Guest essay by Larry Hamlin
The L. A. Times published a story regarding estimates by the Global Carbon Project showing that CO2 emissions would reach record levels in 2018 based on increased fossil fuel use by the world’s nations in defiance of climate alarmist contrived “Paris climate agreement” schemes.
The Times story noted that:
“The expected increase, which would bring fossil fuel and industrial emissions to a record high of 37.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, is being driven by nearly 5% emissions growth in China and more than 6% in India, researchers estimated, along with growth in many other nations throughout the world. Emissions by the United States grew 2.5%, while emissions by the European Union declined by just under 1%”
The Times article provided no graphs or tables showing specific yearly CO2 emissions data for prior years for the various world nations as was done in other news outlet stories regarding this data, as shown below for example in a Washington Post story on these emissions estimates, so that the significant and specific prior year declines in the U.S. emissions were hidden from L A Times readers along with the huge increases in China’s CO2 emissions.
The Times story failed to address and concealed from its readers specific facts showing that the U.S. has been significantly reducing its CO2 emissions since its peak year levels in 2007 (6020.6 million metric tons) such that the 2018 estimate is about 750 million metric tons below 2007 year levels despite the small increase between 2017 and 2018. The Times story also failed to note that EIA estimates show that year 2019 U.S. CO2 emissions are expected to decline by 1.3% from 2018 levels as clearly presented in EIA data.
Additionally the Times story neglected to mention that the U.S. has been leading the world in reducing CO2 emissions over the last decade based on increased use of lower cost natural gas derived through fracking technology that has displaced higher cost and more emissions producing coal fuel. This reduction in CO2 emissions by the U.S. has been consistently concealed from the public by the climate alarmist main stream media.
Last year the L A Times had published another story about climbing global emissions and again failed to address the U.S. emission reductions in that story as well.
The latest Times story never addressed the fact that UN IPCC climate models from which climate alarmist claims are derived depend upon model conjecture and speculation as reflected by the IPCC acknowledgement in its 3rd climate report in 2001 noting that it is impossible to create climate models which reflect the true complexities of global climate.
The speculative and unreliable projections of UN IPCC climate models is confirmed by comparisons of model projections versus actual global temperatures as presented by Dr. John Christy in testimony before the U.S. Senate which exposed these flawed and exaggerated climate model global temperature projections.
Nor did the Times story present satellite measured global temperature data clearly demonstrating that naturally occurring El Nino events in 1998, 2010 and 2017 have been largely responsible for increased global temperatures during the last 20 years not man made CO2 emissions.
The L A Times and Governor Brown have consistently, misleadingly and absurdly tried to portray China as California’s partner in “fighting climate change”.
The most recent Times story again ignored the massive CO2 emissions growth taking place in China since the year 2000 which renders California’s emissions reductions efforts as meaningless and irrelevant despite the fact that the Global Carbon Project presented emissions data clearly portraying this absurd situation.
The Times article also tries to portray China’s government as championing increased use of renewables and electric vehicles.
However unaddressed in the Times story is the fact that China is rapidly moving to eliminate the use of government subsidizes for both renewables and electric vehicles.
The L A Times is clearly pushing a purely political climate alarmist propaganda campaign which is completely disconnected from any connection to the realities of global energy use as well being unsupported by scientific global climate data.
Not surprising coming from a newspaper that stated years ago they would not print any letters to the editor skeptical of climate change. California is going in for seconds with the Kool Aid.
I used to subscribe to the LA Times and had home delivery for many years. I would scan it for silliness and looked mostly for the cross word puzzle and cartoons.
It was delivered every morning accompanied by a copy of China Daily…read into it what you may.
You are a Chinese scientist, maybe??
Why is it that, when these dingaling Enviros start with the complaining about “carbon emissions” and similar things, they ALWAYS include photos of nuclear power stations in their “stuff”, with the cooling towers emitting large quantities of steam????
Do they not know that nuclear plants don’t “burn” anything that produces smoke? Or can’t they figure out that steam and smoke are not the same thing?
Just trying to understand here.
https://www.google.pl/search?q=coal+powered+power+station&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj21f6D-pffAhWlp4sKHdhuBpIQ_AUIDigB&biw=1366&bih=626
Gee Ivan Kinsman.
You sourced many dozens of stacks emitting water vapor from their cooling towers and stacks, AND NOT A SINGLE ONE EMITTING SMOKE in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, nor western Europe!
Funny. The communist Chinese and African country coal-fired plants in your search DID emit visible smoke. Just as they did for dozens of years previous.
Sorry Sara, but that actually is a coal plant, the stacks give it away. And in teeny-tiny print on the caption it says it is a brown coal plant.
But your point about the steam is well founded. Often they make the steam look as dark and ominous as possible, not giving away that it is not smoke.
Please don’t talk such drivel. It demeans you my friend.
I do not understand your point. Do you dispute my technical premise?
Thanks guys. The two types seem to be indistinguishable now, but the smokestacks don’t have the same emissions clouds as the steam stacks do in any of these plants. The four straight stacks are what I would expect smoke to exit from. The others that look like pinched funnels appear to be emitting steam.
The power plant across the state line north of me always had four stacks going full blast and only one of them looked like it was emitting smoke at all. The others, because of the force of the venting behind them, looked like steam vents. That plant was a coal-fired plant. It shut down last year after a new plant was built a few miles away. Gas is cheaper than coal around here.
NO power plant in the US or Canada emits “visible smoke” at all since filter bags and filter systems were mandated in the 70’s and 80’s.
EVERY power plant emits “water vapor” up the stack depending on how much hydrogen is in the fuel being burned (coal = little water vapor in the coal, but some trapped on the coal surface and as slurry remnants and scrubber operation residuals.) No fuel oil is burned in the US-UK-AU-Canada any more, but a little bit in plants in Mexico.
Natural gas is CH4 plus a few other fractions, so many more tons of very hot water vapor come out the stack of a nat gas plant than a coal plant.
Those hot vapors are invisible until cooled down and the water vapor condenses as the “clouds” you see.
And, as you can see each day, the cooling takes places over 25-100 feet above the stack outlet as the vapor mixes with the much colder air.
Even nuclear plants emit a small vapor cloud from their vent stacks, plus the thousands of tons of saturated water vapor from their cooling towers.
What a load of B.S.
https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/coal-and-other-fossil-fuels/coal-air-pollution#.XBAsNLnTU0M
Ivan, you have no idea of what you are talking about. From your linked article, the stack on the left is what is called a “wet-stack.” What is billowing from it is water vapor evaporated from an SO2 scrubber, not particulate matter entrained in smoke. I suspect the same is true of the stack on the right. This is what RA is accurately describing.
Good observations, Sara. If you have unscrubbed emissions, then a well controlled stack will have an almost invisible plume, because the particulates have been removed by a precipitator or baghouse. Scrubbed ones have steam plumes, as RA has described.
Good post, Larry. Looks like we can expect the Earth to really green up. Wait a minute, China is doing what? Getting an exemption via Paris and running away with the CO2 increase title? How is that supposed to work out?
The most important relationship not mentioned by the Times is that atmospheric CO2 has grown at the same rate for 25 years and is not correlated to human emissions. This can only be true if human emissions is much much smaller than natural emissions (a known fact). If we are not effecting the rate of growth by increasing our emissions we won’t effect that rate by cutting them. See Harde 2017 (https://hhgpc0.wixsite.com/harde-2017-censored). Also (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4396&v=rohF6K2avtY) and (https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/my-poster-presentation-for-the-ams-annual-meeting-jan-8-2019/)
The IPCC assumption that all the increase in atmospheric CO2 is from human emissions is falsified and this fact should be widely taught.
… good point
DMA,
Yup, that proves it alright! One paper, one poster and a youtube. Decades of work by hundreds of scientists looking at CO2 cycles, and you found the truth to show they’re all wrong. Congratulations!
Phew, we have nothing to worry about! What a relief.
(But why is the atmospheric CO2 increasing so rapidly?)
kristi silber December 10, 2018 at 8:55 pm
“But why is the atmospheric CO2 increasing so rapidly?” Who cares?
The link bellow is about Canadian grape vines. They are the true canary in the coal mines.
New York State and Maritime Canada are starting to produce “ice wines” That is a bad sign. While high in value they a due to early freezes. They had a terrible time getting European type grapes to survive.
Canada’s high end wine making is only in the last fifty years.
Forget models and adjusted temperature grafts. Instead study how agriculture is fairing in regards to cold.
https://www.winesandvines.com/news/article/200948/Nova-Scotia-Vines-Withered-by-Freeze
michael
It is a known fact that CO2 in atmosphere increases as surface of oceans get warmer. Not the other way around, as climate scientist Murry Salby has clearly shown. Also, there is no “rapid increase” in atmospheric CO2, it follows exactly the increase of sea temperature, while climate temperature does not follow atmospheric CO2 like it should. That alone only shows that “hundreds of scientists” have just been wrong or victims of Lysenkoism.
“It is a known fact that CO2 in atmosphere increases as surface of oceans get warmer. Not the other way around”
Wrong.
Both happens.
Depends on which comes first.
Before mankind (with the exception of massive volcanic outpourings) temperature change came first and atmospheric GHGs responded (the carbon cycle).
CO2 still responds to the CC now – it’s just that there is mre than it can handle.
Since pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 in excess to the CC has been added.
Both are drivers IF they come first.
Both are feed-backs if NOT.
In his recent lecture in Hamburg, Murray Salby shows that the IPCC’s theory of increasing CO2, which it presumes is due to human emissions, is falsified by actual records of atmospheric change. He also shows that there has never been a systematic trend of global temperature.
https://youtu.be/NtIgMftbUuw
Perhaps you can tell us bearing in mind that historic rises in CO2 were very much higher long before man had even discovered how to make fire.
Kristi is right. How do you explain such a rapid increase in CO2 over such a short period of time i.e. the last 100 years, if not for man’s activities? Still waiting for an answer…
Rapid increase? Relative to what?
0:27 – 0:55. Watch and learn…
https://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/12/11/dont-believe-these-climate-change-lies/
Why does it matter why it is occurring.
It’s a good thing and needs to be enjoyed.
So that is your answer! Wow – that really explains it.
Like I said “with the exception of massive volcanic outpourings”.
This and an Earth that bares no relation to the one we live on now.
Look – there is NO doubt that the increase in atmos CO2 from ~280 to ~408 ppm is anthro cause .
It hasn’t shifted above 300ppm in more than 800,000 yrs – so what do you propose could be the natural cause?
Especially as the ocean cannot be doing as ph is decreasing generally.
See ….
Aside from the calcs showing that fossil burnt correlates with atmospheric build-up – the isotopic footprint matches ancient carbon.
“A decrease in the 13C/12C ratio of atmospheric CO2 has been documented by direct observations since 1978 and from ice core measurements since the industrial revolution. This decrease, known as the 13C-Suess effect, is driven primarily by the input of fossil fuel-derived CO2 but is also sensitive to land and ocean carbon cycling and uptake. Using updated records, we show that no plausible combination of sources and sinks of CO2 from fossil fuel, land, and oceans can explain the observed 13C-Suess effect unless an increase has occurred in the 13C/12C isotopic discrimination of land photosynthesis.”
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/09/05/1619240114
AB
Look at the chemical analysis of the atmosphere from 1850 to 1950 by Beck. There was 380 PPM in the atmosphere in 1946. Look at the stomata work by Wagner. There was over 350 PPM in the atmosphere during the Holocene optimum. Watch the Salby video to learn that the natural emissions of C13 is anticorrelated to C12 so the supposition that the change is a human fingerprint is in error. Read Berry’s preprint to see how the C13 content is supported by his Physics model using short residence time and the Bern model is falsified.
Then pick the part you can disprove, not just disagree with, and try again. This analysis initiated by Salby and filled out by Harde and Berry is first principal analysis and has not been reasonably refuted even though there has been much effort to suppress it. It maters not that many others have made bad assumptions and these few have found their error. To get to the truth these findings and predictions are there for the others to falsify or accept and build on.
DMA,
380 ppm in 1946!!! Are you kidding? You believe that? Sorry, but that kind of ruins all your others arguments. Charles Keeling. Heard of him?
(Aside: my uncle has a little bottle of air at exactly 400 ppm. He was chief of the Mauna Loa observatory, and collected it from the measuring apparatus when the atmosphere reached that noteworthy point.)
Stomata are lousy proxies for CO2.
A video is not a good citation. Nor is a preprint unless it’s been accepted.
As Einstein said, it only takes one scientist to prove anyone wrong.
Since the data does not and never has supported a belief that CO2 controls the climate, who cares how many “scientists” say otherwise.
Science is not decided by a popularity contest, it’s decided by the data.
MarkW,
Einstein is right, of course. But it’s irrelevant, since the theory hasn’t been proven wrong by anyone. But if you want to ignore the science and the scientists, why even bother discussing it, Mark? There’s no possible argument anyone could make to convince you.
That’s the beauty of teaching people that scientists are not trustworthy, that the science is full of corruption – no scientific argument will ever hold weight. It’s the perfect propaganda message. (And now the same thing is happening with the media. Trump is teaching his followers distrust. It’s by far the scariest thing he’s doing, the most dangerous to American democracy. Autocrats in other countries are following his lead… Sorry, off topic.)
I’ve been “banned for life” from the LAT comment boards for pointing out their lunacy. The article in question is mild compared to their stances on “transit” , immigration and homelessness.
Curtailing illegal immigration would slow emissions growth. Of course part of the draw to immigrants is a higher quality of life.
Just as the Democratic party in the US has become the Democratic Communist party, the LA Times is now the LA Times Communist newspaper.
The Epoch Times (which is the number 1 reporting newspaper in the world reporting on the evils of the Chinese Communist party) has reported in their November 29 -December 5 edition (the newspaper comes out once a week) that 40% of the US Democratic caucus (all the sitting Democratic congressmen and senators in the US government ) are members of a group called the Congressional Progressive Caucus. That group has extensive ties to several Marxist and Communist organizations in the US. Nancy Pelosi has just made a deal with that group that in exchange for their support of her to be elected speaker of the House, she would allow them to have more key appointments on House committees. This is surely a deal with the Devil himself (if you believe in Devils). The Epoch Times article then goes on to state that the Congressional Progressive Caucus is effectively part of the world Communist movement.
SO IT SEEMS THAT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN THE US WILL EFFECTIVELY BECOME IN THE NEAR FUTURE THE US DEMOCRATIC COMMUNIST PARTY.
Isn’t “Democratic Communist” an oxymoron?
It is Democrat party, not democratic party.
Yes, the Democrat leadership and elites have definitely taken a hard-left turn and are headed down the path to socialism/communism/authoritarianism. They almost got a lock on the U.S. government with the Obama administration attempts to fix the election for Hillary, and have managed to infest the federal government with like-minded individuals who are still trying to reverse the 2016 election and are doing everything they can to undermine President Trump up to this very day.
Whatever name you call the Democrats, their every action undermines the safety and security of the United States in their efforts to acquire power. Power and control are the motivating factors in their lives, and everything else including truth and justice be damned.
If the Democrats didn’t have the Media on their side constantly spreading their leftwing propaganda, then they wouldn’t have anything. That’s the only thing that keeps them in the game. They are able to fool millions of people using the Leftwing Media. An extremely dangerous situation when you can cause people to vote completely contrary to their own interests and make them think they are doing the right thing.
If nothing else, Trump is providing an essential service to the people of the United States by exposing the Leftwing Media for the liars they really are. The Leftwing Media’s credibility is at record lows. And it should be, but it’s not low enough, because they are still fooling millions of people into living in a false reality.
The Radical Left doesn’t live in the same world the rest of us live in. Their reality is not our reality. Their reality is a scary, horrible place requiring complete control of the people. Our reality is a reality of hope for the future based on individuals operating lawfully in their own interests..
The Left has nothing good to offer the world. All they can offer is to spend other people’s money on one crazy scheme after another, always with the idea that the Left will be in control of all that spending.
The Left is the Santa Claus party. They offer you everything “free” and if you accept their offer, then they own you. Which is their objective. They will offer you anything in order to get control of your life. Once they have control, they are free to change their “offer” to you.
LAT shows a nice picture of steam and then titles the article about carbon emissions.
You’ll never really see diamond or graphite exiting a smokestack.
Yes. Love seeing all that lovely steam busy cooling the earth. Then I think of the gross implicit falsity staring me in the face. Grrrrrr🤬🤬🤬🤬🤯
The caption says steam rising from a coal fired plant.
Defiance? Hardly … most folk don’t give a toot about the alarmist drivel, drowning as it is in its own irrelevance.
Most folk can’t see round the corner.
Optimists see opportunity round every corner, pessimists or climate alarmists as they are more commonly known see dangers round every corner so never go anywhere.
I thought I read somewhere that China has plans to build ~200 new coal plants too….
You do realize that China’s emissions are a lot higher than what they claim….they claimed to have closed smaller coal plants…and what they did was just stop reporting their emissions
Latitude December 10, 2018 at 5:45 pm
Hi Latitude, I guess we don’t have Paris after all!
https://qz.com/1404934/chinas-provinces-are-secretly-building-coal-plants-in-defiance-of-the-national-government/
michael
Thanks Mike, that’s one of them….I think China has contracts in Africa too.
I don’t think China has a lot of control over their provinces…they seem to do the head nod…and then do whatever they want
“I don’t think China has a lot of control over their provinces…they seem to do the head nod…and then do whatever they want.”
Or maybe that’s what the central government there wants the outside world to think, while it’s actually secretly giving the provinces a wink and nod when it informs them of its desire to move to renewables.
Paris…did you see Macaroon’s speech with the EU flag behind him…state of emergency, in other words clean them out and act like nothing happened….now he’s really gone and done it!
Latitude December 10, 2018 at 6:00 pm
No I have not seen that but it seems E.U. armored vehicles are being used.
I’m beginning to worry about a new Tiananmen Square.
This seems to be spreading. They can actually lose control.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/tear-gas-mass-arrests-as-new-yellow-vest-protests-hit-paris/
michael
The EU insignia they love their yellow stars still.
They do tend to replace smaller inefficient plants with larger more efficient ones. Cheating is a given, however.
There is no need to worry here. For those that believe in the AGW conjecture, the total radiant greenhouse effect which is provided for mostly by H2O has not changed much. The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero.
How embarrassing for the Warmistas that the USA is leading the way on emissions reduction over the last decade by increased use of lower cost natural gas and even more embarrassingly, it has been derived through fracking technology. Wait, wait, while the rate of human CO2 production has accelerated the measured rate of CO2 increase has remained the same. Could it be that human production is not connected to overall CO2 production. Worse still, could it be that the World’s temperature variation is not connected to the growth of CO2? Meanwhile, Earth is greening up nicely under CO2.
I came across a TED Talk where the gentleman pointed out that much of the gains in Europe were offset by the retiring of non-carbon emitting nuclear energy.
Maybe the China elite can save the California elite’s train to nowhere.
from the please buy our paper LA Times
In 2008, voters approved what was supposed to be a $33-billion railroad completed by 2020. Today — and check back tomorrow, because these numbers could change — the cost has exploded to an estimated $77 billion and the current completion date estimate is 2033.
I’ll need some good fortune to last long enough to see this climate saving beauty.
Here we have a congregation of the world’s highest and mightiest, charged with the responsibility to save the planet, hell bent on doing precisely the opposite.
This, of course judged on its own objectives.
Fortunately the climate couldn’t care less and will just plug on regardless; but not so the economies which will be decimated.
Nice work, Nations. Arno Arrak
” in defiance of climate alarmist contrived “Paris climate agreement” schemes.”
Oy! What a loaded phrase. “Defiance”! That could well be applied to the U.S. administration, but we aren’t part of the agreement, anyway. “Alarmist contrived”? You know, the more times I hear “alarmist” for anyone who supports doing something to curb CO2 emissions, the more inclined I am to start calling skeptics, “denier.” Why should I care if it offends people when they are so willingly offensive?
The denialist author did not point out that the EIA estimates are for energy CO2 only, not for total emissions.
The denier pointed to the massive growth in China’s emissions since 2000, but did not mention how significantly that growth was curtailed, nor that China’s population is 1.36 billion while Americas’s is only 357 million.
Nor did the denier seem to realize (or care) that his first cherry-picked temperature graph is not shown in the link provided, and that the closest to it is labeled differently. (Furthermore, Christy’s testimony seems, to my eyes, to be misleading – in the figures taken from the IPCC, the blue band [model runs without anthropogenic GHGs] does not overlap the observations, as he says it does. The red band [with anthro] shows a pattern much closer to the predictions – what am I missing?)
Nor does the denier seem to understand that El Ninos are part of climate, and they don’t just keep getting higher naturally. If you are going to discount the effects of recent El Ninos, you have to discount the effects of all past El Ninos, too.
Nor does the denier seem to realize that the L.A. Times can report what it wants, and is not obligated to report every dam thing he thinks they should.
One of the prime indicators of a failed argument is the closing down of the other side of that argument. That is what happened in the USSR. Those who were responsible for carrying state propaganda, did not allow the Solzhenitsyn’s any air time, they were “no platformed” or worse, jailed!
The same state of play exists in the UN propaganda climate reporting system. The agents tasked with carrying the AGW message i.e the BBC the Guardian here in the UK have said publicly, they will not allow any voice or column inch to be given to the contrary side of the man made climate change debate.
I do not know the media sites in the USA well enough to comment on them, but it is clear a message has been sent out Herod like, to stop all publication of any climate realists voices.
Make of that what you will.
US youth do not seem to think like you it seems. They can see the flawed logic underpinning the US skeptics arguments and, as such, are not interested in them.
https://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/12/11/us-promotion-of-coal-undermining-last-chance-climate-talks-experts-charge/
Ivan, I am not familiar with a group of people called “US skeptics”? What are they sceptical (skeptical) about? Is there something about the USA to warrant scepticism?
I have nothing against the US skeptical viewpoint that man’s activities are not influencing the climate, and in consequence not having a negative effect on the environment, if they can use valid scientific date to validate this – which to date they do not seem to have been able to do.
What I do really criticise however is the spreading of false information – let’s call them lies – by individuals such as the current President who, to be frank, has a very basic understanding of the issue because he either does ot have the intellect or cannot be bothered to analyse it in detail:
https://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/12/11/dont-believe-these-climate-change-lies/
Ivan.
Trump takes his advices on climate from his science advisory board/panel.
Trump’s belated pick for science adviser, meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier, looked good when he was first chosen on July 31, but people are applying a low standard. He appears much more mainstream than Trump’s long-assumed pick — physicist Will Happer — who has gone public many times saying that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will be good for us.
And as for your contemptible nonsense about his wise-ness or lack off, well he is several billion dollars smarter than you and your moronic ilk.
Trump in high school
Trump attended The Kew-Forest School in Forest Hills, Queens until he was 13 years old. Then, after causing some trouble at The Kew-Forest School, his parents transferred him to the New York Military Academy. Trump excelled in academics and sports while at NYMA. He earned many academic honors, was a member of the varsity football team in 1962, the varsity soccer team in 1963, and the varsity baseball team from 1962-1964. He was also the Cadet Captin-S4 (Cadet Battalion Logistics Officer) and lead his school in the Memorial Day parade down Fifth Avenue in 1964.
Trump in college
After high school, Trump attended Fordham University for two years. He then transferred to the Wharton Business School, where he graduated in 1968 with a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a concentration in finance.
“After I graduated from the New York Military Academy in 1964, I flirted briefly with the idea of attending film school,” Trump wrote in his book Trump: The Art of the Deal. “But in the end, I decided real estate was a much better business. I began by attending Fordham University…but after two years, I decided that as long as I had to be in college, I might as well test myself against the best. I applied to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and I got in…
Who gives a crap about this man’s CV? As Tillerson says he doesn’t read, annot get into the detail on anything and has the atttention span of a gnat. Expect him to beef up on the details of AGW … you’re living in cloud cuckoo land my friend.
Trump said Tillerson is as dumb as a rock and lazy as hell.
He must have gotten in Trump’s way especially with Russia and China, never mind Korea.
Macron did’nt beef up quickly enough, and now Paris sure does not look good.
You can’t be “as dumb as a rock” and “lazy as hell” to get to be CEO of one of the world’s leading energy concerns. Tillerson saw thru Trump – has his character down to a tee – and Trump is just lashing out to get his own back in his atypical infantile manner.
Once again, Ivanski has to link to his own blog in order to find someone who agrees with him.
Rod Evans,
What I read (here on WUWT) is that the BBC stated their staff aren’t obligated to get as much attention to the skeptic side of the argument, not that they aren’t allowing them to be heard. There’s a big difference.
Speaking generally…when you give equal time to two opposing arguments, it can make it seem like they are equally worthy. This is what some journalists have been trained is the right thing to do. But at some point, with some topics, there comes a point when the evidence for one or the other side becomes convincing enough that a journalist is justified in giving more weight to the side of the argument that carries most evidence, because that side is deemed more likely to be the truth. This is how I interpret the BBC’s actions. It’s not about silencing anyone, it’s about informing the public. I don’t know about the Guardian.
Spot on Kristi. It is nice to have someone on this site applying logical analysis to the debate on AGW. Many sceptics think they are hard done by the leftie MSM and that climate change is some kind of socialist conspiracy.
Basically most rational people have concluded that the rapid increase in CO2 particles in the atmosphere can only be due to man’s activities and that this is detrimentally impacting climate. Now they are more interested in hearing about what we can do to mitigate its effects. The debate about whether it impacts climate and to what extent is also over.
That’s funny, the more times I hear Alarmist trolls use the highly derogatory, and deliberate lie of a term, “denier”, the more I am inclined to use the word “asshole” to describe them. But I won’t.
You’re too kind
Bruce Cobb,
I want to be clear. I do think there are alarmists, and I think they taint the whole discussion. I think Al Gore did real damage with his ridiculous predictions. I think it’s wrong of the media to call every hurricane a sign of global warming. I think the IPCC’s latest scare tactics about 1.5 C are not helpful or practical. I don’t like alarmism, and I don’t like being called an alarmist. I also think it’s wrong to say the Paris Climate Agreement was “contrived” or driven by alarmists. It made me mad, and I lashed out.
Not everyone who think AGW is a problem is an alarmist…just as not every skeptic is a denier. But some who call themselves “skeptics” are deniers, and really show little in the way of skepticism. The deniers are those who latch on to every supposed bit of evidence and every weak argument and every interpretation of research that conforms to what they want to believe as the truth. Real skeptics question. They are curious. They investigate. They look at alternatives. They don’t simply accept one argument and dismiss another because it’s comfortable to do so.
The Paris Agreement is driven by people who believe there is convincing evidence that humans are having an impact on the climate, and that doing nothing to curb that impact will result in problems that are worth trying to mitigate. It’s driven by the realization that some countries have contributed more to the problem than others, and that some countries can more easily afford to change and to help others mitigate and adapt. The Agreement and the projects of the Green Climate Fund are not meant to deny poor countries access to affordable energy or force anyone to use renewables, but in some cases that’s a good option. Anyone who has taken the time to look at the Green Climate Fund projects can see that they are diverse, desirable to those they serve, and are funded by multiple stakeholders.
I wonder if those who say “believers” and liberals want to do things that will cost millions of lives have ever looked at the GCF projects. It would have cost Americans less than $6 a person to fulfill our pledge and stay in the Paris Agreement, but we went rogue. We don’t seem to care about our position as a world leader anymore.
Kristi wrote: ” “Alarmist contrived”? You know, the more times I hear “alarmist” for anyone who supports doing something to curb CO2 emissions, the more inclined I am to start calling skeptics, “denier.” Why should I care if it offends people when they are so willingly offensive?”
Kristi, “alarmist” is perfectly descriptive. CAGW promoters are continually sounding the alarm, so it makes sense to call such people “alarmists” since that is exactly what they are.
As for calling skeptics deniers, I personally couldn’t care less. There is about as much correlation between a CAGW “denier” and a Holocaust Denier as there is between CO2 and how the Earth’s climate behaves.
I do deny that any CAGW effects are evident in the behavior of the Earth’s climate. So feel free to call me a denier. I won’t take it personal or feel any mental anguish over it.
They are acknowledging the weakness of their argument when they resort to ad hominem attacks. They cannot defend the science because it is based on computer models that have failed to predict the current temps. So they resort to personal attacks on any that point out the failure of there conjecture to match with reality. Pejoratives have no place in scientific debate. It results in less logical clarity, and more emotional conflict. Anyone who uses such tactics calls into question their ability to defend their position with logic.
They are advocating spending $Trillions of dollars on a non-problem, which can weaken and destabilize governments and economies throughout the world. It is a political agenda that is based in economic coercion for political and economic gain. Not to mention the degradation of the public’s trust in the scientific community. It is an argument of “sacrifice for the greater good”, but there is no evidence that the sacrifice will result in greater good. On the contrary the sacrifice seems designed to increase poverty, and increase civil chaos.
Russ
I agree that pejoratives have no place in scientific debate. “Denier” is no worse than “alarmist.” See my comment to Bruce, above.
The science of AGW is not based on computer models. Both the theory and evidence were around before there were models. The models weren’t designed to “predict” current temperatures, or any specific climate state at any point in time. It is accepted that there will always be unpredictable natural variability, as well as anthropogenic effects. They are meant to predict trends, and at that they are reasonably skillful.
You may not see it as a problem, but many others do. The cost of dealing with it is spread across time and nations. There are no mandates, it’s voluntary. It’s an investment. For many people in developing nations it makes more sense to invest in solar panels than wait to get hooked up to the grid, which is sometime much more costly and takes years. There is also a very high cost to building power plants, providing the infrastructure to fuel them, and built the grid to distribute the energy – and the costs are ongoing. Not every country has a ready supply of coal, natural gas or uranium. Where there is ongoing instability and warfare, there are also risks that supply lines get cut. The world is not going to save those trillions of dollars – at least some of it will be spent in any case, if people are going to get electricity.
“Not to mention the degradation of the public’s trust in the scientific community. ”
Do you not see the irony here? For decades the propaganda has been geared toward killing trust in the scientific community. Sites like this propagate it. Skeptics want to distrust the science, and make all kinds of claims in order to justify it: scientists just want funding, they are victims of bias and groupthink, they fake the temperature record…on and on. There doesn’t need to be any evidence, because assumptions are enough of an argument.
The Hockey Stick is 20 years old. Climategate involved a handful of scientists. Even if it were the case that they are guilty of all the things they are accused of, that’s all that the skeptic community has after all these years, and that’s why it’s latched onto incessantly. Beating a dead horse. 7 years were spent on court cases trying to get more emails…for what? People have already made up their minds. What a waste of court time and taxpayer money.
Someone spent a he11 of a lot of money trying to get those emails exposed. Why? To spread distrust of the scientific community by cherry-picking quotes out of context and putting the worst spin possible on them. It’s happening already.
Sickening.
Hello Kristi,
Again I agree with you reasoned argument here.
I have consustently argued that the group expertise on this site – which is considerable – could be better allicated. Rather than being an echo chamber for sceptic discussion, it could be much better employed trying to determine the best solutions to mitigating the impacts of AGW and the societal changes required to get global temperature increase down to 1.5 C.
I know I will be accused of being a commie or a socialist by some commentators for mentioning ‘societal change’ as it is seen as an implied criticism of the capitalist model. I am far from being a socialist – I simply recognise that today’s ‘business as usual’ model has inherent flaws and corrections need to be made.
If they aren’t “alarmists” then how do they justify their demand to completely work the economies of the world?
Why do you object to calling them alarmists, if you ask them, they will say that is what they are doing. Spreading the alarm.
BTW, you are the denialist here, denying real science in favor of politically driven alarmism.
Hmm, Kristi claims that us realists don’t understand that El Nino’s are part of climate, yet it’s her alarmists who have been using the warmth coming off the recent El Nino as “proof” that the world is still warming.
What is it about socialists that they assume that everyone else is as eager to outlaw opposing voices as they are.
A grand total of nobody has said that the LA Times shouldn’t be allowed to print whatever it wants to.
Ok, time to wind up the broken record about “well of course CO2 is increasing – the USA is not paying everybody else to, you know, do something different”.
EU28’s reduced emissions have not impacted in CO2 in the atmosphere and temperatures. Global picture gives the same message. Emissions grew from 9Gt/y to 37 Gt/y while CO2 in the atmosphere grew just from 315 ppm to 410 ppm [
]. Global temperature anomalies were hovering around zero.
With this hand I would not put all in for CAGW in a poker table.
Here’s Lomborg’s latest update from the EU based IEA. The world generates just 0.8% TOTAL Energy from clueless S&Wind and this MAY increase to just 3.6% by 2040.
Of course no measurable change to temp by 2100 from any of these sacrifices, just an endless waste of trillions $ for a guaranteed ZERO return.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/where-do-we-get-most-of-our-energy-hint-not-renewables/
Here’s IEA pie graph showing China generates 66.7% of TOTAL energy from king coal, while the USA is now down to just 17.1%. How many people understand these numbers do you think? Please wake up to the MSM’s con trick.
https://www.iea.org/stats/WebGraphs/CHINA4.pdf
Is anyone surprised the LA Times is working hard to “hide the decline”?
US sceptics really make me laugh sometimes they are so clueless.
I, probably like many sceptics, do not like illegal economic migration – either affecting Europe or the US.
Now let’s take Central America as an example. Why are these people from Honduras, El Savador, Guatemala etc. trying to get to the US? A severe drought exacerbated by climate change has made land unproductive, forcing people to abandon their land.
So, on the one hand sceptics don’t want to acknowledge the impacts of climate change and on the other they don’t want illegal economic migration. So it is a lose-lose situation.
The only people denying that the climate changes are those denying the LIA, the MWP before that, the Dark Ages cooling before that….
Skeptics only deny that human emissions of CO2 are affecting detrimental changes to the climate.
http://www.fao.org/in-action/agronoticias/detail/en/c/1024539/
” The Dry Corridor strip, which stretches from Southern Mexico down to Panama and suffers from severe inclement weather due to El Niño, has become one of the hottest topics on the agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although the term didn’t even exist until 10 years ago, today it symbolizes the region’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change”
Ivan, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations the drought you spoke of was caused by the recent El Nino, and that this drought only “symbolizes the region’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change”
So, even the UN acknowledges that the drought in Central America is not due to climate change.
SR
The drought might be a natural occurrence as you imply. However, its effects are exacerbated by climate change – a factor that most US skeptics fail to acknowledge. The local inhabitants even say they are experiencing less precipitation than in the past. What more evidence do you need?
Continue the policy of inaction against AGW and the US is only going to witness more of these “caravans” heading for their border. I am inherently against illegal economic migration (the only issue I agree with on Trump’s agenda) and, as such, am willing to address the factors that are causing it. I would prefer to see Hondurans, Guatemalans etc. staying and being productive in their own countries – which I am sure they would prefer to – rather than heading for illegal work in mine.
Ivan: “The drought might be a natural occurrence as you imply.”
I didn’t imply this, the UN FAO stated it by saying the 2016 El Nino – a natural occurrence – caused the drought.
Ivan:”However, its effects are exacerbated by climate change – a factor that most US skeptics fail to acknowledge.”
Again, skeptics do not deny that the climate changes, CAGW proponents do that.
Ivan: “The local inhabitants even say they are experiencing less precipitation than in the past. What more evidence do you need?”
Skeptics need evidence that human CO2 emissions are causing less precipitation. Since no one has found any evidence that total CO2 increases have done this, there is definitely no evidence that the human caused portion of atmospheric CO2 is a cause.
PS Didn’t the central US just have some droughts of our own? If increased CO2 had caused the climate to change, increasing droughts would still be with us as CO2 is still increasing. But, they passed. The drought in Central America will also pass, because it is weather, not climate.
SR
To quote – and the last sentence is important vis a vis climate change vs normal weather patterns:
The “dry corridor” of Central America, which includes parts of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, has been hit with an unusual drought for the last five years. Crops are failing. Starvation is lurking. More than two million people in the region are at risk for hunger, according to an August report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
“Under normal circumstances, without any change in rain patterns, people are already struggling,” said Edwin Castellanos, dean of research at Universidad del Valle de Guatemala and a global authority on climate change in Central America. “In some of these dry areas, we have seen events of children actually dying out of hunger. So, it is that extreme.”
This drought has been longer and more intense than those seen before in the dry corridor, Castellanos said. The failure of critical springtime rains is also new, he said, and is causing such problems for farmers whose crops depend on that water.
Subsistence crops like corn and beans are all but dying. Our crew saw beans the size of Tic Tacs. And shriveled, partially blackened ears of corn could fit inside your palm. Studies have not definitively tied this particular drought to climate change, but computer models show droughts like the one happening now are becoming more common as the world warms.
https://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/12/11/one-suspected-driver-of-the-caravan-climate-change-cnnpolitics/
Comes to a science blog with multiple CNN links to back up his emotive sophistry.
How you people bite your tongues when these trolling progressive retards land here is beyond me, but well done anyway, because i just feel like reaching into the screen and biting their nose off.
When you produce a “weather machine” we can do something about it. Until then they should learn to do what we do. Collect rainfall in reservoirs and irrigate dry areas. They get plenty of rain, but it is seasonal. When it comes, it can rain on one side of the mountains, and dry out the other side, when the dry air is heated by compression. It is normal in every way, and has nothing to do with human activity, unless they have been cutting down forests.
It requires planning, capital, and a government that wants to make life better.
None of those things will happen, if the people leave.
All well and good, but they are leaving … and they are heading your way. So you can philosophise all you want, but that is not really going to change the status quo, which only seems likely to deteriorate even further.
If you can get your friends over at: mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com to quit taking so many drugs, maybe the drug traffickers would quit booting the refugees out of their homes. It is more likely a “deal you can’t refuse” because if you are too poor to eat, you are too poor to travel to the USA.
Desperation doesn’t force people to go long distances, if shorter distances solve the source of the initial desperation.
Ivan, your summary of effects lacks any evidence of the cause? If a drought occurs it is not scientific to simply say, is is caused by man made CO2. Some data supporting your assertion would be helpful and illuminating. I suspect you omit that data or proof, because there is none available.
Solar energy variations are well documented, as are those cycles effect on world wide climatic conditions. Whole civilisations in South America, have developed and disappeared in human history because of climate variation. All of them came and went, long before coal fired plants or SUVs were around.
Climate changes. It has always done so and will continue to as long as solar variation and orbital cycles interact, such that the energy falling on the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere, varies over time. Axial tilt of the Earth also varies over time, adding another complexity.
Organisms on Earth have also affected atmospheric conditions and caused change in our climatic conditions. We should be thankful they have, because we would not be here without them.
The big question is, are human activities impacting the Earth’s climate in any way at all? A second question has to be, if humans do impact climate, is that impact beneficial of detrimental?
When you can answer those points, I will fall in line.
The climate is not the source of refugees. They get plenty of rain, but it is not equally distributed, it is monsoonal. Guatemala City averages 52 inches of rain per year. More than enough if they used water management practices. It gets dryer as you move inland, but it has always been that way. Palm Springs is dry, and it has always been dry, for the same reasons.
http://www.guatemala.climatemps.com/precipitation.php
The real problem is crime. When the drug traffickers and farmers move in, the poor people are forced out: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gt.html
Guatemala: major transit country for cocaine and heroin; it is estimated that 1,000 mt of cocaine are smuggled through the country each year, primarily destined for the US market; in 2016, the Guatemalan government estimated that an average of 4,500 hectares of opium poppy were being cultivated; marijuana cultivation for mostly domestic consumption; proximity to Mexico makes Guatemala a major staging area for drugs (particularly for cocaine); money laundering is a serious problem; corruption is a major problem
Honduras: transshipment point for drugs and narcotics; illicit producer of cannabis, cultivated on small plots and used principally for local consumption; corruption is a major problem; some money-laundering activity
Nicaragua: transshipment point for cocaine destined for the US and transshipment point for arms-for-drugs dealing
Ivan wrote: “The drought might be a natural occurrence as you imply. However, its effects are exacerbated by climate change – a factor that most US skeptics fail to acknowledge.”
Skeptics “fail to acknowledge” CAGW because there is no evidence of CAGW and alarmists can’t provide any. Alarmists just want us to have faith in their assertions. Skeptics aren’t buying it. Skeptics want some evidence. And it makes skeptics even more skeptical when they request evidence from the alarmists and never get anything in reply. That would be because the alarmists don’t have any evidence. All they have are assumptions. Assumptions are not good enough.
Plenty of publicly available research data showing the ‘exacerbation effect’ on the Internet – just do a search … if you can be bothered that is…
A computer model is not and never will be “data”.
The historical record shows that there have been droughts before, and many of them were worse.
Go ahead, keep denying the science.
1:48-2:32
https://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/12/11/dont-believe-these-climate-change-lies/
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/9r6oss/a_starving_refugee_checks_her_phone_2018_colorized/
The drought in Central America is causing starvation.
So it doesn’t matter what the data says, on of the “immigrants” says that there is less data than he remembers in the past, ergo the case is proven.
And to think Ivanski calls others “deniers”.
“However, its effects are exacerbated by climate change” Indubitably! That climate change being caused by the fact that we’re near the bottom of a very weak solar cycle. Same thing’s happening in parts of S. America and southern Africa. If you take the trouble to look you will see similar effects during other periods of low solar activity like the Dalton minimum.
@Ivan – droughts come and go along the western edge of the Pacific coast in both the tropical and subtropical zones. There is nothing unusual about the current one. It is a semi-permanent feature of the area. It puts stress on the locals, but it is not unusual in any way.
And the migrants themselves are not saying they are leaving because of droughts, they say it is due to gang violence.
We don’t want illegal economic migration, because it is unskilled labor, and we exported most of our unskilled labor jobs. Those jobs can be done cheaper in countries with low cost labor. Many are now done in Mexico. If they want economic opportunity, and they don’t have a college degree staying in Mexico is better. They could stay close to home, and then when the “drought” ends they can go back home.
Gang violence is a factor and exacerbated droughts are a factor. Climate change is making these droyghts stronger and more frequent. You know it as well as I do 🙂
Actually I don’t know that because the data does not support the contention. What you are claiming is caused by climate change is normal weather patterns. And a tropical monsoonal area will get more rain in a warming world. A cooling world would result in more droughts. So you are incorrect both in the comparison to historical WEATHER patterns, and you are incorrect in your premise of the effects of warmer temperatures.
Rain is forecast for today, tonight and tomorrow in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
This is the dry season. Pretty weak drought when it rains in the dry season.
https://weather.com/weather/today/l/HOXX0008:1:HO
CA doesn’t care a bit about how much CO2 China emits. Another serious indication that they don’t consider it a problem that will create environmental disaster. It is just a ready made excuse to blame when bureaucratic incompetence is the real problem.
CA is infatuated with China’s government structure. Moonbeam would love to send everyone that points out how stupid he is to the Loagui. And there are plenty more Social Justice Warriors with the same derangement, waiting to take his place.
Question on China:
They are exempt from demands to immediately reduce GHG emissions because
A) They are a developing nation
And
B) They have not benefited from historical emissions during the Industrial Revolution.
Point A no longer applies as they are now one of the world’s richest nations.
Point B – How great has been China’s historical emissions of methane from paddy fields?
They’ve been there a long time, they are big and methane is 30 times more active as a GHG than CO2.
One to ask at COP24 for a laugh.
The developed world cannot keep CO2 emissions even at their current levels, and the developing world is set to dramatically increase their emissions as their economies mature. At what point will alarmists admit that a CO2 reduction strategy is fantasy?
I suspect that at some point we’ll all hear about shifting from mitigation spending to reparations spending. It will be presented as a more cost effective strategy. Instead of spending $10 Trillion, send the UN $100 billion a year for redistribution.
The hilarious thing about this of course is that despite all the arm-waving about “carbon emissions”, the only known effect the increased CO2 has had is the greening of the planet, something the climate numpties like our resident Alarmist trolls (they know who they are) either care nothing about or flat-out deny. They deny lots of things in fact, making them the true deniers. They deny that the “warming effect” of man’s CO2 emissions exists solely in their much-vaunted CO2-based climate models (circular logic much?). They deny that our climate is, in fact one that is as benign as it gets, and that warmer is in fact far better than colder, which is why they continually confuse and conflate weather with climate, one of many of their lying tactics.
Why would warmer be better than colder in the Southern Hemisphere?
Why do people travel 1000s of miles to holiday in the heat,……
Because we like it,…….
How many hotels in antartica are there.
Even the IPCC acknowledges that places that are already humid will feel little impact from rising CO2 as water has already saturated all of the energy bands that CO2 is capable of interacting with.
Why do you believe that the people in the Southern Hemisphere would respond differently to heat as compared to people in the Northern Hemisphere?
I dunno. Why do climate trolls like to use red herring and straw man arguments so much?
Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are all in the Northern Hemisphere. LOL.
Yes but I want an answer to my question. Why say would someone living in South Africa or Australia want it to be hotter?
South Africa hot? I think you have that wrong.
From your comment have you actually been to South Africa? Do you know how hot it gets there in the summer? I spent three months and I’m telling you it can get damn hot.
Also from your comment it seems you did not hear about the drought experience Cape Town went through recently(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/04/back-from-the-brink-how-cape-town-cracked-its-water-crisis)? Why would South Africa want an even hotter climate than what they already have?
Because the sea would be warmer when I go surfing.
1950 is when the IPCC says we first started producing enough CO2 through the use of fossil fuels to impact the climate. It appears the Southern Hemisphere did NOT get the memo. The rate of warming from 1950 to 2018 is exactly the same as it was before we started adding CO2 to the atmosphere. It is the same 0.1* C per decade, that we have been seeing since the end of the LIA.
So the southern hemisphere is controlled by the oceans and the oceans are going to absorb and release heat on their own schedule, regardless of what we do. A lot of water out there, and a minute change in the composition of the CO2 in the atmosphere from 3.5 per 10,000 molecules to 4 per 10,000 does not change the thermal properties of 1,344,420,000,000,000 cubic meters of water.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:1900/to/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:1900/to:1950/trend/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:1950/to/trend
Russ, I do believe you have neatly explained why the Mona Loa curve is a jagged line rather than a smooth upward curve. In other words, during the Southern winter, for the reasons you’ve given, CO2 is being preferentially absorbed because where it is cold it’s mostly ocean. However, during the Northern winter, since where it’s cold is mostly land, absorption would be much less.
It is true that the land masses of the Northern Hemisphere absorb more CO2 in the northern summer and use it to create biomass. Which reduces the available CO2 in the air. The opposite happens in the norther winter, as those plants go dormant, and the Southern Hemisphere has much larger ocean coverage. It is a normal process and one we have little control over.
My larger point was the futility in arguing we have control over the climate, based on our use, or non-use of fossil fuels. The temps went up at the same rate before we were producing CO2 that it did when we were not.
As anyone that has ever tried to warm large volumes of water knows, they heat slowly, and release that heat slowly, as compared to heating air. We know that a significant amount of heat is always being stored, and a significant amount of heat is always being released, into and out of, the oceans. And we also know that those amounts are in constant flux, meaning a net gain, or net loss of heat. There is strong evidence that this heat system is responsible for the changes we see in atmospheric temperatures. And it also has a large effect on the atmospheric CO2 levels. Warm oceans release more CO2 than cold ones do.
There is just no evidence that we are in control of the climate, in a significant way. It is like we are warming a cabin in the woods, and the heat escapes the cabin, so you have to keep stoking the fire to keep it warm. That escaping heat will not warm the woods, in a significant way, because it is too small in comparison to the heat capacity of the woods. In this example we are the cabin, and the oceans are the woods. If we measure temps in close proximity to the cabin, we will see a change in temps from our actions. But that change is local and does not change the temps further from the cabin, because the heat is radiating upward.
This is evident in the global record as well.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to:1950/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/to/trend
Interesting how a factual post always brings out the “climate nuts” that try to erect mirrors and blow smoke.
Me thinks they do protest too much.
If co2 levels were causing a crisis, then the existing nation by nation approach, letting the developing world have a free pass while inducing economic collapse by changing to “alternate” power sources in industrialised nations, is doomed to failure.
Instead existing power generation should be left in place, and new infrastructure built based on nuclear power, with internationally centralised provision of fuel and handling of spent fuel. Subsidise the developing nations the difference between what a fossil fuel based plant and the nuclear plant costs, with a bit of a sweetener thrown in.
Unfortunately the evidence for the detrimental effects of co2 is so weak that the impetus for such an internationally based scheme is lacking.
The environmental costs of coal-fired power plants, for example, are too high to justify their use so I question your “existing power generaton should be left in place”. (https://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/12/12/coal-fired-power-plants-their-true-cost-to-the-environment-and-the-tacit-support-of-the-epa/)
However, where we do agree is on the use of nucleur. I have long been convinced of this as a clean power source are reading Professor James Lovelock’s views on the matter. He points to the fact that nucleur produces very little waste and that there have been relatively few fatal incidents involving the technology. France is also a very good example of a country that has made impressive use of latest generation nucleur power plants.
[Nuclear ? .mod]
You seem to be missing the wood for the trees. The fact is that co2 continues up and temp does not. It has flat lined for nearly 2 decades. So you should first accept that before coming up with theories about CC which have no solid foundation. What you are in fact doing is using regional weather changes WITHIN a climate system to build a case. Nothing to do with climate. I’m afraid you are on the wrong bus.
The use of the argument ”the climate always changes” by skeptics is also problematic in my view. Can you really call a rise and fall and rise of 1 or 2 degrees (for the sake of argument) over one hundred years climate change? For the purposes of these discussions, I say no.
And that seems to be a big problem with alarmists – failure to see the big picture and dwelling on meaningless micro changes.
Ivan why is China building brand-spanking new beautiful clean-coal power stations, not only in China but other countries all around the world? Could it be that it’s cheaper than nuclear? It might also be that high pressure water reactors being fundamentally dangerous (Fukushima) will become obsolete once something cheaper and safer comes along? (Thorium?).
Of course, here in the UK, having as we do such a frightfully clever prime minister (as the moment) China is building Hinkley which will deliver electricity at 3 to 5 times the cost as Drax would if (if only!) it was running on the coal on which it is standing and not on wood-chips from forests being felled in the US?
Ivan, I’m not sure if you realise this, but I suspect that you do, what you are promoting is an energy policy designed to make China more competitive than the UK. Comrade.
Did you even bother to read the link I put up about the atmospheric pollution produced by coal-fired power plants?
China might want to continue poisoning its own people – although I think you will see that they are building more coal-fired plants outside China as there has been a public backlash to the abysmal air quality in the country which has had an impact (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/china-is-massively-betting-on-coal-outside-its-shores–even-as-investment-falls-globally.html).
There are much cleaner alternatives to coal and those countries that want to pursue these should be entitled to do so. Trump and China together are going the other way. I have just finished working on a website for an extremely successful Austrian wind power company that is expanding year on year (https://www.wksimonsfeld.at/) – this and other renewables along with nucleur is the future
That is a great idea. But it only shows progress when you can produce power in excess of the power required to construct and install those windmills. That will prove how they are “sustainable” power sources, not temporary storage of all the energy required to mine, refine, and transport, all the materials that go into the construction and installation of the device, before you get anything out of it.
Let me know when you are “successful” in doing that. Then once it produces more energy than all the energy that went into it’s creation and maintenance, it will be a net producer, although still an intermittent one. (And don’t forget access roads, and power connections from the remote location to the grid).
And you might as well subtract the energy required for a backup system, because we want electricity 24/7. And the cost of removing it when it is no longer economically viable. So it should be a net energy producer ….. 3 weeks before we tear it down.
A pile of horse crap my friend and you know it.
Reality my friend, and you know it. An energy producer, is only a positive net producer, when it exceeds the energy required for it’s life cycle. And that is a very high bar for windmills.
They require a strong foundation, to maintain stability. Much like a tree, they need to be anchored to the earth.
I notice you don’t want to argue this point by point, because there is no point in arguing that steel, copper, concrete, iron, and all the materials required to create a windmill, do not require energy to produce. And all that stuff has to be moved around, from where it is mined, to where it is refined, to where it is fabricated, to where it is assembled, to where it is transported to the site.
You must really hate birds to put all that effort into making sure those baby birds will starve, waiting for their mother to come back, because she is laying on the ground at the base of the windmill, with food for her chicks, still in her beak.
Ivan you may not be aware, but coal power stations actually produce very little air pollution. They have electrostatic precipitators to remove particulates from the flue gasses.
The pollution causing the “abysmal air quality in the country” is probably the result of people burning coal or wood in fire-places to keep warm. Not the coal power stations. Probably, if it’s anything like India they also have a plethora of 3-wheel taxis running on two-stroke engines as well.
Finally, if you are seriously suggesting that CO2 itself, an inert, colourless gas, is a pollutant then please be aware that every time you exhale you are ‘polluting’ the environment.
Michael, if you believe that electrostatic precipitators remove all the harmful elements from coal burning then I suggest you do a bit more research into the issue. If you want to live bang next door to a coal-fired power station thinking you will suffer no harmful effects then be may guest! https://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/12/12/coal-fired-power-plants-their-true-cost-to-the-environment-and-the-tacit-support-of-the-epa/
Also, what is your point about humans expelling CO2? Are you talking about carbon flux? What point are you making? I suggest you watch this video – very good on cutting through the US sceptic arguments against AGW – and then get back to me: https://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/12/12/top-10-climate-change-myths/
Yes, mod, my error!
The atmosphere is not a sealed container. CO2 in the atmosphere has a half-life.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/21/on-co2-residence-times-the-chicken-or-the-egg/
Key Question: Will these other emitters step up to bail out America when advocacy has derailed growth to keep up with U.S. debt service payments?