48 thoughts on “Climate “Consensus””

  1. ” to promote economically harmful policies.”

    You have a model that predicts this economic harm, you don’t have any proof of this.

      2. You say a simple exponential equation will utterly describe the global economic system,
        but you deny that simple math will describe the global climate system.

        It would seem that the mathematics of economics are at least as complex as climate.

        2. You say a simple exponential equation will utterly describe the global economic system

          I’m saying that a simple exponential equation describes the amount of future wealth destroyed by reducing economic growth, you innumerate moron.

          2. Why would I waste my time? People with IQs above room temperature already know the exponential growth equation, and you’re too stupid to understand it.

          3. The equations are written in many textbooks. Rand kindly provides you a link to Amazon where you can buy the textbooks and educate yourself.

            Or you can continue to show your ignorance and unwillingness to learn while blaming others for your own failures.

        3. Dude, you voted for Obama and can’t grasp the concept of ‘Base Load’. You really need to lay off criticizing your betters in the Math game, the self-parody is remarkable.

          1. That’s exactly what it is, parody. dn-guy has been engaging in a sort of Stephen Colbert-esque Fake-Out, but whereas Colbert is a Lefty pretending to be an over-the-top version of a hardcore rightwinger, dn-guy is a conservative (or possibly a libertarian) doing an over-the-top version of the left. And in the dozen or so times I’ve pointed this out, dn-guy has never once protested, denied, or even responded at all.

          2. I’m sure you love the 1950’s as an paradigm but the world is changing.
            Baseload and switchable supply is being replaced by dynamic active
            control of demand and supply.

          3. “dynamic active control of demand”

            That’s your best one yet! Bravo, sir! You have managed to distill the communist view of people as interchangeable drones to be controlled and manipulated into technical jargon that just barely masks the intention, without being so subtle as to be unnoticeable.

    2. The usual solutions are to make the price of energy much larger (so we use less), just as Obama promised, hich means the price of everything else will go up dramatically with no increase in wages.

  2. It’s best to be prepared.

    Sooner or later warming is going to resume its upward tick. I hope it’s later, but we conservatives and libertarians had better have a plan B in place when that event finally takes place. Relying on “drill baby drill” could come back to haunt us in a big way if warming really does resume. The Marxist anti-human nihilists will then be elected to office for at least a generation while the GW problem is “solved” by destroying what’s left of capitalism and replacing it with the USSR lite-if we’re so lucky. The best path to follow would be Bjorn Lomberg’s solution-massive investment in alt-energy while allowing continued use of fossil fuels until the new energy technologies are ready for use on a largely subsidy free basis. Combine that with a strong energy efficiency program, a renewed commitment to n-power based on thorium reactors, and a strong research effort into geo-engineering, and the good guys won’t be caught with their pants down when the warming resumes.

      2. Unfortunately ARPA-E just focused on batteries, biofuels, and carbon capture, and thus far has produced mostly acronyms. Needless to say, given the Administration’s track record on energy projects, all the research money probably went to Obama campaign bundlers.

    2. There has been no “warming” due to CO2. The long term trend is the same it has been coming out of the LIA, well before CO2 could even theoretically have had a significant effect. The temporary accelerated rise of the late 1900’s is now giving way to the cyclical deceleration, just as it did in the transition region 1940-1950. It’s going to stay that way until the late 2030’s, when it will accelerate again. Meh.

      When are you lemmings going to stop being scared of the bogeyman in the closet, and grow up? There are lots more important things to be worried about. Antibiotic resistance is mushrooming. Weapons of mass destruction are proliferating. Massive objects are zipping around the solar system. And, national debt loads are exploding. And, you guys are worried about a few degrees of temperature, over which we have no control at all? Get real.

    3. According to the CEO of NRG, next year in 25 states, renewable energy will be
      price competitive with grid electricity.

      http://www.navigantresearch.com/blog/from-nrg-a-solar-storm
      “According to David Crane, NRG Energy’s outspoken CEO, residential solar power will be cost-competitive with retail electricity in about 25 states next year. As a result, NRG is making some big moves in residential solar installation and financing.”

      I imagine Simberg despises this guy.

      1. Amusingly, your own link shows that NRG switched most of its supply to coal and natural gas, now providing 23 times more energy from the evil fuels than wind and solar combined.

      3. Simberg doesn’t despise him, he just knows solar won’t work in the dark.

        It could be totally free and it would never get above 40% usage because you can’t use it for BASE LOAD!!!!

        If you can’t store something economically, if you can’t use it in the dark, it’s value is fatally limited.

        1. The only way solar can be used for baseload power is if the collector is located in space. Of course, then you actually do have the potential for anthropogenic global warming, as the planet would be receiving more energy than normal.

        2. Have you ever heard of something called Wind power. The wind blows at night
          and if it ever gets becalmed just stand Simberg in front of a turbine and let him talk.
          Should produce enough wind to run a decent sized windfarm

          1. ” Have you ever heard of something called Wind power. The wind blows at night…”

            But wind does not blow constantly.

            Not even enough to provide any reasonable amount of power. Wind farm experience in Europe and the US shows this conclusively.

            You are evidently unaware of real life experience

      4. Is this, like, a problem? When and if solar can provide base power cheaper than oil, everyone will use it without subsidies. Won’t need no Kyoto Protocols, won’t need to worry about fracking, won’t need carbon taxes. China will stop opening coal plants, if solar is cheaper.
        Truth is that we all know that hasn’t come close to happening, but it may indeed happen sometime in the next several decades.
        Good argument for avoiding expensive mitigation. I assume that isn’t your point, but I don’t know why.

        1. So, if you are anti-subsidy, then let’s end the subsidies for Fossil Fuels right now.

          “A 2011 study by the consulting firm Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI)[19] estimated the total historical federal subsidies for various energy sources over the years 1950–2010. The study found that oil, natural gas, and coal received $369 billion, $121 billion, and $104 billion (2010 dollars), respectively, or 70% of total energy subsidies over that period. Oil, natural gas, and coal benefited most from percentage depletion allowances and other tax-based subsidies, but oil also benefited heavily from regulatory subsidies such as exemptions from price controls and higher-than-average rates of return allowed on oil pipelines. “

          1. Deal.

            (That was going to be the whole comment, but I got an error that my comment was too short!)
            “The deepest waters are the most silent.” – my fortune cookie from last night.

          2. A tax deduction, to which every other business is entitled, is not a subsidy. Refraining from dictating “fair” market price is not a subsidy. Refraining from meddling in transactions between willing participants is not a subsidy.

            None of these things are subsidies, anymore than refraining from breaking a persons legs is healthcare.

          4. Um, those subsidies total to $9.9 billion a year, which is about 48 cents per barrel of oil. Even if all of that was passed on purely to motor gasoline, that’s 2.5 cents per gallon. So increase the cost of gas by 2.5 cents and see if the oil industry collapses.

          6. Now that Bart has commented, and I reread your list of “subsidies”, I guess I agree with Bart – those aren’t subsidies. If you have tax advantages given specially to the fossil fuel industry, I would count them.

      5. A lot of grid electricity is “renewable energy” and has been for yonks. Hydroelectric power plants are certainly not new and can be cost effective. Even wind power is fine if it is being built in areas with good enough wind resource and the electric grid has enough backup storage capacity to handle the intermittent generation. Solar is still not there. Current installation costs, maintenance costs, plus inverter costs make solar too expensive. Solar works best in places where there is no existing electric grid at all and you have limited power generation requirements.

        1. “wind power is fine if it is being built in areas with good enough wind resource ”

          And if the wind is a little weak, just let Rand stand there and blather about Communists
          in the White House.

          2. Here’s an idea:

            Once we have enough renewables, then we can eliminate the coal plants. That would be the rational way of doing things.

            Oh, we have to remove the coal first? Why? Because Dn guy says so! But what is his reasoning?

            Crickets chirp…

          3. Yes, let’s let Rand stand in front of a windmill and talk. Heck, let’s get all the politicians standing in front of windmills, hot air contains more energy. But, wait! the most efficient way to turn human muscle power into electrical energy is by hooking a generator up to a stationary bicycle. So let’s put everyone on stationary bikes! Of course, people need to eat and consume fresh water and produce waste heat and polluted water and ZOMG CO2!1!!eleven!

            Or maybe the world is ready for something more practical. Like, say, a LFTR reactor that fits in a seabox.

    4. In a while we will slip into the next glaciation period. That’s when things will get ugly.

      1. Yeah but at least I won’t have to suffer through the July and August heat waves. And if I want ice for my Dark & Stormy all I need do is open the window and chip some off the old glacier block.

      2. Time to start buying a plot of land in the Sahara. IIRC in a glacial period the desert bands basically vanish and that place is supposed to become lush and green. I remember seeing some documentary about cave paintings in the Sahara once and the drawings were… interesting as the place was lush green grasslands back then.

    5. You are right about what will probably happen politically (I am agnostic on the subject of global warming). Too bad those wacky commies have such awful records on the environment. Greens will vote for any political party that mouths the right words, regardless of the actual results.

  3. On judithcurry and on Victor Venema’s site, Eli Rabbett made a very interesting comment:
    “There is a very simple consensus statement that 99+% of climate scientists would agree to: Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere at current rates will increasingly cause bad things to happen. In the next one to two hundred years this will lead to VERY BAD things happening. The rest is detail.”
    That’s a very good point, if it’s true. I for one would be impressed if every climate scientist agreed that a dinosaur-killing event is occurring. I would think that we would all at least put politics aside to agree that we have to stop it, whatever the cost however painful. If it’s true.
    I don’t think it is; certainly Judith Curry disagreed, but even Victor Venema, who is normally a very vocal and reliable AGW supporter, disagreed as well.
    Venema was willing to hazard a guess that 85% of climate scientists might think mitigation is a much better choice than adaptation. Sounds about right to me as well, judging from Bray and von Storch’s 2008 survey. But as I responded there, some of us may reasonably imagine that we can make better econometric estimates than climate scientists, so I don’t much care what they think about it. The limit of my interest in their opinion is what the climate sensitivity to CO2 is – and currently they haven’t been able to be more precise than about 1-4.5. I don’t see why they should imagine that they should have any influence beyond that.
    And there is absolutely no consensus once you get to economists or political scientists.

  4. Funny how they do this quietly and without parades and speeches:

    NOAA Reinstates July 1936 As The Hottest Month On Record

    According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in 2012, the “average temperature for the contiguous U.S. during July was 77.6°F, 3.3°F above the 20th century average, marking the warmest July and all-time warmest month on record for the nation in a period of record that dates back to 1895.”

    “The previous warmest July for the nation was July 1936, when the average U.S. temperature was 77.4°F,” NOAA said in 2012.

    This statement by NOAA was still available on their website when checked by The Daily Caller News Foundation. But when meteorologist and climate blogger Anthony Watts went to check the NOAA data on Sunday he found that the science agency had quietly reinstated July 1936 as the hottest month on record in the U.S.

    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/30/noaa-quietly-reinstates-july-1936-as-the-hottest-month-on-record/#ixzz36EIWvJ6I

    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/30/noaa-quietly-reinstates-july-1936-as-the-hottest-month-on-record/#ixzz36EI7Q8iT

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