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
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William says:
September 17, 2010 at 6:18 am
In addition to higher yield and faster growth rates, higher levels of CO2 enable plants to make more effective use of water.
————-
Pot experiments … but in reality rice yields are already decreasing:
“Scientists found that over the last 25 years, the growth in yields has fallen by 10-20% in some locations, as night-time temperatures have risen. The group of mainly US-based scientists studied records from 227 farms in six important rice-producing countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, India and China.
…
The latest data, by contrast, comes from working, fully-irrigated farms that grow “green revolution” crops, and span the rice-growing lands of Asia from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to the outskirts of Shanghai.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10918591
What about Thorium reactors?
anna v says:
September 17, 2010 at 9:14 am
Sometimes, less is more. Thank you for articulating so clearly what I attempted to do with my ramblings. Well done.
Tom Fuller says:
September 17, 2010 at 8:20 am
The problem with Anthony’s publishing schedule is that this post has attracted close to a hundred comments before I have finished my first cup of coffee. So I don’t know where to start.
Try with another cup of coffee !
BTW, It’s cool buddy!(*)
(*) just to avoid any possible retaliation 🙂
Mikael (post at 9:23 am)
You are wrong when you say rice yields are decreasing. See the below post for more on this
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/12/bbc-to-issue-correction-on-rice-yields-story/
Elizabeth says:
September 17, 2010 at 9:04 am
A need to be precise: You are right, these are common fools, not real crazy ones as we 🙂
Let’s see…
If it gets 3C warmer, we know a few things:
1) it will warm most at high latitudes (where it’s cold) and less at low latitudes (where it’s warm)
2) it will warm most in winter (when it’s cold) and less in summer (when it’s warm)
3) it will warm most at night (when it’s cold) and less in the day (when it’s warm)
4) rain will increase (I’m told) about 5%
So, we will have longer growing seasons, increased crop ranges and more rain and more CO2 fertilizer. Maybe it’s just me, I’m having a hard time gettin’ worked up.
The *consequences* of warming are the least understood of all the elements in the climate debated. Claims of storms, droughts, sea level, etc are nothing more than speculation. And yet, you speak of these with such certitude: “2 degrees of warming… will be a problem”. Moreover, you imply the consequences will somehow only visit the poor (pray tell, how does that work?).
The truth is: you have no idea if 2 or 3 degrees will be good or bad for humanity. None.
And that’s why, choose any label you prefer, you are wrong.
Not wanting to make my posts too long, I omitted the following on my post of 9:20 AM:
Thomas Fuller, I liked the core message you have put forward. It is time for folks in the middle of the road to defend their “lukewarmer” positions as being where we think the science actually is. People on both extremes have grabbed all the air time, but they frequently (not always) appear to be more political than scientific, meaning that they seem to me to be strongly defending one extreme or the other, rather than trying to get to what is the actual state of play.
For me, rather than try to decipher climate models or predict climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2, all I can do is look at the satellite record, which seems more reliable that the land based record, and look at the linear trend.
That trend about 1.4 degrees per century, give or take. It includes the slight downturn of the last 10 years, which may be the PDO downtrend, a bit less than halfway through. There are many factors which influence this trend, whether it is different aerosols or natural oscillations or GHGs or solar, and I can’t parse them all out. So when I look at the trend, it seems to me that for a doubling of CO2, we will likely be toward the bottom of the IPCC range of temperature increase. And that puts me in Roger Pielke Jr.’s camp, that it is better to wait until the alternatives are cheaper before we start large scale programs to replace today’s cheap energy sources.
One caveat: we haven’t heard much discussion of “peak oil” in these blogs. But suppose that the output of rapidly depleting older oil wells — the ones that where oil was easy and quick and inexpensive to find and produce — can barely be replaced by the much more expensive and time-consuming new sources, such as ultradeep offshore and tar sands. In this case, just to keep pace with today’s demands, we will have to have continually high oil prices to justify the costs of tar sands and ultradeep offshore, AND we will see higher prices to balance supply and demand as rapidly growing Chinese and Indian demand for oil put increasing pressure on supply and thus on price.
If “peak oil” comes to pass in the next five or so years, we may well see a drop in the CO2 growth rate, as countries like the US actually cut further back on gasoline use because of the cost of, say, $4 and then $5 per gallon gasoline.
There’s lots of stuff that don’t make it into the models that turn out to be quite important….”peak oil” could be one of them.
I apologize for the rant Mr. Fuller. I am an old guy who has seen his liberties eroded yearly and who, when science is discussed with the heavy hand of “We”, with all its governmental connotations mixed in, sometimes will have a tendency to use ridicule rather than diplomacy. I will try to be kinder in the future but I implore you to consider that the unit making up humanity is the individual acting in whatever way he considers best and that government interference in individual lives and in science and economics can only make things worse.
I would take the typical “warmers” much more seriously if it weren’t for their obsession with unworkable energy solutions. That for me is the touch-stone.
A large majority of the green movement rejects nuclear power and advocates “alternative” solutions that can never be used to power an industrial society.
Wind power for example in the form of windmills and sail for propelling ships has been known since the old egyptians.
They have been immediately replaced when more controllable solutions like steam engines and internal combustion engines became available.
And now they are considered “new”?
What none of these people accept is that especially electricity has to be produced exactly at the moment of consumption and precicesly match the consumption rate.
This just cannot be done with energy sources over which we don’t have control like wind and solar.
Trying to run a modern society with them is like trying to drive a car with no brakes and an accelerator pedal controlled by a frightened squirrel. The crash will not be far off. Basically suicide by stupidity.
I am personally against coal. Not because of CO2, but because of all the other nasty materials coal plants release in their ashes like mercury and heavy metals.
But the green movement has stopped the ONLY long term alternative, the development of nuclear energy, basically in its infancy.
The nuclear reactors we use today are expensive only because they are held at 1950s technology level and because of the large regulatory burden forced on them. If we compare the technology steps that happened for example in cell-phones, nuclear energy technology is artificially held at the level of WWII field radios, albeit with far far greater reliability (lower number of deaths/injuries per GWhr by far than any other known energy source).
But what we know in nuclear engineering today would allow us to build reactors that can utilize 100% of the uranium we have instead of 0.7%. We could build nuclear systems that use also Thorium instead of uranium. That that is 4 time more common in the earths crust than uranium.
And all that with “waste” that decays to harmlessness in a less than 300 years instead of millenia, and while doing that produce rare elements as decay products that are difficult to mine and find.
Even with todays technology know-how (not even counting on technical progress) we could supply an earth population of 9 billion with a larger energy supply than a typical American today enjoys for as long as the sun doesn’t go nova.
The FUD about nuclear power, produced by the same alarmists that want to shut western society down today, has held us back.
Instead we are wasting the world supply of rare and needed elements like Indium and Neodymium on unworkable “alternative” energy generators.
Indium is needed for transparent electrodes for solar panels, but also needed for displays.
Neodymium is needed for strong magnets, used in quantity in windmill generators, but is also needed for strong light magnets for electric car motors.
We like ducks……as canard a l’orange
Thomas Fuller
Thank you, once again, for your courteous response to my questions, which I hope do not come across as rude because, as you can tell, I am not much of a journalist. I am asking these questions because I honestly have suspicions about the recent lukewarm push on climate change and you are the only person who is open enough to be pressed on the matter.
If I may press further, I asked what your capacity was as a green technology advisor and generally about your financial interests in promoting green technologies, having pointed out that you have previously worked in that area.
“You have previously stated that you are not a scientist (it seems that you are a journalist and market analyst/salesman), which begs the question, why were you a green technology consultant to the UK Government? Was this in a capacity as a market research or salesman capacity?
This piece you have written today recommends our heavy investment in green technologies. Do you see a need to make your interests in green technologies, if you have any, explicit?”
You replied:
“My consulting with UK government was while I was with another company altogether. I have no ties with any government at all, have no business with any government currently (although I have one proposal outstanding with the public sector–but in an unrelated field).”
Was this another marketing company? Did your consulting involve marketing Climate Change or marketing green technology?
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.
“How can you satisfy me that your series of articles are not part of a new marketing campaign?”
For what it is worth, I think your article is a valuable contribution and summarizes quite well my own take on many of the issues discussed. Ultimately, I think the global warming debate comes down to what should we do and what can we do when faced with a great deal of uncertainty regarding the effects of CO2 emissions. I, like you, believe that CO2 sensitivity is likely in the low range of proposed forecasts, but I acknowledge that I could be wrong.
For many good reasons, however, totally apart from the climate controversy, it makes sense to move towards decarbonizing the economy, but at a deliberate pace that will not hamstring the economies of developed nations and condemn developing economies to perpetual poverty. In fact, we have no other choice but to proceed at a deliberate pace because we will never have a worldwide political consensus to substantially reduce economic growth, which is required to reduce CO2 emissions with existing technologies.
For some reason, many of the people most alarmed about global warming think that decarbonizing the economy will be relatively painless. I am almost certain that they are wrong. Although many developed nations in Europe like to talk the talk with respect to global warming, no one country is, in fact, making any significant progress towards reducing CO2 emissions.
Ultimately, the only way to decarbonize the economy of the world is to develop new technologies and improve upon exisiting ones. Whether this will occur, or even can occur, is an unknown. I do know that if one lived in the year 1900, it would have been impossible to predict where technology would take us by the year 2000. I am cautiosly optimistic that over the next 100 years similar types of changes will occur that may make this entire discussion moot.
Martin C says:
September 17, 2010 at 9:49 am
Mikael (post at 9:23 am)
You are wrong when you say rice yields are decreasing. See the below post for more on this
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/12/bbc-to-issue-correction-on-rice-yields-story/
———————
Thanks. You are right as far as the press release and BBC rendition
of it goes. But both are vague; I checked the article (abstract below),
it is in fact direct yield they are discussing; minus 300-350 kg/ha due
to Tmin, balanced by plus a 200 kg/ha due to Tmax., derived from a
multiple regression model of farm data (below).
So by sheer luck I was right, which is unsignificant. But, the implications
for SE Asia in a warming climate are not unsignificant.
ABSTRACT
Welch et al.: Rice yields in tropical/subtropical Asia exhibit large but opposing sensitivities to minimum and maximum temperatures).
Data from farmer-managed fields have not been used previously to disentangle
the impacts of daily minimum and maximum temperatures and solar radiation
on rice yields in tropical/subtropical Asia. We used a multiple regression model
to analyze data from 227 intensively managed irrigated rice farms in six
important rice-producing countries. The farm-level detail, observed over
multiple growing seasons, enabled us to construct farm-specific weather
variables, control for unobserved factors that either were unique to each
farm but did not vary over time or were common to all farms at a given site
but varied by season and year, and obtain more precise estimates by
including farm- and site-specific economic variables. Temperature and
radiation had statistically significant impacts during both the vegetative
and ripening phases of the rice plant. Higher minimum temperature reduced
yield, whereas higher maximum temperature raised it; radiation impact
varied by growth phase. Combined, these effects imply that yield at most
sites would have grown more rapidly during the high-yielding season but
less rapidly during the low-yielding season if observed temperature and
radiation trends at the end of the 20th century had not occurred, with
temperature trends being more influential. Looking ahead, they imply a
net negative impact on yield from moderate warming in coming decades.
Beyond that, the impact would likely become more negative, because
prior research indicates that the impact of maximum temperature
becomes negative at higher levels. Diurnal temperature variation
must be considered when investigating the impacts of climate change
on irrigated rice in Asia.
KLA :
Trying to run a modern society with them is like trying to drive a car with no brakes and an accelerator pedal controlled by a frightened squirrel. The crash will not be far off. Basically suicide by stupidity.
Blame Hanna-Barbera for creating “The Flintstones”, greenees took it as real (NASA included:their pebbles’ universe is a joke)
If all the energy devoted to climate change were devoted to reducing world populations, then it might achieve something really positive for the world. A population of say 3 billion would not need the energy that is required now and could probably be well fed when cooling comes along, either a mini ice age or the inevitiable return to the full ice age conditions.
The problem is that there are already far too many people on the Earth. The choice is between a good quality of life for humans or an exercise in how many people can the earth support before some natural event causes mass stavation with the deaths of billions.
hey Tom,
I’m glad to see you pick up the farmer in Iowa subsidizing the movie star in Malibu meme.
This debate is so polarized that people cant even agree on the simplest things.
A while back when Judith sent a bunch of us one of her articles to comment on, I asked everyone ( ya both the warmists and the skeptics) to look for the positions they could agree with rather than the positions they felt compelled to nit pick pick.
Not a single person could read Judy’s piece and leave the differences aside for another day. It’s the internet. And if you said the sky was blue some idjit would come along and question your definition of blue, or ask you to prove it to them, or argue that because you were a liberal the sky was red.
Anyways, I liked the piece. I would hope people could just focus on the “no regrets” decisions. what things can we do as individuals, towns, states, regions, countries, ( in that order) that we should be doing anyway.
Phil:
“But that’s okay because nobody has ever produced a model with a sensitivity of more than 1°C which has proved capable of forecasting future temperatures to a tolerable accuracy either.”
In fact, they have. Qualitatively and quantitatively, model predictions have been validated. They predicted stratospheric cooling, arctic amplification, faster warming night, and faster warming winters in response to greenhouse gas forcing, among many other things. They predicted the magnitude and duration of the post-Pinatubo cooling successfully. What’s the basis of your claim that they didn’t?
““We can’t make our models track historical temperatures without adding this CO2 fudge factor” does not constitute proof that it was CO2 what dunnit. Only that we really don’t understand climate at all.”
Fudge factor! Ha ha ha, that’s a good one. I suppose you could also say that no model can reproduce anything like our observed climate unless they include this “Sun” fudge factor. Greenhouse gases are as real as the Sun.
I see many, many people using this bizarre royal “we”, like you did in your last sentence. You meant “I”.
Elizabeth says:
September 17, 2010 at 9:04 am
Reply;
Schizophrenia is a diagnosis by exclusion, in other words if the Dr. you are seeing can not find a medication regime that fixes you, then you have Schizophrenia.
IF you have not been placed on the right family of anti depressants, and are having a lot of side effects from either being on the wrong medication for your case, or on a sub-therapeutic dose of the right medication this is the default diagnosis.
There are three main neurotransmitters in brain chemistry, epinephrine, dopamine and serotonin. You could have either low production, fast metabolism, or total lack of a regulation mechanism for any one, or as many as two of these, resulting in the need for the right specific medication to fix the resultant problem.
There is an even chance that your problem could be any of the three problems of level control, of any one of the three neurotransmitters. However the number of prescriptions (due to powerful lobbying and advertising campaigns) that are written for medications to fix dopamine regulation problems, is less than 3% of the total, although the chances of having a dopamine regulation problem is about 30%.
The high number of curable “Schizophrenia” patients (about 40% of the total mental health patient base) is more due to picking the wrong medication, sub therapeutic dose or, choosing a conflicting combination of medications, which produce the diagnosis of “untreatable Schizophrenia or schizo-effective disorder”.
The fact that this qualifies the patient to be eligible for permanent medical disability benefits from Medicaid and Medicare, does not seem to motivate providers to search much further for a cure for their locked in funding support.
They took it for more real than you think.
Seriously.
See this:
http://humancar.com/
US$15,500 for a prettied up toy. Something my kids got bored with when they were 5 or 6 years old. Only a greenee can think this is a good idea.
It shows that greens have brains like cheap denim jeans. Repeated (brain)washing shrinks them to uselessness.
Steven mosher says:
September 17, 2010 at 11:38 am
Maybe i’m a little sensitive, but i must say i find this contribution very offensive if not a little revealing.
It appears your flag is well-nailed to the mast.
tim
Tom
Another nice post. Thank you. You said;
“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.”
I think we can all agree that energy is important and it ‘makes sense’ to look to it as a means to bring us all together. It is the bedrock of our society and the west prospered because it was cheap, plentiful and secure(ish) due to it being within our own borders or from countries who subscribed to Pax Americana or Pax Britannia.
We are now in a new environment where there are different realities. Many countries who sell us energy frankly don’t like us and what we stand for, and are willing to see prices rise or to restrict supplies if it suits their agenda.
As a result energy is not only less secure, but it is much more expensive, thereby knocking away a large part of our industrial and social foundations.
I think we need to set out some realities;
1) We must have security with our energy supplies
2) We need a range of different types of energy sources that are appropriate to the teritory using them
3) They need to be cheap and plentiful
4) We have to take into account political realities, practicality, safety and environmental issues
5) We have to accept that fossil fuel is ultimately going to run out
So in the context of all the above- and the subsets that arise from them- having home grown energy makes perfect sense, but can it match the various criteria we need to then apply? Thats a tall order.
In the UK -as an example- we have masses of domestic coal but politically it is not acceptable to use it. Our nuclear power stations are being decomissioned as they go past their design life, but ideologically sucessive govts have been unwilling to embrace the technology again. We are climatically unsuited to large scale solar power and have limited supplies of hydro power. We are the windiest country in Europe but if this resource is used you immediately run into serious cost considerations-it is outrageously inefficient and eye wateringly expensive- and becomes even more so if you move it offshore to try to damp down increasing environmental concerns . We are an island and could power the entire country with wind and wave, but the reality is that we are at the very beginning of that technology, which is up to 20 years behind wind power.
Legally we have to produce 20% of our power through renewables by 2020 and the only game in town is wind, which can’t hope to achieve this aim without bankrupting the country or causing a massive outcry over the large scale installations that will damage our landscapes and lie idle for large parts of the winter when the wind doesn’t blow.
So, Tom Fuller we have an area -energy-where sceptics, lukewarmers or full blown warmists could come together but instead -certainly in our case- a totally unsuitable and expensive way forward is being imposed on us -through carbon scaremongering-which will inevitably lead to a power shortage a little way down the road.
Assuming that politically the West are unlikely to go down the carbon route again, that leaves us all in a pretty pickle as we will be denied access to the very stuff that has fuelled our indistries for 200 years-cheap, plentiful, reliable, energy.
My solution? It is in ALL our interests to put the search for ‘acceptable’ energy on the same basis as the Apollo programme all those years ago and use our resources-money and brains- to develop a range of practical technologies that will deliver a solution to our energy needs within 10 years. That might be new energy sources, or refinenement of existing ones. My own favourites?
Wave/wind -but obviously not suited to all countries as a coastline is rather essential
Heat pumps
Solar-in the right places
Fusion. More info here: focusfusion.org . Technical reports page here: http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/category/C30/
We have lots of unfriendly states who control our energy sources. We are faced with continual price hikes. We are faced with the imposition of unsuitable and costly renewables. We are faced with the reality of controls on carbon. If the West is to prosper we need cheap, reliable, and secure power and need to use our best efforts to achieve that goal whilst we still have the means to do so.
Tonyb
Mr. Fuller,
I agree with your policy goals, but I disagree with your policy statement.
There is nothing whatsoever wrong with wanting alternative energy.
However, using a climate equivalent of a Reichstag fire (Al Gore, Jim Hansen) is not the correct path to go about it. For one thing, whatever the purported goal, the actual goal is empowermet.
Similarly using a climate equivalent of Pascal’s Wager is equally invalid. There are any number of real world issues which have far more measurable negative impact which a focus on a “lukewarm” preventative measure will eclipse.
If the goal is alternative energy, then so be it.
There are plenty of well understood paths to sensible adoption – none of them involve throwing massive sums of money to either assuage climate guilt via a post-modernist climate indulgence or a fear-mongering prevention of potential climate Armageddon.
A clear eyed focus on reducing the deficit, improving lives, decreasing poverty, or whatever via parity or cheaper alternative energy is more than sufficiently motivating given credible leaders.
No Regrets policy — I can live with that. I wonder how many remember that George Bush (the first) advocated that policy over twenty years ago. If you do remember, then you may recall how he was demonized for it — by the press, by activists, and by so-called scientists.
Some features of a no-regrets policy:
1. Fewer hurdles for nuclear power.
2. Allow new coal plants — they are less polluting than the ones they replace.
3. Conservation programs — especially where we can reduce the energy usage of welfare recipients for whom taxpayers pay the energy bills.
4. Support R&D for better efficiency in electric transmission.
A very short list, but these actions would increase standards of living, decrease pollution and decrease dependence on foreign oil. Most initiatives in the name of global warming have done the opposite so far.
Mr. Fuller is “firmly ambivalent”. Or you might say they he feels very strongly both ways. I will agree that on the finer issues there exists a degree of ambiguity, but on the “big picture” macroscopic scale this really is a dichotomous issue. We’re either wrecking the climate or we’re not. Sure…we might be having a very small, inconsequential influence, but we’re NOT destroying the climate. At least not by any metric available to us today short of vivid imagination.
What I find so fundamentally absurd is that warmists believe we have reached the pinnacle of technological innovation. I graduated from high school in 1975. In 1975 AT&T had no fear of something called cellular phone technology. In 1975 only a scant few geeks had computers in their homes (even hand held calculators were an expensive luxury). Today the modern household that doesn’t have at least one computer is an oddity and hand held calculators are so cheap you can buy one with full trig functions for under $10 (you couldn’t buy a good slide rule for under $10 in 1975). In 1975 the average vehicle got about 15 miles to the gallon (or less). The analog vinyl record album reigned supreme as a recording format and cassette tapes were just gaining popularity. Even answering machines were rare. By 1975 we had even stopped going to the moon and nobody yet knew what a VHS tape was. How far have we progressed in 35 years?
How many homes US homes today don’t have color TVs or microwave ovens? In the US how many people do you know that don’t have a cell phone, a computer, a microwave oven, a CD, DVD or MP3 player, a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner or a cordless phone? Compare this to 1920. How many folks had electricity or a home phone? When we examine the “AGW crisis” we tend to neglect the human capacity for innovation.
The person who invents utility storage of electricity will become wealthy beyond human comprehension. No “prize” is necessary. If it can be done it will be done. I’m quite sure it will happen. I just don’t know when. We could develop efficient thorium reactors tomorrow if there was a will. One thing is certain. Any government effort that retards the production and use of energy will have a negative effect on mankind.
We need to heed the “needs of the many” meme another posted earlier. We have some stargazers in my little community (perhaps as many as a hundred). These stargazers (I’m sure mostly retired or trust fund babies) successfully lobbied (or, more likely, took over) our local neighborhood government and outlawed functional outdoor lighting. I was forced to remove floodlights from my home that I only used when taking the trash to the curb because they violated the newly accepted “light pollution” provisions. Two years ago I tripped taking out my recycling in the dark, fell and broke a rib. This resulted in pain and discomfort for months. Why? So a minority of stargazers could have a “light unpolluted” night sky to view when they weren’t watching TV indoors. All I wanted is lighted safe passage just 40 yards to the curb once a week. But that was not to be allowed…no matter that is was my OWN property.
Energy takeovers are tyranny, pure and simple. There is no middle ground. This isn’t a struggle between science and “anti-science”, it’s a struggle between liberty and freedom over oppression and tyranny for the sake of the personal interests of a minority.