Satellite temps have diverged from near-sfc increasingly since 2000. Many arguments as to who is more correct. Both have weaknesses. Both have adjustments. This is why I prefer to use WTI. You can’t just chuck out the one you don’t like.
NCAP CFS/ver2 model initializations since 2000 track closer to satellites. Doesn’t mean they are right… but CFS is initialized every hour with best available data of all types.
They always are. I am still looking for a new version of GISS or Hadcrut that had a lower overall warming trend than the previous version. Any help? I’ve been told such a thing does not exist.
“the earth is better at mitigating than Hansen assumed”
Hansen didn’t assume. That’s why he analysed three scenarios, not one. He has a program which calculates the response of the atmosphere to forcing. He doesn’t predict forcing – that depends on what people decide to do, and he doesn’t claim to know that. A specific GHG trajectory was the definition of each scenario (not words like “business as usual”), and what happened was between B and C.
Peter: I think there are number of safety factors that are responsible for increasing the cost of nuclear power:
1) As time goes by and the world-wide list of major and minor accidents grows, investors are becoming more worried that an accident anywhere in the world could cause their investment to be shut down – either permanently, temporarily, or prematurely. Or never licensed. Germany began eliminating all their nukes after Fukushima. Older plants in many other countries are likely to be closed early or not re-approved. Others were forced to invest in additional safety.
2) After Fukushima and Three-Mile Island, it appears likely than any extended loss-of-coolant accident will result in high reactor temperature, partial meltdown, and water reacting with zirconium cladding to produce hydrogen. That results in explosions, the release of at least some radiation, and weeks of publicity.
3) With questionable standards in China (and possibly India) and aging plants elsewhere, the chances of an accident could be rising. Have we learned enough that the world-wide major accident rate is one every century or one every decade?
Unfortunately, none of these factors explain a rise in cost beginning around 1980. These factors may drive today’s already high costs even higher.
If you want to argue about words, here is what he said in his 1988 paper, p 9345:
[…] German Energiewende – Modern Miracle or Major Misstep […]
Nic Lewis, I like what you have been doing with regards to constraining climate model results with observed data. I judge our degree of confidence in climate model results and the uncertainty we might place on those results will be the major factor in any non-political approach to a reasonable policy on AGW and the only science related approach we have in determining the limits of future climate. I have not studied your post here sufficiently to comment at this point. Obviously the major points of contention and discussion with your approach would be the uncertainty of the observed data used.
We should not sit back and look at the array of climate models and the outputs and be satisfied that somewhere in that range is a correct answer. The only method of validating models is with observed data. I have been analyzing the CMIP5 historical mean global climate model temperature series (1880-2005) in comparison with observed series using 5 categories which are: (1) temperature trend , (2) variance of the trend residuals (white and red noise), (3) variance of ARMA model (of the trend residuals) residuals or white noise, (4) ar1 coefficients of the ARMA models and (5) the ratio of S and N hemisphere temperature trends. What I have found is that attempts at putting statistical tests and significance on these comparisons of models versus observed is that none of the models is that no single model passed all the 5 category tests. Obvious also in such an analysis is the differences between models.
Lots of good information in these exchanges that far outweighs the flotsam and jettisons that might sometimes appear to get in the way.
Nick Stokes here does a good job of pointing to another uncertainty in predicting the future climate and that is the scenario uncertainty. I think that uncertainty gets lost in the discussions of other uncertainties like model output that should at some point have some physical basis and predictability within limits. Scenario uncertainty not so much.
I think reducing CO2 usage is positive primarily because we will eventually run out of hydro-carbons. There are more constructive uses for this resource than burning it to generate electricity.
Regarding the pollution comment I did not mean CO2 was pollution – but burning coal and even natural gas always produces some particulate matter pollution – mercury, arsenic and sulphur dioxide being examples – that was what the MACT was all about in the U.S. So pollution is a side effect of generating electricity by burning coal or natural gas.
There are a number of economic factors at work. Older nucs can incur very significant maintenance and repair costs due to things like neutron embrittlement and corrosion. They are strictly inflexible baseload. Thanks to the failure to build Yucca Mountain as promised, many are also reaching spent fuel storage capacity constraints thatnwoild necessitate additional reinvestment. New CCGT flexes very nicely between 40% load at 58% thermal efficiency to 100%load at 61% efficiency. That flexibility much reduces the need for spinning reserves and gas peakers. So depending on overall grid architecture, new CCGT investment is simply more economic than reinvestment in old nuclear. Especially with the abundance of US shale gas that will extend for several decades.
Davis –
==> “German Energiewende – Modern Miracle or Major Misstep”
Why present such a question (which implies a false binary), particularly since you seem to conclude that neither is the case?
Beyond that:
1) Do you suppose that your perspective might have been different had the implementation of Energiewende not been largely concurrent with the rollback of nuclear after Fukushima?
2) I often hear criticisms of Energiewende framed around the high electricity price in Germany…but I think that price is not the only relevant metric: Cost is also an important consideration. Do you have a resource for evaluating how Germans’ per capita expenditure on electricity relative to other countries to view against the relative price?
That Hansen article has some terrifying quotes:
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/011006/pdf
‘We suggest that the surge of fossil fuel use, mainly coal, since 2000 is a basic cause of the large increase of carbon uptake by the combined terrestrial and ocean carbon sinks. One mechanism by which fossil fuel emissions increase carbon uptake is by fertilizing the biosphere via provision of nutrients essential for tissue building, especially nitrogen, which plays a critical role in controlling net primary productivity and is limited in many ecosystems (Gruber and Galloway 2008). Modeling (e.g., Thornton et al 2009) and field studies (Magnani et al 2007). confirm a major role of nitrogen deposition, working in concert with CO2 fertilization, in causing a large increase in net primary productivity of temperate and boreal forests’
So more CO2 –> more plants –> more CO2 uptake. Pretty much the same story seen recently with the phytoplankton.
As I understand it, Germany exempted its industrial customers from the electric price increases that its renewable energy policy requires — they understood that industry would move away if it had to shoulder its share of the costs. Second, Germany failed to initially require smart inverters to be installed with the solar panels. They are now embarking on a retrofit effort that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars but that is necessary in order to “smooth” the electrical quality (voltage, frequency) of solar output to keep the grid stable. California is now requiring inverters on new solar panels, but it’s not clear yet who will operate them and what will be done for older solar installations. The West is squandering money with “feel good” power, while many of the world’s citizens don’t have access to electricity at all.
niclewis
Thank you for the professionalism you have displayed in all your comments. It was a very informative post.
Holman Jenkins reports in Wall Street Journal that 1,000 times exaggerated dangers of nuclear radiation may be corrected:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-nuclear-paradigm-shift-1449014295
Galen Winsor had long referred to this as “The Nuclear Scare Scam”
This is Galen Winsor’s video on “The Nuclear Scare Scam”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ejCQrOTE-XA&feature=player_embedded
The lack of a source attribution is entirely my fault. I have corrected this on my blog site and have asked Judith to correct on this site. My apologies.
