The Republican Party continues its decline. From HuffPo (also Harpers and NYT):
And when a listener scoffed at the notion of global warming, Steele eagerly ran with the baton.
“Thank you, thank you,” he said. “We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? No very long.”
Greenland, for the record, likely had forestation some 450,000 to 800,000 years ago. But its name was derived, as is most commonly believed, from Erik the Red, who wanted to trick people into going to that island as opposed to the more hospitable Iceland.
justin-tyme says
Whether or not we have global warming is another matter. I’ve seen too many hoaxes foisted upon the public by the self-proclaimed scientific community to be anything but skeptic.
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p>Let’s see: “The krypton factor”, Secretary of Energy Richardson said, “this stunning discovery, which opens the door to further insights into the structure of the atomic nucleus … “; 1984’s “energy machine” of Joe Newman, who declared: “Put one in your home and you’ll never have to pay another electric bill.”; Sir Cyril Burt’ IQ experiment proved that intelligence was inherited, upon Sir Burt’s death it was found he made the data up; although crop circles were an admitted hoax in 1991, some still believe an other-worldly explanation; the Tasaday tribe, claimed by Philippine politicians as stone age people turned out to be just another village; the Piltdown man turned out to be a hoax that lasted fifty years.
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p>Politics in science gave us eugenics, forced lobotomy, testing on prisoners and the general public and other curses. I’ll be healthily skeptic. I wish the politicians would be more skeptical with our tax money.
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p>
ryepower12 says
the tin foil people are the folks who believe it’s a hoax. Sorry. Here, this is for you.
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p>There’s some healthy scientific debate about the end result of Global Warming – but anyone who doesn’t believe the Globe is actually warming is right up there with people who believe the Chupacabra is alive and well and has the ability to control minds. You can have some healthy skepticism on whether or not Global Warming will cause worldwide ecological devastation or just some hiccups and inconveniences, but it is here, it is measurable and, according to records dating back for a very, very long time, it’s nothing quite like warming that’s ever happened in the past — making the implication rather clear that we’re the ones causing it, which only makes sense given the fact that we’re burning through the fossil fuels and carbon dioxide which took millions of years to accrue.
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p>Hell, even if you want to wear your tin hat, it’s still worth getting rid of fossil fuels to make our air cleaner, our population healthier (reducing asthma alone would be worth it) and creating millions upon millions of green energy jobs that can never be sent away from our country. There’s really no downside to getting off fossil fuels for 99.9% of this population. The only losers are the shareholders of Exxon Mobile.
seascraper says
Green jobs can certainly go away. Nobody asked for more expensive energy, it’s a matter of government mandate.
edgarthearmenian says
that the chicken littles keep gasping about? I have read that one would have to cover the state of Rhode Island with windmills to equal the energy production of one atomic energy plant. Perhaps that’s what they mean by green energy jobs. I don’t want to ruffle feathers again, but there is mounting evidence that the earth was much warmer during the middle ages and that there are many possible causes of the cycles. I don’t drive much, but I like to cook on a stove and stay warm in the winter time!
stomv says
OK, let’s do some back of the envelope math. You can fit about 40 turbines on 1000 acres of land. You can still use most of that land for other things of course, but you need space between those turbines.
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p>So, let’s say we’ll use 1 MW turbines, and since we’re putting them in reasonably highly productive areas, let’s assume 30% productivity. That means that we get 40×0.3x1MW of electricity per 1000 acres, or 12 kW/acre. Rhode Island is 777,000 acres, so it could be expected to allow 9240 MW of power. Nuclear power “units” are about 1000 MW each, sometimes coupled in an installation. Given that nuclear uptime is around 90%, each unit is scaled to about 900 MW, and we’re at a 10:1 ratio.
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p>So, to respond to your “reading” — if you covered reasonably productive land the size of Rhode Island with wind turbines, you could replace 10 nuclear power plants. Since there are 104 commercial nuclear power plants in America, and since America is far larger than Rhode Island, what you’ve “read” is both incorrect and meaningless. Minnesota, for example, is 22 times the size of Rhode Island, meaning if we covered half of Minnesota with (30% productive) wind turbines, we could eliminate all nuclear power plants in America.
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p>Of course, the goal is not to replace nuclear, but rather to replace coal and oil fired power plants, which currently generate roughly half of our electricity. Through a combination of recession and Obama’s energy stimulus package (as well as other Congressional subsidies and legislation), 2009 might be the first year in many decades where the GWh of electricity generated by fossil fuels is less than the year prior. Every wind turbine helps, even the 600 kW turbine in Newburyport which had a ribbon cutting ceremony today.
edgarthearmenian says
This article seems to contradict yours. I am not a scientist–both articles make some sense.
stomv says
and doesn’t mention Rhode Island at all. In fact, his calculations come out to 229.21 square miles, which is about 1/5 of RI. Where we differ:
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p>1. His paper uses 2500 MW as a nuclear power plant. I think that’s high. In fact, the total nameplate capacity for nuclear is 105,764 MW. There are 104 nuclear reactors in USA (same site). This puts the average reactor at almost exactly 1000 MW. Again, many are coupled, so a site could very well have two and be at about 2000 MW. His example is 2500 MW, which is certainly a larger than average number, even for a coupled reactor.
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p>I’d contend that it’s more honest (and more useful) to use 1000 MW as nameplate for nuclear and acknowledge that some sites have twin reactors, though many don’t. In short, I contend that he cherry-picked a large nuclear reactor; it is in Texas after all.
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p>
2. His paper uses 95% capacity factor for nuclear. According to the EIA, nuclear power supplied 806 million MWh in 2007. Given that there are 365×24=8760 hours in a year, that’s 92000 MWh generated each hour. Since nameplate capacity is 105,764 MW, we’re got an actual supply factor of 87%. I had used an estimate of 90%; he used 95%. My estimate was back of the envelope, his was in a 3 page article. His estimate, frankly, overstates nuclear pretty substantially.
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3. He put a turbine in every 22 acres, I put a turbine every 25 acres of land; he was more generous with wind than I was.
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4. He put productivity for wind at 25%; I used 30%. What’s the real number? Well, clearly it depends on many factors. UMass Amherst uses 20% — 40% (pdf) as a guideline. It’s worth noting that technology is allowing for an increase in capacity for new turbines, because they’re getting bigger and simultaneously more efficient.
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5. He used 1.5 MW turbines, I used 1 MW turbines. Again, he was more generous to wind than I was. If I used his turbines, we could cut the “land requirements” by 1/3.
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In any case, his article seemed to use numbers that were within fudge factor but generally anti-wind. He then goes on to mention subsidies, ignoring the fact that nuclear power plants would all have to be turned off tomorrow if Uncle Sam stopped paying the insurance premiums on the risk of catastrophic failure. He also ignores the reality that there’s not much else you’re allowed to do with land on a “nuclear reservation” except some recreation. Wind turbines have a very small footprint; the rest of the surface space can be used to grow corn of soy or sail boats or grow forest or whatever.
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p>It’s true though that individual wind turbines won’t contribute much. Heck, Cape Wind will produce about 75% of Cape & Island’s electricity — which is a total of about 3% of the electricity used state-wide. But here’s the reality: about 9000 MW of wind power was installed last year in the USA… given capacity factors, that’s about 3 nuclear reactors, or even one really large nuclear power plant site. Now, how many nuclear power plants do you think will be built in the next 7 years? I’ll tell you: zero. The permitting process is so long and difficult that even if there was an administration friendly to nuclear power, it’d be 7 years. If the US keeps building wind capacity at 2008 rates, we’ll have built 7-10 nuclear power plants worth of wind power in that time. If the rate of growth continues, we might be looking at 20-25 nuclear power plants worth of wind power in that time period.
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p>Solving human-induced climate change won’t happen with just wind turbines. It won’t happen with just mass transit. It can’t be fixed with better building codes. It can’t be fixed with 75 mpg autos, with solar power, with increasing cycling by a factor of 10. It’s going to take combinations of many solutions, and every little bit helps.
edgarthearmenian says
You certainly have more than a passing acquaintance with the subject.
ryepower12 says
That a second wind farm’s been proposed off the coast of NB/Dartmouth area. I’m not sure what the heck’s going on with it over the past year, but if we could build both that and Cape Wind, suddenly we’re looking at wind making producing at least 5% of this state’s energy. 5% is nothing to sneeze about, especially with new turbines being built in a much more dispersed fashion around the state.
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p>You’re absolutely right that there’s no one fix, but making society energy independent thankfully isn’t rocket science. It just takes a little political courage and the willingness to sacrifice a little money up front to save billions in the future – no to mention potentially avoiding worldwide ecological devastation…
marcus-graly says
The Seabrook Nuclear Station, which is on the large side as nuke plants go, generates 1,200 Megawatts. A large wind turbine generates as much as 5 Megawatts. So you’d need about 240 of them to generate equivalent power. Rhode Island is 1,545 sq. miles, so one wind turbine per 6 square miles would hardly “cover the state”.
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p>Sources:
For Nukes:
http://www.animatedsoftware.co…
For Wind:
http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_ba…
(Particularly the sentence “Today (August 2005), turbines with capacities as large as 5,000 kW (5 MW) are being tested.” I assumed that if they were being tested then, they could be built by now. Even if you take the larger end of what was actually in use, rather than development, it’s 2.5 MW (1 per 3 sq. miles) so still not “covering”)
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edgarthearmenian says
which contradict what you are saying.
stomv says
you’ve got to use a supply factor of about 30%… a 5 MW turbine will generate a time-average of 1.5 MW of electricity. Similarly, a 1000 MW nuclear reactor will generate a time-average of 870 MW of electricity (see above).
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p>5 MW turbines are still fairly rare, and are only used in really ideal conditions.
marcus-graly says
Even at 20% efficiency, which is the low end of estimates, you still don’t “cover Rhode Island”
edgarthearmenian says
The enlightenment is appreciated.
ryepower12 says
It is his specialty – and he rocks, as usual.
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p>What I can say is that Rhode Island’s wind mill project, which will probably be finished before Cape Wind even though its a much newer project (thanks, Ted), will instantly push RI over it’s entire long-held state renewable energy goals. After that’s finished, they can make new goals and honestly start talking about making 30-50% of their state’s energy renewable.
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p>I won’t lie — it would be tough to think wind alone can get us to the promised land. However, wind + solar + conservation probably can. People often forget that conservation methods are still the cheapest, quickest and easiest method of reducing fossil fuels and fostering energy independence. Things like making sure you have new, good windows, several heating zones, an efficient heating system for your house and water, etc. are easy, affordable ways to save yourself money, prevent global warming and make the world a better, more efficient and beautiful place.
stomv says
my knowledge is the engineering, not the actual projects. I hadn’t even heard of Deepwater until you mentioned it (not by name). Turns out they’re pegging for 15% of RI’s power needs, which is almost what RI requires by 2019 (16%). Though, I expect that (a) demand will increase between now and 2019, shaving that 15% to 13-14%, and that RI will increase their RPS requirement to even higher numbers. All of this, of course, still requires assorted federal approvals; I hope they can get far enough along during an Obama administration.
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p>Still… you’ve nailed it Sir Rye. RI is getting it done with a quickness; their Kennedy isn’t obstructing the project.
ryepower12 says
It’s NOT a hoax. Feel free to wear the tin foil hat if you think it is.
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p>What I said is regardless of what material your hat is made out of, you should still support a more healthy earth. The chemicals from burning coal and gas and other fossil fuels are very, very bad for us and the environment, whether you’re chiefly concerned about global warming, your body or acid rain. Lots of bad things have been linked to burning fossil fuel: the only thing linked to wind and solar are new jobs.
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p>Finally, there’s no reason why green energy jobs have to be more expensive. The only reason why green technology costs more today is because we haven’t mainstreamed it. Build more renewable energy and it becomes cheaper to produce, very quickly. Moreover, these jobs would be spread around the entire country, benefiting every single community across this great nation. That’s a huge boon to the economy everywhere.
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p>Wind and solar doesn’t require blowing off the tops of mountains and destroying entire wildlife areas. There’s no correlations in any studies with wind and solar to asthma, cancer, acid rain or global warming. We know burning fossil fuels have numerous consequences. We know Global Warming exists. Even if Global Warming only results in the tamest of predictions that means millions of lives will be destroyed. If the worst happens, say the the Northern Icecaps all melt and the Gulf Stream goes away, then you’re talking potentially billions. Transitioning to renewable energy avoids all that, the proportionally tame to the hell-hath-frozen-over version. It also represents a new, better way of doing things – creating sustainable, quality jobs in every community across the globe. I can’t possibly fathom why someone wouldn’t want to enter into that brave new world – one that is cleaner, better and far more prosperous.
edgarthearmenian says
these millions of green energy jobs that are going to happen with wind and solar. I’m all for energy independence, too, especially weaning us from middle eastern oil; but we need to use all sources, including nuclear and gas. Just a few days ago there was a post here about the unintended consequences of so-called bio-fuels (http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/showDiary.do?diaryId=15151)–No matter what we (mankind) do, there are going to be plusses and minusses–trade-offs.
ryepower12 says
Well, solar panels must be produced. Those happen in factories. There are around 650 or so jobs at the Evergreen solar factory in Marlboro, with plans to expand to 1,000. That’s a lot of great jobs. Approx. 1,000 jobs in Massachusetts when solar represents maybe .1% of our country’s energy is massive. Imagine if Evergreen Solar had to keep up with a demand in which 10% of this country used solar? There may be 10,000-20,000 solar factory jobs here in Massachusetts, at several different plants. That would rival the GE, Raytheon or any of our old factories that employed thousands.
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p>Moreover, each of those solar panels must be installed locally. That means there would be jobs all across the country just to do that. If 10% of the country were doing that, it would probably mean hundreds of jobs in every congressional district. These are local, working class jobs with money that would stay in local communities. Jobs like these have great multiplier effects.
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p>The same really applies to wind turbines. Place wind turbine projects all over the country, and people have to be employed all over the country for upkeep. There’s plenty of construction jobs to build the suckers, as well as jobs in R&D to make them better.
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p>How many total jobs would there be all across the country, as well as in factories? I don’t know… it greatly depends on how heavily we pursue renewables. But we’re probably talking in the millions with even a modest effort at becoming energy independent. If we got very serious about it, who knows?
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p>On unintended consequences:
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p>They always exist, but we know enough about these technologies now to know what we’re dealing with. Wind turbines used to be dangerous to birds, for example, but improvements have now made most of them safe. Cape Wind, for example, was endorsed by the Audubon Society. The biggest unintended consequence of solar panels, IMO, is that people will buy them over the next few years… only to see them get much cheaper and more efficient over the next decade. However, that’s little different than people who bought the first VCR’s and HD TVs. The people who buy technology first always pay a premium.
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p>Right now, we get less than 10% of our country’s energy from renewable sources, with the vast majority being hydro sources — which certainly did have many unintended consequences. However, all of the unintended consequences are preferable to the damages done to this world and our bodies by burning fossil fuels and being dependent on the Middle East for oil.
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p>Beyond that, I don’t see very many consequences of renewable energy. I see largely positive results. Paying slightly more for my energy — at first, but not for long — would be a small price to pay for the thousands of dead American soldiers we can never get back. What percent of this country’s energy would be produced if the trillion we’ve spent in Iraq were spent on Wind Farms and solar panels on the roof tops of every school and large public building? How many teachers could we have saved from laying off if every town got its energy for free, from a government-subsidized wind turbine and solar panels, instead of having to pay millions to private companies every year? This is really a no brainer.
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edgarthearmenian says
gary says
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p>FYI, Evergreen Solar is closing its Marlboro plant. The Devens state subsidized plant is behind schedule and sales demand has dropped. IMHO, Evergreen at its current cash burn rate won’t be around in 2010. The stock’s down from $20 when the state corporate welfare was announced a couple of years ago to close to $1.00
stomv says
and it’s cutting edge, and as such individual companies will come and go quite quickly. Deepwater (who is building the RI coastal wind farm) is opening up a factory in RI which will employ 800 people. For how long? Depends on market demand, the quality of their product, and dozens of other things.
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p>The point is: if we’re going to have manufacturing in MA, it’s likely to be high tech manufacturing. Specific jobs and entire factories will come and go; the question is: can there become a base of skilled manufacturing employees in MA? They’ll likely be working green jobs of some sort or another, although the specific job may change every few years.
mr-lynne says
… are worth a bunch. They basically pioneered a manufacturing process that eliminates most of the silica waste in the process.
kirth says
I am doing that now. If your electricity is supplied by National Grid, you can, too.
http://www.massenergy.com/Gree…
johnt001 says
I’m forming an energy committee in my town – I just got permission to move forward from the Board of Selectmen last week. We already have a budget of $9000 because of Green Start – 32 households in town (including mine) are participating, and the extra money we pay for green power is pushed back into the town’s account at thr Renewable Energy Trust.
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p>Green Start and programs like it are an easy way for everyone to have an impact – sign up if you can, and install CFL bulbs around your home, you’ll break even on the costs and do your town a world of good!
johnd says
Part of me is in angst to think we have something in common besides our names. I too am on my town’s energy commitee and have posted about energy here.
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p>What exactly is the Green Start program and how did you get money?
johnt001 says
National Grid offers it – I pay extra for my electricity, and the extra money I pay is made available to my town as grant money for renewable energy programs in the town. Here’s a link to the description at the Mass Tech Collaborative’s web site:
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p>http://www.masstech.org/CleanE…
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p>You can download two PDFs at that link – one will tell you how many households in your town are signed up to Green Start, and the other will tell you how much money is available for your town. Unfortunately, NStar doesn’t participate in Green Start, so towns where NStar is the dominant electricity supplier won’t have much of a balance, if they have any money at all.
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p>Your town’s energy committee should be able to get the funds, there’s another PDF at the link on how to do that. Good luck – let me know how you make out, ok?
seascraper says
Nobody asked for more expensive energy. The only way you can get them to pay for it is to tax money away from the things they wanted, even just to pay the “mainstreaming” costs. Next you’ll need a new grid etc., not factored in.
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p>So green jobs cost actual jobs by diverting money from things people choose and towards something that is questionable but forced on them by the government.
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p>I am for clean air but environmental solutions in this day and age mostly come in the form of technological wizardry which leads to a giveaway to big business. Your good intentions are being used by huge companies to get government subsidies to grow corn for ethanol, stamp on the people on the Cape, etc. Besides being wrong it’s a bad habit.
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p>In the end the warming movement will collapse from the weight of inflated claims and the realization that this actually is going to cost something.
stomv says
It is going to cost something.
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p>Of course, destroying mountaintops and filling in streams and hollars in WV costs those people something too. Increased risk of flooding in southern LA, AL, and MS because natural gas pipes have eroded the wetlands in the Gulf costs those residents (and the rest of us via FEMA and Army Corps of Engineers). Nuclear energy? Without the federal insurance coverage, they’d cost so much per kWh that they’d have to be turned off tomorrow. Petrol — do I even need to remind you of GWI and GWII, not to mention the huge tax subsidies and sweetheart contracts? Those have cost too.
mcrd says
800 years ago corn grew in Greenland—ergo the name: Greenland—you know the current island of ice.
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p>We have had two mass extinctions as well. So much for whales and spotted owls.
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p>At some point in time all of man will be wiped from the surface of the earth again.
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p>So what? The tin foil hats are on the people that think that they will forestall any of these events.
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p> And Kudos to Dianne Feinstein who said several days ago, : You can’t put solar panels and solar collection devices in the Mojave desert. The Mojave desert was not intended for that purpose. To which Ahhhnold replied,” If you can’t put solar panels in the Mojave desert, where the hell can you put them.” You gotta love the NIMBY moonbats. Just like Uncle Ted and the windmills. What a bunch of hypocrites and frauds.
syphax says
There’s a lot of under-utilized space.
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jeremy-marin says
This whole Greenland used to be green history revisionism is, well, annoying.
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p>I can’t speak to the state of education today but as a child I learned why Greenland and Iceland were so named. It was a PR ploy by Erik the Viking.
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p>For a more direct discussion of Steele’s comments and this whole Greenland BS please see the excellent Climate Progress blog.
jeremy-marin says
I should have included the information rather than just the link. Here is a small snippet from the page linked above:
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huh says
I had the same lesson. This talking point is right up there with the teleprompter Obama dis.
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p>It makes one wonder who’s running the GOP Ministry of Propaganda these days.
eaboclipper says
I have not waded into the BMG fray for a while. I’ve got enough with taking care of RMG now that I run it. However I felt a need to respond to this.
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p>Ryan, no matter how much you bang your fist, or shout, there is serious disagreement within the scientific community regarding global warming. University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Scientists last week proved that the earth is cooling, not warming, and that these trends are part of natural cycles.
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p>It has recently come out that sea ice coverage measurements were way off.
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p>I know you want your Gaia-centric religion to be true, like all true believers Ryan. But its not. As more and more data comes out that supports the truth you all look a little like Chicken Little.
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p>Much like Obama saying there was consensus amongst economists on his plan, there is also no consensus amongst scientists on global warming.
stomv says
Whack a mole is annoying.
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p>There is widespread consensus among the scientific community that (a) the earth’s surface is warming at a rate faster than any time in recorded history, and (b) it’s correlated extremely tightly with the level of CO_2 in the atmosphere, which (c) has gone way up in the past years and decades.
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p>It’s true, individual science papers will find inconsistent data. That’s good. It’s important to question the theories, to refine them, to make them more robust. It’s also important for the scientific community as a whole to encourage papers questioning widespread conclusions (which, contrary to Fox News, they do). But, those papers, like all scientific papers, are open to scrutiny too. It turns out that a few hundreds of papers by assorted professors scattered around the world aren’t as compelling as tens of thousands of journal articles by most of the best scientists in dozens of fields coming to the same conclusion.
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p>Feel free to put your fingers in your ears and continue with your La La Las.
huh says
I’m still not sure what the goal of the “hoax” is supposed to be…
justin-tyme says
Buy a credit. Or just send your money to Bernie…
huh says
Covered here, here, and most importantly here.
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p>Slightly edited version of the last (from kirth):
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p>
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p>Thanks for playing.
jeremy-marin says
It may be useful to read through to some of the final paragraphs of the report where it states (emphasis mine)
bob-neer says
Thanks for the comment EaBo. It is striking that in your enthusiasm for your position you fail to recognize that it makes the GOP look like an increasingly fringe party, fundamentally out of touch with reason-based decision-making. It is true that a fraction of the country agrees with this approach. The majority, however, does not, and especially not in highly-educated Massachusetts. That helped to produce an extraordinary reversal of political power over the past three years, beginning with the 2006 congressional elections, and helps to ensure the continuing relegation of the Republican party to near-irrelevance in the Commonwealth, for better and for worse.
kirth says
to Climate science from climate scientists.
syphax says
There’s a lot of nonsense here, but let me focus on one thing.
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p>All your examples were hoaxes or fraud perpetuated by an individual or small group of people.
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p>In contrast, the science of climate change dates back awhile.
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p>John Tyndall figured out 150 years ago that gases like carbon dioxide and water vapor absorb radiating heat.
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p>Svante Arrhenius (if you ever took chemistry, you may remember the Arrhenius equation), in addition to winning an early Nobel Prize, wrote a paper (PDF) called “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground” in which he calculated how much the atmosphere would warm if the level of CO2 went up due to people burning coal and such. He wrote that paper in 1896. It’s actually held up fairly well.
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p>And there’s been a little research conducted in the meantime.
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p>If climate change is a hoax or a fraud, it’s a pretty impressive one. Way beyond what the Knights Templar or Freemasons could hope to pull off.
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p>I’ve been somewhat familiar with climate science for over 15 years, and have followed it fairly closely for over 10 (I’m not a climate scientist, but my master’s thesis was on the fluid dynamics of CO2 and water mixtures). One thing that’s struck me about the climate change skeptic community is that, over the past decade or so, they haven’t really developed any credible theories that disprove the core scientific principles of human-induced climate change. They one thing that they’ve been very good at, though, is repeating the same discredited or poorly supported arguments over and over and over again.
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p>No one has debunked the main scientific issues at hand, and it has not been for lack of effort.
justin-tyme says
But I’ve spent a lifetime hearing scams. Back in the 70’s the story was that a new ice age was approaching. New York will be encased in ice. Then the story was that New York would be flooded in 1000 feet of water because the earth is warming. (I haven’t been to NYC in a couple years — is it still there?)
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p>A scam is always based upon a truth. What is done in a laboratory condition doesn’t necessarily imitate reality. There are usually many more variables in the real world. The scam need only break down the sucker’s resistance to one or two truths. Bernie Madoff only had to show he could get 20% return per year on the suckers investment.
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p>The earth itself is famous for creating all kinds of nasty gases and particles all by itself. Will there be weather and climate change in the future? I do not doubt it based on prior history. Is it caused by mankind? I’m skeptical. Is there a buck to be made? No doubt.
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p>Isn’t skepticism good for science? Bad for scams?
stomv says
dopey rattling off of incorrect assertions and lacking the knowledge of chemistry, physics, or biology necessary to be useful is… not good.
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p>Which category is your comment in? Hint: not the former.
toda says
Let’s cleanse the pool. There are people on this blog that should not be allowed entry. They only serve to cause disention. If they wish to be skeptics, then let them be skeptics in some other blog or some other country. Isn’t this a Democratic Party blog and shouln’t the purpose be to promote the ideals and programs of the Democratic Party?
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p>I don’t want to hear disention from ignorant trolls.
syphax says
Rote repetition of repeatedly debunked talking points is less constructive.
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p>For example, your bit about the 1970’s new ice age doesn’t stand up. It’s a cute story but it’s totally not reflective of the scientific research of the day.
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p>Your posts are typical. You really don’t want to have to accept the science of climate change, so you’re eager to latch onto the usual ‘skeptic’ talking points.
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p>I’ll say this one more time:
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p>The presence of natural climatic variability does not preclude impacts from human behavior
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p>The former is what we call “noise”, the latter is what we call the “signal”. Granted, the signal-to-noise ratio in climate science is somewhat low (b/c there’s a lot of natural variability). The bad news is by the time the signal gets big enough to be 1000% distinguishable from the noise for even the ostriches in the crowd, it’ll be too frickin’ late.
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p>Show me a (valid) forcing that explains 20th/21st century warming (and I’ll pre-empt you here- no, climate change hasn’t “stopped” over the past decade; that argument is based on a cherry pick of 1998, which was really warm b/c of El Nino- besides, 2005 may have been hotter, anyway), or better yet, a negative feedback that means we don’t have to worry about all the CO2 we’re putting into the atmosphere (and oceans), and we can talk.
seascraper says
When the Vikings started in Greenland it was nicer, then it got too cold and they died out or left.
kbusch says
Diamond’s Collapse has a very interesting chapter on Greenland. The older colony was founded during a particularly warmer climate. The Scandanavian settlers refused to imitate the Intuit and insisted on trying to have cattle which were ill-suited. The climate then got steadily colder. Their supply of food began to dwindle. Visits from Norway became less frequent. For lack of clergy, they even had trouble having marriages. Then as they ate into their supply of metal, they became militarily inferior to the Intuit with whom they had kept hostile relationships. They were overrun. The colony disappeared.
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p>So yes, Greenland was nicer. They did die out.
bob-neer says
Although “Intuit” reads better, I agree.
johnt001 says
A fate worse than death…
syphax says
No one argues that the climate doesn’t vary naturally.
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p>In fact, a lot of research by e.g. Eric Hansen is based on studying historical variability to figure out how sensitive the climate is to various forcings.
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p>Climate change boils down to this:
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p>
mcrd says
syphax says
No one denies this!
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p>That was easy.
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p>I’ll say it again: No one argues that the climate doesn’t vary naturally.
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p>But here’s an interesting thing! In the past, CO2 levels have generally amplified the effects of other forcings (like variations in solar intensity).
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p>But this time, we’re leading with the CO2.
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p>That’s the difference. We now have a strong quantifiable change in climate forcing due to increased CO2.
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p>We do not have a strong change in solar forcing right now:
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p>MCRD, you are implying that the presence of natural climate variability means that current climate change must also be natural.
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p>This is, simply, bad logic.
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p>The amount of trees in New England varied over geological time as well. Does that mean that people weren’t responsible for cutting down most of New England’s forests by the mid-19th century?
sabutai says
Really, it’s like the gift that keeps on giving. How we got elected lieutenant governor of Maryland I’ll never understand. At this point, I look forward to his speaking engagements out of anticipation of the the head-slapping statement he’s sure to make.
mcrd says
Actually this has precedent in history. They did this in “The Dark Ages” and during the Inquisition. Actualy it works quite well and is gounded in mathematical data.
somervilletom says
It is often difficult to “receive” when one is perpetually in “transmit” mode.
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p>MCRD, if you’re going to repeat canards like your several offerings on this thread, can you at least do all of us a favor by reading and perhaps even acknowledging the remarkably polite (not to mention devastatingly concise and accurate) responses from time to time?
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p>Surely you don’t want to leave the impression that you are one of those who relentlessly repeats discredited denialist talking-points while steadfastly ignoring those who, in good faith, attempt to respond to you with readily-available low-key facts.