[asa] Re: GW

I'm probably a little more skeptical than Burgy is but I still think we
should be taking remedial action. Like Burgy I am not a climate
scientist. Reasons why I am more skeptical:

1)The models are large complex codes and as someone who spent their
career programming, I don't think there is any such thing as the last bug.

2)The computer models do not simulate all of the climate. As I
understand it, in some cases not all the physics is known and in others
the computer programs would just run too long to perform a more exact
simulation. Something called parameterization is used to set
coefficients for these areas that are not modeled but approximated.

3)Someone said that if they were tasked with understanding how good the
climate models are, that one thing they would do is talk to the grad
students who in many cases did the actual programming. Knowing enough
about the numerical methods and especially error propagation takes more
than a grad course or two in numerical methods. However, at least one
of the models and I assume more than one, come from government research
institutions and should not suffer from this problem.

My take on remedial action is that we have two other global problems for
which many actions are the same as for global warming. Those problems
being:

A) the coming depletion of oil and natural gas. The projection here is
that gas (for automobiles) which now sells for 4+$ US a gallon will hit
6$ US a gallon in the not too far future.

B) smog in cities like Toronto, LA, Tokyo is killing people, especially
those with respiratory problems.

Thinking of things that improve all three or even any two of the above
is not hard:

-Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs can reduce power consumption by a 75 to
80% and then upstream reduce fuel going into generating stations... A
while back I saw a news story that indicated that incandescent bulbs in
Canada are expected to become scares in the next decade or so. Whether
by forcing them off the market or adding a tax of 10$ a bulb is immaterial.

-eliminate air shuttles, Washington to New York to Boston etc. Ottawa
(where I live) to Toronto probably has around 40 to 50 flights a day
each way. If we laid down dedicated dual tracks, even with the trains
that are in use today (85 to 100mph), rail passenger time, down town to
down town would be more than competitive with flight.

-eliminate inter city truck transportation by improving rail facilities.

-install electric water heaters, washers, dryers and disk washers with
the ability to run during off peak hours. Electric water heaters are
available here that can be shut down remotely by the power company to
help deal with city or province wide high peak loads. In a year or two
we will get billed more per kwh during peak hours of the day than off
hours. The generating stations that handle peak conditions are
typically very expensive to operate and pollute correspondingly.
Replacing good existing appliances is probably not the thing to do but
as they wear out then more efficient units should be obtained.

Dave W (CSCA member)

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Received on Sun Jan 27 20:40:56 2008