Hansen explains a decade of flat temperatures

[Nederland]

Hansen explains why he believes temperatures have been flat for the last decade. I was surprised to hear him address the issue of sunspots given the association with climate deniers. Glad to see him looking at forcings other than CO2 as well--particularly black carbon.

All in all an interesting read.

<snip>

Global Warming Standstill. The 5-year running mean of global temperature has been flat for the past decade. It should be noted that the "standstill" temperature is at a much higher level than existed at any year in the prior decade except for the single year 1998, which had the strongest El Nino of the century. However, the standstill has led to a widespread assertion that "global warming has stopped". Examination of this matter requires consideration of the principal climate forcing mechanisms that can drive climate change and the effects of stochastic (unforced) climate variability.

The climate forcing most often cited as a likely natural cause of global temperature change is solar variability. The sun's irradiance began to be measured precisely from satellites in the late 1970s, thus quantifying well the variation of solar energy reaching Earth (Fig. 4). The irradiance change associated with the 10-13 year sunspot cycle is about 0.1%. Given the ~240 W/m2 of solar energy absorbed by Earth, this solar cycle variation is about 1/4 W/m2 averaged over the planet. Although it is too early to know whether the maximum of the present solar cycle has been reached, the recent prolonged solar minimum assures that there is a recent downward trend in decadal solar irradiance, which may be a decrease of the order of 0.1 W/m2. Although several hypotheses have been made for how the solar irradiance variations could be magnified by indirect effects, no convincing confirmation of indirect forcings has been found except for a very small amplifying effect via changes of stratospheric ozone.

<snip>



http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130115_Temperature2012.pdf

[Viking12]

1. Yeah, because he's never discussed TSI or Black Carbon before...

WTF?

[Nederland]

2. True

I think his position on black carbon has evolved over the last 20 years though. In the past I think he dismissed its importance relative to CO2, but now I think he believes it might be almost as important.

As for TSI, the denier claim that changes in solar activity were responsible for climate change has been ridiculed for a very long time...

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

[Viking12]

4. You thought wrong. As usual.

Hansen has been arguing that we should address black carbon first as a low hanging fruit for well over a decade.

You do realize that the Skeptical Science discussion and Hansen's discussion of TSI are exactly the same, right? That neither have ever dismissed the influence of the sun? The idea that solar activity is responsible for any significant part of the 50-year warming has been ridiculed as it should be. You should be ridiculed, too, for the lack of veracity in your posts.

[Nederland]

5. What is your prediction?

What do you think will happen to global temperatures over the next 5-10 years?

[Viking12]

8. There's too much noise in the system to make an accurate short-term predicition.

Over longer periods, the signal will emerge and it is clearly going to continue to rise.

[Nederland]

9. Very convenient

You have a theory that predicts doom for the human race but is completely unverifiable within the time frame needed to do something about it.

[Viking12]

10. So you don't know anything about stats or models

Yet you continue to spout your nonsense.

[Nederland]

11. Apparently I understand them better than you

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/what-the-ipcc-models-really-say/

[Viking12]

15. In what way, Charlie?

Please proceed.


[font size="1"]pssstt, your link says exactly the same thing that I did: "short term analysis of the data can be misleading"

Why are you so dishonest?[/font]

[Nederland]

16. In pretty much everyway possible apparently

If you can't understand why the link I posted is relevant to why I asked for your 5-10 year prediction, apparently I'm dealing with a person that lacks the intelligence to understand the subject at hand.

[Viking12]

22. LOL

[Nederland]

24. Guess I was right

You don't have a clue do you?

[joshcryer]

18. Shit's going to get real.

Good enough for you?

What's your insight?

[Nederland]

25. A bit vague don't you think? nt

[joshcryer]

26. Do you not know what "going to get real" means?

[Nederland]

29. Things are already "real" Josh

I can only assume that you think at some point in the future things are going to "get" real because right now you are living in a fantasy world.

You've been saying "its worse than we thought" for several years now. When things don't turn out to be "worse than we thought", I wonder what you'll do. Will you admit you were wrong, or just count on the fact that you've always been incredibly vague about what you mean to spin things to look like you were right after all?

[joshcryer]

34. I will be pleasently surprised if things turn out OK.

But to say that "going to get real" is anything but a hard position is a joke.

It's clear from your statements that you don't think things will go sour.

We'll see. It's an easily tested position.

[NoOneMan]

35. We don't even need climate change for things to not be "ok"

We are all so far past the point of being sustainable and resilient that an extensive, cyclic, long-term drought would be bad enough (oh yeah, it looks like thats in the pipeline).

I don't understand how anyone would think the century ahead promises any more cheerfulness than the past few. Add in climate change to the equation and, well, things are going to get real

[NoOneMan]

3. So is every El Nino cycle going to crush us?

Will this be the unfolding pattern of climate change? El Nino will cause rapid spikes, while La Nina causes temperature stabilization until the next oscillation? Will the oscillations become more pronounce (which would explain the magnitude of 1998) and cause very rapid rises all at once?

[Nederland]

6. All good questions

I have no idea. I don't think anyone does. I think the message here is that we really don't understand climate well enough at this point to predict what the climate will look like 20 years from now, let alone 100 years from now.

[NoOneMan]

7. Or even 5 years

El Nino + Permafrost thawing + Accelerated deforestation + Ocean acidification....

[hatrack]

12. All-time record low Arctic sea ice volume, all-time record low Arctic sea ice extent . . .

Record Lower 48 temperature records, record Australian temperature records . . .

By all means, let's wait to "conclude the experiment" before rushing to conclusions.

Even better, let's wait until our understanding of the climate allows us to operate modeling software accurate through multiple lifetimes of the universe down to centimeter-scale surface temperature prediction.

Then, and only then, should we do anything drastic.

[NoOneMan]

14. To do that, we will need a computer the size of North America

And hey, by the time we finish that, no one may be living there anymore

[joshcryer]

19. Joe?

[kestrel91316]

27. We understand climate VERY well. You, OTOH,

are being deliberately obtuse just like all other deniers.

[Nederland]

28. You are clueless

Tell me, if we understand climate so well, how come the different computer models don't all produce the same output?

[NickB79]

40. Really? That's the best you can come up with?

All the computer models ARE predicting the same output: a steady warming trend over the next century. The only debate left is HOW warm it's going to get. Your own graph shows that EVERY model shows AT LEAST 2.5C of warming; the most pessimist ones show 5C of warming. The fact that eight different computer models, run over a CENTURY of possible permutations, all come within 2.5C of each other is nothing short of amazing. Out to 2050, they only deviate by 1C.

On the other hand, can you show us one, just one, computer model that doesn't show a steady warming trend to 2100? Or one that shows a cooling trend? Take all the time you want to find one of those from a reputable source.

[Nederland]

42. Some models show twice as much warming as others

You think that is indicative of a mature science? Please. Ask ten different astronomers when and where the first full solar eclipse will be after 2100 and they will all give you answers that are the same within a second or two. That is what a well understood area of science looks like. More importantly, you seem to think that it doesn't matter if the models differ by 2.5 degrees. It does. The proper course of action to take if we can expect 2.5C of warming is very different than the one you should take if we are looking at 5 or 6 degrees.

[NickB79]

50. We're not even taking action to address a possible 2.5C of warming

In fact, NO course of action is being taken right now, except to build out more and more coal and gas infrastructure every year.

We're the equivalent of someone who's smoked 2 packs a day for years, and now has multiple doctors telling him he has lung cancer. One has told him he will only live a year, another 2 years, and yet another 3 years without going on immediate chemo, radiation and surgery.

The cancer patient's response so far has been to say fuck it, let's smoke 3 packs a day instead because "the cancer science isn't clear, mature field" since no doctor can tell him exactly how long he'll live down to the minute and second.

[CRH]

13. Don't forget to re read, the final three paragraphs, ...

of the summary.

snip


Climate Change Expectations. It is relevant to comment on expectations about near-term
climate change, especially because it seems likely that solar irradiance observations are in the process of confirming that solar irradiance has weakened modestly over the latest solar cycle. If solar irradiance were the dominant drive of climate change that most global warming contrarians believe, then a global cooling trend might be expected.

On the contrary, however, the continuing planetary energy imbalance and the rapid increase of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use assure that global warming will continue on decadal time scales. Moreover, our interpretation of the larger role of unforced variability in temperature change of the past decade, suggests that global temperature will rise significantly in the next few years as the tropics moves inevitably into the next El Nino phase.

The one major wild card in projections of future climate change is the unmeasured climate
forcing due to aerosol changes and their effects on clouds. Anecdotal information indicates that particulate air pollution has increased in regions with increasing coal burning, but assessment of the climate forcing requires global measurement of detailed physical properties of the aerosols. The one satellite mission that was capable of making measurements with the required detail and accuracy was lost via a launch failure, and as yet there are no plans for a replacement mission with the needed capabilities.4

end

And then there is the final sentence of the OP.

snip

Although several hypotheses have been made for how the solar irradiance variations could be magnified by indirect effects, no convincing confirmation of indirect forcings has been found except for a very small amplifying effect via changes of stratospheric ozone.

end

[Nederland]

17. Good catch

Moreover, our interpretation of the larger role of unforced variability in temperature change of the past decade, suggests that global temperature will rise significantly in the next few years as the tropics moves inevitably into the next El Nino phase.

Basically this is a testable short/medium term hypothesis. If temperature does NOT rise significantly (I wish he would define that term a little more precisely) in the next few years Hansen will have to admit he was wrong. Time will tell.

[joshcryer]

20. Time always tells.

Just give it a little more time, said the piggy.

[CRH]

21. I don't think much is testable on the short/medium term, ...

The earth system is complex, large variations in temperature and atmosphere occur over centuries and millenniums not generally decades.

Looking for exact cause and effect relations by parsing the the whole earth system into parts our limited knowledge can understand, will inevitably lead to conclusions from incomplete data. An illustration of this follows.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/18/1179915/-The-Strange-Failed-El-Nino-the-Deepening-Drought-Disaster

The Strange Failed El Niño & the Deepening Drought Disaster

Following two years of cold water in the equatorial Pacific ocean, the next year is almost always a warm, El Niño event. Not this time. A weak surge of warm water along the west coast of the Americas this fall relieved the build up of warm water in the western Pacific then the incipient El Niño failed. Strong tropical atmospheric convection in the Indonesian region, driven by exceptionally high sea surface temperatures there, kept the incipient El Niño from intensifying. Tropical air that rises up in monsoonal rains over Indonesia sinks in the subtropics over the eastern Pacific ocean. This convection cell is one of the processes that creates the east Pacific high, the high pressure area that keeps California dry in the summer. Over the past six months, extraordinarily warm water in the Indian ocean kept the monsoonal convection from moving towards the central Pacific ocean, preventing the development of El Niño. The east Pacific high did not break down despite the brief surge of warm water along the equator. Now the water is cooling and the east Pacific high is reintensifying, strengthening the grip of drought across the southwest and southern plains. The consequences are disastrous.

end

The fact that weather patterns all over the globe are changing, and prediction is increasingly less possible, in itself illustrates effect, of a warming planet. An individual's selection of data, does not invalidate the concept, only limits the perception.

Many of us believe, the earth is a complex system, not predictable by the cause and effect relations of select systems. When currents change one place the effects can be observed in many unpredictable manifestations and locations. Sometimes the effects might not be observable for decades or centuries.

An example, is the heat that is melting the planet's ice is not being completely registered at this moment in the land based temperature measurements, and not completely in the water temperatures. However the full effect of the heat responsible will be realized after the melt when both water and land temperatures will surpass the thermal inertia and rise more rapidly. It is easy to say the seas have warmed very little, but much of the temperature is masked in the process of the melt. Physics guarantees the full effect though delayed, will be felt later.

So if you want a near immediate effect, (in terms of earth cycles), to prove or disprove a hypothesis, you are sure to be disappointed.

[jpak]

23. Deniers suck

yup

[GliderGuider]

31. RW memes find fertile mental soil everywhere.

Not sure why, but they do. Yes, it sucks.

[GliderGuider]

30. Hmmmm

From the paper:

[CRH]

32. Hey Glider, try not to confuse him with facts, ...

especially from his own OP. It seems to send him on a tangent of illogic.

[GliderGuider]

33. Oops!

Yeah, sorry.

[Nederland]

36. Yeah, I noticed that cherry pick too

Let's count the ways...

1) Picking an unsually cold period of 1951-1980 as a baseline.
2) Picking June-July-August instead of the whole year to get rid of those record cold winters.
3) Picking land masses only, because the ocean, which is larger and more important to shaping climate, wasn't as warm.
4) Picking the Northern Hemisphere, well, because it helps.

It's easy to prove a point when you make arbitrary choices like those...

[GliderGuider]

37. What record cold winters?

You mean these ones?

[NoOneMan]

38. To be fair...

You can prove anything with facts.

[GliderGuider]

39. .

[Nederland]

41. Another cherry pick?

Please GG, did you really think I wouldn't notice the graph only looks at the lower 48 states? I doesn't even include your beloved Canada. You do know what the 'G' in AGW stands for, don't you?

I'm talking about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_2012_European_cold_wave

The honest thing to do is to look at records for the entire globe over the entire year. Anything else is a cherry pick. When you do that, you will find that the world is getting hotter, its just not as dramatic a picture as when you carefully chose your months and area. And you doomers really need that drama don't you? Can't accomplish decent fund raising numbers without it...

[GliderGuider]

44. So you're saying that the European cold snap is significant, but the American heat isn't?

That's not very global of you.

[Nederland]

47. That is not what I said

What I said was this:

The honest thing to do is to look at records for the entire globe over the entire year. Anything else is a cherry pick.

Oh, and you shouldn't post a graph that drops off the last 7 years to avoid showing how temperatures have leveled off.

[GliderGuider]

43. After all this, I'm still not sure what your point is.

Something has you indignant, but you're not being very clear about what it is. Do you think GW is happening or not? If so do you think we should be doing anything about it or not? If so, do you think action is urgent or not? Or is something else putting a burr under your saddle blanket?

It's hard to know what to say to you unless we know what you're trying to say to us.

[Viking12]

45. His point? F.U.D.

[Nederland]

46. The point is that we don't understand climate very well yet

Yes, the world is warming because of CO2 increases. However, we do not understand climate well enough to know how much warming we will see. People around here seem to think that it doesn't matter how much warming there will be, but it does. If we are only going to see 1.0C of warming, the impact is not great enough to justify spending hundreds of billions of dollars on proposals to reduce CO2. If the increase is 2.0 or 3.0C of warming, it might be worth spending that kind of money. If the increases are anything over 5.0C, any action we take to reduce CO2 is pointless--you might as well start building levies and moving cities further inland.

In contrast, if you say we need to get off of fossil fuels for other reasons--the environmental impact of ocean oil spills and tar sands oil. environmental and social impacts of mountain top removal coal mining, the deaths from air pollution from burning coal, the thousands of lives and trillions of dollars spent on military adventures in the Middle East, etc.--you have a much stronger case for action. Simply put, citing global warming as a reason to end fossil fuel use is idiotic. There are too many unknowns, the most severe impacts will not be felt for many years still, and plenty of better reasons like those I've cited above are available.

[GliderGuider]

48. The Precautionary Principle is for the faint of heart and the weak in spirit, then?

[Nederland]

53. The Precautionary Principle is Useless

unless you assume that global warming is the only problem humanity faces or that we have infinite resources to apply to our problems.

[GliderGuider]

54. How many other potentially existential problems does humanity face?

And what is civilization worth to us?

Addressing this one, at least in the short run, doesn't even cost us anything. It simply requires that we stop growing.

[Nederland]

56. Several

First of all, no credible scientist and no peer reviewed literature calls AGW an "existential problem".

But to answer your question, there is an entire Wikipedia page on the various threats to human existence. Yes, AGW is on the page, but here are a few others:

1) Peak Oil
2) Asteroid Impact
3) Overpopulation
4) War (nuclear, biological)
5) Nanotechnology (grey goo)
6) Artificial intelligence
7) Alien invasion
8) Antibiotic resistance
9) Geomagnetic reversal

I'm sure all the different groups of people that have their own pet doomsday scenario all have plans describing what we should do to prevent these things. Many of these plans, like plans to deal with peak oil or an asteroid impact, are just as costly as AGW. You don't have the resources to apply the Precautionary Principle to every one of them, so how do you choose what to do?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risks_to_civilization,_humans,_and_planet_Earth

[GliderGuider]

63. Start by whittling away the problems we can do nothing about.

And also perhaps those that we don't understand well enough to tell if the risk is real or imagined. Start with a standard understanding of the nature of human beings and civilization.

When I apply this razor to your list, I'm left with Peak Oil, overpopulation, NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) warfare and antibiotic resistance - and possibly/probably global warming.

Now, put on the "energy glasses" supplied by the MPP and look again. The following items end up in the "can't do anything about it" bucket: Peak Oil, overpopulation and global warming.

This leaves NBC war and antibiotic resistance as the only threats from your list that are worth expending effort on. We understand them well enough to counter them, and we are fairly sure that conceivable human action can prevent them.

You may have noticed that my tune has changed a lot since earlier in this same thread. That's how fast this Max Power perspective can shift one's understanding of how the world works.

BTW: The reason the Montreal Protocol on ozone depletion worked but Kyoto on CO2 didn't is very simple when looked at this way. Montreal didn't significantly threaten the power dissipation of the global system, but Kyoto did. When seen through "energy glasses" it becomes transparently obvious.

[Viking12]

55. 3rd grade political science to go with 5th grade natural science

Not surprising

[Nederland]

57. 3rd grade political science?

I think you need to at least be a freshmen in college to understand why the Precautionary Principle is internally inconsistent. Perhaps that is why you fail to address the claim in a meaningful way.

[GliderGuider]

49. It's funny, because I truly believe that there's nothing we can do about it.

Perhaps the difference is that I say quite clearly that it's almost certainly a serious problem that will end up killing many/most of us.

On the other hand, I see your position as one of obfuscation - that since the models show different degrees of warming we shouldn't believe their fundamental message. Even worse, that we should wait until it's definitely too late before we decide to act, rather than take advantage of the uncertainty that remains. That's what comes across to me. I think it's a scurrilous position to take.

[Nederland]

58. I think you need to re-read my post

I am not suggesting that we do nothing. I am all for getting off of fossil fuels, I just think that recent history has shown rather definitively that using AGW as your reason for doing so is a futile effort. Given a 20 year track record of failure, why not try a different tactic? Getting us off fossil fuels, regardless of the reason given, will lower CO2 emissions, so why the opposition?

[GliderGuider]

59. I think that the global "we" can do nothing about either FF or AGW.

IMO it's not a case of the world not choosing to get off fossil fuels. I'm coming to believe quite strongly that because of the way self-organizing systems operate under the Maximum Power Principle, that it's actually impossible for us to stop using fossil fuels so long as they are available.

When seen through the "energy lens" of the MPP, it becomes instantly apparent why energy efficiency and renewable power can't address the fundamental problem of climate change - and even why can't be constrained, and why population growth can be slowed but not stopped. This growth is made inevitable by the MPP - the urge to grow through the use of energy is effectively "built into" the system by the very nature of the system itself.

I know this flies in the face of the commonly held belief that we are rational, volitional creatures capable of free choice, but the more I think about this the more it seems like a valid insight into the nature of civilization - especially where our use of energy - both historically and today - is concerned.

So if we actually can't get off fossil fuels, then rising global warming is a foregone conclusion.

You'll be seeing my commentary continue to change to accommodate this evolving viewpoint. The immediate impact is that I'm going to stop worrying about fossil fuels, climate change, energy consumption, renewable fuels, population growth, economic growth, consumption growth and all related issues. There isn't a blessed thing we can do to slow the bus, let alone stop it or turn it around.

[OKIsItJustMe]

60. How about, there isn’t /much/ the global “we” can do?

I understand your reasoning, but I don’t fully agree with it.

As fossil fuels continue to become scarce, their price will continue to go up. As the price continues to go up, the price of renewable sources will continue to decline. Inevitably, a certain amount will be left in the ground, simply because it is not economically attractive to produce it.

I think it is educational to see how quickly the US power grid is transitioning from coal to natural gas.

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/11/169153322/coal-loses-crown-as-king-of-power-generation

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Coal Loses Crown As King Of Power Generation[/font]

by Elizabeth Shogren
January 11, 2013 6:09 PM

[font size=3]Just a few years ago, Georgia Power generated nearly three-fourths of its electricity with coal. Last year, for the first time, natural gas edged out coal, and just this week the company announced plans to close 10 coal-fired power generators within the next few years.

…

If all goes as planned, within a few years only a third of the company's power plants will run on coal. The company has already built three new natural gas plants. It's expanding a nuclear plant and going bigger into solar and wind, Williams says.

The dramatic and swift shift away from coal at Georgia Power is part of a nationwide trend: After decades in which coal was king of electricity generation, natural gas is making a bid for the title. And it's scoring big, unexpected wins in places like Georgia, where coal was especially dominant.

…

The shift has come faster than many electricity companies expected. Every year, utilities tell the government which plants they plan to close over the coming decade. Over the course of one year, their estimates of how much coal generation they would retire nearly tripled.

…[/font][/font]

(Part of the reason for the shift has been government regulation.)

I think that as the economics shift to favor renewables, and (hopefully) as government regulation steps in, (the global) we will use less fossil fuels.

[GliderGuider]

61. The caveat is that systems use all "available" energy.

External factors will intervene to constrain growth or induce shrinkage. This is why production peaks are significant - they may provide Liebig Limits for a system that has grown around the availability of certain stocks, flows and types of energy. If that situation changes, the system will change as well.

Unfortunately, one of the characteristics of these types of systems seems to be that they will attempt to evade limits to their growth. This we get human actions like sanction-busting and waste-dumping as well as the effort to use any feasible energy source regardless of its EROI (e.g. low-quality coal) or the consequences of its use (like fracking). This has very negative implications for the state of the environment as we run into more and more of these limits with a growing population that wants to consume more and more.

[OKIsItJustMe]

62. Wait a second…

Surely, you must agree, a time will come when there are fossil fuels remaining in the Earth which are virtually impossible to produce.

As fossil fuels approach this horizon, financial costs will become prohibitive.

[GliderGuider]

64. Of course.

At that point (or some point before complete exhaustion), if replacement energy sources are not suitable in size or quality to sustain the system, the system will contract. If it's tightly coupled enough when the contraction begins, it may even crash.

ETA: what I'm saying is that the system dynamics may promote the continued use of FF past the point where it makes economic, energetic or environmental sense to do so.

[OKIsItJustMe]

65. Well, that’s already true

i.e. “system dynamics (have promoted) the continued use of FF past the point where it makes economic, energetic or environmental sense to do so.”

Producing “unconventional” fossil fuels (i.e. “tar sands,” “fracking,” deep sea drilling) these are all examples of desperate acts. e.g. It’s not that we couldn’t have gone after the tar sands before, it’s that it wasn’t economically attractive before.

The question in my mind is not whether we will phase out fossil fuel use, we certainly will ("If something cannot go on forever, it will stop," — Herbert Stein.) The only question in my mind is whether it will be soon enough to matter.

[GliderGuider]

66. Agree, partly.

We're certainly past the point where it makes environmental sense to do it. It still makes sense in economic terms, perhaps just because the ways we define concepts like money and economy are so malleable. As long as the EROEI remains over 5:1 (according to Charlie Hall) we're still good to go from a global energetic perspective. So we've only crossed one threshold of the three for sure.

We will pass all of them before we're done (in).

[Nederland]

67. No they don't

Last edited Fri Jan 25, 2013, 12:47 AM - Edit history (1)

The caveat is that systems use all "available" energy.

It uses only the energy that is cost effective. It is perfectly possible for us to harvest our forests and burn their wood for energy. We don't (anymore), because there are alternatives that are cheaper, plus a lot of people like our forests...

[NoOneMan]

68. I believe it is assumed that what is "available" is what makes sense to harvest

(Yeah, people don't always word things the best).

If you can't get back the energy you put into harvesting energy (or maybe even substantially more by some factor), its not "available"

[GliderGuider]

69. Yeah, that's what I meant by "available".

In a natural system it's energy that returns more energy than it takes to harvest. For instance, to a cheetah, a gazelle right in front of it at the beginning of the chase is available. A gazelle that's in front when the cheetah runs out of steam isn't.

To humans, "availability" has the added complication of economic cost, an obscurantist and almost infinitely malleable abstraction.

To be considered available to the system of civilization, energy must meet the criteria of being below economic, energetic (EROEI) and environmental thresholds. Fossil fuels have probably passed the environmental threshold if one thinks AGW constitutes such, but have not yet passed the economic or energetic thresholds. The cost of oil, coal and gas are still very affordable compared to their usefulness, and the EROEI is still well above the 5:1 "net energy cliff". Fossil fuels are still eminently available, and will continue to be used to expand the system power until they pass all three thresholds. There is as yet no system-level incentive to give them up.

[NoOneMan]

51. Itll cost too much, eh?

Its interesting to think that we cannot do anything that will threaten our accumulation of wealth, yet it is production that creates such wealth and environmental degradation (via energy consumption and resource extraction from natural systems).

Throttling production in itself would help, in regards to climate (by lowering emissions instantly), and its "costs" are simply foregoing on potential accumulation of wealth. We humans seem to think we are entitled to exploit to our maximum system's potential, or anything less is a "cost" or a dollar out of our pocket (yet the wealth doesn't exist in the first place until the production ensues). Pretending that throttling production has a "cost" is pretending--with entitlement--that this production we have a right to already exists and the wealth it generated is a tangible we are parting ways from; this is a fallacy (the same fallacy that drives the massive tar sands expansion when the oil doesn't need to be taken out immediately at the fastest rate).

How can we claim any monopoly on truth when out entire entitled civilization thinks that we "lose" whenever we are not destroying/exploiting/cultivating nature to our potential? Are we ever going to examine what we lose when we are producing at our maximum potential (like a viable ecosystem)?

This is really an absurd way to view reality. Again, I cannot help but believe that members of the industrial society must suffer from some form of psychosis that obscures basic, self-evident truth in favor of perceptions that benefit the larger system.

[GliderGuider]

52. It's not that we think we are entitled.

"We humans seem to think we are entitled to exploit to our maximum system's potential"

Most of the time we don't think about it at all. We don't need to, because it's built into the way self-organizing systems work. The winners among such systems are those that maximize the power and energy transformation of the system, and optimize the system efficiency to that end. We don't need to feel or think we're entitled, we just do it. Humans are the biggest wieners (sorry, winners) of all time.

It would take a lot to refrain consciously from maximizing the power of the self-organizing system known as GlobCiv 1.0. I'm frankly not even sure it can be done.