[leot]

Are you still trying to determine what the probability is that you're wrong? Because that didn't make it into your response. I know I'm not 100% certain.

The point I was making about salaries dealt with the size of the vested interests and the financial means of those involved to protect them.

"The global warming people" (???) really? 2 cents to 50 -- are you presenting these numbers in good faith? Anyhow, lots of "them" also think nuclear power is fine too (or should I say "Them", because it's much better to think in terms of nefarious monolithic demonizable opponents, far more productive and likely to lead to smart outcomes). It seems the estimate of "$0.50/kwh was, at the very least, on the high end. Some estimates put solar at $0.12/kwh by 2015 (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-06/10/content_126... -- btw, these citation things are awfully handy. You should really try them out some time. Say what you like about the nefarious "Them", They are pretty into the whole being-scholarly thing.)

Also, I'd say the bulk of climate change advocates think that the best gains can be achieved through conservation. There are lots of ways of living ones life that require way less resources. I mean, it's a pretty arbitrary decision whether to be into NASCAR or the Tour de France, into motor boat racing or sailing, into massive low-pro-tire pick-up trucks or a sport sedan.

[NY_USA_Hacker]

"References"? Sure, they're crucial. I'm just awash in references on global warming.

But this discussion does not come up to the level of seriousness for me to go to my directory of global warming information and pull up references and details.

The 50 US cents per KWh at the plant is okay: That's ballpark what the total cost has been in Germany that tried hard with subsidies to get farmers to install solar panels.

Sure, people can keep working on solar, wind, low head hydro, etc. power and hope to get the cost down to 20 cents or so, etc.

Still solar and wind are total made up nonsense, wind likely for centuries, and solar at least for decades. A big, huge problem is that those sources are unpredictable so need storage, and the cheap storage is not available. So, basically have to pay the CapEx twice. That is, have to pay for a coal plant to use when the wind is not blowing. Then the coal plant operator will have to raise his rates to cover his CapEx for the time his plant is not operating. Bummer.

On average in the US, at the plant, nukes have been under 2 cents per KWh and coal has been under 3 cents. In comparison, the dreams of the people pushing 'clean, renewable' energy would shoot the US economy in the gut.

For the probability, that's a silly issue: The Mayan priests who killed people to pour blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky (I have a reference to a scholarly book on the Mayans, and Google books or Amazon shows the page with the specifics) picked a good problem: The Mayans didn't know enough to debunk the priests.

Al Guru did the same: Solid science for what the climate will be in 50 years under various scenarios for human activity does not exist. In particular, about the only way we know to calculate the 'climate' is from 'first principles' of physics and chemistry, and that involves actually predicting the weather, each cubic millimeter or so, INCLUDING the oceans, all over the planet for each millisecond or so for 50 years, and we can't do that computing. [Note: All simplifications are not from first principles and are approximations of unknown accuracy. So, can't actually calculate all the clouds in detail, put in a simple model for the clouds; for the oceans, do something still simpler.]

Then for the 'climate', need to do the full calculation, do that computing for a narrow distribution of initial conditions around the conditions now. Big problem: We don't even know the initial conditions, e.g., in the depths of the oceans and their currents, accurately. Anyway, run the weather prediction a few million times and then take empirical distributions and find the climate. Then change the scenario of human activity, do it again, and compare.

Tough to do. Hasn't been done.

Similarly for a gamma ray burst blowing the atmosphere off the earth, Yellowstone wiping out much of the US, a moving black hole sucking up the earth, some microbe we don't know how to kill wiping out humanity, etc.

So, what do we do? Well, we do NOT fall for superstition and gurus like the Mayans did. We don't go for morality plays about evil humans with transgression from evil, retribution from an angry god, and redemption from sacrifice. We don't sacrifice lambs or virgins. And we don't sacrifice our coal plants, half of our electric power.

For 'global warming', first, we look at the arguments of Al Guru, Guru Ramaswamy, etc., move forward to their first absurd, outrageous, egregious, grotesquely incompetent and/or dishonest point and then flush their arguments and reject those gurus. For Al Guru, the time between the high temperatures and the high CO2 levels he didn't show in the Vostok data is enough to flush his stuff. For the IPCC and Guru Ramaswami, his 'radiative forcing' is enough to flush.

So, for the alarmists, we have nothing but superstition.

So, we have to proceed on our own.

So, we start: Is there any empirical evidence that the earth is getting warmer now? We can measure temperature with astounding accuracy, and now with satellites we can get good data for the whole planet, day by day. May I have the envelope, please? "Nope, there's no evidence."

For a little more, as far as we can tell (I'm sure you have the NAS report), the temperature now is exactly the same as it was before the start of the Little Ice Age caused, maybe, by missing sun spots for some decades. So, since then we've been pulling out of the Little Ice Age and, net, since just before the Little Ice Age, all of human activity has had zip, zilch, zero effect on temperature. Net, human caused global warming doesn't pass the sniff test.

Next, what about the science? Do we worry about CO2, methane, water vapor, chlorinated hydrocarbons, aerosols? First- cut, changes in any of these seem to be at most small and trivial.

Next, what is the record on climate variability? Well, there's been a lot of variability. So, that we see nothing going on now means, first-cut, no worries, mate.

Next, if there we do begin to see some changes, then we will address the issue again.

The idea that the climate is wildly 'unstable' (got'a stop those evil butterflies from flapping their wings) and that we are at a tipping point and point of no return, with no good evidence, we have to pass off as superstitious nonsense like the Mayans.

Net, we're not Mayans. We don't wreck our society for superstitious fears. We just don't do that.

No sale. Ain't buying.

Done.

[leot]

So, what's your response to, say:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co...

?

[NY_USA_Hacker]

The whole page is just about 'energy balance', and that fails as soon as there is any significant change. E.g., as there is any significant warming, there may be more water vapor and clouds, and clouds may reflect more sunlight and tend to cool the earth. So, no way can we use such an energy balance calculation to discuss significant changes in temperature over decades, as the alarmists want to predict. So, right away it's time to start flushing their stuff. That is, even if the energy balance calculation is correct, then it says what will happen over, say, tomorrow.

The 'radiative forcing' term was not well defined and, as I recall, nothing like what Ramaswami explained in the main, relevant IPCC document. Ramaswami's stuff was junk, but the usage at the Web page seems better but a long way from good.

That a 30% increase in CO2 concentration leads to an increase of 3 degrees C is tough to swallow: CO2 absorbs such a small amount of energy, especially after what would be absorbed by water vapor, methane, etc. Also, I'd want to see that CO2 calculation in detail, e.g., in terms of the CO2 spectral lines and the radiation from the surface of the earth. Also the page mentioned 'saturation': They didn't say just what they meant, but a guess is that some gas is asborbing all it can. They didn't say how close CO2 is to 'saturation'. My guess is that CO2 is close to saturation now. I'd want to see some details.

At one point they want to refer to 'sophisticated global climate models': That's easy -- it's the empty set.

In places their writing tries to be a snow job, e.g., using undefined acronyms.

They reference Hansen -- TILT! He used to be a big global cooling guy.

Generally, though, the stuff from Al Guru and the IPCC (Tom Friedman is MUCH worse) is so bad that I lost patience with this stuff: The whole thing is at least 99 44/100% flim flam fraud deceptive manipulation,

[leot]

I'm not sure why you keep suggesting that the credibility of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) depends on the accuracy of Al Gore's movie. Furthermore, it's not just the IPCC that provides evidence. There are thousands of peer-reviewed articles on the topic as well. Do you think that editors and reviewers at Nature and Science are acting in bad faith? If so, why? If not, then do you know something they don't? If so, what? Or do you think that the entire AGW "industry" is one that provides a "signal" that encourages people to down-weight/overlook evidence against AGW? If so, then why do you seem to believe that the fossil fuel industry wouldn't have a similar influence in the other direction? Indeed, the fact that news articles suggest AGW controversy far more frequently than scientific articles do suggests influences on the public sphere that come from outside of science.

Science provides huge rewards to those who disprove an existing theory. By the sounds of it, you seem to think it would be "easy" to do so with AGW. So why not just systematically lay out your refutation? If you're right you'll be famous and save the planet billions/trillions of dollars. You'll be able to command huge fees to give speeches, etc. etc. If this doesn't work out, then it suggests that science is broken for AGW. In which case, why would this happen when it's the same process that works pretty darn well for everything else?

> They reference Hansen -- TILT! He used to be a big global cooling guy.

So? People can't change their minds when confronted with evidence?

[NY_USA_Hacker]

I started with the main, loud evidence -- Al Guru and, at the time, the main IPCC technical document. Flush. Bubble, bubble.

It's possible to do some good work in 'climate science', and maybe there is some by more than just the one guy at MIT or the one in Georgia. If they do good science, then maybe Nature would publish it. Here I mean they can do some good science which, however, is a very long way from really answering the main question, are we about to cook the planet? E.g., the MIT guy did some diffusion in a column calculation. Looks okay, but it's a very, very long way from an answer to the main question.

But generally my view would be as you put it that on 'AGW' -- anthropomorphic global warming? -- science is broken.

Why don't I get rich and famous debunking the alarmist nonsense? Because the alaremist 'science' is making various approximations. Maybe with their assumptions, their arithmetic is correct. E.g., if do the energy balance arithmetic carefully and get it right, then okay. Nice work. If it says no changes, good. If it says big changes, then, sadly, the work is good only until the changes start to become significant. If they do everything correctly on energy balance, then my objection would be, in the case of big changes, using that analysis to say what the climate will be in 10, 50, 100 years. I could say that, and maybe it would get published, but it would hardly make me rich or famous.

Broadly Al Guru picked a 'good' problem, that is, like the Mayan priests who scared people without enough solid information do debunk. Again, the solid science we want is not available. With such science we could debunk the alarmists by saying in rock solid terms what the climate would be year by year for the next, say, 500 years. I can't do that. No one can do that.

So, why is science broken for AGW? The fundamental reason is that no one can really get a solid answer to what the climate will be decades into the future under various scenarios of human activity. The shorter term political reason is that the 'climate science' community was started heavily by VP Gore's direction of the funding and, then, the interests of the IPCC to find a way to send money from rich countries to poor ones. So, there are lots of vested interests and not much science solid enough to settle the issue.

So, again, note (1) the temperature is, as far as we can tell, now just where it was before the start of the Little Ice Age; (2) from the good temperature data we have now from satellites, apparently the planet is not getting warmer now. So, what to do? Just keep watching the data and the science, If there is any that is very important, and then readdress the question once it begins to look important.

But there's a big HUGE thing NOT to do now: Wreck the world economy over very inconclusive science.