Sublime Oblivion

Interessant "ny" blogg: Sublime Oblivion av Anatoly "Da Russophile" Karlin. Ingenting med dataspillet å gjøre.

Et russisk blikk på Vesten; temaer er politikk, økonomi, historie... med slengere til, sånn apropos, f.eks. klima: Top 10 AGW Denial Myths. Han trekker ca. samme konklusjoner som meg, ikke rart iom at han lenker flere ganger til samme New Scientist-serie... han gjør den irriterende slurvefeilen at han kaller Svante Arrhenius norsk... Med det navnet er det to muligheter imo: 1) same; 2) svenske. (Han var svensk, ja). Men klart, en russer som skriver for et engelsktalende publikum trekker vel på skuldrene og sier "same difference"... Skandinav, Schmandinav...

Også et veldig interessant essay i "Reinventing Collapse"-ånd: USA 2009 = USSR 1989 ?

Klima å sånn

Det viser seg at jeg har venner som mener at menneskeskapte klimaforandringer er en myte.

OK, jeg er allergisk mot hype og har en sterk ryggmargsrefleks mot å ta konvensjonell visdom for god fisk. Og jeg mener at å diskutere klimaforandringer er litt som å sitte inne i et brennende hus og diskutere om røyking er farlig eller ikke. Og organisasjoner som Greenpeace, Bellona og Zero ser jeg på først og fremst som politiske opportunister; mange av medlemmene mener godt, men de er fullstendig ukritiske mhp de fikse ideene sine... fikse ideer som går tiår tilbake, og i mange tilfeller nå er avlegs.

Men det betyr ikke at de tar feil i alt; ei heller betyr det at den riktige responsen er å starte en like virkelighetsfjern sekt med motsatt fortegn.

Klimaprognosen alle snakker om er IPCC sin. Jeg har selv kritisert den for å ikke ta PO med i beregningen (Aleklett nevner det samme i videoen jeg linket til forrige dagen). Jeg har ikke studert den i detalj - den er lang og tung, og jeg mener som sagt gjentatte ganger at vi har langt alvorligere problemer som også er nærmere i tid... men nå har jeg i alle fall lest FAQen deres. Men la oss begynne med begynnelsen, hva er IPCC egentlig?

Her er en beskrivelse fra IPCCer Professor Martin Parry:

The IPCC is not, as some believe, a group of scientists, but a panel set up by the United Nations comprising representatives from about 140 governments to consider what we currently know about climate change.

The panel decides whether an assessment is needed, and then engages scientists to conduct it.

Since its establishment in 1987, there have been four such major assessments, published roughly every five years (1990, 1995, 2001 and 2007), sprinkled with occasional special reports on specific topics.

Why this government role? The reason is because governments need a sound summary of knowledge which, once commissioned and adopted, becomes accepted by them.

This is why the IPCC assessments are so significant; they represent the description of knowledge that governments "buy into".

We should not expect them to be full of exciting new material; rather, they are consolidations of what we know.

This is why they err, if anything, on the side of conservatism and have been criticised for not exploring the outer edges of knowledge.

En gjennomlesing av IPCCs FAQ gir et veldig tillitvekkende inntrykk. For eksempel var en hovedinnvending at IPCC undervurderer totalt/overser variasjoner i Solas intensitet... etter å ha lest hva IPCC selv skriver virker dette veldig rart; de snakker ganske mye om Sola. For eksempel,

Solar output has increased gradually in the industrial era, causing a small positive radiative forcing (see Figure 2). This is in addition to the cyclic changes in solar radiation that follow an 11-year cycle. Solar energy directly heats the climate system and can also affect the atmospheric abundance of some greenhouse gases, such as stratospheric ozone

(her)

... men det er ikke ukontroversielt, som RealClimate innrømmer:

The solar influence on climate is a controversial topic in climate research (see previous posts here and here). The irradiance changes are assumed to be relatively small and the importance of potential amplifying mechanisms is still a matter of current debate. One reason for these uncertainties is that there are only approximately 25 years of satellite-based observations of the solar irradiance. Sunspot observations for the last 400 years clearly indicate that current levels of solar activity are very different from the state of the sun during the Maunder minimum (from approx. 1645 to 1715 AD) where almost no sunspots could be observed.
[...]
Therefore, in the view of the uncertainties and the conflicting data it doesn’t seem to be appropriate to make uncritical and sensational claims about the history of the sun. As long as the differences between the ¹⁰Be records are not understood, conclusions based on only one of these records should be treated with caution. Atmospheric ¹⁴C concentrations, on the other hand, are much less sensitive to a climate influence during the last 1000 years and, therefore, can provide good estimates of the history of the sun. However, the disagreement between ¹⁴C-based solar activity and group sunspot number (Muscheler et al., 2005) should remind us that the variations of the solar activity are not yet completely understood.

Regardless of any discussion about solar irradiance in past centuries, the sunspot record and neutron monitor data (which can be compared with radionuclide records) show that solar activity has not increased since the 1950s and is therefore unlikely to be able to explain the recent warming.

(fra Did the Sun hit record highs over the last few decades?)

New Scientist har også en fin oversikt: Climate change: A guide for the perplexed (se også Climate is too complex for accurate predictions)

NS tar for seg snakkepunktet "men det var varmere i middelalderen" her; angående viking-jordbruk på Grønland linker de til ‘Greenland used to be green’—Don’t judge a book by its cover, much less a land by its name (grist).

Og Scientific American spør Just How Sensitive Is Earth's Climate to Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide? og får svaret

Earth scientist Aradhna Tripati of the University of California, Los Angeles's Department of Earth and Space Sciences and her colleagues extracted a record of past atmospheric concentrations of CO2 stretching back 20 million years from the shells of tiny creatures known as foraminifera buried in a column of ocean mud and rock. The microscopic animals build shells of calcium carbonate out of minerals in seawater—a process that is affected by the water's relative pH (acidity), which is, in turn controlled by the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. More CO2 in the atmosphere means a more acidic ocean.

"The two species we picked to analyze [Globigerinoides ruber and G. sacculifer] are both ones that are around today, and the living animals actually have photosynthetic algae as symbionts, which means that they live in the surface ocean, since the algae require sunlight to survive," Tripati explains. And that means the fossil record of their shells will reveal the relative acidity of the surface waters in the ratio of boron to calcium as well as the specific chemical signature of the boron itself. "When seawater is more acidic, less boron gets incorporated into the calcium carbonate shells," she adds.

The researchers first matched this fossil record secured by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition in the western tropical Pacific to existing records from bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice cores that stretch back 800,000 years, which preserve a precise record of past atmospheric composition. Thus reassured of the technique's accuracy, they plunged back into deep geologic time.

"Modern-day levels of carbon dioxide were last reached about 15 million years ago," Tripati says, when sea levels were at least 25 meters higher and temperatures were at least 3 degrees C warmer on average. "During the middle Miocene, an [epoch] in Earth's history when carbon dioxide levels were sustained at values similar to what they are today [330 to 500 ppm], the planet was much warmer, sea level was higher, there was substantially less ice at the poles, and the distribution of rainfall was very different."

Further, "at no time in the last 20 million years have levels of carbon dioxide increased as rapidly as at present," Tripati adds; CO2 concentrations have climbed from 280 ppm to 387 ppm in the past 200 years. And "our work indicates that moderate changes in carbon dioxide levels of 100 to 200 parts per million were associated with major climate transitions and large changes in temperature"—indicative of a very sensitive climate.

Jeg mener selv jeg har en god nese for bullshit; ingenting av det jeg har sett på her lukter. Ja, det er mye de ikke vet, ja, prognosene er forbundet med stor usikkerhet; men alt tyder på at det dreier seg om seriøse forskere som gjør sitt beste for å få oversikt over et uoversiktlig problem. Jeg tror på prof. Parry når han sier at "they err, if anything, on the side of conservatism".

Risikoen er på nedsiden.

And Now For Something Completely Different

They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They? av Susannah Breslin.

Fantastisk; Breslin er en moderne Hunter Thompson. En smakebit:

To date, [Jim Powers] has produced and directed over 500 adult movies. But, this isn’t your father’s porn. Equal parts freak show, horror movie, and Russ Meyer-on-crack, his X-rated visions are deranged, demented, mind-boggling expeditions into the dark, unexplored continent of human sexual perversity. Fascinating, horrifying, and amusing—oftentimes all of those things at the same time—Powers’ celluloid world is one populated by midgets, bald chicks, and crazed men outfitted with monster-sized papier-mâché phalluses which spew torrents of goo onto the naked bodies of supine women, movies in which everyone has sex all of the time, and in which, most of the time, no one appears to win.

Take, for example, “The Bride of Dong,” in which two young, unsuspecting women “inadvertently unleash the power and massive cock of an ancient fertility god when they decide to house sit for the summer,” the result of which is the “call[ing] forth an ancient being from another time and world who bridges the cosmos to shove his massive tool up their asses,“ and the true star of which is neither the decidedly comely Gia Paloma or Julie Night but a six-foot prosthetic penis that belongs to an onerous, fanged beast that emerges upon a full moon.

Lo Tek

Lovende nettsted: Low Tech Magazine

Fin blanding av nostalgiske tilbakeblikk på gammel teknologi og kritiske blikk på ny teknologi.

To artikler om alt. energi som er verd å titte på:

The ugly side of solar panels - over halvannet år gammel men oppdatert med nye linker, og

Leave the algae alone

Aleklett og co. i slaget

Svenske professor Kjell Aleklett, medstifter av ASPO og sjef for Global Energy Systems ved Universitetet i Uppsala, ligger ikke på latsiden. Det kommer en jevn strøm av nøkterne, overbevisende og skremmende artikler og rapporter fra GES for tiden...

Det er ikke ofte jeg ser nettvideo, men dette timelange foredraget av Aleklett så jeg. Anbefales både for nye og gamle PO'ere. Av spesiell interesse for oss norrbaggar er det han sier om norsk gass etter ca 52 min. Han nevner en ikke publisert artikkel; det må vel være denne: European energy security: The future of Norwegian natural gas production... Fra abstract'et:

This article shows that only a 20-25% growth of Norwegian gas production is possible due to production from currently existing recoverable reserves and contingent resources. A high and a low production forecast for Norwegian gas production is presented. Norwegian gas production exported by pipeline peaks between 2015 and 2016, with minimum peak production in 2015 at 118 bcm/year and maximum peak production at 127 bcm/year in 2016. By 2030 the pipeline export levels are 94-78 bcm. Total Norwegian gas production peaks between 2015 and 2020, with peak production at 124-135 bcm/year. By 2030 the production is 96-115 bcm/year, which is considerably lower than the 127 bcm/year forecasted by the IEA. Not even in the highest production scenario does Norwegian gas production reach the potential production level of 140 bcm/year presented by the NPD. The results show that there is a limited potential for increased gas exports from Norway to the EU and that Norwegian gas production is declining by 2030 in all scenarios.

Jeg har bladd igjennom rapporten (men ikke studert den nøye) og... fallet er bratt når det først setter inn.

Jeg tror ikke det blir morsomt å være gammel i Norge i 2050.

Men nå skal jeg på fest ;-/

Niall Ferguson om US vs Kina

Niall Ferguson: U.S. Empire in Decline, on Collision Course with China (yahoo tech ticker)

Given its massive deficits and overseas military adventures, America today is similar to the Spanish Empire in the 17th century and Britain's in the 20th, he says. "Excessive debt is usually a predictor of subsequent trouble."

Putting a finer point on it, Ferguson says America today is comparable to Britain circa 1900: a dominant empire underestimating the rise of a new power. In Britain's case back then it was Germany; in America's case today, it's China.

Jeg har gjentatte ganger forsøkt å finne igjen en Spiegel-artikkel om... jeg er overbevist om at det var Scrõder på statsbesøk i Kina... uten hell... IIRC så var en av de tingene kineserne & Schrõder diskuterte hvor lik Kinas situasjon var Tysklands i begynnelsen av forrige århundre, og hvordan kineserne bevisst forsøkte å unngå å gjenta Tysklands feil.

Kvalitet og kvantitet

I forrige post stilte jeg spørsmålet "Men hvordan [stoppe avskoging/starte reskoging] i praksis uten færre mennesker og/eller mer konsentrerte energikilder?"

Dette er kjernen i problemet. Fornybar energi har et mye større "fotavtrykk" enn fossile brensler; den er mye mer diffus og krever større arealer for å gi samme utbytte. Operasjoner som oljesandutvinning i Canada har et stort fotavtrykk; men å skaffe samme mengden drivstoff fra palmeolje har et mye større et...

Renewable energy is a popular concept, but there is a certain irony in this. Although environmentalists are quick to blame industry and fossil fuels, the environmental damage done to the world is only partly from industrial sources. The energy used in the industrial world is principally of high quality. It works in a focused fashion with concentrated side effects. In contrast, low-gain agriculture, a highly dispersed activity, is causing a substantial loss of species as well as environmental degradation. The distributed nature of agriculture means that habitat is removed and landscapes are greatly altered. Increased flooding, soil loss, and nonpoint sources of pollution are to a large extent caused by agriculture, as exemplified by the flooding of the Mississippi River in 1993 and the Ohio River in 1997. Although some observers criticize the environmental effects of agribusiness, Third World peasants at their present population levels have an aggregate effect that is substantial, and perhaps comparable. Similarly, the environmental impact of ants that use droppings is minimal compared to those that strip leaves from plants. The former are not considered agricultural pests, whereas the latter are. Environmental degradation is greater when the resource is of low quality and distributed but heavily used. Thus, a switch to renewable energy sources might bring, ironically, environmental damage comparable in scale to, or greater than, that caused by the use of fossil fuels. It is also ironic that, although industrialists have not rushed to embrace renewable energy sources, great profits would be made from building the infrastructure needed to capture and concentrate renewable resources. Politicians would be influenced less by road builders and more by businesses that recreate coastlines for wave capture and cover huge tracts of land with solar collectors or wind generators.

fra Resource Transitions and Energy Gain: Contexts of Organization (Tainter, Allen, Little, Hoekstra/Ecology and Society)(min uthevelse)

David MacKays "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" er en strålende intuisjonsbyggende øvelse i hvordan dette ser ut i praksis. Ved hjelp av det han kaller "guerilla physics" - enkle overslag som enhver kan gjøre og forstå - gir han en god forståelse av størrelsen på utfordringen. (Urk... elendig setning. Pretensiøs formel-anmeldelse. Jeg gremmes. Men uansett, boka er veldig bra -- bør leses i filler av enhver journalist som skal skrive om energi...) Konklusjonen for UK blir "the UK's present lifestyle can't be sustained on the UK's own renewables (except with the industrialization of country-sized areas of land and sea)" (s. 114).

Interessant for min del er at han fremhever ca. de samme løsningene som Lillestøl: CSP og kjernekraft.

Så jeg går litt i sirkler... Eller i spiral, iom at jeg er over samme punktet nå som for et år siden, men forhåpentligvis på et høyere nivå...

We're damned if we do and damned if we don't. Utbygging av en energikilde som er mer konsentrert og rikelig enn fossile brensler kan, dersom den gjøres tilgjengelig for verdens fattige, bremse/reversere nedhugging av regnskoger og overutbytting (tenk saiga, eller se her (via Desdemona D.)... jeg kan ikke se at en fullstendig rasering av verdens gjenværende skoger (og da tenker jeg ikke på norske granåkre) kan unngås på noen annen måte.

Men uten et omslag i holdninger, verdier, tenkemåte, vil det bare stimulere til vekst, mer industrialisering... større problemer på sikt.

Det hjelper ikke å bytte ut glødepærer med "sparepærer". Det som hjelper er et samfunn som dypt forakter individer som har uplights i hekken som lyser hele natta, hele året; kriminaliserer varmekabler i oppkjørselen; lar SUV-eiere og folk med mer enn to barn forsvinne i natt og tåke på Guantanomo Bay...

Mer fisk

Long time no blog... hoper seg opp med interessante ting som burde vært postet.

Først og fremst fisk og tilstanden i havene.

Problem 1: Forsuring.

Ocean acidification: impact on key organisms of oceanic fauna (Physorg.com)

Since 1800, one third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions has been absorbed by the oceans, corresponding to an annual uptake of one ton of CO2 per person. This massive absorption has allowed to partly mitigate climate change but it has also caused a major disruption to the chemistry of seawater.

Indeed, this absorbed CO2 causes an acidification of the oceans and, at the current rate of emissions, it is estimated that their pH will fall by 0.4 units between now and 2100. This corresponds to a 3-fold increase of the mean acidity of the oceans, which is unprecedented during the past 20 million years. The LOV team, led by Jean-Pierre Gattuso, studied the impact of such a reduction in pH on calcifying organisms. Pteropods (pelagic marine mollusks) and deep-water corals, both playing essential roles in their respective ecosystems, live in areas that will be among the first to be affected by ocean acidification.

The pteropod Limacina helicina thus has an important part to play in the food chain and functioning of the Arctic marine ecosystem. Its calcium carbonate shell provides vital protection. However, the LOV study has shown that the shell of this mollusk develops at a rate that is 30% slower when it is kept in seawater with the characteristics anticipated in 2100. An even more marked reduction (50%) has been measured in the cold-water coral Lophelia pertusa. While tropical coral reefs are built by a large number of species, coral communities in cold waters are constructed by one or two species but provide shelter for many others. A reduction in the growth of reef-building corals due to ocean acidification may therefore threaten the very existence of these biological structures.

These first results raise major concerns about the future of pteropods, deep-water corals and the organisms that depend on them for nutrition or habitat.

(fler saker om forsuring på Physorg; saker merket forsuring hos Desdemona Despair)

We will be billions of dollars poorer when coral dies (New Scientist)

To investigate the economic value of coral reefs further, Sukhdev and his colleagues reviewed 80 studies carried out between 1995 to 2009. Their work suggests that a single hectare of coral reef can be worth from $130,000 to $1.2 million a year.

However, discussing the economic value of coral reefs is like fiddling while Rome burns, says Sukhdev. "The entire ecosystem is on the point of collapse," he says. "Unless negotiators in Copenhagen [in Denmark, at the UN climate talks in December] agree to limit atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million, they will sentence the world's coral reefs to death."

Dette er forøvrig en god grunn til å ikke sette i gang rene nedkjølingstiltak som de som diskuteres f.eks her (Hubro) -- global oppvarming er bare ett av mange problemer (og IMO langt fra det største); å kjøle ned kloden uten å senke CO₂-nivåene er ikke mye til hjelp. Verd å merke hvordan alt henger sammen -- avskoging bidrar med nesten like mye CO₂ som fossile brensler; Sukhdev igjen: "The most cost-effective and easiest way to save our coral reefs is to reduce deforestation and boost reforestation". Men hvordan få til det i praksis uten færre mennesker og/eller mer konsentrerte energikilder?

Problem 2: Overfisking.

Turboevolusjon på norskekysten (Hubro)

- I landbruket tar de vare på genene til de beste dyra. I fiskeri er det omvendt, sier forsker ved Evolusjonær fiskeriøkologi (EvoFish) ved Institutt for biologi ved UiB, Mikko Heino.

[...]

Evolusjon er en langsom prosess. Avanserte livsformer forandrer seg ikke så raskt at man kan observere vesentlige endringer innen et tidsrom av en menneskealder. Slik har i alle fall den rådende oppfatning vært. Nå demrer det for forskere at det er nettopp dette som skjer, rett utenfor vår egen kystlinje. På trettitallet ble nemlig skreien kjønnsmoden i en alder av vel ni år. I dag modnes fisken etter kun seks til syv år. Den blir også vesentlig mindre i størrelse.

– Vi snakker om en vekstreduksjon på opp til 50 prosent, sier Mikko Heino. Han er overbevist om at disse endringene skyldes evolusjon – fremprovosert av tiår med industrielt fiske.

"Nå demrer det for forskerne" er typisk journalist-BS (som irriterer meg ikke så rent lite); det er flere år siden jeg leste første gang om forvaltere av sportsfiskeområder som tok denne effekten til etterretning: Dersom fisketrykket er høyt, må du, for unngå denne effekten med at fisken blir stadig mindre av genetiske årsaker, ha catch-and-release på store individer men fritt fiske på små; iaf strengere restriksjoner jo større fisk. Et system med "minstemål" som f.eks. OFA praktiserer kan være direkte skadelig (det ser heldigvis ut som dette er i ferd med å sive inn hos OFA også). Men at de nå kan dokumentere at fisketrykket er så stort at det påvirker skreiens genetikk, DET er nyheter.

Pescicid

Aquacalypse Now (Daniel Pauly / The New Republic)

Bra om overfisking av verdenshavene:

I myself was trained as a fisheries biologist in Germany, and, while they would dispute this, the agencies for which many of my former classmates work clearly have been captured by the industry they are supposed to regulate. Thus, there are fisheries scientists who, for example, write that cod have “recovered” or even “doubled” their numbers when, in fact, they have increased merely from 1 percent to 2 percent of their original abundance in the 1950s.

Yet, despite their different interests and priorities--and despite their disagreements on the “end of fish”--marine ecologists and fisheries scientists both want there to be more fish in the oceans. Partly, this is because both are scientists, who are expected to concede when confronted with strong evidence. And, in the case of fisheries, as with global warming, the evidence is overwhelming: Stocks are declining in most parts of the world. And, ultimately, the important rift is not between these two groups of scientists, but between the public, which owns the sea’s resources, and the fishing-industrial complex, which needs fresh capital for its Ponzi scheme. The difficulty lies in forcing the fishing-industrial complex to catch fewer fish so that populations can rebuild.

It is essential that we do so as quickly as possible because the consequences of an end to fish are frightful.

Kjell Inge Røkke hører hjemme i fengsel, for "pescicid" elns. Ikke et hår bedre enn democid i mine øyne; sluttresultatet er mye av det samme, bare oppnådd via omveie isf direkte.