Read the main post. Apparently the majority of scientists don’t believe AGW because it is just right and supported by so much of the evidence, but because of something else that she has invented for the purpose of blogging. Try it in a scientific discussion and it won’t fly because evidence wins over rhetoric.
Comment on Climate change availability cascade by Jim D
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Comment on Climate change availability cascade by Jim D
The oceans are warming, but slower than the global average, so yes you can get more rain when it does rain, but the relative humidity isn’t staying constant, so maybe you can also get more droughts.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by Peter Lang
AK,
These numbers may be wrong, but they show where I’m coming from.
The numbers are hopelessly wrong, unsupported and not worth wasting time on. I’ve concluded you have no idea how to do any sort of cost estimate or reality check. I’ve given you references any you haven’t studied them. There are many places you can get highlevel cost estimates to do sanity checks on pumped storage and solar. You are not aware of them and don’t know how to do it. Soi it’s pointless.
More relevant is the fact you are so totally opposed to evaluating the nuclear power option – which is about 5 times cheaper to provide power to meet demand and customer requirements and has far greater potential for cost reduction virtually indefinitely, no resource constraints and has been proving for decades it can provide a large proportion of the electricity for industrial countries. Solar fails on all counts. So your biased advocacy for solar is irrational and worse – it id delaying progress.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by Peter Lang
AK,
Here are some other ways to do a simple reality check of your idea of solar powered pumped hydro energy storage.
Hydro plants like Hoover dam generate power during times of peak and intermediate demand. They are not needed during low demand times because the baseload plants generate power cheaper. Peak and intermediate load is during the day – i.e. at the same time as the solar PV is generating power. You can only store power from solar when they are generating – i.e. during the day. But that is when the hydro is generating not pumping to store. So you can see why solar power pumped hydro is a ridiculous idea.
Another way to do a reality check. Solar energy costs >$200/MWh (system costs included). The owner of the solar plant could sell the energy for $200/MWh to a utility or sell it to a (gullible, incompetent) owner of a pumped hydro scheme for that price. The pumped hydro owner might decide to buy power and store it every second day and use it to generate on the other days (or buy during the peak solar generating time and sell in the afternoon and evening. For simplicity assume the every second day scenario: he needs to sell the power for >4x what he pays for it, i.e. >$800/MWh, plus the revenue he lost on the days he was pumping instead of generating – add another $200/MWh; total >$1000/MWh. He couldn’t sell any electricity at this price.
I hope these simple common sense reality checks plus the ones I’ve provided previously on this and other threads may persuade you to:
1. Do common sense reality checks before advocating for technologies like solar power; and
2. When the evidence is overwhelming that nuclear is far cheaper than renewables, be willing to start looking into it objectively; and
3. Recognise that the same sort of advocacy you are doing for renewable energy projects has been going on for decades – it is effective at making people believe (wrongly) there is a bright future just around the corner, and they then enthusiastically pass it on to others. What you and they (inadvertently?) are doing is delaying progress.
This is the point I’ve been trying to make to you all along.
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Comment on Draft APS Statement on Climate Change by swood1000
ATTP –
Can you find a reason why anyone should waste their time responding to someone who’s chosen to imply that the other person is dishonest?
By this you must be saying that you agree with the person who asserted that ignoring a person who has found a hole in your argument is intellectually dishonest. I think that knowingly using logical fallacies is intellectually dishonest, as would be responding with any statement one knows to be false, but I am not sure I agree that a simple failure to respond necessarily constitutes dishonesty. Your approach seems to be whenever such an implication could possibly be drawn the discussion ends. My approach is that asking if someone is dishonest and charging him with dishonesty are not the same. Although I am aware that merely asking such a question can be a (dishonest) way of making such an assertion in a way that some people find safer, it is not always or necessarily the case.
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Comment on Week in review – science and technology edition by Peter Lang
Rud Istvan,
Thank you Interesting.
Is it true that the Great Barrier Reef almost died out during the ice ages and thrives as the seas warm? Is it true that coral reefs thrive in hot waters (like New Guinea and the Red Sea)? Did coral reefs thrive in much warmer waters in the past when global temperatures were much warmer than now?
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Comment on Draft APS Statement on Climate Change by ...and Then There's Physics
swood1000,
By this you must be saying that you agree with the person who asserted that ignoring a person who has found a hole in your argument is intellectually dishonest.
No, I’m making a very simple point that if someone decides to imply that the other party is dishonest, the other party can choose to simply no longer interact. You seem to be suggesting that if someone accuses another of being dishonest and the other chooses not to respond, that it means that the accusation is probably correct. Is that really what you’re suggesting?
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Don Monfort
You are kidding, patty. The first paper is a convoluted analysis of data from 1996-2005, and the other basically same-same from 1987-2006. How is that more up to date than the NOAA analysis, which actually is decipherable and makes sense? You jokers are really struggling.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by angech2014
Again, I think you’re confusing the fast fluxes (between the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere) and the slow fluxes (sequestering carbon in the deep ocean/rocks/etc). The rate at which we would reduce an increase in atmospheric CO2 is related to the slow fluxes (i.e., the rate at which we essentially remove carbon from the upper ocean/atmosphere/biosphere) not the rate at which it cycles through the ocean/atmosphere/biosphere system.
No
You continue to confuse test tubes of CO2 with real life CO2 WHICH IS REMOVED FROM THE ATMOSPHERE EVERY YEAR IN MASSIVE AMOUNTS.
The CO2 retention rates Lacis describes are only obtainable in a dry , sterile unreal world.
CO2 is constantly turned over in large amounts and is removed from the atmosphere and sequestered in larger amounts when they occur by the biologic process you ignore.
Sorry about the italics , Capital lock by mistake and too tired to change it.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Don Monfort
I don’t believe that patty even read those papers. From the first one:
“The common observation time period is between 1996 and 2005. Due to the relatively short length of the period, the strong interannual variability with strong contributions from El Nino and La Nina events and the strong anomaly at the start of the common period, caused by the 1997/1998 El Nino, the observed trends should not be interpreted as long-term climate trends.”
Shame on you, patty. You are as bad as jimmy dee.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Vaughan Pratt
@ATTP: The rate at which we would reduce an increase in atmospheric CO2 is related to the slow fluxes (i.e., the rate at which we essentially remove carbon from the upper ocean/atmosphere/biosphere) not the rate at which it cycles through the ocean/atmosphere/biosphere system.
Doesn’t this depend in an essential way on vegetation biomass not increasing in response to increased CO2?
Preindustrially, plants absorbed some 120 GtC via photosynthesis during sunlight hours, returning half via respiration 24/7 and the other half to soil. If increased CO2 results in say a 10% increase in plant biomass, plants will absorb a further 12 GtC, returning 6 to the atmosphere and 6 to soil for a net drawndown of 6 GtC per year.
Some of that 6 GtC sent to the soil may find its way back into the atmosphere. However essentially all of it would have to do so if our contribution to atmospheric CO2 is to remain high for thousands of years after we stop emitting it, as David Archer, Susan Solomon, and Ray Pierrehumbert would have it. This seems to me to be a big question mark; our own Mark Jacobson for example, author of Fundamentals of Atmospheric Modeling, expects a CO2 residence time on the order of one or two centuries.
Given how aggressive plants can be about taking advantage of extra CO2, maintaining say 1000 ppm for thousands of years sounds like a pretty tall order.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Scott
Tonyb
I always look for and enjoy your comments. Can’t wait till sea level 2,and any updates for your temperatures.
Clouds are hard. Some are bright and reflect back out, some absorb and retransmit, some increase with winds and no models do well in simulating or predicting. Then we have the deep ocean and transport down at the poles to heat the abyss by o.1 *C to return in 1,000 years. Plus the Milankotich orbital cycles and maybe the sun variations or sunspots. Lots of work today but don’t bet too much on economic carbon trading impacting temperatures within our lifetimes. First we need good temperature observations, then ocean observations and then natural variation predictions before one can hope to measure the impact of carbon dioxide on tempeatures.
The political slant of settled science and denier callouts have only delayed understanding of the real science. Pretend problems are easier to address than real problems like the middle east, poverty in africa, war in the East Russian border and fossil fuel depletion.
I do enjoy your articles and perspective so thanks for that.
Scott
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Vaughan Pratt
ATTP is quite right (at least for sufficiently small values of dF and dT; only in the infinitesimal limit is the factor exactly 4). And I would also be fine with "Ummm…. it doesn’t work like that." if you said how it <i>does</i> work. Simply saying 1% of radiative forcing will warm the planet by 1% is not enough.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by ...and Then There's Physics
VP,
<blockquote>
Doesn’t this depend in an essential way on vegetation biomass not increasing in response to increased CO2?
</blockquote>
Well, yes, and I think it is increasing. I'm not sure what would happen were we to simply stop emitting.
<blockquote>
Preindustrially, plants absorbed some 120 GtC via photosynthesis during sunlight hours, returning half via respiration 24/7 and the other half to soil. If increased CO2 results in say a 10% increase in plant biomass, plants will absorb a further 12 GtC, returning 6 to the atmosphere and 6 to soil for a net drawndown of 6 GtC per year.
</blockquote>
As I understand it, you add 120 GtC via photosynthesis, half being returned via respiration and the other being returned via microbrial respiration and decompostion. So, even preindustrially, it was 120 GtC in and 120 GtC out. The amount actually sequestered was only a small fraction. In fact, in preindustrial times the system was in balance with the volcanic emissions, which are about 100 times smaller than ours today (0.1GtC). So the amount actually sequestered was probably around 0.1GtC per year.
<blockquote>
Given how aggressive plants can be about taking advantage of extra CO2, maintaining say 1000 ppm for thousands of years sounds like a pretty tall order.
</blockquote>
It's not so much 1000ppm for thousands of years. It's more like 1000 years to go from 1000ppm to around 500ppm You can play around with this <a href="http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/geocarb/" rel="nofollow">Carbon cycle simulator</a>. As much as I can see that increasing biomass could draw it down faster, I don't really have a sense as to how much more you would need if you wanted to quickly reduce the concentration. It's possible, I guess but according to <a href="http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/ocean-chemistry/co2-reservoir/" rel="nofollow">this</a>, the terrestrial biosphere has aout 2000-3000 GtC. So it would seem to need to be substantially larger if it were to rapidly reduce atmospheric concentrations from 1000 ppm back to pre-industrial levels.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by ...and Then There's Physics
angech,
You continue to confuse test tubes of CO2 with real life CO2 WHICH IS REMOVED FROM THE ATMOSPHERE EVERY YEAR IN MASSIVE AMOUNTS.
You continue to forget that – in real life – CO2 is also returned to the atmosphere in massive amounts.
CO2 is constantly turned over in large amounts and is removed from the atmosphere and sequestered in larger amounts when they occur by the biologic process you ignore.
I’m not forgetting that. As I was pointing out to Vaughan, the biosphere absorbs around 120GtC per year and then returns 120GtC per year (half via respiration and half via bacterial respiration and decompostion).
You seem to be ignoring that it’s a cycle. There is CO2 coming out of the biosphere and oceans as well as going in. In preindustrial times the system was in equilibrium with the volcanic emissions. In other words, the amount that was actually sequestered and removed from the fast cycle was the same as being emitted by volcanoes each year. Volcanoes emit around 0.1 GtC per year. It’s this slow cycle that would control how atmospheric concentrations would recover, not the fast one.
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Comment on Climate change availability cascade by russellseitz
In consequence of the assymetical correlation of scientific forces in the Climate Wars , the Availability Cascade has set off a counterpropaganda campaign instead of a debate.
For over a decade, energy PR men with no understanding of climate science, let alone climate models or the politics of science have been throwing anything and everything that comes to hand in the general direction of the media. Deploying so many factoids to so little effect has made them a scientific laughingstock , and endangered what scant reputation for intellectual seriousness Republican statesmen have retained.
These antics pale in comparison to the integrated efforts , both scientific and semiotic of their scientifically wel seconded political opponents, who can and do draw on the parallel political asymetry of the popularization of science in postmodern America.
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Comment on Week in review – science and technology edition by ristvan
PL, I am hardly a coral expert. But one who is notes that the present coral genera are in the paleontological record since 15mya, and that all current genera (I cannot speak to species, aa he did not) have thrived throughout the Peistocene. See essay Shell Games for scientific references.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Turbulent Eddie
Don, you keep quoting a “rapid” water vapor feedback. Who are you quoting? Are you sure rapid means it is happening tomorrow? The ocean takes a while to catch up to the forcing
Well, you should re-read what Lacis wrote ( and Isaac Held ).
Water vapor is (presumed) to be a rapid feedback.
Indeed, in the seasonal cycle, here’s the response:
Less than a month.
Now, it is an interesting point whether Arctic warming means less global warming, probably so. But you’d have to throw out all the GCMs and start over again, because they seem to have both Arctic Warming and a Hot Spot for 1979 through present:
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Comment on Week in review – science and technology edition by Peter Lang
Thank you. I will read that.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by AK
The numbers are hopelessly wrong, unsupported and not worth wasting time on.
Well, let’s start with the “sanity check” you demanded for pumped hydro. I used your blog post, which you’ve recommended to me several times, as a model.
I left out Access roads, Tunnels, Surge shafts, Steel tunnel lining, and Surface Pipes since I assumed they wouldn’t be needed to install at an existing dam site. Should I have included one of those? Can you explain why?
I used a number similar to yours for modifications to the power station. Is there some other number I should have used?
I used numbers similar to yours for the generators, Turbines, and Pumps. Given that the overall storage I’m estimating is 2/9 as much as yours, is that out of line? Can you explain why?
Given the smaller power rating, I used about half your number for Transformers. Is there some other number I should have used? Can you explain why?
I used half your number for “Allowance for Other”, given that the design I’m estimating includes no tunnels or surface pipes, and involves much less power. Can you explain why if you consider that innapropriate?
I used the same ratio you did for “project Management” and “Contingency”. Is there some reason I should have used a higher one?
I’ve concluded you have no idea how to do any sort of cost estimate or reality check.
You urged me to use your estimate as a model, How do you think I should have done it differently?
I’ve given you references any you haven’t studied them.
Well, I studied your estimate well enough to notice that you apparently doubled the number of pumps, yet:
The facility would generate 9GW peak power, for 3 hours per day from 6 hours of pumping at full pumping rate.
When I do the math I get 4.5GW for the max pumping power, despite the fact that you appear to have pumps associated with all the generator/motor/turbine assemblies, rather than half as in Tumut 3.
I was going to ask about that…
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