It has been quite awhile since we’ve had an open thread on WUWT, so let’s have one. As usual, stay on topic per this blog’s usual discussions, and keep it civil. I’m particularly interested in hearing from readers about topics and issues we may not have covered that would be relevant for future posts.
We are the priests
Of the Temples of Syrinx
Our great computers
Fill the hollowed halls
The massive grey walls of the Temples rise from the
Heart of every Federation city. I have always been awed
By them, to think that every single facet of every life is
Regulated and directed from within! Our books, our music,
Our work and play are all looked after by the benevolent
Wisdom of the priests
Spooky how real it is getting…
Shelley’s “Ozymandias”
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”[4]
Hollowed?
That’s why they had to be filled.
A misdirected tweet, has just come my way, from “the team” about “the cause”–very interesting!
An admin note
Now global heat
Is showing up
As snow and sleet
Since hot is cold
Please be advised
The hive’s metrics
Have been revised
When hyping scares
‘Bout green-house gas
The new proxy
Is frozen ass
A Global Authority for high political morality?
Question about annual average temps: okay, let’s say that where I live the average temp is 50F averaged over every hour of every day for a year, for an average year, that is 50 X 365 = 18,250 degree days. Now this month is much colder than the average January or average winter (just for an example), now the question is this – does the year as a whole always average out, in other words will there be warmer days during the year to average out a cold month so that I get the 18,250 or very close to it each year?
I’d guess probably not.
Someone else got your warmth.
😉
Look at how the global average temperature record varies from year to year, John. It represents a convenient average to test your idea. Multiply each of those annual average temperatures by 365, and you’ll get the variation in degree-days over time. Your local temperature will probably vary more than the global average. So, the short answer is no. But in the decadal scheme of things, the variation won’t be large.
But notice that the variation in degree-days gets larger as the degree itself gets smaller. Degrees F are smaller thermal units than degrees C. So F degree days will vary more than C degree-days, even though they both represent the same amount of heat. The only really good unit to use is degrees Kelvin (same size as C), because Kelvins are always positive. That takes the problem of negative numbers out of your calculation. Zero degrees K is absolute zero.
Yep I always look on the bright side of life.
Hi John,
Perhaps you might appreciate this paper:
Does A Global Temperature Exist?
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/globaltemp/GlobTemp.JNET.pdf
Why is it that authors of these papers are always associated with free-market public policy think tanks? While I agree that the concept of a “global temperature” is physically tenuous (i.e., the average of point temperature measurements is not equivalent to total heat content), it’s misleading to infer that thousands of measurements can’t tell us something about our climate. So then, should we not measure anything, because it’s all meaningless? Sheesh!
Just be careful what meanings you try to place on such calculations, Barry. That is one of the most important messages in the paper linked by Max Photon. For example, a system can be accumulating energy yet have its “average temperature” going down. And vice-versa.
Barry, what do you mean by:
— “these papers”
— “always”
— “free-market public policy think tanks”
I’m not trying to be difficult. It’s just that your word choice seems very loaded.
Incidentally, before I ever saw that paper, I was absolutely flabbergasted by the cavalier usage of “average temperatures” and “global temperatures”, let alone what minuscule changes in such numbers represent. I found it extremely gratifying when I stumbled across that paper. At least it wasn’t just me.
Barry, it’s because those “associated with free-market public policy think tanks” are those that actually think as opposed to spout dogma.
Barry, why is it that the warmists are always funded by BIG GOVERNMENT and BIG SPECIAL INTERESTS ?? I’m at a total loss to understand why ‘research paper’ conclusions support the aims of these funders 100% … can you tell me that ?
Barry, what does your analysis say about this?
http://www.surfacestations.org/
Do you suppose that part of the reason some people thinking “global warming” is out of control is because many of the “measurements” are somehow … ummm… wrong?
Many thanks again to Anthony and his team 🙂
To Barry:
Can you point me to a specification for a [global] temperature? I would love to know how it is calculated. Tell you what though, i will not hold my breath while you search. You should find linjs to recognised standards and specifation sites online. ISO is probably most recognised.
Oops that should be Global. Not glsbsl
Why is it that authors of these papers are always associated with free-market public policy think tanks?
Unfortunately, the liberal side is in the tank for the AGW hypothesis. It’s group-think.
While I agree that the concept of a “global temperature” is physically tenuous (i.e., the average of point temperature measurements is not equivalent to total heat content), it’s misleading to infer that thousands of measurements can’t tell us something about our climate.
The measurements need to be accurate, comprehensive, and exist over time. Much of what you see these days is “adjusted,” cherry-picked, and recent.
Don’t be silly. Inconvenient truths simply get disappeared.
– the Hivemind
NYTimes stirring the pot…..
Posted today….. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html
Does anyone ever look this hard at the funding for the most active Climate Change supporting scientists?
It is just desperation… Next it aliens will be incorporated in to the narrative.
I highly recommend William Briggs’ posts on this nonsense. Clearly an orchestrated effort to smear and ignore the real issues:
http://wmbriggs.com/post/15337/
The NYT is just repeating a smear article that first appeared in the Boston Globe. It’s character assassination, pure and simple.
Except when actual climate scientists receive money for their work, it is called a paycheck, Willie Soon’s work was provided as a “deliverable” that was on contract to the fossil fuel industry.
That is an incredible breach of scientific integrity, especially when scientific journals explicitly require that all third-party funding for research be disclosed as a potential conflict of interest.
I wonder if there are future FOIA requests lined up for some of the other scientists listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
Troll. Go away unless you have some reasoned argument.
@jai mitchell:
That is a pathetically small list of skeptical scientists. It is so small that it amounts to nothing more than alarmist propaganda.
The OISM statement is only one such climate skeptics’ statement, and it alone contains more than 32,000 co-signers, by name, and all of them are scientists and engineers with degrees in the hard sciences, including more than 9,000 PhD’s.
Also, your despicable ad hominem attack on a respected Harvard professor is typical of your ilk. You can’t play the ball, so you play the man instead.
Go away.
Mr Eck I concur, this guy is dispicable, more than likely read the headline only. ( I just get infuriated with ….holes like him no decency whatsoever).
Jai Mitchell, you’ve either lied, or you’ve smeared Willie Soon out of malicious ignorance.
Willie Soon was accused by Greenpeace of getting oil funding since 2002. http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFN1E75Q1ZO20110628
He published two papers that were sceptical of CAGW before then. Put simply, big-oil money did not make him a sceptic. The only immorality is that he would not get funding from Greenpeace or the government because of his sceptic views (please don’t ask why Greenpeace would fund him. Surely they would like to know that they are going to be on the right side of science).
Either reveal your evidence that he faked data or put a sock in it.
The problem that so-called “alarmists” have is that you can’t prove if someone is lying or just misguided. FOIA aside, I would simply have asked Dr. Soon that if the most recent paper was written “on his own time,” then what were the deliverables from the contracts with fossil fuel interests?
This new discussion format really sucks!
Well db, we meet again, but this time I am the master and you are the apprentice!
I did not impugn Soon’s work, I simply said that his lack of disclosure of his sources was a breach of scientific integrity and a violation of scientific journal publication ethical guidelines. In this case, I would be very surprised if these journals do not retract his papers, it has happened before under similar circumstances.
with regard to your over-stated 32,000 “scientists” claim. The Oregon Petition that you laude was nothing more than an internet poll, there was no verification of identities. Indeed several of the co-signatories were actually “spice girls” see: http://opinionexchange.lohudblogs.com/2009/04/15/ginger-spice-is-a-climate-scientist/
And really, being a Ph.D. in “science” much less a MS or BS doesn’t qualify one as a “scientist” not by a very long shot!
I know some computer science majors back in school who were, quite literally, dumber than rocks (but boy! could they CODE!!!)
As far as willie soon, this is just getting started, we will see where this rabbit hole leads to. Southern was given review privilege of ‘deliverables’ (willie’s scientific reports) prior to publication, those emails were not released due to their confidential nature but it is implied that they provided editorial license to his published work. Not disclosing this in the journal that published his research is not going to help him in this case at all! have a BEAUTIFUL winter weekend, I hope you have enjoyed this warm, (hot) and dry dry dry winter in the beautiful SF bay area!!!
jai mitchell says:
Well db, we meet again, but this time I am the master and you are the apprentice!
OK mitchell, we will see who is the Big Dog, and who is the chihuahua here. You write:
The Oregon Petition that you laude was nothing more than an internet poll, there was no verification of identities. Indeed several of the co-signatories were actually “spice girls”…
Wrong as usual, mitchell. There are no “Spice Girls” in the list of names. You should really check before you post misinformation like that. It’s all online, so no excuses. By linking to a blog from 2009, you appear to be pretty desperate. I’ll bet you never checked the OISM site before you did your search and found a malcontent who, like you, doesn’t like the fact that 32,000 scientists and engineers have rejected the MMGW scare.
Also, it was never an “internet poll”, as you claim. Co-signers had to download the petition, sign it, apply postage, and mail it in. Rather, it is your small clique of rent-seekers are the ones who depend on internet polls.
Next, you denigrate scientists by saying that a PhD doesn’t qualify someone. You know what that sounds like? That sounds like you don’t have a PhD, and you’re jealous of those who do. A ‘scientist’ is someone who practices science. Why do you feel the need to claim they aren’t scientists? Are you that insecure?
Next, you say:
As far as willie soon, this is just getting started, we will see where this rabbit hole leads to.
It has been twelve years since Dr. Soon published the paper that has all the alarmist nutcases up in arms. How many years/decades do you think it will take to investigate your ‘rabbit hole’? Dr. Soon has not been called to account for anything so far. How does it feel to be so impotent?
So, apprentice, what are your answers to those facts? Retraction? Or more of your usual misinformation?
The problem that so-called “alarmists” have is that you can’t prove if someone is lying or just misguided. FOIA aside, I would simply have asked Dr. Soon that if the most recent paper was written “on his own time,” then what were the deliverables from the contracts with fossil fuel interests?
I would have looked at the paper and judged it on its own merits. What a concept.
This is the comment I posted to the NYTimes article.
“What is remarkable about this is that the NY Times is publishing this at all. We don’t see the same stories about who funds anti-vaxxers in the NY Times. That’s because for vaccination, the science really is settled.
But if climate science really was settled, this wouldn’t even be a story. So that tells me, there is still a lot to learn about the climate, and some organizations (e.g. Greenpeace) are very afraid of that.
The NY Times, rather than be Greenpeace’s puppet, would better serve the public by encouraging a diversity of research on the climate. We still have a lot to learn about the climate, and why try to silence critical thinking on the matter?
Character assassinations, such as this, are really beneath the NY Times, and I am quite disappointed.”
I’ve heard a lot of crap spewed from people like you regarding Willy Soon, and others. The problem is there is never any evidence, just false allegations. Nobody cares where your rabbit hole goes. We would be happy if you just crawled in it and disappeared. I wouldn’t believe evidence delivered from smear artists like you even if it were true, troll. Go peddle you filthy insinuations somewhere else. This is all the time I am allotting to you. Bye.
It appears to be the same allegation that the Guardian piublished in 2011 then later corrected
“I got something wrong abt Willie Soon. I suggested he’d never declared his fossil fuel funding. Unlike many, it turns out he has. Apologies” tweeted George Monbiot
the correction was http://www.pcc.org.uk/cases/adjudicated.html?article=NTQ0NQ==&type=
made after Soon complained to the Press Complaints Commission
(The Guardian tho now changed ..and is only regulated by the Guardian ..yes seriously)
How does research and the associated paper(s) produced under grant-funding for a grant-specified purpose differ from the Times article-decried ‘“deliverable” that he [Soon] completed in exchange for their [fossil fuel interests] money”?
I observe that the Times piece reports that Greenpeace reached its conclusion based on documents obtained under Freedom of Information Act-compelled disclosure. As disclosure compelled by FOIA, and related statues, has been the source of bitter complaints and litigation by climate-change proponents [citations available if challenged] — does the article do the reader a disservice by failing to mention this controversy?
I’d love to see the Times pieces source(s) for the claim that “[t]he vast majority of experts have concluded that it is and that greenhouse emissions pose long-term risks to civilization”.
Let’s see if the NYT even admits my comment into their comment section:
What a shameful exercise in ad hominem attack and guilt by association by the New York Times. As someone who for many decades has read and respected this publication, I am both saddened and worried by the politicization and decline of a source I have trusted for so long. For shame, for shame.
I could probably find the answer on Google, but am too lazy: For you electric car drivers, how much does it cost for a full charge, and how long does it take? Is the charging time (batteries) affected by the weather? Thanks.
Other questions are, “How often do the batteries need replacement? How much does it cost to replace the batteries in the car? How heavy are the batteries as compared to the total weight of the vehicle? How does the use of certain metals affect the markets for those metals? How does the mining of those metals affect the environment in the countries in which the metals are mined? Will there ever be a replacement for hydrocarbons, whether synthetic or natural, that meet or exceed their energy storage and transport properties?”
Good questions. Volt battery is warranted for 8 years/100,000 miles. It’s not yet clear how many will need replacement or when. Cost is also pretty uncertain. I’m not an expert on the next questions and can’t answer them, other than to say 435 lbs of battery to replace 1.2 gal of gasoline isn’t a great trade!
Another question. How much are electric vehicles going to cost home use consumers. Will retired ma and pa on a limited income be paying for the rich mans Tesla out of their grocery funds????/?
On a hybrid (not a pure electric car) the battery replacement cost will run from a low of $1,500 (rebuilt, low amperage) up to $5,000-$7,500: That doesn’t include installation or balancing the battery. The weight is approximately 400 pounds.
As an aside, Car & Driver magazine recently ran a comparison between a Tesla and a? … Ford Model T? Yep, a Model T. They ran both cars from Michigan to New York. The Model T couldn’t handle Interstate Hwy speeds so they used country roads. The Tesla stayed on the Interstate. Nonetheless, and despite some breakdowns with the Model T, the Tesla only got to New York about 2 hours earlier. Why? Because they had to stop at motels every so often for 8+ hour recharges.
Now, before anybody thinks the Tesla just represents the beginnings of a new technology, may I remind them that the electric car is as old as the car itself. 100 years of development later and the electric car barely beats a 100 year old gas powered car – and therefore a car without the benefit of an additional 100 years development.
Oh, and one more thing. In a nearby affluent community two of the more common prestige cars are 4 door Porsche sedans, and Teslas. But at least the federal government isn’t subsidizing truly rich people to drive Porsches.
The increased weight is an issue. First it take more energy to get a larger “mass moving” Next it takes an equal amount of energy to stop it (friction factoring in) This results in higher wear and tear on brakes drive train… well just about the whole vehicle. It simple is not cost efficient in comparison to internal combustion type vehicles. It is not just the production costs but maintenance and service life that must be considered
Also is the case of accidents first responders must now be prepared for acid toxins.
michael
Lomborg’s take: taxpayer cost of $7500 per electric vehicle vs $27 in benefits. He also finds electrics kill twice as many people as an Audi diesel.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/02/18/electric-car-benefits-air-myths-pollution-health-column/23641729/
What I envision are all cars having a bank of standardized car batteries (4~10 battery units per car depending on car model) that are interchangeable with all other makes and models.
When your batteries start running low on long trips, you simply pull into a battery station, a robotic system automatically replaces however many charged batteries you require to make your destination, and your low-charged batteries are recharged and placed in another care some hours later.
95% of the time, recharging is done at home. Just on long trips will it be necessary to use these battery stations.
Since the system is robotic and standardized, it should only take a few minutes for the battery exchange.
I talked with an engineer at a large Japanese car company about my idea and he said such a system is already being considered, but said there are currently technical problems with the concept. He wouldn’t elaborate…
“””””…..
Tom J
February 21, 2015 at 1:10 pm
On a hybrid (not a pure electric car) the battery replacement cost will run from a low of $1,500 (rebuilt, low amperage) up to $5,000-$7,500: That doesn’t include installation or balancing the battery. The weight is approximately 400 pounds.
As an aside, Car & Driver magazine recently ran a comparison between a Tesla and a? … Ford Model T? Yep, a Model T. They ran both cars from Michigan to New York. …..””””
This is an interesting comparison, and reminds me of a very old motoring story; in fact I believe it dates from 1955, but it could have been 1954.
In those two years formula one grande prix and top sports car racing events was dominated (totally) by Mercedes Benz.
Those were the years that Mercedes came out with their incredible W-196 2.5 litre formula one car, and the equally incredible 300-SLR 3 litre sports car, with which Stirling Moss won the Mille Miglia, totally shattering the race record; with Dennis Jenkinson riding shotgun, and “navigating.” Navigating meant that if Jenkinson said it was ok to go over a totally blind hill at 180 mph, then Moss did exactly that. Well Jenkinson had his soon to be famous “toilet roll” roll chart that he and Moss had generated by going over the whole 1,000 mile course previously, and describing every single bend and hill and anything else; well except maybe the possibility of a broken down horse and cart, just over the brow of the hill.
Well Jenkinson was an old motorbike side car race rider, so basically, he and Moss were both equally insane; and he was also a writer for Autosport Magazine.
So Jenkinson wrote an Auto-sport story about his trip up to Sweden and back, to report on the Swedish Grande Prix.
The trip started in Stuttgart (I believe), where Jenkinson hooked up with Rudolph Uhlenhaut, who was the genius behind the W-196. Well Rudolph had his own personal sports car, and he was going to drive Dennis Jenkinson up to the race.
This was no ordinary sports car. It was a 300-SLR Gull wing Coupe. Probably the only one ever built. So if you can imagine that fancy Mercedes 300-SL gull wing coupe body, but with the 300-SLR racing sports car hiding underneath; that was what Uhlenhaut drove Dennis Jenkinson to Sweden in, for the Grande Prix, and he describes how they were tearing along some Swedish country roads at 180 MPH or so, with the doors open.
Well you can drive a 300-SL with the gull wing doors open too, but not quite that fast. It evidently impressed the locals seeing those doors racing along above the hedgerows. Apparently the cops didn’t notice.
For the return trip from Sweden, Jenkinson hitched a ride with a French race car driver; sorry the grey matter is a bit dim on the name, but if I’m not mistaken, it was the chap who had that totally awful crash into the grandstand in a 300 SLR sports car during the Le Mans 24 hour race; he was paired with a British driver (Mike Hawthorne I think).
In any case they did not return from Sweden in a 300SL, or SLR, but in a Citroen 2CV; that sardine can car, with the roll top lid, for going down narrow cobblestone streets.
Jenkinson says they averaged about the same speed coming back, as they did going up to Sweden, because the crazy French driver, just kept the car at top speed continuously, and only slowed down, when they needed to gas up. That probably was no more than 65 MPH that tin can could do, but when you can’t do 180 down a French cobblestone street, then a 2CV is just as good as a 300-SLR gull wing coupe.
So yes, I would put my money on the Model-T as well, if the Tesla had to stay within the speed limits.
PS I think the model S grill is sort of hideous, but maybe it just looks weird without the front California required licence plate, which somehow Tesla Model S owners don’t obey, and the cops evidently give the a pass on.
I do think the Tesla Roadster is a pretty looking car. I hope they keep making those in some form.
G
Samurai, I first read about the battery swap idea several decades ago, during the (manufactured) energy crisis era, mid to late 70’s.
Garymount– Thanks, Gary. I’ll do a GOOGLE search on the 1970’s battery swap idea.
It seems a battery swap system would solve a lot of logistical problems and doesn’t seem to be that complicated of a system to develop, although the cost of expanding the infrastructure would be very expensive.
Perhaps battery technology is advancing so quickly, such a swap system infrastructure would become obsolete before it could pay for itself.
Garymount– it seems that this battery swap system is actually moving forward:
http://www.wired.com/2009/05/better-place/
How often do the batteries need replacement?
They say after 2,000 charge cycles, you’ll lose 30% of capacity, the point that most people would want to replace the battery. It helps not to discharge below 20% of capacity. My average has been 25%.
How much does it cost to replace the batteries in the car?
According to McKinsey & Co., the management consultant, the cost as of 2020 will be $200/kWh of capacity, which over an expected life of 100.000 miles would be 5 cents a mile. From that, you deduct the cost of avoided oil changes and transmission and exhaust system maintenance. For my Think City EV, my research says that’s 1 cent per mile, for a net battery replacement cost of 4 cents a mile.
How heavy are the batteries as compared to the total weight of the vehicle?
About 650 pounds out of about 2,250 pounds.
I can’t answer your other questions, because I don’t know.
It seems a battery swap system would solve a lot of logistical problems and doesn’t seem to be that complicated of a system to develop, although the cost of expanding the infrastructure would be very expensive.
I don’t expect battery swaps to ever get much traction, for the following reasons.
1. Form factors vary with each EV model.
2. Batteries degrade. What’s to prevent someone with a degraded battery from swapping for a much newer one at a charging station?
3. Any swap station will have to add a significant charge for infrastructure and labor, wiping out any savings relative to gasoline.
At present, more than 90% of EV charging happens at home. The government supported (loan guarantee) “Blink” charging network went bankrupt for lack of customers. I regard Tesla’s so-called “supercharger” network. much hyped by the company, as a promotional device bordering on laughable. But Tesla doesn’t release useful numbers on its use, and given their track record I wouldn’t trust them anyway. My wild-a** guess is that >90% of Tesla charging is also done at home, in the mini- and maxi-mansions of the owners.
You can see why Tesloids and other EVangelists don’t like me. I am far too candid. These are cars, not causes. Beware of a group of people who commonly refer to the CEO by his first name.
Back in the days of my youth, gas power was all the rage
When it comes to the mainstream viability of electric vehicles, here is my standard. One more reason for EVangelists to get irritated at me, even though I own an EV.
With regard the Model T/Tesla test, will there be that many Tesla’s about in 100 years and how many will be drive able in comparison with the number made?
I do think the Tesla Roadster is a pretty looking car. I hope they keep making those in some form
It reminds me of a late-’90s Ford Taurus, but squashed and stretched, and with a better paint job. The back seat is claustrophobic, and the gigantic screen in front would last about a month before I destroyed it in a fit of rage.
Darn it, the moment after I clicked “Post Comment” I realized that I was writing about the Model S and not the Roadster. Yes, the Roadster is pretty. This is because the Roadster is actually an electrified Lotus Elise. Which brings up another point about EVs. Always buy an EV from a real car company. My little Think City is actually a Ford, the Think once being a division of Ford until they spun it out.
Think’s demise was the result of the high cost of the batteries early on. The list price was $36,000 and no one was going to pay that much of a tiny, plastic-bodied car. The only way to get around battery cost is to build a “Cult of Elon” aimed at rich techies, or for a big car company to subsidize the whole deal like Nissan and others have done. The independent EV makers other than Tesla have floundered.
Now that battery costs are declining with manufacturing economies, the other actual car companies are entering the game in bigger numbers. I will be surprised if Tesla is in the game after 2020. They might even go bust earlier, most likely in the form of a fire sale of their assets to an actual car company.
I drive a Volt. Fun little car, but considering where I live, it’s coal powered. Since its battery is relatively small (16.5 or so kWh, only 435 pounds), it only takes about 10 hours to recharge fully at 120 volts. I haven’t noticed much of a difference in re-charge due to temperature, but there might be one, since the battery needs to be cooled during the process. Where you will see an effect of temperature is in range on a full charge: I see from 42 to 31 miles estimated depending on the temperature during the drive. Since the volt also carries a gas-powered engine to recharge once the battery is depleted, range anxiety is not an issue. I use it to commute 10-15 miles round trip, so I rarely use more than 1/3 capacity and can easily recharge overnight.
Cost of a charge is roughly $1.40 US at 12 cents per kWh. Roughly comparable to a bit more than a gallon of gas in range terms, so with the fall in gas prices, the per mile advantage is much smaller than it used to be.
You will be interested to know that the EPA Volt rating of 60mpg combined is actually 37 with gasoline, 33.5 mphe with battery only, and 35mpg combined when correctly computed on an apples to apples basis. If coal generation charged, also more CO2 emissions than a Toyota Prius. Calculations in The Arts of Truth. EPA did not consider generation, transmission, and battery charging efficiencies.
Thanks. One more question: Is there a max number the batteries may be recharged or diminished in capacity?
Doesn’t a car need about 50 kW of power, so you get 20-30 minutes of driving
Robert:
The Volt has a kW meter (who knows how accurate?) that provides some feedback on instantaneous power consumption. Waiting for the light to change, it draws very little (0.5 is the minimum), unless the heater is on (which it might be in Ottawa!). I can punch it and draw 90 or more kW accelerating, but in cruise it’s in the 20 kW range. But it’s not drawing close to 50 on average. So, yes, with a range of 35 miles, it’s only an hour at 35 mph and half an hour at 70 mph (less, since the range decreases noticeably with increased speed).
Rud:
Per Wikipedia, the EPA rating for the Volt is 62 mpg equivalent on battery:
“As a result of its improved battery pack, the 2013 model year EPA rating climbed to a combined city/highway fuel economy of 98 miles per gallon gasoline equivalent (2.4 L gasoline equivalent/100 km; 118 mpg-imp gasoline equivalent). The EPA rating in gasoline-only mode is the same 37 mpg-US (6.4 L/100 km; 44 mpg-imp) as the previous models.[76][78] The combined gasoline-electricity fuel economy rating of the 2013/2014 model year Volt is 62 mpg-US (3.8 L/100 km; 74 mpg-imp) equivalent, 63 MPG-e in city driving and 61 MPG-e in highway.[100]”
The combined number of course depends on how much one drives on gasoline.
Is there a max number the batteries may be recharged or diminished in capacity?
They degrade gradually. The “reference number” is 2,000 charge cycles until you’ve lost 30% of capacity, but that will vary.
“””””…..
Jake J
February 21, 2015 at 8:09 pm
How often do the batteries need replacement?
They say after 2,000 charge cycles, you’ll lose 30% of capacity, the point that most people would want to replace the battery. It helps not to discharge below 20% of capacity. My average has been 25%……”””””
Well right there is a big stumbling block for EVs.
And I assume Jake J was saying don’t drain more than 80% of the 85 Amp hours out of your Tesla Model S, and not saying, you should only drain 20% of that 85 Ah.
“Deep discharge” batteries have always been a pain in the neck for users. For example, the electric trolling motors used on small sports fishing boats use typically 100 Ah or more at 12 or 24 Volts, but with lead acid batteries.
Now you can buy a Sears “Diehard” battery for your car, and get a seven year warranty on it, with about a three year free replacement warranty. But that is for an automobile motor starting battery, which is NOT a deep discharge operation.
Start batteries can deliver maybe a couple of hundred Amps for a few seconds, and drop the battery terminal Voltage down to perhaps 8.5 Volts while doing that. But the battery is immediately on charge, once the engine starts.
Deep discharge Diehard batteries probably don’t have more than a one year warranty, and they tell you you might get 400 cycles out of it.
That is because the plate structure is different in those two types of lead acid cells.
All of which is semi-irrelevant for EVs, because you need a better technology than lead acid, so the lifetimes will be different.
Now I would not be unhappy, if I could deep discharge my 85 Ah Tesla battery down to 15 Ah before I had to charge it, but dropping from 85 down to 68 before needing a charge would pi** me off big time.
I get a 600 mile round trip highway range without refueling my Subaru Impreza, and I usually wait till the yellow light comes on at about 50 remaining miles.
If I had to maintain an 80% filled tank, all the time, I would be quite upset. Now partially full gas tanks are a hazard; unless the tank is sealed to the atmosphere. That is because a gas tank open to the atmosphere is a diabolical device for filling your gas tank with water.
The partially filled gas tank, open to the air, will fill with moist air during the day, and at night that water vapor will condense on the cold roof of the tank, and then run down the side into the gasoline.
Since gas is lighter than water, the water immediately drops to the bottom where it is now protected from evaporation, by the over-layer of gas.
So it is a “pitcher plant” for water capture, and that water will eventually cause both corrosion in your gas system, as well as engine problems.
So they tell you to fill your tank with gas in case it has an atmospheric leak, to keep the tank air content at a minimum.
Well I don’t want to lug around 120 pounds of gas all the time, when I may only use a gallon of it in a day’s driving around town, and work.
And I don’t want to carry hundreds of pounds of batteries all the time for the same reason.
So better batteries should be reliable at perhaps 90% discharge cycles or they will be a pain.
g
A Tesla battery pack for the 85kWhr model requires 100 kWrs to fully charge (15% loss in charging, mainly due to heat generated in the process). At its inception the battery pack was apparently a $40K part. The cost has come down, but not in line with Elon Musk’s overly optimistic predictions of years ago (ALL of Elon Musk’s predictions are optimistic). At a Supercharger station the car can be recharged to 80% in around
45 minutes or so, a slightly longer rate than that the new all-electric Chevy Bolt due out in 2017 (200 mile driving range, $37K). Tesla’s Superchrger stations use a proprietary charging technology that is not the same a that being used by the other automakers – Tesla offered to give it way, but no takers). TheTesla’s driving range varies from roughly 190 to 250 miles, depending, making the miles per kWhr equal to between 1.9 and 2.5 or between 4 1/2 to 6 cents per mile, assuming 13 cent per kWhr rate – California rates can be double that, and more, making electricity costs greater than gasoline costs- does not include road taxes, which some states are collecting based on yearly mileage. Tesla batteries are roughly 6800 laptop cells, weighing around 900 pounds – encased in a liquid coolant. Best bet for battery improvemnet, cost reduction will likely come from lithium sulfer batteries using nanotecnology. Said to be half the size and weight and half the price. That would supercharge electric car sales, in my opinion. At home charging assume 240 volt 50 amp circuit that could charge at roughly 12 kWhrs per hour.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-21/tesla-bonfire-money-printers-vanities
It just so happens David Stockman takes Musk and Tesla to the woodshed today…….
“Tesla batteries are roughly 6800 laptop cells, weighing around 900 pounds – encased in a liquid coolant.”
I wonder what would happen to encased liquid coolant up here in Winnipeg with tonight’s predicted overnight low of -33C…or even the current temperature of -22C.
I wonder what would happen to encased liquid coolant up here in Winnipeg with tonight’s predicted overnight low of -33C…or even the current temperature of -22C.
To be fair, it took a while (some decades) for gas powered cars to be reliable at those temperatures. I don’t think “reliable in Winnipeg” is a gating factor for EVs right now. If they persist, that will come later.
It just so happens David Stockman takes Musk and Tesla to the woodshed today
You might not believe me, but if you knew my real name I could prove that I am anything but a friend or admirer of “Elon” and his chicanery. But still: Zero Hedge, the Alex Jones of pseudo-financial websites? I treasure my anonymity and am not about to give it up here. Suffice to say that I directly witnessed Stockman the the room when he took on Reagan’s budget voodoo in the ’80s. I greatly admired him for it.
I really wish there was a way to actually talk to that guy, if he really still exists. These days, you need to hire some sort of fixer or human grease gun to accomplish that, and it’s the last thing on earth I’d do. So all I can say is that I actually clicked through and read what went beneath his byline. Whoever wrote that is, on balance, crazier than a s***house rat. And no, I’m not the representative of the Fed, the Trilateral Commission, or the Rothschilds.
And I repeat, if anyone here actually knew who I was, you’d know that, my ownership of an EV notwithstanding, I’m not even remotely close to being any friend of “Elon,” or admirer. But I am something that neither “Elon” nor “David Stockman” is — a sane man who will forget more about how to read financials than almost everyone else will ever learn. Yes, that’s arrogant, but it’s true.
Holy smokes, what nutcasery!
“To be fair, it took a while (some decades) for gas powered cars to be reliable at those temperatures.”
Electric cars have been around for about a hundred and fifty years. Our ancestors dumped them for ICE cars almost as soon as they came out, because electric cars sucked for all the same reasons they suck today. Nearly two centuries of dreaming, and no-one has made them work better than some pistons propelled by gasoline explosions.
They will probably be the norm in the future, because we’ll be living in places where we can’t just dig oil out of the ground: no-one’s likely to be driving an ICE car on Mars any time soon. But they make no sense on Earth for the majority of people, unless you replace the crappy batteries with a nuclear power source that you change every few years.
Electric cars have been around for about a hundred and fifty years. Our ancestors dumped them for ICE cars almost as soon as they came out, because electric cars sucked for all the same reasons they suck today. Nearly two centuries of dreaming, and no-one has made them work better than some pistons propelled by gasoline explosions.
I assume that the old EVs ran on lead-acid batteries. The new ones run on lithium-ion batteries, which have much better energy density. I don’t know the numbers, but I’ve driven a couple lead-acid EVs and you don’t need to know the numbers to see it. That much said, gasoline and diesel fuel have much more energy density than lithium-ion batteries.
One gallon of gasoline weighs 6 pounds, and contains the equivalent of about 34 kWh of electricity. The 24 kWh battery in my EV weighs 650 pounds. An EV will go 3.5 times as far per kWh equivalent because less heat is wasted, and if you go farther backward and include the efficiency factors involved in generating electricity, this rises to about 5 times. Even then, energy density favors gasoline.
They will probably be the norm in the future, because we’ll be living in places where we can’t just dig oil out of the ground: no-one’s likely to be driving an ICE car on Mars any time soon. But they make no sense on Earth for the majority of people, unless you replace the crappy batteries with a nuclear power source that you change every few years.
Nuclear powered cars? Directly? I doubt it, to put it mildly.
A Tesla battery pack for the 85kWhr model requires 100 kWrs to fully charge (15% loss in charging, mainly due to heat generated in the process).
What’s your source? By direct observation, the 24 kWh pack in my Think City requires 25 kWh to charge. Like a Tesla car, it’s got a lithium-ion battery. I keep meticulous records. All of my calculations are based on direct observation, and I measure electricity with an appliance meter (interestingly enough, the brand is “Watts Up”) located between the wall plug and the external gizmo that feeds juice to the EV’s charging port.
The people I trust tell me that you lose 15%-20% from the plug to the wheels. This matches your number so we’re on the same page, but I’d be very surprised if the Tesla Model S 85 kWh model requires 100 kWh from the wall plug.
It’s $1, it is always $1 per charge, it does not matter where you live, what the power source, the size of the battery or how flat the battery is, it is always $1.
It’s $1, it is always $1 per charge, it does not matter where you live, what the power source, the size of the battery or how flat the battery is, it is always $1.
There are some towns in central Washington State near the big dams on the Columbia River where electricith goes for 2 to 3 cents per kWh. At 2.5 cents/kWh, it’d cost 50 cents to recharge my EV. But here in Seattle, alas, juice goes for 11.49 cents/kWh, so a typical charge costs me about $2.25. Rates were lower when I bought it a couple years ago, so the average has been $1.97 per charge over the life of the car.
Before I answer your question, I wanted ti post a link to a picture of my two main vehicles. I’m doing this in an attempt to back up my statement that I bought the EV not to save the earth but because a) I’m kind of a car nut, and b) I got it way cheap in a bankruptcy sale.
http://i.imgur.com/AotcCja.jpg
I’ve owned my EV (a Think City) for 2-1.2 years. Over that period, the average cost of a charge has been $1.97. The average miles per charge have been 54, which makes the average fuel cost per mile 3.6 cents. The average fuel cost for an equivalent gas car (the Scion iQ, almost exactly the same size and weight) would’ve been 12.6 cents per mile.
There is no difference in charging times due to weather, but average summer range is 37% better than average winter range in Seattle. The difference is attributable mainly to the need to use the heater and defroster in winter; if I owned the car in a place with a harsher winter climate the gap would be wider.
I’m am happy to answer any questions about EVs. I know a great deal about them. I ask that I not be treated as any kind of “EVangelist” here. I’m am relentlessly data-driven, to the point where I’ve been booted off of a couple EV forums for telling the unvarnished truth. As far as I am concerned, these are cars and not causes. People here can absolutely trust my integrity and objectivity on this subject. Thanks.
Is a Nitromethane version available? The first rocket car…cool!
Is a Nitromethane version available? The first rocket car…cool!
What does that even mean?
But you have to factor in the cost of battery replacement to the cost-per-mile, don’t you?
Over the last year, the average cost of a gallon of gas in the US has been $2.82.
A Scion iQ averages 36.5 mpg. That’s 7.75 cents/mile, 2.2x the nominal cost of your EV, not 3.5x.
On the other hand, your average 12.6 cents per mile for a Scion iQ, implies gas in your area has averaged $4.60 a gallon. That is unrealistically steep, especially given the recent fall in gas prices. The highest average price for gas in the US was in California, April 2014, at $4.25/gal.
But you have to factor in the cost of battery replacement to the cost-per-mile, don’t you?
Absolutely! All I did previously was give the figures separately, in the interest of both answering the question and identifying the cost components. Elsewhere, when I’ve discussed total operating cost, I’ve added them together to come up with a complete number. Oh, and there’s a third number: the per-mile cost of Washington State’s $100 annual EV fee supposedly intended to replace lost gas taxes.
The gas-tax replacement fee is almost as much of a fraud as, say, the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. At other times in other places I’ve picked those wings off of those flies. I didn’t do it here because I didn’t want to suck all the air out of the room and kill you. But I can, if you want. Honest, I hide from nothing. It’s only a matter of how evil a nerd a choose to be at first. So you can request it of me, but be careful what you wish for because I will tell you.
A Scion iQ averages 36.5 mpg. That’s 7.75 cents/mile, 2.2x the nominal cost of your EV, not 3.5x.
You forget that Seattle has hills, and that I live right smack at the top of one of the steepest. I wrote that I bought the EV because I’m a car nut not because I care about CO2, the scare over which I consider to be a pile of bovine effluent as high as the moon. As a result, I own not just that behemonth pickup, but a bunch of other vehicles, which pay a 15-20% hill penalty. Which I incorporated into the Scion’s official numbers.
And, just to be nerdy about it (because I keep a spreadsheet), the average gas price at the station 0.6 miles down the hill has been $3.65 a gallon since I bought the EV.
p.s.: I answered the battery replacement cost question but it was held in the moderation queue because artificial intelligence has a ways to go. The short version is: 4 cents a mile.
Silver electrocatalysts may help enable long-term space travel
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-silver-electrocatalysts-enable-long-term-space.html
A scientist at NASA’s Glenn Research Center contacted Feng Jiao, assistant professor in UD’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, after he and his colleagues published a paper in Nature Communications in January 2014.
Jiao’s team had created a silver electrocatalyst that, due to its carefully designed nanoscale structure, could convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide with 92 percent efficiency—freeing oxygen in the process.
The catalyst itself is a silver coating on the surface of an electrode that increases the efficiency of the CO2-CO reaction by assisting with the transfer of electrons.
“The catalyst performance is definitely among the best,” Jiao says. “It’s very selective, very efficient.”
Carbon monoxide (CO) has many industrial applications, and the initial idea was to convert abundant CO2 to useful CO, with the oxygen as an incidental byproduct.
Now that byproduct is what they’re focused on.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-silver-electrocatalysts-enable-long-term-space.html#jCp
Lomborg’s take: taxpayer cost of $7500 per electric vehicle vs $27 in benefits. He also finds electrics kill twice as many people as an Audi diesel.
He is consistently wrong on his facts concerning EVs.
Mmm. Its worth noting down the salient facts about BEVs so that people dont get distracted by irrelevancies.
Everything about Battery Electric Vehicles is sunshine and light, except the battery. Electric motors are clean quite efficient and very low maintenance. Regenerative braking works and makes energy available to recharge under braking. The actual power to weight ratio of a BEV can be very high indeed.
What rips them apart is the energy to weight, the cost, the short lifetime and the slow recharge rate of the battery.
And this brings me to another widely held misconception, about Technological Progress. The Great Unwashed thing it proceeds linearly, that technology this year is always e.g. 10% better than last or something ..this is not the case, it proceeds asymptotically towards the best theoretical performance possible.
And this is, in the case of windmills, solar panels and possibly electric cars. a performance that is simply not good enough to replace what we have at the moment.
This point needs to be stressed. Not only is most renewable energy generation massively inferior to existing thermal plant but it is condemned by the laws of physics to remain so. There is no chance that the world will be powered by solar panels and windmills alone, and retain its current technological society.
In the case of batteries, the jury is almost back in. No electrochemical energy store will ever be good enough to directly replace hydrocarbon fuel for off grid power generation including vehicles. Maybe lithium air will come close.,. but what we see is that the motor vehicle as we know it, and the aircraft, are both absolutely developments which were made possible by (and would cease to be possible without), hydrocarbon fuel.
Obviously this doesn’t mean that BEVs are not possible, any more than it means that windmills and solar panels cant be built, but what it means is that they will always be inevitably and necessarily of a far far higher cost:performance ratio than the technology they are designed to replace.
Technology proceeds by giant leaps and paradigm shifts followed by years of stepwise improvement. After years of stepwise improvement to boats with sails and carts with horses, the development of the fossil fuel engine – starting with the coal powered steam engine – saw dramatic improvements in efficiency until thermodynamic limits were approached towards the beginning of WWII. The steam turbine in a modern coal oil gas or nuclear power station is not much better than it was 50 years ago.
IN terms of batteries we are well up the curve of diminishing returns. We can predict all the basic facts about any particular pair of elements stuffed together to make an electrochemical battery, and the short answer is that all are wanting when it comes down to the ideal battery – less than 250kg and able to get a one and a half tonne car at least 500 miles on the level or up the highest pass in the Sierra Nevada from sea level…and all at the sort of mass produced cost/lifetime that doesn’t add more than a few cents per mile. Lithium based batteries come closest. But they are trembling on the brink of adequate energy density and are still firmly over the cliff in terms of cost.
In short the BEV may be an alternative to a fuel car, but it is not, never will be and never CAN be a replacement.
If we become constrained by lack of price of extraction of/ fossil fuel, then we are faced with two options – changing how we manage transport on a global basis, or using cheap nuclear power to synthesise diesel and Avjet and/or gasoline.
http://www.templar.co.uk/downloads/Beyond_Fossil_Fuels.pdf
Summarises some possible ways to maintain a technological society in the absence of cheap fossil fuels.
I suppose even the mention of a steam engine driven car powered by a LENR POWER PLANT .
Is too impossible. Because that would mean a recharge of nickel based fuel every 20,000 miles or ,
12month check and charge, even the idea is impossible in the next 15 years is it not?
Leo
A note of thanks.What a perfectly aware summary! It has nothing to do with climate!
I am one of Ellis’s lurkers. In the past 5 years as a WUWT ‘junkie’ I have read almost every article and most of the comments from contributors. I am a 72 year old retired field biologist in the private sector, followed by a second career as a process control programmer and then IT specialist
I have never read a better ‘***bottom line***’ summary of the continuing evolution of our ‘energy paradigm’ in the USA (world.)
It baffles me that any reasonably intelligent rational person can’t ‘sense’ what you are saying here!
You have put the whole paradigm into a few paragraphs. There IS no going back to the future, only ‘forward’ to higher energy densities, or we are all doomed.
From clipper ships and horse/mule drawn plows at the turn of the last century to jumbo jets and 100 HP John Deere 12 row (or no-till tractors). Technology pushes us forward, and further out on a limb! (smile)
I recently bought a high end Ford Fusion Hybrid which is “Powered by Microsoft”! I fell in love with the technology! It e-mails me reports on how it is feeling!
Thanks for the Link. I can see as a techno junkie I’ll enjoy it.
Eric
What rips them apart is the energy to weight, the cost, the short lifetime and the slow recharge rate of the battery.
I agree with that, except for battery life. EV batteries are designed for a functional life of 2,000 cycles, which for say, a Nissan LEAF or my Think City, is about 100,000 miles. But to get that much out of the battery, you need to use no more than 80% of its capacity per charge. And if you use them in really hot places, i.e. Phoenix, Arizona, they’ll degrade faster. Nissan has had some troubles with LEAF batteries in this regard. The United States, with its huge climactic variation, is an ideal place to test the performance of these vehicles in actual use in a wide variety of conditions.
And this brings me to another widely held misconception, about Technological Progress. The Great Unwashed thing it proceeds linearly, that technology this year is always e.g. 10% better than last or something ..this is not the case, it proceeds asymptotically towards the best theoretical performance possible.
Strongly agree.
And this is, in the case of windmills, solar panels and possibly electric cars. a performance that is simply not good enough to replace what we have at the moment.
Windmills and solar cells are different. The big issue with the former is the lack of cheap storage of the electricity they generate. This makes wind and solar power non-dispatchable and therefore unreliable and unsuited to use for base loading, which in turn raises their cost. I think that issue is going to be solved soon. The development of cheap large-scale batteries is going to turn the whole CO2 argument in a very different direction. Maybe I’m too much of an optimist, though.
Americans are like that. We have a bias toward optimism, especially as it concerns technology. And yes, I realize the irony of pasting a BBC link. But the battery comes from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which in my experience is good at these sorts of things.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29284934
This point needs to be stressed. Not only is most renewable energy generation massively inferior to existing thermal plant but it is condemned by the laws of physics to remain so. There is no chance that the world will be powered by solar panels and windmills alone, and retain its current technological society.
Yes and no. Currently, the U.S. generates 4 petawatt hours (quadrillion watt hours) of electricity per year, and the whole world somewhere between 20 and 25 petawatt hours. Lots of inertia in the system, to put it mildly. If the battery at the link above is real, I expect the growth of generation to go renewable, and work backwards from there. But it will take a long time to go “all renewable,” or close to it.
In the case of batteries, the jury is almost back in. No electrochemical energy store will ever be good enough to directly replace hydrocarbon fuel for off grid power generation including vehicles. Maybe lithium air will come close.,. but what we see is that the motor vehicle as we know it, and the aircraft, are both absolutely developments which were made possible by (and would cease to be possible without), hydrocarbon fuel.
I read as much as I can about small, vehicle-sized batteries, and thus far I don’t see anything viable out there to replace lithium-ion in the next 20 years. Manufacturing economies and incremental improvements in the batteries might — a big “might” — make urban commuter cars viable, but that’s about as far as it goes, from everything I’ve been able to find out.
IN terms of batteries we are well up the curve of diminishing returns. We can predict all the basic facts about any particular pair of elements stuffed together to make an electrochemical battery, and the short answer is that all are wanting when it comes down to the ideal battery – less than 250kg and able to get a one and a half tonne car at least 500 miles on the level or up the highest pass in the Sierra Nevada from sea level…and all at the sort of mass produced cost/lifetime that doesn’t add more than a few cents per mile. Lithium based batteries come closest. But they are trembling on the brink of adequate energy density and are still firmly over the cliff in terms of cost.
One semi-counterargument is that batteries as we know them are still a primitive technology, maybe comparable to running computers with vacuum tubes instead of semiconductors. I wish I knew more about pathways to something else, but I don’t. The one genuinely promising development looks to be the liquid metal battery (the link above), but that’s not suitable for vehicles and it’s really not fundamentally new or different.
In short the BEV may be an alternative to a fuel car, but it is not, never will be and never CAN be a replacement.
Never say never, but I don’t see wide-scale replacement any time soon. There might be some niche markets, i.e. urban commuter cars, but that’s about all, as I mentioned above.
“it seems that this battery swap system is actually moving forward: http://www.wired.com/2009/05/better-place/”
And they’ve already gone out of business:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place
As discussed in the Tesla thread a couple of days ago, there are huge financial and technical problems with battery swaps, which makes it extremely unlikely to ever work in the real world.
I have suggested this before, but I will try again. The U.S. Energy Information (EIA) is responsible for compiling and publishing data on energy consumption in the U.S. Among the metrics they they track is “heating degree days” and “cooling degree days.” Wouldn’t it make sense to track how their estimates compare to published measures of temperature from NOAA/NCDC?
HDD and CDD numbers are derived from the high and low temperatures recorded at NOAA/NCDC sites, I believe. Now if you compared HDD/CDD to heating/cooling energy consumption you might get something interesting.
Yes, but they can’t drop rural sites as alleged by Tony Heller because they are reporting cooler temperatures than urban ones.
A few days ago, DirecTV was having problems. We could not access The Weather Channel, because it was listed as a premium channel on the TV screen with information on how to subscribe. Some of TWC’s programs were listed as Pay Per View events. I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Probably because somebody’s been naming winter storms like tropical cyclones / hurricanes.
Slightly stiff breeze “Bruce”
Satellite glitch. I had the same issue and got an email. All is well now.
Littlepeaks,
That would be a good thing, IMO. The fewer people wthat watch their Fraud – promoting Tripe, the better.
Maybe NatGeo could follow suit.
May I suggest another entry to the ‘Climate FAIL files’
Warmer Bias…
Example..
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/12/another-bias-in-temperature-measurements-discovered/
Is Boston, and New England in general doing okay?
Were the people prepared or are they freezing to death?
My local Florida Today hasn’t said much about snow lately…
nor global warming come to think of it.
I can’t speak for Boston – where I think snow removal has been an issue – but here in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont (up by Canada), it is just winter. Been colder than I would like it (-teens F at night), my woodpile is drawing down (as it was supposed to) bunch of global warming on the ground but we plow that out of the way and it attracts people to come up here and go out and play.
Of course, if I could, I’d escape for the winter. Knees won’t let me bang the bumps anymore and I’d rather be fishing, but that bit about drilling holes in frozen ponds just doesn’t do it.
All in all, I’d characterize our attitude as : GO PATRIOTS again and wondering just which Red Sox team will show up this year.
Bubba, so that our WUWT global community can appreciate the amount of snow you guys are putting up with, I’ve overlayed the NASA image from yesterday’s WUWT article with a scaled map of the UK. It certainly puts things in perspective.
http://i.imgur.com/HM80xxK.jpg
I’m just north of Concord NH, and have less snow than Boston. That’s typical – when it snows in Boston we’re too far from the storm and have a NE fetch over Maine. A storm track just west of Boston means they get rain and we get a lot of snow.
I recorded 23″ on the ground, I still have places to put snow that the snowblower can reach, I shoveled off a shed roof today before the next round (3″ expected), I haven’t had to do a snowtop removal so I can see traffic at the end of the driveway, but only because the driveway is on a hill.
The main problem is all this snow came since early January. We had bare ground from Dec 25 to Jan 3. There has been no melting, so the snow has packed into surface railroad switches. That and narrow roads has utterly fouled up traffic in metro Boston.
15 day with sub-zero lows (and 3 more at +0.1F), 2 days above 40F.
I stopped at the pharmacy this morning. They’re out of Cabin Fever medicine and haven’t bothered to order Spring Fever medicine yet.
You have the advantage of one of mankind’s greatest achievements particularly for Cabin Fever meds – the NH (that’s not Northern Hemisphere – although were stuck in it) Sate Liquor Stores – great prices and amazing selection. I’m not allowed to drive over to Maine to see my mother and sister without calling for their order first.
Ordered a couple of Josh’s 2015 calendars. In both instances, you cancelled the orders after I asked you for the tracking numbers after three weeks had passed with no calendar delivery.
I ordered a Josh calendar in December and it has not yet arrived. 🙁
I thought to write it off as a donation, too, however, I finally decided that I would consider a donation after I received the calendar!
My Josh calendar arrived last week. I had ordered one for a friend, too. He didn’t realize it was from me, decided he already had too many calendars, so sent his to me. Now I have two. I don’t need two.
/Mr Lynn
I guess after they pass(and they will) net neutrality we won’t get to comment on their bias.
How about coverage on all the different data that is out there as to the start, end, severity and extent of the Little Ice Age?
The data is all over the place but maybe some kind of a mean might come about if looked into on this site.
That is my suggestion for a future topic.
I’ll second that.
Maybe I missed it, but has this paper been discussed? I suspect it would be controversial.
Atmospheric and Climate Sciences
Vol.04 No.05(2014), Article ID:51443,8 pages
10.4236/acs.2014.45072
“petroleum production and other anthropogenic activities resulting in accumulation of additional amounts of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have practically no effect on the Earth’s climate. “
“Moreover, based on the adiabatic model of heat transfer, the writers showed that additional releases of CO2 and CH4 lead to cooling (and not to warming as the proponents of the conventional theory of global warming state) of the Earth’s atmosphere.”
“Therefore, it turns out that the common concept of Earth’s climate warming due to accumulation of the anthropogenic CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” is a myth. On the contrary, the atmospheric accumulation of CO2 and CH4, with all other conditions constant, can result only in the global climate cooling …”
Forgot the link:
http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperDownload.aspx?paperID=51443
Maybe an interesting item to be discussed by people who do know more about radiation, but I have already a critical point:
[the GHGs] intercept the infrared solar irradiation in the upper layers of stratosphere and, thus, prevent overheating of Earth.
As far as I know, incoming solar IR is only a small fraction of total incoming energy and CH4 and CO2 only absorb a small fraction of that, but a much larger fraction from the returning IR from the earth’s surface…
… and the GHGs are mainly in the troposphere not the upper stratosphere…
This statement really had nothing to do with the paper. Unfortunately, they added a couple of these irrelevant statements. It does detract from their science.
Ferdinand, IR (defined as anything longer wave than human eyes can see) is about half of the solar radiance striking the top of the atmosphere. In my opinion this “top down” IR radiance causes about half of the greenhouse effect. Water resonates very strongly in these top down spectra and CO2 shown green not so much.
Something is absorbing something in the upper stratosphere because the negative lapse rate continues above the ozone layer.
The “adiabatic model of heat transfer” doesn’t include radiant energy due to black body emission of infrared light. Then, the question is whether or not the climate is sensitive to the build of anthropogenic gasses.
Numerous studies of the troposphere show no significant warming trend versus the surface trend.
“We have found that while the models generally agree with each other, they disagree with the observations. In particular, the three state-of-the-art greenhouse models (Hadley, DOE PCM, and GISS SI2000) examined here show positive temperature trends that increase with altitude, reaching values greater than the near-surface trends by as much as 50 to 100 percent. However, the existing observational data sets show decreasing as well as mostly negative trends since 1979.” – from “Altitude dependence of atmospheric temperature trends: Climate models versus observation,” by David H. Douglass et al, at http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/2004GL020103_altitude.pdf.
“It seems improbable that results from satellites (MSU), NCAR/NCEP reanalysis (NNR), and Radiosondes, which agree with each other, would all be wrong. Therefore, it seems more likely that both the models and observed surface trends are problematic. Their apparent agreement may be a coincidence or perhaps reflect a ‘tuning’ of the models to the surface temperature trends,” the article concludes.
While the IPCC AR4 model predicts that, in the tropics, the temperature trend in the lower troposphere should exceed that of the surface by a factor of 1.4 ( i.e. “fourth power forcing” ), the observation is that the ratio is less than unity. See “What Do Observational Datasets Say about Modeled Tropospheric Temperature Trends since 1979?,” by John R. Christy et al, at http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/2/9/2148/pdf. “A more positive surface temperature trend than reported here, of course, would make the disagreement with the models even more significant.”
H.W. Ellsaesser’s 1988 paper, “A different view of the climatic effect of CO2” at http://www.biblioteca.org.ar/libros/90440.pdf describes the effect on the surface temperature of raising the mean elevation of the “greenhouse blanket” through the narrow “15-micron” window as being far from certain.
A sizeable portion of the earth’s surface is already completely opaque with regard to the CO2 absorption spectrum. See page 71 of “Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics”, International Journal of Modern Physics B, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009) 275–364, DOI No: 10.1142/S021797920904984X, http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161v4
Any “logarithmic” effect of adding more CO2 is, arguably, already asymptotic, having no discernible effect on climate.
The half life of CH4 is seven years, during which time it degrades into CO2.
The half life of CO2 is less certain.
The oceans dissolve CO2 (as well as outgas) with only 1000nth of it converting to carbonic acid. The remaining 99.9% convert into carbonate and bicarbonate species, as well as aqueous CO2. “Although the concentration of CO2(aq) far exceeds that of dissolved H2CO3 (in the order of 10³) we denote the concentration of all dissolved CO2 by [H2CO3]” – from section 9.2 of “CHEMISTRY OF CARBONIC ACID IN WATER” at http://www-naweb.iaea.org/napc/ih/documents/global_cycle/vol%20I/cht_i_09.pdf
From an ocean sediment proxy, the pH level of the oceans 21 million years ago was 7.4, then the pH level increased to 8.2 about 7 million years ago. See “Foraminiferal boron isotope ratios as a proxy for surface ocean pH over the past 21 Myr” at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v363/n6425/abs/363149a0.html
A pH level greater than 7 is not acidic.
In addition to the oceans, carbon cycles exist on land.
“The role of terrestrial plants in limiting atmospheric CO2 decline over the past 24 million years”, Nature 460, 85-88 (2 July 2009) doi:10.1038/nature08133 Letter, concludes that grasslands are the result of the CO2 suffocation of trees. Plate tectonics were responsible for CO2-depleting mineral formation, especially, the uplift of the Himalayas. CO2 levels dropped to 200-250 ppm from 1000-1500 ppm as forests starved for CO2 gave way to prairies. See http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/nature08133
The assertion that carbon sinks are overwhelmed is false. “Despite the predictions of coupled climate-carbon cycle models, no trend in the airborne fraction can be found.” – from the abstract to “Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?”, Knorr, W., Geophysical Research Letters, 2009; 36 (21): L21710 DOI: 10.1029/2009GL040613 at http://radioviceonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/knorr2009_co2_sequestration.pdf
From National Geographic, “Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall. If sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities. This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago. The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers). Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences. The study suggests huge increases in vegetation in areas including central Chad and western Sudan.” See http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
Then, there are the issue of feedbacks, and so on.
Without anthropogenic interference, it is questionable whether the concentration of CO2 would be enough to support life.
gymnosperm
What is the Planck curve labelled ‘5290 deg.C Blackbody Spectrum’ in your first graph supposed to represent? Apart from that it’s obviously wrong ; such a blackbody would emit much more than the Sun’s apparent irradiance at TOA.
I see this graph quite often (and have even used it) but this 5250 deg.C curve irritates me. If someone thinks that is the surface temperature of the Sun, it’s wrong.
Apart from that, the graph is quite useful.
It may be that the division between people who are convinced about the man made climate change disaster and people who are not convinced might well be a division along the line between people who feel that they are concerned to fit in with the society, even to feel worthy of a throne within the society and those that don’t really see themselves as beholding to present society but rather would like to know the truth about a thing.
One of the fun things to dissect here would be the various US 2014 State of the Climate Report claims about extreme weather. Had a go at a top level in essay Credibility Conundrums. But there are probably many others, and other ways to deconstruct the top level.
Another fun thing would be to get deeper into climate model details and how they simply cannot ever be right. Deepen and extend Prof. Essex talk, making it more tangible. Had a go in essay Models all the way Down; probably just scratched the surface.
And, if as rumored, there will be a congressional investigation of temperature adjustments, an update on surface stations and revisions to the draft paper would be timely.
I’ll second these, too.
Next you will probably second that emotion. 🙂
music to my ears!
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, (Rep California), is quoted in “The Daily Caller” saying “expect there to be congressional hearings into NASA altering weather station data to falsely indicate warming and sea rise”. Even if no charges are filed I think the fact that hearings were held damages NASA credibility.
Australia’s sliding/moving lakes:
We have had an article explaining about the sliding rocks in the Death Valley National Park:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/29/mystery-of-the-sailing-stones-of-death-valley-solved-climate-change-immediately-blamed-for-no-good-reason/
Lots of talk about Australia lately. There is one curious thing I have wondered about for a while now. I have been trying to research why the dry/salt/lakes in the Australia Kau Nature Reserve area and surrounding area have been “sliding” to the West-North-West. There seems to be no research or explanation as to why this is happening. They are shallow lakes/dry lakes with elevation changes of no more than 12 to 15 ft. locally. I was told that they are just dry salt lakes, but that doesn’t explain why most of them have slid across the landscape towards the WNW.
Most of the research I have seen on these “lakes” has been related to their ph (acidity) and the organisms in the lakes. Not much on the geology as to why they are moving west.
Photos from Google Earth are attached. Does anyone have a theory about how this happens, or maybe a valid explanation?
Photos link: http://www.goldenrectangle.net/kau.html
Location on Google Earth, you can see for yourselves: 33°31’59.26″ S 122°22’32.45″ E
That is really interesting ( some are repeats), but with all the human development around them ( as far as I can tell) this could be called ASSL.
Anthropogenic Sliding Salt Lakes
We on the skeptic side have had a very lucky break. Mother Nature has not cooperated with the climate alarmists. There is a long term warming trend since the Little Ice Age that will continue into the foreseeable future. The alarmist painted themselves in a corner when they claimed that humans were responsible for virtually 100% of the global warming and that natural variance was negligible. The global temperature rise hiatus will end one day. If we skeptics cannot convince people that the science is not settled now while the computer projections/predictions are so totally wrong, we sure will not be able to when the temperature resumes its upward climb.
I would like to ask the readers here if they think the climate scientists alarmist, the IPCC, the mainstream media, and Al Gore are just mistaken, or are they motivated by political or financial gain, or are they just communist that would like to make energy much more expensive to free western countries and redistribute the wealth from developed countries to 3rd world dictators.
thank you
Some of all three. Christina Figueres of UNFCC is clearly in the third catagory. Gore always was in the second. I suspect some climatologists like Susan Solomon are in the first, and others (most climate modelers) are in both one and two. If models don’t work, they are out of work.
All of the above, in varying proportions.
My colleague Peter Ward and I are promoting an alternative explanation for the dramatic global warming of the last three decades of the 20th century. We feel that ozone depletion due to CFCs during that interval is a far more likely driver of global warming than CO2 increase. The thinning of the ozone layer would have admitted an increased influx of solar UV-B radiation, which is 48 times more energetic than the IR radiation absorbed by CO2. The ban on CFCs by the Montreal Protocol handily explains the global warming “hiatus” since 1998. Global temperature remains elevated because chlorine remains in the stratosphere due to its long residence time, and it continues to destroy ozone catalytically. We argue that greenhouse warming theory (GWT) is flawed for several reasons, chief of which is that it violates the second law of thermodynamics: heat does not flow from a colder body (the atmosphere) to a warmer one (Earth’s surface). GWT was tested experimentally by Knut Angstrom early in the 20th century, and he found it to be insignificant. It has not been experimentally tested since. We find a compelling relationship between basaltic volcanism and global warming in the geologic record, which we attribute to chlorine outgassing. Details are complicated, but our website, ozonedepletiontheory.info, explains them fully. We are writing a book on ozone depletion theory, which should be available later this year.
I read this interview of Freeman Dyson. It truly is ridiculous. There’s a pic of icebergs and the caption;
“Climate conflict: Professor Dyson’s naysaying over scenes like this has made him into a controversial figure”
is worth reading the exchange. The last email of Dr. Dyson says “I decided I have no wish to continue this discussion. Your last message just repeats the same old party line that we have many good reasons to distrust”
Preface to the interview:
“World-renowned physicist Professor Freeman Dyson has been described as a ‘force-of-nature intellect’. He’s also one of the world’s foremost climate change sceptics. In this email exchange, our science editor, Steve Connor, asks the Princeton scholar why he’s one of the few true intellectuals to be so dismissive of the global-warming consensus.” [italics mine]
Bias much?
Beethoven – Thanks for the link to the Dyson “interview”.
What a shame that any reporter granted access to Dyson would have so little respect. And how foolish to try to debate Dyson and waste his time.
I have never met Dyson, which might be strange given that I lived in the same dormitory building at Cornell that he did. My faults entirely for showing up 18 years after he left! But I did hear a talk he gave here about 20 years ago. Astounding. Sharp as a tack then and it appears he still has his edge – and then some. To call him an intellectual giant does not do justice. And what a thoughtful man – as suggested by my two favorite Dyson stories, both from “Disturbing the Universe”:
(1) “By that time I had finally become an American citizen. The decision to abjure my allegiance to Queen Elizabeth might have been a difficult one, but the Queen’s ministers made it easy for me, An official lady in the Queen’s Foreign Office decided that my children were illegitimate according to British law. They were therefore not British subjects and not entitled to receive British passports. As a consequence of her decision, my family for a while consisted of five people with five different nationalities, one British, one German, one Swiss, one American and one stateless. Traveling around Europe with a stateless child is no joke. So it was with considerable relief that I went to the courthouse in Trenton and said the magic words that released me from dependence on any foreign prince or potentate. Bastards or not, the U.S.A. would at least give my children passports.”
(2) “On the Fourth of July I went with my wife and our two youngest children to watch the fireworks on the Ellipse behind the White House. A big crowd was there, predominantly black, sitting on the grass and waiting for the show. We sat down among them. Our children were soon running around with the others. Then came the fireworks. After the official fireworks were over, the crowd was allowed to let off unofficial fireworks. Everybody seemed to have brought something. The black children all had little rockets or Catherine wheels or sparklers and were shouting with joy as they blazed away. Only our children sat quiet and sad because we had not brought anything for them. But suddenly one of the black children came up to us and gave our children a fistful of sparklers so they could join in the fun. That moment, rather than the ceremony in Trenton, was the true beginning of my citizenship. It was then that I knew for sure we were at home in America.”
————————-
Dry eyes? I think not.
Great story on so many levels.
Bernie that is beautiful and Dyson is what all America should be, a vibrant mix of good, bad and indifferent, healthy wealthy and wise.Dyson is a real american, Im an ozzie , but real Americans are not much different from real ozzies.
Freeman Dyson is English born LOL
Excellent post, Mr. Hutchins. !!! Mr.Dyson has an incredible mind.
Sorry, that was meant for Beethoven. Cheers for that.
Sly said February 22, 2015 at 9:17 am: “Freeman Dyson is English born LOL”
My two stories a few comments above relate to the events of Dyson’s naturalization as an American citizen. Did you miss them? Sorry – what was your point?
none really just flying my flag… having said that don’t blame him for leaving the UK 😀
Thanks Beethoven for the link, loved the interview. Why you ask? It finally truly explained what the word condescending means ( the guy from the independent is the most overpaid jerk on the planet, The disrespect, the attempt to “trip” Freeman Dyson was disgusting to read thank god that will be the only and last time i peruse said ?paper? ( I love the name “Freeman” Dyson and I love his incredible sharp mind, the three day hiatus in responding was a classic and Conners didn’t even pick up on that !! ( oh sorry about the rant).
A search for articles about the re-routing of the Iditarod in response to a snowless heat wave in Alaska got me to an EcoWatch page “…Alaska Deals With Climate Change,” where I got into some back-and-forth with a supposed Alaska native. When the conversation turned to how people on the North Slope were all “scared” by climate change, I did some reseach on past climate of Barrow, which a 2010 Smithsonian article described as “Ground Zero for Climate Change.”
I haven’t finished analyzing the data yet, but here are some highlights:
Back in 1902, Barrow had 136 days with temperatures above freezing, with a max temp of 62°F. In 2014 there were 132 days above freezing and the max temp was 58°F.
Record maximum temp is 79°F, set in 1993, which beat the previous record of 78°F set in 1927. Highest temperature this century is 74°F in 2009.
Record low of -56°F was set in 1924. The lowest temperature this century is -55°F.
Every decade in the record has at least one year with above-freezing temps in November (so much for winter coming later and later).
It sure looks like the Smithsonian’s prediction of disastrous permafrost melt was premature. Given the supposed global temperature rise since the 1800s, shouldn’t Barrow have been warmer even without the anthropogenic component?
If Barrow was ground zero for climate change in 2010 then climate change is a dud.
I’m doing a “submit a story” for WUWT that Anthony doesn’t know about yet and will probably take a few weeks more to hash through.
Deals with the new “Next Generation Science Standards” for K-12 education in US that 11 states have adopted to supplement Common Core. It has some frightening implications – one of which is anthropogenic climate change beginning in Kindergarten and escalating through 12th. Included are the use of models to make decisions and judge values in K-5th grade.
Even scarier:
“Leaders of the effort said that teachers may well wind up covering fewer subjects, but digging more deeply into the ones they do cover. In some cases, traditional classes like biology and chemistry may disappear entirely from high schools, replaced by courses that use a case-study method to teach science in a more holistic way”.
I won’t spoil it further except I plan to include efforts and reactions to similar educational “reforms” in UK and possibly Oz.
Beat me up here or I’ll just finish the discovery, ship it, and Anthony can choose me as a “useful punching bag” when he needs a break.
Cheers
I would find that topic interesting. I hope it is published on a Friday so I’ll have the weekend to make a comment or two. I miss a lot since I work a bit during the week.
“use a case-study method to teach science in a more holistic way“??? Sounds more like indoctrination than science, because it’s (a) removing basic knowledge, (b) removing discovery, and thus probably (c) removing thinking.
The National Park Service is already indoctrinating.
“A recent survey of climatologists reveals that 97% of those scientists think that global climate change is occurring presently and that human activity is the primary cause.”
“Let’s be clear. Climate change is happening all around us, and human activities are accelerating it. The evidence is overwhelming, and the theory of global warming is sound. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which conducted the survey above, consists of thousands of scientists from all over the world who specialize in difference aspects of climate science. A separate study by the National Academy of the Sciences drew the same conclusions.”
http://www.nps.gov/articles/climatequestion02.htm
Robin’s been covering a lot of this type of information on Common Core and the UK/Australian efforts at her blog: http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/ What they’re doing in the attempt to reshape how children think is a bit scary.
Thanks for the link – hadn’t found that yet. More than a bit scary.
Ultimate musical interlude …
Wait! Is that … endangered rosewood?
AJB, why do you hate the environment so?
😉
OK…….sorry…for going soooo far off topic but after years of seeing the picture for “Open Thread”….has anyone else noticed the wrapping of thread” C ” and thread ” B” on left rope ” D” are opposite?
OCD much? Sorry.
The one on the left is a right handed spiral, the one on the right is a left handed spiral. They are enantiomers, from stereochemistry. Chirality! Science!
Actually, once rope could be purchased with either a right or a left hand wind. If you have a rope maker you can make either one! Changes how some knots are tied.
You’re seeing the backside of strand c. It will be right once it comes back to the front. B is a previous stage but it’s still twisting consistently. I think.
Any thoughts on these predictions in today’s NYT?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/nyregion/global-warming-could-make-the-super-rich-jealous-of-rowhouse-residents.html?_r=0
Any thoughts on the predictions in today’s NYT? As they suffer through another cold winter they can take comfort in the warming models.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/nyregion/global-warming-could-make-the-super-rich-jealous-of-rowhouse-residents.html?_r=0
Yes – what a bunch of BS…
Just for fun, a question of scale and some simple algebra.
Our atmosphere masses about 5.15×10^18 kg.
Dry air’s specific heat is 1.005 kJ/kg°K.
We use, in total, a little under 9,000 mtoe (megatons of oil equivalent) of energy every year. That converts to about 3.76×10^17 kJoules/year or 1.0467×10^14 kWhr per year. This number from the IEA for 2012 includes everything from nuclear to dung burning. ALL energy used in the world in 2012.
If we could release as heat, with 100% efficiency, every single erg of that into the atmosphere all at once… how much would air temperature increase? The energy transfer equation should get us in the ballpark:
Q = m cp Δt
where
Q = quantity of energy transferred (kJ)
m = mass of substance (kg)
cp = specific heat of the substance (kJ/kg°C, kJ/kg°K)
Δt = temperature difference (rise or fall) in the substance (°C, °K)
Rearranging for temperature change:
Q / m * cp = Δt
Introduce magnitudes:
3.76×10^17 / (5.15×10^18 * 1.005) = Δt
3.76×10^17 / 5.17575×10^18 = Δt
0.0726 = Δt °C,°K
Rounding to just an idiotic 1/100th of a degree that’s 0.07°C or 0.13°F temperature increase if we dumped our entire energy usage for a year into the atmosphere all at once! How on Earth is one of the byproducts of that supposed to do the damage the CAGW folks insist it does? How long is that 0.07°C gonna be there before it’s lost to space?
But if it went into the oceans, the oceans would warm by 0.00007 C.
@Werner, OOOHHHH NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Then you could swim around in the Arctic without that pesky wetsuit to keep you warm.
Just wondering about the double standards of the AGW lot. I mean…do they drink soda pop with CO2 in it to give the fizz ? Is that OK to bring CO2 out of the ground for their pleasure but not OK to bring CO2 out from coal or wood to provide warmth for those that need it? I wonder just how much CO2 Coca Cola and the others release into the atmosphere. Surely the Greens should not be drinking this stuff.
Beer also has CO2 providing the fizz but that’s not from the ground…it’s from bacteria so I’ll keep on drinking that I think!
Anyone got any thoughts on this as another weapon to use against the AGW lot? Has there ever been any research on just how much CO2 is involved…would it be one power station or 10 or x million cars?
Most CO2 for soda and the like is from power plant extraction — from burning coal. The “fizz” is beer is created by yeast, not bacteria, and is simply being recycled from the atmosphere. Plants that produce grain extract CO2 from the atmosphere, combine it with water to produce sugars. Yeasts metabolize the sugars anaerobically to form CO2 and alcohol. The alcohol that you drink is metabolized back to CO2, after first producing acetaldehyde, a poison similar to formaldehyde, that produces the hangover you experience from drinking too much alcohol.
There you go, that is the explanation why warmists hate CO2, hangovers from drinking all that champagne in Lima, Kyoto and Copenhagen!
It’s worse than we thought…OMG, the CO2 comes from coal!
I know that in South Australia much of their CO2 comes from boreholes. I wonder if the soda manufacturers there plan to offset their CO2 footprint by sequestering CO2 back into the ground???
Thanks for the correction about yeast. Good to hear that I can drink more beer without feeling guilty or wrecking poor old Gaia.
[Here are] two quotes that characterize the state of climate [science] and Global Warming/Climate Change:
“In a world increasingly devoid of moral authority, the supposed impartiality of science provides a seemingly objective source of authority. That authority is a major threat to the environmental movement.”
Iain Murray , “The Really Inconvenient Truth” P. 51-52.
–
“When the later generations learn about climate science, they will classify the beginning of the twenty-first century as an embarrassing chapter in the history of science. They will wonder about our time and use it as a warning of the core values and criteria of science were allowed little by little to be forgotten, as the actual research topic of climate change turned into a political and social playground”
Atte Korhola, Professor of Environmental Change, University of Helsinki.
[dupe posting removed. .mod]
Very useful in my ongoing battles against elementary school faculty who believe they are gifted with an innate ability to evaluate all things economic, social, and scientific. Thanks for these
I saw The World’s Weirdest Weather on UK Channel 4 tonight at 8pm GMT.
It was surprisingly good.
Lots of interesting weather and some basic meteorology to go with it.
If you like weird weather without the AGW hype then look it up.
Hansen could have been correct not recently, but in the 1970’s when he warned of the onset of the Holocene Glacial.
Now, in view that Alaska and Siberia are at their normal (or may be a bit warmer) temperatures, but most of the Northern America is engrossed in the ‘catastrophic anthropogenic snowfalls’, this image of the last glacial (Cambridge university) looks a bit ominous
http://www.qpg.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/englishchannelformation/1453389260_3dcecb561c.jpg
New Ice Age may well start not in the Arctic but at the Great lakes, Laurentide ice sheet was up to 3000m thick, but most if not whole of Siberia and Alaska (even today mostly under permafrost) was then ice sheet free.
Suggest: the USA should be stockpiling all the (currently low-priced) oil they can get hold of.
So why the difference between Asia and N America?
Is it because Europe dries out the air before it becomes snow or hail?
And N America has the moisture from the Pacific directly; thus causing an increasing albedo as the land turns white?
That ignores the Rockies.
So why would this have happened?
My hypothesis:
Milankovic cycles –driving tectonics in the far north Atlantic (Earth’s orbital stress)
N. A. tectonics – shuts down down-welling north of Iceland, increasing rate of down-welling south west of Greenland, turning semi-permanent Icelandic Low into a permanent atmospheric pressure system, fixing jet stream to a ‘stationary’ meridional flow position for thousands of years.
Most of evaporation from warm Pacific is deposited mostly in the N. America and the rest in N. Europe as snow, leaving only dry cold winds sweeping Siberia and parts of Alaska.
Once tectonics kicks in (at start of M cyccle), de-icing starts, not as rapidly as assumed, it took 8ka to get rid of the large Laurentide ice bulge.
Arctic’s bathimetry shows clear remnants of at least five periods of excessive magma flows (with 20 or more in total possible, mostly eroded) spaced out by relatively ‘no eruptions’ periods.
For millions of years before Iceland ‘popped-up’ in the N, Atlantic, there were no ice ages.
Stockpiled oil? That’s called coal.
I throw this one up occasionally but have never managed to spark much of a discussion.
I have a theory that the cost of anything in dollars is usually a pretty good estimate of the energy that has gone into producing it.
Gold is expensive because it requires a lot of energy intensive discovery and processing.
Having worked in agriculture it is clear to me that Food = Diesel.
A wind mill requires a lot of mined materials and a lot of hi-tech fabrication.
Some people have no problem with subsidizing renewables but for me this is just an admission of failure. An admission that they absorb more energy than they produce.’
Any thoughts?
and they do not last very long, see here
@ Vuk, Those windmill farms are frightening. I had no Idea they were that large and the land areas they take up! Some of those are shocking. Where are those and why don’t we see any of these pictures in the press and what about the funding that must have gone into them and are they contributing anything? ( Oh btw vuk I am from Dutch descent, those mills are still working and were never meant to provide electricity and should not be in the same category, water pumps/grinding grain etc not much electricity a few hundred years ago)
It sounds right for bulk materials.
But not for commodities that have a significant non-material input. The extra paid for ideas isn’t included, for example.
Not much energy was spent making Faberge Eggs but they aren’t available by the dozen for a dollar.
Movies, legal expertise and sports stars also break the rule.
It seems to me that production of bulk commodities is simplified down to energy costs – they can’t be removed. That is an astute observation.
But not everything is a bulk commodity.
“Not much energy was spent making Faberge Eggs but they aren’t available by the dozen for a dollar.
Movies, legal expertise and sports stars also break the rule.”
This is where I think it gets interesting.
All of those things HAVE absorbed a lot of energy. The energy is not left residing in the egg or the movie but it has been expended in the production.
For example to produce a Faberge Egg you need to support a few craftsmen for a few years and that takes energy.
Same with the vast hordes of people and resources needed to make a movie.
I guess my position is that energy is the one thing expended during the construction of something whilst all matter is conserved and just moved around a bit.
So I still think that money spent = energy expended.
LewSkannen
Check also.
The amount of oil that any single weight of gold will buy remains almost the same since both began trading in the 1860-19890’s.
I’m from a farming family, and Food = Diesel isn’t that far off. This year our production costs will be the lowest since Katrina. But the drought in California, as well as some nonsensical politics there, will continue to keep the price of fruits and vegetables elevated, However, if that high pressure ridge breaks down in the next 3 months we might see unprecedented drops in food along with moderated home energy and gasoline costs, which, if I may get in a political side-swipe to any enviro-nuts who are trolling, benefit lower income persons the most.
As regards agriculture, I think it’s a good deal more complicated.
In a good year where your 1,000 acres produce twice as much as a bad year for the same tractor time, the selling price can be just about anything. Probably all your neighbours had a really good year, too. Not good for prices. Etc.
In some areas that are susceptible to mid and long-range drought that might be true, as in California right now. In Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio the rain is sufficiently reliable that it’s not a lot more complicated. The drought of two years ago, that hit Nebraska and Iowa was the odd-year-out. For the most part the variance in the long-term production price for the grain crops that are grown in the Midwest, specifically corn and soybeans, vary more with the cost of diesel than with any other factor. Even with variance in weather we sit in a pretty tight range of corn yields. That’s not an isolated 40 acre plot, that’s on 3 sections of land. My wife is from Northern Iowa, where her family operates 35 sections, (yes, that’s right, 35 sections, she’s the only women in the world that wealthy who knows how to splice a hydraulic hose, what’s not to love). Their corn yields are pretty tight over the last 30 years, with 4 years being exceptionally low. I can’t even give you an accepted metric on variance since it doesn’t fit any theoretical probability distribution known to man, and I do have a PhD in Information Theory, so this isn’t foreign territory.
When we look at planning we look at diesel futures more than anything, since long-range weather forecasts are “crap” and we hedge that against short-term weather as we see it for 30 days out from planting,and that might change our entire amount of, as you call it, “tractor time.” The options we have for dealing with weather impact are huge these days. If we believe that rain will be sparse we can go with extremely low-til methods, concede about 15 to 20 bushels per acre, and conserve as much existing ground moisture as possible. If we are looking at normal weather, (if there is such a thing), we can stir it up a bit more, and shoot for that elusive goal of 250 bu acre of corn.
There is some bright news about green schemes and shady politicians.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/17/chris-horner-uncovering-john-kitzhabers-environmen/
Peeking behind the ‘green’ curtain
Uncovering the Kitzhaber connections
http://www.wsj.com/articles/holman-jenkins-oregon-is-greener-than-thou-1424218950#livefyre-comment
Oregon Is Greener Than Thou
Environmentalist self-righteousness is so unaware of itself as to be entertaining.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398648/kitzhaber-and-greedy-greens-john-fund
Kitzhaber and the Greedy Greens
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398648/kitzhaber-and-greedy-greens-john-fund
Kitzhaber – yeah sad that, but greed and corruption and bribery in politics – I’m shocked.
Spent several years – late 70s early 80’s – doing PhD in Eugene (yeah, I’m a Duck), but really chasing trout in the McKenzie and steelhead anywhere I could.
The people who’d come out of the hills for Sat Market were beyond Ken Keysey (sp? I’m a reformed English major with a spelling problem).
They’re no longer in the hills, they’re living in tarp tents by the railroad tracks and next to Hwy 99 (West 7th near Chambers).
They call them “rest stops”. Whatever they they were doing in the late 70’s has caught up to them and they are very tired…. (the slogan is “it should not be illegal to sleep”)
Remember how Springfield was the ugly sister …she’s still ugly but now she has standards … she’s picky about who/how she lets sleep on her streets. Here on the west side of the river we let anybody sleep with us.
The Kitzhaber-Tom Steyer story is important. It is now becoming obvious that “Big Green” bought and paid for a politician. When people ask “why would the climate activists make this up?”, talk to them about the Kitzhaber scandal and the green corruption.
Does anyone know of any underground long term temperature records? Well water, cave or any other temperature measurements with little variability that would provide a very accurate up or down temperature trend.
Doug L
Doug. Following is copied from a pipeline burial instruction page. The paragraphs included below pertain to ground temperature at various depths.
Bottom line? Go down just a few meters and the ground temperature is constant. Go underground (in a cave for example) even with a permanent opening more than 10 meters back (as long as no wind blows through the cave from end-to-end) and it stabilizes at 50 F.
http://wiki.iploca.com/display/rtswiki/Appendix+6.2+-+Pipeline+Trench+Design
Yes the temperature is constant which is why it would be the perfect place for temperature measurements. Its like taking the earths temperature. If there was a thermometer deep in a sealed cave with one daily reading for the past 100 years that would be about as accurate a reading as we could get to see if the earth was warming or cooling.
Temperatures in wine cellars would also work very well. Caves or wine cellars at various altitudes would be interesting too. Air pressure would be smoothed in a cave and not subject to weather variability but altitude would still provide large differences
Doug
Here are the official global borehole temperature records
They show a steady increase in temperatures for some 500 years
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/borehole/core.html
Tonyb
Tonyb? Who did that study? Did Mann have anything to do with it? If he did I’ll just consider it junk science. They have an exact temperature at various depths from the 1960’s. Go back and measure them today and see if there is any change. I like to keep things simple if I can instead of reconstructing data that might not be accurate.
doug
no, not mann. He showed temperatures declining for 500 years before the sudden upsurge from 1900. This study reflects the reality that can be seen in such measures as CET in as much the temperature has been rising for some 350 years or so, well before co2 could have ha an impact.
I have been in correspondence with the author in the past and it is a bona fide study although, as with all these things, whether a temperature signal of accuracy can be extracted from a borehole is a matter of conjecture.
tonyb
I’m relatively new to this debate and am looking for a good explanation for or refutation of the idea of CO2 saturation. – Thanks.
Well, no-one denies that the effect of additional CO2 decreases exponentially as CO2 increases.
It’s Beer-Lambert’s Law; consider a window with light passing through but it’s had paint flicked at it. Each extra flick of paint will bock more light if it lands on glass but won’t do anything if it lands on paint that’s already there. Each flick of the brush has less and less impact.
Each extra CO2 molecule is less and less likely to be important.
So are we there yet?
That depends on how insignificant extra CO2 must be before it is swamped by noise. Is the CO2 effect swamped by other effects. No-one worries about the tallest sunflower blocking the view next to a range of new skyscrapers.
And the other effects? Well, who can tell all the things that affect the climate?
But (my opinion) we can tell that CO2 does not dominate the other effects, and so we can say it is sort of saturated – because of the pause relative to the climate models.
cbsjr42,
According to radiative physics, CO2 has its greatest effect within about the first 20 ppm. The effect is logaritmic, as you can see here:
So at our current ≈400 ppm, adding more CO2 has no measurable effect. The usual analogy is painting over a window: the first coat of paint has a great effect, but subsequent coats have less and less of an effect.
You can see from the chart above that if CO2 was increased by even 20% – 30%, the rise in temperature would still be too small to measure.
Thus, the atmospheric window for CO2 is saturated. Adding a lot more CO2 to current concentrations will have a negligible effect.
Another consideration: CO2 is completely harmless. There has never been any global harm from the rise in CO2. And CO2 is very beneficial to the biosphere, which is starved of it:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cHhMa7ARDDg/SoxiDu0taDI/AAAAAAAABFI/Z2yuZCWtzvc/s1600/Geocarb%2BIII-Mine-03.jpg
More CO2 is better. There has never been any downside identified with adding more of that beneficial trace gas.
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta, describe the discovery of a number of large wood fragments from the Panda Kimberlite Pipe, a volcanic intrusion which forms part of the Ekati diamond mining concession worked by BHP Billiton in Canada’s Great Slave Province, which has been calculated to be about 53.3 million years old (Early Eocene). The Panda Kimberlite Pipe forms part of the Lac de Gras Field, which contains about 150 such pipes, emplaced between 45 and 78 million years ago. The Panda Pipe is a simple 200 m diameter cylinder, apparently produced by a single eruption.
Wolfe et al. provide a detailed description of a single piece of wood, a large wood fragment which had fallen into the lava and been mummified. The wood is excellently preserved, with only the outermost millimetre having been fusinized (burned), suggesting an absence of free oxygen when it was entombed. The preserved structure of the wood allows the specimen to be assigned to a tree of the genus Metasequoia, a form of Giant Redwood now restricted to central China, but known to have been common in Alaska during the late Palaeocene and Early Eocene, and therefore not a great surprise in Slave Province.
Metasequoia requires a high level of humidity to survive, with a minimum of around 1000 mm of rainfall per year. The area where the fossil was recovered has around 280 mm of rainfall per year, suggesting that the climate was much wetter during the Early Eocene (it is possible that this 53 million year old specimen comes from a tree of the same species as the modern Chinese trees, since these are exceptionally long lived organisms). Since the tree was living close to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (about 55.5 million years ago), when the climate is predicted to have been substantially warmer and wetter in this region, this confirms the climatic predictions. Isotopic data obtained from both the cellulose of the wood and an amber (tree resin) inclusion within the fossil suggests that temperatures would have been around 7-12˚C warmer than at present while the tree was living, again tending to confirm the climatic predictions.
http://sciencythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/preserved-wood-from-early-eocene.html
Climate Change Destroyed Ancient Human Civilizations
Cooler climates have been associated with the deterioration/destruction of human civilizations, and are much more associated with earlier deaths in modern times than is global warming.
—-
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS0016793213080227
Deep solar activity minima, sharp climate changes, and their impact on ancient civilizations
It is shown that, over the past ∼10000 years (the Holocene), deep Maunder type solar minima have been accompanied by sharp climate changes. These minima occurred every 2300–2400 years. It has been established experimentally that, at ca 4.0 ka BP, there occurred a global change in the structure of atmospheric circulation, which coincided in time with the discharge of glacial masses from Greenland to North Atlantic and a solar activity minimum. The climate changes that took place at ca 4.0 ka BP [4,000 years before present] and the deep solar activity minimum that occurred at ca 2.5 ka BP [2,500 years before present] affected the development of human society, leading to the degradation and destruction of a number of ancient civilizations.
—-
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618211006707
The Tavoliere salt-marsh appears to have contracted during the arid/warm phases associated to maxima of solar activity and to have expanded during the wet/cold phases of solar minima. This coastal area, characterized by a very flat topography and arid climate, appears to have been very sensitive to even minor hydrological and climate changes. Changes of solar activity, determining extensive environmental transformations, were also possibly responsible for the abandonment of the human coastal settlements of one of the most important Neolithic archaeological districts of Italy.
—-
http://www.academia.edu/1411970/The_Influence_of_Climatic_Change_on_the_Late_Bronze_Age_Collapse_and_the_Greek_Dark_Ages
Mediterranean Sea surface temperatures cooled rapidly during the Late Bronze Age, limiting freshwater flux into the atmosphere and thus reducing precipitation over land. These climatic changes could have affected Palatial centers that were dependent upon high levels of agricultural productivity. Declines in agricultural production would have made higher-density populations in Palatial centers unsustainable. The Greek Dark Ages that followed occurred during prolonged arid conditions that lasted until the Roman Warm Period.
—-
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2007.01498.x/abstract
The projected increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration ([CO2]) is expected to increase rice yield, but little is known of the effects of [CO2] at low temperature, which is the major constraint to growing rice in cool climates. The results suggest that yield gain due to elevated [CO2] can be reduced by low temperature.
—-
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935114003661
Seasonal patterns in mortality have been recognised for decades, with a marked excess of deaths in winter, yet our understanding of the causes of this phenomenon is not yet complete. Research has shown that low and high temperatures are associated with increased mortality independently of season; however, the impact of unseasonal weather on mortality has been less studied. In this study, we aimed to determine if unseasonal patterns in weather were associated with unseasonal patterns in mortality. We obtained daily temperature, humidity and mortality data from 1988 to 2009 for five major Australian cities with a range of climates. We split the seasonal patterns in temperature, humidity and mortality into their stationary and non-stationary parts. A stationary seasonal pattern is consistent from year-to-year, and a non-stationary pattern varies from year-to-year. We used Poisson regression to investigate associations between unseasonal weather and an unusual number of deaths. We found that deaths rates in Australia were 20–30% higher in winter than summer. The seasonal pattern of mortality was non-stationary, with much larger peaks in some winters. Winters that were colder or drier than a typical winter had significantly increased death risks in most cities. Conversely summers that were warmer or more humid than average showed no increase in death risks. Better understanding the occurrence and cause of seasonal variations in mortality will help with disease prevention and save lives.
—-
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/3/702
In the middle-to-late Holocene [~4,000 years ago], Earth’s monsoonal regions experienced catastrophic precipitation decreases that produced green to desert state shifts. Resulting hydrologic regime change negatively impacted water availability and Neolithic cultures. Whereas mid-Holocene drying is commonly attributed to slow insolation reduction and subsequent nonlinear vegetation–atmosphere feedbacks that produce threshold conditions, evidence of trigger events initiating state switching has remained elusive. Here we document a threshold event ca. 4,200 years ago in the Hunshandake Sandy Lands of Inner Mongolia, northern China, associated with groundwater capture by the Xilamulun River. This process initiated a sudden and irreversible region-wide hydrologic event that exacerbated the desertification of the Hunshandake, resulting in post-Humid Period mass migration of northern China’s Neolithic cultures. The Hunshandake remains arid and is unlikely, even with massive rehabilitation efforts, to revert back to green conditions.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/11382808/Winter-death-toll-to-exceed-40000.html
The cold weather death toll this winter is expected to top 40,000, the highest number for 15 years. From the beginning of December until January 16, there were 8,800 more deaths than average of 25,000, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The rate soared by 33 per cent in the week up until January 16, when there were almost 15,000 deaths, as the bitter cold snap took hold. An additional 3,000 deaths are expected this week as temperatures plunge to their coldest of the winter so far.
—-
I would love to hear from WUWT readers what their primary reasons are why they are catastrophic anthropogenic climate change skeptics.
I would also appreciate hearing comments from those who DO subscribe to the notion of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
I’ll share my response later; I’m going surfing 🙂
My personal journey. I was a life long Lefty/Greenie (CND, Greenpeace, save the Whales, etc) but was challenged on FB during the last Australian election by a skeptic over Global Warming. I had the usual arguments but this guy just had a lot more detailed rebuttals at hand. So I decided to read up on the science so I could counter such a person in the future. As I was in the middle of reading a few climate and physics books from the Library I saw a clip from ABC TV of the program Q&A where David Suzuki was challenged by a low paid climate scientist in the audience who was having doubts due to the pause. This then gave me more doubts. I say more because the books I was reading from the Library were not making any logical sense.
The final straw was looking at the planet Venus. The ‘runaway greenhouse effect’ on that planet was the original information about the theory that I had been introduced to as a school kid in the 80’s. Looking at the mass of the atmosphere in comparison to Earth and the pressure at the surface I realised the ideal gas laws explained things much better than IR radiation. Checking out temperatures at 1BAR (pressure on earth at sea level) on Venus above its surface and finding it to be similar to Earth, sealed it for me. I then found that Jupiter’s temperature rises to that of Earth when one decends to where it’s atmospheric pressure is 20BAR.
I have since then found glaring mistakes in the greenhouse theory, which anger me as I cannot believe these mistakes are not deliberate attempts at deception. Consider when you read or hear the claim that some trace gas is 10,000 times more potent a Greenhouse gas than CO2. This was one of the things that had me scratching my head when reading books from the Library. My gut reaction was: if CO2 is absorbing 1/10,000th of the IR radiation than this other gas, how can it be absorbing enough to do anything to temperature? When I heard the official answer, which was that the super GH gasses get this rating because they remain in the atmosphere longer I completely lost it! What a con. What a slight of hand. What a cheap magic trick, deliberately designed to deceive! If molecule (a) remains in the atmosphere for 10,000 years and molecule (b) remains for just 1 year then the claim is correct, but what the claim fails to say is that molecule (b) is constantly replaced every year by an identical molecule (c), (d), (e), etc. so the RATIO of the different molecules in relation to each other always remains the same. This angers me so much! I could go on. I do go on whenever I meet a climatologist on a Green FB page who dares to try and peddle their pseudo science at me.
I am like an ex smoker now who is ten times worse than someone who never smoked for berating people who still smoke. I am on a crusade against people who have taken my natural good natured care for the environment and tried to use it against me to further their dishonest careers or subversive political agendas.
Checking out temperatures at 1BAR (pressure on earth at sea level) on Venus above its surface and finding it to be similar to Earth,
BINGO! I did the same research.
Wicked … I’m impressed! Normally, I’m so underwhelmed with my 30-something countrymen who just seem to lack rational thought skills. My wife’s an academic and she fears for the future of advanced education with the dumbos she is faced with. Mazel !
Welcome to the real world wicked wench, you are indeed very welcome, brainwashing of the less intelligent however remains a problem.
I knew that CO2 levels were rising, but I also knew that historical accounts and records showed it had been warmer previous to today. Therefore, although tempted by the one fact the Warmistas had, the con job failed because I had other knowledge that they did not address.
Yes the Medievil warm period was another thing that totally changed things for me. When putting the archeological record of Greenland (raising cattle where it is now too cold to) against tree ring proxies, it really is a no contest. And let’s face it if the “unprecedented, catastrophic” part of the theory is false then the “man made” bit becomes irrelevant!
1. CO2 is logarithmic
2. If sensitivity were high, increases of the last few decades would result in temperature changes easily distinguishable from natural variation, but;
3. Temperature changes of the last few decades are NOT distinguishable from natural variation, implying that;
4. Sensitivity is low.
This entire debate should have ended with “CO2 is logarithmic”. That basic fact is all one needs to understand to dismiss the alarmism out of hand. Which is why the CAGW literature, including that of the IPCC, spends so much time yammering on about tree ring records and storm frequency and species migration while avoiding any in depth discussion of the most basic of physics.
We’re at 400 ppm now, going up by 2 ppm per year. It will take another 200 years to double current levels of CO2. Sensitivity would have to be MASSIVELY HIGH to be dangerous over those time frames. The fact that we can barely (if at all) distinguish temperature rise from natural variation demonstrates that sensitivity IS NOT high, and not anywhere near the levels required for concern. Bring this up with an alarmist and they resort to tree rings, sea level rise, storm frequency, drought, flooding, ice melting, ANYTHING but the discussion of the physics itself. And when one examines all those claims, they turn out to be BS for the most part as well.
I think that is a great question – even though I do like your cartoons, too.
My story is complicated. I have engineering background and I’ve not found a single engineer who is not skeptical. Plus, I live in Vermont – ’nuff said?????
CO2
Plant food!
Said plants feed my food!
There is a recent thread entirely dedicated to that question at Judith Curry’s blog.
And there was a thread devoted to that here on WUWT back in 2013.
Here is a comment I made that summarised my survey of that thread,
“catastrophic anthropogenic climate change skeptic”
Started off with:
1. Arrival of self-styled “climate scientists” selling Arrhenius bunk, everything is to do with conduction alone, no apparent knowledge of Maxwell, Carnot, Clausius, gas laws, thermodynamics, Co2 being logarithmic etc.
2. Climate modelling: based on “its CO2 wot done it ’cause we can’t think of any other reason”. Same absurd error as eating ice cream causes drowning. Flat earth not rotating obloid sphere. Triginometry that has allowed humans to sail round the world for centuries is too hard to incorporate in computer code.
Finally: 3. AGW/CACC-ers getting everything wrong. Not just some things wrong. Extraordinary achievement in a way ….
Hi everyone. First of all, thank you very much for the numerous kind compliments about my cartoons. One of the great delights of being human is laughter. Another is making others laugh. (And people laugh at me all the time.)
Okay down to business. I asked: what are the primary reasons for your catastrophic anthropogenic climate change skepticism? (Or subscription, as the case may be.)
Thank you to those who responded. Please note that JamesS took the time to provide a very thoughtful answer a bit farther down the thread.
JamesS’s post resonates with me in that he describes not one reason for his skepticism, but rather a whole bunch of flashing red lights:
— the vastness of geological time vs the ludicrously short time frame of, say, the Hockey Stick;
— the incredibly large natural fluctuations over geological time vs the microscopic contemporary changes being fretted over;
— the transubstantiation of mathematical model output into “data”;
— statistical techniques that waterboard “data” into confessing about the crimes of man;
— “scientists” who refuse to submit their work to falsification;
— the unsettling emergence of the oxymoronic concept of “settled science”;
— journal bullies.
I will add a few more:
— WTF do “average temperatures” and “global temperatures” mean in a non-equilibrium system?;
— looking at signal-to-noise ratios that are so low that one would need a hotline to Heaven to glean any information;
— assuming that all of the feedback mechanisms have been identified;
— assuming the leads and lags are all figured out;
— modeling coupled, highly nonlinear dynamical systems and then pretending these can be used to forecast far into the future with precision;
— worse, claiming that everyone on earth has to submit to these “forecasts” and pay tribute in the form of money, loss of liberty, loss of property, loss of health and well-being, loss of national sovereignty, loss of science and logic, and on and on;
— the Orwellian abuse of language used to get people to submit: climate change; climate denial; carbon footprint; carbon tax; carbon sequestration; carbon geoengineering … and now they go beyond vilifying carbon dioxide — they vilify carbon itself (goodbye organic chemistry);
— the blatant lies and deceptive tactics used at every level, from data mutilation to media magnification;
— the EF5 tornado of logical fallacies deployed: argumentum ad hominem; argumentum ad populum; argumentum ad verecundiam; argumentum ad baculum; post hoc ergo propter hoc; onus probandi; … never mind, just insert the entire list of fallacies accumulated by humanity over all of time;
— thesis, antithesis, synthesize … (create a problem, pose a solution, shove it up their …)
— the blatantly anti-capitalistic and anti-nation-state biases of the entire enterprise;
— pretending that the UN’s and IPCC’s output is “science” when it is clearly political science;
— the ludicrous attribution of EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS EVERYWHERE to “climate change” (just follow Google News > Climate Change (or Global Warming) for a couple of days and you’ll see what I mean);
— the endless ad hoc nature of cAGW (more duct tape and baling wire please);
— the inherent lack of falsifiability of very long range forecasts;
— the imperviousness to falsifiability in the shorter term … “the models are right; the climate is wrong”;
— even the proxies have proxies;
— why does every commercial greenhouse around the globe increase CO2 levels by 4x? Hmmm?
Good Lord, I could go on and on. (I know I’m going to press “Post Comment” and immediately wish I had added a zillion more.)
And yet, someone like DavidMHoffer get right to the point: CO2 is logarithmic. Done. Time for a beer.
And therein lies the key JamesS was getting at, and that I have tried to amplify: so much about the climate hysteria “just doesn’t feel like science.” And that is because most of it isn’t about science; it is about political science. And in political science the end — total control — justifies the means — lying like there is no tomorrow.
all right then, how was the surf?
I heard about it in the mid 80s in school and had learnt enough to know that there was very little CO2 in the air and that it was a much poorer absorber of IR than water. The first thing I thought was it sounded like propaganda to make nuclear look less polluting.
I had an argument in about 1990 with a leftie (cute girl) when I said that governments didn’t drag their feet on the ozone hole because the science was more robust. She insisted that AGW and the ozone hole were the same thing. Instead of saying “Yes, you’re right and now you want to sleep with me” I argued with her (still regret it). The price of being a denier, I guess.
I didn’t really care anymore until the arguments and name calling started getting nasty. Then the climategate emails and came out and the alarmism got so ridiculous that I decided to look into it more. The first thing that sealed it for me was how much it had warmed from 1920 to 1940, with a pause in more recent times. Then there was a quick calculation of how much fossil fuel would we need to burn to neutralise the oceans (Oh you mean drop the pH by 0.1 when you say it makes the ocean acidic! )
Since I had upset the wrong people already, I became more interested with the intention to disrupt the propaganda (to be the pigeon on the chess board). My head was already in the lions mouth so I thought that I might as well shove it down a bit further and get the bastard to choke.
Here’s a WUWT thread devoted to such testimonies.
(I think there was an earlier thread on the same topic.)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/25/my-personal-path-to-catastrophic-agw-skepticism/
Here are a couple of Climate Etc. threads:
http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/12/the-denizens-of-climate-etc/
http://judithcurry.com/2015/02/15/denizens-ii/
When they said “it’s the consensus” without solid supporting evidence. For example a plot of temperature versus CO2 showing correlation. They never show this because there isn’t one.
Been lurking for sometime and this is my maiden post so be gentle with me….
I’m just your ordinary bloke on the street but my Dad always taught me to never believe anything off the bat and question everything so I have been a skeptic since the beginning of all this.
My first point is one that really irks me… its politics… so often I see the wariest lab led as ‘lefties’ or ‘marxists’ etc… well I consider myself a socialist but I am no warmist… could people be careful.. while some (most) warmists may be ‘left of centre’ not all lefties are warmists (causation correlation fallacy?)
Secondly.. I have seen the hockey stick and that image won’t seem to go away, and in it we can see the warming of the late 20th century, now consider the CO2 record… the earths population has near doubled from 1940 ish and industrialisation has skyrocketed.. in recent times especially in china and india.. I would have expected to see an increase in the rate of CO2 rise mirroring the temp rise but i don’t see it… rate of CO2 rise appears fairly constant… I would also expect to see blips that reflect increase or decrease in rate according to economic activity worldwide… a slow down as a result of economic decline in 2008 for example.. even if there were some sort of lag in the system. If the warmists could spot that and say LOOK ITS HUMAN CAUSED… then it might have some credibility … tell me am i missing something??
Sly
I will take your words at their face value. Your questions are welcome here.
Well, from 1650 to 1850,
CO2 was steady, and temperatures rose over 20-30 year periods.
CO2 was steady, and global average temperatures were steady for many periods of 10-15 years.
CO2 was steady, and global average temperatures declined over periods of 15-30 years.
CO2 was steady, and overall, global average temperatures increased.
From 1850 to 1935, CO2 rose a little bit.
CO2 rose a little bit, and global average temperatures declined over periods of 15-20 years.
CO2 rose a little bit, and global average temperatures were steady over periods of 10-15 years.
CO2 rose a little bit, and global average temperatures rose a little bit over periods of 15-25 years.
from 1935 through 2015, CO2 rose considerably (more than 30%).
CO2 rose a lot, and global average temperatures declined over periods of 15-20 years.
CO2 rose a lot, and global average temperatures were steady over periods of 10-15 years.
CO2 rose a lot, and global average temperatures rose a little bit over periods of 15-25 years.
No, CO2 is not responsible for measurable changes in global average temperatures.
Misguided efforts to “restrict CO2 emissions” and order that we “stop climate change” will fail, but as they fail, they will kill millions dying in needless energy shortages and deliberately excessive high prices due to Big Government, Big Finance (30 trillion in carbon futures alone!) , and Big Science at Big Government Institutions.
I wasn’t in any way trying to suggest CO2 was responsible.. my point was that if ‘they’ could link CO2’s rise to human activity then that would strengthen their claim. The fact that industrial activity does NOT seem to have an effect on the RATE of change in the the rise of CO2 would suggest to me that the CO2 rise is not entirely human caused
Fear not, there are left wing people in this world who by simply adhering to the scientific method, see no evidence of catastrophic AWG.
For starters, the hockey stick is perhaps the most thoroughly debunked piece of work in the history of science. It is based upon very poor tree ring data and worse statistical methods. The image should indeed go away. Visit ClimateAudit, or read “The Hockey Stick Illusion”
Here’s how it all breaks down to me:
Have we seen global warming? Yes, a few degrees in the last century..
Did man cause it? The physics behind the ability of CO2 to trap heat is well established, as is the increase in atmospheric CO2. So yes we, probably caused some of it. Very hard to quantify what percentage.
Is it a concern? The amount of actual warming measured is quite minor, and is far below what the models and organizations such as the IPCC have predicted. Their models incorporate feedback mechanisms which are poorly supported by both theory and data,
Furthermore, it has not been established whatsoever what the optimal temperature is. There are both benefits and drawbacks to warming. Attempts to tie warming to increased storms, floods droughts etc. do not hold up to statistical analysis.
To me the greatest threat of the entire global warming fiasco is that it results in misdirection of priorities. It distracts money and resources from genuine environmental concerns. We always need to balance environment restrictions verses economic progress, and CO2 is the least of our actual concerns.
Thank you for recognising that politics does not necessarily determine your position on AGW… I know i said i am your average bloke on the street but maybe I sold myself short.. I am a teacher and have in that respect a basic mathematical and scientific background and so understand the basics and principles..
I 100% agree with your last statement (and all the others btw) and have been following the debate for some time (especially many of the videos of Dr linden and others, so I know well most of the arguments.
What hit me recently though was the lack of any variability in the rate of CO2 rise or are the timescales and levels too small to detect?
Sly, it is very brave to come here and point out that left-wing people can read graphs and so be sceptical of the hypothesis that rising atmospheric CO2 drives newsworthy global warming.
The stripes on my back from those who should be my allies in seeking good science, just because I am a socialist… sigh.
Thank you for speaking so perceptively and thank you for being so open.
“Secondly.. I have seen the hockey stick and that image won’t seem to go away, and in it we can see the warming of the late 20th century,”
Interesting statement, you also state “Been lurking for sometime” and you appear to know nothing about DR. Mann’s shenanigans in it creation.
“I would also expect to see blips that reflect increase or decrease in rate according to economic activity worldwide” Why? the Level of CO2 produced by human activity is so small that the slight down turn in economic activity would be hidden by any natural noise
Hmm your handle is Sly
well as mike the morlock all I can say is Eat your greens.
fer crin out loud…. I said “the hockey stick image won’t go away” doesn’t mean i believe it or that I don’t know about Mann et als corruption of the data and the scientific method… but you still see it in the mdm is what i meant!
I think you’ll find that the earth’s human population is about three times that of 1940.
thnx for that … so I would expect the rate of CO2 rise to accelerate and it doesn’t seem to???
Do you really believe that Russian temperature records from, say, 1917-1950 are reliable?
Do you honestly believe that Chinese temperature records from, say, 1913-1980 are reliable?
Do you seriously believe that Sub-Saharan African temperatures from, say 1850-1975 are accurate?
Do you really believe that oceanic temperatures from, say 1800-1970 are accurate? (as we know, the oceans cover 70% of the earth’s surface).
I don’t.
How could they be reliable/accurate unless they bolster the current political meme.
They have a scary story to tell, that only they can solve, and data be damned they aren’t gonna miss out on the opportunities presented.
A few years ago I read a paper where the author calculated and graphed absorption of surface-emitted infrared by the atmosphere at current CO2 concentrations. Absorption occurs in several bands. The calculation showed 100% absorption in each band! To me this means that any additional CO2 would not increase infrared absorption.
A search online showed that climate researchers acknowledge this effect. See http:www.skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm
The response at this webpage is that radiative losses of infrared from the upper atmosphere are decreased because the warmer atmosphere is thicker. This is shown in a cartoon of Australia.
Here is the key statement, “By adding greenhouse gases, we force the radiation to space to come from higher colder air, reducing the flow of radiation to space.”
This argument is circular because it assumes that CO2 has caused heating that thickens the atmosphere. They also assume, without any evidence, that the atmosphere thickens where it has warmed. Further, they also assume, without evidence, that radiative losses to space would be reduced by a thicker atmosphere. My memory of gas laws tells me that with heating the number of molecules doing the absorption doesn’t decrease, only the distance between them.
With more CO2, radiation to space is forced to come from higher colder air, not because the atmosphere is hotter, but simply because there is more CO2.
The Effective Radiating Level (ERL) is thus raised to a higher altitude. The temperature at the level now has to increase until it emits as much radiation as before (to maintain the Radiation Balance – ‘energy out’ must equal’ energy in’ ).
Because of the Lapse Rate, the rate at which various layers of the atmosphere warm with decreasing altitude, the surface temperature ends up higher.
Just saw a National Geographic special on the newstand. It’s all about the “War on Science.” Guess which was the top story. You got it, “Global Warming is a hoax,” or some-such. Next was something about Darwin, the third was that the Moon landings were a hoax. I stopped at that.
To criticize the feeble case of AGW is now formalized anti-science, up there with the notion of faking a landing on the moon.
Adios NG.
I believe this is the article you are referring to:
Why Do Reasonable People Doubt Science?
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/science-doubters/achenbach-text
It’s awesome! It’s like a neutron star of logical fallacies. I was so disturbed by its insanity that I actually stayed up late the other night writing an article to dismantle them all, but I gave up because the internet is not big enough.
About six months ago the head of NPR resigned to become the head of National Geographic, because he felt he could make more of a difference there. This is likely his doing.
It’s not about huggin’ trees…It’s about buying your right to feeling smug about not having to feel “carbon guilt”, and about supreme hypocrisy:
You ‘hit the nail on the head’ on that one!
so why aren’t they pushing to ban NASCAR? You’re right, of course.
From the Australian Newspaper. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/queenslands-cycles-of-havoc/story-e6frg6z6-1225998344719
Despite claims to the contrary, climate scientists say it is not possible say with any confidence whether there is a climate change signal in a single extreme event or even an extreme season.
“It is difficult to make a strong case that we are seeing a change in tropical cyclones,” Bureau of Meteorology climate specialist David Jones says.
“There is a strong physical basis for expecting cyclones to become stronger but it is challenging to see a particular trend in the data,” Jones says.
Most of the cyclone data used by climate scientists only dates back to the 1980s.
Prior to 1960 it was only really possible to measure cyclones opportunistically if they happened to pass over a boat or weather station.
From the late 70s to 80s the quality of data improved dramatically with the availability of very good satellite images.
It makes a mockery of claims in other Australian papers that the two Cat 5 cyclones (that only made landfall at best a Cat3) are becoming more frequent. We can never know that the severe cyclones that took up 100 lives in a year in 1918 were not Cat 5 while still out to sea.
Happy to oblige, Max. My degree is in geology, and while I was never what one would call an active scientist (only worked in the field for less than a year out of college), I certainly received a good education in the field. Even as an undergrad, all my instructors were PhDs — I think I had only one geology class that wasn’t taught by a doctorate, and that was my Geophysics course, taught by an MS working on his PhD. I received a good grounding in the scientific method, and of course learned the long history of the Earth in geologic terms — meaning that time spans of less than a million years were hardly worth noticing.
I learned that the Earth had gone from widespread glaciation to being practically ice-free several times over its hundreds of millions of years, and never once did it “run away” in any particular direction. Rather, the Earth’s climate was like a pendulum, swinging between two rather extreme, yet limited extants.
When the climate alarmism began, I was more or less on board because it seemed that the global temperature was indeed rising more rapidly than in the recent past, and it didn’t seem impossible that human activity might be behind it. My break with this train of thought came when Dr. Philip Jones of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) refused a request to see the data he had used in a particular study, telling the requestor something along the lines of, “Why should I show it to you when you’ll just try to find something wrong with it?”
That is not the answer a scientist would give. A scientist who was sure of his research would say, “Here it is! Look at it and see how well it proves my conclusions.” That made me wonder what was going on in climate science.
The more I looked into climate science, the less it seemed like “science.” The output of highly questionable computer models was considered “data,” and used as input to other computer models. Highly questionable statistical methods were used, to the point where professional statisticians wondered where these methods had any relationship to reality. Actual data sets of temperature readings were adjusted, and adjusted some more, and then the original data was lost. A database consultant trying to make sense of the weather station data despaired of making any sense of it.
It’s not so much that there was any one thing, but that there were so many little things that added up to bad science. In geology, the arguments regarding the origins of the Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington and the continental drift hypothesis (aka Plate Tectonics) were debated for over forty years in each case, yet neither side declared “the science is settled” and actively attempted to prevent the other side from presenting its arguments. In contrast, many of the climate alarmist team have proposed boycotting journals that publish “skeptical” papers, and even in getting editors fired for doing so. These are not the actions of scientists.
So that’s my history. I hope it helps you understand the skeptic side a bit better.
Once upon a time there was a universal scientific consensus about the health risks from eating saturated fat. Oops, we prematurely killed millions of people and now have an obesity epidemic.
Climate change is history trying to repeat itself. We reforested most of the Northern Hemisphere since the 1850’s, Trees grow and then drop limbs, get struck by lightning, fall in the wind, die of cancer and infection, drop leaves and they eventually give back all their carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. The live ones even have to respire. That’s where your carbon dioxide increase is coming from, not coal. We went from almost no trees to billions in 150 years over the entire Northern Hemisphere. A massive change no one is paying attention too because the alarmists are claiming deforestation.
Are there any comparative studies that demonstrate your claim that reforestation has increased atmospheric CO2 more than fossil-fuel burning? Obviously there are many ancillary questions involved, esp. residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere, speed of the various cycles, etc. I’m not challenging your statement; just have not seen that claim before, and would like to pursue it further.
/Mr Lynn
Hi JamesS,
Thanks for your response. I myself responded to the question, and include your response in my discussion up at my original post 🙂