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Hawking: 'Trump could turn Earth in to Venus'


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8 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

This article doesn't address the issue of the methane gun.

Aww Jeez, the "methane gun"? How scary...

Does this mean that C02 isn't an issue anymore, all of a sudden?

 

Guess so, because lookie here;

Cen_CO2_zps49992aaf.png

We don't have to go anywhere near all the way back to the Dinosaurs to see MUCH higher CO2 levels, and guess what? The planet didn't burst into fire, no runaway Greenhouse effect.

There we are, near the bottom of the scale.

So.... presto-chango, we switch to methane now?

Well, it won't be the first time the scammers have had to change their story;

 

failed-climate-predictions.jpg?w=1776

 

Are we done yet?

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14 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

Aww Jeez, the "methane gun"? How scary...

Does this mean that C02 isn't an issue anymore, all of a sudden?

Nope.

Because methane oxidizes to CO2.  The half-life is about ten years.  That's high school chemistry.  I guess you really aren't a STEM major.

 

I wish you'd read what I post.  The only relevant period in pre-history is the Holocene because that's the period during which our current ecosystems have functioned and evolved.  An ecosystem from 30 million years ago is irrelevant.  That makes CO2 levels from 30 million years ago irrelevant.  We're not trying to protect terror birds, mastodonts and saber-toothed cats.  We're trying to protect things that are alive right now.

Doug

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15 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

failed-climate-predictions.jpg?w=1776

 

Are we done yet?

Nope.

The only one of those I remember is the ice-age.  I don't recall that that was ever published in a scientific journal.

What kicked it off was an article on the Milankovitch Cycles in which the author miscalculated the length of the cycles:  an arithmetic mistake that got past the reviewers.  That was in the early 1960s.  He said it would take about 3000 years for ice to develop deep enough to actually form a glacier and move.  Then we got a real-life dip in temps in the late 60s.  The popular press panicked and decided that meant the ice age was starting, ignoring the fact that we'd been through several ups and downs already in the 20th century and that we were then a lot warmer than we were in 1910.  So that's the story:  newspapers and magazines creating a hysteria to sell more subscriptions.

 

A couple Pacific islands have been abandoned as a result of rising water.  Vanauatu, Bangladesh and a couple other countries are low enough that it will happen if sea level rise continues and I know of no reason to think it won't.

 

The rainforests (Brazil) are not being cleared by climate change, but by farmers.  Brazil has something like our Homestead Act.  People can take a bag of seed, clear a patch of land and farm it - until the fertility gives out.  BUT, land clearing activities increase the rate of CO2 release from the soil and contribute to global warming.  Same thing is going on in Africa and southeast Asia.  You have cause-and-effect backwards.

 

The Himalayan glaciers are melting - except for the Karakoram Range.  It's a problem if you depend on them for water, as do many villagers and as does India.  Looks like we'll lose the Arikaree Glacier here in Colorado in a few years.  It's down to its last 25 meters of ice and is now too thin to move.

 

The Northwest Passage has been traversed by several ships already, including an oil tanker and several sporting yachts.  The melt-off of summer ice started in 1950.  I don't know what the current figures are, but the melt continues.  The Arctic Ocean is already open during the summer months.

 

I don't know about hurricanes, but storminess in Oklahoma (or at least, Fort Smith, Arkansas) increased between 1965 and 2005.  I am currently working on a paper on the topic.  Using some of those rainfall records we were talking about.  Do you really think seven or eight hurricanes a season is enough to draw a conclusion.  Katrina, Andrew and whichever-it-was that hit Houston didn't do too bad.

 

My major criticism of your cartoons is that they got the timing all wrong.  Everything except as noted, is on track, but is taking longer than your cartoonist thought.

Doug

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On ‎8‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 11:47 AM, Doug1o29 said:

Thanks.

I finally looked it up.  It's a summary of findings made using the GENIE-1 general circulation model (climate model) in 2005.  Currently we have consumed about 390 gigatonnes of carbon (GtC).  The model assumes total usage from 1100 GtC to 15,000 GtC.  They also report warming of only a few degrees over a 3000 year period.

What they do not do is include the methane gun.  Admittedly, that would be hard to model because we don't know how fast the oceans will warm, what temperature it would take to discharge the gun and how fast methane would be released.  But it is methane release that is of major concern in sudden warming to near the boiling point.

We had a scare a few years ago when we found the Arctic Ocean discharging methane at rates far above what was expected.  But after a time, it seemed to make no difference whatever to the atmosphere, so it was decided that the problem was in what was expected.

This article doesn't address the issue of the methane gun.

Doug

P.S.:  The tests used several fixed values of the climate constant.  BUT:  the climate constant is a variable, probably a logistic.  Over the last two decades there have been several attempts to measure it.  These keep showing progressively smaller values as more data becomes available for higher concentrations of CO2.  This is probably the source of AnchorSteam's claims of a moving target.  In fact, it is moving, pushing "Doomsday" forward in time.

It also means that particular predictions for when something is going to happen will also get pushed ahead in time.  And that includes the earth approaching the boiling point in 300 to 500 years, which was based on 2005 data.

I stand corrected:  it will take more than 300 to 500 years for earth to approach the boiling point.  How much more?  That depends on the exact shape and value of the curve that defines the climate constant.

Doug

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10 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

I wish you'd read what I post. 

I do, but you are shotgunning so much at me every day that it is hard to keep up with every line of ever multi-paragaph post. 

 

How about we slow down  bit? My free time has its limits.

 

I'll answer some of this tomorrow, but meanwhile I happened across this;

 

 

I like 8, 6, 3 and 1... 1 looks really good, unless it is another cold-fusion style flop.

 

5 also looks promising, which made me think;  why the rush? Why the onstant 24/7 panic-mode that has dominated this entire subject for the last 20+ years?

At the rate things are improving, it seems that any massive investment like the ones being asked of us could lead to us being committed to a boon-doggle, like building Battleships for WW2 turned out to be. 

The current tech just isn't up to the job, not efficiently, which is why Tesla needs subsidies. 

The vid is only 11 minutes, let me know what you think when I come back tomorrow. 

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9 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

I do, but you are shotgunning so much at me every day that it is hard to keep up with every line of ever multi-paragaph post. 

 

How about we slow down  bit? My free time has its limits.

 

I'll answer some of this tomorrow, but meanwhile I happened across this;

 

 

I like 8, 6, 3 and 1... 1 looks really good, unless it is another cold-fusion style flop.

 

5 also looks promising, which made me think;  why the rush? Why the onstant 24/7 panic-mode that has dominated this entire subject for the last 20+ years?

At the rate things are improving, it seems that any massive investment like the ones being asked of us could lead to us being committed to a boon-doggle, like building Battleships for WW2 turned out to be. 

The current tech just isn't up to the job, not efficiently, which is why Tesla needs subsidies. 

The vid is only 11 minutes, let me know what you think when I come back tomorrow. 

Some interesting ideas there.  Now to make them work at a profit.

These are still in the basic research stage and will probably require govt support for the time being.  Some will turn out unfeasible due to cost, or lack of suitable sites, or just plain inefficiency.  But who knows?  Some may work.

Please tell me what massive investments are being asked of you.  You keep saying that, but a few examples would be helpful.  The conversion to wind is being done at private expense.  You keep saying how expensive wind really is, but Nexterra keeps building windmills.  Now who am I to believe, a dubious analysis on paper, or a profit-making company already installing windmills by the thousand?

The TVA coal plants are 80 years old.  They're breaking down and will soon have to be replaced with something.  TVA is a govt-run monopoly.  Why not just phase it out?  Then tax payers wouldn't have to pay for expensive replacements.  And Oklahoma can supply all the power that TVA can and do it cheaper.  OK - we'll let Kansas and Nebraska share with us.

If the govt offers subsidies, business will accept them, whether they need them or not.  It helps their bottom line.  That's business.  A little thought going into subsidy programs is in order.  Research is sometimes contracted out to private companies.  It's exactly the same thing as grants to universities.  Are you mistaking research grants for subsidies?

Doug

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12 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Some interesting ideas there.  Now to make them work at a profit.

T'would be a first, wouldn't it?

Using up all that Corn to add 10% methanol to our Gas doubled the price of corn.

The Mexicans are still upset with us about that.

12 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

These are still in the basic research stage and will probably require govt support for the time being.  Some will turn out unfeasible due to cost, or lack of suitable sites, or just plain inefficiency.  But who knows?  Some may work.

Some offer vast advantages over the stuff they are trying to sell us now.

Wait, what's this now... you are starting to sound a little, dare I say... skeptical? ;)

12 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

Please tell me what massive investments are being asked of you.  You keep saying that, but a few examples would be helpful. 

No problem!

I don't use Google, so I get lists that aren't politically biased. 

 

This Map Explains Why the Ivanpah Solar Plant Is Performing Worse Than Expected

 

Quote

As if displaced desert tortoises, burned birds and political theater around the loan guarantee program weren't enough problems for the Ivanpah concentrating solar project, the owners are now dealing with lower-than-expected electricity production.

From January to August of this year, the 392-megawatt plant generated far less than the electricity expected. For some, it's yet more proof of the technical limitations of solar -- and an example of another bungled government investment in clean energy.

[...]



The map below shows a strong departure from average irradiance levels in Southern California and Nevada over the last fifteen years. The Ivanpah project is located in Southern California, near the border with Nevada -- right in the blue part of the map.

3Tier_2014_Summer_Map.png

http://theenergycollective.com/steph...worse-expected

This $2.2 billion green boondoggle is the poster child for this sort of thing.

Your area looks pretty blue, I live just below that really red area, where the turbines are usually shut down because of bird-strikes.

12 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

The conversion to wind is being done at private expense.

With how many subsides?

The High Cost of Wind Energy as a Carbon-Dioxide Reduction Method

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/high-cost-wind-energy-carbon-dioxide-reduction-method-5706.html

 

The High Cost of Wind Energy

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=21269

12 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

  You keep saying how expensive wind really is, but Nexterra keeps building windmills.  Now who am I to believe, a dubious analysis on paper, or a profit-making company already installing windmills by the thousand?

The problem is, and this just came out today, folks in your neck of the woods are raising hell about the Powerlines.

I don't like it either, it is the same kind of crap that almost stopped that pipeline up north. I don't know what is wrong with people these days, but it seems like local sources might be the most reliable ones soon.

12 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

The TVA coal plants are 80 years old.  They're breaking down and will soon have to be replaced with something.  TVA is a govt-run monopoly.  Why not just phase it out?  Then tax payers wouldn't have to pay for expensive replacements.  And Oklahoma can supply all the power that TVA can and do it cheaper.  OK - we'll let Kansas and Nebraska share with us.

TVA is coal plants too? Interesting, I didn't know that. But I should have guessed, all that coal is right there in that area.

How about new turbines?

12 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

If the govt offers subsidies, business will accept them, whether they need them or not.  It helps their bottom line.  That's business.  A little thought going into subsidy programs is in order.  Research is sometimes contracted out to private companies.  It's exactly the same thing as grants to universities.  Are you mistaking research grants for subsidies?

Doug

Nope, Grants are free money for Colleges, Subsides are free money for businesses to make them keep doing what the Govt wants them to do. 

 

Tesla Is No Success Story

Quote

Tesla is only profitable thanks to politics and tax subsidies.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2013/06/03/teslas-success-is-the-result-of-political-favoritism

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On 8/15/2017 at 9:48 AM, Doug1o29 said:

Nope.

The only one of those I remember is the ice-age.  I don't recall that that was ever published in a scientific journal.

So, you never attended one of those slick international Conventions on it? Like the one where they showed a little girl screaming and crying as the whole world was drowned in floods of black water and incredible storms destroyed everything all at once?

That is a silly way to dodge it. 

On 8/15/2017 at 9:48 AM, Doug1o29 said:

What kicked it off was an article on the Milankovitch Cycles in which the author miscalculated the length of the cycles:  an arithmetic mistake that got past the reviewers.

But all the math is perfectly accurate today, eh? 

On 8/15/2017 at 9:48 AM, Doug1o29 said:

A couple Pacific islands have been abandoned as a result of rising water.  Vanauatu, Bangladesh and a couple other countries are low enough that it will happen if sea level rise continues and I know of no reason to think it won't.

The very lowest places outside of the Dead Sea or Death Valley, eh?

On 8/15/2017 at 9:48 AM, Doug1o29 said:

The rainforests (Brazil) are not being cleared by climate change, but by farmers.  Brazil has something like our Homestead Act.  People can take a bag of seed, clear a patch of land and farm it - until the fertility gives out.  BUT, land clearing activities increase the rate of CO2 release from the soil and contribute to global warming.  Same thing is going on in Africa and southeast Asia.  You have cause-and-effect backwards.

Wrong, as my post says I was talking about how the 155ppm barrier for CO2 was avoided in ages past, and then I speculated that the devastation of the Rainforests could take that safety-valve away from us.

It isn't a matter of a steady lose of trees, it is the sudden and catastrophic die-off of many of them reversing the drop in CO2 that could mean the end of life on the planet's surface.

Are you reading MY posts all the way?

"Just pollute more"... am I supposed to laugh, or groan?

 

On 8/15/2017 at 9:48 AM, Doug1o29 said:

 

My major criticism of your cartoons is that they got the timing all wrong.  Everything except as noted, is on track, but is taking longer than your cartoonist thought.

Doug

No, it was the geeks making the predictions that got it all wrong. 

And not for the first time-

(yup, even Einstein) 

 

 

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11 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

T'would be a first, wouldn't it?

Using up all that Corn to add 10% methanol to our Gas doubled the price of corn.

The Mexicans are still upset with us about that.

Biodiesel returns about one gallon of fuel for every gallon burned.  Not very efficient.  This technology has a long way to go before it ever gets out of the lab.  But at least, as long as it remains experimental, it isn't using much corn.

Most of the corn is going into gasohol or E85.  Congress imposed it to cut down on vehicle pollution, particularly particulates.  It doesn't help much with CO2 and global warming because it has lower energy density.  Requires more fuel to go the same distance, thus cancelling out the gain.  The benefit applies only in restricted areas that develop inversions during the winter, like Denver.  Elsewhere and at other times there is no particular advantage to using it.  This is one of those "do something" projects.  Congress was responding to demands for action, so it did something without much regard to how well it would work.

A friend of mine in Denver is working on an experimental plant to make alcohol from wood chips - grain alcohol, not wood alcohol.  It has reached the pilot plant stage.  I have no idea why they decided to locate in Denver - there isn't a very good supply of wood chips in that area and what there is, is all pine.  At any rate, we might have a new source of alcohol available if this works.

Over all, I think we should require alcohol gasolines only in areas subject to winter inversions and open the rest of the country to do whatever it wants.  This might be one of those things that should be left up to the states to decide.

And I agree with the Mexicans.

Doug

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11 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

Some offer vast advantages over the stuff they are trying to sell us now.

Wait, what's this now... you are starting to sound a little, dare I say... skeptical? ;)

If we can make them work and do it economically.

Do you remember the MX missile?  We were going to play this shell game with the Russians, using missiles instead of peas.  Under the treaties we could only have so many missiles, so we decided to put them in underground bunkers and move them around to different launching sites, all underground.  We spent millions of dollars developing the missile.  But the whole thing went down the tubes when somebody did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and discovered we couldn't make that much concrete.

Something like that is going to bag at least a few of these new technologies.

But the up side is that some will probably survive and work.  NOW, which ones are those?

Doug

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11 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

No problem!

I don't use Google, so I get lists that aren't politically biased. 

Don't bet the farm on that.

Doug

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11 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

This Map Explains Why the Ivanpah Solar Plant Is Performing Worse Than Expected

 



The map below shows a strong departure from average irradiance levels in Southern California and Nevada over the last fifteen years. The Ivanpah project is located in Southern California, near the border with Nevada -- right in the blue part of the map.

3Tier_2014_Summer_Map.png

http://theenergycollective.com/steph...worse-expected

This $2.2 billion green boondoggle is the poster child for this sort of thing.

Your area looks pretty blue, I live just below that really red area, where the turbines are usually shut down because of bird-strikes.

With how many subsides?

I'm not up-to-date on solar, especially large plants like that one.  Sounds like a siting problem.

Solar has now surpassed coal in its cost-efficiency.  But that's photovoltaic cells.  I don't believe that using sunlight to boil water is all that cheap yet, so plants like Ivanpah are still experimental.  I'm wondering why they spent that much on an unproven technology.  There are always problems instituting a new technology.  We haven't got all the bugs out of cars yet and we've been trying for over a hundred years.

In the photovoltaic end, there's a new roof shingle out that has built-in photoreceptors.  Next time you have to replace your roof...  I just replaced mine, so it is going to be awhile before I need a new roof - and then there's my neighbor's tree.  The shingles cost more than a conventional roof, but it takes only 50% coverage to supply the electrical needs of a typical house.  I wonder how well they work with three feet of snow on the roof.

 

T. Boone Pickens pulled out of the windmill-production business a few years ago when Congress decided not to subsidize it.  But he still owns a couple wind farms.  I'm not aware that any govt subsidies are being used for Nexterra's projects, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn of some.  We're still subsidizing coal and oil and we're trying to phase out coal at the same time.  Doesn't make sense to me

Oklahoma is a good place for energy projects because power from windmills and gas turbines can be carried to market on the same power lines.

Doug

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11 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

Obama's Renewable Porfolio Standard is not very realistic.  To get to 25% renewable energy use by 2025 seems to me to be impossible.  At the moment, we are producing about 5% of our energy from clean sources and at best we'll only reach 20% from wind by 2030.  Geothermal is very limited by a lack of suitable sites.  I don't foresee us reaching those goals.

So why is your report using that as its standard of comparison?

 

A problem often cited by denialist propaganda is that in order to build windmills and other green energy machines, we need to use a lot of energy.  And until we get some green sources on line, that energy will come from coal, oil and gas.  All true, but only by conversion can we end the dependence on fossil fuels.  Your report is showing end-of-production costs of fossil fuels as expenses for green energy.  That is a short-sighted approach.  Once those fossil fuel systems are out of service, the end-of-production costs will drop to zero.

I have a problem with economic analyses in general.  They seem to be based on some rather dubious "science."  If a subject is going to be fact-based, it has to have some ability to use its findings to predict future outcomes.  But not one economist or financial magazine or newspaper gave us three months warning of the 2008/2009 crash.  Couldn't they see it coming?  Why not?

There's a paper that derives the entire enonomy of Nebraska from quail hunting.  Hunters need pickups to get to the camp, so pickups are part of the quail-hunting economy.  They buy beer to take to the camp with them, so beer is part of the quail-hunting economy.  The have to eat while they're there, so food is part of the quail-hunting economy.  The paper was tongue-in-cheek, but it illustrates the problem with economic analyses.

Somehow, financial analysts never seem to get the costs apportioned correctly.

Doug

P.S.:  Link to the report, not some denialist op-ed piece.

Doug

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12 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

The High Cost of Wind Energy

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=21269

The problem is, and this just came out today, folks in your neck of the woods are raising hell about the Powerlines.

That's old news.  It's the Plains and Eastern Clean Line.  It runs about eight miles west of my house.  The lawsuits were filed about a year ago.  It's some Arkansas landowners who don't want the powerline coming across their property.  I don't hold much hope for them stopping the line.  In the end, Nexterra (the parent company) will spend whatever it takes to get the line through.  If nothing else, it can bankrupt them with legal fees.  Their best bet is to hold out for a better price.  They might be able to insist on having the land replaced with land of equal productivity (if they have the records to prove how much that is) and just finding that land could be a challenge.  But they won't do anything more than delay the construction.

The Oklahoma legislature tried to block the line, but waited until they already had the right-of-way secured.  At that point, there wasn't much the legislature could do, either.  Even if they had, the line would have been re-routed through Kansas (which wants the jobs and tax money).  It would have put the Arkansas part of the line farther north and avoided those obstinate landowners - or maybe encountered some other ones.

Doug

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12 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

I don't like it either, it is the same kind of crap that almost stopped that pipeline up north. I don't know what is wrong with people these days, but it seems like local sources might be the most reliable ones soon.

Don't crow too soon.  There are some new challenges coming up.  Environmentally, Dakota Access threatens Indian lands and water supplies.  I think the tribes are right to insist that adequate water facilities be secured before construction begins.  But it's already too late for that.  Construction has already begun.

The first thing that Dakota Access did was bulldoze some Indian burial sites.  I don't think I'd like to see some pipeline company bulldoze my grandparent's graves, either.  Of course they're upset.  It's time to cede title to Indian reservations to the tribes (and abolish the BIA; you small-govt types should like that).  If Indian nations are sovereign, as our government maintains, then we should also cede sovereignty.  That would solve the problem.  Whatever decisions the tribes made would be their own.

BTW:  ceding title would make Indian lands subject to state and local taxes.

About Keystone:  do you realize that one good-sized bomb dropped on Cushing, Oklahoma would sever Keystone and most other oil/gas pipelines connecting Gulf Coast refineries to the northern and western oil fields?  Good planning guys!

Doug

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12 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

Wrong, as my post says I was talking about how the 155ppm barrier for CO2 was avoided in ages past, and then I speculated that the devastation of the Rainforests could take that safety-valve away from us.

It isn't a matter of a steady lose of trees, it is the sudden and catastrophic die-off of many of them reversing the drop in CO2 that could mean the end of life on the planet's surface.

The cartoon was talking about loss of rainforests, not about the CO2 barrier.  If you were talking about something else, why post an irrelevant cartoon?

 

But don't worry about efforts to control global warming getting anywhere near 155 ppm CO2.  All we want to do is stop global warming and restore the climate a la 1950.  And that won't happen anyway, as putting more CO2 into the air and warming the planet is easy to do.

Doug

 

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13 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

"Just pollute more"... am I supposed to laugh, or groan?

Take your pick.

Doug

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13 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

No, it was the geeks making the predictions that got it all wrong. 

And not for the first time-

(yup, even Einstein) 

 

 

What geeks are you referring to?  As I said, there was never prediction of an ice age in any scientific journal.

 

 

Re:  Einstein, et al.:  "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God."

Unlike other fields of endeavor, science eventually finds and fixes its mistakes.

Doug

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35 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

What geeks are you referring to?  As I said, there was never prediction of an ice age in any scientific journal.

From the journal Science:

However, it is projected that man's potential to pollute will increase six- to eightfold in the next 50 years (24). If this increased rate of injection of particulate matter in the atmosphere should raise the present global background opacity by a factor of 4, our calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as 3.5°K. Such a large decrease in the average surface temperature of Earth, sustained over a period of few years, is believed to be sufficient (25) to trigger an ice age. However, by that time, nuclear power may have largely replaced fossil fuels as a means of energy production.

https://www.atmos.washington.edu/2008Q2/591A/Articles/Rasool_Schneider_Science.pdf

Not to say, of course, that these fine gentlemen (Rasool and Schneider) were correct. But there was at least one (probably more, I searched for around 30 s) prediction of an ice age in not just "any scientific journal", but Science.

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32 minutes ago, Socks Junior said:

From the journal Science:

 

 

https://www.atmos.washington.edu/2008Q2/591A/Articles/Rasool_Schneider_Science.pdf

Not to say, of course, that these fine gentlemen (Rasool and Schneider) were correct. But there was at least one (probably more, I searched for around 30 s) prediction of an ice age in not just "any scientific journal", but Science.

I was (obviously) not aware of that one.

Schneider?  I wonder.

I think that's the same Schneider who commented in Discover Magazine in 1989:

“We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have.  Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

I don't think that making up scary scenarios is a good way to promote anything.  Sooner or later you get found out and then you are in worse trouble than when you started.

Doug

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12 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

I was (obviously) not aware of that one.

Indeed. From my limited background on the issue, I think it seems that the 70s were a time when you could find some cooling literature. And warming literature. The latter became more scientifically plausible as climate science moved forward.

Not quite consensus claim of an ice age, by any means.

12 minutes ago, Doug1o29 said:

Schneider?  I wonder.

I think that's the same Schneider who commented in Discover Magazine in 1989:

“We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have.  Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

I don't think that making up scary scenarios is a good way to promote anything.  Sooner or later you get found out and then you are in worse trouble than when you started.

I completely agree. Which is why it ground my gears some time ago at my department when some climate advocacy group came to talk about strategies for discussing climate change and really laid out that exact quotation (in a few more words of course). This had something to do with their ad campaign organizers and focus groups and that kinda schtick. Just seemed a little away from the science, you now?

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4 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

A friend of mine in Denver is working on an experimental plant to make alcohol from wood chips - grain alcohol, not wood alcohol.  It has reached the pilot plant stage.  I have no idea why they decided to locate in Denver - there isn't a very good supply of wood chips in that area and what there is, is all pine.  At any rate, we might have a new source of alcohol available if this works.

That is strange... he should have located up here. Less than a tenth of the new board-feet of timber that grows every year is harvested, the rest goes up in smoke.

LOTS of smoke, this time of year the air-quality is worse than L.A., and there is no major industry within 400 miles. 

4 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

And I agree with the Mexicans.

Doug

You and me both.

It isn't hit us the way it hit them. Here, 90% of the price of food is in processing, packaging and shipping. Down there, they buy it raw and process it at home. 

(btw- ever eaten corn raw off the cob? I have, and I never went back to heating it up again)

Quote

Do you remember the MX missile?

Very well, and I recall that it was all the goobers in Utah & Nevada coming out screaming "not in my back yard!" that was the straw that broke that Camel's back. It infuriated me, how a notoriously "Red State" folded like a cheap chair when it came time for them to take a risk for the rest of the country. Not much of one, either, those places have hardly any people per square mile, the very reason for putting them there in the first place!

I didn't know about the concrete, the diagrams I saw showed missiles being trucked from one hole in a cliff-face to the other. 

But, that is why I like this argument with you, I keep learning new things. Sorry I can't keep up with everything... how do you find the time to keep doing all this?

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1 hour ago, AnchorSteam said:

That is strange... he should have located up here. Less than a tenth of the new board-feet of timber that grows every year is harvested, the rest goes up in smoke.

LOTS of smoke, this time of year the air-quality is worse than L.A., and there is no major industry within 400 miles. 

He's an employee and only moved to Denver after the plant was already being built.  I don't know why they picked Denver, I would have gone to a place with more wood available.  Of course, it's a pilot plant - they don't need that much wood.

 

1 hour ago, AnchorSteam said:

You and me both.

It isn't hit us the way it hit them. Here, 90% of the price of food is in processing, packaging and shipping. Down there, they buy it raw and process it at home. 

(btw- ever eaten corn raw off the cob? I have, and I never went back to heating it up again)

I used to buy some corn flakes from Mexico, but we couldn't get them year-round, so the store quit carrying them.

I grew up on a farm - straight off the stalk.

Doug

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17 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

TVA is coal plants too? Interesting, I didn't know that. But I should have guessed, all that coal is right there in that area.

How about new turbines?

Yup.  Coal plants, dams, locks, navigation...  They were even talking about wood chips awhile back, but TVA wasn't sure they could get a steady supply and didn't want to risk it.

Gas turbines are really close to wind in price.  Nexterra is using them as backup to their windmills.  My daughter is a mud-logger/geostearer/geochemist on some of those wells.  Lots of drilling stories.  Most of our wells cost about $3 million dollars and take about 30 days to drill.  The "Well from Hell" took 83 and cost close to $8 million.  They were losing money from the minute they started pumping it.

Her last well was TD'd (Total Depth) when she still thought there was hope for it.  They were trying to drill horizontally through an eight-foot target stratum from 8000 feet above.  Like trying to push a noodle through sandstone.  There's some sort of fault or something down there.  They've hit it with three different wells now.  They're drilling and all of a sudden they're forty feet above where they thought they were.

And the companies are pretty competitive.  One little company found an old river delta buried 5000 feet down.  They figured out that there was oil in the old river channels and started buying up all the leases over the channels.  Chesapeake saw them getting oil and noticed there was some available leases.  After five dry holes, they figured it out.  No wonder Chesapeake has trouble.  When Chesapeake donated $2 million to the victims of the Moore Tornado, folks were asking who they borrowed it from.

Doug

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On ‎8‎/‎15‎/‎2017 at 10:11 PM, AnchorSteam said:

The current tech just isn't up to the job, not efficiently, which is why Tesla needs subsidies. 

The "do something" mentality is leading to projects that aren't fully developed yet.  Obama's Cash-for-Clunkers being a case in point.

First, they didn't have a really gas-efficient car available, so there was little environmental benefit.

Second, they insisted on crushing cars that still had a lot of good miles left in them, forcing people to keep older, dirtier cars on the road.  And that led to a shortage of used cars for the used-car markets, cutting low-income folks out of the market altogether.  This was really a Detroit Bailout Program.

Law of Unintended Effects, or just not thinking it through first?

 

Cash-for-Clunkers may be a good idea when we finally get the needed fuel efficiency.  When implemented, it needs to accept any combination of an engine block and frame for crushing - whether it's running or not, whether it's even in one piece or not.  That way we won't cut into the used-car market and we'll clean up those junk cars we see around the countryside and we'll get fuel-efficient cars onto the road.

The technology wasn't ready for Cash-for-Clunkers and it isn't yet.  Same thing with some ideas now being floated by politicians.  We need to think these things through first.

Doug

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