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Is There Still a Ray of Hope On Climate Change?
Hugh Pickens writes "David Leonhardt writes in the NY Times that even as the U.S. endures its warmest year on record (the 13 warmest years for the entire planet have all occurred since 1998), the country seems to be moving further away from doing something about climate change, with the issue having all but fallen out of the national debate. But behind the scenes, a different story is emerging that offers reason for optimism: the world's largest economies may be in the process of creating a climate-change response that does not depend on the politically painful process of raising the price of dirty energy. Despite some high-profile flops, like ethanol and Solyndra, clean-energy investments seem to be succeeding more than they are failing. 'The price of solar and wind power have both fallen sharply in the last few years. This country's largest wind farm, sprawling across eastern Oregon, is scheduled to open next month. Already, the world uses vastly more alternative energy than experts predicted only a decade ago,' writes Leonhardt. Natural gas, the use of which has jumped 25 percent since 2008 while prices have fallen more than 80 percent, now generates as much electricity as coal in the United States, which would have been unthinkable not long ago. Thanks in part to earlier government investments, energy companies have been able to extract much more natural gas than once seemed possible which, while far from perfectly clean, is less carbon-intensive than coal use. The clean-energy push has been successful enough to leave many climate advocates believing it is the single best hope for preventing even hotter summers, concludes Leonhardt, adding that while a cap-and-trade program faces an uphill political battle, an investment program that aims to make alternative energy less expensive is more politically feasible. 'Our best hope,' says Benjamin H. Strauss, 'is some kind of disruptive technology that takes off on its own, the way the Internet and the fax took off.'"
Do you have reading comprehension problems? The quoted text says "on record". Go look back how far we've been keeping temperature records. Nobody was sitting around with thermometers in the Paleozoic era.
FWIW, Antarctica is still a desert.
Personally, I'm a lot sicker of people talking about "crazy-eyed alarmists" preaching that "the fucking end is nigh." Who, specifically, are these "crazy-eyed alarmists" and where are they making such predictions? I know who it isn't. It isn't climate scientists. It isn't the IPCC. It isn't even prominent non-scientists like Al Gore who have popularized the concerns of climate scientists. So who are they? Where are they preaching that I've never heard them?
And while we are at it, who is insisting that we need to "abolish all industry NOW NOW NOW RIGHT NOW!"? Again, I know who it isn't. It isn't climate scientists. It isn't the IPCC. It isn't even prominent non-scientists like Al Gore who have popularized the concerns of climate scientists. So who are they?
Our best hope is a radical alteration using chemical means?
Are you kidding me?
We still use HALF the energy in the US and Canada heating and cooling mostly empty buildings. We could easily just change zoning and tax laws to encourage buildings to have green roofs, provide their own power, use half the energy to heat and cool, and build them for barely more than we pay for buildings nowadays. Practically the entire campus here is built using such buildings now.
We still have massive untapped energy sources of hydro, mini-hydro, micro-hydro, geothermal, wind, urban wind, tidal and other energy sources that would dramatically impact GHG impacts. In America.
We still use cars that only get - and this is from an ad last nite - only 36 mpg when we can easily crank out 60 mpg cars today. Or replace 15 mpg vehicles with 30 mpg versions that function THE SAME using technology we HAVE TODAY. Heck, we could replace them in areas where electricity is mostly green (e.g. populated coastal areas) with plug-in electric cars. Or people could bike or walk more.
There are a lot of very simple things we could do today.
But ... we're lazy whiners. Period.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The 13 years are those for which we have records. When the Earth was covered with lava, I don't think anyone had a thermometer, smarty pants.
The vast majority of scientists in the applicable field believe the Earth is warming. If you don't believe it, that's your problem.
The vast majority of those scientists believe that the warming is being significantly accelerated by human processes, and that the trend line is far sharper than standard climatic cycles would ordinary produce. If you don't believe it, that's your problem.
Most outcome predictions based on the rate of change we're seeing include massive effects on humanity. If you don't believe it, that's your problem.
But sadly, you are our problem. People who, despite growing evidence, fail to grasp the urgency of the matter will be our collective downfall. Even though I tend to get very frustrated at the ignorance, I've pretty much just come to accept it. The thing that really ticks me off is that my children will suffer because of people like you, spreading the "it's not that bad" schtick.
And by the way, industry can mean a lot of things. A clean energy industry would be awesome.
My comments are my own, and do not represent the views of my employer, my spouse, my children, or my cats.
Perhaps the part where the year is not yet finished
Yes, and it's still summer. Guess you missed that part. It's only going to get hotter. Also, that's totally fucking irrelevant, because it's about how hot it's gotten, not just about the average temperature for the year.
every single Warmist Chicken-Little alarmist such as yourself proclaiming weather is the same as climate
Show me where I said that. Come on, show me. Oh, you can't? That's because I didn't say that. You're a liar.
(but not when winters are colder! No sir, then it means nothing)
Record winter lows are a predicted sign of global warming. I'm not surprised you don't know that, because you are clearly willfully ignorant.
all attempts to claim runaway behavior from existing climate change have been proved to be bunk
We're not talking about runaway behavior right now, we're talking about AGW. Although, now that you mention it, ice on land is melting faster than it's being replenished, faster than projections, and faster than in recorded history.
your high priests
Your attempts to demonize science? They fail.
along with your high priests inability to predict anything about climate changes that actually happen going forward
And you fail again. In fact, record highs and lows are predicted. Ice melting is predicted, and it happening faster than predicted is not a cause for you to celebrate. All it means is that even scientists are optimists.
why should we treat you and your disciples
I have disciples now? Awesome. I hope I don't get nailed up. You are hereby cordially invited to eat my body before my death. Pucker up.
It all started when you claimed AGW was based on "science", a curious science that silenced detractors and ignored requests to review raw data
And you lie again. The raw data has been available to anyone in a position to understand it all along. That doesn't include you. Detractors have not been silenced; Big Oil has spent vast amounts of money on studies trying to find some support for their assertions, the same assertions you share. Only, now even Big Oil is admitting that AGW is a real thing. Now, they're only arguing that it is not as serious as it is made out to be. As a predictable next step, they will announce that no, we're actually all screwed. Then they'll announce that they have some kind of solution. I don't need to be prescient, I only need to remember what you have forgotten: the lessons of history.
and you wonder why more reasonable heads fail to support you now.
Well, no, in fact, more reasonable people (who are more than just a head, this ain't Futurama — today, "head" more commonly means drug user, but I already knew you were hopelessly out of touch before you said that) actually do support "me" (or in fact, the science of AGW) and you don't. I already know you're not reasonable from your history here, but I decided to respond to you anyway because I had time and I didn't want someone to think that a failure to respond to your inanity was due to believing it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
thank you, at least someone gets it. We have only been keeping detailed weather records for around 100 years and now were supposed to believe that this is the hottest its ever been, thats crazy.
No, he doesn't "get it". Have you never heard of paleoclimatology? Scientists down in Antarctica have sampled cores of ice that have been trapped for millennia, and have been able to correlate the temperatures of the ice as well as trapped atmospheric particles with the time they were trapped. From them, they have determined an approximation of the average global temperature back through time, as well as estimates of things like the percentage of Earth's surface covered by wetlands based on methane levels indicating decomposed bacteria.
The Antarctic ice sheet has a pretty good record going all the way back to the previous ice age and a bit earlier. It's not like an almanac, where they can ask "what was the temperature on July 4th, 4004 BC", but they can see slow moving trends. For example, they can see a small dip that correlates to the Little Ice Age, and a more dramatic dip from an earlier ice age.
And the ice sheets aren't the only evidence. Geological records also contain clues about the earlier weather, in the forms of rock scratchings where they were pushed by glaciers, glacial moraines, ancient dried lake beds, etc. And the distribution of fossils can show where climates went from "hospitable" to "inhospitable" to certain forms of ancient life.
It's just the kind of data you need to have if you are trying to figure out if this decade is warmer than all previous decades in the last 40,000 years.
There is nothing crazy about it. It's just science.
John
current warming trends would help us with more arable land
Only if we are willing to engage in deforestation that would exacerbate the problem. Did you get these ideas out of a Big Oil coloring book, or what? Meanwhile, our existing arable land is showing massive crop failures for this year, and food is already 20-33% more expensive than it was last year. As it turns out, when you have record highs and lows in the same place in the same year, there's no crops that want to grow under those conditions. There is no plant whatsoever that likes temperatures over 100 degrees (though many plants have adaptations to permit them to avoid damage in those conditions) and no plant that can handle those temperatures likes to be frozen. In addition, there has been inadequate rainfall in our existing farmland.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's far cleaner (and greener) than coal, which is what we call "compromise" and taking "baby steps". These are things that the climate alarmists don't understand
Unlike many issues, it's meaningless whether we find a compromise that meets everyone's political preferences. We need a solution that meets the hard requirements of nature. Climate change won't negotiate with us.