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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."
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:
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/
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.
-=-=-
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!
Nuclear waste lasts 100,000 years, but toxic
waste from coal-burning lasts forever.
It doesn't decay, ever.
A 500MW coal plant consumes
1.4 million tons of coal. When you burn
this coal, you get:
10K tons of sulfur dioxide. (acid rain)
10k tons of nitrogen dioxide. (smog, acid rain)
3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide (warming)
(note: the O2 in C02 comes from the air)
.125M tons of ash
.193M tons of sludge
(the ash and sludge contain mercury and other
heavy metals which are toxic, including
more radioactivity released into the
environment than a nuclear plant.)
So which would you rather have:
1) an enviromental disaster of a coal plant,
which causes 1.4M tons worth of mining
(often strip mining) and produces hundreds of
thousands of tons of toxic waste, much of
which is toxic forever and not for 100k years
only
OR
2) A nuclear power plant, which doesn't require
the mining of 1.4M tons of raw materials,
and doesn't produce 200k tons of toxic waste,
but rather *15* tons of high level waste,
*35* tons of mid-level waste, and *100* tons
of low-level waste.
WORRYING ABOUT NUCLEAR WASTE WHILE CONTINUING
TO BURN COAL FOR POWER IS UTTERLY MORONIC.
You also bring up Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
Did anyone even *die* in TMI? No. How many
people die every year from breathing in all
the toxic waste from burning fossil fuels?
And as for Chernobyl, we're not stupid enough
in this country to use flammable graphite to
moderate the reactor core. *our* worst
nuclear accident killed no one and didn't even
*injure* anyone.
How many COAL MINERS die *every* year?
WORRYING ABOUT THE SAFETY OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
IS MORONIC WHILE WE'RE STILL MINING AND
BURNING COAL.
MORONIC.
>Call for citations. Medieval Britain burned a lot of coal & I haven't seen any evidence that it damaged the ecology of the islands there.
s ha /msh97470.htm
http://www.ucsusa.org/energy/brief.coal.html
That is where I got the tonnage data.
And Medieval Britain did NOT burn "a lot" of coal by today's standards. I mean, do you REALLY think that they burned megatons of coal per year? REALLY?
Are you really ignorant of smog and acid rain and poor air quality today?
>> (often strip mining) and produces hundreds of
>> thousands of tons of toxic waste, much of
>> which is toxic forever and not for 100k years
> only
> Ever hear of hard rock mining? (Hint: that's what the adults were doing in the movie ``October Sky".)
I'm perfectly aware that not all coal is strip mined. That is why I said "often strip-mined."
Hard-rock mining has its environmental impact as well: I admit it's not as self-evidently bad as strip-mining.
>How many people die in mining that? Oh, & be sure >to ask around the Navaho & Hopi reservations -- I >hear a lot of folks living there died due to >years of mining uranium.
I don't know. Why don't you tell me?
263 people died mining coal from 1992 to 1997
according to
http://www.dol.gov/dol/opa/public/media/press/m
>> WORRYING ABOUT NUCLEAR WASTE WHILE CONTINUING
>> TO BURN COAL FOR POWER IS UTTERLY MORONIC.
> Elaborate. Or would *you* be accusing me of an ad hominem attack? Sorry, but I get these responses confused.
That was not personally directed at you, but at our society, which has a very irrational way of balancing risks.
It is STUPID to worry so neurotically about a possible nuclear accident when we're creating a worse in negative environmental impact to a nuclear accident by burning coal for power.
Looking at the record of the two industries, it is coal burning which should be banned and nuclear power which should be promoted. Nuclear power has the *risk* of a terrible accident: coal mining and burning has a 100% probability of having a huge negative environmental impact.
Even Chernobyl is nothing compared to the damage the USSR's dirty industrial complex has created in that country.
The fearful attitude of the American public toward nuclear power is like a smoker fearing brain cancer from his cell phone. He won't quit smoking but refuses to use his cell phone! Even though he's 10000 times more likely to suffer an adverse effect from his smoking!
>So we've been told. And the US government spent >millions of dollars & untold manpower to keep >_The_Progressive_ magazine from reporting >negative
> details about nuclear power. Do you >think that we've heard about all of the near >misses, or can trust that the PTB learned from >these mistakes?
Do you think you've heard about all the "near misses" with chemical plants? Massive chemical spills? Bhopal, India? Gasoline spills? You live with many much larger risks every day without giving it a second thought.
If I had to choose between living next to a chemical plant, a coal plant, and a nuclear plant, I'd pick the nuclear plant every time--unless
it had a graphite core! Naturally I'd like all of these things far from me, but of those three, which would YOU choose?
>> MORONIC.
> Excuse me. Are you talking to me? Or to people who share in your delusion?
I'm accusing a society that is so utterly stupid about calculating risks. That kind of thinking is moronic. It is imposing high costs to ameloriate microscopic risks while ignoring daily practices which cause huge amounts of real damage every day.
PeterM
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.
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.
-------------
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
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.
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).
(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.
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.
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--
I thought that I would never see
A nuke defender from Ber-kley
But if PC-ness does not fall
We will have no nukes at all.
One nit: Graphite moderation is only a problem if it can come into contact with air. There are a number of designs for HTGRs (High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors) which use graphite as the moderator. They avoid problems by using CO2 (Britain) or helium (just about everyone else) as the coolant. HTGR designs have some advantages over PWRs, including:
- Higher thermal efficiencies due to higher operating temperatures.
- Reduced radioisotope leakage due to the coolant being in the gas phase.
- Easier to use continuous refuelling by the method of "pebble bed" reactor cores, with graphite-coated ceramic "pebbles" as fuel elements.
- Easy to make inherently safe by using Doppler broadening to shut off the reaction if coolant flow is lost.
- Inherent resistance to thermal damage due to large thermal mass and guaranteed over-temp shutdown even without use of control rods.
I agree with most of your points, I just wanted to point out that you are probably tarring graphite moderators with the brush of the Soviet RMBK and that the whole bunch don't really deserve it.--
Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
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/
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!
...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....
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!
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!
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."
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.
"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)."
Who are you, Rush Limbaugh? Radioactive material is dangerous, hands down, no matter what. Contained Nuclear Explosions fall in to the 'potentially dangerous' category. Take in to account that this technology is hard, and very expensive to fix when problems are found, and you have many potential disasters worldwide.
"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."
And who they live beside, and what water they drink, Hey, if all your waters polluted, you just work a little harder and buy bottled water from farther north. WhoU! capitalism! Hey, if you think you might be absorbing radiation leaked from hundreds of miles away, just move somewhere where nobody effects the planet. simple!
"this same news media is so incompetent they can't cover major nuclear disasters?"
Correct! Welcome to the world of 24 hour OJ Estate coverage not being informative, major Gulf War cover-ups, and bad 80's nintendo looking graphics selling the entire country a billion dollar space-war program.
"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."
Umm no, that's not the point at all. The point is that if you want to design circuitry to run a nuclear reactor, you don't; you get someone who knows what they're doing to do it. Circuitry gets detailed fast. Here's a small list of things you would easily overlook in that situation.
1) Failsafe Details, do circuits open or close on failure
2) Noise failsafes, what amount of noise will cause dangerous operation of the circuit
3) Home soldering & Home PCB fabrication are not trustworthy
4) Chips used are probably not military grade, as the average electronics hobbyist uses the $10.00 cheaper brand which does the same thing.
5) You can not accurately test the design at home against problems.
6) will the circuit ever be exposed to radiation, how much? What occurs in that event.
7) Soldering by hand will easily cause problems with 'wicking' and cold-solders which will break once the circuit is in place.
Please don't reply, summoning the strength to impart these small bits of common sense was enough work for 1 year.
Ace
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.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
There's a better article at NewScientist.com
"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....
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
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."
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... -