Climate Change News

  • Thread starter Thread starter Theo520
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Yea, I used a bit of hyperbole.
The article only says the course created ‘skeptics’
It did not use the word “shocked”
 
The full article is a good read, here’s the start
What the climate wars did to science | Matt Ridley
WHAT THE CLIMATE WARS DID TO SCIENCE

Policy-based evidence making is all too frequent in climate science

For much of my life I have been a science writer. That means I eavesdrop on what’s going on in laboratories so I can tell interesting stories. It’s analogous to the way art critics write about art, but with a difference: we “science critics” rarely criticise. If we think a scientific paper is dumb, we just ignore it. There’s too much good stuff coming out of science to waste time knocking the bad stuff.

Sure, we occasionally take a swipe at pseudoscience—homeopathy, astrology, claims that genetically modified food causes cancer, and so on. But the great thing about science is that it’s self-correcting. The good drives out the bad, because experiments get replicated and hypotheses put to the test. So a really bad idea cannot survive long in science.

Or so I used to think. Now, thanks largely to climate science, I have changed my mind. It turns out bad ideas can persist in science for decades, and surrounded by myrmidons of furious defenders they can turn into intolerant dogmas.

This should have been obvious to me. Lysenkoism, a pseudo-biological theory that plants (and people) could be trained to change their heritable natures, helped starve millions and yet persisted for decades in the Soviet Union, reaching its zenith under Nikita Khrushchev. The theory that dietary fat causes obesity and heart disease, based on a couple of terrible studies in the 1950s, became unchallenged orthodoxy and is only now fading slowly.

What these two ideas have in common is that they had political support, which enabled them to monopolise debate. Scientists are just as prone as anybody else to “confirmation bias”, the tendency we all have to seek evidence that supports our favoured hypothesis and dismiss evidence that contradicts it—as if we were counsel for the defence. It’s tosh that scientists always try to disprove their own theories, as they sometimes claim, and nor should they. But they do try to disprove each other’s. Science has always been decentralised, so Professor Smith challenges Professor Jones’s claims, and that’s what keeps science honest.
. . .
Click to expand...
 
Fleet buyers are the best users of such new technology. They can install the required ‘fueling’ stations and can optimize to it’s technical needs.

Heavy equipment in mining operations has long been a user of electric motors. I’m curious what it has taken so long to be adopted by big-rig trucks. Guessing the the lack of flexibility when your route changes?

Personally, I’ve long been a fan of hybrid designs which offer the efficiency advantages of electric drives and gas/diesel for flexible energy storage.
 
Last edited:
That’s an excellent article regarding the climate change debate. I also count myself in the lukewarm camp. As in climate is changing, but I remain unconvinced as to the (disastrous) effect of mankind. As the article shows us, follow the money …

More specifically regarding fleets, fleet buyers whose vehicles stay within a greater metropolitan area are really the best candidates to help advance this technology as it becomes more cost effective to install recharging stations not only at their terminals and warehouses, but also scattered around that greater metropolitan area. Battery storage technology is still nowhere near what is needed to make intermittent sources like solar and wind take off. Battery range in an EV is also still very much an issue as we’re well short of what Musk needs for his ultimate business success, but one that is remediated somewhat by the presence of easily accessible charging stations.
 
Here’s another piece of new news, to me at least: burning wood counts as a carbon neutral, renewable resource. The assumption apparently is that if you cut down one tree and burn it, but plant another one to replace it, then the CO2 sequestered in the new one will equal what is produced by burning the old one. This might make some kind of sense if they were burning new growth trees, but it appears that old growth forests are at risk as well. Power plants in Britain and Europe are converting from coal to…wood. Now there’s a giant step for mankind.

www.climatedepot.com

Carbon Loophole: Why Is Wood Burning Counted as Green Energy?

Carbon Loophole: Why Is Wood Burning Counted as Green Energy? By Paul Homewood h/t oldbrew Fred Pearce has now also picked up on the biomass scam. From Yale 360: It was once one of Europe’s largest…
www.climatedepot.com
 
Last edited:
The fastest growing trees (and thus the best “sequesterers”) are the “adolescent” trees. Seedlings and small transplants sequester very little carbon. When it comes to the prevailing trees around here, at least, I was long ago advised by an old timber man that the fastest-growing trees are the “15.15’s”; that is, trees that are 15 inches in diameter measured at 15 inches above the ground. They’ll grow as much in 10 years as an older tree will grow in 40 years or even a century. The state forestry dept has a different, but similar view.

Really old trees, it’s true, sequester very little carbon, because they don’t grow very much.

So the most efficient way to do forestry for “sequestration” is to thin and improve existing stands with an eye to most favoring the “15.15s”. Of course, if one does that, one will open up some sunlit ground, thus encouraging natural planting of the eventual replacements for the fast growers.
 
From the article I cited:

In Romania, Greenpeace and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) have reported widespread illegal logging, with much of the timber exported for burning in power stations in Austria and Germany.

Just a guess here, but I don’t think much consideration is being given to “best forestry practices”.
 
Ender said:
Just a guess here, but I don’t think much consideration is being given to “best forestry practices”.
Click to expand...
Probably you’re right, but it’s imaginably better than that.

Most forests are not quite what they ought to be. Timber for firewood should be taken from diseased, dead or malformed trees. But that doesn’t mean its best to leave trees to grow indefinitely. Most forests are of a particular age, with most of the trees all being of approximately the same age. The ground below is a desert that won’t support wildlife or anything else. Eventually, they get diseases or pests or both and tend to die more or less at the same time, creating ‘cross timber’ monstrosities that are among the most severe fire hazards imaginable.

Better to harvest healthy mature trees selectively over a long period of time, and "sequestering’ the timber by better uses like housing or furniture, and leaving space for new trees to grow in patches.

But I expect you’re right in your suspicions.
 
Yikes, this is good alarmism.
Gotta love using correlation with sketchy data to draw broad conclusions.


Comparing the volcanic record with glacial coverage, the team found that the number of eruptions dropped significantly as the climate cooled and ice cover increased. The eruptions that did occur also tended to be smaller in magnitude.

“There’s a big change in the record in the mid-Holocene [epoch], where we see no volcanic ash in Europe and very little in Iceland,” says Swindles. “This seems to overlap with a time where there’s cold climate conditions, which would have favored glacial advance in Iceland.”
 
It’s a step forward, though this plant has been problematic.

www.washingtontimes.com

Georgia regulators say nuclear reactors, nation’s first since 1978, will be finished

In a decision that could help shape the future of American nuclear power, Georgia regulators on Thursday said a troubled $25 billion reactor project that’s over budget and years behind schedule can continue — though state electricity customers will have to foot less of the bill moving forward.
www.washingtontimes.com www.washingtontimes.com

The below summary of a paper on the cost of nuclear power is intriguing,

judithcurry.com

Forgone benefits of disruption to nuclear power since late-1960’s - Climate Etc.

by Peter Lang Could the costs of nuclear power have been 10% of what they are if not for the disruption? A new paper, Nuclear Power Learning and Deployment Rates: Disruption and Global Benefits Forgone [1], finds that nuclear power … Continue reading →
judithcurry.com judithcurry.com
 
The eruption of Krakatoa in the late 1800s did just that. Sometimes referred to as a year without summer due to the volcanic shroud thatcovered much of the northern Hemisphere.

That fact may not be a part of the vaunted “scientific models” constantly cited to make us all stop noticing everything else that might be a more pressing priority … and adopt an immediate and mandatory agenda pressed and led by people who should never be in charge of anything more complicated than their own personal hygeine.
 
Last edited:
It seems both solar and wind farms were decimated by the Hurricane.
So instead of just restringing distribution wires, you have to replace 90+% of your solar panels and your rotor blades, hoping that’s all that was damaged.

www.washingtonexaminer.com

Photos show renewable energy took a beating in Puerto Rico

Environmentalists say renewable energy should play a role in rebuilding Puerto Rico's trashed electric grid, but recent photos of the island obtained by
www.washingtonexaminer.com www.washingtonexaminer.com
 
CaptFun said:
The eruption of Krakatoa in the late 1800s did just that. Sometimes referred to as a year without summer due to the volcanic shroud thatcovered much of the northern Hemisphere.
Click to expand...
To be more historically accurate, the year without a summer took place in 1816, the year following Tambora’s eruption in 1815. Tambora is the largest known eruption in recorded history. That said, Krakatoa (1883), Novarupta (1912) and Pinatubo (1991) all lowered global temps by around 1C or more the following year.

Someone showed that if Pinatubo’s effects were taken out that the warming that took place in the 1990’s is not as drastic as the AGW’ers made it out to be.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top