They never ran out of bronze. Iron was just cheaper.
Comment on Week in review by AK
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Comment on Week in review by angech2014
An El Nino starting 2014 died last week, or rather it was never born. It got so close [4 months of > 0.5] but went under without a trace. where are the articles pointing this out? where is the discussion? also gone without a trace. More ice at both poles for the past 2 years, giving a record total global sea ice are suggests that the temperatures should only go down from here. Looking forward th a cold 2015 !
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Comment on Week in review by JustinWonder
Minimum wage was never intended to support a family, or even an individual. Rather, the min wage allows an employer to hire a person with no skill or experience. IAC, the unintended consequences of the min wage are obvious.
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Comment on Week in review by Faustino
Everything changes. I read The Economist from 1961 (and almost got a job there in 1964), and for decades it was excellent. Somewhere along the line, maybe in the late 1990s, it began to lose its rigour and adopt more trendy values, alas. To an extent, the same can be said of my alma mater, the London School of Economics. How are the mighty fallen.
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Comment on ‘Warmest year’, ‘pause’, and all that by gbaikie
–Richard Mallett | January 18, 2015 at 4:47 pm |
Reply to : gbaikie
So, given all that you have said, can we establish any link between CO2 and temperature, and (if we can) can we establish any link between anthropogenic CO2 and temperature ?–
It’s complicated.
But one begins from the undisputed fact that there are large natural processes which emits and absorb [or store] CO2.
See carbon cycle.
-We are pissing in the wind, but obviously this wind does get urine in it.-
One thing to keep in mind is that for millions of years Earth’s life has been near starvation levels in terms of CO2 content in the atmosphere. That CO2 have been lower than “normal levels” is well known fact. Though not normally described as near starvation levels- but I believe that is very fair characterization.
Plants have been evolving more time than the current low level of CO2, and they are “designed” in terms of evolutionary process to operate with higher levels of CO2.
Or if the atmosphere had 1/2 or 1/3 of the oxygen it has, humans would be starving for oxygen- humans could survive, but we have not evolved in such conditions- and fair to say we would be oxygen starved.
Plus one keep in mind how low the CO2 of 400 ppm is. It’s wonder that
plants can feed on such low levels of CO2, and they will all die at say, 150 ppm.
And plants “like” about 800 ppm. And humans typical live
in their homes with 1000 ppm [or more- and not generally less- because living creatures make it]
What is also a well known fact, is we are in ice age period which has lasted millions of years.This period we are in is characterized as an Icebox climate [cold oceans and polar caps].
And there are ideas/theories of why we living in time of low CO2 in the atmosphere and why we in ice box climate. And this is related position of continents [and plate tectonic in general], So this present condition of Earth [Low CO2 and temperature] is related to geological process.
Basically it’s pointless or silly to argue that humans have not effected global CO2 levels, but to assume human can control global CO2 levels is also as silly.
Or to me it’s possible [not saying it’s likely] that CO2 levels could lower despite human addition of CO2 from fossil fuel burning.
We are not as dominate as we like to think we are.
And I would say where we might want global CO2 levels to be is around 600 ppm. Or not have them above 1000 ppm and not want them below 300 ppm.
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Comment on ‘Warmest year’, ‘pause’, and all that by Dr. Strangelove
Are you kidding? 6 billion tons of ice is the size of 2,617 Great Pyramids of Giza. GPS satellites can track the location of your subcompact car accurately within 3 meters and you don’t believe GRACE satellites can detect an ice block 2,617 times bigger than the Great Pyramid.
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Comment on ‘Warmest year’, ‘pause’, and all that by jim2
Right. And the colder the climate, the more CO2 gets sucked up by the oceans. I believe that’s called a positive feedback in engineering circles.
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Comment on ‘Warmest year’, ‘pause’, and all that by jim2
Militant Muslims are a bigger problem than global warming. Greenpeace should be protesting them instead.
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Comment on Week in review by Peter Lang
True. They are publishing the renewable energy spin that has been shown to be disingenuous for the past 20 years.
The Weekend edition of Australian Financial Review ” http://www.afr.com/p/business/resources/energy/power_generation/renewable_energy_from_fad_to_fact_JqKygUkF60ySg5YrUHh4LM
ECONOMIST
At first sight, the story of renewable energy in the rich world looks like a waste of time and money. Rather than investing in research, governments have spent hundreds of millions of pounds, euros and dollars on subsidising technology that does not yet pay its way.
Yet for all the blunders, renewables are on the march. In 2013, global renewable capacity in the power industry worldwide was 1560 gigawatts (GW), a year-on-year increase of more than 8 per cent. Of that total, hydropower accounted for about 1000GW, a 4 per cent rise; other renewables went up by nearly 17 per cent to more than 560GW.
I was sent the article and asked for comment. I replied:
“renewables are on the march”
It’s an insignificant march. Fossil fuels have increased much more than RE over the same period. RE has shrunk from 100% of energy 300 years ago to 1% now, and is still shrinking. Hydro capacity is strictly limited. It cannot increase much more and certainly cannot provide a larger proportion of global energy supply. Quoting percentages is misleading unless you provide proper context. Intermittent, unreliable energy sources, like wind and solar energy, provide a minute quantity of global electricity supply. So increasing the proportion from 0% to 1% is relatively easy. It doesn’t mean the growth rates at these small proportions are sustainable to high proportions of energy supply from these technologies. To give an example: consider a person on a salary of 100,000 pa. If s/he’s been saving $10/wk s/he can easily double that and save an extra $10/wk. But s/he cannot save an extra $100,000 a week.
“global renewable capacity in the power industry worldwide was 1560 gigawatts (GW), a year-on-year increase of more than 8 per cent.”
Context:
The RE industry continually talks about capacity instead of energy supplied. The capacity factor of wind and solar very low. So it doesn’t produce much energy.
“renewables went up by nearly 17 per cent to more than 560GW.”
That’s trivial because they don’t produce much energy. Furthermore, the rate cannot continue to a significant proportion of total energy supplied because these technologies are uneconomic and not sustainable. That is they cannot provide the energy to support modern society. They are totally dependent on fossil fuels.
I’d urge Ken to ask this question
Why is there so little interest among climate scientists and those most concerned about substantially reducing global GHG emissions in rational policies to do this? Why is there almost no debate among these people about the probability that policies they advocate will succeed in the real world in delivering the benefits they expect and say they want – where the benefits are ‘reduced climate damages’ and measured in dollars.?
Why isn’t the following widely understood by those most concerned? And why isn’t it widely advocated?
1. Nuclear power is a far cheaper way to substantially reduce global GHG emissions than renewable energy.
2. Nuclear power has the capacity to provide all humans energy needs effectively indefinitely.
3. RE cannot sustain modern society, let alone in the future as per capita energy consumption continues to increase as it has been doing since human first learnt to control fire.
4. There is far greater capacity to reduce the cost of nuclear energy than renewable energy.
5. The issue with nuclear is political, not technical. The progressives are the block to progress and they have been for the past 50 years.
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Comment on ‘Warmest year’, ‘pause’, and all that by Mi Cro
“Are you kidding? 6 billion tons of ice is the size of 2,617 Great Pyramids of Giza. GPS satellites can track the location of your subcompact car accurately within 3 meters and you don’t believe GRACE satellites can detect an ice block 2,617 times bigger than the Great Pyramid.”
WWHhhhhhhhhaaaaaaatttt, does ice come with a navigation system? You do realize that “gps” doesn’t have a clue where you’re at, your gps receiver knows where it is.
And then there’s that GRACE doesn’t know what gps is.
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Comment on Week in review by PA
“From the original PDO paper. We are talking here about the Alaskan pink and sockeye salmon.”
No, you are, I’m not, not unless Richmond, Washington moved to Alaska recently.
Are you out of strawmen or is this going to continue? Argue against the point I’m making not some random point you want to argue against. The PDO may affect things. Lots of things affect fish populations. That has nothing to do with whether fertilizing the ocean increases fish stocks. Or are you going to argue that more food doesn’t make for more fish next?
Are you trying to argue that Volcanic ash doesn’t fertilize the ocean?
http://climate.nasa.gov/news/855/
Or are you arguing sand doesn’t fertilize the ocean?
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100809/full/news.2010.396.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/gallery/saharan-dust-feeds-atlantic-ocean-plankton/
Since it is pretty obvious that the ocean can be fertilized from above (that is a fact and facts should not be in dispute) it is pretty obvious that man can fertilize the ocean from above.
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Comment on ‘Warmest year’, ‘pause’, and all that by Dr. Strangelove
In Fig. 3.3 of the link, June 2014 was not the lowest point. There was a dip and rebound between June 2013 and June 2014.
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Comment on Week in review by PMHinSC
Climate is not random and you can’t apply random statistical analysis to it.
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Comment on Week in review by captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2
Joseph, “And I do think that for many years after the civil war the northern business elites looked down on the South and didn’t move their businesses there.”
There was no need to move most industry. Iron ore and coal are more northern resources and were the backbone of most industry. With more scrap iron available and electric arc furnaces, southern steel industry started growing. Other than ship building most southern industry was agriculture related, textiles for example.
Automotive related industry started growing in the south mainly due to lower labor a cost of living in the south. Unions priced themselves out of the market. Now regulations are moving most heavy-repetitive industry out of country for the same reason.
A lot of the agriculture related jobs have been displaced by equipment modernization and migrant labor. Construction work has a lot of peaks and valleys but the real estate bubble did in a lots of folks in the South. You have massive unemployment, more uninsured folks, larger strain on the system. Instead of fixing the problem, unemployment, every one tries to fix the symptoms. Typical government nonsense.
So now they want to raise the minimum wage because the unemployed are doing whatever they can to make it by, instead of the typical infrastructure construction that creates higher wage jobs and longer term investments worth financing under a deficit.
But it is nice to see y’all nit pick insignificant statistical data to death so it can be due to climate change or some other agenda you like instead of basic piss poor government planning :)
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Comment on ‘Warmest year’, ‘pause’, and all that by steven
GRACE might be up to the job but it is questionable that the isostatic rebound models are and GRACE can’t get an accurate estimate of changes in ice unless they are.
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Comment on Week in review by captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2
Here is a link to a neat graphic of industry by state. Watch the transition from manufacturing to retail sales to healthcare. When Healthcare is the biggest industry in every state, who wins the prize?
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Comment on Week in review by captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2
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Comment on Week in review by bob droege
willb,
I think the Mount Tambora eruption and Mount Pinatuba are excellent examples against the long term persistence of global temperature.
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Comment on ‘Warmest year’, ‘pause’, and all that by R. Gates
Playing the animation of warming on this page clearly gives you a sense of the “patchwork quilt” of warming, but especially these past 40 years or so, the change toward more warm everywhere becomes clear:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/decadaltemp.php
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Comment on ‘Warmest year’, ‘pause’, and all that by mosomoso
That’s the odd thing: you have a wiggly line of nothing but bumps and dips, you get yet another bump after yet another dip…and some want to know what happened to their nice straight line. It, er, never existed, guys.
Of course, civilisations can go on and even forward during the coolings. What we can’t be sure of is how civilisations would cope with a big drop and big rise such as occurred not that long ago in the Younger Dryas/Optimum transition. There’s that question, not unrealistic.
And there’s the question of how aviation, transport, communications, agriculture and modernity in general would cope with a Laki, which occurred less than 250 years ago. When you consider what that Icelandic pea-shooter did in 2010, seems realistic to put volcanism and another Laki at the very centre of climate studies. It’s what adults would do. We are talking about the actual study of actual climate change…and it would be an adult pursuit.
Sadly, the climate kiddies are down at the sea-side with magnifying glasses, looking for a rise that’s barely there. And there’s not an adult in sight.
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