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Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by David Wojick

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Regarding the goofy NAP quote, “may” should read “may of may not” as this is pure speculation pretending to be science.


Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by David Wojick

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Sorry but of should be or in the proposed NAP quote. I was brushing a cat while typing.

Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by Grey Tash (@GreyTash)

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In some places back-to-back housing has made a return, courtesy of Barrats, I think it meets the needs of single divorcees, 1 bedroom.

Comment on Did human-caused climate change lead to war in Syria? by JCH

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What hogwash.

The cool phase of the PDO lasted for at most 10 years during the 1st quarter of the 20th century, and the GMST went up. During the warm phase that followed, the PDO index ascended. During the warm phase in the last quarter of the 20th century the PDO index descended, and the GMST went up. It’s never stopped going up, and is now poised to make a major leap.

December 2014:

March 2015

Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by Steven Mosher

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Brushing a cat?.
Is that a new euphemism for…..?
In any case one handed typing is the first sign of Internet addiction.

Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by kakatoa

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Judith,
Just across the NV border SMUD has been addressing system wide costs associated with Net Metering by allocating PV Net meter customers:
1) System Infrastructure Fixed Charge- $16/m
2) Solar surcharge- $.0015 per kWh
3) State Surcharge- $.17
https://www.smud.org/en/residential/customer-service/documents/PV-bill-sample.pdf

I am required to maintain the ground around our PG&E power pole. The pole has an inspection tag nailed to it dated “1965”. The transformer at the top of our pole was replaced in 2009 after a Tahoe like snow storm hit our foothill location and dumped 28” of very wet snow, after a bit of ice, overnight in early December. The next morning when dealing with tree damage, and various water line issues, I failed to notice that the transformer was hanging by only one bolt sidewise on the pole. Luckily the cross member on the pole, that supports the incoming 200 amp service to our house, was held in place by a rather stout metal wire as the cross member holding the wire onto the power pole had been damaged as well.

It wasn’t until 2 days after the storm that I finally cleared one string of our PV panels so that they could generate power that I noticed the rather hazardous condition of our incoming electrical service. A repair crew from PG&E made it to our place within 4 hours. The cross member was reattached to the utility pole and a new transformer was installed as well. It’s a good thing PG&E’s bucket truck had four wheel drive as I had only partially cleared out our parking area. Our PV system, installed nine years ago, sends the over generation of our PV system out to the grid via the transformer.

I wasn’t changed anything by PG&E to have the new hardware installed nor for the emergency service call to have the hardware R&R’d. Our E-7 net meter was not damaged so it didn’t need to be replaced- which is a good thing as we had to pay for the thing back in 2006. So after this long story I am OK if PG&E changes their cost allocations and follows SMUD’s approach and charges me a fixed fee on our utility bill. How much it should be is open for discussion.

Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by David L. Hagen

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David Wojick. Then Oklahoma can continue to ignore (nullify) the EPA’s assertions because this law is non-constitutional, based on the 10th Amendment. Nothing in the Constitution gives the Federal government power to completely transform intrastate commerce or energy generation based on very weak scientific evidence. (It originally had only very weak control over interstate commerce.) See: Scalia

“Reading cost-benefit analysis into section 110 was akin to “‘alter[ing] the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme,’” which Congress does not do “in vague terms or ancillary provisions—it does not … hide elephants in mouseholes.’”43″ http://bit.ly/1dsV0PV

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by dikranmarsupial

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Yes, and on this issue, FAR was even more forthright than AR5. So the question is, what has changed in the scientific literature to imply that “dominant” means something substantially different to what was stated in the FAR? I suspect the answer is “nothing” and that the equivocation is there as a result of the difficulties in getting a bunch of scientists to fully agree about anything.


Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by David Wojick

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Her name is Annie Oakley. As for addiction the first thing I do when I wake up is start the iPad, while still lying prone, so yes.

Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by harrywr2

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Peter,

In the US the industry is spending very tiny amounts onPR. The market for large amounts of new base-load is pretty much non-existent unless the EPA manages to make it latest coal regulations stick and natural gas prices begin to firm.

The exception to that rule was going to be the US Southeast…but with the real estate crash the practice of retiree’s selling their ‘expensive homes’ in cold winter climates and moving south has ground to a halt. So even in the US Southeast the need for new base-load is questionable.

I expect the nuclear industry to start ramping up PR in the US somewhere around 2018 unless the EPA’s ‘kill coal now’ plan manages to hold up in court.(It’s probably be 2018 before the cases are eve heard).

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by Ferdinand Engelbeen

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Mike,

From ice cores we know that ocean temperatures and CO2 levels in the atmosphere are tightly coupled: CO2 levels follow temperature with some lag at about 8 ppmv/°C in the Vostok ice core, recently confirmed by the 800,000 years Dome C ice record:

The control mechanisms for temperature also controls the CO2 levels over the past several million years and we have had no CO2 levels below 180 ppmv, which is the critical level for C3 plants, that are all types of trees and a lot of other plants.

As I don’t think that CO2 is THE control knob for temperature, there is little we can do if the temperature drops again towards a new glacial period. In the best case, our emissions may prevent the trigger which leads to an ice age, but that is just speculation…

Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by RiHo08

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It seems I didn’t provide the post that I was commenting upon:

“A look at past UN climate negotiations offers valuable context for forthcoming Paris talks [link]”

Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by curryja

Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by jim2

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You are doing as the “greens” wish. So, shut up and carry on.

Comment on Did human-caused climate change lead to war in Syria? by curryja

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Chief, thx for spotting this paper


Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by jim2

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kakatoa – the maintenance fee should be calculated, not negotiated, IMO.

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by AK

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<blockquote>His theoretical calculations start a few minutes before the above where he shows that the lower the frequency, the more the signal is attenuated (!). That is where my internal alarms started to ring…</blockquote>OK, having carefully studied the presentation, I realize where a possible mis-understanding arose. You're mixing apples and oranges here. Take the chart showing at 26:23 (where I happened to pause this time through). This shows that for <strike>frequencies </strike>wavelengths of 10,000-20,000 years, the damping is close to 1 (1-1.3). For <strike>frequencies </strike>wavelengths of 50,000 years, the damping is up around 10. However, the record of the Pleistocene doesn't really show any changes on that (latter) time-scale. So there are no multiplications to make. The signals of the inter-glacials/glacials are all on the order of 10,000 years <b>and under.</b> Now, go forward to 26:57, you'll see the cross covariance crosses zero at a wavelength of around 18,000 years. This means that the <b>long-scale average of glacials and inter-glacials is roughly flat.</b> Which it is. <strike>I admit, his mention (27:21-27:31) of “<i>A change of proxy CO2 on a time-scale of 100,000 years then underestimates the atmospheric change by a factor of 15,</i>” is a bit confusing to me, since AFAIK no such changes exist. The following (27:33-27:44) “<i>swings of proxy CO2 of 100ppmv during the glaciation cycle then derive from changes in the atmosphere of over 1000ppmv,</i>” seems to be true, but totally irrelevant. AFAIK no such swings <b>on that time-scale</b> exist, although there may be more to his theory than I got. Or he may have mis-read his notes, and actually meant to say "swings of 10ppmv derive from changes of 100ppmv". There might be such changes <b>to the average</b> on that time-scale.</strike> After a few more times through, I managed to recover (I think) what I originally got out of this section. The key is that he's talking about the <b>signal</b> he's concerned with: temperature-driven CO2 entry into the atmosphere. The "damping" <b>isn't from diffusion</b>; he doesn't even mention that till later. Rather, it's from longer-scale absorption. Here, if I'm right, his “<i>proxy CO2</i>” actually refers to something that, after damping, will become the derivative with respect to time of pCO2. I admit it's confusing, and I'm actually highly skeptical of this part, for the same reason I'm skeptical of your mass-balance argument. The part that matters for the 19th-21st century starts at about 27:25, which is where he <b>starts</b> to talk about the effect of diffusion. <i>E.g.</i> 28:22: “<i>Short scales, with steep gradient, are diffused faster than long scales, with flat gradient.</i>” The equation is on the screen at 28:52. 29:54-30:02 “<i>The effective damping <b>now</b> includes a contribution that increases quadratically with wavenumber.</i>” 30:11-30:20 “<i>High frequencies; short time-scales are damped more than low frequencies long time-scales.</i>” 30:40-30:54 “<i>Changes of atmospheric CO2 are <b>again</b> underestimated in the proxy record. But now, their underestimation increases with frequency.</i>” Here at 30:54 is a damping chart that should be the one appropriate to 19th-21st century CO2 issues. This may be the one you intended to reference, and it clearly (to me) has an incorrect label on the bottom scale. This is why I'm highly skeptical of his presentation, and want to see the whole thing laid out on paper, where he's had a chance to check for errors. But what I'm pretty sure happened is that when he transferred the curve from its original software to PPT (or whatever), he forgot to transfer update the scale at the bottom, which is clearly the same one from his previous chart (at 26:23). You say he didn't repeat this part in his 2015 presentation, so I suspect that there was an error in presentation here. My understanding from his words was (and is) that variation on a time-scale (wavelength) of 10-200 years is highly damped, while those on a scale of 1000 years is much less so. But I'll admit every time I see this presentation I simply assume that the scale at the bottom of his chart is incorrect. The problem is what scale he <b>intended</b> to have at the bottom, and what, besides speculation, he has to justify it. This, AFAIK, is where the theft of his research materials is critical. (Although for him the proofs of the earlier part may be more important.) Anyway, I have issues here with his assumptions about diffusion, because I suspect there's quite a bit more of it during the first few centuries after the ice closes. But in general, the part of his presentation concerned with diffusion seems to me to make sense, if you allow for a few errors. Primarily the scale at the bottom of the chart at 30:54. Now, I'm not saying that I think for sure that he's right. But I do think that he's on to something that needs to be looked at much more closely before any major societal investments are made on the basis of an asssumed CO2 "hockey stick". I will admit I needed a good deal of "charity" to untangle his rather confusing presentation.

Comment on Quantifying the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 by AK

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<blockquote>Even if all C3 plants were replaced by C4 plants, more uptake of CO2 than release by decay/feed/food still would increase the δ13C level of the atmosphere and ocean surface. What is observed is a firm decline in both, thus not caused by the biosphere…</blockquote>You're still managing to evade the point. It's <b>not uptake that matters</b>, it's <b>sequestration</b>. Uptake is more or less balanced by release through respiration (by consumers of uptaken carbon), <b>except</b> for the part that manages to find its way out the bottom of the mixing layer. A substantial switch from C3 to C4 <b>algae</b> in plankton as the <b>source of carbon being sequestered</b> could reduce the δ13C level, assuming no change in whatever source balances it. Similar could be said for a substantial increase in calcium carbonate with its high δ13C levels (relative to organic detritus). I'm not saying this happened, just that all these factors are in a sort of dynamic balance, and substantial changes to ocean ecology could well have driven such changes, which would then have an effect together with fossil emissions. If we assume, <b>hypothetically</b>, that there's a standard "equilibrium" pCO2 (absent fossil emissions) driven by some integral of the temperature field, along with certain (unspecified at this point) ecological factors, then we might propose that the fossil emissions have driven the system to a higher pCO2 than the otherwise determined "equilibrium". The key question in that case would be: how much of the observed rise in pCO2 is due to departure from the "equilibrium", and how much is due to upwards movement of the "equilibrium" itself?

Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by jungletrunks (@jungletrunks)

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There’s too much disinformation in the media that perpetuates notions that humanity is depleting natural resources, most of it is nonsense that continues to play into today’s culture of alarmism. We have reached peak use of many commodities, as early as the 1940s in some instances, the pressure continues to decline on many commodities. I described how developed nations have seen a net increase of forests since mid 20th century in another thread.

Everyone needs to read this link that JC provided. It astonishes me that even among those that are informed that the power of media perpetuates a dumbing down process where facts about natural resources are simply not distributed. I blame much of this to media bias that is not unaffected by politics.

http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/issue-5/the-return-of-nature

This is an interesting set of statistics:

“But even Californians economizing on water in the midst of a drought may be surprised at what has happened to water withdrawals in America since 1970. Expert projections made in the 1970s showed rising water use to the year 2000, but what actually happened was a leveling off. While America added 80 million people –– the population of Turkey –– American water use stayed flat. In fact, US Geological Survey data through 2010 shows that water use has now declined below the level of 1970, while production of corn, for example, has tripled (Figure 11). More efficient water use in farming and power generation contribute the most to the reduction.”

CAs water problems today are more aligned to poor planning and infrastructure buildout to protect against recurring drought, this over a period when population doubled.

As I said before, where global problems “may” exist including AGW, these are imminently solvable with the advancement of technology. People seem to forget that most of the sum of human knowledge has come in the last 100 years. Simply look with a 2x power lens, maybe 50 years ahead, things aren’t dire. About the only thing bad is politics.

Comment on Week in review – policy and politics edition by Wagathon

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As Schopenhauer might say, the motivation and unlikely efficacy of persuasion would challenge the art of Plato engage in effective discourse given the calcification of the audience’s institutional assets.

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