Hard hitting global and local news
Tweet Some news and rumors still seem to spread more by word of mouth than online. One of them for me is the issue of potential misuse of solar tax credits in the US, as opposed to feed-in tariffs done elsewhere. Solar tax credits are transferable and cost-based – the higher the cost of the system, then the greater the tax credit that can be sold to other businesses
CNBC picked up the story in Reinhart-Rogoff Error Sparks Austerity Debate .
With a rare exception or two, I’ve been blissfully ignoring Roger Pielke Jr’s recent stuff for the last year or so as he slid into irrelevance. As long as I didn’t read his stuff, I could keep open the possibility that he was doing something useful.
Third Fool From the Left Ethon was looking hungry yesterday. Eli asked him (cautiously and from a distance) what was up. Turns out that he took a moving contract from Scrotum , to deliver Chris Monckton around the world where he could advance Mycroft’s Agenda 21. As the bunnies may recall, Joe Bast and the Heartland Mob had finally cottoned onto Chis’ unwitting, but effective, role in the UN plan to subjugated the world. Being from Chicago, and well funded by Bankroll Barry, they had sent some associates to London to terminate the annoyance. Fortunately, Mycroft had gotten a message from Peter Gleick (the matter having been discussed at the Heartland board meeting last winter, one of the memos held close) and was able to take measures to spirit Chris to safety and a world wide lecture tour, keeping one step ahead of the competition. Unfortunately, there had been no time to commission a transportation module from W&H Giddon, Saddlers and they had to make do with what Scrotum could scare up at the Extreme Restraints Bondage store deep in the East End. There were chafing consequences accounting for several pictures taken recently Eli kept adding pins to the map as Ethon flew Monckton from Scotland, to Rio to Qatar to the Antipodes, assuming that the bird was being well fed and was quite surprised by the rather thin appearance of his friend.  The scam doesn’t work anymore Eli, Ethon sadly told him. Monckton is discovering that you can’t get to the edge of crazy, there is always someone a bit further on the edge than you. Supporting a globe trotting lifestyle, a hunting lodge here and there, and the tailor is an expensive business and Chris has had trying times as funding for his main gig, denial of climate change, dries up. Scrotum has been furloughed and is looking for work in Washington, it is so bad. His Lordship has been trying birtherism, snake oil cures for everything from HIV to Graves disease, getting a gig in the House of Lords. Poor lad, he got tossed out of a crazy Brit right wing party for being " semi detached " Well Ethon, Eli replied, surely, somebunnies, somewhere, maybe at the ends of the earth have a need for more Monckton. Sadly, yes, said Ethon, but they don’t pay very well;)
While no one was looking the sun has gone cold, more precisely the sun gods have decreased total solar irradiation by about 4 W/m 2 to 1360.8 + 0.5 W/m 2 from 1365.4 + 1.3 W/m 2 ERB is the Earth Radiation Budget instrument, ACRIM is the Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiation Monitor, SORCE is the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment carrying the TIM, Total Irradiation Monitor. The rest is left to the industrious reader. What happened was that apertures in earlier instruments were not properly chosen, allowing excess light to be scattered into the sensor (right side of the figure below) resulting in higher TSI being measured. The magnitude of the effect was determined in a purpose built testing facility at LASP. The error is not without consequences As Kopp and Lean point out, A nonzero average global net radiation at the top of the atmosphere is indicative of Earth’s thermal disequilibrium imposed by climate forcing. But whereas the current planetary imbalance is nominally 0.85 W/m 2 [Hansen et al., 2005], estimates of this quantity from space‐based measurements range from 3 to 7 W/m 2 SORCE/TIM’s lower TSI value reduces this discrepancy by 1 W/m 2 [Loeb et al., 2009].
Visit link: Explain the Universe. Give Two Examples
(via Climate Central .) I’m not sure yet what I think of Mark Kleiman’s post about how people always accept their side’s arguments on a position and assume a contrary argument means the arguer is on the other team. Â I’m no fan of centrism-worship, or of contrarianism-for-its-own-sake.