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I’m taking the rest of the day off.
Publishing will resume tomorrow.
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Discuss our usual range of topics.
I’m taking the rest of the day off.
Publishing will resume tomorrow.
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Here’s a good idea for labeling the AGW movement.
Believing is Seeing
There’s even a study to support the label.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080215103210.htm
How Believing Can Be Seeing: Context Dictates What We Believe We See
Date:
February 19, 2008
Source:
University College London
Summary:
Scientists have found the link between what we expect to see, and what our brain tells us we actually saw. The study reveals that the context surrounding what we see is all important — sometimes overriding the evidence gathered by our eyes and even causing us to imagine things which aren’t really there.
=================================================================
Thanks for what you do.
You are you. You are not your blog.
I am grateful for it but not if and when it is at your personal expense.
Enjoy your break from it.
At Pamela…Time flys when you’re having fun…but when fishing ,time is fun when you’re having flies….!
Schumacher aid : “Has any one seen this? Solar Roads ”
For some reason, people seem to be intrigued about solar roads and have been for quite some time. The concept is not new, although there are variants. This particulr efort made me laugh
when they talked about prototyping to “get the bugs out” without seeming t have the slightest idea of how everything will work. They tak of eliminating fossil fuels completely but solar power can’t do that, even if they had storage facitities. Storage facilities allow power to be shifted from one part of the day to another, but when the sun doesn’t shine for days or weeks, everything falls apart.
And the cost of insuring constant power for such a system is not cheap – essentially you need a complete second system in backup mode. A quick estimate of the power/space – you’ll need at least 16,000 acres of solar roadway to have the capacity to produce as much gross power as a single nuclear reactor. That’s assuming no cars are on the road – cars on the road cast shadows,
which eliminates any solar power from panels that are beneath them. Cost of plain jane solar panels for those 16,000 acres would top $11 billion just for the panels, assuming the panels are as cheap as current rooftop panels (unlikely-these would be ruggedized panels). Installation would likely double that cost. A nuclear plant costs between $4 and $6 billion these days and lasts over 6o years. Solar panels last in the neighborhood of 20 to 25 years, if they don’t break down. Assuming three sets of road panels to equal the 60 year lifespan of the nuclear plant and the cost is probably $66 billion, which would pay for 13 or more nuclear plants, 13 times more power, reliable power.
They talk about paving parking lots with these panels – where who knows what percentage of the solar panels are shaded during productive solar hours by parked cars – sounds like another dumb idea. They also talk of inductive charging of cars as they sail over the inductive coils embedded in the roadway. Now that sounds ultra dumb, in terms of everything – payment for charging, a road that’s magnetized, etc. Sounds very expensive and probably with bad side effects, on the plus side (as they admit), it won’t help electric cars ranges very much. It also assumes facts not in evidence – that when electric cars become plentiful, they will still have problems with recharge times and driving ranges. I consider that a really bad assumption.
Solar roadways? Who needs/wants/can afford them.
Gunga Din,
Thanks! Going to read the analysis there.
Col Mosby,
Yes many issues immediately jumped to mind when I saw it. But people seemed so passionate about it for some reason. So I thought, maybe I’m being overly pessimistic. But, I don’t think so.
Mr. Watts: you should enlist more help, and trust them with more of the operations.
I wonder how the EPA expects to regulate all the CO2 coming from China and the rest of the world. Perhaps we’ll learn that tomorrow. Perhaps not.
To rep Joe Kennedy
Yes I look both ways when I cross the road. It’s a simple and inexpensive measure to keep me and my potential grand kids safe. But if you want to tax me $10k per year for the privilege of head-turning I will have to re-assess my need to cross roads. (Who votes for these people?)
Sleepalot says:
June 1, 2014 at 2:56 pm
===============
I could say that I couldn’t give a flying leap about your comment either, and that I’m just killing time before the start of the Blackhawks game.
But I wont.
Gunga Din, being 58, I appreciate a man who can find his lawn chair about as quick as I can. That said, I actually have all three necessities and am happy as a blue bird. But I’m not done fishin yet. Came back to let my dogs have a run. Heading back out to another river.
Alan, the mountain river this morning ate my lures. A wedding ring lure is called such because of the shiny rondelle crystal donut bead placed between a series of graduated salmon egg like beads. There is usually a spinner at the top and is baited with worms, etc.
John! ROTFLMAO!! I’ve kissed a fishhead for luck once when I was out crabbin! Didn’t work but it made the rest of the folks in the boat go “ewwwww”.
Sleepalot, did you break your funny bone? Or just get up on the wrong side of the bed?
maximum coverage from the CAGW-friendly NYT. all these plus much more on this page!
1 June: NYT Opinion Pages: Room for Debate: Can the Market Stave Off Global Warming?
Is cap and trade the best chance for stemming climate change, or are other methods needed? …
The Only Feasible Way of Cutting Emissions
by Robert N. Stavins, Albert Pratt professor of business and government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements…
As climate change has become an increasing concern, cap and trade has most often been the instrument of choice. The first and largest example is the European Union Emissions Trading System…
Strong Limits and Government Funds are Best
by Doreen Stabinsky, professor of global environmental politics at the College of the Atlantic, and a consultant to governments and nongovernmental organizations on agriculture and climate change…
Europe Shows It Can Work, With Strong Limits
by Stig Schjolset. head of carbon analysis at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, a provider of news and analysis for commodity markets…
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/06/01/can-the-market-stave-off-global-warming/cap-and-trade-is-the-only-feasible-way-of-cutting-emissions
Over at the Conversation a Geology Professor from Miami believes that sea levels will rise by 1.25-2m by 2100. I did some research
– It top slices a NOAA prediction of 2012.
– It is way beyond the UNIPCC’s most extreme prediction of Sept 2013.
– Ignores the UNIPCC’s expression of low confidence in any predictions above 1 metre.
– Is based on extreme melting of the polar ice caps, which latest research repudiates.
– Is similar to predictions made by Professor Wanless in 2008.
Despite six years of contradictions, the Professor is still expressing the same extremist beliefs.
Problem is that Professor Wanless has for years also chaired the science committee for the Miami-Dade Climate Change Advisory Task Force. It also seems that the 2012 “Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Action Plan” appears to reflect these views untenable projections of sea level rise.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2014/06/01/sea-level-rise-extremism-of-professor-wanless-and-possible-consequences-for-miami-dade/
** maeks says:
June 1, 2014 at 1:23 pm
I have a basic question that I have not seen answered: If we have fully recovered from the Little Ice Age, when did that happen and how do we know?
Thanks, Mark**
In terms of glaciers formed from Little Ice Age, they still remain. Some think it will require decades for most of them to have melted.
Probably more important is ocean temperatures.
I would guess that despite the colder conditions the entire ocean did not cool [it didn’t have enough time to do this, but there probably some quantifiable depth of ocean that did cool during Little Ice Age. Let say for fun it’s down to depth of 500 meters. So perhaps down to 100 meters
It has more or less recovered, perhaps it even did this before the end of LIA, or maybe this occurred 50 years ago. But my point is perhaps the part of ocean which did cool, has not warmed back up.
Anyways we have been measuring this temperature of ocean depth over last decade, so one should expect some results from this in the future.
It could also may be possible to infer this from global air temperature.
I tend to think this pause in temperature is a sign we have recovered from LIA, and continuation
and perhaps slight rise over next decade may confirm this.
1 June: WSJ: Amy Harder: EPA Power-Plant Proposal Will Seek 30% Carbon Dioxide Emissions Cut by 2030
Plan Sets in Motion Main Piece of President Obama’s Climate-Change Agenda
The Environmental Protection Agency will propose a draft rule on Monday seeking a 30% reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions by 2030 from existing power plants based on emission levels from 2005, according to two people who have been briefed on the rule, setting in motion the main piece of President Barack Obama’s climate-change agenda.
The rule, scheduled to be completed one year from now, will give flexibility to the states, which must implement the rules and submit compliance plans to EPA by June 2016. States can decide how to meet the reductions, including joining or creating new cap-and-trade programs, deploying more renewable energy or ramping up energy-efficiency technologies.
Each state will have different percent reduction standards, and the national average will be 25% by 2020 and 30% by 2030, these people said…
http://online.wsj.com/articles/epa-power-plant-proposal-will-seek-30-carbon-dioxide-emissions-cut-by-2030-sources-1401650325
2 June: SMH: Bloomberg: Obama’s carbon curbs nullified by expanding China, India
“It’s not a magic bullet,” Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an interview…
And while making electricity creates 40 per cent of the greenhouse gases in the US, cutting it as Obama proposes will not come close to meeting the global reduction scientists say is necessary to reverse warming. For one thing, the amount of the US cuts would be replaced more than three times over by projected increases in China alone…
Were US emissions cut to zero, “global emissions would continue to increase,” Robert Stavins, director of Harvard University’s Environmental Economics Program, said in an e-mail. “So, the direct impacts of the new power plant rules on atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations will be small.”
According to the World Resources Institute in Washington, 1,200 coal-fired plants are proposed globally, with more than three-quarters of those planned for India and China alone. If all are built, which WRI says is unlikely, that would add more than 80 per cent to existing capacity…
Spur investments
All of this doesn’t mean Obama’s effort won’t matter…
The regulation in the US, once it is fully implemented in the coming years, could spur investments in carbon-capture equipment or other technology that reduces carbon pollution, said Armond Cohen, the president of the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group supportive of Obama’s effort. And once those technologies are introduced in the US, they can spread.
“You start creating markets like this, and investors pile in,” Cohen said in an interview. “The real significance of this rule may not be in the US, it may be in China or Indonesia.”…
“The poorest countries in the world are those most impacted by climate change,” said Michael Wilkins, managing director of the credit ratings agency…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/obamas-carbon-curbs-nullified-by-expanding-china-india-20140602-zrumd.html
1 June: Aljazeera America: Renee Lewis: Green energy investment set to ‘explode’ after Obama unveils carbon cuts
“If you’re working in the solar or wind industry, you should feel very happy right now — those are the industries growing faster than the rest of economy,” Mike Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said. “It’s clear that those are going to be the industries to work in, invest in, and watch. They’re about to explode in terms of growth.”…
The new rules could bolster an industry that has already benefited from a flow of new cash, and new demand.
Warren Buffett, the billionaire owner of Iowa utility MidAmerican, announced a $1.9bn investment into wind farms earlier this month. The utility plans to generate almost half of its electricity by wind power by 2017…
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/6/1/obama-carbon-epa.html
1 June: Bloomberg: Tom Zeller Jr: Obama’s Carbon Rules Can Boost the Economy
(Tom Zeller Jr. is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, studying the intersection of politics, science and energy policy. Zeller spent 15 years as a staff writer and editor at the New York Times, National Geographic magazine and the Huffington Post.)
When the federal government moves to clear the air, fossil-fuel interests hyperventilate…
But as the debate heats up over the EPA’s new greenhouse gas rules — and there will be substantial debate — it’s worth keeping the end-times wailing of the fossil-fuel lobby in perspective…
Some key points:
Pollution, including CO2, costs a lot, too…
A recent analysis from the Natural Resources Defense Council estimated that new greenhouse gas limits on power plants could reduce electric bills for U.S. households and businesses by as much as $37.4 billion by 2020, and create more than 274,000 jobs.
Sure, the NRDC isn’t exactly an impartial observer, but then neither is the API or the U.S. Chamber…
They brought it on themselves. Lest we forget, American businesses and their Republican patrons in Congress worked double-time to water-down and then ultimately kill the passage of comprehensive cap-and-trade climate legislation back in 2010..
Americans overwhelmingly support tough pollution rules. Whether its curbing cross-state pollution from power plants, reducing the amount of mercury and air toxins that they produce, or limiting the amount of planet-warming gases they emit, polls routinely show strong support among American voters. In a survey published by Yale University last week, 64 percent of respondents said they supported strict lints on carbon dioxide from power plants — even if it meant electricity rates would be higher…
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-01/obama-s-carbon-rules-can-boost-the-economy
i doubt very much that Zeller believes the NRDC prediction, that this Yale survey reflects public opinion or even that CAGW is real!
Mr. W, I hope you took the family out for pizza, caught a dopey movie at the cineplex, and generally had a relaxing day. Don’t worry about all us knot heads out here on the weekends, we’ll keep ourselves entertained excoriating the occasional troll that shows up, and needling each other.
CO2 regs and “green” energy ruin the economy; just look North to Ontario.
Solar cycle and Earth rotation.
From solar cycle 15 to solar cycle 19 there has been a slow steady rise in the solar magnetic sunspot cycle. Reaching near 200 spots in cycle 19. From cycle 20 to cycle 24 + there has been a steady decline of solar magnetic cycle.
http://www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/images/image022.jpg
Over the above period earth’s magnetic field strength in particular the South Atlantic Anomaly was in a declining state. The north and south magnetic poles accelerated in the later half when solar geomagnetic activity became heaviest. Just how many leap seconds have we had to add, since solar cycle 15?
During solar cycle 24 the N. Magnetic pole slowed its acceleration and began moving more longitudinally, rather than the latitudinal beeline for Siberia.
And Earth’s rotation is speeding up.
THE IERS BULLETIN C
AND THE PREDICTION OF LEAP SECONDS
Daniel Gambis*
“”It appears that, since the year 2000, the Earth is relatively speeding up,
and the rate of introduction of leap seconds has significantly decreased.””
See Figure 3 Leap seconds per year between 1972 and 2010
(courtesy of W. Dick8, 2011) pg. 4
http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/futureofutc/preprints/files/42_AAS%2013-522_Gambis.pdf
Earth’s rotation is now speeding up, whilst the solar magnetic sunspot cycle is slowing down and solar dipolar fields are weak.
http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Polar-Fields-1966-now.png
Which if the next theory is correct, earth rotation speeding up will lead to a strengthening dipolar field.
Focus: Simulations Strengthen Earth’s Magnetic-Field/Climate Connection
Published September 20, 2013
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/103
….Ocean floor sediment shows that over the past two million years, changes in the Earth’s field have been roughly coincident with ice ages,..
…Miyagoshi and Hamano began by simulating 200,000 years of steady rotation, after which they introduced a 2% oscillation in Earth’s rotation rate, equivalent to shortening the day by a maximum of about a half hour. This is much greater than the expected effect of an ice age, which would be about a second per day, but since their virtual Earth rotated a thousand times too slow, they needed to exaggerate the oscillation in order to see some effect. To their surprise, the magnetic field strength oscillated with roughly the same shape as the rotation rate variation (a sine wave) but with a much larger amplitude of 25% . The team says that with the Earth’s faster rotation speed, even a much smaller, more realistic oscillation in rotation rate may have a noticeable effect……………….
So.. we might put our foot in mouth and say planetary bodies are starting to increase rotation rates, whilst the sun just might be slowing its rotation rate..
Just might see circulations patterns change due to increasing polar vortex speeds and sizes. Wow watch the ocean heat get sucked out…eeek
Did that without saying Interstellar wind or Interstellar magnetic field or Interstellar density values…
No you didn’t..lol
I nominate Chad Wozniak for Most Unneccesary Comment.
Dude, the moderators justifiably yell when people post complete nigh-endless articles instead of links and short excerpts.
It took me five seconds to find the link to that doc:
http://www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2014/20140529-14-P-0270.pdf
There’s even an “At a Glance” one-sheet version:
http://www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2014/20140529-14-P-0270_glance.pdf
So why the effusive expelling of that excessive effluent?
Complain not for whom the mods toll, lest they toil for you….. 8<) .mod]
Why, I still at my advanced age (60) scratch my head in wonder, WHY does the Union of Concerned Moronic Left Wing ideologs, who NEVER publish any information to validate any “credentials” on “membership” STILL to this day have an adoring MEDIA fawning all over them when they cough or pass gas??? Wait a moment, Kenji passing gas, that MIGHT mean something significant. We’ll have to ask Anthony when he gets back writing.
Yay !! DeGrasse Tyson is on Cosmos telling porkie pies about Venus. (face palm)
Found in my previous comment:
But, the mods do toil for me, as they do for all of us commenters, whether they are as grateful as I am or not so much.
Apparently you made what appears to be a simple spelling mistake, but might not be. Perhaps your moderating style would benefit from being more automatic, as it seems that in the clutch you had Freudian slippage.
[There are many ways the gears engage in a Freudian clutch, but none slip. .mod]