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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #180 on: 2008-08-07 17:39:57 » |
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[Fritz]the battle grounds are getting draw for our hearts and minds, but mostly our emotions, however noble this is, it still doesn't sit right with me, has the religious alert antenna quivering along with my spider senses.
100 months and counting
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #181 on: 2008-08-07 18:04:27 » |
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[Fritz]Article talks to some of what I'm feeling, so here it is. Not profound in itself, but CoV is justifiably down beat, and I guess I have to remind myself 'never say die' 'till the fat lady sings' anyway.
Cheers
Fritz
Source: Global Public Media
Author:Originally written for The Ecologist.
Date: 05 Jun 2008
View all related to Climate Change | collapse | Peak Oil | psychology
Take relentless population growth. Add decades of expanding per-capita resource consumption. Simmer slowly over rising global temperatures.
What do you get?
Traumatic information: that is, information that wounds us through the very act of obtaining it.
Everyone knows things are going wrong. But if you understand ecology, you know this in a way that others don’t. It’s not just that the current crop of world leaders is idiotic. It’s not just a matter of a few policies having gone awry. We’ve been on a perilous track since the dawn of agriculture, capturing more and more biosphere services for the benefit of just one species. Fossil fuels recently gave our kind an enormous economic and technological boost—but at the same time enabled us to go much further out on an ecological limb. No one knows the long-term carrying capacity of planet Earth for humans, absent cheap fossil fuels, but it’s likely a lot fewer than seven billion. The implication is not just sobering; it’s paralyzing.
So what to do with such traumatic knowledge? An argument can be made for denial. Why ruin people’s day if there’s nothing they can do, if it’s too late to unseal our fate?
But we don’t know that it’s too late.
As hard as it is to get up every day and remember, "Oh yes, that’s right, we’re headed toward systemic collapse," in fact we can’t afford to forget it, if there are in fact measures to be taken to save a species, an ecosystem, or a human community.
To be sure, some of us are better able to handle the information than others. Many fragile psyches come unhinged without constant doses of hope and assurance. And so for their sake we need continuing positive messages—about a project to make a village sustainable, or about a new coal power plant halted by protest. Some will cling to these encouraging news bits, believing that the tide has turned and we’ll be fine after all. But as time goes on, collapse becomes undeniable. Limits to growth cease to be forecasts; instead, we see daily proof that we’re hitting the wall. As this happens, those who can handle the information spend more of their time managing the fraying emotions of those around them who can’t.
Strategy shifts. We move from rehearsing "Fifty simple things you can do to save the Earth" to discussing global triage.
As the Great Unraveling proceeds, there may in fact be only one occupation worthy of our attention: that of identifying the qualities that make our species worth saving, and then celebrating and exemplifying those qualities. If we concentrate on doing that, perhaps we win no matter what. Outwardly, it will probably look a lot like what many of us are already doing: working to save a species, an ecosystem, a human community; to make a village sustainable, or to halt a new coal power plant.
Taking in traumatic information and transmuting it into life-affirming action may turn out to be the most advanced and meaningful spiritual practice of our time.
[Fritz]Amem
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #182 on: 2008-08-07 18:30:07 » |
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But then you see this, and yet another set of values and motivation present themselves ....
Cheers
Fritz
Investing in Solar Innovation ...
Source: Money Markets
Author:Sean Brodrick
Date: Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Dear Subscriber,
Sean Brodrick
As an energy crisis threatens to derail the U.S. economy, it really bugs me that there is a 170-billion-megawatt fusion reactor we are not taking advantage of.
I'm talking about the sun, which, when you get down to it, is a big ol' fusion reactor — nuclear energy on steroids. Enough sunlight falls on the Earth's surface every hour to meet world energy demand for an entire year.
Even if we harnessed just 2.5% of the sun's energy falling onto the 250,000 square miles in the Southwest best suited for solar power plants that would match the total power used in the U.S. in 2006!
The world is hungry for solar power. Pushed along by government tax credits, global demand for photo-voltaic (solar) power hit 3,073 megawatts in 2007, up from 1,985 megawatts in 2006 — 54% growth. That's on top of 41% growth in 2006 and 34% in 2005.
But solar technology is in its infancy — we've barely scratched the surface of what it can do. Today I'd like to lay out some details why I think solar is not only a good bet for today but also for tomorrow.
Not only could groundbreaking technological advances make solar power the fuel of the future, but they offer the potential of enormous profits along the way.
We're Getting Closer to the
Third Generation of Solar Power
You have to understand that there is an evolution going on in the solar power industry. In fact, we are rapidly approaching a new generation of solar power. Let me explain ...
First generation solar power: These are the silicon (or more descriptively, "polysilicon") solar cells you're familiar with. Over 90% of solar panels in the market today use refined, purified silicon as raw material. By now, they're high quality and have few defects, but they're expensive, costing about $1 per watt.
Over 90% of solar panels on the market today use refined, purified silicon as raw material.
Over 90% of solar panels on the market today use refined, purified silicon as raw material.
SunPower (SPWR) is the largest North American solar company by sales, and they make their money in polysilicon.
Evergreen Solar (ESLR) is another name to watch in this space. They have proprietary "ribbon" technology using thinly stretched polysilicon.
Second generation solar: This involves low cost manufacturing. These cheap solar cells can bring costs down to a little under 50 cents a watt, but can have defects and are generally less efficient than first generation technology. Both problems are being worked on furiously.
Third generation solar power: It's coming soon, and uses advanced technology to marry the efficiency and quality of first generation with the low cost of the second generation.
Let's look at some of the new solar technologies coming 'round the bend ...
New Technology #1: Solar panel roof tiles. One objection to solar power is it looks darned ugly sitting up on your roof. Now, you can buy roof tiles that are made with built-in photovoltaic cells and are designed to blend in with most types of roof tiles whether they are concrete, slate, or shingle. Each solar tile has a connector and the tiles are wired together during installation. These solar tiles can be installed during roofing or re-roofing your house. Some of the companies currently producing solar panel roof tiles are General Electric, SunPower, and Premier Power.
Now, you can buy roof tiles that are made with built-in photovoltaic cells ...
Now, you can buy roof tiles that are made with built-in photovoltaic cells ...
New Technology #2: Thin-film photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. This is a laminate (thin sheet) that eliminates the heavy glass and racks of conventional solar power systems. You can peel and stick the thin-film laminate right onto a metal rack that goes on your roof.
Thin-film PV systems can run about half the cost of a conventional solar power system, maybe less. And they're made out of metals including copper, indium, gallium, selenium and zinc. That should be good news for companies that mine those metals.
The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has created thin film solar panels that are very close to competing with their more traditional silicon-based cousins, with an efficiency rate of 19.9% (that's how much of the sun's light is converted to electricity).
This will come to market sooner than you think. Thin-film solar panels are already being used by power companies and industrial users, are available to consumers in Europe, and should be commercially available to U.S. consumers in 2009. These systems will drop the price of solar power drastically to maybe 50 cents a watt within 10 years, say experts, as thin-film solar becomes more efficient.
First Solar (FSLR) is a good name in this space.
New Technology #3: Super-efficient solar windows. MIT researchers are working on special glass panels for windows that are combined with solar cells. The panels concentrate light 40 times standard sunlight before delivery directly to the cell.
These are much more efficient than conventional solar cells, capturing about 50% of the sun's energy.
And the system is so simple to manufacture that the inventors expect it to be deployed within three years at little cost over standard window costs. The technology can be added to existing solar panels at very little cost but an increase in existing efficiency of 50%.
That's the real beauty of this. Even if you have existing solar power at your house, you could upgrade it in a few years with the new MIT technology.
New Technology #4: Nanosolar power sheets. Researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have come up with solar cells that are a thin coating of paint that converts light to electricity. They can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets. The goal is to make them cheap enough that consumers can slap them on walls and roofs to make their own at-home power stations.
These aren't ready yet. But researchers in Japan are working on pretty much the same technology, so the race is on to get it to market.
New Technology #5: Polymer cells. We usually think of polymers (plastics and synthetic rubber) as electricity insulators. But a team of Nobel prize winners are developing much cheaper solar cells based on inexpensive plastics.
They're still working out the kinks — so far, all organic solar cells degrade upon exposure to UV light, and therefore have lifetimes which are far too short to be viable. But if they can make it work, solar cells could potentially become as cheap as plastic bags.
New Technology #6: Solar curtains. Martha Stewart, take notice! We're putting solar panels on roofs, walls and windows, why not the curtains, too? An MIT researcher has created solar textiles. Made of semiconductor materials, they absorb sunlight and convert it into electricity. They can be draped like curtains while collecting solar energy and providing lighting.
New Technology #7: Tandem organic solar cells. The University of California Santa Barbara is working on another way to solve the efficiency problem of solar power — multilayered cells. Layered cells gather a wider range of the spectrum of solar radiation, so one tandem cell produces power that is equivalent to two ordinary solar cells. This technology should be pretty cheap, too. These tandem cells could hit the market in about three years.
New Technology #8: Solar power plants. I'm talking about the kind that can provide the baseline electricity for towns and potentially cities.
Solar farms in Spain and the U.S. can generate enough electricity to power entire towns.
Solar farms in Spain and the U.S. can generate enough electricity to power entire towns.
Spain is leading the way on this technology. There are nine solar power plants under construction in Spain and 28 more approved projects waiting to be built, many of them using a technology called Concentrating Solar Power (CSP).
For example, one solar thermal power plant outside Seville consists of a 40-story-high "power tower" surrounded by an array of mirrors called heliostats. The mirrors heat water in the tower, so solar power converts water to steam. This, in turn, drives turbines and generates 11 megawatts of electricity — enough to power 6,000 homes. Eventually, the plant, owned by European energy giant Abengoa, should be able to provide all the power used by the 600,000 people in Seville ... during the daytime, anyway.
The U.S. has its own vast solar farms, and it takes the #2 slot in leading the world on this technology. The oldest CSP technology sites, known as SEGS 1 through 9, have been operating reliably in the California and Nevada deserts since the 1970s.
And SunPower was recently selected by Florida Power and Light to build the largest photovoltaic power plant in the U.S., a 25-megawatt plant, in addition to a 10-megawatt plant at the Kennedy Space Center.
New Technology #9: Improved solar storage. The problem with solar power, of course, is that the sun doesn't shine at night, so you need big honking batteries to store the energy.
Molten salt storage is one solution. See, the sun's energy can be stored in molten salt, a mix of sodium and potassium nitrate. In molten form, it stores heat with 98% efficiency, and it can be called upon at any time to generate steam which will then spin a turbine to create electricity. A company called SolarReserve is doing a lot of research in this area, and it has the backing of United Technologies.
Another solution comes from a team of MIT researchers led by Dr. Daniel Nocera. They say they have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy — one that could even be used at home.
Inspired by how plants use photosynthesis, MIT's brainy bunch has developed a process that uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen can be recombined inside a fuel cell to power a house or electric car, day or night.
What's the catch? While the process to split the water molecules requires only cobalt and phosphate, the process to recombine oxygen and hydrogen in a fuel cell requires platinum, and you know how rare that is.
One solution could lie with a team of Monash University scientists who have created a new, improved fuel cell. A specially-coated form of the popular hi-tech outdoor and sporting clothing material Goretex® is the key component.
While Goretex draws water vapor away from the wearer's body, the Monash team found that Goretex can also "breathe" oxygen into a new fuel cell. And sure enough, this new design removes the need for platinum.
As You Can See, Solar Is Entering
A Whole New Phase of Innovation!
Here's How You Can Profit ...
For starters, you could check out the individual companies I've mentioned here. Just remember that an individual stock can have bad news that can blow up in your face.
For example, The U.S. Senate recently rejected a bill to extend a 30% investment-tax credit for solar energy and fuel cells for eight years. Unless that's reversed, it could have a big impact on solar power manufacturers.
Always consider the risks before you add individual stocks to your portfolio.
Or check out the two solar ETFs on the market right now ...
The Claymore/Mac Global Solar Energy Index ETF (TAN) holds a basket of 25 stocks in the solar space, and it is a fund with a global portfolio, as its name implies.
Van Eck's Market Vectors Solar Energy ETF (KWT) holds a basket of 27 stocks, also with global exposure.
What's the difference? Looking at the top five holdings of the two funds, TAN's top five make up 34%, whereas KWT's top five make up a much larger 47% of the fund.
So, if you want instant diversity, choose TAN. If you want to concentrate on the leading solar names, you might consider KWT instead.
Yours for trading profits,
Sean
© 2008 by Weiss Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
15430 Endeavour Drive, Jupiter, FL 33478
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #183 on: 2008-10-02 05:49:17 » |
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Carbon dioxide output jumps to record level in 2007
Source: Associated Press
Authors: Seth Borenstein
Dated: 2008-09-25
The world pumped up its pollution of the chief man-made global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists' projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said Thursday.
The new numbers, called "scary" by some, were a surprise because scientists thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output jumped 3 percent from 2006 to 2007.
That's an amount that exceeds the most dire outlook for emissions from burning coal and oil and related activities as projected by a Nobel Prize-winning group of international scientists in 2007.
Meanwhile, forests and oceans, which suck up carbon dioxide, are doing so at lower rates than in the 20th century, scientists said. If those trends continue, they put the world on track for the highest predicted rises in temperature and sea level.[i] Hermit : As predicted here, plants reduce CO2 intake by reducing stomal size in order to balance CO2 intake with limits to the ability to transport water to the cells. ] [/color]
The pollution leader was China, followed by the United States, which data show is the leader in emissions per person in carbon dioxide output. And although several developed countries slightly cut their CO2 output in 2007, the United States churned out more.
Still, it was large increases in China, India and other developing countries that spurred the growth of carbon dioxide pollution to a record high of 9.34 billion tons of carbon (8.47 billion metric tons). Figures released by science agencies in the United States, Great Britain and Australia show that China's added emissions accounted for more than half of the worldwide increase. China passed the United States as the No. 1 carbon dioxide polluter in 2006.
Emissions in the United States rose nearly 2 percent in 2007 after declining the previous year. The U.S. produced 1.75 billion tons of carbon (1.58 billion metric tons).
"Things are happening very, very fast," said Corinne Le Quere, professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey. "It's scary."
Gregg Marland, a senior staff scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said he was surprised at the results, because he thought world emissions would drop because of the economic downturn. That didn't happen.
"If we're going to do something [about reducing emissions], it's got to be different than what we're doing," he said.
The emissions numbers are based on data from oil giant BP PLC, which show that China has become the major driver of world trends. China emitted 2 billion tons of carbon (1.8 billion metric tons) last year, up 7.5 percent from the previous year.
"We're shipping jobs offshore from the U.S., but we're also shipping carbon dioxide emissions with them," Marland said. "China is making fertilizer and cement and steel, and all of those are heavy energy-intensive industries."
Developing countries not asked to reduce greenhouse gases by the 1997 Kyoto treaty -- China and India are among them -- now account for 53 percent of carbon dioxide pollution. That group of nations surpassed industrialized ones in carbon dioxide emissions in 2005, a new analysis of older figures shows.
India is in position to beat Russia for the No. 3 carbon dioxide polluter, Marland said. Indonesian levels are increasing rapidly.
Denmark's emissions dropped 8 percent. The United Kingdom and Germany reduced carbon dioxide pollution by 3 percent, while France and Australia cut it by 2 percent.
Nature can't keep up with the carbon dioxide from man, Le Quere said. She said that from 1955 to 2000, the forests and oceans absorbed about 57 percent of the excess carbon dioxide, but now it's 54 percent.
What is "kind of scary" is that the worldwide emissions growth is beyond the highest growth in fossil fuel predicted just two years ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Ben Santer, an atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab.
Under the panel's scenario then, temperatures would increase by 4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4 to 6.3 degrees Celsius) by 2100.
If this trend continues for the century, "you'd have to be luckier than hell for it just to be bad, as opposed to catastrophic," said Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Fritz
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #184 on: 2008-10-12 17:18:23 » |
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Hermit
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #185 on: 2009-02-02 04:12:50 » |
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Parched: Australia faces collapse as climate change kicks in
The worst heatwave in the country's history
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Source: The Independent
Authors: Geoffrey Lean, Kathy Marks
Dated: 2009-02-01
Leaves are falling off trees in the height of summer, railway tracks are buckling, and people are retiring to their beds with deep-frozen hot-water bottles, as much of Australia swelters in its worst-ever heatwave.
On Friday, Melbourne thermometers topped 43C (109.4F) on a third successive day for the first time on record, while even normally mild Tasmania suffered its second-hottest day in a row, as temperatures reached 42.2C. Two days before, Adelaide hit a staggering 45.6C. After a weekend respite, more records are expected to be broken this week.
Ministers are blaming the heat – which follows a record drought – on global warming. Experts worry that Australia, which emits more carbon dioxide per head than any nation on earth, may also be the first to implode under the impact of climate change.
At times last week it seemed as if that was happening already. Chaos ruled in Melbourne on Friday after an electricity substation exploded, shutting down the city's entire train service, trapping people in lifts, and blocking roads as traffic lights failed. Half a million homes and businesses were blacked out, and patients were turned away from hospitals.
More than 20 people have died from the heat, mainly in Adelaide. Trees in Melbourne's parks are dropping leaves to survive, and residents at one of the city's nursing homes have started putting their clothes in the freezer.
"All of this is consistent with climate change, and with what scientists told us would happen," said climate change minister Penny Wong.
Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth, is regarded as highly vulnerable. A study by the country's blue-chip Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation identified its ecosystems as "potentially the most fragile" on earth in the face of the threat.
Many factors put Australia especially at risk. Its climate is already hot, dry and variable. Its vulnerable agriculture plays an unusually important part in the economy. And most people and industry are concentrated on the coast, making it vulnerable to the rising seas and ferocious storms that come with a warmer world.
Most of the south of the country is gripped by unprecedented 12-year drought. The Australian Alps have had their driest three years ever, and the water from the vast Murray-Darling river system now fails to reach the sea 40 per cent of the time. Harvests have fallen sharply.
It will get worse as global warming increases. Even modest temperature rises, now seen as unavoidable, are expected to increase drought by 70 per cent in New South Wales, cut Melbourne's water supplies by more than a third, and dry up the Murray-Darling system by another 25 per cent.
As Professor David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne, said last week: "The heat is unusual, but it will become much more like the normal experience in 10 to 20 years."
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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the.bricoleur
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #186 on: 2009-02-02 13:15:03 » |
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More likely a consequence of the cooling in central Antarctica. MPH, most vigorous from Antarctica, produce anticyclonic agglutinations in Australia, etc.
In other news, here in my little town on the South East of England we are experiencing the worst snow in 18 years. Also likely to not be the result of AGW ...
-iolo
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #187 on: 2009-02-03 22:10:16 » |
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[Fritz]As the world churns ....
Source: Fortune Environment + Technology
Author: Todd Woody
Date: February 3, 2009, 10:50 am
China: The new wind superpower
The numbers are in, and as expected 2008 set a record year for the worldwide wind industry as new wind farms generating a total of 27,000 megawatts of greenhouse gas-free electricity came online, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
The quick-click headline was that the United States overtook the world’s green superpower, Germany, by installing 8,358 megawatts in 2008 - a 50% jump from the previous year and enough wind energy to power two million American homes. But the big story this year will be China’s rapid emergence as the next global wind power.
China last year doubled its wind energy capacity - for the fourth straight year - adding 6,300 megawatts of new electricity generation for a total capacity of 12,210 megawatts. A third of the world’s new wind capacity last year was installed in Asia, with China accounting for 73% of that power. China reached its 2010 target of generating 5,000 megawatts of wind-powered electricity in 2007 and is expected to hit its 2030 goal of 30,000 megawatts years early.
“In 2009, new installed capacity is expected to nearly double again, which will be one third or more of the world’s total new installed capacity for the year,” Li Junfeng, Secretary General of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industry Association, said in a statement.
Of course, 30,000 megawatts of wind is but a flicker in a country with more than 300,000 megawatts of coal-fired energy online but it’s huge by world standards and has spawned both a burgeoning domestic wind industry and growing investment by overseas companies. Denmark’s Vestas, the world’s largest turbine maker, will open its fifth factory in China this year and it received orders for another 200 megawatts’ worth of turbines at the end of 2008. General Electric (GE), one of only two U.S. turbine makers, also operates a factory in China and in January the company announced a joint venture with China’s A-Power Energy Generation to make turbine gearboxes. In a separate deal with A-Power, GE will supply the company with 900 turbine gearboxes starting next year.
As the financial crisis slows growth in the U.S. and Europe, India is another potential wind power. It ended 2008 with 9,645 megawatts of wind energy and added more capacity that year - 1,800 megawatts - than former world leaders Germany and Spain. Indian turbine maker Suzlon also has been moving onto European turf, relocating its international headquarters to Denmark and acquiring German turbine manufacturer REPower.
Installed global wind capacity now stands at 120.8 gigawatts with the 2008 turbine market worth $47.5 billion, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #188 on: 2009-02-14 09:32:20 » |
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Re alleged cooling in central Antarctica... the following letter, accepted and published by Nature might be relevant, as might the supporting ice core studies, gravity measurements reflecting ongoing ice loss over the Western ice sheet, and the collapse of the Wilkins shelf, expected this coming summer (which will make it one major shelf loss per year in the last decade) which might be a little difficult to deny.
Hermit
Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year
Letter
Nature 457, 459-462 (22 January 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature07669; Received 14 January 2008; Accepted 1 December 2008
Eric J. Steig1, David P. Schneider2, Scott D. Rutherford3, Michael E. Mann4, Josefino C. Comiso5 & Drew T. Shindell6
1. Department of Earth and Space Sciences and Quaternary Research Center, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
2. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado 80307, USA
3. Department of Environmental Science, Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island, USA
4. Department of Meteorology, and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA
5. NASA Laboratory for Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA
6. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York 10025, USA
Correspondence to: Eric J. Steig1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to E.J.S. (Email: steig@ess.washington.edu).
Abstract
Assessments of Antarctic temperature change have emphasized the contrast between strong warming of the Antarctic Peninsula and slight cooling of the Antarctic continental interior in recent decades1. This pattern of temperature change has been attributed to the increased strength of the circumpolar westerlies, largely in response to changes in stratospheric ozone2. This picture, however, is substantially incomplete owing to the sparseness and short duration of the observations. Here we show that significant warming extends well beyond the Antarctic Peninsula to cover most of West Antarctica, an area of warming much larger than previously reported. West Antarctic warming exceeds 0.1 °C per decade over the past 50 years, and is strongest in winter and spring. Although this is partly offset by autumn cooling in East Antarctica, the continent-wide average near-surface temperature trend is positive. Simulations using a general circulation model reproduce the essential features of the spatial pattern and the long-term trend, and we suggest that neither can be attributed directly to increases in the strength of the westerlies. Instead, regional changes in atmospheric circulation and associated changes in sea surface temperature and sea ice are required to explain the enhanced warming in West Antarctica.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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the.bricoleur
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #189 on: 2009-02-14 11:54:58 » |
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Oh, Michael Mann again is it? First he was outed with his Hockey Stick and now he is back telling us to ignore the satellite data and use his imaginary, nonexistent temperature stations.
Quote: Weather stations have been in place in Antarctica since 1957, but almost all of them are near the coast, providing no information about conditions in the continent’s interior.
Satellites are available now that calculate the surface temperature of the interior based on how much infrared light is radiated by the snowpack, but these records only go back 25 years.
The key to the study was comparing the two records and finding that they matched up closely for overlapping time periods.
The researchers then developed a statistical technique that used the data from both sources to make a new estimate of Antarctic temperature trends. |
- emphasis mine - iolo (FOX)
Considering Mann's track record with statistical techniques being shown to be completely invalid, you will forgive me for not jumping on the bandwagon just yet. A further point, as he did once with his Hockey Stick data, he is not releasing the details of his “statistical technique” that determines the temperatures at the imaginary, nonexistent weather stations. So, if you want to verify it for yourself, good luck, you'll just have to have faith in him.
I could go on ...
Lawrence Solomon: Climate change’s Antarctic ruffle
Posted: January 31, 2009, 2:22 AM by NP Editor
How does a new Nature study conclude that Antarctica is warming when actual temperature readings show it is not?
By Lawrence Solomon
Full article: Antarctic Ruffle
----
FP Letters to the Editor: Mann’s world
Posted: February 11, 2009, 7:35 PM by NP Editor
NP
Ad hominem attacks, faulty science and a state of denial
Re: Climate Change’s Antarctic Ruffle, Lawrence Solomon, Jan.31; Tabloid Fossil-Fuel Shill, Michael E. Mann, Feb. 7; and Mann’s Conclusions Not To Be Believed, Lawrence Solomon, Feb 7.
As a member of the scientific community, Dr. Mann should realize that scientific hypotheses — and his global climate-change model is just that, a hypothesis — are evaluated based on the scientific method: critical evaluation of the available evidence to determine whether it supports the hypothesis or not. Using an ad hominem attack as a response to critical evaluation, as he does in this article, does not contribute to the factual debate. Rather, it only serves to weaken his argument. An apt analogy from poker is that Dr. Mann has become so heavily invested in this pot (hypothesis) that he has gone “all in” — and been called.
Michael Weber, Biology lab co-ordinator, Carleton University, Ottawa.
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Lawrence Solomon’s Jan. 31 column notes that a recent article in Nature magazine presents the results of a study that, contrary to earlier general acceptance, has now deduced that Antarctica’s average temperatures have actually risen since 1957. In line with the approach of his columns and his book, The Deniers, Mr. Solomon does not dispute this personally, but rather relates that the initial response of many top scientists, including even some in the “doomsayer camp,” has been one of concern and reservation about the validity of this study’s methodology and hence its conclusions.
He also notes that one of the authors was Michael Mann, well known as the author of the global warming hockey stick temperature graph that a highly-qualified review panel reporting to the U.S. House of Representatives found to be based on faulty statistical methodology, and to demonstrate a less certain and exaggerated historical global temperature trend.
Mann’s Feb. 7 response to Solomon is a ranting cacophony of comments that Mr. Solomon has simply based this and past efforts in this field on lies and disinformation, and was influenced and funded by the fossil-fuel industry. Mann fails to substantiate these accusations, and glosses over the ignominious demise of the hockey stick graph, seemingly indicating his state of complete denial. Ironically, this makes him another Denier, albeit quite a different one from those Mr. Solomon has written about.
Considering the general tone of Mann’s response, perhaps it would be fitting to interpret his description of Mr. Solomon as the “most dishonest industry advocate in the climate change debate” as actually meaning the “most effective advocate of open, objective discussion in the debate.”
Gordon Stockman, West Kelowna, B.C.
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The comment from Michael E. Mann, entitled “Tabloid Fossil-Fuel Shill,” reminds me of an article by Dr. Ralph M. Rotty titled, “The Nature of the CO2 Problem: Certainties and Uncertainties” published in 1984 in Environmental Progress.
Dr. Rotty suggested then that; “If the theory is correct, within the next two decades the signal of the CO2 effect on climate should become quite clear.” He was referring to the small size of a CO2 induced warming “signal” relative to the “noise” of natural climate variability.
It seems that 2½ decades later, the warming signal is not clear at all. In addition, we are now regaled incessantly with other kinds of “noise” from Dr. Mann and many others who make identification of signal vs. noise very difficult. His assertion, copped from an army of global warming dogmatists, that those who question aspects of CO2 induced global warming are “purveyors of fossil fuel-funded disinformation” is particularly odious and unhelpful.
Actually, Dr. Rotty’s article still seems very current and thoughtful. Fast forward from 1984 to 2009 and, if he were still with us, he might again indicate we have a couple of decades to evaluate the signal and “gain time to better understand all of the aspects of the problem.” Is it time for another time out?
Duane Pendergast, Lethbridge, Alta.
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As a former statistical software manager who has dabbled in portfolio management simulations, I was struck by the similarity in approach in estimating Antarctic climate change as described in Lawrence Solomon’s column, “Climate Change Antarctic ruffle.” It’s as if climate change were being estimated by hedge fund managers and financial derivative speculators, perhaps with similar results. Leverage always increases volatility. It’s risky to allot some individuals too much leverage.
William R Watt, Ottawa.
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While it is certainly true that the Mann hockey stick temperature plot of the last millennium “became slapstick as it became an object of ridicule [once] Mann’s statistical techniques were shown to be entirely invalid,” Environment Canada continues to at least pretend that it doesn’t know about this rather old piece of news.
Over five years after the graph was totally debunked by Canadian experts, the department still highlights the graph in the climate science section of its Web site as being indicative of real temperatures over the past 1,000 years. Scientists inside the department know perfectly well that the graph is wrong, but it appears that politically motivated communications staff and other political strategists trump real scientists when it comes to deciding what goes on Environment Canada’s Web site.
Tom Harris, executive director, International Climate Science Coalition, Ottawa.
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #190 on: 2009-02-14 13:25:48 » |
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1) Mann was not the primary author of this letter, although he was a member of the team. So there are 5 other scientists being attacked by the "mad dogs" who it appears were so infuriated by the appearance of Mann's name that they didn't bother to think what exactly they should be attacking - and why personalities ought to be irrelevant - or if they did, it didn't show in what was posted here. Here is a decent response from RealClimate via the Guardian from people who have the enthusiasm and the time to reply to this kind of scurrilous combination of ad hominem, dishonest assertion and fuzzy thinking. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/29/network-media-coverage-climate-change
2) Apropos of something, the so called "hockey stick" is far from being the discredited monster that the sources quoted here appear to imagine. For a decent rebuttal of their science by innuendo and mockery try http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/03/hockey-stick-is-broken.php.
Don't forget to have fun :-)
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #191 on: 2009-02-24 22:44:10 » |
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[Fritz]So, like, they're just saying
Source: Times
Author: Camilla Cavendish
Date: February 14, 2009
The Gaia thinker's latest book warns that climate disaster is imminent
It's too late for Planet Earth, says James Lovelock
You may feel, as job losses soar and parts of the world descend into turmoil, that you're apocalypsed-out for February. If so, you may not immediately leap at James Lovelock's forthcoming book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia. His warning that climate change is spinning us into a hot world, where billions will starve and whole ecosystems will collapse, is a horror few want to contemplate, leavened only by the faint consolation that those of us lucky enough to live in the British Isles, Siberia, Chile, Canada or New Zealand may survive. But his prophecies are plausible and they will also make you think, which are two good reasons to grit your teeth and read him.
It is human nature to prefer writers who confirm the accepted wisdom to those who speak inconvenient truths. Look at the journalists who warned two years ago that Iceland's banks were over-leveraged. Remember the late fund manager Tony Dye, who was ridiculed for predicting the dotcom bust and was fired by his employer, Phillips & Drew, only weeks before the stock market turned. The media has been similarly dismissive of scientists who fear that it is too late to avert serious climate change. We prefer those who warn that there are dangers, but that they are far off and containable. Four years ago, when Lovelock forecast widespread devastation, he was generally dismissed as a lovable “maverick”, a word that always makes me sit up because it is a favourite weapon of the Establishment to fend off difficult ideas.
Suddenly, in 2009, Lovelock's fears strike a chord. The Vanishing Face of Gaia has been hailed as “the most important book for decades” by Andrew Marr, a man not especially sympathetic to green issues or conspiracies. The book is powerful, not only because of the scary scale and speed of change that Lovelock foresees, making the first chapters as pacey as a Hollywood romp, but also because he is a serious, hands-on scientist. While working at Nasa in the 1960s he invented the electron capture detector, which enabled him to point the world to the dangers of the ozone hole and pesticides such as DDT. He has also built spy gadgets for MI6. Nor is he a conventional green. He loathes wind farms, is passionately pro-nuclear and is scathing about “saving the planet”. The planet will look after itself, he says. It's humans we need to save, and soon.
What Lovelock calls his “final warning” (he is 90) has new resonance because of the increasingly alarming data that is coming from the observation of everything from species numbers and deforestation to sea levels and Arctic ice. Satellite images and expeditions suggest that Arctic summer sea ice is disappearing much faster than was thought even two years ago. Then, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that this ice would disappear towards the end of this century. Now, scientists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, Cambridge University and elsewhere, are predicting that the summer sea ice may disappear in 20 years.
Why does this matter? Because ice reflects sunlight. A dark iceless sea will absorb it. If the Arctic does an “albedo flip” from light to dark, this could raise sea levels and melt parts of the Arctic permafrost that are keeping the lid on enormous quantities of greenhouse gases. As a result, Jim Hansen of Nasa has said that the IPCC models that expect gradual changes may be woefully misleading. Hansen points out that when temperatures increased to between 2 and 3 degrees above today's level 3.5 million years ago sea levels rose by 25m, not the 59cm being predicted by the IPCC. Like Lovelock, Hansen is dismissed in some quarters as an extremist. I had dinner with him last year in London. He came across as supremely rational.
Even a 5m rise in sea level would dramatically change life for millions of people. While only 2 per cent of the world's land is less than 10m above the mid-tide sea level, it is inhabited by 10 per cent of the world's population. A 5m rise would inundate large parts of cities, including London, New York, Sydney, Vancouver, Mumbai and Tokyo, and leave their surrounding areas vulnerable to storm surges. Shanghai has an average elevation of only 4m. Whole regions of Florida, Louisiana, the Netherlands and Bangladesh would also vanish. This is one reason why the Dutch have been at the forefront of developing renewable energy and floating houses - 60 per cent of them live at or below sea level - and the dykes and pumps they have built are increasingly vulnerable to flooding. The feared 25m rise is predicted to occur within our lifetimes. To put it another way, our grandchildren will be living in this submerged world.
As we begin 2009 there is a striking gap between the tone struck by politicians and business leaders, who are beginning to take climate change seriously, but with a “we can beat it” tone, and scientists who are getting markedly more gloomy. In the past year researchers at the University of East Anglia have suggested that the Gulf Stream will be altered by changes in Arctic temperatures. The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has stated that world carbon emissions must peak by 2015 and disappear altogether by 2050. Dr Vicky Pope, at the Met Office Hadley Centre, has said that temperatures will rise by 5C by the end of the century if no action is taken. The mainstream view is that such an increase would be catastrophic.
You can question these figures. The Met Office isn't great at predicting the weather three days ahead: how can it know what will happen in 2100? There has been a steady rise in sea level for the past decade but little change - possibly even a drop - in global temperature. This must surely cast doubt on the warming-world thesis, a point made elegantly by Nigel Lawson in his book Appeal to Reason. Lovelock himself admits that there are still huge gaps in our knowledge. The Earth's system is so complex and interconnected that, he says, “we are like a 19th-century physician trying to give a sensible prognosis to a patient with diabetes”.
So why is he so sure that the hot world is on its way, within decades? “Compare the Earth with an iced drink,” he says. “The drink stays cold until the last of the ice melts ...a great deal of the heat of global heating has gone into warming that huge lump of water, the ocean, and into melting ice.” This could help to explain why temperatures have not yet risen. The danger is that they will rise rapidly once the ice disappears, causing the Earth to flip into a permanently hotter state.
“There is a trustworthy indicator of the Earth's heat balance, and that is the sea level. Its rise is a general and reliable indicator that cuts through arguments as to whether some glaciers are melting and others advancing. The sea level rises for two reasons only: from ice on land that melts and from the expansion of the ocean as it warms. It is like the liquid in a thermometer: as the Earth warms the sea level rises.”
Even if concerns about sea-ice are overdone, Lovelock thinks that global warming is not the only problem. He is one of the few scientists prepared to address the deeply unfashionable issue of population. Even if we were not pumping so much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere by heating buildings and driving, he believes, the Earth cannot support seven billion people who are destroying natural habitats and species at a rate not seen since the death of the dinosaurs. This is not romantic: by razing forests and making the oceans barren we are reducing the planet's capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. We cannot solve the problem simply by abandoning fossil fuels, he believes. In fact, one theory, of global dimming, suggests that our pollution haze partially shields us from the Sun's heat. If European governments ever deliver on their grand promises to reduce emissions by 60 per cent, the atmosphere may get hotter. What a scary Catch-22.
The thought that maybe nothing can be done will be anathema to the many scientists and entrepreneurs who are being swept up in what I have previously called a new Green Rush, accelerated in the past two weeks by President Obama's declaration of war on global warming. But it is worth thinking through the worst-case scenario. Lovelock believes that many countries will be wiped out by drought but certain temperate ones will remain fertile, rather conveniently including Britain and New Zealand. These will be the “lifeboats” of the world. Their leaders will have to take difficult decisions about who to let on board, creating the hideous spectre of a fortress Britain, with land divided rigidly between high-density cities and intensive farming.
Lovelock's views about energy are equally controversial. Crusty greens who are attracted to the New Ageiness of “Gaia”, Lovelock's concept of the Earth as one living whole , will be spitting lentils at his ideas about energy. He believes that renewable energy is “an elaborate scam” made possible by enormous subsidies. He loathes the ugliness of wind farms and thinks that Europe's widespread use of wind “will be remembered as one of the great follies of the 21st century”.
It is great to hear someone challenging the accepted wisdom about alternative energy. But he lacks the detailed knowledge that he has about the atmosphere. Tom Burke, of Imperial College (an opponent of nuclear power), says that Lovelock is “very knowledgeable about how Earth systems work, and he is right about the need to integrate science. But he does not apply the same intellectual rigour to his judgments about energy”.
Nevertheless, he is right when he rails that environmentalism has come too close to being a religion, “complete with dogma, icons and simple answers to all environmental problems”. This book makes you realise that nothing - GM food, nuclear power, family planning - should be taboo. The problem is that his descriptions of the Earth as Gaia, a living system, are so religious in tone.
But Lovelock does offer some hope: for example, that climate change could be reversible through geo-engineering, by reflecting the Sun's heat back into space (for instance, with giant sunshades or artificial clouds) or by fertilising the oceans to grow more algae and remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Meanwhile Lovelock is about to blast off into space, courtesy of Sir Richard Branson's “ultimate upgrade” on Virgin Intergalactic. He wants to see the Earth before she fades from the blue and green we know to the brown that he fears. We must hope that he is wrong. But if we face the possibility that he could be right, we have a better chance to avoid that future.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Fritz
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #192 on: 2009-02-25 22:29:31 » |
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[Fritz]Just the messenger
Canadian prof: Green IT is a waste of time
Source: The Register
Author : Lewis Page
Date: 25th February 2009 12:49 GMT
A prominent Canadian academic in the tech-policy field has said that "Green IT" initiatives don't work.
"Most of the negative environmental impacts [of IT] occur in the form of completely unintended, second and third order effects," says Professor Richard Hawkins of Calgary Uni. "These 'rebound' effects may not be mitigated by inventing 'greener' IT products and, indeed, may be intensified by such changes."
As an example, the prof cites mobile phones, saying that even if the phone itself has no environmental consequences its existence will still encourage people to move about more - in cars, planes, whatever - than they otherwise would, so contributing to carbon emissions and climate change.
"We didn't adopt the mobile phone so we could drive and talk on the phone, we adopted it because we were already driving so much. Creating a greener cell phone won't reduce the impact of increased mobility. The real question is what amount of mobility is sustainable?"
This line of argument would also no doubt apply to such technologies as mobile push email, voip, video calling, netbooks etc. If you didn't have that smartphone or UMPC you'd stay in the office and burn less transport fuel, sort of thing.
This isn't just your ordinary academic pondering - Hawkins' research may influence global policymakers. He and his team will be presenting their thoughts at a Euro comms-policy conference in Spain next month, and to the UN Earth Summit at the end of the year. This will inform the OECD IT'n'sustainability initiative, among other things.
There are full details from Calgary Uni here. ®
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Fritz
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #193 on: 2009-02-25 22:53:22 » |
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I can't help but wonder if the timing of the money crisis and the renewed effort to say humans are not a screw up, be happy, because crapping in your nest is in no way hurting you; is a coincidence .... 
Give me strength
Fritz
Japan's boffins: Global warming isn't man-made
Climate science is 'ancient astrology', claims report
Source: The Register
Author: Andrew Orlowski
Date: 25th February 2009 12:23 GMT
Exclusive Japanese scientists have made a dramatic break with the UN and Western-backed hypothesis of climate change in a new report from its Energy Commission.
Three of the five researchers disagree with the UN's IPCC view that recent warming is primarily the consequence of man-made industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. Remarkably, the subtle and nuanced language typical in such reports has been set aside.
One of the five contributors compares computer climate modelling to ancient astrology. Others castigate the paucity of the US ground temperature data set used to support the hypothesis, and declare that the unambiguous warming trend from the mid-part of the 20th Century has ceased.
The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is astonishing rebuke to international pressure, and a vote of confidence in Japan's native marine and astronomical research. Publicly-funded science in the West uniformly backs the hypothesis that industrial influence is primarily responsible for climate change, although fissures have appeared recently. Only one of the five top Japanese scientists commissioned here concurs with the man-made global warming hypothesis.
JSER is the academic society representing scientists from the energy and resource fields, and acts as a government advisory panel. The report appeared last month but has received curiously little attention. So The Register commissioned a translation of the document - the first to appear in the West in any form. Below you'll find some of the key findings - but first, a summary.
Summary
Three of the five leading scientists contend that recent climate change is driven by natural cycles, not human industrial activity, as political activists argue.
Kanya Kusano is Program Director and Group Leader for the Earth Simulator at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology (JAMSTEC). He focuses on the immaturity of simulation work cited in support of the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Using undiplomatic language, Kusano compares them to ancient astrology. After listing many faults, and the IPCC's own conclusion that natural causes of climate are poorly understood, Kusano concludes:
"[The IPCC's] conclusion that from now on atmospheric temperatures are likely to show a continuous, monotonous increase, should be perceived as an unprovable hypothesis," he writes.
Shunichi Akasofu, head of the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, has expressed criticism of the theory before. Akasofu uses historical data to challenge the claim that very recent temperatures represent an anomaly:
"We should be cautious, IPCC's theory that atmospheric temperature has risen since 2000 in correspondence with CO2 is nothing but a hypothesis. "
Akasofu calls the post-2000 warming trend hypothetical. His harshest words are reserved for advocates who give conjecture the authority of fact.
"Before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for truth... The opinion that great disaster will really happen must be broken."
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Hermit
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Re:The Flipping Point
« Reply #194 on: 2009-02-26 00:37:42 » |
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Quote:| "JSER is the academic society representing scientists from the energy and resource fields, and acts as a government advisory panel." |
And these are the very epitome of disinterested scientists? Or the last whine of a country absolutely dependent on increasingly dirty fossil fuels?
Their criticism of models is partially but not completely valid. There are a lot of known unknowns. Nonetheless most of the models give remarkably similar, and disturbing, results. Criticism of observations and fundamentals is not even slightly valid. Things around the world are changing and are changing at unexpectedly rapid rates. If the cause is not anthromorphic, it is inexplicable as there are no hypotheses to deal with them, and we should be even more concerned because that suggests that our ability to affect the process of change may be very much more limited than we had hoped.
I don't care if anthropogenic influence is "an hypothesis" or not any more than I care whether evolution - or Ohms law are "hypothesis" (they are). What I care about is whether they make predictions (they do), whether they make sense (more than anything else currently available) and whether global climate change and its consequences for the weather are behaving as predicted (they are) and to a small extent, if the consequences of doing nothing are potentially worse than the available cures (much). The last is only a small consideration as the end of cheap fuel is in sight, and the catastrophic consequences of that suggest we look for solutions to the GCC problem and the end of cheap fuel problem simultaneously. After all, in the same way that it just isn't sensible to encourage people to poop in our wells, we shouldn't pollute the only planet we have to live on.
If GCC is anthropogenic the near future will bring far worse changes as we strain for every last molecule, however dirty, of energy unless we address the energy issue first. It is more urgent even if less important. So whether or not GCC is anthropogenic we need solutions now, while we still have relatively affordable fossil fuels to help address both the energy crunch and the climate crunch. The only two viable energy sources are fusion and space solar, both should be funded and attempted as emergency projects. Only one of the two offers the ability to perform short term regulation of global temperatures and ice formation. And those are the dual purpose solar mirrors. Which suggests to me that that project should be receiving the vast majority of funding.
Kindest Regards
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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