Also Going Down: Carbon dioxide burial reaches a milestone

Correct me if I am wrong. Is the CO2 under pressure? I assume it must be, You would not be able to store much of it otherwise. This would lead to possible catastrophic failures. The instant release of a few million tones of CO2 into the atmosphere would be quite deadly. I realize that it would not happen right away. But some time in the future, some enterprenurial terrorist might find a nifty way of releasing the gas. Every CO2 sequestering site will fall under Home land security watch. How do you secure a site that might span many square miles?
REPLY: The CO2 is liquefied, so yes even more volatile.
Solution: Terrorists will not be allowed to carry Mentos

I would have concerns about the Co2 dissolving in water and then dissolving the calcium deposits that cement grains into sedimentary rock, like the sandstone Dr. Cook is holding, returning it to its original granular state of sand. It will no longer be a rigid substance, releasing whatever internal stresses it now maintains. Any fracturing due to loss of support structure could vent the CO2 back to the atmosphere. If old natural gas fields are to be the norm for sequestering, you can almost guarantee it is in sedimentary rock.

“Perhaps the sheep will like that seltzer water”
I was thinking, sparking water for the masses….on tap.

It’s absurd to sequester the oxygen; we’ve little enough as it is.
=======================================

CO2 burial is, hands down, the most absurd, obtuse, ineffective idea ever to receive government funding. Senator Proxmire has spun from the ground spitting-mad.
There’s a Freeman Dyson essay at IceCap detailing undisturbed soils as the most effective means of CO2 ‘sequestering’.

CaCO3 – Chalk – buried everywhere in the entire world is almost entirely made up of CO2 – so I dont see a problem ????

It appears to me that the most intelligent answer to the CO2 problem is to reduce the human production of it, and let Mother Earth tend to its naturally occurring presence.

“Steve Keohane (09:00:43) :
I would have concerns about the Co2 dissolving in water and then dissolving the calcium deposits that cement grains into sedimentary rock, like the sandstone Dr. Cook is holding, returning it to its original granular state of sand. It will no longer be a rigid substance, releasing whatever internal stresses it now maintains. Any fracturing due to loss of support structure could vent the CO2 back to the atmosphere”
Steve— When one breaks down the cement in a rock, turning it to pulp, the permiability is reduced, not enhanced. If CO2 leaches the cement out of the sandstone (assuming that the cementing agent is CaCo3) it will seal off fractures.
In gas fields where preexisting fracture permiabily is key to production we often drill with an oil based drilling fluid so as not to react with the rock. We then do all sorts of things to increase the fractures, often injecting fluids and glass beads at much higher pressures than anyone could inject a gas. No frac job ever designed has extended 2000 meters. Two hundred would be a success.

There is an extremely successful CO2 sequestration project running up in Weyburn Canada.
26 million tons of CO2 will be sequestered in an ageing oil field while increasing oil production by 155 million barrels (that would be $15 billion in extra revenue.)
The project has been running for five years now and is being carefully studied. Several papers have been published in Nature etc. on the results and it appears the CO2 will remain permanently sequestered. This oilfield has a long history of different flood techniques so the science was easier to do to start with.
The CO2 is coming from a coal gasification plant in North Dakota and hence the US Department of Energy is financially supporting the project. Rumour is the oil companies are paying $100/ton for the CO2 (while most people pay to get rid of the stuff, not take it) because the economics are so good.
This is the kind of project that should be pursued first.
http://www.ptrc.ca/weyburn_statistics.php

The idea behind the deep geological CO2 sequestration is to pump supercritical CO2 into formations that are already under pressure that will keep the CO2 in its supercritical state. From what I gather from talking to geologists and hearing talks on the subject: this is already a proven technology for the recovery of oil and natural gas deposits and is currently being used to that effect. The real issue with geological sequestration is concentrating the CO2 from a dilute stream as it is in coal flue gas (~80% N2), and will require ridiculous amounts of energy to do. The first targets here in the Midwest are the boondoogle ethanol plants because of the highly concentrated CO2 stream coming off of the fermentation vats.

CO2 has been pumped into oil fields for decades to enhance recovery. The fact that this works proves that the CO2 doesn’t escape in the short run. Also the fact that there is oil/gas there shows that the structure is pretty tight. If the CO2 does escape over a longer time period (millenia or more), who cares? The amount per year will be utterly negligible. Sequestered CO2 is escaping from underground naturally all the time, it’s called “volcanism”.
As for the energy loss at the power station, a much more efficient method is to separate the nitrogen before combustion. Then you won’t have to waste a lot of energy heating all that nitrogen and creating nitrogen oxides (and then taking them out of the flue gas). Also combustion is better in pure oxygen. This process is being actively researched.
While I agree that CO2 sequestration is probably unnecessary, it seems to me to be much cheaper and less damaging to society than any of the proposed alternatives (which is presumably the reason it is strenuously opposed by most greens).

Tom in FL:
Depending of what you choose to believe, humans produce 8-20 billion tons of CO2 from combustion. 100,000 tons is around 0.001% of the total. Assuming they can do that for $40 mil, any serious impact would cost trillions of dollars. With questionable benefit. Maybe they’ll get a volume discount.
Truck load of sand, indeed.

And then there is the obvious, nuclear power.
A few days ago, a major part of Saddam’s nuclear bomb program was delivered to a Canadian nuclear fuel manufacturer. 550 tons of yellow cake. Saddam was planning to no doubt use the yellowcake in Iraq’s nuclear reactor. The Canadian firm plans on making reactor fuel out of it, they paid tens of millions for the yellowcake. Saddam had a very successful Oil for WMDs plan before he fell on hard times recently.
A small volcano will spew out several thousand tons of CO2 a day, lots of SO2 and plenty of particulates for good measure, A big volcano, the sky’s the limit. Hawaii is today having big problems with Kilauea because of all the VOG it’s been spewing, VOG is mostly SO2, mucking up the air around there. Plenty of volcanoes are popping off worldwide nearly every day, Anak Krakatoa is one of the more spectacular today, all these volcanoes leak CO2 at prodigious rates — who pays the cap and trade costs for them?
And then there are fires, here is a cool site to keep you on top of fires worldwide, most fires are either lightning caused or agricultural burning … http://firefly.geog.umd.edu/firemap/ it’s a cool interactive worldwide fire tracker funded by NASA using the MODIS images. Look at all the fires in Africa, most are agricultural burn off. You would be amazed to know how many fires are burning worldwide at any given time. Who is going to pay the cap and trade fees for that?

Has anyone seen any cost projections for commercial quantities of sequestration? Let’s be real about the quantity of CO2 described in this article.
Please note that I am a mechanical engineer, BSME, as well as a nuclear engineer, MSNE. The former makes me tend to round numbers to 2 significant figures, the latter to never round at all. For the sake of simplicity I will stick to rounding to 3 significant figures.
Per this reference, http://www.netl.doe.gov/coal/refshelf/ncp.pdf, as of earlier this year there were 47 coal-fired power plants under construction, near construction, or permitted for construction in these United States. The average electric generating capacity of these plants is 493 megawatts electric (MWe) each. (The typical large second generation commercial nuclear power plants started up in the 1970’s and 1980’s are 1,200 MWe each.)
Based on a conversion factor found here, http://www.seen.org/pages/db/method.shtml, which is based on USEIA and USEPA information, 10,000 metric tons of CO2 are the result of burning enough coal to generate 11.0 megawatt-hours of electricity. (That would result from operating a 1.26 MWe coal-fired power plant for 1-year.)
For one typical new coal-fired power plant of 493 MWe rating, each year the plant would generate 3,910,000 metric tons of CO2. That is 391 times the amount sequestered in the article.
It takes energy to sequester that much gas. It takes energy to capture and then pressurize the exhaust gas so that it will be driven through the piping, down the well, and through the sandstone or other geologic formation being used for sequestration, about 10% of the electricity generated. Many studies are federally funded by these USofA and are up and running to iron out the technology. The current DOE goal for coal-fired power plant sequestration technology is to achieve the following by 2020: the technology to sequester 90% of CO2 at 10% increase in electricity costs.
This 10% cost increase to the consumer (private and industry) assumes that
(1) Other nice things like oil and gas will be forced out of the ground by being displaced with the CO2. This is projected to reduce the overall cost.
(2) Economy of scale (in other words, every coal-fired plant implementing this) will reduce capital investment and operating costs to 10% of the current cost.
(3) Additional coal-fired power plants will be constructed to make up for the 10% loss of electricity used to perform the sequestration.
For a good web site to browse and read-up on this subject try http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/sequestration/publications/programplans/2006/2006_sequestration_roadmap.pdf.
Further more detailed information can be found at http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/sequestration/publications/.

Most AGW skeptics that I know are sincere and good people, and from what I read about Anthony, he is also a good man. That is why I am somewhat puzzled about the direction of the AGW criticism, a pattern of almost certain dismissal of any alternate fuel or procedures to reduce CO2, and personalizing AGW criticism with Jim Hansen and Al Gore. I am not sure whether my comments belong in this topic, but I will just write one brief but comprehensive response after reading this forum (and other forums) for a number of years (I work in a university but I not in climate science). A part of the debate equates Al Gore and Jim Hansen with AGW, and then claiming that there are some alleged issues with both of them, so somehow AGW formulation is tainted and so may be it is wrong; of course there is the other part relating to the evidence, which is of course legitimate. I would assume scientists working in this area are the most capable for evaluating the evidence to reach a conclusion. The views of an overwhelming majority of scientists and almost all scientific societies are clear.
http://www.nationalacademies.org/morenews/20080610.html (U.S. & other National Academies)
http://www.academie-sciences.fr/actualites/textes/g8_gb.pdf (French Academy of Sciences among others).
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=6229 Royal Society’s position (UK)
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=4761 (Royal Society’s special discussion on climate change)
http://www.royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13619 Royal Society of Canada and others)
http://www.socc.ca/permafrost/permafrost_future_e.cfm (State of the Canadian Cryosphere)
http://epa.gov/climatechange/index.html EPA
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/climate_change_position.html (American Geophysical Union)
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/climatechangeresearch_2003.html (American Meteorological Society)
http://www.aip.org/gov/policy12.html (American Institute of Physics)
http://eo.ucar.edu/basics/cc_1.html (National Center for Atmospheric Research)
http://www.cmos.ca/climatechangepole.html (Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society)
http://www.esf.org/focus-on/focus-on-climate-change.html (European Science Foundation)
etc., etc., etc.,……
The members of these societies are the best and the brightest in the world. Except for the American Society of Petroleum Geologists (which we can understand) every one these scientific societies agree with AGW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
I hear the funding motivation as a reason for supporting AGW. But in many places like China and India, the governments funds all the projects, and when the National Academies in those countries go against their own governments’ intentions of economic expansion by agreeing with AGW, one has to wonder whether the funding motivation has any validity. This is exactly the case in U.S. too, where most of the scientists are going against the administration’s preference. Not only that such an overwhelming number of premier scientific organizations agree with human influence on warming, with few exceptions the scientific reputation and publication record of the scientists who believe in AGW far outnumber that of the scientists who are AGW Skeptics. Apart from Richard Lindzen and Frederick Seitz and Claude Allègre and may be Freeman Dyson, I have not seen that many National Academy members who are AGW skeptics. Other than may be Ivar Giaever, I am not aware of any Nobel Laureates in science holding skeptical views on AGW. So, looking from outside, it seems to me that if this so called consensus is a conspiracy or an illusion, then it is an unbelievably complicated conspiracy, which is rather improbable to occur.
Also, I saw some exchanges on whether or not Hansen once believed in Global cooling, and if he did, then the reasoning goes, his AGW arguments are not sound. I think such exchanges are based on an over-simplification of the state of affairs. First, I cannot find any papers where both Hansen and Rasool were co-authors. In the 1971 Rasool’s paper, the acknowledgement on Hansen is very clear, for “making these Mie scattering calculations for us, for suggesting the use of the two-stream approximation, and for checking the fluxes obtained by the two-stream approximation against some exact solutions…”. In fact Rasool’s paper was not just about global cooling, it was on the competition between CO2 induced warming and cooling facilitated by aerosols. This is still an active area of scientific discussion, not too long ago NOVA had a show on how pollution is masking the full impact of global warming (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/ ). But no matter what it is, there is no evidence that the conclusions reached by Rasool was in agreement with Hansen’s beliefs. If they were and if Hansen actively participated in that work, Hansen’s name would have been on the paper as a co-author.
Now, on the consensus issue – just like in other fields like engineering, medicine and history, almost all scientific conclusions are reached by consensus – either by a representative group and then by the larger group and either repeating the same experiment or calculations, or by studying the logic and compatibility with other existing laws. Whether or not the high energy particle collider at CERN is going make black holes that can eat up our earth, whether a fusion reactor is possible, whether or not string theory is accurate and useful (and a true representation), whether statin drugs that reduce cholesterol are beneficial, or what cholesterol level one should start taking medications, whether to approve a new medicine (as the FDA panel), or the units we should use for measuring something, whether the big bang theory is true, what caused dinosaurs’ extinction, whether neurons regenerate, whether Pluto is a planet, whether holocaust actually happened, whether Sun is going to become a red giant, when a volcano might erupt (see Claude Allègre vs. Haroun Tazieff !!) , etc. There are people who claim General Relativity is wrong even now, there are people who believe CERN may create a black hole that will destroy earth, there are doctors who claim cholesterol is not the problem and statins are not useful, etc. The assumption is that given strong and convincing evidence, the majority of experts who are at least trained to be rational from their long studies and research will eventually come to the conclusion consistent with the evidence, which will be the correct interpretation based on that evidence. It is possible that such a conclusion is wrong, which we may find at a later time. But acting on what we know now is the only rational way to make decisions, we have to make decisions based on our current knowledge and evidence, not based on what we might find out in the future. Once up on a time we were told that all fats are bad to eat, and it was reasonable to reduce consumption of all fats based on that consensus. Now the consensus says only the saturated fats are bad, so as rational people we follow that recommendation until it changes (if it ever does).
I see many articles making fun of Hansen on his 20 year old predictions. In fact his prediction was pretty correct (with Case B scenario) until a year ago (http://www.pnas.org/content/103/39/14288.full
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/39/14288/F2.large.jpg ). We will have to wait until the end of 2008 to find out exactly how it did this year. Given the complexity, I think Jim Hansen’s prediction until a year ago is very remarkable. So, I am not sure why so many blogs are making fun of his predictions. Another continuous criticism has been about Hansen’s data corrections, and the state of surface stations. Well, as it was posted in this forum, all four major historical temperature tracking sources (including the satellite data) shows a remarkable correlation. Given such a high correlation, I do not how one could justify such criticisms directed at him.
When alternate fuels (of course, not ethanol) or carbon sequestration is proposed, it is unfortunate that we get a response like from Anthony stating that we do not need them because CO2 is not a problem, and there are problems with such alternate fuels or carbon sequestration. I am sure the scientists (and those who evaluate their proposal, as well as policy makers and businesses) will have to evaluate such technology, but in my opinion at least we should continue exploring such options.
Now, I am all for keeping a degree of skepticism about all groups, including the scientists. But when such skepticism reaches to a stage where people are trying to come up with even trivial criticisms, then we have moved out of the rational domain to creating an unhealthy and irrational motivation, it is not good for progress. In any case, I hope the general debate will focus on substantive issues than trivialities and personalities.

John McLondon also does not cite the opinions of the CLOUD working group. See http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=975f250d-ca5d-4f40-b687-a1672ed1f684 for more info on the eco-political correctness problems faced by the CLOUD experiment. The only black hole associated with CERN is getting updated or current information on the status of their project. They don’t talk about it for fear of getting canned (that’s sacked for those of you in England). The team at CLOUD consistes of about 50 top notch atmospheric physicists, solar physicists, and cosmic ray and particle physicists from 18 institutes around the world.

Yes, thank you Gary. Even we on the other side of the pond understand the term “canned” from the odd American television (that’s TV for you in the US) program that’s shown here! 😀

Now, on the consensus issue – just like in other fields like engineering, medicine and history, almost all scientific conclusions are reached by consensus – either by a representative group and then by the larger group and either repeating the same experiment or calculations, or by studying the logic and compatibility with other existing laws.
Ummm no. Really emphatically no.
Anthony, I admire your willingness to air all aspects but hundreds and hundreds of words transcribed from certain well known sites is not an aspect of the discussion but rather an attempt to shut down the discussion.
I approved the post and did think it a bit long winded. My first reaction was that he needed a girlfriend. If this is truly just regurgitated cut and paste, then it may fall into the Spam category. Point me to links that back up your assertion and follow through on my part may be in order~jeez.

These carbon sequestration schemes produce nothing and cost money. There’s a far-better charcoal-making alternative, which is terra preta (argrichar or biochar) which is produced via anaerobic pyrolysis. It soaks up carbon dioxide in production and when added to the soil and makes for an incredible soil amendment in sandy or nutrient-poor soils.
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/biochar/WCSS2006/Marris%202006%20Black%20is%20the%20new%20green%20Nature%20442,%20624-626.pdf
“…a hectare of metre-deep terra preta can contain 250 tonnes of carbon, as opposed to 100 tonnes in unimproved soils from similar parent material.”

Ric,
One report I prepared for my masters program compared the radiological effects of coal fired elecrtic energy vs. nuclear energy. Some little known facts are:
1. The coal pile storrage facilities at poer generating stations ar usually kept a around 10-feet thick and spread out over acres of area. They are constantly cooled with water sprinklers to prevent spontaneous combustion. The runoff water is collected in catch basin ponds and the silt in these ponds qualifies as low-level radioactive waste.
2. Coal contains many heavy element radionuclides such as thorium, radium, and bismuth. These are vaporized in the combustion heat and are a part of the flu gasses expelled into the atmosphere.
3. While commercial nuclear power plants expell a significant amount of tritium to the environment (it is essentially heavy hydrogen and migrates through high temperature piping), it is eventually water. Tritiated water does not concentrate in any part of the human body and has a biological half-life in the human body of about 12 days. Tritium also decays with the weakest gamma ray of any nuclear isotope.
4. The heavy radionuclides emmited to the atmosphere from coal-fired generating plants: (a) Tend to specifically reside and are stored in specific organs such as bones, never leaving the body until they decay and give off a very high energy gamma ray. They therefore have a long biological half-life. (b) When they finally decay, they usually decay several times because the first decay product is usually very short lived. Therefore, not only is the ionizing potential of the gamma ray an order of magnitude greater, there are also more of them. This is why 1 Curie of tritium is much less important than 1 Curie of coal exhaust.
For the same amount of electricity, there is equivalent or greater radio-biological effects to man from burning coal vs. splitting uranium. Of course, different coals from different regions have different levels of radionuclides, some with twice as much as others.
I know of a specific power generating complex where the utility operates 2 nuclear plants and one coal fired plant at the same site. Whenever the wind gently blew from the coal smoke stack toward the nulear plant radiation monitors, well, it would set off the alarms. LOL.

Build your own hybrid car:
http://www.ecomodder.com/blog/2008/01/30/a-672-electric-car/
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Transportation/1993-06-01/Hybrid-Electric-Car.aspx
I’d also want a way to have air conditioning that would be efficiently belt driven or use the waste heat from the motor. Any ideas? Maybe an isolated ammonia system?

I think that all I need to know is that CO2 is .04% of the atmosphere. Pointless to assume that .04% of the atmosphere controls climate. Further, humans put 7% of the amount of CO2 that is added every year and nature does the other 93%. Included with nature is the amount released from oceans – a huge carbon sink. La Nina, warming of the waters, releases more. Humans do not cause La Nina. Sun and underwater volcanos and wind currents cause La Nina. Pointless for humans to try to control their 7% at a cost of trillions of $’s.

Jerry, whilst it is very unlikely that an explosion would happen today, it has happened in the past before regulation kicked in (for example, Abbeystead Water or Commerce City, Colorado in the 1970’s)
My point is that at the beginning of a “project” whereby something is being buried without the knowledge of the potential downsides could lead to something more harmful than good, certainly in the short term. I like the idea that we have good data from using CO2 gas in the Oil extraction process, but injecting gas into oil wells is a very different situation from storing a more volatile liquid under pressure.
I appreciate and thank you for your response to my original posting.

The other safety factor though about pumping CO2 into water has been shown by StatHyrdo in it’s Sleipner Field in Norway is that the dissolved CO2 will sink to the bottom of any saline aquifer present providing another safety factor if there was any leak or such, which it self is pretty unlikely. The North Sea tectonically is a pretty quite place
So really our concern about CO2 being dissolved into any water present, actually would be beneficial in terms of safety.

Of course it’s probably a waste of money to bury CO2, but at least we get to continue the fantastically successful use of fossil fuels in the centuries-long project of enriching the human race. And in another plus, just in case CO2 actually does turn out to have something to do with warming the Earth, when the Earth starts getting cold at least we’ll know where to go to turn up the thermostat: just start unplugging the CO2 tanks.

John McLondon,
You seem like an intelligent, honest man who lays it all on the line in defense of his ideas and does a lot of research to back up his position. But the bottom line for the skeptics – based on the evidence, the Emperor has no clothes. You cite all this theory for your concerns, but the real world simply won’t conform to those theories.
Sea level rise? On Dot Earth today, the melting of Greenland and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet adds up to 1 mm/year to sea level rise at the latest “accelerated rate”. Do the math – that adds up to 4 inches by 2100. Sheesh!
Glaciers retreating? Glaciers have been retreating since the beginning of the Holocene! In 1850, people had bishops come to the base of glaciers to pray that they would stop advancing and crush villages, towns and farms. Well, they got their wish, but it had nothing to do with AGW-contributing CO2. There was none!
CO2 is a pollutant? Well, the world’s biomass has grown 6% in 17 years. Guess what also increased 6% in that period? CO2! A fertilizer, not a pollutant!
The U.S. is a monster in that it produces an immense amount of CO2? Well, China sling-shotted past that quantity years ago (don’t forget – we’re the ones expanding our forests and sequestering CO2 to the equivalent of 25-35% of our fossil-fuel consumption production of CO2 according to the best scientists on this subject). And the Chinese will crank out a doubling of that amount of CO2 every 10 years. By 2025, they’ll be producing about 5 times the U.S.’s CO2.
As for Gore, he is what you ain’t – an intellectual coward. He won’t debate his ideas in an open forum like you do. He won’t respond to critiques of his positions like you do. He won’t allow impromptu questions from the press at his speeches (as, I think, you would if you had the opportunity to experience the same forum – Man, I hope you luck out to get THAT opportunity!). He has a 28,000 square foot home that uses over 22 times the grid electricity that I consume (even after all his “green” improvements. I’m guessing your home probably doesn’t break the 2,800 square foot mark, right? At my 1,100 square feet, I’m not even coming close to his good life!). And I’m guessing you’re not in the same position as Gore in that his massive home isn’t only one of a number of homes he has that also chews up fuel big time, are you? If are, then I envy you – ain’t been there, ain’t done that.
And finally, I assume you don’t have access to Gulf Streams that jaunt you from speech to speech, unlike others like me with a 10-year old Mazda Millenia that is now making some disturbing noises when I hit 55 MPH going to work. Yet, those speeches and his AIT-based PowerPoint presentations tout absolute audio-visual lies on our environmental future! Don’t misunderstand me – these were lies, intentionally presented to the public. This man is corrupt. (And don’t get me started on his corporate shennanigans!) As for Hansen, here’s a classic case of guilt by association.
Last thing – you mention that China’s scientists are supporting the AGW agenda against their government’s desire to push economic development to its max. Well, you’ve got the Chinese scientists (who aren’t immune to political pressure in a Communist state) answering to the Communist government (which is seeking to build an economic base at any cost to defeat the “West” , i.e. the U.S., Taiwan, Japan, S. Korea, Singapore, etc.). So, given recent AGW-averse science which indicates that China is now a major CO2 contributor, do the Chinese scientists demand that China throttle its economic development by imposing draconian reductions in coal-based electricity generating plants? Duh – NO!! To do so puts you in the scientific netherlands, if not in front of a bullet.
Bottom line – lose your naivete on the world’s good intentions. This is an issue that just ain’t a scientific issue – it’s got local and world politics, economics and philosophical issues that will need to be addressed. It’s going to be very messy.

I cannot believe that ‘John McLondon’ simply copied those address links from their legitimate source. My suspicion is that he is deliberately attempting to insert malicious code in order to cause problems.
My apologies if I’m wrong. But my anti-virus software reported:
Severity: High
This attack could pose a serious security threat. You should take immediate action to stop any damage or prevent further damage from happening.
Description: This signature attempts to detect a webpage containing a large rowspan value that can cause a denial-of-service on the client.
That is the first time in over a year that my anti-virus software has alerted me to someone attempting to insert malicious code. Everyone should make certain that their security patches are up to date, and that they have current anti-virus software running.
When someone like James Hansen states that people who don’t agree with him should be “put on trial,” that certainly gives the green light to the True Believers to use any possible tactic to attack those they disagree with.
REPLY: Smokey I checked all those links and they are absolutely fine and are in fact to the science organizations Mr. McLondon cited.
Whatever alerts you are getting are due to whatever paranoiaware is installed on your Macintosh. Some softwares just go a bit whacko on certain web page designs. I wouldn’t worry about it.

Here’s a modest proposal:
Remember the soberly tendered suggestions for placing atomic waste aboard rockets and firing them into the sun? It makes, at least fractioally, as much sense to give the same kind of “heave-ho” to our unwanted greenhouse gases.

From the original:
In my opinion, the premise of CO2 burial seems absurd not only because of the lack of supporting evidence for certain climate change, but also due to it’s lack of foresight as to the effects of the burial scheme.
It’s perfect if you want to funnel money from Australian taxpayers to yourself via the Emessions Trading Scheme’s Carbon Offsets.

I also agree that the U.S. produced most of the CO2 when the connection between CO2 and global warming was not that clear
It’s still not that clear. There are some big awards waiting if you can prove it.

Will Peter Cook be working on this with his usual comedy colleague Dudley Moore?
John McLondon:
Your posts are too long – keep them short if you want people to read them.
It is disappointing that you with your degree in physics feel you are unable to read the primary sources, and have to rely on the opinions of others.
Read the IPCC report, for example the AR4 WG1 SPM around page 5 – 6 on temperature trends and sea level rise, and the figure in section FAQ 3.1. Then ask yourself whether this is an accurate portrayal of the observations or a misleading distortion.

John McLondon: I think I see your problem more clearly now, after your 2nd post (the first one seemed confused, and lacking in focus).
You are, by far, too trusting of “the consensus”, and “higher authorities”. You seem intelligent, and fully capable of doing your own research, despite your belief that you are “not qualified”. Baloney! I believe you are simply afraid to, perhaps afraid of what you will find. Show some backbone, man! The AGW hypothesis has been discredited and debunked over and over by many scientists. Here is one which is a good place to start: Editorial: The Great Global Warming Hoax?
You should know that many of us started off believing AGW was true, but once we started researching it began to realize something was very wrong with it. I only started to research it in order to refute anti-AGW letters I would occasionally see, so I was actively looking FOR proof of AGW. Surprise, surprise, there wasn’t any. Not only that, but the “debate” was over, and woe betide you if you didn’t believe in the AGW doctrine. I beg your pardon? Run that by me again? Where did you say the proof was? Oh, right, I’m just a “lowly” citizen. Never mind, then. Sorry I asked.

Evan Jones:
Thanks. On your first long response on intellectuals and societies: I agree that scientists are also prone to bias and making misjudgments, but knowing that the general population and bloggers are more prone to those problems on scientific matters, whom should we believe? I do not really believe intellectuals are like herds, the fact that there are few scientists disagreeing with AGW shows a significant degree of independence. Even scientists who agree on AGW may disagree on other issues. To me it is very difficult to explain why such a large majority of scientists and organizations are coming out to endorse the AGW hypothesis.
By the way, Malthusian theory was not all that wrong – had it not for the green revolution he would have been shown to be correct, and such revolutionary developments were not accounted for in his formulation. Unless something changes, we are probably in it again. In fact I have seen calculations that if every Chinese change their diet to an American diet, the entire grain production of the U.S. and China (and may be even the entire world) will not be sufficient to feed the cattle in China. With finite resources and ever increasing population, we will reach a point when we don’t enough resources (unless we go to Moon or somewhere else), it may not be in 2000 – but some day.
You said: “That (acting on what we know now – my comment) depends entirely on the immediacy of the problem and the cost of proposed mitigation. I am simply not willing to sacrifice yet another generation of the world’s poor on the evidence at hand.” Sure, but the necessity and the timing for that action is also a part what we know now, it is the knowledge on which we have to act. So I do not see any problems with my earlier statement “But acting on what we know now is the only rational way to make decisions, we have to make decisions based on our current knowledge and evidence, not based on what we might find out in the future.”
On Morner and others: Here is a reference: Sea-level rise at tropical Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, Church, John A.,White, Neil J., Hunter, John R.; GLOBAL AND PLANETARY CHANGE Volume: 53(3) 155-168, SEP 2006, which states “We find no evidence for, the fall in sea level at the Maldives as postulated by Morner et al. (2004).” They talk about mistakes in previous papers in this area. I picked Morner because he discussed sea level fall.
On consensus, Evan, can you please provide one example of a scientific rule that was established without consensus (I am not trying to be critical, this is just a curiosity)? Take Charle’s law or Boyle’s law, or statistical thermodynamics, Newton’s law, or any other theory for that matter. None of these can be proven, but can be demonstrated by evidence. Someone propose a new theory, others check it and recheck it and eventually if there is a consensus, it becomes a theory. In fact when Boltzmann proposed the kinetic theory, there was a universal rejection of his belief in the reality of atoms, except by few like Maxwell and Gibbs. In fact the prestigious German physics journal refused Boltzmann to refer to atoms in his papers, knowing that atoms are the basic unit in the kinetic theory. As time went on more and people accepted his notion and theory, and now it is a well accepted theory. Science always evolves through consensus. I am happy to accept I am wrong, if you can show me a convincing counter example. CERN and black hole is another typical example, probably comparable to AGW, few physics faculty members that I know very well are very concerned about black holes forming on earth as a result of high energy impact; it is predicted by the string theory. Even Hawking predicts that, but he also says such black holes will melt away quickly – although no one has observed any melting of such black holes in the past. But when committee after committee that investigated it say that there is no danger, and again the general scientific community has developed a consensus on it, it is difficult for me to disagree with them.
In addition to gasoline, oil is essential for making medicines, plastics, etc. which are all essential (and much more critical) for the health of our society (especially in many aspects in medical care). We can replace some of them from plants, but not all of them. So, I personally would prefer (knowing the current state of technology) to leave some of the easily accessible oil resources for the future generations as well. Oil is needed for our economic development, but from what we know now, oil is absolutely essential for the simple existence of our future generations. It is sad to see two or three generations of people exploiting the entire easily accessible oil reserves to extinction.
Jeeztheadmin:
Thank you, that is fine. As you probably noticed I did not take it personally, I just wanted to give an answer. As I said earlier, I fully appreciate Anthony’s effort in keeping a healthy level of suspicion on AGW, and I support it; but I also hope Anthony could help to alleviate some of the extreme distrust generally shown by some of the (most probably) AGW critics as well. Thank you.

Now, on the consensus issue – just like in other fields like engineering, medicine and history, almost all scientific conclusions are reached by consensus – either by a representative group and then by the larger group and either repeating the same experiment or calculations, or by studying the logic and compatibility with other existing laws.
This may be the central issue for me on this entire AGW debate. I always thought science was determined by evidence rather than consensus. We treat high cholesterol with statins because well-designed controlled clinical trials were conducted, and the null hypothesis disproven, with a high level of statistical significance. Not because of a bunch of computer models and a consensus.
And if a pharmaceutical company ever submitted a SAS data set to the FDA with the kind of poorly documented, often hidden data corrections that Hansen keeps making to his data sets, many people would end up disbarred and unable to work in the industry.

Steve,
I will have to go to my garage (storage for boxes of old college papers) and find my report. It was cited with references and documentation, using european PWR and BWR power plants. BWRs were the worst offenders by a large factor because they use nuclear steam, but they are more thermally efficient. I specialized in BWR 2-phase flow in college and worked for GE for 6 years in the 1980s.
Again, give me a few days to see if my wife didn’t claen to much out of the garage. LOL

I’m still waiting for real science to show carbon drives climate change and that that change has more negatives than positives. Until then, I’m not going to be endorsing any of these carbon sequestering schemes.
If there is real damage from carbon emissions it’s probably cheaper to negate the effects than to prevent the emissions. Lomborg estimates it’s 10 times more expensive to prevent one ton of carbon emissions than it is to clean up or adapt to those effects. Since I don’t foresee a 10X increase in personal income anytime soon, you can probably guess what I support as a better approach to this problem (provided there really is a problem).
Also, there are better answers than sequestration if you want to take carbon out of the system. There are several research studies being undertaken to remove carbon from the atmosphere and reprocess into fuel. These technologies should be given more support as we will need more energy and more energy sources in the future.

I believe much if not all of this CO2 will ended up as carbonates. This is a seriously long term commitment. It would be one thing to give into hysteria about PPMV CO2 via a biomass method. But to give in using something so irreversible, is madness. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. At least for the purposes of humanity. Are we REALLY sure we want to do this? Are we REALLY sure we know how low is too low, and therefore, know when to stop? I fear for the biosphere.

Maggie Gallagher by way of BlueCrabBoulevard:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”
Are we there yet?
Sequestration into sandstone. You America’s Hatters are a bit credulous, ‘eh. We hear the economy up there is a bit flat just now, small wonder.

Kim made this point further up the thread, but it’s worth repeating.
1. Atmospheric levels of oxygen are currently 20.946%
2. The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration states:
Human beings must breathe oxygen to survive, and begin to suffer adverse health effects when the oxygen level of their breathing air drops below 19.5 percent oxygen. Below 19.5 percent oxygen air is considered oxygen-deficient.
So, if oxygen levels in our atmosphere fall from their present 20.946% to below 19.5%, the global atmosphere will fall below the safe level set by the OSHA.
Research is already showing that atmospheric oxygen is decreasing, so why are we locking O2 up with CO2?
Isn’t that called throwing the baby out with the bath water?
Just a thought
Max
http://theerrorlog.blogspot.com/2008/07/some-thoughts-on-co2.html

Evan Jones:
My primary objective was to see what kind of response, especially the critical response, I get.
“I agree that for a rule to be “established” there must be consensus. … I am betting that the mainstay of AGW CO2 theory will be falsified and that WILL be the consensus in the end.”
Yes, the problem is we all can have our own scientific rules, some of which may be correct, some of which may be wrong. How do we know which rules are right and which are wrong? In order to show you that my rule is correct, I have to satisfy you with my evidence. If you are convinced, I will show another person, and another and a consensus emerges. We may not get total agreement (I understand we still have a flat earth society), but as long as a significant majority agree with it, we will accept that this is indeed a scientific rule.
There is a real possibility that AGW can be shown to be false and a new consensus might emerge. But that is just a possibility, until that happens. Few scientists and a number of people agree with you, but a disproportionate number of scientists disagree. When I have to make a conclusion, it is natural that I will go along with the majority scientists. But if AGW is shown to be wrong by the scientific establishment, then I do not have any hesitations in changing my views and I am sure most rational people will change their views.
“But that’s the point, isn’t it? And the neoMalthusians (e.g., the Club of Rome) utterly failed to pick up on the vast generality of the refutation. Also, if the green revolution had not been a (continually) happening thing, population would not have been growing at the rate it was in the first place.”
Such revolutions are unpredictable (see the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn – suggested by someone else) – new seeds, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, etc. etc. all came along at the right time. There is no guarantee that green revolution will continue to happen. Also, population will not be curbed due to food shortages. People will be malnourished, but the numbers can continue to grow as in many parts of the world now. Only a disease can reduce population in a relatively shorter period.
I go to developing nations a lot, and it is amazing to see what has been happening in many of their agricultural institutes (the Rice Institute for example) that were responsible for the green revolution. They have abandoned the priority for such institutes (established during the time of famine in India and Asia in general, in the 60s and 70s) and it will be difficult to bring the infrastructure back.
“But we don’t know it. Not even the IPCC speaks much of immediacy or “tipping points”. Only the most radical side of the coin does (most recently, Hansen).”
Yes, I agree. I was only presenting a philosophical reasoning on the methodology than empirical aspects on what exactly we should do. But if you ask, I will invest more in research and development – in hydrogen fuel, fusion reactors, and solar energy.
“It ain’t happening. Much of what was unobtainable (oil reserves – my comment) in 1975 is “easily accessible” today.”
May be, but that is no assurance that it will continue to happen. We cannot assume that there are solutions for every technical problem that will come up. The latest estimates I saw, we have reserves for 68 years at the present rate of production. The rate of production might go up – the hike in oil price is partly due to increase in demand. But for argument sake double, or triple the reserves estimate. Earth still has only finite oil reserves. We have several thousand years of human history, and we want to make sure we have several thousands in the future. But in 300 years or so, a very tiny period compared to historical times of past and future, we will be done with oil.
It has been a pleasure discussing with you.

In a decade we will look back on this period of stupidity and wonder at the head shaking idiocy of this time…..
To think that educated people can advance the idea that Human sources of CO2 can have a significant global effect on climate…. Is astounding. The fact that they have progressed it to the point of legislation is beyond belief.
It can’t last. Surely people are not that stupid?

<Evan Jones wins the argument hands down, IMHO.
Folks on this thread should be careful of making statements like this:
“On consensus, Evan, can you please provide one example of a scientific rule that was established without consensus (I am not trying to be critical, this is just a curiosity)?”
Wouldn’t you call E=MC2 a ‘rule?’ It is a universal rule – yet when it was proposed there was far from any consensus. Scientists of the day were as hostile to Einstein’s relativity theory as the UN/IPCC is to those questioning AGW today. In fact, one hundred eminent scientists signed an open letter claiming that Einstein’s theory of relativity was wrong.
Einstein’s retort to those 100 writers: ”To defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.”
There have been so many peer-reviewed papers posted here and elsewhere, which falsify the AGW/CO2/runaway global warming hypothesis, that no rational person answering honestly still thinks that the tiny amount of human produced CO2, added to the Earth’s immense natural CO2 reservoir, will lead to catastrophic global warming [which has never happened in Earth’s history – even when CO2 levels have exceeded 7,000 ppmv – compared with today’s <400 ppmv].
“Few scientists and a number of people agree with you, but a disproportionate number of scientists disagree.”
That is an untrue statement. George Gallup runs a polling business, and his reputation would be destroyed – and it would destroy his business – if he misrepresented his results: Click
And tens of thousands of U.S. scientists have co-signed a statement directly refuting the current AGW orthodoxy. That is an order of magnitude greater than the number of UN/IPCC scientists – who are employed at-will and dependent upon the UN, and who are well aware that their continued employment, or at least their prospect of advancement, depends on toeing the UN’s AGW line.
There is frantic activity among those desperate to convince the world that human produced atmospheric carbon dioxide will lead to a planetary catastrophe, and that “the science is settled.”
But this frantic activity [and the associated propaganda] does not make their hypothesis true. [Note that this is not a strawman argument; without the scare of ‘planetary catastrophe,’ the grant money fueling the AGW/planetary catastrophe hoax will begin to go elsewhere.]
Yes, CO2 traps a slight amount of heat. But adding more CO2 provides a rapidly diminishing effect. The only major result of increased atmospheric CO2 is the substantial boost it gives to plant growth.
I’m waiting for the Gorebots to begin telling people that more plant growth is somehow a bad thing.

But that is just a possibility, until that happens. Few scientists and a number of people agree with you, but a disproportionate number of scientists disagree.
Well, how many scientists are there and who beleives what? That’s just another one of those statements that is impossible to prove or disprove.
In short, we have learned an awful lot, awfully recently, well after there was a ‘consensus” on CO2-related AGW.
Exactly, the consensus side wasn’t expecting folks to come along and check their work.
There is no guarantee that green revolution will continue to happen.
The green revolution will continue into the forseeable future. There are technologies being experimented with now that would have seemed like science fiction 20 years ago.
(the Rice Institute for example) that were responsible for the green revolution.
Had nothing to do with it.

Evan Jones:
Item 1(b), Can you give me a reference publication about the mechanism found by Aqua Satellite? This is not the one published by Roy Spencer last year I assume (cloud and radiation budget…). I looked through the literature, there are more than 200 publications, one of the relatively recent one I found (Vinnikov K. Y. Grody N. C., Science 2003) talks about “trend of +0.22degrees to 0.26degreesC per 10 years, consistent with the global warming trend derived from surface meteorological stations.”
Even if the low level cloud mechanism is true, the reduction in temperature caused by low level clouds will be less than the warming from increased CO2 that caused increased low level clouds in the first place. Otherwise, it will be an unstable equilibrium.
Item (3), there was an article in NPR which summarized the issue, and it is unclear what exactly is happening. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025 They also talk about sea level rise consistent with temperature rise. There is, of course, a lot that we do not know. But even AGW scientists are well aware of all these issues, and the other arguments you raised, I assume. So, the same question is back, why are they not agreeing with it?
Item (7). I plotted those data is various ways and I cannot get any cooling in the past 10 years, temperature has gone up slightly, but not much. But as NPR quoted “Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming.” Christy also said the same thing.
Please see: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
Item (8). OK, Then how do we explain this correlation?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/giss-had-uah-rss_global_anomaly_refto_1979-1990_v2.png
“I disagree. We have every reason to believe it (though we cannot count on anything 100%). We must base policy on a standard risk-benefit analysis.”
Risk based analysis is certainly appropriate for certain systems. But for systems and technologies that are yet to be developed, risk analysis may not be of much help. Either we will develop such technology or we won’t. Even one small obstacle could prevent the development of such complex technologies.
I used 1250 billion barrels as the reserves, more than the 400 billion you used. But overall it appears to me that you are making a number of positive assumptions in your analysis- how fast the technology is going to develop, how much oil is available, etc.
Obviously you have put considerable effort in this area. So, I was wondering whether you have published any of these arguments in a journal? If so can you kindly post them? If not, I hope you will consider publishing them so that those opinions will have more impact.
Pofarmer/Smokey: “Well, how many scientists are there and who beleives what? That’s just another one of those statements that is impossible to prove or disprove.” No it is not – one can look at the literature. In fact someone actually did that several years ago and published a paper in Science, indicating that she was able to find only very few publications with a skeptical AGW view. I will go back to my original statement, I cannot find more than one Nobel prize winner in Science, and may be four or five National Academy members who expressed skeptical views about AGW. If I am wrong, please correct me with evidence – I am actually looking for that evidence.

“scientists who don’t belive in”
So we are back to “faith based” science again?

John McLondon wonders why many skeptics distrust AGW zealots like Al Gore and James Hansen. You don’t have to dig very deep to discover there is much more to the Climate Crisis than meets the eye. You may have heard of the Club of Rome, a self-proclaimed international environmental think-tank.
The CoR published a report in 1991 called The First Global Revolution. In this report they state:
“It would seem that humans need a common motivation, namely a common adversary, to organize and act together in the vacuum; such a motivation must be found to bring the divided nations together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one invented for the purpose.
New enemies therefore have to be identified.
New strategies imagined, new weapons devised.
The common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
OK … now the really interesting part is who belongs to the CoR and their siblings, the Clubs of Budapest and Madrid:
Al Gore
Jimmy Carter
Stephen Schneider
David Rockefeller
Kofi Annan
Bill Clinton
Ted Turner
George Soros
Maurice Strong
Mikhail Gorbachev
Henry Kissinger
and many more….
You can read all about it here:
http://green-agenda.com/globalrevolution.html

Evan Jones: “The 10-year trend is cooler.”
Cooler than what? This is what the UK Met Office says: “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.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/2.html
NASA: “Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth’s second warmest year in a century.”
And: “The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.”
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20080116/
That doesn’t sound like cooling to me.

John McLondon says:
Item (7). I plotted those data is various ways and I cannot get any cooling in the past 10 years, temperature has gone up slightly, but not much.
No cooling in the past ten years? Look at these independent sources: click
Temps for the past twenty years: click
And 4 gov’t sources plot the temperature trend over the past six years: click
Mr. McDonald can not be persuaded. He is a True Believer. I post the charts above for the consideration of more neutral readers.
{And thanks to DS for that very interesting link. I’ve always been suspicious of the Club of Rome’s Malthusian agenda ever since they appeared on the scene.]

Evan and Brendan re: a Global Temperature,
A project of mine 20 years ago was to create a ceramic circuit board firing furnace, some 20 odd feet, open at either end of the conveyor, having about 2 dozen sensing and heating zones, insulated throughout.
I found, in this ‘controlled’ enviornment (not CERN quality, certainly) that the temperature measured (having taken great care to eliminate ground-loops) was a chaotic fractal:
The temperature graphed at a station was sinusoidal, varying (as I recall at a distance) a few degrees C out of 500 (12 bit AD/DA). Interestingly, however, changing the scale of measurement, up or down some forgotten order, revealed the same sinusoid with the smaller scale signatures riding on top!
We digitally damp the returned values on your meters in order that the measurement converges to a ‘central’ value.
The old mercury thermometers had an intrinsic specific heat that performed a similar function, hard on which to improve.
I suspect, as someone commented above, that the global temperature, equating that of the Sahel with Vanuatu, is a chimera.

I cited (Vinnikov K. Y. Grody N. C., Science 2003) because I was looking for the new cloud facilitated cooling mechanism that you suggested that can be verified using Aqua Satellite, and that is the only paper I could find to have any relevance in recent times. Can you suggest me another more recent paper where they discuss the cooling mechanisms from low level clouds?
“But the CO2 effect has no water vapor feedback. Therefore it has much less effect. Relative humidity has decreased all but the very lowest altitudes. This is discussed in detail in a recent article on this blog.”
OK, but the effect cannot be larger than the cause in a stable system, so if heating causes cooling by whatever mechanism, the total cooling resulting from the warming cannot be greater than the warming itself, in which case we are going to reach newer and newer dynamic equilibrium states at higher and higher temperatures. If it is an unstable equilibrium with a bifurcation point, on the other hand, the effect can be larger than the cause – but now we are talking about a tipping point just like Hansen, only difference is that this one is in the other direction.
“Well, yeah. But the oceans have been cooling for five years and sea level has been dropping for the last three years.”
From what I cited from NPR, the sea level is rising, not falling. Can you please point me to a credible source that shows falling sea levels on an average sense? I have not seen one. (the NPR link is working fine when I clicked – here it is again)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
I couldn’t find a McKitrick and Michaels paper in 2008, I assume you are referring to his paper from 2007 on correlation between temperature trends and socio-economic variables. If so, I read it. I have not seen anyone referring that paper yet, so I cannot find what others in this area thought about it. But just for argument sake assume that they are correct. But the result I posted earlier (actually Watts posted) shows that such an assumption is incorrect.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/giss-had-uah-rss_global_anomaly_refto_1979-1990_v2.png
You said: “By showing that once one sorts out the spaghetti, it’s not so close, after all. (Notice for example, how much lower GISS starts out.)”
Here I disagree with you completely here. From what I see, they correlate very well. GISS does not start out lower, it went down after the first data point it looks like. But even if it started lower, it does not make any difference statistically. It is a plot of anomaly from an average value during a certain period of time. If the first number is lower, it only means that the anomaly for that year was lower, as far as I see, it does not have any effect later as the time span is large. Or take another starting point a year later, doesn’t change the pattern. I review between 20 and 50 papers a year for very good journals (and between 10 to 15 proposals) and if I see such a figure in any of them my conclusion will be very simple. They are statistically identical, they correlate extremely well.
Whether the temperature is slightly higher, or lower, or flat, in the past 10 years, I do not think it matters much, as I quoted last time, unless it lasts for a much longer. So, I will skip that part.
“”I used 1250 billion barrels as the reserves, more than the 400 billion you used.”
“At Bakken or overall?”
That is the overall reserve. I do not know where you are coming up with the 3.4 trillion bbls – I am assuming you are including heavy oil, tar sands, oil shale, etc. in it. From every source I can find, what I quoted is a realistic estimate:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/reserves.html A comparison of different estimates (2007)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/crudeoilreserves.xls More recent estimate (2008) or the html form
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:zV1447U4l4MJ:www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/crudeoilreserves.xls+oil+reserve&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=firefox-a
(somehow the first two takes a lot of time to download, don’t know why)
There are several write-ups about what is realistic about such estimates, I will just quote one:
http://www.runet.edu/~wkovarik/oil/3unconventional.html
About Bakken Reserve, recoverable oil range from 1 or 2 % to 45 %. USGA and North Dakota Reports (in 2008) pick the lower range considering available technology. I will certainly go with the USGA estimate (which says the recoverable oil is about 3 to 4 billion bbls).
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/ndgs/bakken/newpostings/07272006_BakkenReserveEstimates.pdf
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911 or
Heavy crude (from tar sands etc) does not have the right molecular composition (like it does not contain much alkanes) for easily making plastics and medicines. Those non-conventional sources create more environmental problems, both in extraction and in usage (for example it takes lots of water to process shale).
So, yes I believe your assumptions are highly optimistic.
“It’s too simplistic. It’s not graduate level analysis. The data is just hanging out there for any undergraduate to note. It is so obvious to me that I cannot conceive that it could possibly amount to non-self evident, original work.”
Having data and putting them together for a complete story are two different things. Obviously you have to add a lot more supporting information to come to your conclusion, so it is not going to be that trivial as you said. If no one has published it, then it is original work. From what I understand, not many scientists agree with you, which makes your work all the more original. And no matter what you write, IPCC is not going to pay any attention if it is in some blogs. So, I encourage you to write it up and send it for a real publication. It is also a good way to see what kind of genuine criticisms you might get.
Smokey: I wasn’t ignoring your Gallup poll picture. I do not know where you got it, and I do not know whether it is the same 1991 poll. Just to make it simple, here is wiki version of it – does not give me much confidence in that picture when Gallup says “”Most scientists involved in research in this area believe that human-induced global warming is occurring now”
Here it is from wiki:
—–
In 1991, the Center for Science, Technology, and Media commissioned a Gallup poll of 400 members of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society along with an analysis of reporting on global warming by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a report on which was issued in 1992.[66] Accounts of the results of that survey differ in their interpretation and even in the basic statistical percentages:
• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting states that the report said that 67% of the scientists said that human-induced global warming was occurring, with 11% disagreeing and the rest undecided.[67]
• George Will reported “53 percent do not believe warming has occurred, and another 30 percent are uncertain.” (Washington Post, September 3, 1992). In a correction Gallup stated: “Most scientists involved in research in this area believe that human-induced global warming is occurring now.”[68]
• A 1993 publication by the Heartland Institute states: “A Gallup poll conducted on February 13, 1992 of members of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society – the two professional societies whose members are most likely to be involved in climate research – found that 18 percent thought some global warming had occurred, 33 percent said insufficient information existed to tell, and 49 percent believed no warming had taken place.[69]
—-
I have similar problems with the Oregon petition also, I got one too with a genuine looking publication. Well, it is a well documented case, so I do not have to add anything. But I still hope someone out there could find a few Nobel Laureates or may be 20 or so National Academy Members with a skeptical view. In fact, I wrote my first post to get that information.

“But the CO2 effect has no water vapor feedback. Therefore it has much less effect. Relative humidity has decreased all but the very lowest altitudes. This is discussed in detail in a recent article on this blog.”
OK, but the effect cannot be larger than the cause in a stable system, so if heating causes cooling by whatever mechanism, the total cooling resulting from the warming cannot be greater than the warming itself, in which case we are going to reach newer and newer dynamic equilibrium states at higher and higher temperatures.
In order to make a statement like that you need to now ALL the inputs and ALL the feedbacks. It’s not a simple system. At least it’s not that simple.

Bruce Cobb
“Do you honestly believe anyone there who wants to keep their job is going to speak out against the positions of the governing bodies?”
Yes, Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, etc are doing it. And Thanks for the link, I have seen that before though. I think “testing hypothesis” and “consensus” are two aspects of the same thing. Consensus is developed through verification.
Pofarmer:
“In order to make a statement like that you need to now ALL the inputs and ALL the feedbacks. It’s not a simple system. At least it’s not that simple.”
One good thing about not knowing all the details of a particular scientific field is that I can talk in generalities and abstracts! To do the real modeling we need to know all those things. But on an abstract sense we can group together all that is causing warming and all that causing cooling with whatever feedback, without knowing exactly what they are.
Smokey:
“My apologies to Mr. John McLondon for assuming he is a True Believer.”
Don’t worry about that.
“But it’s frustrating trying to understand where John is coming from when he makes statements such as: …”
No, no, it is simple. Assume the temperature went up by 10 deg F, then all the mechanisms that resist such a temperature rise are not sufficient to bring the temperature back by 10 or 15 degs, it might bring down by 4 or 6 deg. If it can bring more than 10 deg, then it will be a case of unstable equilibrium. Like you are pushing a stone to the top of a cliff (the stone was close to the top to begin with), then if it falls it is going to well beyond where it was originally. Here height is similar to temperature. In this case, being on the top of the cliff is an unstable equilibrium. Such unstable equilibriums happen in nature, growth of bacteria on surface , or any general growth of clusters,…but I doubt temperature behavior is one of them.
Sure I agree sea level has been rising, rapidly in the old times and more slowly recently. I was objecting to Evan Jones’ comment that sea level is falling. I think the main question is whether the rate of rise is becoming faster recently ?
Jeez:
Thanks.
I am so tired, if the above statements do not make sense, I will write differently again.

Yes, Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, etc are doing it. And Thanks for the link, I have seen that before though. I think “testing hypothesis” and “consensus” are two aspects of the same thing. Consensus is developed through verification.

Yes they are. The ones you hear most are usually retired (which somehow means they’re irrelevant) or tenured or otherwise secure in their positions and not worried about what anyone else thinks. Those who aren’t in such positions have to watch what they say, else their funding dries up like an AGW drought.

Crosspatch: “I believe it has been pretty well established by now that the data provided by them is contaminated by poor station siting and significant land use changes around the station.”
Scientists have various ways of adjusting to make allowances for anomalies that might arise through siting etc. But it’s not so much the absolute figures that matter as the trend, and the trend has been consistently upwards. And the evidence of warming from surface measurement is supported by satellite measurement, which also shows a consistently upward warming trend.

Jeez: “Considering the climate has not “runaway” past a tipping point or bifurcation point for around a billion years is a solid argument against the concept of positive feedbacks or unstable equilibrium.”
Absolutely, I hope either you or Evan Jones or someone from your side could develop this into a scientific publication (if no one has published it already) – and that will go a long way in countering Hansen’s tipping point hypothesis than all the jokes about him in various blogs combined. I think it is fairly straight forward to show this: first only take the positive feedbacks and show that within a certain range there cannot be any instabilities. CO2 concentration vs. temperature rise is not a linear relationship (I would assume it is logarithmic or somewhere between logarithmic and linear- which in itself is a stabilizing effect – it takes more CO2 now to raise temperature by one degree compared to 50 years ago), to that add increase in water vapor and the resulting increase in temperature and the increase in CO2 released from sea, and the resulting rise in temperature, etc. and show that from what we know now, increase in CO2 will increase temperature but not to a bifurcation or tipping point (for temperature to go up). Then add all the complications – whether all those methane hydrates are going to come out due to temperature rise in the ocean (it might, but we do not have any evidence for that from what we know now), whether there is a critical temperature (due to rapid temperature changes) beyond which trees are not going to survive (like the altitude beyond which trees do not grow – again there is no evidence that it could happen), effect of more vegetation growth for a longer periods of time at higher latitudes, etc. Then put the historic perspectives that we wouldn’t be here if there was a run away greenhouse effect, to support the argument, and finally include temperature regulation through lower level clouds (as Evan claims, if that is true), to show that from all that we know now, there is no bifurcation point. Something like that should give the critics a much better standing against the more intense version of AGW.

Oops, my post above should have read “The point is, there shouldn’t be a need for adjustments if the siting standards were followed in the first place.

Jeff Alberts: “Oops, my post above should have read “The point is, there shouldn’t be a need for adjustments if the siting standards were followed in the first place.”
It is very difficult to do such things perfectly – there will always be problems, as a practical matter. I understand that the data from the Hubble Telescope is routinely corrected because of the problems with the mirror, even if you do a perfect surveying (humanly possible) for some large piece of land at the end they apply corrections to make everything fit well, we have to apply corrections to satellite data for reading correct temperatures, etc. The question is are we applying the correct type of corrections, or are we applying corrections to bias the results in a specific way. In Hansen’s case I am far from being convinced that he is making corrections to demonstrate AGW.

“It is very difficult to do such things perfectly – there will always be problems, as a practical matter.”
The experimenter is allowed to make corrections for his equipment but must document this carefully in his protocol. Hansen is not the indicated experimenter.
While seeming specious this explanation is sickeningly tendentious.

Consensus may well be important in applied science (medicine, engineering, et al.); but open and complete information is crucial in pure research.
Kuhn emphasized, in its practice, that these scientists were comprised, at the forefront, of those understanding the current paradigm, its heuristics, classic experiments, experimental ethics, etc., and could proceed to develop hypotheses to test the paradigm at its vulnerable points. They needn’t even be aware of other’s articulated beliefs apart from these elements.
It remained then for a secondary group, to use the former’s protocols to reproduce their results.
Consensus is only a byproduct, the process is what is important. Kuhn even declined to say that progress was a definable outcome of the process.

Jeff Alberts: “You’re assuming they even know about the microsite violations, or even care.”
I can’t answer that question. From memory, the ‘other side’ dismisses photographs as sufficient evidence of corrupted data and demands numbers. Of course the measuring instruments should be the best possible, and let’s hope the agency responsible raises its game. But uncertain data is better than no data.

One day there will be nanontech robotic microbes who will create diamonds out of CO2 and sunshine, then we can get on with our overdue ice age.

Evan Jones: “As for the lack of positive vapor feedback, see:…”
I am hesitant in using the vapor data since information on vapor content is one of the least understood variable which is very difficult to measure even with reasonable accuracy. If I am quoting correctly, the accuracy (or reliability) of vapor measurements could be as low as 25 to 30 % (I can look around for reference on some quantitative value) – it is highly time dependent (as well as on altitude and position)- now you see it and now you don’t (since the residence time is relatively short) and seems like you have to catch it at the right time. We may be underestimating vapor content – but we do not know enough to make a concrete determination one way or other. Pofarmer’s comment may be applicable here:
Pofarmer (05:02:05):quoting someone “”But uncertain data is better than no data.”” replied “O.k. That’s just pure stupid.”
On sea-level: Please see:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_ns_global.jpg
or go to http://sealevel.colorado.edu/results.php and pick one that you like, or use
or http://sealevel.colorado.edu/wizard.php for specific locations.
The overall trend is up, there is a dip from early – 2007 to now, but that does not appear to be any different that the reductions we observe in the past. I think we will have to wait several more years to see whether there is a downward trend, or it is just a short time phenomenon. I sincerely doubt there is a real change in trend, but I could be wrong. We will see.
Some critical references on Morner’s work.
Kench P. S., Nichol S. L., McLean R. F.
Comment on “New perspectives for the future of the Maldives” by Morner, N.A., et al. [Global Planet. Change 40 (2004), 177-182]
GLOBAL AND PLANETARY CHANGE 47 (1): 67-69 MAY 2005
Woodroffe C. D.
Late Quaternary sea-level highstands in the central and eastern Indian Ocean: A review
GLOBAL AND PLANETARY CHANGE 49 (1-2): 121-138 NOV 2005
Woodworth P. L.
Have there been large recent sea level changes in the Maldive Islands?
GLOBAL AND PLANETARY CHANGE 49 (1-2): 1-18 NOV 2005
Morner’s response was short and did not appear to defend well.
Evan Jones: (JM It is very difficult to do such things perfectly – there will always be problems, as a practical matter.)
“It can be done and is being done. The NOAA/CRN system covering the US is just such a system. Well sited (with photographs, no SHAP), automatic transmission of data hourly (No FILENET), Well distributed (no grid weighting).”
I am not really sure. For one thing they will have to do some averaging to go from data collected from 150 or so stations to an average U.S. temperature – they could use simple arithmetic average, then it will be an average of all the readings not really the average for the U.S., they could use an average scaling with the area a station covers, or they could use some function to interpolate temperature between stations and then average. In any way, a certain degree of manipulation has to be done from the raw data to be the final product.
Also if any of these stations are destroyed by flood, tornado, or when new stations come online, corrections are needed. For example Florida does not even have a working site, and only two at the end of this project to represent that large area. In 50 years these sites may not be as pristine as we have now (I assume all the sites we criticize now were started as good sites using the state of the art technology at that time, some of them may not measure up our standards now – this of course belongs Watt’s department). So, I am sure they already apply or will have to apply corrections. Now I agree with Gary Gulrud’s comment that relevant details of those corrections should be available to the public. It goes without saying that the probability of finding errors in their procedure (up or down) will be much higher if more people look at it. It will also increase the credibility of such corrections.
Gary Gulrud: “The experimenter is allowed to make corrections for his equipment but must document this carefully in his protocol. Hansen is not the indicated experimenter”
I somewhat agree with that comment. Hansen did publish a paper summarizing the logic and procedures for his corrections (I can check and post it if you don’t have it, but probably not detailed enough to reproduce the exact code), also I thought he released the code under pressure from McIntyre? Didn’t he? I didn’t keep up with all that. But at the end of the day, since all four temperature plots agree reasonably well (as much as we can expect, under all these statistical variables involved), I do not have as much suspicion on Hansen’s correction as many of his critics have expressed during these years. But I think, if he hasn’t already done so, he should release more information about his adjustments.
Gary Gulrud: “Consensus may well be important in applied science (medicine, engineering, et al.); but open and complete information is crucial in pure research.”
I agree with what you say, but I don’t see a distinction between the first and second clause. When I used the word “consensus” it is not like a group of people after a meeting deciding to have Chinese food for lunch vs. Mexican food. The consensus in science is based on knowing an appropriate level of relevant facts to reach that conclusion. I just am hesitant to stress the need to know COMPLETE information, because there is no end for something to be complete, we can always add more. I do not disagree with Kuhn at all, in his two books I do not think he addressed the issue of consensus in science. My view of consensus is one that is based on the required knowledge on the phenomenon on which they are developing a consensus.
Brendan H. has a point, that AGW critics in the past used uncorrected satellite data to discredit ground station measurements to show that AGW is not true and there is no warming. I think the group at Remote Sensing Systems helped to apply many of the corrections. It is unfortunate that Spencer/Christy data without corrections (sensor temperature, drift etc) was used by some to criticize AGW, it created some level of distrust (the corrections to the pattern they predicted were more significant that Hansen’s Y2K correction). RSS is still trying to understand the need/effect for corrections (eg. Mears, C. A., Wentz, F. J., The Effect of Drifting Measurement Time on Satellite-Derived Lower Tropospheric Temperature, Science, 309, 1548-1551, 2005).
Sorry, we were supposed to discuss carbon sequestration and we diluted that with all these other things.
John McL

Evan Jones: “As for the lack of positive vapor feedback, see:…”
This is what NOAA has to say.
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html
“…we have good atmospheric measurements of other key greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, we have poor measurements of global water vapor, so it is not certain by how much atmospheric concentrations have risen in recent decades or centuries, though satellite measurements, combined with balloon data and some in-situ ground measurements indicate generally positive trends in global water vapor.”
Somewhere, and I cannot really track it now, I read the accuracy is only about 30 % or so. This is a problem, unfortunately we have not devoted enough resources and work to develop a tool to measure one the most important feedback mechanism. I hope this will be corrected in the future.
BTW: I do believe knowing something is better than knowing nothing (I was just making a mild joke with my quote in my previous post)
I do not really understand the CRN procedure. If it is purely a geometric grid, that may not represent the real altitude adjusted (also wind adjusted) equivalent stations for obtaining a (or the) U.S. average from a simple arithmetic averaging. Which means some type of modeling must have gone in there in determining the locations. In places like Oregon and Washington, if you travel few miles east (like to Bend Oregon) the temperature can fall substantially. So, I am not sure how they are adjusting for such rapid transitions. At the end I hope it all comes out OK, at least I hope everything will be transparent.
I enjoyed our discussions very much. Keep up your work with a skeptical AGW view. It will keep the other side honest. But I still hope both sides could develop a little more trust and remove all the suspicions about the other groups. We will discuss again sometime in the future.
Gary Gulrud: “..Your point is a non sequiter..”
I assume you are using the strict logical formalism here (if A is true, then B is true, since B is true, therefore A must be true; which may or may not be true). That is why I asked for at least one counter example to show something in science that came about to be a rule (or scientific truth) without consensus. I mentioned statistical thermodynamics, we can add quantum mechanics, string theory, uncertainty principle, Boyle’s law, Maxwell’s law, etc., etc. all of which are in pure science. For example, the uncertainty principle evolved due to the endless discussions between Einstein and Bohr (Bohr had to constantly modify the details even until 1930s), and most of the arguments were simple thought experiments (not real experiments), and it kept evolving until a formulation is reached to a stage that is accepted by most scientists in the field. I don’t know what we call that, if it is not refinements for consensus. Most of the public and many scientists have never seen an atom (atomic force microscope and scanning tunneling microscope are relatively recent developments – and even with that only few people working with those devices really see atoms), but slowly and slowly atomic explanations (especially in chemistry and physical chemistry) became recognized as the fundamental explanation, without even seeing it. It did not happen overnight, it took years of consensus development (based on evidence, of course).
Take for example the continental drift theory: Abraham Ortelius (in 1956 or 1957) initially talked about it, developed more fully by Wegener (in 1912), but widespread recognition of this theory came in 1960 or so, and now progress in geology and evolutionary biology etc is based on the continental drift theory. Since the theory was not established before 1960, even though the theory was later shown to be correct, it was not always used for other investigations, thus diminishing the progress of science. It is the general consensus that made continental drift theory a scientific theory and facilitated further progress based on it, etc. Until someone can point out a concrete counter example, it is difficult to believe otherwise. But if someone could show a good counter example, I will be happy to change my view. Kuhn’s subject is scientific revolutions, or paradigm changes.
“Scientific revolutions over turn consensus, prima facie. If I were writing such a book I might consider it given that consensus is irrelevant”
Please look at some of the scientific revolutions: Replacing Sun for Earth as the center of universe, Gilbert’s work in 1600 that gave the foundation for magnetism and electricity, Isaac Newton’s development of calculus, particle wave duality of subatomic particles, development of quantum mechanics, general theory of relativity, …. .There were skeptics all around when such developments came up, and it took years and years before it really became a theory. It took consensus.
“…but without an MD/PhD and post Doc with a top PI you have no background in pure research, the target of our discussion. Therefore abstract allusions to experience are unpersuasive.”
At some level science, engineering and medicine, all become almost the same. Engineers working in nanotechnology are essentially doing physics and chemistry, medical research involves significant amount of biochemistry, medicinal chemistry, molecular biology, etc. and many with applied training work also in basic sciences (including me, I have Ph.D. students and post-docs). So, such classifications will not always apply, that only Ph.D. in science can have background in science. I understand fully what you are saying, that there must be (and natural to have) accepted guidelines and procedures when medicine or engineering is practiced. Sure. But, I believe there is more.

Pofarmer: “But uncertain data is better than no data.
O.k. That’s just pure stupid.”
Let’s see. I’m on a busy city street and want to catch some public transport. I ask the nearest passer-by about bus frequencies and he shrugs his shoulders. The second passer-by tells me that a bus leaves from ‘around here every ten minutes’.
According to you, both answers would be “pure stupid”. But by choosing the uncertain data I would have a much better chance of getting to my destination than you, who would be left on the sidewalk searching in vain for certain data. Before you knew it, a mugger would have sensed your helplessness, and you’d be stranded without a penny.

Hi Evan:
I understand where you stand. We will see how it goes. I will keep reading it when I have time and if any of your predictions come true, I will be happy to admit it (BTW: please, John will be just fine, thanks! No Dr., the Dr. is when patients call you!!).

John Mc. :
Your queries give me reason to doubt that you are indeed familiar with Thos. Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, the background I indicated would be implied in my argument.
Einstein, in his “On Science and Religion” essay said of science “It is the human endeavor to reconstruct the universe.” Whatever else one might think of the statement, the focus is definitely not on the scientist, but his work. And the work does not depend on other’s confidence.
If a scientific paradigm, e.g., Einstein’s special relativity, could in any sense be considered a final form then perhaps our perception and acceptance of the form might be crucial, as it certainly is in selling a procedure to a patient. There is no possibility of returning to Start and trying again with an improved procedure or a superior specialist.
I charged you to show why consensus is necessary to the performance science as defined by Kuhn, the framework, and now you ask me to provide definitions! How about starting with funding and resources, with teachers, students, technicians, etc? Do I have to make your case and argue pro forma?
Are you as advertised? Why cite wikipedia and not PubMed?

Let me guess–some flavor of medical technologist, working at teaching hospitals like Brigham and Women’s or Childrens for a vendor like GE or Philips.

J Mc or whoever:
All I asked after presenting a opening challenge, ‘that science does not depend of necessity on consensus for its prosecution’, as Robert Cote had before me with less detail was some manner of explicit defense.
On the third reply, as your first offering, you attempted to pass off examples of collaboration as consensus, apparently not recognizing D. Webster as an authority.
Thereafter you have been resolutely evasive, deliberately obtuse if I may, as though your opinons are too sacrosanct for challenge or articulation.
My guess as to your profession was not to detract from your profession, but rather to highlight your pattern of cagey enticement of your adversaries to believe your credentials more impressive than theirs and more than in fact they are. We generally do not take this as a harmless deceit and such will be uncovered.
“All men are grass”.

Correction: I should have said “there is no reason to continue such discussions”.

Very late on this topic but if one wants to sequester carbon why not encourage algae growth in the oceans or plant seaweed?