All these engineers! I should start calling myself the Worried Scientist....
Anyway, you are entitled to your opinion on Diamond, An Engineer, it just annoys me a little that you can dismiss someone who's pretty much devoted their entire working life to studying these issues, so quickly with a few hand waving comments. He is a world expert. I read the book many years ago and still consider it one of the best books I've read.

I'm a historian, not an engineer or scientist and an academic librarian by profession. I've read Guns, Germs, and Steel and it makes perfect sense. Geography and history are very tightly entwined.

Dear posters, why everything should be blown out of proportions in such ridiculous way? The world around us is way more complicated than our oversimplified interpretation.

Coal-to-liquid could complement sizeable amount of exported oil for countries without adequate oil reserves or money to buy oil freely, at least at the time. It will never be major source of liquid fuel, period. And it will never be exhausted, at least for couple of thousand years. I do not think we will use coal in 100 years from now for anything more then cement and iron production.

Biofuels could economically supplement 10-15% of our current oil demand. In worst case scenario (peak oil), we can reduce oil demand for transportation by going 50% electric, and the rest supply from remaining oil, biofuel, and synthetic fuel.

Corn ethanol is perfect way to supplement and improve our current gasoline stock, for about 3-5% of current demand, and also the best ever invented way to stabilize corn prices on decent level, having ample food spare capacity without troubles of overproduction (corn prices collapse and farmers bankruptcy), and the way to revitalize rural America. Anyone thinking that corn ethanol or biodiesel is silver bullet probably has never been outside big city limits.

Same with waste to fuel. An Engineer should google “waste to fuel” to find out ample data, and inevitably estimations of one of the experts on the subject, Engineer-Poet. Estimations are that waste-to-fuel could physically satisfy 5-10% of our fuel demand, economy out of question. I found Engineer-Poet estimations over optimistic. Recycling of any useable portion of waste makes more sense then combustion, and landfill biogas returns back most of usable energy content of garbage anyway.

Speaking of out of proportion, GW scare is the champion. For mercantile, political, and ideological reasons it is inflated to the extend of dot com bubble.

Scientific facts: it is proved that warmer climate produces more precipitation and less droughts; increased CO2 concentration significantly increases tolerance of plants to drought conditions; Earth biosphere as a whole benefits from warmer climate; adaptability of plants and living creatures to climate changes are by the order of magnitude higher than any projected speed of climate change; for 8 years global temperatures did not increased, oceans slightly cooled, and most probably we are entering temperature downward trend.

Scarcity of water is fairy tale for people never been outside. Check numbers for Israel agriculture export, amount of rice and citrus grown in California, and how much oranges are exported from Morocco and Algeria. For every glass of orange juice produced 1000 glasses of water is needed. Period. Restrictions for summer usage of water in city is clear evidence of incompetent city management. We have it too in Vancouver (dubbed “Raincoover” ).

P.S. Jarrred Diamond is a biologist. I find his books very interesting from that point of view. At least I got the idea why European diseases devastated North America and not the way around. His historical and civilization evolution ideas are… well, interesting.

Cervus:

Wow! I seriously think that librarian and historian would make better political leader that currently proliferated lawyer. Or other leader, for that matter.

This reminds me of the amd vs intel and ati s nvidia threads only with more SCIENCE!

FRact is right now it looks like corn will find its place simple because the corn plant can be modded to produce good solid results and because we already produce so much corn for corn surup that we prolly have plenty of room for oil.

As for h2. Never underestimate a bunch of super rich geeks and an indtsry hungry to find a new fuel to sell.

If there is a way they will make it work and so far they are doing amazingly well.

As for ev.. Again welthy geeks and people wnating to sell stuff adds up to a force worth watching... Not as large a geek factor as h2 and not as large an EVIL!!!!! corp backing but hey give it time im sure they can become evil enough sooner or later.

And biofuels.. other then raping rainforests and likely causing dozens of environmental nightmares we wont figure out till we are mutating or whatever... it looks promising that they can make a fair supply. Not enough but a fair supply.

In the long run, clean energy availability will not be a problem. The sun and many other relatively clean sources can supply all the energy we need and/

1) We will learn how to use energy much more effciently, enough to reduce the total requirement by 50% and much more in certain areas. Energy used for lighting (25% of total) can be easily reduced by 70% with high efficiency Florescents and long lasting (life time) LED, etc.

2) Energy conservation will become an accepted way to behave and will also contribute to the overall energy efficiency. Generating less wastes and converting the unavoidable to energy may be (a minor) but important part of it, etc.

3) Abundant clean energy (mostly electrical) will fulfill the majority of our future energy requirements.

4) Our grand (or great grand) children will be amused (or disgusted) by all these discussions about using food to produce fuel for our inefficient ICE gas guzzlers, while millions are starving.

5) Unproductive (desert) areas in Africa could produce enough clean electrical energy to satisfy Europe + Africa and better feed it's people with the revenues.

6) USA and Mexico + many others could do likewise.

Andrey and whoever else is interested in a fairly short summary of the conclusions of the IPCC take a look at this PDF.

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

Andrey take special note of figure SPM-7 that summarizes the predicted changes in precipitation between 180-1999 compared to 2090-2099. What you will notice in general is the negative change situated over most of the subtropical regions. In fact it indicates an expansion of the subtropical dry zone or movement of the Hadley cell pole-ward. While countries located more towards the poles may in general receive more precipitation, a large proportion of countries closer to the equator will receive less. These changes have already been occurring as has been noted for Australia previously. Also note that it is not merely temperatures that are changing, the energy of weather systems will increase making it harder for agriculture in general. Part of the problem is one of adaptation, as has been discussed previously. If a national border or the sea prevents you from moving towards more rain what do you do? Our present agricultural systems are geographically based on the weather systems that have been in place for millennia. This is not doom and gloom or some concocted global conspiracy designed to scare you. It is a presentation of the best scientific forecasts available. Holding out that this is a scam borders on delusional. While I think we can adapt and mitigate the worst-case scenarios it will require global political will as well as engineering solutions.

30% increase...114 ga ethanol/ton biomass (average) -> ~148 ga/ton.
_I'd suspect the same for other syngas derived fuels. I'd wager this also bumps gasoline yield above 100 ga/ton.
_Factor in 1 billion tons of existing biomass waste as feedstock, and you may get ~2.4 billion barrels (gasoline equivalent). That is a bit over 6.6 million barrels/day.

An Engineer notes the availability of waste, but conspicuously fails to quantify
1. How much of it there is, and
2. How much demand it can satisfy.
E-P,
You got to be kidding me! You don't have a number in mind? I guess we will have to trust Uncle Sam (a.k.a. UDSA/DOE), then. Q1: 1.3 billion ton/year. Q2: Enough to replace a third of our transportation fuel demand. I know, the report is a bit short on tech info (such as what exactly the third adds up to, what conversion efficiency [if any] was used, etc.), and it is probably optimistic. But even so, I rate it as the best alternative to persue, certainly much better than corn (or any) ethanol.

These are crucial questions.
Amen to that.

If he has answers to them, I'd like to see his proposal for tackling the combined problems of shrinking energy returns from fossil fuels and GHG emissions.
Once again, you disappoint, E-P! Pull yourself together!

Let's see: I propose we take a free resource and convert it to something useful. In effect that means using the energy in the material twice. It also means replacing fossil fuels with renewable fuel. So much for shrinking fossil fuels and GHG.

If he has anything I haven't taken into account yet, I'd sure like to know about it.
I have to plead ignorance. What have you taken into account?

Sasol's knowledge has huge potential.

Sasol has been producing Fischer-Tropsch synthetic liquid fuels (Synfuels)
on a large commercial scale for many years.

gasandoil.com comments:
"It has long been too expensive to compete with standard crude oil.
On the plus side, sulphur and other pollutants such as ash and mercury are removed
-- the sulphur can be sold as a by-product
-- and carbon dioxide is segregated and can be injected underground.
If hydrogen is needed for fuel cells, these plants can also provide it.
In the near term, the petrol and diesel produced are high grade and clean,
meeting even future 'lean diesel' requirements of the United States. "

"The real question is if these plants can be built and reliably produce fuels
for less than $ 20 a barrel.
Sasol already produces 150,000 bpd from coal.
(Conversion from natural gas is cheaper
and Sasol is in the process of switching its feedstock to gas in South Africa.)
Each of the Chinese plants would be four times as large as the existing Sasol plant,
and scaling up can involve difficulties.
If Sasol can make these larger plants work at the publicised costs,
this technology could be used by many other nations -- rich and poor --
who are willing to forego periods of very cheap oil for more security. "

http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/features/fex43159.htm

$20 per barrel (42 US gal or about 160 litres) implies raw material cost of
50 cents per gallon or 12.5 cents per litre.
When oil was $18 per barrel that was uneconomic.
With rapidly rising wages in China, CTL will probably cost more now,
but while the crude oil price ranges from $35 to $60,
CTL could offer competitive and stable costs.

Wits University is researchiing the fourth-generation of Sasol technology
which the above article says
"is expected to be 30% more efficient than the current technology".

MIT estimates that Carbon Capture & Sequestration (CCS)
costs about 1 to 2 cents per kilowatt hour
which is about 10 to 20 cents per litre (38 to 76 per gallon) of liquid fuel.

http://sequestration.mit.edu/pdf/David_and_Herzog.pdf

Known coal reserves are more than 300 years and widely dispersed geographically.

Sasol CTL + CCS might offer the possibility of CTL fuel with CCS
at a cost of 88 to 136 cents per gallon
(or even less if the fourth generation technology delivers
the efficiency improvements hoped for).

In places where waste Biomass costs less to collect than coal + CCS,
Sasol's Fisher-Tropoff research & development will make synthetic biofuels
("BTL" or "Sunfuel") more cost competitive.

Hence if this project is successful it could give many countries an alternative
to importing OPEC oil.
The impact of that could be to put a ceiling on the price OPEC can demand
for its oil.
Western governments might also then have a choice of buying oil from OPEC
or buying CTL from a large range of suppliers.

An Engineer, your one sentence dismissal the Pulitzer prize winning book "Guns Germs and Steel" by the UCLA Prof. unfortunately betrays quite a shallow understanding of the issues and a heavy bias. What is your bias? What are your explanations for some of the issues raised in the book?
I see, the fact that the guy is an academic at a respected institution means he is above making huge mistakes? How ignorant of me.

I'm sorry, I think the guy's ideas are preposterous. Want to tell me that we are all victims of climate and that nothing we do can change that? Sorry, I don't buy that, no matter who is selling...

Markus:

Climate models can not predict (IPCC prefer to use word “project”) future by principle, because climate (and weather) is chaotic system. Climate models failed miserably to explain observed in last 25 years climate changes. Especially spectacular was failure to predict regional climate patterns. See, for example:

http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/scorecard.htm

Observed general trend is quite clear: warmer climate means more precipitation on global level. How it will be distributed – nobody knows. But only very naïve person could believe that nature will selectively increase rainfall in wet places and decrease it in dry, just to make our life miserable.

Regional climate variations, regardless of climate change (climate is always changing, it is just doing it very slowly), routinely produced severe multi-year droughts in the past, and will produce in the future, and we should be prepared for it anyway.

World food production is suffering from severe overproduction (20% of US corn was distilled to fuel ethanol this year, half of Brazil is driving on sugar cane, Europe paying 50 billions yearly for their farmers to not produce, Asia is converting to drive on vegetable oil), and international trade could take care of any regional droughts in a snap of the fingers.

P.S. Currently agriculture accounts for 5% of global GDP, and in Australia (major world food exporter) only 3.5%. In 20 years yield of crops per ha in Australia increased by 60%. Take a look how Australian agriculture “suffer” from Global Warming:

http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/agriculture-food/country-profile-9.html

Dear posters, why everything should be blown out of proportions in such ridiculous way? The world around us is way more complicated than our oversimplified interpretation.
Dear Andrey,
You take the prize for unsupported generalizations and misrepresentations! Taking it from the top...

Coal-to-liquid could complement sizeable amount of exported oil for countries without adequate oil reserves or money to buy oil freely, at least at the time.
OK, whatever...

It will never be major source of liquid fuel, period.
Never say never, especially without any kind of logic or supporting evidence. Who knows? Coal may be THE source of liquid fuels 50 years from now...

And it will never be exhausted, at least for couple of thousand years. I do not think we will use coal in 100 years from now for anything more then cement and iron production.
Again, saying never, without any kind of explanation. And coal use for cement production is already being replaced with renewable fuels (E-P, I trust you are on top of this) such as MSW and biosolids.

Biofuels could economically supplement 10-15% of our current oil demand.
I actually agree with your number, but note you again fail to show how it was determined.

In worst case scenario (peak oil), we can reduce oil demand for transportation by going 50% electric, and the rest supply from remaining oil, biofuel, and synthetic fuel.
Peak Oil = Worst case scenario? How? Right now global warming seems a tad more urgent. Even if oil peaked today, it would probably take five years before we notice a definite downward trend. And by then the oil price will have destroyed quite a bit of demand, as it did in 2006.

And why 50% from electric? How did you calculate that? How about 10% electric?

Also, you may know that electricity is not a source of energy. So where does the electricity come from?

Corn ethanol is perfect way to supplement and improve our current gasoline stock, for about 3-5% of current demand,...
Here is a free example of the sort of supporting evidence I am referring to: In 2005, about 14% of the US corn harvest (about 10 billion bushels) was used to produce 4 billion gallons of ethanol. After factoring in that ethanol only has about 2/3rds the energy per gallon that gasoline has, that would be enough to replace 0.87% of the US crude demand (~20 million bbl/d).

So, if 100% of the 2005 corn harvest was converted to ethanol, it would replace 6.2% of US oil consumption. Note that this not workable - are we going to import all the corn we eat? How expensive is corn (and a host of other foods) going to get under this scenario?

...and also the best ever invented way to stabilize corn prices on decent level, having ample food spare capacity without troubles of overproduction (corn prices collapse and farmers bankruptcy), and the way to revitalize rural America.
LOL! I guess you failed to notice that corn prices is up 50% already - and climbing as ethanol plants are spreading like a disease through the midwest. Here's the problem: assuming farmers enjoy those high corn prices, who is going to buy the expensive corn ethanol? You can't have it both ways: either high corn prices help farmers and kill corn ethanol, or low corn prices kill farmers but help corn ethanol.

Anyone thinking that corn ethanol or biodiesel is silver bullet probably has never been outside big city limits.
OK, you nailed that one. In general converting food to fuel is so stupid, only a politician would support the idea...

Same with waste to fuel. An Engineer should google “waste to fuel” to find out ample data, and inevitably estimations of one of the experts on the subject, Engineer-Poet. Estimations are that waste-to-fuel could physically satisfy 5-10% of our fuel demand, economy out of question.
Again, no support for your numbers. And waste to fuel makes a much more sense than food to fuel. Don't loose sleep over the economy of it, when you take waste (unlike food) you are not competing for a scarce commodity, you are not taking food of people's tables, and you get a huge environmental benefit.

I found Engineer-Poet estimations over optimistic.
I find your estimates overly pessimistic. Neither statement makes any sense in the absence of evidence. See my reply to E-P above for evidence. Now we still wait to hear how you determined E-P was over optimistic.

Recycling of any useable portion of waste makes more sense then combustion,...
Nobody is arguing about that, but even at much higher recycling rates than the current norm, things eventually break down and must be tossed out, no longer recyclable.

...and landfill biogas returns back most of usable energy content of garbage anyway.
In a word: BULL! Landfill gas is a toxic mix of all sorts of unwanted compounds, and low BTU as well. In addition, you have no way to control the rate at which things break down, so you have to wait for years while certain things slowly decompose.

It is much more efficient to feed the waste to a dedicated processing plant and convert it to a liquid fuel (oil replacement) rather than electricity (no shortage of that, since ENRON melted anyway).

Speaking of out of proportion, GW scare is the champion. For mercantile, political, and ideological reasons it is inflated to the extend of dot com bubble.
Keep going Mr. Know-it-all. We are bathing our minds in your wisdom...

Scientific facts: it is proved that warmer climate produces more precipitation and less droughts;
LOL! Read marcus' reply to that. What you failed to understand (assuming you read a scientific report on the subject) is that GW leads to more frequent and larger events on both ends of the scale. As in more severe droughts, more severe storms and flooding. It has to do with heat causing more rapid evaporation and the evaporated water coming down somewhere else.

increased CO2 concentration significantly increases tolerance of plants to drought conditions;
I am going to bet you got that wrong to. Go ahead, prove me wrong with some evidence.

Earth biosphere as a whole benefits from warmer climate;
Please do explain that strange statement. I guess you are no fan of polar bears.

adaptability of plants and living creatures to climate changes are by the order of magnitude higher than any projected speed of climate change;
Tell that to the polar bears. Perhaps you meant to say :"adaptability of some plants and living creatures..." Even that would be debatable.

for 8 years global temperatures did not increased, oceans slightly cooled, and most probably we are entering temperature downward trend.
Please do share your source of information on this, and forward the good news to Al Gore. Then again, maybe you should just learn not to rely on Rush for scientific data. Here is a report that seems to differ from your opinion: The mean global surface temperature has increased by about 0.3 to 0.6°C since the late 19th century and by about 0.2 to 0.3°C over the last 40 years, which is the period with most reliable data. Recent years have been among the warmest since 1860 - the period for which instrumental records are available.

Scarcity of water is fairy tale for people never been outside. Check numbers for Israel agriculture export, amount of rice and citrus grown in California, and how much oranges are exported from Morocco and Algeria. For every glass of orange juice produced 1000 glasses of water is needed. Period. Restrictions for summer usage of water in city is clear evidence of incompetent city management. We have it too in Vancouver (dubbed “Raincoover” ).
As I said, toilet-to-tap, and pinch your nose, if you must.

P.S. Jarrred Diamond is a biologist. I find his books very interesting from that point of view. At least I got the idea why European diseases devastated North America and not the way around. His historical and civilization evolution ideas are… well, interesting.

Wow! I seriously think that librarian and historian would make better political leader that currently proliferated lawyer. Or other leader, for that matter.
Well, I guess we agree on those...

"I see, the fact that the guy is an academic at a respected institution means he is above making huge mistakes? How ignorant of me."

Perhaps it has more to do with the fact he has been studying it for the last couple of decades and has been publishing in peer reviewed journals vs you? If you gave some credible references and a much more detailed critique then I would be more perceptive. Unfortunately I just don't have time to pick up the book again and read it all to argue with you myself. However, to repeat myself, you are entitled to your opinion.

"Want to tell me that we are all victims of climate and that nothing we do can change that?"

Who said that? Not me and not Jared. Although I would point out that if CO2 levels were frozen right now the world will keep warming for another 1000 years due to recent emissions.

Andrey, climate models have been far from perfect but are improving substantially now because of their increasing importance. The weather is chaotic within certain time scales and boundaries. It is the typical weather patterns that the models try to predict, not the week to week behaviour.

"But only very naïve person could believe that nature will selectively increase rainfall in wet places and decrease it in dry, just to make our life miserable."

You are making up straw men to pull down Andrey. The main "projection" is that the subtropical dry regions will get bigger. Its already happening.

read "receptive" not "perceptive" above..

OK Here's my plan
Using Chinese pebble bed technology and private money we build a series of nuclear reactors in Baja Mexico where there close to sufficent water for cooling purposes (although pebble beds need this less then conventional designs) Mexico has cheap labor, could use the money influx and is close to the major markets in the Southwest (most notably California) that would buy the energy in bulk lots. Use the money to finance huge wind and solar plants along the rest of the peninsula and slowly replace the nuclear plants (for electrical production) with renewable sources. Then use the nukes to produce hydrogen by steam cataylis cracking of seawater providing a transportable fuel for transport purposes. Mexico has fewer complex laws and permitting processes then the US and won't get embroiled in as many NIMBY problems as US sites would be. Plus the job production and economic gains to Mexico could actually reverse some of the immigrant flow we in the US whing about so much.

What do you all think?

Larry

An Engineer:

Your critique of my most is blown out of proportions.

Markus:

“6-8 thousand years ago during the Holocene Maximum, the Sahara desert wasn’t a desert but covered in jungle, with large lakes and large meandering rivers full of hippos and crocodiles.”

This is quote from one respected scientist on the subject. Nobody knows what surprises climate will flip out in the future.

Generally, I do not want to discuss any computer model projections at all. Same with Sony Play Station reality simulations.

Well with vat grown meat phood plants not too far off and vat grown edibles of other types I dont think food is an issue for the us. Gm crops plus McPhood burgers will keep us as fat as ever.

I assume by 2050 the us can design a house that doesnt suck ass in summer heat and wont blow away with the deadly storm season and wont burn up in the fire season or wash away in the mudslide season.

Will it be "fun"... I think it will be exciting not knowing what will come and dealing with what does. Will it all work out? Yes! In the end we will feed everyone.. after all everyone we fail to feed will die and so not ecist to not be feed. In the end we will save everyone we save.. and everyone else will be dead.

In the end I will be here.. becsause im too fat the starve too loaty to drown too heavy to blown aay and far tooparanoid to be snuck up on. All of you howevr are toast.

The IPCC GHG Report was put together by UN hacks. UN can’t do anything right (just look at the problems in Africa) and this report is just another crap example of one. So who cares if this report has 2,500 (government paid) scientists claiming Man is the cause of Global Warming because as any trained dog know; if you don’t give the right response to the Master, you will be beaten and not (paid) fed. The weather during this century will be most likely be like the weather we had the last 100 years. So how is it that some 30 years ago the computer models all said the world is just about ready to enter a new ICE AGE and how they are all saying, no it’s really the BIG MELT DOWN instead? CRAP IN = CRAP OUT.
I know all of the Gaia worshippers will never be happy because YOU somehow think that if people just went back to living that Amish life everything will be just fine. You forget that One billion Chinese live like that now and they hate it. It’s nice to see the Socialists have found is new line out of work to help keep the CAUSE going!

Anyway, China burns through 2.6B tons of coal every year right now. They also crank up a new coal based power plant every week. They have about ten million cars on the road today and it’s projected they will have 10 times that within 10-15 years. China’s yearly GHG emissions are projected to surpass the USA’s yearly GHG emissions within 10 years. So what are your guys plans for China to cut its current and future GHG emissions?

People won't change until they feel pain. Some are thicker than others.

Climate models can not predict (IPCC prefer to use word “project”) future by principle, because climate (and weather) is chaotic system.

Weather is chaotic, but what evidence do you have that climate (the average of weather over time) is chaotic?

Paul Deietz:

Chaotic climate models:

Google ( “climate models” chaotic system ).

Now, modeling of chaotic systems is possible, for example modern state of weather models is capable to predict weather with useful accuracy for 4-6 days. The problem is more distant prediction. Initial variables in parameters compose in such high rate that prediction become useless very quickly, regardless of accuracy of initial data or sophistication of physical models and computation ability of supercomputers. Theoretical limit for accurate weather prediction is about 10-15 days.

For climate models we have so poor understanding of physical processes, very crude and very short history of reliable data (satellite measurements), and so much unpredictable variables such as volcano eruptions, massive forest fires, changes in sun brightness, extremely important fluctuation of solar wind, Earth magnetic field, Galactic radiation, etc., that current climate models are proved to be practically useless. See, for example, how miserably models failed to predict climate in our near past:

http://www.warwickhughes.com/hoyt/scorecard.htm

Some articles I’ve read claim that if we master climate prediction models (and it is big IF, at least for couple of decades), we will be able to predict climate for 20-30 years. Further prediction is theoretically impossible.

Computer models are the modern equivealent of goat entrails. You have to show something to back up your words and these days its a computer model. granted the model and the goat entrails were and are only as good as your words bu somehow they add to them anyway. People just like to see it not just hear it. or read it.

I don't think it is theoretically impossible to predict that if CO2 levels keep rising its going to get hotter. A more balanced summary of climate modelling is given here:

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

I would not take Warwick Hughes's word on climate too seriously. Take a look at the commentary starting with Warwick Hughes (find : warwick) in this realclimate discussion:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/650000-years-of-greenhouse-gas-concentrations/

It is very difficult for non-experts to see the merits of one scientific argument over another given selective use of data. However there is a good way of sorting through the chaf. That is to see who is actually publishing in peer reviewed journals on the topics they talk about. I went to the Warwick Huges site and found that he published about five peer reviewed papers through the nineties. Way out of date and non of them on climate modeling.

There are quite a few of these so-called retired "freelance scientists" working for various "think tanks" or "institutes". Do they actually conduct scientific research? No. All they do is scan the literature looking for any kind of hole they can find to push their political agenda. Many of these characters complain that their criticisms of the literature do not get responded to in peer reviewed papers. But the reason is that they can't get their own criticisms published in peer revewed journals because they are too flawed to begin with. Professional Scientific journals have standards. The forum for these kinds of discussions is at blogs such as realclimate.org.