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New America

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/New_America_Foundation#Board_of_Directors
Slightly Outdated list of BoD:

Eric Schmidt: Chair
        Liaquat Ahamed
        David G. Bradley
        Boykin Curry
        James Fallows
        Francis Fukuyama
        Atul A. Gawande
        William W. Gerrity
        Ted Halstead
        Rita E. Hauser
        Zachary Karabell
        Jeffrey Leonard
        Kati Marton
        Walter Russell Mead
        Lenny Mendonca
        Steven Rattner
        Eric Schmidt
        Bernard L. Schwartz
        Anne-Marie Slaughter
        Jonathan Soros
        Daniel Yergin
        Fareed Zakaria

So after Google gets spanked for creating a censorious search engine for the Chinese government, they will be damned if they let Microsoft reap any rewards for working with the Chinese either.

Another way to make an informed choice by reading information on the topic

Yeah, reading information is always good. Now, let's see how unbiased is this "Biotechnology Innovation Organization"....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.sourcewatch.org/in...

Yep, an entirely unbiased source of "information", this one.

So for "New Coal Stations" you cite an article that talks about (as the first example) a coal plant that's been in planning and construction for over a decade, and as of now (nearly 8 months after that article was written) still isn't commissioned and won't be for at least another year. Meanwhile, that project is to build a 4th unit to replace the three that were decommissioned years ago. Three out, one new. That's a net decrease innit?

The other examples are even dumber; A plant that was completed in 2013, one that was completed in 2015, and a plant that's been in construction since 2008 with no completion date yet.

I suppose the time travelers didn't succeed in telling the planners not to bother.

The article closes with a few paragraphs about a plant commissioned in 1996 that is nearing end of contract and presents it as an opportunity to replace it with something other than coal power.

So instead of "Germany is building new coal plants" your article just demonstrates that Germany has built coal plants - past tense - and that even some of those may never see operation. Forgive me if I'm not as convinced as you are on this point.
=Smidge=

Wait, do you mean this guy ?

https://www.sourcewatch.org/in...

Patrick Moore is an ecologist who denies that humans cause climate change

So he's a nutcase.

Seriously, look for sources with more credibility and for more than just confirmation of your bias: https://www.sourcewatch.org/in... "The Mercatus Center was founded and is funded by the Koch Family Foundations." and "In addition to being funded by the Charles G. Koch Foundation, the Mercatus Center also has ties to several prominent right-wing groups, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB)."

https://www.sourcewatch.org/in... "The Mercatus Center was founded and is funded by the Koch Family Foundations." and "In addition to being funded by the Charles G. Koch Foundation, the Mercatus Center also has ties to several prominent right-wing groups, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB)."

I get it. You are a retard who refuses to listen to any peer reviewed studies but think that the "facts" you pull out of your ass are worthwhile to spread.
Flag as Inappropriate

You just cited a leftwing wiki https://www.sourcewatch.org/in... while complaining someone else pulls facts out their ass ?
What's more somehow you don't even get that as problematical ?

Then you cite the people in charge of a project to show that it will work as opposed to say outside sources ? Despite the fact they have already been caught lying ?

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/1...

Otay buckwheat. Maybe you can be a diversity hire in the future.

Hmm. So where on the political spectrum are the people who point out that raising the cost of power in California will hurt the states economy ?

On the intentionally ignorant/conservative side. As there are loads of studies out there indicated that even with with increased direct energy cost, the economics of nuclear/renewable are a net win due to the reduction of externalities of coal/NG. https://www.sourcewatch.org/in...

The people who point out that the highspeed rail initiative will never pay for itself are arguing from emotion ?

Again on the blithering retarded/conservative side. As again numerious studies have proven your false "fact" wrong.

https://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/ne...

I get it. You are a retard who refuses to listen to any peer reviewed studies but think that the "facts" you pull out of your ass are worthwhile to spread.

Remember Roundup Ready seeds? Engineered to produce crops that would survive direct application of the herbicide. Farmers were coerced to use Roundup and also buy seed instead of saving or banking seed from a previous season. Adjacent fields were affected by Roundup and pollen that drifted on the wind. https://www.sourcewatch.org/in... .

executive director of WindAction Group, a nonprofit which studies landowner rights and the impact of the wind energy industr

See https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Industrial_Wind_Action_Group.

It's a front for Jonathan S. Linowes, a self-proclaimed Tea Party activist and climate change denier,
and is supported by the coalmine barons of the Koch family.

Who is Windaction Group was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the story. Surprise surprise they're a Kochbros anti-science group that exists to advance fossil fuels.

The right has a TRUELY vast and well funded RW fake news distribution network
Examples
Accuracy in Media
Avinu News Avinu News.com
Citizens United
The Conservative Voice conservativevoice.com
Conservatives Forum conservativesforum.com
Constitution Society constitution.org
Cybercast News Service
Drudge Report
Ether Zone etherzone.com
The Federal Observer federalobserver.com
The Third Report ThirdReport.com
Federal Review federalreview.com
Fox News: Bill O'Reilly (O'Reilly Factor); Shepard Smith; Greta Van Susteren; Brit Hume; Rita Crosby
Free Republic
FrontPageMag.com
GOPUSA
Hannity & Colmes (Fox News)
Human Events Online humaneventsonline.com
LewRockwell.com lewrockwell.com
Media Research Center: "Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996."
MensNewsDaily.com
Move America Forward
Mullings mullings.com
National Review Online
NewsMax NewsMax.com
The Northern Right northernright.com
The Patriotist patriotist.com
The Third Report ThirdReport.com
Restoring America restoringamerica.org
RightMarch.com / rightmarch.com
Right Wing News rightwingnews.com
Rush Limbaugh
Sierra Times sierratimes.com
Talon News (see article)
Town Hall
Wall Street Journal Opinion opinionjournal.com
Washington Times
Weekly Standard
WorldNetDaily
and NONE of the MSM is truely left wing, or why would Republican Joe Scarbrough have a show on MSNBC?

EiA, who has never had a correct prediction, agrees with you. BTW, they have ALWAYS predicted that Fossil fuels will continue to grow except recently.
However, experts in the coal field of montana
Other Americans continue to point to coal rapid closing.
Here is the massive navajo plant that will most certainly close down. Note that this is America's single dirtiest plant going.
Nice article about the continuing closings of coal plants (assuming that Trump is not allowed to subsidize coal anymore than we currently do)

Finally, here is a partial list of coming US coal plants closures.

Sorry, but in sum it appears to be true, ... at least under the immigration policies of the recent past.

Nope. You're just reciting the same flawed arguments from the same flawed sources, that's either ignorance, or apparently you didn't think anybody noticed that you were building on a broken base. But they did back when it was first published.

Sorry, but the Moonies are not helping you here, they get lost in their own agenda and tend to produce lies.

Besides, recent past?

I'm sorry, but your criteria is again:

Most immigrants end up costing the government more a lot more in services than they ever pay in taxes.

Sorry, but you have to consider all of the living immigrants, and I believe it's somewhere around 20 million people in total that you'd have to cover, and that's not even raising the question of what a "Lot more" happens to be.

Lots of coal plants reached 60+ years old, will wind farms last that long?

Just to be clear, the Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a 501(c)(03) public charity which received $307,000 from Exxon Mobile or its foundation between 2003 and 2007. IER also received $175,000 from Koch Industries according to a Greenpeace report.

Source: https://www.sourcewatch.org/in...

No, it's not a non-issue, but it's a different kind of issue than most people realize. Remember the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution and the propaganda they pumped out last decade about how Linux and Open Source in general was a parasite on the tech industry, was enabling all sorts of illegal activities (such as terrorism - of course!), and attempted to publish a book claiming Linus Torvald's didn't really invent the Linux kernel? Microsoft was (and still is!) a major funder of this propaganda mill.

Think about the possible implications of a story like this: Could it generate calls to change the way the Linux kernel and programs that run under it are written? And now MS have their hooks sunk deeply into the kernel dev team. The SCO gambit (also funded by MS) failed, spectacularly. And the Astroturf de Tocqueville gambit failed, though not quite as spectacularly. And now we have MS "cooperating" in the development of Linux. And up pops a story that may justify an overhaul of Linux to make it controllable by MS Windows. Well, surprise, surprise! This "change of attitude" by MS is looking more and more like a subtler strategy to seize control of Linux rather than outright destroy it.

From the same old people
National Bureau of Economic Research also known as theCorporate Whores who sold pricing studies to keep Big Tobacco in business
You really need better sources for economic SPECULATION!!
These guys are good enough as record keepers for recessions, but not much else.

Well, thank GOD that coal is such a better alternative that doesn't cause cancer or other health defects in the slightest, otherwise we'd have to go without electricity according to your logic.....

Worth noting that according to Source Watch, the Washington Policy Center receives funding from the Koch brothers and pushes agenda items from American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the state.. Take that as you will per your political leanings.

Germany land area: 348,900.0 sq. miles
United States land area: 9,147,420.0 sq. miles
Over 26 times the land area. In other words, it's easier to get the power
from the source to the people in Germany, than it would be in the USA.
It's the same argument, people complain about, when talking about internet
speed. "Japan & South Korea" have x times the speed and x cheaper price
of internet, than in the USA.
Japan land area: 364,560.0 sq miles
South Korea land area: 97,480.0
It's easier in smaller countries to build out, than the USA.
Ok, so the liberal logic would say, move all the people to large urban population
centers, and make living out in the middle of the nation illegal. Yeah, that would be
the way their liberal minds would work. After all, it's "for your own good".
You want renewable power, fine, but leave coal, gas & nuclear alone.

Well thanks for showing us how your mind works. You spout a random statistic of no particular value, the size of the US versus Germany, but don't consider the population distribution, the same as with your claim about the Internet. Despite numerous and extensive discourses on both flawed argumentations of yours having been available for quite some time. The one they have in common is that you're trying ignore the distribution of population, which is not even across any of the nations, and in fact, you can see how there is plenty of concentrated population in the US with any number of maps. The next part is that you're ignoring the actual state of affairs, as the complaints about power production and internet provision actually don't just depend on the averages, but on particulars, such as North Carolina's complaints about pollution to North Carolina's actions to inhibit municipal internet.

Then, of course, you haven't actually considered that efforts to create a better interconnected grid in the US are ongoing, that alternative power production can work better with distribution.

But instead of looking at those details, let's just let you try to boil things down with an irrelevant argument that isn't particularly important. No wait, let's not.

Of course, that you ended it all with a false conclusion of what you think your strawman concept of a liberal mind would say, just puts another nail in the coffin of your argument. Why do you bother? Is it simply because you don't realize how poor a case you're making, or is that the point? Heck, maybe you're around to make conservatives look bad, that'd be offensive, but at least I wouldn't feel quite as bad.

But I mean really, Mitt Romney gabbled his nonsense over the size of the US Navy and Air Force, what else can I expect?

Google will be intertwined with government in no time; they practically are now.

Google is Not What It Seems

Sourcewatch: International Crisis Group

When The Bad Guys Came To Town

derp derp derp BUT ITS NOT THE GOVERNMENT CENSORING YOU IT'S A PRIVATE COMPANY DERRRP

Here's a good article on the subject:

The most likely candidate for a coal-to-gas conversion are 50-plus year old units, less than 300 megawatts in capacity and generally early generation sub-critical utility boilers - the least efficient, most-costly to operate and with the lowest overall capacity factor in the coal fleet. The majority of these older, inefficient units are located in the eastern United States. Typically, these plants have limited or no air quality control systems already in place, and the cost of adding an AQCS to comply with regulations is prohibitively high. Most plants west of the Mississippi River built in the 1960s or later aren't as attractive as candidates for fuel switching since they are often larger, more efficient and tend to burn Powder River Basin coal, a cost effective fuel with a more favorable emission profile than the bituminous burned by many eastern plants.

And here's a list of conversion projects being tracked by environmentalists.

how many humans are actually working there?

Apparently, 6,673 people. Add another 1,110 at coal-fired plants, as that's sort of related to the issue.

It's telling that I had to get these numbers from sourcewatch (a progressive / left-leaning group), because I first looked at industry websites and couldn't find employment numbers. Given these numbers, I can see why they don't exactly trumpet them. Coal is not actually a huge employer these days. It's more likely that they have a disproportional lobbying influence, especially since their industry is more or less under attack by environmental concerns, and has historically been an economic driver for Wyoming.

I don't know how much of the Russian hacking scandal is valid and how much is PR (propaganda).

But PR does not care about truth or falsehood, it will use anything. The last large analysis of a campaign that I know of is
from the Iraq war. You can find the report here: http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...
Note the extent of the organisation, how many people and resources are involved. It's yuge. And the variation in types of stories. There can be speculation, fear mongering(which does not require lying, you just worry about possibilities), claims, plain false stories. It's a great analysis.
These people haven't been sitting on their asses since then.
In this case there's a campaign to ruin the relation with Russia and make it very hard for Trump to mend that(only russian stooges want better relations with russia).And to take away the focus from the content of the leaks, which were uh about what again?
With fake news there is little or no build up. It's just rumors made up of thin air. That's amateurish and low budget.
Real campaigns work on many fronts at once. Once you have official sources and favored journalists channelling anonymous sources you're instantly playing on another level.
In this case the trumped up charges are that the Russians made sure Trump was elected by hacking Podesta and DNC computers and passing them to wikileaks.
With a good campaign every reasonable person should start to doubt and think there must be really something to it.

Wikileaks say (reluctantly) that they got their data from the inside, not through hacking and not through the russians.

Suppose there's a hack. The reaction to is a choice. You can choose to minimize it. You can choose to respond in kind. Usually secret agencies would fight this out quietly. You can choose to take the opportunity to escalate the tensions as much as possible. That is clear intent.

Basically texas gets a 2.3 c per kwh subsidy for 10 years for new private wind construction. It incents selling "free" wind power during periods of excess supply.

Reliant charges 15.5 c per kwh in Houston (they still have nuclear in the mix). Many other power companies charge between 8c/kwh and 12c/kwh with contracts ranging from 8 to 36 months.

When you consider the country has spent well over 2 trillion dollars to protect oil interests, every dime spent on wind power is money well spent. So far only construction workers have died buildilng wind. We haven't had to spend 4,000 lives (and another 2.9 MILLION young men and women permanently disabled to some degree) to protect wind power like we did to protect oil wells.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nu...

Likewise, as we go to electric vehicles, ever penny put into wind power (and conservation and solar power) directly takes money out of terrorist pockets by suppressing demand and hence the price for oil. We only need to suppress demand by about 2% to collapse prices.

In absolute numbers wind subsidies are still very small because "big wind" is tiny compared to "big oil". If you do a casual google, you'll find a lot of anti-wind propaganda. As you dig into the various "institutes" you'll find they are funded by big oil.

For example.. the "Institute for Energy Reseach" is a front for Koch and Enron.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...

Wind is GOOD for us.
Solar is GOOD for us.

They both make oil and electricity prices lower.
Most wind subsidies are TINY (under half a billion).
Most Oil and Coal subsidies are embedded in the system so deep they seem like government functions but we wouldn't NEED to invade iraq or supersite pollution sites if we had more wind and solar.

(As wind and especially Solar get bigger, we'll probably start seeing some new kinds of pollution associated with them however. No free lunch).

Here's some names and dates, which appear to be specific to energy companies:
link 1
link 2
link 3

Be f***ed now, or be f***ed later. If you factor in the external cost coal is pretty expensive. But, those cost will have to be paid by someone else. That's good business. http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...

Am I the only one who knows how to do a google search around here?
The American Physicians and Surgeons is a fraudulent, antiabortion front group "Greenwashing" a rightwing propaganda operation

This is hardly the first time this fraud has been attempted.

LETS GET THE WORD OUT!

Coal already gets massive subsidies http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind... http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... http://www.climatechangenews.c... and that doesn't count the huge cost to health care and lost worker productivity: http://www.fastcompany.com/172...

DOE did a study on savings to date through the Clean Air Act (passed through Congress without a single vote against it!) which found the Act had a *net benefit* to the economy for that reason. Nuclear sucks too, but Coal kills more than Nuclear https://www.newscientist.com/a... If someone can get alternative up to coal and nuclear then all the more power to them! :-)

Environmental policy used to be bipartisan https://www.washingtonpost.com... Fuck partisanship!

That 14,000 abandoned wind turbine claim is bullshit: They are old ones which were decommissioned and replaced, so it's like claiming the automobile is a failed idea because there are so many cars have gone to the wreckers. Just more Nimby bullshit. http://skeptics.stackexchange.... http://www.wind-works.org/cms/...

and says that nuclear energy is, "dirty, dangerous and expensive, and should be precluded on all of those counts", when the actual data shows just the opposite.

If you take into account all of the government subsidies, including covering the industry's uninsurable risks, I'm not sure whether at least the cost argument holds.

You forgot that it's the only form of energy that's currently regulated to include all of externalities in its cost.

No, since for nuclear a bunch of externalities are covered by the government at a rate that is below what the market is willing to offer (since the market doesn't want to cover them at all).

For a fair comparison, you'd need to require coal to catch everything (CO2, sulphur, other toxins, more radioactive isotopes than a nuclear plant, etc)
  from all chimneys, transport and store that securely for hundreds of years.

I doubt Jill Stein is very much in favour of coal fired plants.

And despite that, nuclear is still competitive and causes many orders of magnitude less deaths.

Competitive with massive government subsidies, yes. Of course, coal also gets lots of subsidies.

and says that nuclear energy is, "dirty, dangerous and expensive, and should be precluded on all of those counts", when the actual data shows just the opposite.

If you take into account all of the government subsidies, including covering the industry's uninsurable risks, I'm not sure whether at least the cost argument holds.

You forgot that it's the only form of energy that's currently regulated to include all of externalities in its cost.

No, since for nuclear a bunch of externalities are covered by the government at a rate that is below what the market is willing to offer (since the market doesn't want to cover them at all).

For a fair comparison, you'd need to require coal to catch everything (CO2, sulphur, other toxins, more radioactive isotopes than a nuclear plant, etc)
  from all chimneys, transport and store that securely for hundreds of years.

I doubt Jill Stein is very much in favour of coal fired plants.

And despite that, nuclear is still competitive and causes many orders of magnitude less deaths.

Competitive with massive government subsidies, yes. Of course, coal also gets lots of subsidies.

Or will we have to rely on the free market who will chose the most economical way to generate electricity: coal plants?

You really should get caught up on new plant construction. According to Sourcewatch, only four coal-fired plants are even in the planning phase right now representing less than 2GW of capacity. The same page shows more than three dozen canceled plants over the last 13 years or so. Compare this to hundreds of plants either retired or converted (or planned for retirement or conversion). Only 34 plants were built from 2000-2009. The main reason for this is that coal is not the most economical, having years ago ceded that position to natural gas.

Meanwhile, a recently released report by Bloomberg has the cost of solar and wind dipping below coal and gas by about 2027, and forecasts that 60% of 2040's installed capacity will be zero-emission of some sort.

The rich have always had access to newer technology. They had cars while poor people had horses or had to walk. They had planes while poor people had to take trains or just not travel. Even in cars, they had airbags, fuel injection, rear-view cameras, and other things we now consider essentially standard long before the riff-raff. With GM rolling out the Bolt and most other car manufacturers working on their own electric cars, the costs will come down dramatically, enough that middle class and even poor people will eventually get relatively easy access to them.

Or will we have to rely on the free market who will chose the most economical way to generate electricity: coal plants?

You really should get caught up on new plant construction. According to Sourcewatch, only four coal-fired plants are even in the planning phase right now representing less than 2GW of capacity. The same page shows more than three dozen canceled plants over the last 13 years or so. Compare this to hundreds of plants either retired or converted (or planned for retirement or conversion). Only 34 plants were built from 2000-2009. The main reason for this is that coal is not the most economical, having years ago ceded that position to natural gas.

Meanwhile, a recently released report by Bloomberg has the cost of solar and wind dipping below coal and gas by about 2027, and forecasts that 60% of 2040's installed capacity will be zero-emission of some sort.

The rich have always had access to newer technology. They had cars while poor people had horses or had to walk. They had planes while poor people had to take trains or just not travel. Even in cars, they had airbags, fuel injection, rear-view cameras, and other things we now consider essentially standard long before the riff-raff. With GM rolling out the Bolt and most other car manufacturers working on their own electric cars, the costs will come down dramatically, enough that middle class and even poor people will eventually get relatively easy access to them.

Likely a paid shill of the oil industry
http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...

False. Tobacco companies got in trouble because their customers were disproportionally suffering of nasty diseases. Nothing of the kind can be demonstrated for "victims" of climate-skeptics.

Which part of that statement was False? There was a RICO investigation into the Tobacco companies and the central allegation was that "the cigarette industry has purposely and fraudulently misled the public about the risks and dangers of cigarette smoking".

Because Reason is sock-puppet for billionaires like the Koch Bros. http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...

I don't doubt that the other players involved do make money, but you have failed to take into account what their expenses are. The $386 that goes into seed, etc. isn't pure profit. When you have an open and competitive market with many players and a low enough barrier to entry you tend not to see profit in the double digit percentages.

Well it appears agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals have among the highest profit margins in the chemicals industry, which would put them both at around 13%-14% profit margins. This is a very capital intensive industry, since R&D spending is very high in these sectors, so it is not a very open market. It is very clearly an oligopoly. The top 6 pesticide and GMO corporations make up 68% of the market, and are all companies with market caps above $50 billion.

As for seeds, three companies control almost 50% of the world's seed supply, and the top 10 companies control 75% (source. Monsanto makes almost $12 billion per year and has around a 50% gross profit margin (net profit margin fluctuates greatly but has averaged 12% over the past two years). Yet again these companies have huge R&D budgets which restricts competitors entering the market.

I never even claimed the costs of growing food was too high. I'm glad there is so much R&D being done in the industry. I would rather the price per bushel to go up than for our food industries to stagnate. But characterizing these companies as small with a low barrier to entry is not accurate.

People, companies and investors chase dollars. There's a reason people are STILL building those large polluting pieces of shit.

Is it because they're Chinese? Because in the United States, 170 coal power plants have been cancelled over the last 15 years, with only 40 completed, and are 20 still in development and 17 whose current status is unknown. There's also 12 "abandoned" plants but I'm not sure what the difference between abandoned and cancelled is. All of this is according to SourceWatch. If those numbers are accurate it means that Americans aren't really building many new coal plants, and the even the ones they did plan to build, two thirds of them have been cancelled.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 1,507 MW of new coal plants were added in 2013. However, in the same year 6,861 MW of natural gas and 2,959 of solar was added. For the math challenged that means almost twice as much new solar was added compared to new coal (and over 4 times as much natural gas). There was also 1,032 MW of new wind added. Sure it was only 2/3rd of coal in 2013 (partly because of a subsidy deadline for end of 2012 where 10x the amount of solar was completed in 2012 compared to 2013), but I would bet that new wind projects will continue growing while new coal projects continue to disappear.

Citing Judith LOL Curry.

The trick is that they are only useful for testing out how things work under a given energy imbalance or energy conditions. They are NOT useful for hindcasting energy imbalance

The source for the quoted nonsense above is WUWT, one of many denier/front sites funded by the (untaxed) anti-science lobbyists at the .

The fact is that hindcasting is how climate models are tested, how else would anyone test it? You can find the code for several important models here and run it yourself for the price of a decent server.

Not only can we model the evolution of Earth's past climate and routinely hindcast the last 500yrs with high levels of "model skill", we can also model the evolution of climate on other planets, in particular Mars and Venus. Here's a reliable and independent source that talks about hindcasting climate for testing purposes.

Note also that the uncertainty you quote is about cloud cover, the other common cherry pick used in this kind of FUD is the uncertainty surrounding the behaviour of ice. These two KNOWN uncertainties are discussed in great detail in the report you linked to. They are responsible for what scientists call "error bars". The WG1 report is however the best summary of the current state of climate science that anyone has to offer. If you want to debunk climate science that is the primary document to attack, it is the embodiment of the so called "consensus", good luck in your studies.

You are so wrong it's almost comical. As I already stated in my post as well as providing a link, the source for this is the IPCC WG1 you champion in your own retort:
Model tuning aims to match observed climate system behaviour and so is connected to judgements as to what constitutes a skilful representation of the Earth’s climate. For instance, maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system

As you state yourself, knock yourself out debunking it. The fact is that the errors from unknowns like clouds leaves hind casting that runs into unrealistic states unless you correct it manually. The seem to agree the source is sound, so not sure what your problem is aside from the conclusion maybe not being as open and shut as you'd like,

The trick is that they are only useful for testing out how things work under a given energy imbalance or energy conditions. They are NOT useful for hindcasting energy imbalance

The source for the quoted nonsense above is WUWT, one of many denier/front sites funded by the (untaxed) anti-science lobbyists at the .

The fact is that hindcasting is how climate models are tested, how else would anyone test it? You can find the code for several important models here and run it yourself for the price of a decent server.

Not only can we model the evolution of Earth's past climate and routinely hindcast the last 500yrs with high levels of "model skill", we can also model the evolution of climate on other planets, in particular Mars and Venus. Here's a reliable and independent source that talks about hindcasting climate for testing purposes.

Note also that the uncertainty you quote is about cloud cover, the other common cherry pick used in this kind of FUD is the uncertainty surrounding the behaviour of ice. These two KNOWN uncertainties are discussed in great detail in the report you linked to. They are responsible for what scientists call "error bars". The WG1 report is however the best summary of the current state of climate science that anyone has to offer. If you want to debunk climate science that is the primary document to attack, it is the embodiment of the so called "consensus", good luck in your studies.

Yes, the PESSIMIST projections turn out to be the right ones. WHat a shame that the models assumed mankind would listen to the evidence INSTEAD OF DENIALIST WEBSITES

Consider that Dyson, an AGW denialist, published not in a peer reviewed formal journal, where academic questions of truth and fiction are contested,
BUT IN A DENIALIST WEBSITE that hides the funders!
with only 1.5% of funding accounted for publicly!
Sorry, but even a Narrow Spectrum Physicist understands argumentum ad venicundium, argument by incompetent authority!
Shame on you!

Why not rename it 'Climatedot' and have done with it?

There is no such thing as 'catastrophic man-made global warming', .... There has been no warming for 18 years!

I keep seeing that same response posted as AC to climate stories - here on "stuff that matters". Complete with a link for further info:

http://www.climatedepot.com...

Which is partially funded by the ExxonMobil foundation http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...

Maybe this would be a lot easier if we went back to a dialogue on "pollution", which more folks could easily see value in limiting.

Sure, but government agencies assign dollar values to lives all the time, though they do vary. DOT's value is lower, for example, than the FAA's.

You're still stuck trying for too much accuracy. Ballpark is enough for this sort of stuff, then you adjust as science clarifies or the situation changes. IE the actual damages from X could be estimated to be $8-12. Nailing it down closer is less important, at least in the short term, than the fact that charging $10 for the damage is 'fairer' then charging them $0.

As such you can't attribute a given number to coal power generation.

Sure I can!
5.7-11.7 euro cents per kWh, for the dirtiest plants.
MN estimates it at 1.8 cents per kWh

When did I mentioned that the pollution damage was from CO2? Oh, I didn't? Then why bring it up that way? I've very clearly said pollution, not CO2.

To my knowledge, if you removed both those from the coal emissions which modern coal plants can do... then the health issues you're citing vanish.

They don't remove them completely, and no, they don't vanish. Become an order of magnitude less, that you get. Even 2, but at that point a nuclear plant is cheaper, and still cleaner(on average, including pollution from TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, but excluding nuclear weapons stuff). No, 'filtered coal' is not cheaper. I've seen what it takes to get a modern coal plant up and running (Healy clean coal plant).

The "externals" can't be accurately counted or evaluated. And they don't show up on accounting sheets.

It depends. How accurate do you demand it be?
deaths per TWH by energy source
Health effects

And they show up in accounting sheets - just not those of the originator. They show up in the accounting sheets of healthcare organizations. Life Insurance organizations. Building maintenance(back when acid rain was even dissolving them). Etc...

The term "externals" is what you say when you want something to be more expensive but can't actually cite any of it with any clarity.

No, it's more like I don't want to write a book. I can, using completely open sources, peg an average 'per mWh' external expense to coal. It might not be accurate down to the mill(1/10 of one cent), but I can do it. It's true that you can't really attribute any given death to a specific plant, much less a specific unit of power. But you can certainly do so in the aggregate. If it was any less diffuse people would be able to successfully sue for their illnesses.

It might be somewhat 'unfair', but it does mean that you can 'get it in the ballpark' with regards to internalizing the cost by doing something like charging for the pollution. The USA currently mostly does it by the EPA and fines, but I support a more straight-forward system.

Don't
tell
me
you
believe
the
mass
media.

Yes because funding BP, Exxon, Monsanto etc is really honorable.

I wanna be a company.. I wanna be a company...

BTW Hudson Institute - right wing reactionary extemism in think-tank form brought to you by Olin, Koch, Scaife, Walton (Walmart) and featuring on its board Scooter (Plamegate) Libby, Dick Cheney and Richard Pearle.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...

Sure:
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...

Though I'll note that I was thinking of generation cost(~$0.05) for coal, not retail. Remember, that $0.10 per kWh includes transportation, electricity from the natural gas plant next door and the nuclear plant down the road, as well as the coal generation.

Also, the following article give some insight to the high energy usage by at least hospitals:

Yes, hospitals use a lot of electricity, but consider that everything else about hospitals are more expensive than average commercial buildings as well. After all, you're paying a lot of wages for doctors and nurses with masters degrees, using expensive drugs and equipment, etc....

As for your anecdotal 'evidence', keep in mind that I'm mostly talking about averages - you get lucky and don't have any upper respiratory track illnesses, but you're also 50 miles away. 30% of asthma cases are blamed on poor air quality.

Relative to coal, Natural gas isn't a problem at all, and nuclear, well, I want to see more of it. Remember, I wasn't putting down nuclear, just mentioning that worrying about the CO2 production from the concrete that goes into building the plant isn't actually that big of a deal in the face of the sheer amount of power the plant will produce over it's operational lifespan.