Climategate's Phil Jones Confesses to Climate Fraud

Lewie,

A few more things.

"You'd need to cover an area the size of Arizona to power the US grid"

The number that I have seen cited is "the size of " but be that as it may, How many acres of roof is there currently in N. America? Just because a large area of solar is required doesn't mean it can't/shouldn't be done! In fact decentralized Pv is a better alternative in that it reduces transmission loses.

Quote:
you wrote:

"Sorry, that dog won't hunt. The last generation of environmental regulations have turned the US into a service economy instead of being manufacturing based."


To which I replied:

"Please explain and cite why you think this is true? If we can't manufacture "clean" stuff but others off shore can is that an indictment of the regulations or our corporate culture?"

And you:

Er, why regulations and Progressive government policy, of course."

Excuse me, but this is opinion, not citation. What environmental regulation(s) specifically caused us to become a service economy? Hint,, it was cheaper off shore labor more, coupled with cheap containerized shipping IMHO.

"Come on, you know that research and deployment on fission have been shut down in the US for political reasons. If France, of all places, can power 80% of their national grid with fission, why can't we? Yucca Mountain was killed by these same political "green" forces."

The reality is that there is not yet (and nothing on the horizon) a system or technology to safely deposit waste for the time required to make is safe. It is fine to place large amounts of nuke waste deep underground in stable geology, but what I don't trust is the human element. We worry about a "dirty bomb" now. What would it be like if someone were to break in and remove nuke waste 300 years from now? Like I said before, when the USSR collapsed there was (and still is) great fear about nuke issues.(and that was only ~50 years worth). When someone has figured out to make the stuff save, and or secure for it's dangerous life, it is a risk that I am not willing to take.


"Any schemes to address these problems that aren't "market based" will require the coercive force of big government to implement. You trust "Big Government", don't you? I don't. I think that Government has its purposes, for example, funding nuclear fusion research, but I think they stopped even that."

I wouldn't have any problem with "market based" solutions IF there were indeed a level playing field or a free market. The reality is there is neither. If you don't believe that conventional energy choices are subsidized you are misinformed. Additionally, even if we don't calculate in the CO2 cost of energy, there are considerable costs that are not reflected in the meter cost of energy. Hydro from existing high facilities usually have never "paid the cost" of lost of fish habitat for example. A multi-billion dollar salmon harvest system has gone completely away as a result of the Columbia River dam systems for example, and while some on going mitigation costs are paid it is only a small fraction of that which was lost. I am not arguing that there was/is benefit, but the net/net of the equation is not clear.

Coal fired grid power comes at huge environmental costs. Costs of mountain top strip mining, water quality degradation, ash heap leaks etc. These cost are not reflected in the meter price of power,, they will be left to future generations.

Nukes (which seem to be your favorite) have such huge legacy costs that no investor will touch a nuke plant. The reason no one has built a nuke plant in the last generation has as much to do with the fact that no one can afford to build one (even with subsidized insurance!) So fuel cost of nuke power is cheap, the legacy cost makes it's meter cost off the end of the scale.

You guys like to make the comment that alternatives can't cover the nut, and to some extent I agree. That said, there is another side of the coin. In the solar consulting business we advice that every dollar spent on conservation saves ~$10 in Pv costs. (actually a bit less as the price of Pv has fallen in the last year or so.) Conservation is easy, it is cheap and it has huge, usually fast payback. I know that many like to think it is "going back to the stone age" but simple things like,,,properly inflating your tires as we see here on PC pay big dividends. Simple, cheap steps make a real difference.

As I have said over and over again, we use ~1/6 as much power as the average household, and we do it with no draconian or medieval lifestyle choices.

I don't have much faith that government can/will solve these problems, but I have less faith that corporate america will either. The reality is the impetus must come from you and me, and actions and examples are our best tools.

Even if you don't believe in AGW, one can have an effect on the outcome buy doing simple things,,, like not driving a single occupancy hummer to commute!

 

:thumb: Most ,if not all, of these arguments often boil down to that I find. And to that we can agree! (finally...) or is it agree to disagree?!?

 

"Originally Posted by Lewie
I guess our differences boil down to your thinking that Big Government is the solution, while I think it's the problem."

The problem is big corporations, who have no other purpose than to amass profits.
Government is needed to defend and protect its citizens from corporations.
The free market controlling corporate greed, is fantasy libertarian BS.
Apparently Goldman Sachs has more political sway than Exxon.
Cap and Trade isnt the peoples interest ,its Goldman Sachs interest.
Enron and Goldman manufactured the public's consent.

 

That is almost the silliest thing I have heard on this site!

So nobody ever had a job before the creation of a corporation? I owned a construction business for ~30 years with 6 employees, and I turned a (small) profit most years,, and I wasn't incorporated. How do you explain that?

 

Most small businesses are incorporated for tax and legal reasons. Even without corporate standing the aim of all businesses I know of is profit.

 

That is a very different statement than you previous one that states:

"If not for corporations, be they large or small, and their profits there wouldn't be any jobs"

I have never argued that business should make a profit, or that their model should be other!

 

For all you pro-nuke fission folks out there, two pieces of information in the news today.

The first was a report on the waste vitrification issue and it's potential impact on the aquifer near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Kenniwick WA. An item on the radio this morning suggested that the potential for vitrified waste to get into the aquifer (and potentially the Columbia River!) exists not for a week or month or year,,, but in POTENTIALLY DEADLY CONCENTRATIONS for HUNDREDS of years!

Are you willing to mortgage future generations for the sake of a bit cheaper (metered rate!) power today? I'm not!

The second item, was the announcement by the Obama administration to subsidize the construction of a New Nuke plant in the south, to the tune of ~ $8,000,000,000! In addition they are offering loan guarantees of ~50 Billion for other Nuke production!

Does this sound like a "level playing field", or a "free market"?

How many watts of grid connected solar can you buy "retail" for ~$8 billion (not to mention ~$50 billion!) My calculator doesn't go that high, but raw panel prices are ~$2/watt, grid connected at the home owner level s running $5-8 watt! That is the retail price before any utility subsidy, or any federal or state tax credits.

Just to play with the numbers, $8 billion/$5=1,600,000,000 watts of PV! ($54 billion/5~ 108 billion watts of capacity)

I would posit that if you bought PV at some wholesale rate, you should be able to about double that. Once again, using real world numbers, does giving the Nuke industry this kind of subsidy make your playing field level,, or even make sense?

 

I read Hatton's manuscript on his web site. He considers it unpublishable. He may be right, but I'd suggest that it is because he has elected not to comapre annual storm records with sea surface temperature records. If he did that, and streamlined it a bit, then why not send it to one of the met journals?

There are published papers that dispute a secular increase in storm number and/or intensity, and assert that sea-surface temperatures are not causal. I see no reason why Hatton's analysis (which is arguably the least sophisticated of the lot) is more damaging to the IPCC assessment

AR4 WGI Chapter 3: Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change - 3.8.3.2 North Atlantic

than those.

All analyses of such storm data are hampered by the general agreement that the records are substantially less reliable before 1950 (shorter for the Indian Ocean). A longer view is only possible by using indirect measures such as sediment series and coral and tree rings. There is probably a lot still to be learned about these storms.

 

Here is a great assessment on the climate change fiasco:

The Continuing Climate Meltdown - WSJ.com


This article succinctly states why the global warming crowd is such disarray.

 

Whack a mole.

I gave refs on Amazon drought yesterday. If you don't want to know the research that has been published in re, don't read them.

Most relevant of Nigel Arnell's pubs on water cited in IPCC AR4 seems to be:

http://ncsp.va-network.net/UserFiles/File/PDFs/Resource%20Center/Water%

and if I may dare to summarize it, suggests that where water is scarce it may become more so, and where it is available in exccess it may increase. If that's fair then I can't quite see the WSJ editorialist's point.

AR4 cited many peer-reviewed studies on extreme weather-related events. go here:
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007 (AR4)

search for extreme weather-related events, and you can see them too. The WSJ says that AR4 only only cited one non-peer-reviewed study, and I have no idea why.

WSJ also says Phil Jones told the BBC that "the world may well have been warmer during medieval times than it is now." (They said he said. I put the quotes around it)

The BBC transcript

BBC News - Q&A: Professor Phil Jones

reads "
There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere. "

I made the "if" part bold.

Apparently different people read this statement in different ways. I won't recount his statements about decadal temperature patterns, but they are from the same transcript.

Do I really have to do this stuff? I mean, what do PC readers want? Spin or original sources? Scientific publications or media interpretations thereof?

 

So remember, one person's SCIENCE is another's SPIN. Ya dig?

The science has been called int question, and it's fair to say Phil Jones (and company) responses has been somewhat dodgy.

 

"So remember, one person's SCIENCE is another's SPIN. Ya dig?"

An one person's Bull S*#t is another's fertilizer! Which is yours?

 

Published scientific papers and interpretations thereof by media or advocate groups may seem spin-equal to some. They do not seem so to me.

There is a lot of science related to these matters. Some of the temperature records have been called into question. Meanwhile other science continues to accumulate. A lot of that points to directional change in climate-related factors over several decades. Such studies do not seem to be a focus for the media at present. They are easy to find though, for those interested.

 

I'm reminded of an old saying, "Even the devil may quote scripture for his purpose."

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is like arguing religion and about as successful when trying to change people's minds.

It simply boils down to the fact that some people have an underlying conservative, anti-government political belief. They wonder why people can't see that there is a massive conspiracy for socialism and the scientists who are "getting rich" by way of government support. When you have that at the base of every argument, you will never be able to have a cogent analysis of any data. At least not here through arguing on PC. Impossible. (Although I applaud the brave souls who keep trying :thumb

The worst thing to happen to environmental science was that Al Gore took up the cause instantly making it a "liberal" issue. That gave conservatives a face to put in their gun sights. Any science advancing what "Al Gore believes" was immediately suspect of being a "back room liberal" agenda regardless of what the actual report would say.

As far as I see it, we might as well have an "abortion forum" on here as well as we'd have similar results in the arguments.

 

That article is also an opinion piece. Just because an editor at the conservative Wall Street Journal says that "we still think the science is disputable" doesn't make it true. It doesn't mean that he's been pouring over the science from his vast background of training and came to a rational conclusion. In fact, it seems more like the opposite. When he misleads the readers based on selected quotes from the BBC interview (see tochatihu's post above) then it's hard to see it as anything but promoting opinion.

And this American Thinker article should also show us which way the site leans...American Thinker: An Obamageddon Snow Job