Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

ok there was a comma and quite a bit more but..

are you not agreeing that you do indeed set yourself up as an arbiter of what is and is not scientific, based on your own prejudices?

I'm not saying you're not worthy of comment, far from it, anyone who can grapple with fluid dymanics has my respect.

But science really is neutral and objective. You are wrong to dismiss "AGW tipping point" out of hand just as Einstein was wrong in his gut reaction against quantum mechanics. (imho)

Just curious George, do you also believe as I do that the apparent warming may be overstated by some percentage in accordance with the effects of heat islands due to modern land use, such as large cities?



I wonder what you think about the concept that building cities, cutting down trees, building large dams, farming, and all of the rest are akin to beavers building dams? In other words, our brains are part of nature, just as much as that which makes the beaver do what it does. We have brains, given us by nature, to do all of the things that we do, therefore modern industrialization is not unnatural as environmentalists portray it to be. So I agree with you that primitive animals have no inherent right to trump what we do. And consistent with this scenario, many animals have the ability to adapt to having man and his development around him, and there are plenty of examples of this. A deer hunter can testify as to where all of the deer are in hunting season, on private land, perhaps around development where it is safer. Of course, responsible development is called for as well, as we should have the brains to mitigate unhealthy development.

I suppose that we all occasionally set ourselves up as arbiters of what constitutes good and useful science, at least in some cases. It is a readily observable fact that there is a lot of supposition and many unjustified conclusions & predictions out there in the public media, broadly defined, all labeled as "science" or "scientific". These range from journalistic distillations of scientific papers that somehow leave out all of the qualifiers and assumptions given in the original, to truly flawed propositions in the original that don't withstand routine scientific criticism.This kind of material very often finds itself in the mainstream debate on issues that are hotly debated in the public and political arenas, where the chief protagonists and orchestrators of the debate are usually not themselves, scientists. Indeed the motivation for such movements (and the AGW debate is an excellent example of this) is almost certainly not one of "science". but rather other factors that go unstated (and undebated), as I tried to suggest in my last post.

Let me illustrate. As I understand them, none of the various "tipping point" scenarios out there are scientifically provable. In several cases we can't prove they won't happen either - but proving such a negative is a bit difficult. What we know of the solar system and the physical makeup of the planets and moons in it do suggest different quasi-equilibrium states, some vaguely compatable with some of these tipping point scenarios, but the truth is we don't know the dynamic trajectory by which they reached their present observed condition. In several cases we can safely infer the important factors involved, but we most certainly don't understand the process.

I am also put off by the internal inconsistencies and illogic of the arguments put forward by virtually all of the prominent individuals and institutions involved in this debate. In today's world, with rapid, almost explosive economic development occurring everywhere, except Africa and parts of the Islamic world, the notion that authoritarian means to achieve demand reduction and power production through solar and wind power constitute the "solution" to any of the several "tipping point" scenarios put forward is truly ludicrous. In the first place the required political power to achieve this solution (both national and international) does not exist (as the signatories of the ill-conceived Kyoto Treaty have so amply demonstrated). In the second, their proposals fall far short of a solution, even if such authoritarian political power did exist. Thirdly, the creation of such authoritarian power structures would likely unleash even greater woes on humanity.

I have a good deal of knowledge and experience is some fairly narrow aspects of the scientific debate on this matter. I do know that neither the climate nor the local weather can be accurately predicted based on available numerical models, and there are sound mathematical principles indicating that such efforts cannot possibly succeed, no matter how much computing power is applied to them. In a world in which we cannot use existing conditions to accurately predict the weather in 14 days, why should we believe that we can model the behavior of climate over a 100 year period? In a world in which present numerical modelling is unable to accurately predict the next return of the El Ninho current in the South Pacific, why should we accept the findings of the same numerical model applied to the Gulf Stream and the so called "Atlantic Conveyor"? So far I have seen no attempt by AGW protagonists to even address these fundamental issues. That leads me to suspect their motives and the scientific character of their judgements.

I will agree that the observation that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is rising to unprecedented heights (in the current geological era) is a cause for concern, and that it may lead to some unforseen consequences, some involving elements of those that are "predicted" by AGW zealots. I don't agree that the remedies they propose make sense, even by their own logic, and I don't agree that, given all the uncertainties we face, this is the one that should dominate all others or require either the resources they propose or the authority they demand.

I do agree that sensible application of solar and wind power is a good idea, though I don't accept that they should be given large public subsidies to create the illusion that they are competitive with other sources. At best this would limit the incentive for improvements to them. The most efficient application of solar power is the direct production of heated water, not electricity and the subsequent transformation it requires. Somehow we hear very little about that. The large-scale production of electrical power by nuclear plants is an obvious and completely practical way th significantly limit CO2 emissions in a short time. There is no better means presently available - nothing in the currently "correct" list of alternatives even comes close. Very odd that this is somehow always omitted from the recipe, by those who claim for themselves the mantle of 'true science'.

Would you agree then that we should remove the subsidies from Coal and Oil in order to show their true price on the market?

If we have a vested interest in giving oil companies subsidies, why don't we have a vested interest in doing so for renewable energy companies?

Cycloptichorn

Please be specific about the subsidies to coal and petroleum to which you are referring.

You know what. The world is changing and perhaps some day it will not be a climate that is sustainable for humans. Perhaps the absence of humans will give a rise to another species in a few billion years.

While some people seem to think the warming tread is natural they ignore so many factors, so many signs that this warming tread is much different than trends in the past.

perhaps I'm not mad about the world getting warmer, perhaps I'm offended by the ambivilance.

T
K
O

Still researching coal, but for oil -

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/27/business/oil.php

To sum it up, we give them tax breaks, exploration subsidies, royalty breaks, and other methods to give oil a huge advantage in the market. There is no way to judge the true price of it, as we spend a lot of money on helping them out.

Cycloptichorn

Well the article you posted addressed only a royalty exclusion designed to create an incentive for oil exploration in US waters in the GUlf of Mexico at a time when petroleum price futures were low enough to discourage investment. The measure passed and evidently it is still in effect now that petrolerum prices are very high. This is merely the same kind of economic nonsense we apply to sugar, wheat and other commodities in this country. More than anything it illustrates the folly and manipulation that usually accompanies government intervention in markets.

The tax accounting adjustments we authorize for the costs of oil expoloration merely put oil producers on the same footing as (say) automobile manufacturers & clothing manufactrurs for the tax basis for measuring their profitsd. It is not a subsidy.

Ironically perhaps the greatest subsity our government has given oil producers are the unforseen side effects of our environmental laws. Virtually no new oil refining capacity has been built in this country during the past 35 years - a period of enormous increase in demand. All of this is a result of environmental regulation and the actions of various NIMBYs. Then we go on to specify different gasoline blends for different regions of the country during the summer months. This inevitably creates shortages that drive the market prices up.

I havent been following this thread,so I have a question.

I watched a show on the discovery channel that talked about the "mini ice age" that lasted from the 1400's to the early 1900's.
According to the show I watched,the temp of the earth dropped between .5 and 4 degrees worldwide.
That caused massive climatic changes,famines in Europe,droughts in parts of the world,etc.
It was also credited as being a factor in causing the plague that almost wiped out Europe.

Knowing that,isnt it possible that the temperature rise now is actually normal,that the earth is actually correcting itself or recovering from the "mini ice age"?

The earth's climate has never been stable on a geological time scale. You are correct about the "mini ice age" The recovery from it is generally regarded as ending in the mid 19th century. That of course means that subsequent warming may have another cause. However it is also known that prior to this mini ice age the Northern hemisphere experienced a period of abnormal warming that lasted several centuries. We know the Romans cultivated grapes for wine in Britain and that bountiful production of grains in even the norther reaches of Europe in the late Middle Ages was likely a factor in the prosperity associated with the wave of cathedral construction that occurred in the period.

We don't know the causes of these temperature excursions, but there is some intriguing data that suggests possibilities. We now know tha solar sunspot activity is associated with bursts (or increases) in the emission of radiant energy or plasma from the sun. This explains the observable variation in the spacing of tree rings that correlate well withobserved 11 year cycle in sunspot activity. Moreove the mini ice age correlates in time very well with the so-called "Maunder minimum" in sunspot activity that also occurred during that period.

There are also some geometric factors in the earth's orbital mechanics that could significantly alter the amount of solar activity that reaches each hemisphere over time. The earth's axis is normally inclined 22.5 degrees from the ecliptic plane of our orbit. This is what gives us our seasons. Interestingly our summer (when the declanation of the sun is about 22.5 degrees above the equator) also occurs when the earth is farthes from the sun in its eliptical orbit. However these conditions are not permanent. The earth's axis precesses about 4 degrees from its normal inclination, meaning that the actual summer declination of the sun varies from 18.5 degrees to 26.5 degrees - a big difference in terms of the amount of emitted solar radiation that reaches the earth's hemispheres. In addition the major and minor axes of the earth's orbital plane are known to oscillate periodically, and each with slightly different periods, each different from the period of the axis' precession. All that leads to widely varying conditions over long stretches of time. At some point we could have maximum declanation in the Norther Hemisphere and at a point in the orbit in which earth is closest to the sun. Significant warming will be the result. Of course the opposite will, also happen.

Volcanism on the earth as well as asteroid impacts are also believed to have affected the earth's climate in atmospheric ways generally consistent with the AGW scenarios put forward by advocates. The problem is all of these efffects are still operating and we are truly unable to know which will dominate in the years ahead.

george is wrong in blaming the lack of new oil refining capacity on environmentalists. One of the side effects of the investigation of the manipulation of the California energy crunch of a couple years ago by energy producers to generate huge corrupt profits for themnselves, was the finding that the major oil companies, concerned that their profits should stay high, had bought up independent refiners and shut them down, and shut down other refineries, to keep refined products tight. It was largely an oil company-created bottleneck.

And while we're talking economic costs of energy here, and subsidies for research in alternative energies, let's remember that nuclear power has NEVER been economically competitive, and still is not. It is only in the market place because government has subsidized it for the last sixty years, and continues to do so. As I provided in a link now god knows how many pages ago, even the government experts in the field admit that it's the subsidies that bring nuclear prices within reach. So we have been providing our tax dollars for three generations now, to keep it going. Somehow those anti global warming folks who keep talking about the marketplace and economic realities seem to keep ignoring that.

You are dead wrong in your assessment of nuclear power. Nuclear generating capacity is about 12% of the country's total, but it accounts for over 20% of the power actually generated, precisely because it has the lowest combined capital and operating cost. Moreover, by law nuclear powerplants are required to prefund the cost of their ultimate decomissioning and demolition and include charges for that in their current rates. No such provision exists for other generating plants. Despite this nuclear power is still cheaper, by a wide margin.

The original science that went in to developing the fission technology and the uranium enrichment techniques were indeed paid for by the governmenrt in the Manhattan project. However nuclear plant operators are required to buy their fuel from government producers and pay the actual cost of fabrication for it. (btw we have thousands of tons of it stored away at various Department of Energy sites - enough to power the entire country for many decades to come.)

I am very skeptical of your story about the buying up of refineries just to shut them down. The environmental cost of decommissioning an oil refinery is both very large and hard to forecast. The last thing investors would want to do with their earnings is to buy useless assets and then shut them down. The fact is our demand has increased significantly while our refining capacity has grown only very slightly - mostly because of NIMBYs and environmental interveners. Perhaps you could provide us a list of the refinery operators so acquired and the refineries that you allege were shut down.

username, environmentalists and their groups are obstructionists, and obstruction of new industrial facilities has a chilling effect upon any company considering a new refinery. Their obstructions take many avenues, from lawsuits to media blitzes, to more unreasonable regulations that dampen industrial progress. It also adds cost to the building of new nuclear power plants. This is just basic and everybody knows it, so to claim that environmentalists have no effect upon whether new refineries have been built has to be wrong. I am sure there are other factors, but environmentalists are an important one in the mix.

I think it is time to re-post my mathematical calculation that potentially explains the degree of global warming that we are curently experiencing, which I did the first time on February 6, 2007. Here it is again:

According to the following site, I quote: "The long-term variations track the envelope of group sunspot numbers and have amplitudes consistent with the range of Ca II brightness in Sun-like stars. Estimated increases since 1675 are 0.7%, 0.2% and 0.07% in broad ultraviolet, visible/near infrared and infrared spectral bands, with a total irradiance increase of 0.2%."

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Look.html

If this irradiance factor translates into a thermal increase of 0.2%, how about simply multiplying 0.2% by the average earth temperature above absolute zero, which would be about 0.2% x (15 degrees above 0) or 288 degrees above absolute zero, absolute zero being the complete absence of any thermal energy, giving an answer of 0.58 C above the low in 1375 AD. Also, see the graph for this in the above link. I am going to guess the thermal increase over the average, rather than over what it was in 1375 Ad, would be perhaps 0.10 to 0.15% thermal increase, which translates into approximately 0.3 to 0.4C above average. Not far off of what we are currently seeing, especially after you factor in the heat island effects of land use upon temperature readings around the world.

Obviously, this is highly simplistic, but sometimes the simplest answers are the correct answers? What we are talking about here is as simple as computing the scale of the sun's thermostat and relating it to temperatures here. The calculation is done in a few minutes without a multimillion dollar research grant, and without a bank of computers and worthless computer models.

That depends certainly on how look at it: here, the the industry around enrinvironment is a quite important economi factor, as well as the environmental sciences.

I used to work for an oil company, Walter, and I can tell you how the obstruction works throughout the industry, just one example of virtually every industry. So called environmental studies and permits increase the hoops that have to be jumped through almost exponentially. The end result is that just about everybody wants a piece of the pie, so yes, environmental consultants and companies become important because there is money to be made, but although they have nice green logos on their vehicles, their vehicles also burn gasoline just like everybody else's, and often the end result ends up close to what it would have been anyway, but the environmentalists made their money as well as delaying economic progess considerably.

Highway construction is another problem area that I've noticed lately, wherein years of study and design, accompanied by studies for example of some obscure mouse habitat or something in the road, meanwhile a few decades ago, we built an Interstate system by going out and started moving dirt. Taxpayers have to pay this monumental waste of money on studies, hearings, and so on that could be put into something actually productive, like building and fixing roads.

Um, yeah.

I grew up in Houston, a refinery town if there ever was one.

We needed and liked the refineries; they brought money to the region, and I do mean Money. Lots of it. So we had a vested interest in building them there.

But, you do realize that people have to live around these things? That they don't exist independently of the environment they are in? We also had a vested interest in making sure these plants weren't going to screw the environment.

It sucks that little concerns like the quality of living for people get in the way of making money, is that what you are saying?

Cycloptichorn

ps - I don't know if you've spent any time in Houston, 'specially eastern Houston, but if you have - you know about the smell. The refinery smell that shifts every day from gross to putrid to not-so-bad to vomitus, depending on the way the wind is blowing. You don't have to experience that for long before environmental studies seem like a good idea.

Point scored, cyclops. I've been there. But I am talking about being able to do things in a timely manner with the best technology that we have. We can build cleaner and more efficient industrial plants now, Im not just talking about refineries, and if the permits were easier to obtain rather than being obstructed, thus driving up the cost out of sight, then companies would be more inclined to build vastly improved facilities instead of hanging onto outdated facilities that are grandfathered in? So there is an argument that environmentalism actually sometimes impedes cleaner and more efficient industrial facilities.

That's not a bad argument, but I haven't seen any real evidence that the permits are so difficult to obtain. What is difficult is running a clean plant. If you meet the requirements, you get the permit.

By 'easier to obtain' do you mean 'allows more pollution?' Or just less paperwork, or something?

Cycloptichorn

Less paperwork, less stalling, less wasted time. I have known people that have tried to get permits to build a mine and mill. This takes years. The technology to do it is readily available, but to satisfy every group, every bureaucracy that is involved, including countless town meetings, blah blah, blah. A company announcing a plan to open a mine is to lawyers what throwing red meat is to a den of lions. The biggest problem is people that really are obstructing and do not want mines, period, so they use the permit process as one tool to obstruct, and some of these people work in government. You have a myriad of problems, including bureaucracies that may compete with each other over the jurisdiction even before the process begins. Before it is over, many lawsuits may be filed. Thick books could be written about this, concerning even just single projects. If the project is ever built, then it is forgotten and the band of lawyers and obstructionists go onto their next victim somewhere else to play out the next few years of similar excruciating events. It is the lawyers that are benefiting the most.

It is bad enough to just try to drill one oil well, let alone build something more substantial.