For two weekends in a row, this new CP feature has garnered 99 comments. I’m hoping we can get to triple digits in this thread.
It’s a chance for you to post links to interesting weekend news/links. Or opine on whatever’s on your mind. Or suggest topical topics that CP should cover in the coming week. Or link to some jokes and cartoons. Or share some thoughts on the forthcoming election.
I’ll probably be at the Rally for Sanity/Fear today and will blog on it later.
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The trouble with ACC and what is required to deal with it is the way that politics is run in both the EU and the USA. Lobbying is a powerful (and often immoral) wat of influencing our strategic planning that government is for due mainly to money. These huge companies fund associated groups and these group and bodies assert influence that undermines ordinary peoples requests and wishes.
Couple all of that with the need for immediate cuts in GHG emissions year on year for the next 50 years globally of upwards of 7% per annum in real terms and you can see that we will be lucky if globally we manage to just tread water in this regard.
We just got to realise that the best we can do in all honesty is 2C.
An interesting paper in Climatic Change looked at trends in catastrophic storms (hurricanes, tornadoes, winter storms, and thunderstorms) in the US between 1950–2005. They found a strong upward trend in the number of catastrophic thunderstorms both regionally (eastern states) and nationally. They found no obvious pattern for tornadoes and snow storms (did not include last years data). Increases in hurricanes in SE, but that could be explained by changes in population, etc.
“The upward trends in thunderstorm catastrophes and losses result from increases in heavy rain days, floods, high winds, and hail days, revealing that atmospheric conditions conducive to strong convective activity have been increasing since the 1960s.”
Stanley A. Changnon. 2010. Temporal distribution of weather catastrophes in the USA. Climatic Change 103: Online Edition.
While you’re there, Joe, see if you can suggest to Stewart that he might want to apologize to Mike Mann, Phil Jones at al. for the clueless CRU emails rant he aired last year.
Check out Jeff Masters’ Wunderblog this weekend to follow Tropical Storm Tomas, the 19th named storm of the season, which could become a powerful November hurricane.
“Tomas’ formation location unprecedented this late in the season”
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1677
PS at the top of the my wunderblog page, there is a color ad for Kelly Ayotte, an anti-science Republican running (and leading) in the Senate race in N.H.
what is happening in the arctic, slow ice increase……????
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html
does this mean we will have another cool winter in europe and america mid-lat as cool air channeled away from pole?
regards,
anders
LOOK UP… Is the sun shinning where you are today? That is fusion energy, for the taking… for all.
Is the wind blowing? That is more solar fusion energy begging for a purpose.
Pollution-for-profits is not a livable policy… for the rest of us. (No doubt, it does make FAT CATS and FAT SWISS BANKS.)
Restore reason and sanity. Fear the Corporate greed.
Systems change, not climate change.
VOTE…
You called concentrated solar power “The technology that will save humanity.” Yet the page on concentrated solar thermal power-a core climate solution is brief, does not include cost information, and hasn’t been updated in two years. The Salon article mentions some $/kWh projections from 2008.
Seven CSP or PV sites have been approved in recent weeks that are expected to produce 3000 MW of power. There are 14 Interior Dept. “fast-track” projects that would produce 6000 MW of power.
Capital cost information is often provided in news articles for these plants along with other information. The CP News updates that mention CSP rarely include details such as cost information. Updates should also include other characteristics such as capacity factor, storage capacity in hours, land use, water consumption and loan guarantees.
I suggest collecting information on these CSP sites in one place, and give it a category. Energy efficiency and nuclear have categories (4 and 5 entries respectively). Wind, PV, and CSP should have categories too. Current information on CSP is scattered across dozens of News update pages on CP.
Your assessment called for 3 wedges of reduced emissions from CSP out of 14 total. We need 5000 GW peak for three wedges. We have about 2 GW in 2010. We need 125 GW per year for 40 years and we installed less than 1 GW last year. Based on this 2009 graph:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/05/13/concentrated-solar-thermal-power-csp-with-storage/
CSP is also being called “solar baseload” yet details of these plants often do not mention the storage capacity. See “Announced” table and “Notes” column.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_thermal_power_stations
Did I miss your article on HVDC lines mentioned in 2008?
Regarding wedges, Marty Hoffert wrote in Science that up to 25 wedges would be necessary.
http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2010/09/09/energy-reducing-co2-emissions-will-be-harder-than-you-think/
Positive Societal Change: A few words from Adam Smith and Milton Friedman
I hope to provide a few comments and ideas over the course of the weekend, regarding positive societal change, and I hope many others do as well. I’ll look forward to reading them.
As one thought …
It’s not helpful, of course, when entrenched interests perform bizarre intellectual contortions in order to preserve the status quo and get their ways. It’s even worse when they have oodles of money to spread those misleading messages. And it’s even worse when, as is sometimes the case, they believe their own garbage: believing it allows them to say it with apparent conviction.
In any case, in responding to such BS (for short), it helps to understand some of the folks they quote or refer to, better than they do. In other words, although I hate to put this in terms having to do with battle, but for the sake of making the point, we should understand their chief weapons better than they do. So, I thought I’d provide a few interesting things about the views of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, just for general interest and use in battle!
Let’s begin, briefly, with Milton Friedman. I’ll only point out one thing. I came across some very interesting points a month or so ago while reading Friedman’s old and classic book, “Capitalism and Freedom”. In Chapter II, which Friedman titled, “The Role of Government in a Free Society”, in the section called, “Action Through Government on Grounds of Technical Monopoly and Neighborhood Effects”, Friedman writes briefly but clearly about the types of economic problems that justify and (in many cases) necessitate government action. In other words, he notes these problems that “free markets”, by themselves, can’t deal with without regulation or firm guidance. Here’s a great passage:
“A second general class of cases in which strictly voluntary exchange is impossible arises when actions of individuals have effects on other individuals for which it is not feasible to charge or recompense them. This is the problem of ‘neighborhood effects’. An obvious example is the pollution of a stream. The man who pollutes a stream is in effect forcing others to exchange good water for bad. These others might be willing to make the exchange at a price. But it is not feasible for them, acting individually, to avoid the exchange or to enforce appropriate compensation.”
Of course, nearly all economists (at least, those who haven’t sold their souls) know of “neighborhood effects” and the problem of “externalities” and what-have-you. But here we have “The Man” talking fairly clearly about them. Not only that, but Friedman doesn’t merely offer the comment in a context couched in such notions as “market imperfections” or “market failures” and so forth. Instead, he places and makes this comment in a section that is clearly about the justification and necessity of government action in such cases, at least when they are substantial. This is crystal clear if you read the section and the book. Thus, we have Milton Friedman telling us (the obvious) about why government action is often necessary and justified in cases where “neighborhood effects” are involved, and in a book titled “Capitalism and Freedom”, no less!
(The book is a short and readable one, and perhaps it can be purchased cheaply in large quantities, so maybe someone should send free copies to the Tea Party organizations and to all right-wing candidates, with the relevant pages bookmarked.)
My comment on Smith (who was actually a brilliant and often misquoted and misunderstood person) will be briefer. A whole bunch could be written about how some of his key quotes have been taken out of context, misunderstood, and stretched beyond recognition, of course, to a degree that he would likely gag over, a point that seems clear if you read the entire book. But for now I’ll just mention this:
As many people don’t know, and many who do don’t seem to mention it, Adam Smith was a moral philosopher. He published his first major work, called “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, in 1759, seventeen years before he published “The Wealth of Nations”, the full title of which is actually “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”. It’s quite remarkable, and probably not much noted, that in The Wealth of Nations itself, Smith discusses philosophy and refers to moral philosophy as “by far the most important of all the different branches of philosophy …”. Did you know that? Do most people who quote Smith know that?
If our opponents would read Adam Smith and actually pay attention, they’d understand that he would not want, or want to let, the world to go to hell in a hand-basket over an incorrect and downright damaging interpretation and understanding of “free markets” and the “invisible hand”.
Finally, although I’m guessing that Donald Brown already knows this, I think it’s quite an interesting, helpful, and fun fact that Adam Smith felt that moral philosophy is “by far the most important of all the different branches of philosophy”. (That said, he was making his comment about the vast importance of morality and the subject of moral philosophy, well taught, but he felt that the teaching of it had become “the most corrupted” in his day.)
So, here we have the very person, the very authority, on which “the invisible handers” ground their incorrect understanding of the invisible hand, in their arguments that corporations should be free to do whatever they damn well please, informing us that morality and moral philosophy are vitally important. He makes quite a few other comments, as well, that are quite eye-opening and (in some other cases) not modern, shall we say. My guess is that most people who refer to Smith have not read most of the book, and indeed most of them have probably only read one or two quotes, entirely out of context. This is no problem, of course, if you aren’t using him to justify actions that are messing up the planet. After all, it’s not much fun reading The Wealth of Nations, to be sure. But for those people who do refer to him to justify those things, it’s a problem, and a big one.
In short, then, make sure you are “armed” with these points about Milton Friedman and Adam Smith. The next time someone gives you BS, correct them and ask if they’ve “read the book”.
Cheers for now,
Jeff
Pete @ #2 -
2010 has been an “exceptional” year for weather disasters with the highest number of weather-related events since records began being kept, German reinsurance company Munich Re said Thursday.
“This year really has been a year of weather records,” Peter Hoeppe, an expert from Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research department, told AFP. “The first nine months of the year have seen the highest number of weather-related events since Munich Re started keeping records,” he added.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1940327/2010_and_exceptional_year_for_wild_weather/
————-
Munich Re is the largest re-insurance company in the world.
For well over 200 years moneyed interests and corporations have been gaming, (to be polite), the system to their benefit. Supporting sympathetic judges, politicians, lawyers, lobbyists, “scientists,” media, and yes, even religions.
Has this concerted effort been fruitful? Approximately 5% of the population control ~90% of the wealth!
AND
They like it like that.
However the rest of the worlds population is not fairing so well. It is naive to think that it will change without a serious push from the masses. I should hope, for both sides, that violence is not a option. Earth has been abused to the breaking point as is and violence will only make it worse. Humanity must start to pull together for the healing of earth and all life support systems.
“Pollution-for-profits” is not a long term workable human endeavor.
SUSTAINABILITY IS A HUMAN RIGHT!
Vote…
Worth watching: http://astroturfwars.com/ – just $1.99 online – it does a good job of exposing the Kochs and their obnoxious influence on science and politics.
We suggest that we talk about the idea of putting the greenhouse gas content on packaging just like fat and sugar contents are today. Such itemized quantities would allow thoughtful consumers the opportunity to make choices among items which are of similar quality.
Such a change would, in our view, do the following:
1. make consumers even more aware of the ubiquity of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in all the products they purchase,
2. allow consumers to compare using a common standard the products they are considering,
3. just like low fat / sugar content are used in adverts for various products today, low GHG content will eventually be used in the same way,
4. new industrial processes / power sources will be discovered / used to reduce GHG emissions of various products which in turn will be used in marketing their products,
5. and finally, instituting this regimen now will allow a new generation of consumers to integrate this information into their purchasing habits.
The way things are going now, in 20 years (hopefully) even the most rabid denier will come to the conclusion that we are REALLY behind the 8-ball. Twenty years is enough time to fully integrate GHG content into consumer consciousness allowing individual consumers to fight GHG pollution in their own way.
I’d be willing to contribute to full page ads in NY and LA Times denouncing climate change deniers.
MSM might notice.
We need a concerted effort on many fronts. Street demonstrations definitely ought to be one of the tactics. Perhaps an informational demo at the Koch Industries HQ that has displays showing kansdas under the drought and temp scenarios for 2030 and 2050-59, within the lifetimes of many people today. No corn in Kansas because it is too hot for it to germinate? That might get a few people to listen.
There will be kids’ marches on Mothers Day (May 8, 2011), see here http://kvgw.org.
Litigation is also an avenue withpotential.
But they say that the most persuasive person is the one you know. Talk to neighbors, friends, relatives. Talk to co-workers if you aren’t in science already. Always couple it with the idea that we CAN do something about climate–we have much of the technology already, it is just a matter of making it more widespread and improving the infrastructure to support it (charging stations for cars; better grid; alternatives to coal). In any event, the Chinese and others are moving far pasty us and we will be a second-rate power shortly if we don’t get behind the effort. There is a place for everyone.
Here’s an interesting and scary report put together for the DOE by Pacific Northwest National Labs, managed by Battelle.
Preliminary Geospatial Analysis of Arctic Hydrocarbon Resources
Oh, estimates of 40 trillion tons of carbon in the methane hydrates, not including the methane under the marine permafrost. Half a million cubic kilometers of methane hydrates, or so. By comparison, of course, the atmosphere currently contains less than a trillion tons of carbon. And the dissociation of marine permafrost and shallow marine methane hydrates can occur with less than a degree C of water temperature change. Methane, as most or all readers of Climate Progress know, is many times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas than CO2, when its effects are averaged over a century.
It’s interesting and scary reading, check it out. The report assumes climate change, assumes that as hydrocarbon “resources” are made accessible they will be exploited, and cautions against counting all of the methane hydrates as a resource- some deposits are dispersed, and not economic to exploit.
But even fragmented and dispersed deposits will be available for dissociation into methane due to climate change, of course. Many deposits are deep underwater, and may be stable. Many deposits are not deep underwater, and appear available for dissociation. Much of the methane will produced would be metabolized into CO2 aerobically, adding to ocean acidification, perhaps. Some of the methane can react with sulfate, producing hydrogen sulfide gas. Some can get transformed into bicarbonate, and then from bicarbonate potentially into carbonate. But for shallow deposits, a lot of it might get into the atmosphere, especially if the rate of Arctic heating is too fast.
Just heard a chat UK program on what is happening in the US. Well it seems that the real reason US citizens are upset is that Obama tackled Health when they where expecting him to sort out the recession.
Looks like he chose the wrong 1st battle to win.
Pity cause he could have killed 2 bird with 1 stone with the recession….
Disturbing article at http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-epa-battle-ahead-20101030,0,6040861.story
Excerpts:
GOP plans attacks on the EPA and climate scientists
If Republicans win control of the House, they plan to go after the Obama administration’s environmental policies and the researchers who have offered evidence on global warming, whom they accuse of manipulating data.
………..
Several key Republican Congressmen — most notably Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who could take over the chairmanship of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — have said they plan to investigate climate scientists they contend manipulated data to prove the case that human activity is contributing to global warming.
Should Mann be hauled back in front of the GOP loons, at least he’ll have lots of ammo to fire back at them with (mucho thanx to deepclimate and John Mashey for their dismantling of the Wegman report).
Hopefully, Mann and others have been receiving pro-bono legal assistance to help them prepare for this upcoming GOP inquisition.
Thanks, Joe, for the opportunity.
Trick or treat? Johnson or Feingold? Read why Wisconsinites who love to hunt and fish should choose Feingold over Johnson on Tuesday: http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/article_f0cb6a94-21d7-5dfd-b52c-08ffaeb57dc9.html
Hi all,
Has anyone seen a graph before that looks like this thumbnail?
Thanks,
– frank
BMUS: People who read the NYT or LAT already get that message. We need to get ads or letters or comments to smaller papers. The Op-Ed piece in the Richmound Times-Dispatch is a good example. See:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/10/25/the-tea-parties-are-shooting-at-the-wrong-target/
Mike
We need to get MSM attention. Whatever it takes.
I would love to see a class action lawsuit against climate change deniers and the businesses that finance them.
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to shift gears and start focusing on getting an unfiltered message out to the general public. What purpose does yet another scientific report on the hazards of global warming serve – that only scientists will read? The scientists already understand the ‘ground truth’ and how dire the situation is – but the scientists are essentially powerless to do anything about it without massive public support. And until the massive public support materializes, our politicians won’t act and as we’ve seen – it’s to their political advantage to mouth off and belittle anyone that advocates doing anything about global warming. This has to change and fast.
I suggested some sort of global warming movie or TV show last week that would be done in a non-boring format. Does that makes sense? Maybe some of these global warming/climate change advocacy think tanks need to get together and work with Hollywood to raise money and put together a film?
@ Adam R: Let me underscore your remark. I am a huge fan of Jon Stewart’s but actually called Comedy Central up and complained after that broadcast.
What happened to Jones and Mann should be a lesson to every other scientist; don’t put anything in an email, or even in a postal letter, other than strictly objective scientific information, no matter how appropriate a derogatory comment about someone like MacIntyre would be. The denier loonies are continuously cruising cyberspace and everytyhing else they can think of to glean any tiny bit of fodder for their rumor mills. Scientists should probably save what they really think about these jerks for bug proof lab rooms or else for cocktail parties where they can plead intoxication if the deniers get any possible ammunition to vomit to the MSM. And I’m only hlaf joking!!
based on the recent poll about american’s knowledge of global warming…
http://environment.yale.edu/climate/publications/knowledge-of-climate-change
…i’d like to see a series of maybe 4 or 5 PSAs, really simple & funny, each tackling a part of the global warming situation w/ an easy mnemonic. like:
#1
THE AIR IS MADE OF GAS & GAS IS MADE BY US
#2
THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT KEEPS US WARM AT NIGHT
#3
ONE MORE EXTRA GREENHOUSE BLANKET & WE’RE COOKED!
#4
CARS BUILDINGS & COAL ARE THE BIG GLOBAL WARMERS
anyway i see them as kinda dreamy, funny, creative, colorful, surprising, working that key point, not getting bogged down in science terms (or political jargon) so as not to distract. kinda like ‘rocky & bullwinkle’ meets http://storyofstuff.com .
So a Second Indonesian volcano erupts…
The link between warming and increased earthquakes and volcanism grows stronger.
Biblical stuff…
Hell, High Water and Damnation!
‘Educating’ the masses
Some landscapers where blowing away leaves around my Connecticut home today- I told them to leaves some of the leaves- I wanted to mulch my Windmill palms and needle palm here in Connecticut.
They looked at the palms incredibly- all three in the ground – I said ‘Global warming………’
Colorado Springs Gazette editorial expresses thanks to their Senate hopeful Ken Buck for “shielding us from the scam that says humans must pay for warming the globe”.
http://www.gazette.com/opinion/ken-106950-buck-statewide.html
Here is how we will put an end to coal: The EPA is considering [proposed rulemaking] taking coal ash into its jurisdiction as a toxic waste. It certainly is. Coal ash is also low level radioactive waste.
Coal contains: URANIUM, ARSENIC, LEAD, MERCURY, Antimony, Cobalt, Nickel, Copper, Selenium, Barium, Fluorine, Silver, Beryllium, Iron, Sulfur, Boron, Titanium, Cadmium, Magnesium, Thorium, Calcium, Manganese, Vanadium, Chlorine, Aluminum, Chromium, Molybdenum and Zinc. There is so much of these elements in coal that cinders and coal smoke are actually valuable ores. We should be able to get all the uranium and thorium we need to fuel nuclear power plants for centuries by using cinders and smoke as ore. Unburned Coal also contains BENZENE, THE CANCER CAUSER. We could get all of our uranium and thorium from coal ashes and cinders. The carbon content of coal ranges from 96% down to 25%, the remainder being rock of various kinds.
If you are an underground coal miner, you may be in violation of the rules for radiation workers. The uranium decay chain includes the radioactive gas RADON, which you are breathing. Radon decays in about a day into polonium, the super-poison.
Chinese industrial grade coal is sometimes stolen by peasants for cooking. The result is that the whole family dies of arsenic poisoning in days, not years because Chinese industrial grade coal contains large amounts of arsenic.
Yes, that ARSENIC is getting into the air you breathe, the water you drink and the soil your food grows in. So are all of those other heavy metal poisons. Your health would be a lot better without coal. Benzene is also found in petroleum. If you have cancer, check for benzene in your past.
See: http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/coalmain.html
for most of the above.
Reference:
OUR NUCLEAR FUTURE:
THE PATH OF SELECTIVE IGNORANCE
by Alex Gabbard
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN
Selections from the 19th Annual Conference
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
March 14,15,16, 1996
Nashville, Tennessee
Published by the
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
1996
Edited by Jack D. Arters, Ed.D.
Conference Director
The truth is, all natural rocks contain most natural elements. Coal is a rock. The average concentration of uranium in coal is 1 or 2 parts per million. Illinois coal contains up to 103 parts per million uranium. A 1000 million watt coal fired power plant burns 4 million tons of coal each year. If you multiply 4 million tons by 1 part per million, you get 4 tons of uranium. Most of that is U238. About .7% is U235. 4 tons = 8000 pounds. 8000 pounds times .7% = 56 pounds of U235. An average 1 billion watt coal fired power plant puts out 56 to 112 pounds of U235 every year. There are only 2 places the uranium can go: Up the stack or into the cinders.
Since a reactor full fuel load is around 11 tons of 2% U235 and 98% U238, and one load lasts about 10 years, what one coal fired power plant puts into the air and cinders could fully fuel a nuclear power plant.
Remember the Koch secret meeting name list a while back? The Tea Party private jet “Patriot One” has been traced back to one of them: Ray Thompson of Semitool.
I think you need to take the “Climate Hawks” one step further. You should call the folks denying global warming or delaying global warming solutions “Climate Dove”. This would complete the Hawks and Doves analogy. It would also make the climate doves sound weak.
dp, I would like to see a regular show on the teevee called “Now What?” Sort of like a Martha Steward show only about climate change instead of cooking and decorating, with special expert guests like Joe Romm, and episodes that focus on different aspects of the topic – from the science, to the politics, to the various impacts, to adaptation strategies, and videos like Greenman’s series.. I think it would be great for the general public to get small bites on a recurring regular basis. If it had terrific visuals, a telegenic host, and was cleverly written, I think many people would be interested in watching.
A really upsettig paper I came across lately is titled,”The Whole Fracking Enchilada” by Sandra Streingraber. The subject is: extracting gas from shale. It’s on the Orion magazine website. Very upsetting!
I’d love to hear more about Antarctica… how vulnerable it is and how close to tipping points or wahtever…
If climate scientists are pulled in front of Congressional committees, I suggest someone research the Senators/Congresspersons’ school records on science. Did they get any science passes? Worth a publication/press release.
White House Should Coordinate Geoengineering Research to Help Fight Climate Change
Published October 30, 2010 | FoxNews.com
The White House should come up with a strategy for federal research into large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system that could help tackle climate change, a new watchdog report concludes.
The Government Accountability Office found in its report more than 50 current studies, totaling slightly more than $100 million, focusing on piecemeal strategies to reverse climate change, but none directly addresses what would happen if adventurous programs on carbon dioxide reduction and solar radiation management were put in place. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/10/30/white-house-coordinate-geoengineering-research-help-fight-climate-change/
Leif, you’ve got a bumper sticker/tee shirt for everybody:
FEAR CORPORATE GREED
good one!
#19 here is a website full of graphs… and the one your looking for…
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison_png
wit’s end, an ecofuturological musical procedural situation comedy would RULE. start it out like CSI, with the body of a high mountain forest sprawled across the scene and maybe they find the trail of a polar bear! they interrogate the homeless downtrod bear and things look bad but then the beetle eyewitness is discovered to be the moonlight mistress of massey energy! plus mountaintops are AWESOME for song-and-dancing. i think then you would have the expert guests come on and be like, “um, NO, polar bears can’t operate heavy machines.” cop: “this one… CAN.” expert: “um, NO.”
but it’s hard to get lots of people to watch the same show, is why the big brands sell in the cracks between the good stuff, to catch as many eyeballs as possible. what the planet needs & fast is a refresher course on geobiophysics (and other big issues i think) for good people to be heartened & less fearful of the concentrated powers that be.
I am going to vote the straight Pro-Life ticket Tuesday. Millions of others are going to do so as well, both “Bible” Christians and (like me) Catholics. It is a shame that, for those who feel abortion of human babies is the greatest moral evil of America, there is no choice for a pro-life pro-climate vote.
Prop. 23 has been instrumental in educating the average Californian about the job creating potential of renewable energy. Californians keep hearing on TV that the job growth in the renewable energy sector has been 10X that in any other sector. Prop. 23 has pitted Californian locals against Texan oil interests with the former outspending the latter by a factor of three. It appears to be headed for an ignominious defeat for the oil companies. Joel Stein’s dramatic challenge to Charles Koch to debate him on Prop. 23 and Mr. Stein’s trip to Wichita, Kansas to issue the challenge in person to Mr. Koch has energized the youth in California and will most likely deliver them to the polls, despite their lackluster view of Pres. Obama’s first two years in office.
If Prop. 23 is soundly defeated on Tuesday, this could be a major turning point for the grassroots environmental movement.
Likewise, if Republicans win the House and begin an inquisition on Climate Scientists, this could provide an opportunity for the Climate Scientists to face their accusers squarely in public and defend the integrity of their work. As Republicans shine the light on this topic, the truth will shine through. This can only be good for the environmental movement.
Bring it on!
Frank,
Dammit I’ve seen that somewhere before … but I can’t find where. The colour scheme is like that used on RC, but I can’t find it there.
It’s a close but not exact match with the NH recon in IPCC TAR … http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/fig2-21.htm
You dont burn 30 billion barrels of oil per annum and replace it easily especially considering that there is 1700 KW/h of energy is every barrel. OK so most of it is burnt at 25% efficiency in automabiles and aircraft but al the same its a massive problem. Coal is not far behind and gas not far behind coal in usage terms.
Solar baseload regardless of its cost per MW/h of electricity is a carbon mitigation energy source along with off shore and on shore wind and many others too. Can you put a price on the carbon emissions that wil cause a lot of economic damage and the lives to be lost and possibly even being lost.
ZERO google hits for “fear corporate greed” ; only 12,500 for “fear (punctuation mark, comma, hyphen) corporate greed”.
Here’s a new phrase who’s time has come.
Frank
Closing In… http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/briffa2001/briffa2001.html
Plate 3.
I understand integrating wind into the power grid much better after reading all of an IEA Wind Power Study
http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/tiedotteet/2009/T2493.pdf
It is probably enough for most just to read the abstract and the executive summary
“How to start a movement” (TED)
For those of you who haven’t seen the great, and short, TED video, “How to start a movement”, I’d highly recommend it. Joel Francis’s efforts remind me of this (see the post earlier today about Joel and Koch). The dynamics of leaders, and people who join them in leadership, and then more followers, and so forth, are vital to understand. In the end, “just do it” is a good way to think. And, if you see someone doing something good and courageous, join in and tell others. So, please watch this, if you haven’t already. It’s both interesting and fun — and it’s short too:
http://blog.ted.com/2010/04/how_to_start_a.php
Cheers,
Jeff
Hawks, dove and canaries. Penguins too. I feel like a sparrow. Fidgety and nervous with the weather getting worse. The winds blow hot from all directions. Storms march and drought looms. Food-water-shelter are immediate. I like this avian metaphor. I am a sparrow right now.
My van supplies the heavy lifting and my home is large and expensive to heat. I like it cool when the summer heat gets above 90. I ride a bike when possible and am considered a nut by too many to count. Threats abound from the large aggressive cars and trucks who rule the landscape as if by right. I spend time to urge officials to change my landscape for the betterment of the bike. The lowly bike whose emissions are negligible. Words have been uttered to the effect that a reduction of carbon emissions of 80% are to be achieved. How? A reduction of this magnitude can be achieved by eliminating 80% of the motor vehicles on the road. Buses, cars and trucks. No one in government has uttered the words to the effect that a reduction in emissions by vehicles will mean a reduction in vehicles. Oh yeah, the reduction doesn’t have to be realized for 40 years. Electric cars? Where are my solar arrays to catch that energy and convert it to electricity that can be used in a car?
Today this sparrow along with hundreds of thousands of others in this city drove 100 miles because I could choose to do so. I drove to….a bike event. I am but a sparrow. I have no talons nor a beak for rending. I fly-ride-drive for economic gain such as today where I sold bike parts in support of the local bike community. I urged and spread printed materials in support of bike friendly initiatives. An exhibition of hawk-like initiative? I drove 100 miles today. Tweet-tweet-tweet. I remember that when this sparrow rides the bike, the eagles on 4 wheels are ready to swoop.
There are times when this sparrow does feel empowered. When in a flock. The more sparrows-bikes I can travel with in a group the safer I feel. A reduction of 80% of eagles would really go a long ways toward making me feel safer. The more the merrier.
Though this sparrow desires to be a hawk, the safety found in the flock or the power that exists for me as an eagle are greater. The flocks right now are small and widely dispersed. The 4-wheeled eagle is always ready. The canaries? Well, I will listen to their lonely song.
A regional power planning document lists some alternatives in order of increasing generation (busbar) price:
(1) combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs);
(2) wind;
(3) nuclear power plants (NPPs);
(4) coal burning thermal.
The price difference is actually rather small. But for about 1/3 the cost is energy efficiency.
In response to the question “Which policy options do you support?” 42 percent of the respondents chose the answer “keeping science out of the political process.”
Say what?
Keep science out of the political process? Science? I thought it was supposed to be the other way around; that the goal was the keep politics out of science. … What is the point of civilization in the first place if we don’t use our hard-won understanding of how the universe works to influence our decisions on how to organize ourselves?
– Andrew Leonard
Here is a different proposal to rapidly elimate coal burners:
http://www.coal2nuclear.com/
Don’t sequester your eggshells; let them absorb CO2…A small thing but multiply it by billions…
I say bring on the Climate hearings. No scientists support the Tea Party line. By now scientists around the country are getting very angry. Lord Monckton is well debunked. I do think that it’s a lot to ask of scientists, such as Mann, who did not ask for this, but at some point the forces of anti-science need to be confronted.
Could somebody please help me understand how ocean acidification, coupled with rising temperature, affects the saturation of the upper oceans for CO2? The rising temperature argues for decreasing solubility of CO2 and my guess is that lower pH argues for increasing CO2 solubility. Is this right? Which phenomenum should prevail? I’m trying to understand when we should expect the oceans to become a net emitter of CO2.
I don’t think the subject of man-made aerosols and their impact on total radiative forcing is covered very well on this blog (some of your commentators obviously get it, but the posts themselves refer to the truth obliquely at best. )
Here’s a couple quotes from this year’s National Academy of Sciences reports:
Advancing the Science of Climate Change
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12782#toc
Chapter 6 “Changes in the Climate System”, p. 153
“Finally, aerosol emissions represent an important dilemma facing policy makers trying to limit the magnitude of future climate change. If aerosol emissions are reduced for health reasons, or as a result of actions taken to reduce GHG emissions, the net negative climate forcing associated with aerosols would decline much more rapidly than the positive forcing associated with GHGs due to the much shorter atmospheric lifetime of aerosols, and this could potentially lead to a rapid acceleration of global warming (see, e.g., Arneth et al., 2009). Understanding the many and diverse effects of aerosols is also important for helping policymakers evaluate proposals to artificially increase the amount of aerosols in the stratosphere in an attempt to offset global warming (see Chapter 15).”
Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12785#toc
p. 25, last paragraph of box on key uncertainties
“Many global emissions scenarios consider only CO2 or Kyoto gases. The results of analyses that include only Kyoto-gas forcing differ from those that include “full forcing”, primarily due to the impact of aerosols. The aerosol influence is complex, as some types such as black carbon exert positive forcing (warming), while other types such as sulfates exert negative forcing (cooling). It is estimated that overall, aerosol-related cooling influences currently lower total forcing by roughly an equivalent of 50ppm CO2 (Forster and Ramaswamy, 2007). Many studies indicate that the aerosol influence will attenuate over the coming century however, particularly if strong climate change limiting policies are enacted. This is because aerosol emissions from fossil fuel combustion are expected to be significantly reduced, both as an indirect result of GHG mitigation efforts and as a direct result of concerns over health impacts. For example, in scenarios from the EMF22 models that most comprehensively considered full forcing, it was found that by the end of the century, Kyoto-only CO2-eq concentrations were roughly equal to full-forcing concentrations.”
So total radiative forcing in 2100 is GREATER than today in ALL modeled GHG reduction scenarios that don’t also have some kind of geo-engineering, and those ideas have been shown here on climateprogress as essentially “not going to work.” So what gives?
#36 re Geoengineering: UN just voted for a global ban on all attempts to geoengineer atmosphere/ocean Oct 30 here in Nagoya, Japan
http://stephenleahy.net/2010/10/25/geoengineering-for-a-desperate-planet-global-ban-under-review-by-un/
catman306, @ 44: Thank you for the heads up and poke. I now own “fearcorporategreed.com”. Drop me a note sometime so I can thank you personally. my name at cablespeed dot commercial.
I agree with those who have suggested creating a movement around the threatened GOP investigations of scientists and those who have suggested strategy for this (#25, #33, #35, #41, #47 and others). May I suggest creating a permanent Blog for brainstorming ideas about this? This should also include legislative strategy for passing a climate bill or bills in a hostile environment. After all, there needs to be a leader and a first follower (Ted.com — #47)!
tom gibbons: check w/ http://ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity on that, they’re active and full of ideas & needs
Check over your shoulder. There’s a problem named Tomas passing through the Windward Islands. What in the world is this thing doing out there at this time of the year?
Stephen at 56 -
While a moratorium on the deployment of Albido Restoration options is plainly essential, (they are mostly under-researched, some are potentially dangerous, and all lack effective global governance)
such a delay on Carbon Recovery options is patently non-sensical.
To the extent that people are planting trees, and ensuring the regrowth of harvested woodlands, and increasing the rotational grazing of livestock, etc, carbon recovery is already under way. Plainly the more rapidly it can, sustainably, be accelerated, the better.
The core issue regarding Geo-E (that is almost entirely ignored in debates thus far) is that even a radical termination of global GHG outputs, of say 98% by 2040, is patently insufficient to avoid the airborne stocks of anthro-GHGs driving the diverse interactive accelerating feedback loops past the point of causing irreversible catastrophic climate destabilization.
In light of this observation, Geo-E is not optional but requisite to maintaining a habitable global climate. And, given the many decades required for Carbon Recovery to cleanse the atmosphere, effective Albido Restoration will be necessary in the interim as a temporary measure.
Thus the fear of corrupt wealthy nations’ abuse of Geo-E (as a plan B to avoid the duty of ending GHG outputs) should not be allowed to obstruct the research of both Geo-E approaches, nor the equally urgent development of the global governance capacity that individual technologies’ selection and deployment will require.
Until the opponents of Geo-E get their heads around the need for focussed opposition to specific untenable technologies and motivations, they will continue IMHO to be doing at least as much harm as good.
_________________________________________
If anyone can show me how ending global GHG outputs with CO2 at say 450ppmv will not drive the feedbacks to catastrophe, I shall be glad to retract the above. Until then I’m fundamentally opposed to those who obstruct both the essential scientific research of Geo-E and the development of the global governance it urgently requires.
Regards,
Lewis
The formation of Tomas so far south and east this late in the season is unprecedented in the historical record; no named storm has ever been present east of the Lesser Antilles (61.5°W) and south of 12°N latitude so late in the year.
Tomas is the first tropical storm to cross through the Lesser Antilles Islands south of 16°N this late in the year since 1724.
Another unusual aspect of Tomas’ formation is that we now have two simultaneous hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean on October 30. There has been only one hurricane season since 1851 that had had two simultaneous hurricanes later in the year–1932, when Hurricane Ten and Hurricane Eleven both existed November 7 – 10. Today is also the 5th latest date in the season that there have been two simultaneous named storms in the Atlantic. http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1678
There should be an update later today.
Alaska’s untapped oil reserves estimate lowered by about 90 percent http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/10/27/alaska.oil.reserves/
Fire Island, just off the western tip of Anchorage in Cook Inlet, is home to a steady supply of wind, most from the southwest and north. Cook Inlet Region Inc. is clearing land and negotiating with Railbelt utilities with an aim to make electricity from that wind and sell it at competitive prices by 2012.
Those power-purchase agreements are key to gaining private financing for part of the $162 million project — and to securing almost $70 million in federal and state grants that will cut costs and directly benefit ratepayers.
Read more: http://www.adn.com/2010/10/18/1507919/our-view-fire-island-wind-power.html
Lewis: “Thus the fear of corrupt wealthy nations’ abuse of Geo-E (as a plan B to avoid the duty of ending GHG outputs) should not be allowed to obstruct the research of both Geo-E approaches, nor the equally urgent development of the global governance capacity that individual technologies’ selection and deployment will require.”
Current tech is not capable to control any weather alteration. There are now studies which show that in fact these experiments come with a price of more severe/frequent droughts or flood conditions. Ofc where there is money they will adopt experiments – but it will not work. Like with certain volcanic eruptions the effect is only short lived and it makes only sense during sudden big Co2 equivalent uptakes, but if this happens it might be to late to change anything. Only you could buy some time to build an arc maybe.
The only way to stop further weather devastations is with the out phasing/ban on fossil energy and carbon sequestration.
In the future people will vote for war on nations who do not reduce their carbon footprint.
Some encouragement for activists in Frank Rich’s column today (NYT).
Only 2% of the population actually identifies as tea party members, and yet they’ve convinced the media that a third of the country is with them. A lesson is that 2% can have a huge impact. Of course fox, etc, have enourmous amplifiers. But on our side, we know that more than 2% of the country are climate concerned citizens, many of whom could be converted to climate hawks.
i love biochar for its potential to sequester carbon but it gets no good press. it does seem to have lots of variables : feedstock input; temp and processing conditions; soils and crops used on;. why not just make it and place it into coal mines or any landfill where fill is needed. just to tie up carbon. why do we need to “justify” it with crop growth?
bill,
because biochar and crop growth is linked. Many farmers use slash and burn – instead they have to slash and char. Thus this approach is part of the biochar tech for carbon sequestration on large scale to make a difference.
In the process you get these byproducts: bio-gas, bio-oil and better crop yields.
Have a small read here http://www.biochar-international.org/projects/book
Btw i read a lot about biochar and im not aware of any bad press. This is btw an ultimate job machine, which could help put people out of poverty – which in turn has been shown to reduce population growth.
Oh, and btw there is no other option!
Unless you come up with a miracle invention. Algae is great but works only in geological timeframes.
Hurricane Tomas weakened to a Category 1 hurricane on Sunday as it moved westward across the eastern Caribbean sea, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Tomas, the 12th hurricane of the very active 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, was packing top sustained winds of near 90 miles per hour, the Miami-based center said.
It was located 180 miles west of St Lucia, and was moving northwest at 9 mph on a track that would bring it south of the Dominican Republic and Haiti by Tuesday. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69U19D20101031
UN probes base as source of Haiti cholera outbreak
U.N. investigators took samples of foul–smelling waste trickling behind a Nepalese peacekeeping base http://topnews360.tmcnet.com/topics/associated-press/articles/2010/10/30/112776-un-probes-base-as-source-haiti-cholera-outbreak.htm
Another earthquake may jolt Haiti http://www.themoneytimes.com/featured/20101031/another-earthquake-may-jolt-haitigeologists-id-10138405.html
Just replace Haiti with any other city name … future with climate shifting.
Positive Societal Change: On Suing ExxonMobil
Tonight there will be many cute goblins, ghosts, phantoms, and boogie-men wandering the streets innocently in search of sweets. In the meantime, there is a huge, deceitful, menacing behemoth working 24-7, throughout the year, in front of our noses, to push products that generate over 1 TRILLION POUNDS of CO2 each year when they’re used. And the behemoth is messing up the future for the cute goblins, ghosts, phantoms, and boogie-men without their knowledge. Children and future generations can’t protect themselves from ExxonMobil. We’ll have to do it for them.
It will probably take a number of different approaches, in parallel, in order to send the necessary “messages” and accomplish the task: boycotts, civil demonstrations, lawsuits, appropriate pressure on key shareholders, and so forth. For now, I just want to offer a few thoughts on one of these: lawsuits.
To be clear, I’m not a lawyer. But Cicero was. One of my favorite quotes of his is this:
“… and it has to be concluded that the greatest source of harm to man is man.”
(Cicero, “On Duties II”, 44 BC)
Some of our companies, including (and notably) ExxonMobil, are bringing about more harm to humankind and to other members of Earth’s biological community than is even possible to imagine. Scientists have pointed this out, plentifully. As Aldous Huxley once observed, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
To quote another great lawyer, Abraham Lincoln:
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that’s my religion.”
Those words alone should be sufficient to activate us.
A great lover of nature, Theodore Roosevelt, offered this:
“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”
Apparently, judging from its actions, this seems to be the way ExxonMobil has educated itself.
So, although I’m not a lawyer, I’d like to point out that large groups of concerned people, with the help of excellent lawyers, should be starting to sue the heck out of ExxonMobil (including its top execs and directors) in top-quality fashion, based in fact, using all possible viable legal arguments. I’m not talking about millions of dollars: I’m talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. I’m not talking about damages: I’m talking about treble damages. And I’d like to offer a few thoughts that may or may not help: only the lawyers know for sure.
First, ExxonMobil may say, “Well folks, what we’re doing is not against the law”. There is a big problem with this argument, at least logically and ethically. As they do things (that are harmful to humankind, future generations, other species, etc.) that are “not presently against the law”, and as they continue to do them, they have been paying lobbyists, lobbying the government, making political donations, and deceiving the public in order to try to prevent the relevant laws from being passed. This is like someone who routinely sprays a new sort of pollutant over your neighborhood — one that isn’t outlawed quite yet, but that scientists say is harmful — and who pays the local paper, the local mayor, the local city council, and the local police in order to keep the practice legal, to allow them to keep spraying the pollutant over your neighborhood for as long as they like. It’s a bit like someone who would punch you in the stomach, repeatedly, while holding his other hand over your mouth, and then (in defense of the punching) say that you never told him to stop! The whole argument is nonsense, and if our court system is not wise enough to see the problem, that may be a sad sign that we’ll eventually need a new court system too. (I have more faith in the system than that.)
While I’m quoting lawyers, here’s Thomas Jefferson:
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
“We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations, as with individuals, our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.”
Because of length, I’ll pause here and continue with more ideas (regarding this topic) in a forthcoming message. I do hope that relevant organizations are preparing suits against ExxonMobil, and I’d be happy to help any serious effort with some observations, ideas, and suggestions. Responsible adults need to act responsibly, and address the ExxonMobil problem (and others too), in the interests of those cute little ghosts, goblins, witches, phantoms, devils and demons, baseball players, little mermaids, and so forth that will be coming around tonight. (I don’t know if I’ll see anyone dressed as a climate change blogger, but we’ll see.)
Be Well,
Jeff
Better monitoring urged for ailing oceans by 2015
OSLO (Reuters) – Ocean scientists urged governments on Sunday to invest billions of dollars by 2015 in a new system to monitor the seas and give alerts of everything from tsunamis to acidification linked to climate change.
They said better oversight would have huge economic benefits, helping to understand the impact of over-fishing or shifts in monsoons that can bring extreme weather such as the 2010 floods in Pakistan.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101031/ts_nm/us_climate_oceans
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin took part in discussions with colonial scholars about the effects of deforestation on local climate.
In addition to his meteorological prowess, Franklin also published the first scientific chart of the North Atlantic’s Gulf Stream.
In the last years of his life, Franklin conducted studies on the effects that volcanic eruptions might have on weather patterns, cloud formation, and cloud electrification. He hypothesized that the severe Northern Hemisphere winter of 1783–84 was linked to the volcanic eruption occurring in Iceland in the summer of 1783. Franklin suggested that there was a reduction in the amount of solar energy received at the Earth’s surface after the volcanic eruption due to the ash and other particles inserted into the atmosphere.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Franklin/franklin_2.php
Benjamin Franklin, Earth Scientist
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) is best known as a statesman, inventor and writer, but he was no slouch as an Earth scientist, too.
In Franklin’s day there was no such thing as a scientist (the word was first used by William Whewell in 1840), only “natural philosophers.” At that time, science was pursued by gentlemen of leisure or by moonlighting professionals such as lawyers, clergymen and professors.
Not just a pure scientist, Franklin was relentlessly practical. His skill as an inventor relied on both a keen analytical mind and a strong drive to help the common people. Thus he gave away the lightning rod and the energy-efficient Franklin stove, refusing to patent their designs. http://geology.about.com/od/biographies_dh/a/aa_franklin.htm
Jeff @ 69: I always enjoy your posts. Thank you for your continued efforts.
Two palms up’
Leif
Fear Corporate Greed
97% of climate scientists say that ACC is both real and dangerous, according to the National Academy of Sciences. If 97% of firefighters said your house wasn’t safe or 97% of mechanics said your car’s going to break down, you don’t scream, “Left-wing conspiracy!” You fix the problem.
The Onion once again makes parody by simply stating the truth:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/democrats-if-were-gonna-lose-lets-go-down-running,18333/
I can’t help picturing the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the knights run screaming “Run away!, Run away!”.
Leif @ 75 – Overcome Corporate Greed, not fear.
popeyesmotto #48
That was beautiful.
ps I prefer Fear Corporate Greed. It just sounds crisper, plus, it gets across the point that corporate greed is something fearsome.
Positive Societal Change: On Suing ExxonMobil (Continued)
Continuing from my earlier message on this topic …
There is another problem, too, with arguments that ExxonMobil could try to adopt in order to defend against lawsuits. ExxonMobil could try to point to the “scientific uncertainty” or, indeed, claim that it (ExxonMobil) doubts the reality of climate change or the fact that GHGs are the main cause. Of course, there are many problems with such an excuse or claim.
First of all, there’s the overwhelming scientific majority view, indeed virtually all of the bona fide and relevant scientific organizations in the world. And, ExxonMobil prides itself on being a highly scientific organization: see their advertorials and ads in The New York Times, for example.
Second, even as ExxonMobil tries to confuse and deceive the public, it acknowledges the reality of climate change, selectively, in various messages and to various audiences. It acknowledges the problem. It can’t claim ignorance, by any means. Nor can it claim unaware negligence or modest negligence. In my view, it ought to be easy to show that (at a minimum) ExxonMobil is guilty of immense, deeply harmful, knowing gross negligence – and indeed, if it were up to me, I’d say immensely immoral behavior and crimes against humankind.
Third, if ExxonMobil had the idea of even suggesting, or hinting, that it doubted the reality of climate change, or the link to GHG emissions, and if that was its supposed excuse for its actions, then it would be a fair and necessary question to ask, Is ExxonMobil diligently pursuing plausible hypotheses, and sincere and sufficient scientific research and global data gathering, to demonstrate that climate change is not real, and/or that GHGs are not the principal causes? After all, it’s not responsible to deny or doubt important assessments by the vast majority of the scientific community, and to continue activities that those assessments say are causing harms, if you don’t even have a credible and serious alternative hypothesis that you are trying diligently to assess. Consider: If the scientific community pointed out very likely problems with a specific pharmaceutical, it would not be sufficient for the company making the pharmaceutical to merely deny and ignore those assessments, continuing to sell the product. Instead, the company would have to demonstrate, via sound research, why the other scientific assessments were invalid and why there is no actual problem. And indeed, in the meantime, it would only be wise and responsible for the company to pull the product from the market, until such time as the truth of the matter could be determined.
So, how much of ExxonMobil’s (roughly) one billion dollars of annual research is being spent on plausible hypotheses, responsible scientific research, global experiments, and so forth aimed at understanding climate change and its relationship to GHGs, as sound primary research? Not much, you say. Perhaps none?! Well then, so much for any claim that ExxonMobil might make about disagreeing with the problem of climate change. The scientific community has spoken loudly and clearly enough (for ExxonMobil to be aware of the problem). ExxonMobil spends far, far, far more on continuing to do the very activities that are problematic, and causing harms, than they are spending on trying to actually understand the climate change issue itself, with primary research.
These are just some of the considerations. But again, at the risk of redundancy, relevant organizations and excellent law firms ought to be bringing excellent suits, and many of them, against ExxonMobil at this point. BIG ones. And those suits, or at least the relevant ones, ought to name ExxonMobil directors and senior execs in the suits. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that these steps ought to make sense, if our law is sensible at all.
Cheers,
Jeff
Many comments seem to be talking about what to do ‘when’ the GOP take over the House. It’s still ‘if’ they take over. Some of the polls around the country that give both LV (likely voters) and RV (registered voters) results for the same time frame show a 5% to 7% swing. In some of these races a get out the vote effort that changed the LV model to closer to the RV results could change the winner. So it’s not necessary at this late date to change votes, it’s only necessary to get voter, who have already indicated how they are going to vote, to the poles
So it’s still important to vote and if you can help the get out the vote efforts either with donations or by volunteering. If there aren’t close races in your area (or even if there are) consider helping the “climate heroes” list in this CP post.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/09/17/house-races-climate-deniers/
Phil Clarke:
Thanks! I finally ripped out the full-size image from the PowerPoint. It’s indeed extremely similar to the graph in Briffa et al. (2001) you mentioned, but there are no error bars and the legend’s different.
– frank
Positive Societal Change: Lessons From Robot Cockroaches
Nearly three years ago, NPR reported on scientific research involving robot cockroaches. Back then, some of us were participants on Dot Earth, and this came to be known among a small group of us as the Robot Cockroach story.
The research is fascinating. It has much to do with the social behaviors of social organisms. As it turns out, according to the research, cockroaches have a tendency to prefer being together, and following leaders, even when the resulting behaviors are in contradiction to “common sense” and their own safety and well-being.
I suggest listening to the NPR piece, which is short but interesting and fun. There are lessons here regarding the predicament we all face in bringing about positive societal change. There are far too many mal-programmed Robot Cockroaches that far too many people are still blindly following, and there are still way too few responsible leaders leading in sensible directions. Think about the connections among this research, the TED piece on “how movements begin” (linked above), and the notable leadership efforts of Francis (if I remember his name correctly) featured on CP a couple days ago.
Here’s the link to the original NPR story:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16328789
Happy Sunday, Cheers, and Watch Out For Robot Cockroaches!
(That’s it for today. Tonight, I’m going as Neil Young.)
Jeff
New Bear clip -
Bear #339 and The Bear A Tones Join Dona Nobis Pacem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5lIBEiblxk
St. Louis became known as the Gateway to the West because, in the days of covered wagons drawn by horses, The Mississippi River froze over so that a wagon and 4 horses could drive across the river on the ice.
I need documentation of the above. I forgot where I read it. Can anybody help?
Now you can’t drive on the ice at Davenport, Iowa. There usually isn’t any ice here.
Entering End Times
Sixty One Tornado reports from Midwest Super-storm of October 25-27, 2010
October 26, 2010 the Midwest super-storm was rated the strongest non-coastal Low pressure system in the Continental US (CONUS). The city of Bigfork, Minnesota recorded a barometric pressure of 28.20 inches or 955 MB at 5:34 PM CDT on Tuesday.
That pressure is what is normally found in a Category 3 hurricane with 115 MPH winds http://www.examiner.com/weather-in-fort-worth/spectacular-super-storm-socks-the-us-sets-new-midwest-low-pressure-record
Land hurricane tests wind turbines
This week’s ‘land hurricane’ was a first time event for Minnesota’s wind power industry. Wind turbines have been part of the state’s landscape for about twenty years, but the storm was a real test.
Dan Juhl has been involved with the business from the start, he currently owns or manages about 50 wind turbines on southwest Minnesota’s Buffalo Ridge. Juhl says he’s never before seen a storm where the winds have been “so sustained, at such a high level, for so long.”
Dan Juhl says the winds were the strongest he’s ever seen outside of brief gusts in a thunderstorm. He says most of his turbines automatically shut down during the storm as a self protection measure. Juhl says the turbines automatically shut down when sustained winds reach 55 mph. The biggest machines are more than 200 feet tall. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/statewide/archive/2010/10/land-hurrican-tests-wind-turbines.shtml
Typhoon Megi: The Strongest in the World
The recent super typhoon that hit the Philippines has been named the strongest typhoon in the world.
According to CNN meteorologist Ivan Cabrera, super typhoon Juan (international codename Megi) is “the strongest storm on the planet since 2005″, and it is also the strongest storm that wreaked havoc in the Pacific Ocean since 1990.
Juan, the 10th storm to enter the Philippine area of responsibility, has shown the highest recorded maximum sustained winds of 225 kph, and with gustiness of 260 kph at 11am yesterday. http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7067143-typhoon-megi-the-strongest-in-the-world
Just some thoughts/suggestion, let people register on CP, so that member post show up instantly and could be editable maybe. Would be also a great way to inform and coordinate the CP user base with optional newsletters.
I wonder if putting warnings on gas pumps (like cigarettes) that burning fossil fuels cause GW would make more people want to get educated on the science.
Forget my request. Google found it.
Jeff Huggins had some neat quotes from famous people. I will use them in the future.
I watched Gasland Movie this week for the first time. Recommend this docu on natural/methane gas to everyone. What the movie did not mentioned was recent findings about uranium mobilization from natural gas fracking.
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=gasland&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&psj=1
Posted by “Marie” at 10:40PM on 28 October over at DotEarth (link below).
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/shrinking-the-climate-problem/?sort=oldest&offset=2
Elation at the busy premises of Anthony Watts recently:
“Global air and sea temperatures starting to drop rapidly” (Oct 29).
(Btw I don’t check his site directly lest he gain pageviews, but through the bing.com cache, google does not seem to cache him always)
“The current global anomaly is 0.044C – or very nearly zero”
But, today, surprisingly, after Roy Spencer has got back on-line with some missing data days, the anomaly = 0.40F. Need we stand by for a correction from A.W. or not?
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Hurricane Tomas indeed fortunately weakened, and will probably be a tropical storm tomorrow, but still forecast to hit Haiti on Friday, restrengthened by then to 90 knot (105 mph) sustained winds: http://bit.ly/TomasH
Arctic sea ice extent and area are again touching the record low 2007 line of values!
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Area.png
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Unsurprisingly, silence is deafening at the respective keyboards of the usual suspects!
Come on, not to 100 yet.
Hi, I’m a Tea Partier
You’ll be glad you clicked! Cartoons for us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnUfPQVOqpw
Queensland Rail moves 500,000 tons of coal a day. Actually a little over 175 million tons last financial year.
http://coalrail.qrnetwork.com.au/About-COALRAIL/About-COALRail.aspx
Two things come to mind
1:That is going to make a lot of CO2
2:At the rate coal usage is growing, are we going to face peak coal soon?
I see there is some more trash talk going on over at WUWT directed at Joe here.
Quote:—-
“Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. explains why some leftist bloggers set themselves up for failure when they espouse their intellectual superiority. Screaming “hell, high water, global boiling, climate disruption, etc ” while at the same time saying “you’re too dumb to understand it” looks to be an epic “failure to communicate”.—-
… or is it just more red meat to promote Pielke’s book? Maybe I’m confused but stating scientific facts has nothing to do with promoting intellectual superiority?
[JR: I'll post on this laughably disingenuous faux populism tomorrow. Never met a leftist blogger who said or thought readers or voters are “too dumb to understand it.” Seen lots of right wing and disinformers who think that. Only the deniers treat the voters with intellectual superiority and disdain, by lying to them and/or by participating in the disinformation campaign pushed by the corporate polluter elite.]
#95 Virveli:
Yup, the UAH temps have bounced right back and are headed straight up now. Channel 5 is very close to breaking the all time record again. Quite interesting since we are seeing the second strongest La Nina ever recorded.
Rabid Doomsayer @100 — About 90% of US coal gone by around 2065 according the CalTech professor David Rutledge.
Re: Chris Winter | Post #94
THANK YOU for passing along that excerpt from the 10/28/10 Comments section at DotEarth.
Frankly I am sick and tired of the idea that we are somehow obliged to settle for whatever information (sic) we can get from the print and broadcast media outlets when in my opinion we ought to be communicating directly with the people who are gathering, quantifying and publishing the data on the many aspects of pollution-driven climate destabilization in progress. The comment from “Marie” (at NCAR/UCAR I assume) is heartening indeed.
art for a livable climate:
A requiem for fossil fuels.
http://www.good.is/post/a-requiem-for-fossil-fuels/
Re: Sarah | Post #104
Thank you for posting the link to the extraordinary work, “A Requiem for Fossil Fuels”. I would not have known about this otherwise. I will be passing this around to everyone I know.
#100 Rabid Doomsayer
And in other Queensland news, a large coal seam gas project is to go ahead:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/oct/31/bg-launches-gas-liquify-coal-project-australia
The freight (ie coal carrying) portion of Qld Rail is being privatized and one of the advisers to the government is none other than the Royal Bank of Scotland, no doubt drawing on the expertise exhibited in their role in the GFC. You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Heres a collection of some of the most stunning Climate Warming graphs I am gathering…
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&¬e_id=145916418774456&id=139434822741700
Concept of one plus one is two. Teaching at
the preschool level and above takes many
turns. In the University level it is common
for the educators to exclude from the education
process those who seem unable to learn that
1+1=2. Seems that many scientists are snared
into trying the impossible. Good luck, some know
the education is more immenant weather the
cause of concern is learned before hand or not.
Joe, better not take any chances when you change the formatting for the comment number. Three digits won’t be enough, better put in four. Climate change is a hot topic getting hotter all the time.
Thanks for all the excellent posts. It reminds me that there are plenty of us in from around the world who are paying attention. Maybe not “yes we can”, but “try we must”, and… maybe we will give ourselves a chance.
We learned in kindergarten and Sunday School that good triumphs over evil, and spent the next few decades questioning it. The kind of people speaking up here reminds me that goodness and intelligence may win after all. The only question is if we can do it in time.
German Sinkhole sucks in car overnight
A large sinkhole opened up overnight in the middle of residential area in Thuringia, sucking a nearby auto into its depths and forcing authorities to evacuate residents, police said on Monday.
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20101101-30879.html
paulm
Your graphs are scary.
Assessment of Weekend Open Thread Effort?
I applaud Joe and CP for the weekend open thread idea. I think it’s a great idea. Do keep it going!
But when it comes to the productivity of individual efforts, and decisions regarding how to spend one’s time best, there are more specific questions that can be asked. In thinking about my own time, and about how I should view the Weekend Open Thread, I’ve seen it (so far) as an opportunity to make comments and present ideas that can (hopefully) get through to, and be considered by, leaders in the various organizations leading the movement. But there is NIL feedback as to whether that’s actually happening. Here, I’m not talking about the active and helpful “weekend-open-threaders”. I’ve seen some great thoughts and comments, and I appreciate it when people occasionally give one of my comments a notice or thumbs up. But, aside from those of us here, and commenting, we seem to have no idea whatsoever whether ten other people are reading, or a hundred, or a thousand. Nor do we have any idea of whether leaders in the movements are reading our observations and ideas. Nor do we get any feedback from them — or at least I don’t. Nor is it easy to tell whether, or when, one of our comments or ideas leads to a post on CP. In short: Feedback seems to be lacking — or perhaps the comments and ideas themselves aren’t helpful, there’s no way to know.
So, my suggestion is that, somehow, either formally or informally, people who read AND CAN ACTUALLY USE the observations and suggestions should provide some sort of brief feedback, either directly or via e-mail or via smoke signals or something?! And, the point is not that this should be seen as “pats on the back” or whatever. Instead, it’s a basic practical matter: People, including me, have to decide how to use their time wisely. If my observations and ideas do little or no good when I take the time to write them here, then it doesn’t make sense for me to spend the time, of course. I offer this not as a complaint, but as a question about the forum and about how, perhaps, to make it more productive?
Cheers,
Jeff
[JR: Hmm. I don't know any other blog where that happens. I think most people will have to be content with the fact that a lot of people are reading their comments. But to expect feedback on feedback is a lot.]
Feedback on Feedback about Feedback
Hi Joe, thanks for the comment and the great work.
That said, I’d like to clarify something and make an observation that (I think) is important and certainly well-intended.
The point, of course, is not whether any other blog does this. Everyone always compares to what the other guy is doing: The New York Times is (in its view) doing great because it’s doing more than other papers. And we are told to vote for Democrats and Obama, no matter what he does, because (after all) the other present party in the two-party system would be a disaster, and a third party would siphon off votes. When it comes to climate change, Absolute (not “relative to”) measures of approaches and effectiveness are becoming more and more necessary. This is not to criticize CAP or CP, of course. Instead, I’m leading up to this point …
The feedback I’m talking about does not necessarily, or even mainly, or even much, have to come from you or involve your time. My point was not that you, CP, or CAP should spend valuable time administering some complex and time-consuming system of silly feedback. Instead, my point is this: If senior or junior leaders in the movements read and value my comments and ideas here, it would be helpful — and will ultimately be necessary — for them to let me know, by way of even a brief “got it” e-mail if they like, or else I can’t justify spending my time on the writing. Feedback is a measure of “value”, and time is valuable.
On a broader note, though, I think this is an important point for leaders of the movements to realize, in general. One of the things — it seems to me — that the movements DON’T do well involves affirmative feedback. Indeed, these four things are very interrelated: Actual progress! (towards the aims of addressing climate change); cooperation across initiatives and organizations; movement-building; and feedback to the people involved. Those four things are VERY interrelated. Yet, in all of my writing (for three years now), and in all of my going to events (for three years now), do you know what sort of feedback constitutes communications from the movement’s organizations back to me? Two things: Requests for funding, and automated messages to send e-mails to politicians. In other words, I think that one of the big Problems with the movement and its organizations is that they overlook feedback or (more frequently) they think that superficial “let’s try harder” feedback is sufficient. Most of the movement’s leaders get paid. Some of them write great and great-selling books. Some of them appear on TV. But, the vast majority of the people IN the movement — and many more are needed — don’t get paid, don’t write books, don’t get the notoriety, don’t go on TV. It’s a big mistake, I think, for the movement’s leaders to lose sight of that fact and its IMPLICATIONS. Feedback is necessary. Human contact is necessary. Progress is necessary, and these things are necessary TO progress.
To be clear, the feedback request was not suggesting that YOU or CP should administer something. That said, one thing that you could do, without hardly any time at all, as you talk to folks in the movement, if you value some of the comments and ideas here, is to mention to them that THEY should try to do a better job of connecting with people — and providing feedback — if they want the comments and ideas and efforts to continue coming. Because the reality is that I naturally won’t be able to judge that it’s worth my time IF I don’t get such feedback, periodically, and see that my efforts are helping.
I’m not trying to make more work for you. I’m trying to make the movements more effective. And if the movements treat volunteers, communicators, idea-generators, and etc. like they seem to do, as far as I can tell, they won’t be very successful at expanding involvement beyond the 0.2 percent of the population (or however many are actively involved) who are somehow so loyal and committed that genuine feedback and communication aren’t all that necessary to keep them going, or (perhaps) they ARE the ones who are getting good feedback and communication, unlike the rest of us.
Remember, I (and we commenters) have no idea — none, nil — that “a lot of people are reading their [our] comments”. The posts themselves go out to many people, of course, but as far as I know, these comments are being read by two dozen people, many of whom are probably wondering the same thing I’m wondering, and few of whom can actually make use of the ideas in terms of how the movements are run.
In any case, hopefully these are helpful and clarifying thoughts. The matters of communication, engagement, listening, feedback, affirmation, meaning and fulfillment, moral support, and so forth are among the Very Most Important matters in movements and social change. If the leaders don’t get those things reasonably right, their efforts will ultimately be ineffective, I think, and they’ll get a D- at movement building.
I DO think that the Weekend Open Thread is a super idea, of course. My only question is the time it makes sense for me to put into it.
Cheers for now, and Thanks for the Great Stuff,
Jeff