While the latest IPCC working group III summary report has its share of gloom and doom and ridiculous edicts, it does have one redeeming quality as Josh points out.
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Gail Combs:
Sincere thanks for your post at April 15, 2014 at 4:44 am.
It makes one of the points in my post of 12:26 (i.e. four and a half hours ago) which is still awaiting moderation.
Richard
pat says:
April 14, 2014 at 6:13 pm
questions? why aren’t the CAGW NGOs screaming & yelling? why is the CAGW MSM virtually ignoring this?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Follow the money…
THE ORIGINS OF NGOs
Remember Maurice Strong, Chair of the First Earth Summit in 1972 that started CAGW? The guy who said “…current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class…are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns….” in his opening remarks at Earth Summit II in 1992.
In brief Maurice Strong worked in Saudi Arabia for a Rockefeller company, Caltex, in 1953. He left Caltex in 1954 to worked at high levels in banking and oil. By 1971, he served as a trustee for the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 1972 was Secretary-General of the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment. He was Co-founder of the WWF and Senior Advisor to the World Bank and the UN.
Strong’s early work with YMCA international “…may have been the genesis of Strong’s realization that NGOs (non-government organizations) provide an excellent way to use NGOs to couple the money from philanthropists and business with the objectives of government.”
sovereignty(DOT)net/p/sd/strong.html
Remember the Students for a Democratic Society on campus when you were in college?
Andy Hurley says: @ur momisugly April 15, 2014 at 2:06 am
Everyone seems to have missed the point ,that if we cannot use oil or coal, or nuclear or gas energy we could just stick with electricity!
>>>>>>>>>>>>
If that is sarcasm it helps to add /sarc to the end.
richardscourtney says… My comment at April 15, 2014 at 5:02 am also got booted into the ether. I have yet to figure out all the No-Nos of wordPress. (Only two links)
………..
My husband made a rather interesting comment. It seems the political left in the USA during the 1950s was very pro-nuclear and was complaining the “Capitalists’ were depriving the people of cheap energy. Too bad more people do not revert back to that way of thinking.
“davidmhoffer says:
April 14, 2014 at 2:39 pm
… the Russian bear has come out of hibernation and is carving off bits of Europe one piece at a time….”
How about a smidgin of historical perspective? The Crimea belonged to Russia from the time it was wrested away from the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century until Kruschchov unexpectedly and inexplicably gave it away to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in the 1950s, at a time when that was nothing but a symbolic gesture, since it remained in the USSR. Even Gorbachev has stated that the Crimea should never have been transferred to Ukraine, and properly belongs to Russia.
If you want to protest “carving up bits” of other nations’ territory , you needn’t look any further from home than Guantanamo.
Getting back to throwing greenies under the bus, here’s an alternative or secondary caption:
BUS-TED!
jauntycyclist says:
April 14, 2014 at 11:31 pm
forget energy the only solution for the deep ecologists is to wipe out humans on a massive scale with famine and pestilence. reduce humans reduce co2.
As the number of greens/alarmists dwindles to the radical subset that would rather humans didn’t exist at all, maybe they can be convinced that the easiest route to their goal is to let us devastate the human race by letting global warming proceed apace? (Of course, that devastation would never occur, but at least then maybe they’d leave us all alone for a time.)
If we are going to go to more nuclear,SMR’s may be the way to go. Greater flexibility, and much faster build times. The biggest hurdle for nuclear plants now are the huge capital costs which are further aggravated by lengthy construction times. With SMR’s, everything is modular, so limited need for on-site construction. They can be coupled with other energy sources, and/or additional SMR’s added later, as needed.
Roger Sowell wrote: “In my considered, engineering-based opinion, nuclear power is a danger and a threat to the economic well-being of electricity consumers. I have a special place in my heart for the poor, the elderly, those on fixed incomes, and those who barely scrape by month to month or even week to week.
++++++++++
If you really do, then you would not be for wind power which makes everyone’s energy cost more. They raise grid prices. And the more wind power you have, the more the problem of needing 100% backup is needed. Again – go look at Denmark, who’ve tried your experiment. They can no longer afford their wind energy… and they’ve succeeding as you would have had them.
And – don’t use the word engineering, as it seems to imply you understand engineering principles. Wind generation does not provide low cost energy, so you’re way off here.
After reading the back and forth on nuclear, Mr. Hoffer’s comment about getting out of the way and just letting the free market work made the most sense of all.
As long as the externalities are covered by legislation, such as making provisions for waste disposal and eventual site clean-up, market pricing will settle most of these arguments.
By the way, are the growing number of windmill and solar farms required to set aside funds for eventual maintenance and/or removal of the equipment? Are they even legally on the hook for site cleanup if the projects are eventually abandoned, whether they set aside funds or not? My guess is that they’re not, given the political favoritism they receive.
Roger Sowell says;
Here is the ultimate fact, as I stated above. If nuclear power is so great, why does it still generate only 11 percent of the entire world’s electrical power
You of course have no answer for that.
+++++++
Riddle me this. What’s the percentage of world energy that is generated by wind? Do you have an answer for that?
The IPCC is finally starting to do what my mother always told me – “Eat your Greens”
@saltspringson
LOL! Ewwww! LOL
Mac the Knife says:
April 14, 2014 at 8:23 pm
…
MattS says:
April 14, 2014 at 2:39 pm
I am in southern Wisconsin. It is currently half past April and I have 34 degrees F and it’s snowing. Forecast for tonight is a low of 20 degrees F. Where is all that global warming I was promised? I want my global warming back!
Felix thinks ‘conservatives’ are in denial about AGW while every day folks like MattS all across the whole damn state of Wisconsin and all of Canada are still experiencing winter weather in the middle of April! Now, we all know that Wisconsin has folks from every persuasion of economic, political, religious, philosophical, gender, and sexual orientation but they all need do no more than look at the outdoor thermometer and out the window to know spring is late this year. In many areas across the state, the frost was 4 feet deep and more and still has not thawed completely, a result of a deep and difficult winter. Felix thinks the entire population of Wisconsin and their thermometers andtheir still frozen ground are conservatives in denial.
============================================================================
Mac,
Here is a little more perspective for my area from:
http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/united-states/us
Temps are in degrees F and are monthly averages
Month 2014 Normal
Jan 14.8 23
Feb 17 27
Mar 20.9 36
There is a trend there and it’s pretty ugly. we are averaging 11 degrees below normal for YTD
Normal for July and August is 71. If things don’t start warming up more, I’m not going to need my AC this year.
Anyone who doesn’t think global warming is a good thing should be required to spend a year or two living in northern Alaska without electricity.
Calm down everyone LENR will deliver unlimited cheap power real soon now. (sarc)
Roger Sowell says:
April 14, 2014 at 7:00 pm
“They are not safe, either, even though the industry tells everyone lie after lie that the plants are safe. Each radiation release (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima) is waved away as “a fluke, other plants are safe” yet another one melts down a few years later. ”
—————–
Yup, and traveling by railroad passenger trains in the late 19th and early 20th Century was highly dangerous to one’s life expectancy.
And your problem with the following is what, to wit:
“The U.S. Navy has accumulated over 5,400 “reactor years” of accident-free experience, and operates more than 80 nuclear-powered ships”
===============
Roger Sowell says:
April 14, 2014 at 9:27 pm
“Here is the ultimate fact, as I stated above. If nuclear power is so great, why does it still generate only 11 percent of the entire world’s electrical power (IEA statistics, from 2013 Outlook, for 2011) even after 50 or more years of desperately trying to break into the market? Even with huge subsidies, and laws protecting the plants against lawsuits.”
—————
Don’t be talking silly with such tripe n’ piffle.
Power generating companies don’t have to “break into any market” ….. because they have a monopoly on the market they are currently providing power to.
And talking about “years of desperately trying”, …… try this one for duration, to wit:
The construction of Corridor H, a part of the Interstate Highway System from Weston, W.Va. to Strasburg, Virginia, was begun in 1965 and has yet to be completed. That is 49 years and still fighting lawsuits to prevent its completion.
Reference source: http://www.corridorh2020.com/History.html
– – – – – – – – – –
Rod Everson & davidmhoffer,
Free market philosophies faded in the US necessarily with the fading of the concept of the necessity of natural human progress through individual exercise of reason.
In the 200+ years leading up to ~1963 there was a culturally dominate idea that human progress through individual pursuit of science and technology was inevitable.
The question is, does a resurgence of that idea seem to be occurring in the early 21st century?
I think there is cause for optimism that it is occurring.
John
Travis Casey says:
April 14, 2014 at 3:00 pm
“Isn’t this what Prof. Muller is on record as saying? GHE is real and there is real warming. The best solutions involve conservation and cleaner sources of fuel including natural gas through fracking and additional nuclear power plants.”
There has been NO warming for 17 years+. What is so difficult about that sentence to understand?
Paul Westhaver says:
April 14, 2014 at 7:02 pm
I am a no-longer-practicing nuclear core cooling engineer.
CANDU reactors (Deuterium, heavy water) are very safe, very low emission.
Nuclear power is awesome.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Paul while I like nuclear power I do fear Fukushima type events. I’ve read a large solar storm “might” take out electrical power on a continental scale, thus making it nearly impossible to maintain cooling. 1) This is true? And if so 2) Are there any (cost effective) designs that mitigate the cooling problem. Thanks to any/all that address my concerns with nuclear power.
otropogo says:
April 15, 2014 at 5:47 am
“davidmhoffer says:
April 14, 2014 at 2:39 pm
… the Russian bear has come out of hibernation and is carving off bits of Europe one piece at a time….”
How about a smidgin of historical perspective? The Crimea belonged to Russia from the time it was wrested away from the Ottoman Empire
>>>>>>>>>>>>
If you believe that Crimea is anything but a small step in a larger picture, you are free to revel in your naivete.
richardscourtney;
Russia sees this as a direct military threat which could become a future military danger and – predictably – has acted to negate the threat.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I agree, that’s how they perceive it, but they also perceive an opportunity and they are taking advantage of it. It isn’t just the Ukraine that they have their designs on. They’ve successfully protected Syria from action against them and enabled them to hang on to the bulk of their chemical weapons. They are circumventing the embargoes on Iran by purchasing their oil from them and reselling it as “Russian” oil. They’re very close to shoehorning Egypt out of the west’s sphere of influence and into theirs. Saudi Arabia may very well be next. (That said, Egypt and and Saudi Arabia haven’t so much been wooed by Russia as they have been shoved away by Obama’s mind bogglingly naive attempts at international diplomacy).
So everywhere I look, Russia is expanding their influence and control with the clear goal in mind of extending it still further. They’ve figured out that Obama is a paper tiger, that all they have to fear from him is yet another “stern phone call”. As the west’s opposition wilts, all of eastern Europe should be quacking in their boots.
davidmhoffer:
Thankyou for your reply to me at April 15, 2014 at 10:11 am.
It seems that we are in general agreement. My post here was in support of your argument here but with one caveat.
I think my caveat is important because dealing with an issue requires correct identification of the issue. I think the discussed Russian behaviours are resumption of the Great Game, but you think those behaviours are resumption of the Cold War. If I am right then Russian use of its oil and gas supplies will be mostly as a tool of international influence: if you are right then Russian use of its oil and gas supplies will be secondary to Russian desire to acquire superior military might.
Hence, our different views indicate different probable Russian responses to the IPCC WG111 Report.
That said, I strongly agree your observations and hope many others will take note of them.
Richard
davidmhoffer says:
April 15, 2014 at 10:11 am
IMO not all of Eastern Europe needs quake in their boots. Possibly not even Western Ukraine, if NATO & the EU grow a pair.
However Eastern Ukraine is at risk. It’s unclear how the people of the eastern provinces would vote in a free & fair plebiscite on their future, but certainly many districts would chose to join Russia, especially in the Donbas. They have four options: remain in the present unitary Ukrainian state; achieve regional & local autonomy, with their own provincial legislatures & elected rather than appointed governors; secede from the Ukraine & form an independent nation-state, or be annexed to Russia. IMO different areas would select different futures, based upon the proportion of Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians, Russian-speaking Ukrainians (often of mixed parentage) & of ethnic Russians.
The West is not in a strong position to object to secession of eastern & southern Ukrainian provinces, after its anti-Serbian crusade in Croatia, Bosnia & Kosovo. However with the Anschluss & Sudetenland in mind, NATO & the EU should make clear how much farther beyond the heavily Russian Crimea is too far. Much of the Donbas is even more Russian than the Crimea.
The Russian “army” (ground forces, airborne troops & naval infantry) is not strong enough to occupy all of southern & eastern Ukraine, but it wouldn’t need to do so. If Putin can achieve his goals without overt invasion (as opposed to the accomplished fact of not very covert invasion), he probably would prefer to do so. Maintaining secessionist sentiment alive achieves at least his goal of keeping the Ukraine out of NATO, since states with territorial disputes can’t become members. That was one reason for his invasion of Georgia.
Ironically, annexing the Crimea makes it hard for a pro-Russian president or parliament to get elected in the rump Ukraine.
Since burning natural gas is “greener” than coal, Putin can claim to be fighting CACA by selling his fossil fuels to Europe, which revenue accounts for a big chunk of Russian GDP.
Those that really is behind this political and financial have only used and hided behind willing hired greens. The root of the problem is the evil political and financial forces?
One small step for a man, one giant leap for the Mannkind. This definitively deserves some high quality music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6gX7yVob6w.
P.S. Thanking BRIC, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF, Oxfam and others for their hard work towards sustainable financing of new generation nuclear reactors.