patrick.net

Oh Goodie another Rollingstone rag article.

What band is that, "Gore and the Hot airs"?

Hey Buster,

Just FYI 3.7x10-99 is a tiny fraction whereas the number of stars in the universe is some very large integer number. Maybe you meant "(1 / 3.7x10-99) > # stars in universe". That isn't really all that striking though since the reciprocal of all sorts of probabilities produce numbers that exceed the count of stars in the known universe.

Second, there are very few people that dispute the documented fact that average climactic conditions have been getting warmer in recent history. The big point of contention is in the cause.

Yes, getting the sign wrong leads to big problems. ;-)

Sadly, the only proven way to slow CO2 emissions (w/o a politically-impossible drastic reduction in lifestyles) is to replace coal power plants with nuclear ones.

Wait...you mean they just closed down Yucca Mountain?

Crap. Silly politicians.

wthrfrk80 says

Sadly, the only proven way to slow CO2 emissions (w/o a politically-impossible drastic reduction in lifestyles) is to replace coal power plants with nuclear ones.

Wait...you mean they just closed down Yucca Mountain?

Crap. Silly politicians.

That's OK. there's always sub-seabed disposal for high level nuclear waste.

CaptainShuddup says

Oh Goodie another Rollingstone rag article.

What band is that, "Gore and the Hot airs"?

Global warming is hot air. At least hotter air. Can't say I am wrong. LOL. :-)

wthrfrk80 says

Sadly, the only proven way to slow CO2 emissions (w/o a politically-impossible drastic reduction in lifestyles) is to replace coal power plants with nuclear ones.

Wait...you mean they just closed down Yucca Mountain?

Crap. Silly politicians.

Simply not true even with today's technology; http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-solar-idUSBRE84P0FI20120526

Let's have mid-day all day then solar power will save the world. Hurray!

Peter P says

Let's have mid-day all day then solar power will save the world. Hurray!

Thank you. When Germany generates enough solar power for the entire country in December I'll be impressed.

Buster says

Simply not true even with today's technology;

Buster,

Check out the following website from a guy who actually crunched the numbers:

http://www.withouthotair.com/

He believes in AGW and believes we need to slow our emissions of CO2.

Buster says

wthrfrk80 says

Sadly, the only proven way to slow CO2 emissions (w/o a politically-impossible drastic reduction in lifestyles) is to replace coal power plants with nuclear ones.

Wait...you mean they just closed down Yucca Mountain?

Crap. Silly politicians.

Simply not true even with today's technology; http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-climate-germany-solar-idUSBRE84P0FI20120526

That very same article says solar accounts for only 4% of Germany's total consumption.

"Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone."

And again I have to ask how do proponents of solar intend to solve the problems of night, clouds, snow and ice buildup?

wthrfrk80 says

Buster says

Simply not true even with today's technology;

Buster,

Check out the following website from a guy who actually crunched the numbers:

http://www.withouthotair.com/

He believes in AGW and believes we need to slow our emissions of CO2.

Nice resource, thanks!

New renter says

And again I have to ask how do proponents of solar intend to solve the problems of night, clouds, snow and ice buildup?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

Pete,

At first glance I assumed the article was about a new type of vacuum cleaner. ;-)

New renter says

Nice resource, thanks!

I think so too. He actually "does the math" instead of just pontificating.

His conclusion seems to be that renewables are nowhere near enough energy to support the first-world lifestyles we take for granted. For example, if Britain was covered in wind turbines it wouldn't be anywhere near enough energy.

We'd have to use at least some nuclear power if we wanted to completely stop burning fossil fuels.

I can't help but think the problem of nuclear waste is a smaller problem than putting CO2 into the atmosphere at the rate we presently are. The amount of waste (in pounds) if far less for nuclear than for CO2.

Places subject to large earthquakes and tsunamis might want to stick to the traditional coal and nat gas plants.

And say goodbye to the car. If we can't generate electric for residential and industrial use, we can forget generating enough to power millions of cars for commuting everyday on top of that from solar or wind.

What's interesting is the futurists always try to envision some technological solution, no matter how "vaporware" it is, that allows Americans to keep their cars, an important part of our national mythos. More likely, Americans will have to embrace "Real Change" and not "Substitute Goods" like Hydrogen-fuel powered cars and learn to take the bus or trolley.

As for GW, I found this article interesting and basically this guy advances what I think on the situation:

Lindzen, the ninth speaker in Sandia’s Climate Change and National Security Speaker Series, is Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology in MIT’s department of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and is the lead author of Chapter 7 (“Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks”) of the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Third Assessment Report. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. For 30 years, climate scientists have been “locked into a simple-minded identification of climate with greenhouse-gas level. … That climate should be the function of a single parameter (like CO2) has always seemed implausible. Yet an obsessive focus on such an obvious oversimplification has likely set back progress by decades,” Lindzen said.

For major climates of the past, other factors were more important than carbon dioxide. Orbital variations have been shown to quantitatively account for the cycles of glaciations of the past 700,000 years, he said, and the elimination of the arctic inversion, when the polar caps were ice-free, “is likely to have been more important than CO2 for the warm episode during the Eocene 50 million years ago.”

There is little evidence that changes in climate are producing extreme weather events, he said. “Even the IPCC says there is little if any evidence of this. In fact, there are important physical reasons for doubting such anticipations.” Lindzen’s views run counter to those of almost all major professional societies. For example, the American Physical Society statement of Nov. 18, 2007, read, “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.” But he doesn’t feel they are necessarily right. “Why did the American Physical Society take a position?” he asked his audience. “Why did they find it compelling? They never answered.”

Speaking methodically with flashes of humor — “I always feel that when the conversation turns to weather, people are bored.” — he said a basic problem with current computer climate models that show disastrous increases in temperature is that relatively small increases in atmospheric gases lead to large changes in temperatures in the models. But, he said, “predictions based on high (climate) sensitivity ran well ahead of observations.” Real-world observations do not support IPCC models, he said: “We’ve already seen almost the equivalent of a doubling of CO2 (in radiative forcing) and that has produced very little warming.”