(06-06-2016, 01:28 PM)radind Wrote: There will be a price to pay for the closing of nuclear plants.
Quote:http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/mag...8Z,FM6S9,1 Decline of US nuclear industry is accelerating
… "Over the past few years, US companies have closed or announced plans to close eight reactors with a combined capacity of 6300 MW. Fertel claimed that another 15 to 20 plants are at risk of closure over the next 5 to 10 years. “We’re driving companies to make decisions that our nation will regret for the next 20 or 30 years, or longer, on the basis of short-term, unsustainable price signals,” …Replacing all the shuttered plants with new natural-gas generation would wipe out about one-quarter of the carbon emissions reductions that are projected in the administration’s Clean Power Plan. The changeover would also cancel out 40% of the cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that the US committed to in December at the Paris climate change conference.”…
We need to replace nuclear with solar. Delay is not a reasonable option.
Ask the Germans about that. No one is more attuned to renewables and more averse to nuclear, so they were the first to come to grips with the obvious. You can't run a modern society on intermittent power, so they are biting the bullet and reopening some coal fired plants. Is that better?
In a system that uses the pooled resources from many solar and wind plants at once, there is no intermittence. That has been proven. When one is down, the others are working.
If nuclear can be made safe, it's an option. There must be no chance of a meltdown, and all nuc waste must be recycled. I reported on the old thread that there's some movement toward this, especially in Russia. Personally, I don't like the risk of entire regions becoming off limits due to another Fukushima. We may be truly fu'ked if we rely on nuk. A few hundred square miles of solar can power the world. All we need is transmission lines. The transition is not immediate, but we must go as fast as we can.
(06-06-2016, 01:28 PM)radind Wrote: There will be a price to pay for the closing of nuclear plants.
We need to replace nuclear with solar. Delay is not a reasonable option.
Ask the Germans about that. No one is more attuned to renewables and more averse to nuclear, so they were the first to come to grips with the obvious. You can't run a modern society on intermittent power, so they are biting the bullet and reopening some coal fired plants. Is that better?
In a system that uses the pooled resources from many solar and wind plants at once, there is no intermittence. That has been proven. When one is down, the others are working.
If nuclear can be made safe, it's an option. There must be no chance of a meltdown, and all nuc waste must be recycled. I reported on the old thread that there's some movement toward this, especially in Russia. Personally, I don't like the risk of entire regions becoming off limits due to another Fukushima. We may be truly fu'ked if we rely on nuk. A few hundred square miles of solar can power the world. All we need is transmission lines. The transition is not immediate, but we must go as fast as we can.
Fukushima = Fuck you, Shiva! We don't need mass destruction!
Just a little hyperbolic poetry there.
Other than Fukushima, which was a natural disaster that would have been bad regardless, and Chernobyl, which was the failure of a plant extremely outdated decades before it plant crashed, show me any deaths related to nuclear power. Compare that to all the fossil fuel options. And please, don't ring in with your overly optimistic expectations for renewables. They may get there, but not soon. Assume the same numbers the expert proponents assume: 50 years.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
"Joe Lassiter is a deep thinker and straight talker focused on developing clean, secure and carbon-neutral supplies of reliable, low-cost energy. His analysis of the world's energy realities puts a powerful lens on the stubbornly touchy issue of nuclear power, including new designs for plants that can compete economically with fossil fuels. We have the potential to make nuclear safer and cheaper than it's been in the past, Lassiter says. Now we have to make the choice to pursue it.”
… whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Phil 4:8 (ESV)
… "You might think this will ensure that burning biomass does not result in higher greenhouse gas
emissions than fossil fuel use, but far from it. That statement is misleading because it does not
make clear that the EU’s method for calculating emissions assumes burning biomass produces
no CO2 at all. “Emissions from the fuel in use shall be taken to be zero for biofuels and
broliquids,” states a 2009 directive.”…
… whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Phil 4:8 (ESV)
(10-20-2016, 04:21 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: When they applied an electric current of just 1.2 volts, the catalyst converted a solution of CO2 dissolved in water into ethanol, with a yield of 63 percent.
This result was surprising for a couple of reasons: firstly, because it’s effectively reversing the combustion process using a very modest amount of electricity, and secondly, it was able to do this while achieving a relatively high yield of ethanol - they were expecting to end up with the significantly less desirable chemical, methanol.
This is interesting, but I'd want to look at the net balances. For one thing, you are turning CO2 into a carbon fuel, then burning the carbon fuel. The carbon ends up in the atmosphere anyway.
Second, you are using electrical energy to do it. I hope this isn't coming from a coal fired plant. If you want a net gain, you'd want to use something like wind, solar or tide.
Third, no reaction is totally efficient. When one pours energy into any process, some of that energy is wasted.
But it still seems interesting as a way to store energy in a portable form we are already geared up to use. While the pie might not truly be up in the sky, there could well be a place for it.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
I just visited Realclimate for the first time in a while. Do you think the blue folks here are depressed by Trump's victory? They are treating it like the end of the world. That's a slight exaggeration. Not much of one. There wasn't much time to act, and they fear we are going to move backwards.
They have another interesting article on the broad warming trend. In the propaganda wars, the people are often fed propaganda that avoids mention of the solar cycles. Thus, through most of the ought decade, when the sun was in a cold cycle, and the temperatures were drifting lower, there were proclamations that global warming had ended, that there was no need to act. I tried to push "just wait for the next peak solar" on the eleven year cycle, but was pretty much ignored... until the next peak solar arrived and the records started being set again.
The Realclimate article notes, however, that the peak solar is passed and the records just keep on coming. The warming trend seems to be overwhelming the solar cycle this time around, which is scary. Realclimate doesn't attribute cause, but my guess is that the Arctic ice is melting fast enough that the cooling influence of this phase of the solar cycle is being more than offset by the darker waters up north. So, what happens when the sun starts warming up again?
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
(12-08-2016, 05:42 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I just visited Realclimate for the first time in a while. Do you think the blue folks here are depressed by Trump's victory? They are treating it like the end of the world. That's a slight exaggeration. Not much of one. There wasn't much time to act, and they fear we are going to move backwards.
They have another interesting article on the broad warming trend. In the propaganda wars, the people are often fed propaganda that avoids mention of the solar cycles. Thus, through most of the ought decade, when the sun was in a cold cycle, and the temperatures were drifting lower, there were proclamations that global warming had ended, that there was no need to act. I tried to push "just wait for the next peak solar" on the eleven year cycle, but was pretty much ignored... until the next peak solar arrived and the records started being set again.
The Realclimate article notes, however, that the peak solar is passed and the records just keep on coming. The warming trend seems to be overwhelming the solar cycle this time around, which is scary. Realclimate doesn't attribute cause, but my guess is that the Arctic ice is melting fast enough that the cooling influence of this phase of the solar cycle is being more than offset by the darker waters up north. So, what happens when the sun starts warming up again?
Perhaps even more to the point, what happens when denial continues in the face of undeniable evidence? Jeb Bush just tweeted about how great Trump's selection for EPA truly is ... that from a Floridian. Most of the Virginia delegation to the House are GOPpers, and feel much the same as Jeb, while Norfolk, the home of the Atlantic Fleet, is slowly sinking into the sea. How bad does bad have to get?
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
(12-08-2016, 12:15 PM)David Horn Wrote: Perhaps even more to the point, what happens when denial continues in the face of undeniable evidence? Jeb Bush just tweeted about how great Trump's selection for EPA truly is ... that from a Floridian. Most of the Virginia delegation to the House are GOPpers, and feel much the same as Jeb, while Norfolk, the home of the Atlantic Fleet, is slowly sinking into the sea. How bad does bad have to get?
Remember the old days when navies used to worry about ships sinking rather than bases?
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
This year is likely to remembered as a turning point for climate change. It’s the year the impacts of rising carbon pollution became impossible to ignore. The world is overheating and vast swaths of the planet have suffered the consequences. At the same time, it’s also a year where world leaders crafted and agreed on a number of plans to try to turn the tide of carbon pollution and move toward a clean energy future. It’s clear 2016 was a year where planetary peril and human hope stood out in stark contrast. Here are the 10 most important climate milestones of the year.
10. The world struck an airline carbon pollution deal
The friendly skies got slightly friendlier. Air travel counts for about 7 percent of carbon emissions globally. That number will need to come down in the coming decades, and the International Civil Aviation Organization, the world’s governing body for airlines, put a plan in place to start that transition. The plan, which was signed off on by 191 countries, is focused on letting airlines buy credits that will help fund renewable energy projects to offset airplane emissions. It isn’t a perfect solution since it doesn’t directly reduce carbon pollution from air travel, but it’s a first step for an industry that will have to find novel, carbon-free ways to produce the fuel needed to fly you home for Christmas vacation.
9. An extremely potent greenhouse gas is also on its way out
Hydrofluorocarbons are the chemicals in your air conditioner that help keep you cool in the summer (and the food in your refrigerator cool year round). Ironically, they’re also a greenhouse gas that’s thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere. Reducing them is critical to keep the planet from heating up much more and in October, international negotiators struck a deal to do phase them out. Countries still have to ratify the agreement — and it could face a major roadblock in the U.S. Senate — in order for it to take effect, but if approved, it will provide strong targets and a timetable to find replacement chemicals to keep you cool in a warming world.
8. July was the hottest month ever recorded. Then August tied it
The Arctic had a crazy heat wave this winter, but the planet as a whole really roasted through July and August. The summer is usually the warmest time of the year by dint of the fact that there’s more land in the northern hemisphere. But this summer was something else. July was the hottest month ever recorded, and it was followed by an August — usually a bit cooler than July — that was just as scorching. Those epically hot months helped set this year up for record heat (but more on that in a bit).
7. Arctic sea ice got weird. Really weird
The Arctic was probably the weirdest place on the planet this year. It had a record-low peak for sea ice in the winter and dwindled to its second-lowest extent on record. The Northwest Passage also opened in August, allowing a luxury cruise ship to pass through. Those milestones themselves are a disconcerting harbinger of a warming world, but November brought an even more bizarre event. Normally it’s a time when night blankets the region and temperatures generally plummet to allow the rapid growth of ice. But a veritable heat wave ratcheted temperatures 27°F above normal, hitting pause on ice growth and even causing ice loss for a few days. December has seen a similar warm spell that scientists have found would be virtually impossible if it wasn’t for climate change. The Arctic is the most rapidly warming region on the planet and 2016 served as a reminder that the region is being dramatically reshaped by that warming.
6. Divestment and clean energy investments each hit a record
Climate change is a huge, pressing economic issue as countries will have to rejigger their economies to run on renewables and not fossil fuels. Investors are attacking that switch at both ends, and 2016 stands out for the record pace at which they’re doing it. On the fossil fuel side, investors representing $5.2 trillion in assets have agreed to divest from fossil fuels. That includes massive financial firms, pension funds, cities and regional governments, and a host of wealthy individuals. Not bad for a movement that only got its start in 2011. On the flip side, a report showed that investors poured $288 billion into new renewable projects in 2015, also a record. That’s helping install 500,000 solar panels a day around the world and ensuring that 70 percent of all money invested into energy generation is going to renewables.
5. The Great Barrier Reef was decimated by warm waters
Coral has had a rough go of it around the world for the past three years. El Niño coupled with climate change has caused a massive coral bleaching event around the globe. Nowhere have the impacts been more stark than the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Up to 93 percent of the reef was rocked by coral bleaching as record-warm waters essentially boiled coral to death. A third of the reef — including some of the most protected areas — are now dead. Researchers found that climate change made the record heat up to 175 times more likely, offering a glimpse into the dystopian future reefs face. A 1.5°C rise in the global average temperature would essentially mean game over for corals around the world.
4. The world breached the 1.5°C climate threshold
So about 1.5°C. It’s a threshold that’s crucial for low-lying island states to continue their existence (to say nothing of Miami or other coastal cities). Passing it would mean essentially issuing a death sentence for these places, corals and Arctic sea ice and other places around the world. The globe got its first glimpse of 1.5°C in February and March this year. Climate change, riding on the back of a super El Niño, helped crank the global average temperature to 1.63°C above normal in February and 1.54°C above normal in March compared to pre-industrial times. While the abnormal heat has since subsided a bit, it’s likely that 1.5°C will be breached again and again in the coming years and could become normal by 2025-30.
3. Carbon dioxide hit 400 ppm. Permanently
Scientists measure carbon dioxide in parts per million and in 2016, and it hit a not-so-nice round number at the Earth’s marquee carbon observatory: 400 ppm. Despite the seasonal ebb and flow, there wasn’t a single week where carbon dioxide levels dipped below 400 ppm. It’s the first time on record that’s happened. Because carbon pollution continues to rise, the world isn’t going to see carbon dioxide dip below 400 ppm again in our lifetimes (and likely a lot longer than that). Carbon dioxide also breached the 400 ppm threshold in Antarctica, the first time that’s happened in human history (and likely a lot longer). And in a report that was published this year, the World Meteorological Organization revealed that carbon dioxide passed the 400 ppm milestone globally in 2015. So yeah, 400 ppm was kind of a thing this year.
2. The Paris Agreement got real
The world got together to deliver the Paris Agreement in 2015, but the rubber really hit the road in 2016. Nearly 120 countries have ratified the agreement, putting it into force on Nov. 4. That includes big carbon pollution emitters like China, the U.S. and the European Union, and tiny ones like Mongolia, the Cook Islands and Sierra Leone. While there’s concern that President-elect Trump could pull the U.S. out of the agreement, signatories have stressed that they’ll go forward to meet their pledges regardless. With the rubber on the road, the next step is to get the wheels spinning.
1. It was the hottest year on record. Again
In case it wasn’t clear, the clearest sign of climate change is heat. And this year had lots of it. Hot Arctic, hot summer, hot water, and so it’s only fitting that the biggest climate milestone of the year (in a year that itself is a milestone) is record heat. Of course, that was the biggest story in 2014. And 2015 for that matter. This year marks the third year in a row of record-setting heat, an unprecedented run. It’s a reminder that we’ve entered a new era, where our actions have changed the world we call home. We also have the ability to decide what comes next.
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Obama Bars Arctic Drilling Ahead of Trump Inauguration
Quote:Global warming hiatus disproved -- again
Study confirms steady warming of oceans for past 45 years
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...143554.htm
…”After correcting for this "cold bias," researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded in the journal Science that the oceans have actually warmed 0.12 degrees Celsius (0.22 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since 2000, nearly twice as fast as earlier estimates of 0.07 degrees Celsius per decade. This brought the rate of ocean temperature rise in line with estimates for the previous 30 years, between 1970 and 1999.
This eliminated much of the global warming hiatus, an apparent slowdown in rising surface temperatures between 1998 and 2012.”…
… whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Phil 4:8 (ESV)
(08-22-2016, 02:49 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: We need to replace nuclear with solar. Delay is not a reasonable option.
Ask the Germans about that. No one is more attuned to renewables and more averse to nuclear, so they were the first to come to grips with the obvious. You can't run a modern society on intermittent power, so they are biting the bullet and reopening some coal fired plants. Is that better?
In a system that uses the pooled resources from many solar and wind plants at once, there is no intermittence. That has been proven. When one is down, the others are working.
If nuclear can be made safe, it's an option. There must be no chance of a meltdown, and all nuc waste must be recycled. I reported on the old thread that there's some movement toward this, especially in Russia. Personally, I don't like the risk of entire regions becoming off limits due to another Fukushima. We may be truly fu'ked if we rely on nuk. A few hundred square miles of solar can power the world. All we need is transmission lines. The transition is not immediate, but we must go as fast as we can.
Fukushima = Fuck you, Shiva! We don't need mass destruction!
Just a little hyperbolic poetry there.
Other than Fukushima, which was a natural disaster that would have been bad regardless, and Chernobyl, which was the failure of a plant extremely outdated decades before it plant crashed, show me any deaths related to nuclear power. Compare that to all the fossil fuel options. And please, don't ring in with your overly optimistic expectations for renewables. They may get there, but not soon. Assume the same numbers the expert proponents assume: 50 years.
The barriers to getting there have been all political, and we just got another one installed. We would have been there by now otherwise. But now it will take some time. How "soon" may depend on the definition of both "soon" and "getting there."
I am willing to be somewhat open-minded about nuclear power, since some innovators are developing systems that use the waste for fuel and are safer from meltdowns. Still, nuclear power is only at best a bridge fuel, like natural gas, because it too is non-renewable in the long-run. And it will take a while to bring these new kinds of plants on-line; so certainly at best it can only keep up with the rapid pace at which solar and wind are coming online these days.
And some older Fukushima-style nukes could be closed down in the meantime, especially if another accident happens. An earthquake in CA could be devastating, since Fukushima-type plants still exist here. And some exist near NY too.
(02-12-2017, 07:07 PM)Drakus79 Wrote: Has this been disproven?
We are not yet in the warmest phase of the current interglacial period. Paradoxically, one oif the signs of a warmer world is that the hot deserts are much rainier. This is Africa and most of Arabia today, and as they have been since the desiccation that forced people to take refuge in the Nile Valley, clear the nearly-impenetrable thickets around the river, and irrigate surrounding land if they were to survive. (See Toynbee's A Study of history).
Below is how Africa was at the peak of glaciation around 18 000 years ago (dated by carbon-14):
Because so much of the earth's water was imprisoned in ice, there just wasn't enough moisture in the air to allow the richer vegetation of our time The Sahara and Namib deserts were larger and more severe. Human populations were small, and consigned entirely to hunter-gatherer existence.
Finally I have Africa at the peak of moisture. in the map below:
The Sahara was rather mild desert, more like the Mojave of our time instead of the nearly-barren desert of the modern Sahara. Temperatures were on the average slightly warmer than they are now. Lake Chad was huge, reflecting far greater rainfall in surrounding areas.
This was practically a paradise for hunter-gatherers. It may be telling that evidence of the corded-ware people extends far to the north of the current Sahel, people advancing northward with the savanna and grassland. Summer rains went father poleward in both Northern and Southern hemispheres.
I show Africa because it had a huge part of the human population in both the peak time of glaciation and the pre-classical optimum.
...Yes, it is true -- global cooling would be more of a menace than global warming. But abrupt changes in climatic patterns do not allow people to adjust agricultural economies well.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
(11-26-2016, 09:04 AM)David Horn Wrote: Other than Fukushima, which was a natural disaster that would have been bad regardless, and Chernobyl, which was the failure of a plant extremely outdated decades before it crashed, show me any deaths related to nuclear power. Compare that to all the fossil fuel options. And please, don't ring in with your overly optimistic expectations for renewables. They may get there, but not soon. Assume the same numbers the expert proponents assume: 50 years.
The barriers to getting there have been all political, and we just got another one installed. We would have been there by now otherwise. But now it will take some time. How "soon" may depend on the definition of both "soon" and "getting there."
I am willing to be somewhat open-minded about nuclear power, since some innovators are developing systems that use the waste for fuel and are safer from meltdowns. Still, nuclear power is only at best a bridge fuel, like natural gas, because it too is non-renewable in the long-run. And it will take a while to bring these new kinds of plants on-line; so certainly at best it can only keep up with the rapid pace at which solar and wind are coming online these days.
And some older Fukushima-style nukes could be closed down in the meantime, especially if another accident happens. An earthquake in CA could be devastating, since Fukushima-type plants still exist here. And some exist near NY too.
Germany is the poster child for trying to get to renewables with all due speed, while rejecting nuclear power. What they got for a bridge was a mix of fossil fuels, because renewables are not ready to provide baseload ... not yet, if ever. So another option needs to be in the mix, and nuclear, handled well, is the current best choice. If it ever gets through the development cycle, fusion is the obvious choice all around: thousands of years of power from currently available sources. But fusion isn't here yet, and fossil fuels need to go quickly and totally.
It's possible that a nationwide smart grid might obviate the intermittency problem, making renewables truly capable. That's a $Trillion program that's not likely to come on line soon, either.
So those are your choices. Wishful thinking is not an option.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
Yes, global cooling would be more harmful than global warming. Global cooling is connected to low levels of carbon dioxide and the most variable of greenhouse gases, water vapor. A warmer world is a moister world.
Here is what Europe looked like when carbon dioxide levels were lower -- and much of the world's water was imprisoned in ice, as shown in Europe:
There was more dry land to the extent that the seas shrank, but it was much drier and chillier even where the glaciers did not reach. "Ice" shows where the glaciers were. Gray indicates a polar desert about as barren as the modern Sahara, except brutally cold as well as parched. Steppe-tundra is a strange world too cold and dry for trees, but in which grasses competed with tundra-like plants for coverage. Dry steppe is short-grass prairie similar to what stopped the plow in the American High Plains due to low productivity. The limited areas of green are prairies with a few trees, mostly in places which had some seasonal melt water from glaciers or snow packs. Semi-desert is cold grassland or shrub land about as promising as the lower elevations of northern Nevada and Utah.
The map has an error, as the author writes: what is now central France was steppe-tundra and not cold dry prairie.
For a map that relates to modern boundaries but lacking the color see this:
Ice sheets reached sites of modern Dublin, Cardiff, Birmingham, Berlin, Poznan, Minsk, and Moscow. Iceland, the whole of Scandinavia (except western Denmark) and the Baltic basin, and northwestern European Russia were ice-bound. What is now the English Channel and the North Sea was dry land -- cold and parched, differing little from Mars today except for having breathable air. Sites of modern Paris, Munich, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Kiev were brutal environments for any humans living there. The sites of classical civilization of the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians were more like modern-day high plains in Montana and Wyoming than the world that Hannibal, Achilles, Solomon, and Caesar knew, which is much the same terrain as one sees in paintings of Canaletto, Cezanne, or Picasso.
This is the warmest phase (so far) of the current interglacial. Trees reached farther north. Red indicates Mediterranean vegetation in which subtropical plants adapted to summer drought prevail.
...and below is the Europe of Cicero, Charlemagne, and Churchill:
...Global warming doesn't improve much in Europe that flooding of the Low Countries, Denmark. and the Baltic region doesn't take away when ice sheets melt from Greenland and much of West Antarctica (the part due south from the Americas) .
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
(02-12-2017, 07:07 PM)Drakus79 Wrote: Has this been disproven?
The Green Catastrophist "model" goes like this:
500+ PPM of CO2, and, the permafrost all melting releasing all it's CO2 and CH4, and, positive feedback from more H2O in the atmosphere, overcomes the innate power of the current Ice Age. I say current because we are merely in an interglacial.
Of course, that is a model. Here's the real world. We are not above 500PPM. It remains to be seen if that gets exceeded. Currently we are seemingly oscillating around 400 some odd. The permafrost has not all melted and in fact, is not melting anywhere near what some expected. Lots of so called permafrost melt is actually due to exposing the permafrost (mining, road cuts, construction, etc, etc). CH4 is not climbing all that quick. And there is real scientific debate about how H2O really works in this system. Some of the H20 may actually cool the Earth.
Let's look at the CO2 levels...
Yes, there is an oscillation. The period of the oscillation is 365.25 days. One year. As the seasons turn, there is a very regular periodic pattern that has nothing to do with the long term trend.
The long term trend is as solid as anything you'll find in nature. If things continue business as usual, we are heading towards 500. You have to have a high quality blindfold to avoid seeing that.
Yes, the Milankovitch cycles are a significant cooling forcing factor. Human produced greenhouse gasses are a larger warming forcing factor. See reality. There are lots of forcing factors... volcanoes, solar cycles, El Nino, continental drift, whatever. Every once in a while I'll print the temperature charts and show the magnitude and duration produced by each sort of factor. The big one is the polar ice melting, exposing more dark water. Cross that point and the system moves out of the sensitive part of the curve where Milankovitch cycles have an effect. The ice age / interglacial cycle is not a permanent thing. It depends on the continents surrounding or covering the poles, thus allowing the ice to form there. It depends on plants taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, and burying it as oil and coal. Put enough of that oil and coal back into the atmosphere, and you know how all the images of the dinosaurs feature them walking around tropical swamps?
And, yes, not all of the predictions have been squarely accurate. The permafrost hasn't been melting as fast as the predictions, but the polar ice is far exceeding predictions. Sure, you can say nothing is happening while watching investments being made in northwest passage shipping.
For the nonprofessionals, how many people view climate science depends primarily on their political affiliation. I'd as soon listen to the professionals. Hanging out on this site has me convinced a partisan can convince himself of whatever he wants to believe.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
02-20-2017, 01:23 PM (This post was last modified: 02-20-2017, 01:24 PM by Eric the Green.)
What I notice about the report below, is the fact that Europeans are more concerned about refugees than climate now, and so would turn to leaders like Drump who would deflect people from the real concerns. The irony is of course that the refugee crisis itself is largely the result of global warming and its impact on a country with a genocidal monster in control, who repressed the peoples' petition and protest to take action on it.
Learn the truth about Syria; and stop spreading lies! Learn the truth about the refugee crisis, which I predicted, and which predicted the cause of too, decades ago!
Fears Grow That Climate Conflicts Could Lead to War
by Jonathan Tirone
February 19, 2017, 7:14 AM PST February 19, 2017, 4:00 PM PST
Trump’s threat to quit Paris reverberates on national security
Senator urges countries to tell president, ‘don’t you dare’ Among the 21st-century threats posed by climate change -- rising seas, melting permafrost and superstorms -- European leaders are warning of a last-century risk they know all too well: War.
Focusing too narrowly on the environmental consequences of global warming underestimates the military threats, top European and United Nations officials said at a global security conference in Munich this weekend. Their warnings follow the conclusions of defense and intelligence agencies that climate change could trigger resource and border conflicts.
“Climate change is a threat multiplier that leads to social upheaval and possibly even armed conflict,” the UN’s top climate official, Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, said at the conference, which was attended by the U.S. secretaries of defense and homeland security, James Mattis and John Kelly.
Even as European Union countries struggle to assimilate millions of African and Middle Eastern migrants and refugees, security officials are bracing for more of the same in the future. Secretary General Antonio Guterra named climate change and population growth as the two most serious “megatrends” threatening international peace and stability.
Hotter Than Ever
Source: Met Office Hadley Centre and Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia
“Ground zero” for armed conflict over the climate will be the Arctic, where record-high temperatures are melting ice and revealing natural resources that some countries might be willing to fight for, Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto said on a panel.
“We have already seen flag planting and already some quarrels on the borderlines,” Niinisto said, pointing to new Russian military bases on its Arctic border. “Tensions will rise.”
The Arctic climate paradox -- where countries could fight for rights to extract the very fossil fuels that would cause even more global warming -- underscores energy’s role as a cause and potential moderator of climate change, according to Niinisto.
For Russia, the world’s biggest energy supplier, European nations switching to renewables represents an economic threat. At the same time, European over-reliance on Russian energy exposes them to coercion, according to Kelly Gallagher-Sims, a former climate and energy adviser to President Barack Obama.
Peaceful Coexistence
“Climate change is already exacerbating existing stresses that contribute to instability and insecurity,” Gallagher-Sims told Bloomberg last week before leading a policy meeting on Arctic security at the Fletcher School at Tufts University near Boston. “The main relationship between renewable energy and trans-Atlantic security” is that clean power “permits Europe to rely less on Russian gas,” she said.
For their part, Russian leaders in Munich said they want peaceful coexistence with Europe and will abide by the Paris accord on climate change -- even if it’s unlikely they’ll try convincing U.S. President Donald Trump to do the same.
It’s not clear when and if Trump will make good on his frequent campaign promises to pull the U.S. out of the Paris accord, a 2015 UN agreement to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions that was adopted by nearly 200 countries. Since he took office, the administration has rolled back U.S. rules to combat climate change and eased restrictions on fossil-fuel companies.
U.S. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a member of the committee on the environment and public works, told officials in the Bavarian capital they may have to fight to preserve the 2015 Paris agreement from global warming skeptics in the White House.
“The response of the international community will be significant,” Whitehouse said. While the probability of abandoning Paris may be small, they “decrease further if the response of the international community” to the U.S. “is not only, don’t you dare but, that there’ll be consequences in other areas” if you leave.
...FIRE WEATHER WATCH IN EFFECT FROM THURSDAY MORNING THROUGH
THURSDAY EVENING FOR WINDY CONDITIONS... WARM TEMPERATURES AND
LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY FOR NORTH-CENTRAL TO SOUTH-CENTRAL
OKLAHOMA...AND PART OF WESTERN NORTH TEXAS...
The National Weather Service in Norman has issued a Fire Weather
Watch, which is in effect from Thursday morning through Thursday
evening.
* TIMING...Late Thursday morning through Thursday evening.
* WIND...South to southwest 10 to 20 mph, gusts to 30 mph.
* HUMIDITY...20 to 35 percent.
* TEMPERATURE...In the 80s.
* IMPACTS...any fires that develop will likely spread rapidly.
Outdoor burning is not recommended.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A Fire Weather Watch means that critical fire weather conditions
are forecast to occur. Listen for later forecasts and possible
Red Flag Warnings.
my 2 yr old Niece/yr old Nephew 2020 ![[Image: afr(pre.gif]](http://web.archive.org/web/20160420192835/http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/afr(pre.gif)
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![[Image: eur(22-.gif]](http://web.archive.org/web/20160420192840/http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/eur(22-.gif)
![[Image: europe1.gif]](http://web.archive.org/web/20160420192840/http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/NEW_MAPS/europe1.gif)
![[Image: eur(8ky.gif]](http://web.archive.org/web/20160420192840/http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/eur(8ky.gif)
![[Image: eur(pre.gif]](http://web.archive.org/web/20160420192840/http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/eur(pre.gif)
![[Image: co2.png]](http://www.polyticks.com/photo/co2.png)
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