As I mentioned, hydro and geothermal. All energy sources have drawbacks of one sort or another. Maybe if and when we’ve got nuclear fusion sorted we will have reached El Dorado, but we ain’t there yet.

“It looks to me like there are more holes here than bucket… “

You ask many questions about CO2, most of which are beyond my knowledge. Better to point you to the experts here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87

Quote: “Sequences of annual tree rings going back thousands of years have now been analyzed for their 13C/12C ratios. Because the age of each ring is precisely known** we can make a graph of the atmospheric 13C/12C ratio vs. time. What is found is at no time in the last 10,000 years are the 13C/12C ratios in the atmosphere as low as they are today. Furthermore, the 13C/12C ratios begin to decline dramatically just as the CO2 starts to increase — around 1850 AD.”

The article goes on to mention supporting evidence from coral and sponges, and from ice cores. The article also has links to other explanatory articles and refers to several studies. You could also run your questions past the author of the article, who seems knowledgeable enough.

“Suck 1 percent out of that 3…”

As I mentioned to a previous poster, quoting from an analysis of the Stern Review by the UK’s Tyndall Centre: “In terms of GDP output lost, this represents a maximum cost of a loss of one year’s growth in 2050, i.e.the modelled output in 2050 would not be reached until 2051, in a context in which GDP is likely to have risen by two to three hundred percent in most economies by this date.”

http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/publications/stern_review.pdf

“So you either accept that it’s about 15 to 20 years to change the fleet over to non-petrol or you add a large chunk of money to make it happen faster.”

The Stern Review deals in a 40-year timeframe to 2050, and any mitigation actions will necessarily require a phase-in period, most likely lasting at least a decade and probably more. So in practical terms I doubt that any major changes to the national fleet can take place faster than 15-20 years.

“What’s worse, many far better things could be done with that money.”

Everyone has different priorities for preferred actions. One of the most effective ways to benefit third world countries would be for the West to reduce its agriculture protection. Third world economies are heavily slanted towards agriculture, and reducing first world protection would enable third world countries to concentrate on trade rather than aid.

Otherwise, your comments about small-scale technology and sociological improvements are well-thought and could well form part of an integrated approach to climate change in relation to third world countries.

“Long term, like the 10 year cooling period we’ve been in and the 20 to 30 year cooling yet to come from the PDO flip…”

Not according to the UK Met Office”:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/fact2.html

Quote: “A simple mathematical calculation of the temperature change over the latest decade (1998-2007) alone shows a continued warming of 0.1 °C per decade.”

As for the PDO flip, you would need to show that this flip will decrease the total amount of heat energy within the ocean/atmosphere system rather than just redistribute it.

“How about a person who begins as believing that AGW is probably real and the more they look into it the more they find that it’s bunk?”

Good question. In the context of ethics would you be morally obliged to broadcast your findings wherever possible? I guess that takes us back to the certainty issue: if you have a high degree of certainty that our current path towards mitigating the effects of climate change is the route to disaster, then one could argue that you have a moral obligation to sound a warning.

Luckily, ethics is not a science, so any decision is between your and your conscience (or Mr Big upstairs if you’re so inclined).

How about a person who begins as believing that AGW is probably real and the more they look into it the more they find that it’s bunk? I have not had a ‘willful refusal to consider’ but rather a strong willed and excessive effort to become well educated on the science of it; and found it lacking to the point of “broken as a theory”. IMHO, I have no ‘culpability’ for anything. How can one be culpable when the thesis is broken…

Um, being in S.F. you get a significant part of your electricity from the Hydro, Geothermal, and Nuclear that is used in California. We don’t do coal & oil in Northern Cal… What with Nuclear being part of the new green, you could even claim to be leading the charge!! Even the natural gas turbines we have can be considered lower carbon compared to base load coal… And there are all those wind turbines in Altamont and…

Jeez, I think you may actually be MORE green and renewable than Brendon!
Brendon, get with it lad, you are being left behind!

Thanks for the list of links. Nice. BTW, that plants collectively show this response to CO2 says that for all of them CO2 is a rate limiting nutrient and that says that they have not had time to adapt to the abnormally low CO2 levels we have now (on an evolutionary time scale).

That speaks volumes. These things evolved under much higher CO2 levels (or they would not be rate limited – they would have more stoma and better absorption) and are struggling. And THAT puts the lie to the idea that CO2 can cause a runaway greenhouse since it didn’t back then…

I would even go so far as to assert that one could use the point at which CO2 enrichment no longer adds growth to determine the ideal CO2 level for the planet… somewhere around 1000 ppm?

The ones dumping snow on Milan (enough to close the airports, per Bloomberg this morning) and across much of the U.S. The ones making Alaska run about 10 degrees below average. The ones that had snow in Southern Brazil. The ones giving record snow at ski resorts from New Zealand, to Europe to the Western U.S. the list goes on and on… it’s global.

The short-term perturbations you describe are called weather, and these should not be confused with the longer-term set of atmospheric conditions, which is climate.

Long term, like the 10 year cooling period we’ve been in and the 20 to 30 year cooling yet to come from the PDO flip…

We are now in a race condition between a very rapidly cooling world and the rate at which the AGW agenda can be shoved through before folks start to notice that it’s getting colder. I see two possible outcomes:

1) AGW fades from view as the world says “Nahhh, I’m Freezing!” or
2) The agenda gets implemented fast just in time for the Big Freeze and the subsequent law suits for “causing too much snow & cold”…

I’m quietly hoping for #2 even though I know that #1 is best for the planet. I would personally love to see the class action suit aimed at the IPCC members and Al Gore for ‘over correcting’. If you claim to have control of something you also get the liability for it…

Which renewables? The wind turbines that kill endangered birds or the solar panels that contain toxic metals? Or is it the hydroelectric that destroys valleys and rivers? (FWIW, I’m actually in favor of wind, solar, etc. but the idea that it is pristine and pure is, well, broken.)

collective efforts.

sounds rather like something from a little red book I read once …

According to the Stern Review, the cost of combating climate change to 2050 would be around 1 percent of world GDP. That doesn’t strike me as a call to major sacrifice,

It is major. First off, it’s wrong. To eliminate all that nasty human CO2, you need to change the transportation fleet of the planet AND you need to replace about 1/2 or more of the global electrical generation plant (it’s coal). The numbers are staggering.

World GDP growth is normally about 2 to 3 percent. Right now it’s negative (recession). Suck 1 percent out of that 3 and you cut world GDP growth by 1/3 and that is compounded. You will condemn future generations to poverty that could be kept out of it.

For cars alone it will take about $10,000 per vehicle minimum (and more likely closer to $20,000). The alternative is to assume what is not true – that folks can replace their car when they would normally do so at about the same cost. The fleet turns over in about 12 years (last time I looked, and getting longer). We are not presently building the alternative fuel cars. It takes several years to get a new design ramped up and into production but lets assume it could be done in 3… So you either accept that it’s about 15 to 20 years to change the fleet over to non-petrol or you add a large chunk of money to make it happen faster.

And do you have any idea how long a major ship, train engine, or airplane lasts in service? How much they cost?

What’s worse, many far better things could be done with that money. Like what? Like making efficient little tin stoves for a few bucks each for every 3rd world woman who is going blind from dung smoke or breaking her back hunting down cooking wood each day (and destroying forests in the process). This is a real project that can do more to save the world environment and use less money in the process than anything else. It desperately needs funding. Cuts fuel wood usage by a large percentage. I think it was something like 70% reduction.

Another? Give those same women a decent education. The thing that correlates most with reduced child bearing is a woman’s education. Educate and reduce population growth. (And I don’t mean indoctrinate or planned parenthood – I mean a BA or BS in a real academic field.)

If you really want to save the planet, these actions will do far more with far less than stealing the future GDP growth of the planet. Add in some micro loans and you will even get growing GDP and reduced poverty… Toss in some bare foot agronomists teaching French Intensive Gardening and how to pen the goats and feed them legume tree branches and cure world hunger too… Or toss it all away tilting with windmills. Your choice.

I am a relatively hard core advocate for biodiesel, wind turbines, solar, et. al. and have been for a few decades (before it was trendy). I own stock in companies in the many alternative energy fields. I believe that algae derived oils is the best way to go for future fuel production (and also lets us keep using our present Diesel fleet – avoiding fleet change).

So why am I throwing rocks at the idea? Because it is naive to think that that big a change can happen at low cost and fast. It also does truly distress me that so many bird strikes happen on wind farms, especially to endangered raptors. This really does need to be solved, somehow.

We need to head down that alternative energy path at a goodly clip (IMHO) but not by throwing out trillions of dollars of capital invested in coal and oil systems. We need to use that capital for all it’s worth while we build the alternatives at a sustainable rate. It takes one heck of a lot of energy to refine silicon, best not to shut down the coal plant until after you’ve made the solar cells… yet the expressed goal of the AGW advocates is to shut down oil and coal. It’s a bad idea to promote poverty and waste in that way.

Using CO2 isotopic ratios is not going to work. It is based on the assumptions that 1) There is a known single ratio for fossil fuel derived isotopes and 2) that humans put any fossil derived CO2 into the air and 3) Only fossil fuel sources could bias the isotope ratio. All of these are false.

I posted this before, but it is worth repeating:

How do we tell ancient carbon from fossil fuels from ancient carbon from smokers at the bottom of the ocean? Do we know the isotope ratio of CO2 from mid-ocean ridges vs land volcanoes? (Land volcanoes are from subduction zones so I’d expect more rapid recycle of C from ocean sediment to yield a different isotopic ratio…)

I wandering off to learn more about C12 / C13 origins and ratios I ran into this gem. It does raise the interesting question: If MMCO2 dropped dramatically during the great depression, where is the signature in the record?

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070611/cockburn

I should acknowledge one imprecision in my description of Dr. Martin Hertzberg’s graph in my first column–”the smoothly rising curve of CO2″–which prompted several intemperate responses, charging that I couldn’t possibly expect CO2 or carbon levels to drop just because of a one-third cut in manmade CO2. Indeed, I should have written, “One could not even see a 1 part per million bump in the smoothly rising curve.” Even though such transitory influences as day and night or seasonal variations in photosynthesis cause clearly visible swings in the curve, the 30 percent drop between 1929 and 1932 caused not a ripple: empirical scientific evidence that the human contribution is in fact less than a fart in a hurricane, as Dr. Hertzberg says.

From the same article by ALEXANDER COCKBURN, with questions…

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070611/cockburn

As for the alleged irrefutable evidence that people caused the last century’s CO2 increase, the “smoking gun” invoked by one of my critics, Dr. Michael Mann, and his fellow fearmongers at realclimate.com, the claim is based on the idea that the normal ratio of heavy to light carbon–that is, the carbon-13 isotope to the lighter carbon-12 isotope, is roughly 1 to 90 in the atmosphere, but in plants there’s a 2 percent lower C13/C12 ratio. So, observing that C13 in the atmosphere has been declining steadily though very slightly since 1850, they claim that this is due to man’s burning of fossil fuels, which are generally believed to be derived from fossilized plant matter.

OK, so both C12 and C13 are stable and they are looking for a ‘plant’ signature in burned fuel, not a decay signature. One Small Problem… C4 metabolism plants absorb more C13 than do C3 metabolism plants. Over the last 100 years we’ve planted one heck of a lot more grasses world wide than ever before. Grasses are C4 metabolism…

Have they allowed for this? If so, how? I’m not sure how one would figure out the C4 vs C3 plant population ratio of the world, and certainly don’t see how you would figure out what it was 10,000,000 years ago.

On the naïve and scientifically silly assumption that the only way that plant-based carbon can get into the atmosphere is by people burning fuels, they exult that here indeed is the smoking gun: Decreases of C13 in the atmosphere mean that our sinful combustions are clearly identifiable as major contributors to the 100 ppm increase in CO2 since 1850.
This is misguided, simply because less than a thousandth of the plant-based carbon on earth is bound up in fossil fuel. The rest of the huge remaining tonnages of plant-based carbon are diffused through the oceans, the forests, the grasslands and the soil. In other words, everywhere. Obviously, lots of this C13-deficient carbon has the chance to oxidize into CO2 by paths other than people burning fuel, i.e., the huge amount of plant material that’s naturally eaten or decayed by the biosphere.

And as C4 plants have been sought out (they are more efficient, so more food per growth unit) we get more C13 in the plants. There are even efforts to transplant the C4 genes into C3 plants to get better yield. This would argue for more C13 being sequestered in soils over time as C4 plants have expanded. Have they examined the C12 vs C13 ratio changes in soils over time?

Perhaps even more significant, cold ocean waters absorb lightweight C12 preferentially, resulting in lots of C13-deficient carbon in the oceans. This low-C13 carbon most certainly would have been released massively into the atmosphere over the course of the world’s warming trend since 1850, when the Little Ice Age ended.

And would also argue that volcanic emissions from subduction zone volcanoes ought to be C13 deficient to the degree that ocean bottom ooze is being recycled. Has this been considered?

All of these larger natural pathways for emitting low-C13 carbon into the atmosphere have been considerably accelerated by this same warming trend. So once again, the greenhousers have got it ass-backward. The 100 ppm increase in CO2 can’t be uniquely attributed to humans because at least as plausibly it could be the effect, not the cause, of the warming that started after the Little Ice Age denied by Dr. Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann.

It looks to me like there are very significant issues in trying to assert that C13:C12 ratio changes in the air can tell you anything about CO2 origin in fuel burning…

From: http://www.springerlink.com/content/f5272856220314nk/

We get that the C12:C13 ratio is different in oils than in coals and varies in the source lipids from which oil is made.

Lipid fractions of organisms have consistently lower C13/C12 ratios than do the whole organisms. The average difference between nonlipid and lipid materials for all organisms studied is about 0.5% and ranges in individual species from as little as several hundredths to more than 1.5%. This suggests that petroleums and other noncoaly organic matter in ancient sediments are derived from lipids, or at least from certain components of the lipid fraction. In contrast, coal deposits apparently are derived from whole plants or from the cellulosic fraction of land plants, which is the major nonlipid constituent, of plant tissues.

Has the petroleum from around the world been tested for differences in C12:C13 ratio? I’d expect significant variation based on the above. Is this allowed for in the attribution of atmospheric CO2 to fuel burning?

From:

http://www.isgs.illinois.edu/pttc/Illinois%20petroleum/IP111%20Isotopic%20Identification%20of%20Leakage%20Gas%20from%20Underground%20Storage%20Reservoirs–A%20Progress%20Report.pdf

Bacteriogenic methane from Illinois generally has a C13 values in the range of -64 to -90% relative to the Peedee Belemnite ( PDB ) standard. The 11 samples from pipelines and storage reservoirs that have been analyzed have all had C13 values in the range of -40 to -46%.

Which seems to show that biological source methane can vary widely in C13 content and that pipeline gas is not the same signature as biological, coal, or petroleum. Has this be allowed for? If so, how? (Frankly, given the biological origin variance I don’t see how it’s possible…)

(I hand typed the above quote and there was what looked like maybe a sigma in front of the C13’s… could not get a cut/paste to work fast…)

It looks to me like there are more holes here than bucket… I don’t see how C12:C13 ratio can be reasonably used to make any clear assertion about where the CO2 in the air comes from. How much Clathrate out gasses each year on the ocean bottoms? With what C12:C13 ratio? How much natural gas leaks from the ground? What are the ratios for bacteria produced methane from various ecosystems including ocean bottom? Are they all the same? How do you know? Since bacteria have been shown to eat oil and natural gas, how do you distinguish their CO2 from those eating wood?

No, we don’t know that solar is not the prime driver. The assertion that it’s CO2 is an assumption unsupported by fact. Aerosols could be cooling more than any CO2 impact. We can’t even know the net human contribution to warming or cooling nor even if the sign is positive or negative since the error band on aerosol effect is so large.

see: http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar

So even if there was a global MWP… what does that imply about today’s climate?

It implies that what is happening now is normal and has happened before. Which it is, and has.

FWIW, it looks to me like the solar UV variation drives an O3 variation that can account for why such a small TSI variation can move the climate do much. Add in magnetosphere modulation of clouds and you have all you need.

Interesting question. If you mean can we judge someone’s moral standing according to their carbon footprint, I think this would depend on such factors as the degree of knowledge/certainty about AGW, its causes and likely consequences.

From what I have seen, there is a spectrum of understanding, ranging from those who profess great certainty that AGW is occurring and that the effects will catastrophic, through to more cautious and pragmatic types, and the various forms and degrees of scepticism.

There is also the matter of a personal commitment to a moral ideal that involves some form of “saving the planet” and similar sentiments, while ability to act would be another factor.

I would say that the more certainty one has about AGW and the greater the degree of presumed catastrophe, and the more one is committed to the ‘cause’, the more culpable one becomes for one’s carbon footprint. At the other end, a wilful refusal to consider the possibility of AGW due to ideological or other reasons carries its own culpability.

In some ways it would be better not to bring morality into AGW, but human beings are moral creatures so it’s inevitable that this will happen.

This is not a dig, only a question. Is a person’s or, for that matter, an organization’s carbon footprint a metric for their morality?

Katherine (03:05:18) :

Why should we tackle climate change in the first place? Climate changes. All we can do is adapt to it. One can hope it becomes warmer, but we should be prepared if it becomes colder.

He’s not talking about climate change, he’s talking about Climate Change(tm).

We’re talking about a specific claim: one’s personal responsibility in “using a computer, and relying on the huge fossil-fuel infrastructure it requires”.

I was challenged about my apparent unwillingness to make “big sacrifices” to “sav[e] the planet”. Therefore, the context of personal responsibility, ie ethics, was introduced by another person.

I rejected both the notions of sacrifice and saving the planet, but pointed out that in my situation – where a majority of electricity generation comes from renewable sources — I was probably doing better than average.

In other words, I do not need to make the sort of sacrifices the person had in mind. You have chosen to interpret “better than average” to mean that I am acting more morally than others, such as yourself, which you know must be nonsense because I don’t know other people’s carbon footprint.

What I know is that within the context of emissions from electricity generation I am probably doing better than average, since few other countries can match mine in the percentage of electrical power generated from renewable sources.

Tackling climate change requires a collective effort. Individual actions may make some people feel good, but feeling good about ‘doing something’ about climate change is not my goal.

Why should we tackle climate change in the first place? Climate changes. All we can do is adapt to it. One can hope it becomes warmer, but we should be prepared if it becomes colder.

You said:

Well, from my end around 70 percent of electricity is generated from renewable sources, so on that factor at least I’m probably doing better than average.

and while you did, sort of but not really, qualify it with:

From a wider perspective, individual efforts may be laudable but a much greater effect can be achieved through structural and collective efforts.

In fact, if you accept the fact that I am average in my carbon footprint or worse than average because I live in San Francisco, California, USA, you have specifically said you are doing more in your great fight than I am, simply because you happened to have been born in or are living in New Zealand. In fact you are doing nothing except pontificating. Seriously, what is laudable about having a mother who gave birth to you in New Zealand when it comes to saving the world for humanity?

I don’t “side with” environmentalists. Otherwise, the fact that some or even all environmentalists may oppose hydro is not a claim on my allegiance. People who agree on a particular matter can also have differences on other matters.

Earlier I provided a link to a recreational group that opposed what it saw as preferential treatment for hydro under a proposed emissions trading scheme. Should I check their credentials before taking a position? I don’t think so. Each issue must be argued on its own merits.

“You need to sacrifice or you can stop telling others what a great job you are doing.”

I don’t claim to be doing a great job. I was responding to another challenge that also demanded sacrifice. As I pointed out, making sacrifices is not a major focus for me, and while you may think that major sacrifices are necessary to combat climate change, the Stern Review claims otherwise, and that strikes me as a reasonable position.

Tackling climate change requires a collective effort. Individual actions may make some people feel good, but feeling good about ‘doing something’ about climate change is not my goal.

Thanks for the links. Our response to climate change is a matter of weighing the likely advantages against the likely disadvantages, so it’s not just a matter of more CO2 good, less CO2 bad.

Then you know that colder temperatures lead to increased mortality as compared with warmer temperatures.
95,000 Excess U.S. Deaths during the Cold Months Each Year

Heat related mortality in warm and cold regions of Europe: observational study
Populations in Europe have adjusted successfully to mean summer temperatures ranging from 13.5°C to 24.1°C, and can be expected to adjust to global warming predicted for the next half century with little sustained increase in heat related mortality. Active measures to accelerate adjustment to hot weather could minimise temporary rises in heat related mortality, and measures to maintain protection against cold in winter could permit substantial reductions in overall mortality as temperatures rise.

The Impact of Global Warming on Health and Mortality
Meanwhile, it must not be forgotten that cold weather in winter causes many more deaths than heat in summer, even in most subtropical regions, and measures to control cold-related deaths need to continue.

I don’t see that as a valid argument against taking action to mitigate climate change.

No amount of carbon this or CO2 that will “mitigate climate change” The best we can do is adapt to the changing climate, which is what we’ve always had to do. Trying to change the global climate to suit us is doomed to failure. I thought you might be intelligent enough to see that…

It was simply a rebuttal to your claim of using 70% renewable energy. I’m a big fan of hydro and feel we need many more damns in most parts of the world. However, the same environmentalists you side with on “mitigate climate change” explicitly disqualify your primary source of electricity as a “renewable” solution. So your contention about how much you are already doing to fight the good fight is nullified.

Also, you don’t really get credit for just having been born in or living in an area which just happens to use hydro and geothermal. You need to sacrifice or you can stop telling others what a great job you are doing. Personally I suggest doing without electricity, any form of heating, or mechanized transportation, unless you explicitly own the windmills or solar unit producing the power. As long as you are on the grid your claims of doing well, ie better than others, are nothing but hypocrisy. So I look forward to your next post made without the use of electricity from the grid.