The "Pause" - A Review of Its Significance and Importance to Climate Science 77

[rconnor]

----------Introduction---------
A comparison of recent temperature trends in isolation of earlier data, say 1998-present, to long(er)-term temperature trends, say 1970-present, reveals that more recent temperature trends are lower than long-term temperature trends. This has led many, including many prominent climate scientists, to refer to the recent period as a “pause”, “hiatus” or “slowdown”. While in isolation of any other context besides two temperature trends, the term “pause” or “hiatus” may be quasi-accurate, much more context is required to determine whether these terms are statistically and, more importantly, physically accurate.

It should be noted that most times when these terms are used by climate scientists, they keep the quotation marks to indicate the mention-form of the word and are not implying an actual physical pause or hiatus in climate change. The subsequent research into the physical mechanism behind the “pause” has continually demonstrated that it is not indicative of a pause in climate change nor does it suggest a drastic reduction in our estimates of climate sensitivity. However, this fact appears to be lost on many who see the “pause” as some kind of death-blow to the anthropogenic climate change theory or to the relevancy of climate change models.

While this subject has been discussed repeatedly in these forums, it has never been the focus but rather used as a jet-pack style argument to change the conversation from the subject at hand to the “pause” (“Well that can’t be right because the Earth hasn’t warmed in X years!”). Revisiting past threads, I cannot find an example of where someone attempted to defend the “pause” as a valid argument against anthropogenic climate change. It is brought up, debunked and then not defended (and then gets brought up again 5 posts later). The hope is to discuss the scientific literature surrounding the “pause” to help readers understand why the “pause” is simply not a valid argument. While some points have been discussed (usually by me) before, this post does contain new research as well as 2014 and 2015 temperature data, which shed even more light on the topic. The post will be split into three parts: 1) the introduction (and a brief discussion on satellite versus surface station temperature data sets), 2) Does the “pause” suggest that climate change is not due to anthropogenic CO2? and 3) Does the “pause” suggest that climate models are deeply flawed?

------Why I Will Be Using Ground-Based Temperature Data Sets-------
Prior to going into the meat of the discussion, I feel it necessary to discuss why I will be using ground-based temperature data sets and not satellite data sets. Perhaps one of the most hypocritical and confused (or purposefully misleading) arguments on many “skeptic” blogs is the disdain for all ground-based temperature data sets and the promotion of satellite temperature data sets. The main contention with ground-based temperature data sets is that they do not include raw data and require homogenization techniques to produce their end result. While I am not here (in this thread) to discuss the validity of such techniques, it is crucial to understand that satellite temperature data sets go through a much more involved and complex set of calculations, adjustments and homogenizations to get from their raw data to their end product. Both what they measure and where they measure it are very important and highlights the deep confusion (or purposeful misdirection) of “skeptic” arguments that ground-based temperatures are rubbish and satellite-based temperatures are “better”.

[ul][li]Satellites measure radiances in different wavelength bands, not temperature. These measurements are mathematically inverted to obtain indirect inferences of temperature (Uddstrom 1988). Satellite data is closer to paleoclimate temperature reconstructions than modern ground-based temperature data in this way.[/li]
[li]Satellite record is constructed from a series of satellites, meaning the data is not fully homogeneous (Christy et al, 1998). Various homogenization techniques are required to create the record. (RSS information)[/li]
[li]Satellites have to infer the temperature at various altitudes by attempting to mathematically remove the influence of other layers and other interference (RSS information). This is a very difficult thing to do and the methods have gone through multiple challenges and revisions. (Mears and Wentz 2005, Mears et al 2011, Fu et al 2004)[/li]
[li]Satellites do not measure surface temperatures. The closest to “surface” temperatures they get are TLT which is an loose combination of the atmosphere centered roughly around 5 km. It is also not even a direct measurement channel (which themselves are not measuring temperature directly) but a mathematically adjustment of other channels. Furthermore, due to the amount of adjustments involved, TLT has constantly required revisions to correct errors and biases (Christy et al 1998, Fu et al 2005).[/li]
[li]See the discussion on Satellite data sets in IPCC Report (section 3.4.1.2)[/li]
[li]Satellite data and the large amount of homogenization and adjustments required to turn the raw data into useful temperature data are still being question to this day. Unlike ground-based adjustments which lead to trivial changes in trends (from the infamous Karl et al 2015), recent research shows that corrections of perhaps 30% are required for satellite data (Weng et al 2013 .[/li][/ul]

None of this is meant to say the satellite temperature data is “wrong” but it very clearly highlights the deep-set confusion in the “skeptic” camp about temperature data sets. If one finds themselves dismissing ground-based temperature data sets because they require homogenization or adjustments while claiming satellite temperature data sets are superior have simply been lead astray by “skeptics” or are trying to lead others astray. Furthermore, it clearly demonstrates that any attempt to compare satellite data (which measures the troposphere) to the surface temperature output of models is completely misguided (*cough*John Christy *cough*). It is for these reasons that I will use ground-based data in the rest of the post.

Again, I would like to state that I do not wish this to be a focal point of this discussion. I am merely outline why I will be using ground-based temperature data sets and my justification for that as, undoubtedly, someone would claim I should be using satellite temperature datasets. In fact, I appear to be in pretty good company; Carl Mears, one of the chief researchers of RSS (and the same Mears from all the papers above), stated:

My particular dataset (RSS tropospheric temperatures from MSU/AMSU satellites) show less warming than would be expected when compared to the surface temperatures. All datasets contain errors. In this case, I would trust the surface data a little more because the difference between the long term trends in the various surface datasets (NOAA, NASA GISS, HADCRUT, Berkeley etc) are closer to each other than the long term trends from the different satellite datasets. This suggests that the satellite datasets contain more “structural uncertainty” than the surface dataset

If this is a topic of interest to people, perhaps starting your own thread would be advisable as I will not be responding to comments on temperature data sets on this thread. Now, onto the actual discussion…

 

[moltenmetal]

zdas04: I can see a day, not too far off in the future, where most of our electricity is NOT generated from fossil fuels. At my current retail cost of electricity, it already makes economic sense for me to buy solar panels and put them on my roof. Load-shedding of this sort is going to grow by leaps and bounds in the next decade. Yes, I know that there's still peaking and off-peak generation to take care of, but in my own jurisdiction we're already at only 9.2% fossil and falling (100% of which is natural gas fired) on an annual average basis- the balance being nuclear and renewables. A decade ago, people in this jurisdiction would have thought that unimaginable.

Once people can generate more electricity than they need, they will start using it for transportation. That too is inevitable.

I would love to hasten that transition. The threat of global warming makes it imperative in my view, but it's still something we should be striving to bring to pass even (and I truly doubt this) AGW were to turn out to be insignificant.

I know you're in love with Fisher Tropsch, David, but it's a terribly wasteful technology. It makes no more energetic or economic or environmental sense to convert methane to liquid fuels by means of syngas conversion than it does to convert methane to hydrogen for fuels use. Sure, we will be forced to do this once we have no more liquid hydrocarbons to exploit, but I don't see the mass adoption of F-T type technologies as being any more likely in the near term than a total elimination of fossil fuels use. There are other gas-to-chemicals technologies that do now, or could in future, make economic sense- but if the desired product is liquid fuels, starting with syngas and then hydrogenating CO to produce hydrocarbons guarantees a huge efficiency hit. As a means of using methane that would otherwise be flared (whether it's methane or equimolar methane/CO2 from anaerobic degradation), it's a lovely concept but the devil is in the details. Nothing will happen without a regulatory or taxation driver, and even then there's always an alternative. F-T barely made sense at $120/bbl even with "free" gas feed, and it certainly doesn't make sense south of $50/bbl. The trouble is the nature of methane itself, just like the trouble with hydrogen is hydrogen itself, so I doubt an evolution of catalysts or other aspects of the technology is going to make much difference.

 

[IRstuff]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anosognosia?r=66

TTFN
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
homework forum: //

http://www.engineering.com/AskForum/aff/32.aspx

faq731-376 forum1529

 

[zdas04]

moltenmetal,
Interesting use of made up statistics. According to Wikipedia (I understand that many people reject Wikipedia out of hand, but this table is a compact representation of data that is consistent with other sources) the province of Ontario, Canada has nameplate generating capacity of 35,387 MW of generating capacity. About 1/3 of it is hydro (which is only "renewable" in the sense that new water falls from the sky, but dams do silt up and turbines do break, and many environmentalists hate dams even more than coal). Wind is 4% and solar is 0.3% of the total (remember that this is nameplate data so the actual power available at the latitude of Ontario is closer to 0.09%). Non-hydro, non-nuclear thermal generation is 38%.

Load shedding is simply one of the stupidest concepts ever to come out of a bureaucrat's sick mind. Basically it requires unloading very efficient generation capacity in favor of very inefficient generation capacity (solar panels tend to have nameplate output around 10% of the amount of sun that falls on them). When the sun goes down (or the wind stops) the efficient capacity takes the load back (often on very short notice) and must supply the sites that have foregone paying for storage capacity. The utility still has to have the peak capacity. New natural gas stations are usually co-gen that can reach 70% Carnot efficiency when running steady state. In transient operations the efficiency drops to the low 20% range, and the NOx/SOx numbers go from near zero to above emissions thresholds. The net result in many sites is that load shedding and renewable mandates has actually increased the amount of real pollutants that get dumped into the air.

Solar panels on your roof ONLY make economic sense (they may make operational sense to you if your grid power is unreliable for example) if you include massive government subsidies both to the manufacturer and the consumer. Add to that the government mandate that the utilities pay retail rates for the buy back (basically the power from your roof costs the utility 10 times the cost of power from traditional sources) and without "welfare for the greens" your solar panel would cost you close to 20 times the kW-hr cost of grid power. But you get to feel really good and warm and fuzzy about yourself and how you are personally saving the planet. What utter dreck.

I am anything but in love with Fischer-Tropsch. It is simply an example of a technology available today to turn methane into more valuable compounds. Economics (if we can keep the government on the sidelines) will dictate feasibility. When the crude is gone, some technology will fill the gap. If it isn't FT, it will be something else. Fossil crude will run out. I have no idea when, but it will. Since crude started with methane-rich decomposition products and under heat and extreme pressure over geologic time it became heavier species. We won't have geologic time available to us, so some clever chemistry will be required. I think that is what I said in my post above.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[rb1957]

@david,
"About 1/3 of it is hydro" ... mostly from Niagara (not dams), maybe Quebec (with James Bay) ?

I'd read the table as 50% nuke, 25% hydro, and 25% for everything else (between '10 and '11 there was a large drop in coal fired generators, if we're to believe our politicians).

agree that solar works 'cause of government policy ... wait for it ... incoming !
but what about the petroleum industry "support" ... damn, round 2 ...

IMHO, everything, Everything, in the public environment is policy driven; the science is only window-dressing.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[cranky108]

As I live in an area that can be devoured by fire, I choose to have a tile roof over solar panels. I also choose to not cut down living trees to install solar panels.
I do choose to cut down dead trees to heat my home.

So where exactly do solar panels fit? As solar panels only provide electricty, or heat, and not both, why are they better than harvesting dead trees for heat?
The answer is convience. Solar panels are so easy, but are not a complete answer.

Question: What is the biggest energy use in your home? Electricty or heat? Which really gives the biggest dent in your energy footprint?

I would be concerned about anyone who suggests deforrestation, as there are enviromental laws for errosion concerns.

 

[moltenmetal]

David, you've just pointed out brilliantly the reason people question Wikipedia.

Instead, visit the Independent Electrical System Operator of Ontario:

http://www.ieso.ca/

Or go to

http://www.gridwatch.ca

Just checked a minute ago. Current electrical production is 10.8% gas, with gas being the only fossil fuelsource. Yearly average from the monthly reports between June 2014 and June 2015 was 9.2% gas. We have 0% generation from coal. Our CO2 intensity is in the 40-60 g CO2/kWh range, compared with about 1000 g/kWh in Australia.

The panels and inverters I would buy are not subsidized. If another government is subsidizing their cost to me, I'm all for it! I would be buying and installing them outside the government's microFIT program, so no subsidy would accrue to me either. And yet, looking at what I'm paying (including taxes and all other fees), reducing my peak demand by buying solar panels absolutely makes economic sense.

Cranky, I'm already heating a home we added to, making it 50% larger in livable floor area than it was when we bought it- and we're heating it using 20% less energy than it took to heat the original home. I have a very high efficiency gas boiler for heating and a similar unit for domestic hot water, and the addition is superinsulated- and we've already done everything we reasonably can to improve the thermal performance of the remaining portions of the home, short of tearing it down to the studs and starting again- we did that in a few places too where the renos needed it done.

 

[zdas04]

That IESO link is interesting. Embedded solar generation capacity is 1,634 MW, but as of 2:00 EDT (height of the generating day) solar is putting out 97 MW. 6% of installed capacity. With about 9% of the sun hitting the panels being converted to electricity I get that it has maybe 0.54% efficiency?

They have a page called Supply Mix that shows current installed capacity of (in MW, as of September 2015):
[tt][ul]
[li]Nuclear.......12,978 (36.9%)[/li]
[li]Gas............9,920 (28.2%)[/li]
[li]Hydro..........8,462 (24.1%)[/li]
[li]Wind...........3,209 (9.1%)[/li]
[li]Biofuel..........455 (1.3%)[/li]
[li]Solar............140 (0.4%)[/li]
[/ul][/tt]
Not a mix that is significantly different from the Wikipedia list, wind has increased a bit in the last 5 years. Gas nameplate capacity is kind of hard to extract from the Wikipedia page so I don't know how it has changed.

The biofuel (which isn't huge) is from the conversion of coal plants due to government policy vilifying coal. A couple of the plants do not disclose their capacity, but the ones that do have a capacity between 50% and 70% of their previous capacity (fuel delivery of biofuels is not really ready for prime time).

I'm not going to talk about CO2e or any of the other simulated reasons for bastardizing a power grid. I certainly would not be bragging about eliminating plant food from the environment, but if you must go ahead.

No subsides for you solar panels? Interesting spin. The Ontario government doesn't mandate a price that the utility MUST pay you for your excess power? Isn't that price nearly twice what you pay for power? They sure think they do. The price of panels has dropped 50% in the last 5 years. That is because global subsidies have created economies of scale. When the tax incentives come off (and I think they will as it becomes clearer how much damage this insanity has done to the power grid), plants will begin closing all over the world and prices will return to 2000 levels (about 4 times today's prices/kW).

I have installed a couple of thousand 100 W panels over the last 30 years and for my project economics I use replacing 50% of the batteries every year and 1/3 of the panels every year. Since you are planning on letting your friends and neighbors provide the low-sun backup you won't have to worry about storage batteries. The solar-panel industry claiming 35 year life has some interesting assumptions built in. No dust in the air. No collections of birds to take advantage of the warmth. No heavy winds ever. No high-velocity grit. My experience has been that all these things are not only possible, but common.

rb1957
Your statement

"About 1/3 of it is hydro" ... mostly from Niagara (not dams)

isn't really supported by the data (imagine that). I found a list of the hydro supplies to the Ontario grid (not all of which are in Ontario) and it was several pages, none of which was Niagra Falls. Guess that power goes somewhere else.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[rb1957]

I think 'cause OPG call it "Sir Adam Beck Pump Generating Station" and not Niagara Falls (that'd be Way too easy !)

PLANT GROUP: Niagara Plant Group

DRAINAGE BASIN: Lake Erie
RIVER: Niagara River
NEAREST POPULATION CENTRE: Queenston, Ontario
IN SERVICE DATE: 1957/1958
NUMBER OF UNITS: 6
CAPACITY: 174 MW

but a capacity of 174MW of a total hydro of 8406MW, I guess it is a small component ... surprised.

and the guys south of the border have their own power station.

but this is all just a red herring in the argumentdebate.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[zdas04]

My point was that in the next 20-50 years the money we have to lay out to fix unmaintained dams, reservoirs, and power stations will make us yearn for the days when the only crumbling infrastructure we worried about was bridges and roads.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[rb1957]

this is more like it ... from OPG site ...
"Niagara Operations has facilities on the lower Niagara River and at DeCew Falls in St. Catharines. These stations have a total capacity of 2,278 MW" ... about 1/4 of the hydro total. hummm, getting to the wiki total seems a bit of stretch ...
from the OPG's figures ...
Niagara 2,300
Eastern Ont 2,600 (1,000 from the St Lawrence)
NE Ont 1,000
NW Ont 700
total 6,600 (vs 8400 from wiki ?)
but maybe I'm not using the data right, or complete ?

some of those dams up north look quite interesting ... maybe a road-trip ?

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[rconnor]

zdas04, you’re talking about installed capacity. Moltenmetal is talking about actual power generation. While you're both technically correct in a general sense, molten’s numbers are more meaningful in this context.

Furthermore, “embedded” solar generation capacity means non-utility owned solar generation (i.e. owned by distribution company or solar panels on houses/businesses). This does not factor into the (utility) supply solar numbers, it offsets the required (utility) supply. A hint would be to look at the embedded wind generation capacity (425 MW) and compare that with the current (utility) supply by wind (2,475 MW). Using the same logic you applied to the solar generation, apparently wind generation is currently operating at 582% efficiency! That’s impressive! Of course that’s wrong and so is your 0.54% number. The correct analysis would use the (utility) installed capacity of 140 MW, not the embedded capacity.

Sorry for jumping into this conversation, just needed to correct that error.

 

[moltenmetal]

Yes, my numbers related to the electricity supply mix in Ontario are meaningful- I did careful research on this in relation to my electric car conversion project. David's numbers are not, but I do suspect he's learning, or at least I hope he is. Summing nameplate capacities gives a totally inaccurate indication of where our power is actually coming from.

Ontario's hydro generation capacity is substantial and not just limited to Niagara Falls, though that is still a huge series of generators- including if I'm not mistaken, two new ones that were added by means of a massive tunneling project. But there are many others, on the Ottawa River and elsewhere, which are very substantial. The Gridwatch app gives a complete list of every station of every type and what it is generating, hour by hour. You can click on a link to read about the location, installation date, nameplate capacity etc.

You can ignore CO2 emissions if you like, but they are correlated with toxic emissions AND with fuel purchases. Either way, it's lovely to see that our power grid buys so little fossil fuel. It was a huge change, but a totally worthwhile one.

David, your theory that solar panel sale prices will quadruple when feed-in tariffs (inevitably) come off is an interesting one. I don't buy it at all though.

If I had no mature trees and a roof pointing in the right direction, I'd have put a 10 kW microFIT installation on my roof five years ago when they were paying an absurd $0.85/kWh for everything you generate- not even net of what you use. That, in my view, was bad public policy! Paying a high subsidy for any net generation is one thing, but paying for all production even when not a single electron leaves the property is just dumb-@ss. A friend of mine designed the roof on his addition to take advantage of this absurd subsidy, and another cut down three or four mature trees to take advantage of it too. The feed in tariff has dropped in half now, and with permit fees and the cost to install a separate meter, you would need to install a system larger than what I could meaningfully install on my roof to make any economic sense. But a few panels just to chop off my peak consumption is another matter. Both the panels and the inverters are so cheap now that it would be cheaper to do this than to try to hunt down the last few opportunities for power consumption reductions left in the house. Payback would be far quicker than the 20 years that the panels are guaranteed for.

Forget about batteries- they're necessary for off-grid or UPS use but even our expensive power is just too cheap for batteries of any kind (much less Li-ion) to make sense for load-levelling/peak-shedding right now. Tesla's Powerwall is just an over-hyped way for Musk to ensure that if he produces more batteries than he can sell in his awesome but extremely expensive cars, he won't be stuck with them sitting on a shelf.

 

[GTTofAK]

Three weeks in and Rconnor has yet to even admit that he didn't know how a thermoter works.

Satellites measure radiances in different wavelength bands, not temperature. These measurements are mathematically inverted to obtain indirect inferences of temperature (Uddstrom 1988). Satellite data is closer to paleoclimate temperature reconstructions than modern ground-based temperature data in this way.

All thermometers infer temperature from some other measurement, be it the thermal expansion of a liquid as used in a mercury thermometer, or the impedance of a metal as used in probe thermometers. His "modern ground-based temperature data" also indirectly infers temperature. Rconnor was wrong, painfully wrong for someone who claims to be an ME. Its the kind of gross error that would disqualify any of us from any expert testimony. No jury would or judge would believe a word you say after such an error.

Rconnor is mentally incapable of admitting a mistake. Much like his previous argument about the ENSO being stochastic

ENSO is stochastic

The next time Rconnor makes a diatribe about the satellite records he will simply drop the argument rather than admit a mistake. Did Rconnor ever admit he was wrong about the ENSO being stochastic? No. He simply dropped it the next time he copied and pasted his current ENSO diatribe. Expect the same with the argument about satellites not directly measuring temperature.

 

[beej67]

zdas04, you’re talking about installed capacity. Moltenmetal is talking about actual power generation. While you're both technically correct in a general sense, molten’s numbers are more meaningful in this context.

^^correct. Installed capacity would be how much you could generate from the dam with an infinite amount of water to push through it. Actual generation fluctuates with volume of water that goes through it, as well as with the head of the reservoir over its discharge point.

It's a little bit funny .. global warming will actually have a net positive effect on hydropower, as warming creates more convection, which leads to more rain. It's still not a net gain compared to the costs of sea level rise, but it is interesting.

I do think that the effects of increased rainfall due to global warming will have a noticeably net positive effect on certain areas of the arid 2nd and 3rd world, though. Syria, for instance, has about sucked their aquifer dry. They need some rain. Also a stable government of any form would be nice.



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[GTTofAK]

My biggest pet peeve with net metering has nothing to do with the environment but with safety. In the event of an outage linemen have to go and verify that every source of generation is disconnected before they can work on restoring service. When there were only a few net meters this wasn't much of a problem. But as more people net meter this greatly increases the work needed to restore power. In response there has been a push from politicians and bureaucrats to abandon safety and have linemen assume that non-utility owned switch gear worked appropriately and not visually confirm an open. This is dangerous, it violates decades of safety procedure just for some pet green cause.

 

[beej67]

GTTofAK, I'd never even considered that before. Pink star to you, for changing my opinion on a topic.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[cranky108]

Maybe the linemen can ground the line on both sides of where they are working, and short out any generation, like they do in transmission work. This is a red herring.
Besides most inverters can't even provide the vars required for the distribution transformer at the 'pole'.

Net metering will cause an increase in fixed utility costs, and at some point will be moved from the energy part of a persons bill to the meter charge, like it should be, or placed as a demand charge like business now have. The demand charge should be applied for maximum power flow in either direction.

So why has there been no talk about placing solar panels on electric cars. This would be a good way to partly charge the batteries while the car is parked. The reason is the government can't tax what they can measure. And at some point the government will want to tax energy used in electric cars.

I still think solar car ports might be a better answer than roof top solar. It would at least keep the car cool in the summer, and snow off it in the winter.

 

[beej67]

Hey rconnor, I'll take a crack at this:

How would you create a laboratory scale model to study the interdependent effects of ocean/atmosphere dynamics, prevailing wind patterns, changes in prevailing wind patterns, ocean currents, changes in ocean currents, cloud formation, changes in albedo, etc, such that the can adequately capture the dynamics of the earth’s climate system AND find a way to speed up those interactions such that you can see the impact in 100 years? I don’t believe it can be done. Instead, you’d attempt to break those systems up into subsystems, study them by analyzing observed behavior (past and present) and then take that knowledge into a model. That’s exactly what climate scientists are doing.

They have to do exactly what they're doing, but do a better job of it. They have to be willing to listen to criticism, and respond with good science instead of attacking other scientists funding sources. They have to strive, through sound science, to nail that ECS number down to a range of 1C or less, and in doing so they have to look at other warming factors as well instead of intentionally ignoring or downplaying them. We need legit ECS numbers for all factors that warm the planet, not just carbon.

It'd also be nice if they admitted that they haven't found the answer yet, too, to pull some of the politicization out of the topic.

I think with a collective approach and more, better, science, we can get the answer nailed down. And I think getting the answer nailed down is important. But right now, anyone who challenges the prevailing view in the scientific community is witch-hunted and ostracized, and that's not doing anybody any good. Scepticism is the foundation of good science.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[GTTofAK]

Maybe the linemen can ground the line on both sides of where they are working, and short out any generation, like they do in transmission work. This is a red herring.

Protective grounding is a redundant protection. It is not meant to be the protection. A lineman in my city got hit last year with both sides of his clearance "grounded." And just yesterday there was a lineman hit by a 12.5kV "de-energized" transformer. This is not a field where you rely on one protection or assume that protections have worked. Utilities dont assume that their own protection equipment worked much less should they assume that a customer's has.

This is arguing that we abandon decades of safety protocol in order for these green ideas to work. Lets just abandon the confirming a visual open and just rely on protective grounding.

 

[hokie66]

The linemen are not the only ones at risk. Think of firefighters.

http://solarenergy.net/News/tackling-risks-solar-panels-pose-firefighters/