The Climate Change Hoax

[Alan Klein]

This has a.o. been agreed in The Paris Agreement on climate change: each Party shall prepare, communicate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that it intends to achieve.

Here you can find the details:
http://unfccc.int/focus/long-term_strategies/items/9971.php

Here is THE UNITED STATES MID-CENTURY STRATEGY (other nations have goal and strategies specific to their geography):
http://unfccc.int/files/focus/long-term_strategies/application/pdf/mid_century_strategy_report-final_red.pdf
and here some additional documentation:
http://unfccc.int/files/focus/long-term_strategies/application/pdf/us_mcs_documentation_and_output.pdf

Of course, without proper funding of e.g. the EPA, it is very likely that progress will fall behind schedule, and then additional cost will be involved when trying to catch up with the rest of the world at a later date. And of course, the fact that the USA is the current no.2 polluter of the world, makes an extra effort unavoidable.

Cheers,
Bart

That's not a summary.  One report has page after page of calculus, derivatives, etc.  The other is the total UN report that runs almost 100 pages.  If you want people to buy much less understand what the costs and results are going to be, you have to put in into an executive summary like the one I showed from Copenhagen above. 

The other issue I have is that many countries will not meet their commitments.  Just like NATO, everyone will forget to contribute and let America bear the burden.  Trump did the right thing by putting Paris Agreement on hold.

[Alan Klein]

According to ... who is 'climatedepot.com' (sponsored by ..., mission statement ...)?
What is, according to them the cost of doing nothing?

Cheers,
Bart

It's easy to be critical.  If you provide a summary that's easy to understand like the one I provided, I'll be glad to read it. 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

It's easy to be critical.

You're dodging the simple question.

If you provide a summary that's easy to understand like the one I provided, I'll be glad to read it.

So you are saying that you can't handle the truth (which is not a simple one page summary)?
Okay, let's make it simple enough for you to understand:
Disaster: imminent.
Required action: No time to lose.
Solution by Trump administration: Cover eyes, plug ears and shout LaLaLa...

Cheers,
Bart

[Alan Klein]

You're dodging the simple question.

So you are saying that you can't handle the truth (which is not a simple one page summary)?
Okay, let's make it simple enough for you to understand:
Disaster: imminent.
Required action: No time to lose.
Solution by Trump administration: Cover eyes, plug ears and shout LaLaLa...

Cheers,
Bart

OK.  So you can't furnish the data only make a joke about not being able too.  I get it.  Thanks.

So the summary I found will have to stand until someone comes up with better data.  That summary shows the world spending trillions of dollars with very little effect on the environment.  And that assumes everyone pays their share for decades.  That there's no cheating by anyone.  That no wars or economic catastrophes like the 2008 recession interrupt the payments.

Good luck. 

[Ray]

Ray, when you dig more deeply into the sources that you are fond of quoting and find out that they have direct links to organizations funded by the Koch brothers who are strongly against any scientific efforts to understand global warming, I might take your posts a little more seriously.

Your kidding, Alan. Right? Did you miss the link to the references at the foot of the following article I linked to?
https://stanford.edu/~moore/Boon_To_Man.html

There are about 80 or so references to a broad range of studies by various universities and institutes. I could list them all at the foot of this post, but it would take up too much space. That's why we have links, so I'll list just a few of those studies selected at random.
Of course, many of those studies are not necessarily freely available. You might have to pay to view the full text.

All I ever see are quotes from way outside the mainstream climatology community from you. the only true statement I've seen from you is that global warming is complex. Of this we are in agreement and nothing else.

Climate is not only very, very complex but the times scales involved before a significant and continuous trend becomes clear, are greater than the life-span of a human. Look at any graph of the estimated, fluctuating global temperatures over the past few millennia and you'll see that they spike up and down from decade to decade and century to century. However, certain over all trends are noticeable, such as the 3 periods of cooling followed by warming during the past 3,000 years. Do you dispute the existence of these periods, Alan? Five of these six phases of either cooling or warming can reasonably have nothing to do with human emissions of CO2, because they occurred before the industrial revolution. Do you accept this, Alan?

Such a situation of complexity and long time scales does not lend itself to the application of the rigorous processes of the scientific methodology for future predictions. Isn't that obvious? An analogy would be the complexity of human biology. New drugs and medicines always have to be tested under controlled conditions before they are considered to be effective and reasonably safe. The tests might begin with mice which have a very short lifespan so the results appear quickly, then monkeys with a longer life span, and finally humans with an even longer lifespan.

Unfortunately, it can take many years for the side effects to emerge. Mistakes are often made, and sometimes only years down the track do the harmful side effects become apparent. Don't you agree?

Now imagine if the pharmaceutical industry were to produce a drug which had not been tested through the usual processes, and they were to declare that certain computer models had indicated that the drug should be completely safe without any long-term harmful side effects, and that there was a 97% consensus among the researchers that the computer models were accurate. Would you take the drug, Alan, confident that the computer models must be correct, because there was a so-called, unscientifically verifiable, 97% consensus?

I'm often amazed at the gullibility of people who believe in the 97% consensus figure. Don't people understand that all organizations require a degree of conformity to the ethos or ideology of the organization that employs them?

AGW alarmists so often use the argument, if a scientist is associated with the fossil fuel industry in any way, then whatever he says on AGW issues must be biased.
Do people not understand that the government funded climate research centres in many countries around the globe were not set up to do an impartial study on the causes of climate changes, but were set up as a result of a scare about the influence of greenhouse gasses such as CO2 and Methane. Without that scare being maintained, funding would either cease completely or be reduced significantly. All the climatologists in these research centres have a personal interest in maintaining the scare.

We know what happens to whistle-blowers. They tend to get into serious trouble and suffer a ruined reputation. Only a few are prepared to take the risk and sacrifice their career in the interests of truth.

That applies to all institutions with an agenda, whether Banking, Car Manufacturing, Coal Mining, or the Catholic Church, and so on. Government-funded Climate Research Centres are no exception. The 'Climate-gate' email leaks corroborate this, and the 'Hockey Stick Graph' is one of the most glaring examples of this bias.

What is disturbing for the thinking person, is that the 'Hockey Stick' debacle might be just the tip of the iceberg.
Now you might wonder in what way might I be biased. Do I have shares in the fossil fuel industries? No I don't. I don't have shares in any industry, and I'm retired from all employment. But I do have a solar panel on the roof of my house, which I bought because the subsidies were so generous, especially the feed-in tariff to the grid which is more than double the value of the average price I pay for the electricity I use directly from the grid, when the sun ain't shining.

When I travel overseas for a couple of months to take photos and experience other cultures, my solar panels are generating huge credits. When I return to Australia, my electricity bill for the next quarter is usually in credit, and that credit continues for another quarter or more, depending on how long I was away.

However, because I'm getting a benefit from my solar panels, does not mean that I will therefore jump on the bandwagon of AGW alarmism. The truth is more important, and I don't have a job to lose by exposing it. Okay?

Here are just a few of the 80 or so references that you appear to have missed in my links.
Are you still an AGW alarmist, Alan?

Baliunas,Sallie and Robert Jastrow [1993]. "Evidence on the Climate Impact of Solar Variations," Energy, 18(12): 1285-1295.
Boserup, Ester. [1981]. Population and Technological Change: A Study of Long-Term Trends, Chicago: University of Chicago.
Broccoli, Anthony J. [1994]. "Learning from Past Climates," Nature, 371 (22 September): 282.
Carpenter, R. [1966]. Discontinuity in Greek Civilization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cline, William R. [1992]. The Economics of Global Warming, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics.
Cohen, Mark Nathan. [1989]. Health and the Rise of Civilization, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine [1991]. Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming, Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Cook, Edward, Trevor Bird, Mike Peterson, Mike Barbetti, Brendan Buckley, Rosanne D'Arrigo, Roger Francey, and Pieter Tans. [1991]. "Climatic Changes in Tasmania Inferred from a 1089-Year Tree Ring Chronology of Huon Pine," Science, 253 (13 September): 1266-1268.
Crowley, Thomas J. [1983]. "The Geologic Record of Climate Change," Review Geophys. Space Phys. 21: 828-877.
Crowley, Thomas J. [1990]. "Are there any Satisfactory Geologic Analogs for a Future Greenhouse Warming?" Journal of Climate, 3, American Meteorological Society, (November): 1282-1292.
Crowley, Thomas. J. [1993]. "Use and Misuse of the Geologic "Analogs" Concept," in Global Changes in the Perspective of the Past, J.A. Eddy and H. Oeschger, eds, Chapter 3, pp. 17-27.
Crowley, Thomas J. and Gerald North, [1991]. Paleoclimatology, New York: Oxford University Press
Fairbridge, R. W. [1984]. "The Nile Floods as a Global Climatic/Solar Proxy," in N. -A. [sic] Mörner & W. Karlén, eds. Climatic Changes on a Yearly to Millennial Basis: Geological, Historical and Instrumental Records, Boston: Dordrecht, pp. 181-190.
Lamb, Hubert H. [1977]. Climatic History and the Future, Princeton: Princeton University Press, Vol. 2 1985.
Kutzbach, J. E. and T. Webb III [1993]. "Conceptual Basis for Understanding Late-Quaternary Climates," in Global Climates since the Last Glacial Maximum, H.E. Wright, Jr., J. E. Kutzbach, T. Webb III, W. F. Ruddiman, F. A. Street-Perrott, and P. J. Bartlein, eds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Ch 2, pp. 5-11.
Alayne Street-Perrott, Vera Markgraf, John E. Kutzbach, Patrick J. Bartlein, H.E. Wright, Jr., and Warren L. Prell [1993]. "Climatic Changes during the Past 18,000 Years: Regional Syntheses, Mechanisms, and Causes," in Global Climates since the Last Glacial Maximum, H.E. Wright, Jr., J. E. Kutzbach, T. Webb III, W. F. Ruddiman, F. A. Street-Perrott, and P. J. Bartlein, eds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Chp 19, pp. 514-535.
Morley, Joseph J. and Beth A. Dworetzky [1993]. "Holocene Temperature Patterns in the South Atlantic, Southern, and Pacific Oceans," in Global Climates since the Last Glacial Maximum, H.E. Wright, Jr., J. E. Kutzbach, T. Webb III, W. F. Ruddiman, F. A. Street-Perrott, and P. J. Bartlein, eds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Chp 6, pp.125-135.
Stine, Scott [1994]. "Extreme and Persistent Drought in California and Patagonia during Mediaeval Time," Nature, 369 (June 16): 546-549.

[Alan Goldhammer]

You mean to tell me that after all this time and arguing in the public arena, no one has published figures to quantify costs and what reductions in global warming there will be based on those costs?

The one place to look is the property casualty insurance industry.  they have to quantify impacts of weather in order to make a profit.  Insurance in areas where violent weather is a 'fact of life' (tornadoes, hurricanes) is more expensive than other areas.  Building along beachfront areas subject to erosion also falls into this category.  Because of the porous nature of the substrata in Florida, coastal regions will be very susceptible to damage from sea level rise.  It would be interesting to know what is happening to insurance premiums in this region.

[Alan Goldhammer]

Your kidding, Alan. Right? Did you miss the link to the references at the foot of the following article I linked to?
https://stanford.edu/~moore/Boon_To_Man.html

There are many more references that argue the other side.  Moore is no expert in climatology but rather someone who writes on international trade.  He has worked for organizations that are anti-climate change and receive funding from the Koch Foundation.  His past affiliations with groups such as the Tobacco Institute don't inspire confidence.  Again, had you done a little bit of research you might be a more credible commenter on this topic.

There are about 80 or so references to a broad range of studies by various universities and institutes. I could list them all at the foot of this post, but it would take up too much space. That's why we have links, so I'll list just a few of those studies selected at random.
Of course, many of those studies are not necessarily freely available. You might have to pay to view the full text.

  Number of references matter little; quality of references matter a lot.

When you have something original to say on the topic, I'll start to pay attention to your posts.  Otherwise, I'm not going to read them any more as it only elicits a big YAWN.

[Robert Roaldi]

You mean to tell me that after all this time and arguing in the public arena, no one has published figures to quantify costs and what reductions in global warming there will be based on those costs?  Even a little start-up has a business plan that projects costs and income.  Otherwise no investor or bank will loan them money.  Certainly we can expect some analysis before making a national and global commitment to changing the ways our economy works that will effect us profoundly. 

Let me make it easy for you.

What changes in global warming will happen if America spent $50 billion a year to reduce CO2 and carbon emissions?

What changes in global warming will happen if America spent $100 billion a year to reduce CO2 and carbon emissions?

What changes in global warming will happen if America spent $300 billion a year to reduce CO2 and carbon emissions?

All valid questions that the culture needs to think about. However, we also need to ask what is the cost of NOT doing anything.

[LesPalenik]

Global warming can get dangerous in more ways than one. There is a psychological component to how heat can affect aggression.
For example, statistics show that violent crimes in U.S. cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis tend to go up in the spring and peak in the summer.
On a larger scale, consider the recent study into how heat impacted the Classic Mayan period between AD 350 and AD 900, when their civilization began to decline.

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/deleting-science-heat-and-violence-neurolaw-and-more-1.4045849/killer-heat-how-temperature-made-mayans-more-violent-1.4046275

[Ray]

All valid questions that the culture needs to think about. However, we also need to ask what is the cost of NOT doing anything.

We know what the cost of not doing anything is. Damage from floods, droughts and hurricanes which have been occurring during the entire history of the human race.

Reducing CO2 levels is not going to fix those problems. The more valid question is, 'Do we spend money on an uncertain hypothesis that rising CO2 levels might cause such extreme weather events to get worse, or do we spend money protecting ourselves from the far more certain repetitions of past, extreme weather events with natural causes?

[Ray]

With regard to natural climate change, I'm reminded of the Biblical story of Joseph in Egypt. The Pharaoh had a dream. As he stood by the river, suddenly there came up out of the river seven cows, fine looking and fat; and they fed in the meadow. Then behold, seven other cows came up after them out of the river, ugly and gaunt, and stood by the other cows on the bank of the river. And the ugly and gaunt cows ate up the seven fine looking and fat cows.

The Pharaoh wanted his dream interpreted, but none of his advisers or magicians were able to do it, so Joseph, who had a reptutation for correctly interpreting dreams, was brought out of jail to interpret the Pharaoh's dream.

The seven, fine looking fat cows represented 7 years of plenty (ie. good weather), and the seven ugly and gaunt cows who ate up the fine looking cows, represented 7 years of drought.

To quote:

“Now therefore, let Pharaoh select a discerning and wise man, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint officers over the land, to collect one-fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt in the seven plentiful years. And let them gather all the food of those good years that are coming, and store up grain under the authority of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities. Then that food shall be as a reserve for the land for the seven years of famine which shall be in the land of Egypt, that the land may not perish during the famine.”

I'm not religious, as some of you might have noticed, but I understand that the current, very dry environment of those ancient Egyptian pyramids, is not the sort of environment which would have been conducive to the flourishing of a great civilization. The climate in those days must have been very different. However, that anecdotal story of a ruler taking action to protect the citizens from a famine which could have resulted in mass starvation and chaos, is very relevant to the situation today.

We kid ourselves if we think we can protect ourselves from extreme weather events by reducing miniscule amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere.

[Hans Kruse]

OK I found one answer to my question.  It seems like a lot of money for not much.

Quote: "Danish statistician Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, the President of the Copenhagen Consensus Center: 'We will spend at least one hundred trillion dollars in order to reduce the temperature by the end of the century by a grand total of three tenths of one degree...the equivalent of postponing warming by less than four years...Again, that is using the UN's own climate prediction model.'
'If the U.S. delivers for the whole century on the President Obama's very ambitious rhetoric, it would postpone global warming by about eight months at the end of the century.'
'But here is the biggest problem: These miniscule benefits do not come free -- quite the contrary. The cost of the UN Paris climate pact is likely to run 1 to 2 trillion dollars every year.'"

http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/01/17/danish-statistician-un-climate-treaty-will-cost-100-trillion-to-postpone-global-warming-by-less-than-four-year-by-2100/

Lomborg was used by the Danish government more than 10 years ago to provide an alternative view on what came out of the progressive Ministery of the Environment. Even the liberals realized that his views were not that useful and the support was dropped. As I said and believe, any projections by even the best experts today cannot estimate the cost more than a few years out in time. Beyond that they would need to know what technical innovations will come along. I strongly believe that the CO2 reductions will be small unless there is a way to reductions that is economic and part of that is what I wrote about electrification of transport. We will see, but idealism only carries so far. Most people don't care and will not give up even a small part of their life style for the environment unless it is obviously better for them and economically viable without sacrifice. I know this does not sounds very good but I think it is a very realistic view I'm optimistic though that there will be technical developments and inventions that will make big changes in the right direction.

[Alan Klein]

...The seven, fine looking fat cows represented 7 years of plenty (ie. good weather), and the seven ugly and gaunt cows who ate up the fine looking cows, represented 7 years of drought.

  Of course, it's those damn cows what with all the farts and methane that caused Pharaoh all that grief. 

[Hans Kruse]

Solar in the UK? See this episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nui7VAqvINY&t=108s

[Alan Klein]

Does anyone have factors and costs relating to how maximum demand for electricity on the hottest day of the year requiring the most air conditioners to operate are handled with clean energy and traditional fossil fuel generators?  In other words, do fossil generators still have to be in place to take up the slack on a very hot but cloudy and no-wind day?  If so, aren't you paying double the costs to maintain both system approaches?  Are you also paying for double the replacement costs over the life cycles of both type of systems? Are these costs included in the charts that compare the various methods of producing electricity?

[LesPalenik]

Does anyone have factors and costs relating to how maximum demand for electricity on the hottest day of the year requiring the most air conditioners to operate are handled with clean energy and traditional fossil fuel generators?  In other words, do fossil generators still have to be in place to take up the slack on a very hot but cloudy and no-wind day? If so, aren't you paying double the costs to maintain both system approaches?  Are you also paying for double the replacement costs over the life cycles of both type of systems? Are these costs included in the charts that compare the various methods of producing electricity?

Not if you use large and highly efficient batteries.

[Alan Klein]

Not if you use large and highly efficient batteries.

So are countries doing that or is it a mixed bag?  Major cities are providing batteries so they can completely turn off their fossil generators?  Do you have any links that I can read. 

What reminded me of this is back when I was doing energy management systems in NYC, commercial buildings there had to pay a Demand charge KW in addition to the usual Consumption charge KWH for the total of electricity used. (Home owners only got charged for KWH consumption).  The theory was that the utility would charge for the highest "demand" use on a single day of each billing month because the plant would have to be built for the maximum worse case use.  The fact that the rest of the month was cooler and the plant could operate at lower demand did not reduce the construction costs of a larger plant.  So that got me thinking about clean energy an how it would meet highest demand on a cloudy, no-wind day. 

Where are these batteries you mentioned?  Are they of sufficient size to handle a whole city's demand? 

[Alan Klein]

A few clean energy projects in NYC I'm familiar with that may be of interest.

The East River turbine project in 2006.  Unfortunately the river is really a tidal estuary that runs both way depending on the tides.  So it's force varies during the day and there is no flow during slack tides.  Don't know if it's still operating.
https://energy.gov/articles/turbines-nyc-east-river-will-provide-power-9500-residents

I worked on the building automation control and monitoring system for Citibank Headquarters building when it was constructed back in the 1970's.  It's iconic look (see picture) had the roof facing south on a 45 degree slant so they could power the solar panels that was to power the building.   Citibank had the building designed that way to show they were interested in saving fuel back then in 1973 when we were hit with the oil crisis.  Energy conservation became buzz words.  Of course, the joke was that the solar panels could only produce enough electricity to power one floor.  The building has 59 floors.  So they still needed traditional electric hookup to utility power.  In the end they never installed the solar panels as the roof doesn't face true south (Manhattan north/south streets are not exactly north/south).  Check your Google maps.  But it was all a publicity stunt in the first place.  They also had a more immediate problem that the building would collapse if it got too windy.  The architect and structural engineer designed the building improperly.  They added emergency supports in the middle of the night and kept the problem hidden from the public for twenty years.  Interesting story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center

[LesPalenik]

Where are these batteries you mentioned?  Are they of sufficient size to handle a whole city's demand?

Maybe in the future. We'll have to check with Ellon Musk about his new batteries.
I don't think we should mothball all existing power plants, but a networked system combining solars, wind, large batteries, waves, intermixed with some mega, micro and even nano power plants will offer new ways to generate, store, and distribute electrical power. And on dark, windless days we could generate some juice by using crank and pedal machines. Or build small home methane digesters and generators.

[Alan Klein]

Maybe in the future. We'll have to check with Ellon Musk about his new batteries.
I don't think we should mothball all existing power plants, but a networked system combining solars, wind, large batteries, waves, intermixed with some mega, micro and even nano power plants will offer new ways to generate, store, and distribute electrical power. And on dark, windless days we could generate some juice by using crank and pedal machines. Or build small home methane digesters and generators.

So if a town has upgraded to wind and/or solar, there still has to be a conventional electric generation plant using fossil fuels to back up it up.  You can't shut down the plant.  You have to use it when it's dark and no wind outside.  You now have to replace both electric production plants when their equipment life cycles are over.  You now have two plants to maintain and service.  So when I read what the cost to produce electricity with solar and wind, do the figures include the cost of the fossil fuel plant that must back it up?  What are the true costs?