Fake News - Global Warming Consensus

[rederob]

No, we cannot influence meaningful change unless we stop coal exports. And that day is coming.
In the meantime... Prepare.
Using per capita is simply fudging figures. China and India pollute more then we ever could. Go to Jakarta and see the difference in air quality.

Emissions is a cumulative process, so every step to mitigate is meaningful.
You are completely wrong about China and India. Their respective contributions to global CO2 levels pale into insignificance compared with the industrial world since the 1800s. This blame game on nations with greater populations is disgusting in my view, as it just says we don't want them to have the standard of living we have: it's a paradigm mired in cultural elitism.
I agree that coal continues to be a major contributor to increased CO2 levels, but we in Australia - via a recent election - have declared that it is not our problem because jobs come first. It is symptomatic of why we as a world are where we are. Let's instead blame the countries who aspire to live as we do.

 

[wayneL]

You really need to look at the difference between the information I post, with regular links to back up commentary, and the rubbish you post.
You continue to have great difficulty understanding what words mean, because you are not using them properly.
Again, put up something factuainvestedl for a change so that readers have something which is relevant to this thread.

It would only result in the smearing of the researchers and a range of specious argument. My time is more valuable than to waste that way.

 

[rederob]

It would only result in the smearing of the researchers and a range of specious argument. My time is more valuable than to waste that way.

Actually, it would show you had no idea, as you have proven since the inception of the many threads in ASF forums.
And that is precisely why what you continue to post is mostly rubbish here.

 

[wayneL]

Actually, it would show you had no idea, as you have proven since the inception of the many threads in ASF forums.
And that is precisely why what you continue to post is mostly rubbish here.

That's just ad hom. And you still haven't demonstrated any cognitive dissonance on my part.

...and I'll bet you don't even know what my position on climate actually is.

 

[rederob]

That's just ad hom. And you still haven't demonstrated any cognitive dissonance on my part.
...and I'll bet you don't even know what my position on climate actually is.

Your contributions are oftentimes an irrelevance in these forums as you do not know anything meaningful about climate science, use words inappropriately, and cannot present an argument.
At what point will you get a decent dictionary, get on track, and get over yourself?

 

[moXJO]

Emissions is a cumulative process, so every step to mitigate is meaningful.
You are completely wrong about China and India. Their respective contributions to global CO2 levels pale into insignificance compared with the industrial world since the 1800s. This blame game on nations with greater populations is disgusting in my view, as it just says we don't want them to have the standard of living we have: it's a paradigm mired in cultural elitism.
I agree that coal continues to be a major contributor to increased CO2 levels, but we in Australia - via a recent election - have declared that it is not our problem because jobs come first. It is symptomatic of why we as a world are where we are. Let's instead blame the countries who aspire to live as we do.

Looking at the past is useless. Unless you are looking for a reason to excuse huge levels of pollution. You still can't breath in many of China's cities.
I understand the argument that we got to industrialise, so emerging nations should be allowed to as well. But tech has advanced and the places that matter don't give a crap.

The clock is ticking and imo its already too late. I'm not saying we shouldn't reduce pollution. But giving that we are seeing the effects of droughts and heat already. I'd be sandbagging defense first then waste it on an ideological wank.

 

[rederob]

Looking at the past is useless. Unless you are looking for a reason to excuse huge levels of pollution. You still can't breath in many of China's cities.
I understand the argument that we got to industrialise, so emerging nations should be allowed to as well. But tech has advanced and the places that matter don't give a crap.

Given the past got us here, the lessons are that we know what the solutions entail. But we, ie the industrialised world, is not keen to implement solutions that they consider cost jobs and reduce competitiveness.
Worse, we have outsourced the dirtiest and most labour intensive production to developing nations, and now cry about their CO2 emissions. But we are very happy indeed to buy from them because we are now much better off through having to pay a fraction of the cost had we instead produced those same items at home.
The duplicity of our stance is palpable.

 

[moXJO]

Given the past got us here, the lessons are that we know what the solutions entail. But we, ie the industrialised world, is not keen to implement solutions that they consider cost jobs and reduce competitiveness.
Worse, we have outsourced the dirtiest and most labour intensive production to developing nations, and now cry about their CO2 emissions. But we are very happy indeed to buy from them because we are now much better off through having to pay a fraction of the cost had we instead produced those same items at home.
The duplicity of our stance is palpable.

I do agree with a lot of the above. But we outsourced all our manufacturing due to a cheaper product with lax pollution laws. Its a sham to make our own emissions look better.

The tech feels like its lagging behind as well. I'm starting to think that nuclear will be a cheaper end user price for electricity.

 

[Smurf1976]

Worse, we have outsourced the dirtiest and most labour intensive production to developing nations, and now cry about their CO2 emissions.

There are many like me who would argue that relocating industry to Third World nations such that we can import the production was a foolish move in every possible way.

First because we lose our independence. Whatever they say, we can't afford to disagree with too strongly when we're relying on them for things we actually need. So whilst we might disagree with what some other country does, our hands are tied when it comes to exerting any real pressure.

Second because we lose work and career opportunities in our own country. There's no point telling people to "have a go" when their entire industry no longer exists and has been replaced by low end service sector stuff paying a relative pittance or which simply doesn't offer work that interests the individual. That's causing a huge divide in our society due to the economic ramifications of having a system which requires a large portion to be engaged in low value activities.

Third because we've lost control over the environmental, safety, human rights etc aspects of production and along with everyone else are engaged in a race to the bottom on those fronts. If it wasn't for this aspect then slashing emissions in Australia would be a cinch - just do it and if our goods cost more then not a big problem if we're not competing against anyone who hasn't done the same thing too.

I've nothing against the idea of development in poorer countries, that's entirely reasonable, but the competitive globalised model isn't a great way of going about it. It's akin to chucking a bucket of boiling water into a bath full of cold water - the end result is we all end up slightly better than what used to be the bottom but nowhere close to what was previously the best.

..................

On the question of renewables and electricity costs, there's a difference there with association versus causation.

If we look at Australia as an example well yes Adelaide has the highest retail electricity prices of the significant cities and yes it also has the highest use of non-hydro renewables.

That's not the full story however since SA also has the lowest load factor of any state, that is the lowest average load as a % of peak load, and also has highly fragmented ownership meaning that the scale of individual operators is small.

Both of those points are critical to the high costs in SA. Comparing with Tasmania as otherwise the most comparable state in terms of population etc it's rather revealing:

*Adelaide's population is over 6 times that of Hobart's

*SA's population is about 3.4 times that of Tasmania's

*SA is a physically much larger area although partly offsetting that most of it doesn't have mains electricity available versus the virtually inescapable presence of the grid in Tasmania.

*Almost total lack of hydro generation in SA and a high reliance on expensive fuels (gas and to a much lesser extent liquids) versus high reliance upon hydro generation in Tasmania with very limited use of expensive fuels.

*Weather itself imposes costs since high temperatures are unfavourable to all aspects of the supply chain and that's a far bigger issue in SA than in Tas.

*AGL and Origin are both large organisations as such but looking at their SA operations, they're substantially smaller than Hydro Tasmania's operations in the island state whilst the various other players in SA are comparatively tiny. The lack of scale in SA leads to loss of efficiency technically and in terms of staffing, overheads and so on.

*Multiple competing owners also leads to operating efficiency losses. It's not unusual that lower cost plant sits idle whilst higher cost plant runs - that's the inevitable outcome of having them compete for business.

*Load factor in Tasmania about 71% versus about 41% in SA. This is directly related to the lack of heavy industry in SA with household use of gas and the climate adding to it.

*The ownership structure in Tasmania facilitates the adoption of technical approaches which would be administratively prohibitive elsewhere, requiring more costly alternative approaches. In simple terms Tas can and does push the system along a lot harder due to this "tighter" approach to it all.

Renewables haven't had no impact in SA, it would be untrue to claim that, but they're by no means the whole story or even most of it.

 

[Smurf1976]

We have however done an order of magnitude better job at keeping population under control than China has.

I wish to clarify that the only reason I've mentioned China is because it has the biggest population of any country and also by far the highest coal consumption.

My point isn't about China per se, that's just the obvious example, but that the two are linked.

Have lots of people and have them each using a lot of resources and you end up with very high total consumption.

Eg in Australia we've done pretty well at reducing emissions on a per capita basis. Trouble is, the population has gone up, completely wiping out that reduction per capita, and what matters so far as the planet is concerned is the total actual emissions not how much that happens to be per capita.

 

[SirRumpole]

First because we lose our independence. Whatever they say, we can't afford to disagree with too strongly when we're relying on them for things we actually need. So whilst we might disagree with what some other country does, our hands are tied when it comes to exerting any real pressure.

The recycling scenario with China is a good example of that.

Shovel our rubbish off to China to process and when they don't take it any more we are basically stuffed for a long time.

 

[moXJO]

The recycling scenario with China is a good example of that.

Shovel our rubbish off to China to process and when they don't take it any more we are basically stuffed for a long time.

We actually shoveled a sht full into Indonesia and they sent it back. It was full of rubbish and not recycling.

 

[Smurf1976]

We actually shoveled a sht full into Indonesia and they sent it back. It was full of rubbish and not recycling.

We did a terrible job of sorting things that is true but it is still the case that the collapse of the offshoring arrangement is an example of what can go wrong. We're at the mercy of someone else changing their mind about things and doing so reasonably quickly.

There's countless examples of how someone overseas could decide they disagree with what we're doing so they just change some technical standard as a backdoor means of ceasing to supply whatever when the real reason is a political disagreement. The whole situation compromises our sovereignty really.

As for the recycling sorting, that's a classic failure of our governments for failing to firstly agree among themselves as to what's recyclable and what's not and to then communicate that in a consistent manner to the masses. Depending on who you listen to:

*All plastics with a number on them are recyclable. Or maybe only some and that doesn't include some with one of the numbers that's on the sticker on the bin saying they're OK. Lids are recyclable or they're not, depends which council you ask. Bottles should be flattened or they must never be flattened, again depends who you ask.

*Steel cans are all recyclable. Or those which have had paint in them might not be even if they're perfectly clean, or they might, depends where you are.

*Paper is recyclable and there's no need to remove minor contamination eg plastic envelope windows etc. Or you must remove all plastics etc.

*Batteries are recyclable. Or no they're not.

*Some councils intentionally supply a woefully small general rubbish bin and then act really surprised when residents bend the rules and put what they know full well to be rubbish in the recycling bin because it doesn't fit in the tiny rubbish bin. Well duh......

Given the subject isn't one that interests most beyond the minimum, it's not hard to see why it's failing. It ought to be straightforward and simple - same rules from Broome to Huonville and no silly little bins encouraging wrongdoing.

 

[wayneL]

 

[basilio]

"Human caused climate change is real & aggressive mitigation and adaptation actions make good sense"
Roger Pielke Jr
OK I'll agree with that.

Somehow, however that doesn't gell with the " softly, softly, It's not a real problem" approaches I have heard attributed by Wayne to Roger Pielke Jnr in his previous posts.

And attacking the current science on how dangerously quickly CC is now happening seems to completely undercut Rogers protestations of not being a CC denier (Lets just say luke warmist.. shall we ?)

 

[wayneL]

"

Somehow, however that doesn't gell with the " softly, softly, It's not a real problem" approaches I have heard attributed by Wayne to Roger Pielke Jnr in his previous posts.

I have never made that representation bas. Always pointed out his view of mitigation

 

[wayneL]

A positive for proper debate

 

[wayneL]

 

[IFocus]

Note northwest housing insurance has risen because of higher intensity cyclones, also note none are being under cut in premiums by major players.

 

[bi-polar]

It seems Ann has left the building. I would have liked to ask "what planets , is it just Earth and what does the graph specifically mean?". If she says it's Earth getting nearer the Sun then what do 50 year variations indicate? The 1880-1930 bit is hotter than 1930-1980. Today we're in a sharp drop in "planet orbit".

"The long-term temperature records indicate that temperatures in the New England North West region (Aust.) have been increasing since the 1960s. The longest period of continued temperature increase has occurred in the most recent decades. Based on long-term (1910–2011) observations, temperatures have been noted to have been increasing since about 1970,
New England North West Climate change ... - Adapt NSW

https://climatechange.environment.nsw.gov.au › media
The 11 year solar radiation cycle, as well as small increase in TSI total solar irradiance since 1750, appear in some studies to be correlated with variations in cloud patterns. But, these changes in solar energy absorbed by the Earth appear to be far too small to explain the major changes in our climate.

But it's a lovely graph with cute squiggles in year 450.