2015 Warmest Year on Record

MWBATL

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Lotta Juice said:
I agree there should be diversified sources of power to mitigate risk. The issue here is that even those more reliable sources had failures of their own. Coal, Gas, Nuclear...all were unprepared for this cold so no other source could pick up the slack.

Another way to mitigate that risk is to spend more on winterizing these facilities, or at least a portion of them. I understand that "it's Texas, do you really need to prepare for single digit weather?" but it's all about risk mitigation and preparedness.
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A genuine question....were coal and nuclear unable to rise to the occasion because there simply were not enough power generation facilties using those fuels? I had not heard of failures on their output.... the whole "kill fossil fuels' crowd has generally forced the closure of many older coal plants, and has opposed the construction of new nuclear plants in most blue states.
 
Lotta Booze

Lotta Booze

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MWBATL said:
A genuine question....were coal and nuclear unable to rise to the occasion because there simply were not enough power generation facilties using those fuels? I had not heard of failures on their output.... the whole "kill fossil fuels' crowd has generally forced the closure of many older coal plants, and has opposed the construction of new nuclear plants in most blue states.
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Coal and nuclear were not able to rise to the occasion, and in fact they weren't able to maintain the output that was typically expected of them. One of the links I posted previously describes how the nuclear plant outside of Houston had to shutdown because the cold caused an issue with a feedwater pump and triggered a shutdown. Coal plants need water to operate and they had trouble getting that, the cold froze some instruments, etc. Across the board, this level of cold affected everything because Texas buildings and infrastructure are just not designed for this. Buildings are generally more designed to keep heat out than keep heat in. The amount of pipes freezing and bursting across the state is keeping plumbers working around the clock.
 
Lotta Booze

Lotta Booze

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LibertyTurns said:
I don’t think insulation cares much which way the temperature differential is unless Thermo has changed from the good old days.
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It may not care directionally but that differential is a lot bigger when it's 8 degrees outside and you're trying to keep heat in to maintain 70 degrees than it is when it's 98 degrees outside and you're trying to keep the heat out to maintain the 70 degrees....unless of course math has changed from the good old days
 

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LibertyTurns said:
Well I’ll take the risk and post this. Hope Teddy doesn’t rear his ugly head.

judithcurry.com

Assigning Blame for the Blackouts in Texas

By Planning Engineer The story from some media sources is that frozen wind turbines are responsible for the power shortfalls in Texas. Other media sources emphasize that fossil fuel resources shoul…
judithcurry.com judithcurry.com
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We should have never run Dr, Curry off. She was the best kind of scientist - honest and rational. Anti-alarmism.
 

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BTW, in case anybody missed it, global carbon emissions fell 6.5% in 2020. Normally they increase 1%-2% in a given year, so this decrease was massive compared to where we should have been. Unsurprising to any of us, there was not a single tiny incremental change in temperatures attributable to that. Which obviously once again completely torpedoes the notion that we have any idea what's going on with or how to influence earth's temperatures.
 
bobongo

bobongo

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SnidelyWhiplash said:
BTW, in case anybody missed it, global carbon emissions fell 6.5% in 2020. Normally they increase 1%-2% in a given year, so this decrease was massive compared to where we should have been. Unsurprising to any of us, there was not a single tiny incremental change in temperatures attributable to that. Which obviously once again completely torpedoes the notion that we have any idea what's going on with or how to influence earth's temperatures.
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Utterly ridiculous. A one-year drop in carbon emissions wouldn't have a sudden impact on temperatures, and long-term trends are far more significant.
 

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bobongo said:
Utterly ridiculous. A one-year drop in carbon emissions wouldn't have a sudden impact on temperatures, and long-term trends are far more significant.
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What's utterly ridiculous - their models? I'd agree.

Do this, google "global carbon emissions increase 2020" and go back several years. What you'll notice if you do that is contrary to the news and media reports, global carbon emissions have been completely flat after massive growth in the preceding years and decades. In other words, our total global carbon emissions haven't increased in nearly a decade.

Yet what do we see in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere? You can go here and look - if anything its getting worse.

Global Monitoring Laboratory - Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases

The Global Monitoring Laboratory conducts research on greenhouse gas and carbon cycle feedbacks, changes in clouds, aerosols, and surface radiation, and recovery of stratospheric ozone.
www.esrl.noaa.gov

At some point people have to realize that we actually don't understand the trend and correlation between global temperatures and human activity.

There is a chart here that shows how global carbon emissions nearly quadrupled from 1960 to 2010. We've been flat now for nearly a decade, and yet we see no measurable difference in anything related to temperatures, global warming, or carbon dioxide concentrations.
www.carbonbrief.org

Analysis: Global CO2 emissions set to rise 2% in 2017 after three-year ‘plateau’ - Carbon Brief

Over the past three years, global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels have remained relatively flat, however new data suggests this may be about to change.
www.carbonbrief.org www.carbonbrief.org
 
bobongo

bobongo

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SnidelyWhiplash said:
What's utterly ridiculous - their models? I'd agree.

Do this, google "global carbon emissions increase 2020" and go back several years. What you'll notice if you do that is contrary to the news and media reports, global carbon emissions have been completely flat after massive growth in the preceding years and decades. In other words, our total global carbon emissions haven't increased in nearly a decade.

Yet what do we see in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere? You can go here and look - if anything its getting worse.

Global Monitoring Laboratory - Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases

The Global Monitoring Laboratory conducts research on greenhouse gas and carbon cycle feedbacks, changes in clouds, aerosols, and surface radiation, and recovery of stratospheric ozone.
www.esrl.noaa.gov

At some point people have to realize that we actually don't understand the trend and correlation between global temperatures and human activity.

There is a chart here that shows how global carbon emissions nearly quadrupled from 1960 to 2010. We've been flat now for nearly a decade, and yet we see no measurable difference in anything related to temperatures, global warming, or carbon dioxide concentrations.
www.carbonbrief.org

Analysis: Global CO2 emissions set to rise 2% in 2017 after three-year ‘plateau’ - Carbon Brief

Over the past three years, global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels have remained relatively flat, however new data suggests this may be about to change.
www.carbonbrief.org www.carbonbrief.org
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First you talked about temperatures, and now you've slid over to carbon levels in the atmosphere. Here's the answer to your latest question:

Why Has a Drop in Global CO2 Emissions Not Caused CO2 Levels in the Atmosphere to Stabilize? | The Keeling Curve (ucsd.edu)

"There’s a pretty simple reason why the recent stabilization in global emissions hasn’t caused CO2 levels to stabilize. The ocean and land sinks for CO2 currently offset only about 50 percent of the emissions. So the equivalent of 50 percent of the emissions is still accumulating in the atmosphere, even with stable emissions. To stabilize CO2 levels would require roughly an immediate roughly 50 percent cut in emissions, at which point the remaining emissions would be fully offset by the sinks, at least for a while."
 

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bobongo said:
First you talked about temperatures, and now you've slid over to carbon levels in the atmosphere. Here's the answer to your latest question:

Why Has a Drop in Global CO2 Emissions Not Caused CO2 Levels in the Atmosphere to Stabilize? | The Keeling Curve (ucsd.edu)

"There’s a pretty simple reason why the recent stabilization in global emissions hasn’t caused CO2 levels to stabilize. The ocean and land sinks for CO2 currently offset only about 50 percent of the emissions. So the equivalent of 50 percent of the emissions is still accumulating in the atmosphere, even with stable emissions. To stabilize CO2 levels would require roughly an immediate roughly 50 percent cut in emissions, at which point the remaining emissions would be fully offset by the sinks, at least for a while."
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Sorry I wasn't more clear. I didn't say I expected CO2 levels to stabilize. I said why are CO2 levels not just increasing, but getting increasingly worse when growth in emissions has gotten better. Over the last decade, the trajectory of emissions and the trajectory in atmospheric concentrations are going in opposite directions. That link doesn't answer my question, as that wasn't what I asked. What I asked is how does decelerating emissions result in accelerating concentrations. 10 years ago we had an inflection point where the growth in emissions materially flattened. However if you look at the chart of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, it has a weak exponential curve to it, where you cannot see any effect of this emissions change...and in fact the concentration curve continues to worsen.
 
bobongo

bobongo

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SnidelyWhiplash said:
Sorry I wasn't more clear. I didn't say I expected CO2 levels to stabilize. I said why are CO2 levels getting worse when growth in emissions has gotten better. Over the last decade the trajectory of emissions and the trajectory in atmospheric concentrations are going in opposite directions. That link doesn't answer my question, as that wasn't what I asked. What I asked is how does decelerating emissions result in accelerating concentrations.
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For the same reason that declining deficits lead to increasing debt. It's still getting worse, only slower.
 

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bobongo said:
For the same reason that declining deficits lead to increasing debt. It's still getting worse, only slower.
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That's my point exactly. The CO2 concentration is getting worse, and faster. That's the point. If our deficit was falling consistently over the last 10 years but our debt was getting significantly worse year over year, we'd all be scratching our heads.
 

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bobongo said:
Any deficit at all adds to the overall debt. What's not to understand?
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LOL. What if our deficit this year dropped precipitously to $100B, yet our debt increased from $27T to $33T - growing even quicker than previous years when we had trillion dollar deficits. Would you not scratch your head? Our carbon emissions over the last ten years have held flat and are essentially being produced at the same rate instead of what we would have expected based on the long run - a double. Yet if you look at the CO2 atmospheric concentration chart, the numbers are increasing even faster than they already were instead of slowing down.
 
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