Rktect

Global Warming Models: 'Out of Order'?

For the "it isn't getting warmer" crowd, try explaining why first West Antartica and now East Antartica are calving icebergs the size of states which are now in such profusion they are beginning to be a hazard to shipping.

Explain why the artic is already seeing shipping enabled to use the Northwest Passage because larger and larger areas are ice free in Summer and people are able to play golf on the Baffin Islands.

Indeed the tundra is melting at 9 degrees above the global mean, Methane is outgassing making the situation worse. Alaska, China, Africa and Peru are facing water shortages due to snowpack melting and receeding glaciers

The IPCC interim reports are documenting the warming as being at the upper bounds of the fourth report and rising with "suprising acceleration"

The hacked emails actually don't say anything which contradicts scientific consensus on man made global warming, rather they talk about "tricking the data" so they can combine observed data with projected data in their modeling. All that is in real world terms is a feedback loop which improves the scenarios by making them conform to observed data which now extends another decade past the last used data points.

Bottom line sea levels are now projected to rise more than 2 meters by as early as 2050 which means that many of the worlds largest cities will be subject to flooding and damaged infrastructure.

Nuke plants which use seawater for cooling will be among the first infrastructure to slip beneath the waves, and maintaining them once they are underwater or trying to move them before then will be expensive.


On Nov 28 09:27 AM constantnormal wrote:

> To the oft-chanted "why isn't it getting warmer?" crowd, I ask, how
> is the global ice pack melting if it's not getting warmer? When you
> drop an ice cube in a beverage, does the beverage get warmer? The
> answer is that the combination of the liquid and frozen water DOES
> get warmer, despite the liquid fraction becoming cooler in the short
> run.
>
> When you can explain to me how the thermodynamics of a glass of water
> + and ice cube does not yield a net increase in temperature over
> the sum of the two items considered as separate items, then you are
> in line for a Nobel prize, as you have just negated the 2nd and 3rd
> Laws of Thermodynamics.
>
> People expecting the global air temperature to immediately rise when
> we are melting the ice pack into the oceans, briefly dropping the
> temperature of the oceans while we erase the ice packs and RAISE
> the overall global temperature are missing the point that it is a
> large and complex system -- looking at one part of it tells you nothing.
> And people who think that because the air around them is not immediately
> heating up while we melt the icecaps, that there is no global warming
> are similarly deluded.
>
> Idiots abound in the global warming controversy. More proof that
> there is no intelligent life on this planet. A self-correcting condition,
> as it were.

Distinction Between Positive and Normative Economics Misses the Point

Money is not a good reason for doing or not doing anything.

In the case of using cap and trade auctions to limit or cut emmisions with the hope of reducing the present 450 ppm to the 350 ppm necessary to prevent us being irreversably over the tipping point for the next couple of centuries its a matter of life and death for most of the species on this planet including the human race and we have less than a decade to accomplish our goal.

After that the temperature warms enough that the methane hydrates altready being observed outgassing have added enough greenhouse gasses to melt the polar ice and raise sealevels enough to cover our cities putting their nuke plants underwater where they can't be maintained and go boom.

Imagine the cost of rebuilding the world's major cities in a decade.

The idea of having to decommission and relocate all the nuke plants using seawater for a coolant is just one rarely considered cost. Try costing out the redesign and relocation of all the sealevel infrastructure supporting a planetary population in the billions

Resource wars are rather likely to increase as the price of oil goes up and all the money flows toward OPEC. We are already back up over $70 a barrel and the supply is finite while the demand is not.

Whats money worth when people can no longer afford to commute to work or go shopping and even if they were so inclined nobody can afford the cost of trucking goods to market.

Lets say you are a Republican of the Inhofe persuasion, still think there is no such thing as peak oil or global warming, voted for the methane hydrates act of 2000, thought it was all about new reserves of natural gas, invested in BP, COP and XOM, shouted drill baby drill, and expected that worst case for climate change you would get a northwest passage to connect the lower 48 to Prudhoe Bay. Suppose you are wrong...

Suppose the rate of temperature increase and thus sealevel also is increasing at an increasing rate as scientists who know what they are talking about have warned us. The glaciers and snowcaps that provide water for our industrialized and centralized agriculture are almost gone already. Opportunistic diseases, climate change, the extinction of species and the dying of the oceans and rainforests that serve as the planets lungs will deprive us of food and oxygen much sooner than has been predicted even by the IPCC.

Money won't buy you time when the plauge, famine, pestilence and oppressive heat begin making large areas of the planet uninhabitable. Two decades ago scientists thought we had maybe a century to turn it around. A decade ago they were admiting some suprise at how fast things were progressing and the IPCC was beginning to take scenario A2, the one with no mediation seriously.

Now that the Bush administration is gone and real science is peeking its head out from under the matresses again its recognized that the costs of mediation may be more than money.

We are going to have to get used to a planet with a slower pace, fewer people doing fewer things in a smaller geographical area.
The limit on this may not be entirely within our control.

Our range of options is going to decrease rather than increase. Even if we change over to solar self sufficient alternative energy immediately and do away with carbon based fossil fuels completly, much of the damage has already been done.

Obama's Housing Plan - What Will It Really Accomplish?

On Feb 13 08:03 AM Gem Hudson wrote:

> It's hyperinflation and it all starts with Barack Obama signing away
> the country economic with his stimulus bill. Happy Firday the 13.


I'm an architect. My experience is that home ownership is really the essence of bonding people to their communities. Building and remodeling homes not only provides jobs, it provides a lot of materials and manufactured goods a market.

Inflation is a good thing for homeowners because it decreases the proportion of their income going to mortgage payments and may allow them to pay off their mortgages early and put more of their income back into the economy making more jobs for others.

As more people are employed incomes should go up which is good for everyone. There will be less of a separation between rich and poor nelping unite the country toward more common purposes.

Subsidies to remodel older homes to be more efficient, green and LEED compliant will help reduce the amount of money that goes overseas to pay for foreign oil

As we use the money to build necessary infrastructure, provide healthcare and education small businesses will benefit, be able to move their goods easier and more rapidly, have less of a healthcare burden for their eployees, have more money to spend on keeping up with the latest technology and accees to more better educated and well trained employees.

The biggest problem is the eight year backlog we have in which all these important necessities have been totally ignored. It may take a couple of years to get people feeling secure in their jobs and incomes again but once they do they will definitely want to spend money on improving their quality of life, expanding their housing space and all of this grows the economy.

As Gas Prices Fall, Fuel Economy Loses Importance to Auto Shoppers

I'm amazed to observe traders aren't researching energy more carefully before investing in it. Forget your charts; there is something coming that despite its having been of interest to oil and gas men for forty years is only now been brought into production because there were some technical difficulties involved in getting it in the pipeline.

Clinton signed off on it in 2000 and its likely Obama will go along. Most reports I have seen expect to see full scale production by the US, Korea, India, and Japan with some joint partnerships signed off on by DOE last spring involving XOM, BP, COP, RIG and others in full scale production in early 2009.

There are three earth atmospheres of the stuff lying in easily reachable deposits just off most of the earth's coasts. The biggest danger is that its production might contribute to global warming but oil company researchers say their contributions will be less than what is presently produced naturally.

Allowing peak oil will force people to get over their oil addiction soon and prices will continue higher than we like for another decade until the fossil fuel is all gone, there is the possibility that within less than ten years there will be enough cheap methane hydrate on the market to take up the slack.

www.fossil.energy.gov/.../

"In recent field tests, researchers have demonstrated the capability to predict the location and concentration of methane hydrate deposits using reprocessed conventional 3-D seismic data, and new techniques, including multi-component seismic, are being tested. Modeling of small-volume production tests in the U.S. and Canadian Arctic suggest that commercial production is possible using depressurization and thermal stimulation from conventional wellbores. Large-scale production tests are planned in the Canadian Arctic in the winter of 2008 and in the U.S. Arctic in the following year. "

Friday Market Preview: Was Dow 8,000 the Bottom?

This was identified as the bottom in an article on the Daily Kos posted yesterday morning and tracked all day with charts technicals and commentary

Charts of the Day: New Lows and Then a Rally

The Daily Kos was all over this; posting charts with technicals and commentrary from 9:30 onward to close.

As Russia Tests the Waters, Oil and Gas Showdown Looms

How come nobody is taking into account the role of methane hydrates. When people chant "drill, drill, drill" that is what they are going to be drilling for. There are a projected three earth atmospheres of the stuff located around the world on fault lines. We have known about it for forty years since it started coming up in fishing trawls off the grand banks.

In the seventies it wasn't thought there was any use for it. In the eighties we figured out how to extract it. In the nineties we began drilling for it in Alaska and in 2000 Clinton signed the Methane Hydrate Act. Over the last eight years the infrastucture to go into production has been placed and next year they will come on line in Alaska and off the coast of India.

Oil should go back to its former levels soon as the world really only has a decades worth of the stuff left till the last drop is gone, and alternative energy infrastructure won't all be in place by then, but starting next year methane hydrates will be in the pipeline.