It's Hot! But Fox Only Talks About Global Warming When It's Snowing

[El_Machinae]

Yes we need to protect the environment and find a healthy balance between modernisation and sustainability. Business as usual will not work, but neither will the Green-socialist doctrine. One will result in destruction of the atmosphere, the other will return humans to the medieval era. We should instead get to the point where we fully understand what's happening in the climate (or at least to 95% certainty) and then make rational economically sound decisions which will not risk quality of life nor the modern way.

In swaths I agree. We do want to protect the environment, and we want to do it in a way that avoids returning us to the middle ages. And we should act with information and rationally.

I'm not sure that there's anything but something called 'Green-socialist' doctrines as solutions, though. We have to acknowledge that the environment is common property in order to defend it. Was the Montreal protocol 'Green-socialist'? I think that thematically it's decently similar to AGW solutions, honestly. I've opened many threads looking for alternatives, and there just don't seem to be any.

The problem with waiting until you're 95% certain (when you've already got good reason to suspect concern, which, imo is warranted here) is that it unfairly shifts burdens. The babyboomers have good reason to suspect that we're polluting unwisely, and they're reaping all the benefits from pushing consequences into the future. If we do decide to change then the next generation has to pay all of the interest (effectively) on their overconsumption.

Oceanic acidity, oceanic deadzones, and heat spikes are not triffling threats. They do require some foresight. And a global economy takes time to modify. AND there're evil people who want business as usual.

The uncertain variable in climate change is clouds. I've said it many times. We don't know what the clouds will do re: feedback loops. But we DO have good reason to suspect humidity feedback loops and (potentially) methane feedback loops. If those feedback loops are true, then waiting for '95% certainty' is not wise. The risk:reward ratio is not ideal. And, regardless of clouds, we still have oceanic circulation and especially acidity to worry about.

I know you get roughshod treatment here, but thanks for bringing some science. Of your links, I find the 'radioactive decay' link to be unconvincing (because I don't think there's a change in radioactive decay) and I'll say again that NASA is not predicting a significant downturn in Sun ala Maunder Minimum. Just that there're similar symptoms (that the Sun could easily 'snap out of')

 

[Ayatollah So]

I'll say again that NASA is not predicting a significant downturn in Sun ala Maunder Minimum. Just that there're similar symptoms (that the Sun could easily 'snap out of')

More importantly, a repeat Maunder Minimum would provide only a small bit of relief:

03/10/2010 - A new Grand Minimum of solar activity would decrease the rise of global mean temperature caused by human greenhouse gas emissions only marginally. A new modelling study by researchers of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, published online today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, finds a temperature offset of at most 0.3 degrees Celsius until the end of the century. This is less than ten percent of the temperature rise projected under “business as usual” scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The calculations by Stefan Rahmstorf and Georg Feulner assumed a solar Minimum starting now and lasting to 2100. I sure hope the predictions of a Minimum are right - we're gonna need it. But it won't be enough.

 

[Dale]

Raising the tax free threshold is socialism now?

Jayzus.

And yeah, that 40 bucks a year is really going to hurt. Tremble in fear at the carbon price's smaller-than-the-GST impact on cost of living! FEAR the slight rollback of the diesel excise rebate for some commercial purposes! Rage on the streets against the one-off increase to the pension and other government benefits to offset the expected 0.7% increase to CPI! Oh, and that's with no tax cut either. The extra tax free threshold doesn't apply to those at the over $80K individual income mark.

I can see why you're so afraid. It's UN-mandated eco-socialism after all.

Edit: On the other hand, it will be funny to watch the Coalition vote against a tax cut.

$40 a year cost to you? Ahhh...... now I see it. You're poor! Us at the actual professional end of the scale (ie: dual professional income over $150K with 3 kids) will be out of pocket over $900 a year. And that's on top of all the other taxes that Labor has put on middle-income Australia and all the rebates they've means tested us out of!

BTW just to note, when Treasury calculated the 0.7% CPI increase, it was based on the original lower $20 a tonne. They also admitted it only takes into consideration direct effect of the tax if passed on. They admitted they could not calculate what the additional effect on CPI would be of the indirect effect of the tax. IE: In the calculation is direct power bill increases. What isn't in the calculation is the increased consumer cost of the distributor's extra costs (being passed down the line), the transportation company's extra costs (they use electricity too you know) and other such hidden costs. The end effect could be many many times more than the direct effect 0.7%.

 

[Dale]

I know you get roughshod treatment here, but thanks for bringing some science. Of your links, I find the 'radioactive decay' link to be unconvincing (because I don't think there's a change in radioactive decay) and I'll say again that NASA is not predicting a significant downturn in Sun ala Maunder Minimum. Just that there're similar symptoms (that the Sun could easily 'snap out of')

Pffft, roughshod treatment is nothing here. I've seen worse. I can also hold my own.

In regards to the finding of the 20 TW's, it's all the little things that add up. For instance, increasing TSI from the 70's till 2000 (now declining), PDO being in a positive cycle for the 30 years up to 2008. ENSO being majority positive for 30 years up to 2005. AMO being in a positive cycle for decades (and predictions are it's going negative too). Reduced cloud cover due to less cosmic radiation (one of the major seeds of clouds). Natural forcings, which are only now just being understood, can quite easily define the sharp temp increase since 1970. And it's not like it hasn't done it before, with a +2C increase between 1695 and 1730 through natural forcing (unless someone wants to argue that humans were manufacturing back then ). All this new understanding is opening a few eyes now, because some scientists can add up. With so many of Earth's internal natural forcings in a positive cycle for the same 30 years, it IS possible that natural forcing caused the majority of warming over that period. And now that we are seeing most of those natural forcings going into negative cycles, or heading towards negative in the last decade, temps are flat-lining (and to keep the warmies happy, "temps are at a lower trend level" ). This is the dissension. With so much positive natural forcing during those 30 years, was the original prediction of 2.3C per doubling incorrect?

 

[Arwon]

$40 a year cost to you? Ahhh...... now I see it. You're poor! Us at the actual professional end of the scale (ie: dual professional income over $150K with 3 kids) will be out of pocket over $900 a year. And that's on top of all the other taxes that Labor has put on middle-income Australia and all the rebates they've means tested us out of!

BTW just to note, when Treasury calculated the 0.7% CPI increase, it was based on the original lower $20 a tonne. They also admitted it only takes into consideration direct effect of the tax if passed on. They admitted they could not calculate what the additional effect on CPI would be of the indirect effect of the tax. IE: In the calculation is direct power bill increases. What isn't in the calculation is the increased consumer cost of the distributor's extra costs (being passed down the line), the transportation company's extra costs (they use electricity too you know) and other such hidden costs. The end effect could be many many times more than the direct effect 0.7%.

(Firstly, 900 a year is only if your consumption patterns match the typical CPI basket and only if you make no changes to your consumption patterns, but more importantly, you've been a net beneficiary of changes to the tax code and welfare system for 30 years now, especially all those handouts Howard bought in, so it's a bit rich to be decrying possibly the only genuinely progressive change to the tax system in quite some time as unfair.)

Well no, if you're a couple on 150K you're not really earning much more than me each, so this has nothing to do with poverty or whatever. And anyway, jeez, that was rather classless of you. The entire basis of our system is progressive taxation, if your dispute is with the poor it's a far wider beef than just the carbon price and associated Henry Review reforms.

Price change flow-throughs are pretty trivial to model, that's what input-output tables are for. Change the price of the initial inputs, and you get the change in costs for all sectors of the economy, including household final consumption. That's even before you allow for the fact that you're going to get substitution effects and that the flow-through will be well less than 100% wherever there's a competitive market (as there is in electricity generation and most other parts of the economy).

You're massively over-estimating the extent to which 23 dollars a tonne has any impact on the vast majority of the economy which isn't paying the tax. Electricity as an input to most commercial activities is extremely small. You can see that from the input-output tables:

Link!

Let's take 3 ordinary industries at random.

First let's say, Pulp, Paper and Paperboard Manufacturing.

Their total uses of electricity generation and electricity transmission and onselling are $37m and $31m. Transmission and onselling doesn't change because the price only hits the generators. Say, for arguments sake, that cost doubles (an extremely generous assumption, we're talking more like 10% here).

So $37m becomes $74m. Meanwhile, total use of all products by Pulp, Paper and Paperboard Manufacturing is $1498m. So we're talking a pretty vanishingly small upwards impact on their own products supplied when that's passed through, and that's even for an ordinary manufacturing sector.

Take another industry, let's try finance: Total intermediate use is $23947m. Electricity generation use for them? $26m.

Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction? $33150 in total, electricity generation use $118m.

And so on.

It's not that the analysis hasn't been done, it's really easy (as you can see) to check this out. It's just that in most products the flowthrough will be almost undiscernable, especially once you start looking at the CPI basket of goods. The most directly passed through cost with the least intermediaries - electricity - is of course going to dwarf any others.

Really, what makes you think a modest cost increase on some activities by 500 companies would have a bigger one-off inflationary impact than the economy-wide introduction of a 10% goods and services tax? Even for those 500ish companies it's just one component of their overall revenue and expenses, so the flow through is going to dwindle rapidly the further you get from those 500 companies. Hell even within electricity generation, the price increases from regulators allowing new transmission and distribution infrastructure investment over the last 3 years have had a bigger impact on electricity prices than the rise in energy costs from the carbon price will.

Really though - total revenue is anticipated at $11bn out of a trillion dollar economy - that's what, 1%? I'm assuming that the offsets amount to about $5.5bn so yeah, we're talking about 0.5% of the economy. Even that cost were all dumped 100% on households (a ludicrous assumption of course given a competitive market, substitution effects, etc), that wouldn't be that large a price rise impact. If anything, I'd expect Treasury over-estimated the impacts with conservative assumptions about structural change when designing the compensation package.

 

[El_Machinae]

In regards to the finding of the 20 TW's, it's all the little things that add up. For instance, increasing TSI from the 70's till 2000 (now declining), PDO being in a positive cycle for the 30 years up to 2008.

Yeah, these can be big (except, again, the 20 TW, which I think are a red herring). If the PDO and the TSI flip to a putative downward forcing, and if the temperatures rise (or remain flat, frankly), I think we'll see the evidence of AGW. Just in time for the babyboomers to retire and start taking our SS and Medicare.

Remember, there's fatigue on both sides. The denialists have been screaming that 'there's no warming' for awhile, and so it's good to have discussion regarding signal/noise regarding temperature changes.

 

[Tee Kay]

What may seem cheap and sustainable for us in the developed world, is highly expensive and pointless in the rest of the world.

Solar power is in fact invaluable outside the developing world, especially in poor rural communities in areas with poor infrastructure and not connected to an electricity grid.

It is much easier transport individual solar panels and set them up in villages than to invest in power infrastructure. The solar panels will probably only be able to power some lightbulbs and a few basic appliances, but even that is a huge improvement for communities which previously did not have access to electricity at all. Solar-powered torches scare away animals at night and keep people safe. Solar-powered lamps provide light for children to study. The whole village might chip in to buy a single refridgerator or a washing machine and that can hugely improve their quality of life.

For every one story of mistakes and failure, there are five successful ones.

You misunderstood my point. Africa will need cheaper sources of electricity in order to thrive. This much is given. Sustainability and environmentalism wouldn't work as well over there. First they need to get up off the ground before they can learn how to run without spraining their knee.

Sustainability and environmentalism are no obstacle to economic development, in Africa or anywhere else. Sustainable economic development, anyway.

By the way, the predominant source of electricity in almost all of sub-Saharan Africa is hydroelectricity. So many countries rely on hydro because it is one of the cheapest way to generate electricity. Africa is mostly lacking in coal deposits except in South Africa, whereas Sub-Saharan Africa has great hydroelectric potential, only a fraction of which is currently exploited.

Remember, there's fatigue on both sides. The denialists have been screaming that 'there's no warming' for awhile, and so it's good to have discussion regarding signal/noise regarding temperature changes.

It's only a good thing if the criticism of the climate model is based on facts, scientific observation and methods and conducted in a constructive manner. Not much of that is happening.

 

[El_Machinae]

I like to stay on top of PDO signal contribution (etc.)

 

[Leonel]

If only we didn't have this constantly overcast sky, we could join in the heat wave! I wanna walk around without a jacket!

 

[Dale]

(Firstly, 900 a year is only if your consumption patterns match the typical CPI basket and only if you make no changes to your consumption patterns, but more importantly, you've been a net beneficiary of changes to the tax code and welfare system for 30 years now, especially all those handouts Howard bought in, so it's a bit rich to be decrying possibly the only genuinely progressive change to the tax system in quite some time as unfair.)

Well no, if you're a couple on 150K you're not really earning much more than me each, so this has nothing to do with poverty or whatever. And anyway, jeez, that was rather classless of you. The entire basis of our system is progressive taxation, if your dispute is with the poor it's a far wider beef than just the carbon price and associated Henry Review reforms.

Price change flow-throughs are pretty trivial to model, that's what input-output tables are for. Change the price of the initial inputs, and you get the change in costs for all sectors of the economy, including household final consumption. That's even before you allow for the fact that you're going to get substitution effects and that the flow-through will be well less than 100% wherever there's a competitive market (as there is in electricity generation and most other parts of the economy).

You're massively over-estimating the extent to which 23 dollars a tonne has any impact on the vast majority of the economy which isn't paying the tax. Electricity as an input to most commercial activities is extremely small. You can see that from the input-output tables:

Link!

Let's take 3 ordinary industries at random.

First let's say, Pulp, Paper and Paperboard Manufacturing.

Their total uses of electricity generation and electricity transmission and onselling are $37m and $31m. Transmission and onselling doesn't change because the price only hits the generators. Say, for arguments sake, that cost doubles (an extremely generous assumption, we're talking more like 10% here).

So $37m becomes $74m. Meanwhile, total use of all products by Pulp, Paper and Paperboard Manufacturing is $1498m. So we're talking a pretty vanishingly small upwards impact on their own products supplied when that's passed through, and that's even for an ordinary manufacturing sector.

Take another industry, let's try finance: Total intermediate use is $23947m. Electricity generation use for them? $26m.

Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction? $33150 in total, electricity generation use $118m.

And so on.

It's not that the analysis hasn't been done, it's really easy (as you can see) to check this out. It's just that in most products the flowthrough will be almost undiscernable, especially once you start looking at the CPI basket of goods. The most directly passed through cost with the least intermediaries - electricity - is of course going to dwarf any others.

Really, what makes you think a modest cost increase on some activities by 500 companies would have a bigger one-off inflationary impact than the economy-wide introduction of a 10% goods and services tax? Even for those 500ish companies it's just one component of their overall revenue and expenses, so the flow through is going to dwindle rapidly the further you get from those 500 companies. Hell even within electricity generation, the price increases from regulators allowing new transmission and distribution infrastructure investment over the last 3 years have had a bigger impact on electricity prices than the rise in energy costs from the carbon price will.

Really though - total revenue is anticipated at $11bn out of a trillion dollar economy - that's what, 1%? I'm assuming that the offsets amount to about $5.5bn so yeah, we're talking about 0.5% of the economy. Even that cost were all dumped 100% on households (a ludicrous assumption of course given a competitive market, substitution effects, etc), that wouldn't be that large a price rise impact. If anything, I'd expect Treasury over-estimated the impacts with conservative assumptions about structural change when designing the compensation package.

You're right, it was pretty classless of me. But then your statement of a cost of $40 a year wasn't based on facts and is only applicable to a very low percentage of people.

You're comments about the GST are also a strawman. You've said numerous times how the introduction of the GST was so tragic for the Aussie economy, but not once have I seen you mention the TRUE facts, that when the 10% GST was added every other Sales Tax was abolished, some up to 48%. There were also a number of other taxes eliminated as well. Do you know what the inflationary response was? I'll give you a hint (from Treasury):

Quite a jump after 1 June 2000 (when the GST came into force).......... DOWN!

EDIT: At the end of the day it's a very complex system with any number of natural internal and external forcings working to their own cycles which have greater influence on the result. That figure is a very simplified figure to ease the masses and to try and somehow quantify how the whole system is responding. It could go up, it could go down, you can't really predict it with any certainty. It will just do it's thing. Your job now is to work out whether I'm talking about the climate or the economy in this last paragraph.

 

[Dale]

Solar power is in fact invaluable outside the developing world, especially in poor rural communities in areas with poor infrastructure and not connected to an electricity grid.

It is much easier transport individual solar panels and set them up in villages than to invest in power infrastructure. The solar panels will probably only be able to power some lightbulbs and a few basic appliances, but even that is a huge improvement for communities which previously did not have access to electricity at all. Solar-powered torches scare away animals at night and keep people safe. Solar-powered lamps provide light for children to study. The whole village might chip in to buy a single refridgerator or a washing machine and that can hugely improve their quality of life.

For every one story of mistakes and failure, there are five successful ones.

Yes solar panels may slightly improve their quality of life (by allowing the village to get a single fridge or lightbulb), but how will that village develop and modernise? The village may have a lot of cotton, but how will they power the mill to make wool to sell? How can you extract and process mineral resources on solar? Remember, these countries have no money to build even the cheapest form of electricity generation, let alone one of the more expensive.

 

[Arwon]

That's underlying inflation which removes the largest positive and negative changes from the calculation, the point being to remove noise and reveal the long term trend. The GST spike, being a known and quantifyable one-off event, will be specifically removed from that measure. Underlying inflation won't rise due to the carbon price, either, because the measure is specifically designed to remove such one-off spikes in the index.

Obviously there were a lot of big jumps in that figure at that time because of the changing tax system. The headline CPI change from the GST and changes alone was about 2% for the year when the GST was introduced.

And if you don't trust the bolshies at the Treasury, the ABS shows it too (see that one big quarter there):

And you're right, it was part of a broader package of economic reforms which were necessary and had long-term payoffs, and included compensation measures. Hey, just like carbon pricing.

 

[BasketCase]

So you don't think the possibility of starvation of two billion people is big enough reason to do anything? It must be 100% sure?

Nailed it on the head, dude.

Guys, RE:Venus, AFAIK no significant net amount of CO2 have been added to the atmosphere of Venus for some time (unlike right now on Earth) so it's not undergoing climate change.

Wrong (your individual claims are correct, this is a case of inaccurate cause and effect). Even though Venus' greenhouse gas cover is not changing, Venus should still be undergoing gigantic climate change every single Venusian year--because night on that planet lasts for four months--but climate change never happens.

You do realize that there are greater political and economic reasons to deny global warming exists, than to fabricate the idea of global warming.

Nope. It's the opposite. Oh, and it turns out there's an item I left off my list. Every single environmentalist radical on this planet does has a very good reason to lie about global warming: because the presence of a Doomsday scenario makes a great motivating tool. The fear of global warming brings people into line, and whether or not the thing being feared is even real has nothing to do with it. "Even if it is a lie, it gets people to help clean up the planet".

The chances and benefits of a conspiracy from the part of the scientists is effectively nil (especially since it's accepted worldwide), while the threats to the industries that are causing this climate change are real. Who do you think has more power? Who do you think most wants to hold on to it?

How bout ya go take a peek at who's sitting in the Oval Office in Washington DC right now, and get back to me on that.

I disagree with your use of the word "conspiracy", by the way. It's not a "conspiracy" on the part of the scientific community. It's human instinct. We have an automatic desire to fit in with the group--it's hard-wired into our brains, and even people who are aware of it usually can't control it.

 

[Dale]

Sorry to interject with some REAL science, confirmed by satellite data, but here is breaking news today (and confirmed by NASA) that satellite readings over the last decade show that CO2 is not the demon it is being made out to be. Proof that the climate is much less sensitive than alarmists are saying:

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-global-warming-alarmism-192334971.html

Yes, I know it's Forbes, and I know you alarmists don't like Forbes, so if you don't like Forbes then Google search the study and pick you own choice of news outlet as it's filling up Google News fast.

 

[El_Machinae]

Dale ... that article was very painful to read. I'm sorry I clicked on it.
Couldn't you have picked an article that actually said something?

Seriously, you're decently informed. That article was like stabbing my eye with chopsticks.
I'll try to find an alternate written by (at least) a science writer.

edit:
ah, here's a much better one!
http://www.irishweatheronline.com/n...obal-warming-theory/28942.html/comment-page-1

It explains what the observations were and what they were being compared to.

edit x2:
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/

And the actual article!

 

[Rashiminos]

Here's a guy Fox News might be interested in: http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2010/11/venus-no-greenhouse-effect.html

Venus: No Greenhouse Effect

 

[Tee Kay]

Yes solar panels may slightly improve their quality of life (by allowing the village to get a single fridge or lightbulb)

I just love how you seem to think that lightbulbs are insignificant.

The problem with Westerners is that we take basic things like having a fridge or electric lights for granted. For people who've never had them, it's a huge improvement.

A single washing machine saves several hours of work a day. Time which could be spent on farming more plots of land, making and selling handicrafts, even literacy lessons if they are available.

Likewise, a single water pump (either pumping water from a village well or from a nearby water source) saves many hours and effort spent carrying water.

how will that village develop and modernise? The village may have a lot of cotton, but how will they power the mill to make wool to sell? How can you extract and process mineral resources on solar?

Think smaller. Improving people's lives should be the priority. More ambitious economic development can then follow.

Solar is not even the only small-scale electricity generator. Biomass, biogas, windmills, water mills are all environmentally sound and still much easier to build and maintain than large power plants and national electricity grid.

 

[Dale]

Dale ... that article was very painful to read. I'm sorry I clicked on it.
Couldn't you have picked an article that actually said something?

Seriously, you're decently informed. That article was like stabbing my eye with chopsticks.
I'll try to find an alternate written by (at least) a science writer.

edit:
ah, here's a much better one!
http://www.irishweatheronline.com/n...obal-warming-theory/28942.html/comment-page-1

It explains what the observations were and what they were being compared to.

edit x2:
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/

And the actual article!

Yeah, hence why I included the disclaimer. For reference, the Forbes article says "alarmist" 13 times.

There's already a counter article (sorry I can't link it due to only having my phone on me) where Trenberth is attacking Spencer saying it is absurd to say random clouds affect climate. This is unfair as the response is a personal attack and does not counter the Central point of Spencers paper that CO2 is insensitive to change as shown by the Sat data. Spencer hypothesized for further research the effect of clouds on the strength of ENSO.

 

[Dale]

Yeah, hence why I included the disclaimer. For reference, the Forbes article says "alarmist" 13 times.

There's already a counter article (sorry I can't link it due to only having my phone on me) where Trenberth is attacking Spencer saying it is absurd to say random clouds affect climate. This is unfair as the response is a personal attack and does not counter the Central point of Spencers paper that CO2 is insensitive to change as shown by the Sat data. Spencer hypothesized for further research the effect of clouds on the strength of ENSO.

Something else that's come out related to this (and Lindzen's earlier findings) is that AGW models are completely useless and breach the laws of physics.

http://principia-scientific.org/pso/publications/The_Model_Atmosphere.pdf

AGW models assume radiation emitted by Earth drops as temps go up (the "feedback" effect), but the laws of physics are that radiation emitted rises proportional to temp, which is observed from observation and satellite data (Lindzen and Spencer).

AGW models also use equations that physicists use for stars, which are completely incorrect for terrestrial bodies such as Earth. Thus the AGW models are completely wrong.

Call me a skeptic, but all this new research coming out the last couple of weeks really shows that AGW predictions are completely wrong, and that the climate really is insensitive to CO2 changes.

 

[Tee Kay]

I think climate scientists are aware that Earth has days and nights.

As for Principia Scientifc International, I can find scant information on it or who is behind the organisation.

Call me a skeptic, but I think I will get my science peer-reviewed and from reputable organisations.