The true cost of wind...

It so happens that nearly all climate science detractors ARE unscientific.

And that is the sort of reason why nearly all climate science detractors are unscientific. Or perhaps it's because they are unscientific they are climate detractors. Frankly, I'm not interested in arguing the toss.

It is one thing to have sufficient understanding of the past to be able to explain it satisfactorily in scientific terms, but quite another to be able to predict what a complex, interactive system, with many positive and negative feedback loops, will do in the future.

The most common way of understanding how complex systems work is to hold all the other variables constant while you test the effect of varying just one.

So let's suppose that you have a suspicion based on general theory that some quantity such as the amount of CO2 in air might have some effective in changing how that air passed through or absorbs radiation at particular frequencies, and therefore the temperature to which it should rise when subjected to said radiation. So, in a lab, you conduct experiments and derive a numerical relationships between CO2 levels and the absorbance of radiation across the solar spectrum. Now you think you know what's going on - you have theoretical understanding, and numerical data which allows you accurately to predict what will happen in the lab.

Now you go outside, and measure the CO2 in the atmosphere and the temperature. To be kind to you as our hypothetical experimenter in this hypothetical discussion, we'll initially make it easier by assuming no seasonal or short term variability, yet even so, you find the two quantities no longer correlate as they did in the lab. You then think that perhaps the water vapour might also be affecting radiation absorbance, so you go away and repeat all your experiments with water vapour, but when you come outside again, things still don't work out the way you'd hoped, because, it turns out, the temperature affects the amount of water vapour in the air, your first discovery of a feedback loop, and methane is also a greenhouse gas.

And so it goes on. Assume for the sake of argument that you've been doing good science, yet at no stage are the results outside ever completely accurate. But that doesn't make your science bullshit, on the contrary, your understanding is increasing all the time. You have never been 'wrong', in the sense that the numerical relationships that you derived are all perfectly valid, but the sheer complexity of the system that you're trying to understand prevents your predictions ever being entirely 'right'. In a live system such as the Earth there are a great many interrelating factors, and even when you've sorted all the most important ones that cause the long term trends you're trying to pin down, there are still a great many interactions and variables causing short term variability that in numerical terms completely mask those long term trends.

This why it is important not to judge the models on their failure to predict short-term variability. If they are any good at all, they are much more likely to be right over the long term, probably about 40 years or more.

Reply to
Java Jive
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Reply to
Java Jive

When demand outstrips supply, the price goes up and suddenly sources that were previously uneconomic become economic to develop. Basic economics. It's happened with lots of things, including oil. So it can happen with uranium too.

Reply to
Tim Streater

But who prepared the statistics? A right wing think tank, I believe you said. I wouldn't accept statistics from a right-wing think tank, nor a left-wing one either, without having a chance to check their accuracy first.

On the contrary, the BBC apparently does quite a lot of agonising on the subject of impartiality, which comes as a great surprise to people coming to it from areas such as newspaper journalism where there is no requirement to think like that. I would strongly suggest you read the BBC's own review of its impartiality published in 2007, and also the notes of the seminar which preceded it. Apart from anything else, the role play in the latter with Clive Anderson winding them up is quite funny, in a laid back sort of way.

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Reply to
Java Jive

Reply to
Java Jive

You see, like so many times, you start with a false assumption and wonder why people criticise your blind support for whatever result you get from that.

You never were a scientist, you aren't a scientist, and I'll be drinking beer on Mars before you're likely to be a scientist of any standing.

Reply to
Terry Fields

Reply to
Java Jive

Perhaps you'd be kind enough to share your evidence for it being 'even-handed'.

What do you think this means:

"The university ? based in Norwich, UK ? compounded the errors by "failing to recognise not only the significance of the statutory requirements but also the risk to the reputation of the university and the credibility of UK climate science" when the affair broke, it found".

Tony Blair's being trying to move on after Iraq, but it won't let him, but there's a litany of phrases, of which 'moving on', 'drawing a line', 'rotten apples', 'we'll be more careful with emails', and half-a-hundred others, that get trotted out at times like this. It convinces no-one. At least, I thought it didn't.

Reply to
Terry Fields

Of course, nothing that you wrote above is exaggerated. Tim Streater has explained elsewhere why your doom-laden prediction about uranium supplies is wrong, with an explanation that could have been written

200 years ago. Yet you don't seem to be aware of it. Fancy trying your hand at Economics?
Reply to
Terry Fields

Reply to
Java Jive

Well, he's a mathematician. It's all he knows how to do.

Reply to
Tim Streater

you cant prove anything with science. So its not up to anyone to prove anything.

You can DISPROVE scientific, or other hypotheses that have testable predictions with the facts. The FACTS of the last 17 years disprove every single AGW hypothesis: Not one model has come anywhere near close i predicting- all the model predictions are out at 3 sigma plus deviations from reality. AGW as stated is therefore refuted scientifically. Either the CO2 has no measurable effect, or its so small as to be politically and economically irrelevant.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

mainly just lies.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

more than CO2 ever will.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Reply to
Java Jive

There is currently no technology available that will make use of coal acceptable.

I think its perfectly acceptable to stick in in a fire and set a match to it.

When there is come back and talk to us about it. Just hoping something will turn up out of the magic of technological development is not a basis for an energy strategy. Nuclear on the other hand has a relatively small overall carbon footprint and a reasonably foreseeable fuel supply up to 2080. So over to you. Come back when you have a solution to coals problems and we'll go over to coal. If I had to choose I'd rather have a nuke on my doorstop than a Ferrybridge or Blyth B.

Solution to coals problems is very simply. Stick scrubbers on the smokestack. End of.

indeed.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

He says he is, but he seems remarkable low in logic and intelligence.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

But the WNA's figures already take account of the known and planned increases in production, yet still project a shortfall.

That's a pity ...

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"Electricity generation technology is likely to be based on coal, and in the medium-term, on clean coal technologies. Large increases in electricity-generation capacity are anticipated in India and China, which will most likely utilise their indigenous coal resources. Together with revitalised coal programmes in North America and Europe, coal technology is likely to develop rapidly, moving through a series of evolutionary cycles from currently available sub-, critical, and super-critical technologies, culminating in the development and deployment of advanced technologies, e.g., integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC).

Key to using coal-based generation technologies, however, is the analogous development of pollution-control technologies. These technologies need to focus on micro-pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulates and on the wider and pressing issue of carbon dioxide. Further development and deployment of carbon capture-and-storage technologies is essential."

... and ...

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"Taking all new developments and policies into account, the world is still failing to put the global energy system onto a more sustainable path. Global energy demand grows by more than one-third over the period to 2035 in the New Policies Scenario (our central scenario), with China, India and the Middle East accounting for 60% of the increase. Energy demand barely rises in OECD countries, although there is a pronounced shift away from oil, coal (and, in some countries, nuclear) towards natural gas and renewables. Despite the growth in low- carbon sources of energy, fossil fuels remain dominant in the global energy mix, supported by subsidies that amounted to $523 billion in 2011, up almost 30% on 2010 and six times more than subsidies to renewables. The cost of fossil-fuel subsidies has been driven up by higher oil prices; they remain most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa, where momentum towards their reform appears to have been lost. Emissions in the New Policies Scenario correspond to a long-term average global temperature increase of 3.6 °C."

... and this Prof Muller's attack on the IPCC after climategate ...

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... but the point relevant to this discussion is ...

36:20 forwards Series of graphs show the importance of carbon-based fuels in the future.

Not for a country that has no indigenous supply of fuel to fall back upon.

As linked above, carbon capture or no, it will be the predominant means of generating electricity for the forseeable future.

Why are you attacking me, I'm not wasting your money on windmills, or even wind turbines?

Reply to
Java Jive

Reply to
Java Jive

In other words, you couldn't find any fault with it, so you chose to derogate it instead.

It's a valid criticism.

Whereas this partially exonerates them:

"The report clears the researchers on many charges, especially relating to their personal integrity"

That's what being even-handed means, applying criticism where necessary, and exonerating where necessary. But then, from your known anti-AGW bias, I'm not surprised that you do not understand the concept well. It's the sort of reason why I continue to doubt that you have the senior academic qualifications that you claim.

It's about time you stated openly what you mean. Terry Fields, who claims personal senior academic status, are you or are you not claiming that: * The whole of climate science is fraudulent? * Some of climate science is fraudulent? * None of climate science is fraudulent?

Note that when I say 'is' I mean now, post climategate.

Reply to
Java Jive

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