From WOOD-TV, Grand Rapids, MI
Chief Meteorologist Bill Steffen has been a familiar face in West Michigan since 1975.MSNBC needs to read Bill’s Blog
MSNBC is running a four-part series entitled Future Earth. On their website they say you can “find out why Earth’s climate machine — the North Pole — is melting alarmingly fast. Learn about our planet’s future, and how you can stop its decline.”
First, the North Pole is not “Earth’s Climate Machine”. There is far more heat and area in the Tropics than at the North Pole.
Second, YOU can’t stop it’s decline (assuming it’s declining)! Nature is big – you personally are insignificant compared to nature. Don’t you wish you had the power to control icecaps! If you don’t mind some profanity, check out George Carlin’s take on “Saving the Planet”.
Third, MSNBC does not know “our planet’s future”. The scenario they portray in this piece is about as remote a possibility in the near future (and more than likely the very far future) as the Lions going 16-0 next season. The Antarctic icecap (which is much bigger than the Arctic icecap) has been growing. In Sept. 1979 (first year of satellite data) the Antarctic icecap was 18.4 million sq. km. In Sept. 2008, the Antarctic icecap was at 19.2 million sq. km. That’s a 30-year trend.
By comparison, Michigan is 151,586 sq. km, so that’s an increase in icecover of over five times the area of Michigan. MSNBC could instead be doing a story on the trend of cooling in Antarctica and possible falling sea levels due to ice accumulation in Antarctica. Keep in mind that if the Polar icecap (without Greenland) melted…it would hardly cause sea level to rise, because the icecap is currently displacing water in the Arctic Ocean. The Antarctic icecap is over a land continent, not floating over an ocean. Significant ice accumulation over the land of Antarctica would cause sea level to fall. The Arctic icecap did decrease significantly (yes, very significantly) from 1979 to 2007. To do a fair piece on Arctic ice…MSNBC or anyone would have to note this. However, to also be fair…they should also tell what’s been going on in the Arctic since 2007.
Please, CHECK OUT THIS GRAPH from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Note that the current icecap has grown significantly and is now much closer to the 1979-2000 average than it is to the low level of 2007. There are meteorological reasons for this increase (PDO – Pacific Decadal Oscillation going negative, etc.) that have nothing to do with CO2. Some scientists predicted there would be no icecap this summer. It’ll actually be bigger than last summer. Al Gore predicted last year that “the icecap will be gone in five years!”. I would be willing to not only bet Al Gore but also give him 100 to one odds that there will still be a polar ice cap in 2013. One last point, MSNBC is owned by General Electric. GE is already making money off the issue with their Carbon Credit Master Card (link from “Treehugger”, no less).
Here’s CNN’s story on the new credit card. Interesting note: In the fourth quarter of 2008 as GE/NBC stock fell 30 percent, GE spent $4.26 million on lobbying — that’s $46,304 each day, including weekends, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In 2008, the company spent a grand total of $18.66 million on lobbying.” Reviewing their lobbying filings, GE’s specific lobbying issues included the “Climate Stewardship Act,” “Electric Utility Cap and Trade Act,” “Global Warming Reduction Act,” “Federal Government Greenhouse Gas Registry Act,” “Low Carbon Economy Act,” and “Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.” Do you think this “big business” is just concerned about the environment?
Well, check out this column from the Politico, which says: “Several of the companies would gain a commercial advantage after a cap and trade was established. General Electric has an “ecoimagination” line of green appliances and equipment. Robert Stavins, a professor of business and government at Harvard University, said a cap and trade program would be fantastic for GE and other companies that sell products that consume power. He said that if energy costs go up as a result of the regulation — something he believes is likely — a wide array of products from appliances to power plants would become prematurely obsolete and need to be replaced with greener models.” That would mean big money for GE (parent company of NBC and MSNBC). Take a moment and read my previous post on polar ice…check out the graphs and charts…they speak for themselves.
ONE LAST ADD: Check out this website with pictures of submarines in open water at the North Pole. Also: The Weather Channel is now owned by NBC, so they will have a similar policy.
I don’t think Mr. Steffen’s comments about the benefits of cap and trade legislation to GE’s bottom line go nearly far enough. Considering that a 1 GW coal fired plant would have to be replaced with 4 GW of wind turbines (to account for the different load factors) and would also have to be backed up with another GW of gas turbines for when the wind dies, plus load variation would have to be managed through a smart grid, there is a lot of hardware to be sold. Additionally, GE financial will be marketing the carbon credits in this fiasco. GE is seeing green with their ecomagination all right. It’s just not the leaves on the trees, its to dollars in our wallets.
It would be interesting to see that same ice extent plot with the full-satellite-data-period record instead of 1979-2000.
Sort of OT. I’ve just read this explanation by Barry Brooke on BraveNewClimate.com about why the Antarctic ice is expanding so it must be true isn’t it?
“This is a common source of confusion among climate change sceptics. As the world warms, the atmosphere’s ability to hold water vapour increases. Think of how humid it is in the tropics, and how dry the Arctic air is. The largest desert on Earth is the continent of Antarctica — it receives very little annual precipitation. In a warming world, more water vapour allows for more snowfall in Antarctica, which accumulates particularly in East Antarctica where the temperature never rises above freezing point. So, ice accumulates on that side of the continent. In the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica, this extra accumulation of snow is more than offset by summer surface melt.
Also, as the sea warms around the continent, especially in the most northerly parts of the continent (Antarctic Peninsula) large ice shelves are eroded from beneath, and the frequency with which they break up starts to accelerate. This melting of buttressing ice shelves unplugs the land-based glaciers, and they begin to flow into the sea more rapidly. As such, there is a large net loss of ice from the western half of the continent, and a slight gain in the eastern half. More sea ice builds up around the continent because as the surface waters warm, the ocean becomes more stratified (it ‘turns over’ less readily). Less ocean heat is brought up from below. So it’s a battle between the negative effect of increased surface melt of sea ice, and the positive effect of more snowfall and decreased in melting from below, both of which reinforce sea ice formation. The result — a steady state or slight increase in the amount of floating ice around the great southern continent.
Another meteorologist goes off the reservation. And this one plays dirty as he remembers the dictum to follow the money. That’s what happens when you have people thinking for themselves. They just don’t roll over and play nice. For shame!
In the mean time, and this will probably just be a brief moment, Arctic sea ice levels continue to hold at their high levels, above those of 2003. Must have something to do with the higher than normal levels of ice still in the Bering Sea. That darn sea ice just refuses to cooperate and melt on schedule.
How can GE make money on this imaginary crisis if nature keeps on refusing to adhere to the schedule laid out by the models?
And that durn sun with its monthly sunspeck or two that lasts a few hours. If it doesn’t get with the program things could start to get mighty cold around here.
How can the brilliant Waxman and his colleagues run the country if all these things keep running out of control? It’s positively outrageous.
All I have to say is, thank you Mother Nature for smacking down all these pompous fools and their presumptive arrogance.
If you look at this graph it sure looks to me like there is one heck of a lot more ice in the Arctic today than there was this day last year. If you draw a vertical line from the end of the red line to the orange line, that is quite a bit of difference. And as there is more 2yo ice this year than last, ice this year should be more robust in the face of summer conditions, all things being equal. Of course winds could change things in a hurry but so far it looks like the second year running of increased ice in the Arctic to me.
Oklahoma’s most famous weathercaster, Gary England, has also come out
firmly against the warmists. He clearly understands the sunspot connection.
(I was very happy to see England on the side of truth; he’s a real hero
in Oklahoma, having devoted his long career to educating the public
and the media about tornado safety.)
He’s quoted here:
http://www.enidnews.com/archivesearch/local_story_101232610.html
Give Chief Meteorologist Bill Steffen an award. Well done!
MSNBC must have Henry Waxman as their chief science adviser:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/26/quote-of-the-week-5-waxmans-stunningly-stupid-statement/
I have never understood why some people put so much emphasis on the ice that forms in the Arctic Ocean. WUWT has had several threads on this issue and no one has offered an explanation. In all cases when the issue of an “ice free” Arctic is raised, my thought is “So what? Like a bad weed, it keeps coming back”
Latest WUWT thread: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/26/ice-at-the-north-pole-in-1958-not-so-thick/
Good post, and close to home.
WOOD-TV, Grand Rapids, MI
He can say it here with snow banks still visible!
AGW Falling into the cracks of the ice.
you can quote that ! lol
Don’t forget GE is making the generators for T Boone Pickens’ wind turbine farms he’s building with ‘pickens plan’. GE owns the big media lock stock and barrel. AGW is a big scam by Pickens and GE. What is funnier is Pickens is also shilling the Peak Oil scam at the same time, even though it directly contradicts the predictions of the IPCC that depend on us burning ten times more oil than the Peak Oilers say is in the ground…. the irony of all the corruption is simply delicious.
o/t One of my must-reads of the newspaper world, KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL of the WSJ, has written an interesting report on Congressman Henry Waxman, the Energy and Commerce committee chair, and the bill they are working on to save the Earth.
Strassel’s article is titled “Global Warming Overreach.” Here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124052841876150301.html
I happen to know that George Carlin quote. Just remember: he says the planet will be fine, but WE’LL be screwed.
Just keep forwarding them the graphs from the NSIDC. The global ice is growing. We just need to hang on…and keep letting them find excuses to explain why the ice is growing…
Patience..
Swine Flu is the business of the day today. AGW will come back in 2 weeks after the Arctic 2008/2009 data comes out showing the increased ice.
“MSNBC–the North Pole — is melting alarmingly fast.”
Did MSNBC look at JAXA today…or ever? I don’t think they did and I don’t think they will.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
2009 is behind 2008 —strong!
Anthony:
Could you take a moment and read this article in the Peninsula Clarion from Kenai/Soldatna AK http://www.peninsulaclarion.com/stories/042409/out_291156854.shtml
These guys are looking at soil berms on the SW side of lakes caused by wind driven ice pushing up lake sediments and surface soil into lee side berms. And they have had them dated to as much as 5,200 years vi C14.
They also note that they are looking at no-outlet lakes and note that water levels appear to have fallen as much as 24′.
If memory serves, the paper has a weekly article from the Kenai Nat’l Moose Range staff, so more info may be available.
Anyway, cool summers and lots of snow and rain (sort of like last summer, likely this one,) could explain a lot of their observations. Over to you.
Barry Brooke calling the Western side of Antarctica a “half” is incorrect. The large majority of the mass and increasing ice is the Eastern side of Antarctica, which is a lot bigger than a half. Looks more like three fourths.
“GE Launches Carbon Offsetting Credit Card”
Speaking of credit cards…
There is ~$5 trillion in total credit limit on all credit cards in he US. But, only ~$8 billion is on those cards. Americans aren’t so hot to max out their cards anymore. GE may not get very far off the ground with this new card—debt ain’t so pretty lately.
Also, I can see GE is trying to cash in on Global Warming too with this card.
AGW—gosh, it’s all about money, isn’t it.
GE is the new Dupont, with CO2 tag teaming Freon.
REF: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/blackstock5.html
Interpretation: GE wants to make $$$ from the “control of CO2”. It’s not about saving the environment, planet earth, civilization, humanity, or whatever – it’s the profit motive in all it’s glory.
Nothing wrong with making a profit – but does it have to be at the expense of the US Consumer who is being (will be) legally blocked from purchasing cheaper, more reliable, fossil fuel power.
The match up between GE and Duponts tactics (see Ref) is pretty much spot on. Use the legal system to outlaw your competition, achieve monopoly prices, sh@f#t the end consumer, and lock in mega-profits for a generation.
Don’t you just love the naive environmentalists who just don’t get it.
If Barry Brooke of Bravenewclimate.com claims that the sea around Antartica is warming, where is his evidence? What about the record level of sea ice? This can’t be explained by glacier runoff. The reason there is more ice is simple, the sea is colder and freezes more readily. Is there any other explanation of the facts?
Today another SC23 sunspot , or maybe a early SC25, or possible the cycle is now broken completely. If the cycle is broken then sunspots would appear randomly, which appears to be the case.
“This is a common source of confusion among climate change sceptics. As the world warms, the atmosphere’s ability to hold water vapour increases. Think of how humid it is in the tropics, and how dry the Arctic air is. The largest desert on Earth is the continent of Antarctica”
This is a common “bait and switch” tactic used to obsfucate an issue. You first speak generally about how as “the world warms” more water vapor can be held in the air and therefore cause more preciptation. You then use this generality to explain away data of growing ice cover at a specific location pretty central to the notion that CO2 is warming the planet (being so cold and dry, CO2 should be at it’s most potent in Antarctica) Of course, nowhere in this rebuttal is an actual assertion that the continent of Antarctica has warmed and become more humid, which one would think should be a central starting premise for the argument being made. The last, best information I’ve seen (discounting the dubious graphic recently posted at NASA showing Antarctic trends in the range of plus or minus 0.2 C with errors of 2.0 to 3.0 C) indicates that ice mass of Antarctica is increasing as the continent is cooling. This certainly provides a rational basis for skepticism of global warming due to CO2 emissions.
I believe Bill’s decision to speak up was influenced in no small part by you, Anthony. Bill is an Ozzie&Harriet/Norman Rockwell type nice guy. I’m proud to see him step into the battle when it would be much easier to keep quiet.
I think Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is in better relation with the Arctic ice extent than PDO. AMO has just switched deep cold.
Few beautiful photos to cool down for the comin’ Hot. See the post
“How Global Cooling Might Look Like…”
http://p2o2.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-global-cooling-might-look-like.html
If you found my site too slow in d/loading bigger images , please go to original sites. My networks “gained another middleman” and now I am two levels away from Inet.
Regards
Ugh…I was going to go into more detail about how I felt about this, but maybe Steffen’s writing above speaks for itself.
Essentially, with so many obviously bright and informed scholars, meteorologists, and others out there making well-written, well-informed, well-argued statements against climate alarmism, is it necessarily a good thing to draw attention to pieces like the above just because the author happens to be a respected(?) weather “personality?”
It’s just, with this being such a serious issue, and with “skeptics” or “deniers” being increasingly cast as dull-witted, uninformed, or mentally-ill, I kind of cringe sometimes when I read excessively colloquial, and much more importantly, extremely haphazard pieces like this that seem to try to present themselves as self-sufficient arguments against climate alarmism.
I dunno; maybe I’m just being too touchy, but it feels to me a little like taking part in an AGW thread on digg.com, or I’m sure elsewhere, when someone jumps in and says something like “More CO2 doesn’t warm the atmosphere [at all],” when you just want to say: “You’re not helping.”
“Keep in mind that if the Polar icecap (without Greenland) melted…it would hardly cause sea level to rise, because the icecap is currently displacing water in the Arctic Ocean. The Antarctic icecap is over a land continent, not floating over an ocean. Significant ice accumulation over the land of Antarctica would cause sea level to fall.”
The most intelligent statement (other than those by posters on this website) I have read in a very long time! Even a child knows that if your ice melts in your glass of water it does not cause the glass to suddenly overflow!
Thanks for the great website, Anthony – I’m not a scientist, but now wish I was one just so I could be lambasted for being an AGW skeptic.
Slightly OT – I’m having to run my heater tonight in Southern California…only 50 degrees F right now at midnight….I’m cold.
James Allison:
That is the exact same notion I put forward on the other thread, and it seems that it is “pseudoscience”.
Because your explanation is more detailed, I think Steven Goddard could tackle this one! To me it doesn’t seem realistic that that could be the reason but I would like to hear what the experts have to say 🙂
BTW, a new cycle 23 spot has appeared on the equator… if numbered, then cycle 23 will be 13 years old.
Graeme Rodaughan (23:53:47) :
GE is the new Dupont, with CO2 tag teaming Freon.
……………..
The match up between GE and Duponts tactics (see Ref) is pretty much spot on. Use the legal system to outlaw your competition, achieve monopoly prices, sh@f#t the end consumer, and lock in mega-profits for a generation.
Don’t you just love the naive environmentalists who just don’t get it.
——————————————-
Not just GE.
It does amuse me when AGW types go for the “Big Oil Shill” AH attack.
“Big Oil” stands to profit from this through the indefinite extension of their business model. This is obvious if you think about it. The addition of ethanol simply extends the oil model and distribution network profitability, pushing back the “peak oil” watershed.
Big government, big oil and big industry all stand to profit from this scare.
The irony is remarkable.
“Also, as the sea warms around the continent, especially in the most northerly parts of the continent (Antarctic Peninsula) large ice shelves are eroded from beneath . . . . This melting of buttressing ice shelves unplugs the land-based glaciers, and they begin to flow into the sea more rapidly. As such, there is a large net loss of ice from the western half of the continent, and a slight gain in the eastern half. More sea ice builds up around the continent because as the surface waters warm, the ocean becomes more stratified (it ‘turns over’ less readily).”
I’m also having trouble with the internal contradictions and non-sequiturs in this explanation. How does more sea ice “build up” if the ocean has warmed? I can understand how warming temperatures at the surface would reduce the heat flux moving vertically upwards due to the reduced temperature gradient, but how exacly can this be seen as a cooling effect at the surface produced by an initial warming at the surface, to therefore explain more sea ice around the continent?
Why exactly does the break-up of an ice shelf on one part of the continent explain the build up of ice on the other? Does the ice uphill get “cold feet” and say “Uh, uh – I’m not going that direction” after seeing the fate of its distant kinsman down below? If a land-based glacier extends outwardly into the surrounding ocean, how exactly is it in a “plugged state” that will unplug once the ice in the sea disintegrates? My understanding of a glacier (which could be wrong) is that the flow of ice is caused by the growth in ice above which, due to the massive weight of the ice, pushes the downwards portion of the glacier outwardly. This dynamic should not change depending on whether the galcier terminates in land or in the ocean. Certainly the seawater can’t be holding the glacier back, and I can’t think of any reason why merely cutting off the tail end of a solid glacier has an effect on the flow of the ice immediately above it, which is a function of the weight of the ice above that, etc.
If the terminus of the glaciers start to crumble into the ocean at a faster rate, wouldn’t this tend to put a brake on the rate at which the waters surrounding the continent warm? This, of course depends on the cause of the ocean warming. If it’s due to radiation from added CO2, then you should have a strong negative feedback here provided by the melting ice. If, on the other hand, the surrounding ocean is warming from changing ocean currents, then you have a different story, but I guess this would mean we have another “bait and switch” argument as the cause of the ocean warming isn’t from increased CO2 but some other phenomenon that provides a steady input of warm water to replace the water chilled by the melting ice.
Doe anybody know whether these processes are occurring as described, or is this mere speculation?
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/latestfromtheice
Looks to me like they can soon pack it up. (Note the website has dropped the vital readings for the three trekkers).
Check this:Global ice +1.158 two days ago (recorded on this post), no visibly change on graph SH or NH since then but today 0.7!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/iphone.anom.global.html
this is why files need to be saved!
Talking about people becoming inconvenient: The patron saint of all things green (no, not Kermit), James Lovelock, wrote a scathing rant against wind power in the (UK) Guardian.
(Apologies if this has been posted before)
O/T Spaceweather suggests there is a sunspot struggling to emerge. Look at the SOHO linked on WUWT, it is possibly a sunspeck. Look at the magnetogram, and there is possibly another as well. Two sunspecks? Two cycle 23 sunspecks?
The last one last week didn’t last more than 12 hours.
The record table attached seems to me doubtful. I found another, better documented at http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/world-temperature-records/ with more recent records.
Slightly OT, but relevant, I hope. The BBC reported acidification of the oceans thanks (of course) to CO2 increases in the atmosphere. Their ‘science’ reporter Roger Harrabin did a piece a few weeks ago about the coral dissolving (!) but my rusty chemistry says that if the ocean releases CO2 when it warms up, it must be contain as much CO2 as it will hold already.
Can someone here confirm this? It seems absurd to me to suggest that a few ppm change in the air could acidify the oceans!
Sorry – should have included this link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8021459.stm
James P
This is what I found on Wikipedia. 50 times more than in the atmosphere.
“There is about 50 times as much carbon dissolved in the oceans in the form of CO2 and carbonic acid, bicarbonate and carbonate ions as exists in the atmosphere. The oceans act as an enormous carbon sink, having “absorbed about one-third of all human-generated CO2 emissions to date.”[25] Gas solubility decreases as the temperature of water increases and therefore the rate of uptake from the atmosphere decreases as ocean temperatures rise.”
It seems unlikely that human’s burning of fossil fuel will alter the oceans CO2 content anytime soon.
Maybe some, near the surface in warm waters.
But, of course that will not stop the AGW people from pushing this scare in the same way as with global warming.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17924042.800-were-off-the-hook-over-el-nino.html
Interesting little paper. Abstract has been pulled. Wonder where Kim Cobb is now
If we get more water vapour then the water producing it was cooled somewhere in the region of 80 calories per gram of water lost. Once that water vapour condences it realeases that 80 calories of heat into the atmosphere. That drives those towering cumulus clouds. Those same clouds shield the surface from incoming radiation as well as absorbing a lot of the backscatter radiation of the just released heat.
The way I see it more water vapour means a cooler planet. Can a resident scientist clarify please.
Uncivil Servant (02:04:55) : Thank you for the article from James Lovelock. He is half right – comments inserted in this excerpt, in CAPS.
Global warming is real and deadly and we have to do our best to counter it FALSE but we must not be led astray by the special pleading of an industry made rich by over-generous subsidies paid for by your taxes and one that is bound to fail to deliver TRUE.
Sean (21:55:10) : And thank you Sean for some excellent points. Excerpt:
I don’t think Mr. Steffen’s comments about the benefits of cap and trade legislation to GE’s bottom line go nearly far enough. Considering that a 1 GW coal fired plant would have to be replaced with 4 GW of wind turbines (to account for the different load factors) TRUE – ABOUT 5 IN GERMANY and would also have to be backed up with another GW of gas turbines for when the wind dies TRUE, plus load variation would have to be managed through a smart grid, there is a lot of hardware to be sold TRUE. AND SUDDEN VARIATIONS IN WINDPOWER CAN CRASH THE GRID – JUST WAIT UNTIL THIS HAPPENS IN WINTER.
SEE E.On Netz excellent Wind Report 2005 at
http://www.eon-netz.com/Ressources/downloads/EON_Netz_Windreport2005_eng.pdf
Excerpt:
FIGURE 5 shows the annual curve of wind
power feed-in in the E.ON control area for 2004,
from which it is possible to derive the wind power
feed-in during the past year:
1. The highest wind power feed-in in the E.ON grid
was just above 6,000MW for a brief period, or
put another way the feed-in was around 85% of
the installed wind power capacity at the time.
2. The average feed-in over the year was 1,295MW,
around one fifth of the average installed wind
power capacity over the year.
3. Over half of the year, the wind power feed-in
was less than 14% of the average installed wind
power capacity over the year.
The feed-in capacity can change frequently
within a few hours. This is shown in FIGURE 6,
which reproduces the course of wind power feedin
during the Christmas week from 20 to 26
December 2004.
Whilst wind power feed-in at 9.15am on
Christmas Eve reached its maximum for the year
at 6,024MW, it fell to below 2,000MW within only
10 hours, a difference of over 4,000MW. This corresponds
to the capacity of 8 x 500MW coal fired
power station blocks. On Boxing Day, wind power
feed-in in the E.ON grid fell to below 40MW.
Handling such significant differences in feed-in
levels poses a major challenge to grid operators.
In order to also guarantee reliable electricity
supplies when wind farms produce little or no
power, e.g. during periods of calm or storm-related
shutdowns, traditional power station capacities
must be available as a reserve. This means that
wind farms can only replace traditional power
station capacities to a limited degree.
An objective measure of the extent to which
wind farms are able to replace traditional power
stations, is the contribution towards guaranteed
capacity which they make within an existing
power station portfolio. Approximately this capacity
may be dispensed within a traditional power
station portfolio, without thereby prejudicing the
level of supply reliability.
In 2004 two major German studies investigated
the size of contribution that wind farms make
towards guaranteed capacity. Both studies
separately came to virtually identical conclusions,
that wind energy currently contributes to the
secure production capacity of the system, by
providing 8% of its installed capacity.
As wind power capacity rises, the lower availability
of the wind farms determines the reliability
of the system as a whole to an ever increasing
extent. Consequently the greater reliability of
traditional power stations becomes increasingly
eclipsed.
As a result, the relative contribution of wind
power to the guaranteed capacity of our supply
system up to the year 2020 will fall continuously
to around 4% (FIGURE 7).
In concrete terms, this means that in 2020,
with a forecast wind power capacity of over
48,000MW (Source: dena grid study), 2,000MW of
traditional power production can be replaced by
these wind farms.
THAT’S 2% SUBSTITUTION CAPACITY, OR 98% CONVENTIONAL BACKUP.
AT TIME OF WRITING WIND POWER 2005, E.ON NETZ WAS THE LARGEST WIND POWER GENERATOR IN THE WORLD. THE E.ON REPORT IS HONEST AND RELIABLE – BUT WILL YOUNG BARACK EVER READ IT?
A FURTHER IRONY IS THAT DURING THE RECENT EXTREME COLD WEATHER IN THE UK, THERE WAS NO WIND AND NO WIND POWER – APPARENTLY ALSO COMMON DURING EXTREME SUMMER WARMTH – SO WIND POWER IS NOT THERE WHEN IT IS MOST NEEDED. MORE SUBSIDIES AND HIGHER POWER RATES FOR CONSUMERS ARE NOT THE SOLUTION.
GE SHOULD MAKE A PUBLIC STATEMENT NOW ABOUT THE LIMITATIONS OF WIND POWER, TO PROTECT ITSELF AGAINST BEING SUED INTO OBLIVION IN THE COMING YEARS. AMERICANS ARE VERY LITIGIOUS, AND WIND POWER IS BEING OVERSOLD AS A PANACEA THAT DOES NOT WORK – SOLID GROUNDS FOR A HUGE CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT.
PERHAPS CLASS-ACTION LAWSUITS WILL ALSO BE BROUGHT AGAINST ALL THE WARMIST SUPPORTERS AND THEIR ORGANIZATIONS, AS THE ENORMOUS WASTE OF MONEY ON A NON-PROBLEM BECOMES APPARENT – IMAGINE ALL THE LITIGATORS IN THE USA LINING UP TO GET IN ON THAT ACTION.
OT New York sized (Wilkins) ice shelf collapses.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/new-yorksized-ice-shelf-collapses-off-antarctica-1675400.html
kmye
I think you are wrong that Bill’s post is not helping. This article was re-posted from Bill’s own blog, which is operated very informally as a place where locals can chat about the weather with their favorite expert. It was not meant as some sort of scientific treatise. His post makes the issue accessible to people who may not have an understanding of the science. They may only have a gut feeling that what they are hearing in the media doesn’t quite jive. This is a great indication that the grassroots movement is growing. 🙂
MSNBC is among the worst of the lying, corrupt, doctrinaire so called “news services.” They would be astonishing if we didn’t also have CNN, BBC et al.
Way to go BILL!! He’s one of our guys! Nice to see a local good guy speaking out.
“KMYE,
…I dunno; maybe I’m just being too touchy, but it feels to me a little like taking part in an AGW thread on digg.com, or I’m sure elsewhere, when someone jumps in and says something like “More CO2 doesn’t warm the atmosphere [at all],” when you just want to say: “You’re not helping.”
I disagree, the more that each and every person speaks up about the lunacy of AGW, the better it is for all. Most meteorologists know that AGW is a lie, and more are talking about it. That is a good thing.
WSI who?
…-
“WSI Issues 2009 Hurricane Season Update
Weather Authority’s Tropical Forecast Calls for Less Active Season than Last Year
Andover, MA, April 20, 2009 — WSI Corporation’s updated 2009 hurricane season forecast now calls for 11 named storms, 6 hurricanes, and 2 intense hurricanes (category 3 or greater).
These forecast numbers are lower than those from the WSI forecast issued in December (13 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 intense hurricanes) due to a continuation of relatively cool tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures and a waning of the recent La Nina event. The 2009 forecast numbers are quite close to the long-term (1950-2008) average of 9.8 named storms, 6.0 hurricanes, and 2.5 intense hurricanes).
The 2009 WSI tropical forecast comes on the heels of a very successful 2008 forecast. The WSI December forecast values of 14 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 intense hurricanes were slightly smaller than the final observed 2008 values of 16/8/5. The subsequent updates improved the forecast further, as the April 2008 updated forecast values of 14 named storms, 8 hurricanes, and 4 intense hurricanes were the most accurate amongst the publicly-available forecasts issued last spring.
“Ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic are cooler, relative to normal, than at any time since 1994,” said WSI seasonal forecaster Dr. Todd Crawford. “Further, the recent La Nina event has now ended, and we expect normal or even slightly above-normal wind shear in the tropical Atlantic this season. Neither the cooler tropical Atlantic nor the neutral wind shear conditions are enabling for tropical activity this year. We have reduced our forecast numbers to adapt to the latest information, and future changes to our forecast are more likely to be towards smaller numbers than larger numbers.””
http://www.wsi.com/corporate/news/releases/useg042009_tropcoutlook.asp
There is about 50 times as much carbon dissolved in the oceans in the form of CO2 and carbonic acid, bicarbonate and carbonate ions as exists in the atmosphere.
Thank you, Per. One thing I forgot to mention is that ‘acidification’ is a misnomer as well, implying as it does that the water is becoming acidic. Even the BBC admits that the sea is alkaline (pH 8.2) and the reduction in alkalinity due to CO2 is nowhere near enough even to make it neutral (pH 7) although of course they don’t phrase it like that.
What I would like to know is how gaseous CO2 reacts in the atmosphere and in the oceans to produce the various compounds, some of which (e.g. bicarbonate) are alkaline! I don’t mind looking it up (and will do so) but I’m sure someone here will know and be able to put it into context properly.
TIA
Important Message:
The german Alfred-Wegner-Institut finished an expedition today:
The Ice in the arctic is two times thicker than expected: 4m instead of 2m
http://www.radiobremen.de/wissen/nachrichten/wissenawipolararktis100.html
kmye (00:16:40) wrote in part: …is it necessarily a good thing to draw attention to pieces like the above just because the author happens to be a respected(?) weather “personality?”
I would argue that even if not “a good thing” it is indeed a “necessary thing”, Kmye. We humans are a diverse lot and operate at many levels. Some of us are reached by sober science, some by cries of wolf. Some of us respond more readily to a name or a face or a personality.
All of us (have a right to) vote.
p.s. They are talking flu, here, but it could as well be AGW:
“…what we really need . . . is a tremendous outbreak of calm.”
Precisely why I don’t watch MSNBC and I don’t buy GE products!
That snarky comment about the Lions hurt. :^(
Especially since the Lions are more likely to go 16-0 this year than we are to see any AGW predictions come true.
:^)
Nice article, from San Francisco of all places, ripping into the Goracle’s testimony last week.
http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m4d27-Al-Gore-global-warming-and-truth
Sandy 03:36:13
Yes, interesting paper. Last I heard she was at Georgia Tech with Judy Curry and Julien Emile-Geay.
========================================
It looks like that sun speck is disappearing already.
Allen M R MacRae
The E.ON report that you referenced was referenced here last year I believe. It is a very important report and anyone with the slightest interest in commercial wind power should read it. It’s actually a very upbeat report but you have to actually look at the information it gives. Here are some items to consider when looking at the numbers.
1. The report is very upbeat, it reads like a report to stockholders.
2. E.ON claims to be one of the top producers of wind power.
3. They are located on the very wind rich North Sea and Baltic Sea.
Items 1 and 2 indicate that any information is at least accurate; you will find no numbers that are inaccurately low here. While item 3 indicates that the wind capacity is probably as good as you can get.
However, when you look at the numbers you can see that there is not much hope despite what the report says. The less than 14% capacity generation for the equivalent of ½ year is definitely not good. Building more windmills won’t solve that problem. Improved efficiency will allow for a few more MW but efficiency has its limits and I can’t see it overcoming the just plain lack of wind. In fact the only accomplishment that the company can boast of is a change in German law that mandates the equal sharing of the cost of the conventional spinning reserve with the other 3 German power companies.
The difficulties with power scheduling and overloads is also quit informative.
Thank you, Bill Steffen, for speaking out. We need everyone who opposes the radical AGW agenda and it’s ramifications for our country and economy to speak out.
There is something we all can do. I, for one, will think twice before purchasing any General Electric products or services. I don’t purchase “news”papers like the NYT, USA Today, etc., who regularly run AGW propaganda without any hint of balance. As for cable “news” and entertainment companies such as NBC/MSNBC, I do not watch their channels or visit their websites. And I gave up on the Weather Channel a long time ago after the Heidi Cullen debacle…
There’s good reason for a manufacturer such as GE to promote wind machines. They’re more capital intensive than even nuclear. When you take capacity factor into account (average usable output/peak capacity), the best wind machines come in at around $10,000 per average kw installed. A combined cycle gas turbine plant comes in at around $500 per average kw installed. Fuel cost savings included, the wind machine never comes close to competing with conventional power over the economic lifetimes of the machines. Solar is much less competitive than even wind. Brace yourselves for the skyrocketing electric rates that will attend all that “free” wind and solar power.
Not a single such “renewable” machine would be on line in the U.S. today without benefit of huge tax subsidies that camouflage the real economics (I built 23 such projects before retirement). The “energy density” limitations of wind and solar preclude “economy of scale” breakthroughs for either technology that would make them reasonably competitive with conventional sources of power. The “carbon tax” is simply a way to make ALL power as expensive as alternate energy. Again, brace yourselves for the utility bills that must come out of this Brave New World and that will drive up the cost of EVERYTHING!
Just Want Truth… (23:52:04) :
TYPO!!
~800 billion, not ~8 billion. MY BAD!
Now that news channels are owned by infotainment groups and are commercialized by large now-green conglomerate companies, they have no choice but to toe the line. Commercial income would dry up and shrivel away if someone like The Weather Channel started reporting on what we see happening every day. Whoever controls the media controls the people. Could be why the American Revolution was fought and won by a small Army, not the people. They hardly knew it was going on or why. People always complain about the liberal media (or what some of us thought was the conservative media during the Bush administration). The media can do nothing without the commercials that pepper it. The question is, “Who owns the commercials?” You will discover that corporations are chameleons. They look for opportunity based on the wind of the day. GE may have been ultra conservative just 5 years ago. Now it is as green as Oregon tomatoes.
The media will not, and cannot report the end of global warming without going out of business. It’s that simple.
Miles (05:41:07) :
I know that this is OT, so I’ll be brief :
The writer said this, “I voted three times for Al Gore,…The former Vice President spoke before the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week. It was not his shining hour.”
http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m4d27-Al-Gore-global-warming-and-truth
He also said this in a column in his archive, “The pictures we see of the polar bears ‘stranded’ on a small ice floe make them look forlorn, but in fact these bears are either surfing–or fishing. Polar bears swim quite nicely, thank you and rest on the occasional floe, or use it as cover while they look for something to eat.”
http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m4d27-Of-Arctic-Ice-and-Polar-Bears
This from a man in San Francisco?
“Pamela Gray (07:02:43) : …they have no choice but to toe the line.”
“Without any censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden, have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad.”
~~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
Harvard 1978 commencement address
GE = LOL, just sit back and watch this flop like a fish out of water
kurt:
“This is a common source of confusion among climate change sceptics. As the world warms, the atmosphere’s ability to hold water vapour increases. Think of how humid it is in the tropics, and how dry the Arctic air is. The largest desert on Earth is the continent of Antarctica”
I must be missing something ’cause this “climate change sceptic” is still, apparently, confused . . . .
Yes, the ability of air to hold water vapor increases with temperature but that quality is independent of *relative* humidity.
Further, “The Tropics” are defined by latitude (the areas between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn) which is to say that there are areas within “the Tropics” that do not exhibit a “tropical” climate. Note for example that, as I write, the relative humidity in very warm Aswan, Egypt is but 11% while arctic Anchorage is at 82%.
Is it possible, measured in absolute terms, that there is more water in the Egyptian air than Alaskan? Sure, but that means nothing. Precipitation will occur when when the temperature of a given mass of air drops to below the dew point which is to say that although I haven’t checked the forecast, I can be pretty sure that it is more likely to rain in Anchorage today than in Aswan.
Point is that Antarctica may be the world’s largest desert, I’ll take your word for that, but this is not a result of it being cold; it is the result of myriad other factors that determine its climate like latitude, geography, and ocean currents, to name a few.
” Pamela Gray (07:02:43) : Whoever controls the media controls the people.”
“The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb. This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses.”
~~Albert Einstein
Peter Plail,
I noticed a very interesting paragraph in the news that you link about the n+1 collapse of the Wilkins Ice Sheet:
“The loss of ice shelves does not raise sea levels significantly because the ice is floating and already mostly submerged by the ocean”.
It is the first time that I read about the Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapse without the scientist subsequently talking of the incredible ammount of meters the sea level could rise as a result.
Something seems to be changing in some minds. For the good.
In Sept. 1979 (first year of satellite data) the Antarctic icecap was 18.4 million sq. km. In Sept. 2008, the Antarctic icecap was at 19.2 million sq. km. That’s a 30-year trend.
Except if you use his link to the data you find that he’s wrong, in Sept 2008 it was 18.5 million sq. km., in his terms that’s 30 year trend of zero!
Warning! NORSEX is an AGW biased site
http://www.nersc.no/~knutal/NORSEX_current.html
judge for yourselves.
So be ready for a sudden downwards “adjustment” again to this graph soon…
http://eva.nersc.no/vhost/arctic-roos.org/doc/observations/images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
The Antarctic is growing and the Arctic isn’t doing so bad this year either.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
It’s within a hairsbreath ( a truly scientific measurement 🙂 ) of the 79-2000 average (I’m still puzzled as to why NSIDC uses that time frame as the metric.).
John Edmondson (23:57:22) :
If Barry Brooke of Bravenewclimate.com claims that the sea around Antartica is warming, where is his evidence? What about the record level of sea ice?
What record level? Last year’s maximum was bang on the 79-00 average as was this February’s Minimum (actually very slightly below).
This can’t be explained by glacier runoff. The reason there is more ice is simple, the sea is colder and freezes more readily. Is there any other explanation of the facts?
Well first get the facts right (see above). Over the last couple of years there has been a rapid early refreeze for a month or so followed by a decline to normal rates, last year it barely made average at maximum, probably the same this year.
kurt (00:41:29) :
The common AGW theory is that the glacier’s terminus is grounded on the seafloor and is thereby holding back the shear mass of glacier above it. As the grounded terminus (aka, sea ice) breaks away (due to AGW), the glacier, and all its pent up energy comes sliding down the hill into the sea and destroys New York City. At least that’s the way it was described to me by some of the intellectual elites from the AGW side of the argument.
I’m not sure how the sea bed is able to hold back a glacier when none of the rock on the continental land mass is able to stop it. Must be some sort of magical power yet to be discovered.
Question, are Mars air temps cooling, I know its off topic.
the best wind machines come in at around $10,000 per average kw installed
That sounds a lot. We have a local manufacturer (Vestas) that makes 2MW turbines, and even if you use a duty cycle of 1/3 (i.e. you have to install three to get an average output of 2MW) I’m sure they wouldn’t cost $20m – nearer a fifth of that, I believe. I’m no apologist for them, but I see no real objection if they earn their keep. It may be windier in the UK, of course…
OT, more or less:
“US admits responsibility for emissions to bring big polluters together”
“Hillary Clinton offers admission to ease obstacles towards reaching agreement at climate change summit in Copenhagen”
From the article:
“[Mrs. Bill Clinton] saw climate change as the gravest problem facing the international community: ‘The facts on the ground are outstripping the worst case scenario models.’” (my emphasis)
As if these people had any idea of what “the facts on the ground” actually are. . .
/Mr Lynn
It´s a real “war against terror” which you face. WUWT with the gigantic help of old Sun will win. Just open the bottles, there will be plenty of ice for preparing quite a lot of Gwrs. “on the rocks”.:)
…and we know where their “intelligence”(??) headquarters is: Boulder, Colorado
[snip]
In Sept. 1979 (first year of satellite data) the Antarctic icecap was 18.4 million sq. km. In Sept. 2008, the Antarctic icecap was at 19.2 million sq. km. That’s a 30-year trend.
Except if you use his link to the data you find that he’s wrong, in Sept 2008 it was 18.5 million sq. km., in his terms that’s 30 year trend of zero!
vg (01:43:39) :
Check this:Global ice +1.158 two days ago (recorded on this post), no visibly change on graph SH or NH since then but today 0.7!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/iphone.anom.global.html
this is why files need to be saved!
It’s an anomaly plot! That means it’s compared with the mean for the date, if the sea ice doesn’t increase at the same rate as the average year the anomaly must go down!
Of course it’s also possible that you’re mixing up global anomaly with SH anomaly which is currently 1.228?
The current (December 2007 dollars) installed capital cost for large wind generation installations is about $2,000/kW. The levelized cost of electricity (taking time value of money into account and O&M costs) is a little over 9 cents/kWh at a capacity factor of 33%. This is unsubsidized.
My electric bill last month (central Ohio) listed generation cost at 5.4 cents/kWh.
I agree that Global Warming is all hype. Isn’t it good on so many levels that we find alternative energy though? I love watching the greenies make fools of themselves. Whatever. There are nice capitalistic and anti-terror benefits from all of this hype. I’m just going to roll with it.
“Isn’t it good on so many levels that we find alternative energy though?”
If it’s competitive with existing sources, yes. But there’s a difference between “finding” alternative energy (which no one argues with) and forcing a massive market change away from what, for now, are cheap and still abundant sources of fossil fuel. Remember, that’s not just oil in the middle east – that is still massive amounts of coal in the USA. What makes sense is to research alternatives, but to continue to use the fossil fuels as long as they remain cheap and abundant, with the alternatives on the shelf to be used when they are needed.
Without getting into the pluses or minuses of political plans, it will be important for policy makers to remember that every dollar pulled out of the economy to enforce an uneconomic change in energy supply will be a dollar that is not available for health care or any of the other plans currently in vogue. And don’t believe the nonsense about “green” energy creating jobs – unless you’re going to hire a million people to sit on foot powered bicycle generators, that just ain’t gonna happen. By elminating jobs in the oil, natgas, and coal industries, “green” energy plans will always be a net job loser, not a job creator.
“Impactful” x 7 : The inverted socialist pyramid.
…-
“The Environmental Inverted Pyramid”
“The further we get out from the individual, however, the more impactful people think climate change will tend to be: more impactful on their families than themselves; more impactful on their communities than their families; more impactful on their country than their communities; more impactful than other counties than on the United States; more impactful on future generations than the present one, and finally, more impactful on plants and animals than on humans.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2239572/posts
What defies logic is the notion that GE or any purported Cap N’ Trade pirate must have “carbon” legislation in place to make their nefarious profits. There have always been and remain today, three compelling reasons for energy conservation:
1) The U.S. sends $700B annually overseas for foreign oil.
2) Providing defense/security for foreign oil access costs additional $billions$.
3) Dependence on foreign energy is a major *national security* concern.
A fourth, slightly less compelling (for skeptics) reason is the benefit to environment. A first year biz school student could devise a marketing plan around these three reasons to buy energy saving appliances/services. Want to go green? Add the fourth reason. Not rocket science.
It should be abundantly clear that the “carbon tax” schemes are simply taxes to finance social programs like nationalized health care, banks and your once-favorite fruit stand.
James P (02:52:05) OT ocean acidification
Try this: http://co2science.org/education/reports/corals/corals.php
[You have a choice of download formats. I used pdf. ]
By Craig D. Idso
“CO2, Global Warming and Coral Reefs: Prospects for the Future”
Not exactly what you want but there are pages of references.
“Pamela Gray (07:02:43) : …they have no choice but to toe the line.”
” Just Want Truth… (07:11:08) : “. . .Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad.” ~~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn”
E.O. WIlson on Francis Bacon: “Beware, he said, of the idols of the mind, the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall. They are the real distorting prisms of human nature. Among them, idols of the tribe assume more order than exists in chaotic nature; those of the imprisoning cave, the idiosyncrasies of individual belief and passion; of the marketplace, the power of mere words to induce belief in nonexistent things; and of the theater, unquestioning acceptance of philosophical beliefs and misleading demonstrations.” in Consilience.
OT
Whoever it was that said Andy Revkin at the NYT was fair and objective, think again:
Deliberate misrepresentation:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/deliberate_misrepresentation.html
Speaking of windmills:
“Britain’s only wind turbine plant to close
Vestas is to shut down its Isle of Wight factory in the face of collapsing demand from a wind-farming industry hobbled by the recession and red tape
• Tim Webb
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 April 2009 13.13 BST
• Article history
The UK’s only wind turbine manufacturing plant is to close, dealing a humiliating blow to the government’s promise to support low-carbon industries.”
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/28/vestas-wind-turbine-factory-close
Love the “as likely as the Lions goinig 16-0 next yr” analogy! A true Michigan man!
@ John F. Hultquist (22:58:31) :
I have never understood why some people put so much emphasis on the ice that forms in the Arctic Ocean. WUWT has had several threads on this issue and no one has offered an explanation. In all cases when the issue of an “ice free” Arctic is raised, my thought is “So what? Like a bad weed, it keeps coming back”
That’s an interesting take. Let’s say the Arctic ice cap is melting. Would only bad things happen if it melted entirely? Might there be some benefit if the North Pole is navigable for commercial traffic? Are the climate changes all going to be bad?
Bill Marsh (08:07:57) : the 79-2000 average (I’m still puzzled as to why NSIDC uses that time frame as the metric.).
Because it is internationally agreed on practice to report “normals” with years ending in “0” [and for 30 years, when data is available]. Expect a new “normal” or average, if you like, after the 2010 data becomes available. [I did a longer comment on this on a previous thread. The conference out of which this practice came was held in Warsaw in 1935; if I remember correctly.]
Now it comes GHG desguised under volcanic clothes:
http://filebox.vt.edu/artsci/geology/mclean/Dinosaur_Volcano_Extinction/pages/studentv.html
Jason S. – I find it difficult to “roll with it”. The United States’ current economical stress point is close to the proverbial straw that breaks it. We are currently experiencing a temporary reprieve in global oil costs. Now, more than any foreseeable time to come (as I see it), is the time to slap the crap out of chicken little (stamp out this false green initiative), go full bore with domestic coal and oil avenues, and, as WWS advises above, use this time to slowly grow and replace these carbon based sources. Not because of the false notion they contribute toward the inevitable demise of mankind, but because they will not last forever. It has been projected that for every dollar gained in green technology jobs looses three in another sector. No bull. Just fact. Anyone interested in the facts….. visit:
http://www.petitionproject.com/gw_article/GWReview_OISM150.pdf
Can anyone direct me to a site, or expound on their own, a comparative study on mankind’s contribution to greenhouse gasses since the dawn of the industrial age (or since he made fire)…. vs. the contribution of just one volcanic eruption such as Mount Saint Helens. Further…. how many contributing volcanic incidents estimated take place throughout the ocean floor never witness by man (if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear…..). Can mankind truly be so vain and foolish not to recognize their insignificance in the matter…?
Are you the one who is “if we keep turning the temperature of the Earth up,”?
It’s getting worser and worser than the “experts” previous “worst-case scenarios”: “worse than the worst-case scenarios presented by experts a few years ago.”
Silly. Turn it down.
Goreacle “pleads” for Gaia’s sake.
Goreacle explains: “if we keep turning the temperature of the Earth up, then the heat will go to lower depths of the Arctic Ocean and it will be impossible for the ice to come back.””
That’s enough of the inverted manbearpig forever.
…-
“Gore pleads for rapid action to halt ice melt
Nobel prize climate champion and former US vice president Al Gore called Tuesday for rapid action to prevent the potentially irreversible melting of the planet’s ice, just months before a UN climate summit.
Speaking at the first conference devoted to melting ice, held in the Norwegian town of Tromsoe ahead of the UN meeting in Copenhagen in December, Gore warned that the situation was worse than the worst-case scenarios presented by experts a few years ago.
“This conference is a global wake-up call,” Gore said, adding: “The scientific evidence for action in Copenhagen in December is continuing to build up week by week.”
He explained why the melting ice posed such a threat to the planet.
“Ice is important through the ecological system of the Earth for many reasons, but one of them has to do with its reflexivity,” he said.
Ice reflects 90 percent of the sun’s radiation back into the atmosphere. If the ice were to melt, the dark water would not reflect the heat but instead absorb it, thereby accentuating the effect of global warming.
“As it disappears we have to keep in mind that it can come back only if we act fairly quickly,” said Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
He explained that “if we keep turning the temperature of the Earth up, then the heat will go to lower depths of the Arctic Ocean and it will be impossible for the ice to come back.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2239707/posts
Maz2
I note that Al Gore is in tromsoe preparing for the forthcoming climate summit. This is the link to the Universitry weather site.
http://weather.cs.uit.no/
Anthony
If you click on ‘about’ you will see a picture of their weather station. It appears to be on decking-what do you make of it?
tonyb
With respect to the comments on Wind generation above by Claude Harvey (06:31:18) and James P (08:20:51) . . . .
It is not enough to consider “capacity factor” when considering the capital requirements for grid operation based on large scale use of wind or solar.
If wind, for example, has a 30% capacity factor (vs, say, 90% for a base load fossil plant) it is not enough to say, “well, we’ll just have to install 3X our load requirements.”
Remember, that 30% capacity factor doesn’t mean that one of our three turbines will be running at any given time – it means that over the course of a year, 8,760 hours, that 2MW turbine may deliver 5,200 MWh of electric energy.
So first, we need to make a strategic decision on how to handle (or not handle) load in excess of what the wind can provide:
1) We can invest in large energy storage facilities like “hydro pumped storage” or compressed air that can take the excess when all three turbines are running full out.
This seems to be the favorite of many “Green’s” but it takes land and would be costly. Worse, since the wind might not blow for days, you might need 4X wind capacity (and 4X transmission capability) to run a wind-based grid).
2) We can back up all the wind generation with fossil capability which means 3X wind + 1X fossil.
This is kind of what we’re doing today ‘cause there’s so little wind-based generation capacity, existing reserves can handle the situation when the wind is not blowing or the sun not shining. But if the Green’s ambitions are realized, we will run out of reserve and then, under this strategy we’d be forced to invest in additional fossil generation to back up the wind.
3) We can simply not meet demand requirements when users turn on their lights, motors, TVs, computers, etc.
We occasionally read about places where this is practiced more-or-less; you know, California in the ‘90s with rolling blackouts or Baghdad today with electricity about 12 hours/day. Just remember such examples are never offered as examples of environmental excellence but of pathology of one sort or another. Indeed, it probably wrong to think of this as a “strategy;” more accurately, this approach is a consequence of a failed energy management strategies.
Indeed, this is my biggest worry — that our leaders might not realize that even “green jobs,” building wind turbines in Iowa, for example, won’t be possible without a reliable supply of affordable energy.
Point is that in response to the earlier comments, it is not enough to think about the turbines, and $/KW – you can start with capacity factor but reliable, efficient electric grid operation depends on much more.
I grew up watching him on TV in Grand Rapids. Nice to see another TV meteorologist stand up for what he thinks. I hope he doesn’t get reprimanded for it.
Graeme Rodaughan (23:53:47) :
Graeme, I agree entirely with the sentiment you are expressing, but I have a small quibble with your choice of words. I think what GE is attempting cannot fairly be characterized as profit-seeking, but rather rent-seeking. In a free market this sort of scheme would collapse quickly under the weight of its bogus underlying premises. The only way it succeeds is if people are forced to pay into the scheme through government coercion. Therefore what GE is seeking is not profit generated through genuine economic activity which provides goods and services which the market place demands. Instead it is seeking a government license to act as a highwayman, leeching economic vitality from productive members of society with no thought of doing anything constructive themselves.
This is related to one of Bill Steffens points
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-science/20090406/SCIENCE-US-ANTARCTICA-ICE/
In a nutshell – the west Antarctic ice shelf has shrunk by another and alarming 700 sq miles according to the article and makes no bones in attaching blame to AGW.
Vetning – but please read: the media trumpets this all day. The occasional skeptic pops up, says his/her piece and that’s it. What’s frustrating for me is that I am back in college after a career in the military. The kids at these schools are inundated by speakers who spout the CO2-induced global warming line – and they are eating it up lock stock and barrel. I see NO ONE, anywhere, who counterbalances this losing trend in these so-called insitutions of higher learning. The colleges and universities officially support the consensus view as well.
From my point of view, we who are skeptical are confined to websites, preaching to each other, all the while we are losing the battle everywhere else. I’m a neophyte at this subject, but i have enough grounding in science to understand that what “they” are proposing is …very unlikely. So who speaks for and to the generation of kids (voting age ones) who have been completely indoctrinated in this pseudo-religion? I’ve been swimming against the tide – solo. It’s been very hard.
Rant off
Stan W (06:17:15) :
for Allan M R MacRae
The E.ON report that you referenced was referenced here last year…
Hi Stan,
I’ve posted E.ON’s report several times, and perhaps others have as well – it is the best publicly-available document I’ve seen, and clearly states the problems with wind power, if anyone cares to read it.
At the risk of sounding cynical, Ted Turner is now a big ‘fan’ of wind power – and I hope he invests his entire fortune in it.
Regards, Allan
Hope you find what you’re looking for, and post up your results with a link. I’d be interested too.
Bill P.