Whatever you might or might not think of climate science there is no chance of renewables taking on the lions share of electricity generation, with this article full of the misleading nonsense usually peddled by renewables advocates.

Firstly, it says that prices for electricity generated by renewables is falling. That is true but beside the point. The per-unit produced cost may be falling but that never takes into account capacity factor(average output - a sort of measure of how much conventional capacity it replaces). The truth is that most renewables that the author talks about are simply add ons to the conventional network with no possiblity of replacing it. Their use in large quantities in a comparatively small, isolated grid such as Aus would cause major problems. Countries like Denmark can do it because its part of a very dense network and it can store power in dams in Norway, for example.

This business about renewables taking up the bulk of new investment is because demand stalled during the GFC and hasn't recovered, and probably because China is loopy about building dams. Renewables are the result of green legislation, and that's it..

Hi Curmudgeon,
Thank you for your comments which, I feel, reflect the primitive state of the early renewable sources of energy currently around us. At the start of the 20th century, very few people cared for the heavy, inefficient and noisy internal combustion engines compared to the then market leading steam and electric cars. Only a brave or far-sighted person would have predicted that steam and electric cars would be driven off the market within 20-30 years.
I have hope that technological development will produce a variety of efficient and low-cost renewable energy sources so that our society will not have to flirt with atomic energy and can minmise all fossil fuel usage.
Coal is too valuable as a chemical engineering feedstock to waste it just to generate power when its products can do everything that oil and gas have done for us in the way of plastics, drugs and carbon based substances used in every life.
Thank you for starting this discussion in such a pleasant way: I hope it will continue in the same vein.

The UN report did not favour only renewables such as wind, solar and hydro, it also specifically included nuclear power in the group.

It disappoints me greatly to see reports such as the IPCC reports cherry-picked and misquoted by those with a "renewables only or bust" barrow to push.

All available options to avoid damaging climate change must be considered on the their merits. Articles such as this are simply sales blurb for, at best, a partial solution.

Maybe, given the need for reliability and availability, the true thrust of this article is to plan to fail - in which case fossil fuels will fill the gap, to the almost immediate (in geological timescales) detriment of the planet which we inhabit, our only home.

Closer to home, in Eastern Australia, the percentage of renewable energy on the grid has decreased from 17% to 7% during the past few decades. The 17% figure was achieved primarily through the Snowy Mountains Authority's plant. We have run out of opportunities of that scale.

Despite all of the solar and wind effort, we need not only to get back to the former 17% of zero carbon electricity, but to double it and then double that again. That means 10 or 12 times the current figure.

Wind+solar on that scale is serious stuff, as Germany is discovering and this article mentioned. I can't see it happening by, say, 2050, and I write this as one who has been involved with several large solar thermal projects and who previously held great hope and faith in the ability of wind+solar to be the low cost distributed power sources of the future.

Even Germany is doing too little, too late. What comes next?

What an appropriate question and what a time to post on "Online Opinion" the latest news from the Climate News Network that solar energy is now available 24 hours per day.

http://climatenewsnetwork.us6.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=6e13c74c17ec527c4be72d64f&id=73a8ce1461&e=b500daf449

Brian of Buderim

go back and look at the article you've linked to.. note how it says 18 hours of the day and for "many" months 24 hours.. what does "many" months mean? Now look at the actual rated capacity.. 20 MW .. a large, conventional plant is typically 500 MW. Note that the article doesn't say anything about costs or capacity factor so its impossible to properly evaluate that plant. and its taken them decades to get to this point.

Now check out its location. From memory that plant is in Alpine desert, of which we don't have a large supply in Australia (in fact, none).

All that aside I have seen proposals for all-renewable networks in Aus which might be feasible, if they ever manage to scale up that Spanish plant to anything like reasonable size, and they are able to invent something called power bio-diesels on the scale required (also provided we don't eat as all our crop land will be required to grow food for the bio-diesel). Costs will be prohibitive

Forget renewables. If you want to get rid of emissions, nuclear is far more of an option.

"crops would suck up CO2 from the air as they grow and then be burned in power stations to generate energy, after which the resulting CO2 emissions would be captured and buried. So CO2 is moved from the air to the earth, while generating energy - essentially the reverse of burning fossil fuels."
Errr.... Isn't this precisely what we are doing currently? Where did the coal come from? This is just a 'time' factor. Let me know when 'carbon sequestration' from coal power plants is viable technologically and economically.

"Investment in biofuels - once the poster child of renewables - fell 26 percent in 2013, to its lowest level since before George W. Bush kick-started the corn-to-ethanol race in the U.S. almost a decade ago."

And how many of the poorest starved because of this morally unconscionable policy?

The IPCC is correct in stating that the poorest nations will be hit hardest with climate change. Perhaps the dismantling of the IPCC would be the most efficacious approach to assisting the poor and ameliorating poverty.

Our author is a well known supporter of the baseless assertion of AGW, and seizes this opportunity to back the latest effort of the IPCCriminals in support of the AGW fraud.

He notes that” it avoids the kinds of specific forecasts that have sparked controversy in the past.”, by which he means that they do not, as in the past. rely on their self proclaimed authority in matters of climate, to assert outright lies, so obviously unsupported by science. This is not quite true, as they still assert that human emissions cause climate change, despite the fact that there is no science to show any measurable effect of human emissions on climate.

As Professor Bob Carter says of assertions based:” upon the supposition that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming.
Instead, the hard reality is that after twenty years of intensive research effort, and great expenditure, no convincing empirical evidence exists that the human effect on climate (which is undeniable locally) adds up to a measurable global signal.
Rather, it seems that the human global signal is small and lies submerged deeply within the noise and variability of the natural climate system.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/4/a-new-policy-direction-for-climate-change

One paragraph of the article only needs a small adjustment to make it sound encouraging.The words replaced are in brackets.
“The bad (good) news is that the transformation of the global energy system the IPCC seeks is already partly under way. The good (bad) news is that progress is fragile, and might be reversed.”

If you are going to be sensible and talk about comparative energy from solar and the fossils then speak about intermittency and density; for example compare Installed Capacity [IC], with Capacity Factor [CF] and Reliability Factor [RF]; for instance the RF of both solar and wind is at most 10%; which means the probability of 90% of its IC occurring at any one time is 10%. That’s intermittency.

Density can be considered by noting that a solar farm with an IC equivalent to Bayswater would cover 500 square kilometres.

Anyone who presses renewables is condemning humanity to bankruptcy and darkness and should be treated as the misanthropic Luddite they are.

It was, I suppose, asking too much for a reasoned discussion to continue. The point I made in my first comment on this thread is one I would like all readers and contributors to think about: 1st and 2nd generation renewable energy resources are going to be lacking in some areas. That doesn't mean we should stop developing them. 3rd, 4th and 5th generation renewables will be increasingly more efficient and will occupy less land and resources.
Coal is still too good a petro-chemical feedstock, to misuse a term, to waste it by burning and the costs and dangers of nuclear energy are too high.
Development of renewable energy sources has to continue.

Peddle your arrogance elsewhere Brian; "reasoned discussion" my foot.

Intermittency and density; staple those words on your forehead; maybe you'll learn what they mean by osmosis.

Go and study Betz law and the Shockley–Queisser limit; and then explain how Thermophotovoltaic devices can extend that limit.

For anyone who is interested Thorium:

http://www.energyandcapital.com/report/investing-in-the-future-of-thorium/982

It seems to me Brian that when you seek reasoned and polite discussion you desire that your points of view must not only be respected but also your underlying belief in AGW be accepted.

If that basic belief is challenged you describe that challenge as undesirable by calling it rude impolite etc.

That Brian is unreasonable.

You should be saying look fellas here is the proof supporting AGW. Now let's go onto discussing the role of renewables.

BTW I am polite but I bet you don't possess the where with all to answer my question.

Simply show me the proof of AGW.

Crops would suck up Co2!
None more so than oil rich algae, that suck up 2.5 times their body-weight in Co2 and furthermore, double that body weight and absorption capacity/oil content, every 24 hours!
Some algae are up to 60% oil!
And as an alternative high yield crop, only require 1-2% of the water of traditional irrigation.
Now none of this is dependent on whether or not we have climate change, but rather, the rising price of oil!
Peak oil, and the relationship with energy, and sustainable, enduring economic growth!
And the obvious energy alternative for us, is cheaper than coal, carbon free, thorium power!
Which by the way, pumps out power, when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow! And we Aussies have enough of it, to power the world for up to 700 years?
After that, what's is wrong with turning our biological waste into cheaper than thorium power, particularly, if coupled to more Aussie innovation; the super silent ceramic cell, which by the way, also provides endless free hot water, even when the sun is not shining!
And coal can still be accessed for CSG, which can be used as CNG, powering quickly refuelable electric vehicles, that depend on ceramic fuel cells, with the highest energy coefficient in the world, at around 80%; and where the exhaust product is mostly water!
And none of these things ought to be done in response to real or imagined climate change, but because they are the most pragmatic available solutions to growing a very healthy growing economy!
We need no other reason beyond that, but particularly, given we stare in the face of a new economic downturn, that given huge unprecedented global debt levels, could be worse than the Great Depression!?
Rhrosty.

Footnote:
B of B is completely correct, with regard to coal, as a excellent alternative to oil for many of the things we now use carbon rich oil for.
We also have an option of mining the reef, for its much lower carbon production paradigm, in common use, oil!
And I've read some expert industry commentary, that proposes, we may have larger hydrocarbon resource to our immediate north than the entire M.E.
Why, just tapping into an exporting the contents of the Townsville trough could payoff the state debt, ten times over, and there's bigger vastly more promising prospects, just a little further out.
We would however, need to reinstate our gas and oil corporation, lest some airhead, accuse us of nationalizing our oil industry!
We could still do that, if we wanted to build a huge income earning sovereign fund, and then only by utilizing the share market!
But particularly, if we just over supplied the oil market, [and I believe we could, given the probable size of the resource,] thereby driving down share prices.
Even if we didn't take that course, we could earn the national purse around a trillion per!
And we do need real money to actually develop endlessly sustainable real alternatives, if only to have an assured ultra reliable supply, after we traverse through peak oil, and its unaffordable energy and almost inevitable quite massive economic downturn consequences?
Rhrosty.

Further footnote:
Oil rich algae production doesn't need arable land, but can be grown almost anywhere, hydroponically, utilizing only problematic effluent! And or sea water!
One industry spokesperson currently employed in algae sourced bio diesel production in our own northwest, is on the public record stating, given necessary scales of economy, these bio diesel or alternative jet fuel products, could, even with a fuel excise applied, be retailed for just 44 cents a litre!
Typically the yanks just crack on producing something, while we invent all the ultra absurd reasons, we can't; or should that read, just won't!
Rhrosty.

Hi Cohenite,
Thank you for the two references you included: you have added to my education. Using Wikipedia only because it is fast, I did look up Betz' Law and the Shockley–Queisser limit. Betz' Law gives us, if I read it right, a maximum of 59.3% efficiency in an unshrouded wind-electric device and an unstated greater maximum if the air flow is shrouded.
The Shockley–Queisser limit puts the maximum efficiency of a single p-n junction solar cell as no higher than 33.7% rising to 86% for a cell with mutiple layers.
How am I going?
Photosynthesis has an efficiency 3 to 4 orders of magnitude lower than these figures but is still able to function effectively at keeping our atmosphere almost stable. It is indeed a pity that the ability that plants have to take carbon out of the atmosphere has a significantly lower rate than humans' of adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere: hence the CO2 concentration keeps increasing as does the Greenhouse Effect of that increased concentration.
One of the differences between us is that I can see alternative or renewanle energy sources improving over time, while many on this thread see them as relatively inefficient, at the moment and presumably unchanging into the future.

I go back to my original statements:
1. renewable or alternative energy sources (ie not coal, gas or oil) can only improve in size and efficiency up to the high limits that Cohenite alludes to, and
2. that coal (& oil & gas) are too valuable to burn just to make energy available for everyday processes.

To which pair I add a third point and that is that if we wish to have safe and continuing sources of energy for the future, research into renewable or alternative energy seems to be the field which will offer the greatest growth.

I am being polite and reasonable: I ask everyone contributing to this thread to do likewise. We may not convinve every reader but we have made a polite attempt to show that alternatives do exist in this debate.

Brian, are you aware that there is also major upside potential in nuclear energy technology rollout, such as the Integral Fast Reactor and much cheaper designs? (http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/cheap-nuclear) What is your basis for saying 'renewable or alternative energy seems to be the field which will offer the greatest growth' (remembering that the climate needs these techs to rolled out at massive scale NOW).

What do you make of France being able to largely decarbonise its electricity with nuclear in only a little over two decades, while Germany, going hell for leather for renewables exclusive of nuclear is actually going backwards (emissions rising), and similarly Denmark not doing much better?

You are just so polite Brian.
But you seem to have ignored my very polite request. So I will repeat.

Where Brian is the proof for AGW? You know what has happened with the economy under the carbon tax and RT, so why waste more money trying to develop technologies which are massively more expensive than our sources of abundant fossil fuels?

Can you supply proof these renewables are to be less expensive and help us return to the comparative advantage we once had in the cost of energy?

It is impolite and unreasonable to ignore people when they address you, Brian.

What I additionally meant to say: there is no basis for Pearce's statement that 'nuclear is unlikely to grow much'. Sure, that is the prediction of many business-as-usual models, but business as usual is exactly what is taking us towards climate catastrophe. It has to change.

Moreover, 'the IPCC says the only way is a vastly bigger plug-in of wind and solar' is a misrepresentation of what the report actually says is required, which is this: "a tripling to nearly a quadrupling of the share of zero- and low-carbon energy supply from renewables, nuclear energy and fossil energy with carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), or bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) by the year 2050" (see http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/04/14/ipcc-double-standards-on-energy-barriers/ including the comments for a discussion of this).

I couldn’t respond any earlier as I had exceeded my article limit.

Nutter, I am not a climate scientist but I am a scientist. Popper’s idea of Falsifiability is what we work with: it is not possible to prove anything but all it takes is one negative example to disprove a theory.
Anthropogenic Global Warming is one theory (along with Evolution and Atoms). It cannot be proven but when the available evidence, produced and blind peer-reviewed by reputable scientists, points in one direction scientists working in other fields trust and accept the idea: a consensus develops. This persists until a reputable scientist produces work which after standing up to blind peer-review points the available evidence in a different direction and a new theory is created to better explain the available evidence.
I see thinning, but spreading, Antarctic ice, diminishing Greenland ice, more Arctic ice-free days, higher temperatures in higher latitudes, and retreating glaciers as part of this evidence: I accept the ideas that climate scientists offer. These ideas explain these observations in an understandable way.
Is Global Warming happening?: I accept that it is. Is Global Warming the result of human activities?: I accept that it is. If evidence changes and a theory evolves which better explains the evidence I will probably accept that new theory. We are talking here about observations described by climate and other scientists in blind peer-reviewed journal articles: non-scientists can easily create plausible websites made of straw.

Mark, I also noticed the debate narrowing. Carbon Sequestration and Capture does not have workable technology. It seems a better idea to leave the carbon in the ground than to try the risky manoeuvre of putting Carbon Dioxide underground hoping it stays there.
I cannot see economic logic behind nuclear energy. It seems nonsensical to spend millions digging it up and processing it to put it into a power plant with a life of 40 years, which power plant costs millions of dollars to construct. The radioactive building and the toxic waste remain intractable for thousands of years requiring constant monitoring. It doesn’t add up.

I think it is fairly clear that even if decisions were made tomorrow about new nuclear that it would struggle to contribute a massive amount to low-carbon sources by 2050.

In an era of cheap gas, there is limited economic incentive to invest large amounts of capital in construction that may go nowhere due to changes in the political wind. Currently, the investment risks are high and the investment rewards are low.

New construction, from decision to power output is at least a decade and that is only for countries that have an existing power program. For countries without one, the timelines are much longer. In addition, approvals are going to be bedevilled by the political process required to get approval.

Thorium reactors are still at the experimental stage and are likely to take an even longer period to come on line if they ever do.

Likewise carbon capture and storage is at the experimental stage. If shown to be effective, some rapid retrofitting of power stations can probably be done. However, geology will likely prohibit its use in some localities.

So it would seem to be good odds that renewables will have to do a share of the heavy lifting. At least they are known to work. However, to make renewables a large component of energy systems, the storage problem needs to be solved. If you have dams available, that might be easy, but otherwise some other storage mechanism is required.

Given the uncertainties with all the technologies, a spread of investment in research to solve the issues would seem to be a prudent thing to do.

Thank you for that confirmation Brian of Buderim, I have long suspected from your posts that you were some kind of academic. I have also long suspected that you have long been unable to believe ill of your fellows.

It is obviously quite odious for you to admit even to yourself, that there are in the scientific community, many shysters, & frauds. I can see this fact alone makes it difficult to do anything but believe the increasingly contrived stuff they are producing.

Surely the fiasco of "the ship of fools" should have given you some pause in your belief in the quality of the people in this Johnny come lately discipline.

You are the very type of person the world needs to reevaluate the stuff you have been fed by these fraudsters.

I, like you, believed everything they said for some years. I could not believe the whole thing was off the rails & crashing. Then a couple of minor worries led me to do a bit of math, & that was the end of it.

I am perhaps too virulent in my criticism, because I am so annoyed at myself for once taking the word of these people as gospel. I ask you to not only have another serious look, but to do the math. Do that & it will prove to you the thing just doesn't work.

So Brian what you are saying to me is because a whole mob of people claim, without proof, that AGW, is happening even though recorded and peer reviewed data says the warming led co2 increases, that the whole world should share your belief and pay fcarbon taxes and the development of energies that are not guaranteed to reduce current energy costs to the point where we in Australia regain our comparative advantage in using fossil fuels.

It that intrepretation of your response accurate?

I can supply the link that shows warming began before co2 increases. It is in a warmist magazine and was written by warmist scientists. It was quoted on olo by some who attempted to use it to support their belief in AGW.

Do you want the link? Will you admit then the AGW theory that co2 caused the initial increase in temps is incorrect?

Nutter,
Post the link so that everyone can read it and assess its accuracy and verifiablility.
You miss the point I made about peer-review: it is blind. The author supplies a clean copy of the article or paper (clean in that it contains no reference to the author's or authors' names or employing institutions) to the journal editor. The editor passes it to an authority in the field without disclosing the author's/ authors' names or links. The reviewer does not know who wrote it and author/authors do not know who reviewed it. Most articles are blind reviewed by a number of reviewers none of whom know who else is reviewing. It is conceivable that work by a Finn could go to a British journal and be reviewed by a Canadian, a Turk and an Australian. The comments the editor is looking for are one of three: 1. good enough to publish as is; 2. good enough to publish once work has been done in [listed] areas, and 3. not good enough to publish: can be repetitious, can have been published in part somewhere else or can say nothing new. Depending on the journal somewhere between 50% and 95% of submitted work is not published. Once an article has been published any competent scientist in the field is able to pass judgement on the quality of the work by citing the work in their own publications. Much published work is cited by very few other authors and dies a quiet death. Errors are corrected in the full public gaze of the letters section of the journal. Falsity is also completely and quickly exposed: if you don't pick it up, your colleagues will draw their own conclusions of your status in the cut-throat world of academia. First to publish and first to expose errors and pick up faking wins praise.
Talk to scientists about a global conspiracy to impose a ‘dud’ theory on the world has them rolling on the floor laughing. Conspiracy involves collaboration: advancement in science is climbing over others’ mistakes as scientists compete ruthlessly for the research dollar.

Hi Hasbeen,
Deliberate and intentional fraud is extremely rare in the scientific community. Here, a worker's reputation is as good as the worker's word and the results in the worker's last paper or article. [Notice, I am being determinedly non-sexist].
Frauds and impostors are weeded out very quickly: after that, nothing they publish, or attempt to publish, is taken any notice of. They die a scientific death of neglect. Think of McBride - think of the Indian palaeontologist Gupta.
What is more likely is something like the N-Rays story or the story of Alfred Wegener: a truly sad man, who died unheralded and unacknowledged but who pointed to plate tectonics. Science learnt some bitter lessons from Wegener, whose work was ignored because:
1. he was German when the 'best' geologists were Anglo-Saxon,
2. he was a meteorologist, commenting on a geological issue,
3. he published in German journals at a time when Anglo-Saxons refused to read anything published in other languages [think French today], and
4. he could propose no mechanism to explain how continents could move.
Closer to today, think of Watson & Crick who used Rosalind Franklin's work, without any acknowledgement in their race to beat Pauling to the structure of DNA.
This would not be countenanced today. No Nobel Prize but infamy would be their reward.
Science has come a long way since 1953. Today, we see earnest workers trying their hardest to honestly unravel the climate puzzle, believing they are pursuing good and valid targets, handicapped by a storm of uninformed or disinformed criticism.
In case you had not noticed, I am on the side of the honest scientists.

Brian, you seem unaware of some significant developments in nuclear technology in recent decades. The Integral Fast Reactor I mentioned has demonstrated the ability to consume existing nuclear waste (producing vastly more energy in the process, by a factor of 100 over earlier generation reactors) and reduce its radioactivity to background levels (let alone anything that could be considered dangerous) within 300 years, not thousands: (http://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Energy-technology-scientific-non-specialists/dp/1466384603/‎). Far from requiring 'constant monitoring', geological disposal of this material is technically trivial. It's tiny in volume in comparison to more toxic substances produced in far greater quantity by our industry, which remain toxic forever.

And reactors being constructed now can be expected to last more like 80 years, not 40: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201312/apsreport.cfm

Contra Agronomist, non-hydro renewables have not been 'demonstrated to work', not in the sense of shouldering the bulk of a modern economy's energy requirements. Only nuclear has done that. Trying to scale renewables up to do the same will entail similar lead times and bedevilment by approvals processes given the vast areas of land required and resources that need to be marshalled.

ALL technologies will struggle to contribute a massive amount to low-carbon sources by 2050 for as long as we continue to treat the situation with less than wartime levels of expediency. As the IPCC said, we need every tool in the box.

"Forget renewables. If you want to get rid of emissions, nuclear is far more of an option."

Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 30 April 2014 1:37:21 PM

Nuclear power is the worst idea considering the volatile nature of our planet.( and keeping in mind humans have sped up the natural processes )and lets not forget Japans master stroke of genus, some how forgetting about the rim of fire that just so happens to run right off their coast line....how did they miss that one?

The only way that nuclear power can be an option for the coming future, is to build the plants under ground...( The Japanese Government must be kicking themselves )...containing it would not of been a problem.

If the climate or the planet itself chucks a turn for the worst, we have hundreds of ticking time bombs above the ground just waiting to go off, and don't say it cant happen....we've all heard that one before, hey Japan! With the increases of more violent weather patterns popping up all over the world, the chances of more disasters increasing in the future, are very likely.

Good luck.

Kat

Brian

Why cast aspersions in a polite discussion? It's passive aggressive and rude.

I understand peer review.
I have never ever suggested a global conspiracy.

Now address the issues raised instead of being provocative.

http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/bas_research/science_briefings/icecorebriefing.php

This is the relevant part

'From the air in our oldest Antarctic ice core, we can see that CO2 changed in a remarkably similar way to Antarctic climate, with low concentrations during cold times, and high concentrations during warm periods (see Fig. 3). This is entirely consistent with the idea that temperature and CO2 are intimately linked, and each acts to amplify changes in the other (what we call a positive feedback).It is believed that the warmings out of glacial periods are paced by changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun, but the tiny changes in climate this should cause are amplified, mainly by the resulting increase in CO2, and by the retreat of sea ice and ice sheets (which leads to less sunlight being reflected away). Looking at the warming out of the last glacial period in detail, we can see how remarkably closely Antarctic temperature and CO2 tracked each other.

It is often said that the temperature ‘leads’ the CO2 during the warming out of a glacial period. On the most recent records, there is a hint that the temperature started to rise slightly (at most a few tenths of a degree) before the CO2, as expected if changes in Earth’s orbit cause an initial small warming. But for most of the 6,000-year long ‘transition’, Antarctic temperature and CO2 rose together, consistent with the role of CO2 as an important amplifier of climate change (see Fig. 4). In our modern era, of course, it is human emissions of CO2 that are expected to kick-start the sequence of events. We see no examples in the ice core record of a major increase in CO2 that was not accompanied by an increase in temperature. Methane concentration also tracks the glacial-interglacial changes, probably because there were less wetlands in the colder, drier glacial periods.'

ie actual data from the core samples shows warming preceded co2 increases.

imajulianutter, you must have mis-read that article.

It in fact states "But for most of the 6,000-year long ‘transition’, Antarctic temperature and CO2 rose together, consistent with the role of CO2 as an important amplifier of climate change (see Fig. 4)."

So warming did not precede CO2 increases as you claimed; they mostly occurred together.

Indeed if temperature and CO2 act to amplify each other, as suggested in the article, you would expect that to find increases in CO2 leading to increases in temperature as well as increases in temperature leading to increases in CO2. Therefore, if CO2 is increased by something other than temperature, for example human emissions, there must be the chance of a catastophic feed forward effect occurring where the higher CO2 increases temperature, than then increases CO2, which increases temperature some more.

Agronomist,

'...there is a hint that the temperature started to rise slightly (at most a few tenths of a degree) before the CO2,as expected if changes in Earth’s orbit cause an initial small warming. ...'

Please explain that fact in light of AGW clearly maintaining co2 caused the warming.

Unsupported claims are made that temps and co2 rose together on one hand yet on the other co2 is claimed to be an amplifier. No one shows peer reviewed data, increasing temps as an amplifier. Why is that?

Brian asks:

"How am I going?"

No good. The S-Q limit is a theoretical limit which has theoretical exceptions; there are also theoretical constraints on those theoretical exceptions; which just about sums up renewables.

Google Thermophotovoltaic and tell us how heat differentials from backradiation can be converted into energy.

Agro, a mixed bag from you; there were Thorium reactors running from the 1970's; it is a proven energy source. And this:

"So warming did not precede CO2 increases as you claimed; they mostly occurred together."

One of the last lies from AGW, featured in recent hideous 'papers' by Marcott and Shakun, is that temperature does not precede CO2 increase but that the 2 are intrinsically connected with little or no time delay:

In fact CO2 and temperature appear to have no correlation at all:

21stC:

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:2000/offset:-347/scale:0.008/trend/plot/rss-land/from:2000/trend

20thC:

http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Bastardi-CO2Temp.gif

Geologic:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2,Temperaturesandiceages-f.pd

Well if the sun doesn't start growing spots some time damn soon, we are going to get the proof that Brains scientists are either con men, or bloody idiots.

I do believe most of these misguided people started the AGW thing in belief that it was true. It would appear that many of them don't have enough math to see the error of their theory.

It is also quite obvious that many have their lives invested in the theory, & will fight & scream to keep their livelihood going as long as possible.

It really is a pity that people like Brian can't get past believing "scientists" are all good people. How they could have read the "hide the decline" email, & still believe, I just can't imagine.

imajulianutter, I was pointing out that if the best evidence you have for a position is “there is a hint” that doesn’t make compelling evidence. Perhaps you should have looked for some evidence where this was clearer? In fact most of the article argued against the position you were advancing.

It is indeed reasonably well accepted that increasing temperatures can release CO2 into the atmosphere. Although the proxies used to get temperature from ice cores are really measuring ocean temperature rather than atmospheric temperature, but that is a discussion for another time. It is also well accepted that the increasing CO2 acts as an amplifying mechanism, increasing temperature, which increases CO2 and so on. That is postulated to be the main reason why the warmings from glacials are so abrupt.

What is interesting about the current climate situation is that warming did not precede the current increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 started increasing with the industrial revolution and warming was some century or so later (or indeed not at all if you accept the statements of some writers on this site). So any argument that “warming precedes CO2 increases” is entirely spurious for the current situation. Such an argument would mean that CO2 concentrations would still be not much more than 275 ppm, which clearly is not the case.

This little piece raised its head today,

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/05/solar-jet-fuel-made-out-thin-air

The article notes the following;

"Solar energy engineer Jane Davidson at the University of Minnesota in the US says the production of syngas using concentrated sunlight is still in the early stages of development. ‘Many groups around the world are working on the same process using different reactors, but [have] the same goal of reaching commercially viable solar-to-fuel efficiency,’ she adds. ‘It’s an exciting approach to synthetic fuels that also stores solar energy in chemical form.’"

In many countries this is being supported by government funding.

The one place I can pretty well guarantee it won't be happening is Australia. Too busy digging holes in the ground.

imajulianutter

Hopefully you genuinely want to understand how CO2 affects the climate and why we can be reasonable sure that it has plays a major rule in moving the climate out of ice ages. You are correct when you state that temperature laged CO2 and methane levels during past ice ages.

The earth's orbit varies in 3 ways
1 From circular to elliptical
2 The angle of tilt varies by 2.4 degrees.
3 Precession changes the point in the orbit where the seasons change

For simplicity let I shall ignore the second case.
The earth's orbit is currently elliptical and the earth is closest to the sun during the the southern hemisphere summer. The closer to the sun the earth is the faster it moves and conversely the further away it is the slower it it moves. Currently southern winters are slightly longer and colder than northern winters which are slightly shorter and warmer.

At some time in the distant past the situation was reversed.
The northern hemisphere has larger land masses at the high latitudes than the southern hemisphere, but land loses heat more rapidly than water, thus large ice sheets develop in the northern hemisphere. This in turn reduces the incoming radiation due to increased refection further enhancing the cooling.

The observation is the cooling process is slow and takes a long time on the other hand the earth comes out of ice ages relatively quickly. This is not what one would expect because it requires increasingly more heat to raise the temperature by the same amount.

The interesting question is why ?
The answer is due to feedbacks, in chronological order.
1 Retreating ice reduces the amount of heat reflected back to space.
2 Increasing temperatures cause more water vapour in the atmosphere enhancing global warming.
3 Increasing temperatures cause rising levels of CO2 and methane further enhancing global warming.

The process does not stop when it gets to point 3 it then repeats the cycle. This is why CO2 and methane lag temperature.

argo

I didn't write the article. Warmist terrorists presented it on a terrorist site. It was cited by 'ant' to prove co2 caused warming.
Research was completed by andtdata presented by warmist terrorist scientists.

What did you think they'd say?
They'd minimise and ignore the significance of warming preceding co2 rises. Saying the data isn't strong enough is as silly as it is for scientists to argue against or to ignore the evidence they recorded. That's not the scientific method. The evidence is there why not accept it. Investigate it further. You cannot simply dismiss it because it doesn't suit you position. That's crook. lol

'...the current climate situation is that warming did not precede the current increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.'
Please supply peer reviewed data supporting this assertion. There is none.

'So any argument that “warming precedes CO2 increases” is entirely spurious for the current situation.'

Really then since co2 emissions are still increasing why aren't temps still rising. And why are the IPCC downgrading their predictions re future rises?

'It is believed that the warmings out of glacial periods are paced by changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun,'

Please explain why this was said in the article and proof that something similar has not preceded the current, now paused, warming?

'spurious'
Do you understand the meaning of this word?

Warmair

'we can be reasonable sure'

No, not good enough. I want evidence supported by data before I join your religious crusade.

'You are correct when you state that temperature lagged CO2 and methane levels during past ice ages.'

No I did not state that. Warmist scientists stated that after their evidence supported by data said that.

'The earth's orbit varies in 3 ways
1 From circular to elliptical
2 The angle of tilt varies by 2.4 degrees.
3 Precession changes the point in the orbit where the seasons change'

Good, now if you believe in warming simply prove, with data, none of these caused the current, now paused, warming.

Steele

Do you need reminding?

Will this AGW rot ever end; not when true believers like warmy, Mr Redux and Agro still keep plugging along.

Warmy says:

"1 Retreating ice reduces the amount of heat reflected back to space.
2 Increasing temperatures cause more water vapour in the atmosphere enhancing global warming.
3 Increasing temperatures cause rising levels of CO2 and methane further enhancing global warming."

1 No. Increased cloud would reflect more 'heat'.

2 No. WV is maybe a negative feedback [and clouds certainly are which increase with more WV in the atmosphere]:

http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/E&E_21_4_2010_08-miskolczi.pdf

3 The sensitivity of CO2 to temperature is much lower than assumed by alarmists:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08769.html

Agro says:

"So any argument that “warming precedes CO2 increases” is entirely spurious for the current situation. Such an argument would mean that CO2 concentrations would still be not much more than 275 ppm, which clearly is not the case."

No.` See Knorr discussed painfully here:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14581&page=0

And Gloor et al:

http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/10/9045/2010/acpd-10-9045-2010.html

cohenite, I looked at Knorr 2009 and Gloor et al. 2010 and I remain unsure of why you have introduced these pieces of work into this argument.

In essence what Knorr and Gloor et al. are arguing is that the fraction of human CO2 emissions that remain in the atmosphere has stayed relatively constant or increased slowly over 150 years. What this means is that as human emissions have increased, the ability of sinks to take up that carbon has also increased. In contrast, Le Quere et al. 2009 argues that the fraction of human emissions remaining in the atmosphere has increased from 40 to 45% in the past 150 years.

Regardless, this still means that CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing due to human activity. In 1850 humans put less than 0.5 GT of C per year into the atmosphere and about 40% of that has stayed there. In 2000 humans put almost 8 GT of C into the atmosphere per year and about 45% of that has stayed there. This means CO2 in the atmosphere is still increasing see Figure 1 in Knorr for an example.

cohenite's argument in the post linked to seems to be that Knorr’s works shows that humans are not responsible for most of the CO2 in the atmosphere. This is almost the complete opposite of the argument in Knorr and is frankly weird.

This is no way addresses any argument about whether temperature increases precede CO2 increases in the atmosphere. Prior to 1850, there were no temperature increases. Indeed, you have argued here that global temperatures in the Medieval warm period and the Roman warm period were as high as today. So taking the argument that temperature increases precede CO2 increases, there is currently an unprecedented increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.

imajulianutter puts this down to the action of terrorists, cohenite uses two papers that state CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing to argue … well I am not sure what.

'So taking the argument that temperature increases precede CO2 increases, there is currently an unprecedented increase in CO2 in the atmosphere.'

So explain the current pause in temps while co2 is still increasing.

Agro; I don't think that is the right interpretation of what a constant Airborne Fraction [AF], or the amount of anthropogenic CO2 [ACO2] remaining in the air means. The long discussion between me and Bugsy about Knorr established 2 things; one you've already mentioned, which is sinks are increasing.

The other more problematic issue is whether nature is supplying ANY CO2 at all to the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

The constant AF is one piece of that puzzle which I think indicates some contribution by natural CO2 to the overall increase.

I am also impressed with the work of Gösta Pettersson:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/01/the-bombtest-curve-and-its-implications-for-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-residency-time/

In respect of sinks see this:

http://ej.iop.org/images/1748-9326/8/1/011006/erl459410f3_online.jpg

The point I made was if sinks are increasing the assumption of an equilibrium between natural CO2 and natural sinks before ACO2 began increasing is probably wrong; as is the fact that natural CO2 is not contributing.

Imajulianutter

The global climate since the 1970s has warmed at the of rate of about 0.17 deg C per decade. It appears that despite increasing CO2 levels, the rate of warming has not significantly increased over the last decade. Note it is not true that warming has ceased recently it is only that warming rate has not increased.The period 10 to 20 years is in fact too short to prove anything due to other factors listed below.

1 In a single year the global temperatures can vary by more than 0.17 deg C amount depending on whether we are in a El Nino or La Nina. Since the early 2000s we have had more La Ninas than El Ninos. La Ninas favor cooler conditions.

2 We have had a number of large volcanic eruptions over the last decade which pump sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere and we know from previous eruptions that this temperately reduces temperatures.

3 Global sulphate aerosols have risen due to increased pollution from the developing world particularly China. Again thus tending to cool climate.

4 There has been a small decrease in energy output from the sun.

5 A possible increase in heat uptake by the deep ocean.

So it is not surprising that increased GHGs levels have not managed to increase the rate of warming in such a short time.

warmy; keep flogging it;

1 So what, according to Foster's seminal [sic] paper rebutting Mclean et al natural variation cannot produce trend.

2 Nope. The VEI is not unusual.

3 Nope aerosols are declining and sunlight is increasing; see Wild 2012 and O'Dowd 2013.

4 As above; more sunlight is reaching Earth due to aerosol decline.

5 Nope; SST are declining and deep OHC increase is problematic.

Again warmair just another bunch of unsupported assertions. Supply me with links that support these and I'll read them.

Be careful though, remember how ant has been silenced.

A study was done by Grant Foster1 and Stefan Rahmstorf2 which broadly confirm my points above

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044022.pdf

The results are sumerised on this graph
http://ej.iop.org/images/1748-9326/6/4/044022/Full/erl408263f7_online.jpg

MEI refers to La Nina and El Nino cycles
AOD refers to Aerosol Optical Depth
TSI is Total Solar Index

My conclusion is that temperatures should have fallen by about 0.15 deg C since around 2003 instead they have continued to climb.

They conclude Quote
"This analysis confirms the strong influence of known factors on short-term variations in global temperature, including ENSO, volcanic aerosols and to a lesser degree solar variation."
And
"Perhaps most important, it enables us to remove an estimate of their influence, thereby isolating the global warming signal"

I read the first page of your reference with the following words liberally scatter I started to doubt it's scientific method.

'approximated',
'the expected climate evolution'
'regularly estimate global and regional (including hemispheric) average temperature'
'Surface temperature is estimated'
'Lower-troposphere (LT) temperature is estimated'

But when I read the following I burst out laughing. So much estimation isn't the scientific method in operation it is just plain guesswork.

I didn't bother reading any further.

'Each science team adopts different methods for correcting input data for non-climatic influence. Different surface temperature estimates begin with much of the same raw data, but must be corrected for such factors as station moves, time-of-observation bias, and the ‘urban heat island’, or UHI, effect. For satellite data sets, creation of
a lower-troposphere record requires combining information
from multiple MSU/AMSU channels, since no single channel
represents the lower troposphere exclusively (in fact they
are all influenced by the entire atmosphere, including the
stratosphere). Other complications with satellite data include
the uncertain effects of orbital decay (and disagreement
between teams about how best to correct it), and the necessity
of splicing together data from over a dozen satellite missions
(with further disagreement between teams about how to do
so), each with its own calibration issues. Instrumentation has
evolved over time, most notably the switch from MSU to
AMSU technology with the launch of NOAA-15 in 1998.
Clearly, no single data record, surface or satellite, is free of
complications and uncertainties.
For the most part, the complications which affect
surface and satellite records are mutually exclusive—for
instance, satellite data are free from contamination due to
UHI—although surface and satellite data are not estimates of
exactly the same physical quantity. Yet the lower-troposphere
and near-surface temperatures are coupled strongly enough,
especially on longer times scales, that a comparison between
them provides useful insights.'

you have got to be joking if you expect any reasonable person to take this guesswork seriously.

"This analysis confirms the strong influence of known factors on short-term variations in global temperature, including ENSO, volcanic aerosols and to a lesser degree solar variation."
And
"Perhaps most important, it enables us to remove an estimate of their influence, thereby isolating the global warming signal"

If the following statement was added to both conclusions:

"if you accept all out estimations, expectations and approximations as well as 'our different methods for correcting input data'..."

it would make your and their conclusions a tad more honest and upfront... not to mention laughable.

cohenite, what I wrote was exactly the correct interpretation of what the airborne fraction is. It is identical to how Knorr defines the airborne fraction in the first two sentences of the introduction to his paper. I am tempted to suggest you should read the paper, rather than making things up.

What Knorr’s argument is all about is why hasn’t the airborne fraction increased and whether the predictions of the models of an increase in the fraction are likely to be realised.

The fact that the airborne fraction has been remarkably constant says nothing at all about natural emissions. In fact it is weird to suggest that it does. A constant AF indicates that the amount of CO2 going into sinks is increasing. That is all. Increasing natural emissions would in fact increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and increase the AF.

A constant AF is not in fact much of a surprise. There are two major sinks: plants and the ocean. Both will increase their absorption of CO2 as more is added to the atmosphere. Plants are inherently inefficient at fixing CO2 from the small concentration in the atmosphere. If you double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, plants will fix CO2 more efficiently, the so-called fertilization effect. It is a limited effect, because biomass increase will be limited by nitrogen.

For the ocean, an equilibrium exists between the ocean and the atmosphere. Increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere shifts the equilibrium so that more CO2 enters the ocean. These two processes explain entirely why the AF has not changed.

imajulianutter, there is not currently a pause in temperature increases. There have been statistically significant increases in surface temperatures since 1997, 1998 or 1999. There has statistically been a pause since 2010, if that helps any. But I guess that is just those terrorists fiddling with the data again.

Imajulianutter
Here are a few of your recent comments

"Really then since co2 emissions are still increasing why aren't temps still rising. And why are the IPCC downgrading their predictions re future rises?"
"So explain the current pause in temps while co2 is still increasing."

But in the last couple of posts it appears you do not accept the estimates for global temperatures, so you can not reasonably argue from the same estimates that temperatures have not risen, or to put it bluntly you believe that temperatures have not risen based guesswork.

I would also point out the words like approximations and estimates do not necessarily indicate lack of accuracy.
For example the value of pie is approximately but not exactly.
3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286
Also I would hope that when you estimate your position out at sea that you have a fairly accurate idea of where you are.

Warnair

Estimations used in working out my position at sea do not involve in any way seeking to impose my view upon anybody but me. I don't ever suggest it as an absolute truth.

Silly attempt at parallel, and I think that perfectly typifies the fuzzy thinking of you terrorists.

'But in the last couple of posts it appears you do not accept the estimates for global temperatures,...'

Rubbish. Firstly they weren't statements, they were questions. Do you understand the difference?
Secondly I reject the estimates temps are rising as I have seen no data supporting this assertion.

Your attempt to refute my position in regards to the use of estimations etc in arriving at a conclusion in a scientific paper without stating that conclusion involves extensive use of estimations etc is as dishonest as the practices you are defending. The practice in an attempt to portray the conclusion as truth is dishonest.

Agro
'there is not currently a pause in temperature increases.'

Fine prove this assertion with peer reviewed data.

imajulianutter, data is available here http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.txt and here http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadCRUT4-gl.dat

I laughed at both sets of data.

The first listed months as numbers. What month is number 28, or 18 or 29 etc.

The second set was from CRU UEA

Whould that be climate research unit at the university of east anglia.
Wouldn't Hadley have been easier?
Lol

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”

The numbers after the period in 1999.04, 1999.29, etc., are decimals corresponding to fractions of a year. That is how math works.

The HadCRUT data sets are a collaboration between Hadley and CRU. The same data is available from both.

But your data set is headed year month. Nowhere does it specify anything other than that.
Surely that would have been footnoted. Why didn't you include any footnotes? Do they reveal things you don't want me to see?

Hadl ey was shown to be utterly unreliable years ago.

Still laughing agro.

Ignorance is something your side of the debate is intimate with.
Your comment is again evidence of such.