Thursday, October 30, 2008

William Tucker on Renewables









6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I got to about 12 minutes in but the persistent deceitfulness(or ignorance) about AGW makes me think he has little worthwhile to say.

The sheltered fiords of southwestern Greenland where vikings lived during the medieval warm period are still green. They lived primarily of cattle because even in the best of years what little grain they could get would not have been enough to support them. They likely suffered from soil erosion as the land was very susceptible too it. They traded heavily with Europe(pelts, fur, butter, tusks...) and trade likely fared much worse after the 1350's when black plague decimated the population of Europe. The viking settlers did not get along well with the inuit of Greenland and may have been subject to armed conflict. It's known from ice core data(e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Grtemp.png) that the decline of the settlements in the 14th and 15th century occured during a period when the temperature was nothing out of the ordinary. Climate change is not the most likely cause of the demise of the viking settlements.

The only thing that has happened since the Mann et al "hockey stick" was produced is that we've managed to add a few more temperature proxies and to the dozen or so that were already in place(which already could not be waved away as poor data from tree-rings) and a few more independent studies have been added that support the findings of mann et al.

Yes, CO2 trailed temperature in the past because there was no thing like humans that would swoop in and emit enormous quanities of CO2. CO2 therefor acted as a feedback effect and not a forcing. Past climate change does not appear to have been nearly as rapid as the current warming.

Charles Barton said...

soylent, I will not argue with you, on this issue. I will point out that scientist who I greatly admire and respect were concerned about CO2 linked global warming in the 1970's and even earlier. These would include my father, Dr. C.J.Barton, Sr., Dr. Alvin Weinberg, and Dr. Edward Teller. Do you deny that CO2 is a greenhouse gas? Do you claim that their is some mechanism which prevents increases atmospheric from forcing climate change? Or are you simply ignorant of science.

Anonymous said...

"Do you deny that CO2 is a greenhouse gas? Do you claim that their is some mechanism which prevents increases atmospheric from forcing climate change?"

Is it my writing skills that are lacking or is it your reading comprehension? Either way, this is a disappointing response.

Charles Barton said...

soylent, I am sorry if I misunderstood your views.

Anonymous said...

And I'm sorry If I did not articulate myself properly.

Lets try again. In the introduction Tucker tempers his support for AGW with a bunch of tiresome and thoroughly debunked "AGW skeptic" clichés that weren't any difficult to respond to when I first heard them many years ago; is there a good reason to suspect that mr. Tucker has anything more substantive to say about energy?

Charles Barton said...

you caught me on a grumpy morning. Sorry I went off half cocked. Tucker has not done his homework as well as I would like. My recent postings concerning the IFR were directed at him.

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