from Climate Depot

'Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilizational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere (e.g. via greenhouse gas emissions), which therefore changes the spectral signature of Earth," the study says' -- Update here.

from ICECAP

When they see what a mess we’ve made of our planet, extraterrestrials may be forced to take drastic action. Photograph: PR

It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.

Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth’s atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.

This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by a Nasa-affiliated scientist and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University that, while considered unlikely, they say could play out were humans and alien life to make contact at some point in the future.

Shawn Domagal-Goldman of Nasa’s Planetary Science Division and his colleagues compiled a list of plausible outcomes that could unfold in the aftermath of a close encounter, to help humanity "prepare for actual contact".

In their report, Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis, the researchers divide alien contacts into three broad categories: beneficial, neutral or harmful.

Beneficial encounters ranged from the mere detection of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), for example through the interception of alien broadcasts, to contact with cooperative organisms that help us advance our knowledge and solve global problems such as hunger, poverty and disease.

Another beneficial outcome the authors entertain sees humanity triumph over a more powerful alien aggressor, or even being saved by a second group of ETs. "In these scenarios, humanity benefits not only from the major moral victory of having defeated a daunting rival, but also from the opportunity to reverse-engineer ETI technology," the authors write.

Other kinds of close encounter may be less rewarding and leave much of human society feeling indifferent towards alien life. The extraterrestrials may be too different from us to communicate with usefully. They might invite humanity to join the "Galactic Club" only for the entry requirements to be too bureaucratic and tedious for humans to bother with. They could even become a nuisance, like the stranded, prawn-like creatures that are kept in a refugee camp in the 2009 South African movie, District 9, the report explains.

The most unappealing outcomes would arise if extraterrestrials caused harm to humanity, even if by accident. While aliens may arrive to eat, enslave or attack us, the report adds that people might also suffer from being physically crushed or by contracting diseases carried by the visitors. In especially unfortunate incidents, humanity could be wiped out when a more advanced civilisation accidentally unleashes an unfriendly artificial intelligence, or performs a catastrophic physics experiment that renders a portion of the galaxy uninhabitable.

To bolster humanity’s chances of survival, the researchers call for caution in sending signals into space, and in particular warn against broadcasting information about our biological make-up, which could be used to manufacture weapons that target humans. Instead, any contact with ETs should be limited to mathematical discourse "until we have a better idea of the type of ETI we are dealing with."

The authors warn that extraterrestrials may be wary of civilisations that expand very rapidly, as these may be prone to destroy other life as they grow, just as humans have pushed species to extinction on Earth. In the most extreme scenario, aliens might choose to destroy humanity to protect other civilisations.

"A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilisation may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand. Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilisational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions," the report states.

"Green" aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. "These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets," the authors write.

Even if we never make contact with extraterrestrials, the report argues that considering the potential scenarios may help to plot the future path of human civilisation, avoid collapse and achieve long-term survival.

from Climate Depot

'According to investigators, Monnett's calculations concerning polar bears' rate of survival, however, are flawed because he not only failed to verify that the four dead polar bears he witnessed were the same ones that he saw a week prior, but he also allegedly used faulty percentages in the process'

from Climate Depot

from Climate Connections:NPR

The Arctic is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the Earth, and sea ice is rapidly disappearing during the summer months. Some studies now suggest the Arctic Ocean could be free of ice in the summertime by the year 2030, with major repercussions in the region and beyond.

from Climate Depot

from ICECAP By Dr. Larry Bell

Anyone who says they can confidently predict global climate changes or effects is either a fool or a fraud. No one can even forecast global, national or regional weather conditions that will occur months or years into the future, much less climate shifts that will be realized over decadal, centennial and longer periods.

Nevertheless, this broadly recognized limitation has not dissuaded doomsday prognostications that have prompted incalculably costly global energy and environmental policies. Such postulations attach great credence to computer models and speculative interpretations that have no demonstrated accuracy.

The primary source of scary climate change alarmism routinely trumpeted in the media originates from politically cherry-picked summary report items issued by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Yet even the IPCC’s 2001 report chapter titled "Model Evaluation" contains this confession: "We fully recognize that many of the evaluation statements we make contain a degree of subjective scientific perception and may contain much ‘community’ or ‘personal’ knowledge. For example, the very choice of model variables and model processes that are investigated are often based upon subjective judgment and experience of the modeling community."

In that same report the IPCC further admits, "In climate research and modeling, we should realize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible." Here, the IPCC openly acknowledges that its models should not be trusted. Still, the IPCC obviously needs to apply them to justify its budget and influence. Without contrived, frightening forecasts, they would soon be out of business.

So in the IPCC’s most recent 2007 report the story changed significantly, placing "great confidence": in the ability of General Circulation Models (GCMs) to responsibly attribute observed climate change to anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas emissions. It states that "...climate models are based on well-established physical principles and have been demonstrated to reproduce observed features of recent climate...and past changes."

Yet even Kevin Trenberth, a lead author of 2001 and 2007 IPCC report chapters, has admitted that the IPCC models have failed to duplicate realities. Writing in a 2007 "Predictions of Climate" blog appearing in the science journal Nature.com he stated, "None of the models used by the IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed state."

Syun-Ichi Akasofu, the former director of the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, has determined that IPCC computer models have not even been able to duplicate observed temperatures in Arctic regions. While the atmospheric CO2 forecasts indicated warm Arctic conditions, they were lower than actually reported, and colder areas were absent. Akasofu stated , "If fourteen GCMs cannot reproduce prominent warming in the continental Arctic, perhaps much of this warming is not produced by greenhouse effect at all."

Graeme Stephens at the Colorado State University’s Department of Atmospheric Science warned in a 2008 paper published in the Journal of Climate, that computer models involve simplistic cloud feedback descriptions: "Much more detail on the system and its assumptions [is] needed to judge the value of any study. Thus, we are led to conclude that the diagnostic tools currently in use by the climate community to study feedback, at least as implemented, are problematic and immature and generally cannot be verified using observations."

The prominent, late scientist Joanne Simpson developed some of the first mathematical models of clouds in an attempt to better understand how hurricanes draw power from warm seas. Ranked as one of the world’s top meteorologists, she believed that global warming theorists place entirely too much emphasis upon faulty climate models, observing, "We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system...We only need to watch the weather forecasts [to prove this]."

A recent study reported in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing concludes that NASA satellite data between the years 2000-2001 indicate that GCMs have grossly exaggerated warming retained in the Earth’s atmosphere. The study’s co-author, Dr. Roy Spencer, observes: "There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans. Not only does the atmosphere release more energy than previously thought, it starts releasing it earlier in the warming cycle."

Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville and former senior scientist for climate studies at NASA, has also observed that results of the one or two dozen climate modeling groups around the world often reflect a common bias. One reason is that many of these modeling programs are based upon the same "parameterization" assumptions; consequently, common errors are likely to be systematic, often missing important processes. Such problems arise because basic components and dynamics of the climate system aren’t understood well enough on either theoretical or observational grounds to even put into the models. Instead, the models focus upon those factors and relationships that are most familiar, ignoring others altogether. As Spencer notes in his book Climate Confusion, "Scientists don’t like to talk about that because we can’t study things we don’t know about."

A peer-reviewed climate study that appeared in the July 23, 2009 edition of Geophysical Research Letters went even farther in its characterization of faulty climate modeling practices. The paper noted IPCC modeling tendencies to fudge climate projections by exaggerating CO2 influences and underestimating the importance of shifts in ocean conditions. The research indicated that influences in solar changes and intermittent volcanic activity have accounted for at least 80% of observed climate variation over the past half century. Study coauthor John McLean observed: "When climate models failed to retrospectively produce the temperatures since 1950, the modelers added some estimated influences of carbon dioxide to make up the shortfall." He also highlighted inability of computer models to predict El Nino ocean events which can periodically dominate regional climate conditions, hence further reducing model meaningfulness.

J. Scott Armstrong, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and a leading expert in the field of professional forecasting, believes that prediction attempts are virtually doomed when scientists don’t understand or follow basic forecasting rules. He and colleague Kesten Green of Monash University conducted a "forecasting audit" of the 2007 IPCC report and "found no references...to the primary sources of information on forecasting methods" and that "the forecasting procedures that were described [in sufficient detail to be evaluated] violated 72 principles. Many of the violations were, by themselves, critical".

A fundamental principle that IPCC violated was to "make sure forecasts are independent of politics". Armstrong and Green observed that "the IPCC process is directed by non-scientists who have policy objectives and who believe that anthropogenic global warming is real and a danger." They concluded that: "The forecasts in the report were not the outcome of scientific procedures. In effect, they were the opinions of scientists transformed by mathematics and obscured by complex writing...We have not been able to identify any scientific forecasts of global warming. Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying it will get colder".

Trenberth argued in his 2007 Nature blog that "the IPCC does not make forecasts", but "instead proffers ‘what if’ projections that correspond to certain emission scenarios"; and then hopes these "projections... will guide policy and decision makers." He went on to say: "there are no such predictions [in the IPCC reports] although the projections given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are often treated as such. The distinction is important".

Armstrong and Green challenge that semantic defense, pointing out that "the word ‘forecast’ and its derivatives occurred 37 times, and ‘predict’ and its derivatives occurred 90 times in the body of Chapter 8 of [the IPCC’s 2007] the Working Group I report."

Of course there would be very little interest in model forecasts at all if it were not for hysterical hype about a purported man-made climate crisis caused by carbon dioxide fossil fuel emissions. Without CO2 greenhouse gas demonization there is no basis for cap-and-tax schemes, unwarranted "green" fuel subsidies, expansion of government regulatory authority over energy production and construction industries through unintended misapplications of the Clean Air Act, claims of polar bear endangerment to prevent drilling in ANWR, or justifications for massive climate research budgets including...guess what? Yup! Lots of money to produce more climate model forecasts that perpetuate these agendas.

Reprinted from Forbes with author permission.

from Climate Depot

from Climate Depot

from NOAA News Releases

The globe experienced its seventh warmest July since record keeping began in 1880. July's Arctic sea ice extent was the smallest on record for that month since records began in 1979.

from Climate Depot

D.C.'s murder rate plummets as temperatures soar: 'Violent crime rises with temperature - but only up to a certain point'

'When it becomes too hot, criminals flee to places cooler. It may have reached the point that it's so blasted hot outside that violent offenders, like everybody else, are staying inside'

from Climate Depot

'Despite the 'global warming' that has occurred over past 100 years, global crop production just keeps on increasing'

from Climate Depot

from Climate Connections : NPR

Would you drink reused sewage water that had been declared safe? No? You're not alone. Engineers say processing wastewater to make it clean and drinkable can provide a plentiful source for places where water is in short supply. But the public often balks at the thought. The reason, experts say, is a phenomenon called psychological contagion.

from Climate Depot

'Mars has warmed 4 times more than the Earth over the last 20 years. A 'death spiral' from anthropogenic Martian warming?'

from Climate Depot

from Climate Depot

'The rapidly melting Greenland ice sheet is accumulating ice so fast that they have to keep jacking the buildings up to keep them from getting buried'

from Climate Depot

from Climate Depot

Question: If Greenland's ice has been thinning so fast since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, why were World War II-era planes found buried under 260 feet of ice in 1988?

from Climate Depot

It's simple, really: The Arctic ice allegedly gets thinner and more vulnerable to melt *every* year; and after ten years of this process, you may end up with more ice than you had at the start

from Climate Depot

from Republicans Hate Their Presidential Candidates | Mother Jones by Kate Sheppard

Jon Huntsman may be emerging as the only GOP presidential candidate willing to whole-heartedly endorse climate science. As I noted a few weeks ago, he has been the most straightforward in his assertion that politicians should defer to the scientific community on the question of whether the planet is warming. Yesterday, he went a step further, suggesting that future generations will judge the GOP on the issue of environmental stewardship.

From the Associated Press:

"We will be judged by how well we were stewards of those (natural) resources," said Huntsman, a veteran of three Republican administrations who until this spring was President Barack Obama's ambassador to China.

"Conservation is conservative. I'm not ashamed to be A conservationist. I also believe that science should be driving our discussions on climate change," he added.

Polling on the issue gives Huntsman little reason to embrace — or promote — his position or his moderate environmental record while governor.

Among the 2012 GOP candidates, Mitt Romney has also made the radical assertion that we should perhaps reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. But now his campaign is busy quibbling with reporters about whether or not he thinks greenhouse gases are "pollutants," which isn't the greatest sign that he's serious about the problem.

from Climate & Energy | Grist by John Farrell.

Concentrating solar has promised big additions to renewable energy production with the additional benefit of energy storage - saving sun power for nighttime - but there's a catch. Most of the new power plants are big water users despite being planned for desert locations.

With solar photovoltaic (PV) prices dropping so rapidly, does concentrating solar still make sense?

Concentrating solar thermal power uses big mirrors to focus sunlight and make electricity. Think kids with magnifying glasses, but making power instead of frying ants. The focused sunlight makes heat, the heat makes steam, and the steam powers a turbine to make electricity.In "wet-cooled" concentrating solar power plants, more water is used to make power than in any other kind of power plant. The following chart illustrates the amount of water used to produce power from various technologies:

Water consumption can be cut dramatically by using "dry-cooling," but this change increases the cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of power generated from concentrating solar power (CSP). In the 2009 report "Juice from Concentrate," the World Resources Institute reports that the reduction in water consumption adds 2-10 percent to levelized costs and reduces the power plant's efficiency by up to 5 percent.

Let's see how that changes Institute for Local Self-Reliance'soriginal levelized cost comparison between CSP and solar PV. Here's the original chart comparing PV projects to CSP projects, with no discussion of water use or energy storage:

To make the comparison tighter, we'll hypothetically transform the CSP plants from wet-cooled to dry-cooled, adjusting the levelized cost of power.

Using the midpoint of each estimate from "Juice from Concentrate" (6 percent increase to levelized costs and 2.5 percent efficiency reduction), the change in the cost per kWh for dry-cooling instead of wet-cooling is small but significant. For example, all three concentrating solar power projects listed in the chart are wet-cooled power plants. With a 6 percent increase in costs from dry-cooling and a 2.5 percent reduction in efficiency, the delivered cost of electricity would rise by approximately 1.7 cents per kWh.

The following chart, modified from an earlier post, illustrates the comparison:

With the increased costs to reduce water consumption, CSP's price is much less competitive with PV. A distributed solar PV program by Southern California Edison has projected levelized costs of 17 cents per kWh for 1-2 megawatt solar arrays, and a group purchase program forresidential solar in Los Angeles has a levelized cost of just 20 cents per kWh.

In other words, while wet-cooled CSP already struggles to compete with low-cost, distributed PV, using dry- cooling technology makes residential-scale PV competitive with CSP.

But there's one more piece: storage.

Storage

While Nevada Solar One was built without storage, the PS10 and PS20 solar towers were built with one hour of thermal energy storage. Let's see how that changes the economics.

To make the comparison comparable, we'll add the cost of one hour of storage to our two PV projects, a cost of approximately $0.50 per Watt, or 2.4 cents per kWh. The following chart illustrates a comparison of PV to CSP, with all projects having one hour of storage (Nevada Solar One has been removed as it does not have storage):

When comparing CSP with storage (and lower water use) to PV with battery storage, we have a comparison that is remarkably similar to our first chart. Distributed PV at a commercial scale (1-2 megawatts) is still cheaper than CSP, but residential PV is more expensive.

Even though dry-cooled CSP competes favorably on price, it still uses much more water than PV. That issue is probably whymany solar project developers are switching from CSP to PV technology for their large-scale desert projects.

Concentrating solar thermal power had its moment of cost advantage a few years ago, but the rapid pace (and zero water use) of solar PV installations has quickly eroded even the energy storage advantage of CSP.

from Climate Realists by Co2sceptic

Eighteen Indonesian volcanoes are on "alert" status, two of which are at Alert Level 3, which is called "Siaga", the Volcanology and Geology Disaster Mitigation Center says.

Center head Surono said Sunday in Jakarta the erupting Mount Lokon in North Sulawesi and Mount Ibu in North Maluku were the two volcanoes at Siaga status.

The center has adopted four levels of alert status: "Normal" (Level 1), "Waspada" (Level 2), "Siaga" (Level 3) and "Awas" (Level 4).

Surono said the conditions at Mt Lokon and Mt Ibu were currently considered most worrisome because they had been consistently erupting searing clouds affecting a radius of 2.5 kilometers.

He added, however, that the eruptions had not yet endangered people living around the volcanoes.

Source: thejakartapost.com - Read in full

from Climate Realists by -name>Co2sceptic

The German-based European Institute For Climate and Energy (EIKE)reports here on a paper just published by German scientists Horst-Joachim Lüdecke and Rainer Link appearing in the IJMPC Journal (International Journal of Modern Physics C), see here.

The full paper is available as a pdf file here in English.

The authors claim that CO2 does have a modest warming effect on the global temperature, but:

"The effect is harmless (to the contrary, CO2-increases and slight global warming are beneficial for man and thus desirable) and show that the overly alarmist prognoses for future climate developments as fully inappropriate."

Source: notrickszone.com - Read in full

from Climate Depot

Morano: This is 'sub-prime science...this is a political movement at its heart...Gore is trying to shift movement to extreme weather. They are going to say that every weather event from tornadoes, to floods to droughts -- are now proof of man-made global warming. It is akin to the predictions of Nostradamus or the Mayan calendar. It is becoming more unscientific as they go forward'

Climate Depot's Point-By-Point Rebuttal to Gore'sHighbrow Scientific Arguments