Resisting Climate Hysteria

[Calliope]

I'm afraid basilio that your messiah, who wrote the Warmists bible, and has since become a laughing stock, decended to new lows when he took to the stage in support of one of Australia's greatest pollutor's weird propositions on climate change.

 

[macca]

I'm afraid basilio that your messiah, who wrote the Warmists bible, and has since become a laughing stock, decended to new lows when he took to the stage in support of one of Australia's greatest pollutor's weird propositions on climate change.

View attachment 58480

Hi Calliope,

where is this cartoon from please.

 

[Calliope]

Hi Calliope,

where is this cartoon from please.

Yesterday's The Australian macca

 

[basilio]

So what really annoys Climate Scientists about the state of the Climate Change debate ?

To start with :

Professor Andrew Pitman, director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Many people who would not dream to claim they understand how antibiotics, microprocessors or immunisations work seem happy to wax lyrical on their views on climate change.

A politician or media identity who would be laughed out of office if they said “vaccines don't work" or “I am certain the moon is made of cheese" happily speak equivalent rubbish on climate science, believing their views deserve credit.

I want engineers to build bridges; I want a trained surgeon to operate on hearts and I want some of our decision-makers and commentators to either shut up, or familiarise themselves with climate science well enough to talk sense.

And then perhaps

Professor Steven Sherwood, director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, Sydney

Where to start?

These are things I don’t see (or don’t see enough).

First is still that, even though it is clear greenhouse gas emissions raise the temperature of the Earth, we’ve known this for 50+ years and no reputable atmospheric scientist in the world disputes this, most people think scientists disagree. They’ve been misled by the media, and I’ve been told repeatedly by reporters in the US and Australia that this is due to pressure from management.

Second is the fact that carbon dioxide emissions are effectively irreversible and will stay in the climate system for hundreds of generations is seldom noted. If we decide later that this was a huge mistake there is no going back (practically speaking).

On the political side, I wish the media would note the obvious parallels of the carbon debate with past ones over restricting pollutants (mercury, lead, asbestos, CFCs), where claims that restrictions would be economically catastrophic never came true.

These are things I do see that bug me.

One would be phrases like “action on climate change”. We should be talking about “action on carbon dioxide” — and climate is only one reason (albeit the biggest) that too much of it is dangerous. Nothing we do with respect to any other influence on climate will prevent global warming if CO2 keeps climbing.

 

[explod]

Good post basilio and the tenet is supported by Dyer in "Climate Wars"

The thought of having to cut back on making money or being relected is a huge stumbling block.

The methods, such as calling those of us wanting to see a proper approach as "hysterical" is one of the ploys.

If you cannot win the argument then ridicule the opponent. The weight of the business, fuel and coal lobby is very much alive in this thread.

 

[Calliope]

The weight of the business, fuel and coal lobby is very much alive in this thread.

Of course. This is a stock forum,

 

[basilio]

Calliope no-one makes money on a dead planet.

Climate change is real. Currently human activity is the prime cause. I can readily understand the concern of the coal, oil and business interests who believe their current interests are threatened by reducing CO2 emissions. But clear eyed businesses can also recognize serious risks and dangers

In the end we all live on one boat. If it sinks we all go under - rich and poor alike.

Professor Michael Raupach, director of the Climate Change Institute, Australian National University, Canberra

The greatest cause for sorrow is the widespread inability of the public discussion to recognise the whole picture.

Much of the political discourse reduces the complexities of climate change to political football (“axe the tax”); much media reporting sees only the hook to today’s passing story; many interest groups want to use climate change to proselytise for their particular get-out-of-jail free card (nuclear power, carbon farming).

All of this misses or trivialises the real, systemic significance of climate change: that humankind is encountering the finitude of our planet, confronting the need to share and protect our endowment from nature, and realising that much will have to change to make this possible.

 

[Smurf1976]

I can readily understand the concern of the coal, oil and business interests who believe their current interests are threatened by reducing CO2 emissions.

It goes far beyond coal, oil and gas. We're talking about energy here, the one common element to all businesses in either production or consumption.

You'd be hard pressed to find a single business that isn't impacted, either positively or negatively, by this one given that it impacts the very nature of human productivity and thus the conventional economy.

 

[sydboy007]

It goes far beyond coal, oil and gas. We're talking about energy here, the one common element to all businesses in either production or consumption.

You'd be hard pressed to find a single business that isn't impacted, either positively or negatively, by this one given that it impacts the very nature of human productivity and thus the conventional economy.

I think the amount of "effort" contained in fossil fuels is lost on people. When you consider a barrel of oil has the equivalent of nearly 1.5M kilocalories - think roughly 10, 000 hours of human labour. Americans go through around 60 of those a year each. In Australia we get through 5883 KG of oil equivalent energy each year which is roughly 45 barrels of oil. That's like 450,000 of human labour equivalent each year. Admittedly the individual level is probably a lot lower as this takes into account the resources industries which are massive users of energy, but it does start to give people an idea of just how dependent we are on cheap energy.

 

[Smurf1976]

I think the amount of "effort" contained in fossil fuels is lost on people.

Loy Yang (largest power station in Vic) alone is equivalent to a human labour force of roughly 100 million workers.

Now add in every other power station, all the oil and all the gas and it's an incredibly large number.

What humans do is basically to leverage energy in order to do things. The actual human work input as such, is trivial compared to the effort put in by other means.

The inherent problem with most alternative energy sources is, as even their strongest supporters have often pointed out, they require a greater human input to use. That's like saying you're a forex etc trader and someone just cut your leverage limit to one third of what you were actually using previously. Your profits are sure to decline as a result and that's the problem here. We have to accept less leverage, less GDP, and the economic system doesn't really like that idea.

 

[basilio]

I completely agree with the observations made about the amount of energy in fossil fuels. It is certainly the underpinning of our current way of life and the current size of our economic activity.

But does anyone believe we can continue the current trajectory of energy use and economic activity ?

One of the key reasons for moving to a renewable energy base is the realization that fossils fuels are very finite and will run out (certainly in cost effective terms) within a generation or so. Same thing goes for the loss of many resources including land and fresh water.

On a similar note the increase of CO2 levels is also acidifying the ocean to the point that it will be unable to sustain life as we know it.

There are many reasons to urgently move to a renewable and more conservative society. Even if someone chose not to accept the evidence regarding CO2 emissions and their affect on climate the other security and environment reasons are still compelling.

 

[Smurf1976]

But does anyone believe we can continue the current trajectory of energy use and economic activity ?

No way is it sustainable. Not a chance there since we're simply using too much of practically everything.

The only real unique thing about fossil fuels is that they'll likely run out (particularly oil and gas, perhaps not coal) before we hit some other limit. But changing the power source doesn't change the ultimate outcome, we still hit some other limit alarmingly soon with constant growth of a few % per year.

The whole mindset needs to change really. The "throwaway society" is a big part of it, we really need to go back to the notion of durability and repair rather than constantly extracting resources to make things that fall apart and need replacement (or worse still, replacement for the sake of fashion).

To pick one random example, I see that Telstra is now offering people the option to automatically get a new mobile phone every 12 months. I mean seriously, as long as society has that attitude it's pretty much irrelevant whether there's coal, nuclear, hydro or solar at the other end of the wire providing the power to run our society.

One of the key reasons for moving to a renewable energy base is the realization that fossils fuels are very finite and will run out (certainly in cost effective terms) within a generation or so.

Attempts to put a date on it are fraught with all sorts of things going wrong and have a tendency to make the forecaster look like a fool. Been there, tried that game.

But in broad terms we can say that:

Oil - is a problem now. It's more expensive than we'd like, to the point of being prohibitively so for some former uses. Meanwhile we're engaged in periodic wars, political disputes and technical / environmental mishaps in order to keep the stuff flowing. In one human lifetime we've gone from drilling onshore wells in a few places (notably the USA) and having it simply flow out under its' own pressure, to the point where we're mining tar sands, fracturing the underground rocks and depending on an assortment of unstable countries with dodgy governments to keep the stuff flowing.

Gas - the entire natural gas industry has pretty much followed the oil industry with a 30 - 40 year time lag and not much has changed. Oil became more costly amidst political issues in the 1970's and a consequent move toward a global oil price. 40 years later we see the same story playing out with gas - witness the periodic Russia versus the EU disputes over gas, and that we're seeing prices go through the roof in Australia as we move to global pricing. Just as oil became uneconomic for baseload electricity generation in 1979, gas looks set to go the same way about 2017. So a 38 year time lag there, right in line with the 30 - 40 years that have always been present in this industry.

Coal - conventional wisdom says that we've got more than enough coal so don't worry about it. There is indeed plenty of coal in the ground, but that there are proposals to mine and export sub-bituminous coal from Tasmania ought to ring a few alarm bells there. Sub-bituminous is the second lowest rank, better than lignite (brown coal) but worse than bituminous (regular black coal) or anthracite (the real high grade stuff).

And of course Tassie isn't exactly the first place that comes to mind if someone mentions coal mining. We're talking about small mines (eg 1 million tonnes a year, lifespan 8 years in one case) and the coal will have to be trucked out to get it to a port from which it can be exported. That rings a lot of alarm bells in terms of coal supply, simply that anyone is interested in small, lower grade deposits in a relatively high cost location.

Whilst Tas does have a coal mining industry and has done so since the 1800's, it's a very small scale operation (in the order of 1000 tonnes a day) and it's just used locally in a few industries to run boilers etc. The Hydro looked at coal-fired power on numerous occasions from the 1960's to the 1990's in great detail (to the point of fairly detailed design work being done etc) but on each occasion it was found to be uneconomic. Oil was cheaper in the 1960's. Simply building more hydro-electric dams was cheaper too. Bringing gas from Victoria and using it to generate power was cheaper. Even bringing coal-fired power from Vic via underwater cables was cheaper. For that matter, physically shipping coal in from NSW (at export pricing) was no more expensive than simply digging up the stuff we've got locally and using it.

So if someone's interested in poor quality, small coal mines in a place that's nowhere near the major users of coal then that says rather a lot really. They wouldn't be even thinking about it if they had the option of developing higher quality sources of coal closer to markets.

So whilst conventional wisdom says that there's plenty of coal, actions point to there not being as much high quality coal as is generally assumed. Plenty of sub-bituminous and lignite yes, but we seem to be running a bit short on the higher grade stuff judging by what's actually happening in the industry. There are similar proposals in Qld to mine lower grade coal in the middle of nowhere, and it has the same economic disadvantage as doing it in Tas. No point unless you're already using the better stuff as fast as you can get it out of the ground.

So overall it's wars for oil, fracking for gas and we're using inferior coal. That says all you need to know about the overall abundance of these resources. There may well be plenty of lower grade, high cost stuff but we're reaching the limits of the high quality, easily extracted fossil fuels.

 

[wayneL]

Interesting developments on data fudging -

http://judithcurry.com/2014/06/28/skeptical-of-skeptics-is-steve-goddard-right/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/...is-at-work-on-the-ushcn-temperature-data-set/

Watts - Besides moving toward a more accurate temperature record, the best thing about all this hoopla over the USHCN data set is the Polifact story where we have all these experts lined up (including me as the token skeptic) that stated without a doubt that Goddard was wrong and rated the claim “pants of fire”.

They’ll all be eating some crow, as will I, but now that I have Gavin for dinner company, I don’t really mind at all.

When the scientific method is at work, eventually, everybody eats crow. The trick is to be able to eat it and tell people that you are honestly enjoying it, because crow is so popular, it is on the science menu daily.

 

[wayneL]

and here =>http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/...the-future-july-1936-now-hottest-month-again/

 

[ghotib]

Interesting developments on data fudging -

No developments, no fudging, and no significance.

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/06/noaa-and-temperature-data-it-must-be.html

 

[Knobby22]

No developments, no fudging, and no significance.

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/06/noaa-and-temperature-data-it-must-be.html

Pretty disgusting. I wonder who pays him to lie.

 

[wayneL]

No developments, no fudging, and no significance.

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/06/noaa-and-temperature-data-it-must-be.html

Red flag, everyone who dissents from the apocalyptic version of the AGW gospel is a denier according to that site. Very unscientific. Doesn't adequately address the points raised, just fallacious arguments.


While there is less to it than "right wing" sites are making of it, there is more to it than "left wingers" are prepared to admit.

 

[orr]

Red flag, everyone who dissents from the apocalyptic version of the AGW gospel is a denier according to that site. Very unscientific. Doesn't adequately address the points raised, just fallacious arguments.


While there is less to it than "right wing" sites are making of it, there is more to it than "left wingers" are prepared to admit.

What will be 'apocalyptic' for the say the large elements of the Barrier Reef and other coral ecosystems along with altitude sensitive species when they run out of hill to climb and the list goes on, say a vast inter-tidal zone, that the currrent inhabitants refer to as, London, New Orleans, Surfers Paradise, Sylvania Waters(see it's not all bad). Will be god send blue sky return of things like cockroaches able to fest on the detritus of the leavings. Good to see who's side your on wanyeL....(rhymes with......)

Though there are many the examples of science as apolitical(insert >99.9999% here), the one I like best is Wehmer Von Braum. Mind you how big a switch was it? ...God Bless Tom Lehrer

 

[basilio]

More reasons to drastically reduce fossil fuel use and take serious action on global warming

Dark snow: from the Arctic to the Himalayas, the phenomenon that is accelerating glacier melting
Industrial dust and soil, blown thousands of miles, settle on ice sheets and add to rising sea level threat

Dark snow Greenland
Dark deposits on icefields in Greenland, which absorb more sunlight and lead to faster glacial melting. Photograph: Henrik Egede Lassen/Alpha Film

When American geologist Ulyana Horodyskyj set up a mini weather station at 5,800m on Mount Himlung, on the Nepal-Tibet border, she looked east towards Everest and was shocked. The world's highest glacier, Khumbu, was turning visibly darker as particles of fine dust, blown by fierce winds, settled on the bright, fresh snow. "One-week-old snow was turning black and brown before my eyes," she said.

The problem was even worse on the nearby Ngozumpa glacier, which snakes down from Cho Oyu – the world's sixth highest mountain. There, Horodyskyj found that so much dust had been blown on to the surface that the ability of the ice to reflect sunlight, a process known as albedo, dropped 20% in a single month. The dust that was darkening the brilliant whiteness of the snow was heating up in the strong sun and melting the snow and ice, she said.

The phenomenon of "dark snow" is being recorded from the Himalayas to the Arctic as increasing amounts of dust from bare soil, soot from fires and ultra-fine particles of "black carbon" from industry and diesel engines are being whipped up and deposited sometimes thousands of miles away. The result, say scientists, is a significant dimming of the brightness of the world's snow and icefields, leading to a longer melt season, which in turn creates feedback where more solar heat is absorbed and the melting accelerates.

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ow-speeding-glacier-melting-rising-sea-levels

 

[Calliope]

Rising Sea Levels bas? But what about our grandchildren?

It is certainly good news for one of my grandchildren who runs a business making surfboards.