CLEAN ENERGY: Globally, clean energy technologies are not being deployed fast enough to significantly restrain greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/Tomasz Sienicki
LONDON -- The world is far behind on delivering the low-carbon energy it needs, and unless urgent action is taken, calamitous climate change is certain, the International Energy Agency told a meeting yesterday of energy ministers whose countries account for 80 percent of global energy demand.
An executive of the world energy watchdog said that renewable power was on track to stop the planet from tipping into the climatic unknown and that industry and transportation had made some progress but had significant room for improvement. But he asserted that all other sectors, including carbon capture and storage, the drive for clean coal, nuclear energy and biofuels, were falling behind the timelines needed to minimize global warming.
"Under current policies, we estimate that energy use and CO2 emissions would increase by a third by 2020 and almost double by 2050. This would likely send global temperatures at least 6 degrees Celsius [10.8 degrees Fahrenheit] higher. Such an outcome would confront future generations with significant economic, environmental and energy security hardships -- a legacy that I know none of us wants to leave behind," IEA deputy executive director Richard Jones told the opening session of the Clean Energy Ministerial meeting, jointly hosted by the United Kingdom and the United States.
"Transitioning to clean energy will be essential to reaching our common energy security, economic development and sustainability goals," Jones told the ministers from more than 20 countries.
Jones said achieving the goal of limiting global average temperature increases this century to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels was "ambitious but still possible," but only if governments took swift and decisive action to promote clean energy technologies across key economic sectors.
Carbon capture and nuclear energy falling behind
"But clean energy technology is falling short of where it needs to be. Some mature technologies are making progress ... but in many areas, the great potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are progressing far too slowly," he said. "Carbon capture and storage remains trapped in its commercial infancy."
Jones noted that the nuclear power plant disaster in Japan last year had made some countries backpedal on their nuclear power plans, while others were pushing ahead. But, he said: "Public opposition to nuclear power is rising."
The IEA's report noted that coal remained the dominant source of power and had accounted for about half of additional electricity demand over the past decade.
And while wind energy had been growing at an average annual rate of 27 percent and solar photovoltaic, too, was surging as costs fell sharply, so-called clean coal remained a long way off and governments' ambitions for fuel efficiency and electric vehicles were well ahead of reality.
"The transition to a low carbon energy sector is affordable and represents tremendous business opportunities, but investor confidence remains low due to policy frameworks that do not provide certainty and address key barriers to technology deployment," says the IEA report, called "Tracking Clean Energy Progress," that was presented to the ministers.
Pay now, and benefits come later
It said spending $5 trillion over the next decade on energy infrastructure and fuel efficiency would save $4 trillion in fuel alone, resulting in a net cost of $1 trillion. At the same time, however, it would generating vast savings in climate-changing carbon emissions.
Jones said the governments represented in the ornate gilt conference room in London's Lancaster House had a unique possibility and responsibility to act.
"It is my hope that they heed our warning of insufficient progress and act to seize the security, economic and environmental benefits that a clean-energy transition can bring," he said.
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65 Comments
Add CommentNothing they said is impossible to achieve and should be acted on immediately. For those anti-environmentalists who hate clean air, clean water, and clean land to live on, I have a few words for you: move your asses to Mars and stay there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere exactly is the dirty air, water and land? Not where I live. You do realize that in certain places like parts of the US, there are already plenty of effective laws in place which have cleaned the air, water and land from the centuries of contamination done by pre-industrial morons and industrial age ignorance? Sure in other parts of the world they still use rivers as sewers and bath water or air pollution so thick it really will kill you but not so much around here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere exactly are the people who "hate" clean water, air and land as you describe them?
"Jones said..." prophet speaks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can hear the global warming cultists:
"Break out the purple Kool-ade...the end is nigh"
James:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'For those anti-environmentalists who hate clean air, clean water, and clean land '
I've never heard anyone say they hate these. What fantasy world do you live in? The dirtiest air and water is in developoing countries and even there I've never heard anyone being against a cleaner environmnet.
"Hey Sam, this creek is too clean...I hate it...pour some human waste into it"
"I've never heard anyone say they hate these. What fantasy world do you live in? The dirtiest air and water is in developoing countries and even there I've never heard anyone being against a cleaner environmnet."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn this point I have to agree with you so much. The rhetoric is ridiculous. Of course I also note things like "I can hear the global warming cultists:", kinda cuts both ways, eh?
Then there are things like priddersen's comment about "the last 10 years", which is just idiotic. I don't understand what his motivation is. Does he think it makes him look smart somehow? I assure you he doesn't. Only an idiot or someone who utterly underrates their audience would claim that temperatures have to increase at some monotonic constant rate and that the FACT that CO2 holds in heat (which is what AGW denial amounts to) is disproven because (wonder of wonders) climate is pretty variable on a year-to-decade timescale.
Now, I also laugh at guys like Lovelock who run around like idiots making fool predictions without even bothering to read the literature, let alone learn some real science, so it does cut both ways here too.
Of course, this isn't exactly the place anyone is likely to find much insightful commentary. Ah well.
This land is so pristine lets just pour some oil on top of it and we may as well light it on fire because who wants all that clean air right above the clean land..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell besides the numerous articles out there about the missing heat for the last decade that was predicted and never happened, how about this link
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-change-and-the-missing-heat
That help?
Aside from your insults to my intelligence where I have been going for years is you warmists are spouting a religion, not science. Your theory only works in fantasy worlds in computer models. So it reasonable your predictions are actually not going to be accurate at all.
Then you start changing the story. The last 10 years or more it has been a constant message that evil humans are heating the planet and it is a death march over the cliff. Now that the heat is not here, all of a sudden it is me who was believing heat would increase at a constant rate? That was your warmist message for a decade AND IT DIDN'T Happen.
So when I hear more predictions of Armageddon, just like any religous claim, I am skeptical. However, I insult religions. At least they admit they get their apocalyptic claims from holy books or speaking to god. You warmists are predicting Armageddon but hiding this claim in what you claim is science.
So what of the multitude of ridiculous "facts" you warmists use that can be taken with a grain of salt... how about your claim you know what the average temperature should be or what the concentration of CO2 should be and the claim that a global average temperature measure has any sort of meaning at all. Just 3 items but they form the core of the problem with your computer models. You simply plug the numbers in two cases and the third is a statistic you assign meaning too arbitrarily. The fact is we dont know enough about anything to make these guesses. The earth could in fact be returning to normal and you find this inconvenient. That is the problem with using statistics as facts. You really dont know how long it takes to warm the planet. You just assume the 200 years of now is different, when your averaging of the past really is not detailed enough to make a comparison.
In the end, spending the money on mitigation of the effects of warming is the best path because if you people are wrong and this is at all natural, then we cant stop it and are wasting time. If I am wrong, we still will have the ability to mitigate the effects of warming.
True, set fire to it. Might as well enjoy the show. We're all doomed. in 1996 the prediction was we have until 2005 to act or it's 'too late.' Deadline long past. Remember, by 2010 kids in th UK will never see snow. all those British kids with sleds were just delusional this last winter. .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGlobal warming is akin the quantum mechanics...cases of malaria will increase while at the same time decreasing. Warmer winters mean colder winters. Record grain crops while production drops.
I think JamesDavis remarks are un-called for, but that's besides the point. Priddersen says that the last 10 years of global warming predictions have not come true. What predictions is he talking about? Temperatures are up, arctic ice pack volumes are down and so on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as this all being "alarmist", it took 15,000 years for CO2 levels to go from about 180 parts per million (ppm) at the depths of the last ice age to pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm (That’s the difference between a mile of ice where I sit now and today’s climate). It took 200 years to go from 280 ppm to the current level of 394 ppm, 72 times faster than the natural increase that accompanied the end of the ice age.
So - I do not think it is alarmist to say that the earth's climate has not yet caught up to the greenhouse gas forcing that has so recently been added to the mix. 6 degrees C of warming is not out of the question based on what is currently in the atmosphere. Ever hear of the scientific concept of hysteresis - the lag between a cause and effect?
Problem is, I doubt we can do much to stem the oncoming changes - because no one is doing much. Even if per capita rates of fossil fuel use declined, with projected the world population growth and the increasing number of people who want to adopt a higher energy (i.e. western) lifestyle, I doubt very much that overall emissions will decrease.
We have made our bed - we are going to have to sleep in it.
LOL, so priddersen, you just repeat the same nonsense again. It is amusing but not informative.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnswer me this, using your hopefully not entirely non-existent knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics. If you increase the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere from 280ppm to 400ppm lets say, we KNOW factually that this will block longwave radiation and increase the equilibrium temperature of the Earth's surface. We can quite accurately state what this increase would be at an overall level, and this was done over 100 years ago.
We have also DIRECTLY OBSERVED this effect from space (by multispectral analysis). So, back to your knowledge of thermodynamics, if you decrease the amount of heat radiated by a system to an enclosing system (the universe) would you not expect PERFORCE that the temperature would increase? Do you think there's some kind of magic heat sink that's disposing of this excess heat? LOL. Pardon me if I have to question your grasp of said thermodynamics. It sure looks questionable from here.
I know you're going to try to tell me that fortuitously (and without any solid evidence) that a bunch of clouds are going to form and block the light (hope that makes up for all the ice that is melting) or that the Sun is just going to happen to cool off (how convenient). Short of that you have nothing, and there's no evidence that either of those things are happening. So, you got something else? Lets hear it!
I thought I told you to move your ass to Mars and stay there...you never listen to anyone. If I remember right, and I probably do; you said that you live in a nice large house on ocean front property in California. How are you at treading water?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere is the dirty water, dirty air and dirty land in America? Why don't you come to West Virginia for a two week vacation and you can stay with me in my old chicken coop, and it really is an old chicken coop; I get an incredible tax break, and I will show you all the destroyed land, dirty water that actually catch on fire and glows a nice color green when the moon comes out, and all the dirty destroyed polluted land you can handle. This also includes all the states around WV and Pa, because be are generous with our pollution that spews from the MTR, fracking, and strip mining. Sure there are 'dumbed down laws', but go outside California and look around you...no extraction company follows the laws. I admire California for all their "I will knock the hell out of you if you breathe in my face again buddy" clean air laws. California actually enforces their laws...it seems no place does.
"Where exactly are the people who "hate" clean water, air and land as you describe them?" Come to West Virginia, Wyoming, Pa., NY, and Va and I will show you 10 to 50 million of them and probably all of them are conservatives. You have an open invitation and I will even put some fertilized, that's been fertilized with chicken poop, sliced tomatoes on your radioactive ham sandwich.
So, his name really way "Sam". I thought I heard wrong. I know you heard wrong; it wasn't "human waste" he said, ...it was "decayed animal and plant bodies, and chemical waste runoff", he said. Remember the Gulf; remember the two rivers between WV and Pa. that killed all the fish? Remember the sludge pond collapse in Tn. that destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres and devastated the environment? Come on 'geo', get your head out of the conservative's ass and think a little. You and I both know that we have really screwed up this planet and it is up to us to fix it, and we are not going to be able to do it without the cooperation of all involved. Electric cars, geothermal power plants, mini nuclear power plants, solar, wind, river and ocean power is what it will take, according to your environment, to clean up our planet, and as soon as we start, the sooner we can return our planet to its normal heating and cooling. I know you are not stupid and it is time to stop the 'hard ass' routine and start working together to get our planet back to being the best place in the galaxy to live.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell said.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRubbish.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI’m not sure what to think about the global warming issue. It has taken on many characteristics of religious belief. If you question either believers or non believers, you are damned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do know the following, because I see it with my own eyes, because the truth of it is self evident, and because understanding it does not depend on computer models, or statistical analysis that only gifted mathematicians and a few climate scientists claim to understand:
My house is built on a glacier moraine, as is every other house in my city. The glacier that dropped that sand and gravel melted long ago, prior to any fossil fuels being burned by humans. The Great Lakes were bulldozed out by continental size glaciers. Long Island and Cape Cod are glacier moraines. I have walked on them, and dug into them, and they are the same type of material, deposited in the same way, as the gravel under my home, many thousands of miles away. Those glaciers spanned continents and were many thousands of feet thick.
Human activity had nothing to do with the warming that, some 22,000 years ago, started melting away those glaciers. Those glaciers had largely completed their melting process before humans began to furrow into the earth to plant the first seed of domestic grain. The geological record clearly indicates a more or less continual retreat of glaciers since that time.
The last ice age is not quite over. There are a few glaciers remaining here in the northern hemisphere, and the geological evidence of their continued withdrawal is all around us. The most recent ice age still holds sway in parts of Alaska and Northern Canada, Greenland, and higher elevations worldwide. But the last ice age is fading fast.
Even if humans are to be found responsible for the warming trend as it continues, in order to stop the emissions that some say are causing the problem, half or more of us are going to have to step forward and take the bullet for those that remain in order to have any hope of reducing emissions to levels that some scientists think necessary to ‘save the planet’. Volunteers anyone? Al Gore, this call is for you.
In any case, if the meteorologists and climatologists could speak with any degree of certainty of what the next decade will bring, climate wise, I would be much more inclined to believe what they say is going to happen to the weather over the next several centuries. To the point, I would be much more willing to sacrifice my economy if they had a history of accurate predictions supporting their claims.
I spent many years in computer science classes and still follow, with informed interest, the progress made in modeling and artificial intelligence. Computer modeling of complex systems, such as how water flows through a set of watersheds, or how gasses flow chaotically through a single turbine engine, approach the limit of our computer science at this time.
At our current level of technology and competency, for any scientist to claim with absolute certainty that he has written a program accurately modeling the entire Earth’s climate hundreds of years into the future is beyond silly. It is fraud. Not a mistake, but fraud, knowingly put forth. He knows the uncertainty in his calculations, and yet those calculations are being presented as undeniable fact to a public lacking the education, resources, or time to do their own research.
That is certainly not to say that the work of modeling climate is without value, but the science is in its infancy and is being presented as though there is no doubt as to the accuracy of predictions made by various (and conflicting) computer models of global climate.
You have to wonder what is going on. What are they really trying to accomplish? How do they intend to profit from publishing science like this without a disclaimer of uncertainty?
Where there is such militant and enthusiastic effort made to implement radical changes to the way our civilization survives and prospers, despite the obvious detrimental effect on global and local economies, there will undoubtedly be found a profit motive for the leaders of the movement.
The attempted enactment of global carbon control legislation presents a nearly unprecedented potential for transfer of wealth and resources, from the many that benefit from low cost energy, to the few that are apparently struggling for control of where and how global energy resources will be consumed.
Look for those that will profit under the carbon control laws about to be imposed upon us. While those few will grow unimaginably wealthy, the rest of us will be impoverished by their control and restriction of our energy use. If we allow it.
Very cogent thinking ! Reminds me of a lesson from the 60s when most intelligent, conscientious and ethical couples I knew, believed and practiced the wisdom of ZPG [Zero Population Growth] while most of the dullards and yokels continued to have 4 , 5 , and 6 kids. How well has that worked out ? Instead of being outnumbered 3 to 1 as I estimate we were in the 60s , it now looks much closes to 6 to 1. Lesson : Malthus probably called it pretty well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust check your claim about Arctic Ice. It is in fact recovering despite people trying to deny it. It reached a record low about seven years ago. That means for seven years it has not gone down. At present in fact it is at the long term average. Despite claims that I was mostly thin ice that would melt quickly, this prediction also is false. Look for yourself. http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAntarctic sea ice has been increasing for thirty years.
Wake up. You are the victim f a scam.
What part of the flat earth do you live on ? The International Meteorological Organization began climate record keeping in 1873. In 1950 they morphed into the World Meteorological Organization [WMO] who currently has about 190 members.Michel Jarraud , the Sec. Gen. of the WMO recently stated 14 of the last 20 years have been the warmest on record. And 11 of the the last 13 have been the warmest on record. The decrease in snow cover , sea ice and glaciers world wide is indisputable. Your attempts to refute the facts of global warming are akin to tabacco companies refuting the facts of tabacco causing cancer in the 1950s and about as despicable. Whatever the benefits you receive for espousing your ridiculous arguments you are not doing anyone's grandchildren any favors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, lets be entirely forthright here. Neither one of us are climatologists. I hold degrees in math and chemistry and I can certainly claim to be an expert on software in general and have some experience with numerical simulations. How relevant is either of our experience to the matter at hand? Probably only very little. Any claim you or I make to have a direct first-hand opinion on climate modeling is going to be highly suspect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, lets look at what we see going on here. Clearly the AGW-doubting stuff is coming mostly from the fossil fuel industry. They indisputably fund it and encourage it. Meanwhile where is this huge conspiracy to control us that you refer to? It is run by what, the Sierra Club? It certainly is well funded!
I just find this whole concept that AGW is some invention of a conspiracy to be not credible. When we combine that with our basic knowledge of high-school level physics, basic facts, and straightforward reasoning we come to the inevitable conclusion that the basic facts of the AGW story are certainly correct. The effects considered likely in the consensus of the scientific community is pretty close to what our back of the envelope calculations demonstrate. So exactly how much is there to doubt? ALL that the models can be uncertain about are things like how the climate change will be distributed on the surface of the Earth and some questions about additional positive feedbacks and whether or not the deep ocean will warm fast enough to maybe push the increase in surface temperatures back a little while.
Meanwhile we see that the solutions are affordable and have huge additional benefits beyond cutting CO2. If someone tells there's smoke coming out of your upstairs window, you're going to check that out right? In other words when we have serious indications that something bad could be up, we do something. That's just prudent. Why is it not prudent to stop wasting energy and burning up irreplaceable fossil fuels?
IMHO reasonable prudence dictates that we really better do something. Nobody needs to go totally overboard right now today, but we need to take some serious real action.
Finally, are you really sure that switching to renewable energy, which can be generated right at your own home is a plot to control us, or are the powers that be more scared we will ESCAPE from the centralized dominance of their huge industrial scale energy infrastructure? Who would getting away from fossil fuels actually benefit and hurt? This is worth thinking about because IMHO the current setup is a raw deal for us.
Two words...Horse Hockey!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore alarmist garbage. There is still plenty of evidence for climate change. It began about 4.6 billion years ago and is writ large across the face of our planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately for the Alarmists, there is precious little if any evidence that CO2 is anything other than a trace gas. So they have no choice but to jumble mismatch and obfuscate. otherwise they would have to admit that their godhead is dead.
The issue with global is that supporters are desperate 'to prove' their dire predictions. Anything and everything becomes 'evidence' of global warming. The reality is that nobody can point to anthing with certainty as being evidence. 'Evidence' is really anecdotal heresay or loose speculation. A hurricane here, a flood there, an early Spring in some locale. etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reality is that 'nobody knows' what a half degree of temperature increase over the last century is all about. It may be 'this' or it may be 'that'. We don't know. As soon as someone stamps some dire global warming prediction on an uncertain phenomenon then all credibility is gone....science has moved into dogma.
Explain, if you can, why these brutes, gathered at the forum, do not explore the Internet on the subject of the new developments and why do not meet the authors of the projects, which guarantee the transformation of heat to the surrounding air into electrical current? In particular there are the operating model of the project, which, being implemented will ensure that the cost of one KWh of energy not more than 0.005 dollar, and a unit cost of acquiring the source (100% readiness) - not more than 75 dollars per kW.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisvetto@nm.ru
Gosha
To achieve this aim, scientists should cooperated together and countries shared their technologies. For the we are sharing the Earth, and just several countries cannot succeed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe AGW deniers are the same people that are now advocating the dismantling of the EPA. If there was one agency in America that has really been a resounding success it is the EPA. Ironically it was created by the Republican Richard Nixon. These foolish sheeple have been led to believe (I say led because it certainly wasn't a logical conclusion) that the EPA is now no longer necessary because it was a success (just ask anyone in the chemical, power or oil industry). How is that for twisted logic? Now we have this new Pandora's box called fracking to add to our list of ill conceived greed mongering and these fools think opening that box is as innocent as testing nuclear weapons in the open air.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real fact is that unless these idiots come to their senses, the effects of AGW will seem trivial compared to the the next great destruction of the environment, i.e. the contamination of the most valuable resource in America, fresh water.
The fact is that every river in America is already too polluted to drink out of without chemical treatment. This was not the case 200 years ago. Unfortunately these same people that want to contaminate the countries well water will insist our rivers are not contaminated either, but not one of them would drink tap water anymore if bottled water is available for 5 dollars a gallon.
People that think the climate has gotten cooler for the past ten years are the ones who fell victim to cherry picked data, not the vast majority of the worlds climatologists who look at all the data.
The truth is that the Arctic and Antarctic are not growing bigger as they insist and the the past decade is the warmest ever recorded since record keeping began. There is volumes of information to show the drastic shrinking of glaciers world wide, yet still they will point to a few in micro climates that actually gained a little as local climates changed.
Folks, its time to get you head out of the sand and really take a look around for yourself. Big oil is not your friend anymore then the tobacco industry or the manufacturers of Saturday night specials. They are in it for the money as long as stupid and ignorant people keep buying their crap.
I saw a rabbit run into the bush today. He was trying to get away from the heat from AGW.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat proves that AGW is real.
The EPA is now on record for wanting to strike terror into the hearts of all who oppose it. To loosely quote their words: "We want to be like the Roman Legions invading Turkey. Take the first five guys we see and crucify them. That keeps everyone else under control for a few years."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe EPA is a power drunk eco-fascist organization. It has lost its way. It needs to be brought under control.
"More alarmist garbage. There is still plenty of evidence for climate change. It began about 4.6 billion years ago and is writ large across the face of our planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately for the Alarmists, there is precious little if any evidence that CO2 is anything other than a trace gas. So they have no choice but to jumble mismatch and obfuscate. otherwise they would have to admit that their godhead is dead."
It would be amusing to read such garbage if it wasn't such a serious issue. You don't even have a basic grasp of high school level physics and you have an opinion?
singing flea: "The AGW deniers are the same people that are now advocating the dismantling of the EPA"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishint...it's the EARTH and science and not dometic USA politics. Hint...China dwarfs the USA in population. The world is not about the 'EPA'.
Until the public reaches a threshold of discomfort and suffering, not much will happen. Some of us understand
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe significance of the changes already occurring. Others
hear the words but miss the meaning. Then there is the
group that sees it as a hindrance to continued
exploitation of nonrenewable resources for the money and
market control they have so long enjoyed.
America will never have a revolution. The scheduling to make it convenient would make it impossible.
Seriously youre an idiot, with the iq of a potato peeling.Im not even going to debate your inexistant argument, the avewrage world tempertaures risign is well known, the sea levels rising is well known, the amounts, where and by how much is all well-known.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgainPriddseren, youre an idiot not worth my time more than a cursory mention of your pitiful existence.
All these people who think "climate change" is a lot of horse poop because "the climate has always changed" ought to look at the literature on the geologic record, which shows that when climate changes rapidly with respect to geologic time - species extinction soon follows.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee for example, the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum 56 million years ago, when CO2 levels spiked 1000 ppm above background in a few thousand years. Granted, baseline temperatures were much higher than they are now, but they had been relatively stable for a long time - so life had adapted to it.
As anyone can see from the recent geologic record - the earth is in an interstadial between ice ages. The mechanism for changes in CO2 concentration as it comes out of solution in warming oceans and permafrost which synergistically accelerates warming as the Milankovich cycles in earth's orbit, precession and inclination all well established.
As I said before, we have put as much CO2 in the atmosphere in 200 years as nature put into the Atmosphere in 15000 years. I disagree that this change can have no effect on global temperatures just because it is a trace gas. This statement shows no understanding of the well-established physics of infrared radiation absorption of CO2. If we had no CO2 in the atmosphere - this planet would be a frozen snowball.
For all the skeptics out there - in 2010, the US Department of Defense, in its Quadrennial Review said:
". . . climate-related changes are already being observed in every region of the world, including the United States and its coastal waters. Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration. While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world.”
Why the heck would the DoD be planning for future climate-related conflicts and crises that if this were all a hoax?
As I said before - we have made our bed, now we have to sleep in it.
Let me guess, you got this interpretation of the actual quote from Drudge. I read the article too, but I know better then to believe anything that supermarket tabloid of the internet has to say. The Drudge Report is an agenda driven headline twister with no morals and not a lick of common sense in half the articles it mis-quotes. If you haven't figured that out by now, you fall into the same class of pseudo intellectuals as Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Alec Jones, which is proof positive that phoney conservatism is a mental disorder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, we do have more than "no understanding" of what these forcings are. Most importantly we know the primary first order forcing, CO2 will raise the temperature of the surface of the Earth. To ASSUME that there will be contrary forcings that might cancel that out is just a hope. We know of no such forcings. OTOH we DO know of POSITIVE feedbacks, which can amplify the effects of CO2 (ice melting, which has been observed contrary to the fantasies of some posters above, CH4 release from the arctic, and decreased CO2 capture in plant communities such as the Amazon rainforest).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe notion that our impact on climate is in any way equivalent to natural variations is also clearly a pipe dream. The rate of change from AGW is orders of magnitude more rapid than anything known in the geological record going back as far as we can make this determination (almost 300 million years currently).
Beyond that we know there are a whole host of other negative effects from burning fossil fuels which BY THEMSELVES probably warrant extreme caution (ocean acidification, radioactivity, damage to surface waters, oil spills, groundwater pollution, vast quantities of toxic coal ash, etc).
Of course, we don't fully understand the full scope or impact of climate change or these other effects. We do know they exist, and that they will have significant costs associated with them, which we can estimate to a degree. Every reasonable estimate of these costs indicates that every ton of coal we burn actually costs us more than the worth of the economic activity it enables. It is simply not ECONOMICALLY sensible to continue this practice, let alone considering some of the more dire, and PERHAPS alarmist, predictions.
This doesn't even consider the beneficial geopolitical implications of energy independence to the US or other countries.
Are you seriously implying that it is foolish to invest money in a set of technologies which already have demonstrable significant economic benefits? Why are we even having this debate aside from the fact that some coal and oil companies would rather not see their business dry up? The whole debate is ridiculous!
"hint...it's the EARTH and science and not dometic USA politics. Hint...China dwarfs the USA in population. The world is not about the 'EPA'. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat this has to do with the context of what I wrote about the EPA is beyond me, but most of what you say is too. It's not that I agree or disagree with you, its just that you have no relevant point to make in the first place. What has China got to do with success that the EPA has accomplished in America? China has a lot to learn with their new found and unchecked capitalism. Don't even give me that crap that China is a communist country. I wasn't born yesterday. China has been a capitalist country since McDonalds opened shop there in 1990.
BTW, for the record, I agree 100% that the EPA needs to rigorously enforce regulations that affect the quality of our water and air in America and that means the fracking practices. Turning a blind eye will accomplish nothing but misery in the end. Don't blame the EPA, blame yourself for your ignorance and greed.
Hey Carlyle,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>>Just check your claim about Arctic Ice. It is in fact recovering despite people trying to deny it. “http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png” <<
It is unclear what is the point you are trying to make, from the graph at the link you posted. It shows three datasets for Artic ice, the 1979-2000 average, the 2007 and the 2012. The last two show one million sq km less ice from January to April, with the 2012 line merging with the 2000 line for the May thaw season.
Aside from being a minutely small and unrepresentative sample, it does not in any way indicate recovering, which would require a recovering in winter area; it just repeated the spring thaw pattern. The graph shows that winter coverage is still one million sq km smaller. And this is in just your dataset.
I wholeheartedly agree with what tharter has to say here. I have always understood that it is not the change in climate that is alarming, it is the speed that it is happening. Evolution cannot keep up with the rapid change we see today and that is the cause of mass extinction, not the actual change itself. If you don't understand this or worse yet just don't 'believe' in evolution you have no business wasting your time on a science based forum.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShoshin;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Unfortunately for the Alarmists, there is precious little if any evidence... So they have no choice but to jumble mismatch and obfuscate. otherwise they would have to admit that their godhead is dead.'
true.
The kool-ade drinkers present some type of statistic which may or may not be valid...this is the 'science'. It can stand or fall on its merit (like all science).
That would be fine but then there is tripe at the end of some article 'and therefore all the polar bears are doomed'....or ...'this will lead to a spike in famine deaths in Africa'. Completely unrelated speculative remarks based on zip to with science. My favorite from back in 2001 'by 2010 children in the UK will not experience snow'.
Science is fine...agenda is not fine when couched in science.
"That would be fine but then there is tripe at the end of some article 'and therefore all the polar bears are doomed'....or ...'this will lead to a spike in famine deaths in Africa'. Completely unrelated speculative remarks based on zip to with science. My favorite from back in 2001 'by 2010 children in the UK will not experience snow'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience is fine...agenda is not fine when couched in science. "
Just because there may be some idiots like Lovelock (who has been hammered silly for years in the scientific community) or non-scientists like Al Gore getting all alarmed has NO bearing on the actual science or the facts. Go read what the IPCC actually has to say for instance. It is quite a different thing from some fool saying that England won't have any snow anymore by year X. Those kinds of statements are just drivel.
The question is, so what? If the best you can come up with is that there are idiots in the world how does that change any of the observed facts?
Tharter. There is no science in this srticle. Some speculation of 'this and that'. Ask a dozen economists on the impact and you'd get a dozen other opinions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoomed..we're all doomed. Drink the purple Kool-ade
IPCC AR4 Projections (i.e. predictions for a specific emissions scenario) said that we'd experienced decadal increases in temperature of between 0.15 and 0.3C between 1990 and 2005 and that this gave them confidence in their ensemble of climate model predictions of 0.2C per decade going forward (2C by 2100).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html
Obviously, these haven't come true. The world has hardly warmed at all since 1998, and has cooled in the last decade:-
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/plot/wti/from:1998/trend/plot/wti/from:2002/trend
Over the entire temperature record, the majority of the time, the world has shown no warming http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/plot/hadcrut3vgl/to:1932/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1978/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1978/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1932/to:1940/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1932/to:1940/trend, which is why warmists like to focus attention on the accelerated warming that occurred during the 1978 to 1998 period.
It is very difficult to see any correlation between CO2 levels and global temperature change, as CO2 levels increased steadily from the start of the industrial revolution 1760 until the 1950s and have increased rapidly since. A typical attempt is shown here:-
http://www.warmdebate.com//sites/default/files/co2-globa-temperature.gif
Looks impressive but apart from the period from the late 1970s until 2005 when the graph ends, the fit of the observations to the curve is very poor. The CO2 levels are now at 393ppm, whereas the observed temperature has been flat, so there's once again a significant divergence from the curve.
Turning to ice measurements. It's problematic to reliably measure ice volume, but measuring sea ice extent via satellite is possible. Only problem with that is that we have satellite records only since 1979. However, daily arctic and antarctic sea ice extents are available here along with monthly archives going back a few years:-
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
At the moment, Arctic Sea Ice extent is almost bang on the 1979-2000 average and Antarctic Sea Ice extent is above it.
Who said this was a scientific paper? This is not a journal, it is a magazine. Don't put words in people's mouths. The only "kool-aid" going around here is of the "everything is just fine, move on, nothing to look at here" kind, lol.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgain, you haven't answered the question, why are you opposed to doing anything when there are myriad reasons TO do something, and even if you refuse to believe the evidence of AGW there are a large number of other reasons to stop burning fossil fuels. Can you answer that?
Heh, here's what the EPA has to say about this:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"From 1990 to 2008, the radiative forcing of all the greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere increased by about 26 percent."
"Average global temperatures show a similar warming trend, and 2000–2009 was the warmest decade on record worldwide."
"The frequency of heat waves in the United States decreased in the 1960s and 1970s, but has risen steadily since then."
"Average precipitation has increased in the United States and worldwide. Since 1901, precipitation has increased at an average rate of more than 6 percent per century in the lower 48 states and nearly 2 percent per century worldwide."
"Eight of the top 10 years for extreme one-day precipitation events have occurred since 1990. The occurrence of abnormally high annual precipitation totals has also increased."
"Six of the 10 most active hurricane seasons have occurred since the mid-1990s. This increase is closely related to variations in sea surface temperature in the tropical Atlantic."
"the amount of heat stored in the ocean has increased substantially since the 1950s."
"The surface temperature of the world's oceans increased over the 20th century. Even with some year-to-year variation, the overall increase is statistically significant, and sea surface temperatures have been higher during the past three decades than at any other time since large-scale measurement began in the late 1800s."
"Average sea level worldwide has increased at a rate of roughly six-tenths of an inch per decade since 1870. The rate of increase has accelerated to more than an inch per decade in recent years"
"September 2007 had the least ice of any year on record, followed by 2008 and 2009. The extent of Arctic sea ice in 2009 was 24 percent below the 1979 to 2000 historical average."
"Overall, glaciers worldwide have lost more than 2,000 cubic miles of water since 1960"
"The length of time that lakes stay frozen has decreased at an average rate of one to two days per decade."
"The portion of North America covered by snow has generally decreased since 1972"
"Between 1950 and 2000, the depth of snow on the ground in early spring decreased at most measurement sites in the western United States and Canada. Spring snowpack declined by more than 75 percent in some areas"
"The average length of the growing season in the lower 48 states has increased by about two weeks since the beginning of the 20th century. A particularly large and steady increase has occurred over the last 30 years."
Just saying, you got some things to explain...
jdey123 - I have no idea what a "WoodForTrees" index but if you look at more than the 30 years of data you plotted up - let's say starting in 1850 and using a real temperature data set (ie, peer reviewed and verified), such as GISTemp Global Mean, you see a whole different picture:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1800/to:2010
Saying that there is a poor fit between CO2 and temperature from the graph you show is also nonsense - No one ever said that the curves had to be an exact match and I challenge you to show the statistical math that says these curves are a poor fit. Global temperatures are affected by more than just CO2 but CO2 has been demonstrated to be the driving factor for the rise in global average temprature since the beginning of the 20th century.
Your analyses are fundamentally flawed.
jdey: "At the moment, Arctic Sea Ice extent is almost bang on the 1979-2000 average"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCanada's was actually a little larger than average. Also record numbers of polar bears in ths year's census (stats kept for 34 years) by Environment Canada..
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/indicators/pdfs/ClimateIndicators_full.pdf
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about some real data, eh? Take a look at it, I dare you.
"jdey123 - I have no idea what a "WoodForTrees" index but if you look at more than the 30 years of data you plotted up - let's say starting in 1850 and using a real temperature data set (ie, peer reviewed and verified), such as GISTemp Global Mean, you see a whole different picture:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1800/to:2010"
The woodfortrees index is an average of all dataset providers, so as to avoid arguments that we should be using GISS rather than HADCRU or RSS etc. Unfortunately, as all dataset providers includes satellite data, the index can only start when satellite data became available - 1979.
You've chosen GISTEMP whose records only start in 1880 and are available up to March 2012, and then plotted it from 1800 to 2010 for some inexplicable reason. You don't explain what the reader's supposed to be looking at or what point you have to make. I've already provided a graph showing an entire temperature record from 1850 based on HADCRUT as that's the longest temperature record. My graph shows trend lines which show that there are only 2 short periods in the entire temperature record where warming has occurred. The first trend line in my graph shows that there was no warming at all for 82 years (i.e. more than half of the temperature record).
"Saying that there is a poor fit between CO2 and temperature from the graph you show is also nonsense - No one ever said that the curves had to be an exact match and I challenge you to show the statistical math that says these curves are a poor fit. "
It's a basic requirement of statistics that for something to be said to be correlated it has to be a good fit. Look up r-squared value which is a statistical measure of goodness of fit which is used to determine whether a curve has just been drawn through a random set of numbers or whether there's a genunine correlation.
"Global temperatures are affected by more than just CO2 but CO2 has been demonstrated to be the driving factor for the rise in global average temprature since the beginning of the 20th century."
If you are unable to correlate the two, you've proven nothing. From your comments, however, you haven't got the first clue about science or statistical analysis so my comments are for those readers who wish to educate themselves further.
I have a query about the continued warmist argument that the lack of significant global warming which has now lasted for 14 years is due to natural variablity masking the CO2 signal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHansen claimed in his 1981 paper that the CO2 signal should emerge above all natural variability factors in the 1990s (see p964 in link provided on Hansen's GISS website) http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_etal.pdf
Yet in his analysis of 2011, he's still trying to explain away the lack of warming as due to natural variability
"The current status of these running means (Fig. 3) adds some weak evidence for the frequent assertion that the rate of global warming has been less in the 21st century than in the last two decades of the 20th century. However, that impression is dependent on the end point, which is heavily influenced by the strong La Niñas in the past three years. If an El Niño occurs in the next few years, which is likely as we discuss below, the mean warming rate will probably exhibit no slowdown on the decadal time scale."
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2011/
I think the problem here is you guys like to cherry pick specific ranges of years and state that there's "no warming" or "no correlation" if you look at those particular ranges. Of course it is possible to do that with almost any data set if your only goal is try to find those particular ranges and you select your endpoints for that purpose. What you fail to explain is why the last 3 decades have been on average the warmest on record. That's simply not something you can explain, is it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeyond that how do you explain all the other indications of warming trends? Snowcover, glacial ice loss, later dates of first frost/earlier last frost, lake ice, etc? How do you explain the startling trends in average low and nightly temperatures, which validate predictions based on CO2 being the primary driver? How do you in fact explain how increased CO2 concentrations can NOT result in higher temperatures without discarding the basic laws of physics? You cannot answer these questions because your "theory" is simply at variance with both observed reality and basic universally accepted laws of physics.
I'm sure it is quite upsetting to be faced with a set of facts which forces one to conclude that some of the basic activities of society MUST be altered in significant ways. Yes, our way of life is threatened. Pretending the threat does not exist won't make it go away. In fact it will simply insure that nature will force us to change. If we don't take sensible precautions that day will be a harsh one. We have a choice, change or face the end of, or drastic impoverishment of, our civilization. Pretending we don't face this choice is simply foolish.
The earth is continuing to warm for natural reasons as it warms and cools in cycles, as it has done for billions of years. There's nothing to explain from the skeptic camp. It's a minority of scientists who've invented a problem that never existed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou've not answered the question as to why Hansen is still blaming natural variability for suppressing the CO2 warming signal for 14 years now.
You whine about skeptics using decadal trends yet the IPCC where using these in the IPCC AR4 report to strengthen their confidence in their best known climate model prediction that the earth will warm by 2C by 2100 (when compared to 2000 temperature). The IPCC are also including decadal trends in their AR5 report. It seems you don't have a problem with linear trends unless they fail to show significant warming. Science is about using consistent methods to check that observations match the hypothesis. There is no consistency in climate science. To support this myth requires cherry picking whichever dataset and model that supports the warmist ideology at any point in time. Warmists only ever want to show the reader data starting in the 1970s as this is one of only 2 periods in the entire temperature record which shows any warming.
Scaremongering with no evidence doesn't convince the public nor policymakers. Until you can prove a correlation between CO2 levels and temperature change, stick to your experiments.
LOL, a 'minority of scientists', that's precious. What other FUD have you got for us today?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll Hansen is saying is what we already know, there are a whole bunch of signals, at different time scales, superimposed. Look at other sorts of time series like market prices. You can see the same thing. Take a specific chosen section of any time series and you can say "gosh, the trend is X", but if you ignore the fact that the overall time series shows movement in one direction or the other that's the overall trend.
You can argue all you want, but you have two huge problems. 1) The last 3 decades have been considerably warmer on average than the ones before them, and 2) you can't explain why there would NOT be warming. You have no answer to this. It IS warmer and basic thermodynamics demands that increasing CO2 WILL warm the surface of the Earth. Both in specifics and in general the observations validate the theory. You've got no alternative except 'handwavium'. Show me some decent science that explains how increased CO2 can NOT result in higher temperatures. Go ahead, try, there is none. I'm going to state outright that I'm extremely skeptical that you can find one as it would have to overturn basic fundamental physics which are extremely well-tested.
It is laughable that you can even make these kinds of statements about cherry picking. You need to go back and actually understand what you're talking about.
I don't have a problem at all. I'm not in the business of trying to persuade a skeptical public that I have a hypothesis that is correct. You do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBasic physics says that CO2 will increase global temperature by 1.2C for doubling of CO2 levels from pre-industrial. So far after 252 years, CO2 levels have gone up 40%.
What you need to prove is your hypothesis which says that there's a feedback effect which produces accelerated warming. There's a world of difference between 0.2C per decade (2C by 2100) and what has been observed since the earth bound global temperatures were first recorded in 1850 (0.045C +/-0.007C) or 1880 (0.059C +/-0.007C) according to the skepticalscience.com trend calculator. If warmists are going to make alarming claims they need to explain why observations don't match them.
Those are decadal trends (HADCRUT3 for the trend since 1850 and GISTEMP for the trend since 1880)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Arrhenius estimated that halving of CO2 would decrease temperatures by 4–5 °C (Celsius) and a doubling of CO2 would cause a temperature rise of 5–6 °C.[5] In his 1906 publication, Arrhenius adjusted the value downwards to 1.6 °C (including water vapour feedback: 2.1 °C). Recent (2007) estimates from IPCC say this value (the Climate sensitivity) is likely to be between 2 and 4.5 °C. Arrhenius expected CO2 levels to rise at a rate given by emissions in his time. Since then, industrial carbon dioxide levels have risen at a much faster rate: Arrhenius expected CO2 doubling to take about 3000 years; it is now estimated in most scenarios to take about a century."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCO2 in the air attributable to human action has increased the CO2 by 37.5%. If we go with Arrhenius' lowest number 1.6C at 100% then we'd only expect to have caused what, under a degree of increase. Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880. This is well within the 2007 IPCC range and a bit above the most conservative estimate of Arrhenius (made in 1906 we might observe, he was pretty accurate!).
The IPCC's 'best case' B1 scenario has levels reaching 500ppm before 2030 at this point. Other models that seem to be better tracking reality put the levels as high as 600 ppm by 230 and 900 ppm by the turn of the century is not out of the question at all.
Again, these are facts, easily verified, well within the consensus of 95% of climate experts, and really just not arguable. I don't know where other people get their numbers, but there are some real issues with some of what has been posted here.
reply to #33 Scrat
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuote:
If we had no CO2 in the atmosphere - this planet would be a frozen snowball. endquote.(!!???!!)
Really?
reply to @33 Scrat
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuote:
For all the skeptics out there - in 2010, the US Department of Defense, in its Quadrennial Review said:
endquote.
It may have escaped your attention but the department of defense was talking about climate change. This is something that has been going on since the planet was formed. They do not anywhere refer to CO2 as the single most important factor driving said change nor do they refer anywhere to man's purported contribution to it in a general sense.
I don't doubt that they have considered the regional climate change and its consequences if eg: Ethiopia goes through with its stated intentions to abrogate the multi-lateral Nile River water sharing agreement that was written largely to benefit Egypt. If the other countries that control the head waters follow suit, and they likely would, then Egypt would experience devastating, long term drought with concomitant massive starvation and complete social collapse.
Naturally, the defense dept. has developed a whole range of scenarios that deal with potential problems that might flow from any number of climate issues. But nowhere do they consider alternatives that are designed to get me to stop driving my S.U.V.
Your belief that the Department of Defense has written support of Anthropogenic Global Warming into its Quadrennial Review is something that you have projected on to it. I understand that you are simply repeating what others have said before many times but that doesn't make it less of a projection.
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/indicators/
There are two kinds of feedback loops. Negative feedback loops are self-regulating. Living beings use them all the time. Positive feedback loops tend to extrapolate geometrically and cause runaway effects. Most complex physical systems have some stable saddle points where self-regulating negative feedback loops prevail and large unstable areas where positive feedback loops occur.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe two positive feedback loops we associate to warming is the albedo (white ice reflects more sunlight than dark terrain) and now the heavy methane outgassing, see at
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=arctic-ocean-releasing-significant-amounts-of-methane
Methane is 20 times stronger as a warming agent than CO2, and the amounts that are expected to outgas of the peat permafrost are way larger than all human emissions, because why would it stop now it is started, compounded with the albedo, and the fact that human emissions have not declined.
I agree that we should not be alarmist and clean up on principle, as evolving beings.
Also, what really annoys me is that this was caused by the fuel peddling corporations for their unending profit, manipulating the masses into believing if they didn’t drive a SUV, own a shotgun, and smoke Marlboros, no one can be really happy.
Ah man. You got it. I don't know what is going to happen, but clearly there are better and worse points we can be at in 50 years. Consider which world you want to end up with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I see is an environment which is relatively rapidly suffering severe and probably irreversible damage everywhere we look. Exactly where is that going to lead? Nobody, including you, know. You're largely turning a blind eye to it. The 'benefits' of energy production are only benefits if the NET BENEFIT is positive. If you have to destroy something more valuable than the thing you produce, then ironically the net result of all this energy production is a loss of value. If you were to study the subject you would find that we're well on our way to that point with respect to every form of fossil fuel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for other things: Acidification is not some trivial thing, 30% of the buffering capacity of the ocean has been expended. Note too that the result will at some point, in the foreseeable future, a rather rapid change in pH, which will not be all that pretty.
I've already addressed CO2, the NAKED FORCING from the CO2 alone is almost twice the number you quote, as already stated. Not sure where you get your numbers or your bad info, but look outside of the sites you're using now, they're obviously feeding you bad info...
Radioactivity... I'd suggest looking around. There's a hell of a lot of it out there. I was just noting the general issue. Yes, there's radioactivity released by fossil fuels, and coal is the major source from human activity. Is it a crisis right now? No, and it might not become one. It is just yet another potential crisis.
What about Nitrogen and Phosphorus? You might want to poke around on that subject. General toxic materials in the environment, also a really significant issue and not to be dismissed easily.
Clearly we've treated the environment in a way that is not sustainable. I could cite numerous other examples. All of these are things we should be concerned about. Does every one of them have to provoke some desperate action? No. I never suggested that. I've suggested that prudence dictates that a little bit of money spent now can and likely will save much bigger outlays in the future. We should err on the side of caution.
I find it amusing that everyone is quite happy to accept the effectiveness of science when it comes to doing things they like, but if it suggests that some pet policy is problematic then it is 'bad science', regardless of how solid it is. IMHO you've blinded yourself.
Hey guys,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe need cheap power, yes, but not to the degree we need food or water or shelter. We need cheap power like we need chocolate dessert or interesting stuff to read. There are levels, and then there are levels, of needing.
Our desires and nonessential needs are heavy-handedly manipulated by the filthy rich, the plutocracy, through their corporations to make us believe what is good for them is good, or even essential, for us. No one needs an SUV, a rifle and Marlboros to be happy (so one can wreck the planet, a neighbor and oneself all in one day) but this is the easiest way of keeping the rich richer, through our artificially programmed needs. All you red blooded consumers are just being manipulated, being had, by the plutocracy. We need cheap transport for crops and goods? Sure. Train always did it cheaper.
While we are at it, is it not clear the Other 99% would be much happier living under a European style Social Democracy and real capitalism (where the rich also compete, also pay taxes and also bear risks) and not a sham plutocratic oligarchy, rife with privilege? We fought the French and American Revolutions exactly to abolish privilege.
Climate action should not be about fear.
It should be about acting on principle, not by constraint, because that would make of us moral beings. We should be able to do things because they are the right thing to do. I am not saying by this that there is no real need, however. There is only so much oil down there. In some decades all the oil will be gone (coal might last 300 years).
The smart thing to do, then, is to wait for the last sweet drop of oil to be pumped up, and only then deal with it, while everyone panics?
Also, oil is needed to produce a million synthetic materials essential for advanced technology. We will need oil (not as a power source, but as a raw material) maybe for thousands of years still. Do we really want to leave a world for our descendants entirely devoid of oil?
So if we will have to deal with the transition from an oil based to a clean energy matrix eventually (because there is only so much oil) and we really should do it rather sooner than later (or our descendants will have to live very simple lives), would it perhaps not be smarter to act now, while we have several choices?
Also, screw natural cycles. We do not want to live in a far warmer world because we would be uncomfortable, period.
The filthy rich? Like Al Gore, Dr Pachauri & all the other AGW fat cats you mean?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The filthy rich? Like Al Gore, Dr Pachauri & all the other AGW fat cats you mean?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisROFLMAO! No no, there's nobody making 100's of billions of dollars selling us gas, oil, and coal. I'm sure all those people's massive outpouring of money into climate denial is all just enlightened interest in the good of mankind.
Lets ask ourselves who makes more money, the CEO of Exxon or EVERY SINGLE CLIMATE SCIENTIST IN THE WORLD COMBINED PLUS THE BUDGETS OF ALL THEIR SCIENCE PROGRAMS shall we? Do you really want to keep going here? lol.
Wind/solar won't be cost-effective for a long time, so the ONLY option to avoid massive c02 increases is to fully embrace nuclear power. But that won't happen, because the public sees things like Fukishima on TV and doesn't understand that statistically nuclear is much safer than any other energy we have today. (Coal kills infinitely more people.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNonsense. Wind is cheaper than nuclear, hands down, even accounting for whatever enhancements to transmission and storage required (or alternatively peaking stations etc). Don't take my word for it, read the literature. Solar can be quite cost-effective now in specific situations, but the costs have been going down rapidly as well. In the 10 years (optimistically) it would take to get even one new nuclear power plant online the cost curve for solar PV easily crosses that of nuclear, coal, and gas. Just not worth it at this point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this