Climate continues to change.

[richard_daily]

You think?

Are you this stupid in real life as well?

 

[Que]

Are you this stupid in real life as well?

You post from somwhere less than real?

 

[trysail]

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/paris-climate-agreement-dead-anim1.gif?w=220&h=126&crop=1


​

 

[Que]

Now, that's funny.

 

[gunthernehmen]

If you drive 10,000 miles a year, which would use less fossil fuel, a car that gets 10 MPG or a car that gets 50 MPG?

That's awfully simplistic.

A better comparison might look at the resources it takes to design, test, build, maintain and recycle the vehicles being compared, in addition to the resources to keep them fueled for a year.

A 40 year old, coal rolling HMMV might have far less environmental impact during it's lifetime than a petrol sipping hybrid Prius that is scrapped after 10 years. Or not. But looking at a single variable and ignoring the rest is scientific folly/fraud.

 

[phrodeau]

That's awfully simplistic.

A better comparison might look at the resources it takes to design, test, build, maintain and recycle the vehicles being compared, in addition to the resources to keep them fueled for a year.

A 40 year old, coal rolling HMMV might have far less environmental impact during it's lifetime than a petrol sipping hybrid Prius that is scrapped after 10 years. Or not. But looking at a single variable and ignoring the rest is scientific folly/fraud.

I thought the question was simple enough for Que to answer, but I was mistaken.

By all means set up the better comparison and let's see the numbers. I'd love to see a proof that a 10 MPG vehicle can be manufactured and supported with 20% of the resources needed for a 50 MPG vehicle.

 

[Que]

I thought the question was simple enough for Que to answer, but I was mistaken.

By all means set up the better comparison and let's see the numbers. I'd love to see a proof that a 10 MPG vehicle can be manufactured and supported with 20% of the resources needed for a 50 MPG vehicle.

No you wouldn't.

The obvious example was cash for clunkers. Take an existing old iron beater, low tech, easilly sourced and replaced parts, nearly infinitely rebuildable vs new construction limited lifespan, with heavy use of petrochemical polymers?

Not even close.

 

[phrodeau]

No you wouldn't.

The obvious example was cash for clunkers. Take an existing old iron beater, low tech, easilly sourced and replaced parts, nearly infinitely rebuildable vs new construction limited lifespan, with heavy use of petrochemical polymers?

Not even close.

Not close to what? Actually proving something?

Show your work, or get a failing grade.

 

[William_James]

Queef whiffs it again.

The study reveals that fully 75 percent of a car's lifetime carbon emissions stem from the fuel it burns, not its production. A further 19 percent of that is production and transportation of the fuel, leaving just 6 percent for the car's manufacture.

https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2014/0804/Which-is-greener-Old-car-or-new-car

In general, newer high efficiency vehicles will be far more 'green' than older less efficient vehicles.

 

[trysail]

An Open Letter To An Alarmist Shill/


Graham Woods, Ph.D. to Brian Cox, Ph.D.





https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2016/09/open-letter-alarmist-shill/


A brief excerpt:

...Along with any other panel member, you had a perfect right to nominate the dimensions of climate and climate change that you believe deserve to be put on the table, but as a non-specialist and a non-expert you had an obligation to confine those dimensions to those about which there can be very little doubt whatever: dimensions or facts that any intelligent non-specialist could, in principle, discover for herself. Here are some of them, the first and second groups surely safe from dispute by any climate scientist:

• Planet Earth is a dynamic planet in a dynamic solar system: thus climate change is, now and for millions of years to come, inevitable and unstoppable. In the absence of climate change, life as it exists on our planet simply wouldn’t.

• Our global climate system is almost incomprehensibly complex: across geological time and into the present affected interactively by the sun; the moon; possibly by some of the larger planets; by tectonic plate movement; volcanic activity; cyclical changes in the earth’s oceans; changes in the quantum and distribution of the earth’s biomass; changes in greenhouse gases that themselves are the result of changes in more underlying factors; by changes in the earth’s tilt and solar orbit; probably by changes in the earth’s magnetic field; and possibly by some other non-anthropogenic factors that at present scientists either don’t know about or whose impact they haven’t yet fully appreciated.

• ‘Consensus’ means ‘majority view’; majority views can be egregiously wrong (witness the work of apostates Marshall and Warren in the case of Helicobacter pylori and stomach ulcers).

• There is no published estimate of the degree of consensus on any aspect of climate or climate change that is so statistically robust that it can’t be contested; in any case, the size of the majority in favour of a scientific conclusion is logically disconnected from its validity: scientific hypotheses and conclusions are refined and proven by empirical data, not crowd appeal.

• There are now countless thousands of studies drawn from at least twenty scientific disciplines that aim to – or purport to – shed light on how the earth’s climate ‘works’. Many of their results and conclusions are, by their authors’ own reckoning, tentative; the results and conclusions of some studies contest the results and conclusions of others. There would be few, if any, aspects of climate that could claim 100% agreement among the relevant researchers except some of the raw data – and even many of these are contested, because different (though prima facie equally defensible) methods have been adopted to collect them.

• In 2016, the feedback loops and tipping points that are assumed to affect global climate systems are, in actual real-world settings, imperfectly understood, and tipping points in particular are largely speculative. This is true regardless of the possibility (even the likelihood) that the current ‘very rapid pulse increase’ in CO₂ is geologically unprecedented or the possibility that it will have irreversible climatic consequences.

• There is demonstrable scientific debate about the presumptive roles (yes, roles) of CO₂ in medium- and long-term climate change in the real world – and there is no conclusion about how CO₂ is related to these dimensions that is supported by incontestable empirical evidence.

• The impact of anthropogenic CO₂ is therefore a scientific question, not a matter on which ‘the science is settled’ or ‘the debate is over’...
​

​

(lots) more...
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2016/09/open-letter-alarmist-shill/





​

 

[trysail]

The 2016-7 El Niño is over.

So, now we see that in the thirty-nine (39) years since the advent of satellite-based measurement of global lower troposphere temperatures, there has been a whopping 0.26°C increase over the 1981-2010 average (and that's ignoring potential measurement error and confidence intervals).


Anybody who claims that climate science is "settled science" is trying to sell you something.




http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_January_2018_v6-550x317.jpg

Global area-averaged lower tropospheric temperature anomalies (departures from
30-year calendar monthly means, 1981-2010)


​

 

[wickedpanda]

Ahhh No!

Global Warming Hoax proven !

Climate Change a normal thing that nature does before mankind was ever here so STFU and enjoy the ride you ecotards!

Each ecotard warning is like a bad 1970's disaster movie and just as bullshit.

 

[OldJourno]

Hey, is tiny Tuvalu Island under water yet?
I mean literally, not on the mortgage.
I remember the coverage about all the helpless villagers had to relocate because rising waters from global warming were going to swamp their homes. It was going to happen.
But now I hear that the island is actually growing! WTF!
That's gotta be a hoax.

 

[phrodeau]

Hey, is tiny Tuvalu Island under water yet?
I mean literally, not on the mortgage.
I remember the coverage about all the helpless villagers had to relocate because rising waters from global warming were going to swamp their homes. It was going to happen.
But now I hear that the island is actually growing! WTF!
That's gotta be a hoax.

Did the sea level drop? No, it did not.

Good news for Tuvalu, but doesn't change reality.

 

[trysail]

How Self Delusional Can We Be On The Cost of Electricity From Renewables?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/jo.nova/graph/energy/electricity/cost/cost-electricity-renewables-countries.jpg


by Francis Menton
(Exactly five (5) paragraphs)

...Let's take a closer look at Germany. Germany -- way out there with Denmark as having the most installed renewable capacity per capita combined with an astronomical consumer cost of electricity of around 30 cents per kWh -- is a country about which you can find a lot of data if you take the time to look around. For example, a German think tank called Agora Energiewende put out a big "Report on the German power system" in 2015. On page 13 we learn that Germany's peak electricity demand in 2013 was 83.3 GW. And right below that we learn that in 2014 Germany had installed capacity (all types) of 192 GW. Wait a minute -- they have capacity of almost two and a half times peak usage? A normally-functioning system based entirely on fossil fuels would only require capacity of about 1.2 times peak usage -- a 20% cushion to provide for things like maintenance outages and possible emergencies. So Germany has about double the generation capacity it would have in a fossil fuel-only system. Obviously, that's extremely costly.

Another chart on the same page 13 shows the amounts of "renewable" versus "conventional" capacity. The total for all "renewables" is 83.8 GW -- a figure higher than the peak demand of 83.3 GW. But, then there's also the fossil fuel and "conventional" capacity of 108.4 GW. That's essentially the same amount you would have if you had no wind or solar capacity at all. To put it another way, despite having built what would seem to be enough wind and solar capacity to supply all the electricity needs of the country, they have not been able to get rid of any of their fossil fuel generation capacity. They need all of it as back-up for when the wind and solar go dead.

Are wind and solar sources really so unreliable that you can't use them to replace any fossil fuel facilities at all? Yes. For example, in this post from 2016 I reported on other information from Agora Energiewende showing that in December of that year Germany had some nine days where the wind was so calm and the sun so dim that the wind and solar facilities produced only between 3% and 7% of installed capacity. On the other hand, this article from Clean Energy Wire on January 5, 2018 indicates that on the morning of New Year's Day this year the wind was so strong that Germany briefly (and for the first time ever) got all of its electricity from the renewables (mostly wind in this case).

And then there are two other factors by which the renewables lead to increasing the cost of electricity in Germany. One is that wild swings in production from wind and solar facilities cause comparably wild swings in the spot market where utilities buy power to balance supply with demand at the last minute. When the wind is blowing strongly, that spot price can actually turn negative, meaning that the Germans must pay neighboring countries like Poland to take surplus power off their hands. At other times when the wind dies at night and a conventional plant cannot be ramped up quickly enough to take over, the spot price can spike to over $10,000 per MWH. The final factor going into the Germans' cost of electricity is the close to $200 billion or so that they have spent in subsidies for renewables. Much of that may actually show up in their taxes rather than their electricity bills.

Now, how much of Germany's sky-high electricity costs can be attributed to each factor? I can't find any data with enough detail to let me answer that question. But here's what we do know with crystal clarity: no matter how cheaply you might be able to buy some more wind or solar "capacity," you will only drive the cost of electricity up, not down...
​

​

 

[phrodeau]

Simple fact: fossil fuels always cost money to dig up and move around. Solar, hydro and wind cost nothing at all.

 

[William_James]

Why would anyone trust anything written by Francis Menton, or industry shill trysail, for that matter?

 

[trysail]

https://s3.amazonaws.com/jo.nova/graph/energy/electricity/cost/cost-electricity-renewables-countries.jpg​

By Francis Menton

...For other examples of the disaster of trying to get cheaper electricity from "renewables," see my posts on Gapa Island, South Korea..., and South Australia... In each instance, as the capacity of renewables feeding into the grid increases, the need to add fossil fuel back-up and/or storage ends up driving the cost of electricity up dramatically. And, even with tripling of consumer electricity bills, nobody has succeeded in getting the percentage of electricity from renewables up much past 40%... According to a report from the Grattan Institute in 2016, South Australia is the world champion in getting electricity from renewables, at around 40% of its total supply over the course of a year. And according to this article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in June 2017, South Australia has been rewarded with consumer electricity prices that are "the highest in the world." It has also suffered a series of disastrous blackouts... ​

​

 

[trysail]

Sea Level Rise Acceleration (or Not): Part III— 19th & 20th Century Observations

by Judith Curry, Ph.D.

...Since publication of the AR5 with its highly confident assessment of a very likely mean sea level rise rate between 1900 and 2010 of 1.7 [1.5 to 1.9] mm yr-1, or 1.5 ± 0.2 mm yr-1 from 1900 to 1990, the following global mean sea level rise estimates have been published:

Jevrejeva et al (2014): 1.9 ± 0.3 mm yr-1 (20th century)
Kopp et al. (2016): 1.4 ±0.2 mm yr-1 (20th century)
Mitrovica et al. (2015): 1.2 ±0.2 mm yr-1 (1900–1990)
Hay et al. (2015): 1.2 ±0.2 mm yr-1 (1900–1990)
Thompson et al. (2016): 1.7 mm yr-1 ± 0.3 (20th century); less than 1% probability less than 1.4 mm yr-1
Dangendorf et al. (2017): 1.1 ± 0.3 mm yr-1 (1900–1990)
OTHERS?

A translation of these rates into inches per century: 1.9 mm yr-1 equals 7.5 inches; 1.5 mm yr-1 equals 6 inches; 1.1 mm yr-1 equals 4 inches.

While there is some difference in these numbers associated with ending the period in 1990 or 1999, the major discrepancies relate to tide guage selections, vertical land motion corrections, area weighting and statistical analysis methods.

The important point here is that recently published rates of SLR of 1.1 and 1.2 mm yr-1 are outside of the very likely confidence interval in the IPCC AR5...​

​

 

[richard_daily]

Why would anyone trust anything written by Francis Menton, or industry shill trysail, for that matter?

No one would trust either.

 

[Que]

Simple fact: fossil fuels always cost money to dig up and move around. Solar, hydro and wind cost nothing at all.

. . .except for all the things you have to dig up to make the components for those and to ship them around assemble them maintain them and of course dispose of them after the end of their service life but other than that of course there are no transportation or mining costs at all.

It kind of makes sense of the same people that think that there are free lunches available economically speaking think that there is such a thing as free energy.

 

[phrodeau]

. . .except for all the things you have to dig up to make the components for those and to ship them around assemble them maintain them and of course dispose of them after the end of their service life but other than that of course there are no transportation or mining costs at all.

It kind of makes sense of the same people that think that there are free lunches available economically speaking think that there is such a thing as free energy.

The same applies to fossil fuel extraction, troll.

 

[Que]

The same applies to fossil fuel extraction, troll.

You just implied that none of it is "the same" for renewables. You know when you actually said the solar wind and hydro cost nothing at all.

In that category you should have included nucear but of course you don't because you hate the Earth and you love carbon emissions caused by the creation of all of the above. Do you have any idea at all how much earth has to be mind and moved and turned into concrete at great environmental cost to build a hydroelectric dam?

Also apparently you didn't get the memo but you're not supposed to like hydro because of what it does to the fishies.

 

[Hypoxia]

If you're of age, visualize a missile from 1970 slipping through a time warp and safely landing in 1940. Technologists examine it closely but haven't the slightest notion how it works. The semiconductors, radar and metallurgy are alien. Microwave plumbing is nonsense. That nuclear warhead in the nose, WTF? USA markings mean it's not from ET aliens, but it must be from a far distant future, centuries away, not just 30 years.

I expect transportation technology of 30 years hence will look just as inexplicable.

 

[Que]

Speaking of energy transportation impact, it would be interesting to compare energy losses from high-voltage, long-distance powerlines, vs the energy losses from the pumps on a pipeline.

We already know environmentalists are not serious about carbon emissions or the environmental risks of spills vs leaks from their obstruction of pipelines. I think you have to be incapable of analyzing risk vs reward and cost versus benefit in order to be a modern "environmentalist."

I miss John Muir era environmentalists.