Pharyngula

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 6:40 AM

The developing countries won't use the same wasteful strategies any more than the developed nations will. Energy is expensive for both. Fortunately the developing nations can benefit from the technology developed by the developed nations.

Posted by: JefFlyingV | June 30, 2009 6:42 AM

Aren't most groups avoiding one over riding concern? Isn't there a need for population reduction planning in the near future?

Posted by: DuckPhup | June 30, 2009 6:50 AM

... His recipe is improved fuel economy, more efficient builidongs,..."

Builidong? That sounds like something a porn actor might brag about. "I've got a builidong! I don't need no stinkin' fluffer!"

Population control? I we don't do something about that, then Thomas Malthus will.

Posted by: Bob Harmont | June 30, 2009 6:54 AM

He mentioned NOTHING about limiting population growth?? (Partly fueled by religion)

Posted by: Cowcakes | June 30, 2009 7:03 AM

Somebody should tell the Federal Government here in OZ. Kev the blowhard, (maybe thats why Bruno has taken a shine to him) and his bunch of equally all talk government recently axed solar energy rebates.

Posted by: Paul Macgowan | June 30, 2009 7:05 AM

I recommend people see this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

Basically if we dont take action, Nature will choose for us and none of the options are very nice. The Maths does not lie!

Posted by: Paul Macgowan | June 30, 2009 7:08 AM

I recommend people see this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

Basically if we dont take action, Nature will choose for us and none of the options are very nice. The Maths does not lie!

Posted by: Sili | June 30, 2009 7:17 AM

Builidong? That sounds like something a porn actor might brag about. "I've got a builidong! I don't need no stinkin' fluffer!"

Population control? I we don't do something about that, then Thomas Malthus will.

Posted by: AdamK | June 30, 2009 7:20 AM

You misspelled billy-dong. And mine is already efficient, thank you very much.

Posted by: Mark | June 30, 2009 7:39 AM

I had to look it up. A 'builidong' is similar to a billabong, but it emits less C02.

Posted by: daedalus2u | June 30, 2009 7:52 AM

The problem is, for political power there is no win-win solution. In the perception of those striving for political power, for every group that gains political power, another group has to lose it.

Some of those striving for political power are playing chicken with the rest of us. They don't care about the outcome, so long as they end up on top.

Posted by: Kirlian Nimbus | June 30, 2009 8:01 AM

We may all agree about population control, but that
only applies to population increases in the future.
For the duration of most of our lives, we are going
to have 10 - 20 billion folks on the Earth, & the
only ways to reduce that are Malthusian in nature.
Also, I don't trust them ecoonomists.

Posted by: speedwell | June 30, 2009 8:10 AM

MadScientist, what do you think about geothermal energy? I work in IT in a large firm that specializes in downhole oil tools, and the engineers freely acknowledge that the same tools can readily be used or adapted for water wells or geothermal wells. To the best of my knowledge the technical knowledge and equipment exist now and can be deployed as soon as conditions are right (whatever that may entail).

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | June 30, 2009 8:28 AM

Trends show that greenhouse gases are increasing. What needs to be done? We need a revolution in the way society functions to prevent CO2 from rising abouve 350-450 ppm. Can it be done?

Look, 450 ppm is stark raving mad. It's crazily high. We had that last time several million years ago… I don't have the papers here, but IIRC we last had it (and surpassed it greatly) during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

We should… somehow… start replanting the western African rainforest so that the Sahara can become green the way it did last time when it was half a °C warmer than right now.

Population control? I we don't do something about that, then Thomas Malthus will.

Oh, don't worry about that too much. Birth rates have been dropping for decades all over the world, even in places where that means a drop from 8 to 4 children per woman. The only exceptions are France (which has gone back up to 2.1, thanks to rampant socialism) and the seriously theocratic countries (like Saudi Arabia and Oman… not Iran). All else being equal, the world population will have started dropping before the end of the century, and according to some models it will even be lower then than today.

The question, of course, is what else will be equal. If, for example, the current oil-into-potatoes agriculture fails, it might be impossible to reach the peak of world population growth. That's where Malthus comes in.

For the duration of most of our lives, we are going to have 10 - 20 billion folks on the Earth

Oh no, not 20. 9 to 12 or something.

Concerning solar energy, a German consortium will soon start building lots and lots and lots of photovoltaic plants in the Sahara. What possessed them to build them in Morocco-including-West-Sahara is another question.

Posted by: Fred the Hun | June 30, 2009 8:38 AM

madscientist,

I like planting trees myself and am quite aware that our current global monoculture based industrial agricultural system is an ecological travesty. However I was born in Brazil and have actually lived and worked in the Amazon and I was just responding to Shawn's rather ignorant and superficial comment. He obviously doesn't have a clue about the real world

One thing that will work but which people have cultivated an unsubstantiated terror for: nuclear power.

I myself do not have an irrational fear of nuclear power but from a purely cost benefits point of view
The numbers don't hold up once you start factoring in the externalities of the energy requirements of constructing and maintaining these plants. Perhaps you have information that you can point me to that sets those concerns to rest?

We also have the issue that fuel for nuclear power on the scale that we need, is still a non renewable resource. We will eventually run out. I'd much prefer a paradigm shift in bringing about massive cuts in use of energy and basing energy production on renewables as much as possible.

Disclaimer: I live in the Sunshine State and am associated with a company that sells and installs large grid tied PV systems. I agree that this is not a viable solution by itself for many of the same reasons that I brought up with respect to nuclear. The numbers don't work without massive subsidies. That said I hope that we are at a tipping point in the realization that BAU is dead and it's time to get real. The time to act was "The Day Before Yesterday"

Best wishes for a sustainable future.

Posted by: John M | June 30, 2009 8:57 AM

Why can't I find an abstract of the talk here:

http://lindau-nobel.de/publish/templates/images/lindau_logo_top.jpg

Posted by: MadScientist | June 30, 2009 9:29 AM

@RobertDW: The issue with roofspace is bigger than you might think. I've done calculations on simply lighting a house through the evening assuming a family of 4 and the use of the latest and greatest LED lighting (I'm still not happy with the color balance); for the latitude of, say Melbourne, you're looking at about 20 160W panels to ensure you have a large enough power store to last you through the dark + some lighting during a dark cloudy day. Sure that takes care of your lighting, and in perhaps 30 years you may make up for the solar investment - perhaps just in time to replace those ageing panels. You'll struggle to fit 20 of those 160W panels on a roof, you'd better hope you don't get hail, it won't work for apartment buildings, etc.

@Fred the Hun: I love planting trees too and try to advocate planting trees for aesthetic and also other long-term benefits. As for nuclear power, on the surface it cannot compete with coal for low cost even though at present some US plants claim to generate electricity at about the same cost as coal plants. If coal plants have carbon capture and storage technology deployed that may narrow the gap but there is no guarantee nuclear will be cheaper. All we can say about nuclear plants is that the technology exists and a number of nations have been generating power with few incidents over the past 40 years. The Chernobyl plant had the one accident which created the largest widespread hazard and that reactor was a peculiar design; most reactors are nothing like it. France seems to have the best record, but the US, UK, and Japan have all been operating plants for decades. I don't know what the estimates are of the easily mined uranium deposits.

@knocksgoats: Before accusing others of spewing garbage, it is probably in your own interest to take time to read and understand what you read. The increasing adoption of solar-PV and wind turbines does not mean that those are viable solutions. Indeed in the case of solar-PV and Germany it was purely a political decision. You need to spend many hours learning about the issues involved with each proposed solution and doing your own calculations to see if the claims match reality. Other disinterested parties have done their own analyses and come up with the same conclusions: wind and solar-PV will not work. Some of the articles I can think of also say that nuclear and carbon storage are not options but I don't agree with that. In the case of wind generators things are quite tricky; the big negatives are the resources consumed per unit power produced and the reliability of the wind; even with good conditions 97% of the time, society will not tolerate the 3% downtime.

Quite frankly, the IPCC publications are becoming increasingly politicized and the science is taking a back seat. If you would care to read Lovelock's latest book you will see he has few kind words for the IPCC. Scientists like myself really don't give a damn about politics and find it infuriating that feel-good do-nothing schemes are being proposed. The Green lies are a huge threat; they lead the public to believe strange things and are counterproductive to finding real solutions.

By the way your link to the IPCC thing isn't working.

Posted by: Luke Weston | June 30, 2009 9:33 AM

One of the most important things we could be doing is to have a rational, skeptical, fact-based assessment and science-based decision making process surrounding nuclear power, to counteract what is essentially a fundamentalist religion of opposition to nuclear power, where you're not allowed to question the dogma with skeptical, scientific inquiry about the facts surrounding nuclear power, because you're just not, and if you do, you're not a "Green".

We hear a lot about research and development of new technologies to solve these problems in the future. But there are very useful, powerful technologies that are already developed and already proven that give us powerful solutions. They don't need to be discovered or developed, they already exist - but we choose not to use them, fiddling while coal burns.

Posted by: gaypaganunitarianagnostic | June 30, 2009 9:40 AM

I am 100% pessimistic. Saving the world is just too expensive.

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 9:54 AM

Cappy,

"It would shut up the "cap-and-tax" conservatives"

No it wouldn't. They don't like the government dictating the details, exempting this industry or that to mollify certain congressmen, and subsidizing other industries that can't win on their own. If you get the conservatives on board, it will be with a straight forward carbon tax that is made revenue neutral by a refund directly to the consumers. Similarly, they would prefer a gasoline tax to the CAFE standards. They believe in letting the individuals and markets decide.

For how NOT to get the conservatives on board, look at what congress is currently doing. Highly Democratic coal and heating oil dependent areas are having the impacts on them mitigated in a way which is sure to keep the lobbyists funding campaigns of democratic regulators for decades to come.

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 10:05 AM

"Chinese authorities are predicting severe weather this year for all regions, and they are making no bones about blaming global warming for the conditions."

Do you really expect a totalitarian state to blame its own policy failures which have increase desertification?

Posted by: Desert Rat | June 30, 2009 10:19 AM

Solar photovoltaic will be something of a niche for some time yet, but it's making significant strides. CdTe based panels are already hitting less than $1 per watt, while monocrystalline Si is still hanging at around $5/watt. CdTe doesn't do much for the area issue, since its efficiency is about 12%, while the best of the monocrystalline cells are getting close to theoretical limits at 23%. The next generation of solar PV will be thin film based, this much I'm sure of. The cost reduction is significant, and efficiency is growing rapidly. Both CdTe and dual junction all Si:H cells are checking in around 12%, up from 8% just a few years ago, and experimental CdTe has achieved 18%. Of course, CdTe cells will ultimately be limited by the global supply of tellurium. Right now there's enough tellurium mined every year for about 3.5 gigawatts worth of CdTe panels, and there's about 300 megawatts of CdTe panel production, so there's room to grow, but, ultimately, there's just not that much tellurium to go around. And, for the more distant future, theoretical models of hextuple junction thin film solar, using Si-QD structures and hot carrier extraction, predict efficiencies as high as 65%. True, we don't know quite how to make these yet, but I've seen relatively easily produced and very nicely controllable QD layers produced using thermal annealing of Si-enriched SiO or SiON. The QD size, and thus the effective bandgap of the absorber layer, can be controlled by thickness of the film before annealing, and the quantum dots form very easily with good uniformity from there. The main problem is getting the captured photoelectrons out of such a layer, but I'm confident this will be solved within a decade.

In the more near term, I think large scale solar will come in the form of CSP, concentrated solar power, such as trough farms or power towers. The installation costs and O&M; costs are quite good, and there are easy methods to add dispatchability to the power supply through storing heat as molten salt or hot ceramic pellets, since the power is ultimately generated by a fairly standard Rankine cycle system drive by steam. I've also seen closed loop Rankine cycles running on organic solvents, which, while more expensive to start with, helps deal with the issue of water consumption, which, actually, isn't any worse than it is in a coal power plant.

Like MadScientist, I also think that solar made fuels are a good possibility for future use. I haven't heard of this ammonia cycle, but I have met with researchers and seen operating prototypes of a solar power to octane synthesis method. The feedstocks are CO2 and water vapor, and the output is functionally the same as gasoline. Total efficiency from sunlight to chemical fuel is around 10%, which is not great, but is much, much better than any biofuel, even if you're talking cellulosic ethanol, and it can be run in conventional engines with no modification. Add to this a carbon scrubbing system like those being developed at the University of Toronto, and CO2 can be efficiently harvested from the atmosphere to run the process. I developed an operations and cost model for such an idea for a client of mine and came to the conclusion that gasoline could be made with a solar power tower type configuration, using CO2 harvested from the atmosphere, and running off salt or brackish water, for about $3/gallon. The plant design included desalination and CO2 capture, and amortized construction costs and O&M; costs over the expected plant lifetime. So, that's cost of manufacture, not price at the pump, but it would be easily competitive with $6/gallon gasoline, and may even be possible at $4-5/gallon gasoline provided you exempt it from the taxes normally applied to gasoline sales.

Solar alone won't do it all, though, and that I'll readily admit. CSP is already cost competitive with nuclear, and at larger scales should be cost competitive with natural gas or coal, but that's only true in areas with good solar resources. I should add that by "cost competitive" I mean lifetime cost of the plant in terms of total MWh produced, not just installation cost. CSP has a larger up front cost and a lower utilization factor, but lower operating and decommissioning costs. However, not all areas of the world enjoy good solar resources, and we will need to rely heavily on nuclear power, as well, to achieve a fully carbon-neutral energy generation scheme that works for the entire world.

So, for the future, I see a mix of nuclear and CSP, with, of course, some wind, geothermal (provided the earthquake risks can be solved, or at least, accurately predicted), and hydroelectric for utility scale production, with point of use production via PV adding enough to shave off some peak demand and maybe a bit more. I don't see PV being more than maybe 15% of the total power produced on Earth, but even at that relatively low percentage, we're still talking a terawatt or so of solar PV. Which is, of course, about 3.5 TW of installed panels, given PV's usual utilization factor.

The thing that continually amazes me is that this is all do-able, yet we don't do it. Finance has been one of the big limiting factors. Many finance companies are uncomfortable with technologies like CSP and are unable to do proper due diligence on the costs and risks, and so they simply don't want to loan money for large CSP projects. Many of them end up having to get government secured loans, but, even then, there are no good developed models for assessing plans and risks. This will change as more such plants come on line and we get good real-world data to shore up the currently used cost models, but we just can't afford to wait the few decades it may take for these numbers to become clear. We need a major incentive program, not simply tax credits for putting PV on your roof, but, rather, government guaranteed loans for massive utility scale CSP plants. Sure, there is money for this, and the DOE does have a program of secured loans, but it's too small and improperly deployed. If we put as much money into such a program as we've put into bailing out the US finance industry, we'd be in excellent shape. Not only would our risk be less, in that we would have a high expectation of getting those loans paid back, we'd be left with a new energy infrastructure that would greatly increase America's competitiveness and national security. If we can chuck a trillion dollars down a hole to stabilize the finance industry, why can't we do the same for securing our energy future?

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 10:24 AM

Matt Penfield,

"That will no doubt be because of the excellent stewardship individuals and markets have shown in the past in looking after the environment. "

Yes, when the externalities have been captured in the prices, they do quite well in looking after the environment. Kyoto has shown that governments don't have a very good track record either.

Posted by: Scott from Oregon | June 30, 2009 10:31 AM

Brilliant.

Let's have Goldman Sachs devise a cap-and-trade system whereby shady financials can get in and skim billions off of energy taxes passed like a turd right through to consumers while the US government is granted a slush fund for nefarious "world modeling" enterprises (like overthrowing non-oligarchal-friendly governments)so that we can chase all dirty production of power over to China and down to Mexico where they do a great job of regulating emissions of CO2!!

Brilliant!!

And then we'll get a scientist who is constantly traveling the world, adding to CO2 emissions everytime he does so, to tell the good folks all about how concerned he/she is, so much so that they've installed a solar blanket on their swimming pool...

And to get this bill through the House, what we do is have our very president (who campaigned on transparency and public disclosure of all bills running through Congress) to bring up the Health Care issue as a way to divert public discourse while he "made phone calls" behind the scenes, pushing a monstrous piece of legislation nobody actually read, adding 300 pages to it in the stealth of night... while doey-eyed liberal sycophants sighed and fainted over the brilliance of the "change" that's gonna come..."

CO2 emissions are bad. Cutting down trees is bad. Eating so much beef that cow farts are heating up our planet is bad.

Fine. Agreed. So take personal responsibility. If you live where coal is the only source of power, move. If you live in the south and aren't running 50% solar by now, SHAME ON YOU!!

If you don't have your own garden (even a small one in small boxes) THAN YOU ARE A CO2 FIEND!

If you have a car with more than 4 cylinders and it ain't properly tuned... Eeks!

If you haven't gotten off your lazy ass and added insulation to what you already have in your attic, cough cough, it is YOU!!

Lordy lordy.

Sometimes I think "liberals" want someone else to change their soiled shorts for them...

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 30, 2009 10:38 AM

Yes, when the externalities have been captured in the prices, they do quite well in looking after the environment. Kyoto has shown that governments don't have a very good track record either.

So care to explain why we have a climate problem in the first place ?

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 10:51 AM

"So care to explain why we have a climate problem in the first place ? "

If we accept the AGW hypothesis, then the reason the market would lead to climate damage was because the cost of that damage was an externality not reflected in the prices, just as the costs of defending the persian gulf sea lanes wasn't reflected in the prices either. The reason conservatives would favor a tax is to make the price capture these externalities, so that consumers and business would behave accordingly. A reason they would favor having the tax be revenue neutral, is that they trust the consumers to be more price sensitive with their money than the government is with other peoples money.

Posted by: humorix | June 30, 2009 10:54 AM

You listen to 31,478 scientists opposite to Al Gore or you do not listen to the scientists ?

Posted by: LanceR, JSG | June 30, 2009 10:54 AM

@Scott from Oregon:

Strawman much? Seriously, reread what you've written. That's gotta be the worst mishmash of strawmen, attempted parody, and ignorance I've seen in ages.

And I'm getting a little tired of this "bill nobody read" tripe. You do realize that Congress-critters have staffers, right? Low- or un-paid people who do nothing but read these bills?

All I need is "It's the sun" and "Conspiracy" and I've filled my Bingo card!

Posted by: stogoe | June 30, 2009 10:58 AM

If we can chuck a trillion dollars down a hole to stabilize the finance industry, why can't we do the same for securing our energy future?

Because we already chucked our trillion dollars down the rat hole. There's none left, and besides, Wall Street owns the Senate and the fossil fuel companies won't let the governments they own invest in non-fossil fuel power generation.

What does the 'finance industry' produce, anyways? I mean, besides privatized profits and socialized losses.

Posted by: Rebelest | June 30, 2009 11:02 AM

I realize that Madscientist knows all and can easily dismiss
a solar energy solution for humantiy's future but those mad scientists at Scientific American do have a solar grand plan-it's not just photo-voltaic solar panels. Duh!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

It can be done! Tell everyone!

Dear President Obama,
700 billion dollars invested in the Solar Grand Plan, less than the amount "loaned" to the Wall Street vultures...

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 11:03 AM

"Well at least you admit the markets failed. But given that they have failed, why do you think they are the solution ? "

Externalities and information costs are two well documented reasons that markets can fail. They are the solution, because they work so well most of the time. BTW, I don't admit that the markets have failed in the AGW case, they haven't been tried yet, but I also don't see evidence that we need to try yet. I do favor capturing the defense related externality, but it is too soon to see GHG emissions as a problem.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 30, 2009 11:08 AM

Externalities and information costs are two well documented reasons that markets can fail. They are the solution, because they work so well most of the time. BTW, I don't admit that the markets have failed in the AGW case, they haven't been tried yet, but I also don't see evidence that we need to try yet. I do favor capturing the defense related externality, but it is too soon to see GHG emissions as a problem.

You have admitted they caused the problem.

And what is this "but I also don't see evidence that we need to try yet" ?. I was not aware you are better qualified in climatology that all those scientists contributing to the IPCC. If you are not willing to be honest about the evidence you might as well just fuck off.

Posted by: Desert Rat | June 30, 2009 11:19 AM

MadScientist...

I'm afraid you're largely wrong about solar PV, or, at least, outdated.

Reject wafers from the semiconductor industry were used, and to a limited degree still are used, but that's not a particularly fast growing segment of the solar PV market. The fast growing technology is thin film, which, when it's even Si based to start with, is made directly from silane, not from recycled scrap Si. As for the costs and competition between semiconductor and PV industries for high grade Si sources, well... that happened about three years ago, and capacity has increased, and newer, more efficient methods of silane and high purity Si have been put into place. After a brief price spike, the Si market is settling back down. Even in the monocrystalline or polycrystalline Si solar PV industries, many companies are making their own ingots, or using innovative techniques like ribbon pulling, which operate directly from up-graded metallurgical Si, which is quite cheap to produce. And, thin film methods eliminate the ingot casting all together and work directly from silane, which is usually produced from metallurgical Si as a purification step, and, additionally, cut the thickness of the Si layer down to around ten microns, from as high as six hundred, resulting in far better utilization of Si per watt of solar PV. As a result, the energy payback period, the time it takes for the panel to produce as much energy as went into making the panel, has dropped to an average of about three months. That's not bad for a device intended to operate for at least 25 years.

As for solar PV being damaged by hail, well, sure, that can happen, but only if you're talking about some really serious hail. Most solar panels these days use metal or high impact plastic, or a laminate of the two, as a backing, and fairly tough glass as the top cover. These are rigidly laminated together, and the result is a very strong panel. If you have baseball sized hail it would cause serious damage, but if you've got hail like that you've got other serious problems and damage to infrastructure to deal with as well. Hail damage just doesn't make a significant argument against solar PV any more than it makes for a good argument to never park your car outside. Hail capable of breaking solar panels would be sufficient to dent the hell out of your car and probably break the windshield.

PV does remain the most expensive form of alternative power generation, but the fact that the operating and maintenance costs are near-zero, and it can be deployed such that it displaces point of use power, and it does so most effectively at the time when significant power consumers, like air conditioning, or office lights and computers, are most active. So, in a grid-tied mode, solar PV does an excellent job of displacing some elements of daytime peak power, which, in turn, allows for reduction in the scale of dispatchable utility scale systems and huge cost savings since you no longer have to scale these systems to meet peak demand, and then have them operate significantly under-capacity for the rest of the time. So, despite the high initial cost per watt, the lack of any fuel or significant other O&M; cost, and the ability to displace some peak demand at the point of use makes it an important tool in a complete energy generation plan. Solar output for a non-tracked system doesn't correspond exactly to peak draw, but it does make the peak narrower and less severe when considered as part of an overall plan. Furthermore, many of the newer thin film technologies, such as the dual junction amorphous/microcrystalline hydrated Si panels known as "micromorph" do an excellent job of collecting diffuse light and are particularly good at absorbing the blue frequencies that come from all over the sky. Plus, with a thinner absorber layer they're less prone to heat soaking and the decline in power output that comes with it. So, over the course of an average day, even at lower peak output, these sorts of panels will generate more total power and cut more effectively into late afternoon/early evening peak demand than old fashioned monocrystalline panels.

PV alone is not a complete solution, but it allows for significant peak shaving and relaxation of localized demands on the grid which have economic benefits far beyond just the raw cost of the power generated by them when considered as part of the overall energy system.

Before you sit there and cry "Oh no! What about hail! What about Si demand!" you should do a little more updated research. Your critiques of PV would have been more relevant sometime in the 1980s, but they're not so important now. We have a better understanding of power grid engineering and the effects of including PV in the mix, and PV panels are a much different animal now than they were back when President Carter put a bank of solar panels on the White House roof.

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 11:29 AM

Matt Penfold,

I haven't admitted that markets caused the AGW problem, note that I stated: "If we accept the AGW hypothesis ..."

I don't accept it. I do believe that price signals that don't reflect the supply risks and defense costs associated with persian gulf oil, have lead to a dangerous over dependence on that source of supply. Markets are at fault for this, and governments are at fault for failing to intervene to make sure that these costs were imposed upon these unreliable imports.

The AGW hypothesis must await further advancements in the science. You couldn't be aware that I am better qualified than those scientists contributing to the IPCC. I am an avatar. If I wanted to contribute based upon my qualifications rather than my discussion of the science, then I would not be here as an avatar. I could claim to be more qualified than those scientists that contributed to the IPCC, but what would be the point of an avatar claiming that? Suffice to say, I've demonstrate through my postings a familiarity with the peer review literature. Perhaps you are new to pharyngula?

Posted by: MadScientist | June 30, 2009 11:35 AM

@DanL: Energy use should be cut as much as we can, there is no arguing there. However, you must also keep in mind that industry is really a *very* big user of power - in many places 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Cutting personal consumption will not necessarily result in a cut in the total baseload generation capacity.

Some industrial processes can still be improved significantly - and this more or less happens naturally as people replace equipment and purchase equipment which will give them an improved competitive advantage (cheaper to run, does more work, etc). Lighting, cooling, heating, ventilating office buildings is an area which might be improved more and there have been substantial changes in the cooling/heating/ventillating business (the shopping malls will spend as little as they can on controlling the environment). However, if we continue to use coal emitting CO2 to the air, and increase our population, the energy savings we can achieve simply will not be enough.

Of course nuclear waste is pollution, but it can be handled and stored safely for many thousands of years despite what the common perception of the subject may be.

Before the global economic collapse there were already serious issues in the metals market; high volume production of wind turbines will exacerbate these issues and we will have some pretty serious resource contention. I think wind turbines will be a minute, almost insignificant fraction of the solution. They will have their uses though - with their comparatively small footprint I can think of many areas where they would be the preferred source of power.

Even proposed options such as CO2 storage, though I believe it will have a fairly large part to play, cannot be reasonably deployed at any random location. I would guess that CO2 storage might be 10% of the solution - how do we address the remainder of the problem? CO2 storage is not a strategic long-term solution either, only a stop-gap measure to be employed while alternatives are developed. I imagine it will continue for some time though as we process coal to produce hydrocarbon fuels when oil runs low.

Posted by: Stephen Wells | June 30, 2009 11:52 AM

Yawn; AG's secret identity/big brother could beat us all up, so there.

Posted by: MadScientist | June 30, 2009 11:56 AM

@DesertRat: Thanks for the silicon PV update, but price wasn't even a consideration of mine in addressing silicon PV cells; other information had already pretty much ruled it out. The chief issues remain the use of finite resources (energy, raw materials), reliability of supply, and practicality of deployment. I include energy because you need to compete with the rest of the market for your energy requirements. You need to understand the magnitude of the supply issue; we're talking such big numbers that you need to consider what the global market can physically supply. How large an area do you need to supply a city and its industries, and can your supply grow fast enough? How large an area do you need and what is the resource consumption for deployment, for replacement of a single 250MW generator? You say PV helps with peaks - but what happens on a cloudy day when the efficiency is slashed to less than 20% of the nominal efficiency? Is that dip in peak permissible?

@Rebelest: If you care to read carefully, you'll see I mentioned fuel production with the aid of solar energy as one option which may in the future prove viable. For the large array of tanks in the Southwest and large array of solar cells a few things come to mind. Maintenance is one - you'll get blowouts in your high pressure lines - it happens - you'll also get compressor failures, valve failures - the list goes on. Resources is another - that's an awful lot of steel you'll have there. Compressing air comes at a *huge* cost as well, not to mention you'll probably vent far quicker than you can compress. What is the estimated overall efficiency of the system (not including the PV cells)? Quite frankly that proposal looks like something for the SciAm April 1 issue. The mere mention of a nation-wide DC distribution system has me laughing hysterically; even Edison knew that Tesla had him by the nuts and that was almost 100 years ago - physics hadn't really changed in favor of Edison since that time.

Posted by: Stephen Wells | June 30, 2009 12:07 PM

@77: funny, as a physicist I had thought that AC was better over _short distances_ and high-voltage DC is better over long (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC for a quick discussion). So, madscientist should maybe stop laughing hysterically and realise that he's underinformed and overopinionated.

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 12:10 PM

PZ,

If you participated in the discussions more, it would give you an opportunity to back your points with specifics rather than characterizing in generalities. The "nonsense" I cite can usually be backed by peer review literature in the case of climate science or evolution, or economics, and by personal familiarity with the type when I explain the positions of conservatives, libertarians or homeschoolers. Of course, most of the economics is first year macro economics or at the most an upper level course in price theory.

I don't see how your blog would be served by having contributers joust with strawmen instead of the actual best intellectual defenses of skeptical, conservative, or libertarian positions. Yes, that may be more frustrating than dealing with strawmen, but what scientist doesn't want to refine his arguments against the best.

I think it is dishonest for the avatars here or anywhere to claim "qualifications" in an attempt to argue from their own authority. I've tried studiously to avoid that except when I may relate personal anecdotes without attempt to claim they prove universals.

Posted by: MadScientist | June 30, 2009 12:12 PM

@HankHenry: Conversion of CO2 to carbonate rocks is a pretty slow process and happens on geological timescales (not surprising).

There are actually a few different research groups suggesting that the mineral serpentine can be used to produce magnesium carbonate (which is thermodynamically very stable). Those groups are currently working on small scale experiments in the lab and attempting to improve reaction times and reaction rates - the scheme is being proposed as a means of permanently capturing CO2 from a gas stream with high CO2 concentration (such as exhaust from a coal-fired plant). Some people estimate that the volume of readily mined serpentine is enough to sequester all CO2 until we burn out all our accessible fossil fuel reserves. I take that claim with a grain of salt, but the reaction to form magnesium carbonate is interesting.

Posted by: BMcP | June 30, 2009 12:29 PM

Only pseudoscientific (he was not at all mealy-mouthed: yes, he called the people who question anthropogenic change to be pseudoscientific) papers currently question the causal relationship of human activities to climate change.

Now are these peer-reviewed papers published in scientific journals? If so, how can he call them "pseudoscientific" simply because he disagrees with their position? After all they endure the same rigorous scrutiny as his own works. Sounds a little fanatical to me, as if his position is ever proven wrong, he will never come to accept that.

Posted by: Desert Rat | June 30, 2009 12:41 PM

MadScientist...

Why are raw materials a concern for Si PV? The main materials in Si cells are silicon, oxygen, and aluminum, with a little hydrogen, boron, and phosphorous. These are all very abundant materials on Earth, and exist in states that can be readily processed into forms appropriate for solar cell manufacturing. Some non-Si PV technologies face much greater challenges as far as materials, such as the issue with CdTe. Materials availability, and the energy required to process these materials into useful forms for solar cells are directly tied to cost, so cost can be considered a short-hand for both the issues you raise. Of course, there's current cost, and there's the expected cost in the future. For example, CdTe was quite cheap when tellurium was selling for $10 a kilo. With the increase in demand, particularly for PV production (as well as financial speculation), the price is now around $300 per kilo. However, even with that sort of rise in raw materials cost, CdTe remains cheaper than Si based technologies. However, if the price continues to rise, and new sources of tellurium aren't identified, it will cap out at a limited production per year. This will happen first economically, as CdTe cells become too expensive to be competitive in the market, and that will fundamentally limit the supply of CdTe cells at some level below the theoretical maximum amount that could be made per year based on tellurium supplies. To meet this, the CdTe industry has developed reprocessing techniques for taking old or damaged panels and extracting the tellurium content with 95% efficiency. Currently, this cost of remanufacturing to harvest tellurium is factored into the cost of the panels, since companies engaging in this business want to be around for the long haul. Plus, recycling in a controlled environment is needed for limiting the dispersal of cadmium. Si based cells don't have such an issue, so recycling of them will probably wait until it's more economically feasible to do so. Since 70% or so of the Earth's crust is silicon and oxygen, there's not much of a shortage of these raw materials. Instead, the limiting factor is the energy cost of processing silica into metallurgical grade Si and on to high purity Si sources, whether monocrystalline boules, polycrystalline ingots, or semiconductor grade silane. I've worked with all these processes, both on a process engineering basis and on a finance level, so I've got a pretty good read on how materials scarcity and energy demand for processing factor into cost.

The SciAm article linked to is pretty interesting, but it does seem a bit PV heavy. Plus, there's a lot of emphasis on CdTe as a low cost PV without any acknowledgment of the fundamentally limited nature of this type of PV cell. So, it's an interesting proposal, and the basics are correct, but much more consideration would have to be given to the cost and reliability differences between hot salt/hot ceramic beads and CAES (compressed air energy storage). The cycle efficiency of CAES can be pretty good, better than a vanadium flow cell but not as good as lead acid batteries. Sodium sulfur cells may be a better idea than CAES, since they have excellent cycle efficiency and are almost as cheap to build, but, ultimately, I think good old fashioned thermal storage wins, which points to a plan more heavily invested in CSP than PV.

As for DC transmission... HVDC is a completely different thing than the low voltage DC that lost out back in the 19th century. HVDC systems are already in place around the world, with some transmission lines longer than 1000 km already operating. They're actually more efficient than AC. The ultimate, of course, would be superconducting lines, but the cost of construction is quite high for those, and good reliability of the cooling system needs to be assured. If the lines go above Tc, and you've still got many megawatts of power going through them.... well, bad things will happen. The energy cost of cooling them is actually lower than the energy loss of Joule heating in conventional lines, or even HVDC, but HVDC makes a more compelling case in my opinion. Even though it loses more power than superconducting lines, the initial costs are significantly lower, and the risks associated with operations are lessened. But, as large scale manufacturing of superconducting lines ramps up, this may change. At the moment, though, if you're going to be putting in new long-distance lines for carrying significant amounts of power HVDC is the clear winner.

However, the numbers on that plan and the time line for it all are achievable. I've designed similar plans for clients interested in what the energy future looks like, and my models have included resource scarcity, rate of new capacity addition for Si processing, PV cell manufacturing, lead times and global manufacturing capacity for capital equipment, etc. We'd have to crank it up to 11 to achieve a plan like that, but why the hell not? Humanity has done similar great endeavors before, and America, in particular, has done some significant ones. Rural electrification, WWII and the Manhattan Project, and the Apollo missions readily come to mind as examples of this. As for the comment up-thread that we can't do this because we've already blown our $1T on bailing out the finance industry... well, we just pulled that $1T out of our ass and added it to the $10T or so we're already in the hole, so, what's another $1T? It's all a collective fiction anyway. Money borrowed, or simply conjured, on that scale is more a representation of future expectations in the success of our civilization than a reflection of existing constraints on production and consumption, so, what better use of such "future expectation" money than building a system that will give significant improvements to the future stability of our industrialized way of life?

Posted by: MadScientist | June 30, 2009 12:47 PM

@DanL: Some people say it may already be too late. Personally I think we should do our best and see what happens.

In an ideal world once renewables exceed a threshold % of the power consumption, then their competitive disadvantage will simply cease to exist. Unfortunately the world is not ideal. If you put out 200 wind turbines you will be maintaining them. Scale this up to very large numbers and personally I can't imagine where you will find all the people to perform the maintenance.

We'll see what happens as the years roll by.

@stephen wells: Oh no! A Wikipedia link! What will I do?

Look at it this way; if HVDC transmission was so fantastic why do we still have HVAC towers everywhere? Capital cost and cost of operation perhaps? There are also the conversion inefficiencies in generating the HVDC and in converting to the lower voltage (whether DC or AC). Although HVDC may have its niche uses, it's not the generally preferred method of transmission. I'll concede that the SciAm article may have meant HVDC will be used because the station will be so remote that it's worthwhile.

There are other problems with the article; I initially thought underground steel containers will be used, but on re-reading I see it mentions "underground caverns". The discussion of the use of the underground caverns betrays a profound ignorance of geology. I'm not a geologist, but even I know better. I'll try to go through the cavern list before I go to bed:

1. vacant underground caverns: I can only imagine they mean voids in karst terrain. It's hard to imagine where you can find karst terrain with the requisite void and the requisite sealing.

2. abandoned mines: good luck getting a seal on 'em

3. aquifers: these are not caverns, they are sand or sandstone. Yes you can pressurize them but you are forcing air into the spaces between the sand grains. When you want to retrieve the compressed air, it's not going to come out in a hurry because of the resistance encountered as the air passes through the tortuous routes - thus efficiency will be pretty poor. Another problem is, depending on circumstances, you may also need to pump water in and out. And of course potable water aquifers are off limits.

4. depleted natural gas wells - basically the same as aquifers - or at least basically the same as any aquifer which can be used for this purpose.

I'm sure if I scrutinized the gran plan I'd come up with numerous other problems, but some problems are likely to require further reading to expose them. With the "underground caverns" claim for example, if I hadn't done a lot of work on mine sites and with water wells I might not be aware of the problems either.

To be fair the solar energy used to heat some other substance (I always thought sodium was used, not salt - sodium can be pumped with Einstein's magnetic pump) does work. That's one option which I have not looked into in any great detail.

Overall I think the authors are trying to come up with ideas but I think they will have a hard time convincing the energy industry of the value - and this is not because of an evil energy industry conspiracy.

Posted by: Dan L. | June 30, 2009 1:04 PM

@Mad Scientist:

Some people say it may already be too late. Personally I think we should do our best and see what happens.

In an ideal world once renewables exceed a threshold % of the power consumption, then their competitive disadvantage will simply cease to exist. Unfortunately the world is not ideal. If you put out 200 wind turbines you will be maintaining them. Scale this up to very large numbers and personally I can't imagine where you will find all the people to perform the maintenance.

We'll see what happens as the years roll by.

I don't really think it's too late or that we shouldn't do what we can (the fact that you think we should makes me wonder why you're so dismissive about widespread use of renewables in a micropower context, but whatever). I just don't think it's feasible that enough people are going to do what they can to actually make a difference. Besides that, you yourself noted that much or most of our carbon output comes from industrial processes predicated on the availability of cheap fossil fuels that represent gigantic sunk costs when you start talking about replacing them or making them more efficient. While individual human beings may realize there's a problem, corporations are still going to seek to maximize profit, which means using fossil fuels for however long that continues to be profitable.

The "not enough mechanics" argument is a little silly in my opinion. Labor markets are not quite as liquid as commodity markets, but they're not entirely inelastic either. As the cost of fossil fuels rises and the relative share of wind power increases, the pay scales for people to maintain the turbines increases as well. That's pretty much what capitalism is all about. I wonder if anyone ever warned Henry Ford that if he mass-produced his horseless carriage, there would be too few mechanics and too few veterinarians.

Posted by: rnb | June 30, 2009 1:25 PM

Dan L:

"People do not need to use air conditioners; they are a luxury. "

Seems to me the same thing is true about central heating.
I'm in Texas, where we have just had nine days of 100 plus temperatures. Without AC, we would have had old people dying, as happened in that last European heat wave.

Posted by: Stu | June 30, 2009 1:34 PM

People do not need to use air conditioners; they are a luxury.

I'm sorry, what? It was 107F (42C) in the shade here last weekend. That makes air conditioning not a luxury. Or even optional.

Posted by: Stu | June 30, 2009 1:54 PM

You are obviously ignorant of the scale of the climate models. They are not the work of one person or even a dozen.

Yet you don't believe them. So it HAS to be a conspiracy, right? Thousands and thousands of scientists, all in on it.

1. Create global warming hoax
2. ????
3. Profit!

Posted by: John M | June 30, 2009 2:10 PM

#95:
"It was 107F (42C) in the shade here last weekend. That makes air conditioning not a luxury. Or even optional."

Usually when temperatures are that high, the rel. humidity is correspondingly low. So a water-evaporation based "desert cooler", which runs off much less power will work sufficiently well. At r.h. of 10% a good one will pull down the temperature of the intake by 8 - 10 K.

I've also used a do-it-yourself version, standing in front of an electric fan after emerging wet from the shower :-)

Posted by: Stephen Wells | June 30, 2009 2:22 PM

In most places, a broken water main is an emergency. In Arizona, a broken aircon is an emergency. Lived there three years. The aircon broke once, on a summer night, and we found out why it mattered.

Posted by: uncle frogy | June 30, 2009 2:29 PM

I do not have any of the figures but I do have some questions about the cost of energy production
Looks to me that we never have taken the whole cost of almost anything we have done into consideration. By whole cost I mean as an example we have not considered what the cost of lumber production and hydro power development in the north west really is, the “mitigation” of the environmental damage is not considered, lose of salmon is there a way to estimate how much fish production was lost and what $ value it would have or the overall damage to watershed would be in to days dollars. Our use of carbon fuels has had a long term cost that was just not considered when we went from charcoal to coke and coal though it did change what we were doing with the forests. The long tern cost it turns out is global warming.
So I want to know what are the long-term cost of what we are thinking of doing.
What are the long term costs of extraction of nuclear fuel including the negative costs of radiation and the environmental clean up of the mine sites.
We do have actual records of design and construction costs estimates for existing projects and estimates for proposed but not completed projects to analyze.
We do have cost of operation of existing power plants.
What are the costs of De-commissioning the plants when they reach the end of their operational life span? What do we do with them afterwords?
What is the cost of long term storage of “spent fuel”. Where do we put it and for how long?
As I understand it we will have to keep that same spent fuel longer that the “age of the earth” (6000ys)
What have we ever done that would indicate that we could maintain anything for even a few hundred years let alone the millennium we would require to keep the radioactive components of the “waste stream” out of the biosphere.
My guess is that if every thing was considered into the cost that bees wax candles would be cheaper than any known nuclear reactor power production.
Do we want to initiate some kind of a “radioactive priesthood” to watch over this dangerous waste for thousands of years ?
The only way we can make nuclear power cost competitive is with government and society as a whole to subsidize much of the “external” costs. The benefits IE profits go to the builders, owners and operators of the plants today while society pays for the long term costs.
If that is the deal lets put it in writing up front on the first page not in small print on the last of some later addendum.

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 2:30 PM

Stephen Wells,

I hope the next solar cycle is weak, not in order to reduce global warming, but for the advancement of the science. We don't have modern instrumentation on a weak solar cycle, we need to know what one really is. It would shed light on solar variability and solar coupling to the climate. The models may need such data in order to start getting things right.

"AG, just noting again that your economic and social models have far worse validation than current climate models do."

None are faring particularly well right now. Economic models don't have much credibility and there are continual arguments over whether to incorporate nonlinear feedbacks. Fortunately my social model is roughly approximated by the what the US constitutional system should be, so in terms of real practicallity it is well ahead of fanciful social systems like anarchism. But all are nonlinear dynamic systems, so we should require demonstrated skill, before giving the models any cred.

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 2:46 PM

Dale Husband,

"Bullshit! It is never too late to examine the historical records of past measurements, as long as they exist. That's obviously what I meant, so anyone who knows how to access the data can do it. Why won't you? Because you are stonewalling."

Modern instrumentation data on the Sun only exists for a few decades, and certainly not for the beginning of the 20th century. Ocean data on anything more than surface data are practically non-existent from that time.

"Also, we have been measuring sunspots, strong indicators of solar activity, for several centuries. So you are lying now!"

Slap your bottom. You haven't read the literature at all have you? You might want to try Foukal:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7108/full/nature05072.html

Even over this modern data regime, models incorporating more than just sunspots can only explain about 80% of the variation of solar irradiance. Who knows how well they will do in a different solar regime than they have been tested against? This is why a solar minimum will be so welcome. Do I get to call you a liar back? It wouldn't be fair, because it means something when I say it, I can back it up. Don't panic the world isn't ending tomorrow, you have time to familiarize yourself with some of the literature. You can start with that link to prior discussions, don't assume you've done any original thinking on this.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 30, 2009 2:57 PM

AG,

Given you admit you are not a climate scientist, why do you keep insisting you know better than the overwhelming majority of such scientists ?

Unless you have some credentials in the field it is hard to see just how you are qualified to arrive at a decision at such varience from the experts. Your continued insistance that you are right, and thousands of experts in the field are wrong smacks of an ego out of control.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 30, 2009 3:10 PM

"No, those costs should be fully funded, but they aren't the problematic costs"

How can they be funded when we simply do not know what the future costs will be ?

It is clear that you simply have no concept of the timescales involved here. Nuclear power will generate radioactive waste that will be dangerous for thousands of years. Just how do you propose that is funded ? Do you really think the political bodies currently responsible for radioactive waste will even be around in a thousand years ?

Posted by: Watchman | June 30, 2009 3:21 PM

Even "thousands" is understating the reality.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 30, 2009 3:27 PM

"Sorry, "climate science" is not string theory. It is definitely harder to do than it is to criticise. But it is not particularly hard to understand. Perhaps you should take the time."

You still have not stated what makes you more qualified to detirmine the validity of AGW than the experts in the field. I know why you have refused to answer - you are not. Your exhibit all the hallmarks of the creationist mentality, including the lack of honesty all too often found in creationists.

You are simply lying becuase you hate the idea that your political dogma is at a loss to deal with AGW. You are the kin of Ken Ham, only with even less ability.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | June 30, 2009 3:34 PM

"If the future generations decide to spend it on something else, well they will probably either be more capable and wealthy than us or more primitive."

How much will it cost in total to store radioactive waste for 10,000 years ?

What political bodies will be around in 10,000 years time.

And what right do you have to pass the costs of your pollution on to your anscestors ? I thought you considered yourself a libertarian ? What kind of libertarian imposes costs on others for 10,000 years ?

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 3:38 PM

Matt Penfold,

You are just trying to switch the burden. There is a reason no one here can defend the IPCC statement, it is because the IPCC wasn't able to make the case themselves, and subsequent publications have made that even more clear. The reason you and the others can't defend the IPCC conclusion, is not because it is string theory too difficult for you to comprehend, but because the case doesn't hold together, the models are not ready.

Posted by: LanceR, JSG | June 30, 2009 3:43 PM

So that SUPPORTS my position! Why did you even give it to me?

Incompetence? Just guessing here...

Inability to read for comprehension would answer the question, too, I suppose.

Ideological bias would also be sufficient.

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 4:00 PM

Dale Husband,

I'm glad you read the paper. Foukal is not the first scientist to draw conclusions about the climate system based upon simple linear correlations:

"The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years"

I agree with this statement completely. But I would also add that the CO2 variations are also too small to have accelerated global warming over the past 30 years, or to explain the mid-century cooling, during a period when CO2 was increasing. The missing components are aerosols and particulates.

This is where Foukal goes beyond anything justified by the information reviewed in his paper:

"this new understanding indicates that brightening of the Sun is unlikely to have had a significant influence on global warming since the seventeenth century"

He simply doesn't know whether the observations made during the grand maximum will apply during other solar regimes. Those same models have completely missed what is happening here at the prolonged onset of cycle 24. So even while he extrapolates beyond the evidence in the above statement, he at least admits some of what he doesn't know:

"Additional climate forcing by changes in the Sun's output of ultraviolet light, and of magnetized plasmas, cannot be ruled out. The suggested mechanisms are, however, too complex to evaluate meaningfully at present."

To understand the competing solar hypothesis, you need to understand how poorly understood solar variation is. The IPCC report was written after Foukal's paper and still admitted a factor of two possible error in the estimate of solar variation. Solar variation still has a lot more explanatory power of the paleoclimate than can be accounted for by current understanding. It is a known problem in the science. You need to understand climate commitment and how the oceans could take decades and centuries to respond to a new level of forcing. Solar activity increased over the first half of the 20th century and then maintained (coincidentally?) an unusually high level of activity in the latter half of the 20th century, much like a burner that had been turned up and continued to supply energy to a non-equalibrium system.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | June 30, 2009 4:15 PM

AG, Jeez, once again, you are misrepresenting the science. Find a peer-reviewed mainstream scientific study that sets sensitivity at less than 2 degrees per doubling AND produces an Earthlike climate.

You can raise the boogeyman of nonlinearity all you want. The fact is that the GCM reproduce the main features of Earth's climate. Last time you pulled this stunt, I never even had to go look up a reference of my own. Your own references contradicted your position.

The reality of the climate threat has been established at the 90% CL. Don't believe me? Fine, find a professional association of scientists that dissents from the consensus position. Or find a National Academy of sciences that dissents. You can't. That is why it is called consensus.

Or perhaps you'd care to tell us how your strategies of cherrypicking results and taking them out of context differs from, oh, say the Discover Institute?

Posted by: africangenesis | June 30, 2009 4:35 PM

a ray in dilbert space,

"The fact is that the GCM reproduce the main features of Earth's climate. Last time you pulled this stunt, I never even had to go look up a reference of my own."

It was an education for you wasn't it? I don't recall being thanked. The fact that GCM's reproduce the main features of the Earth's climate is irrelevant to the task at hand of attributing 0.8W/m^2 of energy imbalance, since the models don't reproduce the surface albedo feedback, precipitation, and response to the solar cycle observed during the recent warming. You and others are seemingly impressed that:

"Your own references contradicted your position. "

What should be just as impressive is that the same references supported my position and documented problems larger than the recent energy imbalance of interest. The overriding position of the authors should make their results that I rely upon all the more credible. When I see a result claimed, I look for its basis in the publication.

Interestingly Foukal's conclusion about 1700 and the Maunder Minimum in the review paper cites his own work and appears to be model based. This would have been before the studies documenting the inability of the models to reproduce the amplitude of the solar response were published. I need to get the full text to confirm this.

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 30, 2009 4:51 PM

Most are physicists, geophysicists, mathmaticians or computer scientists, they are only "climate scientists" in the sense that they have been doing modeling, and there is no indication that they are from the cream of the physicist crop. You should read some of their papers. You only get to "thousands" if you include the specialists in particular data and proxies, who don't have any more right to an opinion on the validity of the models than you or I - Africangenesis

The usual crap from AG. Climate scientists are indeed from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, as of course they should be, but the modelers collaborate continuously with the empirical scientists, who understand the models far, far better than arrogant shits like AG, who until recently didn't even know the difference between a physical model and a physically-based model. AG recently suggested that if the Himalayan glaciers melt, the resulting lack of water for agriculture for well over a billion people could be dealt with by building dams. In a remote, mountainous earthquake zone. When I queried this, it was clear he had no data or study to suggest this would even be possible - he was just repeating a denialist trope. In the context of ocean acidification, he referred me, apparently in all seriousness, to a paper in the denialists' house journal Energy and Environment, which claimed that the increase in atmospheric CO2 was not due to the burning of fossil fuels! He also thought the acidity of the ocean wouldn't rise because warmer seas would hold less CO2, it not having occurred to him that those studying the problem of ocean acidification might have taken this (small) effect into account. I could go on.

Simply, AG hates the fact that large-scale government interference with or overriding of markets is necessary in the face of the dangers posed by greenhouse gases. He will grasp at any straw, bury his head in any pile of sand, to avoid facing up to the collapse of his idiotic market-worshipping ideology.

Posted by: DuckPhup | June 30, 2009 4:53 PM

africangenesis...

"Fortunately my social model is roughly approximated by the what the US constitutional system should be, so in terms of real practicallity it is well ahead of fanciful social systems like anarchism."

Hari Seldon? Is that you, Hari?

Posted by: Julian | June 30, 2009 5:03 PM

So far no government has shown the courage or mettle to implement an across-the-board carbon tax to bring energy costs more in line with the total expense of using carbon energy production. At this point, mitigation of how bad things will be in 50 years is really all we can hope for. Given how irrational the debate has become in our own country, I hold little hope for the sort of concerted, global effort that is needed to staunch this problem.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | June 30, 2009 5:08 PM

Simply, AG hates the fact that large-scale government interference with or overriding of markets is necessary in the face of the dangers posed by greenhouse gases. He will grasp at any straw, bury his head in any pile of sand, to avoid facing up to the collapse of his idiotic market-worshipping ideology.

This is the situation with the vast majority of AGW deniers. It's not so much the science they object to (most of them, like AG, don't understand the science*) but the social and economic ramifications of AGW.

*In fairness, I don't understand most of the science myself. But I'm willing to accept that the consenus of climatologists is for AGW.

Posted by: Steve Bloom | June 30, 2009 5:15 PM

The best summary of the current science and its main implications is Hansen et al's recent "Target CO2" paper. It's not a hard read since the difficult material is shuffled off into a supplement. The abstract:

"Paleoclimate data show that climate sensitivity is ~3°C for doubled CO2, including only fast feedback processes. Equilibrium sensitivity, including slower surface albedo feedbacks, is ~6°C for doubled CO2 for the range of climate states between glacial conditions and ice-free Antarctica. Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, the planet being nearly ice-free until CO2 fell to 450±100 ppm; barring prompt policy changes, that critical level will be passed, in the opposite direction, within decades. If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that. The largest uncertainty in the target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings. An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects."

Posted by: Stephen Wells | June 30, 2009 5:17 PM

If I have this straight, AG now claims that climate models don't successfully match past climate data which he also claims does not exist. Colour me somewhat bemused.

Still, at least he displays a little variation; a few months ago it was all "30%" and now it's all "0.8W/m^2". What'll it be in autumn? I suggest "one-seventh".

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 30, 2009 5:19 PM

I wonder how many of those bleating that "political correctness" means that "no-one will discuss population":
(a) Notice that their number undermines their claim
(b) Know that: the rate of population growth has roughly halved (from 2.4% p.a. to 1.2% p.a.) since the 1960s; the rate of growth continues to fall in almost all countries; population growth has probably been slightly sublinear since the mid-90s; almost all states with rapid population growth have government policies to halt or reduce it; and global population is projected to peak around mid-century?
The facts listed under (b) are readily available, but few population-bleaters have ever bothered to discover them.

Posted by: Knockgoats | June 30, 2009 5:26 PM

I guess I'd think that CO2 was a big bugaboo if CO2 levels now were higher than they have ever been in the past. I'm pretty sure that's not true. - jcollum

I guess you're a prize idiot. Do you really think that the climate scientists who are warning of the enormous dangers of rising CO2 levels don't know that levels were higher in the distant past? The point is, fuckwit, that current life, and human civilisation, are adapted to the current levels of CO2, and the resulting temperatures. Rapid changes to those levels will mean flooding of large coastal areas and vast disruption to agricultural production and to fisheries, on top of all the other ways human activity is damaging the environment.

Posted by: TheBlackCat | June 30, 2009 5:35 PM

@ jcollum: Yes, CO2 levels have been higher in the past. Of course, humans weren't around back then, and the global climate was radically different (little or not polar ice caps, for instance). Human society is based on a fairly stable global climate that has existed since around the end of the last ice age. All of our civilizations have existed since then. That climate is changing, and if past warming trends are any indication it is changing into something substantially different than what our society has become dependent on.

And I am not sure why you cited that article. All it says is that there are other threats in addition to greenhouses gasses. That is well-known. For instance increased temperatures could lead to a melting of methane hydrate fields, which would pump enormous amounts of methane into the atmosphere (some think that this contributed substantially to the catastrophic warming mentioned in the article, which resulted in the worst mass extinction since the dinosaurs died out).

Posted by: Dale Husband | June 30, 2009 5:39 PM

Yes, CO2 levels hundreds of millions of years ago were higher than today. But also, the Sun was cooler! And the Earth was warmer in prehistoric times, with higher ocean levels and life forms adapted to that environment. Our civilization is so highly adapted to the climate of the late 20th Century that any significant change, either of warming or of cooling, would result in massive economic damage all over the world. Isn't that obvious?!

Posted by: Stephen Wells | June 30, 2009 5:46 PM

@148: he's also a "madscientist" who read, once, in high school, that Tesla's AC system beat Edison's DC system for local electricity supply, and now laughs hysterically at the concept of a long-distance HVDC supply system, even though that technology already exists.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | June 30, 2009 6:03 PM

AG, Do we really need to go through this again?

I know that you don't dispute that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

Do you dispute that the greenhouse effect raises Earth's temperature 33 degrees C over what it would be with no atmosphere?

Do you dispute that 7 of those 33 degrees are due to CO2?

Do you dispute that CO2 forcing increases logarithmically in CO2 concentration?

OK, let's stop here and look at the implications of your answers. Both of these points are entirely uncontroversial. There are laboratory measurements that support them, and it's nearly impossible to get an Earthlike climate if you fon't buy into these facts. No one has ever produced any convincing arguments that suggest otherwise.

As a simple back of the envelope estimate would put sensitivity at (7 degrees)*LN(2)=4.85 degrees per doubling--that's essentially what Arrhenius got. When you refine the calculation for our current temperature regime, you get closer to 3 degrees per doubling. However, it's actually very hard to get enough negative feedback that suddenly kicks in at our particular temperature range that you could get down to 2 degrees per doubling.

So, it seems to me that your task is to either tell us why you think everything about climate science is wrong--or--come up with a significant negative feedback specific to our temperature range.

I'll save you some trouble. Don't bother with Lindzen's latest attempt to resurrect his Iris--it was an artifact of the dataset he used--one uncorrected for satellite drag. And don't bother with Spencer's tripe, which no longer even seems to have a projection onto the real axis.

And then for extra credit, you can tell us why you think the mean ol' climate scientists are all conspiring against the capitalist system.

Posted by: AnneH | June 30, 2009 6:11 PM

I agree with Molina that there is no single solution. It will take many steps to reduce AGW.

One part of the solution is storing carbon by adding charcoal to soil. Cornell University is currently studying Terra Preta-
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/research/terra%20preta/terrapretamain.html
-which is the soil left behind by Pre-Columbian Amazon Basin civilizations. They added charcoal to soil to sustain its fertility. The charcoal is still there, even after 500 to a 1000 years, so it's obvious that once carbon, in the form of charcoal, is incorporated into soil, that carbon stays sequestered in the soil. It's much more technologically feasible than trying to store CO2 gas.

It also has a cascade effect. Plants in charcoal-enriched soil grow larger and faster, pulling even more CO2 out of the atmosphere. (My son's science fair project was based on this idea. His experiment was a simplified version of this:
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/taxonomy/term/499 )

For more information, plug 'terra preta' and 'biochar' into a search engine.

My (likely excessively optimistic) idea: Have carbon-emitting industries 'trade' for the right to emit carbon by paying the expenses (production of the charcoal and transportation to farms) of adding charcoal to soil for farmers in their area. If a factory produces x tons of CO2, then they pay for the production and transport of x tons of charcoal. The farmer benefits because his crops grow better. The rest of us benefit because, at worst, it is a carbon-neutral transaction, and at best, it is carbon-negative.

Posted by: Douglas McClean | June 30, 2009 6:19 PM

MadScientist, at #46 made the claim that "the amount of steel and copper used to produce [41 wind turbines] far exceeds what goes into a coal-fired plant."

This may well be true as far as copper, but I am very doubtful of its accuracy about steel. Just the rails used to supply the plant almost certainly use more steel. Then there are the rail cars to supply that plant. Then there is that plant's share of the coal mining equipment, etc, etc. Is this claim based on counting just the boiler and turbine shaft?

Posted by: Desert Rat | June 30, 2009 7:20 PM

I'd like to touch on the issue of radioactive waste, here, since it seems to be coming up quite a bit. I should preface this by saying I think nuclear power is a good idea, albeit not the best one.

To understand the problem, first you need to know a little bit about types of nuclear radiation and what exactly nuclear waste is. I'm sure a lot of the regulars here know these things, but I'd just like to put it out there for those who don't.

There are three types of "hard" radiation that you get from radioisotopes, gamma, beta, and alpha. Gamma is a very (very!) energetic photon released directly from the nucleus, usually as it restabilizes after undergoing a nuclear reaction, kind of like an electron falling to a lower orbital kicks out a photon, only with much more energy since we're talking about nuclear reorganization. Gamma radiation can also be produced when a positron is emitted and collides with an electron, which brings us to beta radiation. beta radiation is highly energetic electrons or positrons emitted from the nucleus as protons and neutrons switch roles. A positive beta particle is generally very short lived, since it's antimatter, and ends up producing gamma rays. And, finally, there's alpha, which is basically doubly ionized helium nucleus moving with a fair amount of kinetic energy. It will eventually rob a couple electrons from somewhere and settle down to become helium, but this robbing of electrons is not something you want to have happening in the general vicinity of your DNA. In terms of penetrating power, they go in that order: gamma, beta, alpha. Especially high energy gamma can go through several feet of concrete, beta is stopped by modest amounts of matter, or a whole lot of gas, and alpha particles are stopped cold by a mere five centimeters or so of air, or a very thin layer of anything more substantial.

Gamma rays are released during active nuclear reactions, and for a short while afterward from spent fuel. This cooling down of spent fuel takes a matter of a year or two, after which it's mostly an alpha emitter, just as the uranium was to begin with. So, Tim (I think it was) up thread is exactly right. It's the short lived stuff, and, I would add, still energized fuel in its cooling down phase, which is what is really dangerous. Alpha emitters are pretty innocuous. There were probably some weak ones in the glass of water you had today. But, not much, hopefully. They're innocuous, but only as long as they stay outside the body. If vaporized and inhaled, or dissolved and ingested, they can be very dangerous because now you've got these doubly ionized particles ripping electrons out of your living tissue instead of being stopped by your first dead layer of skin cells. Alpha emitters, including heavy duty ones like uranium or plutonium, are actually safe to handle, although you probably want to wear gloves to avoid getting a trace of it on you and accidentally ingesting it. I handled these materials on a regular basis, decades ago, and I'm no worse for it. So, this is what most of the long lived isotopes from nuclear waste are: alpha emitters which are pretty much safe as long as you don't eat them.

So, simple answer: vitrify the waste (mix it with sand, cast it into glass) and chuck in in a hole, cover the hole and walk away. Done. If mixed down enough, and well-vitrified, a pit full of this stuff is no more dangerous than the uranium containing ore that was there to begin with, and could actually be safer, since it's now enmeshed in a glass matrix which is very good at keeping heavy metals from migrating into water, or even fairly strong acids.

This, of course, is done after the spent fuel rods have been allowed to cool down. You don't want to handle it, except by remote controlled robot, prior to this. Many French and Japanese reactor designs have storage pits built into the containment building for exactly this purpose. Then, once every several decades, the whole reactor can be taken offline, the cooled fuel removed, and new sets of fuel rods installed and ready to be swapped out for the next several decades of operation.

Now, from the cooled down fuel, there are several things that can be done, which vary in safety. They can simply be milled, vitrified, and disposed of, or they can be reprocessed for remaining fuel, and isotopes created in the reaction which can themselves be used for fuel. They can also be treated with neutron bombardment to break down the remaining short lived isotopes, something which is very popular in France. This leaves you with even less active waste going into the vitrification process. The problem with chemical reprocessing is that this involves turning the materials into liquid chemical extracts, and liquids have a way of seeping away when handled on an industrial scale. So, it's not without its risks, but without reprocessing, nuclear power will only meet human needs for a couple hundred years. So, this is really the tricky part. If you do it, it's a little touchy, plus it involves separating out isotopes which can be used as weapons, and if you don't do it, fuel supplies are limited, and costs go up since you're vitrifying a larger amount of material. I should add that the US does no reprocessing and no vitrification. We put whole fuel rod assemblies into monitored and retrievable storage. This is a compromise "solution" since no one was happy with mass vitrification and permanent burial. It's also the dumbest thing you can do with nuclear waste since it remains in concentrated and forms and in storage containers that are necessarily less secure than sealing it in a tomb in the form of glass pellets due to the requirement of retrievability. If you can get in to get at the stuff, well... it can get out.

So, we've essentially let lack of clear thinking rule the day when it comes to nuclear waste, and are sitting here with lots and lots of widespread storage areas, with metallic or metal oxide materials, and associated liquids, all in "temporary" storage systems instead of biting the bullet and investing in a good, well-controlled reprocessing system, vitrification, and permanent burial.

So, it's not actually true that we don't know what to do with nuclear waste. There's actually a pretty good scientific consensus on it, at least among nuclear physicist and nuclear engineers, but there isn't good agreement across the board, and there isn't support politically for the tough decisions like "let's put it all in a big hole in Nevada" or "let's truck it all to New Mexico and reprocess it" or something like that which would actually make the risk much lower and give us a swafe system for handling it.

Well, by safe I mean a hell of a lot safer than what we're doing now, and, arguably, safer than continuing to burn incredible amounts of fossil fuels, spew CO2 into the atmosphere, and dump tons and tons of fly ash all over the damn place. Interesting fact: fly ash from coal plants is the number one source of widespread radioactive contamination.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | June 30, 2009 7:40 PM

Desert Rat, while I agree that vitrification is a part of the answer, the amount of material you are talking about to dilute the fuel--expecially if we all get 80% of our energy from nukes is absolutely huge, as is the area devoted to dumping. Finding such a large, geologically stable area is one of the biggest challenges.
The US thought they'd found one in Yucky Mountain. Turns out the area was riddled with little inactive faults. Right now, the Swedes seem to have the only viable disposal plan, and it probably can't be scaled up much more than it is now.

I regretfully agree that nukes may be needed, but they're far, far behind conservation and renewables (and even CCS if it ever works) in desirability.

Posted by: Francis | June 30, 2009 7:54 PM

I don't know a d*mn thing about climate change except what I've read on RealClimate and related websites. But I do know a lot about water, especially the use of water in California.

Now, people like Jim Manzi, who appear to worship the maximization of GDP above all other values, will argue that the lowest-cost course of action is for California to let climate change occur, and mitigate the impacts by building more dams, more off-stream above-ground storage and more aquifer storage and recovery systems.

To which my only reply is he's nuts. First, he simply assumes that the political will exists to incur the financial costs of building the infrastructure to replace what nature used to provide. (In California, the massive snowpack serves as a series of enormous reservoirs. Water use across the state operates on the assumption that melt patterns will not vary much from year to year. Climate change is challenging that assumption.) As any idiot with an internet connection knows, California's existing budget is heading towards disaster. The political will to borrow several tens of billions of dollars to build new water infrastructure is ... lacking.

Second, he assumes that Californians will be willing to accept the tradeoffs involved in increasing the management of rivers. Not surprisingly, many Californians believe that the existing management regime of the state's rivers is already excessive, and would like to see more rivers restored to their historic nature.

Third, he simply assumes away the unknown but likely environmental costs -- the destruction of pine forests due to drought and pine bark beetle stress, the displacement of native species by invasives that are more tolerant of the new environment, the loss of recreational and even commercial fisheries, etc.

So why should anyone care about the impact of climate change on California? Well, for one, it's one of the largest economies in the world, much larger than any other state. And two, it's a breadbasket of high-value crops (fruits, nuts, vegetables, lettuce, etc.) and of low-value crops (alfalfa) that, among other things, keep the cost of meat affordable.

Remember the food contamination cases out of China? I used to think that the California ag. industry over-played the national security argument regarding the importance of a domestic food industry. Now, I'm not so sure. I like knowing my food is safe.

Posted by: MadScientist | June 30, 2009 9:03 PM

@stephen wells: Ooh, I'm ignorant of issues of power transmission! Well, for your information I learned everything I know of power transmission from the same source as you - your wikipedia link. I also learned everything I need to know of physics from your same source - Wile E. Coyote cartoons.

I am well aware of transmission and conversion issues. Unfortunately your wiki link has no useful information on conversion losses for HVDC, but it must be huge or else equipment incredibly expensive if the power grid insists on the AC transmission and DC transmission is limited to very long runs. Would you care to provide a decent analysis instead of screaming about how ignorant I am and how "X is doing this, so it must be fantastic"?

Posted by: MadScientist | June 30, 2009 9:14 PM

@John M: Unfortunately it is not always the case that high temperature = low humidity. Even in Arizona where that is generally true, during the few weeks of the monsoon it's very hot and ridiculously humid; an air conditioner or a dehumidifier are useful. There are other places I've been where high temperatures = very high humidity almost half the time (and the rest of the time high temp = extremely high fire risk).

Posted by: Parvius | June 30, 2009 9:41 PM

It's too bad Canada is set to give up on the nuclear game. Here we have the CANDU reactor, sanely built from the ground up for generating power for people rather than for aircraft carriers (upon which all PWR designs are based). Our waste decays to ore-like levels in about 500 years, since we don't enrich the uranium first, and the CANDU reactor uses the fuel more efficiently. It can also use existing nuclear waste, MOX, and/or thorium as fuel if we ever run out of uranium. The new design is also fairly cheap, at least on paper: only $10 billion CAD for 2 1100 MW reactors, all included. New designs promise to reduce the capital cost by 40%. Our fuel is also much less expensive, since we avoid the enrichment process. However, political games are afoot in Canada, and people still fear that word 'nuclear', so the new reactors aren't going to be built at home (the project was cancelled yesterday). Since no one will buy a reactor that the home country won't build, the world's all but lost a damn fine reactor design.

Posted by: MadScientist | June 30, 2009 10:04 PM

@Lynna: The power which can be generated by a particular dam depends on the hydrostatic pressure (basically how high the water is) and the attainable flow rates. As old turbines age and need replacement there is a very good chance they'll be replaced with the best available which can be fitted, but the gains will only be a very small component of the CO2 issue. Hydroelectric power is an excellent source; unfortunately it is also very limited.

Posted by: John Morales | June 30, 2009 10:30 PM

'madscientist' addresses KnockGoats:

... many people like you who seem to have a poor understanding of science ...

Evidence for this ad-hominem, please? Because I consider that KG's understanding of science likely exceeds my own, and my own is better than 'poor'.

Posted by: MadScientist | June 30, 2009 11:26 PM

@John Morales: It's not an ad-hominem; KG hasn't demonstrated any competent ability to reason, is not presenting reasoned views, and is not presenting credible evidence. He's happy to say other people are "spouting garbage" etc but really doesn't substantiate his claims or contribute to an intelligent conversation.

Posted by: Tristan | June 30, 2009 11:55 PM

MadScientist @162:

A 200W panel is about 1.5x1m and weighs about 18.5kg. In ideal conditions our 185M panels will take up about 27km^2 and weigh a total of 3.4 million metric tons

... or, to put it another way, the mass of 20-30 moderately-sized skyscrapers.

Posted by: Desert Rat | July 1, 2009 12:15 AM

>4.6MMT glass per year for the silicon PV industry alone.

Which is less than 7 percent of the total global output, and only slightly more float glass than what China typically adds in additional capacity in a single year.

We live on a ball of rock the outer 10-20 miles of which is 70% silica. So, I don't see why there's a problem with using a lot of these materials. It's simply not an especially limited supply, and if there is more demand for glass for the solar industry, added production capacity can be developed quite easily. As for the mounting structure, well, rooftops come to mind rather quickly as a good place to put them. You don't need a complex or heavy system, usually it's just simple cleats to attach to the roof and risers to adjust the angle. Mounting panels isn't rocket science. And, how much roof space is there in this country? A hell of a lot more than 27 square kilometers, that's for sure.

Posted by: John Morales | July 1, 2009 12:39 AM

I'm all for nuclear and wind, not to mention tidal, but I reckon solar power satellites & rectenna farms would be a hugely worthwhile investment.

(shame about their vulnerability against malicious attack, though)

Posted by: OurSally | July 1, 2009 3:21 AM

Reading these posts, and many others like them, only one fact becomes clear:

These clever and informed people have been worrying the problem to death, but they still don't know what's going on. That's why they are arguing so passionately. Some of you are pro AGW, some against, but neither side seems to be able to give us a 100%, absolute, cast-iron argument. You need to do more homework and less shouting.

I also postulate a theory about all this taxing of carbon emissions. The only effect it will have is to take money from me (taxpayer and consumer) and to give it to friends of the politicians. Am I right?

Posted by: Stephen Wells | July 1, 2009 4:13 AM

So madscientist has gone from claiming that the Laws of Physics mean HVDC can't ever work, to admitting that he doesn't know anything on the subject and wasn't even aware that HVDC systems already exist. That was amusing.

Posted by: John Morales | July 1, 2009 5:50 AM

MadScientist,

US power generation in 1998: ~370GW worth of generation capacity operating 100% of the time. (I apologize for the ancient figures; I haven't got time to spend hunting down the latest)

I recommend Wolfram Alpha if you want to save time for that type of query. Its information base is curated.

Posted by: africangenesis | July 1, 2009 6:42 AM

a ray in dilbert space,

Do you have cites for the attribution of 7 degrees C of the total GHG effect to CO2, and for your criticisms of Lindzen's and Spenser's most recent works?

Perhaps your back of the envelop calculation of CO2 sensitivity falters once we reach temperatures where the feedbacks of the water cycle become more active.

regards

Posted by: John Morales | July 1, 2009 8:34 AM

Cathal, your concern is noted.

Posted by: llewelly | July 1, 2009 10:42 AM

HankHenry | June 30, 2009 11:56 AM:

What I can't swallow is that we know that 450 ppm (for example) would be stark raving mad.

The peaks are warm interglacials with climates similar to that of the past 9000 years.

The troughs are glacial periods during which most of N. America and much of Europe was covered with ice sheets.

Notice that CO2 levels during warm interglacials peak between about 260 ppm and 300 ppm . The troughs are all about 200 ppm. For most of the history of human civilization - from about 9000 BCE to 1750 ACE - CO2 stayed at about 275 ppm. At 200 ppm ice covers all of Canada. At 275 ppm civilization flourishes. Today CO2 concentrations are at 387 ppm.

Fortunately global average surface temperature as a function of CO2 roughly follows a log function (for CO2 levels between about 100 ppm and 1000 ppm). Divide 275 ppm by 200 ppm. 1.375 . Divide 387 ppm by 200 ppm . 1.4

In the long run - the difference between where the climate would stabilize if CO2 stabilized at 387 ppm (where CO2 is now) and where it was for all of human civilization, is roughly equivalent to the difference between a major glaciation and the climate that enabled human civilization.

Fortunately it takes a long time for the oceans to warm, the ice to melt, and in general for the climate to respond to the huge increase in CO2. But if CO2 levels stay where they are now for the time necessary for the ice sheets to equabrilate, the resulting climate will differ as much from the current climate as much as the current climate differs from the climate of the most recent major glaciation.

To look at this another way - the previous interglacial - called the Eemian - had CO2 levels of about 290 - 300 ppm. And sea levels 4 - 6 meters higher than present. The Greenland ice sheet contains enough ice to raise sea levels by about 7 meters. 300 ppm can melt the equivalent of 70% of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Fortunately - that would probably take thousands of years. (But maybe only hundreds - not much is known about how ice sheets melt.)

David Marjanovic* says "450 ppm is stark raving mad." It may or may not be mad. But it certainly comes with sea levels many meters higher, jet streams radically displaced toward the poles, much drier mid-latitudes, and numerous other changes. Unless a near-future generation sucks hundreds of gigatons of carbon back out of the atmosphere.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | July 1, 2009 10:48 AM

GWIAS still can't cite the peer reviewed scientific literature. And he wonders why we don't take him seriously?
*waggles fingers bye at GWAIS*

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | July 1, 2009 11:52 AM

Spence,
First, Cohn, Montonari and Koutsoyiannis are not climate scientists, but rather hydrologists. Second, Koutsoyiannis ouvre looked at, what was it, all of 3 stations. None of the work poses any particular challenges to the consensus. Let us know when you have something real.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | July 1, 2009 12:27 PM

Ah, I thought this thread suddenly smelled better. All of GWIAS's posts have been fumigated.

Thanks, PZ.

Posted by: Knockgoats | July 1, 2009 12:28 PM

"Loopy Lovelock"? You obviously know absolutely nothing of the man. Even though I don't agree on many of his views, I have never seen the slightest evidence for calling him loopy. - MadScientist

The "Gaia" woo. The claim that "Modern nuclear power stations are useless for making bombs". The dismissal of CFC damage to the ozone layer and of industrial pollution in general as of little import in his original 1979 Gaia book. The current stupid and irresponsible claim that catastrophic AGW is already inevitable. Loopy as they come.

Exactly as you are doing, on the issue where their findings don't suit you. You haven't given a single citation for your claims about either the contribution nuclear power can make, the near-uselessness of wind and solar-PV, or the politicisation of IPCC WGIII. We're all just supposed to take it on your authority. Pfft.

Posted by: Spence | July 1, 2009 1:36 PM

a_ray_in_dilbert_space,
Thanks for the reply. Only I'm not quite sure where you are going with it.
"First, Cohn, Montonari and Koutsoyiannis are not climate scientists, but rather hydrologists."
This line of reasoning is so bad I'm not even sure where to start in illustrating the flawed reasoning. The original question was: are the papers by these scientists pseudoscience? I don't think you can determine that from their background. I don't care whether they are hydrologists, climate scientists, chemists (like Molina), patent clerks or even garbage men. Whether their work is pseudoscience is determined solely by the work, not what badge they wear.

Just to drive home how bad this line of reasoning really is: (1) the three people I quoted are actively researching and publishing on climate science (2) many other people researching climate science are not technically "climate scientists", e.g. James Hansen (physics) or Gavin Schmidt (mathematics), would you apply the same standard here, (3) hydrology is an absolutely essential component of climate - think clouds, think precipitation, think water vapour - all areas where these guys have specific expertise.

"Second, Koutsoyiannis ouvre looked at, what was it, all of 3 stations."
OK, this is better, at least we are addressing some of their work now, even though you are wide of the mark. You are referring to Koutsoyiannis et al 2008, just one of many skeptical papers published by the Itia group on climate science. It is perhaps one of the most publicised, but certainly not the only paper (nor to my mind, the most profound, although it does provide valuable evidence falsifying aspects of the consensus view). Can I suggest we start by you reading it? From your claim here (3 stations?) you are clearly not fully aware of the content. It is true that the paper was based on a small sample, which was recognised in the paper, due to the work being unfunded. It was based on eight stations, not three. For all stations, performance was worse at longer temporal scales than shorter scales. This is an important finding.

You should keep up to date though. The paper was extended in 2009 to cover an additional 55 stations. The results corroborated those of the original paper; modelling accuracy degrades, rather than improves, at "climatic" (30-year) time scales. So a total of 63 stations, rather than 3, only a factor of 21 out. There is another paper (presented at the 2009 EGU conference, in press) which further extends the study to spatial averaging.
"None of the work poses any particular challenges to the consensus."
Clearly, the works do not agree with the consensus. Whether they "challenge" the consensus is another matter and not the reason I raised the question. Since they disagree with the consensus, based on Mario Molina's statement, they must either be pseudoscience, or Mario's statement must be incorrect.
"Let us know when you have something real."
Let me know when you are actually aware of what these people have written - from the inaccuracies in your last post, you are clearly not aware. Then maybe we can move on to whether they constitute "pseudoscience" or not.

Posted by: Dale Husband | July 1, 2009 2:08 PM

Global Warming Is A Scam bullshits:

That so-called "consensus" DOES NOT EXIST. It is a fiction created out of whole cloth by the Warmista religionists, while simultaneously deriding as "cranks" any scientists who have the temerity to disagree with their dogma.

A prolonged controversy among scientists ends when definite evidence is found to support one side of the debate, but the evidence is so complex and laden with uncertainty that only a scientist or someone extremely well read and trained to judge the evidence, can make sense of it all.
The side that lost the debate includes members that are financed by powerful special interests (such as fundamentalist churches, fossil fuel companies, or Conservative legislators), who have a vested interest in one side winning or the appearance of a controversy continuing to influence the political process.
The losers of the debate withdraw from the mainstream scientific community and found several splinter groups to promote their alternative point of view. They do so not among scientists to have their questionable claims peer reviewed, but directly to the general public as FACTS.
Despite scientists in the mainstream community having dealt completely with all the possible objections to the issue in question, the dissenting side attempts to restart the controversy among the general public, not by asking legitimate questions, but by asserting that there is a conspiracy that caused them to lose the debate among mainsteam scientists. They then engage in fallacies that sound scientific but are not.
They appeal to the public for financial aid, and to spread their message via the internet and in other popular forums.
Which would you consider more credible? Ten organizations of 100 members each, that were founded less than ten years ago, including many members in two or more of these groups, which all have the same dogma; or one group that has over 100,000 members, no dogmas, and is over 100 years old? }}}

Just not in the way that you warm-mongers would have us believe, for everyone who has studied the issue knows that increases in CO2 don't lead increases in temperature, they follow them.

Never mind that the planet has been cooling for more than a decade, hurricane frequency is at an all-time low and Antarctic ice levels are at their highest in more than 30 years. Move on folks, nothing to see here.

Posted by: Knockgoats | July 1, 2009 2:25 PM

Spence,
You assign a scientist to a discipline by where they have published most of their peer-reviewed articles, not by what their PhD was in. Both Hansen and Schmidt have large numbers of such articles in recognised climate science journals: they are eminent climate scientists. Your three are all, quite clearly, hydrologists. Of course, their papers must be assessed on their merits. Their papers concern weather, not climate, going to some lengths to prove that climate models don't do what no-one has ever claimed they did.

Posted by: Knockgoats | July 1, 2009 2:36 PM

Hmm,

8.57: Africangenesis finally pushes PZ too far and is dungeoned.
8.59: "Spence" turns up, with, oddly, exactly the same views on AGW, and argument style, as africangenesis.

Just a coincidence, I'm sure. Not a "libertarian" by any chance are you, Spence? With strong anti-Palestinian views and a particular hatred of conscription? Just asking.

Posted by: Stu | July 1, 2009 2:47 PM

Spence, you're the one bringing up a paper that isn't even relevant -- whether with 5 or 100 stations:

"The answer to their effective question - are very local single realisations of weather coherent across observations and models? - is no, as anyone would have concluded from reading the IPCC report or the existing literature."

"it’s a shame Koutsoyiannis et al addressed a question whose answer was obvious and well known ahead of time instead."

I do agree that you've debunked Mario's premise. It should be changed to "there are no relevant denialist papers that are not pseudo-science".

Since you were aware of this critique, you are at the very least disingenious bringing up the paper. Or were you just interested in making a very narrow point against Mario in an attempt to avoid the larger issue?

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | July 1, 2009 3:02 PM

Spence, you claim "...many of the criticisms in the RealClimate article have been addressed in the subsequent papers..."

Would these be the unpublished papers? Let me know when they are published. In fact, let me know if somebody ever cites them.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | July 1, 2009 3:31 PM

Spence, I don't care why the frigging samples were small. Using small samples is at best unreliable and at worst cherry-picking.

And given that you are picking 3 authors out of hundreds and a couple of papers out of thousands, I can only assume cherry-picking is your MO as well.

For instance, how do your authors deal with the fact that the stratosphere is cooling simultaneously with tropospheric warming?

How do they account for the fact that CO2 is a known greenhouse gas with a sensitivity of ~3 degrees per doubling constrained 6 ways to Sunday?

Need I go on?

Scientific in principle? Well, it's not Intelligent Design, if that's what you mean, but it is certainly flawed. That's why it sits there like a turd on a New York sidewalk.

Posted by: Stu | July 1, 2009 4:38 PM

Holy crap, GWAIS is really setting new records for being tedious, repetitive and childish.

Really, really sad.

Posted by: Stu | July 1, 2009 4:58 PM

Now, who does that remind me of?

Don't tell me, it's on the tip of my tongue...

Posted by: Stu | July 1, 2009 6:31 PM

Thanks, you miserable little douche. Here come the IP range blocks and mandatory TypeKey sign-ins.

Posted by: Watchman | July 1, 2009 7:03 PM

So, all of you Warmistas, what is the optimal temperature of the planet?

What a stupid question. Why... it's 0K, of course!

Posted by: Watchman | July 1, 2009 7:17 PM

Actually, GWIAS, what is typical of deluded liars such as yourself is exemplified by your last comment. Can you figure out what that might be? C'mon. Use your head. You may be an obnoxious fool, but you're not stupid.

Posted by: Kseniya | July 1, 2009 9:24 PM

Global Warming Is A Scam Is a Spammer

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 1, 2009 9:32 PM

I wonder what GWIAS thinks he is accomplishing here beyond making people who hold his beliefs look like total fucking raving lunatics?

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 1, 2009 9:55 PM

Aww that's cute how he does that. He uses strike out to try and be clever where he can't with his own words.

cute.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 1, 2009 10:04 PM

The truth hurts, doesn't it Rev?

More little childish games?

Not really cute, but pathetic.

What's next? I know you are but what am I?

Run along little child.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | July 1, 2009 10:08 PM

Yawn, what a boring, boring troll. Couldn't make a cogent point if his life depended on it. He'll be gone when PZ wakes up. *waves bye-bye to troll*

Posted by: SC, OM | July 1, 2009 10:15 PM

Please don't feed the banned troll.

His comments will be deleted.

Posted by: Kseniya | July 1, 2009 10:21 PM

GWAIS shows his true colors once again - that is, mean-spirited and shallow, and unable to cope with the humiliation that is always brought on by the inevitable exposure of his lunatic ravings. Someone blows his bare-faced lies and distortions clean out of the water, and he goes ballistic. He's the poster-boy for nutflake conspiracy theorists. He can't even respond to Watchman's rebuttal of his inane "hurricane frequency is at an all-time low" claim.

But this is where we stop feeding the troll. Mustn't make too much extra work for PZ.

Posted by: SC, OM | July 1, 2009 10:33 PM

Sigh.

'Cada vez que alimentas a un troll, Dios mata un gatito.'

Just saw that. Hee!

Posted by: Kseniya | July 1, 2009 10:37 PM

Troll? I see no troll here. I'm waiting for Rev's music video of the night. Sven should be by at some point. Party time... teehee.

Posted by: John Morales | July 1, 2009 10:54 PM

Heh. Stupid troll puts $$$ into PZ's coffers.

I like that.

Posted by: SC, OM | July 1, 2009 11:02 PM

Mmmmmmmm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnIK7hSH2JM

Posted by: Rorschach | July 1, 2009 11:15 PM

I feel left out !!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPKDS5QP0Tc

Posted by: Kagato | July 1, 2009 11:32 PM

Invisible.

Posted by: MadScientist | July 2, 2009 6:51 AM

"Global warming is a scam" Oooo - now it's just a scam; I guess the alert was downgraded from "global conspiracy".

"It's not happening! The earth isn't getting warmer! Lalalalalalalalala!"

Other bits of wisdom from the past:

"The earth is flat"

"There is too a god! He told me so himself!"

"He'll never get that thing off the ground."

"There is civilization on Mars, not unlike our own but also very different."

"My god is better than your god."

"Don't be ridiculous; fission cannot be sustained to achieve an explosion."

"NASA never put people on the moon; they faked it all."

Oh, forget it - the list is endless.

Posted by: Stephen Wells | July 2, 2009 7:34 AM

If the consensus doesn't exist how can we mindlessly adhere to it? I'm all confused now.

Posted by: Watchman | July 2, 2009 9:13 AM

I didn't realize that GWAIS had been banned. (The memories of the last infestation are still too fresh.)

Janine: The New Pornographers! Most excellent! A pop song in 5/4 - now that's something you don't hear every day. Unless you're a Tull addict.

I love Neko. What's the next step backwards for a lover of Middle Cyclone? Perhaps Furnace Room Lullaby?

(I'll have you know that middle cyclone frequency is at an all-time high.)

Stephen, what is the optimal IQ for a global-warming denialist?

Posted by: Demetris Koutsoyiannis | July 5, 2009 5:07 AM

Spence, a_ray_in_dilbert_space, Knockgoats, Stu,

Thank you very much for using my and my colleagues' names in your discussions about what is scientific and what is pseudo-scientific. In my view, the climate change enterprise is mainly a political, economical and social issue, in which the religious element is more prominent than the scientific one. The fact that an opinion is the "main stream" in the scientific community does not make it necessarily scientific. Debating established mainstream or "consensus" opinions has been always a driving force of scientific progress. The history of science is full of fascinating stories proving this. So, the future will show what is science and what is pseudoscience in the climate change enterprise.

Certainly, however, censoring scientific discussions is not part of the scientific method. This post is about a Nobel Laureate's talk in Lindau 2009 about "Energy and climate change", isn't it? And we know that in Lindau 2008 there was a Panel Discussion on "Climate Changes and Energy Challenges" with several Nobel Laureates, some of whom expressed opinions different than what I read in the above report by Prof. Myers about Prof. Molina's talk. I have watched the video of the 2008 Lindau panel meeting. It used to be available on line. It was made available by the organizers in their official site (www.lindau-nobel.de). Why was it removed? Please see the footnote in p. 250 of my and my colleagues' paper entitled "Climate, hydrology, energy, water: recognizing uncertainty and seeking sustainability" (full text in http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/878/ ) as well as the endnote in p. S1967 in our discussion entitled "Response to Sivapalan's Response" (accessible from the same address).

According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, (www.climatescience.gov/Library/Literacy/default.php), climate is "The long-term average of conditions in the atmosphere, ocean, and ice sheets and sea ice described by statistics, such as means and extremes" (where it seems that they recently changed the definition from the version I discussed in slide 44 in http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/896/ ). I think I have done extended research on the "long-term average" and long-term "statistics such as means and extremes" of natural processes, including climate processes. I have also some publications, in which I maintain that the view of long term statistics by some climatologists is naive and inconsistent with Nature. In addition, I think that hydrological processes are an important part of the entire set of climatic processes. However, if some of you feel better to classify me in "not climate scientists, but rather hydrologists", I have no problem. But I must mention that Harry Lins, one of my co-authors, has, in fact, done his PhD in climatology. I hope the most conformists will find this information useful.

Harry Lins, Alberto Montanari, Tim Cohn and I have recently published a discussion paper, whose reply by the IPCC Lead Authors on Freshwater (Kundzewicz et al.) was quoted above. I think that some of you would be interested to see our discussion paper, not only the reply to it. It can be found in http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/907/. Kundzewicz et al. were kind enough to reply to us, thus following the scientific deontology. According to this deontology, they should have the last word in this discussion "episode". Apparently, we disagree with most of their points and we look forward to the continuation of discussion with another episode.

As for the "3 stations" that our earlier "credibility" paper ( http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/864/ ) had examined, I found the demotion of eight to three very interesting. As corrected above, this research was more recently extended by another 55 stations ( http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/900/ ). The latter study was presented in the EGU 2009 conference and is now under peer review for publication in a journal. We believe that it will be approved for publication. We are optimists and we do not wish to think that the practice of censoring will eventually prevail.

For the completeness of information about our "credibility" paper, I wish to mention that the critique quoted above was done by Gavin Schmidt in http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/08/hypothesis-testing-and-long-term-memory/. I have published a reply to this in http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3361#comment-287315 .

The continuation of our research is also a continuation of our reply. You may find interesting that the new research (slide 13 onwards, in http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/900/ ), in addition to analyses on a point basis, includes a sub-continental analysis using 70 stations across USA. As shown in slide 14, these 70 stations were perfectly sufficient to fully represent the historical climate of the USA. So, the argument that our statistical sample is cherry-picked or not representative must be wrong.

Demetris Koutsoyiannis

Posted by: Demetris Koutsoyiannis | July 7, 2009 2:42 AM

Thanks Dr. Park.

Did I parallel myself to Galileo? And if not, what is the reason you do this for me?

I think I just spoke about censorship--and this I have met several times, as several of my papers (those referring to climate in particular) had been rejected (I also know other people's similar stories). But I persisted and finally published them all. And by now none was falsified or even criticized publicly and formally--and they are cited. So, their rejection perhaps was not done on the basis you imply, i.e. that they were "not good enough". If they were “not good enough”, would not the rejecting reviewers make their critiques public--and eponymous rather than anonymous? Please note that I have made available on my web site all rejections and rejecting reviews, so your comment that I do not give “any evidence” is not applicable in my case.

As for the Lindau panel meeting, perhaps you are right that that the video was “provided as a live stream” and that “there is no mention of providing it for later viewing”. However, it used to be posted, in addition to the initial “live stream” site, to the official lindaunobel.de site. From the links I give above, you can see that on 21 November 2008 it was available on the official site--and this wasn’t “live stream”, was it? Some time between this date and 9 February 2009 it disappeared--also from the meeting programme. My question above was “Why was it removed?” and your comment does not give an answer.

The religious vs. scientific aspect in climate change is a long one and a short blog comment is not the right vehicle for this. I wrote it just for the readers of the comment to know my position.

Demetris Koutsoyiannis

Posted by: Spence | July 15, 2009 8:14 AM

Firstly, my apologies for not coming back and posting sooner - I've been busy on other things, and forgot about this posting.

Secondly, I'd like to say thanks to Professor Koutsoyiannis for coming along and entering the discussion, and perhaps I should apologise for dragging your name into the debate without letting you know! With regard to Dr. Harry Lins, I did consider Dr. Lins but could not find a good link on the internet to show who I was referring to. I perhaps should have included the name anyway, and I am pleased that you referred to him.

For those who think I might post under a different name, I am sorry to shatter your illusion, but I have only posted on this thread under the name Spence.

Rereading the latest posts I think I am comfortable that nobody here has been able to provide any substantive evidence that the published works of the scientists mentioned above falls into the category "pseudoscience", thus calling into question the reported claim made by Mario Molina.

I remain curious about some of the responses, though. a_dilbert_ray_in_space raised the valid question of sample size in one of Prof. Koutsoyiannis' papers; when it was made clear that a much larger sample set was available, the poster refused to even look at the data until it was published and cited. I find this remarkable. As a scientist, if I doubted a paper based on something such as sample size, and I found considerably more data were available, I would be intrigued by what that data contains. I can't imagine a scientist not being intrigued. It is an opportunity to find out whether the sample size is an issue. Yet the poster seems determined to find excuses not to look at the data, which were reported at a respected geoscience conference, and are easily found on the web.

This mindset I find fascinating, but not one I am familiar with in my field of expertise.

In terms of the wider question of the validity of the work by these scientists, and the question of bias and censorship in the climate change field, I do not think these will be resolved in this blog post, but look forward to watching them play out in the scientific literature over the coming years.

In the meantime, many thanks to all for the contributions to this discussion.