[posted by autoscheduler] I’ll be offline most of today and tomorrow, but may check in via my cellphone. If you have story ideas, news, etc be sure to flag the comment for a moderator’s attention. – Thanks, Anthony
Keep it clean. Play nice.
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John M says:
September 3, 2010 at 12:55 pm
John, I enjoyed your links and commentary on the decline in the horseshoe crab population. Hmmm, overfishing vs. global warming…. once again the CAGWers miss the target!
JAE, I remember a TV show in which a bike-generator was hooked up to 5 100-watt light bulbs. Most of those who tested it could light up only 2 or 3, tops, and that for only a short time.
Wasn’t there a bike-powered Christmas tree in Copenhagen–that was powered by the grid nearly all the time? 🙂
Found it. IIRC this was on a WUWT thread:
@paulw says:
September 3, 2010 at 12:12 pm
In a previous thread we commended on the virtues of France for producing about 80% of their electricity needs from nuclear energy.
Here Fransh is spending €10b on wind farms to produce 3GW by 2015 (6GW by 2020),
http://blog.cleantechies.com/2010/08/30/france-to-have-3000-mw-of-offshore-wind-by-2015/
___________________________________________________________
That is interesting news, the electricity from the new wind turbines (based on 2007 electricity consumption) will add exactly 3000/447,233,000 = .00007% to the French annual power needs. I hope they aren’t planning on decommissioning any nuclear reactors any time soon.
In all honesty and deference to Anthony’s instructions to “play nice” I am honestly asking you if your point was it to illustrate the “commendability” of this shift to wind power? If so, I don’t see it.
Please be nice to me if I have my figures mixed up.
Tim Huck, Lomborg’s no dummy. In addition to the $100 billion carrot for the alarmists, his global carbon tax would raise $150 billion a year for third-world health care, clean water, etc, all projects long dear to his heart.
I suggest a couple of wee changes, though:
(1) Change the carbon tax to a “hypocrisy tax”, e.g. on those who preach small carbon footprint while themselves living large (“offsets” don’t count).
(2) Cut the amount spent fighting global warming by a few percentage points, say about 100. 🙂
From one fish to another..Vigilantfish…the horseshoe crab has survived all kinds of Mother Nature type of Global warmings over the last millions of years or so…I think a tourist or 2 stepping on them will not seal their fate…..Thanks for Posting my last post WUWT..I really dig this site & would love to keep participating even though I’m still just a rocket surgeon…..
There has been abundant reporting of record warm August temperatures on the east coast. But over the past month on the west coast Santa Barbara has been running -6.6 F below normal. I went back through the monthly data and determined August 2010 was the coldest August on record (70 years back to 1941). Has there been anything in the news about this? Even the Los Angeles NWS office doesn’t seem to report it:
http://www.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=lox
Curiousgeorge says:{September 3, 2010 at 12:19 pm}
“Go figger”
Being an open thread I would like to bring up how incorrect the saying “go figure” is.
The proper saying is “don’t figure” which is a shortened form of “it don’t figure” which is a bastardization of “it doesn’t figure”. “It doesn’t figure” means one cannot figure it out similar to “it doesn’t add up”. So when presented with something that appears to be irrational, unsupported or opposite of intuition one simply says “don’t figure” because one cannot understand how it could be so. It is never a directive to “go” figure it out. Thank You.
[REPLY – My understanding was that “go figure” derives from “you go figure it out because I can’t”. Besides, it’s idiom. ~ Evan]
A little off topic but WC is talking about the IAC report here’s some of his crap
It am all de rage, as they say. But is it any good? And who are the IAC anyway? Go on, hands up, before they were asked to do this: had anyone heard of them? Thought not: I certainly hadn’t. This is an organisation so well-known that the wikipedia article on [[IAC]] (note: that is today’s version; I assume that someone will add it, eventually) doesn’t even include them, although it has space for 15 or so other IAC’s. Although Gavin seems to quite like the report, I’m less sure. So before getting down to reading the report, here is another piece of meta-analysis: if you read the exec summary it notes that the first IAC report was Inventing a Better Future – A Strategy for Building Worldwide Capacities in Science and Technology. You’ve heard of it? Unlikely – google news shows no hits and all the google hits seem to be to the usual people you’d expect to note it and ignore it. I note that All IAC draft reports undergo an intensive process of peer-review by other international experts though unlike the IPCC it isn’t an open review process – we can’t see the reviewers comments, let alone see the various drafts (and it does need review: there is an error on p iii of the exec summary, where they fail to capitalise Winnacker’s surname. Trivial, obviously).
had to ask him if he got rid of anything IAC from wiki
“”” 1DandyTroll says:
September 3, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Two thousand years ago most people were of average intelligence. Now a days, 2010, most people are still of average intelligence.
I am now a professional climatologist. “”””
Well unless there is something peculiarly non-linear about intelligence; it would seem more reasonable that about half of the people are of about average intelligence.
Or if the range of intelligence from the dumbest of the box of rocks kind of dumbness to the idiot savant level of intelligence; it might be more correct to say that very few people actually have average intelligencve, and that most are actually eith smarter than average or dumber than average.
So I would thing most people are NOT of average intelligence although about half of them should be smarter than average.
@ur momisugly dbleader61 says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
September 3, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Okay, had the figures wrong. Was comparing capacity to annual output. Actual figure from the turbines is 3000 x 365 x 24 = 26,280,000/447223000 mwh = 5.9% of annual output by 2015, 11.8% by 2020. I think this is a maximum since the capacity is based on continuous optimal wind I would think.
Again, if the numbers are wrong, please be nice!
Mods,
” Plan for travellers body heat to warm homes” http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/04/3002490.htm?section=justin
Perhaps we should all huddle a little closer in Winter and turn the thermostat down, or, stop breathing.
Tim Huck says:
September 3, 2010 at 1:03 pm
A well-known climate change skeptic has changed his mind regarding the importance of global warming, and in his new book, he is urging the spending of over $100 billion annually to help fight warming.
Bjorn Lomborg is a very changeable fellow. He is best known for his book the “Skeptical Environmentalist” – he has now recently changed over to supporting the AGW cause. Most don’t know that before all this he was a AGW promoter – I believe Michael Crichton’s Book Sum of all Fears (?) mentions this. If I am right about this, I think it worth a post. He’s a relatively young man so he has time to change back again.
Looks like the warmists are already trying to lower expectations of an agreement at Cancun:-
‘Mexico Foreign Minister Dampens Expectations for Cancun Climate Talks’
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9I0FODG0.htm
>> 1DandyTroll says:
>>September 3, 2010 at 12:54 pm
>>Two thousand years ago most people were of average intelligence. Now a days, 2010, >>most people are still of average intelligence.
The real issue in the masses understanding climate, is that 50% of the population is below average intelligence !
(Median is very close to mean for intelligence).
Some real science, for those who love numbers-
http://www.secretacademy.com
by a long time friend of John Michel (who died earlier this year)whose idea it originally was.
Now its because the IPCC report was 3000 pages it was bound to be wrong LOL
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/sep/02/intergovernmental-panel-climate-change
Just another anecdotal horseshoe crab story, but I spend two weeks in July every year for a family get-together (Folly Beach, SC by Charleston) and for the last 35 years we have seen a few crabs washed up on the beach (dead), over the two weeks, This year I saw close to 30 of them. Even found one half-buried (low tide, dryish tidal pool) dug it out, threw it back in the ocean, and it crawled right back onto the beach. They all looked in pretty good shape, all body parts attached. It seemed a little strange to me, but the sea turtles had laid 52 nests by the time we left, and normally that number was closer to 40. Life goes on.
Curiousgeorge says:
September 3, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Food riots in Mozambique –….Sounds to me like the commodities traders are responsible, rather than mother nature.
_____________________________________
Oh definitely. It is part of a long range plan. See The WTO and the Politics of GMO
The following quotes show the grain traders greed and their level of concern for other humans.
“In summary, we have record low grain inventories globally as we move into a new crop year. We have demand growing strongly. Which means that going forward even small crop failures are going to drive grain prices to record levels. As an investor, we continue to find these long term trends…very attractive.” Food shortfalls predicted: 2008 http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/dancy/2008/0104.html
“Recently there have been increased calls for the development of a U.S. or international grain reserve to provide priority access to food supplies for Humanitarian needs. The National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) and the North American Export Grain Association (NAEGA) strongly advise against this concept..Stock reserves have a documented depressing effect on prices… and resulted in less aggressive market bidding for the grains.” July 22, 2008 letter to President Bush http://www.naega.org/images/pdf/grain_reserves_for_food_aid.pdf
The repercussions of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture is seen in the discussions at http://nonais.org/2010/08/29/wi-persecution-redux/
Remember this is food and without food we die.
paulw says:
September 3, 2010 at 12:12 pm
In a previous thread we commended on the virtues of France for producing about 80% of their electricity needs from nuclear energy.
Here Fransh is spending €10b on wind farms to produce 3GW by 2015 (6GW by 2020),
http://blog.cleantechies.com/2010/08/30/france-to-have-3000-mw-of-offshore-wind-by-2015/
Again paulw, you show your lack of reading comprehension. Your link states that France builds 3 GW of wind capacity for 10 billion. It does NOT state that France will produce 3GW of power or 3 GWh per hour from that EU mandated project. Because even offshore wind only has a capacity factor (look up what that means) of about 33%, they are building about 1 GW of equivalent conventional capacity for 10 billion Euro. That is one heck of a way to waste money that is only “justified” because they have to comply with EU renewable mandates.
You probably also don’t know that the power output of wind turbines changes with the cube of the wind speed. Meaning if the wind speed drops by half, the output drops to only 12.5% of the previous output.
See for example here:
http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
You see the power output of all wind generators of Bonneville Power Administrations (Pacific Northwest) wind power portfolio (3011 GW) in blue, and the electricity demand in red. You can also see how the other sources of BPA (hydro and thermal) have to ramp up and down much more steeply to compensate for the vagaries of wind.
You can compare that to the operation of a car. If you constantly have to accelerate and brake a car instead of driving at constant speed, your fuel consumption goes way up. A 30mpg car can consume as much as 4 mpg when under full acceleration. Same goes for power stations. All except hydro use more fuel when constantly ramping up and down. And the only power stations (except hydro) that can ramp up and down fast enough are single cycle natural gas plants. They have lousy efficiencies and are therefore expensive to operate (lots of fuel per MW produced), but they ARE fast.
And that’s why in Europe the natural gas suppliers LOVE wind energy and invest heavily in it.
See also:
http://www.eco-voice.org/node/4970
@Tom in Florida says:
September 3, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Tom, I have always thought “Go figger” more or less meant “whoda thunk?” which can a sarcastic comment on the obvious or a legitimate comment on an apparant contradiction.
Go figure that the exact same English phrase can have completely opposite meanings.
Gary Pearse says:
September 3, 2010 at 3:13 pm
“Bjorn Lomborg is a very changeable fellow. He is best known for his book the “Skeptical Environmentalist” – he has now recently changed over to supporting the AGW cause. ”
Lomborg never disputed AGW, even in “Skeptical Environmentalist”. He did point out some of the uncertainties – like the uncertainty of the influence of aerosols that the modellers use as a parameter to make their hindcasting look nice. The Skeptical Environmentalist is first and foremost an Anti-Malthusian book, and AGW is only a small part of it. So reducing Lomborg to the role of an AGW skeptic is wrong for two reasons: First, he didn’t point out several of the reasons why AGW through CO2 cannot possibly happen – the already saturated CO2 absorption band and the low impact of CO2 when compared with water vapor – and second, he was never about AGW alone but more anti-Malthusian in general; pointing out the abundance of all kinds of natural resources. (Hi, GM!)
And as far as i can tell all the warmists are now drooling but what Lomborg did is just analyze what we could best do against AGW IF we had 100 bn a year to fight it. Now that’s simply a thought experiment. It doesn’t say that he really considers it the most important problem now.
The AGW crowd, vulnerable people as they are, will surely use every straw they can grasp to continue their misguided crusade so IMHO one should never give them one, and taking them seriously for a moment will only give them the feeling of being right, which they are not. So i think Lomborg made a mistake by doing this thought experiment, but it’s his decision.
The 100bn a year would come from the 1bn inhabitants of the developed world of course, IOW the working individuals like me would pay about 500 a year… so i wouldn’t be too happy about it. Half of it would immediately disappear in the pockets of Ban Ki-Moon, Rajendra K. Pachauri (Dr.) and the likes… so i’d rather finance military action against the UN if i had the choice.
Any estimated date for when the final Surface Stations Project will be published? I would like to purchase several copies when available.
>> 1DandyTroll says:
>>September 3, 2010 at 12:54 pm
>>Two thousand years ago most people were of average intelligence. Now a days, 2010, >>most people are still of average intelligence.
And 2000 years ago the human death rate was 100%. And today it STILL is 100%. No progress at all. Life is still a sexually transmitted disease, and invariably fatal.
On the other hand, I heard a politician once claim that he will not rest until every single citizen has an above average income.
Showing that at least for politicians, intelligence is a limited and precious resource. The more of them there are, the less each one gets.
Kriilin Namek says:
September 3, 2010 at 1:01 pm
re: French wind turbines…dumb, dumb, dumb. If a power source isn’t used for base load, (except peak stations) , it shouldn’t be connected to the grid. Redo the economics with even a 90% (still inadequate for base load) availability through co-generation, then we’ll talk. New nuclear technology promises to re-burn nuke waste, with the resulting waste staying hot for only about 300 years (10 + half-lives), a walk in the park to store, geologically speaking
________________________________________
“Other countries have not taken such a backward approach to nuclear power. France, whose 59 reactors generate 80 percent of its electricity, has safely recycled nuclear fuel for decades. They turned to nuclear power in the 1970s to limit their dependence on foreign energy. And, from the beginning, they made recycling used fuel central to their program.” France used the technology we abandoned – literally.”
Nuclear Recycling:
http://www.usnuclearenergy.org/PDF_Library/_GE_Hitachi%20_advanced_Recycling_Center_GNEP.pdf
There is a very good discussion on the subject by Rational Debate, a radiological safety engineer (nuclear) over at Tips and Notes
http://www.theage.com.au/world/russian-tanker-conquers-arctic-passage-20100903-14ubk.html
Some boat made it through the arctic passage