You're right, at some point it's a losing proposition. When sea level rises enough that NOLA gets cut off from overland routes for highway and rail it will be time to move to another port up river. I think that's probably something like 100 years away.
One of the main reasons to pay for reconstruction in New Orleans is that it is a major port at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The amount of commerce passing through that port is huge.
The issue for Miami is even if they build levees and seawalls the water will just rise up from below through the porous limestone bedrock below them. When Miami brought in Dutch engineers their suggestion was floating islands.
May I suggest you start talking to the Dutch. Their language sounds like a mix of German, English and a throat infection, but I assure you, they all understand and speak English excellently. The name "Netherlands" means "lower countries". You know that the Netherlands are famous for windmills, right? Well, those aren't all mills. Many are wind pumps, which were used to drain the land, most of which is below sea level.
The Dutch don't have land that is porous like a sponge underneath them. Large areas of Florida have limestone bedrock that leaks like a sieve.
WUWT? ROTFLMAO! Btw, here's the latest plot from your original source at sealevel.colorado.edu of data extended to 2016: Sea level from 1993 (seasonal signals removed). I don't see any signs of a slow down. You can try to say it slowed down a bit from 2003 - 2011 as the WUWT article did but 2011 is a cherry pick because of the large dip that year. The 2011 dip btw was due to a strong La Nina that year that brought an excessive amount of rain to some areas which took a couple of years to drain back out to the sea.
Whatever. The SS Trust Fund still has a positive balance and is expected to last until at least 2030. If the Federal government reneges on that obligation it isn't going to be pretty.
So I charted the data you cited and it doesn't look like it's slowing down to me. A linear trend line through the data shows about 3.3 mm/year of rise which would be 330 mm in 100 years. A recently published study found that over the last 2800 years the fastest sea level rise (until the last 150 years) was around 30 or 40 mm/century and sea level didn't get more than 76 mm above or below the 2000 year average.
What puzzles me about the economics of solar and wind is how solar and wind can cost so much even though they have minimal running costs. That is, all the cost of solar and wind is fixed cost (plus maintenance); there is no recurring fuel cost.
Partly it's a matter of economy of scale. Fossil fuel power has been around for over a century and has been well developed in that time. Serious solar and wind have been around for a little more than a decade and are just getting going. Look at how far the cost has dropped for both in the past decade and they continue to drop as the scale of production ramps up.
Actually the founding fathers were so against a standing army that they required the Congress to reauthorize expenditures for it every new Congress (2 years). Social Security and Medicare are not welfare but self funding insurance programs. Any one who earns wages contributes to the fund with the expectation they will get their part of it when their time comes.
So now you simply need to provide the data you say proves that Greenland was regional only. It should be easy for you, right? opinions don't count, only data.
The PAGES 2K study on "Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two milennia" seems to be the most comprehensive round up of the science. Here is a PDF copy of the paper.
Of course I know about the Hockey Stick graph (which has been confirmed by more than a dozen similar studies done since it first came out). What does that have to do with your claim that Mann and others are saying there is no natural warming for the last 1000 or 2000 years? The Hockey Stick graph clearly shows that it was warmer 1000 years ago and was gradually cooling until the recent sharp uptick in temperatures.
If you zoom in on the Danish graph it appears that the peak for 2015 was about 2 weeks before the current peak for 2016. It looks like the 2015 peak could be slightly higher than the 2016 peak but it's impossible to tell without looking at the actual numbers. For all practical purposes it's a tie and will remain so unless there is significant freezing in the next few weeks.
Practically no one ever predicted Arctic summer sea ice would be gone by 2015. Certainly not the IPCC which puts it in the 2040s or later last I heard. In 2007 there was some speculation that if the rate of loss continued it could be gone by 2015 but if you asked actual cryologists about they would have laughed. So your claim that Arctic sea ice not being melted out by 2015 is a failed prediction of AGW is just a straw man.
Wow, I don't have a clue how you could claim that AGW proponents and Michael Mann have said there is no natural warming for the last x amount of years. I've never read anything like that from him/them.
Yes, in the long run the quantity of most interest in the Arctic is the summer sea ice minimum but generally the Arctic sea ice hits its maximum extent in February/March. 2016 is threatening to set a new record for the lowest maximum extent on record. Here's the report.
Here is some data that many people don't know about. We *expect* to see natural warming as the planet climbs out of the Little Ice Age. This is corroborated by the fact that surface is warming faster than the lower tropical troposphere - which is *opposite* to the specific hypothesis of AGW. http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com... [amazonaws.com]
You present a graph for one spot, the GISP2 ice core at the summit of Greenland, that ends over 160 years ago in 1855 and think that means something globally today. I wonder how it would look if you added in the temperatures since 1855? Also the time scale is not even. The further back you get the more is compresses the graph horizontally which could be a bit misleading.
Is the Arctic summer ice cap disappearing? no, after a low in 2012 it is recovering
I looks like 2016 will set a new record for the lowest maximum ice extent unless there is a big freeze up in the next few weeks.
The difference between predicting the weather and the climate is that predicting weather is an initial values problem. Given the current conditions how do we expect them to evolve over some period of time? Weather prediction pretty much breaks down by 10 days out.
Climate prediction on the other hand is a boundary values problem. Given the current situation and expected future inputs what is the expected boundaries that weather will vary within? Climate models don't predict the expected weather at some point in the future, just the boundaries it will fall within.
This El Nino was actually weaker than the 1998 event, but the recent winter was still warmer, suggesting the record temperatures have their source elsewhere.
Here's a story that has a chart of temperature trends since 1965 breaking them out for El Nino, ENSO neutral and La Nina years (also showing years with major volcanic eruptions). The temperature trend is upwards in all 3 categories and similar to the general warming trend. The chart doesn't include the current El Nino but it would be above the El Nino trend line.
So El Nino/ENSO is just a cycle that happens on top of the general temperature trend without affecting it much.
El Nino conditions typically last about a year more or less. The current strong El Nino came into being between March and May of 2015 and is expected to peter out by May/June 2016. So by next fall/winter the El Nino will almost certainly be gone and we'll be in ENSO neutral conditions or possibly La Nina conditions.
It's impossible to say where an electron comes from once it gets on the grid but if the utilities are not paying any coal power plants for their power they are in effect not using coal power because they've bought enough power from non-coal sources that goes to the the grid is more than enough to satisfy Oregon's needs. If that non-coal power produced electron goes somewhere else the effect is still the same.
What the legislation does is force the electrical utilities in the state (primarily Pacific Power and Portland General Electric) to not buy coal power from plants outside of the state (mostly from Montana). The electrical utilities are on board with this because they faced a ballot measure in the fall that would have forced them off of coal power even faster than this legislation. The legislation was a compromise negotiated by the electrical utilities and environmentalists to head off the ballot measure.
Actually Oregon doesn't have any significant and economically viable coal deposits. A small coal seam on the south coast near Coos Bay is the only one I'm aware of.
There aren't a lot of places in Oregon to build significant new sources of hydro power. The Columbia river is dammed from tidewater at Bonneville Dam to the Oregon border. I guess you could put another dam in Hells Canyon or on the Deschutes River but that's not politically viable.
BTW, the 4 dams along the Columbia River in Oregon are run of the river dams that are not very useful for peaking load. If they don't run the water through the generators they have to spill it to keep the reservoirs from overflowing.
The Boardman Coal Plant in Oregon was scheduled to close by 2020 before this legislation. Most of the coal energy used in Oregon is imported from coal plants in Montana.
Did you know we exhale between 1.5 and 2 tons of CO2 every year? A mere 5% of that from burnt fuel, but let's all do our part, eh? A little less of this 'fitness' nonsense with all the heavy breathing. Besides, you're probably driving to the gym, so you'll be saving even more. Do the planet a favor, watch the game on TV and take a nap.
Ah, a zombie argument that never dies. The 1.5-2 tons of CO2 a person exhales every year comes from CO2 that plants inhaled the year before (approximately). The net effect on CO2 levels is zero. Now it's true that a lot of fossil fuel CO2 gets emitted in the production and delivery of food but that doesn't directly affect the CO2 you exhale.
One of the big reasons that the debt "exploded" under Obama is that the Bush administration used accounting tricks to keep the cost of Afghanistan/Iraq off the books until Obama decided it was time to be honest about it. That plus the great recession he was handed upon entering office.
I don't know if the deficit has come down at a record rate under Obama but he certainly has reduced the deficit from where he started. Here is a post by David Brin that shows how the rate of increase in the national debt increases under Republican administrations and drops under Democratic administrations, at least since Nixon:
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, at some point it's a losing proposition. When sea level rises enough that NOLA gets cut off from overland routes for highway and rail it will be time to move to another port up river. I think that's probably something like 100 years away.
1) Hurricanes have actually been at a record minimum for the last several years with very few severe hurricanes developing.
Only if you count hurricanes that hit the US mainland. 2015 was a record year for hurricanes, typhoons and tropical cyclones globally.
BTW $1.40/liter = $5.30/gallon.
One of the main reasons to pay for reconstruction in New Orleans is that it is a major port at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The amount of commerce passing through that port is huge.
The issue for Miami is even if they build levees and seawalls the water will just rise up from below through the porous limestone bedrock below them. When Miami brought in Dutch engineers their suggestion was floating islands.
May I suggest you start talking to the Dutch. Their language sounds like a mix of German, English and a throat infection, but I assure you, they all understand and speak English excellently. The name "Netherlands" means "lower countries". You know that the Netherlands are famous for windmills, right? Well, those aren't all mills. Many are wind pumps, which were used to drain the land, most of which is below sea level.
The Dutch don't have land that is porous like a sponge underneath them. Large areas of Florida have limestone bedrock that leaks like a sieve.
WUWT? ROTFLMAO! Btw, here's the latest plot from your original source at sealevel.colorado.edu of data extended to 2016: Sea level from 1993 (seasonal signals removed). I don't see any signs of a slow down. You can try to say it slowed down a bit from 2003 - 2011 as the WUWT article did but 2011 is a cherry pick because of the large dip that year. The 2011 dip btw was due to a strong La Nina that year that brought an excessive amount of rain to some areas which took a couple of years to drain back out to the sea.
Whatever. The SS Trust Fund still has a positive balance and is expected to last until at least 2030. If the Federal government reneges on that obligation it isn't going to be pretty.
So I charted the data you cited and it doesn't look like it's slowing down to me. A linear trend line through the data shows about 3.3 mm/year of rise which would be 330 mm in 100 years. A recently published study found that over the last 2800 years the fastest sea level rise (until the last 150 years) was around 30 or 40 mm/century and sea level didn't get more than 76 mm above or below the 2000 year average.
What puzzles me about the economics of solar and wind is how solar and wind can cost so much even though they have minimal running costs. That is, all the cost of solar and wind is fixed cost (plus maintenance); there is no recurring fuel cost.
Partly it's a matter of economy of scale. Fossil fuel power has been around for over a century and has been well developed in that time. Serious solar and wind have been around for a little more than a decade and are just getting going. Look at how far the cost has dropped for both in the past decade and they continue to drop as the scale of production ramps up.
Actually the founding fathers were so against a standing army that they required the Congress to reauthorize expenditures for it every new Congress (2 years). Social Security and Medicare are not welfare but self funding insurance programs. Any one who earns wages contributes to the fund with the expectation they will get their part of it when their time comes.
So now you simply need to provide the data you say proves that Greenland was regional only. It should be easy for you, right? opinions don't count, only data.
The PAGES 2K study on "Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two milennia" seems to be the most comprehensive round up of the science. Here is a PDF copy of the paper.
Of course I know about the Hockey Stick graph (which has been confirmed by more than a dozen similar studies done since it first came out). What does that have to do with your claim that Mann and others are saying there is no natural warming for the last 1000 or 2000 years? The Hockey Stick graph clearly shows that it was warmer 1000 years ago and was gradually cooling until the recent sharp uptick in temperatures.
If you zoom in on the Danish graph it appears that the peak for 2015 was about 2 weeks before the current peak for 2016. It looks like the 2015 peak could be slightly higher than the 2016 peak but it's impossible to tell without looking at the actual numbers. For all practical purposes it's a tie and will remain so unless there is significant freezing in the next few weeks.
Practically no one ever predicted Arctic summer sea ice would be gone by 2015. Certainly not the IPCC which puts it in the 2040s or later last I heard. In 2007 there was some speculation that if the rate of loss continued it could be gone by 2015 but if you asked actual cryologists about they would have laughed. So your claim that Arctic sea ice not being melted out by 2015 is a failed prediction of AGW is just a straw man.
So show us some of that stalactite data too.
Wow, I don't have a clue how you could claim that AGW proponents and Michael Mann have said there is no natural warming for the last x amount of years. I've never read anything like that from him/them.
Yes, in the long run the quantity of most interest in the Arctic is the summer sea ice minimum but generally the Arctic sea ice hits its maximum extent in February/March. 2016 is threatening to set a new record for the lowest maximum extent on record. Here's the report.
Here is some data that many people don't know about. We *expect* to see natural warming as the planet climbs out of the Little Ice Age. This is corroborated by the fact that surface is warming faster than the lower tropical troposphere - which is *opposite* to the specific hypothesis of AGW.
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com... [amazonaws.com]
You present a graph for one spot, the GISP2 ice core at the summit of Greenland, that ends over 160 years ago in 1855 and think that means something globally today. I wonder how it would look if you added in the temperatures since 1855? Also the time scale is not even. The further back you get the more is compresses the graph horizontally which could be a bit misleading.
Is the Arctic summer ice cap disappearing? no, after a low in 2012 it is recovering
I looks like 2016 will set a new record for the lowest maximum ice extent unless there is a big freeze up in the next few weeks.
Of course even UAH has set new records this past month.
The difference between predicting the weather and the climate is that predicting weather is an initial values problem. Given the current conditions how do we expect them to evolve over some period of time? Weather prediction pretty much breaks down by 10 days out.
Climate prediction on the other hand is a boundary values problem. Given the current situation and expected future inputs what is the expected boundaries that weather will vary within? Climate models don't predict the expected weather at some point in the future, just the boundaries it will fall within.
This El Nino was actually weaker than the 1998 event, but the recent winter was still warmer, suggesting the record temperatures have their source elsewhere.
Here's a story that has a chart of temperature trends since 1965 breaking them out for El Nino, ENSO neutral and La Nina years (also showing years with major volcanic eruptions). The temperature trend is upwards in all 3 categories and similar to the general warming trend. The chart doesn't include the current El Nino but it would be above the El Nino trend line.
So El Nino/ENSO is just a cycle that happens on top of the general temperature trend without affecting it much.
El Nino conditions typically last about a year more or less. The current strong El Nino came into being between March and May of 2015 and is expected to peter out by May/June 2016. So by next fall/winter the El Nino will almost certainly be gone and we'll be in ENSO neutral conditions or possibly La Nina conditions.
It's impossible to say where an electron comes from once it gets on the grid but if the utilities are not paying any coal power plants for their power they are in effect not using coal power because they've bought enough power from non-coal sources that goes to the the grid is more than enough to satisfy Oregon's needs. If that non-coal power produced electron goes somewhere else the effect is still the same.
What the legislation does is force the electrical utilities in the state (primarily Pacific Power and Portland General Electric) to not buy coal power from plants outside of the state (mostly from Montana). The electrical utilities are on board with this because they faced a ballot measure in the fall that would have forced them off of coal power even faster than this legislation. The legislation was a compromise negotiated by the electrical utilities and environmentalists to head off the ballot measure.
Actually Oregon doesn't have any significant and economically viable coal deposits. A small coal seam on the south coast near Coos Bay is the only one I'm aware of.
There aren't a lot of places in Oregon to build significant new sources of hydro power. The Columbia river is dammed from tidewater at Bonneville Dam to the Oregon border. I guess you could put another dam in Hells Canyon or on the Deschutes River but that's not politically viable.
BTW, the 4 dams along the Columbia River in Oregon are run of the river dams that are not very useful for peaking load. If they don't run the water through the generators they have to spill it to keep the reservoirs from overflowing.
The Boardman Coal Plant in Oregon was scheduled to close by 2020 before this legislation. Most of the coal energy used in Oregon is imported from coal plants in Montana.
Did you know we exhale between 1.5 and 2 tons of CO2 every year? A mere 5% of that from burnt fuel, but let's all do our part, eh? A little less of this 'fitness' nonsense with all the heavy breathing. Besides, you're probably driving to the gym, so you'll be saving even more. Do the planet a favor, watch the game on TV and take a nap.
Ah, a zombie argument that never dies. The 1.5-2 tons of CO2 a person exhales every year comes from CO2 that plants inhaled the year before (approximately). The net effect on CO2 levels is zero. Now it's true that a lot of fossil fuel CO2 gets emitted in the production and delivery of food but that doesn't directly affect the CO2 you exhale.
One of the big reasons that the debt "exploded" under Obama is that the Bush administration used accounting tricks to keep the cost of Afghanistan/Iraq off the books until Obama decided it was time to be honest about it. That plus the great recession he was handed upon entering office.
I don't know if the deficit has come down at a record rate under Obama but he certainly has reduced the deficit from where he started. Here is a post by David Brin that shows how the rate of increase in the national debt increases under Republican administrations and drops under Democratic administrations, at least since Nixon:
So Do Outcomes Matter More than Rhetoric?