Not the dirtiest or costliest. Nuclear is WAY more expensive, and although it results in less "dirt", (on a kg/MW·hr basis) nuclear's "dirt" is way more dangerous and expensive to store.
-I matched the temperature range to the graph of fossil fuel consumption. If I'd found a consumption graph going further in either direction, I'd have extended the temperature graph likewise
I'm definitely ambivalent about nuclear, but coal has killed a lot more people than nuclear, per GWh.
OK, but your new hypothesis is that the warming trend predates fossil fuel consumption. So looking at longer time scales is appropriate. A brief search provides this graph, which shows warming way beyond any rebound from the Little Ice Age:
en.wikipedia.org
So, getting back to our temperature vs CO2 curve, it certainly seems that the temperature curve is a lot noisier than the CO2 curve. Wouldn't that suggest that natural influences are much stronger? Otherwise, wouldn't we see comparable levels of noise?
Its reports are effectively literature reviews by scientists, right? So I would say it's a scientific one. Nothing is free of politics, but I would expect the effect of politics on the IPCC to be less than, say, the effect of CO2 on global temperature. : - )
Yes, but your graph is of temperature anomalies, not temperature. Once you get back past 1875 or so, all those reconstructions are based on proxy records which have very low resolution. Notice also that the "huge" spike is on the order of 1C, or about twice the resolution of equipment up until about 1985, and about half of that is also considered to be natural by the same folks that created that graph.OK, but your new hypothesis is that the warming trend predates fossil fuel consumption. So looking at longer time scales is appropriate. A brief search provides this graph, which shows warming way beyond any rebound from the Little Ice Age:
Little Ice Age - Wikipedia
Cheers, Wayne
I don't follow this logic. The temperature curve is the result of a complex process we don't fully understand that depends on many inputs, not just CO2. CO2 is a likely a small factor overall, it's just the one that humanity is currently changing. So why would the fact that the outcome of that complex process (the temperature curve) is noisy mean that all of the inputs should be noisy as well?
You would likely be wrong. Ben Santer single-handedly rewrote the Summary for Policy Makers and reversed the findings of the scientific working group for the second assessment report (SAR), using alleged findings that were too late for the report and should have been part of the third assessment report, if ever.
Sorry, I don't follow. I'm not that familiar with the graph or the data that went into it, but it purports to be the change in global average temperature relative to some temperature baseline. The zero point of the temperature scale is arbitrary (except for Kelvin and the like), so it is a temperature graph.
Nonetheless, twice the noise floor is likely significant, isn't it? (Approaching the boundaries of my knowledge) And I think it rules out the "Little Ice Age rebound" theory, assuming the data is trustworthy.
So if we've gotten to this point, do we really need to double electricity costs in the US and deny access to folks in the 3rd World for such a paltry entity?
You may be right. : - )
Your statement lacks any information on the magnitude of the change to the report that supposedly nefariously occurred. But say for the moment you're right, are you going to tell me that every report was corrupted every time, and that the scientific consensus was that the climate sensitivity was 0 degrees C per doubling of CO2? I don't think so.
No, we should decrease overall electricity costs by switching to generation forms that produce less CO2. The accounting has to include the future costs of the pollution we are making. Which is what we are debating.
That's the party line, but I suspect a lot of nuclear's deaths and illnesses have been attributed to other things.
I don't know. I remember Nuclear News publishing an article in 1986 saying that the variable costs of nuclear now exceeded the variable costs of coal. (and, of course, capital costs have always been a lot higher)
The change was from "no discernable human signal" (not an exact quote, just the tenor) to "definite human signal" (same caveat). His findings were made the year the assessment was written. The rules for the IPCC were that they would only consider information that had been published by the end of the prior year (1994). It was a clear violation, the more so because his findings hadn't even been published and hadn't even been peer-reviewed.
Okay, let's say I accept that info. One improper move 25 years ago does not impugn all the future work of the organization. And unless you can rebut all the future IPCC reports, under your narrative, he turned out to be correct, per the subsequent reports even if the statement was not justified by the prior rules of the report writing.
I remember doing a paper in college on the Sternglass report, alleging an increase in leukemia in children in NYS as a result of above ground tests. I reviewed a copy of his paper, and noted in my report that Sternglass had ignored a significant bump in the numbers around 1936 or so. Not a shining moment for the good professor.
OK, the sins of the IPCC are many and repetitive. They claim they only look at scientific literature, yet about 1/3 of their citations are from non-governmental agencies, like the World Wildlife Federation, or the Sierra Club. But, this isn't the forum to continue discussions of the IPCC, so we're going to have to disagree on this one. Folks like Professor Richard Lindzen, Dr. Judith Curry, and Dr. Roy Spence, to mention a few, are among those who don't get excited over the IPCC pronouncements. We could also start a discussion of the CMIP 5 and CMIP 6 results compared to actual temperature records, but that would take us further afield than anyone else would want to go. More than I would want to go, at this site anyway.
