From Roger Pielke Sr. – Guest Weblog By Syun Akasofu Of International Arctic Research Center At The University of Alaska Fairbanks
Dr. Syun Akasofu has provided us with a guest weblog based on a translation from Japanese of an article he wrote. I pleased to use my weblog to communicate viewpoints on climate science issues from credentialed climate scientists.
Recommendation to postpone the 2009 Copenhagen Conference:
The so-called “global warming” issue viewed in the context of politics and the economy of the world.
Syun Akasofu International Arctic Research Center
1. The US must have decided to drop the making of cars as their primary manufacturing activity and gave it to Japan. The Obama administration and the US public believe that enough has been done for the ailing car makers, and hope that they will be able to survive by making good electric (not fossil fuel powered) cars.
2. What does this mean? In the history of manufacturing, there has been a trend in which advanced countries lose their primary manufacturing capabilities one after another to developing countries. The textile industry in the UK was taken over by the US, then by Japan, then by China and others. The iron manufacturing industry in the UK was taken over by the US, then by Japan, and then China and other ‘catching-up’ countries. The car manufacturing industry in the UK was taken over by the US (mainly by GM), then Japan (Toyota and Honda), and some day perhaps China. This historical trend cannot be stopped. (The US tried to take over the world’s financing activities from the UK, which had lost interest in manufacturing altogether, but failed miserably in the recent days and caused the current economic recession.)
3. Then, the question is what kind of primary manufacturing industry is the US going to choose to work on in the future? It is likely that the Obama administration has chosen the construction of atomic power plants as the next great US manufacturing effort.
4. The reasons for choosing atomic power plants are obvious. First of all, the US has to secure future electric power because electricity is needed for everything, including future electric cars. The US wants to get away from its reliance on oil (and the unstable oil-producing countries), which will undoubtedly either diminish or become very expensive within the next 50 years. Reducing oil imports will reduce the great deficit. It should be noted that the primary purpose of changing from carbon power to atomic power is not necessarily to reduce the release of CO2 and global warming. It is an excuse. This will become clearer as we look into the related issues.
5. How is global warming related to atomic power? In order to understand this question, it is important to learn how the global warming issue was born. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher, then the British Prime Minister, came to the conclusion that the UK needed atomic power energy for their future, but she faced strong objections by her people. It was also about the time when the first crude computer simulation of the greenhouse effect of CO2 was made, and it predicted a great disaster and catastrophe due to the expected temperature rise, unless the release of CO2 could be greatly reduced.
Margaret Thatcher must have taken this result into account in promoting atomic power, asking her people to choose either atomic power or global disaster/catastrophe, which would require a great sacrifice in their standard of living in order to avoid it. Without her strong endorsement, the IPCC would not have been established. She also established the Hadley Climate Research Center for further study of the effects of CO2. Until that time, climatology was a rather quiet science (not something dealt with in newspaper headlines), but Thatcher put a great spotlight on it for her political purposes. Therefore, although the CO2 hypothesis is appropriate as a hypothesis in science, the IPCC was related to atomic power from its birth and its destiny was to predict a great disaster/catastrophe. This, in spite of the criticism that the IPCC is predicting the end of the world, although we are not doing very well at even predicting the next day’s weather or the severity of the next winter. Science was used for political purposes. At the same time, the world news media was looking for something exciting to report on because the Cold War was ending. Global warming and reporting on imaginary disasters/catastrophes caused by CO2 has become one of their major headline topics.
6. How is the history of global warming and the IPCC related to the Obama administration’s interest in atomic power plants, making the construction of atomic power plants as the new primary manufacturing industry of the US? This is because if they proposed atomic power plants by singling the issue out, they will face fierce opposition of the people. Since the Three Mile Island plant accident, there has been no atomic plant built on US soil. Therefore, the Obama administration, like Thatcher, will ask the people to choose between atomic power plants (maintaining or improving their present standard of living) or a great disaster/catastrophe caused by CO2 (actually, reducing drastically the present living standard, including not being able to drive (electric) cars).
7. For these reasons, from the perspective of the Obama administration, the greater the disaster/catastrophe predicted due to CO2, the better it is for the purpose of promoting atomic energy. As a first step toward the goal of switching to atomic power, the Obama administration states that atomic energy is “green” (meaning no air pollution), that atomic energy is “non-carbon”, and even that CO2 is “unhealthy”. Note also that Obama uses the words “climate change”, not “global warming.”
The physics of CO2, absorbing and re-emitting infrared radiation is clear. On the other hand, geophysicists must find how much heating CO2 will cause when a given amount of it is released into the complex earth system. Thus, in this situation it is meaningless and useless for the real science of global warming/climate to face off against the political decisions and propaganda for the planning of atomic power plants.
8. One problem in this particular discipline of science is that scientists who base their research on computer simulations have become too arrogant, saying that they can predict the temperature in 2100, although too much is still unknown about the earth system. Ignoring natural causes of climate change and even unknown aspects of cloud physics, they rely on computer work in predicting the temperature rise in 2100. However, a computer is like a robot. It can perform only what it is instructed to do by the programs produced by the human brain. If a computer program is incorrect or inaccurate, the output will also be incorrect or inaccurate. In science, incorrect programs or hypotheses (produced by one or a group of scientists) are criticized by other scientists and can thus be improved. That is the way science should progress. However, the IPCC regards those who criticize them as “skeptics”, or “deniers”, etc., and brought this newborn and immature science to the international stage. They stated in 2007 that scientists have done all they can and that the science is settled, and the rest of the task should be in the hands of policy makers. Such a statement is very irresponsible.
9. However, even if the US decides that its next primary manufacturing industry is the construction of atomic power plants, there will be fierce competition between the US group (US, Japan, Russia) and the French group, which has more experience than the US, at last in the safety of operation. (A further problem is that Toshiba owns much of the Westinghouse stock.) There will eventually be uranium wars in the future; energy securing wars will continue forever.
10. The Obama administration is promoting wind power and solar power. However, there is no way to supply more than 10% of the US power needs (Obama says that they should try for 20%, but has he estimated the cost involved?) It is only about 2.5% at present. In any case, 80-90% of future electric power has to be found.
11. The US has to rely on coal power plants (at present 40%), until a large number of atomic power plants can be built, perhaps about 15-20 years from now. Thus, there is no way for the US to agree on any international agreement on a near-future CO2 reduction at the present time. The US has been saying that unless China and India agree to a significant reduction of the release of CO2, any agreement is useless. On the other hand, the US has made China its factory, and furthermore the US owes a great debt to China. Unless China can remain healthy, politically and financially, and with sufficient energy, the US will have a serious problem. Therefore, the US cannot force China to reduce its CO2 emission. On the other hand, in spite of the fact that China is now “richer” than the US, it continues to claim that it is still one of the developing countries and that the developed countries should reduce their release of CO2 first. The US and China must surely understand each other, so that the above statements are only rhetorical. The IPCC chairman has stated recently that India will not agree to a “cap”. Further, global capitalism is such that the rest of the world relies on the US buying power (even if they are using credit cards), so that the US economy has to be healthy. EU officials have had a large number of conferences on the reduction of CO2, but they have not reached any conclusion they can agree on.
12. For the above reasons, is it useful to have any more conferences on global warming? How many international conferences with the heads of nations have been held in the past? There has been no substantive agreement on the amount of release of CO2 by individual countries, in spite of the fact that protecting the earth from the CO2-based disaster/catastrophe should be the most solemn duty of the heads of nations (although environmental destruction caused by global capitalism is conveniently forgotten). So far, all the past conferences ended with a “fight” between rich nations and poor nations. The latter trying to snatch money from the former using the so-called “cap and trade” as an excuse, and the former trying to protect themselves from such an assault, in spite of the fact that the “cap and trade” negotiations have no effect on reducing the overall release of CO2. It is suspected that the heads of nations do not really believe in the global disaster/catastrophe scenario caused by CO2. However, they stated they believe in the IPCC, so they cannot publicly say that they do not believe in the disaster scenario, because they and their countries would be called enemies of humanity, like George W. Bush.
13. It has been said that the only thing they agreed on at the past conferences is to decide on the time and place for the next meeting. Such conferences are useless, although they are better than a world war. It is suggested that they should postpone future meetings until the science of global warming will advance farther. It is not too late, as the proponents of global warming advocate, since there has been no predicted disaster/catastrophe after the release of CO2 increased rapidly in 1946. In the tropics and middle latitude, there has been no discernible disaster/catastrophe so far. This is why the world media flocks to the Arctic and reports on erroneous global warming effects. None of the phenomena and changes they reported are related even remotely to the CO2 effects. A good example is glacier calving at the terminus. Nevertheless, the world media reports that the changes are caused by the CO2 effect.
14. In Japan, they are overjoyed by the statements of President Obama, saying that he is quite serious about “global warming” (actually, he says “climate change” instead of global arming). They interpret his statements as a sign that the US has finally become serious about the release of CO2, and that Obama is different from George W. Bush.
15. It is very unfortunate that science is being used for political purposes. Global warming is an imaginary product used for promoting the atomic power industry. When the truth will eventually become apparent, the credibility of science will be seriously damaged, since so many scientists (not only climatologists, but also many scientists in general) blindly trusted the IPCC and accused their opponents as “skeptics” and “deniers”, etc.
16. Actually, judging by what has been described earlier, the IPCC is NOT a scientific research organization, although they skillfully mobilized 2500 “world experts in climatology”; they were used by the IPCC, some probably unwittingly. The IPCC skillfully created the impression of “consensus” among 2500 scientists. Their contribution, a large volume of publications, is conveniently used for the IPCC publication, “Summary for Policy Makers”, as an apparent back-up document, although the IPCC charter clearly states that they are not supposed to make recommendations to policy makers.
The IPCC has tried to emphasize that global warming began unexpectedly and abruptly after 1900 because of the enhanced release of CO2. However, global warming began as early as 1800-1850s at the same rate as the present (0.5°C/100 years), namely about 100 years earlier than the beginning of a rapid increase of CO2 release, as the earth began to recover from the Little Ice Age (1400-1800). The recovery from a cold period is warming. Actually, the warming until 2000 and the present cooling trend can reasonably be explained as natural changes. The IPCC has ignored natural changes as at least a partial cause of global warming, in order to promote their CO2 hypothesis.
17. The IPCC tried to ignore the fact that the earth experienced the Little Ice Age by using the co-called “hockey stick” figure, because it is not convenient to know that the global warming began in 1800-1850, and not as they claim in the 20th century. The recovery from the Little Ice Age (a cold period) is warming. How many of the 2500 scientists trust the hockey stick figure? Perhaps only very few. Is this then the “consensus” of 2,500 experts in climatology? Unfortunately, the IPCC and the world media have presented this hypothesis as a fact.
18. There is another reason for proposing the postponement of future global warming conferences. After 1998 or 2000, global temperature has stopped rising and shows a sign of cooling, in spite of the fact that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is still rapidly rising. This is an observed fact. Therefore, their temperature prediction for the year 2100 has already failed during the first 10 years. However, IPCC scientists have not recognized it, saying that it is just a temporal change; but 10 years of consistent change is considered climate change.
19. The world political leaders should be able to decide to postpone future conferences until scientists could find the causes for the present halting of global warming. Temporary or not, there must be unknown forces and causes to suppress the CO2 effect or even overcome it.
20. We should bring back the science of climate change to a basic science, avoiding interferences by policy makers and the world mass media. Only then can this particular science proceed in a scientifically healthy way. Only then can we discuss any global warming hypothesis as proponents and opponents (instead of as “believers” and “skeptics” or “deniers” in the religious sense), regardless of one side being in the majority or minority. In science, unlike in politics, a minority can be right.
Very intelligent article. Syun-Ichi Akasofu is a brilliant mind.
For the fact that WattsUpWithThat posts this article on what the politics of energy is doing to science, while other science blogs in the US aren’t tackling the real issues of the science of climate, shows that WattsUpWithThat is again heading to being Science Blog of the Year.
Obama & nukes for energy, not likely for 3.5 years, but as the article points out we (the US) are likely to be forced to it; not doing this may well be what drives the man from office.
Does anyone have a good link to how feasible the 3rd and 4th generation reactors are and can they truly reprocess the partialy spent fuel from current reactors?
P Walker:
You ask me:
“As regards your investigation of the “acid rain” scare , what did you find about ” acid rain” ? Was it baseless ?”
By far the best paper on that subject was published by Sonja Boehmer-Christansen (it was better than both of mine on the subject). I commend her paper if it is still possible to get a copy of it.
But you ask my findings, so I report those and conclude with an unfairly brief statement of some information in Sonja’s paper and a comment on the present situation.
I was employed at the UK’s Coal Research Establishment (CRE) at the time, and British and German coal fired power stations were being castigated as causing ‘acid rain’ that was inducing ‘waldsterben’ (i.e. forest death) in Scandinavia and central Europe. So, I looked at the geographical pattern of acid deposition, and it did not fit the claim that the power stations were causing the enhanced acidity.
All rain is acid because it contains carbonic and sulphurous acids. Indeed, sulphur in acid rain is an integral part of the sulphur cycle and all life on land would die without it. The acidity of rain over Northern Europe was observed to correlate with its sulphur content but the pattern was of highest acidity near river estuaries. Acidity of rain was low near power stations and downwind from power stations except where power stations were near river estuaries. And the acidity was very high near the estuaries whether or not there were power stations in those regions.
Sulphur compounds emitted by power stations are very soluble in water (sulphur compounds are scrubbed from power station flue gases by putting them through a shower) and, therefore, highest acidity of rain could be expected near power stations, especially downwind of the prevailing wind. But there was no enhanced acidity and no waldsterben near and/or downwind of the power stations. Furthermore, high acidity of rain in Scandinavia occurred at tracks which had to pass over regions of high acidity of rain near river estuaries. There was no clear reason why the sulphur was being deposited preferentially in those regions.
I suggested that the major cause of the enhanced sulphur content of rain was probably a disruption to the sulphur cycle as a result of altered agricultural practices. Nitrogen and phosphur rich fertilisers had become widely used by agriculture following WW2 and excess fertiliser could be expected to be delivered to the North Sea by rivers. This could be expected to fertilise the phytoplankton which produce DMS (dimethyl sulphide and associated compounds) with resulting increase to the rate of the sulphur cycle. Indeed, there was evidence that such fertilisation was happening because toxic algal blooms were starting to wash up against shores. If this suggestion were true then the enhanced acidity of rain was a result of the agricultural industry and not the electricity industry.
Upon investigation, this suggestion proved to be correct. And this brings us to Sonja’s brilliant political analysis.
France had a large nuclear electricity industry but Britain and Germany had large coal-fired electricity industries. Forcing coal-fired power stations to fit flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) equipment would increase the cost of coal-fired electricity (FGD adds ~20% to the capital cost and ~10% to the operating cost of a power station). And the electricity grids of Gemany and France are connected. So, France promoted the ‘acid rain’ scare because that would increase electricity costs and, therefore, the costs of everything that used electricity in Britain and Germany. This would provide economic advantage to France. Scandinavian countries went along with this because they feared for the health of their forests. Britain and Germany had no answer except to agree to their reducing the ‘acid rain’ emissions from their power stations. This resulted in establishment of the European Union’s Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD) that limits the ‘acid rain’ emissions permitted from power stations.
Then the true cause of the ‘acid rain’ was discovered to be agriculture and not electricty generation. Also, the waldsterben was discovered to have been a myth that was not happening. France had a large agricultural industry with much political influence so the ‘acid rain’ scare was conveniently forgotten.
However the LCPD and its bureaucracy had been established. The bureaucrat need to justify their jobs and so they keep lowering the emission limits set by the LCPD. The limits have now been set so low that Britain is being forced to close almost all its coal-fired power stations during the next eight years. As yet, nobody has explained how the lights are to stay on in Britain when these closures are completed.
Richard
I recall hearing a report from an earlier climate conference that after the scientists had presented their data, the political representatives were ‘negotiating’ the final scientific report.
Science by negotiation is no science at all.
Kate (09:04:32) :
“I would like to congratulate BP on their discovery, announced today, of a new “giant” oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico. It is about 4 billion barrels, which exceeds their previous find in the Gulf of Mexico of 3 billion barrels.
Seven billion barrels should keep the lights on for quite a while. Well done BP.”
I agree 100%, No peak Oil this Century or the next or ever!
Is oil the true renewable?
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/deep_oil_a_giant_discovery.html
John Galt:
I am sorry that I failed to be clear. You say to me:
“Not following your logic in anyway whatsoever. You’re saying that by locking a ball and chain around their economic legs, countries will benefit?
Is the idea of a carbon tax to hobble a country’s economy to an extent that it loses any advantages it has? Tax a country unequally (some more than other, some less than others) so as to create equal results?”
No, that is not the point at all. It is a matter of redistribution.
As I said, the effect of handicapping every country in proportion to its economic activity is
(a) to reduce total economic activity of the world, and
(b) to redistribute the world’s economic activity such that those with least get more.
Each country is interested to maximise its own economic activity. And no country is interested in the maximising the world’s total of economic activity unless that increases its own economic activity.
In the period around 1990 the US was by far the major economic power. The handicapping would have reduced total economic activity of the world, but every country except the US would get more economic activity while the US would get much less.
Is it any wonder that so many countries grabbed at the idea but the US Senate voted 95 to zero to reject it?
I hope I have managed to clarify the matter.
Richard
Richard S Courtney – Thank you for your reply . I had suspected as much , at least in regard to sulpher emissions from coal fired plants . Agriculture hadn’t occured to me , but after scrubbers were added to coal fired plants the issue died . In the US , at least .
“Richard S Courtney (16:05:00) :
Richard”
An interesting insight to that period. So Britain being labelled “The Dirty Man of Europe” in the scaremongering days of “acid rain” was all political hogwash in reality. Fantastic!
Dr. Syun Akasofu’s analysis is very insightful in many respects. For example “Temporary or not, there must be unknown forces and causes to suppress the CO2 effect or even overcome it.” That the AGW is a convenient bogey man to raise taxes.
But I am doubtful of his contention that Obama is favouring this in order to promote Nuclear Power. He maybe forced to consider it, but I doubt that he has thought it out as clearly as Dr. Akasofu has. He maybe intelligent and a good orator but he is not as brilliant. Most AGW believers are not particularly brilliant.
Never attribute to intelligence that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
The Yucca Mountain nuclear disposal site was probably canceled because it is a fault zone near the Colorado River, because there was no way to calm the public. http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/25/nation/na-yucca25
Residents of the desert areas of California and Nevada (my neighbors) tremble at the thought of a leak or a terrorist attack on a shipment of nuclear waste. In part because television programs always show it as metallic cylinders or pellets light enough for an individual to carry.
Someone with a clear head, like Richard Muller, should be making the rounds of the news programs, talking some sense into the pundits who shape public opinion on the behalf of the politicians. http://muller.lbl.gov/TRessays/26-Witch-of-Yucca-Mountain.htm
The potential leakage should be compared to radon and formaldehyde exposure in homes and workplaces. Not to Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.
I don’t think Margaret Thatcher ever imagined that global warming would turn in to a carbon credit commodity market.
Ron de Haan (16:33:29) :
There’s plenty more in Alaska. There isn’t much else in that location of Alaska but oil. Alaska really is Seward’s Folly because that oil, oil that could solve more than one problem in America, is just sitting there and could be removed so much easier than this “”giant” oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, drilled to a total depth of 35,055 feet”.
Vincent: yes, the earth has been much warmer, and much cooler also. But how is this relevant here? How many humans were on earth during the holocene exactly? And how much time did it take for the temperatures to increase? Millions of years?
I’ve heard this hoary old line about the unions causing the end of car manufacturing in the UK and the US for a long while. It doesn’t explain how the Japanese then went to both countries, built factories there, used the same workers, sold those cars and made good profits. And it doesn’t explain how the Germans and the French with far more powerful unions than the UK or the US, still have viable car manufacturers. Those facts just don’t fit the union-bashing dogma.
The real trouble with Anglo-Saxon engineering businesses is that too often they are run by bean-counters. In Germany, Japan and France however they are all run by engineers. It is the short-termist thinking of the bean-counters that destroy the businesses and then perpetuate the self-serving myth that it was labor costs that caused the decline rather than the quality reduction caused by poor management decisions. So in any economic argument you should ask is this just another industry-destroying, short-termist, bean-counter talking or is it a job creator?
On a similar note, according to Richard Courtney, all fuel taxes are a drain on the economy. Well only unless forced efficiency measures more than offset that tax. It’s as simple as buying a car that does 30mpg rather than 10 mpg or perhaps even a diesel that gets 40 to 50 mpg. And those European efficient small diesel engines were developed entirely because of high fuel taxes. Meantime in the US cheap fuel produced inefficient gas-guzzling clunkers. Real world economics isn’t as one-dimensional as some people like to imagine.
And maybe some of you can tell Obama how to fix this depression (apparently caused by 2.5 years of a democratic run congress – yeah right!) instead of just bitching about what he does do. Among that list of bellicose jokers who wanted the job, Ron Paul was the only one that had predicted this credit fallout, and said that it was 100% due to the Fed’s fiat money management. He also predicted, in common with Obama and too few other Americans, that these costly wars were totally dumb from the outset. A little less partizan blame-game and a little more common sense easily identifies the real perps rather than convenient scapegoats and might even sort out some real fixes.
Flanagan:
Let me try to help unravel your confusion. You say to Vincent:
“yes, the earth has been much warmer, and much cooler also. But how is this relevant here? How many humans were on earth during the holocene exactly? And how much time did it take for the temperatures to increase? Millions of years?”
There are several reasons why it is very relevant that the Earth has been warmer and cooler than now in the past.
Firstly, the Earth is constrained within close limits of global temperature in each of two stable states; viz. glacial and interglacial. And its temperature has been the same within narrow bounds in each of those stable states throughout the ~2.5 billion years since the Earth gained an oxygen-rich atmosphere. But heating from the Sun has increased by about 30% over that time. If that additional radiative forcing from the Sun had a direct effect on temperature then the oceans would have boiled to steam long ago.
Clearly, the climate system contains very strong constraints that keep global temperature within close boundaries in each of the two stable states.
But the global climate system changes between the two stable states.
Data obtained from the Vostock ice core indicates that transition between the states exists as a series of ‘flickers’ between the states. The transitions occur in decades or centuries and they repeat until the system stays in one of the states. Thus, over geological ages there are very many instances when global temperature increased at much, much faster rate than has been observed recently: decades and centuries are much shorter than “millions of years”.
Furthermore, in each of the stable states global temperature varies within its bounds.
The rate of global temperature change during each year is much greater than the rate of global temperature change over the last century. During each year mean global temperature increases by 3.8 degC from January to July and falls by 3.8 degC in the other half of each year (n.b. this is global temperature change and NOT hemispheric temperature change). But annual mean global temperature only rose by about 0.7 degC over the last century.
Simply, the change to global temperature during each year is more than 5 times its change over the last century as a whole.
And the global temperature changes during each year at a rate that is more than 1000 times greater than its rate of change over the last century as a whole.
Furthermore, global temperature has not recently risen to its upper boundary because there is much evidence that global temperature was higher than now in the Roman and the Medieval warm periods.
The number of humans is not relevant to any of these changes.
But, some people (e.g. James Hansen and Al Gore) assert a fear that a rise in mean global temperature of 2 degC could result in catastrophe. And, as Akasofu says, politicians are responding to this fear by calling for constraints on carbon dioxide emissions which – if imposed – would cause much harm.
It is not clear why 2 degC rise in global temperature over about a century threatens catastrophe when global temperature rises (and falls) by nearly double that each year with no discernible effects.
How is the rise of 2 degC rise in global temperature over about a century supposed to overcome the upper boundary of interglacial temperature that is so robust that it has existed for about 2.5 billion years?
And what mystical effect is the existence of humans supposed to have on the upper boundary of interglacial temperature?
We need to suggest a way to enable the politicians to reverse their intentions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions without causing them to lose face with resulting loss of votes: politicians will not make policy changes that would cost them votes. As a subject of another thread on WUWT I provided such a suggestion: i.e. research geo-engineering to rapidly reverse global warming if and when mean annual global temperature reaches 2 degC higher (it will not) but do nothing until then except to proclaim the research and to continue talking (n.b. not deciding) how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This would allow the AGW scare to fade away as the ‘acid rain’ scare did. But few read my suggestion and understood it (ho hum).
Richard
Re: Richard S Courtney (02:43:05)
The ‘acid rain scare’ was no ‘scare’ but a real problem. People old enough to have lived consciously through the nineteeneighties will remember the haggard or even bald pine trees in European forests and I guess in American and Canadian forests as well.
The problem has been solved by real government and company effort – see e.g. http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/hall/9111/DOC.HTML and remember this:
—
“In 1991, the United States and Canada signed an air quality agreement. Ever since that time, both countries have taken actions to reduce sulfur dioxide emission. The United States agree to reduce their annual sulfur dioxide emission by about ten million tons by the year 2000. A year before the agreement, the Clean Air Pact Amendment tried to reduce nitrogen oxide by two million tons. This program focused on the source that emits nitrogen oxide, automobiles and coal-fired electric utility boilers.”
—
Comparable measures were taken in Europe.
If you want to see what acid rain does, you can still find out in China, where it is a prime environment disaster, and Russia.
http://www.google.nl/url?source=imgres&ct=img&q=http://www.rst2.edu/ties/acidrain/miscgraphics/Acid_Rain.gif&usg=AFQjCNFgORc_uCEauiYZAxKkkbD2fnDU7g
—
As to the argument of global warming not exceeding the annual global temperature variation I would like to seemingly strengthen it by taking the annual variation in temperature in Holland. It used to be from 1.8° C in January to 16.3° C in July; as of about 1988 these averages have risen by close to two degrees. This has the simple consequence that skating on canals and lakes in wintertime is now possible once in four or five winters, used to be >90% of all winters. The Dutch saying ‘all Dutch are born with skates’ now reads ‘… are born with skeelers’.
The annual temperature amplitude in Holland is about 14-15 degrees C. Suppose global warming adds six degrees to all seasons. That is just a fraction of the annual variation. But it would put our temperate country in a climate that is normal for Spain, which has a desert-fringe climate (steppe). It would simply end existing flora and agriculture. We would become as famous as California for our uncontrollable bushfires.
Fauna in Holland is already changing, both by disruption of ecological patterns (e.g. birds nesting find their food gone, as insects breed earlier in the year) and the introduction of new species from southern countries, some of which have become plagues because the balances and checks that exist in a settled ecology are not in place yet.
Bill McClure (06:13:35) :
Bill, I don’t know if you were referring to my link, which is a long one and may not have been picked up by your browser.
Try this: http://tinyurl.com/noluk5
Flanagan (22:45:18) : Vincent: yes, the earth has been much warmer, and much cooler also. But how is this relevant here?
I think it is relevant because if the temperature has varied in the past, and more importantly, in the recent past, quite naturally, as over the last 150 years +1.5/2 C, then it is entirely possible that the current rise is also due to reasons similar to those in the past. It is also possible that the recent rise in CO2 due to fossil fuel burning is just coincidental to this natural rise and may not be effecting it to any significant extent. It maybe a mistake to attribute this rise to the rise in CO2.
Astrologers thrive on the power of coincidence but science must guard against it while trying to determine cause.
How many humans were on earth during the holocene exactly?
Flanagan the Holocene has lasted about 10,000 years. 2/3rds of this time the Earth was as warm or warmer than today. These warm times were the times that saw the establishment of agriculture, the birth of villages and cities and flowering of civilisation. There were not nearly as many humans as today for 9,900 of these years and the temperatures managed to rise and fall quite naturally within the constraints it is in today.
And how much time did it take for the temperatures to increase? Millions of years?
No they rose and fell at similar rates as today. The Holocene has lasted for only 10,000 years.
“We conclude that .. the evidence points consistently to a real but irregular warming over the last century. A global warming of larger size has almost certainly occurred at least once since the end of the last glaciation without any appreciable increase in greenhouse gases. Because we do not understand the reasons for these past warming events, it is not yet possible to attribute a specific proportion of the recent, smaller warming to an increase of greenhouse gases.”
Source IPCC 1990 report, before Mann took over with his hockey stick. That report also clearly showed the “Holocene Maximum” the Medieval Warm period, the Little Ice age and the recovery from it.
PS – we still do not understand the reasons for these past warming events
JamesG:
It seems you have some misunderstandings.
I agree what you say about “union-bashing dogma”. But, of course, I am prejudiced because I am a trade unionist who has held the elected office of National Vice resident of a UK Trade Union that is affiliated to the UK’s Trades Union Congress.
Hence, you completely misunderstand where I am coming from when you begin your comments begin by saying, “On a similar note, according to Richard Courtney”.
And those comments are based on an error. You assert that according to me “all fuel taxes are a drain on the economy”. But I have never said that. Clearly, you misunderstand my views on these matters.
Indeed, you imply that I think economics is “one-dimensional”. Perhaps I do because I do not have any idea what you mean by “one-dimensional” in this context.
Indeed, you clearly fail to understand effects of energy efficiency. It has been known since the nineteenth century that increased energy efficiency induces additional energy use, and several studies have confirmed this since then. The effect is because reduced energy costs free monies that are spent on
(a) additional activities that require additional use of energy
or
(b) profligate use of energy.
As you say, “the US cheap fuel produced inefficient gas-guzzling clunkers”. That is an example of profligate use of energy. But the revenues raised by high fuel taxes in Europe were spent, and the activities they were spent on consumed energy, too, so they cannot be omitted from proper consideration of the total energy usage the taxes (or lack of taxes) induce.
Life is not simple, but there are some useful simplifications that can be made to assist understanding. For example, by definition energy is the ability to do work and money is payment for work done. Reduce the required payment for work done and there is more money to do more work, so more energy gets used. For example, increase vehicle fuel efficiency without changing the cost of fuel and users of the vehicles have more money and they can use their extra money to take weekend brakes that they fly to in aircraft. Any increase to an activity that uses energy is an increase to economic activity.
Importantly, blame is not a useful concept for analysis of political actions and I suggest that you do not apply it.
Richard
Sorry, but automobile manufacturing is not moving to Japan. What’s moving to Japan is the management of the manufacturing process. My Toyota Camry was made by American workers.
Craven management in the US yielded to the union demands too often, and Edward Deming’s lessons were ignored here, but not in Japan. Bureaucracy reigns in large corporations.
Statistical correlation does NOT prove cause and effect. It simply suggests where one might look for a cause.
The (mythical?) tribe on the South Pacific island KNEW that the beating of tom-toms caused the sun to reappear after an eclipse. They’d been doing it for many generations and the drummers were important members of their society. When people suggested that they skip the drums during the next eclipse, they refused since the sun was too important to risk. Their entire database showed ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CORRELATION.
Richard S. Courtney 06: 03: 38:
You say you have “held the elected office of National Vice resident….” which sounds wonderful!!! Could you let me know how I could get a job as a vice resident, please?
M. Simon (07:30:09) :
Richard (01:09:11) :
anna v (22:50:05) – I’m sorry fusion is a pipe dream for the foreseeable future. UK were the leaders in this and they have abandoned it.
Some of us have hopes for Polywell Fusion.
And the best part about Polywell? We Will Know In Two Years
I do agree with Plasma Physicist Dr. Nicholas Krall who said, “We spent $15 billion dollars studying tokamaks and what we learned about them is that they are no damn good.”
And links to publications please? From what I know the conclusion from Jet was that it performed as expected for its size, breaking even in energy. ITER is being designed as an industrial prototype which will give megawatt power.
It is expensive, but will amortize its cost when it demonstrates the feasibility of plenty and “free” energy, at least free of political strangleholds.
Sigh, I knew Flanagan hadn’t read my post properly as soon as I saw the words “millions of year”. Well, I suppose you see what you want to see.
Richard (04:13:23) has given a suitable reply to Flanagan’s confusion and I leave the last words with him.