Fear and loathing in DC

[DanG 1]

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The way you phrased that makes it sound like your an AGW activist who feels government action is mandated and worth what ever else happens. Is that a fair statement on my part?

Um, no. Where in anything I've written, including what you quoted, did you get that idea?

IMHO, you're projecting what you think about "warmists" onto every aspect of the conversation. Please read what I wrote, it was quite neutral in tone, intentionally.

- Dan G

[StreetScooby 5]

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Please read what I wrote,...

I reread your Post #423, and agree with you on this one. I was projecting .

We are all engines of karma

[billvon 3,110]

>Man is aiding climate change, but we're far from the only force driving that, IMO.

Man affects the climate only a tiny amount, fortunately. Of the amount of CLIMATE we see we are a tiny fraction of the driving force. Of the amount of climate CHANGE we see we are currently the largest driver, in terms of raw numbers. (Watts per square meter forcing.)

>In a nut shell, politicians should not be saying that "97% of all scientists agree..."

Agreed. They should be saying "97% of working climate scientists agree . . ."

>I believe the original article that started this whole nonsense number is here:

?? They disregarded the papers that had no opinion on climate change. To do otherwise would be silly.

>Here's another article "debunking this number", this one from Forbes.

You keep posting opinion articles from the popular press; one was written by a political activist from the Heartland Institute, perhaps the leading denier organization. I keep posting peer-reviewed articles from science journals.

[DanG 1]

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I reread your Post #423, and agree with you on this one. I was projecting . I can get wrapped up in a frame of mind every now and then, and it can color my perception .

What!?! This is Speakers' Corner. Aren't you supposed to call me a Nazi or something?

Don't worry, we all do it sometimes.

- Dan G

[StreetScooby 5]

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You keep posting opinion articles from the popular press; ... I keep posting peer-reviewed articles from science journals.

Ouchy, that stings... but it's a fair statement . I've gone back through this thread and collected the various articles you've posted. Had to track some down. Before I post them as a double check, a few quick questions:

1) What do you think of these climate sites?
Climate Central
Climate Etc.

2) You refer to a "Survey of Scientists" in post #404. Do you have a link to it?

Here's a summary of links to the actual papers you've quoted. Let me know if they're wrong, or if I've missed one:

Is there a scientific consensus on global warming?

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Expert credibility in climate change

Thanks. I look forward to reading these.

On a side note, my wife and I have looked into the NY State program that supports putting solar panels on your home. A lot to figure out, yet, but it's on the project list. Unfortunately, I am no where near as skilled with my hands as you are, so this project is still "long term".

BTW - I tracked down the Nature Archive. Wow, that looks great!

We are all engines of karma

[billvon 3,110]

>1) What do you think of these climate sites?

First one looks reasonable as an aggregator, second one looks like a blog. (BTW I generally don't use websites for primary material; good websites are useful, though, as pointers to good material, as well as secondary analysis of that material.)

>2) You refer to a "Survey of Scientists" in post #404. Do you have a link to it?

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftigger.uic.edu%2F~pdoran%2F012009_Doran_final.pdf&ei=HEPNU6fnEoaIogTf24GIDw&usg=AFQjCNFW7gAEg5cN1_dx1xWE7Cpqu81x4Q&sig2=tg_2g0yUw73Xak2YiFJ3UQ&bvm=bv.71198958,d.cGU&cad=rja

Survey questions the study concerned itself with:

1.) When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

2.) Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

The question was asked of earth scientists; the list came from a reference by Keane and Martinez that listed all faculty at associated universities, along with researchers at government institutions like NASA, NOAA, DOE etc.

Of all responders from that pool, whether they were involved with climate research or not, 90% answered "yes" to question 1 and 84% answered "yes" to question 2.

When they narrowed it down to responses from working climate scientists, the numbers became 96% and 97%.

Interestingly the lowest positive response rates were from economists and meteorologists.

>On a side note, my wife and I have looked into the NY State program that
>supports putting solar panels on your home. A lot to figure out, yet, but it's on
>the project list. Unfortunately, I am no where near as skilled with my hands as
>you are, so this project is still "long term".

There are so many places offering installation now that it's getting not worth it to install yourself. Labor costs have come way down, they've streamlined permitting a lot etc.

[StreetScooby 5]

I've made it through the first paper, and related articles. Been very busy with a new job, so this took longer than I expected.

Is there a scientific consensus on global warming?

As presented, I have no problems with this paper. As has been summarized before in this thread we know the following:

Quote

1) Yes, it's clear that CO2 has an impact on climate.
2) It's also clear that there are many drivers in our climate, many of which are not understood, and that the impact of CO2 is no where near the dominant force in our climate.
3) It's becoming increasingly clear that this impact will be not be catastrophic, or anything remotely catastrophic.
4) It's crystal clear that what's is being proposed by AGW proponents is worthless, in terms of effectively mitigating this effect.

This discussion/argument is really around points 3 and 4, at this point in time, IMO. billvon has made the point that humans are the only sustained driving force in climate change right now due to our increasing CO2 emissions (...I am NOT talking about the United States here, I'm talking about the entire planet). That is a valid point, though I'm not sure I'd agree we're the only sustained driving force.

Watched an interesting science channel show last night about the various phases the Earth has already gone through. One of the most catastrophic changes happened when cyanobacteria (Wikipedia Cyanobacteria) started producing massive amounts of oxygen. Completely destroyed most life forms that existed then. So, there can be non-human driving forces to climate. Which others are out there now doing so? Cows, ants? What else?

To be clear in my understanding, without a doubt CO2 impacts the climate. Without a doubt humans are increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. There is doubt whether this is going to be catastrophic as being "sold" by politicians. Without a doubt, there is nothing being proposed by any American politician that is going to have any impact on this problem, other than taking more money out of our pockets and giving them more control over our lives. I agree the planet should reduce CO2 emissions. If it really is as serious at stated, then nuclear is the only viable option right now. Within 10 years, we can dramatically reduce CO2 emissions while we continue looking for non-nuclear forms of energy.

The big problem here are the politicians, and the uninformed people who are blindly following them. Here are just some recent examples of "politicians" that have no clue of the impact of what they're talking about:

Electrical Workers vs. the EPA

The EPA is out of control, and people are beginning to realize it. Actually, they are flat out crazy. This decision is going to have a real impact on real people, and it's going to be a massively negative one while having a negligible impact on global warming.

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Late last month more than 1,600 witnesses testified at hearings held by the Environmental Protection Agency on its Clean Power Plan, which will impose drastic, 30% cuts in carbon emissions by 2030, with most of the cuts taking place by 2020. The EPA's proposal has attracted such a large response for a very good reason. The plan would have a dramatic impact on the American economy but only a minimal effect on global carbon emissions.

The EPA's plan, according to its own estimates, will require closing coal-fired power plants over the next five years that generate between 41 and 49 gigawatts (49,000 megawatts) of electricity. That's approximately enough capacity to power the state of Georgia at any given time. Unless that capacity is replaced, the nationwide equivalent of the Peach State would go dark.

When gauged by accepted industry metrics, the agency's plans also would result in the loss of some 52,000 permanent direct jobs in utilities, mining and rail and at least another 100,000 jobs in related industries. High-skill, middle-class jobs would be lost, falling heavily in rural communities that have few comparable employment opportunities.

The U.S. is already facing the loss of 60 gigawatts of power over the next three years, the result of older coal plants' being forced to shut down because they cannot comply with the EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards enacted in 2012. At the time, the EPA claimed that only four gigawatts of capacity would be lost. Those of us familiar with the industry knew better, and the agency now does not contest that 60 gigawatts of coal-generated electricity will be lost. Ninety percent of the plants slated to close due to the MATS rule were needed to provide power during the polar vortex and other periods of severe weather last winter. Is the EPA willing to gamble that we won't have another harsh winter in the next five years?

This is happening now in my area:

New York environment regulators seek summer shutdown at Indian Point

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New York state environmental regulators are proposing shutting the giant Indian Point nuclear power plant to protect fish in the Hudson River during summer months, when demand for electricity for air-conditioning is greatest.

Indian Point: Summer shutdowns pitched to protect fish

It's actually fish EGGS, they are looking to protect. They seem to have forgotten that Indian Point provides 25% of the power in the lower Hudson Valley, which includes New York City, and the shutdown would occur during the 3 months of summer. This effort is being driven by Robert Kennedy's Riverwatch organization. THIS IS BAT POOP CRAZY. Robert Kennedy, and his political friends, are in dire need of adult supervision, IMO.

This begs the question wrto someone who is BAT POOP CRAZY. How do you have a conversation with them about being BAT POOP CRAZY? You don't, it simply won't work. The EPA, Robert Kennedy, and associated people who are advocating absolutely crazy solutions to a non-catastrophic problem are out of control. And you can't talk to them about it. I don't see any adults on that side of the room, and it frightens me far more than the possibility of a 2 degF hike in global temps over the next 100 years.

We are all engines of karma

[winsor 236]

quade

Some people would ignore the facts all the way to extinction.

The rest of us can see the handwriting on the wall. Not that we're in immediate threat of becoming extinct over this, but a hell of a lot of the population of the planet is going to be pretty screwed over by it within the next century.

News flash - the problem is population. All this horseshit about Climate Change is, if anything, reflections upon one of many symptoms of the core issue.

Anyone who chooses to perseverate upon something so definitively secondary is a fucking idiot. I give you Al Gore as a prime example.


BSBD,

Winsor

[Amazon 7]

winsor

***Some people would ignore the facts all the way to extinction.

The rest of us can see the handwriting on the wall. Not that we're in immediate threat of becoming extinct over this, but a hell of a lot of the population of the planet is going to be pretty screwed over by it within the next century.

News flash - the problem is population. All this horseshit about Climate Change is, if anything, reflections upon one of many symptoms of the core issue.

Anyone who chooses to persevorate upon something so definitively secondary is a fucking idiot. I give you Al Gore as a prime example.


BSBD,

Winsor

If you are going to try to dazzle us with your brilliance..

[winsor 236]

Amazon

******Some people would ignore the facts all the way to extinction.

The rest of us can see the handwriting on the wall. Not that we're in immediate threat of becoming extinct over this, but a hell of a lot of the population of the planet is going to be pretty screwed over by it within the next century.

News flash - the problem is population. All this horseshit about Climate Change is, if anything, reflections upon one of many symptoms of the core issue.

Anyone who chooses to perseverate upon something so definitively secondary is a fucking idiot. I give you Al Gore as a prime example.


BSBD,

Winsor

If you are going to try to dazzle us with your brilliance..

Ok, it's a term I picked up from a PhD in the Very Soft Sciences, in whose Department it was used extensively.

Given the definition provided, it fits nicely (particularly when spelled correctly) . So what if the source was bogus?

[StreetScooby 5]

If you want to worry about something a little more immediate, here's a recent WSJ article. This gets my attention...

==================================================

Opinion
The Growing Threat From an EMP Attack
A nuclear device detonated above the U.S. could kill millions, and we've done almost nothing to prepare.
By
R. James Woolsey And
Peter Vincent Pry
Aug. 12, 2014 7:14 p.m. ET

In a recent letter to investors, billionaire hedge-fund manager Paul Singer warned that an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, is "the most significant threat" to the U.S. and our allies in the world. He's right. Our food and water supplies, communications, banking, hospitals, law enforcement, etc., all depend on the electric grid. Yet until recently little attention has been paid to the ease of generating EMPs by detonating a nuclear weapon in orbit above the U.S., and thus bringing our civilization to a cold, dark halt.

Recent declassification of EMP studies by the U.S. government has begun to draw attention to this dire threat. Rogue nations such as North Korea (and possibly Iran) will soon match Russia and China and have the primary ingredients for an EMP attack: simple ballistic missiles such as Scuds that could be launched from a freighter near our shores; space-launch vehicles able to loft low-earth-orbit satellites; and simple low-yield nuclear weapons that can generate gamma rays and fireballs.

The much neglected 2004 and 2008 reports by the congressional EMP Commission—only now garnering increased public attention—warn that "terrorists or state actors that possess relatively unsophisticated missiles armed with nuclear weapons may well calculate that, instead of destroying a city or a military base, they may gain the greatest political-military utility from one or a few such weapons by using them—or threatening their use—in an EMP attack."

The EMP Commission reports that: "China and Russia have considered limited nuclear-attack options that, unlike their Cold War plans, employ EMP as the primary or sole means of attack." The report further warns that: "designs for variants of such weapons may have been illicitly trafficked for a quarter-century."

During the Cold War, Russia designed an orbiting nuclear warhead resembling a satellite and peaceful space-launch vehicle called a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System. It would use a trajectory that does not approach the U.S. from the north, where our sensors and few modest ballistic-missile defenses are located, but rather from the south. The nuclear weapon would be detonated in orbit, perhaps during its first orbit, destroying much of the U.S. electric grid with a single explosion high above North America.

In 2004, the EMP Commission met with senior Russian military personnel who warned that Russian scientists had been recruited by North Korea to help develop its nuclear arsenal as well as EMP-attack capabilities. In December 2012, the North Koreans successfully orbited a satellite, the KSM-3, compatible with the size and weight of a small nuclear warhead. The trajectory of the KSM-3 had the characteristics for delivery of a surprise nuclear EMP attack against the U.S.

What would a successful EMP attack look like? The EMP Commission, in 2008, estimated that within 12 months of a nationwide blackout, up to 90% of the U.S. population could possibly perish from starvation, disease and societal breakdown.

In 2009 the congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, whose co-chairmen were former Secretaries of Defense William Perry and James Schlesinger, concurred with the findings of the EMP Commission and urged immediate action to protect the electric grid. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences, the Department of Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Intelligence Council reached similar conclusions.

What to do?

Surge arrestors, faraday cages and other devices that prevent EMP from damaging electronics, as well micro-grids that are inherently less susceptible to EMP, have been used by the Defense Department for more than 50 years to protect crucial military installations and strategic forces. These can be adapted to protect civilian infrastructure as well. The cost of protecting the national electric grid, according to a 2008 EMP Commission estimate, would be about $2 billion—roughly what the U.S. gives each year in foreign aid to Pakistan.

Last year President Obama signed an executive order to guard critical infrastructure against cyberattacks. But so far this administration doesn't seem to grasp the urgency of the EMP threat. However, in a rare display of bipartisanship, Congress is addressing the threat. In June 2013, Rep. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.) and Rep. Yvette Clark (D., N.Y.) introduced the Secure High-voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from Lethal Damage, or Shield, Act. Unfortunately, the legislation is stalled in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

In October 2013, Rep. Franks and Rep. Pete Sessions (R., Texas) introduced the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act. CIPA directs the Department of Homeland Security to adopt a new National Planning Scenario focused on federal, state and local emergency planning, training and resource allocation for survival and recovery from an EMP catastrophe. Yet this important legislation hasn't come to a vote either.

What is lacking in Washington is a sense of urgency. Lawmakers and the administration need to move rapidly to build resilience into our electric grid and defend against an EMP attack that could deliver a devastating blow to the U.S. economy and the American people. Congress should pass and the president should sign into law the Shield Act and CIPA as soon as possible. Literally millions of American lives could depend on it.

Mr. Woolsey is chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former director of the CIA.Mr. Pry served on the EMP Commission, in the CIA, and is the author of "Electric Armageddon" (CreateSpace, 2013).

==================================================

I read this fiction book about this scenario. It's horrifying...

One Second After

We are all engines of karma

[billvon 3,110]

>It's becoming increasingly clear that this impact will be not be catastrophic, or
>anything remotely catastrophic.

Here you are making a common mistake; trying to use an emotional term to describe the results of climactic change. To someone in Denver it won't be at all catastrophic; to someone living near the water in the Philippines it may well be catastrophic by any sane definition of the word.

In other words, that's an easy argument to lose to the widow whose husband lived in the Philippines.

> It's crystal clear that what's is being proposed by AGW proponents is worthless,
>in terms of effectively mitigating this effect.

You are confusing AGW science with mitigation. They are not the same thing, although you can use science to predict the effectiveness of a given mitigation. (It's akin to saying "it is crystal clear that any skeptics of AGW are out of their minds, claiming that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas.")

>Without a doubt, there is nothing being proposed by any American politician that
>is going to have any impact on this problem.

Too late; it already has. Our CO2 emissions have plateaued and have even begun declining a bit. This is due to a great many factors, several of which have been driven by the government:

-Increasing efficiency of vehicles
-Increasing efficiency of electrical appliances and the electrical grid
-Reduced reliance on coal (due to both government action and the drop in natural gas prices)
-Increases in renewable electrical energy generation

This is happening even as the economy slowly recovers and our population grows.

Such actions, of course, won't stop the warming for decades to come - but such actions will eventually stop increasing the carbon load in the atmosphere, and at least stop making the problem worse. Hence it is something that will benefit our grandkids, even if it doesn't benefit us next year.

>This begs the question wrto someone who is BAT POOP CRAZY. How do you
>have a conversation with them about being BAT POOP CRAZY?

You start out by not calling them batshit crazy.

Imagine your response if someone you were talking to opened with "you're batshit crazy if you don't think extinction of a species is a big deal." Would you be willing to talk to them further?