Tuesday, September 09, 2014

A Kaya Festival


Somebunny has pointed Eli to a presentation on the Kaya identity from the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.  Not that Eli agrees with everything said, but it provides a basis for discussion, and as several have pointed (Dikran, palindrome and Marion) out this draws out the usefulness of such things.  Anyhow, you can go to the Pacific Institute  site and see the presentation full screen.  You can move through the sections using the menu on the left, or of course, as Eli recommends, you can alternate listening to Wynton Marsalas with the Kaya identity.

Oh yeah, the thing needs a minute or so to load and is set to start at the discussion of the identity, so just click yes. Take your time and beverage of pleasure. Eli will have a Carrot Cola.

35 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you want the error on this?

We're no where near 4-5C per century ( 1.5 C )

Seriously arguing for lower GDP/pop?

Increased GDP/pop leads to lower pop growth rates.

This is uneducated political nonsense.

Steve Bloom said...

The eternal unconstrained future of the spotless mind.

Eli, can disable autoplay plz?

EliRabett said...

Increased GDP/population definitely leads to lower population. A good example is western Europe. Index Mundi shows the strong negative effect of increased GDP on fecundity, which, sooner or later, shows up as a decrease in population. Hell, Brazil is at 1.82 live births/female

EliRabett said...

Autoplay fixed??

Eli

Marco said...

The correlation between population growth and GDP is actually quite poor. Sure, for some countries there appears to be some correlation over time, but it is just as easy to find several that don't fit.

People who want to take a look at all kinds of correlations (also over time) should go to Gapminder.org and run gapminder world.

Fernando Leanme said...

It helps to use a magnifying glass. Oil rich countries and Israel can be outliers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic-economic_paradox

The Israelis have an interesting paradox, I understand the ones who reproduce a lot are the ones who don´t like to fight. If we extrapolate this tendency 500 years we arrive at an Israel full of Muslims and Christians. I´m not into extrapolatin´. I mention it to show why extrapolation doesn´t always work.

Fernando Leanme said...

I went through that slide show and here are my comments

1. Carbon sequestration isn´t viable as described. We don´t have enough volume in depleted oil and gas fields.

2. The requirement to store CO2 for a very long time is unrealistic, and it´s not necessary. The key is to have a very low leakage rate.

3. Intermittency is the elephant in the living room for renewables such as wind. The lack of a quality storage option is the killer. This is mentioned but it´s not emphasized.

4. The Kaya identity should be further modified to be CO2

equivalents rather than GHG. This allows the equation to be modified, introducing the CH4 depletion rate and the CO2 removal by Engineering (this last term is similar to sequestration, but rather than say pump CO2 into the deep ocean the geoengineering solution would cause carbon to precipitate as a solid phase).

Thomas Lee Elifritz said...

You don't put the carbon back into depleted oil and gas fields, you either freeze it and store it in Antarctica, you strip the oxygen off of it and build things out of it, preferably things that are covered with human made out of it, or you stabilize it with a cation and then build things out of that, again preferably covered with humus derived from the carbon dioxide. It's really very simple physics, chemistry, biology and engineering. Get it? Once you have constructed a viable and sustainable artificial carbon cycle (driven by photons, obviously) you could even turn it back into fuel and send it into space where a great deal more photons and working materials are available. No, you don't get it.

Marco said...

For both China and India a case can be made for the inverse correlation: fertility rates dropped before GDP really went up.

Marco said...

Anonymous, try putting it on a linear scale, and zoom in (cut-off everything above 50,000).

turboblocke said...

3. Intermittency is the elephant in the living room for renewables such as wind. The lack of a quality storage option is the killer.

How boring to see this canard again: the Grid is built to cope with intermittency: supply and demand are constantly fluctuating. Try reading up on grid balancing and then you won't need to make this mistake again.

The lack of storage is irrelevant at current levels of wind penetration and, in any case, no one, apart from deniers, is suggesting only one sort of renewable technology. The realistic approach is to use complementary technologies.

Fernando Leanme said...

I write here in an attempt to educate the audience with some painful realities many like to ignore. Intermittency is discussed as a problem in the slide show.

My comment was specifically aimed at highlighting the fact that it was mentioned but it was skipped over very fast.

The reader may wish to investigate this further....for example search MIT white paper on wind power intermittency. Or try

Wind power intermittency
MIT Professor Ignacio Perez-Arriaga:

I do see a lot of misunderstanding, distortions, and what I suspect may be propaganda by hidden wind power corporate interests.

Thomas Lee Elifritz said...

You're a fucking idiot and a troll Fernando, you couldn't educate a fool. Wind power is load balanced into the grid. It's complementary to solar and hydro and the rest of it, give it up, you make trolls look like fools. It's that bad. And your ability to do the least amount of research is just plain pathetic. You are an opinionated innumerate poster child for Dunning Kruger.

Kevin O'Neill said...

FL writes: "I do see a lot of misunderstanding, distortions, and what I suspect may be propaganda ...."

Fernando, the last time you mentioned propaganda you were using the *Russian* media vis a vis Kosovo as your balanced source. No one other than a troll could say that with a straight face. Next you'll be citing the Chinese media to tell us Tiananmen Square protests were all a western delusion.

There's been a lot of disinformation here - but it mostly resides in your comments.

Marco said...

Ignacio Perez-Arriaga isn't a MIT professor. He's been a visiting professor there.

Fernando Leanme said...

I see widdle Thomas Lee didn't get his medicine.

Kevin, I mentioned "Travesty", a book written to discuss the Milosevic trial. This is a book you may not find easily, but can be ordered from Amazon.com.

If you bother to look you would see there's a significant body of information about the Clinton and Blair behavior, and how it is fairly easy to conclude they are both war criminals. The same applies to Bush and the neocon gang.

The problem you have is serious. You have been brainwashed thoroughly. This makes you unable to even glimpse a reality you are conditioned to deny.

Why do I bring up this topic? Because you guys spend endless hours bitching about climate denial. However, each of you have been conditioned to deny a portion of reality. And when others point out that reality isn't so you go berserk. This is why Thomas Lee goes bananas, and why Marco has to point out the professor who wrote extensively about intermittency was "only" a visiting MIT professor.

I suggest those of you who are going nuts right now would benefit from a nice walk with your dog and a bit of thinking about what's going on inside your heads. I had to deal with this at an early age. And it left me full of rage when I realized that indeed we were constantly subjected to lies and distortions intended to make us behave like robots. Nowadays I just try to point out how this works. But it sure helps if I give you the pill before you are adults, copper tops.

Fernando Leanme said...

By the way, I believe the Homo sapiens ability to be conditioned or brainwashed is a genetic trait which helps survival. As Homo sapiens achieved ascendancy over other species survival only required ascendancy over OTHER Homo sapiens tribes.

The ability of the tribal leadership to acquire legitimacy and order others to fight and die for the tribe was easy to achieve when the tribal groups were small. However, to legitimate such orders and extract obedience from larger groups the leadership had to imprint them with beliefs. This is why religion is so popular, it allows leaders to brainwash at will, create the myth of uniqueness (the chosen of god syndrome is prevalent).

In modern society we are brainwashed using religion, nationalism,and of course the quaint Marxist ideas about equality which put in power a rotten party elite able to brainwash the people and live their lives of hedonist privilege.

The climate is indeed changing...but the topic was so badly mishandled it has now polarized the population. And each extremist side is in denial of reality. Meanwhile in the middle we have a population utterly confused by the irrationality they see at either extreme. Eventually the polarization will eat into the middle and the subject will be used as just another issue to be resolved in a war. And if you think this isn't headed that way consider the nutty comments coming from that September 21 crowd.

Anonymous said...

By the way, I believe the Homo sapiens ability to be conditioned or brainwashed is a genetic trait which helps survival.

I have another take.

Most evolution took place with humans in much smaller groups - clans of a dozen or two.

In such circumstances where hunting, gathering, defense, rearing young were all better in a group, it was absolutely necessary to remain part of the group. That meant going along with the group leader, even if one disagreed with the leader. Being a good group member was selected for by reduced mortality and increased reproduction. Being an independent rebel thinker was selected against through the increased risks and reduced rewards of being an ostracized outcast.

The increase in population with small villages, growing to towns, to present cities and countries has taken place much faster than the previous much longer evolutionary conditions.

This explains why we are conditioned to dogmatic response as in religion, political parties, and even denier/hysteric assessment of global warming.

Lucifer

a_ray_in_dilbert_space said...

Fernando,
So nice to know that in the battle between truth and lies, we can count on you to come down firmly on the side of the middle ground--on the side of bullshit and "not even wrong".

Such courage.

dhogaza said...

FL's favorite author on Serbia is quite the piece of work:

[John Laughland] published The Tainted Source: The Undemocratic Origins of the European Idea, a critique in which he contends that the European Union shares some ideological affinity with Fascism, Nazism and communism, notably its rejection of the nation-state.

Anonymous said...

Just another day at Rabett Run, where rational comments (from either "side") are as scarce as Iraqi WMD.

carry on.

turboblocke said...

And each extremist side is in denial of reality. Quite a trite remark. However, most of the commentators here who accept the reality of AGW are fairly middle of the road. The only extremists that you see here are the deniers.

turboblocke said...

And Anonymous just added more noise to the signal...

BBD said...

Yes. The various attempts to label those accepting the standard scientific position as "alarmists" is bog-standard Overton Window-shifting.

Obvious, boring, over-played. Let's please try and remember that the "lukewarmers" are the cherry-pickers and evidence-deniers. Cherry-picking and evidence-denying are not defining characteristics of the middle ground.

Fernando Leanme said...

Lucifer, it seems to me small bands shared genetic material. Thus it was easier to instill a sense of sacrifice (I watch out for you if you look like me and happen to be my second cousin).

There's a subtle difference, I think.

As for the rest of the group's comments, they are to be expected. You are in the denial stage about your own denial. Did you notice the ironic comment about "hey, we are not the ones in denial, the ones in denial are the guys and gals on the other side!!"

Relax. As long as you don't run away in fear you will realize your sacred cows are mostly pelts worn by an old shaman.

a_ray_in_dilbert_space said...

Fernando,
Funny how all the scientists who actually publish say you are wrong.

Fernando Leanme said...

A ray, that would be funny indeed. Show me a quote, please.

By the way, here's something to dose you with a bit of a different reality

http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m061203.html

a_ray_in_dilbert_space said...

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/catalog/climind/pdsi.html

Here ya go! Let me know if you need more.

turboblocke said...

Fernando: do you read up on grid balancing? If so would you like to correct your intermittency statements. If not, why not?

Fernando Leanme said...

Ray, your link is quite banal. Try better... For example something like this...

"ABSTRACT:
The precisely dated isotopic composition of a stalagmite from Spannagel Cave in the Central Alps is translated into a highly resolved record of temperature at high elevation during the past 2000 yr. Temperature maxima during the Medieval Warm Period between 800 and 1300 AD are in average about 1.7°C higher than the minima in the Little Ice Age and similar to present-day values. The high correlation of this record to Δ14C suggests that solar variability was a major driver of climate in Central Europe during the past 2 millennia.

Download data from the WDC Paleo archive:
2,000-Year Spannagel Cave Speleothem Oxygen Isotope Data and Temperature Reconstruction "

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mangini2005/mangini2005.html

However, I find your style ( tossing paper references ) to be somewhat boring and frankly, sophomoric. I happen to be old enough to prefer intelligent debate using original words. Something with humor but respectful is better.

I'm sure you can learn to do it. Just relax your buttocks and stop being such a tight arse. No matter how hard you try you won't defecate diamonds. But you ARE intelligent. It will improve your career opportunities if you learn to relax and be convincing.

BBD said...

Fernando

"Killer" issues is rather strong.

The rapid evolution of utility-scale battery technology shouldn't be ignored. Better batteries will help buffer against slew and intermittence from wind and solar.

It's not a silver bullet, just something more that can and is being done.



Alastair said...

"Increased GDP/population definitely leads to lower population. A good example is western Europe. Index Mundi shows the strong negative effect of increased GDP on fecundity, which, sooner or later, shows up as a decrease in population. Hell, Brazil is at 1.82 live births/female"

Yes, but increased GDP only makes the rich richer. But that creates many more poor people.

Western Europe is now being invaded by those poor from Africa, and Asia, who want/need a share of that wealth.

Here, in the West, we only see people getting richer. But in the world as a whole the number of poor is increasing.

BBD said...

Fernando

A few points:

1/ Why is a single, local paleo proxy study better than a sequence of global studies on modern drought?

2/ Why is a single, local paleo proxy study (2005) better than current, *global* millennial climate reconstructions? Eg. PAGES-2k (2013):

Past global climate changes had strong regional expression. To elucidate their spatio-temporal pattern, we reconstructed past temperatures for seven continental-scale regions during the past one to two millennia. The most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the nineteenth century. At multi-decadal to centennial scales, temperature variability shows distinctly different regional patterns, with more similarity within each hemisphere than between them. There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructions show generally cold conditions between ad 1580 and 1880, punctuated in some regions by warm decades during the eighteenth century. The transition to these colder conditions occurred earlier in the Arctic, Europe and Asia than in North America or the Southern Hemisphere regions. Recent warming reversed the long-term cooling; during the period ad 1971–2000, the area-weighted average reconstructed temperature was higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years.

3/ Whatever role the sun may have played in past climate change, it isn't the main driver of current climate change.

Or we would see it and we don't.

GAT (surface) annual means are shown at the top (green). The three lower curves are coherently-scaled forcings. Well-mixed GHGs (blue) and solar (yellow; bottom) bracket the total net forcing (red).


What major forcing change do we see?

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

I should have stayed offshore.

J Bowers said...

Alastair -- "Here, in the West, we only see people getting richer."

Nope. We're getting quantifiably poorer, while a small group called the very rich are getting much richer. The trickle down trick did its job. We live in the period that saw for the first time a generation that's poorer and less well educated than the previous generation (US and UK, not sure about the rest of Europe). The kids are moving back in with the parents in droves.