This is topic The Rabbit on Global Climate Change (warming, cooling, hockey stick, little ice age) in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.
These links should take you to the first post of threads in which The Rabbit posted about global warming (of the threads that showed up on this search). Each post directly linked in a given thread above may not be the most relevant one of hers in that particular thread, but it usually doesn't take her long to hit full stride.
[ February 22, 2008, 05:10 PM: Message edited by: ClaudiaTherese ]
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
(placeholder)
[ February 22, 2008, 04:53 PM: Message edited by: ClaudiaTherese ]
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
(placeholder)
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
(placeholder)
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
URLs for links in first post above (in case someone else wants to edit, as I won't do this from scratch again ):
tinyurl (links cleanly) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kebk4>OSC and Incandescents: A Reality Check</URL> -- (January 28, 2008) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/2k3dhg>What type of data and/or reasoning would convince you that your position is wrong?</URL> -- (November 29, 2007) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/2xcc94>America gets blamed for everything....</URL> -- (November 27, 2007) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/2nww77>Arctic Meltdown</URL> -- (October 25, 2007) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/yrnerb>2007 Nobel Peace Prize goes to Al Gore and the UN's IPCC</URL> -- (October 17, 2007) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/2tdms9>By chance, has anyone here done any extensive research about global warming?</URL>-- (April 23, 2007) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/34wbot>Puppy, react to this thread!</URL> -- (March 27, 2007) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/2n5kh4>World Watch -- global warming ("All in a Good Cause")</URL> -- (March 16, 2007) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/2b429b>Climate Change "Hoax"</URL> -- (February 05, 2007) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/yvh985>Global cooling, er, I mean warming, er, wait...</URL> -- (January 26, 2007) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/2ayvrx>Proposed Global Warming Temporary Fix Sounds Like Recipe for Acid Rain to Me</URL> --(August 21, 2006) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/yqn5hv>Al Gore, Global Warming Hypocrite</URL> --(August 11, 2006) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/2qlyqr>The Global Warming Dead Horse</URL> --(July 25, 2006) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/33cxg5>Discussion about Global Warming and Caribou and Arctic Tundra</URL> --(May 04, 2006) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/2sf7or>Carbon Dioxide levels: a 1 million year+ record!</URL> -- (March 15, 2006) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/235xaj>Global Warming, or a natural variation in climate?</URL> --(February 24, 2006) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/2g6cq9>Freakonomics</URL> -- (September 20, 2005) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/39fhcf>The Discovery of Global Warming</URL> -- (July 26, 2005) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/2dd9nb>Is there anything that won't result in global warming?</URL> -- (May 06, 2005) <URL=http://tinyurl.com/33rhxl>Global Warming: What would it take to get you to change your mind?</URL> -- (February 03, 2005)
direct (doesn't link cleanly, but tinyurl could go down) <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=051717#000041">OSC and Incandescents: A Reality Check</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=050933#000003">What type of data and/or reasoning would convince you that your position is wrong?</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=050884#000027">America gets blamed for everything....</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=050533#000016">Arctic Meltdown</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=050403;p=2#000098">2007 Nobel Peace Prize goes to Al Gore and the UN's IPCC </url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=048403#000016">By chance, has anyone here done any extensive research about global warming?</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=047925;p=2#000053">Puppy, react to this thread!</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=047914#000005">World Watch -- global warming ("All in a Good Cause")</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=047312#000041">Climate Change "Hoax"</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=047186#000001">Global cooling, er, I mean warming, er, wait...</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=044556#000003">Proposed Global Warming Temporary Fix Sounds Like Recipe for Acid Rain to Me</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=044403#000044">Al Gore, Global Warming Hypocrite</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=044114#000000">The Global Warming Dead Horse</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=042829#000012">Discussion about Global Warming and Caribou and Arctic Tundra</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=041979#000039">Carbon Dioxide levels: a 1 million year+ record!</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=041648#000027">Global Warming, or a natural variation in climate?</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=038109;p=3#000142">Freakonomics</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=036660#000000">The Discovery of Global Warming</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=034583#000002">Is there anything that won't result in global warming?</url> <url="http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=031531#000000">Global Warming: What would it take to get you to change your mind?</url>
other threads that redirect to this page <URL=http://www.hatrack.com/cgi-bin/ubbmain/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=052008;p=0&r=nfx>Reasons to believe, disbelieve, or remain in doubt: manmade global warming</URL>
[ February 22, 2008, 05:13 PM: Message edited by: ClaudiaTherese ]
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Wow. That was an astonishing amount of work putting this post together.
Is Rabbit around?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I clicked on a few at random and got taken to the first post in the thread, rather than Rabbit's post, but regardless, excellent work CT. I'm bookmarking this thread so I can readily link it whenever a global warming thread pops up.
I feel bad that she feels compelled to explain time and time again every time someone rehashes the debate. Hopefully this will filter out some of the more common FAQ type stuff.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
I don't know. But I *was* snippy to her not too long ago, so this is making amends.
---
Lyrhawn: rats. I'll do a cursory attempt at pulling it together as I had wanted. I'll use the placeholders for specific FAQ topics. I made the title as easily searchable as possible.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
Wha-huh?
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Common topic (~q1-6mo), internationally recognized expert that posts here, always having to retype out responses, good to have summary somewhere readily accessible, don't have to agree but useful to know the long long long long long long history of discussions at this site complete with detailed analysis of said expert if discussion comes up again
I can't be much more specific than that, but I can cut and paste from the list to answer other/further questions. Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Ah, I was wondering what the placeholder spots were for.
Do you want any help in compiling the answers into an actual FAQ type section? I'd be delighted to lend some time. It shouldn't be too hard to wade through her responses and find the right posts and string them together to answers the more frequently asked questions.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Oh, for sure! My playtime is almost up. Just post anything here and I'll move things around as needed in the first 5 spots to keep it readily accessible.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
You know, given the amount of work involved, it seems like it might be better to just host this FAQ on another webpage and reference it when necessary.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Who said I'd be around in the future and that I'd be maintaining another webpage to be linked from here? Or, if not me, anyone else that would host it?
I like the idea of having it here so that if the topic arises (as it seems to every 1-6 months), anyone can skip a few ardurous steps, should they choose.
---
Edited to add: that's also why I included direct links as well as tinyurls, since there's no guarantee the tinyurl site will stay up forever. Sure, this thread might drop off, but so might any of the links here -- and it's a frequent topic, so it might get bumped frequently enough to stay afloat.
This way anyone can reconstruct what I've just done with minimal effort. If I'm not around to update, it can be copied to a new thread.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by ClaudiaTherese: Oh, for sure! My playtime is almost up. Just post anything here and I'll move things around as needed in the first 5 spots to keep it readily accessible.
I have the night off work, and some time off this weekend. And since I don't have anything else on tap, I'll probably take a crack at it after I update the Green Energy Thread. First thing's first.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Who said I'd be around in the future and that I'd be maintaining another webpage to be linked from here?
HatrackWiki! Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
If you want me to delete this after you repost it, or you want me to format it in some way or you want to format it yourself in some way, let me know, or go for it yourself. The "Puppy React to this thread!" thread didn't seem to have much of interest in there, but I'll let you decide to keep it if you want. I'd consider replacing it with the "Climate change activists react to this thread!" thread. There's some repetition below, and it's maybe not organized by topic the way I'd like but, separating out some of the sections would've made it look more disjointed and would have required a LOT more editing of Rabbit's original words, which I kept to an extreme minimum here. Let me know what you think, before I do another section. This covers the top seven links.
[Disclaimer: I’ve made very, very minor edits for the sake of formatting it more to a question and answer setting rather than being in the midst of an argument. There have been no substantive changes, but instead changes were made to make it more third person and less specific with respect to pronouns and such. You can search the linked threads above to find the original posts]
To start with, what are your credentials as a climate change researcher, and where can I go to read more?
A: First I should note that I am not strictly speaking a climate change researcher. I am an atmospheric chemistry researcher and am thus very familiar with the closely linked field of climate change.
Second, I recommend you look at The Discovery of Global Warming which has an excellent summary of the scientific history for a non-scientific audience. It is unbiased and has been praised by people on both sides of the climate debate. http://engr-sci.org/history/climate/
Finally, I recommend you look at the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The summary for policy makers is a good start for a non scientist. Despite claims to the contrary, I believe the report is fairly unbiased. It has at least made extremists on both sides angry.
[The above portions can be found in the has anyone here done extensive research about climate change thread]
Where does the funding come from for environmental research?
Claim: I believe that global warming is happening, but there are big environmental groups that pay for studies that support their studies and are ungenerous and even hostile towards scientists that criticize global warming.
Refutation: This statement is fallacious. I know hundreds of people involved in atmospheric science research. I do not know of a single one funded by an environmental activist group. I've spent most a fraction of my adult life writing research grants and looking for potential funding sources. I know who offers grants for climate change studies. I know of no private environmental groups that offer substantial research grants in the atmospheric sciences. I do know several scientists who are supported by oil, gas and coal conglomerates. In fact, all the scientists I know of who remain skeptical of the reality of man made climate change receive funding from either oil and gas companies or coal conglomerates.
Question: Typically where have you seen their funding come from?
Answer: I have received funding for my atmospheric science studies from the US National Science Foundation, the US National Park System, and the Utah and Montana Departments of Environmental Quality. I have also unsuccessfully applied for grants from the EPA, NOAA and DOE.
In the peer reviewed scientific literature it is customary for researchers to list the sources of funding for the research in the Acknowledgements which follow the papers conclusions. If you want to know who is funding Climate Change research, just look at the recent papers.
Q: What about corporations?
A: In this case, the corporations that hire scientists to find the data they are looking for are oil and coal corporations who want people to doubt the validity of climate change science.
I didn't say that not a single environmentally minded group has a dollar to spend on scientific research. I did say that I don't know or know of any scientists who receive any funding from environmental groups. I do know and know of many who get many from large corporations that profit from fossil fuels. To the best of my knowledge, environmental groups are not a significant source of funding for scientific research. They may spend a few dollars, but not enough to have an impact.
I don't see that as such a big mystery. Scientific research is expensive. Environmental groups just don't have the kind of money it takes to fund scientific research. Oil companies do.
In 2006, Exxon corporation had total revenues of $377.6 billion and profits of $39.6 billion. For comparison, the total budget for the Sierra club was $100 million (0.25% of Exxons profits), NRDCs budget was ~$69 million (0.17% of Exxons profits).
Environmental groups don't spend much money on scientific research because they don't have much money. Most if not all of what they spend on science is spent compiling reviews of current science and not doing original research.
Are scientists reliable?
Q: What about scientists who fudge their data?
A: Of course there are still scientists who fudge their data. The point is that science doesn't simply depend on the integrity of individual scientists. The scientific process is founded on skepticism. When one scientist publishes a study, other scientists are supposed view the results skeptically. They are supposed to try to find flaws in the work, to test the ideas and see if they can be reproduced or validated outside of the original work.
Bad ideas are put forward all the time in science. They usually aren't the result of fudging the data, more commonly they are due to insufficient data. But usually these bad ideas are rejected rather quickly as they are tested by other scientists. That's what happened to polywater and cold fusion. Sometimes a good idea, like plate tectonics, is put forward and is initially rejected by many scientists. But if subsequent studies continue to support the idea, it eventually becomes accepted.
This is indeed what has happened in the field of global climate change. Hundreds of scientists have been working on the problem for decades. Initially the idea was very controversial and there were many skeptics. Ideas have been put forth and have been questioned and tested by many different groups in every part of the world. Over the years, the evidence supporting the original greenhouse warming idea has mounted and the number of skeptics has dropped almost to zero.
The conclusions drawn by groups like the IPCC aren't dependent on any one piece of research. Every conclusion they've made is the result of many many different studies. If it were proven that any one of those studies was falsified, it would make no difference in the overall conclusions because every conclusion is supported by many studies.
You shouldn't trust any individual scientist, but you should trust the scientific process. You should trust that if an idea is valid, over time more and more evidence will mount supporting the idea. You should trust that if an idea is invalid, over time more and more questions about it validity will surface and eventually it will be rejected.
To those of us who work as scientific researchers, the idea that scientists could pull of such a broad reaching conspiracy is laughable. It’s just so contrary to scientific culture.
[The above portions can be found in the Incandescents & Reality Check thread]
How Sure Are You?
Q: What would it take to get you to change your mind?
A: 1. A scienfic consensus (>60% of peer reviewed publications) that burning fossil fuels was unlikely to cause catastrophic climate change.
2. An overwhelming scientific consensus (>90% of peer reviewed publications) that we had already crossed a tipping point where changes could not make a difference.
3. A certain knowledge (perhaps through devine revelation?) that an unanticipated future event (miraculous new technology, enormous rise in volcanic activity, the rapture) would solve the problem for us.
But aren’t the scientists always wrong in their predictions? Q: Would it be unreasonable for skeptics of global warming to require evidence along the lines of, Scientists being able, to a reasonable degree, predict climate trends over a period of 10 years, 20 years being better.
A: I don't know, what would you consider reasonably predict? If you are asking for scientists to reasonably predict the next 10 to 20 years of climate before we do anything then I'd say that’s unreasonable since the current prediction indicate we are already 10 to 20 years behind in combating climate change. That would also be unreasonable since no one can predict how human activity will change over the next 10 to 20 years. The rate at which developing nations industrialize will have a significant impact as will whether or not Americans decide to drive compact cars of gas guzzling SUV. Add in other unpredictable factors like volcanoes, wars and so forth and you can see that being able to predict the climate for 10 to 20 years in the future depends on a lot more than the validity of the greenhouse theories. Those big unknowns, however, will only change whether the catastrophe happens in 20 years or 40 years. They won't change the underlying principle.
If you are willing to accept predicting the past 10 to 20 years, then I'd say the science is there. Right now climate models are able to accurately predict the climate change we have observed over the past half century. That means that if you use ~1960 for the starting point of the models, and you include the known changes in greenhouse gases, aerosols, solar irradiation, volcanic eruptions etc. in the models, they get an outcome that is very close to what has actually happened over the past 50 years.
Perhaps more significantly, 30 years ago climate change scientists were predicting that adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere would cause Global Warming even though no Global warming had been observed. Heck the first predictions of this were made over a century ago. Those predictions only match what's happened qualitatively. But they did get the trend right.
It’s very easy to get the impression from the media hype that Global Warming is a very recent scientific theory. Its easy to get the impression that we had a couple of hot summers and scientists started to ask why? That isn't how it happened. Over a century ago, it was predicted that burning fossil fuels would cause global warming. For the 60 years scientists have been measuring increases in the CO2 levels in our atmosphere. For over 3 decades, there has been a concerted effort to model the changes we are making in the atmosphere. During the past decade, it has become evident that the global climate is changing in ways that a consistent with the scientific theory.
When I first started following the scientific literature on this in the mid 80s, one of the big questions was why the planet hadn't warmed significantly despite the rising levels of green house gases. Scientists found the answer to that question. Particulate air pollution was countering the greenhouse effect and they predicted that the greenhouse effect would soon over take the particulate effect. That has in fact happened.
Over the past 25 years the question in Climate Change research has shifted from "Why aren't we seeing the changes our models have predicted" to "We are now seeing significant changes in the climate, can we verify that these are the result of the greenhouse effect".
Predictions scientists made before I first started studying this field in the mid 80s are happening. They didn't get the exact amount of warming right but they got the trend right. I call that pretty good prediction for a system as complex as the earth's climate.
Random Claims and Questions
Claim: There is no scientific consensus that we can greatly affect the process of global warming.
Refutation: This is factually incorrect. Read the IPCC report. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that we can greatly affect the process of global warming. When you make claims like this, you demonstrate that you are both uninformed and misinformed regarding the state of climate change science
[The above portions can be found in the What would it take to get you to change your mind on global warming thread]
Claim: Seems to meet that the world and its climate change whether we're on the planet or not.
Refutation: Yes, the climate of the earth has changed in the past without human involvement but this is in no way evidence either for or against the current global warming being caused by human activity. People die of natural causes, but this is certainly not evidence that people are not killed by other people. People get in car wrecks when they are sober, but this is not evidence that drunk driving is no more dangerous than driving sober.
Q: It makes me very curious how much is caused by human involvement and how much would be happening anyway even if we were all still living in caves.
A: This is a question which has been extensively addressed by hundreds possibly thousands of scientists. The best available science indicates with a greater than 90% probability that the global warming which has been observed during the past 50 years is the due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
[The above portions can be found in the America gets blamed for everything thread]
Someone sent me the following email that proves global warming isn’t caused by people:
quote: "A considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been, during the last two years, greatly abated . . . 2000 square leagues of ice with which the Greenland Seas between the latitudes of 74o and 80o N have been hitherto covered, has in the last two years, entirely disappeared . . . The floods, which have the whole summer inundated all those parts of Germany where rivers have their sources in snowy mountains, afford ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened . . ."
Extracts from a letter by the President of the Royal Society to the British Admiralty, recommending they send a ship to the Arctic to investigate the dramatic ice reduction -- in 1817. (Ref; Royal Society, London. Nov. 20, 1817. Minutes of Council, Vol. 8. pp.149-153.)
Refutation: The fact that this quote is making the rounds among the anti-global warming set illustrates several key fallacies in anti-global warming thinking.
Fallacy 1. Scientists were wrong before so there is no reason to believe it's any different now.
Wrong. The problem with this interpretation of this quote is that it's comparing apples and oranges. This is a report based on one or two ships making a very small number of observation on the artic sea ice. The guy is looking at 2 data points immediately following the Volcanic winter of 1816 (sometime known as the year without a summer).
The current alarm over the reduction of artic sea ice is based on over thirty years of satellite data combined with reports made by ships over the past two centuries and has been reviewed by thousands of scientists.
Fallacy 2. We've identified something that all those scientists and the entire IPCC missed.
Wrong. If you had read any of the scientific summaries on the subject you would know that scientists have been making an enormous effort to collect reports made by whaling ships and artic expeditions over the past several decades in order to improve our understanding of artic sea ice in the era before satellite images.
Fallacy 3. This proves that climate change is a natural phenomenon that has happened all the time for no apparent reason.
Wrong. Climate change has occurred naturally in the past. Everyone knows this. It has, however, not occurred for no apparent reason. We know about numerous factors that have influenced past climate change including changes in the solar flux, volcanoes, changes in the earths orbit and axis tilt and so on. The only known phenomenon which can explain the current climate change is the green house effect.
Fallacy 4. This guys story disproves decades of scientific research.
Wrong, one anecdote taken out of context means nothing. I just skimmed through some research on the history of Sea Ice and the evidence suggests that sea ice was at a record high in 1816 (year without a summer). During the first half of the 19th century, sea ice was generally more severe and more seasonably variable than it was during the second half of the 19th century. For all we know, this president of the British Admiralty was lying in order to get funding for another arctic sea expedition. Heck, for all I know, Hogan could have faked the whole thing. Science relies on verification and reproduction. Before we should place any meaning on this quote whatsoever we need to verify its legitimacy and then sea whether its conclusions can be reproduced using other sources. They can't.
Fallacy 5. Science can't be trusted because scientists are constantly revising their story.
Wrong. Revision is what makes science such a powerful tool for understanding nature. Scientists observe the natural world, build hypotheses, test them with more experiments and observations and then revise their hypotheses. By using this process our hypotheses and our understanding of the natural world get better and better. The fact that old scientific hypotheses get thrown out when new data is collect is proof the scientific process is working.
[The above portions can be found in the Arctic Meltdown thread] But it was snowing yesterday! How can the Earth be getting hotter?
Q: What information is there to confirm or deny the claim made in the most recent World Watch stating that there has been global COOLING in recent years?
A: In my quick search of the peer reviewed literature data bases, I found 188 articles published since 2000 discussing the global warming trend. The trends have been established with both surface based measurements and satellite measurements. There are problems with both types of measurements which must be taken into account to obtain accurate results. In earlier studies of satellite data, a cooling trend was observed. This is because satellites measure the mean temperature through the entire atmosphere. The greenhouse effect cause increased warming at the earth's surface but also causes cooling in the upper atmosphere. This effect has been well studied and measured. If the satellite data are corrected to account for the cooling of the upper atmosphere, they confirm a significant warming trend in the troposphere (i.e. down here where we all live.) As recognized in the IPCC report, there is no longer serious debate on this issue. The planets surface is warming.
[The above is from http://www.hatrack.com/cgi-bin/ubbmain/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=047876;p=0&r=nfx which slipped by CT’s search, but it was linked to in the Puppy react to this thread thread. The thread in question has a long list of linked peer reviewed articles after it, which I have not reproduced here. You can visit the thread to see for yourself if necessary]
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
quote:Q: Would it be unreasonable for skeptics of global warming to require evidence along the lines of, Scientists being able, to a reasonable degree, predict climate trends over a period of 10 years, 20 years being better.
This one always gets me. I first learned that greenhouse gases would cause global warming in 1973, at the same time that I was told that without greenhouse gases, the natural cycle seemed to indicate that the earth was about ready (on a geological time scale) to enter another ice age.
Science correctly predicted global warming at least 35 years ago, in my own personal experience. At the same time, the "back in the '70's they told us we were going to have another ice age" argument is just a matter of ignoring what was actually being said.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
That's awesome, Lyrhawn. I'll move it to the top this weekend.
(Tom: )
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
CT - You might want to also snip the "Al Gore, Global Warming hypocrit" thread. Rabbit had a single post in it, and it wasn't substantive on the issue. And it might save some people wading through six pages of arguing about Al Gore's credibility
Part II
Before I start Part II, I’d suggest that everyone read the Climate Change “Hoax” thread entirely. Almost the entire thread is point counter point with Rabbit on a range of topics, and I’ve have to almost copy paste the whole thread to move it here. So let’s just link that here and consider it an extension of the FAQ. It’s not a large thread, only a page. Rabbit covers the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming Period in that thread as well.
Claim: How about global cooling in the 1970's? Weren’t scientists wrong about that?
Refutation: It's a myth. There was I believe one book, a few media articles and a couple of scientific papers that indicated it was a future possibility. There is absolutely no comparison between that and work that has now been done by literally thousands of scientists from every part of the world which points to global warming.
Claim: I’ve noticed lately that everyone stopped calling it Global Warming and now it’s Global Climate Change, and that global temperatures have been falling lately. How can they just change their minds like that?
Refutation: Global Climate Change is the scientific term that has been used to describe the phenomenon known popularly as global warming. The term has been in use at least since the mid 80's. I can't say exactly when the term was coined since the electronic literature data base I just search only goes back 20 years.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that temperatures have been falling for the past 3 years. 2005 was the second hottest year since 1891 (1998 was the hottest). Although 2006 was cooler than 2005, it was hotter than every year since 1891 except 2005 and 1998. It's too early to tell about 2007.
[The above sections are from the World Watch Global Warming thread]
The famous Hockey Stick
Claim: Since the hockey stick theory was proved to be incorrect, that’s one more nail in the coffin for climate change.
Refutation: Take a deeper look at the Mann's hockey stick example. The original paper was published in the peer reviewed scientific literature in 1998. At the time of the the 3rd IPCC report (2001), it was widely accepted in the scientific community. In 2005, a paper was published (also in the reviewed scientific literature) which claimed that the "hockey stick effect" was an artifact of the way Mann et al had processed their data. Mann and others have since refuted this claim in Nature. It is correct to say that Mann's original hockey stick graphs are now controversial. It would be inaccurate to conclude that they are widely discredited as has been done by many who wish to discredit the IPCC.
In 2007, some of the data which was used in the 2001 report has become controversial. But this was never the sole basis or even key basis for the conclusions of the 2001 report. Even without this data, the scientific evidence for climate change is stronger now than it was in 2001.
What I'm uncertain about is why the hockey stick controversy is taken as evidence to support a scientific hoax. To me, it suggests exactly the opposite. It shows that the scientific community is doing its job to skeptically question the theory. If a substantial fraction of the scientific community were trying to pull over a hoax, then papers that question key findings wouldn't be published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Scientist who questioned the reports would be drummed out of the field. Yet this is exactly the opposite of what is happening.
Claim: McKitrick and McIntyre published a peer-reviewed paper that showed that you could put a completely random set of data into Mann's algorithm, and it would come out as a hockey stick. They also found multiple errors in the methodology. There are rebuttals back and forth. We still hear about the last 10 years being the hottest ever, when one of the original tools used to make that observation is at the very least hotly contested if not discredited. That's why its so important to get the science right.
Refutation: I've read M&M's peer reviewed article as well as Mann's rebuttals to their criticisms. I am an expert in the statistical techniques that are the subject of M&M's criticisms and agree with Mann and others that there are critical flaws in their analysis.
The key mistake you make here, however, is that Mann's "hockey stick" is not the only of even original tool to identify the warming trend in the last 30 years. This is supported by numerous other studies. What's more, since the publication of Mann's paper several other researchers have analyzed the same data using different statistical techniques that do not have the biases M&M claim to have identified in Mann's work. All of these researchers have identified the same basic trends and reached the same conclusion as Mann.
Even if Mann's results were skewed by his statistical treatment of the data, it doesn't matter because there are many other studies which come to the same conclusion using completely different methodologies.
[I yanked the above from the Hoax thread, even though I said to read the whole thing, I pulled the hockey stick stuff specifically]
Q: But I’ve heard some crazy ideas on how to fix Climate Change. Is it really a good idea to pump sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere?
A: The proposal I've heard most recently, involves pumping SO2 into the Stratosphere basically mimicking what happens in a major volcanic eruption. The idea is that we inject SO2 into the stratosphere. It reacts with oxygen and water to from sulfate aerosol. The aerosol scatters incoming solar radiation and so cools the earth. We know that this works because it is the process that happens with a major volcanic eruption. Over a period of around 2 years the sulfate aerosol will find there way into the troposphere where they will act as condensation nuclei for clouds and ultimately come down in the rain.
There are two big problems with this sulfate aerosol. First, it has significant adverse health effects for people, plants and animals and second, it cause acidification of the rain which also kills plants and animals. The theory behind this proposal is that injecting the SO2 into the stratosphere will reduce these two disadvantages.
The assumption is that since the aerosol will be rained out more or less uniformly over the entire planet, the acid rain problem will be far less than from sulfates that are released in the troposphere, which tend to deposit in smaller regions. Based on the data I've seen so far, I'm not convinced that this is a good assumption, but I'm keeping an open mind.
The big problems with this proposal, as I see it are:
1. The climate forcing effect of atmospheric aerosols is still the most poorly understood part of the entire global warming picture. Aerosols have both a primary impast on climate as the scatter incoming light and a secondary effect when they promote cloud formation. We are really far from being able to predict quantitatively how introducing aerosol into the stratosphere will influence climate. There is a serious potential for catostrophic mistakes. For example, in 1815 Mount Tambora erupted in Indonesia leading Year without a Summer . The large amounts of volcanic ash and sulfate in the upper atmosphere, lead to extremely cold summer temperatures and major crop failures over most of the world. The result was severe famine and severe storms over much of the northern hemisphere.
2. The half life of aerosol in the atmosphere (even the stratosphere) is 2 to 3 years where as CO2 has a half life in the atmosphere of about 100 years. This means that in order to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions, we will have to pump SO2 into the stratosphere for centuries. What's more the CO2 in the atmosphere will keep growing for as long as we keep burning fossil fuels, so even if CO2 emissions remain constant, we would half to pump more and more SO2 into the atmosphere to compensate. On the upside, because aerosol only stay in the atmosphere for 2 or 3 years, if we really screw up and drop the temperature of the atmosphere too far, it will only last a few years.
3. The potential for unforseen consequences is astronomical. We would be putting a very reactive chemical into our atmosphere, and creating highly reactive surfaces on the sulfate aerosol. We simply have know idea how that will effect chemistry in the stratosphere (like ozone formation).
4. The economics of this are highly questionable. The energy resources that would have to be dedicated to pumping SO2 into the atmosphere are comparable to the costs associated with reducing CO2 emissions. This isn't a quick easy fix under any circumstances.
On the one hand, I think this is an idea with sufficient potential that it deserves further investigation. On the other hand there is absolutely no reason to believe that this is the solution to our global warming crisis and that it won't cause more problems than it solves. I'm very concerned that those people who are resisting doing anything to combat global climate change, will see this as one more reason to maintain the status quo.
[The above is from the Proposed Global Warming Temporary Fix Sounds Like Recipe for Acid Rain to Me thread]
Q: I keep hearing about how there is a “consensus” for climate change, but how come they never just show me the evidence? Why can’t you just explain it to me simply?
A: People crow on the consensus because those who oppose taking action continually harp on the "controversy".
The evidence consists of literally thousands of peer reviewed scientific publications. If you would like to read a good summary of the science, I recommend the book "The Discovery of Global Warming"
My deep deep frustration on this is that I have 10 years of post secondary education in Science and Engineering plus 15 years of teaching Science and Engineering at a graduate level. I have been following global climate change scientific research for 20 years and have been doing atmospheric chemistry research for about the last 8 years. Despite that, I am not yet a leading expert in global climate change. I know who the leading experts are and I understand the results of their studies and the key criticisms. I know where the key uncertainties lie in the field and understand why different models of the system disagree and can judge as to whether those disagreements do or do not invalidate an aspect of the theory. But it really did take years of scientific study to understand the field and I can't explain it to you or any one else in a few minutes on an internet forum.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but you sound like you want me or someone else to explain to you in a few paragraphs on an internet forum the research that others take years of intensive study to learn. Then you want me to trust you to make your own judgment on the validity of the research which supports global climate change.
At least 999 out of a thousand of the criticisms I hear of Global Climate Science have been thoroughly disproved in the scientific literature. Some of them are patently absurd [this is in reference to Lisa’s “global cooling er I mean warming, er” thread where she makes the claim by inference that scientists can’t make up their minds]. They are the equivalent of the arguments put forth by the flat earth society. But frankly, it would take days of my valuable time to teach you enough about climate change science for you to see how totally ridiculous these arguments are.
If you truly are interested in understanding the evidence for Global Climate Change, then do the research. I've given you a good starting point with the link I posted above. The link is in the thread I just mentioned
This is at least the 10th time I've posted that link on hatrack and to the best of my knowledge, no one here has yet taken the time to investigate it. If you won't take the time to investigate what's already out their, why should I waste my time trying to explain the science to you?
I've developed a very strong impression that those who continue to criticize Global Climate science, understand somewhere in their subconscious that if the science is valid, it creates an ethical mandate for us to make some big sacrifices. As a result, they are using every tool in their box to avoid believing the science so that they can continue under the delusion that they are ethical people.
Well at some point, "I didn't know", fails to be an excuse. If you are honestly trying to understand, then go to the link I posted. Read the book. Read information the author has added since the book was printed. Then come back here with your questions and I will try to answer them.
Until then, I will simply say this: Thousands of scientists who have spent their lives studying this issue have concluded that human activity, principally the burning of fossil fuels, is radically altering the atmosphere of the planet and that these changes are creating major ecological and economic impacts around the world. This will impact not only thousands of species but will adversely impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people unless we can bring it under control. That is the consensus of those who have studied this field in depth.
Unless you have taken the time to read the science yourself, what reasons do you have to doubt the scientific consensus?
Q: What about Michael Crichton’s book “State of Fear?” He says ice is actually thickening, not thinning, and he seems to have a well researched, sourced book.
A: Yes, in several places icebergs are thickening. This isn't a secret in the scientific community. Not at all. If you don't hear about it, it’s not because scientists are covering it up its because you don't read the scientific literature. If you think that this is a serious criticism of Global Climate Change research, its evidence that you do not understand the underlying theory.
There are always parts of the sea ice that are getting thinner and parts that are getting thicker. The point is that far more parts are getting thinner than are getting thicker so that the total amount of sea ice is decreasing at an alarming rate. In fact that rate has increased since Crichton did his research.
Yes, Crichton did a lot of research for his book. But even though Crichton is a bright guy and did a lot of research, he does not have the expertise of the least qualified member of the IPCC.
If you would like to see experts response to Crichton's book, here are several good links.
The bottom line is the like most skeptics of Global Climate Change science, Crichton is cherry picking the data to give an inaccurate impression of the state of Global Climate research. He pulls out pieces of information that appear to raise significant doubt about the theory but fails to mention that these same pieces of information have been thoroughly discussed in the same scientific literature he dismisses. This same pieces of information are consistent with the picture supported by virtually every expert in the field.
Claim: You said in a thread: “In general, climate trends are often difficult to detect in data from individual stations because each station is subject to local effects.” Well OK, if you can't really rely on the data to show that its not warming, then you can't rely on it show its warming.
Refutation: The point isn't that you can't rely on the data to show that it is not warming. The point is that you can't rely on data at any individual location to tell you what is going on globally. CO2 in the atmosphere affects the entire planet but it doesn't affect every place equally. In fact, all of the climate change models show that global warming will cause some places on the planet to get colder while others get hotter. So the fact that some places are getting colder or show no change at all is irrelevant. The question is what is happening to the global average. In order to understand what's happening to the global average you have to look at the average over the entire planet.
When you look at the global average data from either ground based measurements or satellite based measurements you find that the global average is increasing.
Q: Why is CO2 always paraded around as the be all end all of climate change? Aren’t there other factors too? Why aren’t they talked about?
A: CO2 is paraded about as if its overpowering for several reasons. The most obvious is that it is the primary factor which human activity is changing. If human activity were altering the earth’s orbit, I'm sure you would hear plenty about that as well but right now CO2 and other greenhouse gases are the primary factor that is changing due to human activity.
Because CO2 and other greenhouse gases are changing very rapidly (on a time scale relevant to individual human lives) they are very different from other forces which influence climate that change over periods of thousands of years.
Data from ice cores indicates that the global climate has changed abruptly half a dozen times over the past 400,000 but abruptly in this context mean over a period of 5 - 10 thousand years. The changes we are observing now due to human greenhouse gas emission are occurring over a time from of 50 years. Clearly if the climate were to change gradually over 5000 years, people and other living things would have much more ability to adapt than if those changes occur in only a few decades.
Let me break down for you what I see as the relevant questions.
1. Is it possible for changes in CO2 (and other human produced greenhouse gases) to alter global climate in the absense of any other effect? The answer to this question is a simple yes and is based are extremely well established scientific prinicples.
2. Are human activities changing the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases enough to alone result in a significant changes in the global average temperature? The answer to this question has been addressed by both measurement and theory and is an unqualified yes.
3. Are the current changes we are observing in the global climate the result of greenhouse emissions or the result of other phenomena? Mounting evidence indicates that we are observing global climate change which can not be explained without including CO2 and other greenhouse emissions. For example, volcanoes can result in climate change but the volcanic activity we've observed does not account for the climate change we have observed. Change in solar activity can cause climate change but we haven't observed changes in solar activity that are sufficient to observe the changes we are seeing the global mean temperature.
4. Will other factors that influence climate change such as ocean currents, cloud cover, vegetation etc. react in a way that will counter or reinforce the effect of increased greenhouse emissions? The answer to this question is still controversial. If it weren't for this, the Climate Change science would be a no brainer and any undergraduate science student could calculate how much the earth would warm and how fast. This is the crux of all the models and why the science is so complicated. Right now the scientific consensus is that these factors will not counter the influence of greenhouse emissions. In fact, there is growing evidence suggesting that such factors will reinforce the greenhouse effect causing additional warming.
Scientists know that there are a variety of additional factors which influence climate. The question has been asked and explored in hundreds of scientific papers. Researchers have used the best scientifically available understanding of the system to determine whether those other factors could be responsible for the changes in Global Climate we are observing today. The conclusion of those studies is uniformly that greenhouse gases are the only thing we know of that can explain whats going on.
So for example, It has been suggested that the increases in the earth surface temperature since the 1970s could have been caused by changes in solar activity. Several teams have taken all the data that is available on solar activity and put it into the best models available and they have all found that the observed changes in solar activity can't explain the observed changes in the surface temperature of the earth. The same is true for every other factor. In fact, if you plug all those other factors into the best models what you find is that combined they cannot explain the surface warming unless you include the changes in greenhouse gases.
Is that certainty? No. But it is compelling
]The above is from the global cooling/warming/er wait, thread, and deserves special attention, as it’s rife with information. Rabbit really went to town on that one]
Posted by Launchywiggin (Member # 9116) on :
It's shocking how hard people work to find the truth about this issue--who are dismissed by half the population of the US--(and even a large percentage of hatrackers)
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Will do, Lyrhawn.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
"Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity" without the slightest shred of evidence to back them up, not even by correlation.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
Really? none of the links had any evidence?
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
I'd also like to know what the heck the HadleyCenter was including in their average. Cuz the oceans make up 71% of Earth's surface, and sea surface temperatures were noticeably above average last year.
Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
quote: quote:Who said I'd be around in the future and that I'd be maintaining another webpage to be linked from here?
HatrackWiki! [Wink]
Seeing as I'm already hosting the photo album, it wouldn't be out the question for me to host something like this, *shrug* Even if I don't stick around Hatrack, I only plan for my web server to get bigger -- it's not likely to go down any time in the near future. So really I could host anything as needs hosting that the Cards are not willing to host.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:It's shocking how hard people work to find the truth about this issue--who are dismissed by half the population of the US--(and even a large percentage of hatrackers)
Yes, but the trouble is that working hard doesn't necessarily mean you can claim you know the truth. After all, many people work quite hard to study the Bible, and yet are dismissed by more than half of the world's population.
Scientists face a triple problem with global warming: Firstly, science is by nature limited to making theories about the future; our confidence in each theory can approach certainty over time, but can never actually reach complete certainty. Secondly, the number of potential variables involved in predicting a future global climate multiplies the uncertainty involved. Not only do scientists have to demonstrate how certain human behaviors are causing global warming, but they would also have to show that no other variables (ranging from other human behavior, to the behavior to the sun, to other natural processes) are or ever will be countering that effect. I'd doubt that, no matter how much evidence The Rabbit could present on the forum, it would demonstrate with certainty what the future climate will be like. Predicting the future is simply very complicated. And thirdly, scientists have to contend with the fact it would take a massive effort to completely change the behaviors that they suggest are causing global warming. People and nations would be willing to make small changes without much proof, but the greater the change you are asking them to make, the greater the confidence they will require to accept those costs. Shifting the way the entire world does things most likely requires such a degree of proof that scientists, no matter how much they work, are going to have great difficulty trying to provide at the moment.
So, while I do think it is very unreasonable to dismiss global warming, I don't think it is unreasonable for people to approach it with an amount of skepticism appropriate for the degree of complexity that the predictions entail and for the costs that such predictions would require us to accept in order to change things.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
"Really? none of the links had any evidence?"
What links? The only link is to another article making blind assertions, without giving names to the solar cycle studies or where they were published or who the authors are.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
"What links? The only link is to another article making blind assertions, without giving names to the solar cycle studies or where they were published or who the authors are." I counted 5 links to other articles and all of them had names associated with them
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
A discussion on the worldwide Temperature Anomolies from Dec07 through Feb08 , along with an interesting map
Posted by andi330 (Member # 8572) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: [QUOTE] Scientists face a triple problem with global warming: Firstly, science is by nature limited to making theories about the future; our confidence in each theory can approach certainty over time, but can never actually reach complete certainty. Secondly, the number of potential variables involved in predicting a future global climate multiplies the uncertainty involved. Not only do scientists have to demonstrate how certain human behaviors are causing global warming, but they would also have to show that no other variables (ranging from other human behavior, to the behavior to the sun, to other natural processes) are or ever will be countering that effect. I'd doubt that, no matter how much evidence The Rabbit could present on the forum, it would demonstrate with certainty what the future climate will be like. Predicting the future is simply very complicated. And thirdly, scientists have to contend with the fact it would take a massive effort to completely change the behaviors that they suggest are causing global warming. People and nations would be willing to make small changes without much proof, but the greater the change you are asking them to make, the greater the confidence they will require to accept those costs. Shifting the way the entire world does things most likely requires such a degree of proof that scientists, no matter how much they work, are going to have great difficulty trying to provide at the moment.
I think you left out probably one of the biggest problems, and that is that, the average person isn't going to sit around reading scientific journals in order to learn the specifics of Global Climate Change science. I understand Rabbit's contention that there is no way to condense the science into a brief article that will make everyone understand the research, but without it, it makes it very easy for people to dismiss the science as fear mongering. This is particularly true when the American Government refuses to acknowledge the problem, and won't do things like sign the Kyoto protocol. Some of the more recent decisions, like lowering emissions and requiring a higher percentage of cars run on alternative fuel sources and/or are hybrid vehicles will help, but the government has spent decades denying that there is a climate change issue. One or two policy decisions isn't going to turn that around overnight.
The car thing is a prime example of this. People who purchased hybrid or alternate fuel vehicles over the last year or two were told that they would receive a tax credit for making the purchase, however, as my parents found out, it depended on when you purchased the car as to how much (if any) credit you received. Also, despite the best of intentions, the average person can't afford to just run right out and buy a new car, even if it would improve the environment. Hybrid vehicles often cost $5000 more than their equivelent counterparts when purchased new, they also have higher maintenance costs over the life of the car. Sure they may save you money on gas, but that's spread out over the long term.
But, if the government had started encouraging car makers to seek out fuel alternatives decades ago, when Climate Change first started to be discussed then those same cars would probably be much more predominant and have better, even more efficient technology. In fact, those hydrogen vehicles we are hearing about might be the standard now, rather than the wave of the future if they'd gotten their rears in gear.
The sad but plain fact seems to be that the average American, with little or no climate change knowledge is going to be more likely to believe a government that says, "No worries," than they are a group of scientists with research that they have trouble understanding, no matter how valid it is.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"The sad but plain fact seems to be that the average American, with little or no climate change knowledge is going to be more likely to believe a government that says, "No worries," than they are a group of scientists with research that they have trouble understanding, no matter how valid it is."
It's fascinating how the Cheneys and the Bushes of the world prop each other up. The Bushes do their best to stop alternative energy research, thus leading to more money for Islamic terrorists. The Cheneys profit off the military buildup that happens in response to the terrorists, and so forth, and so on.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Evidence of slight ocean temperature cooling in the upper 3000feet/900metres since 2003. Given that cooling would decrease ocean volume and thus the sea-level if the amount of water had remained constant, the measured increase in sea-level suggests that increased melting of perennial ice as well as increased melting of an increasing volume of ice bergs calved by faster-flowing land-based glaciers as possible causes not mentioned in the cooling article.
ie Just as melting ice cools a drink, melting icebergs should cool ocean temperatures. And just as the extra surface area of crushed ice cools drinks faster than the same amount of ice in a single cube, faster breakup of icebergs cools the ocean, Or rather that both counter the expected effects from GlobalWarming in the way that an air conditioner keeps your home from getting too warm on hot summer days.
A third factor not mentioned is that the creation of annual sea-ice itself acts to counter ocean warming. eg Last year's record melt of the Arctic ice-cap means that there was more sea-water that had to be frozen to re-cover the melt-area. Because of the salt content, sea-water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh-water. And as it freezes, the sea-water becomes becomes a (near)fresh-water iceberg by expelling salt into high-salt brine channels within the ice. Those channels in turn empty colder-than-freezing brine into the ocean, where the combination of cold and saltiness causes the higher-density brine to plume downward through the lower-density sea-water into the ocean depths.
Not saying that these are the causes of that non-warming upper ocean, but rather that these factors are some of those which should be considered when making calculations concerning the over-all heat flows between sea-ice and the ocean.
[ March 22, 2008, 12:19 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: So, while I do think it is very unreasonable to dismiss global warming, I don't think it is unreasonable for people to approach it with an amount of skepticism appropriate for the degree of complexity that the predictions entail and for the costs that such predictions would require us to accept in order to change things.
QFT.
(Your whole post is pretty much my position on the subject, except expressed much better than I could do.)
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by aspectre:
What links? The only link is to another article making blind assertions, without giving names to the solar cycle studies or where they were published or who the authors are.
quote:Originally posted by DarkKnight: "What links? The only link is to another article making blind assertions, without giving names to the solar cycle studies or where they were published or who the authors are." I counted 5 links to other articles and all of them had names associated with them.
Are Dark Knight and aspectre the same person? Is this something that has been general knowledge of which I am just not up with?
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
BlackBlade, they are referring to an article DarkKnight links to in his Feb 28 12:20 post.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Oh hey, just noticed the quotation marks in DK's post. I was alittle confused.
edit: Also Mr. Card makes a World Watch essay about how he is more impressed with Mr. McCain, and suddenly the google ad at the bottom of this thread is an endorsement of Johnny's campaign. Coincidence? Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
"Three million of your tax dollars goes to studying the DNA of Bears in Montana. I don't know if that's a PATERNAL issue or a CRIMINAL issue. Stop PORK BARREL Spending."
McCain is whining about low-million funding spent over several years for a useful scientific project... ...yet not one word about spending $11billion for a new fleet of presidential helicopters at a cost of $400million apiece. Each MarineOne*helicopter will cost more than than the AirForceOne*747.
So typically Republican: turn the précis of a research proposal over to a buncha deliberately ignorant twerps and see what kinda MST3K-level jokes they can come up with. What's really sad is that it's been proven that voters fall for this brand of malarkey over and over and over and over again and again and again and again.
* Whichever presidential 747 that has the President on board is designated AirForceOne. Similarly, MarineOne.
[ March 21, 2008, 11:30 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Aspectre, did you mean to post that in this thread?
BlackBlade, DarkKnight's idiosyncratic quoting style slows me down too, when I'm reading his posts.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
aspectre is quoting the McCain google ad at the bottom of the page.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Yep, that was the McCain GoogleAd posted on the bottom of this page that BlackBlade referred to. And the ad also illustrates the style of misleading nonsense generated by rightwing propagandists on the GlobalWarming issue.
[ March 21, 2008, 11:41 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
[ March 22, 2008, 02:37 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
This is a great thread! Thanks so much to all of you who have done so much work to compile it here.
I have a serious question, though. I work for the power company now, and I've been a user of power all my life. I air condition my home, for instance. I use the computer constantly, to the point that without electricity I can't do my job. You can't buy stuff at the store when the power is out. My central (natural gas) heat doesn't work when the power's out because there's no electricity to turn the fan.
I don't have to list for you guys all the ways that people use electricity. I can't do laundry, or dishes, or vacuum my home without it. The products I take for granted like pens and paper, books, shoes, clothes, paint, lumber for houses and decks, glass tabletop, wood furniture, all these things take a lot of energy to produce. Carpet for the floor, chain link fence. I'm just looking around me in this room. Hand soap, a digital camera, a blood sugar meter, contacts and contact fluid, a guitar, a pitch pipe. DVDs, newspaper, fireplace tiles. Every one of these things comes from a factory somewhere that has electric motors, and engines, and boilers and so on that keep them going.
Are you thinking about stopping all that stuff? Becoming hunter gatherers again? We need real alternatives. Wind and geothermal and solar are small parts of the answer. They only work in certain spots like Iceland or when the wind is blowing, which peaks at 2 am when nobody needs much electricity, or on sunny days. There are lots of ways we can make incremental changes, improve efficiencies, add these grace notes, so to speak. But real substantive differences in the amount of fossil fuels burned means HUGE changes in our society. The only practical thing I see is upping the nuclear component in the mix to 50% or 75% of our generation capacity instead of the current %15-%20 (in the U.S.) and that won't stop fossil fuel burning completely.
I think we either have to have an enormous energy breakthrough, like cheap fusion power or something, or else we'll have to have very high prices, like 10 or 100 times higher energy bills than we currently enjoy, or else we've got to keep burning fossil fuels and pay the price of dealing with the global warming that results.
The utilities really aren't badguys. They're the ones who go outside before the storm is even passed and climb poles to get your power back on. They have to balance this delicate dance of producing and transmitting exactly the amount of power, moment by moment, that their customers call for. They have to negotiate tremendous regulatory, environmental and political hurdles to build new plants so we don't have forced outages, rolling blackouts, and unreliable power when our existing plants become overloaded.
They have the responsibility to make sure the power that almost all our economic activity depends on is always there. How can they do it without burning fossil fuels? It's in everyone's best interest that the power stays on. We need to figure out how.
If you draw a Venn diagram that represents all the energy options we have as a species, and then environmental concerns eliminate one set of options, lack of reliability takes another chunk away, high cost eliminates another section, local politics takes out some more parts, and so on, in the end you have to be left with something on the Venn diagram. You have to have some practical means of keeping society going. There's no magical answer, no easy clear solution. Nobody is artificially limiting our options. It's just a really hard problem, a tough situation.
I want you all to think about that. Don't think of an "us" versus "them" mentality. We're all one society. How are we going to manage it? We have to have power plants of some sort. All of them have disadvantages of various kinds. If you were emperor of the planet what would you do?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"There's no magical answer, no easy clear solution. Nobody is artificially limiting our options. It's just a really hard problem, a tough situation."
Bush and Cheney very much are limiting our options. That's why we need to limit presidents to 1 term. Seriously, all those trillions that have been spent on the war, etc. could have been spent on alternative energy research, safer fission reactor research, etc. We have been royally, painfully, non-lubricatedly screwed, and I know exactly who did it. I can point to people and corporations.
This is crap. While throwing blame around isn't always the answer, it is now.
"We're all one society."
No. Trust-fund babies are not part of my society. Jenna and her sister are not part of my society. Cheney's daughter is not part of my society. Get your facts straight. These people are different. They will never have to work a day if they don't want. They will never be hungry, they will never lack good dentistry, they will never lack gas money, they will never have their power shut off, they will never have to choose between paying the student loan and the rent. The children of the oil company execs are the same. All of them.
"If you were emperor of the planet what would you do?"
War crimes tribunal. Bush and Cheney. Life imprisonment, in the worst 3rd-world prison you can find.
Posted by Shawshank (Member # 8453) on :
quote:Trust-fund babies are not part of my society. Jenna and her sister are not part of my society. Cheney's daughter is not part of my society. Get your facts straight. These people are different.
If by society you mean community then you are probably right. But that's not what society means- society is the larger grouping of communities.
quote: War crimes tribunal. Bush and Cheney. Life imprisonment, in the worst 3rd-world prison you can find.
Compared to the many other things that we could be doing right now- that seems like an absurd waste of time. Not to mention, even if you disagree with the war- they themselves are so free of human rights violations compared to so many real dictators that the answer is ludicrous. Also, the worst 3rd-world prison one could find would be cruel and torturous why should send our people there. To be tortured?
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
We're all part of the same society because we're all using electricity off the grid. Seriously, we benefit from grocery store shelves being full, from the products we use being manufactured, from medicine, immunizations, information technology, and so on. We are all part of THAT society, and it takes electricity to keep it going. We can't even have tall buildings in big cities without elevators to move the people and furniture up there. We all take it for granted because it's just easy to do that. We forget it even exists. But without it we'd be very limited. I don't think anyone is seriously proposing that we give it up completely, and go back to a rustic existence, are they? How is that going to work?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
It's ridiculous to act like I have any kind of social responsibility at all toward trust fund kids, particularly the ones whose parents made their money in oil and/or most types of military contracting. I hope they die young, without reproducing. They are a pox on the face of this planet.
Posted by Shawshank (Member # 8453) on :
You know, it'd be one thing to say that the multinational conglomerate executives are a pox on the planet- I would disagree, but I could understand that idea.
But their kids? Whose only "misfortune" was to be born to their parents? Because they were born that they should die young? What's the matter with you?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"What's the matter with you?"
What's the matter with me? I'm not on trial here. With millions of dollars that they had no hand in earning, and, in many cases, no ability to do so if they wanted, they are on trial.
I went to SMU. For those of you who don't know, SMU is, among other things, the college that super-rich kids go to if they're so stupid that the Ivy League, etc. won't admit them, even with a big donation to the school.
I don't mind intelligent, well-educated, hard-working trust fund kids. However...I know a lot who are pretty much the opposite. If you've got a big trust fund, it's your job to educate yourself as to exactly what the world needs to make it a better, safer place, and then donate your time and effort, and at least a little of your money.
These kids are, in at least some cases, neither capable nor willing. In this country, many people get rich without ever getting degrees. As a result, they have little awareness of the world outside the US, and don't care that they don't have much awareness. They then pass this along to their kids, and the cycle continues. It gets worse, though, because at least the parents might know what it's like to be poor. The kids never will. The degeneracy is sickening. I know. I went to college with these kids. They're not all serial killers or anything, but none of them deserve to be in charge of $50 million, or $100 million, or you name the number. None of them deserve a life where they never have to work a day. The kids I went to school with would be burger flippers without the trust fund. They contribute nothing. They get drunk, they get high, they get laid. That's their life. Not a thought goes through their dumb little brains.
That's what's wrong with this country. The Bush twins are what's wrong with this country. Degeneracy combined with ignorance among people with money and power. That's what's wrong.
Posted by Shawshank (Member # 8453) on :
quote:If you've got a big trust fund, it's your job to educate yourself as to exactly what the world needs to make it a better, safer place, and then donate your time and effort, and at least a little of your money.
you could change that to:
quote:If you're alive, it's your job to educate yourself as to exactly what the world needs to make it a better, safer place, and then donate your time and effort, and at least a little of your money.
and it would still be true.
quote:These kids are, in at least some cases, neither capable nor willing.
Plenty of middle and lower class kids are also be like this.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
Tatiana,
I urge you to take a look at some of the content in Lyrhawn's green energy thread, if you haven't already. I think you're dismissing a lot of the potential in renewable energy.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
Juxtapose, there's a lot of potential in renewable energy, but look at the numbers. My nuclear plant makes 1200 MW, day in and day out pretty reliably. Renewables make a fraction of that, and even the capacity they do have they rarely hit 100% on. Wind farms usually generate on average less than 30% of their full capacity, and the peak time for wind generation is late at night, when the demand for power is low. Solar requires sunny days, of course, and doesn't generate anything at night, and very little on cloudy days. Geothermal only works in a few places like Iceland or Yellowstone, where it's readily available to be tapped in on. Wave and tide renewables only work on the coast. Hydroelectric is quite useful, but only so much rain falls. We're still going to need power plants, no matter what. You can't power factories and cities with only renewables.
I think one reason people are reluctant to admit global warming is true is because the things we can do about it are so expensive. Sequestering CO2 at the power plant and burying it is one option, but it's very costly. Can we afford to make electricity three times more expensive, say, if that's what it takes?
I'm all for planning ahead, spending what we need to spend, and doing the right thing for long-term viability. I'm all about averting human extinction, and that takes intelligence and restraint. But I don't hear people making viable proposals for what we can do to reverse global warming. I don't doubt it's happening, but I don't know how we can chart a course ahead that slows it down or stops it. That's what I'm asking for.
Do you think it's feasible that people should give up air conditioning completely, say? Refrigeration? How do we keep food from going bad? Elevators? What do we do with the tall buildings in big cities? Shut them down? Paper mills? What are we going to write on, or stock the printer with? Silicon chip manufacturers? What will we do when we need a new laptop? Textile mills? What will we wear? Even the greenest of green consumer that I see still needs a factory to make their bicycle. They need trucks to bring their food to the local store. They don't live a life of subsistence farming, which would decrease their energy use substantially. They still use products and systems like the municipal water works, the electrical grid, public roads, shipment of goods, and so on which all use a lot of energy.
Global warming is a bad thing. I do believe that. But how, exactly, do we stop?
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
Well, I had a whole long response written, but I wasn't at all happy with it. So, I'll try to keep with major points.
Technology improvements will continue to increase the viability, and decrease the cost of renewable energy. Better energy storage will aid this process. Our end goal should be an energy grid that runs primarily, then entirely of renewable energy. Nuclear energy will be important in the meantime since its costs are relatively stable. Nuclear power will ultimately be unideal because of water shortages as a larger area around the equator dries up.
As for the comforts you list, some we'll be able to keep, some we'll be able to maintain in limited ways, and likely, some we'll have to do without. This isn't so much a choice to be made, as I see it, but an economic inevitability. When energy costs continue to rise, people will have to decide how to adjust their thermostats.
In all honesty, I don't see us stopping the climate change. We'll ride it out and adapt as best we can, the markets will adjust, and hopefully, not too many people will wind up below water. But I am feeling a little pessimistic right now, so who knows.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Even ignoring GlobalWarming, renewable energy will become a necessity within the context of a single human lifetime.
Using known reserves of 4.7million tonnes, the world has 85years of uranium left to fuel conventional nuclear powerplants at the current level of use. Extending the reserve to the 35million tonnes that might exist, the world would have 350/47th of 85years or ~633years of currently exploitable uranium reserves.
In 2004, the world's nuclear powerplants produced a total of ~2.75trillion kiloWatthours of electricity. The US produced ~20% of its ~3800billion kWh total or 0.76trillion kWh through nuclear powerplants. Make it 0.75trillion kWh or 3/11ths of the world total just to keep it simple. If the entire rest of the world were to quit using uranium as fuel, the US alone would burn that hypothetical world supply in 11/3rds times 633years or 2321years at the current rate of US consumption. And if the US were to produce all of it's electricity through nuclear power, it would have to burn 5 times more per year. So the hypothetical world supply would last 2321years divided by 5 or ~464years.
Now let's play nice. Every person in the world is entitled to use the same amount of electricity as an average American. And it's all going to be the "clean energy" produced by nuclear powerplants. The US population of 0.3billion divided by world population of 6.6billion is 1/22nd of the total. So that hypothetical uranium supply sufficient for 464years if it were used by the US alone would be burnt in 1/22nd of 464years or ~21yearsif it were shared fairly with the rest of the world.
An average Western*European uses ~40% of the electricity as an average American to maintain a similar lifestyle. So providing everyone with the amount used by the average European would extend that 21years by 2.5 times to ~53years.
Run the numbers on the highest non-fantasy guesstimates of the fossil fuel reserves assuming everyone uses as much as an average American or an average European instead of assuming the current rate of consumption, and you'll get similar results.
In other words, there ain't no choice other than renewable energy for the people who are gonna be around in 50years or so. The FirstWorld can't keep the ThirdWorld mired in poverty forever.
* Referring to those living in the nations that were never a part of the SovietBloc.
[ March 23, 2008, 03:34 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"Using known reserves of 4.7million tonnes, the world has 85years of uranium left to fuel conventional nuclear powerplants at the current level of use."
Well there goes that.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
You neglect a part of the first article you link, aspectre:
quote:Based on the 2004 nuclear electricity generation rate of demand the amount is sufficient for 85 years, the study states. Fast reactor technology would lengthen this period to over 2500 years.
So, lets see, over 2500 years with just the 4.7 million tons . . . with 35 million tons we'd handily break fifteen thousand years, and that's with a level of technology we have now. Of course, energy usage will increase. I doubt the uranium would last another millennium, personally, but that's plenty to give us a handy buffer.
Instead of "there ain't no choice other than renewable energy", there ain't no choice other than renewable energy or modern reactor technology instead of reactor technology decades old.
Nuclear energy is a sound technology, and one suitable for economically efficient usage for hundreds or even thousands of years to come.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Nuclear energy is a sound technology, and one suitable for economically efficient usage for hundreds or even thousands of years to come.
Amen.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
The more I hear about nuclear, the more I think it's the way we had better go, until solar cell and/or battery tech and/or energy transmission tech get a lot better.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
I do agree with fugu, rivka, and steven.
Posted by Shawshank (Member # 8453) on :
The only problem I really have with nuclear power is nuclear waste. What do we do with it? How much nuclear waste is actually created? Can we just ship it off into space?
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
For me at least, the hope is to be able to create enough cheap power to keep our society going long enough so that we can develop the tech necessary to either neutralize the waste, or store it safely either here or on the moon or elsewhere. Not to preach, but if we're spending all our time/money on expensive power versus cheap power, we probably won't develop the necessary tech as fast. Of course, I may be full of it with that assumption. Either way, I'm pretty sure that we'll have the tech to deal with the waste within two or three hundred years. Hopefully.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Just remember, that newer, efficient breeder reactors raise the risk (even if only slightly) of weapons-grade nuclear material proliferation. It's as clean of a win-win as some think.
-Bok
EDIT: And in the end, even if it will take millenia to use it up, switch over to all, or mainly nuclear without also investing in more renewable potential sources just means we're passing the buck to our descendants. Which is part of what has gotten us into this mess to begin with. So "we" will ultimately have to cut consumption, through efficiencies or lifestyle changes, or we'll find new ways to power the stuff Tatiana talks about.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
I found this blog article on nuclear energy to be very interesting & informative. The blog, which focuses on fighting bad science, is in general quite interesting as well.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Bokonon, there's a new fuel cycle for the fast reactors that doesn't generate weapons grade material at any point in the cycle.
For some reason the Clinton administration killed research on these fast reactors when they're the most promising thing we have for the next generation of reactors (the generation after this new set we're building now). We really need to start it back up.
As for waste, the reason our wastes now are so dangerous is that we only burn about 5% of the energy in the fuel before we call it waste. I think it's actually quite fortuitous that we haven't glassified and buried the spent fuel we have now because it can be reprocessed so that we can get another 94% out of it for powering the fast reactors and leave only 1% left. The waste from that cycle will only be dangerous for 500 years, a much more reasonable length of time.
Our spent fuel we have now, if buried, would be dangerous for 10,000 years or so, a length of time during which there's simply no way to predict for certain what will happen to it geologically or sociologically or whatever.
We should be pouring money into this research.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Tatiana, from what I understand, it may not process it all the way to weapons-grade, but some of the by-products are steps closer to it. Am I mistaken?
-Bok
EDIT: Also, I am not an opponent of nuclear energy. However, I think too much of the rhetoric appears to make it out as an either/or situation with renewables, when we shouldn't stop research/using either.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I've been off camping for the past few days and just saw this thread.
I'm very flattered.
Thanks!!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I should also add that in reading through some of my old posts, I'm embarrassed at how many typos I've found.
I'm a very bad proof reader. I can't see errors in my own writing unless I've let it sit for at least several days.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
quote:Originally posted by Bokonon: Tatiana, from what I understand, it may not process it all the way to weapons-grade, but some of the by-products are steps closer to it. Am I mistaken?
I'm not an expert on fuel reprocessing, but from what I understand, it wouldn't be too close. Fast reactors can burn fuel that's much less enriched than the thermal reactors we have now.
I wish SciAm articles were available for free on the web after a couple of years or something. They have such great articles, but they're so inaccessible. Here's the article, but it's not free. Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
[ March 27, 2008, 12:59 PM: Message edited by: Tatiana ]
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Can anyone point me to articles or discussions regarding the "Not Mankind's Fault!" premise that "Earth's temperature rise PRECEDES the rise in CO2"? In other words, that CO2 LAGS behind temperature rise (is caused by it, rather than being the cause of it).
I'm embroiled in a similar debate over at TBD.COM, and I cannot find any good refutations of this premise.
--Steve
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Boothby, This a confusing issue.
The records we have from ice core data, do indeed show that over the last roughly half a million years, following each ice age temperature increases in antarctica have begun about 800 years before rises in atmospheric greenhouse gases. But in those natural cycles, the total increase in temperature occurs over a period of about 5000 years. From this data, we know that the increase in atmospheric CO2 and methane did not initiate the end of the ice ages but very likely contributed to the warming observed during the later 4200 years of the warming period.
This isn't at all surprising since we know that there are many factors besides greenhouse gases that influence climate such as changes in the earth's orbit, slowdown of ocean currents and so forth. What's more, no one has seriously proposed that previous ice ages ended because people were burning fossils fuels and thereby increasing the greenhouse gas composition of the atmosphere.
The best explanation we have for this data is that toward the end of each ice age something (possibly changes in the earth's orbit that increase the length of the southern hemisphere summer) cause the temperatures in the antarctic to begin to rise. Because rising temperatures decrease the solubility of CO2 and methane in the oceans, this leads to a rise in atmospheric CO2. The 800 year lag corresponds well with the time it takes the oceans to turn over (i.e. the time it takes for deep ocean water to recirculate to the surface). Because of the greenhouse effect, the rise in CO2 cause a positive feedback effect which amplifies the warming trend which in turn causes the release of more CO2 from the deep oceans and as a result we see a slow gradual warming over a period of several thousand years.
Its not clear what relevance this data has to our current situation. During the last century, increases in CO2 and methane in the atmosphere have preceded the increasing temperatures. The changes we are observing now are occurring on a time scale hundreds of times faster than anything observed in the ice core record and numerous studies have confirmed through a variety of methods that these changes are the result of human activity (burning fossil fuels, industrial agriculture etc.)
If this ice core data has any relevance to our current situation, it should be one of extreme concern because it suggests that the oceans and permafrost regions of the earth are likely to react in a way that reinforces and amplifies the effects of human activity. If the greenhouse gases we are emitting cause the oceans to start releasing stored CO2 and methane, we could very well have initiated a runaway effect that we are helpless to stop.
Although I should add, that there is no evidence that we have hit that point of no return yet. The possibility of its existence should be a strong motivator to act and act now and not an excuse for hopelessness and inaction.
[ March 27, 2008, 02:29 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Rabbit -
I fixed some of the typos when I reposted your answers in my little FAQ postings, I didn't think you'd mind. I don't think anyone would fault you though, given your attentiveness to responding to questions and the amount of information you provide. I always assumed you just typed the answers really fast and made a couple tiny mistakes here and there, which I don't find a big deal.
Tatiana -
In what I imagine will be Round V or VI of our every other month debates on renewable energy, I'll get to your arguments in a moment. I haven't been reading this thread but, there are a couple things that jump out at me immediately.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Alright,
First off, I only really have two problems that come to mind off the top of my head with nuclear power. The first is that, much like oil, tying our national energy production to nuclear puts us at the whim of other nations. We import most of our nuclear fuel, from Russia mostly I believe, but Australia is a major world producer, I'm not sure how much we get from them, but the point is that we don't have our own domestic supply sufficient enough to produce all our own power. Perhaps that's something that could be mitigated with new technology, but we'll see.
The other concern is one you're starting to hear more about, and will continue to hear a lot about for years to come: It's water. Nuclear power (and for that matter coal fired plants) requires massive, massive amounts of water. Much of that water is rained back down again, but that water can end up literally hundreds of miles away from the area where it was taken from, which makes it more or less meaningless once it leaves the watershed area of the source it came from. The power plant that feeds Atlanta had to shut down briefly this past summer, and other reactors in drought stricken areas have had to as well as water supply dwindles, and cities and even states are fighting about who has a right to dwindling supplies. This is a sign of things to come, and it's best that we prepare for it now rather than base our entire national energy supply on a finite resource, and in a couple decades, in many parts of the country, that resource will be water. How long will it be before we can only build these plants on coasts and they'll have to be built in pairs? One for electrical generation and the other to run the desalinisation plants because they use too much water.
SoCal has had their water supplies cut from upstream sources, the governor of Georgia is talking about redefining the border of Tennessee and Georgia to get access to the Chattanooga River while Alabama and Florida cry foul about downriver releases from dams. Even the Great Lakes region, which controls the grand majority of the US' freshwater supply has strict laws about how far water can travel from the Great Lakes watershed areas so there is no water loss, especially since water levels in Lake Superior last year dropped to record levels. There is now mounting pressure to enact laws supporting the Great Lakes Compact, to protect the Great Lakes from drought stricken areas that are already clamoring for pipelines from the Great Lakes to their areas. America is quickly approaching a water crisis, but you won't hear about it anywhere on the news. Snowmelt water in many areas is going to be nonexistant or greatly reduced in the coming years, and rainfall is decreasing as well. And all those factories that Tatiana was talking about earlier as having to shut down if we use renewables (I'll get to THAT later) might have to shut down as well if we have to choose between powering a nuclear plant and running a factory. Everything we do requires water, and nuclear power requires more water than any of them. Until we can come up with a way to reduce the water use in nuclear power, I remain skeptical of its longterm viability. Other than that, I'm not as concerned about accidents and the like.
Now, renewable energy. First off, I think it's best to cover issues related to transmission and distribution. Switching the nation to a modern HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) T&D system would not only greatly improve current electrical distribution and minimize transmission loss, it would also make renewable energy much more cost effective. Why? Because certain kinds of renewable energy work best in certain places, and less well in others. An HVDC line connecting the entire US would mean here in Michigan, we could purchase clean, cheap solar from California without significant cost increases because of new converters and HVDC lines which dramatically reduce power loss over long distances. I think they are necessary not only for long term viability of renewables, but the US power grid is badly in need of an update anyway, so we might as well do it right.
Each kind of renewable energy has certain flaws and benefits, but technological advances are quickly eliminating the flaws. Yes it's true that wind power is most effective at night, but that doesn't mean it is useless during the day. The wind still blows during the day, and at least one technology is currently being tested that will make wind power a load bearing source: Air compression. For the air compression technology, the wind turbines at night would turn generators that compress air, which could be released during the day when more power is needed to turn a generator and produce power on demand. There are currently at least two test bed demonstrators under construction. Other than that? Wind power is only getting bigger, better and more efficient. Larger turbines are being built and tested at higher efficiencies thanks in part to the incorporation of Mag-Lev technology in the process to reduce resistance. While only a few years ago, 1.5MW turbines were the best you could buy, GE's best seller is a 3MW turbine now, and there are 5MW and 7.5MW turbines in use as test beds currently in Germany and Scandinavia (I can't remember which of the three countries has it). Wind power is also being tested out in small scale applications, like small fans and turbines that can be attached to your home or placed in the backyard that could partially, or in some places entirely, replace your home's electrical needs.
Solar for many is still the great hope of renewable enthusiasts. There are many different forms of solar, and I won't go into detail on all of them right now, but most of them currently have submitted for licenses to produce 500MW+ power plants in the west, generally in some part of Nevada/Arizona/California desert. Billions of dollars from private investors are currently pouring into the industry. To give a brief overview of the different kinds of solar power:
Photovoltaics is probably what you are most familiar with. These are the panels that take sunlight and directly turn it into power. Even PV systems come in many different flavors, the specifics of which I don't know off the top of my head, but it has to do with the composition of the panels themselves, and recently developments have brought the cost of some solar, like nano-film, to near cost parity with fossil fuels, and that's before a major power plant has even been built, though many are under construction.
There's trough solar plants, which use mirrors to heat tubes of oil or some other liquid which move back and forth and drive a piston to power a generator. These were big back in the 70's and 80's but collapsed when government subsidies dried up after the oil crisis ended. They are making a bit of a comeback now.
Another big possibility is solar towers, where fields of giant super reflective mirrors concentrate the sun's rays onto a water tower where the water is boiled and drives a regular steam engine, just like nuclear power would, only with a totally different heat source.
And then there's solar concentrators, which are more small scale. I've seen a couple designs, one of which uses a sterling engine, and the other which uses a smaller array of mirrors to focus the sun's rays on a ultra efficient solar panel, which are far more expensive but would also get to be a lot smaller since so much sunlight is focused on them. These too are reaching cost parity with fossil fuels.
All of these can work through some cloud cover, though optimal conditions are obviously cloudless sunlight. Obviously the best place in the United States for solar power is going to be the southwest, but solar systems are operating for profit as far north as Canada, which surprised me, but it still happens. In the Green Energy News thread on one of the more recent pages there is a map on Google Earth that will actually tell you how much power you can expect to generate from solar or wind given your spot in the United States, and I was surprised to find some areas where it's still pretty good like the Northeast.
But for those concerned with power generation at night, there's a technology currently being tested at at least one solar power plant that would use molten salt as a kind of battery. The idea is that excess power could heat the salt, which would stay hot for hours after the sun has stopped shining, and could be used to power turbines for electrical consumption at night. It's being tested now, and scientists think it will be cost effective to install such a system at some solar sites.
Wind and Solar are the two biggies. They have gotten the most acclaim, the most media focus and the most research dollars, and while many are calling for the generation of power to power the whole US from Solar alone, which is technically feasible, I think a mixture of many different forms is what we'll need in the end. I'll cover geothermal and the various hydropowered renewables later. If you don't want to wait, I've probably posted this same post, slightly rewritten, a half dozen times, and I'm sure you can find it elsewhere. But I'll be back later to finish it off.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I'd add a few more to your list of problems with Nuclear Power.
1. Despite repeated promises to the contrary, new nuclear power is by far the most expensive option.
2. Nuclear power is not a renewable resource. Without breeder technology, the supply of nuclear fuel could run out in as little as 50 years.
3. No one has successfully implemented breeder technology for commercial power production despite significant efforts (all outside the US). Although their are many potential positives, there are some significant technological hurdles to be overcome before breeder technology can be used for power production.
4. Building new nuclear power plants is a slow process. Even using established technology (not breeders) it would be more than 10 years before we can bring new nuclear facilities on line.
5. When you consider the full cradle to grave life cycle, greenhouse emissions from nuclear are not zero. Significant fossil fuels are consumed in the mining and refining of the fuel, construction of the plants, disposal of the fuel and decommissioning of the plants.
Overall through, nuclear is a lot better than coal in most every respect. I do think we need to consider it as part of the solution but it is ONLY part and possibly not even a major part.
I'm very concerned that people are hyping nuclear as a panacea, and it just isn't.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
Oh, Rabbit and Lyrhawn, every one of your points is addressed in the blog post that Jhai linked to above. Do go and read it!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Tatiana, I taught a class last year on alternative energy for which I did a lot of research on most of the available options. That blog is as bad and biased as the science it criticizes.
For example, it starts off by saying that wind and solar can only ever provide for a tiny fraction of our power. Wind is already providing 20% of the electricity used in Denmarkand 12% of what's used in Germany. Those aren't "tiny fractions".
And for example, the blog makes two big errors when it talks about the cost of nuclear power. First, it blaims the high costs of nuclear reactors solely on activists but nuclear power is expensive everywhere in the world not just in the US where activists up the price. Second, that once a nuclear plant is built its almost free to run. The problem is that, as I'm sure you know as an engineer, the costs of building the plant have to be recovered over the working life of the plant. So the price consumers have to pay includes both the capital costs and the operating costs unless one or the other is subsidized. That's why nuclear power costs more per kilowatt hour than any other source of electricity.
The principle that the cost per kilowatt hour must include both capital costs and operating costs is true for wind and solar too. Heck the operating cost are an even smaller percentage of the total cost for wind and solar than they are for nuclear.
Like I've said before, I am not anti-nuclear energy. I think it is part of the solution. But I am worried that pro-nuclear groups neglect many of the real draw backs to the technology giving people the impression that is the panacea for all our ills. It isn't.
I could very well say the same thing about wind energy and solar energy. They also have problems that advocates ignore. There is no one solution out that to solve the problem. The solution is going to take everything we've got with conservation and improved efficiency at the very top of the list.
[ March 28, 2008, 10:44 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I really wish advocates for the various technologies would stop bad mouthing each other and painting unrealistically rosie pictures about their side.
This problem is big enough that we need to used all the options. The focus need to be on finding the right niche for each new technology rather than seeking a one panacea for our problems or trying to force a one size fits all solution to work.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
A temperature map of Antarctic warming along with Wunderground's brief article on the WilkinsIceShelf collapse. Basicly a chunk of sea-ice is peeling off of Antarctica to become an iceberg about the size of NorthernIreland.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
And by the by, Tatiana, that blog said absolutely nothing about water use. And it's badmouthing of renewable energy right off the bat killed part of their credibility for me. If I were to use their logic, I could argue that billions have been spent on nuclear power in the last couple decades, but with no new power plants built, it's all just been a waste of money. The answer is that it all went into research, and that's where large chunks of the moeny for renewables has been going, because most of the newest renewable tech is really cutting edge top of the line stuff, and it's not in practice in large scale in the US yet really, though it is in Germany, various parts of Scandinavia, and parts of Spain. China has really upped their production of wind turbines too, to a fairly prodigious rate actually. I'd add also that Britain has recently decided to built a vast array of wind turbines around all the British Isles that will provide thousands upon thousands of megawatts of power. I can't remember the exact numbers, but a healthy percentage of their power.
But that reminds me, I've forgotten to cover the rest of my renewables, mainly: Geothermal and Hydropower.
Geothermal, though it's a tried and true power source that, unlike other renewables provides constant, 24 hour a day power, is really underrepresented in America. It powers 90% of Iceland, a tiny island nation perfectly suited for geothermal production. But it's really underrepresented in America. It's true that most of the really good spots for Geothermal power are in the West, though not exclusively limited to Yellowstone. But recent estimations I've read say that geothermal power could potentially power the entire United States at current consumption levels. I remain skeptical of that promise until EGS (Enhanced Geothermal Systems) becomes a more thoroughly researched technology. EGS is something that the US renewable energy research lab and private industry are just starting to really dig into. Part of the basic ideas, as I understand it, is that holes are drilled deep down into the ground to locate hot spots but where there isn't any water. Hot spots with water is how geothermal is produced in other places. So they drill, introduce water, and presto, instant geothermal power. Until recently it was believed to be untenably expensive, but recent technological advancements have made the drilling and the spotting of potential drill sites much cheaper. Geothermal and investment dollars is really starting to take off, but it's a decade away from serious market penetration I think (with the exception of the really good hot spots using existing technology, those are fine for production now). There are hundreds if not thousands of GIGAwatts of geothermal power alone out there waiting to be tapped. I continue to marvel at the insistance of some people that renewables as a team, let alone individually, can only provide a sliver of our total power. Reality and theory both disagree.
And that bring us to both the oldest and the newest renewable technologies: Hydropower. You're all familiar with traditional hydropower, dams, which is just like it sounds, big dams hold back a bunch of water and it is released as needed to provide power via generators. The problem with this form of power is that it's generally devastating to local enviornments, and displaces large numbers of people, to say nothing of the damage it does to downstream ecosystems.
Two new forms of power are starting to really look promising in this field, and they are tidal and wave power. Wave power is being harnessed via two competing designs. One is your basic buoy, with a piston, and generator on board that bobs in the waves and sends power ashore via cables. Test demonstrators have just recently begun trials off the coast of Seattle I believe. The other form are long snakelike rows of tubes that I believe almost work like hydraulics, and the waves push them back and forth and force liquids to move in these tubes and they drive a generator (I'm not an engineer and this is from memory). Britain has a test "farm" of them working in the North Sea currently, but for a nation with ample coast line (eg, AMERICA), they could possible be a boon for electrical generation.
Tidal power is using river currents to drive turbines, like underwater wind turbines almost. Some areas, like San Francisco Bay, have Tidal capacity estimated in gigawatts of power, though I'm not sure on the specific number. Still, as Tatiana says, that's the kind of power you need to power cities. Tidal power, like Wave power, is still in its infancy, and it's only really just being explored and tested now. But it's a good look at what is on the horizon.
Everything I've talked about thus far is just large commercial scale power for mass generation. It says nothing at all about the pontetial lynch pin role I see in the future for Microgeneration, the idea that factories, businesses and homes can produce their own power through upgrades made to their homes that take them partially or entirely off the grid, even providing their own power to power their cars when they buy electric over having to stop at the gas station. This could drastically lower the demand for energy from large scale power generation and allow renewables an even faster rise to prominance.
Our energy supply right now, in some ways is too rigid. We need a new focus on tougher regulations for new building construction, making all buildings LEED certified for new construction, mandatory. There should be a drive to retrofit old buildings to get them LEED certified, which will also drastically reduce energy demand. Reducing demand via efficiency upgrades, small scale generation via microgeneration (which is exploding in sales in some areas around the country), and new uses of large scales I think will really redefine the way we look at energy production in the next 50 years if we can really embrace a new integrated and improved energy framework for the country.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
[ April 07, 2008, 09:08 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
Lyrhawn, while I'm for it, in principle, I'm not sure I agree entirely on your perspective about the US having "ample coast line" for harnessing wave power and/or tidal power. I think our "costal shore line" linear feet compared to our population, is a drastically different ratio than that in the U.K. We are a significant chunk of a continent, they are an island nation. While every little bit helps, there is definitely a different scale.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
We have thousands of miles of coastline. By any definition that's ample coastline. Is that enough to power the whole country? Of course not. Is it enough to power a couple cities along the coast? Eventually, probably yeah. Does that make it worthwhile? Yep.
You're talking about scales and coastline versus population and such. You're right, we are talking about a different scale, but, that dosn't mean we don't have ample resources, it just means that our needs are so drastically high that even ample resources are dwarfed, which is why we diversify. It's a new technology, we still don't know exactly how much power we can hope to get from it.
In summary: I don't disagree about the scale or ratio. It's not a silver bullet, we don't have silver bullets, but we do have a quiver of arrows that put together might solve the problem, it's just one or two more arrows.
As recently as a couple days ago there was a story about the gigawatts of power that we could get from putting tidal power in the Mississippi. It was a few gigawatts, enough for more than a hundred thousand homes to be powered. I'd be willing to bet that combined with wind power, all of Michigan could be powered from tidal, wave and wind power on the Great Lakes, and probably big chunks of other GL states. Coast incluces inland lakes and rivers too btw.
It's new! And news will be posted in the Green Energy thread as it progresses.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:In summary: I don't disagree about the scale or ratio. It's not a silver bullet, we don't have silver bullets, but we do have a quiver of arrows that put together might solve the problem, it's just one or two more arrows.
Exactly! Too many people are looking at this as though any new technology has to be the panacea that will satisfy all our needs. If you look at the problem that way, then it truly is insoluble. What we must do is look at each new technology and identify the niche to which it is best suited. Then we need to identify niches that we can't fill and start looking for creative ideas to meet those needs.
We have to start thinking outside the box. For example we have to start looking beyond "what are we going to put in our gas tanks" and thinking about how will we transport people and goods. Or perhaps even thinking about how we can restructure our communities so that people and goods don't need to be transported as far.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
Great link twinky!! As a long time student of climate change science, I am perpetually amused at how frequently the charges made by vocal opponents of the greenhouse theory are far more accurate descriptions of their own theories.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
You're right. More and more information is coming out about the potential disastrous effects that a corn and soy based ethanol program is hasving on the world. The price of corn and soy is skyrocketing, which not only leads to higher food prices, but it rapidly increases the amount of deforestation in the world's rainforests, primarily in South America, where an area the side of Rhode Island is deforested DAILY. Other problems? Corn ethanol uses more fuel in the growing, transporting, and refining of ethanol than we actually get out of it! It's an inherently wasteful process. Sugarcane ethanol is much better, but even that pales in comparison to some of the newer technologies that are coming out.
Bottom line: As I've said a dozen times, and now with more information to prove it than ever: Corn ethanol is the devil. I'm going to broaden that to all food crops. Food crop based ethanol is the devil.
Your article though doesn't do nearly enough to talk about the new stuff in the pipeline, and in some cases stuff that is already online and working. Wood waste (a woodwaste cellulosic plant just got funding in Canada) is just one of many new cellulosic ethanol ideas being worked on. Several non-food crop sources like prarie grasses, sorgrum and a few others I can't remember the names of, are being discussed, because they can be grown on depleted tobacco fields where food crops can't currently be grown. And there are also enzymes being worked on to break down everyday trash from dumps into ethanol as well, including using the digestive enzymes of termites in the process.
But the really REALLY promising one? Algae oil. A lot of researchers right now are trying to find the absolute best variant of algae that will grow super fast and provide the most oil, and they are trying to figure out the optimal level of nutrients, sunlight and temperature, but a lot of that is just tweaking at this point, there's already a 4.4 million gallon per year plant operating in Texas. And much more advanced versions are on the way soon.
The big difference between these new technologies and the old one? Well there are three really. 1. Corn, sugar and soy are all food crops. New technologies use non food crop farm land and non food crops, much of it is even waste products. 2. The yields are insanely higher. Corn gets less than a dozen gallons per acre, soybeans, the highest yield for food crops, nets 48 gallons per acre per year. Much of the rainforests of Indonesia are being cleared right now for palm oil production, which might net 630 gallons per acre per year. Algae? At current technology they thing they might yield 8,000 to 10,000 gallons per acre per year. That's insanely higher. Valcent Technologies thinks they have a process that might yield, 33,000 gallons per acre per year, which could replace the entire fuel supply for the US using area the size of Maryland for production. 3. The fuel to create these megaethanol producers? Carbon dioxide, the big bad of the emissions world. Often algae plants are built next to greenhouse gas emitting power plants, and they capture the CO2 and pump it into ponds or (more advanced) tubes which are stacked or arrayed to get more sunlight.
Algae, unlike current sources, actually provides the hope that some day we could be fuel independent from oil. Otherwise? The entire corn production of the entire USA would barely dent our yearly fuel consumption. We're talking vastly different orders of scale.
So yes, food crop ethanol is evil, but that's not to see ALL ethanol or biodiesal is evil. I think it's very likely that in 20 years we could have a country driving electric cars with onboard gas powered motors to recharge the batteries, and all that gas could come from algae, which can be grown virtually anywhere, without need for freshwater.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
1400 nuclear powerplants in 42years and 714,000 wind turbines. Somehow building&installing 510 wind turbines every ~11days seems a lot more doable than building&fueling one nuclear power plant in the same amount of time.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
That's such a huge fallacy I'm going to assume you're making a joke rather than being serious. Nuclear power plants are built in parallel, not serial. So are wind turbines. And they're probably talking about smaller, modern nuclear power plants instead of the same monstrosities we've been building for decades.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Not joking, and not suggesting that a nuclear powerplant would have to be built within ~11days. Merely pointing out the rate of completion required to get the facilities online. Does 51,000 wind turbines every three years and 100 nuclear powerplants in the same amount of time sound better to you? Cuz if you take that statement in the manner that you interpreted "...510 wind turbines...and one nuclear powerplant...", the completion rate goes higher. With three years from start to completion, that leaves 39years* from the first plant going online to the last plant going online. Which makes it one more nuclear powerplant coming online every ~10days.
The average of recent construction times has been 5&1/2 years per plant. So if we start now, the first plant comes online in 2014. And one more nuclear plant would be coming online every 9.4days thereafter*.
Then of course there are all the new uranium mining facilities and isotope-purification plants which would have to be built. And nuclear waste disposal / permanent storage facilities.....even though we still haven't had even one completed in the 60+years since the beginning of the NuclearAge.
* Due to neutron embrittlement and other aging problems, nuclear powerplants have a lifetime of ~40years. So after 2050, that rate of one powerplant per 9.4days has to be maintained because the older generating stations will be taken offline at approximately the same rate.
[ June 07, 2008, 01:09 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
The simple answer is that we aren't going to meet that goal. However, that has more to do with politics than any special technical barrier. Nuclear power plants go up slowly mostly because of significant resistance to them, not because they're that hard to make. We could easily put up that number in that time if there weren't significant roadblocks put in place by people who dislike nuclear power.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
That 5&1/2 years is the average time of construction excluding the time it takes to gain approval and construction delays due to legal wrangling. Japan views nuclear generating stations very favorably. I think it's approved&built a couple of dozen since the '80s. And their average time of construction has been similar.
Toshiba claims it can get construction time down to 3&1/3 years per plant using mass production techniques.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
The US is targeting 6&1/2 years from the start of the approval process to going online.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
"...McCain called...for the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030...with a longer-term goal of adding another 55...He also said a decision...not to pursue fuel reprocessing technology should be reversed."
McCain speaking in favor of the YuccaMountain nuclear repository. Interestingly, a LOT more than 100% of YuccaMountain's planned total storage capacity will be needed to store wastes already being held in US temporary storage facilities. AND the US has already pledged to receive waste from other countries' reactors as part of its antiNuclearProliferation policy.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote: Interestingly, a LOT more than 100% of YuccaMountain's planned total storage capacity will be needed to store wastes already being held in US temporary storage facilities.
Is this true even if the fuel reprocessing is pursued in the future?
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Nope.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
What, theoretically, would fuel reprocessing do? And when could it come online if we started to pursue it?
And for that matter, why'd we stop?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
I think it allows you reuse fuel that's already been through a reactor once. I'm not sure of the details. It results in weapons grade material. I believe Carter stopped it for that reason.
I'd be happy to submit to IAEA inspections if we were reprocessing it. It seems stupid not to do it.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
UK ministers propose to bring online one new wind-turbine per day to meet the EuropeanUnion carbon emissions cap. The article mentions 12years for project completion, but realisticly the rate would have to be continued indefinitely (in the manner of road-building and road-repairs) as increasing global demand in comparison to global supply makes higher fossil-fuel prices inevitable.
quote:
quote:Interestingly, a LOT more than 100% of YuccaMountain's planned total storage capacity will be needed to store wastes already being held in US temporary storage facilities.
Is this true even if the fuel reprocessing is pursued in the future?
While misleading due to what it doesn't say, this wiki on mixed oxides as reactor fuel is a decent enough start. Misleading because even after maximum recycling, nontransuranics and high-gamma emitters (such as americium) will make up about half* the volume of the original/non-recycled waste. Or more correctly, ceramic rods/pellets cast to (somewhat safely) contain that waste will take up about half the storage volume. And misleading in the same sense that the IEA report projects "...conventional uranium stock...based on the 2004 nuclear electricity generation rate...is sufficient for 85 years..." into " ...over 2500 years..." when fast-breeder reactors safe enough for commercial use is nearly as far off into the future as commercial fusion, and is only a little less hypothetical.
* Guesstimate based upon expectable radioactive waste produced by a deuterium-tritium fusion reactor generating as much power as a fission reactor. Irrespective of source, having neutrons flying around produces a lot of high-level radioactive waste.
[ June 29, 2008, 01:04 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Dubya&Gang "...refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened."
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Dubya&Gang "...refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened.
Not surprising really. Such actions to maintain deliberate ignorance in order to feel free push a malicious agenda has been the modus operandi of the DubyaAdministration.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
For fans of the Index Of Creationist Claims, we now have its analogue in the global warming debate.
Also, it isn't just that we stopped....the new breed of reactors will be able to use even MORE of the spent fuel than the current ones, and the new processes do not result in weapons grade materials.
Sounds promising.....
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
...I thought all plutonium was weapons grade, there just isn't enough of it in a reactor to be worthwhile?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by AvidReader: ...I thought all plutonium was weapons grade, there just isn't enough of it in a reactor to be worthwhile?
No, To be weapons grade, plutonium like uranium has to be in high concentration. There is plenty of plutonium in spent reactor fuel, it is just way too low in concentration to be usable.
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
So the problem is one of seperating the atoms in the spent fuel? Keeping the plutonium away from the cobalt or something?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by AvidReader: So the problem is one of seperating the atoms in the spent fuel? Keeping the plutonium away from the cobalt or something?
More or less although it is not particularly about the Cobalt. In order to be weapons grade all fissionable elements have to be very high purity, otherwise the chain reaction won't lead to an explosion.
Its easier to enrich Plutonium from spent reactor fuel than to enrich Uranium because you can separate using the differences in chemical reactivity rather than solely by mass. But easier doesn't mean easy.
After separating the Plutonium from everything else in the reactor fuel, things get somewhat more complicated. Although all the common isotopes of Plutonium are technically fissile, they can't all be used to make a high yield bomb. The plutonium in typical spent reactor fuel has too high a proportion of 240^Pu to make a stable high yield bomb. You could probably make a dirty bomb without doing isotopic enrichment but not a high yield thermo-nuclear device. Weapons grade plutonium is generally made in special reactors designed to reduce formation of 240^Pu and not in commercial power reactors.
Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
Thanks, Rabbit. Interesting stuff.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Something weird about the link: it'll relink to a page that says you have already watched it. But if you BACK out of that page, the lecture will begin. The first time I tried it, I had to reENTER the address bar after BACKing.
And a report about the 2008 Arctic Ice Minimum from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
An article on LakeBaikal posted mostly to remind myself to check the other links.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Ya can cover a cake with a cup of icing or with a gallon of icing, and the extent of coverage is the same. It's the volume that counts. A 50% increase in 2008's maximum Arctic winter sea ice thickness would still be considerably thinner than the numbers derived from direct sonar measurements made by USNavy submarines back in the early 1970s.
Interesting USGeologicalService animated graphic about vegetation changes in GlacierNationalPark from 1850 to 2100. The glaciers disappear around 2030.
[ February 24, 2009, 09:08 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
quote:Originally posted by aspectre: Ya can cover a cake with a cup of icing or with a gallon of icing, and the extent of coverage is the same. It's the volume that counts. A 50% increase in 2008's maximum Arctic winter sea ice thickness would still be considerably thinner than the numbers derived from direct sonar measurements made by USNavy submarines back in the early 1970s.
Completely true but the extent of sea ice coverage is still the relevant number if you are concerned about the earth's albedo and the radiative heat balance.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Map and chart of Arctic sea ice thickness as a derivation from age estimates. "Indications of winter ice thickness...reveal that the ice is thinner than average, suggesting that it is more susceptible to melting away during the coming summer...First-year ice in particular is thinner and more prone to melting away than thicker, older, multi-year ice. This year, ice older than two years accounted for less than 10% of the ice cover..."
Overall albedo is time dependent upon the extent of summer melting as well as the extent of winter coverage during the yearly cycle. Thus my "It's the volume that counts." As well as being reflective, sea ice is also both transparent and translucent: the ratio depending upon the thicknesses of ice formed from seawater (the most*transparent), of ice formed from snow crystals and refrozen snowmelt (the most*translucent), and of snow cover (the most*reflective). The transparency and translucency have a high degree of effect upon the radiative heat balance via transfer of sunlight to heat the water below that surface ice as well as in warming the ice itself.
* All three have varying amounts of reflectivity, translucency, and transparency. Just pointing out the light-handling characteristic that most distinguishes the three types from each other. And my use of 'translucency' is also illustrative -- meant to highlight internal reflection and refraction of light within the ice -- rather than scientificly literal.
[ April 30, 2009, 02:55 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
I hope it's not a trend, one year certainly isn't a certain harbinger of doom to come. Still, it's just one more thing to be unsettled about. I'm going back home to Colorado in a few weeks to spend time in the mountains. There was a discussion with my Dad that even though the snow fall was significant this year it seems to be melting off quite quickly, freeing up trails I might not otherwise be able to make. I kind of wish I didn't know why I'm going to have more fun in June...
Thanks Samprimary, interesting read. I've never seen a site that collectively groups all the counter-arguments to global warming like that.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
I just tried doing to the index of skeptical claims site and so far everthing I've clicked on gets me a "site not found message."
Posted by Nick (Member # 4311) on :
Strange, it didn't do that to me earlier today. . .
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
"The Arctic is warmer than it's been in 2,000 years, according to a new study, even though it should be cooling because of changes in the Earth's orbit that cause the region to get less direct sunlight."
"NASA satellite measurements show that sea ice in the Arctic is more than just shrinking in area, it is dramatically thinning. The volume of older crucial sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk by 57 percent from the winter of 2004 to 2008." (quote from first article along with a different, more explanatory link)
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Some initial news from the UN ahead of the G20 summit:
quote:America talked. Canada watched. But it was China that led yesterday in an unprecedented global gathering to meet the challenge of climate change.
In a vivid example of eastern leadership, President Hu Jintao told a United Nations summit of nearly 100 world leaders that China would voluntarily deliver a four-part package of near-term carbon-cutting commitments, including the planting of nearly 40 million hectares of emissions-absorbing forest.
"At stake in the fight against climate change are the common interests of the entire world," Hu said, promising the planet's worst polluter would achieve a substantial decrease in the carbon intensity of the Chinese economy by 2020.
"Out of a sense of responsibility to its own people and people across the world, China fully appreciates the importance and urgency of addressing climate change."
China's pledge to plant a forest the size of Norway intensified the global gaze on U.S. President Barack Obama, whose message was rhetorically robust but lacked specifics.
quote:Japan added to the momentum yesterday, announcing deeper emissions-reduction targets and plans to pass cap-and-trade and renewable energy laws. India earlier this week signalled it too will make significant strides with efficiency measures and investment in wind and solar projects.
The lack of specifics from Obama spoke not only to the limits of American power but to the very structure – any promises the president makes are tentative without the approval of Congress, which is far from finished with energy and climate legislation and beset by other pressing priorities, including health-care reform.
"The announcements from other major economies should give President Obama and the Senate the confidence to act before Congress," said Jennifer Morgan of Washington's World Resources Institute. "The world has been hearing, `Yes we can,' `Yes we must,' but now needs to hear, `Yes we will.'"
Al Gore, the U.S. politician turned climate activist, hailed China's "impressive leadership. It's not widely known ... but China in each of the last two years has planted 2 1/2 times more trees than the entire rest of the world put together."
Canada was hardly a factor in the climate summit, which came a day ahead of the annual UN General Assembly that traditionally turns midtown Manhattan black and blue with armoured limousines and police escorts.
Working for The Onion must be a LOT of fun.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Bah, we can plant a forest the size of 2 Norways, that'll shut everybody up.
Whatever works, at least an environmental race would be better than an arms race. If an appeal to American competitiveness is what is needed, then I sure hope thats what the rest of the world will provide.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Multiyear Arctic sea ice is effectively gone. Yep those 200foot inverted canyons of ice hovering over the ArcticOcean in which ColdWar submarines played hide&seek have mostly melted, leaving behind a couple of feet of surface ice.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Hooray!
More territory for cruise ships and oil platforms.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo694.html Antarctica is losing 190 (plus-or-minus 77) gigatonnes* of ice per year, with 132 (plus-or-minus 26) gigatonnes melting in West Antarctica. However for the first time, data clearly suggests that East Antarctica is losing ice, mostly in coastal regions, at a rate of 57 (plus-or-minus 52) Gigatonnes per year. Such signal clarity probably caused by increased ice loss since the year 2006.
* One gigatonne of ice equals about one cubic kilometer of water,
http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0912/full/climate.2009.122.html The Greenland ice sheet lost a total of about 1500 gigatonnes of mass between 2000 and 2008 [an average of ~166 gigatonnes per year]. But from 2006 to 2008, the rate of ice loss accelerated up to 273 gigatonnes per year.
[ November 25, 2009, 12:44 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
im watching waterworld in preparation for the inevitable.
Posted by FlyingCow (Member # 2150) on :
I know SuperFreakonomics has plenty of detractors with regard to the chapter on climate change - but the idea of controlled geoengineering was very interesting. Aside from the obvious political difficulties of who would control it, etc, I'm curious as to the climate-folks' take on the issue.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
What do you mean precisely by "controlled geoengineering". Given the current state of climate science, injecting aerosol into the stratosphere (one of the common control proposals, would be extremely risky. The role of atmospheric aerosol in the earth's energy balance is the most poorly understood factor in climate science. We really can not make any quantitative prediction of what would happen if we injected large amounts of aerosol into the stratosphere. There are so many feed back effects like nucleation of ice crystals, changes in circulation, catalysis of chemical process and so forth that we can't even be certain which direction it will change things. Chances we would get it right and actually get desirable effects without large unanticipated side effects are negligible and the consequences of getting it wrong could be devastating.
Posted by FlyingCow (Member # 2150) on :
I am summarizing from memory here, so forgive me if I get things wrong.
There is a company called Intelligent Ventures, or somesuch, (IV for short), which is something of a brain-bank and patent-factory. The chapter focused heavily on them.
I know that the climate change chapter of the book has seen a lot of criticism, but most of what I've read has been about the tone and general attitude of the piece - the sensationalizing part, rather than the actual ideas presented. (Though I'm likely missing more specific critiques).
The discussion began around Mt. Pinatubo, and the global cooling effects observed after the volcano spewed sulfur into the stratosphere. Two ideas hinged on creating some sort of chimney that would pump a controlled amount of sulfer directly into the stratosphere. Sulfur was chosen specifically because the global impact of Pinatubo's eruption has been studied to death, and a re-creation of the effects of the eruption should cause a predictable result.
The first was to create a long, tube-like chimney suspended with balloons, with multiple pumps to move the sulfur. The idea was that a small amount could be released and studied, then a larger amount, etc. And the flow could always be shut off.
The second was to use sulfur already being pumped into the atmosphere from factories around the world, by extending the existing chimneys skyward with long tube-like things that would carry the gases higher up and into the stratosphere.
Another idea talked about the ocean being a massive absorber of heat energy, and clouds being a mitigating factor to that (essentially providing shade/cooling for the oceans). An idea there posited that wind-powered skiffs of some sort could be built that throw sea spray high enough into the air to form clouds, thereby reducing the amount of heat absorbed by the ocean.
Now, being a layman and a science fiction lover, these all sound "neat". I just don't know enough about the science to analyze them in any real way.
The chapter also discussed that control of these measures would be a huge political issue, namely who would get to choose how much sulfur or how many clouds to create, etc. It also discussed the negative view most environmentalists take on geoengineering, being that we shouldn't be tinkering with mother nature more than we already are.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Ideas one and two are precisely what I was referring to when I said "inject large amounts of aerosol into the atmosphere".
Like I said, aersols are currently the biggest uncertainty in our models of climate change. Our understanding of how atmospheric aerosol influences the radiative heat balance is very bad. Injecting aerosol into the atmosphere to try to counter accumulation of greenhouse gases is extremely extremely risky and the consequences of getting it wrong are unfathomable. There is no way to test this in a preliminary experiment and once we inject huge amounts of aerosol into the atmosphere there is no way to take it back if things start going wrong.
Posted by FlyingCow (Member # 2150) on :
I think the discussion focused around Mt. Pinatubo as the preliminary experiment (it having been studied extensively), which is why the effort would be to simulate that event (albeit in a continuing fashion, rather than a one-off event)
Did you have any thoughts as to the cloud-making concept?
There was another idea by that IV group earlier in the book re: a way to limit the impact of hurricanes by cooling surface water in the Atlantic, as well.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
There have been a lot of volcanoes and a lot of studies done on their effects on climate. We still don't know anywhere near enough about those effects to be able to predict and control them.
In order to control anything, you have to have a reasonable accurate model that can predict how the changes you are making will affect what you are trying to control. This is particularly critical in any system that has "dead time", i.e. there is a significant lag between when you make the change and when you see the results. The effects of aerosol on climate are highly non-linear and their are all kinds of feed back loops. We really can't begin to accurately predict what will happen if we start pumping sulfate aerosol into the stratosphere.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
I'm unsure if this has already been discussed but Rush Limbaugh is currently crowing about it alot. Here's a link from the NYtimes.
I don't think it's a "mushroom cloud" that blows apart the entire idea of man influenced climate change. But I think I'm in love with Gavin A. Schmidt for two quotes,
"Science doesn’t work because we’re all nice,"
and,
"Newton may have been an ass, but the theory of gravity still works."
What does concern me is the feeling from the emails that scientists are blocking access to the data for fear that hostile readers will try to invalidate all of the science by pointing out innocuous mistakes. Is that a wise course of action in this regard?
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
Do you think OSC's next world watch essay will be about this, or will he work it into his reviews?
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
10 years of emails. Hundreds of thousands of individual communications.
There's going to be *something* bad in there, especially when applying the "I know they are evil, so in what way does this prove it?" filter.
Some of what I've seen was obviously hyperbole and humor, some of it is a matter of the anti-AGW people not understanding exactly what's being talked about, and, yes, some of it looks a little fishy.*
None of what has been revealed materially affects the state of AGW science. There's no evidence of a massive conspiracy.
I wish it was much ado about nothing, and in some sense it is, but any time you get that much personal communication, there's going to be something that can be interpreted as dirt and there will probably me something actually dirty as well.
*EDIT I haven't seen anything for which there is no plausible explanation which is less inflammatory than the "worst case" interpretations which are being applied.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
This pisses me off. It a deliberate distraction from a critical issue. Nothing in this makes one iota of difference in the big picture of climate change science and anyone who is familiar with the field knows that. This is just another example of how the AGW conspires to distract the public from the real issues. They don't seem to get it. We are racing toward the precipice of a cliff and they are trying to persuade us we shouldn't use the breaks.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Nothing in this makes one iota of difference in the big picture of climate change science
Come to Ornery and explain that to Mariner, please.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
I must say that if people are really abusing the peer-review process and distorting graphs, then the rest of the people in their field ought, at a minimum, to take a few moments of self-reflection. The correct response is to go through the old papers and see whether there's any reliance on the now-suspect data. It's not as though this is some obscure institute at the fringes of the field, either.
And really, refusing to share data is not very nice.
Posted by FlyingCow (Member # 2150) on :
Knowing very little about climatology, would sulfur in the stratosphere cause acid rain - or is it only in lower levels of the atmosphere? Was there a worldwide increase of acid rain after Pinatubo?
I really am curious - just don't have the background in the science.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
"another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as 'idiots.'"
Far worse than anything they've been called of course.
"Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents."
Mushroom cloud of what? I didn't see anything that would change the data, the conclusions, or anything else. That people e-mail things that wouldn't go over well in a public sphere? This is the problem I see is that there's a lot of pointing to attitudes and conflicts, but almost no discussion, in the public sphere, of actual data or conclusions. Anyways, calling this a mushroom cloud seems to miss the mark by a bit.
"Some of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics’ camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them.
The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument. However, the documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists."
Absolutely valid, and here I agree with KoM. When it seems the whole world is against you (and the whole world doesn't have to be for it to seem that way) people fight back. Those studying this problem are in the tight situation of both advocating one outcome and remaining unbiased in analysis. Not an easy corner to fight from, but an almost inescapable one. For good or ill (and I think most would agree it's the latter) political battle lines have been drawn and those who would most benefited and benefit others by staying neutral have been thrust into the ring. I wouldn't at all object to very strict guidelines and oversight on this peer-review process. In the same breath, I'm not ready to throw out all that's been accomplished on such a vital issue. I may not be as intensely worried as everyone in this thread, but I am worried, and if 'no I'm not but you are' didn't work in grade school I don't think it will solve an impending global crisis. Even if it does make some people feel better while it happens.
Hobbes Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:bsolutely valid, and here I agree with KoM. When it seems the whole world is against you (and the whole world doesn't have to be for it to seem that way) people fight back. Those studying this problem are in the tight situation of both advocating one outcome and remaining unbiased in analysis.
I think the problem goes a little bit deeper. Most of the people I know, who have been studying this issue for years, are developing a sense of desperation. Over the past twenty years, the science supporting climate change has gone from "compelling" to "terrifying". Back in the 80s, most scientist in the area thought the theory was sound and that we would likely start seeing some serious effects in about a century. The evidence was strong enough then to indicate that we should proceed with caution and begin to shift away from a fossil fuels economy. Over the last twenty years, that picture has changed rather dramatically. Things (like the melting of the artic ice) are happening much much faster than was originally believed would happen. The picture really is very grim, much grimmer than most people want to admit. The IPCC report, far from being biased and over blown, is actually quite conservative in its predictions.
No matter how you slice it, there isn't any rational reason for people to claim human activity is changing the climate and to argue that dramatic action must be taken to stop it, except that they sincerely believe its true. As much as the opposition likes to imagine some hidden agenda, no one has yet come up with any reasonable idea of what that agenda might be.
So in addition to the normal scientific rivalries, that can at times get very nasty, we have a sense of urgency, a sense that action must be taken now to stop global disaster. We can't simply wait for time to settle the debate as usually happens in science.
And so scientists who feel a sense of urgency on this issue really are in a very very difficult position. How do you communicate the sense of urgency you get from understanding a vast body of scientific studies, to a public that doesn't deal well with complexity? How do deal with people who seem to be deliberately trying to obscure the central issues? How do you respond to people (like Michaels) who are actually being paid by the fossil fuels lobby to refute your claims?
[ December 01, 2009, 10:38 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: ... there isn't any rational reason for people to claim human activity is changing the climate and to argue that dramatic action must be taken to stop it, except that they sincerely believe its true ...
Damnit. I knew there was a catch to this whole environmentalism thing.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus:
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: ... there isn't any rational reason for people to claim human activity is changing the climate and to argue that dramatic action must be taken to stop it, except that they sincerely believe its true ...
Damnit. I knew there was a catch to this whole environmentalism thing.
The best way to understand how wight wing wackos think is to look at the things they accuse their opponents of doing. "Hidden Agendas", "Conspiracies", "Hating Freedom", "Media Bias" . . . how do you think they come up with these things?
[ December 01, 2009, 11:38 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
I kind of like Mark Twain: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
People can always find a poll to suit their liking. I would feel much better if they hadn't conveniently lost their source data. What is left is statistics.
If I say show me your source data, does that make me equivalent to a "birther". I am right wing afterall. Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: I kind of like Mark Twain: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
People can always find a poll to suit their liking. I would feel much better if they hadn't conveniently lost their source data. What is left is statistics.
If I say show me your source data, does that make me equivalent to a "birther". I am right wing afterall.
mal, I have provide source data for my arguments repeatedly over the years. CT created this thread as a clearing house for all the sources data I had provided at the time. If you go to the OP, you will find links to dozens of posts where I provide source data. Until you've actually read that data, I don't have anything else to say to you in this debate.
Educate yourself or be quiet.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Again, though, I think the field would benefit, both from a scientific and a public-policy perspective, from taking some time to go through the back archives, weed out the stuff that's not that strong (or perhaps even suspect), and be left with a smaller collection of stronger papers. In particular, any plots where declines have been hidden should be weeded out. It is never good policy not to show all the data you have.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Rabbit, a bit sharp on poor Mal.
Yes you provided data in this thread, enough to answer anyone's doubts.
Mal's points are, if their data has vanished would he sound fanatical.
No he wouldn't.
The fact is that this data, that was thrown out before the need for it was realized, is not the only base data in existence. Agencies from NASA to other science communities around the world have all kept data that corresponds to their findings.
Hence while this is a non-issue on the truthfulness of climate change, it is an issue on the truthfulness of those opposing science, for as they spin this they show themselves to be either honest in wanting all the facts, or dishonest in cherry picking that which they can manipulate...
which is exactly what the claim the scientists are doing.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Again, though, I think the field would benefit, both from a scientific and a public-policy perspective, from taking some time to go through the back archives, weed out the stuff that's not that strong (or perhaps even suspect), and be left with a smaller collection of stronger papers. In particular, any plots where declines have been hidden should be weeded out. It is never good policy not to show all the data you have.
No more than any other scientific field. In fact this is what has been done rather extensively by the IPCC.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
But the IPCC report is precisely what is now suspect! And climatology would benefit more than other fields, because you now know that some of your papers are dodgy. Now I'm not saying that every HEP paper ever published is perfect, but in the case of climatology we have specific evidence that particular parts are not good; that evidence ought to shift your opinion of how much revision is needed, relative to other fields where there is no such evidence.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote: It is never good policy not to show all the data you have.
First off, no one in science ever shows all the data they have.
Second, What do you think would be the proper response in a situation like this where a) the opposition has an established conflict of interest and a proven history of dishonest if not fraudulent presentation of data and b) there is urgent reason to act on your scientific claims?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: But the IPCC report is precisely what is now suspect!
If the IPCC report is suspect, any other attempt to objectively review the research would be as well. The IPCC report is not flawed, if it has a bias, it is toward minimizing the dangers not exagerating them.
quote:And climatology would benefit more than other fields, because you now know that some of your papers are dodgy.
There are dodgy papers in every field, they just don't make FOX new. Please give some specific examples of dodgy papers that any one is using to make policy changes. I know of several but they are all from the AGW (anti greenhouse warming) side.
quote:Now I'm not saying that every HEP paper ever published is perfect, but in the case of climatology we have specific evidence that particular parts are not good; that evidence ought to shift your opinion of how much revision is needed, relative to other fields where there is no such evidence.
I really don't know what specific evidence you are referring to. Their are a number of cases which have been blown out of proportion by the media. Please give me some specific examples so I can defend my field.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Well, nobody shows the raw data in a paper, obviously; but you should maintain a backup so you can give it to anyone who wants to duplicate your results. Further, when you do show a plot, it must be honest. You cannot hide a decline. That is the most damaging phrase in the whole thing, to me; 'tricks' is just jargon, "redefine peer review" is mere hyperbole, and calling people idiots is hardly unusual. But when someone says they have done something to "hide the decline", and you know that their theory is precisely that there is an increase, then I get really upset.
And the proper response is, exactly and precisely, not to act in any way that could even remotely be presented as improper, much less ways that actually are improper. It really does seem to me that the CRU researchers did some dodgy stuff, here. And when the political implications of the science are large and urgent, it is all the more important not only to be pure, but to appear so. It is now too late for that, but second best is to visibly scramble to throw out anything remotely dodgy. This is science, and we have real forms of damage control; we don't need to do what a political party means by that phrase, and in fact it is likely counter-productive. Throw the bums out, and their dodgy graphs with them; then say, simply and honestly, "We still believe this paper, and this one, and this one, and here's the data and here's our model; anyone want to contradict the result?" Honesty may take a bit longer, but the end result is all the more sure.
You say that the matter is urgent, and I agree; all the more reason, then, not to play political tricks. Two can play at that game, and two will; only one side can have the genuine truth backing it. It's worth taking some extra time - yes, even with the urgency of the situation - to be absolutely 100% certain not only that you are telling the truth, but that all your steps are sound and there's nothing a political opponent can insert a wedge into. Failing to do so has led, inexorably, to "ClimateGate".
A scientist should not play at politics, any more than he should argue with idiots; the idiot, or politician, will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:A scientist should not play at politics, any more than he should argue with idiots; the idiot, or politician, will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
What exactly should a scientist do when their data provides compelling evidence of impending disaster and need for political action?
That is the question at hand. How does a scientist balance being a scientist and being a human being? If a scientists knows something that has critical political implications, what should the scientist do?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Further, when you do show a plot, it must be honest. You cannot hide a decline. That is the most damaging phrase in the whole thing, to me; 'tricks' is just jargon, "redefine peer review" is mere hyperbole, and calling people idiots is hardly unusual. But when someone says they have done something to "hide the decline", and you know that their theory is precisely that there is an increase, then I get really upset.
I'd have to know the specifics to be able to make that judgement. If the conclusion is that there is a long term increasing trend and the decision is to use an averaging scheme that makes a short term recent decline less evident -- is that dishonest? No it isn't unless the averaging scheme isn't clearly described and claims are made about the short term trends.
It is really easy to take a sentence like that out of context and make it seem like it is something it is not. It is routine for scientist to choose the scaling on a plot that emphasizes the trend they see as important in the data. It is routine for scientist to choose statistical processing that emphasizes the results they see as most important. That isn't unethical, its good communication.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:It is now too late for that, but second best is to visibly scramble to throw out anything remotely dodgy. This is science, and we have real forms of damage control; we don't need to do what a political party means by that phrase, and in fact it is likely counter-productive.
If we are going to do that, you need to recognize that the "bums" at CRU aren't anywhere near the top of the list for "dodgy" research. The guys the call idiots (McKitrick and Michaels) have published some really stinkers. The published a paper in "Climate Research" in which they made a high school level error of using degrees in a function that required radians. When that error was corrected, it completely reversed their conclusions. There really are only two possible explanations for such a simple mistake -- gross incompetence or deliberate fraud. And this isn't the first or last time these two have been presented stuff that is far worse than "dodgy".
And yet these guys are still being quoted as experts in Climatology. Michaels is the very person who calls the statements from the CRU "a mushroom cloud". By comparison to the stuff he's pulled, the CRU revelations aren't even a BB gun.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I think it is a genuine pity that climate change science has become so politicized, but when you are dealing with science that has such direct implications for public policy it is hardly surprising.
It is however important to recognize that it is not just to lay the blame for the politicization of the science on proponents of climate change. The AGW is far more politically active, outspoken and biased than the opposition. Michaels is employed by a political think tank and paid by oil and gas interests. He can't even make a pretense at objectivity and yet has the gall to complain about bias of among a very small number of his opponents. This is worse than a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:AGW (anti greenhouse warming) side.
Uh-oh. I've always understood AGW to represent "anthropogenic global warming" which is essentially the opposite.
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
It is however important to recognize that it is not just to lay the blame for the politicization of the science on proponents of climate change. The AGW is far more politically active, outspoken and biased than the opposition. Michaels is employed by a political think tank and paid by oil and gas interests. He can't even make a pretense at objectivity and yet has the gall to complain about bias of among a very small number of his opponents. This is worse than a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Indeed; more's the pity that it wasn't Michaels' email that was hacked.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by MattP:
quote:AGW (anti greenhouse warming) side.
Uh-oh. I've always understood AGW to represent "anthropogenic global warming" which is essentially the opposite.
Yeah, it does get used both ways.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:It is really easy to take a sentence like that out of context and make it seem like it is something it is not. It is routine for scientist to choose the scaling on a plot that emphasizes the trend they see as important in the data. It is routine for scientist to choose statistical processing that emphasizes the results they see as most important. That isn't unethical, its good communication.
I agree with all these points, and having read up a bit more on the context of the "hide the decline", it doesn't look as bad as it did at first. I still think it should not have been done that way.
quote:The guys the call idiots (McKitrick and Michaels) have published some really stinkers. The published a paper in "Climate Research" in which they made a high school level error of using degrees in a function that required radians.
:wince: Ok, fine, but "tu quoque" is still a logical fallacy. Further, you can't do house-cleaning on the other side. You can only take responsibility for your own. And, incidentally, if that level of mistake is passing peer review, what does that say for the quality of your side's papers?
quote:What exactly should a scientist do when their data provides compelling evidence of impending disaster and need for political action?
Publish the data. Then talk to your Congressman. Then, at all costs, avoid even the faintest hint of scandal, data-cooking, or suppression of opposing views!
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Indeed; more's the pity that it wasn't Michaels' email that was hacked.
This is the point KoM seems to be missing. The people opposing climate change aren't playing by the normal scientific rules. They are committing outright fraud at every turn and doing things that are blatantly illegal like hacking the CRU e-mails. And they have the entire right wing media force to publicize their every move.
How should an ethical scientist respond to that? Certainly fudging data and hiding data aren't the answer but what is? In science, the usual answer is to wait. Over time, evidence will mount on one side or the other until no honest scientist can refute the preponderance of evidence. But this isn't a usual scientific topic. Because the scientific claims require immediate political action on a global scale, we can't just keep waiting. Furthermore, because the science has such such important political and social implications, the debate isn't being limited to people who understand the science. Over the past 30 years, evidence has in fact been mounting on one side of this issue and one side only. But as that has happened, the opposition has taken their flimsy data that can't pass peer review to the media who are happy to publish any sensational story.
How often does the main stream media pick up stories about dodgy or event fraudulent science among those who are opposing climate change? I haven't seen one mainstream media report yet and yet their are myriads of well documented examples.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Publish the data. Then talk to your Congressman. Then, at all costs, avoid even the faintest hint of scandal, data-cooking, or suppression of opposing views!
Unfortunately, ethical scientists have been doing that for 30 years and failed. At some point, you have to consider alternatives unless you really don't care about the destruction of the ecosystem and deaths of millions of people.
I'm not justifying anyone cooking the data or suppressing opposing views, not on either side. But since that happens in every scientific field its not surprising that it has happened in Climatology.
What I am justifying, is scientists becoming more actively involved politically and learning to play by the rules of politics rather than the rules of science. Because at some point, none of us are just scientists, we are human beings with political and social interests. Scientific ethics don't over ride all other ethical considerations.
What you don't seem to recognize KoM, is the difference between presenting science for other scientists who are trained to understand the complexity of the issues and presenting science to a general public that makes political decisions.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
KoM, Let me pose a hypothetical situation. You are a biologist and in your research you come across some evidence which apparently contradicts the theory of evolution. You are confident that eventual that evidence will be reconciled with evolutionary theory and that figuring out how it works would be scientifically interesting. If you publish the data, you know that a number of scientists will start working on the problem and that through that they may make some interesting and valuable scientific discoveries. But you also know that if you publish this evidence now before you have found a way to reconcile it with evolutionary theory that the creationists will pounce on it and blow it way out of proportion. It will serve as fuel to the whole anti-evolution movement.
Do you publish now or not? If you chose not to publish that data, would you consider it a a breach of professional ethics.
I should also add that this isn't a totally contrived situation. The scenario has come up many times in the biological sciences and that over history a lot of biology has been suppressed precisely for this reason. As we gain a better understanding of evolutionary process, we can explain many of those "anomalies" that had been originally hidden by scientists. There are cases I could point you to where the over all advancement of biological scientists would very likely have been dramatically slowed if scientists have published findings before finding a good explanation for them.
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
Changing the subject slightly, I just read this (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/30/canada-tar-sands-copenhagen-climate-deal) about Canada's not-very-helpful approach to climate change. Is there a Canadian narrative that puts things in a better light?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Publish and be damned. You can't help what the creationists do, you can only help what you do.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
natural_mystic: Nope. There are no real excuses. We should be doing more.
The explanation for what is going on is that the current Conservative government has a large base in Alberta and due to vote-splitting among the left-wing parties that is very difficult to replace even though a decent majority of the population is in favour of doing more.
Edit to add: Here we, go, here's some coverage from a conservative news outlet. link
The gist: "Yeah, we suck. But we don't suck worse than the States. And hey, what about all those developing countries?" Pretty crummy.
[ December 01, 2009, 05:43 PM: Message edited by: Mucus ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Publish and be damned. You can't help what the creationists do, you can only help what you do.
You can only help what you do, but you can't ignore the likely impact of what you do. Why do you think it you should publish data before you can adequately explain it whey you know that the most likely result will be to slow the progress of science? Why is there an ethical obligation to publish something you can't explain?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
natural mystic, Unfortunately, not. Canada (Alberta in particular) has a very significant economic interest in continuing to burn fossil fuels. Curbing greenhouse emissions would hurt their bottom line (at least for the next couple of decades).
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
BTW KoM, I asked for some specific examples of dodgy science. Please provide these. It is important for me to know what you are talking about and whether you are simply repeating lies told by others or have legitimate examples of dodgy science that is being used to push policy.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Truth is truth. Either you're a scientist, or you're a political hack with an ax to grind. If the evidence favours the position of ignorant cretins, that is a problem of having cretins in the first place, not a problem of the evidence.
As for slowing the progress of science, in the scenario you outline nobody is going to die of that, or at least it will be very indirect - third-order effects at most. I must say that the case of climate science is a rather better argument for fraud, in that it has actual lives at stake as a first-order effect. But consider the following aphorism: "If you would break your word to save the world, then the moment when the world needs saving is the moment that your word becomes worthless." In particular, it is worthless for the cause of saving the world, because "he would say that, wouldn't he?" If what you publish becomes a function of what you believe rather than what you can show from evidence, then you lose the effect of being a scientist. If a scientist weighs in on a political problem, saying "Action X will cause effect Y", that should be a very strong argument for those who care about effect Y. But this is only true if the scientist can be trusted not to shade his report. I'm even willing to sacrifice some lives to maintain that reputation for absolute truth-telling. After all, who knows when the next crisis might come along, where it will be of even greater importance that the public should believe the science? Machiavelli reminds us that "the prince should not lie, unless it is very greatly to his advantage", on the grounds that a reputation for truth-telling is an extremely valuable asset. And the prince only has to care about his own lifetime. A scientist must look ahead to the next half millennium.
I realise of course that I'm holding up an inhuman standard; I would not necessarily burn anyone at the stake for breaking it. Keelhauling should be sufficient.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: BTW KoM, I asked for some specific examples of dodgy science. Please provide these. It is important for me to know what you are talking about and whether you are simply repeating lies told by others or have legitimate examples of dodgy science that is being used to push policy.
I was referring to the "hide the decline" comment; pressure brought to bear on journal editors; some examples of 'correction factors' in code which look rather bad; and refusal to publish models. I should have been more specific in my wording: I do not necessarily say that any of these are dodgy science, there could be good explanations for each one (and of course they are all cherry-picked from a huge archive), but they do not give a good impression. Again, it is necessary not only to be pure, but to appear so.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Publish and be damned. You can't help what the creationists do, you can only help what you do.
You can only help what you do, but you can't ignore the likely impact of what you do. Why do you think it you should publish data before you can adequately explain it whey you know that the most likely result will be to slow the progress of science? Why is there an ethical obligation to publish something you can't explain?
To answer this more directly, the fastest way to get something explained is to have more people look at it. If something is really puzzling, then you should get more brains working on the problem.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
I'd honestly prefer for scientists to publish their results without feeling they have a responsibility to act as shepherds of public response to what gets published. To do otherwise is hubris and ultimately counterproductive.
"Why is there an ethical obligation to publish something you can't explain?"
I know little of the process of deciding what is worthy of publication, but I think there are different ways you can have a result that seems difficult to explain. Some things might simply not merit publication without further study.
But suppressing a result that you'd have published if it turned out a different way, because you're afraid it'll sway public opinion the wrong way seems unethical because objectivity is tossed out the window.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I'm accumulating a lot of posts in a row here, but oh well. Touching the creationism thing, how about those dinosaur bones with the soupy fluid inside? Scweitzer and Staedter must have known the creationists were going to jump all over that, but they went ahead and published anyway. Do you call them wrong for doing so? I don't. And I'm glad to have a specific example I can say I approve of, because after all words are cheap. "Pff", he said, waving his hand airily. "Publish and be damned; truth is truth". Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
I don't think any of the revelations that have come out of the letters have undermined anthropogenic global warming.
But things like that they can't reconstruct the process they used to go from original data sources to their database is an example of extremely bad science. Also, the letters reveal certain illegal and immoral practices, like conspiring to delete emails in response to a freedom of information request.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I was referring to the "hide the decline" comment; pressure brought to bear on journal editors; some examples of 'correction factors' in code which look rather bad; and refusal to publish models
Like I keep saying, these snipets are not sufficient to make a judgement on what was actually done. I need more data. What exactly did they do to "hide the decline"? I can think of many ways of presenting data that are intended to emphasize a particular feature and deemphasize other features. Most of those are completely ethical. In order to judge whether or not something unethical was done I need more details. Otherwise, you are making unfair judgments based on heavily biased media reports of data released by criminals with clearly biased objectives.
For example, one of the publicized comments that has been interpreted as pressuring journal editors has been presented without any context. The specific journal in question, "Climate Research". One of the Journal editors, Chris de Freitas, has been a very outspoken sceptic of global climate change and critic of the IPCC. The journal published several articles skeptical of climate change that were proven in short order to be total garbage. The articles contained clear errors, some of them in high school level material, that should have been caught in the peer review process. Chris de Freitas was responsible for the review of all of these articles. This wasn't a case of suppression legitimate science, it was exactly the opposite. A case of an editor allow publication of critically flawed material because it support his bias. When this became widely known, there was backlash against the journal by legitimate scientists of all political stripes. Most of the journal's editorial board resigned in protest. The snipets I've read obtained by these hackers, are about this incident. Knowing the full story shed a very different light on the comments.
And btw, one of the thoroughly discredit papers in question, was co-authored by Michaels -- who is now whining about "suppression". That isn't what happened. Michaels succeeded in publishing a paper with obvious amateurish mistakes that should have led to immediate rejection in a legitimate peer review. The paper was non the less accepted for ideological reasons despite the fact that it was a piece of crap.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Peter Watts has a blog post on this subject that I enjoyed reading. NSFW language, so if that bothers you, don't click.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Part of the ethical obligation is that in most cases research is funded by tax dollars paid by evolutionists and creationists. It's literally the job of the researcher to share with their sponsor (the public) what they learn.
Hobbes Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Hobbes: Part of the ethical obligation is that in most cases research is funded by tax dollars paid by evolutionists and creationists. It's literally the job of the researcher to share with their sponsor (the public) what they learn.
Hobbes
I think people are misunderstanding what I'm saying. I not trying to justify deliberate misrepresentation of results or violation of contractual obligations. But no scientist publishes every single piece of data they collect. That wouldn't be science. Every time scientists report on their findings, they go through a selection process of what data to include in the report and what to omit, they explore a range of ways to present the data to communicate the things they have found important. There are unethical ways of doing that, but doing it is not inherently unethical -- it is an important part of the scientific process.
Let me give an example, consider this famous set of data from Charles Keeling showing atmospheric CO2 levels over the past 50 years at the Mauna Loa observatory. The data shows a long term increasing trend superimposed on an annual oscillatory cycle. We have a good understand of both what causes the annual oscillation and the what is causing the long term trend. But now consider the hypothetical situation that this is your data set and you have to decide how to present it in a research paper. You might choose to present the data as an annual average, which would eliminate all the oscillation and give a smooth curve or you might choose to look at only a one decade long slice of the data which would emphasize the annual oscillation rather than the long term trend. Both of those choices might be completely ethical depending on the point you were trying to make. They might also be highly unethical depending on the point you were trying to make.
Without a broader context it really isn't possible to tell whether the authors were doing something deliberately misleading and unethical or not. Taking a snipet from an email where two authors discussed how to present data to "hide a decline" isn't enough to judge whether or not they were actually doing anything unethical. I need to know the details of the data they were presenting, the point they were trying to make, if they actual did "hide the decline" or simply discussed it and if they did, what they did to hide the decline and whether what they did was clearly identified in the report. The statement alone is certainly reason to further investigate into what actually happened but it is by no means proof or even strong evidence of scientific misconduct.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
I wonder if the IPCC included this in their calculations. Ignoring this data would be like grading the thermal efficiency of your house without looking at the variances in your neighbors. It seems very odd to ignore the most powerful force of heat in the solar system as it's impacts on neighboring planets.
I don't argue that we pump green house gasses into the atmosphere but our C02 is a minor greenhouse gas. Water vapor is by far the most significant greenhouse gas and Mt St Helens is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gasses in WA st. Entire continents no longer burn due to wildfires.
My only contention is, the science is not settled no matter how loudly it is proclaimed or how much the doubters are ridiculed or how wealthy the proponents become.
I don't want to hear about sacrifice for a greater good from a man who uses more electricity to heat his pool than I do in my house. The millionaires with stock in green companies, flying around in private jets and polluting more than 100 families. A future world where you can have as big a house and consume as much as you want, provided you are wealthy enough to pay your carbon offsets. Unfortunately, the poor and middle class will just have to do with less.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I wonder if the IPCC included this in their calculations.
Yes, the IPCC did consider the large body of scientific research that has been done on solar cycles and climate change. They do not cite Abdussamatov's work since it was not published before their most recent report but they do cite numerous other researches who have looked at the solar component of climate change. If you are sincerely interested, here is a link to the relevant chapter of their most recent report.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: What I am justifying, is scientists becoming more actively involved politically and learning to play by the rules of politics rather than the rules of science. Because at some point, none of us are just scientists, we are human beings with political and social interests. Scientific ethics don't over ride all other ethical considerations ...
Indeed. It is a good explanation of why scientists like Richard Dawkins should (and have) become more actively involved in promoting atheism rather than sticking just to science as well.
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
The subject definitely deserves more study, the problem is so often the proponents of man-made global warming behave like early Flat-Earth Catholics when challenged or questioned. It's too early, despite the religious fervor of the true believers, to make any drastic economic changes.
I'm sure I could go through Hatrack and find plenty of old comments about the war being for Bush's oil buddies and a giveaway to Vice president Cheney's prior employer, Halliburton. But no one even questions the worlds first green billionaire is also the number one proponent of the green agenda (I'd call it marketing). No questioning the fact that government grants pay for research to bolster global warming evidence while at the same time pushing for the biggest tax increase ever, based upon that purchased evidence. I doubt if there is real, objective science....the ones paying for and doing the research are already fervently convinced. Are we objectively testing hypothesis' or attempting to bolster a "debate is over" theory. In science, the debate should never be over - especially a debate as young and disputed as this one.
[ December 02, 2009, 12:04 PM: Message edited by: malanthrop ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:It's too early, despite the religious fervor of the true believers, to make any drastic economic changes.
Well, here's the problem: if the "true believers" are right, it's actually too late now to make any changes.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:The subject definitely deserves more study, the problem is so often the proponents of man-made global warming behave like early Flat-Earth Catholics when challenged or questioned.
That is simply not true. If you look at this thread and all the links cited in this thread you will see that I and other "true believers" as you call us, have given detailed substantive answers over and over again. For example, just a few posts back I answered your question, directed you to source for my answer. You have ignored my response.
So let me give you a more detailed answer. First, we know very accurately from detailed satellite measurements how the solar irradiance has been changing and it hasn't been increasing. In fact, during the time period in which Abdussamatov did his study, the solar irradiance was unequivocally decreasing. Over the past 30 years, their has been no measured change in the average solar see data. There is a natural solar cycle, but no overall trend either upward or downward. Since 2001 we have been on the downward part of that natural cycle. Hence, even suggesting that the melting of the martian polar ice between 2000 and 2005 was the result of increases in solar irradiance is nonsense because we measured the solar irradiance during this time period and it decreased.
Additionally, melting of the polar ice caps is a local phenomenon not a global phenomenon. Measures of the global average temperature on mars over the same time period show a slight decrease in the global average temperature so this warming seems to be limited to the polar regions and not a global phenomenon. There have been a number of studies of the martian climate, if you are interested I can find you links although most of them will require a subscription.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:No questioning the fact that government grants pay for research to bolster global warming evidence while at the same time pushing for the biggest tax increase ever, based upon that purchased evidence.
There most certainly is a question about it. Please provide data to support the claim.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Funny. You would think that, with Bush in control lo these eight years, the 'conservative' side would have been able to buy some evidence too. If scientists are so easily bought, where are yours?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Funny. You would think that, with Bush in control lo these eight years, the 'conservative' side would have been able to buy some evidence too. If scientists are so easily bought, where are yours?
I could point to a few who are on the payroll of places like Western Fuels Association if you'd like.
Posted by BryanP (Member # 7772) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:I was referring to the "hide the decline" comment; pressure brought to bear on journal editors; some examples of 'correction factors' in code which look rather bad; and refusal to publish models
Like I keep saying, these snipets are not sufficient to make a judgement on what was actually done. I need more data. What exactly did they do to "hide the decline"? I can think of many ways of presenting data that are intended to emphasize a particular feature and deemphasize other features. Most of those are completely ethical. In order to judge whether or not something unethical was done I need more details. Otherwise, you are making unfair judgments based on heavily biased media reports of data released by criminals with clearly biased objectives.
My understanding with respect to "hide the decline" is that one of the methods that has been used to determined temperatures for the last several thousand years has been to look at tree ring data. And while most tree ring data makes a nice story in conjunction with whatever other methods have been used to determine past temperatures, tree ring data from the last 30 years or more does not correspond to temperatures measured using thermometers, and in fact the decline that was hidden was that the tree data shows a cooling in recent years. If I haven't confused this in some way I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.
Anyways, rather than tossing out all the tree data for their (IPCC?) graph, they merely tossed out the last 30 years or so of data and grafted on thermometer temperatures, which of course show the increase.
I have to figure out again where I read this, hopefully it's somewhat familiar to you. If they did indeed throw out a selection of tree data and graft on the thermometer data, it's pretty dubious. If recent tree ring data does not correspond to thermometer temperatures, then surely the whole of the tree ring data is suspect.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
On an intriguing note, the Economist finished their roughly one and a half week debate on whether China or the US are showing more leadership on climate change.
The debate is supposedly an adaptation of the Oxford debating style and has pretty good and hefty writing by both the proposer and the opposition (and many guests).
Of special interest to Americans may be the statement by Gary Locke which starts with a remarkable concession given his position (but does highlight many positive things):
quote:If it was November 2008 instead of November 2009, it would be difficult to disagree with this motion, but no one has done more in the last year to take action on climate change than President Obama and his administration.
The end statement is here with links to all the various stages of the debate.
quote:We've had a debate unusually rich in different ways to answer the question, or even to challenge its premises. Peggy Liu, writing for the motion, has noted the tremendous efforts China has made to green its energy and its transportation. Max Schulz, opposing the motion, has based much of his criticism of China on the statist, top-down approach that China has taken, and has said that China is only doing as it does to become rich. Ms Liu, and some of our guest experts, see no contradiction in that whatsoever; China is, in this view, doing well by doing good, and America would be wise to do the same. Better still, offer several of our participants, are efforts undertaken by America and China together; research breakthroughs, or even just the creation of bigger markets for green energy, will benefit both through technology transfer, best-practice sharing and economies of scale. In his close, Mr Schulz says that in any case, he is not fully convinced that manmade warming is certain, severe and near enough to warrant huge sums spent on mitigating it. By resisting legally binding regimes, America is doing the world the most good in this arena, he says. ... In the end, our voters thought China was leading more, by a tally of 70% to 30%. This is striking not only on its face, but also given that The Economist, and probably this debate, has far more readers in America than in China. Whether this result speaks more positively of China's efforts (on which the debaters and most guests focused), or badly of American foot-dragging, we leave to the readers as an exercise.
And with that, both countries and others around the world go to Copenhagen. During the course of this very debate, big announcements—including numerical targets from both China and America—have made talks of the eventual result in Copenhagen a little less gloomy than they had been just a few weeks ago. Good news for everyone. A bust-up in Copenhagen would cause political damage that would take years to recover, while the world goes on emitting those greenhouse gases.
Saturn's year is 29.4571years long; and it's equivalent "seasons" are 7.37years long. Using maximum solar insolation as its planetary "summer solstice" equivalent, Saturn's orbital "summer" began 9July2003 when it reached perihelion -- closest point approaching the Sun -- and ends near 1January2011. Saturn receives 25% more sunlight at perihelion that at aphelion -- farthest point receding from the Sun -- so it is unsurprising that Titan has been warming through Saturn's "spring" and "summer" equivalents.
[ December 05, 2009, 12:11 PM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by Clive Candy (Member # 11977) on :
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: The subject definitely deserves more study, the problem is so often the proponents of man-made global warming behave like early Flat-Earth Catholics when challenged or questioned.
It's a small thing, perhaps, compared to global chaos due to climate change, but can we lay the "flat earth Catholics" thing to its long overdue rest? Dang Washington Irving. P.S. He was not Catholic.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
"When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world’s peace-keeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed?... ...So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petrostate...slipping down...towards dependence on...the dirtiest commodity known to man."
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
quote: Man's best friend could be one of the environment's worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle.
quote: "Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat," Barrett said.
Other animals aren't much better for the environment, the Vales say.
Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.
But Reha Huttin, president of France's 30 Million Friends animal rights foundation says the human impact of eliminating pets would be equally devastating.
"Pets are anti-depressants, they help us cope with stress, they are good for the elderly," Huttin told AFP.
"Everyone should work out their own environmental impact. I should be allowed to say that I walk instead of using my car and that I don't eat meat, so why shouldn't I be allowed to have a little cat to alleviate my loneliness?"
Sylvie Comont, proud owner of seven cats and two dogs -- the environmental equivalent of a small fleet of cars -- says defiantly, "Our animals give us so much that I don't feel like a polluter at all.
"I think the love we have for our animals and what they contribute to our lives outweighs the environmental considerations.
"I don't want a life without animals," she told AFP.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
The Rabbit: Or anyone with further information on this really. How valid is this reasoning?
quote:So what's compostable plastic good for? It's made from a renewable resource, namely corn, but that doesn't necessarily make it environmentally friendly. Writing in Scientific American in 2000, Tillman Gerngross and Steven Slater pointed out that manufacturing PLA required more fossil fuels than it takes to make most plastics, canceling out the environmental benefit.
They weren't completely down on the stuff, though, and pointed out two benefits you might not suspect. First, much of the energy needed to turn corn into plastic could be obtained by burning the stalks and leaves, known as stover, which are normally discarded. Second, they argue, we don't really want PLA to biodegrade — just the opposite. The big push these days is on figuring out ways to sequester carbon so it doesn't enter the atmosphere as CO2, one of the major greenhouse gases. What better way to do that than grow corn, which sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere, then use the corn to make plastic, which can be buried underground after use?
Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying this is accepted scientific advice. But it's not out of the question that years from now the environmentally responsible thing may be to use all the plant-derived plastic packaging you can and then throw the stuff away.
We have an increasing number of stores that give out these biodegradable plastic bags and packaging, is the low-carbon ideal to go compost them or to throw them out into a landfill as a sort of distributed carbon sequestering technique?
And what about the cob that remains when I've eaten corn on the cob? Should I compost it or sequester it?
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
The best thing to do with regards to plastic bags from stores, is to avoid them completely. Bring your own cloth, reusable bags, whenever possible.
I actually reuse the plastic bags I receive from stores as trash sacks. Sometimes I just forget to bring my own bags to the grocery store, so having a few of these doesn't hurt me. Since I only have one small wastebasket full of trash every week (or slightly more), these work fine for trash sacks.
From what I've read, practically none of the plastics labeled as 'biodegradable' ever degrade, especially when they are buried.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
quote: Man's best friend could be one of the environment's worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle.
quote: "Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat," Barrett said.
Other animals aren't much better for the environment, the Vales say.
Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.
But Reha Huttin, president of France's 30 Million Friends animal rights foundation says the human impact of eliminating pets would be equally devastating.
"Pets are anti-depressants, they help us cope with stress, they are good for the elderly," Huttin told AFP.
"Everyone should work out their own environmental impact. I should be allowed to say that I walk instead of using my car and that I don't eat meat, so why shouldn't I be allowed to have a little cat to alleviate my loneliness?"
Sylvie Comont, proud owner of seven cats and two dogs -- the environmental equivalent of a small fleet of cars -- says defiantly, "Our animals give us so much that I don't feel like a polluter at all.
"I think the love we have for our animals and what they contribute to our lives outweighs the environmental considerations.
"I don't want a life without animals," she told AFP.
What this has gotten me wondering is what the carbon footprint of a human is, all by themselves. I mean, I'm pretty sure I eat and poop more than my dog does, and I have to imagine that the giant infrastructure required to deal with human waste is dramatically more than the damage dogs do by doing what all the animals in the natural world are doing already.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Keep in mind that not all carbon is damage (and really, the interpretation of any of it as damage is mostly because it will damage humans).
Posted by malanthrop (Member # 11992) on :
....Pelosi and Obama push global warming legeslation.
I live in Tampa and saw a snow flake....first time since 1977. Perhaps it has something to do with the sun. The caps melted on Mars and 2009 had the least solar activity on record. Maybe the 30 year cycle has come about, I remember being afraid of the impending ice age in the 1970's.
Posted by The White Whale (Member # 6594) on :
Again, you show a profound misunderstanding or a deliberate twisting of facts and theories. Probably both.
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
I roll back and forth between face-palming and laughter when it comes to people who provide anecdotal quips about the weather as proof that global warming is true or false.
But I'm always up for discussing the weather! We're going to see negative double digits for the first time in a while, here in northern Kansas. I can't wait. I think I'll experiment with freezing bubbles and photography...
Posted by Glenn Arnold (Member # 3192) on :
I wonder if the article about dogs takes into account that dog food is made primarily out of lungs and other animal by-products, which, since it isn't eaten by humans would otherwise go to waste.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
I think the premise in the dog article is that they are carnivores needing x amount of calories on average to survive which requires y amount of other animals to be eaten...or something like that.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tstorm: From what I've read, practically none of the plastics labeled as 'biodegradable' ever degrade, especially when they are buried.
My understanding is that that "buried" part prevents even decay-able things from decaying as they should in landfills.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
quote: Man's best friend could be one of the environment's worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle.
quote: "Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat," Barrett said.
Other animals aren't much better for the environment, the Vales say.
Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.
But Reha Huttin, president of France's 30 Million Friends animal rights foundation says the human impact of eliminating pets would be equally devastating.
"Pets are anti-depressants, they help us cope with stress, they are good for the elderly," Huttin told AFP.
"Everyone should work out their own environmental impact. I should be allowed to say that I walk instead of using my car and that I don't eat meat, so why shouldn't I be allowed to have a little cat to alleviate my loneliness?"
Sylvie Comont, proud owner of seven cats and two dogs -- the environmental equivalent of a small fleet of cars -- says defiantly, "Our animals give us so much that I don't feel like a polluter at all.
"I think the love we have for our animals and what they contribute to our lives outweighs the environmental considerations.
"I don't want a life without animals," she told AFP.
What this has gotten me wondering is what the carbon footprint of a human is, all by themselves. I mean, I'm pretty sure I eat and poop more than my dog does, and I have to imagine that the giant infrastructure required to deal with human waste is dramatically more than the damage dogs do by doing what all the animals in the natural world are doing already.
Maybe we should start feeding dogs horse meat again? There are some spares in Nevada...
Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :
quote:Originally posted by theamazeeaz:
quote:Originally posted by Tstorm: From what I've read, practically none of the plastics labeled as 'biodegradable' ever degrade, especially when they are buried.
My understanding is that that "buried" part prevents even decay-able things from decaying as they should in landfills.
Yep.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Which may be a good thing
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
Bill Gates in this TED talk said exactly what I think about climate change and what we need to do about it. Posting this here and in several other appropriate threads to catch all the people who might be interested. I apologize for the redundancy.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
quote: Much of the record breaking loss of ice in the Arctic ocean in recent years is down to the region's swirling winds and is not a direct result of global warming, a new study reveals.
Ice blown out of the region by Arctic winds can explain around one-third of the steep downward trend in sea ice extent in the region since 1979, the scientists say.
The study does not question that global warming is also melting ice in the Arctic, but it could raise doubts about high-profile claims that the region has passed a climate "tipping point" that could see ice loss sharply accelerate in coming years.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:Much of the record breaking loss of ice in the Arctic ocean in recent years is down to the region's swirling winds and is not a direct result of global warming, a new study reveals.
While 1/3 is of the effect is nothing to sneeze at, it still doesn't account for the majority of ice loss.
I also haven't seen any discussion of why winds were higher during this period and I'm curious about whether global warming might be a factor there was well.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Hey Rabbit, I was wondering if you could explain this graph to me.
Someone posted it on Facebook as proof that climate change was happening. As you well know, I'm a believer in climate change, but it seems odd to look at just a 30 year period, and at that, less than 20 years of sustained above average warming and call that proof. So can you explain it to me? Is this graph statistically significant?
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
As far as I can tell, the graph is of difference from average temperature. That roughly half of the graph is above the average for the total time period will almost always be true, absent very dramatic changes, for any period you choose, whether that be warming, cooling, or staying about the same... That the half among the warmest is almost all in the latter time period is evidence of a remarkable upward trend.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Lyrhawn, fugu is right. The graph shows the Temperature anomaly, which is the deviation from the mean value over some time period. In this case, the time period is 1979 - present (last 33 years). If there was no warming or cooling trend over this time period, the red (positive) values would be randomly distributed through the time period. They aren't. Nearly all the red lines have been in the last 15 years which indicates a strong warming trend.
All I can really add to what fugu said is that this data (v5.4) comes the University of Alabama Huntsville and was calculated from microwave satellite measurements which only go back to 1979. Satellites don't measure temperature directly, they measure irradiance. That has to be deconvoluted to get near surface temperatures. They also have to adjust for differences between satellites and drift in the satellites with time. v5.4 refers for one algorithm for calculating the mean temperatures in different parts of the atmosphere from the satellite data. Different algorithms that are being used currently give slightly different answers even when they use the exact same satellite measurements, but the underlying trends are the same.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:The graph shows the Temperature anomaly, which is the deviation from the mean value over some time period. In this case, the time period is 1979 - present (last 33 years). If there was no warming or cooling trend over this time period, the red (positive) values would be randomly distributed through the time period. They aren't. Nearly all the red lines have been in the last 15 years which indicates a strong warming trend.
I guess my question is, is that historically abnormal? We might only have been keeping track of temperatures for the last century and change, but we have ice core data and other ways of testing what the temperature was like for thousands of years. Is a 15 year warming trend statistically significant?
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
Why do the abnormal temperatures start so dramatically near the end of 1997? It looks like someone flipped a switch.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: Why do the abnormal temperatures start so dramatically near the end of 1997? It looks like someone flipped a switch.
There is no "normal". The zero line is the average temperature from 1979 and the present. Half the values are above the average and half are below because it's an average. The fact that temperatures after 1997 are nearly all above the average while those before 1997 are nearly all below the average shows that that temperatures have been rising for the past 30 years. There is no sudden switch, I you look at data for the past
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tstorm: The best thing to do with regards to plastic bags from stores, is to avoid them completely. Bring your own cloth, reusable bags, whenever possible.
I actually reuse the plastic bags I receive from stores as trash sacks. Sometimes I just forget to bring my own bags to the grocery store, so having a few of these doesn't hurt me. Since I only have one small wastebasket full of trash every week (or slightly more), these work fine for trash sacks.
From what I've read, practically none of the plastics labeled as 'biodegradable' ever degrade, especially when they are buried.
I have a vermicomposter, and I threw one of those green plastic compost bags in it about six months ago. It's still around, but even the corn cobs that took forever (compared to fruits) are gone. It's probably not going to go until the time-bomb goes off and it shatters into a million pieces (great idea, but such a mess, because I hoard bags).
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Just post anything here and I'll move things around as needed in the first 5 spots to keep it readily accessible. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)