Mark:

No property in Florida. But I do live in the city which is below ocean high tide. Dykes are doing good job here, and I rather spend my BC carbon taxes on upgrading the dykes, than waste it on AGW bureaucracy.

to Esabre,

you ask, ``no one ever asks supporters of global warming hysteria about their connections to far left wing political organiaztions``

I have none. I am a mechanical engineer, currently working on a natural gas-fired combined cycle power plant. I also do a little work on pulp mill recovery boilers. I also have a degree in forest management. If anything, I stand to lose out if the GHG-emitting industries crumble. Rather, what I am doing is using this experience to move on and work towards better technologies for the future.

John Taylor:… Apparently you have a convenient reading disability. Go back and read my suggestions 4 through 7...

The current state of the art in electric grids (the traditional grid) cannot handle the distributed nature of the renewable power generation dream that you reference (4 through 7 ...). The smart grid is a devilishly complicated technical problem that needs a Manhattan project approach to solve. I know that the Pennsylvania grid, managed by PJM, is the world's largest electric grid, serving over 51 million people in 13 states and the District of Columbia. It keeps one or two coal fired generation plants on hot standby not connected to the grid but able to switch on line in a minute in response to an outage. That’s a long way from what you are thinking. Dreams are nice but you got to live in the real world.

Remember John, the devil is in the details.

to Andrey,

Can you provide an economic analysis, comparing the cost of a 5000 mile dyke around the US, in comparison to producing power from wind and solar farms (which are already or nearly cost-competitive)?

The US can`t even build a fence along the Mexican border, or a dyke around New Orleans, how on Earth are they going to fortify their entire coastline?

to Axil,

Can you please explain how Denmark produces 20% of its electrical power with wind farms, and why North America could not do the same?

32000 BScs? As a BSc myself (computer science) I know exactly what that means in terms of my competency to critique papers outside of even my specific area of experience within my chosen discipline ... exactly squat. (what's your degree in Stan? because unless you're a climatologist your opinion is worth butkuss)

The petition is nothing more than a political stunt.

Neil:

I cant speak for Stan but, having an MS in chemistry, I do not claim to know all of the ins-and outs of climatology. My feeling on the subject is that even climatologists do not know all of the ins-and-outs of climatology, and many have developed a bit of "group-think" when it comes to AGW, now called "climate change" to cover all of the bases.

I pointed out in this forum a while back a couple of quotes made by scientists studying the loss of polar ice in the North. One stated that the bulk of the cause was an increased amount of solar radiation reaching the ice. It was his feeling that this explanation did not acount for all of the ice loss, so the rest must be due to "global warming". A second scientist claimed that warming currents were the main cause. If I recall correctly, he to felt this did not make up the difference, and the rest must be "global warming".

I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter what your field of scientific expertise is. Anyone can tell that " It's mostly X, plus something else that we can't identify, so that must be Y" is shoddy science.

Of course the papers ignored the currents and solar radiation, and went straight for "Global Warming".

A lot of intellegent, well-meaning people beleive in AGW. A lot of intellegent, well-meaning people don't. Claiming that the "debate is over", and that all who disagree are pawns of the oil industry is to lean on empty, ad-hominem attacks.

Claiming that the "debate is over", and that all who disagree are pawns of the oil industry is to lean on empty, ad-hominem attacks.

And that's a strawman.

@Mark_BC

The big problem is regulation … politic in and out of the power industry ( remember Enron in California)
From the cited smart grid paper as follows

Beyond normal challenges faced by
new technological entrants, smart
grid technologies confront a regulatory
system that often discourages
their adoption.

Smart grid and smart energy technologies face the uphill battles any technological innovation encounters. New devices must prove they operate reliably and offer superior services and/or
economics. But emerging power technologies
face additional hurdles that represent what most
observers regard as the overarching challenge.
Traditional regulation sets up significant economic
disincentives that do not allow utilities to fully
recover investments in new technologies, and financially
punishes utilities when customers install their
own energy systems. Meanwhile, utility restructuring
that aimed at overcoming some of those
disincentives is incomplete and its status is uncertain.
The overall effect is to place utility investment in
both traditional and advanced technologies in a slump.

I told you above to vote if you want things to improve!

"My feeling on the subject is that even climatologists do not know all of the ins-and-outs of climatology, and many have developed a bit of "group-think" when it comes to AGW, now called "climate change" to cover all of the bases."

If you want us to take you seriously tthoms either publish a paper or at the very least cite one. Otherwise forget it.

Mark:

My point is that there are thousands real problems to spend money on (dykes in NO for starter), than waste trillions on non-solution of non-existing problem.

The British have an really elegant half a trillion dollar solution to the cancelation of the FutureGen project. :-)

“Can you please explain how Denmark produces 20% of its electrical power with wind farms, and why North America could not do the same?”

Mark, looking at the IEA data for 2007 for OECD countries that provide 'leadership' for wind there is some interesting results:

The winner is Denmark where 83% of electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels. Very very green. The Netherlands in next at 79% fossil. Portugal – 69%, Germany 68%. Spain is not doing too bad at 62% but that may have more to do with 18% nuclear generation than wind and solar.

So Mark if can explain how we

can build 'renewable energy other' fast enough to keep up with US demand I would be interested.

Question: aside from GHGs, has anyone got numbers for the total amount of heat released each year from the burning of fossil fuels (Is it enough to have an impact all by itself?)

tthoms: What of course colors the intelligent, well-meaning that don't think AGW is a problem is the fact that there is an enormous industry/army of exxon supported trolls spewing total (obvious) bull in an attempt to make joe public think that AGW is just a hoax. I'm not exactly an AGW true believer (my area of expertise is computer modeling and simulation) but the organized troll factor makes me awfully suspicious.

Elias:
" 'Claiming that the "debate is over", and that all who disagree are pawns of the oil industry is to lean on empty, ad-hominem attacks.'

And that's a strawman."

How so?

Anonymous:
If YOU want to be taken seriously, please post a name. Since you are not interested in using the search function on this site, here are the words of the researchers themselves:

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/17/america/NA-GEN-US-Low-Ice.php
"The center said this led to an unusually high amount of solar energy being pumped onto the Arctic ice surface, which accelerated the melting process. Fairly strong winds also brought in some warm air from the south.

But, Serreze said in a telephone interview, while some natural variability is involved in the melting, "We simply can't explain everything through natural processes."

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1351264.php/Danish_researchers_warn_of_melting_Arctic_ice_cap

"Global warming was a contributing factor, but this year strong currents have also swept large masses of ice from Siberia via the North Pole past eastern Greenland and further south where it melted, Pedersen said."

So we have two measurable reasons for the ice reduction; fast currents and unusually high solar energy. It is believed that these factors don't account for everything, so the unmeasured factor must be man-made global warming.

I'm sorry, but that's a crappy conclusion. It assumes that they have such a detailed comprehension of the climate engine that they know every possible variable and its effects, ergo; the only factor that remains is CO2 emissions.

So, I've said my piece. If you have a reasonable counter-argument, or articles you'd like to reference, great.

Neil:

"tthoms: What of course colors the intelligent, well-meaning that don't think AGW is a problem is the fact that there is an enormous industry/army of exxon supported trolls spewing total (obvious) bull in an attempt to make joe public think that AGW is just a hoax. I'm not exactly an AGW true believer (my area of expertise is computer modeling and simulation) but the organized troll factor makes me awfully suspicious. "

Fair enough. Their are a lot of people working/proseletizing against AGW because it threatens their livelihood. There are of course, armies of bureaucrats, corporations, politicians, and grant-funded scientists working/proseletizing for AGW because it will bolster their livelihood, and increase their powerbase.

Everything should be taken with a grain of salt.

Kit P, the critiques of AGW never want to talk about the widespread "heat island effects" from human activities. Changes in localized albedo, the combustion of fossil fuels, operation of HVAC systems, etc., can raise temperatures and humidity in urban areas by perhaps 10 degrees C and 10 percent respectively. The buildup of heat trapping greenhouse gases is likely
to compound the local impacts.

The argument dismissing the issue is that the waste heat generated is minimal relative to absorbed solar insulation and geothermal heating, and just radiates harmlessly into space. However, heat stroke episodes occur in urbanized areas, so the heat island effect, compounded by rising temperatures, may be more of a killer than other environmental influences.

Some renewable energy advocates also like to ignore localized heat impacts since Solar Thermal and Solar PV have relatively low conversion efficiencies, which may translate into more localed heat in desert areas where large scale solar electric plants are located.

We need to plant more trees in urban areas to mitigate the impact of heat islands, and perhaps utilize super high efficiency solar assisted heat pumps for space conditioning.

The real reason conservatives don’t believe in climate science

"The answer is that ideology trumps rationality. Most conservatives cannot abide the solution to global warming-strong government regulations and a government-led effort to accelerate clean energy technologies into the market."

~~~~~

Why Climate Denialists are Blind to Facts and Reason: The Role of Ideology

"An ideologue doesn't believe that he needs to know the details of an issue in order to make policy decisions because his ideology provides him with a ready formula for solving all problems. Where ideologues run into difficulties however, is when the real world throws up problems that don't fit the ideology's problem categories.

For conservative/libertarian ideologues who compose the overwhelming majority of denialists, Climaticide is just such a case. If a conservative/libertarian ideologue were to accept global warming as real then he/she would be forced to admit that the problem is so big and so complex that government action is required to deal with it. But for an conservative/libertarian ideologue that is impossible because he/she believes that government is the cause of ALL problems and that the solution to all problems is "freedom".

Denialists frequently make this attitude explicit when they accuse the "liberals" concerned about climate change of having invented it as an excuse to expand government. The latest version of this tactic that I've encountered is that none of the science in support of global warming need be taken seriously because it is the product of government-paid scientists who are only doing their bureaucratic masters' bidding, apparently forgetting that the current "masters" are themselves Climaticide denialists....

That there are no facts outside the "truths" of one's ideology is a basic, if not always publicly expressed, tenet, of all ideologues be they religious zealots, communists, fascists or libertarian-conservatives.

Arguing with such people is a waste of time because they only listen to facts in order desperately to compose counter arguments. I say desperately because ideologues find psychological safety from an uncertain world in the certainties of their ideology. What you think of as an argument about global warming, they perceive as an attack on their entire world view. And they're right of course, even though it's not your intention."

Actually, besides running 21% Windpower, Denmark runs mainly efficient power and heat co-generation plants.

So unlike the U.S. which unintelligently runs coal power plants and gas/oil heaters separately, Denmark utilizes its fossil fuels very efficiently.

The reason why Denmark is able to generate close to 20% of their electricity by wind is that Denmark was early adapter, and was able to suck in maneuverable reserves of enormous German electricity grid and especially highly maneuverable hydro electricity of Scandinavia. This trick will not work for anyone.

Current state of electricity grid limits highly intermittent wind generation to about 5%, with appropriate backing of idling natural gas combustion turbines. Which overall makes wind electricity much more expensive to average kWh consumer.

Moreover, wind electricity robs the grid from maneuverable reserves, which could be utilized ten times more efficiently to balance input of zero-carbon nuclear power plants.

Realistically, any one concerned with CO2 emissions (and hawing single functional cell in the brain) should be fierce proponent of nuclear electricity balanced by existed and newly constructed hydro.

I was once a member of Sierra Club.

If anyone wants to trot out lame arguments of political ideology on the issue of global warming, they're most welcome. But the adhominem attacks are childish and emotional rants irrational at best.

Some are failing logic. Thoms had a good example put forth, not a strawman argument of why we must be cautious going forward.

Plotting consiracy theories is weak to for either side.

Hansen has admitted a glaring problem with data for the due to the Y2K bug. After readjusting for the bug, it was discovered that his alarmism was just that, alarmist. The Media, NASA, Congress, IPCC, UN all hyped his bad data to the world that a coming disaster was upon us. He was wrong.

One must understand who are the individual powers driving these studies, their motiviations as well. While most of it is good, honest people desiring a good healthy planet, there are the powerful elite who attempt to control everything, especially out of Europe.

The Rothchilds, the Soros, and all the big financial Trust behind these movements end up producing far-fetched claims by irrational alarmist who can no more predict a hurrican next week or the temperature, yet want us to believe they can predict next decade or 50 years from now.

There is a huge failure to understand the most rudimentary elements in Climate science modeling. They are only beginning to make major corrections. And so far all of their models have been wrong.

They did not predict the drop of 2007 based upon their models, nor did they predict the 10 year flatline since 1998. It would help if everyone would stop panicking and calm down.

Planting trees is a good thing. Preventing large forest destruction is a good thing. Putting forth a reasonable and cost effective plan, incentives for clean transport and energy are all good things. But to insist the earth will reach some maximum tipping point of disaster for us all tomorrow, 10 years or 50 years from now is insanity. It is not science. It is the equivalent of psychic babble in tabloids.

To start calling for vast mandates across multiple industries is an overreaction to guesses of future modeling we know to have already failed in their predictions.

And yes each side has their scientist paid for and with incentives to prove the other wrong. But there is middle ground upon which we all should be able to agree upon without lasshing out at each other.

I think the progress being made to date is quite extraordingary by many diffrent fields. Free Market is working and even China gets it to some degree. The incentives are driven by price, usability and practicality. To act like some Orwellian future thought police and grant powers over all our living habits is not what any of us wants or desires.

Solar, battery, EV, Wind are moving forward at great rates. Nuclear power should not be banned, but used carefully as stop gap measures. What should be allowed as a compromise is for opening of oil and natural gas leases in America to ease a transtion from fossil fuels over to green fuels. All this other banter is mainly just panic. We can allow China to drill in our frontyard pool, dirty it up. Or we can allow American companies that answer to Americans drill it cleanly.

The first moment we allow the American companies to be on the same playing field as Russia, Iran, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, will be the day we can all complain about prices. But right now, they are tied up with no where to go but third world countries. The moment we allow them the same freedoms as nationalized countries, many that are our enemies, the price of oil will drop and slowly decline to a more reasonable price range. That is how business is normally done in a free society. Why we treat our oil companies worse than China or Sudan is mind-boggling.

The world is not coming to an end by CO2. But it sure can slow way down to everyones despair if allowed to by frantic people thinking frantic thoughts and acting upon their frantic ideas.

There is far to much panick attacks in here for sensible people. Especially engineers. We live in an Open System, not a Closed one. Anyone with knowledge of Thermodynamics should understand that our dynamic climate system is constantly in flux of self-correcting modes even with added humans to the mix.

Missing the Market Meltdown

"Renewable energy is attracting Wall Street but nuclear power isn't. Why? Simple economics.

Capitalists have already scuttled Patrick Moore's claimed nuclear revival. New U.S. subsidies of about $13 billion per plant (roughly a plant's capital cost) haven't lured Wall Street to invest. Instead, the decentralized competitors to nuclear power that Moore derides are making more global electricity than nuclear plants are, and are growing 20 to 40 times faster.

In 2007, decentralized renewables worldwide attracted $71 billion in private capital. Nuclear got zero. Why? Economics. The nuclear construction costs that Moore omits are astronomical and soaring; low fuel costs will soon rise two-to fivefold. "Negawatts"—saved electricity—cost five to 10 times less and are getting cheaper. So are most renewables. Negawatts and "micro-power"— renewables other than big hydro, and cogenerating electricity together with useful heat—are also at or near customers, avoiding grid costs, losses and failures (which cause 98 to 99 percent of blackouts).

The unreliability of renewable energy is a myth, while the unreliability of nuclear energy is real. Of all U.S. nuclear plants built, 21 percent were abandoned as lemons; 27 percent have failed for a year or more at least once. Even successful reactors must close for refueling every 17 months for 39 days. And when shut by grid failure, they can't quickly restart. Wind farms don't do that.

Variable but forecastable renewables (wind and solar cells) are very reliable when integrated with each other, existing supplies and demand. For example, three German states were more than 30 percent wind-powered in 2007—and more than 100 percent in some months. Mostly renewable power generally needs less backup than utilities already bought to combat big coal and nuclear plants' intermittence.

Micropower delivers a sixth of total global electricity, a third of all new electricity and from a sixth to more than half of all electricity in 12 industrial countries (in the United States it's only 6 percent). In 2006, the global net capacity added by nuclear power was only 83 percent of that added by solar cells, 10 percent that of wind power and 3 percent that of micropower. China's distributed renewables grew to seven times its nuclear capacity and grew seven times faster. In 2007, the United States, China and Spain each added more wind capacity than the world added nuclear capacity. Wind power added 30 percent of new U.S. and 40 percent of EU capacity, because it's two to three times cheaper than new nuclear power. Which part of this doesn't Moore understand?

The punch line: nuclear expansion buys two to 10 times less climate protection per dollar, far slower than its winning competitors. Spending a dollar on new nuclear power rather than on negawatts thus has a worse climate effect than spending that dollar on new coal power. Attention, Dr. Moore: you're making climate change worse."

The glibertarians rush forward to prove the point.

Somehow, France reliably generates 79% of it electricity by nuclear, with 18% coming from hydro. France has cheapest electricity prices over all Europe, and is the biggest supplier of electricity to EU market.

Why US (having the biggest nuclear generating system in the world, which reliably, cleanly, and cheaply generating 18% of electricity for more than 40 years) is stuck with dirty coal plants and expensive NG generation?

Environmentalist retards, served by traitors highjacked US Democratic Party ( Clinton administration completely closed advanced nuclear reactor research, banned development of shale oil in Colorado, banned ANWAR oil exploration, banned Prudhoe Bay NG pipeline, banned off-shore drilling, banned explorations of cleanest in the world Utah coal deposits, etc.) are choking energy bloodline of the modern economy, and that’s why US nuclear plants were facing construction delays and run-out costs.