Man Based Global Warming....

Acdii writes:

"If that were the case, how are the power companies surviving? When you consider the amount of infrastructure required to deliver power to a farmhouse 100 miles away from the power plant, it is staggering. Where are the subsidies coming from and who is paying them? If its from the government, guess who is paying for them, us taxpayers, so in essence we are already paying the cost, we just dont realize it."

The power companies are surviving because they in some cases are buying below market power from publicly owned/taxpayer subsidized generators (BPA/TVA etc) and reselling at a mark up. In other cases they are burning "cheap" coal that is cheap to buy on the front end, but the environmental costs are staggering! The cost of CO2 out put is not being paid, the cost of Appalachian mountain top blowing off with the associated run off, and other environmental costs are not being paid. The cost of coal ash clean up and the damage done by coal ash piles are not being paid. The loss of fish, fish habitat on hydro dams like the Columbia/Snake system are not being paid. The fact is we are not paying them as a society, but rather we are passing these costs on to the next generation, and ones that will follow.

As a matter of public policy, for a variety of reasons we have thought it wise to have cheap electricity, regardless of the "real and true" costs. That is fine, as long as we are aware of it, but the reality is that too often we become aware too late,, much like the global warming denier community is today. We didn't think much about the price of coal energy and the damage acid rain did until our lakes died. We didn't think much about migrating salmon on the Columbia when Grand Coulee was built, until the Salmon are gone, never to return. (We still don't know all the consequences of that choice!)


My point in all these discussions is, that until we as a society understand that our actions have consequences, our choices have costs, and these costs are not always apparent we will have these dilemmas. If we (as a society) truly serious about global warming (even as some deny it!) serious about weaning ourselves from "foreign oil", serious about weaning ourselves from fossil fuel, serious about leaving the planet if not a better place for our children, at least in no worse shape, if we are serious we have to realize that will come at a cost.

It will come at a cost of dollars. It will come at the cost of lifestyle. It will come at the cost of giving up the habit of using a hugely disproportionate percentage of the world's resources.

But I can tell you from real world experience, we won't have to spend our selves to the poor house, we won't have to go back to living in caves. Industry has always cried poor, that environmental regulations will break them. The power/coal industry fought tooth and nail about how adding scrubbers to coal fired electric stations would raise the price of power ten fold. The "real" result was a cost that was about 10% of the doomsayers estimates. (Same with catalytic converters for cars!) I an my family live very comfortably in a very conventional house. With some work, and some though, and indeed some (but not too much) money, we use ~1/3 the energy than the average house of similar size in this climate. We don't shiver in the dark! Our use of gasoline has dropped ~80% in the last few years given similar miles traveled (We have dropped the miles driven by choice as well, but the PER MILE fuel use has dropped ~75%) The Prius gets twice the mileage the Subaru did, my work truck gets about 3 times the mileage that my previous truck did.

The reality is (despite the deniers) we need to do something, and as long as alternatives are priced out of the market in large measure by poor policy/greed/and by lack of leadership/political courage it is only going to be harder. Would I support a real carbon tax? You bet! Do I think cap and trade is the answer? No! But at least it BEGINS to force us as a society to recognize the costs.

Icarus

 

According to links posted by both Alrick and the Fibber, NOAA says June '09 has warmest ocean temperatures recorded. So what? AGW proponents are always saying a short term phenomenon or record has no significance.

In addition, a snide comment from a poster above seems to indicate by reverse inference that NOAA is infallible. It is not. What many here apparently do not appreciate is that although NOAA, as a taxpayer-funded government organization, should respond quickly to Freedom of Information requests, it does not:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4314

Ask yourself why they won't provide data taxpayers are paying for to another scientist for research. Could it have anything to do with the fact that many NOAA scientists are contributers to the IPCC? HMMmmmmm?

Of course none of this has anything to do with the fact that the climate models are wrong and AGW based on CO2 is just plain wrong.

In Alrick's NOAA link you'll find gratuitous reference to drought and floods. There is ZERO credible information that would link a .59 degree temperature rise over the average for one month to these occurences. Why are they in this release? Ask yourself.

In Fibber's link the article states once again that 1998 is the warmest recorded year. This is false, yet it continues to find its way into uninformed journals. 1934 was the warmest year in the records - a mistake that another government-funded organization was forced to admit when pointed out by independent observers.

NASA Backtracks on 1998 Warmest Year Claim=

 

U.S. consumers spared big costs in climate bill | Politics | Reuters

 

Your link above takes one to the news release of the National Center for Policy Analysis. At the bottom it states:

Isn't that right-wing speak for "no government interference in our raping and pillaging of the planet?

Anyway, to see the retraction from NASA first hand I went to the NASA website and searched for "warmest years"

These were the first page of hits:

• NASA - 2005 Warmest Year in Over a Century
  
  
  Jan 24, 2006 ... Image displaying the five warmest years in the past century. Image to right:
  2005 was the warmest year since the late 1800s, according to ...
  
  others searched for: years, warmest, warmest year on record, warmest years on record, warmest year
  
  NASA - 2005 Warmest Year in Over a Century
• 
  
  Used by 8077 visitors
  
  Apollo40
  
  
  NASA - Apollo40
  
  others searched for: apollo, apollo 9 40 years later, apollo 9, apollo 8 40 years later, years
  
  NASA - Apollo40
• 
  
  NASA - 2007 Was Tied as Earth's Second- Warmest Year
  
  
  Jan 16, 2008 ... The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the
  14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990 ...
  
  others searched for:
  
  NASA - 2007 Was Tied as Earth's Second-Warmest Year
• 
  
  2007 Tied as Earth's Second Warmest Year : News
  
  
  Jan 16, 2008 ... The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, ... For
  the 2006 story: 2006 Was Earth's Fifth Warmest Year, visit: ...
  
  others searched for:
  
  2007 Tied as Earth's Second Warmest Year : News
• 
  
  Data @ NASA GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: 2008 Annual ...
  
  
  Dec 16, 2008 ... In our analysis, 2008 is the ninth warmest year in the period of ... The ten
  warmest years all occur within the 12-year period 1997-2008. ...
  
  others searched for:
  
  Data @ NASA GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: 2008 Annual Summation
• 
  
  NASA - 2006 Was Earth's Fifth Warmest Year
  
  
  Feb 8, 2007 ... Graphic listing the top five warmest years recorded Climatologists at the NASA
  Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City ...
  
  others searched for:
  
  NASA - 2006 Was Earth's Fifth Warmest Year
• 
  
  Data @ NASA GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: 2005 Summation
  
  
  However, the error bar on the data implies that 2005 is practically in a dead
  heat with 1998, the warmest previous year. Our analysis, summarized in Figure
  ...
  
  others searched for:
  
  Data @ NASA GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: 2005 Summation
• 
  
  Earth Gets a Warm Feeling All Over : News
  
  
  Feb 8, 2005 ... Last year was the fourth warmest year on average for our planet since the late
  1800s, according to NASA scientists. ...
  
  others searched for:
  
  Earth Gets a Warm Feeling All Over : News
• 
  
  Data @ NASA GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: 2007 Summation
  
  
  Aug 12, 2008 ... The year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental ... The
  eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since ...
  
  others searched for:
  
  Data @ NASA GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: 2007 Summation
• 
  
  2006 Fifth- Warmest Year on Record : Image of the Day
  
  
  Feb 14, 2007 ... GISS scientists estimated that the five warmest years on record were, in
  descending order, 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003, and 2006. ...
  
  others searched for:
  
  2006 Fifth-Warmest Year on Record : Image of the Day

There is no evidence that NASA has retracted anything:

In fact this is still what they have online:



from

NASA - 2006 Was Earth's Fifth Warmest Year

Please explain the reasons for this: Oh right, I know.... the big government conspiracy..

 

This is the problem when your "research" is based on finding information to confirm your bias. You end up citing worldnetdaily, instapunk and personal blogs to confirm your bias. The story changes when you read peer reviewed publications or the web sites of scientific organizations.

At that point is when a conspiracy is invoked.

 

Thanks for proving my point, Fibber. At his link, you'll find an archved set of data BEFORE GISS changed them YET AGAIN. Always skewing and revising until they achieve the desired result:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt

Here, you'll find 1934 and 1998 in a virtual tie (that's all they could bring themselves to do at the time.) But where is 1934 in the new data? Why isn't it mentioned in the links you give? HMMmmmmm?

While you find it somehow germane to point out that a source I use is interested in private solutions to policy problems as some sort of code for right wing devilry, you also conveniently ignore the fact that Jim Hansen and Gavin Schmidt were forced to admit a serious nathematical error in their calculations of temperature.

Now, they will only admit to a 'minor' error. With Hansen, who is supposed to be an impartial scientist, we have a real enviro-looney. He compares freight cars loaded with coal to the Nazi death death-camp rail cars. Gavin Schmidt, also on the government teat, a co-founder of realClimate (and an AGW extremist) are a couple of people we're supposed to trust to give us the unadorned truth. And you're worried about MY sources? LAUGHABLE.

You'll find that GISS and NASA can be counted on to skew the data in the favor of AGW. I'm insulted that my tax dollars fund these frauds and propagandists.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/...mes-hansen-s-former-boss-on-james-hansen.aspx

An excerpt~

Yes, one could say that I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation. He was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind's effect on it). He thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress.

 

I cited Instapunk to demonstrate that a perfectly good argument could be made for the existence of a cosmic intelligence or consciousness. This is outside the realm of peer-reviewed publications, Alrick.

Where is your peer-reviewed paper demonstrating how the cosmos created itself, or life formed itself from mere matter, or consciousness developed in living things, or even self-consciousness? Where is a peer-reviewed explanation of how we arrived at a Michaelangelo or Leonardo from a butt-scratching ape in a mere 50,000 years?

Now as to peer-reviiewd papers pointing to possibilities other than AGW to account for the natural warming we have experienced, there are many and I have linked to some.

I continue to be astonished at the lack of intellectual curiosity on this site - as well as the hypocrisy. An unnamed poster recently used Media Matters (a criminal enterprise posing as an impartial, unbiased organization) as a source.

 

Making stuff up is not a good argument. You can imagine all you want but if there is no data to back it up it is not even speculation. It is wishful thinking.

All of your questions have been answered or are being studied currently. There is no need to invoke anything but known facts that:

1. The cosmos began with a big bang and we can see it's residue in the current universe. There is no indication a god started anything at any point. Just realize that not having an answer does not mean God did it. Any modern popular physics book would discuss this. Brian Greene books would be good.

2. Life began from simple molecules. Any modern book on abiogenesis can answer this question. As can any biology student. Even small chains or RNA have enzymatic activity. From this to replication is just one small step.

3. Consciousness is an esoteric term but it is always contained within a sufficiently complex nervous system. And that we have a pretty good idea of how got started. Any book of evolution or development will answer your questions.

4. You got your timeframe wrong. Homo sapiens has existed for about 50,000 years our ape ancestors lived more than 4.5 million years ago. This is also well documented with evidence from fossils, molecular biology and other disciplines.

All these facts are basic knowledge and the product of thousands of research papers. You will be better served by reading a modern science book written by a scientist or a review.

Finally, you have not shown a single paper disputing AGW. You have copied and pasted papers and said "this disputes AGW" but nothing within that paper says anything that invalidated AGW. All papers, even those that argue models or projections should be modified, in the end do not dispute, or fail to have an impact on the concept of AGW.

 

You obviously did not read the instapunk link, or did not understand it. Possible refutations of your first three points are contained in it implicitly. Absolutely nothing mankind knows allows him to stand astride a few feet on a tiny speck in the cosmos and declare that he, with an intelligence that he cannot properly explain in evolutionary terms, knows enough to declare that it is impossible that a creative intelligence or counsciousness is part and parcel of it all.

You misunderstand my time frame. I question the evolution of the first homo sapiens (whom I imagine as still scratching his butt) to a Leonardo (who probably scratched his butt, on occasion) based on mutations that accidentally bestow creative genius in a mere 50,000 years from the as yet undiscovered fossil link from ape to man.

Finally, the peer-reviewed papers I link provide alternative explanations for the warming we have recorded during this and other geological periods of earth's existence. They comport with reality. The papers which the AGW religionists use to propund their theory, in the end, focus on one single possibility (that man's use of fossil fuel MAINLY is responsible for the warming since the inception of the industrial era.) That concept is wrong, ESPECIALLY when the climate models (made-up stuff) are used as evidence. So your last point is a falsehood that becomes more evident as observation of reality consistently belies the accuracy of made-up models.

 

From a man the AGW crowd loves to hate, Dr. Roy Spencer:

My Favorite Renewable Energy Concept: The Solar Updraft Tower

August 5th, 2009

There are many different ways that you can extract usable energy from sunlight, and they all have their advantages and disadvantages. Historically, the biggest disadvantage has been cost when compared to more traditional sources of energy, such as coal-fired power plants. For if solar power was an economical and practical alternative to other forms of energy generation today, it would already be deployed on a wide scale.

I think it is only a matter of time before renewable energy sources become more cost competitive. The question is which methods make the most sense. My favorite idea is the ‘Solar Tower’ (or ‘solar updraft tower’, or ‘solar chimney’), an artists rendering of which is shown below.



While most people have never heard about it, the Solar Tower design was implemented on a small scale

years ago to test the concept. More recently, a privately-funded company called EnviroMission has been working toward the construction of one or more 200 megawatt power plants in the Australian Outback. The company has also been actively pursuing plans to build power plants in China and Nevada.

The design appeals to me because it harnesses the weather, albeit on a small scale. Specifically, it collects the daily production of warm air that forms near the ground, and funnels all of that warm air into a chimney where turbines are located to extract energy from the rising air. It’s a little like wind tower technology, but rather than just extracting energy from whatever horizontally-flowing wind happens to be passing by, the Solar Tower concentrates all of that warm air heated by the ground into the central tower, or chimney, where the air naturally rises. Even on a day with no wind, the solar tower will be generating electricity while conventional wind towers are sitting there motionless.

The total amount of energy that can be generated by a Solar Tower depends upon two main factors: (1) how much land area is covered by the clear canopy, and (2) the total height of the tower. EnviroMission’s baseline design has included a glass canopy covering up to several square miles of desert land, and a tower 1,000 meters tall. Such a tower would be the tallest manmade structure of any kind in the world, although more recently EnviroMission has been talking about several smaller-scale power plants as a more cost-effective approach. Since the design is proprietary, details have remained secret.

Since the Solar Tower is based upon physical processes that people like me deal with routinely in our research, I can immediately see ways in which the efficiency of the design can be maximized. For instance, a third major factor that also determines how much energy would be generated is the temperature difference between the power plant’s surroundings and the air underneath the canopy. After all, it is that temperature difference which provides the energy source, since warm air is less dense than cool air, and so ‘wants’ to rise.

This means that you could increase the power plant’s output by building it where the sand is quite reflective (bright), and then covering the ground under the canopy area with black rock — say crushed lava rock — which would then get the hottest when the sun shines on it.

One of the advantages of a Solar Tower over using photovoltaic cells to generate electricity is that the Solar Tower keeps generating electricity even after the sun goes down. Because the ground under the canopy stays warm at night, it continues to warm the air while the land around the canopy cools much more rapidly. This maintains a temperature difference between the canopy-covered air and the plant’s surroundings, which translates into continued energy generation at night. Additionally, the Solar Tower does not require the huge volume of water that coal-fired plants use.

From what I’ve read, the Solar Tower is potentially cost-competitive with coal-fired power plants, but the investment in infrastructure is large, and there is still some uncertainty (and therefore investment risk) involved in just how efficient Solar Towers would be.

If the government insists on providing subsidies for renewable energy, I think Solar Towers might be one of the best investments of the public’s money. But the last I knew, the U.S. Department of Energy was not actively pursuing the Solar Tower technology. I have no idea whether government involvement would help or hurt the private efforts of EnviroMission. Ultimately, the technology needs to be sustainable from a cost standpoint, and when that point is reached it is best if the government stays out of the way.

But just from a political standpoint, I think the Obama administration would benefit by pursuing Solar Towers as a national goal to reduce our dependence on foreign energy. If electricity in the sunnier parts of the country was cheap enough, then plug-in hybrid cars would become more popular there as well, which would reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

A very cool computer-generated video tour of an EnviroMission Solar Tower design can be viewed here (be sure to turn the sound up!). As the video shows, a Solar Tower 1,000 meters tall would also provide quite a tourist attraction.

{Once again, private enterprise, not government, is coming up with all the cool ideas.) - my note

 

All those storms we're (especially Fibber) supposed to worry about because of climate change?

 

Peer-reviewed paper using the results of 18 other peer-reviewed studies of temperature.

http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/AGW/Loehle/SupplementaryInfo.pdf

What this paper does not do is use the tree-ring studies that Mann et.al. (the Hockey Team) massaged into the infamous 'hockey stick'. Consequently the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age do not magically disappear.


The above graph shows an average of 18 non-tree ring proxies of temperature from 12 locations around the Northern Hemisphere, published by Craig Loehle in 2007

 

Loehle's paper uses a different approach than what most climatologists do. The difference is that he takes the average of the standard deviations as the real average. Climatologists attempt to obtain the average method out of the data and not of the standard deviations. Loehle's paper's data actually looks like this:



The actual temperature data is more consistent with the fist half of the lower red graph and the the 2nd half of the higher red graph. It also helps his case that his data doesn't reach 2000 and terminates in 1935:

"Because the number of available series drops abruptly from 11 to 8 in 1935, i.e. to less than half the maximum number of series, the reconstruction was terminated in 1935."

There is no reason to do this since there is perfectly good instrumental data before 1935. Yes. He is massaging the data. That is why his paper was published to Energy and Environment (a contrarian-oriented magazine with a dubious peer review process [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_and_Environment"]dubious peer review process[/ame]) and not in PNAS.

Of course this was all superseded by Mann's further work using 18 different sources of past temperature reconstruction in 2008 published in PNAS:



Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia ? PNAS

 

Mann et.al. continue to use tree-ring data and methodologies that are discerdited by independent scientists and panels. Historical data, as well as written accounts verify the reality of the MWP and LIA. Why do you suppose Greenland (My, what an unusual name) was colonized and then abandoned? If it was warmer in the past, and was green, why is it covered with ice now? MMMmmmm?

Tricks used by Mann are exposed here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?tag=mann-2008

And you don't think the peer-review process is tainted when Mann's own colleagues do the reviewing? BwaaaHaHa. It really is comical what people will believe because 'real' climate scientists who publish papers reviewed by their students and colleagues say it's so.

 

Uh Oh. More problems for the deniers of natural climate cycles and the AGW crowd:

Long debate ended over cause, demise of ice ages ? may also help predict future | News and Communication Services

The melting was first caused by more solar radiation, not changes in carbon dioxide levels or ocean temperatures, as some scientists have suggested in recent years.

“Solar radiation was the trigger that started the ice melting, that’s now pretty certain,” said Peter Clark, a professor of geosciences at OSU. “There were also changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and ocean circulation, but those happened later and amplified a process that had already begun.”

 

You didn't post the last two paragraphs in that article:

"Sometime around now, scientists say, the Earth should be changing from a long interglacial period that has lasted the past 10,000 years and shifting back towards conditions that will ultimately lead to another ice age – unless some other forces stop or slow it. But these are processes that literally move with glacial slowness, and due to greenhouse gas emissions the Earth has already warmed as much in about the past 200 years as it ordinarily might in several thousand years, Clark said.

“One of the biggest concerns right now is how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will respond to global warming and contribute to sea level rise,†Clark said. “This study will help us better understand that process, and improve the validity of our models.â€

 

What do you expect from someone so incredibly blinded by his biases?

 

Are you suggesting the last paragraphs completely vitiate the quote?

Well, at least you're reading my links. Thanks. Although it doesn't appear that you read or care to comment on the Climate Audit posts concerning the un-scientific methods (and failure of transparency) of the 2008 Mann et al.

And Fibber, you think you don't have biases?

The next post is for you (in other words, shallow, meaningless, and insignificant vis a vis the climate debate) so as to mirror your contributions.

 

NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA: July Temperature Below-Average for the U.S.

NOAA: July Temperature Below-Average for the U.S.

August 10, 2009
The July 2009 temperature for the contiguous United States was below the long-term average, based on records going back to 1895, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
The average July temperature of 73.5 degrees F was 0.8 degrees F below the 20th century average. Precipitation across the contiguous United States in July averaged 2.90 inches, which is 0.14 inches above the 1901-2000 average.

 

No. It vitiates your implication that current global warming is not anthropogenic.