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Author Topic: Skepticism about Climate Change  (Read 213526 times)

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #200 on: May 13, 2017, 01:36:55 pm »

Wow, 2 red herrings in the same sentence. I wonder why you brought that up, other than attempting to live up to the thread's subject line.

1. Nobody claims that Wind turbines are clean,
2. Nobody claims it is or will, ever be able to, provide global energy (to fully replace other sources)...

Wow, 2 ridiculous statements in the same sentence.

As for the second point, neither that article or that sentence claims it, so what are you complaining about? It simply says that the percentage wind energy contributes is, after rounding, zero.

Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #201 on: May 13, 2017, 03:34:11 pm »

As for the second point, neither that article or that sentence claims it, so what are you complaining about?

Quote
"Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy"

It seems to me that that quote mentions "zero global energy", and that's what's subsequently being used as the reference.

Quote
It simply says that the percentage wind energy contributes is, after rounding, zero.

At best that's an observation, but it also suggests that that is the goal/objective (which it isn't and thus will never be reached). If instead, the more realistic goal was to cover 10% of worldwide requirements by wind generated power, then we're almost halfway (and there is lots of capacity that has been added since the 2014 IEA reporting period and is still being added each year).

From your post:
Quote
Even put together, wind and photovoltaic solar are supplying less than 1 per cent of global energy demand. From the International Energy Agency’s 2016 Key Renewables Trends, we can see that wind provided 0.46 per cent of global energy consumption in 2014, and solar and tide combined provided 0.35 per cent.

Less than 1% global energy 'consumption', as of 2014, is a red herring. Renewables are not intended and are not going to supply the global energy demand, and wind/photovoltaic power will only be part of the renewable capacity anyway. Because fossil fuel is so predominant (and de-facto subsidized by ignoring carbon tax), the alternatives will supply a smaller percentage.

But what if we start looking at it for specific countries? After all some are more suited for wind power than others. And what if we start looking at households and specific industries, having hugely different demands?

To give you a more realistic idea, today as a random sample, in the Netherlands, with low windspeeds, the energy demand of an approx. 1.2 million households will be fulfilled by wind power alone. Out of an approx. 7.7 million households, that means that more than 15% of all households were powered by the wind. And that's only on a low wind day, where only 11% of the existing operational capacity was generated.

With strong winds we could generate the energy for more than 10 million of the 7.7 households, so that's a surplus that can be split with industrial users,  or sold to other countries if they need it at that moment. And we're not done building yet, at all, so even with low winds (which are more prevalent than strong winds on average), we'll be able to cover more demand, i.e. reduce fossil-fuelled power plants and cover more of the manufacturing industry's requirements.

See how that paints a completely different perspective than 'less than 1% globally', 'let's round that to 0'?

But if you prefer to only paint a denier's picture, it's fine with me. I tend to agree with Neil deGrass Tyson, who once said (when asked if he can resist debunking all crazy ideas that are floated on the internet):
"What I don't do is debunk crazy ideas. I'd spend my whole life doing that. I'm an educator, my task is not to debunk crazy ideas of adults, but establish an educational system that is incapable of producing an adult that thinks that way in the first place".

It also helps those who lack such an education, to be a bit more critical when listening to lobbyists ...

Cheers,
Bart
« Last Edit: May 13, 2017, 08:03:12 pm by BartvanderWolf »
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Farmer

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #202 on: May 14, 2017, 02:13:16 am »

  You're wrong.  Fracking had a lot to do with oil price.  OPEC, particularly, Saudi Arabia, two years ago kept production up forcing prices down in order to put their  fracking competitors out-of-business.  It worked for short while.  Then the frackers developed more efficient ways to produce oil and were back in business.  The Saudi's were going into huge debt.  The fact that pricing is getting stable again shows that free markets are working despite OPEC.  Their cartel has lost its power for the most part because America is producing 4 million more barrels of oil a day then it use too.  Other producers like Iran and Iraq are back in the game as well.  With Trump opening up more areas of production, it will even be harder for OPEC to control prices.  Unless there's a war, you won't see $100 oil again.  My guess is a $40-$50 range.

I'm not wrong.  The figures prove me right.  Short term adjustments occur, but that's all they are.  Yes, the Saudis are feeling some heat after 2 years of lower prices, but that's primarily because they got used to absurdly high prices.  Yes, fracking has some impact, but it and other factors are really a major driver.  The US increase in production is about 4% of total global production - it's a factor, but it's not huge.

The biggest driver is the fact that the world is actively looking to move away from oil.  That's the single biggest driver and the only significant future driver.
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Alan Klein

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #203 on: May 14, 2017, 09:37:10 am »

Fracking has little to do with the oil price.

http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart

That's inflation adjusted and it also shows recessions (which other than the GFC have had little impact really).

Sure, OPEC adjusts the price a little bit to make it not cost effective for alternatives.  When demand decreases, OPEC just reduces supply.  The introduction of more efficient vehicles had very little impact on the price of oil.

https://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Chart.asp

The inflation adjusted average since 1946 is USD42.54, since 1980 is USD53.69, and since 2000 is USD63.52.  Oil has been going up, in real dollars, on average.  OPEC adjusts supply to counter demand to maintain price.  They might drop it short term to push others out of the market where they can, but that's not the free market at work when it's a cartel.
The cartel cheats each other including the Saudis http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Saudi-Arabia-Undermines-The-OPEC-Deal-By-Increasing-Production.html

Sure the cartel can create minor effects to the prices.  But there's so much more supply available from fracking, Iran and Iraq and other sources today that weren't available just a few years ago.  Plus, there's new demand from China which raises the price.  Similar things happen with other commodities.  If the prices of beans drops too much because of over-supply, farmers will plant less beans and switch to other foods so the price of beans goes up.  They don't need a cartel.  Typical supply and demand.  Similarly, oil production is cut to raise prices.  We're seeing a range established for oil. $30-$50.  The days of hundred dollar oil are over.

Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #204 on: May 14, 2017, 10:57:58 am »

Sure the cartel can create minor effects to the prices.

Small trip down memory lane ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

Maybe an exceptional situation (I hope), but a reminder about the potential 'minor' effects from the OPEC cartel.

Edit: Also this significantly affected the oil prices:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC#2008_production_dispute

Cheers,
Bart
« Last Edit: May 14, 2017, 11:31:50 am by BartvanderWolf »
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Alan Klein

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #205 on: May 14, 2017, 01:31:31 pm »

Small trip down memory lane ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

Maybe an exceptional situation (I hope), but a reminder about the potential 'minor' effects from the OPEC cartel.

Edit: Also this significantly affected the oil prices:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC#2008_production_dispute

Cheers,
Bart
OPEC no longer controls the oil market as they did in 1973 when they shut down oil imposing an embargo because of the 1973 Israel/ Arab war.  Today, there are too many other producers for them to do much.   I doubt if they'll shut down oil again as they did.  There rest of the world would just keep producing and laugh at them as they rolled in the dough.   

Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #206 on: May 14, 2017, 05:41:02 pm »

OPEC no longer controls the oil market as they did in 1973 when they shut down oil imposing an embargo because of the 1973 Israel/ Arab war.  Today, there are too many other producers for them to do much.   I doubt if they'll shut down oil again as they did.  There rest of the world would just keep producing and laugh at them as they rolled in the dough.   
A lot of the oil today comes from countries that are politically unstable:  Angola, Nigeria, some countries in the middle East.  In terms of global oil supply the US is pretty well off as through the use of fracking and increased off shore drilling we are almost self sufficient.  A shut down of foreign oil imports would not cause nearly as much of an issue as what took place in 1973.  However, it's worth noting that cars, trucks, train engines and other stuff that runs on gas/diesel are far more efficient today than they were 40 years ago.  My Honda gets almost twice the MPG that my Plymouth of 1973 did.
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LesPalenik

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #207 on: May 14, 2017, 06:56:43 pm »

In Europe, the sun is shining stronger in the recent years - measurements of solar radiation reveal a red zone that reaches as far as Germany. What is going on?



The map shows how the amount of solar radiation arriving on the Earth's surface has changed in recent decades. Red, orange and yellow indicate an increase in radiation. The map is based on a Europe-wide measuring network of solar radiation, which the World Meteorological Organization has been operating since 1965.

An eye-catching spot bounces across Bavaria, Austria, Northeastern Italy and the Czech Republic. But most of the rest of Europe is also orange or yellow, only the north-east, north-west and south-east are blue, where the sun has weakened.
What happened? Altered cloudiness cannot be the cause, because only measurement data under blue, cloudless sky were evaluated. And it can not be because of the sun itself which shines evenly on the entire earth.
Only one possibility remains: the amount of particles and gases in the air - the so-called aerosols - would have changed, says Blanka Bartók. They lay as veils over the earth and block parts of the sun.

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/mitteleuropa-das-geheimnis-des-roten-sonnenflecks-a-1146807.html
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Alan Klein

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #208 on: May 15, 2017, 01:10:33 am »

Maybe it's sun spots.

LesPalenik

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #209 on: May 15, 2017, 01:50:51 am »

Here is the solar radiation map for North America

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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #210 on: May 15, 2017, 09:34:17 am »

Ray

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #211 on: May 18, 2017, 05:00:17 am »

That's a very amusing cartoon, Slobodan, that also gets to the nub of the issue.  :)

We all know that the methodology of science has brought tremendous rewards to humanity that we enjoy and find useful every day of our lives.
However, one aspect of this new scientific knowledge is that it reveals how little we really know.

For example, there seems to be a consensus among Physicists and Astrophysicists, that our current state of knowledge allows us to detect, with our most sophisticated instruments, no more than 5% of the matter and energy that surrounds us. The other 95% of invisible and undetectable stuff is called Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

That should be a sobering thought for those who are so certain about the effects of CO2 on our climate.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Ray

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #213 on: May 18, 2017, 09:03:12 am »

One thing is certain. Australia's electricity prices have risen significantly during this recent period of encouraging the development of renewables through subsidies.

Increased electricity prices do not just affect the individual householder's electricity bills, which might be just an additional couple of hundred dollars a year, but increases the costs of the production of all goods through manufacturing processes that use electricity.

The cost of energy is a fundamental aspect of everyone's prosperity, on average. Australia has an abundance of energy resources, such as coal, natural gas and uranium. Prices should be coming down. Increased energy prices stymie economic development.

The longstanding documentary program, called Four Corners, which broadcasts on the government-funded ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), delved into this issue recently. There seems to have been a lot of incompetence that has resulted from this scare about CO2.

The video is well-worth watching.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2017/05/08/4663424.htm
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Ray

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #215 on: May 19, 2017, 11:10:28 pm »

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/18/climate/antarctica-ice-melt-climate-change.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Very good graphics of what is going on.

Alan,
There are always some glaciers that are melting and others that are growing, whether in the Arctic, Antarctic, Himalayas, or New Zealand.

The following authoritative reference from NASA indicates what the situation was just a few years ago.

"A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.
The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.
According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008."

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses

However, I do understand that alarmists will tend to ignore this data and focus only on the bad news. From more recent times, if you scroll down the NASA page, there's an article that indicates that the accumulation of ice in the Antarctic slowed down dramatically in 2016, which was a particularly warm year.

“Operation IceBridge is particularly well suited to measure changes in polar ice: it carries probably the most innovative and precise package of instruments ever flown over Antarctica,” Newman said.
"This campaign was possibly the best Antarctic campaign IceBridge has ever had,” said John Sonntag, IceBridge mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "We flew as many flights as we did in our best prior campaigns down here, and we certainly got more science return out of each flight than we have before, due to steadily improving instrumentation and also to some exceptionally good weather in the Weddell Sea that favored our sea ice flights."


Antarctica is heading into austral summer, a period of rapid sea ice melt in the Southern Ocean. But this year the sea ice loss has been particularly swift and the Antarctic sea ice extent is currently at the lowest level for this time of year ever recorded in the satellite record, which began in 1979."

Notice the phrase 'the lowest level for this time of year ever recorded'.

That's sounds very alarming, but is moderated by the following statement, 'in the satellite record, which began in 1979."

In other words, the melting of ice in the Antarctic during the summer of 2016 was the greatest in the past 37 years. However, the question that alarmists should also consider is 'what year was the record for the greatest accumulation of ice in the Antarctic?'

In any period one chooses, whether 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 50 years, 100 years, 1,000 years, a million years, there will always be a record rainfall, a record drought, a record glacier melt, a record sea rise, a record glacier growth, a record storm, and so on. That's weather.

Look again at my first quote, 'the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.'

In that period between 1992 and 2001, the average ice gain per year was apparently 112 billion tons. That gain wouldn't have been consistent from year to year. There would have been a record high gain within that 9 year period, as well as a record low gain. The same applies to the shorter period between 2003 and 2008, so the question in my mind is 'How has the build-up of ice in the Antarctic fluctuated between 2009 and 2016?'

Has NASA stopped providing such figures? I bet they were severely criticised for revealing their earlier research which was counter-alarmist.

Here's another recent (2014) article with images showing the advancement of the Hubbard Glacier in Alaska
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=85900

'Since measurements began in 1895, Alaska’s Hubbard Glacier has been thickening and steadily advancing into Disenchantment Bay. The advance runs counter to so many thinning and retreating glaciers nearby in Alaska and around the world.'

Anyone who is interested in both sides of the argument, which is based upon reliable data and facts, can discover for themselves that 'alarmism' about global warming depends upon excluding the 'good news' and mentioning only the 'bad news'.

Once the 'meme' that increased CO2 levels will have catastrophic consequences, has percolated the consciousness of the population at large, every negative reportage of extreme weather events reinforces the meme and increases the alarm, which is shamefully unscientific.

Sensible and rational people understand that the recent protest marches against the attack on science are completely misguided. No serious person has been attacking science and its methodology, but lots of rational people like myself have been attacking the biased and misleading reportage of the results of the scientific inquiry into the climate change issues. It seems to take more nous than the average person possesses, to understand the difference.  ;)

The argument that we are in a current warming period, on average, globally,  seems reasonable to me. After the last Little Ice Age it is to be expected there would be some sort of change, and such change to a slightly warmer climate seems beneficial to me, especially when considering the climate in my home country, the UK, during the LIA.

For those who are interested, the following site provides an insight into past weather and climate conditions in the UK during the past 6,000 years, based upon proxy data (tree rings, ice cores, sediment analysis and so on, as well as anecdotal descriptions from historical texts). Just click on any period listed to get a detailed account.  http://www.booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/histclimat.htm

The impression I get is that our current climate during the past 150 years or so, is just as stable (or unstable) as it was during the past 6,000 years before humans began burning fossil fuels in large quantities, at least in the UK.

My advice to all you AGW alarmists, who are probably suffering from some form or degree of OCD, is to relax about the CO2 issue, and concentrate instead on the real and serious issues that confront our well-being into the future, such as world poverty, religious discrimination, terrorism, the possibility of a future world war, the real pollution of the environment due to plastic waste, release of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and environment, and the lack of rehabilitation of the environment after mining projects have run their course, and so on.




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Alan Klein

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #216 on: May 20, 2017, 12:58:01 am »

OPEC no longer controls the oil market as they did in 1973 when they shut down oil imposing an embargo because of the 1973 Israel/ Arab war.  Today, there are too many other producers for them to do much.   I doubt if they'll shut down oil again as they did.  There rest of the world would just keep producing and laugh at them as they rolled in the dough.   

Interesting article I just came across from two days ago confirming that OPEC no longer controls pricing.  America is now the swing producer.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/18/investing/opec-oil-prices-us-shale-saudi-arabia/

Alan Klein

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #217 on: May 29, 2017, 08:49:37 am »

LesPalenik

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Re: Skepticism about Climate Change
« Reply #218 on: May 31, 2017, 06:01:24 am »

Quote
For the second time in a month, Hawaii’s coastlines have been swamped by epic tides. The phenomenon, known as a king tide, is actually a convergence of a few different factors: high lunar tides, rising sea levels associated with last year’s strong El Niño and climate change, swirling pockets of ocean eddies, and a robust south swell—that is, big waves rolling onto south-facing shores.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/the-ghost-of-climate-change-future/528471/

In the meantime, an even bigger king tide than the ones in April and May is forecast for June.


EDIT:
Toronto is not faring much better.
The total rainfall for April and May has been double what is normally seen. 232 millimetres in 2017 compared to 125 millimetres on average.
From Jan. 1 to May 31, two thirds of the days have had precipitation (that's higher than Ireland), making it the wettest first five months on record in Toronto.
« Last Edit: May 31, 2017, 08:14:16 am by LesPalenik »
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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