A senior Australian climatologist who reviewed the evidence for the anthropogenic global warming model at a lecture I attended laid out in detail what he felt were the certain, plausible and questionable parts of the AGW case, like a man surveying a building for soundness. He concluded that while there were some points in its favor, AGW was not proved (partly because very large parts of the climate system are only now being studied, partly because parameters in the computer models have been grossly misestimated, etc) but finished with an interesting remark that could have been the subject of another lecture in itself. He said (and I paraphrase)
‘we are now being asked to cut back on CO2 concentrations to pre-industrial levels at the practical cost of reducing our available energy sources. What nobody has studied is what this reduction in available civilizational energy will do to our resilience. The earth’s climate has been changing for as far back as we’ve studied it, and humanity has responded to climatological variations by adaptation. But you need energy to adapt. Fuel to move food to flooded areas; evacuate victims. Moderate excessive heat; warm against excessive cold. Rebuild after storms. All this requires energy. What does it mean when, in the name of reducing carbon emissions, we reduce our civilizational energy sources and thereby reduce our resilience? Who has thought this through?’
The remark hung in the air until it was dispelled by questioners who moved on to the subject matter of the presentation itself: the datasets and coefficients in the equations he had presented. The remark about resilience was forgotten. But it soon returned in another guise. Many of the scientists and engineers in attendance were appalled at the free and easy way in which politicians distorted the known facts, a subject which roused them in a way that belied their sober dress and careful speech, so that they resembled nothing so much as ents at a rave dance party. One 94 year old gentleman actually stumped up to the podium on his crutches to denounce the “villainous” inaccuracies that daily went unchallenged in the media, announced that he had personally written to a long list of politicians to set them straight on the facts and asked the audience to do the same. How, I wondered, did narratives like AGW adapt to the arrival of contradictory facts? How did an ideology demonstrate resilience in the face of a political storm?
Pundits sometimes resort to wagers to express their degree of belief in the accuracy of their predictions. Bret Stephens, for example, described how he won his bet with Francis Fukuyama on the way the war in Iraq would turn out.
In March 2006, I wrote a blistering review of “America at the Crossroads,” Mr. Fukuyama’s sensational repudiation both of the war in Iraq as well as the neoconservative movement of which he was once a leading light. The book was widely praised. I called its arguments weak …
There followed between us an exchange of emails, in which Mr. Fukuyama pointed to various pieces he had published prior to the war indicating some concerns about how the U.S. would go in, and some foreboding about what might follow. He also mentioned a $100 bet he had made in May 2003 with a friend — a supporter of the war — that Iraq would be a mess five years after the invasion, the definition of a mess being “you’d know one if you saw it.” We agreed to make the same bet. …
I nearly forgot about the bet until last Friday, when the Washington Post reported U.S. combat fatalities in Iraq for the month of July. … With this in mind, I wrote Mr. Fukuyama to suggest that he owed me $100. He conceded, albeit strictly on “the narrow terms” of the bet itself.
Mr. Fukuyama insists, however, that he has been vindicated on the broader issue: “We’ve spent a trillion or so dollars, 30,000 dead or wounded, a large loss in international influence and prestige, all for the sake of disarming a country with no WMDs.”
Stephens won a hundred bucks but no cigar. Ideas like “Iraq is a quagmire” — and many other arguments popular on the Left or the Right — are very resistant to extinction; they adapt to storms by injecting more energy, in the shape of other “facts” into the debate; by changing the frame of reference or making a larger prediction further into the future. Now suppose Mr. Stephens were to make another bet with Mr. Fukuyama on an indicator that could accurately represent a resolution of “the broader issue”? On for example, whether an pro-American regime in Iran would be in place in ten years? How long could this betting process go on before one side or the other was bankrupted and the other emerged triumphant? A long time, but not forever. Narratives do go extinct, but only eventually.
Maybe the political system acts like a casino which stores the results of public policy wagers. It “remembers” albeit very imperfectly who was generally right or wrong on a particular issue and hands out payoffs. Barack Obama, for example, seems to have lost a political bet that Iraq would fail (in narrow terms) and McCain’s hundred dollar check duly arrived in the gain of a few poll percentage points. But Obama has plenty of political currency and can keep playing; he is now making the bet that he will “be vindicated on the broader issue”. He might win, but any politician that keeps losing his bets will eventually run out of resilience and become nonviable.
It used to be the case that the MSM, playing Felix Leiter to a candidate’s James Bond in Casino Royale, could mint large quantities of political capital by controlling the narrative and save a political cause from ruin, within limits. That is becoming potentially more difficult as more old media outlets collapse. But not impossible. And with the stakes so high the struggle to control information will probably take new forms. Some ideas cling to existence almost as tenaciously as biological life. Maybe we’ll find one day that they’re two sides of the same coin and the surprising thing is that some people, forced to choose between their biology and ideology, will opt for the latter.
“Who has thought this through?” Rhetorical question, that.
“all for the sake of disarming a country with no WMDs.”
– Setting aside the tons of yellowcake quietly moved away…
In a computer game I never finished, Privateer II: The Darkening, one the groups you scuffle with are quasi-religious fanatics who hate what technology has done to humanity. So they use space ships and laser weapons to attempt to destroy civilization as it spreads from planet to planet. The irony is that they decry the same technology they use to destroy it.
Similarly, Environmental Activists seem to decry the same infrastructure that created their ability to activists.
I think – upon reflection – this whole pattern of behavior is an extension of Goldberg’s recent article on the Children of Capitalism. Spoiled, they are.
It would be interesting to see who wins the man versus his ideology wars. Humans spawn these clanking Frankenstein monsters that rampage through history which expend individuals like rounds of ammunition in its quest for some sort of ideational fulfillment. Although I don’t want to push this line of thinking too far, I’ve often wondered what sort of forms the 21st century would throw up in this recurring theme.
i think you can make the generalization that this boils down to a philosophical matter of free agency vs. compulsion. conservatives generally favor policies preserving our agency to choose how we want to live our lives: free markets, dereguation, free speech, gun ownership, etc.. democrats are socialists & they aim to compel people to do their will (which they view as enlightened): regulations, environmental restrictions, transnationalism (to circumvent the constitution), punitive taxation levels to redistribute wealth etc..
it’s not completely black & white but i think we can make that generalization. i also believe that socialists will lie, change the frame of reference etc. because they believe the ends justify the means & they’re ideologues. facts don’t change their viewpoint.
btw: that was 500 TONS of yellowcake that was shipped to canada from iraq. wilson/plame are still celebrities on the left though. facts don’t matter.
Hold on. I thought 99 percent of Scientist agree: Mankind is destroying the planet! What did you do, go to a deniers conference?
Now let us say Scientists are spending 20 Billion dollars building a mega Particle Accelerator. And that Accelerator may produce micro “black holes” that may eat planet Earth — and all its whales and pandas, too. Instead of earth in the Balance it is Earth off to the Crusher. Is that reason for concern? Perhaps, but the French are involved so (insert shrug here). And when fellowship and tenured positions are on the line, we will just have to take our chances with planet earth.
I always thought that a large portion of the “Consensus Scientists” in the surveys are involved in something like “science” part of the day and teach gym class or Home Economics the rest. The trick is to just hone your survey population until you get the result you want. It’s like some of those think tank studies: “Here are your conclusions now go write the report.”
A few years back my relatives forced the Curmudgeon (me) to watch an Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore came across like a Side Show Barker in the Carnivals that used to pass through the Midwest. The difference was instead of wanting all your quarters he wanted 45 trillion dollars. That was just sort of, you know, a down payment.
No it wasn’t a deniers conference. It was a bunch of distinguished scientists and engineers trying to understand something and surprised that other people, mostly politicians and journalists purported to have the answers to the questions they were trying so hard to understand. The problem was that they knew the difficulties; and that facile answers that satisfied the lay public didn’t begin to satisfy them.
But the problem was that some alchemy had transformed the whole standard process of inquiry into an act of blasphemy. I suppose you had to go back to Galileo to find an analogy. Someone had succeeded to the Inquisition. It was back in other robes. The term “denier” captures the religious character of the public debate.
One of the more interesting irritances at the Pentagon are the people who stump the halls and haunt the phone lines promoting bad ideas.
A Phd from Alaska has this neato plan for an office building with a large solarium at his personal university fiefdom. Someone decides it would make a good place to test deeply penetrating nuclear warheads. I had to agree the guy’s proposed new office would make a great test target but there was the small matter of us not having a deeply penetrating nuclear warhead program. Besides, he might not be in when we launched.
A fellow from Pass Christian, Miss just wanted a few of the Minuteman II ICBM’s we were decommissioning. “Just 1% of the total” was the way he put it, namedropping around Washington DC in a manner that would impress Robin Leech. He desperately needed these rockets to launch satellites to gather information on Global Warming and the Ozone Holes. Never mind the orbital capability of a Minuteman II (it is Zero, by the way) or the weight and size of these hypothetical satellites (TBD), just gimme the missiles please. And, oh, by the way, provide the launch crews and suitable launch facilities also. You got plenty and will never miss them.
Those were the little guys. The middle sized and big dogs came up with ideas that more even more costly and often had even less merit.
All of the people were trying the gambit where they convince DC to do it and thereby eliminate the need to make their case in the marketplace or in the lab. Often they were people whose programs had been cancelled and they were trying to keep them going by means of a new application. Sound familiar? Global Warming.
“…so that they resembled nothing so much as ents at a rave dance party.”
Wretchard, lines like that are much of the reason why I love coming here.
As for resiliance, sane/honest people know the planet is much more resiliant than the greens try to make out. People are very resiliant as well being made from the stuff of earth like we are. People have survived under extreme circumstances (the last ice age, the Soviet empire, the dark ages, Florida summers etc.) hell people would even survive an Algore world, but that pursuit of happiness thing would be out the mud thatched window.
It is remarkable to me, as a quasi-scientist (physician who no longer does bench research), that as the scientific case for AGW collapses, the political case for it gains strength.
Perhaps because I am used to looking at data, I seriously don’t get this. Why aren’t people, ESPECIALLY political types, HAPPY that AGW is increasingly clearly false? Why aren’t they mocking and de-funding its proponents (we know how politicians love enemies, especially powerless ones who are at their mercy)?
What’s going on here?
“What does it mean when, in the name of reducing carbon emissions, we reduce our civilizational energy sources and thereby reduce our resilience? Who has thought this through?”
Actually this question is not really new per se. The thought has occurred to me so I assume to a great many others also.
I have no doubt that the folks who advocate returning to the 18th century have also thought deeply on the matter…and have concluded that the candle is worth the price.
The other day it occurred to me that this may be one of the principle reasons the Left can so easily make league with the Jihadist movement.
They both want to return to the past for reasons of their own, it is only how far back that is open to question.
gokart-mozart:
Remember Gore’s acceptance speech for the Oscar? The one in which he said it was a moral issue? That should explain “what’s going on here.” It’s a cult. It won’t go away until after someone comes up with a more politically correct cult — or they start handing out the Kool-Aid. F
“Ideas like “Iraq is a quagmire” — and many other arguments popular on the Left or the Right — are very resistant to extinction; they adapt to storms by injecting more energy, in the shape of other “facts” into the debate; by changing the frame of reference or making a larger prediction further into the future.”
Or they change the data to support their “facts”
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/one-day-later-mauna-loa-co2-graph-changes-data-doesnt/
Problem for the AGW is the real energy source for the planet doesn’t seem to want to play by their expectations.
http://www.spaceweather.com/
The sun remains free of sunspots and most solar scientists are now predicting a very quiet sun for the near term. If the trend continues the AGW crowd is going to have some serious explaning to do as global temperatures behind to fall. Hopefully their enabling politicians will get a swift boot up their backside by the angry voters once they realize that the “CO2-is-a-threat” hoax was a scam that lead to both high energy and food prices as well as higher taxes and useless regulations. One can dream.
Al Gore uses the language of science to promote a religion. He is currently spending $300,000,000 on his “WE” propaganda campaign. Now, if this were a scientific problem to be solved, it would make more sense to invest the $300M in R&D. Just the other day, MIT announced (very preliminary) progress on a form of ‘artificial photosynthesis’ to store the energy of photovoltaic systems so they can keep the lights on at night. In addition to National Science Foundation Funding, this project benefitted from a $10M grant from the Chesonis family for the Solar Revolution Project at MIT. If Al Gore believed this was a critical scientific problem to be solved, he could duplicate that success 30X over.
When I mentioned this to one of my most fanatic enviro-buddies, he replied that Al Gore probably decided no technology worth investing in could be achieved for Gore’s $300M. Instead, his prosletyzing would be more effective in persuading people to elect the proper type of government who would institute the changes demanded by the enviros. Two thoughts jump out:
1. If $300M of Gore’s money is going to buy us nothing, why would we want to spend billions of taxpayer monies on such projects?
2. The real goal is social control, using coercive government programs to drive this new religion.
It’s intellectually and morally repulsive. The only defense of Al Gore’s phony science is rigid political enforcement. The idea that he is spending $300M to mislead the least educated and most naive voters goes beyond P.T. Barnum and the Pied Piper, we’re moving into the nihilism of Pol Pot with this purposeful infliction of ignorance.
Having heard some good news on the Bussard Polywell fusion front, I started daydreaming about all the things we could do if energy were extremely cheap.
Then I pondered the lost opportunities for progress and science and individual freedom attributable to the know-nothing doomsday cults that have taken over media, academia and government. Think about that some time: where would you be today and what great things could you have done without the negative effects of the environmental “movement”. I won’t even get into the drag effects of big government. The two combined are a disaster for man’s future.
What about societal coherence?
I live in an area where the largest industry is underground, illegal. This is Canada, one of the paragons of civilization and structured society.
This illegal industry provides recreational drugs to Americans and Canadians, and generates wealth for people who otherwise would have no access to it. Invariably if there is law enforcement activity, the fines are less than what a legitimate businessman collects in value added tax (GST) each month.
Now energy is to be regulated and controlled.
Bah. These people are fools.
Derek
I spent several years of my life in litigation over the arcane subject of air pollution modeling. I noted then the same thing I see now–the two sides largely talk past each other. the Greens talk in moral language and are disputed in the language of science. But science, by its very nature has no moral vocabulary, so it very speaks to the Greens. What did (and does) speak to them is competing moral language. that is why the Greens retreated in South Africa when confronted by opposition from the Third World that their prescriptions and proscriptions would further impoverish them.
gokart-mozart:
“Why aren’t people, ESPECIALLY political types, HAPPY that AGW is increasingly clearly false?”
Politicians need votes/money. A large motivated group whose support (votes+money) you win by supporting their cause offers an opportunity that is hard to resist.
Consider the level at which energy policy is being debated. Which would you rather do, get a new tire gauge or drill for oil? I’m sure that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain seriously believe that either alternative a real and complete energy policy. They are both caricatures of one.
But if you take tire gauges and drills as proxies for a policy point of view, it boils down to conservation versus exploration; doing with less versus getting more. Thus reduced, there’s no need to talk about BTUs, barrels per day, costs or anything if we can turn the question to a philosophical or religious debate.
It seems to me that the AGW argument, although it still has some force – CO2 is still below the point at which the models start coming up with terrifying predictions – is by no means the best argument for the reduction in use of fossil fuels, specifically oil and to a lesser extent gas.
A much better argument is that the transfer of capital from the civilised West to tribal barbarians, with ideas straight out of the Dark Ages, that want to see us all dead or enslaved is a very bad idea – and reducing oil consumption reduces that distortion. In other words, reducing oil consumption means less money in the hands of those that want to kill us. (The same applies with rather less force to gas consumption – Western Europe has a large and growing problem with its gas supplies being in the hands of Russia).
Spending some of the money currently being sent to Switzerland via the Middle East on research into (coincidentally carbon-neutral) “alternative” energy sources has to be a good idea. Some of them have already been shown to work and simply need some investment; example ocean thermal. Some of them will almost certainly work but need some research done; examples oil-producing algae. Some are somewhat speculative; example Polywell fusion. And some are really blue-sky (although the principles are sound); example SPS.
A combination of some of these would make the civilised “West” (some of it is pretty Eastern from an American point of view) independent of tribal barbarians. And this solves one of the world’s other major problems as well; once all this stuff is working, lay a minefield in the Persian Gulf, blow up all the pipelines leading out of Mordor, confiscate all their Western assets – and let them find out whether oil is edible. Oh, and throw out every last one of the barbarians out of every Western country, make their treason and idolatry illegal and dynamite their “religious” edifices while we’re about it.
Spend some time, expertise and money on alternatives to oil, and we not only shut up some of the shrillest of the ecofreaks, but cut down the money tree for terrorism as well. Why don’t we get started?
Random thoughts
I recommend Fernan Braudel’s (sp?) excellent works. As opposed to many historians he talks about ordinary people and the Realities of Life…the actual…
I posit that the end of slavery was initiated by the advent of cheap power (energy). The abolitionist societies of 18th century England began with the steam engine. Who do greens propose to enslave upon the repeal of energy?
Green and other forms of liberal life hate numbers. Numbers, even statistics, when understood, are not as maleable as words. Average people hate numbers. Thus average folk are suseptible to liberal bovine waste.
Entropy, in its fullest and most subtle forms, lives.
MC3. I too fought the air pollution battle. Got a power permit in SCAQMD (LA) during and EPA construction ban. Most important to regulators? The process, not the result.
Derek, what about an underground energy economy? Bootleg batteries? Bathtub gasolene? A the joys of inintended consequences.
FYI wind power is a fake. Solar a little better, but…
Everything starts with a fire, somewhere.
Saw Native Alaskans on Science Channel. They really liked the snow mobiles they were using. The “camp” used for hunting was well equipped with Coleman products. I am SURE they want to go back to semi-starvation lifestye in order to save the culture. Sure.
My granny, a crusty curmudgeon if there ever was one, used to say “Good ole days, hell, it was 12 to 14 hours a day of back breaking work just to get food on the table. Hot water heaters are a good thing.”
ta
Nova just aired a program entitled “The Megaflood”. It described how glacial activity formed a giant lake called Glacial Lake Missoula in Montana. The glacial walls that contained the water were over 3000 feet high and created a lake over 1000 feet deep. (Think about that scale for a moment.)
When the walls weakened and failed the 500 cubic miles of water (equal to 1/2 the water in the current Lake Michigan) surged out and scoured the earth for 500 miles as the flood coursed to the Pacific Ocean. Stunning.
Did I mention that this has happened TWICE in the last 15,000 years?
How could this have happened? Global climate cycle linked to solar output? Nah! Not possible, says algore and his disciples – these things only happen because mankind is ungoverned and is bespoiling our fair planet.
One of the things I’ve observed in my young 53 years: some people are so focused on the tree that they don’t see the forest. That includes political/ideological agendas. Junk science exists because an a priori faith in the template and worldview that yields up the politically desirable results. Plus, there is a financial agenda behind the people who advance “the consensus.” Also, they see a ratification of Kyoto as achieving some political agendas too. All of which are disastrous for this country and its economy.
Where is the money for R&D for “energy alternatives” going to come from when GDP flatlines or contracts? Again, tunnel vision on the part of some people who are clueless about the surrounding context.
It seems facts do not get in their way. The computer modeling to “prove” their hypothesis is highly unreliable and unattainable. They don’t let other explanations for the warming enter into the discussion, viz, solar cycles and gargantuan thermal energy released in the deep oceans from the earth’s mantle.
But, in the end you cannot argue against a religious faith. You can never convince these people; you can only resist them with all means at your disposal.
gokart-mozart (still checkin’ out the weather chart?):
“Why aren’t people, ESPECIALLY political types, HAPPY that AGW is increasingly clearly false?”
Would you be happy if the horse you were riding suddenly broke all its legs?
As others have noted, it’s all about power and money (and in some cases, a la Gore, also about celebrity and adulation). The Left has for years been making noise about taking over the medical industry in the US, which is what, like 10% of the economy? Lately they are trying to take over the oil companies. They already own the media for all practical purposes. They even took a chunk of the financial industry with the various Fannies (what a shock that a host of Clinton-era vermin, including the disgusting Jamie Gorelick, made millions on this ponzi scheme). Bit by bit they want to take over everything.
In this context, Global Warming was a (ha ha) godsend. What industry doesn’t impact the “globe”? None. So it’s their excuse to take over every productive enterprise in the country or even the world. This is ego-mania of an astonishing order.
The advent of The Great Barack suddenly made it all possible. The Congress is already in the hands of Tyrants. All they needed to push it all over the top was a charismatic King, a pretty wind-up-doll that would go out and charm the ignorant masses into smiling as they handed over everything they own. I’m a little surprised myself at how darkly conspiratorial my thinking is getting, since I’m not a conspiratorial type by nature. But I really think we’re on the edge of something very, very bad if we elect this charlatan to be our new Messiah. The pieces have been falling into place for decades. Obama is indeed the One they’ve been waiting for.
Don’t expect them to let this chance go by. Far too much is at stake. They must be panicking already at McCain getting even with Obama in the polls. I expect an enormous slander campaign to begin right after the Conventions. McCain and the Republicans, slow on the uptake as always, won’t have time to mount an effective counter-attack. Nothing the Left does, no matter how heinous, will surprise me, since the Left has in essence called “all in” with this election, and what they’ve put on the table is everything.
McCain is going to have to hit an Ace on the river. And me, I don’t believe in that kind of luck.
The only defense of Al Gore’s phony science is rigid political enforcement. – Tony
CNBC interviewed one of the MIT researchers responsible for the “breakthrough” in fuel cell technology (synthesizing a catalyst to mimic photosynthesis). My reading reveals some skepticism, but, as per the structure of this post, the interesting words came at the end when the researcher expressed an opinion of frustration that the level of the current technology was far more advanced than acknowledged by Congress which is considering budget reallocations that will reduce the already nominal R&D budget. As noted previously by others, much of the R&D funding is coming from private sector. That’s one point, the validity of which depends on untangling the self-interest drivers of revenue streams.
The other point is gridlock – in the markets and in Congress. Glenn Reynolds linked to the author of the theory here that the structure of patent ownership, which is highly distributed among many owners rather than concentrated among a few, is creating gridlock in bringing new, particularly high-tech, innovations to market. To the extent that the theory of patent gridlock can be applied to pending innovations in energy technology – and I do not know – but skepticism would suggest that the way forward is not fully technological, nor fully political, but will require some restructuring of the ownership infrastructure.
that is why the Greens retreated in South Africa when confronted by opposition from the Third World that their prescriptions and proscriptions would further impoverish them. – mcallen3
This is worth repeating even though my gut tells me that coal is dead. Gov. Schweitzer of Montana quips that everybody is lined up to build the *second* coal-to-liquid plant. He can’t seem to get any traction with investors by pointing to the three plants on-line and functioning in South Africa. Bridge technologies will be required and they will be fossil fuel based. Whether they are mined stateside or elsewhere has yet to be determined.
it boils down to conservation versus exploration – wretched
Which is why I have always personally *opposed* conservation as even a talking point – not because it won’t do any good but because it will be used to marginalize and de-emphasize the structural and political and infrastructure transformations that will be required. So by default – the path of least resistance. The technicians and their numbers will prevail eventually, but not before the rhetoric and the religion put the *A* back in GW.
wretchard of course. Fat fingers. Or spell checker slipped on past me.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 08/06/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
The long run is going to depend on continuing R&D, because we are not there yet in terms of those much trumpeted “alternative sources.” Realistically, when it takes 15 units of conventional energy (fossil or nuclear based)to produce one unit of their much cherished hydrogen power, there are very significant hurdles to be overcome. Constraints only are removed if they are not right up against the laws of physics, and they take enormous breakthroughs.
So, given that most R&D is not government funded – and even government funded R&D depends upon tax revenues – the short-run and intermediate term clearly cannot rely on flatlining or contracting our economy or the global economy. Why the junk science and Kyoto crowd do not grasp this is beyond my comprehension.
Short term and intermediate term we need to increase the supply of fossil fuel. There is no other way around this. Also, opposition to nuclear power is downright retarded, if I may be so blunt.
Al Gore and his crowd emit brain flatulence.
Tarnsman said:
“The sun remains free of sunspots and most solar scientists are now predicting a very quiet sun for the near term. If the trend continues the AGW crowd is going to have some serious explaning to do as global temperatures behind to fall.”
Actually this is something that I find a bit disturbing. Take a look at the following (particularly note the lower plot):
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif
The Sun has not been behaving uniformly over the last century. The Sun was covered with sun spots in the 1960s (cycle #19) but relatively spot free in the 1910s (cycle #14). Notice that the integrated area of sun spots has been tending upwards over the last century. Also notice that the geometry of the top “butterfly chart” has changed significantly over the last century. Obviously the Sun drives the Earth’s weather. Has anyone really bothered to do a proper correlation between the Earth’s average surface temperature and solar activity? I did an Internet search on this topic and most sources were dismissive. Why does it make sense to simply dismiss this argument that global warming is solar driven when there has been this trend with sun spots? Likewise there are Milankovitch cycles, i.e. global warming and cooling due to variations in Earth’s orbital parameters like the precession of the equinox, orbital eccentricity and the angle of the Earth’s axis of rotation with its orbital plane (obliquity). Milankovitch cycles are known to cause changes in the Earth’s climate (one can actually measure it in rock strata). I just noticed that someone has deleted all reference to Milankovitch cycles from the Wikipedia article on “Global Warming”. If someone naively studies Global Warming on the Internet, they’ll probably only see the anthropogenic explanations.
Everything…everything…begins with a big fire somewhere. The sun is a really big fire.
Couple of random thoughts:
Anybody remember the Synfuels Corporation? Jimmy Carter’s bright idea was established in 1980 with a projected “investment” of $88 billion. It was folded in 1985. Reason? No results.
The electrical grid in the US is the most complex machine in the world. We have seen how seemingly miniscule events cam bring it down. On Feb. 28, 2008 the Texas grid came very close to shutting down because of a sudden drop in wind power. A significant increase in unreliable power sources will smash it to smithereens. Unexpected cloud across the sun? One third of the US loses power.
A few years ago there was a brush fire northeast of Phoenix. The environmentalists were screaming about the utter destruction of “our fragile desert”. Two years later you couldn’t find a sign of the fire. I spent 20 years in the desert. Every animal and plant there has thorns and teeth and poison. They can go for a year without water. Fragile?
Mr. Lofquist; on the subject of solar power, I wholeheartedly agree, for the reason you give and also because (on average) it only gives any power at all 50% of the time and is only at full power for a good bit less than that. The other reason is truly terrible power density. In both respects (reliability and power density) only wind power is worse.
Of course, this only applies to ground solar power.
Solar and wind power are NICHE solutions to a huge problem with gargantuan needs. I am in no way saying we should not do these things; just that they should not be what we rely on over the intermediate term. We should be doing everything. Drill, build more nuke power plants, use solar and wind where feasible, synfuels from coal, etc.
My only worry is that if we go ahead and drill for more of our own oil, the OPEC nations will see the threat and open up the spigots, flooding the world with cheap oil and cause our domestic production to no longer be economically feasible. I think some OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers have been holding back production. I KNOW Russia and Venezuela have been doing this, and you all can surmise why they have been doing it – it’s not hard to figure out.
But someone should tell the Al Bore crowd that, in the big picture, what China, India, and Indonesia do completely swamps what we either do or cease doing, in terms of carbon foot print and demand for fossil fuels. This is an enormously weak link in the Kyoto Protocols for that Kool-Aid drinking crowd. I’m sorry I’ve succumbed to sarcasm and mockery, but I am rapidly losing patience with these people.
It is easier to understand resilience in the context of species survival. Resilience is developed in response to stresses, and increases the fitness of the species for survival. It is harder to understand the resilience of questionable ideas. I wonder what notions of fitness are optimized by retaining them.
It wasn‘t a Very Good Year
Within the Reagan Administration, Budget Director David Stockman and Energy Secretary James B. Edwards are locked in a megabuck battle over the synfuel program. Stockman argues that synfuels will not make a significant contribution to American energy supplies for decades to come, and that private industry, rather than the Government, should pay for the development of projects to turn shale and coal into synthetic oil and natural gas. Edwards, on the other hand, maintains that synfuels will never become viable without Government support because private companies will not spend the billions of dollars needed for the risky programs. The Energy Secretary also insists that synfuels are needed to decrease American dependence on Middle East energy supplies and “to send a strong message to the Saudis.”
Energy companies are also looking particularly closely at the high costs of all synfuel projects because of the declining price of oil. A shale oil or coal liquefaction proposal that might have been economically viable a year ago, when oil seemed to be heading toward $50 per bbl., might not make sense now, when the price is dropping toward $30 per bbl.
Moreover, oil industry skeptics point out that the proponents of synthetic fuels have been arguing since the days when oil was only $2 per bbl. that synfuels would be profitable if the price of petroleum went up another dollar or two. Yet every time the price of oil goes up, the estimated price for synfuel development also seems to increase. Those doubters predict that the cost of crude will have to go much higher before synthetic fuels are truly competitive with petroleum. Thus many of the ambitious plans for turning coal into oil and gas may stay on the drawing boards for years.
Some narratives never die.
Three changes over 20 years – (1) price of oil which may see $80/bbl but more likely to settle in the $100-$120 range, (2) pattern of intractable terrorism emerging from OPEC nations, and (3) sharp change in estimated Peak Oil date from mid 21st century to either the next decade or the one after, couple with hyper-growth within People’s Republic of Profit. Coal-to liquid is proven technology. Extraction of oil shale is difficult but commercial. And Fred is absolutely right about density and reliability of renewables. They are neither.
To the extent that government subsidies become part of the answer depends on the collective judgment of the American people for sending $600B to $700B out of country for oil. Under Reagan, Stockman reduced it to a very narrow issue of market economics. Twenty years later, the issue may have assumed a broader footprint.
“As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.”
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And if the Global Community can be convinced to inflate their tires properly, sea levels will simultaneously begin to retreat.
It sounds like the climatologist stumbled upon what is really going on but still doesn’t realize he has. Of course the people behind the curtain have thought it through. They know exactly what they are doing.
The goal is to diminish America and the Western world in general.
Where do you think all of the grease (soybean oil) from McDonalds and Burger King end up? Not the stuff in the dumpster out back, that is yellow grease and is fed to cattle.
The stuff you eat. It ends up at the county sewer plant, floats up to the surface in one of those roundy,roundy separator tanks. It is then skimmed off (or Lake Erie, your hometown river, etc would fill up with them.(They float). This stuff is hauled off by the truckload to be spread on fields to decompose.
It could be heated, filtered and burned in a diesel engine/microturbine. Pretty much if you have a use for heat, you can use the yellow grease for power and heat. Use more than one leg of the Rankine cycle and efficiency increases.
Use batteries for storage? No way. Push it right back thru the meter to the grid. The power companies have changed their attitude about this a lot. The beauty of this method is that you can buy a really small diesel and just let it run.
The problem with environmentalists is that they don’t like icky sources of fuel.
Scrap tires can be chunked and burned in a regular coal furnace (TDF- Tire Derived Fuel) provided it is an old style chain grate stoker. These could easily be used as a sweetener for coal generation plants. Tires burn cleaner than coal (at furnace temps, don’t try this at home!)with lower sulfur content than bituminous.
NIMBY! Your not burning stinky tires here! Tires don’t smell bad when burned at hight temps. It is incomplete combustion that causes that acrid smell.
No, what we want is inefficient solar panels that use more energy to create than produce. Waste in someone else’s back yard, to boot. And a battery system, cause I want to live in my 4000 sqft log cabin off the grid.
While out driving I heard Sen. Obama on the radio talking about cars that get 120 mpg and how he’s going to give you $7,000 if you will buy one (what a guy). Two thoughts came to mind: 1) If a car gets 120mpg, then why do you have to pay someone $7,000 to buy it? 2) Where is the $7,000 coming from?
I favor a windfall profit tax on the iphone myself, but that attacks Sen. Obama’s base so I ain’t holding my breath. I suspect he will kidnap seven grand from every American Family and then send a ransom note: if you want your money back you will buy one of these lame ass cars. You got until 9pm tonight! (He won’t want to give them too much time to think. They might get buyer’s remorse in advance).
The issue isn’t miles per gallon but cost per mile (I mean for a typical rational person — if there is such a thing). That’s why the left needs to artificially push up the cost of gas (and blame it on the oil companies, of course). Then the “Alternatives,” which will be heavily subsidized and untaxed, will look more attractive. Sen. Obama will call the subsidies “an investment” even though it is the opposite. Have we all been keeping our Newspeak Dictionaries up to date? It might be quite a chore during President Obama’s Administration, so don’t fall behind.
Every day the guy comes up with a new proposal that will distort Economic decision making and drag the economy down. Be happy, sell short.
it’s interesting how the iraq war led to higher oil prices, led to political pressure on the dems, causing them to blow an easy election (and maybe the house). almost like it was planned.
Eggplant:
A couple of years back I read an article saying that solar surface current activity, which predicts the amount of heat coming up from the depths of the sun, was at the lowest level ever recorded, which covered a period from the late 1800′s when such observations began.
This was said to predict a unusually low sunspot period beginning in 2018 or so. No mention of the effects on the Earth was made. This was at Space.com, so they dealt with just the space aspects.
But at that time I worked with a real degree-carrying astronomer and he pointed out that meant not just less sunspots but lower solar output overall. And that makes sense to me. If the currents that result from the inner solar processes are so much less, there must be less heat available.
And as you say, I have yet to see anyone plug this into the equation, so to speak. There is that one guy that did that presentation on how sunspots affect cloud cover on Earth, but not even he mentioned the overall solar output aspects.
cjm wrote: it’s interesting how the iraq war led to higher oil prices, led to political pressure on the dems, causing them to blow an easy election (and maybe the house). almost like it was planned.
Bah ha ha ha! OMG, if only the Republicans were that forward thinking.
mark-b…Sorry to disappoint you. Tire burning was tried, several times, and fails on several counts. They do not burn effieciently on a chain grate. Modern coal plants use pulverized coal, tires have stee belts…and there just isn’t enough of them. Waste grease? Same answer, not nearly enough. Further, the grease forms a cap on many types of sewage settlement ponds promoting good digestion of waste. Does a better job of that than as a bad fuel. Lots of diesels? It is called site power. You, the consumer, are not able to maintain the technology…and talk about the grid being complex now, add several millions of independent generators to the system.
RWE, eggplant. I have been talking about power density and the foolish chase of solar and wind power for years. Thanks for finally hearing.
Guys, take if from an old power house engineer, we have a do have a clue what is needed. Fuel. A fire. Somewhere, a fire.
Electical energy is first a rotating shaft, mechanical energy from some sort to heat engine, usually a steam turbine. To extract that energy something hot is cooled through the mechanical device and a shaft rotates. It is really very simple, been around since Hero’s engine.
Drill, refine
Liquify coal
Build nukes
Reprocess nuke fuel
Return totally spent fuel to the slag from which it came.
Have fun with solar power on your roof…it is a good hobby.
Forget the wind stuff…
(ps. Since entropy lives, nothing is free. If the huge percentage of power claimed for wind power is actually extracted, what do we do with the changed weather patterns? GigaWatts are big. Really big. Long live entropy.
i know, i know
Michael Hoskins:
Mechanical engineer here. And I think that solar and wind are fine, for where they are fine.
A friend of mine had a cabin so far back in the Vermont mountains that he has no phone, no lights, no motorcar, not a single luxury. Or he would, except he has solar voltaic panels and a battery storage system. And also a propane backup generator. And he does not try to live there in the winter but comes down here to Florida.
A friend says he works with someone who has photovoltaic cells on his roof that supply all the energy his house needs and feeds the excess back into the main power grid. And at night or when it is very cloudy he runs off the grid. This makes a lot more sense than putting in a battery storage system. But it basically means you need power plants just as large as if his solar system was not there. Obviously, you have to size the power plants as if his system was not there, because at night it is not and it may go down at any time. As for the cost – $20K – it will take 20 years to break even and by then I think he will need a whole new system.
So go ahead and do wind generators – but remember what a hurricane or tornado outbreak will do to them and size the power plants accordingly.
And don’t bother to cover miles with solar cells because they will inevitably be in the middle of no where and getting the power to where it is needed will be a gigantic pain. If you can use them somewhere where you need the power there, fine. Here, locally, they are going to build a new natural gas fired power plant to replace the old coal fired one. A bad idea, I think,- we got lotsa coal – but they are going to use solar cells to run the lights in the power plant! An insane publicity stunt!
Rentech Inc
Rentech will build its first commercial synthetic fuels plant utilizing the Rentech Process at the site of its proposed Strategic Fuels and Chemicals Complex in Adams County, Mississippi near the city of Natchez (“Natchez”). The Natchez facility, which will help meet the nation’s growing need for clean-burning, alternative transportation fuels, will be built in two phases. Rentech is targeting to complete Phase 1, the production of 1,600 barrels per day, in 2011 or earlier. Rentech is targeting to produce an additional 28,000 barrels per day during Phase 2 of the Natchez project.
Capitalized by $175M in bonds from State of Mississippi.
Rentech owns the full suite of proprietary patents.
This is very encouraging news.
michael hoskins:
mark-b…Sorry to disappoint you. Tire burning was tried, several times, and fails on several counts.
Yes, I am aware of some of those failures. There was a plant that tried it in Ohio, but concluded it was not feasible because the tire chunks kept falling the bottom of the boiler and smoldering. (They were injecting TDF into a pulverized coal boiler).
The same company,BTW, had a chain grate stoker, but couldn’t be bothered to burn it there.
Cement manufacturers burn tires in their kilns all day long.
A micro generator going back through an inverter (automatic paralleling) with safeties that prevent feeding an unstable line, large scale distributed generation is not that big a problem.
In any case, the utilities make their lineman work the lines hot, so it makes little difference to the lineman whether it is the utility or the consumer that is trying to kill him.
“Guys, take if from an old power house engineer, we have a do have a clue what is needed. Fuel. A fire. Somewhere, a fire.”
The power companies rely on their Stationary engineers to keep their other engineers in line, and their generators on line.
Solar and waste grease both have energy provided by fire, the sun. The proper argument against my position is that these sources are insignificant compared to coal and nuclear. But are they more effective than tire gages?
The greens are the biggest obstacle to the waste grease. The CO2! The CO2! Never mind the net removal of carbon from the atmosphere.
RWE:
“A friend says he works with someone who has photovoltaic cells on his roof that supply all the energy his house needs and feeds the excess back into the main power grid. And at night or when it is very cloudy he runs off the grid. This makes a lot more sense than putting in a battery storage system. But it basically means you need power plants just as large as if his solar system was not there. Obviously, you have to size the power plants as if his system was not there, because at night it is not and it may go down at any time. As for the cost – $20K – it will take 20 years to break even and by then I think he will need a whole new system.”
The grid is held up by two methods, base load units and peakers. The base load is the big coal plants and nukes running at 100%. Peakers are brought on and off line as needed to support the grid. Solar matches grid load as more power is used during the daytime. So solar is off when it is not being used and on when it is needed. This makes it (collectively) an automatic peaker.
BTW, the guys down at the system control center KNOW when you are making coffee,breakfast,taking showers, drying your hair, and leaving for work.
mark_b:
“A micro generator going back through an inverter (automatic paralleling) with safeties that prevent feeding an unstable line, large scale distributed generation is not that big a problem.”
It made more sense to me when I wrote it. I am referring to solar feeding an inverter and then the grid through your existing meter.
Mark_b:
Yes, I know about peakers. Usually they employ a gas turbine, and then the turbine exhaust is used to boil water to run steam system as well. But even with lots of people having solar cells on their roof you still will need the short notice peak suppliers. In certain instances the photovoltaics will be useless during a peak (cold nights, snowy days) as well as during hurricanes and ice storms that take down part of the grid.
You would not believe how many times we have lost power at my place. I already have a portable generator and I’m planning to put in a 10KW natural gas generator that will kick on when we lose power. I just wish they made them so the exhaust would heat my hot water too.
So I really don’t see how wind and solar can change the design requirements for the main power grids. If they can be used in some locations, then fine. Go for it.
And yes, I understood that you meant that a computer controlled solid state power inverter could backfeed the grid when it had more power available than was required at the site. That could get excessively interesting in the event of windstorm damage to the local grid so I would presume you would need to give control of that capability to the power company, just like they have a box installed that can shut off my air conditioning if required.
Geeze Louise.
Zip ‘em up boys.
Slade:
Ok we’d take it to alt.energy.homepower but Time Warner Cable doesn’t want to use usenet!
RWE:
The new inverters auto parallel as well as pop the breaker when the mains go unstable.
Grid goes away you are out of power.
Tiny generator runs all month.
Runs meter backward. You probably pay $130/MW for power. See how much it costs to generate. (If you can find a way to use the heat it may make sense.)
I’m done.
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