Merged Global Warming Discussion II: Heated Conversation

[icebear]

China is starting to build thorium reactors. The use of coal will probably keep them all alive until those reactors are up and running, they can clean up then.

 

[macdoc]

No they are not. They are researching it

n a $350 million research program to evaluate the use of thorium as an alternative nuclear fission fuel source.

http://theenergycollective.com/roda...akout-series-focuses-china-s-interest-thorium

LWR can and have run thorium anyway.

Coal's days are numbered

World Bank to limit financing of coal-fired plants | Reuters
www.reuters.com/.../us-worldbank-climate-coal-idUSBRE96F19U20130...‎
Jul 16, 2013 - The Bank will amend its lending policies for new coal-fired power ... like Brazil and China - which relies heavily on coal for its ballooning energy ..

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/16/us-worldbank-climate-coal-idUSBRE96F19U20130716

China is quite comfortable admitting AGW is real and doing a lot of cournter the worst of it.

They've move on....you have not even got to that basic stage.

It's getting warmer
We're responsible.

 

[aleCcowaN]

I think Galileo is the AGW denier scientist of choice.

Yes, because Galileo argued that there is just one sole or important tide a day always and everywhere in order to "prove" and as a consequence of the Earth spinning and rotating around the Sun -variations in tides were a consequence of Copernican epicycles- (Discorsso del flusso e reflusso del mare).

That means that Galileo also indulged in epistemological hedonism sometimes -as denialists almost exclusively do- to prove his case. But surely denialists would select "to be persecuted" and "to make mistakes while looking for a new theory of sciences" as the attributes for comparison simply because epistemological hedonism works that way.

 

[Arnold Martin]

Oh yeah - he didn't answer the question...

Tillson the head of Exxon thinks AGW is a significant risk.


http://breakingenergy.com/2013/05/2...es-significant-risk-but-outcome-is-uncertain/

Who's correct...Tillson or AM...?? He keeps dodging this.

I am not dodging anything Macdoc .... I took a trip to somewhere warm to get some sand in my crack .... now I am back working in freezing Canada ....

On the subject of ExxonMobil Chief Executive Rex Tillerson I completely agree with these other points he made in the article.....

..... Tillerson acknowledged the risks posed by climate change at the company’s annual meeting on May 29, but he stressed that the real-world consequences of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels remain unknown.

..... But he cast doubt on the certainty with which forecasts can be made about what climate change may mean in practical terms.

....our ability to project the future with any degree of certainty continues to be very limited,” he said.

.... “Our ability to understand all the relationships between emissions, the environment and the feedback loops continues to be one of the scientific community’s grand challenges,” said Tillerson.

..... He added that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledges limits to the accuracy of its models’ climate change forecasts.

.... They publish a very broad range of possible outcomes because they acknowledge the model’s competencies are questionable,” Tillerson said.

..... We do not have a readily available replacement for the energy that provides the means of living that the world has today

..... “Windmills won’t do it, solar panels won’t do it, biofuels won’t do it.”

..... “What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers in the process of those efforts, if you don’t know what the outcome is going to be?”

 

[Arnold Martin]

You DO know that weather is NOT climate, correct?

.


It has been said on this forum that when we discuss unusual cold weather it is not related to climate change

However the IPCC indicates weather is indeed related

(quote) The Special Report brings together scientific communities with expertise in three very different aspects of managing risks of extreme weather and climate events.

Extreme weather and climate events have figured prominently in past IPCC assessments.

from the preface : https://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/SREX-All_FINAL.pdf

 

[Pixel42]

On the subject of ExxonMobil Chief Executive Rex Tillerson I completely agree with these other points he made in the article.....

It is indeed exceedingly difficult to accurately forecast what the consequences of human activities will be on global average temperatures, let alone what the consequences will be in term of regional changes in climate, and that is indeed the reason for the wide range in the predictions the IPCC reports quote. That does not, of course, mean that we can simply ignore the problem, especially when even the best case scenarios suggest those consequences are likely to be serious.

It has been said on this forum that when we discuss unusual cold weather it is not related to climate change

However the IPCC indicates weather is indeed related

It's true that more extreme weather events are expected as a result of climate change, but it remains problematic to link any particular extreme weather event to the underlying warming trend.

It's a bit like the link between smoking and lung cancer: it's not possible to know whether any particular smoker who gets lung cancer is one of the 10-20% that would have got it anyway or the 80-90% who only got it because they smoked, but it is possible to know that the more people who smoke, the more cases of lung cancer there will be.

 

[Arnold Martin]

Coal is the first target to be eliminated as the damage from it's use cost more than the beneift it produces....

Tar sands are no where near the issue other than being inefficient at producing oil and using more energy than needed tho it's been getting better....

Coal is only making the pigs like Koch fat.... at every one else's expense ......

.
I certainly agree with your first two sentences (thank you)

But I take issue with your Koch comment highlighted above.

Coal burning plants are extremely polluting ... we all know that ... but they provide us electric power at fairly low cost .... all Koch is doing is supplying the Coal to keep the fires burning for us and for the electricity we want and need.

We consumers are to blame .... not Koch or any energy companies.

If all of us stopped using electricity and stopped driving our cars , and stopped flying around the world , Koch & associates would be out of business in an instant.

But we do not want to stop

We prefer to blame an imaginary enemy like big oil or big coal .... it lets us off the hook.

Thus we continue using and wasting fossil energy like always .... we drive and fly all we want ..... we buy shiploads of China Junk manufactured by billowing smokestacks ....

Then we walk across the aisle at the airport and place our empty plastic water bottle in the recycling bin.

And convince ourselves we are saving the planet.

Best wishes.

 

[Arnold Martin]

.
MacDoc

I have a question for you

I understand you live in Ontario Canada .... and many of your coal fired plants have been shut down.

I am assuming you have plenty of coal at low cost and I have often wondered why a coal gasification plant similar to the one in North Dakota has never been built in your area ??

Maybe there is a drawback or a good reason it has not been done. I have always felt it was a good system .... it is a closed loop and no pollutants are released into the atmosphere.

The one in North Dakota has operated for profit since 1984 .... I believe there is a similar plant in Germany.

http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/gasification/gasifipedia/

http://www.dakotagas.com/About_Us/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Gasification_Company

Thank You
AM

 

[Mikemcc]

.
I certainly agree with your first two sentences (thank you)

But I take issue with your Koch comment highlighted above.

Coal burning plants are extremely polluting ... we all know that ... but they provide us electric power at fairly low cost .... all Koch is doing is supplying the Coal to keep the fires burning for us and for the electricity we want and need.

We consumers are to blame .... not Koch or any energy companies.

If all of us stopped using electricity and stopped driving our cars , and stopped flying around the world , Koch & associates would be out of business in an instant.

But we do not want to stop

We prefer to blame an imaginary enemy like big oil or big coal .... it lets us off the hook.

Thus we continue using and wasting fossil energy like always .... we drive and fly all we want ..... we buy shiploads of China Junk manufactured by billowing smokestacks ....

Then we walk across the aisle at the airport and place our empty plastic water bottle in the recycling bin.

And convince ourselves we are saving the planet.

Best wishes.

Coal burning stations are only cheap because external costs are ignored by power producers:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=44 (provives various links to the base studies...

Also coal gasification is good in terms of easy of scrubbing (happens before combustion) but does nothing to mitigate CO2. A combined coal gasification plant with CCS would be very interesting but CCS technology is still 20 years plus away, even if they solve the energy and geological problems associated with CCS.

 

[macdoc]

We consumers are to blame .... not Koch or any energy companies.

If all of us stopped using electricity and stopped driving our cars , and stopped flying around the world , Koch & associates would be out of business in an instant.

But we do not want to stop

We prefer to blame an imaginary enemy like big oil or big coal .... it lets us off the hook.

Thus we continue using and wasting fossil energy like always .... we drive and fly all we want ..... we buy shiploads of China Junk manufactured by billowing smokestacks ....

No -
You are the pilot in command....do you let your passengers dictate how you fly and what you do damage to? Undertake known risky behaviours because they want you to.?

Do you take responsibility for actions you take?
Yes and you tell passengers who "want" to do known dangerous things...no.

This is the role of government to limit excursions by any group that is dangerous to the common weal.

The point you bring up is a good one and it deflates the argument about we'll all go broke.

It's expensive to run a safe organization - be it helicopter or a power system.
Look at Ornge for the former. Orgne flouted safety standards, paid it's executives millions, cut corners, conned a stupid government and people died and the pilots walked out

Flying is safe because of dedicated people who keep it safe along with long developed government guidelines that move forward as new information comes to light.....we can't do the same careless things as we used to.
You know that very well if you've been flying for a few decades.

We KNOW now how damaging coal is globally and responsible governments are moving to curb the damage EVEN IF IN SOME CASES IT COSTS MORE out of the gate.
Irresponsible organizations like Koch are resisting this to preserve their billions.

But the first step in limiting the damage fossil fuel is doing is admitting there is a problem as at long last companies like Exxon and BHP Billiton and others are doing.

We can't have a rational conversation with you until you are willing to admit there is a problem to be dealt with.
Coal pollution is a problem both for C02 and for SO2 and other aerosols and ground pollution from waste.

The first world has other choices. Ontario has made the choice to move from 25% coal to zero this year....in a decade.

Yes it will cost to close the final plant at Nanticoke, yes it is worthwhile as natural gas and renewables take up the slack and a deal with HydroQuebec with their new facility down the road will be both mostly carbon neutral and cost effective.

ANY consumer can cut the increased electricity costs.
The poor already get the first 5-700 kwh at a very reduced rate.
I have changed my habits, I do the washing in cold water, I use the dryer rarely and the dishwasher even more rarely and I do them at night when the rates are half of prime time rates.
So despite rising costs per kwh and an energy intensive type of home business our costs remain flat.
One client who is in the energy saving field runs an entire office and light manufacturing facility on $200 worth of electricity a month just to show what can be done.
http://www.nextenergy.ca

As rates rise, people can, will and are adapting.

Getting rid of coal use in the first world is an achievable goal but it's up to the pilot in command to make that decision and not listen to naysayers.

Companies like Koch have a whole paid contingent - spending 10's of millions to sway public opinion against that and buy politicians in the US outright.

How ironic is this?

As power of coal industry declines, coal baron asks Supreme Court for help buying politicians
Chris Tackett
Business / Corporate Responsibility
October 9, 2013

We shouldn't be surprised. An entire industry is slowly dying, so, of course, the coal barons that see their power fading are not going to just sit idly by on their fortunes and watch their demise. No, they are going to go out fighting as they try to once again use their money and diminishing power to mold the reality to suit their needs. But unfortunately for them and everyone else, the climate has changed and they helped us change it. The planet is warmer from burning their wares. Yes, the coal industry is dying, as it must, but it isn't going to go quietly.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United States heard McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission, which may become as much a chapter of the history of climate change as it is a case about campaign finance law. And unfortunately for the US public and humans around the world, this case has the potential to really change America in dangerous ways.

http://www.treehugger.com/corporate...s-supreme-court-approval-buy-politicians.html

So now you have the vast majority of the science community informing you that as the planetary safety officers, they have identified a safety threat that needs attending to and new rules are being put in place to limit that risk.

Even Exxon admits that risk.

Are you going to be a responsible pilot and heed them or a yahoo?
Let the rules for a safe industry or a safe planet be bent and broken to preserve the wealth of a few?

You've seen time and again in the airline industry what slack management a dn cutting corners leads to.

The planet is the only craft we have. Let's maintain it with what we know, not dictated by coal billionaires out to preserve their profits and use the atmosphere as a free sewer.

Denying the risk at this time withour state of knowledge?? Not responsible thoughtful action at all.

 

[Megalodon]

Do you really intend to suggest that none of the AGW faithful spread apocalyptic predictions? They're pretty easy to find. So how 'bout you moderate the "immensely stupid" talk, huh? Can't we have a friendly discussion?
Maybe with Earth in the balance, no.

If you find me one "AGW faithful" that claims that "CO2 is a super horrible poison like curare and cyanide", then I will withdraw my assessment of that quote.

And I really can't have a friendly discussion with someone who slanders a whole professional class, even if the only thing they manage to prove is their willful ignorance.

 

[Loss Leader]

Once again, a large number of posts have been moved to AAH. Any discussion of "climategate" belongs in the Conspiracy Theories section. Bickering and incivility belongs nowhere. Political issues relating to the problem of global warming are topical here so long as they do not suggest any sort of conspiracy. Thank you for your cooperation in making this thread as informative as possible.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Loss Leader

 

[macdoc]

Originally Posted by Arnold Martin View Post
It has been said on this forum that when we discuss unusual cold weather it is not related to climate change

That has not been said by the people that understand a bit what is going on and have followed the science.
It IS claimed by the denier crowd as proof that AGW is not happening.
There have been any number of explanations of why weather extremes are part and parcel of warming atmosphere.
We are destabilizing the the Arctic weather, the area where the warming is most pronounced.
It has consequences for mid- latitude weather patterns as well.

It IS getting warmer globally and in some areas more than others.....

2013 was hottest year on record in Australia, Bureau of Meteorology says
Updated Fri 3 Jan 2014, 6:18pm AEDT


VIDEO: BoM explains the science behind its Annual Climate Statement, which compares temperatures going back to 1910.
MAP: Australia
Australia has just sweltered through its hottest year on record, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

Average temperatures were 1.20 degrees Celsius above the long-term average of 21.8C, breaking the previous record set in 2005 by 0.17C, the bureau said in its Annual Climate Statement.

All states and territories recorded above average temperatures in 2013, with Western Australia, Northern Territory and South Australia all breaking annual average temperature records.

And every month of 2013 had national average temperatures at least 0.5C above normal, according to the statement.

Heat maps: Australia's hottest year


See our detailed graphical breakdown of the year's temperature and rainfall data.
The country recorded its hottest day on January 7 - a month which also saw the hottest week and hottest month since records began in 1910.

A new record was set for the number of consecutive days the national average temperature exceeded 39C – seven days between January 2 and 8, 2013, almost doubling the previous record of four consecutive days in 1973.

The highest temperature recorded during 2013 was 49.6C at Moomba in South Australia on January 12, which was the highest temperature in Australia since 1998.

Further, with mean temperatures across Australia generally well above average since September 2012, long periods of warmer-than-average days have been common, with a distinct lack of cold weather, the statement says.

The release of 2013 weather data prompted heated debate among our audience. Read what some people had to say here.
Nights have also been warmer than average, but less so than days.

The country has experienced just one cooler-than-average year in the last decade - 2011.

Australian temperatures have warmed approximately 1C since 1950, consistent with global climate trends.

Globally, each of the past 13 years since 2001 have ranked among the 14 warmest on record.

more
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-03/2013-was-the-hottest-year-on-record-for-australia/5183040

Dealing with it
Mitigation for the future....
those are difficult issues for regions and the global community.

 

[lomiller]

Real ice ages had cosmic causes, and there were decades or centuries worth of warning. We're not in any danger of that.

I'm not sure if the earths orbit directing more sunlight into the northern hemisphere in spring qualifies as a cosmic cause.

The end of the last glaciation featured ~5000 years of warming at an average of 0.013 Deg C per decade. Current warming is 10 -15 times faster

The Little Ice Age and other similar shifts amount to centuries-long fluctuations in the output of a star

By "a star" I presume you mean the Sun. This is far from confirmed, in recent years the finger is increasingly pointed elsewhere. In any case it amounted to ~0.5 Deg C cooling over several hundred years. Current warming is ~10X faster.

there was little if any warning.

Warning isn't much of an issue. Changes in solar output from these events are too small to effect rapid climate change.

 

[macdoc]

Arnold Martin

I am not dodging anything Macdoc .... I took a trip to somewhere warm to get some sand in my crack .... now I am back working in freezing Canada ....

On the subject of ExxonMobil Chief Executive Rex Tillerson I completely agree with these other points he made in the article.....

..... Tillerson acknowledged the risks posed by climate change at the company’s annual meeting on May 29., but he stressed that the real-world consequences of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels remain unknown.

..... But he cast doubt on the certainty with which forecasts can be made about what climate change may mean in practical terms.

....our ability to project the future with any degree of certainty continues to be very limited,” he said.

.... “Our ability to understand all the relationships between emissions, the environment and the feedback loops continues to be one of the scientific community’s grand challenges,” said Tillerson

So you agree that C02 is affecting the climate and that there are serious risks??
That is after all what he stated.

forget the rest of the avoidance of litigation squirming .....Big Tobacco tried the same tactic....didn't work.

The fossil fuel companies knew very well emissions were impacting the climate back in 1995.

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

By ANDREW C. REVKINPublished: April 23, 2009

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html?_r=2

Their chosen course of action was to deny the reality of AGW as you have been doing to date and dodge the responsibility of their actions on the climate while making billions doing so.
To the point where it took a board level revolt by the Rockefellers to stop the denial industry funding.

Highly profitable industries need to take responsibility for consequences just as Exxon and BP were forced into by the courts in the Valdez and BP oil platform cases.

It took court action to force SO2 abatement in the 70s and 80s.
Tillerson is desperately trying to avoid that while acknowledging fossil fuel induced climate change and that it presents a serious risk.

Make it clear.

Now you say you agree with Tillerson
Use of fossil fuels is changing the climate? There are serious risks in doing so?
Once you get to that point, then the discussion of consequences, how best to mitigate them and best approaches to reduce emissions leading to a carbon neutral civilization can begin.

Are you at that point?

 

[macdoc]

One of the "risks" we've already seen is slated to get worse...

Devastating El Niño events to double this century

18:00 19 January 2014 by Michael Slezak
For similar stories, visit the Climate Change Topic Guide

Extreme El Niño events, that can kill tens of thousands of people, will be twice as common this century because of climate change. The finding adds to the evidence that global warming will cause ever more extreme weather.

http://www.newscientist.com/article...ents-to-double-this-century.html#.UtyW7nn0B_w

The Economist take on the last major one in 1997-98 ( fancy that )

snip

The last major El Niño, during 1997 and 1998, is estimated to have caused up to $45 billion in damage and killed 23,000 people. It brought flooding to the Americas and Africa, tropical cyclones to Pacific islands, and droughts and wildfires to Australia and south-east Asia.

AGW is not some future event....the consequences are now....El Nino is already a nasty bit of earth violence....we're just feeding the beast.

http://www.economist.com/node/15501877

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

What I find odd is that the denier crowd does not understand that the climate science community welcomes any mechanism that buys time to to start curbing CO2 emissions.

But they don't. One of the AGW faithful (a big name I cannot at the moment recall) opposed fertilizing the oceans on the grounds that this would only buy humanity 200 years or so. That's a lot of time to improve climate science and ameliorative technology.

 

[macdoc]

The needed conversation...

Global warming: The conversation we need to have
Jan 15, 2014 by Anji Seth

Change in heat content in the upper 2000 m of the world’s oceans. Credit: NOAA

We all know the earth's climate is changing. The effects are inescapable no matter where we live. Here in New England, some changes are subtle (more humidity, consistently warmer nights), dramatic (more intense rainfall events), confusing (bigger snowfall events), and dangerous (more powerful hurricanes). The science tells us these are expected in a warming world, and indeed, we see them.

We also know that we are in the driver's seat for these changes. Our burning of oil, coal, and natural gas – fuels that have been extracted from fossil reserves buried in Earth's crust – is changing the composition of the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases constitute a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, but their ability to trap heat has made the difference between Earth being a frozen ice-ball of a planet and the relatively balmy one we inhabit. Greenhouse gases do this by preventing heat from escaping to space, just as a blanket tucked around a child at night keeps her warm. We are adding to this greenhouse gas blanket, and earth is warming up.

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-global-conversation.html

it's too bad the "we all know" does not seem to include a certain contingent set on avoiding reality.

snip....take away

Let us not be distracted by those who misuse data in order to create doubt about global warming. Their purpose is to delay the important conversation.

Let us instead turn the conversation to: What can be done to mitigate the worst-case scenarios and to prepare for the unavoidable ones? What is already being done? What do we collectively need to do?
On these pressing questions there are many constructive arguments to be made.
At UConn, we are having lively conversations that have resulted in action plans to
(1) reduce CO2 emissions and
(2) adapt infrastructure and systems across campus.
Let's focus on actions, not distractions. Let's get to the right conversation.

Great idea..

 

[Trakar]

But they don't. One of the AGW faithful (a big name I cannot at the moment recall) opposed fertilizing the oceans on the grounds that this would only buy humanity 200 years or so. That's a lot of time to improve climate science and ameliorative technology.

So, this un-named influencer is responsible for thwarting action that would have somehow ended all AGW forcing issues?

Cite or reference?

 

[Haig]

it's too bad the "we all know" does not seem to include a certain contingent set on avoiding reality.

Avoiding reality! that's pure projection

You love stick up your little graph based on how many data points? Here's some cold water for you ... The oceans are not warming either unless you count the guesstimates from before accurate measurements were available. This unexpected anomaly of non-warming of the ocean is precisely why the “missing heat” problem was first raised by Trenberth. Now sure he proposes the heat is going in the deep ocean and sure someone has bodged up a 700m to 2000m ocean temperature graph that purports to show this deep ocean heat capture based on roughly 3 data points but only the pessimistic/gullible are fooled. In reality, as Pielke said in his fuller statement, it is utterly unphysical to suggest that heat can bypass the top layers of ocean and head straight to the murky depths. Remember that when they tell you it’s all based on “simple” physics. Simple physics tells us the 700m-2000m graph MUST be wrong. Occams razor suggests there is no missing heat because the hypothesis is wrong.

Man-made global warming it's just nature ...

Antartic http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/antarctic.seaice.color.000.png

Artic http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticicennowcast.gif

Antarctica Has Sea Ice Rabbit Ears, a V for Victory or Maybe It’s a Peace Sign?…