Program: The Great Global Warming Swindle

[wayneL]

True it is not a democracy but it does work on a weight of evidence. the weight is currently with the global warming advocates. Sunspots may also be involved but for this doco to discount human causes is irresponsible IMO.

Not when that evidence is suspect as Galileo et al discovered.

But!..... I agree the doco was irresponsible because it implicitly encouraged more fossil fuel based development. Even the CO2 doubters couldn't argue that this is causing problems independent of climate change.

It IS imperative that we reduce our dependence on non-renewable and pollution causing petrochemicals. The big problem is that most of the answers are not palatable to a gluttonous and self indulgent populace, or have huge issues of their own such as the nuclear option.

 

[Smurf1976]

PS One thing I will accept (after watching that show) is the third world's right to use dirty coal for as long as it takes for them to crawl out of their survival mode. Might encourage the developed world to help them a bit more. And the likes of AUS and USA - (neither of whom were prepared to sign Kyoto P) MUST try to crank back.

Agreed there with the condition that the developed countries don't cut back by means of simply transferring emissions to the developing countries.

If you look at, say, aluminium smelting then that is basically exporting electricity. It's the only reason Australia's first aluminium smelter was built in Tasmania - cheap hydro power. Likewise it's the only reason smelters were built in Victoria (brown coal) and New Zealand (hydro).

In the absense of a physical means of exporting directly, aluminium smelting was the way to do it. Likewise the TEMCO ferro alloy plant in Tas was built for exactly the same reason. And it's why Zinifex expanded to the point of sourcing 70% of it's ore from outside the state.

Even NSW and Queensland are in the same game now. Export coal directly and export more in the form of processed materials. Hence the smelters in NSW and Queensland and also various other energy intensive manufacturing.

And if you make the power more expensive when someone else can do it cheaper? Well, South Australia is the home of expensive (gas-fired) electricity and it's notable as NOT having an aluminium smelter. Likewise WA which mines bauxite (aluminium ore) but doesn't have a smelter - power is relatively expensive in WA. For the same reason Japan closed its smelters after the 1970's oil crisis.

So my real concern is that we end up doing nothing more than shifting energy intensive industry from one place to another. We stop doing it in Australia but let the Chinese do it instead. Quite likely that would end up using the exact same coal. We export the raw materials, someone else processes them. With all the extra shipping required that would actually increase emissions rather than reduce them.

So if the developed countries are going to cut back then for it to work there needs to be some means of assigning emissions from exported or imported product. That way, the consumer of the aluminium or whatever is assigned responsibility for the emissions from producing it rather than the country that actually has the smelters. That removes the incentive to simply shift to another country.

But would they really move? I'll put it this way. If Queensland, NSW, Victorian or Tasmanian electricity prices increased to the price that wind power costs then the smelters would become cash flow negative or damn close to it even without including wages or other non-energy operating costs (apart from the ore etc). They would be gone in a flash and with it an outright fortune in exports. All for no net greenhouse benefit if they simply relocate to China etc and use coal-fired power.

As for emissions in total, I'll put it this way...

The suggested 25 nuclear reactors would have run the entire country around the year 2000. But they would be enough for just one third of forecast consumption by the time they are actually built. Cosntant growth and we'll be using more coal then than we do today even with the nuclear plants.

Meanwhile, it seems likely that we'll get the herritage listed Lake Margaret scheme in Tas up and running as a fully working museum again in 3 years or so. Herritage listed because it was the largest hydro plant in the Southern Hemisphere when built, it doesn't come anywhere near large enough to officially qualify as a legitimate power station these days (though the power produced will end up in the grid). A point that really says it all when it comes to constant growth.

 

[2020hindsight]

If you look at, say, aluminium smelting then that is basically exporting electricity.

that's a shocking thing to say Smurf . - but a good way to express it.

 

[numbercruncher]

FLooding in Portugal, they say probably because of Global Warming ! Wait till this happens in Low lying places of say India where Millions live

Waves up to four metres high have burst through dykes and flooded part of a popular beach resort close to Lisbon, highlighting the growing threat of erosion to Portugal's coastline.

http://optuszoo.news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=256073&_cobr=optus

 

[Happy]

From ABC , March 20, 2007


SUN, SALT WATER COULD MAKE FUEL, SCIENTISTS SAY



Researchers from the University of New South Wales say harnessing the sun to create fuel from salt water could be a commercial reality more quickly if research was better funded.

The scientists are working to improve the ability of a commonly used white powder to absorb sunlight.
Dr Leigh Sheppard from the Centre for Materials Research in Energy Conservation says titanium dioxide could become a key part of a no-emission technology.

"We're promising to produce a fuel, hydrogen fuel which is very clean," Dr Sheppard said.
"When you combust it, it produces water, it doesn't produce carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas.
"There's a lot of promise, we just need sunlight and salt water, and we have a sustainable clean fuel."

Dr Shepherd says it is hard to get commercial investment to match the Federal Government's low emission technology funding when the technology is a decade away, but it could become available sooner if there was more research money.

Amazing, how government is dragging feet to support development of alternative fuel to replace dreaded CO2 producing foes.

Government has excise cut and this is free money, which probably explains the reluctance to act.

 

[rederob]

Amazing, how government is dragging feet to support development of alternative fuel to replace dreaded CO2 producing foes.

Government has excise cut and this is free money, which probably explains the reluctance to act.

Happy
If Oz used a fraction of the research funding on geosequestration instead on alternative energy options, we would be well ahead.
Coal mining is big business.
However coal royalties are even better business for the States, so diverting moneys elsewhere will not be smiled on by the big end of town!

 

[Smurf1976]

that's a shocking thing to say Smurf . - but a good way to express it.

I could also point out that tourism is effectively little more than recreational oil burning from an energy perspective. I'm not opposed to tourism as such, but it's not the "green" industry that many like to claim. It's a massive polluter by any measure and one of the hardest industries to clean up from a technological perspective.

Just to make the point about consumption, right now at 1:45am (I'm not usually on ASF at that time...) the Eastern states including SA and Tas are using a combined 21523 MW of electricity. Roughly 90% of that is coming from coal at this very moment. So we're pumping out 20,000 tonnes of CO2 per hour to generate electricity right now whilst most are sleeping...

 

[Rafa]

Just to make the point about consumption, right now at 1:45am (I'm not usually on ASF at that time...) the Eastern states including SA and Tas are using a combined 21523 MW of electricity. Roughly 90% of that is coming from coal at this very moment. So we're pumping out 20,000 tonnes of CO2 per hour to generate electricity right now whilst most are sleeping...

Can you extrapolate a bit more Smurf?
Why are we using this energy, is it mainly industry related?

 

[happytown]

fear not, the greatest minds are on to the problem, and help is at hand,

"Pill stops cow burps and helps save the planet"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2040845,00.html

cheers

 

[happytown]

and just maybe it isn't a bad idea,

"Germany Plans Boom in Coal-Fired Power Plants - Despite High Emissions"

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,472786,00.html

cheers

 

[chops_a_must]

True it is not a democracy but it does work on a weight of evidence.

That is total crap!

Ever heard of falsifiability?

 

[rederob]

That is total crap!

Ever heard of falsifiability?

I do love a well balanced, strongly argued, case.

Then again, I'm always skeptical about plausibly deniable counter intuitive State manipulated conspiracy theories from credible sources.

 

[2020hindsight]

here's a theory ... in the past when there was a lot of sunspot activity, there was maybe a corresponding increase in vegetation ??

and perhaps without those forests, we are starting the next cycle of sunspot activity "behind the 8 ball"

 

[billhill]

That is total crap!

Ever heard of falsifiability?

Chop's go and read some journal articles. Where is the weight of evidence? If you have a tight chest, pain in your arm and shortness of breath, are you gonna tell me its the flu because you read it in some journal article, no it is most likely heart attack, why because the weight of scientific evidence tells us these are the symptom. It might turn out not to be a heart attack but would you take the chance. Don't tell me that all the global warming evidence is one big conspiracy because that is a load of crap. And as for falsifiability that is a cheap shot. Any scientist should know that just about any theory can be proved possibly false. Possibly we don't even exist, but that doesn't stop people from trying to acheive the highest. The shrinking possibility that global warming does not exist does not mean we shouldn't do anything about it.

 

[2020hindsight]

1. .. But maybe I won't use 2020's data set below!!!. (which looks suspiciously like three charts of the same data! . nice try 20's!!)

2. Either way - even if CO2 isn't the problem we think it is - there are myriad other reasons why we 'human animals' should try to minimize our impact on the planets surface; minimize energy consumption and pollution and try to find ways to 'work with nature' rather then 'work against it'.

dukey, I agree with you on point 2, but here's a better attempt to show those graphs.

These only show ARCTIC TEMPERATURES vs Solar and vs CO2. (wikipedia)
(more graphs to follow). They say "poor correlation between CO2 and temp" - but not that bad really (given their dishonesty about the "cooling" during the 40's which has been explained by sulphur pollution).

Also ice core data - note the time axis is reversed (i.e. "years ago". ) intersting that red line (dust) is low at the moment?
green line ( CO2 ) is pretty high
temp (blue) is pretty high

 

[2020hindsight]

Before posting more graphs, here's John Christy's REAL opinion (when not stuck in amongst others)..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Christyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Christy
Christy is generally considered a contrarian on some global warming and related issues, although he helped draft and signed the American Geophysical Union statement on climate change [2]. In an interview with National Public Radio about the new AGU statement, he said: It is scientifically inconceivable that after changing forests into cities, turning millions of acres into irrigated farmland, putting massive quantities of soot and dust into the air, and putting extra greenhouse gases into the air, that the natural course of climate has not changed in some way.More recently, in a study presented to the Washington Roundtable on Science and Public Policy he said:
• "I showed some evidence that humans are causing warming in the surface measurements that we have but it is not the greenhouse relation."
• Christy has also said that while he supports the AGU declaration, and is convinced that human activities are a cause of the global warming that has been measured, [but] he is "still a strong critic of scientists who make catastrophic predictions of huge increases in global temperatures and tremendous rises in sea levels."

 

[2020hindsight]

Also that "mini - ice age", (when they skated on the Thames - they say 14th Century - why didnt they skate again in the 17th ? )
"medieval warm period", (much warmer than today, think of the crusaders in hot metal in middle eastern deserts ), and
3000 years of hot during "Holocene Maximum" 6000 yrs ago.

Also another copy of that chart that they "massage" to the point of non-recognition - versus the real graph. They say " in the last 150 years, the temp rose 0.5degC before 1940, since then it has fallen for 4 decades , then risen for 3 decades". Blatant spin doctoring of the data. - and misreading the graph.

They forget to say that "it has risen more than 0.3 half degree since 1940". In fact the truth NASA graph shows that temp rose the same since 1940 as it did up to 1940.

 

[2020hindsight]

Finally, more investigation into the suns involvement.
a) directly , and
b) indirectly through cosmic rays

paraphrasing.. Firstly there is close correlation between sun spot activity and Earths temp - due to "Direct Heat".

Then the indirect effect of solar winds. "Solar wind sweeps away cosmic rays formed by exploding supernovi etc. when this happens, clouds dont form, and their cooling effect is lost"

"When cosmic rays (reaching the earth) went down the temp went up".

Again , see how nicely they pretend that their data fits the "massaged" graph of earths temp (the graph that they admit they massaged - "it's a fluff" (?)).

Hence dukey, lol - I wasn't trying to con you, just repeating what they were saying

PS note that the cosmic rays are plotted in reverse, i.e. it has been flipped, or if you like the Y2 axis is increasing down. The last graph shows how cosmic rays (blue) decrease , and temp (red) increases.

PPS I still think that using old data is dangerous - for the purpose of extrapolating into the future. i.e. man IS having an effect - and we have to consider the possibility that the past will not be a measure of the future (imho). we can't ignore it, and its all happening in an exponetially increasing manner (surely). Toffler's "Future Shock" makes it clear that we are heading into crazy times, and that applies to everything, including the environment.

so in summary , I agree with you , lol - man is surely part of the probelm - but how much ?

 

[chops_a_must]

Chop's go and read some journal articles. Where is the weight of evidence? If you have a tight chest, pain in your arm and shortness of breath, are you gonna tell me its the flu because you read it in some journal article, no it is most likely heart attack, why because the weight of scientific evidence tells us these are the symptom. It might turn out not to be a heart attack but would you take the chance. Don't tell me that all the global warming evidence is one big conspiracy because that is a load of crap. And as for falsifiability that is a cheap shot. Any scientist should know that just about any theory can be proved possibly false. Possibly we don't even exist, but that doesn't stop people from trying to acheive the highest. The shrinking possibility that global warming does not exist does not mean we shouldn't do anything about it.

I have read plenty of articles, it's a part of my study.

Personally, I don't think there is enough evidence. I have yet to read a publication, that in my mind, addresses all of the relevant issues. And that is a problem. Though, it certainly shouldn't stop us from taking action now.

The fact that greenies, who I am probably a part of, have been notoriously wrong in predictions (apart from one or two occasions) in many high profile cases, leaves me sceptical. Tin would run out in the 70s. We would all starve to death in the 80s due to overpopulation. Spaceship Earth. The list goes on and on...

 

[rederob]

I have read plenty of articles, it's a part of my study.
Personally, I don't think there is enough evidence. I have yet to read a publication, that in my mind, addresses all of the relevant issues. And that is a problem. Though, it certainly shouldn't stop us from taking action now.

Not enough evidence for what?
To convince you that the Earth is now warmer than it was?
Or that the Earth is not getting warmer?

What are the "relevant" issues?
The causes of global warming, or the effects of global warming?

I doubt there is a single "publication" that addesses everything, but there is a wealth of information available.

Also note that temperature charts for Earth prior to the 17th century are largely estimates based on sets of scientific assumptions as we had no means for taking such measurements before then.