Very bad news

[ruffrecords]

Which summaries in AR6 are not supported by data?

By definition all the ones based on models.

Cheers

Ian

 

[JohnRoberts]

This hit the headlines over here over a week ago and caused the predictable media and government frenzy. They are now saying they will not allow sales of any but new electric cars from 2030 onwards. I guarantee this is impossible. Hydrogen fuel is now touted as the 'solution' to the drive to 'net zero' while studiously ignoring the fact that huge amounts of electricity will be required to generate it not to mention the present capacity is little more than laboratory supply level. This is the biggest con ever yet the general public is lapping it up and crapping themselves in equal measure.

Cheers

Ian

Yup the new hip new solution is "green hydrogen", still made using electrolysis but with electricity from wind or solar. Alternately brown hydrogen is made using fossil fuel. They are already investigating wider application of hydrogen fuel for transportation but for now at least green hydrogen is impractical for large scale use.

Everybody loves our planet and nobody wants to destroy our home. We need to resist emotional knee jerk responses and try to be thoughtful and more practical about long term cost/benefit analysis. People have been arguing about this for decades.

=====

Not unlike the military industrial complex dedicated to keeping the war machine in business for profit and influence, there is a multi-billion dollar (or more) climate industrial complex, dedicated to mining climate change for profit (grants) and influence (control over private sector industries and the public). It is no surprise that the climate industrial complex considers scientists like Koonin a turncoat who changed sides and now needs to be discredited as an enemy of their "good fight", as he points out holes in popular arguments.

I have long been distrustful of the "sky is falling" crowd and am learning more than I wanted to know from the Koonin book about climate science and how much the experts do not know, despite presenting certainty to the public.

JR

 

[Matador]

there is a multi-billion dollar (or more) climate industrial complex, dedicated to mining climate change for profit (grants) and influence (control over private sector industries and the public).

It's curious how you seem to give Koonin the benefit of the doubt but not anyone else: for example, did Koonin give you a copy of his book for free? Why does he escape the "for profit" and "influence" charges?

Said another way: there doesn't exist a single publication with an "alarmist" view that you find compelling?

 

[JohnRoberts]

I worked in marketing for decades and have read many books about influence and persuasion. I am not easily 'suased.

I was initially apprehensive about Dr. Steven Koonin who was the undersecretary for science at the U.S. Department of Energy in the Obama administration.... BUT in 2011 he had a change of conscious when he saw how results were being manipulated by his peers to sway public sentiment.

I trust him about as far as I can throw him, but his book rigorously explains the climate science methodology and then he uses the government's own data to poke holes in their over reaching conclusions. Not only is he a credible expert, he participated in lots of early climate modeling, so knows whereof he speaks.

If you want I can mail you his book to read after I finish reading it so you can poke holes in his science instead of trying to mount critical calls to authority from the climate science community who no doubt want to cancel him to avoid any challenge to their own authority and future research grants.

The wokester social justice community has identified energy companies as enemies of the planet and targets to boycott and scorn. Not just energy companies but most companies are now working to appear greener than green to preemptively avoid being cancelled by the wokesters.

JR

PS: For any paying attention to this over time, anybody remember 20-25 years ago when scientists experimented with seeding the oceans with iron to promote plankton/algae growth to absorb carbon, (root cause of global warming?). Funny I thought the sun was the root cause. International treaties have since banned dumping iron in the oceans because of unintended consequences, and incomplete understanding of the cycle..

 

[shabtek]

deploying munitions is burning resources ...
the green motive claims need to preserve resources
both examples are tainted by business opportunity.

Cost/benefit seems to be pretty much ignored in the public conversation. The costs are real and near term (like government building EV charging stations), while the benefits are hypothetical, save the planet from warming a degree or two a century from now.

valid point, but my flippancy was lost;
cost/benefit as it applies to profit motives of powers that be is what rules.

consideration of frivolous/wasteful production and over consumption of (arguably?) limited resources is anathema to the motives of business, industry and the cronies that run the game.

in the calculus of energy use I have never seen the cost of renewable infrastructure quantified; considering all inputs from extracting raw materials to fabrication to install, etc. until a unit (solar /wind/storage) is put online

similarly I don't hear the case made for existing facilities; there is historic energy overhead costs that have been paid --but aren't considered (given credit) in the accounting as related to future planning.
I am a simpleton but has anyone heard this case being made? existing infrastructure has a degree of efficiency by virtue of its' being.
but the machine of industry must roll on. It needs to figure out how to sell you what you already bought rather than something new.

 

[ruffrecords]

I have said before, if we spent all the money wasted on climate 'research' on developing fusion then we could lick this problem and produce as much hydrogen as is needed.

Cheers

Ian

 

[living sounds]

What about all the money and resources wasted on brainless consumption? There are many things more worthy of sacrificing (like the 2-week product cycle throwaway clothing fashion industry) than climate research.

This week, fusion got a big step closer to becoming a reality, BTW:

https://www.popsci.com/science/nuclear-fusion-successful-ignition/

 

[living sounds]

What about all the money and resources wasted on brainless consumption? There are many things more worthy of sacrificing (like the 2-week product cycle throwaway clothing fashion industry) than climate research.

This week, fusion got a big step closer to becoming a reality, BTW:

https://www.popsci.com/science/nuclear-fusion-successful-ignition/

 

[shabtek]

'brainless consumption' is good for business: so it is encouraged

 

[JohnRoberts]

It's curious how you seem to give Koonin the benefit of the doubt but not anyone else: for example, did Koonin give you a copy of his book for free? Why does he escape the "for profit" and "influence" charges?

Said another way: there doesn't exist a single publication with an "alarmist" view that you find compelling?

I finished reading the Koonin book and as promised I will mail it to you if you PM me your mailing address.

It will be disappointing for people wanting to be told what to do. He basically explains what we know, what we don't know and what the options are.

In my opinion the best option right now is to do "nothing" because the science as his book title suggests is unsettled.

I won't bore you by repeating what I have been saying here for years. I will share one tidbit he mentioned in passing near the end of the book that caught my attention. One well documented global phenomenon after massive volcanoes spew aerosols into the atmosphere is measurable cooling, until the aerosols precipitate out of the atmosphere and albedo returns to previous levels the cooling trend returns to normal.

His throw away comment was about putting additives in jet fuel that would linger in the atmosphere and change the albedo, just like those volcanoes did. This caused a light bulb to go off over my head, remembering an old discussion with my brother (the smart one). The picture I use for my avatar was taken one night at MIT while I was helping him with one of his overnight doctoral thesis experiments (running super saturated steam through a supersonic nozzle to study droplet size). By controlling droplet size of fuel burning in a jet turbine you can control the visible smoke. Small droplets make small particles and invisible smoke, keeping the sheeple happy.

But if you follow where I'm going with this, larger fuel droplet sizes in jet engines could make visible smoke that could alter the planets albedo in a cooling direction. This way John Kerry could fly his private jet to the next Paris climate meeting and honestly claim he is cooling the planet.

I asked my brother (the smart one) about this and he said making visible smoke is easy, they had to work hard to make the smoke invisible. BUT a) making too much visible smoke at low altitudes would unfavorably impact air quality unacceptably and b) it isn't easy to make an engine burn invisible at low altitude then make visible smoke up high...

Of course I don't think anybody has even tried.

JR

 

[Matador]

I appreciate the offer, but I'll have to pass: I have enough reading to do on a daily basis as it is.

If nothing else, it sounds like the book solved exactly the problem it was intended to solve: it gives people enough cover to recommend keeping the status quo.

To quote Kennedy's famous speech:

We choose to not go to the Moon in this decade and not do the other things, not because they are hard, but because the science is unsettled, because that goal would raise taxes and make everything more expensive, and is not the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are not willing to accept, one we are willing to postpone, and one which we would probably lose anyways, and all the others, too.

 

[ruffrecords]

If nothing else, it sounds like the book solved exactly the problem it was intended to solve: it gives people enough cover to recommend keeping the status quo.

There is so much wrong with that sentence. I thought you were better than that.

Cheers

Ian

 

[JohnRoberts]

While I can not read his mind, I am confident that was not the intent of Dr Koonin. From his book cover full title "what climate science tells us, what it doesn't, and why it matters." He was very careful to not offer specific advice or have any agenda. His goal was pretty much as stated to explain what science knows with certainty about climate and human influence. His book contains 70 something graphs of different trends, all derived from government/UN data.

It is my "personal" judgement that the smart thing to do is nothing (like I clearly said). I also advocate more research to gain better understanding of the science, perhaps research without preordained outcomes.

Dr Koonin was very critical of headlines, summaries, and conclusions that are not supported by the underlying scientific data. Just today on TV news I saw Senator Schumer, the Gov of NJ, and probably a couple more (democrats), pointing to the recent flooding deaths in the Northeast (from remnants of tropical storm Ida) as justification for passing the massive green new deal multi $Trillion spending bill pending in congress. This is conflating weather with climate (not the same), and still doesn't even make sense because Hurricane Ida was only cat 4 when it made landfall in LA (Hurricane Katrina was cat 5, 16 years ago). The flooding deaths in the northeast are from poor rainwater drainage/management, not global temperature.

I saw Dr Koonin the other day on a c-span book interview show and he is a very smart man. He seems genuinely motivated to teach people how to better understand the science behind these very consequential future of energy decisions.

I don't understand your Kennedy reference besides the common word (unsettled). Of course President Kennedy did not suggest ignoring science when pursuing the Apollo moon mission. I worked at MIT back in the 60s and knew at least one software engineer working on the Apollo program. Perhaps President Kennedy was suggesting that we not be swayed by unsubstantiated conclusions made about the science of space travel to the moon. That science seems more settled now while some early astronauts did literally bet their life on it and lost.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

I saw an article in todays paper that the administration is going to throw budget funds at reducing green house gases from jet engines. They are clearly talking about CO2, but even biofuel releases CO2. I have seen some short haul battery powered air craft but I don't see this as a practical solution for long range air flight.

Hydrogen powered flight would exhaust water vapor as a combustion product which is also a greenhouse contributor.

Still no serious discussion of altering the atmospheric albedo with jet fuel additives, or my cra cra idea to change jet nozzles to make visible soot to cool the planet. Of course we need to study everything.

Nuclear powered aircraft have been hypothesized since the 1940s... One experimental 1950s aircraft had 11 tons of radiation shielding (and never flew under nuclear power).

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

Coincidentally the price of uranium is spiking but it's a thinly traded market so perhaps being manipulated by the memers.
==
A classic criticism of Green energy policy is what do you do when the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow. It looks like the wind not blowing in the North Sea is impacting electricity prices for the region significantly.

Natural gas was getting tight before so tighter now. Looks like they started burning coal to make up the difference. (Not sure why it was a French coal power plant in England that got restarted, I thought the french were nuclear proponents). Russia will love to sell NG to EU.

Must be climate change? Good thing this isn't happening during the winter months.

JR

 

[Tubetec]

The idea of seeding/altering weather with the use of chemicals dispersed from planes isnt new at all . The shutdown of aviation in the USA after Sept 11 2001 revealed a lot of data . Covid lockdown part 1 revealed even more , but our heads were too far up our asses to take account.

Powering satelites with plutonieum based fuel has also been tried , worked great until it crashed back into the atmos ,disintegrated and peppered the entire planet with radiation , it hampers our abillity to use radio carbon dating , which lets face it is an incredibly usefull branch of science .

The energy used to take a bunch of 'naughts upto the moon could probably feed clothe house and medicate all the poor people in the USA for years . Maybe that was what Kennedy was hinting at.

I agree also with those who call fraud/foul on the so called green revolution illusion , if you'd kept that 1982 Ford fiesta garaged, so it didnt rot all to hell, learned to service it yourself , the lack of effiency compared to modern cars would have been eclipsed many times over in the costs of production . We as a species are not getting any smarter in our use of resources , were more led by marketing and keeping up with the jones' than ever before .

 

[shabtek]

'brainless consumption' is good for business: so it is encouraged

 

[ruffrecords]

Coincidentally the price of uranium is spiking but it's a thinly traded market so perhaps being manipulated by the memers.
==
A classic criticism of Green energy policy is what do you do when the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow. It looks like the wind not blowing in the North Sea is impacting electricity prices for the region significantly.

Not sure where you heard that. It is news to me. I live a few miles from several North Sea wind farms and I do not detect any lessening of the wind. Electricity prices have taken a recent hike, but that was because the regulator raised the cap on the price the generators can sell electricity.

Cheers

IAn

 

[JohnRoberts]

Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

Heavy reliance on wind power, coupled with a shortage of natural gas, has led to a spike in energy prices​

​

WSJ article Wapo wind watch

JR

 

[Newmarket]

It was brought up this morning (UK) on R4 Today along with various problems with the European gas market/supply.