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There will be a story featuring Al Gore and his climate views on CBS 60 minutes this weekend. Normally I don’t pay much heed to this program, but Gore is publicly calling those who question the science “…almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat…”.
To me, a person who has at one time been fully engaged in the belief that CO2 was indeed the root cause of the global warming problem, I find Gore’s statements insulting. In 1990 after hearing what James Hansen and others had to say, I helped to arrange a national education campaign for TV meteorologists nationwide (ironically with CBS’s help) on the value of planting trees to combat the CO2 issue. I later changed my thinking when I learned more about the science involved and found it to be lacking.
I’ve never made a call to action on media reporting before on this blog, but this cannot go unchallenged.
The press release from CBS on the upcoming story on Gore is below. You can visit the CBS website here and post comments:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/27/60minutes/main3974389.shtml
See the video clip here
But let’s also let the producer, Richard Bonin, know (via their communications contact) what you think about it, as I did when Scott Pelley aired a whole hour long special telling us Antarctica was melting. They did no follow up.
The Noble Laurite would never commit to a forum where his view could be challenged. After all, those who believe the climate is affected by natural forces, are “fringe elements, flat earth believers, moon landing conspiracists, holocaust deniers”. I don’t expect 60 minutes to be at all subjective by letting any opposing view point be heard.
Where did The Alliance for Climate Protection get $300 million to throw away on ads? That’s a mind boggling number.
You will notice that she did not ask him how much profit his carbon credits business is expected to make. I am trying to get that business compared to Enron’s rise and fall.
If my wife can’t get me to watch the Adams programs (it is thought that I am a decendant, I am very interested in that history) what hope is there y’all will bet me to watch 60 minutes.
Not going to happen.
There is no chance that anything useful will be aired without fatal flaws.
This is the same network that reported the “forged but accurate” memos from Bush’s days at the air national guard.
Even worse, CBS cancelled Jericho – twice!
So don’t expect much.
In response to Frank Ravizza: I DO expect CBS to be SUBJECTIVE, not objective- I made it a point to never watch any CBS “news” stories back in the 1980s, after they did that scurrilous hit piece on General Westmoreland- A. McIntire
It’s too bad the show will not be on tomorrow. We’re getting 8 inches of snow tonight and another snowday from school so I would have time to watch it.
This is pathetic. Al Gore has refused every offer to debate the evidence, and yet feels entitled to insult those who disagree with him.
As an aside, it only just occurred to me that a large proportion of the people going into environmental science are already going to be favorably disposed to the notion of man as destroyer of nature, and so favorably disposed towards the man made global warming nonsense, even before they look at the evidence (if they even bother)
When the IPCC and friends figure out the role of clouds in climate and understand how to model it for the coming century, then and only then will I become a believer in their prognostications. In the meantime, they are hacks, and true believers, but still hacks.
I’m sorry to see CBS and others in the TV media giving only one side to this multifaceted question.
John Andrews, Knoxville, Tennessee
A $300 million ad campaign? Sorry but I’m calling shenanigans. That is allot of money.
I would love to do the auditting on that.
No, no not “carbon credits”. Indulgences. Wipe away your carbon sins for a few florins.
He’d burn the heretics at the stake but, your know, CO2…
More apt, BarryW, would be to focus sunlight through giant lenses on the heretics.
=========================
I would like to know if the financial books for The Alliance for Climate Protection are open for public record. If they are closed (as I suspect they are), then him giving it money is realy just a tax shelter. Anyone know if the answer to this one?
This CBS froofraw and the $300m ad campaign are just more fuel for the fire. Let the boobs and flatheads caterwaul. They will, in due course, get gobsmacked by the facts on the ground. (It’s beginning to happen already.)
All this nonsense is a repeat of panic cycles from the recent past (Population, Pollution, Cold War, Resources). They faded away fairly quietly. But then, none of them really got the same the publicity this GW shindig is receiving. As a result, it will not be so easy to cause the elephant to tippytoe away quietly stage-left.
But in order for society-at-large to learn the lesson properly, it is necessary that the hooting and hollering be long and loud. What Gore is doing is going to result in a grand intellectual self-imollation. I advise that we stand well back and enjoy the bonfire–while carefully staking out our position on the blogosphere and elsewhere.
We will sit back and grin as we archive the juicier quotes for future use. We are not going to meekly turn the page when the wheels come flying off this jalopy. Not this time! We are going to strike a blow for empiricism, interdisciplinarianism, and traditional scientific method and against the “new scientism” that is going to echo for decades.
This object lesson alone may prove worth all the $trillions that these chickenheaded chuckleheads blow on this foolishness. Fortunately (for the lives of millions), India, China, and Africa (so far) are more or less ignoring the claptrap.
In the meantime, sticking a few pins in CBS is well advised. We have to make them aware of our objections beforehand, so they won’t be able to accuse us of being Johnny-come-latelies. We must deploy ourselves in proparation for a devastating “told you so” stern-rake.
But be of good cheer, Rev. This is going to be fun. One of those “bigger they are the harder they fall” deals. Think “elephant off the Empire State building”. And (like it or lump it) your role in the New Enlightenment–mankind’s Restoration of Reason–is not going to be forgotten!
Unlike Anthony I have never bought into the belief that CO2 was the root cause of global warming, nor have I bought into the belief it is any more a problem than the climate of 1998, 1987, 1978, 1856, 1432, etc. However, like Anthony, I consider myself a dedicated environmentalist. I too am offended and insulted by the statements Mr. Gore makes regarding those who disagree with his AGW views.
I want to see money spent solving a real problem, not a rallying cry. Right now I see Mr. Gore and the media engaging more and more in a form of doublethink. Perhaps we call it doublescience. With apologies to Orwell, doublescience is:
To tell deliberately create data while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact or datum that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary.
I truly fear that focusing on the “global warming” rallying cry is going to end up discrediting environmentalist causes when the incredibly alarmist and dire predictions don’t pan out.
KB: Har! Har!
No, no not “carbon credits”. Indulgences. Wipe away your carbon sins for a few florins.
“Further sins require further expense.”
kim (18:55:00): I’m with ya. Burning heretics at the stake is so 20th century.
Come to think of it, I don’t suppose it would be that hard to fit spits around the concentrator tubes on the new solar thermal plants that are beginning to spring up like weeds in the southwest desert. Metaphorically speaking, it could lead to a beef jerky Renaissance. In fact I have a whole Bubba Gump menu working out in my head. How about this: Nattering Nabob Kabobs. Jamaican jerked deniers. Honey baked heretics. Blackened rednecks. Grilled Inhofe, tomato, and cheese melt (with or without jalapenos, of course).
Is it just me or is Al looking older and angrier? Perhaps because not even scientists at the IPCC believe his claims?
Eagles up!
Document how much this has cost you personally and what Albert Gore claims as his achievements.
I smell a personal lawsuit in the future…
A very sad day for Television News Journalism.
I agree with John G. this may cause great damage to environmental concerns and it will certainly make laughingstock of many institutions that have jumped on the band wagon for monetary reasons. The great concern is will the fall out against “real climate scientists” include those that were truly telling the truth and will it overpower other scientific disiplines.
History shows that times of global cooling are generally times of loss of knowledge as the priorities change to more survival mode. In this case it appears that there are some “scientists” that are causing this distrust almost intentionally while chasing the glory and the treasure.
It amazes me that these folks ignore any data less than 8 years old. while telling us that the decision must be made now using the best data available. I think that we are in trouble because we are being led down a warm path to the deep freeze.
John the only differences is that there may be dire consequences but they will be from lack of fuel and food.
I pray that I am wrong but I am convinced that we are headed for hard times.
Bill Derryberry
Wow – there’s an amazing amount of activity on the 60 Minutes/CBS discussion forum, there’s no way good comments are going to get noticed by anyone at CBS. I think Email is the way to go, but I imagine the piece is in the can already. I’m going to send my “Science, Method, Climatology, and Forgetting the Basics” essay via USPS mail to Stahl, and anyone else who needs to Learn the Basics. Except Gore, he’s a lost cause.
Then maybe follow it up with the March 2008 global temperature average assuming things stay cool.
Imagine the witch hunt this guy would carry out on people like our host Mr Watts and similar sites such as Climate Audit etc, as well as those of us that support them, if he got the presidential nomination. I’m sure Macarthyism was worse, but it would be ugly, what with their total and utter intolerance and zealotry.
Re: Alan D. McIntire
Sorry, I mistyped. I believe I mis-spelled noble ‘laureate’ if you really want to be objective. I don’t typically watch 60 minutes. It’s bad for my blood pressure.
“In 1990 after hearing what James Hansen and others had to say, I helped to arrange a national education campaign for TV meteorologists nationwide (ironically with CBS’s help) on the value of planting trees to combat the CO2 issue.” Say it ain’t so! Ah, that’s okay, we all have skeletons in our closets. I once attended a Greenpeace rally in an attempt to impress an activist female. It didn’t work.
I think Al is getting a little desperate as the AGW scare just isn’t catching on. From a recent poll released on 3/20/2008:
“Forty-eight percent of Americans are unwilling to spend even a penny more in gasoline taxes to help reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new nationwide survey released today by the National Center for Public Policy Research. ”
http://www.nationalcenter.org/PR-Global_Warming_Gas_Tax_Poll_0308.html
Think about it. A crisis of epic proportions that may end life as we know it and half of all Americans won’t even pony up a penny a gallon. You have to love the common sense of the common man.
Perfect timing! There are more than a few voices who are calling on the ssssuper-delegates to anoint Gore the Democratic nominee.
we all have skeletons in our closets
I helped plant a tree on Earth Day #1 . . .
(Maybe I’ll hunt it down and kill it someday?)
Al Gore is the last person I would have chosen to ‘trumpet’ the cause of global warming, or as Goerge Bush was advised to term it, Climate Change. He is a politician turned actor and no one should doubt his “Inconvenient Truth” was a brilliant piece of propaganda … and let’s face it, that’s all that it was.
But propaganda is used by all politicians, both from the Left and the Right, the Republicans and the Democrats, the communists and the fascists, the neocons and the liberals, whatever.
Problem is, while concern for the planet should be our basic concern, it is dictated by politics. The planet has one border, the troposphere … and if it is threatened, we should do something about it. All countries around the world are taking ‘climate change’ very seriously, regardless of their political persuasion. So too are businesses (big and small), different cultures with differing religious affiliations, and so on. Even George Bush is changing views; at least that is what is being presented to the rest of the world.
Now I may be wrong, but it seems to me (and many around the world) that a lot of people, particularly in the US, are opposed to the concept of ‘climate change’ purely based on their political, sociological or ideological preferences – not based on the science per se.
Make no mistake, whoever wins the next presidency (Rep or Dem) will do much more in engaging with the world community in tackling the war on the so called weather of mass destruction … China will follow.
I like this site, for its genuine questioning of the science. However, I see too many people ridiculing the science ostensibly because of their political bent … this is both irrational and illogical.
If Anthony was to do a survey of his following, I would not be surprised that the vast majority would be Republican. Just an observation from the land downunder.
@Evan Jones:
That’s the right attitude…recognising these people for the charlatans they are, while taking them on as a serious threat and optimisticallymoving forward with full confidence. No doubt Gore is using this as an opportunity to rally the AGW troops. With $300 million propoganda campaign expect the next months to get real ugly.
Concerning Gore:
Put the pieces together:
1. the Mann curve
2. The censored TAR
3. His propaganda piece: AIT
4. His recent intolerant comments
He’s the main link in the axis of Kooks – with the UN and radical tree-hugger groups. This lunatic is armed with $300 million! Neither underestimate him, nor the reserves he’s got in the pipeline. He’s got the MSM on his side. This is a man who does not tolerate (he even despises) one of the pillars of our democracy: opposition and opposing views.
He’s the kind of stuff dictators are made of.
If he were to become president, he’d certainly take over all national weather and climate institutions in the USA. He’d sick the IRS on those that threaten his cause. I’m sure, Anthony, you are on that hitlist – congratulations!
Gore’s backed by kooks who are calling for Nuremberg type climate trials.
This is going to get real ugly, very very ugly.
Don’t underestimate this, people. This is gravely serious.
You may laugh now, but you won’t be in the future.
I don’t know why FoxNews is just sitting around on their fat fannies and don’t retort. Whatever.
I asked earlier for a brainstorming session for countering this zealotry, but I guess this idea only went through emtpy heads between deaf ears.
Welcome to Gore Democracy:
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjJmZDYxZThlMzNmNzYzZmIzMGExNWY0Mzg1MGRiZTY
http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080327.html
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HansenNews.JPG
“But in order for society-at-large to learn the lesson properly”
Unfortunately, these sorts of lessons tend to be forgotten pretty quickly. The sad truth is that manias, hysterias, and other fads have afflicted mankind for thousands of years.
The one difference that gives me some hope is that more and more, technology lets dissenters have a voice.
The issue is clear. This steamroller will be hard to stop even when the world cools much more than it has in the last three months. The agenda is too important to the UN and others and the MSM will just do what they are told. The fantasy award winner and dynamite prize holder will cling onto the 98 million dollars he has accrued through propagation of the lie. There will need to be more than just “public awareness” of the weather changes afoot to stop this particular leviathan from hurting millions via starvation due to bio-fuel production and deprivation through taxation. The words Malthusian and eugenics are central to this issue and the concepts are held in such high regard that the inertia is difficult to re-channel. Sorry to appear gloomy.
In case anyone hasn’t seen this wonderful CO2 laid bare paper:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/ClimateChange_Nicol.pdf
The Great and Powerful Gore… (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain). C’mon Toto… pull that curtain down.
I agree with John Goetz: My greatest concern here is also the potential backlash against the entirety of environmental concerns because of this massive overhyping of AGW. I too am a life-long environmentalist/conservationist of the practical variety; like Anthony I was (and remain) a great supporter (and practical doer) of treeplanting as a general environmental benefit, and was doing this well before AGW was even on the radar.
There are still lots of good reasons for protecting and renewing our forests and planting and conserving trees in general:
– Biodiversity
– Soil conservation
– Urban pollution control
– Urban heat control (UHI!)
– Wind shelter
– Renewable supply of building materials
– Sustainable food crops
– Sustainable energy sources
– Beauty
All of these stand even if AGW turns out to be a storm in a teacup. So promoting treeplanting is not a “skeleton” in Anthony’s cupboard; he should be proud to state that he is a practical environmentalist _and_ has severe doubts about the wilder projections of AGW. Given the current climate, that takes particular bravery.
“I helped to arrange a national education campaign for TV meteorologists nationwide (ironically with CBS’s help) on the value of planting trees to combat the CO2 issue.”
Unless those trees were being planted in the tropics they actually were a net contributor to GW.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=tropical-forests-cool-earth&ref=rss
What will happen when some group/person starts a lawsuit and brings down the ex V. President Mr Al Gore ( any wiggle room here)
From what I understand about the law, if a person/company etc, makes a statement, or product that effects the wellbeing of an individual/group that individual/group has the right for regress under the law. The bases for the above has already started with law suits in London on the ‘facts’ in the movie.
Now if some unknown would kindly donate $300 million to Anthony, perhaps he could have a NBC party?
Anthony,
On the MMS data that we talked about, Mosh advised that you looked into it and it’s on another tab. I can’t find, can you help please?
REPLY: I will later, full up with another project at the moment
Since January 2008 world rice prices have doubled. I wonder what event could have occurred in that month to trigger such a catastrophic rise in rice prices? As I indicated in an earlier post in Anthony’s BLOG the news is not being reported.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/snow-and-storms-at-easter-in-europe-and-usa/
The AGW playbook storyline must be preserved even at expense of millions of human lives. The 60 Minutes love-fest with the Al Gore is just another example.
Read the story referenced below. This is the type journalism we should expect as an all out effort is made to convince us to give up our freedom, what little of it still remains.
Evil requires the sanction of the victim (Ayn Rand). The Al Gore’s of the world can only win if we sanction them.
Mike
http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto032820080525305933&referrer_id=yahoofinance
Jump in rice price fuels fears of unrest
By Javier Blas in London and Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok
Friday Mar 28 2008 04:15
Rice prices jumped 30 per cent to an all-time high on Thursday, raising fears of fresh outbreaks of social unrest across Asia where the grain is a staple food for more than 2.5bn people.
The increase came after Egypt, a leading exporter, imposed a formal ban on selling rice abroad to keep local prices down, and the Philippines announced plans for a major purchase of the grain in the international market to boost supplies. Global rice stocks are at their lowest since 1976.
On Friday the Indian government imposed further restrictions on the exports of rice to combat rising local inflation, with traders warning that the new regime would de facto stop all India’s non-basmati rice sales.
The measures include raising the minimum price for selling abroad non-basmati rice by 53 per cent to $1,000 a tonne. Exports of premium basmati rice are likely to continue, although volumes could also suffer as the government also increased the minimum export price and scrapped export tax incentives.
While prices of wheat, corn and other agricultural commodities have surged since late 2006, the increase in rice prices only started in January.
…..
Rice prices have doubled since January, when the grain traded at about $380 a tonne, boosted by strong Asian, Middle Eastern and African demand.
That explains the hysterical CBS reporting on that .01% of the Antarctica ice shelf collapse. No matter that it’s the end of summer down there and such things happen quite often; no matter that the overall Antarctic ice has been increasing beyond anything ever recorded before, CBS and others see their credibility going down the toilet and are pulling out all plugs to save it.
But $300 million?
WOW! Where did all the money come from – the Google Boys? Soros?
That’s what I’d like to know. Follow the money!
I just went over and read the coments at CBS. most of the folks are not being kind to Gore. ( I don’t blame them.) I would coment but you have to sign up for News alerts and I just don’t care for CBS. I wonder if they will recall his NPP if the temps drop and we inter a nasty cooling phase in history. Hmmmmmm what a thought.
Bill D
I’d normally take Gore’s hyperbole to be indecorous and unwarranted. However, after reading some of the ‘analyses’ on solar activity here, I’m thinking he’s pretty accurate in his description.
This article in the Harvard Crimson shows that event environmentalists don’t think Al Gore practices what he preaches, see The author refers to people like Al Gore as “Hypocritical enviro-advocates”. Clearly Al has an alterior motive here, and if he doesn’t buy into this, why should anyone else?
I also found this interesting statement in a (and perhaps scary) section in a mostly unrelated article, but it seems quite appropriate; see by Gary M. Rubman. Sorry this is a little long …
—
Following the publication of his book, Earth in the Balance, the liberal media anointed Al Gore an environmental expert and political spokesman for the scientific community … When one carefully examines Gore’s writings, though, it is shocking to see the clear parallels between his views and those articulated by the Unabomber in his 35,000-word manifesto, the epitome of scientific mistrust and the leading advocate for returning society to the Stone Age. As syndicated columnist Tony Snow recently wrote, “Gore, like the Unabomber, distrusts unbridled technology. While Gore prefers to concentrate power in the hands of a wise and gigantic government, the Unabomber prefers anarchy.”
Interestingly, one of the books found in the Unabomber’s cabin after his arrest was a dog-eared copy of Gore’s Earth in the Balance, complete with copious notes in the margins and underlined sections. For some reason, federal investigators decided to leave this off of the evidence list released to the media. Could it be that Gore recognizes the similarities and is embarrassed by the fact that he is the leading defender of the same eco-hysteria as the Unabomber? The answer is obvious.”
—
Mike
REPLY: The link didn’t get added correctly, you may just want to paste it in and press submit.
… and still more… Gore.
PS. Link stolen from Instapundit
I totally agree with Gore’s statement and I don’t find it insulting.
Actually I think this will in the long run, benefit those of us who are “deniers”.
Here’s why, Gore is essentially “drawing a line in the sand”. As it becomes more and more apparent that we are now entering a cooling face, his arguments, cause, and statements like this, will just show how off base he is.
I see on some of the local forums here in Michigan, more and more people are questioning global warming scams, as we saw another 2-3 inches of snow here last night, after getting 9 inches last friday.
I almost liken Al Gore and the current AGW scam to the “unsinkable Titanic”. We are just gaining speed, and there can’t be any “mini ice age” out there that could possible stop us now, so “full steam ahead”. The only question will be, as the AGW scam slams head on to a solar Minimum induced mini ice age , and starts sinking fast, is how many of them will jump ship to get on the lifeboats, and how many will sink with the ship.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/27/60minutes/main3974389.shtml#ccmm
It seems that skeptics are dominating the comments 80-90% anyone care to do a tally?
I wonder if CBS mainstream media realize that the public may be turning?
I think this article is a very good article on science and the aggressive attitude among AGW too many (almost all?) supporters.
Daniel Muniz in NationalSummary, “Case Settled? Global Warming Myths: Part 1”:
http://www.nationalsummary.com/Articles/Science_Tech/science_tech__warming_myths_1.htm
If I were a scientist, I’d feel insulted. Since I’m a simple rube who just dabbles in math, science, and common sense, I am fine with being called an idiot by the likes of Gore.
I’ve done a more rigorous trend analysis of the GISS temperature anomalies from my month-end analysis. I’ve used varying trending periods and techniques to try and figure out where we’re headed over the next few months. Reasonably speaking, it looks like 2008 will end up the 9th or 10th warmest on record, but could be as low as the 17th warmest. Using 30-year trend line changes yields an unreasonable predictor value of the warmest ever. That should help indicate the validity of using 30-year trend lines. The interesting part of the analysis is that if 2008 is the 9th or 10th warmest year, it is perfectly consistent with a continued trend of declining rate in warming, or even cooling. But we all know that it would not be viewed in that light. I still have more rigorous testing to do on the predictive value of varying trend lines, so for now I just present the results as a point of interest. The anomaly values “predicted” are actually threshold points. If actual anomalies are lower, it indicates more rapid cooling than the n-month trend lines would suggest, and vice versa.
http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/a-follow-up-to-the-march-2008-temperature-analysis/
I seem to remember that Gore was a theology student for awhile. I’m sure that 500 years ago he would have been one of the top inquisitioners. Wait for it. He’s going to come out with the 21st century equivalent for the non believers.
Gore’s statement is about right. It isn’t really a political issue, Mr. Watts, you simply have a problem understanding elementary physics. You may find it “insulting” to have that pointed out to you, but it’s true nevertheless. I’d suggest you get yourself some basic undergraduate physics textbooks and work your way up from there.
I looked at the article and started to read the comments. What a futile effort. I should have know better, anyone who uses CBS for their news is lost. One poster stated the list of “proof” of AGW, the usual suspects of .7 degrees of warming, warmer oceans, unprecendented Cat 5 hurricanes and a host of other babble. Thanks for the link anyway.
Al Gore just looks old, tired, and slimy. He gives me the creeps just to look at him, and his voice sounds like fingernails on a blackboard. Physically, he’s repellent. Mentally and emotionally, he is riddled with holes like Swiss Cheese.
Think about it. A crisis of epic proportions that may end life as we know it and half of all Americans won’t even pony up a penny a gallon. You have to love the common sense of the common man. Although encouraging to hear, there’s a bit of a disconnect, I’m afraid. If they had instead asked, are you in favor of ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, or of passage of Senate Bill 2191, known as the Climate Security Act of 2007, many would probably say yes, not realizing those would affect their wallets in much the same way by driving all prices up, in addition to energy.
Once again I am reminded of my limitations. I again remember in the run up to the 92 election remarking publicly that the Donks’ VP candidate seemed more “Presidential” than the ‘Bama Gov. D’oh!
I wonder if CBS mainstream media realize that the public may be turning?
VG, I suspect their response will be similar to that of many Kerry supporters following the 2004 election: “how could so many people be so stupid?”
I like this. Every time Gore opens his mouth, he sounds more desperate.
Live Earth was a failure. Heck, they blamed climate change for the low turn-out in Johannesburg — it had snowed there the week before the event for the first time in 25 years. And yet somehow humanity was responsible for that as well.
The foundation under his anthropogenic climate-change fantasy is cracking faster than an antarctic ice shelf.
It’s not a “tiny, tiny minority” anymore. The skeptics are growing in number and he knows it. This is the only way his pea-brained mind knows how to respond.
That’s a sword that can cut both ways. Once this AGW house of cards collapses, imagine the “radically cut emissions no matter what the economic impact” crowd facing trial for several million counts of attempted murder.
Heck, let’s just plea-bargain it down to a day in jail at hard labor… for each count, to be served consecutively.
Relax, sit back, and enjoy.
Give him enough rope……………..
In the video, Al Gore claims that there are a few scientists who disagree with AGW. In fact there are many. Following are three separate lists of scientists who disagree with AGW:
60 scientists signed a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, urging him not to sign any Kyoto like treaties. The letter states :“The study of global climate change is, as you have said, an “emerging science,” one that is perhaps the most complex ever tackled. It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth’s climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.” Ref http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605
100 scientists signed a letter to the secretary general of the UN stating:“UN climate conference (is) taking the world in entirely the wrong direction” Ref http://www.nationalpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=164002
19,000 scientists signed a petition stating:“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.” Ref http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p1845.htm
Each of the above letters or petitions contains a list of the signatories who disagree with AGW.
Now let me ask; where is the list of scientists who do agree with AGW?
And “Nobel” too 😉
Astroturf,
This may come as a surprise to you, but most people who seriously question the AGW-by-CO2 are some of the most versed in physics people you will find. In fact, it is physics that undercuts the AGW/CO2 arguments. Everyone, including skeptics, accept that CO2 presents spectral interactions with long wave radiation. The truth, though, is no one, absolutely no one, knows to what degree it influences our climate.
And I will be willing to bet that Anthony’s knowledge of physics far exceeds either your’s or Gore’s.
I helped to arrange a national education campaign for TV meteorologists nationwide (ironically with CBS’s help) on the value of planting trees to combat the CO2 issue.
Planting trees is a good idea for many reasons besides combatting global warming (e.g., if not for trees where would birds sit? Lol!). Likewise, aggressively pursuing energy options alternative to fossil fuels is a good idea for many reasons. For example, it appears one common assumption shared by many here is that oil is available in abundance if not curtailed by tree-huggers and the like. Certainly tree-huggers have had an effect, but I would say the magnitude of the effect is over-stated. It was easy for them to prevent drilling in deep, off-shore waters, or in ANWR, because it didn’t make much sense in dollars and cents. Now the argument is that it does. And if we were to just drill for it the price of oil would drop. The problem is, if the price of oil drops, then the companies that did the drilling couldn’t recoup their costs. Thus, the only way drilling makes sense is if the price of oil remains high. And in that context tree-huggers, while something of a nuisance maybe, are irrelevant. It also stands to reason that if the price of oil remains high, other alternatives become more attractive. Increasing energy productivity becomes very attractive. In fact the economics in general become attractive for all sorts of reasons. Mitigating GHGs is just another benefit. To paraphrase James Carville once again, it’s the technology stupid.
If Anthony was to do a survey of his following, I would not be surprised that the vast majority would be Republican. Just an observation from the land downunder.
OZDOC, if you were a little more observant, you’d note that there are probably more Brits, Germans and Ausies who comment here than there are Republicans. Most of us here, though, regardless of nationality or political persuasion, would love to get the politics completely the hell out of this discussion.
As to the validity of your “observation”, I’d call it more of a Conservative vs. Liberal issue (Evan Jones being a notable exception) rather than a Republican vs. Democrat issue, and, if you stop to think about it, THAT is very telling.
AGW skeptics are often called paid tools of Exxon. I wonder how Lesley Stahl would react to the charge that CBS simply wanted some of that 300 million dollar advertising budget? Waving around that kind of money would certainly attract a lot of ethically challenged advertising salesmen eager to get a piece of the action.
Apparently, the Goreacle senses impending doom and is launching a last minute “surge” to try to turn the tide of battle. It’s probably too late for him. As the temperature falls, so will Gore’s prospects.
Let me get this straight. In his Paper on UHI, Dr. Peterson claimed that we dont find UHI in the temperature record because ” climate stations are located in cool urban parks, following siting guidelines”
So, Anthony decides to check this claim. Guess what? he finds out that Peterson was wrong.
And now Gore says that people like Anthony are flat earthers?
The FLAT EARTHERS in this debate are the people who claim, like Peterson and Parker and Hansen, that Climate stations are well sited.
They never even checked.
REPLY: Here’s the Los Angeles Weather Station, the GISTEMP plot shows nicely that siting is indeed an issue. Of course there are many more. My personal favorites are Lampasass, Texas and Baltimore, MD which are both part of the USHCN “high quality” network.
“This may come as a surprise to you, but most people who seriously question the AGW-by-CO2 are some of the most versed in physics people you will find.”
The question is, what’s their evidence? That’s how science works, you see, that’s how it differs from politics. Can you put up any evidence at all (that means scientific papers)?
“And I will be willing to bet that Anthony’s knowledge of physics far exceeds either your’s or Gore’s.”
You’d lose that bet. Since you bring it up, I have a Ph.D. in physics and 15 years research experience in the subject. It’s obvious from Mr. Watts writing that he has no science education at all. It’s all a political opinion to him.
It isn’t a liberal vs conservative thing unless you define liberal as democrat. I’m as liberal as the come…liberal as in freedom to live my life as I choose sans religious zealots et al. I’m an animal loving, tree loving, forest loving, bike riding for fun, hiking and camping liberal….that doesn’t believe for a second that we are in any crisis or that the earth is any danger from wonderful CO2.
I agree lets take politics out of the discussion. It isn’t about that. It’s about shady science and people with an agenda. It’s about control of a populace.
(e.g., if not for trees where would birds sit? Lol!).
You’d be surprised. it turns out the upper notch in the “K” on K-mart signs is a favorite nesting place for spotted owls.
I also like trees. But even places without them can be bird havens.
After the clean air act began to have real effect in New York, huge numbers of birds have flocked to the city, especially crows, sparrows, gulls, and hawks. (The only new arrivals I hate are the starlings.) Pigeons have become far more robust and healthy–and have taken on a wide variety of colors: Brick reds, sandstone yellows, chocolate browns, creamy grays, and everything in between.
Central Park has become one of the “top ten” bird sanctuaries (whatever that means) and is overrun by ducks, swans, egrets, robins, and many other birds.
A clean city has all sorts of nooks and crannies of the sort favored by birds.
It’s obvious from Mr. Watts writing that he has no science education at all. It’s all a political opinion to him.
Give the man some credit. He’s a weather forecast veteran of around what, 30 years? He is the one who discovered and documented the massive degree of microsite violations, not GISS or the NOAA..
Besides, it is ultimately the laymen who will determine the policy related to this issue, not the Ph.Ds. (And heaven forefend government-by-postgraduates!) It is up to the experts on both sides of this controversy to help inform our decisions with honesty and openness, not to impart writ. It is also the obligation of experts to listen to, answer the questions of, and, yes, even learn from the layman side of the fence.
Consider that the vaunted Club of Rome–composed of a multitude of scientific experts–was entirely ubdone by the common-sense theories of an informed layman who was bucking the “consensus”. And that alone had a major positive effect on the everyday life of all of us.
Why does anyone give the former VP any consideration? This is a man how has an extremely long distance relationship with truth, or has everyone forgotten?
“No Controlling Legal Authority”
“I walked point in ‘nam”
“Love Story was written about Tipper & me”
“I discovered Love Canal”
“I took the initiative to invent the Internet”
His credentials?
Stan: I’d count myself as at the liberal end of a Liberal party in a Liberal region of a Liberal country (compared to the US, anyway), but that is irrelevant to the science.
AJ Abrams: Whether you believe some people have seized upon this as an attempted means of control is also politics, and is also irrelevant to the science.
As Anthony’s alter ego said, “Just the facts, Ma’am”. The key question in my mind is simply this: Is the Earth warming more than the basic heat physics predicts for the given amount of CO2 increase (positive feedback) or less (negative feedback), or maybe just the same. With the all the variables around dodgy measurement, multi-decadal cycles and chaotic ocean oscillation systems it seems at best undecided. But after 25 years in the computer business I sure as hell know I don’t trust a computer model to tell me; and after several more years than that in the life business, I don’t trust the media or politicians to tell me either.
I seriously doubt if Mr. Astroturf has a PHD in Physics. A good science education makes one very careful about what one says and a PHD usually is not afraid to use his or her real name.
Until Mr Astroturf uses his real name so we can check his credential assertion ( another unprovable assertion at this point ), he can safely be ignored.
AstroTurf
Here is – by an engineer who has spent his working life using the wonder gas – which is plant food (vital for life on this planet), NOT a pollutant and definitely not at optimal levels(preferably 1200ppmv as opposed to the dangerously low current level or under 400ppmv).
The best gift the developed world can give to the developing nations is free fertilizer. We should be praising CO2 not condemning the miracle that it is.
But then again these people (like Gore and JP Morgan and DuPont and Maurice Strong and on and on) would like to “limit” humanity in both numbers and reach. AGW is just a pawn in their game. A game that will kill millions through starvation through crop/earth changes to provide unnecessary bio-fuels and then tax the rest of us so hard that no-one will have the will (or money) to look to the stewardship of this planet. Nice people.
Their is a that would satisfy everyone.
“AJ Abrams: Whether you believe some people have seized upon this as an attempted means of control is also politics, and is also irrelevant to the science.”
No it isn’t. In fact, that is ludicrous statement. Control can be political but isn’t a subset of it. Control happens outside of political realms, such as religion and even on a micro social level, such as family dynamics. However, I agree about it being irrelevant to science, as I have already said in that post. My comment about control was about MY personal issues with the topic in addition to the scientific issues.
My first thought on the screencap at the top of the story……..
“And, you know, the thing about a shark… he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes”………….
The arrogance and condescension of “Dr.” Gore is staggering, IMO……..
A letter I sent to CBS:
‘susan.marks@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘ed.harrison@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘kjorgensen@cbs.com’; ‘sljacobs@cbs.com’; ‘khfisher@cbs.com’; ‘andrea.ballas@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘beabseck@cbs.com’; ‘diane.ekeblad@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘sue.lamphear@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘colleen.sullivan@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘bonnie.lefkowitz@cbs.com’; ‘kee@cbsnews.com’; ‘ian.metrose@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘dlmcclintock@cbs.com’; ‘kev@cbsnews.com’; ‘phil.gonzales@tvc.cbs.com’; ‘bbyrd@cbs.com’; ‘smg@cbsnews.com’; ‘gdschwartz@cbs.com’; ‘cender@tvc.cbs.com’
I am a Vice President of Engineering at a high-tech company. I started studying on my own about global warming maybe seven years ago. I had an open mind and was curious to learn about the pro’s and con’s of the arguments. Recently I have come to the conclusion that there still is no “PROOF” that the recent warming of the Earth has anything to do with man. I have an extensive engineering background having taken course in Calculus, physics, chemistry, Engineering etc. I find the below statement insulting easily provable as being wrong, and just plain silly:
…almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat…”.
I would think an organization like CBS would try to investigate the issue beyond having Al Gore pontificate about his beliefs.
Did you know that the Earth has not warmed in since 2002? Did you know the Oceans are cooling recently? Did you know there is record ice in Antarctica? Did you know the ice is back to normal in the Arctic? I am sure you viewers didn’t know any of that and on top of that will be given a serving of pure propaganda by Al Gore. Please check the link out I provide below by one of your competitors and follow the links he provides:
http://community.myfoxcleveland.com/blogs/andrebernier/2008/03/27/More_Climate_News
If CBS doesn’t provide balanced coverage of this major issue I feel I have no other recourse then to stop watching your network at all and inform any one that I can that your network is not interested in the truth.
Best Regards,
If you have a phd in Physics and have spent 15 years studying this topic and still side with Gore, Then you are no Richard Feynman.
The first sign of a Zelot is to silence others.
Besides everyone knows the real answer to life the universe and everything is the number 42. It’s to bad Dougles Adams is not here to have fun with this.
Until the next ice age cheers.
The question is, what’s their evidence? That’s how science works, you see, that’s how it differs from politics. Can you put up any evidence at all (that means scientific papers)?
Funny you should say that, AT. That’s exactly what we skeptics say about AGW, only it’s AGW that is the hypothesis, so that is where the burden of proof lies. THAT’s how science works.
Alarmists are simply more disinformed than us skeptics.
Says a lot about our media today, doesn’t it?
Sadly life has become a battle to keep from becoming disinformed.
Astroturf,
“You’d lose that bet. Since you bring it up, I have a Ph.D. in physics and 15 years research experience in the subject”
Great!!! You wouldn’t mind providing a link or something to your research then!
“Besides, it is ultimately the laymen who will determine the policy related to this issue, not the Ph.Ds.”
It doesn’t split that way. Not all politicians are uneducated morons. Some do know something about the subjects they’re legislating on. Then again, some don’t.
“It is also the obligation of experts to listen to, answer the questions of, and, yes, even learn from the layman side of the fence.”
Hey, great point, I don’t know anything about brain surgery, but I reckon my opinion’s as good as any brain surgeon’s, so get be a power drill and I’ll have a go. The brain surgeon should learn from the layman, right?
You couldn’t make this up.
If someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about, they simply have nothing useful to contribute to the subject. That’s the brutal truth. You may find that “insulting”, you may find that “arrogant”, but it remains the brutal truth.
60 Minutes has lost any and all credibility through it’s past stories on, for instance,exploding gas tanks in which they used igniters and missing gas caps to ensure the crash vehicles burst into flames, and the deeply flawed and misleading report on Bush’s service record that while quashed got alot of coverage. Lets not forget the complete fraud of the 60 Minutes Audi 5000 “sudden acceleration” dishonesty that almost bankrupted a fine automaker. This is junk science to boost ratings and sell advertising time while ringing the alarm bells for the gullible. I ‘d say Al Gore would fit right in to this type of “journalism”.
REPLY: FYI, The “exploding gas tanks” was NBC. The used small model rocket engines if I recall.
Stan: I’d count myself as at the liberal end of a Liberal party in a Liberal region of a Liberal country (compared to the US, anyway), but that is irrelevant to the science.
Paul, I wholeheartedly agree, and my comment wasn’t meant as a slam on Liberals, nor did it have anything to do with the science. It was merely an observation about the debate itself. The political Left (not limited to the U.S. either) has seized on the issue, and, IMO, subverted the science in the process. The fact that Al Gore is one of the leading spokespeople for one side of this issue should raise a big red flag for anyone with an even remotely open mind. I’m not wishing for a coming ice age just to get even with them as some here are, but it would, indeed be poetic justice if Nature had the final word.
As I read this, it is snowing in downtown Seattle. The first time in March in the 9 years I have looked out this window.
Political views mean squat when I am looking at scientific raw data. I just like doing it. Finding patterns where no one else has looked is a very cool thing to do. The guys that have been looking at patterns here and showing us the results are doing what comes naturally to traditional investigators, looking at raw data with unbiased eyes. Astroturf seems the one bound by politicalturf chains. Which brings me to an important point: I would sure like to have the raw data that “published” ivory tower scientists use in their papers. Why not let us have a crack at it? Many scientific paradigm shifts have occurred in the past because of some new un-credentialed person from across the scientific iron curtain making noise.
And before someone says I am just an armchair republican conservative man with 6 children, a gun, and another on the way (gun that is), I’m not only a liberal, but a woman who will probably vote for Hillary. I love nature, done the nude hot springs thing, love no-imprint camping, and have hiked over many trails in the Cascades. I have also been bitten by the sun itself. Lip cancer. No one can tell me that the sun has no affect on global temperature when its rays have managed to find little ol’ me and burn my lip. The scar on my lip compels me to at least give it serious thought.
As Anthony’s alter ego said, “Just the facts, Ma’am”. The key question in my mind is simply this: Is the Earth warming more than the basic heat physics predicts for the given amount of CO2 increase (positive feedback) or less (negative feedback), or maybe just the same.
So far as I can see it is not warming at all now. Possibly it’s cooling. CO2 feedbacks seem to be quite negaative (acc. to the AquaSat data).
Probably CO2 has had a small effect, but the main drivers seem to be oceanic (PDO/AMO) and major solar minimums, which have a big cooling impact (250 out of the last 1000 years have been solar minimum years). Those two factors show the best actual correlation with what is known of surface temperature measurement.
I do historical models (storyboards) and I don’t trust models either. They can describe the past fairly well, but are terrible predictors of the future.
After the clean air act began to have real effect in New York, huge numbers of birds have flocked to the city, especially crows, sparrows, gulls, and hawks.
I guess Beijing has something to look forward to — after they clean up.
I also like trees. But even places without them can be bird havens.
Who woulda guessed.
Central Park has become one of the “top ten” bird sanctuaries (whatever that means) and is overrun by ducks, swans, egrets, robins, and many other birds.
Perhaps they should populate Central Park with Wal-Marts instead of trees.
Maybe we should have a contest to see who provides the best essay on the topic of, “Why I Like Trees — Even Though They Are Not The Only Possible Bird Roosting Platform, And Even Though They Do Suck Up A Lot Of CO2, Which Doesn’t Matter”. Or something like that. I’m sure some of us could come up with something else.
Pardon my sarcasm. But I have to say that on the basis of those which I have been introduced to over a couple of threads now, your arguments suffer from a certain lack of coherence.
Astroturf: “You’d lose that bet. Since you bring it up, I have a Ph.D. in physics and 15 years research experience in the subject. It’s obvious from Mr. Watts writing that he has no science education at all. It’s all a political opinion to him.”
Oh good. After years of avoiding the quagmire of name calling climatology has become, I’ve become interested again now that the decline in solar activity offers a wonderful change to compare competing theories. I’ve been amazed at the dedication of folks like Anthony, Steve McIntyre, Joe D’Aleo, and many others plugging away at finding out what really is going on despite the lack of insterest of Hansen in vetting the the data he uses, Mann’s apalling behaviour in discouraging McIntyre from replicating his work, and so on.
The two things that convinced me there is much more to climate change than greenhouse gases are 1) those pesky correlations between solar activity and cold climate; and 2) the claim that the IR band that CO2 blocks is essentially opaque and that additional CO2 will have little impact. D’Aleo’s r^2 regression studies that show the PDO and AMO oscillations have a much better correlation with global temperature than does CO2. Altogether, it convinced me to write some web pages to stand above the fray and present all sides of the story.
Physics was my favorite class in High School, but I started college as a Chemisty major and then computers point out to me that I’m a much greater asset as a software engineer than a scientist. In your scientific opinion, what are the primary forcing factors and why do you believe them to be so. I understand you can’t come up with with detailed figures without experimental and theoretical data, but surely you have good reasons to support the Greenhouse gas hypothesis. I really would like to include a little more text in favor of that in my main web page, it’s just that the more I read the more trouble I see with it.
Do you at least agree that the next several years ought to provide a really good test of these hypotheses?
Astroturf –
If you are so right, then please provide the link(s) to some peer reviewed research that proves your case. Comments like “You apparently don’t know your physics” needs to be backed up.
The case against CO2 is becoming stronger and stronger as the research comes in. For one example, see:
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
OccamsEdge: “Why does anyone give the former VP any consideration? This is a man how has an extremely long distance relationship with truth, or has everyone forgotten?”
Apparently not everyone has learned. He seems to have influence over $300,000,000 and no matter what his relation is to it, it gives him more say in a lot of matters than you or I have. If you’d like truth to get somewhat more exposure, a semi-organized rabble will do better than just ignoring it all.
Anthony et al have taken a huge amount of time to come up with some remarkable data. Seems to me that us rabble ought to show some appreciation by understanding it and sharing with people who aren’t getting it now.
AstroTurf
One of those who question the AGW by Co2 is Ferenc Miskolzi, who found that the greenhouse gas equation developed by Arthur Milne in 1922 assumed an infinitely thick atmosphere. Miskolzi added the missing information, and finished up with a self correcting climate, with no sign of ‘runaway warming’. Nasa, for whom Miskolzi had been working for some 20 years as a physicist, refused to publish, and he has since left them.
Perhaps, with your superior knowledge, you would be good enough to explain to us how he was wrong in his calculation?
Further to that, whether he is wrong or right, Nasa’s refusal to submit one of its own, long-standing employees work to peer review clearly demonstrates exactly the ‘political’ side to all this that you are attributing to those who disagree with you. You would do well to remember that, on the basis of science that is clearly more and more disputed by experts, not ‘settled’ at all, as people like you would have us believe, we are now expected to adopt stringent and highly expensive measures, which would themselves have highly ‘political’ effects.
Lastly, Anthony Watts publishes under his own name. Are you a football field, sir?
Astro-turf is a troll.
Hey Astro-turf, please give an analytical description of an octopole EM field. By analytical description, I am alluding to using calculus to show how an octopole field can be developed from first principles.
Astroturf
I very strongly agree with Aaron Wells. If you seriously believe there is convincing evidence that man made CO2 is likely to lead to catastrophic climate change lets see it. Right now the overwelming evidence is that the hypothesis was wrong.
I know literally hundreds of scientists most of them in physics, which is also my field, many of them are in fields related to climate, I don’t personally know any who believe the catastrophic scenario.
Your statement that Mr Watts knows nothing about science makes me strongly doubt your honesty.
Astroturf:
Wonderful – a Phd physicist. Why don’t you enlighten us? I am sure that Anthony would give you a forum to explain from 1st priniciples how much a doubling of CO2 increases the global temperature – say within a error of +/- .2 deg C. You could then precisely explain how, after adding thermal energy to the atmosphere, this increased themal energy is handled by various atmospheric processes?
I would like to invite you to http://www.climateaudit.org/phpBB3/
either Unthreaded/ Global Warming: This is a “must read” or
Physics Issues/ Empirical Observations of the Greenhouse Effect or
Physics Issues/Basic Quantum Mechanics and the Greenhouse effect or
Physics Issues/Empirical Observations of the Greenhouse Effect
and enter the discussion with some people more your peers.
Al go…re….home
If you believe in Al Gore’s “Man Made Global Warming” I have a
bridge…mmm…CARBON CREDITS to sell you!‘If someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about, they simply have nothing useful to contribute to the subject. That’s the brutal truth. You may find that “insulting”, you may find that “arrogant”, but it remains the brutal truth.’~
The brutal truth is, astroturf, that YOU have offered NOTHING to prove your contentions. YOU are both insulting and arrogant, because YOU offer NOTHING. You have not answered one single person who has asked you to post links to your work.
astroturf = skeptics best friend/cause… leave him alone we need more of these guys!
‘Are you a football field, sir?’
Funny, I was thinking earlier that the only reason we kept the astroturf on the front porch (already there when we moved in), was to scrape the mud from our feet…….. that’s about how useful his PhD is proving right now.
A valuable collectors’ item!
Right up The Wrong Rev. Gore’s alley.
1997 plus 11 …
Astro.
Thanks for joining the Conversation. As you note you have a Phd and 15 years of research in the feild. I have 3 Phd’s and 1 nobel prize and 23 years 2 months 6 days, 4 hours, 33 minutes and 23…. nope 45 seconds! in research.
So I am right.
Mine is so much bigger.
Perhaps astroturf would care to engage in a discussion of the physics of the GHE with Lubos Motl?
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/03/al-gore-flat-earth-and-tiny-tiny.html
Clearly you don’t even know what the debate is about. It is not about those who say there is/is not a GHE which does or does not get enhanced by human activity leading to some warming. It is about the ~details~ like, how much? WHat does the physics tell us? We can calculate the warming from doubling CO2 theoretically, assuming the Earth system just warms and doesn’t act to counteract or amplify warming. The result is about 1.2 C, which, I can’t emphasize enough, is ~no big deal~. Models, which predict ~catastrophic~ future warming give values for this of 2 to 5 C (which the IPCC thinks is a little high, with it actually being 1.5 to 4 C, but good enough for the models). But if the models are wrong, a there are negative feedbacks like that proposed here:
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/adinfriris.pdf
And evidence for which was found here:
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Spencer_07GRL.pdf
Then Greenhouse warming is insignificant, and a considerable fraction of warming could, perhaps ~must~ come from a different source.
[…] Gore to throw insults on 60 minutes [image] […]
Dr. Astroturf, sir, would you dispute Hottel’s measure of the emissivity==absorptivity of C02(300ppm or 3000) at STP of 15micron radiation at 9*10^-4? Would you disagree that those of asphalt are approximately 1000 times greater?
Would you dispute UAH MSU data indicating no significant lower lattitude high tropospheric warming, no cooling of the stratosphere and Willis’ recent report of no ocean warming this milennia to 3000m?
If not then perhaps we can give you a pass, and let you fend for yourself as a logician.
Mosh. ROFL!!!
R John,
That’s hardly a signature unique to Lee. There are numerous blogosphere gadflies with the same MO.
I would be interested to know what “research” our friend AstroTurf has been doing in “physics” but it is wholly irrelevant. What would me more interesting is to see how the basic physics texts (s)he cites demonstrate circa 4 degree C increase for a doubling of CO2 vs. the classical (?) value of circa 1 degree C that even avowed deniers recognize as the unenhanced greenhouse effect.
I mean, it’s basic physics, right?
My PhD is in mass communication, so I’ll leave the science to you guys.
But it’s worth asking why Gore and the IPCC won a Nobel Prize. Was it really for working for peace on earth, or for masterful manipulation of the media?
Like Anthony, I bought into global climate change at first, convinced that the “experts” had reached a consensus. Now I’m on the fence and am convinced that the experts aren’t being given adequate play in the media. The debate seems to be between Al Gore and Rush Limbaugh, neither of whom is that sharp when it comes to science, but both of whom have political axes to grind.
http://newsprism.wordpress.com
If someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about, they simply have nothing useful to contribute to the subject. That’s the brutal truth. You may find that “insulting”, you may find that “arrogant”, but it remains the brutal truth.
I find merely that the laymen have the power of the vote on the policy issues regard in global warming. If experts want those decisions to be informed, it is up to the experts to inform us. If the experts cannot or will not live up to their responsibilities, then we, the laymen, will simply decide anyway.
You don’t get to decide. Your vote is worth no more than anyone else’s.
You may find this frustrating, you may find that infuriating, but it is remains the brutal truth.
I guess Beijing has something to look forward to — after they clean up.
They won’t clean up until they rich up. No society ever has. So let’s encourage them to achieve affluence as fast as possible by whatever means necessary–for the sake of the birdies.
Perhaps they should populate Central Park with Wal-Marts instead of trees.
Central park could sure use a WalMart.
Maybe we should have a contest to see who provides the best essay on the topic of, “Why I Like Trees
It’s a great deal of fun to chop them up and burn them . . .
Incidentally, has anyone had a look at this ‘Earth Hour’ campaign? Won’t make much difference in Canada, most of our electricity is hydro power. Lighting candles for a candlelit supper between the hours of 8&9pm is more likely to contribute to ‘global warming’ than shutting off your electricity for an hour.
Oops. I’m a heretic.
I’d suggest a bit of caution to those suggesting that cooling global temperatures will force advocates of AGW to change their views. After all, 2008 could be one of the 10 warmest years on record and still be cooler than the prior few years. If you want to attempt to disprove a warming trend, you would need a longer time series to obtain significance.
What I want to know is, how warm was 1998, versus 1198?
BTW, Rico,
Don’t get me wrong. My consistent attitude is that mankind needs to create as much wealth and tech as possible, especially over the next three decades. All via as free a market as reasonably possible.
That will
a.) save many lives that would otherwise be lost to poverty, and,
b.) give us the wealth/tech combo to blow away problems that would be insoluble now.
I am not in favor of sacrificing tech for wealth only, but neither do I think that pressing for possible tech at dispropotionate sacrifice of wealth is the best idea either, and I think either of those options will probably result in less tech in the long run.
Stephen Fox (12:50:28) : Even though it was unattributed, I’m guessing you didn’t write the first part of your post yourself. Either that or you work for a newspaper. So why don’t you tell us in your own words what you find so compelling about Miskolzi’s paper.
I’ll tell you one obvious thing about it that I don’t find compelling — his assumption labeled (g), upon which his conclusions are bound: The atmosphere is a gravitationally bounded system and constrained by the virial theorem: the total kinetic energy of the system must be half of the total gravitational potential energy. The surface air temperature tA is linked to the total gravitational potential energy through the surface pressure and air density. The temperature, pressure, and air density obey the gas law, therefore, in terms of radiative flux SA=σtA [note: the equations did not translate well] represents also the total gravitational potential energy.
Radiative flux equals total gravitational potential energy? That seems a bit odd to me. How about you? It’s an important question because, as indicated in Sect. 3.1, the assumption is key to his entire treatise. Maybe I’m missing something, but it’s too bad he didn’t apply his equations to Venus. Or, say, the early Triassic period right here on Earth. I don’t see how his assumption applies in those cases. And if they don’t apply in those cases, then chances are good the assumption is wrong (even if it might seem right in some contexts). And if the assumption is wrong, then any analysis upon which it is based is wrong. And if the analysis is wrong any conclusions based on it are meaningless. That’s not opinion, that’s logic.
On a somewhat different topic, Russel Seitz, who spoke at the recent ICCC conference in Manhattan, issued a blistering critique of the conservative approach to the issue of what he calls “the Climate Wars”. I largely agree with him — almost everything he says — especially this snippet: “It [the forces aligned with Gore] does so with Hollywood’s full arsenal of special effects at it disposal, and makes its case using lines corny enough to make Captain Planet wince, yet the results seldom face scientific criticism. This stands in stark contrast with its token opposition, chosen for political reliability rather than scientific acumen, and scripted by conservative media often as scientifically impoverished as they are well funded. The result is that Republicans find themselves poorly armed and bizarrely outnumbered in the Climate Wars.”
Later he adds, “In science, as in politics, the truth that sets men free is seldom the one they want to hear. The conservative media’s most favored talking heads frequently adduce views by turns obsolete, tendentious, or just plain daft.”
I’m not sure what to believe about AGW. I’m even less sure it matters in terms of a coherent, forward-looking energy policy. But one thing I am sure about is that one’s ideological point of view, whatever it is, should also not matter. What should matter is what makes sense scientifically (when talking science), or what makes sound energy policy (when talking energy policy). One cannot rely on obsolete, tendentious, or just plain daft talking points — or Hollywood glamor.
Evan Jones (17:17:43) : They won’t clean up until they rich up. No society ever has.
I believe you mean it hasn’t happened since the dawn of the fossil fuel age. Before that there are plenty of examples. And that gets me to thinking about someone’s sage adage, “The stone age didn’t end for lack of stones.”
There’s one thing I should add to my comment, I believe you mean it hasn’t happened since the dawn of the fossil fuel age. Before that there are plenty of examples. That is this: there are plenty of examples where “riched up” societies failed because supply of a critical commodity failed to keep up with demand. In the present case the critical commodity is energy, not fossil fuels. To equate the two is perilous. To refuse to think forward is also perilous. If we fail, then it very well be necessary to chop up the trees in Central Park and burn them. But I’m pretty sure that, as was the case on Easter Island, it would be a short-term solution — just kicking the can down the road a while.
Al Gore and his global warming sheezy foo foo, I’ll believe that global warming will kill the planet, when I see it with my own eyes!!! That commy wants me to ride a unicycle to work everyday, so that people can make fun of me, well he can have the keys to my Hummer, when he pries them from my cold dead hands(or warm dead hands if he’s right)!!!!
My mathematics is not up to a lot of the discussion on this site but I do recognise there is something odd going on between the warmists and the sceptics. It is very reminiscent of the debate we have in Europe between the European integrationists and the sceptics. It sometimes feels as if there is a conspiracy between the politicians and media to lock the sceptics out of the debate, although in truth it is more to do with how modern society, politicians and the media works.
Firstly there is the name calling and branding rather than entering into discussions. In our case it took decades to overcome the impression that the sceptics are all right wing little Englanders who hated foreigners, in your case you are flat earthists who do not believe man landed on the moon. Then there is the pretence that there is a consensus of all right broad minded people and finally there is the under-reporting of facts that do not fit the consensus.
It is really extraordinary how illiberal the chattering classes are, how easily they embrace fads and how intolerant and closed they are to sceptical opinion.
One last observation; people who are attracted to centralized control are very attracted to the possibility of manmade climate change. It is the excuse they want to have more totalitarian government and less democracy. The free-market pro-capitalist economy people hate global warming because they do not want centralised government. So the whole global warming debate has been staked out by the political classes. It is going to be very tough for you sceptics to get your voices heard.
For Al Gore, it has never been about the science. For him it’s about his image.
He is nothing but a PR guy. The real money is pulling his strings. And, you can start who sits on the board of The Alliance for Climate Protection.
Gore as the high priest is needed more than ever to galvanize the resolve of the AGW faithful.
All these contrary signs. The faithful are confused.
The climate has stopped warming! The oceans are cooling! Antarctica has more ice now than it has at any time since measurements began (yeah, I know its only 30 years)! The maple trees are late for the syrup festival! The Hockey Stick is broken! An now snow storms across the nation in late March!
Yes – his words will bring comfort to the faithful in these troubling times.
I think our friend in th UK has his analysis spot on, I must say.
I AM NO SCIENTIST!!!!!!!
But I am an avid reader. I have learned much in reading Anthony’s “Wattsupwiththat” blog, Steve McIntyre’s “climateaudit” blog, R. Pielke Sr.’s “Climate science” blog and several others. There are several things I have learned to trust.
1. Investigators that are willing to report their raw data and their methodology.
2. Those that reveal why they make the statements they do and how they reached the conclusion.
3 Those that are quickly ready and willing to correct any mistakes that are pointed out with data and method.
4 Those that are willing to talk to laymen in laymen’s terms.
I have also learned to mistrust some things.
1 Those that will not reveal the data that supports their findings.
2 Those that are unwilling to offer their methodology so that others may replicate their work.
3 Those that fail to use due diligence to check the papers that they reference as support or as a basis of evidence to support their conclusion.
4 A peer review process that fails to use due diligence in the review process and uses prior coauthors as reviers (this causes questions of Independent review process).
I would love to have a better education. I am also glad that I am not an expert on climate science. I feel that there will be great repercussion in the climate science field. I believe that many young and upcomming scientists in the field will be hurt by the antics currently being used in the current process.
I believe that we are headed for a rocky road for the next few years and the rocks might be made of ice. Lets hope I am wrong and we continue to maintain our current status.
Bill Derryberry
REPLY: Well said Bill.
I believe you mean it hasn’t happened since the dawn of the fossil fuel age. Before that there are plenty of examples. And that gets me to thinking about someone’s sage adage, “The stone age didn’t end for lack of stones.”
Yes, that was my timeframe. But can’t recall any society that gave much of a hoot in hell for environmentalism before the fossil fuel age. And history is my specialty. But perhaps we are speaking to cross-contexts and we have different deinitions of “cleaning up”?
Do you have a specific example in mind; perhaps I am missing a trick, here?
And yes, I am sure we will be nowhere even vaguely near the end of oil before we move on from it. (“Peak oil” is s fundamentally flawed equation.) But I want to see that day arrived at “naturally” in an economic sense. I am in favor of whatever pays.
Rico, you say:
“I’m not sure what to believe about AGW. I’m even less sure it matters in terms of a coherent, forward-looking energy policy. But one thing I am sure about is that one’s ideological point of view, whatever it is, should also not matter. What should matter is what makes sense scientifically (when talking science), or what makes sound energy policy (when talking energy policy). One cannot rely on obsolete, tendentious, or just plain daft talking points — or Hollywood glamor.”
Absolutely, the problem though is that the political ideologues are the ones that will be making the decisions.
I think our friend in th UK has his analysis spot on, I must say.
Althoogh I am an “inegrationist”, I mostly agree. We liberals have got to get back into the practice of actual liberalism–as it is defined in the dictionary, that is. I have noticed a couple about who echo these sentiments (yes, I did notice).
(FWIW, I also think that proper conservatism has very valuable aspects as well.)
REPLY: Well said Bill.
Yes.
One thing about british scientists which I’ve always admired is their “sense” of honesty ie: the hadcrut Hadley have been pushing the AGW but lately as data cannot be avoided the language has changed to “almost certain”, “likely” instead of “will” happen etc.. etc
A brief look at the graph depicting January global average temperatures reveals large variability in our climate year-on-year, but with an underlying rise over the longer term almost certainly caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases”.
and
“However, once La Niña declines, it is very likely that renewed warming will occur as was the case when the Earth emerged from the strong La Niña events of 1989 and 1999.”
and this one is really funny
“In future, while the trend in global temperatures is predicted to remain upwards, we will continue to see inherent variability of this kind”.
So they seem to be picking their words carefully to cover themselves
Quoting: steven mosher (15:09:02) : Mine is so much bigger.
Dude, I have one horse and FOUR wives.
(and the waitress and Umbria liked me more)
That’s what I get for drunken posting after the bars close on Friday night.
AT Umbria.
Anthony/Mosher: your rebuttals to Astroturf made my night. Thanks!
Mosh: In my last two employments, I’ve worked with four Nobel Prize winners. Even though I only have a BS degree, does this trump Astroturf? 🙂
Astroturf: no one can touch you if you use your real name from a private computer (First Amendment and all that)*. As you do not post your real names, I can only think that you do not have the courage of your convictions. I equate this to cowardice. Ergo you have no standing in swaying my opinion re AGW. Watts, Mosher, McIntyre, et cetera have shown the courage of their convictions. I’m not a climate scientist, but I know whose side I want to be on.
* I have experience being vilified, threatened and efforts made to get me fired from my university (publically funded) job by antinuke fanatics – all because I was simply teaching folks how radiation works, which destroyed a lot of their pseudoscience arguments. My point: if you are in a publically funded position, you can still demonstrate the courage of your convictions by simply stating your case as a private citizen. It’s worked for me with no repercussions. Try it, you might like it.
Professor Astroturf,
I must complement you on your choice of prose, your comments remind me of when I also got my Phd, (Piss House Diploma) is your Phd in ‘finger’ or ‘paper’ ?
Face the fact that Gore actually believes what he is saying, like Hansen and the acolytes of realclimate believe it. The left versus right issue only stems from the left blaming big business for polluting the planet and the right thinking that taxes do more harm than good. I trust the rump of us, left and right, realize that business feeds and clothes us all but it needs to be kept on a leash.
And yes Al Gore played a big part in getting the internet where it is today, as the real internet inventors readily say. His enabling actions in fact boosted the US GDP quite a bit so clearly he is far from being anti-growth. He likely believes that the US, and indeed the world, would be better off if it was leading in alternative energy technology rather than continuing to be a Saudi lapdog. Probably you guys do too.
It’s clear that both sides are very prone to witch hunt behaviour. It’s also clear that the oil price is driving the alternative energy technologies much more than any carbon tax would, which is capitalism in action. If we all got off our hobby horses and concentrated on the desired end point – sustainability – then we would actually find we agree on a great deal of things. Insults from either side certainly don’t help but it’s no good rising to the bait either.
There seems to be an expectation here to use your real name, so here’s the real me.
Anyway, I think rather than writing to the CBS execs, it’s more important and effective that we organise presentations and speeches, and take our side right to the people. I’d start with schools, Town Meetings, industry groups, local representatives, publish articles and so on.
Zealots are not going to listen.
I can think of a lot guys who’d welcome King James VI’s problem!
http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/iWeb/Global%20Warming%20Politics/A%20Hot%20Topic%20Blog/EA71FA8B-FF69-4A32-9204-293E5B58BA6E.html
Finally,
JunkScience makes a good point:
If dissent is so miniscule and trivial, then why spend $300 million on a massive campaign to steamroll it?
If the size of Gore’s campaign is an indication of the strength of dissent, then this is very good news indeed.
From reading the comments here, the site looks pretty much like the Intelligent Design, homeopathy, Moon hoax and 9/11 conspiracy websites.
Gore has got it pretty much right.
You’ve got a bunch of guys who’ve discovered some Alternative Reality, they realise they’re being fed lies by the Big Government Conspiracy, and only they are smart enough to see through all those Big Conspiracy lies.
It’s clear from their reasoning skills (and spelling skills) that they mostly have an IQ around 65, but they’ve found a different world here where they know more than all those so-called “experts” who keep insulting them all the time, calling them “stupid”, putting them down.
The common thread running through all these websites is that it serves as a self-esteem builder for people of very limited educational attainment. The rest is random chaff.
REPLY: So no rise to the challenge? No willingness to share the scientific papers in physics you authored or co-authored? Well sir, then without offering such evidence you’ve assigned yourself to fit exactly into the description and labels you have on other here.
I’m not sure what to believe about AGW. I’m even less sure it matters in terms of a coherent, forward-looking energy policy.
You couldn’t be more wrong, Rico. Basing energy policy on reducing C02, which not only isn’t a pollutant, but is a beneficial gas is nothing short of insanity. So yes, it most certainly does matter.
But one thing I am sure about is that one’s ideological point of view, whatever it is, should also not matter. What should matter is what makes sense scientifically (when talking science), or what makes sound energy policy (when talking energy policy).
What makes sense scientifically is what a site like this is all about. Like many, I used to believe AGW was true. When I first started looking into the actual science over a year ago, I had an axe to grind; that of being able to write pro-AGW letters to the editor. I had no doubts whatever that it was true, I simply wanted the facts supporting it. Surprise, surprise, there weren’t any. It was all smoke and mirrors. You would know that too, but I don’t believe you are really interested in science. You want to skip the science and go right to policy. Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way.
I will Snail mail today my response to Stahl and five others who looked interesting. I’m sending a cover letter and a copy of my “Science, Method, Climatology, and Forgetting the Basics” essay. The cover letter doesn’t say anything we haven’t read here already, but it’s at http://wermenh.com/climate/stahl.html and worth reading if you are planning to send CBS a piece of your mind.
On other fronts, three inches of snow here yesterday, March 2008 is the most “snowbound” month in my 10 years near Concord NH, and I still have 19″ of snow on the ground. I’m up to 2417 “Snow Depth Days” for the season, old record was 1511. This is 118th day of continuous snow cover, old record was 100. It hasn’t been a cold year, which is one reason for all the snow. La Nina and the negative PDO are probably more to blame than climate change, but at least no one is talking about the demise of skiing. Instead they’re talking about the slow start to the Maple Sugaring season, today is the annual statewide open house at sugar shacks and some may not have enough sap to boil. I wish Al Gore were here.
Although there are scientists in the UK, e.g. those at the Hadley Centre, who are careful and sensible in their choice of words, one problem we have is that the BBC, one of the biggest news sources here, IMO has a definite AGW bias, which makes it less likely that the public will get to hear much from anyone who questions AGW. Much as I otherwise like the BBC, I find their reporting somewhat selective.
Having said that, I just had a look on the BBC News website to see how they reported the Wilkins Ice Shelf collapse, but found nothing about this currently in the Science/Nature section. However, curiously I did find an article about it in their CBBC Newsround pages (aimed at children), which said:
“Scientists reckon the crumbling of the Wilkins Ice Shelf is being caused by global warming and has happened much faster than anyone thought it would.”
So they have reported this online, so far, to the kids but not to us grown-ups, which I find interesting.
It’s not the training of the physicists, it’s the dat hat is turning up – atmosphere and oceans actually cooling.
And another thing, why is 30 years so important for showing a warming trend but 70 years isn’t, nor 1000 years? Because it was colder 30 years ago, but not 70 nor 1000 years ago.
Off topic, but it is comforting to know that Glacier National park will retain its name regardless of the ultimate effects of “climate change”. Usually the web cams give excellent views of the region, but today some of the views are obscured by snowy weather. Spring appears to be arriving late this year.
http://www.nps.gov/glac/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm
“If current trends continue, some scientists have predicted that by the year 2030, there will be no more glaciers in Glacier National Park due to global climate change.”
“Glacier National park was named for the glaciers that carved, sculpted, and formed this landscape millions of years ago. Despite the recession of current glaciers, the park’s name will not change when the glaciers are gone.”
To Bill Derryberry:
I’d like to post your comment titled “I am no scientist” in the quotes section on the http://www.climateclinic.com website with your permission. I believe it’s very succinct and to the point.
Please advise with an email to comments@climateclinic.com.
Jack Koenig, Author and Webmaster
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
aka McGrats
So we learn that astro turfd has an IQ of 65 and never graduated from grammar school. We knew that!
What’s more interesting is that Antarctic ice is enjoying UNPRECEDENTED thickness, and the Arctic ice is thickening nicely as well. The correlation between CO2 and climate has been broken, and the sun is doing what it’s always done–drive the climate of Earth.
Glacier Park can look forward to growing those glaciers back, and even Kiliminjaro is looking whiter lately.
astroboy has may his status clear, Anthony. Waste of time: BAN.
“No willingness to share the scientific papers in physics you authored or co-authored? Well sir, then without offering such evidence you’ve assigned yourself to fit exactly into the description and labels you have on other here.”
Right, here comes the “I know where you live” line of debate, the last resort every time. You can always see this coming a mile off.
There’s a formulaic set of responses on this kind of Big Government Conspiracy website, starting with “I am insulted” and moving on through “who are you?” and so on. It’s the same every time.
(Your point makes no sense, by the way)
His enabling actions in fact boosted the US GDP quite a bit so clearly he is far from being anti-growth. He likely believes that the US, and indeed the world, would be better off if it was leading in alternative energy technology rather than continuing to be a Saudi lapdog. Probably you guys do too.
The probem being that the “wealth” he has “created” is that of the Ponzi scheme and comes directly out of food prices and genuine engery profits. It isn’t even “real”.
And who is taking it in the teeth? The poor. Both at home and (especially) abroad.
Regarding energy imports, we are much more of a Canadian lapdog than the Saudi variety, anyway. And we needn’t be either. All we need to do is dip the Noth Slope and offshore, which we can do cleanly, effectively, and to huge (real) profit and wealth creation.
You’ve got a bunch of guys who’ve discovered some Alternative Reality, they realise they’re being fed lies by the Big Government Conspiracy,
Well, the alternative reality of severely and recently corrupted surface stations (photos publicly avaliable) do have their alternative effect. I don’t say AGW is a scam; I say it appears to be simply a well meaning error. Since it is a potential error that promises to have profound negative consequences to weath and wealth creation, especially for the poor, I must insist on at least a modicum of due diligence–which has NOT been forthcoming.
Try being a genuine liberal concerning this issue–for a change.
AstroTroll, why don’t you take your mindless AGW drivel someplace else, like RealClimate? I hear they are loaded with drooling, pablum-gobbling climate hysterics like you, so you should fit right in.
It was all smoke and mirrors.
OTOH, so is the skepic position: Aerosols and albedo.
You want to skip the science and go right to policy. Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way.
‘Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first – verdict afterwards.’
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice loudly. ‘The idea of having the sentence first!’
‘Hold your tongue!’ said the Queen, turning purple.
‘I won’t!’ said Alice.
‘Off with her head!’ the Queen shouted at the top of her voice.
So they have reported this online, so far, to the kids but not to us grown-ups, which I find interesting.
“You’ve got to be carefully taught.”
It’s not the training of the physicists, it’s the dat hat is turning up – atmosphere and oceans actually cooling.
Is it the angle of the dangle or the motion of the ocean?
Pierre Gosselin (aka AGWscoffer) :
[Thank you for “coming out”. My exposure to “the net” goes back to ARPAnet days before people thought of hiding behind screen names. Despite a scarce name like Werme I haven’t had regrets at being public. Keeping a sensible tone and avoiding most flame bait helps.]
“I think rather than writing to the CBS execs, it’s more important and effective that we organise presentations and speeches, and take our side right to the people. I’d start with schools, Town Meetings, industry groups, local representatives, publish articles and so on.
Zealots are not going to listen.”
I agree, but I think it’s important to encourage the news media to worry that their bias may be on the wrong side. It’s also worthwhile to let them know that despite Astroturf’s wishful thinking, doubters are more reasonable than Gore claims in his propaganda.
One reason I spent more time than necessary on my cover letter to CBS was to be able to put a polished document on my web site.
Consider this – in addition to your recommendations, share those presentations with the news media and anyone else adhering to the simple bias.
One thing I’ll do today is contact a reporter at the Concord Monitor who hasn’t been able to gain the identity of Concord NH’s official snow measurer. Concord is close to has set a 100 year record for snowfall and eight more inches will break all those records from the late 1800s, so it’s a good time to for interest in the subject. I have lots and lots of data, am open about it, and am glad to find a local forum.
http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080329/FRONTPAGE/803290320
And it’s important to note that the majority of the modern retreat of those glaciers occurred before 1950.
I don’t think he does. His ongoing relationship with Occidental Petroleum is proof of that. He profits from oil exploration and exploitation while railing against it.
Only because he was in a political position to do so. I’m sure many other people played larger roles than he, the difference is they don’t spout off at the mouth.
We (The US) only get about 13% of our oil from the Middle East. That hardly makes us Saudi Lapdogs. Europe, on the other hand…
I’m so impressed by Astroturf’s posting of tolerance.
If that’s all that’s left of the alarmist arsenal of facts, data and arguments, then us skeptics are truly in supreme shape.
Personally I think Astroturf is just a real lonely person and is only seeking attention. It’s okay – we’ll talk to you to Astro. But I’d also like to see something that’s related to science from you. What do you say?
Anyone think he’ll manage that?
It’s clear from their reasoning skills (and spelling skills) that they mostly have an IQ around 65….
So says AstroTurf, itself! Really, it’s no longer strange to me that many Prog Cultists seem to name themselves so appropriately – essentially as a confessional which they then proceed to prove, while also projecting their own disabilities onto their perceived opponents.
Alex Cull,
The British Antarctic Survey (www.antarcitica.ac.uk./staff-profiles/messages) will give you a idea; look for in the left hand column ‘Climate Change, Our View’
Which in part ( read the full article) says ” that a significant part of this change is ultimately driven by human activities”
D.G.Vaughan of this organization has been quoted on CBS, as saying that “the world is in trouble owing to man made climate change,”
But if you go to antigreen blogspot.com. Todays posting tells a different story, some real good photo’s and graphs and lots and lots of links to very important people, who seem to be at odds with the British Antarctic Survey.
For you Astroturf
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080327172038.htm
In summary, the more one knows about climate science, the less a problem it appears to be, and so the less one worries about it. Judging from your level of panic and worry, I’d say you’re horrifically ignorant.
To Alex Cull,
The British Antarctic Survey (www.antarcitica.ac.uk./staff-profiles/messages) will give you a idea; look for in the left hand column ‘Climate Change, Our View’
Which in part ( read the full article) says ” that a significant part of this change is ultimately driven by human activities”
D.G.Vaughan of this organization has been quoted on CBS, as saying that “the world is in trouble owing to man made climate change,”
But if you go to antigreen blogspot.com. Todays posting tells a different story, some real good photo’s and graphs and lots and lots of links to very important people, who seem to be at odds with the British Antarctic Survey.
Sorry about that people got, a double!
“Television News Journalism”
What is thing of which you speak? One of those “pick two” things?
Many thanks Alan – much interesting reading here. The link didn’t work for me, but I found the British Antarctic Survey’s “Climate Change – Our View” article at:
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/bas_research/our_views/climate_change.php
They do appear to be conceding that there has been little or no overall warming of Antarctica, except for the Peninsula. Some very careful phrasing in that article! Thanks again.
Alan, better is antigreen.blogspot.com
You missed your period. Whether you’re glad for that or not is none of my concern.
=====================
By the way, that website, by John Ray, looks like a fine aggregator. It’s hard to beat icecap.us but he’s got some other stuff.
============================
Bruce Cobb (04:50:50) :
Basing energy policy on reducing C02, which not only isn’t a pollutant, but is a beneficial gas is nothing short of insanity. So yes, it most certainly does matter.
Basing energy policy on reducing fossil fuel use is not insane. It makes sense on a health level, on an energy security level, on a national security level, and as I’ve been trying to stress, on an economic level. The fact that it would also reduce CO2 emissions is a bonus, but it is not an essential component. Which part of that is insane? It seems to me more insane to attempt to justify maintaining our heavy dependence on fossil fuels solely on your disdane for those who argue that AGW is real. That is an ideological argument, not a logical one.
I am arguing that even if you ignore the CO2 emissions part, nothing much changes in terms of shaping energy policy. It still makes sense to reduce fossil fuel use — as much as we can, and as quickly as economically feasible. There are of course dangers associated with any policy change. Mistakes have been made, and almost certainly will be made in the future. And of course there are plenty of greedy politicians and their patrons out there. But there are also dangers — and I would argue more so — in keeping the policy the same. For one thing, doing so is likewise beneficial to a different set of greedy politicians and their patrons. More importantly, by doing so we potentially miss out on some very large, very important, very lucrative opportunities. There are no guarantees (and there never will be), but by careful, intelligent rearrangement (easier said than done to be sure) of our country’s energy policy to stimulate the development of alternative fuels, it could be very good for jobs, for domestic manufacturing, and for the trade deficit. It would certainly be good for our national security (we wouldn’t have to rely so much on antagonistic regimes), and for our energy security because it would certainly help to insulate us from supply shocks. Considering all that, I have a hard time seeing the insanity.
There’s another reason to pay attention to energy policy too: it’s going to happen. No matter who is elected president they will change the policy. It is almost certain that the Dems are going to pick up seats in both the House and the Senate, possibly quite a few. That may be an uncomfortable thought, but that’s the reality.
Concerning the science, it seems to me that too many people interpret the debate as two-sided and highly polarized. Pro-AGWers tend to reject any criticism of “the consensus view” out of hand, and accept any evidence for it equally uncritically. Anti-AGWers are the reverse. It gets so ridiculous that people accept every unusual weather event as “proof” that the climate is moving in one direction or another. There is plenty of evidence for that right here on this thread. Well I reject that. I also reject the notion that one or two years of warmer or cooler weather indicates much of anything with respect to the overall trend in climate. The fact is, the earth has gotten warmer in the last 100 years. It’s obvious in Fig. 1 of the Evidence of a Significant Solar Imprint in Annual Globally Averaged Temperature Trends – Part 1 thread. That’s not the question. The question is whether it’s a result of natural or human causes. I also get the impression that a lot of people here are hoping like crazy that solar cycle 24 never happens. A few are absolutely convinced it won’t. And further, when it doesn’t, the world will plunge into another ice age. I’m not convinced of either one. I’d say the safe money is on cycle 24 happening. I’d also say that NASA’s shifting predictions in that regard is evidence that they don’t know everything there is to know about solar dynamics. But that’s not the same as saying they know nothing. However, if cycle 24 really doesn’t happen, I’m sure that will cause a great many solar scientists to sit in their offices and scratch their heads long and hard. On the other hand, if cycle 24 does happen, what are those who were convinced it wouldn’t going to do? My guess is they’ll just go on to some other argument and never look back, never examine their assumptions, never learn anything from the experience.
Either way, how will it impact energy policy decisions?
I do care about science. I try not to get involved in credential debates because they tend to be self-serving. Besides, while most PhDs I’ve known are very smart, very able people, some of them are so channeled and myopic that unless you focus on their subject area you’d think they’re dumb as bricks. So I’d rather present my argument unencumbered from whatever credentials I might have, so that the weight of the argument itself is the focus, not the letters after my name. I’ll just say that I went the academic route for a number of years before I started my own business. And through my business (and my consulting work) I interact constantly with academic and government scientists. So it’s something I care about. And I know something about the bureaucracies surrounding the enterprises. And like any bureaucracy they have an internal inertia which dictates that to a certain extent you have to go along to get along. But to claim that inertia rises to the level of some kind of grand conspiracy is exceedingly hard for me to believe. A lot of these guys have huge egos, and sometimes pride themselves with being generally contrary, and sometimes downright obnoxious. I have a funny story in that regard. I happened into a (crowded) restroom at a conference I was attending. I did my business and went over to the sinks to wash my hands and there was a guy at the sink beside me pissing into it. He was an older guy, dressed in a crumpled, ill-fitting suit. He looked at me and I looked at him. “Do you know who I am?” he asked. “Yep”, I said. “I can do this”, he said, smiling. I smiled back. “Yes you can,” I agreed. Even if I cared (which I didn’t) I sure as heck wasn’t going to tell him he couldn’t. He was Julius Axelrod, a very smart guy (he won the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on synaptic transmission), and very engaging in a goofy sort of way. A true iconoclast. The scientific community is full of people like him to a greater or lesser degree. To think they could be co-opted to participate in some kind of grand conspiracy strikes me as wildly optimistic.
And of course most of the peninsula isn’t even in the antarctic .
[snip]
Banned for trolling
The fact is, the earth has gotten warmer in the last 100 years.
Yes, but a large chunk of that increase came before 1950. And I heavily suspect that a good slice of the increase measurement after that is spurious result of microsite encroachment.
The mere fact that who gets elected is going to affect the economics is a concession that wealth-destroying policies are at issue here. I refuse to go with the flow. I protest.
Besides, while most PhDs I’ve known are very smart, very able people, some of them are so channeled and myopic that unless you focus on their subject area you’d think they’re dumb as bricks.
They are no more likely to be right on policy than anyone else. Which is a sorry state of affairs.
A lot of these guys have huge egos, and sometimes pride themselves with being generally contrary, and sometimes downright obnoxious.
I have noticed this. And counterintuitive (for its own sake).
It’s not conspiracy. It’s a sort of “herd-instict class action” behavior. Doctors don’t sit anround and plot against chiropractors. They just mostly . . . hate chiropractors.
Hell hath no fury like a pacifist (and no one goosesteps like a nonconformst).
jeez, the waitress liked you more because she knew she no chance with the moshpit and that I would just break her heart and leave her breathless.
Evan Jones (07:42:36) :
The probem being that the “wealth” he has “created” is that of the Ponzi scheme and comes directly out of food prices and genuine engery profits. It isn’t even “real”.
You ignored JamesG’s primary point and instead chose to reply to the tangential one. So allow me to reply to his main point first, then blend in a reply to your reply. My understanding of the situation in the 90s and early 00s is that most economists agree that a considerable portion of the rise in GDP during the 90s and 00s is directly attributable to improvements in information technology — both PC penetration and internet development — which improved worker productivity. That is unlikely to continue. Rather, the most obvious untapped resource to improve productivity is better attention to energy productivity. I’ve offered numerous citations on that topic in the past, none of which have been contended, let alone refuted. In spite of that there remains the contention that we should consume energy like drunken sailors and encourage the rest of the world to do so as well. I mean really… how does that make sense?
Regarding energy imports, we are much more of a Canadian lapdog than the Saudi variety, anyway. And we needn’t be either. All we need to do is dip the Noth Slope and offshore, which we can do cleanly, effectively, and to huge (real) profit and wealth creation.
Have you done a cost estimate? You keep saying the same thing, yet you haven’t provided anything by way of documentation. No one else has either. I think it’s time to put up or shut up. And frankly, I don’t think “you” (not you personally, but you in general) can mount a convincing argument. I am not at all opposed to drilling on the North Slope or offshore. By all means, I think we should. I just don’t see it as a game-changer. It’ll make a dent, but not that big a dent. And it will be relatively expensive, too. But the longer we wait the more expensive it will get, and the less impact it is likely to have. We need it now, as a bridge to a more sustainable future. Looking at things completely dispassionately (and irregardless of CO2 emissions), coal kills more people than oil does, and oil more than natural gas. But poverty kills more than any one of them. Having said that though, I strenuously argue that it’s a false equation in the long term. We are going to make the transition to sustainable fuels sooner or later. The question really is how to optimize that transition in a way that kills the fewest people while at the same time doesn’t wreck the economy (because you can’t save people without money). People whine about how reckless and inefficient the government is. And it certainly can be. Then again, there are also numerous recent examples indicating that too free a market is the same way. Lead paint on toys, toxic chemicals in dog food, downer cows in the food chain, predatory lending practices depriving people of homes. Yes, there was a tech bubble in the early 00s. I’m a big fan of high tech, but not mindlessly so. I managed to see it coming before I got too burned (I lost money on Cisco, but that’s a different story). And yes, there are going to be bubbles as the alternative fuels industry takes off. But unless we’re really stupid about it, that doesn’t make it a bad idea. You can’t properly consider the downside without properly considering the upside — and vice versa. It’s not an either-or situation, regardless of how Lewis Carroll portrays it. Go ask Alice.
RutRow, where did astro go?
Hi Mr. Watts, Anyone who doesn’t agree with you is a troll, right?
At first, I thought you were confused, but honest.
I know better now.
REPLY: No it is because your sole purpose here has been to denigrate others with taunts. You have not contributed anything positive to the conversation. Your goal here clearly is to start a flame war, and I won’t have it. So off you go.
As for everyone else, back to business, you too Mosh.
For the record, astro, my IQ is NOT around 65, its around 23 … but in dog years.
so much bigger
Basing energy policy on reducing fossil fuel use is not insane. Now you’re being disingenuous, Rico. Shame on you. I said “Basing energy policy on reducing C02, which not only isn’t a pollutant, but is a beneficial gas is nothing short of insanity.” Big difference there, Rico.
I am arguing that even if you ignore the CO2 emissions part, nothing much changes in terms of shaping energy policy.
If nothing much changes, then why even consider C02?
Your understanding of the science refuting AGW is laughably pathetic, Rico, so your basis for criticism is nonexistent. You might try this paper for a start: Editorial: The Great Global Warming Hoax?
Rico:
“…coal kills more people than oil does, and oil more than natural gas.”
And lack of coal, oil, or natural gas kills even more!
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
Bruce Cobb (12:08:09): If nothing much changes, then why even consider C02?
Uh…. I thought that was my point. Who exactly is being disingenuous?
As far as your suggested reading goes, I’m too stupid. Can you guide me? Or maybe, if you’re as interested in science as you state, maybe we should talk about the science, rather than editorials about the science. In that regard, could you explain to me why my comments about the Miskolzi paper were off-base? For someone with your stated certainty, that should be as easy as falling off a log — if, in fact, I don’t know what I’m talking about. But if you can’t, then again I must ask… who exactly is being disingenuous?
McGrats (12:11:23): And lack of coal, oil, or natural gas kills even more!
It certainly would — if there were no other alternatives. But there are. The question is… at what price? Can you answer that in some sort of coherent manner? Talking points don’t work with me. I want to see numbers. Lots of them. I’m a geek.
Evan Jones (19:30:47): Do you have a specific example in mind; perhaps I am missing a trick, here?
No tricks really. Only cold, hard logic. Think Socrates.
I still can’t think of an example where a nation cleaned up its environment in any real way while remaining poor. The only cases that come to mind are successful postindustrial societies.
I am also not sure what specific examples you want me to adduce to support the notion that when oil prices go up it makes sense to increase exploration and that prohibiting exploration in vast areas industry very much wants to explore, and that failure to do so makes prices higher and the US more dependant on imports. It seems to be somewhat a truism.
hy don’t we lift all restrictions and let the market do as it will? If alternate fuels will pay off, fine. I am in favor of whatever will pay.
And I don’t care so much about imports vs. non-imports. I just want as much wealth creatd as quicky as possible. (I am concerned with production. Overconsumption is a different question entirely.)
Larry Grimes,
Let me tell you a story about men and their past credentials. I trust it won’t bore you. In my first real job, the boss was never in the office, so I reported to MAC, a retired wirey 06 with 10/20 vision and a cackling laugh I will never forget. Every day he would yelp my name and I came running to his office for some random task. I was fresh meat, the new guy. One day my cubical mate, a wild weasel, pulled me aside and said “kid you need some slack in your chain MAC is just yanking you around like a puppy.”
But I didn’t want slack in my chain. MAC had it. Whatever IT was. He had the right stuff.
Every sunday we played golf at the Long Beach Navy Course. He was the ultimate sandbagger, moaning about how long I drove the ball. Every Sunday he took my money, religiously. Ok it was a dollar a side. And then we would go to his house for sunday dinner. The kid, the colonel, and his lovely wife.
I never asked about his past or the pictures I saw on the den wall with him next to airplanes. He never made it a point to talk about war stories. Even at work, when other guys regaled me with tales of valor over thud ridge, Mac sat silent and smiled. Sandbagger.
Then one day while driving by the Hawthorne airport, I spied an F86 and asked my friend, “what’s the name of that plane? ”
“Saber”, he said ” MAC flew one in Korea.”
And then I asked my friend this: “What kind of plane is a thunderbird?”
“Thunderbird isnt a plane you idiot”
” Why does everyone kid MAC about thunderbird then?”
” Mosher, are you a total effin idiot, you spend every weekend golfing with the boss . He has you over for dinner with him and his wife every sunday , and you have NO IDEA who he is? do you know? Tell me you know? he’s an orginal thunderbird!
He is the first slot man”
So when I got back to work I snuck into his office and I found the
history of the thunderbirds book on his shelf and I sat there reading it
until he came in and found me. He yelled at me pretty loudly so everyone could hear.
“Is that you?” I said pointing to a picture in the book.
“that’s history kid, you owe me one more stroke on the front nine this weekend” and then he cackled ,kicked me out of his office and made me fetch coffee.
Next Sunday on the course I brought up the matter with him at the turn.
Bad coffee, cold hot dogs, I was down a stroke after giving him 4 on the front.
I figured I could shake him up.
We sat there, MAC, me and the couple we always golfed with:Chuck Knight and his wife.
“MAC, how come you never told me you were an orginal thunderbird,
you designed the patch for christ sake”
Mac, ” ask chuck why he never told you he was a blue angel”
“Chuck…you were a blue Angel ?”
Chuck: ” one of the first. It’s history kid, get over it”
Their lesson to me, what you did yesterday, what you shot on the front nine doesn’t matter one whit. See you in the clubhouse.
See you in the clubhouse Mac and Chuck. First round is on you.
That’s what I think of Phds. in an odd sort of way.
(Did Plato’s Republic have an EPA?)
The question is… at what price?
Oh, I agree.
Rico
very thoughtful stuff, and I agree with a lot of it, especially about energy and national security. We clearly have to develop new strategies, no question.
All the same, I think you’re too easy on the AGW movement. If things are polarised, the Gore contingent largely started that, by attempting to enforce a ‘debate now closed’ policy, and by doing what Anthony is criticizing on this post, ie insulting sceptics as ‘flat earthers’. Your quote from the Russell Seitz article is puzzling. He finds asymmetry between Gore’s Hollywood effects and ‘corny’ lines which ‘seldom face scientific criticism’, with its ‘token opposition, chosen for political reliability rather than scientific acumen’, finishing with a sideswipe at ‘well-funded’ right wing media, as though Gore and the left wing media were struggling along on dry crusts. The asymmetry is that AGW is the gravy train, isn’t it? Politicians here in Europe certainly think so, and seem determined to strangle our industries and force taxes up. And the media thinks so too, which is why it puts out endless features about polar bears and ice shelves. I understand that you think that adaptation should be gradual, not economically damaging. But most AGWers don’t, as far as I can see. They are trying to bounce us into an economic dead zone, and the truth is, I bet you, 98% of them really don’t give a f**k for the climate or the environment. They are lying about that. Either they are hip posers, or their reasons are political.
Why the reasons matter is, lucidity matters. You seem to be saying, if the end is ok, then ‘science without questions’ is ok too. Well, what if, one day, the end is not ok? What if the science nobody was allowed to question said that people with large ears were inferior, and needed to be sterilised, so they couldn’t reproduce? These things can happen, and have, in countries as apparently enlightened and (sort of) civilized as ours.
Concerning Miskolzi, I believe I have the right to refer to theories, and the physicists who advance them without being a physicist myself. You may publish a refutation of Miskolzi. We either pay attention to what scientists say or we ignore them. Which would you prefer? All interaction between specialists and politics is painful. Live with it.
Sorry no numbers, as you know, I am not a geek. But I respect geeks, and get my numbers from Lucia at rankexploits. She still believes in AGW, but her numbers a levelling off a bit. I trust her to tell the truth.
Evan Jones (13:45:03): I still can’t think of an example where a nation cleaned up its environment in any real way while remaining poor. The only cases that come to mind are successful postindustrial societies.
Huh? I think you might want to rephrase that. Regardless of their concern for their environment, how does a nation (or society — I presume you are equating the two) become a successful postindustrial society (or nation) while remaining poor? It seems like a contradiction in terms.
Evan Jones (13:48:47): The question is… at what price? Oh, I agree.
Well then, answer the question.
Has anybody following this thread seen Stephen Schneider’s talk for the Annual Dempsey Lecture,
“Global Warming: Is the Science Settled Enough for Policy?”
http://www.cctvsalem.org/dempsey.php
About 80 mins in length.
Any comments?
Anyone notice that the CBS commercials for 60 Minutes are only about Bill James (the stats guy for the Boston Red Sox – for those of you that don’t follow sports). I find it a bit odd that they wouldn’t be talking up the Gore interview or the ex-detainee that says the US tortured him. If any of you have seen different ads in your part of the country, let us all know.
Rico:
A: That’s the point. Societies that are poor are very hard on the environment. Why? Because they are too worried about survival of themselves and their kids to care about niceties like cleaning up. Non-modern farming is terribly destructive to the environment. So is hunting and gathering, which is only sustainable when popultions remain tiny and life expectancy is extremely low.
People clean up their environment only when the value of being clean becomes “worth it” to them. And the only time it becomes “worth it” is when they are a wealthy, postindustrial society.
So let China and India and Africa get to that point as quickly as possible without the west tripping them up. At that point they will clean up and the “brown cloud” will be a smelly memory.
B.) A price that equates to a wise investment that will pay off just like any other business venture. Without any influence from the government. Furthermore, i think that when we move on from fossil fuels, this will be how it happens.
“Elephant, n.: A mouse built to government specifications.”
Rico- You said “Radiative flux equals total gravitational potential energy? That seems a bit odd to me. How about you? It’s an important question because, as indicated in Sect. 3.1, the assumption is key to his entire treatise.”
This seems reasonable to me. The atmosphere’s average height is controlled by a balance between gravitational attraction and thermally-driven expansion. Radiative flux results directly in changes in temperature, which affects this balance. I have not gone through the paper carefully yet. However, I expect a model that uses finite boundary conditions at the top of atmosphere (as opposed to the original semi-infinite boundary assumption previously relied on) will be more accurate.
There is a powerful reason to continue using fossil fuels that contribute CO2 to the atmosphere. CO2 is an excellent aerial fertilizer, resulting in a greener planet with more food production.
I don’t imagine we’d burn fossil fuels just for the sake of burning them. But burning them is an exponent and enabler of wealth creation. Wealth is the key. I’d even go so far as to say inceased wealth is better for plants than inceased CO2.
Back in the day, Bill James lost his job as a night watchman in a bean factory because he was too engrossed thinking about statistics to make his rounds and punch all the machines he was supposed to punch to demonstrate that he was making his rounds. Probably not apocryphal.
=============
Hi,
Here is “Joe Bastardi responds to Gore’s Comments”
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2008/03/joe_bastardi_responds_to_gores.html#comments
I think he may have a PhD.
In the words of Frederick Douglass when ask by a young man how to further the cause, his answer was “agitate agitate agitate”.
[…] If you wish to write letters to CBS New regarding the issue, see my post on the same subject here. […]
Has anyone here read Gerlach’s piece (http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161) on how Climatology is basing the notion of a “Greenhouse Effect” on a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
Every (at least the IPCC) Climate discussion always revolves around “how much does CO2 contribute?” when the real question should be “Is there such a thing as a Greenhouse Effect?”
For Astro (since you’re a Phd physicist), please explain how CO2 can violate the 2nd law of Thermodynamics by “reflecting” long wave radiation back to earth causing a forced reheating. (Also, please show your formulas that actually do the energy to heat conversion since energy radiation heat.) Also, be sure you maintain the whole “closed system” and not start re-adding the sun’s energy post facto to satisfy your claims like the google and wikipedia definitions do.
I WANT TO SEE SOME PROOF THAT YOU KNOW HOW THE EARTH WORKS BEFORE YOU TELL ME HOW IT WILL REACT.
As far as your suggested reading goes, I’m too stupid. Can you guide me?
What part of Jim Peden’s paper, written in laymaen’s terms, didn’t you understand, Rico? I assume you read it.
The curse of ManBearPig strikes again.
Well, I have lit up the CBS forum pretty good.
(Possibly a few have migrated back here!) #B^1
Evan, regarding pre/post industrial societies and clean-up activities, I think a better way to think about it is… if we found some pre-industrial societies that created toxic waste we could examine which ones cleaned up and which ones didn’t and how their economies compared. But I can’t think of any that created toxic waste. That’s largely a post-industrial phenomenon. On the other hand, I can think of several pre-industrial societies which started out successful but ultimately failed because the supply of a necessary commodity could not keep up with demand and they couldn’t figure out a way to adapt.
That’s really the question. In that regard, in our modern technological world the purpose of burning fossil fuels is not to create emissions, the purpose is to create energy. So if you could find a source that didn’t create emissions at the same price (considering all of the internal and external costs throughout the life cycle of each alternative), wouldn’t you be foolish not to use it? That way you wouldn’t have to worry about cleaning up.
Stephen Fox (14:53:33): Your quote from the Russell Seitz article is puzzling.
It might be less so if you read the whole article. And with all due respect, given what you said about it, I think you may have even misinterpreted some of the little I highlighted. But let’s ignore that for the time being.
The asymmetry is that AGW is the gravy train, isn’t it?
My perspective is that there are gravy trains on both sides of the issue, because there are vested interests on both sides. What’s best for business, as percieved from the lens of given industry, is not necessarily what’s good for society, or the economy as a whole.
But I believe what you’re driving at is the attitude among the more rabid AGWers that we have to eliminate fossil fuels no matter what the effect on the economy. I think that’s crazy and self-defeating. It would at best replace one catastrophe for another. But I think that is a false choice. I think we can substantially reduce the use of fossil fuels in a way that could be economically neutral at least, and very possibly economically positive. As with anything else, though, it will require an investment. And the resistance there is associated with the assumption that the free market will take care of everything if the government would simply get out of the way. I argue that the situation isn’t as simple as that. The government certainly is in the way. They always have been, and they always will be, because there is no way for them to get OUT of the way.
Said differently, I argue that we don’t have much choice. For example, a study by the DOE a while back concluded, The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.
One could argue that we’ve heard this before (Club of Rome, etc.). But not from the DOE, and not from a variety of oil company executives, and certainly not the Pentagon. Now we are. That’s particularly disturbing, because these are not think tank people (though there are those too), not people walking gilded halls of ivory towers (though there are those too), these are people on the ground with big bucks and lives at stake and who actually have to deal with the issue. So maybe it’s time to listen. And the response has to be coordinated. It’s not something you can leave to the market. It goes without saying that replacing oil in the transportation sector will require strong government action two decades before a peak because of the time needed to replace vehicles and fuel infrastructure. And any attempt will have ripple effects throughout the entire energy sector, so those have to be addressed too.
Regarding Stephen Fox’s question, “You seem to be saying, if the end is ok, then ’science without questions’ is ok too.”… No, I’m not saying that. Science should always be questioned. That’s a good thing. I have problems with the level of inquiry sometimes, but that’s beside the point (for now anyway). The point is that the intense interest in climate science is largely driven by its policy implications. And if the policy implications were only dependent upon the science, then it would be exceedingly important to get the science right. But what I’m arguing is that many of the same policy implications are driven by considerations which have nothing to do with climate science, but which combined overwhelm the science. So a broader scope is required. To advocate maintaining the status quo you don’t have the luxury to only argue that AGW is total bunk. You are also compelled to argue that fossil fuel demand will not outstrip supply any time soon, that the price of alternatives will never be brought lower, that burning fossil fuels is worth the health effects, that the $500 billion/yr we currently spend on oil imports is a terriffic idea, as is remaining beholden to regimes in places like Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. To the extent that you are prepared to argue all of those things, then the implications of climate science are a big deal. But to the extent that you aren’t, then they aren’t. That’s what I’m saying.
And no one forms groups as quickly as Anarchists.
I am no longer financing this Orwellian nightmare. I have stopped all political donations and donations to environmental organizations and causes. Their propaganda is out of control and threatens a witches brew of unnecessary and regressive carbon offset and green tax legislation, which will bleed all of us to death. Xxx knows where the money would go.
Folks, I know you already are ‘doubters’ but thought I should inject one little voice in support of orthodoxy here.
Climatological models aren’t perfect. They certainly aren’t right. Data are incomplete. Predictions are not 100% certain. Causal factors are imputed based on plausible hypotheses.
Welcome to science. This is the way we do it. Complicated things are teased out, modeled and hypothesized over and we compare various scenarios to the data as they come in.
Scientists get a lot of respect for two different things. On the one hand, showing that all this fits together to strengthen a theory is good. You get published along with the hundreds of other papers all in the same vein.
But work that shows a prevailing model to be wrong either in a small way or a big one is a guarantee of prestige, grant support, tenure, etc.
What I’m saying is that you guys are missing two key aspects of science.
Science is rarely certain. We just keep refining and tightening and nailing down our expectations until we’re really darned sure.
Scientists stand to gain MORE from falisifying theories than from validating them.
The American citizenry is more informed on the science of climate change than any other field. Papers are widely disseminated and often presented in simplified form so that non-scientists can parse them. We are also much more aware of the internal dynamics of scientific communities on this subject than on most. Climate scientists frequently go on record as endorsing the overall gist of human-induced global warming, for example.
All of this together should make reasonable people wonder if maybe, just maybe, the likelihood is high that human-induced global warming is real and really a threat.
The alternative is to position yourself as intellectually more capable than the collective scientific community. Or, it is to simply embrace the lower-probability hypotheses that are widely seen as very unlikely indeed. Or, it is to imagine some kind of weird lefty conspiracy in which smart young people all over the world are scurrying around their labs and computer equipment eagerly building a doomsday scenario just to mess with your heads.
As with evolution, this one is pretty much in the bag. We will certainly lean new things and there will, no doubt, be new and interesting tweaks to the theories (as, by the way, there are likely to be to Darwinian genetics). I wouldn’t say that the theories of human-induced global warming are yet as solid as, say, Newtonian mechanics. But remember it took hundreds of years before Einstein presented a refined version of Newton that took us to the next level while still leaving the essence of the older theory in operation.
The scientific consensus may be wrong. But it is the best we have on offer and deploys the most active, engaged and well-educated minds available. It might be a better use of energy to quit fighting this rising tide and direct your energy toward thinking about how humanity can best come to grips with the global alterations unfolding around us.
In the meantime, Bill14, here in Southern Ontario our temps are 15 degrees below normal. The Earth’s temp is slowly falling even though CO2 is up 5.5% since 1998. The oceans have been cooling since 2003. These are FACTS that the models can’t even begin to answer.
That suggests that the science is Flawed and needs serious revision. Agw isn’t working out the way they would like us to believe. Simple as that.
Al Gore is the Ignatius J. Reilly (Patron Saint of the Democratic Party) of the environmental movement. Pay a (carbon) tax and change the weather. I don’t think so.
Not a doubter, Bill, just need real proof and not computer models. There are plenty of correlations, but where is the causation??
So the scientists who are part of the “Consensus” are the most “active, engaged and well-educated minds available”, but those who aren’t are…what? Why then are so many of the “deniers” so high in current and former positions of scientific and academic authority?
Perhaps I am beating a dead horse here, but I think this is well worth a read (or listen). Basically, it’s about smart, coherent policy management to stimulate economic growth — with specific regard to renewable energy. It’s worth reading (or listening) all the way through, but it really picks up steam at the end, when they start talking about production tax credits, among other ways of stimulating investment. If you’ve spent any time listening to what key venture capitalist entities are saying (as I have, lol!), almost to a one they say… PASS A LONG-TERM PRODUCTION TAX CREDIT and we’ll take care of the rest!
While I’m not sure I’d leave it at that, I am sure that that one thing would spur investment many times over, and would create more revenue in the long run than it costs in revenue in the short run. Obviously, there are never any guaratees, but that rates up there in the realm of “no brainers”. There’s a lot more in the interview worth paying attention to, but this one comment was, to me, the take-home message (emphasis mine):
It left me with the belief that President Bush, personally and individually, professionally believes these incentives should be in place and should be long-term, if not permanent. That is my understanding of his position. Now, there’s a lot more to the administration, a lot more to the politics of this that has to be worked out, but I left that meeting in the belief that he believes that these are good incentives. Tax credits cause capital to flow. That capital flow creates immediate economic development. That capital gets spent immediately in the marketplace to buy equipment and employ construction jobs and installers and so forth. So, it creates immediate economic development and all that development pays taxes. So, the supply-side economists of the 1980s would argue here, if they were still here, that these tax credits actually pay for themselves. In fact, all of the supply-side analysis proved, in the 80s and 90s, that a tax credit like this causes $4 to $5 of capital flow for every dollar of the tax credit. You have$4 to $5 dollars flowing in, which creates tax revenues back to the government that pays for the tax credit. It pays for itself. And I’d like to see that supply-side argument, even though it’s not so popular these days, come forward and justify that these tax credits actually pay for themselves on a current basis. I believe that and I believe that’s true.
I believe it too. I’m sure there are many here that believe tax cuts, any tax cuts, are a good thing. I have a more nuanced view. I don’t believe all tax cuts are the same. I believe the best ones are the ones that increase capital flow most directly. Sadly, I believe that for the most part the tax cuts that have been granted in the past few years make more sense from a political perspective than from an economic one. If Bush really wanted to make a serious difference economically, he would have started out with cutting corporate/business taxes. That’s where you get the most bang for the buck. But it is also the one that would have required the most heavy lifting politically. The capital gains cuts saved me a large amount of money. But objectively, it did more to reduce capital flow than to increase it. Reduced corporate taxes while maintaining capital gains taxes the way they were would have motivated companies to recirculate the money rather than distribute it to their investors. And the inheritance tax cuts… I don’t even want to talk about that. At any rate, production tax credits, in the whole realm of tax cuts, make the most sense of all. IMO, it’s just plain stupid not to extend them — and in a way that is dependable. As I said before, the government can never get out of the way. But relatively speaking, this one thing would more qualify under that definition than any other. The second would be to standardize, in a meaningful way, the regulations associated with deploying infrastructure improvements like smart grids, inter-state (or inter-regional) energy deployment, high voltage feed lines, decoupling utility company profits from energy use… that sort of thing. Right now those sorts of things represent impediments that are very difficult for any alternative to overcome. They represent regressive, rather than progressive forces that retard rather than stimulate changes which would be otherwise revenue neutral in the worst case, and revenue positive in most.
… if we found some pre-industrial societies that created toxic waste we could examine which ones cleaned up and which ones didn’t and how their economies compared.
Well, the standard pattern of the chiefdom was to kill every animal, deplete every field, chop down every tree, foul every water source (incl. groundwater), and then simply moved on. Some ancient societies added mining runoff as well.
There weren’t any that cleaned up their environment, though Rome managed to bring in clean water and the Romans cleaned up themselves (resulting in life expectancy that was not rivalled until after 1900).
A truly clean environment (e.g., NY City today) is an entirely modern phenomenon. Industrial societies are dirty, but once they become wealthy past a certain point, they always have cleaned up.
So if you could find a source that didn’t create emissions at the same price (considering all of the internal and external costs throughout the life cycle of each alternative), wouldn’t you be foolish not to use it? That way you wouldn’t have to worry about cleaning up.
Sure. But right now that doesn’t exist. I assume it will exist at some point. But prohibiting or unreasonably restricting the use of fossil fuel is not the way to achieve that. You make it sound like it’s “dirty apples-to-clean-apples, so why not go with clean”. it ain’t.
“The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem.”
Yes, management is going to have to fugure out what a completely false notion “peak oil” is. This will present quite a risk management problem.
One could argue that we’ve heard this before (Club of Rome, etc.). But not from the DOE, and not from a variety of oil company executives, and certainly not the Pentagon
Yes we have (but not sure about the Pentagon). In 1949 we were hearing it from the Dept. of the Interior. Nothing new here. We had c. 3.4 tba potential reserves from all sources in 1975. The number is 6.5 tbls today. We continue to discover roughly 2 bls for every 1 we consume. There are limits. We will probably never get anywhere near them before moving on from oil voluntarily.
As with evolution, this one is pretty much in the bag.
Mmmmm. I must respectfully beg. to differ. (Ook! Ook! Scritch-scratch.)
The acceptance pattern here is different, as is the nature of the evidence.
Evan, if it’s not too much to ask would you PLEASE provide whatever objective documentation you have to demonstrate “what a what a completely false notion “peak oil” is?” Really… where are you getting your information? And how dated is it?
Bill, thanks for the lecture on how science works. We know. The problem is, the AGW folks aren’t doing it. Witness the “hockey stick”. Oops. See, for those folks, when the facts don’t fit the theory, throw them out, and twist and distort the remainder. That’s how AGW pseudoscience works. Stick around. You just might learn something.
“It Will Happen In 2008” … what, may you ask?
Famine … due to cold.
Basically, it’s about smart, coherent policy management to stimulate economic growth — with specific regard to renewable energy.
I know.
But judging by the past record regarding government energy policy, my belief remains that the smartest, most coherent management to stimulate economic growth — with specific regard to renewable energy is to keep the government the heck out of it.
I also realize we fundamentally disagree on this point. But, as with climate, I feel I have to consider past correlations. (I find the PDO to be more reliable than the DoE.)
(I’ll steer clear of tax policy. I have too much to “contribute” and it is too off-topic.)
Evan, if it’s not too much to ask would you PLEASE provide whatever objective documentation you have to demonstrate “what a what a completely false notion “peak oil” is?” Really… where are you getting your information? And how dated is it?
Hmmm. Refer to “The Next 200 Years” for a rather detailed list (not unlike the Rev’s 1922 newsclips) about how oil is running out Real Soon Now, and potential reserves as of 1975. As for today’s reserves, just look up oil and it sources in Wiki and add it up (it’s probably ‘way lowballed, but that’s the way it goes), which is what I did. (I have the list somewhere.)
Same old story. A.) We are about to run out. B.) we continue to expand our potential reserves two barrels for evey barrel we actually use, in spite of expanded use.
The only thing “new” about “Peak Oil” is the word “Peak”.
It may even turn out that the recent “abiotic” theory (a severe misnomer) is correct and reserves are vitually unlimited (not renewable, just humongous).
Interesting, reading the transcript of the 60 minutes piece.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/27/60minutes/main3974389_page4.shtml
It seemed that 60 minutes was more concerned and spent more time about who Gore was endorsing in the Democratic nomination, rather than global warming-other than the small comment:
“”I think that those people [deniers, skeptcs, etc] are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view. They’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the earth is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it’s not that far off,” Gore said. ”
Really doesn’t contain much, it will be interesting to see what kind of advertising campaign 300 million can purchase.
From my experiences here in Michigan, after seeing one of the worst winters in decades if not longer, not too many people I talk to are all that worried about global warming.
I think the whole 300 M ad campaign is kind of a “last resort of desperation” by Al Gore and the rest of the AGW “prophets of gloom and doom”.
If this current solar minimum continues, and as of right now, there still is no sign of Cycle 24 starting any time soon, we will likely see late frosts this spring, and a shorter growing season this summer, especially in the more northern agricultural areas.
If that happens, and the dropping temp trends continue (provided the numbers don’t get deliberately cooked up) I think the whole CO2/AGW propanda machine will start falling apart within a year or two.
P.S. Am I the only one that got the impression that Al Gore’s “meeting/traintings” are more of an “AMWAY” pyramid multi-level marketing type format???
So the successor to Ron Hubbard & Scientology is
Al Gore & Climatology?
🙂
Dell,
GR?
Some comments here indicate that Gore “believes” the science of global warming. This I believe is not the case.
Gore now knows his science is rubbish. He may have believed in it earlier, but not now. This is all about advancing a socialist agenda – a huge government takeover of energy and our lives. He’s attempting a coup d’etat.
Unfortunately, the climate is not cooperating, and he’s quickly running out of time. We’re only 0.5°C – maybe a couple of years – from a cooling trend, and Gore is about to be humiliated. Panicked and desparate, he is now launching one last huge propoganda campaign to brainwash more people, hoping to tip the scales of public opinion. His most urgent target is taking over all worldwide climate data centres and, like the Soviets, put out phoney numbers no matter what the climate does, to fool the public.
For the GOP, every day is July 4th,
For Dems, every day is April 15th,
And for Al Gore, every day is April 1st.
It’s going to get real ugly, and so I urge all skeptics to step things up. This is a fight the world cannot afford to lose.
Evan is trying to give the impression he knows something about the oil economy but he misplaces a few facts along the way. You don’t see Bush kissing and holding hands with Canadians, nor do you see him rushing off to Canada to discuss quotas and oil prices. Hmm why is that? Simply because Saudi Arabia is more important wrt the oil price and petrodollars have underpinned the US economy since Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system. Without petrodollars the US cannot print money out of thin air without causing price inflation. Incidentally Evan it is money supply inflation that causes price inflation – read Von Mises again and blame Greenspan, not Gore.
With peak-oil Evan is actually correct but for the wrong reason. There is no peak in expensive heavy oil, shale oil or hellish-to-extract oil but there is certainly a peak in cheap oil. Regarding getting oil in Alaska, it would be rather simpler and more effective for Americans to buy cars that got more than 15 mpg, like the rest of the world, then more drilling wouldn’t be needed. In this case responsible government would have helped since it’s quite clear that if petrol is cheap, people simply burn more of it (supply and demand and Smith’s invisible hand).
Dogma and idealogical prejudice is ever-present with all the warmers, the warmongers, the socialists and the free marketeers. They are all mostly wrong but partly right. But if they’d just learn that all facts are important, not just the ones that support the theory they learned at their mothers teat, they might realize that the world cannot be easily improved by any ‘ism. The truth snakes between them all.
With peak-oil Evan is actually correct but for the wrong reason. There is no peak in expensive heavy oil, shale oil or hellish-to-extract oil
I don’t consider that to be a “wrong reason”. (YMMV.) Besides, tars, bitumens, shales, etc. are profitable at a very much lower price than currently.
OTOH, Oil companies have low profit margins. The “outrageous” profits have gone up from 7% to less than 10%. On an unrecoverable, unliquefiable investment. Which is why oil stocks were stinking up the Dow for nigh-on 20 years.
but there is certainly a peak in cheap oil.
Different question. And maybe not. And if there is, then all the more reason to expand exploration.
Incidentally Evan it is money supply inflation that causes price inflation – read Von Mises again and blame Greenspan, not Gore.
I am not ascribing blame to Gore.
Yet.
Though it is interesting how US inflation has been quite low given the increasing weakness of the dollar. Part of it is that other currencies are finally strengthenng, which is fine with me. A weak dollar is great for exports, though!
I am not an ideologue other than that I desperately want to see the poor nations of the world becme affluent.
First, it will largely end an entire history of human misery.
Second, they will clean up their environments only when they do so, as did the west.
And third, I think that the wealth the world creates in the next 30 years, if we go all out, will produce the power and tech to deal with almost any problem. Including global warming, if it turns out to be a problem.
I consider these considerations to be mostly practical, not ideological.
I am therefore in favor of what produces the cheapest energy. If that turns out to be something other than oil, then, like groovy. that would be just great. I’m easy. But since I do not believe in “Peak Oil”, I do not believe it wise to sacrifice heavily in order to “prepare” for it, especially as it is the poor who will be hardest hit.
As James G and Evan have alluded, estimates of “peak oil” very much depend on how it’s defined. My definition is more in tune with James G’s, which Evan thinks is a different question: the peak in cheap oil is coming, if not already here. I think the DOE study I cited in an earlier post lays out the issue well. If you don’t like that one, read one of the other ones they cited. Is it a unanimous verdict? Not quite. But even the most optimistic (and still credible) projection requires a very broad definition of the term “peak oil”, little attention to cost of production, and considerable faith in future technology (and if “you” believe the last when it’s applied to oil production, why wouldn’t you extapolate to other technologies?). So in that respect, if you ignore the fact that oil is becoming more costly and difficult to find, and more costly, difficult, and would require large capital investments to extract, and more costly, energy-intensive, more toxic, and more of a drain on other resources to refine in necessary quantities, then yes, “peak oil” is no more than a chimera. But to the extent that you don’t ignore all those things, then it’s not.
And third, I think that the wealth the world creates in the next 30 years, if we go all out, will produce the power and tech to deal with almost any problem. Including global warming, if it turns out to be a problem.
In that respect it appears we largely agree. We do seem to have a major disagreement on the best strategy to attain that goal.
Evan
I think we mostly agree but there is a tendency to oversimplify. The oil business and also the nuclear business have for a long time benefited from subsidies and governmental favoritisms not made available to alternatives. It is indeed enormously difficult and expensive to extract oil but up to now the oil economy has been touted as essential for growth, so this has been tolerated. In fact while dollars were king the worldwide petrodollar economy essentially gave America free money so that was the real reason for the oil bias.
I don’t think that CO2 is a pollutant but I do see many spills, leaks, direct pollution of rivers and seas which come from the oil and petrochemical industry. It is not clear to me that Nigerians, for example, are actually better off for being rich in oil – in fact the oil slicks ruin the fishing. It would be nice to see cleaner alternatives being given a fair shake for once. Solar panels have reduced in price enormously and are set to continue to do so. Is there a good reason why we can’t have an entire roof made of them? Geothermal energy is free, just needing a heat pump. Between these two simple measures, how much money could we save? There are many other similar ideas that just need funding. Oil is only essential if you believe it to be and this belief has caused the crisis. An orderly transition shouldn’t hurt any more than dependence on costly oil does already. As for the money to fund these alternatives (some of which are just a one-off payment) – we seem to find money incredibly easily whenever we need to fight a war. And ironically most of the wars lately seem to be about protecting the oil supply. So is the oil economy really saving us money or costing us money?
The weight of all those panels might be an issue. It also depends on where you live. Here in Seattle the sun comes in at a shallow angle, we don’t get good sun for solar. That and it being overcast for about 4 months out of the year, at least, also makes us a bad candidate.
Geothermal is free, if you can afford to have it installed. And if you have the property. What if you’re in an apartment? Can geothermal provide heating and AC to an entire apartment complex? I know solar can’t. Even a full roof of solar panels won’t power everything in a modern house, I don’t believe (I could be wrong).
Oil is essential for a lot more than just home heating and power. Everything to do with plastics uses petroleum. The entire transportation industry relies on it. Solar can’t cut it there, and until hydrogen can step up to the plate, we’re stuck with oil. Even then, is adding more water vapor to the atmosphere better than adding CO2?
Jeff (09:29:07) : Geothermal is free, if you can afford to have it installed. And if you have the property. What if you’re in an apartment? Can geothermal provide heating and AC to an entire apartment complex?
Unfortunately, the term “geothermal” is used to mean different things to different people depending upon the scale to which it is applied. In that sense, I guess, it’s similar to “peak oil”, lol! Anyway, and without going into detail, could I suggest you expand your interpretation of “geothermal” a bit? I’m not sure where JamesG fits in, but I am very certain you and I are talking about completely different concepts.
Thanks for the link, Rico. Unfortunately it didn’t really do a lot to explain what “geothermal” really does. I had a couple different thoughts on it, but have no engineering background to fall back on. Heck I barely graduated High School (through boredom, not lack of intelligence 😉 ).
One of my thoughts was cooling. Since underground areas, caverns, cellars, etc, have extremely constant temps of something like 50 degrees, geothermal would be a great way to cool a home, by running water through long pipes to cool it, then to use the cool water to cool air. Don’t know how practical it is, or how much such a system would cost to install.
But I guess the real issue is heat. I don’t know that there’s enough geological activity in enough places to be able to provide complete geothermal power. And how reliable would such power be? Old Faithful might be faithful but is everywhere that consistent? I just don’t know, and not afraid to say so.
And what happens if magma starts coming up out of your geothermal vent? Or you end up with Old Faithful in your back yard? Who gets to pay to clean that up?
Again, I think it would be a great thing to explore and exploit, but I have the feeling that groups like Greenpeace, club of Rome, and others would still have a problem with it, since their goal is the de-industrializing of the west, and keeping poor nations poor. Their founders have said so, not in so many words, but nearly so.
I’m not so keen on wind power, since turbines require a large industry to produce, and are prone to failure (and potential death to local inhabitants).
And Solar, while fascinating, is a potential albedo-changing element to the landscape, and could potentially cause more problems that it fixes. Imagine the change in albedo from billions of dark panels all over the planet.
I also meant to add, if Yellowstone is the next super volcano, placing a lot of geothermal power plants there would NOT be a good idea. Not only would it be a huge natural disaster, but if it destroyed a good portion of our power-generation capability at the same time… Can you say Mad Max?
JamesG, Jeff & Jeff Alberts,
Huge advances are being made in Solar. It’s just that much of it is off the average person’s radar. This company is working on some pretty cutting edge solar film technology.
I got this link from Rico a while back, but since he hasn’t noted it, I will. My guess is that weight for a roof full of these would not be a significant factor.
JamesG, Jeff & Jeff Alberts,
Huge advances are being made in Solar. It’s just that much of it is off the average person’s radar. This company is working on some pretty cutting edge solar film technology.
I got this link from Rico a while back, but since he hasn’t noted it, I will. My guess is that weight for a roof full of these would not be a significant factor.
Sorry if this double posts – it disappeared the first time I hit “submit”.
Jeff Alberts (15:51:33): Thanks for the link, Rico. Unfortunately it didn’t really do a lot to explain what “geothermal” really does. I had a couple different thoughts on it, but have no engineering background to fall back on. Heck I barely graduated High School (through boredom, not lack of intelligence).
No need to explain. I have plenty of friends in situations like yours — very smart people, but not a lot of formal education. I also have others who have lots of formal education but not a lot of common sense, or “street smarts”. Where I fall on that scale myself I don’t care to speculate. I am of the opinion that genuine stupidity, while incurable, is rare whereas ignorance, while commonplace, is curable as long as it’s not willful. At any rate, I like what Mac Rebennack (aka Dr. John) had to say about it (in a tune called, “Qualified”): Your edjumakashun ain’t no better than what you understand”. Said in another way, I tried to never allow school to get in the way of my edjumakashun, lol!
With that in mind, try going back to the link I cited and read the MIT study that is linked to at the bottom of the article. That’s the one everyone references. And if that excites you, read the rest of them too. Be prepared for your eyes to get tired. Just so you know though, if that happens before your brain starts to smoke you’re either not paying attention or you’re a better man than me, lol!
But if you don’t want to spend the time, let me summarize: an enhanced geothermal system (EGS) is one where you drill two wells (or more, if needed) deep into the earth’s crust where the rocks are really hot, create a reservoir between the two by artificially fracturing the rocks between them, then injecting water (or some other fluid) into one (the injection well), letting the water heat up as it travels to the second well (the production well) where, by virtue of convection, it comes back the surface to run a turbine before it’s injected back.
And how reliable would such power be? Old Faithful might be faithful but is everywhere that consistent? I just don’t know, and not afraid to say so.
I’m glad you asked! I love talking about this stuff. First, the up side…
The “capacity factor” (which is the percentage of time a plant is able to achieve its rated capacity) of existing utility scale geothermal plants is well over 90%. In that regard, they rival major hydroelectric plants and outperform nuclear. In other words, they run pretty much all the time, which makes them ideal as “base power” plants. Existing geothermal plants are cheaper than dirt, too — or at least cheaper than coal (even ones without any scrubbers to get rid of the most harmful “traditional” pollutants).
As far as future depoyability, the MIT study gives a very thorough estimation of that. The bottom line is: if it becomes a mature technology it can be deployed almost anywhere — in the US or elsewhere in the world. In other words, with a few exceptions, (and again, assuming the technology becomes mature) geothermal plants can be located just about anywhere they are needed (which reduces the need for long transmission lines). They are very scalable, meaning they can be built to accommodate a small community or a large city. They occupy a smaller surface footprint than just about any other power source (the size of the plant itself is about the size of a coal or gas-fired plant, but without the mining and transportation concerns associated with either), and they emit essentially nothing except heat (which can already be recaptured more readily than CO2). And since the “fuel” is supplied by the earth itself (and the water is re-injected), it’s free. And if you know where to drill, they’re cheap to build, too.
Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? And if it is true, why aren’t they everywhere already? That brings up the down side…
As far as I can tell, there is one major techological hurdle standing in the way: artificially stimulating a fracture reservoir in the necessary rock substrata. As far as I know there are no other fundamental technological hurdles. But that one’s a biggie. And as far as I know it’s only been attempted once, at a site called Habanero in Australia. And the results of that site are still pending. A second site is soon to happen in The Geysers, CA. The Australian site is the “real thing” — i.e., they’re drilling deep in a location that is not especially different than much of the rest of the world. The Geysers location, on the other hand, is an attempt to regenerate a more “traditional” geothermal location that originally had naturally occuring super-heated water but subsequently went dry. If successful, the Australian site could be game-changing — it could open up possibilities for geothermal in a good 2/3 of the global landmass over the next few decades. The outlook on the Geysers site, on the other hand, is more limited but shorter term — it could revolutionize geothermal in places where magma pockets exist closer to the surface. That includes a considerable amount of the US west of the Rockies. Either way though, the “closed circuit design”, where you have an injection well in one place and a production well in another, is the big remaining hurdle. That’s a bit of a simplification, but not that much.
As something of an aside, your question about Yellowstone, or about magma coming up the well hole in any other place, is a non-issue. We’re talking about tapping a miniscule portion of a very, very large resource. However, the possibility that artificially fracturing the rock strata could cause earthquakes of low to marginal intensity is a real concern. Then again, it’s no more of a concern than the potential consequences of sucking out millions of gallons of oil from other locations — or subterranean water, for that matter. Florida, southern Indiana, parts of Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, among others I am unaware of, are littered with examples of that. Think sinkholes.
Jeff
Careful, your pessimism is rivaling that of the climate alarmists or the population explosion depressives. Plastics are infinitely recyclable and anyway they can now be made from natural materials (non foods). Even road surfaces are being made from non fossil fuels now. There are office buildings already using geothermal energy for heating/cooling. Every new house should have it installed by default just out of common sense.
I think the characterization of environmentalists is not just. What they want is for us to stop fouling our planet, not a socialist state. A lot of the Greenpeace site is devoted to sustainable energy. Some of it pie in the sky but a lot of it very useful. Sure some of them are lunatics but most are sincere people who care.
If the Yellowstone supervolcano is as bad as they say we’re all screwed anyway. You might read about China Lake (still in Western US). Apparently it has the potential to power a huge area.
For cars we already know that they can be made to do 100mpg if you reduce the weight. Check out the Loremo 157mpg car. And don’t mention safety because the increase in heavier cars have actually increased the overall death toll for a variety of reasons. With SUV’s we took a huge step backwards in automotive design. For propulsion, my own favourite is Aluminum-Air batteries, which I’m actually involved with (we’ve made it feasible). Just swap them out at the service station every 1000 miles or so.
RE albedo of solar panels. The actual total urban area is tiny compared to the size of the earth. So no worries. Indeed the worlds population standing nose to nose would likely fit in New Jersey.
Seems like making road surfaces out of fossil fuels would be a good wau of locking carbon away, no? My pessimism comes from experience, lol, of human nature.
Plastics are infinitely recyclable (really? Infinitely? There’s no loss in the process at all?), as long as they are infinitely recycled. That would mean forcing each and every person on the planet to recycle only the right plastics. And it would also mean that the recycling process doesn’t cause more pollution and cost than landfilling (which, incidentally, all the world’s garbage could fit in a relatively small area for centuries to come).
The problem with reducing the weight of passenger cars is that cargo carriers still have to be heavy. And it would pretty much do away with many freedoms, such as owning a pickup truck and an RV.
As for total urban area being so small, well, CO2 in the atmosphere is even smaller, so we shouldn’t worry about it, right? We already know of climate issues created by land use changes. Making cities even hotter with solar panels isn’t the way to go.
Not familiar with Aluminum air batteries. Better than Lithium ion? If so, why are all the manufacturers still using them?
Oh, forgot to mention, as for the environmentalists and my characterization, I stand by it.
Quoting Maurice F. Strong, one of the world’s leading environmentalists and senior advisor to various U.N. Secretaries-General:
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring about?”
JamesG, can you offer further reading on the aluminum/air battery? That’s one I haven’t heard mentioned before. But from the description on Wikipedia it sounds interesting. By the way, have you heard of the company, EEStor? Supposedly they’re in the process of building a commercial scale factory to produce a proprietary form of rechargeable ultracapacitor battery that has some amazing properties. It’s hard to say how much to believe about these little start-ups until they actually have product rolling off the production line, but fromrecent reports it sounds like they’re actually getting pretty close to that point. After several delays the news is now getting consistently positive.
Also FWIW, that solar thin film PV company Nanosolar that Stan mentioned just announced a big deal with some French company (I don’t remember the name) to provide large amounts of panels. It sounds like their production lines are now booked solid through 2010. On a more traditional (silicon-based) solar PV vein, this new start-up sounds very interesting. But again, until they start pushing product it’s hard to tell.
Solar thermal (aka as concentrated solar power, or CSP) is also taking off like crazy out here in the southwest. According to another article I read, over 100 applications for new utility scale CSP power plants were filed in various municipalities in 2007 alone. Considering their very favorable grid load following characteristics I’d say we’ll probably see CSP grid generation capacity double, maybe even triple every year for the next several years.
There are so many different alternative energy alternatives getting ever closer to the magic “cheaper than coal” benchmark that it’s getting hard to believe it won’t be reached in a few short years — provided governmental policy starts doing more to help than hinder. No matter who ends up president next year, I’d say that’s likely to happen. And that’s why I truly believe the debate over the significance of climate change as a determining factor in energy policy is a bit overblown. With the appropriate combination of cost-effective (i.e., cheap as coal) wind, solar, geothermal, batteries, and whatever else comes along, concerns about CO2 mitigation becomes largely irrelevant, because it will happen anyway — well, assuming the declining costs of renewable energy sources will keep pace with the decline they are likely to instigate in the costs of fossil fuels. It’s an interesting conundrum, eh?
Rico
I’ll try to get some literature on Al-air put up on the http://www.metalectrique.com website sometime. For googling purposes, Lawrence Livermore labs were into Al-Air in a big way in the 90s but they then switched to the inferior zinc-air battery. I expect the hydroxide gel formation was the problem they couldn’t overcome, but they have left a large body of literature. There are a few patents to check out too.
EEstor have never produced supercapacitors before. They have discovered a material with high capacitance yet not allowed for the dielectric saturation of this material in their calculations. So either they have found a way around that fundamental problem (which they don’t even mention as a problem), or they used the wrong equation in their patent. They are putting up a production facility before a prototype has been produced. So what do you think? As a competitor I should be impartial. I predict more “production delays” though :-).
Like you, I think this is the next boom. There will be a great deal of hype and a lot of poor ideas will fall away eventually after losing millions. I also think that isn’t too important for investors, who are likely looking for a short term pump-and-dump boost in shareprices. It’ll be the internet boom all over again. For transport it seems investors though are more interested in batteries than hydrogen systems, so hybrids, plug-ins and range extenders will be the kings. Hydrogen is looking like a dead duck unless a miracle happens.
Thanks for the link. I hope solar does succeed but there are still the intermittency and scale problems to overcome. There is huge potential though. I wrote a degree report on solar power in 1980. Nothing much changed though due to the combined effect of the low oil price and the strong nuclear lobby but in the last few years the progress has been incredible.
Jeff
Landfill is already a massive problem and it’s not cheap either, so something has to be done. There is just too much garbage. Burying useful stuff is really dumb anyway. The throwaway society cannot survive a resource crisis. I could imagine a rather easy process whereby plastics are color coded so they can be automatically separated by machinery.
I’ve long thought that all freight should go by rail anyway. Just imagine those acres of roads without trucks. Pick-ups and RV’s are fine for people who need them but they need to use a chassis that doesn’t kill people. Like minivans for example; it’s not difficult. As a fashion item, they aren’t even pretty and are doomed to lose out to the next fashion anyway.
I agree about the CO2. The oil price isn’t listening though. I’d use up that extra urban heat with heat pumps and Stirling engines. Otherwise it’s just another waste. As you know though the urban heat islands don’t affect the planet. Agriculture has much more effect. I’d welcome experiments though.
If this all works there’ll be cheaper bills and no wars about oil. If you don’t believe some sacrifices are worth it for a clean, healthy environment then I despair. My father tells me that everyone used to run out and collect the horse crap on the road so they could put it on their roses. What the heck happened to our generation?
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