JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Statistics
I’ve put together an article detailing how it appears we may be heading into another round of cooling. I did it rather faster than I wanted to do… Would anyone care to look and critique / make suggestions / tell me to scrap?
http://kajm.deviantart.com/art/The-Case-for-A-New-Cooling-Cycle-491553335
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That coach is in Norway, on the Jottunheimen isn’t it ?
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We’ll OK, forgive my bold stab . Had to switch to the Desktop site to see the article ( & the credit to Japan – which look remarkably like the road over Sognefjellet in the spring)
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It is well put together and appearing on a ‘neutral’ domain. Who is your audience ?
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Interesting site. I liked this one about the Science News Cycle.
That must be the one before the politicians get hold of it and start it on the spin cycle.
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Indeed! An early and very cold looking winter is beginning across most of the U.S. The prophets of doom and gloom seem to have missed it again.
When the weather channel, which is usually quite conservative in their remarks about the current weather, is saying it’s looking like another record cold season, the global warming scare runs and hides under the bed covers to keep warm.
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‘The prophets of doom and gloom seem to have missed it again.’ And as doom day appears on the horizon:-
Fossil fuels should be phased out by 2100 says IPCC
‘The unrestricted use of fossil fuels should be PHASED OUT by 2100 if the world is to avoid DANGEROUS CLIMATE CHANGE, a UN-backed expert panel says.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29855884
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Hardly on the horizon, BA4. You do so like to get yourself all vapourous, over the slightest little thing.
The UN-backed expert panel is only doing what they are paid to do, and that is to underwrite the political agenda.
I thought we had all managed to sort all that out, and you had started to understand the difference between politics (as, “This is what we want”) and science (as, “This is the way the world works”).
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Nor does BA4 seem to register the way that the world actually is. No sign of doomsday at all, just plenty of media-abetted junk science.
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‘No sign of doomsday at all’, not yet! Just hang on for a few decades, if that, the evidence is getting stronger!
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Ha, and what evidence might that be? Do you know?
You don’t know, but it is coming, it is, really it is. You can feel it getting stronger, The Force will soon be with you …
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‘Ha, and what evidence might that be? Do you know?’
Yip and here it is!
AGU, Richard Alley and climate zombies!
‘This particular climate zombie is back in force again…I just showed you warming is continuing, the global warming has stopped, has a new burst of noise…It’s just flabbergasting, what I just showed you the science, the system is warming…the atmosphere is warming…the Goddard Institute for Space…is it getting warmer yes, the confidence is high…but notice how you can do this…I am born in 1957, at the start of a cooling trend, I married in 1980 start of a cooling trend…we moved to Penn state in 1988 at the start of a cooling trend…1997 at the start of a cooling trend…they named a glacier after me in 2002 at the start of a cooling trend…our daughter became a Penn stater…2005 at the start of a cooling trend! So my whole life [as he reveals a graph that shows an ever increasing temperature]…now recognise this, as long as the Earth is variable you can do this forever…ALL YOU DO IF THERE IS RAPID WARMING SHUT UP and then you can go back and claim GW has stopped…until ad infinitum…we are hearing this at the highest levels…this is a climate zombie…somebody is keep waking these up! R Alley
As can be seen here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5sxBSa6Tck
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Yes BA, you have shown us that clip many times before. Showing it multiple times doesn’t make it any more relevant to … anything really.
Richard Alley is pulling a propaganda trick on his students. It is part of the “conditioning”, if you understand what that means.
By using his own history as an example, he is pointing out a fifty-year pattern in the noise and measurement errors in the temperature record, and then trying to imply that the overall trend is upwards throughout a much longer period, and will continue upwards indefinitely.
This is a good example of politics (as, “This is what we want”), but it is not science (as, “This is the way the world works”). He is cherry-picking.
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‘He is cherry-picking.’
No! It’s what climate change skeptics do best! Cherry pick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzZ6GAQzxWM
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blackadderthe4th:
Try to think, if you can, what that means.
No hospitals, no universities, no supermarkets as they’re all big users of electricity.
No mobile phones, no TV or radio, no traffic lights, no public transport (it uses electricity or fossil fuels). The ice man will come around daily in his horse drawn wagon to sell you a block of ice to keep your TINY ice box cool.
And please don’t be so stupid as to claim that renewables will supply electricity reliably and in full. Anticipating a claim about unavailable storage see http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/ the Catch 22 of Energy Storage.
In fact the only good thing about not using fossil fuels is that you would not be able to post your inane and ill considered rubbish.
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Yup I was going to post something but BA4 (4=A in leet speak, so BA4 is simply BAA = sheep, all makes sense when you think about it) beat me to it.
Here is the scare mongering in The West:
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/world/a/25409342/time-running-out-to-reach-2-c-target-un-climate-panel/
Ban Ki is calling down all the biblical plagues and then some more he made up. But then the ABC is a tad more sensible, posting the synthesis report just released:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-02/ipcc-say-greenhouse-levels-highest-point-in-thousands-of-years/5861314
I draw you attention to the incredible certainty of the models on page SYR-8 in which 111 of the 114 models are stated to be wrong (exceeding observed atmospheric warming trend) which is ascribed to not accounting or “natural internal variability.” Yeah, in other words all the parts of nature that aren’t CO2-e related and the ones we don’t understand and/or can’t/haven’t bothered to model.
I don’t know how they manage the cognitive disonance of the actual scientific observations versus the multi-plague doomsaying modelled outcomes and media statements. Clearly I don’t have what it takes to be a climate advocate or politician.
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BA4,
Do you always believe what some group of experts says or can you think for yourself?
Do you realize they haven’t any confidence in their pronouncements? They have been pushing the point of no return farther and farther into the future because their model generated predictions are not coming true. They’re up the creek without a paddle and they count on the gullible to keep going. So which are you, the thinker or the gullible? You appear to be an intelligent guy with the capacity to analyze information that comes to you. So why don’t you do it?
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‘or can you think for yourself’, obviously you do! That’s why you are so wrong so often. You can lead a climate change skeptic to the truth, but you can’t make them think!
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BA,
Have you ever noticed that every argument you make is simply a statement that you’re right and I (or whoever you’re addressing) am wrong and I better believe it because you say so? Everything you say is utterly devoid of facts and logical argument that follows from those facts. Evidence, none. Logical argument, none. Opinion, plenty of that but completely unsupported. At most we get a link to something of the same quality as your reply to me. That’s hardly a way to convince anyone of anything. 🙁
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But I will say one thing to your credit — at least you do reply to my comments directed to you. So thank you for that courtesy.
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Nice link – thanks. I have a question about some warmist scientists’ suggestion (like Trenberth) that heat is hiding in the deep Oceans – if that was true wouldn’t Ocean thermal expansion also accelerate? We know sea level rise can be attributed to both melting ice plus thermal expansion of the oceans. But research suggests that sea levels are rising at 1/4 that predicted by the IPCC? Like most of their theories something doesn’t add up?
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I don’t give any credence to the “hiding in the deep Oceans” hypothesis.
Trenberth was embarrassed by a surfeit of heat, and was faced with a choice. Either it escaped into space, never to return; or it sank to the bottom of the ocean, where it became indistinguishable from the existing heat from thermal vents.
Heat that is emitted into space does not sit well with the meme. But it does seems more probable to me, being more aligned with the Laws of Thermodynamics, and all.
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Rereke Whakaaro
The other possibility is that the missing heat is living in South America under an assumed name.
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I wish I had said that 🙂 Nice one.
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The BUOYS from Brazil…….sorry 🙁
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FAO Rereke Whakaaro
November 3, 2014
‘Heat that is emitted into space does not sit well with the meme’, but less and is actually making the journey, as has been recorded by satellites. Because the ‘vents’ are being restricted by the increased level of co2!
Water vapour and co2 as GHGs and heat vent blockers. [Therefore resulting in AGW! Except WV is negligible compared to co2].
‘70 years ago the view that co2 could affect the global climate was held by only a tiny minority of climate scientists, many assumed there would be a self regulating mechanism that would put things back into balance. Then there was the scientifically valid view that water vapour also trapped radiation and warms up the Earth and it is more abundant in the atmosphere than co2. But research in the 1940s changed all that, Guy Stewart Callender, a British engineer showed that radiation absorption is not even. Water vapour absorbs is mainly in the 18-30 micro-meter band and allows most of the rest to escape into space, in effect these absorption gaps act like cooling vents , but co2 absorbs in a different range, 8-18 micro-metre so Callender concluded that co2 mops up this escaping radiation, effectively acting as a plug to these cooling vents’. Potholer54.
As you can see here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RdAKIN6Y6k
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Radiative gas molecules (aka greenhouse gases) increase the emissivity of the atmosphere and therefore increase the heat loss from the atmosphere.
Radiative molecules in the upper atmosphere also absorb IR wavelengths in the upper atmosphere (note high temperatures in the thermosphere), and hence block heat from getting near the surface.
Both effects help to keep the atmosphere cooler, which is the exact opposite of what you are try to say BA4.
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Greenhouse gases do not plug the cooling vents!
Guy Stuart Callender was a complete dunce. People were smarter back then and paid him almost no attention.
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‘Greenhouse gases do not plug the cooling vents!’ oh yes they do! Because heat come into the atmosphere as UV no problem, but tries to leave in to space as IR, but is blocked at their IR frequencies by the GHGs. Thus the planet gets warmer. Just like if you were to start eating a chocolate bar extra everyday you would start to gain weight!
[Just what percentage of GHG molecules can be busy blocking at one time? What happens when they are all busy?
I invite you to review, correct or retract this analogy] ED
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Extra CO2 blocks one pipe, but the heat goes out the other wavelengths. Net, it’s possible that adding CO2 makes only a very small difference.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/06/big-news-part-v-escaping-heat-the-three-pipes-theory-and-the-rats-multiplier/
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“Water vapour and co2 as GHGs and heat vent blockers.”
“Except WV is negligible compared to co2”
roflmao….. Seriously, what utter BULL***T !!
You have zero clue how the atmosphere works noddy !!
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‘“Except WV is negligible compared to co2″’
So why is not?
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BA, do you know nothing? Even the IPCC admits water is the most powerful greenhouse gas there is. Page 631 AR4. Get a grip. We’ve only discussed it twenty times on this blog. CO2 = 400ppm. WV = 10,000 – 40,000 ppm. WV has wider absorption bands than CO2, and there is more of it.
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I guess in a way you are correct..
Water Vapour is an atmospheric coolant, so has a negative atmospheric heating effect.
CO2 has zero atmospheric warming effect.
But I’m sure that’s not what you meant. 🙂
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The reason climate models have been so wrong is because they are not run by expensive computers. 🙂
“Five years after we paid £33 million to buy the Met Office a new computer, we are now to pay £97 million to give them a “world-leading super-computer” – described by its chairman as “our integrated weather and climate model, known as the Met Office Unified Model”. That’s because it will not only “produce the most accurate short-term forecasts that are scientifically possible”, but can also predict how the Earth’s climate will change over the next 100 years.
“I scarcely need remind readers of how the Met Office’s computer modelling has performed in the past 10 years. In 2004, it predicted that by 2014 the world would have warmed by 0.8C, and that four of the five years after 2009 would beat the 1998 record as the “hottest year ever”. In 2007, its computer predicted that this would be the “warmest year ever”, just before global temperatures temporarily plummeted by 0.7C, equal to their entire net rise in the 20th century. That summer in the UK, it told us, would be “drier than average”, just before some of the worst floods in living memory.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/11202650/Millions-for-the-Met-Office-to-carry-on-getting-it-wrong.html
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Hmm, that’d be when you had the driest rainfall followed by the wettest drought in recorded history?
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Was wheeling the Michael Fish story out of retirement and the man himself onto BBC Radio last week to talk about the new Computer an attempt to make it look competent ?
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I have said it before on this blog. It doesn’t much matter, how big and fancy your hardware is. If the software algorithms are rubbish, and don’t actually model whatever understanding of reality you just happen to have today, you just end up producing quantified rubbish, to n decimal places, faster than you could before.
Some Computer company Representative will be having a very merry Christmas on the bonus from this one.
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The Greens are agitating to be included in next year’s UK Election TV debates, along with the leaders of the big parties & UKIP, after the BBC refused to include them in plans.
Here’s the Guardians bleating about it.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/29/bbc-refuses-include-green-party-televised-leader-debates-general-election
Knowing the BBC, how much bleating will it take ?
Natalie Bennett the leader of UK Greens is a Green grown in Sydney.
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We will forgive her for being born in Sydney – some of the biggest spivs in the world were born there.
However, the fact that she possesses a Bachelor of Agricultural Science (Hons) from Sydney University demonstrates just how far SU has fallen in the area of science education.
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Don’t worry C.j.Richards, we don’t want her back.
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David Cameron seems happy to have the Greens included. He hates these TV debates so much that he’ll do anything to screw them up apparently. Having the loony tunes along should make something he has to say sound sensible.
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Dear Mrs. Evans, I’ve been fractious on blogs for the last week If you think I’ve been bad on your WONDERFUL blog you have to see the dust up I created on WUWT about one commenter. “Danny Thomas” was his nom de internet. I would apologize, but I’d be lying. I am absolutely sick and tired to death of the lying warmists and I intend to call them out anytime and anywhere I encounter these cretins. I sincerely hope it doesn’t make me persona non grata at JoNova’s WONDERFUL blog. Jo and moderator, be on your guard, I’m out for scalps.
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Calm down dear !
Warmist tactics, to prompt you into losing your cool .
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No, I am not provoked by the warmists. I am provoked by the deaths of multi millions of largely helpless people by the greens. Remember GREENS KILL everything they touch.
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The Greens also love the butchering of avian wildlife, the rarer the better,..
and are even campaigning to have all plant life on Earth starved of food.
Environmentalists… NEVER !!
They are disgusting, mentally challenged, anti-human, anti-Earth, troglodytes.
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Ok then, get on over to The Conversation and have a go at Trenberth 🙂
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I will, even though I know I will be deleted.
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No, if you don’t snark at anybody and stay on topic it won’t be deleted.
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Spring has sprung in the southern hemisphere. Local storms, droughts, fires, winds and rains are happening as normal, but are now being reported internationally more than in previous history. A local bushfire in country Australia is now reported in New York – somehow linked to proof of global warming! Twenty years ago, such a bushfire would hardly have made national news within Australia.
Families are enjoying outdoor activities, albeit with more sun-screen applications than used by previous generations. That reflects more sensible awareness of solar-induced skin cancers than of some climate-change increased level of risks of same.
Less concern is now given by family leadership to the failed scare campaigns of apocalyptic climastrologists than in recent years.
The attitudinal tide is turning, aided for example by the absence of proof of forecast sea-level rises that threaten humankind as we know it.
The hyperbole of climate alarmists is now being recognised for what it is.
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Liberal or conservative? Reactions to disgust are a dead giveaway
http://phys.org/news/2014-10-liberal-reactions-disgust-dead-giveaway.html
In a study to be published in an upcoming issue of Current Biology, an international team of scientists led by Virginia Tech reports that the strength of a person’s reaction to repulsive images can forecast their political ideology.
“Disgusting images generate neural responses that are highly predictive of political orientation even when those neural responses don’t correspond with an individual’s conscious reaction to the images,” said Read Montague, a Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute professor who led the study. “Remarkably, we found that the brain’s response to a single disgusting image was enough to predict an individual’s political ideology.”
The results suggest political ideologies are mapped onto established neural responses that may have served to protect our ancestors against environmental threats, Montague said. Those neural responses could be passed down family lines—it’s likely that disgust reactions are inherited.
“We pursued this research because previous work in a twin registry showed that political ideology—literally the degree to which someone is liberal or conservative—was highly heritable, almost as heritable as height,” said Montague, who directs the Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute.
Conservatives tend to have more magnified responses to disgusting images, but scientists don’t know exactly why, Montague said.
The responses could be a callback to the deep, adverse reactions primitive ancestors needed to avoid contamination and disease. To prevent unsavory consequences, they had to learn to separate the canteen from the latrine.
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No doubt we all know about the latest scary fairy tale of “Cry Unicorn” from the IPCC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29855884
At the midday BBC news, I heard the head of the IPCC, our old friend Patchy, speak of the usual dire consequences, although this time the danger year has been now pushed out to 2100.
His qualifications?
1. A railway engineer.
2. A soft porn novelist.
3. Living in tax free unimaginable luxury on a huge estate (including two grass cricket pitches), funded by his ‘charity’/’research entity’ TERI.
Once again, the IPCC assures us that natural climate cycles all ceased in the 1950s and every change in climate thereafter was caused by man’s CO2 emissions.
Next year in Paris, these clowns have the potential ability to hobble the global economy by the use of: i) bad science, ii) manipulated data, and iii) dodgy, inaccurate computer models programmed with pre-determined (always scary) results, just because a small smug club of effete ‘climate scientists’ wish to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle.
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As pictured so brilliantly at the GWPF after the EU ‘agreement’ last week.
Climate negotiations are just a sideshow to placate the anti-carbon blobby.
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‘His qualifications?
1. A railway engineer.
2. A soft porn novelist.’
and Einstein was only patents office worker in Berne I believe! And look at what happened to all his theories about, time, space and relativity! Didn’t even add up to a hill of beans. So how does my sav-nav work then? Please explain.
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Einstein held a degree from a Technik – a university specialising in Applied Science, under the German system of the day. An excellent qualification for somebody who has to recommend whether a patent should be granted, or not.
But qualifications mean nothing. You need to look at what the person does, and what they achieve, and how what they achieve improves the planet and the lot of their fellow beings.
Also, I deduce that your Sat-Nav doesn’t actually work, because you appear to be totally lost, for most of the time.
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Rereke Whakaaro:
he uses a sav-nav. He’s a silly sausage, being told what to do by a saveloy..
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Graeme,
Are you perchance confusing sausage with baloney . . 😉
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‘Einstein held a degree from a Technik’ and could only get a job in a patents office, but he made it possible for my sat-nav to work nearly 100 years later. Just about the same period for AGW to hit the ‘point of no return’, eh? Well nobody expected sat-navs and now the only people who don’t expect serious AGW are those blind to the blinking obvious!
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“could only get a job in a patents office” ??? Do you know the requirements? Obviously not.
“about the same period for AGW to hit the ‘point of no return’ ” Rubbish, the whole debate is whether there is any AGW. It would help if there was some indisputable evidence, not hysterical foaming at the mouth.
And speaking of the ‘point of no return’ how about you put it into practice. You’ve outworn any patience and are no longer amusing in your ignorance. Go play with your sat-nav, and I hope it works on whatever planet you are on.
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I’m just grateful that “the end”, the “point of no return” has been pushed out another century! 😉
Again, well passed the time these crystal ball gazers will be held to their absurd predictions
Remember the heady days of late last century, when we only had a couple of years to go !!
See, it wasn’t that bad, was it.
Now all the prophesies have become just a dingy sideshow act at a rundown backstreet carnival. 🙂
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Actually, Tim Blair’s contacts say we have ONE MONTH left.
Obviously it is time Wail, Panic, and generally carry-on like a BA4,5 or 6 !! 🙂
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I would be interested in your explanation of how the Theory of Relativity applies to Satellite Navigation.
Would you care to inform me?
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Rereke,
I think BA is suggesting that Einstein contended that a saveloy (sav-nav device) hanging from the rear view mirror and subject to the same motion as the driver, would invariably embody sufficient mass to distort space-time so as to arrive at the destination before said saveloy was consumed by said driver. Simple, really.
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Why can I not find a ‘reply’ button on anyone’s comments?
C.J. Richards- the audience on Deviantart is mostly (Ok, at least a small minority) leftist artists. However we have an extensive set of political groups and a fair number of conservatives.
Outside that most of those who attack me on that site are atheists (more likely, anti-theists or Hatetheists). I do not wish to get into a discussion / argument on that (especially since I cannot find a ‘reply’ button anywhere, for some reason.) Although I will say that a number of conservative atheists fall on my side of the argument.
The site where I found the image claims it is from Japan, and I do seem to recall seeing that image once before. I also note my uncle, who is a Maryknoll Missionary, was stationed in Japan in the 60s and 70s and had taken a number of similar photos, from Hokkaido.
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I’ll buy your Japan story. Your computer must be running low on resources though. Reply buttons are fine. Perhaps see the UK Met office if they can give you their old one 😉
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Perhaps the lack of Reply buttons are a WordPress punishment on you for using Twitter?
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This being very close to Election Day here (11/02/14, 5:30 Pacific Standard Time), does anyone have a bet on the various critical senate races around the country?
Each side claims to have everything squared away shipshape and Bristol fashion as the saying goes. And I sit here wondering who’s smoking the wrong stuff. Politics is so much fun. 😉
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Request for assistance.
I have been involved in debates on the Climate Change Discussion group of Facebook recently. One of the things I posted was how the infrared absorption spectrum for CO2 is largely masked by that of H2O, and that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will have little or no increase in radiative forcing. One of the warmists in the Group posted this essay from Real Climate from several years ago:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/
The essence of the argument by Spencer Weart and Raymon Pierrehumbert is that the water vapor is almost all in the lower atmosphere but that CO2 is well-mixed way up into the stratosphere. Thus, increasing the CO2 in the stratosphere will absorb more of the infrared energy that makes it past the lower atmosphere and cause more radiative forcing.
The stratosphere starts at about 12.5 kilometers, which is about 4 km higher than the summit of Mt Everest. The barometric pressure at that altitude is only about 20% of what it is at sea level. The pressure drops down to almost zero by the time you get up to 30 km.
The question is: Are there any statistics for the concentration of CO2 at various levels in the stratosphere? Are there any historical statistics that show how it has varied over time?
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James McCown:
the short answer is that the stratosphere is cooling. The warmists argue both ways, CO2 warms, it cools, it puts the cat out at night.
SEE http://www.wunderground.com/resources/climate/strato_cooling.asp (hardly a sceptical blog)
A significant portion of the observed stratospheric cooling is also due to human-emitted greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. Climate models predict that if greenhouse gases are to blame for heating at the surface, compensating cooling must occur in the upper atmosphere. We need only look as far as our sister planet, Venus, to see the truth of this theory. Venus’s atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, which has triggered a run-away greenhouse effect of truly hellish proportions. The average surface temperature on Venus is a very toasty 894 °F! However, Venus’s upper atmosphere is a much colder than Earth’s upper atmosphere.
Also… Greenhouse gases have also led to the cooling of the atmosphere at levels higher than the stratosphere. Over the past 30 years, the Earth’s surface temperature has increased 0.2-0.4 °C, while the temperature in the mesosphere, about 50-80 km above ground, has cooled 5-10 °C (Beig et al., 2006). There is no appreciable cooling due to ozone destruction at these altitudes, so nearly all of this dramatic cooling is due to the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
AND..should also give us additional confidence in the climate models, since they predicted that this upper atmospheric cooling would occur.
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Have a look at this:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/le-chatelier-and-his-principle-vs-the-trouble-with-trenberth/
The first diagram. From memory, the about 700 band is cool, not doing much, I think not blocking much down low. Above about 18 kilometers, the tropopause, it’s warmer than otherwise. It is warm partly from CO2. That warmth effects what’s beneath it. The CO2 effect gains traction up high.
Here’s Lacis:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2013/2013_Lacis_etal_1.pdf
I think I have to go with Lacis on radiative transfer, but not the control knob idea.
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On the policy front the BBC have an article today (Sunday)
Fossil fuels should be ‘phased out by 2100’ says IPCC
Something I have been looking at is the scale of the problem. We hear plenty about individual countries, but this is meant to be a global issue. Last week I looked at the UK’s target of reducing emissions by 30% by 2020 from 1990 levels. It will end up with 1.2% of global emissions. In those same 30 years global emissions will have doubled. Two-thirds of that growth coming from China and India.
what is forgotten is that in 1990, half the global emissions came from countries with 10% of the world’s population. Since then, a number of countries with 3500 million people, have been growing rapidly.
I explain more fully, with graphs here.
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There is an even bigger issue for policy. By 2050 all the “experts” agree that global CO2 emissions should be returned to at least 1990 levels. Without any new policy I forecast that in 2050 global emissions be four times the 1990 levels. Population will have nearly doubled. Global CO2 emissions per capita in tonnes CO2 equivalent are
1990 Estimate 3.8
2013 Estimate 5.1
2050 Forecast 8.4
2050 Target 2.1
(For comparison, rich countries have emissions per capita of 10-15 tonnes per capita.)
The policy issue is with more than halving global emissions in the next 35 years, when in the last 25 years that people have been talking about the problem it has doubled. The biggest problem will be getting the 70 or more fast-growing countries (including China, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Indonesia) to hit the brakes hard on emissions growth and then cut those emissions. Next to that what Australia, UK and even the USA do is largely irrelevant.
You will not hear this in the mainstream media, as to state the policy problem properly would lead to the abandonment of the Paris 2015 climate talks. Please spread the word.
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My Point:
Insofar as the exact number is not a big part of your argument I suggest you simply say that world population continues to grow. The people alive now want a better life – requiring electricity at a reasonable (for them) cost.
Background info:
Do you mean population will have doubled from the 1990 total? That appears to have been about 5.5 billion, so the result is 11 billion. That is just a bit higher than the “U. N. High” projection. “U. N. Medium” is about 9.3 billion in 2050.
Others can be much more pessimistic about this. One site (Bob is an emeritus professor of sociology) claims world population will peak about 2025 and then begin to fall, never reaching 8 billion.
http://www.siue.edu/~rblain/worldpop.htm
Much of the reasoning for that seems to be that an aged population will have a higher death rate. Info on that here:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/03/10-projections-for-the-global-population-in-2050/
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John
I rounded the figures. The World Bank figures are 5.268 billion for 1990 and 7.114 for 2013. On recent growth I estimated 9.678 billion for 2050, slightly higher than the median estimate of 9.3 billion from the UN, and just 84% higher than 1990. I spent four hours and the UN bods have many man years, so I am not too far out.
My emission estimates for 2050 are just 3.84 times 1990 levels. If population growth is less then it could be just three times 1990 levels.
I think figures are needed just to emphasize how big the gulf is between the vague talk, backed by moralistic rhetoric, and the actual policy requirements. What I would like to get towards is both an emissions forecast (based on zero policy) and a 2050 carbon target for every country to enable the 1990 levels to be reached. For emerging economies will quickly realize that meeting their targets would be horrific in terms of lost growth and denial of access to cheap, reliable sources of electricity. Yet, when they ask about a cheap route to achieve this they will be met by evasion. If these countries then cost the foreign aid required to for them to painlessly meet the targets, they will find the rich countries would have to devote a large part of their tax revenues to fund it.
I think the climate talks will yet again ignore policy countries where over half the population live, maybe showing a video of a small community with solar panels in a remote area of India from Greenpeace (was it on http://notrickszone.com/ recently?) to say how renewables are possible in developing economies. In management accounting for a business, a draft budget for sales, raw materials and overhead (by department) is devised. It is then pulled it together to see what is required to achieve it. If it is not achievable, it is amended. Compiling the figures and crunching the numbers gives an idea how each part fits into the whole, and lets examination of the “what-ifs”. In climate reduction the biggest “what-if” is if all the major emerging economies tell the talks to take a hike. In which case, even if the EU, Japan, USA Australia and Canada decide to return their economies back to the stone age, global emissions in 2050 will be still double 1990 levels.
20
Have a look at the image at this link of a recently opened Hydro Plant in China. This is the Xiluodu hydroelectric power plant on the Jinsha Jiang River.
Even though this dam is completed and the power plant operational, I wanted to find this specific image to show you something.
The dam wall is 280 metres high from the downstream river side to the top of the dam wall.
Now, see at the lower left of the image, just above the water line, there is shown here just two square openings. These are the inlets for the power station. This solves a problem long the bane of hydro, the action of silt on the blades of the Francis Turbines. Because the water is taken from close to the top of the water containment, the silt brought down by the River, sinks in the water well below this level.
Now those inlets you see go into that, well, the wall of the ravine on that side of the dam.
Underground, and inside that area is one of the two power stations, and on the opposite side of the dam wall, there are inlets for the underground power station inside that ravine wall.
There is an 85 metre head, in other words, tunnels to take the water down that 85 metres to where the Francis Turbines are.
On top of each Francis Turbine are the generators themselves, with just the very top poking out into the floor of the Turbine Hall. Just the rotor of each generator weighs 1350 tonnes, and that’s the weight driven by the Francis Turbine which is driven by the force of the water flowing down the head race and into a coil like arrangement and then driving the blades around, which then drive the rotor.
Each generator has a total output of 770MW.
There are 9 turbine generator units in each of the turbine halls, so 18 in all for a total Nameplate of 13,860MW.
Each turbine hall is 308.5 metres long, 28.5 metres wide and 74.5 metres high ….. all of that underground.
The total power delivered from both power stations is around 65TWH per year. For some perspective on that, that is around one fifth of Australia’s total generation from every source, and the equivalent power delivered by Bayswater multiplied by four.
Just this one Hydro plant delivers almost five times the power of EVERY hydro plant in Australia.
Hydro in China currently delivers around 1100TWH of power each year, a tad more than three times Australia’s total Generation. Hydro Power supplies almost 23% of all power generated in China.
That amount is so huge it makes the overall World renewable total power look good, because while Wind power makes up just a tad over 2%, and all solar around 0.1%, China Hydro ALONE makes up around 25% of the total renewable power in the World.
Tony.
160
Error alert:
That should read more than one quarter (28% in fact) of the total power generated in Australia from every source, not one fifth, as Australia’s total generation is around 230TWH per year.
Tony.
80
Some places do not count hydro as renewable. If they did then the goals for non-carbon based fuel energy have already been met so there is no need for wind and solar, or rubber bands. More here:
http://www.midwestenergynews.com/2012/01/13/renewable-or-not-how-states-count-hydropowe/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Search site “Bing” has an image of The Craig Goch Dam, often called the Top dam, a masonry dam in the Elan Valley of Wales; links to other things associated with this lake district.
40
The Greens don’t like all that nasty concrete that goes into making the dam. They also don’t like the “destruction of habitat”. But most of all, they hate the water-skiers and jet-skiers, because they use the lake to have fun!
100
Tony,
Thanks for the information. It is an awesome dam. There is an issue. 65TWH per year from a nameplate of 13,860MW gives 54% of capacity. There appears to be a huge seasonal variation in output. Compare this to the Itaipu Dam in Brazil, which achieved 98.63TWH in 2013 from a nameplate of 14,000MW. That is 80% of capacity. Yet, for 2014 the output of Itaipu is likely to be lower as there is a major drought upstream in Sao Paulo state. In past years when there has been major droughts there has been power cuts.
To get a notion of how big these dams are, to create Itaipu required destroying upstream the Salto del Guaíra waterfall. It was just 40m high in the main section (Niagara is 51m), but had five times the average flow rate of Niagara. It was the world’s last waterfall by volume over 10m in height. Downstream, Itaipu dam has a drop of 196m. Turn Niagara into a hydro-electric dam and the nameplate could be less than 3,000MW.
10
Kevin,
the Xiluodu dam is also used for flood mitigation and for better navigation on the lower reaches of the River.
The image at this link shows a typical Francis Turbine to drive one of those 700MW generators.
The image at this link shows one of those 700MW generators being lowered into place on top of the Francis Turbine.
The image at this link shows one of the two Turbine Halls at the Plant. Each blue circle on the floor indicates where the generator is.
TWO of those blue circles generate more power than is generated in 23 Countries in Africa with a population of 140 Million people. This Plant has 18 of those generators.
Tony.
50
Thanks for the great images. It is good to know that the Xiluodu has other usages. Upon reflection the variation in flow rates may not be such as great a problem in China as Brazil. The reason is that China has a large number of coal-fired power stations, so a large drought could be offset. Another reason for lower capacity utilisation could be that hydroelectric is used partly for peak time energy. It could be relatively quick to divert water into the turbines for power surges. This does not necessarily have to affect flow downriver if the spillways are used at times of off-peak demand.
00
Patrick Moore was on Sky’s Viewpoint with Chris Kenny tonight.
It’s clear why the ABC don’t want him on. He’s a nice bloke and he disagrees with the ‘consensus’. They don’t have any dirt on the guy, and his anti-warmist message is completely incongruous with their world view. He has hippy cred (I mean this respectfully), and this is a threat to the luvvies.
80
Uncompromising.
“…but you do accept don’t you…,. No I Don’t. ”
Catch it here. http://www.skynews.com.au/video/program_viewpoint/2014/11/02/dr-patrick-moore.html
60
And here they go again.
The playbook never changes. They even have the obligatory 97% reference to give it that authentic touch. Nothing from the IPCC is genuine unless agreed to by 97% of…of…of what, exactly?
Isn’t it too bad that 97% of the world isn’t cooperating.
80
I wish them good luck. They’ll need it.
40
Climate is an almost undefinable and complex idea, far more than just tomorrow’s weather which the BOM cannot get right. We are told climate is changing, somehow. Temperature is measurable, even if a world temperature is a crazy idea, but we are also told from indisputable satellite measurements it is not changing at all. The idea was simple enough, increasing CO2 caused by man, increasing temperature, changing climate which must be affected by temperature.
However temperature is not changing, so what is the alleged science of ‘extreme events’. How does increasing CO2 change anything if it does not even change temperature? Or is it that the computers which cannot get tomorrow’s weather right and incorrectly predict long term temperature increases from increased CO2 have somehow established that CO2 changes something else, even less easily defined?
Have we reached a point in the non debate, the one where warmists are right and no debate will actually happen, that life giving CO2 is now officially a pollutant, extreme events are rising even when they are not and temperature is going up except that we cannot see it? Have we passed into the shadow land, where truth is irrelevant? Has Science become the plaything of non scientists, gurus and carpetbaggers and Green anarchists? Have computer models, nothing more than the laborious computation of people’s unproven theories become infallible in their predictions, new oracles of Delphi? At what point did Science become irrelevant and humans once again read auspices now from computers?
At what point was it acceptable to take accurate thermometer readings over a century at a specific location, readings showing a clear decline in temperature and change them to show an increase? At what point did science become perverted so that the data had to be adjusted to fit the belief? The fact that any scientist actually defends this is itself a sign of the perversion of science to suit a purpose, a religion, careers and to exploit the fears of so many facing change in a rapidly changing world. Why did it take nearly 20 years for the IPCC to announce temperatures were not actually going up? What did all those thousands of people who believed in the rapture do when it didn’t happen? Just move the date, I suppose.
90
The IPCC report in the Australian, front page this morning.
Yes, temperatures have not gone up for ‘more than a decade’, but climate change, extreme events, record high CO2, heat hiding in the oceans. so completely end the use of coal and pay the social and human price. Thanks IPCC. No actual science at all.
70
And the scare campaign continues. I suspect they will ramp it up in preparation for Paris in an aclimaclyptic fashion.
Julie Bishop will be representing Australia at the Paris gab-fest. Julie will hold our ground and give no pledge as now we have Direct Action, we will do no more.
“Method” and “madness” comes to mind.
40
Why would Julie even attend Paris, unless she’s up for the couture.
Trying to save the ROW from itself could be a thankless task
20
Global warming is becoming high farce, but people are still enjoying the jet travel to wonderful place, especially the legions of functionaries who actually have the meetings. No one hold these talks in cheaper places, like say Cleveland or Sofia or Minsk. No one would come. It is like the Grand Prix of Global Warming.
Still this is a UN function and just as important as its other functions. (Ha!) The high level inter-government talks however will be about Ebola, Ukraine, Syria, Russia, safe air travel, the Spratlys, Iran and Korea and many other things which actually matter. Champagne will be consumed ritually and without pleasure. A communique which says nothing will be issued and claimed to be a breakthrough by the organizers. It will not be signed if it obliges anyone to actually do anything.
50
Well said.
These things are rarely about the “central” issue, and are always about the “side issues”, that are actually the real issues.
20
You know, like close down all the power plants!!!
And hey, the UNFCCC, when it adopted its Kyoto Protocol, called for CO2 emissions from EVERY Country to be lowered to a level of 5% lower than what they were in 1990.
Where does that leave China, India et al?
Back in the dark ages again.
Fat chance that happening.
Tony.
50
Thought for today:
Over half of the world’s population currently live in China, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, or Indonesia.
While Europe, and North America, and Australasia are agonizing over the non-existent temperature increase, the Big Asian Five are going gang-busters to build their economies so they can compete on an equal basis with the West.
If you are going to think about global climate change, then you had better think about it in terms of global economic strategy, and who really gets to gain by having the West spending 80% of their time arguing about the weather.
20
Rereke,
thanks for this, and this led to an interesting exercise.
The total power generation for Planet Earth is (around) 22,000TWH per year.
The total power generated from *fossil fuel sources is (around) 16,500TWH, which comes in at 75% of all power generation.
The total power generated by fossil fuels in just those 5 Countries you mentioned is 6,100TW, so while those 5 Countries have OVER half the World’s population, they only have 37% of the World’s fossil fuel generation, and you can see the inequity in just that percentage alone.
While they will indeed be going gangbusters to build their economies, most of that can only be achieved with the introduction of electrical power that can give them CHEAP 24 hour basis power.
All of this build up in their fossil fuel makeup has been in the last six to ten years, nearly all of it in the last 6 years in fact.
Those power plants, and the ones still yet to be constructed will have a lifespan well beyond 2050, way well beyond it in fact.
The UNIPCC can waffle on all it likes about reducing CO2 emissions back to ….. ZERO, (if you don’t mind) but I’m telling you this. Those 5 Countries will NOT stop construction of electrical power generation that will bring them up even half way towards what we already have.
We can effectively crush Western developed civilisation back to nothing if we even consider what the UNIPCC demands, not that there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of that ever happening, but until the UNIPCC stops dead those 5 Countries from building new fossil fuel plants, then all we can do is laugh out loud, seriously, at them for the inept, ineffective, toothless, platitudinous, rent seekers that they already are.
I could submit this comment, verbatim to the ABC Comments section at a relevant article, or even at The Conversation, verbatim, but it would never even show up. They don’t want to hear things like this at all.
The UNIPCC latest blurb is aimed specifically at Western guilt, and they play on that alone.
When Paris comes around, those 5 Countries will NEVER agree to shutting down their fossil fuel generation…..NEVER. At Paris, these 5 Countries will make all the right noises, but will not agree to anything like this at all. As for all of Africa, well, it has 16.2% of the World’s population and 3% of the World’s total power generation. At Paris, they’ll be there too, just sitting there with their begging bowl, totally and utterly ignored.
What will eventually happen is that those 5 Countries will eventually pass us, and we’ll be making it a shorter time frame for them to catch us. They’ll be on the way up, and we’ll be on the way down.
It’s an absolute joke.
Tony.
* Fossil Fuel Generation includes coal fired power, Natural gas fired power, petroleum liquids power generation, petroleum coke generation, and other gases generation.
Data Source – International Energy Statistics
40
Thank you Tony.
That is roughly what I thought you would say. But I still needed your confirmation, as somebody who makes it their business to keep abreast of the detail.
I owe you one.
10
Spot on TdeF. The insanity has got to the point where when actual measurements do do match the massaged theory, the measured data must be wrong, and therefor data is adjusted, or “homogenised”, until it fits the theory. However why should we be surprised, for history lists many failed theories that refuse to be recognised for what they are. It is virtually impossible to discard failed theories from any discourse, for the converted believers will never accept that they, and the theories, are wrong. IPCC, Lamarck, Lysenko, Pauling, and many others, still have their followers today, even if their numbers are diminishing. The number of theories expressed will always be the square of the number “experts” present. The only test to carry out is, “do the predictions match the observed outcomes”? No! Well then, whatever was used to make the predictions is not correct. The rest is effluent.
40
TdeF, that is one of the most beautifully composed comments that I have read on any site! I am going to get off my iPad, turn on my laptop and do a screen capture. I will send a copy to every warmist I know, especially my daughter’s in-laws (academics and advertising execs) who are firmly convinced that CO2 is a polutant and we are all doomed! Thank you for putting it all so exquisitely.
10
***u have to laugh!
2 Nov: Independent Editorial: Filthy lucre, dirty fuel: The latest IPCC report on climate change will have little impact due to global economic and security concerns
***If scientists ruled the world, we would all be safe, at least so far as climate change is concerned…
Nations with plentiful and cheap, though still dirty, fossil fuels under their feet such as China, Australia and Russia will continue to burn them to power their cities and heat their homes, to be competitive in world trade. Their push for growth has created jobs, a new middle class and lifted millions out of poverty, but at great cost to the wider world and the quality of the air they breathe themselves…
Plenty of fruitless summits and conferences and declarations have come and gone.
The global environment is the ultimate “common good” issue for the world, the property of everyone and no-one. Worse still, the effects of trashing it will not become critical for decades, long after most people alive today have departed a steadily more degraded Earth. Thus the decision makers have little incentive to change much. As the IPCC implies, the outlook is about as grim as can be.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/filthy-lucre-dirty-fuel-the-latest-ipcc-report-on-climate-change-will-have-little-impact-due-to-global-economic-and-security-concerns-9834525.html
00
Hi Jo,
You may like to give this publicity today for Canberra and region movers and shakers.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/climate-sceptics-in-focus-at-the-canberra-international-film-festival-20141102-11fmpa.html
The title says it. The screening of Merchants of Doubt begins at 6:45pm tonight followed by a ‘discussion’ (should be interesting) by local ABC presenter Adam Shirley.
10
***ABC’s Uhlmann having trouble facing reality!
3 Nov: ABC AM: World still dependent on coal: NSW Minerals Council
STEPHEN GALILEE. chief executive, New South Wales Mineral Council: Well coal is our second most valuable national export commodity; it’s worth about $50 billion a year. And, in terms of our coal role in New South Wales it’s our state’s most valuable export commodity, powering about 80 per cent of our electricity needs in New South Wales and about a quarter of our state’s exports by values.
So it’s very important commodity for the country and a very important commodity for our state too.
CHRIS UHLMANN. ABC: And over the last decade have coal exports been increasing or decreasing?
STEPHEN GALILEE: We’ve seen increases in our export volumes, particularly out of the port of Newcastle, which is the world’s largest coal export port, growing at around 6-8 per cent a year to all our major markets; that includes the economies of Japan, Korea and Taiwan for example and also the emerging economies of China and India as well…
STEPHEN GALILEE: Well the idea that you’ll be able to withdraw fossil fuels from the energy mix over a relatively short period of time is one that really deserves serious investigation because it’s going to cause significant social and economic dislocation, particularly when you consider that those two fuels alone are providing 60-80 per cent of the energy needs of the globe at the moment…
***CHRIS UHLMANN: Stephen Galilee, are you reflecting reality? Do you understand and accept that climate change is real and that fossil fuels have to either clean up their act or stop being burnt?…
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2014/s4120058.htm
10
A couple of quotes from my above link.
“Dr Rimmer will be joinged by Dr Will Grant from the ANU Centre for Public Awareness and Science and David Pembroke, the founder of Canberra based public relations firm The Content Group.
“A larger discussion will also be about the implications of climate scientists’ work abnd how we can better to protect them in terms against the fog machine of fossil fuel propaganda,” Dr Rimmer said.
“That’s been a big struggle and some scientists have been subject to some very personal attacks over the years.”
11
how political does it get?
24 Oct: RTCC: Ed King: US and UK call on UN science panel to stress climate risks
Over 2,000 comments on the UN’s flagship climate science report have been submitted ahead of a week of negotiations that will determine the final text in Copenhagen…
The UK wants the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) study to focus more the “risks of delaying action” as well as the “co-benefits of action”.US comments say the study should stress how richer countries could be affected by future extreme weather events. “There are very few references to the vulnerability of wealthier countries to climate change,” they write. The US also says the final IPCC synthesis report, which pulls together three 1,000+ page studies released in the past 12 months, needs to be more accessible to readers without deep technical knowledge of climate issues.“This document should be prepared so as to be effective for the people who will only read the gray boxes. This report is a story, of what happens if we don’t act, and what can happen if we do… it should be an effective story.”…
Not all comments are political. “I have zoomed 150% in the pdf and have a huge monitor. The [Figure SPM 4] figure has a low resolution which makes it hard to read on paper,” a Danish official writes…
***Leo Hickman, WWF-UK’s chief climate change adviser, who will be in Copenhagen as an observer, tells RTCC the synthesis will likely be the “go-to document” governments use when seeking evidence for their climate and energy policies…
http://www.rtcc.org/2014/10/26/us-and-uk-call-on-un-science-panel-to-stress-climate-risks/
just as BBC’s Richard Black is now the Director, Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), the Guardian’s Hickman has found a new CAGW home:
***Wikipedia: Leo Hickman
Leo Hickman was a journalist with The Guardian, writing The Eco Audit blog within the Guardian environment group of blogs. From September 2013 he will work for the UK branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Hickman
10
reality is hard to face!
29 Oct: Banktrack: ‘Record year’ for bank coal financing as latest UN climate warning looms
Ninety-two leading banks last year provided at least EUR 66 billion in financing to the coal industry, according to new coal financing data released today in BankTrack’s ‘Banking on coal 2014′ report…
Released just days ahead of the publication of the fifth United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report, the EUR 66 billion figure represents a more than fourfold rise in climate-busting coal financing when compared to 2005, according to BankTrack’s research.
Analysing what is now one of the primary forms of life support for a global coal industry in crisis, the new report also reveals that leading banks have provided 373 billion euros (500 billion dollars) in financing for the coal industry between 2005 and April 2014. The top 20 financiers, including JPMorgan Chase, Citi and RBS in the top three, have alone provided 73% of this amount…
Alex Scrivener, policy officer at the World Development Movement, said:
“At precisely the time we need to be rapidly pulling back from coal in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, banks all over the world are fuelling a whole new round of more coal mines and more coal-fired power plants…
TOP 20 COAL BANKS 2005 – APRIL 2014…
http://www.banktrack.org/show/news/_record_year_for_bank_coal_financing_as_latest_un_climate_warning_looms
00
This article is a must read
http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/
It explains how useless renewables are (not hydro)
10
It is a good article, Kano, and the concept of EROEI goes to the heart of energy generation and storage. I seems that renewables cannot generate enough power to sustain themselves, let alone power society.
“But the idea that advances in energy storage will enable renewable energy is a chimera – the Catch-22 is that in overcoming intermittency by adding storage, the net energy is reduced below the level required to sustain our present civilization.”
I have been doing letters on this topic, and this article backs my argument.
00
It would appear that the BoM has predicted a hot dry summer for Australia,you know they could be right!
10
Darn, I don’t remember Australia EVER having hot dry summers before… not ever !! 😉
Unprecedented, obviously !
60
Don’t forget that when the BoM say hottest summer EVER, that’s their acronym for Except Very Early Records. Which means all those records set before about 1970.
30
That had not occurred to me – I shall steal it immediately …
20
I had a WTF moment this morning and it didn’t have anything to do with the hysterical coverage of the IPCC report.
Apparently a study has been published (in Nature?) that has found that using remote control cars to study Emperor penguin colonies causes less disturbance to the penguins.
I mean really! Some “scientist” actually had the idea to go to Antarctica and run a bunch of remote control toy cars around a penguin colony and see what happens? They had the hide to ask for research money and what’s worse someone decided to give it to them. Nice work if you can get it! I guess my scientific career floundered on my inability to think up such creative ways to siphon off money from the research budget.
Seriously, how can scientists complain about funding when money is being spent (wasted) on rubbish projects like this? Amazing.
21
Yep the ‘birds’ around here don’t take much notice of idiots with cars either, well the mature ones at least.
00
WEB POLL
http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/
00
72% say NO at 1900 hrs! Even the ABC lovies are not convinced!
10
now at 78% NO !!
00
a mature poll does not move from 50% to 70% in a short space of time unless something non random is mobilised
10
Such as a popular television program finishing, and people becoming aware that an important poll is under way?
Interesting use of the word, “mobilised”, in this context. It has some interesting subliminal connotations. It is almost as if you are trying to imply that the poll is being hijacked by a subversive organisation, that can mobilise thousands of radical sceptics at a moments notice. Quite a paranoia, you have there, if that supposition is true.
Anyway, a poll that has been running for only a few hours, can hardly be called mature.
10
In lockstep with the Green’s plan to lower the federal voting age to 16, I predict that ABC poll will be declared a final trustworthy opinion well before it is mature.
00
true. But from such a simple comment you could extend out to a very large number of supposition and none of them might be correct since perhaps the word is just as it is – voting jargon.
Newsradio has a very small market and their polls are advertised on air and rarely elsewhere. Their listenership is typical ABC. This poll attracted 10x the usual poll respondents.
When the polling was in the low hundreds the percentages were about even. The vast majority of the next 3000 votes were no.
Make of it what you will.
00
Well it stands to reason that post 26 on an unthreaded weekend JoNova blog comment section and similar would attract far more than 10 x the media coverage and votes than the ABC radio.
So I confess!
00
An interesting set of numbers there in Siliggy’s United Nations quote. However, when my great grandfather was passing through NYC in the mid-1800s he heard the city, and many others, were doomed because of the great amount of horse doo (not his word choice) that was accumulating in the streets. They also had a hard time finding enough hay and the means to bring it into the city. Further, urban horses had tough lives and short lifespans. Getting the dead ones off the streets and out of town was a big issue.
I can’t imagine why these doomed cities still exist, they should be all gone.
What was the question, again?
20
inevitable, but do Australins care what Jotzo and Christoff think? i don’t:
3 Nov: Australian: AAP: More calls for climate to be added to G20
The director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy, Associate Professor Frank Jotzo, said the majority of G20 countries want to discuss climate change.
“And the biggest players – China, the United States and Europe – are all pursuing an active climate change policy in their countries,” Prof Jotzo said on Monday…
“Among developed countries, Australia is the most vulnerable to future climate change impacts, and so should have the greatest national interest in a strong global response to climate change,” he said…
Professor Peter Christoff from the University of Melbourne said the report was the sternest statement yet to come out of the scientific community, adding that it was “astonishing” climate change was not on the G20 agenda…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/more-calls-for-climate-to-be-added-to-g20/story-fn3dxiwe-1227111047685
00
3 Nov: SMH: Peter Hannam: Climate science funding deadline looms
Planned funding cuts by the Abbott government for climate change research will degrade Australia’s ability to predict and respond to impacts and may see whole areas of study lose support, according to current and retired scientists…
Scientists note the words “climate change” appear to be as toxic to the Abbott government as “carbon tax”, with references virtually absent from reports on policy areas where impacts, such as on water availability are likely to be significant.
***Over the weekend, the government announced the Climate Change Ambassador’s title would become just Ambassador for the Environment when the current holder Justin Lee steps down…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-science-funding-deadline-looms-20141103-11fz89.html
20
“Climate science funding deadline looms”
And THERE is the real story for all the alarmista academic bluster in the Australian press. !!!
40
Jo
Not sure what to make of this. This is an extract from NSW Daily Extremes Tables for Sunday, 2nd November. Maybe someone who lives in these areas may be able to verify these temps.
1 37.6 Scone Scs
2 36.8 Lostock Dam
3 34.5 Pindari Dam
4 32.0 Yass (Rural Fire Service)
However Scone AP shows a temp of 26.3C. Lostock Dam is close to Scone – Murrurundi and Tocal which are neighbouring Hunter Valley stations record 24.8C and 26.6C respectively for the 2nd.
Pindari Dam’s neighbouring stations record 27.2C (Moree) and 25.3C (Inverell).
Yass is near Canberra (20C), Cootamundra (19.2C) and Harden (19.2C).
Daily extremes site.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/extremes/daily_extremes.cgi?period=%2Fcgi-bin%2Fclimate%2Fextremes%2Fdaily_extremes.cgi&climtab=tmax_high&area=nsw&year=2014&mon=11&day=2
A mistake/glitch? Helps make temps higher on a cool day.
10
Hi Ian,
I live 20K from Harden. To suggest that we got within cooee of 30 degrees yesterday (2nd Nov) is pure fantasy. Harden 19 degrees, maybe, but more likely 16. Still, that’s going off the thermometer in my kitchen.
As for Coota and Harden having the same temperatures? Yeah, in their dreams. But of course I only live here, I have no “official” records to cite.
00
MaxL
You are right. Just checked weatherzone again. It appears Harden takes it temp reading from Cootamundra – that’s why they were the same readings. Both towns are are in the SW slopes climatic region. Gundagai was also 19.2C. Yass could not have been over 30C.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/nsw/southwest-slopes/harden
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A song by “Men At Work” contains lyrics which state that in OZ, “women blow and men thunder”. So.. a statement could be made that the people of OZ need to cut down on carbs such as beer and processed grains to save the earth.
Certain greenhouse gases (GHGs) are more effective at warming Earth (“thickening the blanket”) than others.The two most important characteristics of a GHG in terms of climate impact are how well the gas absorbs energy (preventing it from immediately escaping to space), and how long the gas stays in the atmosphere.
The Global Warming Potential (GWP) for a gas is a measure of the total energy that a gas absorbs over a particular period of time (usually 100 years), compared to carbon dioxide.[1] The larger the GWP, the more warming the gas causes. For example, methane’s 100-year GWP is 21, which means that methane will cause 21 times as much warming as an equivalent mass of carbon dioxide over a 100-year time period.[2]
http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html
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Lyrics are wrong!
So is your Greenhouse gas summary. No doubt taken from the IPCC.
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“thickening the blanket”
The only “thickness” is those very stupid people who think that CO2 forms a blanket of any sort around the Earth.
The whole idea is a monumental load of unmitigated crap.
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Yes well CCreader (is that short for IPCC reader?) nitrogen and oxygen molecules acquire about 98% of all the thermal energy stored in the Earth’s atmosphere.
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In Roy Spencer’s October data just published there’s still no net warming, since 1998, and nor will there be until at least 2028. Everything in Earth’s climate pattern is still following the two main natural cycles which correlate beautifully with the 934 year and 60 year cycles in the inverted plot of the scalar sum of the angular momentum of the Sun and all the planets. I hope some of the lukes and warmists live to see the start of 500 years of cooling after the next 60 year maximum in 2058. Carbon dioxide has nothing to do with it.
OF VITAL IMPORTANCE:
All the models calculate sensitivity based on the false assumption of “33 degrees” of warming from about 255K to 288K. That claim is clearly spelled out in the glossary on the IPCC website from which I’ve quoted in my book and you can read free with the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon. I have shown that the 255K figure is false for a nitrogen only atmosphere where the surface temperature would be around 290K to 310K for a realistic emissivity range for a rocky planet without water or vegetation.
Incredible as it is, the IPCC discussion of the 255K figure “forgets” that about twice as much solar radiation would be reaching the surface because there would be no clouds reflecting radiation back to space and no absorption of incident solar radiation. This glaring oversight, if corrected for, leaves no warming to be done because the existing mean temperature of 288K is actually cooler than that for the nitrogen atmosphere.
—- I presume this is Doug. Did you think we would not notice? – Jo
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. . . “Look Inside” feature on Amazon.
Seems a bit hard to do this if the author’s name or the book’s title is not provided. Here’s something you can find and read – worth the effort if you haven’t seen it.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/10/critical-mass-of-cotton/
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Try this link. I can see you haven’t been reading many of my thousands of comments on various climate blogs.
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Jo
It’s time you did take notice of the valid physics I present, because no one on any blog has ever been able to correctly fault it. Maybe yours could be the first climate blog in the world to run an article which I would happily write explaining the energy flows and temperatures in all planetary atmospheres, surfaces, crusts, mantles and cores throughout the Solar System.
So called greenhouse gases cool Earth’s surface – I can support that physics with empirical evidence. Maybe you also should read my book which I’ll post you free if you send a postal address to its.not,[email protected]
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People can argue all you like about Earths without GHG or atmospheres, but empirical data (30 years of real world temperature data from three continents) has been used to prove with statistical significance that moist regions have lower daily maximum and minimum temperatures than drier regions at similar latitudes and altitudes. Water vapour cools because its radiation properties reduce the effect of the gravitationally-induced temperature gradient, thus lowering the thermal profile at the surface end.
It is ludicrous to think that people can be so gullible as to believe that water vapour jacks up the temperature at the surface end by about 30 degrees whilst at the same time we know it reduces the temperature gradient by nearly a third in magnitude. What on Earth would happen to radiative balance if both these really did occur simultaneously? Are you one of the gullible people, or do you think?
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If you looked at the whole Earth+atmosphere from a point in space you would calculate its effective temperature based on a mean of one quarter of the total solar flux it receives, that is, a quarter of 1,365W/m^2. Because you don’t know anything about its emissivity, or its albedo, you assume its emissivity is 1.0000 and its albedo 0.000 for this purpose and you get an effective temperature of 278.53K which is about 9 degrees cooler than the existing mean surface temperature. But that is not to say that a world without an atmosphere, or with an atmosphere but no GH gases, would have a surface temperature of 278.53K because the emissivity of that surface is sure to be less than 1.0000. If it were 0.90 the temperature would be 285.96K and if it were 0.8 the temperature would be 294.51K and if it were 0.7 the temperature would be 304.51K.
The IPCC would like you to believe that adding water vapour to a dry atmosphere causes the surface to warm by about 30 degrees. So if the emissivity were 0.9 that would be around 315K. But the IPCC wants you to forget that if we add water vapour we also get clouds that reflect about 30% back to space, and we get an atmosphere which also absorbs about 20% of incident solar radiation, leaving just 48% reaching the surface. Let’s say, without carbon dioxide, 50% reaches the surface, so we have about an eighth of that 1365W/m^2 entering a surface which might now have emissivity 0.95 because the oceans would increase the emissivity. So, if we trust our simplistic radiation calculations we now have 170.625W/m^2 producing a mean temperature of – wait for it – 237.24K. Did I mention water vapour cools? Did I mention that you can’t work out surface temperatures using radiation? Oh, you say, there’s all that back radiation now delivering into the surface more thermal energy than the Sun from the colder atmosphere. Sorry, I can’t count that because it does not penetrate the oceans by any more than 10 microns and its electro-magnetic energy is not converted to thermal energy in anything that is warmer than its source.
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TO THOSE WHO LIVE IN CLIMATOLOGY CARBONLAND:,
Whenever a molecule moves with a component of vertical motion its KE alters, keeping the sum (KE+PE)=constant. Roderich Graeff was able to detect very small temperature differences in his sealed insulated cylinders: he did so in nearly every one of over 800 such experiments this century. But the “killer” is the Ranque Hilsch vortex tube which develops very significant temperature differences in a centrifugal force field. If the gravito-thermal effect did not exist then an Earth paved with asphalt and receiving just 163W/m^2 of direct solar radiation would have a mean temperature around -35C. It is “heat creep” which supplies the rest of the required energy.
You can’t do away with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
An isothermal state has unbalanced energy potentials simply because the molecules at the top have more gravitational PE and yet the same KE. If you have unbalanced energy potentials you do not have maximum entropy. If you do not have maximum entropy you do not have thermodynamic equilibrium. But the Second Law says thermodynamic equilibrium (with maximum entropy and no unbalanced energy potentials) will evolve. That’s what happens every calm night in the early pre-dawn hours when convection stops but the temperature gradient remains. If I were wrong then you have no explanation for the “heat creep” process explained over two chapters in my book. And if there is no heat creep then you have no way of explaining how the necessary energy gets from the upper troposphere of Venus down to the surface and actually raises its temperature. And we do have measured data from Russian probes dropped to the surface of Venus.
Why would it be that every planetary troposphere exhibits the gravitationally induced temperature gradient reduced a little (as we would expect) by the inter-molecular radiation that occurs between some “greenhouse” molecules in its atmosphere? Is it just a coincidence that the core of Uranus is a just the right temperature (5,000K) such that the gases cool to just the right temperature (320K) at the base of its nominal troposphere (thousands of kilometres above the solid core) and continue cooling with just the right temperature gradient so as to get down to just the right radiating temperature (about 60K) at just the right altitude (about a further 350Km up) where there is a methane layer doing nearly all the absorbing and re-radiating of the weak solar radiation? Extend such questions to all planets with significant atmospheres (including gas planets and some satellite moons) in our Solar System and what is the probability that all exhibit a similar temperature gradient? What would happen if they all cooled off in another billion years, rather than being kept at current temperatures with energy from the Sun? And that’s why it’s not carbon dioxide after all.
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It’s not hard to understand the state of thermodynamic equilibrium which the Second Law says will evolve. As explained in my book, start by imagining two horizontal planes of molecules with (PE + KE) the same for every molecule. If the planes are separated by the mean free path or less, then a molecule moving down from the top plane gains KE and loses the same amount of PE. The opposite happens for a molecule moving upwards between the planes. The important point is that, when either of these molecules collides with a molecule in the other plane it has gained or lost just the right amount of KE such that it has the same KE as the molecule in the plane it reaches. And because the KE matches in all collisions there is no propensity for further dispersion of KE (conduction, diffusion or convection) and thus we have the state of thermodynamic equilibrium,
Only in a horizontal plane is there no change in KE during free path motion and so temperature does indeed level out in a horizontal plane, but not in a vertical plane. This was what Loschmidt visualised back in the 19th century and he was right. All attempts to prove him wrong (like Robert Brown’s) don’t demonstrate an understanding of thermodynamic equilibrium and the fact that, if you combine two systems you just get a new state of thermodynamic equilibrium with a new temperature gradient, but certainly no perpetual circulation of energy.
You all need to come to grips with the process which the Second Law describes, and how it applies to all forms of energy and equilibrium. (Hence it is also the Second Law which tells us why there is a density gradient.) Then you need to understand entropy and the state of thermodynamic equilibrium (which includes mechanical equilibrium) and why that state must have no unbalanced energy potentials.
Note that the Second Law applies to every independent process or to a sequence of dependent processes. An example of a “net” effect is seen in a siphon where water flows up the short side (the first dependent process) and down the longer side (the second dependent process) and so entropy does increase for the combination of processes or participating systems. But they must be dependent processes or as stated here be “participating systems.” If you cut the siphon at the top you no longer have two participating systems that are inter-dependent.
Now, the electromagnetic energy in back radiation can only be used for a part of the surface’s own quota of outward electro-magnetic radiation. If its EM energy were converted to thermal (kinetic) energy in the surface then that KE could escape by conduction, evaporation etc and there is no subsequent dependent radiation process. So the first process transferring thermal energy from cold to hot can’t happen, even if those in Climatology Carbonland think it can. All one-way radiation only ever transfers thermal energy from hot to cold because there are no molecules involved and being affected by gravity. Hence the only way the temperature gradient builds up in a high troposphere (as for Uranus and Venus) where no significant direct solar radiation heats a surface (if any) is from the upper colder regions to the warmer regions by non-radiative heat transfer which can “creep” up the temperature plot if thermodynamic equilibrium has been disturbed with new energy at the top, and now needs to be restored by spreading that new energy in all accessible directions away from its source.
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something vaguely familiar about this…
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Here’s a link to the inverted plot of the scalar sum of the angular momentum of the Sun and all the planets. Clearly the 934-year and superimposed 60-year cycles correlate well with Earth’s climate that is thus regulated by planetary orbits.
Carbon dioxide has nothing to do with it, and never will.
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