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
If you want to be a scientist, you’ll better remove the ‘belief’ verb from your vocabulary. Whether the sensitivity of earth’s atmosphere to varying concentrations of CO2 is known or not is not a matter of belief. It is an empirical problem that has to be solved by experimentation, and no computer is going to give you the answer. You need to make real experiments in real world.
And, by the way, we don’t know either if that sensitivity ‘constant’ is actually a constant or not. You might prove that in a confined space that the radiation some gases adsorb is proportional to the (log) of their concentrations, but this doesn’t mean they are going to behave the same way in an open atmosphere.
Think about gravity. We know that any object falls in vacuum at a constant acceleration (g) but that doesn’t mean that any object falls in an atmosphere at a constant acceleration. There is a negative feedback (air resistance) that prevents the object from falling at constant acceleration. That’s the starting point of aerodynamics.
If we don’t know how much the sensibility is at the current CO2 concentration, or at any concentration for that matter, little can we say about this parameter being constant or not.
RW makes a cogent argument: “No-one has ever produced a model with a sensitivity of 1°C or less that can reproduce the recent rise in global temperatures as well as reproducing historical and geological temperatures to a tolerable accuracy.”
The probable reason that that hasn’t been done is that it’s not possible to do so with a physics based model. Good luck trying to explain the amplitude of past temperature changes with such a low sensitivity. I’ll be all ears if and when someone can (without invoking a deus ex machina of one sort or the other).
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2006/03/climate-sensitivity-is-3c.html
The article and several commentators appear fixated on CO2 apparently because of the constant propaganda. Yet the IPCC has made some serious scientific mistakes.
1. The models assume imaginary [an error in the physics, see later] ‘cloud albedo effect’ cooling. Taking average figures in AR4 [Figure 2.4], it’s 44% of AGW.
2. Real radiative greenhouse heating is c. 60 K: you lose 27 K by convection so you should scale radiative temperature rise to 60 K, not 33 K.
3. Since 1970, possibly 60% of temperature rise has been astrophysical.
So, the IPCC’s predicted 3 K central temperature rise for 2xCO2 may be c. 0.4 K.
You may ask “Where’s the missing AGW?”. The models assume as CO2 increases, so does the main greenhouse gas, water. But the evidence increasingly points the other way: upper troposphere water has been falling and that’s where radiation matters.
An ex-NASA physicist [Miskolczi] calculates this natural control system, which already stops us frying, exactly compensates for CO2 rise. So, why do I think there’s still AGW?
I have little doubt that pollution gives a heating ‘cloud albedo effect’. You get at it from physics ignored in the past. It’s in addition to the diffuse albedo and strongly dependent on droplet diameter. Because pollution reduces that diameter, the albedo of polluted clouds is significantly lower, so more solar energy reaches the Earth.
OK, it’s the reverse of what is assumed by the IPCC. But, look at NASA websites, e.g.: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Aerosols/. That ‘science’ is totally wrong, incompetence or deception. So there’s no cooling ‘cloud albedo effect’ for thick clouds. It’s the other way around and indistinguishable from CO2 warming.
Makes me think of the position of ‘realist’ or ‘neutrality’. Gets FLAK from absolutely everywhere 🙂
You might have to expand on your sentence “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.”
To make a statement like this you have to (a) state the initial concentration and (b) specify the shape of the relationship between CO2 and temperature, or the reverse if the physics act that way.
Re (a), a change from 2 ppm in air to 4 ppm in air will produce nothing like a 1 to 2 degrees C change in temp. When you talk doubling, you have to say ‘doubling from X ppm’ or similar. Then you get into difficult ground defining (a) if there was a constant pre-industrial level of CO2 (b) when post-industrial started and (c) what the pre-industrial level was, if it was indeed constant.
Re (b), some regard the relationship as exponential downwards. At “high” concentrations, the temp change is quite small for a doubling because the graph is levelling off to a fixed temperature asymptote.
I’m sure that you know these things, so I guess I’m quibbling about use of language. AFAIK, very few if any climate skeptics would accept the opening statement.
Thomas Fuller wrote:
That’s most commonly called a contradiction: Free markets that are regulated, lightly or noo, are not free. They’re “the other sort.”
Thomas Fuller wrote:
Not about free market, you’re not.
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. At some point there will be a replacement, but it isn’t now. Can you think of nothing better to use tax dollars on than an arbitrary attempt to choose fuel sources?
Anyone who says ‘I’m right’ in an argument is likely to be wrong.
No one knows what the climate will be in fifty years. Bearing in mind the complete lack of evidence to support AGW – and strong evidence that contradicts it, e.g. Richard Lindzen – then there’s a good chance that the climate will be colder.
A thousand years ago – and two thousand years ago – the world was probably warmer than today. In both these periods mankind prospered. And not a single SUV in sight.
Until there is real scientific proof for AGW that would stand up in a court of law, then the most likely situation is that the warming was natural and will come to an end. That may already be happening, but we can’t be sure for some years to come.
Unlike Fuller, I am Wright – and I can prove it!
Chris
As a Buddhist I see many virtues in the middle path, and I believe we can indeed take many “no regret” actions, even if not motivated by deep believe in Global Climatic Disruption.
Micro generation is one way to go that I believe has a lot of potential. I have installed solar panels to heat water that heats my house when it is cold an sunny, and electricity warms that water when it is raining. I am highly skeptical of CAGW, but I think oil & coal is not the best way to have energy.
If I could generate 4 Mega Watts at home for my home I would be energy independent. One option are solar panels, but they are still to expensive and only work 100% during daytime and when it is sunny, wind power is a nice complement and many of my neighbours have installed 1-2 MW wind turbines, but they are a bit noisy. Where I live, Portugal, it is now cheaper to go energy independent than to connect a remote home to the power grid or water grid, many farmers are installing wind turbines and solar panels (thermal and photovoltaic) as a way to go independent. Also small water turbines can be installed in small rivers, with very litle impact in the river itself,
This means that the power grid is alliviated from a lot of stress, less coal is burned, and less governmental investment is needed to build big scale power sources. So micro-generation of energy may be a way to smoothly divert power sources from coal & oil to renewable sources. The main obstacle seems to be financial, because most investment would be done by individuals.
Stefan says:
September 17, 2010 at 1:42 am
“That’s the biggest criticism perhaps of the environmentalists. They are doom obsessed, guilty, self-denying, boring, humourless people lacking imagination. But they seem to believe they have a handle on the “reality” of 2050.”
———————
Take away the words ‘self denying’ & ‘guilty’ (you probably mean: guiltiful,
feeling guilty?) – and that characterisation could fit sceptics rather well:
– my tax money (boring)
– climate policy: taxes will quadruple and the economy will be destroyed
(doom obsessed)
– only fossil fuels work (lack of imagination)
– take Monckton et al seriously (humourless)
but they seem to believe they have a handle on the “reality” of 2050?
Despite debate about the details of his post, Thomas Fuller raises some important points. The world population is growing and energy use is growing faster. Coal and oil may currently be the most economical energy sources but there are alternative sources that are not pie in the sky or windmills in the sea.
His “panel of experts” and his list of alternative energy sources seem to me to be pretty good places to start. I’ll admit to being a skeptic. But that doesn’t stop me from worrying about a future dependent on coal and oil. Let us not bankrupt our current economy with fanciful fixes. Let us instead reduce regulatory burdens on the pursuit of alternative energy sources (such as nuclear) and give incentives (such as prizes) for R&D on practical and economic ways to reduce dependence on coal and oil.
I would hate to interfere with the debate about CO2. It is a lot of fun. But it should not be a distraction from the effort to find and exploit better ways to deliver energy to the world’s population.
“….If you believe that about 2 degrees of warming is headed our way this century, it will be a problem…” Thomas Fuller.
If about 2 degrees of warming is headed our way this century, then it had better get a move on http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/trend.
“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.”
Is it not obvious that the technology then will be vastly superiour to the technology now? I find it incredible that anybody can think that 65 years from now the human race is going to be worrying about power unless we do something now. I also find it incredible that anybody can think that governments are capable of identifying the technology that we will want to use 65 years from now and will be effective at giving them a push – which will still give them an advantage 65 years from now. 5 years maybe, 10 unlikely, 65? The energy landscape will be unrecognisable by then.
Solar has had a huge push in the last 10 years from governments around the globe. Have you noticed an increase in the rate of increase of efficiency of solar panels – or a surge on the path to cost effectiveness? I think the market is big enough that it will increase at a natural pace, and you may as well flush your investment money down the toilet – except it isn’t your money it is taxpayers money. It used to be that the first rule of the precautionalry principle was to do no harm, now it seems the precautionary principle is to spend as much taxpayer money as possible – just in case.
With an as yet undetermined appendage Fuller writes:
Richard S. Lindzen
Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and ClimateMassachusetts Institute of Technology:
Fourth International Conference on Climate Change
Heartland Institute
May 16, 2010
“2. If one assumes all warming over the past century is due to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, then the derived sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C.”
Now you know, Fuller. Write it down so I don’t have to correct you ad infinitum.
You write “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.”
I am not sure if I qualify as a “skeptical scientist”, but I do not accept this. I have two objections. On a general principle basis, I do not believe that you can assess the effect of doubling CO2, without looking at all four ways that energy is transferred in the atmosphere. Radiative forcing is estimated from radiative transfer models. The estimation of 1.2 C is based on the change in radiative forcing, and the use of the Stefan Boltzmann 4th Power law (SB). This strikes me as nonsense.
From what I can see, the use of SB assumes that all the energy that is radiated into space comes directly from the surface of the earth. If so, then this is just plain wrong. What you need to do is to use SB to estimate the change in temperature from those places where energy is being radiated into space – eg the TOA -, and then estimate how much difference this makes to the temperature at the surface. No one knows how to do this.
Just my 10 cents. I would be delighted if someone could tell me where my reasoning is wrong.
“Behold the man!”
Just be yourself. That’s enough. Infact, that’s everything.
If we win, we win. If we don’t, we don’t.
Say, ‘La Vie’!
Welcome to the club
Dear Thomas Fuller,
You wrote:
“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.”
I would encourage you to do a little more diligent research in this area. It is basic Meteorology 101. As the earth warms, the temperature difference between the poles and the equator lessens, and thus the thermodynamic driving force for storms diminishes. It is, as you say, basic physics. However, unlike the “basic physics” of CO2 induced warming, this physics is not supported by the computer programs. Rather, it is supported by all of the historical literature.
It is fascinating to read books on The Little Ice Age, and how weather influenced the course of history. I can’t remember the author off the top of my head, but there is a good book that outlines all the terrible droughts, floods, and disasters around the world when it was cooler, and how the climate stabilized when the world warmed. Of course, the Author then proceeds, at the end of the book, to pronounce that this means we should be even more careful to stop CO2 production and that the climate is more sensitive to small temperature changes than we think. A strange conclusion to say the least, but the author seemed to not notice this disconnect in logic.
Throughout longer time scales, there is (I hate to say it) nearly “settled science” that when the earth is cooler, the earth is much more extreme, much drier, and much windier. If you are interested in the mechanisms for this, as well as all the geological evidence that supports this, then I would recommend “Frozen Earth” by the geologist Douglass McDougal. Again, he is not a skeptic, in fact, he asserts that we should be concerned with climate change. He merely presents what we know about past climate and how we know it.
You seem like a fellow who is very fascinated by these topics and I am sure you would get much enjoyment from digging in and doing a little research.
Cheers!
Fred
ps. You might also want to check up on how much temp will rise with a doubling of CO2 from 300 ppm to 600 ppm. You will be surprised how much the answer differs from the numbers you posted.
Rob Vermeulen says:
September 17, 2010 at 12:34 am
Mmm I think you mean “dissociative identity disorder” and not “schizophrenia”.
Love that term!!!
Hi, I suffer from “DID”, the world is wrong and I am right.
“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”
Aren’t they climate scientists? I thought you were already happy that co2 was the cause. What have climate scientists got to do with finding a cost effective solution? That sounds like an entirely unrelated discipline to me….
Mmmpf. Coal has three real problems, none of which have anything to do with CO2:
* Mining safety;
* Environmental degradation by mining; and
* Air pollution with sulfur and nitrogen compounds.
The third is pretty much resolved in the developed world. The first two remain problems in the US and are horrendous in the Third World.
Coal is not going away, particularly if the masses of Africa are to be lifted from their poverty. Can you imagine what progress might have been made in these areas if $100 billion had been spent addressing these issues over the last two decades instead of delusionally chasing the Global Warming Fairy?
If you have valid concerns about the biased IPCC and their global warming hysteria lacking in hard evidence you should check out these amazing new IPCC reform suggestions, these should be implemented immediately. lets stop those AGW alarmists!
http://openparachute.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/putting-the-ipcc-in-its-place/
A reasonable course of action would be to put money into research for alternative energy sources and data collection. There is a no regrets policy to increasing knowledge. To tax our carbon use so we can send our jobs to China while at the same time borrowing money from China to send to China because elements of the population think we owe them for one reason or another, that is just pure insanity. Paleo data is an interesting argument but it isn’t a logical one. If you are failing to accurately explain what is happening in the present what makes you believe you are accurately explaining the past?
So the reasoning behind your actions would be: “Ah, these are just small changes. There might be a problem, there might not be a problem. In either case, these are just sensible things we should do anyway as they’ll likely make things better for a lot of people.”
By this thinking, the many “rich” nations have been brought to technical bankruptcy by increasing social spending. Guns were nearly banned from civilians in the US.
So the problem is Chinese coal and its dirty emissions? Employ the solution we have previously used, export our values to other countries as a requirement for accepting their imports. We don’t like child labor, we don’t import goods made with child labor. We’ve taken a similar albeit less strong stance towards environment degradation through toxic pollution. If you poison your people to give us a low bid, don’t expect a warm reception from our buyers as they don’t want to anger their customers.
Dirty inefficient power plants are the problem? Then we insist the offending country use cleaner energy sources to produce and transport the goods they send us, which must be verified. And no proclaiming those goods are in compliance while your figures consider the dirty sources to be only used residentially. We know better, we’ll be watching.
Promoting an ongoing series of small harmless changes that will likely do some good, is a long-used tactic of agenda-pushing activists as it garners the support of decent moral people who would strongly reject implementing the full agenda as a whole item. Thus such big plans are broken up into small easily-swallowed pieces, knowing the recipients will not notice the effects of the accumulating poison. On certain issues you must draw a hard line, no matter how heartless it may seem, since those who really do care are those employed to do the most damage.
The problem is not here, it is over there. So take your solutions over there, not here. On this matter, we have done enough. When they have done the same, and all have verifiable proof there is (still?) a problem that must be attended to, then we will consider acting together. But until then, “we” are not doing anything, especially not mandating by law that “we” do something. If individuals decide an action makes sense for them personally, then let them do it for themselves. As a group, the only “change” we should make is to insist others adhere to the standards we have set for ourselves as a condition of doing business with us, which isn’t a change at all since we already do so in other matters.
In Texas, wind power in reality deliver about 8% of its rated capacity.
Nuclear and coal deliver about 90%.
Let that sink in, and let rational people hold a brief period of mourning for the yet another alternative energy dream dying off.
Solar will never reach more than 50% under ideal circumstances for the obvious reason.
Geothermal could be a great source, but why has it not done so yet?
Nuclear has been crippled in the US and elsewhere by fanatical extremists who have high jacked the public policy on energy.
In the normal course of events. like in France, coal is a passing technology of development.
In developed countries where so-called greens dominate, the technologies are stuck on coal.
While I disagree with Tom, I would like to offer a possible clarification to settle the claim that CO2 is not a ghg due to a garden green house operating by trapping air under a roof: The term ‘green house’ is a loosely applied term. A green house, at its heart, is increasing temperatures higher than they would otherwise be. CO2 has the impact, all other things being equal, of increasing the amount of energy kept in the atmosphere.
The term ‘green house gas’ was in use long before promoters of climate catastrophe high jacked the public square.