What Do We Think About Climate Change

Many words could describe wind energy and green jobs. “Sustainable” is not one of the

This is about "costing the earth".

Boone Pickens, Nacel Energy, Vestas Iberia and others have been issuing statements and running ads, extolling the virtues of wind as an affordable, sustainable energy resource. Renewable energy reality is
slowly taking hold, however. Spain did increase its installed wind power capacity to 10% of its total electricity, although actual energy
output is 10-30% of this, or 1-3% of total electricity, because the wind is intermittent and unreliable.

However, Spain spent $3.7 billion on the program in 2007 alone, King Juan Carlos University economics professor Gabriel Calzada determined.
It created 50,000 jobs, mostly installing wind turbines, at $73,000 in annual subsidies per job – and 10,000 of these jobs have already been terminated. The subsidies have been slashed, due to Spain’s growing economic problems, putting the remaining 40,000 jobs at risk. Meanwhile, the cost of subsidized wind energy and carbon dioxide emission permits sent electricity
prices soaring for other businesses – causing 2.2 jobs to be lost for every “green” job created, says Calzada.

Spain’s unemployment rate is now 17% and rising. That’s hardly the “success” story so often cited by Congress and the Obama Administration.
Across the Channel, Britain’s biggest wind-energy projects are in trouble. Just as the UK government announced its goal of creating 400,000 eco-jobs by 2015, major green energy employer Vestas UK is ending production. All 7,000 turbines that Downing Street just committed to installing over the next
decade will be manufactured – not in Britain, but in Germany, Denmark and China. (Does anyone believe that any UK government, let alone the ZaNulabour monkey arseholes, have the organisational skills or the money to have 2 windmills erected and functioning each and every day until 2020? It ain't gonna happen!)

For businesses, existing global warming policies have added 21% to industrial electricity bills since 2001, and this will rise to 55% by 2020, the UK government admits. Its latest renewable energy strategy will
add another 15% – meaning the total impact on British industry will likely be a prohibitive 70% cost increase over two decades. This is the result of the government’s plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions 34% below 1990 levels by 2020, and increase the share of renewables, especially wind, from 6% to 31% of Britain’s electricity.

These cost hikes could make British manufacturers uncompetitive, and send thousands more jobs overseas, the Energy Intensive Users Group reports. English steel mills could become “unable to compete globally, even at current domestic energy prices,” says British journalist Dominic Lawson; “but
deliberately to make them uncompetitive is industrial vandalism – and even madness … a futile gesture ... and immoral.”

On this side of the pond, President Obama and anti-hydrocarbon members of Congress are promoting “green” energy and jobs, via new mandates, standards, tax breaks and subsidies. However, the United
States would need 180,000 1.5-megawatt wind turbines by 2020, just to generate the 600 billion kilowatthours of electricity that compliance with the narrowly passed Waxman-Markey global warming bill would necessitate, retired energy and nuclear engineering professor James Rust calculates.
This would require millions of acres of scenic, habitat and agricultural lands, and 126 million tons of concrete, steel, fiberglass and “rare earth” minerals for the turbines, at 700 tons per turbine; prodigious quantities of concrete, steel, copper and land for new transmission lines; and still more land, fuel and raw materials for backup gas-fired generators. America’s new national forests will apparently be made of concrete and steel.

Those miners and drillers would likely be reclassified as “green” workers, based on the intended purpose of their output. However, the raw materials will probably not be produced in the States, because so many lands, prospects and deposits are off limits – and NIMBY litigation will further hamper resource extraction.

Air quality laws and skyrocketing energy costs (due to carbon taxes and expensive renewable energy mandates) will make wind turbine (and solar panel) manufacturing in the USA equally improbable. Thus, manufacturing could well be in China or India, and most “green” jobs could be for installers, as Spain and Britain discovered.

Posturing has already collided with reality in Texas, the nation’s wind energy capital. Austin’s GreenChoice program cannot find buyers for electricity generated entirely from wind and solar power. Its latest sales scheme has been a massive flop: after seven months, 99% of its recent electricity offering remains unsold. Austin officials admit that “times have changed,” and the recession and falling energy prices may make it impossible for the city to meet its lofty goals. The company’s renewable electricity now costs almost three times more than standard electricity, and even eco-conscious consumers care more about the color of their money than the hue of their purported ideology.

Even worse for global warming alarmists and renewable energy advocates and rent seekers, global warming patterns have reversed during the past decade. Satellite data reveal that the planet is cooling, despite steadily rising carbon dioxide levels, and summertime low temperature records are being broken all over the United States.

“You'd better hope global warming is caused by manmade CO2 if you're investing in [renewable] sectors,” says Daniel Rice, the past decade’s best-performing US equity fund manager (BlackRock Energy and Resources Fund).

But evidence for manmade catastrophic global warming is dissipating faster
than carbon dioxide from an open soda bottle on a hot summer day. The crucial fact remains: wind and solar are simply not economical without major government subsidies or monstrous carbon taxes. Moreover, cap-and-tax legislation currently being promoted in the House and Senate is “not enough to do anything” about supposed global warming disasters notes Rice.
“All it does is provide Obama a pass to Copenhagen,” where the UN will host a climate change conference in December, Rice says. And those subsidies and taxes would drive energy prices still higher, killing jobs and skyrocketing the cost of everything we eat, drive, heat, cool, grow, make and do.

Congress and the Administration are dragging their feet on nuclear power, closing off access to more resource-rich lands, and imposing layers of new regulations on oil, gas and coal energy – denying Americans these vast stores of energy and hundreds of billions in revenue that developing them would generate. Meanwhile, slick wind turbine ad campaigns promote expensive, heavily subsidized, unreliable technologies that only climate activists and company lobbyists would describe as sustainable, affordable,
eco-friendly or socially responsible.

The ads and lobbyists seek more mandates, tax breaks and subsidies. Wind promoters want to quiet opponents long enough to get energy and climate legislation enacted – before Americans realize how it would drive the price of energy still higher, kill jobs, curtail living standards and liberties, and raise the
cost of everything we eat, drive, heat, cool, grow, make and do.

By Paul Driessen

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Driessen-Forestsofconcreteandsteel.pdf
___________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power Black Death.

 

There is light at the end of the tunnel...http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...ministration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
We just have to get there before the train gets us.

 

Thanks a lot, Perry.
I'm not active at the forums these times, because of real life matters: work, family and some nice sailing on good old "Marie"
But I threaten all of you with an strengthened come back after summer time...
All the best to everybody from old Gallaecia!

P.S. By the way: I hate those ugly windmills spoiling our beautiful coastal landscape.

 

A quick "come back" after all...

Just the time to post an update on CERN's CLOUD experiment:

2008 PROGRESS REPORT ON PS215/CLOUD
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1172365/files/SPSC-SR-046.pdf
Some excerpts from the paper:

2.2 Background
In its Fourth Assessment Report, 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) attributes
more than 90% of the observed climate warming since 1900 to the rise of anthropogenic greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere [IPCC (2007)]. Aerosols and clouds are recognised as representing the largest uncertainty
in the current understanding of climate change. The IPCC estimates that changes of solar irradiance
(direct solar forcing) have made only a small (7%) contribution to the observed warming. However,
large uncertainties remain on other solar-related contributions, such as the effects of changes of ultraviolet
(UV) radiation or galactic cosmic rays on aerosols and clouds [Carslaw, Harrison and Kirkby (2002),
Lockwood and Fr¨ohlich (2007), Kazil, Harrison and Lovejoy (2008), Enghoff and Svensmark (2008)]
[Kirkby (2007)]. So far, no quantitative estimates of galactic cosmic ray-induced changes in aerosol and
cloud formation have been reached. Experiments are planned for the CERN CLOUD facility to resolve
this discrepancy [CLOUD Collaboration (2000, 2004, 2006)].


2.6 Conclusions
Initial measurements have been made with a pre-CLOUD experiment at the CERN PS. The accelerator
beam generated equilibrium ion pair concentrations in the aerosol chamber of between one and ten times
the atmospheric values at ground level, which corresponds to between one and almost a hundred times
the natural galactic cosmic ray intensities. Experimental measurements in the presence of low aerosol
backgrounds confirmed a dependence of equilibrium ion pair concentrations on the square root of the
beam intensity, as expected when the dominant loss mechanism is ion-ion recombination.
During the 4-week run, around 50 nucleation bursts were observed, with typical formation rates of
particles above the 3 nm detection threshold of about 1–10 cm3s1, and growth rates of 5–20 nm h1.
Concentrations of H2SO4 were experimentally measured with a chemical ionisation mass spectrometer
to be around 106 cm3 or less. The large observed growth rates indicate the presence of additional trace
vapours in the aerosol chamber, whose identity is unknown but for which there is indirect evidence of background organic vapours.
Interestingly we were able to observe different kinds of new particle formation events. A few
of the events appear to be related to ion-induced nucleation and ion-ion recombination to form neutral
clusters. In these cases, a significant fraction—up to around 20%—of new particle formation could
be explained by ion processes. However, during most nucleation events, less than 1% of new particle
formation could be explained by ion processes. The accelerator beam was also used to search for timecorrelated
nucleation bursts in the chambers. These revealed some evidence for a dependence of particle
formation on beam intensity at the highest SO2 concentrations of 6 ppb, although no evidence at lower
concentrations.
In summary, the 2006 measurements at the CERN PS have validated the basic concept of CLOUD,
provided valuable technical input for the CLOUD design and instrumentation, and provided, in some of
the experiments, suggestive evidence for ion-induced nucleation of aerosol particles from trace sulphuric
acid vapour at typical atmospheric concentrations.


3.3 Experimental programme
Experiments in 2009 will be carried out near 20C in a stable temperature environment provided by
a high-precision temperature control system and chamber insulation. Then, in the 2009–2010 winter
shutdown, the temperature range will be extended to the full range of tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures
(-90C to +30C). This provides a very important experimental capability which is unavailable
at most of the existing aerosol chambers and other nucleation research facilities (e.g. the Caltech aerosol
chamber, the PSI aerosol chamber, the J¨ulich aerosol chamber and the Laminar Flow Reactor at IfT
Leipzig can only be operated at ambient temperatures). Furthermore, beginning in 2010, the chamber
will have the capability to act as a “cloud chamber” by making fast adiabatic pressure drops of up
100 mbar in 5 s and activating cloud droplets and ice particles.
The first two series of experiments are foreseen as:
1. 1st physics run (Sep–Nov 2009): study of ion induced nucleation (IIN) for various H2SO4, H2O,
and ion concentrations at room temperature; comparison with neutral nucleation conditions.
2. 2nd physics run (Spring 2010): IIN for various H2SO4, H2O and ion concentrations at variable
temperatures and with NH3 or volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as additional parameters.
An important part of these early measurements will be to characterise the technical performance of
the CLOUD-09 chamber in areas such as background contaminants, temperature stability, reproducibility
of aerosol burst measurements, trace gas lifetimes, etc.

Cheers

 

if the temp is dropping, how is it all the ice is melting ?

Hi Jim
yes you presented your original view of how isotopic signatures work and it was soundly corrected by BNTII and T3 if you remember who proceeded to give us all a lesson in how osotopic fingerprinting works, as well as how and why the life span of co2 is what it is ( several hundred years in the atmosphere ) frankly I learned a few things within his explanations and I had thought you may have also.
Once again I would ask you to provide a detailed explanation of isotopic identification and variation within the co2 molecule so we can better understand your views
it would be a place to start at least
assuming you would like to keep the conversation on a scientific level
lacking that detail, its difficult to understand what your saying.
Im sure BNTII or T3 could be convinced to go over our conversation and keep us honest in our science concerning isotopic dynamics

feel free to quote these articles as I would be interested in researching both them and there authors veracity

concerning mass balance
lets discuss what we do know rather than postulate about what we don't

I apreciate the relative civility of your last and suggest we keep our conversation going along those lines
if you would like to discuss science then lets stick to the science though and not industry agnotology, agreed ?
within that science given that 97% of the scientist's involved agree there is an implied 3% who do not
that 3% are bound to have written a few articles and some percentage of them are bound to have there credibility intact
I'm going to suggest you maybe dig up a few of there articles, and present them for consideration

or maybe modify your previous view on isotopic mass balance with BNTII's correction and present them to us for review



this last is a quote from a poster who likes to claim that others are bullies
note the litany of insults and falsehoods within the following

hardly has a post in this thread been less worthy of consideration but for the sake of those readers who are maintaining an open mind Ill make one comment and let you folks decide for yourselves

an article by CNN ( go argue with them ) concerning the validity of 97% of climate scientists agree

first the insults and accusations and then the news article I quoted will be printed below

once again the deniers deceitful and vindictive attitudes are easily exposed by simply reprinting a news article

the varacity of my claim is self evident and the nature of the accusations seems obviously not based in science but in vindictive ignorance

cheers
B

 

Boston,

It was your side that got handed their hat the first 3 times around on this; the isotopic mass balance does NOT show the fraction expected if nascent CO2 is sourced (mostly) from fossil fuels. The most damning study only attributed 19% but used a few dubious assumptions, too. By mass balance, even that study only showed a small fraction, like <5%, even while the author of the study made the familiar 'all or nearly all' attribution. He just can't back up this claim with the best known method of quantifying the fraction, which is the isotopic mass-balance. That only showed a tiny fraction.

Even the IPCC will only commit to "21% anthropogenic", but supply no data at all to back up this modest claim. So by the IPCC's own numbers, the atmosphere would still contain about 310 ppm CO2 if humans had never discovered coal, oil and natural gas. What about that?

I'll quote the data again from the technical page at the Global Warming Petition Project, with no real hope of dissuading you from your religion:

"Carbon dioxide has a very short residence time in the atmosphere. Beginning with the 7 to 10-year half-time of CO2 in the atmosphere estimated by Revelle and Seuss (69), there were 36 estimates of the atmospheric CO2 half-time based upon experimental measurements published between 1957 and 1992 (59). These range between 2 and 25 years, with a mean of 7.5, a median of 7.6, and an upper range average of about 10. Of the 36 values, 33 are 10 years or less.

Many of these estimates are from the decrease in atmospheric carbon 14 after cessation of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, which provides a reliable half-time. There is no experimental evidence to support computer model estimates (73) of a CO2 atmospheric "lifetime" of 300 years or more.

Human production of 8 Gt C per year of CO2 is negligible as compared with the 40,000 Gt C residing in the oceans and biosphere. At ultimate equilibrium, human-produced CO2 will have an insignificant effect on the amounts in the various reservoirs. The rates of approach to equilibrium are, however, slow enough that human use creates a transient atmospheric increase."

Excerpted from (59):

"The natural atmospheric CO2 reservoir has delta13C close to -7 permil when in isotopic equilibrium with marine HCO3- and CaCO3 (Ohmoto, 1986). CO2 from burning of fossil-fuel and biogenic materials has delta13C of about -26 permil (Hoefs, 1980). Mixing these two CO2 components with the ratio 21% CO2 from fossil fuel burning + 79% "natural" CO2 should give a delta13C of the present atmospheric CO2 of approximately -11 permil.

Keeling et al. (1989) have reported delta13C of atmospheric CO2 over the last decades. The delta13C reported for atmospheric CO2 was -7.489 permil in December 1978, decreasing to -7.807 permil in December 1988, values close to that of the natural atmospheric CO2 reservoir, far from the delta13C value of -11 permil expected from the IPCC model. Hence the IPCC model is not supported by 13C/12C evidence.

Segalstad (1992, 1993) has by isotope mass balance considerations calculated the atmospheric CO2 lifetime and the amount of fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere. The December 1988 atmospheric CO2 composition was computed for its 748 GT C total mass and delta13C = -7.807 permil for 3 components: (1) natural fraction remaining from the pre-industrial atmosphere; (2)cumulative fraction remaining from all annual fossil-fuel CO2 emissions (from production data); (3) carbon isotope mass-balanced natural fraction. The masses of the components were computed for different atmospheric lifetimes of CO2.

The calculations show how the IPCC's (Houghton et al., 1990) atmospheric CO2 lifetime of 50-200 years only accounts for half the mass of atmospheric CO2. However, the unique result fits an atmospheric CO2 lifetime of approximately 5 (5.4) years, in agreement with numerous 14C studies compiled by Sundquist (1985) and chemical kinetics (Stumm & Morgan, 1970). The mass of all past fossil-fuel and biogenic emissions remaining in the current atmosphere was in December 1988 calculated to be approximately 30 GT C or less, i.e. maximum about 4%, corresponding to an atmospheric CO2 concentration of about 14 ppmv."



Notice the HUGE difference in the isotopic 'fingerprint' between terrestrial, biotic, recent CO2 from ancient fossil-sourced CO2; this large difference makes it very easy to determine the fraction of the CO2 in the present atmosphere is from fossil fuel. The results are very consistent and show that the fraction is tiny, NOWHERE NEAR the expected result if recent CO2 increases were due to anthropogenic CO2 releases.

So the IPCC says it's 21% (77ppm), but can't back that up.
Segalstad says it's more like 4% (14ppm) and can back up his claim with good data and past studies.

Bottom line:

1. There is no scientific basis for the belief that anthropogenic releases of CO2 are the cause of 20th century atmospheric CO2 increases
   
   
2. There is no scientific basis for the belief that CO2 is a persistent, long-lasting substance in our atmosphere
   

Jimbo

Biblio:

59. Segalstad, T. V. (1998) Global Warming the Continuing Debate, Cambridge UK: European Science and Environment Forum, ed. R. Bate, 184-218.

69. Revelle, R. and Suess, H. E. (1957) Tellus 9, 18-27.

73. Archer, D. (2005) J. Geophysical Res. 110, 2004JC002625.

 

those socialist liberals in the pentagon believe climate change is real and will in the future be of national security concern for the us and cause for armed conflict world wide

and of course its way too warm in europe another ice age would do them good when the atlantic conveyor shuts down

 

How can anybody put energy into proving global warming doesn´t exist or taht it has political undertones......you guys need to learn how to swim or surviving in a desert.. If we don´t get CO2 down to stabilize to 4-600 ppm in 2050 the world will be in deep **** trouble. I´ll be dead and gone at that time but my kids and grands....
Who is stupid enough to belive that a change in climate will only affect parts of the world, will people emigrate when continehnts turn into deserts, will they move when islands is floled....and where will they go...??? To USA because nothing will change there.....welcome to reality US

 

Some better questions you should ask:

1. Who is stupid enough to believe that humans have caused CO2 levels to rise in the first place when the data from best tests we have of CO2 origin consistently show the CO2 rise is due to natural rather than anthropogenic sources?
   
   
2. Who is stupid enough to believe that something unusual or unprecedented is happening with the Earth's climate when the historical data shows we are in a period of warming which is wholly unremarkable in historical context?
   
   
3. Who is stupid enough to believe that making small incremental cuts in CO2 emissions at (astronomical expense)will have any effect on climate, given the fact that when our CO2 emissions were at 1/100 and 1/1000 of our present emissions level, the climate was already slowly warming and CO2 levels were increasing?
   
   
4. Who is stupid enough to believe that our climate exhibits a strongly unstable equilibrium, making it capable of dramatic, even dangerous changes once perturbed by small increases in a trace gas, when no such dangerous events occurred in that past even when this same trace gas was at 10X or even 20X the present levels?
   

Jimbo

 

"False ALarm: The Atlantic Conveyor Belt Hasn't Slowed Down After All"


Ward,

If you want to get into this thread, be aware that every argument that you 'think' is erudite or novel or cute or whatever has already been thoroughly debunked. The above was posted a few weeks ago and also a year ago.

Jimbo

 

jimbo just because you think it was debunked dosnt mean it not so,

cut and paste time

Why the Atlantic is special

The Atlantic is the only ocean where heat is transported north across the equator. Here warm surface water from the tropics reaches further north than in anywhere else. The relatively warm, salty water of the Gulf Stream system remains at the ocean surface west of Svalbard to a latitude of about 80 degrees before it dips underneath the much fresher and less dense polar water. The heat released by this warm water makes the climate in regions bordering the eastern North Atlantic warmer than at similar latitudes elsewhere. The results of this warm flow can also be seen in the extent of Arctic Sea ice, which differs markedly from that in the Pacific region of the Arctic. The effect of this Atlantic heat conveyor is most noticeable in winter.

The relative warmth of the northern North Atlantic is due to the unique role this ocean plays in the thermohaline circulation. Cold, dense water sinking in the northern North Atlantic drives the Northern Hemisphere loop of the THC. In the Pacific there is no such area where salty subtropical water can travel far enough north and cool down sufficiently to sink. A slow-down in of the North Atlantic loop of the thermohaline circulation may therefore have consequences not just for the North Atlantic region, but for the entire global heat conveyor.

How could the THC slow down?

The North Atlantic loop of the THC is controlled by the sinking of dense (cold and salty) water at high latitudes. The density of seawater is a result of both temperature and salinity (salty water is denser than fresh water, and cold water denser than warm water). Although the Gulf Stream water is saltier than the deep water below, it is much warmer, so its density is lower, and it remains on the surface. On its journey north, the water releases heat to the atmosphere, and cools gradually, until it is cold enough for its density to match that of the deep layer. Sinking can begin.

At this stage the surface water is still warmer than the deep water, but it also saltier, so its density matches that of the deeper water, allowing the two layers to mix. Should the surface water freshen for some reasons, it would have to cool further before it can sink. Sufficient freshwater input might reduce salinity to the extent that the surface water could not possibly sink, even at sub-zero temperatures.

Paradoxically global warming could create precisely this effect. Increased rainfall, melting of sea ice, glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet are all possible consequences of higher temperatures, and could reduce North Atlantic surface salinity sufficiently to slow down or even stop the formation of deep water. If this happens, the THC may shut down. Once stopped, the heat conveyor may take time to recover, and the consequences would be a cooling of northwest Europe.

and we are supposed to be in a period of cooling not warming

and yes there have been past climate changes worse than today but you wouldnt want to have lived through them

and normal climate change takes 10's of thousands of years so life has a chance to acclimate, what we're seeing today is a timescale of hundreds of years the polar bear for one may go extinct without a chance to adapt and numerous other life forms

when you have most all the worlds reputable climate scientists saying much the same thing and a bunch of kooks saying something else dosnt make it a true controversy

they are like someone wondering where the sun goes at night ( i know thats not original)

 

So bring us your data. The data I brought is the latest and was published in a respected journal.

This is the old thinking based on the idea that the THC is the MAIN driver of the Atlantic mixing current. The world's leading experts on the Atlantic currents NOW say that the THC is only an insignificant driver of the mixing current, that the real work is done by eddys and other wind and sea floor feature driven phenomena.

This is of no significance to the argument since those changes were indisputably of natural cause.

Show us your data that shows that there is something, ANYTHING at all unusual about the present/recent climate; there have been warming periods of similar and greater magnitude and rapidity in the past.

So John Christy, Richard Lindzen, Roy Specner, Ian Clark and a long list of others are just a bunch of kooks?

Here's a suggestion you might consider heeding:

Try attacking the scientific arguments rather than describing reputable scientists as "kooks". You have not detracted from their arguments one iota with you ad hominem attack, but only detracted from your own credibility.

Nothing you've said, NOT ONE THING, is in any way original.

Jimbo

 

Data: current status in the arctic ocean.. Before it used to be in this state 6weeks later..

 

your right nothing ive said is original not being a reputable climate scientist, but i follow the most reputable science available and repeat that

 

So what about 1936? Are you not aware that arctic ice disappeared completely in 1936? Did anthropogenic CO2 emissions do that too? Did you know that about 60% of all anthropogenic CO2 ever released has been emitted since 1978?

Jimbo