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Technology's Role In a Climate Solution (thebulletin.org)
Lasrick writes: If the world is to avoid severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts (PDF), carbon emissions must decrease quickly. Achieving such cuts, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, depends in part on the availability of "key technologies." But arguments abound against faith in technological solutions to the climate problem. Electricity grids may be ill equipped to accommodate renewable energy produced on a massive scale. Many technological innovations touted in the past have failed to achieve practical success. Even successful technologies will do little good if they mature too late to help avert climate disaster. In this debate in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, experts from India, the United States, and Bangladesh address the following questions: To what extent can the world depend on technological innovation to address climate change? And what promising technologies—in generating, storing, and saving energy, and in storing greenhouse gases or removing them from the atmosphere—show most potential to help the world come to terms with global warming?
>> Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, experts from India, the United States, and Bangladesh
No China? Well, then, enjoy your BS session.
Here is a quote direct from the "article":
"The United States and Canada must reduce their energy consumption by about 90 percent; Europe, Australasia, and Japan must do so by about 75 percent. Cities must shrink drastically and energy differentials between urban and rural areas must disappear. Localism must be prioritized and governance decentralized. Uniform risk and emissions standards must be implemented for everyone."
Is it any wonder no one sane takes you global warming nuts seriously at this point?
Use a super sophisticated algorithm to remove the "adjustments" that are introduced into satellite surface temperature datasets that artificially show exaggerated global warming..
All of this is surprisingly achievable by expanding electrical grid and moving to all-nuclear energy generation. Unfortunately, opposition from the green movement to nuclear doomed us to pursuit of ineffective solar and wind solutions.
Seriously, people just have a huge appetite for consuming junk. We've created a whole economic/social/political system predicated on consuming more and more junk. It keeps people under control as they slave away doing pointless stuff to get other pointless stuff. I don't see how you can break that system right now without risking massive social stability issues.
According to this talking llama, the UN already has a plan to defeat climate change, and everyone has already agreed to it. So I'm not sure why people think climate change is still an issue...
We Have A Plan
If I understand correctly, poverty is also going to be eliminated.
They are building hundreds of nuclear power plants...will the world follow?
The AGW crowd is like my ex; always complaining about a problem but always rejecting the solutions.
Hint: Higher taxes and killing economies are not the solution.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Actually, China is and has been taking action on climate change, and if you've ever "seen" the air in a major Chinese city, you understand why.
It's a myth that anything the US does to offset climate change will be offset by some other countries, other countries have smart people who understand the problem, too.
This is action on pollution, not climate change, as every industrializing nation eventually does. (And does so only after integrating the benefits of industrialization, smoke and all, and not before, and properly so, as polluted cities are better for your longevity than dirt floor existence, the precursor.)
If you call it "climate change action", you get bonus brownie points.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
They are building hundreds of nuclear power plants...will the world follow?
They're also building coal plants just as fast as they can. They're just building plants, period. They don't give a shit what the outputs are like, as usual.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We need to stop looking to to fix something and work on the obvious ... clean our environment up as much as possible, stop dumping chemicals, etc, into it wherever possible but any kind of plan to reverse it is futile. The climate will continue to change indefinitely so beyond trying to do less damage our focus should be on adapting to a changing climate. This planet is a living ever changing thing and if the way that we are living is going to be irreparably damaged by a few inches or even a few feet of ocean rise than as a people we are never going to survive. Stop being stupid, stop planting major population centers at or below sea level on a coastline and near somewhere with potential for hurricanes, year after year, etc .... If you know there is an active fault line, maybe don't build there? The bulk of tornado's generally follow a semi-consistent path ... maybe lets not build our businesses or houses there and while we're at it maybe avoid active volcanos as much as possible as well?
The real problem with climate change has absolutely nothing to do with the climate ... it has to do with the stupidity of the people that choose to live in low-lying areas up against bodies of water as big as a continent.
The reality of "global warming" is this. It renders more land, more habitable, it increases growing seasons and makes it so that we can feed more people ....
No, I don't work for an oil company, yes, I do think that in general we should work to prevent pollution and keep our world clean, but I think large over-reaching measures to "fix" climate change are going to result in more damage to this planet and also have huge socio-economic impact on a huge number of people
trying to live here as well.
There's not enough nuclear fuel to do that. We have enough uranium for 200 years at CURRENT consumption rates. If you build 10 times the current number of nuclear plants, you'll only have 20 years worth of fuel.
http://www.scientificamerican....
It would require other mystical technological advancements for all-nuclear to be a viable option.
Fracking has reduced emissions in the US. China's is continuing to go up despite the solar, wind, etc. Maybe you need to go back to school.
Future generations will marvel at the fact that we burned coal to illuminate empty highways at night. It will seem unconscionable that much of the power generated in the destruction of our environment allayed only the most trivial of concerns, if it served any useful purpose at all.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
If people had the same attitude toward human rights as they do toward climate policy, we'd do away with them because North Korea won't participate.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Why can't we take the lead instead of waiting for China?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Climate change is going to be bad for the planet on average (especially food production) and the costs of adaptation would be worse than the costs of prevention. I encourage you to do your own research for a source, if you're interested in facts.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
So having a longer growing season and more rain inland, where the food is typically grown is now somehow bad for food production? What planet do you live on?
Aside from being unachievable, we should be asking ourselves as a species: is it even a good idea to try?
The amount of energy we "use" (ie. convert) today will register as noise relative to what we will be using in 1,000 years from now (should we survive). We've reached the age, as a species, where we need to be focusing on the long-term, as well as the short-term. If we're to survive past the next mass extinction event, we're going to have to keep the technology advancement train a'rollin. There is no going back, and there's no reason to go back.
We should each strive to reduce our impact on the planet, our resources, and each other. We should build efficient machines, and use them efficiently. We should stop burning coal, gas, and oil, and generate our electricity through a blend of hydro, nuclear fission, solar, wind, and geothermal. These are all short-term achievable, and healthy for our civilization.
But we should not be compromising our ability to convert enormous amounts of energy, nor the effort we put into developing this technology. For one day, we're gonna need it.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
And as for the "cost of adaptation" it isn't just a cost of adaptation it's a reversal of stupidity. You cannot "prevent" climate change and you cannot reverse it .... if you make a dent in what you consider man-made climate change you still have to contend with the planets natural tendency to change constantly.
I don't know whether or not that you realize this but without humans and our industry mucking about the sea level has risen and fallen significantly over time several times ... which is a significant indication that this will continue to happen going forward basically as long as this planet exists whether we do something or we do nothing ...... so the adaptation is a requirement for the survival of the species ...... not just to deal with the activity of man.
One where we don't hand-wave away problems with hilariously oversimplified answers:
http://www.preventionweb.net/f... (jump to page 58 for the spoilers)
Not all countries have the same climate or will be affected in the same way, and the countries that are going to be worse off vastly outnumber those that will be better off with climate change.
And here's something on the costs of global warming adaptation:
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
Hope you learned something.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You're right that we'd still have to contend with natural climate change, and if the change is minor adaptation may be the best solution for that. If natural climate change in the future threatened to cause the kind of major warming we're facing now, we might want to deal with it in the same way we're dealing with (or planning to deal with) today's man-made climate change - except we'd call it geoengineering. If the planet's warming up by itself, emitting less CO2 and sequestering more might be a good solution. If it's cooling down, releasing sequestered CO2 could help.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Is this the new frost piss? I've already grown tired of it.
That's just uranium, which is admittedly what we use right now, but there is approximately 3 to 4 times as much thorium. If we went with thorium reactors, and reserved uranium stocks for startup operations related to their operation, we'd be better off.
The real advantage of nuclear isn't how long we'll have it as much as it is carbon neutral, can provide base load, and we're able to build those plants right now, if we set aside the money and remove NIMBY roadblocks. This would give us about a century or so, at the higher consumption rate, to get solar and other generation more mature. And possibly even fusion (finally).
I agree, however, our current consumption of fossil fuels or anything other than direct solar or fusion is probably doomed to run out or hit maximum capacity sooner or later. The problem is that we're nowhere near being able to replace 90% of our fuel consumption with solar yet. We have at least a shot at it with nuclear.
Can you say "breeder reactor"? Sure you can.
That 200 year limit ignores breeder reactors, which allow us to make nuclear fuel from U238. And there is a metric fuckton of U238 out there. With breeder reactors, we're talking tens of thousands of year of nuclear fuel.
Plus there's the whole "reprocess the spent fuel rods" thing - there's still a lot of fissionables in a spent fuel rod. But it's illegal to reprocess those rods to recover the still-usable fissionables....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Also those who thinks roads are important for the economy but can't agree on how to fund them.
And that's why the USA's economy was dead between 1946 and 1964 when the top tax bracket was 91%.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The one child policy proves you wrong.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
When the last human breathes his last, money will finally be able to reign over it's rightful planet.
If the world is to avoid severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts (PDF), carbon emissions must decrease quickly.
There are two problems with this supposition. First, that it is correct in its characterization. The IPCC has consistently exaggerated existing research (example) and uncritically incorporated bad research (original "hockey stick" paper) in order to spin this very tale. Second, they ignore that humanity has other priorities than just curbing greenhouse gases emissions (such as reducing poverty - current mitigation efforts have a nasty side effect of increasing poverty which in turn can make mitigation harder to achieve or scuttle it altogether).
It continues to annoy me that we have this organization telling us what to do when it's clear that they're pursuing ulterior motives in doing so and ignoring the various priorities that the rest of humanity has.
And don't get me started on the ineffectiveness of current mitigation efforts.
China is responsible for half of current greenhouse gases emissions increases. You don't have them on board, then you don't have a discussion.
"They are building hundreds of nuclear power plants."
And they're not even all in China:
http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...
There's asteroids out there that present a very real danger to us. Take, for instance, 2015 TB145 (http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/2009FD/2009FD_planning.html) which was discovered two weeks ago and in a few weeks will pass by the Earth within 1.3 lunar distances. Thar is an unbelievably near miss. And we never saw it coming.
Instead, billions are wasted on "fighting climate change". Designing a planetary alert and defense system seems to me to be a much higher priority... otherwise there won't be a climate (or much of a planet) to worry about.
"We have enough uranium for 200 years at CURRENT consumption rates"
Because U prices are low right now, so not a lot of it is being mined. If the price were to rise 10x, as petroleum has done in recent times, it would become cost effective to strain it from seawater, where there is enough for millions of years to come. Meanwhile, California is starting to desalinate in a meaningful way. Once we get used to running large volumes of seawater through desal plants, the idea of using dissolved minerals will get a lot more interesting. We may never have to dig another mine again.
And that's why the USA's economy was dead between 1946 and 1964 when the top tax bracket was 91%.
There were plenty of loopholes. The rich probably paid a little more than they do now.
There are several ways we can use technology to promote effective climate action:
First, we need to put an immediate stop to the UAH and RSS satellite measurements of surface temperature, or at least publication of the results. None of our models is able to explain why the temperatures haven't continued to rise as precipitously as we expected after the 90's. The pause is an embarrassment. Ergo, the pause doesn't exist, and we don't want to hear any more about it. The science is settled, OK?
Second, we need to deal once and for all with this weird thing called "the internet", where people apparently are free to say things that we disagree with. A good start would be criminal and civil lawsuits against individuals who express skepticism of our climate agenda. This is already underway, as Michael Mann is suing Mark Steyn for his aspersions about the hockey stick. And others have proposed using the RICO laws to shut down other speech that doesn't toe the line. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, if you please. We are all very serious scientists and public servants, and it's the other side who are corrupted by dirty money.
Bulcrap. Northern India men still want & get a dozen children.
The solution is obvious: Nukes. Lots of nukes.
What else would your expect from atomic scientists?
Have gnu, will travel.
Advocating destructive implausibilities is insane.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Because "technology" with its associated carbon footprint is going to lower atmospheric CO2 concentration and increase O2 concentration to get the atmosphere back in balance, Sure, wake me up when that happens.
If only there was a machine that could convert CO2 to O2, sequester the carbon *and* require no electricity to use.
Oh wait, they're called trees. But those won't earn consulting fees for pundits and are decidedly "unsexy" to report about.
My prediction? People will screw it up with these thinly-disguised cash-grabs, RT, "solutions," until the 11th hour when we're all dependent on wearing oxygen backpacks, then FINALLY the dopes will start engineering high-yield trees which are efficient at sequestering CO2. But first they'll exhaust all the stupid solutions.
"Technology," indeed. How about some common sense?
Wrists killing you? Not in 2 weeks. Learn Dvorak.
I'd rather we kill the economy than have the economy kill us. However, it's quite likely that green investments could take up a lot of the slack before it starts seriously hurting our lifestyle.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Simpler than that, you could just paint Texas white, or seed the ocean with iron sulfate and cause a massive spike in phytoplankton growth.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
We are doomed because we are all cows.
Say, "Moo," cows. Moooooo...
We are ALL cows. The climate change deniers, stupidly repeating rhetoric and falacious logic. The ecologists, hoping beyond hope that regulations and social programs can save us. The technologists, egotistically believing their brainpower will find a fix powerful enough to overcome all the natural processes that are already in progress, and that fix will actually get implemented. The oligarchs, selfishly believing their manshions, safe rooms, private armies (which we euphemistically call police departments), and even their compounds in the southern hemisphere will protect them. ALL are cows, wandering blindly toward the slaughter. A slaughter of our own mutual creation.
Because we, as a species, did not have the wherewithal to collectively say, "Fuck That Shit!" when those with a little bit more power and bigger sticks told us to fight others to get more stuff for ourselves, unknowingly giving even more power to the top stick-haver... Because we let someone convince us that we even needed or wanted that stuff in the first place... we have facilitated the social and technological machinery that has inexorably brought us to where we are now: in a bizzarre, collective mix of all four stages of death at the same time.
But that death will come, regardless of what any of us want or believe or try. I hate to say it, but the only way out would be if 90% of the world population just died off. And we all know that isn't going to happen. So, the only thing left to do is to, as contentedly as we can muster, given the circumstances,...
Say, "Moooooo."
And that's why the USA's economy was dead between 1946 and 1964 when the top tax bracket was 91%.
Find me anyone who paid that rate...
Today the top rate is over 33%, yet almost no one in that bracket pays it either.
You can raise the tax rate to 100%, it doesn't mean you collect it.
We've seen CO2 levels increase dramatically, from 280ppm to 400ppm. How much has it cost us to adapt to that increase?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I know it's considered heresy in the church of CAGW to say this, but climate models are still very uncertain about trends for future warming. The 'consensus' within the modelling community is that the models are very good tools for testing out our understanding of how climate works. They're predictive reliability is another matter entirely.
The IPCC that the CAGW church heralds for it's Nobel Prize on climate change says the following on climate models. Go see for yourself here under Box 9.1 if you don't believe me.
maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent
the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters
in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system.
The IPCC go on to reference more than a half dozen peer reviewed papers verifying this assessment. They later add:
Model tuning directly influences the evaluation of climate models, as the quantities that are tuned cannot be used in model evaluation.
Quantities closely related to those tuned will provide only weak tests of model performance.
For an even more layman break down, climate models still have troubles modelling TOA energy balance. TOA energy balance is the ENTIRE driving force of climate change. The greenhouse effect is completely and entirely a function of energy entering and leaving our planet at the edge of space. That places virtually everything within our climate system as at least partially related to this quantity.
All the warming and cooling trends in climate models of the past and projections into the future are driven by TOA energy imbalance. And the scientific consensus is that our models still can not get it correct and require hand tuning and tweaking to manually correct it.
That doesn't seem strong enough evidence to me to warrant advocating for drastic taxation and economic cut backs...
There are too many people. We could easily reduce our ecological and energy footprint if we allowed our populations to shrink (through natural processes over the course of a few generations, I'm not advocating large-scale slaughter). As long as we maintain policies designed to boost population size (such as massive benefits instead of extra taxation for children, as well as unlimited immigration) our resource usage will grow.
Interestingly, so-called "green" parties tend to be hugely in favor of immigration... Makes you wonder about their real priorities.
This is why I don't believe most national governments, "green" activist groups or political parties are serious about tackling global warming. If they were, we would be spending serious money on nuclear fusion research -- beyond just ITER, I mean. We need a Manhattan Project for fusion, an Apollo Program for fusion. But we don't have one. The only reason I can figure is that the people in charge don't really want to solve the problem. That would derail their gravy train. Why spend $200 million on a research reactor that might solve global warming once and for all when you could instead ship $10,000 million in "aid" to island nations that are about to sink? The latter plays much better at the UN!
I firmly believe we could have had nuclear fusion power plants up and running by the year 2000 if the effort had been funded appropriately. We didn't put the funding into this in the 1970s or in the 1980s or in the 1990s -- and surprise, surprise, nothing happened! The only thing we've put money into has been ITER, where they squandered many years just arguing over where to build it, and the design is already looking outdated. If we managed the Apollo Program the way we have ITER, people today would be laughing at the idea of space travel. "A moon landing? That's 40 years away -- and always will be! Haha!!"
Won't happen. If they won't do that with North Korea, a deeply crippled state, then why are they going to do that with the next superpower? Let us keep in mind that the US currently gets away with a lot of stuff. China in a few decades will have similar power. I just don't see this sort of incomplete discussion as remotely useful.
We've only seen a fraction of the warming that amount of CO2 increase will cause. But how much has it cost us indeed? How much less severe would Katrina and Sandy have been? Would the Syrian revolt have started without the immigration influx started by a drought? What about the costs of the California drought? Would Mexico be set to get flattened quite so hard right now by history's most powerful hurricane? It's hard to tell, but there are definitely hefty costs to it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
But how much has it cost us indeed? How much less severe would Katrina and Sandy have been? Would the Syrian revolt have started without the immigration influx started by a drought? What about the costs of the California drought? Would Mexico be set to get flattened quite so hard right now by history's most powerful hurricane?
Yes, that was my question.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well, actually, higher taxes is probably the only viable solution right now, but not the way most enviro its think, at the consumer end. Here's the rub. Burning coal is bad. Stopping that alone would mostly get us where we want to go. Probelm is, once it is dug up it'll burn and we're toast. Right? Now, we can build out renewables to decrease demand for coal, right? Yeah, but that'll have no effect. Prices on coal go down and it becomes more attractive somewhere else. So it's burned and we're toast. In theory we could put enough downward pressure on coal prices to make mining not a viable business, but given the demand for energy that isn't likely to ever happen. So, what to do? Make coal more expensive. LOTS more expensive. Tax the bejeezuz out of it's production. Import and export taxes up the wazoo. Slam the production hard. The US, Europe etc. That'll work. Nothing else will.
Per capita and adjusted for inflation, the average US citizen paid half of what they pay today - and the median was lower as well (the effective tax rate was considerably less - for all - than it is today). Not to mention we ran ACTUAL surpluses overall (meaning the national debt went down); in fact the last time the US ran an actual surplus was in 1957, under Ike.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
what promising technologies --- in generating, storing, and saving energy, and in storing greenhouse gases or removing them from the atmosphere --- show most potential to help the world come to terms with global warming?
I'd wait for more proof that Temperature follows CO2 before I'd rearrange civilization.
I'd let CO2 get even higher, because plants love it and I love plants. Do you love plants?
But with enough carbon-neutral electricity and heat anything is possible, even CO2 sequestration on a grand scale.
But only bring CO2 down to pre-industrial levels if you really hate plants.
Thorium Remix 2011 [02:23:49]
"Every time mankind has been able to access a new source of energy it has led to profound societal implications. Human beings had slaves for thousands of years, and when we learned how to make carbon our slave instead of other human beings, we started to learn how to be civilized people. Thorium has a million times the energy density of a cabon-hydrogen bond. What could that mean for human civilization? Once we've learned how to use it at this kind of efficiency, we will never run out. It is simply too common."
CONTENT:
[00:00] LFTR in 5 minutes; [06:05] dialogue on Energy sources & conservation; [08:29] Elizabeth May (Green Party of Canada) on why nuclear 'fails', response; [13:40] Kirk Sorensen's time at NASA, discovering molten salt research; [17:30] on Glenn Seaborg's discovery of Thorium's fissile properties in 1942; [20:05] What nuclear fission is, decay chains, half life; [26:45] neutron absorption, cross section, Xenon poisoning at Hanford; [30:06] isotopic enrichment, Thorium/u233 rejected for weapons; [32:45] Atoms for Peace, absorption propensity and performance of nuclear fuels, thermal & fast spectrum, Thorium/Plutonium debate; [36:28] Alvin Weinberg focuses on Thorium and liquid fuels, Oak Ridge Labs, Aircraft Reactor Experiment, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, Fluoride Salts; [44:40] two-fluid molten salt reactor; [48:18] light water reactors, Watts Bar, reactor safety and containment systems, issues with water, Fukushima Daiichi hydrogen explosions; [01:01:38] solid fuel & rod assemblies, Eugene Wigner & liquid fuels; [01:04:38] PWR efficiency, Weinberg's quest for near-100% utilization, AEC's choice to pursue Plutonium fast breeders; [01:06:46] Weinberg's concerns about LWR safety, Congressman Chet Hollifeld's inquiry, Weinberg leaves Oak Ridge, WASH-1222, Integral Fast Reactor, Traveling Wave; [01:11:26] Fusion is hard; [01:14:12] Thorium in a CANDU; [01:18:12] Colonel Paul Roege on military reactors, Robert Hargraves: prosperity is related to energy, Robert F. Kennedy on mercury from coal; [01:21:42] transuranics, LFTR active processing, electricity & isotope production from LFTR, Pu-238 and RTGs, Molybdenum-99 & Bismuth-213 in medicine; [01:27:48] cost to build LFTR; [01:30:26] proliferation concerns; [01:31:50] hysterical news coverage of radiation, LNT; [01:40:02] coal & natural gas radioactive emissions, Thorium & Uranium decay in the Earth, magnetosphere, Hargraves on CO2 emissions & ocean acidification & energy density, one-sided press coverage for 'renewables'; [01:50:07] various approaches to nuclear power, the 'reason why not' (LFTR), LWR business model; [01:54:40] China and LFTR, Sorensen's visit to Oak Ridge to obtain access to LFTR documents, the Chinese visit Oak Ridge; [01:58:01] Thorium and rare earths, China's domination of rare earths market, China's LFTR program; [02:06:39] transitioning energy sources, without plentiful energy we will revert to slavery, energy cheaper than from coal; [02:10:44] process heat applications, desalinization, synfuels, Brayton Cycle, managing transuranics, gas & oil working against nuclear, closing remarks and recap.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Australia.
Rainfall has been below trend for a couple of decades in much of the country. The 'food bowl' of the Murray-Darling is suffering from over allocation of irrigation with a trickle reaching the end point in SA.
In suburbia, soil samples have shown where I live the moisture content is the worst in 100 years of records. So good luck growing produce in your backyard - we put in a water tank which is empty for the summer months because of low rainfall amid sweltering 40C temperatures.
And you are responsible for more than half of what's up there.
Last I heard the US is around 30% and that share is dropping.
Or is it the money and your pension fund you're thinking of protecting?
lol wut
Seriously, what do you mean by that, my dear AC? If there's money in here for me, I would love to know about it.
The fact is, the sensationalism and sheer, unadulterated emotion invested in global warming has completely obscured the fact that we don't know how much of the current warming trend is human-caused. All we know is people are desperate to doctor the data to support their conclusions, and write computer models that invariably reflect their own biases, not one of which has ever produced results that have in any way matched reality over the last 25 years. Even true believers like Hockey-stick graph guy Michael Mann and dyed-in-the-wool liberal icons like Freeman Dyson are finally admitting this. We could very easily spend tens of trillions of dollars (or even more, if the UN actually has any influence), impoverishing ourselves and our posterity, only to discover that man actually accounts for 5%, or 10% of warming, meaning the net result of all that money spent will be measured in hundredths of a degree.
Quite frankly, that money would buy plenty of sandbags. It was the height of stupidity to rebuild New Orleans right where it was after Katrina so cheaply razed it for us. No matter who is right, it clearly remains in harm's way, as does most other low-lying property in the world. Democrats talk the talk very well but not one of them stood up after Katrina and said "Hey, this is just going to keep happening, we should use this money to relocate the city..." - but no, that made too much sense.
Of course, I suppose it's just too reasonable to point out that government does not solve problems, never has, never will, but it can certainly make them worse, and that the free market and non-profits not founded to lobby government but instead actually do something about the effects of warming, might well be able to handle all this and more if government would get the hell out of the way!
Any advocate to reduce carbon output that also dismisses nuclear fission power is ignorant, insane, or has motives other than saving the planet.
Of all the technologies available to us this article advocates moving to solar PV, which is probably the most expensive energy source we have outside of burning diesel fuel. If you want to see an environmental disaster then tell people they have to rely on photovoltaic panels for power. As energy costs rise people will be crawling all over looking for something to burn for heat, light, and cooking. Trees will probably be the first things to go. Then people will burn trash. People will be burning tires.
Those with enough money to buy fuel for their cars will save up some for portable generators. Just think of a neighborhood in a summer heat with portable generators to run their air conditioners. The noise, smell, and smog will be unbearable.
These global warming alarmists are not going to win people over with a promise of higher energy prices and reduced standard of living. They need to offer more than a vague promise of saving the planet for some future generation. There won't be a future generation if we all starve, freeze, or see a plague kill us off.
The answer is thorium for energy. It's a known working technology. It doesn't create weapon grade material like uranium reactors, in fact it can burn the weapon grade stuff was have now. Also, if done right, it not only won't produce more nuclear waste but it can destroy the waste we have piled up now.
We have three choices:
- Nuclear fission
- Continued use of fossil fuels
- Starvation, disease, and death
Any claims of solar power, nuclear fusion, algae based fuel, or other as yet undeveloped technology saving us is relying on some breakthrough in technology that we've been working on since we've been talking of the evils of technology that will render the world uninhabitable.
Odd, isn't it? These people that have been telling us all of how technology is going to kill us is now trying to convince us that technology is going to save us. Perhaps we've had the technology to save us all for a long time now but this past fear of technology has prevented its development to the point that we simply cannot save ourselves any more, it's too late.
Again, these people are insane, ignorant, or have motives other than saving the planet. Regardless, we need to use thorium for energy because it will keep the lights on and civilization running. Anything else will likely doom us one way or another.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
While being far from perfect, the Chinese have made actual effort and sacrifice to reduce pollution of all types. American corporate lobbyists are still trying to convince us that there simply is no problem (while seeking to exploit the receding glaciers).
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
Disregarding, arguendo, the issue of whether there's a problem or not, where is it engraved that reduced carbon emissions is the only solution? I've seen a number of other possibilities put forward, including carbon sequestration and increasing the Earth's albedo via induced cloud formation. Taking a solution as given is an approach that's as antithetical to problem solving as I can imagine.
The biggest impact on carbon emission reduction is in reducing energy consumption in select industries, but especially in housing and transport. All that comes at a cost and in some cases the investments are so large that only a public entity such as state or federal can stem the projects. Housing energy use can be drastically reduced by investing in better insulation, installing solar panels for either electricity or water heating (or both), better windows and doors, and better heating systems. The 50 gallon hot water tank is out, continuous stream heaters are in. Any new furnace has to come with solar collectors, same for any new roof. All new construction has to have fully insulated basements. All houses need to be retrofitted with proper insulation and new windows and doors. While the home owners will eventually get the benefits, the upfront cost is so high that it is financially better to spend more on energy each year than to drown in debt that might amount to as much as the purchasing price of the house. There are other measures that architects can take. Open concept and high ceilings is much more expensive to heat and cool. Also, use exclusively hot water or steam radiators with thermovalves on each radiator. That is the easiest way to zone each room rather than just sections of a house. Forced air is way more difficult to control, electric heat should be made illegal by code. As for transport, invest in public transit, rebuild abandoned rail lines in densely populated areas, move more freight onto rail, make it mandatory to have sidewalks on all streets except highways (and even there adding bike/walk ways separate from the road might be a good idea). And also invest heavily in high speed Internet connections that are affordable (means among other things allow for municipal fiber!) so that remote work is more common place as that effectively reduces commutes. Also do schooling remotely at least part time to cut down on yellow transportation. Further, no longer register cars that have engines with more than 1.2 liters displacement and more than 75 kW engine power. That means good bye to the gas guzzling Jeeps and big fat SUVs and the speedy sports cars. Decentralize in industry. Example: Almost 90% of all yoghurt sold in the US comes from upstate NY. While that is great for NY it also means that refrigerated trucks need to move tons of yoghurt across the entire nation on a daily basis. Wouldn't it be better to farm cows in many places and make yoghurt in many places and thus effectively cut down on transportation? Or in regards to trash, do not haul it for miles, but run local/regional trash to power plants rather than dump garbage into landfills. Yes, burning stuff isn't great, but a lot of energy was already injected in what ends up as trash and recouping that will be much better than piling it up somewhere. All these things come with significant up front cost and realize not only financial savings but especially emission savings long term. That means it needs more investments from governments and more subsidies that go far beyond a one time tax reduction. Another way that would be effective, but harsh and hurtful is to drastically increase taxes on energy and transportation. In reality, none of this will happen because there will be corporations that will lose money or even become obsolete and what is bad for some business is bad for politicians. The number of gutsy decision makers in parliaments who think of the greater good than their own career is far to small.
So what does the reduction in sunlight hitting the Earth from your proposal do to photosynthesis? What is the reduction in productivity of plants from the reduced sunlight?
Why do I use the 2 satellite measurements?
First they have the greatest coverage. RSS goes from 82.5N to 82.5 S and UAH, 85N to 85S.
Second they are the least adjusted.
"Least adjusted" my ass! They measure the microwave emissions of O2 molecules throughout the atmosphere and only after a lot of convoluted calculations do they come up with temperatures for amorphous blobs of the atmosphere. The have to make adjustments for new satellites every few years, for changes in the orbits of those satellites, for the gradual deterioration of the sensors and for the effects of high elevation and clouds on the measurements.
Even Dr. Mears said he trusts the surface temperature measurements more than the satellite measurements.
You just like the satellite measurements because you think what they show is closer to what you'd like to see.
The fundamental premise that underlies the whole IPCC "science" is false. An atmospheric greenhouse does not exist, at least not in the way described by the greenhouse gas fear brigade. Yes, the science is clear and anyone taking the time to read it will see that the whole carbon reduction frenzy is nothing more than a circus for and of the bamboozled.
Dr Christopher Essex says: "I have been at this for more than 30 years. I got to madness as a conclusion long ago. But now I have accepted that humans are inherently limited...". He wrote about it 10 years ago in his book Taken by Storm. Now Joseph E. Postma has come to the same conclusion.
Why don't people open their eyes, read the material, and stop this ridiculous scam?
Obviously the authors of this piece missed the memo. Our interglacial is about done and we are going back into a glaciated state that will cause widespread colder and dryer climate and failing crops and no amount of CO2 will prevent that.
I'm sorry to tell you that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is already enough to prevent a new glaciation. The next ice age has been postponed for the foreseeable future.
Neither the Sun nor the Earth is a point. Your shade-o-lite would need to be, at a minimum, the same diameter as the smaller object.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."