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Comment on Open thread weekend by Steven Mosher

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You will never see Springer at Lucia’s discussing his looney ideas.
write that down


Comment on IEA Facts and Fictions by Brandon Shollenberger

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jim2, but we do know. Or at least, we have estimates. The WEO reports cited in this post already deal with oil shales. And as you can see, oil shales won’t provide more than a couple percent of all oil we need. Your source doesn’t contradict this.

If your source provided actual estimates or reasons to question the WEOs’, that’d be a different story.

Comment on IEA Facts and Fictions by Stephen Rasey

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RE: The End of Cheap Oil (Campbell and Leherra) Sci. Am, Mar 1998
http://dieoff.org/page140.htm

I bring to your attention the Hubbert curves in the the third chart (Global Production of Oil). http://dieoff.org/page143.jpg
Please compare the Hubbert curve for (USA and Canada) against the (Former Soviet Union).

That USA-Canada curve is very broad compared to the others. Why should this be? USA is milking every last drop out of some of its fields. I’ve seen ultimate recovery factors above 90% (of oil in place) for Kern River (1900 discovery, steam flood started 1965, in earnest 1980s, still producing today at a 90% water cut). There is a company looking to drill for pockets of untapped oil at Spindletop (discovered 1900) in the Yegua.

The issue is, why should the Former USSR have an ultimate decline curve shape different than the USA-Canada?

Then, compare the USA-Canada curve with this projection of USA (plus unconventional). EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2013 Tight Oil (unconventional) is forecast to be 1/3 of total production and responsible for a 2 mmbo per day increase.

Comment on IEA Facts and Fictions by GaryM

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OK, forget shorting oil stocks, just go buy up the next Solyndra-style IPO.

“Conventional oil is, by far, the largest component in oil production.”

“Is?” When predicting the future, the issue is…well..not the present.

And as for my predicting what the expected production rates will rates will be for the Green River shale deposits, that is too typical of alarmists. No one knows what the market will do, what extraction technologies will be developed, what other recoverable sources will be found. So why would I guess?

What I do know is that alarmists who want to tell us the sky is falling always seem to ignore a lot of contradictory evidence.

I predict that no matter what happens, in the coming years there will be folks predicting one catastrophe after another. If CAGW falls, it will be something else. As oil continues to frustratingly refuse to stop flowing, the date will just be moved back. As the world fails to implode due to population growth (if it continues), ditto – just move the date.

Ehrlichs, Hansens and Shollengbergers, like the poor, will always be with us.

Comment on IEA Facts and Fictions by GaryM

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This was supposed to be in reply to Brandon Shollenberger above.

Comment on Open thread weekend by Doug Cotton

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Who are you saying claimed that? Certainly not me. That was predictable even back in the 1950′s, because the 59.6 year natural cycle declined for 29.8 years from 1939 and rose for 29.8 years from around 1969.. Now we can predict slight cooling until 2028.

Comment on Condensation-driven winds: An update by Jim D

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Vaughan Pratt, yes condensation drives motion, but the main reason is that latent heating generates buoyancy allowing for conditional instability of certain atmospheric profiles (CAPE) to be converted into kinetic energy in updrafts. This part works even without rainfall. Latent heating generates buoyancy by the thermodynamical processes we have discussed here. Namely, compared to dry air at the same temperature, a lifted saturated air mass condenses water and releases latent heat, and this heating expands the volume (decreases the density) increasing buoyancy relative to the dry air around it that has no such energy source. No one disputes that warm air rises, so it is surprising we have to explain that warming from condensation is no different than warming with a flame in creating expansion and buoyancy relative to the unwarmed air around it.

Comment on IEA Facts and Fictions by GaryM

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Brandon Shollenberger,

“And as you can see, oil shales won’t provide more than a couple percent of all oil we need.”

vs.

“The Green River Formation — an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming — contains the world’s largest deposits of oil shale. USGS [U.S. Geological Survey] estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions.

The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, estimates that 30 to 60 percent of the oil shale in the Green River Formation can be recovered. At the midpoint of this estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be recoverable. This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves. …”

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/energy/item/11387-the-green-river-formation-worlds-largest-oil-shale-deposits

Now, I’m no climate scientist, but it seems to me that even the lower estimate of 30 percent of 3 trillion barrels calculates out to…a lot of oil.

And if roughly a trillion barrels is only a few percent of what we need, that would mean we need…oh never mind, if I try to think about it seriously I start to giggle..


Comment on Open thread weekend by Steven Mosher

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Look the evidence has been pointed out to Cripwell on so many occasions that you have to be blind to miss it. So go look for it.

1. The empirical evidence for the addition Forcing that GHGs impose.
He’s been directed to the the physical theory. he’s been directed to
to the practical applications. he’s been directed to the validation studies
and the field experiements. There is no evidence that he read any of it.

2. The empirical evidence for the change in temperature over time. Delta C.
3. the empirical evidence for the change in forcing over time. Delta Watts.

he’s been given the definition of sensitivity; delta C / delta watts.
What he seems to be stuck on is the notion that sensitivity is something you can measure directly. A simple example: take the speed of sound.
The speed of sound is x feet per second. We measure the feet, we measure the time. And we say the speed of sound is X feet per second.
We dont directly measure ‘speed’. its a ratio of two other metrics. distance and time. Sensitivity is the change in C per a change in watts.

You measure Delta C: you measure delta Watts. and there you go.
we measure sensitivity all the time. Now it happens to be complicated because you can measure it over short times and longer times. And its complicated because the accuracy of measures can be narrow or broad depending on your time scale. But that does not mean it hasnt been measured. You play golf, you hit a big drive. you take 300 strides to reach your ball, you’ve measured the distance. You could have used a yardstick, or range finder, or GPS or a mark 2 eyeball. In all cases you measured it. Sometimes with more accuracy, sometimes with less. never with perfect accuracy.

So, we have measured sensitivity. Every measurement of it tells us that Jim is wrong. Its not zero.

he is also wrong that it must be in Ar4. That is not what I directed him to, so he is once again blind. his intellect is indistinguishable from zero.

Comment on Condensation-driven winds: An update by Anastassia Makarieva

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Pat Cassen | February 11, 2013 at 6:02 pm | Reply

All of the quantities within the square brackets are larger than those in Makarieva et al.’s expression by a factor of 1/γ ,

Pat, thank you for your inputs. All the above has been already discussed by us (the authors) and can be expressed much more laconically, e.g. see Eq. (6) in the post (Eq. (A7) in the paper). It says that

-u.∇N = (S – S_d)/γ_d
while our result is
-u.∇N = S.

As you can see, in agreement with your observation, all the terms in the right hand side of the first equation are larger than those in Makarieva et al.’s expression by a factor of 1/γ (recall that γ ≈ γ_d)

But this does not

indicate that the vertical temperature and pressure gradients dominate the contribution of condensation to the horizontal pressure gradient.
nor that

In any event, the expression eqn. (12) cannot be reconciled with that derived above.

On the contrary, Eq. (34) put into the above general equation produces our result -u.∇N = S.

This result does show however that, as we emphasized in the post, S must be defined with a high precision (exceeding γ) to correctly describe the dynamics.

Here it is proper to recall that the second law of thermodynamics is an approximate equation that neglects the kinetic energy of the gas (this is what equilibrium thermodynamics is about). In terms of temporal changes, it neglects the rate at which the kinetic energy is produced (i.e. precisely the rate we are concerned about). In simple words, it is not an energy conservation equation.
Thus, information on dynamics cannot be retrieved from this equation which for that reason is never used in circulation models in its classical form. In reality, in current models, again as we discussed in the blog post with examples, one adds empirically fitted parameters into this equation such that the dynamics produced by the entire system of equations matches observations (including the observed u.∇p). In such an approach no independent theoretical specification of S is at all needed. One can just fit whatever one wants by minor modifications of parameters for which no independent stipulations exist.
If we however turn to theory, all the second law of thermodynamics is valid for is to determine the scale of the vertical temperature gradient (and this is how we used it).

Comment on Sensitivity about sensitivity by Faustino

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Joshua, I’m talking here of someone I know, was once quite friendly with, and whose work I have admired and often praised. I’m not alone in my recent assessment of Garnaut. There are plenty of people here and elsewhere who have different views to me, but for whom I have no evidence to think of them in the way I do of Garnaut. As for those I know with similar views, I can’t make the same criticism of them. Of those in the public eye, none seem driven by fame and ego (I generally don’t find such people attarctive), while Garnaut, who is very charming, has always had that tendency – he was a close friend of PM Bob Hawke when I first knew him. Hawke had a great ego but I think he’s the one very good Australian PM in the last 40-odd years. I do know many of the advisers to the ALP government whom I broadly criticised. I also knew many advisers to the previous ALP governments who I greatly respected, for their quality of work, integrity and genuine interest in “good” policy. I haven’t seen many such people selected by the 2007+ government, I’ve known some excellent people – e.g. Warwick McKibbin – to whom they’ve given the elbow.

Comment on Condensation-driven winds: An update by Anastassia Makarieva

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Once again, but in a nicer format.

Pat Cassen | February 11, 2013 at 6:02 pm | Reply

All of the quantities within the square brackets are larger than those in Makarieva et al.’s expression by a factor of 1/γ ,

Pat, thank you for your inputs. All the above has been already discussed by us (the authors) and can be expressed much more laconically, e.g. see Eq. (6) in the post (Eq. (A7) in the paper). It says that

-u.∇N = (S – S_d)/γ_d
while our result is
-u.∇N = S.

As you can see, in agreement with your observation, all the terms in the right hand side of the first equation are larger than those in Makarieva et al.’s expression by a factor of 1/γ (recall that γ ≈ γ_d)

But this does not

indicate that the vertical temperature and pressure gradients dominate the contribution of condensation to the horizontal pressure gradient.

nor that

In any event, the expression eqn. (12) cannot be reconciled with that derived above.

On the contrary, Eq. (34) put into the above general equation produces our result -u.∇N = S.

This result does show however that, as we emphasized in the post, S must be defined with a high precision (exceeding γ) to correctly describe the dynamics.

Here it is proper to recall that the second law of thermodynamics is an approximate equation that neglects the kinetic energy of the gas (this is what equilibrium thermodynamics is about). In terms of temporal changes, it neglects the rate at which the kinetic energy is produced (i.e. precisely the rate we are concerned about). In simple words, it is not an energy conservation equation.
Thus, information on dynamics cannot be retrieved from this equation which for that reason is never used in circulation models in its classical form. In reality, in current models, again as we discussed in the blog post with examples, one adds empirically fitted parameters into this equation such that the dynamics produced by the entire system of equations matches observations (including the observed u.∇p). In such an approach no independent theoretical specification of S is at all needed. One can just fit whatever one wants by minor modifications of parameters for which no independent stipulations exist.
If we however turn to theory, all the second law of thermodynamics is valid for is to determine the scale of the vertical temperature gradient (and this is how we used it).

Comment on Open thread weekend by Jim D

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Steve, Jim Cripwell hasn’t shown any evidence that he knows any science relevant to this. He is still at the starting line when the debate has moved on.

Comment on Open thread weekend by Chief Hydrologist

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Let’s see if I can get moderated.

It you would just for once not act like a dog with a bone you might be a reasonable human being.

I mean like science, poetry or humour. Anything but the obsessive defence of pissant progressivism. It defines a demographic and can’t be as bad as denialist scumbag or any of the other sobriquets that slip from the mouths of the not so innocent. Do you identify with the demographic? You with your passive/aggressive pop psychology – lacking self awareness, unconscious irony, twisted and obsessive running-dog capitialist, etc. You object to my politics? So what? If you think it concerns me for a moment – you are utterly mad.

Let it go. Take a deep breath. Try something with a bit of style. Anything at all but the empty jibe, the drive-by snark, the smarmy interjection. Anything but the non stop whining about how unfair it all is.

Comment on Condensation-driven winds: An update by Stephen Wilde

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Having reviewed this thread one comes to the conclusion that there may be little or no additional convective uplift from the release of latent heat during the process of condensation for the following reasons:

i) The contraction involved in the conversion of vapour to liquid pulls additional mass into the original volume from the surroundings so that the air parcel is heavier overall and must descend causing an increase in surface pressure beneath it.

ii) Liquid having a much greater thermal capacity than air the condensate will absorb the bulk of the latent heat release for a very small increase in temperature and no reduction in weight.

iii) The latent heat that is absorbed by the air without vapour will not heat it enough to make it as buoyant as air with vapour at the same height so again it must descend.

On the face of it the Makarieva paper would seem to be implausible on those grounds so I invite Anastassia or her colleagues to suggest how they would deal with those problems.

One could suggest that the pulling in of mass from outside the original parcel reduces pressure around the parcel but that doesn’t work because the mass redistribution is simply a return to the average distribution that existed before the initial evaporation at the surface and so the inflow of mass from the surroundings would be neutral.


Comment on Open thread weekend by Chief Hydrologist

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Ah gee schucks – I’d like to thank our host Judith, the Judge Beth and the Denizens… I guess I meant ter say UNtopian.

Can I have baby for desert?

Comment on The horsemeat argument by timg56

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Says the guy who rides around in those black helicopters.

Comment on The horsemeat argument by timg56

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Josh,

I’m calling BS on this one – When Mark Sanford said he was hiking on the Appalachian Trial…first thing I thought?

Climate Change!!!!!

The first thought of almost everyone was – lucky dog.

Comment on The horsemeat argument by Craig Moore

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Dr. Curry, your post reminds me of that famous commercial, “Where’s the beef?” But it is not just in the arena of science where deception for the greater good takes place. Recently Professor Randy E. Barnett of Georgetown made a similar appeal to get at the truth behind gun control measures. http://www.volokh.com/2013/02/12/my-letter-to-ted-cruz-on-gun-control-proposals/ The stampede tactics are merely borrowed from the political world.

Comment on Sensitivity about sensitivity by David Springer

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What’s the 4300 years in reference to? IIRC that’s about the temporal distance to Milankovitch peaking in favor of glacier building then NH summer and winter insolation disparity starts to increase again.

Presumably as the peak nears the other elements of a perfect storm line up and booyah the curtain falls on the Holocene. The other elements of the perfect storm somewhat less predictable but evidently inevitable if you wait long enough would be a solar grand minimum and one or more VEI 5+ volcanoes.

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