The CNN article seems to be missing many of the facts presented in the summary. Here's a better article, though I still find no mention of the fellow "being assured" that the laptop was legit.
It hasn't helped enough - which is obvious given the increase in atmospheric CO2.
Indeed. But that's the appeal of Ethanol as a fuel. You'll add CO2 sinks to match the CO2 production. Suddenly our cars would become working members of the eco-system instead of strip-miners.:-)
But compared to the effect of (for example) transpiration by vegetation it is insignificant.
I think that's a difficult thing to predict at the moment. The CO2 production of cars was once thought to be insignificant, yet environmentalists today are chomping at the bit about it. We can't just throw out any effect as insignificant until we have hard data to back it up.
In any case, my point still stands. We don't get something for nothing. Energy usage will increase, and that will have effects on our environment. If we're smart, we'll reshape the environment to compensate. If we're not smart, we'll reshape it anyway after the effects devistate a few more major cities.
But slowly. That is the problem. Excess CO2 easily removed over centuries or millenia - which is too long to avoid global warming.
Er, no. Not quite. Natural CO2 sinks adapt very slowly to increases. However, it's still basically a big cycle with a given capacity for absorbtion in comparison to the quantity produces. As humans, we can and do artificially affect the balanace of these sinks. Promoting the growth of CO2 absorbing plants in urban areas has been one of the greater achievements of the later 20th century. There's still room for improvement, but it has helped.
Hydrogen can be stored chemically in ways that don't leak (such as in reversable metal hydrides).
Fair enough. But then we run into the environmental impacts of metal hydride disposal. It would be a bit like suddenly causing a thousand fold increase in batteries being thrown in landfills. Perhaps recycling can find good ways to deal with this, but that would likely involve a variety of disposable chemicals as well.
As against the water evaporated off of the 70% of the world's surface that is ocean?
Two words: Cross-Section.
Besides, we'd be releasing water that's already vaporized. That's not true of normally cool water sources on the surface.
Or the water that is breathed out by every living organism that respires?
One of the links I gave (I think it was the PDF I just pointed to) made the point that the very presence of humans has already affected the water vapor distribution in many urban areas. A few others have been pointing out the tale of Erik the Red and Greenland, and how there seems to be a correlation between the decline of the Vikings and lowering temperatures.
I'm pretty sure that the only thing adding any heat to the equation is the sun.
'Fraid not. Remember thermodynaics? "Energy may not be created or destroyed?" All that heat we pump out of car engines, coal plants, trains, airplanes, nuclear plants, wire resistence, computers, etc. all has to go somewhere. So it goes into our atmosphere and causes gases to expand. I'll leave the rest of the effects to your imagination.
Some argue that the Earth would be able to radiate the excess heat without the extra CO2 we're adding to the environment. It's possible that's true, but the issue of CO2 distributions is very complex and is as difficult to change at the moment as the amount of waste heat we put out.
EtOH may be energy positive, but it is economically negative.
I hate to bring up this point, but so is gasoline. The government heavily subsidizes oil companies to keep pump prices down. Not to mention the amount of force we must project internationally to maintain oil interests. (No, I'm not talking about Iraq.) Have you seen the price tag on a carrier?
Ethanol is far less subsidized than the oil industry is. And if the demand for Ethanol goes up, all that land the government is *paying* to keep empty can be farmed again.
As for the relative price to gasoline without the pump subsidy, I've only recently jumped on the Ethanol bandwagon because gas prices have surpassed the unsubsidized cost of ethanol. So it is a winning proposition, any way you look at it.:-)
Yes, because CO2 is effective as a greenhouse gas at orders of magnitude less than water.
Indeed. Yet it is also more easily removed from the environment by plants and microbes.
Also CO2 is a minor constituent of the atmosphere, so anything we produce can have an effect.
As greenhouse gases go, it accounts for 20% of the volume. 60% is water, and the remaining 20% is ozone (O3), nitrous oxide (N2O), and methane (CH4).
Yes I can!
Uh huh.
That is nothing to do with water production by hydrogen burning or fuel cells. It is to do with hydrogen leakage. That is something that can be controlled, and is certainly not an inevitable result of the use of hydrogen as a power source.
You honestly think that hydrogen leakage can be controlled? The molecule is so small, it penetrates ANY material! Hydrogen leakage is an accepted fact of hydrogen transportation. Building heavier tanks to lower the amount of leakage only decrease the overall efficieny of the transport vehicle, while simultaneously having only a mild effect on the leakage problem.
Plus, there are other scientists who argue that the emitted water vapors may cause just as much of a problem.
Now you can stomp around all day yelling, "I can too have it both way, I can too!" but it won't change the fact that our mere presence and use of technology is what has the effects on the climate. So if we're going to affect the climate anyway, we might as well do it right and change the world around us to protect ourselves.
Sorry I didn't elucidate better -- by 'minimize impact' I meant within reason, considering the factors necessary for our survival and reasonable quality of life; the trick is finding the optimal mix. Minimize != eliminate.
But my point is that we've already taken those steps. We're still a long way from correcting the perceived "problems" that supposedly cause global warming. The physics of the situation suggest that we *can't* correct those problems, at least not without miracle technologies that we don't possess.
Also, re: defensive planning for mitigation, you're talking about mitigating the effect of nature on humans; I'm talking about our responsibility to mitigate human effects on nature.
No, I'm talking about changing the face of the Earth to protect nature as well as ourselves. When people choose a place to live, what are some of the things they look for? Perhaps clean air, trees, nature parks? Many of those nature parks are manmade creations, restored from land that was previously ripped apart. Yet they allow nature to balance with the people living there.:-)
Well, one way to minimize the impact of our infrastructure is to lessen the demand for energy.
Sadly, that's not going to happen. In fact, with computers becoming more power hungry, a greater desire to travel to locations faster, and a need for more goods transportations, we're looking at nothing but energy increases for the forseeable future. Sure, we could all decide to turn off our computers and stay in the park communing with nature, but that defeats the point of living as humans. (Not that a little nature communing isn't bad every once in awhile.)
Another is to choose energy sources that have a smaller footprint.
Actually, oil has the smallest environmental footprint. Moving to Ethanol would require massive amounts of farmland. Hydrogen would require hundreds more powerplants. Nuclear powerplants would require places for safe disposal. Coal destroys huge swaths of land during mining. (Are you starting to feel the frustration of engineers?:-/)
There are parts of NO that are historic (these can be moved).
That's not actually the point.
We could be heartless, and tell them we won't help them out if they stay -- this is probably the most pragmatic.
This is the point. Being heartless would be political suicide. For all intents and purposes, it would probably be easier to abandon NO for now. But we're going to spend billions of federal dollars to rebuild it. Why? Because people are compassionate. I'll let you decide for yourself whether that's a bad thing or not. (I know I have mixed feelings.)
One way of preventing human catastrophe from flooding is to build levees.
As I said, we'll reform the world to suit us, not the other way around.:-)
The American coalition for ethanol is basically a lobby of Midwest corn farmers who really like their ethanol subsidies.
No. Really? Gee, I guess I've been duped.
Or more likely, I just like how their facts page is organized.:-)
Try these studies if Ethanol.org doesn't float your boat. For example, a 2004 study done by the Department of Energy (the same organization that found Ethanol to be energy negative under Pimentel 20 years earlier) found that Ethanol is at least 35% energy positive. (Report)
Even if these figures are overstated, the use of Ethanol would consolidate our oil dependence on farming equipment. The money then used to maintain the oil industry could then be diverted to replacing farm equipment with new technologies like hydrogen fuel cells or high density batteries.
If that were true, then the same would be true of CO2. Yet environmentalists tell us that we're having a significant impact on the CO2 ratios. And scientists are already warning about the effects of a sudden increase in vapors:
"The widespread use of hydrogen fuel cells... would cause stratospheric cooling, enhancement of the heterogeneous chemistry that destroys ozone, an increase in noctilucent clouds, and changes in tropospheric (lower-atmosphere) chemistry and atmosphere-biosphere interactions," scientists from Caltech and Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena proposed in the journal Science in 2003. Noctilucent clouds are eerie high-altitude clouds whose abundance, some scientists suspect, is influenced by climate change.
See? You can't have it both ways.
BTW, there are no oceans in Arizona, Colorodo, Kentucky...
FYI, even corn is energy positive. Though you are correct, sugarcane is WAY more efficient a plant to use for ethanol. Unfortunately, there are problems with growing it in areas like the frozen tundra (cute nickname for Wisconsin) where the weather is generally quite mild.
I disagree. The solution is to mediate the impact we've had as best we can, and then try to minimize our current and future impact. We should not be in the business of preserving life as we know it; we should be preserving the ability of life to 'choose it's own destiny', for lack of a better term.
I disagree with your disagreement. I hope we don't disagree on tha?:-P
The problem with mediating the impact is that it's an "us or them" situation. Your choices for mediation are:
1. Stop using technology. Since humans are ill-suited as anything but tool users, the animal kingdom will "choose its own destiny" and wipe us out. If they don't get us, disease and sudden climate changes will.
2. Continue to use technology, but mitigate the effects through defensive planning. We won't catch everything (as with Katrina), but the survivability of the human race (as well as whatever plants and animals we bring under our protection) will be statistically far higher.
I'm afraid that the laws of physics say that there can't be a middle. We use energy on a daily basis. That energy usage rejects massive amounts of thermal waste heat into our environment. We also rely on inexpensive chemical processes. That requires that we also reject large amounts of "burned" chemicals like CO2 and water into the atmosphere. Since the energy for powering our infrastructure *must* come from somewhere, we're on a losing path to think that we can develop miracle solutions that will somehow make the problems go away.
Slightly on a tangent, but relevant -- the rebuilding of New Orleans. I believe we have a unique opportunity to let the Mississipi delta reclaim some if its natural state. I believe resources directed to rebuilding should instead be directed to relocating to an area with a lesser impact.
I agree with you from a practical standpoint. The amount of engineering that's required for moving rivers is astounding. Unfortunately, New Orleans has a rich history on its current land. I don't think you're likely to get people to move. Thus the only pragmatic thing to do is learn from the tragedy and build new levees where weaknesses were found in the infrastructure.
Additionally, if you really believe that the Aeolipile is even remotely powerful enough to be considered 'the technology to manage power production', you're seriously insane.
Oh, well thank you very much. Cripes. It's called, "Technological Development." The path was open to the Romans, but they didn't take it. The aeolipiles they produced could have been useful for low powered stuff like pumping a vacuum. Further development could have produced far more powerful steam engines (especially since they had a great deal of experience with furnace heating from their baths) that could have assisted labor even beyond what the slaves could do.
Heck, that was the whole point of the industrial revolution, wasn't it? Machines could do the work of low-payed men at a far better cost?
The correct answer is, "Ethanol has traditionally been more expensive than crude oil. However, with gas pricing rising, Ethanol blends have helped keep prices of gasoline down. Now the only issue remaining is to find a good method for phasing out gasoline rather than a direct cut over to Ethanol.
You can't get rid of CO2 without causing thermodynamic problems for the machines that keep us safe, warm, and economically properous. (Which ultimately translates to well fed.)
Again, the solution is to change the world to meet our needs, not let the world make us extinct for being useless tool-users.:-)
Well, if there was no need to be snide, then there there was no need in the OP to be drab.
Gosh, nobody can ever be funny around here. Do Slashdotters ever get out of their houses and lighted up? (Never mind. Forget I asked that.)
Our actions do have an impact, which I believe should be minimized.
Are we absolutely certain that we want to minimize our changes on the environment? I certainly agree that we want to make the environment as suitable for life as possible, but I'm not so keen on the idea of letting nature take its course. Nature is a rather violent thing that tends to destroy and remake on a regular basis. Even without our interference, nature is guaranteed to revolve through extinction and speciation cycles.
The difference between man and nature is that man attempts to control these cycles for his own benefit, and hopefully to the benefit of other life as well. Sure, we got a bit carried away with our technological prowess toward the turn of the 20th century, but by the end of the century we were more sensitive to the life around us. I believe that's a good thing.
But the solution to the Earth's violent and chaotic changes is not to stop meddling and hope it all corrects itself (because it won't, history can prove that), the solution is to change the world around us for the purpose of securing life for ourselves, and plants and animals around us.
So what's the solution? Should we abandon the very technology that increases our survivability on a day to day basis in favor of a mere *hope* that the seas will calm down and the weather will be nice to us?
NO!!!
Humans are ill suited to living in "nature", and have the ability to wield tools for a reason. The solution is not to stick our heads in a hole and quiver, the solution is to reshape our environment to be more suitable to our needs. When Juilus Caeser came to the Rhine, did he and his men try to swim the strong currents or navigate with dangerous boats? NO!!! They built a bridge!
That is how man survives and will continue to survive.
[snide]Yes, but we have discovered amazing technology that allows us to see into the past![/snide]. We have examined records of climate change that span hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years.
No need to be snide. That was something of my point. We've had the technology to track global climate with precision for about 50-100 years. We've then based our ideas of what the climate should be, based on that. However, the imprecise records we have of historical global climate shifts have showed that the Earth has historically experienced WILD fluctuations in climate. The only hubris is that we think our 100 years of precise weather experience will somehow prevent the climate from wildly shifting again.:-)
Our scientists have been warning us for the last 30 years and most people think...oh well...that's in the future, by then I'm old and we're going to die anyway, now we're paying for our neglect and ignorance.
Blah, blah, blah. The climate will change, and life will go on. It's not like the real world is going to experience the Insta-Freeze(TM) problem seen in "The Day After Tomorrow." (It would have been such a fun movie too, if it weren't for the unbelievability of the "freeze chase scenes".)
We've been able to make a car run on water for the last 50 years (maybe even before) but the "big leaders" have chosen to stick with the polluting alternatives, guess why?
We have? How does that work? Do we pressurize the water and make it work like a bottle rocket? (All you smart asses out there can save your links to the air cars. I've seen them.)
I think you mean that we've had tech to run cars on hydrogen fuels. Except that there's a few snags:
1. Hydrogen isn't as energy dense as petroleum. So your MPG rating is going to suck.
2. Hydrogen is REALLY difficult to store. The molecules are so small, that they pass right through the containment vessels. When transporting liquid hydrogen, companies *expect* to lose a fraction of it on the way.
3. Hydrogen burns very fast in comparison to gasoline. This makes engine design much more difficult and shortens the life of components.
4. Hydrogen explodes nicely. Gasoline is actually quite safe as long as it's kept in containers so that fumes don't develop. (I know of a few people who had "fun" putting out matches by quickly sticking them in pools of gas.)
In other words, things aren't as simple as you're making them out to be.
(You might be interested in the article in my sig. Did you know that GM developed a Gas Turbine car that got 60 miles to the gallon of gas, could run on a variety of fuels, and cut emissions in half before abandoning the research?)
What's next? Bottled air?
"Oh my god, it's Mega Maid. She's gone from suck to blow!" --SpaceBalls;-)
Please think about the future generations - you're in it too!
Disclaimer: Slashdot is not responsible for all the poking you're about to receive for playing the tired, "Won't somebody thing of the children?" card.
[drab]Oh. no. The. world. is. going. to. end. (Waves little white flag in an uninspired fashion.) Everything. is. going. to. die. God. save. us. all.[/drab]
Seriously, we've had the technology to detect global climate changes for what, a hundred years at most? Of that, we've had useful tools (such as satellites) for less than 50 years. I hate to say it, but the earth has gone through a variety of climate changes in its history, and it will continue to go through plenty of climate changes regardless of whether we eject terawatts of thermal energy into the atmosphere or not. (Putting aside the fact that a forest fire or volcano is a hell of a lot more energy than humans normally put out.) The fact of the matter is that we've been living cushy with our modern technology in our idea of what the climate should be like. We haven't considered that major climate shifts could be possible, and thus have done nothing to adapt our technology to the variety of conditions that may be faced in the centuries ahead.
But that's okay. On the grand scale of things, we're pretty new to this whole technology thing. Not even the Romans managed power production, even though they invented the tech early on. (See: Aeolipile) The climate will change, and we'll adapt. No "fall of civilization" as Hollywood predicts every other day, or massive Slipstreams that make airplanes the only viable tech. Life will continue on, and we'll adapt. Okay?:-)
Grr... the grandparent post *was* modded "redundant" (which I found hilarious), but now some mod has ruined the fun with an "Offtopic" mod. What's this world coming to? Hrumph.
Slashdot Mirror
The CNN article seems to be missing many of the facts presented in the summary. Here's a better article, though I still find no mention of the fellow "being assured" that the laptop was legit.
It hasn't helped enough - which is obvious given the increase in atmospheric CO2.
:-)
Indeed. But that's the appeal of Ethanol as a fuel. You'll add CO2 sinks to match the CO2 production. Suddenly our cars would become working members of the eco-system instead of strip-miners.
But compared to the effect of (for example) transpiration by vegetation it is insignificant.
I think that's a difficult thing to predict at the moment. The CO2 production of cars was once thought to be insignificant, yet environmentalists today are chomping at the bit about it. We can't just throw out any effect as insignificant until we have hard data to back it up.
In any case, my point still stands. We don't get something for nothing. Energy usage will increase, and that will have effects on our environment. If we're smart, we'll reshape the environment to compensate. If we're not smart, we'll reshape it anyway after the effects devistate a few more major cities.
But slowly. That is the problem. Excess CO2 easily removed over centuries or millenia - which is too long to avoid global warming.
Er, no. Not quite. Natural CO2 sinks adapt very slowly to increases. However, it's still basically a big cycle with a given capacity for absorbtion in comparison to the quantity produces. As humans, we can and do artificially affect the balanace of these sinks. Promoting the growth of CO2 absorbing plants in urban areas has been one of the greater achievements of the later 20th century. There's still room for improvement, but it has helped.
Hydrogen can be stored chemically in ways that don't leak (such as in reversable metal hydrides).
Fair enough. But then we run into the environmental impacts of metal hydride disposal. It would be a bit like suddenly causing a thousand fold increase in batteries being thrown in landfills. Perhaps recycling can find good ways to deal with this, but that would likely involve a variety of disposable chemicals as well.
As against the water evaporated off of the 70% of the world's surface that is ocean?
Two words: Cross-Section.
Besides, we'd be releasing water that's already vaporized. That's not true of normally cool water sources on the surface.
Or the water that is breathed out by every living organism that respires?
One of the links I gave (I think it was the PDF I just pointed to) made the point that the very presence of humans has already affected the water vapor distribution in many urban areas. A few others have been pointing out the tale of Erik the Red and Greenland, and how there seems to be a correlation between the decline of the Vikings and lowering temperatures.
I think not.
Think Harder. (Or was that Think Different?)
Guess McNeally got under Michael's skin. :-P
I'm pretty sure that the only thing adding any heat to the equation is the sun.
'Fraid not. Remember thermodynaics? "Energy may not be created or destroyed?" All that heat we pump out of car engines, coal plants, trains, airplanes, nuclear plants, wire resistence, computers, etc. all has to go somewhere. So it goes into our atmosphere and causes gases to expand. I'll leave the rest of the effects to your imagination.
Some argue that the Earth would be able to radiate the excess heat without the extra CO2 we're adding to the environment. It's possible that's true, but the issue of CO2 distributions is very complex and is as difficult to change at the moment as the amount of waste heat we put out.
EtOH may be energy positive, but it is economically negative.
:-)
I hate to bring up this point, but so is gasoline. The government heavily subsidizes oil companies to keep pump prices down. Not to mention the amount of force we must project internationally to maintain oil interests. (No, I'm not talking about Iraq.) Have you seen the price tag on a carrier?
Ethanol is far less subsidized than the oil industry is. And if the demand for Ethanol goes up, all that land the government is *paying* to keep empty can be farmed again.
As for the relative price to gasoline without the pump subsidy, I've only recently jumped on the Ethanol bandwagon because gas prices have surpassed the unsubsidized cost of ethanol. So it is a winning proposition, any way you look at it.
Yes, because CO2 is effective as a greenhouse gas at orders of magnitude less than water.
Indeed. Yet it is also more easily removed from the environment by plants and microbes.
Also CO2 is a minor constituent of the atmosphere, so anything we produce can have an effect.
As greenhouse gases go, it accounts for 20% of the volume. 60% is water, and the remaining 20% is ozone (O3), nitrous oxide (N2O), and methane (CH4).
Yes I can!
Uh huh.
That is nothing to do with water production by hydrogen burning or fuel cells. It is to do with hydrogen leakage. That is something that can be controlled, and is certainly not an inevitable result of the use of hydrogen as a power source.
You honestly think that hydrogen leakage can be controlled? The molecule is so small, it penetrates ANY material! Hydrogen leakage is an accepted fact of hydrogen transportation. Building heavier tanks to lower the amount of leakage only decrease the overall efficieny of the transport vehicle, while simultaneously having only a mild effect on the leakage problem.
Plus, there are other scientists who argue that the emitted water vapors may cause just as much of a problem.
Now you can stomp around all day yelling, "I can too have it both way, I can too!" but it won't change the fact that our mere presence and use of technology is what has the effects on the climate. So if we're going to affect the climate anyway, we might as well do it right and change the world around us to protect ourselves.
Sorry I didn't elucidate better -- by 'minimize impact' I meant within reason, considering the factors necessary for our survival and reasonable quality of life; the trick is finding the optimal mix. Minimize != eliminate.
:-)
:-/)
:-)
But my point is that we've already taken those steps. We're still a long way from correcting the perceived "problems" that supposedly cause global warming. The physics of the situation suggest that we *can't* correct those problems, at least not without miracle technologies that we don't possess.
Also, re: defensive planning for mitigation, you're talking about mitigating the effect of nature on humans; I'm talking about our responsibility to mitigate human effects on nature.
No, I'm talking about changing the face of the Earth to protect nature as well as ourselves. When people choose a place to live, what are some of the things they look for? Perhaps clean air, trees, nature parks? Many of those nature parks are manmade creations, restored from land that was previously ripped apart. Yet they allow nature to balance with the people living there.
Well, one way to minimize the impact of our infrastructure is to lessen the demand for energy.
Sadly, that's not going to happen. In fact, with computers becoming more power hungry, a greater desire to travel to locations faster, and a need for more goods transportations, we're looking at nothing but energy increases for the forseeable future. Sure, we could all decide to turn off our computers and stay in the park communing with nature, but that defeats the point of living as humans. (Not that a little nature communing isn't bad every once in awhile.)
Another is to choose energy sources that have a smaller footprint.
Actually, oil has the smallest environmental footprint. Moving to Ethanol would require massive amounts of farmland. Hydrogen would require hundreds more powerplants. Nuclear powerplants would require places for safe disposal. Coal destroys huge swaths of land during mining. (Are you starting to feel the frustration of engineers?
There are parts of NO that are historic (these can be moved).
That's not actually the point.
We could be heartless, and tell them we won't help them out if they stay -- this is probably the most pragmatic.
This is the point. Being heartless would be political suicide. For all intents and purposes, it would probably be easier to abandon NO for now. But we're going to spend billions of federal dollars to rebuild it. Why? Because people are compassionate. I'll let you decide for yourself whether that's a bad thing or not. (I know I have mixed feelings.)
One way of preventing human catastrophe from flooding is to build levees.
As I said, we'll reform the world to suit us, not the other way around.
Holy propaganda batman!
:-)
You rang?
The American coalition for ethanol is basically a lobby of Midwest corn farmers who really like their ethanol subsidies.
No. Really? Gee, I guess I've been duped.
Or more likely, I just like how their facts page is organized.
Try these studies if Ethanol.org doesn't float your boat. For example, a 2004 study done by the Department of Energy (the same organization that found Ethanol to be energy negative under Pimentel 20 years earlier) found that Ethanol is at least 35% energy positive. (Report)
Even if these figures are overstated, the use of Ethanol would consolidate our oil dependence on farming equipment. The money then used to maintain the oil industry could then be diverted to replacing farm equipment with new technologies like hydrogen fuel cells or high density batteries.
If that were true, then the same would be true of CO2. Yet environmentalists tell us that we're having a significant impact on the CO2 ratios. And scientists are already warning about the effects of a sudden increase in vapors:
... would cause stratospheric cooling, enhancement of the heterogeneous chemistry that destroys ozone, an increase in noctilucent clouds, and changes in tropospheric (lower-atmosphere) chemistry and atmosphere-biosphere interactions," scientists from Caltech and Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena proposed in the journal Science in 2003. Noctilucent clouds are eerie high-altitude clouds whose abundance, some scientists suspect, is influenced by climate change.
"The widespread use of hydrogen fuel cells
See? You can't have it both ways.
BTW, there are no oceans in Arizona, Colorodo, Kentucky...
Which then ejects water into the air, increasing the general humidity, creating a different type of global warming than we currently have.
BZZT. Try again.
FYI, even corn is energy positive. Though you are correct, sugarcane is WAY more efficient a plant to use for ethanol. Unfortunately, there are problems with growing it in areas like the frozen tundra (cute nickname for Wisconsin) where the weather is generally quite mild.
Any ideas on how to get nuclear, wave, or wind into a car, bus, or truck? Because I'm all ears.
(Nuclear *would* work for shipping, and POSSIBLY for trains. But there are a lot of political problems with those avenues.)
I disagree. The solution is to mediate the impact we've had as best we can, and then try to minimize our current and future impact. We should not be in the business of preserving life as we know it; we should be preserving the ability of life to 'choose it's own destiny', for lack of a better term.
:-P
I disagree with your disagreement. I hope we don't disagree on tha?
The problem with mediating the impact is that it's an "us or them" situation. Your choices for mediation are:
1. Stop using technology. Since humans are ill-suited as anything but tool users, the animal kingdom will "choose its own destiny" and wipe us out. If they don't get us, disease and sudden climate changes will.
2. Continue to use technology, but mitigate the effects through defensive planning. We won't catch everything (as with Katrina), but the survivability of the human race (as well as whatever plants and animals we bring under our protection) will be statistically far higher.
I'm afraid that the laws of physics say that there can't be a middle. We use energy on a daily basis. That energy usage rejects massive amounts of thermal waste heat into our environment. We also rely on inexpensive chemical processes. That requires that we also reject large amounts of "burned" chemicals like CO2 and water into the atmosphere. Since the energy for powering our infrastructure *must* come from somewhere, we're on a losing path to think that we can develop miracle solutions that will somehow make the problems go away.
Slightly on a tangent, but relevant -- the rebuilding of New Orleans. I believe we have a unique opportunity to let the Mississipi delta reclaim some if its natural state. I believe resources directed to rebuilding should instead be directed to relocating to an area with a lesser impact.
I agree with you from a practical standpoint. The amount of engineering that's required for moving rivers is astounding. Unfortunately, New Orleans has a rich history on its current land. I don't think you're likely to get people to move. Thus the only pragmatic thing to do is learn from the tragedy and build new levees where weaknesses were found in the infrastructure.
Additionally, if you really believe that the Aeolipile is even remotely powerful enough to be considered 'the technology to manage power production', you're seriously insane.
Oh, well thank you very much. Cripes. It's called, "Technological Development." The path was open to the Romans, but they didn't take it. The aeolipiles they produced could have been useful for low powered stuff like pumping a vacuum. Further development could have produced far more powerful steam engines (especially since they had a great deal of experience with furnace heating from their baths) that could have assisted labor even beyond what the slaves could do.
Heck, that was the whole point of the industrial revolution, wasn't it? Machines could do the work of low-payed men at a far better cost?
BZZT! Wrong Answer!
The correct answer is, "Ethanol has traditionally been more expensive than crude oil. However, with gas pricing rising, Ethanol blends have helped keep prices of gasoline down. Now the only issue remaining is to find a good method for phasing out gasoline rather than a direct cut over to Ethanol.
s/lighted/lighten/g
No. The answer is to change technologies to those that produce less CO2. Expensive, but less expensive than the consequences of global warming.
:-)
No. The answer is to produce more CO2 sinks.
You can't get rid of CO2 without causing thermodynamic problems for the machines that keep us safe, warm, and economically properous. (Which ultimately translates to well fed.)
Again, the solution is to change the world to meet our needs, not let the world make us extinct for being useless tool-users.
Well, if there was no need to be snide, then there there was no need in the OP to be drab.
Gosh, nobody can ever be funny around here. Do Slashdotters ever get out of their houses and lighted up? (Never mind. Forget I asked that.)
Our actions do have an impact, which I believe should be minimized.
Are we absolutely certain that we want to minimize our changes on the environment? I certainly agree that we want to make the environment as suitable for life as possible, but I'm not so keen on the idea of letting nature take its course. Nature is a rather violent thing that tends to destroy and remake on a regular basis. Even without our interference, nature is guaranteed to revolve through extinction and speciation cycles.
The difference between man and nature is that man attempts to control these cycles for his own benefit, and hopefully to the benefit of other life as well. Sure, we got a bit carried away with our technological prowess toward the turn of the 20th century, but by the end of the century we were more sensitive to the life around us. I believe that's a good thing.
But the solution to the Earth's violent and chaotic changes is not to stop meddling and hope it all corrects itself (because it won't, history can prove that), the solution is to change the world around us for the purpose of securing life for ourselves, and plants and animals around us.
So what's the solution? Should we abandon the very technology that increases our survivability on a day to day basis in favor of a mere *hope* that the seas will calm down and the weather will be nice to us?
NO!!!
Humans are ill suited to living in "nature", and have the ability to wield tools for a reason. The solution is not to stick our heads in a hole and quiver, the solution is to reshape our environment to be more suitable to our needs. When Juilus Caeser came to the Rhine, did he and his men try to swim the strong currents or navigate with dangerous boats? NO!!! They built a bridge!
That is how man survives and will continue to survive.
[snide]Yes, but we have discovered amazing technology that allows us to see into the past![/snide]. We have examined records of climate change that span hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years.
:-)
No need to be snide. That was something of my point. We've had the technology to track global climate with precision for about 50-100 years. We've then based our ideas of what the climate should be, based on that. However, the imprecise records we have of historical global climate shifts have showed that the Earth has historically experienced WILD fluctuations in climate. The only hubris is that we think our 100 years of precise weather experience will somehow prevent the climate from wildly shifting again.
You simply can't make 6 - 10 billion people (allowing for pop. growth) turn around and start using solar cells or hydrogen or whatever.
:-)
There are a few ideas being kicked around about that. Read my sig for a whole long story on phasing out of gas and into new fuels.
Our scientists have been warning us for the last 30 years and most people think...oh well...that's in the future, by then I'm old and we're going to die anyway, now we're paying for our neglect and ignorance.
;-)
Blah, blah, blah. The climate will change, and life will go on. It's not like the real world is going to experience the Insta-Freeze(TM) problem seen in "The Day After Tomorrow." (It would have been such a fun movie too, if it weren't for the unbelievability of the "freeze chase scenes".)
We've been able to make a car run on water for the last 50 years (maybe even before) but the "big leaders" have chosen to stick with the polluting alternatives, guess why?
We have? How does that work? Do we pressurize the water and make it work like a bottle rocket? (All you smart asses out there can save your links to the air cars. I've seen them.)
I think you mean that we've had tech to run cars on hydrogen fuels. Except that there's a few snags:
1. Hydrogen isn't as energy dense as petroleum. So your MPG rating is going to suck.
2. Hydrogen is REALLY difficult to store. The molecules are so small, that they pass right through the containment vessels. When transporting liquid hydrogen, companies *expect* to lose a fraction of it on the way.
3. Hydrogen burns very fast in comparison to gasoline. This makes engine design much more difficult and shortens the life of components.
4. Hydrogen explodes nicely. Gasoline is actually quite safe as long as it's kept in containers so that fumes don't develop. (I know of a few people who had "fun" putting out matches by quickly sticking them in pools of gas.)
In other words, things aren't as simple as you're making them out to be.
(You might be interested in the article in my sig. Did you know that GM developed a Gas Turbine car that got 60 miles to the gallon of gas, could run on a variety of fuels, and cut emissions in half before abandoning the research?)
What's next? Bottled air?
"Oh my god, it's Mega Maid. She's gone from suck to blow!" --SpaceBalls
Please think about the future generations - you're in it too!
Disclaimer: Slashdot is not responsible for all the poking you're about to receive for playing the tired, "Won't somebody thing of the children?" card.
[drab]Oh. no. The. world. is. going. to. end. (Waves little white flag in an uninspired fashion.) Everything. is. going. to. die. God. save. us. all.[/drab]
:-)
Seriously, we've had the technology to detect global climate changes for what, a hundred years at most? Of that, we've had useful tools (such as satellites) for less than 50 years. I hate to say it, but the earth has gone through a variety of climate changes in its history, and it will continue to go through plenty of climate changes regardless of whether we eject terawatts of thermal energy into the atmosphere or not. (Putting aside the fact that a forest fire or volcano is a hell of a lot more energy than humans normally put out.) The fact of the matter is that we've been living cushy with our modern technology in our idea of what the climate should be like. We haven't considered that major climate shifts could be possible, and thus have done nothing to adapt our technology to the variety of conditions that may be faced in the centuries ahead.
But that's okay. On the grand scale of things, we're pretty new to this whole technology thing. Not even the Romans managed power production, even though they invented the tech early on. (See: Aeolipile) The climate will change, and we'll adapt. No "fall of civilization" as Hollywood predicts every other day, or massive Slipstreams that make airplanes the only viable tech. Life will continue on, and we'll adapt. Okay?
Grr... the grandparent post *was* modded "redundant" (which I found hilarious), but now some mod has ruined the fun with an "Offtopic" mod. What's this world coming to? Hrumph.