Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for October 2007

Oregon State Climatologist Defends His Views

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George Taylor, Oregon State Climatologist, responds to the Willamette Week article written by Paul Koberstein:

HOT OR NOT: Oregon’s official weatherman has good news about global warming-it doesn’t exist.

Extract:

George Taylor shouldn’t scare anybody. He has been a vegetarian since the 1970s. He commutes to work by bicycle. He’s an ex-hippie and an ex-surfer. He recycles. He likes trees and salmon.
He’s also, according to his critics, one of the most dangerous men in Oregon.

Nestled comfortably in a state that boasts of its environmental cred the way California touts its sunshine, Taylor is one of the leading circuit riders for the church of Global Warming Ain’t Happening.

From his third-floor office in the Strand Agriculture building at Oregon State University, Taylor, 58, a state employee who runs an agency with a half-million-dollar annual budget, is often at work discrediting the well-established scientific facts about global warming.

His views have been read on the floor of the U.S. Senate and, most recently, influenced global-warming bills in Salem. In the past, he also has tried to undermine global-warming legislation in Canada.

“Look, it’s not that complicated,” says Taylor, who, as head of the Oregon Climate Service at OSU, is known as the state climatologist. “It’s not clear that we are seeing unprecedented warming, and it’s definitely untrue that any warming trend can be assigned to human activities. Natural variations in climate are much more significant than any human activities…………………..”

Video of Taylor’s response is here.

A transcript is here.

Excerpt: I get most of my information from peer-reviewed journals, including Journal of Climate, Journal of Geophysical Research, and Climate Research. The articles I write (including, for example, the Arctic article) are based on journal articles and contain full bibliographies. Admittedly, I seldom give“both sides” of the argument, because the “other side” (the one that suggests that human activities exert a dominant role in the climate system) is well-represented in journals and the media. My goal is to be a voice saying “wait, maybe there’s another side to this. Take a look at THIS data and see what you think. Then let’s talk about it.” Unfortunately, this issue has become such a divisive and angry one that ad hominem attacks have replaced dialogue..

When I write about global climate issues, I do so on my own time from home. I’m cautious about having my opinion construed as representing the State of Oregon or Oregon State University, and I try to separate my analyses of global climate from my day to day work as the State Climatologist.

US Invests in Solar Power

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Thanks to Luke Walker for alerting me to this:

ABC News: Solar takes off with US power supply deal

Extracts:

Two of America’s biggest power utilities have unveiled plans for a multi-billion-dollar expansion of solar power supply, backing the argument that solar energy can indeed become a viable alternative to coal-fired electricity.

The company at the heart of the development is Ausra. It was started by Australian solar expert David Mills, who left this country for California earlier this year to pursue the further development of his ground-breaking work.

What makes the announcement more significant is that the utilities are confidently predicting that their solar power will soon be providing baseload electricity – that is, day and night – at prices competitive with coal.

Australian technology

The solar technology developed by Dr Mills already exists here in Australia, in the form of small pilot plants attached to the Liddell coal-fired power station in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.

A plant officer explains that the system’s emphasis is on simplicity, with near-flat mirrors on giant hoops tracking the sun.

“Sunlight, on a clear day like this, strikes those mirrors and is gathered up onto the tower, and there’s an absorber underneath that tower,” he said.

Out comes steam, ready to drive a conventional power turbine. This is on a small scale; the new US company started by Dr Mills and Mr Khosla, Ausra, is now planning plants far bigger.

Dr Mills says the first plant size is more than two square kilometres in area and will generate 175 megawatts of power.

“But really we want to aim for gigawatt-style plants, and they’re much bigger than that,” he said.

Assumptions overturned

The coal and nuclear industries have long asserted that baseload power cannot be supplied by renewable energy. That mantra is oft repeated by Australian politicians like federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

“You cannot run a modern economy on wind farms and solar powers. It’s a pity that you can’t, but you can’t,” he said.

Prime Minister John Howard says solar is “a nice, easy soft answer”.

“There’s this vague idea in the community that solar doesn’t cost anything and it can solve the problem,” he said.

“It can’t. It can’t replace baseload power generation by power stations.”

But baseload power supply is just what Ausra is now being contracted to supply for the insatiable US market. It says that within two years it will be able to economically store its hot water for more than 16 hours.

Dr Mills says there is a convenient correlation between humans’ power consumption and the sun’s power supply.

“We get up in the morning everyday, we start using energy, we go to sleep at night,” he said.

“And the presence of the sun, that’s natural. And that correlation means that we can get away with a lot less storage than we might have thought.”

Better than coal or nuclear

Dr Diesendorf says the huge US investment into solar will soon make talk of clean coal and nuclear as solutions to climate change redundant.

“Basically, the solar thermal technology will be on the ground, certainly in the United States and many other countries long before so-called clean coal and nuclear power,” he said.

Mr Khosla says solar power is developing rapidly and will be cheaper than either nuclear power or ‘clean’ coal.

CSIRO and BoM Report: Too Late to Avoid Warming

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Thanks to Luke Walker for alerting me to this:

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Too late to avoid warming: climate report

Sydney could face an annual temperature rise of up to 4.3 degrees by 2070, and a tripling of the number of days a year when the thermometer soars above 35 degrees, if global greenhouse gas emissions are not cut steeply, a new report has found.

It is too late for the city to avoid a warming of about 1 degree by 2030 as well as a 3 per cent reduction in annual rainfall because of polluting gases already in the atmosphere.

More droughts, fires, and severe weather events, and less rain and snow across the country are also on the horizon, according to the report, Climate Change in Australia, which contains the most detailed and up-to-date climate projections produced by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology.

Its findings, released at the Greenhouse 2007 conference in Sydney this morning, include projections of up to 20 per cent more drought months over most of Australia by 2030.

Read the report ‘Climate Change in Australia’ here.

Report with animation here.

Oh, what a golden web she weaves …

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N.pilipes.jpg

I associate Golden Orb-weaving spiders (Nephila pilipes (syn. maculata)) with the hot period leading up to the wet. Adult females are particularly impressive in their gigantism, which increases relative to the equator. The image on the left has a male on the female’s abdomen.

They would appear to have a three-month life-cycle with an extraordinary growth rate in females; from ~1mm to full hand-span in six weeks.

Their webs are spectacular and so strong they can break the momentum of small birds and bats. I observed one spanning an expanse one night and was astonished to see a three dimensional film of silk (about 30mm in diameter) being played across currents, seemingly unaffected by gravity, to a tree some five-metres distant. The spider then pulled the film into a thread.

There seems to be two distinct morphs; the lighter-coloured variety being vastly out-numbered by the black and yellow variety. Each is viewed differently through the compound eyes of flying insects, producing different capture rates. At nightime, however, darkness is so complete that colour is of little relevance and different groups of flying/jumping insects abound. Nephilas can vary the strength and flexibility of their silk to meet the different challenges of crickets or flies.

They are eaten by cassowaries and most probably frogmouths.

A Note to Ian Mott on Global Warming And Coral Reefs

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Dear Ian,

The Center for Biological Diversity contends that staghorn coral and elkhorn coral are “the first, and to date only, species listed under the Endangered Species Act due to threats from global warming.” Kieran Suckling, the policy
director of the Center, “We think this victory on coral critical habitat actually moves the entire Endangered Species Act onto a firm legal foundation for challenging global-warming pollution.”

The Center for Science & Public Policy has published a report taking a closer look at the scientific evidence, which reveals that the impact of global warming on the overall health of coral species is likely to be positive–towards increased species diversity and richness and habitat expansion–and there is evidence that these changes are already underway.

The hope that this endangered species designation will somehow become a tool for global warming legislation is grossly misplaced. Global warming will likely be a benefit to elkhorn and staghorn corals, especially along the
Florida coast where increasing ocean temperatures should encourage coral reef development further and further northward.

The report is available at http://ff.org/images/stories/sciencecenter/coral_reefs_and_global_warming.pdf

Paul Georgia, Ph.D.
Center for Science & Public Policy
Frontiers of Freedom

James Hansen’s Blog

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Hansen’s blog is here.

A couple of sample extracts:

The deceit behind the attempts to discredit evidence of climate change reveals matters of importance. This deceit has a clear purpose: to confuse the public about the status of knowledge of global climate change, thus delaying effective action to mitigate climate change. The danger is that delay will cause tipping points to be passed, such that large climate impacts become inevitable, including the loss of all Arctic sea ice, destabilization of the West Antarctic ice sheet with disastrous sea level rise later this century, and extermination of a large fraction of animal and plant species. “Make no doubt, however, if tipping points are passed, if we, in effect, destroy Creation, passing on to our children, grandchildren, and the unborn a situation out of their control, the contrarians who work to deny and confuse will not be the principal culprits. The contrarians will be remembered as court jesters. … “The real deal is this: the ‘royalty’ controlling the court, the ones with the power, the ones with the ability to make a difference, with the ability to change our course, the ones who will live in infamy if we pass the tipping points, are the captains of industry, CEOs in fossil fuel companies such as EXXON/Mobil, automobile manufacturers, utilities, all of the leaders who have placed short-term profit above the fate of the planet and the well-being of our children.”