Amount of ice in Bering Sea reaches all-time record
The amount of floating ice in the Arctic's Bering Sea - which had long been expected to retreat disastrously by climate-Cassandra organisations such as Greenpeace - reached all-time record high levels last month, according to US researchers monitoring the area using satellites. The US National Snow and Ice Data Center announced …
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Re: How To Save 2000 Liters of Heating Oil Per Year
Heating up water to 80°C is not difficult if you use a parabolic trough, btw.
Plus, You can generate Electricity
..using a Stirling engine and a generator. It will work best during wintertime !
Re: How To Save 2000 Liters of Heating Oil Per Year
Brilliant
Now then,
My house is 4.2m wide by about 25m long so lets lose the width of 0.5m for the walls so I end up with
a tank of water 3.2m wide by 24m long... although that includes the garden so lets say the tank is going to be 19m long and I end up with a depth of 6.5m or there abouts
Lets change that into old money I basically need a hole dug under my house 21 feet deep, then lined with concrete and filled with water. then hope my house does'nt fall into it
Wheres the JCB icon ?
Re: How To Save 2000 Liters of Heating Oil Per Year
Rather more useful would be a smaller version. Two or three tons of water could easily be stored under many houses without the need for massive excavation and new foundations. Together with an intelligent distribution system this heat store could be used for load shedding, thus increasing the overall efficiency of electricity generation. Equally it might mop up some of the wasteful variability that wind energy is going to introduce.
Heat pumps are quite effective when the temperature difference is modest. A COP of 3 or 4 is easily possible and they are not that expensive. So combining a heat pump for heating and nuclear plant to make electricity can provide an efficient and inexpensive way to heat homes.
@Boris
I am telling you in confidence, it is a communist conspiracy. A plan to deprive the young western man of the opportunity to kill and be killed in Arabia.
It would utterly destroy the best of our civilisation - BP, BAE Systems, Shell and Lockheed.
@David
I know that not all houses do have a 50m^2 garden, which could be excavated. But there are also a lot of public areas (parks, parking spaces, schoolyards, office "view areas"), which could be used for hot water storage tanks.
Looking at modern construction sites, it appears as if they could easily dig ten meters deeper than they already do. Of course, exceptions apply (granite doesn't like to be digged).
My guess is that hot water will be a major component of electricity storage, as it is politically much more convenient than flooding nice-looking valleys for gravity-energy storage.
Finally, many ridiculous-sounding ideas will be much less ridiculous when 500 million Chinese people have the same wealth (and buy oil) as Europeans and Americans.
Re: How To Save 2000 Liters of Heating Oil Per Year
I have seen figures of 200w /m^2
Re: How To Save 2000 Liters of Heating Oil Per Year
50w / m^2 is the practically achievable average for Germany according to the national statistics office.
The discussion is beside the point
Alarmist environmentalist warnings/doomsday prophecies aren't doing any of us any good. In fact, their being proved wrong will just cause people to carry on as they were and forget about the whole 'environment thing' (cry wolf, anyone?).
On the other hand, sticking your head in the sand and ignoring everything isn't particularly helpful either.
And let's not get started on just obliterating anything and everything in your path to make the extra buck, errrr, sorry, make that increase shareholder value. Does anyone still believe that greed is good?
So where does all this leave us? You really don't need scientific proof to act in a fair, civilised and responsible way, and to have a little bit of solidarity between different parts of the world and between generations.
Actually, it's remarkably easy:
- Try not to buy stuff that has travelled halfway across the earth
- Eat locally produced food as much as possible
- Conserve energy on general principle; just don't waste it, is all
- Clean up after yourself
- Don't make the other parts of the world pay for your lifestyle
- Don't make future generations pay for your lifestyle: making a mess now and have your kids clean it up just isn't very nice
- Cheap flights ARE too good to be true
- ...
I'm sure that in any given situation anybody with half a mind can figure out what is the, or at least a, right way to act. Spotting what is most clearly wrong is even easier.
Everything has a price, and somebody somewhere is (or will be) paying it. The question is who, and is that right? The answers are there, but of course you have to want to know them.
Re: The discussion is beside the point
There you go spoiling a good slanging match by introducing a bit kill joy morality into the fire over what is exclusively a matter of individual self-interest, whether enlightened or not!
Who cares about the rest of the world? They are not on facebook.
Re: The discussion is beside the point
".....Does anyone still believe that greed is good?...." Yes. Greed is the underlying basic emotion behind all technical developments, either through the "we'll make some money out of this" to the "I'll make my and/or others' lives easier through this". Did you go to work today because you felt you were meeting some higher calling or because the pay means you can afford the rent, which means you have a nice place to live, nicer than you strictly require, with electricity and plumbed water, probably with a fridge and computer, when you could survive in a hut with a bucket,? How about the clothes you own, do you actually only have the minimum you require or is there environmental "guilt" lurking in your wardrobe? Think carefully about your own motivations in life.
When humans switched from hunting-gathering to farming it wasn't because they made an indepth study of the options and chose the one with a higher moral value, it was because greed drove them to producing more food in a controlled manner rather than having to chase it around. Greed invented the wheel - it gave us the ability to move things more easily so we could spend more time doing the other stuff we wanted to do. You have turned greed into a negative emotion, forgetting the fact that we are all just animals underneath, and without those base animal emotions (greed, lust, even sloth), we wouldn't have left the caveman stage of development. This push to label all human activity that produces advancements as guilt-laden is amusingly silly.
Then we get onto the real fun. I'm sorry, but I can't help but point out the sillyness in some of your well-meaning suggestions:
".... - Try not to buy stuff that has travelled halfway across the earth...." So, what about developing countries, which need to export stuff to us in the developed World to get the money to invest in such basics as healthcare and education? Without them being able to export to us, you condemn them to an awful live of poverty and disease for ever. Not very caring or at all admireable. What is your option, just aid packages? Aid packages do not spur development, they ensure dependency. Trade with other countries is also actually the best way to ensure good relations, as keeping resources from a nation can drive wars (consider the Japanese and their requirement for oil in 1941).
".....- Eat locally produced food as much as possible...." So what about Fairtrade products? Those come from abroad, and they directly support the development of poor farmers. Are you suggesting we ignore them, just cut those poorer nations adrift, so you can feel a bit better about eating "green"? Or is it only wrong if I buy food shipped from another developed country? Are you saying I shouldn't buy Greek produce to help the Greek people get out of there economic mess, you want me to deliberately turn my back on them as this is somehow morally "better"?
"....Spotting what is most clearly wrong is even easier....." Can I suggest you spend more time searching and less time regurgitating spoonfed ideals and soundbites.
Re: The discussion is beside the point
Human motivation is not at all about greed. To a point it is about enough to survive. After that point it is about being able to attract a mate. After that it is about being accepted by your chosen social circle. Humans are driven to feel useful and needed, that is as much as basis for working as any other. The unemployed suffer depression because they feel useless, not because they feel greedy.
Everything Libertarians think they understand about humans is an outgrowth of their own stunted personalities and lack of belonging in any meaningful sense. To them, money is all that can matter because money is all they can reliably gain and control.
More straw for Lewis, please.
The complaint is NOT that you characterise Greenpeace as hippies. Everybody knows that Greenpeace are hippies. The complaint is that you characterise the entire scientific community - the experts who almost unanimously support anthropogenic climate change - as hippies.
In fact, it's not really a complaint any more. People long ago stopped engaging you in anything like a debate. All you get now is burbling "hear hear" from the reactionary climate unaccepters* and outright derision from the scientists and humble lay people.
(* is that more tolerable than "deniers"? I don't want to set anybody's twisted knickers on fire)
Re: More straw for Lewis, please.
"(* is that more tolerable than "deniers"? I don't want to set anybody's twisted knickers on fire)"
Since it's obvious that the pros (Lewis, Andrew) are smart enough to know that what they are writing is shit the correct term is trolls. I'm buggered if I understand most of the commenters, I think they're probablyt just loonies.
Re: More straw for Lewis, please.
The point is you really can't tell. They're that bad going on past articles this may well be a serious piece. It's only marginally worse than other things they've printed before with straight faces.
reg-speak
from the source you are quoting (national snow and ice data centre) analysis on April 4th http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
"Ice extent in the Barents Sea remained well below normal. In both the Barents and Kara seas, temperatures remained above normal by 4 to 6 degrees Celsius (7 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit)."
which in reg-speak becomes
"all-time record high levels last month"
Oh dear, death by statistics
So on average we're the same re ice cover. Bad news for polar bears, good news for penguins! Averagely OK doesn't mean OK on average.
Don't quite get the logic here. Overall Arctic ice is down, but in one place it's up, which means that the doomsayers were full of it? Kind of like me turning on my shower and denying a drought because there's plenty of water in my bathromm isn't it?
Re: Oh dear, death by statistics
"....Kind of like me turning on my shower and denying a drought because there's plenty of water in my bathroom isn't it?" Ah, but is there a drought, or is it that the system of water provision that supplies your house cannot provide enough water without additonal cost? The planet's surface is approximately 71% covered in oceans and seas - there is more water than land, and definately more than enough water to supply all our needs, but only if we spend time and money on developing systems to supply clean water to all.
The current hosepipe bans in the South of the UK is because the water companies are worried that they cannot meet demand with the current system of resevoirs and pipes. There is more than enough water in the UK, it's just most of it is in Wales or Scotland., and we never developed a UK national system of pipes to distribute it. We could do so, it's just the cost would be prohibitive and there is little political will to mess with the privitised water companies. Other areas of the planet import all their water, examples being Los Vegas. We pipe oil across thousands of miles of desert and mountains, there is no real technological reason why we can't pipe water to the middle of the Sahara if required. There is just no political will to do so.
Similarly, all the people in the World could be crowded onto the Isle of Wight, making a mockery of the idea of over-population. It's just we like having a certain amount of resources each, such as space, but you want me to reduce my use of resources because you state that the current rate of use is unsustainable. You are refusing to consider that I could use alternative resources, or that your prediction of doom'n'gloom is wrong, you simply expect me to adjust my useage when you are unable to convince me that you are actually and undeniably correct in your predictions. When emprical evidence starts to poke holes in your predictions, telling me I just must believe is not helping. If there is a drought, it would seem to be in the ability of the AGW crowd to form a reasoned argument that stand up to scrutiny.
Re: Oh dear, death by statistics
You're not applying "scrutiny". The scrutiny is applied by other scientists (including those who did the work that Lewis has befuddled in this ridiculous article) and they overwhelmingly agree with AGW. What _you_ are doing is demanding impenetrable proof in order to obfuscate and procrastinate. It's an age old piece of sophistry that was perfected by the people who argued that smoking is harmless and extended to the absurd by Creationists. "Can't prove your argument 100%? Then I choose to believe an alternative that can't be proven even 1%."
(yes yes ... I know ... you're going to get all red-cheeked and indignant at yet another comparison to the tobacco lobby and fruitloop fundamentalists but I'm afraid the comparison is pretty water tight ... at least to the extent that nobody has yet demonstrated any definite holes in it)
(see what I did there?)
(probably not)
Re: Re: Oh dear, death by statistics
"....The scrutiny is applied by other scientists .... and they overwhelmingly agree with AGW...." Sorry, that bit of AGW bilge has long since been debunked. Especially when the IPCC was publishing reports with scientists' names on the reports that hadn't agreed to their use or the content, and then refusig to remove those names even when the scientists said they believed the complete opposite of the report contents! There are a massive number of scientists that DO NOT agree with the AGW screed, and that number seems to be growing daily, to the point where it looks more like the majority of scientists DISAGREE with the AGW schpiel. You really need to go watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle". The whole ice myth is mentioned one minute in.
Re: Re: Oh dear, death by statistics
"....The scrutiny is applied by other scientists .... and they overwhelmingly agree with AGW...." Sorry, that bit of AGW bilge has long since been debunked. Especially when the IPCC was publishing reports with scientists' names on the reports that hadn't agreed to their use or the content, and then refusig to remove those names even when the scientists said they believed the complete opposite of the report contents! There are a massive number of scientists that DO NOT agree with the AGW screed, and that number seems to be growing daily, to the point where it looks more like the majority of scientists DISAGREE with the AGW schpiel. You really need to go watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle". The whole ice myth is mentioned one minute in. Four minutes in we get the debunking of the "all scientists agree" crap. This isn't new, the documentary is years old, so it's even more embarassing for you to be trotting out the "scientists overwhelmingly agree" male bovine manure.
Re: Oh dear, death by statistics
@Matt Bryant
If I had a penny for every time I'd posted this ... I'd have three pennies.
From this review in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract
"Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers. "
You can call it bullshit if you like. You've got bald UPPER CASE assertions. I have published statistics. Bald assertions lose every single time.
Re: Oh dear, death by statistics
Bizzare. You claim the IPCC is "publishing reports with scientists names [...] that hadn't agreed to their use"(*) then you recommend that we watch "the Great Global Warming Swindle" that includes contributions from scientsts who complain that they were "completely misrepresented" by the program.
Projection?
((*) by the way, [citation needed]).
Re: Re: Oh dear, death by statistics
So, you mean the report that only asked the people that agreed with what the "researchers" wanted to hear? The "climate researchers most actively publishing" being the group with the most to gain (funding) from the maintaining the AGW myth? The grouping that neatly excludes all the other science groups with conflicting views, such as astronomers (global wobbles and ice ages didn't come from the AGW crowd)? Then yes, I call that bullshit, and it was being called just that years ago when "The Great Global Warming Swindle" came out. You obviously have not watched it, but then that's not surprising. I find most AGW alarmists just as unwilling to view anything that doesn't match their blinkered views.
Science brought you technology and awareness of anthromorphic climate change
These articles on Reg are a bit pathetic. Those who take an extreme side on any argument are rarely right. I mean, it's not as if the article is humorous? Maybe I'm wrong and other folk do find it funny?
Repeat after me:
Area does not equal volume.
Anyone who knows what they are talking about (and not deliberately trying to mislead people) will tell you that the important number is the volume of sea ice, no the area. As old, thick, sea ice breaks up under rising temperatures (fingers-in-the-ears-la-la-la-it's-not-happening aside), the smaller chunks spread out because ice floats. To illustrate this, imagine an average ice cube of 1 inch per side floating in a bath tub of ice-cold water. The 'area' of ice in this case is 1 square inch. Now smash the ice into chunks 1/10 of an inch across, and throw these into your bathtub. The 'area' is now 10 square inches.
A seasonal increase in new thin sea ice can be very misleading, as it all melts come the arctic summer, whereas old thick ice does not.
All in all, I have to say I am becoming very disillusioned with coverage of climate science by El Reg. Lewis clearly has some sort of agenda, as can be seen by his cherry-picking of fringe science and partial stories which appear superficially to support an argument against the existence of AGW. What is missing is any coverage of what is on the other side of the metaphorical balance, which is a mass of well researched correctly peer-reviewed hard science that he conveniently ignores because it does not fit. Who is paying you, Lewis? Cui bono?
From what you wrote
It sounds like the "record" ice didn't form there, it was all Arctic ice that just got jammed up for a bit on it's way past.
So if all that Arctic ice is just blowing away how is the ice level in the Arctic doing?
Lewis is only doing his job
Which is to get lots of eyeballs looking at ElReg and its comment pages, and while they're at it seeing all those lovely ads that decorate the pages. The more contentious the article the more comments there are which means more eyeballs.
Re: Lewis is only doing his job
Ads? there are ads on these pages? who knew?
(Noscript/adblock)
Re: Lewis is only doing his job
Exactly! What is even more fun is the trauma it seems to cause some of the posters here that they actually are expected to DEBATE the issues, rather than just have the sceptics accept their word as gospel. Sceptics usually share a common distrust of those that insist there must not be discussion, it makes them even more stubborn in their determination to find holes in the arguments being rammed down their throats. When the rammers get caught being economic with the truth (such as the IPCC shambles), it is siezed on by the scpetics as reason to look for more holes. But the really smart take advantage of both sides to sell advertising space by stoking the fires of debate.
Re: Lewis is only doing his job
Another clueless page from Lewis Page; I didn't even bother to read it and came straight to the comments; much more entertaining.
Re: Lewis is only doing his job
This is not the way to win friends and influence people. From the frame of mind I'm in when I read these articles advertisers would really not want their wares linked to such extremes of digust. Lets just say next time I see a HTC in another setting I'm likely to sneer without realising why :)
Snicker snicker guffaw
Hehehe ... this article was a hoot.
Hippies were/are right about most things
Don't be so quick to condemn the humble hippie.
It's a Lewis Page article, nothing to see here
1. The Bering Sea is a small sea. What's happening all over the Arctic? It's the aggregate that matters.
2. Sea ice, as in frozen sea, is irrelevant as regards global sea levels. On the other hand, if this ice came from glaciers, it is bad news. I imagine there's an Exxon-funded study somewhere which shows the rise in the land as the glaciers melt, due to reduced weight, will exactly cancel out the rise in sea level.
Re: It's a Lewis Page article, nothing to see here
You completely miss the whle point - is any decline in sea ice actually through man-made causes or simply part of natural warming outside our control? That is the real question. Simply saying "hey, the planet's warming up, it MUST be our fault!" without providing unequivical evidence is patently silly. And, no, you lot haven't even come close to anything like unequivical evidence.
Possible?
If we eliminated all the useless hot air generated by yakking on about climate change, might that reverse the effect?
So Lewis's argument seems to be: "There's more ice than normal in one quite specific location, therefore manmade climate change isn't happening".
He might as well say "It's cold at 2am, therefore the globe isn't heating up."
Please stop with this childish drivel.
I think not.
If you are going to make a prediction about "one small specific location", you'd better be prepared to receive the criticism when your prediction turns out to be crap.
Otherwise it seems you want it both ways: us to be scared and do something about each and every little prediction, whilst at the same time saying "well, it was only a little prediction of a tiny little piece of the Earth" then the prediction turns out to be false.
Re: I think not.
And which prediction are you referring to?
Article best summarised as:
"There's more ice than normal in one limited location, therefore hippies suck".
The Earth is warming
No one (at least no climate scientist) would deny that. It has not warmed in over 10 years, but that's a trifle of time. It has warmed since the turn of the century, for sure. There some graphs / science that suggest cooling for the next decade, but we will have to wait.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
A warming earth would mean less ice, but less ice does not support the case that humans are the cause for its loss.
Whether or not its CO2 is the cause of global warming is the issue. There are lots of reputable scientists who doubt the Anthropogenic cause of the warming. Nomenclature has now changed to be future proof: 'Global Warming' has been replaced by 'Climate Change'.
Even if CO2 is the cause of global warming, we have little control over it with existing technologies, other than nuclear power. No country, even Denmark, has made any real progress with renewable energy.
Re: The Earth is warming
"It" has not warmed in over 10 years? What is "it" then?
Earth has warmed statistically significantly in the last 10 years and the only graph deniers seem able to find not showing warming is a hacked up lower atmosphere temp records being pushed through models designed to plot earth and sea temps as well as atmosphere temps.
When you include all required measurements (land, ocean, air) warming is incontrovertible.
I think from the number of trite phrases cobbled together to form one meaningless whole this again has to be a troll.
Re: The Earth is warming
Denmark is a particularly amusing case of "greenness". Denmark wants to have "renewable energy", but not nasty and polluting gas/coal/nukes. Their problem is they can't produce enough energy from windfarms and the like, so the use "biomass-powered stations". When a hippy gives you that one, prod them into admitting what a "biomass-powered station" is - it's BURNING waste. And yes, that burning of waste is DIRTIER than modern gas-burning stations.....
Re: The Earth is warming
the danish have the most windmills, the most pollution for energy production due to non-existant storage, and some of the highest energy prices...
Denmark is the perfect example of the complete failure of wind (and thus even more solar) on bigger scale (over 5%)
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/10/22/denmark-wind-experiment-awry/
Record Amount
My Bank account has a record amount in it too..
But did you mean Record "large" amount or record "small" amount... Only had to read half the story to find out.. grrr. down vote story..
FYI...
As far as I can find, absolutely *none* of the mainstream media have covered the report issued by the (UK) Met Office last week, "Industrial pollution linked to 'natural' disasters" (full report published in 'Nature', as "Aerosols implicated as a prime driver of twentieth-century North Atlantic climate variability").
Quote from one of the authors :
"Until now, no-one has been able to demonstrate a physical link to what is causing these observed Atlantic Ocean fluctuations, so it was assumed they must be caused by natural variability.
"Our research implies that far from being natural, these changes could have been largely driven by dirty pollution and volcanoes. If so, this means a number of natural disasters linked to these ocean fluctuations, such as persistent African drought during the 1970's and 80's, may not be so natural after all.
...When industrial pollution peaked over the Atlantic, this effect played a big role in cooling the ocean beneath; as pollution was cleaned up - for example after the clean air legislation of the 90's - the seas warmed."
But then the Met Office are obviously such a bunch of HIPPIES...and obviously *we* couldn't possibly be responsible for droughts that killed millions of people... that would be too much for *some people* to accept.
Where did the hand grenade icon go, cos that's what I'd like to do to climate change deniers.
Re: FYI...
Well Jim, one study issued by a body that has a direct £250m per year interest in maintaining the fraud is not something I would give much weight to when coming to a view. It's almost certainly based on "model" output, so it is by definition a complete fantasy.
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