World's climate warming faster than feared, scientists say

[Ridgerunner]

More reason for the population as a whole to reject public utilities because cheap rates for a select few cost the general population who does not see the benefit of these lower rates.

The City officials will tell anything that makes their case to feed the monster which is government. The salaries of CEO’s do not make the rates more expensive; that is myth.

Let’s imagine our CEO of the company I work for makes $20 million after all salaries and stock options (BTW, he doesn’t make that much). We serve over 7 million customers, residential and commercial.

Do the simple math, annually that casts the customer $2.86 each. If you want to take it further, $.24 /month/ $.0079 per day. President Obama’s cap & trade regulations, fashioned after the legislation that he couldn’t get passed with a House and Senate controlled by democrats, will cost customers much much more than all the utility CEOs salaries put together. That is fact. Who do you think will be hurt the most? Business? How will business be hurt, all corporations do is pass through costs like this to the customers. The elderly and the poor will suffer under these regulations. I may cut back some usage so my now $250 a month bill doesn’t go to $500; but what about the little old lady down the street that now uses as little as she can so her bill is under $100? How will she pay it when it climbs without an increase in usage to $200? Answer, she won’t, she will have to do without and many sheeple will blame the utility. All in the name of a theory called man made climate change. A theory that many scientists believe is based on inaccurate, at best, models; at worst manipulated lies in the data to promulgate ideology.

I guess this is just more unpleasant rhetoric. They can call me a denier, or a partisan hack (btw way I am neither a rep or a dem), but in the long run I am a simple deacon who ministers to the people these regulations will hurt, the same people who have been hurt by the last decade of government actions. As for the future, our kids and grandkids will suffer more than us for these decisions.

I absolutely agree with your assertion that this administration’s (admitted) policy will hurt the poor most of all.

Sometimes publicly owned utilities can be a good thing, sometimes not. In the city where I live, water and electric are publicly owned. But the electrical is deceptive since the city buys its electricity from a large privately-owned company, adds to it and charges the result to the customers. It’s very efficiently run and the rates are fairly comparable to anywhere else except the high-cost places. The deal is that the city buys power more cheaply from the big utility company than consumers do. That’s not an outrage because the city is cheaper for the big company to administer (one big customer that does its own collections, installations, disconnects, and owns and maintains its own infrastructure within the city).

But no matter what, Obama’s actions will cause it to be more expensive. Most of the power plants for “big electric company” are coal-fired. Why? Because their power plants are located right smack in a coal-producing area. It’s efficient. They’re not too far away from the big gas transmission lines coming from Texas and Oklahoma, but it would take some new, privately financed infrastructure to get it there.

 

[Lapey]

Mr. Deacon:
Just to set things straight, by unpleasant rhetoric, I meant this:

IMHO, there may be other reasons to criticize a utility company, and it would not necessarily mean that I am a hypocrite to do so. It is unpleasant when people go around calling me a hypocrite.

Tomdstone, please go back and re-read the posts, in sequence. I wasn’t responding to you. You jumped into a conversation with a guilty conscience and an ill formed opinion of private verses public utility.

If you care to talk about those issues with respect, I again tell you I’m open to that. But I have tried to ignore the fact that you were very rude in your response to a post of mine that was not even addressing you.

Lastly, I would appreciate you and forum rules dictate that you respond to members of the clergy and religious with respect for their office. To address me the way you have is out of line and completely disrespectful. It is used in a condescending manner and I do not appreciate it. I respectfully request you call me either by my account name, Lapey or if you choose to call me by title it is Dcn. Gary or Dcn. Lapey. It is not the agenda driven and disrespectful “Mr. Deacon”.

If you care to continue this tone and disrespect I will report you to the moderators. Is that “unpleasant rhetoric”?

 

[Lapey]

And that’s needed.

If the infrastructure were maintained as it should be, power would cost more, but we might not see so many weather related outages.

Wooden overhead poles are, I have heard, a thing of the past in the European countries.

After Hurricane Sandy came and went, IIRC, a power transformer from 1901 was discovered shorted out! 1901???

You get what you pay for.

ICXC NIKA

1901 Transformers are much better made than current day transformers. The ones manufactured today, by government mandated standards, last a fraction of the time and work much less efficiently than the older generations.

If we stop using wood poles and/or place all power line underground you would not be able to pay your bill without new government regs.

 

[Lapey]

I absolutely agree with your assertion that this administration’s (admitted) policy will hurt the poor most of all.

Sometimes publicly owned utilities can be a good thing, sometimes not. In the city where I live, water and electric are publicly owned. But the electrical is deceptive since the city buys its electricity from a large privately-owned company, adds to it and charges the result to the customers. It’s very efficiently run and the rates are fairly comparable to anywhere else except the high-cost places. The deal is that the city buys power more cheaply from the big utility company than consumers do. That’s not an outrage because the city is cheaper for the big company to administer (one big customer that does its own collections, installations, disconnects, and owns and maintains its own infrastructure within the city).

But no matter what, Obama’s actions will cause it to be more expensive. Most of the power plants for “big electric company” are coal-fired. Why? Because their power plants are located right smack in a coal-producing area. It’s efficient. They’re not too far away from the big gas transmission lines coming from Texas and Oklahoma, but it would take some new, privately financed infrastructure to get it there.

You cover it well, I’ll add this. After they are done ending coal fired power generation, gas is next. Why is there so much hoopla about fracking, because it allows companies to safely and cheaply produce more natural gas than ever dreamed existed in the USA; it doesn’t help the agenda of the administration.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You cover it well, I’ll add this. After they are done ending coal fired power generation, gas is next. Why is there so much hoopla about fracking, because it allows companies to safely and cheaply produce more natural gas than ever dreamed existed in the USA; it doesn’t help the agenda of the administration.

I’m not entirely sure this administration is thinking beyond that $100 million promised to the Dem party by that billionaire in California if it blocks or impedes every potential energy resource.

Obviously Obama doesn’t believe in global warming from emissions. If he did, he wouldn’t have had his Africa toot accompanied by twelve ships, innumerable armored cars and round-the-clock overhead jet fighter coverage. He wouldn’t have had Air Force One fly to St. Louis and back for a pizza.

I don’t think any of those “global warming” big shots believe in it. But they do believe in money and power.

 

[DaveBj]

The pause continues – Still no global warming for 17 years 9 months

According to the RSS satellite data, whose value for May 2014 has just been published, the global warming trend in the 17 years 9 years since September 1996 is zero (Fig. 1). The 213 months without global warming represent more than half the 425-month satellite data record since January 1979. No one now in high school has lived through global warming.

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/clip_image002.png

wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/04/the-pause-continues-still-no-global-warming-for-17-years-9-months/

Thanks for the update, Gilliam

 

[RACJ]

Were the Vikings driving too many SUV’s when they settled southern Greenland a thousand years ago? They left b/c the climate became either too cold, or they all froze to death! Try settling in Greenland now…
Get a grip, People. The climate changes due to forces beyond our control. And who says that warming, if it is happening, is a BAAAAA…D thing? Rob

 

[RACJ]

“But they do believe in money and power.”

Absolutely, but they also believe in keeping the population misinformed and incapable of discernment, like sheep on the slaughter ramp. Rob

 

[lynnvinc]

The pause continues – Still no global warming for 17 years 9 months

According to the RSS satellite data, whose value for May 2014 has just been published, the global warming trend in the 17 years 9 years since September 1996 is zero (Fig. 1). The 213 months without global warming represent more than half the 425-month satellite data record since January 1979. No one now in high school has lived through global warming.sol

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/clip_image002.png

wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/04/the-pause-continues-still-no-global-warming-for-17-years-9-months/

Great improvement – instead of going down the up escalator (see skepticalscience.com/still-going-down-the-up-escalator.html), folks are now going on a horizontal conveyor belt. Maybe eventually more people can come to understand the realist view and become part of the solution and help reduce harms and deaths from GW and concomitant effects from burning fossil fuels (and save some money for their pocketbooks, which might help reduce grinchiness around the world). Alleluia, praise the Lord!

Going Down the Up Escalator:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator_2012_500.gif

 

[Ridgerunner]

Great improvement – instead of going down the up escalator (see skepticalscience.com/still-going-down-the-up-escalator.html), folks are now going on a horizontal conveyor belt. Maybe eventually more people can come to understand the realist view and become part of the solution and help reduce harms and deaths from GW and concomitant effects from burning fossil fuels (and save some money for their pocketbooks, which might help reduce grinchiness around the world). Alleluia, praise the Lord!

Going Down the Up Escalator:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator_2012_500.gif

We gave all seen the competing graphs before, and all we can conclude from it is that there are competing graphs.

We are just getting to the temperatures prevalent in the Medieval Warming Period after a cold spell, and there is no reason at all to think of it as anything but a cyclical change. geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html. Or at least so some say, and have their graphs to prove it.

Others have their graphs to prove that it’s getting colder, at least in the U.S.
vizwiz.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html

So far this spring/summer, it’s getting an “El Nino” look to it, meaning it will be cooler and wetter than normal here, hotter and drier in the west. So, we’ll be thinking “global cooling” while folks in California will be thinking “global warming”. But it’s just one of those cyclical changes.

 

[lynnvinc]

We gave all seen the competing graphs before, and all we can conclude from it is that there are competing graphs.

The graphs are basically the same, except the one I posted goes back to 1970. Any scientist worth his salt will tell that you need at least 3 decades or more of data on CC to say one way or the other whether there is warming, since there are so many variables (noise) involved. That’s also why the graphs look like see-saws. Climate science is based on the laws of physics; the radiative impact of GHGs has been long accepted. Other factors, such as amount of irradiance from the sun (we’ve been in a solar minima for the past 15 years), heat uptake in the oceans (if you combine atmospheric and ocean warming, the graph will show an increase in warming, not a pause).

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Total_Heat_Content_2011_med.jpg

Volcanoes have a temporary cooling impact, as does SO2 released from coal-burning (think China putting up a new coal-burning power plant each week), etc. In fact it was this cooling factor that lead 2 scientists in the 1970s to predict global cooling, tho the other climate scientists stuck to the idea of global warming, despite the aerosol cooling effect; it’s just that Newsweek ran with the more sensational story of an upcoming ice age . Climate science is not as simple a science as many make it out to be.

We are just getting to the temperatures prevalent in the Medieval Warming Period after a cold spell, and there is no reason at all to think of it as anything but a cyclical change. geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html. Or at least so some say, and have their graphs to prove it…

Yes, there have been warming periods in the past, and we are nowhere near the 6C+ warming of the end-Permian 251 mya when 95% of life died out due to that great warming. However, we are getting there orders of magnitude more rapidly than ever in the past, so while the past can serve to some extent as an analog for the present and future, there are a lot of unknowns re what this extreme rapidity of warming means for life on earth.

Scientists are well aware of past warmings; one branch of climatology is paleoclimatology. In fact one of my students is now spending her summer working on an archaeological project dealing in part with the Medieval Warming in the New World (U.S. Midwest). Nothing new here.

Also, just because naturally released GHGs, solar cycles, orbital patterns, etc. can cause global warming (and cooling) that in no way disproves human-released GHGs cause it. In fact, the case for current anthropogenic global warming is strengthened, not diminished, by past warmings.

If one digs a bit deeper into the science they will find that the other, natural factors that cause GW are just not there at this time to explain the extent of our current warming.

It would be a very terrible thing if natural factors were to join with human-caused factors to cause even greater warming, as will happen to some extent when we reach a solar irradiance maximum in a few years, and will really kick in with tremendous carbon (mainly methane) release from melting permafrost and ocean hydrates. The process is already underway.

I guess, as the movie title goes, some like it hot.

 

[Ender]

(if you combine atmospheric and ocean warming, the graph will show an increase in warming, not a pause).

http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Total_Heat_Content_2011_med.jpg

Perhaps you can explain the mechanism for ocean heating. Where is the heat coming from? … and don’t say the atmosphere because the atmosphere hasn’t warmed in the last 15 years while the oceans (according to this graph) have. Greenhouse warming is based on the theory that the atmosphere will retain more heat because of greenhouse gases, but if the oceans have warmed while the atmosphere has not, how can that be because of the greenhouse effect?

Ender

 

[frobert]

So far, the only solutions being offered are unaffordable energy costs and get rich schemes for those involved in the solutions.

Will you be able to afford heating your home or driving your car under Obama’s tax and cap plan?

Will you be able to afford heating your home or driving your car?

“Global oil prices—which, at the current $90 to $110 per barrel range, are at historically high levels—are nevertheless too low to justify tackling ever-more challenging geology. The industry needs an oil price of at least $120 per barrel to fund exploration in the Arctic and in some ultra-deepwater plays.”

Source: The Party Is Over

 

[vz71]

Perhaps you can explain the mechanism for ocean heating. Where is the heat coming from? … and don’t say the atmosphere because the atmosphere hasn’t warmed in the last 15 years while the oceans (according to this graph) have. Greenhouse warming is based on the theory that the atmosphere will retain more heat because of greenhouse gases, but if the oceans have warmed while the atmosphere has not, how can that be because of the greenhouse effect?

Ender

We are not supposed to be thinking critically here.

Logic doesn’t apply here.

 

[lynnvinc]

Will you be able to afford heating your home or driving your car?

“Global oil prices—which, at the current $90 to $110 per barrel range, are at historically high levels—are nevertheless too low to justify tackling ever-more challenging geology. The industry needs an oil price of at least $120 per barrel to fund exploration in the Arctic and in some ultra-deepwater plays.”

Source: The Party Is Over

Solutions are only for those who want to either save money and/or save the earth and lives thereupon, not for the profligate party-goers. And I don’t think the party will be over for them either…they’ll just go on living wild lives willing to pay higher prices, without concern for others, including their own progeny.

We non-partiers (tho we do have fun in other ways) have done nothing but save money over the past 45 years reducing our energy/resource consumption without lowering our living standards, even increasing them – first in the 70s with the idea of saving resources for future generations and since the late 80s with the idea of reducing our contributions to GW. We didn’t have an idea of saving money; that was just a pleasant bonus.

We started out in the 70s by choosing homes close to work and shops (within 1 or 2 miles) and other such measures, and then by the 90s went in more vigorously for energy efficient measures and appliances, etc. With money saved from small things – such as general conservation, our low-flow showerhead with on-off soap-up switch (from which we’ve saved $2000+ over the past 23 years from ), etc – we’ve been able to pay for the upfront higher costs of other saving measures, which have gone on to save us $$.

By 2012 we had reduced our GHG emissions by about 50% below our 1990 emissions, conscientious that GHGs are a component of nearly every product and of water and energy to heat it, not just ICE car-driving and fossil-fuel-based electricity. We could have reduced more (and saved more money) if we had really put our mind to it.

With the savings from all that we were well enough off to buy our first new car, a Chevy Volt, which we drive mainly off our Green Mt wind energy and energy from our solar panels which we installed in 2013. We really didn’t expect to save money on the Volt; we considered it a splurge on what we were thinking would be our last car. My husband got the Bose sound system and I insisted on the back camera and safety warning system.

Then come to find out, we are saving about $1000 a year on the Volt. The cost for driving 35-40 miles (electric range) is less than $1.25, and it gets about 40+ mpg when it shifts to gasoline, which is rare with our driving habits (tho we did drive 375 miles to Houston to see our niece in 2013, cruise control set at 73 mph, air con blasting – it was a smooth and fine drive).

Our solar panels are also saving us about $1000 a year. As they say on ABC News, "that’s real money. With our other energy/resource efficient/conservative measures also saving us money combined with these last 2 measures, we are now well set-up for retirement next year.

I know people tout the Bible but often don’t really believe some of the things it says. I myself did not fully appreciate the great truth Jesus told us until these experiences with striving to reduce our harms: Seek ye first the kingdom of God and it’s righteousness and all things will be added unto you. Alleluia.

 

[gmx2014]

“The atmosphere’s water vapor content has increased by about 0.41 kilograms per square meter (kg/m²) per decade since 1988, and natural variability in climate just can’t explain this moisture change. The most plausible explanation is that it’s due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases.”

Increase in Atmospheric Moisture Tied to Human Activities

 

[gilliam]

“The atmosphere’s water vapor content has increased by about 0.41 kilograms per square meter (kg/m²) per decade since 1988, and natural variability in climate just can’t explain this moisture change. The most plausible explanation is that it’s due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases.”

Increase in Atmospheric Moisture Tied to Human Activities

Wow! Just Wow! That has to be the largest leap in logic that I have seen this year! Let’s see some proof instead if “well IMHO, it is most plausible…” That isn’t science, that is politics and speculation. And don’t point to models. Models are computer programs, they are a form of ‘art.’ You can make them say anything you want them to say. They are not scientific proof.

 

[gilliam]

NOAA doesn’t show any increase in temperature since 2004 (they don’t have any data prior to 2004 on their site):

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Source: ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&parameter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2004&endyear=2014&month=12

 

[Lapey]

“The atmosphere’s water vapor content has increased by about 0.41 kilograms per square meter (kg/m²) per decade since 1988, and natural variability in climate just can’t explain this moisture change. The most plausible explanation is that it’s due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases.”

Increase in Atmospheric Moisture Tied to Human Activities

Yet another “smart person’s” guess as to why changes take place in the earth’s climate. Now I’m on board…

 

[lynnvinc]

“The atmosphere’s water vapor content has increased by about 0.41 kilograms per square meter (kg/m²) per decade since 1988, and natural variability in climate just can’t explain this moisture change. The most plausible explanation is that it’s due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases.”

Increase in Atmospheric Moisture Tied to Human Activities

This should be a no-brainer, at least for those who prepare meals: increased heat causes more water vapor, drawing it from water bodies, and also from soil and plants, desiccating these, causing crops to whither and die and creating dry fuel for wildfires. Also creating conditions for Biblical-type flooding under certain weather conditions, even floods during droughts.

In fact, water vapor is the most potent GHG. However, it is a “feedback,” reacting to the heat caused by other factors, such as CO2, CH4, etc, the latter being “forcings.” That’s bec H2O molecules have only hours or days residence in the atmosphere, while CH4 can be up there for about 10 years, and CO2 over 100 years – a portion can stay in the atmosphere for 100,000 years. See realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/03/how-long-will-global-warming-last/