habit to write home, repeatedly sending celebratory letters back to staff members at the Department of Health and Human Services detailing his time on the road, and complimenting agency employees who “ensure the good stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
Half a million plus spent on jet setting around like a Hollywood star or professional athlete on the public dime.
Well, well, well.
Trump is sinking into the swamp, and I’m hoping it drowns him, slow or fast, either way. It will be a great pleasure watching him drown slowly, but maybe a bigger one having to resign abruptly if somebody hangs a high crime on him.
Price is gone, lol.
Where are ya HB? Still pouting about your princess and empress to be losing?
Democrats with working brains will remember for at least a couple of generations that if you run a candidate with the worst ratings across the board, according to polling, of any candidate the party has ever run, they will be at risk of losing……… even to a candidate as lousy as Trump.
The country right left and middle is now SICK of bau politics, and wants new people at the top of the ticket, rather than more of the same.
“Fred Magyar says: 09/30/2017 AT 7:58 AM
And you sound like one of Putin’s trolls. Fuck off!”
From here on out I’m going to sign off as a PROUD PUTINEER occasionally.
Proud Putineers are a sprout on the stump of the old young commie leagues.
There’s such a thing as the precautionary principle, and it applies to politics just as surely as it applies to climate science and policy, or vaccinations against contagious diseases, or carrying too big a debt load in relation to income and revenues, etc.
The D’s are in the dog house now because they have failed to consider the precautionary principle over the last two or three decades. They failed to think about the consequences of getting what they wanted via the court system rather than the election booth in too many instances.
The consequences arguably include the R’s owning DC, being in a position to get a strangle hold on the Supreme Court with a little luck on their part, and owning most of the state and local governments in this country.
I’m not arguing either FOR or AGAINST any particular part of the new culture the D party wanted, and has succeeded in getting, to a greater or lesser extent. I’m actually in favor of most of that same new culture.
I’m just pointing out obvious ( to me at least) political realities.
Put a pitcher who can’t pitch on the mound is a great way to lose. Running a candidate who fails to inspire at least a few working class white people is a great way to lose an election.
Like it or not, there are MORE THAN ENOUGH working class white guys who don’t appreciate being talked about as if they are the root source of all this country’s problems to throw any election at any time one way or the other, depending on who badmouths them and who speaks respectfully to them.
We should NEVER forget the precautionary principle.
From National Geo …….
“That’s why Lavery and Judge are lucky they found the Vangunu rat—its rapidly disappearing forest habitat may mean the animal is critically endangered.
Timber companies have logged 90 percent of the Solomon Island’s trees, and on Vangunu, the rats are squeezed into remaining patches totaling just 31 square miles. (The single rat in the study was found in Zaira, a community that’s against logging, Lavery says.)”
One particular giant rat may not be all that important, except as a symbol, but NINETY PERCENT of the forests of the Solomon Islands are already gone. Hundreds of species, THOUSANDS of species,counting the physically smaller ones, have been lost already, without a doubt.
And one of those species might have been the one that was the key to the cure of cancer, or rheumatism, or senility.
Or the cure for stupidity, which is more important.
“Conflicts of interest exist in almost every business model…just ask the former AIG execs who bought trillions of dollars worth of mortgage CDO risk that they were told was worthy of a AAA rating.
But when you read a car review to help figure out which set of wheels you’re going to buy next, you would probably prefer that the writer of that review not be receiving payments, cash or otherwise, directly from the company producing the vehicle he’s reviewing, right? Unfortunately, that’s not so much the case when it comes to Tesla.”
ZeroHedge criticizing the objectivity of other peoples “journalism” is pretty rich.
It’s pretty funny that ZeroHedge is critical of Tesla, who does no advertising, for offering rewards to Tesla owners who refer other buyers, and think it is somehow shady of Fred Lambert, a Tesla owner and enthusiast, to post his referral code on his own EV advocacy blog Electrek.co with the explicit invitation: “Hey, use my referral code, I’ll get free stuff!”
Hi Bob,
ZeroHedge is ostensibly a news aggregate site and (so) the article in question is from another.
It only takes one visit to a hog farm to know that aggregating pig shit in a single location doesn’t improve the smell.
Could you elaborate from your previous reply, please? In any case, $65 000 is not chump change for many, and where is this $65 000 coming from? The tax-pimped?
By the way, assuming I have the right person, how are your lithium investments doing? When do you think the shortages are going to dig in if they do?
“The modern world of global commerce, technologies and countless things has not delivered on the leisure and personal satisfaction once promised. Which may be why we moderns continue to look with fascination at those cultures that have persisted over millennia, who thrive on a different sense of time, connection with the Earth, and social relatedness.
Such curiosity led me to a wonderful new book by anthropologist James Suzman, Affluence without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen.
The most poignant part of Affluence without Abundance is the final chapter, which describes how many San – deprived of their lands, ancestral traditions, and cultural identities – now live out dislocated lives in apartheid-founded townships that Suzman characterizes as having a “curious mix of authoritarian order and dystopian energy.” There is deep resentment among the San about the plentitude of food even as people go hungry, and anger about the inequality of wealth and concentration of political power. Most frightening of all may be the pervasive feelings of impermance and insecurity. History barely matters, and the future is defined by market-based aspirations — a job, a car, a home. The modern world has few places to carry on meaningful traditions and sacred relationships.”
Rome surrendered to time and entropy. Our method is to drive a gigantic clown car into a ditch.
JHK
I had read that… I wonder what/if he’s going to write about the Vegas shooting.
The iceberg— weighing an estimated 1.12 trillion tons — officially ripped from the frozen formation in July in a process known as calving, according to scientists at the University of Swansea in Britain. It’s such a colossal chunk of ice that maps of the peninsula must be redrawn.
In a nutshell, in former times species carried out to sea by a tsunami or flood seldom or never lasted long enough to make it all the way across the Atlantic or Pacific, because wood almost always sinks in less time than it takes to drift that far.
But now……. with countless tons of man made stuff floating in the water that will continue to float a decade or longer…….. We have created a new route for invasive species to reach new shores.
And invasive species are potentially as destructive as just about anything Mother Nature can throw at us, short of an expanding sun.
As the late great George Carlson once said as an answer to the age old question of: “Why are we here?!” “Plastic! Assholes!”…
Mother Earth wanted plastic for herself and she couldn’t figure out how to make it. So she spawned us to make it for her.
We talk often about disruptive technologies. I personally consider them a subset of all the various factors to be dealt with when considering chaos as applied to understanding our big picture problems.
“It was too strange. It was unnatural. It was science meddling where it shouldn’t. That’s what many people said before the successful birth of children whose mothers had been implanted with eggs that were fertilized outside the body using in vitro fertilization. Some have even continued to say it after.”
This is truly worthwhile read for insight into the way new technology can move from being universally feared and hated to accepted as a cherished part of the culture.
It seems highly probable, to me at least, that the various new technologies that can all be lumped together as genetic engineering will likewise be accepted, and probably sooner rather than later than most of us would guess.
With the climate going nuts in various parts of the world much sooner than in other parts, the people who live in the places severely affected soonest are going to have some POWERFUL incentives to accept any new tech………. especially any new tech that might help them put something in their empty bellies.
An empty belly trumps principles EVERY time. Twain said it sooner than anybody else I know of.
As I watch the local creeks and rivers fall to low levels I haven’t seen in a while, my thoughts move to the Southwestern US where water is a major problem due to droughts and increasing demand in the growing region.
Lake Meade, the largest reservoir in the US, appears to have been on a downward trend since 2000 and only a slight recovery.
HIstorical levels: https://arachnoid.com/NaturalResources/
Current levels: http://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp
The Southwest is a prime example of a dry region being highly stressed by increasing demand from industrial and population growth. This paper from Negative Population Growth Incorporated visits and summarizes some of the problems faced by the region. Caught in the cross-hairs of political dispensing of water that doesn’t exist, droughts and increasing demand from a growing population, poor decisions continue to be made regarding the region’s development and water use. The fact that historically and prehistorically the region has seen much stronger droughts than currently exist does not bode well for the long term viability of supporting the large population there already, let alone a much larger one in the future.
THE SOUTHWEST:
GROUND-ZERO FOR GLOBAL WARMING
An NPG Forum Paper
By Kathleene Parker 1922, the Colorado River was allocated, or divided up, under the federal Colorado River Compact. It was believed that most years the Colorado would carry 16.4 million acre-feet (m.a.f.) of water. The Upper Basin states (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico) were
[Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation Page 4 The Southwest: Ground-Zero for Global Warming ]
allocated 7.5 m.a.f; the Lower Basin states (California, Nevada, Arizona) were allocated 7.5 m.a.f., with the remainder to go to Mexico.
But the 16.4 m.a.f. was based on one of the wettest years in 400 years. The river was over-allocated by 1.3 m.a.f. because norms on the river were closer to 15.1 m.a.f. But more recent tree-ring studies show an even grimmer picture, or that flows will likely be only about 13.5 m.a.f., and that only outside of drought. The lower amount did not matter in 1950 when the population was only 14 million; it matters profoundly in a Southwest of roughly 45 million people. It matters even more in a region facing continued high growth rates and a return to the drier norms or perhaps global warming.
Drought hit the Southwest in the mid-1990s and worsened post-2000. Between 2000 and 2005, the Colorado averaged only 9.6 m.a.f., while 2001 to 2003 saw flows of a paltry 5.4 m.a.f. Reservoir levels plummeted, including at core Colorado River system reservoirs, Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, Nevada, and Lake Powell, sprawling amid desert bluffs of Arizona and Utah. The region watched aghast as a “fifty-year water supply” in storage disappeared in just 3 years.19
Unless the Southwest enters a long wet period, the next few decades are going to be very trying and problematical.
Delete
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People who’ve never even set foot in this region have been saying these things now for decades, literally. I remember when I moved to the Phoenix area over 20 years ago, I was told there would only be enough water to last a few years. Obviously not true. Truthfully, people in these parts are very adaptable to water demand and supply issues. On top of that, Arizona is such a business friendly state, every day taking in more businesses quickly fleeing California, that the government and business community will do whatever it takes to prevent water issues from destroying everyone’s prosperity.
On top of that, Arizona is such a business friendly state, every day taking in more businesses quickly fleeing California, that the government and business community will do whatever it takes to prevent water issues from destroying everyone’s prosperity.
Arizona can not continue to take in more businesses ad infinitum no matter how business friendly it purports to be if water in that area is a finite and scarce resource. It’s simple, not enough water means business and the population at large suffer. Pretending that water is not a very scarce resource in Arizona is to put it mildly, sticking one’s head in the sand. There are ways to mitigate the impacts. However promoting infinite growth in a business as usual scenario is definitely not an option!
Fortunately there are people in Arizona and elsewhere who do understand the impacts and are doing something about it.
THE UA INITIATES A WAVE OF CHANGE TO TACKLE WATER SCARCITY
By:
Jordyn Stinnett
Scarcity of clean water is a tremendous concern facing large cities and semi-arid regions of the Americas. Without a sustainable source of potable water, economic development and wellbeing of individuals is at risk. The University of Arizona recognizes this grand challenge and is taking action to address the technical issues of recycling industrial and municipal wastewater as clean, potable water.
As a result, approximately 100 leading engineers and scientists from across the Americas gathered in Recife, Brazil from May 17 – 19, 2017, to develop a group of university and industrial partners to collaborate on water reuse technologies.
BTW, I have been to both Phoenix Arizona and Recife Brazil. Recife has the advantage of at least being on the coast with access to a potential water source through desalination of salt water, Phoenix has no such resource.
UA is doing that line of research because the results can help our businesses keep growing. Science that aligns with what’s best for free enterprise and the economy is always a good thing.
This is what’s known as a dialogue pair: a comment that is not really a response to the previous comment but an attempt at re-framing the argument as ideological rather than factual.
Let’s do a little re-framing exercise ourselves:
“Science that aligns with what’s best for free enterprise and the economy is always a good thing.”
The opposite of this statement is:
Science that does not align with what’s best for free enterprise and the economy is always a bad thing.
This would make, say, the campaign against smoking a bad thing.
Or to re-frame even further:
Facts that do not align with what’s best for free enterprise and the economy are always a bad thing.
I think that’s what he really wanted to say.
Yep!
Complex adaptive and evolvable systems (CAES) collapse when their governance infrastructures fails to regulate their behavior. Humanity’s governance system is wide of the mark when it comes to meeting the criteria of sustainability. Our governments are incompetent in part because they are very poorly designed to manage the complexity of the modern world. But also they are incompetent because the individual decision agents making them up are themselves incompetent. They are simply not sufficiently sapient. Exhibit A: Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma). What a complete idiot. Exhibit B: Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), head of the House Science Committee!!!! These guys and most of the Congress are totally out of touch with reality. How did they get to be elected – Oh wait, I forgot the President too.
Oh wait, I forgot the President too.
Yeah, what a piece of fucking work he is!
Trump arrives at Liberty National for Presidents Cup finale
Associated Press DOUG FERGUSON,Associated Press 4 hours ago
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) — President Donald Trump didn’t just present the Presidents Cup trophy to the winning American team on Sunday. He dedicated it to the people who have endured hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.
Trump, the honorary chairman of the event, became the first sitting president to attend the matches on the final day. He stuck around to give the gold trophy to U.S. captain Steve Stricker and an American team that won by the most lopsided margin in 17 years.
Before arriving at Liberty National Golf Club, a private club built on a former landfill, Trump dismissed “politically motivated ingrates” who have questioned his administration’s commitment to the devastation of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
“On behalf of all of the people of Texas and all of the people of — if you look today and see what’s happening, how horrible it is. But we have it under really great control,” Trump said. “Puerto Rico and the people of Florida who have really suffered over this last short period of time with the hurricanes. I want to just remember them and we’re going to dedicate this trophy to all of those people that went through so much, that we love.”
Though he was greeted with enthusiastic chants of “USA! USA!” when he walked out toward the green, one spectator shouted as he spoke, “You don’t give a (expletive) about Puerto Rico.”
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
The Russians and the Chinese must be laughing their asses off!
Just re-read this and noticed I made an error: in the sentence “The opposite of this statement is:”, the word “opposite” should be replaced with counterpart.
-Lloyd
Fred – Apart from some recent results on the equation of state for neutron stars, the paper by V.A. Ryabov about dolphin’s spoken language is the most interesting thing I’ve seen in years. I’ve followed dolphin research (as an interested armchair amateur) since the 1960s and witnessed the frustration of researchers trying to crack the “dolphin communication problem”. Maybe, just maybe, we are now, finally, seeing the light here.
I’m also happy to hear Fourier Analysis, which encompasses a vast spectrum of mathematics (and in your view) is readily grasped in all it’s complexity by most university students. Because my wife, a mathematical physicist with PhDs in Math and Physics often used to remark that Fourier Math is like King Solomon’s Mine, a vast resource where we keep discovering priceless gems and are likely to continue doing so for centuries. Furthermore, as a geoscientist working with Fourier Analysis (almost daily applied to seismic, gravity surveys, etc.) for almost 40 years I was always discovering new twists to this wonderful tool that were certainly unknown to my professors. Maybe you could give lessons? In any case, the dolphin research paper is a gem which I thank you for from the bottom of my heart.
I’m also happy to hear Fourier Analysis, which encompasses a vast spectrum of mathematics (and in your view) is readily grasped in all it’s complexity by most university students. Because my wife, a mathematical physicist with PhDs in Math and Physics often used to remark that Fourier Math is like King Solomon’s Mine, a vast resource where we keep discovering priceless gems and are likely to continue doing so for centuries.
I’m not for a moment suggesting that Fourier Analysis can EASILY be grasped by anyone, in ALL it’s complexity. However in this day and age anyone willing to put in some effort to at least learn what it is and how it can be applied to various fields of research can do so… 🙂
As for Dolphin speech, I couldn’t agree more that it is a most fascinating topic!
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
– Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio
Dolphins are highly social have bigger brains than we do and have been around for over 50 million years. The surprising thing would be, if they didn’t have some form of language.
Cheers!
BTW, Humanity, we have a problem! Humans have lousy reading comprehension…
What we know about language is biased because we only know one advanced type of language which is the human language, that as far as we know might have a unique origin. It is unclear to me that an advanced dolphin language has to be based on words as repeatable units of information that can be rearranged in different ways. Their type of language could be, and probably is, completely different to ours. Our approach to dolphin language has to be very open, with the least amount of assumptions. Scientists are trying to detect changes in their behavior or actions in response to their communication exchanges. The attempts to learn from their interactions with us haven’t taken us very far.
It will make sense to people that have had to deal with aliased signals.
I could probably figure out dolphin speech if there is a similar pattern going on .. but it could take years 🙂
“September 2017 set Atlantic calendar month records for named storm days: 53.5, #hurricane days: 34.5, major hurricane days: 18, ACE: 175”
–Philip Klotzbach
Failure to model. Failure to predict.
When climate scientists say they can forecast the warming that is going to take place in the next 80 years, it is such a joke we should all laugh.
February 2017 El Niño forecast by ECMWF model, and what has really happened.
If the US won’t provide funds, this seems like a great opportunity for China to show the US what it’s got.
There is little doubt that China is not only now able to step in and fill any empty niche in the world economic power structure; China is eager to do so.
“The Trump White House may still be basking in the glow of America’s global supremacy but, just across the Potomac, the Pentagon has formed a more realistic view of its fading military superiority. In June, the Defense Department issued a major report titled on Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World, finding that the U.S. military “no longer enjoys an unassailable position versus state competitors,” and “it no longer can… automatically generate consistent and sustained local military superiority at range.” This sober assessment led the Pentagon’s top strategists to “the jarring realization that ‘we can lose.’” Increasingly, Pentagon planners find, the “self-image of a matchless global leader” provides a “flawed foundation for forward-looking defense strategy… under post-primacy conditions.” This Pentagon report also warned that, like Russia, China is “engaged in a deliberate program to demonstrate the limits of U.S. authority”; hence, Beijing’s bid for “Pacific primacy” and its “campaign to expand its control over the South China Sea.”
China’s Challenge
“Some telltale numbers suggest the nature of the future great power competition between Washington and Beijing that could determine the course of the twenty-first century. In April 2015, for instance, the Department of Agriculture reported that the U.S. economy would grow by nearly 50% over the next 15 years, while China’s would expand by 300%, equaling or surpassing America’s around 2030.”
“Similarly, in the critical race for worldwide patents, American leadership in technological innovation is clearly on the wane. In 2008, the United States still held the number two spot behind Japan in patent applications with 232,000. China was, however, closing in fast at 195,000, thanks to a blistering 400% increase since 2000. By 2014, China actually took the lead in this critical category with 801,000 patents, nearly half the world’s total, compared to just 285,000 for the Americans.”
“Over the longer term, the American education system, that critical source of future scientists and innovators, has been falling behind its competitors. In 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development tested half a million 15-year-olds worldwide. Those in Shanghai came in first in math and science, while those in Massachusetts, “a strong-performing U.S. state,” placed 20th in science and 27th in math. By 2015, America’s standing had declined to 25th in science and 39th in math.”
I could go on all day about what’s wrong with our public school system, but I doubt whether anybody else here is interested enough in this problem to get a conversation about it going.
So I will say just this much and give it up.
If you happen to be a lamebrain unthinking political liberal, and believe in our schools as they MUST NECESSARILY EXIST, given our political climate, you have two basic choices if you have kid and want your kid to get a good education.
You can move to an elite community, if you are a member of the elite, and if the public schools are well funded, and burdened with few or no kids from the lower strata of society, your kid will have a fair shot at learning SOME math and science, so long as you step in and make GODDAMNED sure what courses your kid takes, rather than leaving it to the guidance counselers, etc.
Your other choice is to put your kid in a private school or home school, if you can. Good private schools are as scarce as chicken teeth, and damned few parents are both qualified and able to home school effectively, given the amount of time it takes.
In principle, having all the kids in the same school system in a given community has a lot to say for it. In practice, it means YOUR kid may be totally fucked over by being placed in classrooms where babysitting is the primary job of the teacher. There are TONS of schools where just about EVERY classroom falls into this sorry category.
BUT if you are a member of the local elite, your kid might still have a fair shot even in a rotten decaying dying city school system, because there are generally at least a FEW good teachers in such schools, and THEIR classrooms are generally deliberately and selectively reserved for the children of the local elite, including their own kids. A county or city high school with forty teachers and classrooms, in terms of UNDERSTANDING, should be considered as being forty SEPARATE schools in many respects.
Now let’s suppose you have a kid that’s bright enough, and that has the good attitude needed to participate in a FIRST CLASS classroom, but you aren’t an elite. Depending on local circumstances, your kid may very well be shuffled int the b or c track classrooms, rather than the A track classes intended for the kids who will be going to good universities later. THIS depends on how many seats are available.
My parents weren’t part of the elite, but on the other hand, there weren’t really enough kids from elite backgrounds to take all the seats available for the REAL chemistry, biology, math, and English classes, so maybe a quarter of us in Amy ( thunder ) Bolt’s fourth and fifth period English classes were from MY sort of background. I did my senior English papers, to university standards, on Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained . I could have chosen Shakespeare, or any classic author.
A quarter of us in advanced math were farm kids with semi literate parents.
Put your egalitarian politics ahead of your own kid’s welfare, by keeping them in a typical American school these days, and you may well will be depriving your kid of his or her opportunity to compete in the world to be.
The elite among us understand this situation very well, but mostly refuse to discuss it publicly. When I was hanging around VCU as a special grad student, living the bohemian life in the Fan District, way back when, I knew dozens of young idealistic couples, of several races and ethnicities , and just about all of us lived in the city. We were all very liberal, being the people we were, mostly graduate students, some undergrads, working teachers, etc. I actually did a REVERSE commute, with some other teachers, driving out into a nearby county to work, and coming home to the city to live for a year.
As their kids reached school age, just about every last couple I knew left the city. They knew, they understood, they were all part of the INTELLECTUAL if not the economic elite. They talked all the bullshit talk, but they weren’t willing walk the walk and put their own children in the city school system.
I still run across some of them from time to time. They’re still reliable unthinking foot soldiers of the politically leftish variety, and still perfectly willing to sacrifice OTHER people’s children on the altar of our extremely dysfunctional school system, because the D party political coalition/ agenda calls for doing so.
The data shows one more year of sea ice growth since 2007, making it 10 years, against multiple predictions from supposed experts that summer Arctic ice was in terminal decline.
The current positive trend is expected to continue at least until 2022 based on frequency analysis, making it 15-year long, and it could continue even to 2035-40, according to the well known ~60 year oscillation. Expect more Arctic sea ice growth in following years.
Modern democracies are built around the neoliberal idea of individual autonomy (a secular version of “free will”). In the west this means blatant individualism, in the extreme, libertarian sentiments – another failing of low sapience. Hyper-sociality, a characteristic of high sapience, is based on cooperation, altruism, selflessness, and a sense of belonging to something bigger and more important than the individual. Democracy among low-sapients cannot work. It doesn’t work. Just look at the evidence in front of your eyes. The average human being today is out for “numero uno”. How much of this is because there are simply too many of us and we all feel we are in competition with each other? I offer arguments that suggest that while population density tends to bring out the worst in us, the fact is that the worst is IN US.
That’s good stuff, if I understand correctly, over the next ten years desertification isn’t going to move north as fast, but it is going to get warmer faster then the previous ten, and all to do with ENSO/PDO (though they don’t use the term PDO, but I think it’s the same phenomena they are referring to).
A Dramatic Increase in Annual Average Temperatures for U.S. Cities This Decade
We may or may not have reached the annual maximum Antarctic sea ice extent. Nevertheless, it remains well below average (>775,000 km^2)
Both Arctic and Antarctic are heading for 3 K positive anomalies over the next week or so (and probably higher and linger on the Atlantic side of the Arctic – records getting clobbered in Svalbard).
Catalonia might declare independence in the next couple of days, as a country it wouldn’t be much smaller than Greece and Portugal (about the same if the French side joined in). Also would be amongst the favourites for the next World Cup.
Hi George,
They have their reasons, including some I find persuasive.
Can they make it stick if they do go for independence?
The OLD South tried it, for not so good reasons, and failed to make it stick here in the USA.
If it hadn’t come about because of the slavery issue, there wouldn’t have been an American Civil War.
But just suppose the south had decided to secede for some OTHER reason?
I don’t think there is any question at all that the South would have succeeded in doing so, or that more than a small handful of northern citizens would really have given a damn. There’s just about a zero chance the North would have gone to war over it, except for the moral outrage generated by the slavery issue.
What happens NOW if California, or the prosperous northeastern states decide to secede? The odds of this happening are close to zero……. but if it does…….. Do we fight another civil war over it?
It’s more like one a partition in one of the old eastern bloc countries (though still a bit different) – it was a kingdom before (I think Aragon and then something else), it has a separate ethnicity, culture and language and to some extent natural borders, so a lot different to the south splitting from the north. The violence the police are using is almost certainly going to have the opposite effect of what they are trying for.
I’m hoping somebody can explain one particular aspect of it for me.
“The reaction of the metallic hail with a primordial Earth hydrosphere (eg., our planet’s combined water resources) resulted in the consumption of the equivalent of some three ocean masses of water, says Mojzsis. This reaction yields an atmosphere that is 90 times denser than what we have now, and is composed mostly of hydrogen, he says. Because the Sun was about 30% dimmer back then, Mojzsis says such an early atmosphere would not just have heated our young Earth, but would have also provided a chemical environment conducive to the production and preservation of organic chemicals.”
I find it hard to envision how the atmosphere could be composed mostly of hydrogen and yet be ninety times denser than otherwise, given the light weight of hydrogen, and the likelihood that so much of it would have blown away into space.
And a hydrogen rich atmosphere obviously cannot also be highly enriched with oxygen without the whole shooting match going off like a planet sized fuel air bomb. So I suppose the idea is that the oxygen released by the “consumption of the equivalent of three ocean masses of water” was incorporated into various oxygen rich minerals such as for instance iron ore?
Any clarification and or additional comments will be welcome, and thanks in advance.
Sounds fantastic to me. Considering that the Earth, Mars and Venus all have iron cores and some iron in the crust, I don’t see how this explanation is even needed. Currents in a molten planet and volcanism should explain the composition well enough, considering the crust is mostly silicon and oxygen, then 8 percent aluminum with iron at 5 percent and the rest much lower in concentration.
Even lightweight carbon is only 0.18 percent of the earth crust.
So either this fantastic planetoid put iron on the surface of Mars too or there are other explanations.
Would have been nice of this “iron loving” planetoid to bring more copper, gold and rare earth’s too.
🙂
Abundance of elements in the Earth’s crust http://periodictable.com/Properties/A/CrustAbundance.al.html
Hi GF,
Personally I haven’t time enough to read up on everything I find interesting, and no longer have ready access to a university library, which crimps my reading style when it comest to purely technical subjects.
Planetary evolution is something I know very little about, but it’s my understanding that in it’s earliest days, once enough materials coalesced to bring the Earth up to about it’s current size or thereabouts, it was basically one large more or less spherical molten mass, up until the time it cooled enough to allow some solid crust to start forming.
So…… in accordance with well understood principles involving the way sediments, etc, arrange themselves as they settle out of solution, the densest stuff generally winds up at the lowest levels, with progressively less dense materials being found in a predictable fashion in layers farther from the bottom or FROM THE CENTER, in the case of a planet sized body.
So….. the expectation is that not much iron or other heavy dense elements would be found in the outer portion or crust as the crust solidifies, given this tendency for dense materials to sink the center.
The authors of the paper seem to be of the opinion that there is WAY TOO MUCH in the way of iron and other heavy elements in the crust, even after allowing for convection in the mantle and volcanic eruptions and plate tectonics bringing up some stuff from just below the plates etc.
So they think ( I think, I have not actually read the paper ) they have an explanation. They apparently think that a SECOND giant asteroid or whatever hitting after the collision that resulted in the creation of the moon is responsible for there being so much in the way of iron and other heavy elements being found near the surface of the Earth.
By then the Earth had supposedly cooled enough that most of whatever hit remained on the surface or near the surface. Of course some of it would have been buried deep by sediments or washed away by rivers, or covered over by volcanic eruptions, or buried by plate movements , etc, over the following billion or two or three more billion years.
I don’t know enough to have a serious/firm opinion, which is why I am hoping somebody with a background in geology or astronomy will throw some light on the subject.
‘At this point, expensive battery technology still makes them money drains. General Motors Co. loses about $9,000 on every Chevrolet Bolt electric car it sells. Tesla had record sales of its EVs last year — and still lost $675 million on $7 billion in sales. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV loses $20,000 on every electric version of its 500-model subcompact sold in the U.S. Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne said in a speech in Italy on Monday. Battery-powered models should be marketed based on consumer demand and not depend on incentives, he said.’
(lucky the sheep buy big trucks with huge profit margins, or this would be a challenging business model)
Criminy Crickey Blue Moons! There are no competitors in the pure EV market for Tesla to beat, at least not in the US (don’t know about the ROW). They have a solid business plan that makes their cars work well and be practical at the same time. No other car maker is doing that. It will be years before other makers could even attempt to catch up even if they had the right plan and implemented it post haste. Soon Tesla will be profitable, very profitable as it ramps up to making half a million cars a year. But like Amazon it might just feed the money back into more growth. Tesla could have several percent of the world vehicle making in the near future. Anybody old enough to remember when a Toyota was a rare vehicle here? Foreign imports did a number on the slow to respond big US auto makers.
That is why the other carmakers are getting into the game, they see an upcoming competitor that will knock down their ICE sales within the next few years. The high profile executive foot-draggers are going to get a back-room slapping and a “hit the road Jack” exit if they don’t get a move on soon.
“There are no competitors in the pure EV market for Tesla”
Not so fast Fish:
GM promises 20 all-electric cars by 2023
• GM says it “believes in an all-electric future.”
• The carmaker will introduce at least 20 new all-electric vehicles by 2023
• Two new EVs will hit the market by 2018, following the Chevy Bolt which was launched in 2016.
• GM will also pursue a hydrogen fuel-cell electric strategy, to address the needs of non-retail customers
The move demonstrated that GM is serious about remaining not just relevant, but extremely competitive as the global auto industry is transformed by electrification and the arrival of upstarts such as Tesla.
“General Motors believes the future is all electric,” Mark Reuss, the carmaker’s Executive Vice President of Global Product Development, said on a conference call with reporters after sharing details of forthcoming designs and new battery engineering was revealed. The 109-year-old company made the announcement in Detroit.
There’s a lot of news over here about one of our billionaire entrepreneurs, Dyson of the cyclonic vacuum cleaners and other electronic stuff like hand driers, bladeless fans, setting up in the EV and battery business.
No real competition HB. Without the charging infrastructure their sales will be poor to mediocre at best with fast post sales turnover by many owners as they deal with the reality of EV’s. Great second cars now for anyone that has to or likes to travel far at all. Why do you think Tesla built out it’s charging infrastructure early and still continues to advance it rapidly? For show? Nope, because they know you need all the pieces in place to make a dent in the market.
The other manufactures so far are building them and the chargers will come. Full of hopium.
Right now GM’s target market is California. In the parking lot of my gym and the Starbucks next to it. The local Chevrolet dealership has installed two charging stations at no cost for Bolt’s. I don’t think from were you live, your getting a fair representation of what’s going on.
EV’s are the future and the manufacturers know it. This is not a transition that’s going to happen over night. It’s happening faster than I ever thought it would just 3 years ago.
Pack up the Saturn and come visit. I’ll show you around.
I live about an hour from the Megalopolis. There are a number of low level chargers there but very few to the west, north, northwest, northeast, southwest, south and southeast. Often they don’t work when you get there. Of course having a hundred or so chargers in a region of 20 million people is not impressive even if they do work. No guarantee they will not be occupied upon arrival. No way to travel in most directions for me, other than the 100 miles out and back for a full charge, low level chargers mean sitting for hours to get a partial charge.
I then checked Tesla superchargers and wow, got some not far to the west of me and sets of them at about 80 to 100 miles apart for hundreds of miles on all the main routes in all directions. I didn’t check further than that. So just a simple matter of hanging around or eating lunch then on the road again.
I have no plans to go to California, especially to drive there. Flying is more efficient and less expensive. Rented cars when I have traveled the West in the past.
The five year old Tesla Supercharger network (first opened October 19, 2012)
Another view:
(I’m still shopping for a electric bike)
Tesla shares down big on failure to meet promised production targets
whereas in August – less than two months ago – Tesla predicted it would build more than 1,500 Model 3s in the third quarter; it actually made… just 260.
I don’t get why Tesla shares are down —-they only missed their target by 80% and Elon promised everything is going to be great next quarter. Elon making big promises has always been enough to give the stock a boost in the past!
We shall see campers—
Musk has been late quite a few times, more or less regularly, in fact, but he has always so far made his promises good.
My personal guess is that Model Three’s will be sold in substantial numbers, meaning at least in low four figures per month, before this year is out.
Ramping up production of an almost entirely new car using new materials, with parts sourced from Sky Daddy alone knows how many vendors has to be about as tough a management job as I can imagine, in terms of keeping it on a tight schedule.
Caelan is always happy to point out any failing, real or imaginary, of just about anybody at all.
He’s our resident sign toter/ preacher on the corner / the end of the world is here prophet. He’s about like Javier, except his obsession is the end of technology instead of the supposed failing so the climate science community.
I’m not sure which of them is the more competent cherry picker,but they are the class of this forum, and Olympic class at least in my estimation. Either or both of them may actually be PROFESSIONALS.
But Javier generally does make excellent sense when he talks about almost anything OTHER than forced climate change, not that he does so very often.
I can’t say as much for Caelan.
For what it’s worth, I just refer to myself now as the resident forum idiot or Trumpster, etc, from time to time so as to save other members the trouble of pointing out their opinion of me.
I don’t think Javier could find his arse with both hands and a torch, and everything he says is poorly understood, regurgitated second and third hand ideas – he just sometimes picks the right people to copy. For the climate stuff everything turns out to be crap and he has to resort to lying and rote repetition to cover his lack of understanding or ability to learn. Caelan has a different and original perspective, although I have no idea what he is on about a lot of the time.
Please tell us all about your new bike when you get it. I’m hoping to live long enough to see real electric bike dealerships in small towns………. dealerships with well known brand names, real technicians, real parts departments, etc.
Now about Bloomberg…… they post a lot of stuff contributed by individuals, generally with the disclaimer that the posted piece is the opinion of the author, rather than the opinion of the Bloomberg organization.
I haven’t looked, but I’m ready to bet a small sum that there are more than a few opinion pieces on the site that are gung ho enthusiastic about electric cars in general and probably Tesla in particular as well.
This does not pass the smell test. Are we to believe that GM is selling the Bolt at $9,000 less than the cost of production when it is retailing for $38,000? Are we to believe that FCA takes the Fiat 500 that retails for about $15,000 in it’s most basic form, fits it with an electric motor and battery instead of an ICE and gas tank, ending up with a vehicle that would retail for $37,000 more than the base model ($52,000) were it not for a $20,000 loss? That would mean that the additional cost of manufacturing an electric version of the Fiat 500 is more than the roughly US$31,000 MSRP of the 2018 Nissan Leaf and even slightly more than the MSRP of the Chevy Bolt (considering that the cost of the ICE and fuel system is subtracted from the cost of the base model).
As for Tesla, they are in the middle of building the largest single battery manufacturing facility on the planet as well as expansion of it’s charging network currently standing at 412 currently operating, 34 under construction and 18 permitted in the USA with the corresponding figures for the World being 997 in operation, 60 under construction and 29 permitted (source supercharge.info/ ). There’s also the cost of R&D for the existing and future models, including the class 8 heavy duty truck to be unveiled at the end of this month. Add to that, the over $1 billion invest in expansion and tooling at their Fremont factory and it is hard to imagine an operation growing that fast not operating at a loss.
Over the past seven years the Renault/Nissan alliance has produced over half a million battery electric vehicles. The best selling EV in Europe, the Renault Zoe, was recently upgraded (to a 40 kWh battery) and the best selling EV globally, the Nissan Leaf, has just had an update announced for 2018 MY with a 40 kWh battery available initially and a 60 kWh battery to be available next year (2019 MY?). Are we to believe that they are losing money on the two best selling battery electric vehicles in the world?
Early this year Hyundai introduced the IONIQ to the US and more recently VW has upgraded their e-Golf to a higher capacity battery. The headline of the second most recent article (as at the time of this post ) at insideevs.com reads “GM: “At least” 20 New EVs To Debut In Next 5 Years, Two in Next 18 Months”. The most recent headline reads “Ford Creates “Team Edison” To Focus Solely On Pure Electric Cars”. I smell a Koch brothers anti-EV misinformation campaign somewhere in the Bloomberg piece and panic at Koch Brothers HQ.
Ask Bloomberg—-
They supplied the data and article.
Even with enough emasculated ‘Merikin Males buying big truck penis machines at huge margins for auto companies, this has got to hurt.
I guess they are counting on the continued subsidies that currently keep the game going.
Federal Assault Weapons Ban
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) — officially, the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — is a subsection of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a United States federal law that included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms it defined as assault weapons, as well as certain ammunition magazines it defined as “large capacity.”
Efforts to create restrictions on “assault weapons” at the federal government level intensified in 1989 after 34 children and a teacher were shot and five children killed in Stockton, Calif. with a semi-automatic AK-47 rifle.[1][2][3] The Luby’s shooting in October 1991, which left 23 people dead and 27 wounded, was another factor.
Under the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 the definition of “semiautomatic assault weapon” included specific semi-automatic firearm models by name, and other semi-automatic firearms that possessed two or more from a set certain features:[13]
A semi-automatic Yugoslavian M70AB2 rifle.
An Intratec TEC-DC9 with 32-round magazine; a semi-automatic pistol formerly classified as an assault weapon under federal law.
Semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Bayonet mount
Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
Grenade launcher mount
Semi-automatic pistols with detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
Magazine that attaches outside the pistol grip
Threaded barrel to attach barrel extender, flash suppressor, handgrip, or suppressor
Barrel shroud safety feature that prevents burns to the operator
Unloaded weight of 50 oz (1.4 kg) or more
A semi-automatic version of a fully automatic firearm.
Semi-automatic shotguns with two or more of the following:
Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Detachable magazine
In 2004, a research report submitted to the United States Department of Justice and the National Institute of Justice found that should the ban be renewed, its effects on gun violence would likely be small, and perhaps too small for reliable measurement, because rifles in general, including rifles referred to as “assault rifles” or “assault weapons”, are rarely used in gun crimes.[29] That study by Christopher S. Koper, Daniel J. Woods, and Jeffrey A. Roth of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania found no statistically significant evidence that either the assault weapons ban or the ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds had reduced gun murders.
Efforts to pass a new federal assault weapons ban were made in December 2012 after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.[43][44][45] On January 24, 2013, Senator Feinstein introduced S. 150, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 (AWB 2013).[46] The bill was similar to the 1994 ban, but differed in that it would not expire after 10 years,[45] and it used a one-feature test for a firearm to qualify as an assault weapon rather than the two-feature test of the defunct ban.[47] The GOP Congressional delegation from the State of Texas condemned Feinstein’s bill, along with the NRA.[48] On March 14, 2013, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a version of the bill along party lines.[49] On April 17, 2013, AWB 2013 failed on a Senate vote of 40 to 60.[50]
Hillary Clinton On Las Vegas Shooting: ‘We Must Stand Up To The NRA’
“Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer,” which the gun lobby “wants to make easier to get.”
At least 50 people were killed and over 400 have been sent to nearby hospitals after a gunman opened fire during the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas late Sunday night.
“The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots. Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get,” she said.
Wouldn’t surprise me if they find undiagnosed brain damage like Charles Whitman.
All the more reason for Gun Control
Exactly. He must have had a thousand bullets, why not at least put some kind of punitive tax on them like cigarettes or booze
Considering the lack of sapient behavior by most ‘Merikins, I’m drifting toward your view.
However, a well armed proletariat does make the storm troopers think twice about breaking your door down.
However, with the current weapons that the State has, this seems a moot point.
All resistance would be asymmetrical, and that would be a moot point on gun control.
I live in rural Oregon, and this would not go over well.
The well armed proletariat is the likely one to be breaking doors down, urged on by the Kochs and Trumps of the world.
I agree.
Wingnuts gone wild!
Who knows what anyone of us would be getting up to if we had an astrocytoma pressing on our amygdala.
I was thinking that on my hike today.
Seems like some bad amygdala issues, like Whitman.
Sounds more like genetics. Just read that his father was a bank robber and on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list, as well as an officially diagnosed psychopath. While this guy was a lone wolf probably acting alone, it seems he put a lot of thought and preparation into this act. It doesn’t seem to be some totally random off the cuff occurrence, i.e. he snapped.
Still, the stats are very clear. Societies that do not severely limit access to guns and especially of assault weapons will keep seeing this kind of event over and over again.
The US leads the world in deaths by fire arms.
Even though it has half the population of the other 22 nations combined, the United States accounted for 82 percent of all gun deaths. The United States also accounted for 90 percent of all women killed by guns, the study found. Ninety-one percent of children under 14 who died by gun violence were in the United States.Feb 3, 2016
He did seem awfully well prepared, and trained.
And a very interesting genetic history.
I’m reading Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior currently.
My prayers go out to all those impacted by the horrific tragedy in Las Vegas. Now is the time to turn to whatever faith you believe in to cope, not disrespect the dead and injured by bickering about politics.
Isn’t that a meme protecting itself?
If you can’t examine it, it is safe?
I still like the good old Talking Snake that hangs out with the Rib Woman under that Magical Tree.
I jump on Mohammeds Flying Horse (when he is busy beheading infidels) and pay him a visit.
Mohammed will send somebody to cut your head off and put it on a stake in front of your house if you keep saying you ride his horse. Gods and dictators tend to get bent out of shape when somebody disses them.
Now if you have Mohammed on speed dial, and he rings you up to bullshit once in a while, that’s different. 😉
Ah yes! Prayer! When you don’t really want to help, but you want to pretend that you did.
I wouldn’t be who I am today without the power of others praying for my soul. With them I was saved and born again. Prayer is very good for your brain and health overall, even science has shown this!
Prayer is very good for your brain and health overall, even science has shown this!
Benson et al.[37] described a triple-blind, randomized controlled study that examined whether remote intercessory prayer influenced recovery after coronary artery bypass graft surgery and whether the certainty of being prayed for was associated with better outcomes. The sample comprised 1,802 patients in six hospitals in the USA. These patients were randomized into three groups: 604 were prayed for after being informed that they may or may not be prayed for, 597 were not prayed for after similarly being informed that they may or may not be prayed for and 601 were prayed for after being informed they would definitely be prayed for.
Prayer commenced one day before the surgery and continued for 14 days. Three mainstream religious sites prayed daily for patients assigned to receive prayer. Assessment of outcomes was made by nurses who were blind to the group assignments. The primary outcome was the presence of any complication within 30 days of surgery. Secondary outcomes were any major event, including death. The study sought to examine the efficacy of intercessory prayer and not to test the presence of God. The design was described by Dusek et al.[38]
In the two groups that did not know for certain whether or not they were being prayed for, complications occurred in 52% of patients who received intercessory prayer and in 51% of those who did not. In contrast, complications occurred in a significantly larger proportion of patients (59%) who knew for certain that they were being prayed for. Major events and 30-day mortality rates, however, were similar across the three groups.
This study therefore showed that remote intercessory prayer did not improve outcomes after coronary artery bypass graft surgery. In fact, the knowledge of being prayed for was associated with a slightly but significantly higher rate of postsurgical complications.
Peggy Hahn, please use the ignore x on Fred. He is an athiest and any amount of prayer for him is a waste of time and a lost cause.
Hell is too good a place for him.
“Hell is too good a place for him”
Hell would be trapped in the same location as a faith based god fearing Christian. Make that a ticket for two. I’m not interested in being a member of your fake Christian love for others.
LOL! You do realize that atheists believe in hell just as much as they believe deities, right?!
People who don’t believe in ghosts sleep well in haunted houses…
Nosiree, fucker.
This is the perfect time to talk about gun control. A teachable moment, a practical application of knowledge.
The dead most certainly wouldn’t want this to happen again.
Their families don’t want this to happen again.
I’m pretty sure (if they weren’t dead) that they would wish gun control had been instituted last time around, after Orlando.
The way to honour the dead is to make sure it doesn’t happen again: to demand something be done now. Write your Congressman. If you’re a gun nut, write to your NRA reps (or whatever). And do it now, before Trump tweets some stupid shit and we all get sidetracked (you know it’s going to happen).
To be silent is to be complicit.
To be silent is to be complicit.
Yeah! Especially because the POS trolls like Bill Franti or whoever is behind that handle are most definitely not silent.
Fuck them, their fake prayers and their dirty politics!
‘Premature’ to Talk Gun Control, White House Says After Vegas Shooting
by Ali Vitali
Politics Oct 2 2017, 5:43 pm ET
President Donald Trump believes that now is not the time to talk about gun control in the immediate aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, the White House said Monday.
Asked about renewed pleas from lawmakers for stricter gun control measures, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it was “premature” to talk about potential legislation before all the facts about the Las Vegas mass shooting are known.
“There’s a time and place for a political debate, but now is the time to unite as a country,” Sanders said, noting “there will be certainly time for that policy discussion to take place, but that’s not the place that we’re in at this moment.”
The Onion has printed this article every time this happens and they only change the name of the city, the name of the perpetrator and the victims names…
We need to gather all the facts about this event before determining if any solution is possible. Right now not all of the facts are clear, indicated for example by the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lztlqh0qahw which shows several eyewitness recordings of what occurred on Sunday.
Are you fucking serious!?
At least we already have all the facts we need to determine that Geroge Harmon, is just another POS troll!
Geroge (or even George) Harmon = No Meagrer Hog by my anagram finder
I left home for a while yesterday afternoon for a while and came back to hear a stream that I had left running on the computer. I was not seeing it because it was not on the visible tab of my browser but, based on the commentary I was hearing , I very quickly figured out that it was Fox News. It is very obvious that American society is very polarized on the issue of gun control as it is on several other issues.
It would appear that the areas that voted primarily for Trump are the same ones where the majority express the view that you will have to pry their guns out of their cold dead hands. I hate to break it to you but, as long as their are Americans with views like Alex Jones (Infowars) there aint’ gonna be a “waking up”. America, the land of the free and the home of some really crazy, right wing MFs.
So are all the facts in yet about Sandy Hook, or Pulse, or Virginia Tech, or Fort Hood, or Tucson, or the Washington Navy Yard, or Isla Vista, or Charleston, or Chattanooga, or Umpqua or ad infinitum? Seems like it’s always too soon.
As horrific as the Las Vegas massacre is, the daily firearm death count in the U.S. is roughly ~85 people per day. Every. Single. Day.
So we had an 169% of average day for firearm mortality, and a now world famous new high scorer.
Bill Franti – 1) Why did you feel the need to tell us that, other than for straight virtue signalling? 2) In what way is bickering about politics disrespecting the dead, what about bickering about who gets the last chocolate, is that disrespecting them as well, and why should we be respecting these dead any more than any others (e.g. I think more are shot in Baltimore each year or the Hurricane victims – with more to come there by the looks of the Trump response)? 3) Go fuck yourself (that’s disrespecting you not the dead).
An Enormous Hole in Antarctica’s Sea Ice Could Help Solve a Climate Riddle
Does anybody here know enough about physics to speculate on the nature of the weapon somebody is using in Cuba to give Yankee spies a permanent headache or worse?
It’s now coming out that the victims are the intelligence guys and girls who operate posing as diplomats with diplomatic immunity, sop world wide. A few of the victims might not be spies, the perps could have been mistaken in some cases.
So far the Trump administration has refrained from blaming this unprecedented kind of attack on the Cuban government, which seems out of character, considering how often Trump shoots off his mouth.
Perhaps this indicates that our intelligence agencies really and truly don’t have a clue as to who the perps are.
Earth climate sensitivity may be coupled to temperature, as indicated by paleoclimate data study.
“The first step was to reconstruct the history of global mean temperatures for the last 784,000 years, using combined data from marine sediment cores, ice cores, and computer simulations covering the last eight glacial cycles,” said Friedrich, a post-doctoral researcher at IPRC.
The second step involved calculating the Earth’s energy balance for this time period, using estimates of greenhouse gas concentrations extracted from air bubbles in ice cores, and incorporating astronomical factors, known as Milankovitch Cycles, that effect the planetary heat budget.
“Our results imply that the Earth’s sensitivity to variations in atmospheric CO2 increases as the climate warms,” explained Friedrich. “Currently, our planet is in a warm phase—an interglacial period—and the associated increased climate sensitivity needs to be taken into account for future projections of warming induced by human activities.”
The bottom line is what matters here: our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs in order to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature
-Klein
What the climate needs to stabilize is changing what we put into the atmosphere. It doesn’t give a shit how much iron or aluminum you dig out of the ground as long as GHG’s are not added in the process. It doesn’t care at all if you travel from NYC to LA if you don’t use the atmosphere as a dumping ground for GHG’s.
The cure for climate change is to stop changing the atmosphere, end of story.
Digging aluminum out of the ground adds to to the carbonization of the atmosphere, and refining it is a huge energy issue.
Same for Iron—
No free lunch I’m afraid.
So you do need to give a hit.
Yes, digging and refining metals adds to GHGs IF you use fossil fuels to do it.
If not, then not so much.
GHGs are, unfortunately, not the only problems with mining, etc..
Can you not think of other ways, they already exist and are used?
There’s zero doubt that the primary cause of forced climate change is air pollution resulting from burning fossil fuels.
But there’s no good reason to get all religious about it, and adopt a counter productive zero fossil fuel position. That sort of holier than thou, nose in the air attitude doesn’t result in net gains, politically, for the environmental movement.
The amount of green house gas pollution associated with burning fossil fuels to run mining machinery, refine aluminum and steel, etc, is very small, compared to the total amounts of fossil fuels we use.
And the vast bulk of all the metal we use these days can be easily and economically recycled. We can afford to burn some fossil fuel in the instances where we get the biggest bang for the smallest amounts burnt, as in producing metals.
And Nick is right, we will be able to produce metals using little or no fossil fuel ……… eventually.
The focus needs to be on energy conservation and efficiency, and that means updating and refurbishing and or replacing old buildings, switching from ice cars and trucks to electric light vehicles, etc.
When a well meaning environmentalist talks about not mining and processing metal ores because of fossil fuel pollution, that has about the same effect on a somewhat knowledgeable man on the street as advocating giving up the use of manufactured fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture.
It takes a nut case to actually advocate giving up fossil fuels, or pesticides and fertilizers, in real world terms. Nut cases seldom do their causes any good. They just make the environmental movement or political camp itself look like a nut case movement or camp.
We should express our arguments in terms that don’t make them so handy to be used as clubs by the Koch brothers team.
It’s a mistake to assume people are stupid or TOTALLY ignorant. There are millions of people who know enough to understand that we are utterly and absolutely dependent on the mining industries and the fossil fuel industries, the pesticide and fertilizer industries, etc, for our very fucking SURVIVAL, for now and for as far ahead as THEY can see.
And they’re RIGHT.
Talking about them as if they’re nut cases, or dupes of the R party , etc, is not apt to result in their voting for Democrats…
No Sir! Talk about women the way a lot of the members of this forum talk about working class people, and you couldn’t get a date in a whorehouse with a roll of hundreds.
OFM foghorned “But there’s no good reason to get all religious about it, and adopt a counter productive zero fossil fuel position. That sort of holier than thou, nose in the air attitude doesn’t result in net gains, politically, for the environmental movement. ”
OFM, I don’t think you mean to but you are sounding like a Koch brother advocate.
Compromise in the case of the health of the living planet is a fool’s game.
OFM, you do realize you just broke every rule of diplomacy you set out for the rest of us to follow? So what does that make you?
Klein has been fooled by right wing propaganda artists, who claimed that dealing with climate change would require a complete rebuilding of our economy. It was a scare tactic, and Klein does everyone an enormous disservice by falling for it and spreading the misinformation.
“Klein’s fervently ideological, anti-empiricist style, and her deep skepticism of the mainstream liberals who believe emissions can be controlled without destroying capitalism, places her in odd agreement with the far right. Visiting a conference of climate-science deniers, Klein discovers the kind of absolutist ideological reasoning and suspicion of mushy technocracy to which she can relate. Climate-science deniers see the fight to restrain emissions as a pretext to expand government power over the economy. Since that is exactly how Klein sees climate change, she thinks they are on to something: “I think these hard-core ideologues understand the real significance of climate change better than most of the ‘warmists’ in the political center … ” she writes, “when it comes to the scope and depth of change required to avert catastrophe, they are right on the money.” Finally, somebody else who understands that the real choice is capitalism versus the climate.
In the actual world outside this jointly inhabited ideological bubble, capitalism and climate science are discovering ways to co-exist. Klein dismisses the “past quarter century of international negotiations,” which she characterizes as “struggling, sputtering, failing utterly to achieve its goals.” In reality, American greenhouse-gas emissions peaked several years ago. European Union emissions peaked several decades ago. Chinese coal use has peaked, and its energy intensity has fallen. The world may not be decarbonizing as rapidly as it should, but it is moving rapidly. It may be slow by the standards of atmospheric conditions, but it is fast by the standards of global political cooperation.
U.N. efforts to fight climate change have only been under way since 1988. Compare this with the notion of replacing capitalism with a radical egalitarian alternative, which has been around for a century and a half. The project does not seem to be moving forward. Waiting to limit the damage of greenhouse-gas emissions until the people can overthrow the yoke of unfettered capitalism may represent the most dangerous advice the left has come up with in a very long time.”
From the mouthpiece of liberal thought, and neoliberal economics.
They brought you Judith Miller and WMD in Iraq.
Mainstream Dim Mouthpiece.
mouthpiece of liberal thought
Uhmmm…who, NY mag?
” right wing propaganda artists, who claimed that dealing with climate change would require a complete rebuilding of our economy”
I agree with you Nick, Capitalism is a great system to inspire individuals to maximize their own potential. The down side is the overwhelming power and influence the rich and powerful have over the less fortunate. Including in a democracy, buying political influence and weakening regulations. The powerful abuse the environment dumping waste freely into the air and water not realizing the actually cost to society by spreading misinformation to the electorate.
Yeah.
I’d hate to say anything broad and general about capitalism, or socialism, etc. I think that free, decentralized markets have a very important place in any economy, but that they need to be very carefully regulated. It seems to me that we have to navigate from where we are to where we want to be incrementally. People like the Kochs are actually radicals, wanting to tear down liberal democracy and take us back to something like the 19th century.
But, it seems clear to me that when people from the Heartland Institute say that dealing with climate change requires socialism, or radical change for the economy, they’re lying and spreading FUD. And, Klein was fooled by them.
Sadly, conservatives will now hold up Klein as proof of their original lies.
If only the markets were free instead of controlled monopolies and filled with mega-companies.
See my five twenty four am comment immediately above.
We WILL have make such changes in our economy that it’s not totally unreasonable to describe these changes as a “complete rebuilding”. English is a rather flexible language , lol.
We shouldn’t deny that some really major changes are NECESSARY, while pointing out that they are COMING, NO MATTER WHAT. Fossil fuels deplete, renewable energy is getting cheaper by comparison every year, etc.
Talking in rose tinted terms without acknowledging such realities as I have mentioned leads people who are suspicious of the motives of environmentalists to conclude that the Koch brothers are their friends, and environmentalists are their enemies.
In this case we’re talking about two very different things.
Sure, replacing every ICE with an EV, and replacing coal plants with wind farms could be described as a complete rebuilding. But, those EVs can and likely will be built by the same auto workers in the same factories by the same car companies, driving on the same roads and sitting in the same garages.
Solar PV may mean a new decentralized business model for utilities…maybe. But, that kind of change isn’t unique – it’s roughly comparable to the disruption of retail shopping by Amazon.
A renewable economy doesn’t mean socialism, or communism, or an attempt by climatologists to impose central planning and steal everybody’s money.
People like the Heartland Institute are makin’ stuff up. They’re pretending that climate change mitigation is just a giant plot by commies. Sadly, Klein was taken in…
The security of the nation and much of world depends upon mitigating climate change, reducing the effects of peak oil and building resilience.
Understanding the Causes and Consequences of Polar Amplification
Toshiba’s new battery technology supports ultra-rapid recharge and longer life….
・New battery realizes driving range of electric vehicles boosted to 320km on 6-minute, ultra-rapid recharge, triple that possible with current lithium-ion battery.
・New anode material, titanium niobium oxide achieves double the capacity of the anode of current lithium-ion batteries.
And 5,000 cycle life (at 90% remaining capacity, a high standard).
At, say, $200/kWh, that’s only 4 cents per cycle. That means the battery cost for an EV would be only 1.33 cents per mile (or less). That’s dirt cheap.
Dawn of Solar Age Declared as PV Beats All Other Forms of Power
By Anna Hirtenstein
October 4, 2017, 3:00 AM EDT
Solar power blossomed faster than for any other fuel for the first time in 2016, the International Energy Agency said in a report suggesting the technology will dominate renewables in the years ahead.
The institution established after the first major oil crisis in 1973 said 165 gigawatts of renewables were completed last year, which was two-thirds of the net expansion in electricity supply. Solar grew by 50 percent, with almost half new plants built in China.
“What we are witnessing is the birth of a new era in solar PV,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said in a statement accompanying the report published on Wednesday in Paris. “We expect that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology through 2022.”
That is great news Fred, thanks.
But we need to start eliminating the stupid uses of electricity and fuel. If you have a hot water circulator loop (so you get immediate hot water when you turn on the tap) you really want to look at this article. It could save you thousands of dollars plus save a lot of wasted energy and pollution to make that energy.
Electricity used to run the pump. For a modest sized pump, this might be 400 to 800 KWH a year if the pump runs all the time. The bottom line is that the recirculation system we inherited when we bought our current house has cost us about $3,200 in wasted propane use over the 8 years we have had the house!
A modern wind turbine has 80 gallons of gear oil in the gearbox. One barrel of oil yields 1/2 gallon of lubricating oil.
You will need 160 barrels of oil to obtain 80 gallons of gear oil for the gearbox in a large wind turbine.
341,000 wind turbines operating worldwide.
The oil is changed once each year, 80×341,000=27,280,000 gallons of gear oil required each year for all 341,000 turbines.
649,523.809524 barrels of gear oil required to maintain the gearboxes for one year.
1/2 gallon lubricating oil per barrel, the gear boxes will require 160×27,280,000=4,364,800,000 barrels of crude oil. It all needs to be refined to provide enough gear oil for 341,000 wind turbines to operate for one year.
You will have to recycle the gear oil, the amount of oil needed to operate the 341,000 wind turbines from newly refined crude oil will be cost prohibitive. Over the lifetime of the wind turbine, 25 years, the amount of crude oil required without recycling will be 25×4,364,800,000=109,120,000,000 barrels of crude oil.
Add the costs to maintain the wind turbines, the use of fossil fuels will be even more.
Wind turbines need fossil fuels just as much as any other machine out there.
There is no way to escape the use of fossil fuels in wind turbines and they probably increase the need for fossil fuels.
Cheers!
You multiplied by 80 one too many times.
Thank you for the correction.
109,120,000,000/80=1364000000
Still will need 1,364,000,000 barrels of oil to refine to obtain gear oil to lubricate 341,000 wind turbines over the lifetime of the wind turbines.
Can’t avoid it at all.
Gasoline 47%
Heating Oil/Diesel Fuel 20%
Jet Fuel (Kerosene) 8%
Propane/Propylene 6%
Natural Gas Liquids and Liquid Refinery Gases 6%
Still Gas 4%
Petrochemical Feedstocks 2%
Petroleum Coke 2%
Residual/Heavy Fuel Oil 2%
Asphalt and Road Oi 2%
Lubricants 1%
Miscellaneous Products 0.4%
Other Liquids 0.4%
Aviation Gasoline 0.1%
Special Naphthas 0.04%
Waxes 0.04%
Kerosene 0.02%
Synthetic gear oil has to have a higher cost to manufacture.
Still will need fossil fuels to service the wind turbines, each turbine will need gear oil changes once each year. No oil in the gearbox means the turbine comes to a screeching halt.
You will not have wind turbines without oil, synthetic or plain old crude from Texas or Oklahoma.
The reality.
No. Lubricant isn’t the same thing as “oil”, and synthetics don’t have to come from fossil fuels – there are plenty of non-fossil sources of H2 and carbon. And, silicon works as well as hydrocarbons. Finally, designs can be changed to reduce or eliminate liquid lubricants.
We don’t need fossil hydrocarbons.
Hi Alfred,
Have you heard of synthetic oil? Also lubricating oil can be made from plant based oils.
Yeah, there are a lot of ways to lubricate machinery. Hydrocarbon lubricants don’t need fossil fuels to get the H2 and the carbon. Silicon works as well as hydrocarbons. Designs can be changed to reduce or eliminate liquid lubricants.
Lots of alternatives.
Plus the math is way, way off: “One barrel of oil yields 1/2 gallon of lubricating oil. You will need 160 barrels of oil to obtain 80 gallons of gear oil “. That’s just silly – you don’t ignore the 99% of the barrel not used for lubricant production.
A Wonk on the Wild Side
(Unfortunately, they have learned nothing– just look who is now running the DNC)
https://thebaffler.com/blessed-and-brightest/what-happened
Clinton is easilly the least competent politician to run for President on a major party ticket since… oh… 1860, I believe. And she still doesn’t understand why she’s detested. What a loser.
Stupid troll, but I’ll bite.
What’s your metric? Who ran in 1928? What as the percent win for the losing candidate compared to Clinton?
Ability to win contested elections in general.
Clinton had a very bad record on this. Neither of her *two* Senatorial elections were contested seriously (I’m in New York; I know.) She performed worse than Schumer or Gillibrand, both of whom had more serious opposition. And she had no electoral experience before that.
Al Smith had won some really tough gubernatorial elections. And fought difficult primaries.
Look, Clinton would have been a fine staff advisor, but for running for public office? Geez. She’s just no good at it. She got beat in the primary by an unknown named Barack Obama last time round!
Plus she lost to a candidate with the lowest approval ratings ever since they started polling and Clinton’s approval rating is still below Trumps.
Energy Revolution? More like a Crawl
“Dr. Vaclav Smil… explored the current state of global and major national energy dependencies and appraised the likely speed of their transformation. In his words, ‘The desirable development of new renewables should not be guided by wishful preferences and arbitrary targets. Using more energy, albeit more efficiently and with lower specific environmental effects, is unlikely to change our fortunes — yet no serious consideration has been given to how to use less, much less.’ “
The, and/or your, cartoonish ‘EV/PV’ story, meme, mantra and/or fantasy, complete with antagonists, the Evil Kochs, doesn’t seem to quite wash, square and/or stack up with the energy that it’s supposedly peddled, whether consciously or not, to somehow ‘replace’, ‘while we all as a species somehow automagically become efficient, save the climate, and relatively-smoothly transition and maintain general semblance of the current status-quo’. <– That's another reason.
As for my other, related concerns, they are supported in part by my previous comments under previous articles/threads hereon, some of which you, yourself, have left unanswered– conveniently so for your storyline/salary/fantasies perhaps, yes?
Smil’s a crank, Caelan. Has always been a crank. You’re a crank too, of course, so that’s probably why you like him.
Please learn some math, history, and/or psychology before you post again.
Thanks for the nice crank comment, Nathanael. That your real name? Last name? Age?
Inconveniently for you perhaps, I quote many others aside from Václav, who apparently has a doctorate and was speaking (presumably invited to speak) at McGill University. How about you? Any speaking gigs? Qualifications? Publications?
Let us know and maybe we’ll quote you too if it’s not religious/dogmatic/adolescent and/or based on casual/cavalier online declarations behind an anonymous moniker, unlike Václav Smil.
Repeat: please learn some math, history, and/or psychology before you post again. You are lacking in all three.
I’m unimpressed.
You can avoid my questions, get the issue of subsidies wrong, and keep repeating relatively empty comments/commands behind an anonymous moniker if you wish (I won’t go as far as to say ‘from mom’s basement’, in part because some mom’s basements might be pretty cool and, say, their own self-contained and chic apartments, and maybe even decent places to go to and be in societal decline/collapse scenarios.) but that calls into question your own command of math, history and/or psychology and so forth. Feel free to enlighten us (and maybe we’ll see if your online puffery is less hot air and more substance, speaking of psychology).
Remember: This is a peak oil/collapse blog, as opposed to a platform for post-adolescent online puffery. Let’s endeavor to honor Dennis’ and Ron’s efforts in POB’s regard.
“Using more energy, albeit more efficiently and with lower specific environmental effects, is unlikely to change our fortunes — yet no serious consideration has been given to how to use less, much less.’ “
Nonsense. The electrification of the heat sector with heat pumps dramatically reduces primary and secondary energy demand. But again: Smil is not convincing, you cite him because he supports your personal (uneducated) opinion, not because he delivers hard data. 🙂
How to Run the Economy on the Weather
The ‘other side’ of your example of the heat pump is of course better insulation and windows to take advantage of passive solar, and maybe internal heat sinks. A residential project done to a more extreme degree in this ‘direction’ in some northern latitudes may not even need a heat pump or any other industrial, etc., heating source aside from the passive solar…
And that kind of thinking appears to be somewhat along the lines of Kris De Decker’s and Vaclav Smil’s, as well as my own. In any case, it involves using some simple common sense and frugality, which I guess cheap, abundant energy makes less important.
It doesn’t take much education, hard data or imagination to put on a sweater, move around a bit, rub your hands together, cozy up to someone, and/or get in the sun, etc., if you’re chilly.
“The ‘other side’ of your example of the heat pump is of course better insulation and windows to take advantage of passive solar, and maybe internal heat sinks. A residential project done to a more extreme degree in this ‘direction’ in some northern latitudes may not even need a heat pump or any other industrial, etc., heating source aside from the passive solar…”
Thank you for providing additional evidence that your cited article is nonsense.
Of course you can use passive solar approach, that is widely done in passive houses and KfW40 houses, however, you still need a heating systen im most parts of Europe. The combination wins.
While heat pumps is ‘something’– although I could chew that issue pretty seriously if I had the time– De Decker’s article, if recalled, is talking about the bigger picture beyond just heat pumps, which not everyone of course has, nor do they have efficient houses, nor do they have efficient countries…
When you have societies attempting to funnel ‘everything’ onto the grid, strange effects can happen, and as I’ve already posted charts of, primary FF energy usage is still whopping in every country I’ve looked at. We have a ways to go, and then there’s Jevon’s Paradox, and MENA refugees to Europe (Why? War? For primary FF energy?), etc..
I guess Fred (and his critical-thinking skills) have neglected the ‘little detail’ of coercive taxation/subsidies for such things as ‘solar panels and electric vehicles’, or the questionable effects they (and their ‘accessories’) have on the planet as a whole in their mining, manufacture, operation and disposal, when suggesting that they are not imposed on anyone anywhere.
(Maybe it’s a Martian-Space-X frame-of-mind thing.)
Perhaps why in part Fred claims not read ‘my BS’ anymore is because it’s actually often about his own BS, and using his own commentary’s ignorance and stupidity for support and illustration to boot.
It’s not like I haven’t also noticed, after posting my comment/pic of the bees, your ‘social insects’ comment/pic of termites and their mound, along of course with my comment on gravity, and then your own mention of it.
Off you go, then.
Well, you’re just lying now, Caelan. As you should know if you weren’t a crank, there is coercive taxation and subsidies for oil. There are none for solar panels or electric vehicles. They are great for the planet — unlike oil. As you *should* know, if you *wanted* to have a clue, which you *obviously don’t*.
elimination of federal tax credits likely to kill U.S. EV market
This of course are just the snowflakes on the tip of the icebergs of the coercive/sociopathological matrix of governpimp intervention that includes social and technological engineering– in part also known/enabled as sheeple mindfucking.
Tesla is not the car industry, or even the largest EV producer, and America is not the world, or even the largest car market.
I was responding to this…
…using the article as an example. So your comment’s moot in that context.
In any case, the article doesn’t just mention Tesla, but it does raise the question about coercive taxation for EV subsidies elsewhere.
Whatever. Your post simply coughs up myopic Republican propaganda, however you try to spin it ex post facto.
The ‘republican propaganda’ is your spin/projection, and remarkably mindless to boot.
BS, Tesla will be just fine once the federal credits run out. The cost of batteries are falling fast and they will be able to reduce the prices to make up for any loss of credits. Plus, the big states like California are increasing the incentives. In California you also get access to the carpool lane – that alone is enough enticement for some.
Some states are increasing taxes and registrations fees on EVs, it’s unfortunate and does reduce EV sales in those states, but hardly eliminates it.
*reprinted with permission*
[All-New edits in square brackets!]
No question that battery interchange should happen. But auto industry does not standardize anything unless forced. Looks like the performance gap continues to widen.
http://insideevs.com/watch-tesla-model-s-beat/
Charging times are getting shorter and shorter even as capacity and range have been getting larger.
For example: “stations capable of providing up to 250 kilometers worth of range within 20 minutes”
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/12/fastned-granted-e4-1-million-german-government-fast-charging-station-buildout/
And Porsche was the first to announce – they can recharge to 80% in 15 minutes at the new 450KW stations, but others will follow.
Tesla supports battery swapping on the S and X but it’s hard to compete with free supercharging. There hasn’t been a huge demand for it from their customers, so they only built the one test station.
Yes, CM it’s likely way to little way to late to save the world.
battery swapping on Tesla was concept. You can not purchase. I think battery pak will evolve like hard drives did. More logic and power conversion within the Pak.
Hardly like a hard drive. We can see, physically, what is possible with storage – a magnetic area is easy to measure and subdivide. Battery technology, on the other hand, remains a material science that is reaping very little in terms of technological progress. There’s been a lot of enthusiastic approaches addressing ways to store and discharge electrons efficiently; like my favorite with nano-sized peaks and valleys for electrons to nestle within, and so on. All have failed. Not miserably, mind you, but failed to reveal any heretofore unknown capability already achieved by the common Lithium type.
There’s hope yet – but don’t confuse batteries with hard drives again, please. ;->
“Everybody that disagrees with my solar shilling is a crank”
-‘Nathaniel’
It’s not just Nathanael of course, and appears a cross-section of why we’re in the species-funk we’re in…
Rational thought and discourse that forms the foundation of science that some make so much of (except, magically, where it doesn’t suit them) in their quasireligious poses and postures, can (where it magically suits them) be dispensed with and replaced by religious folklore, complete with ‘devils-and-forked/wormed-tongues’ epithets (like as canned responses to critical quotes of their own hypocritical ‘tongues’), self-references-by-declaration, and references to works of fantasy, etc..
…All the while serving themselves up, like cocktail sausages, meatballs and cheap wine on styrofoam platters, with crackers like these…
Misfit Kid
“the questionable effects they (and their ‘accessories’) have on the planet as a whole in their mining, manufacture, operation and disposal”
Ain’t it great that uranium grows on trees, coal magically appears at power plants and ironworks, while oil harmlessly flows out of the ground without any effort?
Which indicates in part why we need to power down now, not after a few decades of maintaining that kind of power/business as usual and betting the planet to build things that increasingly appear will not actually pan out the way some people may think or have been conditioned/duped to think or hope.
Maybe CRISPR technology can make some humans adapt, rather than the other way around, to the results of other forms of technology that have created scenarios and feelings of boredom, terror, injury, helplessness and/or unhappiness, etc..
Maybe this can be achieved in part by making some people perpetually ‘happy’, more or less no matter what, and sufficiently dumbed-down where they could do the kinds of work that other people, and even robots or immigrants, can’t or won’t do.
Maybe CRISPR can help create a revolutionary human society of hyperspecialization, rather like ant colonies, where people are custom-designed for ultra-repetitive and hyper-limited tasks, and for example, in the process, don’t ask too many questions of the authorities, except those that are work-related of course.
Here’s another one: Since monarch butterflies, to use GoneFishing’s previous example, are apparently somewhat poisonous to some animals (milkweed diet?), let’s indeed change their colors using CRISPR so that these same animals might not be able to recognize them as poisonous. Or maybe their mates won’t recognize them.
Puerto Rico and now Florida -decentralize for life.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-21/government-regulation-crony-capitalism-keeping-1000s-florida-without-power
I’d bet the opposite will happen – we’ll see the shock doctrine in all it’s glory, which has to be centralised to ensure the money flows to the hegemonies, in all the worst affected areas.
I think they now have a special on the ‘Centralised Hegemony Disconnect Switch’ for PV systems at Home Depot for $99.99, Installation is extra 😉
Just beacuse FPL requires I have the wiring for a grid connection doesn’t mean I actually have to use it. If worse comes to worse you can connect a single LED bulb to their grid and run everything else off grid.
We have an old acquaintance from the Oil Drum who occasionally shows up here now and then, who is 100% off grid, (not in Florida) who welcomes unsuspecting meter readers with smile and a shotgun and a warning that they are trespassing on his property. He is a really nice guy and just does it for a little fun.
Yep
Disaster Capitalism.
Never miss a opportunity to exploit.
The following two sentences from the article are absolute bullshit:
“Government policy dictates that Floridians are required to be connected to the central power grid, even if they have enough solar panels installed to power their entire house. Because of this requirement, a family stuck in areas without power with solar panels installed cannot use them now because doing so could endanger workers trying to restore power for their neighbors.”
First of all, any grid tied inverter sold in the US has to shut down within a very short time if grid power fails as a requirement of the National Electrical Code (NEC 690.61, UL 1741). Secondly there are inverter models, one of which I own, that provide an isolated 15 amp circuit (20A for the newer versions) to be used in the absence of grid power, with certain limitations. Thirdly, a typical battery based system, using an inverter/charger can, if configured appropriately, run the most or all of the circuits in a building, without ever sending power back to the grid, at the same time meeting the requirement “to be connected to the central power grid”.
So, any “family stuck in areas without power with solar panels installed” that “cannot use them now” must not have thoroughly discussed their options with their PV system supplier. Either that, or they could not afford to go with a battery based system and acquired their system before the grid tied units with the battery-less, “off grid” capability became available (2012 or thereabouts). Anybody living in a hurricane prone area that is investing in a PV system should always look for features that, allow for operation in the absence of grid power, even in a limited sense.
grid tied units with the battery-less, “off grid” capability
What brand is that?
SMA (SUNNY BOY TL-US SERIES with Secure Power Supplym US only)
If PV source circuits don’t exceed 415v you can get isolated dc out and run Millions of things with a Mean well HLG driver type A
Lithium battery optional
Just after midnight on Sept. 11, Eugenio Pereira awoke to the sound of tropical-storm-force winds slamming his Gainesville, Florida, home. Hurricane Irma had arrived. At 1:45 a.m., the power flickered out, and he was in total darkness.
Unlike large swaths of Florida that were facing days if not weeks without electricity, Pereira knew he would have power when the sun rose. He had installed rooftop solar panels two weeks before the storm, along with an inverter that allows him to use power from the solar panels without being connected to the grid. The next morning, he plugged an extension cord into the inverter, flipped it on, and let his 7-kilowatt rooftop solar array do the rest. He was able to use his appliances and his Wi-Fi, so he could continue his work as a home-based IT consultant while the neighborhood waited for grid power to came back on.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092017/after-hurricane-irma-solar-florida-homes-power-gird-out-city-traffic-lights-running
I’m not even a real electrician, but I can wire a house, and have done so a dozen times, with compliments from the building inspector on the way I do things, meaning I go beyond what the code requires, knowing that the code is only a “reasonable minimum” standard.
I don’t even know the exact name of it, but a while back I installed a disconnect switch for a friend which totally isolates his house and farm from the grid. It works this way. You run the service lines into it, instead of into your distribution panel with your main disconnect breaker, which is typically two hundred amps these days. You continue from this switch to the distribution panel with the 200 amp main breaker.
It has an additional set of three terminals to feed in juice from a generator, as needed.
This switch is built in such a way that it is IMPOSSIBLE for both the generator and the lines from the grid to be simultaneously connected. When you flip it, it’s EITHER grid juice OR generator juice.
It would work just as well hooked to a personal pv system via a suitable inverter of course.
My friend will be using a thirty kilowatt generator powered via the pto of one of his diesel farm tractors, as the need arises.
Every grade A dairy farm I ever visited has a similar set up, because if the power goes off, ya still gotta milk those cows, or they’ll all get sicker than hell, and maybe put you out of business.
You can buy an old American made generator of this sort, with a brand name such as GE on it, built to industrial standards, which produces nice clean juice, for as little as a thousand dollars if you get lucky. It won’t have over a few hundred hours on it if that much, even if it’s forty or fifty years old, if you get it at a farm estate sale. You can expect it to last more or less forever used intermittently, or maybe ten or twenty thousand hours before it needs attention used regularly.
There are two catches, such a generator is rather large , on it’s own skid or wheels, and it can only be powered with a tractor as a practical matter. Tractor engines have governors good enough to keep the engine speed dead on the money.
Either everything I have read about Venezuela for the last year is totally wrong, or else alternet just totally blew it in terms of calling itself a news rather than a propaganda outfit. Of course it may be that Alternet is already known to be all about propaganda rather than the news. I don’t remember reading much if anything at the Alternet site.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-wont-american-media-tell-truth-about-whats-happening-venezuela?
It’s impossible to read this link as anything other than a propaganda piece written by or for the Maduro regime.
You are not getting any reliable information from either source.
From what I can tell (from limited primary sources), this is a race between collapse and completion of the Chinese Heavy Oil Refinery.
The Chinese and Goldman Sachs are betting on completion, which will probably be game over for Venezuela returning to its Client State status of the past.
Disclaimer: I know people who write for alternet
Hi Hightrekker,
So what’s your personal evaluation of the competence and ethics of the Maduro regime?
Of the opposition as a whole or in part?
Chavez was a populous wizard.
Won election after election, with international observation.
He crossed the World Bank and international finance.
His death was probably assassination , through introduced toxins (just speculation on my part).
Maduro? Not nearly as much of a leader, but can negotiate the road blocks thrown in front of him.
( very morally malleable)
The Chinese and GS rarely make bad bets.
Opposition?
Maybe 20% of the elite populous, sustained through international covert support.
Can anybody remember Caelan ever posting anything positive ? I mean other than his remarks about permaculture, which are mostly naive, or worse, in terms of demonstrating any understanding in depth of what is REALLY possible, technically, and what is possible as a PRACTICAL matter, in the real world?
Sometime with the next decade or so, more than likely, there will be an oil supply crisis, for one reason or another, and anybody who owns a ragged out old Leaf, Volt or Three will be able to sell it for twice a similar conventional car sells for on the same day.
If we had had government poking it’s nose into every aspect of our lives back when Henry Ford built his first T, he could have gotten a big subsidy for building it in some particular place, etc.
He succeeded in kicking horses and mules off the roads, pdq, and not much later, he played one of the biggest roles in kicking them off the farm as well.
It won’t be much longer before electric cars kick ICE cars off the road. It’s going to happen subsidies or none. Subsidies are helping it happen a FEW YEARS SOONER.
That’s a VERY good thing, in the eyes of anybody who actually knows something about peak oil, environmental issues, and what’s good for humanity as well as the rest of the biosphere.
There’s NO POSSIBLE PATH from our NOW to his hypothetical garden in eden future of small groups of people living in brotherhood, the way the birds and the ants and deer and wolves and bears and antelope and on and on and on SUPPOSEDLY live in his dreams………. OTHER than the path called technology.
Caelan will never understand it, but natures BASIC method of dealing with conflict is violence, epidemic disease, starvation…….. Earlier this summer I had a bird bash its brains out repeatedly attacking its reflection in one of our picture windows. Animals fight to the death as necessary to defend the territory they must have to successfully raise their young.
And anybody who actually knows shit from apple butter about how MEN live in very small groups knows that damned few of us act like SAINTS, lol.
It’s far more likely that unless you happen to be the biggest strongest and smartest male in the group, and the most adept at politics and arranging allegiances, or one of his closest allies, you will get your ass kicked, regularly, your food stolen, regularly, and your woman …… except you won’t have a woman, unless there’s one around not wanted by anybody higher up the totem pole and better able to protect and hold her than YOU.
And while it sounds pretty good to talk about a quiet, peaceful, self supporting agrarian or hunter gatherer way of life………… the TRUTH is that primitive agrarian life is tough as hell, and that the hunter / gatherer way of life is as apt to not result in periodic famine, meaning that you put grandma out with the horses to starve to death, or do something else equally harsh to make survival possible, including raiding neighbors who will fight to the death to hold onto any stash of food, clothing, and weapons they might possess.
I used to BE young, and tough, and could have made it just fine with a few acres and a mule or two and some hand tools, barring accident or other bad luck……… if you define fine as working your ass off in order to have enough beans and potatoes and maybe a chicken once in a while to feed your kids, who MAY be numerous enough to look after you to some extent once you are too old to plow and hoe and chop wood ……… endlessly.. day after day……. until you can’t anymore, and die unless you have kids able and willing to care for you.
Caring for my old father is easy, he has an old age check sufficient to pay the basic bills, including the food and energy bills. Without that check……. and without modern technology………. I would have a HELL of a time at my age keeping us warm and dry and well fed.
Caelan is wasting everybody’s time. I ought to have sense enough to ignore him, but I usually stick it out longer than anybody who thinks I’M the idiot in the public argument.
Even old HB is backing off, when he OUGHT to be helping me spread the news about the Trumps.
OFM, Poz
“Can anybody remember Caelan ever posting anything positive?” ~ OFM
We’ll leave that to you.
Hi Caelan,
As usual, you’re talking, or typing, about like a shameless politician.
I suspect you are rather old yourself already, and that without the technology you ALWAYS condemn, YOU would be DEAD already, lol.
And I also strongly suspect that if you were to ever have a position of any significance in a primitive society, it would be equivalent to WORM TONGUE’s position in Tolkien’s Ring trilogy.
Suppress those negative thoughts, Glen. ‘u^
…And, while we’re at it, lets try to wrap our heads around the concept of context; that technology, for example, has different contexts, and that to question it or its fruits, such as in some contexts, doesn’t necessarily mean one is against it, and, say, ‘pro-cave-dwelling’, or ‘republican’, etc.. Reality is, naturally, not black-and-white.
Alas, these kinds of things should go without saying in a supposedly mostly-adult forum.
‘Falling back to default’ as it were, despite these kinds of qualifications– in the style of wilful ignorance or wilful obstinacy perhaps– makes me think of ‘worm brain’, seeing as you mentioned ‘worm tongue’– not that I’m suggesting that of you or anyone else.
Don’t forget forked, too. ^u^
I always like your stuff, OFM. I have finally given up on Caelan, who is no longer entertaining due to his refusal to learn anything whatsoever.
If Caelan had been around at the dawn of human history, he would have been the one caveman who constantly preached against the use of stone tools and fire… while happily eating sliced cooked meat scraps, left by his fellow cave dwellers, when they weren’t looking.
Wormtongue, indeed!
The wise speak only of what they know, Gríma son of Gálmód. A witless worm have you become. Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man till the lightning falls.
— Gandalf, The Two Towers
BTW there is someone who has the handle of Killian who comments over at realclimate.org who sounds a lot like Caelan…
Coincidence? Too many trolls too little time to waste on their BS and the regulars over at realclimate already do a good job of ripping him or her to shreds!
mm-mm meat-scraps
I can’t say that I have ‘finally given up on you’, Nathanael, because I don’t normally read your stuff, except for your trolls casted my way. Maybe your commentary will improve, but I have my doubts after reading some other stuff of yours. Feel free to assuage them if you wish, and can.
A thoughtful piece by a person who knows the law and has a good grasp of the politics:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-litman-mueller-firing-20170921-story.html
The author is just about dead sure correct that the D’s won’t win enough seats to successfully impeach Trump, but I’m not giving up hope that Mueller or somebody else will uncover enough stinky on Trump to force him to resign, or at least put enough R’s in DC in a position such that they are forced to either turn on Trump or give up their own political careers.
I do not mean Republicans on the hot seat in competitive districts and states would vote to impeach him, but rather that they would support somebody else, just about anybody else for the nomination next time, and publicly denounce him, etc, towards the end of his term, in order to defend themselves.
His chance of winning a second term, barring extraordinary good luck on his part, is now just about zero, and his chance of even getting the R nomination for a second term doesn’t look very good anymore.
I’m thinking all the D’s need to do to mop the floor with the R’s in 2020, the way things are going now, is to run a candidate with a little charisma and a sense of touch for the mood of the country and who is liked or at least respected by the bulk of the people of this country.
The right D at the top of the ticket will have long coattails.
Actually, the weird thing is, I think Trump is going to come out of this term better off politically than the Republicans in Congress, who appear to be trashing their reputation faster than I could possibly believe by wasting their time on quixotic proposals which are (a) doomed to fail and (b) extremely unpopular, and getting lots of airtime talking about how they are trying to do very unpopular things and failing.
There are people that use data from Climate reanalysis to show that we are in a cooling period over the past year or so.
I gathered that data from
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/
NCEP Climate Forecasting System Reanalysis (CFSR)
Temperature at 2 meters (deg C)
Values averaged across World (90S-90N;0E-360E)
—————————————————————————————
This file was generated by Climate Reanalyzer (http://cci-reanalyzer.org)
Climate Change Institute; University of Maine; USA (http://climatechange.umaine.edu)
The data is monthly and I have taken the 12 month centered mean from mid 2013 to the most recent 12 months (last data point is May 2017). What we find is that the trendline for the 12 month running average is about 15 C per century over this (very short) period. Should we be surprised that the rate has slowed a bit from this very fast rate of increase? My answer would be no, nor should we be surprised if there is a short period of cooling after the very substantial temperature increase over such a sort period. Very few climate scientists (maybe none) expect a long term temperature increase of 15 C per century. The 40 year trend based on NOAA data is about 1.7 C per century and the 1979-2016 trend is 1.6 C per century. Until carbon emissions are reduced this trend will continue or perhaps worsen.
Note that the data in the chart is from a climate reanalysis which uses weather models so it is different from empirical data, for those that distrust models, it might be ignored. The long term trend for this reanalysis (1979-2016) is about 1.4 C per century, slightly lower than the empirical temperature data from the NOAA over the same period.
That would be me, I guess.
Facts are facts. The problem is with the interpretation.
Much has been made of the end of the pause and the record warm years of 2015 and 2016, when it is clear that a large part of the blame lies with the very strong El Niño of 2015-16 that built over the quasi El Niño conditions of 2014. It remains to be determined how much of that warming was temporary, and will be cooled down in the post-El Niño.
The post-El Niño cooling, a common feature in the temperature record (see for example the year 2000), has been a lot slower this time, because unlike previous strong El Niño events, this one was not followed by a strong La Niña.
So no, it is not surprising in the least that the annual rate of warming has gone negative after El Niño. It is actually expected. The interesting question here is for how long and how much is the cooling going to proceed. Nobody knows, but it could be several years depending on conditions. It will be interesting to follow this cooling as it has the potential to reinstate the pause.
Take Harvey for example. Those first reports of Harvey being a 1,000 year storm were obviously not correct. This is obvious to me, a hydrologist for 30 years. But everyone else must rely on what the media says. n this case, a very well credited sicentists atthe University of Wisconsin used the tools available to evaluate the worst 24 hour rainfall period of Harvey, that proved to be a 1,000-year storm, and then that went rogue. This 1,000-years storm represented an overnight “core dump” or rainfall. This is what a dying, land bound, stalled out hurricane does; it dumps all of its rain in the central core, at night. Houston saw three of these core dumps on three successive nights. But three 1,000-year storms ion three successive nights is not a 1,000-year storm. As we know now from the good work of the folks at Metstat, this entire event 120 hours of rain, was a 25,000-year storm.
Wow still talking to the Russians? Don’t you realize that distraction is at least half the point of trolling?
Put him on ignore.
Hi Javier,
Well not many expected the trend to continue at 15 C/century (which is in fact the trend for the CFSR 12 month centered running mean from mid 2013 to Nov 2016), so a brief cooling trend would be expected by the mainstream science.
I would also note that the difference between the satellite data and other temperature datasets is not that great. There is very wide variation between RSS and UAH and between earlier and later versions, far more so than the temperature data based on measurements with thermometers. Varying in trend from 1.2 C per century (RSS 6) to 1.8 C (RSS 4) per century over a short 37 year period. The average is about 1.5 C per century.
Base on the data at wood for trees, HADCRUT3 has a trend of about 1.4 C per century and GISTEMP about 1.7 C per century over the 1979-2017 period. The average of these two data sets is about 1.55 C per century.
Only by cherry picking high and low data sets would we see a significant difference between the satellite and thermometer based data sets and note that there is a greater difference between the satellite data sets suggesting they might be less reliable (a 50% difference in trend between the two satellite data sets.)
If we compare the latest GISTEMP and HADCRUT 4 datasets, both have about 1.7C per century of warming over the Jan 1979 to August 2017 period. An average of the most up to date data from UAH, RSS , GISTEMP, and HADCRUT. The average of all 4 datasets over the Jan 1979 to August 2017 period is about 1.6 C per century.
Mistake in comment above UAH6 is 1.2 C/ century from 1979-2017 and RSS4 is 1.8 C per century from 1979-2017.
Hi Dennis,
You prefer BEST, and I prefer UAH. A question of preferences as nobody can demonstrate now that one of them is more correct than the other. I worry about land coverage, sea surface coverage, the issue of sea surface versus marine air temperatures, and urban heat island effect, to all of which satellites are impervious. Perhaps we will be able to agree on reanalysis. That remains to be seen.
Past temperatures is not an issue. We can both agree that the world has warmed at ~ 0.15°C/decade, give or take. The issue is future temperatures, and it is obvious that this is a matter subject to a lot of uncertainty.
It is interesting what the UK Met Office said 5 days ago:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/2017/a-pacific-flip-triggers-the-end-of-the-recent-slowdown
“The slowdown in the rise of average global temperature had been observed in the recent temperature record, but with the last three record years, this slowdown has ceased.
Prof Stephen Belcher said: “After a period during the early 2000’s when the rise in global mean temperature slowed, the values in 2015 and 2016 broke records and passed 1 °C above pre-industrial levels. Data from the Met Office shows that the long-term rate of global warming has now returned to the level seen in the second half of the 20th century.”
Although there has been scientific debate about the exact framing of the so-called ‘slowdown’, by looking at rolling 15-year trends, the Met Office confirmed that while the globe remained at near record warmth, the rate of global warming did slow between 1999 and 2014, but now this rate has picked up once more.
Global temperatures have risen since pre-industrial times (1850–1900) by around 1 °C. The influences of anthropogenic greenhouse gas release and aerosols explain much of this increase but natural variations in climate, such as the influence of El Niño, mean that the observed temperature rise isn’t even from year to year.
Although global temperatures remained at near record levels throughout, variations in decadal climate in the Pacific led to the slowdown in the rise of Global Mean Surface Temperature.
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) – a pattern of warm and cool phases in Pacific sea-surface temperature – can persist for a decade or more. Coinciding with the slowdown, the PDO has been in a negative phase which increases the subduction of heat to temporarily reduce the rate of anthropogenic climate change from greenhouse gases.
Professor Adam Scaife is head of monthly to decadal prediction at the Met Office Hadley Centre. He said: “The end of the recent slowdown in global warming is due to a flip in Pacific sea-surface temperatures. This was due to a change in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation which entered its positive phase, warming the tropics, the west coast of North America and the globe overall.”
My, oh my! Things I’ve been saying all along. The pause is real, and it was due to natural climate oscillations that can stop global warming on its tracks. These oscillations necessarily have to contribute also to warming when they are in the opposite phase.
However it is not so clear that the PDO is back to its positive phase as prof. Scaife says. The PDO is very much affected by ENSO, but it is back to ~ zero as of last month, so we will see going forward if the negative phase has ended or not. Also the AMO looks like it might be turning down in the near future. If both turn negative the world is going to have a very hard time warming, which I suppose is good news to everybody.
Another interesting thing is this chart from the UK MetOffice article about the rate of change that accompanies the article. I am so surprised that the rate of warming for the 1980-2010 period is so different and so much higher than the rate of warming for the 1915-1950 period that I just became totally convinced of the huge effect that our emissions are having on the warming rate of the planet since 1950. Amazing. That perverse CO2 is turning the world into an oven. I mean, who could dare say that those two periods present a similar rate of warming despite so different emissions?
Hi Javier,
The change in temperature depends more on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and the relationship is logarithmic, the water vapor feedback is a very well understood physical phenomenon and is driven by increasing atmospheric CO2 and the well understood physical phenomenon governing that relationship.
I have been saying all along that a claim that mainstream climate scientists believe there is no natural variability is false. It is the long term trend that is important as in the chart below. Also the AMO may have an effect, but it is easily included in simplified models and when it turns positive then it works with the CO2 forcing and rates of warming increase, so any pause would be followed by increased warming rates.
The warming is based on concentration rather than emissions.
Chart below shows NOAA Global Land Ocean Temp, trend 1.76 C per century for past 30 years.
Hi Dennis,
We don’t know by how much, because otherwise we would not say ECS is 1.5-4.5. Water vapor is not so well understood because unlike CO2 it is not well distributed, so its effect can be high at places and very low at others. And we have no idea of clouds. Do you know that a 1% decrease in cloud cover would completely negate any forcing increase by human produced GHG’s? And we don’t know if clouds have changed and by how much.
The long term trend has been warming since ~ 1650 AD. And that long term trend is not due to our emissions. Only since 1950 they become important, and only since 1976 we might see a warming effect from them.
Whatever the warming cause, we can only affect our emissions, and every model says the emission reductions we can reasonably make are unlikely to have a noticeable effect on temperatures for a very long time. The more important the natural effect, the less influence we can have on climate, for good or for bad.
Hi Javier,
Using the Mann et al 2008 estimate from 1666 to 1905 (240 years), the temperature trend is 0.1 C per century.
Using BEST Land Ocean data from 1906-1965 the temperature trend increased by a factor of 9 to 0.9 C per century relative to the previous 240 year period. From 1966 to 2015 the rate of warming increases by another 78% to 1.6 C per century, 16 times faster than the 1666 to 1905 rate of warming.
So yes there has been warming for quite a long time after a slow cooling trend after the HCO. The rate of change in temperature has not been very consistent. From 1666-1725 temperature decreased by 0.01 C per century, from 1726-1785 temperature increased at 0.18 C per century, from 1786-1845 a decrease at 0.21 C per century, and from 1846-1905 another decrease of 0.15 per century. So only 60 of the 240 years from 1666 to 1905 saw an increasing trend in temperature (1726-1785), temperature was decreasing slightly over the 120 year period from 1786 to 1905.
Reductions in emissions can reduce future growth in atmospheric CO2 which will reduce future long term increases in global temperature (30 year average temperature) ceteris paribus. I agree uncertainty makes it difficult to predict accurately, which is exactly the reason to be careful, we do not know whether low ECS or high ECS estimates are correct, smart humans make conservative estimates, but use high factors of safety when planning for the future.
If you were building a bridge, would you prefer to use a factor of safety of 2 or 1/2? Assume your children would be using the bridge on a daily basis.
I see you have a lot of faith on the reconstruction of those old instrumental temperatures.
I have more faith on some proxy reconstructions like this one from Moberg et al., 2005. They show a 1000-year peridiocity in temperatures that has been observed also for the first 6 millennia of the Holocene, and evident in drift ice records in the North Atlantic.
They show we are in a natural warm period likely to last until ~ 2100. Obviously if scientists assume most of the observed warming is anthropogenic, they will reach the wrong conclusions.
So far the risk is imaginary, and I don’t think we should worry much about imaginary risks until we have better evidence that they are real. I mean we are talking about a problem that has been known for the past 35 years, and scientists have not been able to come with convincing evidence for any catastrophic outcome in a relevant time frame. In fact doomsday keeps being postponed.
Hi Javier,
What is the cause of the “1000 year” cycle proposed by Moberg?
Without any underlying theory that can be falsified it tells us very little.
Also the Moberg paper is Northern hemisphere temperatures. We are interested in a Global reconstruction.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v433/n7026/full/nature03265.html?foxtrotcallback=true
Also, Moberg et al use wavelets which produces a dimensionless result and then must use the instrumental record to put temperatures onto their reconstruction.
Looks a bit dodgey if one does not trust the instrumental record (which is what you argue all the time, with the exception of satellite temperature data which has all sorts of problems and two different data sets with widely varying trends over a short 38 year period, 1.2 C per century (UAH6) vs 1.8 C per century (RSS4), for TLT from Jan 1979 to July 2017.
The Mann et al 2008 estimate is Global not just Northern Hemisphere so apples to oranges. See
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/research/res_pages/MannPNAS2008/index.html
I use the EIV Land+Ocean reconstruction from paper above.
See
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/supplements/MultiproxyMeans07/data/reconstructions/eiv/
The “gl_had_eiv” Composite data should be used.
I mistakenly used the land construction earlier.
Hi Dennis,
As with any observed phenomenon, the possible cause says nothing about the reality of the observed phenomenon. The seasons have been known to mankind for hundreds of thousands of years before there was an explanation, and that didn’t make them any more real.
That said the most likely cause is a millennial solar variability cycle reflected in solar proxies.
Hi Javier,
We only have decent data for solar output back to about 1600, so any hypothesis about solar variability being the cause of any supposed millennial temperature cycle is highly speculative at best. Any peer reviewed literature based on solar physics which supports your hypothesis? The proxy temperature data has lots of problems as far as trying to reconstruct global temperatures. There are not many global temperature reconstructions, prior to 500 CE. Moberg et al 2005 is Northern hemisphere only.
OK, Javier just became the third person I put on ignore, because Dennis still hasn’t banned him (as he should).
Today is the last day of summer (astronomically speaking) for the northern hemisphere and tomorrow will be the first day of summer for the southern hemisphere. As of today the nights will be longer than the days in the northern hemisphere and shorter than the days in the southern hemisphere. From my perspective, PV system daily yields will be going down in the northern hemisphere and up in the southern hemisphere, except in very specific circumstances where the system has been optimized to for winter production for whatever reason.
Happy Autumnal Equinox everyone! 🙂
Whoa I knew Chevy Truck Month had started again but TIL summer started in the southern hemisphere. ??????
http://www.startribune.com/duke-energy-reverses-will-disclose-coal-ash-disaster-maps/446882413/
Of course very few if any coal boosters own property immediately down stream from coal ash dumps unless I’m badly fooled, lol.
The truth has a way of eventually finding a route to the sun.
Why I haven’t yet spent any of my limited cash on a personal and farm pv system:
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-09-21/thermal-optimization/
The relevant but generally overlooked FACT is that hardly anybody is better off personally or environmentally spending five or ten grand on a personal pv system than he would be spending the same money on upgrading the energy efficiency of his home and or business.
There are quite a lot of projects I can think of that as an environmentally responsible citizen compelled to pay attention to his bank account that should be nearer the top of my ” to do ” list than installing a pv system.
Beyond the immediate cost benefit analysis, there’s the additional indisputable fact to be considered that every year that passes means I can get a solar system of my own for less money.
We should talk a little about how we can work to improve our personal energy efficiency as home owners and landlords, and as business owners or managers.
Gotta get outside and take care of some chores for now, but will be back later with excerpts from this link.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-09-21/thermal-optimization/
Yeah. Superinsulation (which requires an HRV) is usually the best payback you can get.
A good article on the psychological reasons why there is climate change denial. There are some suggestions about how to overcome it, though they aren’t as strong as the reasons it exists. Basically change how we present the concept so it doesn’t trigger the psychological resistance.
http://e360.yale.edu/features/how_can_we_make_people_care_about_climate_change
There is no such thing as climate change denial. Everybody admits that the climate changes.
And like clockwork, the resident denier spews something in response to this. (Which I didn’t read because he’s on ignore now).
As I always say, the baseline scenario now is the end of humanity, but it’s *trivial* to replace this with a golden age of free electricity. Solar and wind and hydro are *cheaper* than fossil fuels. Electric cars are *better* than gasoline cars. Batteries will soon be cheaper than fossil fuels. We just have to get off our duffs and switch.
And those who invest correctly in the transition will strike it rich, too — surely that should be an incentive for some…
https://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/a-dizzying-week-of-trump-russia-revelations?mbid=nl_Daily092217&CNDID=48654290&spMailingID=11984057&spUserID=MTc4OTMyODYzNjk0S0&spJobID=1241944400&spReportId=MTI0MTk0NDQwMAS2
“The possible outcomes of the Russia investigation have always been wildly divergent. On one end of the spectrum, it is possible that the Russian government penetrated deep inside the Trump campaign—perhaps with the candidate’s knowledge”
” it is possible that Vladimir Putin’s attack was essentially limited to the hacking and dumping of e-mails from the D.N.C. and John Podesta, that Russia never had any illegal assistance from Trump or his associates, and that the entire Russia-conspiracy-theory industry will look enormously foolish in the years ahead.”
“Even Trump himself, according to some reporting, may have more to fear from Mueller probing the legality of the Trump Organization’s financial dealings than his campaign’s possible interactions with Russia”
” But this week’s disclosures moved the theorizing about Trump and Russia one step closer to becoming a politically devastating blow to Trump’s Presidency.”
Matt Drudge is a classic canditate to be “turned”. He’s a loner, with obvious personal weaknesses / secrets, who has a lot of influence.
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/09/20/how-matt-drudge-became-pipeline-russian-propaganda/217989
The GRU knows its business.
Media Matters for America is just one more arm of the Soros Machine trying to install leftist thought into every institution and aspect of American society.
Hey Georgy Porgy,
I think this is the message George Soros might send to you in reply…
Nyald ki a kutyának a seggét!
Fat Al and Soros are conspiring to create a one world government and destroy capitalism by promoting AGW.
And all their friends make money selling propaganda books.
(sarc)
As soon as I see the word “Soros” in a comment I know I am in the presence of a true dingbat.
I hate to be rude but some things just make me crazy.
Sorry.
Ding, ding, ding, ding!
.
Good discussion over at realclimate.org
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/09/is-there-really-still-a-chance-for-staying-below-1-5-c-global-warming/
Is there really still a chance for staying below 1.5 °C global warming?
Filed under: Climate Science — stefan @ 22 September 2017
There has been a bit of excitement and confusion this week about a new paper in Nature Geoscience, claiming that we can still limit global warming to below 1.5 °C above preindustrial temperatures, whilst emitting another ~800 Gigatons of carbon dioxide. That’s much more than previously thought, so how come? And while that sounds like very welcome good news, is it true? Here’s the key points…
Anyone interested can read those points over at realclimate.org but here’s the thing:
Does it all matter?
We still live in a world on a path to 3 or 4 °C global warming, waiting to finally turn the tide of rising emissions. At this point, debating whether we have 0.2 °C more or less to go until we reach 1.5 °C is an academic discussion at best, a distraction at worst. The big issue is that we need to see falling emissions globally very very soon if we even want to stay well below 2 °C. That was agreed as the weaker goal in Paris in a consensus by 195 nations. It is high time that everyone backs this up with actions, not just words.
The point is this, anyone who still thinks that this planet remains viable for 8 plus billion humans in a 3 or 4 °C global warming world has zero understanding of ecosystem tipping points and feedbacks, and certainly doesn’t grasp non linear dynamics and Chaos Theory.
Note: With apologies to Monty Python, I direct this slightly modified quote to the assorted trolls that are both regulars here or just drive by visitors…
“I fart in your general direction! Your mothers were hamsters and your fathers smelt of elderberries!”…
…I wave my private parts at your aunties, you cheesy lot of second hand electric donkey bottom biters”
If the Foo shits wear it!
“The point is this, anyone who still thinks that this planet remains viable for 8 plus billion humans in a 3 or 4 °C global warming world has zero understanding of ecosystem tipping points and feedbacks, and certainly doesn’t grasp non linear dynamics and Chaos Theory.”
Dead on, perfectly centered in the bullseye.
As a practical matter, the real question now is not whether we will have catastrophic warming, but rather how much, how soon, and where.
At one time, for a long time, I believed to the bottom of my redneck heart that virtually ALL of us were doomed, or at best least looking at a very few great grandchildren living an eighteenth century life.
Another degree or less of warming will put farmers out of business over many tens of thousands of square miles, using the techniques and equipment available today, growing the crops they grow today. Maybe some adaptation will be possible, but finding water to irrigate, and money to pay for it, on such an expanded scale, is such an unlikely proposition as to make even talking about it a waste of time.
The typical layman keeps thinking an average increase of a degree simply means that it would be a degree warmer day after day. What it really means is that spring comes earlier, but frosts will still arrive on schedule later,more years than not, wiping out crops planted earlier. If you DON’T plant early, weeds get a big start, and the wind and sun take away soil moisture, and then it gets five or ten degrees HOTTER as likely as not, at some critical period during the growing season, reducing yields by half or more……. assuming enough rain continues to fall. Without enough rain,in combination with unusually hot weather, yields often drop to so near zero as to make harvesting a waste of time.
The weather is going to be excessively hot , and excessively dry, in some of the major bread baskets of the world, there’s no escaping that NOW.
Environmentalists who OUGHT to know better, and people who wet their panties because they no longer believe in god but still want to live forever and are desperately scared that maybe having gmo food will increase their chance of getting cancer by one hundredth of one percent are doing everything in their power to make sure FAMINE is a goddamned SERIOUS risk over the coming decades. GMO etc is our single best hope for maintaining production, especially without using excessive amounts of pesticides that are DEMONSTRATED to be major environmental hazards, lol.
But not to fear, some of us will pull thru if we manage to avoid flat out war on the global scale, and that few, in some places, will continue to live reasonably civilized lives in some places, with a little luck. Those in less fortunate places will survive by going back to yesteryear’s ways of getting their bread, with a very few perhaps even managing to go all the way back to hunter gatherer status.
Now here’s an interesting thought. Although most people are abysmally ignorant when it comes to the nuances of physics, geology, biology, geography, climate, etc, quite a substantial percentage of such people are still nevertheless well acquainted with the way things come to pass in history, with the classic horseshoe nail / kingdom lost story being known to almost every one of them.
We all know a happily married couple who met by accident, with only a few minutes difference in their schedule on some long past day meaning they would never have met.
Such little accidents of history change the future the same way that it is sometimes speculated that a butterfly flapping it’s wings back in deep geological or biological time may have changed the entire future course of history.
Countless such historical accidents have set the course of history in part, with the new parts so determined resulting in ever more changes, until we have the PRESENT. It’s sort of like the one you can get from a lady of the evening, damned hard to get rid of.
The thing is that maybe if enough people run with this thought, and try to explain to our less well informed fellows WHY things are spinning out of control environmentally, using ordinary every day experiences and history, rather than talking mostly in terms of chaos theory, which is ENTIRELY over their heads, we might have more success.
Get the horseshoe nail story across, and then the idea of the horseshoe nail times ten, again, times ten again, and maybe culturally literate people will begin to understand that there’s only so much in the way of resources to work with, even as our numbers continue to grow, and as the environment continues to degrade.
In the meantime, luck alone resulted in my home turf being the mountains of the southeastern USA. This appears to be as good a place as any, all things considered. If it gets TOO DRY, we will still get hurricanes, and one thing that will be ready on my farm before I’m gone is a reservoir that can catch ten to twenty acre feet of precious irrigation water pouring off the mountain over the course of a day or two of torrential rain.
MY dam will never wash out, because the reservoir I’m contemplating will be EXCAVATED , for the most part, and off to one side and above the level of the stream that will feed it, and I will have a normally dry canal to divert and funnel part of the stream around the hillside and into it.
Building it means putting six months off and on a few hours a day riding my biggest big boy’s toy, and burning up a couple of thousand gallons of diesel. Other people burn up that much joy riding in motor homes year after year. The reservoir will be more or less forever, and it will produce fish, in normal times, and if we get a New Mexico or Arizona climate here………… who ever lives here will have water enough to raise plenty of beans and corn and potatoes for a family to live without fear of starvation.
That water will flow to five acres of prime bottom land via gravity, lol.
Such measures, properly implemented, are virtually all upside, hardly any down side at all. The reservoir will provide food and recreation, the dry canal will be grassed and grazed, with nut and fruit trees on the shoulders.
Prepping can be like collecting coins. They will always be worth face value, and silver dimes and quarters put away as collector items are now worth fifty times face value for their bullion content, lol.
Environmentalists who OUGHT to know better, and people who wet their panties because they no longer believe in god but still want to live forever and are desperately scared that maybe having gmo food will increase their chance of getting cancer by one hundredth of one percent are doing everything in their power to make sure FAMINE is a goddamned SERIOUS risk over the coming decades. GMO etc is our single best hope for maintaining production, especially without using excessive amounts of pesticides that are DEMONSTRATED to be major environmental hazards, lol.
I might be loling if it weren’t so tragic!
I’m pretty sure those so called ‘Environmentalists’ who are not biologists, ecologists, agronomists, and anthropologists, yet are vehemently against GMOs from a purely ideological stance are just ignorant of basic science and history. They probably aren’t students of natural history in general let alone the subset of natural history that encompasses the evolution of great apes and how Homo sapiens became a tool maker, learned to use fire, domesticated animals, and started genetically modifying plants and animals by artificial selection and animal husbandry at the dawn of the age of agriculture. Which eventually allowed us to develop the the industrial global civilization in which we find ourselves today.
All humans have done, is sped up the process of natural selection (see T.O.E.) which has been genetically modifying organisms for about 3.8 billion years. So yes, we now have a better understanding of biochemistry and genetics than our old friends the Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel and Darwin could have possibly have ever imagined and we now can use tools such as CRISPR to more precisely edit and modify the genome of organisms.
May I suggest to anyone who is against ‘GMOs’ that they simply stop eating altogether and try to subsist on air and water alone!
Note to all the ‘Eeedjits’ out there! Being pro GMOs is not the same as blindly supporting the politics and economic policies that allow certain global multinational corporations to control and patent GMOs to the detriment of the environment and all humans. My personal view is that all aspects of GMOs should be open source, but THAT is a completely different discussion.
Cheers!
Edit: BTW, good discussion about cancer.
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/into-the-dark-land
Into the Dark Land
A Conversation with Siddhartha Mukherjee
Hi Fred,
Of all the people I have ever run across on the net, you are one half dozen or so I would most like to have around as a neighbor and campfire drinking companion.
You could contribute more to a conversation around a campfire than 99.999 percent of all the people I have ever talked to.
So many people know about reality from some particular pov, but damned near every body is like one of the blind men examining the elephant, knowing nothing about the elephant other than the part he experiences PERSONALLY or professionally .
It’s so seldom that I run across somebody who actually knows something about poverty FIRST HAND and the REAL ways people must deal with it; about the physical and life sciences; about the realities of the agricultural sciences in particular; and who knows plenty about politics and is YET ready to SAY what he believes, regardless of cultural solidarity………
People who KNOW ENOUGH to be QUALIFIED to think about such issues as GMO’s versus public health and the environment who are also willing to say what they know and think regardless of what their political peer group thinks and believes are so rare that I don’t run across one more than once a decade.
It’s so seldom that I run across somebody who actually knows something about poverty FIRST HAND and the REAL ways people must deal with it; about the physical and life sciences; about the realities of the agricultural sciences in particular; and who knows plenty about politics and is YET ready to SAY what he believes, regardless of cultural solidarity………
I feel equally at ease in a Rio de Janeiro favela as I do with royalty in Denmark, political leaders in various countries and captains of industry around the world. I do not distinguish between the worth of a digger of latrines or the head of a university’s medical research lab. I have thoroughly enjoyed the company of all of the above at one time or another.
Having grown up as a card carrying member of three wildly distinct cultures and during my early years as an adult, having tried to fit in as a member of a number of professional and academic ‘CLUBS’. It finally dawned on me, that I was, what for most purposes, qualified me as an all around misfit. So I ended up following the Groucho Marx doctrines embodied in the following quotes.
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.
Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
Groucho Marx
Cheers!
YES!
We ought to establish our own little club of misfits, and not allow anybody in except those with backgrounds similar to yours and mine.
Mine is not so diverse culturally. I’ve never met any royals even in a greeting line.
And I have never traveled the world.
But as Thoreau said, paraphrased, I’ve seen it all right here in my own village, which extends as far as the Big Apple to the north and south as far as Georgia in terms of knowing people from share croppers, people starving on substandard wages, alcoholics, murdering psychopaths, veritable saints, tradesmen, true believing fundamentalists, etc right on up thru university society and into the lower rungs of the wealthy.
I have two dogs again that are always glad to see me, and at least fifty substantial books on hand that I haven’t had time to read yet, ranging from historical novels to real history to current politics to various technical treatises involving nature in general.
Old age is slowing me down, big time, and the DESIRE to know more is fading away.
It’s taking me a couple of weeks now to read what I used to knock out in three or four days.
But I’ll still manage to finish forty or more worthwhile books before this year is out.
I’ve known some very wealthy, and I agree with Hemingway:
“The rich are different from you and I.
.
.
.
.
They have more money…”.
I’ve noticed one sad similarity: they’re prone to believing really stupid stuff that supports their narrow worldview. For instance, I had one tell me with great sincerity that outside agitators (apparently Russian) had fomented the 1968 Democratic convention riots.
Another classic example: the owner of the Chicago Tribune, Col. McCormick, who believed that commie sympathizers in the US government were holding back Chiang Kai Shek from coming back from Taiwan and retaking China from Mao.
And, of course, the Kochs, who I think are sincere about their loony beliefs, started by their father, who helped found the John Birch Society.
“The John Birch Society (JBS) was a radical right-wing organisation[2] founded by candy manufacturer Robert W. Welch, Jr.Wikipedia’s W.svg in 1958 as a last line of defense against the massively ongoing, clandestine Communist takeover of the United States. An early book by Welch, The Politician, became controversial after it became widely known that an early manuscript included the accusation that President Dwight Eisenhower was a “conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy.”
It’s basically the KKK but with a thin, stringy veneer of political theory (read: more fears of fluorinated water controlling their brains). They basically started libertarianism,[3] which took the cult-ish route of hiding the core tenets from newcomers.
Oil baron Fred C. Koch was also among the original members.”
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society
Come on Nick! This is the 21st century. The Kochs are almost dead… We live in a new age of technological disruption. Wealth is being generated by venture capitalism investing in ‘SMART’ tech savvy startup companies.
This is the age of Google, Amazon, Facebook etc… all powered by the internet!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ8HVWAOTEk
The World of Bowls
Well this must explain why I’m not a member of Amazon Prime. I still have both of my 20th century bowls I made in 8th grade wood shop. I know it’s hard to believe, but they both still work. Maintenance includes cleaning them when needed.
I know it’s hard to believe, but they both still work. Maintenance includes cleaning them when needed.
How quaint! Sad to say though, you are living in the past… 😉
You should see the looks I get when I carry things around with them on my head. I know their jealous.
We. Can. Reverse. It. We can get back to 1.5C by aggressive fixation of carbon which is currently in the air.
We have the technology. We just need the political will.
The Arctic is setting up to be as warmer as or warmer than last year. Anomalies over 3 degrees C are predicted for most of this week. The refreeze is going pretty slowly.
And the Antarctic is now starting to melt from a record low starting point, so overall global ice is about to start setting new low records, after a short period where it had been a bit above 2016 (though that year was significantly lower than previous ones).
So how much of the warming has been caused by our emissions?
It is generally considered that the warming in the 1915-1950 period was essentially natural, as human emissions at the time were very small.
We can approach the issue by considering that natural oscillations that continue to operate are responsible for part of the observed warming. The excess warming that can be attributed to human causes then is about 0.05°C/decade, or half a degree per century. That works out at about 0.38°C since 1950.
This is a far more realistic approach to the problem of attribution than to consider that all the warming since 1950 is of human origin. By reducing emissions we might be able to affect a small fraction of the human caused warming, but not the natural warming.
Or one can do an actual analysis looking at data to confirm or refute a number of different hypotheses about what is behind the observed levels of warming. This can easily be done in a spreadsheet using a multiple linear regression of global land ocean temperature (our dependent variable) against a number of independent variables such as:
natural log of atmospheric CO2
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO)
Southern Oscillation Index (SOI aka ENSO)
Aerosols (from volcanoes and pollution)
Total Solar Irradiance (TSI)
Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)
When such a regression is done for all of these 6 independent variables over the period from 1870 to 2012 (the only period where we have data for all seven dependent and independent variables), we find that all of these independent variables are significant at the 99.99% confidence level, with the exception of the PDO. Regression output below including all 6 independent variables listed above. Link to spreadsheet below
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4nArV09d398aDd3aDZGWDNfYjg/view?usp=sharing
The Model without PDO, the CASAT model regression output below.
Chart with CASAT model. Note this model was inspired by the work of Webhubbletelescope at Context Earth. See CSALT model at link below.
http://contextearth.com/2013/10/26/csalt-model/
Note that I have found that AMO can replace LOD in the model and that including both AMO and LOD, that LOD is no longer statistically significant, note however I did not include a lag of 7 or 8 years for LOD which might explain the lack of statistical significance.
EDIT: I re-checked with a 7 year lag for LOD and when such a lag is assumed, then the LOD becomes statistically significant, which brings us to a CSALTA model, with the A at the end being for “AMO”.
Chart below.
The idea of a lag, made me go back to check on PDO with an added lag.
If a one year lag between the PDO data and temperature is added then the PDO becomes statistically significant (as was the case for LOD with a 7 year lag). That gives us a CSALTAP model (P is PDO).
Note that as more and more terms are added, it becomes less clear that the AMO will have a big effect as changes in ENSO, LOD, and or PDO might counteract the negative phase of the AMO. Ocean heat content is another factor which should be considered, though the time series is short and there are many data problems.
Dennis – you said “Ocean heat content is another factor which should be considered”. But isn’t that not just another factor, but the single most important one. All the circulation oscillations – ENSO, PDO, AMO, IDPO – just change how heat is taken up in the oceans versus the atmosphere. They aren’t, as far as I can tell, changing the overall energy balance of the earth, which is gaining heat. There may be some change in how heat gets drawn down into the deep oceans versus how hot the atmosphere needs to get to achieve a radiative balance, but equally it’s not clear that putting heat into the oceans versus the atmosphere is necessarily a better option based on past extinction events. My experience, from much smaller systems admittedly, has been the bad parts of the cycles, especially when there’s two or three that can reinforce, are much worse overall than the good bits are good. A steady rising linear trend might be preferred to a sudden fast cycle increase on a flat trend, but add a few interacting cycle on an exponential trend with a bit of noise and you risk the really bad events from which there is no recovery.
Even a single cycle on a linear trend can make you think everything is fine if you only get to see half a cycle – things look flat, and then along comes the next half cycle and it’s panic stations – and you only get to see the pattern once the dust settles.
Hi George,
A very simplistic interpretation would be to focus on the AMO only and argue that from 1970 to 2000 there was a positive phase of the AMO which lead to rapid warming and that from 2000-2030 a negative phase for the AMO will lead to less rapid warming. This is far too simple for many reasons. One reason is that there are other cycles such as ENSO, PDO, along with QBO, NAO, changes in the length of day and perhaps others that will influence how rapidly heat is stored and/or released from the ocean.
Yes the heat stored in the ocean is important, but we don’t have very accurate long term measurements of ocean heat content (there are many conflicting estimates) so I cannot include it in a model.
There is indeed a great deal of uncertainty about these various ocean cycles and predicting what they will look like in the future is difficult.
Looking at longer term trends such as 30 year or 60 year temperature averages may give us a better idea of what the overall temperature trend is likely to be. For the Earth system the heat flows into and out of the ocean over time and the rate of heating or cooling of the deep ocean is difficult to model (or it is for me).
The very simple model I have done allows us to look at CO2 alone and guess at the future trend due to CO2, using land only temperatures might give us a better guess at ECS rather than simply TCR.
So are you agreeing or not with the statement “All the circulation oscillations – ENSO, PDO, AMO, IDPO – just change how heat is taken up in the oceans versus the atmosphere.”?
Hi George,
Yes the various ocean cycles (though they are far from simple sinusoidal relations) will affect how quickly heat moves into and out of the deep ocean. So conceptually I agree, my point was that we do not have good long term measurements of ocean temperature (except the surface temperature) over a wide enough area to make very good estimates of how ocean heat content has changed over time.
The very simple CSALTAP (A for AMO and P for PDO which have been added to the original CSALT model at the context earth blog from circa 2013) can be used to look at trends for temperature change due to CO2 alone and “everything” (CSALTAP) over 30 year periods. The difference I will call “non-CO2 temperature trend”.
I did a regression on the data from 1870 to 2005 so I have a short “out of sample” section from 2006 to 2015. I only have complete actual data until 2012 and fill in missing aerosol and LOD data from 2013 to 2015 using the 7 year average of the data for aerosols and LOD from 2006-2012 to fill in missing data.
The trends for the whole model and CO2 alone (using only the CO2 coefficient from the full model) are found for 30 year intervals (1856-1905) and 32 year intervals thereafter (through 2012) and the non-CO2 trend is the model trend minus the CO2 trend (trend is temperature trend over 30 or 32 years). This “non-CO2” temperature trend is highly variable over 30 year periods from 1856 to 2012 as shown in the table below with temperature trend for the model in degrees C per century.
————non-CO2 CO2
1857-1886, -0.29 ,—0.17
1886-1915, -0.42 ,—0.26
1916-1947, 1.14 ,—0.27
1948-1979, -0.64 ,—0.66
1980-2012, 0.45 ,—1.17
Link to spreadsheet below for CSALTAP model
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4nArV09d398STl1UkY5YUIyYkk/view?usp=sharing
The concept that there may be a negative phase of the combined non-CO2 factors from 2015 to 2045 of between 0.2 C/century and 0.6 C per century which would reduce the warming due to CO2 (assumed at about 1.2 C per century), might reduce the rate of warming from 2015 to 2045 to about 0.5 C per century to 1 C per century with a mean guess of about 0.75 C per century. After 2045 we might expect the positive phase of the non-CO2 factors would lead to higher rates of warming, though perhaps emissions will be rising a slower rate by that time. Hard to know.
Such an optimistic scenario requires one to ignore a number of potential added feedbacks such as reduced aerosols as less fossil fuel is burned, as well as lower albedo due to ice sheet melt, sea ice loss, and reduced snow cover, greenhouse gas releases from increased forest fires and release from soil as permafrost melts.
All of these factors are not well understood and are difficult to predict accurately, other problems include clouds aerosols and their interaction in a warming World.
Our knowledge is limited in the complex interaction of many systems which are themselves understood in a very incomplete manner.
Dennis,
If curious take a look at this article
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/EI-D-15-0014.1
Does an Intrinsic Source Generate a
Shared Low-Frequency Signature in
Earth’s Climate and Rotation Rate?
Hi WHUT,
Thanks. That paper suggests for Global Land Ocean temperatures the LOD lag is 4 years, rather than 8 years.
Except that they are obviously not independent. Your assumptions are wrong from the start.
Hi Javier,
In the sense that everything is connected, I suppose one could argue that there are no independent variables. This is just a conventional statistical name for a variable.
I guess you would need to clarify which assumptions are wrong.
Do you mean because I have not used the “60 year” time period. Note that for the regression, no time period is chosen.
You should look at the spreadsheet.
The Aerosol data is from GISS
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer/
Temperature from BEST
http://berkeleyearth.org/data/
AMO from
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/timeseries/AMO/
TSI from
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koppg/TSI/TSI_TIM_Reconstruction.txt
Length of Day (LOD)
http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/earthor/ut1lod/lod-1623.html
CO2 from Law Dome Ice core to 1958 and then Mauna Loa and Global Data
ENSO data from
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/teleconnections/enso/indicators/sst.php
PDO data from
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/teleconnections/pdo/
Javier said:
“Except that they are obviously not independent. Your assumptions are wrong from the start.”
He’s ignore-blocking me so he won’t see this, but Javier doesn’t know what he is talking about. He hasn’t done any of the heavy lifting of actually working the regression.
All he does is screen scrape for information and then twists and distorts it until it supports his political position.
The positive aspect is that probably a lot of other other people have set the ignore flag on him as well.
Hi whut,
Javier claims I am wrong very shortly, without argument, no doubt because he does not have one. I have simply used his observations that PDO, ENSO, AMO and other natural cycles are responsible for warming along with other analyses showing aerosols, LOD, and TSI are important as well.
When all of the variables are included with appropriate lags (7 years for LOD and 1 year for PDO) then seven factors are statistically significant for Global land ocean temperatures all of which confirms the many different independent analyses suggesting that the natural log of atmospheric carbon dioxide, AMO, SOI, TSI, Aerosols, LOD, and PDO have an influence on global temperatures is correct. The relative strengths of these various factors are determined by a least squares multilinear regression. As you know this is not really a heavy lift for someone with basic analytical skills.
The chart below shows the model vs data for the CSALTAP model (AMO and PDO added to your CSALT model). The regression was done over some number of years and the final x years of the model are “out of sample”. Javier likes to say we need “predictions” of the model. This model can be held fixed in the future to see how well it does.
I wonder if Javier can guess from the chart where the regression stopped? It was earlier than 2015, but certainly is not clear from the chart when this occurred.
Can anyone pick the year from looking at model vs data ( a range of years will do)?
Probably stopped after the last major volcanic event, ~1993?
Hi Paul,
The regression was on 1870-2005, so the 2006-2015 estimates are “out of sample”. Note that 2013- 2015 used filled in aerosol data based on the average of 2006-2012 aerosol data. It is not clear if aerosols have increased or decreased over those years.
Dennis – that’s a pretty impressive fit. Is it possible to break out the contribution from each of the parameters – e.g. as a stacked graph or even just averaged over say 30 and 100 years?
Apologies if this is shown somewhere else I miss a lot of this stuff from skipping over once Javier plasters his dishonest, self aggrandising bullshit all over the place (which presumably is part of his me-me-me agenda).
Here is another approach to breaking out the contributions
http://contextearth.com/2015/01/30/csalt-re-analysis/
and this one is bordering on over-fitting, but interesting
http://contextearth.com/2014/02/05/relative-strengths-of-the-csalt-factors/
The bottom-line is that likely every one of the temperature wiggles is explainable, and that the CO2 contribution is unmistakable.
Hi George,
Thanks. Just a re-do of work started by Webhubbletelescope at context Earth.
I recently redid the model with annual TSI data (earlier I had taken the centered 11 year average for TSI to look at long term changes rather than the 11 year solar cycle.
I also dropped the Ocean terms (AMO, ENSO, and PDO), reducing the model to Carbon, Aerosols, Length of Day (LOD), and TSI (total solar irradiance). This I label the CALT model and I also substitute HADCRU4 for BEST in the analysis. The regression is on data from 1850-2012 (no Aerosol data after 2012) and I substitute the 2012 data for 2013-2016 for aerosols when calculating the model value for 2013-2016. The slope of the trend line from 1850-2016 is very close and the model under predicts temperature for 2015 and 2016.
Dennis – if I understand correctly the HADCRUT data set use only actual measurements and do not interpolate where data is sparse, as other sets do. So they miss out on a lot of the effect from the poles and generally give lower warming overall – is that your understanding?
I can understand leaving out the circulation effects if you think they are not independent variables, but I’d be interested to see how they affect things. I guess if they are cross correlated you can end up with parameters that cancel out each other and give far too big individual effects (e.g. a big positive cancels a big negative, even if the combined effect is correct – at least in a linear system), but maybe that is a way to check for such inter dependence. The understanding that these cycles play seems to be growing – so natural variation is maybe not so much and the interacting cycles is a bigger influence. I’ve read a couple of recent papers now that indicate we should expect a faster warming as the PDO is now positive, and maybe faster still if the IDPO switches phase (I don’t think you ever have included that, and I’ve actually seen very little about it, maybe becaause the data is so sparse).
Hi George,
Just tried HADCRUT4 for another data set, I usually use the BEST data, The PDO is not statistically significant when ENSO and AMO are included, though I recently realized the LOD lag is about 4 years rather than 8 for Global land ocean temperature. It turns out PDO is not significant with the 4 year LOD lag, TCR for CO2 is 2.1 C for doubled CO2. Model is CSALTA, with the extra A for the included AMO (detrended).
1) I don’t see how the PDO can’t have an effect on temperature – a large chunk of the world’s oceans are warmer or cooler that must feed into air temperature – so presumably AMO (and/or part of the ENSO signal) is taking all the correlation. What would happen if you just added all the indices together and correlated against that.
2) Why are you using CO2 rather than CO2e? As I understand it the aerosol effect and non CO2 GHG effect tend to cancel out, so just using CO2 is a reasonable approximation. But if you are specifically including aerosols shouldn’t the methanes etc. also be included?
Hi George,
CO2e could be used, but I don’t have all the data needed before 1979. I could use a model based estimate from MAGICC6, but that’s the best I would be able to do. Much of the data is not in a format that is easily used.
When PDO is included with the other factors, it is not statistically significant, it is possible there is a lag as there is with Length of day, perhaps including ENSO, hides the effect of PDO.
I was surprised there was not a statistically significant influence from PDO.
When AMO and PDO are added and we regress against the sum (including CSALT in the regression where A is aerosols) the AMO plus PDO sum is not statistically significant (tstat is less than one).
Note that the aerosol forcing is mostly due to volcanoes rather than industrial pollution. CO2 is the dominant forcing for greenhouse gases at least from 1979 to 2016.
Hi George,
CSALT model below, TCR is 2.17 C for doubling of CO2 (Carbon, SOI, Aerosols, LOD, and TSI).
Hi George,
If we leave out all of the oceanic cycles (including ENSO), we have the CALT Model (carbon, aerosols, LOD with 4 year lag, and TSI). TCR is 2.26 C for a doubling of CO2, regression on data from 1871-2012 (same as CSALT above). In all cases clicking on chart will enlarge it.
Hi George,
Probably simpler than you meant, but I added together AMO, PDO, and SOI indices, for an “Ocean index”. That was added to the CALT Model to create CALTO, the ocean index was statistically significant (though adding the three indices together seems rather arbitrary). The TCR is 2.24 in this case.
Any of the RCP downloads has data for all GHGs back to pre-industrial.
Hi George,
Using CO equiv as calculated by MAGICC 6 for RCP4.5 changes very little in the regression. For CO2 e the TCR drops to 1.97 C for a doubling of CO2 equiv, in 1871 (start of model) CO2 equiv was 284 ppm so double would be 568 ppm. (The average CO2 eq from 1871-1900 was 285 ppm). The RCP4.5 scenario reaches that level in 2067 (CO2 at 524 ppm).
CMIP3 model mean is about 2.3 C above pre-industrial in 2067 and in 2015 1.14 C above pre-industrial with BEST LO about 1.13 C above 1871-1900 mean temperature.
So my simple model underestimates the temperature increase relative to the CMIP3 ensemble mean estimated by MAGICC6.
http://live.magicc.org/
Hi Dennis,
First, a regression doesn’t prove anything. Different regressions can be done and there is no way to know which is the real one, if any. Clearly having a higher correlation does not mean being more correct. Correlation is not causation.
Second, while TSI, aerosol, and CO2 are independent variables not affected significantly by changes in temperatures, the same cannot be said of AMO, PDO, and LoD, where cause and effect cannot be distinguished. If the variables are not independent one falls into circular reasoning which is poison to science. The variables might covariate but not for the reasons assumed.
Your efforts don’t prove anything, and have nothing to do with science. They just give you your own reason to believe in what you believe.
Hi Javier,
One typically tries to confirm hypotheses with observational evidence. It is interesting that you have mentioned AMO, LOD etc as being natural cycles which may be the cause of the “natural warming”. Or do you believe the “natural warming” is the cause of changes in AMO, and LOD? You are not being very clear on which hypotheses you think are correct, or what those hypotheses are.
A major hypothesis that you return to on many occasions is a 60-75 year natural cycle in global temperatures, what is the cause of this cycle in your opinion?
You have mentioned things such as AMO. PDO, ENSO, and LOD in connection with the 60-75 year cycle.
When they are included in a simple regression, you then reject them. Very difficult to follow your thinking.
Hi Javier,
The trend for HADCRU4 is 0.81 C per century from 1907-2016 (120 years).
For the 60 year cycles we have:
1907-1966 trend is 0.76 C per century
1967-2016 trend is 1.65 C per century
Data link below
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/download.html
Note that your estimate of 0.5 C per century is too low for 1900-2016, the correct estimate is 0.78C per century or 56% higher than your estimate.
Hi Dennis,
If you want to discuss trends you should plot trends, as I have done. Otherwise as trends are very sensitive to the choice of start and end points you can defend anything.
Hi Javier,
Here are the centered 61 year rates of increase in temperature for HADCRUT4 using data from 1850-2016 (centered 61 year rates of change in K per century from 1880-1986). All starting and ending points included.
Prior to 1976 the highest rate was 0.934 K per century, since 1976 the centered 61 year rate of temperature increase has been higher than the 1880-1975 maximum rate in 6 of 11 61 year periods from 1976 to 1986.
I often remark that the environmental question trumps all other questions combined, for reasons that are perfectly obvious to anybody who really understands the environmental crisis.
I just ran across this new site called TransitionVoice, with an article by one Lindsey Curren, who has a way with words.
Here are some of hers.
“You didn’t publicly declare yourself a single-issue voter from here on out — 100% commitment to the climate-and-energy nexus ONLY — and as for everything else: healthcare, education, LGBTQ+, military spending, taxes, immigration, jobs, abortion, whatevs, can all take a WAY back seat.
This shift in politics being because there’s no one to love on a dead planet, no equal rights to win on a dead planet, no wars to fight on a dead planet, no doctors to see on a dead planet, nothing to learn on a dead planet, no genders to opt in or out of on a dead planet, no bodies or babies to save on a dead planet, no government to work with or against on a dead planet, no people to admit or deny on a dead planet, and basically nothing but death on a dead planet.”
I’ve never read a better expressed argument concerning the environment, or anything else.
If North Korea is serious about air testing nuclear bombs with the likely radioactive fallout, and the US is serious about blowing NK away, along with any allies who happen to be in the way, maybe the push to rid the world of excess people starts soon.
Maybe so.
Wars have a way of taking on a life of their own.
Lets hope and pray (figuratively) that it doesn’t come to war.
If doughboy attacks anybody at all with a nuke, as opposed to just testing one over the open ocean, my guess is that the USA WILL do away with NK as it exists today. Whether Trump would use nukes to do so, and whether the top military brass would go along, is somewhat questionable. IF doughboy attacks the USA with a nuke, I think maybe we would use one in return.
It’s my belief that we could simply smother the NK air space with a large number of spy planes and enough attack aircraft to take out any thing dough boy has, before he could launch it, except for whatever he might fire off in the first hours.
And I can comfortably speculate that if even an ICBM is launched, and we have a couple of our older but FASTEST fighter jets onto to the launch signature within a couple of seconds, and they are within say fifty miles, they can take it out before it is high enough to escape them.
Various sources speculate that he may have fifty bombs already. Maybe. Maybe they are small enough to put them on a missile. Maybe not, at least not most of them. Whether he has anywhere close to fifty missiles capable of delivering them, etc, is another debatable question.
If we were to attack NK with our conventional forces, and go balls to the wall without worrying about being called bad names for killing civilians, etc, NK would cease to exist as a political entity within a few hours.
I have read tons of claims that air power can’t giterdone, that it takes troops on the ground to do the job, and in the end, troops on the ground have been necessary in the past. But this is not a Faulkner novel, the past is not the present.
Modern bombs delivered by modern aircraft or cruise missile hit the target dead on the vast majority of the time. There’s a zero possibility NK could survive a flat out air assault using only conventional weapons, because everything essential to the survival of even the NK economy is vulnerable to bombs, everything from the electrical grid, such as it is, to any industrial or laboratory facility not deeply buried or so well camouflaged as to be overlooked. One B one bomber these days can do more damage in a DAY than two dozen B 29’s could do in a month in WWII. And unless it suffers a mechanical malfunction, it will come home as regularly as a civilian airliner, because you can’t shoot them down with conventional antiaircraft weapons. Doughboy doesn’t have a modern air force. Any plane he sends up will be shot down within a matter of minutes.
The biggest question, once a war starts, is what China might do. China is not currently capable of fighting a conventional war outside her borders on very short notice, nor is anybody else for that matter. It takes a while to mobilize and bring troops and equipment up to the front area.
But by the time we and our allies could put enough troops on the ground in NK to really matter, China could likely do so as well, and more of them by a factor of ten probably.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear that dough boy and his leadership have been taken out in a so called surgical strike if anybody can figure out a way to do it. The Chinese themselves might do it, knowing that dough boy might get them involved in a hot war they want NOTHING to do with.
Reliable Interception of ICBM from the surface is fantasy at least for a decade.
I am absolutely convinced that if there is a war it will be between *China* and North Korea. China cannot tolerate trouble on its border.
Apparently China has been actively building up troops on its border with North Korea. Can they fight a conventional war in North Korea on short notice? Well, now they probably can.
I’m watching the Vietnam series and wondering why we are still fighting wars where people are dying. Russia has demonstrated that propaganda can bring about results for much less money than creating a big military machine and invading.
But I suppose if the goal is to quickly reduce the world’s population, war, disease, starvation, and natural disasters are ways to do this. So maybe killing people to remove them from consuming resources could become the goal even if we have the technology to win wars without deaths.
Crisis – a forum
Beyond State Capitalism: The Commons Economy in our Lifetimes
Any argument taken to the extreme is almost dead sure to result in absurd conclusions. I have no idea who JT Roberts may be, but if you are dumb enough to take his words literally, you are as dumb as every body else here thinks you are.
We aren’t going to ” run out” of anything any time soon, although we are short to desperately short of many resources already. We adapt when we have to. We conserve when we have to, and we do without when we have to, in respect to everything except food water and shelter, for without these three, we die, which solves the problem anyway.
People who make the sorts of arguments you make are generally so ignorant of big picture reality as to be like little kids in the adult world, helpless, unable to think enough and not knowing enough to have any real understanding of what is really going on.
As oil, coal, gas, metal ores, good soil, clean water, and all other resources grow ever shorter in supply, we WILL for the most part use them more efficiently from one year to the next, BECAUSE once we MUST, we will.
We still have ample resources, more than enough to manage a successful transition to a renewable energy economy, IF we continue to work at the job.
It’s likely that a substantial portion of humanity will die hard before this century is out, but that’s actually sop in nature. There’s nothing at all new about famine, epidemics, war, and so forth. Every year I see one or another species go into overshoot, and die back, on the farm, lol.
A substantial portion of us will manage the transition. Unless the planetary ecology goes entirely to hell, we have ENOUGH of just about everything that matters in the USA and Canada to survive just fine for a couple more centuries at least, while we figure out how to wind down our dependence on non renewable resources to zero, or so close to zero that our descendants won’t have to worry about such resources for hundreds and maybe even thousands of years. It will be their problem then.
Sufficient unto the day are the NEEDS there of. We don’t need to waste our time worrying too much about how people are going to live centuries down the road. All we can reasonably do in that respect is to do as little permanent damage to the environment as possible.
BAU is an ‘extreme argument’ that is leading to ‘absurd conclusions’, like rampant ecological destruction, etc..
Continuing with it, to paraphrase you, ‘for as long as possible’, and slowly using resources more efficiently, such as when crises are on top of us, will probably in many cases be too late and, in any event, won’t bring back some environments/habitats nor species back for a very long time, if ever.
I will resist making comments about your intelligence, because that would be ‘dumb’.
Dingaling,
WHAT I SAID is that a hell of a lot of people are going to die hard, and then you turn around and deny that I understand that we are already maybe up shit creek without a paddle?
You are refusing to acknowledge that WE WILL continue to pursue business as usual because we MUST, rather than because we don’t have sense enough to do otherwise, collectively speaking. You may well be and probably ARE right about THAT, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, lol.
Even a dingaling OUGHT to understand that any transition to a more sustainable, peaceful, tranquil way of life is going to take quite some time, decades and decades at least, to come to pass.
Giving up business as usual NOW, or any time soon, would throw the entire industrial world into a state of chaos that would make a hurricane look like a mild spring breeze. Only a complete idiot would argue otherwise.
IF we manage a successful transition, it will be because BAU enables us to do the research and invent and build out the necessary infrastructure, educate the public, reduce birthrates so that we can reduce the population, etc.
You would take a hatchet to the bottom of a life boat if you were in one at sea, judging by your comments over time.
I have never suffered fools gladly, and I won’t start NOW. If Dennis or Ron see fit, they’re free to ban me, but I won’t allow such drivel as you post to pass unchallenged without calling it what it is, the rantings of a fool.
You may notice that I have often expressed myself similarly in respect to many other people in business and politics, and other members of this forum as well.
I don’t give a hoot what you call me, with a few exceptions that I will respond to in stronger language. I’m not a racist, and I’m not a nazi, and I’m not a child molester. Other than that sort of thing, feel free to call me anything you like.
Old HB calls me Trumpster and worse, and I’m GLAD every time he responds to one of my comments, lol.
I NEED him to make my own points. I sign in as TRUMPSTER when I post comments about how rotten the Trump administration is, lol.
You would be a prime candidate to head up a small church of some sort based on a vision of apocalypse, one of your own devising.
He’s on my ignore list. A lot of words about stuff that I find irrelevant to this forum.
“…perhaps impoverishing most of the world will slow down environmental destruction.” ~ Boomer II
I consider BAU to be a war waged against people and the living planet– which it is– and so there’s no time left for BAU, Glen. It’s toast.
Therefore there’s also no time left for a very limited set of people figure out, for the rest of us, whether we like it or not, a BAU-oriented transition, using BAU.
Therefore, we need to be talking yesterday about how to rapidly transition out of BAU and into a ‘new set of living arrangements’ that we, our descendants, and the rest of the planet can live with, rather than talking about how to use BAU and its garbage to somehow make some kind of BAU-oriented ‘transition’ (transition to what, and for whom?).
Lobbing all sorts of infantile insults, incidentally, while maybe making your (fragile?) ego feel better, or helping to smoke over the questionable quality of your comments, won’t change that either.
Getting out of BAU also includes, of course, getting out of government-as-usual.
Make Kin, Not Borders
Hi Caelan,
Sounds good.Kin, not borders!
BUT
As a matter of fact, I know some of both political stripes, lefties and righties, here in the USA, some actually within walking distance, who believe in fencing out anybody less fortunate, or a different color, or of a different culture, etc.
The biggest difference, in this respect, between these two groups, is that the lefties are usually publicly extremely hypocritical about it, preaching one thing, mostly doing the exact opposite, whereas the righties are mostly pretty straight forward about who they want and don’t want for neighbors, and say so publicly. The lefties only say what they really want and believe in private. I know, because I know a few of them quite well, having married into such a family once upon a time.
If you are located somewhere that a few hundred thousand or a million refugees arrive and totally disrupt the local housing, employment, educational, social services, etc, you yourself, Caelan, will sing a far different tune.
But maybe you think you are insulated from the consequences, maybe you believe YOU will not suffer any ill effects from so many new people arriving…… people who will have ENTIRELY different ideas about most of your dogma, people who speak different languages, people who will for the most part do damned little in the short or middle term to support themselves…… long term may or may not be different, they may assimilate, they may not,as proven by the situation in various places.
Be fucking careful for what you wish for, because it may bite off most or all of your own ass when you get it.
Right now we’re talking about allowing a few hundred thousand annually into the USA, and that’s not enough to create a lot of problems, except maybe in particular communities if too many of them want to stick together in such particular communities.
Any body idiotic enough to advocate open borders is advocating people coming into this country, and any other peaceable, civilized, reasonably prosperous country, by the tens of millions.
Caelan is obviously ignorant of the fact that the frontiers of the world are almost all used up already, and the remaining undeveloped portions are being chewed up fast by loggers, farmers, and land developers of various sorts.
The righties and the banksters, along with plenty of business as usual wanna be R’s who are pretend to be D’s thought it would be a GREAT idea to off shore as much as possible of our basic industries that employed our working classes.
Now they are dealing with the consequences, or soon will be………. because you can only fence out so many people effectively. Then you start paying out huge sums in taxes to hire social workers, jailers, cops, judges, etc, to deal with the problem so created.
Now they are dealing, those on the left and in the middle, with the backlash as exemplified by Trump getting elected, because when their communities, values, and livelihoods are threatened, working class people will vote without hesitation for whoever promises to put a stop to immigration.
We have a gated community within walking distance of my own place now. Ya want in, you have to be INVITED , or buy property behind the gates. The people who live there are nearly all rather well to do Yankees from the North East, which means damned near every last one of them is a hypocritical sonofabitch when it comes to his ACTIONS versus his words.
Such people profess LOVE and TOLERANCE and BROTHERHOOD……… for poor people and minorities………. so long as they are comfortably far away. They make goddamned sure as a hard rule than damned few if any poor people or minorities show up in their neighborhood, except if they arrive in the morning wearing servants uniforms, and leave in the afternoon well before dark.
I know, they try to treat me like a servant, because I look like one most of the time, but I happen to have a friend or two who own property inside the gates.. not every last one of the residents is a nose in the air holier than thou hypocrite. The land it’s built on used to belong to one of my great grand parents, and the cousins who sold it to be developed kept a few lots for themselves.
You bring in lots of immigrants, and you create a back lash that will eventually result in the USA going to single payer health care, etc.
Of course the righties are riding high for now, because they had sense enough to understand that the majority of the people of this country,over the last few decades, really didn’t WANT large slices of the cultural revolution rammed down their throats via the courts by the lefties. But they sure as hell got control of the legislative and executive branches of government as part of that backlash, and if they manage to hold onto power much longer, they will own the courts too, from the top down. All that would take right now would be for one or two SC judges to die unexpectedly. Old men die every day, ya know, without expecting it, even ones who have access to the finest medical care.
Nature adapts/evolves, Glen.
Each of us is, in a manner of speaking, our own species whose characteristics we can share with others.
If one of us is a blue jay and the other, a squirrel, we are not going to share the same adaptive strategies, but some of them might be similar, such as the ones related to our similar sizes or habitat preferences.
Tell that to a superweed, a superbug, or a Permaean.
Back atcha, dingaling
I have posted numerous meaningful comments about super bugs and super weeds and invasive species, and I have forgotten more about these things than you will ever learn unless you enroll in a good university and spend the five or six years studying agriculture and ecology. I have those six years, and more, myself.
AND MY GRANDPARENTS AND GREAT GRANDPARENTS taught more as a child about sustainability and living in harmony with nature than you will ever know, under any circumstances.
On September 13, 2017, sea ice extent reached an annual minimum of 4.64 million square kilometers (1.79 million square miles). This was 1.58 million square kilometers (610,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 median extent for the same day, and 1.25 million square kilometers (483,000 square miles) and 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) above the 2012 and 2016 extents for the same day, respectively.
The date of the minimum ice extent for 2017 was two days earlier than the average minimum date of September 15. The earliest annual sea ice minimum in the satellite record occurred on September 5 in the years 1980 and 1987, and the latest on September 23, 1997.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
This was 1.58 million square kilometers (610,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 median extent for the same day,and 1.25 million square kilometers (483,000 square miles) and 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) above the 2012 and 2016 extents for the same day, respectively.Fantastic news! My New Ice Age Miami snow plowing business should be in the ‘GREEN’ er, I mean in the white, in no time at all! Standby for my IPO any day now!
Extent might actually decline again this week, there’s high temperature, especially on the Pacific side, and the smashed up multiyear ice is going to start to be pushed out of the Fram Strait again, after almost three months of no transport.
A slightly above average Arctic sea ice extent minimum for the past decade, according to NOAA.
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/images/sea_ice_only.jpg
The lowest 11 years have been the last 11 years.
As it should be. The Earth has warmed and Arctic sea ice has reduced. Sea level has increased. Glaciers have decreased. The expected result is that the latest years have had the highest temperatures and sea levels, and lowest Arctic ice and glaciers.
Besides stating the obvious, that the planet is warming, and it has consequences, the real debate is in another place:
– The warming is a 350 year old trend. Emissions didn’t start it.
– Nobody knows how much our emissions are contributing to the warming.
– We have been measuring the rates for quite some time, and there’s barely some, if any, acceleration.
Nothing in the evidence shows that we are headed to a catastrophe. Linear extrapolation for many decades into the future never works as a predictive tool in complex natural processes, specially when they show clear cyclical behavior.
The IPCC attributed a “greater than 90 percent certainty” to scientists’ assertion that higher greenhouse gas concentrations have trapped more thermal radiation and consequently warmed the planet (IPCC 2007).
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/intro.html
Hi Survivalist,
Javier agrees CO2 causes warming, but he also believes that natural processes also cause some of the warming, there is statistical evidence that the positive and negative phases of the AMO influence the rate of warming (it slowed warming from 1945 to 1979 and it enhanced the rate of warming from 1980 to 2013).
I think that he contends that it may slow the rate of warming from 2014 to 2047 (his time frames may be slightly different because he uses a 60 year cycle, where I have found the period of the oscillation is about 68 years based on 1856-2016 AMO data).
The analysis is highly simplified and probably misses much.
Hi Javier,
The rate of warming has changed quite a bit over the past 350 years. For the first 250 it was very slow (less than 0.2 C per century) and was mostly “natural” warming, essentially just natural variability. The only natural process with a statistically significant effect on global temperature during the instrumental period that also is clearly a cyclical process (sinusoidal) is the AMO which shows a 68 year period from 1856 to 2016 (best R squared fit of a general sinusoidal function to the data over the 1856 to 2016 period).
There may also be a length of day component that should also be included.
Hi Javier,
The length of day (time it takes the earth to rotate about its axis which varies a few milliseconds from year to year) variations from 1870 to 2005 is not statistically significant when C, AMO, SOI, Aerosols, and TSI are also included in the regression (as was the case for PDO).
Interestingly over the 1992-2013 period the natural log of CO2 was responsible for about 67% of the warming trend 1.28 C per century of a total of 1.89 C per century (using BEST data). The AMO accounted for about 0.7 C per century of the warming over that period. Over the entire positive phase (1979-2013) the average AMO contribution was 0.58 C per century.
If we assume CO2 continues to increase at the same rate over the next 34 years so that warming from CO2 continues at 1.28 C per century and that the negative phase of the AMO counteracts the CO2 warming by 0.58 C per century, we could potentially see the rate of warming slow to 0.7 C per century over the 2014 to 2048 period.
There may be other effects such a reduction of aerosols or increases in solar output or volcanic eruptions as well as other Earth system feedbacks such as carbon and methane releases from melting permafrost and albedo changes all of which may confound this highly simplified analysis.
In any case I can see why you believe there might be a slow down in the rate of warming, it is at least in part due to the potential cooling due to the negative phase of the AMO (likely between 2013 and 2047 in my analysis).
Hi Dennis,
Length of Day (LoD) is one of the two great climate integrators in the system that tell us what is going on. While LoD integrates mainly the atmosphere changes, sea level integrates the ocean energy.
Known shifts in LoD correlate well with known shifts in climate. This has been known since the 1976 article by Lambeck and Cazenave “Long Term Variations in the Length of Day and Climatic Change.”
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/51b7/7dfd53a0d553abf8a82bd8a27a6dcac6956a.pdf
LoD has been increasing as the Earth has been decelerating since ~2003. That change corresponds to the climatic change that started the Pause and is now preventing Arctic melting and producing a low warming rate.
https://datacenter.iers.org/eop/-/somos/5Rgv/plotname/213/EOPC04_08_62-NOW_IAU1980-LOD.jpg
For as long as LoD continues increasing there won’t be any significant warming.
Sea level is a slow integrator of energy that shows that the world is in a long warming trend. Sea level also shows the ~60 year oscillation in its rate of change, but it is always positive. Once this positive trend ends, the 350 year old warming will be over. That hopefully won’t happen for many decades.
Dennis, Can you see the increasing desperation of Javier? He is all over the map and is contradicting himself at every step.
Javier has a problem in that all he wants to do is argue and win the argument at all costs.
The issue is one of consistency. It appears that he refuses to believe in consensus climate science on many topics, but then states this : “Never my conjecture. In my articles I don’t add anything to what has been published by climate scientists. 100% science based and fully referenced.”
So the implication is that — according to Javier —
everything that climate scientists find in their research is correct but that their interpretation is completely incorrect, and only he can unwind everything so as to make sense of it.
In other words, Javier is a troll.
Take the example of LOD. Javier cherry-picks and completely twists the data to suit his argument.
Here is the LOD data and the correct interpretation. Notice that the scientists at NASA JPL find that global warming continues in spite of the LOD varation. And that is what Dennis finds in his CASAT regression as well.
Dickey, J. O., S. L. Marcus, and O. de Viron, 2011: Air temperature and anthropogenic forcing: Insights from the solid Earth. J. Climate, 24, 569–574, doi:10.1175/2010JCLI3500.1.
https://www.nasa.gov/images/content/525284main_earth20110309b-full.jpg
Thanks WHUT,
Based on that paper it looks like it should be an 8 year lag of LOD vs Temperature rather than the 7 years I have used.
Hi Javier,
There is about an 8 year lag between changes in LOD and temperature change. Using this 8 year lagged LOD it appears that LOD increased quite a bit from 1968 to 1980 and temperature was rising over this period by about 0.3 C.
I agree that LOD does influence Global temperatures possibly through changes in the angular momentum of the Earth system, the effect can easily be included in a simple model such as CSALT.
Dennis,
“I agree that LOD does influence Global temperatures possibly through changes in the angular momentum of the Earth system”
We ignore by what mechanism LoD changes could affect global temperatures, so we cannot distinguish between that possibility, and the possibility that something is affecting both LoD and temperatures. What doesn’t appear probable is that changes in temperatures affect LoD.
Note that the Dickey et al., 2011 article subscribes to the generally rejected hypothesis of cosmic ray effect on cloud nucleation as a way of explaining the effect of LoD on temperatures.
Hi Javier,
The warming is likely to continue for many centuries, though the rate may slow if we reduce carbon emissions, it will likely take 500 years or more for the ocean to come to equilibrium with the increased radiative forcing due to higher atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, so your hopes will be fulfilled.
Hi Dennis,
All of that is assumptions. We lack the predictive capability to deduct for how long the warming is going to continue. Frequency analysis indicates that due to the millennial oscillation the increase in temperatures might be over by ~ 2100.
We are likely to be in a warm period similar to the Roman Warm Period where temperatures are likely to remain nice for a few centuries, but without further warming.
Hi Javier,
Speculation without any mechanism to explain your millennial cycles, handwaving doesn’t count.
Note that energy considerations and the angular momentum of the planet could easily account for changes in the length of day changing the energy of the Earth system. This is just physics.
Dennis,
The same was said for the glacial cycle. The evidence for multiple glaciations was found before a convincing explanation for them could be identified. Even today some aspects of the Milankovitch theory are unclear.
The evidence for the millennial cycles is clear also. Scientists are progressing in the understanding on how solar variability affects climate. Some models show progress in reproducing the Little Ice Age in terms of solar variability. For example:
Shindell, Drew T., et al. “Solar forcing of regional climate change during the Maunder Minimum.” Science 294.5549 (2001): 2149-2152.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20020049982.pdf
Moffa-Sánchez, Paola, et al. “Solar forcing of North Atlantic surface temperature and salinity over the past millennium.” Nature Geoscience 7.4 (2014): 275-278.
http://orca.cf.ac.uk/85072/1/MoffaSanchez_etal_2014_NGS.pdf
Renssen, H., Goosse, H., & Muscheler, R. (2006). Coupled climate model simulation of Holocene cooling events: oceanic feedback amplifies solar forcing. Climate of the Past, 2(2), 79-90.
https://hal-sde.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/29/80/49/PDF/cp-2-79-2006.pdf
This is not speculation. Is science. Hypothesis are being developed. Some things will be wrong and others will be right.
The millennial cycle is a reality, and now is time of warming and we are having warming. I would be more worried if the millennial cycle indicated cooling and we were having warming.
Hi Javier,
The proxy data is not very good many inconsistencies. We have pretty good global data sets for 1517 years. How far back do these millennial cycles go? Where’s your global temperature data for prior to 500 CE.
I think the argument for millennial cycles based on 1500 years of data is pretty weak.
The solar hypothesis is interesting, but relatively unproven, so far the affect of solar variability is relatively minor relative to volcanic eruptions. There is no doubt variability based on the warming and cooling of the deep ocean over time and more work is needed to understand this more fully.
Double whammy by The Sunday Times to global warming catastrophism.
Climate change predictions — what went wrong?
“As egg-on-face moments go, it was a double-yolker. Last week a group of climate scientists published a paper that admitted the estimates of global warming used for years to torture the world’s conscience and justify massive spending on non-carbon energy sources were, er, wrong.
…
Another author, Myles Allan of Oxford, told The Times: “We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models. We haven’t seen that in the observations.”
Allan’s defence of the models, however, was peculiar. He said that they had been assembled a decade ago, so it wasn’t surprising they had deviated from reality. Yet these are the very same models used to make predictions for 50 or 100 years ahead which have saddled taxpayers with huge costs to pay for alternative energy sources. Anybody who doubted their predictive power was labelled an unscientific dolt, a “climate denier” fit to be listed with the Flat Earthers.”
Global warming predictions may have been too gloomy
“When 194 nations met in Paris in 2015 and agreed to try to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5C, many scientists dismissed the goal as unattainable.
They said it would be politically and economically impossible to cut emissions fast enough and that the world would have to prepare for the effects of an increase of more than 1.5C, including worse droughts and heatwaves and islands disappearing beneath rising seas.
Now it turns out the scientists were being too pessimistic and had been led astray by computer models which overstated the rate of warming.”
Looks like all those wrong predictions are finally taking a toll on climate catastrophism. Like most scares the global warming scare will be proven wrong.
a “double-yolker!”
LOL, Javier.
You mean like a Siamese Twin?!
.
The models will not get every 10 year period correct, it is longer term 30 year averages that are important.
For the past 30 years that Earth has warmed at about 1.7 C per century, for the past 60 years (1966-2015) the rate of increase in Global temperature has been 1.6 C per century. The previous 60 years (1906-1965), global mean temperature increased at a rate of 0.9 C per century. The long term rate of warming of the past 60 years has increased by about 78% relative to the previous 60 year period (1966-2015 relative to 1906-1965).
By choosing periods in a cyclical phenomenon you are getting the wrong answer every time. Too low sometimes, too high others.
A correct extrapolation of the data predicts lower warming ahead, not higher. You have been foretold.
Hi Javier,
The AMO (detrended so we are looking at AMO rather than general SST warming in the North Atlantic)has peaks in 1945 and 2013 and the cycle is about 68 years by doing an analysis of 1856 to 2016 AMO data. The effect of the AMO on temperature is likely to amount to about 0.06C per decade from 2017 to 2030, so not very significant on a long term trend of 0.17 C per decade for most temperature data sets (UAH6 being the lone exception). Perhaps the rate will slow to 0.16 C per decade.
You should use temperature rather than trends on your charts, what is the 20 C doing on a chart with rates?
BEST Land Ocean Global Temp Anomoly in degrees Celsius relative to the 1951-1980 average. The flat part between 1940 and 1970 is probably due to air pollution over this period. See
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/papers/Results-Paper-Berkeley-Earth.pdf
Hi Dennis,
You should look better. We are not talking about the AMO here, but about changes in the rate of warming. These are variations in global temperatures. The AMO might be partially responsible for that, but the AMO is a regional phenomenon, while the changes in rate of warming are global.
You might not see it well in the graph as displayed, but you can make it real size with right-click. The 20 C is actually 20th C(entury) average. UK Met Office choice of confusing display, not mine.
No kidding. The cooling part of the ~60 year periodicity is due to pollution, and the warming part due to anthropogenic gases. Very convenient but false. You are not going to understand climate until you accept the evidence. The ~60 year oscillation has been identified in records for the past three centuries. Your ad-hoc explanations for the past two oscillations don’t hold much water.
Whatever influence we are having on climate is a lot smaller than you calculate.
Hi Javier,
There does not need to be a single explanation. If you are going to claim a cycle due to AMO, then you should know what the cycle is.
The BEST Temp data and AMO model (sine fit to AMO data) in chart below. Note that if the AMO was primarily responsible for temperature changes we should see temperature rise and fall by the same amount and today temperature should be the same as 1878. It isn’t.
Hi Dennis,
I don’t need to claim anything and the periodicity is not due to AMO. AMO is just one of several indices that manifest a clear ~60 year oscillation. Among others they are:
-AMO
-PDO
-global temperatures
-ENSO
-Speed of rotation of the Earth
-Arctic sea ice
That you think I am claiming it and it is due to the sea surface temperature changes of the North Atlantic reflected by AMO, only says how little you know of something so central to global warming. Not even seeing it in figures from official climate institutions you are capable of accepting a reality that is beyond any doubt and supported by scores of publications. Whether is it truly cyclic or quasi-cyclic and how predictable it is we don’t know, but that it is real we are certain, as it is in the data. Ockam would start shaving those that think that a different explanation can be given to each phase of the oscillation, pollution when downwards, CO2 when upwards.
Faulty logic. Temperature is a physical property that integrates many processes that affect it. The ~60 year oscillation affects temperatures and is responsible for the periods of warming and the pauses. There is also an upward trend that is made up primarily of a millennial natural component over which the increase in greenhouse gases is having an effect.
Here is a figure from a recent Trenberth article. He has similar problems to you to understand this, but he links changes in warming to the ~60 year PDO oscillation. Much better than that silly pollution/emissions ad hoc explanation.
Hi Javier,
The aerosol explanation can be found here:
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/papers/Results-Paper-Berkeley-Earth.pdf
I have tested PDO, it is not significantly significant when regressed with natural log of atmospheric CO2, AMO, SOI, aerosols, and TSI, these other 5 factors all have a tstat above 4 so they are statistically significant at the 99.9% level.
As far as the 60 year periodicity, I checked AMO and the best fit for AMO from 1856 to 2016 is 68 years not 60 years, if we assume a simple sinusoidal relationship. ENSO is not a simple sinusoidal relationship, so you are wrong there.
You think you know more than you do.
You can read, not convinced you can do any mathematics or statistics, so it is not clear you understand what you read.
Hi Javier,
If there is a clear 60 year cycle, then demonstrate it.
I started by assuming 60 years for AMO, what I found is that a 68 year cycle works best.
You can ignore that, if you like, I just was letting you know what I found, feel free to ignore it and rely on what you read.
Hi Dennis,
The periodicity of this oscillation is not well determined, but it is very well known. I don’t need to demonstrate its existence because it has already been done to climate scientists satisfaction:
An oscillation in the global climate system of period 65-70 years. Schlesinger, M. E., & Ramankutty, N. (1994). Nature, 367(6465), 723-726.
This article has been cited 1080 times according to Google Scholar. 68 times in the first months of 2017. That makes it a very high impact article that is considered very relevant over 20 years later.
“In addition to the well-known warming of ~0.5 °C since the middle of the nineteenth century, global-mean surface temperature records display substantial variability on timescales of a century or less. Accurate prediction of future temperature change requires an understanding of the causes of this variability; possibilities include external factors, such as increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations and anthropogenic sulphate aerosols, and internal factors, both predictable (such as El Niño) and unpredictable (noise). Here we apply singular spectrum analysis to four global-mean temperature records, and identify a temperature oscillation with a period of 65-70 years. Singular spectrum analysis of the surface temperature records for 11 geographical regions shows that the 65-70-year oscillation is the statistical result of 50-88-year oscillations for the North Atlantic Ocean and its bounding Northern Hemisphere continents. These oscillations have obscured the greenhouse warming signal in the North Atlantic and North America. Comparison with previous observations and model simulations suggests that the oscillation arises from predictable internal variability of the ocean-atmosphere system.”
It has been known for 23 years, just not by you. 23 years ago it was demonstrated that to predict future temperatures this oscillation has to be taken into account. That is what I am doing. Why do you think my expectations for Arctic sea ice and warming are better than those of the very expensive models developed by climate scientists? They are forbidden from including known natural oscillations of unknown cause that would project much lower future temperatures and spoil the party. That’s why I will be right and they will be wrong. I let the system tell me how it works, and they try to tell the system how it should work according to our limited knowledge.
If for the next 15 years things go the way I say (very small warming rate, and slight Arctic Ice recovery) skeptics will be proven right and the climate establishment wrong. If the opposite happens (high warming rate and Arctic ice continued demise) then skeptics will be the wrong ones. Simple test. No need to take any drastic measure before we have the result.
Hi Javier,
You claim 60 years in several cases, you repeat this often. I will note the paper you cite suggests 65-70 years, which I agree with, in fact an analysis of the AMO data shows a 68 year period fits the data best.
Note that the PDO and ENSO have very different periods than the AMO.
Whether there is a global oscillation in global temperature that has regular intervals is unknown, but looking at the proxy record the period is far from regular.
Much of the increase and decrease in temperature within Milankovitch cycles might be explained by volcanic activity.
Hi Dennis,
“You claim 60 years in several cases”
The oscillation is present in multiple phenomena with slightly different period and some irregularity between 55-80 years. It is best seen as a quasi-periodicity that is usually referred in the bibliography as the around 60 year oscillation. I don’t claim anything.
“Much of the increase and decrease in temperature within Milankovitch cycles might be explained by volcanic activity.”
Obviously not. The volcanic effect on climate is due to sulfates and particles that settle down in a few years, and therefore is short-lived. Look at Pinatubo or El Chichón if you need confirmation. Milankovitch effect is just the opposite, very gradual and long lived.
Hi Javier,
Volcanic activity affects temperature and will happen at random within existing Milankovitch cycles. The length of the effect depends on the size of the eruption and where it occurs on the planet as weather circulation patterns in some areas will tend to spread the aerosols further than others as will the size of the eruption and whether the aerosols are injected into the stratosphere.
Dennis,
No effect has been demonstrated beyond a few years.
A different thing are the continuous emissions from huge areas that took place in the distant past, like the Deccan traps.
Hi Javier,
The influence that CO2 has on climate matches well with the physical models when simply using statistics. The transient climate response is about 1.75 and the ECS (estimated from a regression of land temperature changes vs CO2, AMO, SOI, and aerosols) is about 3 C.
I don’t calculate anything, a simple multilinear regression using a spreadsheet and the data gives these results. It simply confirms what is in the peer reviewed literature.
Link to spreadsheet with data below TCR=1.75 C for a model using nat log CO2, AMO, SOI, Aerosols, and TSI, all tsats more than 4 and R squared 0.94.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4nArV09d398dER6SnNGMEFRT1U/view?usp=sharing
Hi Dennis,
Correlation is not causation. Multiple lines of evidence show that the role of CO2 in global warming has been exaggerated. There are numerous estimates of ECS and they disagree by so much that IPCC had to backtrack and go back to the 1.5-4.5 uncertainty. Apparently you know better than IPCC.
In peer-reviewed literature you have everything, as I have shown multiple times. Articles that support what you say and articles that contradict it. The bottom line is that we don’t know the effect of CO2 on climate.
Hi Javier,
Yes there is uncertainty. In science hypotheses are tested against data. This very simple analysis tests the hypotheses for statistical significance and relies on a simple regression to determine the coefficients.
The causation is suggested by scientific theory, the correlation simply confirms the theory using empirical data.
This is how science is done.
The majority of evidence supports the hypothesis that CO2 causes warming, the statistical analysis suggests how much of that warming is caused by CO2, confirming the majority viewpoint and very close to the ensemble mean of the different models.
Short term the TCR is about 2 C, after the ocean warms (taking a few hundred years) warming approaches 3.2 C for a doubling of CO2.
This does not account for other feedbacks from carbon released from soil as the planet warms and due to changes in planetary albedo as ice sheets melt on Greenland and Antarctica.
A low short term TCR would argue for less aggressive mitigation. Risks of strong positive feedbacks argue for more aggressive mitigation.
To me the decisive argument is the very high short term external costs of oil & FF, even when you exclude climate change: security costs and the cost of “criteria” pollutants are very high.
Oil and FF are costly, risky and polluting: we should transition away from them ASAP.
Hi Nick,
The models suggest TCR is around 1.8 C for s doubling of CO2, how quickly the ocean warms to raise temperature further is not very clear. As humans mostly live on Land, the TCR for land temperature may be more relevant, and this is about 3 C and is likely a good proxy for global land ocean ECS.
Hmmm. You’re talking about long-term, right?
Personally, I think the rate of technical progress is high enough that a significant discount rate is warranted – that would make the short term more important.
On the other hand…the uncertainties and risks involved swamp such considerations: the risk of positive feedbacks, and the conventional external costs are much larger than is needed to justify an aggressive approach to mitigating climate change.
For instance: why in the world would anyone argue that being hostage to the ME is a good idea? How many trillions do we need to spend on oil wars, and how many thousands of soldiers must come home dead or disabled before we stop this crazyness, and switch to cleaner, faster EVs??
How many millions of children need to get asthma before we get rid of coal? How many millions of Chinese need to die before they switch from coal??
Hi Nick,
For global land temperature, the TCR is 3.2 C, based on the simple regression I have done. That is short term. It is quite likely we will hit at least 500 ppm of CO2, which would correspond to global land temperatures reaching an average of 2.7 C above pre-industrial. Potentially this will be a problem for agriculture and the environment in general.
I agree we should try to make the transition to non-fossil fuels as quickly as possible.
Hopefully technological progress will be as rapid as optimists believe.
No, Dennis,
The correlation does not confirm the theory. This is not how science is done. The correlation at best is consistent with the theory. If the theory is correct, it has to be able to produce unique predictions that confirm it. The gravitational effect on light was a prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
The CO2 hypothesis of climate change has an awful track record with predictions that actually fails to confirm it.
Models propose an ECS of ~3°C/doubling, as you defend, and they are overheating hugely from day 1 even when using emissions scenarios that predict a stabilization at 2°C, like RCP4.5.
The hypothesis is wrong. The effect of CO2 on climate is much lower than anticipated.
Hi Javier,
The RCP4.5 does not predict stabilization at 2 C, it is just an emissions scenario corresponding with roughly 4.5 W per square meter of radiative forcing.
The models expect a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in approximately 3.7 W per square meter of radiative forcing increase relative to pre-industrial levels of CO2.
The “natural warming” that you refer to needs to be driven by something. What do you propose besides the obvious increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere?
Hi Dennis,
No need to nitpick. CMIP5 predict a stabilization at 2° C when fed RCP4.5.
We have already talked about this several times.
Study of Holocene climate variability shows that a great part of climate change is due to periodic changes in climate forcings. The LIA was the last occurrence of a ~2400 year pattern of cooling due to lower solar activity, helped by high volcanic activity and higher oceanic turnover due to high tidal activity. The mechanisms are being actively investigated but not yet elucidated enough to be reproduced by models that can’t properly model the interactions between the upper, middle and lower atmosphere.
You can get the details and bibliography at my articles at Climate Etc. blog.
The LIA was a slow multi-centennial cooling. Once the factors that produced the LIA disappeared, the post-LIA is a multi-centennial warming caused simply by the absence of the cooling factors. Solar activity has been very high during the 20th century, and it is not properly considered, as it is the effects of UV on ozone that mediate these changes, not TSI changes, that are very small.
On top of that our emissions have given the post-LIA warming a kick. They are having an effect. Perhaps 25-35% of the warming since 1976 is due to our emissions. The rest is natural and the same way it has been given to us it could be taken from us. And it will be taken in due time, as the interglacial is approaching its end, but that is in such distant future that there is no point in worrying.
Hi Javier,
See the following paper on solar
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/other/SORCEwebsite_News_Solar_Cycle.pdf
Figure below can be clicked on for a larger view. It shows that modelled UV variability (we do not have long term measurements prior to 1980) follows TSI very closely, note that 1360.1 W/m2 can be subtracted from the TSI so that the overall amplitude of TSI changes would be greater than for the UV variability. If we also subtracted 12.05 W/m2 from the UV estimate the amplitude would be about 0.3 W/m2 compared to 1.8 W/m2 for TSI. So your UV argument does not really convince. Potentially UV might have some local effects, but for the overall planetary budget TSI is far more important than UV and the pattern is essentially the same for TSI and UV spectral irradiance.
Figure 5. Shown in the top panel are monthly mean values of total solar irradiance, based on the magnetic flux transport calculations of Wang et al. [2005] that predict a small but significant accumulation of magnetic flux during the first half of the twentieth century, associated with the steadily increasing solar activity cycle amplitudes. In the bottom panel are the changes in UV irradiance at wavelengths from 200 to 295 nm (absorbed in the atmosphere), also based on the flux transport model simulations.
Figure 5 (caption above) is below.
Hi Dennis,
“It shows that modelled UV variability … follows TSI very closely …
So your UV argument does not really convince.”
You don’t appear to know that most in-phase change in solar radiation is due to UV frequencies, and that other parts of the spectra actually change in anti-phase with the solar cycle.
Also you don’t appear to know that unlike for most of the spectrum, UV energy is preferentially delivered to the stratosphere, where most of the ozone is. As the stratosphere is very rarified, the energy changes there due to UV variability are quite large and have effects over stratospheric circulation that are transmitted to the troposphere and that we are only starting to understand.
Hi Javier,
There is much that I don’t know.
That is the data I could find on UV, provide links to back up your claims, as I did.
Dennis,
Ermolli, I., et al. “Recent variability of the solar spectral irradiance and its impact on climate modelling.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 13.8 (2013): 3945-3977.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/3945/2013/acp-13-3945-2013.pdf
Most of TSI variability with the solar cycle is in the 200-400 nm UV band. Above 700 nm there is pretty much no change in irradiation with the solar cycle, and above 1000 nm the change is actually opposite to the cycle (see figure 2 from the paper).
Regarding the absorption of UV by ozone at the stratosphere, that is a very generic well known issue.
For stratospheric effects of solar cycle irradiation changes see for example:
Gray, Lesley J., et al. “Solar influences on climate.” Reviews of Geophysics 48.4 (2010).
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009RG000282/full
Hi Javier,
Yes the fact that UV is absorbed by the Ozone in the stratosphere is obvious, thanks for pointing that out. It was the claim that changes in UV have had an effect on climate that I was interested in and indeed there does seem to be research suggesting that changes in polar climate have resulted from stratospheric ozone depletion. This would be a recent phenomenon due to CFCs and other substances that have damaged the ozone layer.
Hi Javier,
another more recent paper on SSI at link below
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.06397.pdf
Similar analysis for BEST Land only data, link below
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4nArV09d398dER6SnNGMEFRT1U/view?usp=sharing
Analysis including TSI has TSI as not statistically significant, so we drop “T” for a “CASA” model (Carbon, AMO, SOI, and Aerosols), TCR is 3.2 C (an estimate of ECS for Global land ocean). Chart below of CASA, regression on data from 1870 to 2012, R squared is o.90.
Dennis, the answer to the climate riddle does not lie in regression analysis of known variables.
In fact your analysis is meaningless once it includes SOI, as it becomes circular reasoning. ENSO both feeds on temperature changes and produces temperature changes. So I hate to break the news, but all you are doing is wiggle matching between two dependent variables about something that is absolutely known. The relationship between ENSO and global temperatures. In fact ENSO is a relatively good predictor of global temperatures with a variable lag, usually 3-4 moths.
Temperature versus ENSO.
The AMO in your model will help with reproducing the ~60 year oscillation.
The aerosol-CO2 binomial is the core of the CO2 hypothesis proposition. It has been adjusted to provide the trend in the temperature change. That it matches what it has been adjusted to match is no surprise, and proves nothing.
Hi Javier,
The model simply takes known effects to see the relative strengths of the effects.
Yes AMO, ENSO, CO2, LOD, atmospheric carbon dioxide, aerosols from volcanoes, and PDO have all been shown in the peer reviewed literature to affect global land ocean temperature.
You seem not to understand how a regression works.
You seem to be under the impression that I somehow “choose” the coefficients.
Try it yourself, the coefficients are simply the best fit of the data, supporting the theory that global temperature is a function of all of these variables at least over the instrumental period.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4nArV09d398STl1UkY5YUIyYkk/view?usp=sharing
Hi Dennis,
“Yes AMO, ENSO, CO2, LOD, atmospheric carbon dioxide, aerosols from volcanoes, and PDO have all been shown in the peer reviewed literature to affect global land ocean temperature.”
This is incorrect. They have been shown to co-variate with temperatures. That they cause temperature variations is an assumption that in some of the cases is reasonable and in others is not.
I understand a regression perfectly well, thanks. It is a best fit approach that finds the best coefficients to adjust one or several variables to a data set. It is just a mathematical adjustment that provides zero information about causal relationships. As it is always said correlation does not imply causation. Those that forget it, learn it the hard way by being often wrong. As it is often the case, as new data is added new coefficients have to be found or even the fit drops, because the solution found is not the real one despite the correlation achieved by this mathematical adjustment over past data.
Hi Javier,
The causal relationships come from physics.
The correlation of data with the theory simply confirms the hypothesis.
How is the gravitational constant determined?
Does empirical evidence have anything to do with it?
Of course there can be spurious correlation, one could claim I suppose that the fact that we measure a relatively constant acceleration of physical objects dropped in a vacuum is just a spurious correlation and does not support the hypotheses of Newton.
All those physicists must be wrong because mistakes have been made in the past. 🙂
The regression is done on data from 1870-2005, so the 2006-2015 model estimates are “out of sample” and data from the years from 2006 to 2015 are not used to determine the coefficients.
You argue that the natural log of CO2 causes very little warming, I and most geophysicists argue that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide results in more warming than you believe to be the case.
This would be a little like Newton and another physicist arguing that g is 10 m/s2 or 5 m/s2.
So they do an experiment to measure g and find that Newton is roughly correct (turns out it is closer to 10). You would claim that nothing has been proved and that correlation does not prove causation.
Newton just shakes his head. 🙂
Hi Javier,
The papers do more than establish correlation, they also give physical arguments for why such a correlation would be likely, maybe you need to read more carefully or study a little physics and chemistry so that you can understand the arguments. 🙂
Hi Javier,
A simple test is to leave natural log of CO2 out of the model, to prove that CO2 has no effect.
When we drop natural log of CO2, then Aerosols, LOD, and PDO are no longer statistically significant. So we retry using AMO, SOI, and TSI vs temperature, we will call this the AST model (for AMO, SOI, and TSI), we will compare with an alternative model which includes natural log of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (C) which we will call the CAST model.
Chart below compares the two models with BEST land ocean temperature, both regressions used 1870-2005 data only.
Which model looks better to you?
Click on chart for larger image.
Dennis,
Does AMO have an additional warming trend? I am suspicious that this may have an AGW signal embedded in it.
https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/styles/node_lightbox_display/public/key_figures/climate_data_set/amo.png
Hi Dennis,
“A simple test is to leave natural log of CO2 out of the model, to prove that CO2 has no effect.”
Your model and your regression doesn’t prove anything it only shows different possibilities.
By using detrended AMO you sabotage the test. It is impossible that detrended AMO data will fit non-detrended temperature data.
You are setting things to support what you are already convinced. Hardly scientific.
Hi Javier,
There is a distinction between AMO and North Atlantic SST, the first is detrended by definition, the second is not.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/timeseries/AMO/
If you think it is North Atlantic SST that is significant, then call it that. It is pretty clear that SST would be correlated with Global temperature so this does not have a lot of significance if we are not going to detrend the temperature series.
The TSI becomes statistically insignificant if we use the detrended AMO, so a model of Carbon, NASST, LOD, and Aerosols (CANA) has a TCR for carbon of 1.72 C.
In my opinion NASST is better left out of the analysis, for the same reason why PDO and ENSO should also be left out, but especially it would be the case when using NASST rather than the detrended AMO.
Actually that is not correct, Dennis.
AMO is AMO whether detrended or not. NOAA is very clear in that respect and the bibliography too.
If you use non-detrended AMO perhaps you can take out CO2 from the fit, as the trend will be provided by ocean temperatures. The entire exercise is quite futile.
Hi Javier,
The point is to try to understand why the ocean and land has warmed so including the SST as an independent variable to explain the increase in SST is indeed futile.
If we use the “not detrended AMO” or as the NOAA would call it, the North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature, then we get a very poor fit without CO2, the TCR is reduced to about 1.5 C when we include the sea surface temperature for the North Atlantic as we would expect.
We can only reduce the effect of CO2 to zero if we regress Global land ocean temperatures against global land ocean temperatures, and we get a perfect fit in that case. 🙂
Not much is learned however. It is indeed futile to include sea surface temperature in the independent variables to try to find out something about the rise in sea surface temperature, though perhaps you don’t understand this as you insist that the North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature should be included as an independent variable (rather than the AMO, which is by definition detrended.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_multidecadal_oscillation
The AMO signal is usually defined from the patterns of SST variability in the North Atlantic once any linear trend has been removed.
Hi whut,
No trend in the AMO data I use.
Chart below, click chart for larger chart.
Hi Dennis,
That appears as an important mistake. By removing the trend you make that data unfit for regression over temperature data that does have a trend.
NOAA has a non-detrended version of AMO as we have discussed multiple times.
“For those who require unaltered data, the following is an “not detrended” version of the N. Atlantic monthly averages”
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/correlation/amon.us.long.mean.data
Hi Javier,
The detrended data makes more sense if we are looking to accentuate the “oscillation” of the AMO.
Have you ever done any statistical analysis, you seem to be missing a lot.
Why do you imagine there is a distinction between AMO and North Atlantic SST?
The focus of the AMO is the sinusoidal nature of the smoothed data, detrending accentuates the sinusoid.
Dennis,
Yup, that’s the untrended version of AMO that you are using, which is better, as far as it goes.
What we ought to do long term is model the AMO similar to what we have for ENSO. It’s probably tides, just like for ENSO.
Dennis, if you compare two things that in origin have a trend and you remove the trend from one of them, you set up an apples to oranges comparison. Remove the trend from temperatures also and compare detrended AMO to detrended temperatures to see the relationship between AMO and temperatures, or compare them both with their trend.
Hi Javier,
Can you explain why including ENSO is circular, but including AMO is not?
Either both should be included or neither as both are statistically significant.
Also if we are going to include AMO “detrended” (aka North Atlantic SST), should we also include SST for all oceans? If not, can you explain why we would include one, but not the other?
Hi Javier,
Note that including the increase in North Atlantic Sea Surface temperature (by not using the detrended AMO) artificially reduces the estimated TCR for CO2 from about 2.2 C to 1.5 C, the increased CO2 is likely the cause of the increased SST which is why we would not use SST as one of the variables in the regression.
No doubt you will not recognize this fact, though if you want to really reduce the apparent TCR for increased CO2, you would suggest global land ocean temperatures vs SST and the natural log of atmospheric CO2 which would drop the TCR for doubled CO2 to under 0.5 C for a doubling of CO2. Maybe someone would think this is valid. 🙂
https://theoutline.com/post/2202/climate-change-denial-should-be-a-crime
CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL CAN AND WILL LEAVE PEOPLE DEAD.
According to the Texas penal code, “A person acts with criminal negligence, or is criminally negligent… when he ought to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise….”
The list of ways in which Talbott and his office should have been aware of the substantial risk of ignoring a robust body of scientific evidence, at the tragic expense of the people of Houston, is stunning. As a climate change skeptic, Talbott, who is trained not as a scientist but as an engineer, refused to consider projections of rising sea levels and heavier rainfall. He let developers pour concrete over prairielands that used to soak up that rainfall, exacerbating flooding. He refused to acknowledge that constructing elevated buildings in a floodplain was probably redirecting floods elsewhere. All of the above led to a sharp rise in complaints from increasingly flooded homeowners, activists, and scientists. Instead of preparing Houston for a climate-changed, flood-prone era, Mike Talbott and his office helped it evolve into a deadly urban aquarium waiting to happen.
Aw and the poor liddle denialists are upset at a little science fiction from a climate activist
http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/08/08/climate-depots-morano-other-skeptics-sentenced-to-death-for-crimes-against-humanity/
John Gilkison, writing from the perspective of decades ahead, reports on the outcome of these trials. http://evworld.com/blogs.cfm?blogid=1430
“The Trial was held in The Hague, Netherlands in 2029 from November 2028 to August 2029…
“The verdicts came down in August of 2029. Sentenced to death for the critical roles they played in retarding any meaning action to mitigate climate change in the United States were as follows.
Sen. James Inhofe, Marc Morano (CFACT), Chris Horner (CEI), Myron Ebell (CEI), Steve Milloy (CEI), Patric Michaels (Cato Institute), Bjorn Lomborg (CCC), Matt Ridley (CWPF)(sic), Christopher Monckton, Fred Singer, Roy Spenser(sic).
Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Donald Trump (President 2017-19), Mike Pence (President 2019-21), Ken Blackwell (Head Domestic Issues (2017-21), Ben Carson (HUD), Myron Bell (EPA), Michael Flynn (was already in prison), Nikki Haley UN Ambassador), Mike Pompeo (CIA), Rick Perry (Secretary of Energy), Reince Priebus (Chief of Staff Trump admin briefly), Scott Pruitt (EPA Admin), Thomas Pyle (DOE), Jeff Sessions (Attorney General under Trump), Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State-Trump), Ryan Zinke (Sec of Interior).
You may note here that the death sentences handed down were heavily weighted towards the Trump/Pence Administration 2017-21 but there was a cogent reason for this. It was determined that after the ratification of the Paris Accords in December of 2016 that the new Trump Administration withdrew the United States from them in May of 2017. This act at this most critical juncture with little or no Carbon Budget left cemented in Abrupt Climate Change for the whole planet although the USA only represented only 25% of the emissions. This was enough to damage irretrievably the momentum coming out of the Paris Accords and to cause other countries setting on the fence to back off their efforts even if they did not publicly announce.
LOL! if you read the full piece, even Al Gore and Bill Clinton served jail time for criminal negligence and not doing enough to mitigate climate change when they could have taken steps to do so!
(Author’s note, the whimsical science fiction piece is meant to be illustrative only. I am not recommending we hold such mass trails yet. I am encouraging everyone who can to vote with their wallet, and to vote at the ballot box for policies that won’t back us collectively into the corner outlined above. As impossible as the trials outlined above may seem they should not be discounted entirely. The best case would be if they do not come to pass.)
My personal view is, that just as the Tobacco companies were eventually held accountable for knowingly putting profits over public health and welfare, so too, the day will come when the individuals in government and business who knowingly lied to the people about the consequences of CO2 emissions and did everything in their power to maintain the status quo, when they knew better and should have taken action to mitigate the effects, will also have to pay the piper for their crimes.
What about the Turtle Whore? That list left out the Turtle Whore.
Which one? I can think of a few…
The one that looks like a turtle. I believe he is the senate majority leader.
Catastrophic climate change is all about science fiction. No surprise.
They can always pull out the IPCC reports and show that not even the best among us knew about the consequences. Check those confidence levels at the IPCC reports. You can keep dreaming about those trials, if they are not dismissed they will be lost by claimants.
Federal Judge Deals Major Blow to #ExxonKnew Crusaders
https://www.energyindepth.org/national/federal-judge-deals-major-blow-to-exxonknew-crusaders/
“Wolf made clear that in order for CLF’s claims to stand, the organization needed to show that ExxonMobil had either caused harm to the plaintiffs or that harm was “imminent.” The CLF complaint was filled with references to the projected effects of climate change by 2050 or 2100, which the judge said didn’t qualify as imminent. He suggested that if the plaintiffs were concerned about the effects of climate change on the facility in 2050, they should refile their case in 2045.”
Unlike with Tobacco industry, this legal battle looks like a losing proposition.
Hi Javier,
what do you think of this 1991 video called “Climate of Concern” produced by Shell Oil?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTlYYlRN0LY
talk about a double-yolker!
LOL
Being concerned about something is not the same as knowing something. We have been concerned about lots of things that didn’t turned out as advertised: acid rain, the population bomb, the coming ice age, the limits to growth, the ozone hole, and now the climate scare.
Oil companies couldn’t possibly know what scientists did not know. Even now the science of climate is so muddled by uncertainty and imagined scenarios for many decades into the future that it doesn’t make a case.
Good gravy, what does “as advertised” mean? Acid rain is devastating forest all over the world. Look at some pictures here:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/acid-rain/
The limits to growth are turning out to be exactly as The Club of Rome predicted. They were spot on. And the population bomb? 10,000 years ago humans and their animals represented less than one-tenth of one percent of the land and air vertebrate biomass of the earth. Now they are 97 percent. If you think human population is not a very serious threat to civilization as we know it then you are very seriously uninformed concerning the state of civilization.
Despite our anti science administration, NASA Images of Change, because of population growth, urban sprawl, natural disasters and Climate Change. You can deny reality all you want but it doesn’t ‘Change’ it (pun intended!)
https://climate.nasa.gov/images-of-change?id=628#628-hurricane-irma-turns-virgin-islands-brown
Hi Ron,
You have a curious way of looking at things. Of course you can always find a corner where excess of acidity is a problem, but back in the 80’s and 90’s we were told the forests of the world were facing catastrophic consequences.
New Scientist 1990: Europe’s forests fall to acid rain
“25 per cent of Europe’s forests will receive more sulphur than is safe. Sten Nielsson, one of the authors of the report, believes that vast tracts of forest in East Germany and Czechoslovakia will die in the next decade.”
The reality is that European forests have never been better, and forest mass is much higher than in 1900.
Regarding “limits to growth,” their premises were completely wrong:
““Limits to Growth” said total global oil reserves amounted to 550 billion barrels. “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade,” said President Jimmy Carter shortly afterwards. Sure enough, between 1970 and 1990 the world used 600 billion barrels of oil. So, according to the Club of Rome, reserves should have been overdrawn by 50 billion barrels by 1990. In fact, by 1990 unexploited reserves amounted to 900 billion barrels—not counting the tar shales, of which a single deposit in Alberta contains more than 550 billion barrels.
The Club of Rome made similarly wrong predictions about natural gas, silver, tin, uranium, aluminium, copper, lead and zinc. In every case, it said finite reserves of these minerals were approaching exhaustion and prices would rise steeply. In every case except tin, known reserves have actually grown since the Club’s report; in some cases they have quadrupled. “Limits to Growth” simply misunderstood the meaning of the word “reserves”.
http://www.economist.com/node/455855
And regarding the population bomb, his author stated:
““The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” it began. “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate, although many lives could be saved through dramatic programs to ‘stretch’ the carrying capacity of the earth by increasing food production and providing for more equitable distribution of whatever food is available.
“Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” it said. “By that time [1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions.”
a “nutritional disaster that seems likely to overtake humanity in the 1970s (or, at the latest, the 1980s). Due to a combination of ignorance, greed, and callousness, a situation has been created that could lead to a billion or more people starving to death…. Before 1985 mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity” in which “the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be nearing depletion.”
https://www.wired.com/1997/02/the-doomslayer-2/
A very interesting article on Julian L. Simon, the professor that won the wager to Ehrlich on resource scarcity.
The problem with all this is that is devoid of any fact. The premises are wrong, not the logic. You have the same problem when you talk about the clathrate methane gun, or species extinction rates, or carrying capacity. You don’t get your facts straight because you are a doomer, and doomers don’t like facts. That’s why you are wrong.
I am not very optimistic about our future and I believe we have a serious problem with future oil production in the near term. I agree with you on the seriousness of the Peak Oil situation (that’s why I come here). But the difference between you and me is that I try hard to stick to the facts, and that is why I recognize easily that most scares are fake, and past scares have been proven wrong almost always.
Despite having an awful track record, doomers never desist, they just move to the next scare, hoping to eventually being proven right.
Hi Javier,
you have not made a very compelling case that the limits to growth models are wrong. The reserve numbers they used were based on information available at that time. Nothing you said changes the fact that these are finite resources.
what do you think of this video on limits to resource extraction?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFyTSiCXWEE
chilyb,
Malthus was right, it is just that he got everything else wrong.
Malthus and the limits to growth could be proven right in 100 years or 200 years, but in the business of predictions the timing is everything.
I subscribe that resources are limited and current rates of consumption are unsustainable. That means we will have to change our ways, and doesn’t make the prophets of doom any more right.
100 years ago people could not imagine how we would be living. In the same way, we can’t imagine how people will be living 100 years from now, or how the climate will be, or even what will worry them.
Javer says everyone else is a doomer:
except for him … wait ..
Get a mirror, buddy.
I’ve been blogging since 2004 and have never said anything this bleak. Are you here just to argue and pick fights?
“We have been concerned about lots of things that didn’t turned out as advertised: acid rain, the population bomb, the coming ice age, the limits to growth, the ozone hole, and now the climate scare.”
“I subscribe that resources are limited and current rates of consumption are unsustainable. That means we will have to change our ways, …”
you seem to be all over the map. You were referencing the work by Donna and Dennis Meadows, but then switched to Malthus. No one can predict the future (with the possible exception of Nostradamus), but you also casually admit that we have to change our ways. So what exactly is your point? You can’t just go around labeling people as “doomers” and “not doomers,” its much more nuanced than that.
And I would also like to know what you meant by “as advertised,” as you wrote above. Especially since Ron mentioned it.
Maybe you should stick to plotting sea ice extent trend-lines from 2007. At least your story is more consistent! LOL
Chylib,
The unsustainability of our ways is indisputable. The change will take place. Population growth is already decreasing and in due time is likely to turn negative. We will learn to consume less of what there will be less. The change could be traumatic.
The climate is changing. The change has been taking place for centuries and is moderate. Most of the effects are beneficial, a few are not. There is no evidence that a climate catastrophe is in the making.
According to Wikipedia, a doomer is a researcher of current and near future trends who believes that global problems of ecological exhaustion — such as overpopulation, climate change, pollution, and especially peak oil — will cause the collapse of industrial civilization, and a significant human population die-off.
I am enough of a skeptic to recognize that in most cases the assumptions and trends on which those predictions of doom are based, are incorrect or likely to change.
But in the case of Peak Oil I am also a doomer, because on that one I just don’t see how we can get out of the impending problem we face. But my inability to see a solution might be just my limitation. I am skeptic enough to doubt my own conclusions.
“As advertised” is as presented to the people by the media as product of science and thus worth of trust. The population bomb was presented as leading to millions of deaths and huge famines in the 70’s and 80’s, not as creating some undetermined problems in a distant future. We can nearly all agree that the population growth is a problem that manifests in many aspects like a decline of natural environments.
Javier says:
So now we know that we can’t trust Javier, because he also says “doomers don’t like facts.”
As Maya Angelou said ““When someone shows you who they are, believe them; the first time.”
““Limits to Growth” said total global oil reserves amounted to 550 billion barrels. “We could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade,”
Javier, please don’t tell me what someone said limits to growth said, instead quote me the passage from limits to growth where it says that. Limits to growth said no such goddamn thing! That passage is nowhere in the book.
Limits to growth stated that, at that time, (1972) 455 billion barrels. And they calculated all known reserves to increase by 5 times current known reserves. That would mean total EUR would be around 2.275 billion barrels. And if the expected rate of increase in consumption was around 3.9% per year then we would have an estimated 20 years of reserves left.
2.275 billion barrels is pretty much spot on. However, they had consumption growing at a much faster rate than it actually grew.
Don’t you see the problem, Javier? Deniers lie like shit. Then people like you who desperately want to believe those lies, repeat them as if they were the truth.
Wake up and smell the coffee. The world is going to hell in a handbasket.
I could reply to your other points but they are all in the same vein.
So you want direct quotes. From the 1972 edition.
page 62
“We have also calculated an exponential index on the assumption that our present known reserves of each resource can be expanded fivefold by new discoveries. This index is shown in column 6. The effect of exponential growth is to reduce the probable period of availability of aluminum, for example, from 100 years to 31 years (55 years with a fivefold increase in reserves). Copper, with a 36-year lifetime at the present usage rate, would actually last only 21 years at the present rate of growth, and 48 years if reserves are multiplied by five.”
So according to them we should have run out of copper, silver, gold, and mercury, and we would be about to run out of aluminium, natural gas, petroleum, tin, and zinc.
Right logic, wrong premises.
page 38
“we can look forward to a world population of around 7 billion persons in 30 more years. And if we continue to succeed in lowering mortality with no better success in lowering fertility than we have accomplished in the past, in 60 years there will be four people in the world for every one person living today.”
World population was 3.8 billion in 1972, which means that a four-fold increase in 60 years would have yielded a total world population of 15 billion by 2030. But the global fertility rate fell from about 6 per woman in 1970 to 2.8 and continues to fall.
Extrapolation almost never works for long periods of time.
page 48
“Furthermore, although total world agricultural production is increasing, food production per capita in the nonindustrialized countries is barely holding constant at its present inadequate level (see figure 9). Do these rather dismal statistics mean that the limits of food production on the earth have already been reached?”
According to the FAO, global food production has more than tripled since 1961, while world population has increased from 3 billion to 7 billion. This means that per capita food has increased by more than a third. The latest figures from the United Nations show that as world population increased by a bit over 10 percent between 2000 and 2009, global food production rose by 21 percent. The number of countries with more than 2600 calories per day per citizen has been increasing steadily.
Bad data, wrong assumptions, unfounded alarmism.
page 48
“The primary resource necessary for producing food is land. Recent studies indicate that there are, at most, about 3.2 billion hectares of land (7.86 billion acres) potentially suitable for agriculture on the earth. Approximately half of that land, the richest, most accessible half, is under cultivation today. The remaining land will require immense capital inputs to reach, clear, irrigate, or fertilize before it is ready to produce food.
…
Figure 10 shows that, even with the optimistic assumption that all possible land is utilized, there will still be a desperate land shortage before the year 2000 if per capita land requirements and population growth rates remain as they are today.”
The population did grow to 7 billion, but per capita land requirements have gone down very fast. The FAO reports that since 1960 cropland has only expanded from 1.4 billion to 1.5 billion hectares. We still have the other half available.
Again right logic, but wrong premises. The decrease in per capita land requirements is a very long trend since the Medieval Period. They decided to ignore it.
page 84
“We might estimate that if the 7 billion people of the year 2000 have a GNP per capita as high as that of present-day Americans, the total pollution load on the environment would be at least ten times its present value.”
Pollution is what does us in at most model runs. But since 1970, the U.S. economy has grown by 200 percent, yet the levels of air pollutants regulated by the federal government have fallen by nearly 60 percent. For example, in both the U.S. and the European Union sulfur dioxide emissions have dropped by nearly 70 percent since 1990. While the number of air pollution deaths have been rising and reaches over 5 million a year, the increase is much slower than the population increase, and the percentage of air pollution deaths with respect to global disease burden is decreasing.
Wrong assumptions. Bad extrapolation. Failure to recognize that an increase in GDP past a certain point can actually reduce pollution.
Don’t you see the problem, Ron? Doomers exaggerate like shit. Then people like you who desperately want to believe those exaggerations, repeat them as if they were the truth.
So according to them we should have run out of copper, silver, gold, and mercury, and we would be about to run out of aluminium, natural gas, petroleum, tin, and zinc.
Javier, as Dennis might say, you are obviously not a “math type”. They were spot on in predicting the EUR of petroleum. And we have used about half that amount, just over one trillion barrels. Actually I think they were a little high with their prediction. I don’t think we will ever recover 2.275 trillion barrels of oil. What they did not anticipate would be the rate “limits to growth” would limit our consumption. Consumption would never grow at a 3.9% as they expected.
I haven’t done the math on your other commodities but I expect you are off as much there as you were on petroleum.
As to the limits on food production in 1972, they posed that as a question, not an actual prediction. Though there has been some increase since then in per acre production the majority of the increase in food production since then has come from clearing forest and grasslands. That is robbing from the wild animal world and giving it to humans and their domestic animals. That is not something I would be bosting about.
Ron, I won’t discuss oil figures with you, but in table 4 they clearly state that with 5 times the known reserves at the time, at the observed rate of consumption growth, reserves should be over in 50 years. That is 2022.
If you predict the second coming of Jesus Christ, and he doesn’t show up, it doesn’t matter that He got caught up in a traffic jam. Of course the prediction must have a reason for failure, of course something didn’t work out as predicted. In the oil case the rate of consumption. In Malthus case the increase in food production. There are many reasons for being wrong and only one for being right.
This is bullshit and you know it. As I said cultivated land has gone from 1.4 billion to 1.5 billion hectares since 1960. That is only a 7% increase. I’ve got enough maths to show you don’t know what you talk about.
Doom predictions are almost always wrong because they are based on wrong assumptions. I’ve lived enough to learn that. You wouldn’t learn it in two lives.
Eventually a doom prediction will turn out right, but that will not make the rest that failed any righter. Doom mentality is a losing proposition, but by all means enjoy it.
Hi Javier,
You seem to not understand how a what if scenario works.
They made an estimate of resources and made an assumption about consumption growth rates, at the time these were the standard estimates for conventional oil.
Eventually oil output will peak (or perhaps it already has) my guess is that by 2030 it will be clear that oil output has peaked (it is likely to be around 2025). I think output decline will be gradual if the peak occurs from 2020 to 2025, by 2035 more rapid decline may occur due to falling demand as rising prices may lead to substitution for land transport. Falling solar prices may lead to less demand for coal and natural gas, hopefully with low levels of output of coal and natural gas by 2060.
Hi Javier,
Note that they said, if fertility improves at the rate it has in the past, then there would be a four fold increase in population. From 1952.5 to 1972.5 total fertility ratios had fallen about 10%. The assumption was that this rate of decrease would continue. That assumption was incorrect, nobody knows the future in advance.
It is pretty easy to criticize the assumptions when we know what has transpired.
I can predict the past with fairly good accuracy, but this is unsurprising. 🙂
Hi Dennis,
I do, thanks. The problem is not with imagining scenarios. The problem is with selling them as the most probable future as you do with your 3°C of warming, when it is all based on a set of assumptions and premises that have a higher probability of being wrong, as time and again has been demonstrated.
As I said, every prediction is based on a set of assumptions and the prediction doesn’t come true if the assumptions are wrong. That’s what usually happens with long term extrapolations. Fertility rates changed, and warming rates will change, and not in the direction you predict.
It doesn’t matter which one of your assumptions is wrong. Your prediction is equally wrong and you were just a merchant of fear, like the researchers of the Club of Rome “Limits to growth.”
Hi Javier,
I never say ECS is 3 C, I simply say that if it is, this is what will happen.
What I say is that there is great uncertainty about actual ECS. It may be higher or lower than 3 C, you claim special knowledge that it must be lower than 3 C, I make no such claims and simply show what the data indicates from 1870 to 2015, with a TCR of about 1.75 for global land ocean temperatures and a TCR of about 3.2 C for Global land only temperatures.
Potentially there are other factors such as permafrost and ice sheets along with clouds and aerosols and potential non-linear effects which could raise the ECS in the future, or there may be other effects that lower it.
Again we don’t know.
Claims that we know ECS is very low are no more than wishful thinking. Mainstream science suggests ECS is likely close to 3 C (probably between 2.5 and 3.5 C) with higher probability of higher rather than lower values.
Hi Dennis,
The central ECS estimate of 3 is mainly based on models, as observations tend to produce values closer to 2 or even lower.
But all of them are based on the assumption that most of the observed warming is due to CO2 increase. Since this is likely not to be the case, ECS estimates, even the low ones, are biased high.
Current scientific understanding has no guarantee of being correct, and it is usually proven wrong every time a significant scientific advance is made. The names of the greatest scientists are known, Pasteur, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, because they proved that the scientific understanding at the time was incorrect.
70 years of the biggest increase in CO2 in a million years at least have only produced a moderate warming that has barely nudged up a preexisting warming trend and that has mainly had a positive effect on our lives. That’s the reality that the CO2 hypothesis can’t hide. That fact is incompatible with a high ECS and a catastrophic effect of climate change. When in doubt stick to the evidence.
“The central ECS estimate of 3 is mainly based on models, as observations tend to produce values closer to 2 or even lower.”
Not on land, and not long-term as the ocean catches up.
It’s 3C
Hi Javier,
I have used observational evidence to show how much warming is due to CO2, but this is only the transient climate response of about 1.8-2.2 C, it takes time for the ocean to warm and the geochemistry suggests the CO2 will remain in the atmosphere for quite a while, falling from 50% of CO2 emitted to about 10% of emissions over a period of about 35,000 years or so.
So the radiative forcing due to excess CO2 in the atmosphere will warm the oceans over time (about 500 years) so that total warming from “fast feedbacks” plus CO2 will be about 3 C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Other slow feedbacks (carbon from soil, and permafrost and ice sheet melt) will only enhance the climate sensitivity, increasing earth system sensitivity to 3.5 to 4 C.
The TCR for Global land temperature gives a rough indication of ECS, it is about 3.2C, based on the data and various hypotheses about natural and anthropogenic causes of global warming.
Just assumptions, Dennis.
The world will warm until it doesn’t, and then it will cool. The paleoclimatic record is very clear on that respect. Warming periods are always followed by cooling periods. During the Holocene warming periods are just a few centuries long, ours is just running out of time. Despite the exceptionality of CO2 levels, temperature levels are not exceptional. And the warming rate is barely increasing.
The whole thing has been hugely exaggerated based on circumstantial evidence.
Hi Javier,
The assumptions are based on physics.
You assume you know more than everyone else, I do not. I think it likely that the main stream view is correct (as reflected in the most recent AR5 IPCC report).
You assume the main stream view is incorrect.
That is also an assumption, likely an incorrect one.
It’s worth noting that, AFAIK, none of the commodity resource estimates were used directly in the LTG scenarios – those were really simply illustrative. The model was relatively simple: there was a single non-renewable “resource”, and another, smaller renewable resource that represented agriculture.
That’s it. Nothing called energy, no oil, no iron, and certainly no solar, wind, etc.
So…it was a set of scenarios, not forecasts. They were not intended to prove that limits existed, simply to show how a simple model of the economy might behave if hard, fairly sharp edged limits did exist. Basically, they showed how “overshoot” might look.
Finally, we haven’t really yet hit the point where any of the LTG scenarios diverged from BAU, though it’s a little hard to tell.The charts weren’t intended for close reading of dates – the first signs of overshoot might be around 2010 or 2015 – it’s just hard to tell, and it wouldn’t be fair to hold them to such a precise date. So…the LTG scenario projections to this point of things like fertility or economic growth look ok, not especially better or worse than those of conventional economists. We haven’t yet tested whether our future might be consistent with any of the LTG scenarios showing disastrous overshoot.
Hi Javier,
Well one could take the position that because there is uncertainty, we should not be concerned. There is wide uncertainty in equilibrium climate sensitivity(ECS) to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration according to mainstream climate science. ECS is estimated at 1.5 C to 4.5 C (at the 95% confidence level).
One could assume that this necessarily implies that ECS must be at the low end of this range (1.5 C to 2.5 C), but that may either be wishful thinking or confusion between transient climate response (TCR) which happens over the short term (reflected mostly by increases in Global Land only temperatures) and ECS which reflects total Global warming over land and oceans after the ocean has “turned over” in 400-500 years time and come to equilibrium temperature (60 year mean sea surface temperature) with stabilized atmospheric CO2 (say at 500 ppm).
Empirical data for land temperature vs CO2, aerosols, AMO, ENSO, and TSI suggests a TCR for land only temperatures is close to 3 C for a doubling of CO2 which is a good proxy for ECS.
That ignores future carbon emissions from melting permfrost and ice sheets which are likely to lead to higher Earth System Sensitivity over longer time scales (1000 to 10,000 years).
In any case, the precautionary principle suggests using what engineers call a factor of safety to account for our ignorance. So if you aren’t sure how strong to make the bridge, the general approach is to make it 3 or 4 times stronger than calculations suggest, in case some thing is missed.
If you were a civil engineer it seems you would suggest building the bridge at 1/3 to 1/4 the strength we calculate to save on construction costs and because “falling is fun”, and exciting. 🙂
The scientists doing climate prediction have an awful track record, and they talk about things that have never happened in human history, and might or might not happen in the future. We don’t use the precautionary principle on things that might not happen at all, until we have some solid evidence. After all bridges have fallen in the past, so we know that is a real danger.
Take for example a lethal strain of the flu. We know that is a real danger. It happened in 1917 and there are a lot more people in the world and more chances of a lethal strain appearing. That risk is dead serious. It could decimate mankind in a matter of months.
The principal way of spreading of a flu these days is air travel. The precautionary principle would mandate that a 5-day quarantine should be imposed on anybody wanting to do an international air trip, including airline personnel. That would delay the spread of a killer flu and give us some very needed time.
So why do some people want to impose a precautionary principle on a, so far, imaginary risk, when it is not applied on very real risks? If we prefer to ignore real risks that would require a certain level of discomfort for the low percentage of mankind that does air travel, what should we do with imaginary risks whose precaution would affect the way of living of the entire mankind?
Javier said:
Wrong — overall they do an excellent job and climate models do even better with a known forcing. Where they do worse is if they rely on (1) “Unforced Variations” (to borrow the RealClimate term) or (2) if the source of the forcing likely exists but hasn’t been determined.
Where they do best is if the forcing is known. Examples of this include
(a) daily cycle -> solar origin
(b) seasonal cycle -> solar origin
(c) volcanic disturbances -> upper atmosphere aerosol origin
(d) long-term warming -> GHGs
(e) ocean surface tides, ENSO, QBO -> lunar plus solar gravitational
The variation that has yet to be tracked down is the ~60 year variation in global temperature that has been variously linked to PDO, AMO, and LOD. The Length-of-Day connection established by researchers at NASA JPL is most intriguing:
Dickey, J. O., S. L. Marcus, and O. de Viron, 2011: Air temperature and anthropogenic forcing: Insights from the solid Earth. J. Climate, 24, 569–574, doi:10.1175/2010JCLI3500.1.
What causes this variation in LOD is tough to pin down.
Lol imaginary risk
What a side show he’s got going.
Hi Javier,
We know the planet has been warming at a minimum of 1.2 C per century over the past 38 years, you have agreed with this fact.
It is also pretty clear that atmospheric CO2 levels are likely to reach at least 500 ppm and mainstream science predicts these levels will be maintained for thousands of years.
Just because something has never happened does not imply we would not use the precautionary principle.
Even if a bridge or building had never collapsed, or if someone built some new kind of structure that had never been built before an intelligent engineer would build with a factor of safety.
Current data based on land temperatures an a simple regression analysis suggests and equilibrium climate sensitivity of about 3 C. During the HCO atmospheric CO2 was about 260 ppm so a doubling of that level would be 520 ppm. Temperatures were close to today’s levels for many thousands of years during the HCO (possibly about the 1981-2005 average temperature). So three degrees warmer than the HCO temperature level (should conditions similar to the HCO repeat) would be a significant problem, despite your mantra that warmer is always better. I think most biologists, and ecologists disagree with you the implication that the planet can warm by 3 C with no adverse effects.
The fact that this is likely to be a problem is the reason for the precautionary principle.
In short, your argument is far short of convincing.
In addition, all I advocate is that we reduce the use of fossil fuels as much as possible. There are many other good reasons for doing so, such as less pollution and less damage to the environment. Other good reasons are the depletion of fossil fuels and the need to move to alternative types of energy so there will be less economic disruption.
The fact that this is also to lead to less damage to the environment and less social disruption because it is likely to lead to a lower level of environmental damage due to severe climate change is simply an ancillary benefit.
You mostly seem to be in agreement with the second argument, but I am sure that I will never convince you that if higher ECS estimates (3.5 to 4.5 C) are correct and that higher estimates of fossil fuel resources (leading to 1500 Gt of carbon emissions or more) are also correct that we are likely to have a serious global warming problem.
The problem is that we just don’t know. I am willing to admit my ignorance, you seem confident that you know more than everyone else.
I think you are mistaken.
Hi Dennis,
Yes, I accept facts, so I accept the warming. The CO2 rise to 500 ppm is clearly possible within a few decades.
I do not think that has been demonstrated in any way. It is just a hypothesis. CO2 levels are quite dynamic to things like ENSO. And during the LIA CO2 levels went down significantly, so they respond to cooling without much delay.
There are “no regrets” policies whose cost/benefit relationship does not depend on climate change being a threat.
Your assumptions are incorrect. You don’t have the correct HCO temperatures, and we are not going to get 3°C, not even 2. Climate sensitivity has been exaggerated. Same problem as with the “Limits to growth.” And emissions will reduce. Plenty of reasons for the catastrophic scenarios to fail. As always.
I don’t disagree with you on oil issues. Just on climate issues. I think that using less fossil fuels is beneficial regardless of climate, as long as we don’t run into energy problems. I am skeptical that we can substitute fossil fuels by intermittent wind and solar in a meaningful time frame.
Of course you do, and I think you are the mistaken one. But the truth will come out. My scenario is very clear, no significant warming to 2025.
Hi Javier,
You would need to be a little more precise and define “significant” with an actual change of temperature.
You could claim 1 C or even 2 C of warming is not “significant”. Without a number attached your prediction is meaningless.
We will have to wait for a “meaningful” prediction in order to assess your veracity.
Also note that a short term slower rate of warming is of little consequence if it is simply followed by a future period where warming accelerates.
Hi Dennis,
I already told you and showed you this figure.
I expect by 2025 that HadCRUT4 will be between 0.43 – 0.66°C anomaly in the 1961-1990 baseline. Is that specific enough?
Hi Javier,
You show lots of figures and do not always make clear where they come from as you include doodles of unknown origin.
Your range is quite narrow, I expect temperature to be within the 95% confidence interval of that chart with roughly a 1/40 chance it will be below that range and a 1/40 chance it will be above.
We will have to wait 7 years to see who is correct, note that I am referring to the annual average temperature anomaly.
You often use daily temperatures, would you specify what you expect the annual average temperature will be in 2025?
LOL
I will propose that we mount an expedition to find out, and that it begin with the Atacama desert, since it is very dry there, so any doodles should remain relatively intact.
Hi Dennis,
That chart is from Ed Hawkins as it says, updated to 2016 and with my temperature target as you requested. The graph shows annual temperature anomaly by Had CRUT4, so that is what I have given.
While we wait those 7 years we shall see if temperatures are trending higher as the models propose, or not. Every year of temperatures trending down will make the model prediction more difficult to succeed. We are close to 2 years of negative temperature change since February 2016.
Hi Javier,
Just look at the ice core data, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels change very slowly over 100,000 years or so. Just look at the evidence. Geochemists figured this out quite a while ago.
Newton’s laws are also just hypotheses, but they work pretty well at non-relativistic velocities. 🙂
Hi Dennis,
Ice core records of CO2 work as a low pass filter smoothing the data. Stomatal records show a much more dynamic response of CO2 to temperatures during the Younger Drias period. Centennial changes are not well reflected in the ice core record giving the false impression that CO2 only changes very slowly.
Hi Javier,
All kinds of problems using stomatal records to estimate CO2 response as they will be affected by temperature and moisture.
There can be local and seasonal changes in Atmospheric CO2, the changes in your chart are likely to be seasonal and/or local effects.
Source?
Dennis,
Rundgren, M., & Beerling, D. (2003). Fossil leaves: effective bioindicators of ancient CO2 levels?. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 4(7).
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002GC000463/full
Everybody knows that predictions are wrong and it’s pretty much taken as a given, but they are nevertheless useful and it doesn’t need to be regurgitated as part of every discussion. Javier seems to have decided he must be some kind of unique genius because he has somehow managed to work that out for himself.
Here’s what actually should be written in a science fiction story taking place somewhere in the not that distant future. Methods of climate change mitigation pushed by liberals and climate researchers lead to monumental increases in the costs of all of life’s daily necessities and regulations which reduce our national living standards. For almost all the time, this story is about gaining more money and control. What’s even more, the methods have no promise of saving people from anything specific because they are so abstract. Although what isn’t abstract, but a completely sure thing is the 20 trillion (and counting) in national debt the left decided to burden our children and grandchildren with by distracting the public with other issues.
Hi Charles,
I am TRULY impressed with the width and depth of your ignorance, assuming you’re not a bot. Prove you’re not by posting a reasonable response, even if it’s just to call ME an idiot, lol.
If you don’t think our nation’s massive debt is a huge threat to the upcoming generations maintaining the American way of life, then that is a true example of ignorance.
Total bot
Back atcha, Charles
I now take you as real, rather than as a bot, although you COULD be a sophisticated bot.
For what it’s worth I agree with you about the vast debt load we have accumulated being a very real threat to the tranquillity and prosperity of this country!
At some point, and we may have passed it already, more promises get to be made than can possibly be kept, especially if it turns out that the working age classes shrink too much in relation to the elderly non working class. The failure to keep such promises can result in revolution, and I mean the real kind, with pitchforks and torches, or pistols and shotguns, or molotov cocktails if the lefties manage to disarm the righties, lol.
IF they succeed in doing that, they may well find at some future time that the POLICE they counted on to DEFEND them from redneck righties such as yours truly are actually their MASTERS, rather than their servants, lol.
So I owe you and apology, and you’re getting it, in this very line.
BUT BUT BUT BUT this does NOT mean that you are right about our environmental problems, or about what we need to do about them. I know. I have the technical education necessary to UNDERSTAND these problems, and although I am a very conservative person in some respects, I tell it like it is, and the facts are all on the side of the liberals and the climate science and environmental establishment, rather than the right wing bau establishment.
You’re hearing this from a person who has seriously called a lot of liberals nincompoops and worse, and a person who has voted R on numerous occasions in the past.
For almost all the time, this story is about gaining more money and control. What’s even more, the methods have no promise of saving people from anything specific because they are so abstract.
Which shouldn’t be a problem for you because you live high on the hog with your paycheck from Koch Industries… Yeah, YOUR story is certainly about gaining more money and control alright and definitely not about saving the environment or the people!
Because nothing will enable my complete subjugation to the state quite so handily as being able to produce all of my own power for home and auto with sunlight harvested from my own rooftop.
Look out! It’s a trap!
Methods of climate change mitigation pushed by liberals and climate researchers lead to monumental increases in the costs of all of life’s daily necessities and regulation
Except – that’s not true. Switching away from fossil fuels will save us all a lot of money.
Oil and coal companies are putting out a lot of misinformation, because THEY will be hurt by the switch.
Hey Nick, I’m pretty sure you’ll get a hoot out of this! I did!
An update on my solar power project – results show why I got solar power for my home (hint: climate change is not a reason)
The funny thing is that he’s saying exactly what I’ve been saying: solar (and wind, EVs, etc.) can be strongly justified without even thinking about climate change.
But boy, does he manage to complain about “green” ideas every step of the way!
Ironic, too, that climate deniers usually claim that “green” activists are opposed to free markets, and yet he is infuriated that he has to pay higher rates when demand is higher: “Thanks to PG&E’s new smart-meter system, they can now gouge me more efficiently and on schedule, when I need electricity to keep cool the most. ”
Wow.
IT CAN’T BE DONE! RENEWABLE ENERGY FROM THE SUN WILL NEVER WORK!
http://evtv.me/2017/09/canticle-of-the-sun/
I’m busy as Santa in the EVTV shop vainly striving to tease clever out of not very good C++ code. Surrounded by too much equipment costing far too much to do so little. Fumbling with my blighted mind and recall, bereft of friend or assistant, and mired in an overwhelming sense of disorder and detail I’ve failed to address. My aging carcass failing to meet the call…
And as quickly, my own ingratitude smights me across the face with a sudden violence left gasping.
In truth, and oblivious, I preside over 12 or 13 various kilowatts of power ebbing and flowing at the whim of the clouds into and out of a Tesla Model S 85kWh battery pack on the wall with a cavalier indifference to the most humbling miracle of our age. The harnessing of electricity to do our work itself a scant 140 years recent of some 13,000 years of recorded or at least vaguely alluded to human history. As luck would have it, encompassing the brief three score and ten alloted me personally, and perhaps another ten if able.
And here I am with the power of 18 mighty equine steeds at my beck, call and fingertips in our little TEST setup designed and ordered not precisely to DO anything, but just to allow me to play with software and hardware to measure and direct its direction and flow. Assembled for my personal entertainment. Sunlight, silent as sin converted to electricity, measurable in flashing red LED, to iron shafts turning in the breeze.
I wish I knew more about electricity and electronics, because my next middle size project is to build a couple of water wheels and put them in the stream on my farm.
Getting the generators properly matched up to the wheels and the flow of water, and getting the speed of them about right is going to have to be a trail and error process, I can’t afford to hire an engineer.
But the cast offs of industrial civilization have their uses, and I’m an expert in terms of finding uses for things such as old truck axle assemblies. I have one set aside that is intended to transmit three hundred horsepower on a continual basis and carry a ten ton load, likewise, at highway speeds, including hitting potholes, etc, without failing. Ball and roller bearings, very low friction, and I will put the water wheel on one end, and support it cantilevered on a welded up mount out over the water, and take the power off at the other end, using a gearbox salvaged out of another truck to up the revs to something appropriate , probably about 3600.
I’m hoping for about five thousand watts continuous from each one, so long as there’s no drought and they don’t freeze up, which won’t happen very often or very long here.
My out of pocket costs won’t exceed five grand, including purchasing the generator units with self contained voltage regulators, etc, but I don’t have any real idea how long such units will last in continuous service. Maybe I will have to get older, bigger industrial units and just not expect them to put out more than the same or somewhat less watts. I can built the wheels and flumes from my treasure stash aka as crazy Mac’s junkyard. But sooner or later half of my neighbors will show up wanting something from it, ranging from a few feet of rebar to a telephone pole, lol.
Is anybody else getting ten kilowatts pretty much around the clock and around the calendar far the same money?
The actual work isn’t going to be work, it’s recreation, lol.
Find a cheap totalled electric car and repurpose the drivetrain as the generator and turbine shaft, and the battery pack for storage. Hell, just weld some paddle fins on the drive rim and dip a toe in the flow while in regen mode.
🙂
Hillbilly Hydro.
What’s not to love.
Forgot the graphic.
If I could find one cheap enough ,and knew enough to hook up some inverters without ruining either the inverters or battery etc, I would do that in a heart beat!
But I haven’t yet heard of any electric cars that are actually cheap, in respect to my budget, wrecked or not.
Thanks for the suggestion, I’m going to create a search and save it as a book mark for such a car on CL and on some other sites. I might get lucky and find one I can afford, and get even luckier and get somebody good on programming and electronics to come visit for a few days of hillbilly hospitality, drinking artisan’s whiskey, murdering Bambi and having her for dinner, matching wits with coyotes and wild turkeys, and just telling lies over a fire.
Used Smart electric drive cars can be had for $4,500 now, not even wrecked. 17.6 kWh battery.
What would be pretty hilarious if you lived by a river and had enough head would be to build a paddle wheel driven dyno that you could park the car on in regen mode that would charge the car up by rolling the tires.
It would kind of be like a spring loaded wind up toy. Wind er up, and let er rip.
Yair . . .
OFM. I had a friend who spent years tinkering with various waterwheel designs and he gave up on anything with gears, oil bath lubrication, or governing for frequency control . . . he reckoned everything had to be simple.
The last version before he died was a twelve foot overshot wheel with a two inch shaft mounted in greasable plummer blocks charging a small forklift battery by way of 24V Delco (D8) alternator driven by V belts, an inverter converted the 24v DC to 240v AC.
He was a man of modest needs and I think the system provided about five kilowatts and ran very satisfactorily for years after his death until destroyed by cyclone Yasi.
Going the V belt route enabled easy experimentation and alteration of gearing for low winter flows . . . same belts, different pulleys, the alternator was mounted on a slide.
The battery was essentially just an accumulator for the inverter and of course the alternator could run at variable speeds (partially blocked pipe?) without affecting the quality of the out put.
Cheers.
Hi Scrub, it gladdens my heart to see your comment, and if I ever get free of family obligations, and you’re still around too, I would dearly love to see the a bit of the outback, and treat you to whatever you like best in exchange for some conversation about your hands on life.
Having given your comment a few minutes thought, I am already ninety nine percent convinced I ought to just do it YOUR way, but I’m intrigued with Bob’s suggestion concerning using a salvaged electric car as as my generator / storage system.
I can mount EITHER a car or a big DC alternator/ generator that will run ok over a wide range of speeds a few feet uphill and off the side of the stream, by using a long drive shaft or two salvaged from trucks, no problem with flooding, other than that the wheel and flume might conceivably be washed out in a hundred year storm. I would be able to fish them out downstream, given that all the land for a couple of miles belongs to people I know, and the topography flattens downstream so that the stream spreads very wide but shallow and slow right below my place. It’s not that big a stream, ordinarily. In moderately wet weather it runs about a foot deep and five or six feet wide at a fairly good pace. In unusually dry weather, it shrinks to four feet wide and six or eight inches deep in the same spot but it still has a strong current.
My grand parents saw it six to eight feet deep and forty feet across in a place we call “the narrows” and running fast enough to create rapids, sometime back in the early part of the last century. Nobody could remember which year that was, but all the older people I used to know who lived close by remembered seeing it.
For what it’s worth, and it’s only anecdotal evidence, but just about all of my family on both sides that lived thru early childhood lived to be OLD, as in eighty, ninety, and a hundred plus, with over half a dozen known to me personally breaking the century mark.
WHY? I put it down to the fact that they worked hard, physically, ate almost nothing other than simple properly cooked locally produced foods, drank super clean mountain spring water and maybe a little cider and milk and homemade wine, but hardly anything else, breathed clean air, and so forth.
Yair . . .
Gotcha OFM. Thanks for reply.
I too would love to get together with just a couple of my internet friends but alas it is never going to happen.
I like your real world accounts of life as you know it and, although much of the conversation here is way beyond my understanding I enjoy this site and hope my occasional snippets from the other side of the world may be of interest to some.
FWIW, practical electrical engineering isn’t that complicated. You can learn it off Wikipedia. So you probably don’t need to depend on trial and error… look the numbers up from standard tables, use standard formulas…
How wind and solar are starting to eat profits on the oil and gas industry.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Too-much-energy-creates-a-challenge-for-Texas-12220450.php
The root of the climate crisis is capitalism, not demographics
Three days backpacking, and when I return it is the same old place.
You get to watch your mind spending 13 hours a day in a sleeping bag looking at the stars.
Where is our friend Frisky?
Is this fall at all? Heat records dropping faster than leaves in the Midwest and Northeast
Large swaths of the U.S. Midwest and Northeast, along with southeast Canada, continued to bake on Monday in some of the region’s highest temperatures ever recorded after the autumnal equinox. The heat is a product of the same sprawling zone of upper-level high pressure that’s slowed the northward treks of Hurricanes Jose and Maria. Meanwhile, it’s been quite chilly across the western U.S., but continent-wide, there have been far more heat records than cold records. One reason: a cloudy, chilly air mass can easily keep daytime highs 20°F or more below average in the arid West, but it’s more difficult to push early-autumn temperatures 20°F or more above average in the more temperate East. Moreover, the clouds and moisture out West have tended to keep nighttime temperatures from plummeting, whereas rich atmospheric moisture has kept nighttime lows back East close to summertime levels.
Hey, it’s cool in Coolidge Kansas though.
Arctic sea ice extent bottomed out the annual in 8th lowest place. The recovery is slow so far. As of most recent JAMA for today’s date it is 5th lowest.
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop.ver1/data/graph/plot_extent_n_v2.csv
It will be interesting to observe future ice behaviour as it thins, as extent and area values converge, and as volume values start to cross paths with both, below an average of 1 meter thick.
All the ice turned 1 year older at the minimum. There is more old ice this year than in 2015 and 2016. This ice will pile up at the coasts of Canada and Greenland increasing ice thickness.
“All the ice turned 1 year older at the minimum.” – Javier
Are you sure that it doesn’t all turn one year older at the maximum? What is the birthday for arctic ice? When does it turn 2?
“There is more old ice this year than in 2015 and 2016.” – Javier
How old? Source? Very imprecise language as usual.
That statement is either true or false depending upon what period in time of 2017 you are comparing to previous years. As usual you speak very imprecisely and unscientifically.
‘Arctic sea ice extent for January 2017 averaged 13.38 million square kilometers (5.17 million square miles), the lowest January extent in the 38-year satellite record.’
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/02/2017-ushers-in-record-low-extent/
‘Arctic sea ice extent for February 2017 averaged 14.28 million square kilometers (5.51 million square miles), the lowest February extent in the 38-year satellite record.’
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/03/another-warm-month-in-the-arctic/
‘Arctic sea ice extent for March 2017 averaged 14.43 million square kilometers (5.57 million square miles), the lowest March extent in the 38-year satellite record.’
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/04/another-record-but-a-somewhat-cooler-arctic-ocean/
‘Arctic sea ice extent for April 2017 averaged 13.83 million square kilometers (5.34 million square miles), and tied with April 2016 for the lowest April extent in the 38-year satellite record.’
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/05/warm-arctic-cool-continents/
‘Arctic sea ice extent for May 2017 averaged 12.74 million square kilometers (4.92 million square miles), the fourth lowest in the 1979 to 2017 satellite record.’
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/06/sluggish-ice-retreat/
‘Arctic sea ice extent for June 2017 averaged 11.06 million square kilometers (4.27 million square miles), the sixth lowest in the 1979 to 2017 satellite record.’
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/07/arctic-ice-extent-near-levels-recorded-in-2012/
‘Arctic sea ice extent for July 2017 averaged 8.21 million square kilometers (3.17 million square miles), the fifth lowest July in the 1979 to 2017 satellite record.’
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/08/which-august-will-we-get/
‘Arctic sea ice extent for August 2017 averaged 5.51 million square kilometers (2.13 million square miles), the third lowest August in the 1979 to 2017 satellite record.’
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/09/the-end-of-summer-nears/
‘On September 13, Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its seasonal minimum extent of 4.64 million square kilometers (1.79 million square miles), the eighth lowest in the 38-year satellite record.’
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/09/arctic-sea-ice-at-minimum-extent-2/
In a few weeks we will have September 2017 average. In a few months the annual data will be complete and we can see how annual 2017 averages compare to previous years. It will likely be in third lowest place. Javier will suggest this is a victory for climate change risk denial. What a fool.
I know you don’t know this, because you don’t know much about the things that you talk about. But this is the good thing. By reading my posts you can learn a lot.
For NSIDC, Arctic ice birthday is the transition from week 37 to week 38, when all the ice advances one year its age. This year it was September 18.
As September 2017 is having more ice extent than 2016 and 2015, more ice has advanced age and become older. You yourself admitted that there are 7 years with less ice than 2017.
In January through April 2017 there were zero years with less ice.
In May there were three.
In June there were five.
In July there were four.
In August there were two.
2017 is not over yet. Thanks for coming out short bus.
“the last year that global temperatures fell below the 20th-century average was 1976.”
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/intro.html
For those Do it Yourselfers, experimenters and the curious, here is a large series of solar heating systems to investigate. Have fun, I am.
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/Space_Heating.htm#Passive
Indictments are almost dead sure on the way.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/26/indictments-michael-flynn-paul-manafort-richard-blumenthal-says-243158
What ya think, HB?
Ya think the FBI went deep and long into HRC’s home brewed email system which would have gotten anybody except a member of the super elite indicted, and most likely jailed, or at least stripped of all security clearances and fired, BECAUSE SHE WAS A DEMOCRAT? Or because she is a WOMAN?
And now we know that her pervert husband( by his own admission ) had a computer with his HRC homey wife’s official state department emails on it, and was obviously a potential black mail subject, and so forth, lol.
Do you still maintain that the VOTERS of this country were NOT ENTITLED TO KNOW THAT, simply because it had been announced she wouldn’t be prosecuted?
You would have howled in glee about this if the perp had been a REPUBLICAN, now, WOULDN’T you ?
Prosecuting super rich, super powerful people with highest possible connections into the power structure is almost impossible, and the decision not to prosecute HRC was based on LACK OF INTENT to allow secret information to fall into the wrong hands, which is apparently a sort of unwritten rule that allows the Justice Department to cut some slack in the cases it WANTS to cut some slack, as when the Department is run by Democrats, and facing the unhappy task of prosecuting a leading Democrat, ditto if it had been a Republican perp and administration.
Nevertheless the FBI in particular and the Justice Department in general, at the career professional level, appear to be ready and willing and WORKING on giving it the OLD SCHOOL TRY.
Intent is HARD to prove, and I’m not claiming and never have claimed that HRC INTENDED to put the country at risk, I have only maintained that she was as dumb as a fence post for doing so, considering she was intending to run for president.
Dumb as she is , in terms of reading the mood of the people, she couldn’t possibly be dumb enough to have taken that risk unless she had some EXTREMELY GOOD REASONS for doin so and thus (fatally ) endangering her prospects. Only a totally naive person, an HRC true believer could possibly believe otherwise.
But of course any cynic and hypocrite with a working brain was and is free to PRETEND to believe she wasn’t out to hide some SERIOUSLY dirty laundry.
YEP. The email scandal cost her the presidency.
But Comey didn’t create the email system, he just did his job. And he was doing it in respect to Trump’s questionable activities too, until he put heat enough on Trump for Trump to fire him.
BIG MISTAKE.
That put the career people who take their ethics seriously at both the Justice Department in general and the FBI in particular in a spot where they are DROOLING at the prospect of biting a giant chunk out of Trump’s ass.
It’s not just a professional law enforcement job now, it’s a personal honor issue for them now.
I just hope Trump is stupid enough to fire Mueller.
Of course there will be somebody ethically flexible enough to do it, when told to do so, because there are always a few of that sort in ANY organization that’s large enough for them to conceal their true nature.
My fondest hope at the moment, politically, is that Trump is fool enough to fire Mueller. That ought to be enough to piss off the people of this country to the extent that they put the D’s back into control of the Senate, and get rid of more than the usual number of incumbent R’s in 2020.
The head of the DEA has announced that he’s quitting because he has no respect for Trump, given that Trump has no respect for the law.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dea-chief-resigns-after-criticizing-trump-remarks-police-conduct-n804981
I meant her homey’s husband, not BILL Clinton. He’s apparently just horny, or at least he used to be, lol. I guess old age has probably cured him of most of his bad habits by now.
Sea ice extent at record low
https://14adebb0-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/sea-ice-extent-area/grf/nsidc_global_extent_byyear_b.png?attachauth=ANoY7cpEezeoUmIgL8xNjfRnvXGMBFddiNn7SM3Uh647P76KYoD_qL7ZL89gDQm2DiHFhayX48n6WL6Sx9pybqrt7ggWjhPuja1QY_ERkAFPkuW8Zqz-NKJCMLJ4U6zfQdnSGlyopgN-xyT7EKFgQYbyxKc1yupEDAJlcOJy2yyn-ANpvzNt8IfXMAoTYzkFeqr1XBkUDZFUSp25RkO6Q3TpWUniM9CJ1G-n592fn-crgGckJXd__Are35szCkJyAq2gyzAUa1cleo2KSDE9L8_A9DmkmdXgsW8YtjCQ_sMI0_tXO8wyiEg%3D&attredirects=0
There was a report in July that indicated the 2016 crash in Antarctic ice was probably weather variation, a bit like the 2012 minimum in the Arctic, except against the trend rather than reinforcing it. But it said the cause was mostly storms in Spring (September to November), whereas the biggest drop was really an early and big melt in late Winter. Also unlike 2012 in the Arctic there has been no recovery yet this year. I’ve never looked at the Antarctic weather before but it’s really symmetric – a big high over Antarctic and six or seven deep lows rotating around it clockwise. Don’t know if that is normal but the lows all look almost hurricane strength, so a particularly stormy season must be something else. I guess that’s what happens if there’s no land to get in the way, but I would think if the Antarctic warms faster and the jet stream gets more loopy, like in the north, it’s going to be a real mess.
” Don’t know if that is normal ”
I’m about as far as expert as you can get, when it comes to the Antarctic climate, but I have read in at least a couple of places that this is more or less the norm.
High winds circle the continent most of the time, with the effect being that the air mass over the ice cap doesn’t mix with air over the ocean nearly as much as would otherwise be expected, due to this band of wind.
Everything you ever wanted to know about global dimming and brightening (no not about education or IQ).
Enjoy the show.
https://fallmeeting.agu.org/2015/files/2015/12/Wild-slides.pdf
How To Make Money Dumpster Diving
http://lolhardonline.com/how-to-make-money-dumpster-diving-2/
The old saying, “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure” has never been truer. What was once called junk hunting has been replaced by Dumpster Diving. And, that craze was started off by hungry people raiding supermarket trash bins looking for perfectly edible food. No more. Thanks to eBay, Dumpster Diving is now a full time, well paying job for thousands. Here are some secrets to help you get started.
Dumpster diving is actually one of the best possible ways to get yourself arrested for trespassing and even for stealing these days, although there is some good stuff to be found in dumpsters……. once in a long while. Produce and deli food can be found over and over again in the same dumpster, if you can get away with retrieving it. Otherwise, fugetaboutit.
But here’s an enterprising take on the topic. If you make friends with somebody whose job it is to throw out such food or food scraps, they can put them in a bag, on top, last thing, for you for easy retrieval. A local woman I know makes an extra five bucks a day throwing out the scraps at a fried chicken restaurant and then retrieving them this way RIGHT BEFORE the boss arrives to open in the morning. Into her car trunk they go, and from there to her neighbor who feeds them to his dozen rabbit dogs. Five bucks a day is a big help when you make ten bucks an hour or less.
No doubt a lot of less fortunate people eat what they can obtain in similar fashion.
When we kept pigs back when I was a kid, some of our customers who run retail markets put aside their bad fruit and veggies for us, on days they knew we would be making deliveries or passing by, freeing them from having to dispose of this stuff and providing free feed for our pigs. EVERY dollar was important back then.
Flea markets and yard sales are the ticket. Let the people who collect all week to sell on Saturday morning do all the heavy work LOOKING and collecting FOR you, and earn a dollar or two. I hit two local long established flea markets at least once a month, and seldom fail to find at least fifty dollars worth of non perishable stuff I will eventually need for ten or twenty cents on the dollar,plus it’s an enjoyable experience.
Fortunately I have ample dry storage for treasures such as like new toys to be donated at Christmas and seldom used tools- tools which are priceless on the day you do finally need them. My flea market collection of nails alone occupies eight feet of heavy duty shelving. Nails aren’t a big expense but the unscheduled TRIP TO TOWN just to buy a fist full of the correct size and kind is a pain in the backside.
Most of the people who advocate living in or very near the city, as opposed to within say half an hour or so driving time of town, one way, fail to understand that you can easily afford a car and all the expenses associated with owning it, even after allowing for the hassle of commuting to work, because you can save it all back twice or three times over on rent or the cost of home ownership and a dozen other ways by living in the boonies.
When you look at your personal finances in terms of the BIG PICTURE, an hour or more spent commuting into town on a daily basis may be the most profitable hour of your day. A house and grounds, NOT including the farm, such as our home place, rents for eight hundred or so out in the countryside in my neck of the woods. In a decent neighborhood in ANY city or close in suburb I have ever visited, it would rent for twice that easily. It would rent for four thousand and up forty miles outside a place such as Washington DC or LA. Places like this with a comparable VIEW don’t exist near DC, and near LA , rent would probably start at ten thousand with the view and privacy we enjoy.
The crepe myrtles alone, which Dad rooted and planted at zero cash expense back in the early fifties, are worth a hundred grand now, if you want to buy a couple of dozen like them from a company that transplants large trees.
And the next generation to live here will have PLENTY of space for a generously sized GROUND mounted solar system, one ample to keep an electric car charged well enough to commute a hundred and fifty miles per week, if you own two of them and drive them on alternate days. In good weather, you could commute fuel cost free any distance within range of your cars. With some upgrades to the wiring and appliances, they would be able to cut the electricity bill back to the minimum service charge most months.
The Arctic sea ice September minimum extent reached a new record low in 2012 of 3.41 million square kilometers, 44 percent below the 1981-2010 average, and 16 percent below the previous record in 2007. Over the last 13 years, a new record was set four times (2002, 2005, 2007, and 2012) and several other years saw near-record lows, particularly 2008 and 2011. On September 10, 2016, Arctic sea ice extent dipped to 4.14 million square kilometers, reaching a statistical tie with the 2007 minimum for second-lowest in the satellite record. As NSIDC reported in September 2016, the 10 lowest September ice extents over the satellite record have all occurred since 2007.
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_ice.html
Arctic sea ice shows the smallest melt in a decade
From maximum to minimum extent the 2017 season has seen a lost of only 10.2 million square kilometers. This is the smallest in 10 years, achieved despite abnormally high Arctic temperatures.
For the past decade, the trend has been towards a smaller melt with 2017 losing 650,000 square kilometers of ice less than 2007. This is nearly the area of Texas.
Data: ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/masie_4km_allyears_extent_sqkm.csv
Also 2017 has seen the 5th largest ice surface mass gain on record in Greenland.
Definitely a good year for Arctic ice lovers and polar bears.
September 15 update
Values for 2011, 2016, 2017 are all within 200 km3. Average ice thickness remains thin, just above minimum September values that occurred in 2010 and 2011.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
On Greenland
“we estimate the total mass budget to be close to zero and possibly even positive.”
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-greenland-ice-sheet-2017
SMB subtract calving equals TMB. Now you know.
So how long will it take for Greenland to melt at this rate, and how much is it contributing this year to sea level rise?
Catastrophic climate is a dumb proposition.
‘So how long will it take for Greenland to melt at this rate, and how much is it contributing this year to sea level rise?’ – Short Bus
Ever heard of google? This information is not exactly carved in a stone tablet and hidden on the dark side of the moon.
“Some deniers will never concede anything, even the obvious. No matter how many times they’re shown wrong, they’ll keep repeating the same nonsense endlessly. That’s why some of their “arguments” are better described as “zombie arguments” — even if you kill them, they just come back from the dead.”
“Deniers tend to use the “change the subject” tactic — a lot. When the topic under discussion gets too hot for them, rather than admit any mistake they just switch to another.”
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/07/27/understanding-sea-level-rise/
Sea Level Rise has Accelerated
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/sea-level-rise-has-accelerated/
Sea level rise has not accelerated.
Fasullo, J. T., R. S. Nerem, and B. Hamlington. “Is the detection of accelerated sea level rise imminent?.” Scientific reports 6 (2016): 31245.
https://www.nature.com/srep/2016/160810/srep31245/full/srep31245.html
The first author is from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO. Tamino is not a climatologist, just a known data torturer.
And I guess that without any contribution from Greenland this year, and the La Niña watch conditions the detection of accelerated sea level rise is not going to be so imminent.
Hi Javier,
When the sea ice maximum for the year is one of the smallest (or perhaps tied for the smallest since 1979) on record, then there is less ice to melt. Maybe we could look at the percent of ice that melted from maximum to minimum each year. The trend from 1979 to 2016 is clearly positive.
Dennis,
We all know the planet has been warming for 350 years. That means less Arctic sea ice, not more. It is very unlikely, and would frighten me very much, that Arctic sea ice situation goes back to 1979 because that would mean that the planet had entered a very dangerous cooling phase that nobody in his right mind should want.
But to understand present Arctic sea ice dynamics we should look at what the ice is doing in shorter time frames than the 30 years you talk about.
As scientific research has showed there are two periodicities that are important for Arctic sea ice dynamics. One is the ~60 year periodicity that has a downtrend since 1979 to 2007 and is in an uptrend since. You can see that in your graph.
The other one is the ~20 year periodicity that has a downward trend in 1980-1990 and 2001-2012, and upward trend in 1990-2001, and since 2012. You can see that in your graph too.
I have not invented these periodicities. They have been described by scientists and the data supports their existence. We don’t know their cause and we don’t know if they will persist into the future, but if they do it allows to make some predictions that are strikingly different from CO2 hypothesis predictions.
Arctic sea ice should grow in the 2012-2022 period. It should stop growing or grow very little in the 2022-2032 period. And it should grow again in the 2032-2037 period. Around 2037-40 the 60 year cycle should change phase again and we should see rapid loss of Arctic sea ice again probably in the 2053-2063 period.
That’s what the data and past evidence from the pre-satellite era shows, not the linear decline that you defend.
Hi Javier,
You have mentioned wiggle matching in the past. Now it is clear what that is.
It seems to be matching imagined trends with no underlying scientific basis. Not very interesting.
Hi Dennis,
The ~20 year and ~60 year oscillations have been described in scientific articles, so they do have a scientific basis. I just have outlined them for you to see.
Unlike the CO2 hypothesis that can’t be falsified, the natural oscillation hypothesis makes very specific predictions. Those predictions agree with the observation that Arctic sea ice is growing and will continue doing so in the following years. According to CO2 hypothesis Arctic melting should have proceeded during these past 10 years due to increasing CO2 and record high temperatures.
Dennis, you nailed him, and then he comes back with that?
ha ha ha
Hi Javier,
Climate cannot be predicted as precisely as you would like.
Nobody except you expects these scenarios to play out exactly as printed in the IPCC, one would be surprised to see the ensemble mean followed exactly.
What does the stadium wave hypothesis propose as a mechanism, that’s the important part, everything else is stories. Yes the dynamics is complex and controlled experimentation is difficult.
Hi Javier,
In peer reviewed journals what has been explained is some kind of periodicity with no firm hypothesis for the cause. Such periodicity without explanation or mechanism is of little interest.
When a better explanation than CO2 is found that fits the data from 1850 to 2016, then the CO2 hypothesis will be rejected. As it stands there is a very good physical explanation for why CO2 causes warming and the data shows that the TCR is around 2 C for a doubling of CO2 and the TCR for global land temperature suggests an equilibrium climate sensitivity of at least 3 C.
It’s ninety five in the shade here at two pm EDT, which is probably the highest it’s been on this date at this particular spot for at least seventy five years, according to some neighbors who are in the quaint habit of writing down such things on calendars their family have keep as personal journals. They have upwards of a hundred of them now, but not everything noteworthy got a note of course.
But being farmers, one thing they have been careful to keep track of has been dates such as first frost, last frost, first snow, etc, and uncommonly hot or cold weather.
I’m sure the nearest weather station has official daily records but I don’t know how to access them. Doing so would probably require some serious data diving skills and maybe a password, if they haven’t been posted in a public data base. Older records might not even be computerized.
Things are getting pretty close to hell in a hand basket in Venezuela.
I don’t generally do more than scan Fox headlines, but you have to check out both the leftie and the rightie press to get some of the news.
None of the major middle of the road or lefties have this up near the top , you would have do dig for it.
“Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, fresh off calling on the inhabitants of his starving nation to eat rabbits that had been kept as pets, is now asking his army to make sure it has “rifles, missiles and well-oiled tanks at the ready” amid a war of words with the United States.
Maduro made the declaration Monday during a military exercise in the city of Maracay, two days after the Trump administration signed new restrictions imposing bans on the entry of some Venezuelan government officials and their families into the U.S.”
Canada in other news is freezing the assets of a bunch of Maduro’s gang.
I can’t see that he is any better than dough boy, in any respect, although he can’t get away with some things as easily as dough boy, such as having people executed as warnings to stay in line.
It’s not any so called elite that’s stirring up revolution in Venezuela, and it’s not the price of oil that’s THE problem. No other major oil producing country , with the possible exception of a couple of other small countries ruled by people as corrupt as Maduro , is in even remotely similar economic trouble.
It’s fucking corruption, pure and simple , on the part of the ruling elite, that’s THE trouble.
The PEOPLE who aren’t closely aligned with that ruling elite are now actually at risk of starvation.
Venezuela is a country that ought to be self sufficient in food, or damned close, and would be, with competent government.
I seldom ever agree with Trump on anything at all, but he’s probably right this once at least. Venezuela is probably a place it’s best that Yankee citizens avoid, for now, especially with Maduro talking idiocy equal to Trump.
If an American ever wishes to have body and soul united no longer I recommend rural hitch hiking anywhere in Latin America. I’ve known some that did it, but only with Canadian flags on their backpacks.
It’s not really corruption that’s the underlying problem in Venezuela. That’s been going on since the Forty Families.
It’s incompetence.
The incompetence seems to correlate with the people from the most highly lead-poisoned generation getting into power.
I still blame lead poisoning.
Hurricanes are not very friendly to wind turbines and solar PV panels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AAHJs-j3uw
On the other hand:
Severe power failures in Puerto Rico and across the Caribbean spur new push for renewable energy
The ongoing electricity disaster in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria — and on several other Caribbean islands slammed at full force by strong storms — is driving new interest in ways of shifting island power grids toward greater reliance on wind, solar and even, someday, large batteries.
“For the most part, these island grids were completely devastated, and it will be four to six months before most of them can power their islands completely again,” said Chris Burgess, director of projects for the Islands Energy Pprogram at the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Adding more renewables, and moving away from centralized power grids to more so-called “microgrids,” could lower costs and increase resilience in the face of storms, several energy experts said. And island nations, already at the forefront of pushing for action on climate change, have been moving this way for a while.
This is not to say that there was not severe damage to the solar farm shown in the video linked to by Javier. Obviously, this should be taken as a learning experience and there were examples from another video (one of the “related videos” from the side bar of Youtube) of smaller, residential type installations that appeared essentially intact. Another thing from the other video I viewed there would appear to be cause for an inquiry, not just in Puerto Rico but, in all the affected islands as to why some structures fared so badly while others seem essential unscathed (Properties in which the POTUS has an interest).
The experience of Jamaica with Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 is useful since before Gilbert it had been more than 36 years since a major hurricane had made a direct hit on the heavily populated area around the capital city. Much more than half, possibly as much as three quarters of the population of the island lives within an 80 by 20 mile rectangle on the south eastern corner of the island, with the old capital, Spanish Town at the center. Since the last major hurricane before Gilbert, construction practices had become very lax and a lot of short cut construction methods were the norm. Many older buildings that had weathered the previous major hurricane also fared well with hurricane Gilbert but, several fairly substantial (read expensive) dwellings lost their entire roofs, leaving the wealthy occupants exposed to the elements in the middle of the storm. Subsequent investigations revealed that several measures which would have prevented roof loss had not been employed as stipulated by local building codes. Since Gilbert the building codes have been strengthened and home builders are now much more vigilant in ensuring that their contractors are adhering to code, at least as far as proper securing of roofs is concerned.
Many commercial properties lost windows to looters who took advantage of the storm to break windows a nd steal items as large as refrigerators from appliance stores. Most commercial entities that value their glass now have installed steel storm shutters that can be quickly removed and stowed when not needed but, offer sturdy protection from flying debris during a storm. Experience teaches. Obviously there is much to be learned about hardening renewable energy installations in hurricane prone areas. Below is a picture of damage to a solar farm in Puerto Rico. It is not known what date this picture was taken. If it was taken after Irma but before Maria, the damage due to Maria may have been worse.
See my comment below.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-sept-21-2017/#comment-616088
Two days ago I had to go down to Key West on business. It was a very looong drive through the Keys because the entire highway is clogged with trucks clearing debris. It was also a bit surreal because I was listening to a long broadcast on NPR about the devastation in Puerto Rico as I drove. They had the Mayor of San Juan practically crying while asking for Federal help to keep people from dying and she was asking for diesel for generators… while I’m sure the sun was beaming down on the Island!
BTW, I drove by a small island on which every house was severely damaged and the only thing completely unscathed was a large solar PV array on it’s own independent structure.
It’s time for humanity the get off fossil fuels once and for all! Solar PV with battery backup such as Tesla’s power wall is a huge step in the right direction.
Most of the highway looks pretty much like this.
.
3*C by 2050
http://www.pnas.org/content/114/39/10315.full
Only a problem in anti-paradise climate doom mentality. Observations are well below model predictions, even for scenarios (RCP4.5) that predict a stabilization at +2°C.
So we are not going to get +3°C. We are not going to get +2°C. We might not even get +1.5°C by 2100. We should complain to climate scientists for being shortchanged in our warming expectations.
2016 El Niño has past. Time to go back to the Pause.
‘Time to go back to the pause’
Is that your next failed prediction? You’re batting zero in the predictions department. Shall we do a recap? Indeed sometimes you seem incapable of determining whether or not it’s hot or cold outside in the present moment.
Who would take seriously the inane ramblings of such a failure?
More September Arctic ice extent this year.
Temperatures going down for 19 months (since September 2016).
Things are not going your way now. Let’s see for how long. I was already writing last year about the new Arctic sea ice situation. This is going to last for a couple of decades.
The strong El Niño was the last chance to convince people. Now its over.
Even the scientists that were claiming at Paris that we didn’t have time are now saying that models predict too much warming. They can see what is coming and it isn’t what the catastrophic-climate advocates have been saying.
Their last hope is a strong volcanic eruption that would cover their failures.
Hi Javier,
If all Earth System feedbacks are ignored (there are many of these not included in the models) then RCP4.5 stabilizes at 2.5 C above pre-industrial temperature, not 2 C as you suggest. The radiative forcing from CO2 in the RCP4.5 scenario is about 3.4 W/m2, the rest of the RF is from other greenhouse gases and land use change. The models respond to warming over a long period of time as the ocean warms, but it is correct that temperature stabilizes between 1.75 and 3 C for RCP 4.5. Note that the models have a wide variety of ECS values from 2 to 4.7C, with most clustered around 2.5 to 3.5C. The ensemble mean is 3.2C. I also understand you believe this mean is too high, I maintain that we don’t know what ECS is, it may be higher or lower than the ensemble mean. I am only certain that we are uncertain.
You make claims that cannot be supported except by a claim that all views different from yours are incorrect. That is also known as wishful thinking.
Hi Dennis,
Nope. The claims I make are supported in the scientific literature and in the observations.
Take for example my claim that the Arctic has entered a new phase that is going to see very little melting. It is based on 10 years of observations and on scientific evidence from much earlier published in several scientific articles. Take for example:
Divine, D. V., & Dick, C. (2006). Historical variability of sea ice edge position in the Nordic Seas. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 111(C1).
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004JC002851/full
“Historical ice observations in the Nordic Seas from April through August are used to construct time series of ice edge position anomalies spanning the period 1750–2002. While analysis showed that interannual variability remained almost constant throughout this period, evidence was found of oscillations in ice cover with periods of about 60 to 80 years and 20 to 30 years, superimposed on a continuous negative trend.
Given the last cold period observed in the Arctic at the end of the 1960s, our results suggest that the Arctic ice pack is now at the periodical apogee of the low-frequency variability.
We suppose therefore that during decades to come, as the negative phase of the thermohaline circulation evolves, the retreat of ice cover may change to an expansion.”
It must have taken courage to predict an Arctic sea ice expansion in 2006.
As you can see my claims are supported. You don’t like them and disagree with them, and you convince yourself that they are baseless. They are not, and you are the one that is subjected to wishful thinking.
You have bought into the assumptions of the CO2 hypothesis. I haven’t. I remain skeptical and see a very important natural component in the climate processes observed. The only possible conclusion is that the role of CO2 has been overstated and future warming exaggerated.
Year after year observations align with this interpretation. Very little warming since 2003 except for El Niño. Lack of Arctic melting since 2007. Decrease in the speed of rotation since 2003. AMO no longer increasing since ~2009. All these despite rapidly growing atmospheric CO2. Prepare yourself for the possibility of being wrong. You have not interpreted correctly the evidence.
Hi Javier,
You misinterpret my position which is that natural variability can modulate anthropogenic warming, it can enhance anthropogenic warming in some periods and reduce the effect of anthropogenic warming in others. The empirical evidence supports such a position. The system is complex and does not follow a simple linear path. Sea ice thickness continues to fall even though sea ice extent has not fallen as fast as some researchers predicted. Also actual sea ice extent has fallen faster than predicted by Global climate models. I note that you have failed to mention this fact. Is this because the models run too “cool”?
There are a number of factors not included in many global climate models, and further research is needed on the carbon cycle, a lot of carbon could be released from permafrost and this is not accounted for in the models.
Your info is outdated. After 10 years of no melting, that is no longer true. As of September 2017 there is no significant difference between what was predicted by models and observations. I still have to add 2017 to this graph, but it is above 2015 and 2016, and very close to where RCP 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 are. Despite this coincidence, the trends are opposite. Arctic sea ice is going up since 2007 and model ice is going down. They are just crossing.
Hi Javier,
The melt was more rapid than the models predicted through 2012, since that time the trend has moved back towards what the models predicted. You have added a bunch of stuff to the IPCC chart which for RCP4.5 predicts about 4.5 million square km of Northern hemisphere sea ice in 2020. If there is no further sea ice extent melt from 2018-2020, then the models would be too high in 2020. If the NH sea ice extent minimum follows the 2005-2017 trend (0.0555 million square km per year decrease), then the models will be correct, and note this means the actual NH sea ice extent minimum would equal the ensemble mean for RCP4.5. Of course the 95% confidence interval is much wider roughly 3.5 to 6.5 million square km in 2020 as the different models do not agree very well.
Sea ice extent is very weather dependent and difficult to predict.
Hi Javier,
The length of day has an 8 year lag between the change and its effect on global temperature according to the research. So for an affect on temperatures in 2003 you need to look back at 1995. When we do this we find that the 8 year lagged length of day decreased from 2003 to 2011 by 2.1 milliseconds, thus the 8 year lagged speed of rotation of the Earth increased over this period from 2003 to 2011 it did not decrease. Since 2011 it has slowed a bit. The effect on global temperatures is quite minor, from 2003-2011 global temperature would be increased by about 0.04 C per decade from the decrease in the length of day. AMO in the negative phase might also reduce temperature a bit by maybe 0.05 C per decade. Note however that it is unlikely that all of the various oscillations will line up, for example the length of day is unlikely to decrease much further based on past history (2011 was close to a grand minimum for length of day) and lately length of day has been increasing with the lagged 8 year LOD increasing by 0.6 milliseconds from 2011 to 2016, this would reduce the temperature by 0.02 C per decade.
For the past decade CO2 forcing contributed about 0.15 C per decade, if that rate of increase continues and both AMO and LOD cause a relative decrease in warming and the net affect of other factors such as aerosols and SOI are neutral over decadal periods then the rate of warming might be reduced to 0.08 C per decade from recent 30 year rates of about 0.17 C per decade. The AMO seems to be relatively predictable, but the changes in the length of day are less so. My expectation is that warming rates will be between 0.08 C per decade and 0.12 C per decade over the 2013 and 2043 period, though unaccounted for heating of the ocean (and future releases of that heat buildup), changes in the carbon cycle, albedo changes, and aerosol reductions may make this guess too conservative.
What research is that? To my knowledge nobody has demonstrated that LoD has an effect on temperatures. Most scientists believe climate affects LoD and not the opposite, as nobody can figure out how changes in the speed of rotation can affect the climate, while the expansion and contraction of the atmosphere with climate changes is bound to affect the speed of rotation. The causality, however, is far from clear.
The lag is also not well studied, so you can’t assume that it is always 8 years. Actually from the change in LoD in 1972 to the start of global warming in 1976 it was 5 years.
And I don’t think you are tying things together properly. You also assume that you are dealing with independent phenomena, when everything points to their relation. There exists a natural oscillation of 60-80 years that appears to redistribute energy among the different parts of the climate system. As the energy moves it manifests as temperature changes, sea ice changes, atmospheric changes, and speed of rotation changes. The system changes are well described by the Stadium Wave hypothesis as showing leads and lags among the different parts.
Climate models and climate scientists don’t properly account for this oscillation, as it is not reproduced. They have measured the warming from the 1976-2003 positive warming period and assumed it was mainly, if not completely due to CO2. Their models only predict continuous increase in temperatures in the future. Thus the Pause caught them by surprise, when it is the logical next phase in the oscillation. Now they are relieved that the Pause ended without realizing that the recent steep warming was only a temporary interlude due to a very strong El Niño.
That your hypothesis leads you to surprises is a very bad sign.
“Most scientists believe climate affects LoD and not the opposite, as nobody can figure out how changes in the speed of rotation can affect the climate”
The moon modifies the speed of rotation and this causes the ocean’s thermocline to slosh, bringing up warmer or colder waters. This is the mechanism for the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
Listen Javier, if you want to discuss this, I will be at the AGU meeting in New Orleans presenting the research at one of the sessions.
But since he has ignore blocked me, he likely won’t see this.
Hi Javier,
The paper is at link below. Section 3 (Results) discusses the 8 year lag. The paper does not give a very satisfying explanation for the mechanism that might link LOD with temperature except possibly geomagnetic modulation of charged particle fluxes which might affect cloud nucleation.
Article also discussed at web page below
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20110309.html
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/2010JCLI3500.1
Abstract
Earth’s rotation rate [i.e., length of day (LOD)], the angular momentum of the core (CAM), and surface air temperature (SAT) all have decadal variability. Previous investigators have found that the LOD fluctuations are largely attributed to core–mantle interactions and that the SAT is strongly anticorrelated with the decadal LOD. It is shown here that 1) the correlation among these three quantities exists until 1930, at which time anthropogenic forcing becomes highly significant; 2) correcting for anthropogenic effects, the correlation is present for the full span with a broadband variability centered at 78 yr; and 3) this result underscores the reality of anthropogenic temperature change, its size, and its temporal growth. The cause of this common variability needs to be further investigated and studied. Since temperature cannot affect the CAM or LOD to a sufficient extent, the results favor either a direct effect of Earth’s core-generated magnetic field (e.g., through the modulation of charged-particle fluxes, which may impact cloud formation) or a more indirect effect of some other core process on the climate—or yet another process that affects both. In all three cases, their signals would be much smaller than the anthropogenic greenhouse gas effect on Earth’s radiation budget during the coming century.
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Hi Javier,
The long term trend is still negative for sea ice in the Northern hemisphere. When the 30 year trend becomes positive, I will be convinced that Northern hemisphere sea ice is expanding. Will there be changes in the short term rate of change in sea ice extent, no doubt, nobody expects the rate of change will be constant over 10 year periods.
If we look 9 year averages of NH ice extent and area the rate of decrease has slowed for the most recent few 9 year periods, no sign of increase yet for the Northern Hemisphere.
When do you predict we will see an increase in the 9 year average sea ice extent or area in the Northern Hemisphere?
By demanding a 30 year trend in a ~60 year oscillation you are bound to be always wrong. After 30 years of expansion you will be convinced that Northern hemisphere sea ice is expanding, and then it will start to contract again and you won’t believe it.
2012 was the lowest value, and the fall prior to 2007 was very steep, while the recovery since 2007 is very modest. The 9 year average will probably turn positive in 2019-20.
Hi Javier,
There are a number of thing left out of climate models or that are poorly understood.
You are confident that none of these things will be problems, you may be right or wrong on this. The optimist believes that the things that are not understood will all have negligible effects. The pessimist believes the effects are likely to be considerable.
The realist says we don’t know what we don’t know and we should not assume a positive outcome in the face of ignorance.
Dennis,
If CO2 was such a serious problem we should know by now. We have run the experiment with 7 decades of very strong increase in CO2. Perhaps the highest increase in more than a million years. All we’ve got is a moderate warming that hasn’t affected our lives. By most measures humankind is at its best.
If CO2 had been a serious problem we would have been screwed. As a “sapiens” species we first do and then we think. Luckily that was not the case.
CO2 hypothesis of climate change is wrong. We already know that. It doesn’t predict what happens. CO2 contribution to climate change is noticeable but not overriding.
We are late for the precautionary principle. We should have applied it at least 50 years ago. By now we already know the hypothesis is wrong and the effects moderate. There is no point in applying a precautionary principle when we already know the answer. It is not needed. If we should stop burning fossil fuels it is not because of their effect on climate. Other reasons are more sound.
CO2 is having the impact that was predicted long ago.
Hi Javier,
As was predicted long ago, ECS of about 2.8 to 3.2 C looks to be about right, so far the thermal lag of the oceans has kept temperature from rising too fast and natural variability in solar output and changes in ocean currents which affect sea surface temperatures, as well as changes in the length of day which seem to be correlated with long term natural temperature changes by some mechanism which is not well understood.
Considering a global land temperature model using BEST data, a model using carbon, Aerosols, ENSO, and AMO (LOD and PDO not statistically significant when including the other 4 factors), we get a TCR of 3.12 C.
I took the 3 year average of best land data and models results to compare model and data in chart below. The trend line for the model from 1870-2015 (data for ENSO only available from 1870) is slightly lower than the actual data.
Yair . . .
Hello and thanks for the thoughtful post islandboy.
What puzzles me are the random failures. Perhaps an individual panel on an array suffered mechanical damage from flying debris allowing the wind to lift it and break it up?
From personal experience conventional panels are pretty tough and can survive pretty much intact even when dislodged from a roof . . . I have a panel well over thirty years old putting out rated output with crazed and shattered glass.
I wonder what would be the situation had Puerto Rico been powered with one of those compact nukes they were speaking of for island States back in the ‘eighties?
You mean the “compact nukes they
wereare still only speaking of for island Statesback in the‘eighties” now? AFAIK “compact nukes” are vaporware. A quick search of the web failed to unearth a single working example of one, not even a prototype. As long as such reactors produce waste from which bomb making material can be extracted, I doubt they will ever see the light of day.I suspect flying debris might be a major cause of damage for ground mounted arrays. A flying object could tear one module from it’s mountings and compromise the integrity of other modules since one mounting point usually secures two modules, except when it is at the edge of the array. This would have a cascading effect. See my post just below for a look at what the cascading effect might look like.
It would be interesting to get the perspective of Richard Branson with his substantial ground mounted array on his private island that experienced the full wrath of Irma. A video of what might have been the TV room showed the effects of the hurricane including all the glass doors blown out and paint stripped off the wall but, oddly enough the broken TV was still mounted to it’s wall bracket!
Ooops! Oh Shit! A solar farm on Anguilla after Irma!
If it were my business I would be looking for the contractor to take them to court. That damage suggests that a significant safety margin was not employed. Ground mounted arrays should be designed and built for maximum expected winds. A perimeter wall to reduce wind loads and the volume of flying debris might also have been helpful. There is a 700 plus kW array in Jamaica that has a fairly tall perimeter wall and I now see that apart from dissuading theft, it might also be protective in a hurricane.
Having looked at the before and after pics of Richard Branson’s (700 kWp ?) array on Necker Island I am intrigued by the contrast. It appears to be largely intact while the solar farm near the Airport in Anguilla (above) is FUBAR. Both installation experienced similar category 5 hurricane conditions. Why did one suffer so badly while the other did not?
2017 Accumulated Cyclone Energy for the North Atlantic.
http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/index.php?loc=northatlantic
Individual storm ACE values are also impressive with 2017 presently showing 3 storms with an individual ACE higher than 40. Only 27 storms with a 40+ ACE value are ever recorded to have formed in the Atlantic. Irma, so far, is the highest ACE for 2017 at 66.6 — which is the second highest individual storm ACE ever for the Atlantic. Jose produced an ACE of 42.2 (24th) and Maria an ACE of 41.4 (26th).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_cyclone_energy
Accumulated cyclone energy for the Northern Hemisphere and for the world.
No trend.
Atlantic ACE compared to AMO.
A much better hurricane metric, TIKE, incorporates the size of storms, which ACE does not:
http://davidappell.blogspot.ca/2013/05/a-new-hurricane-metric.html?m=1
Much better according to a blog by a known unbalanced catastrophic-climate advocate?
NOAA uses ACE, but when catastrophic-climate advocates don’t find an official measurement scary enough they jump into a different one. Same with ice extent and volume.
Atlantic ACE compared to carbon emissions
But this graph, also from the Pew Centre, shows a 40% increase in North Atlantic tropical storms over the historic maximum of the mid-1950, which at the time was considered extreme:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/hurricanes-global-warming.htm
Simple improvements in detection. Small weather phenomena, specially when at sea, wasn’t properly tracked, so the data is heavily biased. Of course that doesn’t matter to catastrophic-minded climate advocates. Go see what the IPCC says about extreme weather phenomena and how much confidence it places on that evidence that you claim.
I’m not sure if this is properly peer reviewed, but interesting anyway:
ATTRIBUTION OF THE HEAT WAVES AND SUMMER TEMPERATURES IN SOUTHERN EUROPE 2017
http://assets.climatecentral.org/pdfs/Sept2017_EMBARGOED_WWA_EuroMedHeat_Lucifer_ScienceSummary.pdf
Solar Dimming versus Greenhouse Warming changes due to aerosol pollution affecting solar insolation.
Just a conjecture based on a graph that demonstrates that it is false. Global warming started in 1976, when dimming was increasing, not 10 years later as the graph proposes, when dimming started to decrease. There is no correlation.
Asymmetric Hemispheric Warming due to asymmetric pollution
Asymmetric Hemispheric pollution
Hi Gone fishing,
Interesting. I use the GISS aerosol data in my simple models, but I only have data from 1850 to 2012.
We could assume aerosols fall to aero and remain there, but that would include an assumption of no future volcanoes, which seems unrealistic.
So2 is on the rise lately. One could assume that in the late 21st century aerosols may get very low. Volcanoes are generally short term blips.
Ship fuel oil is supposed to drop from 3.5% m/m to 0.5% m/m sulfur in 2020 according to IMO but could be delayed to 2025 depending upon availability of low sulfur fuel. Chinese coal consumption doubled between 2003 and 2007. It seems to be reducing sulfur pollution after 2007. India was on the rise.
Pollution from coal increased dramatically during the last decade but now scrubbers are being used, difficult to get at any hard data for the last few years although SO2 is still monitored.
Here is an interesting article on the subject with references to the AURA project measurements.
https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=87154
But the downward trend for China is showing some signs of reversing.
https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/17/9115/2017/acp-17-9115-2017.pdf
Typical exudation of volcanic SO2 is on the order of one Tg per year global. Then there are explosive volcanic events which can go beyond even China’s annual 15Tg to 30Tg output.
To give a scale to the matter, Mount Pinatubo gave off 20 Tg SO2 (largest explosive volcanic event in the twentieth century -1991) while “The large 1783-1784 Laki fissure eruption in Iceland released a staggering amount more sulfur dioxide than Pinatubo (approximately 120-million ton vs. 20). Although the two eruptions were significantly different in length and style, the added atmospheric SO2 caused regional cooling of Europe and North America by similar amounts for similar periods of time.” .
To be fair, large volcanic explosions inject much of the SO2 into the stratosphere where it is a more effective and longer lasting sun blocker than tropospheric injection. Thus the short term pulse has large regional and global effects over a period of time longer than the eruptions, sometimes a year or more.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.747.html
But continuous industrial production of SO2 from thousands of sources globally appears to have fast temperature effect on a large scale. Measurements of reduced regional insolation were up to -20w/m2 back in the 50’s and 60’s. Changes to car exhaust systems, low sulfur fuels and scrubbers on power plants have made a difference, otherwise we would be looking at a quite dim world now since fossil fuel burning is very much increased compared to 1950-1960.
Of course there is still NOx compounds which are produced in similar quantities to SOx compounds. They act as GHG’s and help form tropospheric ozone. All of the particulate aerosols and gases from coal and oil burning form smog. Nasty stuff, that destroys lungs, plants and modifies the radiation properties of the atmosphere. Large brown clouds over eastern China and the nearby ocean are not signs of health for the region or the planet.
Hi Gone fishing,
I use the data at the GISS page below
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer/
Looks like stratospheric data only, good for explosive volcanic activity measures. What about the tropospheric particulates and cloud/haze effects from SOx, NxOx, etc. where most of the industrial sources end up?
Hi Gonefishing,
If you know where to find the global average all rolled up in a convenient data set, I will use it. This is what I could find.
This is a good illustration of why you should put trolls on ignore, instead of fighting with them.
https://www.cnet.com/news/russian-linked-twitter-accounts-stoked-nfl-anthem-debate/
I find the NFL anthem issue interesting. Until 2009 the players were not on the field for the anthem. They were still in the dressing room for the anthem and entered the field soon after. Then DoD began ‘paying for patriotism’ at sporting events (i.e. camouflage baseball uniforms and other gingoistic crap) and as a result players were brought on the field for the anthem. Now that place has become a setting for peaceful nonviolent protest.
The issue here is, we all must support our National Anthem including proudly standing for it with our right hand over our heart whenever and wherever it is played. Where I am from, we were taught always that we put God, Country and Family first. What NFL ownership needs to do is take any kneelers out back for a smackdown if they continue to disrespect our troops by disrespecting our Flag. Unfortunately, the owners are only showing that they are still clueless about this matter. Unless they finally wise up one of these days, NFL TV ratings will continue to suffer.
This message was brought to you by the GOP…or was it the GRU? Hard to tell the difference these days.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/26/media/facebook-russia-ads/index.html?iid=EL
Ever heard of the first amendment?
Troop worshippers are fucking whacked in the head.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6imjvgJFvM
He’s five foot-two, and he’s six feet-four,
He fights with missiles and with spears.
He’s all of thirty-one, and he’s only seventeen,
He’s been a soldier for a thousand years.
He’s a Catholic, a Hindu, an Atheist, a Jain,
A Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew.
And he knows he shouldn’t kill,
And he knows he always will,
Kill you for me my friend and me for you.
And he’s fighting for Canada,
He’s fighting for France,
He’s fighting for the USA,
And he’s fighting for the Russians,
And he’s fighting for Japan,
And he thinks we’ll put an end to war this way.
And he’s fighting for Democracy,
He’s fighting for the Reds,
He says it’s for the peace of all.
He’s the one who must decide,
Who’s to live and who’s to die,
And he never sees the writing on the wall.
You sound like a Russian Bot! Go fuck yourself!
disrespect our troops by disrespecting our Flag.
That’s so weird. How did the flag get connected to respect for our troops???
It’s a cult, most of whose members are obese and have diabetes so can’t serve anyway. Being ineligible to fight really can make you a warmonger.
I’m in week 4 of my self imposed ban on watching the NFL. So far I haven’t missed seeing the games like I thought I would. My father served in the Marines during WWII and was very proud to have been in that particular branch. I have no interest in supporting an organization that allows “protests” that tarnish the legacies of all the brave men like my father. Talking to some of my friends and going by the plummeting ratings, I’m definitely not alone either.
Again…that’s so weird. How did the flag get connected to respect for our troops???
For me, it is about displaying proper respect for both the flag and the anthem. Whenever you are in public and the anthem is played, if you aren’t standing up straight with your hand over your heart and your cap off your head, you are dishonoring our country along with all the freedoms we get to enjoy.
That’s all just symbolism. Get over it. It is your response that makes the actions of protesters worthwhile in their eyes. You are being trolled and are falling for it. Sticks and stones break bones, words and non violent protest piss people off!
As a side note, I’d never provoke the likes of you since I’m pretty sure you would get violent. At least you sound like you would. I’m not a big fan of symbolism and rituals myself.
For me, it is about displaying proper respect for both the flag and the anthem
let me guess, you are not a black man or some other minority in America, are you? Try walking in their shoes for a change!
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel
Samuel Johnson
Riding your dads coat tails eh. Why didn’t you serve?
It’s kind of a stupid song when you look at it. Jimi Hendrix did a good cover. Other than that it’s pretty lame. Definitely not written by anyone with any talent.
Anthem should be changed to TCB by BTO.
These Are The Restaurants Banning NFL Games Because of Anthem Protests
Amy Parlapiano
Sports Illustrated
September 28, 2017
https://sports.yahoo.com/restaurants-banning-nfl-games-because-163008150.html
Some restaurants around the country are responding to the silent anthem protests of NFL players with a “protest” of their own: They’re choosing to potentially lose some business by no longer showing NFL games at their establishments. Here is a list of some of the restaurants who’ve made public announcements about their ‘ban’ on the sport.
[Some of the examples…]
Baxters Family Food and Fun, Hixson, Tennessee
Statement: (via the restaurant’s Facebook page): “We might lose some clients over this but I feel that it’s the right thing to do. Until the NFL comes to its senses on this National Anthem tragedy, we will no longer be showing NFL games at our restaurant. You can still view the college games on Saturday, and we will still be open on Sundays. But my grandfathers fought for our country for that symbol. They lost friends and brothers. My father served under that flag. My grandfather was awarded the Purple Heart with that flag flying high!! And I will not allow anyone to prosper hiding behind the very freedom it created!! So until further notice, we will not be showing the NFL games.”
Canyon Road Barn & Grill, Breckenridge, Texas
Statement: (via the restaurant’s Facebook): “NOTICE: There will be no viewing of any televised NFL games on any of the six big screen TV’s until further notice. For the 99 great things being an American Citizen affords us, there will always be that 1 that ignites some. Freedom of speech being exercised in this establishment so COME FOR THE FOOD BUT STAY AT HOME IF YOU WANT TO WATCH AN NFL GAME 🙂 Put your money where your mouth is…Semper Fi.”
Sarita’s Grill & Cantina Denham; Denham Springs, Louisiana
Statement: (via the restaurant’s Facebook page): “NFL Update. Until further notice, Sarita’s has decided not to broadcast any future NFL games or the NFL Network. We respect everyone’s right to freedom of speech; however, we do not support anyone that disrespects our Flag, our Country and the people who have fought and/or died for the freedoms that we have.”
When did kneeling become disrespectful? Traditionally one knelt before God, and one knelt before the throne.
A flag is a rag and is only as meaningful or as meaning empty as the verity of the principles that it symbolically represents. If the promotional literature advertises justice for all, but the fine print reserves it only for the privileged few, then no respect is deserved, and no respect should be given.
I will stand for it only if it stands for something.
we kneel only to communicate with god. when the national anthem is played we stand up to honor god and country. there cant be no exception.
Here is how a true patriot and leader speaks about the current state of affairs in our country!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=162&v=WfjZ1otkS3o
USAFAOfficial
Published on Sep 28, 2017
Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, along with USAFA leadership, addressed the entire Cadet Wing and USAFA Preparatory School today. Lt. Gen. Silveria left no uncertainties that racism has no place at the Academy.
How the Pentagon Paid for NFL Displays of Patriotism
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/pentagon-paid-nfl-displays-patriotism/
I will never ‘show respect’ for this government while the current commander in chief is at the helm.
And I have very serious hesitation at all other times as well- wars of choice against Vietnam and Iraq killed over a million civilians. Inexcusable. Evil.
Napalm on women and girls.
I am not in the least bit proud of it.
Maybe after a hundred years of restraint.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
Mossygrape – you were taught to put God, Country and Family first, but you seem to have ignored that completely and gone for kangaroo courts, might is right and corporal punishment.
My thought on the anthem/flag issues, back when I was a kid, in school we were taught to respect our country when in public places. We stood at attention every morning to resite the Pledge of Allegiance, loud and proud my 8th grade English teacher would say. Then we were taught to always have our right hand firm near the heart during the Anthem. My thoughts are, children today just aren’t being taught the same values, as when we were children ourselves. That’s what makes them think showing disrespect to the flag in public places is acceptable. Which leads to the ? if they aren’t teaching basic respect and values, what are parents and schools teaching nowdays?
Regards,
Ralph
Cass Tech ’64
One must very clearly know the differences between patriotism and nationalism. Otherwise horrible mistakes can be made, and are being made.
http://www.virtueonline.org/difference-between-patriotism-and-nationalism
Das ist richtig! Ja vol Herr Commandant!
American ‘Nationalists’ seem to have forgotten history’s lessons and think that some Nazis are actually nice people…
Nazi’s? Them again?
Many people think environmentalists and climate scientists are worse than Nazi’s.
Yeah, every time you figure your done with them, bam, they pop up again in a perpetual game of whack a mole!
The worst of all, though, would be an environmentalist who is both a climate scientist and an atheist. Compared to that, a Nazi would almost be a saint… 🙂
Neither one are my strongpoints.
This article provided by Gonefishing is worth quoting from:
“I’ve become increasingly concerned that many American Christians (and perhaps especially evangelicals) confuse patriotism with nationalism to the extent that idolatry lurks close by.
Patriotism is love for one’s country without blinders about its flaws and defects. Patriotism seeks to actualize the highest and best ideals of one’s country which can sometimes look like disloyalty to nationalists. Nationalists tend to confuse “country” with “government” and reject as disloyal all criticism of either. However, criticism of the government can be patriotric. In fact, in America patriotism should be constructively critical toward government.”
http://www.virtueonline.org/difference-between-patriotism-and-nationalism
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/alabama-defeat-leaves-trump-badly-weakened-isolated-amid-mounting-challenges/2017/09/27/5983f748-a39c-11e7-b14f-f41773cd5a14_story.html?utm_term=.33d3f9645d96
“Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, stewed over their own fates, anxious that Moore, a former state Supreme Court judge, would become a national burden for the party because of the long list of incendiary comments he has made on race, religion and sexuality.
Hushed talk of retirements dominated conversations on Capitol Hill, one day after Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) announced that he would not seek reelection in 2018, with Republican lawmakers wondering whether they could survive a GOP political storm that only seems to be growing.”
Earlier on, I was convinced the ACA aka Ocare would be a disaster for the D’s short term, and I was right about that. I also said that long term, it would be remembered as the D’s standing up for the people, and opposing the health care establishment, as a major step on the way to an equitable health care system similar to the ones that dominate in other developed countries such as Canada, France, Germany, etc.
Things are moving faster than ever, and the “long term” has arrived a lot sooner than I expected, in terms of Ocare. The D’s are going to be better off in 2020 in my opinion because of it, if they have sense enough to run a presidential candidate who isn’t perceived as a Republican Lite member of the establishment, one that can light a fire in the bellies of the working classes……… and there are ENOUGH working class people to throw the VAST majority of all elections one way or the other, according to the perceptions of working class voters.
I don’t have any real idea WHAT will actually emerge as law from the R’s and Trump’s tax proposals.
But the D’s are damned fools for not proposing FIRST that the standard deductions be sharply increased.
There are MILLIONS and MILLIONS of people who are NOT in a position to deduct mortgage interest, or write of their cars as business expenses, or do any of the things people with more money can do to reduce their tax bill.
A few hundred bucks extra take home would be as welcome to them as a glass of ice water would be in hell, and they will remember getting it, IF they get it, NOW, as a gift from the REPUBLICANS.
Nevertheless, all things considered, Trump is doing the R party more harm, long term, by being president than he could by donating every dime he has or has ever had , times ten cubed, to the Democrats and joining up with an environmental organization and going around making speeches like a convicted but repentant criminal doing his public service work.
In the meantime, nit wit environmentalists continue to piss off sensible middle of the road voters and righties by pissing and moaning ( by way of example ) about pipelines that carry oil thru the country so that it can be exported from Canada, without having brains enough to understand that while such criticisms resonate with the people already on board, the members of the choir so to speak, they solidify support for the enemy. They’re shooting off their mouth and hitting their own toes, in effect.
There are reasons such pipelines should be built, and anybody with a lick of sense who is HONEST will admit they are good ones. In no particular order:
NEW pipelines are safer by a factor of ten at least than really old pipelines approaching or past the ends of their designed service life, which would otherwise be more heavily used, and used LONGER instead of being taken out of service or replaced with new on the same right of ways. Eventually.
If the oil doesn’t go out thru the USA, it will find it’s way out to the east or west thru Canada, sooner or later, because the Canadians, like every body else, love their government when it’s providing “free ” goodies, and the oil companies will provide as many goodies as necessary to make the deals happen, sooner or later.
Refusing Canada in this matter is a slap in the face to one of our most important allies, not to mention our NEXT DOOR neighbor.
We expect to burn millions of barrels of other countries oil, every day, and we expect it to move freely in international trade, yet we hypocritically try to block Canadian trade in oil?
Middle of the roaders and righties understand that if that oil flows thru the USA, we control access to it in the event of serious troubles in the world in times to come. If it flows thru pipelines financed and even built by various Asian countries, we lose, big time, in terms of political leverage, meaning we are that much CLOSER to having to resort to bullets in the event of hot war erupting. History AIN’T over folks.
We refuse the jobs associated with building and maintaining and running pipelines and maybe some additional refinery or storage capacity, and the tax revenues associated with doing so ??
A little common sense goes a LONG way in politics just as it does in other affairs.
The smart move for the environmentalists in this case would be to use their leverage to extract the price of thousands and thousands of acres of sensitive and yet to be developed land from the oil industries, and put that land into trust as environmentally protected parks or maybe even as wilderness. More votes to be gained than lost that way.
Big win, that way.
This graph illustrates the change in global surface temperature relative to 1951-1980 average temperatures. Sixteen of the 17 warmest years in the 136-year record all have occurred since 2001, with the exception of 1998. The year 2016 ranks as the warmest on record. (Source: NASA/GISS). This research is broadly consistent with similar constructions prepared by the Climatic Research Unit and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The time series below shows the five-year average variation of global surface temperatures. Dark blue indicates areas cooler than average. Dark red indicates areas warmer than average.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
Observed records of Atlantic hurricane activity show some correlation, on multi-year time-scales, between local tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the Power Dissipation Index (PDI) —see for example Fig. 3 on this EPA Climate Indicators site. PDI is an aggregate measure of Atlantic hurricane activity, combining frequency, intensity, and duration of hurricanes in a single index. Both Atlantic SSTs and PDI have risen sharply since the 1970s, and there is some evidence that PDI levels in recent years are higher than in the previous active Atlantic hurricane era in the 1950s and 60s.
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
-According to the total annual ACE Index, cyclone intensity has risen noticeably over the past 20 years, and six of the 10 most active years since 1950 have occurred since the mid-1990s (see Figure 2). Relatively high levels of cyclone activity were also seen during the 1950s and 1960s.
-The PDI (see Figure 3) shows fluctuating cyclone intensity for most of the mid- to late 20th century, followed by a noticeable increase since 1995 (similar to the ACE Index). These trends are shown with associated variations in sea surface temperature in the tropical North Atlantic for comparison (see Figure 3)
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-tropical-cyclone-activity
2017 hottest summer in California history
http://weatherwest.com/archives/5860
Check out Javier’s Twitter feed.
https://mobile.twitter.com/NikolovScience
LOL! ‘Greenhouse Theory’?!
Typical crank pseudo science BS. There is something called a greenhouse effect…
His Twitter feed is an embarrassment. Give it a quick look, read his paper (link below). The guys a total loon.
https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/new-insights-on-the-physical-nature-of-the-atmospheric-greenhouse-effect-deduced-from-an-empirical-planetary-temperature-model.pdf
How do you that Ned Nikolov is the same as Javier?
Apparently Ned Nikolov and another person tried to publish a paper under a pseudonym. The pseudonym was generated simply by spelling their name backwards. LOL.
http://retractionwatch.com/2016/09/13/u-s-govt-researchers-withdraw-climate-paper-after-using-pseudonyms/
Ned is bat-shit crazy. Blames it on Soros lol. What a clown!
https://mobile.twitter.com/NikolovScience/status/906525350393389056
re-vaj(?) – sounds like something Gwyneth Paltrow might recommend.
And so it is that, yet again, we have Fred speaking nonsense and, despite himself, and ironically, about Caelan (yet again) supposedly from beyond his juvenile Safe Space from Caelan…
And so it is that Fred will ‘not’ read what I have pasted below (which is probably just as well, in the interest of the protection of his ego)…
Against the “anti-technology” strawman
Icing? Cherry? Ok, why not…
https://www.techspot.com/news/71171-single-tesla-powerpack-unit-has-already-saved-australian.html
A single Tesla Powerpack unit has already saved an Australian town $1.5 million
The system has already paid for itself tenfold
Logan City in Queensland, Australia had recently installed a solar power system for their water treatment plant. Before installing their Powerpack system, they planned to maintain a connection to the grid for when the sun wasn’t shining. After consideration, they opted for a single 95kWh Powerpack system and have since saved an estimated $1.5 million in energy costs.
They didn’t disclose the price of the system, but it is estimated to be around $100,000 – $200,000 and can power the plant 24 hours a day. This rate of a return on investment shows just how much potential these systems have going forward.
I’m a big Tesla fan, and a big believer in renewable energy in general.
But Tesla has been delivering the Power Pack system only a little while, and it defies belief that it could have saved the town over a million bucks in that length of time in purchased grid juice, unless the utility is charging a truly outrageous rate per kilowatt hour.
But Tesla has been delivering the Power Pack system only a little while, and it defies belief that it could have saved the town over a million bucks in that length of time in purchased grid juice,
The biggest savings was not from purchased grid juice, which only amounts to about $50,000.00 a year. It was in not needing the up front capital costs in building a road and installing the infrastructure of the grid connection itself!
http://www.thefifthestate.com.au/energy-lead/business-energy-lead/why-off-grid-energy-was-a-no-brainer-for-logan-city-councils-water-treatment-plant
Logan City Council, south of Brisbane, has installed solar PV and Tesla Powerpack technology to create an off-grid water treatment solution at its Round Mountain Reservoir, in what is believed to be an Australian first.
Not only has it saved council millions in capital costs compared to installing main grid-connected poles and wires, it has set a precedent it intends to roll out for future infrastructure in the fast-growing region.
Logan Mayor Luke Smith told The Fifth Estate the decision to go off-grid was an easy one to make.
Luke Smith, Logan City Council
To put in poles and wires would have required first building a sealed road 3.1 km long for access and inspection purposes – that would have cost around $1.9 million, he said. The current dirt road is 4WD suitable and no upgrade is required for routine maintenance of the solar and storage.
Then there would have been the bill from the energy provider for the poles and wires themselves being put in, which Mr Smith said would have been an “extraordinary amount of money”.>
As well, the council will save about $50,000 a year on electricity costs to operate the electro-chlorination system that will ensure the reservoir’s water is safe to drink.
One of the main reasons a disruptive technology takes off like wild fire once the conditions are right is precisely because of no longer having to build out exorbitantly expensive things like miles of copper wire. I can still remember the tipping point for cell phones in Brazil. When I was a young boy there was no way the vast majority of people could afford the $5,000.00 connection fee for a business line in most urban centers, let alone multiple orders of that amount in a rural setting like the farm my cousins owned in the interior of Sao Paulo state. Compared to that the up front capital costs of putting up cell phone towers was cheap and almost everyone could afford to buy a cell phone and rural areas of Brazil suddenly had access to telephone communications.
Side note:Back in the day in the city of Sao Paulo you might have to wait for 5 years to get that last mile or so of copper wire for a phone line in your home.
Hi Fred,
Makes sense now! The original comment was way to short on details.
Around here, that sort of project would be paid for by the utility, and a few cents added to the bill of every body served by that same utility. Ditto our rural roads, which are subsidized by urban people.
But this is a good deal for urbanites, because otherwise…. they would be in a tough spot for food, lumber, and other stuff from the country side.
At the end of the day it really doesn’t matter how it is paid for, by whom and how those costs are split up if a new technology simply makes the cost of implementing something the old way completely obsolete and unnecessary! Not having to dish out a couple million dollars is always a win in my view.
Cheers!
http://www.triplepundit.com/2017/09/uk-switches-first-subsidy-free-solar-farm-battery-storage/
UK Switches on First Subsidy-Free Solar Farm with Battery Storage
This week, the United Kingdom launched a new solar plant outside the town of Flitwick, about an hour’s drive north of London. But unlike some of the UK’s largest solar installations, the Clayhill Solar Farm was planned and built without any government subsidies or incentive such as feed-in tariffs.
Furthermore, a 6MW battery battery storage unit will complement the 10MW solar plant in the county of Bedfordshire. The installation marks another step forward in the UK’s clean energy future as the current government has made it clear it wants such projects to continue without any subsidies.
Every morning when I wake up and smell the coffee, I stand at attention with hand over heart and recite the pledge of allegiance, sing the Star Spangled Banner, then outside to run the flag up the flag pole and salute the stars and stripes.
Tears well up in my eyes. Something I do every day! Makes me so happy!
I buy season tickets for every professional sports team, have to show patriotism with your wallet too, you know.
What I love the most is the F22 fly over before the Super Bowl! Never have missed one yet! All from my corporate suite, wouldn’t want to sully my presence sitting in the stands with all of the morons and peons. Not gonna happen! A stadium filled with white trash is easily ignored from the glass enclosed luxury suite.
I’m a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam!
Donald Trump is the 300 pound orangutan in the Offal Office.
Gotta go, need to fill my opioid prescription and then a new tattoo, just like all Americans do.
Cheers!
I bet most of you didn’t know this is the very very best massive post maybe ever. Because we believe this beautiful, beautiful post is made in the USA and America is respected again. Respect is the most important word, because when Americans works on a level playing field. We make America Great again, like it was back farther since before Lincoln. Next we are going to cut taxes the worse evil, the most very evil on our job creators. So they can have the mostest money to pay you to work for them. We will make this fair and it’s about time. When ObamaCare is repealed, then and only than you will have the most ever to pay for your TrumpCare. Which you will pay for, that doesn’t cover the most ever number of things that your sick with. Why would our greatest ever American dream want to buy coverage for the worst things we may never, never need.
All Americans must stand to honor our most beautiful flag without questioning our worst past. All Americans needs to pay for a most beautiful wall that very bad Mexico is not willing to pay their most fair share. Trust me, they will pay. Trust me, you will get tired of the best winning ever. Trust me the most, my health care plan will make most fast food on a level playing field the cheapest, very very cheap.
Only real Americans don’t question our wonderful, beautiful flag honoring our soldiers unless their soldiering with a green card. In that case, we send their families home during their tour. Honoring our best flag is black and mostly the best ever white.
I’ve been looking for pictures of damage done to solar arrays by the recent category 5 storms Irma and Maria and have decided to post a set of links to various pages that discuss solar PV and adverse weather. The first link contains a picture I have wanted to see since the passage of Irma, the last image at the bottom of the article is a picture of Richard Branson’s array on Necker Island in the BVI, before and after the storm! All the links contain at least one picture of an array or arrays after the passage of an extreme wind event (not all Irma or Maria) and there is obviously a growing body of work on building solar PV installations that can survive extreme wind events:
See Stunning Before and After Photos of Hurricane Irma’s Impact on the Caribbean
Antigua’s well-built PV systems sustain impact of hurricane Irma
Photos of Sollega-mounted solar install that survived Hurricane Irma
Power blackout leaves darkened Puerto Rico isolated and paralyzed
Newly-released aerial footage shows sheer devastation caused by Irma on Virgin Islands as Caribbean tourist resort faces hard road to recovery.
Local Third Circuit lawyer shares a first-hand account of Virgin Islands hurricane damage (updated)
Hurricane Devastates Haiti Co-op
‘You Have To Try’: Puerto Ricans, Without Power, Find Ways Forward
Storm-hit Caribbean eyes solar solutions
After Irma: Solar Plus Storage – A Small Beacon Of Light In A Sea Of Darkness
Run on Sun 2, Windstorm Zero!
Are renewables stormproof? Hurricane Sandy tests solar, wind.
Can solar panels survive a hurricane?
Solar Panels on Carports
The Microgrid Opportunity Is Great, yet Risks Remain High
Posts Tagged With: hurricane damage: Tybee Island
I found this final web page very intriguing simply because of it’s source, wattsupwiththat.com . It is a lengthy and detailed blog post by Anthony Watts describing his own 9KW PV system on his home. Strange how even a global warming denier can find a justification to go solar and according to him his decision was based on firm financial justification. Read for yourselves!
An update on my solar power project – results show why I got solar power for my home (hint: climate change is not a reason)
Finally, the collage below shows a 700 plus kW array I mentioned in another post. The picture to the rigth is the Google Maps satellite view of the compound. The upper left picture shows the compound as viewed from the south corner and the lower left picture shows a roughly 4×2.25 mile rectangle with the compound in the middle (roughly). The compound is separated from a densely populated squatter community (Central Village) to it’s north west by a river, an industrial area and a highway. A mile to the east is the edge of a dormitory community called Portmore, home to hundreds of thousands and including a few squatter settlements as well. A mile and a half to the south west is the low income community of Lakes Pen. The primary reason for the wall is to reduce the chance of theft by 1) keeping the installation away from the curious gaze of commuters going from Portmore to the old capital, Spanish town and 2) in case you didn’t notice, it aint’ short and it’s got razor wire along the top! That wall might also prove helpful in a hurricane.
Thanks islandboy, great links. IMHO give it another ten hurricanes or so in the Caribbean razing the centralized power grids with diesel powered generator backup systems before people start seriously looking at Micro grid PV with battery backup systems. I’m 100% sure that people will switch when the pain becomes almost unbearable, and it will! I’m pretty sure it will also happen in Florida, the Carolinas and other states bordering the Gulf of Mexico.
BTW, for the record, Jack Rickard from EVTV is a climate science skeptic and Trump supporter and he is 100% in favor of PV and battery backup and EVs too! Depending on fossil fuels is stupid and really expensive.
You’re welcome! I hate to unearth all this interesting stuff and just keep it to myself. 🙂
Like on Wednesday I crashed a seminar put on by the local utility and an international aid agency that shall not be named, to discus whether EVs could help reduce my island’s fuel import bill. A local dealer in used Japanese Domestic Market cars presented on his experience in importing a used Nissan Leaf, going through a certain amount of hassle to get our equivalent of the US DOT certification (MOT for the Brits) and jumping through hoops to get it registered (tags in the US). After he spoke, a banker who was part of the audience asked him a question about cost projections for EVs and batteries etc. to which he responded that he did not know. You know that I did not waste the opportunity to point the banker and the rest of the gathering to the work of Tony Seba. I saw the banker write the name down when I said it and I’m pretty sure he has followed up, since he seemed quite keen on getting an answer to his question. If he has watched any of the Seba videos his mind should be sufficiently blown.
Climate science Nazis everywhere you turn! There is no room on earth for climate scientists, except for the gulags, where they belong! They’re not scientists, just phony fakes through and through when the truth be told.
Green Nazis too, no matter where you go!
It’s an outrage, a crime against humanity and they have no clue!
Let’s haul oak wood chips from the US to the UK because it is green energy! Yeah, right.
James Lovelock on voting Brexit, ‘wicked’ renewables and why he changed his mind on climate change
The cures being advanced on green zealots are often worse than the disease itself, warns the pioneering environmentalist
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/09/james-lovelock-on-voting-brexit-wicked-renewables-and-why-he-changed-his-mind-on-climate-change/
Nazis come in all colors and stripes, Joseph Goebbels earned a doctorate from Heidelberg University, so we know where they really come from!
Stupid smart people never learn.
I don’t particularly like to agree with Alfred and his nazi talk, but we as environmentalists DO need to be intellectually and factually honest when we make our arguments. Alfred’s RIGHT about one thing, it’s flat out gross stupidity to be burning up considerable quantities of diesel fuel in southeastern USA forests, and hauling wood across the fucking Atlantic to burn it, in the name of environmental cleanliness and practice.
The RIGHT thing to do would be to acknowledge this truth, for what it is, which is another political boondoogle. The right TWO PART POLICY, if we must burn wood in order to avoid burning coal, gas, oil, or splitting atoms, would be, one, to burn it as close as possible to the place it is harvested, acknowledging that national borders mean NOTHING in terms of co2 pollution, etc; and two, to spend the money now wasted on long distance shipping on improving the energy efficiency on the receiving end of the wood chip shipments.
Insulation and new doors and windows are the way to go, especially in a country such as the UK where so much of the housing stock is old and terribly energy inefficient.
Unless we point out such boondoggles for what they are, instead of reflexively defending them, a person who sees them for what they really are takes us for con artists, and is henceforth inclined to believe we are lying when we talk about forced climate change, etc.
Hey Mac, does “Alfred” remind you of anybody?
“Stupid smart people never learn”
Alfred aka R Walter
I don’t particularly like to agree with Alfred and his nazi talk, but we as environmentalists DO need to be intellectually and factually honest when we make our arguments. Alfred’s RIGHT about one thing, it’s flat out gross stupidity to be burning up considerable quantities of diesel fuel in southeastern USA forests, and hauling wood across the fucking Atlantic to burn it, in the name of environmental cleanliness and practice.
Sorry! The guy, whoever he is, is, a fucking troll!
Quoting James Lovelock, who is 98 years old and has no clue about renewables as support for saying that shipping wood chips across the Atlantic is stupid, is pure straw man. OF COURSE IT IS STUPID! so fucking what?! That is obviously NOT an environmentally sound or sustainable idea. So because of that let’s ban solar PV and install a 1000 nuclear power plants?!
Are there people out there who call themselves environmentalist and are nothing more than rabid, ignorant cultists? OF COURSE THERE ARE! but again, so fucking what?!
We all need to stop feeding the trolls on this site! I really wish there was a way to ban them permanently!
Hey Fred, you sound like another one of those Nazi types yourself.
And you sound like one of Putin’s trolls. Fuck off!
Do you have to be so rude and uncouth? You could be a little more accepting and tolerant instead of being an old grouch.
Sadly, more and more, people are less and less tolerant and become more and more intolerant simply because they are fed up.
Doesn’t matter what it is, money, stress, disasters, life’s toils and snares, someone who doesn’t agree with you, it all can become too much.
But it is all good and you go on out and do the best you can!
Cheers!
If so, it might run in the family:
Hi Fred,
This reply is not aimed at YOU, personally. You obviously get it.
My point is that such foolishness as hauling firewood across the Atlantic in the name of environmentalism results in making envirnmentalists and the environmental movement look like the GIANT SCAM it is accused of BEING by fossil fuel mouthpieces.
Remember Hillary’s GREAT RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY? Well, there was a certain amount of truth in that explanation for her piss poor rep with half the people of this country, but the FACT of the matter is that she PROVIDED MOST of THE AMMO for the opposition, handing it to the Right Wing on a silver platter, with ribbons and bows. Email server, White Water, Cattle Gate, Bimbo Patrol, talking transparency but operating to the max extent in the shadows, accepting money from scumbags doing business with the government, etc etc etc.
When we don’t scream SCAM about things like ethanol in gasoline, and firewood to Europe, we’re setting ourselves up the same way she did. Setting ourselves up to get our asses kicked.
The bau oriented, rightish leaning public is ALMOST as dumb as a fence post, in scientific terms, but it’s smart enough to understand THIS particular bit of foolishness disguised as environmentally sound policy.
Failure to condemn such foolishness, at every opportunity, destroys the good name of environmentalism, and causes people who DO understand THIS MUCH to dismiss everything else we are trying to get across to them.
Business men are always ready to make a buck, and damned few of them give a fuck HOW they make it, short of armed robbery or outright theft.
If we are to have any credibility with people who CAN and DO think a little, but who DON’T know the abc’s of physics, we MUST condemn such boondoogles as ethanol for automobiles and firewood for Europe as the FUCKING SCAMS THEY ARE. LEGAL, INSTITUTIONALIZED SCAMS.
There are millions of such people. Tens of millions probably.
All too many environmentally conscious people act like hard core Republicans or hard core Democrats act politically. Find a hard core anybody, and he or she is predictably going to defend everything done in the name of his party and condemn everything done in the name of the opposition, regardless of the actual facts.
we MUST condemn such boondoogles as ethanol for automobiles and firewood for Europe as the FUCKING SCAMS THEY ARE. LEGAL, INSTITUTIONALIZED SCAMS.
Right! Anyone who doesn’t, is already either a moron or part of the scam themselves.
Agreeing with trolls like Alfred doesn’t advance any positive discussion about the topic one way or another. I’d rather just ignore him from now on.
Fred — “We all need to stop feeding the trolls on this site! I really wish there was a way to ban them permanently!”
Yes, trolls and “armchair experts” have effectively ruined (hijacked) this site or rather this thread. Obviously the REAL oil experts such as George and Mike are always worth following. Gone Fishing seems to be the only knowledgeable contributor to the climate dynamics debate and yourself on most other issues. The abysmal climate change bickering between Dennis and Javier, neither of whom is a climate scientist, is pathetic beyond words. So, apart from occasional thought-provoking stuff about renewable energy, which is mostly buried in the rubble, what’s left?
Regarding climate science, this is likely the biggest breakthrough in the field in the last 50 years:
http://contextearth.com/2017/09/27/enso-tidal-forcing-validated-by-lod-data/ (what causes El Ninos)
and the second biggest breakthrough is this:
http://contextearth.com/2017/09/07/the-qbo-anomaly-of-2016-revisited/ (what causes cycling of the equatorial jet stream)
So go at and let’s have a real discussion.
Fourier Transforms find the recipe for a signal. Chao is to be commended for this analysis. As a (retired) geophysicist I do appreciate this stuff, however, I suspect a Fourier Analysis is asking a bit much from the non specialist.
In truth, I’m so fed up with all the bullshit here that, apart from the occasional perusal I’ve (mostly) moved on. Excellent post though. Thanks.
That’s a realistic attitude. It’s about finding a cross-section of interests, and if that cross-section approaches zero, there’s limited discussion.
The more specialized the conversation, the smaller the audience must necessarily be.
If the non petroleum portion of this site were to be limited to highly technical discussions requiring advanced studies in geology, astronomy, etc, in turn requiring three or four or more years of study of university level math there wouldn’t be more than three or four people here qualified to comment, and no more than twice that many well enough grounded to follow the conversation.
For what it’s worth, there are plenty of people who can benefit enormously from an extended exchange between somebody such as Dennis and Javier.
There are plenty of people who can learn quite a lot from my own long winded comments about the realities of agriculture, and while these realities may not be as interesting as the interiors of stars or the intricacies of the tides, so long as you have full bellies, not everybody is so sure he will always have a full belly………..
I have spent the last fifty years plus learning all I can about various fields from a to z, in search of understanding the big picture.
One that I have never found time to study formally is climate science, even though it is plays a critical part in my own field.
So………. I have learned a LOT as the result of Javier being here, by way of reading the replies posted by everybody else to his comments.
Sites such as this one are extremely valuable as educational resources to anybody (who is NOT generally technically well educated ) but who IS interested in the actual facts involved in peak oil, the broader environmental questions, human overshoot in particular, renewable energy, the life sciences, the economy, international politics, and other fields which are discussed here to a greater or lesser extent.
I occasionally talk to a physicist or mathematician in person or at other sites who doesn’t know shit from apple butter about the day to day realities that determine whether he will have food five or ten years from now.
Food’s sort of important.
War and the reasons we fight them, or avoid them, are sort of important.
Elections, and why particular parties and nominees win or lose them are sort of important.
As a (retired) geophysicist I do appreciate this stuff, however, I suspect a Fourier Analysis is asking a bit much from the non specialist.
Can’t say I blame you!
If it were not for being deliberately sidetracked by trolls We could have plenty of interesting topics to discuss and fourier analysis is not beyond the comprehension level, even of most college educated laypeople. Though apparently it might be incomprehensible to a tiny subset of PhD microbiologists…
Let’s just call a spade a spade! The discussions here and on many other forums is hijacked by trolls that are pushing very specific agendas and interests. They are definitely not interested in any general scientific topics or even friendly differences of opinion.
Speaking of Fourier Analysis here’s an interesting application:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405722316301177
The study of acoustic signals and the supposed spoken language of the dolphins
Author links open overlay panelVyacheslav A.Ryabov
T. I. Vyazemsky Karadag Scientific Station–Nature Reserve of RAS, 24 Nauki St., Kurortnoye, Feodosiya, 298188, Russian Federation
Received 16 August 2016, Accepted 16 August 2016, Available online 21 August 2016.
Abstract
This paper continues studies in the problem of animal language by registering acoustic signals from two quasi-stationary Black Sea bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) using a two-channel system in the frequency band up to 220 kHz with a dynamic range of 81 dB. The packs of mutually noncoherent pulses (NP) generated by the dolphins were matched to the animals. The waveforms and the spectra of these pulses changed from one pulse to another in each pack. In this connection, a suggestion was made that the set of spectral components of each pulse is a ‘word’ of the dolphin’s spoken language and a pack of NPs is a sentence. The paper studied the NP peculiarities in the context of the characteristics of the human spoken language…
…The digitized dolphin signals from the ADC were continuously recorded to the hard drive of a laptop. The recording and processing of the signals were carried out in the PowerGraph 3.3.8 and Adobe Audition 3.0 software packages. Signal spectra were calculated using the 4096-point fast Fourier transform with the Hamming window function. There were no other animals in the pool during signal recording…
Now just for shits and giggles we could connect some dots… (elipsis intended) between Dolphin reproduction success to hurricane intensity and resultant destruction of fishing fleets. If hurricane intensity is found to be influenced in some way by increasing oceanic temperatures due to global warming then a sliver lining might be that fewer fishing fleets are available to limit the food supply of our fellow passengers on this planet, the highly intelligent marine mammals.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/hurricanes-bad-for-people-good-for-dolphins/
Hurricanes: Bad for People, Good for Dolphins
Katrina led to a marine-mammal boom, and Harvey, Irma and Jose might do the same
Massive hurricanes don’t just destroy homes and businesses; they also damage fishing vessels. According to one estimate, Katrina wiped out 87 percent of all the commercial fishing, crabbing, and shrimping vessels in Mississippi. In 2005 and 2006, fishing vessels in that state hauled in nearly one million fewer pounds of seafood.
That means that there were fewer boats in the water and also that there was more food for the dolphins. Commercial fisheries target three quarters of the species that make up the Mississippi dolphins’ diets, and two thirds are fished for sport. More food makes pregnant females more likely to deliver healthy babies, and it also makes them better able to nourish their offspring through their milk.
Who knows, if nothing else, that might at least give the Dolphins and the whales something to talk to each other about! 😉
Fred, Those are amazing spectra. For only a fifth of a millisecond duration, they are incredibly rich without any obvious appearance of harmonics.
If dolphins are trying to communicate with those sounds, it is probably one of the densest forms of information content that I could imagine. I didn’t read the whole paper, but it would seem to be much more dense than human speech.
It’s like Kanji compared to the English alphabet.
If dolphins are trying to communicate with those sounds, it is probably one of the densest forms of information content that I could imagine. I didn’t read the whole paper, but it would seem to be much more dense than human speech.
I’m certainly no expert but find this an absolutely fascinating area of study.
From the discussion section of the paper:
We can assume that, unlike humans, dolphins create every word by combining (with repetition) the corresponding spectral extrema (see Fig. 3), i.e., by combining several spectral extrema, different in frequency and level, that they can reliably distinguish, in a wider (by about 40 times) frequency range. Consequently, the spectral extrema of the ‘words’ in the spoken language of the dolphin play the role of phonemes in the human speech. Also unlike the human, the dolphin pronounces all the phonemes of a word simultaneously. Because of this, the duration of an noncoherent pulse is only 0.08–0.60 ms, and its average duration, i.e., the dolphin word, is about 0.25 ms, which is two to three orders of magnitude less than the duration of the phoneme in the human speech. Such a short duration of a word determines the high temporal and spatial (about 37 cm) resolution of the dolphin’s speech. On the other hand, this result indicates a definite advantage of the dolphin hearing over the human one, as dolphins can analyze complex acoustic pulses of shorter duration (by at least 2–3 orders of magnitude) than humans. Thus the NP interpulse intervals substantially longer than the dolphin words (19–300 ms) also vary within a wide range, which apparently improves the robustness of the dolphin’s speech against reverberation. In other words, the dolphin ‘says’ each following word after the reflections from the previous one have attenuated. However, the dolphin’s speech unfortunately lies beyond the time and frequency characteristics of the human hearing, and is thus unavailable to humans. In contrast to the human perception, dolphins hear human speech, as it falls in the low-frequency limit of their hearing but is weakened due to a substantial reflection of the sound energy at the air–water interface.
“The discussions here and on many other forums is hijacked by trolls that are pushing very specific agendas and interests.”
That’s bullshit and you know it. Every time I post scientific research or evidence that contradicts the official line I get insulted. That is the level of discussion people in this forum want to have about climate issues.
I agree that other scientific issues are very interesting. I don’t have much to add regarding marine mammal language. Animal communication research is a difficult issue where progress does not come easy. I know a little bit more about insect communication, which is essentially a chemical process. Chemical communication in humans is also fascinating.
Hi Ned,
When you bump into an asshole it’s no big deal. It just means you bumped into an asshole. When you bump into assholes all day all the time it means you’re the asshole.
If interesting scientific topics are what you want to discuss, you are best off seeking an invite to one of the $10,000/plate soirees thrown by all the real scientists on the public grant tenure tracks. There you will have a safe place to discuss scientific matters of “great import” while enjoying fancy wine and hors d’oeuvres.
Bye Steve! love this ignore troll button…
(first off, get lost Javer)
The information content in the El Nino signal is essentially composed of two primary lunar signals — the monthly draconic and anomalistic periods, which are modulated by a seasonal signal and the details in the anomalistic signal controlled by the synodic month.
The El Nino signal appears very complex and it has been deemed chaotic by many researchers, but that’s likely not the case, as the model fit has been cross-validated across different parts of the time series.
Unfortunately, can’t really use Fourier transforms to do the fitting of the ENSO time series. Have to stick to the time domain and solve the nonlinear differential equations.
“If interesting scientific topics are what you want to discuss, you are best off seeking an invite to one of the $10,000/plate soirees thrown by all the real scientists on the public grant tenure tracks. There you will have a safe place to discuss scientific matters of “great import” while enjoying fancy wine and hors d’oeuvres.”
Sorry Steven, no one cares.
You are only saying that to deflect from the fact that you attend such events. Anything to toot your own horn, huh?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I am an outsider to earth science circles, and don’t work in academia, so have nothing to do with tenure track anything.
Steven,
Are you saying you actually believe this is a real thing???
Doug
There are only a few percent of the population at best with the mental capability to come close to actually understanding complex multivariate subjects such as global warming or ecological systems. * When one considers that even within those intelligent enough to come to an understanding, many do not choose to understand those subjects or have a different talent set that moves them toward other areas of endeavor.
So how many does that leave? There appear to be only a few hundred actual climate scientists in a world of 7.5 billion people . That is less than .000005% of the population.
The world has less than one million physicists but only about 8000 astrophysicists. (<0.13% and .0001% respectively).
Sure there are maybe 10 million researchers in the world and lots of engineers, generally out of one thousand people you are going to find no one with both the ability and the actual knowledge to accurately comment on a climate science let alone have a solid understanding of the principles.
Since it has become such a politically and economically charged subject and it touches on such a wide variety of fields and endeavors (as well as the whole real living world) there will be many people giving opinions or wanting to enter the conversation. Most of what they say will have errors or misjudgments, be out of date, or narrowly sourced, even if they are trying to be honest and accurate. Many will rely on sources that purposely feed out bad information.
So basically, to finally come to a point, looking for in depth understanding on complex subjects outside of the narrow academic confines in that particular area is like looking for a needle in a haystack or worse.
Set your standards lower and enjoy the discourse more. Once in a while a pearl of wisdom might surface. Otherwise it's a very lonely world when in a crowd of ten thousand or even one hundred thousand, no one is found to be worth listening or talking to.
As to the trolling, it can be highly annoying and rarely adds much to the conversation. Too much time is spent on them, reducing the odds of meaningful and intelligent discourse. Much as a two year old constantly can say no to just about anything, they disagree without real thought or substance.
*No one actually understands these subjects, the best are still on a steep learning curve but we are getting better at it.
Very good points and something that I constantly think about. Easier to find common interests in the residents of a single condo building than with the entire internet at your disposal … that is when it comes to science.
Yep, very little (almost none) of my actual conversations with people concerns climate change or even energy. Lots of other things to talk about and do than those subjects.
Of course if I see some obvious home energy problem I might comment on it. Or if someone else brings up an energy topic, I will have something to say but not in a complex fashion generally, usually in a practical way.
If I slip into scientese, people tend to glaze over or say they didn’t understand a word I just said.
Just remember, knowledge of fluid dynamics can come down to just squeezing the end of a hose to get the water to shoot out further.:-)
Fish — You are a rare gem who sees beyond the bullshit.
Thank you sir.
“If I slip into scientese, people tend to glaze over or say they didn’t understand a word I just said.”
Sometimes you have to do this. Can anyone explain tidal periods apart from just describing the phenomenon?
That’s where I am at with respect to El Nino. It’s all tidal energy, but at a different scale that people are used to
http://contextearth.com/2017/10/02/identification-of-lunar-parameters-and-noise/
Start unwinding all these blog posts and MEGO will result but the model is undeniably cross-validated.
In the mean time, AI can now pass most University Entrance Exams in Japan. Not the top university yet, but almost… BTW, Seems that significant numbers of native language speaking humans have pretty lousy reading comprehension. To me that is a lot scarier than any Scifi AI scenario.
https://www.ted.com/talks/noriko_arai_can_a_robot_pass_a_university_entrance_exam/discussion
NORIKO ARAI
Can a robot pass a university entrance exam?
It’s not everyday you see the PNA so far down in the dumps. All the cold we’re seeing in the Pacific Northwest is the result. Another sign of the new ice age normal about to show up in the coming years?
“Another sign of the new ice age normal about to show up in the coming years?” – No.
Damn it George! I’m trying to get my Miami snow plowing business off the ground here and comments like yours, laced with global warming alarmism, could turn my already skittish investors away. Please stop it!
Now repeat after me: THE ICE AGE IS COMING!
.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but even during the height of the last glaciation Florida rarely got snow. Back then it was a much more interesting place to live.
When winter dawned in Florida during the Ice Age, glaciers were as far away as Illinois and snow only rarely dusted the peninsula.
Escaping the harsher weather to the north were the Paleo-Indians, who lived on Florida’s sand-dune prairies alongside giant sloths, camels and a less-hairy version of the woolly mammoth.
An armadillo called a glyptodont, which was the size of a small car, whacked predators with a tail resembling a spiked club. Saber-toothed cats sported 9-inch fangs — the largest of any feline in Earth’s history. But beavers weighing up to 500 pounds could out-chomp them with teeth up to a foot long.
http://articles.latimes.com/2003/feb/16/news/adna-icyfla16
Sorry to burst your bubble, but even during the height of the last glaciation Florida rarely got snow. Back then it was a much more interesting place to live.
No problem, then I’ll just have to start a New Ice Age Critter Control Business 😉
.
I would leave out the Short Faced Bear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-faced_bear
That’s a Giant Sloth…
I know—-
I was just commenting a Short Faced Bear would be a problem.
HB’s California Security System and Doormen Inc.
Terrifying! Should strike fear into the hearts of one and all.
Now don’t be mislead by a couple of cute faces. Ivanka can bite off your family jewels in a dog’s second and Melonia can put her 4″ heel through your heart while emptying your wallet without even a kiss. And that’s all before I release the hounds.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/us/politics/tom-price-travels.html
WASHINGTON — As he traversed the world on taxpayer-funded flights, Tom Price made it a habit to write home, repeatedly sending celebratory letters back to staff members at the Department of Health and Human Services detailing his time on the road, and complimenting agency employees who “ensure the good stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
Half a million plus spent on jet setting around like a Hollywood star or professional athlete on the public dime.
Well, well, well.
Trump is sinking into the swamp, and I’m hoping it drowns him, slow or fast, either way. It will be a great pleasure watching him drown slowly, but maybe a bigger one having to resign abruptly if somebody hangs a high crime on him.
Price is gone, lol.
Where are ya HB? Still pouting about your princess and empress to be losing?
Democrats with working brains will remember for at least a couple of generations that if you run a candidate with the worst ratings across the board, according to polling, of any candidate the party has ever run, they will be at risk of losing……… even to a candidate as lousy as Trump.
The country right left and middle is now SICK of bau politics, and wants new people at the top of the ticket, rather than more of the same.
“Fred Magyar says: 09/30/2017 AT 7:58 AM
And you sound like one of Putin’s trolls. Fuck off!”
From here on out I’m going to sign off as a PROUD PUTINEER occasionally.
Proud Putineers are a sprout on the stump of the old young commie leagues.
There’s such a thing as the precautionary principle, and it applies to politics just as surely as it applies to climate science and policy, or vaccinations against contagious diseases, or carrying too big a debt load in relation to income and revenues, etc.
The D’s are in the dog house now because they have failed to consider the precautionary principle over the last two or three decades. They failed to think about the consequences of getting what they wanted via the court system rather than the election booth in too many instances.
The consequences arguably include the R’s owning DC, being in a position to get a strangle hold on the Supreme Court with a little luck on their part, and owning most of the state and local governments in this country.
I’m not arguing either FOR or AGAINST any particular part of the new culture the D party wanted, and has succeeded in getting, to a greater or lesser extent. I’m actually in favor of most of that same new culture.
I’m just pointing out obvious ( to me at least) political realities.
Put a pitcher who can’t pitch on the mound is a great way to lose. Running a candidate who fails to inspire at least a few working class white people is a great way to lose an election.
Like it or not, there are MORE THAN ENOUGH working class white guys who don’t appreciate being talked about as if they are the root source of all this country’s problems to throw any election at any time one way or the other, depending on who badmouths them and who speaks respectfully to them.
We should NEVER forget the precautionary principle.
From National Geo …….
“That’s why Lavery and Judge are lucky they found the Vangunu rat—its rapidly disappearing forest habitat may mean the animal is critically endangered.
Timber companies have logged 90 percent of the Solomon Island’s trees, and on Vangunu, the rats are squeezed into remaining patches totaling just 31 square miles. (The single rat in the study was found in Zaira, a community that’s against logging, Lavery says.)”
One particular giant rat may not be all that important, except as a symbol, but NINETY PERCENT of the forests of the Solomon Islands are already gone. Hundreds of species, THOUSANDS of species,counting the physically smaller ones, have been lost already, without a doubt.
And one of those species might have been the one that was the key to the cure of cancer, or rheumatism, or senility.
Or the cure for stupidity, which is more important.
Tesla Bribes: Would $65,000 Be Enough To Sway Your Review Of A New Car? Ask These Guys…
ZeroHedge criticizing the objectivity of other peoples “journalism” is pretty rich.
It’s pretty funny that ZeroHedge is critical of Tesla, who does no advertising, for offering rewards to Tesla owners who refer other buyers, and think it is somehow shady of Fred Lambert, a Tesla owner and enthusiast, to post his referral code on his own EV advocacy blog Electrek.co with the explicit invitation: “Hey, use my referral code, I’ll get free stuff!”
Hi Bob,
ZeroHedge is ostensibly a news aggregate site and (so) the article in question is from another.
It only takes one visit to a hog farm to know that aggregating pig shit in a single location doesn’t improve the smell.
Could you elaborate from your previous reply, please? In any case, $65 000 is not chump change for many, and where is this $65 000 coming from? The tax-pimped?
By the way, assuming I have the right person, how are your lithium investments doing? When do you think the shortages are going to dig in if they do?
Affluence Without Abundance: What Moderns Might Learn from the Bushmen
Rome surrendered to time and entropy. Our method is to drive a gigantic clown car into a ditch.
JHK
I had read that… I wonder what/if he’s going to write about the Vegas shooting.
Anyone up for some Wing Pawn Global Cooling News?
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2017/09/giant-iceberg-that-broke-free-from.html
The iceberg— weighing an estimated 1.12 trillion tons — officially ripped from the frozen formation in July in a process known as calving, according to scientists at the University of Swansea in Britain. It’s such a colossal chunk of ice that maps of the peninsula must be redrawn.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/japanese-tsunami-flushed-280-species-across-ocean-180965082/
In a nutshell, in former times species carried out to sea by a tsunami or flood seldom or never lasted long enough to make it all the way across the Atlantic or Pacific, because wood almost always sinks in less time than it takes to drift that far.
But now……. with countless tons of man made stuff floating in the water that will continue to float a decade or longer…….. We have created a new route for invasive species to reach new shores.
And invasive species are potentially as destructive as just about anything Mother Nature can throw at us, short of an expanding sun.
As the late great George Carlson once said as an answer to the age old question of: “Why are we here?!” “Plastic! Assholes!”…
Mother Earth wanted plastic for herself and she couldn’t figure out how to make it. So she spawned us to make it for her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
George Carlin – Saving the Planet
We talk often about disruptive technologies. I personally consider them a subset of all the various factors to be dealt with when considering chaos as applied to understanding our big picture problems.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/vitro-fertilization-was-once-controversial-cloning-today-180964989/
“It was too strange. It was unnatural. It was science meddling where it shouldn’t. That’s what many people said before the successful birth of children whose mothers had been implanted with eggs that were fertilized outside the body using in vitro fertilization. Some have even continued to say it after.”
This is truly worthwhile read for insight into the way new technology can move from being universally feared and hated to accepted as a cherished part of the culture.
It seems highly probable, to me at least, that the various new technologies that can all be lumped together as genetic engineering will likewise be accepted, and probably sooner rather than later than most of us would guess.
With the climate going nuts in various parts of the world much sooner than in other parts, the people who live in the places severely affected soonest are going to have some POWERFUL incentives to accept any new tech………. especially any new tech that might help them put something in their empty bellies.
An empty belly trumps principles EVERY time. Twain said it sooner than anybody else I know of.
As I watch the local creeks and rivers fall to low levels I haven’t seen in a while, my thoughts move to the Southwestern US where water is a major problem due to droughts and increasing demand in the growing region.
Lake Meade, the largest reservoir in the US, appears to have been on a downward trend since 2000 and only a slight recovery.
HIstorical levels:
https://arachnoid.com/NaturalResources/
Current levels: http://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp
The Southwest is a prime example of a dry region being highly stressed by increasing demand from industrial and population growth. This paper from Negative Population Growth Incorporated visits and summarizes some of the problems faced by the region. Caught in the cross-hairs of political dispensing of water that doesn’t exist, droughts and increasing demand from a growing population, poor decisions continue to be made regarding the region’s development and water use. The fact that historically and prehistorically the region has seen much stronger droughts than currently exist does not bode well for the long term viability of supporting the large population there already, let alone a much larger one in the future.
THE SOUTHWEST:
GROUND-ZERO FOR GLOBAL WARMING
An NPG Forum Paper
By Kathleene Parker
1922, the Colorado River was allocated, or divided up, under the federal Colorado River Compact. It was believed that most years the Colorado would carry 16.4 million acre-feet (m.a.f.) of water. The Upper Basin states (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico) were
[Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation Page 4 The Southwest: Ground-Zero for Global Warming ]
allocated 7.5 m.a.f; the Lower Basin states (California, Nevada, Arizona) were allocated 7.5 m.a.f., with the remainder to go to Mexico.
But the 16.4 m.a.f. was based on one of the wettest years in 400 years. The river was over-allocated by 1.3 m.a.f. because norms on the river were closer to 15.1 m.a.f. But more recent tree-ring studies show an even grimmer picture, or that flows will likely be only about 13.5 m.a.f., and that only outside of drought. The lower amount did not matter in 1950 when the population was only 14 million; it matters profoundly in a Southwest of roughly 45 million people. It matters even more in a region facing continued high growth rates and a return to the drier norms or perhaps global warming.
Drought hit the Southwest in the mid-1990s and worsened post-2000. Between 2000 and 2005, the Colorado averaged only 9.6 m.a.f., while 2001 to 2003 saw flows of a paltry 5.4 m.a.f. Reservoir levels plummeted, including at core Colorado River system reservoirs, Lake Mead, near Las Vegas, Nevada, and Lake Powell, sprawling amid desert bluffs of Arizona and Utah. The region watched aghast as a “fifty-year water supply” in storage disappeared in just 3 years.19
http://www.npg.org/forum_series/TheSouthwest-GroundZeroGlobalWarming.pdf
Unless the Southwest enters a long wet period, the next few decades are going to be very trying and problematical.
Delete
.
People who’ve never even set foot in this region have been saying these things now for decades, literally. I remember when I moved to the Phoenix area over 20 years ago, I was told there would only be enough water to last a few years. Obviously not true. Truthfully, people in these parts are very adaptable to water demand and supply issues. On top of that, Arizona is such a business friendly state, every day taking in more businesses quickly fleeing California, that the government and business community will do whatever it takes to prevent water issues from destroying everyone’s prosperity.
On top of that, Arizona is such a business friendly state, every day taking in more businesses quickly fleeing California, that the government and business community will do whatever it takes to prevent water issues from destroying everyone’s prosperity.
Arizona can not continue to take in more businesses ad infinitum no matter how business friendly it purports to be if water in that area is a finite and scarce resource. It’s simple, not enough water means business and the population at large suffer. Pretending that water is not a very scarce resource in Arizona is to put it mildly, sticking one’s head in the sand. There are ways to mitigate the impacts. However promoting infinite growth in a business as usual scenario is definitely not an option!
Fortunately there are people in Arizona and elsewhere who do understand the impacts and are doing something about it.
https://global.arizona.edu/ua-initiates-wave-change-tackle-water-scarcity
THE UA INITIATES A WAVE OF CHANGE TO TACKLE WATER SCARCITY
By:
Jordyn Stinnett
Scarcity of clean water is a tremendous concern facing large cities and semi-arid regions of the Americas. Without a sustainable source of potable water, economic development and wellbeing of individuals is at risk. The University of Arizona recognizes this grand challenge and is taking action to address the technical issues of recycling industrial and municipal wastewater as clean, potable water.
As a result, approximately 100 leading engineers and scientists from across the Americas gathered in Recife, Brazil from May 17 – 19, 2017, to develop a group of university and industrial partners to collaborate on water reuse technologies.
BTW, I have been to both Phoenix Arizona and Recife Brazil. Recife has the advantage of at least being on the coast with access to a potential water source through desalination of salt water, Phoenix has no such resource.
UA is doing that line of research because the results can help our businesses keep growing. Science that aligns with what’s best for free enterprise and the economy is always a good thing.
This is what’s known as a dialogue pair: a comment that is not really a response to the previous comment but an attempt at re-framing the argument as ideological rather than factual.
Let’s do a little re-framing exercise ourselves:
“Science that aligns with what’s best for free enterprise and the economy is always a good thing.”
The opposite of this statement is:
Science that does not align with what’s best for free enterprise and the economy is always a bad thing.
This would make, say, the campaign against smoking a bad thing.
Or to re-frame even further:
Facts that do not align with what’s best for free enterprise and the economy are always a bad thing.
I think that’s what he really wanted to say.
Yep!
Complex adaptive and evolvable systems (CAES) collapse when their governance infrastructures fails to regulate their behavior. Humanity’s governance system is wide of the mark when it comes to meeting the criteria of sustainability. Our governments are incompetent in part because they are very poorly designed to manage the complexity of the modern world. But also they are incompetent because the individual decision agents making them up are themselves incompetent. They are simply not sufficiently sapient. Exhibit A: Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma). What a complete idiot. Exhibit B: Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), head of the House Science Committee!!!! These guys and most of the Congress are totally out of touch with reality. How did they get to be elected – Oh wait, I forgot the President too.
Oh wait, I forgot the President too.
Yeah, what a piece of fucking work he is!
Trump arrives at Liberty National for Presidents Cup finale
Associated Press DOUG FERGUSON,Associated Press 4 hours ago
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) — President Donald Trump didn’t just present the Presidents Cup trophy to the winning American team on Sunday. He dedicated it to the people who have endured hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.
Trump, the honorary chairman of the event, became the first sitting president to attend the matches on the final day. He stuck around to give the gold trophy to U.S. captain Steve Stricker and an American team that won by the most lopsided margin in 17 years.
Before arriving at Liberty National Golf Club, a private club built on a former landfill, Trump dismissed “politically motivated ingrates” who have questioned his administration’s commitment to the devastation of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
“On behalf of all of the people of Texas and all of the people of — if you look today and see what’s happening, how horrible it is. But we have it under really great control,” Trump said. “Puerto Rico and the people of Florida who have really suffered over this last short period of time with the hurricanes. I want to just remember them and we’re going to dedicate this trophy to all of those people that went through so much, that we love.”
Though he was greeted with enthusiastic chants of “USA! USA!” when he walked out toward the green, one spectator shouted as he spoke, “You don’t give a (expletive) about Puerto Rico.”
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
The Russians and the Chinese must be laughing their asses off!
Just re-read this and noticed I made an error: in the sentence “The opposite of this statement is:”, the word “opposite” should be replaced with counterpart.
-Lloyd
Fred – Apart from some recent results on the equation of state for neutron stars, the paper by V.A. Ryabov about dolphin’s spoken language is the most interesting thing I’ve seen in years. I’ve followed dolphin research (as an interested armchair amateur) since the 1960s and witnessed the frustration of researchers trying to crack the “dolphin communication problem”. Maybe, just maybe, we are now, finally, seeing the light here.
I’m also happy to hear Fourier Analysis, which encompasses a vast spectrum of mathematics (and in your view) is readily grasped in all it’s complexity by most university students. Because my wife, a mathematical physicist with PhDs in Math and Physics often used to remark that Fourier Math is like King Solomon’s Mine, a vast resource where we keep discovering priceless gems and are likely to continue doing so for centuries. Furthermore, as a geoscientist working with Fourier Analysis (almost daily applied to seismic, gravity surveys, etc.) for almost 40 years I was always discovering new twists to this wonderful tool that were certainly unknown to my professors. Maybe you could give lessons? In any case, the dolphin research paper is a gem which I thank you for from the bottom of my heart.
I’m also happy to hear Fourier Analysis, which encompasses a vast spectrum of mathematics (and in your view) is readily grasped in all it’s complexity by most university students. Because my wife, a mathematical physicist with PhDs in Math and Physics often used to remark that Fourier Math is like King Solomon’s Mine, a vast resource where we keep discovering priceless gems and are likely to continue doing so for centuries.
I’m not for a moment suggesting that Fourier Analysis can EASILY be grasped by anyone, in ALL it’s complexity. However in this day and age anyone willing to put in some effort to at least learn what it is and how it can be applied to various fields of research can do so… 🙂
Level
Undergraduate
Fourier Analysis
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-103-fourier-analysis-fall-2013/
As for Dolphin speech, I couldn’t agree more that it is a most fascinating topic!
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
– Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio
Dolphins are highly social have bigger brains than we do and have been around for over 50 million years. The surprising thing would be, if they didn’t have some form of language.
Cheers!
BTW, Humanity, we have a problem! Humans have lousy reading comprehension…
https://www.ted.com/talks/noriko_arai_can_a_robot_pass_a_university_entrance_exam/up-next
What we know about language is biased because we only know one advanced type of language which is the human language, that as far as we know might have a unique origin. It is unclear to me that an advanced dolphin language has to be based on words as repeatable units of information that can be rearranged in different ways. Their type of language could be, and probably is, completely different to ours. Our approach to dolphin language has to be very open, with the least amount of assumptions. Scientists are trying to detect changes in their behavior or actions in response to their communication exchanges. The attempts to learn from their interactions with us haven’t taken us very far.
Fourier analysis gets in the way for decoding El Nino:
http://contextearth.com/2017/06/02/enso-and-fourier-analysis/
It will make sense to people that have had to deal with aliased signals.
I could probably figure out dolphin speech if there is a similar pattern going on .. but it could take years 🙂
“September 2017 set Atlantic calendar month records for named storm days: 53.5, #hurricane days: 34.5, major hurricane days: 18, ACE: 175”
–Philip Klotzbach
Failure to model. Failure to predict.
When climate scientists say they can forecast the warming that is going to take place in the next 80 years, it is such a joke we should all laugh.
February 2017 El Niño forecast by ECMWF model, and what has really happened.
If the US won’t provide funds, this seems like a great opportunity for China to show the US what it’s got.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-puertorico-grid/renewable-energy-investors-see-opportunity-in-puerto-ricos-demolished-grid-idUSKCN1C50BF
https://thinkprogress.org/rebuild-puerto-ricos-grid-with-solar-not-nuclear-abc85da68cf6/
There is little doubt that China is not only now able to step in and fill any empty niche in the world economic power structure; China is eager to do so.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/world-war-iii-with-china_us_59ca7c8be4b0cdc773352821
The times they are’a changing, folks.
“The Trump White House may still be basking in the glow of America’s global supremacy but, just across the Potomac, the Pentagon has formed a more realistic view of its fading military superiority. In June, the Defense Department issued a major report titled on Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World, finding that the U.S. military “no longer enjoys an unassailable position versus state competitors,” and “it no longer can… automatically generate consistent and sustained local military superiority at range.” This sober assessment led the Pentagon’s top strategists to “the jarring realization that ‘we can lose.’” Increasingly, Pentagon planners find, the “self-image of a matchless global leader” provides a “flawed foundation for forward-looking defense strategy… under post-primacy conditions.” This Pentagon report also warned that, like Russia, China is “engaged in a deliberate program to demonstrate the limits of U.S. authority”; hence, Beijing’s bid for “Pacific primacy” and its “campaign to expand its control over the South China Sea.”
China’s Challenge
“Some telltale numbers suggest the nature of the future great power competition between Washington and Beijing that could determine the course of the twenty-first century. In April 2015, for instance, the Department of Agriculture reported that the U.S. economy would grow by nearly 50% over the next 15 years, while China’s would expand by 300%, equaling or surpassing America’s around 2030.”
“Similarly, in the critical race for worldwide patents, American leadership in technological innovation is clearly on the wane. In 2008, the United States still held the number two spot behind Japan in patent applications with 232,000. China was, however, closing in fast at 195,000, thanks to a blistering 400% increase since 2000. By 2014, China actually took the lead in this critical category with 801,000 patents, nearly half the world’s total, compared to just 285,000 for the Americans.”
“Over the longer term, the American education system, that critical source of future scientists and innovators, has been falling behind its competitors. In 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development tested half a million 15-year-olds worldwide. Those in Shanghai came in first in math and science, while those in Massachusetts, “a strong-performing U.S. state,” placed 20th in science and 27th in math. By 2015, America’s standing had declined to 25th in science and 39th in math.”
I could go on all day about what’s wrong with our public school system, but I doubt whether anybody else here is interested enough in this problem to get a conversation about it going.
So I will say just this much and give it up.
If you happen to be a lamebrain unthinking political liberal, and believe in our schools as they MUST NECESSARILY EXIST, given our political climate, you have two basic choices if you have kid and want your kid to get a good education.
You can move to an elite community, if you are a member of the elite, and if the public schools are well funded, and burdened with few or no kids from the lower strata of society, your kid will have a fair shot at learning SOME math and science, so long as you step in and make GODDAMNED sure what courses your kid takes, rather than leaving it to the guidance counselers, etc.
Your other choice is to put your kid in a private school or home school, if you can. Good private schools are as scarce as chicken teeth, and damned few parents are both qualified and able to home school effectively, given the amount of time it takes.
In principle, having all the kids in the same school system in a given community has a lot to say for it. In practice, it means YOUR kid may be totally fucked over by being placed in classrooms where babysitting is the primary job of the teacher. There are TONS of schools where just about EVERY classroom falls into this sorry category.
BUT if you are a member of the local elite, your kid might still have a fair shot even in a rotten decaying dying city school system, because there are generally at least a FEW good teachers in such schools, and THEIR classrooms are generally deliberately and selectively reserved for the children of the local elite, including their own kids. A county or city high school with forty teachers and classrooms, in terms of UNDERSTANDING, should be considered as being forty SEPARATE schools in many respects.
Now let’s suppose you have a kid that’s bright enough, and that has the good attitude needed to participate in a FIRST CLASS classroom, but you aren’t an elite. Depending on local circumstances, your kid may very well be shuffled int the b or c track classrooms, rather than the A track classes intended for the kids who will be going to good universities later. THIS depends on how many seats are available.
My parents weren’t part of the elite, but on the other hand, there weren’t really enough kids from elite backgrounds to take all the seats available for the REAL chemistry, biology, math, and English classes, so maybe a quarter of us in Amy ( thunder ) Bolt’s fourth and fifth period English classes were from MY sort of background. I did my senior English papers, to university standards, on Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained . I could have chosen Shakespeare, or any classic author.
A quarter of us in advanced math were farm kids with semi literate parents.
Put your egalitarian politics ahead of your own kid’s welfare, by keeping them in a typical American school these days, and you may well will be depriving your kid of his or her opportunity to compete in the world to be.
The elite among us understand this situation very well, but mostly refuse to discuss it publicly. When I was hanging around VCU as a special grad student, living the bohemian life in the Fan District, way back when, I knew dozens of young idealistic couples, of several races and ethnicities , and just about all of us lived in the city. We were all very liberal, being the people we were, mostly graduate students, some undergrads, working teachers, etc. I actually did a REVERSE commute, with some other teachers, driving out into a nearby county to work, and coming home to the city to live for a year.
As their kids reached school age, just about every last couple I knew left the city. They knew, they understood, they were all part of the INTELLECTUAL if not the economic elite. They talked all the bullshit talk, but they weren’t willing walk the walk and put their own children in the city school system.
I still run across some of them from time to time. They’re still reliable unthinking foot soldiers of the politically leftish variety, and still perfectly willing to sacrifice OTHER people’s children on the altar of our extremely dysfunctional school system, because the D party political coalition/ agenda calls for doing so.
A German microgrid company planning to help out.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-02/puerto-rico-to-get-power-relief-from-german-microgrid-supplier
September Arctic sea ice extent grows one more year
The Danish Meteorological Institute has publish the September data.
http://osisaf.met.no/p/new_ice_extent_graphs.php
The data shows one more year of sea ice growth since 2007, making it 10 years, against multiple predictions from supposed experts that summer Arctic ice was in terminal decline.
The current positive trend is expected to continue at least until 2022 based on frequency analysis, making it 15-year long, and it could continue even to 2035-40, according to the well known ~60 year oscillation. Expect more Arctic sea ice growth in following years.
Modern democracies are built around the neoliberal idea of individual autonomy (a secular version of “free will”). In the west this means blatant individualism, in the extreme, libertarian sentiments – another failing of low sapience. Hyper-sociality, a characteristic of high sapience, is based on cooperation, altruism, selflessness, and a sense of belonging to something bigger and more important than the individual. Democracy among low-sapients cannot work. It doesn’t work. Just look at the evidence in front of your eyes. The average human being today is out for “numero uno”. How much of this is because there are simply too many of us and we all feel we are in competition with each other? I offer arguments that suggest that while population density tends to bring out the worst in us, the fact is that the worst is IN US.
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/
This is a nice recent study that evaluates these heat exchange relationships in the Pacific Sector, if you’re into that kinda thing.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016JC012089/abstract
Finding parallels between Hadley Cell expansion and the global warming hiatus
https://usclivar.org/research-highlights/finding-parallels-between-hadley-cell-expansion-and-global-warming-hiatus
That’s good stuff, if I understand correctly, over the next ten years desertification isn’t going to move north as fast, but it is going to get warmer faster then the previous ten, and all to do with ENSO/PDO (though they don’t use the term PDO, but I think it’s the same phenomena they are referring to).
A Dramatic Increase in Annual Average Temperatures for U.S. Cities This Decade
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/dramatic-increase-annual-average-temperatures-us-cities-decade
We may or may not have reached the annual maximum Antarctic sea ice extent. Nevertheless, it remains well below average (>775,000 km^2)
Both Arctic and Antarctic are heading for 3 K positive anomalies over the next week or so (and probably higher and linger on the Atlantic side of the Arctic – records getting clobbered in Svalbard).
Catalonia might declare independence in the next couple of days, as a country it wouldn’t be much smaller than Greece and Portugal (about the same if the French side joined in). Also would be amongst the favourites for the next World Cup.
Hi George,
They have their reasons, including some I find persuasive.
Can they make it stick if they do go for independence?
The OLD South tried it, for not so good reasons, and failed to make it stick here in the USA.
If it hadn’t come about because of the slavery issue, there wouldn’t have been an American Civil War.
But just suppose the south had decided to secede for some OTHER reason?
I don’t think there is any question at all that the South would have succeeded in doing so, or that more than a small handful of northern citizens would really have given a damn. There’s just about a zero chance the North would have gone to war over it, except for the moral outrage generated by the slavery issue.
What happens NOW if California, or the prosperous northeastern states decide to secede? The odds of this happening are close to zero……. but if it does…….. Do we fight another civil war over it?
It’s more like one a partition in one of the old eastern bloc countries (though still a bit different) – it was a kingdom before (I think Aragon and then something else), it has a separate ethnicity, culture and language and to some extent natural borders, so a lot different to the south splitting from the north. The violence the police are using is almost certainly going to have the opposite effect of what they are trying for.
Yep—
1936 is still in the memory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWXYsi3zoCQ
This is a great fairly short piece about some new astronomy and or geology research, well worth reading.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2017/09/30/lunar-sized-impactor-linked-to-earths-metal-rich-crust-say-researchers/#11035c4010c9
I’m hoping somebody can explain one particular aspect of it for me.
“The reaction of the metallic hail with a primordial Earth hydrosphere (eg., our planet’s combined water resources) resulted in the consumption of the equivalent of some three ocean masses of water, says Mojzsis. This reaction yields an atmosphere that is 90 times denser than what we have now, and is composed mostly of hydrogen, he says. Because the Sun was about 30% dimmer back then, Mojzsis says such an early atmosphere would not just have heated our young Earth, but would have also provided a chemical environment conducive to the production and preservation of organic chemicals.”
I find it hard to envision how the atmosphere could be composed mostly of hydrogen and yet be ninety times denser than otherwise, given the light weight of hydrogen, and the likelihood that so much of it would have blown away into space.
And a hydrogen rich atmosphere obviously cannot also be highly enriched with oxygen without the whole shooting match going off like a planet sized fuel air bomb. So I suppose the idea is that the oxygen released by the “consumption of the equivalent of three ocean masses of water” was incorporated into various oxygen rich minerals such as for instance iron ore?
Any clarification and or additional comments will be welcome, and thanks in advance.
Sounds fantastic to me. Considering that the Earth, Mars and Venus all have iron cores and some iron in the crust, I don’t see how this explanation is even needed. Currents in a molten planet and volcanism should explain the composition well enough, considering the crust is mostly silicon and oxygen, then 8 percent aluminum with iron at 5 percent and the rest much lower in concentration.
Even lightweight carbon is only 0.18 percent of the earth crust.
So either this fantastic planetoid put iron on the surface of Mars too or there are other explanations.
Would have been nice of this “iron loving” planetoid to bring more copper, gold and rare earth’s too.
🙂
Abundance of elements in the Earth’s crust
http://periodictable.com/Properties/A/CrustAbundance.al.html
Hi GF,
Personally I haven’t time enough to read up on everything I find interesting, and no longer have ready access to a university library, which crimps my reading style when it comest to purely technical subjects.
Planetary evolution is something I know very little about, but it’s my understanding that in it’s earliest days, once enough materials coalesced to bring the Earth up to about it’s current size or thereabouts, it was basically one large more or less spherical molten mass, up until the time it cooled enough to allow some solid crust to start forming.
So…… in accordance with well understood principles involving the way sediments, etc, arrange themselves as they settle out of solution, the densest stuff generally winds up at the lowest levels, with progressively less dense materials being found in a predictable fashion in layers farther from the bottom or FROM THE CENTER, in the case of a planet sized body.
So….. the expectation is that not much iron or other heavy dense elements would be found in the outer portion or crust as the crust solidifies, given this tendency for dense materials to sink the center.
The authors of the paper seem to be of the opinion that there is WAY TOO MUCH in the way of iron and other heavy elements in the crust, even after allowing for convection in the mantle and volcanic eruptions and plate tectonics bringing up some stuff from just below the plates etc.
So they think ( I think, I have not actually read the paper ) they have an explanation. They apparently think that a SECOND giant asteroid or whatever hitting after the collision that resulted in the creation of the moon is responsible for there being so much in the way of iron and other heavy elements being found near the surface of the Earth.
By then the Earth had supposedly cooled enough that most of whatever hit remained on the surface or near the surface. Of course some of it would have been buried deep by sediments or washed away by rivers, or covered over by volcanic eruptions, or buried by plate movements , etc, over the following billion or two or three more billion years.
I don’t know enough to have a serious/firm opinion, which is why I am hoping somebody with a background in geology or astronomy will throw some light on the subject.
‘At this point, expensive battery technology still makes them money drains. General Motors Co. loses about $9,000 on every Chevrolet Bolt electric car it sells. Tesla had record sales of its EVs last year — and still lost $675 million on $7 billion in sales. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV loses $20,000 on every electric version of its 500-model subcompact sold in the U.S. Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne said in a speech in Italy on Monday. Battery-powered models should be marketed based on consumer demand and not depend on incentives, he said.’
https://www.bloomberg.com//news/articles/2017-10-02/automakers-plan-electric-car-blitz-even-as-tesla-burns-billions
(lucky the sheep buy big trucks with huge profit margins, or this would be a challenging business model)
Criminy Crickey Blue Moons! There are no competitors in the pure EV market for Tesla to beat, at least not in the US (don’t know about the ROW). They have a solid business plan that makes their cars work well and be practical at the same time. No other car maker is doing that. It will be years before other makers could even attempt to catch up even if they had the right plan and implemented it post haste. Soon Tesla will be profitable, very profitable as it ramps up to making half a million cars a year. But like Amazon it might just feed the money back into more growth. Tesla could have several percent of the world vehicle making in the near future. Anybody old enough to remember when a Toyota was a rare vehicle here? Foreign imports did a number on the slow to respond big US auto makers.
That is why the other carmakers are getting into the game, they see an upcoming competitor that will knock down their ICE sales within the next few years. The high profile executive foot-draggers are going to get a back-room slapping and a “hit the road Jack” exit if they don’t get a move on soon.
“There are no competitors in the pure EV market for Tesla”
Not so fast Fish:
GM promises 20 all-electric cars by 2023
• GM says it “believes in an all-electric future.”
• The carmaker will introduce at least 20 new all-electric vehicles by 2023
• Two new EVs will hit the market by 2018, following the Chevy Bolt which was launched in 2016.
• GM will also pursue a hydrogen fuel-cell electric strategy, to address the needs of non-retail customers
The move demonstrated that GM is serious about remaining not just relevant, but extremely competitive as the global auto industry is transformed by electrification and the arrival of upstarts such as Tesla.
“General Motors believes the future is all electric,” Mark Reuss, the carmaker’s Executive Vice President of Global Product Development, said on a conference call with reporters after sharing details of forthcoming designs and new battery engineering was revealed. The 109-year-old company made the announcement in Detroit.
http://www.businessinsider.com/gm-to-launch-20-all-electric-cars-by-2023-2017-10
There’s a lot of news over here about one of our billionaire entrepreneurs, Dyson of the cyclonic vacuum cleaners and other electronic stuff like hand driers, bladeless fans, setting up in the EV and battery business.
No real competition HB. Without the charging infrastructure their sales will be poor to mediocre at best with fast post sales turnover by many owners as they deal with the reality of EV’s. Great second cars now for anyone that has to or likes to travel far at all. Why do you think Tesla built out it’s charging infrastructure early and still continues to advance it rapidly? For show? Nope, because they know you need all the pieces in place to make a dent in the market.
The other manufactures so far are building them and the chargers will come. Full of hopium.
Right now GM’s target market is California. In the parking lot of my gym and the Starbucks next to it. The local Chevrolet dealership has installed two charging stations at no cost for Bolt’s. I don’t think from were you live, your getting a fair representation of what’s going on.
EV’s are the future and the manufacturers know it. This is not a transition that’s going to happen over night. It’s happening faster than I ever thought it would just 3 years ago.
Pack up the Saturn and come visit. I’ll show you around.
I live about an hour from the Megalopolis. There are a number of low level chargers there but very few to the west, north, northwest, northeast, southwest, south and southeast. Often they don’t work when you get there. Of course having a hundred or so chargers in a region of 20 million people is not impressive even if they do work. No guarantee they will not be occupied upon arrival. No way to travel in most directions for me, other than the 100 miles out and back for a full charge, low level chargers mean sitting for hours to get a partial charge.
I then checked Tesla superchargers and wow, got some not far to the west of me and sets of them at about 80 to 100 miles apart for hundreds of miles on all the main routes in all directions. I didn’t check further than that. So just a simple matter of hanging around or eating lunch then on the road again.
I have no plans to go to California, especially to drive there. Flying is more efficient and less expensive. Rented cars when I have traveled the West in the past.
The five year old Tesla Supercharger network (first opened October 19, 2012)
Another view:
(I’m still shopping for a electric bike)
Tesla shares down big on failure to meet promised production targets
whereas in August – less than two months ago – Tesla predicted it would build more than 1,500 Model 3s in the third quarter; it actually made… just 260.
I don’t get why Tesla shares are down —-they only missed their target by 80% and Elon promised everything is going to be great next quarter. Elon making big promises has always been enough to give the stock a boost in the past!
We shall see campers—
Musk has been late quite a few times, more or less regularly, in fact, but he has always so far made his promises good.
My personal guess is that Model Three’s will be sold in substantial numbers, meaning at least in low four figures per month, before this year is out.
Ramping up production of an almost entirely new car using new materials, with parts sourced from Sky Daddy alone knows how many vendors has to be about as tough a management job as I can imagine, in terms of keeping it on a tight schedule.
Caelan is always happy to point out any failing, real or imaginary, of just about anybody at all.
He’s our resident sign toter/ preacher on the corner / the end of the world is here prophet. He’s about like Javier, except his obsession is the end of technology instead of the supposed failing so the climate science community.
I’m not sure which of them is the more competent cherry picker,but they are the class of this forum, and Olympic class at least in my estimation. Either or both of them may actually be PROFESSIONALS.
But Javier generally does make excellent sense when he talks about almost anything OTHER than forced climate change, not that he does so very often.
I can’t say as much for Caelan.
For what it’s worth, I just refer to myself now as the resident forum idiot or Trumpster, etc, from time to time so as to save other members the trouble of pointing out their opinion of me.
I don’t think Javier could find his arse with both hands and a torch, and everything he says is poorly understood, regurgitated second and third hand ideas – he just sometimes picks the right people to copy. For the climate stuff everything turns out to be crap and he has to resort to lying and rote repetition to cover his lack of understanding or ability to learn. Caelan has a different and original perspective, although I have no idea what he is on about a lot of the time.
Please tell us all about your new bike when you get it. I’m hoping to live long enough to see real electric bike dealerships in small towns………. dealerships with well known brand names, real technicians, real parts departments, etc.
Now about Bloomberg…… they post a lot of stuff contributed by individuals, generally with the disclaimer that the posted piece is the opinion of the author, rather than the opinion of the Bloomberg organization.
I haven’t looked, but I’m ready to bet a small sum that there are more than a few opinion pieces on the site that are gung ho enthusiastic about electric cars in general and probably Tesla in particular as well.
This does not pass the smell test. Are we to believe that GM is selling the Bolt at $9,000 less than the cost of production when it is retailing for $38,000? Are we to believe that FCA takes the Fiat 500 that retails for about $15,000 in it’s most basic form, fits it with an electric motor and battery instead of an ICE and gas tank, ending up with a vehicle that would retail for $37,000 more than the base model ($52,000) were it not for a $20,000 loss? That would mean that the additional cost of manufacturing an electric version of the Fiat 500 is more than the roughly US$31,000 MSRP of the 2018 Nissan Leaf and even slightly more than the MSRP of the Chevy Bolt (considering that the cost of the ICE and fuel system is subtracted from the cost of the base model).
As for Tesla, they are in the middle of building the largest single battery manufacturing facility on the planet as well as expansion of it’s charging network currently standing at 412 currently operating, 34 under construction and 18 permitted in the USA with the corresponding figures for the World being 997 in operation, 60 under construction and 29 permitted (source supercharge.info/ ). There’s also the cost of R&D for the existing and future models, including the class 8 heavy duty truck to be unveiled at the end of this month. Add to that, the over $1 billion invest in expansion and tooling at their Fremont factory and it is hard to imagine an operation growing that fast not operating at a loss.
Over the past seven years the Renault/Nissan alliance has produced over half a million battery electric vehicles. The best selling EV in Europe, the Renault Zoe, was recently upgraded (to a 40 kWh battery) and the best selling EV globally, the Nissan Leaf, has just had an update announced for 2018 MY with a 40 kWh battery available initially and a 60 kWh battery to be available next year (2019 MY?). Are we to believe that they are losing money on the two best selling battery electric vehicles in the world?
Early this year Hyundai introduced the IONIQ to the US and more recently VW has upgraded their e-Golf to a higher capacity battery. The headline of the second most recent article (as at the time of this post ) at insideevs.com reads “GM: “At least” 20 New EVs To Debut In Next 5 Years, Two in Next 18 Months”. The most recent headline reads “Ford Creates “Team Edison” To Focus Solely On Pure Electric Cars”. I smell a Koch brothers anti-EV misinformation campaign somewhere in the Bloomberg piece and panic at Koch Brothers HQ.
Ask Bloomberg—-
They supplied the data and article.
Even with enough emasculated ‘Merikin Males buying big truck penis machines at huge margins for auto companies, this has got to hurt.
I guess they are counting on the continued subsidies that currently keep the game going.
Federal Assault Weapons Ban
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) — officially, the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act — is a subsection of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a United States federal law that included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms it defined as assault weapons, as well as certain ammunition magazines it defined as “large capacity.”
Efforts to create restrictions on “assault weapons” at the federal government level intensified in 1989 after 34 children and a teacher were shot and five children killed in Stockton, Calif. with a semi-automatic AK-47 rifle.[1][2][3] The Luby’s shooting in October 1991, which left 23 people dead and 27 wounded, was another factor.
Under the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 the definition of “semiautomatic assault weapon” included specific semi-automatic firearm models by name, and other semi-automatic firearms that possessed two or more from a set certain features:[13]
A semi-automatic Yugoslavian M70AB2 rifle.
An Intratec TEC-DC9 with 32-round magazine; a semi-automatic pistol formerly classified as an assault weapon under federal law.
Semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Bayonet mount
Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
Grenade launcher mount
Semi-automatic pistols with detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
Magazine that attaches outside the pistol grip
Threaded barrel to attach barrel extender, flash suppressor, handgrip, or suppressor
Barrel shroud safety feature that prevents burns to the operator
Unloaded weight of 50 oz (1.4 kg) or more
A semi-automatic version of a fully automatic firearm.
Semi-automatic shotguns with two or more of the following:
Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Detachable magazine
In 2004, a research report submitted to the United States Department of Justice and the National Institute of Justice found that should the ban be renewed, its effects on gun violence would likely be small, and perhaps too small for reliable measurement, because rifles in general, including rifles referred to as “assault rifles” or “assault weapons”, are rarely used in gun crimes.[29] That study by Christopher S. Koper, Daniel J. Woods, and Jeffrey A. Roth of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania found no statistically significant evidence that either the assault weapons ban or the ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds had reduced gun murders.
Efforts to pass a new federal assault weapons ban were made in December 2012 after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.[43][44][45] On January 24, 2013, Senator Feinstein introduced S. 150, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 (AWB 2013).[46] The bill was similar to the 1994 ban, but differed in that it would not expire after 10 years,[45] and it used a one-feature test for a firearm to qualify as an assault weapon rather than the two-feature test of the defunct ban.[47] The GOP Congressional delegation from the State of Texas condemned Feinstein’s bill, along with the NRA.[48] On March 14, 2013, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a version of the bill along party lines.[49] On April 17, 2013, AWB 2013 failed on a Senate vote of 40 to 60.[50]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban
****
Hillary Clinton On Las Vegas Shooting: ‘We Must Stand Up To The NRA’
“Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer,” which the gun lobby “wants to make easier to get.”
At least 50 people were killed and over 400 have been sent to nearby hospitals after a gunman opened fire during the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas late Sunday night.
“The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots. Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get,” she said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-on-las-vegas-shooting-we-must-stand-up-to-the-nra_us_59d24b49e4b09538b509ab39?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
Wouldn’t surprise me if they find undiagnosed brain damage like Charles Whitman.
All the more reason for Gun Control
Exactly. He must have had a thousand bullets, why not at least put some kind of punitive tax on them like cigarettes or booze
Considering the lack of sapient behavior by most ‘Merikins, I’m drifting toward your view.
However, a well armed proletariat does make the storm troopers think twice about breaking your door down.
However, with the current weapons that the State has, this seems a moot point.
All resistance would be asymmetrical, and that would be a moot point on gun control.
I live in rural Oregon, and this would not go over well.
The well armed proletariat is the likely one to be breaking doors down, urged on by the Kochs and Trumps of the world.
I agree.
Wingnuts gone wild!
Who knows what anyone of us would be getting up to if we had an astrocytoma pressing on our amygdala.
I was thinking that on my hike today.
Seems like some bad amygdala issues, like Whitman.
Sounds more like genetics. Just read that his father was a bank robber and on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list, as well as an officially diagnosed psychopath. While this guy was a lone wolf probably acting alone, it seems he put a lot of thought and preparation into this act. It doesn’t seem to be some totally random off the cuff occurrence, i.e. he snapped.
Still, the stats are very clear. Societies that do not severely limit access to guns and especially of assault weapons will keep seeing this kind of event over and over again.
The US leads the world in deaths by fire arms.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-u-s-gun-deaths-compare-to-other-countries/
Even though it has half the population of the other 22 nations combined, the United States accounted for 82 percent of all gun deaths. The United States also accounted for 90 percent of all women killed by guns, the study found. Ninety-one percent of children under 14 who died by gun violence were in the United States.Feb 3, 2016
He did seem awfully well prepared, and trained.
And a very interesting genetic history.
I’m reading Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior currently.
https://www.amazon.com/Time-Love-Memory-Biologist-Behavior/dp/0679763902/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1281662212&sr=1-2
My prayers go out to all those impacted by the horrific tragedy in Las Vegas. Now is the time to turn to whatever faith you believe in to cope, not disrespect the dead and injured by bickering about politics.
Isn’t that a meme protecting itself?
If you can’t examine it, it is safe?
http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/australian-mythology.php?deity=RAINBOW-SNAKE
RAINBOW-SNAKE
Australian Fertility God/dess
Also known as ALMUDJ, KALSERU
The Great Creator Serpent
.
I still like the good old Talking Snake that hangs out with the Rib Woman under that Magical Tree.
I jump on Mohammeds Flying Horse (when he is busy beheading infidels) and pay him a visit.
Mohammed will send somebody to cut your head off and put it on a stake in front of your house if you keep saying you ride his horse. Gods and dictators tend to get bent out of shape when somebody disses them.
Now if you have Mohammed on speed dial, and he rings you up to bullshit once in a while, that’s different. 😉
Ah yes! Prayer! When you don’t really want to help, but you want to pretend that you did.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/gun-violence-public-health-issue/
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/repeal-second-amendment
I wouldn’t be who I am today without the power of others praying for my soul. With them I was saved and born again. Prayer is very good for your brain and health overall, even science has shown this!
Prayer is very good for your brain and health overall, even science has shown this!
Actually it shows exactly the opposite!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2802370/
Worse outcomes associated with prayer
Benson et al.[37] described a triple-blind, randomized controlled study that examined whether remote intercessory prayer influenced recovery after coronary artery bypass graft surgery and whether the certainty of being prayed for was associated with better outcomes. The sample comprised 1,802 patients in six hospitals in the USA. These patients were randomized into three groups: 604 were prayed for after being informed that they may or may not be prayed for, 597 were not prayed for after similarly being informed that they may or may not be prayed for and 601 were prayed for after being informed they would definitely be prayed for.
Prayer commenced one day before the surgery and continued for 14 days. Three mainstream religious sites prayed daily for patients assigned to receive prayer. Assessment of outcomes was made by nurses who were blind to the group assignments. The primary outcome was the presence of any complication within 30 days of surgery. Secondary outcomes were any major event, including death. The study sought to examine the efficacy of intercessory prayer and not to test the presence of God. The design was described by Dusek et al.[38]
In the two groups that did not know for certain whether or not they were being prayed for, complications occurred in 52% of patients who received intercessory prayer and in 51% of those who did not. In contrast, complications occurred in a significantly larger proportion of patients (59%) who knew for certain that they were being prayed for. Major events and 30-day mortality rates, however, were similar across the three groups.
This study therefore showed that remote intercessory prayer did not improve outcomes after coronary artery bypass graft surgery. In fact, the knowledge of being prayed for was associated with a slightly but significantly higher rate of postsurgical complications.
Tim Minchin Thank you Lord with Lyrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8HT6Ux8FM
Please refer to the University of Utah scientific study report, it shows you are very wrong about what prayer does to the brain and health.
Prayer and healing: Study suggests religion impacts the brain in a positive way
http://www.fox46charlotte.com/good-day/283501217-video
Wrong link above, this is the link to the actual report.
http://www.fox46charlotte.com/health/study-shows-impact-religion-has-on-the-brain
Peggy Hahn, please use the ignore x on Fred. He is an athiest and any amount of prayer for him is a waste of time and a lost cause.
Hell is too good a place for him.
“Hell is too good a place for him”
Hell would be trapped in the same location as a faith based god fearing Christian. Make that a ticket for two. I’m not interested in being a member of your fake Christian love for others.
LOL! You do realize that atheists believe in hell just as much as they believe deities, right?!
People who don’t believe in ghosts sleep well in haunted houses…
Nosiree, fucker.
This is the perfect time to talk about gun control. A teachable moment, a practical application of knowledge.
The dead most certainly wouldn’t want this to happen again.
Their families don’t want this to happen again.
I’m pretty sure (if they weren’t dead) that they would wish gun control had been instituted last time around, after Orlando.
The way to honour the dead is to make sure it doesn’t happen again: to demand something be done now. Write your Congressman. If you’re a gun nut, write to your NRA reps (or whatever). And do it now, before Trump tweets some stupid shit and we all get sidetracked (you know it’s going to happen).
To be silent is to be complicit.
To be silent is to be complicit.
Yeah! Especially because the POS trolls like Bill Franti or whoever is behind that handle are most definitely not silent.
Fuck them, their fake prayers and their dirty politics!
‘Premature’ to Talk Gun Control, White House Says After Vegas Shooting
by Ali Vitali
Politics Oct 2 2017, 5:43 pm ET
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/las-vegas-shooting/premature-talk-gun-control-white-house-says-after-vegas-shooting-n806831
President Donald Trump believes that now is not the time to talk about gun control in the immediate aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, the White House said Monday.
Asked about renewed pleas from lawmakers for stricter gun control measures, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it was “premature” to talk about potential legislation before all the facts about the Las Vegas mass shooting are known.
“There’s a time and place for a political debate, but now is the time to unite as a country,” Sanders said, noting “there will be certainly time for that policy discussion to take place, but that’s not the place that we’re in at this moment.”
The Onion has printed this article every time this happens and they only change the name of the city, the name of the perpetrator and the victims names…
http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-prevent-says-only-nation-where-regularly-ha-57086
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
When the fuck are we going to wake up!?
Ammosexual:
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pLs8OCGdN7Y/WdKQ1S5-_xI/AAAAAAAAzR8/o8cKZMafCcI6-IE1Vce7viFtVdrGizabwCLcBGAs/s640/0229ebb300db8a9be5a54b3f67e6833e–mental-disorders-political-satire.jpg
We need to gather all the facts about this event before determining if any solution is possible. Right now not all of the facts are clear, indicated for example by the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lztlqh0qahw which shows several eyewitness recordings of what occurred on Sunday.
Are you fucking serious!?
At least we already have all the facts we need to determine that Geroge Harmon, is just another POS troll!
Geroge (or even George) Harmon = No Meagrer Hog by my anagram finder
I left home for a while yesterday afternoon for a while and came back to hear a stream that I had left running on the computer. I was not seeing it because it was not on the visible tab of my browser but, based on the commentary I was hearing , I very quickly figured out that it was Fox News. It is very obvious that American society is very polarized on the issue of gun control as it is on several other issues.
It would appear that the areas that voted primarily for Trump are the same ones where the majority express the view that you will have to pry their guns out of their cold dead hands. I hate to break it to you but, as long as their are Americans with views like Alex Jones (Infowars) there aint’ gonna be a “waking up”. America, the land of the free and the home of some really crazy, right wing MFs.
So are all the facts in yet about Sandy Hook, or Pulse, or Virginia Tech, or Fort Hood, or Tucson, or the Washington Navy Yard, or Isla Vista, or Charleston, or Chattanooga, or Umpqua or ad infinitum? Seems like it’s always too soon.
As horrific as the Las Vegas massacre is, the daily firearm death count in the U.S. is roughly ~85 people per day. Every. Single. Day.
So we had an 169% of average day for firearm mortality, and a now world famous new high scorer.
Bill Franti – 1) Why did you feel the need to tell us that, other than for straight virtue signalling? 2) In what way is bickering about politics disrespecting the dead, what about bickering about who gets the last chocolate, is that disrespecting them as well, and why should we be respecting these dead any more than any others (e.g. I think more are shot in Baltimore each year or the Hurricane victims – with more to come there by the looks of the Trump response)? 3) Go fuck yourself (that’s disrespecting you not the dead).
An Enormous Hole in Antarctica’s Sea Ice Could Help Solve a Climate Riddle
https://earther.com/theres-an-enormous-mysterious-hole-in-antarcticas-sea-1819043047
Does anybody here know enough about physics to speculate on the nature of the weapon somebody is using in Cuba to give Yankee spies a permanent headache or worse?
It’s now coming out that the victims are the intelligence guys and girls who operate posing as diplomats with diplomatic immunity, sop world wide. A few of the victims might not be spies, the perps could have been mistaken in some cases.
So far the Trump administration has refrained from blaming this unprecedented kind of attack on the Cuban government, which seems out of character, considering how often Trump shoots off his mouth.
Perhaps this indicates that our intelligence agencies really and truly don’t have a clue as to who the perps are.
Earth climate sensitivity may be coupled to temperature, as indicated by paleoclimate data study.
“The first step was to reconstruct the history of global mean temperatures for the last 784,000 years, using combined data from marine sediment cores, ice cores, and computer simulations covering the last eight glacial cycles,” said Friedrich, a post-doctoral researcher at IPRC.
The second step involved calculating the Earth’s energy balance for this time period, using estimates of greenhouse gas concentrations extracted from air bubbles in ice cores, and incorporating astronomical factors, known as Milankovitch Cycles, that effect the planetary heat budget.
“Our results imply that the Earth’s sensitivity to variations in atmospheric CO2 increases as the climate warms,” explained Friedrich. “Currently, our planet is in a warm phase—an interglacial period—and the associated increased climate sensitivity needs to be taken into account for future projections of warming induced by human activities.”
https://phys.org/news/2016-11-climate-sensitive-atmospheric-co2.html
The bottom line is what matters here: our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs in order to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature
-Klein
What the climate needs to stabilize is changing what we put into the atmosphere. It doesn’t give a shit how much iron or aluminum you dig out of the ground as long as GHG’s are not added in the process. It doesn’t care at all if you travel from NYC to LA if you don’t use the atmosphere as a dumping ground for GHG’s.
The cure for climate change is to stop changing the atmosphere, end of story.
Digging aluminum out of the ground adds to to the carbonization of the atmosphere, and refining it is a huge energy issue.
Same for Iron—
No free lunch I’m afraid.
So you do need to give a hit.
Yes, digging and refining metals adds to GHGs IF you use fossil fuels to do it.
If not, then not so much.
GHGs are, unfortunately, not the only problems with mining, etc..
Can you not think of other ways, they already exist and are used?
There’s zero doubt that the primary cause of forced climate change is air pollution resulting from burning fossil fuels.
But there’s no good reason to get all religious about it, and adopt a counter productive zero fossil fuel position. That sort of holier than thou, nose in the air attitude doesn’t result in net gains, politically, for the environmental movement.
The amount of green house gas pollution associated with burning fossil fuels to run mining machinery, refine aluminum and steel, etc, is very small, compared to the total amounts of fossil fuels we use.
And the vast bulk of all the metal we use these days can be easily and economically recycled. We can afford to burn some fossil fuel in the instances where we get the biggest bang for the smallest amounts burnt, as in producing metals.
And Nick is right, we will be able to produce metals using little or no fossil fuel ……… eventually.
The focus needs to be on energy conservation and efficiency, and that means updating and refurbishing and or replacing old buildings, switching from ice cars and trucks to electric light vehicles, etc.
When a well meaning environmentalist talks about not mining and processing metal ores because of fossil fuel pollution, that has about the same effect on a somewhat knowledgeable man on the street as advocating giving up the use of manufactured fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture.
It takes a nut case to actually advocate giving up fossil fuels, or pesticides and fertilizers, in real world terms. Nut cases seldom do their causes any good. They just make the environmental movement or political camp itself look like a nut case movement or camp.
We should express our arguments in terms that don’t make them so handy to be used as clubs by the Koch brothers team.
It’s a mistake to assume people are stupid or TOTALLY ignorant. There are millions of people who know enough to understand that we are utterly and absolutely dependent on the mining industries and the fossil fuel industries, the pesticide and fertilizer industries, etc, for our very fucking SURVIVAL, for now and for as far ahead as THEY can see.
And they’re RIGHT.
Talking about them as if they’re nut cases, or dupes of the R party , etc, is not apt to result in their voting for Democrats…
No Sir! Talk about women the way a lot of the members of this forum talk about working class people, and you couldn’t get a date in a whorehouse with a roll of hundreds.
OFM foghorned “But there’s no good reason to get all religious about it, and adopt a counter productive zero fossil fuel position. That sort of holier than thou, nose in the air attitude doesn’t result in net gains, politically, for the environmental movement. ”
OFM, I don’t think you mean to but you are sounding like a Koch brother advocate.
Compromise in the case of the health of the living planet is a fool’s game.
OFM, you do realize you just broke every rule of diplomacy you set out for the rest of us to follow? So what does that make you?
Klein has been fooled by right wing propaganda artists, who claimed that dealing with climate change would require a complete rebuilding of our economy. It was a scare tactic, and Klein does everyone an enormous disservice by falling for it and spreading the misinformation.
“Klein’s fervently ideological, anti-empiricist style, and her deep skepticism of the mainstream liberals who believe emissions can be controlled without destroying capitalism, places her in odd agreement with the far right. Visiting a conference of climate-science deniers, Klein discovers the kind of absolutist ideological reasoning and suspicion of mushy technocracy to which she can relate. Climate-science deniers see the fight to restrain emissions as a pretext to expand government power over the economy. Since that is exactly how Klein sees climate change, she thinks they are on to something: “I think these hard-core ideologues understand the real significance of climate change better than most of the ‘warmists’ in the political center … ” she writes, “when it comes to the scope and depth of change required to avert catastrophe, they are right on the money.” Finally, somebody else who understands that the real choice is capitalism versus the climate.
In the actual world outside this jointly inhabited ideological bubble, capitalism and climate science are discovering ways to co-exist. Klein dismisses the “past quarter century of international negotiations,” which she characterizes as “struggling, sputtering, failing utterly to achieve its goals.” In reality, American greenhouse-gas emissions peaked several years ago. European Union emissions peaked several decades ago. Chinese coal use has peaked, and its energy intensity has fallen. The world may not be decarbonizing as rapidly as it should, but it is moving rapidly. It may be slow by the standards of atmospheric conditions, but it is fast by the standards of global political cooperation.
U.N. efforts to fight climate change have only been under way since 1988. Compare this with the notion of replacing capitalism with a radical egalitarian alternative, which has been around for a century and a half. The project does not seem to be moving forward. Waiting to limit the damage of greenhouse-gas emissions until the people can overthrow the yoke of unfettered capitalism may represent the most dangerous advice the left has come up with in a very long time.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/must-we-choose-between-capitalism-and-climate.html
From the mouthpiece of liberal thought, and neoliberal economics.
They brought you Judith Miller and WMD in Iraq.
Mainstream Dim Mouthpiece.
mouthpiece of liberal thought
Uhmmm…who, NY mag?
” right wing propaganda artists, who claimed that dealing with climate change would require a complete rebuilding of our economy”
I agree with you Nick, Capitalism is a great system to inspire individuals to maximize their own potential. The down side is the overwhelming power and influence the rich and powerful have over the less fortunate. Including in a democracy, buying political influence and weakening regulations. The powerful abuse the environment dumping waste freely into the air and water not realizing the actually cost to society by spreading misinformation to the electorate.
Yeah.
I’d hate to say anything broad and general about capitalism, or socialism, etc. I think that free, decentralized markets have a very important place in any economy, but that they need to be very carefully regulated. It seems to me that we have to navigate from where we are to where we want to be incrementally. People like the Kochs are actually radicals, wanting to tear down liberal democracy and take us back to something like the 19th century.
But, it seems clear to me that when people from the Heartland Institute say that dealing with climate change requires socialism, or radical change for the economy, they’re lying and spreading FUD. And, Klein was fooled by them.
Sadly, conservatives will now hold up Klein as proof of their original lies.
If only the markets were free instead of controlled monopolies and filled with mega-companies.
See my five twenty four am comment immediately above.
We WILL have make such changes in our economy that it’s not totally unreasonable to describe these changes as a “complete rebuilding”. English is a rather flexible language , lol.
We shouldn’t deny that some really major changes are NECESSARY, while pointing out that they are COMING, NO MATTER WHAT. Fossil fuels deplete, renewable energy is getting cheaper by comparison every year, etc.
Talking in rose tinted terms without acknowledging such realities as I have mentioned leads people who are suspicious of the motives of environmentalists to conclude that the Koch brothers are their friends, and environmentalists are their enemies.
In this case we’re talking about two very different things.
Sure, replacing every ICE with an EV, and replacing coal plants with wind farms could be described as a complete rebuilding. But, those EVs can and likely will be built by the same auto workers in the same factories by the same car companies, driving on the same roads and sitting in the same garages.
Solar PV may mean a new decentralized business model for utilities…maybe. But, that kind of change isn’t unique – it’s roughly comparable to the disruption of retail shopping by Amazon.
A renewable economy doesn’t mean socialism, or communism, or an attempt by climatologists to impose central planning and steal everybody’s money.
People like the Heartland Institute are makin’ stuff up. They’re pretending that climate change mitigation is just a giant plot by commies. Sadly, Klein was taken in…
The security of the nation and much of world depends upon mitigating climate change, reducing the effects of peak oil and building resilience.
Understanding the Causes and Consequences of Polar Amplification
http://agci.org/event/17s1
Interesting videos.
Toshiba’s new battery technology supports ultra-rapid recharge and longer life….
・New battery realizes driving range of electric vehicles boosted to 320km on 6-minute, ultra-rapid recharge, triple that possible with current lithium-ion battery.
・New anode material, titanium niobium oxide achieves double the capacity of the anode of current lithium-ion batteries.
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2017_10/pr0301.htm?from=RSS_PRESS&uid=20171003-5177e
And 5,000 cycle life (at 90% remaining capacity, a high standard).
At, say, $200/kWh, that’s only 4 cents per cycle. That means the battery cost for an EV would be only 1.33 cents per mile (or less). That’s dirt cheap.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-04/dawn-of-solar-age-declared-as-pv-beats-all-other-forms-of-power
Dawn of Solar Age Declared as PV Beats All Other Forms of Power
By Anna Hirtenstein
October 4, 2017, 3:00 AM EDT
Solar power blossomed faster than for any other fuel for the first time in 2016, the International Energy Agency said in a report suggesting the technology will dominate renewables in the years ahead.
The institution established after the first major oil crisis in 1973 said 165 gigawatts of renewables were completed last year, which was two-thirds of the net expansion in electricity supply. Solar grew by 50 percent, with almost half new plants built in China.
“What we are witnessing is the birth of a new era in solar PV,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said in a statement accompanying the report published on Wednesday in Paris. “We expect that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology through 2022.”
That is great news Fred, thanks.
But we need to start eliminating the stupid uses of electricity and fuel. If you have a hot water circulator loop (so you get immediate hot water when you turn on the tap) you really want to look at this article. It could save you thousands of dollars plus save a lot of wasted energy and pollution to make that energy.
Electricity used to run the pump. For a modest sized pump, this might be 400 to 800 KWH a year if the pump runs all the time.
The bottom line is that the recirculation system we inherited when we bought our current house has cost us about $3,200 in wasted propane use over the 8 years we have had the house!
https://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Conservation/Recirc/RecircEnergy.htm
A modern wind turbine has 80 gallons of gear oil in the gearbox. One barrel of oil yields 1/2 gallon of lubricating oil.
You will need 160 barrels of oil to obtain 80 gallons of gear oil for the gearbox in a large wind turbine.
341,000 wind turbines operating worldwide.
The oil is changed once each year, 80×341,000=27,280,000 gallons of gear oil required each year for all 341,000 turbines.
649,523.809524 barrels of gear oil required to maintain the gearboxes for one year.
1/2 gallon lubricating oil per barrel, the gear boxes will require 160×27,280,000=4,364,800,000 barrels of crude oil. It all needs to be refined to provide enough gear oil for 341,000 wind turbines to operate for one year.
You will have to recycle the gear oil, the amount of oil needed to operate the 341,000 wind turbines from newly refined crude oil will be cost prohibitive. Over the lifetime of the wind turbine, 25 years, the amount of crude oil required without recycling will be 25×4,364,800,000=109,120,000,000 barrels of crude oil.
Add the costs to maintain the wind turbines, the use of fossil fuels will be even more.
Wind turbines need fossil fuels just as much as any other machine out there.
There is no way to escape the use of fossil fuels in wind turbines and they probably increase the need for fossil fuels.
Cheers!
You multiplied by 80 one too many times.
Thank you for the correction.
109,120,000,000/80=1364000000
Still will need 1,364,000,000 barrels of oil to refine to obtain gear oil to lubricate 341,000 wind turbines over the lifetime of the wind turbines.
Can’t avoid it at all.
Gasoline 47%
Heating Oil/Diesel Fuel 20%
Jet Fuel (Kerosene) 8%
Propane/Propylene 6%
Natural Gas Liquids and Liquid Refinery Gases 6%
Still Gas 4%
Petrochemical Feedstocks 2%
Petroleum Coke 2%
Residual/Heavy Fuel Oil 2%
Asphalt and Road Oi 2%
Lubricants 1%
Miscellaneous Products 0.4%
Other Liquids 0.4%
Aviation Gasoline 0.1%
Special Naphthas 0.04%
Waxes 0.04%
Kerosene 0.02%
http://then.gasbuddy.com/Crude_Products.aspx
Lubricants are 1 percent of 42 gallons of oil.
0.42 gallons of lubricant per barrel.
Synthetic gear oil has to have a higher cost to manufacture.
Still will need fossil fuels to service the wind turbines, each turbine will need gear oil changes once each year. No oil in the gearbox means the turbine comes to a screeching halt.
You will not have wind turbines without oil, synthetic or plain old crude from Texas or Oklahoma.
The reality.
No. Lubricant isn’t the same thing as “oil”, and synthetics don’t have to come from fossil fuels – there are plenty of non-fossil sources of H2 and carbon. And, silicon works as well as hydrocarbons. Finally, designs can be changed to reduce or eliminate liquid lubricants.
We don’t need fossil hydrocarbons.
Hi Alfred,
Have you heard of synthetic oil? Also lubricating oil can be made from plant based oils.
Yeah, there are a lot of ways to lubricate machinery. Hydrocarbon lubricants don’t need fossil fuels to get the H2 and the carbon. Silicon works as well as hydrocarbons. Designs can be changed to reduce or eliminate liquid lubricants.
Lots of alternatives.
Plus the math is way, way off: “One barrel of oil yields 1/2 gallon of lubricating oil. You will need 160 barrels of oil to obtain 80 gallons of gear oil “. That’s just silly – you don’t ignore the 99% of the barrel not used for lubricant production.
Hi all,
New posts are up.
Open thread at link below
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-oct-4-2017/
and also
http://peakoilbarrel.com/call-for-reviewers/
A new book entitled
Mathematical GeoEnergy: Oil Discovery, Depletion and Renewable Energy Analysis
by Paul Pukite, Dennis Coyne, and Dan Challou
will be published late next year by Wiley as part of their AGU Book Series.
We are looking for potential reviewers of the manuscript.
The New Yorker cartoon
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/thursday-october-5th-not-a-moron
I’m not a crook, I didn’t have sex with that woman, I’m not a moron, lol.