Home/Blog
President Trump’s actions yesterday to rein in the EPA on a number of fronts involves the usual tension between environment and prosperity. Trump has rightly asserted that we can have both a relatively clean environment and prosperity, but this falls on deaf ears in the environmental community. His actions are painted as Republican’s desire to harm your children, because a more polluted environment is claimed to be worse for human health and welfare than achieving a cleaner environment.
But such assertions must be rejected, and forcefully. Because exactly the opposite is true — at least in an America which is already pretty clean.
Let me give you a simple example. Let’s say you pay to have your house cleaned once a week, and for a reasonable price the house is 90% cleaner each time.
Now let’s say you decide you want your house 99% cleaner on a continuous basis. Cleaner is better, right?
You have crews come in and work for hours every day, cleaning every surface with disinfectant. You buy the best air and water filtration systems. The cost goes up dramatically, and as a result you can no longer afford, say, the health care you once could afford before.
Then your young child falls ill from something she picked up at daycare. You figure she will probably be OK, kids get sick all the time, and you don’t take her to the doctor.
But this time it’s something more insidious. A rare disease left untreated leads to the rapid formation of an aneurysm in her coronary artery. Several years later she dies at a young age.
All because you wanted your house cleaner.
You might think this example is outlandish. Well, in the past week one of my grandsons was diagnosed with this disease. But since America has invested a great deal of money in our health care system, rather than wasting it on green energy schemes, it was caught in time.
In a theoretical sense, we can always work to make the environment “cleaner”, that is, reduce human pollution. So, any attempts to reduce the EPA’s efforts will be viewed by some as just cozying up to big, polluting corporate interests. As I heard one EPA official state at a conference years ago, “We can’t stop making the environment ever cleaner”.
The question no one is asking, though, is “But at what cost?”
It was relatively inexpensive to design and install scrubbers on smokestacks at coal-fired power plants to greatly reduce sulfur emissions. The cost was easily absorbed, and electricty rates were not increased that much.
The same is not true of carbon dioxide emissions. Efforts to remove CO2 from combustion byproducts have been extremely difficult, expensive, and with little hope of large-scale success.
There is a saying: don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
In the case of reducing CO2 emissions to fight global warming, I could discuss the science which says it’s not the huge problem it’s portrayed to be — how warming is only progressing at half the rate forecast by those computerized climate models which are guiding our energy policy; how there have been no obvious long-term changes in severe weather; and how nature actually enjoys the extra CO2, with satellites now showing a “global greening” phenomenon with its contribution to increases in agricultural yields.
But it’s the economics which should kill the Clean Power Plan and the alleged Social “Cost” of Carbon. Not the science.
There is no reasonable pathway by which we can meet more than about 20% of global energy demand with renewable energy…the rest must come mostly from fossil fuels. Yes, renewable energy sources are increasing each year, usually because rate payers or taxpayers are forced to subsidize them by the government or by public service commissions. But global energy demand is rising much faster than renewable energy sources can supply. So, for decades to come, we are stuck with fossil fuels as our main energy source.
The fact is, the more we impose high-priced energy on the masses, the more it will hurt the poor. And poverty is arguably the biggest threat to human health and welfare on the planet.
But isn’t it true that renewable energy such as solar and wind actually employ more people than the fossil fuel business? Yes, but once again there is a basic economic concept people need to keep in mind. We could put all of our unemployed people to work tomorrow by having them dig holes in the ground and filling them up again.
Yet, what would that do to increase prosperity? In order to build wealth, jobs need to be efficiently producing goods and services that people want… not just moving dirt around. So, just because it takes more people to provide more expensive renewable energy that can’t meet our needs anyway… that’s not a good thing.
People want — and need — inexpensive energy to prosper. Energy is required for everything humans do. Everything. The more it costs, the less money we have available for other more pressing problems.
So, the elephant in the room no one is talking about is that fact that the Clean Power Plan (which Trump is trying to dismantle) will make poverty worse, and as a result more people will die. Expensive attempts to make things too clean will be worse for human health and welfare — not better.
And what would have been gained for all that extra expense? Even the EPA has admitted that President Obama’s plans for reducing CO2 emissions will have no measurable effect on global temperatures in this century… only hundredths of a degree reductions in global warming, even if the “consensus of scientists” theory is correct.
This is why Obama’s coal-killing efforts have been legitimately characterized as all pain for no gain.
So, this is an issue where we global warming “skeptics” have the moral high ground. Let’s take it and own it.
Do not accept the premise that everything the EPA wants to do is good for America. The EPA provided a useful service years ago when it required us to clean up our air and waterways. Now it is a bloated bureaucracy in a continuing search for relevancy. It wants to force us to make everything not just 90% cleaner, but 99% cleaner.
And THAT is bad for human health and welfare.
I decided a long time ago that in all cases, despite what Mae West may have said, there can always be too much of a good thing.
OTOH, one thing I hate about my digital scale is that if the recipe for teriyaki marinade calls for 56 grams of soy sauce, I have a lot of trouble measuring out something in the 40-70 range that would be perfectly acceptable. I think I settled for 54 grams once. It would be nice if it also had an analog bar graph or taut band meter. How about a bar graph where the bar shows the acceptable range? And then blanks out when you get to close enough?
Balance, perspective, and judgment is something the environmentalists have never been accused of. Its just too complicated for leftists mindset.
Excellent analysis, Roy. I have one quibble; we do have an alternative to fossil fuels: nuclear.
Yes, I agree. Need to reduce the regulatory and permitting burden on that as well.
While the nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants wasn’t designed to last forever, closures are happening earlier than expected because repair costs are astronomical and it’s harder to compete with cheaper natural gas-fired plants and renewable energy sources.
http://www.elp.com/articles/2017/03/small-towns-cope-with-effects-of-closed-nuclear-power-plants.html
Do you want to subsidise the costs associated with nuclear power plants instead?
Including:
-the costs of insuring against against a catastrophe?
-the costs of clean-up and decommissioning?
If an energy source must be subsidized, nuclear is the one to subsidize.
If an energy source must be subsidized then there must be another source of energy that has a high enough EROEI that it is able to provide the subsidy. Currently, except in the fantasies of the light fantastics that would be fossil fuels and/or hydro and/or nuclear that must be available and productive enough that they can provide the subsidy over and above the energy that they provide for use for other purposes. So here we go loop-ta-loop.
As someone who works in the finances of electric utilities, my observation is that when nuclear plants close, it is more likely due to the following three realties: the hostility of political regulators, the desire of regulated utilities to stay on the good side of their regulators, and the generosity of the regulators to reward utilities for going with politically popular sources.
An Inquirer:
No surprise there. None the less sad. Nuclear, in the long run, should be our best centralized source of electricity.
Solar is nice for smaller needs.
Is tick-tock for Nuclear
A major player is declaring bankruptcy.
Westinghouse
Energy is like sowing your lettuce for summer. If you sow the whole packet you a big rush and then none. If you plan it well and sow a progression then you will have lettuce right through the year.
So sticking up 10,000 windmills covering the ground you get a big useless rush of energy followed by a dearth.
Fossil fuelled power can act as a buffer for the period needed stop the stupidity that is green and build more nuclear eventually providing time for a transport fuel to be developed.
If the nuclear energy is that expensive to build and maintain, then it is definitely a wrong source of energy.
There will be no alternative to biomass and lignite obtained from sustainable forestry. Net change of CO2=zero, and it has the power density required to drive this civilization. The infrastructure and knowledge are available and mature; they are the same as those of coal. Take a look at the paper pulp industry, it is sustainable and it works.
The Union of Concerned Scientists tries to sell biomass as an energy panacea. They contend that 680 million dry tons of biomass could be available in the US (annually) by the year 2030. The Energy Information Agency reports that the US consumed 97.7 quadrillion BTU in 2015. This paper lists the energy content of a variety of biomass sources. The highest energy non-food source is premium wood pellets, at 8,200 BTU/lb. That would make 11.5 quadrillion BTU available. That’s 11% of the amount of energy
I read their study and do not agree with their assessment “Forests offer a limited source of new biomass resources.” There is more than enough lignite in the forests of today to power the whole world in a sustainable manner.
And you believe that the tree-huggers will let you cut down the trees?
They are allowing tree cutting every day for the paper pulp industry. I see no reason why they will not allow it on a larger scale for energy. What is being cut is replaced in kind. So where is the problem?
A follow-up to the last reply, the percent of the present forest required to power this world in a sustainable manner is only 30% to 35% of the existing forest, maximum 40%. This will not break the bank. I do not see how the environmentalists would object to this eco-friendly, inexpensive (about the same cost of coal), and sustainable source of energy. Not only that, but it will distribute the wealth to a much larger segment of the public. It will yield to economically healthier public, which will be better for the environment. Not to mention that healthier and wealthier public drives innovation in this unlimited and yet-to-be-explored potential- The sky is the limit. This cannot be said to any other source of energy for they all have limitations, and some will have to exit the energy mix.
That’s true in the short term.remove all the mature trees. Say 40 to 100 years old.how much damage would that do to the natural world.how long do you wait .For the next crop.if all countries went down the bio mass route for power stations like Drax in the UK.it now imports 3 million tons per year from the USA. Some 3000 miles.to feed just three units in the plant.the downside of this is approx.3 more C02 emissions.than burning coal.it takes twice as many wood pellets to produce the same amount of heat as coal.add on the logging the understructure the transport and construction of new silos the true emission are nearer 20% greater.far better to improve the combustion in furnesses .More so if C02 is your concern.we need the forests as a natural sink the other downside of burning lignite in all its forms is a modern day smog.the smell hangs in air trapped on foggy day with no wind.this happens already in London.its not all a bed of roses.in fact their are days in London you can’t smell the roses.for the acrid pong. Coming from domestic biomass boilers and wood burning stoves
To The UKIanbrown,
These are all minor problems that have been solved for coal and can be solved for lignite. Lignite constituents are a lot cleaner than coal. The CO2 footprint due to transportation will disappear as lignite and liquid fuels extracted from it become more and more used with time. The basics and fundamentals for zero CO2 in the long run are there with lignite obtained from sustainable forestry. CO2 foot print due to transportation and parts production cannot be eliminated with time for any other source of energy including solar and wind. Also, why would they import wood from the U.S.A.? Do they not have trees in England? Can they not plant trees in England to power these three power plants? Sure they can, not only in England but virtually in all of the inhabited world where power generation is required.
With lignite from sustainable forestry as the main source of energy, CO2 sink is not required for CO2 production is zero and O2 level in the atmosphere remains unchanged.
There is of course another alternative, which sadly gets way too little press, and that is population control. Japan and some of Europe have figured it out. If the worlds population increases by 30 percent over the next 25 years, and we reduce our C02 emissions by the same amount, then the net decrease in C02 emissions will be minimal, won’t it?
If we provided birth control for all of the worlds most populous countries, and decreased the never ending upward spiral of the worlds population, we might stand a chance. Otherwise, we have none.
Roy, not only is CO2->AGW “not the huge problem its portrayed to be”, if a problem at all, CO2 emissions are now resolving, as you pointed out some time ago, largely because of demographics.
US CO2 emissions have fallen for decades, most recently at 3%/year.
And global CO2 emissions have fallen slightly the last two years.
These trends will already continue, because 72% of CO2 emissions are from countries with below replacement rate ferility.
And fertility rates are falling faster than the UN’s medium variant.
CO2 decreases are already baked in the cake.
2016 US CO2 emissions were 1.7% below 2015’s emissions:
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/#environment
Nor have US CO2 emissions “fallen for decades.” They peaked in 2007 at 6.00 Gt CO2/yr, and in 2016 were 14% lower at 5.17 Gt CO2/yr.
Data at the link given above.
Statements by DA
“Nor have US CO2 emissions fallen for decades.”
“they peaked in 2007”
2007 + 10 = 2017 hmmmmmm
What is the definition of a decade?
Zero man made C02 is pointless if natural C02 continues to rise.at present rate it would very quickly cancel out any savings made.
To Nabil Sweden. How is burning lignite and bio mass C02 neutral their are no C02 neutral bio mass burners in the UK.like I have stated before it depends on species of tree you plant.deciduos trees lose their leaves for seven months of the year .Therefore not C02 neutral
I think most of the USA reduction came from changing to Gas fired powerstations from coal.
Not population decline .
So who would have guessed that fracking was the greenest process on the planet ?? ha, ha
Roy,
So many wild, unproven assertions, its hard to know where to start.
‘In order to build wealth, jobs need to be efficiently producing goods and services that people want not just moving dirt around.’
I know a lot of homeowners who want solar. One friend has a huge electric bill for various reasons-so he got solar. His electric bill is near 0, and he will have a good roi.
Why would you think you can decide what products and services are better for the economy? People want to buy Tesla, cause it is cool, and that grows the economy, great.
‘the Clean Power Plan (which Trump is trying to dismantle) will make poverty worse, and as a result more people will die. ‘
Rather alarmist assertion. Youve said it many times. But show me one research study that demonstrates this.
Some people “want” solar for their house, and a Tesla in the driveway. So let THEM pay what it actually costs, without government distorting the market and deciding the winners and losers, and see if they still want it.
You are NOT an economist – get back to your climate science not your highly charged political BS agendas. It sees as you grow older Roy you become more and more disconnected from reality. I’d get myself an MRI test on the right of the your brain. I come up clear at 64 years free of dementia.
There there Ross. Debbie getting you down champ?
Ross, I am an economist — with a proven track record of reliable analysis. And I endorse what Dr. Spencer has said in this article.
From his post, I deduce that Ross must be an economist, psychiatrist and MD. Therefore you should listen to everything he writes. Oh, and he also has PhDs in ad hominems and B.S. agendas.
Economist that is a climate denier! I DO NOT ENDORSE every thing Roy says.
It is modern economic ‘science’ that is bs.
Ross your language betrays a defective character that needs a priest or better for corrective measures.
Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. says:
“Some people want solar for their house, and a Tesla in the driveway. So let THEM pay what it actually costs, without government distorting the market and deciding the winners and losers, and see if they still want it.”
Roy, you aren’t at all convincing, because you accept without question the subsidies — direct and indirect — that fossil fuels get.
When you are ready to weigh both sides of the scale, let us know.
David,
Instead of just encouraging a kerfuffle without providing information, why not try adding to the conversation introduced in this post.
Note, it is not about subsidies**, it is about actual quality of life for many, especially less-well off, versus an attempt to make an already clean general environment cleaner. [“general” is there because there are specific instances that can be made better]
Say, I have $100;
a: Should I get flu shots for the 2 of us?, or
b: Install a positive air pressure entrance at the front door to keep outside dust, out side?
{$100 is not enough; wed need a grant to help with the cost}
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
** Just in case anyone is interested:
Major Federal Government Subsidies
The next honest step would be to determine taxes paid at all levels and the other benefits produced by all entities that received any of the “subsidies.”
Have at it: I have work to do.
I have no problem with solar and none with electric cars. Let the people who buy into these technologies pay for them.
California provides a great lesson about a state committed to climate abatement with incentives. The people with a bill near 0 who have solar panels on the roof get paid at the retail rate rather than the wholesale rate because they get a free ride on the costs of distribution. That’s a sweetheart deal for the affluent homeowner paid for by those without panels on their roofs. Tesla makes a good looking car and a bunch of them are sold in California to the wealthy elite on the coast with a $7500 federal subsidy, plus state subsidies and the privilege of driving in the carpool lanes without passengers. Meanwhile, a worker in the central valley is still driving a 10 year old truck long distances to find work and gets no assistance, just higher priced fuel. And that poor guy who in the central valley is having trouble finding work because environmentalists have diverted nearly half the water captured in the dams for use in dry years for “environmental purposes”. And there is real poverty caused by the environmental rules when people’s livelihoods take a back seat. Wealthy California has the highest poverty rate in the country (25%) when the cost of living is taken into account and 1/3 of the population in on Medicaid. Gallup did a pole on the effect of poverty on health. http://www.gallup.com/poll/158417/poverty-comes-depression-illness.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines Poverty and chronic illnesses go hand in hand.
It seems the only hope for the working class in California is to find another state to make a living as this Sacramento Bee article revealed. http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/article136478098.html
Sean,
You make valid points.
At the same time, CA has needed more electricity and has had smog problems. Would you rather have coal power plants near you or solar arrays?
CA is blessed with lots of sunshine and open desert areas. It would seem to make sense for them to develop solar.
It makes eminent sense so much so that it is a puzzle that subsidies are required for generation companies to build these ’eminently sensible’ solar power plants. Could it be that they cannot actually compete technically or economically with the ‘fossil fueled’ generation plants which are required when the Sun inconveniently sets in the evening? And if those same gas powered plants were running all the time they would actually be cheaper than the combination of Solar power and gas generation. The only reason the solar plants are being installed is that they are subsidy farms taking money from the State’s poor but allowing their proponents a feel good factor to accompany their thickening wallets.
I no longer live in California but I don’t live far from a very large coal fired power plant. It’s very clean. The EPA no longer measures pollution in the surrounding areas, instead choosing to just model what they think ought to be there and make regulatory directives. Their arrogance is stunning.
We have solar panels not far from our home. They don’t bother me at all except that we get a lot of cloudy and rainy days so the solar panels which cost $2 million to put is often not making power. I’m not sure if we got billed in our taxes (it was largely paid for by a government grant) or paying a premium price for the electricity it produces. We also pay $1.50 a month extra to support off shore wind and our business pays a 1.5% tax on the total electricity bill. The thing is, the windfarm is not even built yet. That will cost ratepayers in our state $3 billion over the next 30 years. That’s a lot of money to take out of the local economy.
I’ll grant you that California is a great place for solar panels, particularly in the desserts and it has a water distribution system that would allow buffering with pumped hydro energy storage but the environmentalist are not fond of dams and reservoirs either. So the “duck curve” and the mismatch of peak generation with peak demand each day will play an ever larger role in people’s after work activities as the solar panel generation falls off. At least there are lots of natural gas power plants even if they are losing money as priorities always go to renewables when they are generating. But the poor California has to pay for a very large amount of renewable capacity because it only generates power about a quarter of the time, some form of energy storage and fossil fueled generators that kick in when wind and sun are not available to supply power.
In the absence of market incentives, coal has become a loser and natural gas a winner because of the the many deleterious side effects of coal mining and its emissions.
For the same reasons solar will be a winner. Subsidies have been used for all of the energy sources at one time or another (hydro, initial nuclear, oil exploration, ethanol).
In the case of solar, the subsidies are being phased out as cost parity is quickly becoming a reality (It actually is). It is clear to me that people will still want it.
I should add that the societal and health costs are not properly factored in to the market price of electricity from coal.
The societal benefits of coal far outweigh the costs. All one need do is look at longevity compared to coal power generation and see that the advent of coal coincided with increased longevity. This, despite all the additional costs.
Why? See Dr. Spencer’s blog.
“All one need do is look at longevity compared to coal power generation and see that the advent of coal coincided with increased longevity.”
I find it depressing that the most impressive hockey stick graphs relating to recent global changes are rarely included in discussions on the impact of fossil fuels.
On most metrics that seriously impact human quality of life we have a near flat line going as far back as we can in history all the way up to the start of the industrial revolution, and then suddenly we get a sustained and marked climb.
If GDP/capita is a blunt but useful proxy for all other metrics, I suggest people graph Angus Maddison’s estimates going back 2,000 years (work continued by The Maddison Project), and contrast the most industrialised nations and regions with the least.
Lewis says:
“The societal benefits of coal far outweigh the costs.”
Prove it.
This study disagrees: Generating electrical power with coal and oil creates more damage than value-added, according to a 2011 study that included noted Yale economist William Nordhaus:
“Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy,” Nicholas Z. Muller, Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus, American Economic Review, 101(5): 164975 (2011).
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.101.5.1649
Summarizing that paper’s findings: for every $1 in value that comes from coal-generated electricity, it creates $2.20 in damages.
Total damages: $70 billion per year (in 2012 dollars).
Petroleum-generated electricity is even worse: $5.13 in damages for $1 in value.
Studies such as your citation remind one of the myriad studies that resulted in the cluster of climate models. All with the same effect as a misguided cluster bomb, much noise, no resut.
A highly detailed model with basically flawed assumptions.
“emissions should be valued by the damage they cause.”
Laws require that environmental effects be measured by cost/benefit analysis, not net damages. As a post above pointed out, the usage of coal for energy and electricity has obvious and marked effects on longevity. That alone, there are other benefits, massively overcomes the pollution effects in increases “wealth: the total improvement in the status of the population.
“market prices may reflect a number of distortions such as taxes or markets that
are not perfectly competitive. Third, when the necessary prices are not available,
they must be imputed. For example, the national accounts impute a rent for owner
occupied housing.”
Not correcting for the influence of taxes and regulations on costs and noncompetitive markets is a whole cost/benefit analysis in itself, regardless of pollution.
Imputing a rent for owner-occupied housing also is another complete cost/benefit analysis that is ignored. Renting requires either accepting very substandard housing or acknowledging that a significant portion of the rent goes to the actual owner. In addition, most people who own their houses place a greater value on their benefits from owning in addition to the portion of rent that goes to profits, not benefits they actually enjoy.
Like the social cost of carbon, with not benefits considered, this study goes off the rails. Figure 1 is a good example. The EPA in the US has done a quite good job of regulating pollution from energy usage(power plants, cars, planes, etc.) It is now at the point where the cost of a reduction(moving to the right on the graph)increases exponentially beyond the additional benefits. If the benefits were included it would show a humped curve, similar to an error distribution. The peak would be the point where the costs of reducing the pollution stop making any sense, economic or otherwise.
Would you be willing to require the US as whole spend $100,000,000 to “statistically” save one child from contracting asthman(if we actually knew the cause of asthman)?
the Clean Power Plan (which Trump is trying to dismantle) will make poverty worse, and as a result more people will die.
Still nothing that demonstrates this?
Whereas we know that pollution from coal demonstrably causes deaths
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/14/around-22-million-deaths-in-india-and-china-from-air-pollution-study.html
Nate: “Whereas we know that pollution from coal demonstrably causes deaths”. You should try to find examples where there modern coal plants, just sayin’.
BTW, the two countries the article alludes to, particularly China, has had more deaths, environmental impacts and extreme toxic waste dumped into water ways due to solar than any developed world combined account due to coal. Solar is a killer, just not in your backyard
Deaths? Lets see the research
You could do your own damn leg work. You don’t appear to be a slouch from all your active posting.
https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazines/bulletin/bull21-1/21104091117.pdf
1979, thats the best you can find? I found Forbes article(cant seem to post) from 2014, that not surprisingly, has a very different assessment of hazards of solar compared to coal.
The article finds:
Energy Source Mortality Rate (deaths/trillionkWhr)
Coal global average 100,000 (41% global electricity)
Coal China 170,000 (75% Chinas electricity)
Coal U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity)
Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity)
Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity)
Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy)
Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity)
Wind 150 (2% global electricity)
Hydro global average 1,400 (16% global electricity)
Hydro U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity)
Nuclear global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush)
Nuclear U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity)
Here is the article (2012, not 2014). http://tinyurl.com/lpe8cr4
Junk science.
Bart says it-must be true.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0998259713/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_2MC3ybY23A4YJ
irrelevant to the discussion
About as irrelevant as the Gospel to the Pope.
No, doesnt support your assertion of the Forbes article being ‘junk science’.
The book, BTW, is full of strawmen arguments about the EPA.
E.G. ‘EPA claims even brief exposures to typical outdoor levels (of soot) in the U.S. can kill almost instantly.’
This ought to alert anyone with common sense that the book is full of BS.
Really recommend you look into your sources of info:
The author, Steven Milloy is a peach. Paid advocate and spreader of misinformation for Big Tobacco and Big Oil.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Steven_J._Milloy
Yeah, no agenda from your source. You live in a fantasy world.
“Whereas we know that pollution from coal demonstrably causes deaths”
How many people have been lifted out of abject poverty in India and China in recent decades due to the same economic activity that led to the pollution, and how many lives have been saved, lengthened and improved as a result?
This is the cost/benefit comparison that has to be made.
What has every other country in the world chosen to do when faced with the same dilemma? Of course, they made growth the priority because the positive transformation of their society from a low baseline far outweighs the negative, and then they started cleaning up the mess when they had productive capacity to spare. Let China and India do the same, and let them decide when and by how much, just as the developed countries in the world decided from themselves when in the same situation.
Yes, unlike US gov, China is aware that going forward coal is not the answer. They are ahead of us in deploying renewable energy.
The picture is much more complex than you indicate.
China’s attitude to coal is shaped by multiple considerations, including energy security (after it moved from being a net coal exporter to net importer a decade or so ago), severe air pollution affecting large population centres (hence introduction of stack-scrubbing measures, and banning expansion in particular geographies), too great a reliance on small, inefficient and unsafe mines (90% of historical production), public backlash about mine safety (fatalities/tonne 130 times USA levels and far worse in worst mines), terrible resource recovery rates (30% average compared to 60% global average, which means they are wasting half their potential reserves due to inefficient recovery), road and rail congestion (50% of China rail freight is coal, and road transport is also used extensively).
China still plans to increase coal production and generating capacity overall, but at a much slower growth rate than historically, while simultaneously closing the smallest, least efficient and most dangerous mines. It’s also investing heavily in coal-to-gas (allowing gas, rather than bulk distribution), and in supercritical and ultra-supercritical generating technology to improve generating efficiency.
There are also signs that China is throttling back on renewables, which have grown much faster than anticipated due to generous feed-in-tariffs. FITs have been reduced, and RE providers have been hit by curtailment orders from grid operators. China has twice the installed wind generating capacity of the US, but only produces the same amount of power. It is clear that infrastructure can’t keep pace with the level of RE growth in recent years.
China is doing the sensible thing – i.e. diversifying and modernising while trying to balance the various costs and benefits. You can be certain of one thing: the overarching consideration will be putting China first.
Nate: Wait you need a study to know what higher energy costs hurt the poor more than the rich? There is a reason people don’t study this, it’s self evident.
Dont you think its hyperbolic to say slightly higher electric bill is leading to many deaths…
its a straight choice between food or heat,not a problem in California or near the equator any where north of 55%N and the choice is simple freeze or starve or both
I think you guys are being the ‘alarmists’ now.
Many things contribute to poverty, health problems and death in the world.
You are focusing on one, whose link to mortality is both tenuous and theoretical.
Actually the relationship is not he least bit tenuous. Good health is directly related to the ability to consume those things supplied by power. If power is higher priced, the consumption of those things becomes more difficult, first for the poor, then others.
Again, Dr. Spencer makes this point.
Lewis. Tenuos because no one has numbers or studies to show. No different than guns are linked to deaths so lets ban guns.
Nate,
Do a Google search on ‘Fuel Poverty’ and go from there.
There are many poor households in developed countries where the occupants face a choice between heating their homes adequately or eating adequately. This particularly affects the elderly and is one of the contributing factors to much higher death rates in cold winters than mild ones. High energy prices also have an inflationary effect on food and all other prices because energy is an input for the production and distribution of everything. People at the economic margins can be pushed under a line where they start to suffer serious impacts on their health and wellbeing. It is telling that you are unaware of the existence of such people and their plight.
So what are you saying? Government policies should help and not adversely impact poor people? Please tell that to Trump, re: healthcare, etc.
If you were genuinely concerned about low income people, you would advocate for more progressive taxation, more investment in affordable mass transit, access to free education, etc
Climate change will likely impact poor people the most. Poor people live in low lying areas, See Sandy and Katrina.
If you are truly concerned about poor people, you would also worry about air and water quality.
Poor people are way more likely to live where air pollution is highest. Way more likely to have low water quality (see Flynt, MI).
Poor people have asthma and asthma deaths at much higher rates than non-poor people.
Air pollution demonstrably affects human health, and the health of poor people the most.
BTW, in many cold-weather states, like mine, there is financial support programs for low-income people for heat.
Though I have learned that Trump eliminates this program in his budget
Nate
“BTW, in many cold-weather states, like mine, there is financial support programs for low-income people for heat.”
First you put policies and bureaucracies in place to impoverish people and then you put policies and bureaucracies in place to alleviate the problems you’ve created for them. And you get to feel good about yourself on both counts. Furthermore, they cant tell you to go and stick your phony compassion up your arse because you have carefully crafted an implacable machine that places them in a dependent position. So they lose on all counts and you win on all counts.
99.9% of all piety in the world is self-serving. As it says in the bible, the sole purpose of the priestly robles is to hide the rot from human eyes.
‘First you put policies..’
Obviously that is not the order that things were done, and obviously one does not necessitate the other.
Financial support has always been there to prevent people from freezing.
Nate
“Financial support has always been there to prevent people from freezing.”
Ask the people suffering from fuel poverty what they think about the level and effectiveness of the financial support. You only have confidence in the various bureaucracies because you personally don’t rely on them. Some people can work and even game bureaucracies – people like you, for instance – but those at the bottom of the pile are not necessarily as good at it. Furthermore, the kinds of public bureaucracies that you are likely to encounter tend to put on a friendlier and more helpful face for nice middle-class people like you because nice middle-class people like you who know how to make the right kind of fuss if they don’t.
I dont know if you actually live in a cold state? But reason Minnesota, Canada, and Sweden are more progressive is I think is related to the realization that people who lost a job and are left homeless or without societal support, will actually freeze and starve, unlike down south.
Fuel poverty may be a thing, but for many, health care poverty, or rent poverty is probably much worse.
Nice write up Doc.
I found many parallels in todays House Science committee meeting. This may be a bit OT, but how can the same debunked talking points continue to be circulated in front of this committee. The amount of politically charged and scientifically false comments from the members and witnesses like Mann are demonstratively false and harmful to the point of personal liability.
Mann’s charges against Smith, and all the other witnesses present, should be met with legal retribution! His audacity was overwhelming.
https://science.house.gov/legislation/hearings/full-committee-hearing-climate-science-assumptions-policy-implications-and
Not sure if the link will still function.
ossqss…”Manns charges against Smith, and all the other witnesses present, should be met with legal retribution!”
With testimony from Judith Curry, John Christy, and Roger Pielke Jr. around Mann, it won’t be hard to spot Mann’s propaganda.
At least Mann is allowed to testify. In similar hearings in Canada they are usually stacked with climate alarmists.
Lamar Smith looked like a fool today, calling Science magazine and its reporter “not objective.”
http://www.snopes.com/2017/03/29/smith-journal-science-not-objective/
Mann put one right between Smith’s eyes, and Smith never saw it coming.
More coverage at
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2017/03/house-science-committee-comes-to.html
Michael Manns answer to every is lawsuit, shame he wont release the data
The data has long been released. ‘Skeptics’ started the legal game long before Mann did.
What a joker.
Mann’s data has been available since at least 2004. On his Web site.
DA….”Mann put one right between Smiths eyes, and Smith never saw it coming”.
Why are we talking about Mann? He’s a geologist and he made a fool out of himself by claiming the 1990s were the warmest decade in 1000 years.
Mann is not important, even in climate science.
‘Mann is not important’ Judging by all the attention, and threats he gets from deniers, he must be very important.
In fact the ones who get attacked and maligned the most, Hansen, Mann, are the ones who have made the biggest contributions to their field.
Gordon Robertson says:
“Why are we talking about Mann? Hes a geologist and he made a fool out of himself by claiming the 1990s were the warmest decade in 1000 years.
Mann is not important, even in climate science.”
Gordon, you write the most ridiculous things that it’s easy to dismiss you.
Don’t you desire to have just a touch of credibility?
I know a lot of homeowners who want solar. One friend has a huge electric bill for various reasons-so he got solar. His electric bill is near 0, and he will have a good roi.
Remember, the up front costs are being subsidized. His bill is zero because you are helping to pay it.
Why would you think you can decide what products and services are better for the economy? People want to buy Tesla, cause it is cool, and that grows the economy, great.
Remember Tesla sells all its vehicles at many thousands of dollars of loss. If you pay taxes, part of the taxes you are paying are to subsidize rich people buying a Tesla.
Fossil fuels are also heavily subsidized.
Socialized, actually — the fossil fuel producers and utilities get the profits, and the public pays the costs in higher health bills and environmental damage.
How would the public feel, and you, without those fossil fuels?
You spout off on health concerns, but provide no attribution to the benefits of those comforts derived from that of which you say are problematic.
Let’s see how healthy you are without your AC, heater, or refrigerator over a long period of time David. Think about it as you sit in the comforts of your fossil fuel provided domain and use your fossil fuel provided transportation and communication.
Yeppers, you are convicted of the creature comforts that you want deny to others.
How do you live with yourself David?
Appliances, automobiles, etc require ENERGY — but that energy need not come from fossil fuels.
And if that energy does, the user should pay for the damage that fuel creates.
Isn’t that a basic moral clause — clean up after yourself?
Your talking nonsense David.without fossil fuels you can not manufacture a wind turbine or solar panels .Not to mention mining raw materials.or transportation. We are stuck with them for as long as it takes technology to come up with replacements.just think what the scientists and inventors would do with all that money wasted on green policies energy has to be reliable affordable and available to every body renewables are non of those things
Again, how many deaths from indoor pollution per year, David?
Colin Fenwick says:
“Again, how many deaths from indoor pollution per year, David?”
How is that relevant to the topic of manmade climate change?
Or do you think that all other problems must first be completely solved before AGW can be addressed?
That’s not how the world works, or how you run your own life. We have to — and can — address all of them at once.
Ian brown says:
“Your talking nonsense David.without fossil fuels you can not manufacture a wind turbine or solar panels”
Not true. Manufacturing takes energy — but it doesn’t take energy from a particular source like fossil fuels. There are other, much cleaner ways to generate the energy needed.
David, I’m not sure if you are being wilfully obtuse, ignorant or simply selfish.
“And if that energy does (come from fossil fuels), the user should pay for the damage that fuel creates.”
Millions of people die each year because they DON’T have access to electricity from fossil fuels. Millions David.
How do you pay for that damage?
in higher health bills and environmental damage.
You’re just imagining these things, and citing scary things doesn’t make them true. In fact, by appealing to emotion, they are suspect.
You need to worry about your individual health habits FAR more than global warming.
In fact,
* if one smokes, one cannot worry about global warming
* if one drinks, one can’t worry about global warming
* more than one sexual partner? can’t worry about global warming
* familiar with oreos or Cap’n Crunch? can’t worry about global warming
* own a motorcycle? can’t worry about global warming
* own a couch but no walking shoes? can’t worry about global warming
Turbulent Eddie says:
“Youre just imagining these things, and citing scary things doesnt make them true. In fact, by appealing to emotion, they are suspect.”
Why are you avoiding the science?
You act like it doesn’t exist.
I thought Tesla made a profit recently.
Hybrid cars when they first came out were expensive and there was a tax credit to encourage people to buy high eff vehicles. Now the credit is over. Yet hybrids, like Prius, have become some of the top-selling cars. Because they are good. They have contributed to lowering overall US oil consumption. This has helped lower our oil imports. All in all, a success.
The EPA allowed ‘scientists’, really dumb technicians, to lie. That was unforgivable. What’s more, they ignored stark warnings about what would happen in some cases if they ignored those warnings.
That means an Agency out of control: it needs to be culled sufficiently that its management is honest and its staff objective.
As I’ve said many times, a clean, healthful, beautiful environment is a costly good. Richer people can afford more costly goods than poorer people. Poverty, not affluence, is the greatest threat to the environment. History has shown again and again that as societies get wealthier, they choose to get cleaner, too–and their wealth enables them to afford the costs of getting cleaner. Trump’s EO will make Americans more prosperous and therefore able to bear the cost of a cleaner environment. Good.
So why shouldn’t the rich have to pay for the damage costs of their pollution (which is far greater than the damage costs of the poor)?
Stop using the poor as an excuse. Roy and John Christy do this too.
So why shouldnt the rich have to pay for the damage costs of their pollution (which is far greater than the damage costs of the poor)?
Because there are no damage cost and perhaps even benefits.
Should the poor pay the rich for the benefits of increased CO2 and warming?
Turbulent Eddie says:
“Because there are no damage cost and perhaps even benefits.”
Again, a claim made with no evidence whatsoever.
If you don’t have any, why do you make this claim?
Evidence abounds. One need not prove it to you, in fact, showing you proof leads to denial on your part.
So, does that make you a denier or a taxer. I’d say the latter.
Another reply with no evidence at all.
You must watch Fox News.
E. Calvin Beisner, You fawn over Trump like some Messiah. We will see the time bomb wreak on your American economy next year. The sooner they impeach him the better off your country will be.
There are subsidies of government that can speed up many forms of transitions. One is energy use. Another health care independently for the aged just for example.
There are many things that the levers of government can do for good outcomes. The trouble with your dead wooded conservative right brain thinkers is that you think government should take their hand off all levers (your countries economics) and any possible growing climate disruption threat.
Let me tell you something – conservative dead wooded brained minds ALWAYS run for cover. You will not find some fat wealthy capitalist helping out the poor. You will however find average Joes helping out their fellow neighbour like right now here in Queensland Australia with this monster cyclone. Hurricane – (your country)
Ross,
Your crass generalizations are, besides being wrong, are hateful, something I’ve found permeates the left. I expect you yell at those who have the temerity to disagree with you.
Good day,
Lewis Guignard
Crouse, NC, USA
+1
Wishing your grandson a healthy, speedy recovery.
All economic actions have opportunity cosrs–what could have been done in the alternative. And as a general rule any action should cease when its marginal cost exceeds ita marginal benefit. EPA therefore understates the costs and overstates the benefits to justify going from 90% to 99%. That is how bureaucracies self perpetuate rather than declaring victory and withdrawing.
“EPA therefore understates the costs and overstates the benefits…”
Proof?
And the converse?
Can’t prove damage either.
Trends of most of the scary things ( Fires, Droughts, Floods ) are actually counter indicated in the US where the measurements and records are best and longest.
But since these things are natural, one will never have proof.
Best to not prattle on about things you can’t prove.
“Trends of most of the scary things ( Fires, Droughts, Floods ) are actually counter indicated in the US where the measurements and records are best and longest.”
Proof? Data? Evidence?
David,
The EPA lied.
People died.
How do I know. The EPA lied is shown in its record.
People died. Look at the daily obituaries.
That’s all the proof you need.
Sounds like the kind of evidence-less claim Trump would make. If he hasn’t already.
Read the EPA endangerment finding for carbon dioxide.
It is a complete cop out and provides no proof of actual harm to anyone.
And don’t bother quoting the IPCC. That is a purely political organization which does not study “climate”, but tries to form a basis for government restrictions. The science in the AR5 report is pretty well-founded but shows innocuous effects overall. That fact is not reflected in the Summary for Policy Makers.
I came across a new word recently – hormesis. Hormesis is a biological phenomenon whereby a beneficial effect ( improved health, stress tolerance, growth or longevity) results from exposure to low doses of an agent that is otherwise toxic or lethal when given at higher doses.Anti -pollution policies are based on the premise of Linear No Threshold. ( LNT.) Very little in life is truly linear, and the No Threshold means that the only safe dose is zero. We are advised to eat foods which contain ” antioxidants.” Our bodies produce reactive oxygen species ( ROS) which can trigger apoptosis, or programmed cell death. Antioxidants can mop up these ROSs which should lead to better health and longer life, – except many studies have failed to show any such effect from antioxidants. On the other hand, exposing yourself to oxidative stress, also known as “exercise,” has been shown to increase health and longevity. Hormesis is a dose response phenomenon characterized by a low dose stimulation, high dose inhibition, resulting in either a J-shaped or an inverted U-shaped dose response. This positive response to stress has been called “eustress.”
James Davidson…”We are advised to eat foods which contain antioxidants. Our bodies produce reactive oxygen species ( ROS) which can trigger apoptosis, or programmed cell death. Antioxidants can mop up these ROSs which should lead to better health and longer life, except many studies have failed to show any such effect from antioxidants”.
There are many studies commissioned by pharmaceutical companies to cast a bad light on good research into antioxidants. There are many good studies dating back to the 1970s that prove the benefits of antioxidants.
You won’t get much benefit from eating foods high in antioxidants. Vitamin C, one of the better water-soluble antioxidants, requires around 3000 milligrams a day at least. That’s equivalent to 40 oranges.
The only way to take antioxidants is through megadosing them. That’s likely why some studies don’t get results. For example, Linus Pauling called for 10,000 mg of C for terminal cancer patients and a study claiming to debunk his theory used 500 mg. On top of that they kept terminal cancer patients on chemotherapy purely to keep up appearances. The National Cancer Institute has recently adopted Pauling’s advice.
Vitmain E, a fat soluble vitamin, has proved to be effective against heart disease but only if you take 400 to 800 IU per day (more if needed…up to 2000 IU). You won’t get that from eating whole grains, only in capsules.
Recently, the scientist who discovered HIV, Dr. Luc Montagnier, claimed AIDS is caused by oxidative stress and the natural remedy is to stop high risk behavior and take antioxidants. He revealed that HIV will not harm a healthy immune system, suggesting strongly that AIDS is not caused by HIV but by lifestyle. As viral expert Dr. Peter Duesberg claimed 20 years ago, HIV is a passenger virus, along for the ride.
Drug companies don’t want simple, over-the-counter solutions available to the public and have campaigned to make vitamins unavailable to the general public. They admit on their sites that the toxic drugs they produce for HIV cannot cure it. Furthermore, they have redefined AIDS to obfuscate the fact that these drugs (HAART) cause AIDS.
Gordon Robertson says:
“Recently, the scientist who discovered HIV, Dr. Luc Montagnier…Dr. Peter Duesberg… blah blah yadda yadda.”
Both are widely recognized as quacks on this subject.
Naturally you fell head over heels for everything they’ve claimed.
DA…”Both are widely recognized as quacks on this subject”.
By you and who else? Montagnier discovered HIV so that makes him a quack in your eyes. Duesberg received the California Scientist of the Year award. More quackery.
The more you open your mouth the more stupid you become.
If AIDS was caused by stress, it wouldn’t have started with flight attendants.
It would have started with the passengers.
By who? By everyone who cares about scientific truth.
And Deusberg’s prize was given in 1971, long before HIV/AIDS.
Gordon, based on your theory, please explain the drastic decline in mortality-rate of HIV positive people, since the development of the antiviral therapy in the 90s.
You can look up these stats, in the early years, about 10 of every 100 with HIV died each year, ultimately 80%-90% died from AIDS. Currently < 1 of every 100 with HIV die every year (from AIDS). Many people, like Magic Johnson or Charlie Sheen, are living a very long time after infection. The drastic decline began immediately after development of the antiviral therapy in mid 90s.
How can your theory explain this? Ultimately the test of any medical theory is whether treatment, based on it, works.
James,
Regulators hate the idea of hormesis, even though it has been demonstrated time and again.
Small amounts of radiation are beneficial to humans. In fact, low amounts of ionizing radiation result in lower cancer rates.
Isn’t it wonderful we can still learn about concepts such as hormesis. I wish it was taught in schools, but teaching such concepts requires an educated collection of educators. Our schools are having trouble with really basic concepts, let alone subtleties in reasoning.
Closely related to all these concepts, including this entire posting on the part of Dr. Spencer, is the dose-response curve. The dose is the message. The only difference between a substance being a poison and a beneficial substance is the dose. A couple of aspirins will relieve pain. A bottle of aspirins will kill you.
So the question for anyone regulating a substance should be, At what concentration does this substance cause problems? If we are at or below that concentration, we’re OK.
Appreciate your comments.
On hormesis: I’ve recently come to understand that our bodies need a minute amount of arsenic. (I could be wrong but that is my recollection) And since we have arsenic, in small amounts in our well water, I found that relieving.
Imodium can often help with that kind of relief issues.
Dr. Roy Spencer you can ask your doctor about coenzyme Q10 and stem cells.
Sorry.
Another way of addressing our energy needs is starting a systematic program of building many more nuclear power plants. This should be proceeded by a one year study to determine the “correct” kind of nuclear power plant. Small MSR’s and thorium-based reactors should be considered.
We also need way more research into fusion power, and maybe even geothermal. We have to realize at some point that we will run out of fossil fuels and even uranium.
I was surprised when I looked it up that the US currently gets 4.7% of its total energy from wind. I would have guessed half that.
The EIA data says wind is now about 2.2%.
http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/index.cfm#consumption
Someone talk about chem-trails.
OK: chem-trails don’t exist.
Great piece. The Left lives off its rackets. Climate change and CO2 are just the latest fads. In its day, HIV/AIDS was also successful at diverting funds to itself greater than its actual death rate and threat strictly warranted. Self-promoters often get what they want on the squeaky wheel theory, but public servants have a duty to ignore this noise, and prioritize the real priorities rather than waste money on things costing more than any possible benefit.
Lynn…”In its day, HIV/AIDS was also successful at diverting funds to itself greater than its actual death rate…”
The following is all verifiable if you care to do some research. Those who are climate alarmist will immediately resort to their authority figures and reject it out of hand.
What do you mean ‘in it’s day’. The HIV/AIDS machine is still diverting trillions of dollars from medical research in the US to serve people who account for far less than 1% of the population and who could quite easily prevent AIDS themselves by stopping high risk behaviour.
In Africa, people are dying from malnutrition, contaminated drinking water, and parasite infections, and the WHO has blamed it on sexually transmitted HIV. This has emanated from male homosexuals (lesbians don’t get AIDS unless they are IV drug users) dying in New York and San Fransisco back in the early 1980s after participating in unprotected sex in steam baths with multiple partners while taking up to 6 different types of drugs. One of the drugs, amyl nitrate, or poppers, is now being blamed directly for one of the opportunistic infections lumped under the AIDS umbrella.
It was Reagan back in 1983 who accepted a wild guess without peer review from a scientist who blamed the epidemic on a virus. That scientist had only a few years earlier embarrassed himself with a theory that cancer is caused by a virus.
He brought his cancer-virus theory to AIDS, intact from cancer research. He is now a very wealthy man, having patented both tests used to determine HIV status. Neither test detects a virus, they measure immune activity. It is implied on a positive HIV test that the result is due to a virus.
Recently, Dr. Luc Montagnier, who discovered HIV, has made it clear that HIV is a harmless virus that will not affect a healthy immune system. That same claim was made back around 1983 by Dr. Peter Duesberg, one of the world’s leading virologists.
Sorry…the HIV/AIDS propaganda is still very much with us and now the drug companies are starting it again with Hep-C. No one has ever seen the alleged Hep-C virus yet the drug companies are urging everyone to get tested for it.
The only paradigm that shames the viral-AIDS hypothesis is the AGW theory.
Gordon Robertson wrote:
“The HIV/AIDS machine is still diverting trillions of dollars from medical research in the US”
More blunt stupidity.
The entire US economy (GDP) is only $18 trillion per year.
NIH funding is in the few tens of billions of dollars.
David,
don’t be too hard on Gordon and his arithmetic. He believes you can make money out of slot machines the longer you play.
dr no…I studied arithmetic, and trig, and calculus, you apparently did not.
He also seems to think that the only people who get AIDS are homosexual males.
DA…”The entire US economy (GDP) is only $18 trillion per year”.
Did I say the trillions were part of the US GDP?
no you didn’t. Nor did you limit it to any one year.
Do like those opposed to HB2 in NC.
‘NC is losing 3.2 billion over 12 years’ (AP)
Gordon Robertson says:
“Did I say the trillions were part of the US GDP?”
Doesn’t matter — just the claim, of trillions, is obviously wrong, because if it were true it would be a huge, noticeable, problematic part of the US or World economy.
And, as usual, you gave no source backing up your claim.
Gordon,
Pls answer my question re: HIV
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2017/03/trumps-rollback-of-epa-overreach-what-no-one-is-talking-about/#comment-242027
If you dont give an answer, then I have to assume you dont have an answer.
Gordon? Got anything? No rebuttal to my rebuttal?
This is a blog where we discuss and debate science. If you bring up an issue, again and again, then you should be prepared to defend it and debate it.
This comment is admittedly off-topic, but I am still tempted to make it.
I read in the newspaper that the recent reduction in Artic sea ice has created a new sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide, in the form of phytoplankton growth. Was that the work of the EPA?
Christopher…”I read in the newspaper that the recent reduction in Artic sea ice has created a new sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide…”
Right now, there are 10 metres of ice on the Arctic Ocean from the North Pole to the Canadian mainland. Did the article mention that?
Most articles talking about Arctic ice loss fail to mention that the loss is only during a few months of the Arctic summer.
10 meters? Prove it.
DA…”10 meters? Prove it”.
Sorry…typo with some brain lock. I meant 3 metres, I was thing 10 feet, not metres.
How about proving your claim of 1.6 metres as of Feb (over 5 feet of ice). You do realize Arctic ice is not a cap and it moves around. As it moves, say crushed against the northern Canadian mainland, it leaves parts in Siberia with no ice at all.
And it’s not down from 2.9 metres in 1979. I posted a link recently revealing 3 metres in January 2017.
As usual, I”m not allowed to reply with details.
Such comments never get through. Thanks Roy.
DA…”As usual, Im not allowed to reply with details.
Such comments never get through”.
Unlike you, I am willing to spend some time finding the words that Roy’s system won’t accept. So far I have discovered it doesn’t like Had-crut. Without the hyphen it is rejected.
You’ll find that your rejections come down to one word. The word is usually fairly obvious and splitting your posts into smaller parts will isolate it.
Roy’s site won’t accept Had CRUT? Why am I not surprised?
On on other blog that I’ve ever visited is one supposed to guess what words are and aren’t allowed.
avg annualized thickness = 1.6 m, as of Feb.
DA….hear it is, from the Danish Meteorological Institute. See part way down the page under thickness. They have it ranging from 3 to 3.5 metres over most of the Arctic as of March 28, 2017.
http://www.climate4you.com/SeaIce.htm
THis dumb site won’t even let me post a simple formula here.
Yea ive stopped participating for the same reason. Its really a shame you can not use data.
That’s clearly not the case, Gordon. Most of the sea ice area on the graph you give is in the blue, which is less than 2.5 meters thick.
PIOMAS have an anomaly chart for the whole of February, relative to that month’s 1979-2016 average.
http://tinyurl.com/n2dqnpv
Average ice thickness in February 2017 over the PIOMAS domain is also the lowest on record (Fig 4.) Note that the interpretation of average ice thickness needs to take into account that only areas with ice thickness greater than 15 cm are included so that years with less total volume can have a greater ice thickness.
Comparison with other years:
http://tinyurl.com/p334oay
In that chart you get absolute values instead of anomalies, which For February 2017 averaged 1.25 meters thickness.
Average sea ice thickness is greatest in the long-term record in 1980 in the month of May, when it was 2.5 metres thick. There has been a general thinning over time since then, in all seasons.
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/
barry…”Average sea ice thickness is greatest in the long-term record in 1980 in the month of May, when it was 2.5 metres thick”.
I confirmed the 3 metres in a book by Par Farmer who jogged from the North Pole to the South Pole. Or so he claims. Hard to jog across the water.
Anyway, he was dropped into the North Pole by helicopter and en route they stayed at a Russian research site set up on the ice near the Pole. They told him the ice was 3 metres thick.
barry…”Most of the sea ice area on the graph you give is in the blue, which is less than 2.5 meters thick”.
barry…I specifically stated between the North Pole and the Canadian mainland. In another post I acknowledged that the Arctic sea ice moves, leaving some parts of the Arctic Ocean bereft of ice.
The parts that are blue and purple are closer to the North Atlantic, where relatively warmer water infiltrates.
The area to which I refer is all green with smatterings of yellow. I moved it up to 3 metres due to the yellow.
I don’t really care whether it’s 3.5 metres or 3. The point is that the salt water Arctic Ocean is subjected to such frigid temperatures that it develops 3 metres of ice on it’s surface.
2.5…3 metres, it’s late March for cripes sake. That’s cold. I don’t see much in the way of ice melting at the moment.
barry…read Pat Farmer’s book…Pole to Pole: One Man. He’s an Aussie for cripes sake.
Also read the book by Ranuplh Fiennes where he did a similar trek.
Read about the actuality of how miserable the cold is up there in February and March and not the accounts of some sissified alarmists speculating from their labs at room temperature.
This nonsense about ice melting is pseudo-science that fails to address the reality of an Arctic without sunlight much of the year.
divide sea ice volume by sea ice area
Down from 2.9 m in 1979.
Dr. Roy Spencer, you said: “This is why Obamas coal-killing efforts have been legitimately characterized as all pain for no gain. “. Aren’t you ignoring the health benefits of closing outdated coal plants? We used to have SMOG days here in Ontario which was a huge issue for people living with asthma. Those days are luckily long gone now. I don’t think “clean coal” can compete with natural gas.
Jay_CT…”Arent you ignoring the health benefits of closing outdated coal plants? We used to have SMOG days here in Ontario which was a huge issue for people living with asthma”.
My family grew up in the UK when coal produced smog so thick you could literally not see your hand in front of your face.
Most of them lived into their mid-80s and some into their mid-90s, enjoying good health till the end. Those who died younger were smokers and heavy drinkers.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
I can’t imagine anyone would want those days back, and friends that have visited China tell me it is unbearable. Wasn’t it Thatcher that ended coal in Britain as the labor union was fighting for jobs? Back when right wing politicians made sensible decisions!
In 1948 in Denora, PA, about 24 miles southeast of Pittsburgh and its mills, and about 30 miles from where I grew up, a 5-day smog attck killed 20 people and sickened up to 7,000, half the town:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Donora_smog
The smog was so bad PEOPLE COULD NOT LEAVE TOWN BECAUSE THEY COULDN’T SEE WELL ENOUGH TO DRIVE. Imagine that.
It took four days for nearby mills to agree to close down. Gotta have them profits, ya know.
Profits? Is that a bad word? Do you work for free? Or do you prefer to make a profit?
Should profits get priority above human health?
Yes and she also funded research along the lines of fossil fuels cause dangerous climate change.
Oh-and she also brought in the poll tax whereby everybody paid the same local tax.
So a twenty room mansion paid that same amount as a one room hovel.
Thank goodness the British citizens got rid of her.
the answer to smog is easy ,the uk had a serious smog problem, the government passed the clean air act, all coal fired power stations had scrubbers fitted to their smoke stacks ,the results are smog free cities,if you look at the few remaining coal fired power stations we have left, the emissions are almost invisible, so it can be done at very little cost,so now we just have fog,mixed with wood smoke from yuppie stoves and bio fuels, the only smoke emitting power station we have left is the large Drax power station burning 3 million tons of wood pellets,imported from the USA,not so green and not so clean, just a terrible waste of money
What you point out is that early in industrialization pollution is a cost that is ignored. Later, as we become richer, it becomes financially bearable to control or alleviate pollution.
That said, as Dr. Spencer points out, it is not free and spending too much on the next little bit can cost more than it is worth.
That being said, the scrubbers were not cheap. The cost was spread over years and thousands of people.
scrubbers not cheap, that,s true but you only do it once ,the land that wind farms and solar farms sit on,are paid for by financial payments to land owners some times for the life span of the wind farm and solar farm,and the money stays there,at least some of your money you pay for utilities goes back into the tax system and not lost forever,its not perfect ,but what is
Hi Roy,
First time posting but just wanted to wish your Grandson all the best.
Dr. Roy, you are 100% correct when you say:
All I can say is we need to keep pounding that drum. Fighting CO2 on the backs of the poor is a crime against our weakest sector.
Best to you and yours, keep the music rolling,
w.
“Fighting CO2 on the backs of the poor is a crime against our weakest sector.”
As if conservatives care about the poor.
Do you or Roy have numbers and studies showing that the Clean Power Plan “will make poverty worse, and as a result more people will die.”
Then let’s see them. Because neither you nor Roy have offered a scintilla of evidence.
Do you use fossil fuels David? If so, why?
Of course I do — there isn’t much choice about the matter.
But my 15-yr old car still gets 27 mi/gal, and I pay extra for 100% green offsets for electricity (average extra cost/month = $1.63 = 4.9%) and for natural gas (average extra cost/month = $3.36 = 8.3%.
And, as it turns out, I don’t have any children, which is by far the most useful thing anyone can do for the environment. (Each child increases their mother’s, or father’s, lifetime emissions by a factor of 6.)
In any case, we need to stop emitting carbon as soon as possible, and we need infrastructure changes, beyond any individual’s capacity, to do that.
Of course there’s a choice, David. Go out and live in the woods. Why do you even _have_ a car? You are actively and consciously participating in something you yourself view as a great evil. Don’t even try to virtue-signal by talking about the reasonably good gas mileage of your virtuous 15-year-old car. All you’re saying, according to your very own ethical view of things, is that you’re a tiny bit less evil than people with lower MPG vehicles.
Seriously. Go out and live in the woods. Hunt for your food, but don’t you dare cook it over a fire. No emissions for you.
CO2 emissions are a great force for death and suffering (your own view). You actively participate in producing CO2 emissions. I’m trying to think of a option for you, according to your own moral lights, other than evil or hypocrite.
Not having children usefull for the enviroment.you must be reading an old Maurice Strong book.thought we had left all that rubbish behind
David A says
“And, as it turns out, I dont have any children, which is by far the most useful thing anyone can do for the environment. (Each child increases their mothers, or fathers, lifetime emissions by a factor of 6.)”
So then if everybody took your advice there would soon be nobody left on the planet.
Is this not the real aim of the ‘green movement’?
Ian brown says:
“Not having children usefull for the enviroment.you must be reading an old Maurice Strong book”
“Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals,” Paul A. Murtaugh and Michael G. Schlax, Global Environmental Change (2008),
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/pdfs/OSUCarbonStudy.pdf
from the Abstract:
“The summed emissions of a persons descendants, weighted by their relatedness to him, may far exceed the lifetime emissions produced by the original parent. Under current conditions in the United States, for example, each child adds about 9441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average female, which is 5.7 times her lifetime emissions. A persons reproductive choices must be considered along with his day-today activities when assessing his ultimate impact on the global environment.”
Beaneater says:
“CO2 emissions are a great force for death and suffering (your own view)”
Anything else you want to imagine about me?
David is a hypocrite. Not to worry, he’ll keep consuming and complaining, doing nothing for anyone and telling me I do nothing for the poor.
But David, I give 75 people jobs. Most of them very well paying. On top of that I give $3000 per year to the local Christian Ministries for the poor.
What do you do?
Lewis: I write article that set people straight on the kind of pseudoscience spread by the likes of you.
BTW, a revenue neutral carbon tax-and-dividend, with all money collected given back on an equal per-capita basis, would see 60% of Americans getting back more than they pay.
It’d be a poverty relief program, because it’s the affluent who emit most of the CO2, and the poor of today and of the next 4,000 generations who will mostly pay the cost.
All that, and there’s no chance of graft, corruption, or kickbacks! Hooray!
THere are chances of that in absolutely every transaction. That’s hardly reason enough to avoid trying.
It is obvious that most people have many more immediate priorities, than joining a fruitless battle against a future enemy, that may not even appear. Even in the most advanced countries a push back is developing with a resurgence of the far right. Even leftist greens are sabotaging attempts to lower emissions, by pursuing stiff opposition to hydroelectric dams, fracturing and nuclear power plants.
https://tinyurl.com/ko3na9mhttp:/
http://data.myworld2015.org/
http://rockyredneck.simplesite.com/432866901
The far right movement is largely because of immigration and refugees, not due to environmental issues. The existence of manmade climate change, and the need to address it, controversial in Europe.
most people in europe care not one jot about climate change, to them its a none event
You’re wrong:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_opinion_by_country#Table
Get off your backside and go and ask them.none of them had a clue about climate till some one came up with a horror story.and as time goes on it becomes more apparent that the AGW king really is naked after all.like I said.70 years on this planet and no change in my life time.how long do we have to wait before fantasy becomes reality.you can’t change the laws of physics to suit the you religion.i think the kings of fear are dying on thief feet.
Rick Kargaard…”Even leftist greens are sabotaging attempts to lower emissions, by pursuing stiff opposition to hydroelectric dams, fracturing and nuclear power plants”.
It’s not helpful to lump in leftists with Greens. The focus of leftists is getting a fair break for people, especially the poor and disenfranchised. Greens care only about inanimate objects like trees.
Gordon Robertson says:
“Greens care only about inanimate objects like trees.”
Another unproven lie brought to you by Gordon Robertson.
We call them tree huggers.like chocolate fire guards.they melt in the sun
DA…”Another unproven lie brought to you by Gordon Robertson”.
Heck, I say some kind words in defense of Leftists, being one myself, and I still get ad hommed. I’m just not a stupid, naive, Leftist who believes everything he is told by wannabee Leftists.
A few years back the UK planted millions of trees to try and combat.AGW.school kids councils every body was at it.so what did they plant? Deciduous trees. all the leaves fell off in September and did not not grow back till June.seven months out of twelve they were useless.and what happend to all those leaves. They rotted and all the C02. Went back where it came from.the road to ruin is paved with good intentions
Roy, your house analogy fails, for the same reason all your other economic considerations fail: you only consider one side of the ledger.
Not keeping a clean house has costs associated with it. Perhaps a kid slips on an oily spot on the floor and breaks her leg. Bacteria lying around cause diseases. Loose carpeting causes someone to trip down the stairs; the missing anti-skid pads deemed too expensive leads to someone slipping and breaking a vertebrae. The broken window you didn’t address invites crime. A dirty house is harder to sell, lower its price.
Cleaning up pollution SAVES money, usually more than the regulations cost:
“How the Clean Air Act Has Saved $22 Trillion in Health-Care Costs,” Alan H. Lockwood, The Atlantic 9/7/12.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/09/how-the-clean-air-act-has-saved-22-trillion-in-health-care-costs/262071/
You favor higher profits for Peabody Energy at the expense of health and lives. It’s the same argument those speaking for the polluters always make, and every time they have been wrong.
DA…”Cleaning up pollution SAVES money, usually more than the regulations cost…”
The problem is that CO2 is not a pollutant. There are ingredients in vehicle exhausts that were pollutants, like SO2, but steps have already been taken to remove those pollutants before they are burned.
Trying to remove CO2 from the atmosphere due to a cockamamey theory does not justify spending huge amounts of money on it.
MANMADE CO2 is a pollutant — a deleterious substance with unwanted side effects.
And the US Supreme Court has ruled it is a pollutant.
Do you use energy that produces CO2 David? Are you a polluter? If so , why?
See my comment elsewhere on this post.
Sorry David your supreme court .Does not know it’s arse from its elbow
When your party considered blacks sub-human to rationalize enslaving them, The Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sanford ruled that blacks are not really people so they can be denied American citizenship. I can list at least five other absurd Supreme Court decisions that are almost as absurd as Dred Scott.
The Supreme Court ruling CO2 is a pollutant is as absurd as ruling black Americans are not real people so they can’t be citizens. CO2 is not a pollutant. It is an invisible, colorless, odorless gas essential for all life.
Why is *manmade* CO2 not a pollutant?
Because CO2, as a category, is not a pollutant.
Bart says:
“Because CO2, as a category, is not a pollutant.”
That’s a denial, not an explanation.
Man made co2 is not a pollutant because it cannot be differentiated from “natural” co2.
Is the WV from my exhaust pipe a pollutant?
Is the Co2 i exhale a pollutant?
Is the wv from your boiling kettle a pollutant?
Is the dump you just took a pollutant?
As always DA takes the most ridiculous position he can think of and dies in a ditch defending it.
crakar24 says:
“Man made co2 is not a pollutant because it cannot be differentiated from natural co2.”
Wrong.
It can be differentiated, by the isotopes of carbon in the CO2:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
crakar24 says:
“Is the Co2 i exhale a pollutant?”
Breathing is carbon neutral.
This is probably the most embarrassing denier myth of all — it shows no evidence of any thought whatsoever.
Do you think you body is creating carbon atoms?
It is not.
It is recycling carbon.
Once again da shows just how little he understands. Breathing is not carbon (dioxide) neutral if you cannot accept this well-known fact then I now have a greater appreciation as to why you write the rubbish you do.
DA…”Do you think you body is creating carbon atoms? It is not. It is recycling carbon”.
Bit of a stretch. Since atoms can neither be created nor destroyed it’s fairly obvious they have to be recycled.
Can we get into a discussion about where atoms came from?
The body is made up of carbon as a base hence the moniker ‘carbon units’. Life itself is about carbon. Carbon is a very important atom with regard to life and here you are slamming one of it’s molecules as deleterious.
Maybe in your body but I regard my carbon highly. Each breath I exhale I say to my out-going carbon molecules, “Have a good day”.
CO2 is not a pollutant because it is essential for all life. It does not have lethal effects on humans until it its atmospheric content reaches about 80,000ppm.
Naval officers are entrusted to command billion dollar nuclear powered submarines. They have the codes to launch nuclear weapons and destroy entire societies if so ordered. They have that enormous responsibility while living in enclosed environments where CO2 levels often reach 6000ppm – 8000ppm. That’s 20x more than the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Similarly, astronauts live for months in space stations with similar CO2 concentration levels.
“Man-made CO2” can never become toxic to humans because there is not enough fossil fuels on the planet for us to combust to make it toxic.
It’s taken a hundred years for the atmospheric content of CO2 to increase from 300ppm to 400ppm. Regardless of all your egghead studies filled with moronic assumptions, the benefits of that have been overwhelmingly positive. The cheap energy has created the wealth to educate our society, eliminate starvation and malnutrition, provide good healthcare, vaccinate against childhood disease that used to be certain death for pennies a dose, increase longevity, increase leisure, and fund the beautiful things in life like art, literature, and music. And, of course, the massive greening phase the planet is currently experiencing which is adding 2 billion tons of biomass to the biosphere every year providing expanded habitat for greater biodiversity.
The SCOTUS did not rule CO2 is a pollutant. It hardly has that power or purview. What it ruled was that the EPA had the power to regulate just about anything it wanted to regard as an air pollutant, as the definition in the Clean Air Act is exceedingly vague:
‘The CAA defines “air pollutant” as “any air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical, biological, radioactive . . . substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air”.’
– attribution to site which cannot be named, but rhymes with Wicked Media.
Opinion of the Court:
“The CAA defines “air pollutant” as “any air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical, biological, radioactive . . . substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air”.[10] The majority opinion commented that “greenhouse gases fit well within the CAAs capacious definition of air pollutant.””
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_v._Environmental_Protection_Agency#Opinion_of_the_Court
Yeah, DA. That’s what I quoted above. Any “substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air” can be regulated. That is what the Court ruled that the CAA allows. The Court does not decide whether something is a pollutant or not. It only decides what the letter of the law allows.
I think David is referring C14 and C13 found in human emissions and forgetting to mention that both occur naturally making human emissions undetectable.and lost in the noise.
SCOTUS overlooked parts of the clean air act and the EPA’s own website.
Virtually all of the air quality information refers to substances which have measurable toxic effects, usually at quite low levels- fractions of a percent.
Water vapor and carbon dioxide are non-toxic and not in any rational sense “pollution”. Neither is listed in either of the lists of hazardous substances. And in fact, eliminating them from the atmosphere would have very negative effects, if there were any possibility of doing this.
DA…”MANMADE CO2 is a pollutant a deleterious substance with unwanted side effects. And the US Supreme Court has ruled it is a pollutant”.
From wiki…”Carbon dioxide (chemical formula CO2) is a colorless and odorless gas that is vital to life on Earth”.
No such thing as manmade CO2, it’s a byproduct of a lifestyle that is vital to humans.
The US Supreme Court should know about pollution, after watching them perform on the chad issue in Bush vs. Gore, most of what came out of their chambers was pollution. That’s back when I admired Gore and the Democrats. If you want to throw ad homs, there’s the perfect opening for you.
Deleterious substance?? My your brainwashing is extensive. Plants lap it up, can’t get enough. Crops love it. In fact, without it, we’d all have starved long ago.
No proven side-effects, all consensus and pseudo-science.
Gordon Robertson says:
“No such thing as manmade CO2, its a byproduct of a lifestyle that is vital to humans.”
Lame.
Lamer than usual, Gordon.
Clean Air Act: Total health benefits, 1970-1990: saved $5.6 to $49.4 trillion at a cost of $523 billion
CAA Amendments:
1990-2010: saved $690 B, cost $180 B (4:1)
Stratospheric ozone protection:
Saved $530 B, cost $27 billion (20:1)
Source: “The Clean Air Acts Economic Benefits: Past, Present and Future,” Small Business Majority, the Main Street Alliance, Oct 2010, quoting EPA studies
https://www.smallbusinessmajority.org/sites/default/files/research-reports/Benefits_of_CAA_100410.pdf
Was that from the new testament or genisis the king is dead.long live the king
hmm– total U.S debt $18.96 trillion, I would be a little skeptical of the data that led to those conclusions.
Those numbers have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the national debt.
BTW, the public debt is only $14.35 T:
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current
To quote the public debt as the relevant is highly misleading. The bulk of non-public debt is owned by the Social Security Administration in special Treasury Bonds. The SSA is counting on those bonds to fund Social Security benefits. (Even now . . . SS benefits exceed SS taxes, so the interest on bonds is being used.) We are counting on those bonds being repaid so that retirees can receive their SS benefits, so to exclude them from the relevant debt is highly deceitful.
The nonpublic debt is what government agencies owe each other. It’s a net wash.
David AppellSays C02 is a pollutant we in the U K have a saying. When your in a hole stop digging.
Roy…”Then your young child falls ill from something she picked up at daycare. You figure she will probably be OK, kids get sick all the time, and you dont take her to the doctor”.
I think that’s tragic and I hope your Grandson is OK.
I think healthcare should be free for all children whether their parents are covered or not. What kind of monsters would turn a child away from a medical facility?
GR wrote:
“What kind of monsters would turn a child away from a medical facility?”
Republicans.
DA…”What kind of monsters would turn a child away from a medical facility? Republicans”.
It was happening during many a Democratic tenure as well. I did not see Clinton doing a whole lot about it, or Gore.
I recall seeing a US pensioner on TV quite a while back and he was lamenting the loss of his life’s savings as he tended his wife who had developed dementia. They went after his family as well after they had drained his resources.
I did not see any Democrats rushing to his defense.
Gordon Robertson says:
“It was happening during many a Democratic tenure as well. I did not see Clinton doing a whole lot about it, or Gore.”
a) Clinton tried hard to institute universal health care in the US. Republicans refused to cooperate.
b) Gore was never president.
Your characterization is disgusting. Either that or you know little of how the medical system worked in the past and is working now.
“The question no one is asking, though, is But at what cost?”
Someone has been asking that question.
Just How Much Does 1 Degree C Cost?
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/just-how-much-does-1-degree-c-cost/
Got any real, peer reviewed science written by experts?
I doubt it.
“A true conservative would logically be a raging environmentalist, and the fact that the vast majority of alleged ‘conservatives’ are completely in the pocket of the extractive and exploitation industries is a testament to the intellectual bankruptcy of the movement.”
http://forums.talkingpointsmemo.com/t/discussion-what-a-maine-tea-party-battle-can-tell-us-about-obamacares-future/23072/6
Upon reading all your posts on this thread and others, I wonder, do you actually have a job, or ever had a job, of any sort?
You espouse things that anyone who ever had any resposibily in providing for a family, or sustaining one’s self, would never consider.
Do you hold a current job David?
Tell the truth>
None of your business.
We, um, know what that means.
None of your business, either. 🙂
“The effect of carbon dioxide in the blood
Haemoglobin can also bind carbon dioxide, but to a lesser extent. Carbaminohaemoglobin forms. Some carbon dioxide is carried in this form to the lungs from respiring tissues.
The presence of carbon dioxide helps the release of oxygen from haemoglobin, this is known as the Bohr effect. This can be seen by comparing the oxygen dissociation curves when there is less carbon dioxide present and when there is more carbon dioxide in the blood.
When carbon dioxide diffuses into the blood plasma and then into the red blood cells (erythrocytes) in the presence of the catalyst carbonic anhydrase most CO2 reacts with water in the erythrocytes and the following dynamic equilibrium is established.”
“It is this reversible reaction that accounts for the Bohr effect. Carbon dioxide is a waste product of respiration and its concentration is high in the respiring cell and so it is here that haemoglobin releases oxygen.
Now the haemoglobin is strongly attracted to carbon dioxide molecules. Carbon dioxide is removed to reduce its concentration in the cell and is transported to the lungs were its concentration is lower. This process is continuous since the oxygen concentration is always higher than the carbon dioxide concentration in the lungs. The opposite is true in respiring cells.”
http://www.rsc.org/Education/Teachers/Resources/cfb/transport.htm
Conclusion:
1. CO2 in the presence of oxygen is essential for saturating hemoglobin in oxygen.
2. Such adaptation may take place only as a result of a long evolution.
CO2 is required for human health. Manmade CO2 is not.
hows about this one guys and galls, if all motor cars trucks trains and heavy machinery was converted to electric power,how much more power would countries need to charge them all up ps David c02 for human health man made or not, they are both the same C02 is C02 Look it up,
Depends how the electricity is produced. If it’s produced in a sustainable way, then less CO2 is emitted overall.
Wrong DA. The life cycle production of CO2 for any renewable energy source is lower than the direct conversion of the carbon to energy used. This is mostly due to the fact that renewables require much more capital investment to harvest the widely dispersed sunlight, currently either wind or sunshine. Higher capital costs combined with more steps in the energy/CO2 cycle cause this. Renewables such as wind an solar also produce more highly toxic manufacturing wastes in larger amounts per kWh and the machinery is much harder to recycle, if it ever is. Conventional fossil fuel power plants are almost all common recycleable materials- steels, copper, cement.
“Is it true that breathing into a paper bag when having a panic attack calms you down?
Hyperventilation: When having a panic attack the body goes into full-blown “fight or flight mode” with rapid breathing that blows off so much co2 that your blood chemistry is altered. By breathing into a paper bag (my favorite is one that recently had donuts in it) you rebreathe some co2 and restore you pH balance and thus feel physically better.”
https://www.healthtap.com/topics/breathing-into-a-paper-bag
Completely irrelevant to my point. Congratulations.
Is CO2 the result of burning coal is the same gas that releases volcanoes and man during exhalation?
Some advice, Ren: stick to copying and pasting.
And, the US has passed the point where ever more energy consumption is required for sustained economic growth:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2017/03/published-2016-annual-numbers-on-energy.html
In fact, US per capita energy consumption is down 17% from its peak in 1979.
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2017/03/published-2016-annual-numbers-on-energy.html
You are really Bernie Sanders aren’t you?
I knew it!
not suprising if you ship all your heavy industries to the far east,like the uk did,then import the same goods all the way back that is what environmental tax leveys do great way to fiddle you emissions just move them over seas
There’s some truth to your comment. But there are also studies that attempt to take this into account. For example
“Pathways of human development and carbon emissions embodied in trade,” Julia K. Steinberger et al, Nature Climate Change, January 2012, DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1371
“The production of calcium carbonate structures by marine organisms has a major influence on the Earth’s carbon cycle and is responsible for the eventual formation of sedimentary rocks such as chalk and limestone. The major contributors to marine calcification are the coccolithophores, a family of unicellular algae which surround themselves in calcified plates known as coccoliths. Unlike many other calcifying organisms, coccolithophores produce their calcified structures inside the cell, enabling precise control of this process. However, the other product resulting from the calcification reaction, H+, must be rapidly removed to maintain the pH inside the cell. In this study, we show that coccolithophores possess a voltage-gated H+ channel, which removes H+ rapidly from the cell during calcification and helps maintain a constant pH.
We identify the gene encoding this H+ channel, HVCN1, and find that it is a distant relative of those recently identified in animal cells, suggesting that H+ channels may be present in many other types of eukaryote organism.
As calcifying organisms may be affected by ocean acidification, the identification of an H+ channel in coccolithophores gives us an important mechanistic understanding of cellular pH regulation during the calcification process, and may give insight into the response of coccolithophores to future changes in ocean pH.”
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001085
This experiment is interesting.
their conclusions may not be valid butworth looking at, nonetheless.
http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification–a-risky-shell-game
Extent of ice around Greenland grows.
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/plots/4km/r07_Greenland_Sea_ts_4km.png
The surface mass balance is calculated over a year from September 1st to August 31st (the end of the melt season). The figure to the right shows the sum of all the daily changes from September 1st up to today. Next year on September 1st the map will be reset and we start over. This accumulated map illustrates how much the surface mass balance has contributed in each point across the ice sheet.
http://www.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/p/a/m/d/e/accumulatedmap.png
http://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
This post reminds me of an Engineering Economics class that I took where the Professor was demonstrating the cost/benefits for various levels of wastewater treatment. Primary treatment was less expensive up front but resulted in significant environmental degradation and higher levels of treatment downstream for potable water. Secondary treatment was a little more costly but nature could handle the pollution load (natural processes mitigated degradation)and downstream treatment cost much less. Tertiary treatment was extremely expensive and resulted in no reduction in downstream treatment costs. Even though the math showed that secondary treatment process was sufficient for this facility and resulted in the highest benefit/cost ratio, a handful of students insisted that the industry should employ tertiary treatment.
Though the teacher explained that the industry (food processing) would be returning water cleaner than what is already in the river under tertiary treatment and would significantly add to production costs (food prices). This all fell on deaf ears.
If I an interpreting Dr. Spencer’s article correctly, using this example, he is not suggesting foregoing secondary treatment for primary treatment, just not wasting wealth (increased food prices) to go to tertiary treatment. There are some who seem to have interpreted the article in foregoing treatment altogether. I just did not get that impression.
Dr. Spencer emphasized the fight against real air pollution, for example by sulfur oxides. These gases form in the clouds toxic sulfuric acid. It can cause numerous respiratory diseases.
Sulfate Extinction
the aerosol optical thickness (AOT) of light at 550 nm due to sulfate:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/overlay=suexttau/equirectangular=-330.00,0.00,250
An estimated 120,000,000 long tons (120,000,000 t) of sulphur dioxide was emitted, about three times the total annual European industrial output in 2006 (but delivered to higher altitudes, hence more persistent), and equivalent to six times the total 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption.[10][15] This outpouring of sulphur dioxide during unusual weather conditions caused a thick haze to spread across western Europe, resulting in many thousands of deaths throughout the remainder of 1783 and the winter of 1784.
The summer of 1783 was the hottest on record and a rare high-pressure zone over Iceland caused the winds to blow to the south-east.[10] The poisonous cloud drifted to Bergen in DenmarkNorway, then spread to Prague in the Kingdom of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) by 17 June, Berlin by 18 June, Paris by 20 June, Le Havre by 22 June, and Great Britain by 23 June. The fog was so thick that boats stayed in port, unable to navigate, and the sun was described as “blood coloured”.[10]
Inhaling sulphur dioxide gas causes victims to choke as their internal soft tissue swells the gas reacts with the moisture in lungs and produces sulfurous acid.[16] The local death rate in Chartres was up by 5% during August and September, with more than 40 dead. In Great Britain, the records show that the additional deaths were among outdoor workers; the death rate in Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire and the east coast was perhaps two or three times the normal rate. It has been estimated that 23,000 British people died from the poisoning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki
uk solved that problem, just fit scrubbers, simple, end result no smog
Just a silly question. Only I don’t remember if Dr. Spencer has looking into this. Has anyone looked to the SUN as the cause of Global Warming or whatever they call it this week?
You’re kidding, right?
Of course.
The people who have, have been ostracized. The reigning climate establishment does not want to think about multistaged, complex processes. If there is not an immediately straightforward and elementary potential mechanism, they don’t want to hear about it. Might interfere with getting the latest grants to speculate on what horrible things might be imagined to happen in a changing climate.
Some actual evidence would be far more convincing than word salad.
We can show dozens of published papers by the well-known qualified skeptics. We can show them to you in the IPCC reports, even the ones that email gossip promised to keep out.
McIntyre, McKitrick, Spencer, Christie, Lindzen, Pielkes Snr and Jnr and others with qualifications get their stuff published.
The “gatekeepers” are pretty inept!
Inept is not the only descriptive term.
At what cost can mankind reduce Global Warming to below .10 centigrade per decade? Please provide link.
Is there any science out there that shows (with > 80% certainty) HOW mankind can CONTROL global warming at a rate of less than 0.15 degrees centigrade per decade over the LONG TERM (the next 30 to 50 years)? Please provide the link.
What is the probability that global warming will continue at less than 0.20 degrees centigrade per decade for the foreseeable future? (with the current rate of fossil fuel use).
Where is the science that mankind can reverse and/or stabilize changes in the global climate?
Is there any science that California’s cap & trade scheme actually ended the permanent drought in California? Or did the drought end naturally without the help of California’s Cap & Trade scheme to FIGHT climate change?
So many questions and zero scientific answers to obvious and reasonable challenges.
thats simple there is none
Do some research for yourself.
“Is there any science out there that shows (with > 80% certainty) HOW mankind can CONTROL global warming at a rate of less than 0.15 degrees centigrade per decade over the LONG TERM (the next 30 to 50 years)?”
Cumulative warming is proportional to cumulative emissions.
The proportionality constant is
1.5 deg C per trillion metric tons of carbon emitted.
Decide how much warming you are willing to tolerate, and you can calculate how much carbon you can emit. Deciding by when also gives you the rate.
“The proportionality of global warming to cumulative carbon emissions,” D Matthews et al, Nature 459, 829-832 (11 June 2009).
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7248/abs/nature08047.html
using the IPCC models to reduce temperature by 1 degree centigrade would take 33 years of no fossil fuel use any where on the planet,check out the maths
What research shows this?
Do it yourself David read the IPCC minutes.then do the maths simple primary school equasions
Ian:
If CO2 emissions stop, it takes many many millennia for the atmosphere’s CO2 levels to go back to that of the pre-industrial era. It certainly doesn’t happen in 33 years.
sorry David the life cycle of atmospheric C02 is 8 to 9 months not millennia, thats old science,study the carbon cycle,the earth is not a vacuum.
Sorry David for centigrade read Fahrenheit can’t read my own writing it’s in the IPCC 100 year emissions estimate.if you look at it and work it all out.you finish up with 1 trillion tons of C02 for 1 degree of warming
Still no link, Ian. I’m not going hunting based on your misconception.
And who is recommending that we do that?
Even the most loony of use realize that some emissions are necessary.
We just want to stop the warming.
And loons are one of my favorite birds.
No one .I was just pointing out that it is not realistic to destroy what have.on a preface of what may or may not happen
Hummmm,,,,,, real science behind regulation? Who woulda thunk it?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-30/did-epa-just-go-rogue-again
All I am saying is untill we have a new source of energy .What ever that may be. Closing down power stations and rolling back C02 emissions will have no impact what so ever on the climate.Nuclear is OK for power generation .But we still need blast furnesses.we have thousands of scientists and inventors screaming out for funding .And all the time governments are throwing trillions of dollars down a black hole
“Closing down power stations and rolling back C02 emissions will have no impact what so ever on the climate.”
Do you think CO2 doesn’t absorb infrared radiation, or do you think the Earth doesn’t emit it?
C02 natural emissions far out way man made emissions. They are also infinite.all carbon on the planet was once in the atmosphere as C02 at this moment in time the earth is starved of C02.if you were to create a new earth you would create one with much more C02 than is present today .The chemistry demands this be so
oh if it was just that simple David CERN spent millions of EUROS on their CLOUD experiment,and found their findings inconclusive its not surprising that particle physicists like Hawkins and Cox stay well away from climate science,its much to complex
The greatest impact for the dollar that you can have on reducing CO2 emissions is by reducing electricity consumption by switching from incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs to LED bulbs. Power company subsidies and economies of scale are driving the price of LED bulbs below $1. Even dimmable LEDs and LED’s suitable for enclosed fixtures are cheap and readily available.
A 60W equivalent, 800 lumen LED light bulb consumes 84% less power (10W) than and incandescent and (84% less) 23% less power than an equivalent compact fluorescent (13W). Replace 20 60W incandescents consuming 1200W with LED’s that consume 200W. If you pay 10 cents/KwH, you’ll recoup your costs after 200 hours of use.
Big fan of LEDs.but energy saving bulbs are a rip off.useless if you do a lot of reading.had them for a couple of years.nearly went blind.theyare another example of second rate product.made to replace one that worked perfectly well.like most other green products
I like the LEDs. I would have bought them regardless of any laws. They last a long, long time.
I am very annoyed at having the choice taken away from me. Especially when the only alternative for a time was CFLs that make everyone look ghoulish, and poison the landfills with mercury. That was just stupid.
You live in the modern world, not on the prairie 150 years ago. Your choices and energy usage have implications far beyond you, and far beyond now.
Great. So, we leave it up to neurotics like you to decide, and you decree we use stupid, poisonous, mercury filled CFLs. Back in prairie days, you’d be one of the strutting, self-important fanatics demanding trials for witches because the drought proved they were in league with Satan.
If a CFL breaks, just properly clean it up. It won’t kill you.
DA…”Your choices and energy usage have implications far beyond you, and far beyond now….”
According to you and your deluded ilk. Prove your implications.
Nothing has been “debunked,” Gordon.
Read the work of U Chicago climatologist David Archer. His papers from last decade, available on his Web site. Or read his book
“The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate,” David Archer (University of Chicago), 2008.
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10727.html
It’s a thin book, so you shouldn’t find it too taxing.
“Its a thin book, so you shouldnt find it too taxing.”
Of course it is. Because the evidence is so scanty.
“Because the evidence is so scanty.”
So how do you think CO2 ultimately leaves the atmosphere?
Well, ultimately, the Sun will expand outward, and the oceans will boil, stripping the Earth of everything below some particular heat of vaporization. But, I don’t see how that is relevant here.
Repeat that 24 million times for every resident of the NYC metro area. Now, you’ve got a problem.
Meanwhile, in the mountains of California still snowing.
http://www.intellicast.com/National/Radar/Current.aspx?location=USNV0076&animate=true
Forecast of jet stream at 5 km on April 1.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/04/01/1800Z/wind/isobaric/500hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-90.14,41.19,596
What about at 6 km on March 31st?
http://images.intellicast.com/WxImages/CustomGraphic/freeze1.gif
There will be a lot of snow in the northeastern US.
Best wishes for your Grandson.
It is obsessive-compulsive disorder, like washing one’s hands incessantly. AGW proponents are miserable neurotics, when they aren’t stark raving lunatics.
Your scientific argument here is most convincing.
So I’m either a miserable neurotic or a loony. Good to know.
I calls ’em as I sees ’em.
I live in South Australia (SA), some of you may know it as Australias energy basket case state through its ideologically driven need to build wind plants.
Perhaps its like California?
Legislation was enacted to subsidise renewables so they could compete with cheap coal and gas whilst at the same time to drive up the cost of coal and gas to make them financially unviable.
So far the plan is working beautifully, 9 coal plants have shut down the last two have to go have taken over 2 GW of generation out of the system with them.
The result is prices have skyrocketted, at times the price per MWh is $14,000 (thats AU) it would be higher but this is the market cap. Bussinesses are closing because their power bills are so high, disconnection rates are at an all time high because people cannot afford to pay their bills.
Basically, on the odd times when the wind blows power is very cheap because the subsidies allow wind plants to give their power away forcing the coal and gas to go broke and shut down. When the wind stops blowing which is most of the time they dont produce power but without coal and gas there is not enough power to go round so we now experience load shedding.
The politicians, rather than admit they were wrong are now scrambling to come up with a new plan. Here in SA we are getting the “worlds largest battery bank”, the “worlds largest solar plant” and no doubt along with it the “worlds largest power bills”.
part of the plan is to build 200MW of diesel generation, which is far worse than the coal plants they shutdown!!!
We are in the age of stupid but unfortunately we still have some way before we reach the peak.
Someone told me Australia is not yet a 3rd world nation because the water is still fit to drink but I disagree cheap reliable power is the basis of all civilisations.
Everything Roy has predicted is true because it is the here and now in SA.
What makes you think you have the right to cheap energy whose pollution damages health, the environment, and the climate for the next 4,000 generations?
Da I don’t live in a 3rd world shit hole like you, ergo I pay first world taxes so yes I do have a right to cheap reliable power.
Suggest you erect another strawman and have another go you blithering fool
Paying taxes does not, of course, give you the right to cheap power. Obviously.
Not does paying taxes alleviate you from the burdens of ethics and morality and how your actions affect others.
Sorry DAvid cheap energy has enriched millions of lives world wide .And allowed you to lead the privileged lifestyle you and ever one in the developed world enjoys today.like I said before take a trip to Africa and watch children walking miles twice a day to fetch water.and then sit in the dark at night over stinking wood fires.because they have no choice.we all live on the same planet and the planet is huge.add in the atmosphere and it becomes massive.the human influence is tiny.we are outnumbered millions to one by the natural world .In the past before humans life was more prolific than it is now. Human beings are not the problem.but we might just be the solution to the world’s needs.and if increased C02 is part of that solution then so be it.it just might not be the ogre you think it is
The UK Ian brown says:
“Sorry DAvid cheap energy has enriched millions of lives world wide”
Yes, it has. And now that so any are wealthy, tell me again why THEY (US + Europe, at a minimum) shouldn’t pay a extra for sustainable, nonpolluting energy sources.
its not the wealthy developed world that needs cheap energy,its the under developed third world countries ,and who are we to tell them its not allowed,
DA…”What makes you think you have the right to cheap energy…”
Normally, in a democracy, people vote for such initiatives. These days, politicians influenced by alarmist idiots are bypassing the democratic processes and making those decisions for us.
I can see this heading to civil war if it gets out of control. On a local Canadian news service, a blithering alarmist idiot was arguing for seeding the atmosphere to block sunlight.
The US isn’t a democracy — we elect representatives to make decisions. And in any rights are a separate subject, and moral rights still another.
What moral right does anyone have to change the world’s climate for the next 4,000 generations?
I live in South Australia (SA), some of you may know it as Australias energy basket case state through its ideologically driven need to build wind plants.
Did the tornado blowing down major transmission lines have anything to do with it (the September blackouts)?
Barry exhibiting all the knowledge expressed by da asked if a tornado blew down some towers. Little does he know we dot get tornado’s in Australia perhaps Barry should stop reading bullshit media propaganda.
Also Barry the wind plants shutdown due to a software setting the loss of 600Mw in a second caused the blackout.
Do some basic research before you gob off next time pal
Crackar 24…”Also Barry the wind plants shutdown due to a software setting the loss of 600Mw in a second caused the blackout”.
When you start messing with high voltage, high power networks, things begin blowing up big time.
But the final AEMO report clearly indicated that downed transmission lines were not the cause. Damaged transmission lines did cause voltage fluctuations but AEMO clearly expected that the wind farms would stay up, but because of certain settings they disconnected and blacked out the state.
But even if it was transmission lines, why would that absolve wind. Transmission lines are still part of the wind system, as you need it to reach many remote areas where the wind sometimes blow.
And then there was the load-shedding event in February where AEMO underestimated how much the wind would stop blowing, such that it didn’t have enough reliable electricity generation in the early evening when solar was done for the day and wind went from 900 MW to <100 MW in several hours. Yet another failure for unreliable electricity. Of course, didn't stop the anti-science greens to try to blame it on a gas turbine that hadn't been turned on in nearly two years.
I did not know that about the gas turbine. Thanks. Explains a lot. Do you know if the unit was mothballed? How long does it take to get that type ready? How long to ramp up? Got a link? Were parts of the control system scavenged for current electricity generation?
For those interested, steam production for electricity generation has problems when not used regularly. Not only is there upkeep for the turbines, but boiling water units require a lot of planning to go to mothball. Depending on the technology, dry or wet mothballing has problems with immediate start-up. For some units and wet or dry can take over 24 hours.
The gas turbine is the second unit at Pelican Point. I believe it was moth-balled but could be put online with about 4 hours notice. The grid regulator attempted to get it online when it realized that the grid was going to be in trouble but it was too late. It was running the next day.
The link below is a good article regarding the day of the event and the legal and economic issues of why the second unit wasn’t running. There’s also a nice graph showing how little it’s run since 2013.
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/2017/02/examining-why-pelican-point-didnt-bid-full-capacity-into-the-nem-on-wednesday-8-february/
There was a major South Australian blackout in 1999 when there was virtually no wind or solar capacity of for the national grid.
Traditional energy sources aren’t perfect. Transmission failure was the major factor then, too.
Then there were were the Northeast blackouts of 1965 and 2003.
Forgot to mention (sorry) all renewables do not provide synchronous generation its like you on grid roof top solar panels if there is no frequency (in australia is 240Vac @ 50Hz) then they cannot put power onto the grid. Grid frequency must be maintained at 50Hz +/- 0.2 or so Hertz.
Renewables cannot do this ergo if your grid collapses due to instability you cannot restart it with renewables.
I suggest people out side of Australia look at what is happening here and learn from it.
That’s not the problem, a 50Hz +/- 0.2 or (60Hz in the US) can easily achieved by phase synchronization through inverters as current solar panel do indeed.
The only real problem is the stochastic energy production which voids any possibility to put on the grid that energy.
To put that energy on the grid the system should have very fast power changing backup sources to avoid power lines voltage up and down outside the tolerated limits. Practically today the solar panels on the grid just dissipates almost all their generated energy heating the lines through Joule’s effect, without any advantage for the grid that must still produce the whole loads power.
Denmark for its power grid uses wind farms instead. They are supposed to be more predictable in power generation. But again, despite the better predictability, they have to rely on foreign power (Swedish and German) to backup the grid.
And the grid complexity leads to a major number of blackouts (the Danish argue that the blackout time per year is in line with the other EU countries, but it’s not a question of total time per years, it could happen that the conventional power source fails, but it’s a question of how many times it happens during the year, that is much more devastating for the wellness production.
David and Barry already have surely a solution on hands, of course.
I would like that existed an island insulated from any conventional power grid and powered just by those new “renewable” power sources and put there all those who (like them) today are supporting the implementation of such technologies for one year, just one year and see what they have to say after that experience.
Of course, at the beginning of the experiment, I would that that island had all the current comforts and technologies we have, to allow them to work and produce their wellness with their own hands but without the dirty oil energy production.
I predict (it’s just a prediction of course) that in case they are honest, surely they will change their minds.
Just a thought of course…
Have a nice day.
Massimo
Massimo PORZIO
Spot-On!
Wind can be a good backup source of power, no reason not to invest in it to some degree. It is definitely not a good source of energy for an advanced civilization (largely why it was abandoned years ago) because it is and always will be unreliable.
Years ago large sailing vessels were responsible for all the global trade going on. As long as everyone used this resource there was no competitive edge against it, but then the more reliable coal burning steam ships came along they were able to deliver goods while the sailing ships had to wait for the wind to blow.
I believe fossil fuels have a limited span of use, they have elevated mankind to this advanced civilization, it will need to be a future energy source like fusion or antimatter reactions that lead us to the next advancement. Wind will never do it. If fusion someday gets working it will also allow man to easily leave the planet and take full advantage of the resources in the solar system. Travel to Mars would be days or hours not years. You would also have energy to teraform planet surfaces that would not be available with wind turbines. To me wind is a dead end for future progress. If our species wants to keep advancing going to wind power is going backwards and eliminating the potential.
Here is a region of energy in the US.
https://www.misoenergy.org/LMPContourMap/MISO_All.html
Most are not interested to study this but it will let you know how unreliable wind really is. If you watch it a few days you can learn that you are very correct about wind.
If you click on the resource tab in the upper right it brings up a pie graph of all the energy use. Currently the fossil fuels supply the region with about 77% of the energy needed. On some windy days that cover the region and the power demand is low (75,000 MW, summer is around 120,000 MW) the wind will supply the region with about 20% of the energy demand. That is good, but in one day it can drop to a sliver of supply. In the late summer I have seen it less than 1000 MW for days even though the demand is 125,000. That is less than 1% of demand for several days (no conceivable storage system can currently or in long term future store this type of energy for days).
I have done a calculation that you would need 600 million large truck batteries at a cost of around $700 billion (a little over $1000 per battery) to supply one day of energy need. And the batteries would need to be replaced every 5 years or so. Good luck providing low cost power!
OMG Norman,
maybe that my poor knowledge of English struk again!
I perfectly agrree with all you wrote, my reference to Danish wind power was thought only for highlight a folly which begun in 1984 and is still running despite the high costs and inefficiency.
What really worry me about that it’s that in case you ask to an average Italian about wind farms, he is sure that they are a good choice for our energetic future, but at the same time he absolutely unaware of the Danish experience, that because media well keep hidden the disgraced choice of those people.
If wind was a so viable choice, why don’t use that Danish experience as a good example to invite the investors to follow that choice?
Have a nice weekend.
Massimo
Ok, my poor English really stuck again…
I missed your “Spot On!” at the begginning, much better I return to my business.
Again have a great weekend.
Massimo
Massimio…”Thats not the problem, a 50Hz +/- 0.2 or (60Hz in the US) can easily achieved by phase synchronization through inverters as current solar panel do indeed”.
Besides being very expensive to build, inverters put out dir-ty electrical power. The 60 Hertz to which you refer above comes from turbines driven by water, or steam heated by coal or gas. The power is a clean sine wave free of noise because it is a natural product of a rotating inductive machine.
An inverter operates by chopping a lower direct current voltage into a noisy alternating current signal, then the signal is stepped up by a transformer.
The problem lies in the transients created by the chopping. If you look at an inverter signal on an oscillo-scope it has noise all over it.
Creating a stable alternating current voltage to synchronize with the current power grid, especially in 3 phase, could prove to be very expensive and unreliable.
sorry for hyphens in wrong places. I am trying to get around Roy’s censor. Can’t figure out what it doesn’t like.
Hi Gordon,
I agree with you, but having worked as electronic designer for 25 years for a factory which also produced three phase small power inverters (<10kW) I can ensure you that a synchronized low-harmonics sinusoidal source is viable (at least for such low power units), the problem is in its reliability (MTBF much lesser than those of a conventional alternator) and for solar/wind applications the problem is about the unpredictability of the single power sources as function of their localized placement.
Have a nice day.
Massimo
crakar24…”all renewables do not provide synchronous generation”
People won’t understand this until renewable energy sources get connected into the power grid and we start experiencing serious problems with it.
When alternating currents are synchronized, it can be complex in itself. However sine waves at 50 or 60 Hertz are made for each other and synchronize relatively well. When you introduce variable speed wind farms and variable amplitude solar farms, you will get weird and wonderful problems.
What a strange blah blah!
Renews work pretty good in Germany, their supply into the net increases year after year.
Unfortunately, the electricians refused to invest into network capacities ten years ago. That results in requests to windmill farms to disconnect their devices very time net overloads occur.
During the last december, some people had up to 50% disconnect time!
Hi Bibindon,
“Unfortunately, the electricians refused to invest into network capacities ten years ago. That results in requests to windmill farms to disconnect their devices very time net overloads occur.”
Not really so, the problem is well exposed by the Danish case, if you look at Danish grid, you can easily understand why the electricians refused to invest indeed.
Backup of those wind-produced over/under power is very difficult to achieve and have high costs and low reliability.
For that. your “Renews work pretty good in Germany, their supply into the net increases year after year.” is highly arguable.
Have a great day.
Massimo
When the economy wasn’t destroyed by environmental regulations:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1302643033126000&set=a.137607516296230.25398.100001409488194&type=3&theater
This web site is really sick, awful in analysis and not worth anyone’s time. Too many tin foil hat guys on it. Trump worshippers some of them.
Excusing some of the sensible ones here.
IMPEACH HIM NOW! Time is ticking. Tick, Toc.
IMPEACH DONALD TRUMP. WHAT A LEMON of a President. A DUD. A WREAKING BALL on your economy.
IMPEACH
IMPEACH
Ross,
You need a reason to impeach a President, living on the other side of the planet us not one of them.
Sorry? Impeach Trump after Obahma one of the most useless presidents the USA has ever had .He sat on his arse and watched race relations fall apart.and the standing of the USA in the world went down the pan.it pained me watch a great country and world leader in so many fields go down the pan.Donald Trump won the election fair and square .It’s called democracy .As in the U K so many people only want democracy on their terms.if you want to impeach some one try your useless Malcolm Turnbull.ore better still mind your own business. And leave the election of American presidents to Americans it wasn’t that long ago you were nothing more than a penal colony of the British empire
UK Ian Brown, Now, now tones of white supremacist bigotry in your own words. Why are here you fascist? Trump will leave with “MAKE the EARTH UN-GREAT again”.
Not at all. Just stating a fact.the election of American presidents is for Americans.people in glass houses should not throw stones.check out.Malcolm Roberts he might put you right on a few things
Ross you are an embarrassment, the American people democratically elected Trump to be their president. A white communist living in Brisbane like yourself that abhors the democratic process has no business trying to tell a democracy what to do.
Keep voting for the labor/green alliance here at home and your Communist state will he here soon.
Another thought Ross you called ian brown a fascist for supporting trump so by inference you are calling trump a fascist. Trump is such a fascist that people everywhere in the USA stand up and speak against him without fear of retribution because that’s what fascist governments do isn’t Ross. Fascist governments embrace freedom of speech…….. You don’t know what a fascist is do you Ross. Here is a hint, they are in opposition in Australia.
Crakar24, you are tin foil hat guy from down under who is a king kong climate denier full of venom and BS. You can spew forth all your rhetoric you like. You are more then conservative. You are a libertarian of the worst kind. I am not not communist. I am centralist social justice. As for the other we will see just who is correct when this president goes down by impeachment – lets hope he does not take others with him and the planet as well.
Ross forget trump bashing you live in Australia, the more non important people like you bang on about him the more stupid you look.
To educate you further, socialism is a form of government communism is an ideology. If you demonstrate against democracy as you do by wanting to impeach trump without charge (nor the evidence in support) then you are showing communistic tendencies.
The labor/green alliance her in oz is a hard left socialist government which is fine until you run out of spending others peoples money.
Their behaviour in the senate same sex marriage legislation is a good example shows these parties have thrown the democratic process in the bin, which is why you behave the way you do.
I Wasn’t supporting .Trump .I know little about him.apart from the fact he has a golf course in Scotland regardless of his politics he was elected democratically . More people liked what he said.and that should be the end of it so people should grow up and act like adults. It’s getting embarrasing show some respect
the UK Ian Brown…”More people liked what he said.and that should be the end of it”
Heck, I’m a socialist and I liked what he had to say. I don’t like his stance on social programs but we needed to move away from political correctness and start calling a spade a spade.
The Dems and their political correctness have driven a huge chasm between Russia and the US. The Russian takeover of the Crimea and their invasion of the Ukraine was not a good enough reason to ostracize them. The Dems and other politically correct idiots have lead us to the brink of war.
The Dems started this fake news about Putin interfering in the US election because they were humiliated by Trump’s win. They have put us in a serious situation with Russia over nothing more than pride.
Ross…”This web site is really sick…”
It was fine till you started commenting.
Ross still uses the word denier and the unscientific carbon foot print he needs to look up Judith Curry she would eat him for breakfast
UK Ian Brown, Judith Curry has been confronted many times and is speechless in that her counter attacks are VERY weak and you often hear the crickets. Her silence in response is appalling. Many a true climate scientist has confronted her and she runs for cover crawling out of her hole with her next outburst. It is appalling and laughable to watch. Do your research. She went over “hill” – and to the dark non science world of climate denial with a handful loonies.
ross brisbane…”UK Ian Brown, Judith Curry has been confronted many times and is speechless in that her counter attacks…”
Are your delusions in colour?
That’s funny
I think she just got sick of being insulted by bigots.its not her fault if her peers take a different view .Most of them prefer to keep their jobs.she decided to give it a rest. That doesn’t make her wrong
Links please.
Da you are a moron, when you pay first world taxes you do have a right to cheap reliable power.
Fucking idiot
I suggest you to don’t care of him, it’s just a waste of your time.
Have a nice day.
Massimo
I think he’s an American like me, and a quick review of the documentation, indicates that no, I do not have a right to cheap reliable power.
Electricity is a good, and no, my contract with the company that supplies that good, does not give that right either. That company is the one that has the right to terminate my service for any reason. They will provide uninterruptable service if I am willing to pay for it.
But it won’t be cheap.
bob droege…”I think hes an American like me, and a quick review of the documentation, indicates that no, I do not have a right to cheap reliable power”.
I’m an American too, Bob, although I am a Canadian-American while you are likely a US American. Up here in the Canadian part of the continent of America we feel we are entitled to cheap power.
In fact, I have UK passport as well since I was born in Scotland. That makes me a Scottish Canadian American. We Scots want cheaper power because it’s darned thrifty.
Another point of view on the issue.
https://youtu.be/3PWtaackIJU?t=7
procestoc
I liked the video. It is good not just for climate debate, the values would serve conflicting interests on any topic. Think about it try and find solutions, work to improve things.
I still agree.
Bjorn Lomborg is a true enviromentalist in the good meaning of the term enviromentalist.
If enviromentalists were like this guy probably we really lived in a better world, Because instead of fighting the carbon dioxide they could well spend Their time against the true polluters of this poor planet.
If the EPA is 99 percent sure they want to clean up our environment then why the blank are they dumping undocumented radioactive waste down their super fund repositories in our own backyards and calling it lead contaminated soils? Nobody on earth can investigate what they do and they’d rather shut the place down overnight during rush hour traffic in their haste to re-pollute our planet with the poisons of our own past rather than have to address our own concerns that are brought up during their mandatory public comment periods and complaints to the appropriate IGO? Just wondering, here. Overreach is an understatement. You can’t trust these people no matter what administration is in the white house.
Loren Blalock….”If the EPA is 99 percent sure they want to clean up our environment then why the blank are they dumping undocumented radioactive waste down their super fund repositories in our own backyards…”
What, again? The US government tried that years ago by drilling mile deep holes near Denver. Denver started getting a slew of earthquakes and a university student related it to the dumping of nuclear wastes which were lubricating the basement rocks under Denver.
No one believed him at first but he was proved right, so the US Army had to suck out the nuclear waste and move it elsewhere.
Archie Bunker sorted this all out more than 40 years ago, and during the Global Cooling Scare even!
https://youtu.be/7fqCS7Y_kME
“The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus,” W. Peterson et al, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 89, 13251337, 2008
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
And history repeats it self
Recent rainfall eliminated the drought in Australia.
http://www.bom.gov.au/web03/ncc/www/awap/rainfall/totals/month/colour/latest.hres.gif
http://www.bom.gov.au/web03/ncc/www/awap/rainfall/drought/3month/colour/latest.hres.gif
Oh yes!
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2017/03/28/cyclone-debbie-deadly-storm-strikes-australia-thousands-flee/99723528/
Need more of that ren?
Tropical cyclones are low pressure systems that form over warm tropical waters and have well defined wind circulations of at least gale force strength (sustained winds of 63 km/h or greater with gusts in excess of 90 km/h).
These maps show the average number of tropical cyclones through the Australian region and surrounding waters in El Nio years, La Nia years, neutral years and using all years of data. The data are based on a 36 year period from the 1969/70 to 2005/06 tropical cyclone season.
The maps are useful for identifying the regions where tropical cyclones are more likely to occur during El Nio years, La Nia years and neutral years. They are also useful for comparing the occurrence of tropical cyclones using all years of data, to the occurrence during La Nia years, for example.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/climatology/tropical_cyclones/tc-lan-years.png
I kept up to date.
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/03/watching-debbie-cat-4-hits-the-coast/
That blog is from the southern hemisphere, which helps explain why all its science is upside-down.
Trump’s ‘trying to dismantle’ should be easy. The plan was stopped in court under injunction, and they can stop trying to defend it.
The plan is illegal under the Clean Air Act, which says you cannot regulate under section 111d sources that are already regulated under section 112. Clean Power Plan is based on section 111d.
The EPA’s plan was they lose in court, but by that time the coal plants were shuttered. They bragged about it when they lost in Utility Air Regulatory Group v EPA.
Svalbard is still in severe winter.
https://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=78.21065521,15.61839199&sp=ISVALBAR3
Just check how Renewables are working in Germany. You always need the full conventional park of power plants.
This shows how the actual energy distribution is like:
https://www.agora-energiewende.de/de/themen/-agothem-/Produkt/produkt/76/Agorameter/
You can tick for a week, a month and a whole year.
Danke / Thanks Johannes for the link.
But to be honest, I prefer Fraunhofer’s info published yearly by Bruno Burger:
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Stromerzeugung_2016.pdf
Indeed, Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) presented persuasive evidence that solar variability is leaving an imprint on climate, especially in the Pacific. According to the report, when researchers look at sea surface temperature data during sunspot peak years, the tropical Pacific shows a pronounced La Nina-like pattern, with a cooling of almost 1o C in the equatorial eastern Pacific. In addition, “there are signs of enhanced precipitation in the Pacific ITCZ (Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone ) and SPCZ (South Pacific Convergence Zone) as well as above-normal sea-level pressure in the mid-latitude North and South Pacific,” correlated with peaks in the sunspot cycle.
The solar cycle signals are so strong in the Pacific, that Meehl and colleagues have begun to wonder if something in the Pacific climate system is acting to amplify them. “One of the mysteries regarding Earth’s climate system … is how the relatively small fluctuations of the 11-year solar cycle can produce the magnitude of the observed climate signals in the tropical Pacific.” Using supercomputer models of climate, they show that not only “top-down” but also “bottom-up” mechanisms involving atmosphere-ocean interactions are required to amplify solar forcing at the surface of the Pacific.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate
https://smd-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/science-pink/s3fs-public/mnt/medialibrary/2013/01/08/sep_strip.jpg
Ren…thanks for link. Good information. Apparently at UV wavelengths the solar output can increase 10x and there’s concern of the trickle down effect that has in the upper atmosphere.
It concerned me that blatant alarmists like Amman and Bradley were allowed to participate. They managed to inject their alarmist views detrimentally, even though Bradley’s views as a member of the hockey stick team were disproved.
I’d like to see such a conference on global warming/climate change itself. An admission in the paper is that science is too complex to rely on one discipline only. They need experts in thermodynamics, chemistry, physics, and nuclear energy as well to verify how heat is transported and why.
From the article, “Of particular importance is the sun’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation, which peaks during the years around solar maximum. Within the relatively narrow band of EUV wavelengths, the suns output varies not by a minuscule 0.1%, but by whopping factors of 10 or more. This can strongly affect the chemistry and thermal structure of the upper atmosphere”.
Gordon Robertson says:
“They managed to inject their alarmist views detrimentally, even though Bradleys views as a member of the hockey stick team were disproved.”
Oh Gordon.
You try so hard, and yet your claims are always so easy to disprove.
DA…”Oh Gordon. You try so hard, and yet your claims are always so easy to disprove”.
You keep saying that, David, and I keep waiting for your proofs. It’s not me you have to prove wrong, it’s the following:
1)IPCC…they dumped the hockey stick graph and changed it’s range of inference from 1000 years to the range from 1850 onward. NAS had told MBH they could not use 1000 years, limiting them to 400 years. The IPCC took a more stringent approach.
The IPCC changed MBH98 to the spaghetti graph, which re-introduced the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age which MBH had deliberately removed.
2)McIntyre and McKitrick proved the statistical algorithm used by MBH to get the hockey stick shape would do the same for white noise as an input. In fact. M&M tore MBH apart so badly the US government order NAS to investigate. They also appointed statistitian Wegmann to investigate.
More on MBH at McIntyre’s site, climateaudit:
https://climateaudit.org/category/mbh98/
3)Wegman the statistician agreed with M&M and went after Chapter 9 on IPCC reviews for nepotism. He claimed the chapter with cronies of Mann only cited each other.
“In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b to be valid and compelling”.
page 3
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf
Of course, Bradley could not prove Wegman wrong so he went after him for plagiarism. I am still trying to understand how someone investigating MBH should not be allowed to cite their work.
4)Ammann is a student of Mann and his paper with Wahl is often cited as proof that the hockey stick is legit. M&M proved him and Wahl wrong as well.
Gordon, all four of your claims are wrong.
The hockey stick has been confirmed time and time again, by many other groups, using independent mathematical techniques. As I showed awhile back, it is required by elementary physics. It shows up in the literature all the time, and is not doubted by climate scientists, only deniers who have little understanding of it nor keep up on the latest science.
“Hockey Sticks in the scientific literature”
http://www.davidappell.com/hockeysticks.html
He’s wrong in many ways. the MBH hockey stick papers do indeed discuss the MWP and LIA, and posit that MWP temps (NH) were comparable to that of the 20th century average.
Gordon’s issue is with the graphs, not the actual science underlying them. He’s an optics guy.
A strong magnetic field protects us from the effects of falling solar activity.
But in Earth’s magnetic field there are changes.
19 June 2014
The first set of high-resolution results from ESAs three-satellite Swarm constellation reveals the most recent changes in the magnetic field that protects our planet.
Launched in November 2013, Swarm is providing unprecedented insights into the complex workings of Earths magnetic field, which safeguards us from the bombarding cosmic radiation and charged particles.
June 2014 magnetic field
Measurements made over the past six months confirm the general trend of the fields weakening, with the most dramatic declines over the Western Hemisphere.
But in other areas, such as the southern Indian Ocean, the magnetic field has strengthened since January.
The latest measurements also confirm the movement of magnetic North towards Siberia.
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Swarm/Swarm_reveals_Earth_s_changing_magnetism
“The era of trust me science is over”
This is an interesting play of the field of climate “Science”
Scientists Not Served Here; Real Scientists Need Not Apply
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/01/scientists-not-served-here-real-scientists-need-not-apply/
CO2islife….in your link the explanation of the scientific method is not the one I learned.
It goes:
1)Declare a hypothesis
2)lay out the method of proving it
3)describe equipment and apparatus
4)make observations
5)form a conclusion.
The scientific method is laid out so anyone can follow the process followed by the experimenter so that person can verify the process. Before making an observation it is imperative that the experimenter explain what he/she is trying to do, explain his/her method, and explain the equipment and apparatus used.
Climate alarmists and their ilk have their own scientific method, which goes as follows:
1)find an ulterior motive such as the environment or helping the poor (or becoming filthy rich).
2)find a way to scare the general public into accepting your motive but be sure not to tell them what it is directly.
3)lay out a bogus scientific claim based partly on real science and partly on pseudo-science.
4)get lots of sympathetic cohorts on your side by having them agree with your pseudo-science.
5)take over the peer review process so only your papers regarding your pseudo-science are accepted.
6)declare the consensus in step 4 a fact, embellishing scary possible outcomes if the pseudo-science is ignored, repeating it as often as necessary till the general public believes it.
Gordon, that’s the 7th grade presentation of the scientific method.
In practice, it’s much messier.
“5)take over the peer review process so only your papers regarding your pseudo-science are accepted.”
So John Christy, Roy Spencer, McIntyre, McKitrick, Lindzen and more have not had papers published?
I do know, though, that they do not show up at the major conferences to present and defend their work, like most scientists.
DA…”Gordon, thats the 7th grade presentation of the scientific method”.
And it’s still the best one. Gets down to brass tacks rather than messing around with semantics aimed at obfuscation.
What else could you possibly needs, a hypothesis, a method of proving it, the equipment and material you use, your observations on the experiment, and your conclusions?
Nothing else is required unless you are a charlatan trying to pass off pseudo-sceince as the real stuff.
Gordon Robertson says:
“And its still the best one”
The point is, it has little to do with how science is actually done, which is much more haphazard than the 7th grade version. Often experiments or observations happen first, and theorists come up with hypotheses later. The quality of a theory — how it looks, how if feels, what ancient issues it might better explain — can be valuable clues. Ideas come out of the blue, unmotivated by any experimental findings. Experimental results are often wrong. You should read some of Paul Feyerbend’s writings.
The idea of a method that contains firm, unchanging, and absolutely binding principles for conducting the business of science meets considerable difficulty when confronted with the results of historical research. We find, then, that there is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or other. It becomes evident that such violations are not accidental events, they are not results of insufficient knowledge or of inattention which might have been avoided. On the contrary, we see that they are necessary for progress. Indeed, one of the most striking features of recent discussions in the history and philosophy of science is the realization that events and developments, such as the invention of atomism in antiquity, the Copernican Revolution, the rise of modern atomism (kinetic theory; dispersion theory; stereochemistry; quantum theory), the gradual emergence of the wave theory of light, occurred only because some thinkers either decided not to be bound be certain ‘obvious’ methodological rules, or because they unwittingly broke them.
― Paul Karl Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge
Science is essentially an anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.
― Paul Karl Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge
в nfs на джойстике можно играть http://nedforspid.moy.su/ как играть по сети в игру need for speed most wanted
Michael Mann just gave everyone the battle plan to expose this hoax. Please share this article.
Michael Mann Just Jumped the Climate Change Shark
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/michael-mann-just-jumped-the-climate-change-shark/
yes i watched his testimony to congress 29 th march, he started with a rant about some adviser to Stalin ,lost me,then spent ten minuets telling the world how badly he was hounded by sceptics and the media,not to mention all the achievements, and papers he had to his credit,he had a cheap shot at Smith, i think he might want to forget about that debacle,the must have had to widen the doors to get his lugs out of the building
Dragon over the Pacific.
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/nepac/h5-loop-rb.html
Is this the end of the drought in Texas?
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/comp/ceus/rb-animated.gif
Just a little word for the sceptics out their who get a hard time from their drinking pals in their local bar.mostly the ones who are not C02 savvy.ask the barman for about 12 glasses .The largest being a pint down to the smallest.fill the pint one to the top. Pour half into the next glass.you NoW have 50% in each glass.keep doing that till you get as close as you can to 4%.pour all of the contents of the glasses bar the last one back into the first pint glass then say compare the two.the look on their faces is priceless.then say never has so much much been blamed on so little.they should now be totally confused.and at the very least you can enjoy your beer with a smile on your face
ppm vs ppmv
Both ppm and ppmv are abbreviations used in scientific calculations. They are dimensionless quantities. While using these terms one should be very specific and not be confused in using one in place of the other.
ppm
ppm stands for parts per million. It describes parts per million of any quantity by weight. This is a form which describes small concentrations. Traces of contaminants and food additives are also usually described in this manner. In various fields, such as chemistry, physics, and engineering, ppm is the unit to describe no- dimensional quantities as parts per notation. In science and engineering, ppm describes fractions of mass; in chemistry, it describes the relative presence of dissolved substances in water while in physics and engineering, expansion of a metal alloy in length with respect it its total length can be quoted as quantity per quantity. They all are numbers and not concerned with any kind of units of measurements.
ppmv
According to its abbreviation ppmv stands for parts per million volume. Trace gases found in the atmosphere such as sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other pollutants in the air are denoted by ppmv that is, parts per million by volume.
http://www.differencebetween.net/language/difference-between-ppm-and-ppmv/
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an important trace gas in Earth’s atmosphere. Currently it constitutes about 0.04% = 0,0004 (equal to 400 parts per million; ppm) by volume of the atmosphere.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/overlay=co2sc/equirectangular
As you can see above, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere closely depends on the vegetative cycle.
It’s not rocket science just tongue in cheek.your average punter just sees 400 parts per million .most people don’t have 400 dollars in their pocket so 400 is a lot the million doesn’t register at all.they just see the 400. It should be shown on TV ..Could be a new show .Find the C02
One part per million (by volume) is equal to a volume of a given gas mixed in a million volumes of air:
http://www.lenntech.com/calculators/pics/formula01.jpg
http://www.lenntech.com/calculators/ppm/converter-parts-per-million.htm
40 molecules of c02 for every 100 000 molecules of air ,like i said its never shown on tv, try finding 40 grains of black sand in a container filled with 100,000 grains of white sand its seems churlish but that is all you have to work with
Ian, how much does the 400 ppm CO2 weigh? I guess must be a couple grams per sq m?
Lets see, air weighs 10^4 Kg/m^2 x 4×10^-4 = 4 kg. correct for mass so 4kg x 44/28 = 6 kg.
6 kg or 13 lbs not actually all that small.
Is 6 kg/m^2 enough to absorb most IR and warm up? Could it do that? Hmmm maybe so..
Nate
I think your math is wrong. I think you need volume to find mass. Square meters alone will not tell you much.
Not sure what 6 kg/m^2 signifies? Is this one molecule of the third dimension? I think you intended a volume calculation so it would be m^3 but not sure.
Weight would only be relevant if it were a solid .As we are talking gas in parts per volume it’s irrelevant.its all numbers and the numbers are the key.eg 4% is 4& .Regardless of the medium. Making it almost invisible
6kg is the weight (actually mass) of a column of co2 1m^2 in cross section extending up to space.
It is relevant because it tells us how much mass of Co2 is in between the surface which is radiating and space.
I am arguing that 6 kg of CO2 per m^2 is absolutely sufficient to block direct transmission of certain IR wavelengths to space.
Instead, those wavelengths are absorbed and warm the atmosphere, which in turn radiates both upward and downward.
To clarify, I am using atm pressure =10^5 N/m^2, which arises from the weight of the air column, mg, so the mass is 10^5N/g =10^4 Kg.
So 10^4 Kg/m^2
Ian brown,
So, only weight of solids matter? That’s an odd idea..
Gases are fully capable of absorbing or emitting radiation (consider a CF bulb or Neon light).
Gases are fully capable of warming and insulating (consider the gas layer in your double-paned windows, or inside your blanket on a cold night.
In the case of CO2, the 6 kg of it is plenty enough to do the job of absorbing IR and impeding the flow of heat to space.
Ian,
BTW 400 ppm of CO in your house and you will end up a corpse.
So the meme that a small % of a gas cant possibly have an impact is nonsense.
Climate Scientists Make the Election Pollsters Look Accurateand 10x as Smart
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/02/climate-scientists-make-the-election-pollsters-look-accurate-and-10x-as-smart/
Try abolishing all subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear plants. Then see what the market decides.
Renewables are going to sweep the field now, even with governments trying to prop up coal and oil. There’s no stopping that. It’s just a question of whether one country gets left behind, and whether the transition came soon enough.
Here’s an interesting recent article on this very subject:
“While Trump promotes coal, other countries are turning to cheap solar power,” The Washington Post 3/31/17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/world/2017/03/31/while-trump-promotes-coal-other-countries-are-turning-to-cheap-sun-power/?utm_term=.7d30fb11eb42
at what cost. And for how long.i sugest .Till the lights go out
All you guys have to do is watch South Australia (i can give you the heads up when/if we have blackouts etc).
If SA continues on as normal with baterries, solar thermal, solar panels, windy mills etc then the world should follow, if not then Trump is right and you should all follow him.
Agreed?
David, Rewewable energy is causing technology disruption in our country. Even if some want to return to coal it would electricity double and it would take about 5 years to go back to coal and something like 11 billion dollars later.
You see the coal wingnuts here thin power plants of coal NEVER replacing. They do. We facing a crisis in our country as SUDDENLY when a overseas investment took over a very large coal fired power station Victoria, it left Australia open to to energy crisis.
As coal fired stations age and as pollution costs escalate due deteriorating public health and INCREASED subsidies increase from Government coffers maintaining them (something private capitalism WILL never do), thew price of electricity SKY rockets for consumers.
What PRIVATISATION of energy network has done has exposed the libertarian fallacy that ownership by private corporations drive down costs and that coal in the context of our day and age is cheaper. I can tell you it is not CHEAPER.
What governments should doing now is INTERVENING into their energy mix and encouraging INNOVATION in energy alternatives as well empowering private enterprise to INNOVATE with a CARBON TAX recommended by one of the four in Congress (2017) Roger Pielke J.
Worded with haste apologies. No edit capability. Sorry.
It was poorly worded but good enough to read Ross,
Hazelwood could produce power at 4 cents a megawatt they dont come any cheaper than that so why did it go broke I hear you ask, good question let me explain.
Lets assume the wind is blowing and the current price for power is $100 dollars a megawatt/hour.
Both coal/gas and wind all get paid that 100 bucks.
Every MW/h generated by wind earns them a renewable energy certificate (REC) which is sold to coal/gas as an offset to the carbon dioxide they emit (thats carbon pollution to the scientific illiterate).
The RECs cost around 100 bucks ergo wind makes 200 bucks per MW/h and coal/gas make nothing.
Another problem with this sickening legislation is coal/gas are bound by their bids to the market operator, this means if they bid to produce 800mw 3 days from now they are on the hook to produce it, if they dont they get a big fine.
Wind can do what it wants when it can, so when its windy they dump 800 odd MW onto the network real cheap, I have seen power in SA as low as -150 bucks (yes thats a minus) so coal and gas must produce power and sell it at this price.
At -150 bucks wind still make a profit but coal/gas go broke, we have shutdown 10 coal plants this way, one more and we enter 3rd world conditions.
The penny has finally dropped on our socialist ideology driven masters hence the BIG PUSH to build batteries and solar farms.
But remember Ross you cant rely on a fool to lead you out of the same mess they lead you into.
i no what would happen in the UK, at the next election there would be droves of MPs out of a job, the same applies to housing welfare,unemployment money,people will not stand by and let their standard of living go down the pan,
When I noticed all my neighbors putting solar panels on their roofs (mostly leased rather than purchased). I thought to myself that I should consider doing the same thing. I looked into it, but realized how minimally this would affect my overall costs. I quickly came to realize that it was foolish to add a new source of energy to my home without first trying to reduce my consumption. I wrote an ROI statement for LED light bulbs to see how quickly the investment would return the cost to me in the form of lower energy consumption. And, then I replaced every light in my house. I changed the pool pump program to run as few hours as possible (supplementing the saltwater chlorinator directly with chlorine tablets). I turned off my landscape lights, ran the irrigation as little as I could, turned off lights and appliances when not necessary, and changed by thermostat programming. I guess my point is that if we want to reduce our C02 footprint the better approach is to lower consumption, buy our produce locally (rather than having it imported), etc. I wonder, if everyone did the same, how much energy could be saved? It’s not easy and it takes time to sort it all out.
Why should you have to.you are playing their game.for no gain
William,
Your contribution to the big picture is nothing more than noise but if it made you feel better about yourself then it was a worthy exercise.
The big users are manufacturing and city buildings in that they are sealed (cant open a window like the old days) those big AC units need to run night and day.
Here in SA we are shutting down our manufacturing not by any feel good actions we simply drove the costs up so high we forced then to go broke.
This is the only way you can have a measureable effect, so if you really want to reduce your co2 production flick the switch on your power, get rid of your pool, sit in the dark.
Half measures are not good enough when trying to save the planet.
Should Trump slash funding for climate science, it may be that some or most of the data we continually refer to online to get a better understanding of climate will no longer be updated or even kept online. With the stroke of a pen Trump may deny public access to the backbone of understanding on climate – data. This is the very thing critics used to howl about when data was not immediately accessible.
Should Trump cut funding for climate research? Sure, why not? What purpose does it serve? How is it necessary to the economy? Should taxes go to someone studying the AMO?
With the debt we have and the deficit we have, many things need to be cut. Since there is no immediate reason for knowing about climate, it is hardly necessary that government debt be increased to fund it. Maybe you think it important. I think it a luxury because nothing we know changes how we live. Oh yes, you’ve got the alarmists crying out about .1 degree C increase. I believe we’d be better off not knowing that, considering the economic damage those who use it cause.
But somethings have to be cut else the debt will be the ruination of this apple cart. Shoot, David might even have to get a real job.
Lewis says:
“But somethings have to be cut else the debt will be the ruination of this apple cart. Shoot, David might even have to get a real job.”
Lewis, I’m glad to know I’ve gotten into your head. That means you’re paying attention to what I write.
So when critics cried ‘free the data,’ you were telling them they didn’t need it, right?
Coal-related pollutants continue to rise at many of the country’s biggest mines, power plants and export facilities, prompting demands for stricter controls to limit health damage costing billions of dollars a year.
The latest National Pollutant Inventory, released at the end of March, revealed the extent of 93 key toxins from 4000 enterprises, including particulates that can spur premature death by worsening existing heart and lung conditions.
Pause
Mute
Current Time 0:43
/
Duration Time 1:36
Loaded: 0%Progress: 0%
Fullscreen
MORE NATIONAL NEWS VIDEOSPrevious slide Next slide
Hazelwood by the numbers
Hazelwood by the numbers
null
Video duration
03:13
Why do workplace bullies do it?
null
Video duration
00:41
Ayaan Hirsi Ali cancels speaking tour
null
Video duration
01:51
The case for the Adani mine project
null
Video duration
01:58
PM: no delays in flood relief
null
Video duration
00:41
Ayaan Hirsi Ali cancels speaking tour
null
Video duration
01:13
Did the Minister act illegally?
null
Video duration
01:11
I did my best: Xenophon
MORE VIDEOS
Hazelwood by the numbers
Protests, fires and more than 737 million tonnes of brown coal burnt in the 52 years of the Hazelwood power station.
Victoria’s Hazelwood brown coal-fired power station, which shut on Friday, emitted 61,425 tonnes of toxins in the year to June 30, 2016, one of the largest totals. The tally included almost 700 tonnes of fine particulates with a width of 2.5 micrometres about 1/30th the width of a human hair that can enter the blood stream.
While Hazelwood’s emissions fell over the year, those at Loy Yang B power plant in the Latrobe Valley jumped 13 per cent and Yallourn’s 2 per cent.
SHARE
SHARE ON FACEBOOK SHARE
SHARE ON TWITTER TWEET
LINK
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/total-failure-calls-for-tougher-controls-as-coalrelated-pollutants-jump-20170402-gvbrbp.html
Last smoke from the chimneys at the Hazelwood power station, Morwell.
Last smoke from the chimneys at the Hazelwood power station, Morwell. Photo: Joe Armao
In NSW, the Bayswater coal-fired power station reported a 770 per cent jump in toxic coarse particle pollution (known as PM10, of about 10 microns size) over the past five years, while Queensland’s Tarong power plant recorded a 237 per cent increase in just one year.
“The latest NPI data reveal the total failure of Australian governments to control air pollution and highlight the need for much stronger pollution controls and regulation,” James Whelan, a researcher for Environmental Justice Australia, said.
Advertisement
Dr Whelan said the annual health damage in Australia from air pollution was between $11 billion and $24.3 billion.
That total squares with a study conducted for the NSW government six years ago and given little publicity that estimated yearly costs in that state were about $6 billion.
SHARE
SHARE ON FACEBOOK SHARE
SHARE ON TWITTER TWEET
LINK
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/total-failure-calls-for-tougher-controls-as-coalrelated-pollutants-jump-20170402-gvbrbp.html
Coal dumping at Vales Point power station, Lake Macquarie.
Coal dumping at Vales Point power station, Lake Macquarie. Photo: Brad Smith
(See chart below from a recent government energy report.)
Dr Whelan said particulate pollution from coal mining had tripled in the past decade. Pollution from mines such as Bulga in the Hunter Valley increased 32 per cent in the past year. At Drake Coal in Queensland, the increase was more than four-fold.
Coarse particulates (PM10) emitted by Newcastle’s three coal terminals also rose 25 per cent last year, much faster than the increase of about 10 per cent in coal volumes, he said.
Taking in Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle, coal-fired power plants contributed 87 per cent of the area’s 187,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide and more than a third of the 724 kilograms of mercury registered over the year.
Responses
Fairfax Media sought comment from the federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg. Victoria’s Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio declined to comment.
“It’s a stark reminder that we need to be mindful of all the impacts of pollution, not only carbon,” Tony Burke, federal Labor’s environment spokesman, said.
The NSW Environment Protection Authority said the 2015-16 NPI revealed an overall reduction in the state of 13 per cent in PM10 and a 24 per cent fall for PM2.5 particulates.
“The NSW government led the review of the national standards for airborne particles and, as a result, NSW and Australia now have one of the toughest packages of standards for fine particles in the world,” an EPA spokeswoman said.
The EPA, though, had been asked to review the anomalously steep drop in particulate emissions from two coal-fired power plants at Vales Point and Mt Piper.
According to the inventory, Vales Point reported a decline of about a third in PM2.5 emissions even though power generated rose about 10 per cent. For Mt Piper, the dive was in the order of more than 90 per cent even as electricity output rose more than 15 per cent.
“These two are clearly under-reporting,” Dr Whelan said.
“NSW was tasked with developing standards for particulate matter under the National Clean Air Agreement but failed to advocate effectively for standards that would protect human health,” Mehreen Faruqi, NSW Greens environment spokeswoman, said. “NSW’s proposal was so bad, Victoria actually went it alone and adopted more stringent standards.”
Penny Sharpe, NSW Labor environment spokeswoman, said the commitment to stringent air quality standards was “not an academic exercise. It is an issue of life or death”.
“NSW has signed up to lower air quality standards than recommended by the World Health Organisation,” Ms Sharpe said, noting that proposals such a giant waste incinerator for Eastern Creek in Sydney’s far west “has the potential to make things worse”.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/total-failure-calls-for-tougher-controls-as-coalrelated-pollutants-jump-20170402-gvbrbp.html
Sorry about the lack of editing first. Attribution posted and embedded however.
Is the West Coast ready for “dragon entrance”?
http://images.tinypic.pl/i/00888/hjjpz6cq36fb.png
Ocean temperature.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/contour/uspacifi.cf.gif
Barry says:
March 30, 2017 at 11:56 PM
So Im either a miserable neurotic or a loony. Good to know.
Glad someone could be of help.
Anyone who spends as much time as you, and David, trying to convert people to their religion are easily shown to be one or both.
Proselytizing is not the province of the average person.
Not ‘average’ – normal.
Proselytizing: Pfffft. You’re the most avid fiction writer on this blog.
I’d love to see you quote me proselytizing. But if you reply it will be more of your mundane rhetoric, unfortunately. Some things are easy to predict.
can anybody answer one simple question,if the consequences of climate change, are so dire, floods, rising sea levels,etc, and a forthcoming disaster why do so many scientists, and politicians still live , build and buy ,houses and property beside the sea,or on flood plains,can it be, they don,t believe their own predictions,or am i just cynical,i have always been a sceptic till proved other wise,i remember my first employer telling me some fifty odd years ago,he said ,son if it takes two people to sell you something ,its not worth having
“It was relatively inexpensive to design and install scrubbers on smokestacks at coal-fired power plants to greatly reduce sulfur emissions. The cost was easily absorbed, and electricity rates were not increased that much.”
That is true, yet even then the industry howled at those requirements. So, it is understandable that this history makes it hard for otherwise well-intentioned folks to judge when the cost benefits are not worth it, or when industry is just howling like before.
For C02 scrubbing you are surely right (impossibly expensive), but if the topic is about switching from, say, coal to natural gas, it gets hard to sort out who is being objective and who has motivated reasoning about the costs and benefits.
I agree that environmental policy making should include a cost-benefit analysis.
But Trump is proposing to slash regulations without engaging in a cost-benefit analysis. It’s the flip side of the same problem the post identifies.
Climate Change is a Political Battle, Not a Scientific One
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/climate-change-is-a-political-battle-not-a-scientific-one/
Climate Science is Pseudo-Science; A Point-by-Point Proof
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/05/climate-science-is-pseudo-science-a-point-by-point-proof/
Rules for Climate Radicals; Accuse the Other Side of That Which You Are Guilty
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/rules-for-climate-radicals-accuse-the-other-side-of-that-which-you-are-guilty/
CO2islife, Your blog is interesting but a I took issue with the first paragraph I read:
“Second, real science is never determined by consensus, or science by authority.The Theory of Relativity is accepted not because Einstein said it is so, the Theory of Relativity is accepted because the numbers support the theory. ”
So do most senators understand the theory of relativity? Does the general public understand the theory of relativity? Probably not. A consensus of physicists believe it because they have seen the evidence in numerous papers. According to you the public and senators shouldnt listen to this consensus of scientists who do understand it and believe it. This is no different for AGW
“Real science can be replicated and modeled. If objects are said to fall at 9.8m/Sec^2, countless experiments can be run, and the results will all be the same.”
Countless thousands of research papers, of different types, have tested the ideas behind AGW and found general agreement (Just look at the table of contents a major earth science journal). Of the course the tests are more complex than just dropping a ball.
“If a single valid experiment demonstrates something different, the theory is rejected. All science is numbers, and the numbers must support the theory, or it is rejected.”
Wrong. That is not how science works. The validity and relevance of any experiment has to be checked and reproduced many times before such a well-established theory is rejected.
Recently an experiment found faster than light particles. Did this invalidate relativity? No, because there have been so many previous confirming experiments that this experiment was suspect. Of course it turned out to be an error.
For a complex idea like AGW, involving a complex system, Earth, it is not easy to dream up such an experiment. Unless you have one in mind?
Get PSC Result 2019
This blog about Trumps Rollback of EPA Overreach: What No One
is Talking About < Roy Spencer, PhD has helped me a lot, is very well written. I used this fat burner product: https://s96.me/fit and I reached the ideal weight. Kiss you All!
… carbon dioxide is irrelevant to the temperature of the Earth Does not absorb 1/5 as much radiant heat as water vaper (not droplets – but vapor) 13 to 18 micron plus others CO2 doesn’t touch. I’ve lost all faith in climate alarmists as liberty loving Americans. I refuse to live the lie. Climate has been changing for millions and millions of years, because Earth has NEVER had a stable climate system — and NEVER will. The End.