Educated" opinions on climate change - Part 5 11

[ewh]

Time to throw some more coal on the fire. According to the recently released German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU, available here

http://www.wbgu.de/wbgu_sn2009_en.html)

-
"... the WBGU study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020 -- in other words, quit carbon entirely within ten years."
I guess we had better start practising holding our breath!

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[moltenmetal]

cranky: who said I wasn't willing to "walk the walk"? You don't know me- accusing me of hypocrisy is a bit rich!

I've managed to cut my own home's energy consumption by 30%+ and I've reduced my personal transport energy use by about 40%. Neither were all that high to start with.

But what I can do personally isn't the issue, since it amounts to nothing. One idiot with a Hummer and electric resistance heating cancels me out.

The payback period of my capital investments to reduce my energy consumption are so long that they make no (current) economic sense. Yet YOU benefit from my reduced consumption.

While externalities in energy economics continue to exist, your consumption becomes MY business. All I want is for you to pay as you go, so your choices are NOT my f"ing business- truly.

AGW is just one of MANY externalities represented by the current energy economy.

rb: statements like that make me wonder if you have ever objectively looked at the AGW debate. Rather, you want it PROVEN before you are asked to spend a dime on it. This issue does not afford us that option.

 

[cranky108]

moltenmetal, Was I accusing you of hypocrisy? Did I specifically mention your name? (Actually my first thought was Al Gore).

What does electric resistance heating have to do with carbon? In the Northwest, most electricity comes from hydroelectric (I think, I don't live there). Is deforrestation really better than electric resistance heating?

I've tried to reduce my heating costs, but so far people only want to install solar, but no one want to fix them. So unless things change, in 15 or less years, those stupid things will all be broken and useless.

How exactually do I benifit from your reduced usage?

And for ideas that you don't want to hear, exactly what color is you roof? Is it white to reflect sun light, or is it a dark color so it gets hot and heats the air.

Your right, I don't know you. I am only interested in hearing ideas, and presenting mine. If you want me to change, however, you need to convence me with facts.
So show me real facts, or a new point of view. Just don't try to tell me how to run my life.

And stay away from my wallet.

 

[moltenmetal]

Sorry cranky- I took that personally and didn't need to. Both of us can poke fun at Al Gore's hypocrisy.

"How exactually do I benifit from your reduced usage?"

Since you don't understand that point, my argument is entirely lost on you.

As to resistance heating: the WORST a heat pump can do is the best a resistance heater can do. And a properly-designed heat pump can do a great deal better. Consider that most electricity in North America is not generated from hydro- a great deal of it originates from fossil fuels.

 

[rb1957]

mm,
when the Mann "hockey stick" was IMHO proven to be little more than a fabrication, that was about the time when i thought this is a crock.

 

[cranky108]

Heat pumps do work well, except below 32 degrees. At that point most heat pumps use electric resistance heating.

I once had a pellet stove, and I loved it. Except we had to import the wood pellets from 250 + miles away.
To me this seemed a very carbon frendly technology. The wood was used for something, then converted to wood pellets.
However this fact is lost on the green religin people.

Also lost is the whole idea that most of the heat comes from the sun. Gee, lets color our roofs black to make it hotter here.

So with the greens not looking at alternite ideas, they really can't be that concerned about the globe.

 

[josephv]

Global Warming Changing Inuit Lands, Lives, Arctic Expedition Shows

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070515-inuit-arctic.html

 

[GregLocock]

Not half as big a change in lifestyle as you will see in your lifestyle if the global warming alarmists get their way.

Incidentally I saw this rather nice line when discussing whether man should modify his environment "Britain used up entire mountains of coal in the 19th century. That resource is largely exhausted but so what? We got the Industrial Revolution in exchange, something that continues to pay serious dividends."

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[jmw]

Thanks for the link JosephP but that's a 2007 report (I get caught like this as well).
In the last 2 years arctic ice has been reported as responding to lowered temperatures in its extent and the reduced summer melt.





JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[owg]

jmw - "last two years" is weather not climate", whichever camp it favours.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[jmw]

I was being a bit generous before.
Yes, thanks for the link. No problems.

But what did we get?
A scientific survey with raw data?

This is a story by an "explorer" and it is anecdotal and possibly very selective.

It gives some useful indication of changes in the climate experienced by some people but can they be useful in determining AGW?

There is a worrying aspect to this report in that the expedition didn't visit the Inuit, discuss things in general, note some disproportionate emphasis on changes related to warming and then formulate some ideas based on that discovery, ideas that could inform proper scientific research.

Instead the expedition set out to "prove" something they already "knew":

The 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) journey was the first in a series of planned expeditions called Global Warming 101 designed to raise awareness of the impacts of climate change in the polar regions.

In other words the expedition was designed to collect information, stories, anecdotes etc that supported a particular pre-conceived idea. They didn't take along any instruments to measure what they expected to find.

This doesn't mean suppressing any information, it just means asking questions that draw out only the information sought.

There is an episode of Yes Minister where Sir Humphrey explains how to make a survey deliver the result you want.

http://users.aims.ac.za/~mackay/probability/survey.html

It is the easiest thing in the world to get the answers you need.

Given the objectives of this expedition it would be very surprising if they didn't find what they wanted, and especially if they chose where to go with some care.

If I wanted to prove the existence of UFOs through anecdotal evidence I could do it by finding and asking the right sort of people (whom I could find on the internet Roswell sites etc.).

....and more about the remote Inuit population living on the edge of the Arctic.

so note that it wasn't a complete survey of all Inuits with a prepared and tested questionnaire but a selective visit to "the edge of the Arctic"... whatever that means. A well chosen route?

Is there any pretence at gathering information from a true cross section of Inuit?

We don't know.

The article doesn't have a route map, it doesn't show where and when they spoke to people, it doesn't list their exact question and answers at each location.

This isn't to say that in any one fact the report is wrong. It isn't to say that the Arctic wasn't warming - at that time - just that it is rather short of anything that supports any one hypothesis or another.

But the telling statement was this: (I'm surprised they included it)
{quote]But "we have lived in this region for centuries and we will continue to," he added. "As the climate changes, we will adapt." [/quote]
Sensible man.




JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

Ice today:

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/i...c-ice-melt-at-lowest-levels-in-satellite-era/

See their links.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

Sorry, that's Antarctic report... I'll get back to you on the Arctic.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[josephv]

Satellite survey reveals dramatic Arctic sea-ice thinning

"Kwok and colleagues at NASA and the University of Washington, in Seattle, report that Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thin seasonal ice replacing thick, older ice as the dominant type for the first time on record."

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/2009-19.html

 

[owg]

Can someone explain to me the relevance of a short term Arctic Ice study (interesting as it is) to Global Warming, when we are advised that 10 years of global temperature cooling or at least lack of increase is just a normal pause in an upward trend, and that we will need to wait at least 20 more years to determine if this is a climatic change and not just the weather doing its thing.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[owg]

Here is a link to a story which illustrates why we need a list of "silly" projects.

HAZOP at www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[b2theory]

mm,
when the Mann "hockey stick" was IMHO proven to be little more than a fabrication, that was about the time when i thought this is a crock.

That highlights the difference between your opinion and reality. While your perception is that it was debunked, the reality is that his experiments have been repeated and yielded similar results. Not that I expect data to change any climate denier's mind but here:

S. Huang (2004). , Geophys. Res Lett., 31: L13205

J.H. Oerlemans (2005). , Science, 308: 675-677

Crowley and Lowery (2000). , Ambio, 29: 51-54. Modified as published in Crowley (2000). , Science, 289: 270-277

J. Esper, E.R. Cook, and F.H. Schweingruber (2002). , Science, 295(5563): 2250-2253

A. Moberg, D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén (2005). , Nature, 443: 613-617


As far as solutions being good, silly, or questionable, I would suggest a different metric.


Possible Now:
Nuclear
Geothermal (will be geographically limited)
Coal gasification (supplement Aerospace fuels)


Maybe Possible in the Future
Wind (will be geographically limited)
Solar (Possible in some areas, Production needs to increase by three orders of magnitude in order for it ever to be a significant energy source)
Tidal (where available)


Will Never be Possible:
Bio-fuels
Biomass
*People who suggest either of these have no concept of the scale of our energy consumption. Mathematically, it is impossible for these ever to be a significant energy source. If you want raw numbers I can supply.
Hydrogen (not an actual energy source)

 

[jmw]

Meanwhile, on the subject of tree rings, that ultra green and fanatical supporter of Anthropogenic Climate Change, the BBC, published this article on tree ring research......

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8311000/8311373.stm

Of course, this is another correlation but it is just that, a correlation, we need a causation, a mechanism to account for it and we are very dubious about tree rings these days.

(I wonder, as the Huns destroyed their legions, if the Romans experienced the same doubts about chicken entrails?)


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[owg]

b2theory - I like your revised metric. I will recast the list. The one issuez that I am wondering about are coal gasification and scrubbing CO2 from coal fired generator flue gases. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have a presentation on line on the CO2 removal from generator flue gas dated 1991. Perhaps with modern control systems the flue gas will not vary so much as it used to. There is a lot of work and money going into flue gas scrubbing and burial of CO2. I still have not seen an energy balance. Coal gasification I suspect will be a specialized application. Is your reference to aerospace fuels hydrogen?

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[b2theory]

Is your reference to aerospace fuels hydrogen?

It is more a recognition that there isn't a path to a practical alternative to turbofans and Hydrocarbon fuels. The engines keep getting more and more efficient, and jet fuel is one of the safest way to carry extremely dense energy with you.

If we hope to maintain our travel habits, we will have to accept that we will use hydrocarbon fuels for air travel well beyond the period where oil will be cheap. The military has recognized this. They are rapidly getting every airfame certified to use both syth and biofuels. If I had to choose between the two, I would pick coal based syth fuel and find away to removed the CO2 generated by their use from the atmosphere.

I don't think it would be wise to wait for someone to make a practical electric aircraft. For now and with anything that anyone has even imagined at this point, the energy densities are too low.