The Hard Look

Climate Change Emergency Plans

The sad fact is -- we have already passed the point of no return on global warming, if . . .

The "IF" is the point.  If the only way we intend to address the warming associated with climate change is to reduce carbon emissions, we are too late to prevent catastrophic ocean rise and massive shifts in local climates.  Since carbon emissions reduction seems to be all anyone is willing to discuss, then the rationalists among us suggest doing one additional thing - develop an emergency plan to cool the planet once we fail to stop it from reaching critical levels.  Here's a commentary on this issue.  "Emergency Preparedness for Climate Change."  It's a quick read.

Costs of solar photovoltaic panels substantially eclipse benefits

Costs of solar photovoltaic panels substantially eclipse benefits, says study by UC Energy Institute director

Berkeley — Despite increasing popular support for solar photovoltaic panels in the United States, their costs far outweigh the benefits, according to a new analysis by Severin Borenstein, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and director of the UC Energy Institute. “Solar photovoltaic (PV) is a very exciting technology, but the current technology is not economic,” said Borenstein. “We are throwing money away by installing the current solar PV technology, which is a loser.”

In his January working paper, “The Market Value and Cost of Solar Photovoltaic Electricity Product,” Borenstein also found that, even after considering that the panels reduce greenhouse gases, their costs still far outweigh their social benefits.

Borenstein’s paper is online (pdf alert).

The bottom line, Borenstein argues in his paper, is that solar PV panels are not ready for widespread installation…. He favors more state and federal funding for research and development. “We need a major scientific breakthrough, and we won’t get it by putting panels up on houses,” he said….

His analysis deconstructs the argument that solar panels produce power at the location of the end-user and therefore can reduce the costs of transmission and distribution infrastructure investments. Examining 26,522 solar PV systems in California, Borenstein found they are not concentrated in locations where they would reduce transmission congestion and reduce the
need for investment in transmission infrastructure.

“Solar PV is not clustered in the most valuable locations,” his paper concludes.

Borenstein took his analysis a step further by calculating the discounted net present value (a financial tool to calculate the value of a dollar in the future compared to its value now) of power produced by a 10 kilowatt solar photovoltaic system and then compared that to the cost of installing and operating such a system over its lifetime. He found the cost for an installation ranges from nearly $86,000 to $91,000, while the value of the power produced ranges from $19,000 to $51,000….

Given that a coal-fired electricity generation plant produces about 1 ton of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour, Borenstein estimated that the price of greenhouse gas reductions would have to range from about $150 to $500 per ton of greenhouse gases to make the current solar PV technology a worthwhile investment when greenhouse gas reductions are considered.

But Borenstein noted that policymakers are considering a far lower price - $20 per ton of greenhouse gases - as the maximum that industry could be charged in proposed tradable emissions permit programs.

Climate Change is a Coin Toss?

A lead author of the IPCC Fourth Assessment on Climate Change admits that that his organization achieves only 50 per cent accuracy in its climate forecasts and that this is as good as any other forecaster around the world.  In other words, climate forecasting, on which the alarmism of the world rests, offers no better prediction than flipping a coin.

Dr. James A. Renwick, a New Zealand surface climate and atmospheric circulation scientist for the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric research,  is one of the lead authors of Chapter 3: of the IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report.  That chapter is titled “Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change.”  He is one of the experts who predict climate changes decades and centuries into the future.  Here are a few of his recent statements about the science of climate prediction:

"Climate prediction is hard, half of the variability in the climate system is not predictable, so we don't expect to do terrifically well."

"The weather is not predictable beyond a week or two."

As The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition reminds us, "The link between climate and weather is well known: climate is determined by averaging weather variables over an extended period (usually 30 years) at one place or for a region. How can there be any faith in climate predictions by officials who admit they are unable to forecast the weather beyond a week or two?”

Good question.

Prophecies Of Doom That Didn’t Occur

     At a recent gathering of our family clan, several of the nieces & nephews put on their serious faces and asked about doom-mongering in general and global warming alarmism in particular.  They also wanted some legitimate sources to which they could turn for a balanced discussion of these issues.   I told them I’d put something up on my blog, so here it is.

    As for the legitimate sources, you can find a list of books and websites at the end of this post.  On doom and gloom, for a way to understand the future, let’s look at the past.  Several of my colleagues have put the following list together.  Most of them come from Wallace Kaufman's book "No Turning Back (Basic Books, 1994)".   As well, Some of this comes from a piece by Gary Alexander that is fun to read and which explains how one person of my generation finally broke free from the overwhelming drum-beat of doom that has sounded in our ears since our childhood in the 1950’s.  See: “Welcome to “Apocaholics Anonymous” – Join Me in a Crusade for Panic-Free Living.”   

     Before giving you the list of prophecies that didn’t come true, let me introduce you to two scientific statements that set the stage for the list.  In Science last week, Jonathan Gregory of the University of Reading is quoted as advocating the use of “scientific hunches”, while the biggest U.S. global warming alarmist, James Hansen of NASA, rejects the word “hunch” and wants to call these speculative guesses “insights” and wants to promote them over hard science.  They, and several others whose income or notoriety is tied to climate alarmism, believe the public and decision-makers should concentrate most attention on the most extreme estimates of harm.  See the Science article here: In contrast, let’s look back thirty-five years to see how little things change.  Then the editor of Britain's prestigious journal Nature summed up the main assumption of the doom promoters of the 1960s and 70s: "Their most common error is to suppose that the worst will always happen."  (Maddox, 1972).  In the thirty-five years since Dr. Maddox punctured the doom-makers balloon, the worst has not come to pass.  Indeed, beginning with Malthus, over the past 200 years, the worst has not come to pass.  Here’s the list of what didn’t happen: 

CO2 a Poison Too?

Well, it had to happen.  The Supreme Court, the self-professed conditio sine qua non science body in the United States who has relegated the EPA and the National Academy of Science to back bencher status, had declared CO2 to be an air pollutant.        OK.       Fine.         So what?

You gotta understand inside the beltway in Washington, D.C.  When SCOTUS tugs on your belt, the pants on the guy next to you drop to the floor.  And that’s what is now happening with CO2.  Here’s the logic, if you want to call it logic.   First, CO2 is declared an air pollutant.  Next we think about ways to sequester CO2 by pumping it into old gas mines.  Then we realize this is a hazardous waste disposal operation (forget the massive costs of haz waste disposal, I’m not going there.)  Of course pumping stuff into the ground raises concerns about the waste getting into drinking water supplies.  Now we are at the crux of the problem – CO2 polluted drinking water.  Heaven forfend!  What’s next, banning soft drinks?  They’ll have to pry the Caffeine-Free Diet Coke can from my cold dead hands .  .  .  . 

If you think this is just a funny story, take a gander at the Testimony of Kip Coddington, an oil and gas attorney, arguing the unintended consequences of the Supreme Court's scientific pronouncement before the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee last month. (See it here.) He’s a smart guy, and this is his argument, made with a straight face.   No, really, a straight face.  Well, as I said before, you gotta understand inside the beltway in Washington, D.C.

Global Ocean Warming Means What?

In general, scientists thought warming oceans meant less dissolved oxygen and thus smaller fish and thus less of them.  But, in a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) last week comes hard data from Thresher, Koslow, Morison and Smith finding that water temperatures associated with global warming over the past 60 years has had the opposite effect.  We also thought the oceans aren’t much of an organic carbon sink, but that now seems in question too

What do these studies tell us about global warming and the oceans?

"The Great Global Warming Swindle"

If you watched Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” you need to watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle"    (See it here and see the trailer here.)  This is a Google video.  It is an hour and 16 minutes long, so treat it as you would a movie, i.e., get some popcorn, a soda and a comfortable chair.  [3/13 edit: If the Google links are down, you can watch it on YouTube here.

I think The Great Global Warming Swindle so important, I’m making both my teenagers watch it. 

This video offers a sober, independent and honest look at the issue, relying on internationally recognized and respected scientists who have participated in the IPCC process from the beginning.  Their perspectives will open your eyes. 

Useless Arithmetic – The Pilkeys’ Useful Analysis

Father-Daughter team Orrin Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis have come out with a dandy new book on how we lie to ourselves with mathematical models, a point I’ve discussed on these pages before (see here and here ).  Their book has many serious strengths and a few troublesome weaknesses.  Written for the lay reader, it targets policy makers and government administrators as misbehavers (a strength) but forgets, from time to time, to dun folks like the IPCC and the environmental alarmists. 

Overall, the book is an important contribution, even though many details in the book are sloppy and not well considered.  But the larger points are important.  These include:

·        Many models are worse than useless, they misdirect our energies and resources;

·        The urge to quantify needs to be resisted when the science is not adequate to support the models; and,

·        models gather a "political / technical"  following that can make it almost impossible to reject them even when new data show they fail to represent reality.

Here are some juicy examples of how models don’t work and the thoughts of one reviewer from an organization with whom the Pilkeys actually took issue.