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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Tom Fuller says:
September 18, 2010 at 8:43 am
We don’t have an energy problem in the developed world–our population and economies are stable and we built the infrastructure over a century.
Are you sure?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4423456.stm
Mr. Shaw, I support those politicians despite my disagreement with many of their positions, not because of them. I have to take the bad with the good. Perhaps you Republicans are luckier with your choice of politicians…
“So an event such as a repeat of the Little Ice Age would not falsify CAGW?
That’s an interesting answer.
Anyone else like to venture an opinion?”
Everything is compatable with AGW, from sudden temperature rises to a new LIA. It’s all in the error bars, you see.
So nothing can ever falsify AGW.
Z, not sure what is encompassed when you say the known physics but as for the models 15 consecutive years of no ENSO adjusted warming will invalidate those at the 95% per NOAA State of the Climate 2008 BAMS
Tom, while most here criticize the scientific aspects of your opinions, I’m more concerned about what you think government should do even if your views are correct.
Government is police power. Period. We ought to be very careful what we decide we should force citizens to do (or not do). When you ask government to inact all manner of regulations to micro-manage this or that aspect of behavior that is not based in violence or fraud, you are asking for the worst kind of society we can possibly have: one riven by rules (i.e., laws) that someone in government has police power to enforce however they see fit (e.g., see the blog here about the Western Australia cattle rancher). Horrible situation that simply makes my case about giving the police (i.e., government) too broad a mandate to make rules/ laws.
If we need to reduce the emission of CO2, then by all means put a tax on it and let people figure out what to do. If this sounds like “cap and trade,” I would argue against that approach to taxing CO2. If one needs to phase in taxes for different types of CO2-emitting devices/ systems to allow an orderly re-distribution of capital investment, fine. Anything else, and you get an EPA, which once it goes beyond its brief to identify, fine, and remediate obvious pollution, becomes a police force with its own will. That’s why government bureaucracies like the EPA, established to deal with obvious externalities that a free market will struggle to price properly, are to be strongly limited in what they do.
Bottom line, my head spun in reading about all the micro-regulation you would want unleashed. Do you really believe government is/ can be a force for good? Never has been anywhere, anytime. It’s a force for keeping social order and cannot do well what you seem to be suggesting it should do.
Therefore, my objection is to your notions of political economy, not to your opinions about science (which, I will agree with some here, are questionable even before we get to the policy implications).
Ammonite says: “Whereas a molecule of CO2 stays in the atmosphere for ~100 years, water vapour is precipitated in the order of days or weeks. . . . Water vapour on its own has such a small residence time in the atmosphere that it is not self-sustaining.”
???? Please excuse my bluntness, but your response doesn’t make sense. Even in the driest climate location on earth the average yearly atmospheric concentration of water vapor is on the order of .03%. By comparison CO2 concentration is .0003% ! More importantly, in vast swaths across the tropics of the planet the annual average atmospheric concentrations of the water vapor are between 60-80%! Look at those order’s of magnitude carefully, sir. You seem to be confused about the contribution that any given molecule of a GHG has because of your emphasis on “residence time”. So what if a molecule of water cycles back to the ocean in days while a molecule of CO2 takes years to be “caught” by a plant to be converted to sugar, or dissolved into rain to be cycled back to the ocean. For every molecule of water that precipitates one has already evaporated somewhere else! Your right about one thing, the process is not self sustaining – it requires the SUN! On any given day the concentrations of each of these molecules is much more influence by the sun’s interaction with the ocean, than the sun’s interaction with the atmosphere! The very fact that a molecule of water has precipitated out of the atmosphere during a storm, to reenter the water cycle means it has given up a significant amount of “global warming” energy that hits the oceans on any given day, making it the most important GHG by far. Water is THE temperature buffering miracle molecule that has enable sustained life on this planet – as a gas, as a liquid and even as a solid (since it floats on its own liquid form). It’s heat buffering capacity far exceeds all other molecules (only surpassed by ammonia) and even metals! Without CO2 the earth would remain about the same temperature as long as the sun contributed the same amount of incident radiation on the oceans and magnetic storms didn’t adversely affect the amount of cloud precipitating ionization. Water vapor would just dominate even more over CO2’s tiny role. But without CO2 the planet would lose life sustaining green! Double, triple even quadruple CO2 concentration and the planet will just get greener – period! Temperatures will go up, temperatures will go down completely independent of CO2 concentration, or its residence time.
I can’t prove it, but I am in complete agreement with E.M.Smith and “savethesharks” Chris when I restate that in my opinion, the vast majority of CO2’s black body temperature (ie. GHG thermal energy storing capacity) in the atmosphere is not caused by IR illumination from the surface, but instead by collisions with the much more abundant water vapor molecules and other non GHG molecules in the atmosphere – the dominant heat transfer mechanism in the atmosphere is not irradiative it is CONVECTIVE! (It’s pretty easy for me to just look at the gas burner on my stove vs the black body radiating coils in my toaster oven to realize that it takes one heck of lot more energy in the black body radiator (my toaster) to create sufficient irradiative heat to toast my bread than it takes to utilize highly effective convection, from the highly kinetic energy in the CO2 and water vapor coming off the burner of my stove. In no time at all my toast is on fire! on the stove, and very little of the energy transfer was caused by the radiation coming off the flames. It is nearly all caused by the very highly kinetic molecules that resulted from the combustion, convectively rising, causing significant numbers of molecular collisions, trying to give up their kinetic energy to reach equilibrium with the bread and the other gas molecules around them!)
That was what was behind my original questions. I am wondering if anyone has measured the IR black body irradiative signature of CO2 and Water Vapor from space – taken a series of 2 dimensional “pictures” in the IR spectral ranges characteristic of CO2 and water vapors peak extinction coefficients, to illustrate the convective flows of energy that are caused by water vapor’s movement from liquid to gas and back to liquid.
Hi JP Miller,
Well, I agree with you insofar as if and when we need to put a price on carbon that a carbon tax is the best way to go. I’ve written that many times, and have even gone so far as to suggest starting at a low $12 / ton of CO2 and revisit it every decade to see if we either need to keep it at all or stay the same or increase it.
I would also be very pleased if the money collected was refunded through rebates on employment taxes.
As for the broader question of government, I think your question is too general for me to answer it. There are many places in this world that desperately need good government–some in the developing world, where red tape needs to be cut and bureaucracy and corruption eliminated. Today I think I would include Australia, after what happened to the Thomsons.
It’s not that we liberals all love government, you know. For me and those like me, it’s because we care about people that only government can help.
Many alternative energy advocates write long reports about it, it does not mean they have any remote understanding of what they are talking about. I listed three major books on the subject and asked if you had read any of them, no answer. Here is the most recent again,
Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future
Have you read it?
All forms of alternative energy are not economically viable and do not have the power density necessary to replace hydrocarbon and nuclear energy.
The only viable forms of energy are:
Oil
Coal
Natural Gas
Nuclear
Hydroelectric
Everything else is an emotional pipedream,
Five myths about green energy (The Washington Post)
The Real Problem With Renewables (Hint: It’s physics) (Forbes)
There is no one that ‘only government can help’.
===============
SEN GORE AND FAMILY–
“For decades, Sen Gore, Sr., young
Al Gore’s Dad and then Al Gore, Jr.,
as Rep., Senator and Vice President
have been the “go to” politicians
for political issues related to
the US nuclear weapons
programs’ nitty gritty problems”–
And he helped create agw as the counterweight
to distract from and legitimize the nuke
pollution-genocide industry.
http://redactednews.blogspot.com/2010/09/911-global-warming-and-other-crimes.html
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/04/after-getting-bailed-out-by-american.html
leaky yankee nuke pipes
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/228057
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/224327
NUKES COST 4 TIMES COAL
http://notsylvia.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/the-origins-of-the-global-warming-scare-2
trillion dollar loan guarantee to nuke industry
http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/alexander-webb-bill.pdf
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/look-out-for-the-nuclear-bomb-coming-with-your-electric-bill/
http://indymedia.org.nz/article/77839/uranium-dust-gore
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/polluted-by-profit-johann-hari-on-the-real-climategate-1978770.html
http://www.alternet.org/environment/146813/how_global_warming_and_capitalism_are_deeply_intertwined_?page=entire
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18951
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/2009/12/03/theres-more-to-climate-fraud-than-just-tax-hikes/
http://nuclear-news.net/2009/06/05/is-nuclear-a-green-fuel-%C2%AB-voices-from-ghana/
http://nuclear-news.net/
http://nuclear-news.net/2009/05/06/former-federal-regulator-plans-for-fermi-3-nuclear-reactor-could-lead-to-job-loss/
http://arizona.indymedia.org/news/2009/10/74943.php
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2010/06/popcorn-and-beans-depleted-uranium-and-raytheon
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2010/07/racism-irony-and-censorship-trademarks-us-media
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5598
http://seekingalpha.com/article/158542-what-s-good-for-ge-is-good-for-america
http://junkscience.com/oct07/al_gore.html
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/How-GE-puts-the-government-to-work-for-GE-8154266-54820577.html
http://www.ge-energy.com/prod_serv/products/nuclear_energy/en/new_reactors.htm
http://www.ge-energy.com/prod_serv/products/nuclear_energy/en/index.htm
Clearly the IPCC theories are defective. We should not spend trillions until theories are developed which can actually predict future climate. Crippling life-saving economic development is insane.
1. There has only been 1/2 degree F of warming in 150 years. IPCC and GISS reports of 1.2 F are BS based on cherry picking warmer temp stations, and plentiful “adjustments”. Unadjusted data shows little change.
2. Warming is better for farming and biology of all types. CO2 is the ultimate plant food. The biosphere is extremely healthy and lush. All predictions of dire consequences have failed to come true.
3. Temperatures are stable to cooling, according to the best measurement systems – satellite temp measurements, and the ARGO ocean temp system. Only the highly compromised land-based temp stations are used to conclude warming is happening.
4. The IPCC theories of increasing humidity at 10k altitude are wrong, the humidity is decreasing. Same for their predictions of increased temp at altitude. Backwards. Their theory is kaput. There is no evidence that the “positive feedback” of warming is happening, or can happen. Positive, runaway feedbacks are extremely rare in nature.
5. There is a good chance that CO2 will not contribute any more to warming. The Miskolczi theory states that the atmosphere is fully saturated with the greenhouse effect, and that adding one greenhouse gas decreases the effect of another. The decreasing humidity at altitude is congruent with that theory.
6. The Sun has just finished a period of historically high sunspot activity. Fewer sunspots are predicted. That will mean more cosmic rays, more clouds, and thus cooling.
7. No IPCC model can explain the cessation of warming. None predicted it. Again, their theory is broken. Stop the rush to global governance based on broken “science” which is really nothing more than billion dollar video gaming.
So you have the magical ability to pick winners and losers? Must be nice to believe in your own magic powers. How come everytime the government has tried to dictate energy policy it has been a complete failure?
So without your “nudging” all the “clueless” energy companies will do what? Keep providing us with the most efficient and economically viable sources of energy?
I mean really, do you think energy companies are not using X,Y and Z energy sources because you have not talked them into it? ROFLMAO!!
Yeah right, the only reason we are not using Solar is because it is not subsidized and “pushed” enough, it has nothing to do with the economics or physics behind it, nothing to do with it being the most expensive way to generate electricity, nothing to do with it being unreliable or consuming enormous real estate. Please. Guess who holds the majority of the world’s reserves for the rare earth’s needed to make the panels? China. Get back to us when you have a remote understanding of energy.
Poptech, I’m a little confused. I live in Northern California and I’m pretty sure that all the electricity I use comes from geothermal. It’s viable and profitable for Pacific Gas and Electric and has been for quite a while.
As for solar, it is viable in certain locations right now and the extent of those locations seems certain to broaden in the very near future.
Brazil is doing quite well with ethanol, although attempts elsewhere to replicate Brazil’s success are not going as well. But Brazil is a huge country with a lot of people.
I must say your short list seems to be based on dogma not what is actually happening in the real world. 100 years ago everybody thought automobiles would be powered by bioufels, such as peanut oil. Who knows what’s going to happen over the next few decades?
C’mon, kim. It is probably true that people in desperate need could conceivably be helped by people and organisations that are not governmental. But in practice it doesn’t work that way.
OK, Tom, now that you’ve conceded my only point, can we talk about the default assumption that, practically speaking, only government can help some people. Got examples?
=================
This is an example of what I am talking about you not knowing anything about energy,
Nuclear is only expensive in terms of cost to build the plant, once you factor in operating costs is one of the cheapest and cheaper than all forms of alternative energy for electrical generation. It is far far cheaper to build Nuclear plants than miles upon miles of solar panels and wind turbines.
And it is a myth they are time consuming to build,
Modern Nuclear Reactors can be built in 3 years and last 60 years (Westinghouse)
Or better yet, Tom, let’s not talk about examples where only government can help some people. I’m glad to see you’ve backed off of touting wind power. Its fundamental problem is power density, as it is with solar.
====================
Tom Fuller says:
September 18, 2010 at 5:42 pm
“C’mon, kim. It is probably true that people in desperate need could conceivably be helped by people and organisations that are not governmental. But in practice it doesn’t work that way.”
How old are you? Not very, or else you have a bad memory. That’s the way it worked before LBJ’s “Great Society.” Churches, family, social organizations, and local government took care of those in need. All the federal government did by getting into the charity business was add overhead, bloat, and waste and create wards of the state, some of whom are now 5th generation.
If you were there, you don’t have to look it up.
P.S. Read the “Call to Action” Thompson thread and tell me who is helping and who is oppressing.
Tom Fuller says:
September 18, 2010 at 4:09 pm
“Hi JP Miller,
Well, I agree with you insofar as if and when we need to put a price on carbon that a carbon tax is the best way to go. I’ve written that many times, and have even gone so far as to suggest starting at a low $12 / ton of CO2 and revisit it every decade to see if we either need to keep it at all or stay the same or increase it.
I would also be very pleased if the money collected was refunded through rebates on employment taxes.”
Think about what you just wrote. That’s nuts! Take money out of your left pocket. Put the money back into your right pocket. Oh wait… there’s a government rake somewhere between the left and right pocket. And after a while, let’s all just forget about any being left to put in your right pocket.
Tom, Geothermal is geographically an[d] economically very restrictive, depending on the method used it can run as expensive as solar.
Where is solar economically viable without government subsidies? Where is it cheaper than Coal, Natural Gas and Nuclear?
I see you are repeating the Ethanol Myth about Brazil,
Brazil Energy Profile (EIA)
Brazil’s Energy Plan Examined (Washington Times)
The Myth of Brazil’s Ethanol Success (Energy Tribune)
Brazil is the 7th largest oil consumer in the world (EIA)
Ethanol has been debunked as not viable,
Myth: Ethanol is Great (Video) (5min) (ABC News)
H.R., it’s actually not a bad idea. Raise taxes from zero to $12/ton on something people like me would ideally like to see less of, and lower taxes by an equivalent amount on labor, something we would dearly like to see more of.
The administration of labor taxes already exists. I doubt if the administration of a carbon tax would be very expensive–apart from income tax, this country at least does not spend too much on collecting taxes.
Poptech, I’m very familiar with the EIA profile of Brazil. The other two stories you link to are not really relevant. Both the Times and Energy Tribune make the case that the United States cannot blindly follow Brazil’s path to ethanol glory. And that’s true.
But it certainly works for Brazil. They get 20% of their transportation fuel from it, it’s cheaper than oil, and they like it.
We are not Brazil. Our current ethanol is not really a good solution–it takes too much energy to make it, not to mention too much water to grow it, but it certainly is effective for Brazil, IMO.
Susan Young says:
September 18, 2010 at 12:43 am
I hope your knowledge of climate science is greater than your knowledge of mental health.
From reading his comments you can see it is not.
Tom Fuller says:
September 18, 2010 at 5:40 pm
Brazil is doing quite well with ethanol,
There are people starving to death because of biofuel programs Tom. Do you care about that?
Tom Fuller says:
September 18, 2010 at 8:43 am
I’ve seen Spencer’s recent work, and they are promising–but let’s wait and see.
Roy Spencer’s work shows strong negative feedback from H2O. You believe conclusively that CO2 will cause global warming. Yet there are still no data in the real world that show CO2 causes the warming that you are finding to be a problem. You base your beliefs on climate models, apparently. But Roy Spencer’s work is based on data from the real world.
Why aren’t aren’t you convinced by data?
You say let’s wait and see about his work. But we have been waiting to see about the global warming hypothesis for 22 years and the predictions it makes are not happening. So apparently waiting and seeing is not really what you are all about.
You are seeing what you want to see, not what the real world is showing, ex: the photos of the traffic jam that do not show any coal trucks but you say they are there anyway.