Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Willie Soon – A climate modeller has spoken of her distress at her “pretty awful” carbon footprint, including air travel to climate conferences, and energy used to power climate supercomputers.
Climate computer modeling needs to be greener
Friederike Otto, deputy director of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, has identified areas where she can reduce emissions but says researchers can’t tackle the problem alone.
…
“Compared to the average person, my carbon footprint is absolutely awful but it is all through air travel,” she told DW. “On the other hand, working at Oxford, my climate footprint in my daily work life is small. I do not own a car and never did, so my daily commute, school run and shopping is all on bike or foot.”
Still, Otto is frustrated by some of the challenges she can’t address alone, including her house. It is relatively new and built according to British emission standards, which are poor, she said, even though we know how to build carbon-neutral homes.
Like other scientists, she said the issue of traveling to conferences is vexing. Flying over long distances, multiple times each year, to attend meetings is part of the job for thousands in her field. Such exchanges are important in order to make scientific advances. But more could be done to reduce travel, including improving video conferencing technologies for larger gatherings, says Otto.
Running large supercomputers for complex climate modeling is also energy intensive. But these simulations are crucial to understanding the climate.
…
Read more: http://www.dw.com/en/climate-computer-modeling-needs-to-be-greener/a-42887689
I wish Friederike luck with her efforts to green her profession, but I don’t see evidence of a widespread effort to stop the proliferation of large climate conferences in luxury holiday resorts which seems to be such an essential part of making the world more carbon friendly.
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Can any academics out there explain how “Such exchanges are important in order to make scientific advances”? I would be interested to hear of any major scientific advance that is a direct (or even indirect) consequence of a conference.
The exchange of information can be achieved by a variety of other mechanisms that move the data to the people rather than moving the people to the data.
If the purpose of the conferences is to build relationships, the success of on-line dating sites shows that this can be achieved through electronic means.
Conferences don’t occur spontaneously. There is a lot of money to be made in creating and operating conferences and consequently there is pressure from both venue owners and professional conference organisers for participants to attend. Add to this the incentives from commercial businesses that use them as platforms for promoting their products and services, and you see that there is a lot more to it than simply exchanging information.
Peter Plail
Question asked: “…I would be interested to hear of any…consequence of a conference…” [I took the liberty of editing your question for brevity].
Question answered: Yes. Ms Otto gets her British Airways gold card a lot faster than 99.9999% of the rest of the people in the world.
I have a perfect solution.
We build a conference centre in Antarctica,with the required supercomputers.
All the climate modelers ( And I mean ALL) get flown down to this centre at the beginning of the southern winter.
What we don’t mention is the computers, (and the heating) is powered by human driven generators.
That way the survivors can claim how “green” they were about this conference.
I was rather hoping you’d send them all on a boat to Antartica with the Aussi professor dude who almost got stuck.
Javert Chip,
Slight error in wording. FIFY. 🙂
I would love to ram her ‘simulations’ up her behind with no lube. Then and only then will she understand what real world observations are all about. You know, ‘real’ things you can see, touch or feel instead of another fricking simulation!
We need to at least give her points for examining her lifestyle. Most warmists are happy to lecture everyone else and don’t even do the basics. Of course she’s kidding herself that there isn’t much she could do. Those conferences she feels are essential are nothing of the sort and could indeed be done online. Sure, it wouldn’t be as easy but if climate scientists can’t find a way, why should anyone else bother? Her home situation could also be ‘improved’ by just moving to a small flat. The solution to too much CO2 isn’t more insulation, it’s less of everything else. Naturally, because she thinks she deserves a bigger place, she’s not about to have less, she just moans that someone else didn’t make her home energy efficient. The problem isn’t hypocrisy so much as plain stupidity. She’s of a type that rarely fix problems, they think it’s their job just to point them out to everyone else.
. . There! I was generous and gave her two points.
Needs to stick to the Otto Cycle. Not the first time she’s heard that one I expect although they are notoriously humourless so perhaps it is. Anyway, another splendid example of nominative determinism.
“Compared to the average person, my carbon footprint is absolutely awful but it is all through air travel,” she told DW. “On the other hand, working at Oxford, my climate footprint in my daily work life is small. I do not own a car and never did, so my daily commute, school run and shopping is all on bike or foot.”
Still, Otto is frustrated by some of the challenges she can’t address alone, including her house. It is relatively new and built according to British emission standards, which are poor, she said, even though we know how to build carbon-neutral homes.
[end of excerpt]
The aforementioned Friederike Otto, deputy director of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, SHOULD feel very remorseful. Here is why:
She and her fellow climate alarmists are NOT pro-environment – many of their programs such as clear-cutting of tropical rainforests to grow biofuels, draining the Ogallala aquifer to grow corn for fuel ethanol, clear-cutting eastern US forests to provide wood pellets for British power plants, erecting huge wind power towers to slice up birds and bats, etc are ALL anti-environmental.
Their successful efforts to delay and ban fracking of petroleum-rich shales have caused great harm in Britain, continental Europe , and have hampered growth in Canada and the USA.
By driving up the cost of energy and causing instability in electrical grids they have increased winter mortality and cost lives.
Global warming alarmism has greatly increased energy costs in the UK, and this has contributed significantly to Excess Winter Deaths, which especially target the elderly and the poor. “Heat or Eat” is the term commonly used there, Excess Winter Deaths typically total 30,000 to 50,000 per year in the UK, vs 5000 to 10,000 in Canada, which has more than half your population.
Even greater loss of life has been caused in developing countries, where the installation of reliable fossil-fueled energy has been displaced by insistence on intermittent, near-worthless wind and solar power schemes.
Perhaps the greatest cost and loss-of-life has been due to the gross misallocation of global resources, where obvious first priorities such as clean water and sanitation systems, the fight against malaria, and the fight against world hunger have been displaced due to excessive spending on green energy follies.
These are crimes against humanity – they should be prosecuted and the scoundrels and imbeciles who promoted this nonsense should go to jail.
Other than that, she may be very nice…
Haha, excellent – well said!
+97,000,000
Well said Allan.
Hopefully they will remove their large computers from the grid and power them solely from wind and solar. This would then solve the issue of the flawed models 😉
That would sort of make sense, the climate modelling computers do not need to run continuously so switching them off when the wind is not blowing would help fit demand to the unreliable supply.
Of course not having the computers would make even better environmental and financial sense.
Ms. Otto raises an interesting point of principle.
Currently these climate Change modelling institutions primarily depend on fossil fuels yet they all appear to expect everyone else not to do that. These institutions should be required to put their money where their mouths are and start implementing what they propose within their own facilities.
Their efforts should be made transparent and the deficit in result be made quite clear.
I do not propose that the U.K. establishments should immediately curtail their energy use to 80% renewables; as required by the Climate Change Act; but would expect them to commence investment in their facilities and practices towards that end and report on their progress and predictions as to completion.
To me a computer program which runs on fossil fuels advocating that fossil fuels should be eliminated where possible is an odd form of self destructive logic.
It is just not good enough to assign responsibility for dealing with this anomaly to others.
Put “…their money where their mouth is…”?
I think what you mean is “PUT MORE TAXPAYER money where their mouth is…”. This is a bad idea, and one they’d be delighted to implement.
Hush everyone! She’s doing penance.
Does that involve carbon-free meals?
Yeah but she doesn’t own a car and never did so that makes everything else oki doki. But I do wonder if she ever used a vehicle for transportation even if she wasn’t the owner, like taxi, bus or maybe she simply walked to and from the airport.
“Still, Otto is frustrated by some of the challenges she can’t address alone, including her house. It is relatively new and built according to British emission standards, which are poor, she said, even though we know how to build carbon-neutral homes.”
Stay put, seek and ye shall find the true way and the light my dear- https://tinyhousebuild.com/
I’ve got a great idea (honest, it is). Let’s build ‘green’ conference centers in all the industrial towns that these crusaders will destroy with their deindustrialization initiatives. All the climateers can then rejuvenate the economies of these towns by traveling to their vacatio … er, conferences in these places instead of the luxury resorts they normally hold the conferences at. Any takers?
When you’re making a save the world omelette, you have to break a few CO2 eggs.
She’s concerned, but I don’t see her trying to do anything about it.
She seems to be content with sharing her concerns and waiting for someone else to fix the problem.
It’s a tough gig making one’s global community more aware but somebody has to do it flying all over the world conferencing and guilt tripping.
It’s fairly simple to increase the insulation in your home.
You don’t have to be a computer scientist to figure out how to add a roll or two of insulation into your attic.
Replace your windows with triple pane units.
Put up heavy curtains.
Even something as minor as putting the heavy furniture on outside walls.
Instead she just whines that the government standards aren’t good enough and waits for someone else to do something about it.
Why doesn’t she make a model of a passenger jet and see if that will fly her there? 😉
LOL
+a bunch.
Or she just stay home and “simulate” her travel.
Perhaps she can use the model that was used for this article?
Dr. Otto is a very hardworking lady. Her thesis was published in 2007 and in the next three years (as a post-doc?) she managed to publish only two more. Since then, having taken up residence in Oxford, she has been very busy managing to lead author eight articles and co-another sixteen in 2015 alone. In 2016-2017 she managed to add her name to a further twenty-six papers, of which she was sole author or lead author of six.
Add to this that she is the Deputy Director of the of the ECI which, presumably entails at least some administrative duties, has a child or children (hence the school runs).
All this while “..traveling to conferences …. Flying over long distances, multiple times each year, to attend meetings…”.
One may well wonder whence she gets the time or has she sacrificed quality to quantity in her research.
How many of her papers have multiple authors? It appears that names that used to appear in acknowledgments now appear as authors. Also the number of words and letters in titles, curricula, departments, institutes, etc. appear to have increased. It would appear to be an ad hominem to use these as negative criteria. Apparently.
Solomon Green
Remember Ms Otto is a “climate scientist” and all this is settled science. Evangelizing, not research, is required.
Wow- talk about prolific! A published paper very two weeks or so. Must be quality stuff. Of course it is easier when one doesn’t have to bother with data.
How often does she shower. Lots if energy use there.
Let’s all fly to Bali and discuss ways to have fewer and closer conferences.
‘Look I talk the talk even if I don’t walk the walk. Each of us has to decide
what the right balance is between being effective and having a good time.’
My guess is that she is of the Pro-Choice Church, and any embarrassment suffered is minimal and progressive.
IF any of these people believed the lies they tell, they WOULD stop going to conferences and using supercomputers (and lying about using green energy like they do in Cheyenne with their energy hog computer and the wind turbines that do NOT power it). They do not care at all. It’s a comfortable lie and they will go with it forever.
They haven’t nailed down ECS or the uncertainty of any of their scenarios. So what breakthroughs are worth the so called carbon footprint she has?
Modeler is the right term, not scientist.
My favorite example of this hypocrisy is New York State’s meetings for climate change initiatives. When in Albany they start the meetings at 10:00 convenient for them but impossible for anyone taking the train up from New York City or out from the western part of the state to use public transit and make the start of the meeting. Even for the regulators all this is great until it causes them any inconvenience and then forget about it.
The poor lady bought a newer house, completed to current standards, but the standards aren’t good enough for her (but she bought the house anyway)?
The poor lady needs to find a sustainable house (for 50% more cost), or refurbish her new house (for another 50%), or admit she is a very big hypocrite, and then shut the hell up,