Mr. President: For Next Energy Czar, Choose More Carefully
President Barack Obama and the Senate must not repeat the mistake of choosing another climate activist for U.S. secretary of energy. Although well-qualified in his field of physics, outgoing Secretary Dr. Steven Chu brought a dangerously naïve vision of both climate change and America’s energy future to Washington.
Not a climate scientist himself, Chu had faith in the validity of Al Gore’s position on global warming, and even said just prior to becoming energy secretary: “Coal is my worst nightmare … there’s enough carbon in the ground to really cook us.” Such unscientific and biased comments should have immediately eliminated Chu from consideration for a Cabinet position.
As a professor of physics, he should have known that the idea that carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from the combustion of coal and other hydrocarbon fuels is causing a climate crisis was, and still is, an unproven hypothesis, one that is appearing increasingly improbable as the world fails to warm as predicted. While we need to reduce real pollution where it is a problem, Chu must have known that CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to life on Earth, and its increasing concentration has led to greater agricultural productivity.
Chu should have also known that coal, properly mined, prepared, and used, is anything but a nightmare. Coal played a major role helping power America to prosperity and world leadership during the 20th century. It still provides about 50% of all electric power generated in the United States today. The U.S. has enough coal left in the ground to last for centuries. It is by far the least expensive source of power, and modern pollution control has made coal-fired electricity stations cleaner than ever before.
Even if Chu did not know these things before becoming Obama’s head on energy, he should have learned them on the job. Yet he maintained his climate activism and an often unrealistic approach to energy throughout his tenure as secretary. Even Chu’s February 1 resignation letter is riddled with sensationalism and basic errors. Here are some corrections to what he wrote to Department of Energy (DOE) staff in that letter:
– The world has not warmed for the last 16 years, and, according to the British Met office, temperatures will not rise until at least 2018, even though CO2 levels continue to rise quickly. If Chu really believes that “the final arbitrator of any point of view are experiments that seek the unbiased truth, not information cherry picked to support a particular point of view,” as he told DOE employees in his letter, then he must realize that the dangerous global warming hypothesis is disproved by such a long period of no warming.
– The incidence and severity of extreme weather events across the globe have not increased in recent decades, although damage costs have risen due to inflation and a massive increase in infrastructure over the past century. Chu seems unaware that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now asserts that recent extreme weather events are not due to climate change.
– There is no convincing evidence that an “overwhelming scientific consensus” exists concerning the impact of human activities on climate. Also, any competent scientist should know that even if a consensus did exist, it has no significance. Science is about examining the evidence, not a majority vote. Unpopular minority views often prove to be correct. Consensus is all about politics, not science.
– Industrialized societies have no chance of successfully replacing significant amounts of conventional energy supplies with the wind and solar power promoted by Chu. We need a steady and reliable power supply to run steel mills, Internet servers, and our transportation system, not one that fails when the wind drops or a cloud passes in front of the sun. Trying to base a modern energy-intensive society on Chu’s favorite “sustainable energy sources” is not sustainable.
– “Energy independence” is not a good reason for these technologies either. Energy independence is more easily and cheaply attained by exploiting abundant national fossil fuel and uranium reserves and those of close allies such as Canada.
Secretary Chu’s resignation letter indicates that he still does not understand that plentiful, inexpensive, and reliable energy is the key to continued improvement in our economic and social well-being.
Currently, more than half the global population lacks access to adequate energy supplies for clean water, heat, and light. Each year, over 1.5 million people die from “energy poverty.” The International Energy Agency estimates that 2 billion people will be added to our numbers over the next 20 years, and largely thanks to the efforts of those who still believe that CO2 causes global warming, only 200 million of them will have access to electricity.
The UN human development index shows unambiguously that low-cost energy is the key to improving the quality of life across the world. Every ten-fold increase in electricity correlates with a ten-year increase in lifespans. Energy poverty will almost certainly be the greatest crisis humanity will face in the 21st century.
I have a better idea.
Abolish the DOE.
That way, the moonbats won’t have it as a pedistal to project from.
Global Warming is regarded by the sheeple as true, by those who can think for themselves as false and by the power mad and the money grubbing as … … useful.
Exactly. Climate change is fear-mongering with a political objective in mind. The issue is entirely contrived, no different than telling Americans to collect scrap metal during World War Two. Useful for getting support for an agenda, but entirely pointless in pursuit of its professed goal.
The REAL goal (not the professed one) of the ecofreak movement is to promote both socialism and Islamic expansionism, and to break down American society.
Speaking of ‘dangerously naïve’…
….if only a few more voters (and pundits) would just give Obama the benefit of the doubt, and give him a little more time, say, a few more terms as President, four or five more, we would surely reach utopia.
/clues for the clueless on sale for Valentine’s day. Paypal only.
I’m sure he understands this. But understanding something and being in favor of it are two entirely different things.
Someone in favor of economic growth wouldn’t be yearning for $10 a gallon gasoline- which Chu does.
They also wouldn’t try to change a major high-energy research institution into a “paper mill” churning out endless “peer-reviewed” screeds that claim to “prove the reality of Anthropogenic Global Warming”. But that was what Chu did as director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory before being appointed head of DOE. More than a few researchers left LL while Chu was in charge, because they were people who did high-energy research, and he was telling them “we don’t do that anymore”.
Chu’s Nobel Prize was for a method of trapping atoms using a laser emitter. This is a highly theoretical field, that does not translate into any particular knowledge of how to meet the energy needs of a civilization. That, frankly, is a job for an engineer, not a physicist.
Chu’s paean to concern for “the poorest people” hits some sort of high-water mark for rank hypocrisy. The reason they are poor is lack of the necessary energy resources to pull themselves out of an Old Stone Age agrarian-subsistence culture. Claiming that somehow our energy developments will make things worse for them shows an amazing ignorance of how a surplus economy, which is what we have and they don’t, actually works.
Chu is an ideological radical who thinks that Holy Wind and Holy Sun are the answers to everything. To this, I have a two-word answer; Ohm’s law.
The only way his worldview would ever work is if we somehow managed to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Good luck with that. And no, an Act of Congress ain’t gonna do it. (It’s been around for about four billion years, and thus is considerably above even The One’s pay grade.)
It’s long past time that Chu left as Secretary Of Energy. It’s a massive indictment of the delusional nature of this administration that he was ever hired to begin with.
clear ether
eon
Ohm’s Law: “The current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference across the two points”.
Enlighten me. How does this make wind-power and photoelectric power impossible, please?
Also, Ohm’s law is not (as it seems you believe) the same as the second law of thermodynamics. 2nd Law: “the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.”
This, too, says nothing about either wind-power or thermoelectric power.
I’d ask you tu try again, if only so I could get another good laugh, but that’d be cruel.
You are, however, an ignorant idiot. That’s not cruel, it’s merely accurate.
1.Ohm’s Law relates to resistance. It takes a certain amount of amperage to overcome line-loss, especially over long distances. So far, solar and wind have failed to generate enough amperage to overcome line-loss even in local applications.
2. I know Ohm’s Law and the Second Law of Thermodynamics are not the same thing. One pertains to resistance, the other to thermal loss in a closed system (otherwise known as the “You Can’t Break Even” law). Most solar and wind power system advocate use predictions of power output that not only ignores the inherent unreliability of the sources (i.e. the Sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow), but also assume near-100% efficiency of conversion, which is pretty much impossible.
One such, when asked on a radio show from OSU how to deal with line loss and thermal-bloom loss (i.e., the inevitable loss to heat energy in any electrical system), stated blandly that the solution was to use superconductors. When he was reminded that all known present SCs are cryonic, he then said the answer was to run them in “pipes full of liquid nitrogen”- under every street in America.
It took me a full twenty seconds to realize that he was serious. Apparently, nobody in the studio knew enough about the handling of liquid nitrogen, or similar liquified gases, to realize he’d just proven he was an ignorant ass where safety and operational reliability were concerned.
Which seems to be a characteristic common to all “Holy Wind and Holy Sun” advocates. Right up there with ignorance of physics in general.
clear ether
eon
I wonder if Mjaum now sees the humor in his post?
Excellent!
You at least know something, which is, I will say, a distinct pleasure when compared to the average (or even the exceptional) PJ-commentor. Hence, I apologize for insulting you. Of course the insults were, as you proved, utterly without basis, so they can hardly have hurt much. Well, except me, for feeling like a rude ass. In my defence, however, 99% of the commentariat here *would* fit the description.
How far towards a perfect, room-temperature superconductor would we have to come for solar to be useful, in your opinion? (Of course, the creation of such a thing would change a lot more than just solar power…)
No sweat. I’ve had a thick skin since I was in kindergarten.
As to RTSCs,until they can take high temperatures, as in “thermal shock effect due to air friction at Mach 3+” or similar causes, I don’t see them being a viable alternative. In a laboratory, you worry about everything being hooked up properly for the experiment to work as planned. Outside, in the real world, the First Rule of Technology is, “Sh!t happens, and your hardware better be able to handle it when it does”.
And I do agree that reliable high-temp resistant RTSCs will change a lot more than just power systems. And not all the changes will be comforting to the politically correct.
For instance, I don’t think a Star Trek hand phaser will ever be likely, but rugged RTSCs that can power SC “loops” in a replaceable “cassette”, like the box magazine in an automatic pistol, would make the laser pistol in the original Battlestar Galactica very possible, indeed. Think, a hand weapon the size and weight of a modern high-end camcorder that packs the punch of a 20mm aircraft cannon.
And that’s not even assuming Medonian superconductors. (See Gray Lensman by E.E. “Doc” Smith.)
Technology is always a two-edged sword.
cheers
eon
“In my defence, however, 99% of the commentariat here *would* fit the description.”
Hey mjuam let me be the first of the 99% to tell you to blow it out your a$$.
Not to mention the economics of it, but then, that’s never been the left’s strong point, has it?
That includes the “we’ll generate it in space and BEAM it down on radio waves!” crowd.
Um, Ohm’s Law simply expresses a relationship between voltage (force), current in Amperes (flow rate) and resistance to said flow. POWER is the product of voltage and current. Some POWER is lost in its transmission between points. No “current” is lost in transmission. Line losses are commonly expressed as a function of current and resistance – curent times the SQUARE of resistance, or I^2R. (Simple algebra may not be your strong point, but please trust me.)
It isn’t that solar or wind can’t overcome line losses – it’s that the miles of expensive lines and the relatively low amount of power produced by a solar farm or wind farm result in a high cost of transmission per unit of power, compared to hydro or thermal plants. Add thtt to the fact the the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow, and you arrive at a Brooklyn Bridge situation. The rest is simply commentary and snake-oil.
Don’t worry about that DOE, Obama’s nominee for the new Interior Secretary is all about punishing us for using carbon. Sally Jewell has said that we need to “bear the consequences” for using carbon right now.
Here the thing these wackos just don’t get: there IS no replacement for carbon for the foreseeable future. Wind and solar? Not really. Both represent energy sources humanity chose carbon over in the first place. We never would have gotten where we are relying on windmills. Nuclear energy could handle much of the supply, but we still need oil and coal for their industrial applications like making steel, plastics and so on.
Liberals are just so far out in LaLaLand that they’ll never understand how they’ve been lied to by con artists out to make themselves right AND achieve total control over them. And even if they did begin to suspect, the vast majority could never bring themselves to admit it.
That’s fine.
Coal and oil are non-renewable; what we use up is gone forever.
We should be using these wonderful resources to make petrochemicals, plastics, drugs, all the important substances a modern civilization needs. Rather than just burning up all the oil, and pouring the resulting pollution into the atmosphere. Burning them up is a highly wasteful way to emploit them.
For energy, we should convert away from coal especially, and replace it with natural gas and nuclear power.
This is absolutely correct. Nuclear should be 75% of our total electrical energy production. I would add the we should not forget hydro as a source as well in spite of its politically incorrect nature
I agree. We could easily set up a program to build latest generation nuclear plants to not only replace the aging ones but the oil and coal (in that order) plants as well. If commercial fusion ever becomes available, then that will be even better, though realistically unless someone has a wild stroke of genius it isn’t likely for some time to come.
Hydropower would also be a good source, though some places are currently dealing with droughts and water draw downs because of the population boom drawing from the same water supply.
I’ve read about some new technology that could increase the efficiency of solar panels though. It still won’t realistically be enough to replace nuclear power, but if these methods pan out, they could be used as part of a new rural electrification project. By that I mean rural residents and small towns could be helped to buy a few panels per house, or set up a panel field near the town. The object wouldn’t be energy independence but to provide extra power during the day. If this new tech works like they say, one panel could do the job of three or four. One or two could supply most power needs for a house during the day when power is at a premium with the house returning to grid power at night and overcast days. But note that is IF these new methods work. If not the project would never pay for itself and would be pointless.
The only thing stopping the use of spaceborne solar is the cost of getting a few thousand tons of hardware in space.
The easy way to fix this is to construct 2000MW nuke plant in NM and use it to power a rail gun capable of slinging hardware into LEO. Humans could never hangle the G’s. But it’s a cheap way to get hardware up.
If the republicans could get this done it would effectively silence the greens as well as put the GOP in the science driver’s seat. The reason the greens have any sway at all is that the GOP is known to be anti-science. (We can thank the far right fringe for that.)
Spaceborne solar would not only meet US power grid requirements, it would also be something that could be ‘rented’ to developing nations — unless we want them to burn the coal we’re no longer using. One glaring problem with the green position in the US is that — like jobs — it defers emissions to the developing world, which solves nothing. For the sake of argument the assumption is that emissions are undesirable just to show that they stay the same or increase. The use of spaceborne solar solves that. There’s probably a billion people out there living in huts and without electricity burning dung to make meals. If there’s any seriousness to the calls for emissions reduction (rather than gamesmanship and power plays in the political arena) then emissions need to be solved for the globe, not a single country.
Whether or not emissions *need* to be solved isn’t really the issue. It’s that it’s easy enough to do this and short circuit the green extreme.
Spaceborne solar is the scalable technology that can work; all it requires to make this operational is the political will.
You crack me up.
The major thing stopping spaceborne solar power is physics, specifically the solar wind. You see a vast field of solar panels; the Sun sees a solar sail, which it will do its utmost to push away from Earth orbit.
A solar sail craft which uses its sail as a solar farm to generate onboard power is an economical way to do long-term probing of the nearer planets (i.e., inside the orbit of Jupiter, where the inverse-square law still allows enough energy impingement for both propulsion and “hotel load”). As a standing orbital facility, it’s unlikely to work.
BTW, the numbers proving this effect came from solar satellite enthusiasts at Caltech, who were rather chagrined to find that their dream would end up flying away on them. The problem was that prior to their (extracurricular) work five years ago, nobody in the “solar satellite” community had bothered to look into solar wind effects.
The ironic thing is that the space-exploration people, both in the “hard” sciences and the SF community, have been talking about, and doing the math on, solar sails since the 1950s. All the solar-power mavens really needed to do was to ask them, but they never got around to that, either.
Solar sails are a good, cheap way to send probes out into the nearer parts of the Solar System, and can even be used to “nudge” NEO asteroids into different orbits, if they’re small enough and you’re willing to wait for it to work. However, solar power stations with vast solar “farms” in LEO have serious drawbacks, mainly as to actually keeping them in low Earth orbit.
clear ether
eon
Solar panels are so fragile they’d never survive a railgun launch and even rocket would destroy a lot of them.
Then how goes the power get back to Earth? It would have to be “beamed” somehow. That would mean geosynchronous orbit to keep it over the receivers. Most of the power would end up lost due to the distance and the atmosphere, not to mention is broad distribution.
There there is the whole matter of maintaining the satellites, keeping them fueled up the maintain orientation of the panels and the “beamer” as well as moving them out of the way of space junk. Throw in losses to computer glitches, meteoroids, solar flares it would be a real job keeping the system running, and still only during the orbital day.
Keeping the system running would mean lots of communications and computers. Communications and computers mean hackers. One little virus or false command and there goes the works.
Most of the power would end up lost due to the distance and the atmosphere, not to mention is broad distribution.
Solar power beaming by microwave is well understood and sober science. The problems related to this subject relate solely to engineering, particularly getting the hardware in place. And depending on “eon’s” link, perhaps extending to keeping stuff on station.
Solar panels are so fragile they’d never survive a railgun launch and even rocket would destroy a lot of them.
You need to let NASA know this. Apparently they’ve been lofting panels as part of onboard power to the ISS and mars probes etc and not understanding that they break during liftoff.
You seem nice and all, but… seriously?
@randomengineer, Just how many solar arrays measured in tens of square miles has NASA placed in near earth orbit and operated over a period of years? At what level of out put does it become PRACTICAL? Will it be measured in Giga or Tera Watts? The reason I ask is a drift of 1 degree off the target receiver would be measured in hundreds of miles. Being on the receiving end of just a Mega Watt beam would certainly leave but ash. Murphy’s Law always applies!
Robert
You and the other guy seem a bit fixated on solar panels as if these are the only possible way to harvest energy. I had replied that NASA seems to be be doing well lofting these.
Re practical there was a company who was building a unit for PG&E and this got canned after Obama got elected in 2008 — for political reasons. When I say this is well understood, I meant exactly that. Merely because YOU don’t understand it doesn’t imply anything at all.
@randomengineer, Since you can’t or refuse to answer the specific questions posed I suggest it is you who doesn’t have a grip on the difficulties involved. Respond to the questions.
eon
The problem was that prior to their (extracurricular) work five years ago, nobody in the “solar satellite” community had bothered to look into solar wind effects.
Link? Anything in Physics A or equivalent? I’m a bit dubious; solar wind effects have been known for a very long time. It sounds more like something regarding the engineering issues keeping a sat on station.
Maneuvering thrusters are what do that. I would expect that a solar farm in orbit would use up a lot of reaction mass every day to keep itself in position and properly oriented.
(For those not heavily into rocketry, “reaction mass” is what’s thrown out the nozzle to move the vehicle the other direction, as per Newton’s Third Law. Many people hear “reaction mass” and think “nuclear rocket”, but even a chemical rocket needs RM, which it produces by burning propellants. The RM in a nuclear motor, generally LH2, is more properly referred to as the “working fluid”. End of lecture.)
Keep in mind that all that propellant has to be trucked up to orbit to keep the farm’s ACS and thrusters fueled and ready to go. That adds to payload mass, and adds cost.
If a farm is big enough to deliver a worthwhile amount of tW to the ground, by microwave or other means, it’s probably got enough “sail area” to make solar wind pressure a real pain in the fundament. Defined as “next stop Mars”.
So, either
A. The farm area has to be small, meaning not enough power produced to be worth it unless you put up a serious constellation of individual powersats, which creates problems for everybody else who has to use the LEO space (weathersats, non-Clarke Belt comsats, RORsats, manned birds, etc.); or
B. The farm has the “gas mileage” of a ’59 Cadillac Eldorado on its ACS and correction-burn thrusters, which means it probably consumes more energy in propellants than it produces in electricity (all of which has to be hauled up out of the gravity well to tank it up, meaning more support train and more $$$$$ expended): or
c. Some supposedly smart apple gets the bright idea of using a relatively massive structure to damp down movement by gravity-tug resistance (aka “throwing out a sea anchor”). Which means you’ve either got a structure too massive to lift into orbit economically, even in sections, or one which, once assembled, will see its orbit immediately begin decaying due to gravity drag, or (if low enough in the LEO bands) even atmospheric drag. (See “Skylab”, “Mir”, and the ISS in about twenty years.) The exosphere “atmosphere” is seriously attenuated, but it’s still there; ask anybody who works with satellites today.
You can juggle the numbers all you like, but I think it keeps coming up snake-eyes. Physics is not impressed by “good intentions”.
cheers
eon
Hi eon
Yeah I understand the layman’s summary of the argument, I was sorta hoping for the more official study/white paper/etc if you knew where to find it to have a look at more specifics. The concern here is that the assumption appears to be massive PV farm rather than smaller heat engines, and I wonder why this would be omitted. More than one way to skin the cat.
Coal and oil are non-renewable? So is hydrogen on the sun. The supplies of hydrocarbons on earth are unlimited measured by the needs of humans. We get to thinking that because something is valuable that it is also scarce. Hydrocarbons on earth are as plentiful as they are in the universe. Get over yourself.
The authors of article cannot possibly be serious. What world do they live in? The piece is written based on the premise that obama is actually concerned about doing the right thing for the country…nothing could be further from the truth. Where were they when obama said that you could build a coal fired plant, but it would bankrupt you? One other thing. The proper title for this clown is Secretary of Energy…not czar. We do not have czars in this country, other than the unvetted, unaccountable ones that obama has appointed.
If only writers of posts such as this would get the point that Obama promised when he said “we are going to fundamentally transform America” then it would it would take their apparent mystification over his czar and cabinet appointments out of the equation. With Obama’s stated goal in mind, Chu was a roaring success. The right man for the job. He will be missed. His replacement will have big shoes to fill but surely he/she will be up to the job. None of this reflects mistakes, misguidance, wrong-headedness, or incompetence. It all fits nicely with The Plan. Have we forgotten the battle cry? FORWARD!
The only time Obama has displayed any honesty at all regarding the American public is when he told us exactly his plan for America. Fundamental transformation. Get it? Seems that many do not. It is more than frustrating sometimes.
I doubt Obama will “choose more carefully” than ideologues like himself named in the first term, Steven Chu at energy and Ken Salazar at the dept. of interior.
Chu, the physicist, likely knew all the things you say he should have known about coal, but was far more intent on the president’s idea of conventional energy prices “skyrocketing” (Chu backed $10/gallon gasoline) and doing Obama’s bidding shlepping millions of taxpayer dollars to Obama’s “green energy” boondoggles, many of which included Obama cronies and most of which have now gone bankrupt.
The very arrogant Ken Salazar at Interior is the guy who boogied to Colorado for his vacation immediately after the Deep Horizon well blew in the gulf, in a style similar to this arrogant, detached president who boogied to Las Vegas for a campaign gig in the immediate aftermath of Benghazi.
Chu seems unaware that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now asserts that recent extreme weather events are not due to climate change.
That cabal of agenda driven crooks (the IPCC) should not be cited as authorities on anything.
Even if you agree with some of the points they were forced to make in the newest version of their report, which refutations of previous incarnations are, reportedly, “buried” somewhere in the new verbiage.
Gentlemen — …he must realize that the dangerous global warming hypothesis is disproved by such a long period of no warming.
This is nonsense. The tyndall gas effect is well understood, and all things being equal, added CO2 will raise the global temp. This is simple physics. The basic underpinnings of global warming are sound.
There is also warming induced by way of land use change and dumping of heat. (e.g. UHI effects.) I’ll assume you guys are all over UHI as a way of showing the corruption of the global temp records. If UHI is real then the same heat rise from hundreds of warm cities will logically have a global effect. You can’t be correct about UHI **and** simultaneously claim no possible warming takes place.
What makes all of this less than simple is the myriad cycles and self regulation of a living planet. If you want to argue that feedbacks are poorly understood, do so, but to claim a lull in warming disproves a hypothesis that is premised on a longer (200 years perhaps) term gradient makes you look stupid. It plays well with the rubes hereabouts, true enough. They don’t know any better. But let’s see how well your article stands up to an educated crowd. I would suggest you ask to post this at Judith Curry’s ‘climate etc’ site at http://www.judithcurry.com.
By the way your nonsense is the very picture of how it is that Obama is in charge. The republicans have yielded science to the left by posting crap like yours.
The basic underpinnings of global warming are sound.
Oh sure.
That’s why the East Anglia crowd and stateside cronies like Michael Mann were so ferociously intent in their email exchanges to “hide the decline”, the fact that there has been no discernible warming in Earth’s temperatures for (now) 16 years.
(And your (simplistic) “spaceborne solar” isn’t crap ?)
That’s why the East Anglia crowd and stateside cronies like Michael Mann…
You’re a bit like a parrot going after the shiny objects. Mann is a corrupt tool, but the rudiments of the science that he was trying to usurp for his own glory are still sound enough. Your tv remote control would not work if radiation wasn’t understood. The underpinnings are known. These are not arguable.
What can be argued is the feedback mechanisms, not the basics. Feedback and natural regulatory mechanisms are poorly understood. If you would concentrate on what can be defeated, you can win. If you base an argument on the behaviours of a few idiots, you will lose. Call AGW a hoax, and you will lose.
The winning strategy is being waged by the lukewarmer crowd, the one that acknowledges the reality of the basic physics. The lukewarmers are slowly destroying the screeching about feedbacks. Judith Curry and others are doing this using science, case by case. There is no helpful input from right wing idealogues. None. It’s ignorant noise, no different than the laughable and ineffective anti-evolution ranting that idealogues prattle about.
You’ve mentioned Judith Curry twice. I guess she is a goo-roo for you.
I was rather fond of her myself when I read some of her observations and criticisms last October
“Others disagreed. Professor Judith Curry, who is the head of the climate science department at America’s prestigious Georgia Tech university, told The Mail on Sunday that it was clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were ‘deeply flawed’.”
‘The new data confirms the existence of a pause in global warming,’ Professor Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Science at America’s Georgia Tech university, told me yesterday.
‘Climate models are very complex, but they are imperfect and incomplete. Natural variability [the impact of factors such as long-term temperature cycles in the oceans and the output of the sun] has been shown over the past two decades to have a magnitude that dominates the greenhouse warming effect.
‘It is becoming increasingly apparent that our attribution of warming since 1980 and future projections of climate change needs to consider natural internal variability as a factor of fundamental importance.’
Ohmygod, “natural internal variability”…high or low sunspot activity (currently very low), changes in ionization in cloud cover, ocean currents, variation in the Earth’s magnetic field, cosmic rays…dominates the greenhouse warming effect.
Your goo roo said it.
tanstaafl
Correct. She said this. Now, proper context: she’s saying that AGW physics is reality (go to her site and ask her) and is arguing that the feedback mechanisms (the stuff that makes a model usable) are debatable, all of which is precisely what I said in the first place. Thank you for confirming this. It’s science at work, done by knowledgeable people.
I guess her statement that the magnitude of natural variability…dominates the greenhouse warming effect and the implications of that for the entire AGW religion…hasn’t yet sunk into your neural circuits.
tanstaafl
I’ll help you with your reading comprehension difficulty. “Dominates” means that the natural signal is bigger than the AGW signal. It doesn’t mean the AGW signal doesn’t exist.
Now, get enough people like Curry fighting the bad guys (the ones who insist that the AGW signal “dominates” the natural signal) and eventually we win.
By the way, please don’t try to help our side. Seriously.
Judith Curry makes a lot of sense. Scientists of equal, or greater, reputation & credentials have made similar points relative to the miniscule role of the “anthropogenic” factor in warming when stacked up against all the natural factors that go into formulating this complex phenomenon that no single individual fully understands that we call “climate”.
You, on the other hand, make little to no sense.
Anthropogenic global warming does have religious overtones in light of all the idiotlogues who automatically subscribe to its tenets, like you. The self-anointed climate scientists whose lying and perfidy were exposed during the Climategate/email meltdown brought nothing to themselves but contempt the ways they attempted to use the penumbra of “science” to justify their deception.
Anthropogenic global warming does have religious overtones in light of all the idiotlogues who automatically subscribe to its tenets, like you.
Given that I’m a lukewarmer I’d be fascinated to hear what these tenets are and what I believe.
Thanks.
Okay genius, worst case, what will the average world temp be 100 years from now? What was the average world temp 100 years before the last ice age? What was the average world temp 65 million years ago? Simple one: what were the average temps for the last five decades?
blotto
Best guess for 2100 CE is 1.5 C above what we have now, about 50% of which is AGW and the other 50% natural. Hardly any reason for anyone to get excited. You won’t even notice.
Are you angry for a reason?
I live in Wyoming ,and ran coal trains out of here ,for over a quarter of a century. There is enough coal here in Campbell county ,to provide electricity to the nation, at current consumption. For over 300 hundred years. Pinheads like Chew are responsible for devastating the economy ( not just here in Wyo. )but all over the country. High energy prices are the goal of the Obama Admn.(to bring down the living standards, of all Americans. )There is no other logical explanation. Like Mark Levin says, it,s the (Dept. of No energy), just like the Dept of No Education, No Defence , ect. The liberals are bent on civil destruction,it is their religion.
Iw ill not expect anybody different than what we have, and what we have seen from Chu!
EPA official’s ‘crucify’ comment continues to draw fire Advertisement Details DescriptionIgnites debate over agency’s policies Apr 27, 2012
http://video.foxnews.com/v/1603185814001/epa-officials-crucify-comment-continues-to-draw-fire
No More Czars!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can we be MORE plain?
Get rid of everybody.
You are the first person here to grab the ring. Sad.
Chu’s replacement needs a firm understanding that “man-made global warming/climate change” does not exist, and he/she needs the courage to say so publicly. Of course, BHO will never appoint anyone like that. Elections have consequences.
Obama did choose carefully. There was no mistake. Chu advanced the leftist agenda, which is exactly why he was chosen.
The next Secretary of Energy will also be chosen carefully for his loyalty to the leftist agenda first, and his ability to advance it second.
I have a novel idea there should be no “Energy Czar” nor a Department of Energy it is redundancy! As a matter of fact a supreme court action should consider if any President can appoint a “Czar” that has no oversight by the congress and or senate!
Steven Chu wasn’t (isn’t) an arbitrarily selected Czar. He has a few more credentials than people like Van Jones who was Obama’s green energy czar before it was exposed that he was a 911 Truther as well as a full blown Communist.
(the Truther part was harder for the administration to sustain than the Communist part)
Chu’s title was/is secretary of energy, an appointed position that rises to Cabinet membership level and has to go through the Senate approval process.
Will commentators and fellow politicans please quit making the mistake of believing all of this is being done out of ignorance? Will more people please tell it like it is instead of dancing around the elephant in the room? This all make me sick…………..
Obama’s Secretary of State Candidate Has Significant Financial Stake in Tar Sands Companies Mat McDermott Business / Environmental Policy November 28, 2012
http://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/obama-secretary-state-candidate-has-significant-financial-stake-tar-sands-companies.html
The Goreacle Shares His Wisdom
Albert Arnold “Al” Gore, Jr. would have made a splendiferous president had he not managed to lodge his head up where the sun don’t shine and had he not been Albert Arnold “Al” Gore, Jr.
The Goreacle, having escaped charges that he groped, propositioned, and exposed himself to a middle-aged masseuse in Portland in 2006 after famously lodging a public liplock on then-wife Tipper Gore, still cashed in mightily with his farcical “An Inconvenient Truth” and scored big time again this January with the sale of his Current TV channel that no one watched to the Al Jazeera network following an abortive effort to launch an IPO that no one offered to buy.
He later told Charlie Rose that the Muslim-owned Al Jazeera is “respected” and “tells it like it is,” unlike the “propaganda” we see on the Fox News Channel.
That all goes to show you that someone can fool a lot of the people anytime and that any fool can sell his soul for a paltry $100,000,000 at least one time.
The Goreacle, whose academic transcripts from the elite St. Albans High School, Harvard, and Vanderbilt University’s divinity and law schools make George W. Bush seem almost a scholar and his science grades make Bush seem almost a genius, nevertheless likes to hold forth on climate science as if he knows what he’s talking about.
That all goes to show you that even an ignoramus can run for president, become a billionaire, and pose as a knowledgeable scientist.
In one more classic demonstration of overachieving chutzpa, Gore appeared on Ellen Degeneris’ talk show where he expounded on his favorite money-making scam of global warming/global cooling/climate change and made the insightful observation long known to fourth graders that ”It turns out plants need sunlight,” to which Ellen replied with her patented smile, “Yes,” as if she too had just learned a grade school fact of vegetative life.
The Goreacle did share with Ellen and her audience an interesting but very little known Obama government scheme to save Mother Earth from the alleged scourge of global warming. (We can forget for the nonce that phony climatologists were warning of the scourge of a new ice age a mere 30 years ago and finally settled on the catchphrase “climate change” after Mother Earth kept changing as she has done for eons.) . . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=30152.)