Ianl8888, everything I write strives for accuracy. Always. May not always acheive–the world is complicated and subtle. No one can check everything.
But am disappointed that you would be surprised a lukewarmer skeptic would not strive for scientific accuracy. In my three books over last 6 years of writing, always have. At great effort and cost.
Comment on Week in review – science and technology edition by ristvan
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by Peter Lang
AK,
It’s hopeless. You don’t have sufficnet understanding of the subject, you don’t know how to do the most basic of reality checks, you avoid what’s relevant and argue about trivial details. Most importantly, you are not willing to objectively analyse and compare the alternative – i.e. nuclear. That’s how zealots behave. Why do you think you refuse to consider the alternative?
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Comment on Climate change availability cascade by Eli Rabett
Walks like a duck
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Comment on Climate change availability cascade by justinwonder
Pat,
Thanks for the links. From the first one:
“Drought is a reoccurring phenomenon in California that invariably leads to bark beetle outbreaks and tree mortality. There are both long-term and short-term actions that can be taken to protect your trees. These actions are not aimed specifically at Ips, but rather at any of the bark beetles that might attack and kill pine trees. Maintaining tree health is a basic objective and maintaining adequate spacing between trees is one of the most important means of achieving this. Many California forests are overstocked with trees – more trees are present than can be sustained through repeated episodes of drought. When bark beetles kill trees during drought, they help reduce tree density to a more sustainable level. This “natural thinning” by bark beetles, however, can be quite variable and unpredictable.”
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Eli Rabett
So, it’s still a variation of about 10 K.
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Comment on Climate change availability cascade by Ed Barbar
What’s the purpose of this paper and the audience? If it is inform another angle to those who already agree, it’s great. But I don’t see it changing any minds.
“Is climate change making us stupid? I fear that the answer is ‘yes.’”
Here are two different interpretations I could make from this:
“The idiots are doing really stupid things.” You get that from the “I fear” sentence, since your essay makes it pretty clear what you actually think. You don’t fear it, you know it, and you have good reason to know it, and you can see the negative consequences of it. I think this is the interpretation many will have, and some will be put off by the weaselly way you say it. Others will think it’s really fun the way you put it, but I don’t see how you change any minds, but merely help divide further.
“I’m worried we are making stupid decisions, but I’m not quite sure.” This interpretation weakens your overall essay.
The third interpretation is that you wrote stupid, didn’t feel comfortable writing it, and so tried to ameliorate your statement with the “I fear” sentence. In this interpretation, you should simply get rid of the approach as it is unworthy of you and gratuitous, the way some movies throw in sex scenes an cheapen an otherwise great movie.
Why not say what you mean. “The obsessive attribution of unrelated maladies to Climate change, is having blah blah effects.” It doesn’t connote a personal judgement, strengthens your position to those you might be convincing, and leaves you without feeling guilty if the third interpretation is correct.
And, by the way, if “Stupid” is meant to mean those politicians using Global Warming as a tool to gain greater control over people, well, I’m not so sure it’s stupid from their position at all. It’s rather smart, in fact, and quite evil.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Jim D
TE, the Held article also shows a range of GCM responses with different water vapor feedbacks. Some are better than others. The GCMs have generally missed the decline rate of Arctic sea-ice as much as they have missed the hot spot, which supports the idea that the warming distribution is not what was predicted, but no better in consequence.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by aplanningengineer
Peter Lang – I think your third paragraph (like most everything you write) is on target, I will think some more on your second paragraph on the incompatibility of solar and pumping. I think it hypothetically could work well if you can clear the other hurdles (which are huge at this time and I include yours on cost an my previous on accommodating incorruptible generation). Imagine a 50 MW solar with a 100 MW pumped storage dam. My memory may be playing tricks but I think it would be common that a 100 MW would pump at a rate of 50 MW. Where water is not abundant the hydro is usually only used for around the 4 peak hours. (So not in the Pacific North West US for example, but many other places in the US) For this hypothetical system lets say that’s 3 to 7 PM.
Starting in the morning the solar would start up and could be pumping until maybe 2. On non-sunny days if there was not storage the system could pump with purchased power. The solar is going to maximize at 50 MW around noon and start to decline as the afternoon goes on. During the transition you could fed the solar to the grid and until the sun goes down, the diminishing solar contribution would help with the peak. At night if the system economics were good you could pump with off-peak energy. Again, I’m with you on a host of other problems, but except for the time near but before peak where you switch from pumping to generation, I don’t see a problem. I will think more on how big a problem that might me. But thinking of some typical load/generation curves I like the behavior where the storage is consuming solar early, then the pumping stops before the generation starts (there should be a lot of CTs then to take the swing) and then the hydro starts generating with a little solar help to it peters out (again a lot of CTs in this period). It seems this would fight rather than contribute to the duck curve problem. At this time though I am with you that the costs are prohibitive and other answers likely superior.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by aplanningengineer
spellchecker – incorruptible generation. Ha Ha, I’m afraid sometimes it”s anything but.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Jim D
TE, also obviously the precipitable water is not delayed relative to the surface ocean temperature, because convection is a fast response, but the surface temperature is delayed relative to the forcing. The oceans are lagging the land in their warming rate, especially since 1980 as is consistent with a sharp rise in external forcing. As a result, the global relative humidity, especially over land, should be decreasing in this transient phase. Not necessarily a good thing.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2
JimD, “The GCMs have generally missed the decline rate of Arctic sea-ice as much as they have missed the hot spot, which supports the idea that the warming distribution is not what was predicted, but no better in consequence.”
but no better? So if you don’t know it has to be as bad or worse? funny how the people that have been pointing out where the models miss and how badly have been looking at what the implications are, “sensitive” in the lower half of the initial estimated range and potentially below the lower estimated limit, more natural variability impact etc. have been catching grief from the minions but now that the reality is unavoidable y’all cling to your talking points and step up the “deniers should be jailed” rhetoric.
. The reader’s digest version of Helds post is that “global” mean temperature sucks as an energy proxy. That is a zeroth law issue. Has been always will be. Pretty much all of the high end extreme cases are based on a sucky metric aka the worst possible thermodynamic frame of reference one could possibly pick. That is one of those “skeptical” talking points that gets people banned from “scientific” blogs.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Jim D
captd, certainly there are issues with global mean sensitivities. The land is currently warming at nearly 4 C per doubling, and the Arctic even faster. It is very misleading to talk about the 2 C per doubling effective global value without this extra information to supplement it, isn’t it. More skeptics need to pay attention to this variability. It is not a flat warming at all.
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Comment on Climate change availability cascade by Santoron
“Do something to reduce that?” The past 20 years have witnessed less warming than the theoretical zero emission course then considered possible, and as our understanding of the climate system increases, we find it less and less likely we need any onerous goverment intervention at all to meet the goals the IPCC set forth. All this while emissions have grown faster than their worst case scenario!
Indeed, the rearguard analogy fits best with the hardline Warmists still clinging to falsified models and their projections that bear no resemblance to the 20 years of data we’ve since acquired. Still using them to advocate liberal wish list policies that weren’t invented to address GW in the first place, and don’t fit the issue now. The “consensus” has been forced into retreat for years now. Time for the politicians and the few remaining true believers to pay attention and catch up.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2
JimD, “captd, certainly there are issues with global mean sensitivities. The land is currently warming at nearly 4 C per doubling, and the Arctic even faster”
Zeroth Law, write that down. The “land” from 30 north to 60 north is warming at a higher rate than modeled and can cool at a faster rate than expected. Lower thermal mass and knock on effects related to land abuse. Region where trees were planted, wet lands restored an even water permeable paving install have temperature reductions. The CO2 cause all harm mentality tends to miss those subtle things.
In the Arctic, most of the warming is in early winter. That would be due to increased wall energy transport aka pole ward advection. Since we don’t have satellites to krige the pre-1950 period we have a false “normal” of no change due to no data. Dr. Curry mentions that the 1930s could have been as warm as today in the Arctic and the minions crawl out of the dark recesses of the internet.
Dr. Curry mentioned from the get go that better ocean models would be needed and that just so happens to have been dead nuts on. You really need to brush up your basic thermo so you can stop having the tail wag the dog.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Don Monfort
So, according to little jimmy all the dangerous AGW that alarmists of his ilk have been hollering about for decades, ain’t causing increasing evaporation. The RAPID and STRONG positive water vapor feedback ain’t so RAPID and STRONG, after all. But it’s coming. Maybe another 30-60 years. We can wait.
As soon as the ever increasing (since about 1950) forcing from the well-mixed CO2 get’s done heating up the 30% of earth’s surface that is land, it will get started on heating up the top layer of molecules on the water. Then we will be sorry.
In the meantime, the hysterical alarmist ilk will have to pretend they haven’t been hollering about the oceans gaining gazillions of Hiroshima bombs worth of heat that has apparently not affected at all the layer of molecules on the surface. There is something Biblical about all this, rev. jimmy. Old Testament stuff. Miraculous. Do you hear a very deep authoritative voice revealing these fantastic rationalizations to, jimmy?
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Jim D
captd, do you notice that the skeptics usually have to point to periods of no data to back up their various hypotheses? Unfortunately what data there is does support the AGW hypothesis. Certainly transport from a warmed up Atlantic is helping to speed up the loss of sea ice. If you want to separate a warmed up Atlantic from a warmed up rest of the world, go for it. The northern continents around the Arctic have warmed up especially fast, as evidenced by the (not-so-)perma-frost.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Jim D
Don M, read about transient versus equilibrium responses. Perhaps captd can explain it to you if you ask him. The ocean has a large thermal inertia. It warms up slower. The water vapor depends on how quickly the ocean warms. Here are the warming rates of the land and ocean.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/mean:240/mean:120/plot/hadsst3gl/mean:240/mean:120
Notice that the land has been warming twice as fast since about 1980. This fact must be very mysterious to you.
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Comment on Week in review: policy and politics edition by Peter Lang
Planning Engineer,
Thank you for your comment. I greatly appreciate your contributions here – I think they are invaluable for informing CE readers about important issues that are highly relevant to climate and energy policy analysis.
I will think some more on your second paragraph on the incompatibility of solar and pumping. I think it hypothetically could work well if you can clear the other hurdles (which are huge at this time …
Starting in the morning the solar would start up and could be pumping until maybe 2. On non-sunny days if there was not storage the system could pump with purchased power.
I really don’t think it is anywhere near viable. It is cheaper to sell directly to the grid rather than to store in pumped hydro until the installed capacity of solar is sufficient to generate nearly all the electricity. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I am trying to make the major points. The link in last paragraph of this comment throws some light on this.
Regarding the part of your comment I’ve quoted, any solar power generated can be sold to the grid at the available price or sold to the pumped hydro plant for the same price. The cycle efficiency of pumping and generation is commonly about 75% to 80%, so about 25% to 33% of the power is lost. That alone raises the breakeven sell price for the power by 25% to 33%. On top of that you have to pay for the plant (capital, financing and operating costs). A rough rule of thumb is that the sell price needs to be about 4 times the buy price for a proposed pumped hydro project to be viable.
Pumped hydro can buy power at off peak rates at say midnight to 6 am and sell at peak times for much higher price. This can be viable if suitable pumped hydro sites are available. The fact not many are being built shows that few are viable even at off peak prices. PV price is around 10 times higher than the off peak prices. There’s no way it can be viable when it has to buy power at shoulder price (day time) instead of off peak price (early hours of the morning).
On top of this you have only a few hours where the PV is providing sufficient power for pumping. That means the capacity factor of the plant will be even lower than is normal for pumped hydro plants (e.g. 10% to 15%). This makes it even less viable.
Could I urge you, AK and other readers to consider this simple analysis I did a few years ago: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/16/solar-power-realities-supply-demand-storage-and-costs/ . The intended purpose was to explain the important, relevant issues and concepts to people who have limited understanding of them. Point to note: I am not arguing it is a realistic scenario – for example, it is a ‘limit analysis’: i.e. all the electricity to meet the 2010 demand of the Australian National Electricity Market is generated by fixed array PV at a single location and the power is stored in pumped hydro reservoirs. The reason for this approach was to keep the analysis and the explanation simple and because I had access to 2 years of power output data at ½ hourly intervals from a utility owned and commercially managed PV array.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Don Monfort
OMG! Has the Atlantic warmed up? Well, certainly not the top layer of molecules. That would cause increased evaporation. And we ain’t having none of that.
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Comment on Are human influences on the climate really small? by Danny Thomas
Can’t have anything to do with UHI or land use as that’s historically what’s been the leading cause of change but it’s not a fossil fuel.
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