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Why would you link the IPCC report when it's common knowledge that 650 of the scientists whose work was used for the report have come out publicly and said that the entire report is pretty much a fabrication and false in nearly every aspect?

Because the content of your link is a crock of shit? (As is the rest of the site: "If Barack Obama Becomes the President Prepare for Marxism", "Bristol Palin Pregnant, but Makes Brave Choice", "Sarah Palin: A Conservatives Dream Come True"!)

Your link quotes TV weathermen, people who claim the sea levels are falling, that the global climate is *cooling* (despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary).

Classic myths (teh Sun is causing the warming!) sit side by side with quotes that claim the planet is cooling.

Why don't you link to the debunking of your... erm... bunk?

Bah. I'm feeling lazy. link link link

Some of the planets are warming. Some aren't. Some, we aren't sure. Pluto is easily explained by seasonal changes. None of it has anything to do with what's going on on the Earth.

Next question?

[citation needed]

Another, much higher estimation: 8-11 cents per kWH for a nuclear plant built today, somewhat higher than the average cost.

Does your $0.05/kWH include the capital costs of the nuclear plant, or just the ongoing costs of running the plant? If we can ignore capital costs, suddenly solar and wind get very, very cheap.

Flippant remarks aside, the grand-parent is incorrect, legally, CO2 is considered a pollutant. Here's a copy of the supreme court decision agreeing with the stance that CO2 is a pollutant. Also, in at least one case a Superior court judge in Georgia has used the Supreme court decision to block the construction of a coal-fire power plant because the plans contained no provision for limiting CO2 emissions. The "CO2 ain't a pollutant" excuse doesn't work any more. That dog won't hunt.

Legally != scientifically. We're preaching to a geek group, which insists on the most factual representation of its topics (most of the time). CO2 is a fertiliser, whether the Supreme Court has seen fit to accept it as such or not. It helps plants grow, thus it definitively is a fertiliser.

Besides, there's nothing that says a fertiliser can't also be a pollutant. That the SC decided to only use one label does not preclude other labels from also applying. I think what the GP's point is, is that we need to evaluate CO2 holistically: all its pros and cons, and that too many people are focused on a single point. After all, if CO2 is a fertiliser, we should see steady growth in the amounts of plant life (and maybe even its diversity), which we are. And with more plant life, the planet will be able to convert more CO2 back into O2, which seems like a negative feedback loop, at the very least it's drag on overall CO2 growth. Which makes me suddenly wonder if that's taken into account by any of the models being used to predict temperature rise. Probably not by the SC, but perhaps the UN scientists who have created these models have taken it into account? If not, that's a serious deficiency.

Yah that's right, whether something is a pollutant or not is not determined by if it has beneficial effects for some things, it's whether at it's present levels, whether it's harming humans, which CO2 is. If we had more oxygen in the atmosphere it would be a pollutant -- we'd all burst into flame where there's an open spark! That would be pretty toxic I would think and we would probably want to start regulating our oxygen emissions. Also, if we were spewing out massive amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere, I guess that would also be a pollutant because humidity would go up and we'd all get infected with fungi & molds, and viruses & bacteria would be harder to cure or take longer to go away -- ask anyone who smokes and lives in Portland, Oregon what that's like, it sucks.

Flippant remarks aside, the grand-parent is incorrect, legally, CO2 is considered a pollutant. Here's a copy of the supreme court decision agreeing with the stance that CO2 is a pollutant. Also, in at least one case a Superior court judge in Georgia has used the Supreme court decision to block the construction of a coal-fire power plant because the plans contained no provision for limiting CO2 emissions. The "CO2 ain't a pollutant" excuse doesn't work any more. That dog won't hunt.

I read an interesting book which predicted the "climate" in the next 10-20 could be different over the world than we are used to. The idea is that there are a number of different oscillations in the world's oceans which affect rainfall patterns, winds and air temperature. The book made a number of predictions, most of which I forget, they did say that Asia could be quite a bit dryer leading to problems in food production. The other prediction I remember was that northern Europe would cool slightly.
There was also a recent study which predicted a slowing in the measured warming of the Earth. Presumably as some of the heat is dumped deep into the ocean.

It's based on climate models. There's a large amount of uncertainty in the estimate, because we don't really know how ice sheets will react to such fast warming, but one meter seems likely.

Obama's pick to solve the energy crisis

"You should interview Steven Chu," the scientist at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, Calif., told me. "He already has one Nobel Prize. He wants to get a second one for solving the energy crisis."

That was two years ago, and I sorely regret not following through and landing an interview with Chu, a physicist who has dedicated his post-Nobel Prize career to the development of alternative sources of energy. Because as Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of energy, Steven Chu is going to get a chance to make his dreams come true, with the full backing of the U.S. government.

Since 2004, Chu has served as the director of the University of California-managed Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, spearheading, among other things, a massive research effort in solar power. To get a sense of the man's interests, here's the second sentence of his bio at the LBNL Web site. (LBNL, located in Berkeley, Calif., should be distinguished from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which does weapons research for the U.S. government.)

Chu, an early advocate for finding scientific solutions to climate change, has guided Berkeley Lab on a new mission to become the world leader in alternative and renewable energy research, particularly the development of carbon-neutral sources of energy.

Environmentalists and climate change activists are understandably delighted. Consider this: For eight years the United States has boasted an Energy Department that for all intents and purposes was a subsidiary of the U.S. oil industry. Now, should he be confirmed, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who specializes in climate change and renewable energy and already knows how to run a decent-size bureaucracy is going to be in charge of realizing Obama's bold promises to lead the United States toward an energy-sustainable future. Symbolically speaking, one would be hard put to draw a sharper contrast between the Bush and Obama eras than what is achieved by this single appointment.

That said, Steven Chu is no stranger to Big Oil. He was instrumental in helping U.C. Berkeley land one of the biggest corporate bonanzas ever -- $500 million from British Petroleum to establish the Energy Biosciences Institute, an ambitious joint venture that has been controversial from the get-go at Berkeley because of its plans to use oil money to do research and development into energy crops and other biofuel wizardry.

And, as I noted after seeing him talk in early 2007 at a symposium titled "Domestic Bioenergy: Weaning Ourselves From Foreign Oil Addiction," held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he is on record as being a bit hyperbolic as to the potential of biofuels.

There is enough marginal, unused agricultural land in the United States to generate the biomass necessary to reach the one-third goal [of displacing annual American gasoline consumption with biofuels,] without displacing food production, said Steven Chu, the Nobel physics prize winner who runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And the laws of thermodynamics won't need to be broken -- there is more than enough energy hitting the earth every day as sunlight to supply all of humanity's energy needs.

You can find plenty of scientists who will dispute such assertions, right

So lets do the math (I'm honestly not sure which way it's going to end up, so I'm trying not to go into this with preconceived notions of whether the air pressure thing will help). Full disclosure, I am an Obama supporter, and think offshore drilling is a short-sighted plan.

According to your fact sheet, properly inflated tires can provide up to 3% better fuel economy. According to the Department of Energy, US residential vehicles drove 1,793 billion miles in 1994 (the most recent year a lazy Google lookup brought - if someone has more recent data, by all means lets use that). According to what I could find, 1 gallon of crude makes approximately .45 gallons of gasoline (based on brief Google search - anyone have more accurate numbers?) I wasn't able to find national averages for fuel efficiency, so I'm going to pull numbers out of my ass, but use a few different possible 'national MPG' numbers for comparison, so we can at least can idea of whether the tire pressure idea could have any impact...

First, lets look at a national average of 10 MPG (probably too low). At 1,793 billion miles in 1994, consumers used 179.3 billion gallons of gas, assuming that 10 MPG number. But if they were driving on low tires (at 97% fuel efficiency...) they had 9.7 MPG and used 192.8 billion gallons of gas. So, in that case, Americans could have saved up to 13.5 billion gallons of gas inflating their tires. Max savings: 30 billion gallons of crude oil, or 710 million barrels

Assuming 20 MPG, the hypothetical 97% fuel efficient country drives around at 19.4 MPG and uses 92.4 billion gallons of gas, versus 89.7 billion gallons of gas at 20 MPG (a potential savings of 2.75 billion gallons). Max savings: 6.1 billion gallons of crude oil, or 145 million barrels

At 30 MPG (extremely unlikely, but presented for the sake of completeness) the country drives around at 29.1 MPG and uses 61.6 billion gallons of gas, versus 59.8 billion gallons at 30MPG (a potential savings of 1.8 billion gallons). Max savings: 4 billion gallons of crude oil, or 95 million barrels

So what do those numbers mean? Well, according to the Energy Information Administration, offshore drilling would potentially tap 18 billion barrels of crude, with production at max capacity by 2030.[1] So it looks like, even at the extreme end, just inflating tires would only be in the ballpark of 5% of the lower 48 states' offshore drilling capacity. (If all my math is right, which seems rather unlikely for math done during my lunch break...anyone spot any major flaws?)

At the same time, those savings would be per year. The same report says that offshore drilling would not have a large effect on oil production or prices "before 2030,"[2] so that 100 million barrels (the lower end of the savings spectrum) would add up to 2.2 billion barrels saved by 2030, a more respectable chunk of the estimated offshore capacity. So While I certainly don't pretend to have done enough research to say what (if anything...) can bring down gas prices, it looks like offshore drilling is not the short-term answer McCain says it is. Likewise, a 3% drop in gas prices in my area (Chicago) would be 12 cents, which is nothing to sneeze at - in fact, when I go in to get my oil changed this month, I'm going to make sure they check my tire pressure...

-Trillian

[1] - http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr.html
[2] - http://climateprogress.org/2008/06/18/eia-bombshell-offshore-drilling-would-not-have-a-significant-impact-on-domestic-crude-oil-and-natural-gas-production-or-prices-before-2030/

This blogger explains it pretty well:

Memo to T. Boone Pickens: Your energy plan is half-brilliant, half-dumb

Seriously, though, it's great that gazillionaire TBP is talking up peak oil and joining the wind power bandwagon (see "Wind Power â" A core climate solution"). And it's great he plans to spend tens of millions of dollars pushing this idea and delivering the mesage that $15 billion dollars for the wind production tax credit is peanuts compared to the $700 billion this country is going to spend on foreign oil this year.

But if you want to displace oil, the obvious thing to do is use of the wind power to charge plug-in hybrids (see "Plug-in hybrids and electric cars â" a core climate solution"), multiple models of which will be introduced into the US car market in two years. Indeed, with electric utilities controlling the charging of the plug-ins, they can make optimum use of variable windpower, which is mostly available at night time. That would be win-win-win.

The Pickens Plan, however, is based on the utterly impractical idea that "Harnessing the power of wind to generate electricity will give us the flexibility to shift natural gas away from electricity generation and put it to use as a transportation fuel."

Uhh, never gonna happen, T. Boone. Never. The most obvious reason is the gross inefficiency of the entire plan.

Right now, "We currently use natural gas to produce 22% of our electricity." Most of that electricity comes from gas burned in combined cycle gas turbines at an overall efficiency of up to 60%. Why in the world would the federal government â" or anyone else â" spend billions and billion of dollars on natural gas fueling stations and natural gas vehicles in order to burn the gas with an efficiency of 15% to 20%? Natural gas is simply too useful and expensive to squander in such a fashion.

And then thereâ(TM)s global warming.

It now seems clear this country will have a major effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a price for carbon dioxide within a few years. That means all federal and private sector energy-related investments will increasingly be driven by the need to achieve reductions in carbon dioxide emissions at the lowest price.

Running cars on natural gas does NOT significantly reduce GHG emissions (esp. if there is even the tiniest leak in the whole gas delivery process). Running a car on electricity from the U.S. electric grid does reduce GHG emissions. And running a car on electricity from combined cycle gas turbines would have a far lower GHG emissions than running the car directly on natural gas â" internal combustion engines are simply too damn inefficient.

This blogger explains it pretty well:

Memo to T. Boone Pickens: Your energy plan is half-brilliant, half-dumb

Seriously, though, it's great that gazillionaire TBP is talking up peak oil and joining the wind power bandwagon (see "Wind Power â" A core climate solution"). And it's great he plans to spend tens of millions of dollars pushing this idea and delivering the mesage that $15 billion dollars for the wind production tax credit is peanuts compared to the $700 billion this country is going to spend on foreign oil this year.

But if you want to displace oil, the obvious thing to do is use of the wind power to charge plug-in hybrids (see "Plug-in hybrids and electric cars â" a core climate solution"), multiple models of which will be introduced into the US car market in two years. Indeed, with electric utilities controlling the charging of the plug-ins, they can make optimum use of variable windpower, which is mostly available at night time. That would be win-win-win.

The Pickens Plan, however, is based on the utterly impractical idea that "Harnessing the power of wind to generate electricity will give us the flexibility to shift natural gas away from electricity generation and put it to use as a transportation fuel."

Uhh, never gonna happen, T. Boone. Never. The most obvious reason is the gross inefficiency of the entire plan.

Right now, "We currently use natural gas to produce 22% of our electricity." Most of that electricity comes from gas burned in combined cycle gas turbines at an overall efficiency of up to 60%. Why in the world would the federal government â" or anyone else â" spend billions and billion of dollars on natural gas fueling stations and natural gas vehicles in order to burn the gas with an efficiency of 15% to 20%? Natural gas is simply too useful and expensive to squander in such a fashion.

And then thereâ(TM)s global warming.

It now seems clear this country will have a major effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a price for carbon dioxide within a few years. That means all federal and private sector energy-related investments will increasingly be driven by the need to achieve reductions in carbon dioxide emissions at the lowest price.

Running cars on natural gas does NOT significantly reduce GHG emissions (esp. if there is even the tiniest leak in the whole gas delivery process). Running a car on electricity from the U.S. electric grid does reduce GHG emissions. And running a car on electricity from combined cycle gas turbines would have a far lower GHG emissions than running the car directly on natural gas â" internal combustion engines are simply too damn inefficient.

This blogger explains it pretty well:

Memo to T. Boone Pickens: Your energy plan is half-brilliant, half-dumb

Seriously, though, it's great that gazillionaire TBP is talking up peak oil and joining the wind power bandwagon (see "Wind Power â" A core climate solution"). And it's great he plans to spend tens of millions of dollars pushing this idea and delivering the mesage that $15 billion dollars for the wind production tax credit is peanuts compared to the $700 billion this country is going to spend on foreign oil this year.

But if you want to displace oil, the obvious thing to do is use of the wind power to charge plug-in hybrids (see "Plug-in hybrids and electric cars â" a core climate solution"), multiple models of which will be introduced into the US car market in two years. Indeed, with electric utilities controlling the charging of the plug-ins, they can make optimum use of variable windpower, which is mostly available at night time. That would be win-win-win.

The Pickens Plan, however, is based on the utterly impractical idea that "Harnessing the power of wind to generate electricity will give us the flexibility to shift natural gas away from electricity generation and put it to use as a transportation fuel."

Uhh, never gonna happen, T. Boone. Never. The most obvious reason is the gross inefficiency of the entire plan.

Right now, "We currently use natural gas to produce 22% of our electricity." Most of that electricity comes from gas burned in combined cycle gas turbines at an overall efficiency of up to 60%. Why in the world would the federal government â" or anyone else â" spend billions and billion of dollars on natural gas fueling stations and natural gas vehicles in order to burn the gas with an efficiency of 15% to 20%? Natural gas is simply too useful and expensive to squander in such a fashion.

And then thereâ(TM)s global warming.

It now seems clear this country will have a major effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a price for carbon dioxide within a few years. That means all federal and private sector energy-related investments will increasingly be driven by the need to achieve reductions in carbon dioxide emissions at the lowest price.

Running cars on natural gas does NOT significantly reduce GHG emissions (esp. if there is even the tiniest leak in the whole gas delivery process). Running a car on electricity from the U.S. electric grid does reduce GHG emissions. And running a car on electricity from combined cycle gas turbines would have a far lower GHG emissions than running the car directly on natural gas â" internal combustion engines are simply too damn inefficient.

The costs are overstated, and, really all you have is some anecdotal evidence and you aren't considering the benefits side of the equation at all.

Life is one cost, are you saying life isn't worth it? If so then why won't people lower their living standards, after all it's not worth it. As for the benefits it wasn't my aim to consider them, my aim was to show that even those who don't use coal are made to pay for it's usage.

1. Artic ice is actually thicker and wider this year, so the inuit are fine for now.

Oh really, that would surprise those scientists who have said the ice covering the Arctic Sea ice coverage has shrunken for the fifth year. Do you know more than they do? Scientist now say the Arctic will be ice free by 2030, decades before the models forecast. "Global Warming Is Rapidly Raising Sea Levels, Studies Warn". "Sea Level Rise During Past 40 Years Determined from Satellite and in Situ Observations". And Inuit's would either laugh or cry if you were to tell them they were fine. Oh and if it's not so bad then why is the government considering putting the polar bears on the endangered species list? But I guess you know more than the scientists, Inuits, and polar bears do, or more likely you're a troll.

I can't go on anymore with such nonsense.