The calculation says this ” 2.15 pounds of CO2 per kWh (depending slightly on coal rank). That is ~2.15 tons of CO2 /MWh,” and that isn’t correct.
Comment on True costs of wind electricity by Keitho
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Comment on What would it take to convince you about global warming? by fernandoleanme
Cryptid, technology didn’t give us that much breathing room. The technology we use today was enabled by higher oil prices. Most of the new technology we apply to extract oil becomes uneconomic in a 1990’s price environment. Gas is in a little better condition, but not by much.
I realize there’s a lot of cornucopian wishful thinking going on, but reality is going to bite very hard within the next 20 years.
Twenty five years ago I pointed out to senior exploration managers in the company where I worked that exploration didn’t make sense if we performed at the industry average under prevailing prices. They worked hard at getting better than the average, and prices rose, so we had a slight breather. But the key was higher prices, not reorganizing or developing better seismic gadgets. At the time, I didn’t say anything about “peak oil”, because in 1990 I didn’t see it. I did realize we were going to need higher prices.
The higher prices were a natural consequence of population and GDP growth, lack of real competition by renewables and nuclear, AND the gradual depletion of the better fields. We did cherry pick and produced the easier oil first, as a general rule.
This means that, if population and GDP continue to grow, we will need higher prices to satisfy demand. But there’s a limit to what we can do even with higher prices. When higher prices are high enough, renewables or nuclear will take up the “growth wedge”. At that point, when growth is accommodated by renewables or nuclear, we will have reached peak oil. Later, we will reach peak gas and coal.
What I see tells me we have reached peak conventional crude, will reach peak crude and condensate within a 20 year window, and should reach peak gas very soon thereafter. I’m not that familiar with coal, but it seems we should peak by 2040 to 2050, driven by market forces alone. This means the high emission scenarios are using unsound and poorly supported fossil fuel resources (as far as I’m concerned).
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Comment on True costs of wind electricity by aplanningengineer
Here’s a coal plant that’s 40% efficient. http://news.thomasnet.com/imt/2014/01/14/can-ultrasupercritical-technology-save-coal-power
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Comment on True costs of wind electricity by harrywr2
Once you’ve installed windmills and made wind energy ‘must take’ you’ve reduced the utilization of ‘other generaters’ by 20%.
Since nuclear plants are almost all capital then you’ve also reduce return on investment by about 20%.
In a ‘wind heavy’ grid no sane investor would invest in a capital intensive energy generation technology….eventually the lights will go out absent subsidies/rate guarantees for other technologies.
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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by fhhaynie
That is your argument. Bart argues the other extreme; changes in temperature can account for nearly all the observed rise being natural. Your argument that the long-term changes in global average temperature (based on Henry’s law) cannot produce the rise, is not applicable because the fluxes at neither sources or sinks are controlled by thermodynamics. Partial pressure differences are the driving force and the kinetics of fluid flow is the rate controller.
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Comment on What would it take to convince you about global warming? by Stephen Segrest
If President Obama was trying to deal with ozone depletion for the first time internationally, how do you think this debate would be currently going (especially here at CE)? What if there was no Montreal Protocol, and Obama had proposed EPA regs to reduce CFCs in the U.S.? (unilateral actions)
Here is a pretty recent quote by Dr. Fred Singer on ozone depletion and CFCs:
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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by blueice2hotsea
me-
Nope. It says that trend in air-borne fraction is 90% probability not natural. See what you done?
That should have been: the trend in air-borne fraction is 90% probability not due to natural variation.
It implies that natural sinks are weakening and/or a change in natural sources are confounding the analysis.
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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by AK
But what does it mean when a prosecutor cancelled a defense witness’s plane ticket so he couldn’t show up in court?
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Comment on What would it take to convince you about global warming? by Douglas Levene
Dear Prof. Curry,
Last week the Becker Friedman Institute at University of Chicago had a two-day conference on Federal Agency Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty. I’ll send you the link when I get back to Chicago later today. One of the very controversial papers presented was from a government economist on how the social cost of carbon was calculated to be $33/ton, a number that is used in dozens of regulations. Eric Posner, who generally thinks bureaucrats should be forced to guesstimate costs and benefits, apparently thought the carbon calculation was so wildly variable as to be unusable. Others strenuously disagreed. Alas, Richard Epstein (visiting at U C this quarter ) was not in attendance.
Best,
Doug Levene Visiting Professor University of Chicago Law School
Sent from my iPhone
>
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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2
don, “Thank you, Capt.
So, it was her intention in having the post but she waited until freaking May 13, 2015 at 4:58 pm to give us a freaking hint. I would have been happy to say”
She also mentioned improper framing of the questions earlier as I mentioned. Lost in all of this was a potential interesting discussion on uncertainty and practical limits of simple accounting methods aka Mass Balance. As I pointed out one of the charts you linked showed pre-industrial land organic varying by about 40 Gt over the past thousand year prior to industrial. It even had a roughly 25 Gton drop in roughly 150 years near the end of the LIA period. Since that LIA period just missed the “pre-industrial” cut, there is about 20 to 30 ppmv that could be “Natural” prior to 1950. Remember, prior to 1950 there was no Keeling curve which is a major “known” in the mass balance and land use data doesn’t have the same easy accounting as FF. So when you see Mass balance used it is typically limited to 1970s to present which means there is an assumed “normal” baseline or account balance. You cannot reconcile your books prior to roughly 1960 with any confidence.
Without trying to beat the dead horse too much, not knowing the variability prior to the higher tech instrumental creates an initial value problem and climate models including mass balance assume a boundary value problem.
Judith could have picked a better example or more clearly stated her intent, but considering the Stadium Wave and Uncertainty Monster papers I am a bit surprised her regulars could not read between the lines.
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Comment on What would it take to convince you about global warming? by bigterguy
To be convinced of AGW I would need to see both a model that correctly recounts the past 2000 years of climate records, and verified predictions from such a model (ie 20 years forward). Further, I would require the entire process to be above-board with open peer review and substantiation of the data sets.
The proposal of a CO2 tax on CO2 producers may have gotten it wrong. There are measurable benefits from CO2 added to the atmosphere to farmers, ranchers, fishermen, boaters, and even oil companies (re-stocking the oil supplies in 20 million years). Perhaps those who benefit from the added CO2 should be paying for the free feedstock supplied by the CO2 producers! I am certain a model of wheat, corn, and soybean harvests from 1950 – 2015 would show huge increases that are at least in part attributable to higher CO2 levels, no? (this paragraph is to be taken with a crystal of sodium chloride)
Until the benefits and harms of CO2 can be unambiguously quantified, how can we determine if there is a need to hold the producers or users accountable?
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Comment on What would it take to convince you about global warming? by bobdroege
How about lowering the corporate tax to the lowest quartile of industrialized nations and replace the revenue with a carbon tax.
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Comment on Tackling human biases in science by ...and Then There's Physics
Apart from the very first sentence, I can’t see another mention of the scientific method. Certainly in the physical sciences, you overcome individual biases by requiring an element of reproducibility. You don’t trust a result because the author is regarded as trustworthy, and you don’t immediately distrust a result because the authors is not trusted. You start to trust something when it has been repeated and reproduced by many people/groups in many different countries/ institutions. As much as I agree that there are biases and that there are incentives that may exaccerbate these biases and that there are some things we could do to improve this issue, my concern with focussing on individuals is that we might start to trust individual studies more than they deserve, rather than trusting the overall method (repeatability and reproducibility).
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Comment on Tackling human biases in science by krmmtoday
repeatability and reproducibility: that’s what makes climate science different.
You can’t run controlled experiments. It’s more like forecasting history.
It’s impossible to falsify any forecast unless it’s extremely precise (and you are only making approximately one) (as far as I can see).(Which won’t be available for the foreseeable future.)
So how can anyone who favors this or that not be regarded as biased in this case?
To question some result or idea would be unbiased. Pure method. But there must be something to question in the first place. So no science without bias first.
So someone calling someone who questions some proposition biased would run counter to scientific method (as long as he uses proper arguments (where the devil may enter the game again)). But bias is needed for science to start.
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Comment on Tackling human biases in science by beththeserf
Say, how fortunate am I that Judith allows open society
imput at her e-salon, even serfs. So herewith. Humans
are a subjective lot, let’s face it. Why someone happens
ter ask a particular question of nay-chur in the first place
prob’ly comes down ter their own socio-economic-religious
-political-cultural-bi-asses in the first place.
But if the guess/ hypothesis they ask of nay-chur is
framedsuch that it is possible ter refute it, Einstein’s red
shift ‘n such, :) then it can be real-world tested.
The individual ain’t objective but the methodology that humans
developed is objective, so long as we don’t allow utopianist
control freaks to take over the management of what’s allowed
in and what’s allowed out.
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Comment on Tackling human biases in science by freeHat
Prolly a correlation between computing power and bias in papers.
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Comment on Tackling human biases in science by dikranmarsupial
“As scientists, it is our job to fight against biases (and its not easy). One of the ways that I fight against bias is to question basic assumptions, and see if challenges to these assumptions are legitimate. ”
another way is to take it seriously when somebody points out we have misunderstood something.
curryja | May 13, 2015 at 3:45 pm |
No it doesn’t, read it again.
We are *all* subject to these biases, without exception.
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Comment on Tackling human biases in science by Peter Davies
While we may interpret things somewhat differently as far AGW is concerned I agree with your above comment. Objectivity in science precludes individual biases. +10
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Comment on Tackling human biases in science by Peter Davies
@marsupial “We are *all* subject to these biases, without exception.”
Indeed. +10
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Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by verytallguy
Dominant does not mean all or 100%. Seems like 70-80 anthro is perfectly consistent with ‘dominant’. Fred’s 50% would be outside this range, but not by a huge amount.
Oh, my.
We’re now reduced to scouring reports to try and find a word which gives sufficient ambiguity to allow wiggle room. Whilst ignoring the content of the document.
Judith, in this thread we’ve seen you:
– propose that 50% natural causes is “not unreasonable”
– egregiously misinterpreting a Corrine le Quere article which actually contradicted the claim you made of it
– claim historic ice core measurements rely on a “single analysis at a single site in Antarctica” (note that the Law dome alone yielded three separate cores, separately analysed)
– attempt to quote mine the IPCC to pretend a conclusion clearly not intended
And all this in the face of the multiple lines of evidence (I won’t repeat Ferdinand’s excellent analysis yet again) which provide overwhelming evidence of the anthropogenic nature of the rise. Which is not contradicted or even challenged in any way by a single piece of reputable literature.
Your pronouncements appear completely devoid of any rational thought or scientific process, but rather to support anything, however implausible, which provides any room to criticise the IPPC.
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