to be sceptical about man made climate change

[Brioche201]

.. to a layperson like myself the evidence does not seem robust (record antarctic ice caps) .Even if it were true 'the climate' is such a complicated thing affected by thousands of factors.Is it likely that changing just one or 2 of the factors that are within out control would make a difference (or even that the difference would be in the right direction)
Do you still believe in man made climate change or think it is mainly rooted in politics?

But, if it makes you feel better, carry on arguing over the cause - and ignore the fact I agreed we should be doing something. The thing is, if you remove the "man made" from the mix, you end up with quite a different list of things you could do. None of which has the potential to gouge the taxpayer quite as much

And your second sentence shows the reason the first sentence -understanding the cause - happens. Because if there is escalating human impact on the climate, you need mitigation alongside adaptation. Adaptation is vital regardless of the cause.

Neolithic man had a neat line in clearing forests for crops - by burning them. Thousands of square miles in a few centuries.

The Roman occupation of Britain saw a massive deforestation for building and fuel.

Bulldozers are so much more efficient, aren't they?

Jassy - the Norwegian interconnector will only export significant electric in summer when the Norwegian ice is melting. In the winter there is a shortage of electric in Norway and its price is very high. Indeed in winter the UK will likely be exporting electric to Norway (eg in the early morning in winter when Norsk Hydro dams are frozen solid). It could make our electric prices very high in winter. Sadly the Norwegans have plenty of water at low prices in summer when our demand for electricity is also very low. There will be some benefit at certain times but the electric will flow to Norway as much as it flows to the UK depending on the relative price difference of wholesale electric on the UK and Nordpool grids.

The huge gas pipeline form Norway will be a much better prospect for supplying cheap, clean and secure electricity for the UK.

Jassy where did I say reserves have to be provided by fossil fuel power stations? Nuclear would be the optimal source.

However, by making people believe it's man made, I suspect we are engineering a future where people who become disadvantaged by climate change will be portrayed as somehow "deserving it" because they "didn't try hard enough". Which sounds suspiciously close to "the plague happened because we didn't pray hard enough".

Not sure how that works.
The people who will be most disadvantaged are those already living in precarious conditions, with the lowest incomes. When it's people living in countries with the highest incomes who have mostly driven rapid climate change.

By raising the alert that the current rapid climate change is mostly human driven, the objective is so that authorities and international agencies can work to reduce the impact of human activity on the climate and better prepare for the consequences.

Even if it's not human driven, there are several side benefits to preparing for climate and environmental changes and to reduce emissions, and to replace fossil fuels as main sources of energy

Jassy where did I say reserves have to be provided by fossil fuel power stations? Nuclear would be the optimal source

Squirrel, others were lecturing Cote that renewables meant fossil fuel backup. I should have been clear that you weren't suggesting that, but I took your comment as part of that group of comments rather than individually. Sorry.

Free, you've nicely exemplified my point about diverse sources of supply improving our energy security. Many thanks.

On gas - we need it for the next 15-20 years. Even so, I'm not wild about where some of Europe gets its gas in terms of political stability and international relations, even without the carbon impact. The current wholesale price is far from a given.

Jassey - nuclear does not provide backup to renewables. Nuclear runs on baseload mode at full capacity at all times. The backup has to be flexible and able to switch on and off quickly. That means fossil fuel generators (or pump storage if the lake behind the dam is full enough).

Until gas runs out.

When I worked for a major energy company in the 1980s, some of the (very) senior scientists used to visit Russia a lot. (The UK being a world leader in certain technologies around energy distribution).

They reported that there was a view amongst Russian scientists that there was far more methane in the earth than anyone thought. This was to an air of superciliousness from "real" scientists.

I've always wondered about that incident, especially when shale gas became extant.

Russian science can be a tad weird, but occasionally hit the mark (although a stopped clock etc).

Anyway, the Paris lovefest was predictably anodyne, so not of much interest. Of far more interest (but much less newsworthy) was this. You're best reading it on this site as the BBC (as per usual) managed to cock up some of the figures.

For my money, fusion is more an engineering challenge than a scientific one - much like the Apollo missions.

Load following plants are almost never on/off. In the case of a true predicted shortfall, load followers scale up their generation. Baseload is relevant as most systems have margin built in for problems (lack of wind, a nuclear plant going offline, a fire at a coal or gas plant). Ours is currently poor but even so NISMs are incredibly rare. Baseload takes care of times of low wind etc, which was what people were talking about in relation to Cote's situation.

Fossil fuels are not the sole load followers. And I'm not aware of any system in the world that backs up 100% of its intermittent renewables with load followers.

They reported that there was a view amongst Russian scientists that there was far more methane in the earth than anyone thought

So, we're not listening to 97% of scientists on climate science, but we're listening to Russian scientists with a clear interest at play on methane stocks?

Ah, logic.

Methane itself is bad news (around 20 times the greenhouse effect of CO2 IIRC) - but burning the stuff to CO2) is thus a better idea than just releasing it (by, say, warming things up enough to free a mass of it from permafrost or clathrates).

It's also a (somewhat) better bet than coal because you get the energy release from burning both C and H.

Ignite those cow farts.

Ignore my random brackets. I do.

Jassey - by definition a baseload plant is running at full capacity all the time. That is why it is baseload. There is no extra baseload capacity available to meet demand when the wind drops. Its the marginal coal and gas plants that step up production to meet the shortfall in generation. By definition they have spare capacity.

Yes I am aware they don't switch on/off. They are often running part loaded which is even worse as it is very inefficient to run a power station that way.

Renewables, especially wind have put intolerable strain on the UK grid and its even worse in Europe. When Danish wind farms are running at full capacity the supply can exceed Danish demand and the excess power floods across the interconnectors onto the North German grid. The German coal stations take the brunt of the uncontrolled flow by backing down their turbines and then ramping them again when the wind drops or Danish demand picks up. It is a massive problem and causes huge inefficiency and grid instability. The CO2 emissions saved by wind turbines are really much smaller than people believe.

Plain fact is wind and some other renewables are intermittent and even when they do run a coal or gas plant somewhere is on, fully synchronised waiting as backup, possibly running part loaded at a far lower thermal efficiency than it would on full load.

FreeWorker - "In fact you clearly don't understand how electric works"

LOL. I do know how "electric" [sic] works, actually, having had the benefit of a science education AND worked as utilities industry analyst for quite a few years.

But don't let facts get in the way of a good rant

Egosumquisum

Methane generates CO2. CO2 contributes to climate change. Let's see if we can speed it up, shall we

Think what you want. If a huge source of methane - available at the same or lower cost were discovered tomorrow, then any deals done this weekend are history..

JassyRadlett

So, we're not listening to 97% of scientists on climate science, but we're listening to Russian scientists with a clear interest at play on methane stocks?

I can't speak for who you are listening to. And I didn't say I was listening to Russian scientists either.

The point I was making was (a) there's a slight whiff of deja vu about fossil fuels scarcity, and (b) sometimes "unorthodox" science can actually be proven. Anyone who has had a stomach ulcer cured should remember that 40 years ago it was scientific "fact" that ulcers were not caused by bacteria. (And coincidentally, it was Russian research that suggested it in the 1930s).

Anyway, the bottom line, is our lives - the life of every single organism on earth - are predicated upon our access to energy. The cheaper energy is - the better lifestyles we'll have. The dearer it is - the converse is true. No one needs to convince me of that (although it doesn't stop some trying ).

Jassey - by definition a baseload plant is running at full capacity all the time. That is why it is baseload. There is no extra baseload capacity available to meet demand when the wind drops. Its the marginal coal and gas plants that step up production to meet the shortfall in generation. By definition they have spare capacity

Yes, that's why we have margins. We generate (and have the capacity to generate) more than we need as standard. That includes excess supply from wind farms, by the way. The market responds to what's needed and when its economic for them to supply it.

Margins in France are higher because of their mix. Coal and gas are almost non-existent, hydro is a bigger part of the non-nuclear mix. Of course France's system operates differently from ours as a monopoly market.

As I said, NISMs are thankfully rare. One this year, which led to both extra supply via the SBR and some demand-side response, and none last year despite several nuclear plants being offline for a significant period. It's nonsense to suggest that the SBR operates to provide daily 'back up' for intermittent renewables as some on this thread have done, or that it exists only because of renewables.

It's also nonsense to suggest that if we didn't have renewables, fossil fuel plants would always run at or close to capacity.

The question for the future is how much load-following we need, and how much of any needs to be fossil fuel based, and whether the base load needs to increase, or whether large-scale storage will take its place.

At last! Some fellow global warming sceptics!

Whilst I do believe that warming has been slightly accelerated by our production of polluting fuels, I see the punishment of the little guy in the street, who is forced into buying 'low emission' bulbs, or fined for not recycling all their waste, is vastly outweighed by the tonnes of waste being spewed by large corporations who are not being penalised or made to change their wasteage nearly enough [recent meetings notwithstanding] and could make so much more difference than a few million consumers being made to change a light bulb here and there.

This is a global con to scare us all into a state of perpetual terror and cost us more while the huge corporations carry on spewing rubbish into the sea and the atmosphere unregulated. Global warming happens - it always has - I remember seeing a display in the Science Museum a few years ago, showing that the Earth's temperature is cyclical and each cycle lasts millions of years. We just happen to be in a hot cycle right now and whilst the change is a little more rapid this cycle due to our emissions, it happens, and in a few thousand years it will get cold again. [I bet the display has been withdrawn for political correctness.] As a student of Astronomy many years ago, the changes we can make are so hugely miniscule [iyswim] in the universal scale of things as to make no difference at all. We are a tiny dot in the vastness of space. Us v the Solar System = no contest.

We can't stop global warming, same as we won't be a able to prevent global cooling either. We need to stop beating ourselves up about it, do our bit anyway as it is our responsibility to pass on our planet to the next generation in as good a s ate as we can, but it's not our fault it's happening - blame the Sun if you like! [and I don't mean the newspaper!]

Here's something you might not know [wonder why that is...] - polar ice caps are not receding:

www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2015/05/19/updated-nasa-data-polar-ice-not-receding-after-all/

I'm looking forward to reading these books:

'Hiding the Decline' by A.W. Montford (Paperback) & 'Hot Talk Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate' by Frederick Seitz, S. Fred Singer (Paperback)

The cheaper energy is - the better lifestyles we'll have.

I don't think that's automatically true - or in any case there is a question of how much better, and is it worth the costs of slightly cheaper energy when you look at the costs both on a societal level and for individuals (cost of insurance if you live in certain areas, for example, health impacts, etc. Or seeing your whole country fall into the sea..)