Conservatives and climate change

[DC]

And core sites can be re-visited except for the ones that have melted away.

indeed

 

[Furcifer]

Nor does the intoduction of the new technology have to imply a downturn to the economy:

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/07/13/267650/brookings-green-jobs-are-real-good-and-growing/

Not if they are allowed to be introduced as the market dictates. Trying to force things to happen because it's our will isn't going to work.

Yes Green jobs are real and growing, and then they'll disappear. That's just a product of their long ROI. The wind turbines have pretty much been and gone in this area already. You remember the Maytag Man? His son is the Turbine Man.

 

[DC]

Not if they are allowed to be introduced as the market dictates. Trying to force things to happen because it's our will isn't going to work.

Yes Green jobs are real and growing, and then they'll disappear. That's just a product of their long ROI. The wind turbines have pretty much been and gone in this area already. You remember the Maytag Man? His son is the Turbine Man.

can you quantify the uncertainty in that prediction?

 

[jj]

The wind turbines have pretty much been and gone in this area already.

Funny, we have gobs of them around here, more going up every day, it seems, and the cost from the power going down.

You are determined to resist anything beyond "burn, baby, burn!".

#sarcastic
Why do you hate polar bears?
#back_to_reality

 

[jj]

One unique thing about the ice core work is that the evidence is destroyed by the work itself.

Is there some reason for this made-up baloney?

 

[thaiboxerken]

Your argument demonstrates how AGW theory proponents argue. Thanks. I said nothing about how grants work. What is the relevance to Mann's status to the accusations that he withheld data from critics, conspired to delete emails among his allies and so shield them from FOI requests, and, with his friends, contorted the peer review process? The only relevance Mann's status could have to the matter is the extent to which that status enabled this behavior.

Thanks again for the demonstration of the AGW theory proponent's style. Keep it up. When you're ready to discuss issues, instead of personalities, we can continue the exchange.

You so funny.thank you for this.

 

[stokes234]

Not if they are allowed to be introduced as the market dictates. Trying to force things to happen because it's our will isn't going to work.

Yes Green jobs are real and growing, and then they'll disappear. That's just a product of their long ROI. The wind turbines have pretty much been and gone in this area already. You remember the Maytag Man? His son is the Turbine Man.

If we ever get to the point where we have enough sources of renewable energy that there is no point building any more, then we've basically created a permanent, free, carbon neutral power source. At that point we're not going to need as many people working as many hours to sustain the same quality of life anyway.

 

[Furcifer]

We're not doing enough, though. This article by Monbiot analyses two papers published in Nature to suggest that we actually need to start considering not even extracting some of the known reserves of oil.

And without a cheap source of energy we won't do anything.

I have to wonder if the alarmist aren't all Baby Boomers that realize they royally screwed things up and now they want to feel better about themselves while shifting the blame? Damn hippies pretty much ruined nuclear energy for everyone. The ship sailed on this when they were hugging trees and buying Camaros.

Firstly, I could use a source on that. Secondly, does it matter how good your quality of life is, if you're dead? Climate change is predicted to cause more chaotic weather, and mass migration of tens of millions of people from areas claimed by rising tides would bring famine, disease, and conflict over remaining land and food sources, and the worst effects are most likely to hit the 3rd world. Shiny Ipads will not be much comfort in those kinds of situations.

I'd probably need a combination of sources, we're talking about life expectancy, standard of living, literacy and GDP all increasing considerably in the last 200 years. That's pretty much a given: Most people today are better fed, clothed, and house than their predecessors two centuries ago. They are healthier, live longer, and are better educated.
Infant mortality rates have dropped considerably and tend to skew the different life expectancy graphs, they give additional years beyond 15 or 21. The average life expectancy in the US shot up 30 years from 1880-1998 but has remained stagnant. In other places however, like India it continued to rise during the same period.
I'll have to look for a paper or write my own I guess.
People die everywhere all the time due to floods, hurricanes, tsunamis etc. With the world population on the rise it's only going to get worse. I still think a strong world economy is better prepared to deal with the fall out from climate change rather than a weakened one based on wishful thinking we can halt the inevitable.

Have you ever seen a study that compares the "real" business as usual model with the one where we rapidly decarbonize and the world economy comes to a crashing halt? Recession and even depression are well known and real possibilities, more real than the model predictions of climate extremes. Has that occurred to you or is that something you "deny"?

 

[Mikemcc]

Not if they are allowed to be introduced as the market dictates. Trying to force things to happen because it's our will isn't going to work.

Yes Green jobs are real and growing, and then they'll disappear. That's just a product of their long ROI. The wind turbines have pretty much been and gone in this area already. You remember the Maytag Man? His son is the Turbine Man.

Just as much as the construction jobs disappear after oil, gas or coal power stations disappear... Except they don't they move on to other sites, and old systems need decommissioning and replacement, and then there's continuing development and manufacturing. You might also notice that those clean-jobs quoted in the article also included those in waste management and recycling, a growth industry. Especially if we trying to bring others up to the same energy usage per capita...

You really are a glass-half-empty person, aren't you?

 

[Mikemcc]

And without a cheap source of energy we won't do anything.

I have to wonder if the alarmist aren't all Baby Boomers that realize they royally screwed things up and now they want to feel better about themselves while shifting the blame? Damn hippies pretty much ruined nuclear energy for everyone. The ship sailed on this when they were hugging trees and buying Camaros.



I'd probably need a combination of sources, we're talking about life expectancy, standard of living, literacy and GDP all increasing considerably in the last 200 years. That's pretty much a given: Most people today are better fed, clothed, and house than their predecessors two centuries ago. They are healthier, live longer, and are better educated.
Infant mortality rates have dropped considerably and tend to skew the different life expectancy graphs, they give additional years beyond 15 or 21. The average life expectancy in the US shot up 30 years from 1880-1998 but has remained stagnant. In other places however, like India it continued to rise during the same period.
I'll have to look for a paper or write my own I guess.
People die everywhere all the time due to floods, hurricanes, tsunamis etc. With the world population on the rise it's only going to get worse. I still think a strong world economy is better prepared to deal with the fall out from climate change rather than a weakened one based on wishful thinking we can halt the inevitable.

Have you ever seen a study that compares the "real" business as usual model with the one where we rapidly decarbonize and the world economy comes to a crashing halt? Recession and even depression are well known and real possibilities, more real than the model predictions of climate extremes. Has that occurred to you or is that something you "deny"?

Nice and cosy in your neck of the woods then, not so good in sub-Saharan Africa, or Bangladesh, or Pakistan (remember the floods?).

Also, how much extra will it cost to delay and sort out the mess later?

http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...-climate-change-will-be-163190bn-1778391.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4519783...-tallies-health-costs-disasters-tied-climate/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/26/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange

...This meant the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would have to be kept below 500 parts per million, said Stern. In 2006, he set a figure of 450-550ppm. "I now think the appropriate thing would be in the middle of that range," he said. "To get below 500ppm ... would cost around 2% of GDP."...

This is doubled from his initial report of just two years previously.

The trouble with climate modelling and reporting isn't alarmism, it's conservatism. The IPCC AR4 report didn't include Greenland ice-shelf melt water in sea-level rise predictions, because at the time of writing there weren't sufficient studies to properly define it. The emissions scenario is presently tracking along the worst case scenario from the models, with little sign of slowing, and likely to get worse as countries like China tackle sulphate emissions...

 

[Furcifer]

Funny, we have gobs of them around here, more going up every day, it seems, and the cost from the power going down.

You are determined to resist anything beyond "burn, baby, burn!".

#sarcastic
Why do you hate polar bears?
#back_to_reality

And the automotive industry sustained tens of thousands of jobs for 80 years in this area. You don't honestly believe "more and more" will go up for 80 years do you? They aren't consumable goods and they don't require maintenance and parts a sustainable industry requires.
I mean it's great, but the fact is if you graph the associated economic productivity of things like wind turbines and solar farms there's the initial peak and then it tapers off drastically for the next 15-25 years.
I don't know where you live, but around here there isn't enough space to continue erecting wind turbines for 25 years so that they can begin replacing the first ones and create a continuous manufacturing cycle.

 

[DC]

And the automotive industry sustained tens of thousands of jobs for 80 years in this area. You don't honestly believe "more and more" will go up for 80 years do you? They aren't consumable goods and they don't require maintenance and parts a sustainable industry requires.
I mean it's great, but the fact is if you graph the associated economic productivity of things like wind turbines and solar farms there's the initial peak and then it tapers off drastically for the next 15-25 years.
I don't know where you live, but around here there isn't enough space to continue erecting wind turbines for 25 years so that they can begin replacing the first ones and create a continuous manufacturing cycle.

can you quantify.... oh whatever, i will get used to your crystalball predicitons , hypocrit

 

[Furcifer]

Just as much as the construction jobs disappear after oil, gas or coal power stations disappear... Except they don't they move on to other sites, and old systems need decommissioning and replacement, and then there's continuing development and manufacturing.

I don't know what you're saying, but yes construction jobs pretty much disappear after the construction is done. It doesn't matter what it is you're constructing.

You might also notice that those clean-jobs quoted in the article also included those in waste management and recycling, a growth industry. Especially if we trying to bring others up to the same energy usage per capita...

You really are a glass-half-empty person, aren't you?

It doesn't matter if you aren't manufacturing anything.

 

[Trakar]

three-body problem

Newton solved the 2 body problem for a planet orbiting a Sun; piece of cake. Added a second planet and it stumped the greatest minds in mathematics for centuries. As simple as it seems there's no analytic solution to the problem, the equations are unsolvable.

In classical terms and in looking for a precisely determinable state at any given timeframe (with respect to say multiple planetary orbits). If you are simply looking for a reasonably accurate approximations in the relatively near future/past, however (or looking at the quantum mechanical varients of this class of problems), such isn't that difficult of a problem.

The Earth's climate is infinitely more complex.

"infinitely?" Really? Do tell me more!
Perhaps you could even provide a good reference supporting this assertion?

There's no solution to the problem of "What's going to happen to the climate". A reasonable approximation? Only if we put the necessary restrictions on our variables. But then the restrictions themselves are pretty much useless.

In whose estimation? please support these proclamations of faith with some real science from a legitimate source.

You want my opinion?

sure, especially when it is thusly qualified as such

Chances are we've already screwed up the climate to such an extent that it will never return to what it was before we started burning fossil fuels.

point of clarification: "won't" or "can't"? IOW are you saying that we cannot return the planetary climate to that state, or merely that we won't return climate to that state? (not that I've ever heard that as a goal, most are seeking to return atmospheric ratios to levels averaged a few decades ago and even most of the extreme adovcates I've heard are only looking for levels averaged a half century ago). As is evident, climate is in a constant state of flux and change, regardless of whether or not there are human contributions and influences. I, and most others who find issues of concern with regards to the current climate change situation, merely seek to reduce and minimize the human footprint upon climate and the broader environment. Reduce and eliminate most of our atmospheric emissions, restore and maintain the diversity of natural biomes and their associated carbon sink mechanisms.

We've changed the entire face of the planet and the human perturbation will never return to "equilibrium".

Not sure what you are saying here?

 

[Furcifer]

can you quantify.... oh whatever, i willg et used to your crystalball predicitons , hypocrit

lol, yah it takes a crystalball to figure out that once you put up a wind turbine it sits there and turns

 

[DC]

lol, yah it takes a crystalball to figure out that once you put up a wind turbine it sits there and turns

have you quantified the amount of maintence needed over their lifetime? How much maintenance the needed smartgrids will need? etc etc, you know, the detailed stuff that climate modelers do......

i don't say your prediction is wrong, its just rife with uncertainties.

 

[Trakar]

You're right that we can't return to pre-industrial CO2 levels within any short term timeframe, or at a reasonable cost. But we do have an obligation to stop it getting significantly worse. There's already a significant lag in the heating from what we've already put into the air. Even if we (unrealistically) stopped all CO2 emissions immediately the warming would continue for another 30 years or so until equilibrium is reached, before starting to drop as natural sequestration processes remove the CO2 from the atmosphere over a timescale of 1000+ years.

One scenario that is definitely unsustainable is 'business-as-usual'.

short term equilibrium (immediate climate sensitivity) is in the 3-6 decade range. long-term equilibrium may take many centuries or more. At least, this seems to be what the paleoclimate indicates. Additionally, the natural reduction rate is much slower than you seem to assume. ~50Mya in the Eocene, the last time the atmospheric CO2 levels approached anything similar to what is expected over the next century or so, it took 40+M years for the levels to drop back down to the ~250ppm (+/-50ppm) that this range has fluctuated around for the last ~400,000years. The mean lifetime of the elevated CO2 concentration of the atmosphere resulting from fossil fuel combustion has been calculated to be tens of thousands of years (Archer et al. 1997).

A handy reference work -
"Atmospheric Lifetime of Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide"
http://forecast.uchicago.edu/Projects/archer.2009.ann_rev_tail.pdf

 

[Trakar]

At a bare minimum, it might take as long 1000 years, we just don't know. And this is the one thing the confusionalists don't seem to get, the weight of uncertainty is on the high side, there is very little uncertainty that things might not be as bad as predicted but very high uncertainty surrounding whether things will be much worse than anticipated.

The natural conservatism inherent to climate science.

 

[uke2se]

Look, the current argument started here:...jj asserted that I "can read instruments that show the historical trends of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere" and I replied "If you supply the time machine, sure". Do or do you not agree with the basic point, that all of us get almost all of our "scientific" knowledge second-hand? Do you or do you not accept that no one can, without a time machine, today take yesterday's temperature, anymore than s/he can take a triceratops' temperature? Yesterday's weather report was someone else's inspection of an instrument. Today, for me, yesterday's weather report is someone else's word. Even if I visit the weather station at Honolulu International Airport and look at the thermometer, that's today's temperature, not yesterday's temperature. Right? I will certainly believe that since the 50's and earlier people sampled air and ran it through gas chromatographs to derive values for chemical species' representation. I have to take their word for what they found. There's nothing wrong with that. It's how it has to work. Most science is a collaborative effort.

I agree. The question is why do you trust a tiny minority of people with mostly questionable credentials instead of the vast body of academics that are willing to accept reality? It's just not rational.

This relates to the questions above. How could so many experts go wrong? Do they all have to conspire? No. A few critically-placed insiders can construct a consensus around a mistake (or a fraud). Misplaced trust, pride, confirmation bias, and careerist ambition do the rest. In some public venues, it hepls if devotees resort to calumny and other intimidation. For a while.

Yes, a climate denialist really has to believe in a conspiracy. The problem with your explanation of the conspiracy is that it wouldn't work. You see, scientific results can be reproduced, and results from climate science has been, many many times over. That means that all those scientists have to be "in on it" too. Soon enough, the conspiracy has grown to thousands of academics all over the world, and then you drown in a vortex of conspiracist woo.

 

[Mikemcc]

I don't know what you're saying, but yes construction jobs pretty much disappear after the construction is done. It doesn't matter what it is you're constructing.

My comment was that the jobs don't 'disappear', they move on to the next project, just as they do in other major construction projects. Given the more distributed architecture of renewables, it's likely that the employment totals are likely to be more stable than those for large monolithic projects.

It doesn't matter if you aren't manufacturing anything.

A citation for that rather bizarre claim?