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Climate Data Re-examined (updated)
An anonymous reader writes "An important paper that re-examines historical climate data was published on 28 October in the respected journal Energy & Environment. (The paper is also available here.) According to an article in Canada's National Post, the paper shows that a "pillar of the Kyoto Accord is based on false calculations, incorrect data and an overtly biased selection of climate records." (USA Today also has a story.) This paper will undoubtedly be controversial and should stir a vigourous data review." Update: 11/05 14:54 GMT by T : newyhouse points out a similarly contrarian 2001 Economist article by Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist .
Nooooooo!
GWB will use this as an excuse to drop the whole hydrogen economy thing and further increase America's dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Whether the climate gurus are right or wrong, this is a Bad Thing.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Now I don't want to respond to the article's claims, since that'll only spark a flame war I don't want to fight but:
Only in Canada does one see a graph with a flat line then sharp spike and instantly think "Oooo, a hockey stick!"
This just cracks me up because it is absolutely true of most of my Canadian relities, they are just nuts over hockey and I'm sure this doesn't strike any of them as the least bit odd comparison.
It however doesn't mean that we should not pollute.
A friend of mine is prepairing a PHD in geology.
He often climbs on top of the Mont Blanc (4807m) where he analyzes the ice cap.
He found out that ther chemicals that impregnated the ice are similar only to the ones which emanates from the General Motors factories, in Detroit, US.
There is a serious issue, there.
It is not because it won't make rain more that it is not a bad thing.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The poblem with most of these policies is they put rules in place on 3rd world countries that can't afford to put in technology to fix the problems they have, then they sell of thier clean air units to other countries to make cash.
basically it works like this. every country has to make quotas. but the stupid thing is you can TRADE them. Lets say the US it polluting too much, it can buy "clean air quotas" from another country who doesn't pollute as much. It's kinda interesting but lame at the same time.
We shouldn't stop protecting the environment just because some analysis was wrong. Its funny that we even need justification in the first place to preserve the planet.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
Questions:
1. Who are these guys. There are no affiliations listed and the research sponsor is not listed.
2. MBH98 is not the only paper. It was one of the first ones. After that more detailed research was done and it did not refute any of the claims.
3. Is the ice melt in the arctic a figment of my imagination?
4. Is the retreat of South American Glaciers a figment of my imagination?
5. Why doesn't NOAA put all the data for public consumption so that anyone can see who is right and who is wrong?
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
... your vehicle's exhaust won't make any harm to the nature. You can try it: lock yourself in the garage and run the engine for an hour. You won't feel anything bad, serious, it's all harmless stuff, everybody knows that, right? D'oh..
Check out the funding behind this.
Noted, as a potential source of bias.
You seem, however, to have left out your scientific criticism of their methodology and results.
As that criticism will comprise 99% of your final grade it looks like you have some work to do if you expect to pass this course.
KFG
You're comparing filling a very small space with a very toxic poison to putting a tiny bit of pollution into a very vast atmosphere.
The analogy doesn't even come close to being correct.
About twenty years ago, there was a conference on global warming held at Caltech. The gist of the results presented was that adding energy to the atmosphere seemed to make it more chaotic. That doesn't imply local warming must occur, but rather that the weather becomes more unpredictable. I think we're seeing that now in the data.
The "hockey stick" graph has been roundly criticized for years -- and yes, legitimate scientists criticize it, not just "neo-cons" or whatever.
Unfortunately there is immense political pressure placed upon anyone who says something that could be seen as weakening the Kyoto protocol or the "global climate consensus." I expect the authors of this paper will see quite a lot of heat about this.
This is a shame, because the fact that the "hockey stick" graph is flawed absolutely does not imply that human-influenced global warming isn't a problem! Sure, people may misuse these results to argue that global warming is somehow disproven, but the potential misuse of a result is no reason to suppress it. On the contrary, pressuring people to keep quiet about their findings will only hurt the credibility of the entire field in the long run. So it is very good to see that this is published.
And remember -- there is no "final word" in science. The most vital element of science is results can be tested and disproven. Nothing is above criticism, including the hockey stick graph, this paper, and any other paper written about climate change or any other scientific subject. That is what science is all about.
I wonder if the results are skewed because of mistakes, or if the numbers have been wilfully embellished. Neither would surprise me: almost every lobby group for every side of every issue, from Greenpeace to the car industry lobby, have been known to juggle the books a little in order to support their own beliefs. In some cases, outright fraud has taken place.
What scared me about Kyoto is not so much the conclusion that was drawn, nor the way scientists had arrived at that conclusion, but the zealous belief of many governments in these conclusions. In Europe, scientists or governments (the US) who were sceptical about the Kyoto paper became the brunt of scorn and vilification in the media. It again showed how deeply environmentalists have become entrenched in the decision-making bodies of government... it reminds me of the case where two scientists were fired from the Dutch government environmental agency, for publishing reports that proved the official line on acid rain was wrong.
The reactions to this article will tell us if the political climate has changed... if the policy-makers are still only accepting opinions that fit their own world view, or if we have a more open climate where scientific discussion rather than dogma holds sway.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Taking this referenced paper as being on the mark, do look at their corrected temperature graph. One can't say that the recent warming has been unprecedented based on that graph, but you could claim that there's been nothing like it in 500 years.
...) as a good reason to dispute the need for CO2 emission controls. Yet they would still (IMO) be misguided. As evidenced by the hole in the ozone layer, human industrial activity can have significant long-term effects on the global environment. Given that we only have the one planet, it seems only good sense that we should be cautious when it comes to activity that has the potential to seriously change the environment.
It seems almost certain that this news will be welcomed by certain governments (US, Australia,
The warming trend in the last 100 years may have very little to do with industrial emissions - but as yet we can't tell. That there is a correlation indicates we should err on the side of caution: if it is indeed a matter of causation, then we're essential pissing on our own future.
Regardless of quality of life issues, it makes sense as an economic one, when viewed in global terms. We will have to deal with the effects of climate change whether it be due to human activity or not, but if there is a significant component that we're responsible for, continuing in this behaviour is going to make a very large problem a great deal worse, with attendant very high costs to amerliorate it. It is risk management. Putting heads in the sand and saying that there's doubt about the link, does not make the risk of that link magically disappear. Even a 5% chance of the link being actual may be sufficient for a purely economic assessment to indicate that emissions should be sharply curbed.
If there were alternative policies being adopted by those governments against the Kyoto accords, then that would be an indication that their objections were based on more than short-term economic growth (or worse, given the somewhat incestuous relationships between governments and industry.) Yet Australia for example has not even managed to reduce its rate of growth of emissions (not the emission levels themselves!) to targets that had been set earlier.
If the Kyoto accords are not a step in the right direction, then the continuing increase of CO2 emissions is certainly not a preferable alternative.
A recent study by Arctic researchers showed that the polar ice cap isn't just shrinking in terms of land mass, it's shrinking in terms of depth too, by 4cm a year.
All that water's going somewhere, and that somewhere is the oceans. Global sea levels are rising, and you only have to look at the situation in Tuvalu in the Pacific or Venice, Italy to see that the threat of rising tides isn't a myth.
People can harp on about "not enough data" or "inconclusive evidence" all they want but if entire nations vanishing beneath the waves or historic cities sinking isn't a wake-up call then I don't know what is.
Frankly, there are some people who will bury their heads in the sand over this issue just as long as they can make a profit by ignoring it. Oil companies and big business are never going to recognise that they are part of the problem until the last possible moment, at which time they'll just shrug their shoulders and say "Who knew?", just like the tobacco industry before them.
But, unlike tobacco, this isn't a problem that will affect just a handful of people, or a problem that will be easily settled by the courts - billions in punitive damages are useless when your country is underwater. The last time I checked there wasn't a court on the planet that could push back the tides.
I'm sure there are dozens of readers out there that will right off this comment as yet more half-baked environmental doom-mongering but I find it funny that these same people will demand more money to scan the heavens for deadly meteors - it seems that extinction Armageddon-style is trendy but the possibility of extinction because of our own actions just isn't sexy enough.
If you really want to be objective about these issues try to look beyond the smoke and mirrors. Ask yourself how objective the research is - there are far more people out there funded by big business than you'd imagine. Ask yourself who stands to profit by presenting a negative picture of climate change? Who stands to lose if the problem is tackled head-on? And who stands to profit if it's ignored and the situation is allowed to continue unchecked?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I visited a Glacier in Norway once (at Olden) and they have actually signposted the glacier boundary at various previous times for the tourists - ie. "Glacier boundary 1850" etc.
I can tell you its a long climb from those points until you get to where the glacier is today..
Just because you can spot the odd anomoly in a bunch of data does not render the whole thing untrue..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
In case it isn't obvious, the National Post is a very right wing paper, at least in Canadian terms. That doesn't mean they are wrong, but they have a history of taking any opportunity to attack the Kyoto Accord.
As a case in point, I offer the title, subtitle and byline for the article:
I would say, for instance, that a more cautious interpretation would be that an important new paper suggests flaws in the research, not that it reveals it. Particularly if I were a writer for a business & economics paper, not a climate change researcher. And then there is the title itself...
To give credit where it is due, he does tend to use the phrase 'climate change' rather than the older 'global warming', which is a more accurate description of what the body of research underpinning Kyoto actually suggests. Usually you can spot biased participants in debates like this by their choice of language.
Personally, I have never taken sides over whether climate change is likely to be a reality or not. I don't need it as a justification for my environmental leanings. I think there are many national security and economic justifications for taking such actions as improving energy efficiency throughout society without relying on theories such as climate change that are far beyond my ability to competently analyze. So go ahead and tear Kyoto apart if you care to, but don't use that as an excuse to increase dependence on Middle East oil, for example.
And I haven't seen a big appetite for new nuclear or coal power plants in the US as of late either.
If you say, "now I'll be modded down because of X", I'll happily oblige.
You seem, however, to have left out your scientific criticism of their methodology and results.
The original 1998 paper by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes was not in error. McIntyre and McKitrick screwed up their data when they published this paper. Somebody exported the raw data in the original paper to Excel but somehow exported 159 columns of data into a 112 column spreadsheet. M&M did not compare the spreadsheet and produced a "correction" to the original paper that was based on nothing but errors, since the full paleoclimatic data series of 159 columns is required to properly audit the analysis done in the 1998 paper. More information here and here. The world really is melting.
The authors of the original paper have already published a rebuttal to this M&M paper with further details about how M&M faithfully replicated neither the data nor the procedures in their audit.
This is irrelevent anyway. Unless it says that continuing to exploit non-renewable energy at the current rate (or faster) and emitting carbon dioxide at the current rate is actually good for the environment.
People need to look at the big picture and stop arguing over the small print.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
The researcher basically states that it was warmer in 1400 than previously estimated. I have read that the end of the Viking Age (~800-1100 AD) was mainly due to a large drop in global temperatures. The Viking colony in Greenland lasted until 1380 AD when the Summer thaw that allowed them to travel by ship stopped occuring, for example.
He does not refute the fact that it is getting warmer - and rapidly so. He simply says it was pretty warm in 1400 too, in contrast to prior conslusions. Note also that, according to his data, we have already reached his pre-1400 temperature levels and the trend continuing steeply upward.
Thank god I live in Sweden. We love global warming. Vroom vroom!
Damn Yankee
----------------------
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
While climate change may or may not be caused by human activity, there is other much more obvious and pressing proof that we are in fact destroying this planet. For example, there is little doubt that the mass extinction and loss of biodiversity we are currently seeing is unprecedented (save maybe for the extinction of the dinasaur era 65 million years ago). The danger here is that some may be tempted to use the results of this climate study as some sort of proof against environmentalism in general.
While a reduction of CO2 emissions is nice, the real effect of Kyoto would have been to boost renewable, non-polluting sources of energy. The benifits of this go far beyond just greenhouse gasses. By getting off oil we could do everything from reducing cancer rates (less air pollution), to decentralizing the power grid, to shifting global power away from terrorist states like Saudi Arabia. It really is a win-win situation for everyone -- except those who are currently in power.
An 'important' paper written by a scientist employed in the mining industry.
Oh yes and the university guy. Don't know exactly what financial links exist between the university and the people who don't like the news of global warming spreading.
Move along please. No global warming to be seen here.
It is a pity that the original MBH paper you link to states (page 1 top right) "112 indicators back to 1820" and (page 3 middle right) "the reconstructions from 1820 onwards based on the full multiproxy network of 112 indicators". 159 does not appear in the paper except in the date 1599.
This is a normal part of the peer review. We will have to see if this new paper stands up or has flaws itself. Don't hold you breath. The way we view the world has not suddenly just changed. There is just a new strand to the science to be looked at and investigated in more detail.
Nooooooooo....
I believe we're still waiting for the documents relating to the oil companies' 'consultations' with Archduke Cheney over energy policy, aren't we?
Why do people think environmentalists would be biased, anyway? What are they biased towards? Not dying? Is there some secret Globex-EnviroCorporation Inc in which all tree hugging hippies have undisclosed shares? Or is it possible that they simply understand the value of erring on the side of caution when the stakes are so high?
I love it that people think that they are able to be so 'skeptical' about the environment. Can't you see that the logical way to be skeptical about it is to assume that the warning signs mean something significant until you can be sure they don't? Otherwise you're acting like someone with half the symptoms of cancer who wants to wait until they have them all before getting it checked out. After all, you can never be sure so better to do nothing, eh?
Don't worry, go ahead and doubt environmentalists. I'm sure businessmen whose entire job is making profits for their own companies are *much* more reliable at telling you what the state of the environment is.
Read Pynchon.
If you follow the links provided in the parent post, you will find the rebuttal by the authros where they state:
We did not ask for an Excel spreadsheet nor did we receive one.
If you read the rest of their rebuttal, it becomes clear that Mann just made the excel error up! No really! Go read!
It's counter-intuitive, but warmer temperatures can cause increased snowfall - the warmer air can carry more water, you see.
Clear, Dark Skies
Because the same thing could be applied to anything that lacks proof, but would have a consequence if true. The oldest example I know of this kind of thing is Pascal's wager. It's an argument for the belief in god that goes like this:
There is a 2x2 matrix, where you either believe or don't believe in god and he does or doesn't exist. You then fill in the boxes with values for benefit or penalty for the situations. Now what Pascal argued is that in the "does exist" column the values are infinite, positive for belief, negative for disbelief since teh reward and punishment are infinetly greater than anything in this world. So it doesn't matter what is in the "does not exist" column since it will be finite. Well, you don't want to risk it, so you should jsut believe in god.
This is, of course, hugely problematic and easy to poke holes in. There are tons of other cases we could argue including that it ISN'T infinite in the "does exist" column, that god can tell between real and faked belief, that there is a different god, etc.
Now the problem is applying that kind of "you can't risk it" logic to everything lets psuedo science get teh same creedence as real science, and in that, swindlers. Like suppose I come to you with a bunch of graphs n' numbers n' daigrams and stuff. I tell you that this is data on my new drug that can cure all forms of cancer. All I need is $10 million to develop it. You look over my data and realise that it in no way justifies my claim. My response? "Yes, but can you really risk it? I mean what if my data IS right and I CAN make the drug? Can you risk on missing out on that oppertunity, not to mention depriving society of that benifit?" If you find that compelling, well then I have some graphs n' numbers n' daigrams to show you...
Basically, before comitting to something as a fact, and making large changes becaues of it, it needs to pass scientific (strong inference) muster. Otherwise, we get into a really bad situation.
In assuming that a correlation implies a causation. It doesn't. There is no argument that temperatures have been rising in recorded history (a short period actually) nor is there an argument that human output of CO2 has risen since the IR. However that those two happened together does not mean that one caused the other, that is a seperate issue.
Finding causation is much harder than finding a correlation since all sorts of things are correlated (and it's simply to measure) but the causal link can be much more complex.
For example:
You can get the causal link the wrong way. There is a positive correlation between weight and height. There's aslo a causal link. However if you say that increasing weight will increase height, you've got teh direction of the link wrong.
There can be an outside factor. There is a positive correlation in the United States between being white and scoring well on standardised tests. However if you say that being white CAUSES you to score well on tests, you'd be wrong. The real cause is much more complex and has to do with general trends in educational and economic background.
Then there are just things that are incidental. For awhile, there was a positive correlation between one of my friends attending football games and the team winning. Every game he attended, they won, the couple he missed, they lost. Well of course he didn't cause them to win, nor did their loosing cause him not to attend, it was just random luck.
So, just because we have found a positive correlation between an increase in temperature and an increase in CO2 does NOT mean we've found a causal link.
Is that by bottling up the sub industrial nations with environmental regulations, and thereby slowing their advance through the industrial stages, we may be making the problem worse in the long run.
The best way to get people to care about the environment is to get them beyond the point of having to worry about food, clothing and shelter. People worried about their next meal really could care less about pollution.
Kyoto and similar measures threaten to force sub-industrial nations to submit to burdensome restrictions that will make it harder for them to blossom into a wealthier economy.
Furthermore, it's grossly unfair to prolong the poverty of such nations by dictating how they can and can't develop so that we can sleep easier at night.
Remember, we didn't have any such restrictions when we went through this stage.
Posted by Hemos on Wednesday November 05, @04:20AM
So this is what Hemos was doing while hitting his first joint of the day?
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Please note that the editor of "E&E" is one of the few environmental scientists who agreed with Bjorn Lomborg "Skeptical Environmentalist", and a self-confessed environmental sceptic. As stated there, the journal itself has a "stance [that] is critical of conventional wisdom".
Now, I don't read E&E (I tend to read the mainstream geophysics journals: GAFD, JGR(Oceans) and GRL -- "E&E" is not a mainstream geophysics journal), but I am slightly concerned about work published in a journal with an agenda. One may also be concerned about the suitability of referees selected by an editor out to prove a point, rather than to publicise good science.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
This journal does not say it is peer-reviewed. Hmm, with that many data sets and obscure methods, can we trust it?
"Except that China and India are the big polluters of the day."
0 1/Gree nhouse/Fig1P19.gif
s f/cont ent/emissionsindividual.html. gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/cont ent/EmissionsInternational.html
Check out:
http://www.ioe.ucla.edu/publications/report
Compare the population one with the energy use one, and the per capita one. The US is EASILY the biggest per capita AND net user of energy.
If you prefer a measure of straight pollution to energy use, try:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.n
http://yosemite.epa
USA totally dominates others in pretty much all respects. Try basing your posts on actual math next time.
Read Pynchon.
Now I can use hairspray again! Seriously, I looked at the data for the mid to late 1980s and there are distinct spikes in atmospheric GHG that coincide with Poison concert dates.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Comparing the agendas on both sides may well be valid, but what about comparing the consequences if either side is wrong ??
If the tree huggers have got it wrong we see smaller profits, disgruntled share holders and short term job losses. Boo-hoo.
If the Megacorps have got it wrong (or more likely are simply covering up) then we've screwed up the planet.
The stakes are a little bigger.
A robust response from the authors of the original paper is here. In general a paper like hte one noted here should really be put in some kind of context.
Just so all of you are aware of some things surrounding Kyoto and the National Post up here in Canada. They my help you access this information in context.
1. When Canada ratified the Kyoto agreement last year there was a huge controversy in the country about whether it was based on facts. This was led by the ultra-conservative Premier of Alberta ("Red Nose Ralphy") Ralph Klien. He was supported by many right wing, neo-conservative business people. They tried to claim Kyoto would cost Canadians jobs - it was also going to cost Alberta Oil and some big industies profit, but I'm sure they were more concerned about the jobs. These conservative elements in Canada trotted out a few "scientists" (not climatologists mind you, but a biologist, I beleive...the ones with the fake names on their online petitions) who claim there is no global warming, contrary to the opinion of most mainstream scientists, including most climatologists.
2. The National Post is NOT the populist pap that USA Today is. The National Post is a very conservative, right wing newspaper (formerly owned by Conrad Black, an ultra-conservative icon up here and now owned by Can-West Global, the media company of the late Issy Asper, another conservative icon). To say that the National Post might be supporting an anti-Kyoto agenda is an understatement. They are willing to latch onto anything that might cast doubt on global warming and claim a " pillar of the Kyoto Accord is based on false calculations, incorrect data and an overtly biased selection of climate records." - at the bidding of the bussiness and political interests that support them.
So given that, consider source of this story.
As for the scientific paper cited, well, it's been out for about a week. Why not let the scientific community do what it does best - review the facts and try to verify the data. Perhaps it is the study that contains the errors, not the original. Even if it's correct, it is only one of the hundreds of studies conducted by scientists for the past 20 years that support global warming.
Try a Google searh ans see how many more you can come up with whose evidnce is NOT based on extrapolated climate data from the 1400's....then decide if Kyoto is bogus.
"Pillar" indeed. Kyto is standing on a lot more scientific ground that this study, even if it is correct.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
... the rebuttals from the authors of the original paper are here.
That there can be so much controversy highlights the fragility of the "models" that have been developed to support the varying points of view. It seems we really don't understand the climate process yet so maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't leap at any proposed solutions (like Kyoto) because maybe there isn't a problem.
How come not jumping to solutions based on scanty knowledge of the problem makes sense on the small scale (e.g. advice from a sysadmin to a user) but gets lost on the large scale issues (global warming)?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Considering that Mars is experiencing global warming as well, maybe the situation is entirely out of our control? Perhaps we, as humans, have overrated our ability to affect our planet? Or would the extreme environmentalists claim we are somehow screwing Mars over too?
Of course, if this does indicate more of a pattern throughout the Solar System, then we have no control over it whatsoever. Which is probably why it's not really discussed.
Oh, and if you don't like the ABC link above, try it straight from the horse's mouth.
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
Do you know how nasty photovaliac cells are to manufacture? I would presume it would cost more in resources to create the solar cells than you would ever get out of them in energy production.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I had a chance to ask an expert on climate change and Nobel Prize winner about the climate change controversy. His response, summarized was:
1. Evidence of some warming is incontrovertible.
2. This warming may or may not be due to C02 emissions.
3. At this point in time, since evidence is still preliminary, he estimates the chances of the greenhouse effect being a real, scientific fact at about 10%.
4. In day to day life, we buy insurance for, say, a house fire, at much lower odds than that (chance of your house catching fire is 0.01%).
5. Hence he supports a moderate version of the Kyoto protocol as insurance against the possibility of the greenhouse effect being real.
6. That was his recommendation to President George W. Bush: sign Kyoto.
7. Bush chose not to follow his advice.
So were all the 15th century records of cold weather and advancing ice phony? Was the world really warmer and milder than today? Was there a vast conspiracy in the late 1400s to record phony accounts of the weather in order that 20th century environmentalists would believe in Global Warming? I don't think so!
I would like to make several points that are only loosely related...
If humans are causing global warming on Earth, then who is causing the global warming on Mars? That's right, over the last several decades the Martian polar caps have been shrinking at an unprecidented rate. This comes from the European Space Agency, not a suspect US government report.
Human-caused CO2 from post industrial nations is an interesting scapegoat. No I'm not saying that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. My point is that there are other greenhouse gases that have hundreds of times more effect than CO2. Then there is the fact that a large amount of the CO2 released into the atmosphere each year comes from natural, not industrial sources. Rotting vegitation (when not replaced by equivalent new plant growth) is a source for CO2. Supposedly ruminants (bovines, cows, deer, etc) are a large source of greenhouse gases. (Who is going to pay to put special gas-trapping diapers on all the cattle in India?) The forest fires in Indonesia a few years ago were the source of about 40% of the worldwide CO2 releases for the whole year. The fires in the Amazon might be another 10-15%. A single eruption of Mt. Pinatubo a few years ago released as much greenhouse gases as 10 years of industrial output. The CO2 output from manufacturing in developed nations may be only 10% of total CO2. On top of that, the manufacturing in developed nations tends to be much more effecient than the manufacturing in non-developed nations, producing a lot more goods per unit of CO2 released.
If the Koyoto Agreement was really about controlling greenhouse gases then the "developing" nations would not have been excluded. If China can put a man in orbit, then why should they still be considered exempt from the agreement? The dirtiest industries have already migrated from the developed nations to the developing nations because of environment regulations (and the lack of them in the developing nations). The Koyoto Agreement is instead based on a view that there is a theoretical acceptable worldwide CO2 "pie" that is currently divided unfairly to the advantage of developed nations.
All global weather simulations contain a "fudge factor" that is used to represent the unknowns that also contribute to the weather patterns. One interesting fact about the current simulations is that the fudge factor is more significant than the CO2 levels. If you take the various simulations and start them up from the year 1900 they do a very poor job of predicting todays weather. If you take two simulations that both assume global warming and start them up from the year 2000, one may predict that North Dakota will become a swamp, while the other says it will be a desert.
Lawnmowers, ATVs, other 2 & 3 cycle engines, and *bar-b-ques* produce more polution in the US than cars made after 1990. I don't know about greenhouse gases, but they definitely produce more polution.
One of the predictions for global warming was that the sea levels would rise with catastrophic results for the costal cities and island nations. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective) the sea levels have been dropping instead of rising. There are certain cities like Venice, Italy, and New York and New Orleans in the the US that are sinking, but that is a different issue.
None of this says that global warming is not happening. It does seem to be happening, but not in the ways the scientists expect, from the causes they have identified, or with the effects that they predicted. Throughout history, when humans have tried solving one problem they have usually created other problems. Sometimes the new problems are less severe than the original ones and sometimes they are worse. Most of the time it is a mixed bag.
It is one thing for you to decide that you are willing to give up some of your comforts for the betterment of something else. It is an entirely different thing to start dictating to everyone else that they should give up whatever t
The environmental movement has done a lot of good in making us take stock of how we're disposing of our waste. Los Angeles air and San Francisco Bay are a lot cleaner today than they would have otherwise been had it not been for the hoopla. But at the same time, you have to be very skeptical when someone tries to tell you we're going to destroy the earth if we keep doing what we're doing. In geologic terms, we've been around for a brief moment and the earth has managed some amazingly self-destructive feats without us and yet here we are.
I have nothing against PV solar cells in space where they face different problems and are more applicable solutions but on earth they are of limited practical use at the moment. Some of the stories about cheap flexible solar arrays being made soon are promising but until there are demonstrateable enviromental and economic advantages over nuclear power I am reluctant to consider them a panacea and more of a hinderance to the energy crisis. Perhaps one day though.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I read that as saying that what's not left in the machine is typically brought out in recyclable form; you can distill condensed vapors and re-use them, and molecular beam technology can boost utilization if it matters that much. I can't see that you refuted anything I said.
Well, yeah. The bleeding edge is always expensive. Now if you're talking $4/watt amorphous silicon cells, if they cost more energy to produce than they'll make in 20 years each watt of cell would take... hmmm, need an envelope...1 watt * 6 hours sun/day average * .8 derating factor * 365 days/year * 15 years =
26 kilowatt-hours. That's the energy equivalent of about 2/3 of a gallon of gasoline, or 3.3 gallons of gas if you consider the typical conversion efficiency of small to medium size engines. I find it doubtful that you could spend even a dollar on energy to make a cell that retails for four dollars, plus I've read that the payback time for the best panels these days is only a couple of years. I'll take better data when I can get it, but right now I don't think that the bleeding-edge economics applies to the stuff a consumer would buy.
Of course, not all solar is PV (see this, they updated their site), and wind pays back very quickly in any kind of decent site.
Solar PV currently costs about $.25/KWH, but peak time-of-use electric rates in some areas are $.35/KWH and up. Solar PV is actually cheaper than the grid there while it's producing, or will be unless and until something flattens the demand curve. Solar PV has been cheaper than paying to extend electric service for well over a decade. Then there are breakthrough technologies such as have been discussed on Slashdot in the last couple of months, any one of which could throw a real curveball.I've got nothing against nuclear, but its improvements are going to be incremental. Wind isn't bad, but barring tricks like gyromills it is going to move incrementally too. PV, photochemical, and other things are still improving on an exponential curve; those are the ones to watch.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Global warming believers and deniers alike should welcome the paper from McIntyre and McKitrick, and the argument it has started. This is normal science at work: observation, accretion of data, and the formulation and challenging of theories. Here at Worldwatch Institute we're hoping people will remember that the data "M&M" refer to are but one element of a much larger case, built up over many years, supporting the conclusions that the Earth is warming and that human economic activity (especially burning fossil fuels) has a lot to do with it. Even without the threat of climate change, there are so many other reasons for a rapid conversion away from fossil fuels--local pollution, health effects, impending shortages, security--that it would still make great sense. (Incidentally, the claim that the disputed Mann data were "a pillar of the Kyoto accord" is not true; they were published the year after the Kyoto Protocol was drafted.) A lot more information on these topics is available via our website (www. worldwatch.org); click on Energy.