it is my assertion that there is no way “green biofuel” can replace oil as the primary soucrce of energy.

ask yourself how much does it cost to grow, and what the net fuel produced from the factory ( not net harvest) is per acre. Then assume we need the current acres now to grow food, not fuel.

are there enough empty non used plantable acres to provide the quantities of fuel required? is there enough fertilizer to grow them?

I have followed palm oil prices for years. they simply track the changes in the price of biofuel which in trun tracks the price of oil fuel.

I dont think you can grow enough stuff on enough empty land to produce the fuel. And if you deforest the land to provide empty land to grow biofuel, then you remove the sink for c02 that the forest provided and you dont reduce co2 at all.

It’s not b/c Hansen’s science is wrong, but b/c Hansen’s rhetoric is invidious and divisive by nature.

I think his science IS wrong if it tells him that a runaway greenhouse effect can occur. If it was going to occur it would have long ago and the Earth would never have recovered.

The question remains simply: What is the climate sensitivity to CO2?

With average solar irradiance clearly trended to dim by a net of -0.2 to -0.3 degr. C. by 2025 (Solanki, Hathaway, others) & the additional offsets offered from soot & ozone mitigation (another -0.3 degrC) we may widen the window of opportunity against any serious risk of AGW.

So if climate sensitivity is high then an accelerated program of CO2 mitigation is paramount. If climate sensitivity falls below 2.5 degrees C., then a protracted program in due course is warranted. If it falls below 1.2 degrC, then other pressing priorities should be addressed first.

The quandary is this: How serious is the risk & how costly the remediation? Is it even feasible to reduce CO2 emissions in the USA by 80% by 2050, when that target would bring per capita CO2 emissions to below 18th Century levels? If the first 50% of remediation cost might prove acceptable, each remaining decrement of remediation might prove more and more costly to hit the final 80% target. Consider that cost overhead that could go to other greenhouse agents such as soot & ozone which already have feasible and cost-effective remedies in hand.

William Nordhaus projects expensive early remediation in “A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies” as does Bjorn Lomborg. Nordhaus projects that if we front-load remediation costs too much we’ll end up forcing opportunity costs to an unsustainable level. A Kyoto cost backlash is already being seen in Japan & Europe (esp. Britain), exemplifying how the feasibility of energy transformation is limited at this point in time.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494

As for a “green inquisition,” have we forgotten Robert Kennedy Jr.’s notorious statements about the treasons of the skeptic politicians or industrial apologists? Or Joe Romm’s call for Dr. Jeff Marque’s dismissal from the APS newsletter? Or ACORE President Michael T. Eckhart’s threats to ruin Dr. Marlo Lewis’ career? Or Al Gore’s description of AGW skeptics as flat-earthers?

It looks completely like a green inquisition to me, and the angry rhetoric its agitprop. This kind of bellicose rhetoric does nothing to convince skeptics that AGW is a threat, instead it sends up warning flags that behind the polemics lies an insidious agenda that has nothing to do with either global warming or the environment.

Or will James Hansen testify at the trial for the Chinese communists who – assuming CO2 is such a danger – knew full well the climate impact of burning so much coal? Under the aegis of the Kyoto-based UNEP UNFCCC CDM programs, China and other nations can sell carbon credits for efficient coal power. But if our coal execs build new efficient plants, they’re guilty of something?

CO2 is not our original sin, I reject the constant claims that everything causes global warming and global warming causes everything. And given the choice between empowering the Earths multitudes with cheap energy as opposed to a world ruled by authoritarian ecocrats so absolutist they decry even efficient and small autos like the Tata as a bane (even though it’s a huge step up from 2-stroke trike scooters), I think people would rather rule in a self-made climate hell than serve in a green heaven of self-righteous and pious zealots.

It’s not b/c Hansen’s science is wrong, but b/c Hansen’s rhetoric is invidious and divisive by nature. Such desultory Philippics won’t help your cause, now will it? In fact such statements only serve to exemplify the zealotry and desperation of which the skeptics accuse environmentalists.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf

“CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”

AND

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/twenty-years-later-tippin_b_108766.html

“…CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature. If their campaigns continue and “succeed” in confusing the public, I anticipate testifying against relevant CEOs in future public trials.

Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation, if we pass on a runaway climate to our children…”

Hansen means it when he says “crime” and “conviction.” And if we don’t pass a runaway climate to our children, would trial & conviction of CEOs console us? What of the current and future coal & oil magnates in China, India or Africa?

We have had an eerily white haze most of the day right down to the ground and it is colder than last month and 20 degrees colder than last year! We are at 70 blankety-blank degrees in the middle of the @#$%&* afternoon here in Enterprise, Oregon!

Same thing here in Seattle, Pam. The radio weatherfolks are happily proclaiming “We might hit 70 today!” We should be in the high 80s, nearing 90 at the hottest part of the day.

The U.S. & European ethanol biofuels programs shouldn’t have been implemented. Brazil pulled it off using sugar cane but also ran into large problems with the program in the 1980′s. Other cellulosic sources of ethanol are feasible without impacting crop allocation or forest stocks. Cattails can grow in brackish water (they are halophytic) & a good pickup truck load of cattails can yield 40 gallons of ethanol within a day. The practicality of large-scale production, however, is questionable in my mind.

One benefit of biodiesel is that it is low in soot & sulfate emissions. Jatropha has been touted as the least expensive of biofuel (biodiesel) sources and presumably grows well even on marginal land. But although drought-resistant, jatropha could just as well divert croplands as well.
http://images.inquirer.net/media/opinion/inquireropinion/talkofthetown/images/pic-09090207410429.jpg

There are other better-suited oil xeriscape oilseeds however, including the colocynth vine from the Middle East/N. Africa and the NW Mexican ‘Caribe’ (Cnidoscolus angustidens Torr.). Although their oil content is half of jatrophas, the risk of cropland diversion is much lower using oily desert plants like like colocynth and caribe. http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1999/v4-257.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WH9-45GMGVW-36&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=9c5492c74df5bf130337b06bb4d09ab6

Soils can be amended using terra prete (agrichar) which lends to a net CO2 uptake.

Run straight veg. oil in your car w/out preprocessing:
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Vegetable-Oil-Two-Tank-Conversion.htm

Jatropha problems in PHillipines:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/talkofthetown/view_article.php?article_id=87461
Jatropha data:
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Jatropha-for-Biodiesel-Figures.htm

Though I think global cooling may be necessary to reset the craziness going on, I sympathize with your problems. Perhaps a brief cool spell will be all that is necessary.

We have had an eerily white haze most of the day right down to the ground and it is colder than last month and 20 degrees colder than last year! We are at 70 blankety-blank degrees in the middle of the @#$%&* afternoon here in Enterprise, Oregon!

“But this is exactly what the AGW crowd does when it claims the multitude of scientists involved in the IPCC report agree with what it says.”

Yes, true. Lomborg is a scientist, known for changing his mind when he realizes he is wrong, and hence I found it worthwhile to notice him to the fact that very few people have commented on sea level rise within the IPCC process.

You either didn’t read Lomborg’s Op-Ed, or you didn’t read my breakdown of it. Not sure which, but it sounds like the latter.

Mr. Lomborg went back to Denmark determined to prove that Simon was wrong (“We expected to show that Simon’s talk was simple American right-wing propaganda”.) Since he was a statistics professor, in 1997 he put his graduate students on evaluating the same statistics that Simon had used.

A funny thing happened when they did a serious evaluation of the data.

For the most part, Mr. Lomborg’s students proved that Julian Simon was right.

I suspect that it came as quite a shock to Mr. Lomborg when he realized that his basic understanding of the environment was based on half truths, innuendos and out and out lies. It takes someone of exceptional character to realize that magnitude of error in his basic beliefs and to stand up in dissent. With his long time and strong associations with the Greenpeace movement, his book could also be compared to a “thesis nailed to the church door”.

Mr. Lomborg has been branded a heretic and suffers all the fury of the True Believers.

I think that Mr. Lomborg still has a few holdovers of liberal “conventional wisdom” (e.g. everybody knows that nuclear power is bad and AGW really does exist). But he has been honest enough evaluate the data, such as it is, and to reject the hysteria of the activists. As an economist, he evaluates courses of action based on the data and estimate their costs and benefits so that the most beneficial one can be chosen.

Makes sense to me.

Regards,

Steamboat Jack

He seems like a useful counterexample to me. If Hansen is “guilty” of being a political activist, and therefore not a scientist, I fail to see how Lindzen isn’t guilty of the same. To ignore one and not the other is nothing more than a double standard based upon which side of the argument one prefers. I don’t see the problem with what either are doing.

Hansen has been proven wrong on adjustments, take a look at Climate Audit or one of John Goetz posts here.

You said made statements that have been proven false. I am looking for an example. [Reply: Look them up yourself]

Hansen has been on stage with Gore on invitation, for a rally, and he lobbies state governments to not build new power plants, that’s political activism.

And he quite clearly states that he is speaking as a citizen when he does so. I’ve read several of the letters where he does so.

He can’t have it both ways

According to who?

being a gatekeeper of data and political activist for a cause using that data is a conlfict of interest.

If someone can prove misconduct on his part, so be it. Until then he is doing nothing wrong.

Hansen- “In my opinion” nobody else is calling for such, thus Hansen is an outlier.

Did read Lomborg’s Op-Ed before reprinting it? His entire point is that there is a vast “Green Inquisition” calling for the same. [Of course, once one actually tracks down the statements being made, none of them refer to skeptics and all of them refer to those and only those who are deliberately and knowingly engaging in actions or inactions detrimental to the public welfare.]

Look at BP, big alternate energy program.

Assuming BP’s CEO(s) didn’t engage in deliberate disinformation campaigns, Hansen’s comment doesn’t apply, nor to any other person who wasn’t doing the things Hansen explicitly names.

Hansen’s appeal as an emotional activist is a conflict of interest to his role as scientist

You keep saying this, but I’m not sure why. I am unaware of any requirement of any scientific body that Hansen is a member of that requires him to censor himself in his personal life.

he is keeper of the data used to push the agenda he supports.

Do you honestly believe that if A) Hansen wasn’t the ostensible caretaker of GISTEMP that it would not show similar warming to the HadCRUT or NCDC anomalies? or B) That if Hansen was not the ostensible caretaker of GISTEMP but knew exactly what he does now he would not hold the same opinions about CO2e goals we need to reach?

REPLY: Yes Hansen is not an ostensible caretaker of data. He uses the data to push the agenda, that’s not only a conflict of interest, but I believe a lapse in professional ethics.

I never said “censor”, you did.

“And he quite clearly states that he is speaking as a citizen when he does so.” Your argument about “private citizen” is absolute rubbish. Just because Hansen says “I’m speaking as private citizen” somehow negates his publicly funded research? Truly you are gullible if you believe that.

Once you become a public figure, you can’t just take off one hat and put on another at will when speaking about the issue that made you a public figure. If Hansen had no connection to global warming research he would never have been invited by Gore or be lobbying the Iowa legislature. He can’t just “be” a private citizen lobbying on GW after using public research money to elevate himself to international celebrity on the GW issue.

If Hansen was invited someplace to speak about something he does as a hobby in his private life, coin collecting for example, then he’d be a “private citizen” in that venue. Being invited to speak at a political activism rally about fruits of your AGW research from a publicly funded government position, does not entitle him to be a “private citizen” in that capacity just because he says so. Your argument is deeply flawed.

Show me where Richard Lindzen has gone on stage, spoke about AGW, and said I’m a “private citizen not speaking as a learned scientist”. Show me where Lindzen has lobbied state legislatures with private letters with his home address, rather than his university one, and said “I’m speaking as private citizen only”.

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including disguised funding to shape school textbook discussions.

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.

REPLY: Hansen- “In my opinion” nobody else is calling for such, thus Hansen is an outlier. Look at BP, big alternate energy program. Hansen’s appeal as an emotional activist is a conflict of interest to his role as scientist, where he is keeper of the data used to push the agenda he supports.

Citation?

he’s randomly adjusting a century worth of station data, using a single data point in 1995 from satellite night imagery, where no adjustment is required, for starters.

That’s a criticism of methodology not “a claim he made that was proven false.”

As for your defense of Hansen’s call for show trials that “they aren’t on the other side of the debate” that is just bogusly disengenuous.

How so? I read his statement in full, in context, and it was plainly clear that he was not talking about skeptics, or for example people on this site:

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including disguised funding to shape school textbook discussions.

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.

Your reference to tobacco is more emotional than fact.

First, that wasn’t my reference. Secondly, do I really need to reference all the common players (Seitz, Milloy, AEI, Cato, CEI, Heritage Foundation, Marshall Institute, etc.)?

but Hansen fails the smell test on several levels

Parallel universe.

.he is no longer a scientist

Really? He seems to be doing a lot more science than Lomborg et al. are these days…

A political activist should not be the gatekeeper of data.

Whether you like it or not, James Hansen is not some discredited political activist to 99.99% of people on Earth. He is the head of GISS, an award-winning, publishing scientist, and someone who is in no way required to keep his personal opinions to himself outside of his workplace.

If you’ve ever spoken to Dick Lindzen or seen him in action, you’ll see that he has no problem throwing his Sloan title around while making completely unscientific claims about worldwide conspiracies about government regulation of carbon emissions. And yet I’ve never seen a single complaint about that despite all of the antipathy mustered against Hansen for far less.

REPLY: We aren’t talking about Dick Lindzen , no diversions. Hansen has been proven wrong on adjustments, take a look at Climate Audit or one of John Goetz posts here. Hansen has been on stage with Gore on invitation, for a rally, and he lobbies state governments to not build new power plants, that’s political activism. He can’t have it both ways, being a gatekeeper of data and political activist for a cause using that data is a conlfict of interest.