Posts by DevonHammer

Globo-renewables all electric future touted again

@ Steve Crook

I'm all for nuclear, but your assumption is the wrong way round. Solar thermal for hot water is about the most cost effective thing you can do. It may only pre-heat the water in the winter, but it massively reduces costs and doesn't use dangerous chemicals or other nasties.

As for PV, that is unlikely to pay back over the life of the product at current price and efficiency, but that may change.

In my mind the ideal is that every Southish facing roof has solar thermal and efficient PV subsidised by the Govt. Add in ground source heat pumps and wood chip boilers where appropriate and pay for the subsidies with the savings from less power stations. Back up with nuclear plus hydro to deal with peaks. People moan about the look of solar power, but it means less power stations, and I know what I'd rather have.

Blended power

We should use "green power" where it works - hydro in mountains, wind where it's windy, solar in deserts, tidal in the Severn etc. etc. because if conditions are right it's an elegant solution, but I cannot seriously believe we can power the Western world in this way. Nuclear fission seems the only method using current technology with the possibility of fusion in the future.

If you think it's green to protest against nuclear, don't complain too much when we end up with coal. Having said that, I'm very much a layman in this area. Any experts around?

West Antarctic ice loss overestimated by NASA sats

@callmezeke

At last someone who talks sense.

I think given your viewpoint it seems that every news article is skewed (I mean one's viewpoint, but that sounds a bit posh). I believe in anthropomorphic climate change, but I can be convinced either way - I just don't want to take the risk. From my viewpoint The Register seems biased (and I don't get the argument that they're trying to cause balance because The Reg isn't read by the general population and the best way to get balance is to be balanced). From a sceptic viewpoint the output of, for example, The Independent must seem pretty off the wall.

The problem is that news agencies on both sides are picking individual articles from the thousands and hanging the entire debate on a single source. It's like walking across a road and either banning cars or removing zebra crossings based on the safety of that one crossing.

So can everyone stop trying to prove or disprove climate change and its causes using individual pieces of evidence?

@callmezeke

Stop muddying the water.

You must know that the West is where all the ice is and the East is largely above sea level and made of rock. The East does have a very small amount of increase, but the West is losing 50 gigatonnes of ice per year. Have a look at Rignot et al. in Nature Geoscience.

correction

I meant to say "not funded by the petroleum industry". My mistake.

Please come up with some names.

A few requests

Please read some scientific journals if you want to get into the science of this.

Please read lay-persons' guides to climate change if you don't understand the science - there is no shame in this - try the Met Office.

Please do not assume that scientists get paid to agree with the consensus. Normally the reverse is true (even without Exxon who have funded scientists very well indeed as long as they get some FUD in the media).

Please don't quote something that you read in a comment as fact.

Please don't assume everything is wrong just because MBH98 is flawed.

Please realise that if a theory is 1% wrong it should not be ignored completely. An AC above rubbishes Newton because of Einstein's theories. I'm sorry, but Newton was way more than 99% correct. I'd happily go with his theories in my sub-lightspeed, non-subatomic way.

Please stop telling me that my taxes will go up to deal with climate change. My taxes will go up because the financial institutions of the world made a right hash of the economy. This is pretty hard to argue with and yet few people want to get rid of banks.

Please don't talk about the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warming Period to back up your argument. The MWP was not a global event, it was N. Hemisphere only. Global average temperatures are now thought to have been pretty consistent or maybe slightly lower. The LIA was probably globally colder, but that's the most that can be said. If you want to study these events, great, but don't quote them as fact as you're building on sand.

In fact, please don't quote anything as fact. Climate change is not a fact, global warming is not a fact, gravity is not a fact (it's a theory), that doesn't mean it's not happening.

Please take a rational view. Most of you are, which is great. Efficiency is good for lots of reasons; reducing dependence on oil and oil rich nations is good etc. etc.. The climate change gamble is that on a worse possible scenario the earth won't be habitable in 1000 yrs and in the best possible scenario nothing will happen. We can either protect against the worst or carry on as we are and hope.

Please give me a list of published, peer reviewed scientist that are not funded and not creationists. I always ask for this, but no-one's come up with any yet. I know of seven credible ones, but from the level of scepticism there must be 1000's. If there is, I could be convinced.

Please keep an open mind. This is science on the edge being rushed through because of the risks. Entrenched positions on either side do not help.

Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming

Re: Numbers

Please tell me you're not referring to the Global Warming Petition Project?

Why is there a need to use things which are discredited and quote them as fact? That checks how qualified you are by checking which box you ticked. I'm standing by ten scientists who have actually published something that's peer reviewed, aren't creationists and don't get paid by Exxon. It's easy, just list more than ten, not 32,000, just ten. Surely it must be easy, but no-one's done it have they?

I give up

OK, you won't be convinced, but please do a little research on the sources.

One of the things I studied was computer climate models (in retrospect I was more interested in the computer modelling bit and should have realised this sooner) and anyone who does this knows that you can't predict weather accurately beyond a few hours. Back in the day we predicted the next 10 minutes and from that 10 minutes after and so on. I assume it hasn't changed much. A tiny error causes massive changes over a few days and that's why it sometimes rains when it's predicted to be sunny. However, we're not looking for exact predictions here and anyone who tries that is a fool and will rightly get shot down. What we need to predict is the trend. Similar to January being colder than July. Because I don't know the exact temerature or rainfall does not mean you should throw away my model that January is colder than July, but perfectly good models are attacked in this way.

The things to look at are the raw data. Ignore the tree rings (who hangs everything on that? Oh yes, the Reg), ignore the claims that data isn't available (it is in abundance, ask someone at university - you could try the NDCC in the States, or for an unbiased collection of data try Climate Data Information) and just see what has happened in the last 20-30 yrs to C02 levels, temperature, polar ice, sea acidity etc.

Please keep scepticism. It's healthy and is needed. But please research the facts and check the sources (Ian Wishart? Really?). I quote myself "the only scientific body not to agree with the consensus is the American Association of Petroleum Geologists". No-one has refuted this. Does this not seem a bit strange? Or is this government control? Was the Bush administration appearing to be sceptical while forcing every scientific body bar one in the opposite direction?

The results of this are serious. The potential risks of a gamble are huge for our grandchildren. What are our risks? The main one seems to be increased taxation. By how much? By as much as the banking crisis? By as much as the Olympic Games? By as much as recent and continuing wars? By as much as Trident? I'm not saying we shouldn't fund all of those things, but reducing CO2 does not cost that much does it?

But won't it send us back to the stone age? There's a lot of eco-freaks that want this, but have a look what technology can do when it needs to.

Anyway, I genuinely have an open mind and that's why I read sceptical articles. Let's hope for all our sakes that everyone feels the same (on both sides)

@Robinson

You do know that the "handful of "keyholder" scientists" at the IPCC numbers over 2,500 don't you? I've no idea how many support their view.

Presumably you know that the sceptic scientists of all forms (no climate change, not man made etc.) number way less than fifty and if you remove the Exxon funded ones, the one's who believe in creationism and the one's who's field is so far away from climate change as to render their knowledge irrelevant, you end up with less than ten. Yes ten. There's less than ten credible published scientists who are climate change sceptics. Name me more than ten scientists who have published genuine peer reviewed articles, I challenge you.

I'm assuming you also know that the only scientific body not to agree with the consensus is the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (funny that).

Is there an elephant in the room?

@Jay Castle

Why are our beliefs already formed? Mine are based on available evidence and are pretty fluid. I'm sure the same can be said for sceptics; some have entrenched opinions, some have fluid ones. Same in IT, just look at the Apple vs MS debates.

On the other point about whether we can change the outcome. That's a very interesting one and I don't think anyone really knows if they're honest. I have a bit of a never say die attitude and think we should give it a try.

It seems to me that it's often the sceptics who switch between arguing that there's no climate change to arguing that it's so bad there's no point doing anything. The key thing here is that they don't have to do anything.

@ Mal Adapted

Very good point. How about a moderate sceptic like Lewis and a moderate antisceptic (sorry couldn't resist) to balance it if the Reg feels the need to report on this stuff.

At least if the Reg view is wrong and we need to cut down emissions, there's plenty of articles on here about electric cars.

Stop with climate change

Will you stop with the climate change stories. There's no IT angle, you frequently publish the opinions of discredited so-called scientists as fact and you even contradict yourselves.

How can you have an article one week on the lack of global warming and the next on the lack of problems from global warming?

If I want climate advice, I go to climate websites. If I want light-hearted IT, I come here, although I'm not sure that will last.

NASA's CO₂-scan sat set to launch

Hmm

How much CO2 does it take to launch this?

LG confirms 2009 launch for 3G wristphone

An inch thick?

At less than an inch thick and 84g why not just velcro a Nokia to your wrist?

Carbon Trust: Rooftop windmills are eco own-goal

CO2 in production

Firstly I've checked the figures for where I live and it's not worth getting a small wind turbine and I live in the countryside so I'm convinced these things are more about cash than reducing CO2 (plus nuclear doesn't seem too bad an option to me) but on the general green power debate...

The CO2 cost of production is often comapred to the power generated during the lifecycle. If it costs more than it generates then the method is jumped on as being terrible, but it could still be "carbon quite small" even if it's not carbon neutral. Once the thing is manufactured the CO2 produced for every watt is zero. On the other hand the CO2 cost of building a coal fired power station is immense, but even if it were low every watt of electricity results in CO2. Therefore this is not a like for like comparison. Surely we shouldn't reject something for only being excellent rather than perfect.

@ Robin A. Flood

What rhymes with storage? I'm missing the joke, I've only come up with forage and porridge.