Race to the chase,
Mace to the face.
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Comment on Week in review – science and technology edition by kim
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Comment on Climate sensitivity: Ringberg edition by mosomoso
There’s rather a high cost to all this foreknowledge that proves false. You can even end up without dams you need, and with desals you don’t need (but which cost half a million a day just to look pretty and rust). You know the old saying: Behind every great climate authority there’s a great white elephant. Example (from the Melbourne Age of 2009):
‘David Jones, the head of the bureau’s National Climate Centre, said there was some risk of a worsening El Nino event this year, but it was more likely to arrive in 2010 or 2011. “We are in the build-up to the next El Nino and already the drought is as bad as it has ever been — in terms of the drought, this may be as good as things get.”’
Then this happened:
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by Peter Lang
AK said:
As applied to your assertion that “[s]olar cannot make a significant contribution to cutting global GHG emissions”, all your statements are straw men. They depend on current technology. Current prices. Current ways of doing things. In fact, your emphasis on current stuff is precisely what one would expect of a Luddite.
I’ve refuted many times on this and previous threads this assertion you keep making. Let’s try to lay it to rest once and for all. It is wrong! Clearly you have ignored the dozens of times I’ve shown that the projected cost of electricity from solar power does not decline to even close to the projected cost of electricity from nuclear power over any reasonable projection period (2020, 2030, 2040, 2050) even with highly optimistic and unrealistic learning rates for solar and zero assumed for nuclear. I’ve provided many authoritative references on this. Clearly you don’t read them, or you ignore what you don’t like, or you’re simply dishonest. It is you that is continually repeating your strawman argument based on your belief, hope, wish that solar can be cost competitive and can provide a significant proportion of global electricity at some unspecified time in the future. You completely ignore that nuclear is far cheaper now, and fit for purpose now, and has far greater potential for cost reductions than solar. You also ignore, or don’t realise, that the solar power and RE advocates have been making the same arguments for the past 35 years as you are making now. Those arguments are no more supportable now than they were 35 years ago.
It is you that is in denial. You have nothing to support your beliefs. Virtually all your statements include the big IF –
• IF the storage problem can be solved and be near free, and
• IF transmission could be reduced to near free, and
• IF prices of solar with storage and transmission and network management costs included become competitive with fossil fuels without subsidies, and
• IF the material requirements decrease by a factor of 10 or more, and
• IF the land area required could be reduced by orders of magnitude, and
• IF ERoEI can be improved by orders of magnitude, and
• IF per capita energy consumption stops increasing at the rate it’s been increasing for the past 200,000 years or so (e.g. man forgoes further improvements in human well-being and his desires to explore beyond the Earth’s gravitational field).
IF all your IF’s turn out to be correct, then solar may possibly become viable. However, any rational person would not bank on it. They would not advocate we take the risk.
You’re advocacy to continue to waste time, money and resources on solar, and your continual diversion of debate away from rational policy options to discuss your pet belief in irrational policy options shows you have been poorly trained. You continually demonstrate you have not learnt how to think rationally. You are blocking and delaying progress – like the Luddites.
The Luddites were 19th-century English textile workers who protested newly developed labour-economizing technologies from 1811 to 1816. The stocking frames, spinning frames and power looms introduced during the Industrial Revolution threatened to replace the artisans with less-skilled, low-wage labourers, leaving them without work.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by mosomoso
Can be summed up in those immortal words, known to every child and parent around the Christmas tree: Batteries Not Included.
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Comment on Week in review – science and technology edition by kim
Hotel Doctor to Room 8111, Stat! Guest having a fit in a closet after finding one mismatched coathanger.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by kim
There’s gotta be a pony in there somewhere.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by Jim D
New article on a campaign to confront the 2016 Republican candidates on their climate stance.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/06/steyer-climate-2016_n_7012828.html
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by Don Monfort
Thank you so much for that, jimmy huffpo. Yes, it’s the same filthy rich Democrat clown who blew $70 MILLION trying to smear Rebublican candidates in the last election. Climate is a significant factor for a very small minority of voters, who are radical green little screaming mimis. The filthy rich Democrat clown can spend another $70 MILLION and gain about 37 votes. How much is that per vote, yimmy? The filthy rich democrat clown is trying mightily to make a small fortune out of a large one. Keep em coming, yimmy. Very entertaining.
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Comment on Climate sensitivity: Ringberg edition by beththeserf
Apres la secheresse …
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by JCH
Maybe he’ll have better luck with back-to-back warmest years.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by Jim D
It could be a problem for Republicans if 80% of the young voters, who support climate action, see for themselves that these candidates are just BS’ing on climate, raising questions about their other decisionmaking capabilities.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by swood1000
Jim D –
Sure, it is just evidence that things are happening along the lines expected.
Don’t you think it would be appropriate to wait until the Greenland climate is at least showing signs that something unusual is happening?
“Therefore, we conclude that the current decadal mean temperature in Greenland has not exceeded the envelope of natural variability over the past 4000 years…” http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL049444.pdf
If somebody says that the sky is going to fall and that this will begin with a windy day, do you think that a windy day provides enough evidence start the alarm?
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Comment on Climate sensitivity: Ringberg edition by Steve Fitzpatrick
David,
Fair enough, the difference between the forcing scenarios, at least with the GISS model, is smallish. But the GISS model is almost the lowest response model of them all. It is pretty easy to understand the situation: the models are, on average, clearly divergent from measured reality. You can offer a bunch of excuses, (see Ringberg presentations) or, if you have the courage, you can accept that the GCMs are not capable of reasonable projections. In which case there is a basis for starting for a rational conversation about public policy on energy.
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Comment on Climate sensitivity: Ringberg edition by john321s
The recent rainfall antipode between the region around Perth and the rest of the continent is strikingly reminiscent of the multidecadal temperature see-saw between Southern California and the rest of the USA. Seemingly, “Mediterranean climate” zones are comparatively small and vary opposite in phase relative to their continental neighbors.
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Comment on Climate sensitivity: Ringberg edition by stevefitzpatrick
Judith,
Indeed. GISS is now just about the lowest response model. Gavin is both reasonably young and no fool.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by AK
If you don’t like my posts, don’t read them.
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Comment on Climate sensitivity: Ringberg edition by mosomoso
Seems odd to relate climate zones just because they are part of a political entity. An Australian rainfall average for our freak year of 1950 would be a particularly useless and deceptive statistic.
Fortunately, 1902 was a nice even red, while the mid-1970s almost achieved the impossible all-blue.
(Amazing how the climate used to change before there was climate change.)
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by kim
Lovely stuff. Powerful imagination. Unique insights. I always read your comments, well, usually.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by AK
Thanks. What don’t you read?
I’m not trying to make people agree with me, only think about what I’m saying.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by kim
Sometimes I completely ignore the climate blogs. I know, hard to believe.
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