Yes… I know entropy falls under the Second Law of Thermodynamics… But I doubt the author of the Clean Technica article does. [Author’s note: By “falls under the Second Law of Thermodynamics, I don’t mean decreases; I mean it falls under the “jurisdiction” of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.]
Guest ridicule by David Middleton
Among today’s Real Clear Energy headlines, almost totally unrelated to energy: What Will Persuade Conservatives To Fight Climate Change?
Carolyn Fortuna, one of CleanTechnica’s energy industry and climate science experts (AKA a sustainability blogger), has put forth a list of six reasons conservatives should fight climate change…
Reason #1: To Fight Climate Change is to Negate a Serious Threat to Global Security
Ms. Fortuna cites a report from The Center for Climate & Security, a warmunist activist group composed mostly of Obama-era retired military brass, including Rear Admiral David W. Titley, USN (Ret). This group was addressed recently in another post.
The gist of the latest Center for Climate & Security is that sea level rise is an existential threat to coastal military facilities, which are quite often naval bases… frequently hosting “ships and/or submarines.’ Some of the latest climate modeling indicates that ships and submarines may be able to adapt to sea level rise.
It is also thought that Marine Amphibious Groups may also handle sea level rise fairly well. A question for Ms. Fortuna: Which is worse for an amphibious assault? Rising or falling sea level? (Think tides).
Honestly, if this threatens our war-fighting capabilities, we have bigger problems than climate change…
I thought about posting this image at the same scale as an Arleigh Burke Class DDG (figuring a Nimitz Class CVN was overkill), but since I already had an image of global sea level rise plotted at the same scale as the Statue of Liberty, I figured it conveyed the same message…
Addendum
Sea level rise in the Chesapeake Bay area, home of the massive Norfolk Naval Station, is mostly due to subsidence of the land.
- USGS Circular 1392 Land Subsidence and Relative Sea-Level Rise in the Southern Chesapeake Bay Region
- Relative Sea Level Trend 8638610 Sewells Point, Virginia
Subsidence is not due to climate change… At least not due to recent climate change.
If the Navy has a climate change problem, it’s the fact that their newest class of warships, Littoral Combat Ships, have trouble with ice…
Reason #2: Many Republican-Held Districts are Already Experiencing the Effects of Climate Change
Many Republican-held districts are also already experiencing the effects of plate tectonics, entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. For that matter, every Republican-held district has been experiencing the effects of climate change for a very long time… And it was all good up until 1988, apart from the Dust Bowl.
What changed in 1988? Al Gore & Jimbo Hansen invented Gorebal Warming.
Reason #3: Respected Republican Elders are Promoting Carbon Dividends
Republican party elders James A. Baker III and George P. Schultz formed a new organization in 2017 to build political support for the carbon dividend proposal, and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) have joined in with their support. Calling themselves the Climate Leadership Council, the group has outlined a 4-point plan:
- A gradually rising tax on carbon dioxide emissions, to be implemented at the refinery or the first point where fossil fuels enter the economy
- All proceeds from this carbon tax would be returned to the American people on an equal and monthly basis
- Border adjustments for the carbon content of both imports and exports would protect American competitiveness and punish free-riding by other nations, encouraging them to adopt carbon pricing of their own
- Elimination of regulations that are no longer necessary upon the enactment of a rising carbon tax
Not just no… But… NO FRACKING WAY!!!
- Respected Republican Elders? Two fossilized RINO’s, the State Swamp Critter of Mississippi and a Loosiana Democrat??? WTF???
- “All proceeds from this carbon tax would be returned to the American people on an equal and monthly basis”… Does anyone really believe this? The government will p!$$ that money away faster than they collect it.
- $45/ton = $.40/gallon of gasoline and other economically destructive nonsense.
- A real-world discount rate zeroes out all “benefits” of a carbon tax.
Figure 3 from Nordhaus (2017), modified by author. A linear extrapolation of Nordhaus’ discount rate plot implies that a 7% discount rated would zero-out the social cost of carbon. Discounting Away the Social Cost of Carbon: The Fast Lane to Undoing Obama’s Climate Regulations. 
As a default position, OMB Circular A-94 states that a real discount rate of 7 percent should be used as a base-case for regulatory analysis. The 7 percent rate is an estimate of the average before-tax rate of return to private capital in the U.S. economy… https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/OMB%20Circular%20No.%20A-4.pdf
Reason #4: It’s All about Politics, Stupid
Fixed it for Ms. Fortuna:
Reason #4: It’s All about Politics, Stupid… and…
Reason #5: Clean Energy Creates Jobs
So does hiring thousands of people with brooms rather than a couple of snowplows to clear the streets of snow. Note to Ms. Fortuna: The energy industry is NOT a jobs program.
Reason #6: The Millennials Want Clean Energy, & Conservatives Want the Millennial Vote
Who fracking cares what millennials want? This is like saying they want unicorns in a fossil fueled world.
When asked about their clean energy desires (unicorn fantasies) are they also asked if they’re cool with a 20-300% tax on their energy consumption? Note to Ms. Fortuna… That escalating $.40/gal tax on gasoline will be passed on to millennials’ Uber bills. The 56% tax on natural gas and 297% tax on coal will hit them right in their iPhone chargers.
Millennials are an energy dichotomy. They are more likely to be “Green Champions” *and* be “Savings Seekers” than the over-35 crowd…
Apparently, they want to have their energy cake and eat it too.
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Here we go again. The silly season with the born-stupid brigade wanting to ban FRACING in Western Australia.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/aap/article-6177415/Climate-experts-call-WA-fracking-ban.html
Fracin’ the Hole. (PS I will always use fracing as shorthand for fracturing as I will always use CO2 for Carbon Dioxide and not Carbon).
Fossil fuel burning was not an issue during the Eemian interglacial and sea levels rose 6 to 7 metres higher than present day levels. Presumably the only way to lower CO2 emissions would have been to hold ones breath for as long as possible.
If the present bunch of leftist dunderheads were alive during that period and they had foolishly attempted to stop sea level rise; then perhaps Darwinian evolution would have permanently resolved the issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian
Actually it was probably 3-5 meters. The 7 meters is a CAGW factoid with very little supporting data.
Your comments section is a lot nicer. It cuts & pastes into MS-Word much better.
The functionality of the new format really needs to be improved.
The title “What Will Persuade Conservatives To Fight Climate Change?” is good. Problem is, you should actually really ask it and listen and not make a list of stupid arguments.
So, what would persuade me? First of all, you need to show that you’re doing a good job. That your science is of high quality. Do it openly, embrace critics and be open about uncertainties.
After that, you need to show that your predictions actually are spot on. If you do all that, we can both agree that AGW is happening.
Next, it’s about pros and cons. You need to show that the harm from AGW is big enough. If it’s a small problem or even beneficial, it’s not worth fighting.
Then you need to show that it’s more sensible to mitigate than to adapt. And actually, you need to show that it’s possible to mitigate. And here you have to have good solutions and not some crap about wind and solar and batteries.
If you come up with a good solution that is based on nuclear or fusion, I can support it regardless if we agree on AGW or not. And BTW, your solution needs to have a track record. Implement it in a big enough city or country and lets see how well it works.
The Clean Technica article was titled, “What Will Persuade Conservatives To Fight Climate Change?”
The article consisted of a list of reasons the author thought might motivate conservatives to fight climate change.
This post is ridiculing that article. This is all explained in the post
When I quoted the article, I either used quotation marks or html quotation tags
Just to be clear, my post was also ridiculing the Clean Technica article.
Thirty years ago, a boss of mine remarked that he had just seen a bumper sticker reading: “STOP PLATE TECTONICS.” We both thought it was hilarious. Now I see that there are people who think we have that power. That’s hilarious…or ridiculous.
The good news is that US submarines may be able to cope with sealevel rise.
The bad news us that so may do those of the Russians, Chinese and North Koreans.
Just a thought.
We all need to zoom out to a wider perspective regularly. Thanks, EZ.
Is the climate changing? Probably.
Is that change dangerous and so should be fought? Probably not.
Could it be fought anyway? Probably not.
Are the costs of fighting something that shouldn’t and can’t be fought hugely damaging? Yes.
Persuade me the last three are wrong and I will change my mind.
As all media professionals know, just one emotive hard-hitting story can recruit an impressionable idealistic well-meaning person to an environmental single-issue cause, or political circus.
For climate change, one that might do it would be, let’s say, 100,000 cute little lambs dying from climate change. And guess what – it just happened!
Climate change just killed 100,000 lambs in New Zealand:
https://www.iceagenow.info/new-zealand-100000-lambs-lost-to-cold-and-rain/
Odd that the media is silent on such a potentially emotive climate news story. How could such a recruiting sergeant of a story go to waste? Maybe it’s because the climate change in question was not warming. But hey – that’s why they renamed it to “climate change”.
Unbelievable. If it was cold outside how come the farmers wouldn’t keep the lambs indoors?
Truth and facts should work just as well on Conservatives as they do on those of the Left. Searching for anything else as a persuader suggests those doing the persuading may not be totally OK with just using truth.
Maybe if the same things that persuaded alarmists to “fight climate change” actually turned out to be substantially correct then they would achieve their desires. So far they are manifestly wrong.
Most conservatives are probably A-OK with US Army Corps of Engineers war against the forces of climate (sedimentary geology) in harbors, along barrier islands & beaches and in flood plains.
Unlike the Quixotic war against climate change, USACE can successfully fight a delaying action against the forces of climate (sedimentary geology) in harbors, along barrier islannds & beaches and in flood plains… as they have done since the Battle of New Orleans.
But Mississippi is going to win in the end. Sooner or later there will be a really big flood and it will switch back west to the Atchafalaya and New Orleans will become a large-scale tourist trap like Tombstone.
Hence the delaying action.
tty, Venice, Italy will lose in the end, but that doesn’t mean it should be abandoned right now.
TTY:
“But Mississippi is going to win in the end. Sooner or later there will be a really big flood….”
There was one back in 1927.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Mississippi-River-flood-of-1927.
“… Mississippi River flood of 1927, also called Great Flood of 1927, flooding of the lower Mississippi River valley in April 1927, one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. More than 23,000 square miles (60,000 square km) of land was submerged, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, and around 250 people died.
After several months of heavy rain caused the Mississippi River to swell to unprecedented levels, the first levee broke on April 16, along the Illinois shore. Then, on April 21, the levee at Mounds Landing in Mississippi gave way. Over the next few weeks essentially the entire levee system along the river collapsed. In some places, residential areas were submerged in 30 feet (9 metres) of water. At least two months passed before the floodwater completely subsided….”.
23,000 sq miles….some areas under 30 feet of water. I can imagine the climate alarmists and the MSM going absolutely bananas if something like this happened today. The alarmists and the MSM have very annoying and frustrating habit of not placing things in historical perspective before sensationalizing today’s meteorological events.
This isn’t to say that today’s flooding and other weather events don’t deserve the attention they get, and I encourage everyone to contribute to organizations providing relief from Hurricane Florence (as I intend to do). But placing things in proper historical perspective is probably a no-no these days if it doesn’t support the climate alarmist narrative.
“Some of the latest climate modeling indicates that ships and submarines may be able to adapt to sea level rise.”
Not if we’re drowning in post-rational nonsense.
“Some of the latest climate modeling indicates that ships and submarines may be able to adapt to sea level rise.”
That statement has to be the stupidest statement I have ever read. The mind boggles.
What Will Persuade Conservatives To Fight Climate Change?
BELIEF
and what will persuade them to believe?
REASON
Good Luck!
So yet another question is answered by someone who hates “conservatives”….. And never actually asks conservatives what they think.
In other words, a fundamentally dishonest, deceptive article by a lefty hate parrot with no apparent ability for introspection.
The only question her I’ll ever avoids is “what if “progressives” have made serious errors in backing an apocalyptic claptrap belief yet again?”
hunter
OUR children will suffer.
Question: What will persuade libtards to stop believing in manmade climate change?
Answer: Not facts, they aren’t interested. Not reason, they don’t know what that is. Not debate, they always lose. No, nothing short of a total collapse of the ideology, and even then, possibly not – pockets of them will remain here and there, like flat-earthers, even as temperatures cool. The CAGW clan are emotionally invested in their Belief. That is why it is so difficult for them to snap out of it, and switch to reality and logic-based thinking.
It’d be the same as deprogramming cult members. Requires professional & usually drastic techniques.
If you could link the rise of Socialism to the rise in global temperature, they would embrace global warming wholeheartedly. Considering how illogical and gullible they are, that might actually be doable.
I like the pie chart with Knightia eocaena from the Green River Formation. Nice touch.
“Yes… I know entropy falls under the Second Law of Thermodynamics…”
Entropy increases under the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If it decreases, it violates the 2nd law because heat must flow from colder to hotter body. Refrigeration can reverse the heat flow but the compressor must do work that generates waste heat and also increases entropy.
I *fell* for that one!
By “entropy falls under the Second Law of Thermodynamics,” I meant that it is a function of it… Not that it literally falls (decreases) under the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I added that comment because someone would probably say entropy and the Second Law were the same thing or redundant. Although, the way I worded the sentence, it certainly could seem bass-ackwards.
I’ll add a note to the post.
For what it’s worth, I understood it as you intended it. 😉
>>
If it decreases, it violates the 2nd law because heat must flow from colder to hotter body.
<<
The Second Law applies to isolated systems only. Any closed (or open) system that cools off (a normal process not requiring refrigeration), loses entropy. It would thus violate the Second Law, but the Second Law doesn’t apply in that case.
Jim
>>
I meant that it is a function of it…
<<
Actually David, most of us knew that’s what you meant.
The Clausius definition of entropy is:
The squiggly d (
) means that heat is a path variable. The REV subscript means that this definition is only valid for reversible heat transfers. But since entropy is a state variable, that usually doesn’t matter.
So the Second Law for isolated systems is often expressed as:
Then there’s the Third Law which is often expressed as:
The Third Law is used to calculate absolute entropy. There’s another meaning to the Third Law–you can’t get to absolute zero in a finite number of steps.
So you can say that entropy falls under both the Second and Third Laws.
Jim
Yeah… But I did word it in a very funny manner. When I went back and re-read it, it did seem like I meant entropy literally falls under 2nd LoT… LOL!
Maybe, but entropy does literally fall under the 3rd LoT.
Jim
It’s called Thermogoddamics for good reason… ✌
I prefer Boltzmann entropy:
S = k ln W
Where: k is Boltzmann constant, ln is natural log, W is no. of microstates corresponding to macrostate
The 2nd law is for isolated system. The whole universe is considered one isolated system. All bodies above absolute zero temperature radiate according to Stefan-Boltzmann law. Radiation is heat lost that decreases W and S. In isolated system, radiation is still part of the system. Emitted photons increase W and S. Thus entropy always increases in isolated system if T > 0 K. At T = 0 K, the body stops radiating so W is constant and delta S = 0
“Reason #6: The Millennials Want Clean Energy, & Conservatives Want the Millennial Vote”
That’s the only reason.
At some point, in the not too distant future, Millenials will have a significant part of the vote. At that point, whatever unicorns they want, they will vote for.
You realise that we have probably already lost, don’t you?
Usually teenagers grow up and get some sense, at least that has been true in the past.
“Whoever isn’t a socialist at twenty has no heart, whoever is still a socialist at thirty has no brain”
Clemenceau
The problem is that we have been arranging society so that children no longer have to worry about growing up.
They can vote for unicorns. They can’t vote for unicorns to work
Hopefully, they’ll have gained enough life experience to have matured a little by then. previous generations have. If they don’t (and as MarkW points out we certainly make it easier for them not to than at any time in history) than this great nation is in deep trouble.
Bickering over the thermodynamics of the up/down/”back” LWIR GHG loop is pointless since it – does – not – exist.
I’ll plow this ground some more. Maybe somebody will actually explain how/why I’ve got it wrong.
RGHE theory: (Do I understand it correctly?)
33 C warmer w atmosphere – rubbish. (Nikolov & Kramm)
But how, exactly was that supposed to work?
There is a 333 W/m^2 GHG up/down/”back” energy loop that traps/re-emits simultaneously warming both the atmosphere and the surface. Good trick. Too bad it’s not real. – thermodynamic nonsense.
And where does this magical GHG energy loop get that energy?
From the 396 W/m^2 S-B 1.0 ε BB radiation upwelling from the surface. – which because of the non-radiative participation of the atmospheric molecules is simply not possible.
No BB upwelling & no GHG energy loop & no 33 C warmer means no RGHE theory & no CO2 warming & no man caused climate change.
“33 C warmer w atmosphere – rubbish. (Nikolov & Kramm)”
And would that be the bizarre sky-dragon slaying “theory” that gravity compresses the atmosphere and thereby magically causes the excess 33C above Stefan-Boltzmann?
I say “magically” because if it did then Nilov et al have “discovered” free energy and will save the world.
Question: Does the temperature of your bike tyre stay permanently hot after being pumped up?
After all the pressure remains the same and therefore the air in the tyre is being continually compressed.
You will say that the heat is leaking away – but let us put insulation around it.
Will it stay hot?
How about compressed gas canisters.
We could buy them and put them in our houses and the compressed gas inside will perpetually heat them?
Lets provide some common-sense physics here.
A gas will heat up when work is done on it.
Gravity does that work on the atmosphere, yes.
BUT, once compressed the work is finished.
It is a “one-shot” event.
Otherwise we could extract perpetual energy from the Earth!
No work is done in maintaining that compression.
Hence the atmosphere cools and settles into a lapse rate commensurate with -g/Cp, maintained by a “heat pump” of rising/falling air (which does have work being done on it).
The GHE helps this process by heating the bottom of the troposphere preferentially and so adding instability to solar absorbed.
Thanks David. One of the items you show from the RINO proposals is a real laugher:
All proceeds from this carbon tax would be returned to the American people on an equal and monthly basis
ROFLMAO
So the illegal immigrants who work don’t get any returns?
Perhaps they are Americans, I don’t know how you guys count people.
What does “equal” mean in this context? is it returning an equal amount to the person who generated the proceed? Or does it return to everyone who is alive and living in America equally?
What about Americans who aren’t living in America, but working abroad? Do they get a return?
Why take money and give it back, equal or otherwise?
And besides all this, we don’t believe a word of it.
FWIW, I like the http://www.realclearxxxxx.com sites. They tend to put 2 political articles on their daily pages, one left leaning and one right leaning (on the same topics). Think that’s a good example of balance and diversity in reporting.
Like their other pages as well. Its a good news and info site (so far).
It’s a good news site. Real Clear Politics is generally well-balanced, Real Clear Science usually sticks to science. However, more often than not, many of the Real Clear Energy headlines have nothing to do with energy.
“>>> Yes… I know entropy falls under the Second Law of Thermodynamics… <<<"
Actually… no. Entropy is a function that is used to characterize the disorder of a thermodynamic system, specifically it is a logarithm of the number of microstates that yield the same macroscopic characteristics of the macroscopic state of interest.
The second principle of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system can never decrease.
So, they are two different things: the former is merely a definition (like, e.g., the definition of "climate," if you could define it in such a precise way at all), the latter talks about thermodynamics of isolated systems in terms of how their entropy may change over time.
The term "climate denier" is, in its silliness and absurdity, equivalent to a term "entropy denier." It is meaningless. Why and who would deny what is just a mathematical definition of the function?
But you could be a "2nd principle of thermodynamics denier," that is a person who denies the validity of the statement that "the entropy of an isolated thermodynamic system can never diminish."
In the same way, you could be a "climate change" denier, that is, you would hold that the said "climate" can never change on its own, and if it does, it must be because of human interference with it. It clearly transpires that it is all the "warm-mongers" who are "climate change deniers," because this is exactly their position!
Most of those I know who are passionately anti climate science have just one condition. Have all the data inspected to life critical product quality assurance assessment and if it passes then we will believe it. A personal trial reveals it actually fails a low end cheap end product range QA assessment so miserably that no supplier has actually failed that badly by a large margin.
Since the models have been tuned to match historic data which is fundamentally flawed then it follows that the models are equally flawed, as hindsight has proved so dramatically after the hundred months that no mention of it is now made in the media headlines.
Some for medical drugs (esp. vaccines).
Of course, so called “conservatives” here take lightly the fact that so many MD are ignorantly anti gun and pro “climate”. It’s called living in deni@l.
According to:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/mains1.html
“Climate change in IPCC usage refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g. using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. It refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. This usage differs from that in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where climate change refers to a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods. “
So, one problem in people’s discussions of “climate change” is a confusion of definitions of what the proper, shared definition of “climate change” should be. There’s the old UN Framework Convention on Climate Change definition that somehow manages to change common language to its own twisted rendition of the phrase, and then there’s the more general definition, that even the IPCC uses.
Now I think I see what happened — UNFCCC , in 1992, just decided that they could ignore all common understanding of language by declaring its own invalid definition of “climate change”, and somehow they were allowed to get away with it. This is the warped definition that climate alarmists selectively use, assuming that everyone is on their same page, which everyone is NOT.
The first step in dealing with climate alarmism,then, is establishing the correct definition of “climate change”. Make sure we are talking about the same thing, because, when I say “climate change”, I do NOT mean the warped UNFCCC defintion — I mean the proper, common-language definition.
I do NOT recognize the 1992 UNFCCC definition, because it is a fraudulent definition that was wrongly allowed to stand without sufficient clarification in all discussions.
But in the spirit of UNFCCC, I hereby declare the phrase “sunny day” to mean “any Earth day, the greater part of which is illuminated by human-made lights”.
I hereby declare the phrase, “fresh air” to mean, “any parcel of Earth air with normal life-sustaining composition, BUT whose CO2 is between 150ppm and 300ppm.”
The phrase, “starry night” now means “any Earth-night location where one or more celebrities visit or reside.”
The phrase, “mobile phone” now means “any portable telephone located on a parade float”.
The rest of you can get in on the fun by adding to my ongoing dictionary. Then when we talk with one another, we can watch some interesting shit unfold.
With these “admirals”, wet water is a problem for the Navy.