You Lonny have shown us that you are not objective either. In fact you lick the boots of Anthony Watts.

Tim, you say you’re in favor of R&D and innovation, yet you discount any possibility of solar cells coming down enough in cost to compete — when in fact they have been coming down in cost, and getting more efficient.

I guess Paul Krugman cheated on his doctoral thesis, and bribed the Nobel committee. And Lord Stern, now there’s an economic nincompoop.

Regarding your continued assertion that there is no economic solution to CO2 in alternative energy, you need to explain why wind energy is a growth industry, why solar PV and solar thermal plants are being built, why Home Depot is beginning to sell do-it-yourself solar kits, and why geothermal and ocean energy are starting to get some investments. Sure, subsidies and tax credits are involved, but when has that not been true for fossil fuels and nuclear fission?

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/02/24/nasa-talks-global-warming/comment-page-4/#comment-249552

Unfortunately all these books actually refer to Oxygen as “The Gas of Life”.
“Animal Chauvinist!”
The Blue Chick from Farscape…

LOL.

If I recall right her name was Zhaan, yes?

[Checks & returns] Yes indeed :

* Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan (Virginia Hey), a bald, blue-skinned female who belongs to a plant-like species, named Delvians. Once a Priestess of her religious order, Zhaan murdered her lover after discovering he was a Peacekeeper collaborator. Regarded as an anarchist by her captors, she was jailed along with D’Argo and Rygel. Like other members of her species, Zhaan is a telepath; she can share “unity” with other beings (two minds in one body, they can share thoughts, sensations…) and also, as a Pa’u, she is able to share pain with another being.

Good ole Wikipedia to the rescue as ever :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farscape#Main_characters

Hmm .. Very um “Pandoran Na’vi” like isn’t she? Wonder if there’ll be a plagiarism case on that?

PS. Yegods! 365 comments here now – one of everyday of the year? Clearly this is the topic de jour indeed.

There’s a PBS NOVA program you can watch online called ‘Extreme Cave Diving’ (see link below). In the last 50 years it’s estimated there’s been a ten fold increase in the amount of dust storms in the African Sahara Desert because of severe drought. It is theorized that thousands of years in the past, much of this generated dust from dust storms reached the upper atmosphere where it traveled thousands of miles settling near the blue hole rich Bahamas. Blue hole (underwater caves formed during the last ice) diver scientists have discovered climate change evidence on the cave walls, which have a thick layer of iron laden dust in them. The caves also contain ancient stalagmites. Cross-section samples of these formations show a distinct band of this iron laden dust in conjunction with periods of major climate changes during the last 80,000 years. IOW, what we’re experiencing with the increase of dust storms is fitting the historical pattern of accelerated and major climate change as recorded in stalagmites, and preserved in the (currently) pristine blue holes.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1405567128/ (41 minutes in for stalagmite discussion)

Of course, all of the climate change evidence that neatly corroborates with ice core sample findings (and other areas of climate research), will probably mean absolutely nothing to the scientific evidence rejectors and reality deniers. It’s just “natural changes” to them. I hope they’re right but I wouldn’t bet a penny on it. Some of these dramatic changes could happen in their lifetime or at the latest their children’s lifetime.

“Animal Chauvinist!”
The Blue Chick from Farscape…

Carbon cycle modelling and the residence time of natural and anthropogenic atmospheric CO2: on the construction of the “Greenhouse Effect Global Warming” dogma. TV Segalstad, 1998.

AND

Global Warming Myth and Marxism EF Blick, klimarealistene.com.

And rounded off with “Breathing Free: The Revolutionary 5-Day Program to Heal Asthma” by T Hale, L Galland.
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In Google Books we get:

New world of chemistry: science in the service of man‎ a 1952 textbook with a chapter entitled “Carbon Dioxide, the gas of life and decay”.

There is also our miracle Asthma program, but also:

Mysteries of the planets‎ Franklyn Mansfield Branley.
The Origins of Life‎ Roy A. Gallant.
Sun, sea, and sky: weather in our world and in our lives‎ I Krick, R Fleming.
Medical geology: effects of geological environments on human health‎ MM Komatina
Science, understanding your environment‎ GG Mallinson

Unfortunately all these books actually refer to Oxygen as “The Gas of Life”.
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So, Two papers – one from a right-wing think tank, the other self-published, and a 50s textbook are all there is on the skeptical side – so the assertion that many scientists call CO2 “The Gas of Life” is patently rubbish.

“As you can see by this NASA graphic from the linked page, Antarctica loses over 100 billion tons of ice per year, the equivalent of about a hundred

cubic kilometers (more than 20 cubic miles) of ice. That number is hard to grasp, but it’s the equivalent to the volume of a mountain about 14,000 feet

high — or, if you prefer, it’s like saying that one Colorado Rocky Mountain’s worth of ice disappears every year. Just in Antarctica alone.”

As an Astronomer and rather smart person, Phil needs to explain to everyone how any satellite could measure such a tiny change in gravity over the

entire continent of Antarctica to such an amazing accuracy!

How was this truely amazing accuracy from a satellite validated and verified?

Curious minds would like to know…

My bet is that Phil will claim that he trusted what he was being told without question, but finally realized that something was wrong. That absolute

trust in un-verified data sources was a major embarrassment to him.

That, or he will delete all historical records of anything that he said on the subject…

That being said I have skipped past the last 300 comments or so. But I thought this article from the JPL/NASA site was interesting, regarding the effect of ocean temperature cycles on world climate and how even their variable patterns are pointing towards a warmer planet, due to the inclusion of our industrial “greenhouse gases”.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-060&rn=news.xml&rst=2495

Planets change. Look at Mars. Or Venus. Scientists agree they were both very different places once. Possibly even friendly to life. Now? Not so much. And our planet will change too, into a place not suitable for us. That’s a given. But it will take a long, long time…do we really need to rush it? Because that’s what we’re doing. Will we “destroy the planet”? Doubt it. But we can make it a place unpleasant for many, and inhospitable for others.

It’s a closed environment, for the most part. A sealed room. Whoever’s passing gas needs to stop it.

I have linked to the SciAm article which I am using as a basis for my claims. Feel free to post a link to other analyses that you think can refute those numbers.

I am an engineer and doing cost benefit analyses one of things I do for a living.

Technology I have created is part of at least one renewable power project. IOW, I indirectly make money from the industry I am criticizing.

It has never been enough to ‘build a better mouse trap’. Successful new technology must provide economic benefits that exceed the costs of continuing to use the existing technologies. Governments do have a limited ability to make some marginal technologies economic via regulation and/or subsidy. However, governments have no magic wand that can grant any wish.

It is also important to remember that any problem has many possible solutions and when it comes to climate adaptation *is* a solution. It is not perfect but, unlike CO2 emission control, it has a chance of success even if it is not 100%.

(Hi, I’m back!)

I actually kind of agree with one of your points here – that replacing fossil fuels is economically impossible – similarly in a previous statement you said:

We all benefit because we can buy cheap manufactured goods from the Chinese or cheap oil from the Sauidis.

The sad state of things is that R&D is more expensive than the status quo. Science may be able to design a better mouse trap, but when you have to train people how to use this new mouse trap, replace jobs at the old mouse trap factories, employ people at more expensive salaries than those old workers, and manage the infrastructure to replace the old mouse traps with the new ones, the cost starts to add up quickly.

I think, though, it’s a cost that must be paid in the end. Ignoring the problem won’t solve it.

The SciAm paper I linked to listed $3823 per kW in 2030 for the cost of PV.
The also defined a PV installation as a something that provides 3kW.
Current technology produces 200W per 3ftx5ft panel.
We need about 20 sqm for 3kW.
Hence 3823*3/20 = 573 or approx 600.
The cost of 3Kw with 60W panels is $2100 based on your numbers.
Which is cheaper but does not include labour or other components.

The cost of the externalities is irrelevant because they do not change the fact that someone has to come up with the cash to pay for the new capital investments before they can be used. $800 billion a year is a lot of money. It is equivalent to a $10,000 per US family each year – a sum that makes replacing fossil fuels an economically impossible goal no matter what the cost of externalities is.

I am also not arguing that adaptation will be cheap – I am saying it is the only option and has the virtue of being useful even if climate change is not caused by CO2 or if the rest of the world refuses to do its part to reduce CO2.

Lastly, the people who say that Solar PV would never be viable are still right and there is no sign of that changing. The capital cost per kW is simply too high.

And really you should cite your numbers. When purchased in commercial quantities a 60w 1.4 sqm solar panel can be had for about $60, which comes out to about $42/ sqm for the panel itself. Granted that price doesn’t include an inverter, storage, or transmission, but it certainly makes me question how the $600/ sqm figure was arrived at.

In any event in all of your comparisons between fossil fuels and alternatives you have been ignoring the cost of externalities which aren’t factored into the market price of fossil fuels, keeping the price artificially low.

Also in your determination of costs of adaptation vs. prevention you seem to be only considering the cost of physical infrastructure. You’re ignoring the lost value of ecosystem services that cannot be easily or cheaply replaced if at all.

http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/comparing-the-interstate-highway-system-to-scientific-americans-a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030/

I did not provide the link because posts with links sometimes get dumped into a moderation queue.

Some of his numbers are wrong. The numbers I posted are based on my recalulations from the original SciAm paper.

The self sufficiency argument is nonsense. Why draw the line at the US border? Why not require that every state or even every city be self sufficient?

We all benefit because we can buy cheap manufactured goods from the Chinese or cheap oil from the Sauidis. The money that is saved purchasing these goods from the suppliers that can offer them for a lower cost can be reinvested elsewhere. It makes no sense to pay $1000 for a solar panel made in the USA if the Chinese can sell the same panel for $500.

That said, there are problems because the US trade deficit and overvalued currency. But that is a complex topic that I don’t want to get into here. But the short answer is the US won’t need to be bailed out. The US$ will eventually crash and the world economic system will realign itself with the US as a much smaller player.

Something like this one:

“Phil, the stoopid, it burns! The response to your post boggles the mind (at a science site no less). They haven’t clue!”

*That* is a troll. Just insults without adding to the discussion.

Yes, Jon Hanford, this is a *science* site. Science is where things get argued about. Science is where one of the best things you can do is constantly question the status quo. If you can get rid of politics, the best science can occur is when you have competing theorists at each others throats.

The trouble is when it comes to regulating CO2 the cost is so rediculously high it cannot be justified no matter what the risk of climate change.

Lastly, I am very much in favour of R&D and other concrete steps to find some breakthough technology. But there is no guarantee that they will be found. That is why any government policy that tries to mandate outcomes (e.g. X% emission reductions by 2020) is completely brain dead and will only waste money that could be better spent on adaption.

You’re just making excuses, “China and Germany have won already”. WTF?! Self-sufficiency is important for any country and US needs to re-up it’s manufacturing capability. Otherwise, and I’m no economist, but the world should not end up in a position to bail out the US because it’s too big to fail. Energy is critical for the existence of our civilizations and less polluting more sustainable sources are critical, not politically correct but essential.