Another reason to favor something robust as a true answer, (technology) rather
then orders from above. If we need an example of the biggest human-created
disaster in history, it would be Mao's Great Leap Forward (1958-62) where Mao
ordered the peasants to chase birds around and make sure that they didn't eat
up the rice and wheat crops. Millions of birds died of exhaustion, being chased
around by peasants and all, and with less birds to eat locusts, the crops were
devoured by pestilence. 40 million dead, and perhaps almost 60 million
depending on who we ask. Technology for energy and water purification is the
way to go, in Africa and here, too. Governments can do a lot, including turning
individuals into lemmings. Its quicker and more flexible than government
edicts too.
Where climate scientists aware of this problem when they claimed 100% certainty
and consensus on AGW? Because if they were, they lied to us.
-----Original Message-----
From: Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com>
To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Mar 22, 2014 11:08 am
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 10:10 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 3/21/2014 9:59 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:24 PM, Quentin Anciaux
<allco...@gmail.com> wrote:
2014-03-21 17:19 GMT+01:00 John Clark
<johnkcl...@gmail.com>:
On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin
Anciaux <allco...@gmail.com>
wrote:
The thing I most want
to know about
RCP4.5 is what
RCP stands
for, Google
seems to think
it's "Rich
Client Platform" but
that doesn't
sound quite
right. It must
be pretty
obscure,
Wikipedia has never
heard of RCP either.
For your information, that means
"Regional Climate Prediction"
I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist
Party" but are you sure it's not "Representative
Concentration Pathways"?
I'm pretty sure you must be dumb as dumb if you really
think this... As I see we are in a thread talking about
climate...
This thread seems to be mostly about politics. To be fair, John
seems to be in the minority here in wanting to discuss this from a
scientific and technological perspective.
He raises a number of points that I have raised myself in previous
discussions. Instead of focusing on such issues, pop culture
distractions (Fox News etc.) and political tribalism seem to get
all of the attention.
- Given the number of climate models and the fact that the
majority of them failed to predict the climate of the last decade,
how confident can we be in further predictions?
"Failed" is a relative term
Of course. Here we can't know for sure, so we have to estimate the probability
that the models are correct -- especially given the potentially horrible
side-effects of the cure.
and "decade" is too short to constitute climate.
Yes, what constitutes "climate" appears to be:
larger periods than can be observed in our lifetimes but smaller than what can
be observed in the Vostok data.
So what exactly do you mean by "failed".
I mean that, if this wasn't an ideologically charged issue, no reviewer would
accept these models for publication at this point:
http://www.thegwpf.org/judith-curry-disagreement-climate-models-reality/
My view is that they were relatively accurate about some things and not so
accurate about others.
Where they accurate significantly above what a null model would predict, taking
into account the amount of models that have been proposed?
They all include a calculated range of uncertainty.
Funnily, that was never mentioned before it became convenient.
Have they "failed" if the observed weather is withing the range of
uncertainty. The deniers and obfuscators seize on uncertainty as an
obstruction to action, but uncertainty cuts both ways.
AGW proponents are asking for an incredible amount of power to implement
measures that could cause immense human suffering. It's not so abnormal that
people get nervous when there is no tangible evidence that the models are even
correct.
As for further predictions, it's not as if we have to pick one (or a
set) of these models and make THE prediction. What we need to do is figure
out why they were inaccurate in to some vaiables and improve the models.
Ok, and then validate them against reality -- hopefully.
As has been pointed out, the effect of clouds is a major source of
uncertainty. Clouds are generally much smaller than the grid size of GCMs,
~100Km square, and so it's not practical to directly model them within a
simulation.
Where climate scientists aware of this problem when they claimed 100% certainty
and consensus on AGW? Because if they were, they lied to us.
The technique has been to use separate models just of cloud formation and
dissipation to determine which GCM state would produce or dissipate clouds.
Those models are being improved by including the effects of aerosols and
freezing/thawing.
Another source of uncertainty in *weather* is how the extra energy
absorbed due to greenhouse gases is distributed. How much goes into warming
the ocean vs the atmosphere? Model projections have to make assumptions
about human activity too.
Right, and all of this is an awful lot of uncertainty when we're dealing with
complex non-linear systems.
- With current technology, how much would we have to shrink the
global energy budget to transition to sustainable sources?
Read Donald McKay's book "Without Hot Air", which is free online at
withouthotair.org. He has detailed estimates of what it would take for the
U.K. to almost eliminate fossil fuel consumption and still retain the same
standard of living. It takes a lot of change, but it is less per capita
than, for example, the U.S. war in Iraq over a time scale of a few decades.
Ok, thanks.
Far from me to defend the war on Iraq (by the way). That was another shady
business, for sure.
What would the human impact of that be? This is too serious an
issue for wishful thinking. Theres 7 billion of us and counting.
We need hard numbers here, that take into account the energy
investment necessary to bootstrap the renewable sources, their
efficiency and so on.
- What is the probability that a climate catastrophe awaits us vs.
the probability that an abrupt attempt to convert to sustainable
sources would create a human catastrophe itself?
What's "abrupt". You're raising spudboy's bugaboo. NOBODY wants to do
something "abrupt".
They did in my country, and it was disastrous. For a while Portugal was a
poster-child for proponents of similar action around the the globe. Now it's
not mentioned so much.
It's just a Faux News scare point. Isn't is obvious that the longer we
wait to address a problem the shorter will be the time to solve it.
"Only 10 places left, register before it's too late!"
Time scarcity is one of the oldest tricks in the book of manipulation, and a
huge red flag.
Again, I'm all for research and investment in renewable energies. I'm all for
letting people implement these ideas and compete in the open market. I
sincerely hope we switch to viable renewable energy as soon as possible, and I
strongly believe that this will happen easily once the technology is available.
I encourage everyone to invest in the research and development of such
technology -- or the implementation, if you believe it already exists. I hope
it does.
What I am very suspicious of is requests for more centralised control --
especially coming on the back of scare tactics. We've seen this pattern over
and over and it's never been good news.
- Given that environmentalists are claiming that it might even be
too late to advert disaster, why aren't we seriously considering
geoengineering approaches, as the one proposed by Nathan Myhrvold,
which can be easily and cheaply tested and turned off at any
moment?
It's being considered just as seriously as any other unproven technology
to address the problem - which is to say, hardly at all. If we started
penalizing ExxonMobil, BP, Texaco, and Shell for the cost they are
externalizing maybe they'd fund Myhrvold's scheme.
Ok, we agree here. There are a number of environmental costs that these
criminals should pay for.
I just wonder why a fraction of the billions collected in carbon credits and
green miles and whatever can't be used to fund that research.
Telmo.
Brent
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