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there are two possible reasons why a 10 year payback period might be too short.

1) Solar cells cost energy to produce.We would like to get at least as much energy back as we put in.

The Energy Returned on Energy Invested for Solar PVs is pretty good, the payback period is less than 10 years. A 1977 Solarex study found the payback period for energy was 6.4 years. And panels come with 20, 25, even 30 year warranties.

2) Solar cells cost money to produce. When the total life energy (KWH) produced is divided into the total cost, we arrive at the cost per KWH. We would like that cost to be lower than the local power utility supply cost.

Coal and nuclear power plants cost money to build, and without subsidies they may not be built. Want to see something ironic if not tragically funny? Watch and listen as Chevron's CEO agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies as well as how Rep Edward Markey crows about how "My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'" In his speech he also says how much nuclear and other energy industries get. While they get billions of dollars all of the subsidies for geothermal, solar, and wind add up to less than $1 Billion.

Falcon

How long is this "no warming in last 15 years" half-truth going to survive?

I would be greatly pleased if someone who takes this as some sort of anti-gw proof would kindly review this graph: http://www.grist.org/article/global-warming-stopped-in-1998 then explain why they still hold that view.

Then there is this 2000 year graph showing the results of 10 different studies by different teams using different methodologies: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison_png

Is there a claim that ALL of them are junk?

Yes, historically in most warming events temperature increases, and then carbon dioxide levels follow. However, there is one other event in which carbon dioxide was the forcing agent of global warming... the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was triggered by a release of carbon dioxide at an immense rate of 1,500 to 2,000 gigatons over the course of 1,000 years. That's a rate which is lower than the rate which we are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The real kicker? That warming led to an extinction rate of 35-50%. That's an extinction rate which is higher than the one marking the end of the dinosaurs. Yes, small mammals did thrive and radiate during that time. Carbon Dioxide driven warming may very well prove to be beneficial to mice and voles... but there is a good chance it will drive large organisms, including humans, to extinction if allowed unchecked.

Yes, there was a SMALL fluctuation that started 100 years ago. That one tapered off before the 1950s. The warming we are currently experiencing is unprecedented, and we are fucking doomed because of it. The earth will survive and organisms will evolve to fill many of the open niches... but we will be dead if this shit isn't stopped and then reversed. Turn off the Glen Beck and look at the science, asshole.

Well here is a very straight forward answer to the question regarding volcanic vs human.

http://www.grist.org/article/volcanoes-emit-more-co2-than-humans/

This from a series of articles which I only just discovered. Should make for an interesting read. http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/

Well here is a very straight forward answer to the question regarding volcanic vs human.

http://www.grist.org/article/volcanoes-emit-more-co2-than-humans/

This from a series of articles which I only just discovered. Should make for an interesting read. http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/

They are accidents. The first link even has the title "U.S. Nuclear Accidents", that's my my title. Twisting definitions don't change the facts.

If you think nuclear energy should be banned because of the excessive risk caused by such, I sure hope that you also want all cars banned. And swimming pools, and planes.

No I don't. Cars will not harm hundreds, thousands, or millions with one accident. One nuclear accident can. Planes don't harm many people all at once either. The attack on the WTC and Pentagon took 4 planes, and how many were killed? 3000? That's less than 1000 per plane. It was also a once in a lifetime event. If hijackers tried it today the passengers would not meekly go along, heck the passengers in the plane that crashed in Penn revolted once they knew what happened to the other planes. Swimming pools are not mass killers either.

I even have an excuse to ban vehicles, I was disabled because I was hit by a vehicle while riding my bike. While I was in a coma the docs even told my family it would be a miracle if I lived, do I consider it one? Not just no, but HELL NO!!! I don't consider it a miracle, my life has been a living hell. Am I calling for cars to be banned? No I'm not. I do call for people to be responsible, and if they won't exercise it then the law should hold them responsible. Even though the person who hit me had a record of causing accidents, and an arrest warrant was issued in his name, I wouldn't wish my life on him. I'm not that sadistic.

The Bopal disaster should have put the lid on chemical factories.

I'm not against chemical factories or their owners, I do support holding them responsible. That includes oil companies. Has the Alaskan fishermen been compensated for Exxon Valdez? More than 20 years later Exxon still has not paid them. Were the Navajo compensated? No. In the US the government even protects the nuclear industry from lawsuits and paying damages.

Countless deaths due to coal should have made this energy source a big no-no.

I agree. Of course that's not realistic right now. But I would end the subsidies coal gets, yes coal gets subsidies too. Here's a video where Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies. Then there was TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill. That wasn't the first one or the last one either. What's even worse is Mountaintop removal and some containment ponds are above where people live. I's also end passing on the external costs. Polluters would have to clean up and pay for damages, all not just coal plants. The same with alternative/renewable energy sources.

Do you think mining for the rare earths required by solar panels is "clean"?

And nuclear does not require mining or that mining is clean? Sure it does and it is dirty, however unlike nuclear solar can easily and cheaply be recycled as can wind turbines. Heck there are still solar panels from the '70s being used. There are also Jacobs wind turbines made in the 1930s still being used. Also with ongoing research, for which I also oppose subsides, efficiencies are improving and non-rare earth minerals and compounds are being investigated.

By the standards of energy generation, yes, nuclear is clean. By any standard, it is safe.

How many accidents has solar energy and wind turbines been involved in? Of those how many lives were put in danger, or how many were killed? And how much have they been given in subsidies? To answer that myself I googled alternative energy subsidies and found this:

Geothermal can be that baseload.

nuclear waste is a problem for later, and will be solved by breeders, which reduce dramatically the volume of waste. It is easy and safe to burrow the final products from these reactors, the only problem being NIMBY

NIMBYs have also stopped wind farms, especially offshore from Maine to Cape Hatteras. For instance before he died Ted Kennedy opposed wind turbines in Cape Cod. Obama may be able to get one built.

As for the "real" price of nuclear, it is a bit like the US medical system, a larger part of the price comes from terrible legislation and political opposition, not from the intrinsic cost.

Ah, how far wrong can a person be? Forget the US, Neither China, France, India, nor Russia has found nuclear power profitable. In those countries politicians not the market says what gets built. Check out the "Forbes" article Hooked on Subsidies reprinted by the Freemarket CATO Institute. Especially notice where is says "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

The French government owned company Areva has had large cost overruns building the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant as well as thousands of defects and deficiencies in Finland.

Falcon

The Obama administration and Congress under Pelosi have made it clear that along with wiping out the health insurance industry, their vision for "Green Eeconomy" includes a massive wealth transfer from big corporations to their constituents. Nuclear power doesn't fit into their vision for the future.

Maybe then you can explain to me why almost a dozen *NEW* Nuclear Power Plants are either, a) BEING BUILT RIGHT NOW, or b) in the end phases of licensing for construction?

It's a cute fable from the right than left-wing groups killed Nuclear, but like most fables, it's full of holes. Nuclear Power died in the United States, really even before Three Mile Island.

While Three Mile Island is the favorite target for blame, fewer and fewer plants were being ordered, period. The reason for this is a Classic "bubble" effect. Nuclear Energy was the end all, be all for decades starting in the 50s, but by the 70s the bloom was already starting to come off because of massive cost overruns and extended building schedules.

While the Government does share some blame (archaic licensing requirements, for one), the largest portion of blame belongs to the contractors who constructed the plants and the companies that ordered them.

Nuclear Power has always been (by comparison to the U.S.) dirt cheap in countries like France because of the most basic Capitalistic principle, standardization. The French basically licensed two or three designs, spent the time and money guaranteeing those designs were safe and efficient, and then simply chose from those two or three designs every time a new plant was needed.

Well, common sense tells you that once you build a plant two or three times, you'll most probably have discovered all the weird things that creep out of any new engineering project. by the time you've built it five times or more, you can almost be certain that the procedure in building the fifth plant is going to be almost identical to the procedure you use to build plants six through ten (or ten through one hundred, etc.)

In the United States, however, utilities looked at Nuclear (if you will please excuse the pun) like dick-measuring contests. It seems every utility spent more to make sure their plant was as different as possible from the ones that came before it. It's as though they were trying to be as expensive as possible just to show they could.

Every single plant was unique, every single plant had to be gone over from scratch for safety checks, every single plant had to have custom manufacturing processes invented just for it, and every single plant always cost just as much (in some cases, more) as the proceeding one (going back to the first one, practically).

There was never any traction made on standardization (in construction or licensing)

Because of this, Nuclear's supposed advantage over coal (cost, chiefly) *never* materialized in a timeframe that made it a selling point.

People and companies brag now of the Economics of Nuclear, but these plants are all hitting middle age now, where the costs to run them have pretty well been determined and likely costs for the future can be calculated.

What excites me about the future of Nuclear in the United States are plants like the Westinghouse AP1000 -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000

These plants are modular, can be built over and over again as many times as needed. Are engineered from the start with economy in mind (rather than "gee whiz, that's cool!"), and,best of allare fully licensed by the NRC right now.

As opposed to the early plants, the licensing procedures for these plants are greatly simplified because the NRC has already determined that th

The Obama administration and Congress under Pelosi have made it clear that along with wiping out the health insurance industry, their vision for "Green Eeconomy" includes a massive wealth transfer from big corporations to their constituents. Nuclear power doesn't fit into their vision for the future.

For starters the greenhouse effect is used to explain the surface temperature of Venus which IS a function of CO2. The same is not true of Earth's atmosphere because CO2 is a miniscule component.

The sam is true for earth because it has nothing to do with the actual amount. You have x parts per million and your greenhouse effect is X. You have (x+100) parts per million and you greenhouse effect is X+(100 * factor). There more CO2 you have the stronger is the greenhouse effect. Your claim is just bullshit.

Lastly, humans hardly put a dent in global CO2 concentrations regardless of the claims of the IPCC et al. You can prove it to yourself simply by comparing to what your average active volcano throws out every year. The checksum mentality would do lots of you AGW fans a world of good, because it would show you how tenuous your grasp of the matter realy is.

Why don't you just add up the amount of coal, oil, gas burned pr year and calculate the CO2 emission from that? Then you only need to define a base year, lets say 1800, and you can add up every year the produced CO2 until you reach the level from today. (Yes, I know you are to smart and to lazy to google for the amount of CO2 produced every year, to smart to add it up and to smart to compare the sum with the actual level)

Hint: http://www.grist.org/article/volcanoes-emit-more-co2-than-humans/

It debunks your claim. Where the fuck should a vulcano get the C and the O2 from to produce CO2 in any relevant amount? Ah ... yeah those mysterious O2 springs and those mysterious mythril mines which are polluted with Carbon. Far less hen 1% of the years CO2 "exhaust" comes from vulcanos, 99.5% are human mad.

angel'o'sphere

There is significant uncertainty in all of these areas. And based on all that uncertainty, it is impossible to draw hard conclusions about which way this plays out.

Or do you rely, to make your rhetorical points, on a less exact definition of "significant" than is required of a scientist, to use the same word about a research subject? Scientists really are held by their profession to higher standards than the carbon industry spokespersons who are the scientists' opponents in the public "debate" about climate and related policy. Policy itself is a proper subject of debate, but science is not, and yet here we are, debating the facts themselves, not only the policies we should adopt to deal with the facts. Coal and petroleum corporations have countered the best science with scientifically unsupported, factually incorrect talking points, and for decades they have been very successful in that little game. And now, data thieves' motives are being assumed as pure as the driven snow and their "findings" taken at face value, parroted without analysis by the leading "news" sources, who have made no effort to ascertain who the data thieves are, what their motives were, and which petroleum and coal corporations paid them to do their heist (obvious motive, basic journalistic integrity requires trying to find the answer to such an obvious question), before treating the thieves with ultimate credulity, and in the process baselessly impugning the life's work of dozens of scientists directly, and thousands more implicitly.

My thesis is that such corporatist "success" (cheating, really, which is a very different thing from bona fide success, thus the "sarcastic quote marks") is directly the result of the professional constraint by which scientists are not permitted to just say a thing is "significant," but must quantify any significance we assert, at the risk of our careers. Scientists work by the most exacting rules of any profession in the world, while corporate-sponsored opponents play around, virtually no-holds-barred. Your comment about a "foregone conclusion" is particularly ironic in this context, because everybody knows that the most profitable spin is always the foregone conclusion for which any corporation will pay. If something similar is true of even one climate scientist whose work has helped prove The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect, the burden of proof has yet to be met. Even once. That is significant, statistically! Zero out of all climate scientists have been proven corrupt. Saying mean things about others and being frustrated when one's hypothesis is found to need further refinement is not scientific malpractice, it's just human, and that's the worst that the stolen University of East Anglia files show.

So before I refute, with scientific research results in the public domain, each of your five assertions of global uncertainty ("nobody knows" as opposed to you don't know) about specific relevant facts of global warming and related policy, I am just asking you to quantify how much uncertainty you assert that there is in the leading science. Alternatively, you could admit that your own uncertainty is specific to you and at least to some degree commensurate to your personal ignorance of the relevant facts, and therefore not necessarily indicative of what full-time professional climatologists do or don't know and with what certainty it is known, and can be known to diligent voters. I don't ask you to agree immediately that everything predicted by current coupled ocean-atmospheric global circulation models is a 100% accurate forecast, only to recognize that what you don't know is not neces

Meanwhile, the global temperature record has shown no rise in temperature since 1998.

Stop cherry-picking, 1998 was an abnormally warm year due to a number of factors.

'Global warming stopped in 1998'--Only if you flagrantly cherry pick

In no small part because a Coal fired plant can spew a tremendous amount of general gunk into the air for "free" if they paid the "true cost" of the pollution they generate, perhaps the equation would be different?

I agree, and that's without including the subsidies coal gets. However in a market where businesses have to carry their own weight and don't pass external costs to others geothermal, solar, wind and other power sources would be more competitive. According to this, "Cost Comparison for Nuclear vs. Coal", nuclear compares favorably with coal. The $/Mw-hr cost for coal is 29.1 vs nuclear's 30.0. But as Benjamin Sovacool says they are both Faustian bargains. He says "By far the cheapest, cleanest, and quickest strategy to meet America's growing demand for electricity is energy efficiency and demand-side management."

It's even more fuzzy... But my point remains..

As does my point, nuclear power is expensive and more isn't needed.

Falcon

1998 was the year of the strongest El Nino of the century. No one is saying (or no expert is saying--no telling what random activists will claim) that every year with be successively hotter than the last, any more than each successive day in December is colder than the last. Global warming is a global trend, and needs to be considered as a trend. Here's a good debunking of this particularly bad GW-skeptic argument.

(I realized that with the Winter analogy I just cued the 'it's a natural cycle and therefore humans have no effect' people. But scientists didn't just somehow overlook that possibility. Maybe they're not a bunch of absent-minded bumblers after all?)

1998 was the year of the strongest El Nino of the century. No one is saying (or no expert is saying--no telling what random activists will claim) that every year with be successively hotter than the last, any more than each successive day in December is colder than the last. Global warming is a global trend, and needs to be considered as a trend. Here's a good debunking of this particularly bad GW-skeptic argument.

(I realized that with the Winter analogy I just cued the 'it's a natural cycle and therefore humans have no effect' people. But scientists didn't just somehow overlook that possibility. Maybe they're not a bunch of absent-minded bumblers after all?)

It's been how long since we've built a new nuclear plant in the US? Coal is being attacked at every turn, solar and wind still being too expensive and too inefficient to meet current demands.

Remove subsides for coal and nuclear power and solar and wind are more competitive. If not for government businesses would not build nuclear power plants, the nuclear power industry is "Hooked on Subsidies". "Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies".

Falcon

Obama is not saving anything but his @$$ but that is another discussion.

I never said otherwise. Or are you attributing to me things I didn't say?

Make money generating electricity without government involvement burning coal, you bet, no problem.

Coal does get subsidies. Here's a speech by Rep Edward Markey, "My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'" detailing some of the subsidies, not just coal but other energy courses get. And "Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies" The freemarket CATO Institute has more: The USDA provides low interest loans for coal fired power plants. Coal also gets subsidies for coal-to-liquids, synthetic fuels. The EIA [pdf] reports that in 1999 energy got subsides of $4 Billion. Of that oil got $312 Million, coal $489 Million, and natural gas $1.2 Billion. And all forms of alternative energy got $1.1 Billion.

If the drill answer is not intellectually dishonest, go trim a lawn with your drill, maybe even try driving it down the road.

Now I believe you are trolling and will not be responding anymore.

Falcon

1/3rd as much power huh? in terms of joules or BTUs, yes, but where one power source is coming from the ground, the other is coming from power plants, and we don't have those power plants!

Also, the local grids (last mile) can't handle that extra load...

Also off-peak is NOT considered "night time" but varies by region and time of year. in the summer, off-peak is typically midnight to 5AM. but BEVs take 8-10 hours to charge, oops.
In the winter, off-peak is 9AM to 4PM! the car's not home, oops...

Also, once we move to fast charge, it will NOT be stady, stable off-peak loads. People will be charging anytime they get to 20% remaining, wherever they are.

Also, if you read the link's data, they are NOT storing H2, they're making it as part of a catalytic process. It's only kept in short term, low pressure tanks for 12-36 hours. These types of tanks are CHEAP, efficient, and have extremely little leakage (unlike tanks needed beneath gas stations or worse in cars, on which I completely agree). I will NEVER support driving H2 vehicles, EVER. I also can't support driving EVs in mass

EV batteries contain toxins, rare chemicals, and though the most recent technologies are highly recyclable, its a messy expensive process, not to mentoin LiIon pack failure and fires...

I also read the DOE result when it came out recently, and there are a few things you should note: 1) the study completely ignored local grid distribution, and was a statement of average available energy across the USA (total poewr production, including total off-peak capacity, compared to the energy required to power cars based on estimates of energy needs for drivers charging once per day). Well, we don;lt have that power in that way. if we did, California would not brown out... 2) the study did not take into account geographic density of automobiles, or transmission density of existing high power lines. Sure, we've got enough power off-peak in SC to charge 2 million cars at night, too bad we only have 1.4 million of them here... 3) we don'lt have the infrastructure and logistics in place to FUEL the plants that COULD produce that power, keeping in mind what percent of our current production is from FOSSIL FUEL ITSELF??? If we had to run the plants 24x7 at 100%, energy cots will rise, and we'll be out of coal in 20-30 years instead of 50. Oh wait, according to this we may only have 20 years of coal TODAY! http://www.grist.org/article/Are-we-approaching-peak-coal-Part-1/

Really, seriously, LOOK AT doty's data... read the reports. I'll concede (and so do they) that EV is the future, in 40-50 years, but we NEED a stop gap, and WindFuels can be just that, and get us off oil dependence without us having to trade out all out cars in 10 years when oil is $8 a gallon or more (that's a CONSERVATIVE prediction btw). Check out their site, read the real data, www.dotyenergy.com.

Actually, aircraft don't really have any advantages. Once you get over 100 mph, the air friction becomes the primary problem. What makes the airplane (sometimes) more efficient than the car is quantity. The average bus gets about 180 passenger miles per gallon, while most planes manage about 50

(from a cursory Google summary of various sources.)
http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/the-denialism-s
http://www.grist.org/article/coach-buses-provide-long-distance-low-emission-convenience
http://www.ridemcts.com/about_mcts/index.asp
http://askville.amazon.com/miles-gallon-jet-fuel-boeing-737-carrying-250-passengers-500-mph-30000-feet-cost-gal/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=10537954

If it's cost effective to make a home more efficient, then the owners should do it themselves.

I didn't say home owners shouldn't pay themselves. By the same token do you feel the same about you paying for all the costs of your use of fossil fuels and nuclear power? Or do you thing taxpayers should give coal, other fossil fuels, and nuclear power subsidies as well?

Falcon

You stay within _your_means_ not force me to stay within your means.

But are you paying for everything to support your life? Or are you using cheap subsidized power that passes external costs on to others?

Then why are "conservationist" attempting to take my freedoms away and impose their morality onto me?

As long as you pay for all the costs, and don't pass costs on to others, you can do whatever you want. But when my tax dollars support your life style then I will speak up.

Falcon

You're absolutely right, and that's why we need either nuclear power or a large power transmission grid to lower CO2 emissions.

Wrong. Two billion people in the world don't have electricity. Carbon-based sources produce the most, and cheapest energy. Carbon-based sources are responsible for the doubling of human life expectancy.

Wrong. As you say many of those who's life spans have increased have no access to electricity, carbon based or not. What did increase most people's lifespan was the Green Revolution which was based on mechanization and petroleum, fossil fuels. However petroleum is not going to last forever, we have anywhere between 15 and 40 years before peak oil. Meanwhile solar panels and micro loans allow poor people who live no where near an electrical grid to start businesses such as a net cafe.

That also discounts the effects of high carbon in the atmosphere, such as poison ivy which grows faster and is more toxic with higher carbon levels. Or disease carrying mosquitoes gaining higher altitudes and latitudes infecting more people if the world warms.

It's time to forget about environmental propaganda and start being concerned with the lives of individuals who need abundant, cheap energy to survive, and to thrive.

Fossil fuel is only cheap to those who produce and consume it because they get to pass on the external costs to others. If users had to pay the costs of pollution they'd be paying much more. They'd also be paying more if fossil fuels were not subsidized by the government. Yes, subsidized. The coal, natural gas, nuclear power, and petroleum industries receive billions of dollars in government subsidies. In the video My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'" on YouTube rep Markey details some of the government subsidies all these industries get. In another video "Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies".

Quite simply many people like you believe energy from fossil fuel is cheap, but if they had to pay the full price they'd know the truth, it is not. In markets where fossil fuels and nuclear power did not get subsidies and had to pay for the pollution created alternative and renewable energy sources could compeat.

Falcon

Err... lets not do either. Look at Brazil's sugar cane farms and see how many piss-poor agricultural workers are needed to make your ego-pleasing 'green' utopia. http://www.grist.org/article/slave-ethanol/ I want a nuclear reactor in my back yard (the French deserve accolades for doing this) and a car that I can charge at night (gimme a range of over 300 miles while I have the AC on full blast and not driving 'optimally'.)

A quick Internet search revealed that up to one-third of electricity use in the U.S. is for lighting. The current administration is also ordering the DoE to require many household appliances to be more energy efficient. The fine-tuning is happening. It will just take a while to get over the foot-dragging that characterized the Bush administration.

If the new technologies being talked about, worked on, etc. are not economically feasible because of the current price of other energy generation, too bad.

Yea, because alternative energy sources can't compeat with coal they shouldn't get subsidies. Only coal, and nuclear, should get subsidies. Here's Chevron teeming with the Sierra Club to end coal subsidies. And here's the freemarket CATO Institute reprinting a Forbes article saying Nuclear power is "Hooked On Subsidies".

The U.S. government is (and has been) in the hands of A) lunatics and B) people that couldn't run a business if their lives depended on it (the greatest majority of them, in any case).

Like the coal and nuclear industries, we even go to war over oil.

Falcon

You're so insistent on taking me out of context, I'm not sure it's even worth responding.

Even among climate skeptics (at least, the subset of skeptics with scientific credentials in relevant fields), only a handful will go so far as to claim that the warming is imaginary. They'll dispute things like how much is attributable to humankind, or whether it's worth trying to avert it. But only a very few try to dismiss the warming trend itself.

Who is this "we" who wanted to cover the polar ice caps in tar 30 or 40 years ago? Can you show me anything that actually claims this? Or are you just extrapolating from the old "scientists predicted global cooling" canard? The one that has been refuted every which way, but keeps rising like a zombie to feast on people's brains?

The fact is, at the height of the "global cooling scare", the number of peer reviewed papers predicting warming outnumbered the number that predicted cooling by about 6 to 1. more

Nor can anyone claim that we are "rushing" to implement this carbon cap. Had we passed this in the 1970's, we would have been "rushing". By 1988, we would have been "proactive". By 1998, we would have been "responsive". 2009? I think "slug-like" is a good description for our pace.

Remember, the cap doesn't even kick in until 2012, and the industries that are most affected will continue to receive a sizeable number of free carbon permits for at least a decade after that. Now we're in "hesitant, indecisive slug with arthritis" territory.

When I said "let the market find a way", that's not at all what I meant. Sure, if somebody burns down your house, it's suddenly "more economical" to live under a bridge than in the middle of a field. But it would have been more economical still to keep the house intact. The market can only exist as an embedded subsystem within the ecosystem. The ecosystem keeps us alive and healthy and breathing, and trashing it to save $1500/year* is the height of stupidity.

Frankly, I'm stunned that someone can simultaneously believe that "the market" is capable of uprooting thousands of coastal cities, and yet is so fragile that it will fall over the moment CO2 pollution gets a price. Adaptation has its limits. We can't have nine or ten billion happy, healthy people on a planet with a wrecked ecosystem, and make no mistake, fossil fuels are wrecking it.

You started this discussion by asking whether global warming would be "a disaster of epic proportions." Then you counter by saying that 7C worth of warming is fine, because we can all move to Antarctica. It seems that, in your mind, no disaster is truly epic so long as there are survivors, and that it wouldn't be worthwhile to you to take a $1500 pay cut to avert any disaster that leaves a handful of humans behind. Can you explain what's going on in your head here? Because it bears no resemblance to the sort of risk evaluation human beings do every day.

* A made-up number from Heritage, an right-wing propaganda mill built from the ground up to oppose any and all regulation. The CBO weighs in at about 1/10th that number, and their mission is actually a non-partisan one. They have a good track record of releasing reports that tell us things we don't want to hear.

Fine. I'll start. I'm reading the page six of the report, where this oh-so-vital, must-not-be-suppressed, dare-we-proceed-before-we've-fully-worked-out-the-implications-of-this study. He's leading off with the claim that we've had an eleven year cooling trend. This is such a dishonest, basic fallacy, that there hardly seems to be any point in going further.
    I mean, for a regular Internet nobody, it would be worth correcting. But coming from this guy, who seems to think that the entire national debate should stop and pay attention to his report, it's a slap in the face to anyone who wants an honest discussion.

Next he claims that the "consensus" on hurricanes has changed, and that now scientists are predicting no change in hurricane behavior due to warming. He's wrong to say that any consensus exists on hurricanes, and he's doubly wrong because the current expectation is that hurricanes will increase in intensity, migrate further north (to areas that are generally unprepared for them) and remain about the same in frequency.

I'd continue, but the guys over at RealClimate have already written the substantiative critique you're demanding.

FYI, very few real scientists have accepted some "ordinary view" or "consensus".

Have you ever seen an atom? How many scientists have actually reproduced the Rutherford scattering experiment? Well, most scientists have not, so everybody is following the consensus that atoms are built in a certain way. Damn, most people rely on the consensus about the world being round instead of flat—there is not that much space in the ISS.

I work with methanol, and I never ran spectroscopy to ascertain that methanol actually is CH3OH. I never checked out that the gas it reacts into actually is CO2. I never checked out the circuits in the mass-flow controllers to check they are measuring the right flow, and even then I would have to check that Maxwell's laws are actually true.

Everybody, and this goes for scientists too, make a huge number of reasonable assumptions. That's the consensus, and it is a consensus because it works.

Those individuals who discovered valuable and meaningful knowledge were generally frowned upon for challenging the "ordinary view".

Strawman. Who would those be? Einstein changed the view more than any other, and the only reason certain people frowned upon him was unrelated to his science—he was a Jew. Galileo was surely frowned upon, but certainly not by scientists; and what about the discovery of DNA, the proof of Poincaré's conjecture, nuclear physics—were all those scientists doing ground-breaking work being "frowned upon"?

In fact, making bold new claims is all there is to a scientist's life. You need to publish new stuff, which needs to pass anonymous peer review. It's not just a formality, and when I was called for some reviews I have actually sunk a couple of papers which made fundamental mistakes. The problem you have is, you cannot just make absurd claims without any proof on the only basis of faith or personal political bias.

There is over fucking whelming evidence that global warming and global cooling has happened repeatedly, [...]

... and that is misleading, bordering on falsehood. It has never happened this fast in nature, which leaves human activity as the most likely cause. If you make this kind of extraordinary claims you should follow it up with extraordinary proof.

The earth is warming. Evolution is at work.

Oh my god, gas-guzzling climate-change deniers have interbred with the evolution-denying fundies! Let's hope they do not meet the flat-earthers too...

I didn't seriously engage him, because he's clearly a bloody loon. I base this conclusion solely on his bizarre use of CAPITALIZED WORDS. The fact that he can't keep a coherent train of thought, uses several arguments that need to be banned from any serious discussion, and thinks he knows more about the carbon cycle than the experts in the field... all that is just icing on the cake.

I'm sorry, but none of the things I pointed out require corroboration. Do you consider all natural substances completely harmless, or not see the difference between a climate model and a weather model? Do you stand against even the global warming skeptics, and claim that warming isn't even happening (as "alleged global warming" implies)?

If so, it's hardly worth correcting you. The evidence is readily available, and it's not worth my time to rehash the arguments poorly. Comments as bad as the OPs don't deserve refutation; they deserve mockery.

IFR's. There are enough fissionable materials already mined for 100 years of energy production, the waste from IFRs are only a concern for 500 years vs 10,000 for once-thru reactors

I am not opposed to reprocessing waste that has already been created by the nuclear industry. But I am opposed to government subsidies. If businesses want to build and operate plants then they should have to get Wall Street bankers finance them, get private insurance, and deal with the resulting waste themselves. Of course they won't, without government subsidies nuclear power is not profitable.

And to be sure, it's not just the nuclear industry I don't want subsidized. I don't want coal, petroleum, or other sources of energy subsidized either. Farm subsidies, as are others, are bad as well.

Falcon

The only people who think wind turbines are a good idea are naive Greenists and wind turbine companies.

And those who think they are a bad idea are investors in and or workers for other power companies if not fools. I am neither one of your "Greenists" nor work for a wind turbine company. I'm not an investor in one either. What I am is someone who thinks there is no "1 answer" to the question of where energy will come from. We need a mix of different energy sources. And preferably none will get government subsidies, like coal and nuclear power.

Falcon

If it was cost-effective, then it wouldn't require massive government subsidies.

Coal, on the other hand, _is_ proven and cost-effective, which is why there are so many coal-fired power stations.

And coal gets subsidies as well. Heck here's a video about "Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies". Here are some of the subsidies coal gets: "TCS: Coal has long history of government subsidies. And here's Rep Edward Markey talking about subsidies different energy sources get.

Fact is is coal gets large subsidies as well. And they are dirty.

Falcon

There may be enough wind in the world to supply our need 40 times over, but is the cost of tapping the energy source competitive with the cost of coal, gas, or nuclear power?

All of this get subsidies, as well as pass costs to others. Coal slurry spills happen all too frequently. Mountain top removal contaminates a lot of land. As does uranium mining. Without government subsidies nuclear power isn't even profitable. Though natural gas emits a lot less CO2 than coal when burned it releases a lot more methane, which is more than 20 tymes as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2. Then it needs pipelines to deliver it.

We know that there are all sorts of natural energy sources around us, but its the financial cost that keeps us from recovering it.

More like it's politics. If financial costs were that important there would be no nuclear power. As I said before even coal gets subsidies. "Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies". In "My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!' Rep Edward Markey goes over some of the subsidies different energy sources get.

Please stop peddling that nonsense. The decline since 1998 was a seasonal variation. You have to recognize that there is a fundamental difference between climate and temperature, and that climate changes over decades and centuries, while temperature changes from day to day.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/2005_warmest.html
http://www.grist.org/article/global-warming-stopped-in-1998

I know you're kidding, but holy crap are hybrids ever fools' gold. The nerd in me thinks that regenerative braking is too cool of a technology to just ignore, but we need to figure out a do this without causing more NET carbon output, and without the terrible battery-chemical-mining pollution to boot.

When will you people stop touting this ridiculous myth? It's been thoroughly debunked.

I know you have an ax to grind with nuclear power for some reason - but calling it "dirty" compared to it's alternatives is just silly and you should know better.

BS! Nuclear power is dirtier than either solar or wind. With both there is no waste to be stored. And there is no processing or reprocessing of fuel. The sun or wind is the fuel.

Does it create some potentially hazardous materials that have to be dealt with? Yes
Are they in reality THAT HARD to deal with? No

Yes it is hard to deal with. Even the French, who have gone further with reprocessing nuclear waste has problems doing it. "France is aggravating both problems: spent fuel and separated plutonium stocks." "Reprocessing [pdf] and MOX fuel use are uneconomical and will remain so for the foreseeable future;"

"Nuclear France - The Myths Uncovered"
"France gets nearly 80% of its electricity from its 58 reactors. However, such a heavy reliance on nuclear power brings with it many major, unsolved problems, most especially that of radioactive waste. Despite assertions to the contrary, the French nuclear story is far from a gleaming example of nuclear success. The example, set by the French nuclear infrastructure - and best exemplified by its giant nuclear corporation, Areva, is not to be emulated."

Are they really that bad for the environment? Not really

If you believe that you haven't seen the effects of uranium mining. "The Effects of Uranium Mining are Disastrous."

biggest problem with dealing with nuclear byproducts is NIMBY.

The biggest problem with wind is NIMBYism. The government's National Renewable Energy Lab has produced an atlas of wind potential through the US. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to power the continental US. Which I might add that Texas Oil Man T Boone Pickens is pushing with his Pickens Plan. But that's not all. The Pacific Northwest has a lot as well. If you draw a line south from there to Southern CA then turn east to Texas, you'll see more potential. Now go east, the Appalachians is a good location for wind as well. The mountains up the east coast have good locations. Offshore from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod there's another line of good cites.

Oh, I think it's rather telling that so called environmentalist activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr is one of those NIMBYs fighting wind farms in Cape Cod, from that first link on Nimbys.

Originated in the US? It is well documented that the first few known cases were from Vera Cruz Mexico. http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-25-swine-flu-smithfield/ http://www.mydd.com/story/ http://www.google.com/search?q=swine+flu+veracruz&afid=5052&s=&search=. Although the pig farm it may have originated on is owned by a U.S. company and is reported to have deplorable conditions.

This isn't genetically engineered, it's a side effect of bad farming practices.

In the same way we've managed to infect our pigs with MRSA http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15kristof.html I think we've managed to kick up yet another variant..

Signs are pointing to a Smithfields Farms hog-farm in Veracruz where the outbreak originated. http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-25-swine-flu-smithfield/

I'm not arguing for us to go back to sticks and weeds for our food supply, but if you set up a farming environment where the only way to guarantee survival of your animals is continual, therapeutic antibiotics, you're doing it wrong.

OK, your still not seeing it, I will give it another try and I will attempt to be a little more civil this time. But before we get started, I want you to read this article to get an idea of the issues I'm talking about.

It's not that disagree with you about the reasoning behind Kyoto, or the effectiveness of selling carbon credits. But neither of those things have anything to do with what is presently happening. That you fear the political implications does not suddenly transform good science into hype and FUD. It would be better for me if I contented myself with the idea that AGW is some "vast left-wing conspiracy". I have too much to worry about in my own life. But that's not how it works.

The issue is that the science is directly connected to the politics and when you see an attack on the politics, you are taking it as an attack on the science. I originally made no reference to the science behind global warming and even stated it was independent of my argument when I made mention to the "even of it is happening, the so called solutions aren't addressing the claimed problem and all of them have been hijacked for political manipulation and gain" Now those aren't my exact words, but it's close enough. You took that as an attack on the science without any consideration of what was actually said or the context in which it was said.

And it isn't just you, when a journalist quote or represent conclusions or statements of the science and people point out their flaws or unsupported statements, it is taken as an attack on the science. Gwynne Dyer said in an Op-ed back in 2005 over an interpreted a statement from James Lovelock concerning global warming "it would cause a massive human die-off" Lovelock's state actually was "Unless we stop now, we will really doom the lives of our descendants. If we just go on for another 40 or 50 years faffing around, they'll have no chance at all, it'll be back to the Stone Age. There'll be people around still. But civilization will go." So does the science affirm that there _will_be_ a massive human die off or then end of civilization? No, it doesn't those are opinions and interpretations of possibilities. The science doesn't exactly rule it out but it doesn't rule out aliens coming in with some laser refrigerator large enough to cool the planet with technology unimaginable to us and thereby saving the world either. Yet when criticizing those comments, We are labeled as "deniers" and attacked by people like you for being stupid and not knowing science as if the science actually does say civilization will be destroyed in 50 for certain. But some how, we should be prosecuted like Nazi war criminals as David Roberts suggests with this comment. "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg."

Now, knowing that in today's environment the politics and the science can't be separated, you end up with scientific conclusions or statements made for the purpose of furthering the politics. Germany's Environment Minister, Jürgen Trittin claimed that Katrina was caused by Global Warming stating the the US had to sign Kyoto and refused to back down on the statement even after the science and scientists said it had nothing specific to do with global warming.

But wait, it gets better because now we only have two months to save the world. Does the Science actually say that if we don't act within two month, we will definitely see the "killing or making refugees of billions of people in Asia, Africa and America"? Does the science even speak of ""The first offers must come from the rich countries lik

Yes, yes, one study was debunked. The infamous hockey stick graph was based on incorrect data. However, over ten other non-debunked studies show very similar data, so it's time to grow up and stop complaining about one single tree in a forest.

See these sites for helpful links to other studies, and accurate graphs showing that there is still an obvious issue we need to be concerned about:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/14/01828/236

Citation needed. this one says 4% is used. I don't really believe it, as it appears to be a popular science article, but it's better than what you cited (which was nothing).
this one says 3-7%.
Your claim does not pass the smell test.

http://gristmill.grist.org/images/user/8/vostok.jpg

This scientist is wrong.

Nuclear power costs 25-30 cents per KWh, at least double the average electricity costs in the US.

Coal's consequences, including climate change, radioactive pollution, devastating waste pool bursts, damaging conditions inside the mines, ecological catastrophe from mining like mountaintop removal, all make it much more expensive than solar. If it didn't, it would indeed compete well. Instead, it's subsidized by hiding its true costs so it can compete. Especially in the Bush era, when laws reducing its pollution were rolled back simply at the request of the coal industry. Hence the large number of coal plants.

And no, I didn't gloss the "problems" of night and clouds in the Southwest. There's more than enough sunshine when the sun is shining (almost half of all the time) for it to be quite effective. You're just ignoring that, and raising quibbles instead. And ruling out solar power in your neighborhood based on two months during winter. So that's all the time I'm willing to spend in this thread.

Why not repeal the subsidies to oil companies? Some direct, some indirect. That would level the playing field, stop skewing the market and then we would see where alts to oil stand in terms of economics. Then a decision on what to do about alt energy and transport will be easier to make.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/3/6/122829/2907

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/vehicle_impacts/cars_pickups_and_suvs/subsidizing-big-oil.html

http://cleantech.com/news/node/554

http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0401-12.htm

http://www.progress.org/2003/energy22.htm

"(American Geophysical Union) notes that human-made CO2 are dwarfed the estimated global release of CO2 from volcanoes by at least 150 times."

http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/climate_effects.html

This page has a good quote:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/17/223957/72

"I have never heard a skeptic making that ridiculous claim. It seems you are putting up a straw man in order to be able to kick it. The skeptics are not that dumb."

I guess you just proved them wrong, eh?

Research isn't hard, it takes all of two seconds to type "CO2 volcanoes" into google: http://www.google.es/search?q=co2+volcanoes

Try it sometime.

I'm not surprised that climatological literature is a chorus of global warming anthropogenesis. Climatologists who offer alternative theories get fired (such as Mark Albright) , retitled (such as Patrick Michaels and George Taylor), or threatened with one or both.

This whole issue has become so politicized that any dissenter is viciously attacked, personally and professionally.

You might do well to watch "Doomsday Called Off" to see other scientists' research in beleaguered opposition.

She doesn't toe the party line firmly. She angers many members of the Republican party. She called them out for corruption, and is especially unpopular with GOP members like Stevens (series of tubes) in Alask

Not at all.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/29/83614/5859

In summary, she toes the party line.

C'mon, just say it. All of you climatologists need to Say "We have no fucking clue" in chorus and three part harmony.

Global warming is well understood. That scientists have uncertainty about some of the details is common with well-understood science. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/26/232046/03

Global warming, global cooling, impending ice ages, heating sun, cooling sun. I'm tired of it.

There was never any scientific consensus on global cooling back on the '70s. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/23/18534/222 The sun affects the temperature on earth, it is not causing today's global warming. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/28/090/30666 This is a complex issue. So is rocket science and we still have great photographs of the moons of Jupiter. Many of us are in information overload these days, that doesn't mean that global warming isn't real.

Would someone please point out for me what is insightful about the parent post?

C'mon, just say it. All of you climatologists need to Say "We have no fucking clue" in chorus and three part harmony.

Global warming is well understood. That scientists have uncertainty about some of the details is common with well-understood science. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/26/232046/03

Global warming, global cooling, impending ice ages, heating sun, cooling sun. I'm tired of it.

There was never any scientific consensus on global cooling back on the '70s. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/23/18534/222 The sun affects the temperature on earth, it is not causing today's global warming. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/28/090/30666 This is a complex issue. So is rocket science and we still have great photographs of the moons of Jupiter. Many of us are in information overload these days, that doesn't mean that global warming isn't real.

Would someone please point out for me what is insightful about the parent post?

C'mon, just say it. All of you climatologists need to Say "We have no fucking clue" in chorus and three part harmony.

Global warming is well understood. That scientists have uncertainty about some of the details is common with well-understood science. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/26/232046/03

Global warming, global cooling, impending ice ages, heating sun, cooling sun. I'm tired of it.

There was never any scientific consensus on global cooling back on the '70s. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/23/18534/222 The sun affects the temperature on earth, it is not causing today's global warming. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/28/090/30666 This is a complex issue. So is rocket science and we still have great photographs of the moons of Jupiter. Many of us are in information overload these days, that doesn't mean that global warming isn't real.

Would someone please point out for me what is insightful about the parent post?