Of course solar and wind are capable of satisfying the demand. It will just take a time to build them up to that point. After all we've been building up the fossil fuel infrastructure for over 100 years.
Compare the data near "man-made warmers" to other data stations and you will see different temperatures but the temperatures trends will be similar. It's not at absolute temperature we're measuring here but how it's changing over time.
Imagining that tomorrow that coal and gas plants stop making energy is a straw man. They will be phased out as alternative energy sources come on line. As I said it will take time to transform our energy systems.
Your bus scenario is an example of your lack of imagination. How about if instead of stopping the bus service you replace it with a hybrid bus that gets 20% better fuel mileage? Then in 15 years when it wears out you replace it with a bus that only needs batteries to run its route. The longest journey begins with the first step.
This civilization does not know a way to exist without burning oil or coal.
You lack imagination. Energy is energy. More solar energy pours down on the planet in a few hours than humans use in a whole year. We didn't get as far as we have by sticking with the old ways of doing things.
Solar and wind are proven technologies. The only thing standing in their way is economics. There was a coal plant project recently that was cancelled because at the rate the cost solar PV is dropping it will be cheaper than coal by the time the plant got built.
I'm not against nuclear power but it's an awful expensive way to produce electricity and the lead times are so long. I'm not sure it will be able to compete with solar and wind in another decade.
Just to be pedantic it's the cow belches that produce the most methane, not their farts. It has to do with the predigestion of their food in the rumen.
The La Nina last year (2010/2011) was the warmest La Nina year ever measured. It's still too early to tell where 2011/2012 will fall but the indications are that the current La Nina will peter out over the next 2 or so months.
Anyone with a lick of sense knows that ceasing net carbon emissions will be a 30-50 year process. We have to completely transform our energy systems. There doesn't appear to be any physical reason why we can't make that transformation so it's just a matter of will. A number of economic studies I've seen say it will take 2 or 3% of GDP to make the transformation. That's hardly an economic catastrophe.
Statistically speaking it takes 17 years of the temperature record to distinguish a warming or cooling trend from the noise of natural variation. Of course that only says what's happening currently, not what will happen in the future.
Climate change is causing more extreme weather. Global warming (a subset of climate change) refers to the fact that more energy is collecting in the Earth system. So there's more energy to go into making the extreme weather.
If you paid attention to the Arctic you'd know that there is lots of open water in the Barents and Kara Sea's north of Europe where it's been extraordinarily warm. That open water and the (relative) warmth it releases forces the jet stream to dip south into Europe carrying frigid Arctic air with it.
While it's true you can't attribute any single weather event to global warming it's also true the extraordinary warmth east of the Rockies is the sort of event you'd expect to happen more often from global warming.
I'm in Salem, Oregon and we're getting snow today. There's about 3 inches on the ground outside right now and it's still coming down. It's unusual to get snow here in March but this is the sort of thing that happens when there's a La Nina going on as there is now. You can expect the next El Nino year to set a new global temperature record, probably in 2013 or 2014.
LA to Melbourne if under 14 hours would be cool but you could do it even faster with a sub-orbital ballistic flight, probably under 3 hours. Normal low Earth orbits are about 90 minutes for a full orbit.
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Global Warming is a subset of Climate Change.
That, Little Johnny, is what we call "over-the-top hyperbolic rhetoric spawning from extremist zealots.
AKA, a straw man.
Just like we can reproduce the infrared radiation absorbing properties of CO2 in the lab instead of just a computer simulation.
Of course solar and wind are capable of satisfying the demand. It will just take a time to build them up to that point. After all we've been building up the fossil fuel infrastructure for over 100 years.
Or "the record 3 feets of snow [in 2008] is proof of global warming."
It's not proof of global warming. It's just not proof that global warming is wrong.
Compare the data near "man-made warmers" to other data stations and you will see different temperatures but the temperatures trends will be similar. It's not at absolute temperature we're measuring here but how it's changing over time.
El Nino//La Nina has global effects. They're just more subtle the further away from the Pacific Ocean you are.
Don't forget your sunscreen to protect you from the ultraviolet rays the ozone you destroyed failed to block.
Imagining that tomorrow that coal and gas plants stop making energy is a straw man. They will be phased out as alternative energy sources come on line. As I said it will take time to transform our energy systems.
Your bus scenario is an example of your lack of imagination. How about if instead of stopping the bus service you replace it with a hybrid bus that gets 20% better fuel mileage? Then in 15 years when it wears out you replace it with a bus that only needs batteries to run its route. The longest journey begins with the first step.
This civilization does not know a way to exist without burning oil or coal.
You lack imagination. Energy is energy. More solar energy pours down on the planet in a few hours than humans use in a whole year. We didn't get as far as we have by sticking with the old ways of doing things.
Solar and wind are proven technologies. The only thing standing in their way is economics. There was a coal plant project recently that was cancelled because at the rate the cost solar PV is dropping it will be cheaper than coal by the time the plant got built.
I'm not against nuclear power but it's an awful expensive way to produce electricity and the lead times are so long. I'm not sure it will be able to compete with solar and wind in another decade.
Just to be pedantic it's the cow belches that produce the most methane, not their farts. It has to do with the predigestion of their food in the rumen.
The La Nina last year (2010/2011) was the warmest La Nina year ever measured. It's still too early to tell where 2011/2012 will fall but the indications are that the current La Nina will peter out over the next 2 or so months.
Perhaps without GW/CC the high temperatures would have been 4 or 5 degrees lower.
We can't destroy the Earth but we might destroy ourselves.
Anyone with a lick of sense knows that ceasing net carbon emissions will be a 30-50 year process. We have to completely transform our energy systems. There doesn't appear to be any physical reason why we can't make that transformation so it's just a matter of will. A number of economic studies I've seen say it will take 2 or 3% of GDP to make the transformation. That's hardly an economic catastrophe.
Statistically speaking it takes 17 years of the temperature record to distinguish a warming or cooling trend from the noise of natural variation. Of course that only says what's happening currently, not what will happen in the future.
Get used to it.
The oceans are absorbing most of the excess heat, over 90% of it I think. The top 2.5 meters of the oceans hold as much heat as the entire atmosphere above it. The heat it takes to raise a mixing layer of 25 meters in the ocean 1 C would raise the atmospheric temperature by 10 C. Heat gets moved around by ocean currents. Thus Western Europe is much warmer than the same latitudes in North America. It also moves from the equator toward the poles in the atmosphere. Thus the Arctic has warmed more than the areas south of it. Nevertheless there aren't many areas around the world that haven't warmed over the last several decades. One thing to keep in mind, it takes 17 years of temperature records to distinguish the global warming signal from the noise of natural variation.
Climate change is causing more extreme weather. Global warming (a subset of climate change) refers to the fact that more energy is collecting in the Earth system. So there's more energy to go into making the extreme weather.
If you paid attention to the Arctic you'd know that there is lots of open water in the Barents and Kara Sea's north of Europe where it's been extraordinarily warm. That open water and the (relative) warmth it releases forces the jet stream to dip south into Europe carrying frigid Arctic air with it.
While it's true you can't attribute any single weather event to global warming it's also true the extraordinary warmth east of the Rockies is the sort of event you'd expect to happen more often from global warming.
I'm in Salem, Oregon and we're getting snow today. There's about 3 inches on the ground outside right now and it's still coming down. It's unusual to get snow here in March but this is the sort of thing that happens when there's a La Nina going on as there is now. You can expect the next El Nino year to set a new global temperature record, probably in 2013 or 2014.
No, racism is caused by stupidity and idiocy. No relation to global warming.
Actually, running your AC is about a perfect application for solar PV. You need it most when the Sun is shining the hardest.
LA to Melbourne if under 14 hours would be cool but you could do it even faster with a sub-orbital ballistic flight, probably under 3 hours. Normal low Earth orbits are about 90 minutes for a full orbit.
When I first read the headline a read "A Prosthetic for Money". Sounded just like Microsoft