"I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a factor of TEN reduction in cost. After all, the raw materials are low grade silicon wafers and energy (which can be supplied by panels produced by the plant itself...)
As for land : I calculated that at 10% net efficiency, we would need a 200x200 mile area of Arizona to power the entire United States. That includes all the energy used for transportation, and losses used in spinning up energy accumulator devices. That land currently sits idle, and while is a lot of area, there's still plenty of Arizona left (I used google earth to check this)"
This is really irrelevant---200x200 miles is absolutely totally ginormous for any sort of engineered structure. Fly over Arizona, and look out the window of the plane. Then consider that absolutely EVERYTHING you can see in every direction must be totally covered with human-produced engineered stuff. That's totally crazy, and impossible. When you're looking out even over relatively populated areas the ratio of human-stuff to raw dirt is infinitesimal.
Consider: enormous cities built with large capital over decades to centuries (e.g. Los Angeles) aren't even that big. The huge sprawl of Phoenix is miniscule. Let's just start with getting a few solar panels on Phoenecians' homes. There are virtually none now.
With good manufacturing and breakthroughs---the marginal cost of solar will go down. But that marginal cost is computed at current or moderately increased production rates.
To satisfy these useless hypothetical computations (which really show how poor solar will be) the production would have to be so many orders of magnitude greater that you would induce huge and impossible bottlenecks that will increase the marginal cost, probably to infinity. The marginal cost per unit for intel to make 20 million microprocessors is more than making 100 million microprocessors.
Now, what is the marginal cost of making 20 quadrillion microprocessors per year, and getting there in 10 years? Smaller or larger?
Solar power will be 99% useless in doing anything to stop coal burning, which is the key villain in climate change and other nasty pollution. It's a diversion from unpleasant investment in large scale nuclear which could make a quantitative difference.
Of course, nuclear requires a small number of high-skill people and it must not be screwed up.
"Every such project, no matter how small, is that much less reliance needed on a fossil fuel-based plant somewhere."
Though slightly desirable, I think that this is mostly greenwashing so deflect criticism so that business as usual can continue. 40 MW isn't enough to seriously affect the large fortunes of the fossil fuel industries and the large subsidy.
What if you build a large project, with much less reliance of fossil fuel somewhere? One which would actually seriously reduce fossil use rather than just barely make a tiny dent in the future growth rate.
Modern nuclear reactors are 1100-1600 MWe, and you typically put two or three in a plant, and they're profitable at 3-4 c/kWh. 20-50 times the power capacity
You can say that this is good for 'solar research & development', which is true. But consider that people really have been working on solar for a long time and there aren't any serious objections---and yet still, it is so wimpy.
The reason is unfortunate reality of the laws of physics, not really a lack of R&D. It sucks but appears to be so.
We went from first demonstration of principle to commercially viable, utility-scale significant production in nuclear in about 15 years.
The notion that professional climate scientists have ignored solar forcing in estimating climate sensitivity is 100% false, and by now repeating it is slander.
By no means whatsoever have actual climatologists "forgotten" about the Sun since the earliest days of global warming studies in the 1960's and further. Of course popularizations ignore all the complexities but that's what they do.
The fact remains that by the best known observations and theory there is no way to explain the current observations WITHOUT major to dominant human greenhouse gas forcing.
There is no trend in solar activity observed or predicted which either explains recent past observations or will in any way nullify the clear and significant effect from greenhouse gas forcing. That depends on very predictable laws of physics, not statistical correlations.
And if the Sun does happen to be in an upswing in output, then that will just make the climate change we are causing that much worse. Since the upper extremes of events and risks are the greatest danger, any uncertainty in solar forcing adds to the variance in future forecasts, and not the mean. This means that doing something about the thing we can do something about is ever more urgent.
CBC News had a great article on Capturing Carbon. The idea is to capture CO2 from coal and gas plants and pipe it across country to locations where we can pump it into the ground.
What make anybody think it is going to stay in the ground, and for long enough to matter?
People still batshit about putting a few hundred caskets of solidified, vitrified fission waste into a highly engineered and monitored hole in the ground which might possibly have a tiny chance of leaking over 20,000 years as proven by enormous studies.
And now you are going to just shove a GAS in the ground and what, hope, it doesn't just come right out in a few years?
Large scale CO2 seqestration is imaginary technology. You might as well ask for warp-drive, free vacuum energy and a unicorn pony.
"Basically, we're screwed on a quick fix until someone bio-engineers us some quick growing trees that sequester so much carbon that they're shiny."
Even then they'll die and be turned into lumber and wood chips which will, of course decay and re-release much of its carbon as CO2.
"The best solution is to reduce our output of carbon, and allow the carbon cycle to re-balance itself."
The solution is to reduce output of fossilized carbon, because that is what is unbalanced.
I'm not sure about this but I believe that the fossil carbon in the ground (coal) came from a time of Earth's evolution before bacteria had evolved the ability to metabolize cellulose and lignins.
Obviously, bacteria can do this today. They live in bioreactors called "cows". We aren't ever going to unevolve these organisms and so no amount of re-forestation or biological planting is going to change the long-term carbon balance. We just have to leave the carbon in the ground where is, unmolested. There's no other choice.
The problem is that when the trees die, they decay and release the carbon in them back into the atmosphere as CO2. There is a slight drop as the trees grow, but it is only temporary.
Only if you can bury the trees somehow in a way that will be safe from decay over geological time, thereby making new fossil fuels for some future aeon, will it have any significant effect.
The most effective way is to stop coal mining, making it a death penalty crime against humanity.
For 90% of people, it's doing very well. The point is that despite very strong social welfare and taxes the standard of living between Sweden and USA isn't that different over decades, despite the right wing propaganda which would have you think it would descend into a hell-hole. And many nations without realistic social welfare and taxes are still very unequal crime-ridden hellholes.
"My point is that in a capitalist society, it is the rich that drive the economy. It is the rich that employ people and buy products. Granted, Paris Hilton doesn't need another yacht, but I'm sure the workers at the shipyard where that yacht is made will disagree."
Indeed, in a slaveowning society, it is the slaveowners that drive the economy. It's a trivial truism that the ones with the money govern demand. That's the entire point of the argument: a different distribution of wealth, and you have different people's demands being met.
"Granted, Paris Hilton doesn't need another yacht, but I'm sure the workers at the shipyard where that yacht is made will disagree."
At one point, shipbuilders made moderate boats for masses which some of them could afford to play with in the summer.
Original EPA efficiency figures. Very inflated due to ideal conditions on an unrealistic test.
Current EPA practice: put a downward "fudge factor" on the numbers which go on the sticker.
Future EPA practice: an actually better and more realistic test.
CAFE fuel economy requirements: use only the very first figures, which are even more inflated than currently reported figures, which are again more inflated than an authentic test which will be forthcoming.
Why? It's the law.
ah, so real scientists are too expensive
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and we should rely on hobbyists?
Imagine a group of kids that are building robots that can help deal with IED's?
Why, we can have them read your CAT scan too when you get brain cancer.
iRobot robots weren't designed by hobbyists---iRobot was founded by a PhD robotics engineer and got millions of dollars in venture funding and DARPA type of contracts, and had to pay lots of smart people money to do serious things as part of their full time job.
Okay, that sounds optimistic, but there are many hobbyists in North America that are not creating world class projects for the simple lack of funding.
Maybe, but I know for a fact there are many professional researchers and engineers that are not creating world class projects for the simple lack of funding, and the chance that giving funding to one of those will probably work better than giving it to a hobbyist is lower bounded by 97%. Hobbyists often have delusions about what is 'world-class projects'.
Billionaire hobbyists (Elon Musk) may be useful in spending money on people to make their dreams work but the billionaire part of it is the critical element.
How many hobbyists are doing molecular biology cancer research that makes a serious difference?
The limitation on crops in almost all of the world is the problem of too little (or occasionally too much) H2O, not CO2.
For agricultural production, snowfall which then melts in a conveniently moderate flow is the best thing for irrigation. Global warming will cause less snowpack, and result in more extreme storms (more energy in the atmosphere) both of which will be detrimental towards agriculture.
Consider also that plants and crop pattenrs have been optimized for the past climate. If climate changes, it is a good assumption that those optimizations will be invalidated---and usually that means worse, overall.
I would want to see more testable predictions made and verified before we start throwing our economy in a tizzy.
The testable predictions were made starting in the mid-late 80's. They were tested, and verified. Current observed data backs up their primary predictions. Our understanding is greater now. Denalists will continue to use the "we need more predictions made" until it is literally too late, and then they will say, 'oh well it's too late', without the slightest bit of guilt.
I think we can help things without "throwing our economy into a tizzy". It is unwise to deny the potential harm however and the expense of that harm.
"Man's carelessness and wanton capitalist greed is destroying the Earth, and we must rebuild or remake all of society now before the fuzzy bunny rabbits and cute black and white penguins all die."
Correct rewriting;
"Man's carelessness and wanton capitalist greed is modifying the Earth, and we must rebuild or remake all of society before capitalist civilizations all dies."
More specfically, Columbus bent the truth to please his funding agency, but in his own mind he knew the scientfic consensus, which was close to correct about the Earth's circumfrence.
He had some hidden goal he might actually discover something, but that non-renumerative adventure wouldn't have gotten funding.
The fact is that even the evidence that shows we are undergoing a warming trend fails to demonstrate that this is a long term warming trend, that the warming trend is man-made, or that green-house gasses have had an impact on the temperature change. The argument is usually along the lines "We have demonstrated that the Earth's temperature has risen 1 degree in the past 100 years, and at the same time man-made green house gasses have increased 10 times so the impact from man made greenhouse gasses is." In many cases you could replace "Increase in Man made greenhouse gasses" with "Reduction in Pirates" and conclude that the world is warming because we lack pirates.
In a word, this is "bullshit".
The argument for climate change and human influence thereof is not remotely based on that sort of juvenile argument. Asserting so is now getting to be a dangerous libel. Would people make similar assertions about the results of biochemistry over the last 30 years? No. Would Slashdot writers make similar assertions about how those engineers were just fooling themselves about how semiconductors worked?
The discussion and investigation of physical mechanism, has been and always will be the primary study in climatology. Geoscience existed before global warming became prominent. Was that all just random superficial correlationist baloney?
Why do people casually make assertions about the operation of intensive climate study based on physics, and observations, by professionals who devote their lives to it, over decades?
All I can guess is that they really don't like the answer. I don't like the answer either, but I'm willing to deal with it.
Please, start looking seriously into this if you have doubts.
You will find major study of mechanism and details and things you would never have imagined.
Pollution has "economic externalities" --- meaning that general people end up paying for the cost for something that benefits a few, and this cost is not included in the financial explicit cost.
To be blunt, having to do something about global warming gets in the way of a few people making lots of money at the expense of many others and future generations of them.
This is known as "selfishness".
How can this obvious self-serving ideology be ignored when pointing out the "watermelon environmentalist" ideology?
Economic externalities cannot be resolved without some collective decision to do so, because otherwise there is a tremendous "free-rider" problem.
The right may dislike this, but it is the truth.
When the right looks at what the environmentalist movement advocates, it looks an awful lot like centralized control of the economy.
When it comes to alleviating environmental externalities, some is inevitable and impossible otherwise. The environmentalists were right about other forms of pollution---human health in cities is significantly improved as a consequence of their actions, which were bitterly opposed by the right at the time, using identical arguments.
Why not cut off the catalytic converters and put lead back into the gasoline?
How is it different from centralized control of law and order? The task then is to monitor the collective decisions to ensure they are the best available mechanisms to solve the relevant problems.
Planck of course, like Einstein, fully accepted quantum mechanics as the theory and especially convincing experimental progress evolved.
Planck was involved in modern physics of the time throughout his life.
(Also Einstein didn't reject quantum mechanics in itself---he rejected the Copenhagen Interpretation as inconsistent mumbo-jumbo. Modern physics actually says the same {"decoherence" is currently the preferred option}, even though Copenhagen makes the right predictions in most experimentally relevant cases. The specific proposals Einstein made in QM turned out to not be true, but the experimental evidence was not available until after Einstein's death. Had Einstein lived, he surely would have changed his theories.)
I know he didn't even believe in quantum mechanics and tried for the remainder of his life to somehow reconcile his discoveries with classical mechanics, which turned out to be impossible.
Except for that wee little thing called the Bohr correspondence principle?
The reality of the physics was that quantum mechanics and classical mechanics were successfully reconciled; large quantum number limits go to known classical mechanics.
Maxwell's equations remain fully valid in their regimes and the eventual successful unification of electromagnetic fields as a quantum-mechanical phenomenon as quantum optics and later quantum electrodynamics was successfully accomplished. So, contrary to Planck's initial fear, Maxwell was not thrown out at all.
Notice that in 1905 this theory was not fully available. By the 1930's most of it was. There were both photons (excitation of the creation operator on vacuum E&M fields) and Maxwell's equations in it in their own way.
So, these guys are working and living in what amounts to a left-wing echo chamber and anti-industrial environmentalism is a core tenet of modern leftist orthodoxy. People working in that enviornment can not help but have a certain amount of cultural bias. As in most social environments, there is great pressure to conform. I do not doubt that in some cases, non-conforming academics have been ostracized as cretins or kooks, denied tenure, and passed up for promotion. So it is not surprising that a "majority of scientists" would land of the left-wing side of any particular debate, given the implications of being on the "wrong" side.
I guess it really must be true: "reality has a left-wing bias."
But seriously, physics isn't postmodern critical theory, and people working at Los Alamos National Laboratory are not crazed anarchists.
And what about the "cultural bias" which appears to infect the 'intellectual-critizizing' right wing chattering classes? Cultural bias at Exxon Mobil, Fox News is perfectly "A-OK"? Just to negate the supposed "bias" over there?
And what about those scientists who do have tenure? Why don't you suddenly see tons of them flip to the climate denial side once they have a secure job?
If you have a non-conforming academic chemist who didn't believe in atoms, should he be ostracized? Yes, because there isn't good evidence for believing that atoms are a left-wing conspiracy.
When somebody says "science is on our side", I basically evaluate it the same as if they said "the statistics are on our side" (especially if its based on statistical or computer models instead of "hard science" that is reproducable in the lab).
That's really foolish.
When somebody says, "the majority of scientists" are on our side, they are just using a logical fallacy - appeal to authority.
An appeal to authority is not a prima facie logical fallacy, if the authorities are authoritative for good reasons.
If a "majority of doctors" say that it is your heart which pumps blood, not your gall bladder, is that a product of left-wing pleasure-hating anti-McDonalds anti-capitalist-food pro-vegan haters? Does some celebrity poohbah with an infomercial touting organic-bean-sprout enemas have equal value to the New England Journal of Medicine in deciding the value of health treatments? No rightwing person would think so, but that's the equivalent here.
Bizzarely and ironically enough this sort of argument is similar to a few nutty post-modernists in the leftist critical theory departments who seem willing to abandon any pretense of "fact".
When people decide to deny the results of the historically best proven way to discern useful facts about our universe because they have an illusory idea of some supposed political bias which is continuously harming truth, perhaps that's a foolish bias on their own.
The extent of it that can be blamed on man versus natural climatic cycles is debatable.
This is what people study. The answer is pretty clear that human influence is the dominant factor and will likely get larger. "natural climactic cycles" have physics to them. You can't assume away something which magically explains past observations which somehow simulate exactly anthropogenic climate change and then suppose another magic phenomenon which negates the observed effect of IR emissivity in the atmosphere.
There probably is an anti-industrial environmental bias built into most climatic studies conducted at any university or government institutions. All claims should be filtered and evaluated with that in mind.
So you asserting that you can use your own admitted politically oriented opinion about the supposed political influences of these scientists and thereby negate their opinions?
So your "political opinion" plus no facts somehow equals their supposed political opinion plus decades of hard work, study, and specific detailed investigation based on the best knowledge of science.
I think the key problem with climate change reporting is that it's portrayed as a "you're with us or with them" point of view and if you don't believe the popular dogma, you're one of "them". The problem is, there isn't only one question. Besides the "is it real?" and "are we responsible?" questions, there's also:
* If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?
* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)
* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).
Unfortunately, the issue has become so politicized that these other more important questions are being drowned out or viewed as "avoiding the real issue" by the dogmatists.
No, those questions are exactly what the professional climatology community studies, and have been studying for decades. They've been studying many other more obscure problems as well that influence this issue. Trust me, they have thought of thousands of more complications than any layman or writer is going to know about, and have investigated them.
Here is the current state of the known science with respect to the above questions:
1) "If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?"
The current evidence and knowledge of physics shows climate change which cannot be explained by factors which exclude the dominant forcing of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. This result stands intensive probing in theory and experiment.
There is one point which laymen do not understand: A "natural" cycle of various means must have its own mechanism You cannot posit a "flying spaghetti monster" theory of a natural cycle without observed evidence, physical law, and scientific reasoning. Natural "cycles" have physical causes and consequences which we would have observed with modern science. Furthermore, these "other explanations" would have to somehow "turn off" the known physics of infrared radiation which is a rock-solid lab-based physical reality, and directly observed in situ. To summarize the most prominent 'other' explanations: (a) no it isn't volcanoes, they don't emit enough CO2 to be responsible for the CO2 we observe, and there is no evidence that volcanism is suddenly on the upswing. And in any case, our tailpipes and smokestacks don't have invisible devices to catch the CO2. (b) No it isn't the Sun suddenly getting brighter---we have measured the sun for a while now, best guess is that is could be responsible for 10-15% of the effects. Observed patterns of atmospheric temperature change (troposphere warming, stratosphere cooling) is compatible with the change in greenhouse effect, not solar brightening (both would warm). (c) Cosmic rays. This is another new hypothesis---it may have a bit of an effect which is not understood in magnitude and direction but again there isn't evidence it is resposnible for climate change and yet nullifies the effect of CO2 from humans.
2) "If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)"
Urban heat islands are not global warming, their effect on the instrumental record has been known and accounted for in the good data sets. Other effects are linked in to the climate cycle and so the real issue in climatology is in es
The intent was to get NASA out of the launch services business and by implication they should not be doing design of launch service since to do so usurps the role of the private sector in risk management. Designing an entire launch vehicle is such a large part of designing a launch service that it simply isn't reasonable to allow NASA to do so.
If the rocket blows up and kills astronauts, it will be NASA's neck which gets chopped, not Lockmart's. Their optimal "risk management" strategy is to transfer risk to taxpayer and agency, and profit to themselves.
Realistically, nobody except the Russian organization has experience in making rockets this large for human flight. This is not a wide-open competitive market.
Private enterprise is not a magic spray which automagically makes hard engineering problems easy.
Remember the Mars probe which was lost because of a "units problem" in the guidance? That was because some of the operation was outsourced to a large aerospace contractor in some Congressdroid's district, and this contractor put a fresh out of college person on this critical task, and internally they were still using imperial units.
By contrast, the prior Pathfinder mission, and the subsequent Mars Exploration Rover missions were done mostly at JPL with strong academic partners. They worked very well.
For a more balanced and skeptical look at them (as well as the fact that a number of years ago they predicted no more than $40 oil for decades), see these from a good blog on oil (unlike Slashdot):
The essential problem behind Peak Oil is that the existing oil fields, which are large and supplied a major amount of oil, have natural decline rates.
In order to increase production overall you have to find all this new exotic oil (which is very expensive to extract) and make enough not only to make up for the natural decline rate but also add some more.
That is very unrealistic by many people's estimation.
Also, even if it were possible, it also means that the new oil will continue to be very expensive---because if it weren't expensive, then all those technologies for oil extraction from difficult locations (deep sea ocean, arctic, oil sands) wouldn't be worth it. So, even if there is more oil in a molecular sense, it will get ever more expensive and difficult to get. That is the core take-away message of Peak Oil, and it is essentially irrefutable.
Think about it this way. If you go looking for oil, the first things you will find are the really big oil fields that are easy to get at. It is an obvious fact.
Don't confuse the addition of "reserves" in the past---those were very conservatively defined if they were part of western oil companies---as the proven reserves in the able-to-report-it-on-the-balance-sheet is a regulatory issue, not a geophysically oriented good estimation of what's out there.
The geophysics has changed in the last 5-10 years, and the fundamental rate of major new oil discovery in feasible locations has globally declined.
Indeed it is a heated debate topic, but the core topics of that debate differs very significantly among climate scientists versus the general public and media.
The latter talk about crap and make many assertions---almost always reducing human-induced effects by large degrees without scientific justification---often asserting that their doubt of some random factor or another trumps the well-considered and deep experimental and theoretical evidence from professionals in the field.
The existence of naturally observed causes for physical climate change does NOT rule out human-induced causes in any posssible way.
All it does is point to a starting place for understanding the underlying physical mechanism.
Everything you discuss has been known by actual climate scientists for decades upon decades.
Consider yourself as an electrical engineer: It would be like observing "gee when I move my magnet there are induced EMFs" (true) and then going from that to being skeptical about elementary, and professionally-established, facts regarding the fundamental physics of all sorts of classes of transistors which have been professionally studied in laboratories for decades.
The answer, "yes those people who make the transistor models do happen to have heard about Faraday's laws and can say whether some effect is important or not or explains the working of the transistor."
Also, how do you explain huge ice ages on Earth? Were thse caused by huge carbon emissions or was it a small natural climate cycle that just happens?
complicated answer, but best belief is that there are astrophysical and other forcings which can start warming and then there are feedback loops which amplify greenhouse gas emissions. This is bad for current climate change because human induced forcing could end up being multiplied to a large degree.
Were those climate changes, which are no doubt more extreme than what's going on now, caused by the combustion engine?
No.
Does the existence of naturally occurring lightning in any way debunk the theories of physical causality in transistors? No electrical engineer imagines so. What they care about is of course the underlying physical principles of electromagnetism in in natural and engineered systems and these predict behavior. This is of course the right way to proceed.
Why is it that when it comes to climate, and pretty much climate alone among scientific subjects, the equivalent sort of incomprehensible "arguments" or "skepticism" against the professional understanding of climate scientists come up?
So, the people who are against Kyoto would support a far more strict treaty which included emerging markets and science-based cutbacks on greenhouse gases (which would be far harsher than Kyoto)?
Sure. And monkeys might fly out of my butt.
By the way, keep in mind that existing Western industrial civilization has a large head start in infrastructure generated by cheap fossil fuel burning without regard to atmospheric consequences.
Slashdot Mirror
"I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a factor of TEN reduction in cost. After all, the raw materials are low grade silicon wafers and energy (which can be supplied by panels produced by the plant itself...)
As for land : I calculated that at 10% net efficiency, we would need a 200x200 mile area of Arizona to power the entire United States. That includes all the energy used for transportation, and losses used in spinning up energy accumulator devices. That land currently sits idle, and while is a lot of area, there's still plenty of Arizona left (I used google earth to check this)"
This is really irrelevant---200x200 miles is absolutely totally ginormous for any sort of engineered structure.
Fly over Arizona, and look out the window of the plane. Then consider that absolutely EVERYTHING you can
see in every direction must be totally covered with human-produced engineered stuff. That's totally crazy, and impossible. When you're looking out even over relatively populated areas the ratio of human-stuff to raw dirt is infinitesimal.
Consider: enormous cities built with large capital over decades to centuries (e.g. Los Angeles) aren't even that big. The huge sprawl of Phoenix is miniscule. Let's just start with getting a few solar panels on Phoenecians' homes. There are virtually none now.
With good manufacturing and breakthroughs---the marginal cost of solar will go down. But that marginal cost is computed at current or moderately increased production rates.
To satisfy these useless hypothetical computations (which really show how poor solar will be) the production would have to be so many orders of magnitude greater that you would induce huge and impossible bottlenecks that will increase the marginal cost, probably to infinity. The marginal cost per unit for intel to make 20 million microprocessors is more than making 100 million microprocessors.
Now, what is the marginal cost of making 20 quadrillion microprocessors per year, and getting there in 10 years? Smaller or larger?
Solar power will be 99% useless in doing anything to stop coal burning, which is the key villain in climate change and other nasty pollution. It's a diversion from unpleasant investment in large scale nuclear which could make a quantitative difference.
Of course, nuclear requires a small number of high-skill people and it must not be screwed up.
"Every such project, no matter how small, is that much less reliance needed on a fossil fuel-based plant somewhere."
Though slightly desirable, I think that this is mostly greenwashing so deflect criticism so that
business as usual can continue. 40 MW isn't enough to seriously affect the large fortunes
of the fossil fuel industries and the large subsidy.
What if you build a large project, with much less reliance of fossil fuel somewhere?
One which would actually seriously reduce fossil use rather than just barely make a tiny
dent in the future growth rate.
Modern nuclear reactors are 1100-1600 MWe, and you typically put two or three in a plant,
and they're profitable at 3-4 c/kWh. 20-50 times the power capacity
You can say that this is good for 'solar research & development', which is true.
But consider that people really have been working on solar for a long time
and there aren't any serious objections---and yet still, it is so wimpy.
The reason is unfortunate reality of the laws of physics, not really a lack
of R&D. It sucks but appears to be so.
We went from first demonstration of principle to commercially viable, utility-scale
significant production in nuclear in about 15 years.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005 /07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/
4 /12/recent-warming-but-no-trend-in-galactic-cosmic -rays/
6 /10/how-not-to-attribute-climate-change/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200
The notion that professional climate scientists have ignored solar forcing in estimating climate sensitivity is 100% false, and by now repeating it is slander.
By no means whatsoever have actual climatologists "forgotten" about the Sun since the earliest days of global warming studies in the 1960's and further. Of course popularizations ignore all the complexities but that's what they do.
The fact remains that by the best known observations and theory there is no way to explain the current observations WITHOUT major to dominant human greenhouse gas forcing.
There is no trend in solar activity observed or predicted which either explains recent past observations or will in any way nullify the clear and significant effect from greenhouse gas forcing. That depends on very predictable laws of physics, not statistical correlations.
And if the Sun does happen to be in an upswing in output, then that will just make the climate change we are causing that much worse. Since the upper extremes of events and risks are the greatest danger, any uncertainty in solar forcing adds to the variance in future forecasts, and not the mean. This means that doing something about the thing we can do something about is ever more urgent.
CBC News had a great article on Capturing Carbon. The idea is to capture CO2 from coal and gas plants and pipe it across country to locations where we can pump it into the ground.
What make anybody think it is going to stay in the ground, and for long enough to matter?
People still batshit about putting a few hundred caskets of solidified, vitrified fission waste into a highly engineered and monitored hole in the ground which might possibly have a tiny chance of leaking over 20,000 years as proven by enormous studies.
And now you are going to just shove a GAS in the ground and what, hope, it doesn't just come right out in a few years?
Large scale CO2 seqestration is imaginary technology. You might as well ask for warp-drive, free vacuum energy and a unicorn pony.
"Basically, we're screwed on a quick fix until someone bio-engineers us some quick growing trees that sequester so much carbon that they're shiny."
Even then they'll die and be turned into lumber and wood chips which will, of course decay and re-release much of its carbon as CO2.
"The best solution is to reduce our output of carbon, and allow the carbon cycle to re-balance itself."
The solution is to reduce output of fossilized carbon, because that is what is unbalanced.
I'm not sure about this but I believe that the fossil carbon in the ground (coal) came from a time of Earth's evolution before bacteria had evolved the ability to metabolize cellulose and lignins.
Obviously, bacteria can do this today. They live in bioreactors called "cows". We aren't ever going to unevolve these organisms and so no amount of re-forestation or biological planting is going to change the long-term carbon balance. We just have to leave the carbon in the ground where is, unmolested. There's no other choice.
It is feel-good but mostly unscientific.
The problem is that when the trees die, they decay and release the carbon in them back into the atmosphere as CO2. There is a slight drop as the trees grow, but it is only temporary.
Only if you can bury the trees somehow in a way that will be safe from decay over geological time, thereby making new fossil fuels for some future aeon, will it have any significant effect.
The most effective way is to stop coal mining, making it a death penalty crime against humanity.
For 90% of people, it's doing very well. The point is that despite very strong
social welfare and taxes the standard of living between Sweden and USA isn't that different over
decades, despite the right wing propaganda which would have you think it would descend into
a hell-hole. And many nations without realistic social welfare and taxes are still very unequal
crime-ridden hellholes.
"My point is that in a capitalist society, it is the rich that drive the economy. It is the rich that employ people and buy products. Granted, Paris Hilton doesn't need another yacht, but I'm sure the workers at the shipyard where that yacht is made will disagree."
Indeed, in a slaveowning society, it is the slaveowners that drive the economy. It's a trivial truism that the ones with the money govern demand. That's the entire point of the argument: a different distribution of wealth, and you have different people's demands being met.
"Granted, Paris Hilton doesn't need another yacht, but I'm sure the workers at the shipyard where that yacht is made will disagree."
At one point, shipbuilders made moderate boats for masses which some of them could afford to play with in the summer.
That'[s the point.
Current procedure:
Original EPA efficiency figures. Very inflated due to ideal conditions on an unrealistic test.
Current EPA practice: put a downward "fudge factor" on the numbers which go on the sticker.
Future EPA practice: an actually better and more realistic test.
CAFE fuel economy requirements: use only the very first figures, which are even more inflated than
currently reported figures, which are again more inflated than an authentic test which will be forthcoming.
Why? It's the law.
and we should rely on hobbyists?
Imagine a group of kids that are building robots that can help deal with IED's?
Why, we can have them read your CAT scan too when you get brain cancer.
iRobot robots weren't designed by hobbyists---iRobot was founded by
a PhD robotics engineer and got millions of dollars in venture funding and
DARPA type of contracts, and had to pay lots of smart people money to do serious
things as part of their full time job.
Okay, that sounds optimistic, but there are many hobbyists in North America that are not creating world class projects for the simple lack of funding.
Maybe, but I know for a fact there are many professional researchers and engineers that are not creating world class projects for the simple lack of funding, and the chance that giving funding to one of those will probably work better than giving it to a hobbyist is lower bounded by 97%. Hobbyists often have delusions about what is 'world-class projects'.
Billionaire hobbyists (Elon Musk) may be useful in spending money on people to make their dreams work but the billionaire part of it is the critical element.
How many hobbyists are doing molecular biology cancer research that makes a serious difference?
The limitation on crops in almost all of the world is the problem of too little (or occasionally too much) H2O, not CO2.
For agricultural production, snowfall which then melts in a conveniently moderate flow is the best thing for irrigation. Global warming will cause less snowpack, and result in more extreme storms (more energy in the atmosphere) both of which will be detrimental towards agriculture.
Consider also that plants and crop pattenrs have been optimized for the past climate. If climate changes, it is a good assumption that those optimizations will be invalidated---and usually that means worse, overall.
I would want to see more testable predictions made and verified before we start throwing our economy in a tizzy.
The testable predictions were made starting in the mid-late 80's. They were tested, and verified. Current observed data backs up their primary predictions. Our understanding is greater now. Denalists will continue to use the "we need more predictions made" until it is literally too late, and then they will say, 'oh well it's too late', without the slightest bit of guilt.
I think we can help things without "throwing our economy into a tizzy". It is unwise to deny the potential harm however and the expense of that harm.
Monckton is a good example of pseudo-science.
6 /11/cuckoo-science/
He doesn't really understand the true issue at hand and uses extremely misleading data in other
places.
The U.N. didn't "cook the books".
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/200
"Man's carelessness and wanton capitalist greed is destroying the Earth, and we must rebuild or remake all of society now before the fuzzy bunny rabbits and cute black and white penguins all die."
Correct rewriting;
"Man's carelessness and wanton capitalist greed is modifying the Earth, and we must rebuild or remake all of society before capitalist civilizations all dies."
The Earth will be OK. We might not be.
More specfically, Columbus bent the truth to please his funding agency, but in his own mind he knew the scientfic consensus, which was close to correct about the Earth's circumfrence.
He had some hidden goal he might actually discover something, but that non-renumerative adventure wouldn't have gotten funding.
The fact is that even the evidence that shows we are undergoing a warming trend fails to demonstrate that this is a long term warming trend, that the warming trend is man-made, or that green-house gasses have had an impact on the temperature change. The argument is usually along the lines "We have demonstrated that the Earth's temperature has risen 1 degree in the past 100 years, and at the same time man-made green house gasses have increased 10 times so the impact from man made greenhouse gasses is ." In many cases you could replace "Increase in Man made greenhouse gasses" with "Reduction in Pirates" and conclude that the world is warming because we lack pirates.
In a word, this is "bullshit".
The argument for climate change and human influence thereof is not remotely based on that sort of juvenile argument.
Asserting so is now getting to be a dangerous libel.
Would people make similar assertions about the results of biochemistry over the last 30 years? No.
Would Slashdot writers make similar assertions about how those engineers were just fooling themselves
about how semiconductors worked?
The discussion and investigation of physical mechanism, has been and always will be the primary study in climatology. Geoscience existed before global warming became prominent. Was that all just random superficial correlationist baloney?
Why do people casually make assertions about the operation of intensive climate study based on physics, and observations, by professionals who devote their lives to it, over decades?
All I can guess is that they really don't like the answer. I don't like the answer either, but I'm willing to deal with it.
Please, start looking seriously into this if you have doubts.
You will find major study of mechanism and details and things you would never have imagined.
http://www.realclimate.org/
There's a reason for this.
Pollution has "economic externalities" --- meaning that general people end up paying for the cost for something that benefits a few, and this cost is not included in the financial explicit cost.
To be blunt, having to do something about global warming gets in the way of a few people making lots of money at the expense of many others and future generations of them.
This is known as "selfishness".
How can this obvious self-serving ideology be ignored when pointing out the "watermelon environmentalist" ideology?
Economic externalities cannot be resolved without some collective decision to do so, because otherwise there is a tremendous "free-rider" problem.
The right may dislike this, but it is the truth.
When the right looks at what the environmentalist movement advocates, it looks an awful lot like centralized control of the economy.
When it comes to alleviating environmental externalities, some is inevitable and impossible otherwise. The environmentalists were right about other forms of pollution---human health in cities is significantly improved as a consequence of their actions, which were bitterly opposed by the right at the time, using identical arguments.
Why not cut off the catalytic converters and put lead back into the gasoline?
How is it different from centralized control of law and order? The task then is to monitor the collective decisions to ensure they are the best available mechanisms to solve the relevant problems.
Planck of course, like Einstein, fully accepted quantum mechanics as the theory and especially convincing experimental progress evolved.
Planck was involved in modern physics of the time throughout his life.
(Also Einstein didn't reject quantum mechanics in itself---he rejected the Copenhagen Interpretation
as inconsistent mumbo-jumbo. Modern physics actually says the same {"decoherence" is currently the preferred option}, even though Copenhagen makes the right predictions in most experimentally relevant cases. The specific proposals Einstein made in QM turned out to not be true, but the experimental evidence was not available until after Einstein's death. Had Einstein lived, he surely would have changed his theories.)
I know he didn't even believe in quantum mechanics and tried for the remainder of his life to somehow reconcile his discoveries with classical mechanics, which turned out to be impossible.
Except for that wee little thing called the Bohr correspondence principle?
The reality of the physics was that quantum mechanics and classical mechanics were successfully reconciled; large quantum number limits go to known classical mechanics.
Maxwell's equations remain fully valid in their regimes and the eventual successful unification of electromagnetic fields as a quantum-mechanical phenomenon as quantum optics and later quantum electrodynamics was successfully accomplished. So, contrary to Planck's initial fear, Maxwell was not thrown out at all.
Notice that in 1905 this theory was not fully available. By the 1930's most of it was. There were both photons (excitation of the creation operator on vacuum E&M fields) and Maxwell's equations in it in their own way.
So, these guys are working and living in what amounts to a left-wing echo chamber and anti-industrial environmentalism is a core tenet of modern leftist orthodoxy. People working in that enviornment can not help but have a certain amount of cultural bias. As in most social environments, there is great pressure to conform. I do not doubt that in some cases, non-conforming academics have been ostracized as cretins or kooks, denied tenure, and passed up for promotion. So it is not surprising that a "majority of scientists" would land of the left-wing side of any particular debate, given the implications of being on the "wrong" side.
I guess it really must be true: "reality has a left-wing bias."
But seriously, physics isn't postmodern critical theory, and people working at Los Alamos National Laboratory are not crazed anarchists.
And what about the "cultural bias" which appears to infect the 'intellectual-critizizing' right wing chattering classes? Cultural bias at Exxon Mobil, Fox News is perfectly "A-OK"? Just to negate the supposed "bias" over there?
And what about those scientists who do have tenure? Why don't you suddenly see tons of them flip to the climate denial side once they have a secure job?
If you have a non-conforming academic chemist who didn't believe in atoms, should he be ostracized? Yes, because there isn't good evidence for believing that atoms are a left-wing conspiracy.
When somebody says "science is on our side", I basically evaluate it the same as if they said "the statistics are on our side" (especially if its based on statistical or computer models instead of "hard science" that is reproducable in the lab).
That's really foolish.
When somebody says, "the majority of scientists" are on our side, they are just using a logical fallacy - appeal to authority.
An appeal to authority is not a prima facie logical fallacy, if the authorities are authoritative for good reasons.
If a "majority of doctors" say that it is your heart which pumps blood, not your gall bladder, is that a product of left-wing pleasure-hating anti-McDonalds anti-capitalist-food pro-vegan haters? Does some celebrity poohbah with an infomercial touting organic-bean-sprout enemas have equal value to the New England Journal of Medicine in deciding the value of health treatments? No rightwing person would think so, but that's the equivalent here.
Bizzarely and ironically enough this sort of argument is similar to a few nutty post-modernists in the leftist critical theory departments who seem willing to abandon any pretense of "fact".
When people decide to deny the results of the historically best proven way to discern useful facts about our universe because they have an illusory idea of some supposed political bias which is continuously harming truth, perhaps that's a foolish bias on their own.
The extent of it that can be blamed on man versus natural climatic cycles is debatable.
This is what people study. The answer is pretty clear that human influence is the dominant factor and will likely get larger. "natural climactic cycles" have physics to them. You can't assume away something which magically explains past observations which somehow simulate exactly anthropogenic climate change and then suppose another magic phenomenon which negates the observed effect of IR emissivity in the atmosphere.
There probably is an anti-industrial environmental bias built into most climatic studies conducted at any university or government institutions. All claims should be filtered and evaluated with that in mind.
So you asserting that you can use your own admitted politically oriented opinion about the supposed political influences of these scientists and thereby negate their opinions?
So your "political opinion" plus no facts somehow equals their supposed political opinion plus decades of hard work, study, and specific detailed investigation based on the best knowledge of science.
Consensus of unconsidered and unexpert opinions is useless.
Consensus of thoughtful opinions derived from internally consistent
and self-checking scientific method is very powerful.
There is scientific consensus that
1) Molecules are made of atoms
2) Atoms are made of three kinds of stuff, electrons, protons and neutrons.
3) Light has electric and magnetic fields
In these issues, is "scientific consensus" important? You betcha.
How far would a "non-atomic theory of matter" chemist get? Would they
find it difficult to get grants? You betcha.
Would that be a good thing? You betcha.
I think the key problem with climate change reporting is that it's portrayed as a "you're with us or with them" point of view and if you don't believe the popular dogma, you're one of "them". The problem is, there isn't only one question. Besides the "is it real?" and "are we responsible?" questions, there's also:
* If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?
* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)
* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
* If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).
Unfortunately, the issue has become so politicized that these other more important questions are being drowned out or viewed as "avoiding the real issue" by the dogmatists.
No, those questions are exactly what the professional climatology community studies, and have been studying for decades. They've been studying many other more obscure problems as well that influence this issue. Trust me, they have thought of thousands of more complications than any layman or writer is going to know about, and have investigated them.
Here is the current state of the known science with respect to the above questions:
1) "If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?"
The current evidence and knowledge of physics shows climate change which cannot be explained by factors which exclude the dominant forcing of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. This result stands intensive probing in theory and experiment.
There is one point which laymen do not understand: A "natural" cycle of various means must have its own mechanism You cannot posit a "flying spaghetti monster" theory of a natural cycle without observed evidence, physical law, and scientific reasoning. Natural "cycles" have physical causes and consequences which we would have observed with modern science. Furthermore, these "other explanations" would have to somehow "turn off" the known physics of infrared radiation which is a rock-solid lab-based physical reality, and directly observed in situ. To summarize the most prominent 'other' explanations: (a) no it isn't volcanoes, they don't emit enough CO2 to be responsible for the CO2 we observe, and there is no evidence that volcanism is suddenly on the upswing. And in any case, our tailpipes and smokestacks don't have invisible devices to catch the CO2. (b) No it isn't the Sun suddenly getting brighter---we have measured the sun for a while now, best guess is that is could be responsible for 10-15% of the effects. Observed patterns of atmospheric temperature change (troposphere warming, stratosphere cooling) is compatible with the change in greenhouse effect, not solar brightening (both would warm).
(c) Cosmic rays. This is another new hypothesis---it may have a bit of an effect which is not understood in magnitude and direction but again there isn't evidence it is resposnible for climate change and yet nullifies the effect of CO2 from humans.
2) "If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)"
Urban heat islands are not global warming, their effect on the instrumental record has been known and accounted for in the good data sets. Other effects are linked in to the climate cycle and so the real issue in climatology is in es
The intent was to get NASA out of the launch services business and by implication they should not be doing design of launch service since to do so usurps the role of the private sector in risk management. Designing an entire launch vehicle is such a large part of designing a launch service that it simply isn't reasonable to allow NASA to do so.
If the rocket blows up and kills astronauts, it will be NASA's neck which gets chopped, not Lockmart's. Their optimal "risk management" strategy is to transfer risk to taxpayer and agency, and profit to themselves.
Realistically, nobody except the Russian organization has experience in making rockets this large for human flight. This is not a wide-open competitive market.
Private enterprise is not a magic spray which automagically makes hard engineering problems easy.
Remember the Mars probe which was lost because of a "units problem" in the guidance? That was because some of the operation was outsourced to a large aerospace contractor in some Congressdroid's district, and this contractor put a fresh out of college person on this critical task, and internally they were still using imperial units.
By contrast, the prior Pathfinder mission, and the subsequent Mars Exploration Rover missions were done mostly at JPL with strong academic partners. They worked very well.
You mean like the Genesis Effect?
Like suppose we had this array that could heat up a Martian neighborhood from -80C to 20C.
Imagine what it could do if we pointed it at Earth city which were already at 30-35C!
Green Zone here we come!
For a more balanced and skeptical look at them (as well as the
8 452 819 53o ughts-on-cera-report.html6 97
fact that a number of years ago they predicted no more than $40 oil for decades),
see these from a good blog on oil (unlike Slashdot):
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/9/6/214757/6
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/8/12/114231/
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/9/13/162534/
http://www.theoildrum.com/classic/2005/08/more-th
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/9/21/01620/6
The essential problem behind Peak Oil is that the existing
oil fields, which are large and supplied a major amount of oil,
have natural decline rates.
In order to increase production overall you have to find all this new exotic oil (which is very expensive to extract) and make enough not only to make up for the natural decline rate but also add some more.
That is very unrealistic by many people's estimation.
Also, even if it were possible, it also means that the new oil will continue to be very expensive---because if it weren't expensive, then all those technologies for oil extraction from difficult locations (deep sea ocean, arctic, oil sands) wouldn't be worth it. So, even if there is more oil in a molecular sense, it will get ever more expensive and difficult to get. That is the core take-away message of Peak Oil, and it is essentially irrefutable.
Think about it this way. If you go looking for oil, the first things you will find are the really big oil fields that are easy to get at. It is an obvious fact.
Don't confuse the addition of "reserves" in the past---those were very conservatively defined if they were part of western oil companies---as the proven reserves in the able-to-report-it-on-the-balance-sheet is a regulatory issue, not a geophysically oriented good estimation of what's out there.
The geophysics has changed in the last 5-10 years, and the fundamental rate of major new oil discovery in feasible locations has globally declined.
Indeed it is a heated debate topic, but the core topics of that debate differs very significantly among climate scientists versus the general public and media.
The latter talk about crap and make many assertions---almost always reducing human-induced effects by large degrees without scientific justification---often asserting that their doubt of some random factor or another trumps the well-considered and deep experimental and theoretical evidence from professionals in the field.
The existence of naturally observed causes for physical climate change does NOT rule out human-induced causes in any posssible way.
All it does is point to a starting place for understanding the underlying physical mechanism.
Everything you discuss has been known by actual climate scientists for decades upon decades.
Consider yourself as an electrical engineer: It would be like observing "gee when I move my magnet there are induced EMFs" (true) and then going from that to being skeptical about elementary, and professionally-established, facts regarding the fundamental physics of all sorts of classes of transistors which have been professionally studied in laboratories for decades.
The answer, "yes those people who make the transistor models do happen to have heard about Faraday's laws and can say whether some effect is important or not or explains the working of the transistor."
Also, how do you explain huge ice ages on Earth? Were thse caused by huge carbon emissions or was it a small natural climate cycle that just happens?
complicated answer, but best belief is that there are astrophysical and other forcings which can start warming and then there are feedback loops which amplify greenhouse gas emissions. This is bad for current climate change because human induced forcing could end up being multiplied to a large degree.
Were those climate changes, which are no doubt more extreme than what's going on now, caused by the combustion engine?
No.
Does the existence of naturally occurring lightning in any way debunk the theories of physical causality in transistors? No electrical engineer imagines so. What they care about is of course the underlying physical principles of electromagnetism in in natural and engineered systems and these predict behavior. This is of course the right way to proceed.
Why is it that when it comes to climate, and pretty much climate alone among scientific subjects, the equivalent sort of incomprehensible "arguments" or "skepticism" against the professional understanding of climate scientists come up?
So, the people who are against Kyoto would support a far more strict treaty which included emerging markets and science-based cutbacks on greenhouse gases (which would be far harsher than Kyoto)?
Sure. And monkeys might fly out of my butt.
By the way, keep in mind that existing Western industrial civilization has a large head start in infrastructure generated by cheap fossil fuel burning without regard to atmospheric consequences.