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Global Warming Worse Than Thought
yulek writes "This AP article summarizes the IPCC report released today which states that global temperatures will rise as much as 5.8 degrees instead of the 3.5 degrees (C) originally estimated for the period between 1990 and 2100. The U.S. is still the primary culprit responsible for 25% of climate affecting pollution."
um...right...and with all the reductions since the 1970's we are the ones poluting the planet. Not 3rd world countries and countries like China who have NO policy NOR the technology to produce energy cleanly. I guess all the oil fires and such in Iraq have NO effect on polution. And, gee, volcano's and such have no effect either. IT's ALL AMERICA's FAULT! RIIIIIGHT! For every scientist who says this is happening there is one who says who don't have enought info. I just LOVE these type of sensational headlines.
(1) far larger industrialized societies (by at least 2 orders of magnitude) reside in the northern hemisphere.
(2) Weather patterns discourage interhemisphere air exchange.
(3) Ozone thinning over the north pole is negligable compared to over the south pole.
So something else must be causing it. Not pollution, not CFCs. Maybe it's even...gasp... a NATURAL phenomenon?
The exterrior walls on your house are typically 8 inches thick. Your front door is about 1.5 inches thick. Would you call that a "hole"? Then why do you call ozone thinning over Antarctica a "hole"? A hole would be NO OZONE AT ALL over Antarctica.
BTW, do you know where ozone comes from? (Besides your car, which they FAIL you on emissions tests for. WTF?) It's caused by UV splitting O2 into free O atoms, which then combine with other O2 to make O3. O3 absorbs UV without breaking apart so a layer forms. Remove the O3 layer, and another one quickly re-forms!
How utterly stupid. I get my food from either McDonalds or Dominos, not from some damn field!!!!! And I drink coke, not water!!!!
Apart from having sensible (=high) petrol prices and good public transport systems, they have also done a lot more on passive insulation. In *1982* I saw an energy conservation display in Gottenborg (sp?) Sweden showing *triple*-glazed windows!.
having spent a few months in India recently,
including some time in Agra (where the Taj Mahal
is being ruined by acid rain), and nearby Mathura
which has an oil refinery pumping out clouds of
noxious black smoke, I have to agree.
breathing the air of india, and washing greasy
black shit out of my skin, hair, eyes and clothes
every day changed my mind about the nuclear issue
and convinced me that nuclear power has to be a
far superior alternative to fossil fuels.
the *absolute certainty* of environmental
pollution from fossil fuels is far worse than
the *risk* of nuclear catastrophe.
the point is that nuclear catastrophe is only a
risk, not a certainty. risk can be, if not
eliminated, then managed. people are aware of
the fact that nuclear reactors can be dangerous
so they will design accordingly.
OTOH, everyone assumes that pollution from fossil
fuels isn't anywhere near as dangerous, pretends
that it isn't a problem, or that there's nothing
that can be done about it because everyone needs
petrol & oil etc, or that there's so much
pollution already that it's "somebody else's
problem". so they don't bother doing much, if
anything, to clean it up.
I live in Finland, which really isn't that very cold (in contruary with what I expect you americans to belive ;) ). If we only count the middle to south part of Finland, in the summer we usually get temperatures of up to 25 Celcius, and in the winter it usually doesn't get any colder than -10 Celcius. It's kind'of weird, because of where it is located (Helsinki, for example, is on the same lattitutde as southern Greenland if I'm not mistaken) it most definitely should be colder. The reason that we don't have subarctic temperature here is of the warm Golf-stream, which transports hot water from the south somewhere. Now the problem with global warming for Finland (and for Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, UK, etc.) is that at a certain temperature the Golf-stream will either ceace to exist or atleast redirect itself (I don't know the exact numbers for this, but it won't take that many degrees to make it happen). And the few extra degrees of temperature we'd get from global warming is *nothing* compared to how cold it'd get without the Golf-stream. Again, look at Greenland.
deserves pity.
That's an old, old piece of insightful commentary from the Republican School of Deep Thoughts. Go here for the origin of this "expert" opinion, and an explanation of the facts.
One thing I've found a bit funny is that a lot of Americans get their facts on evolution, global warming, etc. from politicians and ideologues (be it from the left or right). This leads to considerable distortion and bad decision making.
Sadly, the state of science and math taught in public schools doesn't help either, generating further generations of easily misled masses.
Why are there so many jerks spewing facts here, with no consideration of the superior insights of Barbara Streisand and Alec Baldwin?
"Photovoltaic payback", Knapp, K.E. & Jester, T.L., available on the web as a PDF, http://www.solarpv.com/paybackstudy.pdf
The authors investigated the total energy and materials requirement used by the Siemens Solar Industries factories in Vancouver and Camarillo, producing 15 MW of cells during the duration of the study.
The results - single crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells pay for themselves in two to four years, depending on the sunshine where you put them. They come with a 25 year guarantee. there's no moving parts, no maintenance needed, nothing to go wrong, and plenty of 25 year old solar cells still producing Watts. Even including the (small) drop off in power over time, given an reasonable 30 year life, solar cells produce about 9 to 17 times the energy required to make them.
Newer cell technology (copper indium diselenide) is now on the market at competitive prices and is better, paying for themselves in less than two years.
Anyway, some of my (huge multinational) company's servers are located in Cali. The upside of the laughable conditions of that State - I get a great excuse for not having done any work yet today. And that's the only bright side of it.
"When it gets warmer everywhere that's global warming. When it gets colder everywhere, that's global warming." Youz gotz ta be grokkin' dat leftist liberalz logic, man!
When you can explain what caused the last Ice Age or the warm period 65e7 years ago, I'll believe you can even guess at the next 100 years. But to predict weather changes over goelogic timer periods with a loust 70 years of worldwide weather data is like predicting the stock market 200 years from now based on today's Wall Street Journal. It's not just stupid. It's collosall fucking insanity.
Germany does not use any breeder technology (the single pilot project has never been productive and will not be continued), and is in fact phasing out nuclear power over the next 30 years, with the first power plants probably going offline within two years..
Many other European countries are also either phasing nuclear power out, or already have done so. This includes the Scandinavian countries and Austria. France is still pushing for nuclear power, though. And due to deregulation of the power market, some of the power production is simply moving to other countries. On the other hand, most power companies are now offerering green power (i.e. electricity produced using regenerative sources only) at a premium.
I have been going to Denmark or Holland during Christmas holidays for years, and it is interesting to see that in the northern flats of Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark, wind generators have been increasing enourmously.
Stephan
IIRC, the termal efficiency of coil/oil power plants rise to 37% (electric energy vs. energy of fuel), while C.C. (combined cicle, use steam and combustion gases to move the turbine) plants have an eficiency of 60 - 70%. I don't know how efficient is a car's engine,but I think is much lower.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
If you're charging the batteries with your gasoline engine, that's the same as charging them with coal-produced electricity! It's just a bit more efficient because of the regenerative braking. Leave that out, and the car is a heavy, inefficient, unreliable, STUPID design.
Actually, no. Internal combustion engines run best (and cleanest) at constant load/rpm. Electric motors don't care. The idea is to keep the energy density and the lack of (electrical) transmission losses, but gain the efficiency of an engine running at constant speed.
With good design, the overall system may be simpler. After all, no more hydraulic transmission and no constant adjustment of engine parameters (by computer) to adjust for current loading and RPM. With a small booster battery (small reletive to electric only vehicles that is), the engine can be smaller since it no longer has to have enough power for quick acceleration (on acceleration, the battery drains and is replenished while cruising and during braking).
One more quick point: if the mixture of hydrocarbons has a octane number of X, then it has the same knocking characteristics of a mixture of X% of iso-octane and (100-X)% n-heptane (thus why those two are assigned 100 and , respectively).
But the key point I was trying to make is that when you do deep HDS, you will increasingly break down the branched alkanes and alkenes (with high octane numbers) to smaller straight-chained alkanes (with pitiful octane numbers) as you increase the sulfur removal level.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
A good example is the process of hydrodesulfurization (HDS). Sulfur is a natural component of crude oil; gas that is burnt with sulfur in it will produce sulfur dioxide, which, of course, is bad as it helps with smog creation. In addition, sulfur is what causes most cat converters to degrade, and if/when we go to fuel cells, sulfur will completely ruin the typical fuel cell catalyst (platinum based).
So the process of HDS removes sulfur from the crude oil to create hydrogen sulfide and clean hydrocarbons; in this form, it's easy to extract the hydrogen sulfide and convert it separately to a non-toxic/hazardous waste form. The problem is is that the sulfur is buried deep in the molecules of hydrocarbon, and to remove these sulfurs will generally destroy the hydrocarbon into smaller pieces.
Now we base our gasoline ratings on octane number, which is a combination of how large the hydrocarbons are and how many are olefins (double bonds) or not; a large number of long-chained hydrocarbons or olefins increases the octane number. If you try to remove all the sulfur before you distribute the gas, the octane number will drop terribly, and the gas will be worse than with the sulfur in it, as there's a better chance of CO production and reduced feul efficiency from low octane gas. So there's a practical balance between the effective sulfur removal levels, and the quality of gasoline that we get.
Mind you, as we head towards feul cells that can use methanol or ethanol as produced by bioproducts as opposed to crude, the amount of sulfur to start with will be much lower, and octane number will not be as great; you still need to deal with it, but you don't really have to worry that much about how much fragmentation of the hydrocarbon that you get.
Now, IMO, most of the problem with Global Warming is not a result of the last 20 years, but of the first 40 years of the 20th century with the unfettered industrial revolution and two wars that introduced aircraft to the world. Since at least 1960, we've been aware of environmental damage, and while it may have not been a consumer issue until the 1980s, we as scientists and engineers were already aware of it and layed the groundwork for what research is being done today to continually improve what we've got. I also think that we still don't have sufficient evidence to yet conclude if we are in a warming or cooling cycle for the planet, though I can't disagree that mankind has had a small effect.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
0 K= -273.15 C
0 C= 273.15 K
You may be thinking of ratios: Kelvin is much better when ratios are needed (ie in Thermodynamics calculations), but when differences are being discussed, the two are equivalent.The main[1] surface point of contention at The Hague was Carbon sinks. The US[2] wanted Carbon removed from the atmosphere to be deducted from Carbon added to the atmosphere. Some contries, most notably the bulk of the EU, wanted only to count emissions.
The underlying question is: is global warming presenting us a moral or an engineering question? If its an engineering question, net carbon is the important number. If its a moral question, obviously penance is needed and drastically less carbon must be released--- the more this hurts, well, the better.
-Henry
[1] Another issue was the buying and selling of pollution credits. The US has been doing this domestically for Sulfur Dioxide (acid rain) reduction with good success. Such a market gives cost to the externallities of pollution.[3]
[2] Also Canada, Japan, Russia and a couple couple of smaller countries.
[3] Some people are afraid that such a market would let Americans not change their lifestyle by buying credits from poorer places. Obviously these people view global warming as a moral issue.
The Satanic Gases. Lots of facts about global warming.
Through Green-Colored Glasses: Environmentalism Reconsidered.
Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet. And spare the criticism bias -- the same can be done for the U.N. organization that released the global warming alarm call.
The Ultimate Resource 2 Julian Simon's excellent work on population & global trends.
The State of Humanity
Note: I'm actually in favor of reducing greenhouse emissions. At the same time, I find it disconcertaining that a lot of environmental rhetoric has a tremendous amount of counter-cultural, anti-corporate, 'fuck the man'-type reasoning that I have a hard time taking seriously. I found these books to have moments of objectivity in them (and definte moments of bias at times, but who can really be free of it?)
If you were looking for scientific papers, sorry, I don't carry a library in my backyard.
-Stu
Do you really believe this ?
I can't tell whether you are a clever troll of just genuninely deluded.
USA has many (not terribly effective) local controls, but on a global scale is biggest polluter. Also, it is the country which managed to scupper the last two world environmental summits by refusing to sign up for lower emissions, and trying to get an exemption so that you wouldn't have to reduce your emissions to a level similar to rest of industrialised world. Your standards are the *worst* in the world for a major economy.
You're like the family that is always throwing garbage into the street, but says "but we're the cleanest household on the street, I clean my stove twice a day".
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Hybrids are a stopgap. They do not solve the problem, (global warming) longterm. They introduce needless mechanical complexity which is good for the automotive and automotive repair industry, but bad for the consumer. They still don't improve the crappy weight and aerodynamic trade-offs that have to be made to create an efficient vehicle. Long term, full-on electric (or fuel-cell) is the only answer. Hybrids only get us closer until real batteries are available.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I recently took a tour of California's Diablo Canyon nuclear plant.
The on site security force was quite impressive.
Armed guards, background checks, metal detectors and xrays.
The guards were armed with AR-15's, pistols, MP-5's, and they even had a shooting range on site.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
hm. cancer? or starvation and loss of standard of living?
:(
i'll take the cancer, I guess.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
electric cars are not necessarily a stupid idea ; according to Bill Nye. I watch his show, and he elucidated, to my 6 year old son, how electric cars are good because if you have a bunch of fossil-fuel burners spread out all over a city, generating smog, you can't easily do anything about it except ask people to curtail their driving.
But if those are electric cars, the polution is produced at a big plant, instead of spread out, so you can do things, like filter it, or improve the generation technology (using nuclear instead of coal, etc). Electricity is electricity, and eventually, I believe that is the way cars are going to go, but definately NOT with today's battery and generation technology. The trade-offs that have to be made for weight and aerodynamics make for a very undesireable car.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I've heard this argument (roughly: "mankind isn't causing global warming -- it's a normal, natural shift in the planet's temperature") several times.
The point is moot. Whatever the cause, it's going to cause problems for mankind (water levels rising, habitable permafrost melting away, places which were previously only tolerably hot becoming too warm to set foot in, blah blah blah).
We're faced with a choice: either adapt to it, or slow it down (or to me more realistic, a little of both).
However, the levels of CO2 in the air have shot up wildly in the last 2 centuries, and the mechanism by which this is said to cause warming seems pretty logical to me. I'll bet industrialisation and forest depletion is at least a contributary factor.
--
Enjoy it whilst it lasts. Every other super power has had their moment and then been replaced. 75 years ago, the British ruled a quarter of the world. 2000 years, the Romans ruled a quarter of all known civilisation. The Mongols ruled from China to Central Europe (and would have ruled more if they hadn't turned around). The US is big now, but it will face many challengers in the next 100 years.
I think the concern isn't that the temperature is changing, but rather the pace of change. The last ice age represents only a small change in global temperature, but it hasn't changed since then in just a few hundred years. Think how many millions of years it took to fix carbon out of the atmosphere, compared with how quickly we're putting it back. We humans can adapt quickly, but other life forms on the planet can't.
Just because there's global warming, doesn't mean that the cold will go away. For some people, it could get colder and more extreme as weather patterns shift.
You haven't lived in other countries then, have you? Your ingnorance shows so clearly through your invalid statements. Everywhere you go in the US you see gross wastes of energy.
From the EPA's page " Most of these emissions, about 82%, are from burning fossil fuels to generate electricity and power our cars. The remaining emissions are from methane from wastes in our landfills, raising livestock, natural gas pipelines, and coal, as well as from industrial chemicals and other sources."
If the Carbon Dioxide is synthesized in an internal combustion engine, or in a coal burning powerplant, it is not "naturally" occurring. Don't blame a decaying swamp for the emmisions from your SUV. Besides, Carbon sinks are overrated. Rapidly growing forests absorb the most Carbon Dioxide, but many forests in the United States are essentially stable. Natural decay processes may also eventually rerelease CO2 into the atmosphere.
So, do you listen to Neil Bortz or Rush Limbaugh. Either way, they're both fine scientists.
"I know some people will cry about Chernobyl, but that incident really just goes to show you the drawbacks of communism, not nuclear power."
That's not really a fair statement. Certainly the Russian communist system seems to have bred the kind of incompetence and laziness that led to Chernobyl, but you would be naive to think that these traits don't exist in spades under capitalism. Corporate culture is some ways similar to communism, in that it provides individuals all sorts of ways of abdicating personal responsibility.
I do agree that nuclear research should be pursued as an important counter-measure to global warming, but the problems with nuclear power generation are not limited to the potential for catastrophes such as Chernobyl. Modern reactor designs may be theoretically safer, but the process still produces (to my mind) an unacceptably large amount of toxic waste.
"I say the Ice Age is coming."
Don't joke about it. Here in Ireland, one of the most likely effects of global warming will be the diversion of the Gulf Stream - the warm air current which provides us with the temperate climate we enjoy here on the Western edge of Europe. If this current is disrupted, we will no longer be shielded from the extremes of low temperature experienced by areas on the same latitude, such as Newfoundland. The global increase in temperature will be more than offset by savage wintry conditions.
The only question is: will this happen before or after the island sinks beneath the waves of all that polar ice meltwater?
I would love to bike to work. It would be great exercise and all that. There's just one problem...
On the roads I would have to travel on, I would be safer building a catapult, strapping on a helmet, and attempting to fling myself to work. With all the cars and trucks wizzing by at 60 mph and no bike lanes, my life expectancy would be measured in minutes.
If they installed some safe walkways and/or bikeways, paralleling major roads, I'm sure many more people would pedal around.
CP
According to statistics that were discussed on BBC radio Texas has 1/3 of the population of Great Britain but produces 20% more pollution.
There is some dreadfully reactionary thinking on this topic going on everywhere, not just in the USA. Why not see the whole thing as an opportunity to develop and sell new technology that is highly efficient and pollutes less. While you are at it, why not make it as cheap as possible so countries like India and China don't get into the bad habits the 1st world has.
Folks, I won't even bother making fun of this. The "Greening Earth Society" is a joke of an astroturf campaing fronted by a coal mining cartel. Couple the link to obvious astroturf site with nonsense sentences like "Further, the technology developed to help handle global warming, such as more energy efficient devices, would be useful just in the context of on an expanding popular", and you've got a rather sad troll. But at least Mr. Alien54 is indirectly helping to spread the word of Greening Earth's astroturf status.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
I think you're going to find that most of them were taken in the center of metripolitan areas.
What's present all over those areas?
Concrete and Asphalt.
These absorb heat and slowly, but slowly release it.
Measured temperatures are on the average 3-7 degrees colder on the outskirts of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex when compared with the inner cities or the measuring points at DFW International Airport, Love Field, or Meecham.
While I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm asking that they and everyone else happen to have more accurate data points before making statements.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Plus our major cities are spread out quite a ways:
Distance from Houston :-(
City Direction Miles Kilometers
Dallas North 239 384
Corpus Christi South 220 355
El Paso West 749 1202
Orange East 110 177
Tried to make this look nicer, but no HTML table's allowed
Orange and El Paso on on opposite sides of our state, 859 miles(1379 km) apart.
Another factor in the equation is the Houston area alone has about 60% of the nation's(not just Texas but the entire country!) petrochemical processing.
Interesting tradeoff - instead of worrying about Global Warming, the survivors of WW III (ie: you can bet you're ass we won't go down alone) will be worried about surviving a Nuclear Winter.
You don't find it the least bit odd that the octane rating has little to do with the presence of octane?
In the long term, do you think we'll be synthesizing gasoline? Perhaps wood alcohol, but that'll be a hell of a lot more expensive than the stuff we're currently pumping out of finite ground reserves, and I suspect battery/fuel cell improvements will make all-electric cars superior.
But, we have never had a disaster that has wiped out all higher life, although the Dinosaurs certainly took a hit, but it still didn't wipe out all the higher vertebrates. Doesn't this indicate that the earth has incredibly powerful equilibrium mechanisms that we probably don't fully understand, primarily because of our lack of historical perspective?
In case you're listening to doomsayers for your global warming news, let me bring things back into perspective. Nobody is worried that global warming will boil the oceans and wipe out all vertebrate life. Many people are worried that global warming will cause trillions of dollars worth of flooding damage, reduced crop production, etc. The other vertebrate species don't have billions of members living in difficult to abandon habitats in coastal regions, or dependent on high-yield agriculture; nor do they understand/care if drought-induced starvation cuts their population by a fraction.
Despite Mr. Bush's feverent wishes, all those plants could be turned back on and run at 100% capacity without violating any environmental regulations.
Therefore the regulations have absolutely nothing to do with the power shortage.
Well, gee, that was published in '74. Here we are in 2001, 27 years later. They had already had 200 reactor-years without incident by then. How many reactor-years have we racked up since?
--Dan
Are you stupid? 6 miles to the gallon? I've got an 80's era land yacht and I still get near 20. Even the "EVIL SUVs" you hear so much about do better then that. I think you're thinking of some other country. Try again.
The average American WANTS to "buy-and-throw-away",
Bzzt again. I'd prefer to not have a few cubic feet of food wrappers in my car, to not have to fight with 5 layers of wrapping on my purchaces. Blame "negligence" lawsuits for forcing people to put up with insane amounts of waste. Do you really think we buy something based on how much trash comes with it? Try again.
Oh yea. And thanks a lot, greenes, for getting rid of foam peanuts. They take up 1% of the space in the landfills that crushed-paper filler does.
Let's keep trying.
the average American WANTS to only pay a buck for a gallon of gas (ok that part is changing a LITTLE, but not because of people insisting on paying more),
And that is just people whining that they pay 5x as much as we do for gas. So I'll ignore that.
the average american WANTS a heated swimmingpool (ok, maybe the "a-little-more-than-average" american, but You get the picture).
Bwahahaha! Now _THAT_ is clueless. Guess how you generally heat a swimming pool? That's right, solar energy. Oh, those evil americans! Using the fusion power of the sun to heat their pool.
There's only a fraction of a percent of the US population that can afford to use gas or electric heaters on their pools.... and even then, it's enclosed in a greenhouse. Solar insulating covers are common.
In short the Average American dosn't want to be concerned with the environment, and while that's true, no president needs to concern himself with getting elected on those premises. After all, there are no votes in it for him, so why do it ? It's not like the politicians of today actualy has moral values....
*yawn*
--Dan
The current attitude towards nuclear power is ridiculous.
The truth is that nuclear power is much more expensive than oil, coal, or gas power. If nuclear power suddenly became cheaper than coal, I'm sure the NIMBY/enviro factor could be overcome.
It is my belief that over the next 50 years, there will not be a significant (inflation adusted) increase in the price of oil, and this will be a significant confounding factor to attempts to reduce CO2 emissions. Crude oil only costs $1-$2 per barrel to pump from middle east countries right now, so theoretically the price of refined oil could be as low as $5-$10 per barrel and still be profitable for them.
Our only hope is a fuel cell mechanism to extract energy from oil and that does not produce CO2 gas.
Well, think of it this way. You see a 4-year-old who's got big feet and is half a foot taller than the other 4-year-olds around him.
You have a pretty good idea the kid's gonna be pretty big by the time he's in high school. But do you know at what point the kid will hit his growth spurt? Is he on it already?
Will it be next week? No clue. But you know it's gonna happen.
This agency really has very little scientific (or any other) integrity, and appears to be little more than a political lobbying organization.
That said, the numbers they fabricate for what is perceived as global warming cannot be believed. There is simply NO evidence to support their claims. The models they rely on are not accurate, and there is no evidence that global warming is actually occurring.
Now, I'm certainly in favor of reducing emissions, but doing so because of the screams of the irrational is not the way to go about it. Until there is real evidence that a danger exists, there is no justification for imposing compulsory emissions reductions. It must be voluntary.
For a much more thorough treatment, visit Globalwarming.org
I have always felt that Global Warming was a bunch of bullshit. It seems like everyone looking for research funding finds something worthless to talk about. *Yes*, the global tempatures are rising, *yes*, it is a direct result of what we have done in our past and current days w/the burning of fossil fuels... Does it matter overall, *no*.
.02
The Earth was hot as hell before. There is great evidence of major climatic differences in the past... The Earth does NOT give a shit if we decided to put a major city right on the coast. If it needs to do "whatever" to fix itself it will. It is our problem that we fucked up.
As far as increasing the time in which this would have happened, this is true. Does it really matter? *No.* If it happened say 10,000 years from now it would have only caused greater problems w/society (if we still exist).
Global warming is a fact of the Earth's existance. It is going to happen no matter what. Get over it people. Put the money into education rather than closing the damn hole that keeps getting bigger...
Just my worthless
There wasn't one model, there have always been lots of models. Over time computers get faster and more powerful, our understanding of the earth system improves, our models imporve. I agree that today's models still suck, but if you actually look at the code and the parameterizations, they are getting better over time. And *all* of the models predict an increase in global average temperature, they just don't agree on the magnitude of the global average temperature and the distribution of temperature and precipitation perturbations. What seems to be agreed upon is that higher latitudes will experience the strongest warming (alredy seeing some of this), most of the warming signature is seen at night (nighttime low temps are rising) and that while more intense rainfall will be experienced in some regions, interior continental regions which are already prone to drought will experience even more severe droughts.
This is not pure politics, there is solid science behind the following statement: If you increase the amount of so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the global temperature will rise. The question is, by how much, and what are the feedbacks which will respond to this increase in temperature.
One scary aspect of the whole pollution/global warming scenario is that as we clean up our emissions and decrease the amount of sulfur emissions (sulfer dioxide, sulfur trioxide) we are going to experience a warming since these sulfate particles have a cooling effect on the atmosphere. Volcanoes are natural sources of sulfates (and a lot of other stuff including soot and water vapor) and it is interesting to note the year following Mt. Pinatubo's eruption we experienced a statistically significantly cooler year.
To be fair, the earth has experienced natual swings in climate due to mechanisms we are not completely sure of. Carbon dioxide appears to be a big player in climatic temperatures. We have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from pre-industrial times by over 30 percent. This is a big forcing to the radiation balance of the earth! Whether other mechanisms will respond significantly in the opposite direction of global warming (negative feedbacks) remains to be seen, but if you actually look at the data and the climate record it appears we humans are having a definite effect on climate.
And there are certainly good arguments to be made for switching over to non-fossil fuels which do not involve the global warming argument anyway.
Leigh Orf
Professor of Atmospheric Science
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
Climate scientist have known about the urban heat island effect for a long time, and have *not* swept it under the rug. Statistical tools are used to take into account the UHI so as not to give a false impression of a more intense warming than is truly being experienced. Ask the good folks at NCDC about sweeping the UHI under the rug!
Leigh Orf
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
Prove that there we are in a warming trend: easy.
Prove the cause of this warming trend: don't make me laugh.
What about China, India, and the former Eastern Bloc?
Regulations on pollution are way behind on those in Europe as the article mentions shortly.
What about China, India, and the former Eastern Bloc?
I thought most of the CO2 was absorbed by the oceans. In which case, protecting our oceans would seem to be of greater consequence.
And how do we know that this warming trend we're seeing isn't some natural process? in which case, we would probably be doing more damage by trying to counteract it.
Well, I think we should definitely work on cleaning things up. But why do all the plans considered involve giving up property rights and national sovereignty to the UN or other international body? Additionally, it seems to me that the improvements that we have already made won't begin to have an impact for quite some time; this makes it difficult to know what's really needed.
The less ozone there is to protect the earth from sun's rays, the more rays there are to be trapped in the greenhouse gases.
--
--
Wrong. There are plenty of things we can do with the spent radioactive waste, but the very same idiots I'm talking about, who prefer coal power to nuclear power, also oppose the things we can do with nuclear waste that any sensible person would have no problem with, like:
And that's only what I can come up with from the top of my head.
Yes, Nevada and California don't want it. NIMBYism at its finest. I live in California, but frankly I'd love to see the power companies here go bankrupt and leave the state without power. That'll teach those idiot pseudo-environmentalists and NIMBYists what happens when you refuse to build the things you depend on (power plants) in your own backyard...in other words, what happens when you don't take responsibility for your own needs (power).
As for the safety of nuclear power plants, remember that I'm talking about modern designs. You know, the ones where some law of physics would have to be violated for something really bad to happen? CANDU reactors are a good example, but I believe there are even better, safer designs out there these days.
We have thousands of reactor-years of experience with nuclear fission, and Chernobyl is the worst that has happened, and that was with a badly designed reactor with the safeties deliberately turned off! We've been putting nuclear reactors into military naval vessels on a more or less routine basis (think submarines) and have put them into relatively harsh environments for the last 40 years without any really significant problems, and you think that a land-based nuclear power generating facility based on a modern (read: uses the laws of physics to be safe) design will be UNSAFE?!? You're exactly the sort of person I've been talking about: you'd rather live with all the shit spewing from the coal plants than "risk" getting power from a clean, safe source whose only real problem is all the sensationalistic bullshit spouted by the media and pseudo-environmentalists. I hope you live in California so you can experience firsthand the consequences of your viewpoint.
--
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
This is what happens when you can't use nuclear fission to produce most of your power, thanks to the pseudo-environmentalists and NIMBYists and their shortsighted anti-everything stance.
So, those of you who are so deathly afraid of nuclear power, tell me: would you prefer to generate your power using "clean" natural gas which emits lots of CO2 and get an increase in the global temperature of 5 degC, or would you prefer to generate your power using "dangerous" nuclear power (not with the old RBMK technology that everyone loves to point to when they think of nuclear power, but with real modern nuclear designs like the Integral Fast Reactor) and deal with the "problem" of disposing of the comparatively little waste produced? Sorry, you don't get any other choices, because nothing else even comes close (coal and oil? Puhleeze. Solar? Yeah right...let me know when the production of a cell uses less power than the cell can generate over its lifetime. Hydro? How many ecosystems do you want to destroy in the process of building it? Wave? How many plants would you have to build to generate enough power, and what effect will it have on the coastline ecology?).
Bottom line: you're going to affect the world around you if you generate power. Conservation helps but it won't help nearly enough and, in any case, why do it when you can generate your power using something as clean as nuclear?
But, of course, nuclear power will never happen in this country thanks to the very people I'm talking about, so I guess we're all just going to have to deal with a hotter world (if the prediction referred to is correct).
--
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Cato published an alternative viewpoint on the UN report in the 01/22/01 Daily Dispatch. In this short article they sight an important work by Patrick J. Michaels explaining why the threat from global warming is overrated. That work, co-written by Robert Balling is called The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming.
Stuart Eichert
Stuart Eichert
In posting the above message, when I tried to include a few paragraphs from the Reason article on technological fixes to global warming, Slashdot aborted the posting due to "lameness filter encountered". How does one avoid triggering the lameness filter? In my own humble opinion, deleting the blockquoted portion made the posting MORE, not less, lame. Any suggestions?
I play Nerd-Folk!
That's one hell of an assumption...
In the US, we choose not to reprocess partly for political reasons (fear of proliferation, largely misguided) and partly for economic reasons (ie, uranium is so cheap and easily available now relative to the demand for it that there's no immediate need to build breeder reactors.)
In the short term we don't need breeder reactors. In the long term, breeder reactors are a relatively straightforward solution (probably not the only one) to humanity's power needs. Given the existence of this technology, it's silly to think we'd have to run out of power any time before the sun explodes. The only problems we have with power production are those we inflict upon ourselves when we let the ignorant, the superstitious, and the paranoid define our power-generation policies.
I play Nerd-Folk!
That approach, invented and pioneered by scientist John Martin, definitely shows promise.
I play Nerd-Folk!
-=-=-
How long will nuclear energy last?
These facts come from an article by Bernard Cohen.
Nuclear energy, assuming breeder reactors, will last for several billion years, i.e. as long as the sun is in a state to support life on earth.
Here are the basic facts.
There is plenty in the Conway granites of New England and in shales in Tennessee, but Cohen decided to concentrate on uranium extracted from seawater - presumably in order to keep the calculations simple and certain. Cohen (see the references in his article) considers it certain that uranium can be extracted from seawater at less than $1000 per pound and considers $200-400 per pound the best estimate.
In terms of fuel cost per million BTU, he gives (uranium at $400 per pound 1.1 cents , coal $1.25, OPEC oil $5.70, natural gas $3-4.)
Seawater contains 3.3x10^(-9) (3.3 parts per billion) of uranium, so the 1.4x10^18 tonne of seawater contains 4.6x10^9 tonne of uranium. All the world's electricity usage, 650GWe could therefore be supplied by the uranium in seawater for 7 million years.
Comments:
- Cohen neglects decay of the uranium. Since uranium has a half-life
of 4.46 billion years, about half will have decayed by his
postulated 5 billion years.
- He didn't mention thorium, also usable in breeders. There is 4 times
as much in the earth's crust as there is uranium.
- He did mention fusion, but remarks that it hasn't been developed yet.
He has certainly provided us plenty of time to develop it.
The main point to be derived from Cohen's article is that energy is not a problem even in the very long run. In particular, energy intensive solutions to other human problems are entirely acceptable.I play Nerd-Folk!
So what do you suggest we do? Wear hats against UV, turn up the A/C, and return to our energy guzzling slumber?
Han-Wen Nienhuys -- LilyPond
I have triple glazing in my windows. It really keeps the cold out during winter, and cuts down on the noise from outside. When I was in Adelaide last year I was freezing my ass off in the winter. We had to close all doors and spend all evenings in the one room we heated up with the air-conditioner.
I was bitching about this to my landlord. "Oh no, we don't need insulation, this is Australia it doesn't get cold here. Bullshit! I'm colder here than I ever was in Sweden because it's both outside AND inside." His answer was that they couldn't insulate because it would pull the warmth in and make the summers unbearably hot. I tried to explain to him that it worked like a thermos. It doesn't matter if you keep hot coffee in them and go ski, or ice cold lemonade and go to the beach, the insulation keeps the contents the same, no matter what the outside temperatures are. But I don't know if he believed me.
Most Australian houses are really shoddily built. It is SUCH a waste of energy. In the summer the air-con is on full blast, and in winter the heating. But they have to keep them on constantly because the outside leaks in through the windows, around the door and so on. (Love the country though. I'm coming back as soon as possible.)
But we all know who the REAL wasters and destroyers of the planet are.
*points finger accusingly at Americans*
************************************************ ** *
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
There has been talk of "urban heat islands" before, about how temperatures at many monitoring stations are significantly higher now than in the past due to urban expansion, but you seldom see any consideration of this except to sweep it under the rug. Of course, "the sky is falling" gets more grant funding.
A significant problem with sulfur dioxide emissions is the respiratory effect on people, especially children with asthma.
I guess exaggerating about it being worse is probably a good thing, means that governments will be under pressure to do something. The bigger issue should be scrapping the carbon credits crap. Currently a loophole exists that means that a company can do nothing about stopping emmissions, if it grows some trees. The real problem with this is that they can cut down trees and plant new ones to comply.
I don't know how good exaggeration is -- especially with the plans of some like Ocean Fisheries that wants to "seed" the oceans with iron oxide to increase algae, reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, and increase fish stocks -- such a plan is said to be capable of lowering global temperatures up to 4 degress C. If such a plan is approved on exaggerated global warming claims, I'm moving out of Canada fast (51 degrees N is where I am) because in 50 years there will be nothing but glaciers here.
I live in Canada, at least until recently one of the biggest exporters on nuclear reactors, and modern, safe reactors at that. I think in most other places (except France) research has stagnated, and focused on light water reactors, whereas here we have heavy water moderator reactors where the reaction is much easier to stop than the light water counterparts.
Many people don't realize this, but "ozone" depletion is what is normally considered at fault for increased UV. CO2 is normally considered at fault for increased temperature. This article is about warming, not UV.
Of course sheer corporate greed is probably more responsible, but the United States is raising energy prices considerably. I consider this one of those unspoken "done deals" similar to Clinton being the one who was left to implement NAFTA and Most Favorable Trade status for China. Regardless of which party is in power, regardless of side rhetoric meant to appease special interests, the proven method for encouraging conservation of raising prices dramatically is a reality for both the present and the future. Perhaps it is easier to slip it past the general public explaining it from Republican terms as "market forces" rather than for the Democrats to push for an "environmental tax".
Here's my global warming survival strategy.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The problem with electric cars is that you have to haul the extra deadweight that the battery, generator and traction motors are.
So, to do the SAME job, you have to burn more fossil fuel. And that, no matter how little emissions the engine gives out, that's still MORE carbon dioxyde spewed up in the atmosphere.
Face it, TRANSIT is the ONLY solution. The vast majority of trips always are the same, day in, day out, so there is no reason that people can't use transit at least on the more used portion of their trips.
What? No transit? That's no excuse. Demand transit and there it should be.
--
> and the US starts to really work on reducing emissions.
But they are. School kids in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia have been painting green trees on inner-city houses for months now, and they will keep doing it until all the CO2 emissions have been neutralized.
If you *don't know* what is causing global warming, then forcing industry to completely revamp its production methods with something more expensive and less efficient seems pretty insane. It's like saying "say, California may fall off into the ocean this year, though we're not sure; let's evacuate everyone just in case!" Do you have ANY IDEA how much this will cost?
-- Moderation in all things, exceptions to all rules --
There's this guy who's name I can't recall who's discovered that dumping iron into iron poor regions of the ocean causes massive plankton blooms. Most of these plankton die and sink to the bottom taking their carbon with them to turn into calcium carbonate rock.
The main problem I see with this is possible ramifications of messing with the ocean ecosystem. Since the iron poor regions tend not to support much of an ecosystem in the first place (no plankton, which is the bottom of the ocean food chain) I'm not sure this'll be a big problem. The other problem is that iron is not a renewable resource, and not very recoverable once it's sunk to the bottom of the ocean. It doesn't take enormous amounts of iron though, just a few tons for a fair sized bloom.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
that this supposedly accurate prediction was just drastically corrected. If it can change from 3.x to 5.8 degrees, then clearly these "brilliant" scientists' science is not that exact of a science. It seriously suggests that they could also be estimating too high, especially when taken in context of previously inflated and failed predictions.
I'm not saying there is _no_ danger, but for anyone to say they _know_ with absolute certainty is ridiculous. What's more, given the political, economic, and social implications of what the proponents of global warming advocate, I think we SHOULD scrutinize their predictions. Perhaps we DO need to take corrective action, but perhaps we DON'T. This matter needs further study.
Another Minnesotan here.
Actually, we've got 2 nuke plants (Monticello & Prairie Island).
Most of the coal burned here is mined in Montana, not ND.
Ok, so we start enacting controls that cost trillions of dollars on the basis of a small chance. Then in twenty years we find out that all the CO2 we've been dumping into the atmosphere has been the only thing between us and the next ice age and, whoops, we've stopped putting out so much.
Sometimes you're better off following the "Don't just do something, stand there!" approach until better data comes in.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
extreamly biased extreamist organizations
While I am not a member of Greenpeace, (I don't even like them), it does seem that there is an 'environmental crisis' ie. mass slow suicide. And Greenpeace puts out info about this. Now that doesn't mean all their info is 100% correct, but we don't just dismiss them because they're biased. I mean, if they exist to promote green ways, and attack eco-damage, and they are very focussed at doing so, then yes, they'll seem 'biased'. But that's like saying, "don't ask a linux user about linux because they're just extreemist biased weirdos".
Careful fact and analysis requires that people think, and I think it's already been established that ninety-five percent of America tries to avoid thinking whenever possible.
Don't mind me, I'm just one of the 95% that doesn't think.
I sense an over reliance and confidence in Rationality in you. I'd say the Rationality is strong in you... but that doesn't have the same ring to it.
Seriously, there's a problem with 'fact and analysis'... and it's quite hard to notice it... (bear with me on this one).
There's a weakness in thinking (words, concepts, analysis etc.) which, how shall I put it, 95% of people don't realise...
Lets explore this a second. When we say 'thinking' we are talking about a mental process with symbols, concepts, or even just words. All these are 'thing' based. They are the basis of things.
Say we are thinking about a chair. When I say "look at the chair", your attention becomes focused on the 'chair'. But what are you really looking at? After all, there is really no such 'chair' in your senses. This is the Myth of the Given. For all your eyes give you are little coloured patches... (are you still with me? or have I been dismissed into fuckwit land?)... and these coloured patches are all that there "is" in an objective sence.
So while our senses just report coloured patches, the mind somehow creates 'things' in 3D space. Things like teapot, child, car, and also things like national border, race, religion, etc.
All these are things that we create in the mind and share culturally, so that when I point to a set of coloured patches in my visual field and say "chair", you examine your visual field, make the same mental construct, and agree with me.
This act of focusing on one tiny area of our sensory experience, is a 'constricting' of our experience. In order to experience, and therefore think 'chair', I have to exclude everything else. Otherwise you'd never get to 'see' the 'chair'. All you would 'see', is a sea of colour.
So what's the point? Well, we can begin to suspect that Rationality is weak at the foundations. While our senses report coloured patches, our mind focuses on some patches at the exclusion of others, and constructs a 'thing' and names it 'chair'. Note the exclusion, the cutting, the subtle ignorance required.
Now the 'chair' is real in as much as it's atoms exist, and I can pick it up and bash you over the head with it. But the 'chair' does not exist as a separate thing, even though we conceptualize it so. The illusion of separation is created by focusing on one area and ignoring all the rest.
In learning to draw, you would be given exercises to look at the negative shapes, or maybe just the positive shapes. It's near impossible to see both at the exact same time. Even though neither the negative nor the positive shape can exist without the other. Likewise, when we think about things, we are actually performing huge acts of deliberate ignorance. In order to think about something, we have to exclude from our attention everything else. Now this is usually OK with simple things like following the rules of mathematics, or deciding what to wear. But when we talk about ecological issues (and most popular arguments against nuclear energy are about the environment), we are dealing with systems of systems of systems of systems...
Thinking is a focussing by exclusing. But to understand systems of systems etc. we need to open our minds.
Asking 'how much energy does it take to manufacture a solar panel' is questioning the start of the first level of the first system... do you see what I mean? We could also ask, what happens if every third world country gets nuclear power? That's also a first system question. How would a country that does not have access to deep mines in stable geology deal with their waste? Now we're starting to probe a little further. Notice that we have to expand our questions to begin to include more of the system. Notice that this is the opposite of 'rational analysis', where we try to cut away everything unnecessary. Here we have to take many many many points of view, just to start to get a handle on the size of the problem!
While rationality is good for relatively complex arguments that can be nailed down in twenty points or so, trying to understand ecology and society means opening to encompass vastly interconnected systems of systems of systems. And while basic rationality operates using symbols that 'chop off' everything not contained in the symbol itself, ecological problems require something better. I don't think fall-out on Scottish sheep was on the minds of the Chernobyl operators.
So while rationality has proved itself to be a hugely successful and powerful tool, we are running into evidence of it's limitation. Evidence in the form of turds (or worse) hitting swimmers in the face on a sunday outing to the beach. I'm not advocating going pre-rational (pray to your godess and chant etc.) I'm advocating trans-rational. I'm advocating not being taken in by 'rational argument' -- it is not the best we can do.
A Zen master holds up a stick before his students and says, "What is this? If you reply 'it's a stick', I'll beat you. If you reply 'it's not a stick', I'll beat you. What is it?! " A student got up, took the stick from the master, and broke it in two.
That was quite an odd response to that man's comment.
Yes, it certainly was. 'Insane' even. But then you're giving me the benefit of the doubt?
Transrational as you are calling it is the part of thinking commonly referred to as "understanding".
I'm not quite sure. It is understanding, but not via thinking. Like the Zen koan defeats intellectual analysis. You can't think your way out of "show me your original face before you were born!". So there's definetly a 'trans-thinking' possible. Not just a 'better thinking'.
Memory, analysis, synthesis, understanding... can happen on lots of levels, like remembering feelings or pictures, but the original post was talking about rational analysis, which is why I tried to deal with the deficiency of what rational thinking is based on: symbols, words, concepts.
but many people start to believe in the "spirtual" side of Zen because of linguistics of the teachings and fail to see the metaphors and allegories for what they are.
Metaphors in Zen? Like what? Zen, as far as I know about it, is meant to be the most direct, most immediate, most spontaneous realisation -- "hard because it is so simple". I don't know what it's metaphors and allegories are.
My silly point was just this: rationality works by splitting the world into little chunks, and manipulating some of those chunks. If the solution to the problem happens to not be in one of those particular chunks, then you'll not find it. What you will find is a bunch of conclusions that look very reasonable based on the chunks you happen to have. Also it is very difficult to analyse complex systems of systems, consequences of consequences etc. We just don't tend to think about it. And because we see the world as Things, and think Things, subtle relashionships and consequences don't easily enter our awareness.
It's like, unless we have a name for something, we don't particularly see it. So anything we haven't 'thingified', we can't analyse. And by the time we've given it a name, it's changed, so all we're left with is the abstraction. Try making a list of all the things that define who you are. Now try to make that list 100% complete. It's a limitation of thought. And it's a problem just getting people to see beyond Either/Or terms.
Anyway, I'm suggesting. Take with pinch of salt. I'm having a strange day.
What are you quoting from? I'm not sure I understand the koan as a "folk story", as that implies to me that it's not something real or practicable. But perhaps the quote means it's like an oral transmission, used to carry knowledge?
Which is how I'd sorta understood it -- something to do, an exercise.
Perhaps you can reconcile Enlightenment and Understanding based on personal realization.
Not been there. Not done that. No T-shirt. But say, boing boing, hows your interest in Zen and Buddhas formed?
You see that is what I keep thinking... I live in Canada... Hmmm, X million hectares of nothingness is now converted into farmland. Wow, could be interesting. Bring on the global warning I say!!!! ;)
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Plutonium is extremely toxic (poisonous), in fact. IIRC, the primary reason that breeder reactors are not used in the U.S is because the breeder reaction creates more materials which could be used to create nuclear bombs, whereas non-breeder reactions produce nuclear waste but nothing that could be used to make a bomb.
Although I'd have to say I support nuclear power as well; a well-designed (see posts about the Candu reactor above) and well-regulated (including disposal) reactor can be one of the best methods of power generation around. And it's cheap - all you folks in CA should move back to IL, where there's plenty of power and a large percentage of it is nuclear-generated.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
> Have a look at JunkScience.com for more on this.
v ery.html#milloy">PR Watch article</a> for more about lobbyist Steve Milloy's news articles and his web sites JunkScience.com and Consumer Distorts.
...
> Perhaps some skepticism is in order.
Skepticism is always in order when something appears in JunkScience.com. JunkScience.com is a PR mouthpiece for anti-environmential propaganda by the biochemical, pesticide, fossil fuel, and nuclear power industries.
Have a look at this <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/prw_issues/1999-Q4/a
The 3rd world have cheap polluting equipment, but they have so little of it that they still pollute less.
Oil fires in Iraq don't matter that much, it didn't last long. And it don't matter if the oil is wasted or burned doing useful works - it pollutes in either case.
Volcanos have little effect. Massive when they erupt, but they don't last. A week or two and its over.
A third world factory probably pollute worse than a US one, but they still get less pollution per capita, as they have substantially fewer factories and fewer cars per capita.
I dunno..junkscience.com denies that there are insect genes spliced into genetically modified food (untrue -- it also makes the same claim for animal genes, which may be true), that american beef cannot have mad cow disease and that silicon breast implants have never caused disease.
Some skepticism is very much in order, I think.
is it every day that it's that windy? bet not...
I only bike or ride my moped (110 miles per gallon, baby) right now -- and today was pretty windy and icky -- you can buy raingear specially made for biking or motorcycle riding (which works nicely on a moped) and I hear you europeans have better moped options than us merkins (I have two vespa bravos, both from 1980, that I bought from an individual -- it's very difficult to find dealers and harder to find a place to work on them, but moped maintainace is a very geek thing anyway )
and save your car for the occasional gale
http://www.corbinmotors.com/sparrow.htm
looks electric only to me...
Nuclear plants absolutely make more energy
than they take to make! No utility would
ever CONSTRUCT one which didn't. I
mean, think about it: 30 years of continuous
1GW operation. Let's say $.02 per KW-hour.
(We pay $.11/KW-hour now retail).
That's $5G just to build a plant, on *top*
of all the other capital investment.
Now, with the burden of changing government
regulations on operating nuclear plants and
mid-construction design changes, it might well
*cost* more to build a nuclear plant then
you get out of it.
The sky isn't falling. Really...
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
I live in northern germany and it has been 3-5C every day -with some exceptions. Also it was like 10C until almost xmas or so. Definitely strange weather. Is it global warming at work? Could be a fluke. But it makes you think.
Someone please mod this up. This is good stuff.
> I live in Florida. Its been below 32 for almost everynight this month.
Well, you could come to Sydney, where it's been above 32 every night for the past week. That's 32C, which makes about 90 of your puny american Fs.
Last week it hit 45C here. That's 113F. Wanna swap?
Your right however thies are not due to global warmming but the polition that caused it.
The point is valid.. Global warmming isn't really the biggest issue when it comes to polition. That air food and water thing is way higher on my priority list than umm the world getting warmmer.
We could do well by global warmming.. assuming we don't die from toxic poisoning first...
I don't actually exist.
Stupid me.. I missread... (Stupid speed.. reading stupid me.. Suphid suphid suphid [Obscure Sluggy Freelance refrence])
Anyway.. I thought I read "Clean water" and "clean food" and so on...
You are still off...
Water level won't drop much (due to evaperation) and may rise (Snow melt off.. or lack of snow to start with..)
Tropical diseases are a non issue. You can cure them with proper medical resorces.
Anyway.. I think being able to breath and eat is far more impressive to me than the posability that one day I won't need to dress warmly...
I like breathing even more than I like warmth
I don't actually exist.
Someone please moderate the parent posting (not mine) up. I am glad to see somone posting useful references on this stuff.
DuPont's worldwide patent for the production of Freon ran out at midnight the day before the worldwide ban on Freon production went into effect.
:)
Who helped sponser a lot of research that went into the ban on CFCs? DuPont.
Where are Mulder and Scully when you need them?
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Where's your logic? I mean, I could see NY being totally flooded and Washington being like Venice.. but not the other way around! Look at the map!
-- ATTENTION: do not read this sig. It doesn't say much.
Time to start work on off-Earth power sources - a good first step is lunar-based solar... see Criswell's plans for example. A cure for global warming, power plant pollution, and more. And no need for nuke's.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Oh yeah, that's an unbiased look at the science alright. 10 sentences on the "science", and pages and pages on the economic disaster the Kyoto treaty is foisting upon us! 68 cents/gallon higher gas taxes! 2.4 million American jobs lost! And a little "instant expert" page that tells you among other things, "the best strategy to pursue is one of 'no regrets.'" - doesn't that tell you something?
Have you tried reading the REAL sites on global warming, like
the EPA's site? They don't just TELL you everythings terrible (or OK, like the globalwarming site) - they show you in pages after page of graphs, numbers, and statistics. Read through that stuff, and then go back to the globalwarming.org site and decide which one looks more believable to you.
Energy: time to change the picture.
We have from this website:
Dec 2000 - a scientist claims that, while climate change is serious, more research is needed...
Nov 2000 - well it was too slow to load, so all I have are the search quotes, referring to the "stalled climate treaty", the Hague conference, etc. Doesn't look like much one way or the other there.
May 1999 Bush warms to global warming! - Even George Bush is quoted as saying: "I've had some briefings recently and I'm becoming more convinced that the science proves there's global warming."
All the remaining references I could find there date back 2 years or more - have they been having trouble recently finding any real scientists who agree with their position?
Energy: time to change the picture.
Nope, Celsius is perfectly linear - it's just Kelvins plus 273 degrees - of course since Kelvin's are absolute then for any absolute comparison (eg. today is 1% hotter than yesterday) you want Kelvin, but Celsius is fine for addition/subtraction purposes.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Nope - since when did Volcanos manufacture complex chloro-fluorocarbons? Pinatubo spewed lots of chlorine (and some fluorine) into the air, but it all got rained out within a year or two - quite different from the effects of man-made ozone-destroying chemicals. Of course this article was about CO2, not CFC's, so what's the story there? Pinatubo also didn't send up much CO2, but it did produce a lot of sulfur dioxide, resulting in airborne sulfuric acid droplets that likely cooled global temperatures by 1 degree for a year or so. But they got rained out too. The problem with CO2 (and CFC's) unlike what comes out of volcanos - they don't drop out of the air in rain, they just accumulate. Like a lot of other man-made pollutants.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Lets test that hypothosis... put a bunch of ice in a cup. Fill cup with water. Hell, just for fun, build a 'city' on the rim of that cup. Wait for ice to melt.
I'm betting your city isn't flooded, and the cup isn't overflowing...
Note that this argument in turn is flawed; The ice which causes the sea level to rise is that which is currently sat on land masses (eg Antarctica).
Phil--
nosig
'cause my solution is to blast it into the sun.
Blar.
> Yes, there's all the NIMBY opposition to a good permanent storage facility. Somebody should just get it over with and force Nevada to let them build the proposed storage facility.
I hear that Texas has a robust National Guard.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> If the Carbon Dioxide is synthesized in an internal combustion engine, or in a coal burning powerplant, it is not "naturally" occurring.
I'm still trying to decide whether the much discussed "bovine flatulence" is natural or artificial.
Sure, flatulation is natural for the cows, but there wouldn't be so many out there flatulatin' away if we didn't breed them by the million.
At any rate, I'm not too worried about bovine flatulence over the long haul, because I'm sure there's some biotech startup out there that will be patenting fartless cows sometime in the next decade or two. Then we can enjoy a diet of beef and milk without feeling guilty about what it's doing to the atmosphere.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Will this end soon? Not likely. The reason for the rising temperatures is that many current technologies are not environmentally sound.
People might want to do a Web search on The Tragedy of the Commons. It's no new thing for short term economic interests to wreak havoc over the long term.
Of course, it's easy to say "Fuck 'em, I'll be dead and gone before it matters." At that point it becomes a moral issue rather than merely an issue of common sense.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> But the global warming has seem to become the favored theory of environmentalists, regardless of evidence.
As indicated by the "environmentalist" bashing your reply, GW-denial is a political movement.
Yes, GW is a hypothesis. But yes, we have evidence that we're changing the atmosphere, and we have science that tells what various mixtures of gases do to incoming and outgoing radiation. A hypothesis, but the best one you can build on theory+evidence right now.
Denying GW might be good for your stock portfolio, but it probably isn't good for your planet.
In a newsgroup full of Libertarians, it's no surprise to see a lot of GW-denial. (See, I can put a political spin on it too!)
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> I totally agree with you that nuclear is the way to go.
I could go the nuke route, but I'd like to see a requirement that power plants make prior arrangements for their waste disposal and plant decomissioning before a license is granted, and pre-pay for them before construction starts.
The main failure of nuclear power in the USA isn't Three Mile Island, but rather the "what do we do with the mess" situation that it has left us.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Ummm... that's what the US Nuclear Waste Policy Act was for. By law, electric utilities do not "own" the uranium they use in power plants, it is only leased from the Department of Energy. So in this circumstance, and again by law, final disposition of spent fuel must be performed by the federal government.
Thanks for the info.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Where does your food supply come from?
The world's breadbasket shifts to Canada and Siberia. With long days, warmer temps, higher CO2 levels, and a longer growing season plants grow faster and better in these northern latitudes. The market economy will cause the shift of food production to those areas that there is a competitive advantage to the production of food. Also, new hybrids that resist drought currently in production will be improved. Total food production will increase following the trends of the last 200 years. More and more food can be produced on less and less land.
Neutrons are slippery little rascals, they can fool you. They can bounce and show up around corners you don't expect.
If the burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming, then we have nothing to worry about!
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
the latest cars that use electricity are hybrids: they use a gas and electric motor. The batteries are charged not only when the gas motor runs but also when you break. I don't think anyone is pushing electric-only anymore. Rather, I think people have realized that hybrids are the future.
That the first thing on that page is a plea not to link to it (but to link to his main page instead, so that his page counter works).
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
This planet has had times when the ice from the poles almost met at the equator and times when there was no ice at all. Aren't we jumping to conclusions (hubris too...) with all of maybe 100 - 150 years of climate data (some of it very marginal data too) by trying to say that 1) we actually can measure and know what's going on and that 2) we can actually have influenced things in any way.
... Prove it ... then prove we actually influenced something as large, robust, and chaotic as an entire plantary atmosphere.
two words to all the "global warming" claimants
use Signature::Witty;
You figure out how to get it out of the gravity well, and I'll find the VC for your startup. We'll make billions, no shit.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Never mind the environmental damage...how about the cost? The best rocket technology we've got on the drawing boards has a cost of $1000/lb of payload to low Earth orbit. (That's a tenfold reduction in cost over the Shuttle, by the way) Getting the stuff to escape the Earth's gravitation into a decaying orbit around the sun takes another huge delta-V (which means using a rocket to launch a rocket that carries the payload of the nasty you don't want to deal with)...
In other words, it will not ever be feasible to get rid of energy production waste by dumping it into space, since "dumping" it involves spending amounts of energy many orders of magnitude larger than those wastes generate to get the gunk out of the gravity well.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Why make trillions when I can make...millions! *sticks pinkie finger to corner of mouth*
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You figure out how to make it work, and I'll find you however much startup capital you need. We will be the wealthiest and most powerful individuals on Earth, and we can take turns using Bill Gates as a footstool.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Back in 1986, Argonne National Labs tested an inherently safe reactor; one that easily survived the Chernobyl and the Three Mile Island error conditions without human intervention, and without any negative consequences. It uses metallic Uranium for the fuel, instead of UF6 (Uranium HexaFluoride). Read more about this important development at Argonne's site yourself (look for EBR-II on the page).
John 17:20
Steve Milloy is an idiot:
http://skepdic.com/refuge/junkscience.html
has the specifics. He has a mind that automatically rejects any scientific study, real or false, which seems to threaten conservative, corporate interests as false by definition.
He rejects ALL studies against DDT while enthusiastically embracing pro-DDT stories. He rejects ALL studies supporting global warming, wrong or right, while accepting studies that are ambiguous or disagree with the Global Warming Theory. Why does he do this? Because he isn't interested in what's real and what isn't, he's just a conservative Rush Limbaugh type zealot who only sees what he wants to see.
I used to read his site, and for a while shared his simple-minded, market-oriented view of the world. But what we do affects others, whether it be second-hand smoking or supporting polluting companies. And regardless of his head-in-the-sand beliefs, we must be responsible to ourselves and our planet.
-Ben
Errrm, that should read "contaminants", not "contaminates". Mod -1 for un-gud grammer. *grin*
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I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Taken from http://www.csef.org/csefhome/globwarm.htm:
...
"Increasingly, scientists are taking note of the satellite measurements' evidence. According to satellite measurement advocates, such as John Christy of the University of Alabama-Huntsville, evidence of warming on a global scale has proven elusive to satellites monitoring temperature change. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellites measure the earth's temperature at a few kilometers above the surface and serve as the most accurate measurement today. These satellites have shown no net warming over the last 17 years. In fact, satellites have shown a slight cooling trend since the early 1990s--after the cooling effects of the Mount Pinitubo volcanic eruption had dwindled. This contradicts surface temperature measurements which have shown a significant warming trend since the beginning of the century. Surface temperature readings suffer from various accuracy problems that make the data less reliable in many ways. Industrial area heat amplifying effects as well as large unmeasured sections of ocean in the southern hemisphere reduce the accuracy of surface temperature readings--not to mention the inaccuracies stemming from thermometer reading problems. Nineteen ninety-five served as the most recent accuracy contest between the two methods, with scientists from East Anglia claiming a surface temperature increase, and John Christy offering satellite data showing a significant cooling trend for 1995. Whatever the truth, this fundamental problem of temperature data collection--often ignored in the popular debate over global warming--is further evidence of the lack of consensus in the scientific community.
Even if the surface temperature measurements are taken at face value, there are still problems with the hypothesis that this warming is due to human factors. Most of this one degree Celsius of warming occurred before 1940. Nearly all anthropogenic greenhouse gases were emitted into the atmosphere after 1940, which would imply that the global warming trend shown by surface temperature measurements over the past century was natural.
Based on the evidence available to us, we do not subscribe to the so-called 'scientific consensus' that envisages climate catastrophes and advocates hasty actions. As the debate unfolds, it has become increasingly clear that-contrary to conventional wisdom-there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. On the contrary, most scientists now accept that the actual observations from earth satellites show no climate warming whatsoever. And to match this fact, the mathematical climate models are becoming more realistic and are forecasting temperature increases that are only 30 percent or even less of what was considered the 'best' value just four years ago."
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I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
When Mt. Pinitubo erupted, it spewed forth more CFC's and air contaminates than the entire human race has been able to produce in its entire history. I'm not advocating rampant excesses and environmental irresposibility, I'm just saying that I think global warming is a farce and a lousy reason to base any amount of conservationism on. Base it on preventing the extinction of rare species or even preserving natural beauty, just don't base your beliefs on highly suspect bogus science.
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I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
I read somewhere that there are more greenhouse gases released into the atomosphere from one large volcanic explosion than from the total released by human activities for the past 100 years.
This doesn't mean we shouldn' try to reduce low-altitude atmospheric pollutants but I think we should try to get some perspective on the theory of Global Warming in general. For all we know, it could just be one of those things that happens to the earth every 50 million years or so.
Yes...
Thers is what? 300 million citizens in the USA? There is 6 billion people in the world. The USA produces 10 to 25 % of world's food and 25% of world's pollution while being only about 5% of the popullation. Where does all that energy go? Why is there so much waste?
Same goes for Europe...
Please tell us how much carbon was released by the natural prairie and forest fires across North America before 1700. Also, how much carbon was deposited in topsoil annually?
There's nothing half-hearted about the automobile industry attempts to make electric cars. They know the first to market with a practical design will sell a lot of them. The problem is there simply isn't yet a battery technology which can hold enough energy cheaply enough. (I put "cheap" in there because some high-density technologies presently wear out the batteries too quickly for automotive use) It's hard to approach the energy density of volatile liquids. Waving the magic wand harder doesn't seem to be producing denser energy storage.
The protective feathers of the disposal facility design are intended to protect against accidental damage, particularly by those who don't know what they are doing. Retrieval with the blueprint (or ground-penetrating radar) with proper equipment is easy enough, although time consuming in sealed areas.
So put all the nation's breeder reactors in one corner of Utah. Line losses to feed the electricity to the rest of the nation don't matter, as the nuclear fuel would be wasted if it wasn't used. Have all the reactors close together so they can have plenty of guards to stop people from eating the toxic plutonium before it is converted.
Gee, if "many of the reactors in Canada had to be shut down after 10 years" then the 21 operational reactors in Canada suggests that Canada used to have many more. What was the total number -- 50, 100, 210 reactors? And most of those 21 seem to be older than 10 years...
And why do you want to scrap carbon credits? If vegetation removes carbon, why ignore that? Remember that the Central Prairies had six feet of black dirt under the prairie grass? That's carbon rich soil -- how do you think it got there? Well, we have stopped letting the prairie burn every year and instead have megatons of crops and timber every year...
Oh, yeah...and why not cut down trees? They're a renewable resource and the new ones grow also. If your issue is favorite old growth, mention it.
What was significant about the Pinatubo eruption was the 17 Megatons of sulphur dioxide (which measurably increased ozone damage for at least two years), and the sulfates in the cloud of debris (5 cubic kilometers of stuff, with much of the heavier stuff landing nearby) in the upper atmosphere which shaded the Earth and decreased global temperatures.
Actually, Global Cooling was making headlines in the 1970s, when the 55 MPH energy-saving policy was adopted, so the science is more recent than 1920. Within five years Global Warming was in the headlines. And they've been tinkering with computer models for decades trying to prove the theory.
Gee, that's too bad. They're using bad data. Ocean temperatures are higher than air temps. Thus those studies which use air temperatures over land and ocean temperatures over ocean are using temps which are higher than true air temps.
Almost from the beginning, the IPCC operated under the assumption that human use of fossil fuels was having a measurable impact on the Earth's climate. But this assumption needed the scientific community's imprimatur if it was to motivate the United States and other developed countries to curb their carbon emissions. So computer models were ginned up to "prove" that if the nations of the world continued to produce more carbon dioxide, a potentially catastrophic planetary warming would occur. There was, however, a huge problem with the models -- they were wildly inaccurate. Indeed, the models on which the Kyoto Protocol are based predicted that the planet's temperature should have risen by as much 2.3 degrees since the start of the Industrial Revolution, when major greenhouse gas emissions began. In reality, the Earth's temperature has risen only about a third of what the models forecast. Yet, despite the unreliability of atmospheric models, despite evidence that actually contradicts the dire warnings of global warming (like global satellite technology and data showing that, over the past 18 years, there actually has been a global cooling of .09 degrees Celsius), the National Academy of Sciences and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change continue to misinform the public that there is "no scientific dispute" that global warming is under way and that human beings are the culprit.
In short, the IPCC was tasked with assuming global warming was the huamnity's fault, and then proving it. Pretty easy to do so when you lie and the press doesnt expose you as a liar. Just like Al Gore's endorsement of junk science. The press is so taken in by the bull that they dont even metnion that there are 15,000 scientists who oppose the "positons" the IPCC has chosen on global warming- and make no doubts, its a CHOICE by the IPCC, not a conclusion of honest research.
I'd no sooner trust the IPCC opinon on climatological research than I would the Catholic Churche's research on effect contraception.
http://www.junkscience.com/news2/medianom.htm
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
First, the radioactivity from coal mines is in the form of radioactive rocks and gasses, radon or radium, or any variation of heavy metals that inhabit the earth. The fact coal plants do release these is rarely known, but worse is the fact that they are completely unregulated!
With Nuclear, at least the radioactivity levels are monitored at all times by an independent body.
Warning: IANASM (science major)
The problem with Yucca mountain is much more than political - it's evironmental and unsustainable. The recent findings at Yucca mountain is that as recently as 20,000 years ago, water ran through the area exactly where they want to put the nuclear waste (when I say "the area", I mean underground). What this means is that likely as not, it will happen again (could be 2000 years, could be 200000 years) and the water would become contaminated ... and spread throughout the western part of the US.
Granted, there are those that think that's not such a bad thing. *jk*
What it comes down to is that this "option" is just as harmful, if not more, than what nuclear energy is trying to replace.
My $.02
--
Give a man a match, you keep him warm for an evening.
Give a man a match, you keep him warm for an evening.
Light him on fire, he's warm for the rest of his life
I just had a conversation earlier this week with a high school science teacher about the problem of dislodging preconceived notions from her students' heads. It's aweful that our culture and education system nurtures them still. We've moved beyond "the world is flat" and the "moon is made of bleu cheese", but poisoned thought is all around us.
In our discussion, we talked about how some of her student's had thought that when water boils, the bubbles are made of air that was trapped in the water. This of course is incorrect, but no more incorrect than her notion that the bubbles were atomic hydrogen gas and oxygen gas being released by the water breaking appart into components. The bubbles are water vapor, chemically the same as the water that they emerge from.
My point in this is that we are all poisoned by other's suggestions and our own misconceptions about the certainty and 'science' in our world. The poster asserting that volcanoes spew CFC's is just as incorrect as superposed's assertion that CFC's are the main cause of ozone depletion.
Back in 1990, I had lunch with a NASA scientist who was working on figuring out what the root cause of the newly (less than 10 years old) discovered ozone hole. Being told in school at the time that the cause was definitely CFC's and the evils of hairspray, freon (a damn fine refrigerant and parts cleaning solvent), and styrafoam, I regurgetated what I was taught, thinking that this would hold up my end of the conversation.
The scientist was distressed. He did confirm that CFC's could break down ozone, but that CFC's positively were NOT involved with the creation or enlargement of the hole! When a villian is created, it is damn near impossible to convince a mob that he is not evil.
CFC's only break down ozone under very specific conditions. A temperature below -90 C is required for the reaction. This low temperature can be found at the altitude that the ionosphere is, but CFC's are too heavy to ever reach that altitude. Even more problematic for the CFC scenario to work is the fact that that even if some amazing updraft could lift them up to the right altitude, they would breakdown before reaching the ozone that they are responsible for attacking.
After asaulting preconceived notions and bad theories though, I would be remiss if I didn't offer my own theory (flamesuit on) about our ozone hole. As a disclaimer, I have no data to back this up, so this is only being advanced as my own preconceived notion.
I think that solar flares, or at least solar winds, are responsible for our nifty hole. We are constantly bombarded by ionized radiation from the sun. This ozone layer protects us (biological entities) from this constant stream. Ionized matter has a polarity (Millikan oil drop), as does our earth (magnetic poles). The relationship between electric charge and magnetic fields is well understood. My notion is that the ozone layer exists in part because of the solar winds, and that the hole exists because of the magnetic polarity of the earth.
Many people have asked if the hole was always there, but we were unable to detect it until recently. Think about it, nobody knew it was there until somebody went and looked for it.
Who knows?
-- Len
for example, that article contradicts this report which also refers to an article in the Jan. 1, 2001 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters
NTAGARA
> Chernobyl ... incident really just goes to show you the drawbacks of communism, not nuclear power
So, is Three Mile Island in a Communist country?
> Another thing worth noting is that electric cars are a stupid idea if the electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels.
Nonono, you're missing the point; if the electricity is produced at a huge power plant, then you can spend tens of millions of $$ on filters and stuff to get the bad stuff out, while cars absolutely sucks in this respect, since you can't afford it for each individual car.
> scientists don't agree on global warming.
Wrong, very wrong. The only scientist that don't agree are the ones bought by the industry. This is a pretty well known fact.
But I guess you need to see your skin fry to coal before you're convinced?
Alright: We've been doing nuclear research for 50 years, funded by the military and big business at _huge_ taxpayer expense. Meanwhile, solar power, wind generation, geothermal energy, and tidal energy (which don't have much if any military value) are getting ignored. How much taxpayer money is going to their research? How much has gone to their research over the past 50 years?
It's amazing that each of these alternative sources of energy work as well as they do without even remotely near the same order of magnitude of funding as nuclear power.
Here's a suggestion: Let's stop funding things based on how easily they allow us to intimidate smaller countries, and start funding them based on public good. If solar, wind, geothermal, or any of the above alternative energy sources had been researched to near the extent nuclear power has, there is no doubt in my mind that we wouldn't be considering nuclear power as a viable technology.
> An intelligent reactor design (such as Candu)
Being a southern Ontario resident, I'd have to point out that the CANDU (Canadian-Deuterium-Uranium) reactor is anything _but_ intelligent. As part of normal operation, it spits out tons of Tritium. The levels of which are legal nowhere in north America except for Ontario. The levels weren't even legal in Ontario (just quietly ignored) until Bud Wildman (MP, Algoma, and then Minister of the Environment) more than tripled the limit in 1996.
The limit he set (7000 becquerels per litre) results in 350 fatal cancers per million.
There are more than three million people living in Toronto alone. That's 1050 fatal cancers _expected_ because the limit is set that high (and constantly pushed by the often poorly-tuned CANDU reactors).
Good design? No!
Good design would have been spending as much taxpayer money as was spent on nuclear energy research over the past 50 years on other sources of energy such as solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy.
Coal power results in deaths, Hydro power destroys valuable habitat, Nuclear power results in deaths (meltdown or no). If all the skyscrapers in a city had to put solar panels on their roofs, and windmills off the side of the buildings (wind tunnel, anyone?), how many deaths do you think would result?
Not 350 per million, I'll tell you that!
Sure. If this wasn't obvious, you just need to think about it a little more.
CFCs, HCFCs, HFCs, PFCs, and SF6s, barely contribute to global warming anywhere. They're not to nice to the ozone layer, but that's another issue. Too many people confuse them, and it's dissapointing to see the EPA doing nothing to help prevent this mass misconception.
Ozone depletion reduces the level of 03 high in the atmosphere allowing more UV light in. This ups the cancer rate, but not much else.
Global warming results from gasses being released into the air which won't allow heat out at the same rate as the rest of our nitrogen-based atmosphere.
Light goes in--hits ground--converts to heat--can't escape--planet warms.
The great culprit chemical for global warming is CO2. The US, and Canada have consistantly ignored their promises to the rest of the world to reduce CO2 emissions. Maybe the oil companies are just too damn powerful.
All the jerks on the coast move inland... move next door.
Do you want politicians living next to your kids?
It wasn't an issue of mismeasured reactants, it was an issue of blatantly ignoring the procedures for performing a procedure. By doing things in a rushed manner, materials came together in a way that yielded a nasty radiation dose for those doing the work, and not much else. (That'll teach you to follow directions ...) I don't have a link handy, but I think it was in Physics Today.
Look it up. Of course its getting warmer. Were coming out of a major ice age 50-100 thousand years back, and a smaller global cool down about 2-300 years ago. Not to mention being at the top of a major solar cycle.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
The fact that you're confusing the ozone issue and the global warming issue proves that you haven't a clue what you're talking about. They're two entirely different things. I haven't read Sagan's book, but I'd be utterly astonished if he made such a blunder.
A scientist working for a corporation tends to lie to help the corporation.. Wouldn't a scientist who's funded by an environmental group also tend to lie to help that group?
Science in the U.S. is generally funded by public money and not by "environmental groups," unless you consider organizations like the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and NASA as being "environmental groups." The grants are obtained by applying for the money, and there is intense competition for each research dollar. A scientist who habitually lies about his or her results can expect that, eventually, the ruse will be discovered, and the scientist will lose all credibility in the eyes of his or her peers. The scientist will then be unable to secure research grants in the future. Let's "follow the money," as you say, and realize that credible studies are in most scientists' best interests; a scientist's currency is his or her reputation. You will find few who are reckless enough to risk that for a dubious immediate gain.
Has Paul Erhlik [sic. Ehrlich] a scientist ever admitted his mistaken predictions?
See a recent biographical article in Scientific American where Dr. Ehrlich indeed admits that many of his doomsday predictions did not come true. How is this relevant again?
Much of the evidence of global warming is in indicators; people who claim they can measure fractions of a degree in tree rings or atospheric gasses. That's something that makes me reluctant to trust them.
Please elaborate on the flaws in these lines of research and convince my why they shouldn't be taken any more seriously than, say, economic indicators that point to a recession on the horizon. Just why should I care about the CPI or the trade deficit or the number of new housing starts in a quarter? What relevance could these possibly have?
Face it. You are yourself biased because you do not wish to lose your beloved SUV or admit that your USA "consume and discard" lifestyle is at all damaging to the environment. You are eager to accuse those who have devoted their careers to answering the difficult questions of climate change of being as biased as you. You choose, instead of elevating yourself to their level by learning of the issues and debating the results of the studies, to dismiss all studies whose outcomes you don't like.
Rush Limbaugh claimed once on his radio show that global warming wouldn't matter anyway because (to paraphrase) ice melting in a glass of water doesn't change the level of the water.
- The oil-fires in Iraq definately had their impact on this
- I think 3rd world countries don't use enough energy to cause more pollution than the USA
- Regulations on pollution are way behind on those in Europe as the article mentions shortly.
My $.030x or or snor perron?!
You overlook reworking the way our society is organised so that people don't have to travel so far every day... viva le teleworking!
Sure, but most of the energy expended to make the plant was done by someone else - the Sun/big bang :-)
What, you mean people might start having to ride bicycles and take puplic transport, and not eat kilos of meat (which, of course, requires a huge amount of greenhouse gases released to be produced) per week? Yeah - I can see that that will never happen. People are just too god damned greedy. Until America's bubble of greed bursts.
Pollution control comes through reduce of one's abuse of the environment around them, not sophisticated technology.
It is sad that most people will not consider it an issue until it directly affects their ability to live. By which time it will probably be too late.
If you don't need to wear your suits anywhere other than work, do what I do. Keep em at work. Ties and belt and shoes stay at the office as well. Each weekend I take in 5 clean shirts, socks and jocks. 15km ride takes longer to drive than to ride. If it rains, I get wet. Big deal.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
I just got over reading Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan and in it he talks in great depth about global warming. [snip]
2) If at sea level, wholly intact, the ozone layer is about 3 mm thick or just slightly thicker than one's finger nail.
Oh, not this again... Global warming and ozone depletion are two separate, largely unrelated problems. I hope it was just you and not Carl Sagan who got confused. Furthermore, the ozone hole has shown signs of closing.
1) Even if we stopped production and useage of all greenhouse-effect causing gases, these gases would remain in the upper atmosphere doing harm for a little over a century.
Let me point out that the only way to completely stop producing greenhouse gases is to kill yourself (remember, you breathe out carbon dioxide and fart methane), and, even then, your rotting carcass would release more greenhouse gases.
The amount of confusion between global warming and the ozone hole is really disheartening. If nobody even knows what they're talking about, how can we possibly expect to get anywhere?
OK, first of all, the ozone hole and global warming are two separate, largely unrelated problems. Was it you or Carl Sagan who confused the two?
Second, saying "you can't do X. Read book Y for an argument I can't be bothered to summarize" is a lame debating tactic. I'd love to hear your (or Sagan's) explanation of why releasing particulate matter into the atmosphere won't work, so please post with more info if possible.
The real solution is to get our damn greenhouse emissions in order...
That would be the ideal solution, but it's just not going to happen. The negative economic impact would be too large, especially for developing countries that can't afford sophisticated pollution-control technologies. We have to look to solutions that can actually be realistically implemented.
Ozone only contributes a small amount to the greenhouse effect. Other gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, play a much more significant role in the greenhouse effect. I am aware of this, which is why I said "largely unrelated..."
Again, I note evidence suggesting that the ozone hole is now closing. If global warming and the ozone hole were really closely related, you'd think that that would shut people up about global warming.
Good points, but I was expecting that the "dust shield" would have to be continuously replenished. Expensive, yes, but cheaper than trying to meet the draconian restrictions proposed in the Kyoto Accord. I have no clue where you get your "10 cubic miles" figure from--this sounds way off-base to me. My own quick estimate, based on using particles with a 1-micrometer radius, is that around 7 x 10^6 cubic metres of particles would need to be used. That's around 14,000 tonnes, assuming a density twice that of water. Smaller particles would reduce the mass required... Yes, this is a lot, but it's not impossible, and it could be fuelled using nuclear or other clean energy sources... I do agree that our first priority should be replacing fossil fuel electricity plants with something cleaner (nuclear being my favourite candidate).
Yes, there's all the NIMBY opposition to a good permanent storage facility. Somebody should just get it over with and force Nevada to let them build the proposed storage facility.
Politics and science don't mix well...
Many countries around the world signed the Montreal Protocol which was a ban on CFCs - the leading cause of ozone depletion as speculated by scientists and perhaps proven so with the recent evidence you've provided
:-)
/. I appreciate you being civil, too.
Yes, good point. However, just because we had an effect on A does not automatically mean we have a significant effect on B. There are a lot of things which affect global climate, such as solar cycles, natural ecological change, etc. The ice ages were all natural, for instance... It's very difficult to isolate man-made environmental changes from natural ones.
I remember that a few years ago, the Wall Street Journal published a graph showing global mean temperatures, human CO2 emissions, and solar activity over the past 117 years or so. Solar activity correlated much better to temperature than did CO2 emissions. It sometimes strikes me as arrogant that we assume that humans have the power to destroy the planet. Remember, we're not the biggest polluters to inhabit Earth--that honor belongs to early photosynthetic bacteria that "polluted" the air with oxygen. That turned out real bad, didn't it?
OK well thanks for at least being rational about this.
No problem. The occasional funny troll aside, rational discussion is so much more interesting than a lot of what happens on
Paraphrasing from the book:
It's amazing what kind of weird shit I remember. In any case, people should know that even the existence of global warming is disputed.
Your reasoning is completely flawed, I have to say. Yes, computers cannot accurately predict short-term (1 to 5 etc.) weather trends, that is, they can't calculate how such and such ocean currents will affect meteorology.
However, in the long run these short-term events cancel out. Computers are capable, with a limited degree of accuracy, given chaos and the data available, to extrapolate on long-term trends. This is completely different than a 2-week or even 2-year weather forecast.
The climate is a chaotic system, meaning that the future becomes exponentially more difficult to predict the farther forward you look. While there are some trends that we can use to make predictions (i.e., it probably won't snow on July 4 in Texas), placing too much faith in these models is silly.
It's also worth noting that the models have, so far, been completely wrong in pretty much everything. For instance, predictions made in 1990 of warming by 2000 haven't happened. Aside from the El Nino blip, we haven't seen any warming. Check out this link.
Before people freak out completely, I'd like to make a few observations:
First of all, it's worth noting that this is a prediction based on a theory. Scientists are trying to explain why we haven't yet seen as much global warming as the models would suggest, and this is one possible explanation--not absolute fact. Remember, back in the '70s, global cooling was the environmental boogeyman. Second, the IPCC has done some shady things before, such as changing the executive summary of a report after it was peer reviewed (my source for this is a series of letters to the editor published in the Wall Street Journal several years ago). Finally, there is a significant amount of controversy in the scientific community surrounding global warming.
The point is, take the IPCC report with a large grain of salt. People on both sides of the issue have their continued grant funding depending on whether they find evidence for or against global warming, so the science has unfortunately become very distorted by politics.
That said, I'd like to suggest a simple technological solution to the potential global warming problem. Disperse sufficient fine particulate matter into the upper atmosphere to reflect about 1% of the sun's light. Volcanoes do this naturally, and there's plenty of data to show that it can cool the planet. The cost of doing this artificially, while expensive, is likely to be far, far cheaper than meeting the goals set out in the Kyoto Accord. I can't take credit for this idea--I heard it mentioned once somewhere else. Why, with all the concern about global warming, do you hear so little about using technology to directly fix the problem?
I totally agree with you that nuclear is the way to go. I know some people will cry about Chernobyl, but that incident really just goes to show you the drawbacks of communism, not nuclear power. An intelligent reactor design (such as Candu) operated by well-trained individuals would never suffer such a catastrophe.
In the Candu design, if the reactor core starts to overheat, the heavy water moderator boils away, and the reaction stops. Simple physics prevents meltdowns. There are plenty of other good designs that avoid the Chernobyl problem, but people just freak out when they hear nuclear.
Another thing worth noting is that electric cars are a stupid idea if the electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Finally, your average coal plant puts out more radioactivity than your average nuclear plant (due to radioactive isotopes in the coal).
Listen, there is a non-trivial likelihood that these predictions are correct and if they come through, it could have devastating effects on our descendents. By then, it will probably be too late for a quick fix.
It is better to be safe than sorry. Maybe global warming is being overestimated, maybe not. Do you want to take that risk? It surprises me that so many people are willing to risk the lives of our descendents just so they can drive bigger cars, etc.
I'm from Finland and I welcome some warming. 5-6 extra degrees would be lovely! What I'm worried about is how the heating affects the earth in a larger perspective. Extra heat means polar ice caps and other large perpetual ice-areas will melt. That would mean the seas rise, except that increased heat also means that more water is evaporated (probably not the correct techical term) and form clouds, which then means more rain... somewhere.. The end result could be that strong sea currents stop or reverse and that we actually get colder weather in parts of the world because of this. Dramatically colder in some cases. I'm pretty sure just about any part of the world (except maybe Singapore ;) could handle an extra 5 degrees of heat but can Scandinavia handle the end of the Golf current? What happens when it starts raining daily in the Sahara? What happens to Miami when hurricanes are a daily occurance? That's what *I* am worried about.
As another Minnesotan, I am also looking forward to global warming. The winters here are simply intolerable.
Where does our food come from? Mostly around here, at least for the staples (wheat, sugar, cows) though it will be a shame not to have Florida oranges or California avocados anymore. Maybe they'll grow in Tennesse after things warm up a bit.
Clean water? That's true, the Mississippi isn't the cleanest, but we can always buy from Canada, they have plenty!
Our electricty? We've got one nuclear plant here, maybe we can just stop selling electrcity to the rest of you suckers...especially after you're all under water...And don't forget all the coal out in North Dakota, which we'll be burning steadily to keep the temperature up.
- with toungue in cheek -
Yeah, but I'm originally from ND, and I know we've got plenty of coal out there. It's really dirty so they don't use much of it anymore. Which makes it perfect for spuring global warming!
We're being asked to believe an assertion by some people. They are trying to prove something that can't be observed, because it hasn't happened yet, can't be reliably seen to be happening, and has been repeatedly exploited, exaggerated, lied about, and then coined into gold by political extremists. In determining whether to believe them and their assertions, their credentials matter.
The poster above was trying to prove exactly nothing. One need not have credentials to doubt, nor is a degree needed to believe one's own eyes.
Junkscience.com isn't a mouthpiece for anyone. It's a cheaply put together website that tries to add a note of realism to the many, many press-hyped pseudo-scientific proclamations.
Remember when you heard caffiene was bad for you? It's not. Remember when you heard breast implants cause illness? They don't.
Junkscience.com tells you whether the scientists and the press have done all their job. Most of the time, the answer is no.
I wonder if this makes me a mouthpiece for the caffiene and breast implant industries?
If it's free, then yes, let's hedge our bets all the way. If it costs money (or jobs, quality-of-life, freedom, or anything else of value), then a serious risk-analysis is in order. Then a cost-benefit analysis should be done for the proposed solutions.
Unfortunately, the people pushing this are the true believers. Their beliefs and plans have a fanatical religious quality. Fanaticism doesn't tend to lead to good decision making.
Doomsday predictions are a favorite tool of would-be leaders. If you don't accept them from David Koresh, why are you so anxious to accept them from Paul Erlich?
Yeah, but Millroy hasn't been editing the site for a while now. Find something to trash the guy who is.
It says on the site he's working on a book instead of the site for a while.
(I added the bold.)
Have a look at JunkScience.com for more on this.
My take is this:
We're being asked to believe an assertion by some people. They are trying to prove something that can't be observed, because it hasn't happened yet, can't be reliably seen to be happening, and has been repeatedly exploited, exaggerated, lied about, and then coined into gold by political extremists.
Perhaps some skepticism is in order.
Hey, yeah! But, er....
;)
A good 50% is really *bad* food: Deep fried X, where X is a member of the set of all possible edibles.
Perhaps we should look at cleaning up two American hydrocarbon emission problems: The one where the h.'s are vented into the atmosphere, and the one where the h.'s end up around people's midriffs.
- undoware.ca
Um, although I agree with you that something should be done to reign in the smog-belching lump of corpuscular excess that is the US, I would also point out that Canada's environmental policies are actually N% worse that America's. However, we have fewer people and more environment with which to hide the consequences of industry, and so our naughtiness continues unabated. Plus, everyone thinks we're nice and well-behaved, for some strange reason.
Canada? Pollute? Naaaah!
- undoware.ca
Why not? Everything costs money. If the cost to business was the sole criterea for choosing what's good for mankind we would all be slaves. Every industry is regulated so that they exersize a modicum (read minimal) bit of restraint in their pollution levels and general harm to society.
According to your logic we should have no emissions controls at all because it's VASTLY CHEAPER just to dump all your pollutants into the air or water or whatever.
Screw costs to the industry. What is the cost to farmers if you don't take action, what is the cost to all the extra people who get cancer, what is the cost of the untold misery industry has and continues to cost everybody who happens to live in their neighborhoods. When you are calculating cvosts you better add into the cost of all those malformed babies my friend.
Only factoring the costs to industry while neglecting the cost to society at all is voodoo economics.
BTW it's not at all like what you say. This not me running around saying california is going to sink this is a bunch of scientists who have studied this their whole lives. Ignoring what they have to say because it costs too much is totally insane. This is their best guess at what they think is going to happen not some wild guess by an ignoramous.
War is necrophilia.
http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1999Q4/avery.html (the parent link seemed to get a bit mangled). I knew there was something weird about that JunkScience site.
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as well as Solar Power which feeds energy back into the electric grid (thereby, eliminating the need for nuclear energy by over 100% if everybody did it, and it was a government funded project).
Unfortunately, solar cells are currently extremely damaging to the environment. Essentially, they're manufactured in a similar way to computer chips--it requires immense amounts of power and large quantities of extremely toxic materials to create them. Yes, they're emission-free once they're in use, but getting them out the factory door involves huge expenditures of both power and toxic chemicals.
The truth is, new technology has not been tested as long as old technology; and in reality, new technology is always new, and never the technology being used everywhere; so it is not possible (in this case) to forgive the use of dangerous technology worldwide with a few examples of some new reactors running in a few small locations.
While your argument is sound, it's also inapplicable. CANDU reactors (and similar negative-coeffecient-of-moderation reactors) are not new technology. They're over fifty years old, if I recall. The RBMK-type (Chernobyl) reactor is actually of a newer type than the CANDU reactor.
Every design, whether it be of a car or a nuke plant, involves tradeoffs. If you want it to do X very well, you have to scale back on Y. The RBMK reactors did not have environmental safety as a design criteria--hell, the Russians cared so little about environmental safety they didn't even bother to put a containment dome on it. The CANDU reactors, and other similar negative-coefficient US reactors, have environmental and human safety as their first design goal.
The very nature of dependance and cost of Nuclear Technology makes it a dangerous thing.
According to whom? Different people have different ideas of what is and is not dangerous. "Danger" is a subjective term, and too often used as a defense for NIMBY and NIMBY's big brother, BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).
Instead of talking about "danger", try talking about historical risk. Define exactly what such terms as "nuclear meltdown" means--does it mean full-bore China Syndrome? Or is something like Three Mile Island, which has never been demonstrated to have had any environmental impact whatsoever even though there was a nuclear crisis there?
Once you come up with those rigid definitions, then look to history to come up with an assessment of risk. (Some people say to crunch numbers, but I don't--that's how we got to Challenger, after all.) Once you do that, then you'll be on solid ground if you want to claim that nuclear power is dangerous. But be warned, it's a hard thing to back up scientifically; by and large, anti-nuclear activists depend on the fear effect of the nuclear bogeyman to make people's knees jerk in the opposite direction from the nuke plant.
Should a problem be found in new reactor designs, or a problem occurs in the many tiny unique variables that effect nuclear power production at any facility; the technology is still going to be used for a long, long time.
If the design is that badly flawed, they won't be able to run the plant. That's one of the nice fringe benefits of living in a capitalist society; people get to choose who they work for. If someone wanted to hire me to work in an RBMK plant without a reactor dome, I'd say "buddy, I don't care what you're willing to pay me, the answer is no--especially since these other plants, whose designs aren't criminally insane, are willing to offer me an equal wage to work there."
[Y]ou will be very surprised by "Greenpeaces Guide To The Nuclear Age". Chernobyl was only one of many many disasters that have occured worldwide; many have occured in the US and Canada that nobody has even heard of, and they were very serious.
Wow. Let me get this straight. The same news media that hounded Clinton's every move--the same news media which is so effective that the CIA's number one source of intelligence is CNN--the same news media we all love to curse--the same news media which is predominantly left-learning and, thus, inclined to judge nuclear power even more harshly--this same news media is so incompetent they can't cover major nuclear disasters?
There's a disconnect of reality there. Either (a) the news media is so ferociously competent at exposing these things that major world governments can't keep things secret for them, or (b) the news media is so incompetent that when they see buildings glowing blue from Cerenkov radiation, they think it's just a new paint job.
Take your pick and stick with it.
The answer? Because the staff at the plant itself were actually designing, and building the controlling circuitry AT HOME, as it was needed!
Let me get this straight. If they were designing and building the controlling circuitry at the office, that'd be fine, no matter how lousy the design was; but since they worked at home, it doesn't matter how good the design was, it's still lousy?
Very smart people, whose HOBBIES were Electronics were doing this stuff
My hobby is cryptographic engineering. My day job is cryptographic engineering. Does that mean that, if it's between 9-to-5 on a weekday, that what I produce is automatically good because it's "professional work for pay", and anything I do on a weekend is "amateur-quality work"?
I don't trust any industry that has to make commercials saying, "Nuclear Energy is Safe!", but they can't explain why, even in simple terms.
That's because the best way to refute FUD--such as what you're spreading here--is with careful fact and analysis. Careful fact and analysis requires that people think, and I think it's already been established that ninety-five percent of America tries to avoid thinking whenever possible.
NO NO NO!!! You didn't see the whole report. The current theory goes:
"The main difference between the estimates is that scientists now believe past global warming has been held down by the amount of dust and other particulates reaching the atmosphere. According to the theory, these blocked sunlight and created a cooling effect.
As industry gets cleaner, this effect is diminishing and carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases now have no countervailing force."
So, you see, we need more SUVs, more coal burning and more polluting factories! Doesn't anyone see the irony in this?
Hey, 25 percent ain't that much ... c'mon America, we just selected George Bush for President, it shouldn't take us more than four years to increase from our current level to at least 40 percent of all heat production and deforestation!
All we have to do is just make sure we buy more SUVs this year, take a few extra drives, leave the windows open, and use lots of forest products which we then burn in our nice fireplaces.
And, then, noone will challenge us. Because we are the USA, and we are Number 1!
Will in Seattle
And would be praised by amateur astronomers (and probably a few professionals as well):
Turn off a few (actually, many) of those damn lights in cities and towns!
I live on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona, and the glow from the light in the city is INSANE. All night long, lights are on. Most of these are unneeded - security lights that don't really provide security, merely the illusion of it. Lights that point up onto billboards, instead of down from above. If these lights were installed and designed in a proper manner, fewer could be used to achieve the same desired result, at a savings of energy at night.
How about using LED lights for stop lights? How about designing homes for the environment (ie, small windows on the south/east/west sides - solar cooling, etc)? How about using more fluorescent lights and other energy efficient lights?
Really, the thing is to use less light, not more - we get all kinds of free light most days in most areas, yet we still light up the insides of offices with electricity! Does anyone remember the fiber optic light pipes used in Japan? From sun tracking collectors on the roof, sunlight could be piped into rooms via fiber. Solatubes work in a cruder, though less expensive, fashion.
I know this isn't the complete answer, and I don't want to do away with electric light. I am sure there are a bunch of other things that could be done, but using less electric lights would go a long way...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Many of the skin cancer test cases seem to completely forget taht smoking is a leading cuase of skin cancer and simply blame the sun. Australia has the same problem. Its almost like some of the studies are rigged to show the desired results.
Back to CO2, the US is taking a stupid stance but Europe won't back down either so no on wins. Even with the US consesion of having lots of green areas, they are still going to have to cut CO2.
One way to help stop the rising water is to grow more plants. Many coastal areas near deserts can now sustain life. Egypt has enough water under it to expand the green belt quite a ways into the desert. If the dust bowl showed anything, it should show that if you get more trees in an area, you will be able to get more rain. Keep in mind that Oklahoma was known as the "Great American Desert" before they found out about Arizona. The tree plainging schemses and mand made lakes have increased the rain fall in Okla several thousand precent.
--
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
While China or India may not have as many cars/motorbikes as the US, the ones they do have have no emission controls whatsoever.
Also, can you provide a reference that quantifies cars as causing "most pollution in America"?
Not to mention that changing to new processes and products can have unintended consequences. Think of all the great things we've come up with that we later discovered had some lasting negative effect on us.
Interesting that you should mention this. If atmospheric CO2 levels do lead to increased global temperatures, leading to increased sea levels, nature has a way of balancing this out.
The increased temps result in more 'tropical' areas, and the increased sea levels create many shallow seas. These are the conditions under which small carbonate-producing creatures thrive. As these creatures grow and die, they create carbonate rock - limestone. Supporters of the greenhouse hype conlcude that as more carbon is removed from the atmosphere, temperatures decrease, sea levels fall, etc.
While we understand the genesis of carbonate rock very well, we do not understand the complexities of our atmosphere. Those who are pushing the global warming agenda are trying to use this as support for their cause.
The original poster simply said "pollution", not carbon dioxide. The ever-increasing fuel economy of our cars equates to less CO2 being spewed from each tailpipe. Yes, the total number of miles we drive continues to increase every year, but then so does the number of uncontrolled vehicles in developing countries.
Further, an analysis of the government data indicates that if all gasoline burning vehicles were removed from the U.S., total man-made CO2 emissions would drop by 4 percent, and total C02 emissions (man-made and natural) would drop by 18/100 of 1 percent.
I think you're right... But doesn't that just
continue the joke?
www.dictionary.com
affect1 (-fkt)
v. tr. affected, affecting, affects.
1.To have an influence on or effect a change in: Inflation affects the buying power of the dollar.
2.To act on the emotions of; touch or move.
3.To attack or infect, as a disease: Rheumatic fever can affect the heart.
Goddamn, I hate us. Note that this will probably get worse before it gets better -- our friendly voters in Florida helped get a pro-business, anti-environment President elected.
inigima
The second Hemos uses proper grammar, hell will freeze over, making the earth a bit cooler.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
The climate is a chaotic system
I'd have to disagree a bit. *Weather* might be chaotic. But climate usually isn't. I mean, the equator isn't going to become an arctic climate over night. We can track trends over hundreds and thousands of years, accross ice ages, etc.
The bottom line is: 1) if we do nothing, we can get screwed pretty big 2) if we do *something*, the only risk is that we have "unnecessarily" forced ourselves to be less wasteful, more efficient, etc. How could that *possibly* be a bad thing?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
You got some credentials, pal? Some evidence? Some references? Or are you just running your mouth?
First of all, reducing C02 doesn't really lower greenhouse gases. The biggest greenhouse gas is water vapor, making up 98% of all greenhouse gases.
Yeah, and your heart is only two percent of your body mass. So I guess taking it out wouldn't really lower your functioning, eh?
during the 60s, people worried about a global cooldown.
Yeah, and the shining product of computer science in the 60s was COBOL. So what? In last 30 or 40 years, a lot of new work has been done and a lot of new data unearthed. Oh, and they now have these fancy thingies called computers for working with all of this data. It would be reasonable to think that climatology, like every other science over the last few decades, has improved some.
Third, global temperature depends on where you measure temperature.
This effect is known and can be corrected for. And it has no effect on other ways of measuring historical temperatures, like ice cores and tree rings.
Statistics lie, that's what they're good for.
Spoken like a guy who's never taken a stats class. Statistics, like any other tool, can be wielded wisely or foolishly.
Lastly, scientists don't agree on global warming.
And not all scientists agree on evolution. Does that mean we should just turn the schools over to the fundamentalists?
There was a similar conference earlier this year where scientists decided that they couldn't come up with a solid decision on global warming.
Really? I heard there was a conference earlier this year where scientists decided you were a dork. Talk is cheap, pal; if you want to be taken seriously, give links and references to support all of your assertions of alleged fact.
It's entirely true that complete, specific prediction of real-world "coupled non-linear chaotic system[s]" is not possible.
But look at US economy and the financial markets which are similarly complex, coupled, non-linear, and chaotic. We can make a few observations:
I agree that much more research is needed, but the notion that CO2 emissions could cause devestating climactic change is theoretically plausible, and a lot of reasonable scientists have concluded that it is happening.
In light of that, wouldn't it be at least reasonable to start hedging our bets?
Junkscience.com isn't a mouthpiece for anyone.
As another poster pointed out, the latter half of this article claims that the author of junkscience.com was a registered lobbyist for several large firms with dubious environmental records. And at the same time he has been running this website, he was executive director of a (now defunct) non-profit that had members including "Amoco, Chevron, Dow Chemical, Exxon, General Motors, [...] the National Pest Control Association, Occidental Petroleum, Philip Morris" and so on.
You can verify his lobbyist registration here.
Conveniently, the fact that large polluters have been paying his bills for the last several years isn't mentioned on the "about the author" section of his web site. Maybe he's an entirely disinterested scholar who just happens to be funded by a lot of people with a financial interest in opposing environmental regulation, but I'm not convinced.
Bad science sure does happen, but a guy with a financial interest in the outcome is not one I'll take very seriously on the topic.
Whatever, boss. The site is pretty clearly Milloy's project. And the whois record still lists him as the owner. So the fact that a number of big polluters pay his bills is still relevant, even if he isn't doing the day-to-day work.
And speaking of which, according to you, who is? And what's your evidence for claiming that Milloy's not in charge?
Actually, the electric only cars cost a lot less to run then gas powered cars and the power plants are MUCH cleaner then any gas car. Plus, the electric only cars are simple machines realitive to gas powered cars, so they will not have the same reliability problems. Finally, the new pulse charging technology means that you can recharge one in a short period of time.
The ONLY two problems with electric cars are: (a) the high cost of the bateries and (b) the short range of travel between charges. Still, if you want a commuter car (200 miles per day) there is no better way to travel (besides public transit).
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Don't forget some of his other last deeds, like pardoning 167 of his cohorts. But I digress.
Back on topic, there's an incredible amount of political spinning on global warming. There isn't much real science going on, and there's an incredible number of political wankers wanting to look like they are doing something about it, so naturally they promote the idea that industry is the problem, not some unchangable global cycle. Add in to this "scientists" who give the politicians what they want so that they can get the government funded science dollars.
It's an incredible, disgusting cycle.
What's wrong with the world is this: People who use flawed logic trying to disprove points. Example, There were no industrialized countries in pre-historic times therefore the iceage was not caused by man therefore global warming does not come from man it's just nature. How does this make any logical sense? What proponents of global warming say is this: Overall there is a warming trend OUTSIDE the the normal earth cycle which we have tried to understand via geological records. THEY KNOW THAT THE EARTH HAS CYCLES. What do you have against scientists?
WHAT!?
You plan on using Nuclear power?
Later
ErikZ
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The soil got there from the Glaicers pushing down topsoil from Canada.
Later
ErikZ
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
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"Here to discuss how the AOL merger will affect consumers is the CEO of AOL."
grep -ri 'should work'
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
unfortunately, science is rarely fact. usually it's theory. While the theory may not be perfect, the results are clear enough and close enough to reality. See classical mechanics as a good example: ALL scientists know that classical mechanics are an approximation. Still the theory is widely used since it gives an undecently close approximation of reality. but it's not perfectly accurate.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
It's bad English complaint day at slashdot, and here is my contribution:
Unless Hemos meant to say that there was first global warning, and sometime after that a thought, the correct english word to use is "THAN".
I did double check to avoid such irony. And spell checkers don't catch these things.
You've exposed the sad truth, sir: I suck!
If you're charging the batteries with your gasoline engine, that's the same as charging them with coal-produced electricity! It's just a bit more efficient because of the regenerative braking. Leave that out, and the car is a heavy, inefficient, unreliable, STUPID design.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I thought I remembered reading that we're in an interglacial period.. IE, we're supposed to be covered by glaciers right now, and it's only chance we've had such good weather the last few 10 thousand years to set up a civilization.
Let's follow the money then. Let's assume that all scientists are automatically biased in the direction their paycheck comes from.
A scientist working for a corporation tends to lie to help the corporation.. Wouldn't a scientist who's funded by an environmental group also tend to lie to help that group?
Or would you claim that there's a double-standard. That scientists who work for corporations will lie, but those working for environmental groups, although they're in the same circumstances, wouldn't?
Take a clue. Everyone has biases, otherwise we would always have a consensus.. Has Paul Erhlik, a scientist ever admitted his mistaken predictions?
It is our job as the public to distinguish between the lies and biases to find the truth.
Much of the evidence of global warming is in indicators; people who claim they can measure fractions of a degree in tree rings or atospheric gasses. That's something that makes me reluctant to trust them.
Everyone knows this, There used to be a land bridge between asia and north america. There isn't one now.
Nor does it take more than an idiot to know that global climatological change would be incredibly economically disruptive.
I have a question for you. Can you tell me exactly who funds and who controls the funds for the global warming people? If people are biasable based on where their money comes from, I would like an understandable explanation of who controls the funding for the global warming crowd? I've never seen a comprehensible list.
Is the funding mostly controlled by those who believe in the hypothesis of global warming? Is it not? If the funding for the scientists writing the report comes from people who believe in global warming, am I supposed to believe they're unbiased too?
You're right. I should have researched what I said before looking like this much of a fool. I also error'ed because the site has been recently revamped and the information I meant to link to was no longer obvious. (BTW, the URL you gave at Pace university is dead.)
There seems to be quite a bit of a lack of sanity in the environmentalism circles. For curiosity, have you read http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm ? It's most entertaining. Specifically #14-19.
www.junkscience.com
There is a lot of junk science out there in all fields. But the global warming has seem to become the favored theory of environmentalists, regardless of evidence. Check out the website for another perspective. You don't have to agree with it, just read it and reflect.
Temperature trends STILL have not deviated from long term climatological trends that anyone can look at at NOAA of any state climatological office. Of course this is not a politically correct or in vogue idea. And worse yet, this kind of environmental heresy WILL NOT get you any government money.
Mt Pinatubo pumped more pollution (of exactly the same kinds we produce, along with some we don't) in one natural event than the human race has generated in its entire history. It is pure arrogance on our part to think we are having that much of an impact on this planet.
d4,...,Nf3, or maybe I should use a Ratfaced Mcdougal?
I think you mean affected, but I could be wrong.
---- Yay! I have a sig!
Please take it elsewhere. Global warming to some extent is known to have historically occured. The mechanisms and exactly how current technology plays into them and thus what the overall temperature change will be is not known and not consensus science. So please take the call to arms before the science is in elsewhere.
This is also:
3) A new way for the governement to control the way you live. (Energy use) Russia called it communism. I'll be polite and call it socialism.
Just my $0.02
It gets mighty cold up here in Chicago. Anything to warm the fridgid winters is gladly invited by me. *turns on his car* I mean, 0 C is frickin cold!!! *starts a wood burning fire* I say YAY to global warming! The world may just be a warmer place because of it :)
As an interesting side effect, they would have met even the most severe criteria by the Kyoto-Protocol (summary/full).
The protocol determined that all industrial nations should reduce their output of certain "greenhouse gases" by 6-7% in comparison to 1990.
The former eastern block was granted to retain its level, since they are "undergoing the process of transition to a market economy".
The U.S. and Russian Federation strongly opted for a "carbon trade" deal, where they would be allowed to trade unused "carbon stocks" from such evolving countries. The reasons are quite clear.
Brazil, India and China are just evolving. Therefor, no restrictions where applied to them, "... However, China was making a major contribution to the mitigation of climate change through its policies to reduce population growth, improve energy intensity by vigorous implementation of the Energy Conservation Law, develop renewable energies, increase forest coverage and enhance sinks" (source)
Chinas per capita emission are 0.7 tons compared to 5.3 in the U.S. (source)
And:
The top 15 energy producing States in the U.S. produce more carbon emission than the entire country of Russia
Southern U.S. States emit more carbon emissions than China
If six Northern States (Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, New York, Michigan) were an independent Country, it would be the 3rd largest carbon contributor in the world, just behind Russia and China
(source).
and still two countries between them and India: Japan and Germany.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Research revealed that global warming is a result of natural disasters and human interference.
A model containing only the first component predicted the developement of the first part of the last century quite good, but failed utterly in the second half. Taking only the industry into account, the model failed in the first part of the century, but succeded in the second part (starting with the correct parameters, of course).
A sidenote: In Germany, they're selling sulphur-reduced gasolin with 99 octane.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
I just would like comment that you are having a typical narrow-sighted view on things that people have, who just dont know the facts. "Policies" in the US (I've lived there, I know) about saving nature come down to saving sweety cuty rabbits in some wildlife parks.
As long as some el diablo cooperations rule the US, or at least the opinions of most people there, there will be no change in the US's policy of blocking a worldwide agreement that might be sufficient enough to prevent unreversable damage done to nature and the world wide climate. And to prove that I am not just writing some type of sensational headlines/comments: look at the world climate conferences held every couple of years. One of the only countries who seem to ruin the effort made by other countries who really have an interest in that topic, i.E. pacific island nations, is the US. There is no arguying about that, and since the US is one of the most industrialized countries in the world, the US industry have so much impact on the world's climate. You don't earn money by saving nature. You don't win the superbowl, either. That is the problem.
I know that the world is not supposed to pinpoint that problem to the US. Every nation has to self-reflect and think about their own policies. But there is enough reason to believe that people in power in the US are one of the last that will do exactly that.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
The U.S. government, the EPA, and all the other enviromentalist wackos on this planet have been trying to scare us into passing their political agenda over the last several decades by insisting that our use of CFC's is destroying the ozone layer. And that all the chemicals used in energy production cause global warming. I don't know about you, but where I am it's awfully damned cold outside, and the last few winters have been colder than those I remember in the last decade.
Did you know that when volconoes erupt they release 20-50 times more CFC's into the atomosphere than the United States has in the last 50 years. Over the 1000's and 1000000's of years of earth's history lots of volcanoes have erupted. Well we still have an ozone layer why's that? Because global warming is simply propaganda to further the cause of enviromentalist wackos.
Don't get me wrong I don't think we should be destroying the enviroment for the sake of business, industry, or any other cause. That would be poor management of the resources God gave us. But things have gone too far. The "powers that be" were happy when California deregulated the power industry, but the result of that has been horrible. No more power plants have been built in the last 10 years for the sake of enviromental protection. Power companies can not pass their costs onto the consumer, so in a state that has double in population in 10 years, but has not grown at all in power production you now have rolling blackouts.
Yes, He's a Nuclear Engineer, but that doesn't make his policy choices wise. He assumed that a once through fuel cycle was an acceptable alternative to recycling. The nuclear industry knew that public acceptance of nuclear power was dependent on a closed cycle, where the fuel is reused, and stays out of the waste stream. That is why nuclear plants have "cooling ponds" designed only as temporary storage for spent fuel, before it was to be taken away for reprocessing.
Carter figured that it was an unacceptable security risk to have civilian facilities reprocessing plutonium. While some may agree with his conclusion, I believe he was wrong. We've created a royal clusterf*ck by opening a loop that was designed to be closed. This change, which created a new artificial need to dispose of fuel instead of reusing it. Simultaneously the repercussions of this new waste removed any credible process for disposing of this otherwise reusable fuel.
We need to get our sh*t together, come up with a sane way to get value out of the fuel we have piling up, instead of treating it as waste, and get safety back into our overregulated into complacency nuclear power industry.
--Mike--
the U.S. is still the culprit... 25%...
Who says? you believe everything you hear? HA! obviously. What a crock.
Why don't we all just go back to riding horses... No wait, horses fart. We'll have to walk. Back to the stone age folks!
what a load of crap.
The price we pay for immortality... is death. Narnia The Great Fall
Not to mention...
Im not sure if anybody has notices this, but sunlight plays a major role in ozone production. If you go far (north|south) enough, you wont see the sun during the entire winter. In the summer, the sun will just go around in a circle in the sky, or stay up for 20+ hours at a time.
The ozone thinning for the north and south poles occur during their respective winters. Coincidentally, the sun doesnt shine in these circular regions over the poles for that time. Thus: no ozone is created, and lack of sunlight negates the need for it in the first place.
"Are we learning yet?"
I live in Valdez, Alaska.
Im not going to launch into a long well-thought out tirade about the many misconceptions surrounding oil shipping, Valdez, a particular Exxon tanker, and environmental nutballs; im too tired for that. I will state some interesting information though.
- approx 11 million gallons of crude oil were spilled. This was 1/5th of the cargo.
- a record fishing run was reported the _next_ year, in the same area of the spill.
- each sea otter rescued and returned to the wild was done for a cost of about $80,000 each. (The release of the first two sea otters was marked with much fanfare. The otters were eaten by killer whales not far off shore.) About 200 otters were released back into the wild. Otter populations returned to normal within 3 years.
- Alaska supplies about 1/4 of the oil consumed by the US.
- When people talk about 'drilling in alaska', they reveal their lack of education. The proposed drilling site is in a region called ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Preserve) The northern half of ANWR looks like the planet 'Hoth' from "Star Wars - Empire Strikes Back" Except, there is no rebel base or Taun-Tauns. Not even vegetation up there. This place is desolate. ANWR covers a good chunk of Alaska. The area designated as suitable for drilling is about the size of Dulles Airport in Virginia.
- North slope oil production from Prudhoe Bay is declining. It would take about a decade to turn ANWR into a prodcutive oil field. As much as I would hate to see gas prices jump about 5$/gal, the sadist in me would love to see all the SUV's stranded on the road, cities burning, and wholesale persecution of environmental extremists.
I do wish for a clean environment with industry conducted in a safe and unobtrusive manner. The 'final solutions' proposed by the likes of greenpeace, earth first, and others similarly uneducated yet greatly motivated people, are destructive to business, degrading to humans, and in a number of ways, damaging to the environment.
I support scientific investigations and solutions to environmental problems.
A boot to the face of 'eco-warriors' for all I care.
</sarcasm>
If hazard is the measure, the only sensible way to rate it is in mortality and morbidity per unit of energy. If you are rating only the radio-isotope exposure from a given source you'll miss things like environmental disruption and flooding hazards from dams, worker hazards from wind plants (working on towers isn't the safest thing to do even if there isn't heavy machinery at the top) and chemical hazards from the production of solar cells. Even within the limited category of radiation hazards you've got plenty of radon, uranium and thorium emissions from coal and a surprising amount of hot material (NORM, Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material) coming up out of the earth along with the hot brines used for geothermal power. Saying "Nuclear is bad because of radiation", then ignoring the same hazards from either conventional or "green" energy supplies is sheer hypocrisy.
So do contained chemical explosions, but people crank up their car engines in the morning and don't think twice about what's going on inside the cylinders... unless they don't fire. Besides, nuclear electricity does not involve explosions, contained or otherwise. Hard? We've been doing it on an industrial scale since 1944. Expensive? What's expensive is re-working things from the ground up when someone changes the requirements. Nuclear plants are not unique in this respect, as anyone who's managed a software development budget will tell you. Where do I get the water that's free of uranium, thorium, polonium and mercury from coal combustion? Wouldn't I be better off if the plants upwind split a few tons of atoms instead of burning millions of tons of black stuff?If you don't have the strength to defend what you laughably call "common sense", you have no business posting here. If the effort to respond leads you to an early grave, you can share it with the thousands dead and dying of the effluent of coal in Pittsburgh, London, the ex-Soviet Bloc, China....
--
Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
You might also want to look at this abstract. It suggests, but does not state clearly, that all the trans-uranics (TRU) can be recovered from the salt bath using a liquid metal cathode. If that keeps them out of the waste stream until they've been converted to fission products, so much the better.
--
Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I live in a large town 30 minutes west of London, which has this giant sign outside the town hall which reads "Welcome to Slough - An Anti-Nuclear Town".
I find it a bit strange therefore that they situated the town hall quite some distance away from the huge great ugly coal burner on the industrial estate, which visibly pumps out thousands of tonnes of waste into the atmosphere each week.
Freaks. Having said that, the UK's attitude to nuclear power appears to be a lot more sensible than the US's, even to the extent that we take other countries' waste for processing, which is not something that I necessarily agree with.
Stuii!
Did you know that the weather stations built in the early parts of this century were on the edges of cities? Did you know that areas that were on the edge of a city in 1900 are now in the center of the city? Did you know that it is warmer in a city than in the countryside? Did you know that we could probably make cities cooler places by getting rid of all the people? Who wants to be gotten rid of?
First of all, it's worth noting that this is a prediction based on a theory. Scientists are trying to explain why we haven't yet seen as much global warming as the models would suggest, and this is one possible explanation--not absolute fact. Remember, back in the '70s, global cooling was the environmental boogeyman.
It's also interesting to note that if you put historical data into any of the models these "scientists" are enamored with, they don't work. In other words, put in known data from the 1700s and 1800s, run the simulation to the present day, and what you get bears no resemblance to our weather.
Second, the IPCC has done some shady things before, such as changing the executive summary of a report after it was peer reviewed (my source for this is a series of letters to the editor published in the Wall Street Journal several years ago). Finally, there is a significant amount of controversy in the scientific community surrounding global warming.
Let's not forget that the UN is a political organization, not a scientific organization. Their primary interest is increasing their funding and power. Would you believe a panel of scientists that declared there was absolutely no danger of global warming, ever, or suspect that they had been cherry-picked by whatever organization was backing them? Although there is a considerable amount of debate on this subject among real climateoligists, the UN's hand picked panel voted unanimously. That should tell you everything you need to know about the validity of this "finding."
First of all, nuclear is not the only option. There are a myriad of options available including wind, solar, wave and biomass. There are many different fuel types including fuel-cell, compressed-air, MagneGas, biodiesel.
Global warming is happening, and the evidence points to man being a significan contributer. The USA is the major culprit producing 25% of CO2 emissions but, except for a few enlightened individuals, they do not care. This is unfortunate as it is a global problem that can only be tackled on a global scale.
There is an online magazine covering all the newest renewable and sustainable energy called Future Energies. They also have an item on the Greening Earth Society, mentioned elsewhere, who happen to be affiliated with the Western Fuels Association. They claim the Internet will be responsible for up to 50% of electricity consumed in the USA! Read more here.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
I think we also eat 20-30% of the world's food (I dunno what the number is really, just making a bad joke...)
Instead, it states that we should be taking advantage of human nature which is a me-first sort of attitude. By providing a reward / punishment system which encourages environmentally sound actions, we can hopefully start to clean up this planet.
- SEAL
Really, how would you feel about all the refugees from coastal areas turning up on your door step? That lake's going to be pretty crowded when half the population of New York decides to move to Minnesota.
It is obvious that the world, and more specifically the US needs to address this issue of global warming. However considering our new president has a horrible record with the enviroment, it is highly unlikely that this problem will even be addressed by the US anytime in the next 4 years. Let us not loose hope, if the government won't do something, then let us. I imagine most readers of slashdot are above the average intelligence, therefore, let us brainstorm some possible solutions. I have heard some ideas in some of the previous comments, however many of them are out of science fiction and are not very plausible in the near future. So, instead let us try to generate some realistic ideas.
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
Do you have any links to any of this info on the web? This is fascinating stuff to me and an great example of information that is being buried about nuclear power that, if people knew about it, they would be asking for more nukes to be built (in the US that is).
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
I don't believe we know everything about nuclear fission, and that we will discover what really is going on when we split atoms.
This statement probably has some truth to it. However the lack of funding for scientific research for nuclear power is the result of FUD being spread about nuclear power. *I* care about the environment and the well being of others and know for a fact that with the proper research, funding, and support that nuclear power is the only current viable high-energy power source we have that is environmentally friendly. However people have an emotional reaction to incidents like Chernobyl before really considering all sides of the story.
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
The Earthwatch Institute has a very good article about global warming in the newest issue of their magazine. It is worth buying. Unfortunately it doesn't look like they have any articles on their website (http://www.earthwatch.org).
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
You *have* to look at the cheapness and safety. Had the Soviet Union cared at all about safety Chernobyl wouldn't have happened at all or would have had a much smaller impact than it had. We're supposed to hide our heads in the sand and just forget about a clean source of power because the Soviets were dumbasses? Please. I don't disregard anything except people trying to use the fear factor instead of rational thought.
You may call it FUD if you like, but reading whitepapers won't teach you anything useful about the product. Try reading independent reviews, and you get another picture. I believe this is true both for software and nuclear power.
How about looking at a project like IFR here in the US by Argonne National Labs to see what *could* be out there if the fear factor of nuclear power weren't the deciding factor on whether funding is available (that and the probable problems with the coal industry for fear of losing money)? Here is the URL. That project should still be being funded but its not.
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
and the US starts to really work on reducing emissions. We need to really work on fuel efficiency and more importantly we need to start research again on nuclear power. The current attitude towards nuclear power is ridiculous. It is the only currently viable high-energy source we have that doesn't pollute as badly as alternatives like coal. We also need to start working on retrofitting all coal-fired power plants in order to reduce emissions there. These things are common sense. Lets hope the new US leadership understands.
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
Actually, the average temperature has been rising steadily since about 10,000 years ago; and before that it had been gradually dropping. I can't say I know when it'll stop rising and begin falling again, but rest assured that your great^400-grand-kids are gonna want to invest in some pretty good coats and mittens come the next ice age.
Now that King George II has been crowned, the US will see a rollback of environmental policies that were already insufficient. But hey, without restrictions we'll be using petrolium products faster. If we time things right, maybe we can run out of oil before doing irreovacable damage to the earth's atmosphere.
These are breasts; this is source code.
These are breasts; this is source code.
Why do you have a problem with those two things belonging to one person?
Stopping the reproduction completely for few decades would be another good step as well, though.
And to comment the electric cars quote and bring some good ol' flamefest back: cars are a stupid idea, period.
______________
______________
OTTERS RULE.
or other plant community. I can take a joke, but just in case somebody out there actually believes what you said, forests, etc. don't just sequester carbon, but remember that they produce oxygen (ah sweet oxygen !) as well as cycle water through absorption and transpiration.
Also, reusing/not using things like plastic bags hypothetically reduces production of new bags (highly pollutive), but I don't think that actually happens.
I have a feeling that you really Really REALLY ought to visit a 3rd world coutry some time. Let's compare the average US citizen to the average citizen of someplace like Kenya or even China:
Per capita, per annum, per anything, Americans are the monster fat pigs of the planet, bar none. Reduce/reuse/recycle is a very good idea, but we make 100x more mess to start with.
Back in the good old days of the dinosours the earth was something like 15 degrees hotter then now on average.
The earth temp's has been fluctuating for as long as they been recording it. (Hey remember that ICEAGE?)
I watched a whole program on C-SPAN with a scientist yanking weather records from the mid 1800's, pointing to graphs, and spouting stats left and right. His basic point was there is NO solid evidence a 'greenhouse' effect is taking place what so ever. Only the normal shift of the tempurature cycle. Knowing the constant stream of bullshit coming out of this government I'd bet he's right.
'Diesel' Dave 'Kill a Cop' Cinege (Freezing my ass off in S. Florida! Global Warming? Ha!)
-- "Nobody will ever be safe until the last cop is dead." NH Rep. Tom Alciere - (My new Hero)
You are environmentally friendly, so this would be why 4% of the world's population produces 25% of the world's polution. Oh yeah, great environmental record. get over yourself.
Global warming may or may not be happening, but climate simulations tell us absolutely nothing. In fact, it's worse than nothing because it is intentionally misleading.
Look, if there's even a small chance that Global warming is occuring, then we should do something about it, right now - because it takes time to fix the problem, and the consequences can be catastrophic.
Ok, so we start enacting controls that cost trillions of dollars on the basis of a small chance
I exaggerated when I said that the chance of global warming is small. There have been repeated warnings from credible scientists.
Even if you don't buy their story completely, if there's even a fair chance (say 20% chance) that global warming will occur, then spending trillions of dollars to avert it is well worth the expense. Think of it as insurance against a global catastrophe.
Reducing emissions, making industries more fuel efficient pays for itself in the long run - lower fuel costs, lower medical bills from pollution related illnesses. During the fuel crisis of the 70s, industries retooled themselves - as a result, oil consumption has actually decreased since its peak in the 70s.
Then in twenty years we find out that all the CO2 we've been dumping into the atmosphere has been the only thing between us and the next ice age and, whoops, we've stopped putting out so much.
Where's the data for this? In any case, it is easy to insert CO2 into the atmosphere if necessary.
The US should cut back on emissions, and so should every other country in the world. No matter about those industrializing countries, whose populations live way below the poverty level, and are desperately in need of modern infrastructure.
g lobal_warm.html
If you've bothered to read about the issue, you'll see that the problem is that the US is unwilling to cut back on its emissions - while industrializing countries that need development most are being asked to bear the cost of reducing emissions.
See http://www.thegully.com/essays/environment/001204
I don't know, sometimes all you've got to trust is your senses. I tend not to do that very often, but with nuclear power something tells me it just isn't right. It's not because I used to read Hulk, X-men and Spiderman either ;-)
Besides, I don't want transport of nuclear waste through our city, or along my coast. Seen the amount of accidents lately? More and more oil spills. We should be happy it's not nuclear waste. The long term effect is pretty devastating, far-reaching and long-lasting. Right now, I have no say in this matter. Russia and Japan is currently planning on transporting a freighter full of nuclear waste along the coast of Norway. Our coast is full of wreckages. Last year we had such accidents every single month.
Living in Norway, Chernobyl _affected_ my life. My health. However, noone has told me how or how much. Nobody knows how much it affected me and my genes. It was much worse for those living off the land in the north though. It's really sad how people _want_ to stay ignorant in such matters.
There have been many more such accidents all over the world, but the people behind the plants tend to hush it down. Using any tactic they can do to make their plant work, lying, stealing and cheating. I don't trust these managers for one second.
I have no problems with advancing science in that field. Except for detonating atomic bombs in other people's backyards. Which has happened frequently throughout the cold war. I just have a problem with the "cheapness" and "safety" of nuclear power, and that so-called rational people seem to totally disregard other people's opinion on it.
You may call it FUD if you like, but reading whitepapers won't teach you anything useful about the product. Try reading independent reviews, and you get another picture. I believe this is true both for software and nuclear power.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
If you had any useful knowledge at all to share, you'd know that the global warming we're having now is a natural cycle of the earth. Cycling between thousands of years, problems with CO2 emmisions are pretty much exhaggerated. Not that pollution isn't a serious problem we should deal with the proper way, but it's hardly to blame for the total global warming we've been having.
Your solution with battling pollution with pollution, I think your perception of the fault is to blame. You perceieve global warming as the problem. I can assure you, it is not. By putting an extra factor into the equation, you're not solving anything, but making the equation more complex. What if the dust reflects radiation from the earth, or reacts with the Ozone layer? Not very likely I know, but you can never know what'll happen. There's always an unforeseen side-effect.
Your argument of finding the cheapest solution, is the one that truly disgusts me. Instead of adapting to the problem and finding the best solution we can live with, you propose a hack to the air we live and breathe in? Why, when we have so many better alternatives. What is wrong with your equation is that when you calculate cost, you don't include the environment in your calculation.
However, you're right that we shouldn't rush into things and panic.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
If you react without having a clue what is going on, you're part of the problem. It's pretty much like playing a chess-game. You may think you just made the most brilliant move, but get checkmated in 10-15 moves. My advice: Play chess! ;-)
Yes, we're in a cycle of global warming right now. Global warming and cooling has been happening on earth for millions and millions of years. It's natural, and I doubt we can interfere with it without bad side-effects. Now what is more important, is to reduce our own artificial factors from the equation by reducing our emission of pollutants like CO2. I fully agree on you on that.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
People who care for the environment and well being of others, know that nuclear power is inherently a bad choice. I don't believe we know everything about nuclear fission, and that we will discover what really is going on when we split atoms. Mod me down all you like for meaning this, but it's my opinion and my responsibility to express it.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
... is that it is total bullshit. Remember that Ozone hole in antartica - oh yea nasa made a mistake and it wasnt even 1/100th the size it was. Ooops. Yea - im gonna go drive my Blazer and and run my 3 computers 24/7 while I use CFCs too cool the overclocked beasts
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
AP wire is traditionally HORRID english
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
I've also heard that it takes more energy to produce a nuclear plant then the plant produces in its lifetime (This is the fundamental rule of power generation -- a generator has to make more power in its lifetime then it takes to construct the generator itself). Can anyone substantiate / deny that ?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Climatologists (sp?) work on the scales of decades, centuries and millennia. Anyhow - anyone with experience in science knows it involves a bit of stumbling. However, you are typing this on a computer that is a result of science.
Furthermore, you SHOULD pay attention to the rates. Even the lower estimates still represent significant warming that AFAIK has never been observed at this rate before.
So - think before you start that SUV. Maybe you could take the bus today?
Stop the brainwash
From this article:
Any problem can be solved with a clever hack. Er, right?
The only thing I would like to know is who is going to be around to see if these predictions, which are about a hundred years off, is going to be around to prove it. Secondly, how do any of us know that one day someone will wise up and first of all, figure out how to stop the problem and second, figure out how to fix it. Who knows, someone may invent duct tape for the ozone. Afterall, we all know duct tape will fix anything and everything.
"Don't know, Bubba, juss wipe it off your feet afore you go in."
Iron may not be renewable, but it's fairly common. If you don't try to make nails out of it, it's as cheap as dirt.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Every single component? Surely they have some of their less profitable activity shipped off to China, just like we have ours shipped to them. Bother me when someone somewhere can come close to the design power of Intel or AMD.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well, not really. Nothing could be worse than thinking around here.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Those of you who really don't like it can see how long they can do without US wheat, rice, soybeans etc. Those of you who do, are welcome to join us and help everyone fix things.
Thank you for reading this on your Intel, Motorola, AMD, Sun, SGI, or other US design inspired computer.
You would be better off reading a few more books instead.
As many people trying to enter the US from Shanghi will tell you, wealth is good. It supports students like yourself and professors who might come up with answers. It's also responsible for the millions of TV's, computers and newspapers that will trumpet that will trumpet this Commie propaganda at us all. Ha! The statue of liberty that burned in Tienamen Square shows that such propaganda does not even work at at the source.
Conserving resources is good. People are good, and will seek this out on their own. You might even do something useful. Work to help others prosper, and advocate reasonable consumption.
State planning, and other tyranical schemes are bad. They have no respect for people, and typically canibalize wealth to support their own power and privalidge. Beware those who urge moderation and economy while enjoying all the benifits of modern wealth at your expense!
One person's definition of excess does not fit all. I aplaud your efforts to conserve resources, but don't get all righteous and resrict others.
As a Minnesotan, I'm trying to figure the downside to global warming. Winters will continue to be a little warmer: yeah! Summers warmer: spend more time at the lake, or reading slashdot at my air-conditioned workplace. Icecap melts; oceans rise; Wash. D.C., New York and other coastal cities, as well as all of Florida is flooded: less gov't, faster election results, and NYC is like Venice. Cool!
Here we have Yet Another Whining Bozo who wants the benefit of something, without paying the cost. Perhaps we should force you to accept high-level nuclear waste in your backyard.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
...that we (citizens of the US) produce 25% of the world's climate affecting pollution!
:)
I mean we DO produce 10-25% of the world's food....
Heating earth up might be the very thing that keeps the next ice age at bay.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
Is that any efford to move the earth, to make it
rotate arround the sun with longer radius?
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
Perhaps if the U.S. started (as was mentioned in the California Power Cut Story here ) to reflect the cost of environmental damage this might change at least in the U.S. What incentive is there really for U.S. citizens to drive socially responsible cars (i.e. small engines) when the cost of petrol is maintained at an extremely low level? With car sales in Ireland going through the roof reflecting the increased disposable income, we are not seeing people going for big powerful cars, we are seeing people buy new cars with reasonable engine sizes (1l -> 1.4l) to enjoy the economy of such cars (with petrol prices of £0.65 ~ $0.9 /litre ~ $3.3 / gallon, the miles per gallon or km per litre of a car is a big deal). Are you guys all driving at >120mph so you need big engined cars or is it just a phallic thing? Or am I out of touch and you are now excercising social responsiblity in your car purchasing?
The link isn't previewing so here it is plain ... http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/01/17/14121 1&cid=280
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
But would you if petrol cost $1 / litre or would you move closer to work and fly/train/coach and rent a car on holidays? You describe a symptom of the facts I describe, not a reason for them!
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
If you look at a map of Europe and a map of the U.S. you cannot argue that America is a fundamentally different geography and hence requires cheap petrol. If your petrol costs were responsible, how many more train stations would be built to ensure that freight was more economical? Again you describe a symptom of the problem and not a cause. Do you really think that Europeans don't have to collect from trains and then transport by truck to get to more remote areas? The fact is though that IF they are going less than 100 miles (your suggested figure) it is because they have built a reasonable rail system as it is more economical!
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
`The United States is way off meeting its targets,'' said Watson. ``A country like China has done more, in my opinion, than a country like the United States to move forward in economic development while remaining environmentally sensitive.'' Yea right. First, exactly how is replacing coal with natural gas supposed to reduce greenhous gases? It won't. Second, know anywhere in the US that has air pollution as bad as China's worst? And what the hell does smog have to do with global warming. There is a difference. Third, what about population. How much environmental damage is that causing (farming encourages methane production...). Can you say clueless journalists...
The UN has placed out the call for followers in these environmental alerts. Each time they scream a bit louder, and get a few more people.
Anyone who listens and obeys, they are sheep, for they feel that themselves and mankind need to be herded and terrified and eventually legistlated into making the right decisions for the environment. Anyone who listens is also of questionable intellect and even more so of a cow-like herd mentality. You need to base your opinions on cold hard facts - concerning polluting emissions from natural events vs. the past 200 years of the industrial revolution. I won't provide them -- its not my job to be your analyst. Oh, do you trust those UN scientists as your analysts?
So then, you trust facts from a organization (namely, the UN), whose primary purpose was to be the diplomatic grounds upon which we'd meet to hash out details of peace before resulting to rocks. The UN now throws its own rocks -- and is so inept, that it can't hit a damned thing with them. You think hard science is any easier than fighting a small skirmish in some third world where they pipe sunlight in? Not hardly. Killing a man is easy, making sure he lives in peace and comfort is extremely complex. So the UN wages ridiculous wars, does little for peace, and generally advances science by releasing terrifying future predictions, and then one upping them several months later. Wow, it was lucky they had such a quick catch on their previous mistakes!!! We could have melted the earth much sooner!!! Wowee!
If you want to do something about the environment, make it financially viable to have the environment be in better condition. Capitalism is the only force in a society that will eventually bring balance to life on this rock. If you allow someone to gain extreme power, especially an organization as inept as the UN, and allow them to regulate environmentalism, then you have a problem. What if they make the wrong decisions? You have given them the authority to make your life operate environmentally, you have told them they know whats best for you, do you think they are going to listen to dissenters? No, capitalism is the ONLY solution. Once people have more cancers, more lung problems, and big landfills in their backyard, capitalism will step in automatically to make sure things start changing, and changing quickly. I am not claiming that I have (all of) the solutions, I am just an agitator, here to keep you from falling into the dark of government regulations and UN international restrictions.
Finally, it trully is funny to read the posts of the anti-religious here on slashdot, then read their posts on environmental stewardship. They say religious people are sheep, to be herded by their God(s). Instead, I counter propose that they are in fact the sheep - as is typical, the anti-religious are all for having powerful central governments to shepherd the masses (of course not them, the enlightened few!!!) into doing the "right thing" whatever that is.
I'll close with this: Be a MAN or a WOMAN, whatever the case that nature necessitates, and be a capitalist, take responsibility and solve your own problems, or be a WUSS and let your government change your world.
David
A smart capitalist never dies, he just moves on to better oppurtunities.
This is absolutely true. Furthermore, many of the rural weather stations in the world have been shut down over the last century, to be replaced by urban ones. Surprise surprise, evidence of increasing temperatures!
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I'm more worried about a rock from space falling on my head than a little warmer temperture.
Hell why not. Everybody in this sh**-hole is blaming everyone else. "If it weren't for the tree huggers we'd have more power plants, we'd get our nuclear that's the reason." "If it weren't for the greedy oil companies..." "if it weren't for the government..." "if it weren't for the United States..." "If it weren't for the paranoid scientists..." "If it weren't for the fact that the moderators mod up all the morons" (Hey mod me up man I'm a moron)
We are constantly looking to put the finger on someone aren't we. We want to look for ways out of our situation, look for reasons why scientists would lie to us, look for paterns that may/may not exist. All the while we are simply ignoring the fact that we are F***ING our planet daily. You get the environmentalists on one side who want to save every blade of grass, and then the industrialists on the other side who either say "f*** it cement's cheaper to take care of" or "we'll plant a tree somewhere in the state as a sign of our devotion to ecology". This group is taking that group to court, this group is slandering that group. Questionable studies, statistics, outright lies. "Well someone did a study in Greenland and in the 1800's the temperature was the same... blah blah blah"
The Christians all want to blame the government and point to heaven and say it's all a conspiracy to devalue 'Our God' and to negate the 'Perfect World he created for us'. Or worse to say 'It will all be over soon anyway, Jesus our savior is coming tomorrow' - Meaning they've already given up on this world and all the people in it so who cares. THE END IS NIGH...
The agnostics/atheists will use the excuse that nature will strike a balance. That either the ecology will evolve to take care of our extra polution, that we will evolve to handle it ourselves throug invention, or that we have grossly underestimated the ecology and that it takes care of much more than we thought with fewer square acres.
The point in all this? It's all useless theorizing. It's psuedo-science at best, part science part speculation. Doctor1:"Diabetes might be caused by this little tiny molecule" Doctor2:"No diabetes is caused by these three molecules" Doctor1:"Well I'm gonna try my rats on these three drugs and you try yours on those three drugs and well see who wins" TRIAL AND ERROR, GUESS WORK, PSUEDO-SCIENCE. This is what our scientific community has been reduced to. Throwing millions of random combinations together in the hopes that they might maybe find the cure for cancer... and oh by the way win the Nobel prize... and oh by the way keep the drug companies rich... and oh by the way keep the really good drugs in the hands of the rich. Scanning random plots of sky night after night and shooting data off to thousands of ET junkies in the hopes that someone might discover a blip of an alien ham radio. And all the while call every other scientist, doing the same thing they are in a different way, a quack/nut/lunatic. It's all about finger pointing.
Take a look around people! For every study that's out that is based on good science there are five studies based on poor science trying to debunk the first one. For every product out there that makes sense to use, sense for our ecology, there are millions that are "cheaper", "better", "faster", "sexier".
The new complaint I hear about electric cars is "Oh well what does it matter if the gas is burned in the car or in the power plant?" Go find a study. See which one really makes sense. How efficient is the modern combustable engine in todays cars compared to say a gas turbine in a power plant? What's the weight of pollutants generated by those automobiles compared to the weight of pollutants generated by enough power plants to support that same number of automobiles? What are the regulatory rules and emmissions laws and how strict are they between the two items? "Oh well we don't have time to figure that out, after all I've got QuakeIII to play and a Apache server to get up and running, and I'm just such a damn busy person."
So what's the answer? Damned if I know I'm just rambling at this point. But it should probably be something like this: Instead of talking about building new power plants, going to court, defacing property, public tirades (woohoo!), "we're gonna fix it like this, we're gonna fix it like that", how about just living a little bit smarter lives. I'm not there yet, but I'm working on it. I'll be the first to admit that I suck up a huge amount of juice, and burn off a ton of crap into the air, but I'm working on it and teaching people around me how to do it too. I've started recycling most if not all of my paper (shread it up, throw in the old jeans I was going to throw out, wet it down, screen it - voila new paper), recycling cans for two years - plus the cans of all of my coworkers, compost heap, ride sharing. I want to teach my children how to have an impact on the earth and those around them in a positive way and not teach them to leave everything up to someone else. See we want to blame our congressman, our president, our clergy, or even Canada, but we are unwilling to blame ourselves. Unwilling to clutter our car with cigarette butts, after all that's what the street sweepers are for, and we wouldn't want anyone to know that we smoked :( ! Unwilling to bend at the waist and lower ourselves to pick up someone elses trash, as we enter work. Unwilling to spend $5-10 on a light bulb guaranteed to last 5 years and consume 10-25% less energy than the pack of five 60watt lightbulbs that we will tear through in the next three months, simply because we aren't reading the lamps clearly marked wattage message.
We, the people (remember that one), should, instead of becoming a mirror of the world, become screens to it, reflecting back and showing the picture that people should see. We should be reflecting back that we care about what actions we take, that we are responsible and thoughtful when taking them, and that we rely on noone elses judgement, flawed logic, or skewed belief system to make those decisions for us. We as individuals should take heart that at least we are doing something other than complaining and making jokes. We as individuals should understand that one by one things can change.... or we can just take that lovely defeatest /. attitude and say 'F*** you, stop typing so much and go save a whale or something.' It's up to you.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Did anyone bother to mention how much food and other necessities come from the US? Sure we product the most pollutants, but we also produce most of the worlds consumable necessities. Assume it's not junk science for a moment. Is the production/pollution ratio better or worse than other nations?
--- "1.21 Jigawatts!" -Doc
As proposed by O'Neil would place the energy collectors in geosynchronous orbit. This is something we could do today (and could have done twenty years ago...).
Gordon.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
They are not completely unrelated although I should have done a better job at stating that ozone depletion is in fact another issue than the greenhouse effect. Ozone depletion allows in more U.V. rays. The earth reflects back less energy into space, and thus the overall temperature rises. With the greenhouse effect, much of the energy that the earth radiates into space is prevented from doing so, trapping in this heat. So before you go mouthing off about this, maybe you should think logically about the two problems which are quite related.
At this time, it looks like people did have an impact on at least the depletion of the ozone layer which is a contributing factor to global warming. And if us mere mortals can have an impact on the presence of the ozone layer, I'd say that given the evidence we shoule err on the side of caution: that is, accept the argument that humans do contribute to global warming.
I think the biggest problem from the environmentalists side, is the term "global warming". While it's true that the average temp. is getting warmer, as somebody has already pointed out, large dips in temperature and spikes in temperature are more characteristic of "global warming" and it should probably be called "climate volatility".
1) Even if we stopped production and useage of all greenhouse-effect causing gases, these gases would remain in the upper atmosphere doing harm for a little over a century.
2) If at sea level, wholly intact, the ozone layer is about 3 mm thick or just slightly thicker than one's finger nail. That puts things into perspective - there isn't much there to begin with and we're totally fscking with what's there!
3) There was a key "Conservative" in the U.S. (I'm assuming Republican...I'm not American) during some environmental negotiation who was of the opinion that we should all just wear hats to cover us from the extra U.V. rays. - that was his stated recommendation on the issue. Unfortunately, it was beyond their capability of comprehension that the phytoplankton at the very bottom of our fragile food chain cannot wear "hats". But regardless of party-lines, no politician wants to do anything about the issue because it takes much longer than a political term for the rewards of any proactive efforts to be reaped.
We can only point fingers at someone else for so long. It's time for us individuals to take small but significant steps to better our environment. I mean, do you really need a Ford Navigator to drive to and from work through bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic? Is it too much to buy things in bulk where practical (which would save packaging material and the energy wasted on recycling/throwing-out the packaging material)? Is it too much to get off our lazy a$$es and walk to the local mall or store when we're only going to shop for a few things?
We've really got to start accepting responsibility for our actions because everyone knows the politicians aren't going to do a damn thing until its way too late...and trust me, we're almost there!
> Maybe the oil companies are just too damn powerful.
Even if they weren't before, they are now, as there can be no doubt that Bush jnr is well and truly in their pockets.
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
So who was responsible for the ice age?!?! It must have been all of those industrialized countries back in pre-historic times? Are scientists aways this ignorant? If we have learned anything about history it is that the climate ALWAYS changes. No exceptions. I wonder what their logic is here: "Hmmm...the climate is changing so it must be because of man. It couldn't possibly be nature taking its course. Wow, I'm so damn smart I'll probably win a Nobel for this!"
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
This type of report that you quote is nothing but a clever hiding of the facts, and doesn't change anything about the predictions we are facing if we don't stop ourselves from ruining this planet.
Bandazaar
lol. seattle ain't nowhere NEAR as bad as here in Denver.
i got 2000 square feet to heat, and if it gets above 45 here, we break out shorts.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
global warming whatever. i know that we really need to think about "cleaning up" the environment and all, but hell....
i'll take a crap on a baby manatee, whipe my ass with non-biodegradable styrofoam, while spraying aqua-net into the ionosphere if it gets my heating bill below $225 a month. i mean fuck....I CAN FEED A CHILD FOR 10 CENTS A DAY BUT I CAN'T HEAT MY HOUSE FOR LESS THAN $5.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Secondly, during the 60s, people worried about a global cooldown. It was similar to the worry about global warming now, only the reverse. As we know now, this didn't happen.
Third, global temperature depends on where you measure temperature. If I measure temperature in the middle of the city, it will go way up as the city increases in size and population. If I measure it in the country, it's not going to increase. Statistics lie, that's what they're good for.
Lastly, scientists don't agree on global warming. There was a similar conference earlier this year where scientists decided that they couldn't come up with a solid decision on global warming.
Don't let allow bad science to impede your rights!
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
I think you`ll find ol` Dubya agreeing that global warming - indeed, just about anything - is worse than thought.
Thought is bad, and causes headaches.
Yes, I love JunkScience.com. Makes me wish for the halycon days of my youth, before all this governmental regulation and labor rackateering. Days of child labor ... unlimited coal smoke ... even (dare I say it?) legal slavery. 'Tis a sad, sad thing when the lower classes conspire to rob industry of its well-earned profits.
question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
What you need most is a sense of scale.
...).
First, asking climate studies to be accurate on a scale of 3-4 years is stupid - pure chaos theory: noise. They're not talking about predicting whether a thunderstorm's going to hit your house today, but the average temperature of the globe. Ask someone to predict the position and velocity of a baseball and they'll do pretty well, because it's huge. An electron - no dice; too damn small (see, there was this guy called Heisenburg
Second, re: above, 5.8 degrees is a fucking huge difference. Again, not to you sitting in the heating/air-conditioning, and not on a yearly/seasonal scale. Averaged over the course of decades, though, such changes can wreak serious havok: melting ice caps, rising oceans.
Thirdly, you should really do some research on climate simulation. Here's a handy Google link to start you off If you really think climate simulation is bullshit, you're pitting yourself against some of the most hardcore and brilliant mathematical analysis ever done - WTF are your credentials?
Finally, let's be clear about what really matters here: Mother Earth is in absolutely no danger from us humans. Nothing we could do short of saturation-bombing the entire planet with nukes is going to "destroy the earth." She's been around 4 billion years and, on that scale, we're barely hiccups. The real danger is that we make our environment so toxic that we ourselves can't survive it. That's well within our power, even on such a short scale as 100 years.
question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
IAMHG (hydrogeologist) or at least was. I've been to Yucca. They are doing very good science there. And yes it appears likely that water table has intersected the planned storage vaults. But like the stock market, past results do not inidicate future performace. One way or another.
The things is. I can't think of another place where this isn't true. The climate was very different 20K years ago (lakes in Death Valley, glaciers in Ney York etc.). Yucca is about as good a place as we will find (If you ignore the nearby faults and volcanic activity) to store high level waste. The salt mines in Texas and/or New Mexico are good Geologically too.
Inseresting notes. One of the things people are worried about is that Nuclear fuel gets HOT. If the water table rises and comes in contact with the fuel a massive steam explosion is possible. The first man made volcano! This would be bad. Even is there is no explosion the natural ground water flow system flow directly to Death Valley.
i am confused about this issue...i have heard this is just a bunch of BS made up by eco frauds wanting to keep their juicy government grants (they have to find something, right?)
OTOH, i have heard that major portions of the ice under the north pole has melted (from underneath) since initial measurements were made by the first nuclear subs.
the subs (from what i heard) took deep core samples, and found that the ice had been solid for millions of years. now that ice is gone -- not just in a small area, either -- major areas of undersea ice, after millions of years, are gone in just a few decades.
if anyone has links, or is otherwise familiar with the sub studies, please post about this. it seems like fairly definitive evidence, if it is really widespread.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
We are heading towards another ice age. The geologic record shows that periodic ice ages happen about every 10,000 years. Our waste heat and excess CO2 may be the only thing that is keeping us from falling into another ice age.
It would serve the tree huggers if they get the CO2 down to a point that they freeze all their beloved trees and other plants.
There is quite a bit of info on the effect of the eliptical path of the earth and its bearing on the seasonal variations we experience each year.
Only nearsited exteamists would attempt to make us believe that their answer is the correct one. We barely have the ablilty to store our own history for the last couple of centuries and our weather data is even less developed.
Research is needed and intelligence with no emotional ties is needed to figure out what our best course is.
dzimmerm
Jumping to correct solutions slowly is better than jumping to incorrect solutions quickly.
Yeah, it's kind of true. And the cost of taking care of the waste in the future will certainly marginalize any profit they may make today. But, who will pay for the waste, the energy company or the stock owner? Nope, the tax payer will pay it. The ONLY way out of this dilema may be nuclear fission (if feasible) and more likely solar technology (already works). Hyrdogen cars with Ballard's fuel cell and hydrogen produced with solar power IS definetely a good alternative. This will also not produce any net heat emission. I've studied physics, I know what I'm saying here.
This is why we should all be using TI-89's to surf the web. Oh, and we should wear night-vision goggles instead of using overhead lights. It's more efficient in the long run. The poster had the right idea. Don't waste cycles on the grammer-checker. And no porn. Use your imagination. In fact, no masturbation. It's heat-innefficient. For about a 50% increase in energy expended on motion, and a drop in total frictional loss, due to lubrication, twice the orgasms can be achieved with greater overall satisfaction. Also, an orgasm has the same endorphin release as walking 10 miles, which uses up a hell of a lot of energy. So, we use calculators that don't have enough memory for a grammar checker to browse the web, and there's no loss as far as the poor graphics go because we don't need porn, because exercise will be banned in favor of sex. We're not just fighting global warming, this is the pending heat death of the universe we're talking about!
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
This will probably become flamebait...oh well.
The first time I heard the 'bull' you are referring to it was coming from a pigs mouth, Rush Limbaugh. It's been seven years, but it still amazes me people take an entertainers words as scientific fact.
I'm not saying I know the truth of the matter. I'm not a scientist in that field nor am I on a political committee dealing with the subject. I honestly don't have any facts. What I do know is this: world leaders are concerned enough to host global meetings about the greenhouse effect. That's enough for me...
My only concern is the lobbying by third world countries and corporations. I don't want what happened to Easter Island to happen to the rest of the Earth. I don't want greed and shortsightedness to get in the way of pure science.
PS. I live in Houston, #1 in US smog. My eyes are burning this morning.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
What's the People's Almanac say the weather'll be in 2100??
---
I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age, nerds are in.
They're still in, aren't they?
---
I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age, nerds are in.
They're still in, aren't they?
Will this end soon? Not likely. The reason for the rising temperatures is that many current technologies are not environmentally sound. So why are they used? They are cheaper than equivalent technologies that do the same thing. As long as the business incentives are there, people will do what it takes to earn their cash. Thus, one of the only incentives that they have to not pollute are potential government controls, which are not currently very extensive (and will get weaker in the U.S. with George Bush in power, as some of his biggest campaign donors are polluters). The only other one that I can think of is that they would feel better about themselves, but I think they would rather have their billions of dollars. Neither of these reasons are likely to stop them from polluting, and so the earth's temperature will continue to rise.
Maybe nanotechnology will help us reverse some of the damage. Any opinions on that?
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
On a related note, the most recent issue of Home Power has detailed stats regarding how much power various manufacturers' solar cells produce in their lifetime vs. the power consumed to produce them. I can't find a nuclear link tho.
Judge Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed
The phenomenon (El Niño) IS the cause
The headline should read "Worse Than Though", not "then". After all, we are making a comparison, not indicating a generic time.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
this would happen in Cincinnati a little faster. It is cold ass balls here. =]
If you want to see how Bush's environmental policy affected the air and water quality in Texas, I recommend reading Molly Ivan's essay on the subject. It is pretty scary.
Although i agree that the yanks are acting in a ridiculous way, pumping out more and more greenhouse gases it must be considered that we can't blame them entirely. The rest of the world , and in particular the western, so-called "enlightened", part of the world should obviously know better by now. Aparently the concept has not been completely understood in America. So it must be in the rest of the world's interest to make this point understood on a global scale instead of just pointing fingers. We'll all get wet when the oceans rise (yes except you few who live somewhere up on a mountain and don't give a toss).
-.sig sauer-
We've been keeping historic records of climactic changes for a really, really, really short period of time compared to what might be termed "geologically significant". For every scientist or organization that's saying "the sky is falling" there are just as many, if not more, who will admit that over the long term, these temperature changes might be nominal. That is to say, we don't know for sure what "normal" is. I believe in not polluting the environment to any extreme degree, but this global warming nonsense is hysterical hype IMO. We simply don't know.
BFD!
Back 100 years ago people were worried about global cooling! If it's not one thing it's another!
Almost all of the comments posted have been paranoid about evil politically biased scientists trying to turn the USA communist.
Remember kids, Green != Red. Let's try and keep balance here. Yes, the scientists may be wrong. But they may be right (That's the magic of science). We (as sensible fully functioning members of democracies) have a duty to review the evidence and make up our own minds. I, for one, am pretty convinced by the ice core evidence and the fact that here we've had the wildest winter I can remember for a long time.
-------------------------------------------
i propose we strap 2-stroke engines onto our exoskeletoned soldiers and beat the crap out of anyone who complains about the "green house effect" one more time... boy is it hot in here.
"Ask me about Loom"
--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Nope, I voted for Bush. Early, and often!
I live in Florida. Its been below 32 for almost everynight this month. Ridiculous. I say the Ice Age is coming. Which is good for us overclockers.
Your question about the power it takes to build a reactor is mis-informed. The comment you recall was concerning the power coming from a fusion reactor. As of now, no fusion reactor can make more energy than it takes to fire up the reaction in the first place. i.e. the tokamak reactor at MIT has never reached break-even that I know of.
'nuff said.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
I thought melting ice didn't change the water level. Can someone explain?
Neil
Where have you been? Global warming has been in the news for years. If you were to regularly read any legitimate news site other than slashdot you would know this has been an issue for some time.
did i eat the bait?
fear is the mind killer
1.Climate change is the real issue. the normal weather patterns which we have seen for years are changing. formerly inhabitable cold regions become more harsh and un-inhabitable, arable land is becoming dry desert. It remains to be seen what the full effect of our pollution revolution will be.
2.we've all heard that the scientists don't know what they're talking about and there's no way to predict the future of the climate. But why can't we at least acknowledge that what we do to our air will have some effect on our environment?
the fact that we don't know what is going to happen sounds like an excellent reason to be cautious with how much we change (pollute) our atmosphere. Yes, we could continue to be niave and say what we do will not matter; that would be easy. The developed world will cope with climate change but there are cultures won't. Like those who rely on subsistance farming in regions which are going through desertification. An article in the Jan/Feb issue of MotherJones describes the killer winter and famine being experienced by nomadic herders in Mongolia.
...and what do we do when, immeadeatly after launching particles into the atmosphere, a volcano erupts and blocks another % of light. There is so much chaos already in the system. Earth can metabolize the toxins we have fed it, lets quit smoking before this cancer becomes terminal.
-josh
fear is the mind killer
I totally agree with you that nuclear is the way to go. I know some people will cry about Chernobyl, but that incident really just goes to show you the drawbacks ofc communism, not nuclear power. An intelligent reactor design (such as Candu) operated by well-trained individuals would never suffer such a catastrophe.
[..]Another thing worth noting is that electric cars are a stupid idea if the electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Finally, your average coal plant puts out more radioactivity than your average nuclear plant (due to radioactive isotopes in the coal)
First up I know physicist believe in their models but saying they "can`t ever fail us" is quite a pretentious and hardly an open state of mind. I`m a computer scientist and as such would rather "plan for the best, prepare for the worst" instead of waiting for something to happen to proove me wrong.
Aside from potential meltdowns (not necessarily in the perfect US but in other countries that have not such a stable financial situation), there is the waste. Nuclear waste. What are you going to do with it. Put it inside missiles and hope for another war to break out ? Dig some hole in some poor country and pay them to shut up ? Shoot it to the moon/sun and close our eyes happily ? Ofcourse not.. They`re either immoral, unethical or too costly. Face it, there is no solution. Thirdly, nuclear power is not that efficient either.
Instead of trying to sell the nuclear power idea again (which I agree on itself is simply a necessity to have and to research, but not in massive commericial quantities!) maybe the US should shrink it`s power consumption. Now there`s an idea. Your cars are horrible when it comes to gas consumption, european (fueled) cars have much better mileage (since we also pay more for our gas, btw). Houses are badly isolated from heat / cold so they need heating and airco`s 24/7, everywhere (so we also pay more for our house, btw). You waste perfectly unused plastics and food in amazingly huge proportions. These are all facts, and I`m not pointing fingers or anything because that`s not what I`m after, I`m just giving you an idea of the difference in lifestyle and what it means to power consumption in the first place.
My final point is that yes, you won`t be able to produce all power needed to ru your country by windmill parks or solar/water/tidal powerplants, but these are valid alternatives. Try checking Greenpeace and se what idea`s they have come up with in the past, maybe it will inspire you to realise the problem is not the fuel, it`s the consumption. And from that we go to economy. And ofcourse that`s why US doesn`t want any restrictions on their toxic exhausts. I`m sure if you`re caring enough about the environment your children have to live in, the food they have to eat and the air they have to breath, that you want to have a better world, not so much a nuclear garbage belt, right ? So instead of trying to solve a problem by creating another one, try looking at the source of it for a minute.. if you`re openminded, you`ll atleast agree that there IS more work to be done
No, I`m not a greenpeace activist. Yet.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Exactly.. it`s kind of the same where I live (Belgium).. we have the same sort of water pumps, not that many water power plants, but quite a few windmill parks.. we`re sorting trash, though that`s only _just_ starting to really take off / be effective.
Hey, cool that you live near a Bond location!!
In Schotland, where tourism is a big part (if not the biggest) of the national economy, people really take good care of their land. Sure you got all sorts of industry there too, but it`s quite amazing. I guess the same reasoning counts for Switzerland as well.
Well, our prime minister said at the recent conference in Italy (the one with the number-of-votes problem) that we need more Europe, not less like many people seem to agree on (like France`s president). The reason why he said that is exactly because small things don`t matter if we don`t all team together on them, and to prevent countries from trying to dump problems 'over the border' by doing things their own nifty way.
I think he made a good statement, and I hope he makes it again when Belgium will get to lead the European council this summer. But those politicians can`t really be trusted I`m afraid, not even the "good" ones..
With great power comes great electricity bills.
For the U.S. fucking you over. It wasn't in the plan until the corporations took over.
aztek: the ultimate man
No sig for you!!
Follow the money, dude. If those super rich "enviro-nazi" groups don't get their way by convincing the stoopid "scientists" and "educated" people that there is "global warming", then they'll just pool thier money and, like, buy the oil companies, and the car companies, and the volcano companies and just shut them down, man.
With the current stock price of that "enviro-fascist" group Greenpeace hovering around $45,694 a share they could buy Exxon tommorrow. Man, and, like, Sea Sheppard could buy Texaco and put all of those under-paid, working-man CEO's out of business. But they don't want to spend their own money, they just want us to like not use oil and shit.
The thing that makes me really mad, man, is that the "scientist" so easily fall into the major "enviro-conglomorates" trap. Don't these so-called "educated scientists" realize we are just leaving the Ice Age that only happened 10,000 years ago. Man, they are stooopid. What did they get their PhD's in, anyway, "Doctorate of Stoopidity". Jeez.
And don't they know about Mt. Pinatubo??? The volcanoes cause global warming. Even Reagan said that that trees cause polution. And he said it on television so it must be correct. Don't "scientists" watch television. Maybe if they did they wouldn't be so stoopid. Dumb, wits.
They probably watch that "left-wing", SOCIALIST PBS or something.
And don't get me started on cigs causing cancer; bull! I bet the "scientists" think that they found PROOF, just so they could shut down the hard-working businessmen. I had an great-uncle that smoked till he was 102 and he never had any problems. I bet the "scientists" never heard about that!
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Maybe the rest of the U.S. should adopt California's power deregulation policies. That should cut some of the pollution, at least.
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Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness. -- Bertrand Russell
One problematic assumption these folks make (but do not state, as it would discredit their other claims) is that the earth should and would naturally stay the same as it is right now. While some of the general public may swallow this if they don't think about it too much, it is obviously false. There is plenty of evidence that long before we had an impact on the earth it went in and out of ice ages and had huge temperature fluctuations.
Global weather is a chaos system. You can't predict the behavior of a chaos system. It changes all the time, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, of its own accord. That's why it is chaotic.
You can effect a chaos system, though, so one could make a valid argument that we MAY be effecting the global weather and therefore should reduce our emmissions, etc. But we can never KNOW for sure whether or how we effect the weather system.
I think some scientists may grasp this, but continue to use scare tactics and misleading information to try to get people to clean up and reduce our impact on the environment. Which is a reasonable goal, but an unacceptable means of promoting it.
There is an excellent book on Chaos by James Gleick. It does a good job of presenting the basic ideas of chaos in a non-mathematical, comprehensible way.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
First it was 3.5, now it's 5.8. That's a difference of 2.3 degrees! So what happened with the original computer model? Are now to believe that "Oh, that original one was flawed, but this one is the real deal! AND GOOD GOD IT'S WORSE THAN EVER BEFORE!!"
The fact is, climate simulations are not even close to being able to predict patterns 1 year in the future, much less 100 bloody years. Not only is our understanding of climates at the stone knives and bearskin level (to quote Star Trek), but our computers are multiple orders of magnitude away from being able to do anything accurate. Proof? Give me a link to a study that was done, say, 3-4 years ago that correctly predicted the climate for this year. You can't, because it's all garbage.
This is not science, this is 1) pure politics, and 2) pure money raising. It's well known that the more dire the prediction, the more money you can ask for grants.
Global warming may or may not be happening, but climate simulations tell us absolutely nothing. In fact, it's worse than nothing because it is intentionally misleading.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Now understand, I do think that Global warming might be a problem. But I do think that there may see people fear-mongering for fun and profit. Just like some people would muddy the waters to protect their interests.
If there is no global warming, then there are just the usual problems of politics as usual. If there is global warming, then we will have a problem, in addition to all of the usual problems of politics as usual.
Further, the technology developed to help handle global warming, such as more energy efficient devices, would be useful just in the context of on an expanding popular.
So I see that it would be better in the long run to treat global warming as a real problem.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Just a thought but.
All this CO2 that we are "producing", Are we not just releasing natural C02 that was fixed from the atmosphere millions of years ago?
Drudge had a link this morning to an Australian paper that printed a story about recent findings that Earth has cooled 10 degrees C in the past 3 million years. Adding 10 degrees F should get us about 2/3 of the way back to Earth normal temps.
Both these sources of 'evidence' are flawed.
First, we shall look at why statistics is flawed: Over the past 100,000 years, during any 200-year period, the Earth's average annual temperature has varied within a 10 degree Farenheit range. This means that the Earth's climate varies greatly even during relatively local time periods. Thus, any statistical obvervations of the past 40 years (which is as far back as most scientists go when they issue their 'doomsday decrees') are statistically insignificant observations.
Certain simulations used to model the atmosphere given X ppm CO2 and Z ppm CO, etc, etc are the second source of evidence doom-sayers use to prove a global warming trend. Most of these simulations are oversimplified. They fail to take into account some major forces and phenomena in the environment. All of them neglect the dynamic nature of biological influences on the environment. They simply treat the amount of CO2 conversion (basically as a result of photosynthesis) as a constant, rather than as a function whose parameters would be something like average yearly temperature, CO2 content of the atmosphere, etc. This is one of the more glaring examples of oversimplification in certain atmospheric simulations.
Other scientists have modeled the earth differently (using more optimistic rules to model certain phenomena) and have obtained different results. But the fact of the matter is that crucial pieces of our knowledge about the Earth are missing. We just don't know how dynamic a system the Earth is and how easy or difficult it is to disrupt its equilibrium. We don't know what the true function is that biology plays and to what degree its slope varies. Most well-respected researchers are the first to admit this, and they refute the findings of the sensationalists on just these grounds.
Basically, doomsayers are bending the rules just slightly, with minor assumptions and simplifications, in order to get their agena across. Most of them simply want funding and are looking to do research that sounds groundbreaking in order to distinguish themselves. The fact that you get seemingly contradictory reports almost weekly on this topic, and many others, is an indication of junk science, human nature, and the sensationalist nature of much of the press.
Easy solution.
Kill a few million fat Americans, save the rest of the world.
No?
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
These islands are sinking - not the sea level rising. In the last 20 years sea levels have risen 0.8mm a year hardly enough to sink an island. Also scientists are humans and are as prone to political influence and greed for funding as anybody else - whether consciously or not.
A computer without Windows is like icecream without ketchup -- Heard that somewhere
There's a better article at NewScientist.com
One of the most common things one hears when discussing this stuff is that we should "conserve power", but one wonders just how far the average Westerner can manage to conserve. IE: if we went all out, what's the maximum percentage of our power needs that we could conserve. And I don't mean 'potentially', I mean realistically, considering all the idiots and regular fools on the continent.
With the enegery crisis in California I keep hearing about all these calls to Californians to conserve power and I read about tons of distributed computing enthusiasts turning off their computers to conserve power so the schools, hospitals, and traffic lights can get power. So if anyone has had a reason to do a good job of conserving power, it's Californians.
My question is, just how much of an effect has the call to Californians to conserve power been? Just how many Megawatts have Californians been able to 'conserve'? And what percentage of the total is it?
I see this as a real world test case for just how much (or how little) we (not you and me, the average people) could conserve if they 'had' to.
All rightie. I've finally found the answer to my own post.
A reporter on CNN had information from the California authorities that individual's conservation efforts have been *so* successful that it's basically allowing/would-allow 2 million homes to keep their power on. They're actually a bit afraid of telling the public that things have gotten that much better, as it might cause a negative feedback putting them right back where they started...
The upside of global warming: You'll spend much more time at the lake. The downside: "The lake" is Lake Agassiz. Even worse, some parts of the ancient lakebed are still lower than Round 1: Lake Agassiz, due to glacial rebound. I'm not saying a new Laurentide Ice Sheet will park itself in Hudson Bay to block water again, but I wouldn't trust rising water any further than I can drain it. :)
WhatEVA
I would LOVE to see Your point being made into realities. Unfortunately, as You may or may not know, the nice mr. Bush is not exactly pro-ecology (infact, he's not even pro-choice, AFAIK, but that's not the topic of our discussion), and being the former govenor of Texas, a state which pollutes more than even the Coal-mining, Oil-pumping, not-our-concern entire COUNTRY of Brittain (Yeah, I mean good-ole-England). I don't see that "the new leadership" will change the current venues of the countrys policy towards environmental concern.
The fact of the matter is that the average American, from the president to the bum sleeping on the sidewalk, on average produces about 200 times the greenhouses gasses as the average thirdworld citizen (even fairly well-developed countries like say, India). Heck even the chineese know that their more than 1 bil. population can do some serious damage to the environment and thus are more concerned than most.
But look at the big 1990'ies summits. US voved to "only" increase it's emmisions of greenhouse gasses by 10%, if other countries decreased theirs by the proposed 15-25 % (depending on the various summits, it's not like there was ever a general agreement on these numbers).
No my friend. I believe that no American president will EVER have the guts to stand up and say "Hey guys, we need to double Your taxes in order to get this environment thing going again".
Now I'm not saying that I have any hard evidence that a doubling of the tazes is the amount of money required, but I have no doubt that it's the economics of it that's keeping the environment out of any serious political discussions in the US (government).
And who can blame them ? After all, it's not like the US is about to be flooded like so many other countries with loads of lowland areas, like say... Holland. And hey, those big floodings, that's just nature throwing a fit. Just because a few states got flooded, doesn't mean we should use money on the environment, Oh no. After all we just used millions on rebuilding after the flooding.
Climate changes ? Oh no, it's always been this warm in the states, and the few glaciers that melt in Canada and Alaska, who cares ? It's so far away anyway, and doesn't concern us.
The average American WANTS to drive a car that only give 6 miles to the gallon. The average American WANTS to "buy-and-throw-away", the average American WANTS to only pay a buck for a gallon of gas (ok that part is changing a LITTLE, but not because of people insisting on paying more), the average american WANTS a heated swimmingpool (ok, maybe the "a-little-more-than-average" american, but You get the picture). In short the Average American dosn't want to be concerned with the environment, and while that's true, no president needs to concern himself with getting elected on those premises. After all, there are no votes in it for him, so why do it ? It's not like the politicians of today actualy has moral values....
No unfortunately I think that no politician will start to speak up untill the average American realizes, apparently like You've done aswell, that this isn't someone ELSE's concern.. It's YOURS !
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
i hope that wasn't my typo... there's a "WE" missing in there :)
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j u l e s @ p o p m o n k e y . c o m
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
maybe they need a bigger computer
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j u l e s @ p o p m o n k e y . c o m
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
The sun is the driving force behind all of the weather on this planet. Allowing more sunlight in (and allowing it to be trapped) will greatly increase the potency of the weather machine. I wouldn't be suprised to see 15 Cat 3+ hurricanes make landfall by 2100, or giant sweeping thunderstorms that spread from MN to TX, with tornadoes the entire length. Also the melting of the icecaps will mean that more surface water will be available for the weather machine to tap into.
"Two South Pacific islands have disappeared beneath the waves, as climate change raises sea levels to new heights.
They are Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea - which ironically means "the beach which is long-lasting" - in the island state of Kiribati"
That's from the BBC
One thing I've found interesting is the level of disconnect between cause and effect in the US. The average American produces 70 times the level of pollution as the average person in a developing country, but most Americans I talk to never realise the damage they cause because they never see it . For instance, DDT is banned in the US as a toxic chemical, but it's exported for household use to developing nations.
If you only looked at the facts from an unbiased perspective, and actually had some contact with those who suffer the brunt of these damages, trust me, your opinion would be different.
Another thing I find interesting is that most Americans seem to get their opinion about scientific issues such as global warming and evolution from politicians and talk show hosts. The topmost post on this page is a guy quoting Rush Limbaugh on how volcanoes are more polluting than anything humans ever made (and it's been moderated up to 5). Guys....these people aren't educated enough to barely understand these topics, let alone form an opinion or explain it to others. Don't follow them like sheep. Columnists, politicians, left-wing and right-wing ideologues have agendas and try to sway your mind. Trust them as much as you would their expert knowledge on how to partition your HD for optimum seek times.
For issues on science, the best people to refer to are *scientists*. Yes, they are sometimes wrong, and they have competing theories, but they are heaps better and more reliable than anybody else, because they do it for a living and have to prove things more accurately and with greater impact on their lives than anybody else who talks about these things.
But then, judging by the wise posts in response to the article, what would scientists know....
Individuals don't need to wait for electric cars or new government mandates on emissions to do their part. Ride a bus to work, or ride your bike. It may take a bit longer, but it is worth it.
I ride my bike 15 miles to work, or I take the bus. When I ride my bike, I get in much better shape - I feel better and have MORE energy. When I ride the bus, I do my CS homework on my laptop. (Last semester I worked full-time and had 7 credit-hours of CS) I rarely have to actually do homework at home because I get most of it done on the bus!
In the last 4 years I haven't driven a car to work more than 10 times. Yes, when I get to work with a streak of mud up my back and I am soaking wet, I really hate it. But that is easily solved by having an extra set of clothes at work if I need to change.
My advice is to get out of your car. It's good for you and everyone else.
Living in a part of America where I get to see the Ice Age receed every year around April, I can't wait to get some of this global warming you guys are talking about.
Does anyone realize that the planet has been warming and cooling for eons before anyone had cars or deoderant? Every time I hear another 'expert' talk about global warming, I think of a wooly mammoth walking around with a similar concern.
The Earth is going to warm and cool for a lot longer than we will be around. Get used to the idea.
Viv
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I Use Napster. I use DeCSS. I buy over $1000 a year in CD/DVDs.
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
Octane has nothing to do with molecule length. Octane is simply a measure of the tendency of a fuel to cause an engine to knock. Octanes are measured on big one cylinder engines with variable compression ratios. The engine's compression ratio is adjusted until it starts knocking and is then compared to a standard made from a known octane.
Some very small molecules have very high octane ratings, methane for example, while larger molecules may have low octane. Heptane has an octane of zero and iso-octane has an octane of 100. Methanol, another small molecule, has a very high octane - over 100.
Octanes are measured with two engines, a research engine and a motor engine. The research engine runs the fuel under cooler more ideal conditions and the motor runs under hotter more car-like conditions. The final gasoline octane is an average of the two: R+M/2.
I like to take the broader view of this whole situation. A dominant theory of Earth history says it has gone through cycles of "hotter than normal" and "colder than normal" for billions of years.
And you guys are worried about a measly century of global warming? As Carl Sagan said, if the history of the universe was described as a 12-month calendar, Earth's human race would have taken up less than ONE SECOND of that entire calendar year.
Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it?
Bring on the global warming! As George Carlin would say, "The planet is fine... the PEOPLE are fucked! Big difference!"
-thomas
"And like that
Gee, when I play Civilization I don't have global warming? :)
What's the difference between one gaming theory and another? It's all in what the other's intended goals are. When you set out to prove global warming, it isn't amazing when your simulations support your theories.
Plan junk science for the masses.
http://unisci.com/stories/20011/0109014.htm
God it'd be nice to see some quality enviromental arguments from *both* sides. Till then, it is ALL rubbish.
I mean, here in Seattle, which is not exactly renowned for its warm tropical climate (though it ain't Michigan either), my winter electric bill is running somewhat under $20 a month. And everything in here is electric: heat, stove, water heater, the whole enchilada. Admittedly my apt. is only maybe 800 sq ft and I don't like to turn the place into a hothouse, but still, I'm not complaining...
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Developing nations are similarly not going to limit greenhouse-gas emissions since doing so would only increase the relative gap between them and the richer countries. Plus, they have the further moral argument that it's the rich countries that are polluting disproportionately.
I can see two ways out of this. One is to accept that emissions are simply going to happen, and find technological ways of mitigating them -- whether by increasing the earth's overall albedo or planting lots more trees to soak up CO2 (and combat deforestation to boot) or something else people much smarter than me might think up.
Furthermore, I think we must get real and acknowledge that people's behavior will change only if it's in their own perceived self-interest. There are two ways I see to accomplish that. One is a social way via peer pressure and so forth; you make it unacceptable to do things that contribute to global warming. But that's a little hard because, while you may be able to berate your friend because he bought a gas-guzzling SUV, you probably don't know what kind of insulation he has or whether he turns down the heaters at night. Basically, too many behaviors are hidden.
So my suggestion is to appeal to people's craven economic self-interest. Build models that account for the true long-term cost of the following activities, among others: Generating 1kWh of electricity by natural gas / nuclear / hydro / whatever; burning 1 gallon of gas in your car; and so on. By "true long-term cost" I mean you'd actually have to find a way to put numbers not just on the raw materials and the processing/operation, but on factors like long-term storage of nuclear by-products and risk of contimation of water tables; loss of fishing stock and biodiversity caused by dams; insurance losses caused by rising sea levels and medical costs incurred by rising malaria transmission if global warming comes to pass; and on and on and on. It's hard to define the cost of something as amorphous as damaging an ecosystem, but there are techniques that can be used to estimate how people value things in relative terms and then come up with a number. Similarly, we don't have a good idea how accurate our climate models are, but there are various types of Monte Carlo / game theory techniques that should allow differnet sorts of approximations to be taken into account.
Anyway, I'm not a mathematician or an economist, but my idea is that you get to a bottom line where you can say something like this: The true, fully-loaded cost of a gallon of gas is $8.45. The true, fully-loaded cost of a kilowatt-hour of electricity is $0.67 cents for hydro vs. $0.54 for nuclear, or whatever. You'll note that these numbers are, by and large, an order of magnitude larger than what we pay for these things today. I suspect that we are indeed underestimating costs by about that factor today because we don't consider the "total cost of ownership" for various technologies.
Now, charging people 5-10x their current power rates or gas prices is probably politically unfeasible. But imagine what would happen if we did: Wow, would people have an incentive to change their behavior. Is it really worth an extra $200 a month to cool your house to 68 degrees instead of 70 degrees? Is it really worth $5 of gas to drive down to the store so you can pick up a quart of milk? I'd sure think twice and consider alternatives (well, I already DO walk to the store, but that's primarily because I don't like the fact that I'm starting to feel my waistline slowly expanding each year and I could use the exercise :-)
I'm sure it's a pipe dream, but it seems like the logical solution to the problem to me...
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Second, global warming does not simply mean "warmer winters". It means warmer average temperatures across the globe as a whole (most of which is water, remember), which could have dramatic effects to either warm or cool specific areas if ocean currents were to shift, for example. One possible scenario is that hotter years would be hotter and cooler years would be cooler -- i.e., that global warming spreads the extremes of climate at both the bottom and the top end.
Third, your analogy between weather forecasting and climate forecasting is incorrect. Your analogy to predicting the state of the stock market is actually an interesting one, as it's very hard to predict where the DJIA (or any individual stock) will close tomorrow or next week, but it's not unreasonable to make a prediction like this: In 200 years the DJIA will be at least 10x and perhaps as much as 100x what it is now. (I pulled those numbers out of my ass; they are probably way too low.) Your prediction could still be wrong, of course, but my point is that sometimes longer-term trends are easier to identify than short-term ones because the underlying drivers are not obscured by unpredictable short-term fluctuations.
As I mentioned in the beginning, we're on the same side of the argument here. I just think that you should choose the arguments that defend the anti-global-warming position a lot more accurately so you don't end up making us all look stupid.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Global Warming Worse then.. Thought
Those who can, do. Those who can't, post on Slashdot about it.
I thought it was spelled 'THAN'?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, post on Slashdot about it.
The word is 'thAn', silly.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, post on Slashdot about it.
Just so you know, the proper word is 'Than'.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, post on Slashdot about it.
Makes you think, doesn't it?
Goats are good too =)
Not that "soviet-style" really works, the security standards and environmental awareness in such a site would become incredibly low.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Only 25%...come on people we should be doing better than than we can get that puppy up to 50% if only we get together and try. Why do I have this point of you...because I don't care if my kids dont have an ozone layer...I'm cold now!
That's the number that we went through and calculated in my nuclear fuels class a few years ago for a typical PWR (pressurized water reactor), and a number that was corroborated by Argonne National Lab when speaking of their Integrated Fast Reactor project. In all of the spent fuel pools we have huge amounts of recyclable fuel just asking to be used.
BONUS: By recycling, not only do you reduce the waste to 3% of what's considered waste now, but the stuff that's left only has to be sealed away for about 300 years before it's radioactivity fades to background radiation levels! It's the Plutonium hiding in those fuel bundles that causes people to talk about hiding it for 10,000 years. Why not "burn" it and keep the blackout away?
Oh, and we should revive the IFR that Clinton and a jackass representative from my home state (az) pushed to kill years ago. *THAT* was an awesome concept: a reactor that you couldn't melt down in *any* scenario (liquid sodium cooled, metal fuel (so no mucking about with oxides), fast breeder reactor), a recycling building attached to the reactor building and using mostly electrolysis techniques as opposed to messy chemical processes to recycle the fuel, and as above a reduction in waste levels to 3% of what we're currently stuck with (thanks Jimmy) that even a semi-moron can design a storage cask to last 300 years.
What is the harm to taking these scientists views and making some changes to our industries. If they are right, then we might be able to slow down the damage and shorten the amount of time that it takes for the earth to heal. If the models are incorrect, we gain greater energy efficiency, less dependence on fossil fuels and probably greater air quality for all. Who will pay for these things, well I guess industry, and eventually the consumers. In fact it probaly would create a whole new high tech industry which undoubtedly only high tech countries will be able to provide Either way we win...
By the time the year 2100 rolls by, we'll all be dead. Like Nikita Khruschev once said, "Life is short, live it up."
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Hah, back to your fortified wilderness retreat before the black helicopters get you.
Sparks create ozone (O3). So why not put some huge spark generating machines above Antarctica to fill in the hole? Everybody is concerned about slowing down the process. Why not figure out a way to reverse it?
[ ]
"Global" [the subject of the sentence] is "warming" [the main verb] "worse" [not a comparative but a substantive adjective, referring to bad people] "then thought" [after that, Global is warming thought].
The article is about Global, a company in California that is providing free heat to cold convicts, but has so much extra power that they have decided to start "warming" cold smart people as well.
it's all because of El Nino...
A First Post that is:
1) On-topic, and
2) Has no comments about Goats or Natalie Portman
Miracles Do Happen...
:)
Here's why: most CO2 pollution comes from fossil fuels. However there is little doubt that we will run out of oil within a century (sooner, no doubt, with 2 texas oilmen at the helm in the US).
When the oil runs out, you have no more combustion, and no more CO2 pollution, and QED no more global warming! :-P
--hongpong.com
US uses ~1/3 of world energy, producing 1/4 of world C02. Rest of world uses 2/3 of energy, producing 3/4 of C02. So US C02 per energy used is about 0.7, vs 1.1 for rest of world. If rest of world matched US CO2 per energy used, we'd reduce world CO2 emmissions by about 30% - nearly as much as the US total. I'm not trying to score points here - if someone can explain why there's this discrepancy in CO2 per energy used, I'd love to hear it.
What's the big deal? As it gets warmer, we'll just build more air conditioners!
Hey, if Hemos is such a "Public Intellectual," shouldn't he know "than" is comparative? ;/
As one of his first executive actions, President George W. Bush convened a Blue Ribbon panel of distinguished scientific experts, headed by Dr. Rush Limbaugh, to study the problem of global warming. Their conclusions: 1. Global warming is a fraud. 2. Even if it's not a fraud, it's probably a good thing. 3. Even if it's not a good thing, the only way to prevent it is to allow more logging and strip mining in national parks.
Dubya has a keen and far ranging intellect. In conjunction with Dr. Rush Limbaugh, he has conducted his own numerical simulations which have shown that global warming is a fraud foisted upon the public by a radical leftist scientific community.
A funny point was made by Bill Maher when he said it was rather hypocritical of Bush to be so adamently opposed to recounting the Florida vote--yet when it comes to the environment, well there have been dozens of studies showing warming; but let's just wait until a few more truly show the earth is warming up.
And unlike the election results, where the candidates really weren't all that different, the results of a wrong choice in environmental policy could potentially have disastrous results not only for the US, but for the entire earth.
That might be a very dangerous proposal indeed, not least because people might think it would work and actually test it without having any means to reverse it should it be harmful, but also because as per my previous post global warming might cause severe global cooling. (archive-mode proof link here)
Scroogle
It's a pity attitudes to climate change research per se are so polarised. There was a paper in a climate modelling conference where the US author was only half joking when he used an amusing title on his paper.
Scroogle
You might not like the possibility of this severely affecting Minnesota.
Scroogle
One thing very few independent scientists dispute is the Rahmstorf bifurcation model of Atlantic thermohaline circulation has only two possible stable solutions:
The on-off switch is the amount of rainfall minus evaporation over the North Atlantic.
Scroogle
Well it's only possible... but with increased atmospheric CO2 and increased rainfall over the North Atlantic, you might be getting a lot less food than you do now (more info.)
Scroogle
Rahmstorf bifurcation model of Atlantic thermohaline circulation-- implications discussed here.
Scroogle
because the Gulf Stream might shut down as a result of the increasing rainfall over the North Atlantic, thus making a new Ice Age.
Scroogle
What can global warming do? According to the widely accepted Rahmstorf bifurcation model of Atlantic thermohaline circulation, small increases above a threshold level in freshwater precipitation over the North Atlantic region can trigger a long-term Gulf Stream shutdown, a.k.a. an Ice Age.
A super-threshold increase in freshwater supply to the North Atlantic area is one of the most stable effects predicted in simulations by coupled ocean-atmosphere models of climate for any future increased levels of atmospheric CO2.
Would an ice age be so bad? Well, which of the two states below do you prefer?
A. Gulf Stream OFF image of US vegetation (Ice Age conditions)
or
B. Gulf Stream ON image of US vegetation (present day conditions)
What does an ice age do? On land, agricultural productivity in the major food producers like the US and N.Europe would collapse due to freezing temperatures. Reduced ocean circulation would also cut precipitation in other regions of the world, creating droughts. In the sea, the much reduced ocean circulation would be unable to replenish marine nutrients in vital high-latitude oceans, i.e., marine productivity and fishing harvests would also collapse.
Scroogle
Rahmstorf's bifurcation model of Atlantic thermohaline circulation is widely accepted by independent scientists, implying the Atlantic Ocean has only two stable modes of thermohaline circulation -- implications discussed here
Scroogle
You forgot methane. Methane is more greenhouse inducing than CO2. Yep. Natural gas, what they burn to make electricity + heat + CO2 + water vapor. All methane in the atmosphere comes from decomposing biomass, and is the waste product of the bacteria that decompose it. Cattle have bacteria in their stomachs that convert cellulose plant material into sugars + methane, which they continuously burp/fart out. And the most numerous creature on Earth, termites, also have methane producing bacteria in their stomachs.
Natural gas deposits are formed when biomass in the oceans is decomposed by methane producing bacteria. Some bubbles to the surface and into the atmosphere, and some settles to the ocean floor. On the floor of the Gulf of Mexico and off the east coast of the U.S. are huge deposits of methane "ice". In time, this will either bubble up to the surface, or become covered with layers of silt, then thaw out and become trapped between layers forming natural gas deposits. There has been talk of mining this "ice", but it's still a finite resource that can't be replinished as fast as our appetite for energy can guzzle
Now take these fuel pellets, stack them in tubes to make fuel rods, rack up and then seal bundles of fuel rods inside a reactor, and start a controlled fission chain reaction and output a gigawatt continuously for a year and 1/2 or so. Then dismantle the reactor, remove the spent fuel rods, and store them in a 23 foot deep olympic sized pool. Then install new fuel rods, reassemble the reactor, and make another 1-1/2 gigawatt-years of electricity. (Assuming the plant doesn't break down constantly.)
After 10-20 years, remove the spent fuel rods from the pool, stuff them in huge white radiation proof kegs, and stack them outside in an abandoned plant contractor parking lot. Leave them there while waiting for a huge hole to be dug underneath a mountain, a final resting place for the kegs.
This is what is called an open-ended fuel cycle. Mine, use, dispose. But fuel rods can be recycled. They do it in Japan and France, among other countries. You see, not all the uranium in the fuel rods undergoes fission, in fact, less than 1% of the 1% enriched uranium is split. In fact, by a process called breeding, some of the U-238 absorbs a neutron and becomes Pu-238, which is even more desirable for the chain reaction. The overall effect is that the fuel rods are more potent when spent than when they were new. Unfortunately, what ultimately stops the chain reaction is fission by-products that absorb neutrons. A crude analogy would be burning one ton of coal, and getting back one ton of better coal, but it won't burn until 5 kg. of ash is sifted out.
While he was in office, Jimmy Carter signed legislation prohibiting the recycling of uranium fuel by the civilian nuclear power industry, based on fears that some of the recovered Pu-238 might be diverted to enemies wanting to make an atomic bomb. If only these fears could be laid to rest, we could recycle our fuel like other forward thinking countries, we wouldn't need a hole under a mountain, and we wouldn't need to strip mine for uranium ore as much as we do for coal.
Coal? Natural gas? NUCLEAR? What ever happened to the idea of using the 45 quadrillion horse power of energy that big bright thing in the sky dumps on us every day?
Evey one seems to be thinking about power stations
that are poluting the are sure but not as much as your normal car!!!
there are so many cars and trucks and many other types of Vehicals that are producing green house gasses its the carbon Dioxide thats agrivating the Global warming process that has been going on for thousands of years we hu-mans are just making things worse by burning fossil fuels and choping down trees.
Its got to stop there are other forms of energy
other than fire:
>like Hydrogen fuel cells that produce electricity from the chemical fusion of hydrogen and oxygen to create water.
>and for house holds theres solar pannels and wind power
>what about hydro power ( either harnessing sea currents or daming up rivers )
> and of course Nuclear power.
petrol is the leader because its easy to get out of the ground and since people can own it and make billions of dollars selling it greed comes into play over saving this one Bastion of Life as we know it the hole in the ozone is getting bigger and bigger an its not going to stop our small pityfull rock in the universe is dying and all we can think about is our pockets
its time to stop moaning about it and blaming the govenments for the problems and realise that it is us that have created this major problem
go plant a tree, buy glass insted of plastic,
buy a bike, buy a hydrogen fuel cell car,
hell even pressure your local council!!
Its not hard try it every bit helps
as I recall, the whole problem with the US carbon sinks argument was that the effect of those carbon sinks that already exist must be factored into the current emissions variables.
The US used some good science about carbon sinks to justify a policy that is the equivalent of the fictitious budget surplus.
How can the United States claim it should have less of an emissions reduction burden because it has more forests? The US still is responsible for more pollution than any other country.
In terms of pollution credits, remember that that isn't a perfect model. Market allocation does not always work. For example, a lot of the power plants that shut down in California this summer for "maintenance" actually had run out of emissions credits and shut down instead of paying staggering fines.
By the way on the nuclear power question discussed in some posts I think we should explore it too, but let's make sure its safe and find a suitable way of disposing radioactive waste.
Goat sex free since 2001
The USA really need to get their heads out of their asses, although it's probably nice and cosy up there, too. Thanks to organic fuel, I must admit.
:)
But seriously, these "nuke good, nuke bad" posts are pointless (as long as lobbies in DC are making damn sure that it'll be oil and coal that's a-burning): we're facing two evils, nuclear winter might occur, or carbondic summer will be upon us for sure.
Poor countries don't pollute as much in the first place, but they'll be the first to get wet feet once the rise of the waterline starts causing floods on a global scale. Hell, even top oil-exporting countries are all for drastic action.
It's the USA representatives who are most unwilling at serious international talks, refusing to commit to emission-cutbacks. George Dubya does not seem to be the messiah in this respect, either. Though I despise the deathsentence, I would like to have seen him fry some using solar energy or whatever that while he was campaigning - might have even won over some greenies
Research programs regarding prospects of solar-, hydro-, and nuclear power, as well as fullscale recycling schemes, need much more emphasis in terms of grants and budgets if they are to contribute to the turnaround.
regards,
EK
PS: Please note I'm no troll, I'm no hippie, I'm just realistic
--
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Thank goodness I have Air Conditioning in my car and my house!
One of man's greatest inventions, that's for sure... right behind gasoline.
In its most common state the Earth has no ice at its poles. The fact that we have adapted to expect Earth to stay the same forever just goes to show how naive we can be. So what if New Orleans sinks into the ocean? It was built on a piece of ground that has been underwater for most of the Earth's lifetime, so why should we expect it not to be underwater again in the future?
The Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Recorded history is only a couple thousand years and much of that is still not understood properly. What will the Earth be like a million years from now? We will most likely be long gone and another civilization will be digging up our remains and making crazy theories about how we lived. I bet they'll never think that we were afraid about spewing toxins into the air when a huge asteroid was hurtling toward us.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
while the atmosphere may be warming the link to polution has not be shown.
George will fix it. Honest.
"I'm going to solve all the world's problems, I'm going to blow it up!" - Marvin The Matrian
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Electric-only cars are a rather nifty Idea but they are not feasible with current technology. With our current load sensing technology we can run a diesel generator to an electric motor on a dynamic load and have it be 80% more efficient than a traditional engine. While we are many years away from large-scale consumer releases of this technology some large cities are using busses based on this technology.
Some fuel alternatives are just silly. The Fuel Cell, since it's creation by NASA, has been used more as a battery that anything else. It takes a lot of energy to get Hydrogen in the form that you need in a fuel cell. You'd be better off with Solar Cells, but like all other forms they do have there draw backs. While it is cheaper for consumers to operate traditional vehicles, they will most likely me faded out over the next 20 years. Who needs grammar?
Long term use of sulpher damages the emision levels of engines. Where I live (Dublin, Ireland) our state-owned bus service used to import High-Sulpher diesel from the USSR. The sulpher built up deposits on the fuel injectors which resulted in poor combustion. Every time the bus driver put his foot down you could see a thick black cloud of smoke coming out the exaust pipe (which was for some reason facing out the side of the bus towards the sidewalk- a bus coudl easily leave you choking if it pulled away beside you).
The sun is heating up as it ages. Before long, we're going to have some global warming.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
To combat global warming because of C02, you want to put as much carbon into non-biodegrading landfills (no oxygen flow thru them to break them down) as possible.
So, burying yard waste in such landfills is GOOD, not BAD. That yard waste, diapers, newspapers, are causing large landfills and we are running out of room is not true whatsoever. (No argument about badly placed landfills near urban areas, though.) Run the numbers yourself, not that anybody does.
Remember: every time you compost, you're doing evil.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
I am far more concerned about Bush trying to ban porn on the internet than of any environmental issues.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Mabe Hemo sould hav red the artical abot Cruesoe as a servur chip.
--Blari
There are alternatives such as fuel cells, solar, etc each of which has drawbacks. All we really need is an economic incentive for people to move to alternatives. As long as it's cheaper for consumers to operate traditional vehicles, we will never get to the next-gen technology.
I found a couple of articles in Scientific American that are interesting but a few years old.
http://www.sciam.com/1196issue/1196sperling.html
http://www.sciam.com/1097issue/1097wouk.html
Your post seems to be based on many assumptions. There is no reason to suppose that the Earth's climate is in any way unstable, and liable to self destruct at the slightest perturbation. I would hazard that it is in fact highly stable. This is why we have managed to live through massive asteroid impacts, volcanic explosions, and various other doomsday scenarious without becoming extinct.
Antother thing to bear in mind is that the climate is highly variable on its own. From the middle ages to about the 18th century, there was a little ice age, and temperature were inordinately cold. In the Xeventeenth century, the Thames in London froze over some 18 times, compared to very few in the twentieth (one or something). Temperature then were 4 or 5 degrees cooler than now.
Similarly, the early nineteenth century saw a cold snap, and it is thought that such an abrupt weather change may have brought down the Roman Empire. 2000 years ago it was possible to grow grapes in the north of England, a feat unimaginable today.
So, we have established that the climate is variable of its own accord. Why then is there the assumption that rising temperatures, still statistically insignificant, are the fault of Mankind? I would hazard that it is because we have become all to self absorbed and shallow, and grasp at principles as we see them whether they be right or wrong. People should stop trying to make others guilty, and stop feeling guilty themselves. We should deal with this in a rational manner, removed from unfounded ideals.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
Don't believe me? Just look at the error in this article's title. For more errors, and how to avoid them, see Common Errors in English.
It's not cool to use other peoples code... -
For all intents and purposes, this is completely true. Thankfully, the Emissions Protection Agency (aka EPA) is doing something about it -- see their page for more info. They even have a page about current impacts, though many more of course are expected to come soon. Global warming is a rather slow process if I say so myself.
It's not cool to use other peoples code... -
- The Greenhouse Hoax...Noel Mc Donald
- Global Warming: A Chilling Perspective
- Greenhouse Syndrome: Just Hot Air?
- Global Warming: A Political, Economic and Scientific Backgrounder
- A BRIEFING ON GLOBAL WARMING,
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY
- There are many questions
regarding Global Warming
- Global warming has failed experimental test.
- GLOBAL WARMING:
INVENTING AN APOCALYPSE
- Home Page of John Daly,
author of The Greenhouse Trap.
- John L. Daly
Profile of a Greenhouse `Dissenter'
Source, and many more links: Liberty Exposure: Global Warming.It's not cool to use other peoples code... -
The EPA recently launched their brand new global warming web site, complete with great facts about global warming. Apparently, naturally occuring carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide gases are causing more harm than artificial hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), perfluorocarbons (PFC), and sulfurhexafluorides (SF6). I'd say they need more sinks.
It's not cool to use other peoples code... -
but, they don't Effect climate...they Affect climate. I propose a program to release the CO2 in the cliffs of Dover so we can get this place back to the warm humid green tropical paridise it was in the distant past. Remember, Every time you exhale, you make a plant healthier.
(1) Natural gas produces less CO2 than coal, because more of the energy comes from the hydrogen component of the fuel, and less from the carbon component (Natural gas is CH4, and coal is roughly C135H96O9NS). Natural gas isn't great, but it produces half as much CO2 as coal per unit of energy.
(2) Yes, China has bad smog, and yes that is a big part of the reason they want to switch away from coal, and yes, smog doesn't have much to do with global warming. But China is still doing more than the U.S., which is doing NOTHING.
(3) Exponential growth of any sort is dangerous for the environment. But you're letting yourself off too easy by pointing to China's population growth. Their population may be growing by 3% a year (or whatever), but we are doing at least as much harm if our per capita consumption is growing by 3% per year.
For a group of techno-nerds who supposedly present themselves as independent thinkers, cynics, and skeptics, I see a lot of you buying into these environmental reports from the government, and the various international agencies.
The facts are quite clear. There is no proof for man-made global warming. Between solar cycles, the cycles of ice-ages, and other complex atmospheric and land-based occurrences, it would appear that we have very little to do with any of it. There were times of extreme heat and extreme cold long before we were here. Temperatures have been on a slow, and natural climb, since the last ice age, as you would expect. Most of the increases in the 20th century occurred before we even had any big industry. One cannot dismiss volcanoes and other natural forces that created the atmosphere in the first place.
There is a long history of anti-American, anti-technology fanaticism that works to destroy successful enterprises and nations. The enviro extremists fall into that category quite nicely. Did you ever notice how they never mention one shred of evidence that they might have miscalculated, or might be wrong altogether? It rarely happens in real science that your theories are perfectly accurate throughout your experimentation, especially when the real evidence shows contrary results. Maybe that's because they're not presenting real science.
It just so happens that the very small, agenda driven, socialized, government-paid scientific community is the only one that buys into the extremist theories. 19,000 independent scientists and engineers came forward two years ago to show that the evidence being presented for global warming was not science, but rather pseudoscience and rhetoric. These were people who were the best in their fields from all over the world and their concerns were understandably focused on the bogus Kyoto Treaty. They sucessfully debunked the enviro theories and showed quite a bit of evidence that described the exact opposite of the "Chicken Little" doomsday theories.
Even many liberals are leaving the ranks of the extremist environmentalist groups. Largely because the groups have shown themselves to be fraudulent. The scare tactics from those groups are created to keep the money rolling in, so they can promise to present a solution that is waiting for a problem. If everything is OK, as is the case, we don't need them, and that's their greatest fear. Let's not forget that they focus all their attentions on the big metropolitan areas for their supposed research and completely ignore the outlying areas, the weather balloon tests, and the satellite results, all of which show a slight cooling trend lately. Sure, we can create heat islands, but that is not global, and certainly should not require punitive actions. And why is it that it's always the US that gets the blame? We produce more than any other country, support a good portion of the world through foreign aid, and follow some of the strictest standards for emissions. It's cowardly to point the finger at us and ignore countries like China, India, and the third world nations who live in heavily polluted, heavily populated areas where no research is being done to clean things up.
I would suggest that everybody follow the money trail and where ultimate power is being created. Follow your instincts of skepticism and dig deeper to find the real facts. Figure out what it is that concerns you the most about the future and why so many people seem to ignore our sovereignty and Constitutional rights to freedom and are so quick to buy into junk science. Remember what our forefathers were insinuating when they stated: "He who sacrifices a little freedom to gain a little security, will lose both, and deserves neither". Don't fall into the trap of allowing bogus results determine what we're all allowed to do and not do for the remainder of human civilization.
with (nearly) all of the emerging nations going nuclear for their energy needs, I think it's really important, that we are able to provide fairly safe nuclear power plants, in order to avoid them installing the "old" soviet models. Look at the situation in Germany: nuclear power is no longer a valid option, so all those engineering brainpower (like KWU) either goes abroad or does something different. Hmm. And Poland happily switches on nuclear plants one by one. Just like Arizona making nuclear power plants illegal, and Texas having them happily smoking away...
-- Go ahead! make my day... fl@well.com