Guest Post by Thomas Fuller
It is not often that I get called a ‘denialist’ and a ‘troll’ for the dark forces of Al Gore on the same day, but it does happen.
It’s because I am a ‘lukewarmer,’ one who believes that the physics of climate change are not by theselves controversial, but who believes that the sensitivity of the earth’s atmosphere to a doubling of concentrations of CO2 is not yet known, but is likely to be lower than activists have claimed.
I suppose it should bother me that I am getting slammed at activist websites such as Only In It For the Gold, Deltoid and ThingsBreak because they think I don’t go far enough, and slammed again here and at The Air Vent because I go too far. Although I want to be liked as much as the next fellow, it doesn’t, because the reasons given for slamming me never seem to match up to the reality of what I write.
Critics here have focused on a lack of substance, so I’ll try and address that in this post. I’m a bit amused at one commenter who yesterday said I understood nothing of energy. (Shh! Don’t tell my clients–I just delivered a 400-page report on alternative energy, and they’ll be ticked off…)
And I’m equally amused that I have to acknowledge that Michael Tobis (at last) got one thing right in a comment yesterday, when he wrote that the real problem we face is coal–and Chinese coal at that. (More on that in a minute.)
The LukeWarmer’s Way
The operation of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is one of the least controversial ideas in physics. The calculations that show a temperature rise of between 1 and 2 degrees Celsius if concentrations double is also widely accepted, including by all skeptic scientists without (AFAIK) exception.
We don’t know the sensitivity of the atmosphere to a doubling of CO2, so the effects of feedbacks are not know. Activists think it is 3 degrees or higher. Contrarians think it is very low–1, maybe 2, tops, some thinking it is even lower.
If activists are right we have a very big problem on our hands. If contrarians are right we don’t. If both are wrong, there is a lukewarmer’s way.
If you believe that about 2 degrees of warming is headed our way this century, it will be a problem–probably not for those reading this, because of our fortunate geography, but for those in the developing world, who will have to add droughts, floods and heatwaves to their current long list of miseries. And it’s not really the size of the temperature rise that worries me, although having a 2 degree average means it will be greater in some places, and again, probably in the least fortunate locales. But it’s really the speed of change that will make it tough to adapt to.
So as a lukewarmer I believe that if there are ‘no regrets’ options, by which I mean things that make sense for us to do no matter what happens to the climate, that we should move quickly to do them in hopes that it will a) help prepare for whatever temperature rise comes our way and b) may serve in some small way to lessen the total temperature rise and its impacts.
The devil is in the details, obviously, and a bigger devil lies in who should decide and how much authority we give them. And we probably don’t get to pick and choose at the right level of detail.
For example, I have no problem with the EPA actively encouraging power plants to shift from old coal configurations to combined cycle natural gas. It’s not a permanent solution but it’s a quick win. But I do have a problem with them classing a school with 3 buses as a major emitter of CO2 and getting them involved in the bureaucratic nightmare of emission control.
I do not want Maurice Strong to control our approach to the world’s environmental issues. I’m reading his book right now (‘Where On Earth Are We Going?, with a foreward by Kofi Annan), and it is horribly bad, and horribly wrong. I’ll give it a full review later, but suffice it to say that I wouldn’t trust him with any responsibility at all.
But there are some in both government and science who I do trust. And I’m willing to work towards helping them get to where we need to go. If a panel composed of both Pielkes, Judith Curry, Mike Kelly, John Christy, Richard Lindzen and a few others were to work on proposed solution, I’d be pretty happy. I might be alone in my joy, I realize.
Another no regrets option I’d like to see is a review of building planning, permitting and insurance in areas that are already vulnerable to tropical storms and floods. We are in the silly situation right now where middle class workers in the Midwest are subsidizing rich people who rebuild ruined but rich second homes in Florida or Malibu Canyon.
We could also allow planes to use modern technology to choose the most fuel efficient routes, descend directly rather than in stages and unblock no-fly spaces left over from the Cold War.
I’d like to see greater use of X prizes to stimulate innovation, as it did with private spacecraft. I’d love to see prizes for utility level storage or better use of composites for distribution, or improvements to HVDC transmission. Prizes almost always work.
I’d like to see more base research done on superconductors, for example, and other technologies that are threatened with being trapped in the Valley of Investment Death.
And I don’t think that list of no regrets options is too controversial, either here or with the activists. (I’m sure I’ll hear about it if it is.)
But the real problem is counting to 3,000. Because a straight line extension of energy consumption gets us to 3,000 quads (quadrillion BTUs) by 2075, with 9.1 billion people developing at present trends and GDP growing at 3% per year.
If those 3,000 quads are supplied by burning coal, we’ll choke on the fumes, no matter what it does to temperatures. China has doubled its energy use since 2000, it may do so again by 2020, and 70% of their energy is provided by coal. The massive traffic jam into Beijing a couple of weeks ago, 90 miles long and lasting three or four days, was composed primarily of small trucks bringing coal into China’s capital. And the pollution and soot that is caused by China’s coal travels–to the Arctic, hastening ice melt and over the rest of the world, as small particulates and just general haze.
So I also advocate pushing for renewable and nuclear energy. I think we’ll need them both. Nuclear is ready to roll right now, but it’s expensive and time consuming to put up as many plants as we’re going to need. Solar is on the verge, and I’d like to give it an extra push. Natural gas is a temporary solution in terms of emissions, but at current prices we can’t ignore its advantages.
We also need to push piecemeal solutions that will not solve our problems by themselves, but are important contributors at a local level, such as geothermal power, or small hydroelectric and run-of-river installations.
No matter what you or I believe about climate change, we face an energy issue that we need to address today. Our coal plants are dramatically cleaner than they used to be. China’s are not. If we don’t want the air we breathe to taste of China’s coal, we need to work on better solutions.
And the worst of all possible worlds is where we don’t do the right thing on energy because we are at war with each other about climate change.
I’m a firm believer in markets, and I like free markets better than the other sort. I also think they work better with light regulation. I think it’s legitimate to nudge the energy market in the direction we want it to go, without giving the reins and the saddle to government bureaucracy. And I do think it can and probably will work.
So I’m not a ‘denialist.’ I’m not a ‘skeptic.’ I’m a lukewarmer–and I’m right.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
Thomas Fuller
There would be no global warming without new technology. And that’s not because new technology uses so much energy.
It’s because new technology has allowed us to measure new phenomena, and old phenomena with radically more powerful tools.
Mike Smith gives us an example in his book ‘Warnings’, a great story about how technology addressed the warning system for U.S. tornadoes (and which is advertised here on the right hand column). He notes that many tornadoes that are called in to reporting centers today would never have been noticed before, thanks to a growing American population and the ubiquity of mobile telephones.
The same is more or less true of hurricanes. Before satellite coverage began in 1969, we really didn’t know exactly how many hurricanes actually happened in a given year, nor how strong they were. If they didn’t make landfall, they would only be catalogued if planes noticed and reported them, and they would only be measured if specially equipped planes basically flew through them and charted their strength.
It’s certainly also true of measurements of ice extent, volume and area, which would not be possible without satellite imagery.
New technology has had a radical effect on the time series of measurements made for extended periods before the technology was adopted. Sailors used to measure sea surface temperatures using a thermometer in a bucket lowered into the sea. When Argos buoys began providing a network of more accurate measurements, there was a break in the timeline. When surface stations converted to electronic thermocouples on a short leash, the adjustments required caused another break in the data series. (I guess readers here might know something about that already.) Scientists have worked hard to make adjustments to correct for the new sources of data, but the breaks are still pretty noticeable.
The sensible thing would be to give the new technologies time to develop an audited series of measurements long enough to determine trends, rather than grafting new data on top of older, less reliable series. But there are two objections to this: First, who’s to say another new measurement technology won’t come along and replace our brand new toys and resetting the clock to zero? Second, and of more concern, there is a whole scientific establishment out there saying we don’t have time to wait for a pristine data set. Some say we’ve already waited too long, others say that if we start today (and they really mean today), we just might avoid climate disaster.
And if you start to muse on the remarkable coincidence that warming apparently started at the same time as we got all this new-fangled technology, why that makes you a flat-earth denialist. Or something.
As it happens, while serving in the U.S. Navy I took sea surface temperatures with a thermometer in a bucket. There were not many detailed instructions involved. Should I have done it on the sunny side or the shady side? Nearer the pointy end of the ship (that’s technical talk) or the flat back end? How long was I supposed to leave the thermometer in the water?
I wouldn’t want to make momentous decisions based on the quality of data I retrieved from that thermometer, which wasn’t calibrated–I think the U.S.N. stock number was like 22, or some other low number indicating great antiquity. I much prefer what comes out of Argos.
But there are times I wish all those fancy instruments on the satellites were pointing at another planet.
Thomas Fuller href=”http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
Tom Fuller,
and the article with the picture that doesn’t show any coal trucks… talks about coal trucks.
You’re not saying anything new here. You are still missing the point.
This is the point:
What does it matter what the article says? Anyone can say anything they want in the article. The photos do not show coal trucks. Coal trucks did not cause the traffic jam. If there were that many coal trucks as you claim they would clearly be in every photo. We would easily see the coal trucks causing the problem. But we do not see that. We see everything but coal trucks….. unless people are transporting coal illegally in their cars. 😉
The idea that coal trucks made the traffic jam is a product of bias in the media. That bias is in the article.
I hope that finally gets the point across.
Amino Acids, I think you have about 23 comments on this thread. The only question mark in any of them regards the presence or absence of coal trucks in a recent traffic jam in Beijing. Here’s another link to reinforce my statement that there were a lot of coal trucks in the traffic jam and they are partially to blame for it:
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/coal-may-be-behind-chinas-monster-traffic-jam/19607142
If there are other issues you want me to address, would you kindly summarize them?
Thank you.
Amino Acids, should we quit growing cotton as well? It takes up land that could be used for growing food.
And Amino Acids, how would you propose to stop people from growing biofuels?
It is their property, their product, their choice on who to sell to, right? You would need government to stop it. Would that not pose an ethical dilemma for you?
Huh?
We need some southing Prozac spray at the door?
Let’s begin with the Nitrate and, then, the Carbon cycles.
For a start.
Tom Fuller says:{September 19, 2010 at 10:15 am}
“If a business can make more money by switching to cheaper natural gas than coal, why don’t they? Because the payback time and capital investment costs work against it. Using lower taxes on natural gas and higher taxes on coal is an attempt to change the balance of the equation without coercion.”
What you suggest is exactly coercion! You are correct about the payback time and capital investment costs. That is why the switch won’t happen without government coercion, and government has no place doing that. Leave business to business people.
We can debate political ideas from different sides of the isle, but my main objection to your posts are that you try to come across as a reasonable person who is somewhere in the middle when in reality you are just trying to create less resistance in order to infiltrate us with your government knows better ideals. Yes, your true spots are on display.
Tom Fuller writes:
“I am not trying to make anyone conform to my view.”
But in the article he states categorically:
“I’m a lukewarmer–and I’m right.”
In fact, Tom is wrong. His belief system has him convinced that a tiny trace gas essential to all life on Earth is going to cause runaway global warming, despite the complete lack of any convincing, real world, measurable evidence. His evidence-free belief is based on faith, not reason.
This entire article fails due to the lack of testable science. It is just an opinionated faith-based article laced with “what ifs”. After being shown conclusively by multiple commenters that Mr Fuller is wrong, he falls back onto the climate alarmists’ tired old appeal to authority — his own preposterous ‘authority’ in this instance, which is about as convincing as a Sociology major trying to explain calculus without ever having taken algebra.
The fact that the CAGW scare cannot pass the scientific method is enough to convince reasonable folks that the pseudo-science masquerading as the CO2=CAGW hypothesis is debunked. But Tom Fuller’s belief is based on “post-normal science,” which of course is not any closer to science than Scientology — and just as much of a scam.
Mr Fuller would do well to heed Dr Richard Lindzen’s prescient words:
Tom Fuller is doing his part to add to that hysterical panic — and the scientific method be damned.
Tom Fuller,
there are no photos in this one either.
Tom Fuller says:
September 19, 2010 at 11:53 am
Amino Acids, should we quit growing cotton as well? It takes up land that could be used for growing food.
Biofuels are not needed. Gasoline works fine. The price of gas would be much lower in the US if oil companies could freely drill for oil anywhere they could find it in Alaska. Biofuels would be priced off the market by a huge influx of gasoline if that could happen.
Complicating drilling for oil has made biofuels economically viable. ‘Global warming’ is not happening. The world needs food, not biofuels. The land that people are free to grow whatever they want on would be used to grow something other than crops for biofuels if gasoline was less expensive. They could not make money from biofuel crops then. The government would not be in what some could call an “ethical dilemma” then. The world can turn just fine without big government.
People know what to do on their own. They don’t need people who think they are smarter than them, who feel they are “right”, deciding (or is it called nudging?) for them.
Are there people deciding for you the things you do in life? Or do you feel there aren’t people smarter than you to be able to do that?
Tom Fuller says:
September 19, 2010 at 10:15 am
Using lower taxes on natural gas and higher taxes on coal is an attempt to change the balance of the equation without coercion.
You make an assumption: that things are not in balance.
This thread has arguments going in the same circle ‘global warming’ arguments end up going in. I see only more circles on the way.
So I’m out now.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
September 19, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Tom Fuller,
there are no photos in this one either.
———————————————————————————————-
Correction:
I went back to your link again and this time photos did open. They didn’t last time.
It is not apparent that those trucks are coal trucks, though some may be. There is increased commerce on the roads in China. But there is also an increase in all traffic. Roads are being upgraded. If America had a similar increase in commerce there would be traffic jams here too. But I’m sure they wouldn’t be like China. This is a new problem for the Chinese.
Highways through Arizona have very bad traffic jams at times from commerce.
Not all photos of the traffic jam have this many trucks in them.
Steven mosher says:]
Philip Thomas says:
“You did not comment on your financial interests in promoting green technology.
Your CV and past employment suggests work in the promotion of private green technology companies. Do you benefit financially from marketing green technology? Can I again raise my last question.”
****************************
Tom does market RESEARCH. sheesh do you even understand what that job is and how it differs from campaign marketing..
And I have to second Steven Mosher here. I’m an ARDENT SUPPORTER of alternative energy. I’ve bought damn near every alternative energy stock out there at one time or another as I’m a True Believer (and it’s cost me about $20,000 so far. Call it about $1000/year). But I can’t stop, so I try my best to just control the urge and channel it into small buys. I’ve been an advocate of solar, geothermal, wind, alcohol fuels, wave and tide, you name it since about 1973 (the Arab Oil Embargo years) when a friend and I converted a lawn mower to alcohol and I ran my VW on all sorts of odd things (including alcohols). Though in fact, the interest started earlier as in high school about 1968 I was playing with gasohol and alcohol blends in an old Ford Fairlane… but I digress…)
So on the face of it I ought to be an ardent AGW Advocate given my bias.
But an over riding fact is where facts and clean analysis lead me. And that is to say that the AGW thesis lacks the quality data to support it. As much as I’d like to have a reason to push for my present stock holdings in OPTT (a wave generator company) and a couple of others including PSUD (an algae fuel company that’s cost me about $3000 so far as I lamely can’t bear to admit that its just not the right time and is likely to go bankrupt); the fact is that I buy those things as a TOY and for recreation. To “feel good”. So I budget it inside my gains on other things.
The simple fact is that a bias on one issue (alternative energy) is not enough to buy my soul on another (adherence to truth and numbers). I have to think the same is true of others as well.
Larry says: I don’t agree that there is a case to move away from fossil fuels without global warming. Government has a responsibility for regulating emissions (non c02 – real pollutants) but it also has a responsibility for energy supply. We have lots of coal and it only really makes sense for electricity generation.
Um,. couple of points. First off, what makes you think government has any responsibility for energy supply? Why can’t Exxon and Peabody Energy decide to produce oil and coal (respectively) and I can decide to buy it or not? WHY does government need to have a role at all? Look, I’m well schooled in economics (it was my major) and know almost all the ways markets can ‘go wrong’; but governments go wrong in so many larger and more catastrophic ways. Why would you ever want to give lawyers driven by avarice and greed (most of the politicians in the USA at least, are such) control over such a central issue?
Second minor point: A major use of coal is called ‘metallurgical ‘. It’s not just soft brown used for fuel, it’s also a chemical reagent used to reduce metals. There is no decent alternative. So to eschew coal is to also decide we don’t need steel and other metals. Think on that for just brief while as you look at your car, your furnace, and perhaps even your coffee thermos and your TV (metal circuits inside) while forming your answer on your computer… made with a host of metals…
wayne Job says: This week in our spring in australia has been real special 16c below normal in tropic climes, rain and snow and cold in temperate zones. Tasmania our southern island state just had their coldest days EVER, 140 kph wind, rain and snow all over, 18.4 Metre waves, for us no problem. How ever the largest storm noted in the southern ocean is descending with plunging temperatures on the poor old Kiwis, some what like the day after tomorrow. Either CO2 needs a minus sign in front of it or it is the sun playing its normal game and those sucked in to the AGW nonsense are the pawns.
The time for fence sitting has lapsed, if the politicians decide that increased power supplies are a no no, buy a chain saw and start harvesting a real renewable resource.
Old Sol is a worry at the moment, for history shows when Sol slumbers the earth tremors, volcanos awaken, our magnet field has a funk and the outer atmosphere behaves badly giving less protection from space nasties. Sir it is time to get off the fence and take a good long look around. Chart the difference between advocacy, spin and real scientific knowledge, the fog will clear. Wayne
To all those who complimented me on my posting and clarity: I thank you and appreciate your compliments. Please look at what Wayne has said. He “has clue”…
Ric Werme says:
September 17, 2010 at 5:32 am (Edit)
RW says:
September 17, 2010 at 1:06 am
>“So I’m not a ‘denialist.’ I’m not a ‘skeptic.’ I’m a lukewarmer–and I’m right.”
>Even if you were right, that would be a grotesquely smug line. But you’re wrong.
I thought you got banned.
I suspect that even “banned” posters sometimes get through when the moderators get a particularly intense chuckle at what they say. At least, that’s what it looks like to me. But “I could be wrong”. ;-0
A very generous response, Tom: (Tom Fuller September 19, 2010 at 8:15 am: Roger Carr, okay, you can still call me young. Hope I’m writing as clearly as you when I have as much time in the saddle.) — Thanks!
Amino Acids in Meteorites says: If we don’t want the air we breathe to taste of China’s coal
You don’t really believe that the smell of Chinese coal power plants can cover the world—do you? That’s a serious question by the way, not sarcasm.
I can’t say where I saw it, as I was paying poor attention, but something like 1/4 or 1/3 of “stuff” in the air in California is from China as it drifts over the ocean that divides us…
Yes it does,
Biofuels Could Lead to Mass Hunger Deaths: U.N. Envoy (Reuters)
“…more and more sugar cane plantations in northern and eastern Brazil were being used for biofuels, leaving less land for subsistence farmers.”
Simple, remove the government mandates and subsidies,
Push Ethanol Off the Dole (Cato Institute)
Ethanol would not exist in the market without government intervention (mandates and subsidies) because it is a poor substitute for gasoline and diesel.
Tom I am still waiting on an answer,
Where is solar economically viable without government subsidies? That means cheaper than hydrocarbon or nuclear based electrical generation.
The problem here is that as demonstrated by some excellent physicists and mathemeticians over the last few years. The theoretical basis for 1 or 2C is demonstrably false. I realise this view is a “minority” one, even here on WUWT, but as a scientist myself, I perfer to listen to the laws of physics and thermodynamics over politics and spin.
The ‘greenhouse effect’ denies the basic laws of physics and thermodynamics, it is quite simply impossible! The sooner lukewarmers like yourself, Thomas wake up to this fact and stop denying the physics then the sooner we can defeat for once and for all the global warming bogeyman.
Really curious if this self-inflicted waterboarding technique is any better than shock theropy administered by professional sadists, seems it would only increase the level of schitz in your Cherri-O’s and make you more phrenic, that is it would if you really had a problem. Which I doubt. Life’s a beach.
Where are you getting these numbers? Projections continued off the EIA’s predictions to 2035 will only get you around 1,000 Quads.
Poptech said on September 20, 2010 at 12:48 am:
I’m not Tom, however…
Where remoteness renders solar as more attractive, when it isn’t otherwise the only choice. Far from power lines and grids, putting in a solar installation is a more economically viable solution than running the power lines to access the nuclear-based electricity. Where coal or petroleum-based fuels for use with a generator would have to be carried in or air dropped, and local biomass isn’t considered an available fuel, or again with the power lines when considering hydrocarbon-using power plants, then solar would likely be more economically viable.
Also, when done on a DIY basis and going off-grid, where having your own generator is locally frowned upon, solar is economically viable without government subsides. However this can quickly change depending on the level of regulation, which includes how far you are required to shift away from DIY. Going with factory-made panels instead of self-built can alone make the difference.
There are some circumstances where it does make sense. But far too few to matter, with circumstances that are extreme in their own ways.